1.3.1 And Beyond!!! Apparently

1.3.1 New Stuff

I have to say, I'm a fan of the new stuff. Lets get things rolling with... dum dah dah daaaaahhh!

Keeps

TWO RAMPS! Finally our prayers have been answered. Tanks walls, while still an integral part of any good keep defense, will no longer be practically invulnerable in huge attack/defend numbers again. You'll now have to split your forces in half, guarding both ramps and adjust where you place the higher number of defenders all the time. Attackers can now push up one ramp, ignoring the second one completely while a defender cannot. This eliminates so many frustrating situations where defenders can't get new people up, due to massive enemy presence on the ramp, and the defenders being able to utterly bottle-neck the attackers with a wall of 30 tanks/MDPS and healers group healing, while they wait on a door reset which will then let them push down to wipe them with a lot less fear of losing the keep.

City Sieges

I can't wait. I played on my US mates account, as I said in the last patch, and I really enjoyed the experience in the new City Invasions. Even in a defended instance, you can help push to stage 2, rather than just trying to get crests off the other guys. Plus, being able to flip the victory conditions from their stage 2, to your stage 2 is a brilliant idea. Now the reward is for those with the drive to actually slaughter their enemies, rather than those who wait outside for 20minutes to get an empty instance. I believe it is now better to have a defended one, than an undefended one, as you can get the 1,000 points you need to progress to stage 2 in an invaded city much faster than baby-sitting 3 BOs for a few months (extremely large exageration[spelling?]).

Although, I am wary of this whole 18 hours of a Captured City thing. Order has been pushing really hard during the late morning/early afternoon on my server, which could let them have ages inside IC. On the other hand, we've been more likely to take Altdorf in the very early morning, after several hours of locking zones and pushing forts during peak hours. Surely this means that people will be, essentially, in a city for hours on end on my server? But, the advantage of the new Capture City is that you no longer have to do the Warlord PQs to get in to pay a visit to the king. Sure you'll still have to do them to gear up, but they are now 24-man instances rather than 48-man randomness where Order can come in and bugger it up by destroying a cube or two (BW Academy one, which they've done to me a few times!).

1.3.2 "Ideas"?

Forts being taken away from the end game? I applaud the move, but how then will we progress to the city? Will it just be a case of locking two of the three pairings again, but this time without the fort? What exactly will happen to them, and what loot can I expect to get from them now? Where will Conqueror set bits drop if they are no longer coupled with the keeps/city progression? Is it possible that we are going to see something similar to the relics of old that we saw in Dark Age of Camelot?

And whats this Apprentice/Hireling system all about? MORE DETAILS PLEASE MYTHIC!

1.3.1 PTS shenanigans

NEW STUFF

Well, I've been playing around on a US friends account so I could see what all this hype was about. TWO ramps in Keeps, and the new city siege stuff? I LOVE IT!

No longer can you hold a keep against far superior numbers just by having a shite load of tanks standing there and being group heal spammed. Now you actually have to split them up, move some about, guess where/when they will next push and compensate. Admittedly, my friend plays a Black Orc so my choice of what to do was very limited, as I have no idea how to play the class, considering my tank of choice is a gimpy Black Guard. I just stood there bashing buttons aimlessly, hoping I hit the right AoE thing at the right time, and mainly popping Immaculate Defense when it was ready.

Now, as for the new city siege content, its brilliant! When you are on the attack, its so much more fluid. You can't just sit around, waiting with two warbands full of people and get a brand new instance with no defenders. You spend so damn long standing there "guarding" the BO's that you get really bored, really damn fast, just to finish the PQ like 2-3 times in total. It pays off now to charge in early on, hoping that you all get in together (when more than a warband or split apart), and start laying down a beating on the other side. Sure, you only get 1 point per kill, but thats better than waiting 3seconds for 3 points in an empty instance. You could be holding 2 BO's and getting say 50 kills every 10 minutes, and that sends your score way up, much faster. I also really like the fact that you can finish stage 2, or flip it to your victory conditions, by getting a further 1000 points, rather than having random Orderlings charge in and just disrupt everything by knocking down healers, bashing tanks out of range, or the general charge and die mentality to stop you DPSing that damn Lord down fast enough.

Along side this, I really REALLY like that you no longer have to finish the two warlord PQs to get to the king. I don't know about Order, but the Bright Wizard Academy constantly bugged for me when I was in there on the live servers, and the Temple of Sigmar was just agony and almost an instant wipe when he cleaved.

SAME OLD COMPLAINTS, BUT MADE AFRESH

One thing I do wish had happened in this patch, is the nerfbat to Magus being undone. I do like to complain, but only when its really required of me in an MMO. I played a Shaman in WoW and I had great fun on it. I re-rolled as a Paladin tank there with The Burning Crusade, and quite often whinged about how much less desirable I was compared to Warrior and Druid ones, until Mount Hyjal, and later on Black Temple were launched.

In WAR, I find myself always complaining that my Zealot is a far, FAR less useful healer than a Disciple of Khaine, or a Shaman. To be blunt, both of those classes DPS much better than my Zealot, and both of them are also excellent healers. My Zealot has the worst group heal (or at least it seems that way), and yet we are almost always ignored completely if we attempt to be a DPS'er. Not that I'm saying there are no good DPS Zealots out there. I have been informed of a rather good one on Karak Eight Peaks by a few guildies, but the name slips my mind at the moment.

Please Mythic, make my Zealot a viable hybrid class. I remember back when beta was out there was the very blunt statement that there was no pure healer. Thats a bunch of lies and you know it, as almost every "pure" DPS class is likely to be taken before me, except for my Magus who is even worse. And to prove I'm not biased, I well understand the fixes needed. I was originally a White Lion, who was at the launch of WAR, the absolute worst class in game. It goes to show how they can fix something properly, when Mythic goes "This class is underperforming, lets show them some love," and turns the worst class in the game, to a class where the bloody PET can solo my healer down. You know, the guy who's meant to be able to live through almost anything except a full out assault by a melee class. "Half" a White Lion's DPS should be in the pet, maybe 75% if they are the spec that focuses on the pet, but not to a point where the damn pet can kill me no matter what I do, or whatever class I play. I've seen tanks in tank kit, with a tank spec be killed by the damn thing.

End whinge.

Rerolled from semi-gimped to 150% gimped!

Yes, its true. I've re-rolled (sort of) from my semi-gimped Zealot, who's biggest thing was Blessing of Chaos (25% increse to heals on crit), to a 150% gimped Magus.

I love my Magus, I love the idea behind a Magus, I love seeing all those pretty numbers sky-rocketing in scenarios even though I do almost nothing really. I lie, I get a lot of kills, but never 1v1.

What I don't love is the massive nerfbat that Mythic is constantly hitting my sexy new Magus with. By the way, she's called Robba Loldps. Uroo from Ancient Shadows, part of the Evil League of Evil alliance, suggested I call myself Robba OfBanks. I was tempted by Robba Baron, but until they fix my lovely new choice of class, I'm in protest.

And speaking of protests, take a look at these cracking videos of the protest that we staged on 27 July, to show just how we feel about the previously mentioned nerfbat whacky that we have undertaken.







And just for laughs, heres Roo's first video, Memoirs of a Maniac Magus, which made me fall in love with the class all over again, even after the nerfing. I mean come on, I was only 30 when the nerfbat beating hit me, and even I lost bloody 1.5k damage over all. That made me a sad panda :(

Lost Vale malarky!

Whooooo. I'm back and posting again, after a rather lengthy loss of internet capabilities at home. Anywho, on with the blogging.

First time, wewts!

Few weeks ago, can't remember the exact date, I got my first trip the fun and bugs that is Lost Vale. I can tell you, going in with only 3 wards as a healer can be bloody horrifyingly scary at some points. Almost got 1shotted at LEAST a dozen times on boss fights, and there was several 2 hit kills. In the end though, it was a fantastic run. Was in there with my guildies, of course, running with the main group as they were lacking a healer for it.

I must say, doing the Butcher was an agonizing nightmare though. So many times we thought we had it down packed, and something would go wrong, either in one of our tanks dying and us having to force a reset, or Dacovale getting one shot insta pwned by the stupid pet thingy that likes to one shot healers sometimes. Most memorable wipes had to be the one where Daco got charged and knocked off the cliff, and the wipe where I survived BECAUSE I got charged and knocked off said cliff. In the end though, I think Bootae said it was the first "proper" kill that our guild had gotten on him.

Every other boss was a 1hit kill for us pretty much, except when for some strange reason we lost our Sorcerer on that silly tree at the end of the right wing. And lucky me, got my sexy new Darkpromise shoulders! Go go 4 Greater/superior wards for me now! Wewt!! Alas time ran short, and we couldn't finish up, and I had to work the day we were scheduled to go back in and finish up the devestation :(.

Land of the Dead

I fondly remember the days of Darkness Falls in Dark Age of Camelot. I really cannot wait for this stuff to come out. I especially like the fact that it won't be like the days of DAoC where one side could at some times completely and utterly dominate the place, because I remember back in the day playing on Percival, US servers, that there were very lengthy periods of time where only Albion or Midgard would have access, and us poor Hibernians were left out. Mainly that was due to New Frontiers and the fact that keeps were much harder to take than in the original frontiers.

Since I'm not a Core tester, unlike some of my fellow guildies, I can't really say much more on this subject until they let me know over on our guild website, http://war.mmoguildsites.net. So keep an eye out over there for a bit more info, or follow along with me on the Herald waiting for anything that Mythic deigns to let us know.

Gief Cities!

Campaign for Extra Cities, or CAMPEC

My mate Bootae, over at http://bootaesbloodyblog.blogspot.com/ has been campaigning for Mythic to give us the four other cities that were originally going to be included in the game. I hereby throw my support to this notion, and officially launch the Campaign for Extra Cities. This is something I would really love to see. Charging around inside the Black Ark, murdering and killing those pesky High Elves as they try to ruin such a great and wondrous sign of Evil, would be a blast.

I cast my mind back now to a time 7 or 8 month ago, when Mythic stated that while they were taking out the cities for the Greenskin and Chaos pairings, that they would implement them "in the future" on a rotating basis. What I thought would happen, would be something like you attack IC/Altdorf for 4 months, and then we get a nice patch where upon we would then start chopping our way through stunties to get to the Dwarven city, or punt High Elves off bridges to get to their home instead.

Why has this not been done yet? You've given us the extra four classes, made them horribly OP, then nerfed them into the ground to bring them in line with the others. Why not give us our cities? Check out Bootae's blog to see the very sexy looking gates that lead to the Dwarf, High Elf and Greenskin cities, which are sitting there in game... right now... not being used... ... ... COME ON MYTHIC, HURRY UP!

The answer to the Ultimate Question!

So long, and thanks for all the Crests!

Well, there we were. The spells were flying, the Choppa's were chopping, the Elves were dying... And we pushed them back to Altdorf. Not once, not twice, but THREE times in a 24 hour period were Order forced back and having to defend. Was a good experience getting all the way there, and then it was almost like the lag got given "Git to da choppa!". My first time in a city siege, and I was horrified. 5 second cast delays were the normal occurance for me during this. All in all, I believe that we got the PQ done about 4 or 5 times. We had waited around outside for all the silly people to rush in and fill up the Order filled instances, while we coasted along and took a nice, empty one. So the natural thought process is "Oh yes, its empty of Order. No lag for us." How wrong we were. Waiting 20 minutes for the PQ to reset the first time was the worst it got. 10 Minutes was the best.

There is no such thing as a pure healer

Mythic said it, I'm embracing it! I've gone DPS spec for a while, just for a laugh. People mock me, Order look upon me with disdain and think I'm free Renown, but then we pop into a scenario and I do the 2nd most damage on Destruction. Who can't DPS now eh? I'm quite excited to see what will happen if I ever get up to around 800 intelligence instead of hovering around 500.

Nice trick I found out on my AoE DPS spec was that I now have a spell called Winds of Insanity. This cool spell, roots me and knocks everyone in 30 feet around me back, hits them for about 180'ish and doesn't give them immunity. Now, that sounds pretty lame by itself, but I can do other stuff at the same time. So lets say we have 3 melee people, not slayers with their cone AoE though, trying to hit me. I get scared, cry, whinge, scream, and then I pop Winds of Insanity. They all go bouncing away, and I laugh. Now while they are bouncing helplessly in the air, I start casting some other spells. I throw out a Demon Spittle, which with my tactic debuffs their Corporeal Resistance and about 900 armor (melee loves it, yes they do). Then I spam Rite of Agony, which further annoys them by hitting those silly people bouncing in the air helplessly.

Through all of this, they have no immunity to knockbacks, so then when they can hit me again, I blast them away with my knockback and run away behind the by now arriving reinforcements and blast them with Chaotic Agitation, which is sort of like a Pit of Shades/Rain of Fire but focused on whoever has my Harbringer of Doom on them.

Tier 1 Malarky!

So it got to around 10:00pm GMT, and I'm bored. Don't want to fight the lag that is IC at this point, and I really don't want to be bothered with my Choppa right now. So I make a Magus called Robba. I was quite dubious about this class in the beginning, because I didn't like the range restriction they have of 65 yards on most of their DoTs. But then I realised something. Yes I'm super squishy and theres a million melee people running around in T1, and yes I will die almost instantly, but chances are with 3 DoTs ticking on most people, and me spamming the lash thing that hits everyone about 30 feet infront of me, then some of those bastards are coming with me.

Spent about 4 hours in Tier 1 oRvR and scenarios, and I've not had so much fun with a class ever. None of the one button spam that is Choppa/Slayer until 40. None of the abuse for heals that was my Zealot back then. Its pure, unadulterated killing, but killing in style. Will be a shame when I finally get my poor Robba to level 12 and have to move on to the less exciting, and vastly less populate Tier 2.

Patch love

Well I finally got a taste of the latest patch. And I have to say, I love the fixes to combat effectiveness. Finally my spells cast at the right speed when there isn't a huge strain on the computer, like that of oRvR. I finally enjoy playing my Zealot in oRvR again. Few problems with it are annoying me though.

Firstly, we haven't got our Gold Bags for holding a keep when the zone locks. According to Mythic, they didn't implement it yet. Its coming "possibly in a future patch". They said that this would be online and running with the new keep system, but yet again we got lied to.

Second is city siege. Again. With the new change, its all well and good that you can take a whole warband into the same instance, but it takes forever now. Spent 20 minutes the other night waiting outside Altdorf with my alliance, trying to get into an instance. In the end, I gave up and went to play some alts though. And when they finally did get in, the city server crashed twice. We were at 91% zone control on the first one, and I don't know what it was for the second, but that shows some serious problems server side. I really wanted to get my first Altdorf loading screen, but alas it was not meant to be.

Third we have fortresses. We got a perfect dual fortress take in prime time, but Shining Way crashed at least 4 times before it finally was taken. I wasn't trying for that one though, as my alliance was busy attacking the Dwarf fortress. When we finally did take it, two warbands worth of us were stuck outside because too many people were supposedly inside. That just boils my blood. We expended a lot of effort to get there, and then we can't get in? Not even that, but some members of some warbands got through, and we had to re-create two basically so that people inside and out were in the correct one. What was worse though, was that there isn't a portal or anything that you have to run through to change from Kadrin Valley to the fortress. You cross an invisible line, and if the place is "full", you get ported back to the warcamp. I got sent back at least 3 times trying to ride around the side, staying away from the Order gankfest so that we could keep them out.

Finally is the medallion system for getting the RvR armor sets. I once again use the Invader set for this example. Getting enough medallions doesn't seem to be too much of a problem, as they drop fairly often at that stage of the game. The thing I found incredibly annoying though, is that to get Invader Crests you need to kill a fortress lord, which means you have to be at one of the BO's closest to the fortress to get in there. I feel cheated that I didn't get the chance to get a chance to attack my first fortress or get a gold bag.

Other than that, I love the fact that I can now run the game on balanced or full effects the whole time, and still keep my group alive, even if all I'm doing is spamming group heals. I can't wait to get on later tonight and zerg my way through the new live event, Beyond the Sands. Come on Destruction, lets get our Airship built first so we can have fun in the new zone first.

New patch stuff

So I've been reading about on one of my favourite blogs, namely Wizards and Wenches, and came across the info for the token system in oRvR. I have just one thing I have to say about that...



I mean, to get the Invader gloves, its going to take a truck load of effort. I pull the numbers directly from WNW for this.

You have a CHANCE every kill to get a medallion, and you get a set amount for doing things such as locking down zones, taking BO's and keeps etc. You need 400 of these to get the kit. Oh, and did I mention you need to roll for it? BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

You also need another bit of currency. Namely Invader Crests. These bad boys you only get for two things. You kill a renown rank 51+ person and get damn bloody lucky, and then win the roll amongst your warband, or you finish City Invasion PQs and then win the roll amonst the whole damn instance.

Sounds like fun doesn't it? This feels like grinding heroic badges in WoW all over again, only taking a crap load longer. I had imagined something similar to the system in place in DAoC with Darkness Falls, but I guess they're saving that for Land of the Dead.


Another thing I was reading about was the changes to weapon skill, toughness, and initiative. Am I the only one thinking that I need completely new kit, and that now my Sentinel/Annihilator mix just won't cut it any more? I mean, its great that useless stats now count, but this will make those pesky Ironbreakers even more pesky, by giving them in combat health regen on top of huge armor, crazy block/parry/dodge and hitting like a mack truck if they happen to be great weapon spec. But then again, being a squishy, even the flies hit me for as much as a tank does who's using a one-hander, and those hit me for up to 400 pretty regularly.

Seems to me that they don't want us healing for as much now, and would rather we focus on just reducing the damage we take from crits. Now that would be great, except for the fact that if I'm getting hit, I'm normally dead even without a crit because of the assist trains that happen when I pop up somewhere. There'll be me, minding my own business, healing the Choppa's that are cutting a swathe through Order and getting me some good renown, when suddenly all the other Destruction seem to vanish, and I'm surrounded by a sea of red names battering me down in under a second. They could of at least made Willpower the stat to affect HP regen in combat, to give us squishy healer types a chance to stay alive longer, rather than making it incredibly likely that we'll see tank archetypes running around in full toughness/initiative kit and taking literally zero damage.

1.2.1 shenanigans!

So, we've had the test notes up for patch 1.2.1 for a while, and I thought I'd throw out my 2cents about them.

First off, I have to say the AoE fix couldn't of come sooner. The army of Bright Wizards and Engineers out there have left me, and many others, finding it hard to force ourselves into oRvR on a regular basis. While this wasn't a bad thing in WoW, the PvE encounters do need a lot of work to make up for it. Hence, I've found my Choppa just to be more worthwhile playing. I tend to run with a Liminent: Mercy up and even though that bumps me to about 8k HP, the 40% soft cap to resists that was forced upon us still leaves me dying more often than not in a few seconds.

Keep upgrading I personally can't wait for. One thing I really, REALLY want to see along with this though is visual upgrades so you can tell at a glance what level a keep is. Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC henceforth) was brilliant in this regard. You could take out a few groups, run by a keep and tell at a glance what level the thing was just by the size of walls and what level guards were there. Door HP upgrades do seem a bit lackluster though, as you can only double the amount they have. Sure its a short timer on it to actually upgrade them, but having them naturally get stronger as your keep does would be nice too. Its a shame they didn't code in destructible walls though when they made the game. They had done it in DAoC in New Frontiers, why not in a brand new game fresh at launch?

Some of the upgrades do look rather interesting though, like the Altars and specialty guards that will cast spells. Tank walls at the inner door will be much more likely to happen, rather than the current ramp block. The skulls that you need to get to fire off an Altar though I'm a bit vague on. Do they get destroyed when you log out? How many skulls can I carry at a time? Do I get one for every Order I kill, or do we get them randomed out through the whole warband? Can I trade them if thats the case? And are we talking a HUGE amount of damage, so that small numbers of defenders can withstand a much larger attacking force, or is it percentage based?

The oil immunity potions that will be coming out with the new "ordinance" currency are quite tempting to get as well. Quite often I find myself moving in closer so I can hit the oil with DoTs and instant cast spells, hoping to damage it enough to force the person using it to repair and save the MDPS some health, and me AP for healing and rezzing them in situations where we can't take it out. Of course, even though I have 100 range on many of my spells, it still seems that I can't stand back as far as the RDPS can to hit said oil. This innevitably leaves me standing in the oil myself.

Thats just the stuff I personally think is going to be most worthwhile, mainly because siege weapons beyond rams and oil are essentially useless. Maybe being able to use the single target ones on doors, although for a lot less damage than a ram hits for, would be a good boost for them. Possibly give me an aerial view when I'm on the AoE ones too, so I know exactly where its going to hit, rather than guessing. Not saying let me see where people are precisely, but give me a little map so I can figure out where it is a little better. If you hit someone, maybe let you see where they are moving to for a couple of seconds afterwards, or even just if it hits them and they stay in range.

Whatever happens, bring on the patch. I can't wait to be out there, kicking ass, taking names, and becoming a feared and respected Zealot, rather than just a renown farm for the Order AoE zerg.

Bloooooog!

Thought I'd follow my good guildie Bootae and throw out a blog of my own.

Quick bit of info about this and me.

This is a Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning blog based around the Zealot class. I play a 40 Zealot, when I have time, on the Karak-Norn European servers.

So, now that thats out of the way, let us be getting cracking.