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.