Friday 23 July 2010

1.3.6 patch chatty posty post

Right then, as I posted yesterday the 1.3.6 notes are out and I’m guessing most everyone has had a good look. As ever this means its time for me to have a little rambling chat about the potential impact of the patch.
 
Lets get the character stuff out of the way first… 1.3.6 has a fair bit of character balancing, so in that respect it’s going to be controversial patch for those with characters that get hit in a negative fashion, though I have to say that in general it looks pretty solid to me.  I’m not going to go into every career’s changes, just a few I feel like commenting on.
 
The biggest changes are to Zealots and Runepriests, changes that I think maybe fairly positive. Prior to the patch I had a steadily increasing sense of doubt about them, I was worried about being toggled for damage gimping the self-presevation abilities of DPS Zealots, but I’m intrigued by the potential of the new transference tactic. With every single damaging spell healing you (or your defensive target) for 50% of the damage done, this might work out ok. However, whilst I have a level 40 Zealot, I’m not that experienced with him for DPS, so I can’t say with total certainty. It will be interesting to see how this works out.
 
The change to close quarters will do nothing to prevent the dominance of mass stacking PBAoE. A 25% damage reduction is of no relevance when you regularly face such large numbers of Bright Wizards or Sorcerers, it will still be instant death stacked AoE. As such while I think it’s a step in the right direction, unfortunately on it’s own it’s a pointless change and will achieve nothing. PBAoE should not hit harder than most people’s primary single target attacks, end of story. Though I do think examining the potency of both team heals and the guard abilities should be included in any real solution to AOEhammer.
 
Magus changes are interesting and pretty good, but I’m not sure they are enough. The class needs more damage or something to give them more influence on the battlefield, without becoming rift-bots. And what on earth is the point of buffing Strengthen Thrall??? Unless the Daemonic Fire debuff is truly monumental, Magus pets will still be used primarily as land mines. In particular I’m disappointed to see the Havoc tree not getting buffed, but at least Mythic are making some headway into sorting out the Magus.
 
Stealth fixed? At present more often than not stealth is utterly useless, so making it harder to spot stealthers is good, but have they also addressed stealth breaking for a vast range of stupid reasons like being buffed, having guard put on, etc, etc. It’s not mentioned in the patch notes, but I’m hoping for a stealth fix to uhm stealth… Other than this there’s nothing for Witch Elves or Witch Hunters… Which is odd when I’m told that Witch Elves have a tactic that only works if you are SOUTH of your target, I’ve forgotten the name and can’t log in to check right now, I think its called baneful touch or something?. Whatever, that’s just LOL. Fix it please ;)
 
 
Shadow Warriors… I’m really pleased they’ve been buffed. Of everything in the game I think they needed it most. The changes look great. I’m not complaining about the knock on effect to Squig Herders either!
 
Marauder. Ok seriously? The brutality tree is still ignored and completely useless. I do not understand why this is not being addressed.
 
Moving on from characters…
 
The new armour appearance system rocks. I tried it on the PTS and it’s spot on, I’m very pleased with this. Though I’m told that the graphic updates for armour that we were meant to also be getting have not been included. Which would mean for my Chosen that actually I don’t have much to choose from, since many of our armour sets use the same graphics… Still, a fairly minor gripe, it’s a great system and exactly what I had hoped for.
 
Sovereign armour changes. Good move, nuff said.
 
ORvR changes. Against all Odds, no more mailbox guarding and no more prior tier or PvE contribution to the campaign. Love it, great stuff and a big step in the right direction. I’m not going in to great detail about these now, but these changes are potentially the biggest changes in the entire patch and these alone make 1.3.6 a good patch for WAR.
 
I fully support the changes for Land of the Dead access. While summoning being turned off will make it a bit more awkward when sorting out Vulture Lord groups, on the other hand not having to piss about with the Public Quest will save time. And regardless, the overall benefit for Tier 2 and 3 when combined with the new increased XP/renown from the Skaven stuff in the RvR lakes, more than makes up for a little inconvenience for my occasional dungeon runs. If it results in busier T2-3 then it is good for the game in general.
 
There are loads of other things in the patch, but I’ll be writing all day if I cover them all. There’s one interesting little thing though… “The /assist command is no longer accessible by 3rd party add-ons.” Wow, a big nerf for people relying on auto focus and other such mods. Great move! People will use macros instead of course, but at least it removes some of the brainless gameplay.

11 comments:

  1. As i feared it will be a more or less useless patch when mythic yet again shows no courage to deal with issues. Some good stuff for some of the some careers needing love. Actually thought they would dare to do something drastic like CQ change PLUS caree mechanic change, sad to see they didnt.

    Marauder still has a useless tree for pvp, WE suffering apart from Heart Render Toxin, Black Lotus Blade and (possibly) Witch Brew are the only abilities worth anything while the rest of the tree remains utterly shit.

    0 changes in for WE/WH 2 patches in a row is just fail. Oh and Boots is right.. stealth is utterly fucking crap, not even good in SCs since it breaks for nothing.

    AoE still the king, not looking forward to be bombed to shit for another 1-2 months before next patch.

    GG Mythic

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  2. Eldard/Gorefist23 July 2010 at 14:26

    Well since im a old Black Orc/Sword Master player im still not happie about this cheap fix for a mechanic that needs to be scraped..

    I dont know what the hell mythic are thinking but the bo/sm classes are the weakist tanks in this game..

    The ones who know how to play there class well make it look easy my self henchor rev finreal lokax & rhalp parvn many others..

    I generaly makes me kinda down in the dumps about the class over all..

    Quick question bootae if i make a offical post about the balance/plan mechanic will you sign it and add your own views?

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  3. If I agree with the post I'll sign it, but at the very least I will be happy to reply in it with thoughts ;)

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  4. Eldard/Gorefist23 July 2010 at 15:47

    Well i will do it tomarro since i got stuff to do tonight ect it all so gives me few things to chew over when thinking about it..

    I will send you a pm on here or wha with the link to the post tomarro

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  5. Have to confess I am little disappointed about GYR for Knights (and the equiv for choosen) is getting nerfed. The fact that it is the best aura is not necessarily due to the fact it is super amazing (it is very good) but mainly due to the fact that most of the rest are just gakk.

    Cant help but feel we are getting the blame for the bombing here.

    Oh well I guess two weeks of 100% renown has helped alot of peeps towards rr80 just in time for another alt.... skaven perhaps ;)

    VPP

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  6. Was going to point out similar to VPP- how will the fact that Chosen/Knight resist debuff is getting a 50% nerf, while party buff does not (at least as I understand it) affect bombing? I'm on badlands where we're fortunate enough to not have the giant bombing warbands (at least on the scale you seem to have on the EU servers; wonder why). Any thoughts as a chosen on the resist debuff nerf? I think it's probably needed (even though I play knight and BW as my mains)

    Chrin, badlands

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  7. I'm a bit torn on it really. I can understand how it may help contribute to reducing the effects of AoE, which obviously is something I'm keen on seeing, but from a personal selfish Chosen viewpoint... Almost every one of our attacks is spirit based (other than Cleave which is really weak anyway), so this is potentially a big nerf to the vast majority of Chosen abilities. I'm hearing bad, baaaadd things from some quite sensible Chosen players who are testing it on the PTS. Now some people will say Chosen DPS needs nerfing, but in reality it is nowhere near the levels people make out. A guildie friend of mine has done some experiments lately and I was surprised to see his Black Orc actually putting out consistently higher burst damage than his Chosen, and this is a well geared and decent player.

    I believe Knights have less of a reliance on spirit (or whatever magic type it is for them) based attacks, but I gather its a similar situation and fairly heavy nerf.

    Having said all that, I'm not going to leap around in a panic and will wait to see what tweaking happens prior to go live.

    As for why we get larger scale bombing here, tbh I don't know why its different here, it just is. For example today I've been in multiple City siege instances that had 7-8 Bright Wizards all PBAoE bombing. Over the last few days I've also seen similar numbers of Sorcs. Those numbers in the enclosed spaces of a city are enough to make quite wide walls of instant death.

    Alas it's just too effective not to use. My own guild has had to start bombing more to compete, quite effectively of late too. A shame, but unavoidable on Karak Norn.

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  8. Konfuzfanten - BnQ24 July 2010 at 04:52

    A PBAoE bombing 6 man group can charge a pug wb head on and waste it. Thats how powerful a slayer+BW/2xslayer/2xBW is. I spend most of the friday(last night) running my BnQ group of a solo BW bomber and our newly returned good gear shatter limp slayer, result: 2 altdorf instance 70000+ renown and loads of sc carnage = 4 RRs(rr45-49) on my baby-knight (Panzerfanten). Again bombing is to powerful and the knight battle command/Chosen Aura is a big part of that. I play my knight as a harassment/survivale tank so my dmg wont get nerf (most of my dmg is from morale dumps + me spamming punts and staggers left and right). But i do know a lot of DPS knights runs with a tactic that make most of our attacks into elemental dmg instead of physical dmg. Again if you anit specing into that tree getting that tactic you should feel the dmg nerf.

    This patch will not kill PBAoE, but change it to slayers/choppas instead of BW/sorcs. Tactics will be the same, but overall bombing will get nerf by 5-10% dmg, but still more then enough to destroy any non-organized/high gear opponent. With that said this is a good patch a lot of good new things (no low lvl lotd grind!!!), more tier 2+3 action, less bombing.

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  9. Oh yeah, hadn't noticed they were nerffing the Chosen aura.

    Well, seeing that Spiritual resistances are currently being stripped by both Chosens and Magi's Glean Magic (and possibly other classes) by a decent amount, I guess they had to do something about the incoming unmitigated Sorc damage. And nobody would even want to hear the mention of a Magus nerf would they?

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  10. Eldard/Gorefist24 July 2010 at 11:51

    Bootae

    i done the post but its not 100% finshed i will add more when i have some time link is below

    http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/board/message?board.id=pts_ff&thread.id=86058

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  11. Eldard/Gorefist25 July 2010 at 14:07

    Bootae cheers for the kudos and the post mate. I just need 1 more fav from you if you can pass the link on to lokax & Ralph & pavrun and the rest of the bo's in destruction mate i would be greatfull

    -Cheers

    Eldard/Gorefist

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