T7 Black Orc armour

Now this looks mean as hell. I like a lot.

Bloody Blorc

Felt like a bit of a change, again, so I’ve been playing my Black Orc the last couple of days. He’s only L40/R3X and the last time I had played he was specced for a great weapon, which sucked obviously thanks to no stats to support it. So this time I respecced for a proper tanky shield style and chucked my few renown points into defensive stats. I figured I’d be more useful if I played guardbot and got as much CC as possible, which turned out to be quite correct. I’m no big killer, but I’ve been able to make myself useful and the groups I’ve been in have worked out quite well... Apart from when facing the Order mega zergs, which apparently don’t exist! :P Yet somehow we had AAO all night in every zone yesterday, go figure…

Anyways, I think I am enjoying playing the Black Orc, they’re a pretty solid class, have some great abilities and look mean as foooooook. When it comes to fulfilling a PvP tank role, just looking at the CC options in my current spec I’ve got:

• 2x single target knockbacks
• AoE knockback
• Snare
• Morale single target root
• AoE root
• Knockdown
• Silence
• Morale AoE Silence

Then there’s a load of buffs, debuffs and more, which I must say is pretty damn good really. It is a bit of a shame though that it’s all wrapped up in the hideous plan mechanic that Blorcs and Swordmasters are lumbered with. It’s a system which will always feel like a hindrance rather than something enjoyable to use in itself. Though perhaps if the Blorc had all those abilities available all the time it would be a bit too powerful?

My Chosen in a relative spec has:

• Knockback
• Knockdown
• AoE Stagger
• Snare
• Morale single target root
• AoE root

Certainly it looks like the Blorc is some way ahead, even taking into account that the Chosen's AoE stagger is a particularly potent ability when used well.

Still, using the plan system frustrates me, but as the abilities go off and evil things happen, it pleases me greatly. Oh damn it Mr Blorc Designer Dev Type Person, I can’t work out if the class annoys the shit out of me or smothers me in waaaghy goodness.

/confused

Lokax posts an interesting idea on tanks

I was having a chat with Lokax the other night and he suggested some ideas of his about further defining the role of defensive tanks by using tactics to improve Taunt and Challenge. He’s got a quick post up on his blog Mmmmm Gud about the idea and I really think he is on to something good there. Go have a butchers and encourage further debate and discussion.

It links into something we were discussing at Gamesday about how it would be much better if Guard only worked if a tank was using a shield. It’s an idea a guildie of mine has often mentioned and when we were asked about our thoughts on it at the weekend (but this time it was raised by someone else) everyone thought it really would be an excellent change if it were to happen.

Further defining and rewarding tanks that play shield specs is something that would be good for the game all round. At present I am great weapon spec again, despite having been a shield tank for over a year and shield being my preferred play style. The problem is since the latest patch the loss in damage and gain in defence is just not worth it, particularly as by using a great weapon I barely lose any of my utility. I do miss my knockdown ability mind you, but the damage gulf really is so huge for a Chosen now that it’s just not enough.

So OI! Lokax! Take this idea further and post more pls ;)

Blorc update, almost there...

We had a shockingly bad time in RvR this evening, in part due to the odd screw up by us, but mainly due to over half my warband suffering from incredibly bad lag. Players were appearing to teleport around and there was a regular occurrence of that old favourite; the classic lag spike pause. This combined with a very zergy night in every racial pairing (just soooo many people online tonight) was obviously pissing people off and we haemorrhaged players as they (quite sensibly) decided to go do something else. Nobody likes getting rolled by superior numbers AND lag. So I decided to do a little bit of Blorcing.

Off to Land of the Dead I went and then it was the usual stuff, grindy grind grind! Ran out of rest XP just after I dinged level 37, so I’ve left it there for now and will continue soon as I have a full level’s worth built up again. Which means I've only 2 levels more grinding and then I’ll use a war tract item for the free ding to bypass 39-40. It’s nice to have the end in sight and I’m quite looking forward to swinging that great weapon about in Tier 4 properly.

Actually I’m considering not doing any PvE with this character at 40, instead sticking with a Great Weapon and just going for RvR & scenario items. Of course it’s easy to say that now… We’ll see ;)

Let's Blorc again

Got a couple more levels on my Black Orc, hitting the heady heights of level 35! I've done a bit of RvR too, obviously at a huge disadvantage, but it's not been entirely fruitless. Mainly because I just played (a slightly psychotic) guard-bot. I've decided I'm going to be stick with the great weapon spec and just smashing things around with no real care for my own safety, because it's fun. Which I guess means I am accidently role-playing a Black Orc correctly.

Here's the look at level 35, mean green killing machine:

Anyways, building up some rest XP again at the moment and I plan on hammering his level up with some champ group farming in the near future. I will probably only level him when I have a full bar of rest XP available, since that's the most efficient when you're juggling as many alts as I am.

It shouldn't be too long before I'll discover if it's joy or pain (I suspect the latter) for a newbie 40 Blorc in the now sovereign dominated Tier 4.

Big post of rambling before going AFK

I’m going to be AFK for a week, which would have meant no posts, but thanks to the glory of iPhone I might be able to sneak in the odd post, but that may prove difficult… Still, worry not my bored at work friends! Just go check my blog roll for more WAR, MMO and other alt-tab work-time reading! ;) In the meantime I figured rather than post on a particular topic, I’d instead ramble about the various WAR related things ticking through my head and see where that takes me.

First of all we have the collision detection drama that I posted about yesterday. For good or ill, this will prove to be what 1.3.6 is remembered for. I saw this post on the WHA forums earlier which tickled me, it’s a quote from a Mythic grab-bag about friendly collision detection. LOL Poor Mythic, but that’s the curse of the internet and that special breed, the MMO gamer… if you say it, it’s never, ever forgotten. I have to say though; I agree with Mythic’s comments in that grab bag and would love to hear exactly why it was a problem then and not now. I say that without sarcasm. No, seriously, something changed their mind and would like to know exactly why.

Long term readers will know that this is not something I would say lightly, as I’m not one to go all emo-rage-quit, but there are 2 things that would make me seriously consider quitting WAR:
1 – WAR going free to play (thankfully ruled out)
2 – The PvP combat system becoming too much like World of Warcraft’s trash PvP.

As of 1.3.6 the jury is out on the second one. I’m unfortunately only little bit hopeful it will work out ok, I’ve got much louder alarm bells going off like crazy. Kiting through friendly targets, weakening of the relevance of terrain and a big step towards Zerghammer are genuine threats with this change. If Zerghammer replaces everything, then everyone will suffer and all of Mythic’s recent progress will be for naught. You may think I’m being overly negative, reading too much into it, but in a year and a half of writing this blog I’ve discovered it’s better not to write off my gut feeling on this sort of thing. Everything I’m hearing is pointing to this going in regardless of anybody’s concerns. Unless it’s for a like a temporary 2 week test on live servers, then I will be staying extremely worried for the future of WAR’s gameplay.

Moving on…

A mini Blorc update. Sorry folks, I got sidetracked… I will be continuing and will be posting about his progress, but I just got utterly absorbed by my Witch Elf. I’m approaching realm rank 50 with her, have got pretty well geared for that level and have become reasonably proficient in kicking arse. Of course I still lots and lots to learn to become “good” with the Witch Elf. It’s also dramatically reduced the time I’ve spent on my Chosen, which I need to address. The Black Orc I figure I’ll pick up again in couple of weeks.

Gamescom, Gamesday Baltimore and the big announcements for the future are fast approaching. Many of us are expecting this to be news on a paid expansion, whereas others are more than a little less optimistic (shock horror). There are all sorts of rumours flying around, but they’re hard to substantiate. For example I’ve heard from a respectable contact with extremely good links into Gamesworkshop that not only is an expansion coming, but it’s been practically ready for a while, but between the GOA split and the big scary Cataclysm approaching, Mythic’s release schedule was buggered. Any truth in it? I’ve no idea! I can’t get any confirmations and it could just have been someone involved pulling our chain. In a couple of weeks hopefully we’ll know the truth.

As an aside to that, something is going on general with Mythic and their games. Mythic have stated that Ultima Online has a big announcement coming. The lead for Dark Age of Camelot is also going to Gamescom and I believe Gamesday too. Hmmm. Speculation can lead you all over the place with this.

Next thought… Having had plenty of time to settle into our new Mythic version of the Karak Norn server I can confidently give a bit of feedback on it. The performance in ORvR is vastly improved. Is this to do with avoiding France Telecom? Having played MMOs for a long time, I wouldn’t be bloody surprised. I’m extremely pleased with the improvements in ORvR and it has been great fun. Alas, its not all good news. The lag spikes everyone gets in Tomb of the Vulture Lord (or any dungeon) when something happens elsewhere in the game world have not gone away with the GOA servers, so its obviously WAR itself at fault. I loathe wiping on a boss purely because everyone’s game froze up for a second or two. Actually I don’t know if this is related or not, but if you want to see some kind of server delay in visual form, just use a knockdown on the cousins on the 7th boss in Vulture Lord and notice how they fall to the floor several paces BEHIND where you and the mob are when you actually hit them. It happens almost every single time.

Finally in not WAR related, yet sort of is, news, I’ve been playing an awful lot of “Mount & Blade: Warband” and am bloody loving it. Once you get past the dodgy presentation, the lack of decent instructions and after you apply the Polished Landscapes add on to update the graphics, it is truly a brilliant game. The single player campaign is far deeper than it at first appeared and the multiplayer is absolutely fantastic. I’ve been in siege battles with 222 people, no lag at all and FULL collision detection. I’m sure for technical reasons that you can’t really compare a hosted battle game and a MMO on performance, but a big part of why this game is so amazingly brilliant is that full collision detection. Last word on that my friends, you don’t know what you had until its gone.

The Kill Frenzy WAR video auteur is making a video of some of the fights we’ve had, I’ll post it ASAP so you can see why I’m gushing about this game.

Anyways that’s me done, I’ll try and keep posting over the next week, but don’t rely on me for news or anything ;)

Blorc update and a quick word (or several) on maintenace messages

OK so you may have noticed I haven’t posted about my Black Orc for a little while. You may have thought I’d given up, that the pony plan system had finally driven me to despair. But no! Thanks to some Land of the Dead power levelling on champ groups I hit level 31 the other day and am now in the heady heights of Tier 4. Which of course means I’ll be continuing to power level all the way to 40 and probably won’t be bothering with scenarios or RvR for a bit. Well, not much anyway.

I still loathe the plan system, it is truly terrible when compared with playing my Chosen in that respect, yet the class continues to ooze character despite this and I’ve not even considered quitting. I’m levelling with a Brawler spec, but have had to go sword and board for tanking the champs, I think I’ll be sticking with this spec tree and swinging a great weapon when I properly start tier 4 pvp.

On the armour front, I’ve taken quite a big step towards the end game look, with huge chunks of metal everywhere. Except for my feet, which are some random RvR vendor crap, I’m wearing full Explorer gear from Land of the Dead in this screenshot. Not exactly a proper armour set stat wise, but it’s not too bad for my level and has a decent look.

Sorry it’s quite a dark screenshot btw, I had to rush as the server was being taken down for maintenance out of the blue at 11pm on a Friday night. An emergency is an emergency, I just hope it really is and isn’t someone just not giving a toss… because that’s how it looks when no real reason is given for something like this.

A tip Mythic, instead of some apparently flippant message, if you say “emergency maintenance to resolve serious issue X Y and Z”, then you’ll find people much more receptive to these things. not that I mean to teach you to suck eggs or whatever ;)

As it was people were literally fuming mad in region chat and it’s certainly not a great impression for the large number of returning players we’ve got right (due to 2 weeks free).

Still 1 emergency downtime over the whole transfer, aint too shabby.

Borked Blorcs

Before I get started, if Mythic have this all sorted in 1.3.6, then I wub you guys. If you don’t, well, you should :P

You often hear people complain about the Black Orc (and Swordmaster) plan system, you’ll think it sounds a bit dodgy, but until you roll a Blorc and you really persevere with it you won’t really know quite how frustrating, limiting and just abso-bloody-lutely “AAAGHHHH MAKE IT STOP!!” it is.

Just in case you don’t know it works, I shall explain as briefly as possible… Obviously I’m talking for a Black Orc, but the principles are the same for Swordmasters. Your attacks are split between 3 different “plans”.

1) No Plan
2) The Gud Plan
3) The Best Plan

Using an ability from one plan progresses your character to the next plan and you can then use abilities from that plan (and only that plan), this then progresses you to the third and final plan, you use one of those attacks and then it takes you back to the start. So at any one point the abilities you can use is limited dependent on what plan you are in. Think about that for a minute and relate it to your current main character, divide their attacks into 3 groups and imagine what it would be like if you can’t pick and choose what to use when.

To make the implications of this absolutely clear, oh yes baby, it’s imaginary scenario time! No nurse outfits alas.

I’m logged in with my Chosen and fighting a Slayer 1v1 on a bridge in Dragonwake. A Witch Hunter appears behind me and joins the fight, but his positioning is dodgy so I simply turn round, hit my knockback, punt him off the bridge and continue the fight.

Now lets try the exact same situation, but I’m using a Black Orc. The Witch Hunter has jumped me, his positioning is dodgy and he is ripe for a knockback… except I can’t, but not because I don’t have a knockback, I do and it’s quite a good one. You see at this point I was in the next plan up, so I’ve got to go through 2 different attacks and 2 global cooldowns before I’m in the correct plan and my knockback is useable. In MMO PvP where it’s all about hitting the right ability at the right time, this pretty much ensures that the Witch Hunter will no longer be set up for punting off the bridge by the time I can actually use my knockback.

That would be quite simply ridiculous if there wasn’t some incredible benefit for using the plan system, but… uhm… there isn’t, so yeah… it is ridiculous. There is no benefit to plans in any way or form, nothing. It is a limitation for limitations sake. To make matters worse the plan system is negatively affected by lag. When you’re in a big fight or suffering from lag for whatever reason, sometimes the plans don’t change correctly. So not only do you have to cycle through a range of abilities to get to the one you want, but now and again it just doesn’t work at all. AND the system is unplayable without using either a mod such as Plan B or Nerfed Buttons. As such I don’t understand why it is still in the game. Other than generating frustration, what is it achieving?

Yet, could it be made to achieve anything? Possibly... First, lets assume Mythic manage to fix the lag related plan changing problem…. Which leaves us with; if the plans are going to limit our options, the plans themselves need to provide a benefit.

First off Black Orc (and Swordmaster) plan related abilities should not have any cooldown timers. Not being able to use an ability when you want (due to the plan system) is annoying, so why limit it further? Make that into a bonus. So yes, you are restricted by the plan system as to when you can use ability X, but if you are in that plan then that ability WILL always be available. Secondly, give the plans a bit more meaning. There is a tactic (name escaping me right now) that links your critical hit rate to your plans; Gud plan gets +10% crit, Best plan +20% crit. Remove the tactic and put that into the career as standard. This would mean that while the careers are limited about when they can use each ability, they would be more potent when using them. In other words, they get bonuses to counter balance their serious limitations.

Would my suggestions be enough to make up for the headache plan system? Hmmm, to be honest I don’t know. I’m not an experienced enough Blorc player yet and I’m trying to fix an inherently flawed system. Not having proper choice and control over what you do, when everyone else does, is a massive downside and I’m not convinced it can be balanced out so easily. Would it just be easier to rip the entire plan system out and give Black Orcs and Swordmasters something new?

I’d be interested to hear from other more experienced Black Orc players (Lokax I’m looking at you mate) for their thoughts.


Oh and make Black Orcs as big as enraged Choppas. Black Orcs are meant to be the biggest, meanest Orcs in existence. Having them dwarfed by bloody Choppas is completely lore breaking and looks stupid. I refuse to believe it’s not easy to change. AND while I’m here, get rid of the shields from Swordmasters and make them true great weapon tanks (once again) like they’re meant to be. It’s not hard; to replace the loss of shield blocking just give them an enhanced version of parry that also works against magic. Actually, that should apply to Black Guards too and their lore breaking shield nonsense! And another thing… uhm… actually I better stop before I go off on a tangent of epic proportions.

FIX BLORCS!

Blorc update - the middle of tier 3

Ok so I've hit level 25, but my renown rank has dropped behind a bit and is languishing at 21. I had a few power level opportunities which I decided not to turn down. Of course now I'm at 25 I can get to Land of the Dead, which is great for power leveling on champions and the like. I'm considering hammering the Blorc straight to 40 with some serious PL sessions, but I'm not so sure if I want to leave my renown rank so far behind this time.

Tier 3 is erratic... Ranging from zero PvP to huuuuuuge fights. Want to get out quickly really.

Still liking the class, the look and feel of it, but I'm still hating the plan system. It's terribad as they say. I'll be posting in more detail about that and with some suggestions soon. As for the evolution of my armour, wow, really starting to get there now. Very spikey and just plain covered in metal. It's just sooo WAAAGH darling!

I suspect once I get to 40 I could get a bit drawn into playing the Blorc in T4 quite often, just for the look..

In other news, make sure you read my post below about Shadow-war's competition.

Black Orc update – middle of tier 2

So far and still so good… Most of the time in Tier 2 I’ve been grouped with a Choppa and occasionally with a Zealot and Disciple of Khaine, all from Kill Frenzy. Where possible we’ve been running our little group around the sides of the main Destruction groups/warbands and with great success. Of course it’s only lower tier action, so the quality of opposition (and friendly) players is extremely varied and as such it is hard to judge how good the Black Orc actually is. It feels like an absolute monster, but I expect that is because of the whole fighting in lower tiers thing. Not that I care, since it has just been plain good fun.

Armour wise I’ve upgraded quite a lot. As I’m playing Gashcheese purely in PvP at the moment I wasn’t really getting any armour that wasn’t just the very basic green stuff from keeps, so I ran my Choppa through the Saccelum dungeons to get the repairable blue armour from there.

This is what I'm looking like now at level 16 and all tier 2 armour and weapons:

As you can see comparing with the end of tier 1 (image below), it’s made quite a big difference to my appearance and I’m really starting to look like a proper Black Orc.

A few levels away yet, but I’m hoping Tier 3 won’t be too much of a letdown after all this fun in Tier 2. I guess I’ll just power level out if so.

Black Orc update – The other end of tier 1

I’ve been really enjoying the Black Orc this time round. I discovered that an add on conflict was causing problems for the Plan B mod (essential to make Blorcs not utter crap to play) and sorting that out has made a massive difference. I still think the Black Orc/Swordmaster plan system is very poor for PvP because it doesn’t let you react with the right ability at the right time, but even so at the moment it’s not annoying me. I’ve opted for running around with a great weapon, stacked mainly strength and the end result has been me kicking buttocks left right and centre. Only lost one 1v1 fight and am also winning most 1 vs multiple fights, within reason anyway. Of course this is tier 1, so a lot of the opposition isn’t up to much, but then it’s not like I’m the only veteran running round with a half twinked alt. It’s certainly a very solid class in this tier.

With these Blorc update posts I’ll be including pictures to show the evolution of the Black Orc image as I progress through the tiers, it’s a class that has some pretty dramatic and very brutal looking armour. Nothing in the way of WoW’s camp insanity thankfully, this is Warhammer after all.

So this is me at the start of Tier 1, I think other than the starting gear all I had was a bracer.

And this is me now at level 11, about 35% away from dinging 12 and leaving tier 1. Not found a helm yet alas. Mean looking bugger I reckon.

Tier 2 is fast approaching... It was pretty busy when I was there with my Zealot fairly recently, hopefully that will have continued.

My third attempt at leveling a Black Orc

How long before the plan system drives me mental and I rage delete the character? Place your bets folks :P

Now all fear my....

Love the look, even before getting proper armour.