Woah that went live quick

Mythic didn't waste any time with the DoK/WP nerf/change going live. Forums are going to assplode right about... well... they have been for days.

It will be very interesting to see what the reality of this change is. My money is on the decent guilds and players adapting very quickly and not a great deal changing in the grand scheme of things, other than perhaps cloth healers getting a bit more popular. I suspect that those suggesting that the rampant AoE of doom will melt things quicker have a point, but meh, it's not like it was particularly slow before.

Any time that people get nerfed the forums go ape-shit, more often than not it proves to be players crying purely out of self interest, sometimes not of course, but until this gets played with on live we won't know how justified all the QQ has been. I'll be most intrigued to see on Karak Norn what impact (if any) it has on warband composition for the big name guilds.

Hotfix details below:

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Greetings!

The following Hot Fixes were implemented during today's maintenance:

General Changes and Bug Fixes
General
•The Keg’s End Live Event has begun and lasts until January 4th, 2011!
Combat and Careers


Disciple of Khaine
•Khaine’s Embrace: The base healing value of this ability has been reduced and its cooldown has been removed.
•Khaine’s Vigor: The base healing value of this ability has been increased and its duration has been reduced.

Magus
•Chaotic Attunement: Fixed an issue which prevented this Tactic ability from reducing the Action Point cost of summoning abilities.
Warrior Priest
•Pious Restoration: The base healing value of this ability has been increased and its duration has been reduced.
•Touch of the Divine: The base healing value of this ability has been reduced and its cooldown has been removed.

Realm vs. Realm
Open RvR
•Rate Ogre: This unit’s survivability has been increased.
•Gutter Run: This Gutter Runner ability will no longer stack with other run speed buffs.
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The 1.3.6, the best patch WAR has ever had?

This patch has not by any means been perfect; there are things it introduced that are (or were) a problem. Some of these problems have been relatively quick to fix and others are a bit more of a headache. However the bad has, in my humble opinion, been FAR outweighed by the good, including one new addition in particular that is the best thing to happen to WAR since launch. And it’s such a good change that I want to be sure this post ends on a high, so I’ll get the bad out of the way first.
 
Performance and graphics bugs
The game performance has got worse, not consistently as everything can be fine for big chunks of time, but then sometimes (with varying regularity) you’ll start getting those performance hits and freezes that fit the vague term gamers use of “server lag”. On a few occasions it has become barely playable and at one point it did lead to most of my guild (myself included) logging off to play something else. However, Mythic have been doing server maintenance almost every other day and performance has dramatically improved since the patch went live. As such it shouldn’t be too long before this becomes a non-issue. Actually, the last couple of days I haven’t had any performance problems at all.
 
Graphics bugs… there was this strange thing happening occasionally where the game’s textures flashed grey for a couple of seconds, but thankfully Mythic hotfixed it earlier this week and it’s now resolved.
 
Sovereign Armour
This is both good and bad. Good for people that are renown rank 80 and can equip as much sovereign as they wish, but bad for everyone else. Prior to this patch the gear gulf between the 80s and everyone else was something I always thought was rather over-hyped, unfortunately that’s no longer the case. It’s more noticeable with some careers than others, but for those in the “more noticeable” category it’s more than a little bit over the top. Certainly there are some recognised bad RR80 players that have suddenly become a lot more dangerous or hard to kill purely based on the numbers and abilities associated to their armour, combined with the armour’s new synergy to their career. It’s a pretty harsh world out there for a new level 40 right now.
 
I think the problem here is not so much that the Sovereign armour was changed, but more that the other armour wasn’t. Sovereign armour was improved and made more sensible in the way it worked, but that still leaves everyone else mixing and matching armour sets that often have bonuses / stats that simply do not work or make sense anywhere near as well as the new Sovereign armour does. I would really like to see Mythic roll out changes for the other armour sets akin to the new Sovereign. I do think there should be a noticeable reward for reaching RR80 and I do really like the way Sovereign has been changed, it’s just that this change has moved RR80s quite far forward while leaving everyone else standing.
 
Auction House
The watered down auction house is not great, it’s very basic and some things are too hard to search for if you don’t know the name. Not that this is much different to how it was before, as it’s never been particularly good. WAR’s auction house and mail system are rather limited and clunky, there’s definitely room for improvement here. I would highly recommend Mythic have a long hard look at EVE to see how it should be done.
 
And now the good stuff…
 
The new appearance system is bloody marvellous; I love the fact that people actually look different now. I’ve seen some really inventive use of the “bugged” armour pieces and it’s been great hearing this whole new topic of discussion as people try and find unusual armour from quests, drops, etc. By the way Mythic, it would be nice if there were a way for us to get influence rewards again somehow, just for the graphics really. There’s some really nice influence reward armour and weapon graphics that many of us can’t get because we sold the armour to a vendor in 2008!
 
Most Career changes
I could do a break down of all the good things that have happened for careers, but it would takes ages, so I’ll just pick a couple of paired examples...
 
Stealth was fixed for Witch Elves and Witch Hunters, which is absolutely bloody brilliant and about time too! Previously it would break at stupid ranges and for all sorts of silly reasons, like being buffed, guard being applied, etc, etc. I was already enjoying playing my Witch Elf and this has made it even more satisfying to play.
 
Shadow Warriors got the buffs they’ve needed since launch. I’m really pleased about this even though I don’t play Order, because prior to this almost all Shadow Warriors were free renown. Sure there were a few exceptional individuals that made it a little bit more effort, but even against them I always had an edge purely because they were playing with the deadweight of a gimped career. That’s just not fair on them and not particularly satisfying for me when killing them. Now however it’s an entirely different kettle of fish and those good players are as utterly lethal as they should have been before! As a knock on effect Squig herders received similar changes and for the first time ever I have more than 2 combinations of tactics to consider as viable options.
 
Oh I should also mention Zealots and Rune Priests..
Since the patch went live Mythic have made further changes to the revised Harbinger of Doom/Healing mechanic. All told I think the changes for Zealots and Runies will need some time to bed in before we really know how good or bad it was. I’ve heard very mixed views on this and I haven’t had enough time on my Zealot to be able to tell. I do know that it has boosted my stats considerably and when playing pure healer it has been buff, but I’m not so sure about DPS zealots. At a glance it looks like they loose a lot of survivability, but perhaps they will play more like WoW’s Shadow Priests?
 
There’s been a lot of career changes and in general “is niiiccce” as Borat would say.
 
Oi! Leechers! In your face you slaaaaaags!
No more leeching in the warcamp, no more guarding the mailbox, now you have to be in the RvR lakes to get any renown. Yes some people have been finding places to hide in the RvR lakes to leech their zone locks, but that in turn has just supplied us with a new and amusing game of hunt the leechers. I’ve found some AFK toerags hidden in some quite cunning places, which on occasion required a bit of effort to get to, but in each case so far I have managed to exchange their AFK leeching wankerdom for a smack in the face and have then taken delivery of their renown to myself. I thank you.
 
There was an amusing moment the other day when I noticed a chain of combat log death spam as a well know Witch Hunter killed 13 AFK Destruction hiding in the Wilhelm’s Fist keep… made me chuckle.
 
Here’s a tip for you folks, if you are doing solo or small scale roaming and you go to a new zone that has the Against All Odds bonus in your favour, but for some reason you can’t find any enemies in the zone, just go hunting. It will quite likely be a group or two of AFKers hiding somewhere and it would be terribly rude of you to not butcher the lot of them and earn their oh so sweet AAO buffed renown points. That said, this seems to be happening less because of AAO itself, which leads me to…
 
Against All Odds
Oh Mythic, Mythic, Mythic! You pulled off a bloody marvel with this one! I love AAO. This was the bit I referred to at the start of this post as “the best thing to happen to WAR since launch”. Just in case you don’t know what it does: AAO is a buff that kicks in if you in a RvR lake and are outnumbered by a certain (unknown) amount of enemies. The buff increases how much renown you earn and caps at a 400% increase, yes 400%! What this has done is encourage people to spread out around the different zones and not just zerg all the time. That doesn’t mean it has eliminated zerging or blobbing. Since there are times when a zerg is required, there are some guilds/alliances and players that like to zerg and there are also some people that at times just want an easy life. I’m sure we’ve all surfed the zerg when online but not paying full attention due to a distraction from real life.
 
What AAO has done though is give a reward and incentive for people to fight away from their own faction’s zerg. And the reward is considerable… If I recall correctly the most I’ve had so far for a single kill was 7.8k renown, but I’ve heard of people getting a quite a lot more. With the big renown boost it means charging a small, organised group into zergs can actually pay off quite well if you get just a few kills and if you start capturing objectives too, it can really punch your renown upwards.
 
After this patch I find myself really looking forward to 1.4 and the RvR Packs. The combination of the upcoming revised campaign system and Against All Odds has potential for awesomeness. AAO is a huge step in the right direction.

Career Coaster

Many careers in WAR have been on a bit of a roller coaster ride since launch. They plummet into the foul depths of nerfdom, rocket skywards to bask in the light of an overpowered sun, only to go down faster than a skint chavette.

Right now with my Chosen I’m in sight of that overpowered sun, not quite getting a healthy tan, but I’m certainly catching enough rays to be very comfortable. I don’t think we’re overpowered yet, personal bias perhaps, but I honestly don’t think so. For me it’s more a case of paper scissors stone; Chosen are a stone and some people playing scissors seem to think that they should cut up everything easily... That and how the good players stand out and the bad ones are forgotten, with a class as popular as Chosen (they look awesome) there are plenty of good players to remember and the mass of crap ones (that’s you Mr Ravage Spammer) just meld into the nameless zerg. It’s when you fear the name of infamously bad players that you’ve got to start worrying about their career. That said, I won’t argue against those saying that a well geared and played Chosen is one of the better careers in WAR right now. However, it wasn’t always like this.

At launch we were excellent RvR Sword & Board tanks, but very poor with great weapons. Then we got nerfed in all manner of ways and combined with (at that point) many bugs, we became known as the worst tank in the game. Things changed over time and with the infamous Rending Blade buff we became overpowered killing machines. We were absolute bloody monsters for a month or two. Then it was Rending Blade’s turn to be nerfed. At the time it was a change I thought killed the spec, but to Mythic’s credit it wasn’t that long before I realised it was a sensible nerf and ate my words. Which roughly leads us to today’s Chosen. As mentioned above, with good gear, a decent spec and a good player, the Chosen is very influential on the battlefield. We can solo well, provide a wide range of group buffs and can contribute very well to both large and small scale RvR. Thing is, we should enjoy it while it lasts, because at some point the nerfbat will come swinging our way again.


Every career is on a roller coaster, but not everyone has a dramatic ride. You’d think that Bright Wizards, Warrior Priests, Sorcerers and Disciples of Khaine would be getting bored looking down at everyone by now. As far as I’m aware they’ve never been anywhere close to average, let alone sub-par. Where as many Marauders, Blackguard, Shadow Warriors and particularly Magus have already got off and strapped themselves into a new ride. Though experience tells us that what goes around, comes around. If you’re riding high, you need to be ready to fall. Look at Ironbreakers for example, still a solid class, but nothing like the invincible death machines they once were.

Every MMO I’ve played has taken us on it’s version of the nerf/buff roller coaster. From Ultima Online onwards (TankMage or MageTamer anyone?) it’s always been the same. I still have nightmares about Enchanters in DAoC... I suppose when you think about how every MMO seems to have this, perhaps its understandable that a game like WAR is not going to break the mould anytime soon. With so many careers and the focus on PvP combat, career balancing is not a job I’d fancy.


Plus we, as players, are so often blinded by the shortcomings of our own character, would we recognise a balanced game if we found one? We’d probably just whinge that everything’s too samey.

OMG! Magus protest and suicide pact!

Fair play Uroo mate, you did it :)

Watch more videos of Warhammer Online

This video was made by Caz from VOP, well done to you sir, great choice of song. It will be interesting to see what if any response this gets from Mythic. I really hope so, cos the shite state of Magus desperately needs acknowledgement from Mythic.

Classic event /salute to all involved.

Staying positive is tricky when you have a Magus

My Magus is level 36. I was planning on getting her up to 40 soon.

Problem is its hard to motivate myself to log in with it when it would seem the latest patch has utterly destroyed the already weak class. According to this post and the initial feedback after the patch went live in the US, thing sure aint good... The class is heavily AoE based, more so than most to be honest and to make it worse Mythic has even nerfed a single target spell for no reason too? Not an overpowered ability in any way or form and since Mythic haven't communicated why they did this, we can only assume they simply did not realise it was not an AoE ability... *sigh* That's depressing on so many levels.

Come on Mythic cut out the spin doctor poo, lets see some real solid info that will help people stay positive about your balance patching. I was at an alliance meeting last night with loads of players present and I can assure you that right now there is some immense negativity building up.

Less vague comments, more solid info pls. kthxbye

AoE nerfage

The latest WAR patch is up on the PTS at the moment, which as everyone's probably seen includes an across the board nerf to AoE.

People are already crying, most of which is a load of old cock, but is a bit more valid for others. Whilst all AoE being nerfed sorts out the Bright Wizard/Sorc/Engineer/Choppa/Slayer AoE of Doom, it also makes the weak classes even weaker. For example Magus are hit hard by this nerf, a class which is already desperately struggling for popularity. I know Marauders are extremely unhappy, not so much that their AoE got nerfed, more that their class is in need of fixing not nerfs.

However, Mythic doing this across the board AoE nerf is actually sensible. In theory it instantly sorts out the AoE mania buggering up RvR now and it gives them the ability to balance up abilities and classes that need it. They key though is for Mythic to be very clear with their player base about what's going on. Otherwise you'll continue to see people quitting because there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel for their gimped class. Mythic probably think they're posting and commenting more than enough, but seriously guys the player base needs reassurance right now.

My guild is large enough to regularly have full guild only warbands, but is now down to 1 active Marauder and Magus. That says it all.

Balancing the Bomb

Bomb groups… bloody nasty things. The vast majority of WAR players will have encountered the horror of facing a bomb group, but as I know I’ve a bunch of readers that aren’t playing right now, I shall first explain what these terrors are.

Bright Wizards and Sorcerers have very powerful PBAoE (Point Blank Area of Effect) nuke spells, the damage is quite simply insane and is going to get the crap nerfed out of it, but for now it’s live and bloody dangerous. A bomb group uses these spells to maximum effect by having a tank using guard on the PBAoE spell caster combined with a team heal spamming healer. The casters and tanks open with AoE stuns/disables/etc to stop their targets escaping and then they spam the PBAoE to kill all the targets in seconds. It’s brutally effective.

Order and Destruction can both make use of this tactic, with each faction having slightly different advantages. Order has Bright Wizards that do a bit more damage than Sorcerers and they also have the Knight of the Blazing Sun, a tank whose AoE stun makes it almost impossible to escape once you’re in the bomb radius. Where as Destruction can use a Rift specced Magus to pull people from range into the bomb radius, then use the (less reliable) pet detonation stun and lay the smack down with the Magus’ considerable PBAoE. The Order groups are harder to escape from and the Destruction one has more control.

If the group is built with these abilities in mind, I don’t think either side has an too much of an edge. Typical Bomb groups will look something like this:

Order
Knight of the Blazing Sun
Knight of the Blazing Sun
Bright Wizard
Bright Wizard
Warrior Priest
Warrior Priest

Destruction
Chosen
Magus (Rift specced)
Sorcerer
Sorcerer
Disciple of Khaine
Shaman

I think it’s fair to say that a well-played bomb group is top of the pile and has a huge advantage in WAR. If you’re in a more mixed up group that’s not using bomb tactics, then against an equally skilled and organised bomb group… well… basically you’re buggered.

Bomb groups capitalise on the current prevalence of Crowd Control and AoE in WAR and there’s nothing wrong with that, people are just playing to their strengths. The problem is that this creates cookie cutter groups and risks isolating and annoying people that either don’t want to, or don’t have the option of, running in a bomb group.

I was running a group in Praag a few days ago, it wasn’t an uber group, far from it. I had some mates that had returned to the game and me and a couple of others were showing them round Praag. Our group consisted of my level 40 Chosen, a 28 Zealot, 35 DoK, 35 Shaman and a 40 Sorcerer. Hardly ideal, but they’re all good MMO players and we’d been holding our own against groups full of 40s. Then we walked round a corner and into one of our server’s Forum Ego Monkeys™ and his pet bomb group. It was a Knight of the Blazing Sun, 2 Wizards, a Warrior Priest and someone else that I don’t remember.

We died in seconds, a full wipe in a handful of bloody seconds. Not because the enemy was particularly good, just because we instantly had no control over our characters due to CC and their PBAoE damage output was so high that it killed all of us before the first unbreakable stun had worn off. It was impossible for us to have done anything. Now, I’m not complaining about them doing this at all. That would be hugely hypocritical since I regularly run in a Rift-Bomb group myself, yet I do think it demonstrates how these groups make a mockery of other set ups. Yes my group was a weak one, but regardless it should not be possible to wipe any viable Tier 4 group faster than the duration of unbreakable CC. Otherwise you’re just left with early DAoC style “who CC first wins”, wild accusations of being OP, claims of balancing being fooked and also risk players leveling in tier 4 feeling they can’t join in oRvR (it's not like they dont get shit already for daring to do scenarios).

Amusingly with the above incident, the Order players felt the need to laugh at our corpses and taunt us. Ironic considering not only was most of my group lowbies, but also a day or two before when I was in a more hardcore guild group doing scenarios, we ran into the same Forum Ego Monkey™ and farmed the crap out of them. :P Perhaps that’s another problem with bomb groups, it gives people delusions of grandeur… :D Not that I suffer from that at all, ehem.

Another example… I mentioned recently about us doing particularly well in Praag a few days back. We had a guild warband of two and a half groups and went up against (no exaggeration) 3 times our number of Order that were heading towards our warcamp. By using calm and coordinated Rift Bomb pulls, we cut our way through them, wiping the bloody lot and ending up at Martyrs. It wasn’t a one off either, when they resumed their attack we did it again, though we had another group or so of Destruction with us for the second fight so I won’t claim too much glory there. But then how much glory is there to claim? Yes we wiped 3 times our number, yes we were very organised on ventrilo and OMFG did we earn a lot of invader, etc as loot, but would it have even been possible to without us working as an oversized Rift-bomb group? I’m confident we would have done well, that batch of enemies can’t have been properly organised for this to have happened, but surely their numbers should have eventually taken us down? I mean 3-1 mannnnnnn....

Clearly bombing is over powered and I think it’s hard to argue that it’s anything but bad for the game. Will I stop running in our rift-bomb groups? Hell no. We have to be competitive or enemies will have our city on farm status, there’s no third faction for underdogs to work with in WAR. Once you’re on the back foot you’re in bloody trouble. Whilst it would be nice to be all sweetness and light, we can’t afford to drop certain abilities and/or tactics because they’re overpowered. No quarter given, blah, blah…

It’s down to Mythic to give us more diversity in powerful play styles and escape from “who CCs first wins”. Thankfully their next collection of patches is going to be all about balancing our characters. We know that AoE is getting nerfed and that CC is going to be seriously looked at. Assuming this spells the end of bombing, will we get an even playing field? No doubt us devious players will discover the next over powered combo, but can Mythic make it so that in future we have at worst only slightly overpowered options, rather than the (almost) auto-win groups of doom that we have now?

With 2 factions and a total of 24 classes, it’s an unenviable task.

Character changes removed from 1.3

Yup read it here: http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/board/message?board.id=pts_announcements&message.id=53#M53

Sensible move, should have been done that way in the first place instead of one monster patch. Unfortunately now that we've all been built up to having some freedom from AoE of Doom, a lot of people are going to be feeling rather let down. Hopefully people will be distracted enough by Land of the Dead, but I'd advise Mythic to get their tin hats on! I can smell the forum rage quitters from here...

Edit: I've heard that some of the AoE changes WILL be going in with 1.3. I've not yet found any official post confirming this, but I'll link soon as (or if...) I find one. In the meantime, here's a pyramid and cool sky effects..

AoE IS being nerfed, single target damage improved

Mythic have started posting up their previews of class changes in 1.3, the first one I looked at included this all important bit if information:

Patch 1.3's major balance changes focus on the balancing of direct damage vs. area-of-effect abilities. All careers should expect to see AoE effectiveness reduced across the board. This reduction can come in a change to damage/healing, AP cost, or effect radius, and will vary from ability to ability.

Bloody great news! I had heard rumours of course, but I'm really pleased to see it confirmed by Mythic. Hopefully if we get some single target damage again it could mean playing a Chosen will make us enough of a threat that we're more than just a glorified buff bot for DPS classes.

Not all the posts are up so I can't link them all yet, but here are some examples of the sort of changes we're getting for Marauders and Bright Wizards. Also there's nerfs to AoE healing which we can see for example with the Warrior Priest changes.

To me this all sounds very promising. Everyone knows the game has become too AoE dependent and it needs to be addressed. For me, the sooner these changes go live the better. However I expect to read plenty of rage quit and general mewing threads soon :D Awesome ;)

Update: I forgot to mention is ninja Keep takes are being removed for upgraded keeps.

1.2.1 first day final impressions

Well that's my first day of 1.2.1 done and it's time to reflect on how good a patch this is.

Generally I'd say at this early stage it seems very good, but it's not without a few problems either. So first off lets get the bad out of the way.

First off we have Lost Vale.
I've not been in there myself today, but I've heard of 3 bosses that have new and serious bugs. The Gnoblar at the Butcher boss is bugged and starting at 50% enrage which is making it nigh on impossible. Gorak the Ancient is randomly nuking fully warded people for 20k, making this impossible to do. And finally, I didn't catch the exact details but N'Kari is doing some buggy uber damage attack also making it impossible to do. It needs to be stressed I'm not hearing this from people new to LV, but very experienced WAR players that have had LV on full farm for months. Looking at the official forums shows this is not unique to my guildies and is a common problem. Frankly I'm shocked bugs this serious in WAR's premier dungeon make it to live. How did this get past testing? Especially considering those bosses have FIXES included in the patch notes...

New bugs
Sometimes when you get killed, you click release and nothing happens. It won' let you log out and you have to ctrl-alt-delete, shut the game down and restart it. I only had this happen once all day, but I saw another 4 people have the problem once or twice.

Entering City Siege instances doesn't always work. Order sieged IC earlier and when trying to enter IC for siege defense it would start to load, then just go back to the Maw. Eventually I got in, but this was an annoyance. Some people didn't have the patience and just logged off.

Both of those 2 problems have been acknowledged by Mythic, so should get sorted quickly. Lets hope LV gets hot fixed fast too.


And now the good!

The new guild UI is very good.
In fact I'd say it's now one of the best I've used in any MMO. Truely a massive improvement and makes my life as a guild leader soooo much easier. Also little things like being able to look at the guild roster and instantly see who's in what type of warband, then just right click to join them, such a simple idea and really bloody great. Popular one that.

Combat responsiveness.
It's a lot better. I've been playing melee classes all told for about 5 hours of RvR today and the improvement is immense. We talked a lot about it today on ventrilo and everyone was reporting big improvements. Our witch elves in particular were most pleased.

Game performance.
For the first time ever I was able to do large scale oRvR with full spell effects on and have acceptable FPS. It's still not good enough, as the bigger fights I had to turn it off for, but it's a major improvement. Couple of warbands fighting was no problem, it was only when it got into multiple warbands it started to chug. But regardless it's improvement enough to show promise.

City sieges
Are quite a bit better. Not great yet and far from the epic moment I expect, but far better that previous ones I've been on. Game performance wise we're talking about a huge improvement, today I fought players and not fighting lag. Also with the Invader Crest tokens as rewards both for the PQ and a succesful defense, it gave us more tangible incentives and a proper reward for defending.

Token system
I really like it. The drop rate seems about right, people aren't going to be in full Invader over night (though it seems some people think they should...), but if you do RvR you will get RvR armour rewards. Bare in mind these tokens are in addition to the set pieces from loot bags. So people still have the normal chance to get items. The tokens are a back up system, a kinda reward insurance policy.

The only thing we can't do anymore is buy things like the armour set gloves for gold from vendors. Makes it a tad more difficult to quickly gear alts, but IMHO it's not worth crying about. There's still the BoE bits dropping from players and it just means people need to pay their dues and go fight people for tokens. From memory I think my haul from today was 4 Invader crests, 6 Conquerer Crests and 16 officer medallions. Remember those crests can be broken down into large numbers of medallions, so it really won't take that long to get stuff.

Also I highly recommend you check out how much stuff actually costs (Greenskin has a good post for this), because people in region chat are talking total crap. I've seen people saying how the Invader helm costs 500 Invader crests... Actually it costs 9 Invader crests and 475 officer Medallions. I got almost half the crests in one day's play and if break down those conquerer crests that'll give me 46 medallions already. Soon as I have enough Invader crests, I'll start breaking them down too and then the medallions will fly up.

Seriously, take the crying on forums about the token system with a pinch of salt. It needs time to fully assess how good or bad it is, but to me it's looking good.

Keep upgrades
Cool, I think... They had an impact, but were not game breaking, at least that's my initial impression. Long term effects? Wait and see.

Melee is back baby!
Melee works again. Wizards, Engineers, Sorcs and Magus still hurt, but the AoE spam is nothing compared with what it was. For the first time the large number of Bright Wizards didn't over balance things. First time in ages that it felt like an even fight. Today was the most fun I've had in RvR in a long time. When using Gashface my choppa I died loads (obviously), but I had a blast and really contributed to our group/warband killing things.

When on Bootae my chosen, well that was a surprise. We've got harder to kill in RvR, like big time... I had it explained to me, but may have since got the detail confused, apparently it's something to do with a change to how toughness works.
Big talking point prior to the patch, Rending Blade... the nerf isn't too bad, but you have to adjust how you play. For smaller fights I did just fine with a great weapon. Though I sword and boarded for all the big fights, be mad not too.
Also, it seems Touch of Palsy got a bit better. I need to test that out more and see if anyone else has noticed anything, so don't take that as gospel.

So there you go, first day and first impressions are worrying for PvE (sloppy testing?), but very positive for RvR. With some good hotfixing, this could work out very well.

PS gratz to Karak-Norn's Order for getting to IC on the launch of 1.2.1. This clearly showed you're not just about Rain of Fire stacking and will remain a force to be reckoned with. Fair play to ya! ;)

Stat Adjustment pondering

Was chatting with some mates about this stat adjustment proposal yesterday, very mixed opinions.

I quite like the idea, as at the moment there's just too many irrelevant stats and I don't see it meaning I'll need to re-gear myself much. Other tanks I spoke to also seemed to like it, but some of the DPS nutters I chatted with were quite concerned. At the moment they've mainly stacked things like say Strength and Wounds, but to maintain decent crit damage with these possible changes they would also need to get a load of Weapon skill somehow. Apparently requiring quite dramatic changes to their current equipment.

It seems like the toughness change would fit in very easily, its not game breaking and I imagine those that would want the benefit already have a lot of toughness (i.e. tanks), but perhaps this isn't the case for stats related to damage. I've not seen any PTS feedback on it yet, but it's sounding like this could be a delicate one to get right. Here's hoping...

Patch 1.2.1 patch notes are out- Chosen Dread spec killed again

...and it's on the US PTS.
http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=728

I've not got time for a full review before I need to hit the sack, but here's a few highlights for me:

The Guild Window has received a major facelift and several functional improvements. We have added more information to the Guild Window, such as new news alerts and additional statistics on the profile tab. We have also resolved several interface bugs with the window, such as promoting and demoting through the UI and loss of guild permissions.
This is going to make my life sooo much easier, thank bloody fook for this.

Various improvements have been made to Zone Control Rewards in Tier 4 zones to reward players for zone captures more so than individual Objective and Keep captures. When active zones are captured in Tier 4, all players in the zone are awarded Renown based on their level similar to Tiers 1, 2, and 3. If a Keep is claimed by a guild when the zone is captured, a Gold Bag will be mailed to the Guild Leader who can then mail it to anyone in the guild, as they see fit.
Oooh, gold bag? Sounds cool, could help with getting Annihilator for those unluckly sods that every guild has. Possibility for abuse? Dunno, nothings springing to mind immediately.

Upgrade Your Assault with Ordnance!We are pleased to introduce a new resource to RvR that players can trade in for deadly assault upgrades! Scattered throughout the RvR lakes and acquired from killing players, Ordnance is collected and traded in for various items and weapons to use in open field RvR! Battering rams with more hit points, ballistae that do more damage, oil immunity potions, caltrops, and dynamite can all be purchased and used on unsuspecting enemy players!
Hah, sounds funky :D

Chosen
- Auras will no longer immediately dispel themselves and go into the temporary version.
AT BLOODY LAST!
- Bane Shield: Fixed a bug that allowed this ability to turn off some auras.
Good, good.
- Rending Blade: This ability’s tooltip now correctly states that the ability is undefendable. Additionally, this ability’s reuse has increased and the cost has been lowered.
Bah, shame to see this nerfed, but with all the mostly justified crying about AoE, it's no shock. I dread to think (pun intended) to see how long its reuse is.
[UPDATE] It's 5 seconds. Bah :( 1.2 nerfed Chosen's single target DPS to the point if being useless, but with Rending Blade (if we specced for it) we had respectable AoE DPS. It made up for the nerf to Touch of Palsy, Cleave STILL not working and the weakening of all our single target abilities. This 5 second has now basically killed the Dread tree again. Lame :(
This post by Zaknarakh sums up the problems in each patch perfectly:
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=274177

Bright Wizard
A few changes here which I've not put up cos it doesn't mean much to me, but this one does: Rain of Fire: Fixed a bug that allowed this ability to continue channeling after the caster’s death. Additionally, this ability will no longer stack multiple times on an enemy. Instead, multiple Rains of Fire in the same area will begin to affect more people.
Knew it was coming obviously, but I still want to say... thank fook for that! Same applies to Engineers, Sorcs and (Havoc) Magus and their GTAoEs. Everyone knows AoE is killing tier 4, this can't go live soon enough.

Witch Elf
Where are the buffs to this now rubbish class? If the "target out of range" problem also gets fixed in this patch and the reduction in AoE of Doom has the required effect, maybe we'll see improvement for WE from that, but hmmm. Disappointed otherwise.

Lost Vale
Mounts can now be used in exterior areas of the Lost Vale.
YAY, about bloody time. Also good to see a range of bosses being fixed.


Loads and loads of other things in the patch, but it's late and I need to crash out :)

Not a lotta choppin and does the new AoE of doom cause the lag?

Not had that much spare time last few days due to a mixture of real life stuff and having the damned pox. Which has resulted in not much progress with my Choppa. What little time I have had online when not on my Chosen I've just used to grind out quests with Gashface.

Doing a chapter at a time in each 3 pairings, seems to work quite efficiently. So far I'm up to level 24 with very little time put in since I left tier 2. Though obviously this has meant bugger all renown gains, my renown rank is lagging behind at 21.

Maybe I'll get stuck into tier 3 RvR a bit more when I get more time, but it's kinda tempting to just hammer straight through and get into tier 4.

Though with the way tier 4 is at the moment, I'm not so sure I'd be wanting to use an undergeared alt in RvR there. If my pretty well geared Chosen can die in literally 1 second with the AoE spam of Doom, it doesn't bode well for a squishy choppa :P No joke, had this at a recent fortress attempt, walked anywhere near the gate it was instant death with just a wall of numbers filling my screen. Dunno how many Bright Wizards they had stacking rain of fire, but ouch... Same would happen to Order when our Sorcerers stacked pit of shades I guess. Literally impossible for healers to do anything, especially when combined with the horrific lag. Hopefully it'll get fixed soon.

Interestingly that night we noticed that soon as we managed to get the Order off the walls and the Rain of Fire spam stopped for a bit, instantly the lag got better. Like a LOT better. I had spell effects turned off, so RoF shouldn't effect my PC graphic wise and everyone in alliance chat was talking about the lag reducing. So it wasn't just me.

Is it the calculations AoE makes the game do or something that shafts the server performance? There's a link for sure it would seem.

The Chopwork Orange

I so wish I had thought of that for my Choppa's name. Ahh well, too late now.

Anyway, so me and my droogs have had a quality couple of days in Tier 2. All that was missing was some weepy young Devotchkas...

LOADS of action. Scenarios popping very regularly (quite often instantly) and large scale oRvR with multiple warbands clashing over keeps. Not much of the RvE nonsense, but lots of proper RvR scrapping. It's still Choppa/Slayer crazy, but there's a fair bit more diversity in classes than I saw in tier 1. My Choppa is at level and renown rank 15 now and it's been a doddle keeping both my XP and RPs going up evenly.

I'm still enjoying the Choppa, it's suitably manic in its playstyle and I think this will take over from my Witch Elf as my 2nd priority character. Lots of AoE spamming crazyness which is fun, but not very taxing. So far its really just a case of spamming Lotsa Choppin and Wild Choppin, with the odd snare or charge thrown in.

PvP wise I'm doing ok. I must admit that I can't quite shake my tank habits of trying to smash deep into enemy lines all the time, which with a squishy choppa can be more than a little suicidal. Of course for Orcs suicide is painless, but it is certainly bringing many changes to my Dammaz Kron score line (best add on ever btw), as I fluctuate wildly between insane killing machine and unsupported idiot in the middle of 4 Bright Wizards... But crucially I'm enjoying it regardless and that's all that matters :)
I've now had multiple 1vs1 fights with each Order class. I've beaten every class 1v1 at some point, but if I recall correctly it's only the following classes that I've had any losses against:

• Warrior Priest
• Sword Master
• Slayer
• Iron Breaker

Everyone else hasn't been that hard to kill. I doubt that's down to me being uber, more just a case of what the Choppa is designed to do. As in to kill squishy tree huggers.

Of course in RvR and scenarios, 1v1 fights are not the norm. It's sprawling melees and uneven fights that you'll most likely be stuck into, which the Choppa can do just fine in. Sure if I'm focused fired by more than 1 person I go down faster than a Kings Cross hooker, but with some good healing and staying in control of your rage, the Choppa can really bring the pain.

In scenarios I've hit the no1 spot for both damage and killing blows a good few times, even with me as low as level 13 in tier2. Obviously those scores shouldn't be taken as Gospel, but it is an indication that something is right when you're on the winning side and you're top in both. I've seen some other Choppas (and Slayers) get some crazy arsed damage scores too.

I'm not going to say the new classes are overpowered at this level, but they're certainly competitive.

Dungeon Y needs class X, what about class Z?

Something I was really hoping would not be in WAR that featured heavily in WoW, was the old must have class X to do instance Y. You know the bit where you have to take a Warlock because a certain boss needs something banishing, or you need a hunter for tranq shot, or bloody mages and sheep. It's something that can be really frustrating when your class isn't perfect for certain instances and you struggle to get groups (unless you're in a good guild that's not full of numpties).

It seems WAR almost escaped it, but a bit has sneaked in. Bilerot Burrow... Thanks to thier monstrous damage dealing aura type thing, those bloody Plaguebeasts are only really doable if you take some ranged DPS. Not so long ago there was a night where we had no ranged DPS online, but we tried Bilerot anyway with just melee DPS. As anyone that's been there before will know, uh uh, bad idea. After enduring repetitive pain not dissimilar to an N-Dubz track (nice hat btw.. init), we gave up. Other times I've been to Bilerot those mobs have been a pain at times, but with some ranged DPS they're easily kiteable, or with a bit of luck and good gear, you can just tank and spank.

Which sucks for melee DPS players that are not in a decent and/or active guild. If it's anything like WoW then random pick up groups just wont take them along... Surely it's not impossible to put in mechanics to the fights that a melee DPS could do, say having something in the environment they could trigger to do damage, a puss bomb of doom or something.

I've not been able to go to Lost Vale yet due to crap luck with Sentinel drops in Bilerot, but at least as a tank I can get groups no problem...