Dinging along nicely

It's been just over a month since I came back to the game and I am pleased to say things are going well.

I've gone from RR41 to RR50 (dinged last night!). That's pretty good going as far as I'm concerned. I've also accrued 4 Invader pieces and have plenty of crests for me to get the 5th or 6th if I want to and when I'm ready.

I've also got some other nice gear, some rings and cloaks and stuff, oh, and a Weapon of WAR! So yeah, loot.

I've been spending a lot of time look at "my role" as a Swordmaster and what stats and abilities are important to me. I've spent a lot of time thinking and tinkering but it's been worth it. I feel more effective in PvP now than I did 10 months ago, even though I'm pretty much in the same gear I was then, which is relatively poor by today's standards (Anni/Conq). I'm looking forward to equipping some of the Invader!!

I've still not done any serious PvE. I have not been to Lost Vale or ToVL yet and really don't know if I ever will. I haven't got the time for long raids and things. I just don't get the buzz from PvE that I get versus human opponents. It feels more like a chore, like it's just for the loot. I do feel a gentle tugging on me in that direction though, so who knows.

In other news, I've been doing some testing of avoidance in-game and will have a new WAR Stats post up in a few days.

Happy Bashing
~Aeo

The Land of Tank and Glory

Scenario Scoreboards are an integral part of WAR but they are not conducive to good team play. I have an idea to change that.

DPS classes do Damage. Healers Heal. So far, so good.

The role of Tanks isn't that simple though. They are there to support other classes.

The scenario scoreboards give a measure of Damage Done and Healing Done. How does a tank measure his or her impact on the result?

The only obvious measure available to a Tank in a scenario is damage done. Tanks commonly stack strength and use a two-hander to maximise their offence. Forums are full of screenshots and boasts about topping the charts and doing 200K damage or whatever. I can't really blame them either. There's nothing else to boast about.

When a scenario finishes and I scroll down to the bottom of the scoreboard to see my damage only just topping that of a WP who did 10K damage but 200K healing I can't help but metaphorically sink into my chair and glance around a little to make sure no-one's looking my way. There is little glory for a support Tank.

Solution
Add an additional column on scenario scoreboards alongside Damage and Healing, let's call it Protection.

Protection would measure the reduction of incoming damage to party members and, importantly, party members only, not to the individual player.

This would not be exclusive to tanks, but a new score for all players. Let's look at some examples. Lancelot is your friendly KotBS and Teclis an Archmage.

• Mitigated Guard Damage - Lancelot is guarding Teclis who gets hit for 800 damage. Lancleot takes 50% of that so is hit for 400. Armour mitigates 75% of that so Lancelot has been hit for 100 damage and mitigated 300 that otherwise would have hit Teclis. Lancelot scores 300 Protection.
• Avoided Guard Damage - Lancleot takes a guard hit from Teclis of 500 but that shield he's so fond of blocks it completely. 500 Protection for Lancelot.
  
• Buffs - Teclis buffs Lancelot's resists and reduces the damage from an incoming Gloombolt to him by 150, earning Teclis a 150 Protection.
  
• Debuffs - Lancelot has a weapon that steals 80 strength from enemy players and as a result Teclis gets hit by 100 less damage. 100 to Lancelot.
  
• Absorbs - Teclis puts a bubble up around Lancelot which absorbs 650 damage. 650 to Teclis.
  

You get the picture. Any ability that directly or indirectly reduces damage to your team mates is totalled up as Protection in a new column on the scenario scoreboards.

This gives every class increased reason to use their protective abilities but in particular will emphasise teamplay and encourage and reward Tanks who play a support role which, in my opinion, will be for the betterment of the game for everyone.

CITY.3.5

This post is up from Andy Mythic on the official forums about the planned City changes and there is a tonne of extra juicy in the form of Q&A appearing from the blogger champions. Shadow-War and Mykiel have City RvR specific posts up.

It does sound like it's going to be a fun ride. The 3 different stages sound varied and interesting. 2 hours maximum is good. Rewards win or lose is good. Only relying on your own instance for the result is good. And the super-buffed player-champions idea is super-buffed-good. I look forward to seeing this in action. I hope the players are visibly buffed - supersized I mean. Imagine a 20ft Black Orc stomping on loads of stunties!

Being issued your instructions by the Realm Leader (Karl Franz or Tchar'zanek) and getting to see these guys be called in for special moves will add some grandness to the whole affair.

My biggest stumbling block with the news so far is this, from Mythic's thread...

"Players will be forcibly placed within a Warband upon entering a City instance equipped with an instance-specific chat channel. Manipulation of looting rules will be disabled"

Reading Mykiel's Q&A about this, it sounds to me that Mythic don't want organised Warbands grouping up and queueing for instances together. It sounds like each single person queues on their own and is randomly assigned to a warband.

This sucks. I am really going to want to play this part of the game with my guildies. Not just for the organised/competitive edge that comes with that but because these are the people I know in game and enjoy playing with.

And I can imagine a whole load of chaos deciding who the warband-leader is going to be. There will be heat! Communication is a big slice of success in WAR.

I'm sure Mythic have thought about this but it's gonna pose problems and I'm sure high-end players/guilds are going to like it even less.

They could at least think about letting single groups join.

EDIT: From Werit's post it seems single groups may in fact remain together. Smiles.

Overall though, it looks rosey and I can't wait.

Meet Jumby

This post on the Tank section of the official forums made me smile, especially as it popped up in a thread discussing the merits of a Swordmaster.

I've copied a bit of the post here. Follow the link for the full post.

"...Meet Jumby. He is a RR70 Chosen and enters a scenario. He sees the front lines charging strong. Jumby thinks fast and unleashes the following combo: Blast Wave, Rending Blade, Challenge

Each member of the charging front line has just lost some health, but more importantly all of their wounds have been reduced by 111. The combination of Jumby's 45% crit and the AoE attacks has most likely crit every single member of the front lines too, and due to Crippling Strikes, their damage has been reduced by 25%. Jumby's Challenge also reduces damage by 30% so long as they don't attack Jumby. Jumby is so scary looking, they wouldn't dare. So, now the whole front lines are wounded and weak. I don't think they're a threat anymore! Go ahead Jumby, run on past them.

Jumby gets past the front lines into the backlines of RDPS and healers. How can Jumby stop them all!?!? I know, Quake! Now all of the backlines are staggered and are of no threat for several seconds! Further, if he crit any of those nasty Bright Wizards, they will wake up with 25% less damage due to Crippling Strikes. Good Jumby!

Ok, Jumby's not done yet. He still needs to kill someone. That Rune Priest looks tasty. First, let's use Dizzying Blow to slow him down and then Touch of Palsy to make it hurt if he tries to run away. Now, let's add a Seeping Wound for yummy DoT damage. Ok, so the Rune Priest can't get away and he's a little wounded. How on earth can Jumby kill this bugger though?..."

Read the Full Post here.

What's woot got to do with it?

Before my stint away from the game I had been to defend Altdorf four or five times. Theses visits were generally marred by slide-show lag and general confusion as to what to do. It wasn’t great but people were still getting used to it. Confrontation with actual real enemy players was avoided as people tried to find an empty instance. Even then we’d struggle to kill the PQ boss in time and never got to Stage 2. IC was the same.

On Friday I got to go back to the Inevitable City for the first time since my return. And my thoughts? Well the changes in 1.3.5 will be extremely welcome but I am glad to have had the chance to farm free Invader first!!

Most players have probably got all the Invader gear they need now but I am still in need of it – or I was until Friday anyway. In the 3 hours the “siege” lasted I got 3 Invader pieces and crests enough to buy a 4th.

The city siege involved one hour in Stage 1 where I didn’t do anything except stand on the stairs to the Apex and watch another warband try (and fail) to kill Adell. No bother though, Stage 1 was won and Stage 2 was up. My guild had enough folks about to take on the King (and win) but, alas, I didn’t have the wards so was left behind on my todd .

There were a hanadful of other Order left in the instance . We all just stood around taking and retaking BOs for 2 hours. 2 whole hours doing amost nothing. I made some comments to the other players there that this was “…a bit boring…” only to get the reply “no, this is great” “free loot” “wootwoot” “we love it, free loot!”.

Hmmmm.

At the time It really didn’t feel like fun at all. It wasn’t enjoyable. I wish I’d had a film to watch. It was a very good job I had beer!! But now, looking back, I don’t regret it and would do it over. I even let out a little “woot” myself when I got the Invader chest piece.

And this has left me musing over the whole “what’s fun?” question. What was it that made me readily do doing something boring in my own free time ? For me, it was the feeling that future game-time will now be that extra bit more enjoyable. I will feel more competitive in PvP, or at least not feel like I am lacking an edge due to dated gear. And I won’t have the niggling feeling of compulsion that I need to be getting the better gear.

I have always been against the gear-grind, believing (hoping!!) that skill was just as important and that the game could be enjoyed all the same whatever gear you had. But even on these merits, it’s got to be more enjoyable with better gear, no? I might even be tempted to try out some of that PvE lark. Well, maybe not.

~Aeo

WAR Stats: Hard Hitting

This is a look at the abilites which do the most damage per hit on my Karak Norn Swordmaster. From my combat logs I have totalled up the damage done by each ability and then divided this by the number of times the ability actually hit me.

The numbers are before any mitigation from Toughness, Armour or Resists to give them more relevane to all classes, rather than slanting the numbers with my high tanky mititgation.

I've only included abilities which hit me more than 20 times (out of 2000 total hits). There are certain abilities, such as Morales, which hit hard but they might only have hit me once or twice so I'm not counting them as typical.




Remeber this is average damage per hit and before any mitigation. It's an average of all normal and all critical hits together and this can smooth over the potential actual damage some of these abilities can do.

For example, from my logs I can see Agonizing Wounds can crit for ~1500 (before mitigation) and, as it ignores armour if struck from behind, I will often take ~1000 actual damage from an Agonizing Wounds crit.

Saying that though, Sorc crits regularily do me for closer to 2000 actual damage. I mitigate about 50-60% of Sorc damage meaning the total hit before mitigation would be scarily around 4000. I dread to think what this would do to a low toughness class with debuffed Spirit resistance.

Conclusions: Ouch and Double Ouch
As I've been posting my other results and seeing the Sorcs taking the damage biscuit I've been mindful that a lot of this damage could be so called "meaningless damage", AoE or DoTs, that are easily healed away, and it's the burst abilites that get the real job done.

The results show that Sorcs has the potential to inflict more single big hits on me as well as most overall damage. I have to stop them somehow, for the greater good.

I have been tailoring my spec a bit for greater survivability vs. Sorcs. and it has worked out well, but I had been holding some back until now as I was fearful of losing to much to melee classes, particularily the Choppa and Witch Elves.

Swordmaster's were initially portrayed by Mythic as the "anti-magic Tank" and there are a few useful abilities for this which are often ignored on the SM forums.

I am going to explore further a Sorc-Killing role for my SM.

AFK & Go Bloggers!

I've been AFK a bit as my wife has been laid out by an infection for the best part of a week so I have been taking care of her and our son. She has no interest in WAR or even computer games but still reads this blog which is nice and kinda weird. Get well soon, honey!

The news that Werit, Gaarawar, Shadow-War and Mykiel are being flown to Mythic HQ to get a preview of the City changes has filled me with even more optimism than usual about the future of WAR. Mythic must be feeling confident about making a really significant change to the game. I can't wait to read what everyone has to say.

In-game I've just started some testing of different builds for my next WAR Stats post, although I doubt I'll have time to complete it this week now. I'll be comparing a high avoidance set-up (e.g. block, parry) versus a pure mitigation set-up (Toughness FTW!).