Asuryan's Flames

I hopped on to PTS to test out a few things on my Archmage last night. The biggest one I wanted to see in action was my Alter Fate. Now if you remember when the game was released we where told that rank 4 morals where suppose to be huge battle changing abilities that should not be easy to obtain. Well they are moderately easy to obtain, but they are tide changing. Well the current plan with 1.2 is to change it so that alter fate no longer works in boss/lord fights.

Now the first thing that comes to mind is WTF we have an extremely gimped moral that now servers no purpose. This things start to add up, 10 min run back to N'kara in vale for a simple mistake that would have been easily rescuable with an alter fate. Boss fights that enrage after X amount of time and you lose a DPS'er early in the fight and so on. This will kill PVE progression, and really kills this abilities role. In fact there is no reason to have this ability if it is going to go live, I would suggest looking for another rank 4 if they do not change this.

I believe that Mythic's logic on this was or make it harder to defend/attack fortresses, but in effect they have also killed PVE at the same time, and really turned an already weak rank 4 into a crappy aoe rez. I think that the current incantation of alter fate should stay. You don’t get pulled to the healer; you don’t get full health on rez. It just helps give me the further impression that Mythic hates healers, buffs to damage mean nerfs to healing. A huge nerf to a rez that all healers get is a huge nerf the survivability of groups.

Well tonight starts our first organized push across multiple alliances. The past few pushes have started just within the alliance and snow balled up and into the city, but tonight will be different.

Back story:
So a while ago one of the big guilds on the server started to snuff us, because we are good at what we do, or egos or whatever. So their leader left and new leadership has stepped up to take over and wants to play nice now since they realize that there will not be an effective push without our alliance involved. A bit more about our alliance, we are really a guild that we split specialties into different guilds so we can specialize standards, heraldry and so on so people see the Totenrich alliance and think organization. So we have a guild of tanks, healers, mDPS and rDPS. All of the guilds, but our lowbie/alt guilds are level 20+ and a couple of them are almost 30.

Back to what is going on:
So our plan is to start pushing, in fact as I write this at the office, we have people running premades in the zones that we plan on pushing and that is what they are doing all day so that when the guild is on we can start rolling with the punches. At the same time, our new friends are going to start pushing as well and we will probably be rolling at least 2 guild warbands, our friends will have at least 1 warband, and the several puggers’ warbands.

The critical part of this will be communication. It is necessary to coordinate pushes and so on as many of you know, but overall this goes into a deeper subject for those of you on lower population’s servers unlike me where you have to have a lot more friends across the guilds to put something like this together. I would suggest starting a channel where all guild/alliance leadership can talk so people can plan pushes, and try and get a centralized vent.

Overall I think that it will go well. We will have a lot more people on due to Saturday not being a work day for most people and it will provide us and opportunity to test out our new bonds on the server. If things to smooth we will be dinning in the Inevitable City tonight.

So for those of you who are interested in learning a bit of Warhammer lore, more specifically focused at some of our newer classes should check out War Stories on Mythic's main site. Overall it gives some fun back story and could help you role players out there develop a solid character story.

Why do you do it?

That is the question I always ask myself when people say that they are getting farmed at the warcamp, in fact I had a guildie ask that last night and I told him in less than polite words what I thought of him getting farmed by destro. On the flip side I have been a person farming people at a warcamp, so why do people let this happen. There are very few zones that I have been to that are hard to get into from a point outside of the warcamp.

Last night was a good example of this, we mustered up the Havoc warband because we where sure there would be a shinning way fort defense, so we did a call to arms and everyone stopped PVE'ing and so on joined our warband and we formed up at shinning way. Destruction had 2 warbands farming the warcamp, so we went through Altdorf to get to shinning way. People kept saying in local that they where still getting farmed at the warcamp, so we pushed and capped the east BO and stopped all of this.

Knowing that the only way to flip a zone is to get kills in RVR, win scenarios, and cap all of the objectives, people consistently will sit at the warcamp and run out like lemmings getting farmed for hours just for a shot at getting 1 kill instead of going through the PVE zone, crossing the RVR boundary and stealing a BO and setting back a push. This is what happens at every destruction push, order lets themselves get farmed, and conversely, destruction lets themselves get farmed when we are on a push. Hence the saying the best defense is no defense, at least in the current patch environment.

I think that people need to follow some strong leadership and make educated pushes to stop the opposing force from farming you. Split warbands up and send them to different objectives. If anything you will split the opposing force into a more manageable fight. If not you will keep getting stuck between that rock and a hard place and wonder why you keep losing your city.

Well you can now move any level 11 and lower character from any server to any other server for free. This started more for people who where doing the trial, but it applies to those of us who have been playing the game for a while. This means that you can not transfer stuff off of one server to another one and consolidate items, money and so on onto the server where you predominately play at.

This is something that I am seeing happen more and more as patches are pushed out, classes are being diluted. In some cases the class you rolled at the start of the game is a distant visage of what it is currently, but more importantly is the disparity between classes.

Slowly classes are becoming one in the same. Like when WOW released, each side had a defining class, aka Shaman and Paladin, well in War, every class was different, some had similar mechanics, but abilities and areas of focus/expertise where different. Now what is happening is that classes are becoming exact mirrors of their counterpart, just with a different game.

This is making me concerned since this game was about diversity and how groups interact on the battle field, not each group will be the same with just different class names. This I am seeing prevalent with 1.2a, where Chosen are being given many of the class defining abilities of the Knight, where as the Knight is being left almost untouched, and this is a problem across the board. Without some difference the game loses its luster and really makes me question why I play it. Now I enjoy the game and the people I play with, but I did not start playing War to be just another face in the crowd. When I walk onto the battle field I want someone to shit their pants.

I think that this is getting taken away from it. At the heart of it could be the new classes. Something new and shinny and to pull people away from the tried and true current classes, get them to play something different, but even then that will be the fate for the Choppa and slayer if things do not get turned around. There needs to be class definition, there needs to be a difference between, say a zealot and a runepriest, not just mirrors of each other with different class names and different ability names.

First off all of these are my opinions on this subject, so heed that accordingly.
*
On Your Guard!: The damage of this ability has been increased and will now deal Elemental damage. The ability will not receive benefits from stat factor nor will it do critical damage.
***After getting to actually see this in action, I think that this is a poor idea. First and foremost, the fact that this can now be mitigated and it can only hit a target once every 2 seconds means that point for point, the damage of this will do down. Conversely more and more Knights will stop using it because of its lackluster performance in favor of other options in our buffing arsenal.

*
All Out Assault: The damage of this ability has been increased and will now deal Elemental damage. The ability will no longer receive benefits from stat factor nor will it do critical damage.
***Once again, we are dealing with a low damage ability that went from being non-mitigatable to being a slightly more damage than before, non-scaling, manageable aura. This will make this option obsolete as well, especially as people gear up, they will have less and less of a need to use this ability, yet again killing another "class defining" aura.

*
Shield of the Sun: The damage of this ability has been increased and will now deal Elemental damage. The ability will no longer receive benefits from stat factor nor will it do critical damage.
***This ability suffers from what the above two suffer from, the fact that the change to elemental damage is now mitagatable for this ability and it is still tethered to the previous change in 1.2 that made it so it will only deal damage to a target once every two seconds making this almost worthless. Although it will still be on the tool tip it has lost almost any use during PVP and has little use during PVE.

*
Shield of the Sun: Multiple Knights with this ability up will no longer prevent each other from dealing damage to the same target.
***Ok, this should have already been like this.

*
Shining Blade: The disorient associated with this ability has been removed. This ability will now reduce incoming damage on the Knight by 15% for 10s. The cost has been lowered on this ability.
***This is good and bad, first we lose our only disorient ability and it is not being replaced, but we are getting a damage mitigation ability that we desperately need because we are lacking hugely on the PVE tanking side of the house.

*
Myrmidia's Fury: The cost and damage have been increased on this ability.
***Still does sub-par damage competed to just doing 2 GTC attacks and auto attacking, couple that with the fact that it needs to be channeled, it is not worth it.

*
Press the Attack: The cost of this ability is now free.
*
Stand Strong!: The cost of this ability is now free.
*
Gather Your Resolve!: The cost of this ability is now free.
*
On Your Guard!: The cost of this ability is now free.
*
Stay Focused!: The cost of this ability is now free.
*
All Out Assault!: The cost of this ability is now free.
*
To Glory!: The cost of this ability is now free.
*
To Victory!: The cost of this ability is now free.
*
Now's Our Chance!: The cost of this ability is now free.
***All of the above auras being free, it is nice, but it further puts the knight into a buff bot role by really solidifying that is what we are suppose to be doing. I am fine with twisting 3 auras and I think adding the no cost to them as a nice touch in a limited AP game, but it does not address the lacking that we have in terms of class definition.

*
Bellow Commands: This tactic will now restore 5 action points per second to the Knight for each Command the Knight is running.
***We not have infinite AP and further solidify triple twisting. While I do it now, I use macros and twister to keep 3 going, and being able to effectively RVR and PVE, which is where hundreds of things are going on at once and you are stuck worrying about buffs. Change it so that the mechanic is not used best with an add-on, make twister a part of the Warhammer UI, and polish it. Make it easier for people to twist three auras since that is clearly the route that Mythic is pushing us.


Final thoughts, the most concerning thing that I am seeing coming with 1.2a is that chosen are getting a huge buff, and knights are an after thought. Prior to this and even in it s current form knights are under performing on both the PVE and PVP side. Our damage is poor for PVP, we take substantially more damage than other tanks in PVE, which is a huge problem, and we are stuck sitting as buff bots. In fact that is the only reason I am in a Vale group right now is because they wanted my buffs, if not they would have taken another DPS.

For being a class that came along substantially later in the game and had time to be polished, we have yet to receive it; in fact most of our class definition is being lost, while the chosen is getting problems fixed, and more added to them. This leaves the knight in a bad state as of now, and hopefully gets addressed before 1.2a comes out.

As you can see on the site I have been making a few changes over the last few days. I put up a new theme and so on. Additionally I added several new blogs to my blog roll, so please check them out. Additionally if I left your blog out for one reasons or another please either leave a comment to email me via my contact info at the top right of the page and I will get it corrected.

Warhammer Community Promotion Initiative is a little project that was started by a few folks over at Warhammer Alliance started up and I will personally be taking a part in it.

This week I will be talking about a fellow healer who has been through many of the issues that I have been through. Blame the Healer takes a direct approach to how it feels to be a healer. One of Dont's most recent posts, 5 ways of asking for heals. He goes into the ways that people will go from blatantly rude, to honesty in requesting some attention from a healer. His article really goes at the heart of etiquette that is required when you are playing any game that is reliant on other classes for survivability.

Beyond that he covers a broad swath of things that are going on in Warhammer and lets you know how it is relevant to you, from screen shots to commentary, Blame the Healer covers it all.

Yep that is right, both the chosen and the knight of the blazing sun are no longer going to have an action point cost associated with auras. This is huge because as is, every few second’s aura tanks spend 15ap on a recurring basis to keep 3 auras going without even using skills. I do not see this as a huge change in these classes dynamics, but it does make them substantially more viable classes, not that they where not before, but it is a reward to the effort that is associated with running multiple auras at ones.

Taken from Warhammer Online Forums.

It appears that they are certainly listening to feedback from the test server player and people on the forums because I can already see several items that where hot ticket things people did not want changed removed. Cheers Mythic for listening to the community, although I doubt this will be the last revision before this patch launches.

Combat & Careers
Racial and Archetype tactics
Balance Changes
* Centuries of Training: The damage done by this ability has been increased. The damage done will now be Spirit damage, affected by the target’s resists, which will not be increased by stats and cannot critically hit.
* Backlash: The damage done by this ability has been increased. The damage done will now be Elemental damage, affected by the target’s resists, which will not be increased by stats and cannot critically hit.
* Jagged Edge: The damage done by this ability has been increased. The damage done will now be Corporeal damage, which will not be increased by stats and cannot critically hit.
Archmage
Balance Changes
* Dispel Magic: The damage of this ability has been increased and changed to Spirit damage. However, this damage will not critically hit or receive benefit from stats.
Blackguard
Bug Fixes
* Elite Training: This ability will now correctly work for the next 4 attacks.
* Balance Changes
* None Shall Pass: The damage of this ability has been increased and changed to Physical damage. However, this damage will not critically hit or receive benefit from stats.
* Exile: The knockback distance of this ability has been changed to Medium distance at 30 Hatred, Long distance at 60 Hatred and Very Long distance at 90 Hatred
Black Orc
Bug Fixes
* Tree Hit Combo: This ability will no longer interrupt itself while moving.
* Balance Changes
* Da Toughest!: Wound buff increased from previously reduced value.
* Da Biggest!: This ability will now grant a stat buff to nearby group members.
* Da Bestest!: This ability has been renamed to “Guud at Big Choppin!” and will now increase damage and Parry rate while using a great weapon.
* Skull Thumper: The additional damage caused by this ability's debuff has been increased, is now mitigated as Corporeal damage, and no longer gains an increase from stats. Additionally, the damage from this effect will show up on its own line in the combat log.".
* Loudmouth: The damage of this ability has been increased and changed to Corporeal. However, this damage will not critically hit or receive benefit from stats.
* Can Youz Hear me Now?: The damage boost of this ability has been increased.
* Keep it Goin!: The damage boost of this ability has been increased.
Bright Wizard
Bug Fixes
* Annihilate: The self damage portion of this ability will no longer do critical damage.
Balance Changes
* Flames of Rhuin: The base damage on this ability has been increased and changed to Elemental damage. However, this damage will not critically hit or receive benefit from stats.
* Flame Shield: The base damage on this ability has been increased and changed to Elemental damage. However, this damage will not critically hit or receive benefit from stats
* Funnel Power: The base damage on this ability has been increased and changed to Corporeal damage. However, this damage will not critically hit or receive benefit from stats.
* Playing With Fire: The base damage on this ability has been increased and changed to Elemental damage. However, this damage will not critically hit or receive benefit from statse.
* Lingering Fires: The base damage on this ability has been increased and will deal Corporeal damage. However, this damage will not critically hit or receive benefit from stats.
* Fueled From Within: The amount of damage added to Flames of Rhuin and Flame Shield has been increased.
* Draining Burn: The amount of damage added to Burning Iron has been increased.
* Wildfire: The base damage on this ability has been increased and will deal Corporeal damage. The ability will now affect all Path of Conflagration abilities. The ability will now gain more benefit from stats, but will not be able to do critical damage.
Choppa
Bug Fixes
* Slasha: This ability has been changed so that when multiple debuffs are on the same target only the largest debuff value will be taken into account.
* The Choppa Career will now correctly start with 50 wounds.
Balance Changes
* Bring It On: The base damage on this ability has been increased and will deal physical damage. However, this damage will not critically hit or receive benefit from stats.
Chosen
Bug Fixes
* Mixed Defenses: Fixed an issue that made the parry bonus of this ability a multiplicative bonus instead of additive.
* Repel: Fixed an issue that limited the knockback distance of this ability.
Balance Changes
* All Chosen have undergone changes and as a result will need to reallocate their Career Mastery Points. Be sure to speak to your trainer right away to regain your abilities!
* Discordant Fluctuation: The base damage on this ability has been increased and will now deal Spiritual damage. The ability will not receive benefits from stats nor will it do critical damage.
* Dreadful Agony: The base damage on this ability has been increased and will now deal Spiritual damage. The ability will not receive benefits from stats nor will it do critical damage.
* Bane Shield: The base damage on this ability has been increased and will now deal Spiritual damage. The ability will no longer receive benefits from stats nor will it do critical damage.
* Touch of Palsy: The value of the barb damage has been increased and will now deal physical damage. The barb will no longer receive benefits from stats and will no longer do critical damage.
* Tainted Wound: The base damage on this ability has been increased and will now deal Spiritual damage. The ability will not receive benefits from stats nor will it do critical damage.
* Hasten Dismissal: This tactic is now a level 35 Core tactic. It reduces Repel's cooldown by 50% and turns Repel into a long knockback.
* Corruptive Power: This tactic is available at Corruption x11. All Corruption abilities cost 35% less action points.
* Baneful Shielding: This is no longer a valid tactic.
* Dire Shielding: This ability will also increase the duration of Bane Shield by 7 seconds.
* Bane Shield: Multiple Chosen with this ability up will no longer prevent each other from dealing damage to the same target.
* Oppression: The disorient effect has been removed. This ability will now reduce incoming damage on the Chosen by 15% for 10s. The cost has been lowered on this ability.
* Rending Blade: No longer requires an active aura to receive a bonus effect. The ability is now a Point-Blank Area of Effect ability that deals Spiritual damage. This ability requires a Great Weapon and no longer has a cooldown.
* Relentless: The cost and damage has been increased on this ability.
* Dreadful Fear: The cost of this ability is now free.
* Corrupting Wrath: The cost of this ability is now free.
* Discordant Instability: The cost of this ability is now free.
* Discordant Fluctuation: The cost of this ability is now free.
* Corrupting Retribution: The cost of this ability is now free.
* Dreadful Agony: The cost of this ability is now free.
* Dreadful Terror: The cost of this ability is now free.
* Corrupting Horror: The cost of this ability is now free.
* Discordant Turbulence: The cost of this ability is now free.
* Power from the Gods: This tactic will now restore 5 action points per second to the Chosen for each Aura the Chosen is running.
Disciple
Balance Changes
* Covenant of Vitality: The damage from this ability has been increased slightly. The damage will now be Spirit damage, and will be affected by resists. The damage will not gain benefit from stats, and not be able to critical hit.
* Covenant of Celerity: The damage from this ability has been increased slightly. The damage will now be Spirit damage, and will be affected by resists. The damage will not gain benefit from stats and will not be able to critical hit.
* Khaine's Imbuement: The damage from this ability has been increased slightly. The damage will now be Spirit damage and will be affected by resists. The damage will not gain benefit from stats, and will not be able to critical hit.
* Bloodlust: The damage increase this gives to Covenant of Celerity has been increased.
Engineer
Balance Changes
* Hollow Points: Decreased Dot duration but increased DPS, also increased stat benefit.
* Runic Shield: The amount of magic damage absorbed by this ability has been increased.
Ironbreaker
Balance Changes
* Punishing Blow: The value of the barb damage has been increased and will now deal physical damage. The barb will no longer receive benefits from stats and will no longer do critical damage.
* Oathstone: The base damage of this ability has been increased and will now deal physical damage. The ability will no longer receive benefits from stats and will no longer do critical damage.
* Overprotective: The base damage of this ability has been increased and will now deal physical damage.
Knight of the Blazing Sun
Balance Changes
* On Your Guard!: The damage of this ability has been increased and will now deal Elemental damage. The ability will not receive benefits from stat factor nor will it do critical damage.
* All Out Assault: The damage of this ability has been increased and will now deal Elemental damage. The ability will no longer receive benefits from stat factor nor will it do critical damage.
* Shield of the Sun: The damage of this ability has been increased and will now deal Elemental damage. The ability will no longer receive benefits from stat factor nor will it do critical damage.
* Shield of the Sun: Multiple Knights with this ability up will no longer prevent each other from dealing damage to the same target.
* Shining Blade: The disorient associated with this ability has been removed. This ability will now reduce incoming damage on the Knight by 15% for 10s. The cost has been lowered on this ability.
* Myrmidia's Fury: The cost and damage have been increased on this ability.
* Press the Attack: The cost of this ability is now free.
* Stand Strong!: The cost of this ability is now free.
* Gather Your Resolve!: The cost of this ability is now free.
* On Your Guard!: The cost of this ability is now free.
* Stay Focused!: The cost of this ability is now free.
* All Out Assault!: The cost of this ability is now free.
* To Glory!: The cost of this ability is now free.
* To Victory!: The cost of this ability is now free.
* Now's Our Chance!: The cost of this ability is now free.
* Bellow Commands: This tactic will now restore 5 action points per second to the Knight for each Command the Knight is running.
Magus
Balance Changes
* Perils of the Warp: Damage of this ability has been increased and changed to Elemental damage. However, this damage will not critically hit or receive benefit from stats.
* Aegis of Orange Fire: Damage of this ability has been increased and changed to Elemental damage. However, this damage will not critically hit or receive benefit from stats.
* Infernal Pain: This ability now receives more benefit from stats, but will no longer critically hit.
Marauder
Balance Changes
* Touch of Rot: The damage from this ability will now be Corporeal damage. The damage will not gain benefit from stats and will not be able to critical hit.
* Touch of Instability: The damage from this ability will now be Corporeal damage. The damage will not gain benefit from stats and will not be able to critical hit.
* Unstable Convulsion: The damage done by this has been increased. The amount that stats contribute to the tactics damage has also been increased. The damage done will now be Physical damage.
Runepriest
Bug Fixes
* Earth shield will no longer cause Rune of Shielding to get stuck on the player’s target.
Shadow Warrior
Balance Changes
* Smoldering Arrow: The amount of damage added to Flame Arrer by this tactic has been increased.
Shaman
Balance Changes
* 'Ere We Go!: The base damage of this ability has been increased and will now deal Elemental damage.
* Gork's Barbs: The initial base damage has been increased. The barb will deal Elemental damage, the damage has been slightly lowered and will no longer do critical damage or receive benefits from stats.
* Mork's Touch: The base damage has been increased and will now do Spiritual damage.
* 'Ere We Goes Again: Increased the damage improvement on 'Ere We go!
Slayer
Bug Fixes
* Break Loose: Fixed a tooltip issue for this ability.
* Pulverizing Strike: This ability has been changed so that when multiple debuffs are on the same target only the largest debuff value will be taken into account.
* Shatter Limbs: Fixed a tooltip issuefor this ability.
* Distracting Roar: Fixed a tooltip issue for this ability.
* Balance Changes
* Retribution: The base damage on this ability has been increased and will deal physical damage. The ability will not receive benefits from stat factor nor will it do critical damage.
Sorceress
Balance Changes
* Frozen Touch: The base damage of this ability has been increased and will now deal Corporeal damage. The ability will not receive benefits from stat factor nor will it do critical damage.
* Daemonic Chill: The base damage of this ability has been increased and will now deal Corporeal damage. The ability will not receive benefits from stat factor nor will it do critical damage.
* Shades of Death: The base damage of this ability has been increased and will deal Spiritual damage. The ability will no longer receive benefits from stats and will no longer do critical damage.
* Swell of Gloom: The base damage of this ability has been increased and will no longer deal critical damage.
* Vision of Domination: The damage on Word of Pain has been increased while this tactic is slotted.
* Chilling Gusts: The base damage of this ability has been increased and will now deal Corporeal damage. The ability will now gain benefits from stat factor, but will not be able to do critical damage.
Squig Herder
Balance Changes
* Sharpened Arrers: The amount of damage added to Explodin Arrers by this tactic has been increased.
Swordmaster
Bug Fixes
* Perfect Defenses: Should now provide actual benefit.
* Quick Incision: This ability was receiving less stat benefit than intended.
* Deep Incision: This tactic was worded to make it sound like it enhances a DoT on quick Incision when it actually adds one itself.
Balance Changes
* Redirected Force: This ability will now trigger off Block, Dodge, Disrupt or Parry. The damage of this ability has been slightly decreased but is now enhanced by weapon DPS. This ability will no longer affect balance when activated.
* Gusting Wind: Radius of this ability has been increased.
* Gryphon’s Precision: This ability has been renamed to “Great Weapon Mastery” and will now increase damage and parry rate when wielding a great weapon.
* Blessing of Heaven: This ability now has a 100% trigger rate on all offensive Path of Hoeth abilities.
* Impeccable Reactions: This ability now has a new effect; whenever you Parry, you will automatically parry the next hit as well. (This ability can trigger only once every 5 seconds)
* Wind’s Force: This ability has been renamed to “Calming Winds” and now increases your Disrupt chance based on your current balance.
* Nature’s Blade: Whenever this ability procs, the stat buff will now be applied to your group members as well.
* Blurring Shock: The on crit effect damage of this ability has been increased and changed to Spirit damage. However, this damage will not critically hit or receive benefit from stats. In addition, the crit effect damage from this ability will now display as “Shock” in your combat log.
* Ensorcelled Agony: The damage of this ability has been increased, but now receives less benefit from stats.
* Potent Enchantments: The damage of this ability has been increased and changed to Spirit damage. However, this damage will not critically hit or receive benefit from stats.
* Deep Incision: The damage and duration of this ability has been increased and changed to Physical damage. In addition, this ability will now receive more benefits from stats.
Warrior Priest
Balance Changes
* Prayer of Righteousness: The damage done by this ability has been increased slightly. The damage done is now Spirit damage, and will be affected by the target’s resists. The damage will not be affected by stats, and will not be able to critical hit.
* Guilty Soul: The damage from this ability has been increased slightly. , and will be affected by the target’s resists. The damage will not be affected by stats and will not be able to critical hit.
White Lion
Balance Changes
* Tearing Blade: The base damage of this ability has been increased. The ability will no longer stack with itself nor will it deal critical damage.
* Lionheart: The amount of damage added to Lion's Fury by this tactic has been increased.
Witch Elf
Balance Changes
* Kiss of Agony: The damage done by the proc’d effect of this ability will now do Corporeal damage, and will be affected by the target’s resists. The damage will no longer gain benefit from stats and will no longer be able to critical hit.
* Kiss of Death: The damage done by the proc’d effect of this ability will now do Corporeal damage, and will be affected by the target’s resists. The damage will no longer gain benefit from stats and will no longer be able to critical hit.
* Kiss of Betrayal: The damage done by the proc’d effect of this ability will now do Corporeal damage, and will be affected by the target’s resists. The damage will no longer gain benefit from stats and will no longer be able to critical hit.
* Vehement Blades: The damage done by this ability has been slightly increased, and will now do Corporeal damage, and will be affected by the target’s resists. The damage will no longer be able to critical hit or gain benefit from stats.
* Enfeebling Strike: The damage done by this has been slightly increased, and will now do Corporeal damage, and will be affected by the target’s resists. The damage will no longer be able to critical hit or gain benefit from stats.
* Treacherous Assault: The damage done by this ability has been slightly increased, and will now do Corporeal damage, and will be affected by the target’s resists. The damage will no longer be able to critical hit or gain benefit from stats.
* Witch Brew: The damage done by this ability has been slightly increased, will now do Corporeal damage, and will be affected by the target’s resists. The damage will no longer be able to critical hit or gain benefit from stats.
* Sharpened Edge: The damage done by this ability has been slightly increased, will now do Physical damage, and will be affect by the target’s armor. The damage will no longer be able to critical hit or gain benefit from stats.
Witch Hunter
Balance Changes
* The rate that Witch Hunters gain Willpower, Toughness and Ballistic Skill has been updated. Because of other changes noted below, Witch Hunters will no longer gain a large bonus to Ballistic Skill. Instead, they will get slightly more Toughness and Willpower, and much less Ballistic Skill than they currently receive. Because of this change, it was necessary to refund all Mastery and Renown points for Witch Hunters. Please make sure to visit your trainer as soon as possible after logging in to retrain your Mastery and renown points.
* Absolution: This ability will now gain bonus damage from Strength instead of Ballistic Skill.
* Trial By Pain: This ability will now gain bonus damage from Strength instead of Ballistic Skill.
* Dragon Gun: This ability will now gain bonus damage from Strength instead of Ballistic Skill.
* Exit Wound: This ability will now gain bonus damage from Strength instead of Ballistic Skill.
* Blessed Bullets of Purity: The damage done by this ability will now be Spirit damage and will be affected by resists. The damage from this will no longer gain benefit from stats and will not be able to critical hit.
* Blessed Bullets of Confession: The damage done by this ability will now be Spirit damage and will be affected by resists. The damage from this will no longer gain benefit from stats and will not be able to critical hit.
* Blessed Bullets of Cleansing: The damage done by this ability will now be Spirit damage and will be affected by resists. The damage from this will no longer gain benefit from stats and will not be able to critical hit.
* Burn Armor: The damage of this ability has been increased slightly, and has been set to Spirit. The damage from this will no longer gain benefit from stats, and will not be able to critical hit.
* Sudden Accusation: The damage of this ability has been increased slightly, and has been set to Spirit. The damage from this will no longer gain benefit from stats and will not be able to critical hit.
* Fanatical Zeal: The damage of this ability has been increased slightly and has been set to Spirit. The damage from this will no longer gain benefit from stats and will not be able to critical hit.
* Encourage Confession: The extra damage given to Blessed Bullets of Confession by this tactic has been increased and will now do Spirit damage.
Zealot
Balance Changes
* Waves of Chaos: The damage on the ability has been increased slightly. The ability will no longer able to critical hit and the damage will not be increased by stats
* Transference: The damage on the ability has been increased. The damage will be increased by stats, but will not be able to critical hit.

This is something I am seeing happen more and more as keep ownership changes hands, and zones flip and revert. Let’s look at what happens when a fort is successfully defended. The "fight" flips back to the middle zones, aka: Praag, Thunder Mountain, and Dragon Wake. Each of these zones starts with basic control, so for this discussion we will focus on Praag. The south keep's ownership is order, north's is destruction base.

When a zone reverts, what is occurring is the current owner will stack into the lords room waiting for the revert to claim the keep immediately post the flip. This is kind of a grey area, I for one don’t think that it is an acceptable practice, but they do have ownership prior to the zone revert.

My first thought would be to expel every one from the keep that is not of the controlling faction post the flip, since you would think that the incoming leadership at the fort would have the "power" to regain control, thus forcing the faction to actually retake the keep vie conventional means, and thus promoting battle instead of promoting RVE'ing. The second one would be to make the lord un-attackable for 5 min after the zone flip, allowing defenders to show up and allowing attackers to fortify their positions.

Now of course there is the option to leave the system in the status quo, but doing that just promotes RVE'ing which is not what this game is about. When you as a defender have to spend a majority of your time sitting in a fortress, or so on holding off forces while the attackers supply lines change course and go to another location to get ready for an easy keep win, thus unbalancing the system that is in place.

Zone domination is the new way to cap zones starting in 1.2 it is going to put the focus of zone control not on PQ's or Scenarios, but actually controlling the zone. In the current system, aka the one we are all using right now, you build victory points by killing people in oRVR, completing PQ's, winning scenarios, and capping the BO's and Keeps. Each of the aforementioned items represents a numerical value. So X is your base VP in a zone and Y is the value that is added by each object so, a keep worth 15 VP would be a huge item to grab and so on until you reach the magic number 100.

Now with the domination system everything is about zone control, and holding positions for X amount of time. You have to hold a BO for 30min consecutively, and hold a keep for, I believe I can not confirm it and if I am wrong I will change this information later, 1 or 2 hours. So the incentive will be for people to defend the battle field objectives to change the tide of a war.

This changes the whole dynamic of how oRVR should play out; in fact things might even go quicker. Instead of grinding VP's you get to have just and just hold objectives for their set amount of time to flip a zone. Additionally, there will be tool tips, map data and so on that will show the status of each objective so that both sides know the status of them.

Things that I think will need a bit of changing; BO's need some type of defensive positioning. Most are open and hard to defend because you can essentially line of sight everyone instead of being able to fortify a position. That would mean a sweeping change to BO's, but it would also make them more player/defender friendly. Drop the ability for people to zone into keeps where the war is currently not taking place. This will prevent people from stacking warbands into the keep once a zone reverts back to the hot spot. More specifically keeps where the ownership will change based on zone dynamics.

Overall, I think that this will be a positive change to the way oRVR will work. It will force people to come out and actually defend and play PVP instead of being lemmings playing see who can RVE the fastest.

As the days pass, Praag seems to be losing order players in huge droves. Most at this point are waiting until 1.2 patch comes out. Now I understand taking that stance, I know many people who did that in WOW, EQ....and on down the line, but it puts a damper on the order T4 population when destruction is either in your city, or pushing forts every day.

Even more disheartening is that only one guild on order seems to come out and defend them, most of the time there might be a group of one guild or another, but when a fort is properly defended, Havoc are the ones who did it. Take for instance last night, Reikwald was pushed, destruction had 3 warbands, and they not only could not get the keep door down, at 20min left we pushed out the east postern door wiped a majority of their healers, and pushed through their ranks.

Now this may seem isolated, but it is the kind of thing that order needs to see to get hyped up about. Not losing a fort, or having your city attacked although some may see that as acceptable because they want to RVE for gear. Such as life I guess, some want the easy road, while others want the hard one.

So I was perusing the Mythic forums today and read through an article on things people would like to be changed with the Lost Vale, and it seems that they are looking into one of the biggest complaints, the time it takes to traverse the zone.

James Forum Mod for Mythic stated
"This is actually something our Core Testers have brought up to us, I don't really have any additional details other than we're looking into it.
It's not as easy as just "flipping a switch" you have to look into how it effects design and other more subtle issues."

In regards to the issues of zone traveling. So we might see a speed increase, or teleport ability for use within the zone in the near future.

This is something that I am seeing more and more. Guild leadership, between multiple guilds souring. Either because of personal differences, or just overall opinions of what is the key to X, Y, or Z strategy. Now in a game such as War where there is a huge requirement for large amounts of people to work together, having multiple guild leadership on the same page helps a lot, but when these small differences start to add up they create a schism in and otherwise good system.

I don’t think there is a cure all and there will always be hardcore guilds and normal guilds, but I think that stopping and trying to understand the issues that are facing other guilds could correct this, or at least put it on the right track. So take a bit of time and listen to the ideas of others, you may not agree with them, but it will start to build a better relationship with them so in the future if you need them, or they need you they will be there to help.

Have you found yourself on the bad end of three warbands that are staring you down, well last night that was the case. Well we had two guild warbands in the Shinning Way Fortress and we where looking at between 3~4 warbands coming in on us so we set up a very fun defense. First we slowed them at the outer door as long as possible then retreated to the Fortress and say under the oil and waited for them to come.

As soon as they arrived we spiked them and made a push straight into their clothies and killed off all of their healing as well as their ranged DPS; from there we worked through their meatier members until we had pushed them out. So we prepped for the next attack. A few minutes later another group came in, this time to the west of the fortress trying to sneak behind us, so we attacked them with the same strategy, assist train the clothies. This went on one more time, with surprisingly no losses for us and complete wipes for the attackers. At this point destruction gave up with almost 30min left on the clock to take Shinning Way, instead they opted to camp our warcamp.

Now, in most fights we are out numbered, and sometimes equal but rarely are we the overly large force, but we are extremely successful for several reasons. The first of which is communication. We use vent exclusively to communicate. We will divide up our guild warbands into different channels and keep a good amount of communication between the groups with a focused goal. Next, people know their roles in the warband. We do not have any DPS healers here; everyone is focused and knows what they need to do to make us effective. Next, leadership has a clear goal, when we enter an RVR lake we are there to take the zone and push, not to lose.

Organization seems to be a key element to winning large scale fights in oRVR. Now numbers count, and they count a lot, but a smaller more organized force can beat one that is just attempting to blob win fights. Focus firing, moving into proper positions, and so on are what make winning with smaller numbers possible. Having tanks defending the warband, dps killing clothies, and healers keeping everyone up is critical and without constant communication and status updates, this is hard, it not impossible to do.

Last night with the push into the city, I realized a few things about fortress defense that seem to be severely lacking. First of which is that each "tweak" that is done by Mythic tips the scales further and further in favor of the attacker, where as in a real situation taking a heavily defended fortress should be down right hard to do.

Additionally, the ability to still pull the lord down to the first floor of the fort also poses a sever issue with the current state of fortresses. Lords are supposed to be tethered to the lord rooms, but you can get them to the first floor of the fort and completely bypass any defense that is put up. Now I know you will tell me it is an exploit, and it is, but when you have 500+ people in one area it is hard to tell who is doing what at all times.

Changes, increase the numbers of people, who can be defending a fort, not by a whole lot, but increase it a bit. Then fix the pathing issues with the lord. Make it so he will not go to the first floor at all. This would correct a few deficiencies that I am currently seeing in fortresses. Nothing major, but still items that should be looked into.

Well last night was a good one for the destruction on Praag. They successfully got into Altdorf despite our best efforts to hold them out. So I spent a few hours playing defender. We, as a guild went into the instance with the most destruction because we wanted to farm them, and we did. The first thing we did was cap the docks and wait for them to come to us. We channeled them, but we did not have our whole group there so we wiped and picked it up in the main courtyard.

They engaged the hero, so we swept behind them killed their healers and things went downhill from there for the destruction. We sat at their spawn point killing them as they came out. At the same time we had out "PVE super team" running the PQ so we could dole out the lone gold bag the defender gets from time to time to people in the guild who where high enough renown rank to get it.

Not only was there a ton of renown, one of our ironbreakers walked away with his Warlord boots, and lucky me, I walked away with my knight Warlord boots. I was excited to get them although I have about 10 renown ranks until I can use it. My only complaint with the city is that a lot of groups try and avoid the fight and instead choose to go to instance where they can farm the PQ. That does not give the invasion feel and really defeats the purpose.

I think if there is no either defenders or attackers in the zone and you can free farm PQ's, they should not drop any set items. Make it unrewarding to those who cower from a fight, after all this is a PVP based game so why reward people who don’t PVP.

I was reading Warhammer Alliance this morning and came across several posts with people saying that it is the end of the world that they are changing the type of damage that shield of the sun does. Now in its current form, it deals 100 spiritual damage base. In the new form, it will deal 100 elemental damage base. That is not a nerf for one; in fact it makes more sense with what the spell is.

When I think fire I think elemental damage, not spiritual. Same should be applied here. You will still meet classes with the same amount of resistance to the damage, but such as life. Really, they are putting its damage back to where it belongs. This issue is deeper though. Why is it that people assume that the world is end when their class gets a change in a patch? All I heard last night on vent was witch hunters crying to whole heaven that they where getting a nerf. Well for one unless you have been on the test server seen it first hand, and tried different builds to get back to where you think you need to be you need to stop. Not only is it distracting, but no one cares. All classes will get nerfed and buffed as time passes.

One OP class will be replaced with another and the cycle will continue. There is no perfect balance because innately we as humans will find a way to use a class far beyond its intentions.

***Adding a bit more to this***
One thing that should be considered here is that currently SOTS is undefendable, just like witch elf kisses. So now it is defendable, but it can also crit, so a fair trade.

Yep that it right, Warhammer has released their official forums for us all to use. You can check them out at: Warhammaer Online

I have to wonder what the Choppa/Slayer will bring to the table that isn't already there. We have 2 decently strong in their own right mDPS classes on both sides of the fence. So what in balance was missing, or how will these two classes topple the current balance of the game.

In the games current state, people have a good idea of where each class fits in the puzzle. Albeit some classes are still considered more powerful than they should be, it is still fairly equal. Each class has their bane of existence. So I feel as though there is a lot of hype for something that might not necessarily really bring anything to the table.

Now in most classes that would be fine, but the Choppa was a flagship class that tons of people wanted to play when the game came out. So I could easily see several hundred people re-rolling them on release, but that in it's self creates a power shift. People who where playing healers, rDPS, other mDPS, and tanks switching to the new kid on the block.

I don’t want to be overly negative about the class, it think it can and will bring a lot to the table, but I wonder what will change as a result of it, and how will it effect balance as a whole

This weekend saw a few ups and downs. First the good I guess, we made a push into the inevitable city, and I hit RR 50 on my knight, and got a new piece of dark promise. Now for the bad. We had to break up our fairly steady lost vale group. We had been going fine until Friday night when people where suppose to be on and they where not. So we decided that we would try again on Saturday, which also was a bust. Finally, everyone agreed to meet up at 7am CST and anyone who did not show would be considered out for good.

Everyone said yep we will be there, not a problem boss and we all went along out merry way. Well Sunday morning rolls around and our witch hunter is no where to be found. 30min go by and our group leader calls it. This is completely understandable. Well he logs in no sooner than the group leader logs out, so he calls him and pleads his case, but the damage has been done. People knew the time they needed to be there and he chose not to be one time, even tacking into account he was the one who said this was the way to do it.

Then yesterday another one of our Vale groups was broken up. Apparently one of their DPS'ers was not going to be able to make the schedule for the time it was open that week, so he said he needed to sit out for that cycle which was great. He was forthright with his situation and knew it would be good starting the following week. Well the following week comes around and they stone wall him, and tell him he is SOL that they will not be tacking him anymore. Well really they did not give an explanation they just said sorry...

So with two group displacements we had to rebuild Vale groups which was not that hard. We have a surplus of DPS and a shortage of tanks/healers so...all is right in the world. I think the biggest thing to take from this, well two things, be upfront and tell the truth to your group. It will come out eventually and more than likely it will bite you in the ass. Two, always to what you say you are going to. If you can't meet a schedule then tell people so it can be adjusted.

So I hit RR 50 this weekend, which was nice, and to add to that I got my Dark Promise boots and the Sward of Defiance. So it was a great weekend. Not only did I get some new gear but my new rank.

Yesterday was a rough day for order on Praag, we where stuck defending Reikwald, which in its current state is difficult at best. We Where defending from the fortresses front door because the Lord can be pulled down to the first floor. So our tank wall was in clear line of sight to the destruction casters. Three warbands deep, destruction unleashed a ton of AOE onto the entrance of the fortress. Which dropped most of the tank wall very quickly, between the normal aoe and the rank 4's going on.

We did return fire with tons of rank 4's and aoe as well, but their superior numbers and our poor defensive position lead to us losing the fight. The "reinforcements" where no where to be found to save the lord, who was killed on the first floor, while the other defenders sat on the third floor.

Now we are many months into this game and basic pathing issues still exist and need to be dealt with. It makes it very difficult to defend a position when you are defending from a point not designed to be used in that manor. More over giving the enemy clear line of sight on the brunt of your forces. Now I don’t discredit those who took the fortress. It was an amazing achievement, using current game mechanics, but it still does not excuse the fact that it needs to be corrected.

In my last post on this subject I spoke a lot about the use of collective guild crafting, this time I am going to talk about organization especially how it relates to efforts in Warhammer.

Now I know most people have been in a disorganized guild, you know the one that kind or have a plan but never try to act upon those maxims. Well having disheveled leadership is where a lot of this starts at. You need to have people in positions of power who have clear cut and defined goals, not people who are limp wristed and not willing to follow the master plan. For instance, people in my guild where complaining about not really stepping it up in RVR like we had in the past. So our course changed a bit from gearing up to putting the push back onto destruction.

All of this was done with a clear and focused consensus of what needed to take place. Instead of humming and hawing about what should happen, we set a date and rocked the house. Where as my previous guild, on Skull Throne, would just randomly do things. I would schedule a Crypts run and another officer knowing we only had enough people to run one group decided to run it a day early, instead of inviting the people who said they would be there leaving a lot out in the cold. Now doing stuff on a whim and blatantly going against a set schedule, but this is the type of disorganization that drives guild members else where. It also does not promote cohesion in a guild.

Things you can do to fix this would be following a schedule, defining the guilds goals, and having leadership willing to execute what is necessary to reach those goals. Sometimes it is tough telling people what needs to be happening, but on that same note if it does not happen, then people fall into a big disorganized mess that often times more damaging than just puging something.

This is my opinion of fixes getting pushed out for the KOTBS.
Bug Fixes:
* Myrmidia's Fury: This ability will now behave correctly when interrupted.
I am glad to see this one getting fixed, although in my current spec I almost never use it

* Press The Attack!: This ability will now continue after zoning.
* Stand Strong!: This ability will now continue after zoning.
* Gather Your Resolve!: This ability will now continue after zoning.
* On Your Guard!: This ability will now continue after zoning. Additionally, this ability should no longer be procced by ranged autoattacks.
* Stay Focused!: This ability will now continue after zoning. Additionally, when Lingering, the aura will now correctly heal when triggered.
* All Out Assault!: This ability will now continue after zoning.
* To Glory!: This ability will now continue after zoning.
* To Victory!: This ability will now continue after zoning.
* Now's Our Chance!: This ability will now continue after zoning.
All of these lasting after zoning, nice to have it fixed, but nothing really major.

* Challenge: This ability no longer requires an enemy target.
That will make it more useful in PVP encounters

* Sunder: Fixed a tooltip display issue.
Never saw an issue with this

* Staggering Impact: Fixed a tooltip display issue. Shield Rush: The block bonus from this ability will no longer stack with other block buff bonuses.
Understandable that block bonuses should not be stacking.

* Vigilance: This ability's buff window tooltip will now correctly state that you are receiving more damage, instead of less.
This seems a bit off to me, so the main thing in your taking tree makes you take more damage instead of less, or am I reading this wrong.
"The glory of the sun fills you with power, reducing all damage that you take by 50% for 10 seconds but reducing all damage that you deal by 25%"
Is that the current tooltip for the item says, so it bothers me that they are saying I should be taking 50% more damage...wtf would be the point of this a self debuff.

* Dirty Tricks: An Icon will now appear in the buff window when this Tactic fires.
Never had and issue with this.

Balance Changes:
* Commands will no longer aggro monsters that are not already in combat. Hate from Commands which affect all group-mates will now be credited to the individual group members, instead of all to the Knight themselves. The effects of Commands can no longer be dodged, blocked, parried or disrupted, and Commands that deal damage now deal Elemental damage. Shield of the Sun: This ability will now deal Elemental Damage.
I would have rather had it stay the same way it was for auras, but such as life. As for shield of the sun change. That could be good or bad, we are a caster tank so we should be casting abilities, but without the ability to really debuff elemental...who knows.

* Myrmidia's Fury: This ability will now receive a greater damage contribution from stats.
That will be nice for my 2 hander brethren.

* Stay Focused!: This ability will now heal for slightly more.
Good, it is pathetic in terms of healing in its current state. I only run it because of the increase heal to group members I can get on it with a tactic.

* To Glory!: This ability will now restore slightly more Action Points.
That is good as well 15 ap is really nothing when almost everything is 20+ ap to cast.

* Guardian of Light: This ability will now absorb more damage.
It is nice that they are buffing shields in general, I felt that they where weak overall.

Last night we started out offensive by pushing Praag through Chaos Wastes and into the Maw to take out the fortress lord once again. It was stunning; then we moved onto Kadrin Valley to start the push back into Thunder Mountain, and to throw destruction off of the fact that we would actually be pushing Caledor.

Well when in Kadrin Valley, most of my warband was camping the destro warcamp so I thought I would go out and see what fights I could find along the PVE exit of the war camp. The first encounter I had was with a black orc, and needless to say the black orc did not last long to Shield of the sun and on guard. Then I came across a three pack of sorceress, disciple of Khaine, and witch elf. I met them on the bridge above the RVR Lake and engaged.

First I booted the DOK off the bridge to the ground below and attacked the sorceress. I threw up Shield of the sun, and keep on guard cycling and had it dealing massive damage to the witch elf that was doing almost nothing to me. The sorc was almost dead and I turned to finish the witch elf. She died quickly, and my focus returned to the sorc. I was able to dot her up before she knocked me off the bridge. She died as I was falling into the RVR Lake. Conveniently the DOK was sitting close to where I had booted her off so I knocker her down snared her and engaged. SOTS and OG where up here as well and she died with a quickness. 3 people dropped at the hands of the Knight, and it was a blast getting to fight them.

This was just one of the fun things going on with the push that we made last night. We took several zones, killed many destruction so it was a good night. Rolling 3 warbands deep of just guildies helped a lot as well since we could coordinate much better than the others who where tagging along. Organization is key to defeating a superior force.

Now this is going to be a huge change to the dynamic of zones. It is such a huge change that people are going to be more inclined to make pushes defend locations and overall create a ton of additional PVP.

Zone Control Domination
To help place more emphasis on Keep claiming and defense, as well as to combat the "defense by not defending" strategy, we are introducing the Zone Control Domination mechanic. With this system, players who take and hold all Battlefield Objectives and claim Keeps in a contested zone (in Tier 4) or a shared RvR lake (in Tiers 2 and 3) have the opportunity to capture that zone, forgoing the standard mechanics of Zone Control. Each Battlefield Objective and Keep will be worth 1 Domination Point. To capture a zone via the Domination rules, your Realm must have all 6 Domination Points. In Tiers 2 and 3, capturing all six points in a shared RvR lake will give the capturing Realm control of the entire Tier. These are represented as small pip marks on the Zone Control Bar. Battlefield Objectives and Keeps have different requirements for earning their Domination Point, as follows:
* To earn a Domination Point from a Battlefield Objective, it must be owned by your realm for 30 minutes.
* To earn a Domination Point from a Keep, it must be claimed by a Guild and then held for 2 hours. If you lose control of a Battlefield Objective or Keep at any time, you lose the Domination Point.
* Multiple Domination Points cannot be gained from a single source (for example, it isn't possible to get 6 Domination Points by capturing Martyr's Square 6 times).
* If a zone that was taken over by Zone Domination is put into a contested state, all timers and Domination Points are reset.
Original Location

Outside of Lost Vale changes, this is the thing I am personally most looking forward to. From the sounds of it the current zone control system will go away and the domination system will be replacing it. So the 6 zone locations will be key to flipping a zone. The catch is everything is on a timer for control. So 2 hours for a keep and 30 min for a BO, concurrently without any loss of control will flip the zone.

Not only does it make it simpler to cap the zone, but it also provides a bit more incentive to partake in RVR by actively defending instead of defending by not going into the lake. I look foreword to this change and what it will bring to War and I think everyone else should as well. It is what this game was supposed to be. Control of land via mass fighting, now we just need server stability.

So the other night the guild, including myself where running around doing some keep takes and trying to get destro to come out and play. Of course to our surprise they did not so it turned into another night of RVE…+ scenarios. So we where pushing out last keep when vent went out. This is not the first time it has happened, but it is certainly annoying to have it happen. Intermittent service and random outages without notice get old quick especially when trying to manage large groups.

I made a recommendation that we change to UGT. I had been using them for years as a private vent server for friends to play Call of Duty and Battle Field on, and to date have not had any issues like random dropping, or prime time maintenance; even beyond that their service for me has been impeccable. We where able to choose a location that was situated in the middle of the mass of the guild, and provided quick and responsive customer service.

We made the switch over a day or so and got a cheaper server for the guild that held more people than before. So when we start our offensive tonight I don’t think there will be any issues. It sucks to lose a key element of combat communication, but what can you do other than find new logistics. If this has happened to you consider making a switch and avoiding these hassles.

Forts have seen love in almost every patch for the last few months and for good reason. They where poor at the start of it all, but they have been improving big time. Now Mythic is revamping the drops that come from them. Trash will now drop Watcher weapons, some of the better ones in the game. Belts will drop from trash as well as being changed to bind on equip items. Which is huge for all.

Additionally, PQ reward bags for a cap are being changed to reflect the amount of people who are usually taking place in a fort take. This is good news for those of us who have seen many trips to the fort to only lose rolls, or get stuck with green bags. This will certainly change the dynamic and importance of going after them.

RvR Fortresses
RvR Fortress raids have received an update for their itemization in version 1.2. The focus of this update was to better reward players for completion of a Fortress capture as well as give players who do not successfully capture a Fortress some chance at improved loot.
* The Fortresses now feature the same world drop items found in the high-level city dungeons. This includes rare drop "Watcher" weapons.
* The Fortress PQ bags now feature new, unique Uncommon, Rare, and Very Rare items.
* Non-PQ target mobs within the Fortresses, including general mobs and the guards of the lords, now have a chance to drop the Conqueror Belt. The belt will no longer drop from Gold Bags.
* Additionally, the Conqueror Belt has been made bind-on-equip. This only affects new instances of the Conqueror Belt. Any Conquerer Belts found prior to this patch will remain bind-on-pickup.
* The number of PQ reward bags that drop in Fortresses has been increased to 30, with 12 Gold Bags for each completion.
Original Post

Now this is something that I am very excited about and I am sure that others are as well, the 1.2 Lost Vale changes:

Lost Vale
Lost Vale has benefited from some significant changes in version 1.2. We have itemized the dungeon with a number of new drops as well as improved a number of older items. In addition, we have revised the drops for most of the bosses in order to improve the chances of getting set items for each career.
General:
* Darkpromise weapons have been retired and will no longer drop in Lost Vale.
* Darkpromise cloaks have been retired and will no longer drop in Lost Vale.
* Darkpromise accessories have been retired and will no longer drop in Lost Vale.
* New, unique Uncommon, Rare, and Very Rare items have been added to the Lost Vale. These items are available as dropped items from all monsters in the dungeon.
* All of the old "Unique Named" special weapons dropped in Lost Vale have had their stats improved.
* A number of the "Unique Named" special weapons have been moved from boss loot tables to rare monster drops to make room for new items.
* We have added an additional Unique Named Weapon for each career to Lost Vale. These are powerful weapons with magical proc effects.
* Multiple items have had their names changed. Existing items will update automatically to the adjusted name.
Boss Loot:
* Wing Sub-bosses have been updated and will now have a 100% chance of dropping the following: 1 Set piece, 1 new dungeon Rare/Very Rare item, 1 rare Dye. In addition, they have a 50% chance to drop a Unique Named Lost Vale weapon.
* Wing Main-bosses have been updated and will now have a 100% chance of dropping the following: 2 Set pieces, 1 new dungeon Rare/Very Rare item, 1 rare Dye. In addition, they have a 50% chance to drop a Unique Named Lost Vale proc weapon, as well as a 50% chance of dropping an additional Dye.
* Lost Vale Wing Main-Bosses will always drop different 2 different career pieces.
* Darkpromise gloves for the Tank archetype careers now drop off of Ahzranok, Larg the Devourer, and the Darkpromise Beast.
* Darkpromise gloves for the Healer archetype careers now drop off of Ahzranok, Larg the Devourer, and the Darkpromise Beast.
* Darkpromise gloves for the RDPS archetype careers now drop off of Horgulul, Butcher Gutbeater, and the Darkpromise Beast.
* Darkpromise gloves for the MDPS archetype careers now drop off of Horgulul, Butcher Gutbeater, and the Darkpromise Beast.
* Darkpromise Belt for the Tank archetype careers now drop off of Malghor Greathorn, Chul Earthkeeper, and Zaar the Painseeker.
* Darkpromise Belt for the Healer archetype careers now drop off of Malghor Greathorn, Chul Earthkeeper, and Zaar the Painseeker.
* Darkpromise Belt for the Tank archetype careers now drop off of Malghor Greathorn, Gorak the Ancient, and Zaar the Painseeker.
* Darkpromise Belt for the Healer archetype careers now drop off of Malghor Greathorn, Gorak the Ancient, and Zaar the Painseeker.
Original Location

I am glad to see the Darkpromise weapons go, although the cloaks, and jewelry where rather nice so that is a bit of a loss, but the big deal is the re-itemization and the addition of new items with proc's. That is a nice revelation because before items from the zone where a bit lackluster. Some where amazing, but some where weak. Additionally, they are upping the set drop rates so that each mini-boss drops 1 set item guaranteed, and the wing bosses will continue to drop 2 items.

I still have to say I am excited about the new weapons that are being released. Something to replace my Kadrin Valley 1 hander sword, maybe with a better proc who knows. It is nice to see that Mythic is smoothing out endgame; I hope it lives up to my expectations.

Mythic posted the Official 1.2 patch notes. There are a lot of changes that are looking good, and a nice long read.

Coming from playing a healer for a long time, I found this very troubling. Last night a few guildies where looking for people to go and do a Warpblade boots side run, which I was open for and had some time to spare so I took them up on it since I am still on the hunt for a specific warden ring and a watcher sword.

The first pull told me everything about what was going to come. Mind you I have 5/5 greater and or superior wards and almost 10hp...We pull the first 4 pack of assassins, after everyone said they where ready and poof dead. Only 3 people had come over to the first pull, the remaining 3 where sitting at the instance entrance. I chocked it up to people not paying attention, but that was just the start of it. About 4/5 pulls in healers are not healing for almost 20 seconds, so I am popping everything I have for self preservation, still no heals 30 seconds into the fight and my lesser geared off tank is trying to help mitigate all of this. 45 seconds in dead, no heals at all, but I got an insta rez from the Archmage.

Now coming from playing an archmage and almost being able to solo heal that dungeon I am like WTF we have a runepreist who runs Vale, and an Archmage who I think is new to the guild, neither of which are putting much effort in, yet they both need the final items from the zone. Where as I am there for the chance at a few stat buff items, but they are more fluff than anything else.

We reach the mini-boss and like before, half way though the fight healers stop healing. The rest of the group is at full health, I am taking him and they stop healing. Poof....I am taking yet another dirt nap. A wipe, run back and two of the stragglers pull mobs that where skipped on the way down because they are not paying attention. So the Archmage dies, and the shadow warrior dies, and the rest of us kill the adds when the reach us in the mini bosses room.

Second pull on the mini-boss and it goes the same as above...now this is a guild group, although several of which I have never run with before, so I am getting irritated. We are better than this and one of the cornerstones to an effective group is not performing, our healers. So one dps has to leave to take his kid to hockey practice, and people start looking for someone else. Then the Archmage leaves and it all falls apart from there.

I do not mind screw-ups, in fact I welcome them most of the time because they are a good way to learn, but if you make it into a vale group and need items from lower zones you should be smart enough to not only know your roll in the instance, but perform it. Not sit there and afk on pulls, and not pay attention. Apathy is not excuse for these actions and it wastes the time of others in the group. I know there are people who are amazing at their classes and others who are mediocre, but you should at least know how to play them well enough to get through an easy instance.

So I finally broke down and bought my own domain. My http://asuryanflame.blogspot.com/ domain will still work, but the new address will be http://www.asuryanflame.com/. So please enjoy the same old musings under a new title.

Warhammer Alliance original post :

"RvR will be getting a complete face lift. Keeps and forts are being redesigned to have 2-3 ramps. This should make things a lot more interesting for keep/fort defense, as well as weaken the popular tank wall strategy. Also, Conqueror Armor pieces will drop off guards and not just the lord in a fort.

There will be special buffs to both attackers and defenders in forts so that everyone feels a bit more useful. Not sure what these will be as I got no elaboration.

Mythic will be expanding the ORvR influence bar. There will be more rewards as a result but it will take much longer to max out them out as well.

Class balance is constantly being looked at. Adam Gershowitz and Brian Wheeler when queried about the White Lion's Fetch! Ability, replied that it would have its effectiveness reduced to be more in line with the Marauder's Terrible Embrace.

Also, pets will no longer be able to phase shift through doors and walls to fetch you from the safety of your keep.

Here are a few direct questions given to and answered by either Brian or Adam, or both:

Q: Any plans to tone down Ironbreaker area knock back?

A: All area knock backs should be the same distance.

Q: Instanced city sieging= Order and Destro avoid each other and PvE for loot. Is this being addressed?

A: We're changing this, probably by taking away the choice of selecting an instance.

Q: Problems with knock back and such are making the Magus Chaotic Rift near worthless, will this be addressed?

A: Chaotic Rift will soon draw enemies to an area around the magus within a certain number of feet instead of one precise spot. Unmovable should make them immune to rift and the magus can't rift as hes knocked back in the air but should be able to immediately after he lands if he's in range.

Q: Will there be a way to name other pets besides the White Lion's, such as turrets for Engineers and squigs for Squig Herders?

A: There are no plans for that currently

The last question posed was straight forward, and he got an answer. Brian Wheeler, a designer for WAR stepped up to the plate

Q: In your personal opinion, what are the most powerful class, most balanced class, and the weakest class?

A: I would say the most powerful- Warrior Priest which is better than the Disciple of Khaine.
The most balanced- we like the marauder how it is now.
The weakest- the Shadow warrior needs love."


That leaves the door open for a lot to say the least. I think we can expect a nerf to the warrior priest, a buff to shadow warriors, more and hopefully better oRVR influence rewards and so on. I am excited to see what Mythic comes up with in the coming months to shore up oRVR as well as provide more carrots for us.

***Note: I edited down the original post to put just the important information up. Please see the original for full details.

So, as stated in my other post we pushed into Dragonwake after capping the Maw. There was lag at the Maw, but not unbearable. Well Dragonwake was bad, in fact it was awful. We capped everything except Covenant of Flame, and we where in the process of pushing up to the lord room when the server stopped. Confusion passed through vent....then character select screen appeared.

This is bad at this point; nodes are dropping outside of fortresses and further shows that the hardware associated with oRVR lakes needs to be upgraded further to handle a large load. People are going to populate the areas that something is happening at, not those areas where there is nothing going on. So when the mass of order forces hit Dragonwake, so did the Destruction forces who where called to arms when their fortress was dropped.

I think that this a huge issue that needs to be addressed and fast. We are now post the launch bubble of people so we need to get hardware that can support large populations on the same plane, or find some way on the back end to tune your systems to limit what it does during a fight of that magnitude. If not you are going to once again have pissed off customers asking why they can not effectively do what this game was designed to.

The ball is clearly in your court Mythic, now we need to see what you do with it.

Last night we where back in the Vale, and almost to the Whitefire Matron when the call to arms happened. Order had flipped Chaos wastes on Praag and we where pushing into the Maw. So we abandoned the Vale for the night and headed off to the Maw to get into some fortress siege action. Our guild already had a full guild only warband so our group started a second and it filled up quickly.

We pushed through the first and second door within 3 minutes of the fight and made our way to the second floor. Our first push we got people up on to the lord’s floor and wiped a lot of the support that where up there, and punted several others off of the fortress, but alas there was still enough between them and the lord to wipe us. So people on the second floor started to get people back up, we where banner rezzing and getting prepped for the next push.

During this time destruction was mounting a push from the back side of the keep. In response we flanked them from both the east and west side of the fort and killed all of the third floor destruction support. This time we made another big push and we where able to kill all of the destro and take out the fortress lord. It was an excellent accomplishment. From there we brought the fight out to Dragonwake and started the cycle all over.

There are a lot of things that come into play to help make an effective and a big cohesive unit. I think this will be a multi-part article that will touch on various aspects of making a guild function well. This will be observations and advice from what I have seen over time playing MMO's and what is occurring currently in War.

So to the meat of it. The first thing that I want to touch on is collective crafting. Unlike individualism where people think that they need to only focus on their portion of it all and rely on the auction house to get the other items you need, I think that it is more important to collectively doll out resources to people. So you have a dedicated crafting core of people making talismans or potions making.

From there others will collect fragments, herbs, and so on and pool them and pass them out to people in need of the items. Not only do you start to get a central point for needs, you also provide a way for everyone.

Now some of you skeptics will say what about making gold, well there is farming, questing, and so on to do that. You can even farm for personal crafting items to sell and so on. The idea is to provide a potion of your wares to the guild to receive back in kind from others.

I think that this works best when everyone is on board to help farm, or to run instances to fill the materials in the bank back up. On the most basic level this is limited socialism, but on a grander side of the picture guilds are there for the betterment of the people in the guild. You work together for a goal and by ensuring that people are properly geared and have a good amount of support items, as a guild you will be more successful.

All in all I think that supporting a guild that supports you is good, and by having people who work together in this fashion build a better bond between people and will help with cohesion.

Well for starters I loved the advertising that went into the start of the latest live event. It has by far been one of the best attention grabbers that could have been used by reaching out to the community of Warhammer players at large to have us decipher the code before the announcement. I being the recipient of one of the post cards was rather excited to be included in this, but I know others, namely our brethren over seas where left out, but alas it was still and excellent promotion that was well worth the hype.

Now for the actual event, first and foremost they have done a great job of keeping it fairly PVP oriented with the Marked quest you could either kill NPC's or players. Which was a very nice touch; although like most of you I spent most of my time killing players. Couple that with the fact that almost all of the quests overlap in some way. For instance kill 10 keep lords, well they are also marked NPC's, or when you kill a player in a scenario they can count for the kill X of a race, guild officer, guild leader, or class. So I think they have done an amazing job of not only adding a nice set of rewards but also made it very easy attain these rewards.

So far this live event has been fun, I am still hoping that Reikland Arms comes back eventually, or something else tied to a live event, but all in all I think this was a success. Not only for its simplicity, but also the fact that you are not spending 3 hours grinding PVE mobs, more over you have options unlike the past live events. Certainly a step in the right direction across the board.

So I posted yesterday of my Lost Vale groups issues with N'Kara, I don not know what changed since we used the same strategy that we had been using, but it all seemed to click and she went down without much of an issue. All that I can think is that the new people to the Vale where starting to click with the group better and people where performing up to the level necessary for the zone.

All in all it was a good fight though, considering that our group had been ravaged by people leaving the game or getting tiered of the Vale, things turned out well for us and we seem to once again have a steady group.

Our lucky Runepreist got himself a Darkpromise chest piece...So it was a good night.

Are you on a server where the opposing faction runs when there is a chance for a fight? Do you get stuck RVE'ing because people don't want to come out and show why they should control a zone... Well this happens on several server, and I have done posts in the past on this subject, but I am now taking a look at Praag and how it seems to play. Waralytics numbers are from December 2008, but they put the ratio of destruction to order at almost 50/50. I know these numbers might have skewed since then, but none the less they are what I have so they are what I will use.

What this means is that there is a fairly even fight not matter where you look. Yes there will be times when one group has more on than the other, but that is how life goes, none the less the heart of this is fighting. That is what War is about big fights, taking forts and killing kings. Now why do people seem to avoid the fighting in this game? The best thing I can describe a death in War to would be TF2. You die...pay a measly 20 silver to get your death penalty removed and run back in...Wash rinse repeat. Now with such a limited penalty people should be jumping into the fray, but they are not. It seems that the only time people get bold is when they have superior numbers and think that will get them the win, instead of just going into it head on.

I can not really go into the psychology of it, largely because I do not have the education for it, but I can go into what I see. For instance last night, I on my Knight, come across a marauder and a DOK out in Eataine running around. I start to chase them and even taunt, and try and knock them off their mounts, but they keep running because they are afraid of the fight. Even with having the 2:1 advantage.

How can this be fixed?
Put in huge death penalties. Not necessarily dropping all of your items and gold but maybe take something from other MMO's where you have to go get your corpse back, and you get the % of stats removed from all death penalties. Couple both of those with raising the cost of a "Heal" in proportion to level. A level 40 should be paying 5 gold to heal, and so on so that there is a real penalty to dying in War. Now that might not make them fight, but that might make them try a bit harder when you reach them.

Additionally, bring the fight to them. Instead of waiting for RVR to happen go out and make it happen. Start in the morning with constant premades in scenarios, then as primetime comes flip zones, and start making a push. Force the opposing faction to come out and defend, or risk having their city put under siege. Now there are certainly things that can be done, it is a matter of doing them. I remember when influence rewards where released and people hopped out and started to RVR a lot, but that has since diminished with a lot of people already having their influence rewards. Now we need something else to fill that void and force people out into ORVR.

Where does Mythic come in on this, possibly in my first recommendation, but they can certainly offer some other carrot out in RVR to drag people back into it. If not the game will for the most part keep being RVE.

I ran a crypts group last night for fun, and because a few guildies needed stuff from there. We had seen pieces for every class but the ones in the group. As we cleared trash in the final room with the twins, one of them says why not make it so that bosses only drop look for the classes in the party.

Now, I at one point thought about this as well, but I stated to her that the reason it is done this way is to prevent people from basically completing all of endgame in a couple of trips in. Additionally there is not fun, work, or goal left for you to do.

I think that this is a fair statement about the whole of endgame PVE in War because there is a finite amount of PVE people can't race through all that is left in one night. It would kill games longevity and it would mean that really there are fewer goals to attain for progression. I see them doing it if there is every some type of expansion where gear and items are replaced. Like when WOW expansions come out or are near instances are nerfed so that people who never got to see the zone are able to go in and do them and get items.

Same could be applied here in the future, but with the first "expansion" on the horizon and Mythic stating that it will have zones that drop a lot more jewelry, weapons, and general support items I highly doubt that they will boost drop rates for people. I do think that they need to up the amount that drops in the Lost Vale, but not make it so that it only drops for specific classes. Largely because it is a zone with a 5 day lock out and it takes a lot of time to clear.

What are your thoughts on gear drops and who they play into the endgame?

So once again this weekend we where hammering away at the Lost Vale. Like before we where very successful in making it through the zone to N'Kara, but like before she stopped us in our tracks. For some reason the fight just seems to spin out of control. From our MT not being able to get the purple cloud, to dps dying to stupid stuff like the frontal cleave.

I am honestly at a loss; because half of the group has cleared the vale before and the other half had been new to it, but being new to a zone does not mean you are oblivious to how the fight goes after the 20th attempt. Anyone else having issues with her, or if now what strats did you use to fight her. Our current makeup is:
IB
KOTBS
BW
WH
AM
RP
All have 5/5 wards so...

For the better part of this weekend the battle on Praag was going back and forth. Order would flip a zone, destro would flip another and around and around we go. There where several large and well orchestrated fight that I had personally been involved in. The biggest fun for us this weekend though was keep defense. Our guild leader is on a kick to level the guild, which is not a bad kick to be in, so we set out a few keeps that we would claim and hold.

Our first one was the south keep in Kadrin Valley. We spent about 30 min outside the destro warcamp just enticing them to come out and killing those who did before the destro zerg finally showed up. By then we had a full array of siege weapons set up and started pulling people into range of the oil. Because of this tactic, it took the destro almost 45 min to get through just the first door, but they where persistent and finally broke through from there it was wash rinse repeat. We where drastically outnumbered so even with defense in our favor, there were a good chance we would falter, and ultimately we did. After a big push and lots of aoe, the tank wall fell, and things went swiftly from there.

We easily killed 30 of them on the push alone so it was not to a real loss, but it did give us a fun time. The next trip was to Reikland where we also defended the north keep. This time destro started off attacking us with a small force that had the brunt of its dps destroyed by us several time before the KV reinforcements arrived. Once there, the door dropped quickly and they made the push. Like before we where hopelessly outnumbered, but...it was the fun kind of outnumbered.

So that is how our weekend RVR went, loads of pushes, and loads of defeats, but it was what I think Mythic was going for. This never ending power struggle to control a zone for the chance and a city invasion.

I have to hand it to Mythic, although I was and still am a bit skeptical about the current changes to oRVR, they have brought out the fight in people. Last night was yet again another night of back and forth tug-o-war over zones. We were able to push destruction out of Reikland and back into Praag and tried to push to Chaos Wastes. It was a big blood bath with lots of deaths and kills all around.

At one point we thought we finally had them then a huge push with lots of reinforcements came at us...alas I had to go to the vale shortly there after so I did not get to see the aftermath, but cheers to Mythic for brining the fight out in people. That is what war is all about.

Yep that is right it started today, although I personally have yet to get to play some of it and see what the rewards are. I will on the other hand give you my thoughts on it after I play around with this tonight...

After several nights of running around with the KOTBS in instances and getting to tank with them, I find myself wondering why there are so many complaints about their tanking survivability on the WarAlly forums. They are comparing them to IB's and various other tanks. I am not seeing this, largely because the KOTBS is still a new class and comparing them to ones that have been here since launch, and are better geared and in a lot of cases better understood seems to be wrong.

How I have started to spec my tank out in the following order based on importance:
Initiative
Wounds
Resistances
Toughness

I find that in instances that Initiative is hugely important because preventing being critically hit seems to be one of the best ways to mitigate damage. Normally I don’t die to normal hits; it is the crits that kill me. Couple that with the health buffer, wounds you have a nice amount of wiggle room for your healers to work with. Next would be resistances, I find these very useful since a lot of mobs in this game not only deal physical damage which is mitigated by our armor, but also elemental, corporeal, and spiritual. So the higher you’re magical resistances, the less damage you are going to take from these abilities and ultimately the more damage you can soke up. Finally, toughness, of all of the above stats, for PVE it does the least, but for PVP it does a lot. I still think it is good to have a nice buffer of toughness, but not necessarily having it as the highest stat.

Beyond that it is the usage of abilities, I find that I will use Vigilance a lot during fights to help mitigate burst and high damage mobs; additionally the usage of wards is critical for a tank. You will see your biggest damage reduction by the amount of wards you have. Tanking a zone with not wards means you are taking 200% more damage than someone with 5/5 wards. That is a lot of damage for a healer to mitigate, and in all honesty you are almost worthless to the group at that time.

Tanking as I am learning are a lot of various abilities coupled with skill, but he key is survivability. If you can survive and hold agro, not only do you make the life of your healer easier, but you also make an instance go hundreds of times smoother

As many of you all have read I have been focusing on my KOTBS for a few weeks now, and to be honest I am enjoying it a ton. I don't plan on shelving my healers quite yet, but I find that playing this tank is more entertaining then playing the Archmage or the Zealot. Maybe in the future I will go back to focusing on them when things change with the way healing works in RVR, but for now I will be focusing on the knight.

I am now running with a guild on Praag by the name of Havoc so if you see us running around you will know where I am. Now goals, I want to hit LV head on again. I have enjoyed it a bunch in the past, but I have been searching for a steady group of people who are dedicated to running it over and over and over again. I have a fairly steady instance group and I think we will be pushing foreword in the near future. The key for me is gearing up accordingly.

I have found that tanking on the Knight is a lot easier than it was on the black guard. The BG seems to be lacking as a heavy tank, and is certainly an amazing offensive tank. So I have been working on getting proper stats for the knight, that and wards. I can see in about a month or two sitting in a full or close to a full set of Darkpromise, just in time for the expansion to add content.

RVR is a huge focus for me right now. I am hitting the grindstone once again. I am shelving a RR55 Archmage to start re-grinding all of those levels on the tank. I am finding that the tanks renown comes a bit slower but as I stated above I am having a lot more fun with it.

In the end I still have a lot of respect for healers but I wanted a change from playing ranged/healing classes. This is giving me a chance to do that and enjoy doing it. This game has a lot to offer, you just need to find exactly what you want from it, and for now tanking it is for me.