84

Ding 84 in a horribly boring Scenario that I took just to get the last 1500 to get the RR. The lakes have been awesome lately, weekend Order gets the numbers over Destro in the morning/afternoons so I've been soloing or running with a small gank group soaking up the renown from 68% to 100% over Sunday and Today.

Tonight, while no AAO was great as we were pretty much farming Order at their spawn until they put enough numbers to push our 8 with some extra destro out. I was shocked how long we were able to stand in their shit, even to pulling guards. I was like 50 kills and 6 deaths while the next highest killing blows was my guard with 20. It was a good night for me at least.

I don't even find myself looking to do scenarios anymore, and when I'm out in the lakes I try and stay clear of the zerg as much as possible, but sometimes it is unavoidable. The Pugs for Destro are just so bad and generally have no clue (sorry) and I just end up getting focused by the Order premades that I always see running (or combinations).

Top Tens pt I

I'm going to do a series of Top Tens in Warhammer

This Installment...

Top 10 Things that Annoy Me About WAR

10. Limited Available Trainers

IC/Altdorf and Viper Pit/Sigmars are the only places to respec in the game outside of T1 makes no sense. Also, not only that but in City instances you can respec in your spawn your Mastery but not your RR and in LOTD you can respec your RR but not your mastery... wtf is with that, it makes no logical sense!

9. Cave In

An Offensive 4s knockdown on a 20 cooldown that has no requirement other then a great weapon. The Black Guard requires a shield AND block and gives you an extra second, granted that I think is retarded as well 5s or 4s knockdowns are stupid, no KD should be more then 3 s and that should be only in the hands of Defensive Tanks

8. Healers Only Being Able to cleanse limited Debuffs

All healers should be able to cleanse the same shit, not this mamby pamby 'oh i can't cleanse cuz I'm a zealot'

7. White Lion Pet AI

This is horrible, unreliable and has been since day one. Why Mythic hasn't fixed this yet is beyond me. The WL would be an awesome class if the pet mechanic actually did something to aid the class rather then (for the most part) hinder it's ability to be functional in group play.

6. Terribad Weekend Scenario choices

Last while.. Black Fire Basin, Blood of Black Carin?! These were horrible SCs that ppl wanted gone in the first place only bringing them back reminds us how much we hated them.

Why not bring Logrens Back and let us mount up so ppl can't dodge the fight so easily, what happened to Reikland Hills, Howling Gorge, Grovood Caverns those were decent SCs for the most part (well Caverns was somewhat annoying but at least there was always a fight to be had)

5. Spawn Guards

Pulling, Punting etc into guards is old. Some players can't kill anything except for cheap shit like that. Granted I have pulled into guards many times but I only do it when spawn camped by a double premade and we are all pugs just to break up the stupidity. Every SC needs a set up like EC does, no spawn camping possible, just portal in and everyone has 5s of immunity and then it's on.

Not to mention also Spawns are not ballanced anyway. You can take a lot of SCs and see that it's easier for one side to Spawn Camp another or guards react differently..

Norden Watch
Order Spawn is a slope, guards aggro super easy, long punts into guards. Destro spawn is easier to break out from but is a long stretch where you have no terran advantage and Order can just wait back well out of range of any Destro punt

Reikland Factory
Same deal

Serpant's Passage
Relatively fair but Destro's guards don't react to any aggro. Someone can get pulled or punted right into them and nothing happens. Order aggros easier, not by much. This is why I like SP anyway, the guards relatively even and spawn is fair.

Isha's Will
Even

Battle for Praag
Even? Order has more guards at the front of their spawn then Destro does.

Caledor Woods
Order has a much wider spawn cliff face to work with and their guards are right on the edge while many Destro guards are way way in the back out of range of any fight. The Destro spawn is far more narrow as well but has more rock faces to LoS so I suppose that's fair enough.

4. Pistol Whip

As a player of a 59 WH Pistol Whip and Heartseeker are glaringly overpowered in my book. No knock down should hit this hard. In many instances on my WH I was getting nearly 2k crits on Pistol whip and that is in conq/invader gear with mediocre weapons. Not only that, but combined with FP you can pull this kd off anywhere for butt loads of dmg and pretty much burst through any target not in heavy armor to a sizeable advantage. Perhaps even worse is the fact that WHers get too much defensive abilities (Magnus, Repel and Declare) that if something goes wrong they can panic out of it.

3. DPS Healers (AM/Shaman especially)

Healing archtypes shouldn't be putting out the damage that they are capable of putting out. An Archmage has the ability to roll with 2 punts 4 dots a heal debuff an aoe snare that debuffs their dmg type, an M1 bubble for like almost 4k silence and a channel dot that ticks for 1k a pop not to mention can heal themselves rez others and buff their groups resistances. Shaman are similar minus dots but have all sorts of kiting abilities that make them almost impossible to catch for any melee damaging class. While the trade off might be squishieness all one needs is a modest ability to kite or just find a nice comfortable place to snipe from and you just can wrack up renown and kills without any effort what-so-ever.

2. No Snare Immunity

Currently snares are broken to the point in which many stack. IBs Knights and other tanks are putting out so many snares (and AoE Snares) that it is crippling MDPS in a way that it is makign it impossible for them to get on any soft targets of priority. Now, I can break a snare or root for 10s every minute, but other then that I am snared. I can charge, get myself back to normal speed 14s out of every minute which gives me 24s out of 60. This might sound reasonable but because Snares have no immunity I can be KD and or punted at the same time to eliminate the effectiveness of my Root/Snare break and or Charge.

Snares need to be looked at, especially now with the stacking of it. Either give an automatic 5s snare immunity (which I think is fair) or lessen the time you get snared from an ability. This perma-snare bullshit has got to stop.

Partily I'll admit that most Destro tanks on Badlands are horrible with their CC because 80% of them are Chosen and they just want to LOLRAVAGE spam their way to victory (and seldom do they actually contribute anything to the victory)

1. Bright Wizard Utility and CC Abilities

No way on Earth should a class with this much damage out put get this much CC without sacrificing anything

SDR - 100 foot knockdown? Please.
Firecage - AoE Root on an instant cast
Withering Heat - Channel Dot with a snare from range?!
Mage Bolt - M1 Knockback
Cauterize - Remove any debuff... wtf
I don't know the name but they also get a heal debuff an AP drain

now some of this you have to spec for... so what. This plus a shitty BW can crit you for 8k in 1 time stamp if they actually know how to rotate and do it all from 100 ft away while you try to get close to them. Oh I pull you... nope KD, kite dot you up Sear is 1.5s Pyro is 2s and you're dead.

Not saying Sorc's don't have their retarded shit also, but Bws just have way too much and if anyone tells you that BW and Sorc are balanced then they are smoking drugs.

I'd love to hear back from readers as to what Annoys them in game the most!

WHAM

I've been messing around with builds and playing alts. Tonight I went back to my 1.4 build and I hit a Slayer (who was city champion) for the above.

My question is, he didn't mitigate anything... which seems odd.

Oh yeah and Happy Holidays

Been Quiet

Things have been slow lately in WAR mostly because a lot of people in Guild are taking breaks or trying out some other games... most harmful was the loss of our guild's top Defensive minded Tank's account due to a hacking. We're hoping he gets it back.

So while his stuff is waiting to be restored I spent a lot of time duoing and such with him in lower tiers. A lot of guildies have gone back to WoW or went to test Rift. Me, I'm a WAR guy and I don't have any interest in either of those games. So Escha and I (his BG and my Shaman) have been terrorizing the noobs a bit, and to our delight many DN guildies wanted to join in on it jumping on their T2 toons as well! I forgot how interesting it could be and exciting to level in a group through RvR... getting that tactic or skill that pushes your class to the next level is fun.

Maraudering

I've been running a new RA build were essentially i'm able to run capped strength with a chosen buff, a 35% crit and a 40% parry. My STR drops a lot and I lose some crit when I put defensive gear on but I remain ultimately an equal force when i switch gear in terms of a solo guild. The 6 Offensive sov + Glyphs and the 40% parry is just a real nice thing to have when Order melee turns their wraith on me and also a whole slew of Melee spec WPs who are out soloing a lot... I don't spec CJ anymore so WP can be tricky with no knockdown but with the Parry + Disarm it's pretty much cake. In fact I find myself toying with most of them, and there is one that I need to get some payback on for him getting the better of me a few times before I respected. I also have 1 level of Cleansing Winds... why someone wouldn't spec that unless they were a healer is beyond me because that thing has saved my ass too many times to count already.

Oh, of course Ding RR83... I didn't capture the moment because we were in a very intense Scenario at the time but i do have the /g announcement ss!

ding 82

Busy at work, busy at play. I'm enjoying the game more probably then I have in a while. This makes me happy. But hey check it out, ding 82. Lucky, that at the same time I am not really that concerned with hitting rr90 or higher. I know i'll get it so I'm just enjoying the fights as they certainly are numerous!

Defensive Sov vs Offensive Sov and why I run Offensive

Wow I got a gear upgrade last night when I finally dug out enough Captain's Emblems to buy my RR81 main hand weapon. She's a doozy and actually amazingly enough the artwork isn't utter shit on it.

77.X DPS is a nice little bump, while I logged right after I slotted a tali in it and have yet to check it out I'm interested in seeing what it's going to give me for more white dmg. ATM My main hand is getting crits in the 1k range on medium to squishie targets (1.4k on BWs or AMs) and my Offhand is getting 900s and 1ks. Brutality combo with Savagery is giving insane AA dmg when the Brut proc goes off with Cutting Claw up.

I'm still working on the rotation and trying to fine tune it. Honestly it's not the greatest build for large scale combat but I am getting through just fine. Having a double Marauder group over the weekend was sort of cool also with Rathead(another 81 marauder in DN) in defensive gear running the same build.

I've been running in the lakes with Defensive gear up solo lately and it's funny how you don't trade off a whole lot of raw dps with that set up then full sov with your defensive status being raised through the roof. Either way, I didn't wait 2 years for this patch to gimp my dmg by wanting to live longer... I just go get a pocket guard.

The trade off is really that sustained dmg wise Def vs Offensive is about the same when you take into consideration the 7 piece proc. However Burst wise, Offensive is through the roof. With a liniment I have %40 crit without Feeding on Fear (so %60 if I opted to run it) and 1100 strength atm with brute force (if I am running it).

What this means to me is that I can run 4 tactics without Brute force in a group with a chosen or zealot. In defensive you pretty much imo have to run BF and FoF because your crit is not going to be touching 30 with a liniment and so you're limited from that point since you probably want to run PB as well leaving 1 swing tactic.

Your damage and utility options in Offensive Sovereign are significantly improved over Defensive. Think about it this way, if you drop BF and always run PB you don't have to worry about weapon skill and you can swing tactics 3 tactics (since you always have PB) and don't need FoF

Flanking, always take it imo
Subvert Strength, great for long fights lots of tanks or healers
Unending Horror, save your ass
Deadly Clutch, you could spec that for the heal debuff, not such a bad idea
Growing Instability, which of course is now part of just about every single Marauder build.

As of late I run two tactic set ups in a group where I get a str buff.

Flanking, Piercing Bite, Growing Instability, Subvert Strength
or
Flanking, Piercing Bite, Growing Instability, Unending Horror

Many Marauders, especially lower RR Marauders might want to run Feeding on Fear because you won't be able to obtain a %40 Crit without that proc, and that's a good idea since our dmg is so based off burst atm.

In Defensive Sovereign you are probably going to be running

Brute Force, Growing Instability, Feeding on Fear, Piercing Bite as your most logical options to be able to maintain some sort of DPS level to match your survivability. It works really well, in fact it's probably stronger then the Offensive set up, clearly in 1v1 situations at least.

In my current build WHers are the only things giving me significant problems in offensive sovereign because of their opening burst. I almost always bring them down to 30% if not lower once I get up. That being said most WHers are cake if they don't get the jump on you in the first place since they have to ramp up their mechanic. WHers in defensive sovereign are just like Marauders in Defensive Sovereign, complete pains in the ass and probably better in the long run due to Torment and Feinted Positioning.

But as said, I didn't wait 2 years to not go for big numbers and huge burst. If anyone is interested in a cool addon-mod for tracking your big hits, try moneyshot. You can reset it as much as you want to and as long as you disable it going into Stage 3 or say beating on a resource carrier with AAO you get some nice honest numbers on big hits. It comes with an other mod that will screen shot your big hits as well as they come along. I currently have that disabled because I dunno about what sort of lag that would cause... maybe I'll give er a shot!