Disclaimer. This build is very group orientated, can work in smaller fights but requires certain elements of group play in order to maximize the potential for it as a pure DPS killing build. This build offers little survivability, and while on paper looks like it has all the utility of my regular build, honestly things die too fast for it to be called Utility.
This set up may not be something you could enjoy if you don't run in a group with someone dedicated to healing and absorbing your damage. This is not a solo build, this is a build for premades and is a way for the Marauder to be as lethal as a Sorc or Witch Elf in terms of burst damage. Also, this build really requires you to be in your 90's for renown rank, although I'm sure you could still make a pretty efficient variant on it in your 80s
CONCEPT
One of the many things Marauders have going for us is the amount of useful tactics we get. Now, we aren't Chosen or Witch Elves but we do get a lot of great tactics to run with. Most of the time we all think that the typical Marauder build is to run a variation on 3 tactics + 1 extra tactics. This is no longer true for yours truly.
The combo of 3 everyone runs.... Growing Instability, Piercing Bite and Brute Force.
Most other Marauders then cycle depending on their build between Feeding on Fear, Flanking, Subvert Strength, Deadly Clutch etc etc.
I say, no. Drop Brute Force, keep Flanking GI and PB and cycle a 3rd one depending on your build. For me, it's Feeding on Fear.
You might then say, but Kruelhand what about your strength? Well, good point folks. I build my renown by getting all 5 levels of Strength and 4 levels of Melee Crit tossing the rest into a variety of other things ranging from wounds to parry depending on what's left over.
What this really means is I need a chosen in my party with a high strength aura. In the gear I'm wearing (i'll get to that in a second) I sit at around 1020 strength (if memory serves me) which is indeed below the r95 soft cap but when I am grouped with a chosen I am at the cap. I'm at the cap with a 295 damage bonus and a flat 42% melee crit with a liniment, over 9400 hit points, 4000 armor and a 34% parry
but I only have 160 toughness, a 12% to be crit and my AP management is somewhat lack luster. Feeding on Fear does seem to work as intended now as I take a lot of crit damage, and am thinking about dropping all the points I put into parry and seeing how low I can get my -% to be crit... again that could hurt me more because less then 30% parry seems like a mistake considering how much melee there is out there.
GEAR COMBINATION
The gear set up is to help get my strength up without brute force so that with the support of a group I can be at cap. This means that I drop my normal set up I was running which was 4 doomflayer, 2 tyrant and then 5 tovl glyphs. While this set up gave me a slightly higher inate damage bonus (about 304 incl the %5) my crit is higher as well as my auto attack speed is better now that I run 4 offensive doomflayer 4 offensive sovereign and 3 glyphs
Healm - doomflayer
Shoulders - doomflayer
Chest - doomflayer
Gloves - Doomflayer
Boots Sovereign
Belt - Sovereign
Back - Sovereign
3 glyphs and sovereign gem.
The build is based off of procs for crits. In doomflayer gear the 2 piece crit proc is extremely strong, coupled with Feeding on Fear I can get double procs to over 70% crit coupled with the targets chance to be crit when I get on targets often times nearly every attack crits and if the doomflayer melee power proc goes up...
Before I was on occasion getting crit hits 3k with Guilotine only and now I'm seeing 3k crits on TB and on Guilotine I'm routinely getting 3k. In fact if guilotine is not hitting for 2700 I get disappointed. I hit debuffed tanks for 1800-2000k with guilotine. I hit a city Warlord mob for 3900 and I've hit a slayer for 1774 when guarded standing right beside his guard with Guilotine.
Without a doubt in my mind some of these players I'm hitting this hard are losing to me on hidden levels but I am hitting RR100 slayers for 3k on the regular, not so surprising because it's a slayer but hey it sure looks nice.
I have no doubt that this build is the hardest hitting set up for a Marauder in terms of it's ability to take down a target very fast even through being healed. I'm contemplating respecing to Deadly Clutch to see if that is an improvement but I have yet to run across a healer yet who has been able to outheal this damage output... I have met healers that were able to escape (punt or detaunt or whatever) but in terms of me giving the full burst roatation even with only 1 doomflayer proc up there is far too much damage happening at in a short period of time. Actually many times the target dies before I get to Guilotine in the roation (which is great because then I have it right away for the next target).
Oh and mastery. It's the same as I have posted before only now I drop Draining Swipes and max out the Savagery tree for a 1800 armor debuff. In 1 more RR I gain another passive level... which I'm excited about to see how that goes.
IN CLOSING
If I was running solo all day I would never use this build. I would go respec for something a little more tame. I like to play with my friends however, and I tend to be in a group where I play the Main DPS role split with a 94 Sorc who deals with the targets I cannot get to, as well as stealing my god damn death blows (<3 Laonsela). If you run solo, or don't have a guard or healers capable to a lot of burst healing, don't use this build, you'll hate it. If you get the support you always wish you could have, this is the absolute most efficient killing spec I have come up with yet.
The PvP Video I am finishing up this weekend will be %100 in this build, so you will be able to see it in action.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
Vs Slayers (And Video Update)
Slayers, easily in my opinion when it comes to this game are the top of the melee food chain when it comes to how the game is supposed to be played, in group combat. The Slayer gets so many great abilities and skills that when they are supported properly they do more damage, kill more enemies then any other class in game.
Shattered Limbs
Inevitable Doom
Rampage
the list could keep going. However upon catching a slayer by himself or not supported properly who is not specifically geared for small group play they are also the fastest class to die. A Slayer ought to be able to 1v1 any class regardless of what the build is if they are smart and use their rage mechanic to their advantage. The trick to beating a slayer is patience and captiolizing on your opportunity. As fast as they might be able to kill a target, a Slayer out of guard range will die faster.
Against any slayer that I fight I want to get them out of position, away from that guard. That means I could pull them from their guard when he's not paying attention or use co-ordination with my tank to disable the guard so I can pull the slayer. I only need 3 global cooldowns to kill a max rage slayer and that's if there is no other dps on them. You might think that I'm exaggerating, well truthfully I'm not. I recently killed a RR100 slayer in 3 cooldowns when he was not anywhere near his guard and it was only me on him, they are inbelievably squishie and when you combine the armor debuff with their red mechanic they mitigate no damage at all. Hitting a slayer for 3k+ is something that happens to me now daily and I make it a point to do it to put them in their place.
That being said, no slayer can be taken lightly. Slayer in the red can kill you very fast on his knock down especially if he's running his crit%dmg tactic and is low on health. A lot of slayers run this tactic, which was the old Marauder tactic mirror (until that got changed). A slayer might kite you until he's burning red and get on you wait for you to get him low then knock you down and kill you with that 2s knockdown hitting you for crits in the 3k range. I've seen some slayers lately running 2handed spec doing just that. In fact there are a few slayers I've seen quite intelligently using Last Stand that way... waiting till they are at 20% health, popping last stand and killing 2 or 3 people sometimes more while it's up just popping rampage and owning everyone's face then of course dying. Thing is, they're going to die anyway and with that build they're going to take someone with them. When they get into that mode Spellbreaker is going to be hitting for 2k on non- crits!
Slayers who run solo tend to spec the same way a Choppa might, for the channel heal. The trick here is to interupt the heal with disarm/knockdown/moutho'T and at that point they are in trouble. You cannot count on parry here because they will pop rampage to make sure they get the heals off, only thing you can do besides that is hope you get huge damage off on them or absorb when they channel depending on how badly you want to win/don't want to lose. Remember also that in the yellow they're going to be hitting for huge numbers, you need to be equalling that.
The next big thing to know about Slayers is that a lot of Slayers (most if not all) spec a lot of Weapon Skill. You know what that means right... monstro proc. If you get into a situation against a Slayer you want to get a monstro proc up right away and keep dancing through stances to try and mitigate as much weapon skill as possible. Granted, you don't want to do the entire fight in Monstro because your damage will be nerfed as well, don't get into a DPS race with a Slayer because it's a bad idea.
In all honesty most slayers I run into I just explode and don't care what level they are. 3 shot them 2 shot them whatever. Most are wrecklessly trying to kill squishies thinking that I'm going to try to take their healers out. Truth be told I go after Slayers first every time because of Shattered Limbs and what that can do to my group in terms of screwing up rotation, auras, heals and whatnot. After Slayers then I make choices about over extenders or healers.
The Video
Volume 3 of my pvp videos was completely scrapped and has been redone. Reason being is I've got a new build for renown and gear and a minor modification to my spec. This new build works in duels okay but it really shines in group play to the point where honestly it's almost not fair. So what I have done is started filming over again from scratch in an effort to highlight this build and show some absurb damage numbers. In fact in some instances my damage on scoreboards is kind of low compared to what it used to be, and that is because my TTK is so fast right now that I don't need to compensate for heals, the targets just fall over dead in 3 or 4 seconds.
Stay tuned for that.
Shattered Limbs
Inevitable Doom
Rampage
the list could keep going. However upon catching a slayer by himself or not supported properly who is not specifically geared for small group play they are also the fastest class to die. A Slayer ought to be able to 1v1 any class regardless of what the build is if they are smart and use their rage mechanic to their advantage. The trick to beating a slayer is patience and captiolizing on your opportunity. As fast as they might be able to kill a target, a Slayer out of guard range will die faster.
Against any slayer that I fight I want to get them out of position, away from that guard. That means I could pull them from their guard when he's not paying attention or use co-ordination with my tank to disable the guard so I can pull the slayer. I only need 3 global cooldowns to kill a max rage slayer and that's if there is no other dps on them. You might think that I'm exaggerating, well truthfully I'm not. I recently killed a RR100 slayer in 3 cooldowns when he was not anywhere near his guard and it was only me on him, they are inbelievably squishie and when you combine the armor debuff with their red mechanic they mitigate no damage at all. Hitting a slayer for 3k+ is something that happens to me now daily and I make it a point to do it to put them in their place.
That being said, no slayer can be taken lightly. Slayer in the red can kill you very fast on his knock down especially if he's running his crit%dmg tactic and is low on health. A lot of slayers run this tactic, which was the old Marauder tactic mirror (until that got changed). A slayer might kite you until he's burning red and get on you wait for you to get him low then knock you down and kill you with that 2s knockdown hitting you for crits in the 3k range. I've seen some slayers lately running 2handed spec doing just that. In fact there are a few slayers I've seen quite intelligently using Last Stand that way... waiting till they are at 20% health, popping last stand and killing 2 or 3 people sometimes more while it's up just popping rampage and owning everyone's face then of course dying. Thing is, they're going to die anyway and with that build they're going to take someone with them. When they get into that mode Spellbreaker is going to be hitting for 2k on non- crits!
Slayers who run solo tend to spec the same way a Choppa might, for the channel heal. The trick here is to interupt the heal with disarm/knockdown/moutho'T and at that point they are in trouble. You cannot count on parry here because they will pop rampage to make sure they get the heals off, only thing you can do besides that is hope you get huge damage off on them or absorb when they channel depending on how badly you want to win/don't want to lose. Remember also that in the yellow they're going to be hitting for huge numbers, you need to be equalling that.
The next big thing to know about Slayers is that a lot of Slayers (most if not all) spec a lot of Weapon Skill. You know what that means right... monstro proc. If you get into a situation against a Slayer you want to get a monstro proc up right away and keep dancing through stances to try and mitigate as much weapon skill as possible. Granted, you don't want to do the entire fight in Monstro because your damage will be nerfed as well, don't get into a DPS race with a Slayer because it's a bad idea.
In all honesty most slayers I run into I just explode and don't care what level they are. 3 shot them 2 shot them whatever. Most are wrecklessly trying to kill squishies thinking that I'm going to try to take their healers out. Truth be told I go after Slayers first every time because of Shattered Limbs and what that can do to my group in terms of screwing up rotation, auras, heals and whatnot. After Slayers then I make choices about over extenders or healers.
The Video
Volume 3 of my pvp videos was completely scrapped and has been redone. Reason being is I've got a new build for renown and gear and a minor modification to my spec. This new build works in duels okay but it really shines in group play to the point where honestly it's almost not fair. So what I have done is started filming over again from scratch in an effort to highlight this build and show some absurb damage numbers. In fact in some instances my damage on scoreboards is kind of low compared to what it used to be, and that is because my TTK is so fast right now that I don't need to compensate for heals, the targets just fall over dead in 3 or 4 seconds.
Stay tuned for that.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Vs White Lions
Despite what a lot of White Lions may claim, the WL is a very very dangerous Class if you come across a situation where you have to deal with them by yourself.
In fact, I would much rather fight a Slayer or a Witch Hunter then a White Lion if we're of equal level and gear mostly because a White Lion has the ability to absorb a lot more punishment then their other MDPS brothers/sisters.
While dealing with Mitigation for a marauder can be easier then most classes due to the debuffs offered in Savagery, a lot of Marauders don't use Savagery and are a Brutality Monstro build. This is fine, however when dealing with a higher armored target piercing bite only grats returns on abilities that require the mutation, which means without an armor debuff you're auto attack damage won't be fantastic. Note also that you lose your only undefendable attack with Cutting Claw, and you will not find a White Lion without Force Opportunity, you're going to get hit very hard and fast by WL and you have to make quick choices.
But the one thing you do have going for you against a WL is that you know that 9.99999 times out of 10 there are only 2 builds you're going to see. Both builds have Pounce, LF and FO the other is depending on if they have their knockdown, or their finisher.
In a lot of situations for 1v1 a WL will go for his knockdown. 2s+lag can be pretty insane especially when it can ensure they get all 4hits from Co-ordinated strikes off, this combined with armor debuff, LF and AA hits provides that burst most people are so afraid of (myself included). Since my burst rotation relies on the target being less then %50 health I get up from msot WL knockdowns at 50% before I got more then 1 or 2 hits off, and it's playing a horrible game of catch up.
One thing you can do is if you have Savagery is hit them with Draining Swipes as soon as you get up. WL have extremely poor AP management, and stifling them more is going to go a long way to helping you catch up. A smart WL will also kite you after the kd burst so they can get AP back... they have great snares (one on the pet, one in their rotation) and can charge away, replenish AP and pounce back in to finish you off. You cannot kite a WL (charge, pounce) and they can kite you (double snare and knockdown if in guardian spec), advantage WL. Now, a Marauder does have his pull, but a 2s cast that will be set back due to the lion is a folly and you might as well not try because they can just pounce out of your pull to throw your timing off.
A WL that is spec for CTW is going to be running a high advantage against healers and casters but not really against other MDPS except maybe a Choppa, and even then, it's a race to the choppa's kd and then killing the WL. Losing that KD costs the WL a lot vs a Marauder.
Best way to deal with a WL is to have your own knockdown or get your disarm up fast. The other thing is to detaunt right away going into the fight. This mitigates the pet's damage even if you're hitting the primary toon for everything you have. Trying to keep both in the parry arch is not a practical idea but keep the primary toon in as well.
If a WL starts to kite you to get his AP back, kill the pet. Most WL pets are squishie, if you take that pet out and then pull the WL you're going to win that fight because of the amount of damage that the WL loses with the pet on cooldown (re: their %50dmg to crit tactic is dependant on the pet being alive)
In fact, I would much rather fight a Slayer or a Witch Hunter then a White Lion if we're of equal level and gear mostly because a White Lion has the ability to absorb a lot more punishment then their other MDPS brothers/sisters.
While dealing with Mitigation for a marauder can be easier then most classes due to the debuffs offered in Savagery, a lot of Marauders don't use Savagery and are a Brutality Monstro build. This is fine, however when dealing with a higher armored target piercing bite only grats returns on abilities that require the mutation, which means without an armor debuff you're auto attack damage won't be fantastic. Note also that you lose your only undefendable attack with Cutting Claw, and you will not find a White Lion without Force Opportunity, you're going to get hit very hard and fast by WL and you have to make quick choices.
But the one thing you do have going for you against a WL is that you know that 9.99999 times out of 10 there are only 2 builds you're going to see. Both builds have Pounce, LF and FO the other is depending on if they have their knockdown, or their finisher.
In a lot of situations for 1v1 a WL will go for his knockdown. 2s+lag can be pretty insane especially when it can ensure they get all 4hits from Co-ordinated strikes off, this combined with armor debuff, LF and AA hits provides that burst most people are so afraid of (myself included). Since my burst rotation relies on the target being less then %50 health I get up from msot WL knockdowns at 50% before I got more then 1 or 2 hits off, and it's playing a horrible game of catch up.
One thing you can do is if you have Savagery is hit them with Draining Swipes as soon as you get up. WL have extremely poor AP management, and stifling them more is going to go a long way to helping you catch up. A smart WL will also kite you after the kd burst so they can get AP back... they have great snares (one on the pet, one in their rotation) and can charge away, replenish AP and pounce back in to finish you off. You cannot kite a WL (charge, pounce) and they can kite you (double snare and knockdown if in guardian spec), advantage WL. Now, a Marauder does have his pull, but a 2s cast that will be set back due to the lion is a folly and you might as well not try because they can just pounce out of your pull to throw your timing off.
A WL that is spec for CTW is going to be running a high advantage against healers and casters but not really against other MDPS except maybe a Choppa, and even then, it's a race to the choppa's kd and then killing the WL. Losing that KD costs the WL a lot vs a Marauder.
Best way to deal with a WL is to have your own knockdown or get your disarm up fast. The other thing is to detaunt right away going into the fight. This mitigates the pet's damage even if you're hitting the primary toon for everything you have. Trying to keep both in the parry arch is not a practical idea but keep the primary toon in as well.
If a WL starts to kite you to get his AP back, kill the pet. Most WL pets are squishie, if you take that pet out and then pull the WL you're going to win that fight because of the amount of damage that the WL loses with the pet on cooldown (re: their %50dmg to crit tactic is dependant on the pet being alive)
Vs Witch Hunters
I got a message yesterday (very late) from someone asking me for advice on how to deal with a Witch Hunter in a 1v1 situation and if I would post it on this blog to help all the other ppl out there that have problems with WHers. I figure, I could do a whole series based on most of the classes out there.
Here's a confession, WHers are hard in 1v1 situations for just about any class possibly with the exception of turtle/regen tanks which I like to affectionately call "retard spec." WH is a class built do kill targets that are vunerable, separated from their friends or otherwise unsuspecting. If you are a solo player out in those lakes or carrying a part in a sc or any other sort of situation and a WH jumps you, well my friends you're in a great deal of trouble.
Note friends that this advice does not apply to Order fighting a Witch Elf, be clear, while these two classes share a lot of similarities, they play a great deal differently and ask anyone who has played both classes to 80+ and you're going to get a lot of information about the differences between them.
Also do note that there is a large difference between a 1v1 situation out in the lakes and a duel. I was not %100 sure if this find upstanding marauder was asking about duels or just getting jumped in the lakes. Dueling a WH is in fact far easier imo then fighting in the lake for the most part because of one very important fact... predicatbility.
If you are in a duel with anyone you know you're in a fight and who it is against. In many situations you know what level and what build they are in, thus you can prepare yourself mentally and perhaps emotionally for the asswhiping you might just get. In the lakes, you tend to not know it's coming, and then suddenly you're down on your ass with someone beating on you taking away your health before you even knew it was going to happen. That is where a WH shines specifically. A good WH never fights on anyone's terms but his or her own and is in complete control of the fight. My strategy against WH is to take that advantage away from them if not turn it in my favor completely.
A good rule of thumb when you're out and about is to have your Detaunt bound to something effortless for you to hit. Myself, my middle mouse button is my detaunt, and when I suspect some shit is about to go down I keep it pressed down. Call that "pre-loading" your detaunt. This way when they go to pop on you, you're going to have a split second to take your finger off the detaunt and boom, they're detaunted and you're going to take 1/2 of their damage while you're knocked down. In a situation like this you've taken away their advantage of a front end burst. You should be able to get up from that knockdown at about %70 health to %60 depending on gear or lvl gap. A smart WH while having you kd for those 2s will have put Repel Blasphamy on you, or at least is going to apply it as quickly as possible for when you're back up. This as you may or may not know gives them 5s of %100+ parry. So for 5 s the only ability you're going to have to hit them with unless you can get their flank (out of their parry arch) is your Armor debuff. In this situation what you do is hit charge and back off out of range of their attacks OR you just try and keep them in front of your parry arh for when they get up.
Kiting a WH is a daunting task because of their movement barb. You don't have to move too much but you also don't want to give them your flank otherwise they'll take you apart with torment. They won't have many accuastions built up at this point because most times they've blown their wad on BaL or EW (depending on spec).
Many WH have a base parry around 40-50% depending on their level and tactic set up. However, you do have Pulverize and if you can get that off early in the fight you can help to mitigate thatm.
Most WH are also very squishy and thus cannot take too much punishment. In my experience if you can get out of their parry wall (RB) with %40 health you're going to win the fight because most WH's tend to do one thing after RB is up... panic.
It's amazing watching a WH get flustered once they have failed to kill you after they pop everything on you be it SoD, RB, and all that good stuff. Most of the time they don't expect it.
Oh and if you're going to play it anything goes. I like to try my best to pop my absorb trinket before detaunt if I can time it. That way I get 3500 aborb taking half damage most of the time they don't get through the absorb by the time I'm back up and they are in a great deal of trouble at that point. In fact most will just self punt off and run... but running from a Marauder is not so easy with the pull.
Other then surviving the burst from 9 out of 10 wh you can just follow your normal rotation of whatever spec you're in. If you're running the knockdown I would wait for them to get to about %60 to %50 health rather then trying to knock them down right after you get back up, because they'll have their parry wall up. If you're running a disarm then the same thing applies.
Some WH will not knock you down and will disarm you instead. That actually tends to be more effective but the KD they use hits incredibly hard and most then will use that.
Good WHers are very difficult to take on 1v1 and there are plenty out there that even are not good WHers that still will take you out if you're completely jumped and taken off guard. I have no advice for a situation like that.
Here's a confession, WHers are hard in 1v1 situations for just about any class possibly with the exception of turtle/regen tanks which I like to affectionately call "retard spec." WH is a class built do kill targets that are vunerable, separated from their friends or otherwise unsuspecting. If you are a solo player out in those lakes or carrying a part in a sc or any other sort of situation and a WH jumps you, well my friends you're in a great deal of trouble.
Note friends that this advice does not apply to Order fighting a Witch Elf, be clear, while these two classes share a lot of similarities, they play a great deal differently and ask anyone who has played both classes to 80+ and you're going to get a lot of information about the differences between them.
Also do note that there is a large difference between a 1v1 situation out in the lakes and a duel. I was not %100 sure if this find upstanding marauder was asking about duels or just getting jumped in the lakes. Dueling a WH is in fact far easier imo then fighting in the lake for the most part because of one very important fact... predicatbility.
If you are in a duel with anyone you know you're in a fight and who it is against. In many situations you know what level and what build they are in, thus you can prepare yourself mentally and perhaps emotionally for the asswhiping you might just get. In the lakes, you tend to not know it's coming, and then suddenly you're down on your ass with someone beating on you taking away your health before you even knew it was going to happen. That is where a WH shines specifically. A good WH never fights on anyone's terms but his or her own and is in complete control of the fight. My strategy against WH is to take that advantage away from them if not turn it in my favor completely.
A good rule of thumb when you're out and about is to have your Detaunt bound to something effortless for you to hit. Myself, my middle mouse button is my detaunt, and when I suspect some shit is about to go down I keep it pressed down. Call that "pre-loading" your detaunt. This way when they go to pop on you, you're going to have a split second to take your finger off the detaunt and boom, they're detaunted and you're going to take 1/2 of their damage while you're knocked down. In a situation like this you've taken away their advantage of a front end burst. You should be able to get up from that knockdown at about %70 health to %60 depending on gear or lvl gap. A smart WH while having you kd for those 2s will have put Repel Blasphamy on you, or at least is going to apply it as quickly as possible for when you're back up. This as you may or may not know gives them 5s of %100+ parry. So for 5 s the only ability you're going to have to hit them with unless you can get their flank (out of their parry arch) is your Armor debuff. In this situation what you do is hit charge and back off out of range of their attacks OR you just try and keep them in front of your parry arh for when they get up.
Kiting a WH is a daunting task because of their movement barb. You don't have to move too much but you also don't want to give them your flank otherwise they'll take you apart with torment. They won't have many accuastions built up at this point because most times they've blown their wad on BaL or EW (depending on spec).
Many WH have a base parry around 40-50% depending on their level and tactic set up. However, you do have Pulverize and if you can get that off early in the fight you can help to mitigate thatm.
Most WH are also very squishy and thus cannot take too much punishment. In my experience if you can get out of their parry wall (RB) with %40 health you're going to win the fight because most WH's tend to do one thing after RB is up... panic.
It's amazing watching a WH get flustered once they have failed to kill you after they pop everything on you be it SoD, RB, and all that good stuff. Most of the time they don't expect it.
Oh and if you're going to play it anything goes. I like to try my best to pop my absorb trinket before detaunt if I can time it. That way I get 3500 aborb taking half damage most of the time they don't get through the absorb by the time I'm back up and they are in a great deal of trouble at that point. In fact most will just self punt off and run... but running from a Marauder is not so easy with the pull.
Other then surviving the burst from 9 out of 10 wh you can just follow your normal rotation of whatever spec you're in. If you're running the knockdown I would wait for them to get to about %60 to %50 health rather then trying to knock them down right after you get back up, because they'll have their parry wall up. If you're running a disarm then the same thing applies.
Some WH will not knock you down and will disarm you instead. That actually tends to be more effective but the KD they use hits incredibly hard and most then will use that.
Good WHers are very difficult to take on 1v1 and there are plenty out there that even are not good WHers that still will take you out if you're completely jumped and taken off guard. I have no advice for a situation like that.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Gosh I wish
there were more Order to fight on badlands.
Throughout 3yrs of this game we've seen the balance of power switch from side to side several times, that isn't so shocking or alarming. This time however it was noted by Lyram (a guildie) that it happened far faster then it has in the past. This to me is a cause of moderate concern.
With SWTOR coming in 2 months time many are speculating that WAR will merge the last 2 NA servers into one or even as drastic as taking all of the servers and just making 1. Now, I don't really think that is the solution at all, I think we need 2 servers and I think it's important not to force people with alt toons on the other faction to be forced into 8hr lock outs, nor do I think there should be an abolishion of the lock out. 2 servers I think is the most effective scenario and we all know that WAR isn't trying to get 'new' players if anything they're trying to get old players coming back if anything.
You don't see them updating the website (as noted) and you don't see them really pimping 14 day trials as they once did. Patches are somewhat meaningless attempts at changing something in an RvR system that probably from the start never worked properly.
I understand the excitement about SWTOR and I'm looking forward to playing it (GW2 and D3 also) and since most of the WAR people seem to be fixated on WOH I don't expect any sort of patch coming soon (maybe January) and in said patch I don't expect anything other then return of Keeps (which would be cool).
That being said, I wonder how on earth I'll be able to make rr100 if there is only a few fights, unbalanced SC and flipping empty zones. I suppose my original prediction of never getting to 100 will hold, despite the fact that I'd love to get there... right now RR95 seems like forever away and i'm %20ish through it.
Video Footage
For those who have asked, yes I am currently collecting FRAPS footage for a 3rd video which will feature various aspects of the game from premades to solo to duels to small party combat. Most of the footage if not all is going to be between RR93 and 95 depending on how often I remember to hit the record button. It will be in my typical Sav/Brute build and either in a two armor combinations.
I've also dropped Draining Swipes as of yesterday for full 1800 armor debuff and wounds debuff which seems to be pretty interesting although I need to find a substitution in my rotation that is actually effective other then just hitting flail. I suppose it doesn't really matter since DS was a 20s cooldown and I always forgot to pop it anyway (laugh). That 1800 armor debuff is very nasty I must say.
Zealot
Loving my zealot still and in fact on the weekend took him into ToVL... at lvl 34. Yeah we went through the first 5 bosses before we decided to call it due to our DoK who was melee healing to help me out had to go due to what I can only assume was wife aggro. You can just tell how that dungeon was not built for people in doomflayer while we only had that dok and the main tank in doomflayer it was just too easy to heal. I would say that absolutely if we didn't have Tig melee healing we wouldn't have gotten past boss 5 in my opinion but even when we fucked up trying to bug boss 4 we were still fine the entire time. I got enough currency to buy my LOTD Cape/Ring and I got a glyph drop hahahaha.
I'm thinking we'll be trying to finish the run tonight.
Throughout 3yrs of this game we've seen the balance of power switch from side to side several times, that isn't so shocking or alarming. This time however it was noted by Lyram (a guildie) that it happened far faster then it has in the past. This to me is a cause of moderate concern.
With SWTOR coming in 2 months time many are speculating that WAR will merge the last 2 NA servers into one or even as drastic as taking all of the servers and just making 1. Now, I don't really think that is the solution at all, I think we need 2 servers and I think it's important not to force people with alt toons on the other faction to be forced into 8hr lock outs, nor do I think there should be an abolishion of the lock out. 2 servers I think is the most effective scenario and we all know that WAR isn't trying to get 'new' players if anything they're trying to get old players coming back if anything.
You don't see them updating the website (as noted) and you don't see them really pimping 14 day trials as they once did. Patches are somewhat meaningless attempts at changing something in an RvR system that probably from the start never worked properly.
I understand the excitement about SWTOR and I'm looking forward to playing it (GW2 and D3 also) and since most of the WAR people seem to be fixated on WOH I don't expect any sort of patch coming soon (maybe January) and in said patch I don't expect anything other then return of Keeps (which would be cool).
That being said, I wonder how on earth I'll be able to make rr100 if there is only a few fights, unbalanced SC and flipping empty zones. I suppose my original prediction of never getting to 100 will hold, despite the fact that I'd love to get there... right now RR95 seems like forever away and i'm %20ish through it.
Video Footage
For those who have asked, yes I am currently collecting FRAPS footage for a 3rd video which will feature various aspects of the game from premades to solo to duels to small party combat. Most of the footage if not all is going to be between RR93 and 95 depending on how often I remember to hit the record button. It will be in my typical Sav/Brute build and either in a two armor combinations.
I've also dropped Draining Swipes as of yesterday for full 1800 armor debuff and wounds debuff which seems to be pretty interesting although I need to find a substitution in my rotation that is actually effective other then just hitting flail. I suppose it doesn't really matter since DS was a 20s cooldown and I always forgot to pop it anyway (laugh). That 1800 armor debuff is very nasty I must say.
Zealot
Loving my zealot still and in fact on the weekend took him into ToVL... at lvl 34. Yeah we went through the first 5 bosses before we decided to call it due to our DoK who was melee healing to help me out had to go due to what I can only assume was wife aggro. You can just tell how that dungeon was not built for people in doomflayer while we only had that dok and the main tank in doomflayer it was just too easy to heal. I would say that absolutely if we didn't have Tig melee healing we wouldn't have gotten past boss 5 in my opinion but even when we fucked up trying to bug boss 4 we were still fine the entire time. I got enough currency to buy my LOTD Cape/Ring and I got a glyph drop hahahaha.
I'm thinking we'll be trying to finish the run tonight.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
I wonder if they realize
I wonder if EA/Mythic realizes how completely horrible it looks that their news thread on their main page has not been updated since 1.3.6.
And if they realize that really sort of shows how much they care about attracting new players to this game. While I sure do understand the desire to build more and more hype around SWTOR since they set a release date etc etc... it is kind of disappointing that they have essentially jumped ship and have given up. Patches now are so small and generally useless attempts to freshen an RvR system they should never have brought in in the first place...
The only thing I really want is to put in a scenario list that is voted on by players and not be putting in these absolutely trash scenarios. It's to the point that I just don't want to queue up anymore, stonetroll was my least favorite sc leveling up through the tiers and I would just drop queue whenever it popped. It's still shit in T4 and will always be shit.
I find myself just dying for EC or a 6v6 Gates of Ekrund
And if they realize that really sort of shows how much they care about attracting new players to this game. While I sure do understand the desire to build more and more hype around SWTOR since they set a release date etc etc... it is kind of disappointing that they have essentially jumped ship and have given up. Patches now are so small and generally useless attempts to freshen an RvR system they should never have brought in in the first place...
The only thing I really want is to put in a scenario list that is voted on by players and not be putting in these absolutely trash scenarios. It's to the point that I just don't want to queue up anymore, stonetroll was my least favorite sc leveling up through the tiers and I would just drop queue whenever it popped. It's still shit in T4 and will always be shit.
I find myself just dying for EC or a 6v6 Gates of Ekrund
Sunday, October 2, 2011
An Interesting Session
I had all day to play WAR yesterday in between some working on my own career side projects and what not and for the most part of the day I frigged around on Order side.
My boy hooked me up with a RR82 BW which I respected SDR to see what it was like on the other side of the barrel. As the owner of a RR73 Sorc I already had a feel for what the Rotation was going to be like as well as the need to kite. This BW was pretty decently geared, had some glyphs, had his sovereign etc. First SC was top DMG and tied DBs... I was not so surprised.
Subsequently in other SC you see the difficulties of BW life, that in order to be crazy effective you have to have heals, which I didn't have. But in any instance were I did it was stompy goodness.
I was a noob and didn't write down the account info, must get it back.
That night we rolled an epic 6 man group. The problem is with that you can't face another good group because any SC you join, it's a spawn camp. Even if they try really hard to put up a fight you just kick their ass. Problem with spawn camps... as MDPS you just have to wait for your chance and when someone does get punted, falls or comes off every tank and other MDPS jumps that guy and you feel like you're just zerging instead of trying to play. Lucky for us Cryst was on the 90+ Sorc he is playing and we got plenty of kills. In fact in the only SC that had a fight in it I kicked a lot of ass... why? Bad punting.
Pro tip to tanks out there who like to punt MDPS away from guards or just off their own MDPS... if you punt them to your back line, you need to make sure they are controlled. More then once last night I got punted off the middle temple in MorkT into the back line and proceeded to kill all of the healers in about a minute 3 shotting the AMs and BWs pretty much without any opposition. You cannot let a 90+ Marauder run rampant like that all over your squishies. If you do go for the punt, you need to get back there and challenge, snare get the MDPS back there to finish me off. My Guard has to find me and make a bee line for me and then our backline is vunerable. Don't just punt and forget because I'm going to wipe your entire group, I hit just way to hard and strike way too fast to be ignored. This would not just go for me but any 90+ MDPS like a Choppa or WE and when you have no healers, you're fucked.
Better luck next time.
My boy hooked me up with a RR82 BW which I respected SDR to see what it was like on the other side of the barrel. As the owner of a RR73 Sorc I already had a feel for what the Rotation was going to be like as well as the need to kite. This BW was pretty decently geared, had some glyphs, had his sovereign etc. First SC was top DMG and tied DBs... I was not so surprised.
Subsequently in other SC you see the difficulties of BW life, that in order to be crazy effective you have to have heals, which I didn't have. But in any instance were I did it was stompy goodness.
I was a noob and didn't write down the account info, must get it back.
That night we rolled an epic 6 man group. The problem is with that you can't face another good group because any SC you join, it's a spawn camp. Even if they try really hard to put up a fight you just kick their ass. Problem with spawn camps... as MDPS you just have to wait for your chance and when someone does get punted, falls or comes off every tank and other MDPS jumps that guy and you feel like you're just zerging instead of trying to play. Lucky for us Cryst was on the 90+ Sorc he is playing and we got plenty of kills. In fact in the only SC that had a fight in it I kicked a lot of ass... why? Bad punting.
Pro tip to tanks out there who like to punt MDPS away from guards or just off their own MDPS... if you punt them to your back line, you need to make sure they are controlled. More then once last night I got punted off the middle temple in MorkT into the back line and proceeded to kill all of the healers in about a minute 3 shotting the AMs and BWs pretty much without any opposition. You cannot let a 90+ Marauder run rampant like that all over your squishies. If you do go for the punt, you need to get back there and challenge, snare get the MDPS back there to finish me off. My Guard has to find me and make a bee line for me and then our backline is vunerable. Don't just punt and forget because I'm going to wipe your entire group, I hit just way to hard and strike way too fast to be ignored. This would not just go for me but any 90+ MDPS like a Choppa or WE and when you have no healers, you're fucked.
Better luck next time.
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