The dust settles on 1.3

So with 1.3 out there appears to be few bugs lurking around. It's expected, but still baffles me as to why things that haven't been touched in the patch notes should all of a sudden not work properly (or at all). What Mythic and GOA are at least doing this time though is openly posting bugs they know about and what is fixed, what is due to be fixed and what they're looking into.

THIS. IS. GUD.

This is making the bug fix process much more visible and does give more confidence than before (even though I knew they were fixing bugs, I couldn't see them do it...)

So what else in 1.3 then? They fixed the dismounting in IC (yay!), more talismans (yay!), crafting and currency bags (yay-yay!). So far I like it and have no direct grumps regarding it, they may also be looking into actually fixing WAAAAGH! for Black Orcs.

The live event is a bit... meh... Not really getting into it and don't feel any sense of personal achievement in it, they should have stuck to the influence system for it.

Overall though, it's a major step up and with the number of bugs that slipped into the patch I'm glad the combat and career changes didn't take place as well. Now we just have to sit back and see what happens...

Feedback I gave...

Figured I'd just pop some of the feedback I gave GOA over the official European forums. Don't read if you don't want basic spoilers (I didn't go far as I didn't want to spoil it for myself)

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Due to wanting to have some surprises and not wanting to discover everything I've focussed on the opening area at this time. I also have no idea how GOA want's the feedback done, I submitted a load of ingame feedback and bug reports but also noticed they mentioned putting the feedback here.. So they have it twice I guess :)

There were large numbers of people at each area, so the PQ's were easier than intended, I have taken this into account.

PQ's
Sedjhet Temple

Nice little introduction PQ. Runs fairly quickly and appears to be easily takable with even a small group (laying down the AoE just obliterates the sand worms). It's designed for a group so I would have increased the numbers and spawn rate of the worms to make it a challenge away from AoE massacre. Collecting the urns appears to be a bit of a bore and spread out so I can't see the temple being a quick farmable PQ especially with the forced defence on a 3m timer. The boss looked a basic tank and spank. (2 out of 3)

Aerie of Death

A unique console style PQ. A lot of jumping about on ridges (which confused me to start with as I ran around looking for the eggs). The jumping stage favours the quick reaction players who can play Tomb Raider in there sleep, but it's no competition, just a bit annoying to have to wait out a few minutes. I can see this becoming a relatively unpopular as well due to the scattered nature of the stages.(2 out of 3)

Obelisk of Judgement

My favourite so far. It's contained PQ in a small area, nice constant spawn of mobs which aren't a challenge until you add in the "pewpew lasers of death (tm)". This aspect makes the PQ infinetly much more enjoyable and is a unique touch. The stages are easily grindable and I got a nice 8 hour epic talisman of one of the trash mobs which was unexpected. The boss appears straight forward however it is a little buggy. Your abilities on the action bar remain red to indicate you cannot use them on the boss however if you click/press the key they fire off as normal.(3 out of 3)

Assault on Nekh Ahket

I was unable to find/start this PQ at the time, the area shows up but I guess it must be on a timer? Regardless I explored the area but never came across the PQ update on screen.

Bugs
(Artwork)
Zandri Lion: The debilitating wound debuff does not have an icon, simply a "No Icon/Art" image instead.
Carrion in the Tome of Knowledge: The entry shows a walking, humanoid skeleton. I guess it should be carrion bird instead.
Great Hammers on Black Orcs: Our right hand goes straight through the head of the hammers, poking through the other side. There appears to be missing animations as well (t'ree hit combo for example has some rough shoulder swinging animations but the weapon remains firmly in hand)

(Other)
Obelisk of Judgement: Some of the mobs upon dying in stage 2 came up on the screen as "You have slain a Invis Placeholder"
PQ contribution lists are broken: It doesn't tell you what your contribution score is nor where you placed on the text box

General Feedback
Map Sound: Please allow us to turn off the new sound that occurs when opening a map. It was never missed when it wasn't there and adds nothing to the feel of the game other than a minor distraction if you open it a few times in a row if you've misclicked or needing to recheck the map. Allow us to turn this off.
Epic Soul Talisman thingies: After getting one on a trash mob in a PQ I got a couple more drops off level 37 mobs in the area. Not sure if I as just lucky at getting them or whether they do drop frequently. If they do drop that frequently then I would maybe lower the duration on the drops as no-one will pay the price for them from the talisman vendors

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Feedback on the NEW Tyrant Black Orc set
Naturally I can only see two pieces so have no idea what the other parts are like but lets have a look at the two pieces you can see. Gloves and Belt.

Gloves:
33 toughness
13 wounds
19 weapon skill
3% reduction in being critted
(talisman slot)

Nice upgrade over invader since it's a tanking piece. Wouldn't bother with it however if building a DPS/RvR set.

Belt:
28 Strength
21 Toughness
21 Weapon Skill
59 Spirit resist
167 Elemental resist
47 Corp resist

Great belt and a massive upgrade from the rubbish we've had the last few sets (+willpower? urgh...). No complaints over this and it makes a part of a nice RvR set as well if you can slot it in.

Set bonuses:
2) +76 wounds
3) +76 toughness
4) +5% parry
5) Reactionary: On being hit, 25% chance of increasing evade, parry and disrupt by 10% for 10 seconds
6) +76 hit points every 4 seconds

The first two set bonuses you certainly cannot complain about, + wounds and + toughness are always good, especially with the inevitable combat changes coming along, however this is where it ends and the head scratching starts...

+5% parry?

This is where I now believe we have a copy of the swordmaster gear (which it is..) all other tanks get +block for the 4 piece set. Swordmasters and Borcs get +parry. The problem is... Black Orcs can't parry, we have no natural parry abilities to make use of them (SW's get "wall of darting steel" which grants them +50 parry with great weapons, we get "cant hit me", which we have to spec high for, gives us block and only works with shields). We also have no +parry weapons. An over sight possibly in having mirror careers but Black Orcs in the current format cannot parry very well and we certainly wouldn't tank end game bosses with a great weapon. I'd like to try a parry build for sure and hope this is a sign of black orcs getting parry buffs but as it stands it's pretty much pointless.

Reactionary is nice, gives a solid little boost but I wonder how truly effective it will be as when tanking, the whole point is not to actually get hit... So this makes you want to get hit to increase your chance of not being hit? I'd rather just not be hit in the first place....

+76 health per 4 seconds: Nice little extra but again it's very little and when tanking you tend to be taking large amounts of damage so having a small health tick is meaningless as it will not save you.

Overall it seems a solid 3 piece set, but dissapointing afterwards. This may change if black orcs are being adjusted in 1.3x when the combat changes come out, but as it stands stick with the belt and two other pieces of your choice for a tanking set. No initiative on the two pieces I've seen nor in the set will not stop you being critted by mobs.

Sneaky testing...

Well I decided to pop onto the PTS tonight to do a bit of testing (and c'mon, there's a chance to get the shroud thingy and a manticore mount) and I have to admit it's looking not too shabby. I forced myself to do nothing more than the opening area and the PQ's and they are quite fun. Yes there's bugs (reported) and some feedback needing done (written and submitted) but I think LotD will be a lot of fun and a good way to pass the time over the summer months while the game settles itself back down and the classes become balanced.

My only real concern is that I fear it will drive a lot out of the regular tier four zones and into one dustbowl making the whole area fairly laggy, but we'll see.

Overall though, it's looking good from my little excursion.

So out goes combat and career changes. In goes focus testing on Land of the Dead.

Gud job ladz!

As time wore on and we realised that there was a lot of testing still to be done and with the deadline fast approaching it was only right to pull the C&C changes out and focus on LotD. This was the best choice and a much welcomed one by the community. You're starting to earn our trust again Mythic, keep it up and ensure you keep those channels of communication open with us general rabble.

So what's next for WAR? Well we have LotD coming in a couple of weeks and I'm guessing the release will be the 24th/25th June. It's looking good I have to admit. I spent maybe 30 minutes looking around on the test server but purposely didn't test much due to the fact I'm an explorer (and really I am in games). This of course puts me in a nasty position where I'd love to give feedback and test it out to try and scrape a Manticore mount but I want to get the "Ooooh" feeling when I explore LotD with my guildies. Still, maybe there's another chance to get one later down the line.

Well with the recent neglect of the site I owe it to everyone to at least try and get some updates going again. I hate this once a week post rate I have just now, so I'm going to try and drop a few lines of text when I can rather than feeling that I have to write a novel each time I post. A lot of WAR blogs have gone quiet recently, some have just disappeared and so long as I'm playing the game I'll try to post. I'm more than willing to have people contribute articles as well if they want, just drop me a mail (address is over there on the right.. no right.. up a bit.. top bit. No, not that top. Down... Up.. there we go). Also in my personal challenge is to respond to comments more as I tend to leave them a bit :(

So here we go folks, over the next couple of weeks we're going to welcome in a new era of WAR. One that features the cast of The Mummy crossed with Indiana Jones..

Can't wait!

'aving a look at 1.3 (aka - All tanks secretly get nerfed)

So 1.3 is incoming for the middle to the end of June and with it comes changes.. Oh yes, more changes to our little game. So, let's take an Orcy look at all these wordy notes.

Land of the Dead
Can't wait, though I only have reservations regarding the 30 minute timer, it doesn't leave a lot of time to get into the dungeon before the inevitable zerg hits and rolls through the place, and by that time, the other zerg will have formed and be ready to hit back. Repeat the cycle and I wonder how many will actually get far to start with. No big deal though, I'm sure it wont be a death every 30 minutes as it will take time and the content should last us. So far, it's looking good.

Sigils replacing wards
Oh thank Gork... The ward system was silly broken forcing you to use certain gear, at least now we have a choice and can work around our set bonuses rather than being pigeonholed. I'm not sure how this will work with getting new wards though I've never had too much of an issue in having to run an instance to basically attune yourself for it. I wonder what sort of wards.. err Sigils we'll be needing in LoD and where they'll start to cross over from tiers... Again, this is a good change though.

PQ Opt outs
Pretty decent again though I'm not sure if I will be passing to be perfectly honest. If we take a keep and I would have won a bag but elect to opt out the roll, do I still get my token since I would have received it in the bag? With the new LoD PQ's though, there will be more getting done. I do love the Bastion Stair system of two or three PQ's to complete before the boss and would have loved to have seen this extended into Lost Vale (to the extent of changing some of the minor bosses to PQ bosses instead). I cant see anyway to cheat the system nor anyway this is bad, so here's hoping it doesn't cause problems for invader PQ's or fort captures...

Enhanced Siege Weapons and 'deadbolts'
Making sieges more like a.. well.. siege rather than a zerg on a door is a good step up from what we currently have. I'm always in favour of making WAR more about battles on keeps and forts than mindless. Though I have to admit, I'd rather have seen deadbolts be a tank RvR ability to replace the now worthless Bulwark, make posterns immune to being bypassed for 15 minutes or some such and simply remove the ability to bypass the posterns on the inner doors.

Instance Lockout changes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. About time they changed it to make it more like other games. This will allow so much more flexibility with guilds who may have members that are a bit more casual or have people who need something from one boss. Glad they finally implemented this to work as other games do.

Action Bar changes
Well I have an addon that does this, so I guess it's one less thing to worry about if it will come as standard.

Inventory slots for crafting
Good yeah I like it... Shame they didn't use the chance to dump a gold sink into the game with it though.

Combat & Careers
Ok, the AoE changes (damage drop and size reduction is good) but why on earth then buff the single target dps up? We're more than capable of taking targets down with the existing STDPS that we have. This starts to come back to the arms race I'm worried about from a previous article. Is it a case that Mythic doesn't want to see cries of NERF so they have to add in a boost? It's all fine and well adding in more damage but when will tanks see the reactive update? By this I mean if we see more and more updates buffing damage output then where is our ability to soak up the damage, not only for ourselves but for our groups?

It's fine saying

"Moving forward, offensive stats will increase all damage by a flat percentage. This will result in high base value damage abilities gaining more benefit from offensive stats. Players should expect to see the damage on single target and positional abilities increase, while multi-target abilities will be reduced in effectiveness."

But what about our shitty little 450 damage absorb shields we have? Do we get a reactive buff to make sure the absorb and mitigation affects are not subsequently weakened? Do we hell.

This in fact turns into a global nerf for tanks, no matter what one you are. Sure you can do a bit more damage now but I don't exactly think too many folks rolled tank careers to do DPS.. But to protect and guard our fellows, to control the flow of battle and to be able to take a beating in order to distract our enemy. Simply by buffing single target DPS now, we lose more of our mitigation and absorb abilities. Our guards will cause us to take more damage and thus be harder to maintain as we'll require more healing. We still (and rightly so) lack the burst and damage output of any DPS classes, but since our survivability has not been increased to match increase in damage our role on the field of battle diminishes a bit more.

We're basically, just weak melee DPS right now. I could rant a lot about tanks and the role in WAR but it's for another day.

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So that's a basic run down, despite my hesitation towards the combat changes and the subsequent affect it will have on Tanks, it needs to be done, well at least the AoE part of it does. Overall this is a very promising patch, the combat changes will need to be tested a lot though and I hope they are open to pushing back the patch if it looks like there's an imbalance. Somehow though, with the fact they've said that LoD is out in June means that regardless of what feedback we give on the PTS, very little will be done, most of it will already have been done by the core testers (and we know how 1.2 turned out...). So lets hope they will listen to feedback on the open PTS more.