Warhammer Online

[Robert Treder]

Yeah, I guess PQs aren't working like they wanted, because pretty much most people just go around solo and grind out the first stage of a PQ and then leave when the champions come. A few PQs get run regularly by pugs, but only a very few. I think they should increase the quality of the PQ loot; most of the time if I get to loot the chest I take the cash consolation prize, but since gold is pretty much valueless in this game, it's almost like not looting at all. If PQ loot were better than influence/renown gear, maybe more people would do the PQs.

And yeah, they need to do something about having only one bg per tier being played. You're not missing out on much though, since Nordenwatch is the best in tier 1. Gates of Ekrund is cool though.

Order PUGs seem to suck utterly in that sense.

Make that pugs in general. Don't worry, Destruction players are just as hopeless by their lonesome. When you get rolled you're probably up against a premade.

[Stormin]

1: What is it with scenarios? I only got Nordenwatch to pop.... That's IT.

It finishes fast. That means everyone gets their xp and realm points quickly. If you are on a high pop server, just stand in your order vs chaos warcamp and grab the quest to run nordenwatch and do the 20 kills in norden. Fastest xp you can get most of the time even if you are not capping 500 every run.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Folks,

Okay, I started a new RP and played him from level 3 up to level 6 in scenarios only. I only healed, didn't use damage spells at all. I played in different PUGs and never left my group. I healed everyone I could. Here's what I've seen:

1) My renown and experience were leveling up fairly concurrently

2) I was always one of the top healers

3) By the time I reached level 5, I was usually #2 or #1 in healing

4) I was never higher than 5 from bottom in exp

5) I spent 90% of time running around and healing. No downtime.

Here's what I think:

1) Pure healers may be getting less exp, than their efforts are worth

2) Renown gain may need a boost but not much at this level

3) I think being a #1 or #2 healer should not leave you at bottom of exp pile unless you really suck at healing and you were only healer

4) There seems to be something different in terms of rewards for playing a hybrid healer versus a pure healer. My WP was much more effective exp/renown wise when I played hybrid and even it seems, when I played healbot. I'm not 100% sure of this and I'll know more once my RP gets another couple of levels.

I'll take my observations to the team tomorrow to discuss.

Mark

See here folks, this is what Mythic is doing so, so very right.

[White Haven]

As far as scenarios, I've found that it really branches outwards in Tier 3, in terms of getting into other scenarios. If you just sit there all day spamming Join All like a goon, sure, you'll just get into Tor Anroc most of the time, but Doomfist Crater pops relatively frequently, and I tend to get into at least one or two Highpass Cemetary and Talabec Dam scenarios in a given day, and I don't generally play for that long. Lost Temple of Isha and Black Fire Pass are rarities, but honestly, that's because they're not very fun maps, sadly.

It's a shame about Nordenwatch being the omniscenario in T1, though, I adore Khaine's Embrace.

[PainRack]

Since we have to wait until December for Knights to be released, are WPs capable of taking on tankers like the Chosen or Da Black Orc? My attempt to test this by going on 1 v 1 against a Chosen, using judgement and etc repeatedly before closing into meelee after 1/3 of his life was gone was cut short when a fellow WP joined in.

I noticed WPs that are dealing out a fair share of damage in scenarios, and in battlefields, they're charging right into battle and acting as "tankers".....

And are Archmages really fragile?

[White Haven]

It somewhat depends on what we're up against, as archmages. Sorcs don't really worry me unless they're either en masse or acting in support of other DPS. I've got something like 35-40% resists to most of their damage, and I can heal like a bastard, plus Willpower also increases Disrupt (full resist) chance. Melee DPS can be a real bastard, but I DO have knockbacks now, which help get me breathing room against them. Witch Elves and Disciples of Khaine are the two classes that can almost garauntee a kill against me. Marauders can be dicey, and I usually stalemate tanks and other healers who AREN'T DoKs. Squig Herders are too rare for me to judge, at this point.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Since we have to wait until December for Knights to be released, are WPs capable of taking on tankers like the Chosen or Da Black Orc? My attempt to test this by going on 1 v 1 against a Chosen, using judgement and etc repeatedly before closing into meelee after 1/3 of his life was gone was cut short when a fellow WP joined in.

I noticed WPs that are dealing out a fair share of damage in scenarios, and in battlefields, they're charging right into battle and acting as "tankers".....

WP is very solid 1v1. Not quite to the degree of a DoK (although you'll stalemate against an equal-level one most of the time), but decent DPS, armor, and lots of self-healing lets you take down most melee classes. Their snare sucks though, so trying to chase down ranged classes is difficult.

I am firm believer that you really have to be hardcore to play a WP properly. Not only does it take more skill than other healers (as you have to manage your defensive target, your AP, your RF, and your duration-based abilities such as Castigation and your HoT, in addition to trying to keep yourself alive in melee while still healing your group with both casted heals and your melee heals, all while finding a good offensive target to beat on), but you really need to get into the maelstrom of battle. There's nothing I hate more than a sissy WP who's afraid of getting into a fight. WP is one of the most survivable classes in the game, so there's really no excuse.

There's nothing wrong with standing back to cast-heal if the situation calls for it, mind. But WPs who run from a fight, especially one where the ten - fifteen seconds it takes to kill a WP could delay the enemy enough to accomplish a strategic objective, should really just reroll another class. Like White Lion.

Anyways, you shouldn't really think of WP as a tank per se. That's not their role. Even with their armor prayer, they don't have the armor to take really nasty hits, nor do they have a shield (which is half of tanking - shields are VERY good in War). Their role is to be the crazy sonuvabitch who charges headlong into an entire enemy group all on his own (hopefully dragging more reluctant teammates along with!) and the backup healer for the AMs and RPs.

[Jaevric]

Since we have to wait until December for Knights to be released, are WPs capable of taking on tankers like the Chosen or Da Black Orc? My attempt to test this by going on 1 v 1 against a Chosen, using judgement and etc repeatedly before closing into meelee after 1/3 of his life was gone was cut short when a fellow WP joined in.

I noticed WPs that are dealing out a fair share of damage in scenarios, and in battlefields, they're charging right into battle and acting as "tankers".....

On my WP I feel nothing but glee when I get attacked by a Chosen. Black Orcs are in my experience a bit tougher, but as long as I do the smart thing and HoT up as soon as the fight starts I don't have a terrible amount of trouble with any tank, one or two-handed. Fights against a sword & board tank take FOREVER, though.

I am not, however, a tank by any stretch of the imagination. If I get focus-fired I'm going down no matter what unless a tank has Guard on me and is making an effort to get the people off of me.

[PainRack]

I am firm believer that you really have to be hardcore to play a WP properly. Not only does it take more skill than other healers (as you have to manage your defensive target, your AP, your RF, and your duration-based abilities such as Castigation and your HoT, in addition to trying to keep yourself alive in melee while still healing your group with both casted heals and your melee heals, all while finding a good offensive target to beat on), but you really need to get into the maelstrom of battle. There's nothing I hate more than a sissy WP who's afraid of getting into a fight. WP is one of the most survivable classes in the game, so there's really no excuse.

I'm not so comfortable with the idea that a WP is a survivable class though. Self heal doesn't seem to compensate for the lack of shields and damage mitigation.

There's nothing wrong with standing back to cast-heal if the situation calls for it, mind. But WPs who run from a fight, especially one where the ten - fifteen seconds it takes to kill a WP could delay the enemy enough to accomplish a strategic objective, should really just reroll another class. Like White Lion.

Well..... running after that WP may open you up to attacks by other tanks and DPS???
So far, I been orientating my WP along the lines that I'm there to support the melee line. My job is to heal others, and that means getting in up close and personal. But in order for me to do that, that means I can't be the focused target of the enemy, if that happens, well, a tactical withdrawal to the rear while someone sort out the lines.

It somewhat depends on what we're up against, as archmages. Sorcs don't really worry me unless they're either en masse or acting in support of other DPS. I've got something like 35-40% resists to most of their damage, and I can heal like a bastard, plus Willpower also increases Disrupt (full resist) chance. Melee DPS can be a real bastard, but I DO have knockbacks now, which help get me breathing room against them. Witch Elves and Disciples of Khaine are the two classes that can almost garauntee a kill against me. Marauders can be dicey, and I usually stalemate tanks and other healers who AREN'T DoKs. Squig Herders are too rare for me to judge, at this point.

So, the tanks burst damage is tolerable then?

[White Haven]

Melee DPS are a 'brown pants' situation. Tanks are...an irritant in most situations, they like to harrass healers and can be somewhat threatening, but usually only if I'm not paying any attention to them. Or, you know, of it's Chosen, not because they're more dangerous, but because EVERYONE AND THEIR FUCKING CAT plays a Chosen, and they travel in packs. I wish I were joking.

[Garlak]

I've started playing Warhammer online and rolled an Archmage. Considering playing a Warrior-Priest too..

Personally, although I'm only level 9 so far... I really, really hate Witch Elves. If they close to melee with me, it's game over.

Also, I have a question: the dwarves have only 3 classes for now, but they'll get their fourth eventually. Why did the creators choose the fourth class, melee DPS, to be Hammerer instead of Trollslayer? I'm curious about this; I'd thought dwarven slayers were very iconic units to dwarves in Warhammer so I was surprised to learn they couldn't be played. Anybody know anything about this?

[Stormin]

I've started playing Warhammer online and rolled an Archmage. Considering playing a Warrior-Priest too..

Personally, although I'm only level 9 so far... I really, really hate Witch Elves. If they close to melee with me, it's game over.

Also, I have a question: the dwarves have only 3 classes for now, but they'll get their fourth eventually. Why did the creators choose the fourth class, melee DPS, to be Hammerer instead of Trollslayer? I'm curious about this; I'd thought dwarven slayers were very iconic units to dwarves in Warhammer so I was surprised to learn they couldn't be played. Anybody know anything about this?

Actually it's looking like the Hammerer is getting axed and the Slayer might be put in as a nearly carbon copy of the Choppa. There's lot of complaining about Order not having a proper dual wielder class.

As for Witch Elves, just stay close to your Bright Wizard zerg Since all these FOTM BW's can't do anything more complex than nearest target insta-dot you can't expect them to cover you otherwise.

[White Haven]

You say 'Bright Wizard zerg' as if the roving death-packs of Marauders were anything different.

[Robert Treder]

You say 'Bright Wizard zerg' as if the roving death-packs of Marauders were anything different.

It seems to me from reading this thread that WAR hasn't yet reached the point where strategy and tactics are uniform across all servers (not that that's a bad thing). For example, on my server (Wolfenburg) we have 0-1 marauder per bg.

[Lord Pounder]

When I started I rolled a Marauder and while I enjoy playing him I decided to roll an Order char on a different server. Generally I prefer my Witch Hunter to my Marauder. They generally do the same thing, the WH actually feels more fragile but it has that added satisfaction of shooting people in the face. Despite being grossly out numbered I prefer my Order char.

[Robert Treder]

While I'm still generally enjoying the game, here are some gripes off the top of my head:

World pvp sucks. If you go to the rvr areas, you can sometimes find some opponents, but the objectives are very boring and the keep lord encounters are slightly less boring. When there are a lot of guys there it's a little better, but that doesn't happen that often. Maybe I have to log on earlier, but fuck that. I need to find a server that's cracking at 11pm-2am.
Going around trying to gank is even worse. Everybody just stays in town and queues for bgs, it's almost impossible to find people, and when you do and you gank them, you can't corpse camp because they spawn back in town.

The scenario system is cool, but it gets boring just doing those all day.

PQs are deserted, I only see people grinding the first stage. Maybe they could increase the reward qualities or something, maybe make it so that you only get influence from stage II and beyond once you're past the first bar of influence, I don't know, but they're a good idea, but the majority of them go undone.

The dungeons or whatever you call them are kind of lame. We did Gunbad (what a dumb name) a few times, and it's just a bunch of PQs. And it's only instanced to your side, so you can still get people coming in and kill stealing or fucking with you. Although this one time was funny, we were competing with this group in this PQ in Gunbad, and they didn't have a healer, so it was more like they were leeching off of us. So the boss dies, and one of the competitor group is dead too. The PQ rolls, and the dead player earns an epic bag. We bounced without rezzing him, so he didn't get to loot his epic. Lol, he was pissed, but that's what he gets.
Maybe I'm just crazy, but I liked the 5-man instance format in WoW. Why can't we have that here?

They should let you duel. I know your side doesn't have any classes that you can face in real pvp, so it's not like great practice, but on the other hand, that sort of makes it all the more interesting. It would be so easy for them to add it in, too, and wouldn't change the game except for adding one more thing for you to do to keep you from getting bored and logging out, so seems like it's in Mythic's best interest, too.

That's all I can think of right now.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Though I'm playing much more casually now on account of school, honestly I'd say ditch the Open RvR stuff. The game is meant to be played with the Core ruleset; the Open RvR is just there to appease diehard PvPers and (thankfully) keep them off the regular servers. The game is already built from the ground-up for PvP and RvR, so unlike WoW which needs dedicated PvP servers to suck less, WAR plays ideally on its normal ruleset.

Since normally you're only flagged in the RvR lakes, that's where everyone congregates to fight, so on a decently-populated server (and that's another issue entirely, oi) there's tons of action. Back when Skavenblight still had people on it, I regularly got in these awesome T2 warband vs. warband keep sieges. Cannon to the left of them, cannon to the right. Shit was fucking intense.

[Stormin]

6v6 is starting up on a few servers so I guess I have a reason to stick around and try it out. Here's a vid from a few weeks ago. I think it's a set of arranged fights because its between the same 6man groups.
http://files.filefront.com/AE+CP+Warwmv ... einfo.html

[Jaevric]

Yeah, my pocket priest insisted we roll Open RvR even though I told him you're more likely to find world PvP in a regular rules map since people will know where to go for world PvP. He has subsequently quit the game ("The game sucks, there's no world PvP and the game's boring" says the guy who levelled from 1-27 as a BW and an IB without doing a single quest or PQ) and I'm looking for a new server or...something. Bah.

I usually try to get PQ groups together but it never works out, either nobody's interested or we can't finish the last fight because there are no tanks doing PQs. I can't wait for the damn KotBS to come out so I can reroll into one, since finding a healer doesn't seem to be a problem. In the interim I end up grinding out the first stage of a PQ, going to the next PQ, rinsing and repeating until I get into a scenario or get the influence reward I want.

The other thing that gets me is the utterly garbage craftskills. I just can't generate any interest in them. I realize WAR is supposed to be about, well, war, but potions and talisman making only go so far -- and people need stuff to do in an MMORPG other than grind scenarios all day, which seems to be the 'best' way to play WAR.

If I still had my WoW characters I'd be tempted to reactivate for the expansion.

[Robert Treder]

I guess that's true re: open rvr and normal servers, but that doesn't really solve the problem of not having any real world pvp. The problem with the lakes is that there are uninteresting objectives (spend hella days clicking on a ram until the door breaks, omg how fun) and a bunch of stupid npcs running around.

I want to always have to be looking over my shoulder while I'm questing, to not be comfortable letting a mob get me too low for fear of someone coming along and taking advantage of me. I want to be able to go around and interrupt people's questing for a little impromptu pvp. I want them to call their friends and have us all duke it out.
Basically, if the game could be like STV all the way 1-40 that would be nice.

And re: 6v6 in WAR, lol I thought everyone left WoW because they hated arenas (I, for one, liked arenas, but there's no accounting for taste, I guess).

[Oskuro]

Basically, if the game could be like STV all the way 1-40 that would be nice.

That's fun and all, until the griefers show up and start corpse-camping, or ganking people (not sure what griefing methods are available in WAR). The hardest thing for developers to balance is the player's ability to be assholes

[White Haven]

See, the problem with wanting it to be Stranglethorn is that people are dicks. Did you ever DO STV? 'Oh, look, here comes ANOTHER group of bored seventies with murder in their eyes, good thing I learned to bring my own lube now.' As for the RVR lakes being 'boring,' well yes, if you go into a PVP AREA and DO NOT PVP because the other side IS NOT THERE, then it's going to be boring. Gosh. PvP without opponents is dull. Alert the fucking media.

[Stormin]

About the only action I have found pre tier-4 in open rvr has been when (by chance) the two zergs taking keeps meet up and that involves the less prepared side just running away to a keep or guards :/
I do find the occasional solo fight around the battlefield objectives killing the people who are there to gank enemies doing the scout quests but usually those people will run away to guards before I can kill them.

It's sad and maybe a case of rose tinted glasses but the RvR is seeming a hell of a lot more fun back in DAoC* despite the game having a population totaling a fifth of the goldfarmers banned from WAR in the past month.


*Yeah, I'm plugging a video I made a while back.

[Oskuro]

Playing WoW I'm having issues with the overwhelming Alliance majority on my realm, and from what I've read here, faction imbalances are not alien to WAR. I just wonder why don't they implement some faction-balancing mechanism?

[Robert Treder]

See, the problem with wanting it to be Stranglethorn is that people are dicks. Did you ever DO STV? 'Oh, look, here comes ANOTHER group of bored seventies with murder in their eyes, good thing I learned to bring my own lube now.'

That was part of the beauty of STV (and pvp servers in general in WoW). Somebody could come around and fuck with you, and you could call your friends over or log on a main, or you could change the quest you were on or the zone you were in if you wanted to be emo about it. And aside from 60s or 70s coming to have fun, just being at level, since you were questing in the same areas as the other side, you could compete for your questing territory with the enemy. That in particular is sorely missing in WAR, they can keep the chicken thing, but making you avoid the enemy altogether? Stupid.

As for the RVR lakes being 'boring,' well yes, if you go into a PVP AREA and DO NOT PVP because the other side IS NOT THERE, then it's going to be boring. Gosh. PvP without opponents is dull. Alert the fucking media.

I'm not surprised they're boring, since as you say, there's nobody there. I was just pointing out, they're boring. I don't know how they want to fix it (get rid of the lakes altogether, increase the rewards, increase the max server population and decrease number of servers, whatever), but as it stands, the lakes are boring.