Taugrim's MMO Blog

This is my second PVP video for Allods Online (AO). This video includes the following fights:

• 26 Melee Healer vs 26 Warrior + 25 Healer
• 26 Melee Healer vs 26 Caster Healer
• 26 Melee Healer vs 26 Paladin
• 27 Melee Healer vs 27 Warrior
• 27 Melee Healer vs 27 Summoner

I’ve heard a lot of concern from players about fighting Paladins and Warriors, so I included several clips and talked about the matchup mechanics.

Level 26 Spec and Stats

http://allodsbase.com/en/talents#_2oxv3mc1xyc718a20nvy

My stats with green Asee-Teph rep gear

• 8691 HP
• Luck 89: 13.9% glancing
• Intelligence 94: 15%
• Perception 125: 16.5%
• Faith 114: 22.9%
• Wisdom 97

Level 27 Spec and Stats

http://allodsbase.com/en/talents#_2pxv3nc1xyc718a28nvy

My stats with blue Asee-Teph rep gear

• 10380 HP
• Luck 85: 17.8% glancing
• Intelligence 101: 16.2%
• Perception 153: 8.65%
• Faith 136: 15.4%
• Wisdom 122

Here are tips not mentioned in the video:

• When fighting ranged DPS classes, you don’t have to conserve mana as there will be times when you are out of melee range and therefore regenerating mana

Based on my experience so far in Holy Land PVP, I am going to continue filling out the Verdict ruby tree. Getting  3/3 Holy Avenger should provide an excellent boost to survivability – not only will I get crit less, but when I do get crit, I’ll get 3 Fanaticism stacks which equals burst healing to offset the damage taken.

Life in Asee-Teph has gotten much better since I hit level 26. I still get run over by ?? (high-level) players, but overall my survivability has gone up a lot compared to 25.

If you have any comments / feedback / questions please post ‘em.

This is my first PVP video for Allods Online (AO). I dinged level 25 today and captured footage of League players attempting to gank me 1v1 and a dynamic 1v4.

This video includes the following fights:

• 26 Melee Healer vs 26 Mage
• 26 Melee Healer vs 27 Summoner
• 26 Melee Healer vs 4 opponents

Here is my current spec:

http://allodsbase.com/en/talents#_2oxv3mc1xyc718820nvy

• I’ve earned 2 World Quest rubies in addition to the rubies available when leveling, so ignore the calculator saying this is a level 27 build
• I picked up Divine Prayer 1 (DP) instead of Holy Rage. DP is an excellent instant-cast burst heal
• I have 2/3 Condemnation, and this reduces the cooldowns for Blind Faith (disorient/snare) and Banished Words (ruby silence ability) to 24 seconds. Both are superb abilities in PVP, and BF is highly valuable in PVE. At level 26 I will take the 3rd Condemnation ruby to reduce their cooldowns to 21 seconds

Overall, I’m really enjoying the playability of the Melee Healer spec. The PVP mechanics in practice have matched or exceeded what I was hoping for when I wrote the Melee Healer Guide.

Here are some comments not mentioned in the video:

• Always make sure to pre-cast Heavenly Smite. Having an instant-cast AOE knockdown rocks in PVP (and PVE)
• I didn’t call out when I used DP, but I used it in each of the fights, and you can hear and see the spell animation (it looks like the green shimmer like Devoted Plea)
• Don’t underestimate the power of the self-healing from 3/3 Brilliant Faith. I talked a lot about PH in the video but when you watch the footage you can see the Brilliant Faith heal procs as well
• If you use the Kanian racial bubble and Holy Shield, after Holy Shield wears off you’ll still have the racial bubble up – so you have unbroken damage absorption. You can see that in the fight against the Summoner
• My gear in the 1st fight was from Darkwater, which is two zones before Holy Lands (HL). Yes I know that’s pathetic. I skipped the Elf rep gear because I didn’t want to do the repeatable quest 18 times. That’s simply not my idea of fun. My gear sucked until I was able to acquire the green HL rep gear. In the last two fights I had the green HL rep gear. I haven’t been able to run the repeatable rep quest in HL due to the lack of level capping/balancing mechanics

The PVP action in Holy Lands has been fun at times. However, there is no mechanic to prevent or discourage higher level players from ganking lowbies. I have watched a single level high-level player wipe multiple groups of under-30 players with ease. A lot of players I’ve chatted with are very frustrated with getting 1 or 2-shotted and not having a fighting chance. AO will lose players if the game mechanics are not changed, because life in the Holy Lands in the mid 20s can be pretty rough. A simple level cap would suffice, e.g. Asee-Teph PVP is only for players level 30 and under. This design flaw exists in both Aion and Allods Online and I am surprised that game developers haven’t figured out that level capping/balancing mechanics make for a much more enjoyable and competitive PVP experience that will result in higher player retention.

I’m still playing AO because gPotato adjusted the Item Shop prices to reasonable levels and I wanted to experience the PVP system firsthand. I’m still waiting to see what gPotato does about the 1.0.07 patch, which contains a lot of negative changes and is rumored to have caused many Russian players to quit playing Russian AO. Hopefully gPotato can work with the game developer to not implement those changes in gPotato’s AO.

If you have any comments / feedback / questions please post ‘em.

I finally got back from a 3-week business trip overseas. I played Aion very sparsely in January, and the sad thing is I didn’t really miss it.

So after only 4.5 months of playing Aion, I’ve de-subbed.

The reasons are pretty simple:

1. the leveling was boring and very time-consuming. Fundamentally Aion felt like work to play based on its design
2. the main PVP zone, the Abyss, was largely empty. This was nothing like WAR, WoW, or LOTRO, where it was easy to find opponents to fight

The funny thing is my Chanter is only just over a level away from 42, which was my original target level for making PVP videos – Chanters get a ranged stun at 42. But the main thing is I simply don’t believe in Aion. I would not recommend Aion to a new player who is used to “Western” MMOs (e.g. WoW/LOTRO/WAR). So I figured it didn’t make sense for me to invest the time to level up and make videos.

I think some of the good qualities of WAR really set me up for disappointment with Aion. WAR was fun from level 1 all the way to 40, aside from the game instability issues. Aion was incredibly stable but consistently boring.

A YouTube subscriber sent me a PM back in September 2009 about Aion, and he was right about the game:

Not a big fan of aion, knowing the principle is Korean mentality based, it’s going to get old fast.

I myself been hooked in so many same type mentality game design and they all ending up a disappointment.

I work in the gaming industry, and I know how Aion is build as. [Aion] makes it more efficient for people who has time to waste, then instead of people who actually has the skills to show off. Quite imbalance approach, but then again, that’s their mentality of designing video games. (The american version is based off the asian version, same set of rules will apply.)

Hope you won’t spend too much time on Aion, you might setup yourself for a disappointment in the long run.

I’ve been following Keen’s posts about Allod’s Online so I might check that out.

The majority of the subscribers I have on my YouTube channel subscribed because of my Warhammer Online (WAR) videos. People frequently ask if / when I will come back to WAR. The answer is never, because of reasons beyond WAR itself.

EA is shifting its focus in online gaming to the social gaming sector with its acquisition of Playfish in late 2009. Around the time of the acquisition, EA laid off 40% of the staff at Mythic Entertainment, the studio that created WAR. Those layoffs have obvious implications in terms of what Mythic can do with WAR moving forward. Fewer resources = less new game content and game improvements.

It’s a shame, because WAR has gradually improved as a game, and some players think that if it had launched in its current state, WAR would have been a success instead of a colossal failure. I shared that viewpoint when I played WAR’s excellent Patch 1.3b over the summer.

That being said, I don’t think that the EA/Mythic/Playfish case is an isolated incident that had its roots strictly in the failure of WAR as a game. Rather, it’s an indicator of the shift in the online gaming industry towards social gaming. Social gaming has been experiencing wildfire growth because of potent, synergistic drivers:

• the cost to launch, maintain, and evolve social games is (relatively) low
• social game developers leverage analytics to customize games very quickly based on what users are actually doing. It’s a very “Agile” approach to game development – instead of massive investment up-front, you start with something and evolve it based on user behavior and feedback
• social gaming has a huge and growing potential player base (thanks to Facebook), and the corresponding strong viral network effects
• social games have user-friendly (i.e. simple) game mechanics. Social games in the online gaming market is analogous to the Wii in the console market – anyone can play them, and that’s how they suck you in

Contrast that with MMORPGs, which have traditionally cost a lot of money (e.g. tens of  millions of US dollars) to develop and launch and have a (relatively) steep learning curve for players.

A guy I know, who was the CEO of the company that launched a best-selling console game, told me he thinks the console gaming sector is in jeopardy. Social gaming is where it’s at, from a business perspective. And I think that the MMORPG sector, as we currently think of it (WoW, Aion, Eve Online, etc), may be in trouble for the same reason, over the medium- to long-term.

I’m a fan of traditional MMORPGs, because they provide the kind of rich and complex environment that I find challenging – especially in terms of PVP. So I hope that the market for traditional MMORPGs continues to grow, to sustain the economic drivers which enable game development and evolution. If MMORPGs become a niche market over time, there will be fewer options for us to choose from.

 

The following video has footage from 2 scenarios, Dragon’s Bane and Howling Gorge, with my Swordmaster running a damage / mitigation spec.

I made the video to show tactics for surviving heavy focus-fire as a 2h tank. Played correctly, a 2h tank has very good durability and can bring the pain with a big 2h.

The combination of 700 Strength and 700 Toughness, with 3 offensive tactics slotted (Balanced Accuracy for the crit bonus, and the Damage-over-time tactics Potent Enchantments and Ensorcelled Agony), has been the most effective blend of DPS and survivability that I’ve found. I’ve experimented with many different spec, gear, and RR configurations with 1h and 2h swords, and this 700 / 700 2h build suits my playstyle perfectly.

As I discussed in Part 3 of the Swordmaster Class Mechanics Guide, a tank can stack avoidance, or mitigation, or both.

When using a 2h, I’ve tried stacking parry or disrupt to improve survivability. Parry provides avoidance only against melee attacks in the 180 degree arc in front of you. Disrupt provides avoidance only against spells. I’ve tried stacking avoidance and mitigation together, but that causes my DPS to suffer, because I have fewer tactic slots and RR points to spend on offensive tactics and stats.

For ORVR and scenarios, what I’ve found works best is simply stacking Toughness. The only avoidance stat that makes sense to stack in my opinion is block, because block provides avoidance against most attacks (except morale abilities). And obviously you can’t block with a 2h.

Toughness provides passive mitigation against most attacks (except morale abilities). It doesn’t matter whether you are facing your opponent, and it mitigates damage even if you are stunned or knocked down. Toughness scales with the numbers of attackers; the more you are being attacked, the more damage Toughness mitigates.

A few game mechanic changes have increased the value of Toughness:

1. before Patch 1.2, many damage proc and DoT abilities were not mitigatable. However, in Patch 1.2, proc and DoT abilities were changed to be mitigatable, and this increased the value of Toughness significantly
2. as of Patch 1.3, there is a pocket item that drops in Land of the Dead that can makes attacks undefendable. So that’s another factor in making mitigation more valuable relative to avoidance. This is not to say that a shield isn’t a valuable avoidance tool. Shields in WAR are powerful because they can block any attack. I’ve just found that I’m more effective in RVR with a 2h sword as opposed to a sword-and-board, in terms of applying pressure to healers and bursting down targets