Taugrim's MMO Blog

Yesterday Warhammer Online released a Live Event (LE), called The Wild Hunt. Part of that LE is an instance called The Hunter’s Vale (HV). While the HV mini-bosses drop nothing of significance, if you kill the final boss in the instance before the PQ timer runs out, you have access to very good drops.

Last night I joined a group with some folks from the Phoenix Throne guild Clash of the Karak to run HV. We downed the boss in time, I won a gold bag, and inside this was waiting for me:

Ironically, I’ve been trying to get a solid purple 1h sword for a long time. I chose both 2h greatswords for the RVR influence rewards. Up until recently, I’ve been using Blade of the Bloodmoon, which drops from the 1st PQ in the middle wing of Bastion Stair. I haven’t gotten a purple 1h sword to drop in my runs of the right wing of The Lost Vale or from the Tomb of the Sun in Land of the Dead.

But at least now I’ve got a pretty solid 1h weapon

The LE has been fun, there has been a lot of ORVR fighting in the Elf lands. The main issue for me is my game client keeps crashing. It’s a shame Patch 1.3.1 wasn’t a stable follow-up to 1.3b. A lot of the players on my server are quite frustrated with the lack of game stability.

On Thursday night, Order on Phoenix Throne captured the Chaos Wastes. Unfortunately, most of the Order players left the zone instead of attempting to take the Destruction fortress The Maw.

A few of us figured it would be a great opportunity to fight against superior numbers, so we grouped up and rode to The Maw looking for trouble.

Thanks Foxxy, Jostle, and Shineobi for the fun group! That was hilarious

I played WAR from September 2008 (Head Start) until the 3rd week of April 2009. I de-subbed at that time, because Patch 1.2 had gone live, and city sieges and mass RVR were wildly unstable. The game client was crashing several times an hour.

In early July 2009, I re-subbed to WAR to check out Patch 1.3, and I’ve been playing since then.

Before I start, let me say that there are some classes that need buffs in terms of class and faction balance. I won’t belabor that here in this post.

Patch 1.3 Highlights

The most significant change was the addition of the new zone, Land of the Dead (LotD). The game also seems to have gotten much more stable between 1.2 and 1.3.

LotD in practice was primarily a PVE zone, with PQs you have to grind to gain access to single-boss instances, called tombs. You have to re-do the PQs after you run a tomb. There is also a PVE instance with multiple bosses, called Tomb of the Vulture Lord (TotVL). I haven’t run TotVL, nor do I have any plans to. I’ve had my fill of PVE from other games (World of Warcraft, LOTRO, etc). There was very little RVR in LotD, because of the mechanics for entering the zone.

As I mentioned above, WAR was much more stable in Patch 1.3. That was the biggest reason I decided to stick around for a bit. Which brings me to the next major patch…

Patch 1.3b Highlights

This may have been the most controversial patch released for WAR, because there were across-the-board nerfs to AoE damage abilities. Many people, including me, felt that the changes were knee-jerk.

As it turned out, the nerfs vastly improved the quality of RVR by removing the cheesy AoE wipes that were prevalent pre-1.3b. Before the patch, it was easy to wipe groups of opponents by stacking 2-3 AoEs in the same spot. It required no skill and was frustrating for players. I was one of the people on my server who initially welcomed the live changes in 1.3b, and eventually, other folks did as well. Immunity timers were also increased, which was a good thing.

With the changes, RVR in 1.3b was the most enjoyable I’ve ever had in WAR. The combat was epic; e.g. some fights would last for several minutes in a scenario before one side emerged as the winner. It took coordinated focus-fire to break the tank wall in a keep or fort. I have seen a lot of players come back, or at least play more regularly, once word of 1.3b got out.

In my opinion, if WAR 1.0 had the same AoE damage as WAR 1.3b, the game would have had a much higher retention rate. In hindsight, many of the things players complained about were directly or indirectly caused by the imbalanced AoE damage. Remember before Patch 1.1, when magnet-bomb groups would wipe out the other side in scenarios and RVR? People complained that the magnet abilities of Engineers and Maguses needed to be nerfed. That might have been true, but the issue would never have been such a big deal if AoE damage weren’t so high.

Patch 1.3.1 Highlights

Edited August 21

On a positive note, the game performance seems to have improved (higher FPS). Both faction can enter the LotD zone at any time, and that was a good and oft-requested change.

There are 3 significant concerns for me with 1.3.1:

1. I’ve been CTD’ing (crashing to desktop) multiple times an hour; the game is very unstable. On top of that, the servers have been brought down for maintenance / fixes every day since the patch went live
2. there are a lot of bugs affecting gameplay, most notably the absorption bubble bug
3. The new LotD barter weapons are big upgrades but only obtainable via PVE

The new LotD barter weapons (check out the Swordmaster versions) deal 66 DPS for 1h’s and 95.7 DPS for 2h’s. That is a huge jump from the current highs of 60 and 87 DPS for Lost Vale 1h’s and 2h’s and 91.4 DPS for 2h’s from the city sieges, which people won’t have realistic access to unless there is an imbalance in their server’s faction population. I’m concerned that players will continue to have to PVE in order to remain competitive in PVP in terms of weapons.

There should be some means of acquiring weapon upgrades via PVP, without requiring city PQs. Since Patch 1.3.1 went live, neither side on my server, Phoenix Throne, has managed to push a city. On servers with balanced faction populations, PVE may be the only means of getting excellent weapons. The RVR influence weapons were a good start (53 and 76.9 DPS), but they were introduced over 6 months ago.

I understand that a game need progression, but PVE doesn’t have to be the only answer. I hope Mythic extends the RVR crest / medallion barter system for armor to include weapons; please post your support in Keedo’s suggestion thread on the official forums if you agree.

This is Part 3 of the guide. Part 2 of the guide covered the DoT Tactic Mechanics, Bubble and Healing Mechanics, and CC Mechanics

Please post comments / feedback / tips, contributors will be credited as the guide is updated (e.g. contributed by Gumby).

7. Avoidance and Mitigation Mechanics

For the purposes of this guide, these terms are defined as followed:

• avoidance: preventing an attack from “landing”. This can be blocking an attack, parrying a melee attack, disrupting a spell, or evading (dodging) a ranged attack
• mitigation: reduced the amount of damage suffered from an attack that “landed”. Mitigation is provided by Toughness, and either armor or the appropriate resistance

Attacks are checked against avoidance first (to see if they landed), then against bubbles / mitigation.

As discussed in Section 5, damage can also be absorbed by bubbles. Mitigation is factored in before damage is absorbed by a bubble. Therefore, stacking Toughness will prolong the “life” of a bubble, except for morale bubbles. You can see this from the combat log, when an attack is wholly absorbed and mitigated, and the bubble is still up. Each point of Toughness basically offsets each point of an attacker’s damage stat (Str / Int / Ballistic Skill).

A tank can equip a shield, and shields are very powerful as they can block any kind of attack, as long as the opponent is in the 180 degree arc in front of the tank. Parry only works against melee attacks in the 180 degree arc in front of the tank. From what I’ve seen, there is no positional requirement to disrupt spells or evade ranged attacks. Please note that some “ranged” attacks count as melee, e.g. the Chosen’s ranged knockdown Quake. Because of the positional requirements for block and parry, it’s important to keep opponents in front of you whenever possible.

It’s important to note that if you avoid an attack that has a debuff or CC (e.g. stun, snares, etc) effect or a buff effect on your attacker, that effect will not be applied.

Rok provided a great writeup on tank’s avoidance mechanics here:

From Mace to Face: How damage gets from your attack to their health bar

SMs favor different approaches towards avoidance and mitigation, e.g.:

• high migitation (e.g. 2h tanks)
• high avoidance (e.g. 1h  tanks with H/K build, 2h parry tanks, any tank in PVE)
• high avoidance and mitigation (e.g. 1h bubble tanks)

If you go with high avoidance, you’ll see periods of taking no damage and then spike damage. If you go with high mitigation, damage taken in general is much lower. If you go for both, well, you’re a turtle tank

At Rank 40, SMs get the excellent 2h avoidance ability Wall of Darting Steel (WoDS), which boosts the parry, disrupt, and evade for the SM only by 50%. WoDS is arguably the best on-demand 2h avoidance ability in the game. All tanks with a shield can use Hold the Line (HtL), which boosts the tank’s disrupt and dodge by 45% and allies behind them by 15% (stacks 3 times). HtL does not boost block, probably because that would be over-powered.

The bubble tactic Vaul’s Buffer synergizes when an SM is using a shield and / or any of the following tactics or abilities: Perfect Defenses (parry / block buffs), Impeccable Reactions (guaranteed parry after a parry, once every 5 seconds), Great Weapon Mastery (5% parry), Aethyric Armor (disrupt buff), and Crushing Advance (block buff). Also, an SM can raise the probability of a VB proc by using of HtL or WoDS.

8. PVP Tanking Mechanics

WAR did an impressive job of making tanks relevant in RVR, regardless of spec.

If you want to help protect an ally who is being attacked, you can:

• put Guard on the ally, if you are in the same party
• use Challenge to debuff the damage of attackers
• AOE punt melee attackers off the ally with Gusting Wind
• AOE root melee attackers with Aethyric Grasp
• use Hold the Line to boost the ally’s disrupt and evade by 15% (stacks 3 times)
• snare attackers with Quick Incision (and hope your ally runs)
• knockdown an attacker with the mastery ability Crashing Wave
• silence a caster with the mastery ability Whispering Wind

Guard redirects half of the damage taken by the guarded ally onto the tank, but the damage can be blocked or parried by the tank. It’s important to note that putting multiple Guards on an ally won’t help the ally: the ally still takes half damage, and half damage is also redirected to each tank.

Taunt in WAR is very useful in PVP, as it acts as an interrupt and a damage buff. In most games *cough cough WoW cough cough* Taunting is just a waste of the global cooldown in PVP.

HtL is a great utility ability when leading a charge, covering a retreat, or protecting stationary allies (e.g. RDPS) from RDPS.

9. PVE Tanking Mechanics

There is no “required” spec for PVE main tanking. PVE bosses in WAR hit for thousands of damage, therefore: avoidance > mitigation.

Tips:

• The tactics Menace (doubles threat generated) and Isha’s Will (boosts incoming heals by 20%) are excellent choices for PVE
• Use Eagle’s Flight for the parry buff
• On boss fights, use Dragon’s Talon for the damage debuff
• The R2 morale ability Shield Wall is awesome in PVE and provides 100% block for 10 seconds
• Have a healthy-size HP pool, at least 9k buffed
• Have enough crit reduction (via -crit gear and Initiative) so that the probability of getting crit is low
• For multi-mob pulls, if you have Protection of Hoeth, before combat, get into Improved Balance, then attack the mobs with Wrath of Hoeth and Gusting Wind. This establishes AOE threat on the mobs and buys time for healers while the mobs are knocked down
• The Vaul mastery tactic Perfect Defenses rocks, but if you don’t have it, you can slot Impeccable Reactions

That concludes Part 3 of the guide.

Please post feedback / comments / questions.

This is Part 2 of the guide. Part 1 of the guide covered the Balance Mechanic, Damage Mechanics, and Blade Enchant Mechanics.

Please post comments / feedback / tips, contributors will be credited as the guide is updated (e.g. contributed by Gumby).

4. DoT Tactic Mechanics

Each of the DoT (Damage over Time) tactics is listed below, with associated pros and cons:

• each “+” is a pro
• each “-” is a con
• italics are subjective comments

Centuries of Training

+ Spirit damage
- damage is not increased with Strength and Melee Power
- damage is not increased with mastery points
- ticks can’t crit
- 1st tick @ 1 sec, 2 more @ 1 sec intervals
+ not tied to a single ability
+ can proc on multiple targets via AOEs
- seems to have a lower proc rate than PE, for whatever reason, even though both should be 25% from the tooltips

Deep Incision (DI)

- physical damage
+ damage is increased with Strength and Melee Power
+ damage is increased with mastery points in Khaine tree
+ ticks can crit
- 1st tick @ 2.5 sec, 3 more @ 2.5 sec intervals
- tied to a single ability (QI)
- single target only
- requires mastery point investment in Khaine tree

Ensorcelled Agony (EA)

+ Spirit damage
+ damage is increased with Strength and Melee Power
- damage is not increased with mastery points
+ ticks can crit
- 1st tick @ 1 sec, 4 more @ 1 sec intervals
- tied to a single ability (EB)
- single target only

Potent Enchantments (PE)

+ Spirit damage
- damage is not increased with Strength and Melee Power
- damage is not increased with mastery points
- ticks can’t crit
+ 1st tick immediately, 3 more @ 3 sec intervals
+ not tied to a single ability
+ can proc on multiple targets via AOEs
+ can re-proc on the same target prior to DoT expiration, resulting in immediate damage and refreshing of the 9s DoT duration

PE and CoT do not scale with stats (Strength and Melee Power), so a low-Strength SM will see a significant DPS boost by using DoT tactics, esp PE. On the flipside, EA and DI do scale with stats, so a high-Strength SM will get more bang from those tactics.

Multi-hit abilities, such as Ether Dance, Dragon’s Talon, Crashing Wave, and Whispering Wind, synergize well with PE, because each hit of the ability can re-proc PE, which causes an immediate DoT tick. In particular, ED and PE synergize superbly together because ED is a 5-hit ability, which means you can get up to 5 immediate PE ticks.

DI and EA can crit, so they synergize with the Balanced Accuracy tactic, which increases the SM’s crit rate.

Editor’s comment: I’ve performed damage testing with Tortall’s DPS Meter, and in a nutshell, PE and EA are very good, CoT sucks (typically accounts for half what PE or EA do), and while DI can offer some nice burst, it’s still 3rd fiddle.

5. Bubble and Healing Mechanics

SMs have several “damage absorption”abilities (aka bubble) available to them

• Phantom’s Blade Enchant: as discussed in the Blade Enchant Mechanics section, this enchant has a 25% chance of proc’ing a bubble
• Vaul’s Buffer (VB): Vaul mastery tactic. Points in the Vaul tree improve how much damage is absorbed. This bubble procs when an SM avoids an attack (block / parry / disrupt / evade). Therefore, VB synergizes with gear, abilities, and tactics that improve an SM’s avoidance, such as the Vaul mastery tactic Perfect Defenses and the base Khaine ability Wall of Darting Steel. VB can not re-proc while it is up, and after the bubble expires, VB will not re-proc for at least 3 seconds
• Protection of Hoeth (PoH): Hoeth mastery ability with a 10 second cooldown. Points in the Hoeth tree improve how much damage is absorbed. This ability is popular with SMs not only for the bubble, but because it enables an SM to progress to Improved Balance without a target
• Bladeshield:  Rank 3 morale ability that absorbs up to 3600 damage and reflects 600 damage per attack while the bubble is up
• Shield of Valor: Rank 4 Vaul mastery ability that provides a group bubble

SMs have 2 Hoeth mastery tactics that provide self-healing ability:

• Blessing of Heaven: adds a debuff on the target that causes attackers to gain a mild 3-second HoT (heal over time)
• Bolstering Enchantments: provides a weak HoT on the group

6. Crowd Control Mechanics

WAR’s crowd control (CC) includes interrupts, silences, snares (movement debuffs), roots, knockbacks (aka punts), and knockdowns.

Compared to the other 5 WAR tank classes, SM has fewer built-in CC abilities.

All tanks have the following CC abilities

• Taunt: this acts as an interrupt, which means it cancels any abilities that are being cast or channeled
• 30 foot radius AOE root: the SMs version of this is called Aethyric Grasp
• single-target snare: the SMs version is called Quick Incision, which reduces the target’s movement for 10 seconds
• Champion’s Challenge: rank 1 morale ability that roots the SM and target for 10 seconds

All SMs have the following class-specific CC:

• Gusting Wind (GW): this is an AOE knockback with a 10 second cooldown. The ability has tremendous utility in terms of offense and defense. Offensively, it can be used to punt opponents back into friendly lines, off cliffs / walls, or out of line-of-sight of their healers. Defensively, GW can be used to punt enemy meleers off an ally, to create a gap between the SM and enemies, or to interrupt opponents

SMs can opt for the following class-specific CC:

• Whispering Wind (WW): Hoeth mastery ability that silences the target for 5 seconds
• Crushing Advance (CA): Vaul mastery ability that interrupts the target. Requires a shield to be equipped
• Crashing Wave (CW): Vaul mastery ability that knocks down the target for 3 seconds
• Whirling Geyser (WG): Khaine mastery rank 4 morale ability that is an AOE knockback
• Forceful Shock: trainable tactic that adds a knockback effect to Blurring Shock (BS). Note that many SMs feel this is a poorly-designed effect, as the point of applying the BS debuff to a target is for focus-firing the target

That concludes Part 2 of the guide. Part 3 of the guide covers Avoidance and Mitigation Mechanics, PVP Tanking Mechanics, and PVE Tanking Mechanics.

Please post feedback / comments / questions.