Games I’ve Played
Here is the list of games I’ve played (reverse chronological order):
- January 2022 – now: Elder Scrolls Online on NA/PC server as @taugrim
- January 2022 – February 2022: World of Tanks on NA server as taugrim (stats)
- October 2021 – January 2022: New World on US East server Pyrallis as Taugrim
- July 2020 – October 2021: Elder Scrolls Online on NA/PC server as @taugrim
- January 2017 – May 2021: World of Tanks on NA server as taugrim (stats)
- May 2016 – July 2016: Overwatch
- October 2015 – January 2017: Armored Warfare on NA server as taugrim
- April 2015 – October 2015: World of Tanks on NA server as taugrim (stats)
- February 2015 – April 2015: Guild Wars 2 on Blackgate as “Taugrim the Ele” the Elementalist and “Taugrim Guardian” the Guardian
- October 2014 – February 2015: World of Tanks on NA server as taugrim (stats)
- June 2014 – October 2014: WildStar on
PagoPergo (US PVP) as Taugrim the Melee Mage DPS Esper (1885 2v2 Arena, solo RBG 1789) - April 2013 – June 2014: World of Tanks on NA server as taugrim (stats)
- August 2012 – November 2013: Guild Wars 2 on Blackgate as “Taugrim the Ele” the Elementalist and “Taugrim” the Warrior
- December 2011 – August 2012: SWTOR as Taugrim the Trooper Vanguard and Taugrymm the Smuggler Gunslinger on Ajunta Pall (US RP-PVP)
- February 2011 – January 2012: RIFT as Taugrim the M*A*S*H Cleric on Sunrest (US RP-PVP). I shelved Taugrim the Rank 4 Riftblade/Champion/Paladin Warrior on Harrow (US RP-PVP)
- March 2010 – February 2011: World of Warcraft as Taugrimm the Paladin (L85, 2k in 2v2 and 3v3 Arena) and Taugrim the Balance Druid (L80) on Wildhammer
- February – March 2010: Allods Online as Taugrim the Melee Healer on Tensess
- September 2009 – January 2010: Aion as Taugrum the Chanter and Taugrim the Sorcerer on Lumiel
- September 2008 – September 2009: Warhammer Online as Taugram the Swordmaster (RR65 L40) and Taugrim the Bright Wizard (RR41 L40) on Phoenix Throne
- November 2007 – September 2008: The Lord of the Rings Online as Taugrim the Captain (R6 L50) and Taugrem the Orc Reaver (R6) on Landroval
- May 2006 – November 2007: World of Warcraft as Maeglor the Feral Druid (L70) on Agamaggan
- 2005 – May 2006: Knight Online as Taugrim the Archer (L61) on Beramus
- 1998: Meridian 59 as Helm on Server 200 and Taugrim on another server I can’t remember
My History with MMOs
My first MMORPG was Meridian 59, which I played back in 1998. My job was very demanding so it was 7 years before I played another game.
In 2005, I searched for a F2P (Free to Play) MMORPG and landed on Knight Online (KO) on the server Beramus, where I played an Archer named Taugrim. For the Rogue class, Assassin was much more popular than Archer. I wrote my first gaming guide, Guide to Rogue-Archer, to answer questions that kept coming up on the forums and to address the widely-held perception that Archers sucked. Archer’s mechanics suited me well: the class had excellent mobility, solid DPS, and enough spot-healing and cleansing to bail friendlies out of trouble.
KO was fun, but the game was very hackable, and I grew tired of PVP’ing against players who cheated. So I switched over to World of Warcraft (WoW) with a few friends from KO during the summer of 2006.
My first endgame WoW character was a Druid named Maeglor on Agamaggan. I fell in love with feral gameplay while leveling and tanking in particular, even though veteran Druids warned that Feral gearing options were limited at endgame and the community despised them. At level 60, I played the 11/33/7 Bear tank spec and rocked a Warden staff. WoW was the first game I played that had serious class balance issues, and because of Vanilla WoW’s gear progression design, very narrow spec options. The community was likewise very narrow minded about classes and roles.
When The Burning Crusade (TBC) expansion launched, Feral became a viable option in raids, and I was one of our guilds main raid tanks. Eventually I got burned out of the raiding gear grind, so I quit WoW cold turkey in November 2007.
I still wanted to play an MMORPG, but I didn’t want to deal with a grindfest. At the suggestion of a friend, who I’d been playing online with since KO, I tried The Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO). LOTRO’s community was stellar, the game was immersive, and there were no issues of different classes playing the same role (e.g. main tank, main healer, etc), as there had been with WoW.
In LOTRO I played on Landroval, first as a Captain and later as various Creep classes. Our kin raided in partnership with another and we eventually downed the Balrog, which was a fun achievement. I wrote several LOTRO class guides: 2 for Captain, 1 for Orc Reaver, 1 for Uruk Blackarrow. Some players gave feedback that tips in my Guides didn’t work, even though I knew from personal experience that they did. So I bought FRAPS to record footage and started publishing narrated PVP videos on YouTube in the summer of 2008, and the videos generated a lot of positive feedback and community engagement.
In late Spring of 2008, I started following Warhammer Online (WAR) with keen interest. WAR was incredibly attractive to me, because it treated PVP as core game content. The concept of leveling up via RVR (Realm-Versus-Realm, which is another acronym for mass PVP) sounded awesome, and I was intrigued by the mechanics of classes such as the Warrior Priest, which used melee abilities to generate “mana” (called Righteous Fury) for healing. When WAR launched in September 2008, I switched from LOTRO to WAR.
In WAR, I initially played a Bright Wizard to 40, published a bunch of narrated BW videos, and wrote my Bright Wizard Class Mechanics Guide. Due to a shortage of Order tanks on my server, I rolled a Swordmaster as my main character in November and continued cranking out narrated videos and wrote my Swordmaster Class Mechanics Guide. I intentionally chose Swordmaster because of the widely-held belief that SMs were useless (they weren’t), even though objectively I knew the Ironbreaker was the more powerful class.
I played WAR until April 2009, at which point I unsubscribed because I was frustrated with the lack of server and mass PVP stability in Patch 1.2. In early July, I decided to check out WAR in Patch 1.3 on a free trial basis. The game’s stability had improved, so I re-subbed and played until mid September 2009, at which time I unsubbed because I wanted to try Aion, and WAR had gone from being fairly stable with the great Patch 1.3b to being very unstable and buggy in Patch 1.3.1. Another huge factor in my quitting WAR had to do with the dying population — the majority of my guildees and the community had already stopped playing, and eventually I came to grips with the realization that they weren’t coming back. This phenomenon of a relatively new MMORPG suffering from a dying population became a theme over the next 5 years, and I tended to be one of the players who stuck around after 80% of the community had quit. Games that become ghost towns are super depressing.
In September 2009, the North America version of Aion launched. There was a lot of hoopla about the game in terms of its polish and PVP potential. My initial impression was that the game was tedious but I leveled a Chanter to 40, by which point the grindy nature of the game just killed my interest to continue leveling to 50 so I unsubbed in early February 2010.
I started playing the F2P game Allods Online in February 2010 but by the end of March decided to stop playing AO due to concerns about the game. In the meanwhile, I’d heard that there were several changes to WoW in Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) that removed a lot of the grind that I’d detested back in TBC.
So I decided to give WoW another try. This time around, I chose Balance as my main spec for my Druid and eventually decided to level a Paladin to play as Retribution in PVE and Protection in PVP.
Prior to WoW Patch 4.0, my Protection Paladin hit level cap and became my main PVP character. When 4.0 launched, there were significant class changes that were introduced for the Paladin (and other) classes. There was a dearth of information for how to play the Prot spec in 4.0 in PVP and many veteran Paladins declared that Prot PVP would be dead in Cataclysm. I believed Prot would be viable, so I published my Prot Pally PVP Guide, and a copy of it was stickied on the WoW Paladin US forum. I reached 2k Arena rating in the 2v2 and 3v3 brackets as Prot in Cataclysm, and I was the only person to do so as Prot in those brackets in the Shadowburn battlegroup during the time I played.
In February 2011, I started feeling restless with WoW, and I heard some very compelling things about RIFT, so I pre-ordered the game. RIFT had a terrific launch and was up to that point the most enjoyable game for PVP that I had ever played. I wanted to play a heavy melee class so I rolled a Warrior and published my Riftblade Warrior PVP Guide. In early June I switched servers to Sunrest and rolled a Cleric, because our new guild needed healers.
The RIFT Cleric community widely believed that “melee healer” Clerics were not viable, but my gut feeling was that the mechanics existed to support melee-healing, it was just a matter of sorting them out. After hitting level 50, I wrote my M*A*S*H Melee Healer Cleric Guide, and to my pleasant surprise many Clerics overcame their skepticism, tried out the spec, and raved about it. I began to lose interest in RIFT with Patches 1.5 and 1.6 due to the overbalancing of classes, and as with WAR, many of my guildees had already quit the game and the game’s community had cratered.
Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) was the next big hope for a great MMORPG, and I got full Beta access from BioWare in December 2011 and published introduction PVP videos for various classes. During the 1st week of launch, my guild rolled on Ajunta-Pall (US RP-PVP) as Republic, because we wanted to be on a server with reasonable faction balance, or at least to be on the side that was outnumbered, which is much more interesting than running with the zerg. SWTOR had great storylines for each class and the combat graphics and sound felt epic.
In August 2012 I decided to stop playing SWTOR, as the vast majority of my guildees had moved on from the game, the game became more grindy in 1.3 which did not align with my limited free time per my new job, and I wanted to see how F2P was implemented before committing further to the game.
Around that time, Guild Wars 2 (GW2) was in Beta, and its pseudo-action combat appealed to me. I played GW2 at launch on Blackgate. GW2 provided all the modes for PVP that I care about: battleground, tournament / ranked battleground, and World PVP. I appreciated the horizontal scaling system, especially in 5v5 tournaments, as gear was strictly cosmetic so therefore PVP was a level playing field. I also loved that you could play in endgame battlegrounds within literally a half hour of rolling a new character – this allowed players to experiment with new classes with minimal time investment.
Over time I realized that with my focus on sPVP, I would never level my characters to endgame so that I could WvW with my guild, because in the first year of GW2, sPVP was completely disconnected from the rest of the game. I transitioned over to WvW full-time and played a Warrior and an Elementalist. The introduction of Ascended gear was a big turnoff to me, because it was a grindy system and you have to commit to particular gear stats, and therefore specs, as you buy Ascended gear pieces.
I also found GW2’s fixed skillbars for weapons to be enormously rigid. That is, I couldn’t customize the order of abilities in a way that made sense to me. I want to customize skills so that they suit me, rather than having to adopt what the game restricts me with.
In April 2013, on a whim I picked up World of Tanks (WoT) and it was the most pleasant surprise of any PC game I’ve ever played. WoT was easy-to-learn but hard-to-master, which really appealed to me. Skill was a huge determinant in PVP outcomes in WoT, which was how it should be. My only concern about WoT was the continued existence of gold ammo (aka premium ammo), which created a pay-for-advantage environment as the extent to which players can afford to buy and use gold ammo was correlated to how much money they were spending on the game (i.e. subscriptions, premium tanks, etc).
In February 2014, I played about 5 hours in WildStar Beta and was on the fence. The game’s combat system seemed great but the game was buggy and had low framerate. I decided to give WildStar a go at launch and their implementation of action combat with telegraphs was the most engaging and highest skill cap combat system I’d played in an MMORPG up to that point.
I loved WildStar, but the endgame PVP system was horrific, which had gear tier gaps and gear rating requirements, and this created an environment where gear was more important than skill in PVP. I reached 1885 rating in 2v2 Arena and 1791 solo queuing for Rated BGs, so I was able to acquire my full 1800 PVP gear. However, the runes on gear were RNG, which created an awful experience whenever you acquired an epic gear item and the runes sucked. Due to the RNG grind and increasing PVP queue times due to the declining playerbase, I unsubbed in early October.
After I quit WildStar, I went back to WoT. Questions about improving one’s gameplay in WoT come up every day on the WoT sub-Reddit and on various forums, so I started a video series called “Road to Unicum” to share what I learned as I progressed towards purple stats for my account.
In February 2015, I picked up GW2 after over a year away, and the game had noticeably improved. That said, the game failed to maintain my interest, and I went back to WoT and reached Unicum rating for my account.
In October 2015, a competitor to WoT called Armored Warfare (AW) launched in Open Beta. AW was a fantastic game, and the PVP in tiers 4–6 was arguably the most competitive and skill-based context I’ve played in any MMO. That said, tiers 7–10 the game suffered from very poor class balance as Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) were extremely difficult to penetrate frontally. Fights between high-tier MBTs devolved into “pixel hunting” of very small weak spots. These two dynamics created a frustrating experience for many players. The PVP population quickly shrank – many players went back to WoT and other AW players focused their time in PVE – and by mid-2016 PVP queue times were unacceptably long (5+ minutes). Obsidian undertook a large class re-design effort with “Balance 2.0”, but unfortunately in February 2017 Mail.Ru fired Obsidian as the developer and took the development in-house.
As it turned out, before that news broke I had already gone back to WoT in January 2017, not because I believed WoT was the superior game, but simply because it had a large active population. I was reluctant to go back to WoT as I was a huge fan of AW’s game design, but to my pleasant surprise I found myself enjoying WoT again.
I played Overwatch for several months after it’s launch in May 2016. It’s an excellent game, but my aim is very mediocre. I have gradually decreased my mouse sensitivity and bought a large gaming mousepad, but I believe that I’ll never develop good FPS aim skills, so my performance ceiling in games such as Overwatch is pretty limited.
I tried the Beta of Gloria Victus but the combat just didn’t pull me in, so I haven’t played since.
In July 2020 during the pandemic, I watched a PVP player stream battlegrounds in Elder Scrolls Online (ESO). Based on the answers I received from the streamer and his viewers, I decided to give ESO a try. ESO had multiple things going for it:
- An incredibly customizable build system for all 6 classes
- The combat is action-based and very skill-based. There are no cooldowns; you decide what abilities to use and how to manage your resources
- There are 2 contexts for PVP: battlegrounds and world PVP in Cyrodiil. I’ve mostly spent my time in BGs and they are super fun
- There is meaningfully challenging solo and group dungeon content
- You can play solo or with others
- Horizontal gear progression at endgame, so it’s about acquiring different sets, not replacing all your gear every time the level cap is raised (e.g. WoW)
- The player population has sufficient critical mass
I stopped playing WoT in May 2021 and focused my time on ESO, as I grew increasingly frustrated with Wargaming’s continued addition of overpowered premium tanks that are straight up better than normal tanks and their reluctance to balance gold ammo. Wargaming doesn’t care about creating a good experience for all players, free or paying. Rather, the game is intentionally designed to heavily favor players who pay. Pay-for-advantage mechanics create a context where a game has difficulty acquiring new players (due to the reputation) and retaining existing free players (due to their losing to paying players).
I thoroughly enjoyed my PVP experience in ESO until late August 2021, at which time ZeniMax Online Studios (ZOS) released 2 extremely overpowered PVP sets — Hrothgar’s Chill (HC) and Dark Convergence (DC) — that created a miserable experience for opponents. I posted about DC on the official forums because the 5-piece set bonus did the following:
- created an AOE that pulled players into the middle, multiple times
- stunned players after pulling them
- slowed players after pulling them
- applied damage to players based on how close to the center of the AOE when it expired
DC was the most faceroll PVP gear I’ve ever seen across any MMORPG. I refused to use HC and DC out of principle. While HC was nerfed after 3 weeks, DC was not nerfed until October, at which point New World (NW) had already launched. Many PVP diehards including me completely lost confidence in ZOS’s ability to balance their own game. and a substantial number of PVP players ditched ESO to play NW.
I had little interest in playing NW as I’ve been burned by too many hype trains. That said, my disgust with ZOS’s itemization motivated me to check out streams of NW in the first half of October, and streamers whose judgment I respect raved about how skill-based the combat was. I found a Discord for a company (NW parlance for guild) on the server Pyrallis (US East) and talked to the players about the game. They said positive things about NW, and based on my disgust with ZOS over HC and DC, I decided to purchase NW. I ended up rolling on Folkvangr (US East) after watching a stream for an ESO content creator named Dottzgaming.
NW’s leveling experience was extraordinarily tedious, so I leveled gradually to 60 over a month. This was intentional for several reasons: I didn’t want to burn out, I was unsure whether it’d be worth it, and I wanted to give Amazon Games Studio (AGS) time to fix the many shitshow exploits (e.g. duping) that dramatically impacted non-cheating players.
I really enjoyed NW’s combat system, as it was very skill-based. I transferred from Folkvangr to Pyrallis, as the former’s population at prime times was barely over 200 players, and the queue for the 20v20 PVP battleground Outpost Rush (OPR) at level 60 didn’t even pop most days, so I transferred over to Pyrallis. Playing on a medium-pop server (~500 players during prime time) was a revelation: the economy was robust (i.e. I could buy the specific gear I needed instead of farming it) and OPR popped throughout the day and night. I stuck around NW until AGS announced the Umbrals gear progression system, which looked unnecessarily tedious and grindy, so once the Umbrals patch launched I never logged in again.
I went back to WoT but realized after NW that I really missed playing in an MMORPG, so I picked ESO back up and have been enjoying it since.
Taugrim's MMO Blog 
hi buddy longtime no see; you may not remember me but im a good friend of arc and robin adonis of kol. i recently quit the game and went to wow looking for you guys but i guess im on the wrong server (tanaris). anyways your doing really great on your followups i just have 1 question. i am a lvl 80 mage now on wow;and am having trouble with my specs in pvp i was wondering if you can email me some advise on mageing pvp. my specs are arcane and frost cause of the casting time. dont get me wrong i do kill also lol. also i have all the correct armor for the pvps but its like im useless still. the armor is the hateful gladiator armor. i dont want to quit the game cause its a fun game to me and DirtNapCentral. remember that clan from kol ran by Dirtnap4U formally the train runners. well the whole clan is now on wow as is arc and we are all lvl 80s but im the only basic mage inneed of advise; so if you can give me some id appreciate it :)) ty
It’s been 20 months since I played WoW, and I never played an endgame mage, so I’m not the right person to ask.
Please say hi to ARC and Robin for me, and thanks for dropping by!
ok buddy thanks alot , and i will probably see you on aion when it comes out it looks really good from what i saw. and im tryin to get the DC clan to follow me there. so i’ll still be named as sqwiggy, let me know of any follow ups on the game ty
Hey Taugrim. Hope you remember me (the mighty Magus ;D), we had some good fights in WAR. I’m playing LOTRO now on Landroval and I noticed some old post of yours. Couldn’t believe it was the same person but low and behold it was.
Anyway, just wanted to say heya and if you ever decide to drop back into LOTRO gimme me a shout. My name there is Zhanthir.
Peace.
(belated reply, heh)
Hi Malaghaas!
Of course I remember you. We had some fun fights – you were a skilled Magus :)
Funny that you saw some of my old posts on the LOTRO forums. I was very heavily involved with the LOTRO community on the Captain forum and on the Landroval server forum, back when I played LOTRO from November 2007 to September 2008.
I doubt I’ll play LOTRO again.
That game has a terrific community and some aspects of the game are really well done. I just got tired of the limitations of the PVP system, especially the ridiculous amount of CC.
If you get this response, let me know which Freep and Creep classes you play, I’m curious.
Cheers,
Tau
Taugrim, i’d suggest you take a look at LOTRO again if you haven’t in a few years. They made substantial changes to PVP and have included DR on all CC abilities.
Essentially CC works like this now. ( CC = Stuns, Mezs, roots, fears all in the same catagory)
1st CC is 100% duration
2nd CC is 50% duration
3rd CC is 25% duration
4th CC and beyond is just an interupt.
Turbine has also made signifigant advances towards balancing creep and freep classes so each can hold their own in 1v1’s. Granted this balance isn’t always perfect due to the insta-buff creeps get when the level cap is raised, over freeps having to lvl, grind new gear, etc, but it’s still a lot of fun.
Here’s a video from about a year and a half ago of me vs a R10 Warg on Candy Mountain.
Oh I played a LM too, and you know how CC heavy they are.
Hi,
My name is David Lui, and I am a Marketing Coordinator for F2PMMO, a new publisher of online games and unique services. We are excited to announce our new game portal, F2PMMO.com, which will launch at least two high-quality MMORPGs per month for the global free-to-play market. Our first addition, Heroes of Gaia, launched on December 7th. We have noticed that your blog features highlights and articles about other popular games and would be delighted if you would consider publishing an article about our game or/and our services. We will also provide you with bids for our unique reward system. I appreciate your consideration in this matter, and please don’t hesitate to contact me for further questions.
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Kind Regards,
David Lui
Marketing Coordinator
HiLvl, Inc.
1982-B Zanker Road. San Jose
California, USA, 95112.
Tel: (510) 381-9990
Skype: dlui620
Internet: http://www.hilvl.com
Confidentiality Warning: This e-mail contains information intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, any dissemination, publication or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify us by return e-mail. Thank you.
We will also provide you with bids for our unique reward system.
What exactly do you mean by that?
Are you talking about compensating me with reward items for writing about your game(s)?
Or are you talking about providing me with rewards that I could share with readers of this blog? E.g. use this reward code and get a free +1 sword for your new character in a game. I’ve seen other blogs sponsor game rewards that way.
I want to maintain clear disclosure so that readers of this blog understand if and when I have any potential conflicts of interest when writing about games.
Cheers,
Tau
Hey Taugrim!
I just started playing Allods and i’ve been trying different classes and builds to see which one was my preference, and it turned out your healer spec was. Now ok, ‘Thanks’ i hear you say – but what brought back a lot of memories was your name! I doubt you remember me that much, but waaay back in the day, when we played KO, we met through my dad – ARC. I don’t know if you guys keep in touch anymore, its been so long, but im sure he’d love to hear from you. I remember your guides being of endless help to the both of us,(and no doubt everyone who read them!) so i’m really glad to see your still a gamer.
My dad plays WoW now too, i think he has a lvl 80 Paladin and Rogue, and numerous other characters, although for the life of me i can’t remember on which server. It’d be great to hear from you – keep up the good work!
P.S KO has been as good as run into the gutter in my opinion, the cheating is if anything, worse than before, and there is no real endgame. I just wish it didn’t have the best PvP system i’ve played (even if it was because of the combo ‘fluke’ haha)
Of course I remember you and your dad. Every now and again ARC and I email each other. I still keep in touch with Mahdi (Kerchek), you may remember him.
Tell your Dad I said hello!
I recently transferred my 80 Druid from Agamaggan (US) Alliance to Wildhammer (US) Horde.
hey taugrim love your site keep up the god work , i jus got in this beta seams like a game up your ally
http://www.bloodlinechampions.com/
its only pvp think wow backgrounds but high quality textures like torch light and allods really fun check it out sign and try to get into the beta
Great info on prot pvp Taugrim – thanks so much!
I recently resurrected my vanilla wow pally I had left at lvl 60 and with the help of your posts/blog I’ve been having a lot of fun at 85 in BG and even with some 2v2 arena with a buddy playing a feral druid.
I would really love to see some specific – even just bullet points – tips on how to beat other classes 1 vs 1. Tips like, what to look for, how to play ( aggressive or defensive ) which seal or auras I should make sure to have on when fighting each class… stuff like that.
Anything would help, there may be something like this already posted somewhere you could point me to just thought I’d come here first.
thanks for all the info!
Great info on prot pvp Taugrim – thanks so much!
You’re welcome!
I would really love to see some specific – even just bullet points – tips on how to beat other classes 1 vs 1
I had several other items on the TO DO List ahead of providing 1v1 advice:
– video(s) of Prot PVP in 4.0.6
– video(s) of Ret PVP in 4.0.6
– keybindings guide
That being said, I did decide on Feb 23rd to switch from WoW to Rift.
For 1v1 the best way to learn is to simply duel people and talk to them about what special abilities they have.
Hi, I discovered your blog since your early post on the Rift forums (i believe you were lvl 15-30 at the time). Just wanted to say that I’m a big fan of the blog; lots of depth, content, and insight. I’ve been playing Champion/Paladin/Paragon (32/26/8) melee & block focused from lvl30-50 before 1.1 and now after. It works great in PvP; great DPS, great survivability, nice set of CC harassment tools; two stuns/two charges/two cast-interrupts/AoE melee spam/ranged interrupt/powerhouse finishers/bloodthirst etc. After 1.1, I’m beginning to sway towards replacing the Champion with the Riftblade soul BUT played somewhat similarily in mid-melee ranged combat; riftwalk, planar blade, ignores armor, 3pt bursts (500-720 upon crit), etc. Attack points build up very quickly with combination of reactive abilities and buffs. I was thinking of replacing paragon because turn the blade does not seem to proc, and rising waterfall is slow, and strike like iron doesnt seem to work properly. Thanks for keeping up such an awesome blog.
It would be really great if you added me, my username on the forums: dieniceli
I play the char ‘Errza’ on Silkweb
in case you wanted to check out what I wrote: http://mercguild.enjin.com/forum/m/1270568/viewthread/674359-pvpsolo-pve-builds
Relatively old forum post that needs updating but touches upon what I was aiming for in PvP (i’ve made changes to certain abilities since I reached 50 and 1.1 patch):
http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?127854-Champ-Para-Pally-focus-is-on-block-hit-crit-and-procs-followups-reactives&highlight=
I’ve been playing Champion/Paladin/Paragon (32/26/8) melee & block focused from lvl30-50 before 1.1 and now after. It works great in PvP; great DPS, great survivability, nice set of CC harassment tools; two stuns/two charges/two cast-interrupts/AoE melee spam/ranged interrupt/powerhouse finishers/bloodthirst etc
It’s funny that you mention Champ/Pally. I’ve been looking at different specs and I think that would be my next choice after RB/Pally, for the reasons you stated above.
LOL, that is awesome. I’ve got nothing but good things to say about that build. Many 2H champs will take you for granted, unfortunately for them :\ Premades and skilled players will realize that this build is a big threat, and you’ll been tunnel-focused to hell sometimes by champs and mages. But man, sure as hell reassuring and that we’re thinking along the same track (I think lol).
taugrim nice job on your guides and stuff
Do you still play WOW? here soon i going to try rift since I hearing good things, but for now I focused on wow. 1st time in 6 years I am playing another class than a Warlock, and I am finding my Binding doesn’t cut it for Melee, I saw your key set up you posted but watching your Prot videos I know you have things on other keys.
Any chance if you willing so I can have a better look just email me your binding so I can load them into wow and see them all, I tried take a pic of your videos but can’t see them that way. my email is GuthanRulez@gmail.com much thanks.
Main goal is get better at moving like you were, right now I just can’t keep them in front of me
Do you still play WOW? here soon i going to try rift since I hearing good things, but for now I focused on wow
I usually only play one game at a time, and right now that game is Rift. Rift’s been awesome so far, an unexpected surprise.
Any chance if you willing so I can have a better look just email me your binding so I can load them into wow and see them all, I tried take a pic of your videos
Here’s a screenshot:
Main goal is get better at moving like you were, right now I just can’t keep them in front of me
Coincidentally, I finally got around to posting a strafing / movement / keybindings video just this morning. Here it is:
https://taugrim.com/2011/04/07/rift-warrior-pvp-video-volume-9-strafing-movement-keybindings/
thanks man
what is that Cross bone looking button you got after Y key I can’t see it
I looked at the macros you posted, and some of them was easier to add Mod clicks, like the BOK/BOM instead of doing a cast like you, just made it nomod = BOK, Mod:Shift = BOM, Mod:Ctrl = SOJ and Mod:alt = SOT
but besides the ones you posted which are the basic, you got any others that would be great that you use?
Hello Taugrim,
My name is Catherine Meyers, I’m the admin of a modest games site and high traffic blog directory, I’ve been checking your blog and I find it very helpful and informative for anyone taking up a MMO, so I thought you could be interested in a link exchange, (no money involved), with my sites, this might help increase the visits to Taugrim’s PVP Blog and get nice comments and feedback. Let me know if you are interested to send you the links to my sites.
Kind Regards,
Cathy
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Hiya,
Love the blog, very insightful and your videos are oddly relaxing :) I wonder if you could tell me what plugin you use for the comments, specifically the ‘post comment’ part.
Thanks and keep up the good work :)
Jace
Oops, please ignore my post, have found out that the ‘post comment’ section is part of the hosted WordPress sites :)
Hey Taugrim, I played Hashi, a mage on Beramus KOL (Everlong Clan), and RoadRunner, an archer on Edana. Enjoyed your posts for that game and glad to finally put a face to them. Keep it up! Cheers!
Hey Taugrim, I played a warrior (Wellard) in a guild led by you amongst others and later an archer (inspired by your good self) on Beramus KOL a few years ago.
I have to say, I’m quite impressed with what you’ve accomplished and it’s great to finally put a face to the name. You might also be surprised to hear that the old Knightsunited fan site is still going.
Anyway, keep on keeping on. Great to finally find out what you’ve been up to :D
Wellard! Of course I remember you.
We had fun times back in KO, I just wish that game wasn’t so pitifully hackable. If it weren’t for the rampant exploiting, I might never have moved on to WoW.
In which case it might be a good thing that it was so easily exploitable. I quit the game a few years ago due to the exact reasons you left. I’m now currently playing WoW, but plan on moving to SWTOR when it’s released. Your videos have certainly got me hyped up for the release and I look forward to the next one :)
Haha so funny, was going through swtor stream looking for someone that was pvp’ing. Finally ran into ur stream. Remember ur SM video’s like 5 years ago, was playing a SM as well at that time. Old memories, haha. I hope they’ll allow some interserver pvp at some point, would love to duel u a bit:P..
We could always roll on the same server :)
We’ll going to pick a PVP-RP server.
First of all i play in a small scale tight group, and we’re joining a pvp server there is some initiative with some other competitive pvp guilds, so we’ll all join the same server and be sure to have tons of good pvp.
Secondly I’m EU, so wouldn’t work all that well:P.. But if there won’t be inter-server fights where they also link eu and us, I might make a pvp vid some time.
Happy Thanksgiving from Key West Taugrim!
It is a pleasure to see that you have joined The Republic podcast on Gamerbreaker TV as well as streaming the SWTOR Beta on Twitch. I watched your stream everytime you were broadcasting this past week.
I am on Sunrest in RIFT (Conman, 50 Warrior) and have enjoyed many PVP matches with you and your guildmates. I am actively searching for a PVP guild on the Republic side of SWTOR and have a huge interest in joining your guild. I am curious to know the process I would go about applying.
Any kind of reply would be much appreciated! Take care!
My guild leader anticipated that my covering SWTOR / streaming might result in incoming requests for ginvites – more requests than we can handle in terms of growing carefully, as we’re a small guild (about a dozen active players).
For now I’m letting people know we’re not recruiting. If / when that changes, I’ll post on my blog letting y’all know.
Have a Happy Turkey Day!
Hi Taugrim, I was wondering if you have looked at Age of Conan at all, they recently went live with a special pvp server and it looks interesting just thought i’d share the news
No, I don’t plan to.
I heard / read a lot of things around the AoC launch that would make me uncomfortable as a customer.
LOL, just found this post on your gaming history. You know, I started in Meridian 59 too. Too funny. I played on server 3 (IIRC) with an anti-PK guild called the Amber Order.
I also ran some PKers, but there were used to infiltrate enemy PK guilds. The politics of that game were quite interesting with a limited resource of guild halls. :)
Small world :)
I originally rolled on Server 200, which was the first non-PK server, in a guild called The Blue Dragons.
Our guild had about 15 actives IIRC, but we had that bigass keep as our guild hall out in the middle of nowhere, can’t even remember the zone name. The guild hall was enormous, but we had to farm to pay the upkeep.
M59 taught me that people *really* value their online gaming relationships. Crazy to me at the time, because I played because it was a game and could hang with my RL best friend.
I did eventually re-roll on a PK server, because I wanted to experience that at “endgame”.
Watched the SW:TOR livestream and i kept trying to figure out where I knew the name Taugrim from. Surprised to learn that it was from Allods, a game where IMO the only great and outstanding aspect was the graphics. I personally got to LV36 as a Melee Healer (became too hard to lvl up at that point) and LV40 on a Necromancer before the Great Exodus of players happened. Your name was big on the forums for some reason, and I just think it’s a shame that greed ruined what could have been an amazing game.
So anyway, I’m probably gonna read some of the content on this blog, looks worth it, and also there isn’t really much else to do at the moment since i’m fully awaiting the official launch of SW:TOR.
People knew me in Allods Online because I wrote the stickied Melee Healer PVP Guide.
It was too bad what happened with AO. It could have been a big-hit F2P game.
Hi Taugrim,
Small world, really. I’ve been reading your SWToR posts since I saw you on gamebreaker, and knew your name was familiar. Turns out, we ended up on the same servers for LoTRO and WAR. In LoTRo, I didn’t PvP too much, but played a Champion named Encaitaruil. In WAR, I was a Sorcerer and a member of the guild Scorn. Now, in SWToR, I have a Valor 62 Assassin, Darkness spec (Powerr’s build), previously Deception.
Just thought I’d say hi – doubtful you remember either of these characters, but wish you the best in SWToR.
Encaitaruil sounds familiar, but it has been 4.5 years :)
Where did you roll for SWTOR?
I rolled on Shadow Hand, PvE. Weird, right, since I was on PvP/RP for all the previous ones.
Forgot to mention my WAR name: Talrithin.
I mostly rolled on this server because of a bunch of RL friends. They also forced me to roll Empire. :[ I wanted my Jedi Shadow.
Hi man!
Im from Brazil and I have played Allods and Rift thanks to u!
In GW2 I will try to thank you ingame.
Cya!
I love the game play in TERA, but I don’t think I’ll be playing much PVP. To me it seems kind of spammy (not as much spam as say Rift) but the PVP Battlegrounds seem like they’re not very well thought out and I have concerns about PVP balance. They disabled BGs because of level 60 abilities breaking PVP.
With games like GW2 coming down the pipe, I don’t see myself trying to sort out PVP in TERA when I can play the much more complex and fulfilling PVP in GW2.
Hrm, I thought you played DAOC back in the day. The name sounded really familiar. Mid/Perc.
I thought I recognized the name. I played a bit with you in WAR (Religun – Witch Hunter) and Aion (Xedex – Sin)as well. Good to see you doing things with Gamebreaker and games in general. You seemed good at it. Good luck.
Dear Taugrim,
thank you for your wonderful blog and videos. I was wondering, If you plan to take a look at “The Secret World”. I have been playing it since the beta and I think the quite unique skills/abilities system would be something, you might enjoy wrapping your head around. Players could certainly use your input. Its pretty complicating, challenging and at the same time fascinating and rewarding.
I’m swamped with RL work atm, so I probably won’t be picking up TSW.
If that changes obviously you’ll know here.
Oops, sorry for the spelling mistakes. I meant:
It’s pretty complicated,…
Taugrim,
I’ve been a fan of your videos for awhile, but I never realized that, back in the day, you used to run with Phoenix Throne on WAR. I was a RR60 something Shaman named Gnashy. Made me smile and remember the good old days of WAR, which I still remember fondly. I didn’t end up leaving until 2011.
You probably would never remember me, but I do remember seeing Taugrim the Swordmaster in Scenarios quite often. We usually lost, but it was always cool seeing “famous” members of the server community.
Once PT merged with Badlands, I only stayed for a little while.
Anyways, reading this gave me some nice memories of WAR while it was great for me. Thanks for that!
Gnashy
Also, nice to see an RPer who also is an avid PvPer.
Heya Gnashy :)
I don’t RP, but RP players are fun to hang around with, and across multiple games I’ve played, the RP-PVP servers had the best community and realm pride…from LOTRO (Landroval), WAR (Phoenix Throne as you know), and SWTOR (Ajunta Pall).
Hey Ed/Taugrim! Love you on Gamebreaker (and thanks for introducing me to Gamebreaker by the way!). Any idea which GW2 server you will be playing on? I’m trying to find a homeserver for my guild (which is far more casual than you all, but its a great group of people) and I was hoping for some tips or ideas on what to look for.
GAMEBREAKER rocks – the team has a lot of talent and insight into MMORPGs, so it’s a pleasure to work with them.
We haven’t selected a server yet. We may wait until after launch to announce where we’ve rolled, so that we can sort out the server populations and such.
\m/ u rock \m/
i love u vids keep up the good work
Hey Taugrim,
I really love the site and all the content you put out. I’ve been following since SWTOR and I keep coming back for your insight into the games.
I’ve playing GW2 now and I’ve really enjoyed your builds. I’ve got limited time to play the game so I always just use your builds as a starting block to tweak.
Keep up the terrific work!
Glad to hear you get value out of my content.
Have fun in GW2!
Hey, have you ever think about playing Neverwinter? probably is the less p2w game of perfect world. If you have already consider it and decided not to play can you tell us why.
Thanks
PS: Old knight Online player here, from Beramus too, karus side!
Was on human side pre knight empire. Insane military foos
LOL I remember that clan!
The name was so distinctive :)
I remember you and reading your guide for knight online. Me and friends played on beramus for few years before quitting. Good guides man. Keep it up
What were your character names? I’m wondering if they’ll ring a bell.
Can you believe it’s been 10 years?
Man MMOs are shi…. don’t event exist any more.