Sunday 15 March 2009

Dat 'Urtz! - Review

And here we are Gud fans, it's time for another countdown of the five things that make Lokax go "Dat 'Urtz!" when he plays. There's been a few changes to this as I've been doing a bit more RvR this week, two items have dropped out, the LV Wipe runs (simply right now because N'kari was resettable for us finally) and terrain bugs (it'd be sixth) but it hasn't bothered me as much this week. This is now the aftermath of 1.2, so without further ado.. Why don't we take a look.

1) AOE Stacking
This has become a major focus point over the last week with small teams of engineers and primarily Bright Wizards (I'm assuming of course that Sorcs and Magi can do much the same) able to just obliterate warbands by stacking aoe on a single spot, most of the time without even being in sight of the enemy, simply hiding behind a wall and dropping it. I won't waste my time with a rant about it too much, I'll just advise you to check out the post over at Stunty Stomper regarding it. Thulf has said it better than I ever could.

2) Crowd Controlled out the game
I've actually taken to looking at my "Unstoppable" buff I get once I get CC'd (not when.. 'cause I will) and I think I've realised what one of the biggest issues with the crowd control system is. The Unstoppable buff takes affect the moment you are CC'd so if you are rooted for 10 seconds and it is not broken then you will only be 10 seconds away from another root or heavy CC. Now I might be wrong, I need to check it, but I think snaring a target is on a separate immunity timer (if it has one at all) so you could then be snared from a distance making it all but impossible for melee classes to get to you. It doesn't help we (black orcs) have one CC breaker in juggernaut which is on a 60 second cool down.
Solution: All classes CC immunity timers should start the second the crowd control is broken. Also Mythic, give us a proper counter to crowd control for ALL classes. At least there is a happy ending to the story, hopefully, according to the State Of The Game post: CC will be getting a look at "Our primary focus over the next few months will be the Crowd Control concerns and we will continue to investigate and fix issues we find with this type of ability. "

3) Being hurt through walls
Don't want to go over the same ground but it's probably worse now with AoE stacking through walls. Just fecken fix this crap Mythic, it's getting very close to the top of my list.
Solution: See last weeks Dat 'Urtz

4) (Please, no) More dots!
I'm all to familiar with DOTs being a former WoW Warlock, but the rate I seem to pickup DOTs in WAR is silly, I go near a couple of Bright Wizards or Engineers and I walk away with more DOT's on me than someone suffering from the measles. With weapon procs giving off dots and the nerf in resist effectiveness you can simply be dotted to death then knocked back/snared and there is absolutely bugger all you can do about it since there's very little way to remove any hex's debuffs or ailments that you are suffering from and those that do can only remove one on a long cool down.
Solution: Implement more core abilities for classes to remove DOTs, add a proper 'cure' potion for removing them or/and remove the dot affect from certain weapons so you you will not be covered in them. Though those classes that make use of DOTs the most MUST be given a buff in return for the nerf (probably direct damage).

5) The missing content
Still waiting on any news on our missing 2/3Rd's of our End Game. How long until a website or magazine picks up that 6 months down the line and WAR still hasn't added it's end game properly yet? C'mon guys, focus should be on adding the content that was removed before adding the stuff folks didn't ask for (not to say that Darkness Falls won't be good, but I'd rather have my cities there first)
Solution:Errr.. add them? Give us an update? There's at least some concept art of Eight Peaks floating around so they must have something still left of it before it was cut.

So that's my five thingies that are 'urting me right now in WAR. Wot's yours?