Mmmmm Gud

/BRB

2011-01-18T12:11:00.000Z

Well I've started a new blog named /BRB. It's based on gaming, MMO's and random crap alongside it that I find amusing and/or particularly interesting to myself (and maybe others). Mmmmm Gud will return with a couple of updates though as I found some bits and pieces (armour sets mainly) that I never posted so the blog will get an update but my other random writings and musings can be found at /brb

http://slashbrb.blogspot.com/

Da last stomp.

2011-01-09T17:35:00.000Z

Well for those who follow my twitter or know me in game you may already have gotten the idea if not the confirmation pretty much that my time in WAR has now reached its end.

I've spent many, many days of my life playing this game and enjoyed most of it without a doubt, but there always comes a time where you sit there and think "Maybe I need a break" and having a break over christmas, combined with life being a bit busier before hand meant my game time was minimal.. After this I realised I didn't actually miss the game and had no desire to login. My sub was actually cancelled three months ago (and runs out the 19th of January) as I was still disgusted at the customer support provided after the Tyrant cloak farce (read the back posts if you want) and realised I never resubbed when my rage calmed. This made it easier to just decide that it's time to call it a day when I looked at my sub renewal date.

I like WAR, the actual game is very good but with all games you play there's burn out when you have limited choices in what to do (again see back posts on depth). Combine this with sadly the neglect that some classes receive, the abysmal bug ridden mess some parts of the game have been left in (Vulture Lord as a prime example) and the glacier like speed it takes Mythic to realise that there are problems with aspects and then start to make changes (see bombing and melee healers). I guess limiting myself to one class that had the middle finger shown to it just after release and completely ignored for the following two years has burnt me as well, the mechanic (plan) and mastery is so busted that I'm sick of trying to shout for help.

WAR isn't dying, in fact I'll say that in the next 6 months once the Rift (and yeah, I'm going to give it a shot) hype has died down and people start to unsub that a lot of subs will come back. I'm actually sad a bit since I also missed out on the chance to be a core tester where I feel I could have helped, I would have still applied but with my heart not being in the game, sadly I can't justify potentially wasting Mythics time.

I'll be back to WAR, that much is a given... I'm looking to come back in the summer or just after once I've had a break.. Sometimes getting a break is the medicine you need to come back to a game... But whether I stay again I don't know yet, a lot has to get done in WAR to polish it back up and make it appealing to those players who play the minority classes.

I'll be keeping my blog up here as it is in preparation for a return. I won't convert it into a gaming or a rift blog as people still check this blog for Black Orc bits and pieces however I may pop a link up if I do decide to make a new blog and I will return periodically to this one and also check my email here Mmmmgud@gmail.com (yeah it's 4 M's on the email) if anyone wants to get back in contact at all.

As for my Twitter feed, I'm not sure what to do as I'm not convinced people want to read about my rift thoughts but I'll see, I may just make a new one but I guess people can filter me out if they don't want to... I think I'll be looking at more gaming orientated stuff rather than just Rift.. At least until I return to WAR.

Finally though I want to thank Mythic, in particularly Andy Belford, Keaven and Steven Engle for being fantastic folks (and I'll still be watching KSitM and also all the other WAR bloggers though kudos to Bootae, Werit and Grimnir.

I'll be back to check out the game in the summer/autumn so until then, keep the WAAAAAAAAAAGH going!

Let it snow, let it snow....

2010-12-22T22:28:00.000Z

Well time to take a wee winter break. Far too much to do over the next couple of weeks so I won't even attempt to get a blog post out (and right now I'm struggling as it is). Just want to wish everyone that reads and all those folks who contribute to the comments a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Take care gitz and I'll see you all in the new year!

Steven and Keaven in the morning (and at other random times)

2010-12-15T20:35:00.000Z

Steven Engle and Keaven mumblemumblesomething (sorry mate, don't know your surname) are two developers on Warhammer Online and both were on the UStream videocast that Mythic done a few weeks ago before the launch of 1.4 (which was awesome by the way). They've branched out a bit and during Tuesday and Thursday mornings (0830 East Coast US time) they have been doing a streaming videocast.

Now what makes this great is nt only how well they both work together as hosts but the actual discussions they have. It's not about WAR (which may make the odd mention) but about MMO's and those things in the MMO Culture that most of us subscribe to, in fact they had an excellent piece about hybrid classes in MMO's in 1.02. It's not long (only 20 minutes) and they do record the episodes (normally *cough*) so you can watch them later.

I whole heartedly recommend checking them out or watching the recording, even follow them on twitter @keaven and @steven_engle to catch them with the ad hoc shows (last Friday night was a laugh with a few of us jabbering away with Keaven). SO if you have any interest in MMO's or the culture that surrounds them. Please do check them out, you won't be disappointed.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/keaven-and-steven-in-the-am

A question of depth

2010-12-14T14:10:00.000Z

So I've been struggling to balance work, real life and play time recently so my activity in WAR has been quite low unfortunately. Normally I get the 'twitch' to login and crack some skulls or go wondering off in search of something new and interesting however sadly the twitch just hasn't been there.

Now don't get me wrong, WAR is still my game of choice, I'm not running off anywhere soon but right now there's nothing grabbing me back to WAR. I'll log on, hit a scenario then pretty much give up due to the MIA matchmaking system which still puts full RR80+ premades against low RR pugs. I've been unfortunate in my warbands recently that we're hitting Morale bomb warbands most of the time. My record stands at having 10 damaging morales hit me in a 2 second window which isn't mitigatable (making a mockery of the increased survival rate) and basically ends up being which side clicks faster and/or has more full Sov MDPS to drain multiple sides. For all the whining of 1k1 it still doesn't help against a rank 1 morale.

But that's just the evolution of battle now that standard bomb groups have taken the hit, someone will find a new way and it's only a matter of time before this spreads onto more servers and becomes more common amongst premade warbands (which are the standard on Norn). So lets move on anyway away from that. If I log into WAR late at night after work there's little for me to do now, I've hit a lot of unlocks already so I'm left looking at killing 100,000 mobs or blindly looking for an exploration unlock which may or may not exist and if it does may or may not actually be broken anyway - so currently unlocks are out for me. Scenarios and RvR as said are become frustrating, even roaming is becoming a chore due to ganking, adds or just unkillable warrior priests or doks or my pet hate... Kiting AM's (I HATE YOU!).

I'd like something I can do in WAR which doesn't go down the inevitable path of rage due to bugs or just unfun situations... I hate saying it, and I have in the past so apologies for sounding like a broken record but there's just nothing to actually DO in WAR in downtime. This isn't WoW or LotRO so I can understand a lack of fishing or archaeology but what about the crafting skills we do have? Why can't there be more to them, no siege weapon making? You could gather resources such as ore or wood (Mmmmm wud) or smith armour and weapons, scribe scrolls.... Heck I'd even like to do some fishing or archaeology, something to waste some time in so I have a reason to login and not get pissed off with the game.

I dont want WAR to be WoW, LotRO or some such, it's WAR.... But at least those games have more to do other than the main objective. WAR you RvR, everything else is left over, buggy or just plain doesn't work.The problem is that nothing will happen over night, in fact nothing will happen for a while because the game needs RvR to survive and rightfully that should be the primary focus. I'd like to hear about more things happening in WAR, more new stuff coming in but I can't see anything ahead of us now that makes me want to say "That's cool".

So in your downtime, when scenarios and RvR have become a chore/grind more than something what do you do?

The slightly more selfish Mmmmm Christmaaaaagh List

2010-12-06T14:57:00.000Z

So in my previous post I had a Christmas List for WAR, once which was for the benefit of everyone. Sadly I forgot about adding Crafting to the mix as I think this is a horribly under looked part of the game by Mythic and deserves a lot more attention so I wish I'd remembered about it.

So what about a more personal list which to be brutally honest is much more selfish over what I'd love to see for my own benefit rather than the games.As per the previous one, this is not in any particular order.

1. Wot ever 'appened to our CC?
A few patches back there was supposed to be a revamp of the tanks crowd control actions, this came in conjunction with staggers and more immunity timers. A lot of tanks believed they would receive new CC actions but this never came and the best CC in game (the stagger) was limited to two tanks, the chosen and the knight... Both of which come with an AoE stagger (and potentially a single target though can't remember right now). I waited patiently a few patches but have decided that either I and many other tanks didn't read it right or they never bothered with looking at the other tanks. Give the other tanks a stagger even if it's single target but having only one tank class on each side having staggers (and providing the best form of group buffs with auras) doesn't balance the desirability of those classes in a warband compared to other tanks.

2. Da Boss is Da Wurst!
I've posted about this a while back but the boss tree for Black Orcs is abysmal. It's a buffing/aoe tree which features such amazing buffs as a group armour buff (so long as they're in 20 feet) for a short duration which doesn't stack with other armour buffs which are better. WAAAAGH! is just out right crap now after the old AoE nerf and the other actions and tactics are mostly useless with the only decent part of this tree being Big Brawlin'. Fix plz.

3. Mechanic... Still.. Painful.. and... Clunky...
We're almost at the six month mark and as I predicted we'd see maybe one change and that'd be it.. The worst mechanic in the game which actually hinders your rather than helping you. NO player I have ever spoken with would swap mechanics. It's downright dreadful, still breaks in lag and is a constant source of frustration by the Black Orc and Swordmaster. If you have a class mechanic in game which makes players say "I don't want to play this class because of it" then you know you need to look at a new mechanic, not just putting sticky plasters over it.

4.Tyrant back piece...
Now that the older RvR gear is easier to come by due to reduced costs and easier access to the loot rolls isn't it about time that they applied this to the PvE gear? I'm still fuming over the whole "tough shit" policy given by Mythic over an honest accident when the wrong person ended up with the loot and with the collapse of my VL group and lack of time in the evenings now it looks like I will never end up back there to find it, how about making players able to buy the cloaks for the masks and some scarabs? How many people still really goto VL other than for the glyph sets and after over 20 runs I still don't have the back piece... Isn't it a little bit unfair? How about adding in the same for Lost Vale and the city dungeons? Give tokens that drop off the bosses that when saved up will let you buy the pieces instead of relying on the archaic random roll mechanic for one class.

5. Remove renown ticks from resource carriers.
Hate to say it as I take full benefit right now and it's a long, long road to 100 but it's not exactly fair that a load of players can sit just outside the warcamp but still within range of the guards, go AFK and leech renown while contributing as a player in the lake so your side either doesn't get AAO or because there's mass numbers of AFK'ers then your realm gives the other side AAO. Really makes no sense. Last night in Praag for a couple of hours we seen piles of destro sitting idle just outside the warcamp as we struggled against more numbers in the lakes but they had AAO so we were getting zerged by more people fighting but they got the bonus of having less numbers... Work that one out...

Anyway that's my five right now and I could probably go off on a rant about others but really it's not productive, I like to try and offer a fix where I can but it'd be nice to see if other people also feel the same way for a few of these items...

Mmmmm Christmas List

2010-12-02T14:55:00.000Z

Well the end of the year creeps closer and so Christmas is just around the corner for most of us, so what better time than to put out my Warhammer Online christmas list much as I did last year. Now to make it a bit more constructive I've gone for fairly neutral things that would benefit people in Warhammer, not just me personally. It's in no particular order but I limited it to five of them. So without further ado...

OI SANTAAAAAGH!
HEY GIT FACE.... ITZ GETTIN' BLOODY COLD N ALL WHITE 'N' STUFF. MAKES IT EASIER TO SEE WHEN A STUNTIE IS DEAD OR SLEEPIN COZ RED STUFF SHOWS BETTER ON DA WHITE STUFF.

ANYWAY. GIMME STUFF OR I'LL SMASH YER FACE IN SINCE YER PROBABLY A BIG STUNTIE WITH THAT BEARDY THING ON YER GOB.

1. Weather Effects
I'm still a huge fan of weather in a game, it brings a world alive and adds variety to a bland landscape. It's odd that the Marshes of Madness has the exact same weather as Eataine. Yes there's a couple of zones with snowflakes falling, but that's the generic snow zones you get in MMO's. Give us rain through Praag, howling gales through Kadrin Valley and fog and damp in the mentioned Marshes of Madness. It doesn't have to be forced onto everyone, give us the option for weather but I still hold out for the day where the world feels alive and not trapped in a glass jar.

2. New RvR lakes
For two years we've been battling through the same 9 zones with the same look, the same places to 'hide' and the same bits of pathway to get stuck on inexplicably. There's four tier 4 zones unused, commonly known as the side zones, allowing some sort of zone capture mechanic could be nice, perhaps once the middle zone is captured it unlocks one of the others in the pairing randomly instead of the same ones each time. It's also be nice to visit some of the old RvR lakes for T4 battles. I liked Barak Varr in particular, maybe it's just good memories of battles there but I really liked the style and theme of it, kept the place interesting. Maybe we could get a special T4 version one day, just lock the warcamps so players can't get out to an empty zone and leave the only exit a portal back to IC/Alt or into the lake. T4 players only of course.

3. Mix up the scenarios
We've had the same ones repeated a lot and I think it's time to mix them up. When they first came out people thought we'd say the vast majority if not all the other scenarios pop up that didn't make the cut in the weekend warfront.. I think we've seen 4 not including the special ones and I know a lot of folks that don't queue for certain scenarios (Temple of Isha in particular) due to the length of time they can take even when dominating the opposition. Mythic also still need to look at guard ranges as some are very unbalanced in regards to aggro ranges. Praag seems the worst for this as I've seen Order within a few feet of the guards and not get touched where I've been a fair distance and still gotten whacked (and not because someone else pulled). Anyway Mythic.. Revisit what's there and bring back some others that never got a chance to come back. While going through them though, I'd also like to make a mechanic in scenarios to avoid one side spawn camping the utter hell out of the other one and ignoring the entire point of the scen (like capturing the flag) just to grind out renown. A quick win should benefit as much as a 15 minute grind on pugs.

4. Matchmaking in Scenarios
Cross server, visible ranking system and scenario only gear... It's a lot to ask but I am confident this would kick interest back into WAR for a lot of people. Allow servers to fight against other servers with a global and server ranking system, setup teams (small cost of course) and allow 6 players to register for a team, you can either queue for ranked scenarios against other teams from other servers in a 6v6 battle, or queue for general scenarios using a matchmaking system. The arena style (lets not mess around pretending it's anything else) would allow players to earn tokens for scenario only gear, it has unique looks so can be used in the appearance system but will not provide bonuses unless you're in a scenario to prevent the teams dominating ORvR and to keep the gear level from going crazy. It'd be a paid booster expansion but I bet a very popular one.

5. Re-itemisation
It's a lot of work, but there's a LOT of gear out there with dreadful or pointless stats on them. I think one of the early Black Orc chests you can pickup has more willpower on it than anything else if I remember rightly. Now it'll take forever to get through each quest and influence reward but I think they can start off with tier 4 sets. With the new establishment of offensive and defensive sets and each T4 set having a PvE equivalent (annihilator and ruin, sentinel and conqueror, invader and dark promise, warlord and (almost) tyrant) I think going back and itemizing the sets so that RvR could drop defensive sets and PvE offensive versions. Balance them out amongst all classes better and you then have a more comfortable level of gear progression and options for all classes.

The Lonely Borc Club

2010-11-28T12:18:00.000Z

No posts this week of which I'm sorry for that. I was sitting trying to think and motivate myself to write something but it's been a fairly hectic week at work and I really just wanted to chill for the weekend. I think one of the problems is that a lot of friends have now left the game and although the guild is still going strong and potentially is as strong as ever when people you have levelled up with, been through the first city dungeons all the way to killing colossus decide that WAR is no longer for them then the drive you have drops as well.

I'm still RR80 as well and know that once I hit RR81 the real grind starts and I'm really not looking forward to it with the more limited time I have now. I've been into two Skaven instances, both of which was double the number of Order to Destruction so it was pointless trying anything, normally had there been a group of us then we would have given it a shot but on my own, I won't bother. Heck, even on Friday night I sat down with a few beers to get something going and ended up just pugging EC for most of the night till I got so bored of it I just had to log out, that was also because there wasn't a lot of guildies on due to a RL meet up, but we used to get a good group going on a Friday night which was always a laugh, though with them now experiencing a cataclysm I think I can pretty much wipe out those nights as well now.

It always amazes me that really for a lot of people in a game it's the community which makes it for them, not the game itself. If you find yourself with a good bunch of people that you get on well with and can have a laugh and chat with then it makes even the buggiest game a lot more enjoyable. To be honest there's plenty of folks in the guild I can group with (although our healers have disappeared so balanced groups are a bit tricky outwith warband nights), so again some of that comes down to me though I guess being used to playing with set people and knowing exactly what each other does without even needing to speak on vent or TS has spoiled me.

There's also a bit of frustration right now with TTK. I loved being a huge mountain but now I realised that quite simply I get ignored as it's not worth the time to try and kill a tank, meanwhile I'm sitting hitting on a WP that is completely ignoring me as I'm doing hardly any damage, my debuffs are on long durations and he's immune to silence most of the time due to other CC effects kicking in. So I literally feel fairly useless right now, however this is also due to my spec and setup so I won't get overly frustrated.

One of the things I have to admit I'm disappointed the most in is the scenario matchmaking system. It's either a hugely simplistic and basic mechanic or it's broken. Yesterday I ran 10 pugged EC's, 8 of them were against premade groups with high renown players. Now either there wasn't enough destro premades running (our guild had two at the time) or the matchmaking just looks at something such as Rank and Renown Rank to give you the rating and then tries to fit you in somewhere and if nothing is found around your RR then just chucks you into the first available instance, and for the record I think I lost all 10 of my first instances and was still getting premades against pugs so either those premades from the best guilds on the server with the best players were losing a lot to be ranked beside pugs or really it doesn't work very well within the confines of a single server. I would rather wait a little bit longer for a scenario pop and know I'd get a balanced fight than get instant pops where I know I wont get any renown or fun.

Which nicely leads me onto what I think could be a huge injection of OMG for WAR... One which I have been against for a long time but now believe it's needed for the game. A proper "arena" style system which uses queues for all servers in the game, with a visible rating system for your team. A currency/token system which rewards you gear that can only be used in the arenas (imagine skaven fighting pits where they reward you with warpstone fragments that can be used to purchase better gear, though if you go out to the world the warpstone loses it's power rendering the armour and weapons useless other than for appearance *hint hint*). To me right now that would be awesome, it would give premade groups something a lot better to aim for rather than farming pugs and hopefully would give pugs a bit of a break from being constantly farmed in scenarios for 15 minutes as the objectives are ignored.

Ach well, I'll get back into the swing of things for WAR, need to find some motivation again for it as all I see right now is a huge grind ahead of me.....

What a Week for WAR

2010-11-22T00:00:00.000Z

It's been potentially the biggest week for Warhammer Online since launch and I've not posted a soddin' thing so apologies for that but life has been busy with the launch of a new project at work and weekend just seems to have conspired against me to sit down and get time to write. On the upside I have a few good ideas for filler posts which you should see each week now, at least it'll tide me on until the new year.

So what has this week brought us? Well the big news was the release of 1.4 which I have to admit was much smoother than anticipated so a big WAAAAGH to the Mythic team for putting the hours in to get it going and we also had a great Dev Q&A on uStream which was very well done as well, much preferred the laid back style and felt much more chatty and fun. I hope to see more of these soon, preferably on a Friday or Thursday when I don't have work the next day *hint hint*

Back onto 1.4 though, and yeah it launched well, smoother than expected but not without some concerns. The main one that I think everyone is talking about though is the speed of the campaign, it's actually going much faster than before, to the extent that I doubt we'll see a 5* city again until they adjust the amount of resources required/produced. Also there seems to be a campaign bug which lets you capture bo's and keeps even when the zone is locked and even the whole pairing which was really confusing.

The RR80-81 Renown increase is really sneaky as well, gives you an OMG LOTZ O' PURPLEZ ON MAH SCREEN!!! which gives you one heck of a rush to see a 20k scenario, the sudden drop to normality will hit soon at 81 though and then the real grind begins.

So what will yet come for WAR? Well we know 1.4.1 is a bug fix patch so I'm not holding out for anything exciting really, after that I'd really like to see a focus on balancing classes a bit more again. WP/DoK are still the apex healers without a shadow of a doubt, the others don't even come close, best heals and best survivability will trump anything sadly. I'd also like to see more care and thought into the other less viable careers but I'd prefer that other classes get nerfed down rather than buffed as continually buffing of classes will leave certain ones way far behind and less enjoyable to play. It's a fine line with balancing classes but I hope that Mythic open up discussions with players on how best to tackle the changes.

The Skaven themselves are offering an interesting option to go alongside a warband but we certainly would never get a player to change to one due to limited usefulness. Currently we've found the Gutter Runner to be the best due to the passive scouting he offers players in the area so there's no need to sacrifice a warband member for it. Being able to see a warband sneaking up on you has saved us and turned a rout into a victory a few times already. I would however like to see a counter spying mechanism so if you have a skaven 'switch off' his scouting by using an ability he can plant false information making other skaven unable to feed back as well.

There's interesting times ahead for WAR that's for sure, if this expansion has been a success and the players returning to try it out for free choose to stay then we're onto a winner for sure.

The other items in 1.4 that we'll see

2010-11-13T11:58:00.000Z

Well by all accounts if you're a WAR player you know about the 1.4 release coming on Thursday and there has been a lot of noise over Doomflayer and Warpforged armour sets as well as the new scenario weapons for 81, 90 and 100 but what about between those ranks?

Well on the PTS last night with an organised guild 3groups (well as organised as we can get on a Friday night) we went out out to the lakes to test it out. I wont go into the detail, my feedback can be found in the dev discussion forum but I was happy to discover that decent loot drops for the in between portions of those ranks, the scary thing is that the RR80 greens are better (item v item) than sovereign, however they don't come with bonuses but it should be a good way to introduce new parts into your armour rather than waiting 10 ranks thankfully. Here's a couple of screenshots I grabbed of loot that dropped in RvR (and thankfully someone put some greens on the auction house). I didn't see any weapons drop but I'll come to that in a minute.

Thanquols Invasion Bag Loot
Now we know that gold bags on the second and third boss drop doomflayer and warpforged respectively however the green bags on boss one (there's no gold), blue from boss two and purple from boss three also have loot inside them, so lets take a look at the hidden shinies:

All these items seem to fit a very nice gap in the gear progression (everyone like progression!). The weapon is very nice as well, giving you an upgrade over the RR81 weapons but letting you save tokens for the Doomflayer ones. I'm not sure if armour drops in the blue bags or if weapons drop in the others but I'm sure someone will mention it or we'll get a better idea closer to the time. In the meantime of course, I'm sitting here wondering if I'll be running about in green items again for the first time in about 2 years

Breakdown of the stats for Black Orc Doomflayer and Warpforged sets

2010-11-12T09:20:00.002Z

Seems that 90% of my posts recently have been about the sets but such is life when new stuff comes out.

We've gone over the graphics for the sets and it seems to have split the community into a love/hate though I think more dislike it to be perfectly honest, ach well, we always have our appearance system anyway so it's not a huge deal. I think my main annoyance with it is the Doomflayer boots, all other sets from Conqueror onwards have knee and thigh guards so having exposed legs (admittedly with a manky pair of old trousers on) doesn't seem to fit the look with the rest of the armour being all metal bolted on.

But anyway, here are potentially the final stats for the sets. They still don't have resists on them so I guess this was a choice made to prevent the soft cap being obliterated. While the offensive sets look good the major drawback is a lack in crit reduction or initiative on them, you can end up with a 40% chance to be critted for wearing full Doomflayer (without accesories though).

You can fit at least three piece sovereign into the sets as well with the back/belt/jewel in place however the high level cloaks are quite nice as well. In all honesty you can check all this stuff out on the PTS but it's nice to see out of game as well.

DOOMFLAYER

Defensive will give you the following stats without accessories, weapons/shields, renown abilities and talismans
Str: 313
Tough: 510 (-102 DPS and -16 DPS from fortitude)
WS: 196
Init: 293 (10.1% chance to be critically hit)
Wounds: 788
Armour: 5733
Block: 15%

Offensive will give you the following stats without accessories, weapons/shields, renown abilities and talismans
Str: 461
Tough: 391 (-86.6 DPS and -0DPS from fortitude)
WS: 378
Init: 123 (40.7% chance to be critically hit)
Wounds: 747
Armour: 5733
Block: 10%
Damage Bonus: 108.2 DPS
Armour Pen: 18%
Critical Hit Bonus: 6%

WARPFORGED

Defensive will give you the following stats without accessories, weapons/shields, renown abilities and talismans
Str: 350
Tough: 595 (-119 DPS and -24 DPS from fortitude)
WS: 196
Init: 335 (5.9% chance to be critically hit)
Wounds: 834
Armour: 6659
Block: 17%

Offensive will give you the following stats without accessories, weapons/shields, renown abilities and talismans
Str: 546
Tough: 433(-86.6 DPS and -0DPS from fortitude)
WS: 424
Init: 123 (40.7% chance to be critically hit)
Wounds: 784
Armour: 6659
Block: 10%
Damage Bonus: 133.2 DPS
Armour Pen: 20.2%
Critical Hit Bonus: 8%

Doomflayer and Warpforged armour graphics

2010-11-11T00:26:00.001Z

Well the PTS came up, I managed to take a couple of screenshots then my client crashed and I can't get logged back in as the test realm is full. So you will get the graphics today and time (and the PTS) permitting tomorrow I'll grab screenshots of the full stats for both sets for reference again.

One key thing, the sets DON'T come with belts or back pieces. The rr98 belt is actually the same style as the Warpforged so we can assume it goes together (graphically), but I didn't see a belt that went with the Doomflayer set in my backpack so the Black Orc looks a bit slimmer than normal.

I like the Warpforged set and even the Doomflayer set looks nice however the helm I don't know if I love or hate. I love how it's a big, clunky bit of metal with spikes and bits welded on, but I can't seem to shake the image of a droid from Star Wars when I see it. I think playing around with some dyes could net some interesting results, but in the meantime here we go.

Doomflayer (no belt, no cloak)

Warpforged (with rr98 belt, no cloak)

RR100 Weapon and Shield graphic updates

2010-11-08T23:42:00.001Z

Straight from the PTS I present the Black Orc RR100 weapons. I love the Deathbringa of Mork and it's glowy red particle effect (as a side note, green glow = offensive, red glow = defensive so it's easier to tell the type of weapon equipped). There's no shield particle effect and the RR100 two handers have the same skin as do both shields. I guess they have time yet to change that so no rush, but hope they will have different looks.

Orc mounts for the Personality pack

2010-11-06T11:26:00.000Z

They're easily visible in the PTS but they are also beside the three royal crest mounts, so just to make them stand out a bit, these are the three that it appears you can get with the Personality pack. The orange looks confirmed at least due to it showing in the teeny pic of a Black Orc on the site.

I'm more likely to go with the Black/Red mount to replace my Manticore but I am really tempted with the Black/Green as well, just looks very warpstone themed. But no rush yet to decide. I'm just glad that I get my mount Pork back (he's named after the Orcish god of boars).

Snotling love

2010-11-03T22:22:00.000Z

Well they released the first set of WAR Microtransactions. Ok, got a Snotling pet and they're seriously cool items. They might be a bit buggy with not moving on other players screens but I'm sure that will be fixed. Hopefully these are just test items and we will start to see more and more things such as these (GIEF WYVERN!). I don't mind spending a few quid on them, it's a hobby, I've spent more on something for a hobby which is a lot worse so meh :P

Anyway, here's Lokax and Tat the Snotling :) (only one person that reads the blog will get the reference... /cheer L)

Quick summary of Borc changes in the 1.4 notes

2010-11-03T08:07:00.003Z

So the patch notes are now up. I'll quickly summarise any changes that affect Black Orcs for ease of reading:

As you can see, Black Orcs didn't even need a tool tip change this time, we didn't get any item changes and certainly no ability tweaks which is a bit disappointing for potentially the biggest WAR patch yet. Oh well, there's always 1.4.1 but at least we know we're balanced.

Couple o' thingz

2010-11-02T20:52:00.002Z

First of all, a huge thanks and gratz on a good guild mate MrSpanky the choppa for not only reaching RR80 but also on making a seriously nice banner for me.. Gogo Spanks!

In other random bits of news I've not managed to sit down for a proper test of 1.4 after the first European one but some of it is a bit of WAR burnout as well (not helped by the Tyrant cloak incident). I'm also rapidly running out of random sets to collect so guess I'll be starting to show the more common ones and even open my collection of items up for browsing. I have a couple of other posts in my head but I need to get them onto ePaper really as my stockpile has almost run out.

I'll get the brawler guide out within the next two weeks, it's my own mission right now, hopefully it'll be finished up this weekend and I can schedule a post for Monday or so, but no promises. Learnt not to do that from the past.

In other news, someone kindly posted the exact block formula up on my block post so that will be added to make it clearer and the RR81 two handers got updated so edited the post to say what the new DPS is.

Anyway, time to chill with a cuppa for a bit and work out something to do for tonight so have fun all and see you on the battle field.

Oh and seriously Mythic... You've introduced an ability called "Thwap" and then "Thwap!Thwap!Thwap!" Arrrghhh! I don't want ratmen things Thwapping me!!!

Infiltrators (Grime Covered) Set for Black Orcs

2010-11-01T21:00:00.000Z

The Infiltrator non-set comes from Saccelum Dungeon as a series of green repairable items. They drop as "Grime Covered" items and once repaired they become Infiltrators. There is no set bonus to them, they just have a common appearance and share the same name.

Decent looking pieces though not a fan of the helm. The gloves and boots are nice pieces and they come in a decent red and grey colour system so it all matches up nicely. Anyway, enjoy!

Doomflayer Offensive set

2010-10-30T09:00:00.002+01:00

It's only two weeks late or something so don't worry. Also I have apparently managed to not take screenshots of the Warpforged Offensive so they will be going up later as well, plus it lets me pad out another post I guess...

Good looking set, chest piece is an absolute beast with the extra crit damage on it as well

How to convert block rating to block chance

2010-10-29T12:29:00.001+01:00

I wanted to work out how much block the RR100 shields would provide (potentially saving me renown points on block rating) so I worked it out quickly. It's probably already posted on Warhammer Alliance or on another blog somewhere but meh... was too lazy to look for it and brain needed a work out.

10 block rating on a shield = a 0.57% chance to block

This is a rough number but it works out pretty much dead on what block chance you get.

Tactics, Renown and +block% items add on after the block rating is worked out, so a 500 block rating shield with +2% block bonus would give you a base block chance of 30.5%. If you had a +10% block tactic on that would then give you 40.5% block.

Edit: Thank you to Anonymous who posted the following in the comments. It's the actual formula and gives you the exact block rate, even if it is a bit more numbery

The calculation works for characters that are level 40, as the equation factors in level per block rating.

Block Rating / (((Level * 7.5)+50)*5) = Block(*100) = %

So for example, at level 40 this works out to be Block Rating/1750.

New RR81 Black Orc Weapons

2010-10-27T22:23:00.002+01:00

On the latest PTS build the RR81 weapons are available. These require royal insignias and open up the doomflayer.

One handed equipment costs 730 Captain Emblems and 430 Royal Insignias, the two handers cost 1460 Captain Emblems and 860 Royal Insignias. Though keep in mind you can buy the bauble of Vice (trophy) as soon as you get 430 Royal Insignias so you don't (currently) need to wait until you're RR81.

To note one thing though, the two hander DPS is currently out of whack, it's around the same level as Invader so it's likely a bug since the other items are in line with slightly above royal

Edit: Two handers now have 112.6 dps

We've accepted your mistakes Mythic, why won't you accept ours?

2010-10-24T22:47:00.001+01:00

So I was at Tomb of the Vulture Lord, 8th boss.. kill number 22. For the first time in 22 runs I've finally seen the Black Orc cloak drop, everyone is cheering on Team Speak - Finally, Lokkie gets his back piece.

I click on need.

Need Rolls
You roll 75
The Chosen main tank rolls 75

"What the fu... I clicked pass"

It's a tie

You roll 63
The Chosen main tank rolls 65

.............

Ach well, we can always CSR it, use a wild card it's no problem... Except the Mythic servers don't have the wild card system (for those who don't/didn't play the EU servers back in the GOA days the CSR's offered a three a year wild card system to allow you to undo mistakes such as these, or incorrect server transfers, no questions asked, they just let you know if you had run out. I get a canned CSR response basically telling me they don't offer this service, and that if I want it I should leave feedback on the Herald. For the first time in my 11 years of playing MMO's I almost went off on a flame on the CSR. I resisted, deciding instead to post something here.

In Mythics defense, yes they have a "Need on use" feature, we forgot it wasn't on, we only go for the 8th boss, to get two cloaks and three Mortis pages and we wanted to get done as quickly as possible. However we also had to put up with the ever bugged out 5th boss causing us to reset the instance as usual, a bugged out 6th boss and the usual warping trash, unhittable mobs and getting stuck on the terrain. The general frustration, annoyance and muttering that happens every week which after 16 months you'd think they'd have fixed by now. It's not actually fun to do anymore but we promised one another we'd keep doing it until we had everything we wanted from it. Friends stick together.

We have accepted this instance is a buggy pile of crap which will never be fixed, we've accepted dreadful server performance and unbalanced careers, we've accepted for the last two and a bit years now that the game isn't perfect but we enjoy it when it works well and that is why we play it, we're loyal to Warhammer because it sometimes brings great moments and fantastic RvR. All I'm asking for now in return Mythic is that you look at your customer service you offer and think long and hard about accepting OUR mistakes from time to time as loyal, paying players because right now, I'm going to check when my subscription ends.

Dis is a GREEN blog now!

2010-10-23T13:29:00.000+01:00

Alrighty, working out the kinks with the new layout, PLEASE let me know if there's anything wrong with it. I decided to go with a green theme reflecting Greenskins and Warpstone. The background image will change and I'm rubbish at banners so the title will as well (though feel free to submit something gud!).

So aye, if you see wonky things over the next 24 hours then don't worry, it's just me breaking stuff.

New Twitter function added to the blog

2010-10-23T11:01:00.003+01:00

Got a nice green Twitter button down at the end of the post now which should in theory allow you to immediately send any posts to your twitter account. Still messing around with it so should be ready to roll soon.

Bollocks, it doesn't shorten the URL and for some reason the standard twitter widget thingy on here doesn't show up, must be something in the CSS but gork knows wut...

Edit: Actually on saying that I've just had a look at the new template designer and it's quite nice, think it's time the Blog got a new coat of paint earlier than intended.

No changes so far for Black Orcs in 1.4

2010-10-22T12:06:00.003+01:00

I took some time out to go through each individual action and compare it to live. Since the only template available is RR70 and I'm RR80 on live I had the free mastery point so I didn't get exact results. But all damage was within a couple of points so I'm taking that as they mastery point. If the PTS has no sneaky Black Orc changes then at least I now also have a base level of damage to compare things to which is always useful.

There's still a lot of time to go until 1.4 so there might be changes coming yet other than being a bit bigger. I have to admit I'm not even seeing any tool tip changes this time so don't hold out for marauder/magus/engineer sweeping changes for us but I'll keep people updated as and when the new builds arrive.

(oh and the DPS sets will be posted up later on today.. ish)

Preview of the Doomflayer and Warpforged defensive armour sets

2010-10-20T21:26:00.003+01:00

So as a quick follow up, here is the armour sets for Doomflayer and Warpforged. I'll add the offensive ones tomorrow as well as a couple of nicknack's that I found when I get some more time. For some reason the Warpforged chest pieces weren't available, or I couldn't find them anyway. I'll update this post with the WF chest when I find it.

Anyway, enjoy as they are sickeningly good.

Disclaimer: These are the current PTS armour sets. They can and could change by the time they go to live so keep that in mind

Edit: Also as you can see there are no resists on these pieces so it's pretty much a given that they'll change

Preview of the Doomflayer and Warpforged weapons

2010-10-20T20:43:00.004+01:00

Hopped onto the PTS and the new Weapons were for sale on the scenario vendor. Didn't have time to take a screen grab of the new sets but I'm sure the server will be back up. In the meantime, feast your Greenskin eyes on these choppas and blockas...

You can click on them for a better view as well.

(edit - Disclaimer: These are PTS weapons currently, they can and could change by the time they goto live so keep that in mind)

Keepers Set for Black Orcs

2010-10-19T22:02:00.000+01:00

For once my set I'll be showing is actually a set. I never even knew this existed until recently when a guild mate was on the "gather all armour sets" grind and pointed it out to me, so the pair of us did a few runs down in Saccelum Dungeon and got my set (easier with an actual DPS to rip through the mobs). This is what the set looks like and the stats can be found at the WARdrobe at the moment. It's a fairly basic looking set, only three pieces however the hands are quite decent with the extra arm guard on the left piece.

Looking at potential Renown builds in 1.4

2010-10-15T13:50:00.003+01:00

The first draft of the new renown abilities have been published and they make for some quite interesting ready. Keeping in mind that they are very likely to change and currently do not have a tiering system in place we can start to look at potential builds. The abilities are a bit more defensive orientated but that suits as fine as tanks. Makes our lives easier.

One thing I want to keep in mind however is that as our gear gets better our block will also so the more I look at spending 20 points of renown for a total of 10% block I am struggling to justify it with other cool things in there.

So here's a few builds I can think of:

RR40 Defensive
Defender IV = 10% block increase
Futile Strikes II = 8% reduction in being crit
Trivial Blows I = 5% less crit damage

At RR40, you're just wanting to survive in ORvR against higher geared players, at this point you likely will be a guard bot so ensuring you have as much block and survivability is the way to go.

RR80 Defensive
Might IV = 72 Str
Deft Defender IV = 18% dodge and disrupt
Trivial Blows III = 30% less crit damage
Cleansing Wind I = cleanses all Curses, Ailments, and Hexes from you on a 5 minute cool down

RR100 Defensive
Might IV = 72 Str
Deft Defender IV = 18% dodge and disrupt
Trivial Blows IV = 50% less crit damage
Cleansing Wind I = cleanses all Curses, Ailments, and Hexes from you on a 5 minute cool down
5 points spare, possibly just pickup a bit of parry and block

Yes I picked strength, I still rate it highly on a tank even in defensive because if you hit like a wet noodle then you become worthless other than a guard bot and guard bots get ignored, you should be at least able to assist in dishing out damage, even if it isn't a huge amount. Some people prefer to pickup Weaponskill to improve armour penetration and parry so I'll leave it up to the individual to pick, I'd still recommend strength.

I picked Deft Defender over the block and parry for the simple fact that as a Black Orc we severely lack any sort of disrupt, we can get a high block (which will only get higher as gear progresses) and we have an OK level of parry available to us. This will help more in the long run than a smaller boost in block (and AFAIK, disrupt doesn't require you to be facing the target like block).

Trivial Blows. Crit damage is a pain, you can see 2k spikes even with high toughness and soft capped resists. A permanent reduction in damage taken from crits will help to balance out the fact that we will see more crit on higher gear levels.

Cleansing Wind. Perhaps it's a pet hate of mine but I detest seeing a pile of dots and debuffs on me and having no way to remove them other than the harbingers cloak (still not found the LotD ones to see if they're on the same cool down). Harbingers only removes a couple and isn't available to everyone anymore so having cleansing wind will give us a life line in small scale stuff, even if it's on a 5 minute cool down.

RR40 Offensive
Might V = 120 str
Blade Master I = 4 WS
Opportunist I = 2% melee crit

RR80 Offensive
Might V = 120 str
Blade Master I = 4 WS
Opportunist IV = 14% melee crit

RR100 Offensive
Might V = 120 str
Blade Master III = 38 WS
Vigor I = 4 Wounds
Opportunist IV = 14% melee crit
Quick Escape I = Adds a 5% chance to increase your movement speed by 25% for 5 seconds.

Obvious really, stack strength for guaranteed damage, then work on crit for the bonus and top off with WS to add armour penetration and I've added in Quick Escape since it should proc off dots etc to allow you to catch up with kiters to smash 'em in the face.

What I really don't rate
Looking through the RA and there's a few I don't rate for us which might look good to start with. The first one is Hardy Concession (You take X% less damage, but you deal X% less damage.). We want to do damage at some point and simply soaking up a bit of damage with a reduction in our own effectiveness offers nothing of benefit in my opinion. It IS very good for healers though.

Regeneration is another RA I don't rate. Ok, I don't rate the cost of it, the hp/4 is always nice but not for the cost in renown. I can't see any build where you'd even have 10 points left over which wouldn't be better placed in a stat compared to 30 hp/4.

I kinda go against the grain here but this is partially my own failings. I don't rate resolute defence currently as much as it was. The immunity timers right now work fine and with a Black Orc having Not in Da Face helps us and the group more. However! This is easily swapped if you want/require it for Cleansing Winds I in the 80+ builds so the choice is yours.

So that's my wee review of RA's as they currently stand, it will change and I get the feeling I've calculated something wrong at some point but... Meh :)

Doomflayer and Warpforged sets for Tanks

2010-10-11T21:30:00.000+01:00

Apologies for not bringing this info up earlier, I've recently started a new shift pattern at my work which is 5 days work squeezed into 4 so much longer days, the upside though is that I have Friday, Saturday and Sunday off every week \o/ So at the moment I'm trying to write up a couple of posts in advance until I get my head around managing my time more. In fact this was actually written on Friday and saved for today :)

So Mythic have announced the tanking sets in the RvR packs Doomflayer is for RR90 and Warpforged is for RR100. As with the Sovereign sets they come in Offensive and Defensive flavours. For convenience I'll post them here. Keep in mind that you gain access to all pieces now at 90/100 so there's no progression of parts.

For the new fortitude stat what Mythic has posted should describe it decent enough:

"In addition to these new sets, we are also introducing a brand new stat. The stat is called Fortitude and is effectively "Toughness Power." It works with the same relationship as Melee Power/Str, Ranged Power/BS, Heal Power/Wil and Magic Power/Int."

So without much more ramblings, here's the sets as they currently stand (they will change, trust me)

Doomflayer (Defensive)
Tou - 289
Wou - 182
Init - 170
Str - 141
7% reduced chance to be crit
5% block
80 hit points every 4 seconds
4 AP per second
4% reduced armor penetration
80 fortitude
Set Bonuses
2 piece - On Being Hit: 10% chance to increase Fortitude by 238 for 10 seconds.
4 piece - On Being Hit: 10% chance to Heal yourself for 1030 health over the next 5 seconds.

Warpforged (Defensive)
Tou - 374
Wou - 228
Init - 212
Str - 178
9% reduced chance to be crit
7% block
120 hit points every 4 seconds
5 AP per second
6% reduced armor penetration
120 fortitude
Set Bonuses
2 piece - On Being Hit: 10% chance to increase Fortitude by 308 for 10 seconds.
4 piece - On Being Hit: 10% chance to Heal yourself for 1325 health over the next 5 seconds.
5 piece - 2m cool down - Your group becomes immune to Stagger, Knockdown, Root and Knockback effects for 5 seconds.

Doomflayer (Offensive)
Str - 289
WS - 182
Tou - 170
Wou - 141
6% melee crit chance
80 melee power
5% reduced chance to be parried
4 AP per second
5% parry
6% critical damage
Set Bonuses
2 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to reduce the next two heals on the target within 10 seconds by 516.
4 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase Melee Power by 238 for 10 seconds.

Warpforged (Offensive)
Str - 374
WS - 228
Tou - 212
Wou - 178
8% melee crit chance
120 melee power
8% reduced chance to be parried
4 AP per second
6% parry
10% critical damage
Set Bonuses
2 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to reduce the next two heals on the target within 10 seconds by 662.
4 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase Melee Power by 308 for 10 seconds.
5 piece - 2m cool down - Nearby allies have their movement speed increased by 60% for 10 seconds.

As you'll see the biggest change is the reduction back down to 5 piece (of which I approve) and the removal of stats from the set bonuses, now it's replaced by a chance to proc a higher value. Now even with the reduction down to 5 pieces the stats are higher than the combined 8 pieces of sovereign, for example defensive Sov has +134 wounds where Doomflayer has +182, so there's a fairly good chance you will be leaving sovereign behind.

However, the defensive sets have gone back to "On being hit" which defeats the whole point of being a tank as you tend to have a high avoidance so you won't generally get hit.... They will likely change this to be "On being attacked" and reduce the potency of them. The self heal buff is nice, works out better than pure hp/sec regen and is much more noticeable, though potentially dispellable, again though, it's only of significant use if the proc changes to "On being hit" really. Fortitude I really need to understand more, is it simply a counter to the other powers to nullify them? If so it's nice however just revamping toughness could have done the same thing. As it stand Toughness is a misunderstood stat and usefulness is constantly debated.

Offensively the sets look nice, in particular the high wounds will keep us from being slightly less squishy MDPS. One of the key procs though that I am looking keenly on is the two piece proc

"On Hit: 10% chance to reduce the next two heals on the target within 10 seconds by 516 (662 on WF)."

This sets up Black Orcs as a very nice healer killer. Heal debuff on them, disrupted, silence and cool down increase should let us lead a train on healers very nicely. Right now I would say that we're looking at two piece offensive and either the rest sov or defensive being the normal, but a lot of that also depends on the jewels and back pieces and other items that may drop in Skavenblight. So far so good though, hopefully Mythic keep up with the excellent Black Orc artwork and we should be quite chuffed with our gear.

Cleaning up the cave and a look ahead

2010-10-09T10:20:00.003+01:00

Well yesterday I decided it's time to start doing a bit of cleaning work in the Mmmmm Gud cave (ick... Orcs dun like to clean stuff) but there was quite a few inactive Blogs and other bits and pieces no longer used. I'm also in the process of sorting a few new graphics out for the launch of the RvR Packs so it will get a fresh coat of mud. If there's any recommendations or things you'd like to see me change in the blog then just post a comment, email me or send me a message on twitter.

Also, if you run a Warhammer blog and I've not linked you at the side then please let me know through the same channels above, the more we all link through to each other the better. In particular I'd like to recommend a new blog to the scene Hadrune's Ammo Dump a great guild mate who has just started blogging and has some very high quality posts up already. Go check him out gitz.

The plan for the blog is to have the Brawler and Boss guides done by the end of the year (Brawler is nearly completed and I'm desperately holding out for Boss changes) and then to clean up the Toughest guide. Next on the guide list will be armour sets to use through the ranks, part of this may require me to actually go back and roll another Black Orc to remember the lower tiers but that might end up being fun as well and a good progress guide for new Black Orc players.

The blog has and will keep a Black Orc theme with my own personal rants about things going on as well, I'm not qualified to have an opinion on any other class since I don't play 'em :) You may notice bursts of posts and then a period of nothing for the coming couple of months as I've recently changed work hours so will be getting used to a new way of working each day :)

So see all you gitz back on the battle field

How to be... Gorbad Ironclaw

2010-10-08T09:00:00.001+01:00

Gorbad Ironclaw
Gorbad Ironclaw, atop his vicious boar Gnarla, was the mightiest Warlord that ever lived. Gorbad Ironclaw and his tribe, the Ironclaw Orcs, absorbed the Broken Tooth tribe along with the local Goblin and Night Goblin tribes, to create a massive force of Greenskin warriors. The tribe marched through Black Fire Pass to attack the Empire under the Emperor Sigismund. Gorbad's army conquers the territories of Solland and Wissenland, but Gorbad himself was wounded in the fighting. At the fortress of Altdorf, the Waaagh! was kept at bay outside the city walls. Gorbad unleashed Wyverns upon the city, who threw the defenders into disarray but were ultimately repelled without achieving their main function, which was to destroy the city gates. Eventually, the lack of progress and Gorbad's injury took their toll on morale, and the army disintegrated. The remnants of Gorbad's tribe were ambushed and defeated on their way home by a Dwarf army under the King of Karaz-a-Karak. It is not known if Gorbad survived the encounter.

Part two in my "How to be..." series (part one is here). Today I focus on Gorbad Ironclaw, an Orc (not a Black Orc) who rose to become a great Warlord. Although Gorbad wasn't a Black Orc, I don't see any reason why we can't recreate him. One of the challenges for Gorbad was that he appears to have a couple of Choppa items (helm and chest) so I've attempted to recreate them as much as possible within my set guidelines of making it as easy as possible to achieve.

Sadly though, one thing I have messed up on is that there are a few items I've used which are quest rewards (search for the items on WARDB to find the quests) so apologies if you've already done them and trashed the reward. If I find an easier way to get the items then I'll try and remember to update this post.

I've used the following pictures of Gorbad as reference:

At least working out the colouring is easy, blood red the whole way through.! Once again, the shoulders became a bit of a pain, there's nothing really that matches up, but also they are fairly hidden under his cloak on the model and painting so I've simply used a fairly low key set which doesn't stand out. The cloak potentially could be replaced by the Tyrant Glyph back piece as it has the fur style plus the pole at the top but I've gone for the easier option to get (that and I don't actually have the back piece.. *mutters*).

I'm not overly happy with the weapon either, I feel there's a choppa which resembles it more but I can't seem to find it, in fact I'm almost positive there is and it used to drop as T4 green loot, but damned if remember properly. The chest I'm sure I can find a better version for as well, but the Carnage one I used (just do some newbie PQ's) works in the meantime.

So here we go, Gorbad Ironclaw. WAR style (click for bigger pictures).

Head: Ancient (Antiquated)/Conqueror 'Eadplate
Shoulders: Shouldaplate of da Miner (Quest)
Chest: Bodyplate of Carnage
Back: Vanguard Cloak (T4 renown vendor)
Gloves: Staunch Manifers of Skill (T4 green drop)
Belt: Decent plackart of Skill (T2 green drop)
Boots: Primeval/Invader/Darkpromise
Weapon: Bad Waaagh Choppa
Shield: Blocka o' da Doombull

To read up a bit more on Gorbad Ironclaw, I suggest you visit the Games Workshop page about him. Some fun little tidbits of information. HERE

We did it gitz... WE'Z DA BIGGEST!

2010-10-05T23:00:00.008+01:00

From the PTS.... Black Orcs are now bigger than the Choppas!!! You can click on the picture for a bigger view. Middle is a Choppa and Chosen and the two at either end are a RR80 Black Orc and Tier 3 Black Orc, as you can see there's no difference in size based on renown, well if there is, it's not noticable. Still not complaining.

As a side note, I've not found any Black Orc changes other than the size and Save Da Runts (our guard now requires a shield). Not much time to check out more but will have a look tomorrow proper. Also I have to say this before I get too carried away.... This is only the PTS, it may change, they may remove the size difference so lets not get too excited.. ;)

(Edit: Added a Chosen into the mix for the size difference now so you may want to force a refresh of the site, holy crap we're massive! Although the Tyrant Black Orc doesn't look as big, he was slouching at that point as the chosen stretched up, trust me, it's noticable)

Tanktics part three. Guard.

2010-10-01T09:16:00.002+01:00

You can check the other two parts of my tanktics series here and here but for those who aren't overly bothered it's simply a small post with combining tactics and the tank archetype abilities to improve them, to give something a bit more well.. Tanky.

Following on from my conversation with Bootae about only being able to guard if you are a shield it occurred to me this is actually a nerf. We're removing something from two handed tanks and not giving them anything in return, it doesn't actually make tanks want to guard more (which they always should anyway) but it certainly gives people ammunition to whine in scenarios etc about "OMG not a 2h tank.. ffs you're not mdps". If we were to only allow guard to be activated if using a shield then potentially we'd have to increase 2h damage to make it worthwhile for tanks to go 2h in scenarios etc.

Orrrrr..... We could look at combining it with a useless tactic. Now barring Unstoppable Juggernaut the other tank tactics are pretty decent, as we've already commandeered it for a Hold the Line buff then we either have to change another archetype tactic or I'm sure there's a useless tactic each tank has we can replace. I wont go through each class to find it, I wont pretend to know anything about Knights or Blackguards so I'll leave it as that, but here's what I propose instead of a straight "you can only guard if using a shield"

1 Slot Career Tactic - No range - No cool down - Passive
IMPROVED GUARD
If you have a shield equipped the damage split on your guarded target is increased to 75% assigned to you and the effect range is increased to 50ft

I have deliberately gone a bit overboard with this as I felt that my Hold the Line was in retrospect quite weak although it had the right 'feel'. Improved Guard might be a bit potent but it certainly makes choppa and blocka tanks be an absolute beast for guarding targets and much better than the 2h equivalent without nerfing 2h tanks.

Thoughts?

More thoughts on tanktics!

2010-09-29T18:05:00.008+01:00

So I'm desperately trying to make my brain work tonight, for some reason motivation has disappeared and I'm tempted to just watch a film or some such, but I'm going to force myself to write something. Better to at least be a bit productive today even if I did sod all at work today.

So I wrote an earlier post about having changes to the taunt and challenge mechanic by adding in a tactic which improves it by speccing deeper into the tanking tree for tanks, and after speaking with Bootae earlier in the week we liked the idea of giving sword and board (or choppa 'n' blocka) tanks something more rewarding for speccing that way in RvR. To me, tactics are an easy way to look at how tanks can be improved, we have certain ones which are shared or at least are all very similar and yet we hardly have any that interact with our archetype abilities (taunt, challenge, guard and hold the line). So after my little thought about challenge/taunt being changed a bit, how about we look at Hold the Line....

Tanks have an unused tactic which is shared amongst them... Unstoppable Juggernaut. This tactic is all but useless these days with and in fact was never that great to start with, I can't see any tank justifying using up a tactic slot on it when there is so many better tactics out there. Now I don't want to make a tactic which works with Hold the Line that makes it the Uberbestomgwtfbbqpwn tactic of all time but I do want to make something which makes you think "Hmm, could I possibly slot this instead?". So after a few thoughts and simply looking at the name of the tactic I actually realised it's fairly simple.

1 Slot Career Tactic - No range - No cool down - Passive
UNSTOPPABLE JUGGERNAUT
While using Hold The Line! you also become immune to roots, snares and knockdowns, this also increases the channeling cost of Hold The Line! to 25 AP/sec

Nice isn't it? You can still be staggered and knocked back and the AP cost does go up, but it certainly helps to make tanks push forward more and gives another nice effect to having a shield. My other version of this was was to include knock backs (but not staggers) and increase the AP again to 30/sec.

Would this make a worthless tactic better? Certainly. Would it be used? I don't yet know but I can see potential for keep sieges and with WAR heading to more important sieges it could find a very nice place. Any thoughts?

Video: Hand of Blood - Recipe for Hate

2010-09-28T18:49:00.002+01:00

Another video from the Hand of Blood vaults (well last night). A nice epic battle against one of the top guilds on the server (if not world) and then a little show on how to clear out a blob which is camping your war camp. Epic night of kills, it was a stupid amount again, there was over 3,000 kills in the zone when we jumped to Dragonwake to break up a potential zone lock.

Taunt , Challenge and tactics - Is there wasted potential?

2010-09-27T22:28:00.005+01:00

So I've always thought that two of the four class defining abilities that tanks have (challenge and taunt) have no actual interaction with any other tactics or abilities. The tactics in that mastery can be good but especially as a Black Orc the top tier tanking tactic is absolutely rubbish (you can check previous rants on it in older posts). I'm sure each tanking class has the same issue, a tactic in there that really, isn't all that good and would rarely if ever be slotted and you'd gladly see another one replace it.

I have a little proposal for all tanks, it's not overly thought through so potentially it might be a bit potent or underwhelming but how about this for the top tier tactic in your tanking tree:

1 Slot Career Tactic - No range - No cool down - Passive
(insert name here)
Cool down on Taunt and Challenge is reduced by 5 seconds and the effectiveness is increased by 5%

So this would put Taunt on a 10 second cool down with 35% extra damage and Challenge on a 25 second cool down with enemies doing 65% damage to all other targets. The question is, would it become an option for you to slot, something to ignore or an essential tactic?

There's other possibilities as well, such as increased range or making Taunt a cone effect like challenge. Could we also then do things with Hold the Line?

Antiquated (Ancient) Set for Black Orcs

2010-09-26T10:12:00.004+01:00

The Antiquated set from Land of the Deads Tomb of the Vulture Lord is a green repairable set. Once repaired it becomes Ancient (piece name). The actual set itself doesn't offer any set bonuses but does feature Strength, Toughness and Initiative as the primary stats, it's basically a T4 Surveyor set and is fairly decent to use but will quickly get replaced as it's rank 40 gear (primeval for example is much better). The set itself though replicates the Conqueror gear so it's good if you want to have some of the same appearance as it, the shoulders and helm tend to be popular. Anyway, if you want to find any of these on the Auction House, just search for "Antiquated".

Five things you didn't know about Black Orcs

2010-09-24T17:42:00.002+01:00

Here's five things you may, or may not know about Black Orcs in Warhammer Online.

1) T'ree Hit Combo #1: It hits five times, not three. It's meant to.

2) T'ree Hit Combo: #2 It's one of the only actions that has fluff in the tool tip as well 'As Da' Big Boss would say, "Countin' is for Stuntiez" '

3) We are the only tanks that can do corporeal damage and have ailment actions

4) Our collectors edition head (the metal face plate) will be the same colour you choose for the metal bits when you create the Orc (so you can have a red or gold face plate for example)

5) We can use hammers, but none we can use actually drop from mobs or quests.

Changing da plan - A guide

2010-09-19T12:37:00.001+01:00

So after a few weeks of 1.3.6, the biggest change to the Black Orc mechanic since launch has been used, mind you it's the only change to the Black Orc mechanic since launch so that's not saying much about the worst designed and badly implemented mechanic in the game. Thanks for throwing us a life line after nearly two years!

Anyway before I rant more about it, Mythic have mentioned in the past that they are looking at the mechanic and how it works in the future so maybe we'll see something come of it.

Well back onto "Changin' Da Plan". How does it work after testing? Overall it's not too bad, in fact it can work very well but also leads to over complication. I actually know of Rank 40 Black Orcs that haven't bothered with it as the mechanic and finger fiddling is enough for them without adding in another one. However I would recommend that all Black Orcs pick it up and use it as much as possible to learn the benefits of the new action.

Key points to remember about CDP.

+ It costs no AP
+ It's off the global cool down
+ In combination with Big Swing you can 'preload' to the third plan
+ You can step back to second plan when in our third plan

- It's not just to preload a plan
- It has a 5 second cool down which cannot be removed
- It can complicate a rotation
- Accidental use can cause problems

Preloading
The act of moving up plans to second or third after using Big Swing in preparation for combat is known as Preloading. Prior to engaging in ORvR I'll often setup a big swing or knockback if near a cliff face (I still gloat to this day about my preset aoe knock back killing four order that had come out of hunters vale near a cliff in Dragonwake and slid down the side of the terrain face taking fall damage).

However talking to some fellow Black Orcs and they tend to use it to setup moves at the start but then it gets lost in the shuffle of combat. Setting a rotation in your head is potentially the best you can do rather than trying to hit it in the middle of combat without thinking ahead. You can also preload third plans by using Big Swing to move straight onto it, letting you smack a target down straight away leaving them open for the melee dps to rip them into pieces.

Rotations (and stepping back)
Rotations pre 1.3.6 were fairly standard you could easily sit spamming three different actions but now with Changing Da Plan it can complicate things and lead to more actions being used.

Two example rotations are below:

ORvR (preloaded onto plan 2) - If on healer attack duty
Big Swing - Not in Da face - CHANGE DA PLAN! - Big Swing - Shut Yer Face - Wot Armour? - Big Swing - CHANGE DA PLAN! - Big Swing - Savin Me Hide - Wot Armour?

Single Target (example in PvE)
Wot Armour - CHANGE DA PLAN! - T'ree Hit Combo - Follow my lead - Right in Da jibblies - CHANGE DA PLAN! - Trip Em Up - T'ree Hit Combo

As you can see, CDP isn't always used when it's on cool down for the simple reason that it can sometimes break a better rotation. For example in the Single target rotation we actually change off the third plan away from t'ree hit to use a snare, even in PvE. The reason for this is actually straight forward. When you reach the third plan you actually have a 1.5-2 second cool down left on T'ree Hit and using another 3rd plan ability might not add much more damage. If you change down to second plan and immediately use Trip Em Up you will be ready for T'ree Hit again straight away. One great little unintentional boost that T'ree Hit now has is that it because it's a channeled skill which takes exactly as long as the cool down on CDP.

Lag does play a part in this though, so be warned that changing plans in heavy lag can take a few seconds to register leaving you wasting cool downs. Experiment a bit in each situation you're in to find your lag level and how you feel with a long rotation. It's not about memorising one rotation for each situation, it's about using a base rotation and swapping out actions for each situation. For example you probably won't bother too much about Trip Em Up on a slayer but using big swing may prove to be efficient if you don't have action point management issues.

Conclusion
So in conclusion. Changing Da Plan can be a very powerful tool, though can also be used poorly causing more issues or not using it to its full potential. If you've never used it, or are unsure on using it, please take the time to play around with some low damage champion mobs to find a rotation you like. Get used to using CDP in non dangerous or crazy situations and that will get you more comfortable in using it.

'appy second WAAAAGHday to Warhammer!

2010-09-18T19:25:00.004+01:00

Two years old and still going.

Not bad for a game that was going to get shut down by Xmas 2008 and is dead in the water being in "Maintenance Mode".

May everyone at Bioware Mythic keep on Waaaghing for a long long time, I look forward to another two years at least of Warhammer Online. Thanks to all the devs that work and have worked on the game and to all the bloggers and twitters that keep the community going. Kudos also to everyone who just plays the game and shows support quietly by going out and enjoy it, you truly are the stars of this MMO.

Happy Birthday Warhammer.

Video: Hand of Blood - Sleepless in Praag

2010-09-15T18:36:00.001+01:00

Another video from our epic adventures in the lakes. Well in this case it was one lake, we pretty much spent all night in Praag against all odds (literally with the buff). A sickening number of kills in total (I think we counted up to 1,200 by the time we called it a night) and one of our RR79's got 1/3rd of his renown bar during it. Awesome fun, a mix of classes and good banter all night, we wiped others and got wiped but always picked ourselves up and headed back out. Anyway, enjoy.

A proposal on how Mythic can make Black Orcs da biggest.

2010-09-14T17:05:00.003+01:00

So I'm beating this subject to death again, only this time I will offer a solution. Adding character changes as they level up can already be done as can be seen by the Magus disk and the White Lions pet so we know this is a possibility already to put in but the question remains, that if Mythic decided to put it back in, how could they? This is where I attempt to answer that.

First of all, lets give Mythic some money out of it. There will be a WAR booster pack out which would add to all classes and races a way to customise your appearance further depending on your renown rank, this is achieved through the use of special 'dyes'. If you have the collectors edition you know about the head dyes which give you the special faces, this would act the same way, allowing you to apply a new change to the character.

For Black Orcs I would propose the following.

Upon achieving renown rank 20 you get a mail in the post from a Sneaky Git letting you know that there is an old warboss in a zone that is ready to get a good kicking and this would be a great chance to push yourself up the ranks in Grumlocks Waaaagh! So off you trot to the location, find the Orc and give him a hiding he wont forget, seeing that you're a much tougher Orc than he is, he gives you some fungus beer and a leg of ham and slips off into the distance admitting that you're much bigger than he is. This beer can be used in the special dye slot to increase the size of the Black Orc by 1% It's not a lot but still, you're not yet a tough Black Orc like Grumlock. Also the leg of ham, if used in the special dye slot will darken your skin a bit.

Once you get to RR40 another mail appears again from the Sneaky Git. This leads you to a quest to complete involving blowing up stunties, much hilarity and then defeating another bigger Orc in a headbutting contest. Upon completion of this you receive another pair of dye items to use which increases the size of the Black Orc to 3% above base size and the other will darken your skin further, also you receive quite a large trophy to proudly wear showing you're bigger than other Orcs.

This process repeats itself at RR60. A quest which sends you off to take some Elf ears and track down an Orc which has betrayed Grumlock in exchange for his own pile of shinies from the High Elfs (which in reality is just a load of shiny stones). Once this is done, you will again receive the two dye items which once used increases the size of the Black Orc to 5% of the base size and darkens the gnarly green hide of your Black Orc even more. Along side this though you are granted a Shield, this has no stats and is bound to player, in fact it's a unique skin for the appearance system, it turns the shield into a High Elf shaped/design but with Orc glyphs and no doubt some extra spiky bits attached to it. Again, this shows off you have achieved RR60 if you want to use the appearance.

Guess what happens at RR80? The sneaky git reveals himself to be Gazbag who has been watching you. Having defeated an old Warboss in the orc lands, a warboss in the stuntie lands and a warboss in the elf lands it's time to head to the Empire and lay down Grumlocks law on a warboss which has had a siege set on Praag for months now without progressing and in fact is getting fatter, lazier and his boyz are getting more and more worthless as each day progresses. So a quest is set forth to get them sorted for Grumlock until you draw the ire of the big, fat warboss. Again, once you defeat him you feel the power of the Waaagh and as all Orcs do when they defeat a bigger Orc they themselves become bigger. The dyes you receive this time increases your size to 7% of the base, make you even darker and in addition you retrieve a choppa which is in fact the Runefang which was lost to a great Waaaagh many centuries ago. Again, this is only appearance, and not effect.

Finally, when all appears to be settled down, Grumlock calls upon you at RR100. The Skaven have used some evil ratty magic to enslave one of Grumlocks trusted Black Orc bosses. You have to go down there, break the enchantment (and a few skaven skulls), upon doing this the boss wakes up and realising that the only way to redeem himself to Grumlock would be to give you a solid beating takes you on at a fight. Once/if/when you defeat the boss (it doesn't have to be easy, just a challenge for a solo player) the now beaten boss, hands over a chunk of warpstone, a cooked rat and a massive, black warpstone enchanted two handed great choppa. The warpstone will increase the size of the Black Orc to 10% over the base, the cooked rat will darken the skin further and the great choppa is a unique appearance for great weapons.

And that's that! It doesn't need to go further, it can be expanded to other races and classes (dwarves get longer beards and more gnarled looks, Bright Wizards may gain more burn marks or flames erupt around them (oooh particle effects) etc etc). You also don't have to use each item, it's simply there if you want to you might like your skin the current colour so there's no need to change it, your size might not appeal to you and you may like the appearance of other items better. Whatever your choice though it's that. A choice, you're not forced to buy it as it offers no in game advantage and even if bought if you dont like the look of being bigger and darker, well heck, you don't need to use it!

I'd pay for it for sure.

How to be Grimgor Ironhide

2010-09-06T12:06:00.011+01:00

Grimgor Ironhide
No one knows Grimgor’s early history. He came from the east, staggering out the Blasted Wastes with an unknown number of grizzled, tired and hungry Black Orc bodyguards, now known to other Orcs as "Da Immortulz" (The Immortals). Upon entering the northern portion of the Worlds Edge Mountains he quickly took over the first tribes of Greenskins he came upon and within a month had carved out a small empire for himself. From there he set course on a campaign of destruction that the northern Worlds Edge Mountains had rarely seen in their history.

So with the new armour and weapon appearance system in place I thought it would be a fun idea to try to replicate some of the famous Orcs from lore. For my first one I decided on Grimgor Ironhide, as you can read above (and the link sends you to a Wikipedia article about him if you want to find out more).

So I did a bit of digging around on him and came across pictures of him and his miniature in the tabletop game. I decided to stick with the Games Workshop colour theme and try to replicate his armour and appearance as much as possible. Now a word of warning, it will not be 100% accurate, for once thing Lokax has a big metal plate stuck on his head so please ignore that for the sake of appearance, and the armour in game does not always equal what you see in artwork or on miniatures so it's as best as I can manage. Grimgor also appears in game at the last Greenskin hard PQ I believe, I've not used this as reference at all.

My rule of thumb for these is that all equipment should be relatively OK to put together, I want to try and avoid Sovereign and the likes so that most people can put together the same gear. Below are a couple of painted models (the first is the Games Workshop painted one so I've gone with that colour scheme) that I used for reference as well as the artwork above.

The actual armour set I came up with was easier than expected once I'd stopped trying to be absolutely perfect. For example I was looking for boots without spikes on the knees but were heavy full plate... Don't think there is any, so I had to settle on spikes. Same with the shoulders, I couldn't find any rounded shoulders that looked like Grimgors so I had to use ones with spikes on them. Oh and also, lets not mention the pose...

During my travels should I come across more armour models that will suit it better I will update the armour list. If you read the background, at one point Grimgor heads into High Pass so I placed him there for the screenshot. But in the meantime here we go...

Head: None/Hidden
Shoulders: Shouldaplate of the Fallen Explorer (green drop from Land of the Dead)
Chest: Primeval/Invader/Darkpromise
Back: None/Hidden
Gloves: Primeval/Invader/Darkpromise
Belt: Primeval/Invader/Darkpromise
Boots: Primeval/Invader/Darkpromise
Weapon: Bigchoppa of the Darkscale (from Lost Vale but the model does appear quite often)

I used Chaos Black primary dye and Ulgu grey secondary dye (ok, I used the Dye Preview addon) to get the colouring right and for the belt I used.. gah, can't remember now, but chaos black is the secondary colour. I used a knife trophy to try and simulate the choppa Grimgor has on the side and removed the other trophies.

It's easier to get the primeval pieces as there is no Renown or dungeon required. Just search for "priceless" on the auction house to find the repairable pieces.

You can also read more about Grimgor Ironhide on the official GW website here

Video: Hand of Blood - This is how we RvR

2010-09-04T18:00:00.004+01:00

Just a video from a night of RvR earlier in the week, it was a hugely succesful night, even going right up against the best guild on the server and kicking ass. At one point we notched up over 200 kills on the trot as we moved into the zerg and destroyed warband after warband. Our resident video maker Ecipo put together a little promo video and may be working on more! (you may even see a red coloured Black Orc at a few points.. dats me!)

Hand Of Blood (Karak Norn)

Five things from WAR's concept that we never seen

2010-09-02T16:47:00.006+01:00

Just looking through old previews and artwork for Black Orcs (I'm gutted my closed beta screenshots have disappeared off my hard drive) and came across some fantastic little concepts that never quite made it. I'd love to see all five come back in some form to spice it up a little but well, we can't have everything and of course, things had to get cut out. Have a look, which is your favourite? (I've deliberately left out the other cities out of this)

Mythic also seems to be focusing much of its PvP efforts on a more structured manifestation of this sort of gameplay -- what it's calling Battle Zones. You can make the obvious analogy, and you'll probably be correct. These Battle Zones will be instanced matches between preset groups of players. The number of players on each side won't necessarily matter, mind you. Rather, true to Warhammer's legacy, it's all about their "point" value. A given Battle Zone scenario might have, say, a 1000 point limit. This could permit ten less-powerful players go up against five who are significantly stronger, while theoretically keeping things balanced. It works just like this in the tabletop game. Mercenary units -- belonging to the Dogs of War faction from Warhammer fiction -- will be on hand to make up for any point deficiencies.

http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/warhammer-online/700105p2.html

Your character model will also evolve as your character levels up. Orcs get bigger and thicker as they level up and dwarves get longer beards. This makes it very easy to tell at a glance just how powerful an opponent is.

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/699/699806p2.html

Social organisation is reinforced in the game design at guild level, too. Guilds level up themselves - progressing through 80 ranks - and there's a heraldry system whereby they earn banners. These can be assigned tactical buffs that play an important part in skirmishing. They're hung proudly from keeps by the owners and can be taken from defeated guilds too, their tatters displayed as a trophy. The guild interface also looks like a vast improvement on the usual fare, including a facebook-style news feed.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/warhammer-online-age-of-reckoning-preview

Death will also be handled in a truly unique way. If your character falls in combat, you'll be presented with a chance to use acquired Fate Points to resurrect yourself and continue the fight at the very same instant you died. If you don't have any Fate Points, you'll be resurrected but you'll also acquire Insanity Points and you'll temporarily suffer from various attribute penalties. The only way to rid yourself of these insanity penalties is to successfully complete PVE quests.

http://www.gamepro.com/article/previews/53097/warhammer-online-age-of-reckoning/

For example, you earn trophies for killing 100 players, 1000 players, a million players (OK, maybe I exaggerate a bit), etc. It is up to the art team to make sure the million-players-killed trophy looks much cooler that the 100-players-killed trophy. Applying this thinking to every type of trophy awarded will ensure that Badassery is accomplished.

http://war.warcry.com/news/view/81161-Warhammer-Online-WAR-Trophy-System-Revealed

On a personal level I'm still wishing to see Black Orcs getting bigger, but also I've been so disappointed with the trophies. Now I know that we have seen trophies and they are in game but they just seem like so much wasted potential. They could have been so damn cool but ended up being a horrible, low res blob that no-one can actually make out so it doesn't stand out at all.

Again, making Black Orcs da biggest again.

2010-08-30T09:57:00.003+01:00

Someone sneakily asked in the RvR pack Q&A about Black Orcs getting bigger again and got the following response by Andy at Mythic.

"Appalled wrote...

Thanks for the thread Andy, I have one question and one only that keeps me awake at night;

Will the Black Orc be the size of an enraged Choppa by the time this RvR pack comes out? If not, have MYTHIC begun to put serious consideration in to this community request so that we are in accordance with the lore? (Get what I did there? :P)"

I've been trying to convince the Art/Production team to do this for over a year now. I'll keep hammering away at them.

I also just noticed on Erknuffels blog he asked the same question when getting a chance to speak to the devs at Gamescom

http://erdknuffel.de/2010/08/interview-von-der-gamescom-teil-iii/

Erdknuffel: Do you have any plans on making the Black Orc da biggest Orc again?

Andy: Well if it’s up to me: yeah, because that’s something I’m constantly bugging these guys about. So Carrie, the community really wants for the Black Orc to be the biggest Orc, because it matches the lore.

Carrie: I think we can look into that.

The hope is still alive fellow Black Orcs! Don't let our Waaaagh go un noticed!

I've also updated the original request post with the new Bioware site instead of the GOA and old Mythic forum stuff

http://mmmmmgud.blogspot.com/2009/03/waits-jus-minute-us-black-orcs-are.html

Also feel free to post your support on a fantastic YouTube video that was made @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uKCc4NSrkE

Alternatively, if you have a blog or website and you'd like to support our plea then pelase rip my "Supportin' Black Orcs" tag to the right there and post it somewhere

A question of alts.

2010-08-26T16:38:00.004+01:00

So I've made mention a few times on tweets to other bloggers about no purple numbers showing anymore or double xp weekends being meaningless to the 40/80 player and it's always been brought back to alts, and it's a perfect chance for them.

But I don't play alts... I do HAVE alts, (rank 7 squiggy and a 40 shaman and 40 choppa) they all started as bank alts and then two levelled up for butchering mats and eventually scavenging. Is this really an alt? I have no link to them, I log them in and always feel strange not seeing Lokax there and look confused at my toolbars until I remember one button that does stuff and just hit it. I have no empathy to the characters and don't enjoy using them for gathering mats, so I don't count myself as having alts. The Choppa gets logged in once a month to grind out armour mats and the Shaman gets logged in every few weeks and then to check if I can be bothered getting scavenging levelled on him (answer every time being no).

Many do have alts though, it keeps the game fresh for them and I have no problem with that. I've put a lot of work into Lokax to hit 40/80 with good gear, unlocks and what not. It's not easy getting to that level with a Black Orc but it was worth it. If I'm bored and in WAR I'll either log out or go and do some quests, unlocks or look for new armour/weapon skins to add to the collection I have built up. In WAR especially there is quite a lot of other things you can do.

I like thinking up new specs, going out roaming in the lakes on my own or friends who are also RR80 and do the same as myself. I'm not a fantastic gamer, never have been, I can pick things up and play with them and work out bits and pieces but I'll never be in the elite. Spreading my time over alts seems to 'weaken' me, I forget rotations and certain aspects of the character if I'm not playing them so I like to put effort into one character and keep with them. I personally feel that I get the most out the character by learning more about them.

What's interesting is that I've always been like that in MMOs. In Ultima I had my Fisherman and the obligatory mule. In DAoC I had a Bonedancer. In SWG I had a Creature Handler/Bio Engineer and in WoW a warlock. I always focused my time and effort into them and didn't bother with any others unless something came up where I had to.

I guess it's why I'm always a little dissapointed when I see double xp/renown weekends, or lake buffs to grant more xp/renown. It doesn't affect me, I feel like I'm missing out as people get excited about shiny numbers rocketing on characters as I sit there wondering "Purple numberz? Wutz dat?". It IS my choice however to not have alts so there's certainly no reason for me to complain (and I try not to), but I wouldn't say no to seeing a little something added in, even if it's just a small chance of say a blue level dye or above dropping which can only be looted by a 40/80 (random example).

So really, the end of this little musing is that, is it odd now a days for a player to not have any alts, sitting at max progression and gear and not being bothered about it?

First bits of concept art now appearing for the RvR pack

2010-08-23T14:36:00.002+01:00

We really need to get a name for this don't we?

Anyway, this link was popped on over at twitter by one of the writers at GameReactor a Swedish based website and retweeted by Carrie Gouskos

http://www.gamereactor.eu/news/4654/Warhammer+Online+concept+art/

Looks fairly standard but the painting of the underground tunnels would be a nice background image

I rescind my hate on turtle builds

2010-08-23T10:36:00.007+01:00

I've been running a turtle build recently despite hating it to see how effective it truly is. I'm 'lucky' in that I have full Sov, 4/5 Tyrant Glyphs and RR80 so I can make a fairly decent build out of it. Currently using 7 piece Defensive Sovereign, the four Glyphs and an Invader tanking choppa nets me 388 HP every 4 seconds, combined with Da Toughest bellow and the dirty new You Got Nuffin (basically a 340 HP heal every 10 seconds) and it basically works out as 716 HP regained every 4 seconds (if I've done my math right).

Against average players I can literally hold up six people and they cannot kill me, decent players or those using nerfed buttons with pre programmed interrupts as soon as it picks up that you are channeling an ability or have an ability will have an easier time but still, it's fantastic to 'feel' the rage building up in players as they beat on you, unable to kill you and in fact the more that appear to beat down on the Black Orc the more he seems to be regaining health.

I've literally just come out of a scenario where my view for most of it was the following:

(click for bigger pic)

This actually allowed the other 11 players in the scenario to turn a 200-20 losing scenario to a 500 win because the rest of Order were badly outnumbered as 5 focused on me.

So turtling, it's fun for now but no doubt the novelty of being almost immortal will wear off soon enough, however even in this spec I still managed to take out a Bright Wizard (a good one) and a random White Lion at the same time and finish on full health.

Oh and this is how the scenario ended:

(click for bigger pic)

All aboard dat Twitter Waaagh!

2010-08-19T16:29:00.003+01:00

Well I finally signed up and started getting setup with a Twitter account for Mmmmm Gud. It'll make 'micro blogging' easier as I often have a lot of little things to say which really doesn't make either any sense to post in the main blog or I'm nowhere near a PC and forget to do it (yay for iPhone and Twitter app). So you can now follow me under the URL below.

http://www.twitter.com/mmmmmgud

Slowly adding folks from the WAR community and those that write about WAR whether it's blog or general MMO news.

It's also possibly a good chance to annoy the hell out of people by sending them messages over it...

Mythics secret announcement - Bringing back the MMO Imperator?

2010-08-13T16:39:00.008+01:00

From Superannuation:
http://supererogatory.tumblr.com/post/945189389/domain-name-imperatorthegame-com

The domain www.imperatorthegame.com has been registered by Mythic Entertainment in December.

Registrant:
Electronic Arts
Domain Hostmaster
209 Redwood Shores Parkway
Redwood City, CA 94065
US
Email:

Registrar Name....: CORPORATE DOMAINS, INC.
Registrar Whois...: whois.corporatedomains.com
Registrar Homepage: www.cscprotectsbrands.com

Domain Name: imperatorthegame.com

Created on..............: Tue, Dec 15, 2009
Expires on..............: Sun, Jun 24, 2012
Record last updated on..: Sun, Dec 20, 2009

Administrative,Technical Contact:
Electronic Arts
Domain Hostmaster
209 Redwood Shores Parkway
Redwood City, CA 94065
US
Phone: +1.6506281500
Email:

A previous MMO by Mythic put on hold, this game was about the Roman empire that still exists in a futuristic Earth, you can check out links at IGN and Gamespot for more information about it:

http://uk.pc.ign.com/objects/483/483577.html

http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/imperator/index.html

Are we about to see a new MMO announcement from Mythic and EA?

Two things are clear here though...

1) Mythic have registered a new domain for a previously canned MMO.
2) Mythic have a special announcement next week.

Updates:
Update 1: Here's some ALPHA footage of the game from 2005. Don't judge it in the slightest.

Update 2: Also to add to imperatorthegame.com there is also http://spcqr.net/ which is very close to SPQR which is a term used for the Roman Senate (if I remember rightly..)

Update 3: Ok, more digging about, and a lot more URL's have been registered for Imperator.

imperator-online.com
imperator-online.net
imperatorherald.com
imperatorherald.net
imperatoronline.net
imperatorthegame.com
voximperator.net (Created in 2004)

(edit, apologies, the formatting of the email is a bit wonky, at least on my screen. It reads hostmaster@mythic.ea.com
Edit: 2. Added 2005 Alpha gameplay footage
Edit: 3. Also added http://spcqr.net/
Edit: 4. Added more domains regarding Imperator)

"We'd rather make the Careers more similar than less similar"

2010-08-06T18:15:00.007+01:00

From the latest Q&A posted by Gaarawarr there was a question posted about Shamans and Archmages, but the answer does relate to Black Orcs somewhere down the line, you can tell which part by the title (which I purposely misquoted to make it sound better).

Q – Any plans on evaluating the parity between Shaman and Archmage DPS specs?

Nate - The only thing I can really say to that is what I have said a couple of times before. All things being equal, I’d rather make the Careers more similar than less similar. But I really don’t have an answer beyond that.

Now it looks fairly innocent enough, but we've already started to see that happen in the boss tree where we got the swordmasters group heal instead of our anti detaunt (which was a nerf to Black Orcs.. and for the record, we still never got a reason for the change). So I thought I'd have a look at what else is in the equivalent tree to see if we could make Boss mastery a better choice.

Now, the Boss tree is meant to be an AoE/Group Buff tree which does very little of either it has one decent tactic in it (Big Brawlin') and the rest of the tree can be happily ignored forever. Swordmasters have it as an magic/anti magic tree.

Now we share the same opening tactic so that's fair enough, we can skip straight to the first action. I dont know a lot about Swordmasters so any SM's please correct me as I just write this out from WARDB.com

Swordmaster: Aethyric Armor - 35AP - The power coursing through your blade is extended to your armor, increasing it by 660 and increasing your Disrupt chance by 5% (is this a permanent buff, the WarDB tooltip doesn't show any duration etc)

Black Orc: We'z Bigger - 45AP -20s cool down. Needs middle plan -- Deals 176 damage. Increases the armor of all groupmates within 20 feet by 429 for 20 seconds.

Both are fairly meh and don't stack with armour pots or any other armour buff making it all but useless, I've never used We'z Bigger but when compared to Big Swing + Big Brawlin' it's pointless for groups. I'd suggest both sides get the following:

40AP 20s cool down. Needs middle plan/stance -- Deals (low) damage, increases resists by 200 and disrupt chance by 5% for all group mates within 60feet.

Swordmaster: Calming Winds (tactic) - Increase Disrupt chance by 10% when in Improved Balance, and 20% when in Perfect balance.

Black Orc: Big Brawlin (tactic) - Big Swing now Snares for 40% for 5 seconds and Disorients, increasing build times by 25%.

I'll happily give Big Swing to the Swordmasters making it affect Wrath of Hoeth, disrupt fits in with the anti magic side of things for SM's and the aoe side for Black Orcs.

Swordmaster: Protection of Hoeth - 25AP - requires first balance - 10s cool down -- You call upon the magic in your blade to form a barrier to protect you, absorbing up to 825 damage for up to 5 seconds.

Black Orc: Rock 'Ard - 35AP - 10s cool down - requires first plan -- Deals 77 damage. Activates protective shield that absorbs up to 160 over 5 seconds.

As a Black Orc I'd happily take a bubble that didn't require me to hit the target first even if it meant I didn't do damage on the attack (it's low anyway). So yeah, give Borcs a copy of Protection of Hoeth plz.

Swordmaster: Blessing Of Heaven (tactic) - Path of Hoeth abilities will place an effect on your target for 10 seconds. During this time, any allies who strike the target will recover 132 health over 3 seconds.

Black Orc: No Choppin' Me (tactic) - Follow 'me Lead will also buff all group mates within 30 feet of the defensive target.

This is another one where I'm fairly... Meh about both tactics, BoH looks nice but when you look at the amount that gets healed it's fairly pathetic to get any solid use from it. No Choppin' Me is one of those tactics that IF you're in a melee group is very nice, IF your group stays within 30 feet if your defensive target and IF you could justify using it over an armour debuff. Honestly though, it's in our soddin' buff tree and Mythic give it a pathetically low size to effect people.. Meh, at least double it, even up to 100 feet and it'd be better, though maybe still not worth picking that high up the tree. Any SM's or Bobs have a better idea to replace this tactic?

And finally...

Swordmaster: Whispering Wind - 20s cool down - requires 3rd balance -- You release two swift blows that deal 153 Spirit damage each, interrupting any building attack and will Silence your target for 4 seconds. The winds then aid group members within 100 feet for the next 10 seconds by decreasing the cool down of abilities used by 5 seconds

Black Orc: WAAAAAAAGH! - requires 3rd plan -- Deals 246 Corporeal damage to all targets within 30 feet. Also reduces target's Corporeal resistance by 160 for 20 seconds.

The iconic ability of WAR, the one that is screamed daily by players and developers alike... WAAAAAAAGH! is a pile of shit. Even specced up to max in it the damage is still no more than our core AoE attack Da Big Un. Whispering Wind is a fantastic action for warbands and scenario group and I'm seeing more and more SM's in top level warbands these days specced for Whispering Wind. In fact it's such a nice action that it fits in perfectly as WAAAAAAAGH! instead of our rotten one. So I'll happily leech WW of you SM's and rename it to WAAAAAAAGH! :)

WAAAAAAAGH! -- You shout loudly causing two shock waves dealing 153 Corporeal damage each, interrupting any building attack and will Silence your target for 4 seconds. The shouting then 'inspires' group members within 100 feet for the next 10 seconds by decreasing the cool down of abilities used by 5 seconds

Sounds good huh? Well to me it does being a Black Orc. In all honesty though, this is just a look at the one mastery I'm not overly keen on for Black Orcs and is possibly favoured a bit towards us, however there are actions and tactics in other trees that I'm sure Swordmasters would happily copy from Black Orcs as well. While we don't want clones so classes must be somewhat distinct there needs to be a bit more parity for sure, after all I'm not sure either class wants to be Swordmasters of Gork.

Werit shows us the new Black Orc shields

2010-08-03T13:17:00.003+01:00

Got home from vacation yesterday and sadly contracted Nurgles Rot so having to take the day off work as my head fills up with snot and blood. In the meantime though Werit has kindly posted the new shields you can get at early ranks. Much the same as Werit said, the target one is my favourite. Hopefully I'll be able to get onto the test centre over the next couple of days.

http://www.weritsblog.com/2010/08/136-black-orc-shields.html

Cheers Werit!

EA partners with microtransactions firm

2010-07-27T18:06:00.002+01:00

EA has a HUGE library of games already in development, so it's a fairly good chance that it's nothing to do with the MMO arm of EA (Bioware Mythic) but just in case I thought I'd pass along the news.

Keep in mind though, microtransactions do not mean F2P, probably just TRH....

Electronic Arts ( ERTS - news - people ), one of the world's largest games publishers, on Monday partnered with microtransactions platform Live Gamer to bolster its online game efforts. The companies did not disclose details of their partnership.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/26/electronic-arts-videogames-technology-microtransactions.html

Warhammer Online: Island of Blood

2010-07-26T16:14:00.006+01:00

I recently found out that Warhammer the board game has recently had a new version brought out (I stopped playing the board games a long time back), it's up to 8th edition and is just a rulebook. However Games Workshop have also announced that there will be a boxed set expansion type thing for the game in September featuring two armies.. High Elves and Skaven.

Now what possible tie in could happen with a certain online game that we play?

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/blogPost.jsp?aId=11500028a

Nothing even mumbled from Mythic of course, but it'd make an almost perfect opportunity to announce an expansion whether live or paid. Fighting over resources or some such for the war against a Skaven horde. Now we just need to find out some background on this Island of Blood and what the story is behind it, could it be linkable?

BioWare points, ANOTHER vacation the PTS and thank you to da boss Xzi

2010-07-25T16:45:00.007+01:00

I have a Bioware Social Network account from buying Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 so one account rather than multiples is always good for me, it's also inevitable that SW:TOR will go through the network as well, possibly DAoC and Ultima will come later if it's viable.

So what does this mean really? Well one key thing that the BSN (I can't be bothered typing it out each time, so it's now called that) has is the purchasing of BioWare points for real life money, this is used in Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age to purchase downloadable content such as new quests, party members and expansions.. Could Warhammer be going down the road of purchasable items? There was also mention a while back about new vanity pets coming in, this would be a way to gauge interest, maybe add some of the mounts that are hidden in the files that people have found.. There's a possibility. What I don't see happening is a free to play model, WAR is profitable enough to not have to worry about that... For now.

And guess what? I'm on another vacation. Last one for the year probably but I'm off for a week to Sweden with the girlfriend and to meet up with some long time guild mates, we're heading up to the north of Sweden, just inside the Arctic Circle with a forest, lake and mountain around us. Mmm 1600 metre mountain to climb. Should be a good laugh :)

The PTS I've had very little time to play with, the problem with it right now is that I don't have Lokax on it, I hate using template characters as they don't let me 'test' situations properly. I know Loks gear, limitations with it and what not, so giving me two sets of high end gear and a lot of emblems doesn't help when I still have jewels, other weapons and other armour pieces I use. From what I've heard though the plan mechanic changing is not too bad, will take some time to get used to for some people but when you can open up with a Down Ya Go or Shut Yer Mouth it certainly can't be bad.

And finally my long time guild leader has stepped down to concentrate on real life. We went out with one final Hand of Blood warband with Xzi leading on Thursday night before he logged out for possibly the last time. So here's vid that one of our members took.

/salute Xzi

You were a gud git.

(click to expand to see the full version)

Another look at the 8 piece sovereign bonuses

2010-07-22T07:52:00.001+01:00

NateL of Bioware Mythic posted the revised 8 piece set bonuses they are looking at

(clicky)

And for the stuff I'm interested in, lets look at the tank bonuses:

Tank archetype

Defensive: Your group becomes immune to Stagger, Knockdown, Root, and Knockback effects for 5 seconds.
Offensive: Nearby allies have their movement speed increased by 60% for 10 seconds.

Meh... Well compared to the other archetypes it's just a big... Meh. I mean, lets be honest about it, we get the same buff (for four seconds) on a 20 second cooldown in our third plan, that's not an endgame bonus on a 2 minute cooldown no matter what they think, all other bonuses are on 10 seconds. Just because you think CC immunity is hugely powerful doesn't actually make it so when it is reliant on timing and lasts 5 seconds. Extend it to 10 seconds maybe and then we're talking.

The offensive one I still think it's Meh as well... It just doesn't strike me as 'tanky' even for offensive tanks. I guess it's meant to show the tanks leading a charge in, but lets be honest, it will only affect you, maybe the other tank in the group and a melee dps (assuming a two tank, one mdps, one rdps and two healer group). I just don't rate it as using up an item slot when there's better abilities out there for offensive tanks, in particular the LotD cloak for DPS. Hmm, 100 melee power and 25 strength.. Or I can run fast for 10 seconds on a two minute cooldown. I know what I'll pick.

No they've said they dont want 'click = more damage' bonuses so we should avoid dreaming of them, and subsequently I don't think they want 'click = absorb damage', they're looking for bonuses which change the shape of the battlefield.

So how would I do this?

For Defensive I'd change the timer to 10 seconds, if that's deemed too powerful then how about?

Your group takes 20% less incoming damage for the next 10 seconds

I'd say it looks decent enough, can be vital if timed right, or a waste if not.

And for offensive bonus? Hmmm, a bit more difficult. It needs to be aggressive and beneficial to your group, or a hindrance to your enemies, not a simple self buff or single target debuff. It's very difficult to think of the bonus since by nature tanks are defensive but yet we need an offensive bonus which does not mirror the MDPS morale. I'm honestly at a loss for what could be better but I still can't see myself using it in any shape if I'm DPS spec (which I generally am these days).

So are the bonuses great or not? A guild mate suggested you make it a simple +1 tactic slot which I think is great in theory, but sadly would become essential rather than a choice even beyond the inevitable rank increase.

Loudmouth vs. 'Ave Another One

2010-07-14T18:00:00.003+01:00

I've always been a firm believer in the tactic Loudmouth. It's a nice proc which does decent damage. For those who don't know it's the following at Rank 40.

Loudmouth: War Bellows now also deal 227 damage to your offensive target.

What this means is that there's a 25% chance every thing you hit something (or in the case of Da Greenest when you're hit) to do 227 corporeal damage to your offensive target. Nice little proc which can do a nice chain of damage if you're lucky. Bellows activate (though you dont gain the effect from them) regardless of whether they are on internal cooldown allowing Loudmouth to do damage fairly consistantly. It's actually my choice over Stab You Gooder (crits do 25% extra damage) due to the guaranteed damage rather than assuming you get a crit, plus a decent damage roll which would add over 227 damage to an ability, although SYG has it's place for heavy crit builds for sure.

Now compare Loudmouth with 'Ave Another One (AAO)

'Ave Another One: Follow me Lead will deal an additional 695 damage over 5 seconds

This is basically three Loudmouth procs in one tactic which is spammable every 5 seconds (not that you would since FML is an opening plan). Overall Loudmouth always looked more appealing since it wasn't tied to one ability and you could easily just keep Wot Armour? as your opening plan without jumping between multiple actions.

But the more I've been looking at AAO recently the more I'm starting to get a twitch for it, however to maximise it's efficiency you need to keep it up as often as possible. It's only 5 seconds so it's pretty much impossible to keep at 100% uptime unless you drop plans (although 1.3.6 changes will make this easier). So lets have a look at two abilities side by side. However be warned, there is NO maths, nor any stats since I have no way to really collate and compare reliably.

AAO is obviously linked to FML so you need to keep this in mind. There's a fine line of whether it's better to always use FML if you have AAO slotted, or to use a combo of Wot Armour? and FML since both have 20 second secondary effects. Wot Armour obviously debuffs the targets armour which increases your overall damage from other abilities (though not Loudmouth since it's corporeal damage) as well as increasing melee damage done by allies on the target. FML however does more damage than Wot Armour and gives you or your defensive target a +100(ish) WS buff which in turns increases your own armour penetration and parry rating.

The one test I done against a random rank 40 mob, an auto attack with -1k armour (maxed brawler at rr80) applied to the target was only slightly more damaging than an extra 7.3% armour penetration I received from 102 WS (6 or so points in Boss). I believe it was onlt a difference of around 40-50 damage in favour of using Wot Armour? however keep in mind I have now activated a 695 damage proc.

So lets think about this without any factual based number crunching in the slightest.

A standard rotation I use is the following:
Wot Armour? > Right in Da Jibblies > T'ree Hit Combo

Three Hit is actually 5 hits (not a bug) so in one rotation not including auto attacks you are hitting a target 7 times without blocks or parry, add in a couple of auto attacks and lets round it up to 10 attacks. Now your bellow will go off 25% of the time so that's 2.5 Loudmouth procs, rounded down due to the Black Orc curse to 2 procs. So including the increased damage from the target being armour debuffed and you probably come away with slightly higher numbers than using AAO with FML always used as the first plan.

Ok, so not the most scientific method so if anyone has any better way for me to collate and work it out then please let me know and I'll give it a shot. In the meantime I'm going to hit some scenarios using just FML instead of Wot Armour to see how it 'feels'.

Mythic.. Seriously sort the European servers out.

2010-07-13T19:53:00.005+01:00

How?

I mean.. Really.... HOW?

What is so different with the European servers that are causing people to crash to character select screen upon changing zones. Currently I'm in a little premade of three people and for the last 90 minutes we've not managed a single scenario together without at least one person crashing out. This is the first time I've really played in three weeks so was looking forward to a good night of smush.

I know I'm not paying for the sub right now (because you won't let me since you don't have the account system setup for us) but I'm still an active subscriber. There is something seriously wrong with the servers. This is pretty much proving that the new servers are sub par that you gave us.

Apparently the free time ends soon (21st ish) and there's been little to no information from Mythic barring a "we're looking into it" and an emergency maintenance during peak time which took the server down for 6 hours or something stupid. Add to this that normal Wednesday maintenance now lasts until 6pm and you can tell see that we're starting to get a little pissed off.

There was a perfect opportunity to show former players over here how well you've done with the game but you've seriously dropped the ball, in fact it's dropped onto a big spiky pit and is actually deflating as I read about more and more European players just pissed off with the whole thing and wont be subbing when the free time runs out. Time to get your act together Mythic, communicate more (there's the C word again you like to preach) and get this shit fixed.

(Edit: Mythic have updated the Herald with the following information. I appreciate them actually saying something openly about it now, but it still worries me that there is no estimated fix time. I hope they dont expect us to pay while it's like this....

"We are currently aware of and are investigating solutions for performance and stability issues affecting the Karak Norn and Karak Azgal servers. This includes delays with the in-game mail system, frequent disconnects to character and server select and reports of performance issues and high latency. At this point we have no estimated time of repair for these issues, however please be sure to check the Herald for updates regarding this situation.

We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your continued support. ")

The new sovereign sets for tanks (part 2)

2010-07-12T09:11:00.004+01:00

So Mythic have changed a couple of bits for different classes (primarily removing the WS upgrade for the DPS set for Chosen and Swordmasters, and changing how things proc). It doesn't overly affect how the sets work for us, but gives me a good excuse to look back on the sets with a bit more time.

The new sets look like the following:

(Primary) Defensive Set

Tou - 232
Wou - 134
Init - 116
Str - 106
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289
6% reduced chance to be crit
4% block
60 hp/4s
4 AP/s
2% reduced armor penetration

3 piece - 85 Tou
4 piece - 85 Wou
5 piece - 200 HP/4s
6 piece - On Being Attacked: 10% chance to reduce all damage you take by 6% for 10s.
7 piece - On Being Attacked: 10% chance to increase parry/block/disrupt/dodge by 10% for 10s.
8 piece - 2m cooldown - Up to 9 targets within a 20 foot radius have their movement speed reduced by 60% for 5s.

(Secondary) Offensive Set

Str - 232
WS - 134
Tou - 116
Wou - 106
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289
6% melee crit chance
40 melee power
4% parry strikethrough
3 AP/s
2% parry

3 piece - 85 Str
4 piece - 85 Wou
5 piece - 5% DPS
6 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase melee power by 130 for 10s.
7 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase parry/block strikethrough by 10% for 10s.
8 piece - 2m cooldown - Up to 9 allies within a 20 foot radius have their movement speed increased by 60% for 5s.

If you compare this to our current sovereign set.

Tou - 224
Wou - 100
WS - 99
Init - 20
Str - 103
WP - 8
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289
3 morale per second
2% block
2% parry strikethrough
4% melee crit
2% reduced armor penetration
3 AP/s
3% reduced chance to be crit

3 piece - 85 Str
4 piece - 85 Wou
5 piece - 5% Melee crit
6 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to lower all of targets resistances by 200 for 10 seconds.
7 piece - On Hit: 25% chance to steal 80 toughness from your target for 10 seconds.
8 piece - 2m cooldown - Defensive target will absorb 487 damage over 10 seconds.

Both new sets are a lot more appealing but can they replace for example a Sov/Warlord/Invader combo set for 3x strength bonus? Without knowing the exact numbers on pieces I'd have to say yes. Using the triple strength stack (without talismans but including the Shroud of Assassins) you are receiving +376 strength without any set piece bonuses other than the + to strength. The DPS set, using all 8 pieces will grant you +317 strength but with +40 melee power added and a 5% DPS bonus. The DPS bonus is always hard to work out but with high end gear I'm sure it will add a few more points onto the damage bonus.

As for replacing a defensive/tanking set that's more tricky. For PvE tanking there's a lot more pieces out there which have better effect in PvE as well as some of the procs and bonuses being pointless. Toughness has NO effect in PvE at all for anything of any use and thus should be completely ignored, so you lose your first set piece and in effect 232 stat points. Wounds and HP regen is nice as is the parry/block proc. The 6% damage reduction proc is too low to be worth anything when you're getting cleaved for 4000 damage. Overall the defensive set is NOT for PvE tanking so don't use it as such.

Well how about the defensive set being useful for RvR? Much better yes. In scenarios I still prefer to run a more offensive build (triple str stack for example) so for scenarios I'll be sticking with the offensive set, for open RvR out in the lakes running with the warband it's much more interesting to look at the set. Multiple targets hitting you with AoE will set the defensive procs off enough to keep it up (though that also depends on internal cooldown), add in the AoE snare and general survivability with toughness, wounds, reduction in being crit and block and you have a good open RvR set.

Overall though, it's looking good. For single target DPS, scenarios etc I'll be running with a Sov set, though I might swap out a couple of pieces as the parry strikethrough I don't rate too much with the low proc rate and the speed boost while I like it, it will depend if I can fit in the invader two piece bonus (+72 strength) which I'd prefer or the Ferocity of the Crocodile set (+90 melee power).

The new sovereign sets for tanks

2010-07-07T22:38:00.003+01:00

Subject to feedback no doubt, but overall they don't look too bad. I gave up with toughness as a stat a while back mind you as I found it to be very ineffective. A large wounds pool seemed to work out better and the toughness just sort of added on anyway. The procs are nice and the speed buff/debuff seems decent enough, if a little odd for tanks, but I suppose it gives us more movement effects (and a life saver for us Black Orcs for being buggered with CC due to the plan mechanic). Any thoughts? I like it so far.

(Primary) Defensive Set
Tou - 232
Wou - 134
Ini - 116
WS - 106
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289

6% reduced chance to be crit
4% block
60 hp/4s
4 AP/s
2% reduced armor penetration

3 piece - 85 Tou
4 piece - 85 Wou
5 piece - 200 HP/4s
6 piece - On Being Hit: 10% chance to reduce attacker's armor penetration against you and chance to critically hit you by 6% for 10s.
7 piece - On Defense: 25% chance to increase parry/block/disrupt/dodge by 5% for 10s.
8 piece - 2m cooldown - Up to 9 targets within a 20 foot radius have their movement speed reduced by 60% for 5s.

(Secondary) Offensive Set
Str - 232
WS - 134
Wou - 116
Tou - 106
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289

6% melee crit chance
40 melee power
4% parry strikethrough
3 AP/s
2% parry

3 piece - 85 Str
4 piece - 85 WS
5 piece - 5% DPS
6 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase melee power by 130 for 10s.
7 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase parry/block strikethrough by 10% for 10s.
8 piece - 2m cooldown - Up to 9 allies within a 20 foot radius have their movement speed increased by 60% for 5s.

Your dream sovereign sets?

2010-07-02T17:37:00.007+01:00

Well with the upcoming changes to the Sovereign armour sets and multiple choices you can make, I was thinking what I'd like to see with the Black Orc Sov set. In all honesty it's a nice set, you get strength, wounds and melee crit as the first three bonuses, the next is a resist debuff which is also very nice. The toughness theft isn't that great and our special is abysmal.. A 300 damage absorb shield on a 3 minute cool down.. Bleh

So with the inevitable change coming, lets head it off and find out what I'd like.

I'll try and do three sets here, one for each mastery tree. All 8 part pieces are on a 2 or 3 minute cool down (can't decide). If it's highlighted green it means it's an already existing ability on the Sov set or on another high end set such as Tyrant.

Brawler (Single target DPS / Two hander)
3: +85 Strength
4: +85 Wounds
5: +5% Melee Crit
6: Erosion - On Hit: 10% chance to lower all of target's Resistances by 165 for 10 seconds.
7: Snap yer fingerz - On Hit: 25% chance to reduce targets chance to parry by 1% for 10 seconds this can stack up to 10 times
8: 'eadbutt: You smash your head into your targets head staggering them for 5 seconds. Once the stagger is broken the target will suffer from mass bleeding and take 750 damage over 10 seconds

Toughest (Tanking)
3: +85 Wounds
4: +85 Initiative
5: +500 Armour
6: Spiky Bitz - On Being Melee Hit: 10% chance the attacker will get caught on some nasty spikes adorned on your armour and take 200 physical damage.
7: Reactionary - On Defense: 25% chance to increase Parry, Evade, and Disrupt by 10% for 10 seconds.
8: Dats not 'urty: Your party will absorb 1000 damage over 10 seconds.

Boss (Group Buffs / AoE)
3: +85 Toughness
4: +85 Strength
5: +85 Wounds
6: Dis way - On Hit: 10% chance to increase the highest stat of party members within 60 feet by 100. Does not stack.
7: Keep 'ittin 'em - On Hit: 25% chance for party members within 60 feet to regain 20 Action Points
8: Orcapult!: If your defensive target is within 5 feet you can throw them to an enemy target within 60 feet.

Wot you gitz think?

Also today.. RvR Adjustments in 1.3.6

2010-06-30T20:00:00.004+01:00

ZOMG! Double post day!!

http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/board/message?board.id=dev_discussions&thread.id=10655

We'd like to announce some upcoming changes for RvR in v1.3.6. As stated by Carrie Gouskos in a recent Producer's Letter, there are many upcoming changes for ORvR in the near future. While some of these changes do affect ORvR, they do not conclude the list by any means. We are vigilantly working on much larger improvements to be released in a later version.

ORvR: Victory Points for PVE and Prior Tier have been removed. New pool values are as follows:
Tier 1
Objectives: 40%
Scenarios: 40%
Skirmish: 20%
Tiers 2 & 3
Objectives: 45%
Scenarios: 35%
Skirmish: 20%
Tier 4
Objectives: 45%
Scenarios: 30%
Skirmish: 25%

ORvR: Zone capture rewards will now only be awarded to players within the RvR lake or an associated Tier's Scenario. Players will remain eligible for rewards for 5 minutes after leaving the RvR lake or an associate's Tier's Scenario as long as the player is within the appropriate pairing.

Against All Odds: in the event that an army is outnumbered within an RvR lake, members of the outnumbered army will receive a scaling bonus to Experience, Renown and Influence. This bonus becomes active on qualified players after being outnumbered by 20% or more. The bonus cannot surpass 400% and requires at least 6 players of each Realm to be present within the RvR lake.

Scenarios: players with the "Quitter!" debuff will no longer suffer a penalty to Experience and Renown but will now be unable to queue for a Scenario until the "Quitter!" debuff has faded.

Contested Cities: Players belonging to the Realm that lost Stage 3 will now always be properly disabled by the Routed ability.

Contested Cities: Portals leading out of the Khorne War Quarters and Slaanesh Chambers no longer check for combat status.

Contested Cities: Guards will no longer spawn at the six objectives within Altdorf and The Inevitable City.

This is all quite a lot of info to digest. Against all odds only gives xp/renown/influence so wont impact the actual fighting (I initially misread this part, so apologies if you read something else here :D ) . Quitter change looks decent as well and how many people will we see hiding just inside the rvr lake but still close enough to the warcamp to get guard protection? Fair few I bet,

Changin' da plan

2010-06-30T17:31:00.007+01:00

So we get a new ability in 1.3.6 known as "Changin' da plan". Here's the details straight from Mythic.

Black Orc:

A new ability, "Changin' Da Plan", is now trainable at Rank 3. This ability will instantly shift you from No Plan into Da Good Plan, or from Da Good Plan into Da Best Plan, or from Da Best Plan into Da Good Plan. It is off of the global cooldown, and has a 5 second cooldown of its own.

To add to this, Mythic have stated it won't cost any AP.

So what to make of it. Well it's something which isn't a nerf lets put it that way. It does seem a very clunky way of handling things, adding an extra ability for us to fit onto overloaded action bars. Removing it off the global cool down is good but certainly not a huge advantage as the game is fairly unresponsive at the best of times, let alone in laggy situations where it won't actually help (and possibly will end up making you change plan when you don't want as it queues your actions all over the place).

I am thinking of ways to use it already and can skip out parts of a rotation now, a lot will involve timing and proper use of CDP will make a Borc more effective, however bad use of it can cause more problems than it's worth and possibly you gain it too quickly where you will still be getting the hang of using the plan mechanic leading to over complication.

Is it good? Yes for the simple reason that if it's bad we don't NEED to use it.

Is it a fix? No. The mechanic is still horribly broken with poor game response, bad action design, ill thought out combinations and our CC is still on cool downs which limits the effectiveness of changing plans if you activate it too early leaving you with the choice... Use another ability or wait for the cool down and lose precious damage.

I'm still trying ot think of a better way to run the mechanic within the limits that Mythic would put in, but it's harder than thought. I do love Bootaes idea of adding in the effect of the tactic which grants 0/+10/+20 crit depending on the plan, however I would drop that to 0/+5/+10 and also add the same rate to be added for Block and Parry (after all we're tanks).

So while I woz away....

2010-06-28T17:37:00.002+01:00

Mythic and GOA change things around.. I read the details from the phone but doesn't look too bad. I'll have a quick post about it tomorrow as I have nothing but good things to say about GOA and the European community team.

Also, I noticed Bootae asked a question about Black Orc (and SM) mechanics to me, I'll have a quick think and get back to you on that this week :)

Enjoy folks, seems us in Europe get a weeks no progression before the transfers are done to Mythic servers... Annoying since I'm now back from holiday, although the Steam sale is looking gud...

Off on 'oliday again

2010-06-21T16:35:00.002+01:00

Away from the PC for a week to enjoy some quality time with the better half and the sun. Have a good summer all and don't forget the suntan lotion!

Surveyor set for Black Orcs

2010-06-18T15:21:00.000+01:00

The Surveyor non-set comes from Mount Gunbad. It's repairable green items so fairly easy to get (I got most of them from a drunken naked war band.... and bought the rest for a few silver). It's a decent looking set, and the shoulders are often known as the coat hanger shoulders. It's a nice looking set, you can find repeats of the set items throughout the early stages of tier 3 so if you like the look there's a fair chance you can pickup the bits without having to bother going into Mount Gunbad. As an added bonus I included the Surveyor one hander and two hander weapons (didn't find the shield, but if I do I'll add the picture to this post). It does come pre-dyed in green and black. Trophies on shoulders not included....

A dedicated followorc of fashion

2010-06-17T10:33:00.006+01:00

So part of my little ongoing quest is to complete every Greenskin quest in the game (currently finished tier 1 and 2 and almost done with tier 3). I actually levelled up in the Dark Elf zones as back in the old days there was no Black Guard so hanging around in there gave me lots of opportunities to group with players running PQ's etc. This has worked well in my favour now as I go back, run the Greenskin quests and read the story behind each one and follow the grand pairing storyline. Some of the quests are brilliant and I'm sure in my rush to level I would have skipped reading them. Do yourselves a favour, run the Greenskin quest line and just follow it, I mean you can't beat a goblin in disguise as a slayer with a load of moldy beards stuck to his face, Gork speaking to you and being launched by a catapult.

Anyway, what does this have to do with fashion? Well it's also letting me do another personal quest which has been inspired by Blog the Witch who looked for a lot of unique designs and the announcement of the item appearance changes. And that is to collect every type of item for Black Orcs in game, all the models and skins that are different. This was made slightly trickier in 1.3.5 as they changed a lot of the green drops, so no Precursor pieces dropping which may not be replaced by another item. It's quite fun to realise though that the rank 39 green shoulders use the old tier 1 graphic though, so it's a decent change.

Thank Gork though, for the expanded bank space right now as it's starting to fill up...

This is NOT including any set items, so no invader, warlord etc in this screenshot and has only a couple of the tier 4 weapons.

So this will let me work out a combination of items which looks and just feels right for Lokax, I love tinkering with his appearance, right now he's just a giant red Orc in sovereign but it's not quite unique enough for me. I have never showed my helm due to loving his iron face plate and broken tusk face (does anyone have an idea if the special Choppa Teef face change works on Black Orcs?). I have a provisional set worked out, which looks a lot more scrappy, maybe not quite 'ard enough but it looks not too bad at all. I will be missing quite a lot of old influence rewards I will have picked up at some point and dumped and sometimes it's hard to tell if it's a different graphic or not for quest rewards, so when giving the choice of two you have to just hope it's different. I'm helped at least by some old concept shots of Black Orc armour and weapons, so I'm keeping my eyes out for anything which may resemble them. And of course, I'm desperately looking for a basha (club/mace) as there's plenty of Orc NPC's with them, just never seen a drop or a model of one for players :(

Anyway back to the quests!

Hell Yeah! Orcs in Helicopters!

2010-06-15T16:40:00.002+01:00

Nothing to do with WAR, but it's Warhammer 40k Orcs.... In Helicopters... Online...

DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA

Da Toughest - A Guide to the Black Orc Tanking Mastery

2010-06-13T09:18:00.001+01:00

DA TOUGHEST

In the second part of my guide to Black Orcs I'll be discussing our primary mastery - the tanking role. We have a whole tree dedicated to this known as "Da Toughest". It features our self heal bellow, aggro generating attack and a few defensive abilities. I'll look at typical mastery builds and mastery rotations. This is just a guide to the tree and some builds and rotations around it, specific guides on roles such as the ORvR tank will feature as a seperate guide. Warning, this is a LOT of text (over 2,500 words).

Overview

Da Toughest is our tanking tree, featuring defensive abilities and tactics. Each point in the mastery tree increases the effectiveness of abilities from this tree. The purchasable actions and tactics in this tree are geared more toward PvE tanking rather than anything of great value to RvR. There's a few key points to know about Black Orcs and PvE tanking though. You have to keep in mind that we're not 'technical' tanks like Black Guard or Chosen, we dont have mass amounts of parry and no way to drop our chance to be critically hit. What we do have though is a decent block rate which can be increased by a large amount (at a cost of threat generation and AP) and a vast amount of wounds. Finding the right balance between your wounds, armour, chance to be critically hit and defenses such as block and parry is half the battle. I tend to make sure I'm well stacked on wounds with a low chance to be crit, your healers should be able to keep you up, if not then dropping a bit of crit reduction for more block/parry might be the best option (and a bit of praying).

A key stat that Black Orcs lack in however is parry, we have no real natural way of increasing it other than one tactic which is quite weak (and even then it's 0/5/10% depending on the plan you're in). What this means is that Black Orcs are vulnerable to cleave attacks as they cannot be blocked, only parried. If you struggle on a boss with cleave attacks then there's no harm in seeing if a chosen or black guard can take over the tanking duty for him, it might be easier until you can start stacking Parry through renown.

Action Breakdown
Tactic Breakdown
Rank 4 Morale
Builds, Tactics and Morales
Rotations

Action breakdown

I'll break down each action that comes under Da Toughest mastery, I'll list plan, action point cost and if it's a low, medium or high damage action.

Clobber (first plan - 35 AP – Low Damage)

Our basic threat generating ability. Causes a decent chunk of damage and increases threat on our target. It costs 35 Action Points (compared to every other tank other than Swordmaster who does the same or more damage for 30AP, and the SM does spirit damage with his). This should be used a couple of times upon engaging a boss before starting your rotation and is a good, solid ability in PvE. Sadly not great in RvR due to needing to slot a tactic to turn it into a morale drain attack, combined with the high AP cost, spamming it will drain your AP very quickly.

Tuffer 'n nails (second plan – 30AP – Low Damage)

This action increases our armour by 990 for 20 seconds, it's not on a cool down but is in our second plan. A great action to use for PvE tanking.. IF you don't have any armour potions or a DoK with the armour buff covenant on due to the fact it doesn't stack which is disappointing. In all honesty though the buff you get from it is better than the covenant or the armour potion so should be used. It's cheap as well for one of our actions so fits in nicely, plus smashing a shield into someone's face is always good for a laugh.

Right in Da Jibblies (second plan - 35 AP – Medium Damage)

Quite possibly the most iconic action from a Black Orc. Kicking someone right in da jibblies causing a decent amount of damage and a reduction in weapon skill. Excellent in small scale for taking on melee DPS to reduce armour penetration (the bane of a tank).

Savin' Me Hide (third plan - 0 AP – Medium Damage)

My favourite RvR ability. Increases your toughness but importantly reduces the incoming magic damage your group receives by 20% for four seconds. This is a great ability in large scale RvR where bomb groups rule the roost. The four seconds could do for being a bit longer due to it only being 20% and Black Orc abilities having a hidden cool down due to the plan mechanic. I would recommend this and Not In Da Face as two essential RvR actions. Put this as your third plan and your group will love you.. For four seconds.

Ya Missed Me (25 AP – Low Damage)

Now we look at the purchasable actions. Ya Missed Me is the first action you can buy. Upon blocking you can deal a chunk of undefendable damage to a target and reducing the physical damage done by 20% for 10 seconds. This is great in PvE encounters but also very handy in small scale RvR (scenarios, 6v6 etc) where it will proc off a guard if you block it and can then dish out de-buff to any target you want. Not as much use in large scale RvR due to the single target nature of it but if the enemy has a melee focus or a super slayer then you can neutralise them. What is important is that this action is not bound to a plan so you can use it and retain the plan you are in without stepping ahead or back.

Can't Hit Me! (15 AP/Second – Medium Damage)

Can't Hit Me! is the ability other tanks want and immediately believe that it makes Black Orcs the best PvE tanks in the history of ever. "OMG you can get 100% block permanently".. WRONG! CHM is a fantastic action but it's certainly not an ability to trivialise PvE due to a couple of drawbacks. The first is that it drains AP. Black Orcs have a higher than normal cost for abilities so when you get out of AP, it is more of an issue. The second problem is that the threat generated is very low, you will only be dealing around 120 damage upon blocking so you can only spam it up once you have a large amount of threat (imagine 240 threat compared to 1000 threat from a choppas auto attack crit). It's great for emergency situations or for holding large numbers of mobs but remember you cannot block a cleave so it won't help on a lot of bosses. It is however essential for PvE tanking for a fall back and to keep up when you're at the last few percent of a boss when your threat should be high enough.

Down Ya Go (Third Plan – 0 AP – High Damage)

Our only knock down appears at the top of the toughest tree. 20 second cool down and a 3 second knock down... Not great, but it does have the single biggest base damage of any black orc ability. I have seen 2k+ crits on this with a two hander however the fact it's on a 20 second cool down, is the third plan and the knock down is only three seconds does limit it as a crowd control action. If you're speccing into the tree fully it's worth it as a burst damage ability and in small scale it's nice to have for neutralising someone for three seconds so they can be focussed down.

Tactic Breakdown

Less Stabbin' Me (3 points in Da Toughest)

The first purchasable tactic you can get is Less Stabbin' Me. I actually think this is overrated and used a bit too often. People see the 10% increase to parry and block in the last plan and get blinded by it. This tactic gives 5% increase to parry and block in second plan and the afore mentioned +10% in the third. The problem is, you don't hold yourself in a plan for long as you're debuffing the target, hitting things, trying not to get hit and building threat. It's pointless in RvR and in PvE the tactic slot would be better suited for an 'always on' tactic for tanking.

Stop Hittin' Da Runts (7 points in Da Toughest)

Now THIS is a must have tactic. 40 AP every time a bellow goes off (normally 25% of the time on a hit). It works in a fantastic combo with Can't Hit Me and Da Biggest bellow which can proc on multiple targets almost giving you 50% extra block for a longer duration as your AP will be regenerating when the bellow goes off. It also lets you keep spamming the rotation as you shouldn't have any AP issues. If you're taking any points in Da Toughest then you could do a lot worse than take Stop Hittin' Da Runts.

Mor' Hardcore (11 points in Da Toughest)

Dear Gork.. What a dreadful tactic for 11 points. Right in Da Jibblies and Savin' Me Hide will now knock back targets a medium distance. Two main problems here though. Medium distance is actually pathetic compared to any other type of knock back that tanks have (Black Orcs have the shortest distance of knock back available). And the second problem is that Right in Da Jibblies is on the second plan along with our base knock back so there's no use in having two knock backs on the same plan when you can only use one anyway. Seriously, this is one tactic I have NEVER taken and in its current form NEVER will.

Rank 4 Morale

Can't Touch Us

Group Members within 100 feet gain 200 Action Points and absorb 4500 damage over 15 seconds. This is basically a very weak version of the Zealot Rank 4 morale Tzeentch's Shielding (250 Ap and 5400 damage over 20 seconds). It's also an exact mirror of the Swordmasters morale 4. Basically it looks nice for extra support in a war band but as ORvR Black Orcs tend not to spec into Da Toughest for war band action it's of limited use and I certainly can't justify the 3 mastery points you have to spend to get it. It's a common trait amongst Tanks, the rank 4 morale in the defensive tree just doesn't seem worth the points. Honestly unless your war band requests you to spec into it then don't bother.

Builds, Tactics and Morales

One of the great things about Black Orcs is that a lot of the actions you use are not in the actual mastery tree so you can actually perform most roles without having to respec too much but you do still need a build. I'll do each build for 25 mastery points and point out where you can put the other points once received. All builds feature PvE tanking as a feature but some (particularly the ORvR and Skirmish specs) will also feature in other trees with different builds

PvE Tanking Build

Fairly obvious build. The spare points including those from renown ranks can pretty much go anywhere but I find popping them into the brawler tree will at least help Skull Thumper and Da Biggest bellow while Arm Breaka is handy if you find yourself doing some RvR. Tactics and Morale are straight forward as discussed above.

Turtle Build

Turtling is all about survival, losing group utility, damage and general usefulness to become an immovable object. It's not a whole lot of use but some do enjoy playing it. Extra mastery points I'd split between both trees as you'll absorb more damage with Rock 'Ard, heal more with You got Nuffin' (which is now a group heal, not the anti de-taunt as shown) and if you use the toughest bellow as a turtle then the extra points will help to heal. Stop Hittin Da Runts can be useful as well if you want to slot that instead of the You Got Nuffin, especially if you want to spam Can't Hit Me. I've included both in the build so you can swap them out depending on the situation.

ORvR Build

AoE and survival is the biggest thing in large scale ORvR. The more damage and debuffs you can do while staying alive the better. Depending on tank numbers and what they're specced for (example being Chosen with crippling strikes) you will likely have to be either spamming Hold The Line or hitting the ORvR rotation. Spare points are just that, put them anywhere that you feel like though I'd recommend keeping them to the Boss spec or Toughest. Putting them in Brawler will just spread it out too much. I have to admit however that I feel a good solid ORvR build is based more in the Brawler tree, but this works if you wish to keep a single spec.

Skirmish Build

Skirmish is what I call the Toughest build that is most effective with for Scenarios/6v6 or small roaming groups but with the PvE aspect of the tank still attached (again it saves a respec). It's also effective in ORvR however you do lack Big Brawlin' which is great (more in the boss guide). Spare points go in brawler to get Arm Breaka and Not in Da Face. Tactics can vary if you want to use a two hander, I'd then slot in Dat Was Great, Stab You Gooder or Stop Hittin Da Runts depending on how you feel and how your group is composed.

Rotations

PvE Tanking Build

Your basic toughest rotation for PvE tanking involves two toughest abilities and one from the brawler line.

Clobber >> Tuffer 'n Nails >> Skull Thumper >> Clobber >> Right in Da Jibblies >> Skull Thumper

Clobber is a no brainer, until you have a decent level of threat up then use this in your first part of the rotation. Once you hare happy you have enough threat then start swapping in Wot Armour? to help the group DPS. You can then move onto Tuffer 'n Nails which will give you a nice armour buff and lasts long enough that you can swap in Right in Da Jibblies when the second plan comes around again. Skull Thumper, although it's a brawler ability there's no decent third plan from the Toughest that you will use in PvE. Use Skull Thumper as this will do damage every time someone crits, so if you have a crazy Witch Elf, Sorc or Choppa with a huge crit build you will actually gain extra threat and damage done to them. Skull Thumper features more in the "Da Biggest" section. Of course, during this rotation you will keep Ya Missed me up on the target when it appears, as this does not break your plan you do not need to worry about it causing any interference with your rotation.

Turtle Build

Turtling is an incredibly boring way to run as an RvR tank, in fact it offers little to no group utility, probably won't earn you any friends but you will be incredibly difficult to kill.

Rock 'Ard >> Tuffer 'n Nails >> Savin' Me Hide >> Can't Hit me for 5 seconds if under attack

Add in Can't Hit Me as often as possible and you will be a solid rock, just that though.. A rock, you wont be hitting anyone, you won't be doing anything and in fact you'll be a big, immobile blob of worthlessness.. Not Orcy as not enuff fightin'. This is more like Stunty fightin'. Note though that Rock 'Ard is in the Boss mastery tree so I'll discuss that more in that part.

ORvR Build

The next rotation is for the ORvR build. Catching as many enemies out and helping your allies is the aim here.

Wot Armour? >> Big Swing >> Savin' Me Hide / Not in Da Face

The whole aim of this is to cause debuffs and disorients with Big Swing then follow it up with damage mitigation or unstoppable buffs if facing low numbers of casters. You should be in the middle of your war band doing this to the enemy unless the healers aren't staggered (chosen AoE normally) in which case feel free to disorient them, just be careful you don't break any staggers that are incoming. Though as stated on the top of the guide, I'll actually be doing a guide just on the ORvR Black Orc.

Skirmish Build

Skirmish Build is what I basically use as a term for a spec that you can use in PvE tanking and also in Scenarios or small scale stuff. I'll do the rotation for RvR as the PvE tanking is the same as the standard rotation above.

Wot Armour? >> Right in Da Jibblies >> Down Ya Go! >> Wot Armour?/Arm Breaka >> Trip 'em Up >> Savin' Me Hide / Shut Yer Face / Not in Da face

The Skirmish rotation does vary depending on what your facing and if you have the extra mastery points from the renown rank, for example I really wouldn't bother with Savin' Me Hide if you're not facing any casters or they're not overly powerful or blowing the crap out your group at that point in time, instead Shut yer Face on a healer would be fantastic as would Not in Da Face to increase cool downs (and gives unstoppable to your group for four seconds).

A welcome to the WAR Europe crews WAR Blog

2010-06-10T18:08:00.003+01:00

http://waaaghmeup.blogspot.com/

I'll be keeping an eye on you gitz for news so yer on me blog roll.. Now Mr Kaxzane, about that onRPG contest....

Primeval (Priceless) set for Black Orcs

2010-06-08T17:41:00.005+01:00

Part two in the Non set sets... This is the Primeval set which drops in the Tomb of the Vulture Lord as repairable purples known as Priceless .... It's the same models as the Invader set but it does have a melee crit bonus on the shoulders instead of a block bonus that normal Invader has so works out well if you have a spare armour piece and want a bit more power. Plus, the shoulders are arguably the best in game for any class.. I mean, a Rat Ogres skull on one shoulder and every spiky bit you can find on the other.. What's not to love about them?

Kerching!

2010-06-07T10:07:00.004+01:00

Well it happened last night, and in all honesty it's how I wanted it to happen. In a middle of a fight not a zone leech or undefended keep take, actual fighting. I'm the official leader of G.R.E.E.N. in the guild (Getting Renown Ethically Each Night) so that basically means only get renown you fight for, no zone leeches and step out a BO before the final tick if you didn't have anyone to attack... I'm the only member :P Just scenario weapons left for me before I've officially 'completed' the game, but right now I'm having a lot of fun in the RvR lakes. Humans are much less predictable an opponent than memorising key strokes and positions for end game PvE encounters.

Huge thank you to everyone in Hand of Blood that helped me on my way there and a special shout out and thanks to Asrok, Garamore, Gogron, Kendel, Lethy, Mavve, Mimz, Snikkit, Xhera and Xzi.

(as a side note, that's part two of the Black Orc guide almost written so it should be up today or tomorrow)

Random musings

2010-05-31T12:48:00.003+01:00

It's typical isn't it? I can think of a hundred and one posts when I'm at work (normally when I go for a walk at lunch time) but see when I get home? They melt out my brain and disappear somewhere... So instead of actually putting one post on one thing, I'll pop a few little comments into a post and see what inspiration happens...

The Red Plague... I think we're setting ourselves up for a fall here. I am actually starting to believe that there is no red plague and that it was just a throw away fluffy comment in the patch notes. WE the players and bloggers have actually been the carriers of the disease that now has people talking about what will happen with WAR and if it will be an expansion. WE will be sorely disappointed and no doubt actually be raging at Mythic for not doing anything about the red plague when it was actually the community that created expanded it into something it isn't.

End game... I'm deliberately staying away from zones that will be locking, taking a couple of steps out a BO before it gets capped and generally trying to prevent any gains in renown other than killing things. Why? I'm just about to hit end game and I'm worried that the RR80 curse will hit me and suck the life out the game for me. I doubt it will, but there's just not a lot to drive people out to the lakes other than fighting for the fun of it when they hit 80. The game needs more for the end game players to do as full Sov and RR80 are actually getting quite common now.

Producers letter tomorrow... Hopefully something of substance, but I get the feeling this one will be a recap of the last patch and the usual "Great things are coming... just wait!".

Bombing... Good to see a European (and a guild we regularly fight) gave Mythic a bit of a wake up with the effectiveness of bomb groups. Shame that the 'fix' has actually done nothing of the sort other than add one more button to press every now and then. Bomb groups are still alive and kicking and are as effective as ever.

TTK... Time To Kill. This is actually a good one, and something I want to talk about properly. Mythic claims that the TTK is too low, meaning that players die too quickly. Mythics answer? Raise damage and healing.. Errr wut? No seriously, there's been no increase in damage mitigation or nerfing of items that make you kill players quicker than intended *cough*Land of the Dead pocket items*cough*. Why are resists so easily hitting the stupidly low softcap and then barely moving to help mitigation? Why does toughness really do bugger all since to make it effective you have to stack it very high (in my opinion, double the effectiveness of toughness). So many defensive buffs, potions and liniments don't stack that it makes many abilities worthless to use. I wont go into too much detail since it's best left for another day. Suffice to say that Mythic think the TTK is too low, but they keep on adding things that lower it...

PinkforTink... All my thoughts are with you lass. Hope you can pull through this and everyone over here in the old world of Europe is rooting for you.

Arabian Steeds... They look dreadful and all of a sudden the "You can recognise an enemy from the silhouette" design concept gets chucked out the window. I would have preferred (of course) racial mounts. Dark Steeds for Dark Elves, Keg carrying ponies for Dwarves. Wyverns for Orcs etc etc. Still the idea of having stuff to spend your wasted tokens on is good. Now it just needs to actually have something of use (and desire) for me.

Anyway, that's it for me for just now. Will pop back in later to go over some of these things again.

Any fellow bloggers know how to contact Mythic for a couple of interview questions?

2010-05-17T15:07:00.003+01:00

Subject says it all, even if you're not a blogger any idea?

I'd like to send a few questions off to Mythic about Black Orcs and I'm looking for a way to contact them or some of the guys over there. Since I have a European account I can't use the forums to PM Andy or James there (and I dont think they would pay too much attention to a trial account PM'ing him) and I'm not even sure who does what on the team anymore (maybe a who is who for the website would be good Mythic?)

Not sure if I'm even wasting my time or possibly there time but if you know, then drop me a comment or you can send me an email by clicking the orange link to the right hand side there in the "Wot's dis all about?".

Even better, if you are Mythic then let me know if it'd be ok, or if it's best just to wait for producers letters etc

Precursor set for Black Orcs

2010-05-13T13:48:00.007+01:00

So I've decided on a little project as I get scarily close to realm rank 80. To collect all armour sets which you don't often see such as the green sets, repairable sets and basically to look for interesting models and skins, hopefully the odd unique one as well to tart around in :)

So here's the first one. The Precursor set for rank 39. Simply a green set, nothing special on it but the artwork is nice enough, though can be seen throughout the game. You can click on each picture for bigger examples. I left the trophys on simply because I couldn't be bothered to take them off so the twin daggers on the shoulder at the left hand side are from Land of the Dead and the Stags skull on the right side of the picture is from the Hunters Vale live event.

Black Orc questions from the recent Q&A

2010-05-12T18:20:00.003+01:00

I need to get me going to the European one if it happens again to ask some solid Black Orc questions. Last one (and maybe only ever one) I was on holiday :(

Anyway, thanks to Gaarawarr for posting the transcript.

Q – Are you looking into making the Black Orc Boss tree more attractive?

Nate - For the Black Orc and the Swordmaster, our intention is really getting the career to feel overall top to bottom like it’s a little smoother. Whether that’s something to do with the mechanic or how the abilities interact with the mechanic, I’m not sure yet. But we want to get the career generally not feeling so step-stop, step-stop as it does currently. That’s our priority more-so than singling out a specific mastery tree.

Well it's a start. I'm not expecting much, if anything as this has been the first mutterings of changes to the mechanic since they last mentioned it wasn't totally going to be re-written. I'm wondering if it wouldn't just be easier for Mythic to re-write the mechanic than to work on the existing one. It absolutely MUST be resilient to high lag situations so we're not locked out of plans or spamming one button because the game doesn't realise we've changed plan and then jumps us ahead two. I'd actually like to sit down and design a mechanic, just to see how it would work.

Q – When you use Not in Da Face you get a 4 second immunity to your group and Savin Me Hide gives your group 4 seconds of reduced magic damage. It was said in the past that those durations would be increased. Are we going to see those adjusted?

Nate - It’s possible. They’re both pretty powerful effects, obviously specifically the CC immunity is really strong. We don’t want those to get too out of control so that they’re up all the time, but it’s certainly a possibility.
So keep the CC immunity timer which also has a great base effect (single target CD increase but ability has a cool down) as it is and increase Savin Me Hide's 4 seconds to something of substance (10 seconds?). Savin Me Hide has a hidden cool down of around 7-10 seconds depending on lag due to it being on the last plan so it's not spammable, plus you have to drop defences on your war band (no Hold the Line), find a target that isn't a tank so you might actually not be blocked or parried, go through the first two plans and then drop it on the third, rinse and repeat. If it's too good then nerf it, but I don't see anyone complaining about it as it stands, if anything it's almost under looked due to the stupidly low 4 second duration

Q – Any plans on increasing Black Orc group utility?

Nate - As I mentioned earlier, in our view, some of the bigger problems with the Black Orc and the Swordmaster are general smoothness of playability and that’s what we’d like to look into first.
OK, so we wait for the class playability before any other changes. So 1.3.6 is out the window as it's too short if they're just looking right now. 1.3.7, 1.4? Who knows. On the upside it means I won't hold my breath for patch notes expecting some wonderful work done on the class, downside though is that we'll get the little nerfs here and there and no doubt be waiting six months until we hear anymore about this. I'll put this bet out (and going by my track record of predictions which is dreadful, please don't put money on it) and say that the Black Orc and Swordmaster mechanics/playability/ability interaction or however you want to call it won't be changed within the next 6 months. In fact I'm putting a post in 6 months which will pop up reminding me to either eat my hat or to look smug on me rock. It's not that I don't think Mythic don't want to do anything, it's just that BOBs and SM's are so poorly played it's not worth the resource for Mythic to fix the classes when the game revolves around Chosen/Knights, Sorcs/Bright Wizards, Choppas/Slayers, DoKs/WPs. Those are the best in archetype for each side, both mirrors and both head and shoulders above respective classes.

Black Orcs got nuffin'

2010-05-11T08:55:00.003+01:00

I had a mini rant about this a while ago but didn't go into too much detail, so bear with me on this one....

So Black Orcs and Black Guard have a little tactic which allows us to ignore detaunts, it's gud. It lets us be a pain to healers and it gives us something different from the Chosen.

So mythic remove it from Black Orcs and give us a group heal tactic...

Uhm.

Wut?

Balance Changes:

* You Got Nuffin': This Tactic will now heal group mates whenever your War Bellows trigger.

Yup, they changed it to a group heal. But not just any group heal, it's a group heal which does a whole 300 health over 10 seconds (and it doesn't proc multiple times so it's basically on a 10 second cool down).

THIS IS POINTLESS.

All I'm asking is the reasoning behind this. Again I go back to communication issues with Mythic. They have changed something, given no reason for it and no matter what feedback will be submitted on it it will not be changed. It's one of these changes that are set in stone. I've almost gotten to the stage of giving up on feedback since nothing ever seems to change unless it's a huge public outcry.

So here is my request since we have no communication channels with Mythic.

DEAR MYTHIC.

PLEASE CAN YOU GIVE US THE REASONING BEHIND THE CHANGE TO THE BLACK ORC TACTIC "YOU GOT NUFFIN'" AND REPLACING IT WITH A TACTIC WHICH HAS SO LITTLE IMPACT IN RvR THAT IT WILL NEVER BE SLOTTED.

I know the chances of a reply are less than slim to none but since I'm a paying European customer I have no way to post on the official forum which is frequented by the developers so I have to resort to this.

Another blog roll update

2010-05-11T08:20:00.000+01:00

Nine new additions to my blog roll, not all are new blogs, some very well established members of the community I somehow managed to miss out.

Apologies to those I missed out and welcome to the new members of the community. I'm sure there will be more to come.

On Waaaghcation!

2010-05-05T09:42:00.002+01:00

Forgot to say you little gitz dat I'm on me Orcy 'olidayz so no posts dis week.. Be more soon though gits.. Keep da smush goin'

Quick thoughts on the red plague.

2010-04-26T14:21:00.004+01:00

If you read WAR blogs you already know about the teasing of the red plague that has been passed around. Is it an expansion? Is it bringing in new player races? Skaven? Brettonians?

In my opinion, none of the above.

Going by what Mythic has done in the past with DAoC and Ultima Online, I'd actually expect this to be a summer campaign much as Land of the Dead was. Maybe no new zones, but a new live event each month with rewards, titles and random things that will go in your bank. I will put this out right now though: there will be NO new playable races.

My live event item has ran out so we're due a new live event soon, this red plague will be the start of an arcing chain, the summer campaign which will take us to different zones etc but please don't hold your breath waiting for the announcement of an expansion or new race. It's simply not viable right now with the clearing up Mythic are doing in WAR.

What it doesn't stop me from doing though is imagining a "What if..." expansion/live content....

I would see a fourth race for each realm, however this is known as "Dogs of War" (for those who don't know much about Warhammer, the dogs of war were mercenaries of various types that could ally to almost any army. The dogs of war wouldn't be shared but would feature a new playable character which doesn't fit in with the other three races. In particular they'd be mirror classes as well. So what would I have for the two classes?

Bonedancers! Erm, I mean.. multiple pet classes. Now Bonedancers in DAoC were my favourite class, being able to summon different types of skeletons for different tasks. You got a slot limit and could fill up those slots with the skeletons. Healers, warriors, archers, casters and the commander (which you had to run). I might be a little flaky on that as it's been a while since I played DAoC. So lets skip the nonsense and bring out my proposal for the "there wont be so it doesn't matter" classes. Both classes become 'unlocked' after reaching rank 40 and renown 40.

Destruction: The Skaven Pack Master

Clan Moulder is one of the four Great Clans of the Skaven. They use foul mutations induced by Warpstone to create their charges of battle. Clan Moulder armies are typically led by Master Moulders and then field Clanrats as well as Skavenslaves as the bulk of their troops. The armies then include masses of their 'experiments' such as the Rat Ogre and Giant rats. These fighting beasts are also sold to other Skaven Clans for the highest price.

Archetype: Multi Pet (5 slots of pets). Physically very weak and must rely on powerful pets
Pet Types: Giant Rat (1 slot - weak melee DPS), Skavenslaves (1 slot - weak ranged DPS (slings)), Plague Rat (2 slots - dots/debuffs), Warpstone Slave (2 slots - medium melee DPS), Rat Ogre (5 slots - Tank)

Trees: Master of Rats (buffs the giant and plague rats), Master of Slaves (buffs the slaves), Master Moulder (buffs the Rat Ogre and the Player)

Order: The Grail Knight

The Land of Bretonnia is a feudal, traditional society where the peasants serve the knights in return for protection, while the knights are bound to militarily serve their lords in return for certain rights and titles. At the top of this feudal hierarchy is the King. Beneath the Kings are the Dukes. Beneath them is another layer of nobility, the Marquess's, the Earls, the Viscount's and the Barons in respective order. The King, Dukes, Marquess, Earls, Viscounts and Barons are also each the lord of a number of Knights, who are the lesser nobles. Each Knight (including the higher nobles) has his own force of Men-at-Arms chosen from the most physically-abled peasants. In return for serving his knightly lord, each peasant is given a small tract of land for his family and can be expected to be called upon for service in times of war. The Knights' forces typically consist of the stronger Men-at-Arms and the more lowly Bowmen levies. The lands of Bretonnia are also ruled by spiritual and mystical leaders, the Fay Enchantress, her Damsels, and the Grail Knights, who are all faithful servants to the Lady of the Lake.

Archetype: Multi 'Pet' (5 slots of pets). Strong and uses weak pets to enhance abilities
Pet Types: Peasant (1 slot - very weak melee DPS), Bowmen(1 slot - very weak ranged DPS (slings)), Man-At-Arms (2 slots - melee debuffs), Squire (2 slots -buffs), Knight Errant (5 slots - Tank)

Trees: Chivalry (buffs the Man-At-Arms and Bowmen), Honour (buffs the Peasant and Squires), Nobility (buffs the Knight Errant and the Player)

Wot Arm... Blog Roll?

2010-04-21T22:42:00.002+01:00

As you may have seen (both of you that visit the blog) I've done a mass upgrade on the blog roll. Lots of new bloggers and lots of new articles to read so updated it from what I've managed to find over the last couple of days and hopefully not missed anyone. If you're not there and run a WAR blog or gaming blog with a significant amount of WAR articles then please let me know and I'll add it in.

A guide to Black Orcs - Part 1

2010-04-18T21:42:00.001+01:00

"Armed and armoured to fight in the thick of melee as a warrior and tanker, the Black Orc matches physical hardiness with a down and dirty brawler’s fighting style that makes him the heart of any war band. With choppa and shield in hand, he can face down any foe unshaken. However, it is his unique approach to fighting that makes him as deadly with his fists as with either of those tools. He’ll knock you down so you can’t fight back, and then kick you while you’re down. There’s no honour among Greenskins, and there’s no such thing as a fair fight – and that’s the way he likes it!"

Black Orcs are the Greenskin army tanks. Huge, hulking and green they are an instantly recognisable sight on the battlefield and are (in my opinion, which may be biased) the best 'feeling' class in the game through looks, abilities and background. People may laugh at you if you charge in with a chosen screaming about change for the raven god as a Chosen.. People cheer when you charge in as a Black Orc screaming "WAAAAAAAAAGHHH!".

This first Black Orc guide is not about how to level up your Black Orc, or where to quest and what loot is best, that may come later on; this is simply an introduction, to give a bit of background and understanding to our class and mechanic. We are huge, lumbering Greenskins, encased in metal with spikes sticking out from our armour. We have vast amounts of hit points and toughness and although we lack the technical skills such as high levels of parry, block and reduction in being critically hit that the Chosen or Blackguard have, the raw survivability stats can make the Black Orc a formidable foe in RvR.

The Black Orc - sometimes known as a Borc or Bob (Black Orc Brawler/Boss) - has two class mechanics, Bellows and Da Plan so lets look at those first.

Bellows :

Bellows are self buffs. You get a choice of three, all of which do different things. The difference with a standard buff though and bellows is that all bellows are based on procs (when there's a chance that something will happen rather than a guarantee). Two of the bellows (Biggest and Toughest) are a 25% chance of activating when hitting something and the last (Greenest) activates when being hit (again a 25% chance). We’ll look at each type of bellow individually.

Da Biggest: This is the bellow from the brawler tree, it’s a stat stealing proc which has a 25% chance when you hit a target to steal a random stat (other than wounds) from all enemies within 30 feet of you. Since this is a steal you and your party within 100 feet gain the stat you’ve stolen for 10 seconds. This does unfortunately mean that sometimes you will steal ballistic skill from a warrior priest but other times you’ll steal strength from a slayer. Fully specced at rank 40 in Brawler and you’ll be stealing 120 points where a rank 40 without any brawler points will steal 75. This is an excellent bellow for threat as well as the de buff that the mob receives will take a decent amount of threat from you and when you’re AOE tanking a big swing can be enough to de buff multiple targets keeping them locked on you.

Best Use: Da Biggest is the RvR bellow of choice due to the de buffs and buffs provided.

Da Toughest: Toughest comes from the toughest tree and is a self heal bellow. This heals the black orc between 300 and 480 wounds (depending on how much you have in the toughest tree) when it procs. There is a 25% chance upon hitting a target that this will proc however it’s on a 10 second cooldown which means at best you will heal yourself every 10 seconds and at worse it could be every 20 seconds or so. This is commonly used in situations where you are without a healer or you need a fairly constant trickle of health. It’s not the best for PvE tanking due to the low proc rate and low health regained (and lets be honest if you need to rely on 480 health every 10 seconds then you have issues with your healers. Even in RvR tanking the heal is minimal so it adds no benefit to your war band or scenario group (providing you have healers).

Best use: Solo grinding, duels or scenarios where there’s no healer.

Da Greenest: Coming from the boss tree this is a situational bellow. It relies on you getting hit for it to proc (25% chance) and it will give you and your group within 100 ft a resist buff or armour buff for ten seconds depending on what hit you. This sounds like a great bellow other than the crucial fact that tanks are generally the last targets on the battlefield to be targeted so your bellow doesn’t help as much. Add in the fact that most people will be or are already close to hitting the soft cap on resists and the buff doesn’t add as much protection as you’d believe. It’s certainly not as useful as the biggest bellow, however it can be good for keep sieges or battlefield objective defences where you will be in the front line hopefully buffing yourself and your group as you get assaulted.

Best Use: Situational defences where tank walls are formed up or high lag situations where you can't do much other than hold the line.

So to summarise, in almost every situation it’s best to use the biggest bellow to not only buff yourself and group but also to debuff your enemies. By all accounts play with the other bellows and see if any of them fit other situations not described but you can’t go wrong with more stats!

The Plan Mechanic:

The plan mechanic is the basis of how we attack our enemies. There are three levels of plan, No Plan , Da Gud Plan and Da Best Plan. Most of our actions fit into one of these three and can only be used after the previous plan has been activated. This leads to chains of attacks which grow in power as they get to the end of the chain before resetting back to the first plan. Actions in our last plan cost no Action Points and are generally the most powerful abilities we have.

However there are downsides to the mechanic. The nature of the mechanic means you lose a lot of flexibility in your attacks - you cannot guarantee to be able to use the attack you want to use as you may be in the wrong plan, that archmage might already be out of range by the time you get to the plan which lets you snare, silence or knock him down. Although the last plan is no action point cost, it’s offset by the first two plans being higher than average costs. These two disadvantages are by design however one which is not by design and which can be critical is unfortunately lag. In high lag situations the games takes a long time to realise what plan you are in, this unfortunately can mean that in mass RvR you are stuck spamming first plan attacks until the game realises you’re in the next plan. The Black Orc can be very frustrating to play and is not an easy mechanic to understand compared to the hate of Black Guards or the auras of the Chosen, however work with it and understand the limitations and you can play the Black Orc well.

Summary:

With the Black Orc you don’t have a one button killing machine, you have to deal with a complicated mechanic and rely on procs for any of your buffs. You need to plan ahead and know what you’re doing. A Black Orc has to be in control of the battlefield or at least know what will be happening in advance, he cannot react to it as quickly as other classes so you lose a lot of effectiveness. However if you master this and have confidence in your abilities to understand the battle then you can be a key piece in a warband. Think of yourself as a rock. You might not be the most flexible, but as an almost immovable object you can get the rest of the world to adjust to you.

Black Orc questions from the blogger meet

2010-04-14T21:59:00.005+01:00

Big thanks to the bloggers who asked all the questions at the meeting. Some great info about there. I am loathe to link to one blogger over the other so I just suggest you visit Gaarawarr, Mykiel, ShadowWAR and Werit to see all the details. For now I'm going to just put the questions that were relevant to Black Orcs up and then have a small rant after each one.

Q) Is there any chance of a tank on the Order side getting a tactic where they can’t be detaunted?
A) Probably not…seeing as we just removed it from the Black Orc.

No actual reason given yet for the removal of an ability from the Black Orcs. They may have replaced it with a crappy group heal, but no-one will slot it so they have basically flat out removed an ability and given us nothing in return. Bad form Mythic, if you're going to remove tactics from a class, then you would be wise to remember that you promised to COMMUNICATE with your COMMUNITY better - currently you've not communicated with the Black Orcs since justifying the toughest bellow úber nerf.

Q) Is the Black Orc mechanic going to be reworked at any point in time?
A) No, they’re not going to be totally reworked. They are a little more limiting than we originally wanted, but I don’t have an answer (other than that) for you right now.

The problem is, every Black Orc and Swordmaster knows our mechanic is broken to pieces. Mythic seems to know it's broken despite putting on the worst attempt at political speech I've seen in a while "a little more limiting". A little? A LITTLE? Do they even play these classes in any high lag situations to know how impossible it is? The concept of the mechanic is fine (there I said it) the execution of it however is not. The most effective fix barring a total reworking of it (which will not happen in the next few years lets just put it that way) is to change the locations of some abilities on the plans, at least that will stop it being a limiting factor rather than a tool to work with.

The more I read the answers to those two questions (and although one wasn't directly about Black Orcs we were rather brutally mentioned) the more I believe Mythic is completely detached from the class. The longer it goes without help from our developers the less people will play the class which in turn leads to less developer support. This is the sort of situation which makes people leave the game when they realise that all the hard work put into the character is basically a waste of time and the pleas for help are met with an apathetic or negative attitude to the class from the developers.

Wut 'appened?

2010-04-12T09:31:00.002+01:00

Alright gitz. Not been on me thinkin' stone for a while and at one point was going to abandon the blog as I just couldn't get the motivation after a long period of busy work but the wurdz are stating to come into me noggin again!

Basically Mmmmm Gud will be back soon. Going to do a bit of redesign work on the blog, clear it up and might also shift focus to Black Orcs a bit more and what goes on and how to survive our constant nerfs.... I'm still keenly playing Warhammer, enjoy it and have managed a few accomplishments since I last posted so there will be lots to talk about. This time though there will be no promises for regular posts, just when I want to put them up rather than feeling I have to write something for the sake of it.

There WILL be a new post this week, it'll be the first part to my Black Orc guide which was actually written back in February before work got busy but never posted.

Anyway gitz.. Go forth, Waaaaaaaagh and may Gork be with yer!

Still 'ere. Work = Busy :(

2010-02-04T21:44:00.001Z

Been hammered at work the last week and a bit and next week is likely to be busy as well.. Ok, I say busy, what I mean is working later than normal. Off this weekend though so will try and write up a few posts to tide over the coming days. It's been an interesting week in WAR for sure and I'm gutted I've not been shoving my opinion in peoples face for it.. Grrr

Details on the night of murder and scurvy dogs.

2010-01-28T22:21:00.005Z

The latest WAR Europe newsletter published some sneak peaks of the upcoming live events as we welcome in the night of murder on February the 10th (though since it lasts a week maybe it should be the nights of murder? week of murder?). It also gives us a little more information on the scurvy dogs event. So for those who are yet to see it, here's a copy/paste job.

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Live Event: Night of Murder

When: February 10th – February 17th, 2010

What: Love em to death!

Rewards:
Basic – Butcher’s Blessing (+10% xp/renown/damage/incoming healing) and lasts for 3 in-game days
Advanced – Well-Mounted Skull – Places a pike next to the body of a fallen foe, topped with their head
Elite – Khaine’s Caress – Event Slot item with Career-specific stats

World Drop Item – The Noggin & Burning Blood Potion (that is to say, Khaine’s Regard, the ring, no longer drops)

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Avast , me mateys - for the Scurvy Dogs are upon us! If plunderin’ be your port of call then prepare for a weekend of plank walkin’, swashbucklin’ and bare knucklin’ as WAR hits the high seas!
Scurvy Dogs introduces a new scenario – The Ironclad! The forces of Destruction seek to silence the cannons and bash some stunties as they invade from their makeshift pontoons. Be blasted into the air by sea mines in 6 vs. 6 close-quarters combat. Gyrocopters and Zeppelins fight to dominate the skies as you work with your team to control key areas on the Ironclad.

Become a dread pirate as you unlock the weekend events achievements within the Tome of Knowledge and see if you can earn the title “Dread Pirate”. And if that doesn’t sate your appetite for booty then 25% more medallions might put some wind in your sails!

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Both events sounds pretty good as always, hoping we don't have an emote spam live event and the 6v6 is always good fun, and with more medallions then I can see a weekend of mass scenarios (though typically I work Saturdays so that's one less day for me.. grrrr). Overall though, no complaints from what I see there... Now we just wait on the 1.3.4 notes...

Mythic clears up some bits on 1.3.4

2010-01-20T22:26:00.003Z

Will just post this here, will comment later on as smushing order at the moment :)

Link:

Some of the Scenario currency will be obtainable for characters who are Rank 40 during Keep capture/defense as well as successfully winning both Stage 1 & 2 within a city's Contested state. While the bulk of it will be obtained within Scenario play, you are also gaining it for participating in certan ORvR activities.

Please keep in mind that this design is expansive and malleable. Due to Scenarios introducing the "new shiny" - we fully expect to see a drop in ORvR participation at first but then balance itself out. The rewards (ones being released with this patch as well as planned rewards in the future) have been carefully crafted to complement, not overshadow, those obtainable in ORvR.

As Andy has mentioned - he has brought up the premade situation to us on a number of occassions. While we are investigating means to provide a more balanced play experience for everyone, it's not a situation with a simple solution. We definitely hear your complaints and are looking into it, however.

In regards to the feedback about the cities and campaign - we have a large scale plan for the cities we hope to get into the patch following v1.3.4. The adjustment being released with this patch is a dependency for this plan. It has never been our intent to reset the campaign after a city's Contested state, dust off our hands, and leave it at that. We're not prepared to go into the specifics regarding the details of the plan just quite yet, though.

More 1.3.4 goodness.

2010-01-20T18:41:00.002Z

By now everyone has read and posted about the 1.3.4 sneak peak we got yesterday. So... uhm... yeah.. I'm late doing it but when the post went up on the US forums we were in Vulture Lord (damn you 8th boss, down to 14%) and then I basically couldn't be arsed typing anything up at 11pm :)

So here goes my wee look over what was announced

At this point the plan is to have 1.3.4 on PTS by the first week of February or (at the latest) early the second week of February. Patch notes, of course, will accompany the opening of Warpstone.
We know this, but it's good to have it confirmed and more importantly when we can expect the full patch notes which we're all keen on.

We will be introducing an entire new line of weapons earned via RvR (this is the "feature players have been asking for"). These weapons will be purchasable via a vendor and will not be bought using medallions or crests, instead utilizing an entirely new currency system earned via Scenario gameplay from tiers 1-4. More information about these new items and how they're earned will be forthcoming in a Dev Diary with Developer Sean Bosshardt.
Ahh, so I'm wrong (there's a surprise, my track record isn't the best). My money was on the Warlord weapons being purchasable with warlord tokens and the sovereign dropping from the Kings. The mechanic sounds good though, although it will lead to a lot more scenario fights this will help those who prefer smaller premade battles, though it's worrying for the pugs who will get steamrolled by the top end premades. I can see the currency being much as they do for WoWs battlegrounds. For each scenario you get a generic currency but for winning a scen you get three special tokens (drawing or losing would be one token) based on that pairing. So you might find that some weapons may cost 20 Greenskin tokens and 100 Generics.. Best hope your party likes the greenskin scenarios...

We are completely reworking the current structure of Scenarios by removing some of the less popular and streamlining the tiering of Scenarios. There will be more details upcoming in a Dev Diary from Content/RvR Lead Mike Wyatt next month.
Streamlining the tiering sounds... interesting. Some have commented that it probably means adding rank 40 only scenarios as well.. Wouldn't that be adding more rather than streamlining them? Though thinking about it now they might go for 1-15 being tier 1, 16-30 being tier 2, 31-39 being tier 3 and tier 4 scens for rank 40's only... Maybe... We'll have to wait and see, one thing that is almost guaranteed though.. Thunder Valley will be dissapearing (about time, it's dreadful)

The last tidbit is a change to the way that the campaign functions. Starting with 1.3.4, once a Contested City flips into the Captured state (otherwise called "Stage 2") the Open RvR Campaign will now restart, leaving the realm sieging their enemies city with a tough decision: Stay in the city, possibly defeating your opponent's King, or retreat back to the open field to defend your realm?
This is actually pretty neat, the attacked forced could (in theory) lock down the opponents city if the underdog points are high enough, highly unlikely but would be amusing to have both kings dead. But seriously, it's a nice idea, gets people back out to the battlefield quicker. It's more renown from one zone lock than an hours worth of empty city instances. Hopefully this also means scenarios will open up fully and we can put the Reikland Factory and Twisting Tower scenarios during stage one of a city siege.

Looks decent enough so far. But, we're waiting about a month for the actual patch notes so it may yet change. As others have stated and so have I, it's highly unlikely this will be a huge combat and class update, I don't expect any nerfing of classes or abilities in this patch, that will come in the next major I believe. Anything else mentioned on forums etc is just pure speculation with no solid proof.

What happens when you've done everything?

2010-01-18T12:10:00.004Z

Yesterday morning (well 11:30 ish) we killed the King. For most of the guild this was now no big thing as they've been there a few times now, but for me it was one of the 'big things' in my list to mark off. I came away with two Sovereign pieces and I'm now starting to realise that although I'm only Renown Rank 74 that's still only 6 more renown levels to go and I should or be very close to full Sov by that time wiping another end game item off my list.

So what do you do when you're RR80 in full Sov?

I know for some RR80 is the kiss of death as the motivation to spend time fighting disappears when there's no personal gain (and lets be honest about it, everyone wants to get something from WAR). Others can carry on fighting away without bothering that there's no more purple numbers floating about but I don't think people know what they will feel until that time comes.

I look at the guild and I see multiple people over renown rank 70 with sovereign gear and I wonder... What's in WAR to keep these people interested after the next couple of months pass? With more and more people in general now hitting the caps Mythic needs to talk openly with the community about plans or what people would like to see once they're 40/80. The obvious is to expand the renown ranks and level but might this be better for an expansion (which right now doesn't look to be happening until at least the two year birthday).

Personally I'd like to see an expanded Influence bar open when you're 40/80 which requires vast amounts of influence (gained from killing players only, so no zone locks etc) but offers not only weapons, armour and accessories but special trophies, titles, mounts and even some non combat pets mixed in as well. Of course, this influence bar would only be open for as long as there is a 40/80 cap, when that lifts then the influence bar disappears and the chance to get those items disappears with it...

What can we expect in 1.3.4 ?

2010-01-15T16:14:00.002Z

This week we've started to see information filter through a bout 1.3.4 so I figured I would make a quick post looking over what we can possibly expect. Of course, all of this is subject to change and a lot is just my own personal opinion.

Expected PTS and Live date?
According to Werit the PTS MAY be up for 1.3.4 in early February. Meaning it's likely then we'd get 1.3.4 on live at the end of February, although I believe it's more likely to be the first couple of weeks in Feb it goes onto the PTS then early March we see it on live.

What can we expect from the patch?
Bug Fixes seem to be the popular choice. We can also expect more than just a handful of fixes to the ever present bugs. So what else? My safe bet is the addition of weapons and cloaks to the RvR loot. I also think we'll see the scenario structure changes. Anything bigger will be in 1.4. The only other possibility might be the start of the economy restructure driven by the South Korean launch (they have mentioned in the past that the Korean market enjoys a well created and playable economy).

Big Un or Little Un?
Hard to tell right now, I'd expect it to be a small to medium sized update to get us started in the new year (keep in mind a lot of development work will have been shut down for the winter holiday) and I'm sure they'd like to get something out to pacify us as well as fix the bugs. I expect the one after 1.3.4 to be a biggy but don't expect miracles in the next patch.

Da biggest?

2010-01-12T10:37:00.005Z

With the rumblings about Black Orc size starting once more I found this little movie over at the excellent looking Da Blog (Hungarian Waaaaaaaaaaagh to you over there, sadly I can't read Hungarian but the blog itself looks impressive). It's not in Hungarian but I'd like any Black Orcs and anyone else with an interest in the lore and background of Warhammer to watch and do your thing at the end of it.

Go forth and be da big WAAAAAAAAAAAAGH

Support your Black Orcs, put the image on your forum signature, blog or anywhere else

A Black Orcs wishes for the new year.

2010-01-11T14:49:00.001Z

After my personal WAR Christmas list a few weeks back, I figured I'd do a fairly selfish new years one for Black Orcs and what I'd like to see happen to my class over the next year.

1) Changes to the Plan Mechanic
The biggest pain to Black Orcs (and our mirrors the Swordmasters) is our mechanic, a "nice in theory but horribly implemented" mechanic which heavily restricts what we can and cannot use. For those who don't know what the plan mechanic is, the basic idea is that each attack leads onto another one, getting more powerful as the plan moves on before resetting back to the first step. There are three plans and they progress as you use an ability from each one. Instead we get...

A mechanic which breaks in lag (plan doesn't move on and your stuck on first plan attacks)
Puts your crowd control abilities on advanced plans so you have no CC on first contact
Offers no actual benefit as our last plans might cost no AP, but it's countered by higher than average AP costs on the first two plans...
Unable to move back a step when on our final plan (which for the record is where our snare is)
A very ill thought out middle plan with no basic strong abilities

The whole system is highly frustrating and needs a revamp. I'd like to see a cross between the hate/grudge and rage mechanic where actions are deemed "Smart" or "Hitty" and as you use say Smart actions you gain smart points which tilt the dial one way giving more benefits to smart abilities (less AP, more damage etc) but if you start using Hitty abilities then the dial will start to move back towards Hitty lessening your Smart benefits but increasing the Hitty ones.. make sense? No? Meh....

2) Get bigger
"Black Orcs will get bigger as they increase in power" Oh how I waited for this only to be dashed by it as they decided that Choppas needed this instead.. I posted about it a while ago but Mythic deemed that it was not suitable as Choppas needed to be bigger to indicate a bigger threat.. You know because the fact they are charging about with red rage flying around them doesn't indicate it enough... Now we're not looking for it to be based on plan or a rage count but all we were looking for is a minor increase for every 10 levels and 10 renown ranks or so up to a maximum when you get 40/80 where we'd be fully enraged Choppa size... My hope is still there, it was one of these "That's cool!" things that Mythic were quick to tell us about but fail to implement :(

3) Bellows still unbalanced
Bellows were the second mechanic Black Orcs get. One of three permanent buffs which we can apply, almost like an aura but they require us to actually do something.. and it's a proc so never guaranteed. The problem is, one is a standard and the other two are highly situational and to be perfectly honesty, pretty weak. Our brawler bellow is the typical one where we steal stats and apply to ourselves and party. I love it, it's great, the group loves it, no-one ever moans about it (apart from when I pull a target by accident as it procs onto them).

The other two are now fairly.. meh. Our toughest bellow which prior to the infamous 1.1 nerf bat was pretty incredible but now is certainly not "da toughest" but more of "da pillow" as it's now 40% as effective as we get a 25% chance to heal ourselves for 320-480 (and increase our wounds by 32-48) every time we hit something with a 10 second cool down (and of course the increase in wounds we get is only half as good as it seems due to the wounds soft cap. Da Greenest is all but useless, 25% on getting hit to increase resist/armour (depending on what you get hit by) by roughly 320/840 respectively, it also apples the same buff to party members within 100 feet. Sounds nice... but really, as a tank in RvR you are the last one getting targeted so it doesn't benefit your group, but again the soft cap on resists and armour means the actual buff you get tends to be half as effective as it reads.

The last two still need some serious work to bring them back to a decent level. The toughest buff is decent in duels/solo RvR but other wise offers no benefit in large scale RvR or when you're at full health. I'd like to see it become active when you defend against an attack as well and maybe just up the self heal a bit (I'd happily lose the increase in wounds). Da Greenest is a bit trickier as it comes from our Da Boss tree which suffers from identity problems (and in all honesty would be on this list as well but I forgot). By the description it's "A master path focused on buffs and group support" and in this tree we have... Two buffs/group support actions. One which gives our group mates an extra 560 armour (but you have to be within 20 feet and it costs 45 AP!) and another which is a tactic that gives our defensive target +100 or so weapon skill. I would personally swap Da Biggest to Da Greenest (group support and buffs remember) and almost mirror the Swordmaster 'bellow' for Da Biggest to become one which has a 25% chance on hitting to reduce armour of your opponent or increase strength .

4) Bashas (where's our maces!)
Black Orcs have a skill which lets us use maces/hammers. Basically they're called Bashas. You can sometimes see Orc NPC's running around with huge chunks of stone attached to a tree branch smacking folks about the head.

We don't get them

We don't even get a single hammer or mace we can use unless we pickup the dreadful land of the dead ones.

So when you next feel like adding new weapons into the game Mythic, there's a load of unused artwork and models which Black Orcs would like to use as it would give us a basha to break skulls with. There's even names of bashas in the Warhammer background if you're that desperate.

5) Improved Itemisation
I think this goes for a lot of classes and not just Black Orcs. The item set bonuses. The bonuses themselves on magic items (seriously... +8 willpower on our Warlord and Sovereign jewel is not gud).

Our Tyrant four piece is pointless... +5% parry when Black Orcs can't make a parry build plus you gave us the same bloody bonus on Conqueror. Warlord five piece is +5 disrupt... Disrupt is one of these things that happens by accident, you cannot stack it to make it worthwhile compared to every BW being Intelligence soft capped and I'd certainly not choose it over +76 strength or wounds for example, oh and just to add though, you cannot disrupt PBAoE which is 95% of a Bright Wizards abilities.

What is most important to Black Orcs in my opinion is (in no particular order):
Strength, Toughness, Wounds, Block, Melee Crit. Then you can have weapon skill, melee power, initiative (mainly for tanking PvE content) and then the random assortment of abilities which get tacked onto sets and go from absolutely dreadful to pretty damn cool without any rhyme nor reason.

Itemisation was something mentioned recently in the producers letter so lets hope they take a look and speak to the community about what they would like from the sets and item bonuses.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Well that was more than I had intended and in all honesty I could probably talk more about certain things in that list but I might come back to it. It might 'sound' like a negative post but it's just wishes and desires for my class that I play, I think I will have to do a 5 things that Mythic did right with the Black Orc in 2009 to make up for this :)

GOA loses the Dark Age of Camelot licence

2010-01-07T19:16:00.004Z

Doesn't affect anyone in the US, but over here there HAS to be some rumblings. For what it's worth I think GOA do a good job for European customers. The CSR's have been friendly and helpful and any server crashes I believe are more related the game stability rather than the server itself. Updates to the game are within 48 hours (barring European holidays/weekends) compared to DAoC's weeks - months. It's news on a slow news day...

http://camelotherald.com/news/news_article.php?storyid=3999

Mythic Welcomes European Players of DAoC

Posted By: Andy Belford

2010-01-07 12:26:32

Today, it was announced that after eight years of operating Dark Age of Camelot in Europe, GOA’s license with Mythic Entertainment will soon expire and they will no longer publish or support the game.

Over the years, GOA has fostered a vibrant and dedicated community that is passionate about the game. In the coming weeks, GOA will be entrusting Mythic with this community of players.

We are currently working with GOA to take over operation of the game and its European community, and will soon be providing details about pressing player questions such as existing subscriptions, character transfers, game versions, localization, and more. We look forward to welcoming all players from the European servers and look forward to supporting them in the years to come.

While this closes one chapter for DAoC in Europe, a new one begins with a bright future of RvR ahead.

We’ll see you in the Frontiers!

Mythic Entertainment

Last Orders

2010-01-05T17:52:00.007Z

No, no.. Not the remains of Order (of which there are plenty still infesting the land) but the signal to end Keg End, Warhammer New Year Live Event. Another year done, more beer drunk and more fireworks than you can stick up a stunty.

Overall I think it was an average even for WAR. Nothing really special to remember it by this year but nothing that made me swear (too much)

Da Gud...
Black Fire Basin: Welcome return for this scenario I haven't seen since.. Oooh... tier three over a year ago. With the bonus renown and a new central flag mechanic I really enjoyed it when this scenario popped. Of course, the wintery theme to it just added to the year end feel.
Tasks showing what you need: Toast 12 allied careers... Ok I have 11, what am I missing? Simply click the task and it now shows you exactly without any fuss. Other live events have shown you by hiding it away in the tome but this year was the first (that I remember) which made the information easy to hand
Party Kegs: Nice idea, and seems there's a desire by engineers and Magi to allow them to have an ability which is much the same to let them build barricades. This needs to be fleshed out a bit more and made so it's not exploitable (build only where you can mount for example, and must be destroyable by the enemy).

Da Bad...
Fecken Giants: I solo killed 20 of them, group killed another 5 and didn't see a single goblin beer carrier :( Now it's ONLY 25 mobs killed, but keep in mind that one spawns per zone, in the RvR area and it's on a 90+ minute respawn in one area which everyone knows about. I just couldn't face waiting for hours for one mob to get some fireworks for my effort anymore... Very disappointed.
Event Rewards: The trophy was the same as last year, at least they could have coloured it differently or made it have a different name to indicate it was a different years. The keg was nice but only active for a few days and the event item only lasts until the next event and is just another couple of stats. There's nothing there that says "I did Keg End 2009/10" other than the 'Broo Dog' title.
The Keg End Tasks: Mehhhhhhhh..... Kill 50 (three times), boast (twelve times), toast (twelve times), set off (lots) of fireworks. Really unimaginative and just involves spamming a few times or just a night in the lakes/scenarios. Could have done with some more exploring ones or more special things to do.

Overall I'd put it towards the lower end of the live events Mythic have done, it was entirely forgettable and can't say I'll be mentioning it a few months down the line.

So I seen end game yesterday

2010-01-04T10:57:00.003Z

And hit Karl Franz over the head with my choppa...

Our alliance on Karak Norn has been killing the King now for a few weeks but due to not being picked as a tank I've been sitting out (no harm done, my time will come) but I've also been helping out the lesser warded folks and going through the Warlord instances with the non King pushing war band. Yesterday we had a fair amount of folks on and took out both Warlord instances (one blue bag for me but everyone needed the golds that got it so no master loot down :( ) and then we went onto the Shadow Warrior, Engineer and Reiksguard. They all fell to our might and we visited the king, now we were low on DPS and wards so we had no real chance of taking him down, however we still went and had a quick shot at him to see what he's like (folks had to go) and I have to admit, he seems straight forward enough.

But... By Gork, the stage 2 city instances are buggy as heck. The amount of times things just randomly reset or mobs bugged out and did weird things is silly. Stage 2 is a complete mess, it's fun right now because it still feels 'new' to me since I don't see it too often but otherwise it feels very ... betaish still. I don't see them fixing this due to the changes coming in for the instances to be more RvR orientated, but for them to do this they need to completely remove the current instances and rebuild them from scratch, far too much is already buggy with them and to simply modify the existing instances would just make them worse.

Oh and just to annoy me more, I've discovered that weapons above warlord level ones drop from the three palace bosses. Touch annoying as that now makes the top three weapons all PvE drops :(

The servers behind WAR

2009-12-31T19:33:00.002Z

Not sure what to make of this article on Gamasutra, it IS an Intel sponsored article so it's biased towards the server technology but there's bits and pieces of interest here and there and it's a time filler if you're sitting bored for the bells to ring in the new year.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4229/sponsored_feature_restless_.php

But until next year folks, I'm off to celebrate Waaaghmanay! So here's to another year.

A look ahead to Mmmmm Gud in 2010

2009-12-29T16:38:00.002Z

Well not been smushing at all over the last few days since Christmas has been all busy and the few days here and there at either side of it, so not a whole lot going on in the Warhammer world for me right now but will be back smushing tonight (assuming the guild are online of course). So lets have a side step for a moment and look at what I'm planning for 2010...

There's a few articles I want to write up, I've started some, planning others and the rest are getting moldy in my fungal brain cavity. I'm aiming to start writing some Black Orc guides to help prospective, existing and maybe even veteran Black Orcs. I'm certainly not the best Black Orc on my server, let alone an even decent one, but since playing a Black Orc since the early start week I've got a few things to share. I'll be aiming for one every few weeks with the beginners guide to a Black Orc coming in January.

Also on my rock is Mini Lokax, who is glued together and... that's about it sadly. Just not had the drive to get doing much with the cold and dark weather hampering my light in the cave so he's on the back shelf right now, but I'll at least get the next step pictures up in the next couple of weeks and maybe that'll be enough to kick start some painting frenzy!

Lots of little topics I am writing about as well, with thoughts on zones, the new year and what not. I even have my own Warhammer Online expansion ideas on what I'd like to see :)

Aiming to get a more consistent number of posts for the blog as well, summer was far too enjoyable for me as I spent a fair chunk clambering over the Scottish Highlands and weather dependent will be doing the same this year, so I doubt I'll get another 30 post month, but I'm aiming for a minimum of one post every three days. Sound fair?

Of course, lots of things can change due to changes in Warhammer, while some may be saying that this is WAR's last year, I doubt that's the case. WAR is starting to form it's own core community and this is what the game needs, the MMO tourists will start to wonder over in the next couple of months as WoW waits it's cataclysm (the final WoW content patch has just been pushed out but they're opening up the instances stages at a time.. milking the raiders pennies dry). We'll see what changes come in the next few months but I'll be here for the foreseeable future that's for sure!

WAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

Merry Waaaghmas

2009-12-25T09:55:00.002Z

Live Event:	Night of Murder
When:	February 10th – February 17th, 2010
What:	Love em to death!
Rewards:	Basic – Butcher’s Blessing (+10% xp/renown/damage/incoming healing) and lasts for 3 in-game days Advanced – Well-Mounted Skull – Places a pike next to the body of a fallen foe, topped with their head Elite – Khaine’s Caress – Event Slot item with Career-specific stats World Drop Item – The Noggin & Burning Blood Potion (that is to say, Khaine’s Regard, the ring, no longer drops)