Mythic.. Seriously sort the European servers out.

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)

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

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?

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

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

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....

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

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

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

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!