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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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