Wooo Blackguard. Now Destruction get another awesome looking tanking class which looks like it will be able to dish the DPS to attract even more players to Destruction! Awesome! That said, since everyone and their cat is talking about the new classes – the Blackguard does seem pretty badass.
They are the mirror of the IB, but there is one key difference from what I could gather, hatred increases through each attack the BG does. This has its own set of pros and cons; such as an IB could theoretically build Grudge / Hate faster than a BG could, but honestly who targets an IB first. I’ve only toyed with an IB in PvP, so I really can’t be one to comment on their Grudge building, but regardless in a PvP sense, if BG get an Oathfriend/brother/whatever type of ability, they will more than likely be a force to be reckoned with.
They seem to be a damage oriented type tank from what I’ve gathered from whats been released on them, though I could as usual just be miles off. Either way, they look sexy, and I (along with every other destruction player) will be rolling one for an alt.
The KotBS are also getting introduced, but since they are a Chosen mirror and focus on buffing their allies it seems intresting, but being destruction it doesn’t really intrest me too much. (Pffft Order).
In other news we see the first of the Live Events, assuming that there will probably be a ton coming around since it is that time of year – Halloween, Promotional ‘Heavy Metal’, Christmas, New Years and maybe Chinese New Year, all within a few months of each other. Lets just hope they don’t go too overboard with them and trivialize them.
What really counts in my books though, is the PQs in the RvR lakes. It is rather amazing at how a little bit of carebeary incentive will bring the PvE only players (shocking isn’t it) and lower levels into the RvR zones for a good scrap and stunty bashing. It is a step in the right direction, though which ever brainiac at Mythic decided to have a set loot table in the PQ rewards and not just give everyone a worthy reward deserves a good boggin’ on the noggin. Having to get a Gold bag against 200 other players is a bit ridicilous. Especially when the PQ table caps out at 60 people.
Its a step in the right direction, but it really does require some refinement.
Filed under: ORVR, Rants | Tags: Electromagnet, Engineer, Keep, order, rant
So today there was a bit of carebearing in Bloodwrought, which I wasn’t in but willing to wager good gold that Shaman loot was going to drop. Good thing no one took me on that bet, else I’d be a bit out of pocket. They knocked off the instance in about 30 minutes – Nice quick run.
After which we proceeded to queue for some Scenarios and Open RvR in Praag / Dragonwake. Order outnumbered us this time around, and actually once summoned up the cahoonies to meet us in the field rather than running to their nearest keep. Unfortunately it wasn’t to last, with Order retreating to their keep and using two Engineers using electromagnet to suck large chunks of Destro through the door and into the Keep itself. Suicide stunties are bad news.
Now heres the intresting thing, the Magus Rift is capped to 9 players, applies the debuff / immunity to further stuns / knockbacks & CC and is chainable, while the Engineer one is still capped to 9 players – (It doesn’t seem like it us, but going to take the chance here and say it is) applies the debuff, but is uneffected by the the debuff itself, as though it is its own form of CC. The reason I say this is because in Serpent’s Passage earlier our group managed to get 3 immunity debuffs. Yea beats me too how the hell they did it.
So after we stomped the Order in Orvr we were consigned to watching randy destro getting sucked through the keep door, until they used a suicide engineer to run out and suck people to within the inside suck range. The naturally had several Bright Wizards backing them up to AoE the door. Personally I think it is rather weak in that they can’t hold a keep the old fashioned way, though I’m not going to say destruction aren’t guilty either – since Magus can pretty much do the same thing, plus Pit of Shades with Triumphant Blasting, while still part of the game was the easymode way to hold a keep.
It still is weak to have an Order Guild WB (of the same guild) using cheap tactics to try and hold a keep against equal numbers.
Sooo now the tables have turned, from Order being the chickens to Destruction being the chickens, and deliberately deciding not to fight Order, even going to another zone to just cap BFOs.
Seriously, what is with this chicken shit of PvEing for renown when theres a fight to be had. It’s just sad. Today Destruction lost alot of respect, also since I knew some of the people who I thought would rather stand and fight – wanted to sod off and PvE some more for renown. Its just unbelievable that people whinge and moan about not getting a fight – these same people; and then when theres a fight to be had they just bugger off and go cap BFOs and Keeps uncontested in another zone.
Whats even more is people say “We get more renown from BFOs and Keeps” Thats an absolute load. You get alot more renown from fighting than you do from BFOs. In a good fight you can gain upwards of 3-4k renown in under 5 minutes instead of the 1k that you earn in 3+ minutes. Its just really weak that people say that. I actually got kicked from the WB because I said “theres a good fight to be had here, lets fight instead of pveing for renown.” Go freaking figure.
Cleared Bloodwrought tonight in about an hour and a half. No Shaman loot as usual :p Beats me why Mythic didn’t implement a token system or something so where theres a guarenteed drop for those who are actually at the instance. Barakus dropped two WE helms and a DoK one.
Lots of ORvR again as its a Sunday. 4 Sorcs + Triumphant blasting > Order zerg in a keep. 12 guildies managed to hold out ~50 for a good 30 minutes, and then managed to recap the keep back anyway. Though thanks to the way renown works most kills only give 1RP. Though order have begun to have a good whinge about Chaotic Rift, blaming it solely as the cause for them to die so much. Its kind of amazing how much some players can QQ about anything if it gets them killed or does not ensure a 100% chance of victory.
Managed to get them both to 200, with 15s left in my wallet. I’m now stuck in the IC. Wooo go me. Late night crafting while having drunk is bad, don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise – drinking and crafting and AHing is bad.
It took me about 300g to get from 1-200 on both Salvaging and Talisman Making, and the crafting buff in Dragonwake was a lifesaver. Those 10 extra levels make a huge difference in the chance to succeed and fail a Salvaging – though I never failed a Talismaking session apart from once when it bugged and it said ‘You have made something Awesome!’ followed by ‘Attempt Failed’ and ‘Not enough space in your backpack’ when there was atleast 10 spots open.
Now comes the challenge of making permament 19+ to something other than Wounds. Which only happens from getting a crit off salvaging an epic. Hmm.
Further note: Anyone that is planning on doing Salvaging and Talisman making; make sure you have lots of gold spare, or plenty of patience, the last 5 levels of both have an insane chance to not grant levels even using 200 mats.
Lots of O-RvR tonight, still plenty of zerg on zerg action though. The anti zerg tactic AoE + Chaotic rift tonight was fairly epic, when 13 of us took on 1 – 1 1/2 Order Warbands at a BFO and wiped them all. Cheap, but effective.
The RvR started when an Order guild decided to start capping Battlefield objectives (BFO) and the keeps in Thunder Mountain. Rather quickly my guild assembled a team to head out and give em a good walloping. Just my luck I was AFK until later. From what I had heard previously they had assaulted a keep – Bloodfist, and we had successfully defended that, where they then went over to Kazak Something (the Stunty keep!) and managed to get the first and second doors down, however we were in the lords room, and managed to repel their charges into the room itself.
One thing I did notice though was an increasing amount of lag as time went on, however I wasn’t leaking memory. I think it was because I haven’t defragged in a while. Who knows, maybe it will ease the lag up – I’ll let you know :p. So here I am krilling and defragging, just to find out that theres ORvR happening in Praag. Its probably the best place to have ORvR in, and its rather surprising that it doesn’t happen as often as Dragonwake.
Many times the group I’m in has been managed to grab a few extra kills from runners who take a wrong turn and end up in a dead end, though the same can be said for us too – getting cornered in an alleyway. Another great thing about Praag is flanking and charging is hard to pull off against a numerically strong opponent thanks to the streets themselves – though the multitude of plaza’s and other wide open spaces randomly spread throughout the zone allow everything to degenerate into a bloody melee.
From what I’ve seen so far, every day more and more people get into T4 and RVR. Hopefully the trend will continue as I’m hearing of some killer RvR happening in Avelorn and Saphery at the moement.
Epic night tonight. Barakus the Godslayer down! :>
We managed to clear the entirety of Bloodwrought Enclave in 2 hours give or take about 10 minutes. A tanking specced Chosen makes a hell of alot of difference. Chosen replaced IBs as my percieved best tank in the game now. Out of the Sentinel pieces we had drop we got DoK, BO and WE boots, with a BO belt off the Ragedrunk Centigor fellow; name still eludes me. Our lucky off-tank who is a BO got all the bits, same with the second healer getting their DoK boots. Unfortunately there was no Witch Elf in our group, and the boots were sharded.
The two other non set piece bosses dropped quite frankly, nothing good. Nifty trinkets which are comparable to previous ones from Chapter 22 quests, eg a DoK one with 27 Str and 18 Willpower. Very nice, but nothing special – though the same can be said about most of the set gear. Got a Shaman staff, sexy stats, but it has Intelligence (44 Toughness, 59 Wounds, 44 Intelligence). Same as all the other Shaman super staffs, apart from good ole Hatred (53 Willpower, 40 Toughness, 40 Wounds, 1 Talisman socket).
Kudos to Euphoria of Ironfist for giving us an inkling on how to tackle the boss and modify our strat, embedded is a video of our downing of Barakus the Godslayer, last boss of Bloodwrought Enclave, he dropped the BO helm and two Chosen helms.
I hope the vid, while I know its probably hard to see what goes down, will give you a good idea of what to do, and what we did in it.
Vid contains swearing 
I got my Conq boots today.
Damn lucky too, since I happen to be the ‘Lootninja’ winning most of the loot rolls in PQs and keeps , a guildie thought it would be funny to roll need on the boots, not realising that they were BoP. Luckily the title of Lootninja held, and I won the roll. It is only the second pair of Conqueror boots that Ive seen drop, the first being the Squig Herder ones – speaking of which, is it just me, or do the most underplayed classes on Destruction aka Magus and Squig Herder always have their loot drop and go to waste? Not saying that those SH Conq boots went to waste, they went to a guildie as his second pair, but in Bloodwrought we got Magus and SH boots, with neither in the party. Talk about badluck.
Even daily in ORvR we still get the damn bloody things, always with the squig loot, Annihilator boots left right and center. Its 50G on the AH for any other Annihilator boots and only 15G for the SH ones. Lucky SHs. I think I might roll an SH for an aly probably down the track, too bad they’re a bit broken. Still, free / cheap loot is still loot – though knowing my luck, when I roll a SH I’ll see nothing but Shaman loot.
Not much else happened in WAR today, some Orvr which just devolved into zergs zerging different BFOs and keeps in different zones to get loot and renown while making every effort to avoid each other. Same old same old. My guild went into Bilerot and got absolutely raped – totally because I wasn’t there. On the up side, T4 seems to be picking up. Plenty of 1am action wooo.
It seems unfortunate though that as much as T4 is, T4 doesn’t seem as well optimized for Orvr, unless its just me and I keep springing memory leaks. Sure it is playable, but it does get to a certain stage where it becomes ~10fps it makes playing rather annoyingly fun.
Back on topic; PvP set pieces only coming from player drops is bad.
WAR has some rather nice and novel ideas for CC, none of the gimmicky WoW transformations and fear; but nothing that hasn’t been done before. Though that said, I feel that CC (Crowd Control) in WAR seems to be better suited to PvP rather than PvE. Theres a variety of ‘Urgh bloody <Insert CC here>’ but nothing that is really deemed broken thanks partly to the dimishing returns, and the debuff buff which grants the immunity to them.
There are several types of CC; Knockbacks, Knockdowns, Stuns, Silences, Disorients, Roots & Snares. It really depends on what class you play, but various forms of CC happen to be more annoying to certain classes than others. Eg a Witch Elf probably won’t care about a silence but a Shaman will.
Knockbacks and Knockdowns have their various advantages and disadvantages, a KB can often put someone out of range of you and has a dimishing return, same goes for a knockdown however they gain an immunity for other forms of CC, and it happens to be for a longer duration, eg 4 second KD = 30 second immunity. Of course as a Shaman KBs happen to typically be my friend since its easier to knock someone away / be knocked away by them rather than kiting them around or tanking them, though KDs happen to be a mortal enemy.
Silences too have their uses, especially considering how many classes get one at 35+, but a silence unfortunately triggers the CD for all other forms of CC closing many doors for a latter need to CC. The same goes for disarms, however a disarm is much more devastating than a silence as it leaves the melee rather vulnerable in a tight situation and can often mean the difference between life or death, something which a silence will not do against a BW or other castery class.
Roots and snares are also highly effective forms of CC, in that in conjunction with a KB or just on their own, they can really force a players hand – either attack something, try remove the root / snare, or just eat damage. Fortunately roots have a decent chance to break on damage, except firecage >_< and mose snares are cleansable.
Here comes my most hated form of CC, Disorients.
If you are a class with a 1s disorienting ability, spec into it. It is a sure way to kill a healer without backup. Nothing is worse than two Swordmasters using their disorients with coordination providing a 20second disorient, as disorient is not subject to any DR or immunity. One second added to any ability, from morale to abilities, makes it insanely difficult to heal through a focused attack. The same goes for any caster, and it is rather amusing to see a Chosen to take a Bright Wizard from 100 – 0 without taking any damage thanks to their disorientating Aura stacked with their 1s disorientating ability.
Its just my pot luck that Shamans don’t have an AoE root or snare as a core ability. Blasted 3 second cast 13 point mastery talent.
