From the War Herald:
The Heavy Metal event will begin Tuesday, November 18, 2008 in order to coincide with the release of Game Update 1.0.5. Please watch the Herald for more details!
http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=449
Let’s see that root fix!
The Public Test Server went up this weekend, and I’m already getting people sending me emails/PMs with the changes they’ve noticed. It looks like the increase to DoT damage is slightly more than everyone initially expected, which is dissapointing.
DoT damage
A friend of mine who plays a Bright Wizard reported that his DoTs, mainly Ignite and Boiling Blood, were doing even more damage now, and that the increase is very noticable. He parsed some quick numbers over a couple PUG scenarios and came up with approximately a 20% damage increase on Ignite, and a 40% increase on Boiling Blood damage. Sounds like more bad news for melee, let’s hope the damage gets readjusted.
Combustion / Dark Magic
This is all before the combustion/dark magic changes though, so there’s still a good chance that that will be the big balance card. That change has not yet hit the PTS, nor has the resist debuff on Word of Pain. I really hope that Mythic is paying at least a little big of attention and make the resist debuff SPIRIT instead of CORPOREAL. I guess we’ll see how that pans out.
Electromagnet / Chaotic Rift
These changes are in. The cooldown has been increased to 30 seconds, no big deal. The limit of players that can be pulled in at once is set to 6 currently. The cast time has been raised to 1 second.
Definitely a good change, and I’m glad they didn’t over-do the cast time. I’m sure it’ll still cause some rage, as the Magus/Engineer needs to be well within damage range to get this spell off. My Sorceress’ disarm is also a 1 second cast, and even with a single melee class beating on me, the cast time gets pushed back a lot.
I’m going to get on the PTS as soon as I can, both with my Sorceress and my Marauder to see how things are going for both ranged and melee DPS. I’m going to get some perspective from a few healers I know as well to keep everyone updated on those changes. Stay tuned.
Another quick preview of what’s to come before the full patch notes for 1.05 are released, Mark Jacobs had this to say about the much talked about Electromagnet and Chaotic Rift abilities:
Okay, but just because it’s you.
I hope the notes will go up early tomorrow and then we begin testing on it as well on PTS. Once the PTS is up and running players will begin to be able to play there and help test the patch. As to one tidbit per class, sorry but I have to turn that request down. However, here is a sample from one of the most talked about abilities on the VN:
Electromagnet: The cost has been reduced significantly. The cooldown has been increased. The build time has been increased. The ability can no longer be cast on the move. The pull-in maximum number of targets has been decreased and can now be defended against.
And remember, this C&C patch is only the first steps. Big steps, but just the first.
Mark
That seems like a lot. Granted, a good magnet Magus/Engie can pretty much win games for his side, this might be too much without buffing those respective classes in other areas, hopefully they will get some love elsewhere. I know a lot of people had rerolled Magus/Engie just for this move; a month ago you’d be lucky to see a Magus past Tier1, and now I’ve been in games with 5 Magi per Tor Anroc in Tier3 on my alt.
So much for the whole ‘more buffs than nerfs’ mantra. I guess it’s too early to judge though, we’ll see when the full notes come out.
source: http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/109321363/p15
It seems so.
Recent posts by Mark Jacobs on the VN Boards lead players to believe that the big content patch that is supposedly scheduled to hit in December, will make it’s way live in majority within the next few weeks. A new patch name, 1.05, has been floating around, and speculation has it that it will be released before November 13th (World of Warcraft’s WotLK expansion launch date) with most of what 1.1 had promised. All the RvR improvements and class balance changes seem to have been moved to this new 1.05 patch, leaving only the Blackguard/KofBS class inroduction due out later on.
Folks,
Look for my new topic in a few hours. The notes are 17 pages long and still growing.
And yes, this is the patch that pretty much everyone has been asking for and talking about here and elsewhere. Brought in from 1.1 to 1.05 as I hoped we could do. There’s no such thing as a miracle patch, and WAR certainly doesn’t need one, but it certainly is a big patch.
Mark
http://vnboards.ign.com/Message.aspx?topic=109303253&brd=22997&start=109315982
That was posted this morning on the VN Boards and is the latest we’ve heard so far. Hopefully we’ll see at least a preview of these ‘17-page-patch-notes,’ before they go live. I know a lot of playeres are banking on this patch to fix a lot of problems in RvR in this game, or they’ll be heading to WotLK. It would definitely be a good move on Mythic’s part to bump the big fixed to before Nov 13th.
First of all, I’d just like to apologize for the lack of posts this week, things have been busy, but the updates should start rolling in regularly starting today.
I’m sure you’ve all at the very least noticed the Halloween Event entitled the ‘Witching Event,’ seeing as it’s posted on the WAR patcher and you’re reminded every time you log in. At first I dismissed this as another World of Warcraft-style PvE timesink; kill some impossible-to-find mob for some pointless loot so you can show it off later.
Turns out I was wrong.
While the pointless loot is definitely there in the form stat-less Halloween masks, I think the real purpose of this event was to test Mythic’s new ORvR PQ system before the big patch in December. It’s pretty genius really, most of the people I’ve talked to didn’t even realize this could be a small preview of the new ‘ORvR Influence System’ that had been mentioned in the State-of-the-Game address a few weeks back.
Throwing out a PQ area in an ORvR zone has huge potential. Even with just crappy Halloween masks as rewards, some of the lower tier RvR zones were filled with players, constantly, and all times of the day. It was more Open RvR action than I had seen since the beta. I can only imagine what these will be like once the rewards are actually worth working for.
The Witching Event PQ objective did not actually have an influence bar; it was just a single-stage PQ to kill 100 members of the opposing faction. Once that was complete, contribution and loot distribution would get calculated like in any other PQ. It’s a fairly simple task, and I hope it stays that way. Scenarios all have other objectives such as capture points or a murderball to worry about. Keep Sieges and World Objectives are about killing NPC’s while warding off Player defenders. I’m glad that the focus on ORvR seems to be nothing more than ‘kill them.’
I think the amount of players participating in this week’s ORvR PQ was also a reflection of the rewards. I checked it out, got a mask, had some fun, and then left as soon as the zerg became insurmountable. The level variance really make renown gained hit-or-miss; sometimes I get 100 RP for a kill on a near-equal rank player, and other times I get 1. I think doubling ORvR renown gain would be a solid way of encourage PvP in ORvR zones and participation in these PQs.
