The 1.1 patch is just around the corner, well, coming in December, and I thought it’d be a good idea to go over some things that should be included. Keep in mind these are just some ideas, and are in no way official changes that have been confirmed. I think Warhammer Online is a great game, and had a very solid launch, but is riddled with imbalances and bugs. None of these seem beyond fixable, in fact, they all seem like very simple things to change, which makes me wonder why they haven’t been already.

Better Scenarios

It’s no secret that the majority of the RvR/PvP in this game at the moment happens in the confines of Scenarios. Why is it then, that they’re all so bad? Every rank tier has a different selection of scenarios to play, yet only 1 in each gets played consistently. Tier 4 seems to have some especially bad scenarios. Grovord Caverns is a Line-of-Sight nightmare with a buggy spawn-gate, Thunder Valley is spent just running around on mounts, etc. Serpent’s Passage is pretty solid, but only doing the one scenario over and over gets boring.

Let’s see some kind of Nordenwatch and Highpass Cemetary equivalents in Tier 4, those scenarios were a blast. Get rid of Grovord Caverns, nobody likes that one. Change Thunder Valley to have only 3 capture points, and move them closer to eachother. Lorgim’s Forge has potential, it’s essentially a Highpass Cemetary, but a little too big to get around in.

Double the Renwon in Open RvR

They’ve doubled the experience gain from Open World RvR, now double the renown gain. If ORvR was the highest source of renown in the game, you can bet your ass that it would happen. I’ve mentioned this before; roaming PvP/RvR nights. The experience boost was great, but it doesn’t benefit the rank 40s at all, and it’s them that have nothing to do anymore.

Rewards for Defending

Right now there’s really no reward for defending a keep or a world objective, other than knowing that you beat up some players. It makes more sense at the moment to let the other faction take said keep/object, come back later, and retake for renown/loot. Give some incentive for defending, and you might see some more Keep / Objective battles, instead of these ‘exchanges’ of renown. Giving loot for a defense might be too much, and very hard to calculate, so why not make it that the faction who owns the keep gets 1.5x renown for kills while in the Keep zone? The team defending gets a bonus to renown, while the offensive team gets loot if they make it through all the way.

Itemization Improvements

Itemization in this game is horrible. While I love the idea of a renown gear system, I’d love it even more if any of the gear was actually good. I’m not sure who was put in charge of allocating stat points on the gear sets, but it seems they only played one class, and had no idea what stats the others used. As fun as it is to have Willpower/Initiative gear for my Sorceress, I’d prefer something more useful. This extends beyond just renown gear, as the influence/quest/drop rewards at higher levels are very much in the same boat.

This really seems like something that should’ve been fixed a long time ago. There’s really not much incentive to get my renown rank up, seeing as all the potential ‘rewards’ are worse than what I’m currently wearing. Goodie.

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The popularity of part 1 of the Bright Wizard / Sorceress comparison here at thewarjournal.com was nothing short of surprising. I really didn’t think so many people would get around to reading it, arguing it, and discussing it across various WAR forums around the web. I can understand how some Bright Wizard players may have been angered by the things I said, but the truth sometimes hurts. A side-by-side comparison of the more potent spells in the Immolation and Calamity lines drew some criticism from BWs who claimed they could put these spells to better use than their own, as well outright telling me Playing with Fire was a ‘bad’ spell, and no ‘true’ Bright Wizard even uses it. I addressed many of these concerns in my follow-up to the article. Finally, I bring you part 2 of the BW/Sorc comparison, in an effort to suggest ideas as to how Mythic could possibly improve our Calamity line to make it more in-line with that of Order mirror, and the huge affect -resist debuffs have on overall damage of these classes. First, let’s look at each spell in the Sorceress’ arsenal, both learned from the Mastery lines, and core abilites:

Absorb Vitality

This spell just doesn’t cut it. The damage is alright and the healing is mediocre, which would be fine if this was a baseline ability, not the TOP of our calamity tree. This is the spell that I have to wait for? Bright Wizards get a 100ft instant knockdown! Where’s my f&*@king knockdown?! This is the spell that I’m spending all my mastery points in Calamity to achieve? The added bonus of the healing from AV being affected by Playing with Fire makes this super risky to use given the popularity of the Bright Wizard class. If I have Playing with Fire on me, and my Absorb Vitality is up on a target, it heals me for ~75 a tick, while PwF is critting me for 550-650 every tick. The crit chance for the heal portion of AV is of course affected by our critical chance to heal, not damage, so having full DM gives us no benefit in that regard.

Reduce or remove the cooldown on absorb vitality. Due to the lack of any other decent DoT spell to compliment Chillwind, AV seems to fill the role of our second ‘bread-and-butter’ spell as it were, but it’s fairly difficult to use often with a 20 second cooldown.  If the cooldown was removed completely however, it could make the spell too powerful because of its healing aspect, probably not because of how little it heals for and the prevalence of healing debuffs, but I digress. Perhaps lowering it to 10 seconds, or maybe even 5 seconds and having it heal only 50% of the damage done would be sufficient. However, if none of the other proposed DoT changes are made, removing the cooldown on this spell would still make our entire DoT spec much better as a whole. Another thing that could be done to improve this spell is to change its damage type to Spirit, and add a Spirit resist debuff to Word of Pain…

Word of Pain

 I like the idea behind this spell, and even though the damage of this was nerfed near the end of beta, it’s still a powerful ability. The one thing that I don’t understand is the willpower debuff. Willpower? Seriously? This is a joke of a debuff. Playing with Fire reduces healing done on the target by 50% and crits my healer for 550-650 when he tries to heal through it, and we get a willpower debuff to compete?

Having to stack this 3 times is a huge pain in the ass. Not only does the triple stack make it costs 3 times the AP it should, but if any of the applications get disrupted, they all get wiped off. Same goes for dispel abilities; it only takes one ‘remove curse’ ability to remove all three stacks of Word of Pain. Having to cast this 3 times means I’m giving all the BWs a great opportunity to fill up my debuff bar to full. I am one of many Sorceress’ that doesn’t even have this ability on their action bar anymore.

Change this to a Spirit resist debuff instead of willpower,  and we’ve got something. Make it a single cast so that the stacking of the spell isn’t an issue. Make it so it can’t stack with a Magus’ Glean Magic as to not make it too powerful, or hell, allow them to stack. Why not? Magus’ can use the DPS boost.

Hand of Rhuin

This spell is more or less the bread-and-butter of the Calamity spec. Hand of Rhuin NEEDS a snare. It’s got a 100ft range, which is an awesome start, because staying at max range is essential, but as soon as your target sees the damage they’re taking from HoR, they will run away, and it’ll interrupt the rest of the cast. I rarely get all ticks of HoR off before my target is out of range and my 11 second cooldown spell is cut in half. Why is it that Withering Heat has a snare and this one doesn’t? It’s the same exact spell; didn’t it cross anyone’s mind that they’d produce the same utilization problems?

Gloom of Night

This spell is mediocre at best. Gloom of Night is actually better damage than Chillwind on a single target; I guess it’d be comparable to Boiling Blood in terms of damage, and Detonate in terms of AoE capability, but the 80ft range and 2 second cast time make this spell very limiting.

A lot of Sorceress’ love this spell because of the damage output, but to be completely honest, it’s probably because of how much it increases the damage numbers on the charts rather than it’s actually effectiveness. With the amount of wounds players have in tier 4, the damage from this isn’t very noticeable, much like detonate, and it’s only real strength is to use it in conjunction with a channeled AoE like Pit of Shades.

Going within 80ft of an Order group and standing there for 2 seconds means you’re coming out with at least 2 DoTs from every BW and Archmage.  My survivability in scenarios went up considerably as soon as I stopped using this spell, and it didn’t really hurt my total damage output because I wasn’t sticking my neck out to get this spell off.

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Mirror Class; that’s the term used to describe the 2 classes filling similar roles on both sides of the faction fence. Each class has a mirror; some have an exact mirror, while certain classes only have similar role definition or mechanics. In this article I’m going to focus on one of the two pairings that are more unbalanced, and come up in discussion quite a bit; the Order’s Bright Wizard (BW), vs Destruction’s Sorceress (Sorc). We both have plenty of spells and abilities that are exact copies of each other, so I will be ignoring those, and instead focus on the differences.

Ignoring the fact that the BW AoE Root, Fire Cage , is currently bugged and does not break on damage like it’s supposed to, it’s an exact copy of the Sorceress’ Grip of Fear. I thought this was going to be the standard way mirror classes were designed, where the two would have the majority of spells that were identical, only with different names and graphics. This holds true for a number of spells, but for some reason, almost everything the BW gets is better than the Sorceress equivalent. I’m not going to examine every spell, tactic, and morale ability, that’s been done already, I’m going to talk about the things that stand out the most, and what I feel really gives BW’s an advantage over the Sorceress in RvR, both group and solo play.

As of finishing this article, my Sorceress is rank 30/RR29, and I’ve had experience playing a 31 Bright Wizard.

There are some noticeable power differences in the Direct Damage capabilities of the two, and some tremendous ones in the Damage over Time capabilities. The Area of Effect spells and masteries of these two classes are more or less the same, or so similar that it’s almost not worth mentioning.

Agony vs Incineration (Direct Damage)

While the core spells for both the BW and the Sorc are quite similar when it comes to Direct Damage, the little differences add up. With so many similar spells and abilities in the Direct Damage area, Searing Vitality and Funnel Power are enough to shift the battle in the BW’s favor. If you add Burn Through to that, making their main nuke nearly undefendable (block and disrupt) and I’m completely jealous of their DD superiority. Swell of Gloom is the only tactic in the Agony line worth mentioning, and Funnel Power blows it out of the water, without even taking up a tactic slot. With these slight differences, both classes casting the exact same spell will give the BW a damage and healing advantage.

 Damage over Time Abilities

What it comes down to is that the core DoT abilities for the sorc are fairly weak, and the masteries in all lines are mere shadows of the BW mastery lines. Giving the Bright Wizard extremely powerful abilities like Funnel Power and Playing with Fire as the first trainable spells in their respective lines means that any BW spec is capable of getting these 2 moves. Let’s compare the two DoT lines side by side:

Ice Spikes Boiling Blood

Boiling Blood is one of the reasons the Immolation spec will always out-do Calamity. Not only is Boiling Blood an instant DoT with comparable damage to Ignite (Chillwind), but it reduces the target’s Corporeal resistances by 378 at 40. That’s a 20%+ increase to any incoming corporeal damage, which works out great seeing as the 3 main DoTs of Immolation are all Corporeal based. Ice Spikes seems like the closest mirror of this spell, since they’re both corporeal DoTs over 15 seconds with comparable damage. Ice Spikes’ lower damage is understandable as it’s a Cone-AoE DoT, but with a 65ft range and no additional debuffs, this spell is useless.

Chillwind  Ignite

 Identical. Same costs, cast times, damage, everything. This is a good start. It could be argued that Chillwind has a slight advantage because of its corporeal damage type falling in with most debuffs.

Word of Pain Slow Boil

Hm. Virtually the same spell. Word of Pain has a useless Willpower debuff, has to be cast 3 separate times to stack it to its full potential, which means you’re spending a total of 75 AP to cast this, and if one of these applications is dispelled or disrupted, all 3 are removed. Slow Boil on the other hand is only a single application for 30 AP and has the added bonus of adding 5 seconds to all the cooldowns of your target’s abilities. Word of Pain has a total of 744 vs the 448 of Slow Boil at 40, but again, Slow Boil is Corporeal damage.

Gloom of Night Detonate

Even though Gloom of Night is an ability learned from the career mastery, it’s the most similar ability to Detonate, so I’ll be comparing the two. Both spells work in the same way that when the DoT is applied to your target, it ticks on them and everyone within 20ft of them. While Detonate does initial direct damage, Gloom of Night does not, however the total damage of the Gloom of Night DoT is higher than that of Detonate. Overall Gloom of Night will do more damage to those around the target, while Detonate will do more damage to the target itself. However, while both spells are limited to an 80ft max range, Gloom of Night has a 2 second cast time whereas Detonate is instant. Running in closer than 100ft of your enemy is dangerous, as you are most likely being hit with everything that has  max range great than 80 ft; running in and standing there for 2 seconds is a death wish. Going in to cast Gloom of Night almost certainly means that I’m coming back with at least 1 DoT for every BW on the opposing team, usually a DoT and Withering Heat.

Playing with Fire - Nothing comparable

A 50% healing debuff that damages healers who attempt to push through it. This is one of, if not the, most powerful spells that BWs have, if not one of the most powerful spells in the game, and the Sorceress has nothing that even comes close. This automatically boosts a BWs demand in groups, and enables them to efficiently dispatch healers, or targets with multiple healers on them. No cast time and 100 ft range makes this a low risk spell to get off.

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Here’s a nice little interview with Mark Jacobs from TenTonHammer, the first interview post-release if I’m not mistaken.

They discuss everything from gold sellers to equalizing server populations.

A good point about slow server queues, Mark Jacobs states that these things should sort themselves out, but if they don’t, there will be chances for people to transfer servers if they are unhappy with their current ones:

“But if one side wants to do open RvR and the other side doesn’t, that’s going to be a problem. That’s a problem with any game, not just WAR. It could be something that happens on the WoW PvP servers or the Camelot servers. If guys don’t want to RvR, then they have to sort it out among themselves. You can’t force people to RvR. You can’t force ‘em to PvE.

These things will sort themselves out once we have the transfers going, then people can make the choice if they want to stay on their server or not. They might look at the servers and discover that one is a bit more PvE oriented, so they’ll move to that server. But activating anything now, that’s just going to make the problem worse.”

Getting stuck in server queues when logging out to the character screen is a bug:

“A perfect example would be like when you get booted or want to switch toons and you get stuck in the server queue again. We thought it was fixed, but we’re going to go in and fix it again. To me, that’s something that’s really important to fix right away. That’s not a balance issue. Nobody is going to be pissed off about us fixing this dumb bug. That’s one of the things that I really want to do over the next thirty days; get a whole bunch of these annoyances or bugs out of the way and then get ready for a couple big content patches.”

And quite possibly the biggest reveal in the interview, is that the team at Mythic is already planning on bringing back the four classes that were taken out of the game right before release, maybe not all of them, in the next four months to boot:

“On a decidedly different track, over the next four months we’re looking at bringing back some of those classes that we cut or some of the other content that was cut. Or giving players some additional things that they want and have been asking for.”

 

Full interview can be found here: TenTonHammer

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No UI Addons

Enemy Castbars. CC Watch. Target of Target of Target of Target of Target. Convenient? Yes. Necessary? No.

When I first stumbled into Warhammer Online and played around with the UI, I noticed there wasn’t a visible section for third-party UI modifications. I later found out that it wasn’t me getting lost in lots of pretty menus, but that Mythic doesn’t want this to be a part of their game. After my initial semi-shock that they were actually taking this route, it occurred to me that this way will probably help separate players into their respective skill brackets. Naturally, UI Add-Ons only give players so much of an advantage and while it probably isn’t game-breaking, it’s another thing that you have to leave up to human control.

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