Sorceress resist debuff and instant silence!!

Combustion/Dark Magic crit chance nerf!

and more:

Folks,

Some good news as the weekend approaches:

1) We hope to have the PTS up and running this weekend. Right now we are shooting for sometime tomorrow. The Herald will have all the latest information.

2) As promised, our C&C team has combed through this thread (and pertinent links) and here’s what they have found in regards to bugs. Unfortunately, there were a number of both unreported bugs and reported bugs that didn’t make it up to the C&C team in time for this patch (initially). I am in total agreement with player sentiment that these bugs need to be fixed along with 1.0.5 and as such, the team is already working on doing that today and over the weekend. The current plan is to fix the vast majority of them in time for the patch but some, because of the coding involved or if they are minor bugs (display) will not be fixed for 1.0.5 but will be fixed as soon as practical. The update to the 1.0.5 patch will be updated to reflect these fixes once these changes are incorporated into 1.0.5.

3) We are also going to look at making some additional changes to some of the classes/archetypes. As I’ve said before, 1.0.5. is not yet up on the patcher and we expect to continue to make more tweaks/adjustments until the patch goes live. Among the changes currently going into 1.0.5 are:

a) BW/Sorcs will have their crit chance lowered for combustion.

b) Sorcs will also see Word of Pain’s debuff changes from a willpower debuff to a resist debuff to match BWs and it will no longer stack Word of Pain and be a single application that deals damage at the end. Stricken Voices will have its cast time removed to match Bright wizard Choking Smoke.

c) For IBs, we are going to make some changes that will allow the IB to get to low grudge more quickly than initially proposed by increasing Oath friend grudge thresholds from 5/3/1 grudge generated to 10/5/3. Also, we are lowering the grudge required (and making a couple other changes) in the following abilities:

Shield Sweep: Cost reduction from 30 Grudge to 25 Grudge.
Oath bound: Cost reduction from 30 Grudge to 15 Grudge.
Avenging The Debt: Increase heal value.
Away With Ye: Reduce cost from 30 Grudge to 25 Grudge. Increase damage. (Also requires cool down from 0s to 10s)
Watch An’ Learn: Reduce cost from 30 Grudge to 15 Grudge. (Also requires cool down from 0s to 20s)
Grumble An’ Mutter: Increase heal value.

The combination of better contribution from OF and lowering the grudge cost of some abilities should help alleviate some, if not all, of the IB’s concern. We will continue, of course, to look at the IB as a whole to determine if additional changes are still necessary.

d) For our healers, we are looking at making the following changes:

Ranged Healers

Long Cast Big heals go from 3s cast to 2.5s cast
Interrupt / setback value on long heals is reduced by 50%

Melee Healers
Divine Strike and Rend soul will now heal for 350% damage dealt instead of 250%

Like the IBs, this is just part of an ongoing process. As I said yesterday, the team will continue to look very carefully at the healers on the PTS and if more changes need to be made, we’ll make them.

e) The Chosen seemed to have a higher number of potential (we haven’t confirmed them all yet) bugs but in the meantime, we will make the following changes:

Convert Blast Wave, Bane Shield and Quake to magic attacks that use STR instead of INT for bonus damage
Push Aura code fix up that makes twisting easier

f) The Marauders have a similar bug to the Chosen (using INT not STR) so we are making the following change:

Mouth of Tzeentch will use STR instead of INT for bonus damage

g) For the Black Orc the biggest bug appears to losing their place in the combo chain randomly. The team has been trying to duplicate this all day and so far, no luck. If we can duplicate it, it will be fixed.

So, a few things:

1) Let me once again express my thanks to those great people here on the Vault (and elsewhere) who spent time and energy posting helpful (critical, insightful, positive, etc.) messages. You have helped us quite a bit by doing so. The 1.0.5 thread was, at its best, a great example of how developer<->community interaction can work very well at times when you have motivated players and interested developers who are actually paying attention. So again, you have my thanks.

2) The changes here are still part of an ongoing process of evaluation and reevaluation of 1.0.5. Nothing is final and until the PTS is up and running and 1.0.5 goes through the ringer, will it even be close to final. So please, when the PTS goes up let us know what you think through feedback here and in the game.

3) Some of the bugs/changes that I’m listing here will not be fixed/up by tomorrow of course but they will be during the time that the PTS is running and *before* 1.0.5 goes LIVE. We will keep you informed about the changes through the patcher.

4) A number of people have commented that this patch seems more chock full of ranged DPS changes and while the team believes that a lot of the changes we made to the the rDPS group will have a significant positive impact on our tanks and mDPS folks, they will turn their attention to those careers again after the 1.0.5 version. Again, please keep in mind that bugs for the mDPS/Tanks will be fixed for this version as well.

Again, my thanks to the many members of the WAR community for their efforts in regards to our game.

Mark

source: http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/109355195/p1/?247

Finally! These are the kinds of changes I was expecting from the 1.0.5 patch notes. Maybe there’s hope after all!

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An Update on the latest patch notes. Mark Jacobs just posted this on the VN Boards:

I’m always hoping to post Part 1 of the update shortly (within 30 mins). The full patch notes will have to wait till tomorrow due to their rather hefty size and widespread impact and they need a little extra review time.

Mark

Looks like 1.05 is coming soon. Full patch notes tomorrow, with perhaps a good preview today. As said in the previous post, the patch notes are 17 pages long. Let’s hope for some good changes!

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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.

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So I figure I’ve got some time to burn and I’m going to write a review/guide/chunk-o-bullshit bit about green fatties and tanks in general. If you’re wondering where the hell I’ve been, colt, don’t worry about it. I’ll be back soonish.

For some history: I have a blorky blorc (black orc, if you’re silly) at r38 that has constantly “respec’d” and has experience using powerful two handers with da brawler/da boss builds and decent 1h/shields with builds throughout each mastery. I’ve played an engineer to 19, a marauder to 16ish, a chosen to 24ish, an ironbreaker to 13ish, and several other classes through t1. I do not have extensive r40 experience, but I’ve dealt with r40 enemy classes of every type.

The tanks’ dilemma

The single most important thing you must realize as a tank class is that you can very rarely, if ever, play a perfect game. I point this out first as a foil to my extensive experience playing a warrior in WoW, where playing a perfect game is possible, if not relatively simple. Most of a warrior’s difficulty involves either hitting the right target(s) or dropping back to a defensive position when necessary. There’s really nothing else you can do better on your own. You always immediately hamstring targets, always pummel specific spells (i.e. shadow school on warlocks), always trinket certain effects, and always use a relatively simple dps cycle. There’s a little variety besides that, but not much more. I haven’t played since the patch so I guess things could change, but from what I could tell things were just getting easier.

You will immediately want to do everything as a tank in warhammer. You want to be everywhere. You want to be within 30ft of whatever’s getting focused on your side whenever they get focused so your guard works. You want to focus whatever your team is focusing with your armor or resist debuffs. You want to pummel opposing glass cannons so they can’t cast as easily (note; bright wizards still function pretty well under fire, whereas sorcs do not). You want to pummel healers so they can’t cast their spells with build times easily. You want to snare and root and knock the hell out of all enemy tanks and melee so they can’t muck with your glass cannons or healers. You want to knock squishies into positions where they are open to attacks from your forces. If you can’t force something dangerous to hit you, you want to challenge them. If you get into a position to drop someone on the opposing team, you want to taunt them and kick their ass. You want to perform everything above while staying within the range of a healer without dying to effects like playing with fire. You do not want to helplessly hit something you cannot kill while your team gets mutilated.

Ultimately, you want to maximize both how well you enable your forces while disabling the opposing force. This isn’t easy at all! Thank god for that.

(more…)

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A week or so ago, we had a nice discussion about statistics in guild chat. I had asserted that I was pleased with the way Mythic had implemented stats. They are, from what I can tell, all balanced in terms of the benefit each particular stat enhances. I am fairly confident that we’ll avoid the shattering imbalances of melee vs. ranged. I find that I mostly die to intelligent use of abilities (and Lava) more than I do to a guy who had a mace with a top end DPS equal to a quarter of my HP pool. I stand by what I said; stats are pretty neat in this game so far.

For the most part, there are stats that are class-specific (Intelligence, Willpower, Ballistic Skill, Weapon Skill, and Strength) and then there are stats that are applicable to all classes (Initiative, Toughness, Wounds, Resists, Armor). Stats have fixed formulas that express their effects on certain abilities. Ballistic Skill, for example, will increase your auto attack (with a ranged weapon) DPS by 0.1 and your active abilities by 0.2 for each point. Intelligence increases ability damage by 0.2 per point AND reduces the chances your spell will be disrupted (resisted). Gotcha, so Intelligence is a stat for ranged casters, I can dig. Clearly, as a Disciple of Khaine, I won’t need Intelligence. My main stats should be Willpower, Strength, and Weapon Skill, as a majority of my skills naturally rely on those stats.

Here’s the thing: Disciple of Khaine has four skills that rely on Intelligence to get their damage done and reduce disrupt rates. They include Fist of Khaine, Essence Lash, Fell Sacrifice, and Devour Essence. Two of those abilities, Fell Sacrifice and Devour Essence, are in the middle of two melee mastery trees. Sacrifice, my current spec, is a heavy Strength and Weapon Skill tree and Devour Essence is in this mastery path. Why would an ability that takes its damage from Intelligence reside in a tree whose stats are only melee-based? This is a mastery ability, and it’s ass-backwards in terms of the stat it uses. Fist of Khaine is hardly a reliable Soul Essence generation tool (and a precious one at that, being that it is ranged) simply because of the ridiculous disrupt rate it gets. An intelligent DoK would switch on Covenant of Celerity and spam Fist of Khaine to trip up a fleeing player, but it would be miraculous if they managed to get through the disrupt rate AND manage to proc the covenant. I don’t bother giving chase to Rune Priests or Arch Mages anymore.

The DoK isn’t the only class to suffer from strange ability stat assignments. Chaos Chosen are stuck with it too. Quake and Blast Wave are entirely based on Intelligence. This is a tank class. Why would a tank class ever, ever, ever put on intelligence gear? I was reading a thread on the Alliance boards where a player was considering using Intelligence gear to increase the damage for his abilities. While I applaud his thinking to get around the issue, it was alarming to me that it was never questioned why a caster stat was associated with a tanking class ability.

There are likely other examples in other classes. I apologize for not outlining them, as I am mostly familiar with the DoK mechanics. The Chosen issues were brought up through proxy hearsay by a friend.

Now, I’m not dense, I know why they did it. These are magical abilities and most of them are AoE. There needs to be some basis for avoidance, and nevermind that I get blocks and parries on some of these skills. The fact of the matter is that these abilities are flat-out underpowered because of their association with Intelligence. They should be linked to stats relevant to the class. Of course I’m concerned about it as a DoK, but I expect the problem to be addressed to all classes across the board. It’ll be interesting to see how (if) Mythic addresses the situation while still maintaining the possibility of disrupt.

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