Tarelther's Swordmaster Revamp Version 3

Keaven recently posted in the developer discussion forum for WAR looking for Combat and Careers balance feedback. The very first post stated he would not be doing a restructuring of all careers in the game, so I'm posting this here to not derail the entire thread.

Currently the SM is a very flexible tank, able to switch from offensive to defensive mode simply by varying his rotation. This is reason for his short buff/debuff durations. If the buff/debuff durations are extended without any additional changes, the SM will be capable of maximum offense and maximum defense at the same time and will be able to maintain both easily. I really don't think we want to recreate the OP Chosen that once got all the QQ though.

This is not working for most of the player base though, as evidenced by the recent survey Keaven posted. The big question I see asked is why bring a SM instead of a Knight? The big problem with the SM is the lack of a very clearly defined role. So let's make the Blade Enchantment very clearly define the role of the SM. This involves combining a lot of effects for tactics into the Blade Enchantment itself and replacing them with more interesting effects.

Also we can take this opportunity to make CC as available to the SM as other tanks.

Prior to making suggestions for changes, I'll lay out what I think each spec should do.

Also keep in mind that I am batting zero on my other two revamps.

Khaine is all about damage and damage support. A fully committed Khaine SM has forgone defense for offense, sacrificing his defensive utility for more damage. A SM less committed to Khaine still gains offensive utility allowing his group to kill opponents more quickly.

Vaul is about protection. Less committed SMs only look to Vaul to protect themselves, while those fully committed to Vaul also use the Winds of Magic to protect others.

Hoeth is about the SM using the Winds of Magic to enhance his Blade Enchants further. A SM less committed to Hoeth will find his Blade Enchantments working more often and will be able to push himself for longer. A SM fully committed to Hoeth will also use the Winds of Magic to rip apart his enemies' magical defenses for his team to exploit.

Blade Enchantments:

Heaven's Blade: Moved to Khaine: 25% chance on hit: Reduce all resists by x. Deals x spirit damage. Also increases outgoing damage by 45%, parry by 5% (GWM and Taunt) and crit chance by 0/10/20% based on balance state (Balanced Accuracy) and disables Taunt, Challenge and Guard. Requires 2h weapon.

Balanced Accuracy and Great Weapon Mastery get other effects.

It's known that the dev team wanted to restrict Guard to shield. I find that rather heavy-handed. I felt it was better to allow the SM to trade his defensive utility for damage. Adding another percentage increase might make damage get a bit out of control though. The flat damage added to Heaven's Blade makes the DPS SM easier to balance than another percentage increase would.

Alternately, Heaven's Blade could increase outgoing damage by 10% instead of 45%, not do the extra spirit damage when applied, and still have the SM keep his defensive utility.

Phantom's Blade: 25% chance on hit: Absorb x damage over 10s. Also Increases armor by x. Increases chance to block by 5/15/25% and chance to parry by 0/10/20% based on balance (Crushing Advance and Perfect Defenses). Increases duration of Eagle's Flight and Dragon's Talon to 10s.

Crushing Advance and Perfect Defenses get other effects.

I know the player base wanted the effects of Eagle's Flight and Dragon's Talon increased in duration, but I felt it would be overpowering to allow a DPS SM to keep these up and still output a lot of damage. By restricting the duration increase to using Phantom's Blade, which does nothing for the SM's damage, I think that problem can be avoided.

Nature's Blade: Moved to Hoeth. 25% chance on hit: Steal stats from enemies within 30 feet and give them to your group for 10s. Also increases chance to disrupt by 5/15/25% based on balance (Aethyric Armor and Calming Winds)

AA becomes group armor buff like We'z Bigger. Calming Winds has new effect.

Nature's Blade is group utility, so I think it belongs in the utility tree.

Normal ability moves: Quick Incision moved to Vaul. Wrath of Hoeth moved to Khaine (probably should be made single target and AP cost reduced with the other Hoeth changes). Intimidating Blow moved to Hoeth. This is to reinforce the purpose of each Mastery line. Khaine is damage, Vaul is protection, and Hoeth is utility.

Khaine.

Deep Incision is made core trading places with Forceful Shock. It's not worth the Mastery point in my opinion.

Forceful Shock now causes Blurring Shock's Shock effect to do x damage, where x is what a normal max point investment in Khaine would give, or maybe a little more. The idea is similar to the Bright Wizard tactic Fueled from Within. A full Khaine SM probably would not use it unless it was a drastic increase in damage, but this would allow a Vaul or Hoeth SM to offspec Khaine and still make use of the Shock debuff to help his group kill the enemy faster. Besides, why would anyone want to knock away a target you just made more vulnerable to damage?

Sapping Strike is now a 50% incoming heal debuff for 10s. SM is the only tank on Order without a heal debuff. The AP drain isn't strong enough to be worth anything.

Balanced Accuracy. Crashing Wave, Whispering Winds, Crushing Advance, Redirected Force, and Gusting Wind are x% (more than 20%) less likely to be defended/are undefendable. I only used Poised Attacks and Discerning Offense for one purpose, to make sure my CC landed, but 2 tactic slots is very costly for this. This tactic would accomplish the same thing with only one tactic without increasing the SM's damage potential. I would prefer undefendable, but it might be too much. This also makes Khaine more attractive for an offspec.

Phoenix's Wing is moved to 13 Hoeth with new effect.

Crashing Wave is moved to 9 Khaine. Knockdowns are offensive utility and have no business in a defensive tree. Vaul is going to be picking up a single target stagger, so this may need a 2h requirement if having both a knockdown and a stagger is too much for the SM.

Great Weapon Mastery – You gain 4 x Mastery level Strength while using Heaven's Blade. Basically Brute Force. By this point, only full Khaine SMs are still hanging around in this tree, so it's time to start piling on the DPS.

Ether Dance. No change.

Whirling Geyser. No change.

Vaul.

Vaul's Buffer – moves to 3 Vaul. This keeps the SM alive, not his group, so it belongs lower in the tree. Absorb values may need to be adjusted. This is more for the SM who isn't using Phantom's Blade anyway. It makes Wall of Darting Steel a much better survival tool.

Redirected Force – moves to Crashing Wave's old spot 13 up Vaul, requires Perfect Balance, no longer requires defense, super punt, 10s cooldown. Blurring Shock can hold hate in PvE just fine. We don't need this for PvE. A super punt for the SM is another request, which I feel is reasonable so long as it's restricted to defensive tanks. If a SM puts 14+ points into Vaul, he won't be doing much damage anyway. It can be restricted to Phantom's Blade if a problem arises.

Protection of Hoeth – moves to 5 Vaul. This used to be worth 10 points when Sudden Shift was not in the game allowing the SM to move to Improved Balance without a target. Now, not so much. It belongs in Vaul since it's a self survival tool.

Lingering Intimidation – is now core replacing Dampening Talon. It's more I needed to room to improve Dampening Talon than not liking Lingering Intimidation.

Perfect Defenses – moves to 7 Vaul – Reduces chance to be critically hit by 10%. Mirror of Chosen tactic. In the current state of the game, this is a more practical defense then parry and block.

Crushing Advance – Requires Shield – 9s ST stagger, 20s cooldown. It's not AoE like the Knight/Chosen, but I don't think it really has to be either to make an impact on the battlefield.

Dampening Talon – moves to 11 Vaul - Dragon's Talon affects up to 9 targets within 20 feet while under the effect of Phantom's Blade and it deals less damage. Another change the player base has been asking for. I feel it really needs to be restricted to defensive tanks. DPS have no business having something like this. Granted spending 12+ in Vaul won't exactly make the SM a damage machine though.

Hoeth.

Bolstering Enchantments – Increases chance for Blade Enchantments to trigger to 33%, instead of 25%. I always liked the idea of having a tactic increase this. It makes the SM more of what he already is. More DPS from Heaven's Blade. More survivability from Phantom's Blade. More debuff/buff goodness from Nature's Blade.

AA – group armor buff like We'z Bigger. No longer increases disrupt since that was rolled into Nature's Blade. Could also be made into a toggle, like Prayer of Absolution.

Calming Winds – You gain 40 AP when your Blade Enchants trigger. Mirrored to Stop Hittin' Da Runts. Similar to Bolstering Enchantments, it allows the SM to be more of what he already is by letting him stay in the fight longer.

Whispering Winds – Moved to 9 Hoeth

Blessing of Heaven – Nature's Blade now also reduces all resists of enemies affected for 10s. Makes up for the loss of Heaven's Blade to Khaine. Brings total utility closer to a Knight's. Name fits well.

Phoenix's Wing – Moved to 13 Hoeth. 40% AoE snare for 5s. Similar to BO Big Swing with Big Brawlin' tactic slotted. No longer has 2h requirement. I don't think the AoE disorient is needed, and the Strength debuff is already covered by Nature's Blade, but feel free to add these effects.

Alternately, Blessing of Heaven could add a 5s snare to targets affected by Nature's Blade and Phoenix's Wing could be an AoE to debuff all resists.

7 Tenets of PvP Tanking

I originally posted this on the SW:TOR boards here. Given the positive reception, I'll post it here too.

1. You shall initiate the fight when appropriate.

As the tank you are the most likely of your team to absorb the initial focus of the enemy team and live, so it's your job to pick the fights. You will go in first and start messing with people for a couple seconds before your team engages. The idea is that the enemy starts with focus on you and forces the enemy to interrupt a damage rotation and take a second to switch targets to start hitting your big DPS character. The seconds you buy from this can make the difference between winning and losing the fight.

2. Defense before offense.

Your primary responsibility as a tank is to keep your DPS alive so they can kill the opponent. Adding assist damage to your DPS's target, while very important, is secondary to your other functions such as Taunt, Guard, and various CC and damage debuffs. Your DPS can do no damage dead.

3. You must be a threat.

You don't necessary need to make an enemy go, "He's gonna kill me, get him off." It helps if you can do that while still being able to initiate, but you just have to be enough of a pain in the rear to the enemy to make them deal with you. It can be with CC frustrating the enemy to the point of focusing you just so they feel like they can act. It can be making the enemy's primary healer or DPS useless by debuffing them. One of my favorite things to do to a sorceress in WAR was to start by dropping her damage to 70% of normal, cutting down her crit chance and draining her morale, then disorienting her to make all her casts take 50% longer, followed by a snare, a silence, then draining her AP and morale further. It usually got me some attention.

4. Take advantage of player psychology.

This really applies to everyone, but the PvP tank can do this in ways no one else can. In WAR, I always carried 2 full sets of gear and had a few preset combinations of them I could switch to with the push of a button ranging from balls to the wall offense to a couple balanced sets to full turtle tank. One thing I would often do is try to project an image of being one end of the spectrum and then switch to the other. If I wanted to be a full tank for example, I'd rush in, lay some heavy damage on a enemy, get focused, die, respawn or get a rez, switch gear to full defensive gear, and then go in like that for the rest of the fight. It also works the other way too if I want to DPS. This is similar to a poker player presenting a table image then switching to another play style hoping his opponents don't notice.

Of course, you want to communicate something like this to your team ahead of time if you can. Going in first as a DPS to give an early, easy kill can also make the enemy overconfident, and you definitely want to take advantage of that if you notice by luring the enemy into traps.

5. The life of your DPS is more important than yours. (But not by a whole lot)

You should be willing to sacrifice yourself to save the life of your DPS. Your DPS should NEVER die before you do. Obviously, this does not always happen, but it's the mindset to have. If your DPS is going down before you consistently (and it's not his fault for being stupid), you need to make yourself more of a threat by shifting some of your survivability for damage. This works the other way as well. If you die well before your DPS consistently (and it's not your fault for being stupid), you need to trade damage for survivability. Ideally when your DPS dies, you should have been killed seconds earlier or be about to go down shortly after the DPS dies. In this way, you'll have a perfect balance of threat to survivability. This is presuming the DPS player is competent of course. If your DPS teammate couldn't DPS his way out of a wet paper bag, he's not worth your life.

Guard damage should be one of the major causes of your death when it happens. Yes, you can take more damage than most, but that's because you have to be able to do so. You intentionally redirect some of the incoming damage from a teammate onto yourself. You are able to defend and mitigate this damage. You should be able handle this damage without being a major drain on the healing resources which are better conserved to keep your DPS alive.

6. If your DPS is wrong, you should be wrong with him.

This is related to number 5. This means if the DPS you are protecting has run off by himself to do something, you need to be with him. Your DPS is useless dead, and a lot of your abilities to mitigate damage do not work on you, so you might as well be useful with your DPS being wrong, than useless being "right."

Taunt for example, unless it changed from the Eternity Vault video, reduces damage of the targeted enemy to everyone else except you for a time. You can't Guard yourself, not that it would do anything dividing the damage you take between you and you.

7. Tunnel vision will kill your team.

You need watch health bars like you were a healer so you can place Guard where it is needed. You need to watch the enemy so you can place your CC, buffs and debuffs effectively. You need to watch the positioning of your team since Guard only works within a short range. (See also number 6 for this.) You need to do all this on top off watching yourself, your ability rotation/priority, your health and resources, and your positioning. It can be very stressful, and sometimes impossible, to keep track of all this.

Sometimes in WAR my healers would tell me to potion because their resources are drained or focused on another player. They did this because they understood sometimes I can lose track of my own health trying to perform all my other duties. I rarely needed the reminder, but I appreciated it.

The PvP tank is a thankless job, much like the PvE tank, but it is very satisfying when played well.

2h Tanks and Guard - Another Possible Solution

I had this crazy idea come to me reading one of the recent threads on removing Guard from 2h tanks, playing RIFT beta for a little bit, and thinking about how awesome it is to actually have weekends off from work.

RIFT has Guard in it's game, but it functions differently from WAR. It's a 15s buff with a 30s cool down that redirects 25% of damage taken by an ally to the Warrior. This can be increased to 50% by spending 10 soul points in the Vindicator PvP soul. This prevents you from buying the better DPS abilities in the soul since that soul has a 21 point cap on it. One of the 15 point abilities caught my eye, the Art of Defense. This allows a player to block without a shield.

In real life, I work for an insurance company. In a lot of insurance policies, there are several restrictions placed on coverage. Oftentimes, these restrictions can removed from the policy for an additional premium payment.

So I propose a similar solution. Guard requires a shield to use. A tank may purchase the ability to use Guard without a shield with renown points. I would place this ability on ranks 4 and/or 5 of Hardy Concession. The 10% or 15% damage cut and the cost of 20 or 34 renown points would make it unlikely that the 2h tank would be able to put out anything remotely close to DPS classes, so it should be fine to let the tank use Guard. The main complaint was 2h tanks being able to output too much DPS while having the most powerful damage mitigation ability in the game. This handles the complaint while not degrading the psychological game the tank plays to get players to attack him instead of him teammates.

Thoughts?

Reading Between the Lines of the New Producer's Letter

The new Producer's Letter for WAR is out. I took a few days to let things sink in before writing about it to try to figure out some of the hidden meanings in the letter.

Please note that these are simply my predictions based on information Mythic has released publicly. If you have any concerns with anything I say, please do not complain to Mythic about it. You can direct all complaints about these predictions to their source, namely my ass.

With that out of the way, I'll break it down after the break

This month’s Producer Letter is being brought to you by James Casey. James has been a Producer on the project for some time and has run a number of WAR initiatives (New User Journey, Endless Trial, Verminous Horde, etc.) in tandem with Carrie. Carrie is still working on WAR, but is looking at a different aspect of the game. This new focus will be revealed in due time.

The first part I bolded is about new content that was added to the game recently. Carrie is now working on a different aspect of the game. What other parts of the game are there than content development? Well, there's customer service, server and code management, and financial management to name a few. The big question that jumps to mind is could WAR being going free-to-play? Carrie has stated in Q&A sessions before that they'd like to learn things from the free-to-play model.

The issue with WAR going F2P is how to make money selling stuff in a cash shop without grossly imbalancing combat. If that can be solved, then sure, why not? The game is only fun with other players to play with...or kill. F2P would bring a LOT more players into the game. More players makes the game more fun for everyone.

The current structure of the Scenarios will remain unchanged, but the Scenarios themselves will be different. Some scenarios stayed where they are, some changed what tiers they are available at, and some are gone and replaced by other classic scenarios. For example; The Maw of Madness will be making its return to the Tier 4 scenario Queue.

I liked Maw of Madness, so I welcome that change. Classic scenarios seem to suggest no brand new scenarios. I have to figure Nordenwatch and Reikland Factory are staying in Tier 4. I figure the 3 6v6 scenarios will be added to Tiers 2 and 3 to help with queue times. Those are Gates of Ekrund (a 6v6 bracket existed for ranks 19-24), The Ironclad, and the Eternal Citadel. Lost Temple of Isha has to be getting the boot for sure since approximately zero people take the queue for it. I'm going to say that the other 3 Tier 4 scenarios will be Black Fire Basin, Battle for Praag, and Serpent's Passage. I would love for Ironclad or Eternal Citadel to be in Tier 4, but I doubt that will happen.

We also have some very special plans for Grovod Caverns.

Grovod Caverns is a capture the flag scenario. The flags in this case are Warpstone. This screams Skaven scenario to me and would be quite ingenious if I'm right. Players complain about the power gap, a lot. Skaven have the same stats regardless of the rank/renown rank and gear of the controlling player. Also players complain about lack of group balance in scenarios. Allowing players to choose which Skaven to play in the scenario avoids the issue completely. Andy did mention wanting to improve the group support ability of the Packmaster. Could this be why?

Along with the patches and live events, we also have plans to expand our services and Account Entitlement offerings this year. This includes introducing paid name changes, more pets, and more ways to personalize your character.

More support for the F2P argument perhaps?

However, we understand that population is a key component to enjoying the game. As part of an effort to ensure off-peak hours are as enjoyable as peak hours can be, we are actively discussing our plans for lower population servers.

Free server transfers have already been mentioned, but this could be even more support to the F2P argument. Or it could be something else.

That's all I've got for the Producer's Letter. The TTK calculations I've been doing just got a wrench thrown into them with the healing changes being discussed. I get the feeling more is coming that will cause me to have to redo them completely. I'm going to hold off on that for now to see what's coming before I go further on that series.

The effect of RR100

Before anyone says anything, no, I'm not talking about me hitting 100. I'm barely 82.

One of the WPs in my guild is currently RR99. He'll be 100 by Sunday. Already though, he is causing a massive difference for us. This guy hits like a truck. Yeah, you gotta give him a pocket guard, but man, people explode when he hits them.

So yeah, there's a bit of a power gap happening. But honestly, it's not as bad as it was.

Players used to enter Tier 4 at rank 32 and would have to face players of RR80, or effectively rank 41. This is a 9 rank gap. Now players can avoid Tier 4 until 40 and will potentially face players of RR100, or effectively rank 46. This is a 6 rank gap. Players can attain RR80 very quickly now, dropping the disadvantage to 5 ranks.

But the RR90 and RR100 gear is soooo much better than other set gear. In terms of stats, not really. Basically the stat set bonuses for Doomflayer and Warpforged were built into the items themselves.

I've faced many RR90+ opponents. Yeah they've got a little bit of an edge, but it's nothing that organization cannot overcome.

My biggest issue with WAR right now is it just plain has too many bugs. After playing in the RIFT betas so far, this only stands out even more. The PvP is WAR is light years ahead of PvP in RIFT in my opinion. This is to be expected since WAR was designed from the ground up for PvP primarily. RIFT is more of a PvE game. Don't get wrong, I like PvE when it's good, but it doesn't compare to an intelligent opponent.

I've preordered RIFT, and it'll be my PvE game. I do miss raiding with my old guild in Vanguard. I was Erasial, Raki Disciple of Watchtower on Xeth. (And no, it was NOT a Jehovah's Witnesses guild.) But when I need a PvP fix, WAR all the way.

The shift from AoE to single target healing

I logged into WAR a little bit this past week. It was my first playing since the adjustment to the WP/DoK group healing. I was in my offensive kit, but I used full Sovereign for Leading the Charge to try to keep up with the crazy ass slayer who is now the new leader of my guild.

Um, yeah, I could tell the difference. Before the change AoE healing could cover the guard damage I took in DPS mode. Now I need some single target healing to stay up while doing so. With a shield on in defensive spec, my regen can cover what Guard damage gets past my shield.

If my healer has to use single target healing to keep me up, he can't heal anyone else until I'm ok or he has to let me drop.

I have been tempted to pull out the shield just for that reason. Way back in the day when I was ranking up my SM, I was a Vaul/Hoeth S/S tank. I hit like a girl, but I took it like a man. The S/S build works in warband situations, quite well actually, but I find it lacking for scenario play.

I also played a little bit of Rift today in the warfronts. Oh man. If you were complaining about the marauder pull in WAR, the warlord taunt that you can buy for 8 soul points actually pulls enemy players right to you. And it's not on a 30s recast. Oh no. That bad boy refreshes every 8 seconds. There's no global CC immunities for now either. Not only that, tanks can buy a branch ability in the PvP soul that makes their taunts work like challenge reducing damage output to everyone save the taunter. Rank 1 was 20% and the ability has 3 ranks, so 60% damage cut isn't unlikely. The only saving grace of this is the warlord soul's DPS is pathetic.

I've got an easy 2 weeks coming up. I've got continuing education classes for the next two weeks to renew my insurance licenses. I'm feeling a little better now. I'm not quite as tired, but I'm still not 100%. Hopefully I'll make my full return soon enough.

Patch 1.4.0 - Raising the Bar, Busting Excuses

And I'm not talking about the renown rank cap increase.

You won't be able to just zerg it up in Open RvR and expect to win quickly. You won't be able to jump in your elite premade and just roll the uncoordinated in scenarios all day long. You won't be able to complain that you got rolled by an elite premade when you just entered Tier 4.

1.4.0 is officially called "The Verminous Horde." I call it "The Excuse Buster."

A lot of the excuses players make about why they lose in scenarios suddenly disappear when you put players of equal skill/gear/organization together. No, the only reason you lose when you are against opponents roughly equal to you is you got outplayed.

For Open RvR, every once in awhile, the RR65+ disappear into the Skaven dungeon leaving the lower ranked players to duke it out up above. You might get outnumbered. So what? Just means you get to milk the sweet, sweet, Against All Odds buff for extra renown. Heck, you might even win if you outplay your opponents. So what if you end up losing the campaign? You get a chance at the new gear by defending your city. Since the city is considered a scenario, you end up with players similar in skill to you there too (unconfirmed and pure speculation, but would be awesome.)

WAR is going to be better than ever I think. So what's your excuse for not playing?

The Skaven Impact

They are the ultimate in support and they deal almost no damage themselves. They have more hit points than normal, but can only be healed by a Packmaster. The Rat Ogre boasts 34k health for example.

The Rat Ogre is the tank's tank. Takes it like a man and hits like a girl. He boasts incredible amounts of CC. He's got everything from the AoE stagger, a massive punt that ignores immunities and the ability to hurl a group/warband member out of (or into) harm's way. Put this guy in your anvil group for the ultimate in controlling the flow of the battlefield.

The Packmaster, in addition to being the only thing capable of healing Skaven players, also boasts a nasty plague rat swarm. At one point I had a 50% debuff to outgoing damage and healing from that thing. He can also Pounce to the nearest Rat Ogre who can then toss him further out of trouble if needed. He also has a curious group buff...

The Gutter Runner's signature move in the open is his snare + movement barb. Got a bomb group? Can't have those poor saps getting out of range of your bombers can you? He can also leap out of (or into) trouble. He can also sabotage a siege engine, making it useless until it's cleansed.

The Warlock Engineer is the energizer bunny. He make your group keep going and going and going. He can put an AoE healing/magic power buff or an AoE AP regen buff. He also can cleanse a war engine that a Gutter Runner sabotages. He also has a flamethrower.

None of these classes are very good on their own. Put them with a coordinated warband, and they are deadly. Hopefully the complete lack of damage output discourages the uncoordinated from even wanting to play them. It would be a shame to waste their awesome potential with people afk in the keep.

Dev for a Day - Guard requires Shield

Someone asked me in my last post how I would solve the Guard requires Shield dilemma for the SM. Here's my take.

I'll start with a couple Mythic quotes and I'll build from there.

For example Andy stated in this thread:

The fact that we're going to do a deeper evaluation has the potential to increase the likelihood that we will be restricting Guard to shield only sometime in the future. Before we make a move like that, we need to make sure that all tanks using a 2 handed weapon are on even ground, hence the decision to delay and focus on the issue at a more appropriate time.

Also Nate said in his 1.3.2. Developer Diary about Crowd Control changes:

Secondly, another aspect of allocation that we're working towards as a long-term goal is to slowly shift the general distribution of Crowd Control to be more common on defensive careers—such as the tank archetypes—and away from DPS-focused careers.

We determined that there needs to be a clear and obvious line drawn between which effects we intend to be used offensively and which we intend to be used defensively, and that lead to the final change that you'll see in this patch.

We're introducing a new effect called "Stagger".  When you Stagger an enemy, they'll be briefly disabled and unable to move or take any actions, just like a Stun or a Knockdown, but with the critical difference that the Stagger will immediately break if they suffer any damage.  We've gone through every player ability that's a Knockdown or Stun, and have done one of two things to it:  either it becomes a Knockdown (a clearly offensive tool which allows you to knock an enemy tail-over-teakettle and then beat them down) or a Stagger (which is now a clearly defensive tool to remove an enemy that you're not attacking).

I would continue down the path that was started back in 1.3.2 by Mythic. That path is the clear and obvious delineation between offensive and defensive support. This can also be clearly seen by the new armor sets. The next logical step to rebalance the classes for this. The general idea is to split up the abilities so that the offensive support abilities are in the offensive tree and the defensive support abilities are in the defensive tree.

The Khaine Swordmaster uses his Elven Greatsword and the Winds of Magic to tear apart the defenses of his foes. He is fully capable of dealing swift death to his enemy once he fully exposes the enemy's weaknesses. The true DPS class will always be able to take better advantage of the Khaine SM's openings though.

Blurring Shock/Forceful Shock - Either Blurring Shock has it's proc damage doubled or Forceful Shock doubles the proc damage of Blurring Shock. Blurring Shock is offensive utility so changing it to a knockback doesn't make much sense. It makes up for the loss of Guard by helping your group kill the enemy faster.

Sapping Strike - 50% incoming heal debuff for 10s. The SM is the only tank on Order side without a heal debuff. (The BO is in the same boat for Destruction.) This makes the tanks more on even ground. It also has synergy with the 2 piece Doomflayer and Warpforged offensive tank sets.

Phoenix's Wing - Moved to 13+1 Vaul with a different effect.

Crashing Wave moves to 9+1 in Khaine and is now a 4s knockdown. This puts it on even ground with the IB knockdown Cave-In. (4s KD with added effect.) It should likely have a 2h requirement since it's clearly offensive utility.

Whirling Geyser - 3s AoE knockdown instead of a knockback. Knockbacks seem more defensive than offensive, so it doesn't seem to fit to have a knockback in the offensive tree.

The Vaul Swordmaster puts aside the classic Elven Greatsword in favor of the shield. Using his shield and the Winds of Magic, he creates magical absorb shields to protect his group. He will determine where the battle lines are drawn. The Vaul Swordmaster highly values his own personal survival. For the longer he stands, the longer he can use the Winds to protect his brethren.

Dampening Talon - Shield required - Dragon's Talon will now affect 3 (or 9) targets within 20 feet (30 feet), but it's damage is reduced by 10% (20%). It doesn't make sense to have offensive utility like defense strikethrough on a defensive ability. Same reasoning as Forceful Shock and it'd be a decent enough "mirror" to Crippling Strikes.

Redirected Force - Requires Block. Single target 9s stagger. 10s (or 20s if that's deemed too powerful) recast. I originally wanted this to be a knockdown like the IB shield knockdown, but a stagger fits the defensive tank better. It might need to switch places with Crushing Advance in the Vaul tree.

Vaul's Buffer - Grants your group an absorb shield whenever you defend against an attack. This is a pseudo mirror to the DoK group absorb shield tactic. It helps balance the realms since Order has no equivalent to that tactic on the DoK.

Phoenix's Wing - 13+1 Vaul. Flames of the Phoenix engulf your group's armor causing X Spirit damage whenever attacked. 15s duration, 30s recast. Basically a mirror to the Chosen's Bane Shield with the tactic.

The Hoeth Swordmaster uses the Winds of Magic to neutralize other magic and refresh his allies. He is the bane of any spell caster. He combines a mix of offense and defense to turn the tide of battle.

Calming Winds - Gusting Wind will now knockback a single target a long distance. A good single target knockback is required to deal with Guard effectively, and the SM/BO just don't have access to one good enough. All tanks should have access to a good single target punt to put them on even ground.

Whispering Wind - Moved to 9+1 Hoeth with same effect. Other tanks get their CC at 9+1, so it brings the tanks more on even ground. Also the Choppa can buy their cooldown buff for 9+1.

Protection of Hoeth - Moved to 13+1 Hoeth. Group magical absorb shield for 10s. 60s recast. Sudden Shift has made the current version much less useful, so increasing the investment required and the return seemed like a good idea. It definitely has to be changed to be worth 13+1. I would make the absorb about 2k if magical only. The healer one that absorbs all damage types absorbs is about 1k. Alternately, it could just be an exact copy of the healer one.

Let me know what you think either way.

Confessions of a 2H DPS Tank

Hi. My name is Tarelther, and I'm addicted to Focused Offense.

The big Ether Dance and Blurring Shock crits give me a rush. There's nothing quite like being able to take the big hits, shrug them off, and give back as good as you take. There's just something about watching that sword and board tank hitting on my healers run like a girl when my blade rips through his armor like it isn't even there. Yes, it cuts into my survivability, but I'm no more difficult to heal that a typical MDPS at that point. If the healer can keep a MDPS alive, he can keep me alive no problem.

It's even better with my pocket DPS class next to me assisting me. Then not only am I ripping through noobs like butter, I give him 65% damage mitigation so they can't even kill him easily. It's true that only works if I'm allowed to stay within 30 feet of him and they ignore me completely and only on enemies in Challenge range when I fire it. The enemy could very easily negate all that by hitting me a couple times before punting me away instead of wasting their time doing 35% damage to my guarded friend. Alternately, they could simply just do 100% of normal damage to me instead. So what if I take advantage of the social programming embedded into the player base? "ZOMG noobs! Quit beating on tanks!" If you don't deal with me, you'll never kill my group. Most will simply choose to ignore me and then wonder why my group rolled them.

Yeah, I take extra damage from using Guard since I can't block, but if I have a WP group healing anyway, I might as well make use of that healing and not let it go to waste.

The real question is it overpowering to take advantage of the natural tendency of the enemy? Or it is simply smart play?

Can I quit using Focused Offense whenever I want? Probably. But why would I want to? If my group can keep a melee DPS up under focus fire, they can keep me up. Why not go for the extra damage? After all, a dead enemy deals no damage. Death is the ultimate debuff.

Hi. My name is Tarelther, and I'm addicted to Focused Offense.

The RvR Dungeon - Thanqoul's Incursion

While I did not get to play the dungeon myself, I did watch it on the internet thanks to Hadrune, so I think I'm qualified to comment on it.

Ok, maybe not, but I'm going to do so anyway.

The instance has several levels, but the boss fights seem to be concentrated in a single area. It is very possible to park ranged classes above the main area and rain death from above upon the boss and enemy players. You'll definitely have to pay attention to your surroundings. Respawn locations are random and you never know if that group you just wiped got respawned at your back when you were trying to damage the boss.

I saw a new repairable weapon drop in there. It looked like a purple 80.7 DPS 2h weapon with a balance of offensive and defensive stats requiring rank 38. It seemed to be off a player kill. No word on if those will only drop in the instance, drop anywhere, or even exist come Live.

A balanced warband is required. The main area is an open area with lots of ledges for ranged and healers to stand, but the access to those ledges is through tunnels favoring melee. I almost think I'll have to have my hammer group just running around the dungeon tunnels killing ranged and healers so the rest can safely be in the boss area. I'm not sure where I can put my cannon group. If I put them on the ledges, I risk them getting ganked by respawns or roaming melee assist groups. If I put them by the boss, I'm forfeiting the high ground.

I probably want my anvil group holding the middle ground protecting my bomb group. But if there's melee trains running around, an anvil group is best way to shut that down. I need to damage the boss, but I need to kill players and not have my team die too. When a side wipes, the other has to focus on the boss allowing the wiped side to regroup at a random location giving the wiped side the element of surprise.

This looks like it's going to be a tactical nightmare with two good armchair generals facing each other with balanced warbands.

I, for one, welcome the challenge.

An Apology, a Rant, and a Lesson Learned

First off, sorry about being late to my own PTS event on Tuesday. My cable modem went dead on me, so I had to drop by my ISP on the way home to pick up a new one. I took off work 2 hours early so that I could make it back in time. For those of you also in Nashvegas, the traffic on the loop around the city was just horrible. There were accidents left and right. I got home at 8:00PM EDT, 30 minutes later than I wanted.

There weren't enough people online for a warband as organized as I liked anyway. It was disappointing. At the first test there were plenty of people who showed up. I think many of them just wanted to see what it looked like and not actually test stuff. Well, that's flawed in my opinion. I spent the night in a warband with Mike Wyatt, James Casey, and Carrie running around and having fun testing stuff. It was the perfect opportunity to chat with the developers about what they were making and tell them directly what I thought and felt in the moment it was happening. I don't know any other development team that would let the general public have that kind of access to them. It's really an opportunity you shouldn't miss if you like WAR and want to see it thrive.

The lesson learned from this is that most people really don't want to go through the trouble of being hyper-organized for a game. The core culture of this game is more about just going out to the lakes/scenarios, smashing some faces for a little bit, and then log out and do something else. My fear is that the system may become so favorable to the highly organized squads (like the crew I run with) that the core audience may be alienated. I hope that doesn't happen. I think this is the main reason there's 2 months of testing for this. Mythic has to get the balance right on this. They can only do so with our help.

What is a Core Tester?

If you're looking for info about the warband I'll be running on PTS on 10/12/2010, you can find it here.

There seems to be a bit of confusion on the boards about what a Core Tester is and what he or she does. I hope to clarify it a bit.

1. We're just regular players. We don't work for Bioware/Mythic. We get no reimbursement whatsoever for our contribution. The only reason we do this is because we like the game and want to see it succeed. I pay my subscription fee just like you do.
2. We don't design anything. If you have an issue with a design decision, leave your feedback on the forums, just like we do. That's what they're there for. If we bring up a valid concern, Mythic will often make changes something before implementing. They do the exact same thing with the public feedback. See the Sovereign redesign for a perfect example.
3. We aren't yes men. We are often critical of Mythic. We leave feedback in a constructive manner so that Mythic has something else to consider before making a change. (No calling anyone's mother a bad name.) For example, I was completely against the removal of Guard from 2h tanks. My reason was that I would not be wanted in a scenario group without Guard. Melee DPS would have similar utility with more damage. (Warband play is another animal completely. I think most tanks would have been fine in warband play 2h without Guard.) If the 2h trees are redesigned to give a group another reason to want me besides Guard, then I have no issue with Guard being restricted to shield only.
4. We do give input on things before the general public sees it. As such, we are held to a NDA. We don't talk about anything publicly until someone at Mythic does so first or patches it to the PTS for all to see.
5. We test content that can be tested with smaller numbers of people. You don't need 50 bazillion people to make sure a redesign of a ToVL boss works. We do that so you don't have to. You do need 50 bazillion people to test a complete redesign of the ORvR battle and to test the stability of a new version, so that's what PTS events are for.
6. We don't represent anyone but ourselves. We don't represent classes. We don't represent our guilds/alliances. We don't represent our servers. We don't represent Order or Destruction. We don't represent the community as a whole to the developers. (That's Andy's job.) We are Core Testers for our own opinions and contributions, and nothing else.

I hope this clears things up.

Open RvR 2.0

Information has come out of GamesDay UK about Skaven and the Open RvR revamp.

ShadowWAR has a nice summary of the infomation gathered so far.

At any given time, there will be 12 places/routes to defend and attack at once.

1. The 4 BOs.
2. The 4 resource carriers
3. The 2 warcamps
4. The 2 keeps

Zerging it up is likely going to end badly. There's too much stuff to attack and defend at any given time to make it worth it. This is good imo.

The keep siege itself will definitely become more dynamic. I imagine the siege going like something like this.

1. Skirmishes abound as players fight for control of the BOs and resource carrier routes. Expect big fights at choke points like bridges and narrow passes.
2. One side will reach Rank 4 first. They have a tough decision whether or not to bring out the Ram and attempt to assault the enemy keep or wait for Rank 5 to get even more offensive siege weapons first.
3. The attackers must now move their siege weapons from their keep to the enemy keep. (I'm hoping these have to be moved while built and they move slower than a player. I could be wrong. Ignore this step if so.) Defenders can take this opportunity to intercept and destroy the Ram and offensive siege weapons before they reach their keep, hopefully setting back the attackers forcing them to wait on the Ram and siege weapons to respawn. (Siege weapon respawn mechanics, or if they even respawn, are unknown.)
4. The keep assault begins. The attackers are first tasked with bringing down the defender's siege weapons. Since these hurt now, not taking these out will likely result in certain destruction of their Ram and offensive siege weapons and all of them most likely. This can be done with melee going in the postern door, ranged DPS and offensive siege weapons shooting them, players parachuting in on Aerial Bombers, players being thrown up by friendly Rat Ogres or the Skaven Gutter Runner leaping up and sabotaging it. While all this is happening, defenders are respawning in their keep. Attackers are respawning at their keep so it'll take much longer for attackers to rejoin the battle.
5. If the attackers manage to bring down the defender's siege weapons and oil, it is now safer to assault the keep door. Rams and Rat Ogres now start focusing on the outer door. Defenders continue to focus on taking out the Ram. Losing the Ram means the attackers having to wait on it to respawn. (Purely an assumption on the Ram respawning. Details are unknown on how or if that happens.)
6. The outer door falls! Attackers attempt to maneuver to the inner keep. I imagine it won't be easy getting the Ram and offensive siege weapon through the main gate since defenders will simply respawn at the inner keep should the attackers manage to push through. The attackers will have to push through and wipe the defenders stand at the outer door.
7. Now the attackers need to take out the siege weaponry and oil on the inner keep. This will be difficult considering that it will likely take awhile to move that siege weaponry into the keep and set it up. (Purely assuming they have to be moved while built. I could be wrong. If I am, ignore this part just like the other one like this.)
8. The defenders now must defend the inner keep door as if their life depended on it, for it truly does. If that inner door drops, defenders can no longer respawn in their keep and respawn at their warcamp instead.
9. Should the attackers bring down the inner down, the defenders will make one last stand inside the keep to prevent its loss. To capture the keep, and likewise the zone, attackers must interact with a flag in the lord room for 30 seconds uninterrupted.
10. Renown and loot bonuses given out.

 Sounds like it could be epic. I'll reserve final judgment until I get to play it for myself though. If I'm right, you couldn't even zerg a keep since you need to attack and defend multiple points on the keep while protecting your own, plus protecting BOs and resource carriers and your warcamp.

@ The Person Asking Me My Opinion About Healers

First off, sorry about the cut short answers followed by the /ignore. I had too many other things going on. I was hoping you'd take the hint that I was busy. I will give you my full answer here now that I have more time to answer it.

I'm only going to cover Order healers because that's what I know better and that's what the question was about.

I'll start with this. Healing burden is not determined by your group. It's determined by your enemy. You want to build your healing core around what you will be facing if possible.

Again, this is all simply my opinion and is greatly simplified.

The Warrior Priest is an anti-physical, anti-AoE healer. He cleanses Hexes and Curses and is the only healer in game that can cleanse his entire group at once without blowing a morale. He simply does not have the ability to do large single target spike healing unless he puts himself in danger. Choppas hate seeing this healer because he can completely neutralize almost everything he does in a group setting. A Sorceress that relies on Curses like Word of Pain to kill is also annoyed by the WP. The best chance at killing a WP is to use a Witch Elf. Witch Elves can ignore armor. A lot of WPs have tank level armor. She uses Ailments which the WP cannot cleanse. She also does large, single target spike damage which the WP is not well equipped to handle. Other physical damage dealers are not much of a concern to the WP due the ease at which he can stack armor.

The Archmage is an anti-magic, spike healer. Arguably the Archmage has the best single target raw healing in the game. AP is generally not a concern to the healing AM due do all the ways they have to conserve and restore AP. They can cleanse Hexes and Ailments. Due to their light armor and inability to cleanse Curses, Choppas love seeing these on the field. Squig Herders can eat AMs for lunch too with their silence, heal debuff, and heavy physical damage. The AM also cannot cleanse anything a Sorceress does. The AM shares a common issue most players have with High Elves in general. The AM is a very self centered class. It's got a lot of raw healing going for it and a ton of self preservation tools, but as far as offering their group much more than a lot of heals, they don't have much utility.

The Rune Priest is the jack of all trades, buffing healer. He can buff your stats. He can buff your armor. He can buff your resists. He can give you AP. He can buff all incoming healing. He can heal on the run. He can stand still and focus heal. He can AoE heal. And if he had a tube sock, a cardboard tube, a hanger and paper clips, he could probably find a way to heal you with them. He can stack armor to the heavens like the WP or he can have lower armor in favor of better heals. Now obviously, he can't do all this at once. He has to choose what he's going to be good at. He cleanses Curses and Ailments, so he's weak to major debuffing ability of the Blackguard.

So as far as your question, would I rather have an AM or RP? It depends on the situation. I'll take the class with the better player behind it all else being equal. I know it's not what you wanted, but it's the way I see it.

A Knight's Tale or My 4th Rank 40 Character

Ok really. This isn't fair. The Knight of the Blazing Sun is simply far too easy to play for how strong it is.

For example, the Swordmaster mechanic is built around AP management. Every Perfect Balance attack is free. That's cool. Arguably the best tank channel in the game costs the tank no AP to use. On my Knight, I don't run out of AP...ever. Bellow Commands is just crazy. I can't spam abilities quick enough to drain myself.

The Swordmaster's main form of hard CC is the knockback. Yeah, Banish Darkness just isn't fair. I need a rank 4 morale to knock someone back like that on my SM.  Arguably a good single target knockback is better than an AoE knockback for cleaning Guard off a target. I have to slot a tactic on my SM just to get a single target knockback as good as the Knight's without Banish Darkness. The Knight's other hard CC is located 9 points up their Mastery trees. The SM's hard CC is located 13 up their Mastery. And AoE stagger. 'Nuff said.

One the signature things the SM can do is drain stats from an enemy group, and lots of them, including Initiative. On most targets, this will grant your group an extra 10-20% crit rate, but it's random. My Knight can run two tactics and achieve the same thing all the time...

Can my Knight do the damage of my SM? Not even close. Don't get me wrong, damage is important, but it isn't everything. My SM has some nasty burst that my Knight just won't be able to match. (Especially not at RR30.)

The only real downside to the Knight is I'm dependent on my group because all I can really do is make my group more effective and stay alive. That may change down the road as the Knight picks up more gear and renown. On my SM, since it's a more self centered class, I can more easily take the burden of the group upon myself. I'm never in a situation where I can say that I blew all my cooldowns and tell my group to pick up the slack.

In my opinion, a well played SM can outdo a well played Knight, especially in damage and debuffs. A mediocre Knight will beat a mediocre SM any day of the week. In my mind, this makes me want to play harder at my SM.

Or maybe I'm just full of crap and completely off-base. Feel free to tell me either way.

Tarelther's Take on Against All Odds on Live

So yeah, it's definitely spread out the zerg. Any temptation my alliance to follow the zerg was eliminated. I've been finding more smaller fights recently. This is one of the things that the devs were trying to accomplish, and so far it's worked. The real test of this will be how it's doing next week.

The bonus might be a little too big. Basically, you get at least double renown/xp/inf if outnumbered 20% or more in a lake. I've gotten quite a few 1.2k renown ticks from BOs because of that.

There's more coming out of Gamescom. They aren't done with ORvR yet. I'm pretty sure a lot of that info is coming out tomorrow at Baltimore Games Day, but I don't know for sure.

Although it is double renown weekend. Time to log in and get some stuff done.

Tarelther's Take on the Removal of Friendly Collision

Mythic decided to be a little sneaky about something on the PTS event yesterday. They turned off friendly player collision and didn't bother to tell anyone about it until afterward. The Core Testers already knew what was up, but when asked for feedback about the test, no one else could jump and say that friendly collision was turned off. Almost everyone saw performance improvement, some massive improvement. There wasn't a single negative comment about it before Andy dropped the bomb on us.

Note that enemy collision was still on the entire time. You just would not get caught up on your realm mates.

After the news was given, some players brought up concerns about the tank wall no longer working. This is only partially true. The shield wall simply has to evolve to the phalanx.

For those unfamiliar with a phalanx, it's basically two or more rows of shield tanks with third or greater ranks being DPS. The way the tank wall currently works is that you need 5 seconds to push through the enemy and then 5 seconds to push through your ally to clear the wank wall. With no friendly collision, you need 5 seconds per rank to push through. A 2 rank deep phalanx covers the current job of a single rank tank wall.

The phalanx is easy countered by a flanking maneuver much like a tank wall. The players will have to modify their tactics to play in this new environment, but overall I think it will be good for the game for many reasons.

My New 1.3.6 Build

1.3.6 introduces many changes to the SM class and enough has been revealed so far that I can now show you all my new plan for 1.3.6. Note that I do not have the Royal Weapon yet, and probably won't for a little while, but this is the goal. This assumes no changes to the tank sovereign between now and the patch. This also assumes almost 100% uptime on procs. This will require testing to confirm.

Gear:

Full Offensive tank Sovereign
3 Glyphs
Offensive Royal Weapon

Renown:

Might 5, Assault 3, Reflexes 3, Dark Elf Bane, Greenskin Bane

Talismans (+23 or 3%): 4 STR, 1 WOU, 1 crit, 1 Kamenra

Hybrid DPS build

Stats:

Str 774
WS 271
Tou 595
Init 331 (10.6% chance to be crit.)

Wou 902
MP 222
Spi  513
Cor 508
Ele 508
+25% parry
+13% crit
9 AP/s
+15% damage
14% parry strikethrough/10% block strikethrough
Damage bonus abilities 300.7 (101.5 from weapon and 199.2 from stats)
Damage bonus AA 201.1 (101.5 from weapon and 99.6 from stats)

I might do Opportunist 3 instead of Reflexes 3, but the extra crit really isn't needed if you have a Knight or SW around.

This build will take huge advantage of WW, Sudden Shift, Sudden Shift, Ether Dance, SS x2, Ether Dance.Sudden Shift does NOT incur global cool down. Sudden Shifts recast drops to 0 under the effect of WW and Ether Dance drops from 8s to 3s, so you can pretty much spam ED while under the effect of WW.


Well gee Nate, way to ruin all my fun. Yeesh!

Diminishing Returns on Critical Rate

Let's face it. Time to kill in WAR can be ridiculously fast. I believe this is largely in part due to critical hits getting way out of control. I have a SW guildmate who has a parsed 80% crit rate. I know BWs who pull off about the same. It's much more effective on the BW because their mechanic grants extra critical damage bonus.

As discussed in earlier posts, the ability to steal initiative from an enemy or cause him to be crit more often will often kill a target very quickly. Likewise making yourself unable to be crit allows you do some things that would normally kill you quickly. It's much easier for a healer to deal with a predictable stream of incoming damage than random spikes of incoming damage. (This is the principle that allows me to 2 hand tank in ToVL.)

I propose diminishing returns on critical chance once it surpasses 40-50% or so. I believe this will make fights much more strategic placing more emphasis on proper use and timing of CC than out-gearing and out-RRing your opponents to death. The main difference between a lower RR character and a higher RR character in most cases.is critical chance. Higher RR characters will still have an advantage over lower RR characters, but it will be much less pronounced, giving the lower RR player a better chance to survive.

I realize I'm going to have Shadow Warriors raging at me for this, but if this negatively effects the Shadow Warrior too much, then Mythic can simply adjust the class to bring its performance back to an appropriate level.

Any thoughts?