Of course I'm talking about my Shaman again. I hit RR51 last night which means only two more RR until I can wear the Invader Shoulders that are already paid for and sitting in my bag. I fully expect to alienate half the people that I normally run scenarios with when I go DPS, but it's just what I'm good at. I'm not a healer at heart by any means, and every healer I've rolled has been a hybrid, even my twink Runepriest. Yeah, I twinked a Runepriest for DPS in tier 1, and it worked out pretty well. I think he'll be even more fun after the Zealot/RP changes in 1.3.6, but we're getting off on a whole different tangent. My real issue today is collecting my loot.
Currently I'm about 10 scenarios away from picking up my Conqueror weapon which will fall in line a tad bit early. I'm also reconsidering wearing 2pc Bloodlord for my DPS gearout as I can swap to 4pc Invader for an extra 2% crit and better overall stats, albeit less Intelligence. Not to mention it's a fair sight easier than trying to get a group together for a Bloodlord Helm and Chest run. For one, the middle wing of BS can be tricky at times and if you get overconfident on the Stairs PQ you get kicked back out to the bottom. Typically it takes a good 30m just to move through the PQ again, and hardly takes 10m to get up to it. The Helm boss, extremely similar to the Bloodwrought Enclave middle boss, is easily the most difficult boss as well. Part of the design is having aggro tables reset which makes life rough for the squishies if he decides to ignore both taunts and detaunts. The chest boss is a cakewalk, but I wasn't planning on that for my second piece anyway.
Then there's the city siege bags for more Invader. This basically goes two ways, I can run with a premade warband of guildies and alliance members and beg them to opt out on the first run increasing my chances for Gold. Chances of this happening are slim to none as I seem to be in the Alliance of Assholes for destro on Iron Rock. The second option would be to get with a smaller group on a later city siege run and hope for less opposition or more lockouts on my realmmates that already ran it today. Chances of this are a bit better, but might also result in facing a larger amount of opposition and blowing my chances for any bags. At least with a full Alliance warband I can be 90% confident of a victory. Ideally there would be a third option where the Alliance warband would stay together for a second city instance and would swap me in. This would more or less guarantee me Gold bags on each stage of the city since everyone I would be running with would be locked on them. Chances again are low as most of these guys run for the bags since Officer medallions have been royally F'ing screwed due to the conversion changes.
That's the last issue there isn't it? With Officer medallions no longer getting a nice 5:1 conversion from Conqueror crests (let alone the whole chain being affected similarly) it's a serious pain in the ass to buy gear anymore. It also means that if I ever plan on getting Warlord or Sov on any of my toons I'll probably get stuck doing the city quite a bit. Hopefully the difficulty in acquiring set gear is going to be counterbalanced in the future by more purchaseable (by gold mind you, not medallions) renown gear like we've had through the entire game until you hit T4. I think that's what is really missing. There's no clear cut progression once you hit RR40. Everything just turns into a grind for medallions or insignias, or you pray for lack of opposition so you can win bags be it from keeps (Anni), LotD warcamp(Conq), or the city siege(Inv, War, Sov). With the amount of players in end-game gear on either side it makes for a lot of prayer that you don't run into them so you can similarly get geared up. I think what I'm getting at is more dispensary options for loot to get more variety in the end game set gear.
Perhaps a post for another day.
Cheers!
 I need a disclaimer in here I think. Well, more like an explanation. I play a shaman on Iron Rock, and for destro I always manage to queue with 3-5 other healers when pugging. It's freakin scary sometimes how many healers we have on Destro at any given moment. Something that gives me pause for this spec however is the fact that on the same night I can run a scen with 6 healers, I can also end up being the ONLY healer. Just some weirdness in the scenario queuing that's persistent as all hell. I can't tell you how many times I've ended up in an empty Battle for Praag or Caledor Woods. Different issue though I suppose. Also, as a second caveat, this is a very difficult spec to play. It's not like T1-T3 where shams are OP little unkillable bastards. In T4 everyone has tools to take you out and you'll feel the pain if you're sub rr50. In fact, I recommend at least rr60 before you start seriously pursuing the spec line. The extra mastery point isn't a big deal, but access to those pieces of Invader, and the Renown Mastery points will help quite a bit. Can you lifetap at lower ranks? Yeah. Are you going to benefit your team? Not enough. Don't be disillusioned in thinking that you'll get much support from your realmmates either. Chances are they're going to get all up in your face about not playing a heal bot. Be strong. Tell them to lick your GorkaMorka. ENOUGH NONSENSE. Better preservation and slightly more heals. http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=7#10:32:0:0:15:8704:29:585:1942:758:1943::::1964:695:696:697Ok, so this first spec link is my Whiny Bitch Mode spec. Basically, you're not confident enough in your ability to pre-kite or survive WH burst so you waste half your mastery points dumped into the heal spec. This also doubles as a "Oh Shit" mode for getting into a scen where you're the only healer. It sucks, I hate it, but it works fairly well. Alternatively you can drop the AoE and pick up the TGH Hot swapping out 13pt abilities. The problem I have with this spec is you're still using your heal tree as a crutch instead of straight up relying on your deeps to keep you, or your target, alive. This is how most "Deeps" shammys spec, and ultimately it's why they fall to an average or poor rating overall whilst accumulating the ridicule of their peers. It's pretty much only good for practicing DPS, don't waste your time with it too much. Once you've shaken off the rust from healing for the past 15RR's or so it's time to move onto the big boy spec. Less avoidance and preservation with better damage and finishing capability. http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=7#0:0:9:640:15:8704:29:585:1942:758:1954::::1964:695:696:697 The second link there is where the real meat of this post comes from. Yeah, you don't have the luxury of Sticky Feet to save your ass, you're not even slotting Whazat behind you?! for survivability. Nope, none of that nonsense. You're a monster though, that's for damn sure. It really is the equivalent to whipping out them big shammy balls and saying "Bitch, let's party". So besides all that I'm gonna give a run down of how to play the big-balled Shaman, and how to keep some bitches alive in the process.Here's a look at some of the gear you should be collecting if you really want to do things right. None of it is excessively difficult to attain although some might scoff at you wearing Bloodlord, however the 62int bonus is a necessity. The weapons, glyphs, and backpiece are going to be something to work for, but really you should have reasonable access to them if you're in a decent guild. I went through manually and did some calculations on what you can expect for approximate DPS scores at the end under each weapon choice. Keep in mind a Sorc in our alliance wearing mostly end-game gear specced for single target rape was sitting around 320DPS. None of these are including weapon DPS factor as it doesn't apply to casters just yet. BASE INTELLIGENCE R40 +196 Bloodlord Greenbringas+8int +3crit (+35MP) Bloodlord Waaaghat +29int -hate (+23int) +62int set bonus Conqueror Morkyfeets +16int +3crit (+23int) Conqueror Robefings +13int +3ap (+23int) +66int set bonus Invader Bitskeepa +26int Invader Sholdafings +10int -3tobecrit (+4crit) +72int set bonus Veil of Nehekharan Ritualists +26int +28MP Emblem of Nehekharan Ritualists +20int +26MP +90MP set bonus Nehekharan Icon of Knowledge +15int +44mp Glyph of Sahkmet: Mbizi +25int Glyph of Sahkmet: Mume +25int +48MP +4% reduced Disrupt set bonus Base Equip +678int +227MP +10crit +rr61+80int pot +893int +227MP +12crit Nihilist's Blasta of Tyranny +53int +4crit +6AP (+23int) 2slots (Conqueror Scenario Weapon) 239.2DPS 969int 227MP 16crit Zaptwig of the Sandstorm +75int +65MP +5crit 2slots (+23int) 256.6DPS 991int 292MP 17crit Hommis, the Spirit of War +52int +35MP (+49int)(+99MP)3souls 271DPS 994int 361MP 12crit Akire, the Creator +18int +104MP (+49int)(+99MP)3souls 278DPS 960int 430MP 12crit The last two weapons here are drops from the Tomb of the Stars and Sky, run those when you can and pray. I didn't include the world boss weapons here because to be frank, they're damn near impossible to acquire, and I wouldn't waste a page on a DPS stick for my Shaman unless I already had the heal stick. Anyway, with a difference of a mere 7DPS I think taking Hommis would be preferred if only for the extra 34 INT to penetrate Disrupt further, and bringing yourself within buff range of the soft cap. Another thing to keep in mind is this gear gives -5% chance to be Disrupted, so it should negate your slightly lower INT when taking down healers with stacked WIL.Having a nice spec and appropriate gear makes not a DPS, I can point you to any number of terribadtarded players in the world that are wearing gear that far outweighs their skill level. As a shaman you need to rely on your kiting skill, which is especially difficult due to melee range being slightly extended to make up for Client--Server communications. The melee fudge factor WILL get you killed, and probably a lot, regardless of how well you pre-kite. If you're lucky, not knocked down, and have AP by not spamming all your skills constantly, you can usually avoid 80% of melee fudge. This will be the hardest thing to master, especially when you get serious about damage and forgo the majority of your oh-shit buttons. Let's move on to your bread and butter skills! Nukes!Brain Bursta for when you're not healing. Basically, when you first get into a skirmish this ability will have slightly higher base damage than I'll Take That!, initially when people are still good on HP, and only being halfway up the Gork tree, Brain Bursta will be serviceable. Once you get into the shit however, your lifetap takes over. I'll Take That! for when you are healing (most of the time). Whether you're assisting off a main DPS, or just trying to keep someone alive I'll Take That! is your bread and butter nuke. Healing for 150% of the damage it deals means that you'll be critting in the 1300 range and healing every 2s for ~1950 on a single target. Not too shabby compared to heal spec single target burst with Bigger Better an' Greener. Less setback from being hit too. Fury of Da Green for great AoE heal nukes if you think you'll hit more than 2 people with it. This is your Fiery Blast/Shattered Shadows skill. Specced this high and heavy in DPS, you can expect this one to crit for 1000-1200 as well, but the burst heals will be more than any single player has in HP. If you know someone is going down, dropping him a Fury will save his ass fast. Also keep in mind it's only a 5s cooldown, so you can half spam this if you're targeting into a fray for serious single target healing action. Bunch o' Waaagh for when you want to draw some attention to yourself and burn some AP. I refer to this as the Ghostbusters beam, and it can pack a pretty hefty punch. Expect to see 1200 ticks coming off this green beam of doom. It's particularly handy for calling targets, or tracking people down past 100' range, it tends to extend for an extra tick. ALSO, a tricky thing about it, you can use the green beam as an instant cast on the run. For kiting, one good pop of 1200 in their face might slow down your aggressor a little bit. Big Waaagh! is a kiting tool almost exclusively in my book. If you're pretty used to kiting, then you might have gotten used to the stop-and-go casting of Gork'll Fix It. Basically, since it's a 1s cast, you only have to stop for half a second to get the cast off. This is handy on the run if you can stop for half a second as Big Waaagh! is another ability that'll pop someone chasing you right in the mouth for a decent amount. Not something to use in longer range combat though as your 2s casts are much more efficient, mix it up with your initial Brain Bursta flurry, but aside from that just leave it alone. You Got Nuthin! is a fairly beefy 5s Silence that packs something of a punch. Application is tricky because of it's long cooldown timer, but if you get it on right away, do one good nuke, Gork's Barbs', Yer Not So Bad, then a Bunch of Waaagh! as they come out of the Silence it'll usually make a healer (or caster DPS) crap their pants and/or die. Use this situationally, and when you know you'll have enough to take a healer/caster down. No one likes wasted opportunities when it comes to 5s CC.Dots! (Kiting fuel!)Bleed Fer' Me keeps you alive while on the run for a very hefty 24 seconds straight. BFM will tend to tick your aggressor for a good 300-400 in turn healing you for 450-600 every 3 seconds. Now, if you have RUN AWAY! popping like it should, this will net you a few good chunks of HP so you can pop them with a couple other abilities on the move. Yer Not So Bad is a very powerful ability when used on the right targets. Warriors Priests don't care much, but hit an AM or RP and they'll be feeling the squeeze. Also it's great for slowing down an aggressor that's going to town on your face. They'll get tired out as you keep on ticking. I also tend to throw it on Witch Hunters if I see them running around as it cuts their burst capabilities significantly when they try to tear into someone at half their normal AP.Life Leaka is your other simple dot. Doesn't last too long at a mere 15 seconds, and it doesn't do a ton of damage ticking for 250-300 every 3s, but it's something to wear down on your enemies. Make sure your kiting target has it applied. Don't overdo it.Gork Sez Stop Ok, Ok, this is a Morale ability. However, it's probably the best morale ability you have and will certainly make an aggressor reevaluate his position. GSS ticks for 150 unmitigateable damage every HALF second. That's a solid 300 DPS as long as your target keeps chasing you around. Unless they stop anyway. Oh, and the kicker? It will refresh itself for up to a full minute. That's a solid 18000 damage if they manage to get healed through it the entire time (I've seen it happen).Buff/Debuff?Eeeek! is your classic area denial, and that particular area would be your face. It won't save you for long, but it'll give you some breathing room if you missed your pre-kiting train. There's a long cooldown, so if you can make a quick mental check to see if they're immune to punts. A lifesaving ability like this being wasted will most likely cost you big.Greener 'n Cleaner is another kiting tool believe it or not. There's a handful of classes if you plan on figuring them out, that have a snare you can clean right off. I believe Slayers are on that list. Good ability if only for that right there. I don't really employ this on anyone but myself. Greedy greedy. 'Ere We Go! doesn't add a ton of damage on your own, but get within 100 feet of your group and it starts to add up. Depending on the makeup of your group should make or break this ability. Are you running 3 healers? Are you running 5 tanks/dps? Basically, if 4 people are going to get use of it, then fire it at will. Less than that and I'd leave it alone.Yer A Weaklin' pops a 20' AoE DPS reduction. This is another very situational ability that's fairly weak, dropping 120 from a stat isn't going to make a huge difference in DPS (about 24), but it might make it a bit easier to dodge/block/parry/disrupt (~5%). If you can hit 6 enemies it's probably worth it, but don't get used to tossing it around a whole lot. You'z Squishy pops a 20' AoE 120 Toughness debuff. The issue I have with this is that Toughness is a static amount so it has the same effect across the board, straight increase in damage deal to your target. Treat it much the same as Yer A Weaklin' unless you're calling targets. Then you can lead off with it.Don' Feel Nuthin is your absorb bubble, and unlike other classes that get it as a career ability, the Shaman gets his in a mastery path. That means Da Greener the better. Use this frequently when you pre-kite. If you even think something has a chance of hitting you go ahead and toss it on. It's saved my life plenty of times. A word on Heals and DetauntsLook, I don't put a lot of stock into either of these when playing a DPS Shaman. Heals are fine out of combat, but you'll be regenerating anyway. A HoT or two in combat isn't outside of the question either but the effectiveness is highly diminished. Also, Detaunting a target that you're trying to kill or kite really won't work here. Sure, you can detaunt a Bright Wizard and target something else but why not just kill him instead! I'm not saying you should avoid these abilities, just forewarning that they're going to have serious differences in potency than what you're probably used to. One thing that you will be great at however, and you should probably pick up this responsibility, is the instant-rez capability. All the DPS abilities from Da Green count towards your balance mechanic. This means at any given time you should be able to insta-rez. This keeps the pure healers healing instead of wasting precious moments trying to pick up that Magus who decided to go melee spec. (Different post entirely... hehe).
 It's going to be a long week for gamers, industry people, and bloggers alike as E3 is set to open the floodgates in just a few short hours now. I've been getting ready and I'm giving you guys a cheat sheet list of links to keep your fingers on the pulse. There's so much good stuff on the table, you're not going to want to miss out. http://e3.gamespot.com/games.html List of all the games at E3 http://g4tv.com/e32010/ G4's coverage that I'll probably skip over http://www.e3coverage.com/ Gametactics.com dedicated E3 site http://www.1up.com/e3/ Coverage via 1up, and probably my preferred site http://www.youtube.com/user/E3 IGN's youtube channel if you prefer getting subscription updates http://google.com/trends?q=e3 Google Trends showing how hard E3 is about to spike your media coverage There's a lot more crap than that to follow as well, but if you're like any sane human being just trying to keep up with one source will be enough to cause a mild brain hemorrhage. Good luck with that!
 So there's this shaman once upon a time that really dug WAR, and I mean like REALLY dug it. He even got a fancy green name and tested things for Mythic. Well, a while back he fell off the bandwagon, and I don't mean like he started up on the sauce or anything, he's probably still doing that. I mean like he started playing something else. I know right? Like who does that, seriously? Anyways, the point is that he's back now and running with some Old Folks on Iron Rock. He's even got one of these blog things that I like so much, so here ya go. Click his banner and go on over to get a feel for his vibe.  Now here's an entirely different case and point. This young greenblood, or greenhorn, or whatever the hell something-green that damn expression is. He's new to the game, and he's gonna give this whole blogging mess a shot as well. Now I don't usually go out on a limb for blogs that are at a single post, but it turns out the other one that I was looking at isn't really a WAR blogger anyway. These are my favorite. You just got lucky. Well, as lucky as you can consider a spot here anyway. I'm not really sure how lucky that is.Also, I've added the two of you to the blogroll on the right! Cheers!
 Ah Stonetroll Crossing, we've never really been friends. Your awkward King of the Hill, Capture the Flag, Base-running mechanic is one of the worst. Perhaps better if the map functioned properly and showed where my group and/or the flag runner is. Perhaps if the capture points opened up one after another, funneling people to a fight, instead of running in a big goddamn circle, or going to the top of the hill... again. Either way, STC, please promptly cut your wrists open and bleed to death while engulfed in flames. No one likes you, you're stupid and ugly. Now, in the event we ever have the pleasure of dry humping this flame scarred corpse of a scenario again, maybe we can at least make it somewhat pleasureable. So here's the lube. Personally, I enjoy the King of the Hill mechanic. There's not a lot of GOOD scenarios that know how to do it. So here's the deal, change the central point to reward each realm every 10 seconds for a player standing on the hill. This means 12 players would have to hold the hill for a solid ~6m40s to win the scenario. Fighting on top of the hill is so damn nerve wracking with all the punts going back and forth, limited LoS, and an amount of space that limits how much AoE healing (and damage!) can be done. All too often one side will wipe the other, grab the flag and run along. When the other team respawns, the map is fubar'd, and the part appears to still be on top the hill. The entire respawned team runs right back up the hill, and usually down the other side. Just make the hill the main objective! Now, the secondary objectives should enhance and directly affect the primary objective. At each spawn during the live event there was a box of munitions to throw at the trolls on the ledges. Personally, this was the least intriguing and engaging Live Event tasks I've seen yet. One-shotting PvE mobs during a PvP battle is just... out of place. I could toss any amount of more flavorful words there, but I'm feeling a bit calmer today. Now, to use this idea, change the munitions to some kind of bait or bribe. Run four pieces to a point, and the trolls will start to target a section of the hill with a medium AoE knockback once every 30s. Capture all three points for 30s and the hill explodes and ejects EVERYONE off the sides, as per a normal flag reset. Of course, the PvE knockbacks would ignore immunity.  Now you have a scenario with a single main objective full of crazy, haphazardous, stressful fighting. Three secondary objectives that scatter your enemies and give a legitimate chance of overtaking an entrenched enemy. Turn off points for kills, and you have at BARE MINIMUM 6m40s of scenario insanity. Alas, it's time to return to reality... We've had these Weekend Warfronts for a couple of months now, revisiting a lot of scenarios over that time period. There's never been any drastic changes like the one briefly outlined. I've pretty much given up hope that we'll see anything like it either. I know city siege changes took a lot of development resources, but look at the rewards. Heal pot, DoT pot, Emblem. Never changed even though there's been tons of suggestions for something better. Weekend Warfronts appear to be something that works 'good enough' and are unlikely to change significantly in the forseeable future. It's a shame too, especially after all the love they had for bringing out the Ironclad. Pretty sure the playerbase would give up a vital organ or two for some real shuffling of scenarios at this point.
 The unrelenting march of WAR blogs continues to trample the internets into submission. Holy hell, you'd think this was a game with a couple million subs or something. Well, this guy here http://rakathublogs.wordpress.com, presumably going by the name Rakathu, has been whipping himself into a frenzy to re-sub to WAR in the past few weeks. So far so good, but it'll be an interesting read to see if he really embraces the game, or gets a second handful of ragequit in the coming months. Time will tell.
You remember when you were in T3, and Tor Anroc popped, then you proceeded to run to the volcano and promptly get your sorry ass punted straight into the lava? Well, Artiee is one of those assholes that you swore at and summarily had nightmares about. Not only will he happily punt you into lava, there's also a fair amount of fences in the game that he'll aim for. I cannot wait for players to discover his blog and RAGE all over it. Should be good times. Check him out at http://artieepunts.wordpress.com/
 Bastion Stair is my favorite PvE instance in the game. That being said...Take any Instance boss in the game and figure the odds of you getting a useable drop. Unless you're running Hunters Vale or ToVL, chances are pretty f'king slim right? Something like 1 out of 12 pieces might be for your class? This wouldn't be so bad if you could bring all 12 classes into an instance, at least SOMEONE would get the damn drop. Unfortunately, it's all too common for that phantom player to collect all the drops from a single run.Sunday night, we had one of those runs. When I get a couple of the old school guys online, we tend to run through everything like crazy. These are the same guys that had Bastion Stair down to a 90m run at sub R40 levels. I only take credit for tanking it. However, this also means that we run Bastion Stair A LOT. Like, every night that 3+ of us are on at a time. Of course you're probably wondering, why the hell would you guys run BS so much? Well, half of them are hopeless altoholics that seriously need 10 R40's on a server before looking at Sentinel runs. My personal reason is that for the majority of the dungeon, the shit just makes sense. Bastion Stair is an instance CHOCK FULL of PQ's. Literally, every mob you fight is tied to a PQ somehow. This means lots and lots of bag drops and Master Looting going on. When you get good enough that purple bags drop from the middle wing PQs, you can actually end up with some very decent gear. The problem is always the bosses however, and this is where the phantom player comes in. Any boss in the game drops career specific set pieces, which unfortunately means that you have a 2 out of 12 chance (most of the time) to get what you need. Multiply this by the standard 5-6-7 piece set and you're looking at a statistical mountain of runs before you're guaranteed a full set of anything.
Then you have phantom players. I shit you not, on Sunday we ran Bastion Stair, Bloodwrought Enclave, and Bilerot Burrows, EVERY SINGLE DROP was for a Marauder that wasn't even there. Literally every boss dropped a piece of Mara gear. That means if we had our Marauder online he would have gotten his full Bloodlord and Sentinel sets in one run. Oh, but they're not called phantom players for nothing. The more and more I hear about players running dungeons and repeatedly getting gear for the same class that isn't present, it just makes me more and more paranoid. Is there code in the game that creates these phantom player drops? What's our real chance of getting something useable? 2 out of 15? 2 out of 30? Is this kind of loot distribution really what the game needs to thrive?To all of this I say hell no. Perhaps initially a low drop chance was needed for the ward granting sets to slow down the rate of players attaining gear, but these days the significant playerbase is running multiple pieces of Invader, Tyrant, Warlord, and very soon Sovereign gear. Is anyone going to really give a crap if I snag my Sentinel pieces sooner? Does anyone even WEAR Bloodlord gear? I'd even go so far as throwing some PQ's into Lost Vale since ToVL really stole it's thunder (ToVL really should have required Superior instead of Greater wards imo). I really have no problem with gated content, it makes sense and pushes people to play the game in a designed path. When the path ends at a dead end 10 out of 12 times however, you start smacking your face against the wall in an attempt to mine it for your precious loot.USE THE PQ SYSTEM. IT WORKS GREAT. It worked great for Gunbad Mountain in T3, and it worked great for Bastion Stair in T4. All that needs to be done is to convert the instanced boss fights into staged PQ's, and let 1 of each color bag to drop for beating him. Now you can go multiple directions with loot distribution. The most obvious, but probably a bit too drastic would to simply put an armor piece in one gold bag and call it a day. However I've heard of another way to do it, which would be a fragment type system. Each bag has a number of fragments that can be used to repair into the appropriate armor piece when enough are collected. Add in a single dropped piece at random from each boss, and you'll have the normal cross-your-fingers-and-pray drop system along with a rinse-and-repeat fragment system.The goal here isn't to give away gear willy-nilly, but to give players a sense of progression instead of having to rely on blind luck. Not that luck is bad by any means, but it shouldn't be the sole source of gear necessary to move into the next tier of content. It's already being done for RvR gear via Medallions and Insignias so you guys know that the system works just fine. It wouldn't really be a new currency, as each set of fragments would be unique to the armor piece. Ideally this change would have come over a year ago when the FIRST medallion system was put into place, but then again people seem to like doing these dungeons anyway.We're never going to escape the fact that players are going to collect every piece of gear in the game. Even if you make it ass-fuckingly ridiculous to attain, players are still going to get their hands on it. In fact, one would imagine those players that would dedicate themselves so hard are already some of the most elite players anyway, and will pass that ass-fucking along in PvP. No lube. All I'm asking for is a little lube to make the experience slightly more enjoyable. Is that so wrong?
 Oh, but this is just the first part of the double tap today... Hehe...Alright, so the first new-ish blogger to the realm is Blaq, blogging at zewar.wordpress.com and tube-ing at http://www.youtube.com/user/Blaq888. Insert random praise, enjoy the posts, ravenously reading every piece, yadda yadda. Go there and add him to your reader feed thing or whatever it is you use to keep up with the world. Blaq has some nice videos to check out, subscribe to, and demand moar of. If there's one thing that gets me going, it's people bitching and whining about how I don't post enough!  El Bloggero numero dos on the meat grinder of doom is Rancid working out of the www.war4scrubs.com corner. A self proclaimed sage of wise wisdom and shit, Rancid is working his pants off to keep all you scrubs trodding along with the zerg. If you're not sure if you're a scrub or not, then you should probably check him out. If you're not a scrub, you should go check it out anyway so you can, uh, not make fun of the scrubs. I guess.
 Just when you thought the WAR blogger invasion was coming to an end... Wait, you didn't actually thing it was ending already did you? Seriously? This party is just gettin' started!Introducing Vauleen of Volkmar. Somehow this one has been flying under the radar for over a month now, but they rarely escape me for long! Ok, truth be told someone usually points them out to me. Meh. Point! This esteemed and clearly OP blogger/addon author makes for another fine addition to anyones blogroll. I mean it. Go add him now or I'LL FIND YOU. Buggers...Vauleen of Volkmar!
 Ah RuneTwisting, the lost magical art of... uh. Wait, is that a dance move? Shit. Well whatever the hell it is you have a new source of Twisting goodness to draw from. FINALLY I get to add another Dwarven blogger to the mix. Can't have enough of us yanno. RuneTwisting is penned (or um, chiseled?) by a fellow named Aezelbeth hailing from the Karak-Azgal server across the pond. This guy is hardcore, and although I'm not really playing a Runepriest at the moment, I'm pretty intrigued as to what he has to say.So check him out, leave some love, and drag his ass kicking and screaming into the WAR blogger community.
 So I have to say the new city siege REALLY lives up to the hype so far. I have NEVER had such an exciting time running around killing people as I have during this recent PTS event. There's some PvE elements still hanging around, but they actually add to the fight and bring a bit of epic to the table as well. It's much more escort oriented than previously as you're usually running alongside an objective WITH A GIANT FINGER OF GOD BEACON pointing out it's location to your enemies (and vice versa of course). It seemed like the first stage was pretty heavily skewed to the defenders. This is the stage where as an invader you rush into the city and start taking BO's. Once you clear out a BO, a sapper (keg carriers ala Keg End live event), comes out with a powder keg to blow it all to smithereens. As a defender you have to haul ass down to the other end of Altdorf, use the Flags, and kill off these sappers while dealing with the destros who are going to be protecting them. The sappers themselves don't do anything but run from you like little scaredy bitches and don't even have the luxury of CC immunites, so you can pretty much stun-lock them if you're coordinated enough. Alas, the little guys are tough bastards, and have what seems to be Hero hitpoints. Mix in the swarming Destros and they manage to squeak by. Instance 36 lost the first stage hands-down. I mean, we techincally won it, which is all that counts for baggage, since we managed to keep them out of the Altdorf palace at the end of it all, but we still lost every single BO (which is why we took so damn long and held up the QA session). In the second stage, both teams are reset back to their spawn area, and each recieve two big badass Heroes to run around and one-shot the mobs defending the BO's. If you already own a BO, they stop and check the place out for a minute before moving onto the next one. Again somewhat similar to the sappers, these Heroes have no time to deal with normal players. They only stop to pimp slap the BO guards outta their way, or to drop their gloves and go to town on each other whilst we all squabble like children at their feet. Heroes can be healed by the players as well, so it's something for the healers to do while avoiding the insane amounts of havoc being caused by the rest of us. Altdorf leaves very little room for manuevering which is actually fairly hilarious when physics kick in and you can't move past that asshole right next to you. Don't worry, you were that asshole as well. Right, so the second stage ends when your Hero reaches one side or the other. So not only do you have to make sure one of your Heroes gets over there, but you have to kill the other TWO enemy Heroes before they get to the other side. This shouldn't be too hard considering each pair WILL UNDOUBTEDLY run across each others path. This is so much fun, it's even better than getting really drunk and feeling up your sister! I swear! Order ended up getting back all but ONE of the BO's in the seconds stage, and got our big badass Bright Wizard across the finish line to boot! The BO's are used in the final stage to pass around buffs. I don't have any idea what these buffs were since this is the most AWESOME part of the entire city siege anyway. You get called back to your spawn one last time and the head honcho himself shows up to give 4 of you lucky pimps some male/female enhancement like you've never seen before in WAR. Based on your wards (the better the more likely), you turn into a 16 foot tall monstrosity doing 25% more damage and with 8x more health (or something like that). Then you get into this weird pimp strut as you march straight up to their boss Tchar'Zanek and get ready for the smackdown to end all smackdowns. When the Kings collide all hell breaks loose as each warband just rolls into each other with 8 pillars of beef slapping against each other. For about 10 minutes it's absolute MADNESS and I couldn't have enjoyed it more. Trust me people. Have faith. The fine Mythic employees running the show KNOW what EPIC tastes like. They're about to rub your goddamn faces in it. Also, afterwards there was this little Q&A session. I managed to snag a recording of the whole thing. It's here. Also, when I say James Nichols in there, I REALLY mean James Casey since yanno, he's a Dev and stuff. =/ Oh, and a taste of the loot that was dropping. Nothing to wet your pants over, but it's nice to know it's out there. 
 These here WAR bloggers just keep multiplying I tell ya. It's half my damn posts these days! Check out Asvaldr over at Champion of Chaos for another taste of that tainted darkside that ya'll love so much. Mmm nom nom, darkside taint. Weirdos. Show this guy some tentacled love since I pretty much made him start over from scratch, lol!Click the pic for the link!
 <- It's a link! Oi! Someone let another gobbo loose on MMOFansites! Goes by the name Squibblegut I suppose.
Go take a gander at one of the newest bloggers on the Warhammer scene. Just another testament to how fanatical the general public of WAR can really be. Hehe...
But not as long as this!  Ha. Funny guy I am...Anyway, I'll get back to my normally scheduled posting on Monday I believe. Yes, it's real.
 Things to do!
1. Keep an eye on the 1.3.5 PTS Bug Report section of the official forums. 2. Make up reasons cross-realming might not be so bad.
3. Support one of many causes! 4. Click on all the links on my Blogroll. 5. Douse your playerbase in napalm! Oh well, at least when they give us both factions on the same server I can finally start up my RP Chaos Dwarves Guild. Good thing I'll have all that free chaos black dye...
Check this guy out. Not your every day ranting and raving lunatic blogger! Instead he brings to the table (so far at least!) small bit size posts of flavor from the perspective of a Dwarf roughing his way through the world. It's refreshing, and usually comes with a touch of color in the form of random screenshottery. Click on the banner to pop on over!
Apparently I'm just in a pissy mood lately, but you know what? I feel justified. Some things just make me want to eat babies.  Like this guy, he's friendly, I swear. Now go eat your fucking vegetables. Now, don't get me wrong or anything, I've got just as big a hard-on as anyone about the changes coming to the city. It's by far the best thing that's happened to this game since, well... Yeah. Better than the hack job done to where'd-all-my-scenarios-go, better than the horrifying itemization (pocket items of fuckyou-i-win, uber-ultra-talismans, better-than-sovereign set gear, ZOMGWTF weapons, etc..) that is the Land of the Dead, and even though they all add up to a staggering mountain of patch notes better than all the accumulated bug-fixes. To be fair, the amount of bugs was pretty embarassing and probably shouldn't have existed in the first place. I don't really consider that development... It just seems like every good thing they push into the game, they have to come back with something that just makes you scratch your head and go "Who do they think is playing this game?". I'd say a 50% win rate for the dev team is pretty fair. Now I tried to do what I can to save our scenarios, in the end there was a slight concession leaving us a couple more scenarios and we had the advent of Weekend Warfronts. Well, someone dropped the ball on the Weekend deal and now we're starting over. Last weekend was Black Fire Basin for the second time, and now it's Doomfist Crater for the second time. Why does this matter? Well I'm glad you asked! Shut up! I don't care if you didn't ask I'm gonna tell you anyway! Look.. 2/26 Ironclad 3/5 Highpass Cemetary 3/12 Howling Gorge 3/19 Black Fire Basin 3/26 Doomfist Crater 4/2 Phoenix Gate 4/16 Twisting Tower 4/23 Black Fire Basin 4/30 Doomfist Crater The difference between the first and second set of BFB and DC is archived at Gaarawarr's site (since he's been tracking all the live event tasks). The difference? Well, there isn't any. Not a difference in the event tasks, not a difference in the rewards, not a difference in the mechanics of the scenarios, nothing. For a solid 7 weeks it seemed like Mythic got it right and we're very solid in their commitment to variety via the weekends. So what happened? Did the guy in charge of setting this stuff up get fired? Is he busy hard at work rocking out TF2 instead of setting up the next WW? Someone dropped the ball here. There's pages of suggestions for different things they could do to scenarios, so far we've seen very little in the way of content out of this. Well, whatever, it's not something we even have an answer for so speculate your ass off if ya want. I don't want. I'm content with just being angry about it. Take away a bunch of scenarios under the premise of fixing them. Give us Weekend Warfronts as a concession, then abandon ship with no rhyme or reason. It's cool man, they're working on the cities yeaah. That must be why they stopped live production. This is what gets me, and maybe it's my managerial perspective, but once work is commissioned one would expect a certain amount of follow up to be taken into account. When a recurring job is put into someones hands, you expect that job to be done in a timely manner at it's recurring interval. It makes me wonder what kind of production is required to set up a scenario to be ready for a Weekend Warfront. Considering the amount of structure already in place (which should be the main focus, creating a structure as opposed to copypasta editing), after you have the first few nailed down it should be fairly quick and simple to production line more out there. I see it as a lack of accountability. Maybe not on the one person who was working on it, maybe not on the management either, but just a general breakdown in how accountability is distributed among our peers. Justification does a wonder on things we should be accountable for. It's a magic word that absolves you of your responsibilities without those nasty pangs of guilt, until someone calls you out on it anyway. I love when justification is used to divert responsibility, because how I was raised it gets a firm and swift "Deal with it". There's so many variables however, WE might never know where the breakdown of responsibility occured and a justification was inserted. It doesn't make me look at this any differently. Maybe I'm just being excessively harsh. It boils down to being told I'm getting one thing, and then waking up in the morning with a thick brown coat of shart on my frosted flakes. A dozen more scenarios untouched since the change and already we're getting repeat weekends? It just shouldn't happen.
Alright, so I totally would have done this post a few months ago. In fact, I'm pretty sure I had a few drafts of how I would change the Engi/Magus to be more relevant. I think to bring that down to a more concise post, I'd rather just talk about one class, hell, one spec line at a time.
I can see you can see where I'm going with this. Heh, straight for Tinker.
Now, the sad part about WAR is that a lot of the classes have one tree that is more or less useless when compared to the other two. Engineer is no different. By this I mean that both Rifleman and Grenadier are fairly solid trees that one could justify fully speccing in without feeling like they NEED to spec something else. They both work as MAIN spec lines.
Attempting to spec full Tinker requires a hefty amount of gear so you aren't gimping yourself on stats due to the amount of survivability required, especially for a Light Armor class. Also, EVERY ATTACK in this path is an AoE, so they have all been pretty abused by the blanket AoE nerfs, much more so than either Grenade or Rifle were. Those are the general problems with the spec. It's very close-range dependant which means getting hit in the face, and it has 0 burst capability.
Herewithin lie my proposed changes.
Core Tinkerer Abilities
Land Mine - None with 1.3.5 changes
Burn Salve - Swap with Flak Jacket, increase armor value based on mastery points.
Static Discharge - Add a 5s duration 2s Cooldown increaser. Change CD to 15s.
Flamethrower - None
Steam Vent - Increase channeled time to 5s
Friction Burn - None with 1.3.5 changes
Blunderbuss Blast - None
Mastery Tinkerer Abilities
3 - Well Oiled Machine - None
5 - Lightning Rod - Increase range to 65' GTAoE and 40% Snare in radius
7 - Runes of Warding - Increase Disrupt buff to 15%, reduce range to 20'
9 - Bugmans Best - VERY SIMPLE. Change 120 Healing/3s to 150 Morale/3s. Increase Cooldown to 60s.
11 - Tracer Rounds - None
13 - Electromagnet - None
15 - Fling Explosives - +50% damage output
*note about specced M4's - Most spec M4's aren't worth the extra point compared to the core M4's. I think any specced M4 should be 20-50% more effective than the core depending on the type.
EX.
Hail of Doom (Core path), does 300/.5s over 5s for a total of 3000 dmg.
Range 100ft, 20ft GTAOE.
Scattershot (Rifleman), does 600/1s over 4s for a total of 2400dmg.
Range 40ft path
Artillery Barrage (Grenadier), does 600/1s over 4s for a total of 2400 dmg.
Range 125ft, 30ft AoE
Fling Explosives (Tinker), does 600/1s over 4s for a total of 2400 dmg.
Range self, 30ft AOE.
proposed
Fling Explosives (Tinker), does 900/1s over 4s for a total of 3600 dmg.
Range self, 30ft AOE.
Okay, that was a rather long explanation. Back to the abilities!
First one on the list is swapping Burn Salve out for Flak Jacket. Corp resist isn't going to help a close-range light armor nearly as much as a hefty amount of Armor would. With Flak Jacket in a spec line, we can have it scale upwards as an Engi devotes more of his spec to being an up close and personal skirmisher, without turning into a gratuitous bloodstain. Currently, Flak Jacket is 880 Armor for 20 hits, Warlord bonus adding 10 hits. This should be fine as a base for being unspecced. However, for each spec point I'd like to see and additional hit, and 40 armor added to it. Fully specced Tinker would get 35 hits at 1480 Armor. This should last at least 30s when engaged in melee combat. Also, adding a check in there to make sure that only physical damage knocks off hits would be a bonus.
In full Invader, with the Armor Tactic slotted, this would be 3349 armor, or ~77% physical mitigation. With a good armor pot and some talismans, you could probably push this to 90%, but that would waste a lot of the DPS you'll need to avoid embarassing yourself. Although, it'd be pretty cool to tank as an Engineer. This should be on par with MDPS classes speccing defensively (taking higher base wounds into consideration), or RDPS classes (SW and SH) armor boosting via stance/pet (my SW in anni is 80%).
Alright, good solid defensive ability that puts us on par with other ranged-turned-melee dps classes. Moving right along!
Static Discharge is a confusing ability at the moment. It does very poor damage based on INT and has a 5s cooldown with no utility behind it. This could have gone three ways, increase the damage dramatically, increase the damage slightly and remove the CD, or what I proposed (which is much more fun). Cooldown increasing abilities are a pain in the ass when it comes to any spamming class. Group healers and melee trains are both stopped dead in their tracks when you grey out their '1' key for a couple seconds. Combine this with Concussive Mine and the Engineer will be able to nearly lock down a backline of healers if left to his own devices.
THAT is exactly the kind of utility I would give up my top damage in scenarios for.
Steam Vent Just seemed underpowered and lacking in utility, a small boost to it's area denial would bring that in line.
Lightning Rod is an ability that would fare MUCH better if it wasn't a self target, and it would make some sense seeing as the animation is self-assembling. Tie the first part into a FireBomb throwing animation, and the second into the building. You have a 1s cast ability that activates after ~2.5s. That's the most important part. Now, moving along with the utility theme for Tinkerer Engineers, adding a snare component to it's pulsing damage would be perfect. Less than Mistress of the Marsh or Sticky Feetz, but also capable of dealing some marginal amounts of damage. There you have another necessary, but not overpowered addition to the Tinker line.
Runes of Warding 5% Disrupt really isn't much of a drop in the bucket. Move this up to Hold The Line levels (stackable with it of course), and you have a tactic that is now much more valuable to take in the Tinker path. With the increase in power however, comes the reduction in range. The hardest part of this tactic would simply be getting your team mates to stand next to your turret.
Bugmans Best is a great idea for an ability. If it stacked with Ballistic instead of Willpower it would have some potential for decent AoE heals every few seconds, or even if it got better with mastery points. Unfortunately it does neither. Change those HP's into MP's and you have a whole different ability that doesn't try and encroach upon territory that it has no place. Besides, since when does Bugmans Best heal your wounds? It's highly concentrated liquid courage if anything! A 60s cooldown on this is much more appropriate, especially considering the 60s cooldown on using Morale abilities anyway.
So where does this line leave Engineers in the end? Tougher and more versatile without adding a whole lot in the way of big numbers. The only significance is adding utility to the AoE's that were nerfed into the ground so many months ago since they were the only strength in the spec line. This utility does a much better job at keeping the engineer alive and supporting his group while being a stinging pestering little bastard.
This post brought to you by Elmenstor of Gorfang Oh man, I just got a brilliant idea! If new players want to avoid twinks, why don't they just pay for the game and hit level 12? BAM! No more twinks bothering them, and they get a metric waffle-load of more content. I am a genius. Clearly, I should be president. Fact o' the matter is, Mythic is a business, and businesses have no reason to listen to people who don't want their product. See, the inherent logic of people complaining about "twinks" is flawed: 1.) "I want to play WAR" 2.) You go get the free trial. 3.) "This game seems like a lot of fun!" 4.) "Oh wait, I keep getting killed by people who are stuck at level 10 because they don't pay for the game." Then there are three possibilities: 5a.) You like the game, and because you're not an idiot, you understand that twinks can't follow you once you hit level 12. So you buy it, and enjoy the rest of the game. 5b.) You don't like the game enogh to pay for it, but you don't mind the free trial. Nobody has any reason to care what you think about the trial, because it's clear that you wont buy the game. 5c.) You refuse to buy the game because twinks just make you so angry. Nobody has any reason to care what yo think about the trial, because it's clear that you don't understand that there's more to the game than level 10. Clearly, if you fall into categories 5b or 5c, you aren't going to buy the game no matter what, and catering to you is a catch-22. If Mythic caters to your whining and somehow eliminates twinks, then all they are really doing is eliminating a reason for you to actually pay for the game. Ergo, if you are playing the trial and complaining about twinks, and still haven't paid for the game, then you aren't going to pay for the game, and you should really stop wasting everyone's time by pretending that you are. And if you do pay for the game, and just make endless-trial accounts because you "like Tier 1," then there's especially no reson for anybody to care what you think, because Mythic is already getting your money. If you cancel your subscription to only play endless-trial, re-read this post from the beginning. You cannot say that more people would be encouraged to pay for WAR if there were no twinks, because there would be no more twinks anyways if they paid.
If you don't pay for the game, there's no reason for anybody to care what you think. If you do pay for the game, you will notice that all of your complaints about twinks are already fixed.
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