 Ah, Sqwittle Mcsquee. This was my first WAR toon from 4 servers and 3 guilds ago, back in the days of the Chaos Wastes RvR/RP server and the Dogs of War guild. Changes over the past year have altered this class quite a bit, but it's still the same idea. Run around and shoot everything that moves while your squig harasses anything that bleeds. Well I've gotten him to R40 on Iron Rock and have made a habit of blasting away with a giant green arrow of doom. Why doesn't anyone use Shoot Thru Ya? I've identified some of the main issues, but for the most part I've overlooked them as the damage still scales well regardless.
If you're confused as to why I'm talking about Destro, please refer to item number one in my Keg End Resolutions.
So my little Squig Herder was abandoned at the paltry rank of 31 with some pretty decent gear acquired from PQ's, but utterly useless for the current age. Also, pretty much destitute in the ways of cash and no guild associations I went to the one place I could get some phat lewt for the pawning. Land of the Dead. Two quick levels and I was decked out in Fallen Explorer gear, one lucky drop of a shaman healcrit Sandstorm staff netted 3500g, then bam. Back in business. A few guildies from way back got together and we had a decent team, bought up a bunch of blues and purples, Ruggog's Shoota for myself was a very nice find, then off to make with the killin'.
Right, so we got smoked pretty bad in scenarios. Order farming the king on a bi-daily basis probably didn't help with the gear discrepancy. Still had some good times, and moved from RR22 to RR28 over two days. I should mention something for the Witch Hunters in the crowd, do NOT use Sudden Accusation when you're fighting a goblin. All it does is proc our RUNAWAY! over and over and over again, which btw is a hilarious way to kill multiple RR60+ WH's in a row (thanks for the RR29-30, lolz). Some thing for IB's and Binding Grudge, it just doesn't work to drop a movement barb on us. I'll suck up that 800 damage with half a pot, and kite your silly ass all over the place while my Spiked Squig (with his +620 odd BAL) tears you apart from behind. Wanna kill a squiggy? Forget the dots, hit em with big single target abilites, and snare them before you get rooted/snared/punted.
Angry little buggers they are.
Needless to say, aside from the rampant Order dominance on Iron Rock, I'm having a great time playing the SH. It's a good amount different than my Engineer, Shadow Warrior, or White Lion which all share similar traits. This is one of the beautiful things about WAR in my opinion. Mirror classes really don't exist, the way you play an Engi is going to be significantly different from how you play a Magus. A Chosen is not the same as a Knight. The SH, SW, WL, Mara share similar styles, but each is it's own beastly force to be dealt with (Melee SW's need to dual wield, kthnx!). My goal of two destro toons to RR36 is nearly halfway through, and I think the next toon to level up will likely be my Chosen. I hear their defensive spec is some kind of insane to deal with.
I'd also like to apologize to all my Order buddies that I'm missing out on time with. The Knights of Order are still running strong on Badlands from what I hear, and I miss my Engi/Slayer/AM/SW/WP r40's quite a bit. I'll be back for sure, hopefully with a bit more insight into our Destro adversaries.
I think people could easily muck about in T1 for three months.
So it takes about 2-3 game sessions to hit the R10 cap in pretty much any given class. Scenarios are non-stop at any given time of the day, PQ's are lit up like christmas trees across the map, and warbands roam the beaches of Nordland in waves of blood. I figure three months would be about the length of time that one could level up 10 different classes on each side to the cap and get a feel for them. So far I've got 4 finished out, and working on a fifth.
Normally, I'd be more than happy to bounce around in T4 with my Slayer or Engi, but some guildies that are returning to the game hit up the trial first to see if the performance enhancing drugs from 1.3.2 had kicked in yet. They're far from disappointed. However, reluctant to sub to the full game they're hanging out in T1 for the time being. It's a nice break from the constant full scale war of T4, and when they get online for the night I usually kick out 2-3 hours with em. So far I've got a Marauder, Chosen, Choppa, Squig Herder, and Witch Elf rolling around. It's safe to say I prefer the deeps.
I might even be switching over to Iron Rock Destro when these guys finally re-sub to the game, at least part time. The Witch Elf is the first stealth class I've touched since... ah... I guess ever. I had an Assassin in Shadowbane, and a Rogue in WoW, but neither of them really felt like their stealth was really useful. The Witch Elf is just something else. You're pretty much guaranteed a kill when you mosey into the backlines and pick yourself out a nice juicy Bright Wizard for the devouring. It's so damn satisfying, even though I'm usually slapped to the ground immediately afterwards.
It'll only be a part time deal I'd imagine. Most of the guys already have fully ranked and geared Order toons on Badlands, and when we get together it's a flurry of steamrolling, blood spilling, utter madness. I think the rekindled interest mostly stems from our very first server on Chaos Wastes where we all met up in the first place. Playing Destruction at the time, we formed the largest guild on the server (Chaos Wastes) as Dogs of War. Now that I look back on it, we were kinda scary. We played the oRvR/RP server, and when the guild was online, we all rolled around in a huge 2-3 warband deep mass of bodies. Didn't matter what your level was, if the guild was running in T2, everyone came to T2. If we were rolling around in T3, you could find at least a group of players ten levels lower. Crazy times.
Maybe it's rediscovering all the nostalgic moments throughout the game, or just wanting to get into our enemies heads. Destruction was our first choice when the game released, it's how we all met and formed deep gamerships (gamer relationships? like a bromance? lol). Normally in games, I'm a faction purist. One side or the other, no looking back. However WAR has so much to offer in their non-mirrored mirror classes it justifies things a little. Sure a Borc is equivalent to a Swordmaster, but they're so different at the same time. 24 classes in the game make for an incredibly diverse environment, and playing for one team the whole time means your missing out on easily half of the game.
Much as I prefer a one-sided approach to my gaming, WAR has too much to offer. It won't be a perfect split, but playing Destro may take up about 25% of my time in WAR. Should be interesting. =D
 Alright, so for one, Altdorf has no chance in hell of ever looking this cool...
As I've come to understand, not everyone is having such a great time defending and attacking cities. After about 6-8 sieges in a span of a few short days, people start to miss things like scenarios, RvR, hell even having time to do instances, or crafting! Yes, two hours of being stuck in your city to defend can be something of a nuisance. Getting stuck with the same group of players that holds a death grip on the objectives while they casually melt your face can get a trite irritating. The cute little tactic of having a Chosen stand at a choke point, guarded and focus healed while spamming all of his auras to lag out anyone nearby while the backline casters nuke the general area... ah, that was fun to deal with. So I suppose there's a time and place for City Sieges. Everyday is a bit much for the average end-gamer in WAR. Way too much for the R30-39 crew as well. Then you have the rest of the T1-T3 players that watch from the distance as the sieges take place.
I've posted on City Sieges before, a really long time ago actually. Some of the points I made there eventually snuck into our current experience. Some of them haven't. I'd like to take a moment while sieging is on everyone's mind to refine and refresh what else I'd like to see. (Then cross my fingers and pray that it happens...)
One of the major differences between a siege and RvR is the lack of Scenarios. Some would liken the City to it's own hugely scaled scenario with a 2 hour timer, but it's not really the same. The beauty of scenarios is what drew people to WAR by the boatload. 15m skirmish action that gave you objectives to complete or let you kill to your twisted black hearts content. You never needed to be in any particular place to queue for them, and they popped frequently enough that you could make for a full night of enjoyment. Some players absolutely lived and leveled on scenarios! So now we have semi-regular city sieges and all that falls to the wayside. Why should it?
First off, we have The Undercroft and War Quarters for each city to defend. A while back now they were tweaked so only non-T4 players could join them. This makes no sense to me at all as T4 players are the only ones that would survive fighting over the city to begin with. Is there not enough demand for scenarios when the city pops? In the past, perhaps. Cities were sieged very rarely on most servers, so I would imagine most players that could, certainly would take part in the actual siege. However! Things have obviously changed! With the increases in sieges, I believe this would be the perfect chance to re-introduce Scenarios to the city for players needing a change from the same 2 hour long grind.
This of course, gets you nowhere fast. What else then? Well obviously you would need multiple scenarios, lest people get tired of playing the same one over and over again. How about the Twisting Tower and Reikland Factory? Oh, but people love the hell out of those, and they should! The Twisting Tower sits atop Chaos Wastes and has a great amount of detail put into it. It's a rather large population scenario that has some GREAT mechanics (like turning into Skaven). Reikland Factory is also an epic scenario that people go absolutely NUTS over. I know it was one of my favorites the few times I managed to play it. These are shining pinnacles of design that Mythic has decided it needs to hide away and play on their private servers (I know you do, you dirty bastards!). They fit seamlessly in the concept of a city siege, Twisting Tower supporting the Inevitable City, Reikland Factory supporting Altdorf. Both of them important for strategic defense and supply of their respective capitals. Brilliant!
 
So great! We have scenarios back in action for the city siege, what now? Well, Mythic in their strangely wise decision has left VP's entirely to the players actually fighting in the city. I don't mind this actually, not one bit. It makes a lot more sense for the ground troops to affect the ground war more than the backline support troops. Instead, the two scenarios should affect city instance buffing! For Order defending in the city, a War Quarters win would equate to a defensive bonus. Adding 10% to armor, resists, and HP. A win in the Reikland Factory scenario would be an offensive bonus granting an additional 5% damage, 5% armor penetration, and 5% crit, vice versa for Destruction capturing these locations of course. Let the buffs persist for 5 minutes, making them temporary but useful, and not applied 100% of the time. While you're at it, have each instance of a scenario only apply for a single instance of the city siege so you don't have multiple scenarios effecting multiple sieges at one time. Say we have Altdorf 10, 15, 20, and 25 running, there should be a War Quarters 10, 15, 20, 25 as well as a Reikland Factory 10, 15, 20, 25. Allowing people to queue up for the City Instance# they know their alliance or guildies are in would be another great move as you could then have your skirimish/RvR groups working hand-in-hand with your elite Scenario groups to win out the day.
City Sieges are one of those things that really focuses down hard on one single aspect of the game, but with proper tweaking embracing what people love about Warhammer, they can become the epic sieges we all fantasize about.
One other thing, for the love of all that is sacred, can we remove the Invader Belts from the damn gold bags already? Make them rare drops off players in City Sieges, but getting one in a gold bag is really GD irritating... Rawr...
 A full week since a blog post! I've got some things on my mind... Firstly, the newly formed Alliance on Praag of the larger and more active RvR bloodthirsty cretins has successfully turned the tides of our server. Zones were flipped, Forts were pushed, and we were SO close to getting into the Inevitable City! Granted, I'm not a great fan of the way we did things, but it was necessary when fighting a larger and/or better geared force. Here is where I thank the makers for three zones, and multiple objectives. It took a while to dig in and begin to repel invaders from the lines nearest to our forts, but eventually our persistence paid off as more and more pugs came out of their holes to join us. Winning is an addictive chemical substance to be taken in large amounts, all at once, without prescription or notifying your doctor. A few solid keep defenses in a row and we headed off to each zone, 4 groups of 12, to simultaneously cap every BO at once. Boy does that make people angry! The puggers damn near abandoned our cause as they couldn't hump their BO's for piddly renown ticks, and the battle was close to lost. Destro pushed a zone down to 30m domination timers at the keeps as our collective shriveled. A tactical mistake perhaps. Apparently some people NEED those sad little renown ticks from capping BO's. Alas! We would have none of this! Our alliance was still 60 members strong, and greater mobility would win the day. As Destro closed in on their cap of the zone, the remaining two went wholly undefended. Leaving 2 warbands to each grab up undefended keeps, the remaining people snuck into their zone cap, and quickly snatched a BO before the blanket of red washed over us. Their 5m wait was extended to 30m yet again. You could almost HEAR the tears hitting the ground. Some decided to leave the zone and fight against us at the remaining two red keeps. There was enough to deter a warband, so we forced the outer doors down, and ran. I hate running. Would much prefer murder over running. My cat avoided me in this mood. The few (relatively) Destro stayed at the keep with the outer doors down, and we joined in for mass reinforcements to the second one. With our numbers doubled we quickly swarmed upstairs and downed their lord. It was brutal. Destro region chat must have been aflame! O how I wish I had confirmation. The stream of tears quickly became a torrential downpour! Our ninja group was preparing yet another insurgence into the near-dominated destro zone. With less than 10 minutes to go, they failed their attempt as the reluctant Destro zerg decided it may be more effective to have a full two parties at each BO for defense. Moving quickly, as was our tactical advantage, the whole of our alliance flooded down on top of one BO. Leaving a bloody stain in our wake, and one BO captured, their zone flip would have to wait 45m, if ever. Enraged the hoard quickly headed to our position, alas to find a small token force as the remainder scurried away to yet another BO. Lies, deceit, feints, and very quick and organized movements over the next hours caused many many Destro to /ragelog and play alts in T1. Take this entire scenario, repeat it over 9 zones, and Order became the annoying bastards they needed to be for a long since absent victory. Land of the Dead was ours throughout the day, and if we were to give up one zone, it was because we were taking 2. These were some of the most frustrating tactics I've ever taken part in, but they work. Constantly running, avoiding the enemy, and denying any advancement on their part without significant losses is the best way to turn the tides of the WAR. Let it be a guide for you Destro on Order dominated servers. Short of a massive zerg, spreading out in just-effective-enough groups will cause the battlefields to slowly come in your favor. The larger zerg you face, the more likely they will not listen, and just follow the person in front of them.
 O the shame! Tchar'zanek was captured by Order! I watched the video captured by some Bright Wizard and held my head in disgust as they broke down the 4-skull Lord-King of IC. Surely they've broken all oaths of honor to accomplish this feat, and sold their souls for their sovereign set pieces. A World First they say! Touted as the mighty conquerors banishing the forces of Destruction to a new age of darkness, they are a lie. However, one must ask what they would have done in such a situation... One must ask, whatever about the capture of Karl Franz... Perhaps these "World Firsts" are but a farce, a failure of the game to patch correctly, when no one has tested the King encounters since beta. There is much to consider, but take it all very lightly. WAR will go on!
Now look, there's been a ton of forum warriors on the WAR boards across various sites crying over a capped king on one particular server. The opposing party FRAPS'd the entire thing where it shows them getting insta-respawned (about 5 Mythic seconds) right where they stand. Somewhere in all the angry, one of them admitted to being bugged like that since stage 3 of the city capture. You can see in the SS here, a CSR was present for the final moments, which raised some ire as well. Take it one step at a time shall we?
First off, to you angry forum warriors crying. Knock it off! You're pathetic! Especially the ones that have admittedly left the game, and come in just to bitch and moan about every little thing they can. You're seriously so disappointed in a game you DON'T EVEN PLAY, that you're coming back to the official forums to cry moar? (noob)... Obviously all did not go as planned, but was there nearly this much outcry and hatred when Franz was taken? Well maybe, but they were losers too! Basically, end-game is bugged (and mostly fixed with 1.2.1 out, cross your fingers), it was bugged for Destro, it was bugged for Order, they both stole a King, fair play, get over it.
If that's not enough to get you over the hump, think about it another way, what would you have done? I know personally just getting out of Stage 1 is a HUGE pain in the ass. I've run IC dozens of times, and with proper defenders, its damn near impossible! Don't want your city sacked? Show up to defend ya louts! In the event I could push to Stage 2, only to find out there's some horrid game breaking bug, there's no way I'm turning back. I KNOW there's some goodies to come, and this would be content I've never seen before. Do you remember the first time you walked through the gates of IC and started killing and burning? Excitement was the word. For that fact alone, there would be no turning back. Just factor in the effect of the Zerg Mind, and you don't stand a chance of turning back. Hell, for that matter, there's more than a handful of players out there that wouldn't even bother reporting a bug like that, just for the sole reason to abuse it and get Sovereign gear. They, without a doubt, are also lame.
So there was a CSR there, initially people thought it was him causing all the insta-rezzes and essentially winning the fights for these players. Think about it. There's plenty of CSR's in the game, can you imagine one NOT being at a stage 2 or stage 3? I'd bet one is required to show up since it's so horribly bugged, and they're mandated to do so. It's nothing surprising to me at all, even if it weren't bugged, that a CSR would be there for the final battle just to confirm the kill, and catch whatever glitches happen. I'd be pissed if I had to /stuck from some stupid terrain glitch. A CSR would be able to move you. On top of all that, whichever dev pretty much told us that the CSR log was pulled, and he didn't do anything in the fight. Them players got lucky with being able to root/snare and kite the shit outta the King. All things that are fixed with 1.2.1, as far as we know anyways.
It's pretty clear how I feel about all of this. Sweet! Grats! But it's all so hollow, and you know it! All you complainers, GTFO. Chances of defenders getting to the King before the next patch? Oops, guess that didn't happen either! Time to send these trolls back under the bridge. I'm an anti-hater like no other. I hate the haters for hating those undeserving of their hate. It didn't effect your life, and it's not the first time it's happened. Yet all the haters come out when a team ADMITS to bugs. Didn't hear any Destro reporting insta-respawns when they took Franz. Does that mean it didn't happen? Who knows...
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