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.
Ok, 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.
Akire, the Creator +18int +104MP (+49int)(+99MP)3souls 278DPS960int 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 Detaunts Look, 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).
Because if you're gonna get into massive UI and functionality overhauls, it's best to do it all at the same time. I plan to go over a bunch of these and do a couple videos, probably 5-6 addons at a time, in 5 minute increments. Keep an eye out for them!
Thanks to some of my old-school guildies returning to the game I've been put in the position of leading warbands through the mostly barren battlefields of T3. As I almost alluded to in a previous post that was eaten by the internets (I.E. it never got posted) the tactical state of doorhammering, or Keep Sieges, is frankly quite pathetic for the majority of casual players. Don't get me wrong, I happen to LIKE casual players for the most part, it's just that a lot of them have no idea what to do when you're rolling up on a keep that is likely to have a dozen defenders or more. As such, I'm taking personal responsibility for not enlightening these players earlier on the more subtle tactics and strategy involved in Keep Siegeing.
Hopefully, I can right my heinous mistakes with this short guide.
Keeps, starting in T3 and typically continuing through T4 have a few key points of interest to note. Understanding each of these and the strategic significance not only to your realm, but the enemy realm, is a challenge that most players are either uninterested in, or the zerg as a whole considers unimportant.
First, the main focal point of a keep siege. The door.
Mistake #1: During a siege, all the MDPS will run up on the door and flail away at it seeing their big unmitigated numbers fly across the screen all willy-nilly, driving them to raging e-boners as they get perverse satisfaction from big hard numbers in their face.
Mistake #2: RDPS will focus on the oil with single target abilities and dots, leaving the oil pourer relatively unscathed the entire time, freely dumping hot splattery love all over the mass of MDPS humping the door with reckless abandon.
Mistake #3: Healers panic. All their bars are dropping as melee and tanks alike get rocked by oil splashing freely all over their faces. Half the warband dies, the enemy pushes out and drives hard and deep into the warm and squishy center, the Keep Siege is wiped, rags are handed out at the warcamp to clean up.
A question for anyone playing a melee toon, do any of you really think that you're doing a reasonable amount of damage when compared to a ram that hits for 30-40k a swing? Fine, of course you do. Well, stop it. Your job is not to beat on the door, your job is to kill incoming reinforcements. It's not as exciting as afk-humping the door and tugging off to your big damage numbers scrolling across the screen, but it's necessary. Not to mention, with ~6 melee guarding each postern, you're going to quickly destroy any enemy that wanders through. Hey look! Renown, Xp, AND Influence! You just have to WAIT FOR IT. Here's one for the RDPS, why are you trying to focus down the oil if there's someone pouring it? Once oil is loaded into that thing, it gains 10x it's unmanned hitpoints, and can be repaired almost instantly. You know what really sucks for someone trying to pour the oil? AOE the damn thing. Yes, move into your 65'-80' range and drop every AoE you possibly can on that stupid thing. If every RDPS in your group can do this, that oil is going to stop pouring as the poor sap trying to tip the bucket will either quickly die, or run like a bitch crying to his momma. Hell, for this reason, I'd recommend leaving the oil UP, so you can nuke whatever poor soul thinks he has a chance at dumping the stuff.
Healers... for the love of god... you have one archtype to worry about for the majority of your keep sieging. YOU can shape the battlefield with your unique ability to keep people alive. 4 Tanks on the ram, 4 targets to heal. Move out of the 100' group heal range and stay safely between 100-150'. If some MDPS get into the oil LET THEM DIE. Drop a rez on them, and let them LEARN the hard way that "No motherfucker, I'm not healing your stupid ass if you're playing in the oil. Go guard a postern". It's OK. You can be the biggest dick on the battlefield and NO ONE is going to forsake your healing if they die immediately after doing some stupid... well, at least after the first couple times. Now, to be fair, if they're doing what they are supposed to be doing, by all means heal them when they get in trouble. If you see no melee on the door, but life bars are dropping, run over and give them a couple quick bursts of loving goodness, they'll do their job much more frequently when you give them candy for doing it right.
Tanks, your job for the first two doors of each keep is simple. If you have a shield, take the ram and slam that bitch into the door. If you DON'T have a shield, then go join the MDPS at a postern. Hell, you might even want to guard them too. Now, if your warband leader is one cool savvy sonofabitch (like me), he'll have all 4 tanks in the same group so you can have a 4-way with each others Guard ability. Yes, Cross-guarding is good. Everyone with a shield has a chance to block, everyone guarded/guarding with a shield has a chance to block TWICE AND TAKE 1/2 DAMAGE. Don't QQ over taking damage on the ram. If you die, you die. Expect a rez shortly, probably before you can whine about how little heals were spammed on you, or how long it takes to get a rez around here. If this doesn't happen, you're probably wiping anyway for any of the above reasons. Regroup, smack a few of the assholes that failed at their job, and move along. The game doesn't end from a single wipe.
Now, the secondary and more tactical aspects of keep siegeing is where things require a bit more finesse and patience. Oh, and a picture for Passwatch in EvC T3. So, everyone should understand the positioning here if you read the previous paragraphs. Red is the four Tanks on the ram. Green are the healers in the middle, closer to the DPS for group healing, but within 150' for focused heals on the tanks. Yellow is the RDPS, close enough to AoE the Oil, or to nuke anything rushing the middle. Orange is the MDPS spread out near each postern to intercept incoming reinforcements.
Two new lines here, the path for Order in light blue, and the path for Destro in purple. It's important to know where your enemy is coming from, and where they're going to head. 60% of the time, if they're going for a postern, they'll be swinging around wide to stay out of sight as best they can. Also, having a single RDPS near the postern is more than acceptable, faster to dismount them at max range, and let your melee eat them alive. Now, chances are if anyone is coming to defend a keep, they won't be very organized until they get inside. It's a bit more rare to see a well established warband roll in as a single force. At best you'll have 3-6 players at a time that are actually organized, and aside from that one or two at a time that will try to sneak around. Provided you have a suitable force, it shouldn't be an issue to kill them before they pop inside. The KEY TO KILLING THEM, is simply to keep your distance from the postern. Standing AT the door, or even within rez range from the wall does absolutely dick. You need to kill them far enough away from the wall that a healer can't reach them without risking their own ass, because they simply won't (most of the time).
During this stage, you may see renown pouring in like crazy as small amounts of players are focused more on getting inside than fighting at all. They drop fast and hard, with sexy RP's and candy flying around. Guarding the Postern will give you MORE RP than flipping the Keep (which you'll get anyway if you do your job). MDPS have the unique ability to Charge or Stealth, not to mention Mara/WL Pulling. At RR30 your stealthers can sit right inside the postern and crush the hopes of anyone who thought they were going to survive, this is more common in T4 however.
Eventually, your enemies will most likely get tired of filtering into the keep and go RvE somewhere else (the battle is won!), or they'll get their shit together and come storming through the center. IF they choose the latter of the two options, everyone (TANKS INCLUDED) needs to fall into the middle and wipe the bastards before too much damage is done. This is tricky, and not guaranteed to work, but occasionally you can deflect an attack on your rear if everyone reacts accordingly. Provided your grouping is done well, send one group of melee to the back for healer assassination, the other group to the middle to intercept and defend the squishies. Derpa durr, it's RvR, good luck with that!
Moving on to Stage 2, where most warbands wipe since they usually fail at executing stage one properly and the inner keep is full of pissed off enemies. With fire. -Pardon the horrid image quality here...-
So here we have the same idea in practice, the only real change is the MDPS. One group will be guarding the most likely postern, while the other one does laps around the building killing off guards and catching heals as they pass by the core group on a hunt for any other enemies wandering around. Also, you have the greater danger here of Morale 4's being thrown around, possibly many at one time. Keep some distance between each other (as best you can) to lessen the AoE morales, and use whatever CC you can to mitigate the rate at which they're flying about.
For Passwatch in particular, the healers are going to be pretty damn close to the walls. Not a lot of great places to go between the 100-150' range and still have LoS on your tanks. Spamming group heals, if tanks are in your party, in this instance is fine and dandy. You'll probably need them anyway since defenders inside the keep are REALLY hard to get rid of. Keep the same strategy in play as the first door, and soon enough you'll be walking up those nice new big stairs to wipe the Lord.
So there you are. Essentially a two step process for any class to what they need to do during a siege. The problem currently is getting people used to the idea that yes, you get a LOT more renown for guarding posterns than humping the main door. Also, getting people to listen falls mostly on the shoulders of the healers and the warband leader. If you're leading, make sure your healers fully understand what you are planning to do. Getting them to agree to your devious plans will make things a lot easier when they keep people in line.
As a disclaimer, running a pug warband with tactics does not equal a premade warband with 10x the communication. If you want to get serious about RvR, join a guild, get on Ventrilo, and take part of the glory that is vocal communication. Even WB leaders have to fight, we can't sit around and give direction the whole time.
I love twinking! For those unfamiliar with the term, it stems from WoW describing a character decked out with the best possible gear at a level transition. In WoW this was every ten levels on the 9's. There were level 9, 19, 29, etc, twinks for each tier made for dueling and battlegrounds. Now, like most things I'd imagine this didn't actually originate in WoW, but being the largest game in the world, most MMORPGers probably understand references to this the best.
The Endless Trial has really made twinking come out in full force. For the LONGEST time I've heard players and guildies alike pine over the dreams that one day we would be able to /xpoff, and stay in T1 forever. Here gameplay is simple and killing is gratuitous. Crowd Control is extremely limited and mostly set aside for Tanks, Morale abilities are effective without being overpowered, and every class fills a role on the battlefield without being overshadowed. I've seen pretty much every class excel at its focused archetype when left in the hands of skilled players. Although I prefer taking a class well out of it's archtype, i.e. melee Runepriest, an equally skilled and geared player will easily be able to rock out significantly better numbers that I would ever be able to, but it's fun!
First off, and most importantly is getting your level up to R10. Fairly simple, and every player will have no issues doing this over time, although a few tips will get you there slightly faster. You're only going to have a handful of abilities, and typically at r10 you'll receive your archtype defining ability. For Tanks this is Guard and Hold The Line, Healers get Rez, MDPS get Charge and an AoE Detaunt or Stealth+Sneak Attack, RDPS is a mixed bag of damage or utility abilities.
Don't forget to also use all of your renown points as well, for ranged classes go with Ballistics or Intelligence, Healers feel free to take your Willpower, but melee I would recommend Weapon Skill as the abundance of players stacking Armor talismans will make this worthwhile and by the end of the guide, your STR stat should be really damn close to the soft cap.
Your second goal to achieve is gear. Oh sure, most players will be more than happy to run around with their Decimator set and Vengeance gear, along with 4 of the +10 wounds accessory pieces, but the real twinks are going to value the blues with empty slots instead, and blue accessory pieces too. Are you running around in T1 with a +% crit chance weapon? No? Well then... There are four main ways to go about collecting your uber-gear.
Zone influence rewards, gained through RvR and taking battle objectives
Lair boss drops, who drop a helmet, main hand weapon, and off hand weapon/shield/book/chalice
Random mob drops, new to the Endless Trial are repairable slotted drops.
PQ rewards, both bags and influence rewards
Influence for EvC will be the easiest to attain by far. If you're an RvR kind of person, you'll most likely get all three of these by the time you hit 10/10 anyway. This gear is some of the best, but not in every instance, you'll just have to figure that out on your own. I'll come back to this in better detail later.
This is where the third step comes into line. Once you have figured out what gear is going to give you the most return, you have to balance around stat caps. The stat cap is something T4 players are more familiar with being 1050, but for each Tier it gets lower and lower. The trick to working with the cap is simply to get as close to it as possible, and dump the remainder into other stats that enhance your survivability. Oh, and I should probably mention the cap for stats is 320, armor is set at 75% (anything more pads against attackers armor mitigation), and resistances are capped around 40%. These are just "soft" caps, so you can dump significantly more into them, it's just you'll be getting half the return value, but sometimes this isn't a bad thing.
Once you pass a soft cap, any additional points dumped into it will be cut in half, excluding armor which works a bit differently. The benefit to this is the small handful of abilities that can reduce your stats and resistances. Even though your contribution to stats is cut in half, the debuff still takes from the total amount of points you have spent in the first place. Example, your STR is at 340 (20 over cap), and you're debuffed by 60, instead of losing the full 60 points of stat, you only lose 20 (doubled from being over the cap), and another 20 (bringing you under the cap). Even so, it's something I try to avoid as those stat points are better spent in defensive stats (INI or TGH) for casters/ranged or WS for melee armor penetration.
Having nicely balanced stats is what separates a well twinked toon from someone endlessly dumping everything into their main damage stat. If you aren't understanding why from the explanation above, leave a comment and I'll do my best to enlighten you further.
The fourth point to make is the necessary crafting to get all of the potions and talismans you'll need to nicely polish off your game. Being on a trial account, you simply won't have the opportunity to use the auction house and snatch up the overabundance of loot available. Sure you can grind out a few gold and beg a full account players to run there and retrieve items for you, but chances are there's gonna be a markup, and that won't come cheap.
Talisman Making and Scavenging will get you the talismans you'll need for both DPS (STR, BAL, INT), HPS (WIL), and Armor. You'll be missing out on Salvaging along with Weapon Skill, Wounds, Initiative, Resistances, and Magical Essence (mat for tali making) but those aren't really that important. The reason I say this is because you're going to need to break down a LOT of gear to attempt to get these blue mats, and beyond that you'll need a "special" crit to convert it fully into a purple talisman. Surely it's possible, but nowhere near as efficient. Your talisman making agenda should consist mainly of your prime stat, and armor.
Stats cap out at Rank 6 and +17 or +127 for armor. Use everything else during your quest for the epic drops, and save up enough +17/+127's to throw in your final set. Once you have all these in place, you can respec to your longer term crafting profession. Alternatively, if you're like me and have a 200/200 Talisman maker, you can down-convert all your high rank materials to R1 mats, and pump out tons of pretty much anything you need. This would really be the only viable way to get your hands on those Salvaging-Only +17 talismans. Also to note along that line of thinking, you can just as easily downgrade Crit talismans to T1 levels as well...
Apothecary and Butchering will get you everything you need for potions buffing stats and armor, along with heal, HoT, and absorb potions. The alternative to Butchering is Cultivating, which will only net you the seeds you can find from a standard merchant. These are GTAoE napalm or snare, thorns, and a couple other utility effects. Nothing in Cultivating is really worth taking at any tier, and short of them all getting massive buffs in the future, currently they're rather useless. With all that being said, Cultivating had in previous patches seeds for damn near everything. These seeds still exist, but you can expect to pay quite a bit to get your hands on them as most players don't recirculate them freely. They no longer drop out in the wild, making them excessively valuable.
Potions come in a variety of different crit levels and effects. You can also buy potions from the RvR Quartermaster by using up Recruit Medallions. DO THIS. The RvR Quartermaster heal potions do not use the same cooldown timer as the crafted potions. This means in a tough fight, BOTH potions can be used in quick succession which should be able to take down any other player not doing the same, or let you survive long enough to flail at a healer to give you some love. The blue stat potions can boost you around 30 points for up to an hour (and with the right mats you'll make 5 of these at a time), armor is similar boosting up to 260-ish for an hour as well.
One thing to keep in mind however, stat potions will overwrite other stat potions. You can only have one running at a time. Armor shares it's slot with Resistance potions, so you can only have one of four defenses running there as well. This is something to keep in mind depending on your class and stats. Are you a tank? If so, you don't really need a whole lot more armor, so use a resist pot. Are you a healer? Chances are you may have a resist buff you can hit yourself with, so use an armor pot. See how that works? Now, if someone hits you with a buff, it doesn't remove the potion, just the stronger buff standing takes precedence. Also, potions persist through death, while buffs do not. If you're separated from your buffer, or the effect wears off, you'll still have the potion keeping your stats floating high.
Right then, enough of all that nonsense. Let's get into specifics about where to find the phat loot. Well, for Order anyway, it probably translates to Destro just as well.
Norsca! For the Endless Trial players, you're going to be very limited in the various amount of ways you can attain gear. For the most part, you'll want to be hitting the Ch 4 PQ's in Norsca. The actual rewards from finishing the PQ's are lackluster, and the influence rewards aren't all that stunning either except the purple bag, but the real loot you're looking for is the repairable Prudent, and Worthy gear that drops at random from the mobs. Champions, Heroes, and Lords have a significantly higher chance of dropping these pieces which makes advancing the PQ to further stages worthwhile. You won't be able to find these on the more common database sites, or at least I haven't found any yet. They're new additions to the loot tables for T1, and they drop all over the place. All of them are slotted, and have considerably better stats that the renown gear merchant Vengeance items. The blue weapons can even rival RvR influence rewards in overall power as well.
You'll also want to keep an eye out for Gale-Runners and Wanderer shoulders or helms, or if the stats on those aren't worth your time you can go with War-Torn for an empty slot and great resistances. One of the WH's in my guild has a full set of War-Torn which give him resists way past the soft cap and mitigation into the 50% range. There are also blue versions of these, Storm-Coursers and Intruders, and purple versions, Tempest-Riders and Interlopers. Don't worry too much about these however, the difference between the greens and purples are a mere 2 stat points, and 8 resists. Hardly worth the time to grind when you could be killing people instead.
So that's it? Well no, not really, that's all the Endless Trial players can accomplish unfortunately. To finish out the rest of your twinking you're going to need access to the rest of the game as well. Of course, that isn't going to stop me from sharing a few more secrets!
Next up are two lair bosses found in Ekrund and The Blighted Isle respectively. Obviously if you're on a trial account, you won't be able to get over there, but for the rest they're easy enough to do with 3 people.
As you can see I'm not only a novice at youtube-ing, but these bosses are really not that intensive when you have decent gear. The drops are probably the best possible for T1 unless you're trying something aside from your normal spec, like a DPS healer, or a BAL stacked axe-throwing Slayer, or something like that. However they're not the last bit of gear you'll be looking for.
If you've got a toon that can make their way to Altdorf, then you're all set for some bargain hunting on the Auction house. Okay, really there aren't going to be any bargains at all. Everything in there is going to be marked up to the moon (because people are greedy), and it's just a fast way to get geared. However, some people LIKE fast and have LOTS AND LOTS of money to blow on it. Well, I've done my share of poking around the AH, and you will occasionally find a pretty good deal on something that you haven't seen dropped yet. I would actually make this my last stop after a night of whatever just to give a quick look-see what's inside. Not something everyone can do, be it lack of gold, or lack of sub, but it fills in the slots decently enough.
The final stop on this trip took me out to the Shadowlands for the Chapter 5 influence reward. There you'll find a r10 blue chest or gloves with a talisman slot in it. The stats are quite good, and the empty slot seals the deal. I haven't checked to see if every character has equally good stuff coming from there, but for my RP it was a chest, and Slayer it was gloves. I found the below PQ to be fairly easy and rewarding to get influence without getting owned. Also, if you have butchering it's a real treat.
So that should do it! Everything that I've gathered (except the super secret Fallout Guild secrets), whilst running about in the T1 Endless Trial should be here. Take what you will and apply it to your own experiences. I'll be on the Badlands server ready to rock out some angry Firerunie DPS with ya.
Ah, well there's the second video. At the moment I don't have any annotations done, and I'm sure I'll add some sort of music to it eventually, just nothing really strikes my fancy at the moment.
Of course, with the second video done, that does mean my guide has come to an end... I suppose I'll have to post that sometime this week. Hehe...
Okay, I've been spending far too much time killing in T1, and (although not as much) farming for gear in T1. However, it's not without fruition. I've been playing my melee Runepriest in the Badlands T1 trial...
Yeah. Like, up in your face, beating you with a stick kind of melee.
That being said, and shown, I'm working on a Tier 1 Endless Trial Twink Guide. A lot of things are fairly easy to figure out, but with so many people out there having no idea what they're doing wrong, it should help. Keep an eye out for it in the coming days. I'll be building as contextually as possible for a new player coming to the Trial and having absolutely nothing in their pockets. Things to do, things not to miss, where to go, and how to kick ass in every fathomable way. It should be a fun one to break my drought of posting...
Finally tracked down all the critters needed for the Master Huntsman title. I had originally thought you needed to kill these in the elf lands, boy was I wrong. Hard to find them damn Vultures in Elf zones...
For posterity I've decide to rewrite this as it applies to T1, and leave the rest included in the event that the Wild Hunt returns next year sometime. Since Hunters Vale was added to T1, it has been dumbed down quite a bit and simplified. I'd imagine people that read the original guide at the bottom of the page would likely get confused as some things are not happening as I described. No worries. I've since run HV quite a few times and refined the limited strategy needed to finish it quickly.
/start t1 refresh
I think I would recommend the T1 Hunters Vale instance for R8 and up, just for the sake of gear. If you're a good little soldier, you'll have both your Decimator pieces and a handful of Vengeance (or if you read my Twink Guide, you'll have much better stuff than that). Every time I've run this instance recently in T1, you really only need one tank, and one healer. None of the bosses really scratch a decent tank with a shield, and healers don't have much of a problem keeping themselves, and everyone else, alive through much of it. One thing I would mention, WP's are not the greatest group healers. If you bring one, you'll probably need a second healer as well. Divine Strike only goes so far..
Upon entering the vale, Kurnous starts jabbering on about how pathetic you are, and you'll never survive, etc. etc.. This first thing to keep in mind, is to control your bloodlust just a LITTLE BIT. Killing the innocent bunnies and deer make the instance significantly tougher as you have to fight the wandering trees. If no one in the group harms innocent animals, these treekin stay incorporeal. You still have to fight the lesser treekin however.
A handful of champions will take you to the first miniboss, a duo of large treekin. These are bonded, and will switch back and forth. They do a nice sized knockback, so have your tank with his back to the wall so he keeps aggro. It's not a tough fight, but this is better than getting bounced all over the place. The treekin will swap back and forth regenerating a bit of health while they're inactive, so the faster you do your damage, the shorter the fight will be. Ok, that was a bit of stating the obvious.. o.o..
Anyway, next fight is pretty shortly after that. You'll see a single red sprite hanging out in a clearing. The goal is to have everyone focus down the single sprite. You'll get a ton of adds, but they drop very fast once you get the named one down. Quick and simple.
Next up is the giant treekin, this is the first "wing" boss as he drops a piece of repairable Carnage gear (the PvE set piece). For the most part no one is really going to need it, but for some classes it looks pretty cool (Witch Hunters get the duster length longcoat). You can single pull the lesser treekin and blast them down fast enough. When you pull the big guy, your tank wants to have his back to the tree he was standing near. This boss also does a knockback and spawns two adds at the same time. The adds pretty much go straight for the healer, but they're not a huge threat. Assign one DPS to clear the adds through the fight and you should be fine. After the fight, collect your loot, and attack the huge tree you're standing next to. It's your bridge to the next area.
This is usually where we pull out two guild standards, one guy in front of the group, and one guy following behind. The next three minibosses are essentially the same. You're going to run through a bunch of mobs as they beat on you, head straight to the boss and kill her. The first set is dogs, the boss is on the right, the second set is wolves, the boss is on the left inside a cave, the third set is lions and the boss is on the left again. Sometimes things can get a little hairy when you get to the third set if your group isn't well geared, and you may need to stop near the river to clear adds, but we've yet to have this problem.
Once you clear the three minibosses, you have another wing boss to fight. Just past the Lion Mother, there's a wall of vines that you'll need to attack to pass through. Make sure EVERYONE goes through at the same time or they'll get locked out of the fight. Initially you'll be fighting a male lion, after a little while he calls in a female lioness to assist him, she does not respond to taunt/hate. Depending on how the fight goes, you may need to switch DPS to the lioness. Once the lioness is under 50% she is perma-snared and whoever she targets can just kite her in circles until the male is killed. DO NOT kill the lioness first, or the male goes into rage and will probably wipe your group. With a well geared group you can usually kill the male while ignoring the female.
The male also drops a repairable piece of Carnage gear, in case anyone cares about that.
The next part is a puzzle, the same strategy applies so a copy+paste is in order...
Also, a guide for the Pillars. You'll need at least 4 people to get this done right.
Reminiscent of the Temple of Ualatap PQ in Land of the Dead, you have to match symbols to standing on things. This took us a bit to figure out, and there's a couple things to remember.
-First off, the central pillar doesn't mean squat except for blocking your view.
-At the base of each outside pillar is a blank square stone. Someone standing on this lights up a symbol on the pillar.
-While one person stands on the blank stone, another needs to go the to corresponding symbol.
- If done correctly, the corresponding symbol will light up underneath you.
- Also, after someone steps on a corresponding stone, the person on the blank stone needs to get the hell off before moving on to the next pair.
-Stepping on any of the other stones will grant you a nice blast of lightning.
-At the end, there should only be three people standing on the symbols, and NO ONE standing on the blank stones.
The best way to do this is with 4 people on vent. Have one person stand on the blank stones, and the other three match them up one at a time. We had issues with trying to light up all the blank stones at once, and get all three people on the other stones at once. That didn't work. Take it easy, do one at a time. You'll probably get it done faster and without wiping.
Upon finishing, you'll get to ride a bunch of Eagles up to the final boss lair. These guys will occasionally flip out and start spazzing all over the place. Just hold your left mouse button to avoid any epileptic seizures. Make sure everyone makes it up to the platform, as occasionally the eagles will drop someone to their death and /lol at you. Oh it's hilarious when that happens. I laugh every time. Make sure everyone is inside the lair before approaching the boss, else you'll be locked outside on that tiny platform. In the event this happens, just have everyone take a dive off the side, respawn, resummon your eagles, and try to be less fail this time.
Kurnous! Well, he's supposed to be a god. To be perfectly blunt, I've solo'd tougher tanks than this guy. He does a medium knockback, have your tank pull him to a wall. Eventually he starts changing forms and is immune to everything. When he comes out of immunity he has huge absorb shield on and has changed into one of the forms. This is when you use your damaging morale abilities. Morales ignore the absorb shield, and if you have 4 DPS classes + tank slapping him with morale damage through two of his forms, sometimes you can skip his third form. It's tank and spank all the way home, this "god" is a chump, not a champ.
Good luck on your rolls for that Hunters Cape! It gives you a 3m Elk form that increases your run speed by 50%. Pretty cool stuff!
/end T1 refresh
Just to post something, I figured I would give a teeny tiny tidbit of a guide for finding the hunters in Lost Vale. There's only six, so I remember them off the top of my head pretty good. I've only played the Order instance. Sorry Destro guys!
#1 Sorceress - Lying on the ground where you first talk to the boss at the beginning of the instance. #2 Squig Herder - Maybe 300' down the path at the first pull of dryads. He was orange for me, but still one of the hunters. #3 Magus - There's a nice mini fight against a duo of trees that switch back and forth. The Magus is on top of the rocks nearby. #4 Orc - I believe halfway through the Wolf (or maybe Lion) swarm, there's a small stream in the middle of the path. Follow this inland to find the Orc. #5 Witch Elf - On the cliff-side just before the Lion Mother. #6 ChaosSomething - Just after the duo Lion boss fight, this guy is just outside the circle of rocks.
Also, a guide for the Pillars. You'll need at least 4 people to get this done right.
Reminiscent of the Temple of Ualatap PQ in Land of the Dead, you have to match symbols to standing on things. This took us a bit to figure out, and there's a couple things to remember. -First off, the central pillar doesn't mean squat except for blocking your view. -At the base of each outside pillar is a blank square stone. Someone standing on this lights up a symbol on the pillar. -While one person stands on the blank stone, another needs to go the to corresponding symbol. - If done correctly, the corresponding symbol will light up underneath you. -Also, after someone steps on a corresponding stone, the person on the
blank stone needs to get the hell off before moving on to the next pair. -Stepping on any of the other stones will grant you a nice blast of lightning. -At the end, there should only be three people standing on the symbols, and NO ONE standing on the blank stones.
The best way to do this is with 4 people on vent. Have one person stand on the blank stones, and the other three match them up one at a time. We had issues with trying to light up all the blank stones at once, and get all three people on the other stones at once. That didn't work. Take it easy, do one at a time. You'll probably get it done faster and without wiping.
Kuronuos (or whatever)
This was a decent boss fight, though the Lion duo was ultimately more challenging. You only need a single tank and single healer if people do it right. There's no rezzing allowed, so staying alive is really important. You'll also need your spell effects maxed.
-Phase 1 Simple tank and spank. DPS him down. Keep everyone alive.
-Phase 2, Portals After getting beaten on for a bit, he goes into ghost mode and walks into the leafy doors at the outside of the room. Up to three of these portals open up and fire bolts across the room. The portals can be targeted, and when one drops you move to the next phase. I suggest letting RDPS target the portals when they're firing bolts, and get everyone out of the line of fire. It's not a one shot, but you can take a load of damage. Staying out of the center of the room is a good idea. Just hug the walls, and throw axes, swords, or shoot the damn things.
-Phase 2b Lightning Rods After the bolts fire off a few times, the boss comes out of a portal (it was the one nearest to the entrance for us) still in ghost mode and starts throwing lightning rods around. They work similar to the Engi ability, and with graphics on full you can see where they're going to hit before you start taking damage. This is the most vulnerable part of the stage. Just ignore the boss, and start pounding on the portal he came out as soon as possible. We managed to do this on the first appearance with RDPS on the portals during the bolt stage. If you don't get it down the first time, the bolts start firing after he throws three lighting rods, and Phase 2 starts again.
-Phase 3 Polymorphing (start saving up your damaging Morales here) This is where it got interesting, and we seemed a little confused. He comes back out of ghost mode all pissed off, and it turns into another tank and spank. Three (friendly?) mobs start running around, a dog, wolf, and lion. Eventually, he gets one of their symbols above his head. I think the idea is to click on one of the mobs that matches the symbol. You should probably assign one person to do this who can think clearly under pressure. Now, this didn't really do anything for us as far as I could tell, but it didn't last too long.
-Phase 4 Absorb,Absorb,Absorb The cool thing about his absorb shield is that Morales ignore it entirely. We didn't bother to wait this one out. After I fired mine off, I told everyone else to do the same, and he lost his absorb shield VERY quickly. It was up for a matter of seconds. He lasted only a matter of seconds longer than that.
Hope that helps some of you potential hunters out there. The instance is pretty difficult in T4 to get the timer finished. The Devs swore up and down they could do it with a group of R3X'ers, but I can't see that happening. The Lion Duo is probably the toughest part due to the taunt/hate-ignoring female that runs in at 80% hp on the male. She can be CC'd and kited though. Hope you have some tough healers, she likes them special. The toughest part for us to beat the timer was just clearing trash along the way. 3 DPS, two Healers, and a Tank should do just fine. There's no need for a second tank through any of it really.
For the three swarms, just rush past to the boss. Keep the healers in the middle of the group while you're running, and try to stay off to the side. You'll pull everything regardless of where you are, but as soon as the boss is down, they stop spawning. One other thing to note, for the Lion swarm, we stopped just after the river to clear mobs off of us. Not all of them since they endlessly respawn, but at least 3 champs and 6 normal mobs before starting to run again.
2 Pieces : On Hit 10% Debuff targets armor by 1200 for 10s.
As of 1.2.1 the missing Oathstone was added to the game. Initially there was much scrambling around to find the unlock for these two items, I've run at least 10 of my guildmates through collecting them on 4 seperate occasions. This will be a guide for both Order and Destruction, and the difficulty varying in a few different ways. For one, 4/5 of the unlocks are in Destruction territory and the Oathstone of Karaz-a-Karak is right near a Destro chapter hub. However, while the oathstone is nearby, Destro will need to kill a champion mob, whereas Order simply needs to talk to it. It takes a bit of a grind to get all 5 of the objectives done for this 2 piece set. On average it took about an hour solo (as Order), and about 2 hours with a group of 4. If you're running a Destruction toon, you might have a bit of a challenege with the champ mob, but the rest of the pieces should be fairly easy, and close to your chapter hubs or warcamps.
I haz a map.
Red Square - For the unlock of Karaz-a-Karak (if you don't already have it), you'll need to make your way to Kadrin Valley. For Order, I recommend heading to the Warcamp in Thunder Mountain, Destro can use their warcamp in Kadrin Valley. Talk to or Kill Argnus Rockskull (58000,48000 in a small camp of dwarves). He is a R38 Champion last I checked, so Destro will need to bring their friends.
The next four locations are the drop items you need to collect for the Karak Eight Peaks Oathstone. Green - The Nose is collected in The Badlands at 40k,37k and drops off the Bloodmaw Gnoblar. Most people report it dropping for them on the first kill.
Blue - The Trap Parts drop in Cinderfall at 54k, 54k off the Gnoblar Trapper. Typically you will collect this one the same time as the Tooth.
Orange - The Shiny Bits drop in Black Crag at 40k,11k off the Burnmaw Gnoblar. There is a Champion Ogre wandering around, be careful if solo.
Blue - The Tooth drops in Cinderfall at 54k, 54k from the Tooth Gnoblar.
Badlands can be accessed from either Warcamp. Order will have a good time running to the southern reaches of Cinderfall, and Destro will enjoy the roundabout they need to take for the Black Crag destination. All in all, the unlocks aren't too difficult to get to drop, unless you're Destro trying to solo the Champion. Good luck at that...
Once you collect all four of these items, you have to check and make sure you only have 1 of each. If you somehow picked up a duplicate of any of them, you have to destroy it! Right click on any one of the four pieces and you'll recieve the unlock for the Oathstone of Karak Eight Peaks. Head to your capital city, find the Librarian, and purchase happily! I have these 'Stones on each of my r35+ toons, and they hit quite often. Methinks they'll be nerfing the armor debuff sooner than later, so go out and grab em while ya can! Hope ya'll enjoyed the guide! If you want to steal my map to repost elsewhere, leave me a comment of where it's going, and a link where it ends up!
Finally the winds of WAR have begun to blow. I can see the wheels turning now in the minds of developers as they have seriously introduced some intrigue with the free-for-all Nordenwatch surprise short-term Live Event. If they're gonna do what I think they're gonna do, this could stand for a whole new element of the game worth fighting over. I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it until everyone understands, players love Scenarios! Easily 80% of my guild will log into the game, and do nothing but scenarios unless I drag their happy ass to RvDoor at a keep or BO. The few ultra-killers like myself will, instead of run scenarios, run attacks in Destro PvE zones seeing how fast we can kill players as they come running out of their chapter hubs (Don't hate just yet, I specifically target players near my level).
First off, take a look at how scenarios have changed in the past months...
- Objectives are on a delay timer from when the match starts. - Less Scenarios are unbalanced (though it still happens) - City Siege scenarios are open for everyone NOT in the City PQ. - Gates of Ekrund 6v6 R19-24 was introduced (With big-n-sexy XP rewards) - Queue from anywhere in T4 for the area-specific scenarios.
Has anyone seen something they've changed in Scenarios that they DIDN'T nail perfectly? Mythic, this is the sweet and sexy area of WAR that, IMO, you've done very little wrong, and so much right. Going forward with what you're good at will certainly distract the playerbase while you fix things that suck.
let's go over some strategy that I remember quite fondly from the nordenwatch know and love.
Nordenwatch is a simple 3 point King-of-the-Hill scenario based on an island. Each faction spawns at docks, and can make their way straight forward to the first capture point being the Barracks (Destro) or Lighthouse (Order). The initial captures are worth half of the central point the Fortress.
What usually happens in Nordenwatch. The zerg blob will run up to the first flag and wait around to claim it. One or two will run right past it to the Fortress. Once the point is claimed the zerg blob will get to the fortress and the initial two will be dead under a pile of hostile enemies. A fight breaks out, the weaker side bites the dust, and the zerg blob claims the Fortress, and moves onto the enemy flag.
Zerg mind tactics right there. People do it everytime though, and I can't imagine it'll change a whole lot.
The REAL tactics.
First off, as soon as you enter the scenario you need to make clear what you are going to do. In a pug group, they'll typically follow whatever happens, so convincing one or two players will generally pull the whole group. With any luck, you'll have a single MDPS with Charge! (specifically WL or Mara) to stay and take the initial point, while the other 11 people go full out at the Fortress. RDPS and Healers should get up on top of the wall ASAP, with RDPS punting the oncoming MDPS off and away, leaving Tanks and MDPS in the middle causing all sorts of havoc.
Winning the Fortress is the key. It's worth more points per tick, and more for the initial capture. If all you do is grab your first point (once) and hold the Fortress, you can win every single time. Let them take your spawn back, just keep your healers well defended, and have no one release. Rezzes will keep them in a defensive position.
But hey, we're talking about a whole SLEW of ranges here. It ain't R1-11 anymore. What kind of tactics can you expect to see in play with T4 groups running around?
-First off, use Mounts! It's a small map, so you can get from point A-B-C very quickly. Or rather, go from your spawn to the Fortress without stopping (aside from the designated MDPS). -AoE will be a serious problem, but one that can be handled. Healers and RDPS should spread out along the top of the wall, and stay far away from the common choke points like the bridge. What shall we do if we lose the initial push? -Party heal from safety! A side of the wall, behind the fortress, under the bridge, behind rocks. All great places to hide and group heal if you're on the offense. -Rift/Magnet/Fetch/Tentacle/GtdC The Fort is a small area, and will likey make excellent use of the pull mechanic to suck in enemies and efficiently murder them. -Morale Abilities will be epic! If you're on the offense, and really pounding against a solid wall of resistance, coordinate a surgical strike of Morale abilities to quickly wipe the entire group of enemies, then rush in and take down the stragglers.
Obviously this is going to be a great weekend for WAR, but what about the after effects? It's time for some speculation. Personally this strikes me as a great launching point for incorporating scenarios into the full scope of the WAR. A weekend event open to all levels for different scenarios in different Tiers would be a great way to bring all the players together in a common goal. What needs to happen, is have these events MEAN something to the rest of the game. After the weekend, tally up the total amount of points between Destro and Order, and declare us the winner! Give out a special title for "Winning" the live event, and a 5% boost to the faction VP's for the zone the scenario took place in. This would give us two GREAT initiatives for not slacking off. By going through all the scenarios, each faction will have a chance to get the title for the "Win", and every weekend will be a regular slaughterfest in the scenarios that actually DO something for us.
So what should be the next Live Event Scenario to come up for battle? Think it should go along with progression through T1 with Khaines Embrace and Gates of Ekrund? Personally, I would love if they bounced around at random.
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I love twinking! For those unfamiliar with the term, it stems from WoW describing a character decked out with the best possible gear at a level transition. In WoW this was every ten levels on the 9's. There were level 9, 19, 29, etc, twinks for each tier made for dueling and battlegrounds. Now, like most things I'd imagine this didn't actually originate in WoW, but being the largest game in the world, most MMORPGers probably understand references to this the best.
Nordenwatch is a simple 3 point King-of-the-Hill scenario based on an island. Each faction spawns at docks, and can make their way straight forward to the first capture point being the Barracks (Destro) or Lighthouse (Order). The initial captures are worth half of the central point the Fortress.
