Friday night I logged in hoping to achieve another rank on my shaman. I ended up doing so mainly through scenarios (of which we lost only 1 or 2 all night) and PvE grinding for influence rewards. I got my ranged staff (woot bugs!) so now I run around with two staffs on my back. I like the look of the ranged one better so it always warms my heart when my shaman pulls that one out when he's casting.
Well, Mythic has listened to its fanbase, or shall I say that Mythic listened to the healers. For the moment, I will get my reduced time big heal AND there will be no nerf to my HoT. This it amazing. I didn't think they would change it but I'm very happy they didn't. It provides a little more utility to my class with the instant casts. All I can say, if you want a buff, is go whine in the VN forums about how much your class sucks (Mark Jacobs will tell you to delete your character) and then they'll be looked into. Simple as that.
The biggest reason I did so well in scenarios was because tanks started popping out of the woodworks. I had close to 5 BO's in every single scenario. It was wonderful. I loved it and no one really died. The scenarios, if you queued quick enough were popping every 10 seconds. If you didn't queue quick enough you had to wait 20 minutes or so. There were times where I would walk into a scenario and Destruction would already be winning by 100 because no order had been able to show up. Ah, the good old days. I'll say it again, I love tanks.
Next week is Thanksgiving week, and I'll be out of town. I won't be able to play at all for a few weeks so any posts will have to wait.
~J
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
WARHAMMER Chronicles: Episode 9 - Power Level service and BW vs. Marauders
Friday came and went, and I achieved what I set out to do. I gained 3 levels of Renown and two ranks. I am now 26 and well on my way to being the uber healer that shamans are required to be. How did I do this? Well here's the hint. Pick a level 31 sorceress friend. Preferably one that can actually do damage and kill people. Heal him out the wazzoo till he levels out of t3. Find another sorc friend and then repeat.
Me and two of my friends, a squig herder and that 31 sorceress, decided to group into scenarios. We won every single match we were in together and with the healing buff to renown again (thanks Mythic!) I was getting around 2k renown consistently. It was incredible, some of the most fun I've had in WAR since I started. I highly recommend actually playing with people. It makes the game more fun.
Well, after I had gotten to 26, with my sorc friend at 32 and playing his rank 13 WE, I decided to pick up my rank 7 marauder and just try him out for a little while. Now, I stopped playing him (if you recall) because there were so many snares going on without any ability to break them, that I was perpetually snared and couldn't do anything. But, I gave him another go and he, when used correctly, kicks butt. I had been playing a BW for a little while before this and found out what it means to have no survivability and huge damage. With the marauder, I got survivability by trading in the range damage with the big numbers. All I do now is look at which healer, runepriest or archmage, I want to kill and if I get within melee range of them and outlevel them at all (which at rank 10 isn't hard) I will kill them. Then it's the BWs turn and so on down the armor tree. I ended a T1 scenario with 24k damage. That's the most I've seen even with a well played SORC or BW. Luckily I had a bunch of healers and tanks to help out.
But why was it so much easier for my marauder than my BW? Well, I'm not gonna say it takes any more skill. Sure, I have to have position on my target, be within melee range and all that, but I have about 1k more health on my marauder than my BW. Also, and this is the biggest reason. The group makeup on destruction (no matter the server) is better than the order. Order plays 30-40% BW in almost any given scenario. Then they have 1 or 2 SW, 2 or 3 Engineers, 1 healer somtimes a low ranked one, a few witch hunters, and absolutely no tanks. Destruction, from my limited experience, has at least 1 usually 3 tanks, at least 3 healers, 2-6 sorcs/magus, 2 WE, 2, Marauders, and 2 DoK's. The balance is overwhelming. I get heals constantly on my marauder when I got none on my BW. Order is so much more about the big damage (another reason why they lose so often but have the most damage) that they don't care about winning.
It's not a difference in skill level, or maturity level (while the order do bitch and moan in scenario chat constantly while Destruction are either constructive or silent). It's entirely a mindset where the destruction want to have a balanced group, while the Order just want to have the best class. The heaviest played class is the BW, followed by the IB. Those are the two classes that grossly outclass their destruction counterparts or don't have a destruction counterpart. No one plays healers because people constantly claim that Order is inferior to destruction (check all the forums) so all the people wanting to play a healing class go destruction because the Order claim that their healers suck.
All in all, Order isn't any worse than destruction, they just don't work as a team together. That's pretty much the gist of it.
~J
Me and two of my friends, a squig herder and that 31 sorceress, decided to group into scenarios. We won every single match we were in together and with the healing buff to renown again (thanks Mythic!) I was getting around 2k renown consistently. It was incredible, some of the most fun I've had in WAR since I started. I highly recommend actually playing with people. It makes the game more fun.
Well, after I had gotten to 26, with my sorc friend at 32 and playing his rank 13 WE, I decided to pick up my rank 7 marauder and just try him out for a little while. Now, I stopped playing him (if you recall) because there were so many snares going on without any ability to break them, that I was perpetually snared and couldn't do anything. But, I gave him another go and he, when used correctly, kicks butt. I had been playing a BW for a little while before this and found out what it means to have no survivability and huge damage. With the marauder, I got survivability by trading in the range damage with the big numbers. All I do now is look at which healer, runepriest or archmage, I want to kill and if I get within melee range of them and outlevel them at all (which at rank 10 isn't hard) I will kill them. Then it's the BWs turn and so on down the armor tree. I ended a T1 scenario with 24k damage. That's the most I've seen even with a well played SORC or BW. Luckily I had a bunch of healers and tanks to help out.
But why was it so much easier for my marauder than my BW? Well, I'm not gonna say it takes any more skill. Sure, I have to have position on my target, be within melee range and all that, but I have about 1k more health on my marauder than my BW. Also, and this is the biggest reason. The group makeup on destruction (no matter the server) is better than the order. Order plays 30-40% BW in almost any given scenario. Then they have 1 or 2 SW, 2 or 3 Engineers, 1 healer somtimes a low ranked one, a few witch hunters, and absolutely no tanks. Destruction, from my limited experience, has at least 1 usually 3 tanks, at least 3 healers, 2-6 sorcs/magus, 2 WE, 2, Marauders, and 2 DoK's. The balance is overwhelming. I get heals constantly on my marauder when I got none on my BW. Order is so much more about the big damage (another reason why they lose so often but have the most damage) that they don't care about winning.
It's not a difference in skill level, or maturity level (while the order do bitch and moan in scenario chat constantly while Destruction are either constructive or silent). It's entirely a mindset where the destruction want to have a balanced group, while the Order just want to have the best class. The heaviest played class is the BW, followed by the IB. Those are the two classes that grossly outclass their destruction counterparts or don't have a destruction counterpart. No one plays healers because people constantly claim that Order is inferior to destruction (check all the forums) so all the people wanting to play a healing class go destruction because the Order claim that their healers suck.
All in all, Order isn't any worse than destruction, they just don't work as a team together. That's pretty much the gist of it.
~J
Friday, November 7, 2008
WARHAMMER Chronicles: Episode 8 - Patch 1.05, HoTs and Reroll thoughts
I know I know, I'm a day late, I was busy yesterday with school and the cold weather. Not an excuse but definitely a reason for being late.
Anyways, I heard/read some horrible news yesterday. Mythic has decided to make a few major changes with their characters. Put simply - They did a lot of good things. Playing with fire is majorly toned down on the BW, snares will now properly break, a few classes (SH, Magus, Eng, and maybe a few others got some much needed damage love), and they nerfed the grudge mechanic on IBs. This was a much needed fix because it was the equivalent of a warrior running around with full rage. Anyone who has played WoW will understand what I mean. Also, they buffed DoTs across the board for all classes making it scale better with INT.
But the bad news is that BWs got a buff (but no more than 10% damage increase on their DoTs). Do they even test BWs in the devs brains?! DoTs are the problem with BWs. Yeah the big nukes are scary but with the ability for DoTs to crit (which was a good idea imo) BW could effectively take anyone down but putting their insta cast DoTs on them and then running away. Now they get at least a 4% increase per tick (not including crits) to their DoTs. This is just ludicrous. But that's not the worst of it...
My shaman, who all I felt needed was another direct heal (even if I had to spend a few more points in the mastery tree), got nerfed. If we go by percentage points (and theory) this is how big the nerf is:
Before I had about 1000 HPs total for my 'Ey Quit Bleedin' HoT (my bread and butter spell) in 15 seconds of HoT time. I'm not sure when it actually ticks but I think it's every 3 seconds. So:
1000/5 (every 3 seconds it ticks) = 200 HPs per tick. About the equivalent of 2/5 non crit nuke from a 30 BW (btw, don't feel bad their crits can hit for 1500)
With the increase to HoT time:
1000/8 (every 3 seconds it ticks) = 125 HPs per tick, or the equivalent of less than 1/3 a 30 BW nuke.
200/1000 = 20% of my total healing per tick previously
125/1000 = 12.5% of my total healing per tick after 1.05
That's a total 7.5% decrease per tick after 1.05. This is true of all healers btw, not just shamans. So, in effect all damage got increased by 5%-10% and the main spell cast by healers got nerfed at least 7.5% at my level. That's a 15% turn around meaning 15% more people will die. Meaning 15% less likely I will help change the tide of battle as a healer.
Yes, I know that I'm being irrational about this (not illogical) but imagine if your main ability took 60% longer to take effect. Instead of every 3 seconds a big nuke it's 5 seconds. Doesn't make sense to me personally, but it does make me want to reroll to either a BW, back to my Marauder, or a SH or Magus. This patch hasn't taken effect necessarily though, so it's entirely possible that this change will not pass. If you have any heart, go on the PTR (public test realms) and in the feedback, tell Mythic that you dislike the healing changes because you die 15% faster now.
~J
**edited for math's sake, thanks to Josiah for pointing that out.
========================UPDATE================================
The Devs are changing our big 3 second long heal to a 2.5 second cast and it doesn't get knocked back as easily. Nice work mythic, this makes more sense than what I thought you were trying to do.
Anyways, I heard/read some horrible news yesterday. Mythic has decided to make a few major changes with their characters. Put simply - They did a lot of good things. Playing with fire is majorly toned down on the BW, snares will now properly break, a few classes (SH, Magus, Eng, and maybe a few others got some much needed damage love), and they nerfed the grudge mechanic on IBs. This was a much needed fix because it was the equivalent of a warrior running around with full rage. Anyone who has played WoW will understand what I mean. Also, they buffed DoTs across the board for all classes making it scale better with INT.
But the bad news is that BWs got a buff (but no more than 10% damage increase on their DoTs). Do they even test BWs in the devs brains?! DoTs are the problem with BWs. Yeah the big nukes are scary but with the ability for DoTs to crit (which was a good idea imo) BW could effectively take anyone down but putting their insta cast DoTs on them and then running away. Now they get at least a 4% increase per tick (not including crits) to their DoTs. This is just ludicrous. But that's not the worst of it...
My shaman, who all I felt needed was another direct heal (even if I had to spend a few more points in the mastery tree), got nerfed. If we go by percentage points (and theory) this is how big the nerf is:
Before I had about 1000 HPs total for my 'Ey Quit Bleedin' HoT (my bread and butter spell) in 15 seconds of HoT time. I'm not sure when it actually ticks but I think it's every 3 seconds. So:
1000/5 (every 3 seconds it ticks) = 200 HPs per tick. About the equivalent of 2/5 non crit nuke from a 30 BW (btw, don't feel bad their crits can hit for 1500)
With the increase to HoT time:
1000/8 (every 3 seconds it ticks) = 125 HPs per tick, or the equivalent of less than 1/3 a 30 BW nuke.
200/1000 = 20% of my total healing per tick previously
125/1000 = 12.5% of my total healing per tick after 1.05
That's a total 7.5% decrease per tick after 1.05. This is true of all healers btw, not just shamans. So, in effect all damage got increased by 5%-10% and the main spell cast by healers got nerfed at least 7.5% at my level. That's a 15% turn around meaning 15% more people will die. Meaning 15% less likely I will help change the tide of battle as a healer.
Yes, I know that I'm being irrational about this (not illogical) but imagine if your main ability took 60% longer to take effect. Instead of every 3 seconds a big nuke it's 5 seconds. Doesn't make sense to me personally, but it does make me want to reroll to either a BW, back to my Marauder, or a SH or Magus. This patch hasn't taken effect necessarily though, so it's entirely possible that this change will not pass. If you have any heart, go on the PTR (public test realms) and in the feedback, tell Mythic that you dislike the healing changes because you die 15% faster now.
~J
**edited for math's sake, thanks to Josiah for pointing that out.
========================UPDATE================================
The Devs are changing our big 3 second long heal to a 2.5 second cast and it doesn't get knocked back as easily. Nice work mythic, this makes more sense than what I thought you were trying to do.
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