Well..I’ve been quiet for some time now.. one of the reasons was RL and another was the lack of stuff to write about..

Well..that is not true. A lot of stuff happens WAR related, but there has not been the urge to write about it. I want to stay below my rant-quota/month ;) It’s been some quiet ..spooky past weeks. Before patch 1.4.2 the game was really broken for me.. it made absolutely no fun, because of several reasons; two being the gear and rr-imbalance. Are those fixed? Well..fixed is the wrong term, but it’s more or less playable now when you face enemies with higher rr. Speaking of higher rr..

Our guild has a quiet relaxed play-style. Our top priority is to have fun together..ermm..Njnel..not in that way :P A side effect of our play-style is the quiet low RR when we build a group. We have only two active members who are above rr80 and some in the 70ies..some even below 60 (e.g. Halgart, the slayer I’m playing).. Before 1.4.2 it was impossible to fight with such a setup. Now..it’s not much better, but sometimes we can give at least a good fight..before giving the enemy the renown ;)

It’s no problem if we get beaten up as long as there are some real fights in between.. and there starts the problem. The amount of fights that are actually fun has declined dramatically after patch 1.4.0.. I think that this is because everyone is chasing those funny purple numbers.. and because of the imbalances the new ranks etc. brought.

Without those fights the motivation sinks..and frustration rises. Actually around the time of the patch 1.4.2 my motivation for WAR was quiet low.. too much grinding for too silly stuff. What added up to that was the smaller ability to solo stuff in the the game. Pugging scenarios is worse than ever.. Most likely you will face 2 premades..often they’ll even admit that they queued to be put together in a scenario. So scenarios don’t work..unless you just don’t care..die a few times and endure the beating.. Oh what fun! ;)

So scenarios are out.. PvE is out..because WAR will never do anything meaningful in that area (focus on RvR and such stuff..blabla from the dev’s..you know that stuff already.) What’s with ORvR? Well.. Runepriests are not great in soloing that stuff.. Just s siege at a keep from time to time..but that’s not really fun. So lately I’ve played my slayer more for roaming solo through the RvR lakes.. most of the time I die, well..but as I don’t care (*note to myself: new post)  it’s not as frustrating as with my Runepriest, with whom I hope to be at least some sort of competitive.

“Then build a group and don’t run around solo” you will say.. well..my gaming time is a bit broken up because of my two parrots.. and some other stuff. So it’s quiet tricky to join a group.. My guild knows that and accepts it..for which I’m thankful, but for grouping up with other people this is quiet a barrier.  To complicate it, our guild has atm not many people online..so we can’t even make a full group.

Our alliance is now also at some motivation low..so we are even having additional problems to fill up the group. So we are running around in the RvR lakes with 2-6 dwarves..(-1 for Ilani’s chars..she prefers elves..horrible I tell you..just horrible sense of taste.. *shakes his head*) with an average of 4. What we often face are warbands (at least 3/4 of a warband) as enemies.. groups are rare or they are built of rr95+ chars.

This leads to an evening full of frustration, not because we lose, but because it’s constantly a totally unequal fight. You get beaten up and most of the time it feels like that’s just because of rr disparity. There are also a lot of unknown names in rr90+ ranks.. It feels right now that you have to grind your way up to rr95 through keep sieges and after that rr you may build a group for scenario. WAR distilled..you might say (Mythic cut so much stuff..that they might actually really change the name ;) ). Every other option seems to be a dead end as long as you have the wish to be competitive on a level of knowing your character and how to play it..and not on a level of rr-race. There was a slow shift in the way this game was casual friendly.. and I don’t like the direction it has taken.

There is something to add though.. The change of the rr-restrictions in lower tiers changed the way new players will perceive T4 as they now have around rr60-70 when they enter T4 .. but old chars..like the alt’s I still have from Huss (a server closed in 09!) suffer from it. Maybe I’ll write another time about it..I think that this wall of text is already big enough to be seen from space, but at least there died no slaves during the building of it… I hope.

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Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Well..PTS is up and patch notes can be read here..

Is it a critical patch? More or less..yes..but I think that any recent patch in WAR was more or less critical ;)

Why this notes are strange? The most important thing, i.e. the power gap above RR80, is the thing that is kept most vague.  The reduction of 20 to 4 effective ranks for RR100 is quiet big..but I still think that it’s not big enough. It’s worth a try and definitely a step in the right direction.

Another step in the right direction is that Mythic is taking a close look on how Siphon Vitality should be changed. The only strange thing on the proposed change is that it’s always doing something offensive oriented while increasing the defense at the same time. I am not the only one who thinks that if they want to keep a defensive set that it should only increase the defense and not simultaneously debuff the enemy or do damage..  I think that many can agree to general plan that offensive oriented characters may deal a good a mount of damage and die more easily, while defensive oriented characters survive longer, but don’t do that much damage.. Well.. imho you can delete the second option completely. A DPS career should always deal damage..so a secondary set may focus on a different style/spec rather than on surviving, but that would mean that there has to be a deep understanding on side of the dev’s on how the careers play in a live environment and not “on the drawing board”..oh.. and there comes the problem ;)

The biggest part of the notes compromises detaunts and that they can’t be used while being silenced.. minor change, but might do something in RvR, though I’m not sure how many people silence an Engineer or SW.. most likely they will be disarmed rather than silenced, but who knows *shrugs*

Last point are the scenarios.. they are shaken up a bit.. and I’m curious how Thunder Valley and Gromril’s crossing are perceived. I like both scenarios..though TV is a bit too wide for 2 groups..so that it often leads to circling around and tapping like a maniac..too few fighting in between. I hope that the layout is changed a bit.. Coming to layout changes.. Mourkain Temple is changed. Looking at the Notes ..I think that it might get a tad more friendly to ranged careers, but I’m not sure. Maybe it will still end in one side at the enemies warcamp. It’s rules/objectives are too simple for anything else.

Overall the notes don’t imply that much changes by themselves, but I think that the game itself will change a lot by the adjustments to effective ranks and rr80+ items. Therefore I think of them as strange notes..

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Karic(doomdiver.wordpress.com)