Knights of the Blazing Sun and Black Guards in WAR

Two of the ‘missing’ classes being introduced to the game sometime before the end of the year (pending date changes, of course). As everyone reading this will know, they’re both tank classes – the Knight is mirror to the Chosen and will use auras and twisting, the Black Guard mirrors the Ironbreaker but uses hate instead of grudges as a mechanic. They’re iconic classes and have been much missed, so there’s bound to be plenty of them.

Now, WAR might be the first MMO to introduce new classes so early on in the cycle, mainly because they were obviously close to being ready when cut out from release. This means that there won’t be any new starting areas, gear was already designed, and it’s still in the stages where people are testing out alts anyway. WAR has also chosen to herald the entrance of the new classes with a fairly interesting live event, which is going on in all zones at the moment. Hopefully it’s going well – some will do it for the fun, some for the chance to get a week headstart with the new classes – again, something that I believe is pretty new in the genre, but will probably be copied!

Rune Keepers and Wardens in LotRO

Came in with the Mines of Moria expansion. They can be various races (covering all of the races in-game, but each new class skips one race), but the starting areas remain the same. Turbine have added gear for the classes to each stage of the game, including raidsets etc.

Interestingly, both new classes are supposedly decent soloers, and together they form the tank-healer combo, with some good dps between them. A good design decision for the overwhelming number of the new classes that started in the game this week.

Death Knights in WoW

Came in as part of the new expansion, although none of the pre-expansion events specifically featured Death Knights. They’re well known as part of the lore, have featured previously as raid bosses in pre-Burning Crusade WoW and anyone who played Warcraft III will be familiar with them. This class also starts at level 55 so skips the bulk of the levelling process.

They have a full Death Knight specific questline when you create a new character of that type, in a semi-instanced setting that reminds me a lot of the LOTRO introductory quests. The questline is solid and fun, and features lots of WoW-trademark style quests with the customary pizzazz and sparkle. There’s an associated storyline to do with redemption from evil and choosing to fight against their previous overlord. It’s well written and  culminates in a fairly epic battle scene. They also get a full set of good quality gear and a fast mount thrown in for free, which you are awarded as part of the intro questline.

The gear they release you into the outside world with on a Death Knight also looks absolutely fantastic. (Well, until you start replacing it and look like a clown again, but it will last for awhile.)

Mark Jacobs writes about how they’re thinking now about the career updates for future patches (I am now slightly unclear as to which changes will go in which patch but we’ll see when the patch notes go up) which gives some of the reasoning and accounts for feedback and reports from the test realms. A basic summary is:

1. Ironbreaker Grudge mechanics still being tweaked but there will be a much slower loss of grudge per second. This means that the Ironbreaker doesn’t have to stay constantly in combat to be able to use Grudge.

2. Healer HoT changes (nerfed) are being backed out completely but the buffs to the slow heals are staying in. So that’s a decent buff and not a nerf at all.

3. Sorcerer/ BW DoTs will not be benefitting from the general damage increases.

I’m all for testing and all for not being nerfed so hurrah for that. But I still wish I knew why they’d wanted to nerf healers in the first place — was it a basic balance issue that still needs to be addressed (maybe even moreso because of the planned buffs) or just a mistake?

Game developers in general are very bad at explaining why they make specific fixes, possibly because of the torrent of feedback that might ensure. But as a player, I would like very much to know how developers feel about the state of different classes because I’d like to know if my expectations match up with the designers. (If they don’t, it’s a good sign that you are playing the wrong class.)

Having said that, we can certainly read through the patch notes and get an idea of the sorts of changes they want to make and how they see some of the classes and abilities at the moment.

A few bloggers have already summed up changes for classes they play: Regis discusses 1.05 and Warrior Priests, Syp discusses engineers, A Wall of Text talks over the non-class specific changes.

But because you can never have enough summaries, here’s mine!

Healers

Every healer has had their main HoT spell adjusted to do the same amount of healing as it does now, but spread over 24 seconds. So each tick will be ticking for less. This is a sizable healing nerf because the reason people have been getting such high healing numbers in scenarios is by HoTting up their whole team.

Healers have also had their damage adjusted upwards, which should help for soloing and make levelling much less painful.

I’m in two minds about these changes. Casting HoTs blindly on everyone is pretty dull, I much prefer keeping an eye on what’s going on around me and responding to that. On the other hand, dps is outdistancing healing in Tier 4 by quite a lot at the moment. No one thinks healers have too much survivability. So a patch where several classes get more damage and all healers get less healing could tip the balance even further away from support.

I’m hoping that Mythic plan to move towards more fun healing and away from the constant HoTs so we’ll see how these pan out on the test server. I’m very happy about the increased damage though. That was needed. There are also some bug fixes for various classes but that’s the main gist of the healing changes.

Damage Dealing

DoTs are being made more consistent which looks as though it means that most of them get a damage buff. The damage buff in most cases is to do with the spell getting more of an effect gear stats (ie. Int). But there are some spells that simply got a damage increase independent of gear.

All the abilities which reduced heals by more than 50% (affects Marauders and Witch Elves) now are being nerfed to 50% heal reductions.

Wizards and Sorceresses

The main nerfs here are:

• the fact that root now has a chance to break on damage, so no rooting people and then nuking them down.
• immunity on root which will leave these classes lower in survivability
• combustion is slower to build
• root now available at rank 12, not rank 10. (ie. not in Tier 1)
• HoTs ticking for less makes it harder for healers to keep these guys up when they’re nuking at full combustion

Other than that, they got a solid damage buff with the DoT improvements. Not quite what people were expecting.

Squig Herders, Engineers, White Lions, Maguses (Magi?)

Lots of ‘this ability now does more damage’ buffs. So more damage across the boards. It looks as though pets are being buffed up as well, at least in their damage capability.

Bow classes now get to autoattack on the run while in their skirmish mode.

Tanks

Poor Ironbreakers, their ability to build up Grudge is being nerfed quite severely. Were they doing too much damage in Tier 4? I don’t know but it seems Mythic thinks so. On the bright side (is there one?) they can now use hammers.

All tanks get their root breaking ability at rank 12.

Guard now only works on players within the tank’s group.

Non Class Specific

• Ability to set rally points in any warcamp
• root effects can’t be stacked, and after you get rooted you have a 5s immunity to being rerooted
• less likely to get the same scenario twice in a row
• movement reductions etc will no longer stack
• guaranteed to get 1 gold loot bag on every keep take PQ
• everyone needs ward gear to fight encounter bosses, not just tanks

Overall

I see a lot more damage buffs across the board, and an across the board healing nerf to go with it. I hope they test this good and proper because it’s quite harsh as a healer in Tier 4 as it is and this isn’t going to help.

I feel bad for the Ironbreakers too.

• Heavy Metal event advertised, Nov 18th-Dec 2nd in Europe (so place your bets for launch of 1.1 here), scenario called Reikland Factory – open to all levels, all tiers and doesn’t contribute to campaign. 10% bonus to renown for playing it. Basic influence gives a trophy, advanced gives a cloak, elite gives access to the two new classes a full week early.
• Overviews of Knight of the Blazing Sun and Blackguard
• Witching Night announced – now till Nov 4th (has a couple of mask photos)
• Advert for Red Alert 3 and Kossar’s Helm
• Mark Jacobs’ State of the Game (for those who don’t know it already)
• Concept Art – Order Epic Armour, Greenskin NPCs
• Paul and Adam Gershowitz podcasts on Knight of the Blazing Sun and Blackguard
• Paul’s videophone blog
• Grab Bag (as previously reported)
• “WAR Europe is the place to go for the most up-to-date news regarding your favorite (sic) game and ours – Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning!” (I had to quote this, as I’m still laughing)
• Developer Profile: James Casey (Content Design Lead)
• Blackguard and KotBS wallpapers
• Community Spotlight – Warhammer Movies
• Ads for Empire in Chaos (Warhammer Online novel) and joint DAoC/WAR subs for Europe

So, we have an announcement about the November Live Event, dubbed “Heavy Metal”.

When the Heavy Metal live event begins on November 17th, players who log into WAR will see a new tab in the Tome of Knowledge. Clicking on this tab will open the Live Events page, where each day we’ll place a new daily task. Completing these daily tasks earns influence, just like you’d earn in a public quest. There are rewards for Basic, Advanced and Elite influence, culminating in the ultimate prize: the chance to play WAR’s new classes a full week before they’re released to the public! This last reward won’t be easy to earn, and players who want to get to the Elite level will need to log in each day and complete on the daily event.

And if that wasn’t enough, there’s a special live event scenario that will be available to all tiers for the duration. And it grants extra renown to players.

I’m hyped, Mythic sound as though they’d taken out all the stops here! I love daily quests and scenarios. And now it’s going to be harder than ever to decide which game to play in November. Game is very much ON.

Edit: Nov 18th for European players

Yeah, we prefer our Swordmasters in robes too.

Hawley:  It’s the little things you pick up.  Discovering that the chaos champion you just whacked into the ground must have been a horticulturalist, because of the watering can you’ve looted from him.  Or that you’ve just collected someone’s makeshift loincloth.  I mean, how desperate do you have to be to need a *makeshift* loincloth.  Loincloths are pretty simple things, really…  But no, my favourite thing so far has been…

A barrel of fish!

The barrel of fish.  Every time I see one, I giggle.  It’s so cool!

So, when you’re in a scenario (and we’ll stick to scenarios right now, as keep and open field is a little different for a few reasons):

• Do you go for the enemy healer?
• Do you protect your own healer?

There will always be divided opinion and in some ways it’s dictated by the make-up of the group. We know the enemy will drop faster if we can kill all their healers, but so will we if all our healers are killed. We know this, but that’s not always how it plays out.

RvR as a healer can be pretty stressful with line of sight issues, people running off in separate directions, everyone feeling they’re the healers’ main target. So let’s look at it, who is the main target?

• Do you heal the tank that has your back, but the extra armour?
• Do you heal the other healer who can keep you covered if need be?
• Do you heal the MDPS who should be off killing something squishy?
• Do you heal the RDPS who are very very squishy and always off doing something dangerous?

You have to make the decision in a split second to make a difference, taking into account dps being done on your target, range and keeping up with your target and line of sight (and whether to use group heals in the situation).

As a tank you need to decide who to guard and when to attack and push the enemy, as the shield wall makes a lot of sense. You can’t always be standing by a healer, though it’s always thoroughly appreciated.

As dps, you want to be out killing. It’s what you’re built for. I know this. I even understand and expect this. But you won’t be on tanks (really, you WON’T/shouldn’t), you’ll be on the isolated, or the squishy. And you go down FAST! I try, I really do, keeping up the dps is what keeps up the groups’ kill rate, but it’s just not always possible. And hey, remember if they’re attacking healers keeping the healers covered will produce lots of nice squishy and ready-to-die targets.

And let’s not forget we have different flavours of dps too, some more squishy than others. The glass cannons (sorc and bright wizard) really need to be on the attack, they’re built for it. The slightly less squishy versions – witch hunter, witch elf, marauder, white lion – they have a role to play in both attacking the objectives of the scenario and also protecting the healer.

I don’t worry too much if I die in a scenario, I’d hope others don’t either. As Spinks has previously posted, some scenarios go heinously badly. It’s not just because we come across a super-organised group. Sometimes we do something dumb, myself included. Sometimes I miss the ball and heal the wrong person, choose the wrong heal, hurl myself at an objective because I want to see what it’s like to do something like that, decide to test out something in my mastery.. sometimes I’m targeted by 5 people and survive, sometimes I watch as their dps targets all our Bright Wizards when I’m standing next to them.. and I wonder if they’re on a grudge match of some sort. I’m a dwarf, I’m female – I understand grudges

Just the other night I was in a scenario where someone was bitching about the healers. I was amused because I could see us all healing non-stop while he cheerfully ran out of range and all across the map. Someone asked him why he didn’t go play a healer – and he just laughed.

That’s our lot. Especially in RvR.