Patch 1.3.0b

So today Patch 1.3.0b went online for the EU servers. I tried the patch on the PTS before - did not write about it due to GOA not answering/clarifying the Beta Testing Agreement we had to sign on login. With the overall nerf to AoE Black Orcs got hit as well. IMO Mythic will upgrade some abilities on classes like Magus, BO, etc. soonish, since some classes got hit harder (as they were weaker already) by the overall change. Since I'm too lazy to respecc all the time and i play the "annoying" role (silence, slow, etc.) in RvR with my heavy tank spec, for my playstyle the AoE damage nerf did not matter that much. I respecced after the patch since Big Swing is 30feet now and together with Big Brawlin' it finally seems to have a use for RvR and PvE. Mythic did give the LotD talismans new icons and fixed some, but i still have four (one of mythic quality) that still have no use. :S

Black Orc Tyrant Armor Set from Land of the Dead

With the Land of the Dead came some new gear and also a new armor set: Tyrant's War Boyz' Kit. Two of the set items you can buy at the vendor inside your Expedition Camp with some kind of mask currency (from the tomb of the vulture lord i guess). The rest of the set seem to drop from the bosses inside the Tomb of the Vulture Lord and have a 50% chance to drop from the bosses there. Seems the drop itself is a repairable item more then one class can use. If this works correctly it means less sharded loot and more item joy for the party members. Good stuff! The Tyrant set does not award any wards btw. Judging from a bunch of Tyrant armor screenshots at Gaarawarr Gabs, the Orc questgiver inside the Expedition Camp wears the full Black Orc Tyrant set, which you can see on the screenshot. I wonder if we'll ever see the kind of cool cloak he wears - with some kind of standard on his back. Should be cool tbh. There is another set called The Warmonger of Sakhmet, consisting of four jewelry items and The Squigplate of Sakhmet (maybe THE cloak)?

The set bonus from the Tyrant gear is as follows:


I wonder why a PvE obtained set has a parry bonus on it tbh. IMO sets obtained by RvR should be geared towards PvP and sets obtained in PvE dungeons should have bonuses on them towards PvE. Check out the full Tyrant set stats posted by Lokax. Tbh the distribution of attributes and special bonuses does not really get me excited for the single pieces. I can't see myself wearing the full set for tanking purposes, which is a bummer as it looks rather nice. I fail to understand the logic behind the itemization of this new PvE set. I know some people say: "Heh, its a nice addition to Warlord gear" - but tbh not all of us can wear the high RR gear. Which leaves a mix between Darkpromise/Tyrant/Sentinel plus a few epic pieces like Insurrectionist Feetsplate, Time-lost Bodyplate to set up the best combination of tanking gear. I hope the items/set will be adjusted again. I've no idea how good they are for other classes What do you think about the new Tyrant set?

Black Orc Newsflash: Sentinel Armor fixed in patch 1.2

Joy! I just logged on to the PTS running the latest build and oh wonder: Mythic finally fixed the Sentinel armor for Black Orcs. You can dye all parts and also the trophy slots work now. One happy Orc here.

PTS 1.2: Hybrid Potions, Black Orc Skills and Dungeons

The weekend on the PTS has been great. I met a bunch of new people that poked me due to reading my blog or entered crafting discussions we had in the test-guild chat. Due to this, i was able to get up to speed much faster about all the changes and test different things better. Thanks for sharing guys, you rock! One thing that has been *very* confusing is that often tooltips and skills are not consistent and there is some talk about the US running an updated test server version compared to EU. Since some skills did change quite much, its hard to tell what the current status on them is. But like you know, all of the PTS findings can change until they go live. One more thing i realized for a new UI change: When there is RvR fighting going on in an area you'll see it on your map. If you enable the small HUD campaign tracker, it will show there as well.

I was asked about the difference between Butchering & Cultivating for Apothecary supply. Well, from the looks of it both professions will be able to supply you with the needed stabilizers without a problem. Butchering offers ingredients for Armor & Toughness potions, which cultivating doesn't. Cultivating on the other hand has the new rare BoP seeds now. For base supply both would do, what you take up will probably depend on which things you need and if you can be arsed to grow seeds. I was linked some more of the new hybrid potions and made a screenshot collage for you guys - really awesome potions. On a sidenote: Buff potions now have a cooldown of 5min, so no different potions gulping right before a boss fight. And NO, force shield/absorb potions do not prevent falling damage sadly. ;)

Some wierd graphic bug makes the texture on the new mounts reload every few seconds. Also to other players it looks like you drop off the mount for a splitsecond.

I had some time to play around with some of the new/updated Black Orc skills. While its still unclear in which state they'll make to live, some of the changes are really great. Overall damage got improved and even so with a tank spec and sword'n'board. Some of my favorites I'd like to point out: Stop Hittin' Da Runts - all new, gives 40AP whenever a warbellow triggers. Awesome new tactic, never run out of AP again when you have it. Works together with Can't Hit me! - you'll be able to keep it up a lot even without any +AP regen gear. Wot Armor? applies the armor reduction in one hit now, with the fitting tactic for 30secs plus toughness reduction. Big Slash is now 360 degree, together with Keep it Goin'! its a good AoE damage dealer. Shut Yer Face together with Can Youz Hear Me Now? does around 500dmg usable every 15s. Very nice finisher, not sure if its intended as the tooltip suggest it only increases the dmg up to 350dmg. Overall after all the changes there are many more viable specs possible and you'll have enough tricks up the sleeve to find one that will fit your playstyle.

Like the patch notes said, they went over Mount Gunbad and Bastion Stair again to add some nice quests & loot. While i did not have time to join any dungeon crawls to look for new drops, there are a few quests for each dungeon you might find interesting: Each Dungeon has one quest for different jewelry items (Mount Gunbad, Bastion Stair), some other items and also for timed special talismans (offensive & defensive). The jewelry items might even be good for high level chars, i know I'll get the block ones for my tank. When i tried the boss in Mount Gunbad he had some pathing issues, resetting him back to 100% health, but hopefully that will be fixed before it goes live. The quests for the special talismans are not repeatable from the looks of it.

Tip of the day: The PQ loot bags from city sieges will have new loot with 1.2, should you still have any, keep them! The purple one will have an epic jewelry item (example), the blue ones a weapon and the green ones a cloak. The items are now useful for a rank 40.

PTS Patch 1.2: City Siege Improvements & More Crafting Stuff

Mythic announced City Siege Improvements with patch 1.2 yesterday. Seriously? C'mon Mythic, that's a drop on the hot stone named capitol raid endgame. The shift in victory point generation is a step in the right direction, but they really need to fix the empty instance grinding. Now people can only do that for two hours instead of six, but still its a large issue. The server should only open new instances once the existing ones are full and place groups automaticly into existing ones where the group fits on. I know this still leaves issues with eg. a full warband starting a new instance, but still its better to prevent farming then let people chose their own instance. Also the queue system needs to work properly. Reduced time for a contested state means less people will have a chance on invader gear tho, resulting in more raids needed to be able to advance in the other capitol raid content, as you need those superior wards. Let's hope the overall zone domination changes will result in more frequent assaults on the main cities to even this out. I saw one item from the improved purple bags from an Altdorf raid and they sure pimped that stuff. Looking forward to Altdorf raids... I won't rant further on the city sieges, did that before. Let's hope the overall package of changes will result in a fun RvR endgame, but we're not there yet.

I fiddled around with crafting on the PTS more. Still trying to figure out the best way for me to change my main to cultivating, as my Choppa will take a while until rank 40. But i guess once the changes go live I'll do one or two afternoons of grinding materials with butchering on Thulf to stock up and then switch. Those mats then have to last until my alt is high enough to provide stuff cultivating can't. Should be fine. Only problem now is, how to make enough space in my bank or bags? Guess I really have to throw away some BoP greys. :S

Meanwhile i brewed some more potions and while many of the existing pots in my bags have been downgraded it looks like the critical success tiers finally work properly. I crafted some pretty nifty potions. One other thing i realized, and think is good: The materials from the guild vendor will provide less powerful potions then eg. potions brewed with butchered mats. Check the screenshot for a comparison, had to use an extender to create the same result with less duration. The multipliers for potions are pretty straight forward to use. The lvl 1 multiplier (vendor) will give you one extra potion, an uncommon lvl 200 multiplier yields five extra potions. I tried for quite a while yesterday to get my hands on a BoP seed, but had no luck.
From the looks of it those seeds can drop of high level champs/heroes, are lvl 200 BoP and will create the mysterious hybrid potions. Despite what the patch notes said, the plants created are currently not BoP. The potions are quite powerful, but have hefty stability requirements. Here is the first screenshot of such a hybrid potion, courtesy of Djanee.


While being on the PTS i met more readers of my blog, which has been a lot of fun. I appologize if my answers sometimes are delayed, but often i have 2-3 conversations going at the same time, about my blog or the patch 1.2 changes. Today i met two fellow Black Orc players, Neil & Sauce, i want to give a shout-out to. I was really curious if the Black Orc Darkpromise gear had any changes to the models with patch 1.2 and its sad to see, there are no changes. Neil was nice enough to pose in Darkpromise and Invader for me - check out the difference. There are so many nice NPC models, when will those placeholders be changed? Darkpromise on an Orc looks like the stuff my rank three auction house alt wears. Sucks.

On further sidenotes: The overflow system was enhanced, once you make space in your bag the overflow items will automaticly go to your bags, nice. Also the stack buying has finally been fixed. When i bought stacks of mats/containers it worked every time on the PTS.

PTS Patch 1.2: Guild Crafting Materials and High Guild Rank Mounts

Tonight on the EU PTS a larger zone domination test was organized. As part of it, GOA created a guild (highest rank) and people could join it. While i had no time to stick around for the RvR, i managed to sneak into the guild long enough to check out all the guild benefits you can buy from the guild vendor. The first screenshot collage shows you all the mats you can buy from the guild vendor (those need different guild ranks) and in addition some potions you can brew with those mats. The rez potion (cost you 62.44s in mats) is really cool - being a standard bearer i can also rez with the banner, but could prove useful. You also see that the snare potions are not fixed and the resulting potion will always have the same effect. In addition to what you can see on the screenshot you'll be able to buy different seeds (only different in level not in type from what you get at every other vendor) and also different containers and curios for talisman makers.


Now the juicy stuff: New guild rank mounts! Since the test guild "Eternal Destruction" was of the highest rank, not only could we buy the guild rank 25 mounts, but also the new improved mounts (faster & lower dismount chance) you can get at guild rank 37. The mounts you can buy from the guild vendor have three additional colors and the faster ones are slightly armored, but have the same color then the other ones from the guild vendor. While normal mounts have 50% speed increase, the armored ones have a 60% speed. So people don't need to worry that it will make such a difference in RvR. 10% is not that much tho, we had a short race and it was a tad faster, but not very. Here are the pics of all the guild rank Orc boars:





The cost of 150g is really cheap for the better mounts IMO. It's just that guild rank 37 is not that fast to reach. Thirst is at rank 29 currently, still some levels to make. I know not all will ride boars, so here is a screenshot of an armored dark elf mount. I also met Oziriz, a reader of my blog, inside the Viper Pit and could convince him with a few coins to show of the Chosen steeds (1,2,3,4,5). Talking about blog readers, i met quite a few during my adventures on the PTS. If you play and see me standing in IC, say hello... :)

At the start of todays RvR event i was also able to catch Magnus (GOA) for a few words on his Black Orc in full Conqueror gear. He was joining the fray to fight Order in Praag himself. Overall i've to say that the atmosphere on the EU PTS is very relaxed and people are willing to test things out. Hell, I've send a huge chunk of bug reports myself. The more i see from the patch 1.2, the better it looks. While crafting has been easy before in WAR, after the patch it will still be easy, but much better to understand for people and they ironed out some bugs. And finally crafting will be useful, all of the trades. Personally I'll need to switch around my trades a bit (due to the BoP seeds/plants), but that's fine.

PTS 1.2 Crafting, Mounts and more

The character copy works now on the EU PTS. So i was able to transfer Thulf over and check some stuff. To my surprise the model for the Sentinel helmet changed. O.o You can dye the helmet now, but tbh i liked the old helmet better... wtf? It's still not possible to dye Black Orc Sentinel properly on the PTS. The Vomitous Choppa got a new model and looks very cool now. Many of the higher level Choppa weapons got a new (all the same) model as well. The rest of my items looked the same from what i can remember.

I toyed around with crafting some on the PTS. Apothecary, Cultivating and Butchering are much better now. I can only assume (did not test the other professions), it's similar with the rest. They fixed a lot and streamlined the process, which makes it much easier for people to understand. Cultivating is finally a useful profession and its rather easy to level now that you don't have to grind for seeds. Basicly you buy lvl 1 seeds from a vendor and use plant reaping (Ctrl-Right-Click) to produce 2-4 seeds from it - this process will also yield resins (stabilizers). Usually Cultivating will yield you 2-3 plants from that seed, a super-critical success will also grant you one plant from the next higher tier plus dye pigments. You then convert that higher lvl plant into seeds and start over from there. It's much faster to train then right now on live. Stimulant ingredients seem to be bugged right now, at least i could not make any use of them during my quick test. Seeds & Plants will stack up to 50 now. yay! It looks like there will be some cool/weird potions you can brew with 1.2, like resurrection potions, increased crafting skill potions, +morale and a few others. From the looks of it all apothecary potions will have proper "rare" tiers. The ingredients to multiply or enhance potions work out of the box. Don't bother to much with crafting before the patch, some eg. existing healing potions were downgraded through the patch.

In the capitol cities you can visit your scavenging/butchering trainer and pick up a quest to convert into the other skill with your same skill level. Crafting mats that are not ingame anymore can either be converted into the same skill level "new" ingredient or will convert into some rotten parts, 20 of those can be converted into Chaos Black Dye. Because of this and the other changes to loot tables, dyes will be much more accessable after the 1.2 patch. I already heard about the first new dye from crafting, liche purple.

With the funds Thulf brought to the PTS i was at least able to buy the new "standard" mounts. To check out the other ones you need guild rank, which does not transfer over. The old boar is the Light Brown Ridin' Boar and the two new ones i post a screenshot below:




My Choppa is rank 10 and still a lot of fun to play, I'll definately stick to my plan and create an alt Choppa. Thulf being a tank will still stay my main, the new changes to the Black Orc are mostly great, the Da'Toughest selfhealing was nerfed rather much tho. I did not play around with the Black Orc much on the PTS, was thinking about maybe checking out Lost Vale on the PTS if i get the peeps. But then again, Darkpromise is still nice to gain on live.

1.2 Patch Notes Thoughts

Seriously long patch notes, takes a while to dig (or should i say chop?) through. Some major changes to RvR combat, like disorients no longer stacking, Immovable upgraded to 20secs and a large hit to resistances. Resistances will yield diminishing returns after 40% (and yes, Adam says its still going live in 1.2, despite patch notes initially forgot it) and also all resistance talismans values are being halfed. Some changes to armor debuffs as well. It's too early yet to say how it pans out. I'll enjoy my resistance set while it lasts. ;)

Black Orc
A few interesting changes and minor fixes (war bellows persist after zoning finally). The biggest hit is the Da Toughest change/nerf... less wounds/health when triggered. We don't know yet how much it was lowered, so its too early to cry doom. Some skills got a damage buff and I'm looking forward to the changes to Savin' Me Hide (reduce the magical damage taken by you and your group) and Not in da Face! (make you and your group briefly immune to disabling effects), although i liked the cooldown increase which could be used on PvE trash mobs as well. I'll stay full PvE tank specced also after the patch, will see how much its necessary to adjust my current spec. Looks like the annoying bug was fixed that eg. you could get stuck with the Can't Hit Me bar (its under Bug Fixes: Art).



Crafting & Apothecary
Some major changes to crafting incoming. THE buff to apothecary: All buff potions will now persist through death. Finally people will want to buy potions for a reasonable price. Mythic changes the gathering/crafting pairings, which means they will remove a bunch (!) of crafting mats and streamline the overall crafting process. In the long run this is good news. In the short run this will cause some hassle. Apothecary will work closely together with Butchering & Cultivating after the patch. My 200 Scavenging will be pretty useless for me. Luckily Mythic will offer a NPC in the capitols to switch from scavenging to butchering (confirmed so far, maybe other choices). Good stuff. But then again i saw this part for cultivating: All [new] special seed/plants are set to rare, and are Bind on Pickup. Hum, basicly for me this means i have to train cultivating again on my main (as i go to the dangerous places) and train butchering on an alt (which i wanted to do with my Choppa anyway). Question now is, train it now or do it after the patch? Mythic says the leveling curve was streamlined... but still. My bankspace will go havoc as well. Guess I've to get rid of a ton of grey BoP items to store stuff. Interesting as well: What happens to existing ingredients that will be removed? Two things say the patch notes: a) If possible they'll be converted to the new (same) type. b) Stuff that has no "mirror" will be converted in some kind of temporary special item, for 20 of them you'll get some kind of reward. Somehow i have the feeling it will be a lame title, but we'll see. I'm sitting on stacks of epic crafting ingredients, waiting for a crafting fix. I can only cross my fingers they don't all go *puff* in that change. :S

Stuff
New color variants for player mounts incoming: You can choose from three different ones and with guild rank 25 you gain three more choices. I wonder if the gr25 mounts will have some minor accessories attached to look different. Improved mounts will come with guild rank 37. Itemization for the Invader capitol PQs has be revisited, we don't know yet how exactly tho. No word on fixes to the boring first PQ. New Zone Control Domination system will go in. Capitols will now start to lose rank once pushed into a contested state.

Dungeons
Mount Gunbad, Bastion Stair and Lost Vale get an overhaul. Some much needed changes to LV will go in. Drops will be revisited, some removed, some new stuff (eg. special weapons with procs) added. Each Wing Sub-bosses will drop either Dark Promise gloves or belt, one piece granted. The Wing Main-bosses will drop two DP pieces granted (different careers). More rare dyes will drop as well.

And much more... overall the sheer amount of fixes looks promising I'd say.

Unfortunately i could not spot a single point from my annoying/broken stuff list in the patch notes. But since they're not final yet, there is still hope.

New Black Orc Mounts Follow-Up

Since i posted the screenshots of possible new mounts and also the cheerleader miniature, i checked out some more figures from the table-top game. I really have to say that Mythic did a nice job of creating the looks those "originals" have into the game. Looking at a bunch of those miniatures shows some very cool war-boars, that actually look like you could fight with them. So an upgraded model with those long tusks would look very cool. I like those a lot, looks like they crossbreeded boars with other animals.

I only found one picture of those mentioned "magical machines", the Ironback Boars and have to say i don't really like their look. Then I'm rather giving my vote to the earlier mentioned "classic" looking WAR boars. If you want to get an idea about some cool looking Orc armor, dig through some of the miniatures... some very cool stuff. Although WAR already has some cool Orc armors, its just that they're only used on NPCs and a lot of shields or the Darkpromise gear just use placeholder models at the moment. Let's hope that changes soon...

This one is for scribbler: I found this thread about a guy creating an Orc Boss miniature, while the Orc is riding a hybrid between a Rhinox and a Boar. Check out the pictures in that thread, hes posting all the different stages. While I'm not into miniatures myself, i found this a cool project nontheless.

Talking about WAR, how cool would it be if you could also dye your mounts armor?

Ragbag & New Black Orc Mounts

What to do with all the cash? Gold so far is pretty useless in WAR. Mythic stated they don't want gold to be that important, but there are enough players, like me, that like to trade & craft and pile riches like Stunties. Shouldn't there be more money sinks people can work on? Like really expensive, but good looking, dyes? Or how about prestigious mounts that will cost a fortune. I don't really care if they're even faster, they should just look different. Talking about Black Orcs, my vote would go to these three creatures: Juggernauts of Khorne (cloaked in sheets of steel and brass), Rhinoxen (furry Ogre mounts) or as an enhancement of the already used boar theme: Tuskgors. Which creature would get your vote? Talking about mounts: Mythic, why do we get dismounted when riding into the Apex in the Inevitable City? Am i the only one that thinks this is annoying?


Werit wrote a nice post about Creating WAR Web Tools, how to read information from webpages and use them to create an online tool. He'll talk further about this subject, so check his blog.

Magnus guarantees that your characters will stay intact for a minimum of six months, should you cancel your subscription or take a break.


A lot of players still have difficulties to understand the zone capture & victory point system. Like with the wards system, its something Mythic does not explain properly ingame or elsewhere, so people fail to understand it. I'd also advice you to either use the macro to show VPs or use an addon like Compact VPs that shows the correct amount and not rounding to 100 to cap a zone. If you want to read up on it, check here for a more detailed description how Victory Points and zone control work.

The lost map of Lost Vale challenge is going great, the next challenge will be posted later today.

What I'm working on

Felt like i could make a short post about what's in the pipeline and what I've been working on. I really want to finish my follow up on the WAR: Age of Blogging. Our initiative has been very successful so far... we got a lot of coverage, even the latest US GrabBag was refering to it. Edit: The WAR EU website posted about it today here. More important tho, a large amount of blogs introduced themselves. Thats the reason I'm lacking behind, as i at least want to have a brief look at every single one of them. I should get it done these days tho. Then I've been toying around with my personal version of RvR setup. I bought a bunch of gear and talismans from the AH, threw away some, got some others. I'm too lazy to respecc all the time, so I'm working on my own best version of a tank setup for RvR. I'll keep you posted once i was able to test it more. I also have all the screenshots for my post about exploration in WAR laying around, just need to write the article.

One more thing I'm working on is a map for Lost Vale. As it's an outdoor instance, its not that easy to create a good map for that place. The basics are meanwhile done tho, only need to polish it and add the POIs and some waypoints to it. As this one was more work then the other ones, I'm thinking about creating a scavenger hunt for it, so readers of my blog will be able to do some tasks/exploration and finally unlock the map, resulting in it being posted. Once the map is done, I'll talk more about this project. Stay tuned.

On a sidenote, Denman, a guild mate of mine, created a great Black Orc RvR video. Fun to watch!

I touched Darkpromise Feetsplate for a few Seconds

...but then they were gone. What happened was this: We went back into Lost Vale yesterday. The start of our trip was already a bit unlucky, but the climax was our fight against Dralel the Whitefire Matron. We kill the boss, we loot the boss... sweet! Darkpromise Feetsplate (WarDB info on those is wrong btw, check set bonus etc. here) for me. Like 30 secs later the zone crashes, we find ourselves outside at the boat (with a bunch of other people) and realise there has been a short rollback.. Loot from the boss fight is gone and the instance had a softreset, trash back and boss alive again. yay! Guess what the spider dropped this time? Black Guard boots no one could use... supernice. Of course CSR was useless in this matter - nothing they could do to exchange boots, who would have guessed. I'm just happy the instance crash did not happen earlier, as i was lucky enough to get my hands on the Blocka o' da Doombull, which is (beside the Blocka of the Watcher) the best tanking shield for an Orc in game. And it looks like the header of my blog, how cool is that? ;)

I updated the Altdorf City Siege post with some more clarifications, as Destruction was able to capture two fortresses again on Karak-Azgal last night around midnight. I only went in briefly, as it was late already... but it was only my second time and it already started to get boring. Why? While in the beginning there were some nice fights inside Altdorf, rather quickly the instances did split up... Destruction farming Invader in their instance and Order in another. Yawn. Most people won't be able to wear Invader gear for a longer time anyway. Inbetween people met inside the Warquarters scenario, which is not that much fun compared to other scenarios i have to say. PQ Contribution is definately bugged, i tried it out and it does not really matter if you do anything at all in there, its just random. The quests are not repeatable, even not at another siege. Mythic needs to get back on the endgame quickly to make it more fun and fix the flaws with the city instances. If you have a 48:48 instance its a lot of cool fights, but if the instance is nearly empty for one side its boring as hell.

With the bad Darkpromise droprate in Lost Vale (wing bosses only drop one piece, city dungeons at least have a chance to drop more) i assume those people that grind the renown will be better off farming invader, hoping for a high contribution number and winning several bags then. That might be a faster way to gear up for king fights. Until contribution is fixed, i wonder why Mythic doesn't pull the plug on the contribution system and make it entirely random numbers. At least then you won't see the same player grab the gold bags all of the time.

When i grow up...

...i want to pillage & plunder Altdorf capitol. In the meantime Thulf hit rank 40... yay! The last two levels i did reel in with questing through Greenksin & Chaos chapters. So now what? I'll test my current mastery tree against another spec idea i got, atm i use 0:17:8 and am quite satisfied with it. I really should do some more RvR and bring my renown up. One mission of course has to be to get more Wards for the high-end dungeons. So far i only got the Bloodlord Andsplate and mobs inside the city instances and Lost Vale hit damn hard. Beside gear from PQ loot bags and boss drops, i can't upgrade my gear anymore with quest or influence rewards. There is one influence reward, the Da' Gorfang Bladestoppa I'll switch with my current Witch Steel Bladestoppa, to get but i nearly maxed the influence already. Beside that nothing else i can do beside running instances & PQs and hope for a lucky drop. Easiest way will probably be to do some RvR to be able to buy the rest from those rewards, tho nothing really major there beside the stuff with insane renown requirements. One quest to mention is Helpin da Humies, really easy travel quest and good reward if you did not get a better head piece yet. I got two good blue drops from PQs inside Bastion Stair i use: Gore Covered Sholdaplate and Bloodherd Eadplate (I could also use Eadplate of Demons, but the Bloodherd one looks better - maybe switching it for 'Eadplate of the Stair). The rest is a mix from the best quest, influence and BoE drops i could get my hands on. Overall I'm satisfied with my gear and atm i run around with approx. 11.6k HP (yes, includes the wounds tactic) while maintaining a very good level of mitigation. Once i get more set pieces with Wards my HP will go down a bit, but looks like i should be able to stay around 10k, which should be sufficient.

Overall i have to say the journey from 1-40 was enjoyable, partly also because the humor in the greenskin chapters is fun. I tried to stay away from the elvish chapters as much as i could, as i found them rather boring and too turquoise & pink. Character development felt like it was going somewhere, i gained new skills and new gear on a regular basis and had the feeling it was useful. Although itemization sucks at 25+, it really does. While in the beginning you praise that quest rewards are always useful to you, during later levels it's mainly DPS gear choices - three nearly identical pieces, but no tanking stuff - and like all the other classes you suffer from really weird stat distribution on gear. The gear 32+ being the worst... check out the epic rewards from Bastion Stair influence, WTH?
One thing i thought was rather disappointing is the really easy AI from NPCs. You get a quest to eliminate the boss from another tribe, head over and hes surrounded by his 10 bodyguards... you just get into a good position and shoot him, while he runs mad at you his gang does absolutely nothing. There are very few linked mobs in PvE, or those with smart behaviour or special abilities. This results in the normal PvE game being really, really easy. Starting with Mount Gunbad inside the instances it gets a bit better, but not much. Some of the scripted PQs are really cool, but i wish there would be some more generic intelligence for NPCs.

Talking about the city dungeons, Bloodwrought Enclave & Bilerot Burrow, and Lost Vale finally I'm able to venture into them, which is great. I took a sneak peak right after i turned 40 and in Lost Vale you can explore a bit and even kill a few mobs on your own... looks promising. ;) So beside Bastion Stair, expect to see a few updates and screenshots on those high-level dungeons here soon.

Patch 1.0.4b did hit EU today and introduced a damage reduction if you don't wear enough Wards. Evens out the playing field and everyone has to get their hands on Ward gear now. The random drops inside the dungeons suck tho, going there again and again and only find loot no one in your group can use is frustrating. Mythic should either introduce repairable items that more then one class can use or at least generate part of the loot depending on group setup. I don't think its viable to only drop loot that can be used by all in the group, as people probably will gear up to fast - but at least some way in the middle should be found. GOA also mentioned the EU Realm War pages again and they had run into technical difficulties.. blah..blah. Seriously, no one cares... we want results. GOA does not have to develop the game just provide service to EU customers and it takes forever for them to get stuff done. Answers from CSR to problems/bugs have a backlog from one or two days and the "service functions" they are supposed to provide with their website are non-existent yet. While i acknowledge their job is more difficult then many realize (having to coordinate everything with Mythic) the lack of service since the launch results for me in a state of mind where i don't even bother to read any of their excuses anymore. Go and get the stuff done, then we can talk... win trust back with results.

EDIT: Looks like the ward patch did not only nerf damage a notch, but significantly. People report they do barely any decent damage with only a few set pieces and in addition that bosses only drop one set piece and one blue now.
EDIT2: We've been in Bastion Stair tonight and i can't confirm any nerf in loot drops, looks like it did before patch to me.
EDIT3: Mythic reverted the Ward change back via a hotfix tonight. No word on when this will change for EU yet, but its coming.



Tip of the Day: When you port back into the Viper Pit via the Guild Recall Scroll, maybe to use the Flight Master inside the VP for quick travel access between zones, you don't have to run around the small podest to buy a new scroll. Just stand at the corner and you can access the vendor as well - saves you a few seconds everytime you do this.

Epic Quests for Fun & Gear

My char is 37 already so a few levels ago i started to look around for gear to get; the best stuff for my tank from quests and such. I enjoy to have a closer look at what people wear when i stand at the AH or mailbox. You can always find some cool looking stuff ths way. One thing i realized rather late in Warhammer, there are lots of epic questlines, some longer some shorter, and party quests you can gain rather nice gear from. Besides, often the story is very entertaining. Despite those quests are labeled as "party quest" I was able to solo all of them right when i could take them. If it involves areas with lots of mobs, you just have to move careful.

For your convenience i created a list with the endgame epic quests and their starting points for Destruction, so you won't miss them:

Quest: Prophecy
Starts at: Hekl the Soulless, Chaos Chapter 19
min. rank required: 35
Last Step/Rewards

Quest: Out of Favor
Starts at: Relkarin, Dark Elf Chapter 19
min. rank required: 35
Last Step/Rewards

Quest: Broken Core
Starts at: Mosk, Greenskin Chapter 20
min. rank required: 35
Last Step/Rewards

Quest: The Ebon Flame
Starts at: Fenrith Thaurgyn, Dark Elf Chapter 18
min. rank required: 37
Last Step/Rewards

Quest: Annihilation
Starts at: Cultist Begrid, Chaos Chapter 21
min. rank required: 37
Last Step/Rewards

Quest: Time to Waaagh!
Starts at: Waruhag the Black, Greenskin Chapter 22
min. rank required: 37
Last Step/Rewards

As there seem to be some problems with abandoning long questlines, it might be better to only start them if you can finish them. One more thing you should notice is the last three have many rewards that have hidden procs (here the ones for Blorc) attached to the items. I use the Blood Fury weapon and the Dissolve X (800 armor debuff, 6sec) procs fairly often. Those procs also seems to be bugged atm, as you can equip other items and still use those procs - i cba to test this, but read about it.

Rippa of the Patient One

Due to some group PQ farming and further questing Thulf is rank 34 meanwhile. So finally I'm getting close to being able to play around with all those different tome jewelry sets and their boni, which i can use at 35. If you want to max. out greenskin chapter 18 influence and you're solo, here is a tip for you: Go to Cinderfall and do the Da Drakk Cult PQ. When you kill the Drakk cultists there, they drop keys to the cages. When you open a cage it will yield 300 influence. This speeds up solo grinding quite much... as the drop rate is rather high. If you're alone stage one will yield you around 17k inf quickly.

We manage to run Bastion Stair groups every other day with our guild, so chances are high to get some pieces of the Bloodlord set. I won a blue loot bag from the juggernaut PQ in there and it had a nice tanking shield in it: Gore Flecked Blocka. Unfortunately the bag was bugged and i could not retrieve it, but got coin instead. I know this happened to others getting either nothing or coin while definately selecting the item they want. Annoying. First time something like this happened to me tho. From the influence rewards inside Bastion Stair i gained Rippa of the Patient One, which looks awesome - like a huge butcher blade. The elite influence rewards are, while epic, utterly crap: Willpower & Initiative? Please... I also won my first Defender's Signs from a PQ in wing 3, so now only we need a purpose again for them. Maybe some new good looking trophies? Trophies for my mount! Talking about dungeons, some guildies went to Bloodwrought Enclave recently and one of the tanks got the Sentinel Eadplate, looks cool.

I also managed to obtain the Man Tactic II (Manly Strategy) from the tome tactics. I'd go for the next one, but i hear it's bugged and does not work. And I'm still of the opinion the 50% closer part is bugged as well. Part of this was to get an unlock from an order PQ, which was really funny as i could not see the stage/goal of the PQ, but was able to advance it myself by figuring out what one could do with gunpowder. This was really funny to be in the dark and try to find out what had to be done. ;)
Skill development after rank 33 feels still ok, you have one or another rank when you don't gain anything useful but there is still progress and the mastery tree enables some nice skills as well. My rank 4 morale ability Cant' Touch Us is great for longer boss fights or PQs as it will nearly refill the AP for your group and absorb damage as well. We did put it to good use when we gathered four 32-34 guys and went to do a chapter 20 PQ with mobs around 38 - the last stage was rather hard, but we made it. Challenging fights like that are good fun.

You can't hit me! ...or the Action Point Spree

Yesterday i got some time to test my new skill Can't Hit Me! and it's damn powerful. But let me tell you more in detail about how i grind mobs: Before i got this, i was able to solo tank and take down approx. 5 mobs up to +4 levels of my own (ofc the lower the more), without any real danger to me. Everyone telling you Da'Toughest specced tanks can't solo mobs and are useless are wrong. The question is how you do it. If you take on one or two mobs after the other you'll take a longer time then some DPS specced player, as your DPS output is of course lower. You need to use your strengths, which is survivability! For me as a tank (with mainly toughness & wounds tank gear), it's no difference if its one or a few mobs banging my chest. So you need to calibrate your mob grinding in a way that you pick up just enough mobs you won't be in danger to die and that you're downtime is not increased. What i would do is, to gather up to five mobs... maybe use Challenge initially to gather them up nicely. Then i would use whatever skill rotation (for higher damage until now i used 'Ave Another One tactic) i see fit on a single mob of them while using Big Slash and Raze whenever available. The mobs would die one after the other but because i have a few on me (gather them nicely so they all get hit by cone attacks) i can make more use out of the multiple mob abilities. If you stack up on thorn potion like Brief Thorn Ointment this will speed up grinding multiple mobs even more. These potions are rather cheap and not hard to come by. Even for solo play i was able to keep up a very good pace and did not have the feeling others were plowing through the mobs while i was stuck banging on one.

Talking to some other classes, taking on five mobs higher level is already more then some can handle. Let's check on how Can't Hit Me! improves this... Using the above skills/potion i vary it a bit now: Gather all the mobs and maybe use some self-buff skills then switching to Can't Hit Me! when nearly at full Action Points (AP). While you channel the skill and your APs slowly drain all mobs hitting you will take damage. Depending on mitigation they will at least take 70-80 dmg if not more. Add the damage from the thorn potion to it and you have a nice and steady flow of damage on ALL mobs going. As soon as Raze is available, use it (because the cooldown needs some time to refresh). Then maybe use a few skills depending on the situation and go back to Can't Hit Me!. Rinse and repeat. You'll drain quite a lot of AP so you should use Get 'Em whenever it fits the rotation - this skill is best used when you're around 40%-50% AP as it will make sure you can get going. Using it when depleted of AP is not that good IMO. You can also use it before going into the channeling. With the above skill rotation I'm able to take down around 10 mobs at the same time with a good pace to it. Comparing that with other classes that's pretty good if you ask me. It should be noted that i use a shield with +block and also make use of the Good Wif Shield tactic. This gives me close to 100% block chance while channeling.

This will work best on melee mobs tho. If you face ranged/magic mobs it becomes a bit tricky to gather them. Should there only be a few just gather the melees on top of the ranged and you're good - of course the block damage will also affect ranged attackers standing away but with the current AI the mobs tend to run away when they're to low on health and if they run to far, they can reset and end up back to full health again. These scared mobs starting to flee are a bit borked if you ask me. Depending on the situation you might need to break of the channeling and kill the ones running away, should they not come back by themselves. Just use any other skill or the hotkey again to break off channeling.
As you realize, the above drains a lot of action points, a lot. I suggest you stock up on the +AP jewelry that you can get at rank 29. Each gives +3 AP regen and in addition i use the Grim Changehide that yields an additional +4 AP regen, so in total that gives me +16 AP regen and you can really feel the effect. Together with Get 'Em this keeps me going for a long time. Due to the AP regen I'm even able to solo hero mobs around three levels below me.

I did not really had the chance to test this in RvR yet, but while more situational i can see great potential when being focus fired and such. To close off this excursion, here is a bit about my experience while teaming up with others: I grouped with two guildies of mine (Zealot & Sorcerer) and we were doing PQs. I would run around and gather approx. 30 mobs and we would take them down *very quick*. We were owning the place and respawn could not be fast enough. I used the Menace tactic, run around and gather the mobs and we would just AoE them down. Important of course to let your group know you don't really generate any aggro while running around and gathering mobs, so they have to wait until you're stationary and had 2-3 secs to generate aggro to be safe. We went into Mount Gunbad yesterday night and i used a similar tactic to tank multiple mobs. The times when the Chosen would own you on multiple mob tanking are over. This really works like a breeze. Maybe I'll post more in detail about each wing of Mount Gunbad once we went back and cleared wing 3 again.

Addon Tip: Check out Mini World Map if you haven't yet. It will give you a small world map, which is very useful to find directions and also in those capture the flag scenarios to see where the flags are.