Physical vs Magical DPS

Today I wanted to briefly discuss the realm of dps as divided between physical and magical dps – and before I begin I will clarify that by ‘magical’ I mean attacks that deal elemental, corporeal, and spiritual damage. My primary examples for this thought experiment will be range dps classes because melee classes for the most part deal physical damage (yes, there are some exceptions). In the group of physical rdps I have Squig Herders, Shadow Warriors, and Engineers (while I recognize that each has ability with ‘magical damage’) and in the group of magical rdps I have Bright Wizards, Sorceresses, and the Magus. If anyone would like to argue these classifications I defer to the common morales and tactics which bind the groupings.

6-Man SC Review

After almost a week of no scenario pops because of a broken match-making system (or whatever) Mythic generously gives us a weekend scenario that lasts 5 days. This ‘gift’ however was a load of crap in my humble opinion. This isn’t a matter of winning/losing; it’s a matter of scenario design.

I don’t know what goes on in Mythic’s mind, but their concept of a six-man scenario needs to be reworked. Would it really be too much to ask for a open field with random obstacles (water for snares, rocks for LoS)? First you give us the boat which was a LoS nightmare and neutered RDPS classes while allowing healers to group heal the entire map from one location.

Then you gave us the Eternal Citadel. In my mind all this scenario only fulfills the function of a insignia/medallion factory. It’s stupidly short, and a sad fact is most of the kills from it are often achieved by punting people in an abyss. Now I’ve played the EC as both a Shadow Warrior and an Ironbreaker, so I know two sides of this tale. As a tank the easiest way to neutralize the enemy is to punt them into that abyss. All healers do in this scenario is wedge themselves against the wall so they can a)not be punted into the abyss and b) so they cannot be affected by positional attacks. Now I know someone will say ‘l2p and get some positional awareness’ but that isn’t the point. This shouldn’t be a one-button win for the scenario. The second side of this tale is my SW, and this scenario (and the boat) completely blow for RDPS classes. No room to kite and complete range neutralization. This scenario really only favors melee trains.

Why can’t Mythic design a scenario that benefits all classes, not just melee classes and group healers? We want a 6-man but I personally don’t want to fight in a small ass hole where I can’t move without being hit by rubberband-arm choppas. After a while we just kept going up against groups of three healers and three tanks; talk about a snore fest. All in all this weekend was pretty crappy because my options were staring at keep doors for hours, or queuing for minute-long marathon ECs. I think my 6-man’s record EC was a minute 47 seconds. -twirls finger- what great joy…

How Tough Are You?

Apparently not tough enough. Today I wanted to briefly discuss the stat ‘Toughness’ and hope that Mythic gives is a look. In eons past when the best armor people could reliably acquire was Anni/Dark Promise and the best weapons were T4 influence weapons or Lost Vale weapons, the dps was far lower and the TTK higher. In this mythical bygone time when damage was lower, it was far more beneficial to slot toughness because it actually had an impact. Today with weapons having a dps of 100+ and classes dealing burst damage in the thousands, I am of the belief that toughness is obsolete. At 1000 toughness you only have a 200 dps reduction. Now when a sorc or bw critically hits your for 2.4k, you wonder what the use of 200 mitigation is… I believe there is none. The only classes which fully benefit from toughness are tanks which already have a very high armor rate, thus reducing their damage to already low numbers. Naturally resistance attacks (spirit, elem, corp) will still deal high damage to tanks, but classes with physical burst will be weakened. Classes with medium armor can get some utility from toughness, but good group coordination can easily bypass their defenses.

So in the end against what classes is toughness the most effective? The answer is sadly against the classes/specs which have always been voted amongst the weakest. These would be dot spec and physical damage classes – and if you’re a physical damage dot spec class well then you truly get the shaft.

In my opinion toughness should be a saving grace for lightly armored classes. They get low armor, so their toughness should compensate. However, because toughness is so useless against high burst classes, overall it isn’t a stat worth much in the end. I sincerely hope Mythic re-evaluates toughness and perhaps changes it to a % of dps dealt, rather than a flat out rate, because honestly, when someone hits you for 2.4k, what good is -84.6 dps mitigation going to do you? I welcome anyone with differing opinions to speak their mind, as I have said I am not a firm believer of toughness unless it goes on tanks.

1.4 Personality Dyes

Time to define the new you. Last week we were given the opportunity to purchase the 1.4 Personality Pack and with it came many new dyes. In the Q&A players asked about the dye color specifics – you don’t want to buy something if you don’t know what you’re getting right? Well Mythic drew a blank and I guess wanted to keep their color stash a secret. Today I give those of you who have not yet explored the world of 1.4 dyes a visual preview of the colorful world of WAR. For today’s experiment I subjected my beautiful Shadow Warrior to many tortures. Please pray for his soul. I suppose there could have been a better class to display the colors but I’ve got a SW so accept what you’re given.

Mythic Takes a Step Forward with 1.4!

It is always welcoming to see some communication from the developers. Yesterday Andy posted this thread stating that Mythic has acknowledged some of the issues with the 1.4 patch and are seeking to correct them, and today we had a Hot Fix with some of the fixes. Several of these issues when fixed will work wonders in alleviating the tier 4 campaign – issues such as broken queues for Scenarios, Cities, and the Thanquol’s Incursion instance. With broken queues players were forced to do the only thing they could to satisfy their blood lust – zerg in tier 4. While such massive population numbers are welcome and do lead to pitch battles, the effect on zone locking and city pushing was rather negative.

Some additional bugs not mentioned that should be addressed are –

– Gutter Runner’s Spy ability persists into scenarios if you are a gutter runner when entering a scenario

– Stage 2 City friendly bosses glitch on each other if they meet making the stage impossible to complete or they reset pathing and go through walls.

– During the Carrion Phase of Boss 1 in ToVL (Hand of Ualatp) he continues to deal damage while knocked down.

– Renown Ability Trivial Blows not working (At TB IV and still being critically hit for same amounts as I was prior to having TB)

– Ordnance and Skulls of Fallen still dropping despite having no use

The Suggestion Box – Listen To Your Player-Base

When the Mythic forums were created, they were a vast structure of categories, threads, sub threads, information and announcements. One particular section dear to many was the Suggestion Box in the Developer Roundtable, the place where we could put our thoughts and dreams and hope Mythic would pull from the great suggestions the players had to improve the game. With the transition to the Bioware/Mythic forums the entire ‘Official Forums’ deal kind of collapsed and many players reverted to Warhammer Alliance. Buried in the Suggestion Box lay dozens of threads, authored by players who love Warhammer and wanted to improve the game. Currently this thread has 480 pages of posts! That’s 480 ideas swept under the rug and forgotten. Some ideas have been implemented, but the sad truth is that many have gone ignored. Of the one section of the forums that shows the most heart and player interest, the Suggestion Box is the one section that has the LEAST moderator/developer attention.

Today I take a walk down memory lane, but before I dive into the past I turn the attention of my readers to some of the more recent posts in regards to the present and future of Warhammer as it rests after the 1.4.0 patch.

1.4 Evaluation

So I didn’t want to leap at Mythic’s throat the day of the patch because I figured there would be issues to fix, adjustments to make. Instead, I let the patch sink in a few days and with a clearer calmer mind I would now like to give a critical evaluation of 1.4 days after its launch. I applaud my fellow bloggers for their devotion to Warhammer and to reporting; however, I believe there are far too many ‘great job, awesome work’ posts out there. Although 1.4 has ushered in dramatic changes into the world of Warhammer, I am personally not of the opinion that all are great or as they were marketed to be. This is meant to be taken as constructive feedback, not ranting or raging.

Altdorf Menagerie – 1.4 Personality Pack Pets (Order)

So I recently came to acquire four items which have the magical ability to grant me magical monkeys of varied colors. Although I know what the colors mean, I am unsure as to what they look like. Since the decision is final upon magical transition and I cannot go back and change colors, I came upon a stumbling block. Roam around Altdorf as I may, I could not find the local animal shelter or exotic zoo with the beasts on display, so I did the only thing I could do to see which pet was for me – I put on my Darwin hat and went to another server and created toons to pick pet colors and deleted them about as fast as I made them. Darwin hat aside I present my findings to you in case you too would like to know exactly what color ‘Green’ or ‘Gold’ is (because you have not yet caught your leprechaun).

11/17 Q&A Transcript & 1.4 Patch Tomorrow!

So it’s the big event everyone’s been waiting for. Essentially the first ‘new content’ patch since LotD which was almost a year and a half ago. November 18th brings in the Verminous Horde and with it the two RvR packs. Today Mythic held a Q&A session to address not only questions about the 1.4 ensemble, but also other concerns players had. For the first live streaming Q&A session I found the event to be a success – mainly because some concrete answers were given – not the usual ‘we have plans but can’t tell you’ (although there were a few of those).

First off we’ve got the 1.4 patch and its free content available to all players! Some of the changes we’re going to face tomorrow include a complete revamp of RvR. Domination timers and VPs are out the window – now locking a zone is literally as easy as taking a keep. In conjunction with this we’ll see the new RR65+ Thanquol’s Incursion 24v24vSkaven instance, which upon completing successfully will give players the ability to don Skaven skins and assail the keeps in more unique fashions. Also in this free patch: the renown system is getting reworked in terms of what abilities can be bought, the level caps for tiers are being reallocated to better accommodate new Tier 4 players, and scenarios are getting a new E-harmony matchmaking system where you will be paired with destro across 32 qualities ranging from your toons hair color to how many nurglings you have killed and enjoy killing.

In terms of paid content we have the two RvR packs of Progression and Personality available via the EA Store. Progression offers players the opportunity to push the envelope yet again and strive for renown rank 100. Also included is access to new renown weapons and armor for these new renown ranks and of course a renown bonus for those not yet at 80 so they can catch up to the big boys. Personality on the other hand comes with some new dyes, barber tokens to change yer ugly mug, pretty ponies, and pretty pets.

As for the Q&A I did indeed attend and issue forth a slew of questions of which only a few were answered. I personally did not find my questions to be unfair, but I felt that there was a definite bias in whose questions were being picked out – some people got more attention than others. I would have preferred that more people were selected from the question pool, and not six questions from one person. Andy kindly recorded the session and it is broken up into two parts, Part 1 (if you want to skip the music it starts roughly at 21 minutes) and Part 2.  Andy(AB) did the reading of questions, and they were answered by Steve Engle (SE), Keaven Freeman(KF), and Carrie Gouskos(CG), and later James Casey (JC). Because I’m lazy, I’m not going to type these word for word but go for the abridged version!

1.4 Art – Destro Warpforged

Last segment of the 1.4 armor sets art! Once again, my knowledge of other Destro armor sets is very limited but I have seen the Doomflayer so I can at least cross compare with that. So lets take the last look at the Good, the Bad, and the Fugly.