Daggers are a girls best friend

You see above a very happy witch elf, which she should be as she now posses after a evening hard work the two best daggers (untill a patch nerfs the hell out of them ) in WaR.Unlike WoW there has been relatively little theory work done for war so i thought id spend a little while discussing witch elf weapon choices.
Our Lesson plan for today is
1.Stats
2.Speed:
3.Hidden extras:

Stats:
Before delving in too much id like to direct you to Cerberias’ guide to rank 40 witch elf smackdown this is a excellent primer to WE stats & tactics, and can really help you get a feel for how the class works, & also to WaRdb's excellent Career Builder
& fianly if u want ur brain really hurt to the godly Disquette
There are only 2 stats we really care about for dps
Weapon Skill & Strength:
Picking between these is all about mitigation, roughly put Str will give better results when your target has less than 50% base mitigation, more than this & WS will give better results.
Lvl40 squishy Base Armor (using annihilator set values) = 970 Armor Total
Lvl 40 Medium Armor 1915
Lvl 40 Heavy Armor 2917 (assuming the fucker dont use a shield)
lets save me a headache or 2 & round that up to 1000, 2000 & 3000. So
So Looking at the different paths main attacks we can see how much mitigation they have
Carnage
Slice
0% on all
Pierce Armor up
100%light 50% med 33%heavy
Suffering
Envenomed Blade
75% (that's the % of damage done by the dot) on all
Treachery
Agonizing Wound
100% on all
Finishers
None of the finishing move have a built in ignore armor affect however for 4 point in carnage u can get Sharpened Edge.
As you see obviously if you are carnage then WS become allot more important than it is for treachery or suffering. I tend to aim to have around a 25% armor ignore value from WS when carnage spec but i like to use Whirling Blades to build fast combo points so allot of my dps comes from finishers.

Speed
I'm gonna take a excellent summary from WA forums here by Blind Muse
"Essentially, a faster weapon in the main hand is better, for offhand, its not a big deal, fast or slow, it will still attack the same amount of times. Offhand swings are based on a proc off the mainhand, its a fairly high chance, so nothing to worry about there.
All skills are set to a 1.5 Co-efficient(instant skills are all set as having a 1.5 cast speed for co-efficient purposes.) so weapon speed becomes irrelevant there.
All procs are set to a % chance, and unlike WoW are not on a PPM system, and are not 'normalized' So faster weapons will cause more procs to happen.
"
So Basically you want a fast MH to proc OH attacks, similarly fast weapons are more likely to proc kisses &/or talents.

Hidden Extras (Procs)
speaking of procs some t4 level weapons have built in procs, due to some wisdom i can't decipher mythic feel it unnecessary to make any not of this on the item tooltips
There are 3 quest & 6 daggers in total
Time to Waagh!
Merciless
Seeping Blade
The Ebon Flame
Nightfall
Spite
Annihilation
Frenzy
Brutality
Nightfall & Frenzy are considered to be the best because the procs appear to frequent & provide a very high amount of burst potential.
Note: due to a bug if you die u need to unequip & reequip the items to get the procs
So in summary, look for high weapon dps, then fast speed, a decent amount of str , then for any hidden procs. if a weapon has all of these your onto a winner.

Personal Best

that i think must be my all time best score in a scenario & quite frankly i have no goddamn idea how it got so high, dps was 6th on the destro side, 3rd from bottom on kills, died 3 times, got 2 solo kills (although that's no big total), also ran the parts 3 times. now i was over rank 36 so bolster doesn't explain it, so really i'm at a bit of a loss.

/AFK

Been a really busy week what with Witching night(and the frantic dash to farm rewards)IRL Halloween & 2 family birthdays, but im back. Pacth 1.05 is on the horizon & id like to echo the feeling of Exsequien on the EU Forums
"• To promote population balance among the various scenarios, we have added a feature that reduces the number of times a scenario can launch in a short period of time. This will give scenarios which are launched less frequently an opportunity to catch up in the queue population and launch more often.

YES YES YES *orgasms*"

Enraged

I started blogging to be part of the ongoing discussion about the games i love to play & generally I've found that WaR & WoW both have great blogging communities which inspire me to think harder & more thoughtfully about the issues involved.
Occasionally though someone goes & says something which makes me really gawd darn frikkin mad!
and like anything. its worse when it comes from someone you otherwise respect. There i was doing my daily trawl of my blog roll when i came across this post by Tolbold called War introduces auto win for bigger realm.
This left me a little slightly peeved until i read More on wow zombies after which i was just pure pissed off.
How can someone write in one post that people should stop complaining about event which ultimately inconvenience them & at the same time complain about a change which will produce more RvR but at the cost of possible inconvenience.
I think it probably the hypocrisy of the 2 post which got my good & angry rather than the opposition to the changes because when reading Arkenor post on the subject i feel he makes a much more reasoned argument. I still think hes wrong becuase ultimately what the problem is his servers population not the change itself. Im hopefull after Wotlk has hit & taken it toll Myhtic will introduce the server transfers they have disscussed and we will end up with a far more concentrated player base, which will render most of the concerns over this null & void.

a step in the right direction?

so patch 1.04 is here and there's some minor changes to RvR full notes can be found at the US herald
Ive highlighted the important parts of this for easy reference

"Campaign Adjustments
Tier 4 zones now require fewer scenario victory points to be captured. The mechanics of capturing a zone have not changed however. Zones which have no scenario opposition can still be captured if players join the queue for scenarios based on that Zone. Victory points towards zone control will be granted if a realm has enough players in the queue to launch the scenario and the other realm doesn't.If players in those queues join a launched scenario or leave the queue, the victory points towards zone control will be forfeit.
In other words, using "Join All" to queue for all available scenarios is still the fastest way to get into a scenario, but joining the scenarios in a specific zone will have the greatest impact on control of that zone, and by extension the greatest impact on the campaign in that pairing."

So whats the likely affect of these changes? Obviously this should make zone control quicker but will it be quick enough. PuG Warbands quickly run out of steam when there's nothing to do, sure PQ's can be farmed but that's about it if you side controls all the keeps. From personal experience id say 30-45 mins is the max length of time a warband will stay together once all keeps are controlled, before everyone slowly ebbs away. This is a step in the right direction hopefully resulting in zones being capped & the battlefront moving more often, & hopefully towards solving the 'Ive run out of people to fight' problem.

But I'm worried that again the cure may turn out to be worse than the disease. There is little incentive to defend anything atm, coupled with a greater ease of attack, & the still uneven realm pops may lead to a steamroller affect on many servers as one side dominates.

The change to affect of queuing is a good one overall, & hopefully will lead to a greater variety of scenarios launching. But it still lacks anything to really link the RvR & Scenario content. The possibility of faster launch time may attract more people to que for the zones where there are large number of RvR players queing but theres still nothing which really makes them any more likely to que for one scenario than another(ie: no reason to que riekland rather than dragonwake even if it would help their realm attack a Fortress.

Be carefull what you wish for (how players told mythic to kill RvR)

RvR & how to re-invigorate it has been the weekends big hot topic. With Mythics announcement last week that they would be introducing RvR influence lakes many people took this as a admission of guilt on mythic part are so the great debate as to how we should set this right began.
Lots of people have made some interesting posts hardcore casual, Jobildo,WallofText & Potshot have some interesting things to stay & the hubbub even waken the mighty Tobold.
My favorite post on the subject was by Keen and Graev who have written a excellent article on open RvR stuttering attempts to take off, asking the question 'is it the players' fault this time?'
The cut & thrust of the argument is should players be prepared to forgo instant gratification offered by scenarios or should it be considered their fault that they are not prepared to show some patience in order to get open RvR rolling. Keen seems very impassioned & makes allot of good points the problem is i think i blaming the players hes wrong(well Partially). I personally trace the current RvR problems all back to one decision by Mythic, which although it did come at the request of players is ultimately Mythics fault.

Scenario Sickness

The Diagnosis:
back in the day you could only que for the scenarios of the zone you were in, this combined with some bugs & a player base divided unevenly between the zones & factions, meant scenario launches were less than frequent.
Its a valid question to ask if this problem would have occurred if all the factions had all their classes, & if mythic had sold the concept of the order races as strongly as they did the destruction ones. But those changes aren't something Mythic could fix overnight & the forums & the WaR blogsphere were beginning to resound to the clamor of aggrieved players.
I think just about everyone in the WaR community was unhappy about the early ques, and so Mythic desperate to have as a successful launch as possible responded.

The Treatment:
Cross Pairing Queuing
"Your feedback is very important to us and it’s always our goal to make your play experience an even more enjoyable one.
In response to popular demand, you’ll now be able to queue for all of the scenarios available in your current tier, across all three pairings. For instance, if you’re in Nordland, you can queue for the Nordenwatch scenario as usual. You can also queue up for Khaine’s Embrace (the Tier 1 scenario in the High Elf vs. Dark Elf pairing) and the Gates of Ekrund (the Tier 1 scenario on the Dwarf vs. Greenskin pairing), all without leaving Nordland. No travel is required at all; just click the WAR symbol on your interface as you normally would, and use the arrows at the top of the window to scroll through the different scenarios.
We know many have been waiting for this feature and we have a lot more great additions coming on the horizon. We look forward to your continued feedback as we work to take WAR to the next level…WAAAGH!!!"
Click to read about the side affects of the treatment & the radical surgery needed to really fix the problem

The Unforeseen Side Affects:
This is the point that RvR died, no-one noticed yet. The gamers were to busy trying out the new scenarios & leveling up, Mythic were to busy trying to fix everything else to notice what they had done.
No one noticed until now when the dust had settled & the population had settled and when its too late, far too late to do anything about it.
"So what is this problem exactly?" i here u say"your being pretty vauge so far, we know its something to do with scenarios just go ahead & spit it out!"The problem isn't scenarios themselves or even players desire to max min.The problem is that mythic in trying to fix part of the system split it into two systems. At release although buggy WaR's RvR system was in place & ready to go. Scenarios were part of that system, they could only be qued in the zone a player was in. The quest for the scenarios could only be obtained from warcamps in turn were situated right next to the RvR pools. The warcamps even had quest which encouraged players to go into the RvR areas to scout them.Everything was connected , the system was so good in fact that if Sir Elton John had seen it he would have been tempted to re-write Circle of Life as Circle of War.
But because of the imbalances brought about in the short term by class, faction, & leveling speed differences, it seemed as if it wasn't working. We will never know if left as it was how it would have turned out, but what is clear now is that when you remove what interconnected the two aspects of the game people are always going to pick one aspect over another.

RvR autopsy
RvR died at 00:13:41 EST on 30th September 2008
It is thought that the subject injected the victim with a lethal overdoes of the highly addictive drug S.C.E.A.R.I.O
It is thought that the injection was carried out by mythic entertainment at the request of RvR's lover the WaR community

So how the hell do we get out of this mess.

Short Version:
Reconnect RvR & Scenarios so one affects the other & people are encouraged to do BOTH.

Long Version:
Patch 1.04
1.Cooldown on recapping Battle Objectives reduced to 10minutes.
2.The Amount of Victory Points require to capture a Zone has been reduced slightly.
3.Keeps & Battle Objectives capture Victory Points have been increased & they will contribute a constant stream of victory points while controlled.
4.RvR actions within the immediate vicinity of keeps & BO's now contribute towards influence pools available at quartermasters in keeps.
5.T4 Scenarios Victory bonus will increase for attackers by 10% & decrease for defenders by 10% depending on the proximity of the contested zone to a fortress.
ie: If Reikland is contested victory for destruction will ofter almost 20% more to renown to destruction than it will to order.

So what have we done here
1.BO's are now more vulnerable controlling a zone now requires a active watch on the RvR area.
2&3. Zone change over has been made quicker, no more 'all keeps are locked down, there no more RvR to do I'm logging for the night' this is counteracted by the greater vulnerability of BO's.
4.Influence pools give a good reason to take part in RvR even if your on the loosing side.
5.Scenario players now have a genuine reason to want to advance the RvR endgame, currently this doesn't matter to a scenario player, whatever he ques for returns the same XP/Renown return by reconecting indivdual succes to collective succes they immediately have a reason for people to take part in RvR.

im not saying this is perfect but i think it would take changes like this to create a truely active & rewarding RvR experience where battles eb & flow & there is as much a reason to defend as there is to attack.

I Rolled a Orc (& i liked it)

I felt it was about time i rolled a alt & thus my Black Orc Ardcase was born.
I'm a Big fan of the Visual feel of Games Workshops Orcs but for a long while i was put off rolling a BO due to the bad experiences Ive had playing a tank class in WoW.
To me tanking in WoW was a high stress/ low reward occupation, sure at first it felt cool to be the guy everyone relied on but as soon as it began to dawn how much your perceived performance relied on other people the thrill quickly ebbed away. John Walker at
Rock Paper Shotgun feels that Responsibility is one of the things which act as the biggest killjoys to his MMO experience, & reading it although i didn't agree with everything allot of what he said resonated with me.
I like playing with other people & one of WoW's greatest success is the feeling of euphoria which you got when things went right & you finally got that boss down & Ive made some great friends through the game. But when thing did go wrong however WoW can very quickly developed into a blame game, as John says "if you don't play like they would have done it, you've failed them, you've let them down, you've spoiled their game'. I think this feeling is felt at its strongest in WoW because the class roles are written in stone, this causes players to see others as just a necessity, just a means to a end. Interaction between players is strangely disconnected too with everyone operating inside a little bubble rarely do you co-operate with someone, instead players have a list of actions they are expected to perform which are dictated by the environment or opposing players actions. Overall in tanks in WoW always felt like as just a cog in the machine, & just as useless when the rest of the machine was removed.

I am overjoyed to report that tanking in WaR is a very different far more satisfying experience so far.
Click for details on how i rediscovered tanking could be fun
Not that WaR re-invents the wheel or anything, just it adds some suspension which makes the ride allot more comfortable.
Tanking in Both RvR & PvE feels far more about you & far less about everyone else. WaR's primarily RvR is the prime driving force behind this because humans opponents bring a degree of uncertainty which scripted encounters lack.
To illustrate my point im gonna talk more about 3 skills, which respectively:
1.Encourages Team work between Healers & Tanks.
2.Bring the Taunt mechanic to PvP
3.Makes tanks viable for Solo Pve (& encourages them to act more tank like in RvR)

1. Save Da Runts
"You defend one of your allies and try to take attacks meant for them. As long as you are within 30 feet of them, any damage that they suffer and all hate that they cause will be split evenly between the two of you."
Very simple & yet very effective this sends out a clear but unmistakable signal to any target its used on in RvR, 'Whats good for me is good for you'. Equally in PvE this it offers benefits to both sides, to put it in wow terms 'you take 50% of the damage received by one target, & 50% of the threat generated by them is transferred to you. It can be applied to a healer or dps depending on the situation, got a DPser a few lvls high than you who's always over agroing? Pop this on them & they will increase your threat. Similarly this works great when healers have to use AoE heals.

2.Taunt
I just love this skill, it really knocks the socks of its WoW equivalent
"You enrage your opponent, interrupting any currently building abilities and forcing monsters to attack you. While taunted your opponent will take 30% more damage from your attacks. This effect will fade after 15 seconds or after your opponent has hit you 3 times"
Bullet point comparison time!!!

WoW taunts:

• Doesn't Do any Damage
• Temporary increases threat
• Only usefull as a Panic Button
• Useless in PvP

WaR taunt:

• Increase damage for its Duration
• The damage component also help increase overall threat which means...
• Its Beneficial to use even if things are doing well for a nice boost of threat
• Very Useful in PvP (target a dpser who's trying to nuke your healer & throw in save the runts, & the poor dpser is left between a rock & a hard place).

What i like about this is that they didn't go down the road of 'forcing' players to attack other players, they just made it so they have a very good reason to do so.

3.Da Toughest
"A grand war cry to proclaim yourself da toughest! All your attacks gain a 25% chance to increase your wounds by 30 for 10 seconds. You will be healed by the amount increased"
A nice enough skill 1v1 but nothing ground breaking where this shines is when you are using a Aoe attack to hit 4 or more targets at the smae time almost guaranteeing a proc. What mythic have achieved with this skill is something which is, A: not overpowered 1v1 B. Allows PvE soloing for a tank class & C. to find the biggest group of enemies & get stuck in RvR.

In the end quite simply if tanks in WoW were given these abilities they would cry for joy.

for further reading on black orc check out Save Da Runtz or Stunty Stomper