Decoding Aion videos

I just realized that the people who do not play Aion may not be familiar with what's going on in an Aion video. I know I definitely felt that way when I was looking at Korean Aion videos a few months ago. In this post, I'm going to try to provide some info to help non-Aion players decode Aion videos.

The pic on the left shows the class symbols/icons that appear beside a target's HP bar.

A1 - Spiritmaster, B1 - Sorcerer
A2 - Assassin, B2 - Ranger
A3 - Gladiator, B3 - Templar
A4 - Chanter, B4 - Cleric

Below is a labelled screenshot of my UI. In general, what I do in my videos is: strip my target's buffs, apply debuffs, CC (silence, disarm, root, fear, etc), and use pet commands. The only chain skill that I use is a "snare → short stun". Everytime I hit the "snare" ability, my "short stun" indicator pops up to the right of my character.

Bonus vid: another rift adventure in Heiron before dinner yesterday. This time, I popped out at location E on the map in my previous post. The action in the video happened as I was moving from E to F along the north edge of the map. Hopefully the videos make more sense now :)

Exploring Heiron, enemy territory

Yesterday, I hopped on some rifts to explore the enemy zone, Heiron. I decided I needed more PVP in my life, now that I was at max level. However, I was Rank 4 in terms of "PVP rank". At this rank, I would start to lose Abyss Points every time I was killed. Going into unfamiliar territory and not having PVP'ed in a while, I anticipated many deaths. So instead of potentially wasting my Abyss Points, I spent them purchasing the advanced stigma Infernal Pain. That deranked me to Rank 6. Sweet. The next thing I packed with me for my trip was a resurrection kisk. This allows me to set up a resurrection point anywhere in the zone. However, it is visible to the enemy and can be destroyed.

Then, it was time to find an open rift that allowed Lvl 50s to enter. Rifts appear every ~20 minutes at random locations, and have level restrictions for entry. There are only 2 "usable" rifts for me to enter into Heiron from Beluslan. My first rift was short-lived. I had trouble orienting myself and finding a safe spot to drop my Kisk. Consequently, I got zerged and my Kisk was destroyed. I spent some time after that restocking my "rifting picnic bag" and running around Beluslan to try to find the next open rift, since the first rift had closed. It was annoying that there was no way to "run" to Heiron, and the only way to enter enemy territory was via a rift.

Eventually, a rift opens. The rift spits me out at location F in the map above. Just like before, my first order of business was to orient myself, and find a safe spot to set down my Kisk. Since this was an unfamiliar enemy zone, initially everything seemed dangerous. For great success, I knew I had to sort the zone out. I needed to figure out where my safe zones are, where the danger zones are, what the enemy traffic patterns are, what level NPCs each area has, etc --- just like when I decided to roam around solo on my Zealot in WAR. I needed to figure out what was actually dangerous, and what was not. I would also benefit from figuring if anything in the zone was advantageous to me.

My plan of action was to first spiral out from F, and to lower-level areas to get my feet wet. Get some easy kills, work up some confidence, and maybe get some 1 vs many fights. I started out circling around locations F and C. Eventually I had a good idea where the low-level areas are and I'd try to up the challenge and move to locations B, D and E; to run myself into higher-level players. With this approach, I have a better feeling of where the "safer" areas are, I have more control over my surroundings and I could consciously put myself in less or more danger. Videos below.

Out-levelled players who bravely put up a fight:



Some noteworthy encounters, including me being a jerk and playing with the prey. I didn't notice that there was a level 50 sorceror in the mix, or I would have been a little more careful.



If you have been following my Spiritmaster-Chanter posts, you may notice the key moment in the fight where the 1st Chanter in the following video gave the fight away. He almost had me killed for goofing around too much. But, he gave me too much space to med up and when he finally closed the distance, he was too trigger happy with his ranged stun, Soul Strike. That allowed me to hit "stun → fear" unchallenged and take control of the fight.



And finally, moments of fail below. The first one was me trying to mess with a few groups that were getting ready for an instance. I bit off a little more than I could chew and got gangbanged. The second was me stumbling onto a bunch of Lvl 50s waiting outside a rift from Heiron to Beluslan! I saw a whole bunch of red dots pop up on my radar, and got curious so I took a closer look. Then I noticed a rift, and my first thought was that they were waiting for my friends to jump through it and ambush them. But then I hovered over the rift and discovered that I could click it --- they were getting ready to infiltrate Beluslan! While I was being distracted, they noticed me and I was hunted down.



My kisk had expired and I was sent back to Beluslan. Shortly after, there were reports that Elyos groups were rifting into Beluslan.

Aion's aerial gameplay issues

At first glance, flight in Aion seems like a good idea. But the more I experience it, the more I start to see areas that don't seem to be as well thought out or nailed down. In general, they've designed combat and classes to work a certain way. However, these combat mechanics and classes have to work both on the ground and while flying. While they work for the most part on the ground, they do not completely translate to a similar visceral experience in the air. I thought about it for a little yesterday, and the following are what I believe some of the reasons are:

Flight speed is faster than running speed
While not instantly obvious, this has very significant implications for combat and mechanics. All abilities in the game are tuned for run speed and do not readily work in the air without mechanic adjustments. E.g., how a 3s ability works on the ground is not the same as 3s in the air. Even quick melee abilities suffer, since quick on the ground often translates to "target is out of range" in the air. To have combat feel as good in the air as it does on the ground, they should have done something like shorten cast times by the % difference of run speed vs flight speed. Then, reducing defense stats while flying should keep it balanced.

Animation root
Many abilities have an ending animation root. While it is annoying enough on the ground, it is exacerbated in the air because more distance can be covered over the time that someone spends being rooted by animations. E.g., get caught in an animation snare in the air and your opponent can be long gone. They should shorten or remove animation root when flying.

The factors above are reasons for aerial class disparities, and why some classes appear to have a significant advantage over other classes when in the air. The classes that benefit from fighting in the air are the classes that have low/instant cast times and short/no animation snares. 

Area effects are 2-dimensional
Many AE abilities (e.g., buffs, mantras, fear, heals) only work in 2-D. If a target is on a different z- coordinate, they will not be affected.

Flight as transportation
I believe that this is a bad idea. It implies that long flight times are necessary and goes against original intent that flight should not be overused. When players roam around in a typical 'grounded' or 'no-fly' zone, they can run around indefinitely. They can run up hills, down hills, glide across vallies, into caves, around rocks, sit, hide, etc. However, this is not the case in the Abyss. Once you're in the air, your flight timer starts to tick down.

The Abyss is mostly empty space
In fact, too much empty space. Each layer of the Abyss is a large zone, sparsely populated by islands that only have 1 or 2 levels of flat land (but typically only 1). While this is fine if flight combat was not clunky or if Aion was a space/flight simulator where you could actually have fun fights in open space, this is not the case in Aion and battles in open space are clunky. It's also easier to run away from a fight in the air than it is in the ground, and lame strategies such as running someone's 5-10 minute flight timer down are common. As vast as the Abyss is, there's a lot of wasted or practically unusable space. They should have scattered more platforms or large asteroids all over the place to make things more interesting. They could also have added more features to the Abyss islands' terrain. E.g., caves, tunnels (think Star Wars), and more levels.

Flight time
Everyone can easily consume flight time potions to stay in the air for a long time. Why not just allow everyone to fly for 5 minutes if that's the kind of combat they are trying to encourage? Right now, the zone layout and flight mechanics require that people chain-chug flight time potions like water in the Abyss.

No special flight abilities
This is especially disappointing for me. Flying in Aion is pretty much like running in 3-D. You don't get any acceleration from diving toward the ground or any variation in speed at any time. You are just an object that moves at a constant speed in 3-dimensional space and there are no special aerial attacks or maneuvers. There's also a lame limitation that prevents you from falling too far. If you tried to fold your wings and dive, the game won't let you go very far before crashing you into some invisible plane. Basically, being in flight dumbs down each class and renders many abilities virtually ineffective.

Despite these gripes I have, flight can still a good idea, provided that the developers make an effort to tune and clean up the mechanics, and rework the flying zones. Being able to fly is still great, along with being able to fight in 3-D. But the developers really need to get off their thumbs and put more thought into their flight system (combat, mechanics, zones) if they want a winning product. Just allowing people to move (like they were running) in 3-D and passing that as 'flying' does not cut it.

Currently, aerial combat is a dumbed-down, more restrictive, and more broken version of ground combat; with the exception that you can move in the vertical direction as well.

Spiritmaster-Chanter update (video)

The video starts with me having a Wind Spirit. The Wind Spirit does pretty decent melee-range damage, and can cast a short stun with a low cooldown. I was trying to win the fight without chaining Fears, but using control and dispel abilities instead. The next couple of fights are with a Water Spirit, which has very low HP and does ranged attacks but does not have a stun. We moved to a less laggy location for the last couple of fights, but the location that the Chanter picked was disadvantageous for him because it was surrounded by walls. Toward the end, I settled into the sequence of: dispelling buffs and HOTs, waiting for Soul Strike, and then leading Fears with stuns. I revealed what I was doing to him after our duels --- his gears started turning and he exclaimed that he had discovered the "Achilles heel" of Spiritmasters. I expect more interesting counters from him in the future!

Level 47 Spiritmaster experiences vs Chanters

  
I had a couple of interesting duels last weekend. This was long overdue, as I have not been learning as much about each class as I should. Unfortunately, this post will not contain any videos. The duels were often frantic since I am still learning, and FRAPS stutters had cost me a couple of fights. What I have instead are a bunch of notes or tips that may help other Spiritmasters against Chanters, or vice versa (by understanding what SMs can or cannot do).

Key Chanter factors:

1. HOTs (especially Recovery Spell) and shields (especially Word of Spellstopping and Divine Curtain)
   These help to keep HP up through fears. The SM cannot out-DPS even the HOTs enough and must dispel them.
2. Soul Strike ranged stun (also, Parrying Strike and Binding Word)
   These are for kiting the SM. Stun to enter into melee/stunlock range, or stun to get out of fear range. The spell's damage also eats away at the SM's HP. However, drawing out the fight too much will lead to a draw as it allows the SM to refresh stoneskin and pot. One interesting thing to note is that when a SM does Stone Shock (stun) into Fear Shriek, there will be a small window between the stun and Fear Shriek where the Chanter regains control of his character. I.e., the stun duration is shorter than 1.5s. This is a good opportunity for the Chanter to reply with a stun of his own. If the stun lands, the SM will be disabled while the Chanter is feared away scott-free. A smarter SM may try a Body Root (to disable the stuns) into Earth Shock into Fear Shriek. But, remember that Body Root can be potted out of. Save stuns for stopping a Fear.
3. Celerity Mantra
   Mantras cannot be removed by the SM. With Celerity on, a snared Chanter will run at the same speed as the SM. This means that if the Chanter is feared, stopping to cast anything will put the SM farther behind the Chanter. If the SM lets himself fall too far behind, he will not be in range to chain other fears. The SM only has 1 or 2 "DOTs" that can be cast on the run (in addition to having pet damage). Having the Celerity Mantra greatly reduces the SM's damage, in addition to making it harder for the SM to chain fear. If the Chanter has a run speed scroll, the SM must slap on his speed scroll too. Note that speed scroll buffs can be dispelled by the SM.
4. High HP / magic resist
   This is the greatest counter against the SM at end game. The SM can only chain 3-4 fears (the fears are on a 30s, 1 min and 5 min cooldown). If a Chanter stacks enough HP to live through 3-4 fears, there is nothing the SM can do to kill the Chanter. Once the fear chain is up, the Chanter is free to kite and heal and the SM will be a sitting duck with his fears on cooldown.
5. Greater Healing Potion (to remove Silence/Root)
   When the Chanter is rooted, the SM has time to set up debuffs, DOTs and CC. Since Chanters cannot dispel roots, having Greater Healing Pots is a must. Some SMs rely on Silence or Body Root to stretch the fear chain. Pot out of Silence/Bind and the chain is broken.
6. Stay away from confined areas (see SM below)

Key SM factors :

1. Dispel (especially Ignite Aether and Magic Implosion)
   A Chanter has various self-buffs, and some buffs mentioned above that give him the edge. These must be removed to level the playing field. The core Dispel ability has a cast time, a cooldown and only removes 1 buff at a time. There is no time to remove all the buffs of the Chanter one at a time, especially when trying to CC or follow him after a fear. Having instacast dispels that take off 3 buffs each is helpful. Note that Ignite Aether and Magic Implosion do not share cooldowns.
2. Curse of Water instant fear
   For high-HP Chanters, Curse of Water is a must, unfortunately. Against a high-HP Chanter, the only way to win is to try to get the Chanter's HP low enough to be able to finish with chained fears. If the Chanter is smart/conservative and keeps himself topped up... disadvantage SM.
3. Shackle of Vulnerability
   This is nice for the casting speed debuff and the elemental resist debuff (damage increase). However, it does not last very long and has a cast time, so choosing when to cast it is important.
4. Silence, Body Root
   Silence stops heals and Body Root stops the ranged stun. Body Root also reduces melee damage.
5. Running speed scroll
   The only way to get a speed advantage over a Chanter is to dispell the Chanter's speed scroll buff and for the SM to use one.
6. Having a pet already out
   Time is a scarce resource against a Chanter. Taking the time to pop the instant summon buff, followed by a brief stop and jump-cast to summon the pet means you either lose CC or damage time. The wind pet can be helpful sometimes for the additional stun. Note that all pet auto-attacks and Orb damage are physical damage (they can enable the Chanter's parry-based abilities).
7. Keep track of the Soul Strike (ranged stun) cooldown
   Soul Strike's stun lasts 4s, and its cooldown is 12s. If the Chanter is unable to chain stun for the ~6s after the Soul Strike stun wears off, the Chanter is vulnerable to the Stone Shock into Fear combo. However, stay out of melee range after Stone Shock to avoid the melee stuns.
8. Save Chain of Earth and Stone Shock
   They are useful for leading Fears. I think it is a waste to cast Chain of Earth on a Feared target, or when snared with the Chanter's Binding Word. Pot out of Binding Word instead.
9. Being in a confined area
   It is a massive advantage for the SM to be able to pin the Chanter against a wall. If the Chanter is pinned, the SM can plant his feet and go "PVE raid boss" on the Chanter while chain fearing: Spirit Wrath Position, Spirit Erosion, Shackle of Vulnerability, 2 Spirit Claws, Spirit Disturbance, Summon Orbs/Energies, Erosion, Sandblaster.

I'm very impressed with how balanced the classes are, and how the combat system allows for complex encounters. I cannot enter each fight with a fixed strategy, and I have to constantly act/react to my opponents actions. The fight could go either way at any point in the fight. I've been having alot of fun playing 'mental chess' --- going over scenarios in my head and having duels/discussions with guildies.

Update: I found more 1v1 matchup info here.

Infiltrating Eltnen through Rifts

Finally! I've found the rifts. Rifts appear at regular times in the PVE zone, but at random locations. To find a rift, you could check one of their possible spawn locations yourself, or check general chat in case someone has already reported one. One of the incentives for rifting is to complete "rift quests" that give you good rewards, proportional to the challenge of completing quests in enemy territory. The first video is of me entering the rift solo and as a small group. We popped up deep inside enemy territory --- sometimes inside a questing area right next to enemies. We then had to navigate our way out of danger and stay mobile so as not to have enemies converge on us, as our locations get broadcasted in their general chat.



After going on a killing spree, we get a debuff that makes our location visible to all enemies in the area, in addition to being banned from rifting for a while. This was probably from all the low-PVP-ranked farming bots we plowed through. The debuff is called Ariel's Curse: "You are under Ariel's Curse for killing too many lower level targets in Elysea. The curse prevents you from using the Rifts. Return to Asmodae and wait until the curse is lifted." Shortly after receiving the debuff, we were zerged down.



The next video is of us practicing rifting as a guild for the first time. This was a little more difficult than small-man rifting for a couple of reasons. Communication and coordination were difficult, since we had to maneuver a big blob while the fringes of the blog would keep getting focus-fired and CC'd. Everytime we engaged, we had trouble disengaging and extending because part of our blob would get stuck behind. The other difficulty is that a blob attracts more attention. Attracting lots of attention and lacking mobility meant that we would eventually get zerged by increasing numbers. We even have a "300"-style standoff at one point :)



Bonus vid: Water Spirit: Spirit disturbance - "Crash". This is a situational spell that drops flying players out of the sky. The spell requires the Water Spirit pet to be out and the target to be close enough to the ground to be in the Water Spirit's range.



And here's some silly back and forth fighting in the Abyss, by the "layer teleporters". The teleporters of both factions that transport players to the different levels of the Abyss are placed right next to each other.

How I manage a gazillion keybindings

    Playing a Spiritmaster places a lot of demand on keyboard/mouse resources. This is exasperated by the introduction of flight in Aion, and having pet-related abilities. If key mappings are not ergonomic, they can lead to poor reaction times. Worse yet, bad key mappings and repeated contorting can result in painful hand injuries.

From my gaming experience, the following are my general rules for keymapping:

1. In-combat abilities should be bound to convenient locations near the movement keys (WSAD)
   I use the Function keys F1 through F4, number keys 1 through 4 (5 is a little too far), and all the alphabet keys around WSAD, up til R, F and V. I consider anything to the right of F4, 4, R, F, V too far away and I do not use them for in-combat actions.
2. Abilities that can be activated on the run should be placed where they can be hit while using the movement keys
   I find that I can comfortably hit C with my thumb while maneuvering on WSAD. I used to put the V key under this category, but I now feel that it's too far away to stretch the thumb while using WSAD.
   The other keys I have under this category are: Q, E, 2 and `. At first glance, these keys don't seem like they can be hit while using WSAD, but I've developed a habit to strafe one way or other if I have to hit them while strafing. And, I can hit any of them with my middle finger on W. The ` key is a stretch, so I reserve that for less frequent abilities or instant abilities with a long cooldown.
3. Abilities that have a cast/build time can be a placed within easy reach of the WSAD fingers
   Abilities with a cast/build time require that you stop moving. Hence, your WSAD fingers will be free. I like to put a frequently used spell with a cast time on 3. So to cast it, I stop and slide my middle finger from W to 3, and back to W.
4. Infrequently-used abilities that are important and require a quick reaction time can be placed a little farther away. But, they should still be relatively close and accessible without any modifiers
   I use R and V for these abilities. R is currently my "Silence" ability (and MouseWheelUp -> R is my "Disarm"). V used to be my "Blink" ability when I played a mage, and my "absorb damage" shield as a healer. It is now used to activate my long-cooldown "resist 1 magical attack" shield.
5. Actions that are less timing-critical can reside farther away
   The keys I have under this category are F1 through F4, and F. The reason the F key is here even though it appears to be near is because It's hard to stretch for it with the middle finger on W, or with a finger on the A or D key.
   Right now, my Function keys perform tasks like consume potions or select a pet to summon. When I played a healer, I would use the Function keys to select group members, in conjunction with clicking friendly targets on the screen.
   
6. Swap Caps Lock with Ctrl
   I feel that it's awkward to hit Ctrl in the bottom left of the keyboard. Which is a waste since Ctrl is such a great modifier key. And look at Caps Lock there. A big fat key between Tab and Shift. How often do you use Caps Lock? I always swap Caps Lock and Ctrl for work and play. With Ctrl in the place of Caps Lock, I can now hit Ctrl with my pinky without moving my hand.
7. Use modifiers whenever it makes sense
   Modifiers are keys like Alt, Ctrl and Shift. These allow you to effectively double/triple the key functions right under your fingers. E.g., for a key in a prime real estate such as E, you have plain ol' E, Ctrl-E, Shift-E and Alt-E at your disposal. My general rule of thumb is to avoid modifiers for timing-critical or frequently-used functions. For less critical functions, consider using modifiers to overload a nearby key, instead of using a key farther away. However, be careful with the modifiers as they can sometimes cause you to scrunch or tense up your hand unnecessarily. This can lead to untimely fatigue or worse, injuries. I tend to avoid Shift and Alt for this reason, and only use Ctrl since I have it bound to the Caps Lock position.
8. Overload the scroll wheel
   It's a waste to use the scroll wheel for the simple task of zooming in and out. Move the function of zooming to the keyboard, or a secondary mouse. However, not all games support mapping the scroll wheel. Fortunately, I have a mouse that lets me reprogram the scroll wheel to simulate hitting keyboard keys. I currently use the scroll wheel for tasks such as:
   Scroll Down: Hotbar 1 (primary; frequently-used actions)
   Scroll Up: Hotbar 2 (secondary; long-cooldown actions)
   Ctrl + Scroll Up: Hotbar 3 (infrequently-used actions)
   Shift + Scroll Up: Hotbar 4 (other infrequently used actions like marking targets or emotes)
   Ctrl + Scroll Down: Assist target
   Shift + Scroll Down: Cycle through friendlies
9. More buttons on the mouse helps
   The mouse hand is often neglected, with the keyboard hand doing most of the work. Getting a mouse with more buttons means you get more keys to bind. I use the extra buttons on my mouse for flight-related actions and to control my pet. One benefit of using mouse buttons is that it's often faster/easier to hit a mouse button and a keyboard key sequentially; compared to hitting 2 mouse buttons sequentially or 2 keys sequentially. This is why I prefer switching hotbars with my mouse, instead of the keyboard. However, I don't place frequently used abilities on the mouse --- the only mouse buttons I want to press often are left-click and right-click.
10. The spacebar is a button too (and so are W, S, A and D)
    Typically, the spacebar is used for Jump. In Aion, it is also used to toggle gliding. But, with modifier keys, we can overload the spacebar with additional actions. I use Ctrl+Spacebar to cancel flight in Aion (fold my wings). I figured that if Spacebar toggled gliding and I won't be jumping when I'm flying, Ctrl+Spacebar made sense. The same idea can be applied to the W key. W is already used for moving forward, so it's not a stretch to have Ctrl+W toggle Autorun (instead of wasting some other key). Having Ctrl remapped to the CapsLock position helps for things like this.

Level 28-31: key skills and the consequence of reaching terminal velocity

Level 28 is when the Spiritmaster begins to feel more like a Spiritmaster. The CC ability I have been looking forward to is Fear (level 28). Fear is a CC that puts the target in a feared state and doesn't break on damage. The downsides to Fear are its long cast time, high mana consumption and long cooldown. Another neat ability, Summoning Alacrity, came at Level 31. Summoning Alacrity makes summons instacast for 10s. Apart from the pet summons, this ability also affects the DOT servant summons.

Now to the videos. For reasons outside my present sphere of knowledge, zergs happen in the Abyss occasionally. I was exploring around the lower Abyss when I find myself caught in the middle of a clash between an Elyos force and an Asmodian force:



Here's a video of something unexpected happening in an aerial fight. A high-level priest was trying to get away from a few of us lowbies by flying really high. He just bolted and shot up vertically for minutes as we followed him. As he kept ascending, I saw that my flight timer was depleting and I popped a flight time potion. This bought me some extra time but the priest kept ascending. But we weren't making any progress on his HP bar, so I started to wonder how I was going to get down, now that my flight timer was nearly empty, my flight time potion was on cooldown and I was so far up that the ground was clipped by my draw distance. Then I thought, "okay, I'll save a few seconds of flight time, cut my wings, allow myself to freefall til just a few seconds from the ground, then reopen my wings." This didn't work quite as expected and I mysteriously died in mid-air. Apparently in Aion, you die if you reach terminal velocity:



And finally here are 2 fights from me stumbling into some Elyos. The first one was against a warrior, who retreated back to his guard tower. I underestimated the range/power of the guard tower and died a foolish death from being zapped by it:



What's sucky about the Spiritmasters right now is that the pets have trouble following, especially when flying. That's why my pet is rarely with me in the videos, except when duelling. It's not that bad of a problem at these lower levels, since the pet is mainly a DOT with a HP bar. It makes more of a difference at higher levels, when pets enable more interesting abilities. Flying pets are already on the Korean test servers, so hopefully pets will be able to fly by the time it matters to me :)

Level 26 thoughts on the Abyss and Rifts

One thing great about the Abyss is that it merges PVE and PVP into a single zone. However, that's not all. It also puts everyone on the server (of all levels) in the same place. Here's an encounter I had with a lvl 37 Templar (10 levels above me) and his friends while I was trying to complete a quest in the Abyss. I was on my way to meet an NPC as part of a quest, and apparently the farther I travel from the starting Fortress, the more likely I am to run into enemies (and PVP). The video shows how much effect level differences have. A few of us lowbies tried our best to scratch at their HP bars, but they bullied us with their level gap and I was forced to retreat.



The next video captures some Rift action. We were completing some quests in Morheim when random rifts opened near us, spilling Elyos into our PVE zone. Similar to the Abyss, the rifts open at the higher level areas in the Zone. I.e., you will be less likely to encounter PVP when you start PVEing in the zone initially, but as you start progressing to higher level quests in the zone, you could find rifts opening next to you and be forced to PVP. The last part of the video shows a swirly vortex thing in the sky and a column of light that some say indicate where rifts open. But nothing happened and I failed to find a rift yet again.

Aion update: Level 26 Spiritmaster duels

I'm back! It took me 2 weeks to level up my Spiritmaster above the level I was when I made my last Aion post. I'm now level 26. Level 20 granted me access to Stigma stones. These stones allow players to customize their class' "spec". But this only gave me a new ability or two to play with. Levelling 20-25 were the worst levels for me. PVE was starting to get tiresome. Levelling up professions was (is) lame and a boring time sink. It's the usual minigame of spending tons of money, pushing the button a quadrillion times and watching the progress bar wrestle its way full. But, most annoying to me was that I was starting to see some PVP, but the key abilities that define my class weren't available to me until Levels 25 and 28.

Then it suddenly got interesting again at level 25. The game funnels you into quests that prep you for access into the Abyss (the ORVR zone). From what I can tell about the Abyss, it's more like DAOC than WAR is, was or hopes to be. A whole bunch of new Abyss quests popped up and so began my char's journey into the world of PvPvE. The Abyss is like WAR if there were no separate PVP/PVE zones, but instead one massive zone with PVE, fortresses, relics and the possibility of PVP encounters at any time. The difference with fortresses too is that they are hubs for PVE and PVP activity. People would go there to get their stuff done. If a fortress gets attacked, it's like the alarm sounding in a fire station. The PVP in the Abyss totally sidetracked me from my questing. I didn't even get to figure out what to do for my first Abyss quest before I saw combat log spam and a cluster of red names in the distance!

Eventually I was back at Morheim, and I tried to catch a rift to complete some quests. The sucky thing about rifts is that they open at any one of seven locations at random. I followed a report in General Chat hoping to catch a rift and some PVP, but when I got there, there were only a group of friendlies chilling while waiting for the next rift to appear. I can't figure out why WAR wouldn't allow duels for the life of me. We were bored, so a fun  way to kill time was to duel to tweak our skills and strategies.

There weren't many around my level, so I only managed to duel with a Ranger, Sorc and Assassin. I hadn't duelled since beta and PVE has been rotting my skills, so this was a nice chance to practice:



The assassin I duelled with didn't have Aethertwisting slotted --- that would have changed everything. I need to figure out a game plan for Aethertwisting. That reminds me... I watched a fight between a Cleric and Spiritmaster a while back and the Cleric summoned a Holy Servant. I'm going to see if the in-game Spiritmaster channel can give me more info about that too.

Aion CBT 5 & 6 rift action (lvl 22 SM P.O.V.)

Update: CBT 6





Looking forward to the Aion release, and finally being able to develop my real char!

Blast from the past: pre-BC Mage video

Ooo look what I found: footage from my past life as a Mage in pre-BC WoW.

The first video is of the Arathi Basin (5-node capture the flag) scenario. A shitty Alliance premade had captured all the nodes and pushed the PUG Horde team I was with back to the spawn point. At this point the PUGs started whining and crying about how we should just let them win so it would be over quickly. This pissed me off greatly and I thought hell no. No way I'm going to sit back and let sucky players get an easy win. So, I snuck off to the Gold Mine to flip the node to delay their win (and hopefully annoy them). I find a Rogue there defending solo. I cap the flag, the premade responds with excessive numbers (noobs) and I work for a kill before I am vaporized:



Here's the 2nd video with some Magey action in Warsong Gulch:



Sorry for the poor video quality. I didn't have a great rig back then, so these were the only 2 videos I Fraps'ed. Thinking back about it, it's a shame that I don't have any videos showing the crazy honor grind. This was way back when honor decayed and everyone on the server had to compete against each other to advance in rank. I have some sweet memories... especially from the epic fights that happened when two honor-grinding premades slammed into each other.

After a crazy (stupid) grind, I got to the rank of Warlord, and felt a (masochistic) sense of achievement. The grind involved running a rag-tag group of PVP-ers consisting of outcasts (WoW was still very much a PVE game at that time so PVPers were often shunned by guilds). Us outcasts tended to hate PVE, and PVP was our main source of fun in the game. We didn't have the fancy, rare and powerful gear that the PVE'ers had. We made do with greens, and whatever we could get our hands on through PVP. We were often outgeared by our opponents, but we made up for it with experience, teamwork and our burning desire to win. The grind was weeks (months?) of savage killing and methodical and efficient winning. All we cared about was getting maximum Honor in the minimum amount of time. Often, scenarios would start and end with barely any killing, because killing was unnecessary. We would win many games with superior CC and teamwork alone. So much so, that we'd sometimes take a break and fight naked, just for laughs. Sometimes the humor would rub off on our opponents, and they'd respond with a dance party at their spawn. As much as I detested the grind, they were good times. I made many good friends (as you would anytime you compete with a team). And I had many good fights.

Then Blizzard announced the Burning Crusade expansion. New levels! New gear! It was a slap in the face to my Mage. He was made obsolete instantly. They let us keep our rank, but it did not mean anything more than just a title over our heads. Random green gear from trash NPCs were better than my Warlord PVP gear. Stripped of my rank and my gear, I quit the game and never looked back.

Aion closed beta #4

RL stuff kept me occupied this weekend, so I only managed to get from level 19 to 21. Unexpectedly, there was some PVP action outside the Abyss. Something about rifts opening and Asmodians and Elyos ending up in the same place at the same time. I was caught by surprise while I was PVE-ing and had no clue how it all worked or where the baddies were coming from.



It was a confusing weekend for me. It felt awkward playing the Spiritmaster at this level. It's as if I'm growing out of my old "generic Mage" skin but I'm not quite a Spiritmaster yet. E.g., the only CCs I have are root/snares, which means it's still a pissing contest against casters.

Video compilation (Zealot RVR)

With no game to play, I decided to make a movie as a tribute to the Zealot. I selected a couple of my videos, stitched them together to have some semblance of flow, sped gameplay up by 5% and picked some tunes to go with it. The product: a compilation of solo/duo/trio and RVR prowling action from my "project" to find some fun away from WAR's horrible endgame.

Warning: the video ended up pretty long (1 hour) despite some edits, and pretty large (800MB) despite messing around with quality and compression.



Links
Download: Part 1 of 2 and Part 2 of 2; or as a single file in lower quality
Warhammermovies.com (Woo! Featured movie of the day! Pic)

Contents
00:00 - BW + BW + SM
04:13 - WP --- Engi
05:44 - SM
07:22 - BW
08:03 - Engi
09:45 - WH
11:26 - (Zealot + Sorc) WH + Engi
12:19 - (Zealot + Sorc) Engi + WH + SM
13:33 - (Zealot + Sorc) WP + Engi + WH
14:23 - prowling
15:26 - evading SM + WL
16:55 - stalking the zerg
17:08 - WH + IB
18:07 - IB
19:39 - Engi
20:35 - BW
23:34 - scouting
23:47 - stalking the zerg
24:02 - hunting stragglers
26:29 - IB + WL + AM + IB
33:00 - (Zealot + Sorc) Engi + WH
33:33 - (Zealot + Sorc) KoTBS + Engi
34:35 - Slayer + AM
35:30 - ninja stealth hiding in tree
35:38 - (Zealot + Sorc) SW + KotBS + Engi + AM + WH + SM + SW + WH
39:45 - SM
40:15 - fishing WL + WL + KotBS
41:30 - fishing WL + WL (2nd attempt)
41:50 - (Zealot + Sorc) BW --- BW --- BW + WH --- SM + SW --- BW + WL + WH + RP + Slayer
43:30 - BW
46:12 - (Zealot + Chosen) WP + AM + SW + BW --- + KotBS + RP
54:33 - (Zealot + Chosen + Sorc) SW + RP + SM + WP + KotBS
57:15 - BW + IB + WP --- + WL + WP + WH
1:02:19 - WH --- BW + WL + WP --- WH
1:04:54 - AM + BW
1:06:36 - gear/spec

Aion 2nd N.A. Beta weekend

My WAR account expired today! That's good news, by the way. I logged in a handful of times in the weekend, but each time, I only got as far as buffing myself and checking my friends list. I had no motivation whatsoever to do anything else. The last time I logged in, I saw that Order was pushing all 3 zones and seiging a Fortress. I winced and made a face as if I had drank rotten milk and logged off... and logged into Aion!

I got to level 10 after some nasty PVE. Aion's PVE isn't bad by usual standards. I just dislike PVE; always have, always will. I threw in the towel a couple of times when I had to do some stupid travel quests that made me run all over the place and back again for 30 minutes.  This would be equivalent to what WAR calls "epic quests" (or what I like to call "epic travel quests"). I don't know why game designers think it's "fun", or "epic" to have quests that make you run back and forth for more than a few minutes.

I recorded some videos from the weekend. I don't have many videos of the PVE action. Instead, I have more of duels and what seems to be an Arena. Flight does add another interesting dimension to the game, and I'd say that if you are not deft in managing your flight abilities, you will definitely be at a disadvantage.

Getting a feel for Spiritmaster mechanics on some NPCs:



Spiritmaster vs melee (Assassin, Warrior). There's a mismatch between caster CCs and melee counter-CCs at the this level. Things should sort themselves out at endgame:




Spiritmaster vs RDPS (Sorcerer, Spiritmaster). There aren't any anti-caster CCs at the moment. Only thing at this level are damage chance-to-interrupts and spell chain pushbacks (stuns). Because of this, it's pretty much like a wild west gunfight at this level --- whoever gets the interrupt first wins. The 2nd video is a little more interesting. In it, I fight a Spiritmaster and I try to do some kiting to disrupt the stun/damage sequences:




Spiritmaster vs Priest. It's a "max DPS and heal interrupt" game. Feels like DPS is greater than HPS at this level from the fights in the videos. Although, Klausen (from Phoenix Throne) destroyed me on his Cleric earlier by outhealing my damage and sneaking in some damage between heals. I didn't have fraps running at that time though:



Arena. We found out about the existence of the Arena minutes before we had to go to bed and rallied a group to go up against a team that had been kicking ass there. We held them off for a short while, but eventually got overwhelmed by their number of healers:



Bonus vid - Tooka (Lylia) kicking butt on her Chanter:



Combat is more involved and engaging than WAR even at this level. But that's the advantage of a combat system where classes are ultimately balanced with each other. Systems balanced for group combat have to dumb down each class so as not to give too many tools to each class. I think this is where WAR fails hard twice. First, by having classes balanced at a group level, paper classes will always be at a disadvantage to counter scissor classes, and have to rely on help from rock classes. This means that when group synergy is not just perfect, players die fast and are not able to do anything about it. Second, WAR has CCs that have no counter (stuns, long disables). Focused fire is enough to give serious problems in any combat system. But when you add the two characteristics of the WAR combat system mentioned above, combat becomes extremely cheesy with the one-two I-WIN combos. I believe it is possible to have a good combat system balanced for group PVP, but just not the way WAR does it.

Case study: why lower tiers are more fun

People are always talking about how the quality of gameplay plummets in T4. I am going to try to elaborate on this because I feel that this is one of the weakest points of WAR. The fact that people are experiencing a significant and noticable decrease in their gaming experience is a gigantic hint to some of the fundamental problems in WAR. From here on, note that I only speak for myself. As much as I hate the RVE endgame, I believe the problem is not because of Fortresses or Keeps or BOs, or any of that RVE bullshit.

The problem is combat and mechanics.

Somewhere between Tier 3 and Tier 4, almost every class begins to get armed with the The Cheese: disables that last a long time, AOE CCs, and powerful AOE damage. Prior to this, no one person had the power to do enough damage to single-handedly slaughter multiple people simultaneously. There was also limited CCs such as silences or stuns, so for the most part, classes had to rely on good ol' fashioned single-target damage. There were fewer AOE snares and disables, so everyone was free to run around and brawl. No one felt helpless for losing control of their characters due to CC.

Furthermore, there was not enough damage that someone would be vaporized within one GCD. But yet, people died, and fights were won and lost --- even though damage was lower, it was never a stalemate. In any prolonged fight, eventually people would fight smarter and do a better job of focusing fire and selecting targets. And that was what made fights fun. There would be clash and a battle. But without crazy damage, the battles could mature and people could got a few good licks in. There's also enough time to experience the joy of a "tough" battle, and being able to go through a process of figuring out what is going on, who we're fighting, and rallying the mob to outsmart the enemy. Thus, giving every fight (even over something as boring as a BO) a chance to blossom into an epic fight.




Fights like these will NEVER happen in T4, because of the AOEs and CCs. Note that in the first video, Order and Destro were fighting in close quarters. In T4, it would have played out like the following: AOE CC (frustrated victims), AOE damage (dead victims). T4 combat deprives the players of the chance to see battles mature into "epic battles". Another thing to note in the video is the number of people fighting. Even though the number is large, it doesn' feel "zergy", because no one gets "steamrolled". And that is key. Large-scale combat can be fun. It is not fun in T4 because of the "steamrolling" effect from AOEs and CCs. Large-scale combat is fun in the lower tiers because of the absence of them. And take a look at all the melee careers! Look at how happy they are being useful and swinging their weapons.

BTW, Shamans are overpowered :) Our shammies had no problems holding our own in T3, even though we were only lvl 20 and 22. Check out what I picked up yesterday at level 21: Gork's Barbs. Shamans get AP drain + healing debuff? Damn. Lylia picked up I'll Take That! with only 6 Mastery Points. My Zealot needed 10 Mastery Points to get something similar, but inferior: Boon of Tzeentch (requires Harbinger and has 5s cooldown). Other stuff to come in this tier are RunAway, EEEEK! and Gork Sez Stop. Shamans have the tools to disassemble any class.

In other news, Aion Beta opens today!

Fishing for fights in Tier 4 and twin gobbo power in Tier 2

I raged again yesterday and swore never to do another Scenario (I got tired of: being a 'support class' to the PUG, being a helpless boring healbot, and The Cheese™). So, since Scenarios are the only thing Lylia finds fun in T4 now, she logged on her Shaman today instead of her Sorceress while I went around fishing for fights for a little bit:





But Tier 4 is not something that sits well when taken in anything other than very small doses. I went to detox by watching some TV and caught the sweet finale of Out of the Wild on Discovery. Then, having had enough of Tier 4 for the day, I joined Lylia on her Shaman (Tum) on my Shaman (Bzzt) for some Tier 2 double gobbo action:



Lylia's Shaman got her Wolf mount and last name today!



Of all the things I will leave behind in WAR, the thing that makes me sad is not being able to see our Shamans grow up :( But then again, considering how fowl the endgame is, maybe that's for the best. They get to spend forever in the best levels of their lives!

Gear and specialization

My soloing gear, healing gear, mastery and renown training.



Some details

June 11 prowling

The first part of today's video shows some fights as I roamed around to help give some eyes to the zerg in Praag and Chaos Wastes. The remainder of the video takes place after people started to log off and activity died down. I amused myself by trying to stalk a pack of Order across zones in search for kills.

Aion 1v1 combat

I pre-ordered Aion last week, and I have since been researching for the right class for me to play.

I was severely disappointed with the Zealot in WAR, since pre-game info and interviews (and even the class details on the *#&$ official website!) had conned me into thinking that there were no healbots in the game, and that the Zealot could be a cross between the WoW Warlock and Shadowpriest --- being complicated but rewarding to play, and a bitch to fight against. Man was I wrong. I was pigeonholed to be a boring healbot because that is the best way a Zealot could contribute to a fight and to his team. I played along for a few months, but after getting the right gear combo, I finally had enough. No more. No more button mashing in boring zergs. No more cheesy skirmishes. No more RVE. No more healbotting. It was time for me to try to find some fun in this broken game.

And here I am now, a month or so after running around soloing/duoing, etc. I'm spent. That was my "hail mary" play to give WAR one last shot. But I see nothing meaningful on the horizon for the Zealot, combat and career cheese dominating, same ol boring zerg RVE, and Mythic shoving Land of the Dead in my face despite the fundamental problems with the game that I have issues with.

Damn, got sidetracked into a rant again. I'm sorry. Anyway, I've been trawling the interwebs for Aion class info, but I found that the web is overflowing with tons of speculation from lowbies who don't know much about their class or the game, and an abundance of anecdotal evidence instead of sound arguments. Most of the gameplay videos (just like WAR gameplay videos) are of people PVEing, or PVPing in lowbie encounters. I absolutely didn't care about PVE, nor about how classes are balanced at lower levels. I wanted to know what the potential and playstyle of each class was at endgame. Most importantly, I didn't want to make the mistake I did in WAR again, by "learning about a class" only by getting to max level.

Fortunately, Aion has already been released in Asia for a while now. That means that people have had more than enough time to work on their characters. Then it occurred to me... I should be looking for KOREAN videos!



I found what appears to be a 3v3 tournament. Except that it's a series of 1v1 fights, until one team has no players left standing. The video was uploaded by "s2dayz". He has uploaded other videos that have given me some valuable info about how each class plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/s2dayz. I initially thought of being a Ranger, but I am leaning more toward the Spiritmaster now.

Sunday woes

I rage-terminated the WAR client again today after not being able to do anything.

My character was in the Chaos pairing when I tried to log in, but for some reason the Chaos pairing was dead, so it booted me out of the game. When I logged back on, I found that the game had sent me to Tier 1. Whatever. I then noticed that the Elf Destruction Fortress was under attack, so I teleported to the Inevitable City to try to get to the Fort via The Maw. I get booted from the game again, and it seemed like the Maw had died along with the T4 Chaos pairing.

Meanwhile, Order unlocks the Greenskin Fortress as well. The only other way to the Greenskin Fortress was via the adjacent Greenskin zone, but I thought hell no, I'm right in front of the portal to The Maw! So I bang at the portal to The Maw a few more times and give up:



Earlier today, WAR freaked out and barfed all over my screen:



Bonus (bad implementation of trees in T2 Chaos):



This game makes me mad way too often. I have wanted to like the game from before it was even released, but it is nearly impossible to!

Helping lock zones with intel

It is usually fun to roam around when a zone is about to lock, because that's when the activity level spikes and there's a good chance of actual fighting going on. Thunder Mountain (and later, Dragonwake) were about to lock for Destruction, so I set out to look for some good fights away from the zerg. Strangely, I felt altruistic today and felt bad for the zergs who typically operate in blindness. Since it was Destro locking the zones this time, and I do a fair bit of "scouting"-type stuff anyway to pick my kills, I decided to relay whatever I saw to the zerg.

The first part of the video is in Thunder Mountain with Lylia. The second part of the video is me running solo in Dragonwake, after Lylia ditched me to play Aion.

Aion looks amazing

I've been looking over Lylia's shoulder as she tests Aion with her beta access and I have to say... it looks AMAZING. Now that's what a game looks like! Not like a game like WAR, that looks like it was hacked together by some high school kids as a computer graphics project.

The "polish" that everyone praises is well deserved. With graphics at max quality, the game is smoother than WAR with fastest framerate, and it looks gorgeous. Gorgeous enough that I actually feel like walking around to explore the virtual world, instead of closing my eyes, holding my breath and rushing through the PVE content. We didn't realize how scarred we were by WAR until we exclaimed in surprise for being able to walk over a fence without getting impaled on it.

Graphics-wise: from what I can tell, the polygon count is actually lower in Aion than in WAR. They are just smarter with their implementation. E.g., better use of textures, various illusions and clever tricks to make the game look good. There are people who know what they are doing at work on this game. It might have also helped that they used the CryEngine for Aion. The visual depth of the environment is far better. Pretty clouds span the sky, buildings in the background, butterflies, fish in the river... it even started raining at one point without any noticable performance degradation. There's also Bloom for some of you junkies.

The game doesn't try to blow you away with sophisticated, resource-hungry graphics. It looks like there might have been some conscious thought put into deciding that some visuals are just too slow, so it's better to use faster alternatives. But they still managed to pull off a very cohesive environment that looks great. And that's what an interactive game should be. It should look great and run fast. There's no need to dick around with crazy particle effects as if you have something to prove, and consequently slaughter performance because the devs don't know what they are doing. Aion's environment is immersive, unlike how WAR reminds you how broken a game can be and how much software can suck every minute you play the game.

The music is fantastic (if you like the genre). Seamless transitions. Enter combat, and the background music gets more energetic. Exit combat, and the music transitions to a soothing, ambient piece from a wind instrument, piano or vocals. It's not music they whipped together by the developers calling a friend of a friend who happens to play an instrument. It's well produced music with an orchestra behind most of the pieces. The sound effects are great as well. Birds chirping, snappy spell animations and sound effects.

(Since I started writing this, Lylia must have mentioned at least 20 times how much she loves the music and how pretty the game is)

Interface is slick and looks well implemented and efficient. Windows and menus are fast and snappy. No noticable server-client lag. You can show the enemy cast bar, so I would assume that the latency is low enough to have them in the game. There is some weird occasional camera glitching that I can't put my finger on though.

Can't say much about how the combat is, since Lylia didn't get high enough for any meaningful combat. Can't tell if PVE is grindy either. 

What I can say for sure is, Aion looks like a game I want to try. I want to play it now! F***k you WAR, you uninspired jimmy-rigged piece of garbage. Can't believe I let you string me along since Beta. I'll be pre-ordering Aion and the second the N.A. servers go live I'm there!

Scouting Thunder Mountain warcamp

One of my gripes with warband leaders is they operate with too little intel and do not put enough effort into getting intel. Take the Thunder Mountain warcamp for example. It is easy to safely observe the PVE and RVR routes leading out of the warcamp. The only other ways to enter the zone would be to run in from adjacent zones. It would require fewer numbers to lock the zone down at the source, than stationing warbands at BOs and having reactionary roaming forces.

However, this brings me back to the topic of WAR rewarding the zerg mentality. No one is encouraged to scout, because it is a boring job with few rewards. Sure it helps win battles, but when the battles are won and the zones lock, everyone gets rewarded equally (the mindless 1-button mashing lemmings and the crafty, courageous, selfless, lonely scouts). So why do more work if you will get the same rewards? The zerg will get into more fights and get more renown and loot.

It's particularly a problem with Fortresses. The game rewards the cowardly and the lazy. If you are brave and do what's good for your team by sacrificing yourself and charging up the ramp to break the enemy bunker, your chances of dying are very high. What happens when you die? You have to respawn at the warcamp, run back to the Fortress and you will most likely be locked out of the Fortress because of the population cap. Meanwhile, the cowards who sat back until it was safe to move up kill the Lord and all the defenders, get top contribution and reap all the rewards.

Mythic: if you are reading this, for God's sake get rid of your irrational coddling of the "PQ" concept. I know you guys invented it and it's your baby, but you have to be realistic with its limitations and just let go. It's one thing to have public quests, but it's silly to force every encounter to fit into the notion of a "public quest". Reason: you simply cannot comprehensively quantify contribution in RVR encounters. Everyone can play a significant part in the war, even when doing uncelebrated things such as scouting (just like how a truck driver in an army delivering supplies is as valuable as any other solidier). Ditch PQs!

Anyway, in the video I was on my usual rounds in Thunder Mountain, and I stopped to check out the order warcamp. Order had just landed as a zerg, and appeared to roll out of the warcamp with a singular purpose. Shortly after, they attacked the North BO (Thargrim's Headwall).

It was a slow PVP night otherwise. Although, I admit I was lazy to look for fights tonight.

Black Crag pre-fortress troublemakers

In this episode, Order was trying to lock Black Crag and defense was heavy at each BO. I try to escape the zzzzzzs and run off to look for trouble at the north BO. To my surprise, Andrarlatrip the Chosen follows me. First encounter was against 3 people (2 of which were healers). Outnumbered and without enough damage, we had to keep working them around to create opportunities for some kills. Eventually they get smart and separate the Chosen and me; a KotBS (Knight of the Bullshit Stun/Snare) and a Runepriest join the fight and I am vanquished. I self-rez, regroup with Lylia the Sorceress and we go back to get our Chosen. We get a few more kills, but also pick up a few more adds (probably shouldn't have fought so close to the north BO and Order WC). As we try to maneuver the fight to our advantage, the Knight stuns us and separates us with his super field goal punt. The north BO was getting too hot and we would no longer have the element of surprise, so we left to look for trouble elsewhere after that.




In other news, Lylia somehow managed to obtain a key for Aion's closed beta. She finished installing it last night and is fidgeting for the servers to open (June 5th!).

Also, I clicked the button last night, out of impulse. The pain ends on June 22nd.

5-piece Invader set bonus (Mending) on PTS

I usually run with a combination of Conqueror and Invader for two +Int bonuses, one +Willpower bonus and one +Wounds bonus. But after fooling around on the PTS yesterday, I started to wonder if it was worth completing the Invader set. I destroyed every crest I had and spent everything at the Royal Quartermaster to find out.

Here's a video of Mending (together with the Warped Flesh tactic) in action, in a WAR version of "how many 5-year olds can you take in a fight":



I did not heal myself actively in the video --- the heals are from Mending and the Absorbs are from Warped Flesh. Mending is affected by stats (and the Divine Fury tactic), and can critically heal.

 I can't decide if it's worth giving up the the Int and Willpower Conqueror set bonuses.

Stalking the Dragonwake zerg

Order was zerging to lock the zone. First fight was with WH I caught by surprise. An IB add shows up and with my knockback down, I bait him to hurl himself off a cliff to finish the WH. Second fight: an IB spots me "hiding", breaks away from the zerg and follows me back to give me a piece of Invader.

Life as a priority target

Here's a taste of "another day in the office" for a squishy healer that gives good renown and has a chance to drop awesome gear/crests. Who wouldn't want to kill me? I miss the days when I was only double-teamed...

The Cheese

I have expressed my distaste for The Cheese in WAR's combat before, but I thought I'd show an example video of The Cheese this time. Lylia and I walk into a Scenario that's already in progress, and this is what we find. Behold, WAR's small-scale endgame combat!



What makes good Cheese? DPS one trick ponies, a few tanks for CC and to guard the DPS, and a bunch of healbots.



Apparently, the counter to this group is to "take out the healers", according to the Mythic combat and careers dude. Tell that to the melee careers (even tanks) who get disabled and vaporized by The Cheese in one GCD cycle.

Dragonwake locks

There's always a flurry of activity around the time a zone locks. Here, Lylia and I look for some trouble a few minutes before Dragonwake locks.



Update: we might have finally figured out what has been lagging Lylia's game out --- the combat log! She used to have the combat log open and detached from the chat window. Since she turned it off, the game is no longer stupid choppy.

Scouting Eataine

Order was out in numbers to lock Eataine last night. I rode around the zone to get an idea of what Order was up to. I was also curious to see what Order does when Eataine locks.

Late night stroll in Dragonwake

After eradicating my computer of an annoying trojan, I decided to take a stroll in Dragonwake. Before long, I discovered that a warband or so of Order was zerging around trying to lock the zone (zzzzz). They had retaken the last Destro BO in the middle of the zone, and proceeded to the Destro warcamp to camp us, presumably. I strolled over to get in range to intercept the direct route from the Order warcamp to the Destro warcamp.

I find a lonely IB standing still in the middle of the road so I go say hi. Now that was no place to have a boring Zealot fight for 5 minutes, so I reel him off the main road. I skip and I hop and try to pull him farther away from his friends, but as luck would have it he snares me as I try to clear a crevice and I fall in it. This IB was either grouped or broadcasting in Region chat, because eventually more Order appear. I apologize in advance for the boring crevice fight that ensues (I often doze off myself when I play a Zealot). It gets worse when the IB I'm fighting gets heals. I try to bait him to punt me off, but this IB really wants me dead so I stall til my knockback comes back up. The video ends with some fantastic cliff diving by a waterfall.



Earlier that night:

Found myself right outside the Order warcamp in Thunder Mountain when I logged in. After a few scenarios with Lylia, I decided to congratulate the folks who were returning back to the warcamp after they locked the zone:


Here's me trying to feel out the Order zerg after arriving in Dragonwake. I guessed wrong, ended up in a bad position and killed myself with falling damage while trying to make my escape :(

Tracking and evading

One of my latest WAR boredom antidotes is tracking and evading the enemy. It's a cheap thrill that gives me a nice dosage of suspense, fear and excitement. A side benefit of this is a better familiarity with the zones.



But I just looked up when my subscription expires again. It shouldn't have to require this much effort to have fun. It makes me sad every time I think of how much promise this game has.

Black Crag pre-Fortress duo roaming

Order was working to lock Black Crag to advance to the Destruction Fortress. There was a sizable force camping the Destro warcamp, and groups of Order were posted to guard each Battlefield Objective.

The video starts out with me harassing the north BO nearest to their warcamp (Squiggly Pens). Two White Lions refuse to play, and before long they start gathering their entire defensive force to hunt me.

Lylia shows up, and we decide to move to the east BO (Madcap Pickins) to see if Order is more alive over there. We run into some Order along the way, and arrive at the BO to find a decent force defending here as well. We evaluate the situation, count the numbers and identify our key targets. At this point the people we killed on the way here respawn, try to get back and we kill them again. Meanwhile, some roamers find us and we bait them away for the kill as well.

After a few sets of kills, it started to feel dangerous. We knew we would get overwhelmed soon. We tried to make our escape to a more advantageous position, but we get intercepted by a large Order force. After some slipping and evading, we end up heading toward some friendly NPCs (not expecting to get out of this alive) --- and that is where the last section of the fight happens.

Two's company

Incidentally, I'm not the only one bored with WAR's zzzzzzz "RVR" endgame. Introducing my partner in crime (in real life and in-game), Lylia the Sorceress. She came along for the hunt one day. It starts as a little project to familiarize with the zones, get used to prowling and finding kills.

Cutting teeth --- low-risk stalking for strays at the perimeter of Praag's RVR lake:


Aqua battle, with Lylia throwing in a disarm with the CCs to save me:


Dragging a 2v3 fight (that reduced to 2v2) away for the kill. Started rolling the camera after evading the WH. Lylia lagged out in this one, running into the trees near the end and leaving me to fend for myself :)


Destro was getting spawn camped in a scenario, so we decided to take a break from the cheese and hunt the weak. The game only allows at most a 6-man to queue together. This means that while the 6-man is strong enough to dominate the entire Destro PUG, there will be weak Order PUGs in the game who aren't well supported by the 6-man. In this fight, we bait rezzers away and Lylia draws aggro one way while I stay sneaky outside their field of view.

Hopefully more to come in the future!

Cone of Fire peculiarities & ability cooldown burning

I recently discovered a peculiarity with Cone of Fire requirements: if you are running away from your target, then try to fire an instant ability by jumping and facing your target in mid-air, it will not fire. Instead, you will get the error: "TARGET OUTSIDE CONE OF FIRE". Additionally, if the ability has a cooldown, the ability will be placed on cooldown, as if it fired.

Observe this in the following video (and excuse me for being half-naked --- I had a little to drink and Lylia persuaded me to go for a "Lucha Libre" look):



None of my abilities managed to fire, except for one Aethyric Shock at point-blank range. Weird that I never noticed this before.

c-c-c-Combo breaker :)

Running with low toughness and resist, BWs can hurt alot... especially when the damage is coupled with their silence/disable/stun and healing debuff. In the first encounter, I pay the price for not respecting the BW damage combo enough. In the second encounter I'm more cautious --- liberal use of Detaunt and tried to stay away from the burst damage combo. Attempted to pull the fight to my safe zone, but he was too level-headed to bite.

The ninja Zealot waits...

Getting used to flying solo

Having given up on the RVE endgame that Mythic is pushing in WAR (BOs, Keeps, Forts, Cities, cheesy 6-mans, mindless zergs), I have embarked on a lonely journey in search for PVP fun. This is, in a way, my proactive attempt at giving WAR one last chance to provide me with a reason to stay subscribed. It's been a few weekends now, and I must admit there is still alot to get used to. I have been tweaking my tactics and gear, and I think I have found a good combination of survivability and versatility to go against whatever I encounter.

What I've found I needed the most work on was understanding the zones: enemy traffic patterns, safe zones, entry points, exits, advantageous spots, etc. I struggled a little intially, but my increasing familiarity with the maps is helping. I am slowly warming up to the mindset of: stalking from safety, picking targets and maneuvering the fight for a kill, while trying to minimize danger to myself. As I get more comfortable, I plan to take on more risk, and bump up offense.









Occasionally, the zerg still runs over me, but I am starting to feel less helpless.