more free to play stuff…

So, following on from the last time I made a post about the game going free to play, and what it would require. And then reading feedback I received on those suggestions, I’ve come to two conclusions…
Firstly – it would be an almost monumental task to overhaul the sections of the game required to make it work.
Secondly – I doubt the game will ever go free to play. Or even a hybrid system.
Now, a lot of this is just copy/pasted from my previous endeavor, however there are some parts that have been altered to accommodate hybrid mechanics of a cash shop/subscription hybrid.
I’ll focus on restrictions first, and then additional content/content changes later.

rvr specific restrictions

• keep the existing restriction of only being able to reach renown rank 80 without purchasing the rvr packs.
• allow all players to access all four tiers, and all the rvr lakes within them.
• restrict the use of skaven monster play, to players who’ve purchased the rvr packs.
• pve specific restrictions
• do not restrict public quests, allow players to experience all non-instanced content within the free to play subscription.
• Low level city instances (Altdorf Sewers/Sacellum Dungeons) are unrestricted, and do not need to be purchased from the cash store.
• The Hunters Vale instance is unrestricted, and now open to any rank, see “PVE changes” for details on how this works.  The dungeon does not need to be purchased from the cash store.
• Players may purchase account wide instance unlocks from the cash store, or have permanent access if they are a subscriber. They cost £5 per pack, and come in the following packs:

1. Big trouble in our little city – Bloodwraught Enclave/Bilerot Burrow, Warpblade tunnels/Sigmars Crypts.
2. The tears of Isha – Lost Vale
3. Their city will burn – Temple of Sigmar, Bright Wizard College, The Monolith, The Sacellum
4. Kill the King – The Eternal Citadel, Altdorf Palace
5. The Eternal Sands – The land of the dead. This costs £10 to unlock, but you may now enter at any time. Subscribers have full access also. Access includes all four tombs, and the tomb of the vulture lord instance.
6. Bloodied steps – Bastion stairs instance has been reworked and now costs £10 to unlock, subscribers have full access.

These instances have been re-tooled and tuned, and appropriate for the gear they drop. Please see the “PVE changes” section for more information.

Player specific restrictions

• players are limited to 4 character slots per server if the account is made AFTER war goes free to play. any players who were previous subscribers may keep all the characters they have made, but upon deleting a character, that slot becomes closed. if they delete all their characters for example, they will then be limited to 4.
• players can purchase unlimited character slots, at the cost of £2.50 per slot.
• players are restricted to a single inventory, currency, and crafting bag upon creating a new character. any old characters who already have full bag sets will retain those bags.
• players may pay £1 for an additional inventory bag, up to a total of 5.
• players may pay £1 for an additional crafting bag, up to a total of 5.
• additional inventory/crafting bag purchases are on a per-character basis, they are not account wide.
• new characters will be restricted to 5 bank rows, any existing characters may keep all the rows they have currently unlocked.
• players may pay £0.50 for an additional bank row, up to a total of 80.
• additional bank rows are on a per-character basis, they are not account wide.
• all players (old and new) will now have to pay £2.50 to unlock the alternate appearance function on their character. this is on a per-character basis, it is not account wide.

new features/changes

• unless stated otherwise, the following are on a per-character basis, and are not account wide.
• along with the restrictions above, there are new features available for players to take advantage of!
• players will now be able to visit a special armour painter. these armour painters can be found at any chapter camp, and in the inevitable city and altdorf.
• the armour painters will charge you £1 to change the colour of your armour, and gives you access to the FULL range of citadel paint colours. you may still use gold to dye your armour at the regular merchants, but they retain their limited colour pallettes.
• players will be able to purchase new mounts, for the small sum of £1.50 per mount! these mounts are permanent additions to your character and do not decay over time. they have no level restriction, however their speed is restricted to +25% in tier 1, +40% in tier 2, +50% in tier 3, and +60% in tier 4.
• empire characters will now be able to purchase pegasus, unicorns and griffons.
• high elf characters will now be able to purchase pegasus, unicorns and drakelings (young dragons).
• dwarf players will now be able to purchase shield bearers, and beer powered tanks.
• chaos players will now be able to purchase juggernaughts of khorne (chosen/marauder), screamers of tzeench (magus), and beasts of slaanesh (zealot).
• dark elf players will now be able to purchase dark pegasus, manticores, and drakelings (young dragons).
• greenskin players will now be able to purchase ridden squigs (squig herder/shaman), snotling bearers (goblins can be carried by snotlings… copying dwarven shield bearers), and wyrmlings (young wyverns for black orcs/choppas).

PVE changes

• All pve instances have had the following buff applied – “Under Pressure: Your experience gain has been reduced to 25%”.
• A token system has been added to all PVE instances. The tokens are specific to those instances, but CAN be traded to any player who has purchased the instance unlock from the cash store, or is a subscriber.
• Some of the armour sets obtained from PVE instances have had their rank requirements adjusted.
• Bloodlord – see new Bastion Stairs for details.
• Sentinel – rank 28
• Dark Promise – rank 32
• Tyrant – rank 37
• Glyph + Cloak set from tomb of the vulture lord – rank 39

Instance specific changes

• Warpblade tunnels/Sigmars Crypts:
• The requirement to enter the instances is now rank 25.
• The encounter still requires lesser wards.
• Basic mobs are now rank 25-28 champions.
• Hero mobs are now rank 26-29 heroes.
• Mobs will drop loot in the same way they currently do.
• Upon completing the Warpblade Tunnels, you will gain a rusted sigmarite coin.
• Upon completing the left and right wings of Sigmars Crypts, you will gain a tarnished sigmarite coin.
• Upon completing the middle wing of Sigmars Crypts, you will gain a preserved sigmarite coin.
• You may now purchase sentinel boots and gloves for 3 rusted sigmarite coins each.
• You may now purchase sentinel belt and shoulders for 3 tarnished sigmarite coins each.
• You may now purchase sentinel helmet and chest for 3 preserved sigmarite coins each.
• The lockout timer has been reduced to 6 hours.

Bloodwraught Enclave/Bilerot Burrow:

• The requirement to enter the instances is now rank 25.
• The encounter still requires lesser wards.
• Basic mobs are now rank 25-28 champions.
• Hero mobs are now rank 26-29 heroes.
• Mobs will drop loot in the same way they currently do.
• Upon completing the Bloodwraught Enclave, you will gain a bloodied head.
• Upon completing the left and right wings of Bilerot Burrow, you will gain a rotting skull.
• Upon completing the middle wing of Bilerot Burrow, you will gain a pestulent bauble.
• You may now purchase sentinel boots and gloves for 3 rusted bloodied heads each.
• You may now purchase sentinel belt and shoulders for 3 tarnished rotting skulls each.
• You may now purchase sentinel helmet and chest for 3 preserved pestulent baubles each.
• The lockout timer has been reduced to 6 hours.

Lost Vale:

• The requirement to enter the instances is now rank 28.
• The encounter still requires greater wards.
• Basic mobs are now rank 28-31 champions.
• Hero mobs are now rank 29-32 heroes.
• Mobs will drop loot in the same way they currently do.
• Upon completing the left wing, you will gain an unhatched spiders egg.
• Upon completing the right wing, you will gain a seed of the worldbearer.
• Upon completing the middle wing , you will gain a vial of ishas tears.
• You may now purchase sentinel boots and gloves for 3 unhatched spiders eggs each.
• You may now purchase sentinel belt and shoulders for 3 seeds of the worldbearer each.
• You may now purchase sentinel helmet and chest for 3 vials of ishas tears each.
• The lockout timer has been reduced to 18 hours.

Tomb of the Vulture Lord:

• The requirement to enter the instances is now rank 32.
• The encounter still requires greater wards.
• Basic mobs are now rank 32-35 champions.
• Hero mobs are now rank 33-39 heroes.
• The enrage timers have been adjusted from 8 to 10 minutes, and the HP adjusted for some heroes and mobs to reflect the lower rank of players entering the instance.
• Mobs will drop loot in the same way they currently do.
• Gold bags obtained for killing the Vulture Lord now contain two golden funerary masks.
• Tyrant gloves and belt may now be purchased for 3 golden funerary masks each, but have had the 200 scarab cost removed.
• Tyrant boots and shoulders may now be purchased for 3 golden funerary masks each.
• Tyrant helmet and chest may now be purchased for 3 golden funerary masks each.
• Each glyph and the cloak may be purchased for 2 funerary masks each.
• The lockout timer has been reduced to 18 hours.

Temple of Sigmar/Bright wizard college:

• The requirement to enter the instances is rank 40.
• The encounter still requires superior wards.
• The encounter is now a 12 man instance, and the mobs have had their stats adjusted to reflect this.
• The encounters no longer drop warlord gear, but instead a new vanity set has been introduced.
• Defeating the temple of sigmar awards you with a sigmarite scalp.
• Defeating the bright wizard college awards you with a burning scalp.
• Boots, gloves, and belt may be purchased for 3 sigmarite scalps each.
• Helmet, shoulders, and chest may be purchased for 3 burning scalps each.
• The sigmarite cloak may be purchased for 3 sigmarite scalps.
• The burning cloak may be purchased for 3 burning scalps.
• The instance has an 18 hour lockout.

The Sacellum/Monolith:

• The requirement to enter the instances is rank 40.
• The encounter still requires superior wards.
• The encounter is now a 12 man instance, and the mobs have had their stats adjusted to reflect this.
• The encounters no longer drop warlord gear, but instead a new vanity set has been introduced.
• Defeating the Monolith awards you with a shifting mirror.
• Defeating the Sacellum awards you with a heart of a champion.
• Boots, gloves, and belt may be purchased for 3 shifting mirrors each.
• Helmet, shoulders, and chest may be purchased for 3 champion hearts each.
• The mirage cloak may be purchased for 3 shifting mirrors.
• The champion cloak may be purchased for 3 champion hearts.
• The instance has an 18 hour lockout.

The Eternal Citadel:

• The requirement to enter the instance is rank 40.
• The encounter still requires Excelsior wards.
• The encounter is now a 12 man instance and the mobs have had their stats adjusted to reflect this.
• To gain access to the instance, speak to Karl Franz in the Altdorf Palace who will port you to the start of the encounter.
• The encounter will no longer drop sovereign gear upon it’s completion, but instead a new vanity set has been introduced.
• The sub-bosses will still drop loot based on the old loot table.
• Upon completing the instance, you will be awarded one Head of the Defiler.
• You may purchase any part of the vanity set for 3 defiler heads each.
• The vanity set consists of a helmet, shoulders, chest, gloves, boots, belt, cloak, mainhand, and offhand weapons.
• The instance has a 24 hour lockout.

The Altdorf Palace:

• The requirement to enter the instance is rank 40.
• The encounter still requires Excelsior wards.
• The encounter is now a 12 man instance and the mobs have had their stats adjusted to reflect this.
• To gain access to the instance, speak to Tchar’zanek in the Eternal Citadel who will port you to the start of the encounter.
• The encounter will no longer drop sovereign gear upon it’s completion, but instead a new vanity set has been introduced.
• The sub-bosses will still drop loot based on the old loot table.
• Upon completing the instance, you will be awarded one Head of the King.
• You may purchase any part of the vanity set for 3 Heads of the King each.
• The vanity set consists of a helmet, shoulders, chest, gloves, boots, belt, cloak, mainhand, and offhand weapons.
• The instance has a 24 hour lockout.

The hunters vale:

• The encounter will now scale based on the rank of the highest participant.
• If the highest rank player is between ranks 1 – 15, the instance will be considdered tier 1.
• If the highest rank player is between ranks 16 – 25, the instance will be considdered tier 2.
• If the highest rank player is between ranks 26 – 39, the instance will be considdered tier 3.
• If the highest rank player is rank 40, the instance will be considdered tier 4.

Bastion Stairs:

• Bastion stairs is now a pvpve encounter.
• The instance is now a 6v6 encounter and must be queued for.
• The encounter can only be queued for by a group.
• The objective of bastion stairs is for the Order side to prevent the bloodthirster reaching full strength, and for destruction to aid it in reaching full strength.
• The bloothirster has 5% health at the start of the instance.
• There are four stairs.
• Both realms start at the bottom stair, when one realm is defeated they move to the next stair. Each stair will either grant the bloodthirster +20% health on a destruction win, or 0% health on an order win.
• after finishing the fourth stair, both realms will enter the arena with the bloodthirster. By defeating the enemy realm here, destruction may heal the bloodthirster to full health and therefor win the encounter, or order may deal damage to the bloodthirster and therefor win the match.
• There is a terror aura in effect.
• The terror aura has been modified to cause ressurections to take 10 seconds instead of 3 to cast for this encounter.
• Bloodlord gear now has a unique appearance, and is a full set comprising of helmet, shoulders, chest, cloak, belt, gloves, boots, mainhand, and offhand weapons.
• Bloodlord gear has no stats.
• Your group will be awarded a mark of khorne for each stage of the encounter that they won.
• Each piece of bloodlord gear now costs 50 khornate marks.
• There is no lockout on queueing for this instance.
• The Bastion Stairs instance now has a leaderboard attached, which can be viewed on the Warhammer.com website. It will show you the players who have done:

1. The most damage.
2. The most healing.
3. The most deathblows.
4. The most damage mitigated. (see who’s the best tank!)
5. the most deaths.
6. The most renown earned.

• Characters who are number 1 on any of those lists will have a golden halo surrounding them in game.
• Characters who are number 2 on any of those lists will have a silver halo surrounding them in game.

Well that’s about enough of my brain farting for one day… see you later.

Wrath of Heroes?

wow… what an announcement. and where to begin?

first of all, i’m not one of the bloggers who was invited to take part in the mythic Q+A a few months back, i knew nothing of this, and neither did any of the other bloggers/core testers who weren’t invited.
it seems mythic did a fantastic job of keeping mouths closed about this.

but where do i stand on it? a quick cursory glance to the forums shows a lot of bitterness and spite coming from some players. somewhat understandably, they feel (initially at least) betrayed by mythic… we were told there would be an anouncement about WAR in august, and to a lot of us, wrath of heroes looks like a new game, of course it does. it’s not WAR, and never will be. so where is our WAR news, please?

thing is, this DOES have the potential to be a good thing for WAR. unlimited 6v6v6 play? fantastic, i can see a lot of players dropping in and out of it. if that sparks renewed interest in WAR, then that’s awesome.
it does pose a problem though… a lof of the WAR players i play with currently, are scenario fanatics… so an excuse to leave WAR behind in favour of what is effectively non-stop scenarios with a self balancing mechanic is pretty win.
it also has the leaderboard and three way combat that WAR players have wanted since the game launched 3 years ago.

i’m interested in seeing how they combine WAR with WOH. i’m interested in seeing what benefits WAR subscribers will get within WOH (see bootaes blog for my source on that), and i’m also interested to see how this affects WAR in general.

i think this will go one of two ways:
1. mythic has just killed WAR.
2. mythic has just given WAR the lifeline it needed.

the free to play WAR issue, and me…

so i’ve been having a thought about the whole free to play argument going on with WAR. it’s been going on for a while, and i can see arguments both for, and against it.

the biggest argument against it, is that it’s a pvp focused game, and that it would be very difficult to stop it becoming “pay to win”. so i thought for a while, of all the different ways to make a free to play business model successful for WAR. and sure some of these might not work, it’s just one guy brainstorming, after all.

content restrictions:
being a pvp game, you can’t really restrict any of the pvp content in a free to play model, that’s just silly. and to that same end, you can’t restrict or penalise “free” players with regards to the gear they can obtain or how fast they gain exp/renown. anything in that regard would come down to the “pay to win” argument.

rvr specific restrictions:

• keep the existing restriction of only being able to reach renown rank 80 without purchasing the rvr packs.
• allow all players to access all four tiers, and all the rvr lakes within them.
• restrict the use of skaven monster play, to players who’ve purchased the rvr packs.

pve specific restrictions:

• do not restrict public quests, allow players to experience all non-instanced content within the free to play subscription.
• remove lockout timers from all pve instances.
• add a £1 entree fee for players entering a pve instance. this fee will cover their entry into the instance for 6 hours, or until all bosses have been defeated, at which point they will need to pay another £1 to enter the instance, all bosses will be reset and the instance restarted. – this will enable players to “farm” pve loot to their hearts content, and provide a potentially lucrative income for mythic/ea.
• an alternative to the above, would be to remove lockout timers from pve instances, and charge players a one off fee of £10 per instance, to unlock access to that instance on a per-character basis. allowing players to decide whether they wish to run an instance, how often they want to run it, and whether they feel it’s worth paying for the content.

player specific restrictions:

• players are limited to 4 character slots per server if the account is made AFTER war goes free to play. any players who were previous subscribers may keep all the characters they have made, but upon deleting a character, that slot becomes closed. if they delete all their characters for example, they will then be limited to 4.
• players can purchase unlimited character slots, at the cost of £5 per slot.
• players are restricted to a single inventory, currency, and crafting bag upon creating a new character. any old characters who already have full bag sets will retain those bags.
• players may pay £1 for an additional inventory bag, up to a total of 5.
• players may pay £1 for an additional crafting bag, up to a total of 5.
• additional inventory/crafting bag purchases are on a per-character basis, they are not account wide.
• new characters will be restricted to 5 bank rows, any existing characters may keep all the rows they have currently unlocked.
• players may pay £1 for an additional bank row, up to a total of 80.
• additional bank rows are on a per-character basis, they are not account wide.
• all players (old and new) will now have to pay £2.50 to unlock the alternate appearance function on their character. this is on a per-character basis, it is not account wide.

new features:

unless stated otherwise, the following are on a per-character basis, and are not account wide.

• along with the restrictions above, there are new features available for players to take advantage of!
• players will now be able to visit a special armour painter. these armour painters can be found at any chapter camp, and in the inevitable city and altdorf.
• the armour painters will charge you £2.50 to change the colour of your armour, and gives you access to the FULL range of citadel paint colours. you may still use gold to dye your armour at the regular merchants, but they retain their limited colour pallettes.
• players will be able to purchase new mounts, for the small sum of £1.50 per mount! these mounts are permanent additions to your character and do not decay over time. they have no level restriction, however their speed is restricted to +25% in tier 1, +40% in tier 2, +50% in tier 3, and +60% in tier 4.
• empire characters will now be able to purchase pegasus, unicorns and griffons.
• high elf characters will now be able to purchase pegasus, unicorns and drakelings (young dragons).
• dwarf players will now be able to purchase shield bearers, and beer powered tanks.
• chaos players will now be able to purchase juggernaughts of khorne (chosen/marauder), screamers of tzeench (magus), and beasts of slaanesh (zealot).
• dark elf players will now be able to purchase dark pegasus, manticores, and drakelings (young dragons).
• greenskin players will now be able to purchase ridden squigs (squig herder/shaman), snotling bearers (goblins can be carried by snotlings… copying dwarven shield bearers), and wyrmlings (young wyverns for black orcs/choppas).

so there you have it. my own take on how WAR could potentially go free to play. hope you enjoyed reading, and while i’ve no doubt that WAR will probably never go free to play, especially as it would then become a potential conflict of interests with SWTOR, we can all hope.

long time no post!

long time no post…

and yes i’m sorry about that! but as happens from time to time, real life got in the way, i stopped playing as often and had other things to worry about.

being freelance has its drawbacks sometimes, i’m focusing super hard on getting a solid portfolio together, but when the majority of your past work is locked under NDA you have to spend your free time doing extra “work” to fill the void… so it’s been tough, and that meant less game time! my girlfriend became pregnant (the high!), and suffered a miscarriage (the epic epic low…), and we’ve been working through that together and are finally at a point where we are starting to feel “normal” again.

so where to begin eh?
i’ll try to keep this fairly concise, but please be aware it’s sort of a ramble too. let’s just say, that i’ve come to a point in my WAR career where i really couldn’t care less about too many things anymore… yes i’m still a core tester, for what it’s worth. and sure i still enjoy theorycrafting, proving people wrong, and being a troll from time to time.

but what about the game itself?
well firstly, let me say that over the past months, the game has come a long way. the gear gap has diminished dramatically, and while a full party of warpforged will stomp a full party of sovereign… that’s no different to the way it used to be when a full party of sovereign would stomp a full party of warlord. there is still a small gear gap though, and i don’t think that’s going to go away anytime soon, but the game is far from unenjoyable because of it.

tiers one and two have become insanely fun of late. i had mixed feelings about the restructuring of renown gear, but actually it’s really not so bad. for the most part it’s very balanced and because the gear is so freely easy to obtain you will find the experience highly enjoyable.

but tier 3 is a nightmare.
i don’t think i can stress that enough. this is partly down to bad development, and partly down to shitty player mentality. by allowing players to gain renown ranks double their career ranks, and with the current level of exp gain per player kill/scenario win, players are finding themselves “encouraged” to avoid fighting in tier three…
this is a bad thing.
the reason for this though, is the entirely unfounded belief that anyone entering tier 4 at a rank lower than 70 to 80, is going to get stomped over and over and will never have any fun at all. that’s complete and utter horse crap. i recently rerolled a white lion (prettiest WL in all of EU i should add), and started roaming T4 as early as career rank 32, but why? oh that’s right, because i enjoy actually fighting players. when i hit rank 40, i was only renown rank 52. i decided i’d rather grind rats and hit 40 ASAP, than do an endless merry go round of empty keeps in T3 to get my renown up.

and i didn’t regret it.

hitting tier 4 as a “lowbie” white lion was invigorating and fun. it inspired me to play to the best of my ability, and when that wasn’t enough, that was fine. i was actually pretty happy in the knowledge that most of my deaths were at the hands of players i knew to be great from playing with them as a destro player.

and what about rerolling order, why did i do it?

well… when 1.4.0 hit, i started out the new grind to 100. but, i dunno if i can explain it properly. but i didn’t see 100 as being an achievement. i didn’t see it as a goal to hit. moving the goalposts and making the “top rank” higher than before seemed a little cheesy to me… i’d already been “top rank”, i’d already been the highest RR you could achieve, and for longer than most people in the game. i didn’t even roll any alts until months after hitting 80 because i never wanted to. i was happy knowing order players hated fighting me, and destro players envied and sometimes disliked me for my playstyle and manerisms. Bruglir had, it seems, become some sort of renowned name… players from different servers had heard the name. so why did i leave it behind?
i didn’t.
i still play my disciple, and still enjoy playing it. but i needed to feel a rekindling of excitement in the game. i needed to do something i felt like i hadn’t done before… and for a long time i’d wondered (mostly because people had suggested) what it would be like playing a “proper” mdps career, would it be any better? would i melt people faster? would it be easier/more difficult? so i set off to find out. and i have to say that while the pet is a complete pain in the arse and that there are some obvious shortfalls. playing WL for a while has really renewed the game for me. i DO melt people harder and faster than i ever did on my dok, and the playstyle is completely different.

oh and when i do come up against melee doks, it hurts… i know the tricks to beat them, but they don’t always, or even often work, and the good doks just tear me apart. but that’s fine, i can live with that!

so i guess if i were to shorten all of the above, i would probably say this:

• don’t be so extreme, it’s just a game, enjoy it for what it is. sure there’s not much in the way of “new content”, but just by rolling to the opposite realm (on the same server) i was able to enjoy a completely new experience, and have some fun and healthy competition against my destro friends.
• go out and actually fight other players! sure you might not hit rr80 by the time you hit rank 40, but (and i mean this very sincerely) if you get from rank 22-40 without having many decent fights, THAT is the reason you will lose in tier 4. not the gear gap, not the renown, but purely lack of practice and knowledge of your career.
• yes i still feel that particular changes need to happen with the game. firstly resistance/armour values need to be reversed so that high armour has low resistance and vice versa, and also that CC/debuffs need to be revised among all careers to allow those with lower damage to have more value through utility, and those with better damage to have lower value through utility.
• come talk to me. if you play on norn, my destro toons are Bruglir, Lhunara, and Rhunon. and my order toons are ipouncetheface, itburnstheface, ipoundtheface. if you want to discuss game mechanics, how many times i’ve killed you/you’ve killed me, or just say hello. then do it. i’m not the eliteist prick i used to be, and i feel like a better player for it.

oh, and for those that enjoyed my last post featuring some fan art i did of  Darth Revan, from KOTOR. thank you for your feedback, here is another image that might help you see the materials and construction:

Dream 1.4.2 patch notes? sure… why not…

Well, we’ve been told in rough terms what we’re going to see in 1.4.1, so i’m going to throw out some wishlist notes for 1.4.2.

Some of the notes are the same as my previous wishlist, some of them are a little different, some are completely different.

One thing I do ask though, is that if you feel the need to comment like “omg u want to remove SL orders only CD debuff OMGOMGOMG!”… please read the entire thing before making yourself look like a boob. I realise that White Lion is a little further down the alphabet, but really if you’re at the level where you can post a comment, you can certainly make it that little bit further past the letter S, right?

And again, I don’t know every career inside out, although i’m getting a clearer picture all the time based on conversation, and rerolling toons (although not lately, my pc is broked).

I also need to prefix some of these changes with “mechanic” information, such as how resistance and armour work. Otherwise you won’t fully understand the changes.

How armour is calculated is in 3 parts:

Attackers armour penetration value

(<Attacker WS> * (<Attacker rank> / (<Attacker rank> + <Attacker Renown over 80>))) / ((7.5 * <Defender rank>) + 50) * 0.25

Defender physical mitigation value

<Defender armour> / ((<Attacker rank> + <Attacker Renown over 80>) * 44) * 0.4

Total physical mitigation value

<Defender Physical Mitigation> * (1 – <Attacker Armour Penetration>) cannot be over 0.75 (75%)

So if our attacker is renown rank 83 and has 600 WS, our defender has 3500 armour at rank 40 we get:

• (600 * (40 / (40 + 3))) / ((7.5 * 40) + 50) * 0.25 = 0.3987
• 3500 / ((40 + 3) * 44) * 0.4 = 0.74
• 0.74 * (1 – 0.39) = 0.4450

this gives us a total of 44.5% armour penetration between this attacker and defender.

and Resistances are calcualted like this:

<Defender Resistance> / ((<Attacker rank> + <Attacker Renown over 80>) * 8.4) * 0.2

So let’s say our attacker is renown rank 83, and our defender is rank 40 with a resistance value of 673 (the softcap at 40/80). we get:

• 673 / ((40 + 3) * 8.4) * 0.2 = 0.3726 which is 37.26%

what we see from this, is that as you gain renown past 80, you gain a small bonus to armour penetration, and a reduction in your enemies resistance effectiveness. Which in itself is fine and I won’t be touching on that at all in this post. However the information is important for you to know so you understand the changes to the way armour and resistances work later on in this post.

General RVR changes:

• Siege weapons, and rams are now affected by your realms AAO bonus. They will now deal between 100% damage at 0 AAO and 400% damage at 400% AAO.
• Scenario queues have changed! if you are queueing as a group, you will now only fight other groups.
• All warcamps will now have two (2) rank 55 champions at their exits.
• Scenario guards now have a 200ft aggro range, will only use ranged attacks, and cannot move (they will not wipe an entire group if they are out of 200ft).
• Keeps now have two door locks, one in the outer gatehouse, and one in the keep lord room. If the attacking realm manages to destroy this lock, the door it controls will open immediately. Defenders will need to be extra vigilent against
  attack!
• Controlling 3 battle objectives will halt all damage on the keep door. The attacking realm will need to control at least two objectives to continue damaging a keep door. This change forces players to roam continually and actively participate in zone control rather than “waithammering” at a keep door.
• Controlling all four battle objectives as the attacking realm will cause your ram to deal 10% more damage.
• Controlling all four battle objectives as the defending realm will cause your door to heal at a rate of 1% every 10 seconds.

The rvr lakes will be widened and in some cases remodeled to allow easier access in tier 4. and will have two new public quests added along with one new battle objective. Existing objectives will be respaced to allow more travel time between them, and causing smaller forces to become more effective against larger ones by forcing them to spread apart.

The new public quests will involve both realms fighting over resources, the winning realm will have access to siege ladders (maximum 2 deployed at a time). Siege ladders may only be deployed by a player in a party or warband. Anyone may purchase a ladder at any time, but cannot use it if:

• the realm hasn’t won the pq at least once (to
  allow deployment)
• they are not in a party or warband

Siege ladders may be deployed anywhere along a keep wall, they will act (in reality) as a teleporter from the bottom of the wall to the top, there is no travel time from bottom to top. They will have an HP bar, and can be destroyed.

General Mechanic changes:

The way armour penetration is calculated has changed! Now all careers will benefit from a passive multiplier in the formula based on what type of armour your opponent is wearing.

This multiplier will be:

• Light armour = (penetration 0.45)
• Medium armour = (penetration 0.32)
• Heavy armour = (penetration 0.2)

This makes the armour penetration formula look like this:

• (<Attacker WS> * (<Attacker rank> / (<Attacker rank> + <Attacker Renown over 80>))) / ((7.5 * <Defender rank>) + 50) * <penetration multiplier>

Likewise the way magical resistances are calculated has now changed! Now all careers will benefit from a passive multiplier in the formula based on what type of armour your opponent is wearing.

This multiplier will be:

• Light armour = 0.25
• Medium armour = 0.2
• Heavy armour = 0.15

this makes the armour penetration formula look like this:

• <Defender Resistance> / ((<Attacker rank> + <Attacker Renown over 80>) * 8.4) * <Armour Multiplier>

With this change means an overhaul of existing armour sets. All armour sets will be revised in order to allow them to work in the current system. In order to aid this, armour will now be bracketed in order to provide a clearer system. I’ll focus on Tier 4 here.

• Bracket 1 – Conqueror, Sentinel, Invader, Darkpromise, Tyrant
• Bracket 2 – Warlord, Sovereign
• Bracket 3 – Doomflayer, Warpforged

Bracket 1 will all have an armour value of 2800. it will all have the same item level and therefor stat budget of 58. the renown requirement will be staggered from 40-65, the sets will be made so that Conqueror and Sentinel are Defensive, Invader and Darkpromise are Offensive, and Tyrant is hybridised between the two.

Bracket 2 will have an armour value of 3500. it will have the same item level and therefor stat budget of 65. Warlord will need an additional item added to its set, or have its stats revised to contain the same amount of stats as sovereign. Warlord will be Defensive, and sovereign will be Offensive.

Bracket 3 will have an armour value of 4500. it will have the same item level and therefor stat budget of 75. both sets will therefor have their stats severely reduced from current levels, but could have up to 3 additional items added to their sets, and/or include the named weapons as parts of their set bonus. Doomflayer will be defensive, Warpforged will be offensive

The combination of the above changes means that yes… there will still be a balance of power in favour of high renown players in the best gear. However it HEAVILY dampens that balance, allowing players in lower level gear to remain highly
competetive. It also keeps mitigation values largely the same as you progress, so while your stats increase with the gear, so does your enemies armour, but so does your penetration. It’s not overpowering however. This also means that light armour users will gain less use from stacking armour talismans/potions than heavy armour wearers, but the opposite effect happens for resistances.

I’ve set up an interactive spreadsheet here, with instructions at the top of the page, so you can see the difference between now, and under the new system.

General career overhauls:

Bright wizard/Sorcerer

Bright Wizard and sorcerer mechanics have changed, they will no longer have a chance to receive backlash damage. Instead they will have a scaling incoming heal debuff applied to them.

• At 20 mechanic, 5% heal debuff
• At 40 mechanic, 10% heal debuff
• At 60 mechanic, 15% heal debuff
• At 80 mechanic, 20% heal debuff
• At 100 mechanic, 25% heal debuff
• this heal debuff can be applied on top of others. So a second incoming heal debuff would reduce incoming heals to 37.5% at full mechanic.

This change will allow both careers to be less reliant on groups allowing for players to have more freedom to play solo if they choose. However it also forces them to manage their mechanic more closely in group play, as being focused at full
mechanic will be much much harder on their group.

Magus/Engineer

Magus and Engineers will not receive any huge damage boosts. Instead they will have two of their tactics merged with current abilities. This will allow them to become more of a support career that is vital to any group, and will raise their
effectiveness through utility. I’ll list engineers only here, but it should affect magus equally

• The tactic – Concussive Mine will be merged with napalm grenade. So that anyone within the napalm grenade radius will become disorientated for 10 seconds.
• The tactic – Proximity alarm will now become a passive ability on all turrets.
• Burn salve will be revised. It will apply a lower valued resistance buff to all resistances, but will also apply an armour buff. Due to the lowered values, this ability will stack with potions and other buffs, giving magus/engineer a unique place within the game (no other group buffs stack).

Squig Herder/Shadow Warrior

Not so much a career overhaul, as a passive adjustment. Bows will now have a passive +5% armour penetration attached to them. This will be applied during the attacker penetration stage of the formula like this:

• (<Attacker WS> * (<Attacker rank> / (<Attacker rank> + <Attacker Renown over 80>))) / ((7.5 * <Defender rank>) + 50) * (<penetration multiplier> – <bow multiplier>)

Again, for your reference, please check the interactive spreadsheet on how this will affect values. and feel free to PM me on the forum or just write in this thread if you have any questions about it or whatever.

That’s all I got for now!

Thanks for reading.

edit: updated the penetration multipliers, and did away with mitigation multipliers. it scales much more evenly now. essentially what it means is that because the majority of armour sets will have the same stat budgets, mitigation values will “feel” static as you progress, rather than taking sharp dips or high spikes. it means that low armour careers will get less benefit from stacking armour than high armour careers do. that said, all the armour sets would need their stats redoing, it would be a much more fun game (in my opinion) without such a massive difference in item levels and stats. but you would still get some benefit from leveling past 80 (roughly 0.57% total mitigation less to deal with per renown rank), but it’s not as massive a difference as it currently is.

the patch that could have changed everything…

This is going to be a long read, brace yourselves!

patch 1.4 can be seen as a success, or failure. it succeeded in some areas, and failed in others. the ideas were good but the execution is seen as very poor. and to top it all off, many players are just getting fed up of so many little things that they become big things. so i’ve come up with some things that could change it all… i won’t pretend to think i know better than anyone, at the end of the day i still enjoy the game, but i just believe it could be better than it is. and i want to see WAR have the glory it deserves.

I’m sure there will be many people who would disagree with me, and that’s fine. That’s their right, that’s their prerogative. All I ask of people, who DO disagree with me, is that they be constructive in their feedback of this.

I should also, probably foreword this by saying it’s extremely unlikely any of this will come to pass. At the end of the day I’m just another player, and I have hope that WAR can be “better” than it already is. As such, the majority of this is based on personal opinion, and although I’ve consulted many (many many) other people about it, it remains my opinion alone.

That said. If you do agree with it, fantastic, let’s try to publicise it as much as possible, and see if mythic listen and implement some of the things we’re talking about!

Problems with the game (perceived or otherwise):

Only 10% of the games total content is available to tier 4
players.

You read that correctly… once a player moves up through the games tiers, they lose access to the previous one. By the time you reach tier 4, that’s 3 whole tiers (75%) gone. Of that 25% that’s left, roughly 60% of the remaining play areas are PVE. Bearing in mind that this is a PVP game, advertising huge open world rvr combat, that’s a real shame.

Casual players constantly fighting hardcore players, and vice versa.

This is probably one of the biggest problems. It goes far
beyond such issues as gear which is easily available and renown which can be
gained by all, in time. Casual players feel they have “no place” in the game,
currently. As there is no safe haven for them to play in.

Career balance.

The rock paper scissors mechanic is pretty broken. Along with every career having too much of everything. Every career feels like it should be a one man army, and very few TRULY rely on group play to be at their best effect. Having realm mirrors that are non-identical is fine, I encourage it. But at least try to build around the fact that everyone must have a weakness, or that they should rely on something other than themselves to be the most effective. Not to mention the obsolescence of some careers down to such simple things as potions. Having a career or careers become “useless” because their primary roles can be replaced by a purchasable item is not a good thing.

Strength in numbers.

I fear this problem is persistent in all games, not just WAR. More numbers = more wins. Blobbing/zerging is prevalent. But not just because of career balance, or even the mindset of players. Part of the problem lies in the ease at which a huge number of players can move from one place to another in good time.

Possible solutions, and reasoning behind them:

Widen the rvr lakes in tier 4.

There is really NO reason not to do this. All that would need to be done, is reduce the number of pq’s, or even keep them there but alter them to be rvr pq’s, and change the chapter camps into battle objectives. It’s really not that complicated a solution, but it works on multiple levels.

Firstly, it stops a large group from being able to be everywhere at once (or at least get from one place to another in a short period of time). This would have more effect on separating the zerg than any other change. Because a smaller force would be able to take any given point, and know that if the enemy were all blobbed up on one spot, the likelihood of them getting to that point in time is slim. It promotes actual skirmish combat, which is what players want.

And secondly, it allows players to utilize a larger area of the game world that is currently just… not being used.

Change the tier brackets to function on renown ranks instead of career ranks.

• Tier 1 = rr0-19
• Tier 2 = rr15-39
• Tier 3 = rr35-59
• Tier 4 = rr55-100

This would give players a much closer bracket of competition with each other. It allows a larger portion of the game to be played for a longer period of time. Currently players can ascend through all 40 career ranks in under a week. Which leaves months, possibly years (in my case) of playing through tier 4’s same old same old content over and over again. A secondary reason for this is the stat difference between annihilator and warlord, is much much smaller than the difference between warlord, sovereign, and the new doomflayer/warpforged sets.

Change scenario queuing system.

Group queues, where possible, should only ever fight other group queues. this would GREATLY aid the pug vs premade problem. pugs are largely built of casual players, but if they’re constantly rolled over by premade groups who literally do nothing but spawn camp for 15 minutes, ignoring objectives in favour of renown. those casual players will just stop playing. I recognise completely that pugs SHOULD get rolled by premades, however what also needs to be recognised is that there MUST be an outlet for casual players. leave the open rvr zones for the pug vs premade fights, but at least give pugs the sanctuary, and premades the competition, of decent scenario queuing.

Give the general careers an overhaul

This is an important point, and not one to be taken lightly. I’ve put a lot of thought into how this should work, looking at the current careers, their current roles (or lack their of) and tried my best to come up with something that actually compliments the original intention of “rock < paper < scissors < rock” idea.

Firstly, potions need to stack with regular buffs. Having utility careers who’s utility is well… useless, because a simple, purchasable in bulk potion can over-write it, is just not on. However, an important amendment to that statement is that they should ONLY stack with GROUP buffs. Players should not be able to drink a strength potion, and then buff their own strength on top of that.

Secondly, debuffs… let’s talk about them. Why do so many careers have access to so many of them? Especially careers who deal more damage than anyone else having just as many debuffs. It’s not fair and it’s not right, so let’s revise it…

• Tanks will now have access to heal debuffs. Incoming debuffs will be limited to 2handed spec lines, outgoing debuffs will be limited to sword + shield spec lines.
• Melee dps will have access to resistance debuffs.
• Magic ranged dps will have access to armour debuffs.
• Physical ranged dps will have access to resistance debuffs.
• Healers will have access to cleanses, and incoming heal
  buffs.
• Utility careers (magus/engie) will have access to both
  armour, and resistance debuffs, but with lower delve values than others. They
  will also have access to outgoing heal buffs, as well as group damage buffs.

This system is designed so that no one career can excel on its own. To get the most out of any given career, you need another to compliment it. It allows a lot more freedom to create groups of different setups, with different things in mind. But penalises you for taking a cookie cutter setup every time, because someone else will always find a new setup that beats it.

General mechanic changes to “hybrids”.

• Guard – guard can only be used with a shield. However there
  will be a tactic in all tanks 2h mastery trees which grant them a 15% outgoing
  damage bonus.
• Divine fury – this tactic will be changed so that any healer who uses it will no longer be able to resurrect a fallen ally.

The reason for those two changes is fairly simple… the combination of guard on a 2 handed tank + a dps careers, is just too great. However, tanks do need a trade off for losing guard. Similarly, healers who want to spec dps should lose their “main” healing ability, of being able to resurrect people.

And finally, I guess… fix melee healing!

That’s all for now, I’m sure I’ll have more to say soon. Cheers.

forum post here, please post.

your dream 1.4.1 patchnotes…

So after seeing this post on the official WAR forums. I thought about it and thought pretty hard. And decided that of course, anything I suggested would ultimately not happen, but it would still be fun to type up a
bunch of “fake” patch notes anyway.

Just to see people’s reactions and stuff.

It also turned out to be much much longer than I could have posted on the official forum. So I decided to make a blog post about it. Try to bear in mind i don’t know every career inside out, so some careers i’ve
deliberately missed off just because i don’t know enough about them, and if i’ve added a career that i don’t know much about, it’s quite probably down to “peer pressure” and reading up on the various complaints.

Here goes!

General RVR changes:

• Siege weapons, and rams are now affected by your
  realms AAO bonus. They will now deal between 100% damage at 0 AAO and 400%
  damage at 400% AAO.
• Scenario queues have changed! if you are
  queueing as a group, you will now only fight other groups.
• All warcamps will now have two (2) rank 55
  champions at their exits.
• Scenario guards now have a 200ft aggro range,
  will only use ranged attacks, and cannot move (they will not wipe an entire
  group if they are out of 200ft).

General balance changes:

All armour careers have had soft caps implemented on their
armour and resistance values.

• Light armour, and robes will now soft cap at 30%
  with the soft cap on resistances increased to 50%
• Medium armour and medium robes will now soft cap
  at 55% with the soft cap on resistances increased to 45%
• Heavy armour careers will now soft cap at 70%
  with the soft cap on resistances remaining at 40%.

Bright Wizard and sorcerer mechanics have changed, they will
no longer have a chance to receive backlash damage. Instead they will have a
scaling incoming heal debuff applied to them.

• At 20 mechanic, 5% heal debuff
• At 40 mechanic, 10% heal debuff
• At 60 mechanic, 15% heal debuff
• At 80 mechanic, 20% heal debuff
• At 100 mechanic, 25% heal debuff
• this heal debuff can be applied on top of
  others. So a second incoming heal debuff would reduce incoming heals to 37.5%
  at full mechanic.

Career changes:

Disciple of Khaine

• Rend Soul has been moved to the sacrifice tree
• A single target, channelled heal has been added
  to the dark rites tree. It is classed as “fragile”, and is almost always
  interrupted.
• Lifetaps will now have their multipliers
  increased by the amount of soul essence in their resource pool.

Engineer

• The hollow-points tactic will now give you an
  additional 15% armour penetration. But you will not gain additional damage as
  before.

Magus

• The chaos unleashed tactic will now allow you to
  ignore 10% of your targets resistances instead of gaining a critical chance
  bonus.

Marauder

• All abilities may be used regardless of your
  mutation. However if an ability is not designed for the mutation you have, it
  will have a 75% reduction in damage.

Shadow Warrior

• All abilities may be used regardless of stance. However
  if an ability is not designed for the stance you are in, it will have a 75%
  reduction in damage.
• The enchanted arrows tactic will now give you an
  additional 15% armour penetration, but will no longer ignore resistances.

Squig Herder

• The clever shootin’ tactic will now give you an
  additional 15% armour penetration, but will no longer grant you an AP bonus.

Slayer

• Shatter Limbs has been changed and will now debuff outgoing heals by 50%

Swordmaster

• The vauls buffer tactic has been changed. it will now cause Dragons Talon to hit up to 8 additional people around your target.

Warrior Priest

• Divine Assault has been moved to the grace tree.
• A single target channelled heal has been added
  to the path of salvation, it is classed as “fragile” and will almost always be
  interrupted.
• Lifetaps will now have their multipliers
  increased by the amount of righteous fury in their resource pool.

White Lion

• Echoing Roar has been changed, and will now increase the cooldown of all abilities by 5 seconds, to your target and all allies within 30 feet.

Witch elf

• For every point of frenzy, you will gain 3% more
  armour penetration.
• Agonizing wound will now ignore 3000 armour,
  instead of 100%

Witch hunter

• For every point of accusation, you will gain 3%
• more armour penetration.
  Torment will now ignore 3000 armour, instead of
  100%.

more interesting developments.

well, after reading some forum posts, and some people “just not getting it”. even so far as calling me stupid, and a noob and stuff, for only factoring in KE as a spell, saying that a good dok prehots, and uses other abilities… well that’s cool and all, so i figured i should probably just, you know… factor those in too.

what i’ll do now, is calculate everything over a period of 15 seconds, as that’s how long our longest hots last. we’ll see how quickly we run out of SE shall we?

Khaines Vigour

• 40 SE cost
• instant cast
• 15 seconds duration
• 10 seconds cooldown

Restore Essence

• 55 SE cost
• 0.5 second cast
• 5 seconds duration
• no cooldown

soul infusion

• 30 SE cost
• instant cast
• 15 seconds duration
• no cooldown

soul shielding

• 40 SE cost
• instant cast
• 10 seconds duration
• no cooldown

khaines embrace

• 60 SE cost
• 1 second cast
• no cooldown

for the sake of argument we’ll say that the dok in question has yet to enter combat, sees an enemy group coming, and decides to act. he prehots the group with KV. then places 2 hots onto the groups main assist as he’ll be in first, and then pops his group bubble to try and help against that initial hit. after that he can start using KE to pop out some group heals. now, try to remember that CURRENTLY, all of these instant cast abilities could have been used while KE was on cooldown. but now there is no cooldown, and you will have a choice between using a global cooldown on another instant cast hot, or casting another KE. currently if you cast an instant, the GCD would be over just before KE’s cooldown allowing you to chain cast things.

now it’s different. i’ll use an image to display the new timeline for all this.

 
now we just have to pray to the gods that we’re all in full sovereign, and that we don’t need to change to other armour types later on in order to keep up with the gear curve. even full sovereign will struggle past the 15 second mark.

interesting developments…

Well well well… we’ve had some exciting/disappointing for some developments from mythic today, in the form of changes to the way dok/wp heals will work in future.

before i get into that though, i had a comment regarding my last post, i’m sorry the guy doesn’t have a blog, however he does have a twitter, follow him @AndyBursh

now then, into the nitty gritty. perhapse to break precedent, Steven Engle gave some figures over the core tester IRC channel which i’ve been allowed to share with you all. it’s nothing amazing or fantastical or anything like that. just a “before and after” sort of thing:
[16:37:08]  so for example if you once healed for 1280, it will be closer to 720ish

with that in mind, let’s review a few things. firstly, the way Khaines Embrace used to work:

• 1 second cast time, 1.5 second cooldown = 2.5 seconds between casts (in-theory).
• 60 SE per cast = 24 SE per second cost
• 1280 non-crit heal

and how it’s going to work:

• 1 second cast time, 0 cooldown, 1.4 second GCD = 1.4 seconds between casts
• 60 SE per cast = 43 SE per second cost
• 720 non-crit heal

so let’s do the usual math bust here. over a period of 10 seconds, in the old ways you could likely have gotten off 4 casts (if there are no interrupts or setbacks). over the course of that 10 seconds, assuming full sovereign + mythic chalice, you could regen up to 220 SE. this would almost negate the cost of the heals, as they would cost 240. you could suppliment this with 1 use of Essence Lash to regen another 45 SE, however it’s un-needed and you’ll get the full 4 over 10 seconds anyway, for a total of 5120 non-crits worth of health in ten seconds

now… under the new system, you could theoretically cast 7 heals. theoretically.
now, why is that only a theory? well. first of all, that would cost a whopping 420 SE. you can regen a maximum of 265 if you get an essence lash in there. but even then that takes away one of your heals, as it costs a GCD to use. so now we’re down to 6 heals. those heals are 54% less effective than they used to be too (720 = 56% of 1280). of those 6 heals you only have enough RF to cast 4, and then another on the 11th second. giving you just 2880 worth of non-crit heals over the same 10 seconds.

this actually gets progressively worse. as the fight goes on, you’ll need to use more abilities to regen your soul essence (yes, even in full sovereign). each of those abilities takes away 1 gcd that you could have used to cast a group heal.

this has the knock-on effect of causing fewer heals to be cast instead of more, over an extended time period. and for a lower delve value. i actually think this was a clever move, it’s bringing dok/wp heals to where they should be: supportive aoe, leaving “burst” healing to clothie careers.

edit: some 8 hours later or something… after some ZZ’s.

it was pointed out to me on the WHA forum that “ZOMG UR MATHS SUCKS!!”, because they correctly pointed out that at the start of a fight, dok/wp have 250 resources at their disposal anyway.  so with that in mind, currently you will run out of SE…. never, you can keep pumping out the heals every 2.5 seconds for ever and ever and ever.

with the new changes, you’ll run out after 10 seconds, giving you the full 7 heals if you really want to spam them (for a total of 5040 heals) within that 10 seconds. but again as in the above example, you’re out of SE and you have very few ways to reliably regenerate it. really, after the initial hit of a fight, dok/wp are likely to find that their healing suffers a lot purely because they’re used to just spamming a button and everything being ok.

good players will work around it, but the majority of terribads out there, who are fotm rerollers who played the career so their guild wb could get an ez win? well… they’re gonna get a pretty hard kick in.

Dok/WP Love/Hate; a letter from an Archmage…

this is a really cool (roleplayish) writing from the perspective of an archmage, take it with a pinch of salt, but it’s definitely a good indicator of the mindset of clothie healers vs dok/wp. if we could get this reposted on all war blogs, and get some actual momentum going, i’m sure we can get some worthwhile and meaningful changes made to healing careers. thanks!

“Dear Disciple of Khaine and Warrior Priest,

I hate you, I really do, but I love you too damned much to stay mad at you.

First things first: I’ve got to ask you how a 1s group heal that can heal for more than a 2.5s single target heal isn’t unbalanced?

You’re fantastic partners to have as a healer, but I have a sort of love/hate relationship with you. I love healing alongside you, because you keep me alive and make up for my absence when I’m kiting somebody around; even while you stand in one spot whistling and making origami penguins. It’s like you’d be just as happy and effective without me.

When I’m running around like a mad man screaming for help, unable to help heal the group with more than HoTs, you stand stoic, spamming that group heal, determined to make sure our groups health never drops. Thanks. I hate you.

Beside your overpowered might, I look no more than a child in one of my mother’s ill-fitting dresses. I guess it’s cool though, because you don’t have a clue what to do when the other team all decide to beat up the same person; that’s where you need my help. In those peaceful moments when I’m not dead and I’m not running away like a Shaman with a speed proc, I put absorb shields on our MDPS and magical infusions on our little tanks; it makes me ever so happy to see them drop below 20% health and then go shooting back up instantly. I know some of that is down to you, but I tell myself that was all my work; it helps me get through the day, ok!?

I prance around cleaning up those little bits you missed with your incessant group heal spam, and tickling our enemies with my debuffs. Sometimes, I even put a HoT on you because it makes me feel good.

Then I see the scoreboard. You’ve done ten bajillion healing in nine minutes, and I’ve done about five thousand; but I was putting HoTs on everybody and using my channelled heal to save my favourite little Slayer from being blown up by the nasty Sorcerer .. I hardly even died either. I felt like I’d done really well, but no, you take that all away from with your stupid group heal. By the time I’ve cast a heal, or seen a HoT tic, your next wave of health has hit and rendered my efforts null; but if it weren’t that way, you wouldn’t be the same stubborn, armour clad, hammer wielding prat I fell in hate with.

When I see the enemy, I cry and run away. What do you do? You stand there like a statue and take the beating with that ridiculous armour, you idiot; but then you’re still spamming that stupid group heal and keeping me alive! You only do it because you can’t run away in that much armour.

If I’m lucky, I’ll see that skanky Witch Elf coming. Then, when she pops on me, I’ll be able to get away, and lead her on a wild goose chase around the map; all the time jeering at her and screaming for help. If she catches me though, I’m dead. Again. Not even you can save me. You wouldn’t even try, but if I can keep her away for long enough your constant healing might keep me alive until the friendly neighbourhood Dwarf comes and hits her round the head. If you were in trouble, and by some miracle I wasn’t, I’d heal you with everything I’ve got, because I love you that much!

So, you make me look pathetic on the scoreboard – stealing all my healing points – and then you make me look like a weakling when somebody attacks me. Great … but your wounds buff is so damned good for me, how could I stay mad at you?

Sometimes, I get tired of looking like a fool compared to you. You make me so angry, I unleash the power of Khaine upon my enemies in a tirade of lasers and pain – but I still heal people, or myself. I run around the map, trying to find that stupid Choppa so I can put all my DoTs on him then burn his face off with my Searing Touch. During all this, what’s happening to our groups health? That’s right, it’s not going anywhere. You’ve got it covered. See, I told you it’s like you don’t even need me. I feel so unappreciated.

Still, I suppose I should take solace in the fact that I can try and kill people when you make me angry. In fact, I’m pretty much a one-elf killing machine. I don’t need you to heal me. My enemies pain is my tonic.

Sorry, what? You can do that too? When have I ever made you angry? What? You get to run around with a big hammer smacking people in the face? Fantastic. I guess I should have figured that you carry a hammer for a reason. So you’re telling me you can do all those things that I thought made me special – healing myself by damaging my enemies – AND that stupid armour of yours means you can go toe-to-toe with those ugly Marauders? That’s just unfair.

Well, I have heard more complaints about my legendary damage, so I guess I must just be better than you. So there!

I don’t know if you know this though, but people really hate it when you get your big hammer out. When you hold it in both hands, it’s like you forget how to heal completely. What am I meant to do if you’re not wildly spamming your group heal like the disabled chimp I’ve grown to love? Well, I’ll die a lot more, and so will the rest of our team.

You know what, I’m glad you’re a healer. I love you when you heal. You keep everybody alive, suffuse us with the glow of high quality group heals. However, if I hear you’ve been having another affair with a Rune Priest, it’s over. I’m going dps spec forever.

Kindest regards,
The Archmage.”