My respec costs are going to bankrupt me

So for city sieges (and Thanquol's Incursion probably) and oRvR warbands, Bomb spec for a sorc is the way forward, single target just doesn't cut it in 24vs24 and higher

But in scenarios, I really feel that bomb spec is just underwhelming, whereas single target truly shines in the assist monkey realm that is small scale (12vs12) RvR, I tried a couple of scenarios last night after the IC defence and found myself pretty bored as bomb spec. Maybe running in a group rather than PUGging it would make a difference

So, gonna give it a try over the next week or so, but it looks like I may be respeccing a couple of times a day as it goes city - scenarios - city

On the subject of city sieges, I thought 1.4 was supposed to REDUCE the rate that city sieges happened? Maybe there's another meaning the reduce that I don't know, not that I'm complaining of course, made about 30-40k renown per defence last night which is nothing to sniff at (and got my first piece of warpforged that I'll never use)

1.4 is here!

And my evening kind of went like this...

got online around 8ish, specced my sorc, sorted renown points out, went to get mail from packs, no mail, got the hell out of IC, mail!, saw enemy wasn't working since the patch (along with a few other non-essential addons), installed squared again, found out there was an update to enemy hidden away (http://netload.in/dateiH2mAWll9uc/Enemy.rar.htm) so installed that and removed squared again, reconfigured my unit frames with enemy, flew to DW, server maintenance in 15 mins, bash head against table, go play a bit of Dragonquest IX on the DS and then watch Castle

on the plus side, I'm probably not going to be online till the weekend now, so maybe people will have a clue about wtf is going on in oRvR...

If, for example, everyone that was in DW RvR zone suddenly got ported to Ellyrion's RvR zone, most of the chickens would be headless

Some good news then...

Rancid's Career Builder is finished!!! http://wardrobe.war4scrubs.com/

This is fast becoming my favourite site for WAR related stuff, I tend to respec weekly, so being without a builder for so long was agony for me and Rancid's put a hell of a lot of work into this bad boy

There's also a renown builder available at WARStats.net (another one of my fave sites, I just wish searching was a bit easier) http://warstats.net/rbuilder?lang=usa

Bring on Tomorrow!!!

Yeah baby!

I'm 50k away from 70 and we get to play with new toys

I'm quite looking forwards to trying out the new oRvR and seeing how things work, hell, I might even give a packmaster a try if the opportunity arises

on a side note, had an evening of scenarios/IC defence as dirty bomb spec the other day

Quite fun, but I'm pretty certain that ST is more effective for SCs than bomb spec now, in a warband, its a different story

Additional testing complete!

So, plugged away at a keep door this morning in TM using my usual rotation (instead of CQ DB spam)

Frozen touch only ever procced off Arctic Blast, Gloomburst, Impending Doom and Hand of Ruin (any tick)

Guess SoG is looking more and more promising

Been running it for scenarios the last few days, overall, damage hasn't increased by any great shakes, but I did notice that those players who were surviving a rotation with a sliver of health now arent :)

Still going to continue playing with it for a bit longer and see how it goes

on a side note, dinged 69 the other day, one more rr to reach my target of 70 before 1.4

Swell of Gloom - Worth it or Not?

Been a while since I've posted so I thought I'd land back with a bump and have a look at one of the tactics that I've been looking at recently and wondering whether its worth it or not

So, my base spec is:

Agony: 11 points spent including picking up Echo of Power and Impending Doom
Calamity: 17 Points spent, including picking up Vision of Domination, Shadow of Disaster and Hand of Ruin

and my tactic loadout is Endless Knowledge, Vision of Domination, Shadow of Disaster and Frozen Fury

My new spec (as of last night) is

Agony: 14 points spent including picking up Echo of Power and Impending Doom and Swell of Gloom
Calamity: 14 Points spent, including picking up Vision of Domination, Shadow of Disaster and Hand of Ruin

and tactics are the same except FF has been dropped in favour of Swell of Gloom

So, ultimately, I lose a small amount of WoP/VoT/HoR/CW damage and boost AB/FB/DB/ID/EoP by a touch, so these pretty much cancel out

which only leaves the difference between SoG and FF

Ignoring the backlash component of SoG (as in group play its pretty irrelevant anyway) its a guaranteed 628 damage (according to my tooltip) every rotation (additional burst!)

Whereas FF boosts the proc chance of frozen touch to 75% from 25%

some simple mathhammering now...

I'm only concerned about the damage during the burst window, during which time these spells will land on an opponent...

CW (one tick)
VoT
WoP
AB
GB
ID
HoR (one tick)

Assuming FT can proc off dot spells (not sure, will test) then with FF slotted (75% chance) you get 5.25 procs at around 200 damage per proc for 1050 damage total

If it doesn't proc off dot spells, then its only going to proc 3 times for around 600 damage total

So, with SoG slotted instead of FF,

Assuming FT procs off dot spells, its going to proc 1.75 times for around around 220 damage per proc (additional points in agnony boosting the damage slightly) for a total of 385 damage

If it doesn't proc off dot spells, then it will only proc once, for 220 damage total

And to this needs adding the 628 damage from SoG itself

In summary...

	FF Procs of Dots	FF doesn't proc off dots
FF slotted	1050 total damage	600 total damage
SoG Slotted	1013 total damage	848 total damage

So, for pure damage numbers, FF performs slightly higher if it procs off dots but if it doesn't then SoG massively outperforms it

However, even with the slight damage boost for FF if it procs off dots, I think the additional burst potential from SoG would make it worthwhile

Anyway, I'll play with this spec for a week or two and start checking my combat logs to see exactly what FT can proc off

Musings on the 1.4 Patch notes

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/patchnotes/index.php?id=2010_1-4

Some interesting stuff, I've deliberately stayed away from the PTS in order to get thrown intot his first hand on release, which if they're releasing patch notes now may not be so far away (50% to 69 now - would liek to get 70 before 1.4)

I guess everyone is going to buy the progression pack, if nothing else for the buff to rp gains from 1-80

the personality pack seems a bit 'meh' but its a nice name for the order barber surgeon anyway

Class changes... nice marauder buffage along with the engi and magus changes, nothign else particularly springs to attention. Apart from the heart render toxin nerf which is really going to hurt Witch Elves

However

the most epic change of all epic changes of epicness ever in the land of epicdom is this...

"Falling damage has been tweaked to be more forgiving. Players can now fall further before incurring damage."

OMFG YES!!!!!

This might finally stop me getting laughed at by healers as i 'pop' down the side of a hill or leap daringly of a small ledge only to splat at the bottom

and maybe JUST MAYBE I won't die by taking a leisurely stroll down the dragonwake hills

Have a thought for your healer!

Played my lowbie zealot for a while yesterday (40/32 when I started) and finished on 40/35 with full annihilator gear

Shes horrendously geared but still did quite well and I enjoyed playing a healer for a day (I played a cleric in DAoC so I'm used to it)

What I had forgotten about was the incessant whine at healers during scenarios, one that springs to mind was a squig herder saying 'learn 2 res'

Funnily enough, after that he never got a res, strange how that can happen

Typically, when I play a healer, every scenario seems to have 4+ healers in, when I play my Sorc, no scenario has healers :)