Some people on guild chat were saying that the scenarios were bugged after the last patch and only Phoenix Gate was popping for T2. I hope it something they fix soon.
Order lost all but one of the PG I played over the weekend which was very frustrating. It seemed to me that the Order side rarely played enough offense. I would like to see the Order side forget about defense, rush the other sides flag, and as soon as it is captured and on the way back, have the whole team turn and kill the destruction flag carrier.
Andrew
1662
Yeah, it is pretty awful, given how important the scenarios are to WAR. I made a Destruction character on Phoenix Throne, and I was able to get into the other non-Nordenwatch scenarios.
I agree, PG is really bad. Even with an organized group, the round rarely (or never?) ends due to caps. Adding to the fun, one round of PG I was playing yesterday had an organized group of around 6 people on the Destruction side who were ignoring the scenario goal and just killing people. They were just standing on top of our flag, killing people as they respawned. It was like being trapped in a cage with a hungry lion. That was the point where I decided to give up on scenarios for the day.
Andrew
1663
I don’t know, I’d be happy if Order figured out even more basic strategy, like Don’t Just Attack the Tank. Far too often I’d come across a bunch of people fighting some tanks, while 3-4 healers and ranged DPSers stood to the side completely unmolested. Is it just me or is that completely the wrong thing to do?
Yes, but if you see a bunch of people fighting the tank and try to do the right thing and attack the RDPS on your own, you’re going to die before you kill anthing once they focus fire on you. Then that’s negative reinforcement about trying to go for the RDPS. Happens over and over on my WH in PUGs, and sometimes I just get tired of dying and decide to hang out with the mob. If they’re beating on the tank, oh well.
I actually liked Phoenix Gate. As a Witch Elf, I either played defense–nothing like popping out of stealth and surprising the one dude going for the flag on an end-run–or flanker, sometimes even getting the flag and running it home. Lots of room to maneuver and get behind casters and healers. The one I HATED was Mourkain–as a melee DPS the scrum is too deadly. Great for casters who sit back and randomly spew death, and for healers who sit back and randomly spew healing I guess.
Tier 3 stuff is all pretty good except I hate the lava level, whatever it’s called. Getting punted into lava by dwarfs is no fun.
Speaking of Tor Anoc (T3 lava level) - has anybody playing order made it to the bauble before destruction? On my server Destruction seems to have taken control of it before anybody from order has gotten more than 75% of the way up the hill to it. I’m not sure if they’re just closer or what is going on.
It’s not a bug. Over the weekend I’ve done all three T2 scenarios (PG most of course). Mourkain and Stonetroll will pop… when people queue for them. People just prefer PG. (It’s a less complex scenario, plus there’s the pre-mounted weapons so people who are low DPS classes and “useless” seem to love shooting at folks - personally I wish the tanks would, y’know, run tank interference and capture the flag.)
QFT from my perspective as a BW. With multiple roots between us RDPSers, plus DoTs and nukes of all kinds, unless your entire tank force comes for the RDPS, you’re going to get a VERY quick trip back to your respawn. Nothing like DoTing you, and rooting you while we all back off and focus fire for say a second or two.
Plus, the enemy healers stay way clear of the RDPSers, so if you’re amidst us, you’ve got no healing support. In some cases, I’ve seen our healer coolly just HoT or heal himself and not even budge an inch while we disintegrate the lone interloper.
BlakeD
1669
See, and as a melee DPS I loved Mourkain Temple. I found ways to get around to the back (particularly on horse and from the side marshes) and take out casters and there’s enough room to maneuver out of harm’s way often. In the middle it’s easy for me to wade in for a bit, lay down a Sever Nerve Morale Level 1 ability or stack some Fervor or use Feinted Positioning in conjunction with Torment to slip through the armor a few times and then run back.
I think the problem with Mourkain Temple is that it’s highly dependent on someone on your team having a mount. If no one on your team is level 20 then you’re screwed. That initial run to the flag is incredibly important especially if it’s a healer who just hangs back and throws heals on themselves the entire time. While it’s possible the other team can take the flag, the head start is difficult to make up in my experience playing it 20 times or so.
I love my witch hunter and despite being Rank 23, the low end of Tier 3, I’m having a really good time. My first experience with the cemetary instance was pretty poor on the Order side. I’ve played it twice since then and found that as long as everyone focuses on their strengths we tend to roll Destro.
As for people attacking tanks, I’ve found I’ll jump in on it if they’re already injured and I can use Feinted Positioning/Torment to drop their HP quickly. I have the “Flowing Accusations” (Rank 21) career tactic that gives me 2 Accusations 50% of the time whenever I use any Execution. That’s lead to me spamming Absolution for 350 damage 5 times in a row sometimes which is enough to kill a tank quickly. If there are healers I’ll jump back and take them down first and then sorcerors.
The problem with expecting everyone to go for a healer is that I will die before I do any damage and then I sit out for 25 seconds. That’s a waste in my opinion. I’m all for sacrifice, but only if I take down someone with me and a key player (shaman or zealot). If I run too far back to take down a healer, everyone will just jump on me and it’ll be over before it’s even begun. Just my take though.
Funkula
1670
That is absolutely bizarre. On Volkmar it’s Mourkain, 24/7, and good luck getting one of the others to pop. That suits me fine, though, since I think it’s by far the most fun of the three.
The CTF style of Phoenix Gate, like Warsong, is not a style that I like. I much prefer ones where you don’t have to possess both flags to cap, since it’s much less likely to devolve into a stalemate. But PG isn’t even as well thought out as Warsong, since it’s a much larger area and decreases the intensity of the fighting and likelihood of finding the enemy flag carrier.
Stone Troll is also pretty poorly designed in my opinion. The timer on the flag is short enough that capping all three points is practically impossible, since they don’t have to hinder you for very long at all. Like Phoenix Gate, it seems to mostly consist of one team getting a cap or two and then stalling to run out the clock. Mourkain can actually be won on points, and that makes it the clear winner from my perspective.
Yeah, you really need a tank to lead the charge, and the tank needs to have healers staying on him and MDPS pushing forward with him. Or the MDPS all sneaking around the back together. It’s just a lot to coordinate in a PUG, and beating on the closest target is a lot easier.
skyride
1672
I don’t get why certain Scenarios seem more popular at times. Normally my guild queues for all of them. When I was T2 on Ostermark, Phoenix Gate never popped. I might have played 100+ SCs and PG popped maybe twice. Now I hear on Ostermark that PG is the only SC that pops.
In T3, last 2 days I’ve only been getting Tor Anroc and another one (forgot name) non stop. Why am I not getting any of the other 4 SCs?
Seems like certain maps are trending but what causes the trend? Is it just some internal sorting that causes certain maps to pop more often?
As a Witch Elf, I find it pretty easy to get in and kill a BW or a healer, though the RPs are tougher than most. It’s getting OUT alive that’s the problem. Then again, if I can take out the caster and occupy three to five people while doing it, IF my team takes advantage of that it can be very useful. With the throat slit for silence and the kiss that diminishes healing, not to mention an elixir or morale abilities, often I can shred my target before they can do much. It’s the other half dozen people who pound on me that are the problem :). If you can get more than one WE to go in together, it’s pretty wild, and if by some miracle you can get a tank and a healer, you can devastate the rear ranks. But it rarely happens that way.
Most BWs I find are over-confident, because their DPS is so high. They seem baffled when you break their root and cut off their noses.
I hated Mourkain because all too often my Destruction team mates couldn’t figure out the simple strategy of get the artifact, and run it back to our spawn area and hunker down. That works 99.99% of the time, though as has been noted, you do need a mount to get there first. Most of the time the team that grabs it first wins.
In Tor Anoc, Destruction usually takes a Marauder or Black Orc, dumps HoTs on him, and has him run THROUGH the lava. Gets there first nearly always if done right.
Funkula
1674
If there are only two categories of people:
- People who queue for everything
- People who only queue for Tor Anroc
then nothing else will ever pop. If you want to play the less popular scenarios, you have to queue for just them and accept that you’ll be waiting for a lot longer than if you go with the path of least resistance.
With the habit of queueing for all scenarios being popular, few people can influence what scenario gets played. Only a few people have to be more likely to pick one scenario (for instance because its an orc scenario, and that person or party is in orc land) in order for it to dominate.
I would guess whichever area is most popular on the person-limited side would have its scenarios pop more frequently, because they are the first to be queued, and some people are too dumb to multi-queue. One area or another on a server tends to be more popular, due to network effects with pqs and rvr.
If you have a few friends, you can pick what scenario gets popped usually… our server used to only do Talabenac (sp?) Dam on tier 3. Our guild decided we hate it and so we started queueing for everything else… lo and behold, no more dam on our server.
I think that if they added something to the “join scenario” interface that gave you a general idea of what the wait times were like for each scenario, you’d see players spread out more. As it stands, I think people just gravitate towards whatever the most popular scenario is. If they could see that there was a long wait time for that scenario in advance, I think a lot of people would choose another one.
Wouldn’t that exacerbate the problem? The queue times are going to be shortest for the most popular scenarios; not the least popular ones.
AlanC
1678
So it’s not bugged then. I don’t know if that makes it any better. If scenarios are one of the primary ways of leveling, I’d hope Mythic provided a means of insuring that all of them were available. Maybe cross-server scenarios would help?
It’d also be nice to see how many order and dest are waiting in each queue.
Twice now I’ve seen Order use a banner/standard that improved walking speed that allowed them to beat Dest to the bauble. Aside from that, Dest always gets to it first.
z22
1679
I waited until I had my new rig together to play War, as it was HORRIBLY slow on my ~4 year old machine (no surprise there, although WoW ran good). Some late to the game comments are below. Maybe someone can help me with the cons, in case I missed something along the way. So far I’ve only leveled up my Squig Herder.
CONS:
[ol]
[li]These pet features are a mess: pathing, rendering updates, command response, you name it. They need to overhaul pet movement, updates, rendering, … everything![/li][li]Looting mobs isn’t easy. it should be. The end.[/li][li]I REALLY hate that you can’t get the Career of your (enemy) target[/li][li]Assigning hotkeys is messy, mostly because they alphabetically sorted the damn hotkeys in the bind window (10 doesn’t come after 9, it comes after … who F*** knows)[/li][li]Gold spammers need to be controlled. I was getting flooded with them until I used “/hi”, for “hide”, but I’m not sure what exactly I’m hiding[/li][li]Having to check EULA every load is ridiculous[/li][li]Too many intro screens during load. I’d be happy with same load times and one progress bar. I just somehow feel the extra screens unnecessarily increase my load times.[/li][/ol]
PROS:
Tons, and most listed here so I won’t bother. The game LOADS of stuff that WoW doesn’t or most MMOs don’t have at launch. Very nice launch, very stable, very polished.
BlakeD
1680
I’d also like to say, I don’t understand why people necessarily think Witch Hunters are weaker than Witch Elves at the same rank. I guess, statistically, people on the Warhammer Alliance forums are saying they’ve proven it’s true for the teens and early 20’s. However, I guess WH’s come into their own in the mid to late 20’s and dominate afterward. I’m looking forward to Pistol Whip under the Path of Judgment tree, but I never experienced the feeling of being helpless as a WH even one-on-on with a WE. I’ve taken down Chosen a couple levels above me by myself before and I’ve had the opposite effect, a WE taking me out in 5 seconds. It has always seemed very even to me.
In Scenarios, I often have done the most damage, place in the top 3 for number of Death Blows, and placed in the top 3 for Solo Kills (1 or 2 often). I’m not trying to brag, just comment that the game feels balanced. I do die a bit, but I’m a melee DPS so that’s expected.
I think a lot of surviving as a WH has to do with tactics and how you position yourself before going into a fight. Knowing when to flee and when to wade in and who to tackle first changes a lot on the fly. Dropping “Sever Nerve” for 600 damage at the exact right moment is crucial especially with healers. Also, knowing how to spec for RvR with gear and tactic slots helps a ton. Maybe it’s just message board complaining similar to the WoW effect of crying “NERF!” at the top of your lungs, but I feel like I’m a DPS machine most of the time. Anyone else play a WH who feels the same way?
