No I don’t either. And it’s a bit scary. Am I growing up? I have friends who play but, unlike with past MMOs, we don’t spend all non-play our time talking about WAR either.

Y’know, not that I get to play too much lately. It’s crazy month around here.

PS: Trying to put a nice Black Orc video together, have most of the material I need, just need to edit it and slap some bad music on top of it. Maybe over the weekend…

All War Bellows will now persist through the Black Orc’s death. This means that you will not have to recast a War Bellow after respawning or being resurrected.

Nice, especially if you’re like me and always forget to recast your war bellow before hitting flee in a scenario.

Trip Em Up: The snare from this ability will no longer stack with other snares.  Also, the damage has been reduced but no longer occurs over time. The AP cost has increased and the reuse timer has been removed.

Wasn’t this already in? Haven’t played much lately but I’m pretty sure it was. Bit of a shame they increased the AP cost, as I seem to be struggling as it is, but otherwise I’ll always take direct damage over DoTs.

Da Big Un: The damage of this spell has increased, and its radius reduced.

Sweet I guess? No really insightful comment to make.

Skull Thumper: This ability now adds an effect that deals additional damage to the target whenever they are critically hit.

Also seem to remember noticing this (the tooltip actually said ‘their head will ring for 0 additional damage for 0 seconds).

Right in da Jibblies: The reuse timer of this ability has been lowered.

Awesome. Black Orcs - now with more reproduction denying power!

Follow me Lead: The Toughness buff given to the defensive target should now work correctly.

Again, confused - wasn’t Follow me Lead supposed to buff weapon skill?

Juggernaut: This ability is now available at rank 12.

Not bad. It seems that most or all classes got their roots/counters pushed down to rank 12.

Guard: This ability should no longer attempt to work on players outside of your group.

It did?

Rock ‘Ard: This ability now starts a Plan chain.

Don’t have it, can’t comment.

Link to the full patch notes. All in all, I don’t really find the changes to be as big as to warrant a mastery points refund but again, I can’t complain. Some other things I like about the patch are: ironing out the morale bugs, the root immunity, the added delay on murderballs and the general improvements on interface responsiveness and animation. Huzzah!

I love these little bursts of luck. I logged in to my Witch Elf (it was only fitting) and immediatly got summoned by a friend to Troll Country, where an RvR PQ was about to reset. So I get there, we fight, we crush Order, we grumble at people to get back in the PQ zone and, eventually, we win. I end up 6th on the contributions list and 1st on the roll. Why hello there Massive Loot Bag! And inside, among other goodies, the epic mask pictured above. Wicked!

Do I look like Diablo or what? ((That is, assuming Diablo went around wearing skimpy clothes and dual wielding daggers).

Until I got to T4 that is. Let me just tell you, T4 is awesome. For one, it feels more like a real war than any of the other tiers, partly because of the numbers involved on each side (on any given night, there will be at least 2-3 Destro warbands fighting off an equal number of Order troops) and partly because having some leaders with a head for strategy is more important than ever.

Imagine, if you will, that you’re one of the leaders of an alliance made of 5-6 large guilds. You have 4 warbands at your disposal and there are at least 3 fronts on which you can do battle. Do you keep the warbands together, or do you split them up? Where do you send each group? Can you make quick decisions on what to reinforce and what to abandon? Cue about 20 more things that you need to look after at the same time. You sure went a long way from fighting 5v5 at the Lost Lagoon in Human T1, huh?

In conclusion, if T3 is wearing you out, keep your head up and try to think about T4. Because it really is great and it certainly helped keep my interest up.

“Oh, WoW, huh? Oww, we kinda gave up on that“, me and my coworker go. “We’re playing WAR now…”

To which he throws us an ironic smile. “Oh, WAR? Yeah, I heard about that. They say it’s not as good as WoW is…”

At this point, I had to decide between going into full geek mode and holding a 20 minutes speech about the perks and flaws of each game or just dropping a quick “Well, if you’re into PvP, then WAR is awesome.”

I went with the latter. He smirks a bit,my coworker pitches in with a vague “yeah I mean, WAR …PvP..you know?” and I decide I might as well show him the damn game, as I have it on my laptop.

*clickety-click* Goodbye Microsoft Powerpoint, hello Warhammer Online. “Oh, you’re an orc, huh?”

“Damn right I am. Green, mean bastard! I’m like a protection warrior, only without the suck.”

“I play a protection warrior.”

“Oh…our rent just went up, didn’t it?”

I login and go into full this-would-be-easier-if-I-stopped-talking-and-let-you-at-the-controls mode.

Well this is the city…pretty empty right now, here, let me fly some place. Hey look, instant flying. So now I’m in a warcamp, let’s just ride to this keep right here, why don’t I also queue up for 6 unique ‘battlegrounds’ in the mean time. Oops, no one at the keep - well you can siege these things man, you totally can…with cannons, baby! Right so, did I tell you about open parties and public quests? Yeah, let me just show you. Here…I click on this little button aaaaand…if there was anyone around with an open party going, I could join it. But apparently there isn’t anyone at this public quest or in this entire zone. Well it’s 2 PM, people are at work, whaddya want?. Hence why no scenarios popped up either in the 20 minutes since I queued up. So yeah, I guess…umm…you gotta try it. It’s great fun, it’s very PvP-focused, you can get some action as soon as you create your character, it has a much more open approach to grouping and it’s lacking that grindy feel so far! It’s not WoW but it doesn’t try to be either! Give it a try, I think they do free trials now?”

The man showed some interest towards the guild leveling system, as well as the part where I told him about the lack of grinding (I lied - people who love you often do). Otherwise though, he just nodded politely and topped it off with a “Well, they’re adding alot of that stuff in WoW and it’s Blizzard, man. They’re gonna do it better.”

Well yes, they’re Blizzard indeed. And as much as I love WAR, I’d be silly trying to deny the fact that Blizz is indeed effing awesome.  Even so though, it’s not a matter of who does it “better”. For me at least, it’s about who does it differently. And yet, I realized I really had no arguments to sell WAR to a Wowhead. Especially one who’s not that hot on PvP, mind you. Of course, no demo will ever beat having them sit down, create a character and have some fun in a scenario before they’re level 2 but how do you get past their initial refusal to try anything not coming from Blizzard? How do you defeat the whole “Well, I’m sure it’s a great game and I’m glad you’re having fun, but I play WoW cause they do it better, or at least that’s what I keep telling myself, to justify all those nights of grinding rep with yet another bloody faction.”

In the end, no single carrot is likely to convert a non-believer, except perhaps keep sieges. And yet, word of mouth is tons more efficient than for example banners or tv commercials. Which basically means that we’re more likely to try a product if a friend or someone we trust/look up to recommends it, than if we see an ad where some strangers smile sheepishly cause the product touched them down there (in a questionable way). Which in turn means that WAR’s success also depends on our evengelical skills. And man, my skills were rusty today! (Unlike the open beta, when I got a few people who had never even heard of WAR to check their email every five minutes and go “Arrrgh, still no confirmation, damn it! I wanna play, what’s this French company I never heard of before doing?!”

No big conclusion here, just a question, as food for thought. How would you sell WAR? To either someone who plays another MMO (everyone you know, except for your mom) or someone who never played an MMO (your mom). To keep things simple, imagine it’s an elevator pitch. (”You have until we get to the first floor to tell me about your idea, cause I’m very busy. SSC starting soon.“) Let’s hear it!

PS: I should be returning to a more regular blogging schedule towards the middle of the week. Till then, waaagh to yer mums.

Started a Witch Elf. First impressions: very dangerous but also very squishy. Archmages fear me.

I have trouble noticing the change to Skull Thumper. Will need to test more. Also Trip’Em Up got changed it seems.

Got a new title last night, for taking 25 keeps. The Encroacher. So-so, as far as coolness goes. Still better than The Squatter though!

Can’t for the life of me figure out why my screenshots look like roadkill. The game looks damn fine, yet whenever I push that Print Screen key, the output looks like it was filtered through a rat’s arse. Help?

A couple of days of playing Witch Elf really make you appreciate the tankiness of Black Orcs.

Need to prod El G to write more Marauder stuff.

And last, in case you haven’t noticed, I added some new images to the blog (top right side). They should change with every refresh/page opened.

May apply to other classes. Your experience may vary.

Been looking at charts and reports all bloody day, so I guess some of that spilled over to this blog. Oops.

So you like runing around half-naked with an odd looking limb and a big bad ugly mace? Like having all those Bright wizards and Archmagi focusing on you when they see you charge through their ranks while praying that your healbots can keep up? Or you simply like making everyone that rolled Black Orc regret their decision?

If you said yes, then this little badass puppy is for you. and I’m going to show you - to the best of my knowledge and experience, how to make the best of this brute.

Enough with the generic guide introductions for now, I’m gonna try making this as simple as possible, using bullet points if I have to :)

What you have going for you:

• High DPS.
• Adaptability, you can swap mutations based on the situation you find yourself in.
• Good AoE  with Demolition.

What you wish you had:

• More armor, durability.

Of course there are more things to consider but that is what you should keep in mind for this part of your career.

What makes the Marauder stand out from the crowd are his mutations and these are:

• Gift of Savagery: Acquired at rank 1. Gives you Improved Weapon skill and initiative, this increases your chance to parry attacks as well as reducing your opponent’s armor effectiveness, also increases your chance to evade ranged attacks and defend against critical hits.
• Gift of Brutality: More Strength and Initiative, meaning more damage and makes it harder for opponents to block or parry your attacks.
• Gift of Monstrosity: Improves your toughness, resulting in more damage reduction and less damage from wounding attacks.

Mind you in order to be able to use your gifts, your shield hand must be empty.

With the gifts settled, let’s now move onto the array of abilities you have at your disposal, before we proceed. A note on Marauder abilities: some abilities require a certain mutation/gift to be active for in order to be available. You can now begin to see all the strategic options that can open up during a fight:

• Flail: Acquired at Rank 1. This is your bread and butter ability, 2 hits are always better than 1, does not require any specific Gift.
• Rend: At Rank 2. This is a DoT requiring Savagery or Brutality, I usually avoid using this because as with any DoT, to gain the most of it you need to use it as a opener, sure it can stack 3 times, but as a Marauder I preffer opening up with other abilities. Logic would tell us to use against tanks, wear them down in time, but tanks have a high score of toughness, so I would not advise that, a situation where this might prove useful is on a fleeing squishie, but even still you have better options for when a squishy has his back turned to you and fleeing.
• Debilitate: Acquired at Rank 3. This is what I prefer using as an opener in RvR, the natural reaction of a squishy is to run back when you charge them, make sure this is active on them for the whole duration of the fight, works on any gift so you can spam this no matter what mutation you have active. Strategic uses: use on an enemy to stop them chasing your healers, or to slow down anyone chasing you.
• Corruption: Acquired at Rank 4. Less toughness = more damage taken, make sure this is the first thing to use on anything you fight, in RvR, this would be one of the 2 abilities I use first, with Debilitate. makes those tanks go down a bit faster.
• Impale: You get this at Rank 5. Earlier I hinted out that you should be chasing after squishies, and that squishies would be running away from, if the above 2 situations = True, then change into Gift of Brutality, smack a Debilitate and start spamming this to finish them off.
• Convulsive Slashing: At Rank 6, I’m not really a big fan of this, it implies having to stand in one place for it to not break, I wouldn’t recommend staying in one place during an RvR, unless the odds are already in your favor.
• Demolition: At Rank 7, AoE ability, cheap at 25 AP, low CD, spammable, good for finishing off groups of mobs in PvE, lmited use in RvR.
• Mouth of Tzeentch: At Rank 8, requires Monstrosity or Savagery, always cast that when charging towards a group of bright wizards or other casters.
• Touch of Rot:You get this at Rank 9. Great skill for fighting any other melee class, requires Monstrosity or Savagery.
• CHARGE!!!!: Acquired at Rank 10. Ahhhhhh what is a Marauder without the ability to charge into the thick of battle? Use this to quickly close the distance between you and your target, smack a Debilitate and a Corruption and start dealing the DPS before they figure out where you came from, use this to chase and flee as well. Has the same CD as Flee.
• Wave of Horror: At Rank 10.  One of the only sources of Damage reduction you have at this stage, cast this whenever you are getting zerged, or AoE grinding for some brief respite.

This early in your career you also gain one Moral ability and one Tactic:

• Warped flesh: your other source of damage mitigation, procs pretty often too, you get this at Rank 11.
• Sever Nerve: instant 400 damage at Rank 11, make sure to always use it whenever you have the moral, also cast a Corruption for slightly more ooomph, you first get this at Rank 8.

Well there it is fellas, I hope this will make things easier for anyone wishing to start a Marauder.

Happy killing.

Last night, while returning to the Warcamp after a good hour of open RvR on my zealot, I run into the scene pictured above. What was this guy doing? I laughed for a couple of minutes and decided to ask him. So he promptly tells me he’s “making dinner“, to which I ask “what, for the entire warcamp?“. “Me an’ mah friend are vewy hungry!” he tells me, as he pops yet another squig. Gotta love gobbos!