If the above title is not cryptic, this cake isn’t a lie!

Should you be a PC gamer, a steam player and a fan of the above franchise: Rerollmuch is my player name on steam.  Look me up, TRR will invite you into a match.

Having reflected on Warhammer Online state of open world pvp, it dawned on me that very little in that game has to do with holding a keep.  In fact, the few rewards that exist that involve keeps have to do with attacking and taking over a keep not holding out against a siege.  so I put my thinking cap on and designed a content centric system that borrows ideas from other mmos and leverages existing tech.

Goal:

• Players want to own keep
• More players want to adventure/pvp in RvR lakes than in other systems
• Creates a critical mass of defending players
• Players want to prevent the opposing faction from owning keeps
• Constant tension and pressure for keep defenders
• Create denser content for player consumption
• Players want to own keep as they level

Problems this system is not meant to resolve:

• Class balance issues
• Trade Skill mechanism and value
• Partial integration
• Population balance within a server
• We can encourage players and they must manage this themselves

Opposing factions will fight over ownership of a keep.  Once a keep is owned, an ownership timer begins.  Initially only the renown vendors and general item merchants spawn in the keep for use by the winning side(current implementation).  After 1 day, and for each day afterward up to 6, a new item is available from the renown merchant that is specific to that Keep.  Keep items are unique to each keep.  After 7 days a pve instance(called a Keep Instance) opens for the owning side.  This instance will drop the highest level pvp items available to the tier(1-11, 12-21, etc).  Difficulty will be balanced towards mid tier renown items(8, 15, etc) and mid tier PQs items to complete.  Tier 4 Keep Instances drop items that aide in City sieges and end game pvp.  Items that drop from Tier 4 Keep instances are not set items and are on par with City Dungeon Itemization.

The keep owners side is granted a zone wide defense buff.  The buff is minor and equal in value to the diametrically opposed offensive buff the opposing faction is granted.  Testing will prove whether the buff should affect RvR and/or PvE.

The Keep owner also has access to special aesthetic trade skill recipes that are only available when a keep is owned.  These recipes should represent the chaotic and fun aspects of the Warhammer Universe(think holiday weekend items from World of Warcraft).

The keep system already allows for ownership and specific guilds to own them.  Prototypes and early roll out are based on new content.

Prototype:

• Instance portal spawns at top of keep based on timer
• Vendors spawn based on timer
• Keep ownership grants zone wide buff

Alpha:

• New Spawner:  Spawn List of attacker and defender types based on keep state
• Spawner spawns appropriate entities based on keep ownership and is controlled from the PQ system
• PQs complete and reset

Beta:

• Guard spawners are triggered from RvR lake ownership
• Vendor entities populate based on keep ownership time
• Keep resets to a neutral state if no pq is completed after 7 days

Head in the clouds:

• Keep ownership grants an xp bonus to the owning side after 1 day
• Keep ownership leader boards for guild competition across servers
• Unique trade skill recipes drop from an RvR lake only if the keep is owned

Final and Approved:

• 36 instances, 2 per lake per tier
• 144 PQs themed around defending or attacking a keep
• 32 items per lake, 16 per side
• 108 Trophies

The specifics are in the desired player behavior.  Encouraging player RvR is centric to the “War is everywhere theme”.  Warhammer Online had a similar level of content across each tier but divided the player base.  Encouraging players to play in similar areas creates the critical mass necessary to initiate conflict.  The time limits allow for more casual players to always take part in the RvR.  They may not be able to participate in the actual attack/defende and holding of a keep, but they can complete PQs in the lakes and benefit from the additional PvE and PvP content provided.

Hardcore players will have more to brag about.  And the opposing faction certainly wouldn’t want you to own a keep for any length of time.  There is however one issue this design fails to resolve.  Keeps can be attacked at any time of day.  Many guilds will attempt to log in the off hours for a straight up PvE challenge avoiding PvP altogether.

I tossled with the idea of requiring the attacker PQs to defeat defender players but I ran into a chicken and the egg situation.  In order to create the desired population, the defending PQs would need to be the most rewarding PvE content available, and therefore more precious to the player base.  There is a fine line between creating compelling content and over compensation for the issue.  This solution can go a long way to solving some of the population issues with War PvP.  Testing and future patches will determine what Mythic actually does!

PVP players are already used to stacking 2-3 dps on a discipline priest to take em down.  Pre-3.02 a D priest could certainyl live with that and excel!  Since we’ve trained the player base to do this, post-3.02 2-3 dps on a tanking discipline priest takes me down in 5 seconds.  I don’t even get to heal myself most of the time.

Yes.  I am whining about priest tanking!

On the other hand!  Shadow is WAY fun.  4 dots, dispel still works and as long as I’m on my game, a longer mass dispel is no longer detrimental.  Haha, get it?

Overall, I applaud Blizzard for the change.  From what I can see, they’re pushing raiding and pvp to be more frenetic, more decisive and more open ended.  Everyone has a little bit of everything with one or two specialties.  Enough ball pading, here’s some pointers since most of Discipline will play the same.

1. Mana drain is less important because fights will be over quicker.
2. Fear bomb is a potent weapon.  3 seconds is HUGE in pvp right now.  Like 12k HP to dead huge.
3. Learn how to pillar dance.  Put your left hand on WASD and learn to turn and camera pivot with your right hand.  Reverse that if you’re left handed.
4. DO NOT MOUSE CLICK.  Learn to use the key binding menu to create SHIFT + AlphaNumeric and CTRL + Alphanumeric to cast spells.
5. Throw shield around.. like a bad analogy that I can’t think of right now.
6. Target health can be displayed as a number now.  When you’re target is at 4k life, queue up mind blast + Shadow Word: Death.  Bring that target DOWN!
7. Discipline priests are great for single target healing, but you HAVE to learn to play offensively to survive.  The best defense ( YOU! ) is to have a strong offense ( situation awareness ).

That’s all I have to say until I start arenaing at 80.  Enjoy the freebies, raid where you can.  Go kill Illidan.  Just go!

Rerollmuch – 70 doesn’t work, and waiting till 80.

1. You’ll spend the majority of your time at 35% mana.  Its wierd but it happens.
2. You MUST live through the opening burst.  If you can survive for 5-7 seconds you’ll live through the encounter.
3. Mana burn is much more important.
4. Shield + Aegis + Many damage reductions = Your heal target will not die if you chain flash heal.  This in itself is a HUGE change.
5. Range and pillar dancing is even more important then it was before.

I really want to be fair to you guys and give you a full review of the new talents and changes to Disc Priest PVP.  I’ll need to run more BGs and more Arena matches to get a true(er) feel for the changes.  Next week I’ll have a full talent run down.  Stay tuned.

This is what I’m running right now.  Be wary of disc priest tanking.  Offense overall for everyone, including YOU, has increased.

The pure game mechanics of Warhammer Online as a healer are more fun than WoW.  I always feel tough.  I always have 4 or more abilities to use during an encounter.  I can help out during any situation, offensively, defensively and support.  War doesn’t need to do an itemization change (spell damage/healing to spellpower) to make items work for healers.  Each stat provides both an offensive and defensive boost.  For example, Willpower increase my healing output and increases the chance that all my attacks will interrupt a spell caster.  Since character damage or healing output is linked to a stat and not an item, doesn’t prevent nor encourage any specific play style.  That’s a breath of fresh air.

In addition to the game mechanics, I also have the freedom to level however I want.  And the best part is that I can join a scenario (BGs in War) and will have my level adjusted to 3 levels below the max for that tier.  This means I can ALWAYS PVP COMPETITIVELY.  I am never limited by my level to participate in any activity Warhammer has to offer.  My survivability increases as I get better gear, that has stayed the same, but overall I can enjoy and level while playing the game that I choose, pvp or pve.  Now that’s a great feature.

So the last two points are REALLY great for Warhammer.  Let’s talk about WoW, because no matter what, I just spent 4 days playing World of Warcraft.  More then 30 hours since last Thursday to get my toons to 60.  And I’ll keep coming back for more.  Here’s what WoW does awesomely.

WoW has 24 different classes.  Yes, there’s only 8 when you make a character.  As you level there is a distinct difference as you spend talents points.  I recently changed my paladin from prot to ret at level 60.  They play completely different.

WoW looks better, period.  There’s more to see in WoW.  The environment design, from a landmark and viewing distance stand point, is years ahead of Warhammer.  Every new area feels like a different experience.  If you don’t believe me travel from Hellfire Peninsula to Zangarmarsh to Terrokar Forest.  Notice how your screen went from Red to Blue to Green?  Yeah well your brain noticed!  In War, I’m tired of looking at forests and trees.  Really tired.

WoW gets the community.  Having years more experience then Mythic, Blizzard is standing on the shoulders of Battlenet, Online Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft play experienced professionals to create the community of World of Warcraft.  When Mythic fixes the community and social mechanics of Warhammer Online, then we’ll start to see some really interesting cross over.

Finally some quick notes about character development and customization.  Being a purchaser of Collector’s Edition versions of MMO I play here’s the different between the two.

WoW gives me a title and a non combat pet.  The title isn’t even in the game yet.  Tomorrow it will be!

Warhammer gives me 3 titles to choose from, a unique head for my character based on gender and race, unique trophies to attach to my armor that SHOW UP IN GAME and… a 3 day head start.

Winnar Warhammer for collector’s edition.

Summary:

I’ll be playing World of Warcraft as my main mmo of choice.  No matter what Warhammer does, it cannot compete with playing World of Warcraft with 15 of my closest friends.

I’ll be maintaining and playing Warhammer Online because it really IS a step up in MMOs.  I want to follow it because I want to see what happens in the end game and how the community works together.  I believe Warhammer created the next iteration on PVP design in a traditional MMORPGs.  I just know, and it breaks my heart, that it takes competitors and a competitors compelling feature set to force Blizzard to innovate on its flagship title.  If Blizzard ever decided to light the fire under its own butt and truly force itself to innovate, it would… what?  Dominate more?  LAWL!

One of the many issues affecting discipline in both casual and and high end pvp play is mana efficiency.  DPs are very effective at mana burn, heals, dispels for about 3 minutes.  Chain healing isn’t our foretay.

What 3.02 brings to the table is mana return.  Not mana regen, but mana return.  Percentages of mana that are returned on damage absorbed from PW:S and healing spells casts.  I hope you’re as excited as I am about the coming changes.  More thorough reports will follow after the patch and into the expansion.

What do you think of the proposed changes?

Everything on a mage can be dispelled

Icy Veins, PoM, Combustion all come to mind as buffs I’ve dispelled in the past.  Does the mage go all lightning?  Dispel.  Does the mage Ice Block?  Mass Dispel.  Does the mage have a buff other than an armor buff?  Dispel.

Mages have trouble regaining mana

Mages have two sources of mana: Evocation and Mana Gems.  Once their out, you can wand away.

Mana burn like your life depended on it

Do it!

Summary List

• Dispel everything
• Keep shield and renew casted at all times
• Mana burn
• Fear the elemental if you can
• Dispel fire and ice debuffs on yourself

A final note on mages.  ! on 1, as discipline you will live.  I’ve lived through PoM Pyros, ice elementals, counterspells, you name it!  Where mages gain their strength is as a line backer offensive caster.  In a group situation, if you leave the mage alone, you WILL die.  Period.  Mages stack very well with every other DPS in the game.  Keep your wits, control their mana and have fun!  Mage fights will be challenging, and they usually end with you wanding them to death.

What do you think?

First things first, let’s examine the differences in Shaman specs.  Unlike Paladins, shaman can either be a handful in 1 on 1(enhancement) or a cakewalk(resto, but annoying!).  This isn’t to say that any 1 on 1 battle against another opponent will be more or less, it largely depends on their skill and your awareness.  Let’s jump right in!

Enhancement

You’ll be able to spot these guys easily, they sport two weapons!  Most important to watch is that they have below 8k mana.  This is an important area to watch for one simple reason!  MANA BURNZ!  That’s right folks, you’ll be juggling three tasks to bring down these dual wielding punks:

1. Mana Burn
2. Totem Killing
3. Fearing

You’re best defenses don’t work against a good shaman.  Don’t bother putting up shield or renew (unless rank 1, be mindful of global cooldown) it’ll just get purged.  Juggle AE fear and mana burn.  Drop the AE bomb after killing their tremor totem if any.  Juggle mana burn and healing as you need to.  The trick will be fighting on your territory… that’s at range against enhancement.

Summary:

1. Kill grounding and tremor totems.  You should have a fast melee weapon, right click it.
2. Constantly move, Shamans are really good once they get their totems up, if you can kyte em, you’ll win.
3. Drain their mana.  Enhancement shamans have low mana reservers.  It’s to your benefit to take this resource from them.
4. Do not let your health drop below 50%.  Those windfury crits will burst you down before you can say OMG I JUST GOT BURST DOWN REALLY QUICK BY AN ENHANCEMENT SHAMAN 3 times fast.

Elemental/Resto

These guys are very similar.  In 1 on 1, you’ll do the same routine as above!  Burn burn burn!

Resto will have access to Tide and Ele will be constantly lightning bolt spamming you.  You don’t want to wait for either.  The great aspect of fighting Ele and Resto shaman is that you CAN use you’re regular defense.  Shield up, drop a renew and cast through the first lightning bolt or two.  Get in both of their faces in 1 on  1.  Keep them on their toes and they’ll make a mistake.  Again you’ll fear bomb, burn their mana, top off your life and finish them off.

Note: Against elemental shaman it is particularly important to be IN THEIR FACE!  They will destroy you in a casting contest, don’t let it happen.  Force them to use their shocks!  It’ll force a gcd and interrupt the lightning spam.  Always remember you can win!

Summary:

1. Get in their face.  Lightning bolt is a longer cast than spec’d mana burn.  Use it to your advantage.
2. Don’t let them chain spam.  You can hide behind your shield for about 2k damage, that’s roughly 2 casts.
3. Mana burn until you’re blue in the face.  Keep their mana low.

This has many implications.  The addition of a traditionally high pve stat to the pvp set means you likely will be able to keep less extra equipment sets on your person.  This isn’t to say that new PVP gear will be a suitable substitute for regular PVE gear.  Only that as a primarily PVP player, you will be able to pick and choose which pieces you want to wear.  That is a huge distinction from previous tiers.

While its true, I don’t raid anything beyond the occasional TK/SSC run. What I do know is that I wear my PVP set all the time and I have a PVE heal set with plenty more MP5 and spirit in my bags. With the addition of spirit to my pvp set, I can at least perform moderately well in guild heroic runs without having to store an extra set of armor on my person. In addition I’d like to point to the extra talent palette each character is likely to have post expansion.  Which will make having a PVP talent spec in Disc and a PVE holy talent set possible without much hassle.

Doesn’t this excite you?

53/18/0 – Remember S4?

Reflective Shield boost spec. I really like this spec. As a discipline our main trumps are rogues, warrior, and ranged caster specs. Reflective shield is a potent weapon against each of these classes. While it is difficult for us to prevent damage before it is done. We can make a low life attacker think twice about dropping that 5 pointer, or shatter crit with our shield on, shiny and for all to see.

We keep spell warding from the holy tree against our caster trumps and to mitigate dot damage. We gain an increased bonus to PW:S thanks to the new talent Borrowed Time. This reduces the cooldown on PW:S and increases its absorption by 20% of your “healing”. I am assuming the wording means spell power and that hopefully its an increased bonus in addition to scaling normally with spell power.

The new 51 talent also gives a nice holy damage attack for those clutch moments when a burn down is called for. Remember that holy is largely un resistable. That means this channeled attack right after a mana drain/mind blast + PW:Death can be quite a potent burst damage combo.

Largely you’re still pursuing you’re traditional disc priest play style with this build. Which is nice.

44/27/0 – You use smite in the arena?

This is an experiemental build for Disc Priests. Instead of using mana drains, dispels, PW:S and Renew as your primary attack, you enter the arena as an offensive damage dealer and secondary healer. You’ll maintain all the survivability toys of the current disc builds. You’ll also gain free smites. Since you’ll be relying on critical spells to fuel instant smites, this build is less predictable but more fun. Important note: with WotLK spell power is the governing stat for spells. No more separation of +healing and +spell damage. As such both you’re heals and damaging spells will become more potent with gear.

61/5/0 – Where’s that extra point go?

The final spec I’ll propose today is the full discipline tree. A quick over notes that all deep disc talents are taken advantage of. Mana efficiency, mana return and increased damage reduction are the key to this build. You’re greater heal takes longer and you’ll be using it less in favor of a quicker flash heal. The extra point can go where you like. I opted for enlightenment due to the additional 1% to spell power. You’ll be ultra survivable and have great mana return.

Ultimately, I have no idea how these spec will play out. I imagine that due to itemization discipline priests will gain many more options. Depending on play style and team make up, stacking either of the big 3 (MP5, Spell Pen, Spell Haste) will be useful. Take care! Our role is still one of strong support and cloth tanking. I foresee we’ll still be resilient, standing up to the powerful new spells and abilities of the expansion with ease.