f13.net

Me and a substantial chunk of my UO guild are coming over to WoW.  If you want to see why CLICK HERE (http://www.uo.com/uoml/elf_cool.gif).

No.

So anyway, are warriors good yet?  I played right after release and they were shit back then.

You should be a night elf rogue.  There's not nearly enough of them.

Umm, what's up with the hair? Have the elves gone punk? And is he/she/it wearing glasses?

Yeah, Warcraft is a great place to get away from Elves.

It's a good way to get away from elves that look like they belong at a GWAR concert, have absolutely no lore to explain their existence, and were shoehorned into the game after coming up in a focus group.

CoH might be a fun game, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't be pissed at EA if they added superheroes to UO.

That looks like something that you might find on a bad player-run UO server -- intentionally bad, that is.

I forgot how badly dated those graphics are.
Make a shaman.  Every second horde plays a shaman.

Care to back that up? 

Warriors are pretty good right now but they take a bit to get rolling and there are still issues with their protection talent line. The armsman and fury apparently are pretty tasty.

I don't play warrior to much but I play against them in battlegrounds and damn nothing sucks more than a tauren warrior charging my poor hunter.

Shaman are a very popular class mainly because they are fun and all their talent lines are good so you can have good diversity. I have seen all enhancement builds which basically makes a shaman a very effective melee character or all elemental for long range nuking. Some say shaman are over powered but I think they get hated on mainly because their powers by and large work as intended and are fun.

Kaid

I don't need to I play on the most balanced server in the game.  Or second most if I recall.
I pvp daily and I just see the multitude of shamans.
Who wouldn't want to play in godmode.

Not even close
Most played class is rogue, followed closely by hunter and then mage, then warrior.  Shaman are extremely strong 1v1, which btw the developers have said over and over again this game is not and will not be balanaced for.  As a mage, you really dont have much chance vs a sham 1v1, however warriors rip them new assholes (good ones) as do hunters.

On my server (magtheridon, pvp high-pop) #1 ranked is a warrior, followed by mages and rogues in the top 5, horde-side.  Its really mostly propaganda.  If you ever play horde you hear people moan about the cheezyness of paladins, etc.  Its all bullshit.  Shaman are uber vs casters, because of thier 2-tiered defense against spells (grounding totem + earthshock), and ability to do a big, instant heal.  One of your chars is  mage, the other is amoung the 2 lowest dps chars in the game and also happens to be a caster, of course you find them overpowered.

Warriors are really good, and about to get even better if the leaked patch notes are correct. If you want to be different, play a Warlock. Or if you really want to be punk, play a night elf hunter, cause well, there arnt many of those.

Welcome back, I think.

When it comes to classes, they're all fairly fine- balance is decent.  I guess if any class is gimped, hunters are, on account of their questionable raid value, but that's pretty much it. 

Its VERY hard to beat a good shaman one on one as a rogue also.

Settled on a human paladin.  After half a decade of playing melee in that other game, the idea of not being able to pound away on shit while keeping myself healed is unthinkable.  Plus they're just cool, and start with a huge-ass hammer.

What server?

Check the population realm website for details; it may not be a good idea to roll a Paladin on your server.

Depending on what your endgame plans are, here are some suggestions (assuming you're rolling Alliance):

1) Dwarf Priest: Best racial spell benefit for both PVP and end game raiding.  Most guilds are always short healers for 10 man or endgame Raids, and Priests with one or two wingmen are surprisingly dangerous in PVP.

2) Any stripe of Warriors: Can do amazing damage if specced out properly.  Need one to tank instances (Paladins can do so, but it's not easy). The only thing going against them is that with the new abilities, and DPS envy, you're going to see a lot of Warriors running around.

3) Night Elf Druid: Useful healers.  Can tank moderately well in the early game, less so in the end game. Very useful in Capture the Flag games.

4) Gnome Mages: Root + AoE = lots of damage.

Paladins, Rogues, and Hunters fall into the category of being way too overpopulated on most servers. You probably won't notice this as a problem until you hit level 59, 60. At that point, if you're interested in running instances, you better have enough guys in your guild to do 10-man runs with very little/no outside help, or you're going to be /LFG a long time.

If you are hell bent on the Paladin, Paladins are much more efficient when they are working as healers/buffers first, hitters second. Unfortunately, Paladins have evolved into Hitters first and foremost. This second pathway is viable, but really negates most of the good things that make you unique to begin with.

If you wanted to be a total fag, you could have stayed in UO. Human Paladin, HA.

WUA you might want look into this a bit more.  I am on the Horde side but my impression is that most Pallys do not play their character to its strengths.  Most pallies want to do damage, when really their strengths lay in support.  Never played a pally, but saying this based on the rants I have seen by alliance about how the class is played.  For melee damage you might consider a rogue.  Or maybe an Arms spec warrior.

I'm an arms spec warrior w/ that kinky new spear you get for pvping. I can 3 hit mages now before they realize what's going on with crits and MS. It's pretty kickass.

Most paladin players have no fucking clue what they're doing, it's true.  They're a fun class, and seemingly quite suited to solo play, but in a group they're buffers and backup healers, period.  Oh, and I'm on Cenarion Circle.  Lowest populated RP server.

Paladins are many things but they do not fit the damage dealing role well. Usually in my lower group where I play a druid and my friend plays her paladin the druid usually main tanks and the paladin goes into support role. They do that job very well and are more than capable of off tanking while letting everybody else pick on the druids target.

I love having a paladin in our group especially one that realizes how to use all their tasty group powers well. The ones who are there doing mostly melee tend to be somewhat useless. Heck I think a shaman can probably get tricked out for melee damage dealing better than a paladin at least with talents.


kaid

Oddly, I recently re-subbed and started a Human Paladin on Dragonmaw (PvP).  I picked it after deciding against the Priest and his cloth armor.  This thread bodes well for my planned Holy-spec.

Great choice.  I miss the plate toting days of clerics from EQ.  A paladin with the right talents and healing gear, could be an awesome healer, especially in messy instance fights and pvp.

And yes I am a cloth bearing Priest wearer.  I am surviving a hell of lot longer in Warsong than I ever thought possible.  With plate - there are real possibilities.

BTW - I just looked at the Paladin boards on Blizzard's site.  What a mess.  The community that plays this class have no idea what their role (no agreement) nor any idea how to approach it.  I haven't seen any board with such fundamental confusion about what their strengths are or why they chose the class in the first place.  Many want to tank or do damage.  Very few want support.  Some want it all - without realizing that no set of gear can support healing/damage/tanking without accepting major tradeoffs.

Well my MO was always to make sure everyone's blessings were maintained, then jump in and do whatver melee damage I could, while keeping a close eye on the priest's health/mana bars.  If the priest got low on mana, I would take over healing for a little while.  If the priest started taking damage, I would keep them healed while the others dealt with the critters.

With the Spiritual Focus talent and good armor, it was entirely possible to heal others while taking hits myself.  That fact saved my ass many times when the group's priest was dancing around in their robe shrieking "Get it off me!" and I was the only other healer around.

Paladins are like elves. They pretty much are homoerotic, not matter what you do. Now, if they had undead antipaladin, that would be sweet.

Maybe its just the PVP servers, but usually paladins are the biggest tools on the server, tons of immature shittalking, with nothing to back it up except "Shield and Hearth". I think these two rules pretty much should be taken in to account when playing wow.

1) Dont play a Paladin.
2) Dont play Alliance.

Follow those two rules, and every thing will be good.

I think that is my new sig!

I think it's engrishy.

You mean like some cat from Japan?

Viklas maybe.  Engrish - na.

Why do some people just always HAVE to play a MMORPG? I really can't imagine how someone that loves UO could love WoW.

Large amounts of free time and nothing else to do?  As for the WOW/UO, there's nothing that says the virtual world lovers can't enjoy the taste of DIKU.  I enjoyed WOW while it lasted for me, but I've been craving a GOOD virtual world for a while now, ever since SWG failed to provide it.

I fear you are an endangered species...

No, the endangered species is a GOOD virtual world.

Pfft.  That isn't an endagered species, that's a mythological creature.  And I like both UO and WoW the same way I played shitloads of both Zelda and Contra as a kid.  What sorta question is that?

That is like saying unicorns and dragons are endangered.

Edit- heh. WUA made pretty much the same point.

Don't play alliance.  If you simply must play alliance play a needed class like warlock or dwarf priest.  I recomend a tauren shaman if you must play a well armord healer than can sorta melee.

Whats wrong with the Alliance, aside from the general population imbalance?  I think that if you go in understanding that you're going to have a wait for the BGs, you're fine.  And if you're the PvE/raid type, being Alliance gives you a lot more potential allies to group with.

The humans seem to run as if a giant pole is shoved up their ass.  Night Elves are largely a medevil version of Micheal Jackson - but as an entire race, not an NPC.  The gnomes take the game from cute to laughable.  Dwarves.... well they rock :)

1. Elves and people that play elves.
2. Humans and people who play humans.
3. Paladins and people that play paladins.
4. Lag.
5. Waiting 2 hours to do something when all you have to play is 2 hours.
6. Being on a side that has no less than 3 uber raiding guilds at once. It's like EQ server politics all over again but just on a factional basis.

Only reason I can see for playing alliance is being a gnome.  Greatest racial ability of all: being REALLY SMALL for pvp.

Night Elves do the Michael Jackson dance. Undead can eat anyone they kill.



I have been feeling the same way. I am really craving a Virtual World type thing. There is just nothing out there.

"Realistically", what are you looking for that is missing from the current MMORPG crop?

Fun?

You like CoH.  So what is the world element - within reason - that is missing?  (or in WoW etc.)

I've kind of discussed this before (http://www.f13.net/commentary.php?subaction=showfull&id=1086806829&archive=&start_from=&ucat=1&).

A very interesting question, I found I got attatched to the idea of having a game "character".  Suddenly it was no longer satisfying to play far superior games because I could change my name and appearence at will and there was not even the semblence of persistence.  I'm not sure what it is really, but I wish I could get rid of it because this generation of MMORPG's do nothing for me but make me annoyed that I wasted money/time on them.

The notion that I'm supposed to take what is "needed" into account at character creation...  LOL...  You're drastically overestimating the importance of endgame/pvp shit to a near-total newblet.  I'll play whatever the hell tickles my fancy, thank you very much.  And if that makes me Human Paladin #457,826...  Well, I blame Blizzard for making the other choice a Voodoo-powered cow witchdoctor.   :roll:

Yay! Someone else who thinks the horde designs are fucking retarded!

That, and the Alliance capitals/quests/zones are vastly more interesting than the horde ones. I could care fuckall for population balance since I think PvP is the weakest link in the game next to the largely braindead playerbase.

One of my friends is a level 60 Pally on my server (Proudmoore), and he knows his job. He's either an offtank or a healer. If you play your pally well and other guilds/players notice that, you WILL get invites, because the vast majority of paladins are fucking shovelheads who want to "tear shit up" with a high DPS hammer. Ditto with most warriors who duel-wield or 2-hand exclusively in groups.

They got Dwarf women all wrong.  ALL wrong.  Note the almost complete lack of female dwarves in the game.

Pfsssh, of course there be Dwarf women, ya idjit. They all be back in Iron Forge cookin and raisin me kids. We're not like dem crazy elves, lettin thier women run around around the whole damn world with there jiggly bits hangin out.

(This will hopefully be my one and only ever in character post here)

Oh, and I agree with Windup fully. Play whatever character interests you. I honestly don't care how oversaturated my class is in the end game. Mind you, I have guildmates that I know will invite me along whether I'm uber or not.

Down with conformity for the sake of mix maxing! No one is gonna make me trade in my black bear Bobo, just because certain cats in certain zones have a higher attack speed.

And you chose the human paladin. *snicker*

Well there's at least two of us.  But the breeding potential is low so endangered status is probably still called for...

I don't think you and HRose should breed.  It'll end in tears, I tell you!

Tears of laughter or tears of shame?

I thought that was how we got WUA.

This thread got funny.

Bravo.

Doubly Bravo.

If I ever resub, it will be to start a complete new character.  It will be alliance.  And it will be short.  Probably a dwarf priest, or a gnome warlock, since those are two classes that I've had an interest in for a while.  The other choices are either a dwarf paladin or a gnome warrior (kick ass).

But I'm with Morpheid, I can't bring myself to make a paladin past L5.

Why do all the Horde players I know get so antsy when they find out I'm starting, and that I don't want to be a pig, or a cow, or a gangrenous hunchback?  I'm real sorry your side is underpopulated and you're getting ganked to death everyday, but fuck ya, not my problem.

With battlegrounds - at least in Warsong - the reverse is happening.  The Alliance is doing better, but for the most part Horde victory in Warsong is the norm.  This is not a judgement or argument - just an observation.

The Horde still plays in battlegrounds on your server? Lucky you.

Yeah, but they won't.  There'll be an expansion, and they'll add a new race and class to the Horde, but none of it will be anything cool.  They'll throw on another bluish/greenish race based loosely on some manner of barnyard animal, and add a class that's a thinly-veiled Hare Krishna imitation which gains XP by standing around bothering people as they go to board a zepplin.  Then they'll find an excuse to put your dark paladins on the Alliance side, along with even more elf boobies, and wonder why their populations are unbalanced.

Horde is not playing Warsong on other servers?  Why not?  Unlike TM or SS, now we have roughly balanced pvp encounters.

Horde still plays battlegrounds on my server. To bad the alliance has them outnumbered 2:1. Still it looks like the balance will begin to shift though as I have been having 0 trouble entering in the level 20 to 30 range warsong instances and are often outnumbered by horde. I am guessing a lot of folks who liked battle grounds and realized it takes two to tango decided to move to the dark side.

kaid

Odd.  Yet the alliance is still more numerous on servers.  Is the opposite possible?

I notice on my server that alliance is returning to zerg fights  - especially at XR.  They seem to be baiting Horde into the fields where they can out number them.  In the instance where things are balanced - there may be less Alliance participation given their string of losses in balanced encounters.

alliance may at the moment be higher numbers but I must say when playing my newb lil cow the horde newbie areas on eonar seem to be bustling with youngsters running around. When I was playing with my level 27 druid not only was I having 0 trouble getting into instances the horde side seemed to be filling up as fast or faster than alliance side. The higher level brackets are still VERY slanted towards alliance but I think that is changing at least on our server.

My group decided if we wanted to do battlegrounds seriously we would probably need to make a horde squad until/unless things balance themselves out more.

I am kinda surprised though with the battlegrounds that they did not make a third option. Instead of just warsong 10v10 and altarak huge ass long freaking 40v40 map they should have had a 20v20 map. The 10v10 is fun but it may be nicer to have a few more folks running around. the 40v40 stuff is a hoot but it takes TO FUCKING LONG to finish it. I seriously just don't have it in me to play one map for 8 hours. Something inbetween too short and too long would have been great.

Kaid

Word has it that they are toying around with a bunch of other Battleground types for future patches.  Eventually we may have 5+ different BG flavours to mess with.  They probably just wanted to release these two to test the waters, figure out unforseen bugs and whatnot, before throwing out more.

You might want to look a bit deeper into how agro is held in the game. We found putting a tank with an arcanite reaper and MS on Onxyia was able to hold agro better than a warrior with full protection spec and sword and sheild. 2 healers had no problem keeping the dps tank up either. It appears that high damage is a better way to grab and maintain agro in the game than any of the tricks in the protection tree. Another trick that people are doing is decking paladins out in cloth high +healing +mana regen gear and having them  be main healers. It's a lot easier to keep agro off them as Blizzard specifically removed agro from paladin heals. One paladin I know gets huge mileage out of the first level fast heal with +250 to healing items and regains mana as fast as he can cast the spell. I'm sure once Blizzard catches on to this trick a nerf will be incoming but at the moment don't laugh next time you see a paladin in a robe.

Warrior aggro is borked. The defensive spec is set up specifically to hold aggro, and it fails on all counts. They've really been hitting on all the PvP talents for warriors, which is nice, but they are neglecting the protection talents as far as hate generation. Shield blocks should be extremely high on the generation list, which I think would solve most of the problems with mobs pulling off. The problem with a warrior doing damage with a 2H and keeping aggro is that you lose 2000+ armor, which effectively cuts your damage reduction down by 1/3 or more. This then strains the healers and ends up causing even more problems.

In short, protection needs a LOT of work before it becomes viable.

We had a DPS specced warrior on Onyxia for the first 3 times we killed her. The last time he wasnt around so we had one of our lesser equiped Def specced warriors do it. He held aggro WAY better. So I dont think its that broken.

It's all taunt spamming for the warrior. It's pretty annoying, but it's effective. I'm just saying for the players, I'd like to use some of my other dev-given skills instead of the taunt.

Sorry, but that would be silly since you're a warrior. Taunt and be happy, meat.

I'd say that revenge and sunder armor also work damn well for holding aggro. I however, have not done an Onyxia/MC or any other shitty uberdungeon run.

That's very true. Sunder armor spamming is what you do when the mob is sticking to you. I'm not so much referring to the big dogs where you hold one guy. I'm talking about UBRS or the 10-man raids where I'm peeling lots of mobs. Ideally, I would like a very large decrease in the cooldown on challenging shout, which is the aoe taunt that pulls all mobs. That coupled with shield wall is typically a make or break thing on a possibly wipe.

I wouldn't mind Challenging Shout's cooldown being knocked down to 5 minutes. That seems just about right, since it only provides 6 seconds of aggro anyway.

Demoralizing shout is also helpful - aoe debuff that warriors can use to try and manage groups of mobs.

It's good for pulling everything at the start of a fight, but it doesn't really have any pulling power after the cloth wearers start casting.

not so much the cloth wearers, rather the healers, since any intelligent Mage/Lock should be on whatever target the main assist is on.  If you are stupid enough to all pick different targets, then the best tank in the world isnt going to have a lot of hope of keeping aggro under controll.

Mostly, the problem should be peeling stuff off the healers when they draw too much heal aggro.

Whoa.  Single target fights are not the only way to fight.  My groups use aoe damage effectively in many instances.  There is not a much a single warrior can do in these fights since there are many targets / big pulls.  So mages in the group bounce aggro off each other.  Mage + priest for the win.

In higher level instances? Unless you're 10 manning a 5 man instance, a mage going AOE happy is just going to get their ass pounded visciously.   

I remember grouping with a mage on her first trip to LBRS which was her first trip to any higher level instance.  She thought it was great idea to walk into the middle of our 5 mob pulls and blast away with AE.  Her armor broke before we go to Voone.

How to tell it's time to change tactics - when you have a big bouncing red arrow over your head at all times...

in my experience, AoE is usually a situational thing (the Skeletons when doing the Vectus Encounter, the whelps in the room above Rattlegore, the beginning groups of skeletons in Strath, things like that).  If you are AoEing EVERYTHING, even when the encounter could be much safer singleing out targets one at a time, I suppose that is your call.  What instances do you do that in, just out of curiosity?

We have been very successful with this in Uldaman.  Grant you - that is not an uber instance - about mid level.  We are just starting Maruadon and ZF now.

We use 2 mages and 1 priest (and warrior and then anyone else).  One mage is frost the other arcane / fire.  As a priest I can Shield and heal them but of course with 5-7 mobs coming at you that does not last long.  So both mages take turns bouncing aggro between them - and the time the mobs spend running is added time for more damage from our team.  The frost mage can slow the movement rate of the mobs with blizzard and roots.  Good for control.  The fire/arcane mage is good for damage.  I pull aggro of course just by group healing - and the mages pull it in turn by doing major aoe damage.

Generally our group is in the level range of Uldaman (or was - we are moving on), initially all of us were below 45 except the fire / arcane mage who was 49 or so.

In cases where it is minions + mini boss in Uldaman the main tank and rogue take the mini boss and the mages aoe the minions.  Again they pass the aggro back and forth - among the 3 of us (2 mages, priest).  The Frost mage has a good way to shake aggro by going into Ice Form (or whatever it is called - a block of ice).  So when the Frost mage gets all the aggro coming his way - once per fight - he can go into his block of ice, and then the aggro has to stop and run all the way back to their original target.

Agreed, AoE will not work in all cases.  But for about 95% of Uldaman we have used it.  Too early to say yet if we can employ this in Mauradon or ZF.

aoe all depends on the group and the players. My group usually focuses fire but we switch to aoe fury in a heartbeat whenever it looks viable.

Then again my group is the oddest bunch of instance crawlers you can imagine. My normal instance moshing group is 5 hunters or sometimes 4 hunters and a warlock. If the mobs look at all weak we will start throwing down multishots and volley and that can do a scary ammount of damage VERY fast with 5 hunters throwing down at the same time. When the warlock is there adding in his aoes our aoe potential is huge and since we have 5 disposable taunting tanks we can tie down a lot of targets and keep them in the radius.

kaid

Getting better all the time.  Really.  Now you can have fun instead of just riding the template wagon.

Think I'll make a warrior alt...