Part 1 Update for Patch 1.05

[UnSub]

10 things? Shit, why not, in my deepest of hearts, I still want to play the game:

5)   An additional gold bag will be generated when a keep or fortress is taken.

NOT ENOUGH, REWARD EVERYBODY.

Just because I thought it was funny, according to a comment below the article the only way the rewards for keeps can be distributed as they are is if they are bugged and reversed; i.e. the person who contributes the least gets the highest contribution score. So then: gold bags for the person who is AFK.

Given the opaque contribution rules, it could very well be true.

[Zupa]

...  we'll have to grind out Public Quests to get gear we can PvP in.

I'm sorry am I the only one who is already wearing 100% PQ gear as it is simply better than anything else available?

haven't had a talisman slot since about level 15. 

[siv00]

what the FUCK? God damnit, I have been representing the "it's not so bad" crowd for weeks, particularly regarding the armor sets shitty implementation of gating.

When talking to friends:

"Only tanks are going to need them"

"C'mon guys, I heard if you only have 1 piece it counts double, plus you can buy them!  "

"Hey, Bastion Stair/Warp/etc. is pretty easy/fast!"

"Hey, Conqueror boots can drop in T4 RvR!  Now you can get TWO pieces easily! That should be totally fine for anyone who isn't a tank!"


Thank you Mythic for making me look like a fucking idiot.

[Goreschach]

Are you shitting me? They broke hovercast.

[waffel]

Healer nerfs are boggling. The fact that they need to test the patch before noticing the nerfs is even more boggling.

Its like nerfing a car down to three wheels and having testers drive it around the parking lot for awhile just to see what happens.

[Lukeios]

Ok, so:

50% increase on damage received in high-level encounters.
50% decrease on damage dealt in high-level encounters.

GameDesigner1: "But won't good players bypass our tedious cockblock still make it past the high end encounters?"
GameDesigner2: "You're right!  Lets nerf healers, just to make sure."

 

[CecilDK]

As I've said before, I'm rather encouraged by the fact that they seem to be working hard to fix things.  I just think they're making a lot of bad decisions.  I mean, the ward stuff was rather heinous before----but now it's even worse with the damage nerf.

But honestly, I'm a single issue voter here.  Until xp gain is upped dramatically in all phases of the game (especially RvR and Quests) then I don't care that much.

[Beltaine]

I can't tell if they're "balancing" for RvR or PvE.

I can MAYBE understand if it's balancing for RvR. People will die more, since healers can't heal AS well as before, they can contribute by doing damage. More kills = more XP/more Renown.

But doing it that way is like calling a cab to take you home from the pub you live next door to. Seems like a contrived way of doing something simplistic.

Balancing it for PvE makes more sense. Heroes and Lords will fall faster due to more DPS, but since healers can't keep up, you'll need more of them, so it doesn't become TOO easy.

However, if that's the case, why the hell are they balancing a RvR game for PvE?

[Kail]

I can't tell if they're "balancing" for RvR or PvE.

The DPS boosts for Zealot and Runepriest look like solo PvE buffs to me, unless they've completely lost their minds and buffed them so hard that they'll be able to DPS on an Engineer/Shadow Warrior level.  I'm not terribly worried about the nerf to HoTs, since they're way overpowered in tier 1 and in later tiers there are other healing spells to lean on.

Ironbreaker nerfs, I have no idea what the hell they're thinking.  Kill grudge generation, make it decay faster, and nerf Guard for all the tanks, but now they can use hammers...?

Squig herder could be good or bad.  Their main nuke got a nerf, but a lot of their situational abilities got buffs.  White lions, similarly, could really, really use the pet DPS boost, but some of it is just wacky (Training persists after death, so you don't have to retrain your lion after you die?  Huh?  Since when did your lion persist after death, trained or not?).  Engineers and Magi with boosted turret/daemon damage sound nice, too.

[Bismallah]

I cant tell either, mostly seemed PvE related... but who knows with Mythic.

I got half way through 35 last nite, seemed faster but then again I was watching TV at the same time. I saw some fights in Praag finally but Dragonwake was a complete ghost town and Thunder Valley was very quiet as well. I guess if Ostermark can at least have decent fights in one out of the three zones we should be happy right?

This weekend will probably be my last push on WAR for a month or so anyhow.

[Hindenburg]

I can't tell if they're "balancing" for RvR or PvE.

The DPS boosts for Zealot and Runepriest look like solo PvE buffs to me, unless they've completely lost their minds and buffed them so hard that they'll be able to DPS on an Engineer/Shadow Warrior level.  I'm not terribly worried about the nerf to HoTs, since they're way overpowered in tier 1 and in later tiers there are other healing spells to lean on.

Given that they didn't buff Scourge, or even bothered to reduce the cast time on that shitty spell, you can rest assured that Zealot dps still sucks gonads.

[dd0029]

One question, do people actually wear the sets for RvR?  For Bright Wizards at least, the stats look awful, lots of stats with low numbers.  The entire Sentinel set has 46 wounds.  I have more that on my ch 13 influence staff.  It also has a whopping 36 weapon skill for those times I just feel the need to beat on something with my stick.  The set has a whopping 76 resist to spirit, elemental and corporeal.  Again, more on my level 20+ green crap.  There are some unique stats like dodge, threat reduction, HP regen, and bonus damage.  However they have such low stats, I can't see what they do and really, what does 2 to dodge mean?  Is that 2%?  Well woopty freaking do, now I have a 7% chance to dodge.  Its not like I can find other dodge gear to stack so I can be some sort of ninja wizard.  So, we apparently need crap gear with magical hidden buffs that don't appear anywhere on the tooltips or apparently even on WarDB in order to advance the War?  WTF batman?

[Khaldun]

Folks,

I'm looking at about 20 pages worth of patch notes right now. We have 20 classes in our game each with different mastery lines, tactics and morale abilities. As you can imagine, balancing all the that is a tricky task. Compared to most other MMOs, a WAR character's combat abilities/choices are much more customizable on an individual basis and when you multiply that by 20, well, it's even more complicated. I have no doubt that we have more to do on the careers and I'm also sure that some of the things in these patch notes will change before going LIVE. However, to say that we are not paying attention, don't care or the ever-popular "I quit now" simply makes it less likely that we will continue to post and interact here. We're putting these up now because we want your feedback. We're opening a PTS so you can jump in and help test these changes. If after all the work that the team put into these changes (and pulling them in for this version) is met by those types of posts, then continuing this type of thread here is a waste of a time. You don't like the changes, tell us. You think we should do more, tell us. You think we rebalanced too much tell us but can we do it without all the drama please?

Like I said, these notes are just the start of an ongoing process.

Mark

So... if you give honest feedback on how shitty our patch notes are, we'll stop posting them.

This quote captures perfectly my skepticism about the "Oh, we don't need official forums" arguments. It's pretty much exactly what I predicted would happen: that Mythic devs would jump from fansite to fansite looking for the most properly sycophantic community (and dangling before local fan mods the added traffic and ad revenue that might flow from dev presence), and any time they didn't like what they were hearing, they'd be gone. Eventually leaving communication entirely one-way, e.g., that they say whatever they want to say through website announcements and give no indications at all about whether they're really listening or not to any players.

[BitWarrior]

This quote captures perfectly my skepticism about the "Oh, we don't need official forums" arguments. It's pretty much exactly what I predicted would happen: that Mythic devs would jump from fansite to fansite looking for the most properly sycophantic community (and dangling before local fan mods the added traffic and ad revenue that might flow from dev presence), and any time they didn't like what they were hearing, they'd be gone. Eventually leaving communication entirely one-way, e.g., that they say whatever they want to say through website announcements and give no indications at all about whether they're really listening or not to any players.

I quite agree. The sad thing is, for as obnoxious as the WHA forums are, its a large, active community posting from the heart, and at times spending far, far too long compiling information than one would consider healthy. In the very same thread you quoted, a VN board member posted a c/p of a sticky in the Chosen WHA forums, a compilation of Chosen problems (source: http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148417). This was entirely news to Mark, who had never seen the list before.

Now I can understand not wanting to post on the WHA forums, but literally never viewing them anymore as a developer? It's irresponsible. I'm sure Mark has also turned off viewing the F13 boards out of disdain, and as a result turned off yet another source of great feedback, regardless if he agrees with the views or wants to be handled with kid gloves.

[tazelbain]

Its just like the Bush Administration on media for the first 6 years.

[Shatter]

Folks,

Some good news as the weekend approaches:

1) We hope to have the PTS up and running this weekend. Right now we are shooting for sometime tomorrow. The Herald will have all the latest information.

2) As promised, our C&C team has combed through this thread (and pertinent links) and here's what they have found in regards to bugs. Unfortunately, there were a number of both unreported bugs and reported bugs that didn't make it up to the C&C team in time for this patch (initially). I am in total agreement with player sentiment that these bugs need to be fixed along with 1.0.5 and as such, the team is already working on doing that today and over the weekend. The current plan is to fix the vast majority of them in time for the patch but some, because of the coding involved or if they are minor bugs (display) will not be fixed for 1.0.5 but will be fixed as soon as practical. The update to the 1.0.5 patch will be updated to reflect these fixes once these changes are incorporated into 1.0.5.

3) We are also going to look at making some additional changes to some of the classes/archetypes. As I've said before, 1.0.5. is not yet up on the patcher and we expect to continue to make more tweaks/adjustments until the patch goes live. Among the changes currently going into 1.0.5 are:

a) BW/Sorcs will have their crit chance lowered for combustion.

b) Sorcs will also see Word of Pain’s debuff changes from a willpower debuff to a resist debuff to match BWs and it will no longer stack Word of Pain and be a single application that deals damage at the end. Stricken Voices will have its cast time removed to match Bright wizard Choking Smoke.

c) For IBs, we are going to make some changes that will allow the IB to get to low grudge more quickly than initially proposed by increasing Oath friend grudge thresholds from 5/3/1 grudge generated to 10/5/3. Also, we are lowering the grudge required (and making a couple other changes) in the following abilities:

Shield Sweep: Cost reduction from 30 Grudge to 25 Grudge.
Oath bound: Cost reduction from 30 Grudge to 15 Grudge.
Avenging The Debt: Increase heal value.
Away With Ye: Reduce cost from 30 Grudge to 25 Grudge. Increase damage. (Also requires cool down from 0s to 10s)
Watch An' Learn: Reduce cost from 30 Grudge to 15 Grudge. (Also requires cool down from 0s to 20s)
Grumble An' Mutter: Increase heal value.

The combination of better contribution from OF and lowering the grudge cost of some abilities should help alleviate some, if not all, of the IB's concern. We will continue, of course, to look at the IB as a whole to determine if additional changes are still necessary.

d) For our healers, we are looking at making the following changes:

Ranged Healers

Long Cast Big heals go from 3s cast to 2.5s cast
Interrupt / setback value on long heals is reduced by 50%

Melee Healers
Divine Strike and Rend soul will now heal for 350% damage dealt instead of 250%

Like the IBs, this is just part of an ongoing process. As I said yesterday, the team will continue to look very carefully at the healers on the PTS and if more changes need to be made, we'll make them.


e) The Chosen seemed to have a higher number of potential (we haven't confirmed them all yet) bugs but in the meantime, we will make the following changes:

Convert Blast Wave, Bane Shield and Quake to magic attacks that use STR instead of INT for bonus damage
Push Aura code fix up that makes twisting easier

f) The Marauders have a similar bug to the Chosen (using INT not STR) so we are making the following change:

Mouth of Tzeentch will use STR instead of INT for bonus damage

g) For the Black Orc the biggest bug appears to losing their place in the combo chain randomly. The team has been trying to duplicate this all day and so far, no luck. If we can duplicate it, it will be fixed.

So, a few things:

1) Let me once again express my thanks to those great people here on the Vault (and elsewhere) who spent time and energy posting helpful (critical, insightful, positive, etc.) messages. You have helped us quite a bit by doing so. The 1.0.5 thread was, at its best, a great example of how developer<->community interaction can work very well at times when you have motivated players and interested developers who are actually paying attention. So again, you have my thanks.

2) The changes here are still part of an ongoing process of evaluation and reevaluation of 1.0.5. Nothing is final and until the PTS is up and running and 1.0.5 goes through the ringer, will it even be close to final. So please, when the PTS goes up let us know what you think through feedback here and in the game.

3) Some of the bugs/changes that I'm listing here will not be fixed/up by tomorrow of course but they will be during the time that the PTS is running and *before* 1.0.5 goes LIVE. We will keep you informed about the changes through the patcher.

4) A number of people have commented that this patch seems more chock full of ranged DPS changes and while the team believes that a lot of the changes we made to the the rDPS group will have a significant positive impact on our tanks and mDPS folks, they will turn their attention to those careers again after the 1.0.5 version. Again, please keep in mind that bugs for the mDPS/Tanks will be fixed for this version as well.

Again, my thanks to the many members of the WAR community for their efforts in regards to our game.

Mark

[schild]

alt+f

"experience"

Phrase not found.

[Ashmodai]

alt+f

"experience"

Phrase not found.

lol.  I was excited when I heard the news that a big balance patch was incoming, too, and when I saw it, er, yeah.  Not sure what the rules for profanity on this board are, so I guess I will just say "fail".

I'm not usually one to make sensationalist remarks like "do they even play their own game?" .. but really, do they?  damage buffs, healer nerfs, lol and I thought AoC devs were clueless!

[Goreschach]

This quote captures perfectly my skepticism about the "Oh, we don't need official forums" arguments. It's pretty much exactly what I predicted would happen: that Mythic devs would jump from fansite to fansite looking for the most properly sycophantic community (and dangling before local fan mods the added traffic and ad revenue that might flow from dev presence), and any time they didn't like what they were hearing, they'd be gone. Eventually leaving communication entirely one-way, e.g., that they say whatever they want to say through website announcements and give no indications at all about whether they're really listening or not to any players.

The scariest thing is that, more and more, this is starting to sound like exactly what HRose was bitching about earlier.

[Ashmodai]

This quote captures perfectly my skepticism about the "Oh, we don't need official forums" arguments. It's pretty much exactly what I predicted would happen: that Mythic devs would jump from fansite to fansite looking for the most properly sycophantic community (and dangling before local fan mods the added traffic and ad revenue that might flow from dev presence), and any time they didn't like what they were hearing, they'd be gone. Eventually leaving communication entirely one-way, e.g., that they say whatever they want to say through website announcements and give no indications at all about whether they're really listening or not to any players.

Yup, having no official forums is terribly amateur.  Can't think of any games that have tried it and had it work out well, either.  Vanguard tried this same approach and well.. haha, don't think I need to expound on that one.

And using the VN boards as semi-official forums is hysterical, too.  Internet message boards I visited in 1999 had better functionality and usability than they do there, I actually broke down after a few posts and asked how to properly quote people on those forums as my quotes came out as a block of .. unquoted text .. and I had seen others quote properly, and I was told by a moderator that being able to quote without your post looking like a heap of shit was an extra feature that you had to pay a subscription for.  Words failed me at that point.

[UnSub]

Now I can understand not wanting to post on the WHA forums, but literally never viewing them anymore as a developer? It's irresponsible. I'm sure Mark has also turned off viewing the F13 boards out of disdain, and as a result turned off yet another source of great feedback, regardless if he agrees with the views or wants to be handled with kid gloves.

To be fair to Mark, it would be impossible for him to track every single list for every single class. He should have people underneath him doing it. They really should be posting separately for each class (or even each pairing) about what they are trying to do.

The issue is not only no official forums, it is Jacobs being both CEO of Mythic and official forum PR person for WAR. He's top level view, whereas class design is the grit of gameplay and needs a different focus.

[rk47]

I understand your point of view, but the issue here is aside from Mark, who else is talking to the community?
I mean shouldn't he really ask questions to his team about the short Chosen list of issues "Are they really OK? I mean, only 3 issues? Seriously?"
If he still can't get enough feedback from his own staff then he just gotta dig his own stuff off the official class forum ("Hey wait a minute how come the Chosen forum has a list of issues?!")

[Pringles]

WHA has a class issue compilation post for almost every sub forum... way more constructive than 99.99% of posts on vn, I honestly can't believe they never look at those lists.

I am disappointed because I've helped contribute to a few of the compilation posts and to find it was all basically for nothing is ... wow ... just ... wow.

[siv00]

Melee Healers
Divine Strike and Rend soul will now heal for 350% damage dealt instead of 250%

Does Mark Jacobs think that the 250% is standard with the ability? It comes from a talent. What is he buffing, the base ability or the talent? Does he even know?

[Megrim]

I still don't understand why they made tanks unable to Guard people outside their group.

[Pringles]

I still don't understand why they made tanks unable to Guard people outside their group.

From what I understand, even if you were guarding people out of group and the icon was there, it didn't even work anyways.

So... no change really.  Someone wanna test to make sure?

[rk47]

I still don't understand why they made tanks unable to Guard people outside their group.

From what I understand, even if you were guarding people out of group and the icon was there, it didn't even work anyways.

So... no change really.  Someone wanna test to make sure?

oh fuck that shit. lol .

[Zzulo]

Melee Healers
Divine Strike and Rend soul will now heal for 350% damage dealt instead of 250%

Does Mark Jacobs think that the 250% is standard with the ability? It comes from a talent. What is he buffing, the base ability or the talent? Does he even know?

uhh, you're wrong. The regular rend soul does 250% without any talents. I know it's popular to bash mark here, but at least make some research first.

[UnSub]

I understand your point of view, but the issue here is aside from Mark, who else is talking to the community?
I mean shouldn't he really ask questions to his team about the short Chosen list of issues "Are they really OK? I mean, only 3 issues? Seriously?"
If he still can't get enough feedback from his own staff then he just gotta dig his own stuff off the official class forum ("Hey wait a minute how come the Chosen forum has a list of issues?!")

I was agreeing with you

Jacobs and Barnett worked well in promoting WAR, but it looks really bad for the CEO of the company to indicate something hadn't been seen. It very well may have been seen and discussed among other devs at Mythic, but for the CEO to go "huh? wha?" publicly just makes everyone at Mythic look clueless.

I appreciate that Jacobs posts on forums. But he appears not to realise what it means for the rest of Mythic when he replies. The lead class designer should really be fielding these queries... assuming there is one and he isn't Jacobs.

[Bismallah]

But it is Divine Assault, not Divine Strike so he got the name of the skill wrong but he did get the percent right. 350% is too much, but I'll take it until my sub runs out.

[Hindenburg]

c) For IBs, we are going to make some changes that will allow the IB to get to low grudge more quickly than initially proposed by increasing Oath friend grudge thresholds from 5/3/1 grudge generated to 10/5/3. Also, we are lowering the grudge required (and making a couple other changes) in the following abilities:

Shield Sweep: Cost reduction from 30 Grudge to 25 Grudge.
Oath bound: Cost reduction from 30 Grudge to 15 Grudge.
Avenging The Debt: Increase heal value.
Away With Ye: Reduce cost from 30 Grudge to 25 Grudge. Increase damage. (Also requires cool down from 0s to 10s)
Watch An' Learn: Reduce cost from 30 Grudge to 15 Grudge. (Also requires cool down from 0s to 20s)
Grumble An' Mutter: Increase heal value.

The combination of better contribution from OF and lowering the grudge cost of some abilities should help alleviate some, if not all, of the IB's concern. We will continue, of course, to look at the IB as a whole to determine if additional changes are still necessary.

The chap went from nerfing Ironbreakers HARD to buffing them (although there's no mention of dropping that retarded "decay starts after 10sec" thing). So.... they had no fucking idea what they were doing to the IB in the first place, so awesome   

His people skills improved a bit, though.

[Shatter]

Making rend soul heal for 350% is still shit.   Problem isnt the value but the set back.  Tool tip says it can hit up to 4 times, it typically only lands twice, often once.  NOthing like repeatedy using an ability that "can" potentially do 2000+ healing(4 hits) which most of the time does about 500(1 hit).  The ability that DoK's have that is supposed to reduce the set back by 50% doesnt work either so GG

[Kail]

c) For IBs, we are going to make some changes that will allow the IB to get to low grudge more quickly than initially proposed by increasing Oath friend grudge thresholds from 5/3/1 grudge generated to 10/5/3. Also, we are lowering the grudge required (and making a couple other changes) in the following abilities:
(snip...)
Away With Ye: Reduce cost from 30 Grudge to 25 Grudge. Increase damage. (Also requires cool down from 0s to 10s)

The chap went from nerfing Ironbreakers HARD to buffing them (although there's no mention of dropping that retarded "decay starts after 10sec" thing). So.... they had no fucking idea what they were doing to the IB in the first place, so awesome   

His people skills improved a bit, though.

Not sure what the deal is with "Away with Ye," though (that being, of course, the single most important IB skill in Tier 3).  What does "also requires cool down from 0s to 10s" mean for a skill that currently has a 20s cooldown?  Reducing the grudge from 30 to 25 sounds nice, but I'm fairly sure that the current ability costs more than 30 grudge (the tooltip says 30, but never lights up as available until I hit 40).  Grudge generation is still nerfed when you're over 60%, though, and the big problem is that skills like Binding Grudge and Heavy Blow deal damage based on your current grudge, so I suspect this will still hit the IBs as a DPS nerf (though not as big as originally proposed).

Edit: okay, I'm stupid, it does cost 30 grudge, but for some reason, can't be used until you have 50 or so.

[dd0029]

Jacobs and Barnett worked well in promoting WAR, but it looks really bad for the CEO of the company to indicate something hadn't been seen. It very well may have been seen and discussed among other devs at Mythic, but for the CEO to go "huh? wha?" publicly just makes everyone at Mythic look clueless.

I appreciate that Jacobs posts on forums. But he appears not to realise what it means for the rest of Mythic when he replies. The lead class designer should really be fielding these queries... assuming there is one and he isn't Jacobs.

This is one of the things that is really confusing me lately.  From what I remember of Mythic - I left right after Darkness Falls came out - they really focused on the community with DAOC and saw that as something they really wanted to improve on from EQ.  They had multiple well defined people that interacted with the community.  I really believe that this is yet another thing that Blizzard copied from them with WoW and then polished it.  For as bad as the Blizzard forums are, they are no where near like what the EQ forums were.  If you go beyond the General forum to the class forums, there is always good information to be found in the community developed stickies and not universally terrible discussion in most threads.  Its not EJ with its relentless focus on moderating, but Blizzard has done an adequate job of handling the community.

And here in Warhammer, we see Mythic needlessly reinventing the wheel yet again with their community practices and in the process acting decidedly B team about the whole thing.  Really, why is Mark Jacobs, one of the visible heads of the thing, slinging mud in a forum?

[khaine]

Jacobs and Barnett worked well in promoting WAR, but it looks really bad for the CEO of the company to indicate something hadn't been seen. It very well may have been seen and discussed among other devs at Mythic, but for the CEO to go "huh? wha?" publicly just makes everyone at Mythic look clueless.

I appreciate that Jacobs posts on forums. But he appears not to realise what it means for the rest of Mythic when he replies. The lead class designer should really be fielding these queries... assuming there is one and he isn't Jacobs.

This is one of the things that is really confusing me lately.  From what I remember of Mythic - I left right after Darkness Falls came out - they really focused on the community with DAOC and saw that as something they really wanted to improve on from EQ.  They had multiple well defined people that interacted with the community.  I really believe that this is yet another thing that Blizzard copied from them with WoW and then polished it.  For as bad as the Blizzard forums are, they are no where near like what the EQ forums were.  If you go beyond the General forum to the class forums, there is always good information to be found in the community developed stickies and not universally terrible discussion in most threads.  Its not EJ with its relentless focus on moderating, but Blizzard has done an adequate job of handling the community.

And here in Warhammer, we see Mythic needlessly reinventing the wheel yet again with their community practices and in the process acting decidedly B team about the whole thing.  Really, why is Mark Jacobs, one of the visible heads of the thing, slinging mud in a forum?

Because he gets off on it , for years now from taking jabs at EQ/EQ2 to the latest , insert foot in mouth , MTV blog interview , MJ gets his jollies from throwing out his brash statements and trying to act like his opinion is just that important

Deep down I think he cannot stand the fact that even before WoW , many people that don't play mmorpg's still had heard of "Everquest" but no clue about DAOC , now with WoW doing that x10

And on that fact he has always tried to play both sides of the fence , constantly trying the "we're not trying to compete with WoW nor expect to" line , while then in the next breath basically saying "look out WoW, it's a marathon and I think they are scared of us"

The one thing he is an expert on from what I've seen ,  is acting about as unprofessional as can be for an exec as part of a large company , talking about how every other game did X wrong , while his own game begins to burn around him