The End of a Story almost 4 years long

It's about time to post it.

After a really long period in which I didn't really spent time on either playing AoC or testing anything related to it, after taking the decision to take a break for a while this is the right moment to step down.

Age of Conan has been a great experience, I enjoyed playing that game despite the rants about the unbalance, about the development and about the FunCom on the overall.
After almost 4 years this game sounds to me like an old song, nice to hear but really not addicting nor exciting anymore, it gave me what he had to gave, but after Turan it slowly fell to oblivion.

My opinion is still that the combat system of Age of Conan could have brought it to the highest peaks of the MMO world, but the way it has been handled during all this years, the way it became a full PvE game just disappointed me over any limit.

I started to play this game lured by the blood, the fatalities, the chances to cut the head off the neck of many people and to have mine cutted off even more times, I saw it change day by day to a PvE factory, where gear and perks have become far more important of your skills, I lived with it as I loved the game, now I want to change though, because I felt betrayed.
If you advertise a game as a PvP game and you transform it into a PvE game you are not correct toward your customers, declare it PvE based with PvP degrees here and there and you would have avoided many complaints.

I still love the game but I need a change, that's it.

So the Temple will be closed, its fires smothered and ashes and dusts will claim these halls.

Thanks to those who visited this blog, to those who wrote and to those who sponsored and incited me behind the scenes.

Keep killing in the name of Xotli, and Have fun in Hyboria!


Farewell!



Arcalimon

A Genius has passed away

Today a Genius of our time passed away, to a better life? I hope so.

I would like to remember him with one of his most famous quotes, reading and hearing it again today gives it even more depth than it actually had the first time I heard it.

"Do not settle. Stay hungry, stay foolish."

Farewell Steve Jobs.

Summer - When FC guys decide to wake up!

It's incredible, absolutely incredible.
I left for my holidays with nothing new except for the new server Rage which, despite being fun on the PvP side at some degree, is nothing new, brings us nothing new, we still end up doing the same thing, leveling first, farming for gear after, only at the end doing some proper pvp, even in this case without anything new.
The only good thing is the absence of Bori (this deserves a 10+ for FC in this case).

As soon as I came back I approached my pc again, ready to see the same boredom and... SURPRISE!

TL is overwhelmed with acitivity, lot of testing and many many good news!

First of all, the new zone of Turan is being tested with the introduction of several new instances, also a raid, by the voices I heard, given that I don't have time actually to log on TL and see myself, the zone is really well designed, the instances are intrguing and interesting! Really not bad I dare to say! I appreciate this effort.

But what caught my interest is the PvP additions:

1) World Bosses: I don't like this, we don't need a wowish solution, we need a new open pvp contest which has as main objective the slaughter, the control of objectives a persistent zone of war! If any of you knows the Ettenmoors from LOTRO I guess can understand what I mean! War, all day long!!!

2) Animation rework: let me be clear... THEY REMOVED THE COMBOSKIP!
Absolutely thumbs up for it, I've got very important feedbacks on it, animation are quicker, not skippable and....
NO ROOT AT THE END OF PILLAR OF INFERNAL FLAMES!!!

Finally!


I will try to go and test some stuff as well as gathering more information to post a detailed feedback on what's going on!


Stay tuned!


Arcalimon

Time for Holidays!

After another exam at the university and my regular job end i'm in attempt to move out.

I'm enjoying the experience of rage with another toon, in the end I decided not to replicate my HoX there because I wanted to try something new and I started a guard (given that I already have a DT, Conq, BS, Sin and Barb) and I'm trying to get myself home with my head on my neck everyday.

It's a good experience just because everything it's much more dangerous, with fights everywhere, without rules, if you want to kill and have a real challenge at even getting out a zone then try the new ruleset.

But I've got to say that this is really nothing new, it's just a different shape of something we already done and that we are trying to redo, my plan is to stop at level 59 for a while to do some pvp and then see if I'll have the will to go up to level 80.

Also, the pre-order of Star Wars is out and I'm really eager to see how this game will look like.

But for the moment i'm just going to enjoy some weeks of relax, sea, sun, interesting cities and friends!

So guys, have fun, enjoy the holiday and always remember to dedicate some skulls to our god!

See you all at the 2nd half of august, hopefully with the chance to open up a small forum to discuss and reunite our scattered community.

A group of friends i've been part of once said "Together we stand, divided we fall" and this is true, especially when it comes down to the Herald of Xotli.

One last hint: Keep your eyes open as rumors say that the combo animation revamp is approaching and this could probably be a great change for us!

Let's wait and see.

Enjoy the summer and have fun guys!


See you on the 2nd half of August!



Sincerely,
Arcalimon

Player versus Player - Collection of thoughts

It's fundamental to be clear, if I'd have to define myself as a player I would say without any doubt that I'm 75% into PvP and the remaining into PvE, it's a choice I prefere a human versus human competition against a human versus server competition, it gives me much more satisfaction.

Even though I can define me a more or less professional PvPers always looking at improving, experimenting, playing every class I can to have a larger view on the field being able to react fast I'm not the kind of person that is encouraging the "elitaristic war" of PvErs agains PvPers, but I understand why it comes out.

It's undeniable that, when in a MMO PvE and PvP have their source in the very same skillset, feat and whatever there will always be a conflict, any modify applied to a class X at a time Y will affect the PvE side in a way and the PvP side in another, some examples are the Assassins, the Ranger and the Guardians.

Blaming a player in a moment of frustration may happen, what we should keep in mind is that there's a lot of players who remained faithful to their class even when it was not that performing that well, i'm referring to Sins which suffered from a lot of issues in the past, so why should we blame them for being now in a so called OP Status?

True thing is that there's also a lot of re-rollers, but hey, the game allows this, so why should we surprised if one re-rolls on a class that is performing better than his own?

It's the human nature guys, human beings are always aiming to competition, and to compete properly you've got to have the proper tool to do that.
In a MMO it is translated into having a good class, today it's the sin/ranger/guard, tomorrow it will be Necro/Demo/PoM, in a year it will be ToS/Conq or HoX... err no screw the HoX :)

What I mean is, it's a game true, but we all want to be competitive, starting from this then it comes to personal choices, I decided to roll pretty much every class in the game to have a larger overview, to know more also to have more choices, but my focus still remains on the Herald of Xotli, for it is the class I picked at day 1, the class I like(d) and love(d), I'm still willing to put an effort in being a good HoX especially when I realize that with an undergeared pvp 3 barbarian I'm much more performing than on my PvP 6 geared HoX.

It's a matter of pride and honor.

But the PvP is a strange entity.

In Age of Conan what I'd the chance to see is that it is based on Gear Supremacy, Perk Supremacy and Number Supremacy, only far after those 3 comes the Skill Supremacy.

If you are skilled you won't stand a chance against a player less skilled than you but with superior gear, simple as that.
Age of Conan at the very beginning was used to be a skill based (based on what I recall) game, equip was obviously a boost, but you still had a chance if you'd been a good player.

Now that's not the case anymore, so I'm asking myself why?

There could be many reasons to this.

I'm quite confident to say that Shrines of Bori were the first unbalancing factor in this game, came immediately after a revamp of the PvP levels and a new itemization which were not that bad after all.

I say so because I can't understand how mining resources nodes can be defined as a PvP activity, especially because the behaviour about Bori is well known: One guild steamroll the map, occupies it for the whole day and has its member up to PvP level 10 in a "heartbeat" and who the hell cares if those pvp 10 are noobs? with their gear anyone below pvp 5 will not have a single chance against them even if they know perfectly their class, even if they are perfectly aware of strenghts and weakness of their enemy, they simply can't fill the gear gap.

Recently issued polls showed how roughly 92% of the community refused Bori, demanded a change in regular server and begged the Devs to not have it as an option in the upcoming Blood and Glory ruleset, it should mean something, 92% guys, it's a reallly high percentage.

Sieges are another dreadful chapter.

Siege content could be the real engine of the PvP, it SHOULD HAVE BEEN the engine, the soul, the deep reason of pvping.
World conflict to own a Battlekeep, huge efforts to build it in terms of material, huge efforts in terms of sacrifice to maintain it against the enemies storming the walls.

But...

Compared with minigames a siege gives nothing in terms of PvP xp and reward;
Compared with Shrines of Bori it gives even less;

So why should one bother about sieging at all?

For fun you could answer.

True, you got a point. Unfortunately there are a lot of issues which are removing the fun factor from the siege activity, some have been mentioned above, other are purely technical.

It's not possible, not understandable and not acceptable that after 3 years from the release with a top maching and an ADSL connection a player, a customer is not able to perform properly in a siege, at low settings, with everything disabled.

It's not possible, not understandable and not acceptable that after 3 years from release, with a top machine and an ADSL connection a player is not able to cast an instant spell, to perform a combo without having to wait 5 seconds from the moment he casts the spell/combo till the moment he notices the animation on the screen.

Playing a 48vs48 content having the whole raid stuck in huge red lag spikes it's impossible, it's not fun, it prevents you from doing anything it DESTROYES any effort you made to build up the keep, it does not allow you to defend what you got and build with sacrifice.

If you are lucky the siege will crash. The only chance of salvation.

But we can't blame only the SH mistakes.

The Community playes a bigger role in this.

Gankers, leavers, afkers, k/d whores, big-egos, flame wars, QQ, whines, complains, add whatever you want here.

The class X is OP OMG!!!!! NERF NERF NERF!
The class Y is UP! OMFG YA NOOBS WE NEED LOVZOR"

Yes I'm part of this as well and I regret this.

I stopped posting anything openly flame-baiting on the forums since a month or so, I'm much more focused on finding a way to perform despite any possible issue.

This is a plea to you all fellow PvPers, if the game is what it is, the ONLY WAY we have to keep it enjoyable is to focus on the community, to focus on the way we play.

Let's try to be less selfish, let's try to play more for the sake of playing rather then for the dire need of establishing ourselves as the best overall in the whole universe.

We would all have benefits from this.


See you the next time.

Arcalimon

Herald of Xotli - Discussing on Crowd Control

It's about time to write down something on how I would use the Crowd Control now that the new system has been settled.

To summarize the changes from the HoX point of view we can start with these small points:

1) Dread Visage is now 1 second casting time;
2) Word of Command is now 0.5 seconds casting time;
3) Desecrating Essence remained untoched;
4) The innate feat Roots of Hell gives up to 50% resistance to KB (if fully feated) while in demon form;
5) There's a lesser amount of CC around.

The 5 points above should be enough to grant a player an overview on how the Crowd Control works now and how it will affect his own way of using them.

The first thing that becomes clear is that the HoX lost its instant CC, I wrote in the past that CCs like WoC and DV were used mostly for defensive purposes, something like a "oh shit" ability to escape dangerous situation, that is obviously not the same anymore, even though the first impression on it made me scream about the nerf I have to be honest that it was not so if you try to watch it in the greater picture.

The modifies to our CC are now forcing us to play our class more tactically, we have to time properly our CC and we absolutely need to be able to prevent what our opponent will do, movement and positionin is now even more important than it was before and the line between a good HoX and a not good HoX is now even more defined.

If you are able to prevent and react properly you'll survive, else you're dead meat.

Simple as that.

More in detail:

WoC: I'm not using it only to escape anymore. I can't cast it instantly but it's a great tool to be effectively supporting especially when trying to help the flag carrier, in a minigame played yesterday I managed to get our flag carrier out of troubles a couple of time by simply rooting down the chasers with WoC and interrupting their casts and combos with Hellfire breath. I'm alse re-evaluating the role of WoC as a backup CC for when I stun a target, I'm perfectly aware that the stun can be easily removed especially in early stages of a fight, but the process takes at least 1 second and I'm managing to apply the root before my enemy is removing the stun gaining in this way enough time to either land a buffed ToX or to retreat waiting for a better moment to shot it.


DV: This was the ultimate "I need to save my back" cc for the HoX, it isn't so anymore, but even in this case I found it usefull for supporting the team, especially in this new Furian reality I'm noticing that it's really common to have 3 enemies on you trying to burn you down and it's in this case that I use my DV to buy some time for me or my ally to run out, maybe also using WoC as a backup if I believe I've got enough time to stay and cast it (it means more than 60% of my hp).

What comes out from this small analisys is that now the HoX has less "selfish" tools (and that's bad) but has on the other hand of the deal more "teamplay" tools which is not a bad thing after all, it's true that we are maybe a bit forced to play that way, but in the long run it will turn out to be a good thing creating some kind of "mutual aid" behaviour in minigame, and it's always nice to see a guy standing between you and your death just because you saved his back before.

I'm enjoying my "new" role of supporter, and especially in crowded fight when healers and flag carriers are the main focused targets my root or fear or stun can often change the tide of the fight.

It's all about making the habit to this new style, I wouldn't dislike a bit more of survival, but while I wait for it, at least now  I can try to find a new "reason" for my class, and a new role I may like to play.


I hope you enjoyed the read.

Take care.


Arcalimon

Fury: New dimension of life

So we've been through the server merge.

The new experience within the new PvP server Fury has begun and after a week of play I can try to summarize my impressions on it.

First thing to be said is that finally we have a living server, vibrating server, a lot of stuff is going on and especially on the PvP side the things have improved a lot in terms of frequency and numbers.
Minigames are starting at the speed of light and it's now normal to be able to run 3-4 or even 5 JS in a day if one has the stomach to do that, 40 minutes of minigame are quite a lot, but yet, you have the chance to choose to play it or not to play it. Back at Aquilonian's days have you missed a JS you couldn't be sure that you'd had another chance to play it within the day.

I've had the chance to see also the old Keshatta Zerg activity back on track, with around 20-30 players taking out the doubts and fighting bad in there, nice activity after years of Empty Kesh in which the only activity was some rare duel going on the duel area, downside of it is that the "Duel area" has become again the hunting ground for gankers, but this should have been expected.

Fury is traditionally a full PvP server, without the RP tag that Aquilonia had, so far I think there have never been a duel area in there, not officially at least.

About my experience the feelings are mixed, I'm absolutely happy to have the chance to spend 4 hours doing minigame without a break, being able to enter a map as soon as I'm out from the one I was playing in, but I have to admit I'm a bit concerned about the "quality" of the experience.

Regardless of the map, you'll end up in a minigame in which killing the enemy is far more important than actually winning the minigame, people is leaving as soon as the group composition does not match whit one's personal tastes, and it's absolutely normal to have 4 guys chasing and hunting you down even at your resspad, which is utterly annoying.

I've been through a devastating siege experience, my guild has been attacked and in a 48vs48 siege at prime time 20:00 CET the lag was so bad that I was not able to even cast Hellfire Breath.
Obviously with this situation it took 30 minutes to the attackers to burn the keep down, catapults and trebuchet will keep on shooting regardless of lag.

The impact has not been easy, I was used to play at the much slower rate of Aquilonia, but I adapted quite soon to the new speedy game in Fury, I'm enjoying the experience so far, I'd wish I could siege properly, but at the next attempt if the lag remains that bad I guess I will call it and close my sieging experience, untill when FunCom will do something to make siege finally enjoyable.

They've got a full PvP server with guilds willing to actively siege, it's a shame they can't do it properly.

Catch you around soon.

Arcalimon

Age of Conan: Unrated and Server Merge

Hi fellow HoXes.

A lot has been announced lately, lot of stuff that will change the future of this game and that hopefully will allow us to enjoy it a lot more thanks to a wider player base.

The Savage Coast of Turan will be an add-pack that will be released at fall 2011, it will allow players to access the zones that are related to the film which will come out in the theaters during the summer (August 2011 afaik), it will bring new contents for both solo playing in terms of ACG instances as well as group and raid instances, new armors and I dare to say also probably new factions to deal with.

This has been the first announcement made by FunCom and although I think it's good to know they'll release stuff I'm disappointed. There's lack of PvP content and still no word about the B&G ruleset that was announced for May and after postponed to a more generic "Summer". Also, B&G won't be a solution, we don't know how they will handle the character progress, the AA gain, how they'll prevent the Bori farming and how they will allow players to make us of PvE content without guards, allowing then gankers to stay there and kill you over and over and over.

If it has to be a real PvP Hardcore server, every single PvE component of it should be removed (PvE AA as well I dare to say) unfortunately it won't be so, cause as it has been said already "Core System won't be modified".

The second huge announcement is the Age of Conan:Unrated.
What the hell is it? Simple, Age of Conan is going Free 2 Play on a hybrid model, which means that starting from this summer, all the customers with an active subscription (or with ROTG) will be considered premium members, having access to the full content of the game, new players will be able to play the early parts of the game for free with:

1) Limitation on Class, only 4 classes out of 12 will be available;
2) Limitation on instance content, major raid won't be allowed.

A store will be created in which you would be able to buy armor (good but not at pair level with raid armor apparently), special passes to allow you to join instances as a F2P member and whatsoever.

No word has bee given about how and if the PvP will be affected by restrictions too.

Related to this announcement there's a close up activity, on June the 1st at 09:00 GMT all the European server will be taken down for a merge.

All the PvE server will be merged into 1 server and all the PvP server will be merged into 1 server, they will activate 1 free transfer to move to the other ruleset so PvE --> PvP and vice-versa for the lenght of 30 days.

Last but not least FunCom declared that next on the schedule there's the beginning of the works for the server optimization and the introduction of the cross-server functionality which will probably affect also the minigame mechanics, a good new.

There has been also a shy announcement about possible tweaks and fixes to the classes ingame.

There's a lot of stuff to read and verify, and my intention was just to give you a quick overview, for there will be really a lot of stuff on the horizon.


As usual I reccomend you to go and give a check at the official forums and at the site www.ageofconan.com for further details on the matter.


So stay tuned.


Special Mention:

I'd like to say Goodbye to Aquilonia, it has been my first and only server and I'm going to "leave" it only because of the merge.
It has been a lot of fun to be there, I saw many guilds come and Go, but everyting comes to an end at last.

So... See you AQ server, it has been a pleasure!



Arcalimon

Technical Notes: RAM usage for 64 bit OS

Hi guys,
wanna share my experience and hopefully it will be usefull for some of you out there.
Tech world is a Jungle and finding a config which suits perfectly with all your needs is not always easy, and most often we can't expect top performances on everything we are running on our machines, being it due to bottle-necks on user end side or for programming failures on the Software side.
The last case is clearly the case of Age of Conan, everyone who plays that game is perfectly aware of it's issues managing a multicore CPU as well as its insane requirements in terms of RAM memory.

Many 64bit OS users with an average ov 4GB of RAM DDR3 may have noticed how the RAM usage (I was using G15 performance screen) can be established pretty much always in a range between 95-98%, which obviously take out all the memory available on a PC (and 99% of the products out on the market are running absolutely fine with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, just to let you know) making you pretty much difficult to do anything.

This leads to some issues in game, which are often masked as lag spikes with really huge pings (around 4.5k ms), I discovered that this is not real lag but it's strictly linked to the RAM usage, there are some posts talking about it on the official forums, but spreading the word it's not a bad thing at all so I will describe the symptoms I had and the really easy solution I found to solve them.

First of all my rig:

Mobo: Asus p7p55d LE
CPU: Intel i5-750 OC 3.2GHZ
RAM: 4GB Kingston DDR3 1333Mhz
GPU: GeForce GTX 570
HD: Maxtor 7600rpm (500gb) and another Maxtor regular rpm 250gb roughly
Cooler: Noctua Tower
OS: Windows 7 64-bit

With this rig, I've always been able to enjoy the game, there were sometimes some mini freezes while loading textures, loading time were average but with huge spikes in terms of time when it comes down to loading heavy zones like Paikang, Chosain or Northern Grasslands.
The most common issues i found were a heavy rubberbanding, average lag on 150-250ms (yellow), npcs loading while I was walking in a zone with consequent freeze on the screen, alt-tab crashing, game crashes.

Although I managed to play the game like this for almost a year at some point I grew tired of this and I started to verify what was my machine doing when a freeze was occurring, so I deactivate my antivirus and any background running application and I noticed to important things:

1) My HD led was always active, like there was a swapping during the read of information;
2) My RAM usage was always at 95%, regardless of any other side activity of the machine;
3) The trend on the RAM usage was always increasing.

I was damn sure though that the issue was on my HD, so I did a deep clean of it, uninstalled obsolete stuff, launched a complete cycle of cleaning for apps and win register with "CC Cleaner", made a great scanning with "AD Aware" and finally made a deep and long (5-6 hours) cycle of defrag with "My Defrag".

After that I launched the game again with 50% of my HD space free and optimized.

The situation was a bit better, but after a couple of hours the problems came back in all their might. At that point it was clear that it was not a HD related issue, I had the suspect but I wanted to be sure.

So I went to my PC shop I bought other 4GB of DDR3 RAM and I installed it on my pc.

Result?

Yesterday I did a full siege in full graphical setting with 4 application running on background without having my fps down 40, without a single lag spike, I can safely alt tab without crashing, my loading time decreased from 3 minutes to pretty much immediately regardless of which zone i'm loading, NPC are all loaded as soon as i'm out of loading screen and my HD can finally rest a bit more without being stressed.

So far fellow players, if you do not mind spending money in a 4GB more of RAM and you like me really want to play AoC having top performance, with 30€ you can solve all your issues installing a new RAM block.

Some side notes: That was my case and those were my signals that there was something not working, if you find that you have similar issues and your rig is similar to mine, and you know for sure your connection cannot be accused of anything, well this may be the solution, I cannot of course guarrantee that you will solve everything with this, but in my opinion it is worth a try.


IMPORTANT: If you are a 32bit OS user, do not buy other RAM! 32 bit OS will accept only 4gb of ram regardless of how many ram you phisically have installed on your machine, so before wasting your money take your time to read through the InternetZ to verify if your PC can sustain this new memory and if you meet the requirements.


Hopefully this will help :)

See ya!

Arcalimon

Herald of Xotli: PvP after the 2.2 patch

Greetings everyone.
I've been slacking a bit on this blog lately (Slith will enjoy this statement) essentially because I wanted to test out the PvE side of life with my alternate toons and to see how much smoother was the faction progression.
But I've also invested some time in PvP with my HoX trying to draw a line and compare how much the gameplay on the overall changed, and for good from my point of view.

I've been in some minigames mostly Hallowed Vaults and Lost Temple with my beloved HoX and I have to admit I had a lot of fun. Yesterday I ended up in a minigame full of rogues (melee ones) and I was already feeling the pain, my last memory of minigames with this setup was limited to a Stun - Dead - Ress behaviour without any real chance to do something concrete, beside rare exceptions when I managed to found a small hole to unleash the flames of Xotli.
It was the heaven of the CC-lock and of the huge damage spikes from sins, it was really hard for an HoX to survive enough to call it fun regardless of the deaths, in fact spending 10 minutes just clicking on the "Resurrect" button can hardly be defined as fun or challengin, it's rather frustrating and annoying.

Back on the trial, I was so expecting another devastating experience, but I came out from that mini with a big surprise. I've been able to move, without being thrown all over the place and raped by the first shade that approached me, mostly due to the new CC mechanics, I was able to move around and I was able to time correctly my HFB to interrupt dangerous moves from my enemies which could have been the cause of my death.

Admittedly after a month of non-pvp activity my result was not so shining, but again I think that once I'll remove some rust from my wheels it will be even more fun.
You know, for the first time in a minigame against sins and barbarians I've been able not only to play, but also to be a real support for my group, carrying the flag, protecting the healer (they don't need it so often and being dead does not help when they really need) or simply slowing down those who were chasing at our flag carrier.

Let me be clear, if caught in the wrong place and affected by a CC the HoX will still die in pain, and it is still most susceptible to it than most other classes, but the situation really changed and even though I still believe the HoX suffers from a weaker base than others in the game, its status has been improved indirectly by the new CC mechanics and received a small direct boost from the changes at HFB.

I'm sticking around with a Poss/Gen build still which is highly reccomended for a "pew-pew" tactic, but I'm slowly building the idea to develope a new kind of hybrid build removing some points from the general to add them in the Avatar Tree.

It's all under test though I don't expect it to work properly nor to convince me to switch to it anytime soon :)


Generally speaking about AoC apparently the new zones that will be released in game are Turan and another Arashadir-something (can't recall the exact name), rumors confirmed by the "Search for Zone" feature in game which shows Turan in the list, also Silirrion said on Twitter that we should expect something on the level of announcement in this week or next week when the 3 years of AoC Birthday will fall (a lot of speculation about the date though so I'm officially confused).

Also there will be soon enough new content to test on the Test Live server as well as the announced set up of the Blood&Glory ruleset which should be released during the summer.

Busy times are ahead indeed, let's just see what the future will bring :)

Stay tuned!

Arcalimon

2.2 What we were not expecting

The CC revamp and Faction revamp has been released on Live servers, and it is a hell of a work, lot of stuff has been tweaked and fixed and I reserved myself some time to check stuff out before posting anything.

I've had the chance to test both the PvP effects of the CC revamp as well as the PvE effects of it as well as the Faction improvement and I have to say i'm impressed.

First of all, based on my last post there have been some stuff modified for the Herald of Xotli, stuff that greatly changed the horizon of our class, small tweaks indeed but they affected our gameplay thanks to the big design of the CC revamp.

Mainly the 2 biggest changes were the reduction of the casting time for Word of Command from the original 1 second to a 0.5 seconds casting time, still many can perceive it as a nerf compared with the previous instant cast status of this skill, but inserting it in the new mechanics of the CC system it results to be a good move. Also a new feature has been added to Hellfire Breath which is now capable of interrupting combos as well as casts.

In PvP the changes are pretty good, as soon as there are less CCs around the HoX is more capable of moving around without being stun-locked and therefore has more chances to deal damage without great issues, of course as soon as we get a CC on us and we can't removed we will be devastated, but compared with the pre-revamp situation, everything seems to be better.
What I unexpectedly like was the change to Dread Visage, true thing is that it is a 1 second cast instead of a 0.5 second cast, still I feel I'm now obliged to use it wisely, hence I need to time it correctly and I therefore have the feeling that i'm forced to play more in a tactical way, I used to cast it for defensive purposes but I find it more usefull now for offensive purposes, as we need to stay out of combat in the first frenzied phases of a melee fight, we have enough time to get in the middle and lessen the pressure on the Soldiers or healers, we are now more supportive to the group, and this is a good thing.
Without mentioning the chance to interrupt combos with Hellfire Breath, in this way as well we can now consider it more than a mere spamming spell, we can time it to interrupt for examples incoming CCs that are now more noticeable than they were before.

As I said these changes modified the gameplay for the Herald of Xotli and improved a bit its status, still we would need some more modifies, the cons of this revamp is that a Possession based HoX will have even mre the upper hand over an Avatar specced HoX, a rework of Avatar would still be really appreciated, it should be much more viable than it is now, but who knows, the tide seems to be changed, it's allowed to hope for something more in the future?

I would hope so.

About the faction revamp i'm really impressed.
Yesterday I tried to start the faction progression from 0 with another toon (a DT) and I picked up the Last Legion in Northern Grasslands. I admit I didn't go for the fastest way possible and I wasted sometimes trying to enjoy the storyline, the result was that at the end of my 3hours of playing I found myself with more than 50k faction point (so Rank 1 i guess) and with roughly 100 MoAs much more than all the MoA I obtained in my intensive and rare farming session before the revamp.
While doing quests I also noticed that the CC importance in PvE has been a bit reduced as long as you receive less CCs from the mobs and you can then time your skills a bit more, relying more on tactic rather than on pure CC frenzy spamming.


I read rumors about the next expansione, apparently it will be in Turan, I rather think it will be an "add-on" so let's wait to have more infos.

In the meantime I'll try and dedicate myself a bit more to the 2 new districts in Paikang, I've had a glance at them on TL server and they looked impressive, I will come out with something on them as soon as possible.

Keep your heads on your necks in the meantime!


Regards,
Arcalimon

Crowd Control Revamp - The details for the Herald of Xotli

Greetings.

The Crowd Control revamp has been released on the Test Live, I will skip the full notes and I will just report the changes that are related to our class:



Generic CC Changes: (as of 20/04/2011)* Most CC spells, abilities and combos have been tweaked in regards to duration, cast time, range, immunities or max targets. Also most combos are now one step in addition to the finisher.
* Knockbacks will now use a resistance based system to behave like other crowd control effects. Some feats and items have been changed in this regard. This means that the worn armor type of the target no longer matters.
* Some abilities and spells that purely gives resistances have been changed to be hostile so they are visible to enemies. These are: Stand your Ground, Running Shot, Excellent Balance and Ursine Bond.
* Most abilities (Abilities tab) should no longer be affected by silence. Spells will still be affected as they always have been.
* Priest and Mage classes will now also gain resistance to silence while under the effect of Recently Impaired.
* Targets affected by fear will now also have slow movement.
* The maximum Snare effect is now 60% Hinder Movement from a crowd control spell. Any additional effect will still stack on top of this.
* You can no longer be Staggered while affected by a Snare.
* All Root and Silence combos and spell will now grant the target a Recently Impaired buff.
* The stagger debuff now has a unique icon.
* Players that are feared while sprinting will no longer lose stamina as if sprinting under the fear effect.


Herald of Xotli
* Roots of Hell will now add 10/20/30% resistance against knockbacks while any polymorph is active




So far these are the changes applied by FunCom to CC environment, so I'm now going a bit in depth with what effectively changed for the Herald of Xotli.


Dread Visage (Fear): it was a 0.5 seconds it has been changed to a 1 second casting time skill, range and cooldown have not been changed. The HoX will perform an "hellfire-a-like" animation while casting it;

Words of Command (Root): it was an instant cast, it has been changed to a 1 second casting time skill as for the Fear range and CD have not been changed, the animation is like described for the fear.


Changes to the Possession Feat "Roots of Hell":

The whole system behind the Knockback has been changed, armor weight will now mean nothing, the whole calculation has been reworked to be based on resistances.
Roots of Hell now instead of increasing the HoX weight while under form will just modify the resistance to Knockback of 10% for each point invested, which basically means that a maxed feat will grant us a 30% to knockback.
I'm still unsure about this change and its effects, on the overall it does not seem so bad, but I need absolutely to understand one thing:

1) Now: We have a Full Plate weight with maxed RoH and we are harder to be knocked back by everyone due to this fact, I assume that a clothie or a light armor is simply unable to knock us back while we are plymorphed;

2) Future: We will be knockbackable, we will have just a 30% resistance, this means that EVEN while in form we will not be immune to knockbacks incoming from cloth,light and medium and we will just have a calculation of the resistance with a base value for us of 30%.


If the change is what I'm assuming then it's a nerf, we will susceptible of knockback even while under our demonic form and we will have to be extremely carefull. If it is really this than guys it will be a utter pain, resisting to Knockback while in form especially the one from barb and sin was absolutely our best reason to spend point on that feat.

Now we will just have roughly a 30% of resisting a Knockback while transformed, means basically that we will resist 1 KNOCKBACK EVERY 3 USED ON US.

And sorry it sounds like a nerf.


About WoC and DV, I'm totally disappointed, our fast CCs have been nerfed, we would not be able anymore to use especially the fear to escape dangerous situations. On the overall I do believe that those changes are the final blow to all our chances to fight properly in melee, we won't be dynamic and ready to run anymore and we will have to base everything on kiting, our melee survivability will be heavily affected by this and we will have to rely even more on a "hit and run" technique, true all the other classes will have their CC nerfed, but hey... a Barbaria now will debuff the DPS (i was reading and it seems to be -900 to DPS) with the feat "Paralisys" which had its root effect removed. In this case it was a nice tradeoff, and the necro now has an instant root, so why ours had to be nerfed? Just guessing.

I'm strongly convinced that the HoX will be seriously penalized from all those changes and it will be really really hard to figure out a proper way to survive now, on the other hand, the overall weight of the CC chain-locks will be lowered so we should have a better capability to move around.
I'm not that confident anyway, we saw our survival tools removed, and instead of being able to use a fast CC to stay alive we saw all our CCs brought more in line with the slow-as-hell Desecrating Essence.

Using Desecrating Essence is from my point of view only for offensive purposes so we have to be good at positioning and good at timing it, root and fear were our means to get out of trouble before someone could spank us, we don't have time to do a proper positioning and timing while running away, that's my biggest concern, our survivability has been penalized, and we are already an extremely-not-surviving class.

Many classes had a tradeoff (read barbarian going from root to DPS debuff) we didn't have any tradeoff. They just took something out of us, without giving us anything in exchange, and it's not fair at all.

The HoX already respected many times its part of the deal, having more and more penalties at every patch round, now it's their time to give us something in exchange.


Ending the rant on how it will affect the HoX i want to say that on the Overall this revamp will change the PvP and will do that for good, less CC frenzy it's a good thing for sure and I'm still supporting this change.

It's just that for once I would really like to see a balanced a well reasoned revamp, a revamp that for once is not throwing even more down classes that are already in desperate situations.


My testings will of course go on on TestLive especially when it comes down to duels, so I will be able to provide you all some more details.


Be aware anyway that those change is concerning me a lot and that my starting impression is negative, at least based on what they changed for us.

A real answer anyway will come only when we will be able to go on the battlefield and verify what will be the real CC output of all the other classes.


Stay tuned guys.


Arcalimon

Age of Conan - Age of Renewal

Refuge of the Apostate hitted Live Servers!
This week we saw the flash release of the new content announced a couple of weeks ago, after a quite speedy testing phase the instance has been released, and despite some usual bugs it is the first step toward a defined direction that has been drawed by the Game Director.
The reduction of the farming aspect of Age of Conan is being shaped day by day, first came the introduction of the exchange with veteran tokens, now the new instance, after will follow a rework of the faction reward, so the path is quite defined even if I'm eager to know what will change, and how much these changes will affect our experience.
Beside this aspect, there's also much more on the go, and it's my opinion that FunCom is willing to make use of the new Movie incoming this summer to shake the game from it's actual status both to prepare the ground to face the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic (rumors says it will be out in September) and to keep AoC alive till the release of their main project (at the moment at least) The Secret World.
Of all the upcoming changes we don't have many information, there will be 2 districts in Paikang, 2 new ACG instances (Active Generating Content [I'll check the spelling later:P]), but what is interesting me the most are the upcoming changes to the Crowd Control skills, to the Animation lenght and the introduction of the new ruleset.



Crowd Control Changes:

This change will affect the PvP side of the game, and I feel it is really much needed, the weight of the CC in the game mechanics at least for PvP it's just to heavy, most of your time while PvPing will be spent under the effect of CC being it a major one or a minor one, despite the new AA Anti-CC it still makes the experience not enjoyable.
Accordingly with the few information provided the major pace of this change will regard the "melee cc" due to the possible introduction of an attack before the execution of the skill, this will somehow affect the gameplay of the melee fighters, especially for a class like the Barbarian which is relying on the CC.
It will be interesting to see:
1) How will they work on the resistances to the CC especially for the Silence, which will be reviewed again;
2) How much melee will be affected by the change;
3) How much casters will have benefits/penalties from this changes.



Animation Rework:

When FC speaks about "The exploit we are not supposed to talk about" they are clearly referring to the comboskipping.
This change will aim directly to delete or at least reduce the occurrence of this exploit, by fastening the animation speed and by removing the root effect at the end of the combo (HoXes rejoice you won't be stuck anymore while using PoIF) they'll make the PvP much more dynamic and frenzied, faster combos will be harder to skip (if it'll be possible at all) and again this will affect badly all the classes that are "abusing" or take insane advantages from this "exploit" (Barbarian, Conqueror and Bear Shaman are the first coming to my mind).
Let me be clear anyway, FunCom classified the "Comboskipping" as an exploit, it is of course a practice which is on the very edge of the "Legal play" it is unfair by definition because male can skip better than female, because class X can skip better than class Y, but actually not Comboskipping will make your effectiveness in PvP far below the average.
This will be a really interesting change, and i'm absolutely looking forward to see what they'll do.




Paikang Districts and the 2 new AGC instances:

More introduction on the PvE side, this is not a bad idea itself, and if it will help in lessening the farming factor of Age of Conan i'm all up for this change. There's a huge lack of information beside some new posted in the Monthly Development letter on official forums so I can't really formulate anything detailed on this, but I have just one question:
Wouldn't you appreciate more new bosses for the T4 instance and a related bug fixing for it?
As a PvPer I would do. T4 is actually what is frustrating the most the player base PvEside, from my point of view obviously.


Blood and Glory ruleset:

I've already spoke my mind about this, but the news about CC and Animation rework will change things a bit.
These changes WILL change the life of the PvPers, these changes WILL affect also the chances of either success or utter failure of this new server for Hardcore PvP.
I've heard whispers about a possible PoM revamp in the meanwhile, and yes I do believe that a fresh level 80 PoM is in need of some love, but so does ToS and HoX.
Will they revamp these 3 classes before the Blood and Glory will be released?
If I was a member of the Developing class, I would suggest them to focus on revamps and class balance before facing such a huge challenge like the B&G release.


Anyway only time will give us the answers we are seeking, I have to say that FunCom is working and apparently is working hard to shape a new form for this game, results are sometimes good and sometimes bad, but I see a positive will in all this.

Let's just wait and see what the future will bring.

Till the next blog entry and may the Wrath of Xotli be with you!

Arcalimon

Refuge of the Apostate - The new upcoming solo instance

Finally back!
I've managed to test that new instance just yesterday and it was not that bad.

Our journey towards the Refuge of the Apostate begins in Kara Korum when we decide to move up to Ghost Hills (most probably when we will be chasing a Brittle Blade officer [Rank 2 quest]), while fighting our way through the village we will meet a girl near a resspad, she is willing to exchange words with us, warning us about the great peril toward which we are moving our footsteps. Obviously we decide to go in despite her advices so she will charge us with a task, because she has no desire to get back in the nightmare.
We will then climb the slope heading toward the first house on the right, and entering it we will bravely go throug the trapdoor that leads inside the refuge.
The instance is splitted into levels:
The first level consists in a mine, where we will find several mobs busy in attending to their jobs, but they won't hesitate to attack us on sight, the level of the instance is what i would define a simple "Run through" you'll go across the map from point A to point B finding a gate during your trip, gate that will be opened after you'll kill the HoX looking boss but with Necro skills. Note for the HoX: At least in the TL versione the mobs of the virst zone are very likely to resist the spells, so watch out.
The Second Level is called the "Staging Area" it looks like a mix of a Chessboard and it has clear references to the "Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor - Qin Shi Huang" [if you want to learn more http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/441] and his army of stone. You'll have to go through this area in which there's an interesting puzzle runnig throug the canyons while slowed preiodically by a specific spell and fighting the "Stone Warriors" that are impressively similar to the ones in this picture, you'll have to pay attention because sometimes walking on the wrong pad will activate some "Tomb Raider looking" (thanks slith for reminding me where I saw that traps first) traps based on arrows. Your first aim is to reach the exit of the room passing through the Canyons, to do so you'll have to reach the highest level of the room where a nice puzzle awaits (i won't spoil it).
The Third Level is a Library, there's a good number of mob in it, but as for the first level it's "Run Through" zone without anything really particular to be done in it.
Then comes the end of the instance when you'll reach a room with an hall in which you'll be able to see 5 bosses in front of you, they are just reflection of the real boss, but you won't be able to fight them immediately, just because they will underestimate you and send you within a nightmare (or soul trip) you will be chained like if you were fatalized by a necro.
While in this mode you will have to reach the platform where the "chained soul" is in order to free yourself, what has to be noticed is that there's a countdown in this mode, at the end of it you will be fatalized, while trying to reach the platform, reflection of the boss will appear and they will knock you back (repulse animation) also applying an hinder movement, that reflection can appear up to 3 times as far as I had the chance to see, and the Hinder movement stacks till reaching 100% condemning you to death.
If you'll manage tor each the platform to free the soul you'll fight the last boss, personally I haven't found anything special about that boss, it's a common fight only special feature is that he will periodically call his reflection starting a nasty attack which could one shot you, so you'll have to seriously nuke him down.



Conclusion:
The instance looks nice, it's not so hard and easy enough if you pay attention to what you are doing, I do believe that it should be a bit better enriched for what regards the story behind it and also inserted in a "chain" of quests that will lead you there, without getting there because others told you that it's there.
I found pretty interesting the 2nd level and its references to the "Stone Army" it would be awesome to have some more details on why that statues are there, and on who the hell is that apostate, that cultural reminder was really appreciated by me honestly.
As for the reward, they should adjust the loot table, it's a one-man instance, the loot should not be random imo, but it should be something usefull for the class keeping in mind that for a regular raider all the items will be useless but for a fresh 80 a blue item dropped there would be a great loot and great step forward on the long road called "Equipping my toon".
Screenshots will come asap!

Take care!

Arcalimon

Herald of Xotli and AoC, there will ever be peace?

Dreamworld has been released and Hyboria is now living under a new graphical shape and fighting against new bugs.
Even if the update was not "class" related once again there's something that is affecting the HoX adding problems to our apparently nearly-forgotten alter-ego. The game runs smoother and that's true and we've been showed some interest with the tweak of our Phoenix Cloak animation which has been sensibly modified and adapted, we're no more a traffic light in the middle of the fight, this change is purely aesthetical but better than nothing I would say, but... there's always a but.
Especially after the second patch which was aiming to sort out some bugs like the permanent fire dot from Jhebbal Sag and the absence of reward from some minigames there's an issue that is resulting to be very annoying not only for us but also for the other players that have the bad luck of ending up in group with us.
Sidenote: Missing tokens after winning a Minigame has not been fixed even though it's a random event, after winning a Jhebbal Sag yesterday i didn't get the update on the quest so I didn't get the 3 tokens, shame.
Back on the track of our topic, I will start saying that it is mostly graphical related and it provokes lag spikes to all the players joining a minigame, adding lag to the already known lag spikes that are randomly affecting the field with peaks of 4.800ms if you are lucky.
So be aware guys (and I hope, I sincerely hope that: 1) not all are experiencing this; 2) it will be fixed) that everytime we will use Desecrating Essence and most probably Avatar of Xotli (if there's any Avatar specced HoX around please do confirm this chance) we will be entirely frozen giving to all the minigame players a free lag spike, huge lag spike, it's common to hear your comrades on vent screaming out "Hell that HoX transformed again, i'm lagging badly".
In fact, as far as I've been told by a guildmate yesterday during the morphing transition there's a really small portion of time in which our character will lose its equipment staying naked before the new demonskin resulting from the DE skill is applied on the character, this transition is provoking huge amounts of lag, even if I can't understand the linke between this graphical transition and the related effect on the connection.
The result of it is that we stay frozen for the whole lenght of the Desecrating Essence form, ending up dead in 99% of the cases or if lucky below 40% of hp which will result in death soon after, wasting our chance to unleash our full power in the few seconds of our transformation, as well as ruining the game experience of many.
Try to wonder about a minigame with 3 hoxes using Desecrating Essence together, it will be a pain.
Desecrating Essence is our "top" skill it's fundamental for both Avatar/Poss, Poss/General, Poss/Avatar specs, we rely on it, there's a perk which is giving us an insane boost to the stats when under our demonic shape (RSoX), and being polymorphed it's the best solution to max out the damage output for both physical attacks as well as magical attacks.
This bugs is cutting our legs.
Herald of Xotli it's already hard enough to be played, with poor survivability and slowness to build up a proper dps output, we need a time we don't have to do a lot of damage so we must rely on kite and we NEED our Demonic Form to have a  nice peak of damage, with this bug we are prevented to use one of our best skills.
Most probably it will be fixed and everything will be back on a "normal status" soon, but this brings up to a me a thought once again.
We need attention, we need a rework, we don't have any viable choice beside the striaght forward road that leades us to a Possession/General build, without the equip speccing differently it's pure fantasy and even though I have a great esteem for those brave HoXes that are running Avatar/Poss I'm also aware that I can't do that without having a good backup of gear, and for good backup I mean a full Wolves set from Khitai (due to protection) or a full minigame set (pvp 7 and a shitload of tokens), even with this requirements matched, living as an Avatar/poss it's a paing, it may work in a 1vs1 context, it will be a lot harder to be performing in group pvp contexts.

The Herald of Xotli needs attention. The Herald of Xotli needs a revamp.
When it will happen, or when they will realize it, it's entirely another thing.

In the meantime.. let's try to survive this issue like we did in the past and let's keep on spreading our hellish flames on the fields.

Till the next time.

Arcalimon

Dreamworld engine - Impact on the Live Servers

So far it will be a personal impression on the new engine, having tested it yesterday during the evening in the BloodRavine map, on the T3 instance and roaming around some zones of the world.
What to say? Some bugs are expectable for this release, given its importance and size, a patch of 1.1GB it's indeed a great work, but on the overall I'm firmly convinced it has been really a smooth release.
First loading time have been a bit long, but I was downloading resources in background so it's quite normal, but after that, after some time spent in the zones i notice faster loading times, better and more polished graphic and better performances, my regret is that I had no time to test the water effects, nor to see them.
The game is smoother, movements are really fluid even though I noticed a generalized slowness in the run speed, apparently we are all slower than we were used to be before. I've heard of some bugs related to the Jhebbal Sag maps about Necros being unable to kill their pets, having them plymorphed in some kind of E.T.'s coming from some extradimensional space, but beside this bugs I really guess FunCom did a good job this time.
Ok let's admit it, it may not be exactly what the game was needing but, so far, it's a demonstration that if they are willing to put serious efforts in an activity they are capable of doing a good work.

HoXes do not despair, even if it is not mentioned in the patch notes (or at least it wasn't when I last checked) our fix at the Phoenix Cloak animation has been introduced, now we have finally an animation more in line with the bubbles of all the other bubble-user classes(animation only though).
Sadly, our old bugs are still all there, I lost all my hairs yesterday after using my mighty and strong demon form, I don't know if you may know the fictional character "Stewie" from a Matt Groening's cartoon "The Griffins", but if you know him, well.. I felt right like him, bald and sarcastic noob, not able to keep a sword right on my hands!
In fact, my dear HoX fellows be aware that we are all capable of using our swords without the need to have it right on the hands, we are able to make them levitate or to keep them on our back and landing damages like we were using them!
The Bug of Xotli we are, and the Force is weak in us!
On this subject I believe that mental powers are really the new horizon of the HoX, would be nice to have us morphed in some kind of weaponless class like the "Black Hand of Set" from the "Hour of the Dragon" novel, dealing insane damages only using our accursed hands...
But that's a digression on other arguments which are not the focus of this small post.

This new release also added some kind of Exchange Rate System based on Veteran Points.
Some usefull informations:
5 Veteran Tokens are worth 100 Imperial Insignas;
5 Veteran Tokens are worth 15 Marks of Acclaim;
35 Veteran Tokens are worth 100 Marks of Acclaim;
These are just some examples of the bartering for kithai reputation items.
My opinion on this it's that it is a good move, many will have the chance to see their endless grind lessened by this addiction and it will probably also encourage people to subscribe for more time because veteran tokens can be earned only through subscriptions.
A new Conan Movie is incoming, my impression is that FunCom is trying to consolidate its playerbase reading themselves to expand it in the near future making use of the Advertising for the new film.
As a medium term player I really hope this move will succeed, for we need more heads on AoC, but they will have to look deeply on some game aspects which are in serious need of attention, especially after the announcement of new PvP reserved ruleset coming on TestLive hopefully in may.

Now I've got to leave you, I need to deeply reflect on my choice between wolf and tiger mount, please stay tuned if you've liked the posts, and don't be afraid to leave comments, suggestions, requests!!!

Remember to sacrifice skulls to Xotli, it's alway a good thing to please our good, hopefully better times will come!

'Till the next time!

Arcalimon

Blood and Glory - The lights and shadows of this idea

Back after a hard week of study for university exams and going to discuss about the new idea thrown in by Sil on forums about the new ruleset temporarily called "The Blood and Glory".
My reaction about this new went through 2 different phases, i switched from an excited feeling to a more critical overview of the thing.
Truth be said, I believe that the idea behind this proposal it's quite good and can represent a great mean to satisfy (partially) the PvP needs of the AoC community which have been lately frustrated and twisted, especially with the latest revamps and the introduction of the Shrines of Bori, Bori is a game mechanics that i personally don't like, but I'm doing that every now and then, and not on a regular basis because it represent the only way to obtain easily and fast what you won't obtain easily and fast with all the other PvP mechanics.
This is a truth.
Creating a reserved ruleset for a PvP only server without guards is a good idea, will prevent the chicken run to guards in the pvp zones and should at least on the paper give a boost to the "Group PvP", it will allow you to finally GROUP UP WITH YOUR FRIENDS feature, this one, that has been removed with the latest patch, choice that one that I consider honestly unbelievable.
Many sarcastic posts proposed to remove grouping from PvE as well, and even if it is obviously absurd, the sarcasm behind these posts clearly draws how much this choice has been unfamous.
Back on topic anyway, this idea could work, thinking about it I really believe it would be a serious challenge to live in a world where only your friends and your effective skill will be your shield against the deaths, even though there are some indents that are in need to be consdiered.

On a general point, the hardest concerns are related to the class balance, the class system as it is now is impronted to a great advantage of some classes against some other, developing a new pvp reserved enviroment without providing everybody with the same tools it's a foulish idea, classes gimped to oblivion will never have the upper hand against a zerg of godmodes classes.
I can foresee a server full of Guardian, Rangers and Assassins and Necros with pets.
Who's gonna roll an healer or a HoX or a Demo in a server where the vast majority of the classes can shot you with a simple 1 click combo?
This point should not be underestimated.
Another big issue is related with the AA system, this new ruleset is supposed to be PvP oriented, so Prowess and Expertise should be our bread, how can we manage to obtain enough points to be on pair with all the time spent, since one year till today, on the live server to boost our perks?
How many will be available to redo the grind from 0?
How are they going to address this issue?
These are all big questions.

The gear is another issue, on this server, I personally expect to not be forced to do PvE to get enough gear to do PvP, so how am I supposed to gather enough equipment to be competitive?
How will gear effect the Blood and Glory ruleset?
Simply if it stays as it is now, it will be a big no-no, AoC is actually too much gear dependent, you can be skilled as you want, if your enemy has a better equip than you do, you are dead. Period and full stop.

Bori chapter. FunCom did a great thing here, they opened a poll asking their players to expose their opinion on Bori, should it be available or not?
Bori has been declared as one of the better introduction of this game, it was surprising for me to see the partial results of the votes.
Last time I checked, on a basis of 300 voting guys 290 voted "No, it should not be present" only 10 voted "Yes it should be present".
What does it mean?
It means that the community dislikes Bori, and that the community is aiming at a REAL pvp content, which Bori clearly isn't.
This means of course from my point of view that the community is acting to prevent the creation of 1 big guild that will own the zone forever completely preventing all the others to go there.
Fury is an example of this, according with my information.

As Silirrion said, this will be a fresh start, you'll be able to have only one character there and no transfers will be allowed.
This is partially a good idea.
Partially why? Because rerolling from 0 means that you will lose all the progression you earned in one year of expansion, specifically all the perks, this is good on the other side because it will bring you back on pair with all the rest (who exploited the AA and who is far behind the others) of the players, but... how many will really consider an option to be forced to develop the AA from 0 again?
Many are honestly not willing, and Sil said that AA system won't be removed from the game, so this is almost a dead end road, but it should not be ignored.

Beside all these points I think the idea behind this proposal is good, what will make the difference for it being a huge success or the epic and ultimate fail for this game is the development that there will be behind it.
They should boost the actual content (read sieges and world objectives in general) before releasing this new content, they should work on balance and revamp all those classes that are now far beyond all the others (no i'm not exclusively referring at the HoX, we're not alone even if we are probably in the worst position), and address all the game related issues of lag, bugs, exploits.

Only after all those measures they will be ready to release this new content, hopefully they will seriously listen to the playerbase opinion on this matter.

We will see what will happen, for sure i will test it on TestLive servers if and when it will be released.

Stay tuned!


Arcalimon

[Prince of Terror] How does it work?

Hi guys, I finally managed to obtain this perk and I was running around yesterday with it in minigame to test it.
First of all a little description of what it does:
Prince of Terror:
+89 Magic Damage (Fire)
+375 Protection (Fire)
+66% Weapon Damage (Fire)
Duration: 15 Seconds
Casting Time: Instant
Cooldown: 60 seconds
Chance on Damage, Spiritual Wrack (-10% Holy and Unholy damage) 200 proc per minute
Switches the damage type of the combo from fire to Unholy and improves the BtD combo with an increased chance of critical damage for the DoT.

This is the description of the skill itself I would like (try at least) to go a bit more in detail about what a HoX may lose/gain from removing RSoX to use PoT.
This is very depending on the setup of perks and equip you have so I will give you my example so you can do your calculations on a solid numerical basis.
I'm running around with a most classical Possession/General, 56/23, using in PvP Chest, Legs and Helm from T1 PvP set, boots and belt from PvP minigame set, 2x Dreamer's Keepsake, pvp5 Cloak, pvp5 necklace, pvp5 sword, t2 wrist and t3 shoulders and gloves, PvP level 5 with T3 BK.
My original setup was: Chromatic Warding (3), Decisive Strike (4), Will of the Sublime (4), Ethereal Escape (4), Red Shadow of Xotli.
My stats: 340 strenght and 230 Intelligence without RSoX and 440 strenght and 330 Intelligence with the passive boost of RSoX.
Resistances; passive resistances from AA at 2, beside Electrical which is at 3.
With this set up my PvP magic damage was at 1055 Bonus spell damage fire, with resistances between a minimum value of 28% up to a max value of 31.5%.

It's quite clear that removing RSoX it's putting our magic damage down to Oblivion, in fact as soon as i removed RSoX I notice my pvp magic damage fell under 1000.
It's obvious that this gap will be increased while under Desecrating Essence, given that without RSoX we will lose our massive stat increase.

Now my actual setup with PoT:
Build: it's the same Poss/Gen I actually don't find doable a switch to an Avatar/Poss or Poss/Avatar, General tree still gives us more than Avatar does.
Perk setup: Field of War (pvp perk at 2 points, being trained at 3), Decisive Strike (4), Will of the Sublime (4), Ethereal Escape (4), Prince of Terror
Equip: the very same described before.
Stats: Strenght 340, Intelligence 230, PvP Bonus spell damage 1033, Resistances between a lowest value of 26.7% up to a highest value of 28%.

Little overview: I'm standing above 25% of magical resistances, admittedly the difference between 26% and 28% it's probably not that much, the magic damage it's only 22 points below the average I had in a normal form with RSoX so it's highly acceptable from my point of view (soon i'll have field of war at rank 3 so i will go on pair probably), yes of course while in form the gap will be present but on the overall this setup from my point of view fills the gap existing due to the absence of RSoX, and more than this, honestly a possession HoX does not rely that much on remaining under Desecrating Essence for a long time, that's more an Avatar feature.

Test during fights:
Ok then, now let's come to the real test.
Prince of Terror being an instant cast spell it's extremely dynamic, it can be used whenever you want, immediately giving you a good burst of damage.
I'm actually not suffering from the absence of RSoX, and the damage output it's pretty much the same, what is nice is that Pillar of Infernal Flames has a huge benefit from this perk, boost to magic damage, boost to melee damage, auto-debuffing, switch to unholy damage, it works great.
We should also consider that PoT and Exultation of Xotli can be applied together, this will then result in a nice situation:
90% + 66% = 146% melee damage istantly for a lenght of some seconds resulting in a good burst of damage, let's just consider that my melee dps goes up from 209 to 290 only with the +66% of melee boost!
For example, yesterday I managed to land a BtD for 800 melee damage for each hit plus a boosted dot at 700 on a soldier.

Conclusion:
Prince of Terror has impressed me, it's a perk that can be used in many situation and grants you a good boost, used properly and cycled with other skills like Demon Maw, Tome of Erlik, Desecrating Essence will allow you to have a boosted damage pretty much for the whole duration of the fight.
Anyhow the differences between PoT and RSoX are really not so deep to allow me to say that one is better than another, I'm strongly convinced that is more a matter of personal tastes and gameplay.

So even if I do believe I will hang on with PoT for a while, my suggestion for you is: Try it out, make tests, make experiments!
Hopefully my numbers posted above will help you a bit to understand what are we talking about

Catch you around!

Arcalimon

[Note: Thanks to Kayava, Igramul and Kelvar who helped me about this topic]

[Dreamworld Engine] Another look at the new engine

Out of interest i logged back on the TL server to verify how was the development going, especially to verify the performances of the engine after the deactivation of the AA feature.

I was still very impressed by the test I made a couple of weeks ago, the system was smooth and the detail level was very impressive, on the average the FPS were good.

I saw many posts full of concerns here and there and it's understandable, the fear to have another beta content released on live with the followup of bugs, instability, crashes and whatever, but I must admit that even without the AA feature activated the result is pretty awesome.

First of all as usual my rig:

Intel i5 - 750 overclocked @ 3.2 GhZ
GeForce GTX 570
4 GB Ram DDR3
OS Windows 7 - 64bit


I noticed a great difference in terms of mere fps numbers, in Chosain Province the amount of FPS increased from 30 to almost 60, the overall quality seems unmodified, the surrounding is astonishing, detailed and the light/shadow management is still great.

Being entirely honest I didn't noticed any big difference between my first test and my latest test, if not for a strong increase in FPS in full DX 10 settings, which is encouraging.


If in the graphical section I dare to say that there's nothing to report (and that's a good thing from my point of view) it's a different story for the Client side.

Loadings are extremely slow and tricky, especially when you are zoning from an "Old" zone to a Kithai zone, it will take quite a while to load the area and to let you play, also, even if apparently the loading is completed as soon as you spawn in a zone you will notice NPCS and surrounding being loaded while you move.
This of course creates some issues and some mini freezes on the screen as well as major lag spikes sometimes (but not often) resulting in a crash.

Of course this has been reported on TL forums, and community is waiting for an answer to this.

Beside those client issues I'm still convinced that the development of the Dreamworld Engine is going in the right direction, and i'm still convinced it will be really appreciated when it will hit the Live Server.

I do also agree with their choice of removing AA from the client as soon as they noticed it was not performing correctly with the client.


On the downside of this thread I have to mention the fact that multithreading is not being treated in this update series (2.1) and it's not considered a focus for the staff, things this that is making me quite disappointed, in 2011 a game like AoC should manage properly the multithreading to allow a better approach to its astonishing graphics.

Patch notes on TL forums are also including a large list of fixes and tweaks to some issues in game, rebalance of some elements on the PvP side (especially about the new minigame Jhebbal Sag), and on the overall appears to be a good "starting point".

I'm still hoping that in the future we will se some more balance between classes with some more revamp hitting the ground especially for our belove and forgotten class.


That's it for today!

Till the next blog entry then!



Arcalimon




P.S.: Some screenshots taken from Khemi, enjoy!

Herald of Xotli - Class Tree Alternate Advancement

Hi, i'm willing to take a look at the class section of the AA system for the HoX, it has to be said that on the overall i consider the AA advancement for the HoX, especially for what regards the Archetype section, poor.

An explaination to this from my point of view it's quite simple, it does not boost significantly any aspect of the HoX, it does not fill the gap it is suffering compared to other classes, it does not offer a real solution to the Ethernal issue Possession > Avatar nor it does provide us of any serious tool to be effective.

Why?

Short analaysis:

General Tree on AA: It's General, common to everyone, our boost on resistances it's common to all the classes, so who is already strong and with high rates of immunity will be even stronger and even more immune, we will be more resilient and that's true, but hell we are meant to be DPS not tanks give us damage boosts!!!

Archetype: well, there's not that much to be said, only 2 perks are worth a mention here: Will of the Sublime to boost critical rating and base weapon and spell damange and Ethereal Escape, our only effective anti-cc, taking it to 5 points it's a pain though.
It looks like this tree is meant to be for pure casters only, and that's fully understandable, but it does not match at all HoX needs, even though they are classified as mages.


Class Tree: Here we finally find something nice, Passive boost to Hellfire Breath is a must a +5% at level 5 of boost to damage it's something nice even if not insane, i often wonder if it's worth spending so much time in both grinding or time leveling to get it to rank 5 for a +1% of difference between rank 4 and 5. I strongly reccomend also the boost to PoIF damage, to BtD Dot, the decrease on cd for Desecrating Essence and PoIF.

I would  like to dedicate my attention also to some Minor and Major perk of this section:


Hunger for More: mainly a new rank of HellStrike, faster indeed and a 2 step combo (compared with the 3 step of our last rank of the regular Hell Strike), i don't find it particularly usefull, and absolutely not worth the sacrifice of a Major Perk to use it. It requires 1 slot.

Enslaving Fire: New rank of PoIF which adds a stun to the PoIF combo. A nice perk i have to say, it's to be considered that, being a Minor Perk and not a passive perk it requires to be slotted on the bar and  it would not be possible to use it along with RSoX. Is ti worth the sacrifice?
Honestly I do not know.

From the Beyond: The concept behind this perk is amazing, mainly you charge toward your enemy and you get automatically transmuted in your Demon Form, my personal concern about this is that you will not get the Stun from the polymorph.
It's my personal belief that this will work fine in a mainly Avatar Spec, even if RSoX still remains the top.


Feeding the Pyre: It will increase the stack of the Burning Skull spell to 6, also adding a chance to trigger damage on attacks done. I find it quite pointless.





And now a special mention for the 2 core perks for the HoX:


Prince of Terror: It's an amazing perk, it switches the damage of your combo finisher from FIRE to UNHOLY, with a chance of applying a wrack which increase target susceptibility to Spiritual Attacks (nice to boos DT damage), increases fire resistance and fire damage done.
It is a good perk but it requires 2 slots on the bar, being it a Major Perk.
I'm wondering how it would work on an Avatar Spec, but also a possession spec could receive benefits from it.





Red Shadow of Xotli: Here's the most used perk, and let me be clear, it is not used for what it does but for what it PASSIVELY gives. The skill itself is mainly a pointless self-ress, true thing is that when self ressing with RSoX you will be restored to life in demon-form and with a short CC immunity, but this feature from my point of view is entirely USELESS in PvP contests.
The best feature of this perk is the passive boost to the stats.
Red Shadow of Xotli passively increase Intelligence and Strenght by 100 points if slotted on the bar (2 slots) and when transmuted in demon form it increases furthermore this stats by +325 Strenght and +450 Intelligence.
This means that on a mere numerical bases an Herald of Xotli fighting on demon form will ahve +425 on Strenght and +550 on Intelligence.
What immediately appears clear is that this Perk is perfect for an Avatar build, but a possession hox will have advantages from it given the boost to Intelligence (so to Magic Damage).

Unfortunately though Avatar tree is widely considered (and with some good arguments) gimped and way under par compared with Possession.

In the end i do believe that a Possession HoX has a bit more tricks to be effective, especially thanks to Chains of Anguish which is, from my point of view, an unrenounceable skill for an HoX.

True thing is that chosing an Avatar spec feating Mindless Brute and Damning Eloquence will allow an HoX to have approximatively +1k HP and an istant "Inferno Curse" which is absolutely a great debuff when istant (furthermore boosted by the perks: +20 to combat rating reduction for each rank) and in addiction an increased duration on Demon Form, plus Avatar of Xotli and Fire Lance a good melee combo that used to be greate before the Great Nerf of Avatar tree.
It is also true that preferring an Avatar spec over a Poss/General spec will make us lose some armor bonus and anti-root from general tree plus some boosts to elemental resistance and boost to magical damage.

At the end of the story it's a matter of personal liking, i still find a Possession/General spec way more suitable for an HoX, but I encourage everyone to give a try at an Avatar/Possesion or at a Possession/Avatar build and to test them out, same goes for the hot topic of "making a choice" for what perks must be taken or not.
It depends on your playstyle, it depends on what you are asking to your class.
The only thing I feel to assure is that, at least at the actual state of the art, any choice for Class Perks that goes outside the Perimeter of RSoX and PoT it's not a good choice.


I will try (hopefully) to play a bit with perks on TL environment and to provide you with some feedbacks on how the HoX fares with Avatar/Poss spec and chosing different perks setups.


Stay tuned for furthere updates!!


Arcalimon

[Dreamworld Engine] Preview of the new engine directly from Test-Live server of AoC

Hello everyone.
I'm back to allow you to take a first look at the "Dreamworld Engine" that FunCom is developing and testing on the Test-Live server.
As soon as i logged in, I noticed a difference, a huge difference between our actual client and the new client, images were much more detailed, with deeper colours, on the overall even the loading screens appeared to be much more polished.
I took a ride around some significant zones in which i experienced some lag issues in the past to see how was the client reacting, so, before posting any information i would like to point out my PC build to set a "benchmark":
Core: Intel i5-750 overclocked @ 3.2GhZ
Mobo: Asus P7P55D-LE
RAM: 4 GhZ DDR3
Video Card: GeForce GTX 570 GDDR5 1GB
So, given those basic build information here's what i found out in the following zones:
1) Keshatta @Thoth-Amon's Strnghold square: Full DX10 without AA, 70fps without any big variation, never had big jumps, I didn't experience any kind of mini freeze due to monitor refreshing rate, or to background loading, impressive.
2) Chosain Province (Around Shaulun): Ok, that IS one of the worst zones ever, due to its rich textures it's actually a pain even for someone with a good machine, in Full DX10 without AA I had 30fps, what is surprising is that 30 is a stable value, there are no jumps and with the progressive re-rendering of the textures done by the graphic card, the FPS rate is going to increase. Maximum peak was at 40fps minimum at 27.
Never had a big drop with the fps, not even while fighting multiple mobs.
3) Tarantia: Ok, Tarantia is probably the less/worst optimized zone on TL, as soon as you spawn at the path location (near to the graveyard) I had a suddend drop of the fps below 15fps, then it went up again to fall down again a few moments later when i started to move around.
Tarantia in full DX10 with the new engine is simply astonishing, taking a ride around the roads, on the bridges and terraces of the city and looking around makes you really see what this engine is capable of.
Initially you will have some fps jumps and a bit of rubberbanding, but don't worry, after it will be stable, I had after some minutes fps in the range of 40-60 which is a good value given the size of that zone.

On the overall I found that engine really impressive, the game appears to be smooth, really smooth, movements are dynamic, light/shadow effects are seriously great and the detail of the texture is really amazing.
Beside the mere appearance of the new engine, what surprised me is that stability of the engine, mini freeze are not happening at all and if they do it's not a common thing, even during fights in heavy "texturized" zones does not make you play a screenshot-game, you are now capable of being dynamic and responsive for the whole lenght of the fights, and that's indeed a great news.

What I'm wondering is if this will be valuable for sieges as well when 48 characters will be on the same spot along side with environment, buildings, particle effects and so on.
Probably yes, it will (with all the needed attention like decreasing a bit the detail), but yet again, I have the feeling it's more a matter of server stability and reliability more than a graphic issue.
If the server crash everytime a siege occurs, the graphic is useless!


Phoenix Cloak: Particle Effect reworked
So that is, at least for what regards me, is the first change i see on the HoX, the first real change that is goin to affect even if not directly one of our skills and the impact it has on the gameplay.
I'm talking about Phoenix Cloak.
It is our "Bubble", calling it bubble could sound a bit improper though, for it does not provide us a total immunity, they provide us a +50 at damage deflection.
Even though, it sometimes may result usefull and i dare to say in 1vs1 encounters or when we manage to pick up an enemy that's not group and that's roaming around.
One of the biggest issue with PC beside the skill itself was with the rework of the animation that was done, this skill went through 2 phases in its history, and the third one is beginning:


1) Release: no animation or pretty unnoticeable, PC could have been a fake cast
2) First rework: We actually have a traffic light over our head the entire world knows we have PC up, the entire world knows that this is the best moment to CC us, wait for PC to disappear and to gank us.
3) New Rework: Finally the animation has been resized and polished, it's more dynamic and finally now like for all the other class you will have to pay a bit more of attention to notice us popping it, the pulsing effect has been made smaller and a bit more translucent.


Enough talk it's time to let the screenshots speak!
I hope you'll enjoy the images and the video!
Stay tuned!!

Arcalimon


Album with all the screenshots taken

Still lolling about this one!

LOL

The Debuffs! How to weaken our enemies (maybe)!

Back again from the mists of the week-end!

So today I would like to go throug a harsh point, I would like to discuss about what is commonly known as "Debuffing" using our skills to weaken our enemies and to maximize our effectiveness.

As I said elsewhere (discussion reported below in another post), and in many other posts here and there on forums, the Herald of Xotli still has its issues (also) on the "debuffing" side of life.

Let's begin:

Inferno Curse
5m radius up to 12 targets
-15% Fire/Cold/Electrical Invulnerability
-415 Combat Rating
Casting Time: 1.5 seconds
                       Recast: 45 seconds

This is the first skill I'm trying to analyze, it's an AoE debuff lowering the elemental resistances (not all though) and the combat rating of the enemies, the amount of combat rating penalty can be boosted by the perk "Expanded Inferno Curse" (+20 at the combar rating debuff for each rank).
This is a good debuff to be used against melee opponents, the debuff will produce a reduced damage on hit for melee fighters and an increased susceptibility to elemental damages based on fire cold and electricity.
This SHOULD make us more effective against melee fighters, but there's a little problem: Long casting time.

In the frenzy of a melee fight stopping and standing still for 1.5 seconds it's a problem, it's like if we are saying to our enemies "Hey Nabzor, i bet you don't noticed what i'm doing, i'm so HAWT!".
Too bad that on 90% of cases we will CCed (mostly Knocbacked) to death in the meanwhile, so we will lose both the CC and life.
Still if managed properly it can be a good skill.



Molten Steel Slash
!!Combo!!
Recast time: 20 seconds
Starter: +95 damage per second
-10% Cold/Fire/Electric Invulnerability
                      Finisher: +187 damage per second

This is our combo-debuff, to cast it you will go through a 1 step combo to apply the debuff.
This could have been our best debuff being it melee debuff, unfortunately the insane lenght of the animation makes it almost unused.
Only exception to this is when we are able to approach the enemy from a relatively safe spot, having the time to chose a good position e to start the cast before the enemy can turn and counter us.

Spitfire
Recast time: 45 seconds
Casting time: Instant
3m radius up to 12 targets
-25% Received Healing Modifier
                      -100 Stamina/Health/Mana natural regen
                      99-125 damage fire each 2 seconds (13 seconds lenght)

Probably our best debuffing skill, accessible through the possession tree (tier 2 - 5 points).
The debuff to regen and incoming healing makes it extremely annoying, also the ticking damage, even if not extremely high, it's really nice, most important thing, it's Instant, so unless you are really unlucky you won't miss it!
I use it whenever i can, but could be nice to save it sometimes to use it against healers even with the aid of some "heal-removers rogue" or against some enemies with high rates of health regen.




Conclusions:

Debuffing as a HoX could be difficult, the extreme slowness of the skills that are giving elemental weakness it's a bound, Spitfire remains actually the best debuffing skill also due to the DoT it unleash.
So, debuffing it's rarely a unrenounceable duty for us, if you are lucky enough you'll be grouped with a ToS and you won't be in need to debuff you target.

Take it as a general assumption, all the other classes can debuff better than we can do, so don't rely on your debuffs (excluding Spitfire), you will waste precious time, time that sometimes can draw the line between your life and death!



Stay tuned!



Arcalimon