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
Welcome to the Temple of Xotli a blog for the Herald of Xotli Class of Age of Conan.
Tuesday, 31 May 2011
Friday, 20 May 2011
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
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
Wednesday, 18 May 2011
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
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
Tuesday, 10 May 2011
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
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
Thursday, 21 April 2011
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
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
Friday, 8 April 2011
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
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
Tuesday, 5 April 2011
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
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
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