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