A quick heads up to let you all know about a new warg blog: A Warg’s Tale. It is basically the journey of a fresh faced pup straight out of Grams. It can be easy to forget what it is like starting from scratch so for old and new wargs alike this is a good read. Go check it out!
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Search Term Find #32
hunters suck in ettenmoors
Somehow that led them here …
Critical Rating Boost: Part II
Update 10 introduced a new type of corruptions for creeps: critical rating boosts. These corruptions allowed us, for the first time, to adopt a crit build! Because this had never been available before there was uncertainty over how best to use these corruptions. There are various opinions of course, but in this post I am going to go through the numbers with a view to determining how bet to use these corruptions for different builds.
Note: If you are unsure as to what these corruptions do or how they work please see part one.
Effects
First of all let us look at what the different combinations of critical rating boost corruptions gives us:
- 1 critical rating boost: +3.3% crit chance +1.4% dev chance +4.5% crit/dev magnitude
- 2 critical rating boosts: +5.8% crit rating +2.7% dev chance +8.6% crit/dev magnitude
- 3 critical rating boosts: +8.1% crit chance +4% dev chance +12.3% crit/dev magnitude
- 4 critical rating boosts: +10.3% crit chance +5.3% dev chance +15.6% crit/dev magnitude
- 5 critical rating boosts: +12.4% crit chance +5.9% dev chance +18.6% crit/dev magnitude
- 6 critical rating boosts: +12.5% crit chance +6% dev chance +21.4% crit/dev magnitude
Note that slotting all 6 critical rating boost corruptions will take your critical and devastating critical chance to their cap i.e. 25% and 10% respectively. Compare that with slotting 5 of these corruptions; you are only 0.1% under each of those caps. Even in the case of the critical magnitude increase 6 corruptions only gives you an extra 2.8% above that provided by 5 corruptions. Thus it looks as if slotting all 6 corruptions is a bit of a waste, especially if you then go on to use abilities such as Pack Alpha and Frenzy.
Best Use
If six of these corruptions aren’t really useful for anything then what about other combinations? I have listed them different combinations below and what they might be useful for.
1-2 Critical Rating Boosts – Best used to fill out your corruption slots if you somehow find yourself with a slot free (no idea how that might come about though!). This would also be a good number to include in a traditional dps build that focuses more on high base damage. The extra oomph from one or two crit boosts should increase damage output without sacrificing too much base damage.
3 Critical Rating Boosts – Here we would be getting into half and half territory. By that I mean that we would be walking the line between a dps build focusing on base damage and a crit build focusing on scoring critical hits. You do not really get the major benefit of either build with this setup although it should still produce good damage output.
4-5 Critical Rating Boosts – We are looking at a full blown crit build with this many crit boosts. Four would be the best option in my opinion to ensure some solid base damage to work from. Five crit boosts might push the base damage down too low for your liking, but even so it should still produce good dps.
Why Are They Tracking Me?
I get email from wargs looking for my opinion on their build, or asking how best to fight this class or that, etc. Most of it is pretty standard fare to be honest. However, recently I was asked a question that was a little more interesting than usual and I thought it might be worth spending a little time looking at it in more detail.
The question was pretty simple: why do Hunters track my warg when there are other wargs closer to them?
Tracking
I have spoken about tracking before and how best to combat it, but the question remains unanswered; why is one wargs selected to be tracked and not another? Is it not logical to assume that a Hunter would track whichever warg is closest to them? That is indeed logical, but then when was a Hunter ever logical? Remember they choose to play a Hunter in PvMP!
There is method to the madness though because simply selecting the nearest warg to track isn’t always the best strategy for a Hunter. To illustrate that let us look at an example:
A Hunter tracks for stealthed wargs and two come up on his screen, one is identified as being ‘close’ and the other as ‘distant’. Which one does he pick?
The close one.
Let’s add more information. The Hunter recognises the closer of the two wargs as being a well known high-ranked warg, but doesn’t recognise the more distant warg. Which one does he pick?
Probably the more distant one, but why?
Why Hunters Do What They Do
In the above example if a Hunter recognises the closer of the two wargs as being a player who has been around for a while he instantly knows that it’s going to be tricky to kill him. A veteran warg will have a better chance at escaping due to being more familiar with the class, knowing the terrain better, etc. Hell, the warg might even turn the tables and kill the Hunter.
Now if that distant warg is unrecognised or known to be a relative newcomer the Hunter may feel a bit more confident in attacking him. He may think he stands a better chance at getting a kill with a warg that isn’t used to dealing with such situations.
Why Me?
At the end of the day we all try to give ourselves an advantage. If you are a low ranked warg fresh out of Grams then the chances are that you are going to be ‘picked on’ so to speak. A tracking Hunter knows you are still wet around the ears and frankly the freeps are going to have an easier time tracking and chasing down some rank 5 newcomer than they are a rank 12 veteran that knows the Moors like the back of his hand.
We have all been there though and all I can say to you is that it does get better. Make sure that you give any Hunter that tracks you a hard time, whether by escaping or by killing him. That will soon earn you a reputation as a warg that should be passed over in search of an easier kill.
Critical Rating Boost: Part I
Update 10 sees the introduction of a new corruption for creeps: Critical Rating Boost. This corruption increases your critical rating, which means that both your critical hit and devastating critical hit chances are increased, and also the magnitude of those hits.
Since these corruptions present wargs with a brand new setup I am going to spend a little time looking at how we might best use these new corruptions.
What Do The Corruptions Do?
Each of these corruptions provides a bonus of +1,717 critical rating. Thus with all 6 slotted the total bonus would be +10.302.
That is a fairly significant bonus. So much so in fact that with just 5 of them slotted your warg will almost be at the cap for critical hit and at the cap itself for devastating critical hit chance i.e. 24.9% and 10% respectively. Five of these corruptions will also mean that your critical and devastating critical magnitude is increased by 34.3%.
Slotting all 6 of these corruptions will push you to the cap for critical hit chance (25%) and increase your critical and devastating critical magnitude bonus to 37.1%.
In short these corruptions provide a means for wargs to adopt a full on crit build!
How Should I Use These Corruptions?
I will be posting some specific builds using these new corruptions in due course, but for now let’s take a more general view of how these corruptions can be used.
Previously a warg wanting to do maximum damage would have to slot either all six Mastery corruptions or 5 Mastery corruptions and Damage for Power rank 2. It is therefore tempting to assume that slotting all 6 Critical Rating Boost corruptions will be a similar build in terms of outputting lots of damage. That is a dangerous assumption to make though because the fact of the matter is that there simply hasn’t been any testing done to see how such a build performs on the Live servers.
From what I have gathered so far though the following seems to be holding true:
- A full crit build i.ee all 6 Critical Rating Boost corruptions doesn’t provide a noticeable increase in dps over a full damage build i.e. 6 Mastery corruptions. This is due to the fact that even though critical magnitude goes up, the base damage goes down and in the end it seems to (approximately) even out.
- A ‘half and half’ build i.e. 3 Critical Rating Boost corruptions and 3 Mastery corruptions provides an increase in dps over a full damage build i.e. 6 Mastery corruptions. This is due to maintaining a decent level of base damage and coupling it with an increase in crit magnitude (and critical hit rate of course!).
So the obvious solution is to use 3 Critical Rating Boost corruptions and 3 Mastery corruptions, right? Yes, and no. As I said above there simply hasn’t been any testing done with this on the Live servers in real PvMP. That means that we simply don’t know how any of this will work out in practice. The best advice anyone can give you at the moment is to go and try it out for yourself and see what works and what doesn’t. I will of course be doing that myself as soon as I can and reporting back so stay tuned!
Update 10
Update 10 goes live today so I thought it was about time to take a look at what changes are coming our way.
Warg Changes
There aren’t too many warg specific changes coming with Update 10, but even so it is worth taking a look at what there is. First up is a change to Shadow stance’s ICPR bonus, which is being increased to 513. The warg’s base ICPR value has also been increased to around 1,300 or so. This is being done as part of the wider power changes affecting all classes in the game. It isn’t a massive boost, but a boost is a boost so I’ll take it!
The other major change specific to wargs is the introduction of a new appearance! This will be a store only appearance so you will have to spend Turbine points to acquire it. It comes as part of a ‘starter pack’, which costs 3,000 Turbine points! However, it is available separately for 995 TP. I will go into more detail on the starter pack in a separate post, but for now I have posted a screenshot of the new warg skin below.
Courtesy of Tangaar
General Creep Changes
The two biggest changes are of course the introduction of a brand new corruption and a complete re-working of how brands work.
New Corruption – The new corruption trait is called Critical Rating and it does what it says on the tin, it increases your creep’s critical rating. As with most other corruptions there are six levels of this corruption and you are free to slot as many, or as few, as you wish.
This is a pretty big deal folks. Until now wargs have had no way to increase their critical rating except for Frenzy. These corruptions will now allow us to increase our critical rating, which also increases our critical hit magnitude by the way!
Brands – Brands are being completely re-worked. For starters all rank gated brands from rank 1 -14 will no longer give you any immunity to crowd control effects at all. Instead they will allow you to break free from crowd control effects and as such they will be usable in-combat. The rank 15 brand will work in the exact same manner except that it will also give the player 10sec of crowd control immunity.
As for Mordirith’s Brand that will work in the exact same manner as a rank 15 brand, except that both it and the rank 15 brand will share a cooldown.
Are All Wargs Female?
Sapience certainly thinks so.
Oh and for those wanting female creep classes, just a little trivia. All Weavers and Wargs are female. And no I’m not kidding or making it up.
Er … no. I made a point of checking this and my warg has the title ‘Son of Grimmjaw’. That makes me a boy. A real boy!
LEGO: Attack of the Wargs
I know what I want for Xmas!
Positional Damage
Positional damage is a mechanic that whilst not unique to wargs isn’t widespread in the game and thus it is something that many players may not fully understand or even know about. Here we will take a look at positional damage; what it is and how best to use it.
What Is Positional Damage?
Positional damage is a mechanic that causes your skills to hit harder when you attack your opponent from behind. When you hit an opponent from behind the base damage of your attacks is increased by 50%. It is as simple as that.
A few additional notes are in order though to help you better understand this mechanic. For starters the additional 50% damage applies to the base damage of the skill, it is not a critical damage multiplier. Secondly you do have to be behind the target, not at the side of them or slightly off centre from the front, but behind them.
Which Skills Benefit From Positional Damage?
All of our damage skills benefit from the positional damage mechanic. You will notice that some skills include a note about this on their tooltip, but through testing it seems that all of our skills that deal damage, whether their tooltips state sit or not, have positional damage.
Skills that deal extra damage from stealth will receive both the stealth damage boost and the positional damage boost if used from behind a target.
How Do I Best Use Positional Damage?
This is very simple and also very tricky. On the one hand to use positional damage you just have to stand behind your opponent. On the other hand that isn’t always an easy thing to do.
At the start of a fight you can of course start with a stun from behind, which will give you a few seconds to freely hit your opponent from behind and get the positional damage boost. A stunned opponent provides one of the few opportunities to make use of positional damage easily. The other opportunity is when your opponent is fighting more than one person and if not focused upon yourself you can position yourself behind your opponent.
Apart from those two situations you will have to work hard to get behind your opponent. Astute freeps will know about positional damage and deliberately try and minimise opportunities for you to get behind them such as turning constantly to face you or by placing their back to a wall, etc.
It is worth constantly trying to constantly get behind your opponent though, even if he is turning to face you constantly. The extra damage you will deal from behind is too big a boost to easily pass up.
Update 9 Combat Changes: Part III
To wrap this series of posts up I thought it might be wise to spend a few moments looking at the overall picture of these combat changes. The forums contain some lively debate on the subject, as you might expect, and various issues and questions have been raised concerning the changes. Here I will give my take on some of those issues.
Why?
It’s a simple enough question: why are these changes being made? Different explanations have been given on the forums, but one theme has surfaced again and again. It’s PvMP driven. This has predictably caused something of a backlash amongst those who think that PvMP is the work of the devil and that PvMPers should be seen and not heard. I would offer a different view.
For one thing I don’t think you can take all these changes as a single entity with a single reason behind them for their implementation. For example, the changes being made to how interrupts work could very well be the result of a desire on the part of the devs to make interrupt mechanics work better in the PVE game rather than players negating such mechanics through simply spamming short cooldown interrupt skills. So too the critical damage changes may come from a desire to make the mechanic as a whole less based on chance and more reliable in terms of allowing players to setup their characters around a consistent mechanic.
The point I am making here is that I think it’s too simplistic to point at one source and say ‘That’s why!”.
Are They Needed?
Yes and no. On the one hand induction based classes have suffered for a long time in PvMP, notably Hunters and Lore-masters. There did need to be something to make inductions a bit more reliable, however, I think the changes we see coming to inductions and interrupts take it too far. They also have the knock on effect of making self-healing even more powerful than it already is and in seeing unrelated areas, such as warg’s crowd control abilities, being nerfed.
The critical damage changes are very interesting for me because this is one area where a number of people have criticised PvMP. Long term players will no doubt remember the days of Rune-keepers ‘one shotting’ creeps and will probably be glad of these changes. On the other hand classes that rely on high spike damage may not be so keen. As I have said before this is a set of changes that will need time to settle down before we get a better view of how they will play out.
The changes to miss chance are at least something most people will welcome. It’s not fun to have skills fail, through whatever mechanic, and making skill usage more consistent and reliable is a good thing for all players.
How Will These Changes Affect Balance?
That is a very big question and one I can’t possibly hope to answer here. Nevertheless we can speculate a little with regards to broad trends.
The big winners from these changes are induction based classes. In terms of both attacking and healing inductions gain a significant boost with these changes. Self-healing, which is already very potent, will probably become even more so due to a diminished ability across the board to interrupt or knock-back such abilities. So too induction based attacks should be more reliable now, and maybe Hunters might even see a small boost with more consistent attacks, more critical hits and fewer interruptions.
It is of course impossible to accurately predict how these changes will play out so we will simply have to wait and see and hope for the best.
