Monday, December 15, 2008

Warhammer Online: How to increase your chances on a gold bag in a keep raid



Many may wonder why some people got #1-3 quite often during a keep raid and asked how you could improve your own contribution/ranking during a keep raid? Most people on official Forums may told you to actively participate on the keep raid, don't go afk and do as much damage/heal/tanking as possible will make sure you're on the top.

However, this is not completely true. Mythic was to stupid to develop a full functional contribution system which will reward people accordingly to their effort in the public quest/open RvR. Instead they simply determinated the player will get a hidden roll each time he enters a certain zone/pairing which will determinate his contribution.

This was confirmed by many peoples on the Warhammer Alliance forum. Some people always got #1 in 3 different keeps (within the same zone/pairing) 2 out of 3 times with being half afk and not doing anything at all.

Basically: If you're on a low rank (let's say 10-30+), your best bet is simply to zone out and zone in again (log out/in should work too) to get a new "hidden roll" associated with your character.

(Source: Warhammer Alliance Forum)

There is also another cheat/exploit you can use, to increase your chances. It's also quite easy and really not understandable how stupid this guys over there at Mythic are to program such a shit. If you're using the ram on both gates (jump inside and use it and not just place it down or attack the gate with your skills) the chances are very good that you will land at ranking 1-3 each time.

Happy gold bag grabbing

Update: Another proof for the theories above (click for zoom)

Chicken-Open-RvR-Contribution

So how could a chicken, do enough damage to get silver medal and roll high enough for #1?

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Warhammer Online: Mourkain Temple Scenario - Conclusions and Final Analysis



Final Analysis

Victory in Mourkain Temple comes down to two very simple things:
Grab the artifact first.
Kill more of them than they kill of you.

Holding the artifact means you do not have to kill as many of them as they have to kill of you, which is why turtling is such a powerful and effective strategy. A few helpful tips:

1) Make use of line of sight to protect yourself from ranged DPS. The temple, hills, roots, and trees all provide numerous places to duck behind.

2) Pick your moment to charge the carrier.
When the Artifact has been freshly passed off, the DoT will be small and the carrier will be the least vulnerable. This is the time to kill stragglers, aggressive enemies, and healers or ranged DPS. A few minutes after a swap is the ideal time to charge the carrier. The DoT should be ticking for 1500+ damage by then, and even with heals it will be hard for the carrier to survive an aggressive assault.

3) Attack the carrier from different directions. If a frontal attack fails, start circling around the sides. The only way to break the turtle sometimes is to surprise them. Hit from the side and focus all your damage on the carrier. Then try to book it out of there as quickly as you can.

4) Heal your carrier - especially a brand new carrier. Keep your carrier alive unless it is time to pass off the artifact. Speaking of which, healers should pay attention to scenario chat so they know when it is time to STOP healing the carrier. If someone on your team manages to gank their carrier and charge off with the artifact, heal them as much as possible as fast as possible.

5) Don't Turtle! It simply is not fun. There was a time on some servers where teams actually did not use the turtle strategy, and Mourkain Temple was a lot of fun. Players have the power to bring that back.

Conclusions

Mourkain Temple can be a very fun scenario, but the few glaring flaws often ruin it. The fact that it pops far more often than the other two Tier 2 scenarios means most players spend the majority of their T2 scenario life in Mourkain Temple. When every match is a turtle from one side or the other, it gets extremely repetitive and boring. I often find myself queuing for Stonetroll and Phoenix Gate only to simply mix things up.

When the teams are fighting instead of turtling, Mourkain Temple can be an enormous amount of fun. The temple is a fun place to fight, and frantically trying to grab the artifact from each other can be very exciting. It is almost tragic that the artifact does not reset every time it is dropped. One simple change could make this a really amazing and extremely fun scenario.

Warhammer Online: Mourkain Temple Scenario - More Suggestions for Improvements



Specific Improvements for Mourkain Temple

No Mounts

The rank range for this scenario is 8 to 21 (though honestly, 12 to 21 is the appropriate rank range). Rank 20 and 21 players have mounts, but everyone else does not. Mounts can outright determine which team starts with the artifact. Because starting with it first is such a huge advantage, it really hurts the overall "fairness" of the scenario to have such an advantage to the team with rank 20+ players. One of the many great things about RvR in Warhammer Online is that rank is not such a huge determiner of victory. The bolster system and the tier system let people of all ranks participate effectively in RvR. It would be best if mounts were disabled in Mourkain Temple (as they are in Tor Anroc, by the way).

The only problem with this idea is the fact that it would then change things to giving the artifact to whichever team had a Marauder/White Lion. This could easily be fixed by letting the artifact spawn after a certain amount of time (which is more than enough for all people to gather at the spawn point and already start fighting for control of the artifact spawn zone.

Do Not Allow Healing or Attacking from the Spawn Area

Players that have not dropped down from the spawn area should not be allowed to heal, buff, debuff, or attack. They should have to enter the field of battle if they wish to do anything to help their team or hinger the opposing team. This is particularly true since one realm has greater "reach" from their spawn area. If the first suggestion was implemented, this would be less of an issue, but it would still be worth doing just on principle.

But there is also a risk that the enemy team would do spawn camp the inferior team if the attackers are strong enough. Good example can be seen in World of Warcraft Battlegrounds where a high equipped/organized group would push back the other team to their spawn points and camp them there while 1 or 2 people complete the battleground objectives (i.e. capture the flag) without any resistance.