Warhammer Tank

Leveling Talisman Making - My bad guide!

While this is not, exactly, a guide, I figured I'd comment on my experiences leveling Talisman making.

In short, it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be but it did make a dent in my gold and it took a bit of time.

The first tip in Talisman making is this.  Don't wait forever and then do it all in one night, and, don't try and do it on the fly.  Take an hour a week and work on it as you level.

I haven't been reading around the web, there may be someone out there with better ideas than me but this is what I did and I'm fairly happy with it even tho I think that it's a horribly designed crafting system.

So here's the main strategy for those of you Googlers out there. 

Go download EZCraft from Curse.com.  It lets you click directly on your little crafting slots in the UI and select an item to put in.  Saves mouse clicks and movements and therefore time.

As you level, save every green you can get your hands on even if you can't Salvage it yet. I assume you have Salvaging or you're going to spend a fortune at the AH.  Put them in your bank if you can't Salvage them.

Once in a while, I did it all one evening, but you should do it once every week or 2.  Use your book of binding and find your nearest merchant.  

Buy 2 or 3 stacks of Level 1, Mojo Coins, Gold dust, Containers, and your Magical Essence.

Use your guild recall scroll to go directly to your capital city

Get any fragments you have out of the bank.

Stand beside the Renown gear vendor in your city and buy 5 to 10 pieces of armour.  Usually gloves are the cheapest to salvage.  Turn them into fragments.  Make sure you find the right level for the fragments you need before you make big purchase.

Now you should have the mats you need.  Make the Talismans and watch the levels tick up.

I got from Talisman making level 20 to 112 in an hour and a bit, maybe more, and it cost me about 17 gold in renown gear for all the fragments I needed.  Note that I had already gotten a bunch of fragments that were in the bank from salvaging renown and other gear along the way to attempt to keep up with my level. (28)

I just kept going until I ran out of basic mats, and in my case just did it again.

Keep in mind that you'll need to keep your renown level up in order to follow this method.  You won't be able to have a level one character follow this exactly.  In fact I'm not sure if there is a cap on your crafting level as compared to your character level at all.

If you're interested in Talisman making a bit more, I just read Tobold's overview about 2 seconds ago...

New Tanks Live Event - You are not prepared!

So the "Heavy Metal" Live event is coming soon, on November 18th.

You can find the default information on it here.

It looks to be an event that is very similar to the Halloween "Live" event where you can get some cool stuff if you gain enough influence.

For those of you out there who are looking to roll one of these new careers you'll want to get started fast and max your influence so you can start before the masses get access.  So, book some time off from household chores and get ready for a good old fashioned grind!

In my opinion it looks like there might be a bit more variety in this event than there was in the Halloween one.  Hopefully we'll see different quests every day, kind of like the WoW instance dailies that changed around.  And, there's a new scenario to try out.  It's in the T4 Zone but everyone can participate, I assume that you'll only fight people in the same Tier as you.

During the Halloween event I found the zerg in the RVR PQ kind of boring and my inf bar didn't budge much at all, hopefully the Heavy Metal event will feel more meaningful and a bit less grindy but I'm not holding my breath.

I have a feeling I'll be rolling a Black Guard as an Alt after I get to 40 on my Black Orc.  We'll see when that happens.

Good luck to everyone who'll be trying out the Feather Knights or the Emo Elfs.

Mount Gunbad - Fun for Tanks

Just a quicky.

As a testament to just how slow I am at leveling. I took my first few steps into the Gunbad instance tonight and dinged 28.

I found it one of the better areas for a tank that I've been in recently.  Often I find that the mobs at my level really don't hit that hard, and they are always solo pulls.

In Gunbad the champions hit you like they mean it at least and there are a fair number of multiple add pulls.  It's not really that hard but makes you work more like a tank, managing the pulls, and trying to keep multiple adds off your heals and dps.

I would like to see a bit better aoe threat gen on my Black Orc.  I don't feel like I can do much but rotate my dps around to build aggro.  And the abilities that do some AOE damage don't really look like in on the animations.  I want more spinning and chopping.  That's one thing I liked about AoC was the animations.

If you haven't gone over there yet, I'd say don't wait for till you're 27 like I was.  If you have a full group 23 is fine to get started and achieve success.

Till next time!

When is a Tank Not a Tank?

It's been two days since I logged into Warhammer but it feels like two decades.  I desperately need to get rolling and punt some people into the lava and blow off some steam.

RL has dealt me a couple swift kicks Right in the Jibblies. I've had some health issues pop up in the family and I got shown just how ineffective my personal organization system really was.  Don't worry, nobody is going to die.  I mainly just need to take a few days and reorganize.

Once I get out from the mountain of tasks I have I'll be back to my regular posting schedule, hopefully this weekend.

If all goes well I'll be in Tier 4 sometime early next week, about a month after I expected I'd be there.

Tor Anroc - How I hate you!

My life consists only of punting dwarfs into the lava.  That's it.  No more, no less.  

I think I'll be getting from my current level 27, to 30 in this scenario.  I am out of quests and there's no open RVR to speak of. 

Heck I enjoyed the 60 to 70 grind in WoW way more than this.  At least there, there was a lot of instance runs to keep busy, not that I want to promote rep grinds.  But at least I was wanted as a Tank, or a Healer depending on what I was specced.

Somethings got to be done and I hope the next patch comes soon and promotes more RVR. That is what this game is about after all.

My Honeymoon - Yeah it's done

Now don't get me wrong.  I still very much like Warhammer Online.  I find it more interesting than World of Warcraft and I feel that I can still have fun while being a bit more casual about it but the happy times where I want to shower WAR with affection have slowly faded away.

I think my feelings are mirrored by a variety of posters in the blogosphere.  Boatorius, Arbitrary Snasfg Werit, and others.  

So, what do I like about WAR?  From a Tank's perspective

• I can play solo if needed, I don't die often and can grind with zero downtime
• I can add some value in scenarios and punt people into lava which makes me laugh
• There's lots to do, quest, scenarios, um... PQs
• Grouping is fun, and I have a dps and a healer who keep me coming back. 

But what don't I like?

• Leveling is slow as hell.  It's retarded. 
• There's no open RVR.  What I did find was super fun but there's not enough. 
• Crafting Blows but everyone knows this 
• All the loading between zones destroys a sense of place. I love WoW flights where I can look around and sight see
• Server Pop is sliding.  My current guild is shedding people like crazy. 
• There's not a lot of "must have tank" mobs around except for PQs which are relatively empty atm and I have yet to step foot in an instance. 

  At the present time I kind of worry about the critical mass WAR is getting. It totally deserves to get more WoW converts.  I know WAR needs a couple of patchs to polish things up but I wonder if it has that long before it becomes an AoC but without the precipitous dropoff in subscribers. 

I'm not Dead!

In case anyone out there is wondering, I've not given up posting.  If I don't post for a few days I always feel incredibly guilty and figure I should be posting something terribly insightful about Warhammer.  

But because this blog is focused on tanking, and I'm not leveling anything close to quickly, I don't have any terribly new insights, although I do have a couple posts I'm working on.

I am having fun in Warhammer, but I don't fell compelled to log in and grind away.  I don't want to ruin the game for me.  Although I do believe that I'd like to see an MMO that doesn't have levels, only gear checks.

Right now I'm trying to stay balanced and spread my time around a bit.

Gear Grind - Priority goes to...?

The Greenskin effectively captures my feelings from the recent grab bag on the Gear sets in Warhammer. 

I actually find it a bit scary that the requirements sound so ominous.

If it's anything like WoW getting this gear is bound to get a little intense, and, quite possibly, will bring in guild DKP systems to make sure that gear goes to the most "worthy"

Obviously I have not seen any of the top end fights so I am not sure about their mechanics but in my minds eye I imagine that your tank would be the first person you'd want in resist gear.  Can anyone out there confirm if that's true or not?  I just can't imagine everyone in the group/warband taking damage equally.

I am pretty sure that the gear that drops won't be in the form of Tokens, as those are out, so it'll come down to fighting the random number generator to see if your gear drops.  And if the drop rate sucks it'll mean farming the instances or the RVR zones for months trying to get your stuff.

Right now I'm kinda hungry so I'm going to rail against long leveling times and stupid gear grinds.  I don't mind gear checks in MMO's, they're almost a requirement, but don't make me run an instance 20 times just to fill out my gear so I can move on.

NPCs in Scenarios - Fun and Tanking Opportunities

One thing that I liked in Battlegrounds in World of Warcraft was the fact that there were NPC's Alterac Valley.  As a Protection Specced Paladin it was a lot of fun to tank them.  Now, admittedly, AV wasn't so much about PVP as it was about rushing to the other end as fast as possible, but it was still fun.

I'd like to see some boss type NPCs roaming around various scenarios that would sometimes appear and help one side or the other.  As a tank it would give me something compelling to do rather than punt people into the lava endlessly.  

It's pretty simple really.  And if done right it could shake up the routine of scenarios and make them a bit closer to open RVR for us tanks.

Damage Taken - Why it's important

Right now in WAR there's a bit of a bias against tanks, and for dps and healers.  As I've said before, overall it may only be a %5-%10 bias but it's enough that it should be addressed.  It's unfair to have non-tanks get more renown and xp in scenarios and rvr when tankspecced.

So I have two options for Mythic when it comes to tanks.  Either you can give xp and renown for damage taken in RvR and Scenarios, or you can give renown/xp for damage blocked and avoided.

Personally I'd lean towards the latter.  That way you could give an incentive to tanks to actually block players and take damage, and get into the fray, rather than spec dps as many do to level faster.  You would also give incentive for tanks to throw up guard on non-tanks and soak up some of the attacks on them.

And, if you did that, you'd be able to do the same for all classes, and not have to give xp or renown to that bright wizard who just got nuked and while he took a lot of damage, he was naked and not doing anything.

Of course this wouldn't work in groups, where xp and renown is split, but it would possibly help in open pve where, I'll be in a PQ, tanking some champion, and slowly working him down, when some other player comes up, 2 shots him, and takes 66% of the influence points.

Lastly, one thing it might do, is show who the real tanks are.  The dps and healers get to sort their scenario summaries and see who is on top, and tanks could then do the same.

If Mythic doesn't do this then there will always be a sense, particularly in scenarios and RVR situations, that a tank is less useful than heals and dps.