Oberheal Trailer

It's time for another video and this time it's abit more action inspired. I've been thinking of doing more movie (or machinima if you like) inspired videos in the future, but I can't honestly tell because I keep changing my mind all the time. However, this one was basically a test of new ideas and especially a bit more advanced editing.
Tell me what you think! :)

Please view it in 720p and full screen!

OMG NOOBS!

After I posted the 1.4.0 videos on various forums I was pleased to see that I got some pretty possitive criticism, however a few people complained about a lack of creativity, after all, I've been doing those "insert epic music" and some footage videos for a while.

So I thought it's time for something new and honestly I don't know how I came up with it, I'm not entirely satisfied with the actual gameplay footage but I see this as another learning project, I spent greatly more time on developing the graphical style than actually frapsing. I am btw looking for DPS classes with fairly good rigs that can fraps some nice sequences with dps awesomeness to have something more to work with than just a kiting shaman (need to get that dps sovereign eh?)

Anyway, enjoy the video!

Please view it in 720p and full screen!

Tier 3 PTS Event video

My guild decided to roll a warband on the PTS event and god that was fun! There was alot of players but it didn´t feel zergy, mainly due to the new structure in the RvR, all BO:s are open spreading the fight across the entire zone. As it is now the PUGs tend to zerg one BO at the time.



Thumbs up for my poor attemt at voice commentary :>

My own 1.4.0 trailer

I upgraded my computer this week with an intel i7 950, Asus rampage III extreme, 6gb 1600mhz dominator RAM, a brand new 24" LED screen and a Samsun Spinpoint F3 HDD entirely dedicated to frapsing, so I had to try it out in action. Luckily the PTS for 1.4.0 was open so I went there with my dear old friend Jucka and did some frapsing.

Somehow I thought that I was in a hurry, the content of a patch isn't all that fresh for long so I had to rush this video, however with my new set up everything went just faster (my old Q6600 wasn't all that fast at rendering for instance) and the material which I use has improved alot as well, frapsing at 60fps at 1080p isn't all that bad huh? :D

Anyway, here's the result!

The most epic troll on Karak-Azgal since dawn of time

Well I guess it's time to post it here as well. My most recent video was made with the intention to troll the crap out of order on Karak Azgal, well, destruction as well I guess. The general idea was to basically claim that I'm uh... The best player in the world ;P And on top of that taunt a couple of guilds on order side. The idea to this video initially came from when i posted the IB vid on the KA forums on WHA and I wasn't sure if alot of the replies were either trolls or written by retards, so I guess I figured that they deserve it.



I made it quite fast and didn't put alot of effort in it due to the character of movie. Please note that all editing was basically done when i frapsed the UI part, so I wasn't looking for the ultimate skill clip. I still find it quite funny concidering how many they were. Yea, I've heard it before, I had a tank guarding me, but keep in mind that it was a PUG as well, and there is nothing to justify that something like 8ppl couldn't dps me down? Ah well, noobs.

Link to WHA thread

Inglorious Basterds guild recruitment video

After about a month of frapsing and editing my latest video is finally done! This time I decided to make a guild promotion video and if you ask me it turned out pretty well :)
This is by far my most ambitious project yet since my old videos only had about 1-2 days of work spent on 'em. The editing quality has been improved quite alot so I'm looking forward to see how my future projects turn out since I've been improving quite alot lately! Enjoy!

The most awesome Mount Gunbad leveling video.. Ever.

I recently got home from my summer vacation at my parents house and could finally start making videos again. I decided to start softly with some PvE and since a friend of mine started leveling a Choppa we decided to do some Mount Gunbad runs.
What a pleasant surprise! Last time I was there was in 2008/early 2009 and i was surprised of how well made it actually is. What a waste of code concidering people don't really spend time in T3. Hopefully 1.3.6 will change that with the new R32 level cap. Anyhow, I was drunk half of the editing and I tried to tank without UI, so don't expect it to be perfect, I'm quite happy with it as it is though. Anyhow, enjoy!

Ding RR80

Today it finally happened. 03.23 AM I dinged RR80. As some of you might have noticed I've been gone for a while, but I decided to take advantage of the 100% RP bonus and "free gametime" which currently is active on European servers and finish the job! I went from 54% to 100% in only two days.. People must be leveling fast as it is now.

I made this video in preparation to my RR80 ding which I expected to happen about a week after I made it, so here it is a little bit later than planned!

The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time

I haven't written here for a long time because of multiple reasons, we'll discuss that some other day and focus on the video I'm about to share :)

My brother has been playing The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time for a couple of days and he frapsed quite alot of it, so I edited this cinematic style video of the ending. First 3-4 min are edited and then you'll see the Ganondorf/Ganon fight. What I'm saying is that if you're not into watching ten minutes of the most awesome game of all time, at least watch the first 3-4 minutes :)

It's highly recommended that you watch it in 1080p and full screen because of the Eyefinity resolution ;)

Jucka - First full Sovereign RR80 BO on Karak-Azgal

When I first bought WAR at launch I was one of those that got the game and just didn't sub, I don't know why but I just quit playing. A few months later Jucka (back then known as Von Snoe) told me that his BF2142 clan is rolling on WAR and that's when I resubbed. I rolled Oberheim on Karak-Azgal with them and we created the guild Kittens With Klas.

Now, about a year later, he dings RR80 and on top of that has every single part of the Sovereign set, making him the first BO on KA to wear it (and own it as far as I know).

I dinged RR79 yesterday, so he won the race which I led with 10 RR at one point, anyway, huge gratulations to you Jucka!

Shaman Healing Guide Video

Some of you might remember the Shaman Healing Guide i posted here earlier. Since I'm such a sharing person and want destruction to improve I decided to make a complement in the form of a video since alot of people can't be bothered to read guides and enjoy videos alot more :)

I know the video isn't perfect, it was never meant to be, I'm not discussing rotations or how to encounter specific cases, it's quite general and is mainly meant for new shamans out there. Though an experienced player might want to watch it anyway just for the fun of it, who knows, you might get some ides for an UI improvement or something?



I posted the link on a mIRC discussion and a fellow player there thought that I'm a retard, he thought that my positioning sucks and asked why I wasn't hiding in bushes and healing from maximum range? I'm not a hider, I prefer to be as close to my group as possible to be in range for a guard switch, minimum LoS problems and knowing that my AoE heal is always in range. Hiding doesn't really work in WAR since you can easily tab and find players and how many times haven't you been killed by a WH because you weren't close to the group? If everyone is close to each other a DPS class can easily chase away a WH that suddenly shows up from nowhere. However this doesn't really work in PUGs since people tend to run away and do their thing, so your premade should agree on that you stick close to each other and e.g. meleetrain and call out targets for the entire group.

Before I get even more rage from you guys, no, I'm not saying that you shouldn't hide, ambushing is really effective but I'm talking about hiding in bushes during small scenario fights.

Inevitable City Defence

Today we had some awesome RvR, order had something like 40VP while we had none in IC so we decided that we'd do something about it. So we started with a half warband which in the end grew to be about 3 groups big. We lost the first PQ since we got there too late, but we got some awesome fights on the second one and ended up winning, screwing up the lock. I think order got 63VP in the end and they would have made it to stage 2 if we wouldn't have showed up. The fun part is, that I frapsed it all. So I made a short "cinematic style" video of it. I hope you'll enjoy it!

T4 RvR video

This is something I made today, it's my first poor attempt at trying to do some editing and I really need to sort out how to fraps without massive lag, but I hope I'll be able to produce better videos in the future :)

Ding

No frikking Tyrant!

My group just finished TotVL and we didn't get any Tyrant drops the second time in a row, I actually sent an appeal after our last run and asked if the drop rate is bugged, I haven't seen the healer helmet in about 10 runs so I was indeed wondering. They replied:

Dear Customer,

All Loot Drops are random and 'Drop Rates' are not an exact figure for any items.
We apologise for any inconvenience.

Oh well, two runs and no Tyrant, I bet it's working as intended...

Ding RR78

The endless renown farm is soon over and I'm getting closer to 80 every day. I dinged 78 during this week and we killed the king again yesterday, no luck in drops for me though. Jucka got BO shoulders and is only missing two parts now, huge grats to him and I hope he gets one more part soon so he can buy his last one :) He would be the first full Sovereign toon in our guild at least then! If not on the server, some of the Eltharion dudes might have so I can't say for sure :)

Sexy isn't it? :D

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Something I made :)

Tyrant vs Sovereign

I'm sure many of you have been wondering what the best armor for your class is. Before I joined IB I wasn't really planning on farming Tyrant, as ToVL in the end is quite hard and after failing to get full Darkpromise (those damn shoulders never drop...) I wasn't that into starting to farm a new set again. However, to my delight I got into an awesome group and now I'm only missing the chest and helm, I got the glyph cape last run and therefore I've got all 5 bonuses from the glyphs now. Now that I've got some Tyrant and Sovereign I've been thinking about what the best combo is. To my dissapointment, when comparing the two sets I realised that the set bonuses of Tyrant are far superior to Sovereign. Just look at the 5 piece bonus:

Hierophant's Grace - On Hit or Direct Heal: 5% chance to reduce build times by 50% for 10 seconds.

Which practically means that I have a high chance to pop Focused Mind, just do the math, gather around, my AoE heal hits 6 targets, hence it has a 35% chance to proc on every AoE heal. If I know Mythic right there's a high chance that it procs from HoT tics as well which would make it IMBA untill they fix it. The 6 piece bonus is +50AP and that in combination with the 5 piece glyph bonus (+50AP) I'll have +100AP from my gear alone, giving me a total of 400AP (keep in mind that you get +25AP from both RR70 and 75).

Let's take a look at Sovereign.

(6 Piece Bonus) Caretaker - On Hit: 10% chance to heal defensive target for 113 health.

(7 Piece Bonus) Vivacious - On Heal: 10% chance to recover 50 AP.

(8 Piece Bonus) Gain ability: Just a bit mor'

The 6 piece bonus seems to be a lesser version of the Warlord 6 piece bonus:

(6 Piece Bonus) Martyr - On Being Hit: 10% chance to heal group for 192 health over 9 seconds.

In reality the HoT is over 1k so hopefully it's as high on the Sovereign version, which would make it quite good, but atm I've got 4 pieces so I can't test it out yet. The 7 piece Sov bonus is quite good as well, far better than +50AP from full tyrant. But what this set would need to justify it over Tyrant is the Hierophant's Grace proc which simply is too good to not have. What about the 8 piece bonus then? The reward from gathering the entire Sovereign set? I bet you think it's IMBA, but after some research I found out that it's an ability with 2min CD, which adds 20 feet range for 10s. WTF... Is it really that good? I'd say it's crap, 'cause you seldom heal from max range anyway and in RvR it's far more effective to stay as close to each other as possible. I can see its uses though, sometimes when you rush for someone and getting into range would make the difference between life and death, but something tells me that wearing full Sovereign should give something far better.

So for now I gonna farm the entire Tyrant set and wear it with all glyphs, in other words, my endgame character will wear PVE gear. I yet have to see how it works out, perhaps Hierophant's grace isn't that good after all. But I will certainly wear Sovereign just for the looks of it when I get some more parts. I gonna try out a combo with 5 piece Tyrant and the Sovereign shoulders/cape/jewelry as well, which would give me the +85WP bonus but I'd loose 100AP and hell alot of healing power. Doh, I read a comment from Mythic somewhere that they aren't planning on doing big changes on set bonuses but to instead learn of their "mistakes" (I'm sure they used another word for that, perhaps player feedback or something ;) ) and make better and more balanced sets in the future. Time will tell, ha, I didn't even know they were planning on adding content to the game after seeing them removing some from time to time! :D

Playing a Shaman - Oberheim style

Playing a Shaman - Oberheim style

I'm not trying to be anyone, or nor do I think that what I'm going to share with you is by any means the best way of playing, it's just how I play.

So anyway, I'm going to try to cover as much as possible of the class so if you other shamans out there have any opinions or matters to discuss, please share! 'Cause that's why I'm writing this, to help not you but myself to become a better player.

RvR playstyle
I believe in survivability rather than strongest possible heals there are when playing PvP, so my gear focuses alot on Wounds and to some extent toughness, currently i have slotted wounds talismans in all slots in my pvp gear, which makes me able to kite and outstand meleetrains. Which brings me to the most important point in this thread:
A shaman never heals stationary!
Alot of slayers and witch hunters will give you their attention, how i react depends strongly on the situation, but generally I:
1) LEG IT
2) AoE Detaunt (depends on threat, don't want to waste it)
3) Use Sticky feets a few feet in front of me and run directly in it, since it takes about 1-2s for it to be cast I should have ran across it and have the meleetrain struggling behind.
4) HoT up/Don't feel nuthin/Shrug it off

Eeeek! is sometimes handy, but it's strongly situational since people usually are immune to it. An Odjira is of course essential for kiting, I don't think that the tactic "Run away!" is needed when you have the talisman slotted.

Toughness/crit reduction is also an interesting combo, I tried out with equipping "reduction in being critically hit" gear and jewelry and in combination with the -5% crit/T liniment I got my crit chance to 0%. That in combination with stacking toughness and Do Sumfin Usefull is indeed a powerfull combo. I haven't evaluated what I think is the best set up yet though, I'm still farming for more gear to try stuff out with,

Morale

Morale 1:
I usually slot Gork Sez Stop since Divine favor isn't strong enough anyway to waste your morale, and I always bring potions with me to give myself two nice instant heals. This ability is mainly for having fun, sometimes it might save your ass when kiting a WH, but when healing a group I'd prefer to save up to M2.
Morale 2:
Focused Mind situationally your best morale ability, makes you immune to CC (which btw means you can use your instant ress without getting the 3s stun), unable to be setback while casting a spell and increases buildtime with 50%. This is Shamans Godmode for spamming AoE or extremly good focus heals.
Morale 3:
Divine Protection though I rarely use it, I prefer to pop M2 and spam AoE instead, but might come in handy when I simply don't have time for that. I could slot You Weren't using Dat, but then again, I could just drink an AP pot instead if Yer Not So Bad isn't doing its job.
Morale 4: Feelz No Pain A really nice ability, though it's a bit too short. I usually use it when bombing since the damage reduction with the HoT gives some heavy support, and you're able to focusheal meanwhile.

Tactics

I usually use:

Slot 1:Dat Makes me dissy Shamans are somewhat expected to use instant ress in either RvR, but when playing scenarios i usually use Whazat Behind You? which gives a chance to detaunt stunties when they hit =) Really good for survivability!
Slot 2: Restorative Burst Is AP management a problem? Slot this tactic! Makes life alot easier, especially concidering that shamans have a heavy critical chance which basically means that this tactic procs constantly.
Slot 3: Discipline gives 160WP.
Slot 4: Extra Special Mushroom Essential! 10% extra crit doesn't hurt =)

Addons/UI
I want as much essential data as possible taking as little room as possible on my screen. Most healers have a similiar set up but I wanted to cover as much as possible so here's my set up:

Squared,
Takes extremly little room and works really well, it's easy to see when someone is out of range (especially in comparison to Healgrid) and doesn't cause any lag.

DuffTimer
A really handy addon, i've configured it so that it only shows spells cast by me, to make it easier to keep track on them. This is usefull for HoTs, mainly Ey quit bleeding and Do sumfin' useful. You get separate "bars" for friendly target, yourself and hostile target. If you don't have anything like this make sure to try it out.



Calling
This isn't a healing specific addon, but it's really handy if your premade or even WB is using it. It's an evolution of Main Assist. It makes every player able to call and target hostiles with macros you drag to you spellbar. In addition to that you get a notification on the screen of who called and who the target is. Healing takes alot of focus so this helps out alot if you want to cast a healing debuff or something since you don't have to browse for a specific target on the screen.

In addition to these I use partyhelper, paint the leader, followmylead, Minmap (nice custom minimap) and alot more, but yeah, it's all about personal preference.

Spellbar/abilities

I know this is all about how everyone prefers to play or which keys you prefer to use. I just thought I'd comment some points.

If you're looking for a new mouse I'd strongly recommend Razer Naga, it has a total of 17 buttons of which 12 are on the side easily accessable with your thumb. Which basically means that if you configure all your spells right you'll never have to click on your spells again.

What you want is that your two detaunts, Healing spells including shrug it off and Don't feel nuthing and two healing potions are easily accessible. In case you didn't know you can use both a "normal" pot and a renown pot simultaneoslu since they have separate cooldown. I put a picture below in case you want to study my layout.


I can easily access 1-5, alt 1-5 and all 12 abilitiws bound to the Naga.

Spec

Here's a link to my current 19/10/0 spec
This one is RvR/Sc oriented, I basically want the 50% Healing debuff from the Gork tree, but if you want to max out healing more you could put points in the Da Green tree and perhaps take the tactic "Gork Fix'd it" from the Mork tree (it's actually really good, but I had to sacrifice one point in favour to the healing debuff, and I'm using the detaunt/instant ress tactic instead).

Last words
I'm sure I don't have to comment on gear, since it's pretty straight forward. However I'd like to remind that hitpoints are important, so there's no point in maxing out healing if you got 4,5k HP (according to me). At current state I play with 7k HP and 320T, but with a nice combination with invader (W bonus) and other jewelry I can get up to 9k HP, which in the other hand is kind of overkill since healing is so gimped at that state. However my point is that if you have always ran around with WP talisman in your gear just try with switching to W talismans instead and see how much more focus you're able to withstand. Save your WP gear for PVE instead =)

EDIT:
I also made this video guide as a complement to this one so feel free to watch it for additional tips & tricks!

The journey continues

So I've finally dinged RR77 and this friday we went for the Emperor Karl Franz as well. I have to say that I was lucky, the sovereign belt dropped and now i've got a total of four pieces. I was actually quite close to buy it, but I guess yesterday was another proof of that greed pays back. However, I really want the shoulders, since they're basically the best individual Shaman part and they look cool as well. I should afford to buy them in about a week, but of course they'll drop if I fall for the temptation.

I'm happy to say that my ToVL group is doing pretty well, we usually oneshot all bosses now (and yet we wipe on trash sometimes lol), I'm only one part away from the Amazing 5 piece bonus which gives a 5% proc chance to pop Focused Mind, it'll never be as good as the DoK equivalent, but at least it's as good as a Shaman can be. In the end I'll probably be running with 5 pieces of Tyrant and rest sovereign, I.E sov shoulders + jewelry. I haven't looked to much

into it but I think that's the best setup as the game is now. We tried out with a new tank in ToVL so my group wanted me to optimize my gear for healing since I usually just use my T/W RvR gear with decent PVE healing capability, I tried it out in a few Scenarios but I just can't live with being squishy, however I'll try to be a bit liberal when I get the entire tyrant set and try different stuff out, there's nothing more satisfying than seeing those big crits when needed the most!

All I do is complain

It's been a while since I wrote here last time, time has passed and I'd like to say that alot has happened in Warhammer, we can indeed look forward to 1.3.4 and even try it out on the PTS, but is it that much really?

In 1.3.3 basically what we got was the new "Ooooh, Shiny!" graphics, underdog system ( which all in all is just a static point system) and the War Report. Not much, but hey, Mythic surely was working on something bigger. And now, when we all can read the 1.3.4 patch notes I can't say I'm satisfied.

As usual there's three major changes, or updates. They promised us a scenario revamp, which results in that when 1.3.4 goes live, we only have 6 scenarios in T4. I mean, WTF? Isn't there like 26 scenarios in the game and they narrowed it to only 6? Mythic is indeed the only company that removes content from their games, first fortresses and now scenarios? We want more content, not less, and weren't we asking for a premade vs premade mode?

Anyhow, it's not the full story. The scenarios will be online at all times, so no more waiting for Battle For Praag, and they introduced a big bunch of new weapons as well which will be obtainable with new insignias that you get from participating in scenarios and some RvR events. So I'd say that's the 2nd improvement with the patch, new weapons.

3rd then? Last time they gave us the underdog system, this time they thought that what we need is an even more open RvR lake, WAR is everywhere you know? Well, whenever a city goes to stage 2 in a siege the RvR lakes will open up again. It'll probably be just PVE but it's a nice thing since there's nothing to do if your city gets captured.

This makes me wonder what Mythic is working on really, for me this feels like maintenance mode and the fact that they aren't announcing anything more far away than a few weeks at the time just supports the statement. Perhaps they have 80% of the staff working on 1.4.0 or even an expansion, LotD went live last summer so I really hope they're working on something for 2010 as well, but that's all I can do, hope. I'm getting closer to rr80 every day, it's going well with farming Tyrant and I've got several sovereign pieces so my time in the game is coming to it's end soon if they don't make it more interesting. Ah well, the scenario farming starts as 1.3.4 goes live...

Patch 1.3.4 preview

Andy from the Mythic comminuty team recently posted a teaser about next patch on the US forums. He couldn't yet go inte to details, but let's discuss the announcement.

"At this point the plan is to have 1.3.4 on PTS by the first week of February or (at the latest) early the second week of February. Patch notes, of course, will accompany the opening of Warpstone."

The EU servers usually open up some days later, but at least it's not long time left.

"We will be introducing an entire new line of weapons earned via RvR (this is the "feature players have been asking for"). These weapons will be purchasable via a vendor and will not be bought using medallions or crests, instead utilizing an entirely new currency system earned via Scenario gameplay from tiers 1-4. More information about these new items and how they're earned will be forthcoming in a Dev Diary with Developer Sean Bosshardt."

This is indeed interesting. I've certainly been waiting for new weapons, the bloodmoon staff I use tends to get a bit old (and it's impossible to find a sandstorm one). The suprising part is, that by "earning new weapons via RvR" doesn't translate to oRvR, but instead to Scenarios. I certainly would have wanted the weapons to be attainable from oRvR to give it more purpose, at the moment I find being in a good WB to be the best part of the game, but there's no real purpose or treat that attracts me there, except Altdorf pushes of course. Instead they want to give a purpose to scenarios, some people argue that scenarios in itself don't have any real meaning, but I don't know, I was satisfied with the anti zerg RP farm/crest mode scenarios were, soon we can get weapons as well!

"Speaking of Scenarios...

We are completely reworking the current structure of Scenarios by removing some of the less popular and streamlining the tiering of Scenarios. There will be more details upcoming in a Dev Diary from Content/RvR Lead Mike Wyatt next month."

Many thought and hoped for a premade vs premade mode when they announced their scenario remake, but it has been confirmed by Andy that they're looking into it, but it's not going to be introduced in this patch, however, we'll finally get rid of Thunder Valley at least!

"The last tidbit is a change to the way that the campaign functions. Starting with 1.3.4, once a Contested City flips into the Captured state (otherwise called "Stage 2") the Open RvR Campaign will now restart, leaving the realm sieging their enemies city with a tough decision: Stay in the city, possibly defeating your opponent's King, or retreat back to the open field to defend your realm?"

This is good, extremly good! Instead of people logging of for three hours they get the chance to go and do RvR instead. It'll probably be PvEish at first, but at least it's not the peak of boredom anymore when your opposing realm sieges your city. This will make the campaign alot more fluent, but they still need to reduce the god damn reset timer to at least 15 min....

Oberheim AWESOMENESS

Have you ever wondered where I got my nick from? Probably not, however, everyone knows that I am awesome, so did the guys that founded the company, named by me: Oberheim. They produce (since 1973) great and fat sounding synthesizers, hence my second name. Just listen to the sound of Oberheim OB-12 :)

Friday

What a day, not only did I play ToVL, have some awesome RvR, ding RR76 but also killed the Emperor Karl Franz my second time! Take a look at some nice Eyefinity screenshots from today :)

Warhammer online on Eyefinity

So ’ere it is, me brotha finally got ’is dird screen an’ I got a chance to try WAR wiv dem. It is simply amazin’, you right see da environments an’ dat’s one reason I recently cleared up all me addons which prevented to see da game I was actually playin’. Now I’s able to see da stunties ’eads get smashed into pieces in true widescreen mode. Yummy!

Resolution: 5860*1080, not bad... ;)

facerolling Gajlord

I posted this picture basically because I wanted to show Facerolling how my interface currently looks, it enables squared style grid and disables the party window when in scenarios or WB. I'm quite happy since I see alot more of the game now :)

Emperor Karl Franz killed by Inglorious Basterds

Me and Jucka switched guild yesterday, we moved to Inglorious Basterds and I have to admit that I had some hard feelings about that, me and some friends started Kittens With Klas about a year ago when we rolled on WAR and have been playing together since then. So it felt a bit like leaving a part of my archievements behind somehow. But times change and this morning I was in my first king kill. We pushed stage 2 and I have to say that the king encounter was so... Mythic. I guess you understand what i mean.

WAR Eyefinity

WAR on eyefinity, two screens at 3840*1080, imagine this on three screens....

My brother put together a new computer recently and the new 5000-series ATI Radeon video cards support a technology called "Eyefinity". Which basically means that you can use several screens with native resolution without any stretching in games. He got his second 1080p screen today and I simply had to install WAR on his computer and these screenshots show how it looks. It's simply amazing, I have yet to see how it looks in T4 RvR, stay tuned for more screenshots!

DING RR75

Yey, I finally dinged RR75. We have been playing with a meleetrain setup for a few days in KwK and I have to say that it works quite well, it's definiately alot more fun than bombing. Though Facerolling refuses to get the addon calling which makes it a bit more complicated when the rest of us uses it.

Calling is kind of essential when using a meleetrain setup. You get two macros; one for calling and one for targeting which you then drag to your spell bar. It's really handy for me since I usually don't have time to look for a particular target but now I just have to push one button and then I can cast my AP drain/healing debuff or whatever I feel for. Thumbs up!

Download Calling here

Radiation Sickness

This is my sorceress, Radiation Sickness, currently RR43. I thought that I'd write the ultimate, most sophisticated guide ever on how to play with her.

Just follow these extremly hard steps:

1) Run in to the big zerg of order

2) Infernal wave

3) Disastrous Cascade

3) Pit of shades

4) Repeat from 1)

I understand if it feels hard at first, really, you need three spells so it's completely acceptable if it takes a few months to learn this spell rotation completely. If you want to be hardcore or are aiming for becoming extremly skilled, you can enhance the rotation with M2 (focused mind) + Shattered shadows or just rooting + 1800dmg to everyone with your M4, and then go for the rotation. Sorcerers are so insanely nerfed so we have to live with this hard-mode ;)

Karl Franz is down

Oh crap, I just woke up and was drinking my usual coffee. When I booted my computer o got a message from Jucka which translated to English leads:

"KARL FUCKING FRANZ!
HAS BEEN KILLED BY THE ALLIANCE!!!! \o/
Manjare tanked him.
\o/ KARL FRANZ IS OUR BITCH \o/"

hmm, this is great, extremly great. Tcharzanek has been killed a few times on order, but that wasn't until recently after the Eltharion merge and about a week ago KA had his first Karl Franz kill, by two Eltharion guilds as well. So our alliance got the first "Core KA" king kill, which I'm both proud of and happy about. Too bad I wasn't online though, but next time I guess :)

The future of WAR - Skaven

We are all waiting for an expansion, or at least a major patch. Since Mythic doesn't like to share what they do inbetween their constant coffee breaks we can do nothing but guess, or interpret some random statements from now and then. I CBA to look up sources, but the community generally agrees on that if they gonna put in new races Lizardmen/Skaven would fit best. I'm a destro player all the way, but I'd really be tempted to roll an order alt if they implement the Lizardmen, the possible classes/mechanics look promising as well... I first decided to write about both races, but I had to narrow this post down alot and you can look forward to reading about Lizardmen in a few days.

Skaven

These fearsome rats indeed have alot of exciting opportunities, when examining their wide selection of models in WFB (Warhammer Fantasy Battles) I get really excited. I'm by no means an expert in WFB, I do indeed own an Orcs & Goblins army, but becoming familiar with any race requires alot of effort and studies.

The Skaven, are in short explained as "a race of malevolent rat-men that inhabit the underground of the Warhammer world"

in their army book. Traditionally they fight with numbers and have a hierarchical social structure as seen in many other races' armies. The Skaven society is structured into a number of clans, no one can trust each other and their shy attempt on politics is dominated by endless treachery, betrayal, labyrinthine plots and scheming. The clans are usually led by a Warlord and below him is a clear hierarchical ladder based on the law of strength and cunning. They consist of, starting from the bottom: slaves and creatures from other races, above them we have the workers which represent the majority of their population. Above them we have the clanrat warriors which are few and strong, which are led by the Warlord at the top. Even though the Warlord is strong, he lives under the same circumstances as Bosses of greenskins, anyone can come and challenge him for his position, so he usually spends alot of his time eliminating rivals

which also is a sign of how paranoid the skaven are. Here below I picked some models I particulary like and that I think would be cool as classes in WAR.

Warlock Engineer

These guys are indeed interesting, they aren't natural born wizards,

so they try to control the energies of the wind magic by their weird sorcerous science. To do this they wear impressive pieces of equipment which are known as warp-power accumulators on their back. They pick up and concentrate magical energy through an antenna. As I understood they don't know any spells, but are instead dependent on the equipment they wear. In WFB every model you choose costs a certain amount of points, you can then choose to enhance this particaular model with extra equipment and for 25 additional points I can choose to buy a "Storm Daemon" which is a Warpstone device that can be used by Warlock Engineers. This devide grants its bearer a Warp lightning spell.

Assasins

Similiar to the Witch Hunter and Witch Elf the Skaven could have their own stealthy assasins. They are described as follows in their army book: "They're the masters of the secret lethal arts of Clan Esbin. They have the reputation of being able to turn invisible, appearing from the shadows only to deliver poisoned death to their destined victims. "

It's questionable if we want or need another stealth class in WAR, but they're indeed cool and I enjoy playing my WE alot.

Skaven Plague Censer Bearer

There's a big range of models that could fit as mDPS classes, I myself think that Skaven Plague Censer Bearers are cool, they carry deadly weapons known as plague censer, these weapons are flails whose spiked heads are filled with burning warpstone incense. Not anyone gets the honour, only the most deranged and fanatical worshippers of disease are chosen for this task.

2010 - The Year of Quality

Yeah, Mythic conciders 2010 to be the year of quality, we can all agree on that especially with recent patches, performance has been improved alot. I read a statement where they said that they're satisfied with current performance which has been their #1 priority, so they are now able to focus more on new content.

"Next year is going to be an exciting one, and I am looking forward to sharing more of our plans during the frigid days and long winter nights of January. We’ll have exciting new Live Events, new weapons and cloaks earned by spilling the blood of your enemies in RvR, a new Scenario structure, economy and loot drop improvements, adjustments to the King and Warlord encounters to convert them to RvR-only battles, UI customization enhancements, Tier 4 RvR campaign improvements, daily quests and so much more - and that’s just our near term plans for 2010."

(source: 1.3.3 Producers Letter - Bruce Maclean)

Itemization

Sounds fair and good, I'm really looking forward to see the new weapons, the Bloodmoon staff I use tends to feel a bit old. I really hope that they implement them wizely, they should make oRvR more appealing to high RR players and new weapons could be a nice carrot. The problem is, which I've noticed in our alliance as well, that many of the "good" players /ignore oRvR, I really can't blame them, 'cause scenarios are just way alot more rewarding.

No more r29 ruining your scenarios

The most promising announcement (for me at least) is "a new scenario structure", which naturally could mean anything. But all we can do is hope for a tournament mode in style with Guild Wars, that game was brilliant really, what NCSoft did was that they made an ongoing constant competitive battleground mode, you could join a queue with your team and then fight your way to the top. Well, I might be wishing for too much, but at least give us a premade vs premade option will you? :)

Warlord/King PQ restructuration

Oh dear, they plan to make 'em RvR only, which could end brilliantly or just make it impossible to complete any of them. This game is and should be as much about RvR as possible, but I enjoyed the only WB raid instances in the game, so hopefully they don't remove them entirely, but well, they have so much lore to look in to that they should come up with something fresh and fun.

In overall their revealed plans are fine, we're still waiting for the armor rewamps as well which they stated were to be released in 1.3.3, so hopefully they're finished to the next patch. However, I'm still waiting for the "next big thing", these patches we get are more or less maintenance mode, I'd like to see what the creative team has been working on since LotD (1.3), if they have. This game needs proper endgame (rr70-80) content, but that's another post.