My New Tank Spec vs. Choppa

During Gromils Crossing last night I got stuck far off by the keg capture point and was followed by a Choppa. I was instantly incited to test my new Tank build out on this lowly choppa. I, being mounted, began to head past him when he began flailing his choppas causing my Gyro-copter to malfunction. I quickly dismounted and charged into mortal combat with the ugly greenie. Within the first few seconds I had a great upper hand. My attacks were hitting him pretty hard and I got him to 50% with out hesitation. But once he got to 50% I had a rough time grinding his health down further. That damn tactic of his was healing him faster than I could DPS him! My grudges were full by this time and it was time to start spamming my new favorite ability, Oathstone. And it worked quite well. Keeping my positioning up I kept at him, but he was working me down really fast now. His knock downs left me taking 1k+ of damage since I couldn't defend w/ my shield (i only have 8k HP). The last few seconds were neck and neck. We were both at 5% health. My Earthshatter was on cool down and that is my primary source of crit damage. I was critting him with that earlier at about 1k. Quickly I popped my Oathstone and he ended up eating my shield as I hit him for 600HP.

It was far from an easy victory. I barely limped away from the fight with about 300HP. There are still many abilities that I failed to use that could have left me at a higher advantage.

What I need to incorporate into my RvR battles:

- Shield Of Reprisal. Knocking down my opponent for a few seconds would have really helped out. But I'm still not used to using a situational knockdown (one that can only be used when I block). Cave-in has really spoiled me.

-Taunt. I seem to have misplaced it and it wasn't in my action bar during the fight. That extra damage could have helped out, but I'm not really sure how much the taunt helps in RvR when someone like a Choppa is wailing on you. Edit: Taunt used to be a lot more useful. It seems that it only does an additional 3% damage now...

-Punishing Blow. yep, I completely forgot about this ability. If I had used it I could have caused two possible outcomes:
1) He would stop circling around me and fight me face to face making my blocks much more effective and making Oathsone a sure bet.
2) He would keep running circles and take some damage. This would have helped counter balance all the healing his tactic was doing.

-Away with ye. Didn't use it once. And if I had used it with the Punishing Blow, It would have been a great way to give myself a breather and force him to walk to me.

Yep, there is plenty of room for improvement when it comes to my RvR Tanking. I do think that I had my tactics set up pretty well though. Offering a good amount of damage output, but not limiting the use of my shield

Sweet Revenge + Raising Anger + Shield Mastery + Seasoned Veteran

Oh yeah, my current build.

Any other thoughts on how I could successfully run with my Tank in RvR would be very much appreciated.

Thanks!

Invading IC

It's finally Orders turn to return the glorious City Siege. Though the first time we made it there few order were on and even fewer destro around to defend – to top it off the server went down a few hours after the initial assault. Second time we hit it, just a few nights ago, I actually got to join in the fray (for it wasn’t at 3am like the first one).

Today we hit IC again, once again, like the first one, I totally missed it. *sigh* so I’m going to talk about the 2nd one! Yay.

First let me start by saying that all in all I enjoyed the city siege. It was ok farming with no destro, but got to be a lot of fun once destro showed up to wipe our asses for us and feed some renown. Mm mmm
There are a few things I want to point out about the attack though. A little, compare and contrast. Comparing the time that destroy siege Altdorf for those 4,5,6… however many days.

Two hours of PQ’s. It seems that we had about 3 hours for our City PQ (I was absent for about an hour and I think it started right when I left). I recall the Altdorf PQ’s being around 6 hours of madness. So for one of our sieges, destroy had 2. multiply the 6 or so times that they hit the city and it would take us 12 sieges to get the same amount of time, with seemingly less rewards.

No more Dungeon. Perhaps it’s just that I (or we) couldn’t find it, but I’m pretty sure that Mythic took that section out and added it to Stage II. I still have my fingers crossed that we’ll find a secret entrance.

Two Gold Bags per PQ. I was thinking that we would get a few more than 2 per PQ. Think about it, it takes at least four hours to get to the city gates (mind you, we do get rewarded along the way, but its no stroll in the park). Then we have three hours to pray that destroy doesn’t defend, and if they do, we hope they suck. But only 2 gold bags? At the same time I’m thinking that this is an attempt to keep groups from capping IC at 3am (cough cough, the first time we took it! Haha) and farming the living daylights out of it.

Boss Scales Down when the destro are around. And he scales up when destroy aren’t around. I thought this was awesome addition on Mythic’s part. Even though the boss still kicked my ass when we had 48 destro rollin’ around!

Easier to Advance to Stage II. We almost made it to stage II (or so we’d like to think, haha). We held at 91 VP’s for a while before it sunk down into the pits of hell, AKA IC. It seemed like we didn’t struggle as hard as destro had to in order to get that high. Perhaps it was just population imbalance.

Zerg vs BW OP so we are almost even. When destro was rollin’ us in up to altdorf they out numbered us in the ORvR lakes big time. And now destro claims that the BW’s over powered-ness is the cause of our success, SO BE IT! I’ll bask in the glory of our IC city sieges just as they did during our siege! We still need to cap the city 9 times to make it all even though… we’ll see how that pans out.

Honestly though, I had fun fighting against destro during the IC siege. It was great fun. Even if I didn’t get a stupid gold bag with an item that I can’t even wear for 20+ Renown Ranks.

And cheers to all the destro that showed up in our PQ to own us! Grinding PQ’s isn’t my bag, so thanks.

Order Goes on the Offensive

Tonight was our ORvR night for our alliance. We set out with a goal, to flip the zone Thunder Mt and go from there. We managed to get 3 warbands together and along our quest for domination found many a pug to join in. The night turned out to go from a successful mission, to assaulting a fort... I guess we had the organization, cause I was surprised enough that we took TM, let alone Breezing through Black Craig and into the Fort.

Once in the fort it was another story. Destro had a well set up defence and our puggers kept arguing with eachother. /2 chat was crazy annoying tonight. Our alliance made two strong pushes into the keep, we really didn't have too much trouble taking down destro, but we had a hell of a time with the keep lord. I believe he reset on us the first run through. We got rid of most of the destro, but at a price, we only had about half a warband left to take on the keep lord... perhaps more if you include puggers. Wipe.

second time around we did an alright job against destro. All I know is that the keep lord hit me about three times and I was dead... (TvT)

In the end it was great for us to have gotten as far as we had when we were only aiming to flip TM. I think it was one of the best pushes that we've ever made. And it was a blast! Well... the fort fight was lag city... and wasn't very much fun. spamming my abilities hoping that something happens... yeah. anyway.

I also made my first trip to Bastain Staris. I look forward to seeing that place some more as I didn't take any pictures and was only there for an hour (visited left wing).

I Hear Destro Knocking...

But why don't they come in?

So this is interesting, after working their asses off (yes, thats right, we made work for the fort this time) they decided that altdorf wasn't that fun after all. or they took a nap, or got burned out, or lots momentum, or whatever. I'm not sure what happened on their side, but once the siege started (in the begining that is) they were around in numbers, not a lot, but a good amount. So we get a Warband + a few groups to run PQ's and join the ones with the Most destro.

Here is the run down of what happened everytime we joined a PQ with lots of destro:

1) we enter the PQ and go straight into battle with destro, balls to the fuckin wall.

2) they put up a good fight or they wipe.

-If they wipe: Most of them leave the PQ leaving a few behind to farm.
-If they put up a good fight: Say good bye, cause they don't actually want to fight. They port out or go to the instance.

3) we port out and join another PQ with a good destro population. because honestly, who wants to farm a stupid PQ. I came to fight destro. oh, and the one time I did roll 1st in the PQ, it was all green bags - again. *sigh*

4) see #1

Yep, that was it, all night. Didn't get any real good fights. The night before we had some AWESOME battles! last night... not so much. *tear* I don't mind if they wanna run the instance, I would to, but all night... and usually they just left to farm the pq somewhere esle. It was really frustrating. To top it off, their were very few destro in the PQ's anyway, maybe 60 or so for the last 3 hours.

I hear destro knocking, but they don't wanna come if there is a fight.

The Siege Continues

Day 6

Today was another smashing day for ORvR. I loged on early to help the Resistance and we actually got 2 warbands up in Etain ready to take back our lands (well, the elves lands). We were met with strong opposition. Taking BO's wasn't so hard, we had enough to spread across the zone to scout and take multiple BO's at one time, But when it came to taking a keep, we just couldn't compete. We tried all kinds of tricks, had great organization (pretty good at least), and did a great job of delaying the inevitable - the siege on Altdorf.

Six nights of Altdorf PQ's. It's almost like this giant sign hangs over our castle doors saying, "Enter here for an all expenses paid trip for 7 days and 6 nights in the beautiful Altdorf!" Then again, we have been shutting them out every night... but you'd think we could shut em out at the fort or something. ugh, forts! anyway.

Before this whole Altdorf fiasco happened, we had the great idea of taking the Thunder Mountain. We did manage to take both keeps right off the bat and I won my Anihilator Helm. YAY!

Once we got to 81 VP's they just decayed faster than we could gain more (this is with 3 BO's left untaken for the final push for a flip). Nope, we didn't filip it... IDK, Destro sure knows how to flip zones. I wish we all had the knowlege or capability to flip a zone. Not sure what the problem is: our numbers, maybe the PQ's go too slow, maybe we arn't winning the Scenario's. whatever it may be, we gotta figure it out and fix it. WE cant even flip with NO DESTRO! lol

Ok pic of the week right there! After a long battle with Destro, this is what we got:
Yep, thats 4 green bags... Thanks Mythic! hehe

Iron Rock is like a 24/7 job

Day 5

Another night, wait, not even a night, on Iron Rock. At around 3pm pacific time, Destro started their push through etain towards their first fort. and with in about 40 min, they cap it. By 4pm they are rolling through Reikland and by 4:20 they hit the fort, 4:40 the keep is down and we start doing Altdorf PQ's.

By the time everyone is home from work, Destro already had Altdorf by the balls. They still have yet to get a good grip on those balls though. Once 5pm hit more order loged on and our PQ's in Altdorf were fairing pretty well.

The biggest complaint I have right now is the Fortress. I truly don't know the exact numbers, but I do know that Order is always outnumbered and we truly have no advantage. While on Ungrim we were able to successfully stop destro from taking keeps if we got people to come and defend, this isn't happening on Iron Rock. Destro just whipes through us.

This is us at the fort getting whiped. We had about 15 Tanks on our tank wall with a few DPSers. We thought it would hold alright, but we just eneded up being a 20sec speed bump.

Might I add that this Fort lags like crazy with all these people. Defenders can truly do nothing but stand there. I click my spells and there is a good 5 sec delay on anything I do. SPLAT!

Atack on Altdorf

Day 1 on Iron Rock
Friday
Less than 6 hours after I transfer my character over to the new server Destro hits us and they hit us hard. With little organization on our side (god knows how much orginzaion the destro had) we were able to successfully whipe in the reckwald fortress. YAY! ok, not so yay, but we did manage to scrounge up a decent guild wb to keep them from getting past the Altdorf PQ.

Once in the Altdorf PQ it was pretty fun. Most of the guys in our guild that participated had a blast or at least didn't think it sucked. 6 hours of that same PQ sure gets old though, luckely we had people logging on and off to keep the wb up and keep destro out. All in all we successfully defended (if you call letting destro into our city and lighting fires everywhere successfull). But the point is they didn't advance. We lost no city rank due to the battles. Every thing goes back to normal and the zones reset.

Day 2
Saturday
They are back, more organized and angry that they couldn't finish what they started. So another evening of Altdorf PQ's. Meh, not so bad. Get gold bags out of it (some do) with Invader gear. It's not a total loss, and I get a TON of RP from those PQ's.

Day 3
Sunday
Destro just can't get enough and we can't defend the fort worth crap.
Altdorf PQ's once again.

Day 4
Monday
THANK GOD it's monday. Never thought I'd say that ever, but I was thinking that because its monday less people will be on and perhapse we could push the zones back a little. WRONG. Another Night of Altdorf PQ's. Should be ending soon though. They assulted at 3pm, and it lasts 6 hours.

So why do destro own us so badly?

1. Currently, we are outnumbered in ORvR. on the weekends it was full on both sides. So I don't think that is the whole reason, but it defenetly has an impact when Destro side is full and Order is still at Medium (today & sunday).
2. Fort defence is a joke. We could only fit two warbands (50 players) in to defend while destro had 5-6 warbands. Some one told me the attacker gets 150, not sure if thats true, but if it is it's no wonder that we can't defend a keep. This also has me realize how few destro their were on Ungrim, they couldn't take our keeps if we had a solid defence and they "never" had 5 full wb's hitting em.
3. Organization is truly a key in this game. It wasn't untill we had Altdorf PQ's going that we could set up a solid Defence, for the 2.5 hours that I played we kept destro at bay in our PQ, though we failed to succeed in finishing one.

Perhapse the system needs a little tweaking. Purple bags in Altdorf PQ's will be better with this next patch so don't open your purple bags yet! idk, I'll ponder on this more after a break.

Eataine, A Monumental Defense

Chillwind Manor has won my love. This BO proved to be very fun to defend. Tonight, we attempted to defend it with a decent sized warband of 3 groups (18 players). We headed out to defend Chillwind and once there we cleared the area of any scouts. We picked up the new BO defense quest under the impression that, upon turn in, would provide extra VP's for the zone and perhaps make up for the lives we were about to loose (anyone know if this quest helps towards VP?) .

Within the manor we set up our tank wall - four tanks in total (3 IB's and 1 SW). The manor doors only allows for 2 tanks to squeeze into the doorway side-by-side, so the other tanks (myself) stood in-between the cracks for extra cushion support.

Chillwind manor is now order controlled - appears across the screen.

First Wave

Obviously destro wasn't expecting anything other than PvE as they only sent a party of about 6 and we dealt with them swiftly. This was a surprise as we knew of 2 scouts that had spotted us setting up and expected that they would have relayed the info to someone. Even if they were just pugs, you'd think it would have showed up in RvR chat/Region chat. Never the less, a min went by, nothing. We sat their with our tank wall... silence. Then the ground began to shake and the sounds of horror approached. The doors burst open.

Second Wave

Destro were prepared this time, well, they were prepared for a fight, I don't think they saw an organized tank wall coming. The front line tanks were doing a great job with CC, knocking enemies away, down and keeping the destro push to a minimum. Our tanks manage to hold tight for the first min or so, then Destro began to pull us out. Both of our front line tanks get pulled, one is killed and the other struggles to reclaim his ground while destro begin to trickle in. Luckily, only a few got in and it was nothing our RDPS couldn't handle, as they finished them off just as I got my rez. 30 sec later and the fighting was getting more intense. A hand full of Chosen and Marauders breeched the tank wall and went to town on our healers & RDPS. But we weren’t done fighting; there were still a tone of destro here. We only hoped that our struggle would buy our comrades enough time to gain some ground and push from the warcamp. As for us another 30 seconds or so go by, at this point I lost track of time. Keeping the tank wall up was getting harder as now everyone had Rank 4 Moral abilities blasting us to shreds. Our healers were barley able to keep us up, but they did, and the line held tight for about a min - until we just got over whelmed. Destro made a massive push forward, cutting through our line and gutting our healers, the room was flooded with triumphant destruction players and a pile of dead order.

Conclusion

A lot was learned from this battle. Destro ultimatly smashed us out, but we held for a good time before they were able to gain any ground. Strategies to defeat the "zerg" that everyone talks of may not exist, but in theory, we can indefinitely delay its advancement into the next zone or simply force them to spread out. A key to winning a battle is fighting a battle where the terrain and maneuvers work in your favor. Use buildings and doorways to bottleneck your enemies should be used to your advantage. If used well enough, they may just give up and walk away. haha

Feel free to comment w your thoughts on the topic

My First RvR with Legends

The other night, after playing some catch with Kilor, the guild leader of Legends, I enquired about the current status of the guild. Being an ex-B&B (Bash and Brew) officer from the Averheim server I knew that a few of my old guild mates ended up over there. Sure enough I found a hand full of old friends! I'm so happy in my new guild! And to kick off my happiness with a bang they had RvR night. OH YES! FINALLY some organized ORvR (being that scenario's never popped).

Reikland
2/10/09

When I arirved Legends, Crimson Guard and Omega had a pretty good stand off at Reikwatch. Order had the high ground of the BO while Destro was north on the opposing hill. There were a lot of destro, but after a few more reinforcements, it was truly an order zerg - the likes of which I have never seen before - and with a swift order of our leader to push, everyone uniformly pushed. We pushed them off of Reikwatch and once they were on the run we all came back to reikwatch to cap the BO. I was amazed. Not only that but we sent out scouts to neighboring BO's and keeps to check the status. It seems that the PUG's were camping destro's warcamp. but I couldn't care less, it's happened to me dozens of times. Plus, its not like there aren't other ways to get into the RvR lake. TRY the back road... oh wait, that takes orginization. In the world of PUG's, we know how that works out.

Once we had all the BO's and Keeps, it was time to earn some VP. So we queued up for scenarios and headed off to the PQ. And that’s when we all got bored. Oh, the first run was fine, fun even. We were all energized with the idea of flipping the zone back to Praag (cause its so much fun to play there! Love that zone!). Then the 2nd PQ, still no VP gain, 3rd PQ... 4th PQ... and I'm spent. Our VP went from 84, down to 82 and back to 86 and in the end, 84. Perhaps destro was doing the same PQ grind, hence few returns from either side. I’m not sure, but it wasn’t much fun and there was no sign of accomplishment; time to move on and/or call it a night.

Destruction Almost Sacks Altdorf

Tonight I logged on around 8pm and saw this:

Holy crap! Destruction locked up Shining Way? AND they are at Reikwald? It was like the apocalypse was coming. I got such an adrenalin rush as I stunted up to the defensive line. When I arrived at the door it seemed that the main fort defense was full, Looks like I couldn't get in. Oh well, I headed over to Reikland to block off the folks who couldn't get rezed. That in itself was a total blast! I had so much fun in ORvR tonight that I almost peed my pants.

The best part is that there was little to no lag. I honestly was surprised. I'm not sure on the specifics of what Mythic did to the fort system, but it seems to have helped out a lot. The fact that destro was getting so far was so exciting! I almost wanted to see them sack the city, but then I started to have flashbacks of building up Altdorf all over again.

In the end they couldn't pull it off in time to take Reikwald. So we all headed back to Praag to claim the zone. This is where i got to have some really fun group vs group battles as well as a few 1v1's.

I got completely owned by a Witch Elf tag team. I must say, it was pretty awesome, they just popped out of the blue sky and proceeded to each go in a circle (one clock wise, the other counter clockwise) around me and kick my ass. And I loved every second of it. twas almost like a dance. =p

Sadly, I was so impressed by the whole scene that I forgot to grab a few snap shots… Shoot! If anyone has screen shots from the fortress fight I would love to see them. Just leave me a comment with a link. Thanks.