Tracker and Stalker Sets

Yesterday a mate was asking whether there were sets in WAR and whether they were worth collecting and fortuitously Syp had just posted a quick guide to obtaining the Stalker set for Order so I thought I would do up something for Destruction.

The basic premise for the Tracker (T2) and Stalker (T3) sets is that you get a quest to kill a bunch of Order players (not NPCs) and then once you have handed that quest in you get a quest to kill a Hero. After killing a Hero you then get one of the pieces of the armour set. Once you have collected all pieces you also get a spiffy tome unlock and title. There is one quest series for each of the racial pairings.

So, without further delay, here is a summary of the quests and their objectives:

Tracker Gloves – Obtained from Erikwuf Wrathbound in Ostland:
Good Will – Kill 20 Witch Hunters
Good Will - Kill the Witch Hunter Wilhelm Von Kleinbach

Tracker Boots – Obtained from Drekka Goblobba in Marshes of Madness:
‘Ead ‘Unta - Kill 20 Ironbreakers
‘Ead ‘Unta - Kill the dwarf Surveyor Stonebreak

Tracker Chest – Obtained from Tarond Frostrage in Ellyrion:
Bladed Whispers- Kill 20 Swordmasters
Bladed Whispers- Kill the Swordmaster Drielis Windform

Stalker Boots – Obtained from Kruggog in Black Fire Pass
We’s Gettin’ Shot Up – Kill 20 Engineers
We’s Gettin’ Shot Up- Kill Flinty Copperlock

Stalker Gloves – Obtained from Asille Nightreach in Avelorn
A Servant’s Duel- Kill 20 Archmages
A Servant’s Duel- Kill Kasildir Morningbreeze

Stalker Sholders – Obtained from Hallbjorn Frent in Talabecland
Fighting Fire with Fire – Kill 20 Bright Wizards
Fighting Fire with Fire- Kill the Bright Wizard Felix Magnus

The Order version of the Stalker set has 4 pieces but only 3 pieces are showing up for the Destruction version on WARDB so I suspect that the 4th quest hasn’t been captured by the folks at WARDB yet. I will check back regularly and update this once more information is available. The Order quest for the Chest is available at 27 or 28 so I have a couple of levels before I can get the quest yet.

Some comments on WARDB indicate that you may need to have completed certain quests or be at a certain influence level before being able to get the initial kill quests but details are sketchy at this point. If I find something more definite on the quest requirements I will add the information into this post as well.

UPDATE:

It seems the quest from Kruggog currently has a level requirement of 27 which seems a little odd considering the boots are level 20 greens. I suspect as there doesn’t seem to be a quest for the 4th piece of the set that the boots reward was supposed to be the chest instead. The order version has a minimum level around 27 for the chest. At this point the fourth quest isn’t available in game so I would suggest putting in a bug report for it as Snafzg has done.

Stats for Zealots

In a similar vein to what Regis over at Wizards & Wenches has done for the DoK, I am going to run over the stats and comment on their importance for the Zealot. My focus as a Zealot is healing in RvR so my comments are biased to that role, however I will make comment on solo viability and DPS stats.

Willpower: Increases your chance to Disrupt attacks and increases healing dealt to allies.

Zealots are healers, this stat is the only one that increases you healing, therefore it is the most important stat IMO.

Now there has been a bit of discussion over the relative merits of willpower versus wounds. The discussion postulates that wounds is of more benefit than willpower as +1 willpower only increases you healing by 0.2 hps where as +1 wounds provides an additional 10 health. When it comes to soloing and any situation where you take the bulk of the damage this is quite true, however any time you are partied up and someone else is taking the damage, additional wounds on your part aren’t going to keep them alive where as additional willpower will.

Willpower has the added advantage of increasing your chance to disrupt spells so those Bright Wizards become less of an issue as you increase you willpower.

Wounds: Increases the amount of health you have.

Wounds is you buffer against burst DPS. It gives you more time to switch to yourself to heal and reduces the likelihood of you being insta gibbed by the assist train. Regis has a good analysis of Toughness versus Wounds here, but in general I prioritise Wounds slightly higher than Toughness as it is more difficult to find on gear and I tend to die more often from burst damage than sustained damage. However, as Regis mentions, a balance of Wounds and Toughness is probably best.

For solo questing I would recommend stacking a bit of Wounds so that you can survive getting ganked by a respawn or an unexpected add.

Toughness: Reduces damage dealt to you by opponents.

This will lower the amount of damage taken from each hit. As above, having a bit of toughness is important, however I feel that with our HoT giving Zealots a proxy toughness, surviving burst DPS is more important so therefore wounds is rated higher.

If you were min/maxing PvE it might be worth looking into the amount of toughness you would need for your HoT to counter the incoming damage but so far I have found the base amount of toughness to be more than enough for solo questing against single mobs.

Intelligence: Increases Magic Damage and reduces your opponents chance to block or disrupt attacks.

This is the key stat for solo/DPS Zealots. It increases your spell damage and reduces the chance your spells will be disrupted. I have a separate gear set for solo PvE which is stacked with intelligence but I don’t generally have it in my RvR/Healing set as my damage is usually less than 10% of my healing and therefore the benefit in RvR is marginal.

Initiative: Increases your chance to evade attacks, detect stealthed enemies, and lowers your chance to be critically hit.

Reduced crit chance, increase evade and increased stealth detection all sound nice but really you would still be better off going for more wounds or toughness. Maybe of situational use if you are getting hit from stealth by Witch hunters all the time.

Weapon Skill: Increases your chance to Parry attacks and penetrate an opponents armour.

The increase to parry is a marginal benefit but really there is no point in getting additional weapon skill for a Zealot. Once again you would be better off looking for Toughness or Wounds.

Strength: Increases Melee Damage and reduces your opponents chance to block or parry attacks.

I am not sure how much our melee hits for but if you are relying on your melee attack for damage then something is wrong. I don’t see any point in this stat for a Zealot.

Ballistic Skill: Increases Ranged Damage and reduces your opponents chance to block or evade attacks.

As the Zealot doesn’t have any ranged attacks this stat is worthless.

Ok, so there you have my thoughts on stats for the Zealot. Willpower is the king of healing with Wounds and Toughness as required for survivability. I intend on having a bit more of a closer look at how much is enough as far as survivability goes but so far I haven’t had too many issues with survivability.

Favourite quest so far

This post is inspired by a survey I just filled out over at Nick Yee’s The Daedalus Project. I would highly recommend everyone go and have a look over The Daedalus Project and participate in the surveys there. I find a lot of the information there to be of great interest and I think having a better understanding of  players’ motivations helps me with my online interactions both as a player and as a Guild Leader.

So, back to quests – the survey asked what my favourite quest of all time was and thinking back over all the games I have played and all the quests I have done, I have to say the Dark Elf quest line Legend and Infamy was the one that stood out as the best of all time. I have been thinking about why this is so and I think the thing that grabbed me about the Legend and Infamy quest line was that it specifically involved me. The bulk of the story line was my quest to restore my reputation by tracking down and killing Haydion Whitewrath. Not only did it involve me, it also work in really well with the Dark Elf lore and their hatred of the High Elves.

Unfortunately the other areas don’t tend to do the epic quest lines quite as well as the Dark Elf Tier 1 (although I am holding out hope there may be something later on in T3 or T4). While most quests (not just the epic ones) do have some back story and a solid reason for doing the quests that tied nicely in with the story line, they just didn’t feel quite the same as Legend and Infamy. Now I know that writing a whole bunch of quests with the aim of getting everyone engrossed in the quest line is difficult and I don’t expect every quest to be like that, but I would like to see at least 1 Epic chain that does draw me in and runs through all the chapters in the tier. As it stands, there is little incentive to follow a quest chain through if you have out levelled the area or moved on to another pairing.

One thing that did disappoint me with Legend and Infamy was that as soon as I got into Tier 2 it was like I hadn’t participated in the quest chain at all. The NPCs there obviously hadn’t heard of my deeds and treated me like scum and once again I had to prove my worth. Why can’t at least some of the quests we do have an ongoing impact on our characters such as influencing the way NPCs interact with us? Why couldn’t word have spread to other lands of the amazing feat I carried out in order to kill Haydion Whitewrath and the local inhabitants treat me differently to those who didn’t complete the quest series? Maybe give me a couple more quests to choose from or a different reputation item or even just show a little more respect in their dialogue with me. Surely it wouldn’t be that hard to have a flag in game that toggled between 2 choices depending on whether someone had completed a particular quest chain or not?

So, what are your favourite quests thus far? What would you like to see changed/improved about quests in WAR?

Witch Hunters – oh how I detest thee

To be honest, until last night, Witch Hunters had never really been much of an issue. Sure, they tend to pop up when you don’t expect them to, but usually I would just strafe away, pop a few heals and find the nearest friendly. In T2 I have been mainly running Mourkain’s Temple and in there they don’t really even sneak up on you due to the confined nature of the map.

So, last night, me and a few guild mates went looking for some Keeps to take. We found one in Marshes of Madness which we took back with very little resistance so we moved on to Ostland to try and take back the keep there. This one turned out to be a little more difficult. By the time we got the doors down, we had amassed nearly 18 people in the raid and we were pushing up against a group of 10-12 Order who were holed up on the 2nd floor. We pushing up onto the 2nd floor with a strong force, but due to lack of coordination, our healers ended up with most of the NPCs on them and we wiped badly.

By the time we rezzed and regrouped, the Order ranks had been reinforced to the point where we now had two groups of 24+ people going toe-to-toe out the front of the keep. We weren’t able to make too much progress and they were able to defend quite effectively. It was around this time, with our forces out in the open that I began to experience the pain of the higher level Witch Hunters. Order had a couple of them and they were pretty well coordinated. I died several times to Sudden Accusation while trying to escape their grasp and being a little slow, I just didn’t pick up on the fact that moving was what was killing me.

Thankfully, Ulfryk over at The Raven Calls has some handy tips for dealing with Witch Hunters. As a counter point, Cathbadh has written a nice little article providing advice to Witch Hunters on hunting healers which I also recommend. Getting into the head of an enemy will help you better combat their attacks.

So as the night wore on and our large group of attackers slowly dwindled as people looked for more effective means to level, I continued to run into these troublesome Witch Hunters. I learnt that to survive, I needed to stick close to the freindly DPS and keep moving so as to thwart a sneak attack. I had to stay still if they did manage to jump me, use both Chaotic Blur and Embrace the Warp to limit the incoming damage and switched to healing myself sooner. They still managed to kill me a couple more times, but I also spotted them on approach a few times and deflected the brunt of their attacks.

Levelling as a Zealot

First up, let me state that levelling as a Zealot isn’t as hard as you may first think. A Zealot in WAR is quite different to a priest in WoW as you have quite a few options when it comes to how and where you level. I rolled a Zealot because I wanted to be a healer and I have specced in Witchcraft because that is the path that suits my healing style. I have also prioritised my items for healing over damage (I do maintain a damage set, but I only upgrade it if I can’t get an upgrade for my healing set). Despite this, I feel that I am levelling at a pretty good pace and the only reason I am not at cap is because of my available play time.

Now, your options for levelling are to either solo or group quest, run popular PQs in an open group or run scenarios either solo or in a group. I have done a bit of everything but found that running scenarios and solo questing in between has been the most effective means to level for me. As some people have already mentioned, there are not sufficient quests in T2 to level at the appropriate rate without changing to another pairing. Even mixing in some scenarios there isn’t quite enough. The approach I took was to run through the Chaos versus Empire chapter 5 and 6, then pop over to Dark Elf versus High Elf area and do Chapters 5-8. I then popped back into Chaos versus Empire for Chapters 7 and 8. This saw me through to 19 with a few runs in Stone Trolls Crossing just to balance things out.

One significant change that came in just as I hit 19 was the ability to queue for scenarios from any racial pairing. I am not sure if all servers were the same, but this dropped my queue times from around 30 minutes per scenario down to around 2 minutes for the Mourkain Temple scenario (the others don’t tend to happen much at all any more). Most of my time from mid way through 19 to mid way through 21 has now been spent in Mourkain Temple. In fact, last night I was riding down from Chaos Chapter 9 to the Warcamp in Ostland while queued for Mourkain Temple. In the time it took me to ride that distance I had done 6-7 scenarios and gained 1/2 a level. Not bad for what is essentially less than 10 minutes outside of a scenario.

Why are scenarios so effective for levelling? Well, as a healer you are usually involved in every kill that happens as you will heal the DPS who are making the kills. This gives you a reasonable amount of XP for each scenario run. I find that I am usually in the top 3 for XP each scenario we win and if we lose, my XP might drop from 10k to 7k, which isn’t too bad at all. 10k XP from an 8 minute game in Mourkain Temple is a pretty good rate of XP gain but the best thing about it is I can play my Zealot how I want to play; as a healer.

Now there will be times when scenarios aren’t popping and this is when you will do some questing. I will admit, Zealots kill things a little slower than a sorceress when solo. However, as solo questing isn’t the only way to level, when you do quest it doesn’t tend to drag on as much as just grinding quests does. When questing I will swap out my healing set for a damage set that is stacked with +int and +wounds to help me survive. I also swap around my tactics. One tactic that makes life a fair bit easier is Divine Fury which you get at level 13. The other tactic I run is Endless Gifts. With these minor changes you can increase you damage output enough to make a difference.

The next thing to note for soloing is the ability cycle. I generally start out a pull with Scourge, then put up my Harbinger of Doom, followed by a Tzeentch’s Cry, Warp Reality, Demon Spittle, Tzeentch’s Cry, Tzeentch’s Cordial if required, Demon Spittle, Tzeentch’s Cry and maybe the activated ability from Mark of Daemonic Fury. Mobs usually die prior to the last tick of Warp Reality so around the 20 second mark. I can take down 2 equal level mobs at once in a little under 40 seconds but my AP ends up being a little low.

I have found PQs to be a bit hit and miss now that I have fallen a little behind the levelling curve. If there are people around running PQs I will join in to add a bit of variety and get some influence but unless one of the influence rewards is a big upgrade, I will not go out of my way to complete PQs or bother to grind the first stage solo.

I hope this gives some insight into how levelling a Zealot doesn’t have to be a chore and I would be interested in hearing how you have levelled your toons.

Impressions so Far

So, a couple of weeks in and I have been having an absolute blast with WAR. My Zealot Xibalba is 21 and I have a couple of alts around level 8ish. I have started up a branch of my guild, <The Basin>, on the Oceanic Ironclaw server and got a bunch of my WoW mates on board. As a guild we have run Sacellum Dungeons a couple of times and defeated all except for the Hydra at the end of the Southern wing, attempted the T1 Lair in Norsca and done a bunch of guild RvR in T1 and T2.

The things I love about WAR so far:
- scenarios are way more fun than I expected
- open RvR totally rocks in a guild group
- there is a lot of depth to guilds themselves and what you can do at the different guild ranks
- healing in PvP is actually fun
- I haven’t had to grind for cash for my mount or for gear

Things I don’t like about WAR:
- Zealot itemisation is a little bizarre (more on this in another article)
- Sacellum Dungeons were a little weak and there is little incentive to go there
- finding some opposition in RvR can be difficult

There are a few other annoying things at the moment but they mainly relate to polish and I am confident Mythic will sort them out. Nothing too game breaking, although that missing texture in my hood is driving me nuts …

Why a Zealot?

In all of the MMOs I have played to date I have played a Tank archetype as my main character. In WAR I was looking to do something different so when I got the opportunity to play in the closed beta, I decided to try all the different classes just to make sure I wasn’t limiting my experience based on a class description by Mythic and my previous MMO experiences.

I found most classes enjoyable and relatively easy to play in PvE, however, in RvR I found that I enjoyed the healer archetypes the most. A solid healer can turn the tide of battle and I found that generally I was pretty good at healing. When playing a tank or melee DPS I would often get frustrated with the lack of heals I was getting so the best way to solve that issue was to roll a healer.

So, having narrowed the choice down to a healer archetype, I spent a bit more time playing the different healers, the Zealot, Disciple of Khaine and the Goblin Shaman.

My initial foray into healing was with a Disciple of Khaine. Having a predominately melee background I thought a melee healer would be the easiest for me to get used to. In PvE I had no problems at all. Mobs didn’t move around too much and I was able to focus on balancing my DPS and heals to keep the other melee and myself alive while doing as much DPS as I could. Once I got into RvR however, I found that I could only really focus on both my healing and DPS if the target wasn’t moving too much. If the target was moving around, I would either lose track of where I was at in my healing cycle or where I was at with my DPS/debuffs. In general I am poor at multitasking and while I could do ok with a DoK, I just didn’t feel that I was making the most of the career due to not being able to multitask the 3 key things a DoK needs to track: heals, DPS and positioning.

My melee background also cause some issues when I played the Goblin Shaman. I had a lot of trouble getting used to the cast timers on most of the Shaman abilities (I have the same issues with ranged DPS) and I would often find I was either interrupting a cast by moving or getting a bunch of push back due to that rather nasty Warrior Priest wailing on me while I waited for my cast to go off. I also found on my shaman that I would tend to spend more time healing than DPS and I really didn’t feel very effective at either.

So that left the Zealot. With a few instant casts and other spells on very short 1 second cast timers, I didn’t have the same interrupt issues I found on the Shaman. I didn’t have to maintain melee range to power up my heals like I did with the DoK and I could focus on healing without having to worry about keeping up my DPS to power up my heals. My play style with the Zealot involves a lot of movement to keep up with the action and maintain line of sight. I throw a HoT on most things that move and I tend to use my instant cast heal and morale heal in cases where more direct healing is required. The constant moving helps in reducing the incoming damage and doesn’t impact on the amount of healing I put out to the same extend as it did on my Shaman.

So there you have it, my rationale behind rolling a Zealot in Warhammer Online

Welcome

Welcome to the Denizens of Xibalba, a blog about my adventures in online gaming. I am currently playing as a Zealot in Warhammer Online so this blog will be mainly about my Zealot and Warhammer Online but I reserve the right to digress into other aspects of online gaming.

As a bit of history, I started playing games online back in the days of the original Diablo. I got into MMOs with Star Wars Galaxies at launch in Jun 03. I played SWG until world of Warcraft came out and switched to that at the beginning of 2005. I played WoW on and off until finally leaving when I got into the closed beta for Warhammer. In my time playing WoW I had tried a few other games such as Eve, HG:L and AoC but nothing really grabbed me until Warhammer.

So, here we are, a new Warhammer blog … Enjoy