Continuing the overview — Archmage and Shaman

All caveats still apply – theorizing from external info, NOT from the game itself.

In the last post I said that if you wanted a pure healer the RPZ was probably your analog pairing of choice.  This is and is not true, and this post’s subject – the AMSH pair – is the reason why.

The RPZ was going to be a healer regardless of spec.  Our AMSH has a choice.  It starts with the fact this career pair has a dual path of strenght – damage and healing.  On paper, they’re just as good at either job – and can flip freely and without penalty from one to the other.  I say on paper…  lots of forum comments here that say that up to the point where you start the mastery (spec) work, this is absolutely true.  And you’re a very strong DPSer and/or you’re a very strong healer.  Which means that as an AMSH you stand a darn good chance of being embroiled in controversy.  I’ve mentioned that controversy before – “healers should HEAL.  If you want to be DPS, roll a [various classes]“.  Here’s the deal, before we get to the special mechanism…

We can sorta compare our AMSH to the priest, and that’s not a little bit because of the mastery tracks.  See, we’ve got one track that’s dedicated to healing.  And then we’ve got two tracks that are damage tracks.  One’s allegedly a direct damage track while the other is a DoT and Debuff focus, though both have each.  In other words, it’d be as though the WoW priest had Holy, Shadow, and the warlock Affliction talent trees.  If the AMSH specs the healing mastery, the player is a great complement to the RPZ, able to provide solid and near-continuous spike heals to mesh with the RPZ’s sustained heals.  Doing so, however, means not taking the DPS tracks.  And there…  For the WoW player, particularly one who played prior to TBC, it’s a familiar experience.  “Why are you Shadow?  We need a healer, not a knock-off Warlock.”  Even though fully specced and oriented the AMSH is a strong, powerful, and dangerous DPS player (who can provide backup heals in a pinch).  That backup point brings us to the peculiar mechanism of the AMSH – the balance trick.

No, that’s not what it’s called, but since it’s different in each career it’ll work.  Here’s the deal:  each time you cast a spell of healing, you get a balance point for the pain.  And the reverse applies.  You can only have points of one or the other, not both, and they’re capped at five points.  These points have an effect on THOSE spells if/when you cast them. They make them more powerful and/or faster.  The latter is especially useful as they can… picture casting five SW:P, and your next Greater Heal becomes an instant.  Yeah, that sort of useful.  And that leads to some of the tactical options.

Logically, the AMSH does the most healing by only casting heal spells.  As any WoW healer can tell you, however, healing is a matter of quality, not quantity.  And so it might be a lot smarter to pop some small damage spells so when the Massive Spike hits I’m ready.  Of course if I have to sustain, I can.  And by the same token, if I’ve run lots of damage spells then my “OMG I’m Under Attack” spells (there is a lot of PVP, remember) are.. no, let me rephrase.  I now have a lot more options to use as OMG spells – spells that would normally not be used due to time of cast.

The races are High Elf and greenskins (another goblin), for those who choose based upon race.  Armor is… snicker, what armor?  Well, robes, and we priests are more than aware of what THAT means in the long run.  This is another strong healer, but this one CAN be offensive instead (at the risk of receiving a lot of LRN2PLY messages).  Nobody will care how good a shadowpriest you are – you’re supposed to heal.

For me, another possibility as an alt.  I’m tired, for now, of paper armor.  Though I must admit the idea of a Warlock Priest is kind of fun…

Continuing the Overview – Rune Priest/Zealot

Again, some caveats.  I’m not playing yet, so cannot give the little details.  This is meant as much for “figuring out what I want” as it is telling the WoW readers most of you are how these are both the same and different.  Do NOT think I’m trying to identify “best”-  not least, that’s going to depend on your play preference and biases.  (To make that plainer – I won’t be playing Destruction.  Oh, I like greenskins – on tabletop that’s one of my armies.  But just as Undead in WoW make me uncomfortable, I’m bothered by Chaos.  Dark elves are just short of being Chaos Elves — a whole nation built on the concept that cooperation and trust is fatal just doesn’t work for me, and I can’t disbelieve enough to make it work.)

Aaaanyway.  The reason I started with the Rune Priest / Zealot (henceforth RPZ) is because of the three healer types this is probably the closest thing Warhammer’s got to a “pure” healer.  Armor is between that of the Archmage/shaman (AMSH) and the melee based Warrior Priest/Disciples of Khaine (WPDK).  They’re probably the weakest (relative terms) for offensive play, but they can last and last and last with their healing.

In addition to the basic heal casts (direct, HoT and AoE) they’re probably the most prolific buffers – at least they have what appears to be the most opportunity to buff.  They’ve got a couple of things to note in addition.  First, they’ve got an interesting ‘on demand’ capability.  That is, some of their buffs come with an extra action that can be triggered by the person who was buffed.  For example, a tank could be wearing this buff that provides extra spell resistance, and in the middle of a largish pull trigger it so it does an AoE damage blast – and the spell resist continues.

The second thing to note is mastery trees.  Think spec – seriously, that’s what they are.  For the other two analog sets the choices are between healing and damage.  As I said, the RPZ is the closest to a “true” healer (from the WoW point of view), and it’s demonstrated by the trees.  Basically: Direct Single; Over Time; and AoE.  Notice I didn’t say “heal” in any of those three.  MOSTLY they are.  But there are a few damage spells, and they’re relevant to the particular mastery path.

If you’re an RPZ, you’re going to choose based on your play style as well as the demands of any groups with which you regularly play.  At this point I refuse to do theory crafting on which does how much.  Not least there are a lot of other elements that are synergistic.  (I’ve not discussed talents, gear, supporting buffs, and all the other fun that can be involved.)  You’ll choose an RPZ if you want a class that’s mostly meant as a healer, one who CAN solo stuff, but is clearly representative of the healer archetype.  (Ain’t no RPZ shadowpriests, y’all.)  On the other hand, you’re stuck with either a dwarf or a human (chaos) for your race.  If it’s race that drives you… ok.

The class appeals to me because of its familiarity.  Given I was burning out with that same familiarity, I’ll probably not choose it as my main.  An alt, though… maybe.

Pondering another set of guild loot rules

Actually, pondering a particular rule.  Now as I – and just about every other blogger that’s discussed making guilds work – have noted, deciding who gets what loot from a drop is probably THE biggest cause of guild drama.  Again repeating myself, pretty much every rule can be scammed and will be disliked by someone. They all have their flaws and weaknesses.  And as long as the guild TRUSTS that the rules will be consistently and equitably applied, they’ll generally accept them despite all the problems.

Which means the following is not a magic bullet.

I’ve recommended some rules before – and bluntly they’re for major guilds who want to deal with the large amount of paperwork.  I thought of a small, different variation I’d like to bring to the table for general consideration.  I suspect it’s not new, just that it may be something that works.

The bag of loot drops, and some of it is Really Good Stuff – the type of stuff that causes the problem.  The plan:

Everybody rolls;

High roller gets three choices:

Pick an item

Pick a person who can pick an item

Pass.

Once the high roller is done, the second highest roller goes – UNLESS he (or she) was ‘picked’ by the first roller.

If the group’s been gone through once and there is still loot, run through a second time, same rules.  After that, if you still have stuff it’s probable that nobody wants any.  Vend it, disenchant it for the magic supplies, whatever.  I’d still recommend following the order.  Three passes should get everything gone.  Heck, for most raids on which I’ve participated two will probably do it.  There’ve been rare exceptions – when every SINGLE item is designated for a particular class and you’ve only got one of that class.  As I said, “exception”.

is it perfect?  heh – absolutely not.  Is it fast and simple?  actually, yes.  Would it work?  I think so.

Feel free to use – or modify – to your heart’s (and guild’s) content.

Have fun.

Examining Warhammer Healers – overview

Looks like I’ll be playing in the not so distant future.  There’s a decent chance I’ll play a healer (oh, gee, big surprise) though there are two other classes that look, well, fun to me.  However, given my history and such, I thought I’d do a bit of meandering discussion of this game’s answer to the Priest (and the other healy types).

For the handful of you who haven’t looked, Warhammer has two sides – destruction and order.  Each side has four “archetypes” and three races for a total of 12 careers (what we call classes) on each side.  Well, not really, as Mythic decided four of these – two on each side – weren’t quite right and pulled them so the game would get out sooner.  For those who care, that’s one tank and one melee DPS career.  There are three ranged DPS and three healer careers, one for each race on each side.

Now allegedly each side has a mirror career on the other side.  I actually prefer “analog”, and some are closer than others.  The similarities between the Shadow Warrior (think hunter without a pet) bear little comparison to the Squig Herder (hunter WITH pet, and oh what a pet) beyond the fact they both tend to use bow but are quite competent at melee.  ANYWAY…  Healers, however, are fairly close analogues – close enough that the other can be considered identical save a handwave and some color text.

So the three healers are Archmage (High Elf)/Shaman (greenskin aka Orc/Goblin); Rune Priest (Dwarf) / Zealot (Chaos); and Warrior Priest (Empire aka Human) / Disciple of Khaine (Dark Elf).  Respectively, we’ve got robe level armor (armor level 0) who are offensive/healing spellcasters; Light (level 1) armor who are mainly healers with some offensive capability; and medium (level 2) armored melee healers.  These last are NOT paladins, though everyone keeps thinking of them that way (with a bit of justification).  One thing Mythic tried to do with all three is make it so they COULD fight alone if they had to.  The worst for offense – the RP/Z – has the counteradvantage of taking forever to kill (fast, very good heals), giving plenty of time against most classes for their relatively small damage to matter.

I need to point out here that every class is vulnerable somewhere.  In forums this inevitably leads to tears and complaints of needing improvement – and in other forums the early stages of “Nerf These Guys…”

In later posts I’m going to do a bit more detail for those folk who haven’t started.  I’ll point out I’m not going to do intimate details yet – I don’t have the game myself to doublecheck – but there’s enough info to give solid understanding nonetheless.  The quick point is that each healer has advantages and disadvantages that a smart team leader can juggle for outstanding impact.

Have fun…

some things remain the same

I found this, and while specific to Warhammer I couldn’t help thinking of certain WoW players I know.  Especially with WoW’s new achievements…

Wiiiiii

I’m tempted to restart my WoW account even though the game itself doesn’t enthuse me.  It’s because I finally put together the bits and pieces needed to WiiWow.  OK, that needs some expansion, explanation, and then discussion.

A while back, while I was fading, I commented I’d like to play WoW on the wii.  It turns out that various folk have been working on how to use the Wiimote to run, well, several things.  To put in simple terms: a bluetooth dongle (or native bluetooth capability), bluetooth control software, and a little program called GlovePIE are about all you need.  Well, that and some scripting loving.

GlovePIE was written to allow VR gloves to be used with a computer.  Frankly it’s a brilliant bit of work, all kudos to the designer, Carl Kenner.

Once it’s all loaded, you have to do some script work.  Basically the scripts are to convert the message from the WiiMote and/or Nunchuk to a signal the PC understands.  Yes, this includes the movement calculation from the sensor bar so it can detect move toward/away/left/right/up/down/yaw(left and right) from the WiiMote.  To be blunt, I’m fascinated and boggled.  Not least is figuring out what to put where.  Huh, you don’t get it?

OK, let’s say you use your wiimote for left/right.  Now, how do you keep going?  If it’s logarithmically cued – that is, if it’s “the further from center the faster you move” you get two more things with which to mess: center (and tolerance for not being exact) and off-screen (when the wiimote can’t see any of the IR sensors any more).  The fun one is move – forward and strafe.  (Turn is just left/right while moving).  Let’s make “C” the ‘go’ button.  And I’ll use yaw for strafing left and right.  I think I’ll leave up and down uncued unless flying.

Now I’ve got the D-pad and A and B buttons on the ‘mote, plus the nunchuk.  Nunchuk next – it’s now my pointer controller (separate from movement if I can).  This might not work, darnit.  Still…  I want the nunchuk to move the pointer across the menus with the first and second buttons being mouse-buttons 1 and 2.

D-pad is camera.

A and B are… hmm.  I really don’t know.  Two macros, to be loaded situationally?  That’s probably best.

Know what?  I still don’t, quite, like it.  But it’s a rough idea.  If anyone is reading, how would YOU orient your ‘mote and ‘chuk system to run the game?  Because I now know it’s POSSIBLE, and for that reason…

Oh – vent.  And look real, real hard for a voice-to-chat addon (like that’s going to work.  sigh.)

It’s the Healer’s Fault

There are no official forums for WARhammer online, but there are plenty of unofficial ones.  And on several one thread/topic is so prevalent it’s literally locked as soon as it appears.  It’s the various theme of, “Why won’t healers do their jobs?”

Now there’s a degree of legitimacy to this.  There are plenty of screenshots of healers having extremely low heal numbers – of only healing themselves, or even only a few people.  That said, the moaning and groaning tells us just a weeeee bit more of what’s going on once we dig further into the sludge.

The complaint really goes, “Why isn’t the healer keeping ME alive, fulltime?”  Buried – or sometimes openly stated – is the belief that the healer has no purpose at all in the game besides healing.  There are games where that is true.  It’s not true of WoW, and it’s especially not true of WAR.

Let’s start with WoW.  There are a few healer-type classes, though one is pretty much always a healer: the priest.  Even so, the priest has a lot of other things to do.  The priest may be exploring.  The priest may be doing his/her own quest.  The priest may be playing with a Holy Smite build.

In WAR, this is even greater.  While the archetypes are called healers, the reality is that they’re PVP players who CAN heal.  There’s the warrior priest/disciple of Khaine, which are “melee healers”.  That is, they swing their weapons and that gives them the juice with which to heal.  Bluntly, and especially at the beginning, they’re going to heal one target predominately: themselves.  If you’re nearby, you might get some splash.  The Archmage/Shaman is another “can” not “must” heal.  Over half the spells are damage spells.  While not as OMG as a dedicated DPS caster, they’re quite capable of dealing much damage on the field.  And that is, as any DPS player can tell you, fun.  Even the purest of the healers, the runepriest/zealot, can do some damage if that’s what they want to do.  And that’s the real key, “IF they want to.”

So the first response is they don’t HAVE to heal. “They rolled a healer they have to heal. That’s what the archetype says.”  Bah.  They paid money to play a game, and the ONLY thing they should be striving to do is enjoy themselves.  If they want to be a minitank/melee dps’er, they can.  It’s THEIR decision.

A short digression.  Already the word’s coming out that the healers are dangerous in 1V1 situations.  Unlike WoW, all three are hard to kill.  Sure, their DPS isn’t as good as pretty much anything else, but it takes pretty much FOREVER to kill them because they heal so well.  Take long enough and even the relatively piddly damage of the Runepriest/Zealot adds up.  Besides, take long enough and somebody else might come by.  Of course, that leads to the other reason healers might not be healing.

I cannot count the number of times Zingiber stood in a PVP situation, targeted by rogues and/or warlocks and/or whatever, and suddenly some idiot passing by yells HEAL ME – without doing diddly about the players chomping on me.  Yeah, the player who rolls a runepriest does tend to be a healer.  But if you the DPS or Tank roll by and don’t keep others off, then turnabout is fair play.

“Waaah, they’re not healing me,” should get an immediate, “what did you do for the healers?” in response.  Actually, I saw that.  And the responses left me shaking my head because for far too many it was, “huh?”

It’s a team.  There are two kinds of team – a bunch of supporters making a star shine and a cooperative organization with flashes from everywhere.  All things being equal the latter tends to do better.  So if you’re not getting heals, it might just be because you’re not part of the team – not just “grouped” but actually being part of the team.

Want a healer to dedicate to you?  Become that healer’s bestest buddy and keep everyone off him or her.  You’ll love the results, and then you can say with absolute honestly, “It’s the healer’s fault (that I’m such a dangerous player).”