Retribution
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EVE Online readies Retribution deployment
You EVE Online pilots better have a yummy bag lunch prepared by your moms because you're going to need all the nutrition to carry you through the launch of the game's newest expansion next week. The folks at CCP announced that the game will go down at 4:00 a.m. EST on December 4th and hopefully will come back up around 6:20 a.m. on the same morning. While most of the major features have received the all-star dev diary treatment, the studio doesn't want to overlook the smaller but still important line items. A new "little things" dev diary highlights all of the lesser-known changes that are coming with the expansion, including the ability to drag icons into text fields, an easier way to find yourself in a fleet, a streamlined repair list, and many other quality-of-life improvements.
EVE Online dev blog details changes to Drone Regions coming in Retribution
Not all regions are created equally, and that's something EVE Online devs are fixing. No, that doesn't mean all regions will be boring carbon copies. But it does mean that devs are adding content to the eight different areas known collectively as the Drone Regions to bring them more in line with the rest of the New Eden cluster. When the Retribution expansion hits in December, the Drone Regions (so named for the special drone content located within them) will be getting four officer spawns, five officer modules, and hauler spawns scattered throughout the sectors. Salvage from NPCs is also getting a buff to increase it to the levels seen elsewhere in the game, and rogue drones will give sec status. In other EVE news, CCP announced that fans can now subscribe to EON magazine using PLEX.
CCP lays out the details on EVE's revamped bounties, kill rights, and more
It's time to learn about what CCP has been up to in EVE Online! The newest dev blog is just brimming with juicy tidbits on the team's work for Retribution, especially concerning the bounty, kill rights, and war systems. Bounty Hunters now have their own listing in the Bounty Office. Any bounties a player has posted can be tracked via the "My Bounties" tab. The minimum price for bounties has been lowered, and you'll be informed of precisely who has placed a bounty on you (which is marginally better than the looming knowledge that some faceless someone, somewhere, wants you dead). The kill right system has been retooled, clarified, and made more accessible through players' character sheets. Aggressors now have an option to retract wars that have been made mutual, thereby ending the war in 24 hours. Cost multipliers for multiple wars have been eliminated, and cost scaling has been retuned. Read all the details over at the official blog.
EVE Online sorts out its inventory system
While inventory management might not be at the top of everyone's most-anticipated expansion features, CCP is going to lengths to drum up enthusiasm for EVE Online's upcoming inventory overhaul. In a new dev diary, the changes coming with the Retribution expansion are laid out in excruciating detail. When players get their hands on Retribution, they'll find a much more streamlined inventory experience. The windows will persist longer, performance time will improve by leaps and bounds, the system will be easier to use, a compact view will be introduced, and there will be multiple ways to access one's inventory. Even something as small and mundane as the scroll bars are being revamped. The devs are also adding an intuitive feature to allow players an easy way to loot wrecks either all at once or one at a time based on whether or not the index tree is expanded.
EVE Online prepares to roll out Retribution ship rebalancing
With EVE Online's newest expansion, Retribution, only a couple of weeks away, the devs are all abuzz over the features and changes coming with it. One of the biggest of these is a widespread effort to rebalance ships and put them in line with each other. CCP Fozzie reports that 40 new and existing spaceships are slated for the expansion overhaul, with more on the way after that. Even though change can be a scary prospect, Fozzie sees the rebalancing as a boon to the community: "Every time EVE's balance changes, it creates new opportunities for clever players to demonstrate their creativity and separate themselves from the pack. We know that our customers are amazingly creative with ship fittings and tactics and that if we give them a new set of tools they'll do things better than we could have imagined with them." The post goes on to detail the changes being made to frigates, destroyers, cruisers, weapons, and mods when Retribution goes live.
EVE Online maps out 2013 balance changes
With changes to Retribution ships scheduled to land in EVE Online on December 4th, the dev team is already casting its sights to 2013 for additional tweaks to other tiers of ships. In a new dev blog, CCP lays out its detailed plans for ship balancing come the new year. According to the team, battlecruisers are next in line for adjustments, followed by battleships. While the devs have a lot of changes in mind for the former, they're largely happy with the state of the latter and plan only small shifts in their current role. The post includes a handy chart which shows how all of the tech 1 ships will relate to each other when these changes are finalized. The post also elaborates on new skill requirements when all of this is said and done, as well as eventual plans to tackle tier 2 and 3 ships.
The Light and How to Swing It: Retribution reader mailbag
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! When my guild first started in Mogu'shan Vaults and we were working on The Stone Guard, I was rapidly approaching what felt like a breaking point. I believe our first combination was Jade, Cobalt, and Jasper Guardians, and I was having trouble managing my rotation and cooldowns while simultaneously dodging mines and trying to wordlessly negotiate with my chained partner which of us would be moving toward the other. I vacillated between rage, frustration, and despondency, wondering if this was an accurate reflection of how the entire tier would go. Luckily I had some good friends willing to listen to my ranting and incoherent babbling. They managed to eventually convince me to not give up, bite my lip, and give myself some time to get readjusted. I'm still not the best ret paladin in the world, but I'm having a much easier go at working through my abilities and staying out of bad stuff ... most of the time. Anyway, my inspiration this week came from quite a number of you who had emailed me asking some of the same questions I asked myself at the start of my level 90 activities, most of which can be summed up with a single inquiry: "How can I improve?" Balance your DPS with your survivability. Most people will correctly tell you that the most important skill you can develop, whether it's for PvP or PvE, is self-preservation. If you die, you can't do any damage; it's as simple as that. However, what use is staying alive if you're spending so much time watching the floor that you're being outclassed by Mr. Grubbs?
EVE Evolved: Three ways to break Retribution
EVE Online's upcoming Retribution expansion is set to revolutionise PvP with its brand-new criminal and bounty hunting systems. Players will be able to hunt down criminals who show their faces in highsec, and bounty hunters will track not just individuals but also entire corporations and alliances. If past expansions are any indication, however, the first thing players invariably do with any new feature is to try to break it. Some people will undoubtedly find ways to bend the new gameplay into scams, others will trick players into getting themselves killed for a few laughs, and a few will hunt for borderline exploits. We now know enough about Retribution's new features to figure out some of the ways they can be potentially abused. The ability to sell kill rights opens up a whole new scam based on tempting players with a juicy target and then pulling the rug out from under their feet. The new Suspect flag that lets players dispense justice to criminals can also be used to bait innocent players into getting themselves killed. There may even be a way to get rid of bounties for free, undermining one of the expansion's core mechanics. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at three potential pitfalls in the upcoming Retribution expansion, how they might work when the expansion goes live, and how to protect yourself from falling victim to them.
The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing options for ret paladins
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! Earlier last week I updated my retribution guide for Mists, so if you're still scratching your head wondering what your talents do or why everything and its mother is spitting out holy power then please feel free to give that a look. Part of that update was to plug in the latest stat weights that help us determine, among other things, which pieces of gear we want and which ones we could probably do without. With heroic dungeons and three difficulties of raids available for plundering, as well as Hallow's End fast approaching, this is a great time to figure out which pieces you'll want to set your sights on. Before we jump into it, however, a quick examination of those aforementioned stat weights shows us that the main stats we're looking, aside from strength, are hit, expertise, and haste. Note that pieces that natively possess hit and expertise are particularly nice because it will make reaching those caps much easier. Remember that our tier won't reliably drop until Terrace of Endless Spring and Heart of Fear are released, but there is a small chance it will drop from Sha of Anger. Also keep in mind that gear out of Mogu'shan Vaults has raid finder, normal, and heroic equivalents. I am going to try to squeeze this all into one post, so I hope you'll forgive me if I refrain from my usual snarky one-liners and bad jokes in order to provide useful info like drop locations and item costs.
EVE Evolved: Bounty hunting and revenge
Last week I looked into the major PvP changes coming in EVE Online's upcoming Retribution expansion, from the piracy revamp to a new global flagging system that puts players in the driving seat of justice. This week CCP Games revealed full details of the upcoming bounty hunting system revamp, and I have to say I'm really excited. The new bounty system not only makes bounty hunting a viable profession again but also gives players a way to deal significant financial damage to their enemies without getting their hands dirty. As if that weren't enough, players will even be able to enforce the law on their own terms, trawling high-security space for criminals and lighting them up for everyone to kill. Corporate- and alliance-level bounties will push grudges to new levels, enabling a new type of passive financial warfare. The new bounty system can also be used as a tool to motivate troops into battle, a way to incentivise boring but necessary starbase warfare, and even a method for running tournaments. In this week's EVE Evolved, I get ridiculously excited about EVE's upcoming bounty hunting revamp and explain why it makes the Retribution expansion a complete game-changer.
EVE Online dev blog discusses Bounty System revamp
It takes some impressive cojones for a game developer to come right out and say that one of its game's systems is broken, but that's exactly what CCP has done in the latest EVE Online dev blog. "The bounty system is broken!" reads the opening to the post, which -- surprise! -- focuses on all the ways the game's current bounty system is borked, and more importantly, how CCP plans to go about fixing it in the upcoming Retribution release. CCP's main goal with the bounty system revamp, according to the post, is to "give people faith that money they put into the bounty system has a fair chance of actually leading to their target crying tears of fear and frustration." Lovely! CCP also wants to "support bounty hunting as a career choice, preferably in a way that makes it possible for newer players as well as older players to get involved." To top it all off, the studio is expanding the bounty system to cover corporations and alliances as well, so if you've got a grudge against a corp and the money to put all its members six feet under, you're in luck. The full list of changes coming to the system is mind-numbingly extensive, but if you'd like all of the fine details, you should head on over and give the official post a read-through.
EVE Online video and dev blog detail improvements coming with Retribution
In a new video released today by CCP, we're treated to a guided tour of the teams responsible for EVE Online's winter expansion: Retribution. CCP Ripley, the senior producer for release development, introduces us to each team responsible for the upcoming features, including improved visuals, five new ships, UI tweaks, and of course, the new bounty hunter system. In addition, CCP has released a new dev blog by CCP karkur from Team Pony Express detailing a few of the upcoming user experience improvements coming with Retribution. One of these is a clearer indicator of who's dealing the most damage to your ship. CCP karkur points out that this is still in very early development, so things may change slightly between now and launch on December 4th. Check out the complete dev blog for more information; the full video with CCP Ripley is after the jump
EVE Evolved: Player justice in Retribution
This week CCP released a new devblog on upcoming piracy and PvP changes heading to EVE Online with this winter's Retribution expansion. In addition to new ships and an as-yet unrevealed bounty hunter revamp, Retribution completely redesigns the Crimewatch system that decides whom you can legally shoot and stops players from docking or jumping out of the system in the middle of combat. EVE's aggression mechanics are notoriously complicated and buggy, but Retribution aims to simplify the system and put players in the driving seat of criminal justice. The new Crimewatch system not only gets rid of old, undocumented code that was written when dinosaurs roamed the earth but also has far-reaching consequences for pirates, people engaging in PvE and the upcoming bounty hunting revamp. Pirates will now be able to escape into high-security space without police intervention, loot thieves will be subjected to mob justice, nullsec ratters won't be as safe as they think, and neutral remote repairing will be a thing of the past. In this week's EVE Evolved, I delve into Crimewatch 2.0 and how the Retribution expansion will change the game for pirates, ratters, and people engaging in PvP across New Eden.
CCP unveils EVE Online: Retribution, coming this winter
Earlier this evening at the VETO EVE fan gathering in London, CCP announced EVE Online's 18th expansion: EVE Online: Retribution. Due in December, this latest content overhaul promises to bring some of the biggest changes yet to the space-themed sandbox MMO, which is steadily ramping up for its 10th anniversary next May. We sat down with Jon Lander and Kristoffer Touborg, EVE's executive producer and lead designer respectively, to get a first-hand look at some of Retribution's key features as well as the enormous pile of tweaks, updates, and adjustments players might expect with any CCP-helmed update. One thing is certain: After Retribution, the world of internet spaceships will never again be the same.
The Light and How to Swing It: 4 ways to start retadin combat off with a bang
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! One of the perks of this job, at least in my mind, is receiving reader mail and interacting with the community. I love doing what I can to help people new to the spec; it's really why I started blogging and writing about retribution paladins in the first place! Anyway, last week I received an email posing the following question: I have noticed that some other ret paladins have very high initial DPS. How are they doing this and how can I do the same? The string of abilities and buttons you hit at the beginning of combat, called opening sequences or openers, are a much-discussed topic among theorycrafters and the community at large. Naturally, your first few attacks can set the pace for the rest of the fight. Fortunately, the spec is forgiving enough that even if you flub a button at the beginning of an encounter, your overall DPS won't go straight in the toilet. Even so, I have a few pieces of advice up my sleeve from my own experiences that can help you start the fight off right.
The Light and How to Swing It: In defense of Inquisition
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! When your paladin first hit level 81 and you visited your trainer, I bet you had no idea how much of an impact that little ability called Inquisition would have on your future DPSing career. OK, maybe if you read the tooltip you could have had some idea, but I will fully admit that I completely forgot it was in my spellbook until a short while after I hit 85. And to be fair, at the time it was a really lackluster ability. Sure, Exorcism hit like a truck thanks to the new version of The Art of War, and Hammer of Wrath still hit decently hard, but other than those two abilities, Inquisition didn't really buff a whole lot. One of the main selling points of Inquisition (if not the main selling point) came when Blizzard changed our mastery from 3 free holy power to X% extra holy damage off your most used abilities in patch 4.0.6, allowing Inquisition to boost an even larger percentage of our damage by 30%. So, thanks to our mastery, Inquisition is here to stay. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? In case my own opinion wasn't made clear in the title, I have been a long-time supporter of this ability. However, I know that there is a very large group of players with a dissenting opinion, and that's OK. Some preferred the Wrath model of retribution to the current model, and for others, it's just the opposite. In an effort to make my reasoning clear, I'm going to pick a few of the most common complaints I have seen or heard. Hopefully, my responses won't make me seem like I'm a masochistic freak who loves to stare at a countdown and plot in advance exactly when to refresh it. Because I'm totally not -- my therapist assures me that I'm a completely normal person.
Retribution bug hotfixed, Vengeance temporarily returns to PvP
Zarhym has given us an update on the bug with Seal of Truth from yesterday, and it opens a fascinating window into the complexities of the code that ultimately is the World of Warcraft. Zarhym - Update on Retribution Paladin Bug The bug where paladin Seals could sometimes cause excessive damage has been fixed. This bug came as a result of a hotfix we put in to fix an issue where some attacks, such as Scatter Shot, were still causing Vengeance in PvP situations. While these things may seem totally unrelated, it has to do with our proc system, which is an extremely complicated mechanic under the hood. We reverted that hotfix, meaning you may sometimes see Vengeance in PvP. But we don't think that will present a major balance concern at this time. To be clear, we have no current plans to take action against players who experienced this bug last night unless we come across any extreme cases. The error was ours and we haven't seen any evidence -- so far -- of players excessively exploiting the bug. We reserve the right to take action if we do find evidence of players crossing the line to repeatedly exploit this bug for major in-game advantages. source I won't lie, I find this fascinating. The idea that the issue lies in a system that on the surface would seem totally unrelated gives me the shivers just imagining what it must be like to maintain and advance the design for code that's been around for years and years. I have to agree that letting Vengeance sometimes pop up in PvP is probably the better option. It's only going to happen in an extremely limited set of circumstances, anyway. I'm also glad only extreme edge cases will be seeing bans, as I had no idea the bug even existed while leveling my ret paladin last night and only figured it out afterwards. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.
Retribution paladin DPS broken after realm restarts [Updated]
According to several reports, including the official forums, World of Logs, and several of our own staff, retribution paladins are experiencing a bug after tonight's rolling realm restarts. The bug has retribution paladins dealing several times their normal damage, with new records on World of Logs easily exceeding 100,000 DPS on any given Dragon Soul encounter. The bug appears to be related to Seal of Truth, as it's dealing over 60% of the affected ret paladins' damage, vastly dwarfing all other sources. The bug seems to be affecting PvP and PvE, as there are many reports of retribution paladins being nigh unstoppable in Battlegrounds tonight. One group of retribution paladins toppled Lord Rhyolith in under 15 seconds. There has been no official word from Blizzard just yet on these developments, although we can be sure that there will be a change deployed to fix this bug as early as possible. Reminder from the editors: Do keep in mind that abusing things like this is considered exploitation. Blizzard does have the right to ban you for abusing this if you're using it to bypass content à la our old friend Karatechop. Don't make Blizzard's job harder, and don't risk your account. Update 10:00 a.m. EST Blizzard is aware of the problem and is looking for a way to solve it. They also issue the same warning we did -- don't exploit this. Zarhym -- Ret Paladin DPS Bug We're aware of this issue and looking into it right now. It's likely we won't have further updates for you until we're back in the office in the morning PST. Just as a reminder from the Terms of Use: C. Rules Related to Game Play. (i) Using or exploiting errors in design, features which have not been documented, and/or "program bugs" to gain access that is otherwise not available, or to obtain a competitive advantage over other players. source
The Light and How to Swing It: Raid gear for ret paladins in Dragon Soul
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! Before we begin talking about upgrades in Dragon Soul, we need to discuss the three separate tiers of raid gear available in patch 4.3. Thanks to the introduction of the Raid Finder, a lower tier of the same gear that drops from normal and heroic Dragon Soul is readily available to those who queue for it. This lower tier is of ilevel 384, the same level gear that drops from Ragnaros on normal difficulty. If you had done any heroic Firelands raiding and got some gear, you will find that the Raid Finder tier is seven ilevels behind that gear. For most pieces, you will want to upgrade as normal (from 378 to 384, for example). For tier gear, however, it appears that the new two-piece T13 set bonus overpowers the itemization difference between heroic T12 and Raid Finder gear, at least for now. If you're available to do additional testing, I'm sure the theorycrafters at the Elitist Jerks retribution thread would adore you for contributing. For the time being, I would pick up some lower-ilevel tier and test it out while still holding onto your heroic T12. Remember, four-piece T13 is our ultimate goal here, so don't skimp on those loot rolls.
The Light and How to Swing It: Dealing damage in Dragon Soul heroic dungeons
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! This new series of heroics runs akin to the Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection trio of Wrath in that you must complete them in a specific order. In the interest of fitting all of these encounters in one post, I will need to truncate a lot of descriptions and irrelevant details. If you have any questions or suggestions for your fellow ret paladins, please feel free to drop a comment below! Warning: This post contains strategies and brief descriptions of the new heroic dungeons in patch 4.3 that may or may not be spoiler-esque. As always with my columns, proceed with caution.
