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EVE Evolved: Fitting Heavy Assault Cruisers in Odyssey 1.1, part 2
EVE Online recently revamped all of the Heavy Assault Cruisers in its Odyssey 1.1 update, in addition to buffing active shield boosters and armour repairers and rebalancing medium beam lasers and railguns. Last week I put together a new brawler setup for the recently revamped Deimos, a sentry drone sniper fitting for the Ishtar, an extremely effective anti-frigate Cerberus setup, and a sadly underwhelming railgun Eagle. This week I've turned my attention toward the Amarr and Minmatar HACs, with some surprising results. The Zealot and Sacrilege are still as powerful as ever, and the Muninn may see some use as a tactical frigate sniper, but this patch could see many players retiring their Vagabonds. The nano-fit Vagabond was once the unrivaled number one ship for lone pirates, able to speed-tank anything larger than a frigate and still deal over 500 DPS. It engaged safely from outside web range, moved too fast for turrets to track, and absorbed any attacks that did hit with its sizable buffer tank. When CCP made warp scramblers knock out microwarpdrives, Vagabond pilots adapted with dual propulsion module fits that use a microwarpdrive to approach the target and an afterburner to orbit. Unfortunately, the Vagabond didn't fare well in the Odyssey 1.1 patch and players aren't sure if they can adapt this time. In this week's EVE Evolved, I put together PvP setups for the at the Zealot, Sacrilege, Muninn, and Vagabond Heavy Assault Cruisers.
Choose My Adventure: Singing the skill grind blues
Well, here we are folks, smack dab in the middle of our Darkfall run for Choose My Adventure. With three weeks down and three weeks to go, I have to be honest: I feel pressed for time. There's so much to see and do in this game that six weeks simply isn't enough to really do it justice (to say nothing of the fact that it's not nearly enough time to build a competitive character in terms of the skill grind). In any event, I'll do what I can to give you an accurate read on the game, and as my first couple of columns have admittedly erred on the side of fresh-faced enjoyment, today's entry will touch on a few of the game's less than savory aspects. In addition to that, I'll recap a few of my gameplay highlights from the past week. Join me after the cut for a look at my Darkfall present and future as well as a video diary of my adventures thus far.
Choose My Adventure: Special treatment, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the gank
Well, so much for the theory that the Darkfall community has banded together to ensure I only see the good side of the game. This past week was an interesting one, and despite an encounter that most players would probably consider griefing -- as well as various and sundry inconvenient ganks -- I remain enamored of Agon. Aside from recurring instances of the Darkfall version of "special treatment," much of the week was spent leveling greatswords on my public main and crafting/harvesting on my private alt. In between there was a NEW-sponsored PvP event, a kracken run, and various dungeon excursions, not to mention more exploring than I've done in my last three MMOs combined. Finally, I'm also beginning to see the grind that a lot of current and former subscribers complain about. Join me after the cut to see how I dealt with it as well as a recap of week two. %Gallery-108450%
Waging WAR: Chaotic zeal, part two
In this week's installment of Waging WAR, Greg returns to the Chaotic Zeal series and peels back another layer or two of the Zealot career in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. He tells us about his experience through tiers 2 and 3 and talks about what makes the zealot stand out in the chaos crowd. If only we could get him to eat his onions with the same fanaticism... At the end of the first issue of the Chaotic Zeal series, I left off by saying that I was happily looking forward to playing through tiers 2 and 3 and the promise the Zealot would bring. I'll kick off this second article in the series by saying that I wasn't disappointed in the least. The Zealot is an absolute pleasure to play as a PvP healer, despite the settings and circumstances I was presented with. The career's growth is robust and meaningful with a variety of attractive tactics and morale abilities, while the playstyle becomes more and more refined over time. I could fill an entire column with anecdotes and memories of my time with the career through the middle tiers, as the Zealot is a career experience that tends to be quite engaging and memorable. Instead, I'll focus on my impressions of leveling through them. Thus, with my Zealot poised on the precipice of tier 4 at level 30, I'll look back and recall the issues I faced getting there. Follow along after the cut as I discuss the middle tiers with the Zealot career.
Waging WAR: Chaotic zeal, part one
Continuing in the tradition of the Nagarythe Chronicles, Waging WAR moves forward this week with the first issue of another multipart career spotlight for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. This time, however, Greg has defected to the velvet darkness of Chaos. Brandishing a skull in one hand and a twisted dagger in the other, Greg rolls a zealot and starts down a road of uncertainty, where the only constant is Change by the will of Tzeentch. It has been a long time since I've played the game on the side of Destruction. Actually, truth be told, I've never really been serious about any Destruction character I've ever rolled at all, with my highest level being somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 or so on a blackguard when the class was first released. It has also been quite a while since I've done any career spotlights for the column. With those facts in mind, I've decided to do a multipart series for the zealot and to take a look at how they play and what makes them tick through the various tiers of growth up into Tier 4. The reasons I chose the zealot for the series are simple and few. First of all, the last time I had my hands on the zealot career was long before the new Harbinger mechanic was released, and I want to try it out for myself. Second, I have a considerable amount of experience healing (and DPSing) with my archmage, so I have a baseline for comparison. Finally, I thought a defection would be fun as I level and discover new areas, quests and storylines that I never gave myself a chance to become familiar with. Follow along after the break as I take a look at the zealot through levels 1-11 in Tier 1.
Waging WAR: Patch 1.3.6 and the proverbial DPS-Healer
There aren't very many companies that open up planned patch changes to their players and fans for discussion; however, Mythic is one that does. This week, Waging WAR focuses on the suggested career balance changes for the Zealot and Runepriest coming in patch 1.3.6 for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. We'll cover the issue as well as the proposed solution for these careers. We'll also discuss the impact that these changes might have on the affected careers and on the community in general. There's also a part where Greg throws some drama at the fan and rants about "DPS-Healers." Let's start by clarifying the main issue and the proposed change. Currently, the other healing careers (Archmage, Shaman, Warrior Priest and Disciple of Khaine) have their mastery paths organized by the role which they might play (i.e. damage focus, healing focus, etc.); whereas, the Zealot and Runepriest don't. Their mastery paths are organized by the delivery method of their healing (i.e. over time, direct, or area). The problem is, after deciding whether to specialize offensively or defensively and gearing to that role (a freedom of choice that they should be given), the Zealot and Runepriest are left with only one-half of an effective skill-set -- the other half of their skills being rendered ineffective by role choice and gear itemization. To bring these careers in line with their archetypical cousins, a new mechanism is proposed which gives Zealots and Runepriests a chance to retain some effectiveness in skills that are outside their chosen role.
Massively goes to WAR: An overview of Healing careers for Destruction
If you're a planning on being a Destruction player in Warhammer Online and want to focus on healing, consider yourself covered. For starters, don't worry about being a heal-bot, this game probably has some of the most damage capable healers in an MMO that we've seen to date. That's not to say a healer can out-damage a DPS class, instead they're simply deft at dealing with combat on their own terms. For example: whether you enjoy keeping some distance from combat while supporting allies or prefer to get down and dirty, your needs will be met. It's indeed a diverse healing world in Warhammer Online and we've got it all mapped out for you.
From Tabletop to Desktop: WAR's Destruction careers
With the announcement of the White Lion as the final career in Warhammer Online, we finally have a good idea of what the class dynamics will be in the long-anticipated MMO from Mythic. Obviously, the specifics of each aren't set in stone, as some classes don't even have their masteries announced yet, but one finally gets the sense that it's all starting to come together. With this is mind, we've put together an overview of the game's classes, including a comparison to their tabletop equivalents, to give you a better idea of what you've got to look forward to with the upcoming open beta. In the first part of this feature, we take a look at the careers on the side of Destruction.And if you like what you what you see here, make sure to check out our on-going Massively goes to WAR features! From Tabletop to Desktop: WAR's Destruction careers >>>>>%Gallery-24169%
Warhammer videos collected, looking great
Brothers and bloggers Keen and Graev have put together a nice collection of Warhammer Online videos over on their YouTube account, and this seems like the best we've seen of the game so far (I saw it at PAX a few years ago, and then we saw quite a bit of it at E 4 All, as well as the various videos released since then). The video above was taken at a German show, so it's in Deutsch, obviously, but the graphics are clean and clear, and the gameplay looks pretty manic -- just the kind of thing to get us all excited for this baby.They've also got a character selection video, some Bright Wizard gameplay, Zealot footage, some Hammerer and Choppa RvR combat, and a little world exploration. This game is definitely looking better every day -- it's still on track for a release sometime in the middle of this year.
