So, I must apologize for abandoning this site. I have ceased playing Warhammer Online due to my server being dead for the last couple of months and I don’t expect I’ll be back. It was fun while it lasted but the spark has gone.
I do appreciate all who contributed to this blog and posted encouragement and sorry to those who had hoped I would return.
My main site is DigitalGunfire.com if you want to keep in touch :)
Nothing spectacular, but if you’re dying to see one, give it a look.
Warning: UI may make your eyes bleed. Click.
This mod has become one of my new favorite mods. I never really used Sever Blessing much as it was hard to tell when someone had a blessing on them. Using Aura, you can setup big alerts in the middle of your screen whenever your target gets a specific blessing on them. It’s made me much more efficient. It’s a bit of a pain to setup, but once it’s done, it works great. Give it a try!
This is the fun of MMOs, you get to change your mind over and over. So, I’m level 30 right now and I’ve been doing some guild-group Tier3 PvP with friends on and off. I was previously specced into Kiss of Doom in Suffering and the rest of my points in Carnage, giving me Elixir of Insane Power at 30 and not much else.
I changed my spec last night to this. I was dreading losing Kiss of Doom, but I found that it was a crutch I was able to give up. I’ll spec back into it once I hit 34, but it’s pretty easy to live without to be honest. I’m now strongly contemplating this spec for 40. I know; giving up Black Lotus Blade is blasphemy, but here’s the thing – I’ve lived without it for the last 30 levels and although I keep telling myself (and everyone else) ‘oh, you gotta have it’ – most people (sub 40) only have it in their level 40 specs, not their day to day specs. I already know I can kill healers quickly without it and while I think there are a lot of situations where it would be very useful, I’m starting to think that I can probably survive without it. I might change my mind soon, but we’ll see.
So, the real nice thing about this spec is you get Elixir of the Cauldron (arguably the strongest elixir), you get to keep Kiss of Doom and you get On Your Knees and Pierce Armor.
I got to actually try out Pierce Armor last night and it’s great. I would typically pop it at 4 bloodlust since I’d have an ailment on my target by that time; it was typically hitting for around 500 which is pretty significant damage. I’d then do Ruthless Assault (or On Your Knees, depending on the situation) and take advantage of the armor debuff for my finisher.
Wow. A flat armor reduction doesn’t seem like that much but against our usual targets, it makes a BIG difference.
On Your Knees is also a great finisher – one of the nice things that I didn’t realize is that it doesn’t require a target to go off, so if someone is running from you and they’re just out of range you can run a little behind them and hit it as they reach their group, knock them all down and finish your target off. It has a lot of uses in all kinds of situations – I used it to take the bauble back in Tor Anroc quite a few times and it can save you when you get mobbed. I’m also now a 100% advocate of the Whirling Blades tactic – when you’re using On Your Knees, it’s great to be able to rebuild your bloodlust quickly, and getting to 5 bloodlust as fast as possible really helps reduce your AP drain, since a 5 point Ruthless Assault is free. I’m debating even getting Kiss of Doom at 40, to be honest – perhaps putting those 3 points into Carnage to maximum my Carnage skill damage and slotting the +50% crit damage tactic instead. We’ll see how that goes.
I’ll be running this spec for a few more days to test it out, but I noticed my TTK decrease with this build, even without Kiss of Doom.
So yeah, I’ve been slacking lately on posting. Honestly, I don’t have a whole lot to say right now! I just hit 30 on my Witch Elf and I’ve been playing a Zealot a bit waiting for the rest of my guild to catch up. I’m still sticking Carnage for now and I’ve been having an amazingly good time playing my Witch Elf with two pocket healers in my guild :)
Zealot is a pretty different experience from Witch Elf but it’s fun sometimes to see the other side of the coin – now I know how Rune Priests feel when I kill them (and how satisfying it is when I survive through a Witch Hunter’s attempts to down me.) It’s also given me a much better understanding of the escape capabilities of healers and leaves me wondering how I am sometimes able to kill healers so quickly.
I anticipate my guild catching up to me by the middle of next week and we’ll begin venturing into Tier 4 scenarios – once that hits, I’ll be posting more about my experiences in those scenarios. Until then, ciao for now!
Good influence rewards for Witch Elves, How to get healed more in scenarios (allegedly), a good discussion of On Your Knees and a new PvP video.
Sorry for the lack of posts the last few days! I’ve been pretty tied up with work (and will be for another day or two.)
The guild I formed on Ostermark is coming along nicely (almost rank 8) and I am starting to set foot into Tier 4. I’ve been a bit spoiled lately, as a couple of my guildmates (a Zealot and a Shaman) have been playing with me pretty extensively, and it is hard to go back to soloing scenarios after having two pocket healers for every scenario I’ve played lately. You haven’t known the joy that is a Witch Elf until you burn through five people without stopping (or dying.)
I need to still grab a couple more levels to start Tier 4 in earnest, but once I do, I’ll give some reports of the scenarios in this tier. I am feeling more and more lately that Carnage is the spec to be for scenario battles at least; it is getting more and more difficult to take down other players quickly by myself – not impossible, but definitely tougher than it was back in the good old days of Tier 1/2. Having Elixir of Insane Power is a godsend for chopping up those pesky White Lions and helping take down tanks quickly and teamed with Ruthless Assault, it is as painful as you can imagine it would be.
However, I have been able to engage in some more RvR lately, and I think there is a lot to be said for the other specs in this regard; you do get to pick your fights a lot more (oddly enough) in large-scale RvR.
Anyway, I’ll put together a more worthwhile post in the next few days. Hope you are all still having fun out there!
So, I’m sitting in the airport, waiting on my delayed flight, bored. So here’s my first post from an airport!
The last thread I posted about my current spec choice generated a large number of comments and it got me to thinking about the pros and cons of the various mastery trees. One thing I want to make clear is that, even though I’m posting my mastery choices on this blog, I’m definitely not saying that my choices are the ‘best’ mastery tree choices available. In fact, I honestly think all three mastery trees are very viable options (and I have tried them all.)
The thing I really like about this game is that it is difficult to say ‘Tree X is the best and Tree Y is the worst’ because all the trees are quite different and are strong in their own right. It’s more (for Witch Elf at least, I can’t speak for other classes) a question of playstyle vs a question of min-maxing. That’s something I really like about Warhammer Online.
Anyway, I decided to break all three trees down into their own sections and list out the pros and cons as I see it. I’ll also link the type of build I would use if I was going to spec deeply into a particular tree, for reference. Let’s start out with Suffering.
Suffering contains some of the most powerful abilities available to a Witch Elf. There aren’t many (viable) specs that don’t include either, or both, Kiss of Doom and Black Lotus Blade. At this stage of the game, a +25% proc chance to your kisses is huge. My Kiss of Death does, at level 27, about 150 damage. It’s not unusual to see a Ruthless Assault proc at least 3, if not 4 or 5, kisses upon activation. That’s a lot of additional damage. It also makes it easy to keep the kiss debuff up on the target.
Black Lotus Blade is going to be an ability that is going to be very difficult to not take. We all know (at least, if you’ve played other MMOs) how powerful healing debuff abilities are, and a 50% healing debuff is something that makes our life much, much easier.
While most builds will take 11 points into Suffering and pick up Kiss of Doom and Black Lotus Blade, there are people who go deeper into this tree and use it as their primary damage dealer. With this build, you will typically use Envenomed Blade as your bloodlust builder and concentrate on building as many DoTs as possible on your target by using Jagged Edge (tactic), Wracking Pains and the aforementioned Envenomed Blade.
There are definitely some pros to this approach. Stacking DoTs on your target vs dealing instant damage can easily result in some kills you wouldn’t otherwise have been able to make. If someone runs at low health while you’re rooted and you’re unable to catch them, a variety of stacked DoTs will often take them down, whereas if you were specced into a burst damage build you may lose your target, or have to run into very hostile territory to finish them off. Envenomed Blade also has the highest damage per AP if you take into account the DoT damage.
The 13 point finisher in Suffering is Witchbrew, which can look underwhelming on paper. The nice thing about this finisher is that if you kill someone without triggering a frenzy, you can still pop Witchbrew and have a nice damage buff to take onto your next target. It also makes your dagger throw a 200+ damage AoE attack, which means you can still (briefly) contribute and/or kill runners easily.
If I had to categorize a Suffering build in one sentence, I’d look at it as a powerful hit and run build – you can jump out of stealth, put Enfeebling Strike on someone, build up a very damaging stack of DoTs and often, run away and leave them to die. Maxing Suffering also maxes the damage on Heart Render Toxin, which can be an underwhelming finisher, but when you’re trying to kill someone with DoTs, putting Heart Render on them plus Black Lotus Blade can make it difficult for a healer to keep them alive.
There are, in my opinion, a fair number of cons to this build however. One is that both Carnage and Treachery give you an additional CC ability; On Your Knees and Heartseeker respectively. Suffering gives you nothing. Another con is that, although stacking Envenomed Blade does the most damage on paper, in reality, you are left with two choices if you want to maximize DPS per AP – only refreshing Envenomed Blade right when it is about to expire or refreshing Envenomed Blade before it’s expiration time and losing the AP you have dedicated into triggering the first ability. When you hit someone with Envenomed Blade, you are able to stack it three times, and refresh the triple stack by hitting them with it again. If you hit someone with Envenomed Blade before the timer is up, you have, in essence, ‘wasted’ the AP you spent to refresh the stack the first time.
Many people call Suffering the ‘tank killing build’ but I don’t think they have actually tried it if they have this mindset. If you think back to rogues in WoW, using DoTs was the most effective way to kill armored targets, as they were not mitigated. All Witch Elf dots are fully mitigated in Warhammer Online, so if you stack DoTs on tanks, you are not bypassing any of their mitigation in any way. In fact, there is absolutely no armor mitigation ability in the Suffering tree, so of all the trees, I would call Suffering the weakest tank killing tree.
Lastly, you don’t really get much burst damage in Suffering. If you have a need to drop someone very quickly, you don’t really have that option. Wracking Pains has a long DoT timer on it and while Envenomed Blade is fairly short, you can definitely drop a lot of damage much quicker in Carnage or Treachery.
Speccing into Suffering is really a playstyle choice. You can still kill very effectively with this build, but if you’re used to popping out of stealth, decimating someone very quickly and escaping after their death, you have to rethink your playstyle a little bit for Suffering. Here is an example Suffering build – there are a lot of ways to approach this tree, but this build will give you maximum damage on your Suffering abilities and the excellent Cauldron from the Treachery tree. You may want to, instead of maxing the tree and taking the Morale 4 ability, take Septic Blade or Healer’s Bane, but it probably wouldn’t be my first choice.
So, onto Carnage. Carnage is often looked at as a ’spam’ build, but I don’t think of it that way anymore. Carnage is mostly centered around quick, burst damage and armor mitigation. You are provided with two separate mitigation options in Carnage, Elixir of Insane Power and Pierce Armor, along with a fairly powerful AoE CC ability, On Your Knees. However, to take both Black Lotus Blade and On Your Knees, you need some of your renown mastery points, so you are not able to fully take advantage of this build until you are very high in Renown Rank. You’d need two more mastery points to get up to On Your Knees.
I’ve been playing this build heavily lately, and it is very strong in some situations. Between Kiss of Doom and Black Lotus Blade, you have both of the most powerful abilities from Suffering at your disposal. Elixir of Insane Power is only 7 seconds every 60 seconds, but if you really need to take someone down (especially a tank) you can pop it and really drop their health fast with unmitigated Slices and Ruthless Assaults. Pierce Armor lets you drop most cloth wearers to almost zero mitigation.
Once you have mitigated someones armor, Slice does an insane amount of damage and Ruthless Assault paired with Kiss of Doom can be devastating. While Treachery has armor mitigation options, such as Agonizing Wound, you have to get behind someone to use it (which can be difficult) or use Feinted Positioning, which, without a tactic, has a 60 second cooldown. In contrast, Pierce Armor has a 10 second cooldown and can be used repeatedly. Carnage is a really strong build for killing almost any class – assuming your Elixir is up, the targets mitigation is irrelevant.
There are, of course, some cons to this approach. Your CC ability, On Your Knees, is unreachable without renown mastery points. This means you don’t gain one of the benefits of the tree (additional CC) until a high renown rank. Slice is also the highest AP base bloodlust building ability out of all three trees, so you will run out of AP faster with this build.
While Ruthless Assault is one of the most damaging finishers (when paired with Kiss of Doom) it does take 3 seconds to run to completion. This means you lose out on at least one auto attack, and one bloodlust building ability vs using Heart Render Toxin or Puncture. You can also be interrupted when using Ruthless Assault and if you need to drop someone REALLY fast, it’s not always the best option, as the damage is not instant.
Finally, the damage per AP for your bloodlust building ability in Carnage is worse than Suffering. While I don’t think the difference is significant enough to worry about too much in PvP, if you’re trying to min/max for PvE encounters, it may be worth considering.
Lastly, on to Treachery. This tree probably seems the most familiar to people who have played rogue-style classes in other MMOs. You have the quintessential ‘backstab’ ability, Agonizing Wounds, a stun and a high damage finisher.
There’s a lot to be said for this tree. If you can get behind your target, or use Feinted Positioning, your base bloodlust builder is cheap (35AP), completely armor mitigating and fairly high damage. Even if you can’t get behind your target, it’s still worth using over Slice or Envenomed Blade if you’re specced into this tree.
Treachery is the only tree to give Witch Elves an additional stun. While it requires positioning, you can also use Feinted Positioning to trigger it. It’s often not possible to use some of your ‘free’ CC such as Throat Slitter and Heartseeker on the same target due to the unstoppable buff, but it does give you other options for dealing with multiple targets. Treachery also gives you arguably the most powerful Elixir in all the trees, Elixir of the Cauldron. Pop this and you become almost totally immune to magical attacks for 7 seconds. It’s a beautiful thing when you use this against a Bright Wizard.
Finally, the 11 point ability in Treachery, Masterful Treachery, increases your damage by 20% when you come out of stealth. This can definitely make you a devastating force on soft (or even tougher) targets, between your armor mitigation, stuns and increased raw DPS. Here is an example Treachery build I have run.
Now, there are, of course, some cons to this build. If you can’t get positioning on your target, and you’ve already used Feinted Positioning, Heartseeker is worthless. Agonizing Wound is also the weakest bloodlust building ability if you can’t take advantage of the armor mitigation. Masterful Treachery is a wasted tactic slot if you aren’t able to get a stealth attack on your opponent and Sacrificial Stab is probably the weakest 13 point ability in any of the trees (assuming you take that route with your renown mastery points.)
Treachery is a great build to have if you view yourself as an assassin, prowling around the battlefield and taking out the back lines. The problem with this approach, in my opinion, is that the highest you get in the tiers, you less ability you have to play this way. People get smarter, healers stay in groups and people see through your stealth more often. If the opposition can shut down your bonuses (by disallowing you to gain positioning or attacking out of stealth) a lot of the benefits of Treachery are lost.
So, I think the best way to pick a spec for your Witch Elf is to look at your playstyle. Do you like to sneak around the battlefield, quickly destroy a target and escape? Treachery is probably the best spec for you. Do you find yourself more often linebreaking along with Marauders and other melee DPS classes? Carnage probably makes the most sense. Suffering can fit quite well into either of these roles and is really a playstyle choice rather than a min/max choice. In a linebreaking situation, stacking DoTs on some targets can be very powerful (and allow you to keep dealing damage if you have to fall back.) In an assassination situation, stacking DoTs and running may let you live to fight another day.
OK, my plane is boarding (and man, this is a long post) so I don’t have time to proofread. Please forgive any spelling, grammatical or other mistakes :)
So, which path have you chosen – and why?
And got my guild up and running! If you’re on Ostermark, you’re not an asshole and you want some people to RvR with, give us a look.
