Archive
Patch 1.2 – What it means for Gunslingers
Hello, my fellow Gunslingers! Wanting to know what Patch 1.2 will do for the Gunslinger class? Well, look no farther, the following are the changes coming and my thoughts.
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Hunters in Isengard Dev Diary
Zombie Columbus released a Dev Diary today with the official changes for the Hunter in Rise of Isengard.
First off, I want to say to the Hunter community: don’t panic. The Hunter is my main, so I tried it in the Beta, and they are actually quite good. The biggest concern is the removal of Strong Draw from the game, but it is hardly missed with the changes. Just keep that in mind.
Stances
The first thing ZC wanted to address with the Hunter changes were the traitlines being tied to stances. Mainly, he wanted to have Hunters able to switch stances mid-fight and not feel that they were wasting a trait they had slotted. Traits like Graceful Draw that buffed only one stance were removed from the game and the bonuses were distributed into the stance itself or throughout other traits in a more general way. Read more…
Lore-masters in Isengard Dev Diary
There was a Dev Diary today on Lore-masters and the changes coming to them in Isengard. For the most part, they are in line with the rest of the changes that have been mentioned previously. For a comprehensive list of all changes coming to Lore-masters and all relevant links, see this constantly updated post.
There are a few differences from what has previously been discussed. The pet gained at level 70 is going to be a healing-related pet, and it will not necessarily be an auroch (I have heard reports from people that attended Gamescom that the new pet is now a limrafn (the Dead misty thing from Evendim). It will be interesting if that is the pet we end up getting and to see what the skills will be.
I would like to highlight my thoughts about the change to Lore-masters’ cure skills. My first opinion that I wrote in the Lore-master changes summary was like that of many in the forums:
“This is potentially one of the biggest nerfs in all of the updates I have seen. Almost everyone that has seen it has hated it. A cooldown on the ONLY class that can remove diseases and wounds consistently will be horrible for the instances that put 4+ diseases on you at a time. I realize the resistances are being removed because of the stat changes, but the cooldown is just unacceptable. It is just very unnecessary. I would trade all the buffs to get this unnerfed.”
Then I thought about it for a good long while. Here are my post-dev-diary, post-much-reconsideration, and post-a calming-period-of-time-to-reflect-on-my-temper thoughts:
“This will simply make Lore-masters that are skilled more desirable, as well as forcing people to use their pots. After all, are Lore-masters really here just to feed you power and take the 10 second power sapping disease off of you at the same time? We have things we need to do to help the battle too, like DPS, debuffs, spot-healing, etc! I’m fully behind this change now.”
Let me know if you have any questions or comments!
Champions in Isengard Dev Diary
There is a new Dev Diary today on Champions! There are many, many, many changes coming. As the Champion was my second 65, and my main for a long time, these changes are very interesting to me! I will break the Dev Diary down and give my thoughts as I go.
The Developer in charge is Orion, and he is also one of the key developers for PvMP. He begins his explanation of the Champion changes by saying that the Champion for a long time has had two roles, DPS and Tanking. When Champions were forced to tank, they would suit up with a shield, making them a slightly less fun version of a Guardian. My all-time favorite quote by Orion was from his original blog post on Champion changes in Isengard, “Champions are based on Gimli. Gimli did not use a shield. Champions will not use shields.”
The problem of course is that Guardians are fantastic Guardians, Champs not so much. So why would you want a Champ to do a Guardian’s job, when the Champ doesn’t really like the Guardian’s job anyway because of the drastically different gameplay style behind the shield?
Orion decided to take a different approach. While Guards would be a shield tank with mitigations, and Wardens would be the parry and evade tanks with HoTs and morale leaches, the tanking Champ would play like a DPS Champ: shield-less, focusing on using skills to maintain aggro and survivability instead of doing as much damage to enemies, but still fun and fast like Champs like it!
Captains in Isengard Dev Diary
There was a Dev Diary yesterday on Captains and the changes coming to them in Isengard. For the most part, they are in line with the rest of the changes that have been mentioned previously. For a comprehensive list of all changes coming to Captains, see this constantly updated post.
The big difference in this Dev Diary from what we’ve seen so far is how the stat changes are going to be affecting Captains. Captains will now be basing our Outgoing Healing on Might as well as Melee Offense, making our builds much more straightforward.
This also means that we will be hitting like pansies and healing like level 30 Rune-keepers in our healing gear, come Isengard. Luckily, most of us have soloing gear that we use when we need more Might than Outgoing Healing, which will now conveniently give us both. I also imagine that they will go back and refigure the old gear like the Helegrod armor, to better match the stats. Keep in mind, this is the way it will be for Captains from level 1 and up. That means countless armor sets that are useless now, with lots of Will.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments!
The Fanatical Swordsman 