Fight on the Flag

I took a brief break from the blog after a business trip. Here’s a quick update.

Obliteration and FOTF have been running King together for the past month or so. We’ve definitely got it down. Loot is rolling in and people are progressing. We have almost a full warband of Warlord geared people and we are bringing in people who are nearly high enough to wear Warlord as we can.

FOTF is also trying to run through VL but the darn thing is so buggy half the time we get frustrated and leave.

We have killed through boss six and only briefly saw boss seven last weekend. Not too bad for only trying for a couple of weeks I say.

Finally Sunday morning we were out and decided to stop the Destro zone flips. The Destro apparently gave up after we stopped them, a shame considering we were vastly outnumbered. I guess they just want their freenown (free renown) as fast as they can get it and it doesn’t occur to them to try to, oh I don’t know, fight people for it?

In any case we are still having fun and still trying to kill Destro at every turn. On another note we are not recruiting anymore. We got some fabulous new guildies and learned quite a bit about those who did not make it through the initiate phase.

FOTF has been running plenty of scenarios lately, and for good reason! The new scenario patch comes out today.

Here’s a screen of a scen where we were horribly behind but we pulled it together against one of the better Destro teams. They have a few random people in there, but we had a full group of random people.

Finally the qotd, we haven’t had one of these in quite a while. FOTF was trying monolith PQ with some Oblit and other people. Order finally beat it at a later date. If you have ever done this PQ then you know why most people do not try it.

We did not win during this run, but many of us were finally getting the hang of it as the timer ran down.

First off, happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Destro wanted to give us a hug today so we decided to give back in spades. FOTF and Obliteration’s morning crew rolled the few Destro that were in Altdorf this morning. It was incredibly coordinated. Bright Wizards were grouping up as if they had a hive mind.

Cleanup, aisle 5!

It’s too bad we didn’t have better attackers. I would’ve loved to have seen what our organized group could have done against organized Arsenal. We have faced them before, and whenever they lose resoundingly they tend to leave to find easier pickings. At least we know we can put up a good fight.

Order also downed the King at a fairly reasonable time Saturday night. I was so hyped up afterward that I could hardly sleep. Andora, our SM, got his final piece of Warlord gear and will be able to tank the king as soon as he gets one renown rank. Woot!

Now, in a completely unrelated rant, please inspect the following two screenshots:

See the difference? In both screens, I took a screenshot of the moment the zone was taken by Order. However, in the top version, I only got 192 renown for taking Praag, even though I had been there for both keep takes and a number of Battle Objectives (see above: I had just helped take Armory when the Scenario popped for us). It appears that after joining BFP that I had the idle hands debuff (seven seconds left before scen starts, see ss). This reduces the renown you can earn.

In the second one I was in the Maw when Chaos Wastes flipped. You will notice I got a ton of renown. So in short, there is no incentive to take a scenario when you stand to gain so much from having taken BOs and keeps earlier in the day. This is really something that Mythic ought to fix. ~13,000 renown vs ~200 rewnown? There is really no choice there.

I’ll take the larger figure, please.

Just wanted to share some screenshots of the Order zerg that I took Saturday night. I am fairly certain more than 200 Order were swarming zones and taking keeps.

Here are more pics from the same location of more Order flowing into the Manor.

• Picture 1
• Picture 2

By the way, Saturday was the worst night I’ve had in gaming in a very long time. We had double overdog points (I guess that’s what we call them) meaning that Order had attacked Inevitable City twice within 24 hours. That means it takes much longer to cap zones. We couldn’t get enough Victory Points to cap either. Sometimes we were sitting at 105% of required VP and because of the underdog mechanic we couldn’t cap. I hope this was a big reminder to Order to keep those in mind when we schedule a city push.

Long story short, we started at about 8 p.m. Pacific and didn’t get to the city until midnight (major sorrow for the Eastern timezone people). I wanted to stab myself in the face with a screwdriver. We had a good fight at the entrance to Maw. Then in the city my warband just happened to get the one with the halfway decent Destro in it. I was soo tired. Unfortunately we had a lot of random PUGs in the scenario with us. Eventually they left to make way for Irony, but the damage was done.

Fortunately we managed to take the city during the Super Bowl and down the king. Unfortunately for us those of our guildies who watch football socially did not get to join us At least it’s one step closer to getting full Warlord for Andora, who will be able to tank the king for us during our future FOTF king runs!

First, the fights. Order was bent on capping the Chaos pairing. There must have been 4-5 warbands of order and I don’t know how many Destro. For the first time since I can remember Order seemed to outnumber Destro, but not by much.

Here is a pic at Chokethorn Bramble BO. That is just the front of the vast Destro zerg. (Click pic to embiggen)

FotF ran with our good friends in Obliteration. Since both guilds are fans of using assist, getting in vent and working together, we  wiped the Destro nearly every time we faced them.

We also ran scenarios together, although some people had trouble with Queue Queuer:

On another note, the 1.3.4 patch notes are here. There is a pretty long discussion on the Gorfang forums lamenting the loss of such scenarios as Serpent’s Passage, Caledor Woods and Logrin’s Forge. Really Mythic? This makes me a sad panda Why are these scenarios unpopular? I saw Serpents pop way more than Dragon’s Bane.

Here is the list of scenario offerings:

* The following Scenarios now make up the regularly-offered list: Nordenwatch, Gates of Ekrund, Mourkain Temple, Phoenix Gate, Highpass Cemetery and Battle for Praag. The breakdown of when these Scenarios are offered is as follows:

* Tier 1

- Nordenwatch

- Gates of Ekrund

* Tier 2

- Nordenwatch

- Gates of Ekrund

- Mourkain Temple

* Tier 3

- Nordenwatch

- Gates of Ekrund

- Mourkain Temple

- Phoenix Gate

- Highpass Cemetery

* Tier 4

- Nordenwatch

- Gates of Ekrund

- Mourkain Temple

- Phoenix Gate

- Highpass Cemetery

- Battle for Praag

With the possible exception of Phoenix Gate and Battle for Praag, your team can win every one of those scenarios by avoiding the fight. The scenarios that were removed seemed to favor single-point battles. The lower-tier scenarios that were removed were a rite of passage, as Mezirah stated on the Gorfang forums.

tor anroc was a rite of passage. isha introduced dynamic LOS pvp.

LOS pvp is incredibly important for strategic defenses and offenses. Why they removed Temple of Isha I will never know. It was one of my favorite scenarios leveling up, along with Tor Anroc. It is a shame they are removing these scenarios. (Here is a link to one of FOTF’s early reports from Tor Anroc. Here is a screenshot of Temple of Isha.)

But at least we won’t have to do Thunder Valley anymore.

On a positive note they are adding weapons that you can buy with new scenario currency. So when we are bored out of our minds doing the same scenarios over and over at least we will have something to look forward to.

Destro’s Sunday morning Altdorf push is like the tides — constant and predictable. We know they will storm Altdorf to kill our king and thus become better geared.

A few Fight on the Flag members were about to log off. The city is not very fun when we keep getting stomped into the ground. Usually there are only six of us and it’s hard to make a difference when the PUGs keep pushing center and keep getting owned.

FOTF only had five people online that early in the morning. We decided to open up the warband to alliance members with Ventrilo. I helped form the warband and make sure everyone was in vent and Pylith led our tiny zerg of three groups around.

Usually when we have led Vent-only warbands a lot of people just run and do their own thing anyway. This time, Pylith was patient yet firm. We stayed together and started catching up in Destro’s PQ stage 2. Then we pulled ahead and won the stage. Then we won our stage and got some points on the board. Because of our wins, the Destro did NOT get what they wanted.

All of us envisioned the tears they were crying. They had to plan so much to get up early to push zones just to get to the city. All of that effort, wasted.

In my glee I posted a thread on WHA about the situation, where Destro went on to minimize our victory. Either way it was good clean fun.

I had work Saturday but imagine my surprise when I get home and Order was already pushing zones to get into the city.

Five members of FOTF got into a warband with V’los Vel’drin and a few other guilds. Bangrund did a fantastic job tanking. We worked with Run Like Hell to lock down an instance. Destro bodies were everywhere.

Fighting on the flag in a city assault is truly the best thing ever!

Teamwork among Order was great! For the instances that were losing the PUGs left and they were replaced by organized Order.

I think at least two king instances of Order got nice shiny Warlord/Sovereign pieces. Both Pylith and Truncheon are decked out in full Warlord. It was my first king instance and I also got a few pieces after breaking royals down. Next time I will be in full Warlord and will then be working on Sovereign.

Grats Order on our fantastic teamwork!

We had a very fun and productive weekend. First off, a few FOTF members got Warlord gear from the king captures over the weekend (myself excluded). This is great news for those of us who had tried 40 or 50 times to get Darkpromise breastplates.

We also had some really fun fights in BOs this weekend!

Here, the manor in Eataine (click to embiggen).

We were flipping zones like pros and almost made it to stage 2 on Sunday’s IC push for those of us unable to make the first king run. Unfortunately my WB was in the losing city instance. I think either a lot of Order left or a lot of Destro joined (or both) and we lost the last stage 2 event. D’oh! Maybe next time.

Destro was definitely out in force.

I was proud of how our realm did in almost defeating them during prime time. Destro must have been taking a break after beating our king Sunday morning or more would’ve shown up for that effort.

(more…)

For the longest time FOTF has avoided doing TOVL. There are many reasons, one of which is that PVE content tends to be buggy and we are too lazy to figure out the strats. We decided to start doing TOVL last weekend because the gear is too good to pass up. Our theory is that,  in the time it takes us to do Lost Vale, we can get really nice other loot, including talismans, cartouches and warlord-equivalent stats gear.

Last weekend we downed the first two bosses fairly easily (not bad for the first time in several months). On the third boss we wiped and five of us released. We asked for the sixth to release and when he did, the gates remained closed as if the boss were still in combat. We sent in a stuck appeal and we got no response. Destro owned the zone so we couldn’t just reset. Frustrated, most of us logged for the day.

This morning, we planned to wake up early and do TOVL. We wiped on the first boss and five of us released. The sixth released and yet again the gate was closed (maybe this is a trend?).

(Perle is on the flag, there are six people. Notice the door is closed?)

Again I sent in a stuck appeal and again we got bored after waiting for 30 minutes and getting no response. Finally about 30 minutes after we left the dungeon we got an automated message that they were “looking at the problem.” Pshaw!

Both days the bug prevented us from progressing further. Both days our time was wasted and we become more disenchanted with the game.

Maybe the solution is to release at the same time so we don’t get the bug? I really don’t know. Once everyone is dead the doors should open and that should be that. If someone knows the answer to this please let me know.

I guess this goes to show we will never be done fighting doors.

We had a lot of fun this weekend. Lots of fights, good scenario battles (so good that I didn’t take screenshots, doh!) and of course city defenses… OK the city defenses weren’t quite so fun.

Destro on Gorfang pushes the city on weekend mornings to farm our King. During those attacks, you’re either in the instance with the warlord/sov geared Destruction (I don’t care who you are, that hurts) or you’re getting in the instance with few or no Destro and left to ponder what we can do to end it all (the city PQ I mean):

Sadly killing the mob takes longer than playing hokey pokey on the objectives (another rant entirely).

What would be really awesome is a scenario that people could run in T4 instead of doing city defenses! It was great when Kegs End was active because those of us who dislike city defenses could run Black Fire Basin. I can’t tell you how many people I see log on during the day, see a city defense and then log out. There should be another option for those of us who don’t like being in the city for 2-4 hours a day.