[art] Happy Halloween!

Moar Korean Patch Details

Korean Aion has been hit by another patch. Once again the same guys from Abyss Addicts have translated the patch notes.

There are two major points in my eyes:

We added reward for successful fortress defenses. The leader of the legion in control of a fortress will now receive badges through mail. The amount and the grade of the badges will vary depending on the level of the fortress.

Hooray for defense incentive, but this seems a bit off. Only the owning legion? This means the defending force will always be inferior to the attacking force. It may result in increased incentive for legions to ally and share but it won't help pugs at all, while pug attackers will still get medals for their time. Bizzare decision.

Increased experience gain from crafting and extracting.

Wayhey!

As with 1.6, no word on when we can expect it to hit. :(

Kuhhheargit

Tired of sounding like you're giving childbirth whenever you hit someone? Chose the 'young' female soundset and didn't realise your error until it was too late? Think that spells should be followed up with a goofy "a-hyuck"? Suspect the Koreans are subtly making fun of western culture by approving this garbage?

If you played during the closed betas, when Aion was still version 1.0, you'll have known that the voices were a lot cooler. Female characters sounded cute but strong and male characters had a certain Bruce Lee quality to them. That's because the voice pack was Korean. The 'westernisation' has then got to be a cruel joke.

If you think it's not all that bad, go and make a level 1 alt right now with the Female Young soundset. You don't even need to go into combat; just unsheathe your weapon. Congratulations, you now know what I'm talking about. It shouldn't be called 'Young', it should be called 'Mentally Deficient'. She sounds like she is wearing a colander for a helmet and drooling all over her straight jacket when she does something as simple as unsheathe a weapon. If you want to take it all the way, go into actual combat. Even better, make her a ranger and get to level 10. She sounds just as retarded with every. Single. Shot.

But there's light: the Korean voice pack is available for download and so is the Japanese voice pack. I've been playing with the Japanese pack for the last day and am quite impressed... I'm about to give the Korean pack a run. The only drawback to the Japanese pack? Shugo don't say 'nyerk' anymore :(

1. Download the Voice Pack of your choice:

• Korean
• Japanese

2. Find your Aion folder. Extract the contents of the .zip to your Aion\L10N\ENU\ folder. If you're not using the English client, change the location as appropriate (eg. Aion\L10N\CHS for Chinese).

3. Play to the soothing sounds of Bruce Lee kicking some vespine arse.



Source 1, Source 2 <3

Shining Slash: Guest week, a plea to the masses

Long time no blog! I'm here to break the silence with a little post from Minsc, a Templar in my Legion. Every Tank you've run with has wanted to say this at some point, so take it on board, seriously.

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Your Guide to "What The Hell Is The Tank Doing" (1-35)

So you're in a group, and that Templar (Or Gladiator) is strutting around like he owns the planet, despite being able to do less damage than Tutty on a bad day. You think to yourself "Heh, but this guy can't hold agro either". Doesn't he have taunt?

Odds are, from a Tank point of view - you're a liability because you probably don't understand how Templar threat works. Tanking in Aion isn't like most other games. Also note: "Agro/Threat" in Aion is referred to as "Enmity".

Note: This is a guide only up to level 35 or so. Things do change after this
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The Tools Of The Trade

A Templar (as at Level 35) have two basic Enmity generating moves.
> Provoke: medium range non-damaging Enmity ability. Cool down 12 sec.
> Provoking Slash: melee attack with extra Enmity. Cool down 12 sec.

They have access to two subjective Enmity generators.
> Provoking Shield Counter: Shield "bash", only usable immediately after successful block. Does NOT stun enemy. Cool down 24 seconds.
> Divine Chastisement: DP ability. Costs 2000 DP.

They have access to three Stigma stones which are Enmity generators.
> Inescapable Judgment: Ranged "pull" ability bringing enemy directly to you. Also reduces their movement speed for 10 seconds. Cool down 30 seconds.
> Provoking Roar: 10m PBAoE which generates some threat on up to five monsters. Cool down 30 sec.
> Incite Rage: 15m 1 minute CD Provoke clone with a mana cost added.
> (Remember they may not have one or both of these.)

More come as levels progress, but I don't know my way around the full list yet. There are more Stigmas out there, but for now we'll stick to the level range we know well, and the level range of what we are seeing day-to-day.
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Things to know:

First, none of these are a "top of the stack" enmity/threat/agro generator.
They generate a set amount, period. If you've pulled agro, and you're a DPSer... STOP. There is nothing a tank can do if you're still going berserk on a creature that is attacking you. You'll stay ahead of him/her for a lot longer. If you're a healer, all you can do is try to heal through it as best you can and hope the tank can pull agro back off you.

Secondly, a Templar relies on blocking attacks to generate a lot of threat.
He has three abilities at his disposal on a successful block - (a) a shield bash stun, (b) the aforementioned Enmity generator, and (c) a retributive strike (which is their highest damage dealer). If you pull agro, you are going to take away roughly half of his bag of tricks that he can use to keep agro on himself, and some of his damage mitigation to boot. So if he's not got agro on himself, his ability to get it back is depleted, and he'll start to fall behind the healers - and that's wipe territory.

Thirdly, a Templar is not a Gladiator.
He does not have an appreciable ongoing "multitanking" capacity like a Gladiator - he traded it in for mitigation. If there is more than one creature out there, he will be switching between them and spreading his basic Enmity generators around, which means the DPS troops have to scale back their output so they don't pull agro. Healers have to "suck it up buttercup", and hope the chainmail will stop any errant hits if one gets away briefly.
This goes double for if there are crowd-controlled creatures. If one is 'slept', a good tank will switch to that target every time Provoke cool down is up and throw it at that creature (from out of melee range so he doesn't break CC). This prevents the creature from running after the CCer or a healer if it breaks/resists CC. So, if one creature is slept, be sure not to still go absolutely gangbusters on the one you're DPSing at first - give it a grace period of 20 seconds or so (enough for two rounds of the 12 sec cool down taunts) of light DPS after the tank finally has the creature in melee range before you start really unloading with the pointy stuff.

Lastly, a Tank may have to go "Defensive".
One thing a Templar can do is go into "Shield Defence/Steel Wall Defence". This puts his mitigation up quite a fair bit, but he cannot use any abilities while in this mode - this includes any Enmity generators. It gives the healers a chance to catch up if he's dropping below, but in turn stops his Enmity output. So if you see or hear of the Tank going into 'Block Mode' or 'Going Defensive' or 'Putting Up A Wall' or any such thing for any length of time to let healers catch up - dial back the juice or you'll wind up with the bad guy cleaning your clock for you, and it'll give new meaning to "Spray 'n' Wipe + Mr. Muscle".

-

So to recap:
If a Templar loses agro, wind back the DPS, even if it's not you the guy is coming after. The longer the Tank doesn't have agro, the more he falls behind.
If there is more than one bad guy, give the Tank some time to really get rolling, he'll be behind for a while. Ease the DPS for 10-20 secs at the start.
If a Templar is going all defensive mode, lay off. He's not generating as much threat.

-

I hope this clears up tanking. Without a specific "automatic Top-Of-The-Stack" agro/taunt skill, Tanks have a lot harder time actually regaining agro, so take care when you're out there. If you pull agro, you put the whole group at risk here, not like several other MMO's where the tank has an "Oh Shit" button. Some tanks are very good at their job, and can honestly just output threat like it's nobody's business, and a lot of the previous stuff may not apply as much, but these basics ought to give everyone a rough understanding of what is going on.

Cheers!

~ Minsc and Boo.
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Thanks, Minsc!

Watch this space for upcoming posts delving deep into the Stigma system (for Templars, of course!) and a look over of the Templar DP abilities we'll have lined up for level 50 content.

Sorcerer Solo Rifting

I always go rifting in a group. Always. And yet most of the PvP we do is small scale... us vs. one, us vs. two, or us vs. massive unbeatable zerg. Abyssal wings can get kind of frustrating too... it's really easy for people to just run (at least until patch 1.6 hits). So I figured, why not just go in on my own?

So I did. The result: almost two hours of furback killing (except for a small hiccup the first time I stepped through), mostly bots but plenty of 1v1 and some 1v2. And about 8000 AP for my time.

The bots were mostly easy as hell: sometimes they just stop attacking you and go after a mob. Sometimes they just don't attack at all. Other times, there would be a clump of them and attacking one would see all of them chase after you, which is like pulling multiple mobs in solo pve xD. The excellent thing about them though is that they're not all rank 9: some were as low as rank 6 and gave sexy amounts of AP. In addition, after killing four or five of them, I'd gain over 2000 DP.

Of course bot farming wasn't my primary goal and I got plenty of actual player footage, including against two skilled gladiators and some SMs. SMs are turning out to be not quite as bad as I thought to fight, especially on the ground; but then, sorcerers have most of their tricks by level 41.

This is a two parter... youtube doesn't like 14 minute videos. Click through (or part1, part2) for the full sized versions at youtube.

[art] Love is War II

Before I realize it, the dawn is already coming.
Time, please stop.

a brief interlude

Say hi to Taihen the Chanter and... the other Tora.

Me and Lewin hadn't played our Ranger and Templar respectively for a few days, and thus the inconspicuous lack of posts from us lately. I still have to make that jumpshot video... d'oh. For that, I apologise; we've been busy with some rl stuff, for me some art stuff and for Lewin ODST.

Anyway, in between the spare time I had, I rolled a Chanter alt, and an Asmo Assassin.

• Chanters are insanely fun. Think Ret Paladins with Druid HoTs. I loved playing my kitty druid in WoW, so Chanters feel very similar.
• Considering how many times I've done the first 15 or so levels, I'm still surprised how fast I power through them, and yet it never got boring.
  
• Male Asmos run funny.
• I expected the Asmo ascension quest to be the same as Elyos, and boy was I surprised.
  
• Asmos on the whole feel a little more badass. Their raiders raid because they can, while the Elyos raiders raid because they get paid. Go figure.

Anyways, we finally hit 36 today, after nearly two weeks at 35.

• The grind gets really boring if you don't build up a steady rhythm.
  
• That is, until you find a legion group and grind elites in the Kaidan HQ for three hours.
• ...and then proceed to do Fire Temple with the same group, and find the xp isn't as sweet at level 35...
• ...and still not get Judge Kromede.

Also, fortress raids are a pain in the butt when your faction doesn't get their act together.