No, I’m not quitting… anyway I play a good witch elf but I’m not an era lol…  Nevertheless things have changed quite a bit since patch 1.3.6 went live.  For one thing, I just had a bittersweet duel session against a whole host of colorful characters, and went 22-0 which is good, but also exposes some flaws in Mythic’s gear-gap mentality which is the same school of thought driving us toward an expansion that features 20 more realm ranks in lieu of content to attract new players.  Some of the folks I fought this morning were in full sov; and one WL in full defensive gave me the closest shave but I adjusted my tactics and the second duel wasn’t nearly as close.

Most of our big guilds on Gorfang (especially destro side) are rerolling on Badlands, and while it is implied that this is a temporary thing, I’d say the server is really starting to miss them.  Destro premades seem to be utterly extinct, and the friends I usually play with (other than Raven) are nowhere to be found.  So even my trusty pocket healer is getting frustrated that his guild- the best Destro has to offer on Gorfang, has packed up and bailed on us for Badlands and I don’t blame him.  My own guild, Arsenal, is now a pale shadow of its former glory, with about 90% of our big names having dropped the guild tag for others or remaining unguilded.  Despite this I have decided I’m going to stick it out; I’m too tired to rush another major guild and at this point there really aren’t any left anyway.

On a lighter note I did adjust Taransula’s fatigues and I think she looks pretty cool   So Gorfang may be dying, and it’s quite possible that myself and/or Raven may log on less; but I’ll definitely be trying out that expansion whenever it goes live.  I just hope our server is still around when it does.

So it’s finally happened.  I hit 426 royal insignias last night and bought dagger #4.  I don’t think two royal regen daggers are practical in any situation but I had to equip them and queue up one last time for a victory lap… fortunately we did win the SC lol.  And so with a not-so-heavy heart I am proud to say that after hundreds… and hundreds of royal farming missions, Taransula has done her last solo queue.  She will continue to be seen with Raven’s pocket heals, or perhaps in a premade with the mighty Paradox or the last remaining members of my guild Arsenal, but the days of solo sloggin’ are over.  Naturally I really have no need for all four royal daggers, but I had to have them; for completeness I suppose.

So in that match I ran around with a whopping 199 damage bonus, and 25 crit.  I had exactly 10,000 hp and 371 toughness.  The defensive sovereign works.  I am so in love with it now I just don’t think I can ever go back.  Now my usual setup if I solo queue is more like 240 damage bonus with 27 crit, and 9500 hp.  With my zealot pal it’s 260 damage bonus.  I feel pretty much unstoppable.  With double heal debuffs and 3 different offensive procs (kiss, lifetap, witchbrew) the damage still feels very high- high enough to get a non-crit AW in the 1700 range on a tank when everything goes off at once.  For offense I can slot up Flanking and ToB and get a nice boost to white/yellow/proc damage.  When I want defense I slot SR and with the proc in my dagger I have a chance to proc any of 3 different bubbles when I get hit.  I’ve literally run from the order WC to the part in SP with two SWs chasing me the whole way and absorbed everything they threw at me.   I know there are some naysayers; and running a defensive build on an offensive class seems pretty obtuse from the outside, but this is the perfect storm I’ve always been looking for.

In skirmishes Raven and I have taken down three times our number, and had countless victories over 3-4 people; and we’re talking ranked players here no graybies.  Solo I was able to take down a 72 AM with a 74 BW and 74 SM in a fantastic 3v1; which never would have happened in the offensive sov armor.

So now the waiting begins.  Realm rank 100 is coming… but I have a feeling it will be Christmas at the earliest.  I don’t really need anything anymore so helping Raven rank up will be priority #1.  Also it’s been way too long since I thanked you folks for reading my blog!  I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback this past year and I hope we can continue to keep you entertained.  More WARbits coming soon!

To complement my graduation post, and as a last huzzah to solo queueing (with a couple pocket heal SCs sprinkled in there), here are some screenies that I think clearly show the defensive sovereign armor works better for WE than any other MDPS.  Stats-wise you will notice I’m still competing extremely well for KBs and damage since I can stay in the front and be exposed to enemy fire longer- the key difference is a lot fewer deaths.

Yeah I’m in love with the new sovereign sets.  Here is how Taransula looks in the different sets; though mostly I’m going defensive atm

So here are the new Sovereign sets!  I wanted to make a convenient place to study them for the min-maxing theory crafters out there   The first and second row are the primary (offensive) set, and the last two rows are secondary (defensive) set.

So I’ve just uploaded 6 more finished Warbits.  Featured below is our little homage to the Taransula/Ravenett duo that has been improving its order-headache-inducing, ragelog-encouraging PvP goodness for a few weeks now…

Finally doing Raven’s hilarious comics justice… WARBITS! now have their own page, so check em out!

Well, rather than repeat myself, scroll down to see the FINAL version of our Sovereign armor. Note the increase of 8pc defensive ability from 5s immunity to 10s. woot !

There is a rather funny bug causing the +10 haste pieces (helm and shoulders) to actually ADD 10 seconds to your attack speed.  So in most of my duels I only auto attacked once for the entire duel- since my swing speed went up to 22.4

I assume that will be fixed soon.

70+ order and only a handful of destro is always a recipe for good times if you’re talking about Caledor. For those of you who haven’t fallen in love with this zone yet I encourage you to give it another shot. I was 60s gank spec for the entire duration of this- Caledor’s numerous hills, bridges and rivers create perfect guerilla terrain. The first 40 kills I was paired with my little zealot slave (I mean coworker!) Ravenett, who fed on my RPs and cranked out surprising heals for rr40x while we ganked all over the zone… then I started adding people into the group who we came across and eventually we joined up with a premade from my guild before turning our business over to scenarios full time.

Skirmishes in WAR are more fun for me than everything else, and when the new Sovereign armor sets hit it’s going to get a lot sicker

(Primary) Offensive Set

Str – 232
WS – 134
Wou – 116
Init – 106
Spi – 294
Cor – 289
Ele – 289
6% melee crit chance
40 melee power
20% auto attack speed
3 AP/s
4% critical damage increase

3 piece – 85 Str
4 piece – 85 Wou
5 piece – 5% melee crit chance
6 piece – On Hit: 10% chance to increase melee power by 130 for 10s.
7 piece – On Hit: 10% chance to increase increase the target’s chance to be critically hit by 7% for 10s.
8 piece – 2m cooldown – Drain morale of all nearby opponents to zero

(Secondary) Survivability Set

Wou – 232
Tou – 134
Ini – 116
Str – 106
Spi – 294
Cor – 289
Ele – 289
6% reduced chance to be crit
400 (additional) armor
60 HP/4s
3 AP/s
2% melee crit

3 piece – 85 Tou
4 piece – 85 Wou
5 piece – 500 Armor
6 piece – On Being Hit: 10% chance to form a barrier that will absorb up to 935 damage over 5s.
7 piece – On Hit: 10% chance to deal 409 damage to your attacker, healing you for 150% of the damage dealt.
8 piece – 2m cooldown – Group immune to knockdown, stagger, root and knockback for 10s

These bonuses reflect current Sovereign armor on the PTS.