Please do not get me wrong when looking at the title. I am not complaining, I am just bearing some concerns about
some problems that might come up in the future time.
Comparing the effort it takes to aquire the RvR Armor Sets or the PvE Armor sets, at least at this early stage, I am afraid that getting the PvE Armor Sets is ways easier than getting the RvR-Armor Set Version.
I am not talking about the difficulty level of playstyle, just about the surrounding factors.
To aquire your PvE Set, you simply need a number of players who are able to enter the Instance.
Now the RvR Sets, require certain factors like Zone Control, Citiy Sieging, Faction Leader Fights eg. not to mention that you need to be in the game, when a city siege is in progress. You can't just decide, %26quot;Well Today I will try my Luck on Renown 70 Gear%26quot; and start fighting the opposing realm with 6 Teammates.
I love RvR, but from my feeling, the WoW Set-Mentality will drive people into the instances, for easy mode Armor (exagerating) keeping them away from participating in RvR.
So are I am getting something completly wrong, did I missed something or it is really harder to get your RvR Armor Set?
yBut the PvE obtained armor sets are just that....for PvE. They bear no real significance in RvRing. That's why they have the Wards for PvE resistances while the RvR sets don't. While yeah they may be nice and cool and help a small bit, they don't come close to being the same as the city seige RvR obtained sets. Completely different paths, there.
Not to mention, that armor in this game is not an auto-win as it is with WOW, so really, let the WOW-Menatlity try and kick in. When people realize that they actually need to have skill to win and it's not the armor that wins FOR them, they'll either catch on or move on.
Just for clarification. My concern is the following:
If there is a easy way to aquire Sets, than the vast majority will take this route, leaving the RvR Zones empty.
You're completly right to the extend that this is a WoW-Mentality, but the problem is, that many, many, many people look at the game from the WoW Perspektive, as we saw in various discussions.
Even if PvE Sets are worthless (exageration) in PvP, people will try and get them. I remember beeing totaly confused how people were taking T1 WoW Sets as THE Set, even if their Statts were totally useless for teir own Skill.
Just to give you an example, all Hybrid-Classes Sets were designed as HEaler sets and guess what. Even Hybrids skilled for Damage used them.
So yes, if there is an easy way of getting Armor, people will take it.
Actually...my understanding is that both the pve and pvp sets have the wards and can be used in any combination to achieve the ward maximum of 50%.
Now, on the matter of your concern about the pve sets being easier to get...
We'll start with Bastion Stair and the Bloodlord set. On my Black Orc I currently only have 1 Bloodlord piece and 3 Annihilator pieces...because the set pieces drop off the heroes at the end of each branch and you can only fight them as a 6 man party, requiring that you have an ideal party put together (generally, 2 tanks, 2 healers, 2 dps). I've been to BS countless times now and only successfully killed the 2nd path boss once. We get pretty far on the 3rd path but we haven't yet been able to complete it. To give you an idea of the difficulty, my Black Orc, who is quite a beefcake, has been hit by bosses in Bastion for almost 8k damage, WHILE BEING GUARDED by another tank (yes, that's a 15k+ dmg hit). Once the tanks go down, most of the other members get 1 shotted.
Now, enter Bilerot. The IC dungeons can only be run as 6 mans. A group of us decided to give that dungeon a shot and after about 4 hours of wiping over and over while only defeating 1 hero and wiping repeatedly on a boss we couldn't even get down to 90% before getting destroyed (again with the being hit for almost 8k damage on a guarded tank AND you're now stuck in a 6 man so have a limited number of healers) we gave up. The Khorne dungeon is even harder than Bilerot and Lost Vale is harder than that.
Believe me, after having run a few of these places, I think I'd rather get gear from pvp, because the dungeons are freaking nightmares.
well yes I have to agree with ya here.
People are taking that path, and Mythic is encouraging it.
To take a fortress now you need PvE armor with the wards.
Dungeon running and grinding due to random drops only makes it worse.
So now RvR is being attached to PvE in the worst way.
And TBH I get most of my gear through Influence grinds anyways.
The renown gear is still broken, no word on when it will be fixed.
Very sad since in beta you could be totally geared just doing RvR and never leave a warcamp.
Those were the days eh?
Now Open is dead unless there is an event or someone organizes something, you can't just go out and find open 90% of the time.
I dunno. Mythic is really trying too hard to please those Wow players and is just screwing themselves.
People who came for the RvR are not happy, people who came for Wow 2.0 are going back to wow.
What are they gonna be stuck with? A game that caters to people who have that game already.
WAR has promise and the tools to be an incredible RvR game.
Right now it's a PvE game with Scenarios and the occasional open %26quot;trist%26quot;
The only thing they fixed is the dps effect of wards. You still need them to survive hits in the city dungeons and fortress/city sieges. Although they have no direct effect in RvR against other players with regards to wards, they are pretty much needed for fortress and city sieges to survive against the NPCs there.
When people say armor makes no difference in the game, it's only true to a certain extent. You absolutely need them for the sub bosses in the cities and more than likely the king encounters as well. It also wouldn't hurt to have them in fortress raids too.
I'm sure there are better pieces of armor stat wise, the wards alone make them a requirement for at least Tanks, everyone can probably get away with wearing only 1 or 2 pieces.
Although I wouldn't call the PvE gear %26quot;easy%26quot; to get, as you don't just need a good 6 man group but also luck that pieces your group can use actually drop. The PvE set is definitely a lot more accessible than the RvR sets though unless your realm is constantly doing city sieges (which I remember mark jacobs saying was intended to only happen once a month?). So theoretically you can progress through the PvE stuff if you have good luck and a great group and then once the city sieges happen, you'll be much more prepared.
I'm not sure how the stats directly compare to the RvR gear though... if they did it right, you'd have better stats on the RvR stuff even with the same wards.
Thanks a lot, this is exactly what I was trying to express desperatly. Sometimes language is the highest barrier.
I am not talking about %26quot;Difficulties%26quot; in the meaning of how hard an encounter is, what skill you require PArty setups etc.
My concern is comparing the surrounding factors as Itachi said. Even if the dungeons are a rough ride, at least you can organise them.
Just try organising a City Raid, than you know what I worry about.
Thank god we have a Feedback function.
Whether or not the PvE stuff will take away from RvR depends on the people and it's sad to say but most people will probably choose to do PvE over RvR until a city siege is actually happening.
For example, last night a couple warbands formed and started taking keeps back from order starting with Dragonwake. A couple of keeps through my guild starts a Bastion Stair run and needs me as a tank so I went. Despite the ongoing open RvR we spent most of the night doing PvE. I see more people doing this until an actual city siege happens. You're more likely to get gear from your group doing PvE than RvR...
But the problem there is, an actual city seige won't happen if people don't bother to RvR.
I also seriously think you guys underestimate how all of this works and think that there's one easier road than another. Not to mention, the city seige sets are, as they have stated continuously, 'the best in the game'. So dungeons being %26quot;easier%26quot; get you less impressive rewards. It's the whole risk vs. reward thing.
And you can 'easily organize' a dungeon run all you want, that doesn't mean you'll actually be able to complete it to get anything out of it, like Stunty pointed out. So it evens out just fine in the end.
I really think you're over-thinking this and worrying for nothing, especially if you haven't experienced all of the ways to obtain these things.
Well if you look at the grab bag that talked about the armor sets you'll see that there's an equivalent PvE armor set to the RvR sets up until you get to the Sub-boss PQs. Whether or not the RvR sets are actually better is still unclear. The lost vale sets being the best PvE stuff is only equivalent to the Invader sets and either of those sets are required for the sub-boss PQs.
The sub-boss and king sets are the best sets in the game currently. Although I haven't seen them stat wise, hopefully that's a safe assumption. They also require very high renown ranks (64+) which should encourage people to do RvR constantly anyway regardless if they went through only PvE to get the lost vale set.
It might only seem like a problem right now because of the rarity of city sieges so you'll see more go for the PvE rewards so they can at least be prepared for a fortress battle or even city invasion.
Yeah gotta remember that the PvE sets are only on par with the bottom rung RvR sets.
Also I don't get what you guys are talking about with only need a 6man for PvE but not RvR. Not don't get me wrong, WAR's no DAoC, with the 8man gank groups slaughtering the battle group zergs, but that was more about the overabundance of Crowd Control and less about the skill balanacing.
Honestly WAR is really fine tuned for group work, and lack of RvR content for a six man doesn't fall on my list of its short comings. Maybe you can single handedly take a keep or a fortress, but you sure could cap objectives and kill much larger less organized groups, probably 12 plus. Doesn't the Anilihator, which compares to the Bloodlord set, come from normal T4 RvR. I'll bet a 6 man run like the good ole' day DAoC 8 mans could get it pretty quickly.
Heck if 4 serious 6 mans groupped up, it'd be amazing. I don't know about anyone else, but I haven't seen a PUG warband figure out that actually splitting their forces into 4 groups that work as units is amazing yet.
I'm sure some of you guilded fellows are on top of it though.
Honestly I say give it time, there just aren't enough people in T4, at the point where they're playing the macro game. I mean, I know I've referenced it waaay to much, but DAoC had much larger PvE hurdles to be competative in RvR than WAR does, and its end game was great. People just had to get there first.
Right now you Realm Pride, PvP/RvR oriented players are not in line with the PvE/carrotmeplease players. But once they clear those dungeons, what else will they do? They'll want a city siege, they'll want the same thing you do, they'll come to the RvR zones, because thats where the big carrot is. And many of them will realize that they actually like RvR. And once RvR is swinging, people will figure out what DAoC players (and prolly UO guys too) already know, WAR is a game to play for RvR. And when people play it for that, the problem will be the opposite. It'll be hard to find people who want to run the dungeons. Its happened before, much like this, in DAoC, except you have a ton of WoW players now who haven't quite figured it out.
Maybe in that sense WoTLK (launched today right?) will be a blessing in disguise, because they'll leave long enough to come back to a game where people can tell them how to play, and why, rather than the vauge uncharted frontier that WAR is currently.
...wow ok sorry I went of the deepend a bit, but I'm pretty sure I was respectful, so I'll post it. If we have disagreeing opinions, I say lets just wait and see, as the future will have to prove one of us right eventually, and I'm willing to eat my words if I'm wrong.
We're not talking about the lack of 6 man content in RvR, we're talking about the general difficulty of having a chance to get RvR gear compared to PvE gear. Also if you compare the Invader set which is available during city invasion PQs, with the Darkpromise set from Lost Vale, the Darkpromise stuff is easier to get because city invasions don't happen regularly and generally depend on the entire server population. Whereas the Darkpromise stuff can be farmed effectively using 6 dedicated people.
Comparing Annihilator to Bloodlord, it's easy to get 2 Annihilator pieces since you can just buy them. Same with the sentinel vs. conqueror set. So really it's not that bad because at some point they'll have to do RvR to get to the Sub boss sets and then the kings.
You can only buy 1 pieces from each set though from the renown vendor and the another piece (boots I think) from AH. I only see up to the conqueror set that's buyable though. If they do let you buy 1 or 2 pieces from the invader and up sets then it's not that bad. I'm sure they'll add more stuff that has those wards to make things more diverse.