Taransula's Personal Information

So I've had some PMs and a request on my comments board to update my spec. My talent build has not changed in a while so I will link it again here:

Taransula's Current Spec rr70 version

Highlights include Witchbrew, Increased Pain, Heartseeker, Elixir of the Cauldron, Elixir of Blades, Kiss of Doom, and Black Lotus Blade. I use EoB after engaging melee with Witchbrew already on me- Elixir of Blades is best used when you are NOT planning to CC your enemy during those 7 seconds, and before your melee opponent has used their CC on you- so if you are stunned or knocked down you still proc EoB's 273 dmg on your attacker. Elixir of the Cauldron is an obvious choice, useful right after the knockdown from stealth to piggy back your squishy caster/healer enemy and hopefully destroy them before it wears off. Heartseeker is nerfed but still necessary CC, Witchbrew is my finisher of choice along with Heart Render Toxin, which is great in this build with all those points in the Suffering Tree. Kiss of Doom is an invaluable tactic in group rvr, 1v1 vs. hardy opponents, or pretty much any fight not decided in less than 10 seconds- the little heals can add up and make quite a difference. Black Lotus Blade no longer stacks with Kiss of Death for a 100% heal debuff, but still certainly seems to help- my theory is that it now stacks to 75%- making it still worth the points in my book, naturally you can only reach the 75% penalty to heals if you attack a healer directly- Kiss of Death will affect his own heal cast and BLB effects heal received, ie vs. any class other than a healer our maximum heal debuff is still 50%. Below are my recommendations for this type of build with lower realm rank:

Taransula's Current Spec rr60 version

In the rr60 version I have dropped Elixir of Blades, which is an easy choice as the short duration usually means 2-3 procs max vs. most melee opponents anyway.

Taransula's Current Spec rr50 version

In the rr50 version I dropped Black Lotus Blade simply because it no longer stacks to 100% and Kiss of Death's debuff is still quite formidable- also with the Kiss of Doom tactic still running your Kiss of Death will be not only nerfing outgoing heals but continuing to heal you for the damage.

Taransula's Current Spec rr40 version

In the rr40 version I dropped Kiss of Doom. It's not very easy to get this spec to work for rr40, but Witchbrew in my opinion is the most powerful aspect of the Suffering Tree now- the damage bypasses armor and the buff lasts 60s allowing your precious bloodlust to not go wasted. Since block/parry does not waste procs I'd still consider the DPS of Witchbrew to be better than Black Lotus Blade for this setup.

As far as tactics I am always running Increased Pain and Kiss of Doom. The other two tactics tend to shift depending on whether my focus is offense or defense. If defense I will slot Sacrifices Rewarded and Taste of Blood- being careful to spam 1 point HRT finishers to proc bubbles and +dmg boosts. If my focus is offense this instead becomes Brute Force and Jagged Edge, or Brute Force and Flanking. I don't generally run with Frenzied Mayhem as my base crit hovers around 30% at all times.

So what defines overpowered?

And so it begins. Laying the patch out on a flat surface you see some nice changes for Witch Elf. But our order targets, or my order targets at least, are starting to complain about this new kill-every-class business. Unfortunately for them, when you look really closely you find much of the WE's "over poweredness" is an optical illusion. It's partly abilities, but mostly tactics:

Witchbrew is an incredible finisher- it means you can add 350 (average) damage per hit to 6 attacks over a period of up to 60s. This damage can come fairly rapidly and really make the difference vs. some targets- especially those with high armor but low resist. The catch is that Witchbrew is still a finisher. It's not a magic trick- the WE must save up 5 bloodlust and then spend a GCD waving her arms and doing her little dance move to trigger the 60s buff and add damage on subsequent attacks.

Witchbrew cannot proc on back to back attacks. In fact, though quite powerful it seems to have been stealth nerfed to proc only once per two seconds. I can't seem to create a time stamp with 2 WB procs in the same second.

Other than Witchbrew the patch had relatively no effect at all on WE performance as far as actual numbers- On Your Knees hits slightly harder than before, but only knocks down the primary target. Our other finishers were untouched. Kiss buffs now last 30 minutes, but other than that are absolutely identical resulting in no DPS increase for any Witch who made sure to keep her kiss buff up. Kiss of Doom is now the same as the WH heal tactic- but with only a 25% chance to proc a 200 point heal per attack it is still not quite strong enough to rival a WH using Sanctified Bullets and determined to spam finishers- the bullets hit twice as hard and are guaranteed on a finisher, unlike the WE's 25% chance.

In other words it is doubtful that the new OYK, Kiss of Doom (see below), or duration of our kiss buff are what frustrates our enemies.

SO what exactly is going on here? How would the WE be overpowered after only these changes? Witchbrew is nice- but a 5 point HRT finisher can crit for more than all the WB procs combined, and instantly! Kiss damage has not changed. Our stun was actually nerfed, and the Carnage tree is no better than it was before.

My theory is that the new Witchbrew has given rise to the idea that building bloodlust before jumping away with Agile Escape, is a good strategy. The problem this creates for our enemies is it gets them out of sync. Many times they will have already blown precious cooldowns, and now they find themselves far away and waiting on the WE to restart the fight at her convenience. In other words, simply USING more of the tools our class has available, in a smarter way, is making quite a bit of difference. This only combines with the healing of *Kiss of Doom when you look at the idea of fighting tanks- when the assassin can heal herself, if the target is a modest damage/high survivability tank they will suddenly find themselves facing mission impossible- killing a high dps class that has a constant Heal over Time on itself...

Killing tanks is a double edged sword. On the one hand it is nice to finally have tools to deal with these types of encounters- WB finisher adding non-physical proc damage, and healing kisses to mitigate the low damage bleed-her-out style of sword/shield tanks. But on the other hand tanks have always been the most difficult class for a WE to kill. So therein lies the rub- since all the other classes were already very doable given equivalent gear/rank, applying our newfangled anti-tank technology to our overall RvR strategy makes us realize that as the tank gets easier, so must everything else.

Overpowered? I don't think it's that simple, but I do think that people yelling about anti-tank tactics being outside our jurisdiction or a waste of time have failed to understand the critical point I just outlined above- that the anti-tank abilities introduced in 1.3.2 are just as effective against every other class. I'm not going to say this makes us overpowered, but I'd be lying if i didn't say my WE isn't head over heels for Witchbrew and Kiss of Doom.

It's also been pointed out to me that most WEs on my server aren't any more dangerous than they were in 1.3.1... but I think that if more of them took my advice they would be

I guess spreading panphlets on all this stuff is against my own self-interest, but I've been barking info and WE tips for a long time whether people asked for them or not, and I don't plan on stopping for a little "OP" scare.

The Damage Bonus?

The DAMAGE BONUS stat on your paper doll is an interesting one. It combines your Weapon DPS, Strength +DPS, and Melee Power bonus into one stat. I've noticed when you get this really high (I have gotten it as high as 282, but I think with more melee power you can get it higher), that strength doesn't count anywhere near as much as melee power. For example going from 1091 strength to 1093 strength increased my Damage Bonus by +0.

So currently I'm trying a new gear setup where I am wearing 3 warlord, 2 invader, and 2 DP pieces. This knocks my crit down to 25%, but with a liniment (+100 wounds, +60 melee power) I can get 1091 strength, 758 wounds, and I have 265 melee power. This should make for extreme auto attack damage to go along with my proc build. I am also slotting Flanking+ToB since they stack for +30% dmg; I will keep you posted about how this works out... I gave up some wounds by skipping the Invader 3 set piece bonus, and lost 5 crit by passing on the DP 3 piece bonus, but other than that secondary stats like WS and toughness went up, along with strength obviously. I'm thinking even if you love Witchbrew and have a solid proc build, keeping your strength and dmg power extremely high is never a bad thing- and tactics like Flanking and ToB will buff proc and melee dmg together.

Kind of a boring update but I'll try to collect some numbers and let you guys know how three-setting works out !

Fun with Cooldowns

So I just wanted to take a moment here to remind WE players of our attacks that lack a cooldown... I don't mean stuff like Slice I mean attacks that don't even trigger the GCD after they are used. All three of our openers fall into this category- meaning if you bind your follow-up attack to the same key as your opener (except on your main hotbar of course), you can double tap someone with an opener followed by your first attack almost instantly- this means you don't need to stun from stealth- you can put something nasty in between the stun and the opener. Enchanting Beauty, Fleet Footed, and all three of our Elixirs also do not trigger a GCD This means against a caster I will often pop from stealth, ES, BLB, Stun (now i have 4 bloodlust), while they are stunned I pop EotC for magic immune and hit my Witchbrew at the same time (or one 100th of a second later if you want to get technical)- so it looks like my witch does like a double-arm-flap and then I have both buffs on me. To clarify when I say they don't trigger a global cooldown I mean if you aren't ON cooldown already, you could potentially bang your FF, FP, Elixir, and Witchbrew all at the same time; although you will want to use Witchbrew last in that example because it will in fact trigger a cooldown. So for reference here are the no-GCD triggering maneuvers:

Elixir of Insane Power

Elixir of the Cauldron

Feinted Positioning

Elixir of Blades

Fleet Footed

Enfeebling Strike

Treacherous Assault

Vehement Blades

Rune Priest ditches Swordmaster: News at 11

So I had a neat little episode yesterday in Dragonwake. Order was locking down the zone, zerging the BOs and keeping destro in check pretty handily. When the zone finally locked the bluebies from Memory BO rushed to our WC to camp it and kill us for a while. Well, I happened to already be outside and so i came up behind them from downhill- the first person I met was a WP who was a little to far from his mates- but after squishing him I caught the eye of a Swordmaster and her RP escort... so they chased me with gusto, but my Crystal of Sandstorms tali kept proccing and i managed to make some distance and restealth by the time i got to the foot of the steep path leading up to CoF keep. From behind the tree I saw them stop so I decided to jump the RP, he had just waved at the SM- but I figured he was being cute and meant that wave for me... well I hit him twice from stealth before he vanished lol- he had scrolled out leaving the confused SM to pick up his slack. She jumped on me and I on her, I got some bloodlust, leapt away for Witchbrew, and turned on some undefendable proc. A few slashes later I had 60% hp left and some RPs. I thought the situation was amusing simply because I was fully prepared to martyr myself, and the RP could have easily broke his channel to 2v1 me but opted to vanish instead, leaving the SM to fend for herself.

So to Thoradin- thanks Now without further ado here's a little Wallpaper featuring my WE mascot

Everything I need to know about life I learned dueling in Warhammer?

Well not to toot my own horn but #1 this IS my blog and #2 I got to see my WH strategies bear out last night in some nice duels. Granted I had at least slightly better gear than any of the four who showed up on the field, but I managed to go undefeated against them all... although a stray BaL tick did bring me down after the kill in one particular duel. Basically what I'm seeing is the awesome power of Agile Escape in action. If you get jumped from stealth you can use it to pop away from the WH before he can stun you... this seems to work virtually every time- again because they can't stun you facing them without FP, which they won't pop from stealth right away if they think they have your back. So often I would find I turn and pop AE, they spend their GCD on FP, and now I'm 40' away, not stunned, while their FP timer ticks out... Sometimes they would even pop RB so I got to use up two cooldowns for the price of one lol... I even experimented with a couple duels where I let them stealth on me first! In most cases I could still jump away and then counter-stealth; whereupon they had no choice but to eat my opener.

It may sound like I'm harping on this but it's not often I give advice about a particular class and then have a long string of duels vs. said class and things work out better than I'd hoped. So even if you don't particularly go for the new Witchbrew, or Suffering spec in general- make good use of Agile Escape, especially in encounters with our mirror class, and you just might become their worst nightmare.

The Best of Both Worlds

So my favorite lately is running with Taste of Blood, Kiss of Doom, Brute Force, and Increased Pain. For a while I was messing with +WS from my renown to make a true tank killer. Well I realized I was probably doing it wrong. Is more WS really worth it in the face of losing Strength or Melee Crit? I don't think so... So still continuing my crusade for Witchbrew-in-every-engagement I beefed my crit back up, and got my hands on the little Daemon Moon Rising lord drop. My stats are now back to classic brutal WE (esp with liniment on, as pictured below)... and combining this with the Witchbrew-proc-heal spec is not only better, but completely insane. I don't want to overstate my results for fear of being too graphic, there might be kids reading after all

My gear is working well here, but even shaving 100 str, 100 Wounds, and 15 crit off all that would net you some brutal results- so again I encourage my fellow WEs to really give 1.3.2 a chance and try out the new Kiss of Doom and Witchbrew if you haven't yet... and get used to Agile Escape, it's your new best friend I promise.

Common Abbreviations

TACTIC ABILITY MORALE FINISHER

FM - Frenzied Mayhem

SR - Sacrifices Rewarded

ToB - Taste of Blood

FTHQ - For the Hag Queen

SM - Swift Movements

KoD - Kiss of Doom

MT - Masterful Treachery

IP - Increased Pain

BF - Brute Force

ES - Enfeebling Strike

TA - Treacherous Assault

VB - Vehement Blades

WoB - Web of Shadows

SN - Sever Nerve

CM - Confusing Movements

AW - Agonizing Wound

AE - Agile Escape

OYK - On Your Knees!

PA - Pierce Armor

BLB - Black Lotus Blade

FP - Feinted Positioning

EB - Envenomed Blade

KoDeath - kiss of death

KoB - kiss of betrayal

KoA - kiss of agony

WP - Wracking Pains

SS - Sacrificial Stab

HRT - Heart Render Toxin

HS - Heartseeker

WB - Witchbrew

PCT - Puncture

RA - Ruthless Assault

EoB - Elixir of Blades

EotC- Elixir of the Cauldron

EoIP - Elixir of Insane Power

SB - Sever Blessing

Witch Elf vs. Order, a few tips

I can't guarantee results here, but I thought I'd put up some general tips that I would find helpful vs. each class; assuming you play Witch Elf @ lvl 40; I'm trying not to preach exact build and spec here, but give general gameplay tips. I'll start with MDPS and add more as I can.

Witch Hunter - our nemesis. The WH cannot be overestimated; they have all the tools they need to paint the walls with our blood and then some. However even after the new nerf to our stun the fight often comes down to who stuns first. Nearly every WH specs for Repel Blasphemy and Burn Away Lies so Sever Blessing is a must here- it's a free hit anyway and can crit for up to 900 vs. our nemesis if you have high str. Feinted Positioning is vital fighting the WH because it often determines who can stun first, and helps you ignore armor altogether for 10s- So from stealth if you land the opener I could encourage a standard stun and Agonizing Wound strategy, adding finishers to taste; but I would also encourage using Agile Escape. This can be a miracle worker if the WH gets you first from stealth; when you see Sudden Accusations ticking on you if you spin 180 and spam that AE button chances are good you will mez him and hop away; since he is assuming he won't need FP to stun as he is already behind you. If you get the AE off early you are free to stealth and counterattack since he's already burned his. Agile Escape, Feinted Positioning, Sever Blessing- using these tools effectively can help you get your average vs. WH in your favor.

White Lion - these guys can frontload an incredible amount of damage after the kitty stuns you. Detaunt is an absolute must here. if you can get the WL from stealth; as soon as you CC him make sure to use your free GCD on a detaunt. Then simply piggy back the WL kicking out as much dmg as you possibly can. WLs can be tough, so from stealth you might want to open with Wracking Pains straight after ES for the debuffs, with Heartseeker or OYK as your next attack to get the knockdown; popping FP after detaunt will guarantee he has no armor for 10s. This is a DPS race so if you are vastly outgeared chances are still good you will eat dirt- but with a good crit rate and the element of surprise you should be able to take out a WL better kitted out than you. If the WL uses fetch try to pop your FP mid flight and detaunt when you land- stun the WL and hang in there. There are also some WLs who still think they can send the pet in first and hang back- if you sense this is the case try to create more room between the pet and the WL than they want, and burn down the pet as fast as possible. You'd be surprised how many of them expect you to charge the owner with the lion chewing on you; they can often be caught off guard when you jump the pet before the owner is ready to get in melee range. Sever Blessing can remove Leonine Frenzy from the pet, but LF was nerfed in 1.3.1 so I don't think it's necessary to do this.

Slayer - the Slayer can be incredibly brutal, mainly due to Rune of Absorption. This heal attack can give them 50% of their HP back with a few crits. because of this I'd say it is vital to keep your eyes open and when you see the crazy arm movement and his health start moving up use your Agile Escape or stun to interrupt it- RoA is on a 30s cooldown. other than that, if you can get them from stealth the standard ES, WP, stun, kill strategy works well here. If you have Elixir of Blades by all means use it- the dmg cannot be mitigated and Slayers attack so fast they will really hurt themselves... Confusing Movements is a good morale vs them combined with Riposte for the same reason. Making RoA a non-factor is the key to beating this class. Slayer is another very short fight for us- so make sure to burn FP.

... but I don't want to cheat on PA!

A quick note about spec- I see a lot of WEs confused about whether to try out the new suffering/treach spec for fear of losing the hit power of PA against high armor. I think what they are missing is that Witchbrew is better dmg vs. armor than anything else in our arsenal. The Witchbrew procs will also wait for you to land an attack before firing, they are not wasted on parry/block like PA can be. Suffering/Treachery is now a catch-all spec that helps us against heavy melee, light melee, ranged, and healers.

in other words- SYNERGY!

I've decided to try my hand at a regular Witch Elf blog! I'd like to add comments etc, but I'm new at this and didn't want to use a generic blog service so i'll have to program it myself. Anyway, I plan on adding as much useful information about WE as I can muster. Also here is a link to my WHA profile if you want to comment or send me a message or questions:

Taransula on WHA

I'll close this update with my newfound inspiration for Witchbrew, as posted on the WHA forums:

let me put it like this- if you have a mind to slot MT+Flanking, and you happen to have WB on you when you stealth (plenty of time, since it lasts 60s) you are looking at 500 dmg procs. if you used a 5 pointer, so you get 6 procs, you will see them all spent in about 4 seconds.

as WE still needs a range boost (we have only 1 finisher with 20' range, WH has 4 finishers with 30' range) and we need a better DoT, as well as a severe buff to Sacrificial Stab, which often heals for less than the new kiss procs with Kiss of Doom tactic!

The work is not finished, but 1.3.2 gave us a refreshing boost, and making the most of it will increase your productivity on the battlefield !

Witch Elf Armor Modeling

Witch Elf Yearbook

AS OF Warhammer Online v1.3.2.

RED = Nerf

Pink = Global or WH+WE nerf

Green = Buff

NERFS!
Enchanting Beauty radius nerfed
Pierce Armor armor debuff removed
On Your Knees... 50% damage nerf, 33% range nerf, 100% immunity timer nerf. THEN 25% damage buff, 150% radius buff, AE knockdown removed and restricted to primary target, range kept at 20' tactic nerfs Slice damage by 10% while slotted
Healer's Bane tactic in Suffering tree removed (replaced with a mastery spec bubble-from-stealth that absorbs 75 points more than Sacrifices Rewarded, a core tactic)
Sharpened Edge removed and replaced with incomprehensible trash bearing the same name.
Elixir of Insane Power armor debuff nerfed to 50%
Vehement Blades, Enfeebling Strike, Treacherous Assault damage nerfed by 50%, no longer able to crit or gain bonus from strength
Shadow Prowler nerfed to break on damage and then nerfed again to break on proximity of enemy crowds and AE dots, debuffs, and some buffs
Kiss of Agony, Kiss of Death, Kiss of Betrayal nerfed to check resist, and damage nerfed. Kisses changed and later restored to have 25% chance to proc on all attacks.
Riposte nerfed to proc max once per second
Masterful Treachery nerfed from 20% bonus damage to 15%
Heartseeker nerfed from 3s stun to 2s knockdown
Blade Spin radius nerfed, morale
Fling Poison range nerfed, morale
Web of Shadows range nerfed, morale
Sever Limb duration nerfed
Throwing Dagger nerfed- kiss proc capability removed
Agile Escape nerfed, no longer functions while rooted
Bathing in Blood tactic nerfed, no longer stacks
Increased Pain tactic nerfed, cost increased from core to 8 points in Treachery
Broad Swings range nerfed, morale

BUFFS!
Broad Severing tactic added to Carnage *10% dmg reduction
Pierce Armor confers 20s WS buff of up to 120 *armor debuff removed
Witchbrew 300% dmg buff *AE removed
On Your Knees 25% damage increase, 150% radius increase (with 5 bloodlust), *AE knockdown removed
Agile Escape receives a 3s stagger *no longer works while rooted
Kiss of Doom replaced with a healing tactic that heals for 100% of kiss proc dmg
Enchanting Beauty made undefendable *radius nerfed
Treacherous Assault buffed to work against heals (like the WH version) *damage nerfed

Phoenix Throne Personalities!

This is an attempt at humor, poking fun at some of the larger than life forum/RvR personalities on my server. I tried to sum them up in one inspired "quote"

Massie: what is that? DPS?! /no /no /no RUN!!!!!!

Mez: Anyone have more jumping videos? i already posted all mine

Trang: Resolute Defense is like a bunker during nuclear war... completely unfair

Kidneysticker: they don't expect you to charge em' that's why it works.

Bilby: napalm doesn't hurt the environment that's a rumor.

Marvolo: wait... i have a rr80 magus? where were you people?

Munhel: stfu and pop Gromril's. don't make me come over there.

Rozak: there's more to destro than sorcs and choppas btw. black orc for example. ok bad example

Castyn: wait, who doesn't have full tyrant yet?

Vesr: i took out my boss in a 1v4 at work. i love when people underestimate me

Beccala: if you spec for 1h/shield you are utterly missing the point of "shield tank"

Arthemm: Phoeki is trying to farm me at the warcamp. omg what a joke

Covennx: i'm not sure why people think RvR is hard. my character has never been killed.

Rimarlk: you're absolutely right. it's just, you have no clue what you're talking about.

Shire: i had an interview today but they went with a WH

Vvix: so what do i have to do to make Mythic understand BW is still a retarded class? solo IC?

Duvent: you think it's easy being smarter than every one else playing order?

Melekh: my resists drop to zero as soon as i flag and you're telling me that's balanced?

Memon: i had to put down my drink and play with both hands. /salute!

Cooperx: is it balanced that WEs log on covered in gasoline?

Ardz: your job is to chase around your healers. otherwise how will you be in heal range?

Rudin: threw the monitor through my living room wall on that last duel- gimme a sec i'll brb.

Sersay: oops- excuse my 1800 dmg crits, i'm kind of a ditz with the class

Kahoona: i've gone through your post history cross-referencing your high school English papers. god you're such a whiner.

Xear1llo111117: dude i've had this account forever

Katikk: i roll my eyes because it saves time

Nolaloth: once he tasted WE he wouldn't eat anything else.

Shrewd: if 1v1 doesn't relax you you're doin it wrong.

Xole: i hope they buff Edit Post in 1.3.2

Pureblade: ya whatever, The Hulk borrowed my pants for that movie

Siendel: can we add the words Annihilator and Conqueror to the curse filter? i find them offensive.

AOE PRESSURE BUILD

http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=...2:9:640:0:0:29

I know it's completely wacky, but I was imagining slotting SE, JE, BS, and KoD, since Sharpened Edge and Jagged Edge will both proc on AOE.

Spamming OYK and Slice, buffing your AOE armor-pierce with PA, punching through parries/blocks for 100-200 dmg with SE, popping EOIP to buff your AE dps, adding the JE dot, and AOE kiss-procs constantly healing you. Lower str (I can get 940 without BF), and lower crits, but JE, SE, and Kiss procs ignore IP anyway.

If you are assisting you would be spamming AOE heal debuffs while healing yourself, dotting people, and ticking dmg through defenses. Since OYK always hits 9 people now and the radius is increased the cumulative effect of kiss proc heal/debuff is amped up quite a bit.

This spec is similar to Dragon Gun spec for WHs, but we have a couple advantages- kisses can still proc on white dmg, slice, and can double proc on OYK, we still have a single target KD on it, and AOE SE going through defenses is unique to WE.

Anyway, just thinking a build like this might be fun to try for regular wb rvr...



Here is the rr40 version:

http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=...0:7:128:0:0:29

dropping EOIP won't make a huge difference, and losing BLB still leaves you with AE heal debuffs in KoDeath.