Most excellent Ted...most excellent Bill!

Another great night in T3 under a T3 siege night runs by The Gaiscioch Family.  I started late on Saturday and quickly got into one of the two warbands we were hosting.  I was in a Dwarf then Elf zone lock.  Not much to say about those as most of Destro was in the other lands locking those down. 

Finally, we managed to get together in Empire.  Order arrived with Destro having Stoneclaw at four stars and our keep, Passwatch, at zero stars and the inner door under attack.  Foghlahda ran his warband to Passwatch, hitting Destro from behind and saved the keep with the inner door at 13%.  My warband stayed outside to start hitting BOs and gathering resourses.  We took the Tavern and Hallenfurt's Manor and held them the rest of the time.  We and Destro continued to pass Feiten's and Veretane's Tower back and forth. 

While we were doing this Destro continued to push Passwatch and the defenders there were unable to leave.  Order had the numbers so the resource carriers would NOT repair our doors like they would if we had AAO.  What generated was a rolling fight centered around the area between the Destro Warcamp, Tavern, Feiten's and Passwatch.  For over an hour the battle seesawed back and forth, with Destro unable to break the keep defense and our keep slowly ranking up.

When Passwatch hit Rank 4, my warband moved in to get a Ram and siege guns.  As I've said before, the need for siege guns is crucial.  We had a hard time getting there as Destro had a VERY effective two groups that camped on the hill in between their Warcamp and Tavern.   This is the flight path for Order's griffons and many of us were shot down as we flew or run down as we tried to run around them.  Finally, we got what we needed and took down the outer door.  We did this with only one warband as Destro was still pressing Passwatch and with the inner door at 13% we couldn't afford to let them get a ram down at all. 

We started pressing the inner door and Destro mounted a VERY tight defense.   In particular they had a a large group of Ranged DPS that came around the left side of Stoneclaw, it had six or several Squig Herders and almost that many Sorc with healing backup.  We were able to hold them off, but only because they were unable to push back without melee help.  Destro managed to kill the first ram and we had to wait almost ten minutes to get a ram through the Destro roving patrols.  Foghladha had brought over a fully vented group from his warband on keep defense to get the siege equipment through, the only reason we were able to proceed at all, afterward he would die and then get sent back to Passwatch.

We finally took the door down and quickly took the keep as there were few melee or tanks in the keep at all and in the keep itself the ranged DPS were unable to hold us back.  Overall, the hour plus we spent in Empire showed off the best in 1.4.  There were fights over the BOs and open fields, at the same time a viable keep assault was going on.  We won for two reasons, 1) we managed to have enough people to cover the keep and take BOs.  If we had fewer peoples we would have been bottled up in the keep and would have eventually been overrun.  2) Better coordination between Warbands.  Can't speak to this point enough.

Eventually, we won with the approximately 60/40 points split, but with a much higher amount than we received for flipping zones uncontested.  All in all, another great night for RvR

T2 fun and excitement

Finished another guild night, the T2 Seige Night run by the Gaiscioch Family.  We are all still figuring out the best way to hold and complete in 1.4, and last night was no different.  Personally, I feel that 1.4 has hurt the ability of a smaller force to hold out against the odds.  The inability of smaller warbands and groups to adequately defend keeps has led to the "round robin" effect in zones.  Order will push Empire, while Destro closes Dwarf.  They meet briefly in Elf until one side realizes they can't roll the other side...they then move onto the now unlocked zones in Empire and Dwarf.  I realize that this dynamic is most obvious in T2 and T3 due to the fact there are fewer places for Warbands to move to, as well as, the small delay from a fully locked down pairing to an unlocked pairing.

Right now the strategy is to ignore the enemy as much as possible while getting resources to your keep quickly.  Sounds obvious, but this does force a warband to split its forces which does provide the opportunity for a smaller defensive force to move in and grab BOs.  There is one dynamic that I believe needs fixed, however.  Right now if Order holds a BO (Kinshels), and we leave for a minute to cover the resource carrier and a Witch Elf comes in a grabs the flag.  We have three minutes to get back, kill the WE and recapture the BO, which now LOCKS the BO for a full five minutes.  What should happen is we get the BO back and its moved directly to the generating stage but the BO is still recapturable.  The only time a lockout timer should be engaged is when the other side takes is and HOLDS it for the required five minutes.

Now last night the Destro in Empire did show the validity of small group tactics that may hold some promise.  We had one full WB and a second with just over a group spread between three BOs (Kinshel's, Crypt and Morr).  We continued to hold the BOs, but what looked like a full WB of Destro floated in the middle taking out the Resource carriers and looting the remains.  For the twenty minutes they did this they were able to keep up with us in increasing their Keep's rank...even though they only held one BO.  Eventually, we got Mandred's Hold to four stars and pushed to the Destro keep.

The key to T2 and T3 keeps right now is twofold.  One, you MUST have the single shot siege equipment setup to kill the oil and siege guns that spawn on the keep.  The increased damage of siege will kill people in one to two shots and therefore must be eliminated.  Second, careful coordination of the griffins to ensure people with the siege engine buff can rapidly reach the keep and set their equipment up before the their timers run out.  I wish that the timers were moved from three minutes to five minutes as it takes a large amount of time to move to the keep in certain pairing.

In our case the warband leader called out the targets and we quickly removed the siege cannons on the wall and broke down the door.  After that it was a easy issue to kill the two groups of Destro in the keep.  Although there was a bug that kept the lvl 55 Champions on the third floor at the top of the ramp protecting a shaman, they Champions are supposed to despawn when the door goes down, but they weren't until the FLAG was pulled.  This leads to my last point, that the removal of keep lords have removed the ability of smaller groups to hold keeps in the face of  a larger numbers of attackers.  Now, if there are equal numbers of defenders and attackers then not having a keep lord is a good thing and the keep changes hand because of the actions of equal amount of players.  However, a small group that forgoes the easy way of leaving the zone and fights for defense is getting screwed.  Perhaps if the AAO of an area is 150% or 175% then the keep lord spawns might be a viable solution.

All in all...a great night of fun.

Enemy Addon

After years of manually loading curse addons, I finally broke down and installed their curse client.  The process was painless and made picking and choosing addons to try relatively painless.

The one addon I found to try and use as a Warrior Priest was the Enemy addon.  It has several different capabilities...most of which still confuse me as I work my way through them.  It counts the number of kills per side per BO and Keep in an area...which is nice to see a historical view of where the fighting has been the heaviest.

Enemy also has a unit frames section that can be used to replace the Squared addon if desired.  So far I like their version a lot...it provides a huge amount of customizable information in a small space.  I've added a screen shot of the unit frames in a warband.

The block also "grays" out some if the character reaches extreme ranges.  The only problem this has, it does not remove the default WB interface place holders...and I haven't figured out a way to remove them.  It also supports the location of the person on mouse over, just like the default Warband unit frame does.  I found this very helpful for my WP see if my group was within group heal range before firing off my heal.

The most exciting thing this addon does for me is add class icons over the head of everyone in your warband.  Also, the icons over your group's heads are larger than the icons over the rest of the warband.  This tool GREATLY eased my burden of finding my group and keeping them in range.  It was also helpful when running multiple warbands together.  Finding and keeping my warband in sight made my job a whole lot easier.  Below is a picture of the icon.

I know some may already have their UI modified beyond all recognition, but if you don't...and you’re a support class, this might be an addon for you to look at using.