Ark's Ark

My server, Makaisson, has been down for about an hour in Prime Time now, without comment from GOA. I’ll take the time to bring you up to date with my adventures!

Osgard, my Engineer, is now level 21, with a renown rank of 20. The renown rank means that he pretty much doesn’t get any renown from tier 2 scenario and RvR any more, so he’s been hanging out with the tier 3 folks.

The problem is, nobody I have spoken to has ever gotten into a tier 3 scenario on Makaisson. We are one of the lowest population servers but that can’t be all of the problem. We’ve had warbands of 24 folks, who’ve all said they’re permanently signed up for all the tier 3 scenarios. There are certainly enough destruction players in tier 3 to have a scenario, so what on earth is going on? There is something screwy with the way the game is deciding when to launch a scenario.

It’s so hard to find a fight in tier 3 that many people are playing their alts, and a vicious cycle ensues.

I will write more about the Engineer in the future. There has recently been a lot of nonsense written elsewhere about us though, so I’ll say this. We are one of the most powerful RvR classes around, at least for the three tiers I have so far experienced. We may not always look that impressive in your parsing, or in the scenario report, but that is because they do not mention all the times we kept the healers alive, rooted the enemy flag-bearer, or slung someone off the roof of the keep. We’re more than capable of scoring solo RvR kills too. A smartly played Engineer is a bringer of woe unto those who oppose you. So do try to remember to heal us once in a while, eh?

We are, however, probably the most appallingly bad PvE soloer that there is. In spite of using potions galore, I got the snot beaten out of me by 2 different level 7 heroes yesterday while slumming it on the Blighted Isle. Most of our best tricks (such as knockback) don’t work on these wily mobs, and with WAR’s respawn rate, using AOEs is often the fast way back to your bind point.

Osgord, my Ironbreaker, found my first ever Decimator chest piece last night. He singlehandedly went through all the tier 1 RvR zones, taking 10 Battlefield Objectives in all. That a single level 9 (He was halfway through 10th by the end of the spree) Ironbreaker can go around soloing Objectives, while my Engineer gets beaten up by champions half his level is a story for another day. On the last objective he found this lovely bit of kit on the level 10 Champion.

Hurrah! Except that it is the Bright Wizard one, the Decimator Flamerobe, and it’s bound to Osgord. I’ll try to make this the last time I go on about this, so I’ll spell it out really simply. Given that:

1. You only get Decimator Chestpieces from the Level 10 Champions that guard the tier 1 Battlefield Objectives.
2. These Champions drop them excruciatingly rarely.
3. These Objectives are only available to take if your opponents have bothered to take them back of you.
4. There are 10 possible chests. Soon to be 11 in December.
5. Once you hit level 12, you can no longer fight in the tier 1 RvR zone without turning into a 1 hp chicken.
6. Each piece of an armour set for your class is a tome unlock.

Given all these things, as it stands, there is precious little point Decimator armour even exisiting. You could, perhaps, grind away at these Champions in the hopes of getting the right chest, but all the time you are doing that, you are moving towards level 12, at which point your chance of completing your set is lost forever. Stuff that hard to get belongs in the end game. This is horrible design, and it makes Tome completists like me very very sad.

Aha, at 7 pm GOA have seen fit to bring my server back up. Time to see if I can get into a tier 3 scenario tonight, or whether I’ll be chasing Waroboros again.