The State of The Union

Hellbent, my guild, is a relatively small group of friends, some of whom have known each other for over 10 years of gaming in the MMORPG community. Our history goes all the way back to Meridian59, however most ties were established in the golden age of original EQ.

We have played and tested many many games including the aforementioned EQ and M59. We have played or tested EQ2, AC, AC2, Planetside, DAoC, Horizons, AO, LoTRO, CoH, and WoW, among others. We spent a considerable amount of time playing on the Test Server as a guild (under a different name) for DAoC.

Our home for the past two to three years has been WoW.

We generally split our time between PvE and PvP. We've never been much for grinding. Unfortunately, the WoW PVE endgame for us has turned into exactly that. A grindfest. Grinding for materials, grinding for faction, grinding heroics for gear with a horrible risk vs reward balance. The saving grace for us has always been PvP.

Unfortunately, Blizzard has chosen a path for PvP that some of us find distasteful. They are pushing to turn WoW PvP into a professional e-sport and are completely abandoning the roleplaying-based PvP that the game was sold on. In short, there is no WAR in World of WARcraft. The only thing of importance now are arena matches, which is nothing but dueling in a confined and controlled enviroment for e-peen gratification.

We want PvP with a purpose. We want our wins and losses to have an impact on the gameworld around us. We want PvP in a world enviroment, not in some small arena.

Thus, we are in transition. We are stuck with a game that we are becoming increasingly disatisfied with, but possible salvation (Warhammer or AoC) lies a long ways off in the horizon.

We will be seeking to get into either beta, to see if they deliver what WoW has abandoned.

Warhammer Online
Age of Conan


-- Oozo/Chromed

What Vanish Bug?*

(*actually applies to any two events that happen too closely together)


For HQ version - vanish.wmv

If the hunter's mark hit first, then the vanish should have cleared it. If the vanish hit first, then I should have never got hit with hunter's mark to begin with. The hunter was way too far away to see me while vanished, even with track hidden up.

It seems to me that when two events happen within x seconds of each other the Blizzard game engine (out of fairness for people with low latencies - this is what the global cooldowns are all about too, ladies and gents) calls it a draw and views them as simultaneous events and says that both events happened. BUT, it seems that vanish gets the short end of the stick in these situations an inordinate amount of times.

In other words, the vanish event usually gets #@#$ed, but not always.

I've had situations where my KS was "simultaneous" to another rogue's vanish and their vanish is the one that held true. I've vanished a warrior's charge and cheapshotted him. However, it seems that the vanish is the event that gets screwed 90% of the time.

Now, this doesn't only effect vanish. I'm sure many of you could of swore you got that kick in before the polymorph and sure enough, after you go back and check the combat log you did get the kick in before the polymorph and it even says you interrupted it! Yet, you still became a sheep.

Simultaneous gouges anyone? Simultaneous kidney shot right after the simultaneous gouge? Seriously what are the chances you both did the same action twice in a row at the same exact time?

One of you was faster, there is no doubt about it. The WoW game engine just can't recognize that, and willingfully so (fairness to those with low latency, remember).

So, when your vanish shows up before the hunter's mark in your combat log what does it mean? Does it mean that you were really first, but the game engine is being fair to other guy by giving a time cushion where it considers your two events as simultaneous. Or does it put the events up there in alphabetical order? Hrm... abcdefgh... Maybe it's reverse alphabetical order? Kick...polymorph. Hrm... Or maybe it just makes a call to its psuedo-random number generator: /random 0 1

The world may never know, but if Blizzard makes this into an esport stuff like this is going to determine some outcomes. INSTANT REPLAY PLEASE!

Oozo Lives (The Aftermath)

Great feedback aside from a few asshats with nothing constructive to add whatsoever.

1. No UI - huge failure. At a minimum I have to keep the health bar info. Removing it removes 'drama' and 'suspense' from the clip.

2. Too long. This I agreed with even before I put the movie up. It was a production issue from the start rather than a direct choice to make the movie so long. Fraps files take a huge amount of room and I was a bit short of HD space. So, I had to make the movie in segments. I'd get some clips, decide which ones were good enough and make a segment from those and delete the original fraps to clear room for more clips. Once a segment was complete it was basically unalterable.

Now, I like to keep a variety of classes. For example, that one feral druid I have in the movie is not the best druid... but he is the best one I found while filming. So he made it in.

But, I ended up with other cases where I had a fight that was similar to one I already, but was a better fight or opponent so I felt compelled to keep it, and since I couldn't get rid of the one in the segment already done.. I had to keep that one too. If I had the flexibility I would have REPLACED it.

I won't make the same mistake again. This time I'll make sure that I have more room to work with AND I'll be more patient in my choices before putting any segments together so there is less filler and less "similar" fights. I mean, you only need to see me CoS stunlock one nonSL warlock to know that the build can do that.

3. Music. You really can't make everyone happy here, but some people brought up an excellent point: Some techno, not all techno. I need to put more of a variety of music in the movies and perhaps even use clips instead of whole songs to make the movie feel like it's moving along quicker.

4. Content. I was generally satisfied with the content of the movie (aside from some filler and repition as mentioned above). People who's opinion I actually respect seem to agree that I had enough "tough" fights in here to make things interesting. They weren't necessarily the best of the best, but they were perhaps only a notch or two down. Personally, I'd like more 1v2s (and that will come with more HP, I believe)


I had this quite interesting exchange with Ming earlier today on worldofming.com:

Me: [quote]Ming, go watch Oozo’s new video lol.[/quote]

You mean the one where I beat the crap out of several 1900-2100 3-to-5 gladiator-pieced opponents with my shitty gear?

lolz

Not the best of the best, but that is only because I didn’t run across anyone else with a higher rating or there is a pretty good chance they would have been in the movie too.

Actually, that is somewhat false I did run into a 2400+ player and had him isolated for a 1v1, but he ran away for help, heh.

100: does this oozo guy think hes good or some shit?

Me: No, it’s more the case that arena ratings don’t mean much when it comes to 1v1. Gear does though.

Ming: 1900-2100 is really low these days, very mediocre players if that is their “go-to” bracket. That and hemo is enough to beat every class except felguard warlock and BM hunter and ONLY at extreme gear ranges. And let me guess, most of these fights are in BGs or world PVP? Most of them didn’t have full CDs? Try dueling them, different story.

Playing the “I have bad gear” card is a joke in TBC. PVP gear is so incredibly easy to acquire, I won’t watch anyone’s video unless they have a 2100+ arena rating. I have no interest in minor league play.

Me: That’s right 1v1 in BGs. I did kill a 13K HP felguard warlock btw, with two adds on me. My point is that you can’t possibly balance the two. Balance world pvp and bgs (where rogues are still overpowered IMO) and you weaken rogues even more in the arena. Balance rogues for the arena and you make them ridiculously overpowered for BGs and world PvP. The problem is the gear and resilience.

Blizzard has made two seperate PvP systems basically, and IMO an unfixable problem.

Rogues have problems in 5v5s (always have really) and high resilience DUELs. BTW, if you had the same matchups you had in your duels but were in more of a BG situation (where the rogue had initiative) the rogues would have fared much better. You know that.

Oh yes, and if 1900+ sucks why would you be listing that as your requirement for joining your 5v5 team. *Note: I see you just recently raised that to a 2000+ requirement.

Once again, arena ratings are a good indicator of how a person might be 1v1, but they are not the “definitive standard” as you put it. Otherwise how could a person with 0 arena standing beat such people?

As usual, you move your standard around to fit whatever argument you are trying to win. 1900-2100 rating people suck, but these are exactly the requirements with which you are recruiting people to join your 5v5 team.

Continue to sit upon your high throne, and I will continue to beat gladiator-geared opponents when I’m able to single them out in the BGs.

The bitterness continues here

Oozo Lives (Content)

For HQ version - oozolives.wmv





Song 1: Soul Purifier by Transmutator

• Draup - Dwarf 2H warrior (31/30/0)

Dwarf warriors are extremely difficult to fight due to stoneform. Honestly, I fail more than I succeed against a good, well-geared tw0-hand dwarf warrior. In order for me to win, it seems that they have to make some kind of crucial error or mistake. In this case, Draup should have been able to shout me out of the first stealth and then he blew stoneform way too early allowing me to blind later and basically control the whole fight. He ended up dying to my DoT while I was mace-stunned.

Draup is obviously from a strong PvE guild. Most of his gear was PvE epics. His health was around 9200, but the reason I decided to put him in here were his offensive stats, which were the best I ran across while filming this movie (self-buffed with battleshout):

Ugh. Chance to increase crit strike rating by 800? I'm glad he didn't get to hit me much. ;)

• Dwarf BM hunter and NE fury warrior

I kill the hunter, but then die to the warrior. This is an example of me not having enough health to close out a 1v2.

• Winkz - Gnome 2H warrior (33/28/0)

This warrior had around 9800 HPs with 127 resilience using Thunder and 3/5 Glad. This is my standard attack proceedure on a 2H non-dwarf warrior. Blood fury, premed, garrote, evasion, shiv, rupture, slice and dice, hemo to build CPs for kidneyshot as evasion is fading. I'm cheating here with berserker buff, but it's kind of funny to stand toe to toe with a warrior like this and win easily.

• Diablito - Human 2H warrior (31/30/0) plus 3 adds

This warrior had around 10400 HPs with 142 resilience using Lionheart Champion and 3/5 Glad. Same garrote/rupture opening, but I get a lot of outside inteference. I can't quite finish him off and he's left with about 2% health.
:(

1945 5v5 arena rating.

Song 2: Destroyer by Transmutator

• Lats - NE feral druid (0/46/15)

Druid with 1/5 Glad and 2/5 Malorne. Not the best feral druid out there, but the best I could find for this movie. :/

• Krance - NE rogue

This is just in here for fun. Notice the behind the back hemo on pullaway?
:P

• Roebit - Gnome affliction warlock (45/5/11)

10400 HPs with 1/5 Glad. Only 54 resilience. Plays on a 1978 3v3 Arena team. This is an example of a 100-0 stunlock extended with CoS. The warlock dies before CoS drops. You can't do this to a soul link warlock, but it's not uncommon to 100-0 other warlocks builds this way. Perhaps this is why they are getting a trinket that breaks stuns. :)

• Necrillian - Human 2H Warrior (35/23/3)

This warrior carries the Lionheart Blade and has 2/5 Glad. He has 9600 HPs with 165 resilience. Again I have berserkers buff here, but just look at the way he melts away. Those are 325 point rupture tics. When I pulled back and did the deadly throw I thought it was over, he literally had no health left showing in his bar. Unfortunately, I had run out of crippling poison in this match (you can tell by the first shiv I do while he is on his horse - it doesn't snare him) and that comes back and bites me in the ass.

I've never in my 2+ years of playing have had a 2H warrior who substantially outgears me run away. I was truly in WTF-mode. He drops a healing potion and spams commanding shout while running away calling for help over his premade team's vent. And they end up running right up my ass and zerging me. Hey, but that is teamwork. I guess that's how he ended up on a 1990+ 3v3 team.

• Dorain - Tauren Restoration Shaman (5/5/51)

Dorain is a fellow Medivhian. He has around 9700 HPs and 154 resilience. He carries 3/5 Glad and has around 1100 bonus healing. I've seen Dorain fight before and noticed that he likes to start faking heals (start a heal, then quickly sidestep) if you are getting interrupts in on him. It just seems pointless to try to stop him from healing. My goal was to run him out of mana, which I did... but I just didn't have the HPs to hang in there after that. The only way I can win this fight is to increase my HP pool and/or pull off more bandages. I could have sprint out of range and bandaged but to me that is a bit cheesy, but perhaps it's necessary for this kind of fight.

This is actually the first fight I've had against a good shaman in about two years. I've been horde for two years and I don't duel much, therefore ipso facto, e pluribum unum, etc etc... I really need more practice to relearn this fight.

Dorain is on a 2034 5v5 team.

Song 3: Frogger!

The answer is Swahili. And no, it's just a jumble of sampled phrases and words that have nothing to about rogues and more to do about what day it is or what you want to eat. :P

Song 4: On Point by End User

• Seveer - Human Fury Warrior

The mainhand is the Decapitator. He had around 10400 HP and 143 resilience with 5/5 Gladiator. Fury warriors are relatively easy when compared with 2H warriors. All you really need is evasion and you are gtg. According to armory he has since switched back to a 2H build. Good move, IMO.

Seveer plays on 1940+ rated 2v2 and 5v5 teams.

• Bonaris - Human Rogue and Jarik - NE Hunter

The rogue doesn't cheapshot me out of the ice trap and the hunter shoots me and releases me from the blind. Good stuff all around.

Song 5: ? by the Criminal Saints

• Alexsis - Human fury warrior (3/41/17)

A former rank 14 fury warrior. She is using the Planar Edge in mainhand and has 9600 HPs with 98 resilience. She seems to react slowly after the first dismount allowing a restealth. Probably eating subway or something. She actually beat me in a later 1v1, but my FRAPS tanked my framerate on me. That happens often when I run low on space. And that happens often because FRAPS files are freaking HUGE. More on that later.

• Thibalex - Human 2H warrior and two adds

This fight is actually from two months ago when I was combat build. You can see I use blade flurry here. The former rank 14 warrior is using Thunder. I barely put him down. I use KS at the end, because it felt like he was drifting away from me. Nothing is worse than getting snared and just out of range of a nearly dead target while other people beat you to death.

• Pkunforgivin - Human arcane/fire mage with one add

This clip is also two months old when I was combat. Pkunforgivin is a former rank 14 mage who has since upgraded his gear quite a bit. He is currently playing on a 1940+ 3v3 team. It seems like 80% of the mages I run across out there are arcane/fire and only 20% or so are frost. Even those who are involved with PvP teams. I was kind of surprised by this.

• Poledra - NE druid and Pamgrier - Human fury warrior

The last of the two month old combat clips. TELL ME ABOUT ILLEGAL DANISH AND I WILL SPARE YOUR LIFE.

• Mezzery - Human warlock

This is another 100-0 CoS extended stunlock. In this case Mezzery had 11K HP and used a 3K healing potion as well. IIRC, he had little resilience.

• Tgrable - Human mage

This clip was actually a mistake to include. I was looking for a filler (to fill out the song) and mage fights make good fillers since they are usually short. But, I grabbed the wrong one, put it in and rendered it. Then to salvage harddrive space I deleted the original fraps. So, the mistake was effectively unrecoverable. My apologies, Tgrable.

Tgrable was only 80% health when this fight started, but what it gives you a good look at what happens when fraps tanks your framerate during a fight. When I swung around to gouge my framerate dropped to about 5 for a couple of seconds. It's like getting hit with every single CC in the game all at once. I end up with my camera pointed straight up at the night sky, LOL. Fortunately, it subsided some and I was able to recover. I usually don't recover from a fight like this where my framerate tanks.

• Heladesira - Human demonology warlock (7/43/11) and two adds

This soul-linked warlock had 13200 HPs with 152 resilience. During the fight she used a master healthstone for a 2800 heal. Her pet died, so it was most likely still injured and still healing when I attacked. So, it's not really a clean kill but hopefully the warrior and druid adds helped counterbalance that misfortune some.

BTW, I didn't miss the kick on the fear. Her gear gave her a 5% chance to resist interrupt effects. :)

• Some hunter

Some unfortunate hunter that I wanted to practice my dance routine on.

Song 6: One Two by End User

A comedy skit. You will need to download the HQ version to get the full joke, though.

Song 7: Storm by Covenant

• Melesius - Human frost mage and Solidifier - Human mage

Nerf CoS OMG! I have no clue where the second mage disappeared off to in this fight (I think he thought I died), but I killed him 1v1 a few minutes later in a noneventful fight.

• Untamned - NE rogue

The only reason this fight is here is because it is the first of a string of two fights. This rogue tried to vanish with my rupture on him and then just came in and committed suicide. Interestingly enough, this guy led the killboard at the end of this match. /boggle

• Tyhon - Human retribution paladin (20/0/41)

This fight was actually a duel. We seem to run across each other alot in the BGs. Tyhon has about 9100 HPs with 3/5 Glad and Thunder as weapon. Things really couldn't have gone worse for Tyhon. I anticipated his repentence by a fraction of a second. His hammer of justice got eaten by my racial, and I dodged two swings as I came in on his perception. I ended this fight with about 15% health, but I still had blind (and prep) up. Hopefully, we will get a chance to duel again and his fortune won't be so bad.

• Ignatios - Gnome affliction warlock (43/7/11)

Ignatios is another person I seem to run across in the BGs a lot. He has around 10500 HPs with 149 resilience. He knew I was near and was running around looking for me with the felhunter. Note the distract I use to turn him around just as I come in for the opener. He gets off his deathcoil in the slight opening offered up by my expose armor opener, but ends up eating the kidney shot anyway. I had one tic on that DoT left before he came back from the GY and killed me. Bind rushing is lame, Ignatios! Lame, I tell you!

• Adyss - human 2H warrior with inteference from a passing paladin

Adyss had about 10K HP using Thunder. Passby HoJs hurt when fighting a warrior. Other than that, nothing too special.

Ending Song Credits

More swahili

Oozo Lives (Background and Build)

I spent a lot of time considering how I should present my next movie. I've always tried to do my movies as a mix of entertainment, humor, and education. However, these days everyone pretty much knows all there is about being a rogue. People seem to want entertainment and humor now more than a movie that tries to tell you how to beat the different classes.

With that in mind I decided to crop my UI out of most of this movie to free me up to do more effects (such as altering the graphics to give it more of a comicbook look). That's not really something you can get away with the UI still cluttering the screen. It's not as flashy or polished as something like Kenion's or Tosan's work since I'm still learning to do different things. My goal is to improve my editting skill with a series of movies over the summer to teach myself how to get the most out of my copy of Adobe Premiere Elements.

The footage in this movie actually stretches over two months. There are a few clips from a few months ago when I was combat. Shortly after I took those clips things got very busy for me at work and I also fell very ill for a couple of weeks requiring a weekend visit to the hospital. When I got better, I found that I had not missed playing WoW at all and went to check out the LoTRO beta.

That game held me for a few weeks, but pretty graphics only gets you so far and the people who I game with became disinterested in it.

So, I'm back to playing WoW again. I decided to finish up the movie I had started before taking my near two month break, but I needed a build a bit more fun to play than combat. Since my best weapon is the Drakefist hammer that left me with a clear choice of going back to a hemo build.

For me the most entertaining fights to watch are the ones where both opponents get their shots in. Where both sides get a chance to attack and counter. This is why I have purposefully chosen builds that lack burst power for the past two years (except for a stint with mutilate). I did the "big crit" stuff with my dwarf rogue two years ago. Yes, two-shotting cloth and leather and three-shotting mail was fun back then (when MC gear was l33t) but in the end I found the clips to be boring and one-sided.

In summation, if you are looking for a movie with "big crits," then my movies are not what you are looking for.

My stats and build for most of this movie are as follows:

This is what I would like to call a "zero-burst" premed/hemo build with added survivability provided by improved sprint and cheat death. Now, I'm not going to lie. With my low HP, resilience, and lack of dependable burst damage 1v2s were extremely difficult to pull off. I typically killed one and then died to the second in 1v2s.

We've taken a lot of hits in the CC department. Prep doesn't work for blind, we can't reliably vanish/sap anymore as opponents seem to get stuck in combat longer than we do. Changes have been made to intentionally decrease our chances of pulling off 1vNs. The devs have watched too many Happyminti movies maybe.

The good news is that due to the PvP I did to make this movie I've been able to upgrade my gear for PvP significantly. 700 more HP and 50 or so resilience is making a huge difference in survivability. I expect I will be winning more 1v2s with 1K more HP or so. Most of this movie will be true 1v1s or 1vNs where I take down a single target before dying or retreating.

Hopefully, I was able to make up for a lack of 1v2s by finding some decent 1v1 opponents. Which is the topic of a future post.

Introduction

I've been playing MMORPGs for a little over 10 years now. From Templar in M59, Raggok in EQ, Reave in DAoC, The Debater in CoH, to my current day role as Oozo and Chromed in WoW.

Some people have surmised that I named myself after a russian alcoholic beverage. That is not the case. What I like to tell people is that I named myself after my RL girlfriend, Oozo. But, people generally don't buy that. Truth is that I stole this name from an EQ friend who had an ogre warrior named Oozo Slobberfist.



Now, before you go and call me a name-thief, let me tell you; he had it coming to him. My friends stole most of my old EQ names in DAoC and WoW and it was time for some payback. Little did I know that it would be by this name (not even my own) that I would end up being best known as.

Oh irony, how dost thou stabbeth thee...


The purpose of this blog will be for me to have a place to offer my musings on PvP, give background for movies I make, and talk about whatever MMORPGs I happen to be playing or looking forward to.