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A Few Random Comments

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

This will probably be the last post talking directly about the Book 7 patch notes. I think I've pretty much covered the major issues/changes. I'm certainly not the only one talking about the Book 7 patch. You can find coverage at Under the Banner, MMeOw, LOTRO Chronicles, and LOTROCast. With that said, here are my final thoughts regarding the notes:

Captain's banners "have discovered unforeseen reservoirs of buoyancy and now float in water."

First off, I love the random humor that shows up in Turbine's patch notes. Secondly, this is awesome. Obviously not as life-changing as many of the Book 7 updates, but as a captain, I will tell you this is a very good thing. I noticed this most poignantly in the Waterworks where oftentimes I found myself fighting creatures in "deep" water, where my banner would fall all the way to the bottom. Most of the time, this wasn't far enough to remove me from it's AOE, but on occasion, the water was deep enough for the banner to despawn, leaving me with less morale and morale regen. A captain lives and dies by his buffs, so to have even a small problem like this fixed is a good thing for us.

Warg-Riders now count towards the Moria Warg-slayer deed.

This is another awesome. Those warg riders are a pain to kill as a melee class. Having them count both towards gobs and the warg deed makes it a little more tolerable. I've finished my gob deed, however, but I still have a little more incentive to take on this buggers after Book 7 launches.

Reduced cooldown on crafting-guild recipes.

This makes me happy. Very happy. As a cook, my crafting takes longer than most to give me significant income. Because it's so easy, relative to other vocations, cooking is often given to alts and many players use their own cooks for food - limiting the demand. Furthermore, profit margins are rather thin due to this low demand. Having the craft-guild recipes that would give me a full stack of the superior version of food greatly reduces the production cost, allowing me to sell for even more attractive pricing but also give me a greater profit. Reducing the cool-down on these recipes allows me to put the goods on the market faster.

Certainly this will probably reduce the viable selling price. More incentive for cooks to craft their superior stacks means more potential competition on the AH - and thus lower prices. Still, I don't think it will hurt that much. A good thing, in my book.

New cooking recipes - soups and stews!

These new recipes will give cooks the ability to craft soups and stews which boost resistances: fear, poison, disease, and wound. I'm excited about this, though I'll have to tick off another slot in my bags and hotbar for these. A necessary evil. I don't know how much of a resistance boost we'll see from these. Hopefully Turbine finds the right balance, though I'm sure they'll be lower than most people will hope for.

Minimum level for fish recipes.

Apparently these didn't have minimums, which is odd. Not a big deal. I don't craft fish recipes because the time-sink in order to get enough fish is prohibitive. Basically, it's not worth it.

Deconstructing a legendary item at max level will now return the relics to you.

This is big. At least for me, who lost 3 tier 6 relics by deconstructing my level 30 emblem. Good move here. Before, if you wanted to retain your relics after the last reforge, you couldn't slot them into your max level legendary. If that legendary was still worth using, this means you wouldn't get as much out of the item as you should. It didn't make sense. Glad to see this fix added. Still, I am bummed that I lost my 3 relics. Took me long enough to build up relic forging to get to that point. *sigh* Tier 8 is so far away.

Monsters that burrow will no longer do so when close to death, "because that's annoying."

Amen! Pain in the butt and annoying is right. I honestly thought this was an intended behavior. I suppose it could have been anyway. Glad that's changed. It actually makes a difference if you have more than one mob on you. As a captain, I need to have a mob die to activate my "on death" skills, one of which is a fairly significant heal. This might be the difference between life and death, and when I couldn't hit the mob and kill him, it was a problem. I'd usually switch targets (why waste that time trying to hit nothing) but that meant I had to switch back and then back again. This takes time, attention, and sometimes I click the wrong thing and I'm wasting more time - not to mention morale and power. Good change.

Warg-Riders will no longer use their Hamstring/Ride-by-Attack unless they are attacked.

That makes these buggers a little less obnoxious to fight. I would change up my skill progression by avoiding using an opening Battle Shout. This is a ranged skill but two melee skills are gated behind it. So, I would hit a Warg-Rider with a ranged skill but then have to run - very slowly because I'm hamstrung - to the warg to use the next skill in my progression. Pain in the butt, and if the Warg decided to run again, I'd lose the chance to use those skills. Both of these have the potential to give me very good supercrits. And there's yet another skill gated behind those - one that is my mob-buff cleansing skill. Basically, these guys are a pain. should be a little more manageble now.

That's it. You'll certainly notice I skipped a lot of notes. I clearly concentrated on the ones that affect my captain (who, if you hadn't guessed, is a cook). That's necessary. For one, I wouldn't know what I was talking about if I covered other classes, and two, it would take way too long to read and comment on every single note. And many of them aren't worth commenting on. I hope you enjoyed my patch note coverage. This won't be the last time I talk about Book 7 changes, however. Other bloggers might inspire me to a topic, and there's always upcoming dev diaries and forum posts.

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