Keen’s WAR Beta Impressions from the Preview Weekend

Keen's Zealot in RR6 Armor
Keen's Zealot in RR6 Armor

The preview weekend for Warhammer Online began yesterday. This marks the beginning of the end for the beta phase of development for all but maybe the Elder Testers. While I am considered an “Elder Tester”, most everything tested there is classified and done on test servers. Unless they lift the BTA (like an NDA) then I won’t be talking about my experiences there.

For this weekend’s preview I decided to play a Chaos Zealot. I really wanted to dive deeper into my analysis of the healer classes in WAR and solidify, with facts, that the Shaman was under-healing more than he should.

Zealot Impressions

This is a fantastic class. Zealots are the best Destruction healers and are the mirror of the Runepriest. They start off with an instant cast heal that feels like it has no cooldown aside from the global cooldown. Although it heals for so low, mashing the key allows you to really pack on the numbers. I decided that with this character I was going to level as much with RvR as possible so I spent all of yesterday in the queue. When I wasn’t in a scenario I was doing a few quests to fill in or open-world RvR.

Since I began RvRing at level 1 I was able to watch this class develop from 1-12 entirely in RvR. I noticed that the Zealot takes a lot of damage, similar to the shaman, except it has the ability to counter that damage with instant cast heals. When a ‘robe’ wearing class starts taking damage it’s imperative to run away. When a Shaman runs he can’t heal himsself with more than a slow-to-work HoT. When the Zealot runs away he’s spamming himself with heals and full HP by the time he’s out of range. This makes all the difference in the world.

The Zealot also provided the perfect partner for Graev’s Chaos Chosen. He would run right at a group of 6+ Order and I would keep him alive as the rest of our team followed him into the fight. This was key to our winning most of the scenarios yesterday. When a tank runs in and begins hitting healers or ranged dps it scatters their front line. Few classes can take the initial damage that charging a line focus firing you can deliver, but a Chosen and a Zealot got the job done. One particular experience from yesterday comes to mind. Most of our team was disorganized except for myself and 3 Marauders. I kept all 3 alive while they butchered the entire enemy team (albeit the enemy was equally disorganized, it was still a beautiful sight).

K&G own the Scenarios
K&G own the Scenarios

When I started getting a few levels I was given an amazing HoT that heals for double what the Shaman’s does, a damage absorption shield that heals when it expires, a Heal + HoT, and buffs that increase the intel/str of my team. This class is built for support.

It became clear though that the Zealot lacked dps. Killing things in PvE took 2-3x as long as it does on my Shaman. I can kill multiple mobs quickly with my Shammy but would be fighting for a prolonged period of time on the Zealot. It’s give and take though. The plus side is that my Zealot never came -anywhere- close to dying even with 4 mobs on him.

It’s a matter of playstyles really. The Shaman is going to be a late bloomer with much less healing and far more damage/debuff/utility. The Zealot is going to be a VASTLY superior healer, probably a little more than he should be, and keep any group alive. If I had to pick one, even though it’s undoubtedly inferior early on, I would say the Shaman is more fun to me. I like the playstyle, feel, look, and end result of the Shaman more.

Notes from my playtime yesterday. Did I CTD or Lag? Did the masses make it unplayable?

CTD’s – In closed beta for the past month I did not CTD more than twice the ENTIRE time. In the Collector’s Edition beta I CTD’d a couple times but nothing to worry about. Yesterday alone I CTD’s over a dozen times. I have no idea why. Nothing changed on my end. This is an annoying problem that I want to see fixed before the game goes live. I have no patience for CTD’s.

Lag – It was present but expected and not really as bad as it could have been. I can remember only an hour’s worth of gameplay yesterday in a total of 8+ that lagged. The server must have been having some problems because things got out of sync and delayed. This caused me to lose a few people in RvR because their HP wouldn’t drop until they were dead but it went away. Framerate wise it was fine. I was doing a PQ with 57+ people and I didn’t notice a thing wrong with my rig’s ability to perform.

Numbers – There was A LOT of people online in one area at a time. In the first PQ we had 50+ people and in the Chapter 2 PQ that is right near the quest hub there were so many people that the PQ was being done in record time. I had done this PQ in closed beta and it took us easily 10 minutes. Yesterday it was being done in 3. It was fun for a while but when too many people were there I couldn’t get ANY influence (100 being split 50+ ways isn’t much) and my odds at placing and getting loot were nil. Graev and I went to some of the more secluded PQ’s where there were maybe 10 people and we rocked those for a bit earning out entire influence for the chapter before the others probably got 1/4th of theirs.

RvR – It was the best yet. The Chaos vs. Empire area was the hot spot of activity for everyone. SO MANY people were waging all out war all day long over these objectives. We had one point where it was zerg vs. zerg and we let them advance to the little town. As soon as they were close to sounded the charge and overran them for a ton of renown and experience. Amazing times! While big numbers can hurt PQ’s they certainly help RvR live up to its full potential.

Odd Technical Issues – I experienced one odd issue yesterday. I had a video display driver failure at one point when I had been playing the game all day. Not sure what caused it. Vista recovered from it and the game continued to run. If anyone knows what can cause these please let me know.

This Preview Weekend, in the first day, cemented my excitement for the game. I was able to play another class; and enjoy it, see first hand how team work annihilates my enemies, have epic RvR battles in the level 1-10 area, and make it to level 12 – T2 – RR10! Today is going to be even more fun as the masses move to T2 and begin keep sieges. I LOVE this game.

  • What, being allowed the honor of fighting alongside of Syp and Snafzg doesn’t warrant a mention? For shame, sir, for shame!

    MEDIC!

  • I’m still concerned with game’s sluggish framerates, although is there an in-game command to bring up a visual framerate indicator so I can confirm this? I swear I feel like I’m getting below 30fps normally and in a heavy Public Quest, I feel like I’m getting less than 15 fps (sometimes maybe 5 fps in a heavy concentrated fight).

    I mean I have a P4 3.4 Ghz machine, 3GB RAM, and a new ATI 4850 HD video card running on a Win XP machine. Is this considered a crappy minimum system?? The only thing I can figure is that maybe the motherboards PCI Express version is a slightly older one (it’s a Dell XPS Gen 3 machine) and the bus speed of the video card really isn’t being utilized to it’s full potential.

    BTW I still have this “negative” impression of Scenarios. I mean I was trying a Dark Elf the other day and decided to sign up for one. After five or more minutes, I just canceled it. Yes, I was doing other quests at the time but just the perception of waiting for something turned me off, especially when I can just jump into a RVR battle in the world without wait.

    I also agree with your statement about PQs. When there are too many people in them, it becomes a zergfest without as much challenge to it and without as much chance for reward, although I usually got at least one loot bag every 2nd or 3rd run. Not sure how I do it. I mean I try to hit as many different targets as possible. So if I only get a single axe throw in on a target, I try to do it, so cumulatively all those small contributions add up. Also if there are three targets next to each other, I’ll hit them each once and then the PQ swarm finishes them off quickly.

  • Nice to read you have so much fun with the game. Looking forward to reliving my DAoC RvR experience both with regards to the zergs and the 8v8 (in WAR 6v6). Could you share your experiences fighting in premade’s or against them?

    Keep sharing the information with us without access 😀

    Tx

  • Im beginning to worry my computer cant even run it properly 🙁 I thought it would run only slightly harder than wow, but thats not how it seems at all..

  • Hey Keen, I thought I’d throw up a few impressions on the witch elf since it’s a surprisingly less popular class in our guild/community.

    The witch elf is a solid and very satisfying melee dps class for the dark elf race. It’s special game mechanic is the blood lust/frenzy system, which is very much like the rogue combo point system in WoW. A major difference is that in this case blood lust is saved across targets, so you’re not constantly clamoring to stack up points on just a single target and then get some use out of it before the target dies. Another special mechanic they have are called kisses, which are essentially attacks that leave a weapon enchant on your daggers (think poisons in wow) that have a proc chance for varying effects. Lastly, they are one of the two stealth classes, but stealth in this game drains action points, making it temporary but does not cause you to lose movement speed.

    The biggest thing to me about the witch elf class is the incredible variety of options you have for damage dealing and the high damage potential you have even early on in the game. While you could easily be satisfied and do fairly well mashing your slice button (sinister strike) and then waiting for 5 blood lust points and hitting puncture (eviscterate), you only truly maximize your damage potential when you’re also keeping up your poison dot (stacks 3 times) as well as picking the right kiss to use in the correct situation. There is also the question of whether to use your higher damage, but 3 second channeled finisher and risk the mob moving and wasting parts of it, or just use the quicker burst one. Early on there is another bloodlust builder that ignores armor if striking the target from the back, adding incentive to letting tanks pick up high armor targets.

    The variety is even more accented in PvP as well as the extra attention to positioning. There’s an entire mastery tree pretty much devoted to skills that promote getting behind your opponent as many extra effects will take place. There’s even a skill early on that allows you to use positional attacks without the positional requirement for a short period of time. Even without these, witch elves can apply a number of useful conditions in PvP such as a finisher leaving a deep wound effect (which reduces the target’s wound stat for a short time), a kiss that procs a slowing effect, a kiss that procs and AP reducing effect, a morale ability that GREATLY reduces a target’s strength, and bear in mind that my character is so far only level 13.

    I guess what I’m trying to say is that this is looking like a very exciting class early on, I hope it doesn’t run into the problem of losing all these options as you progress down a mastery tree but there are some really awesome things to look foward to such as a mortal strike effect (reduce inc heals by 50%) not to mention another debuff that reduces outgoing heals by 75%. Can you say rvr healer shutdown? In another tree you get a couple PBAoE knockdowns and damage effects, which sounds like fun to sneak into a group of enemies and then open up an organized attack on them by disorienting them from within. The class really just caters to so many different playstyles whether you want to do staight up big numbers damage, debilitate multiple opponents at once, or completely just lock down one enemy at a time.

    As icing on the cake, the class so far is doing very nice damage, easily reaching the top few ranks of PQs with little effort with the exception of PQs with too many people meaning you can’t make it to mobs in time before they die. Witch elves solo very well, taking down mobs quickly before they can do much damage, and can be very mindless if you dont’ feel like thinking, or very efficient if you want to blow through things. Not to mention a non slowing stealth is very nice for when you’re lazy 😉 They especially shine in group settings though, when they’re free to max out their abilities especially with positional consideration.

    I encourage everyone interested in melee dps of any kind to give this class a try, it’s great fun, and i look forward to surprising groups of Order from stealth with a couple of you at once in the future. =)

    Oh, and please nerf warrior priests. That is all!

  • I had a blast in open RvR today (and I never really was a PvP type). I was not in CB however I seem to have gotten a several CTDs also a “audio stuffer then game freezes then recover”. Still game is fun now and has great promise if they clear up some of these issues.

  • I was having no issues in CE Closed beta, I maybe CTD’d once or twice over the entire period. Preview Weekend comes and it happens a lot.

    The other big thing I noticed, I can barely run the game on ‘high quality’ now. I could run AoC on high, so I don’t know whats going on here.

    Another HUGE issue that was addressed by Mark a few mins ago I believe, pathing is borked to all hell. NPCs and Pets pathing is horrid right now. I am confident they will get it fixed before release, hopefully by the time OB rolls around. However, this makes pet classes very hard to play right now. I would not recommend playing one right now, I played a White Lion today and while it did great damage by itself… the pet pathing just makes it not that fun. A good portion of your damage comes from the pet, and when it’s off doing it’s own thing and not responsive to you… it takes away from the experience.

    Ok, and lastly… the MAJOR issue I have with the balance of classes currently is.. Tanks. Tanks are way, way, way too powerful. I don’t think anyone can deny this. They can dish out a beating.. and take one. They need something toned down, because right now a tank+healer will destroy everything in it’s path, without question. There is really no point to be a DPS class IMO, tanks do comparable damage and have WAY better survivability.

    Anyway, thats my thoughts so far.

  • […] I’ve joined up with Keen and Graev’s guild… The folks of at K&G want this guild to be a fun community. You can read more about it here […]

    Glad to be with you guys! I hope to be on more tonight to RvR with you!

  • @SwS, that’s not what I’m experiencing as a Chosen tank who has specialized in toughness. Yes I can survive with heals against three or four major caster hits against me (plus maybe one melee) but that’s about it. If most of the opposing team decides to focus fire on me though, then I’m dead no matter what, since the dmg input into me exceeds the healers output.

    Is it fair that I can continually survive against a beating from four or five people with maybe only one or two people healing me? I sure hope so because my dmg output isn’t that great and by myself, I can’t do that much. With the coordination of another tank though plus focused fire from offensive casters behind us, we can do some decent work as team. But again it’s not like we’re overrunning the entire enemy team in one continuous motion.

    It’s basically rush forward, snare someone in the front long enough that the offensive casters can waste them, then fall back and recharge. Rinse and repeat. It really requires a lot of coordination and teamwork to pull off, since it would take me tens times as long to kill someone by myself. That’s assuming that 1) the entire enemy team decides to leave me alone long enough for me to kill them and 2) the enemy I’m attacking doesn’t get repeatedly healed by one of his teammates. Very unlikely. 🙂

  • You need to try Order.

    Mythic has a real problem, because all of you are playing Destruction. You complain about PQs and not being able to get any influence and thus not win any rewards. Well, if you go roll Order, you will complete PQ’s with a group of 4-7 people. You will get a LOT of influence and a LOT of loot.

    Likewise, your queue times for scenarios will be instant because there are 2,000 lemmings on Destro and 200 people playing Order.

    So this weekend Destruction owns all the RvR objectives on my server. But I daresay I have had a lot more scenario experience than any of them. Given how I am owning Destro players 3-4 levels above me, using my Reknown gear, I’m pretty sure that between being able to get gear faster due to doing more scenarios, and possibly some kind of bonus given me by Mythic for playing the underpopulated side…

    How long til some of you figure out that Destruction’s overcrowding is not fun? 🙂

  • Not only that, but last night on my server, Order had dominance of the RvR area and pushed out Destro a few times even. I’m loving Order, and the classes are great too. Nothin’s more fun then being lvl 10 with the RR6 gear though, that’s a blast! Anyone else have to problem of lvling too fast in RvR? I missed our first 3 or so chapters from too much RvR, it slowed way down around 8 though, so it’s all good.

  • I agree Mia. I know have a bit better refernce for what 10,000 influence achievement means. I got it after my 2nd PQ on the Order side, and was impressed by how much easier, quicker, faster, etc it is compared to Chaos side.

  • @Nollind
    A level 11 Black Orc was fighting myself (WP), another 11 WP and at least one more guy. The other guy was melee as well I think. Oh, and there was RP that he managed to kill, though low level. At first he had a level 11 Zealot with him, which took forever to kill. After I got the morons to focus the Zealot, the tank took literally 5 minutes to kill probably.

    Maybe it’s different when it’s the whole side, but we didn’t have any offensive caster fighting him in this instance. The length of time it took to bring him down was absurd. This leads me to believe that the melee mitigation is a bit too high for tanks. Thats my personal opinion, maybe this is what Mythic wants.

    @Mia
    I’ve been playing Order all this weekend and on my server at least, in tier 1 we are competitive in the open RvR. Same for scenarios.

    Plus, it’s beta, people play stuff they wouldn’t tend to on live. On live I’m confident the populations will even out.

  • My observations were not complaints. 😉

    A few PQ’s being crowded is nothing to worry about. So far I actually LOVE the huge population. As for population balance, no one knows until the game releases exactly how it will be server to server. Some will have more order, some will have more destruction.

  • So Keen, would you say that the Zealot is overpowered like you say for the Runepriest? 😉

    I walked a friend of mine through the start of the game last night. I think we have another convert and we did not even make it into any form of RvR! The server I was on had a long queue for the Greenskins. I think it popped once in 30 minutes, but I was showing him how a PQ works, so we ended up declining the scenario. Oh well. There is always today/tomorrow to show him around.

    I’ve noticed that pets/mobs have had the bad pathing issues. I tried a white lion this morning. After about 5 minutes, I had already come to the conclusion that they are not worth playing this weekend without the pathing fix. I would run just a little ways and have to wait 30 seconds for the lion to catch up. If I sent him in to attack and then threw an axe, the mob would run to me and the lion would run to where the mob was; then just stand there for 5-10 seconds before coming back. Quite annoying, but I know it’ll be fixed before the head start.

  • Keen I’m confused, I hope you can clear something up for me.

    You said you fealt like your Zealot’s HoT spell was alot more effective than the one on your Shaman. Why do you think this is exactly? From what I can tell the baseline amount healed for both spells is exactly the same (I think it scales up to as much as 1500 healed over 15 seconds at level 40). Is this true or is my information bad? If it is true, what other factors might make them have an unequal value? Is it the gear? the base states of the class? Something else?

  • @Ryver: I think the Zealot and the Runepriest healing might be a bit overpowered, yes. However, I think mots of this lopsided feeling comes from when these healers are healing tanks or themselves.

    @Transitive: That’s a good question. I found out today that the tooltips say the exact same values for both the Shaman HoT and the Zealot HoT. I’m going to go back and review the actual health given by them. It could be that I felt the Zealot’s were more effective because I was putting them on a Tank the majority of the time. Tanks have so much HP/Toughness that they are able to benefit more from a HoT because they live longer.

    I can’t figure out what it is… whether it’s the instant cast heal or something else that’s making the Zealot just SO MUCH better at healing than the Shaman.

  • so you had fun playing an obviously overpowered class,

    I rolled one too, simply ran around spamming heals, big deal, did not have to think or act meaningfully, I see a broken game mechanics

    by the end of the day there were 5 zealots per scenario

    oh my this game has the worst pathing issues since … I don’t know … I can’t recall a game with worse pathing issues

  • forgot to mention,

    Zealots can heal 50% of their healt in 15s plus with an instant heal, then every 2 seconds they can cast 5% heal. The mana fully regenerates so that they can do this forever. I’;m doing this with no gear or any special skills, with level 4 abilities.

    This means that in about seconds they can fully heal. THat is hugely owerpowered as there is no class that can kill another one in 20 seconds.

    If this is not broken I don’t know what is. It is scary that Mythinc releases such blatantly wrong class mechanics. I konw it is a beta, but in beta you’re supposed to fix sutble issues not glaring ones.

  • I have to say, I agree with the comments on zealots. Of all the healing classes, this one is most in need of a nerf. A zealot can keep itself and a few others alive pretty much permanently, due to mana regen rate and the size of the heals.

    If the surveys I have been given this weekend are any indication, they are all over which classes are over- and under-played, which faction is being underplayed and why, which overplayed and why, and appropriate nerfs/buffs are incoming. Some people may be disappointed when Head Start rolls around and what they thought they were getting turns out to not be as OP. Others will be thrilled when what they get is better (I want a white lion as my main, and the current pet AI and pathing bugs make it immensely frustrating to play – Jacobs says it’s top priority to fix this week though, so I have hope!)

    😀

  • Once NPC/pet pathing is fixed, White Lion will be amazing. They do a TON of damage, even without their pet.

    As for healers being OP, specifically Zealot and RP… I fully agree. If a person plays one of these classes well, they can really make the fights stupid. The only way to really kill them is to bum rush them, and hope they don’t have another healing them like crazy.

    In tier 2 I tanked the whole order raid with 2 extra healers. It was stupid. They need a slight adjustment along with tanks I think, not much. Or they just need to make it so melee does not run out of AP so quickly, I think that could fix some things as well. On my DPS classes, or tanks for that matter, I run out of AP in a matter of seconds. If they adjust it then healers will be killable, at this point you need at least 2 dps to kill a healer.

  • I’m thinking pure healing classes…zealot and runepriest are most definately OP’d.

    In this entire preview weekend I have seen a runepriest die once….just once….every single other class has died multiple times…..this one time was me and 2 other beating on the RP for 2-4 minutes straight…he’d heal full…we’d wear him down….wash/repeat.

    This is shaping up to be a great game, but as of right now, it has some of the worst class balance of any game i’ve ever played.

  • Very nice review! I agree… I CANNOT wait on this game anymore…! :p

    And yes, Zealots do rock. I just put a Rune Priest guide up on my site and my thoughts mirror yours; these two classes are going to form the backbone of any truly effective RvR group.

  • The CTD’s are really out of hand. I know it’s beta and all but man it’s so annoying being in a scenario getting a CTD then not getting any of the exp at the end. Been having that happen a lot.

    On the bright side, warrior priests are a blast to play. It’s exactly how I first imagined my paladin when I made it in WoW (this was before I knew that I would be expected to shut up and spam flash of light and be a cc soak in arena, no thanks)

  • Skull Throne RvR has been hot. There were some massive siege battles at the keeps in Dwarf/Greenskin and Empire/Chaos. When I logged off it was order 4, destruction 2 on the keeps. But boy destruction sure can zerg those contested PQs can’t they!

    I like the dynamic in the fights right now. Some classes might be unbalanced, but I don’t think they’re grossly out of balance. Couple of small tweaks should do it.

    No doubt this has the been the most enjoyable MMO experience I’ve ever had easily.

  • But zealots are not good to do damage?? I thought they was more like priest and shadow priest in wow.. 😛

  • I wish I could get more time in and get to some real pvp. Right now at the low end my Archmage destroys healing with no less then 24000 each scenario at level 6. All scenarios is about 7k dmg average as well. I’m gonna try and level a Shaman to see if my theory is correct. The theory is I get a feel of the Archmage that is exactly like the old WoW Druid. HoTs and DoTs. Support dmg and support heals that even out spikes and makes both heals and dmg to targets more consistant, problem is that without a Zealot or RP, there is no burst heals to top them off and let the HoTs shield them kinda like dmg absorption.

  • Call me disappointed.

    It’s not that the game is bad or I think issues won;t be fixed but this is so far from the control I felt I had in DAoC that I can’t help but think of it as a better WoW.

    Public quests are awesome, the RvR options are great, but I feel disconnected from my character. Everything is the same, from spells to ‘weapon styles’. It’s all just an ability with a cool down and to me it stinks. A position style is simply a button you push and if you’re holding the right weapon and in the right position it goes off and the cool down starts, but you don’t get the feedback that you actually used your weapon in that swing to do something.

    I’ve worked on a few emulators and admittedly this is a lot easier to code.

    – execute something
    – does it require an object of some sotr
    – does it require a position
    – play the effect
    – start the cooldown timer(s)

    But the end result is that your next swing plays the effect but you don’t have the same tactile feeling because every swing is the same. Please tell me that at higher levels certain weapon ‘styles’ alter how your weapon swings.

    I guess what I want is an improvement to DAoC instead of an improvement to WoW. And don’t focus on the WoW comparison, you know what I mean. It’s the more simplified interface that incorporates cooldowns instead of item or ability stats. I guess action points are like endurance?

    Regardless I think WAR will be *wildly* successful and I’ll be that small minority that insists DAoC is better. /shrug. I preordered WAR and plan to play it for a few months after release, but when DAoC origins is introduced I’ll probably go back.

    Oh, and any game without public quests from this point forward will fail. Incredible idea. 🙂

  • @Excelsias
    So that means that zealots are just buffs machines and a heal bots???

    Is that all the fun they have??? I like heal, but i like to do damage, change my talents points and keep playing with my char… :S

  • In a lot of cases, the reason these classes are impossible to kill is that the enemy has too many tanks, thus no dps, thus cant kill you. We found that in a lot of scenarios, there were just so many black orcs and chosen they had no ability to dps through our healing.

  • Hi, man i lvled shaman to 12 and i just hope that they wil get better with higher lvl.
    In scenario tanks eat shaman in 5 seconds and if no one to save you you are cooked green meat.
    i like to play shaman but damage we do is total joke and heals are weak as well.

    IMPROVE SHAMAN OR ELSE i gonna send green cloud over mythic HQ.

  • Hey, i got a friends beta key and been testing the game a bit, i have to say i do enojy the world pvp system, i dont really feel that there are maney class imbalances which runining the game atm, i guess the large numbers in the pvp raids means if your more organized you will win and not who has the best classes.

    Apart from the game crashes which i get about 10 times a day atm i am worried that this system mite get old for me pretty quick. In Warcraft i did competative pve and pvp meaning i was getting a break out of pvp when i raided and the other way around. I cant help but feel that once iv taken the enemies capital city a few times i will have no competative pve to fall back on, storming a keep is fun but i dont know if its gona be able to keep me interested for months.

    There will be titles and that statue spot in the main city to keep me interested in zerging keeps for a while i guess, the PQ are fun but not competative.

    I know they will release new content but i dont know how there gona make that content more important than the main goal of the game which is taking your enemies city, maybe they will add some of the cities they took out or something and let us raid them later or something.

    Sooo anyone else been testing and felt this way and if you dont then you got any reason to think that the system will be able to keep you interested, and give you a reason to log on every day after you captured the enemies city a few times?

  • Lag is even worse today than previous days. Definitely getting only 5 to 15 fps in PQ, RVR, etc. Doesn’t matter if I change to Fastest Framerate and None for effects.

    I heard somewhere that there are some video cards that could be the problem. Hopefully they’ll fix this by the Open Beta.

    BTW just noticed something unusual today which leads me to ask the following. If you go to an enemy area, can you assist/heal friendly NPCs? If so this really opens up the game, particularly on an Open RVR server because doing something as simple as a Quest or Public Quests becomes much more unpredictable with enemy players involved.

  • @Marcus —

    You can certainly DO damage as a Zealot; just nothing on the same level as what you could do with shadow-spec priest in WOW. Not gonna’ be as good.

    If you want damage be an integral part of your toon; try a Shaman. They’re a little squishy, but they can (and are supposed) to be doing some good damage.

  • BTW just a followup with regards to my framerate issues. When it got so bad I couldn’t even RVR yesterday, I decided to go to my ATI Catalyst Control Center and “Reset” all of my settings. I don’t believe I had modified them at all that much but decided to wipe the slate clean anyways, particularly since I just upgraded to a new video card. Anyways, when I went back into the game, my framerates seemed to improve considerably so that I could play RVR without any lag issues. So before I was like getting around 5 FPS in RVR combat, afterwords I was probably get 15 to 25 fps.