Saturday, May 31, 2008

Barbarian Stats (Attributes) and Gear guide

Hello everyone, as a quick follow up to the Skills guide posted earlier, I have put together the following, a guide to Stats, specifically those found on items, and how to handle them. As with the skills guide, this will be focused on solo PvE, mostly leveling, and solo PvP as those are the most important aspects of the game, currently. As the game progresses, and group or end game PvP becomes more prevalent, updates will be made.

To begin, let's take a loot at the "Stats" window. The P key will bring this up on your screen and allow you to look at various aspects of your barbarian. Mousing over any aspect will provide a useful description of what you can expect from which stats. At the bottom is a simple "At a glance" summary, if you are simply looking for a quick reference.



(Click for a larger view)

As you can see, there are a lot of influences on your performance as a barbarian that are displayed here. For the time being, we will be covering the stats under the "Attribute" and "Protection" headings. Skills are covered here and as Attack, Defense and Magic Rating aren't fully understood at the moment, I will hold off on talking about them.

Stats displayed in white are represent your base value, once you pick up a piece of gear or get a buff that raises a stat, it will turn green.

I will start with health and stamina, since they are somewhat unique in how you can acquire them on gear. Gear will have +Maximum Health/Stam and/or out of combat Health or Stamina regeneration. These formats can have different applications, personally, I tend to prefer gear that increases the maximum as opposed to that which provides regen (though a nice mix is good, too) due to the fact that resting pretty much negates the need for additional out of combat regen, and a bigger Stamina or Health pool is a great help during a tough fight.

Italicized text represents the description given in-game.
  • Health - Your characters Health points. If your Health points reach zero, you will die. Health points automatically regenerate when you are out of combat.
    • Health is life. You cannot live without this. While health on gear can be considered more of a tank (Guardian, Dark Templar) stat, it helps barbarians out also. Especially beneficial for those who solo often, for those harder hitting mobs.
  • Stamina - Your characters Stamina points. Stamina is used to execute combo attacks, and to sprint. Stamina points automatically regenerate when you are out of combat.
    • Stamina is what allows melee based classes to perform combos, without which we are rather useless. Stam is great, and one of our two main stats, if you find gear with stamina or stam regen on it, chances are, it's a good piece for you.


Attributes
  • Strength - Strength increases your Attack Rating while using melee weapons. Daggers are the exception to this bonus.
    • I will start off by noting that, currently, adding or removing strength has no impact on the numerical value for one's attack rating, as displayed in the Attributes window. Whether this is a display bug or strength being useless is unknown, we are hoping the former. For the purpose of this guide, I will assume strength is functioning properly.

      Strength is the barbarians PRIMARY stat. Above all else, strength is what allows us to dish out the damage, and should almost always be given preference over other stats.

  • Intelligence - Intelligence increases a Mage's Magical Rating and the number of Mana points available for spell-casting.
    • We have no mana, we cast no spells. Useless.

  • Constitution - Constitution increases your Life and Stamina.
    • Apart from the in-game discrepency of referring to Health as Life, Constitution is a great attribute for us. Increase in Stamina is always wonderful, and more health never hurts.
      • 2 hit points per point of Con
      • ~4 Stamina per point of Con (11 stam for 2.5 con)

  • Dexterity - Dexterity increases your Defense Rating and adds to Stamina. Dexterity also increases your Attack Rating with ranged weapons and daggers.
    • Dexterity is very similar to constitution in that it increases our Stamina along with providing an accompanying bonus to our defenses. As with Con, anything that adds to stam is something we are interested in. The actual impact of defense rating, as mentioned above is currently unknown, so I would tend to go for Con over Dex, simply because the Health bonus is currently more tangible. Barbarians cannot use daggers, so that damage bonus is meaningless (unless you're a fan of using your ranged weapon.. but that probably means you aren't using Hide enough).
  • Wisdom - Wisdom increases a Priest's Magic Rating, and increases the number of Mana points available for spell-casting.
    • A Priest class's version of Intelligence, equally useless for us.
Protection
Apart from Magical Resist which is worded almost exactly as Defense Rating, as the counter for Magic Rating, the various elemental resists are listed on a percentage basis. The reasonable assumption is that these will reduce damage taken from spells falling into those categories by those amounts. This will be important in end game PvP, for which this guide is not intended.

Other Attributes
This is where I will cover a few other important stats that you may come across as you pick up gear in the world, if anyone knows any that I have missed, please let me know and they will be added!

  • Hiding - Often you will find a piece of gear with +Hiding on it. I will not go over Hiding in detail, as I have already covered that in the skill guide, but I will say that this is a great stat to pick up. As you can see in my screen shot above, when that was taken I had +20 hiding from gear (now it is closer to +30). This is something that each individual will weight in their own way, and that is fine. Personally, I like to be sneaky.
  • Out of Combat Run Speed - Just what it says, increases your run speed out of combat. As with +Hiding, different people will perceive different benefits from this. I like it, and take it when I can.
Armor Types
As a barbarian, we have access to cloth and light armors. Assassins, who can only wear cloth, share a good deal of our "beneficial" stats (though, they get a bit more out of Dex, since they often use daggers) which means that often we will come across some cloth armor that looks like it would be great for us. I would caution you about taking cloth over light armor, as you WILL get hit harder, but sometimes it seems that is the better way to go.

Procs
Occasionally (this increases at higher levels) you will find a gear with some text similar to "Has a change to inflict damage when struck in combat." This can be found on armor or items. I have yet to see the full extent of what types of procs exist in Age of Conan, but anything that causes bonus damage or an increase to our important stats, go for it!

Weapons
Weapons have a few different stats that are not found on armor based items. They will be covered below.
  • Damage/Second
    • Abbreviated DPS (Damage per Second), this stat reflects how much damage, on average, you will inflict per second while swinging this weapon. The display of DPS on a weapon is real time and influenced by both your feats and (if working properly) your Strength attribute. That is to say, if you have the 10% bonus to damage for 2H feat, this will be reflected when looking at the DPS in a weapon's tooltip.

      The nice bonus about this is that you do not have to speculate if a 70 DPS 2H with 5 strength is better than a 72DPS 2H with 0 strength, because clearly the 72 DPS weapon will hit harder. As DPS directly translates to the damage done by your combos, this alone should be how you determine which weapon to use.

  • Damage Range (#.##s)
    • This number indicated what your weapon will hit for normally, per swing. That is to say, if you simply hit a directional attack on an area where the enemy has 1 shield (normal damage) it should do damage that falls into this range. The number in parenthesis reflects the swing timer, or how long you must wait before swings.

  • + #.# Damage
    • When you get an Item with a stat such as +2.4 1H Blunt Damage, you will notice that the DPS of any 1H blunt weapons you have around will go up by 2.4 as you equip it. Great stat for any DPSers, just make sure your weapons match.

  • ##.##% Stamina/Health Tap
    • Noone seems to be fully sure (and this will be updated when someone does) but the most logical assumption is that the indicated percentage of damage done will be returned to you in the form of a heal or stamina regen.

  • +/- Hate Modifier
    • To understand this stat, one must be aware of what a mob's "Hate" is. As you do damage to a mob, you generate hate, meaning you are making it unhappy. The target of the mob, who it attacks, is determined by who is at the top of its hate list. As a high DPS light armor wearing class, when given the opportunity, -% Hate Modifier is great. Keep the mob on the Guardian, not you. Do not that this does not work on players in PvP and that outside of a group setting, it useless in PvE.

  • +% Evade Chance
    • Pretty self explanatory. Good stat when it comes to you, don't go out of your way for it though.

  • + Natural Health/Stamina Regeneration
    • This could be located under the Health and Stam section, but it works here. Apart from Max and Out of Combat Regen, a 3rd form of Health and Stam may be found on gear, this is natural regeneration. Unlike Out of Combat Regen, Natural Regeneration occurs even in combat. Great to pick up, especially stam.

Summary:
Ok, for those of you who do not wish to wade through that quite large post on a regular basis, here is my preferred order of stats on gear:

  1. Strength
  2. Maximum Stamina
  3. Natural Stamina Regen
  4. Weapon Damage
  5. Constitution
  6. Dexterity
  7. Maximum Health
  8. Natural Health Regen
  9. Hiding
  10. Run speed
  11. Out of Combat Regen
No, I did not list Int or Wis, as they are useless :P

Thank you, and good luck with your barb!

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Update

Just letting everyone know, the stats and gear guide should be up tonight!

Small change to comments

Just letting you know, in case anyone has some popup blockers enabled, when you click the Comment link at the bottom, it will now pop up in a new window to add your comment. No major change, just making it easier on you guys so you don't have to jump through hoops to get back to the site after commenting.

Also, if you simply want to view the comments, still in the context of the blog, simply click the title of the article.

Also I'd just like to say thanks to all the readers and commenters so far, I appreciate it!

Friday, May 30, 2008

Food and Potions

Quickly I would like to mention how great I think it is that AoC makes food and potions immediately and easily available, being purchasable from vendors everywhere at every level.

However, I find it sad to see players not making use of it.. I don't know if its overlooked or if people are just being stingy. Anyway, food buffs last an hour and give +max and regen out of combat. You can get them in the flavors of Health, Stamina or Mana (which is useless, for us, and doesn't even show up in the tooltip). Potions give an initial burst of a stat, health or stamina, then provide a 1 minute buff of regen (including in combat).

And the best part is, they stack. You can have one food buff for health and health regen and one for stam and stam regen. You can also pop a health and stamina potion at the same time, the over time regen stacks and they do not share a cooldown.

There are different varieties of foods, offering various balances of +Stat and Regen.. some having +100 stat and 5 regen, some having +80 stat and +15 regen. I tend to favor those that give the most +max as I can always rest out of combat to regen, and having a bigger stam pool gets things dead faster :P

One of the EASIEST ways to give your barbarian a nice advantage is to always have your food buffs up and use potions liberally. They're cheap. You have nothing better to spend your money on.

MOBO = DOA

Well.. got the whole system together just to get no post and no video output. Awesome. Pretty sure the motherboard is bad, so I have that going in for an exchange. Unfortunately, I get to keep AoC'in on the laptop. Oh well, that's technology.

Combos and Cooldowns

Just something I'd like to point out, that I've been noticing and finally took the time to test today. I'm sure you've all noticed that when you activate a combo and either mess up the combo or decide to not use it, your combo still goes on cooldown.

However, it's worth noting that the cooldown is not the full duration. When you activate a combo without fully executing it, it goes on cooldown for exactly half the time it would if completed.

Case on the way

The final piece of my new PC is currently "out for delivery" :D It's the case. All the parts have been patiently waiting on my desk for their opportunity to be installed into my new blazing game machine, and today they will get to!

I'm working on the guide for Stats and Gear and... stats on gear, but this may put a slight delay on it (expect it tomorrow or sunday). Pictures of the rig and some screen shots of max settings later tonight!

Thursday, May 29, 2008

A short note about Staggering Blow and Reverse Swing

Recently I learned rank 2 of Staggering Blow, an ability I had already become fond of, and began to realize this is a highly underused combo.

Staggering Blow is currently my default combo (Rank 2 and 1 take slots 4 and 5 on my hotbar) due to its massive damage and very low stamina cost.. I alternate between them depending on the target's health and my cooldowns. A general example for a tough mob or group would be something like SB2 -> Butcher -> SB1 -> Clobber -> Finishing Blow -> [some combo, based on which CDs are up and shields]


This may not seem the most logical route, but consider what happens when you bring the feat "Reverse Swing" into the mix. Reverse swing is an ability that, when you hit a target with Staggering Blow (Note: you MUST hit the target, swinging into the air does nothing), gives you a buff that increases your base damage output for 5 seconds. At 5/5 in the feat, it gives 10% (thanks to Azrus) So maintaining that buff while you execute your other combos will notably increase your damage output.

Anyone else use this method?

Stance Issues

Well, I'm sure you're all aware that right now, our legs don't move when attacking in a stance (except on the final swing of combos), but I've been experiencing another issue with stances and was wondering if anyone was getting the same.

This issue occurs when, after death, you try to get back into a stance. Now, I've only noticed this with Blood Rage Stance, but I assume it could be happening for Reaver as well. I've found that usually, activating the stance does nothing except place it on cooldown.. and this will continue to be the case until I draw my weapon ( \ is the default hotkey). Anyone else notice this? If you are having the issue.. there's a solution for now. Draw the weapon before you try to enter the stance, not that it shouldn't always be out anyway ;)

Reflections so far

Another barrage of patches to download this morning, but it gives me a nice time to think on the barbarian class and this game as a whole.

One thing that caught my eye in the updater this morning was that FunCom has already taken to finding cheaters and exploiters (which I've heard of a good number of) and issuing bans or modifying characters to reduce the impact of whatever he or she exploited. Good stuff FunCom, keep it up. You will note that this reason is why you won't see me writing much about class exploits here until they have been resolved. Don't want any of you getting banned!

On to the game itself. Before taking up Age of Conan, I had been playing World of Warcraft (still pop on two nights a week to raid) for about 3.5 years, and before that, Dark Age of Camelot for about 4 years. Other than that, I have dabbled in UO, Lineage and L2, so it can be said that I have a decent understanding of the MMO genre and games in general. That being said, I feel AoC to be one of the most refreshing games I've played, and it is clear that they have been paying attention to what other MMOs have been doing right (or wrong) to make a great game.

A few of my main "cheers" for the game as it stands (since the patch appears to be almost complete.)

  • Unique Classes
    • Never before have I seen anything like a Herald of Xotli, Bear Shaman, Barbarian or Tempest of Set. These all seem to have very new, innovative styles of play. Whether or not they are fun or properly designed can be debated, but their uniqueness cannot.
  • Melee Combat
    • A lot of individuals have been putting down the so called revolutionary new system for melee as just having to mash whichever side is open, or unshielded. While I'll agree that that aspect isn't particularly difficult, it is, as mentioned above, new. What I think most people discount is the fact that even though you have something targeted and are standing near it does NOT mean you will hit it. In most games, if you are targeting a mob and try to perform an ability that wouldn't hit, you get an error message. Not here, you waste that Stamina and get no benefit. I like that, less sloppy play.
And, why not, a few Jeers:

  • Gear
    • Common complaint, the upgrades for gear are few and far between. Getting the trader up and working was a great step toward alleviating this (if you haven't been to the trader yet, get yourself to a capitol and check him out). Quests will reward you will wonderful items.. which is good, since you'll be using them for 15 levels :P
  • Crafting
    • The crafting system doesn't seem to be fully complete yet. While there is vague information posted, and people have been picking up the crafts, no one is really sure what they do and many have accidentally gotten them stuck in a profession they did not want.
I'll post some thoughts on the Barbarian specifically later. For now, what do you think? What has been the best and worst of AoC for you so far?

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Nostromo N52

So, I'm wondering if any of you barbarians are using a N52 to ease your key mashing. I have one, but haven't taken the time to set it up yet. With the combat keys taking up 5 of the available buttons and Alt acting.. interestingly.. by default, I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to make everything work well.

As it stands, I'm most likely just goin to have to redo the full keybinding (on the alternate keys, of course) and ditch the 1-0 idea.

Any thoughts?

Get em in your cone

So, the game interface says pressing V will bring up some sort of view to see your frontal AoE cone. This would be an amazing tool for us barbarians, but I have yet to be able to make it work. Because of this, I (and others, from what I've been reading) have had the occasional issue with getting groups of 3 or 4 mobs stacked in our AoE area.

I've been hearing of a new tip out there to assist with this, that being double taping S, or back, for the backwards dodge. The point here isn't to give you the 50% dodge buff, but instead to get the mobs to stack up in front of you. I didn't get a chance to test this yet, but it sounds like it should be a great help! Thanks to the various individuals I've heard mention this :)

Update: After playing with it.. seems to work great with 2 mobs. Splits the damage pretty well. 3 or more, not so much. If you guys have better luck, let me know.

Barbarian Skills Guide

As a new character in Age of Conan, one of the first decisions you will have to make is how to spend your skill points. The skills you chose to invest in, and how many points you chose to invest will have a significant impact on the development and playstyle of your barbarian for all your remaining levels.

Thankfully, skill point investments are not permanent, and at any time you can remove all points invested in a particular skill for a fee. This is done by Alt+Left Clicking on the skill you wish to reset.

The following is a list of skills available to barbarians and an overview of each followed by an "out of 5" rating of each for both a solo pve and solo pvp environment. As additional aspects of the game (raiding, group pvp) begin to grow in importance, ratings for those will be added as well. Keep in mind, depending on what level you are, you may not have all of these skills available to you yet. If you're missing some, don't worry. You'll get them eventually.

  • Bandaging: The Bandaging skill increases your rate of Health regeneration, depending on your skill and current character level.
    • One of the primary causes of downtime for a Barbarian is a deficiency in health. When there are no healers about, Bandaging and using the Rest ability are the most efficient way to regenerate Health and keep the grind going. If you frequently run solo, keep this one high.
      • PvE - ****
      • PvP - ***
  • Recovery: Adds Stamina regeneration while using the Rest ability.
    • While a lack of Health slows down a barbarian's grind, Stamina is our absolute limiting factor when it comes to chain pulling. Contrary to some things I've read, one point is not the same as a hundred. While you may not want to keep it maxed, this is definitely one all barbarians want to keep high.
      • PvE: *****
      • PvP: *****
  • Fast Recovery: Gives you a chance to regenerate double the amount of Stamina when using the Rest ability. After further testing, it DOES appear that one point is sufficient in this talent. This is, until they fix it. I tested it repeatedly with 1 point and with 165 points. Each time it took my Stam bar 11 seconds to regen, with 5 procs of fast recovery.
    • As with Recovery, this one is also often indicated to only need one point invested to be efficient. It is true that a single point will be enough to get this ability to proc 6 or 7 times while resting a full bar of Stamina, whether or not more points makes it regen faster is hard to say. I put points here from time to time, nothing too much. Just be sure to have SOMETHING in this. It nearly cuts resting time in half for a full bar of stamina.
      • PvE: *****
      • PvP: *****
  • Endurance: Lowers the Stamina cost of Sprinting.
    • This one is personal preference. As an individual who finds myself sprinting frequently, whether to chase down an enemy or simply quest faster, I keep a few points in here. It is usually at about 1/3 of max.
    • 100 points = 1% reduction in Stamina cost.
      • PvE: *
      • PvP: ****
  • Run Speed: Increases your movement rate, when not engaged in combat.
    • I'm always a fan of moving quicker and try to keep this between 1/3-1/2 of max.
    • Adds 1% movement speed per 100 points invested.
      • PvE: **
      • PvP: ***
  • Skulk: Increases your movement rate when using the Hide ability.
    • Hiding is an important part of your life, as a barbarian, and this is one way to augment it. stealth is generally used to bypass content or to get an opener on a (sometimes moving) enemy. Skulk will help you get there quicker. However, it has been said that the gains are relatively menial. This only gets occasional points from me, but may become more useful as endgame group PvP evolves.
    • 100 points = 2% increased movement speed while stealthed.
      • PvE: **
      • PvP: ***
  • Climbing: The Climbing skill determines if you can climb a surface.
    • Climbing is an integral part of Age of Conan. However, I have yet to experience any use besides quest completion. For example, you need 80 to complete an early quest in Tortage and something like 130 to complete a quest your respective (race specific) 20s zone. I give 5 or 10 points here every other level or so. Just enough to keep it up, perhaps as siege and keep based PvP develops, we will see more of a use.
      • PvE: **** (necessary to complete certain quests)
      • PvP:
  • Hiding: The Hide ability gives you a chance of avoiding detection by enemies.
    • Key aspect of playing a Rogue archetype. Always keep this maxed. Remaining hidden allows you to get the jump on ranged attackers (allowing a stunlock ftw) and sneak by various baddies to speed up quest completion.
      • PvE: *****
      • PvP: *****
  • Perception: The Perception skill increases your chance to detect hidden enemies.
    • This is an ability that I find relatively useless currently, again, will become more useful as frontier and group-based PvP comes about. A few points might save you from a gank, but I doubt it. Search would be a better option if you know someone is sneaking around you.
      • PvE:
      • PvP: ***
  • Subtlety: In battle, your attacks have a chance of being treated as less of a threat, so the target is less likely to break off from their current target to attack you.
    • Great if you are in groups with a tank. The last thing you want is to pull an elite off a Guardian and get smashed. However, this is useless if you are solo and completely useless in PvP. This will probably get to be very important as we progress into end game raiding.
      • PvE: **
      • Raid/Group PvE: *****
      • PvP:
Hopefully you will find this guide beneficial through the life of your Barbarian.

UPDATE

A few requests were made for a % of max breakdown of spending skill points. Here you go!

While Leveling:
  • Bandaging - 70-85%
  • Recovery - 50-70%
  • Fast Recovery - 1 Point
  • Endurance - 20-40%
  • Run Speed - 15-20%
  • Skulk - 0-10%
  • Climbing - 70-80% (Need 350 for a mid 40's quest, working on a list of climbing spots.)
  • Hiding - 100%
  • Perception - 0-5%
  • Subtlty - 0-5%

Projected End-Game PvP - Highly Speculative due to the unknown nature of end game PvP.
  • Bandaging - 70-90%
  • Recovery - 70-90%
  • Fast Recovery - 1 point,until FunCom fixes it.
  • Endurance - 60-75%
  • Run Speed - 30-60% (Mounts?)
  • Skulk - 40-60%
  • Climbing - Minimum required to climb player buildings, if possible
  • Hiding - 100%
  • Perception - May be more useful, 10-20%
  • Subtlty - 0%

Projected End-Game PvE (Group/Raid based)
  • Bandaging - 40-60%
  • Recovery - 60-80%
  • Fast Recovery - 1 point unless fixed
  • Endurance - 0-20%
  • Run Speed - 0-20%
  • Skulk - 0-20%
  • Climbing - Minimum for climbing the world
  • Hiding - 100% (Or, 0%, depends on playstyle. Probably won't need to hide in raids.)
  • Perception - 0-10%
  • Subtlty - 60-90%

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New Rig

Well.. parts of the new PC started showing up today, minus the case. Updates might slow down a little as I begin to play with this beast.



Processor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037
Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121059
RAM - 2x (for 4gb): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231121
HDD 2x: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136178
Video Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130339
PS: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153023&Tpk=thermaltake%2b430w
Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811103010
Drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151153
Keyboard/Mouse: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823126176
Monitor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009108

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

To do list

Well, since I'm sure you're wondering, here's a quick list of what you can expect to see here during the times I can peel myself away from leveling:

  • Overview of Skills and some opinions on how to spend your skill points
  • Important stats on gear
  • Feats. Overview of interesting ones and Berserker vs Reaver comparison
  • Overview of hiding and how to be effective while sneaking around
If there are any other topics that you are particularly interested in, leave them in a comment on this post and I'll add it to the list.


Servers up

Well, the servers are finally back up.. not sure what was done during the four hours of maintenance here, but hopefully it was some feat fixing! From what I've been hearing, we've got some nice fixes put in today, though I didn't get a chance to test or experience them before the servers came back down. From what I've heard, though:

  • Staggering Punch - Fixed, now properly adds a snare to Stunning Punch (YAY)
  • No Escape - Now usable at throw range (instead of melee.. ) Weapon actually returns after 3 seconds
  • Blood Rage Stance - Now actually gives a HoT



Hello and welcome.

A short introductory first post so everyone knows what this blog and I am all about. I currently play a barbarian in the newly released MMORPG Age of Conan. As it stands, information relevant to this class, and AoC in generally is randomly dispersed across the vast spaces of the internet. My hope is that this blog will provide a centralized location of information about AoC, focusing specifically on the Barbarian class.

In the near future, I will be adding posts related to spending feat and skill points and optimizing your barbarian.