Tor Anroc & Roll

Tor Anroc is a hell of a place.

I've been stuck in the brutal k-hole of a level curve that has been tier 3 in week two. By the time I had caught up to the mid-range of tier 3 players, it had already been decided, as if by some unannounced town hall meeting of the WAR community, that Tor Anroc would be the fastest queue in the tier. It seems like for every three Tor Anroc queues, a Talabec Dam queue will pop. As for the rest of the scenarios, well I only have one real comment towards them...

What other scenarios?

I've queued multiple times for the other scenarios, even without queuing for Tor Anroc, but they get absolutely no love, what so ever. I mostly take issue with it because I like to experience all of a game's content, even if only once. Tor Anroc is like a scolding hot pie full of miserable failure, unbalance, and despair, and it tastes like the tears of both realms.

I don't know what the general consensus is like on the other servers, but on Azazel, Destruction has taken up the ugly mantle of playing the blame game, pointing the finger at us, the Order players, for being afraid to queue the other scenarios; stating boldly that we play Tor Anroc simply because we can 'exploit' the scenario, and subsequently, it's the only one we can win.

To put it frankly, BULL****. I have played a fair share of RVR scenarios, I personally feel like winning, or even close losses, seem to reward you with both a fair share of reknown points as well as experience points that are only rivaled by epic AoE grinding sessions. Considering how I'm sitting on a full set of Devastator gear in my inventory, I'm also pretty interesting in getting RR26 so I can equip it all.

As far as I'm concerned, we, as in the Order Realm of Azazel, have a much better record in Talabec Dam than Tor Anroc, any day of the week. In Tor Anroc, it's pretty simple. Either we get a guy with a great spawn and a speed banner to actually get to the center island fast enough to watch a Marauder take the bauble, or we have a White Lion make the lily pad jump (which seems to have been ninja patched anyway) or we lose. Occasionally we might actually luck out and catch a break, maybe the Destruction bauble carrier will get to close to the edge and get knocked off, or perhaps he'll get too aggressive and die, but even in that case, I've been the only player near the bauble, clicked on it to pick it up, and had a Witch Elf run up while I was channeling the bauble and somehow pick it up before me.

I won't sit here and pretend that Destruction's channeling times are shorter than Orders, that clearly is some sort of bug or lag issue, but I'll tell you, there have been some times when I've seen Order players click on objectives before a Destruction player had even come close, and not get interrupted, and still lose the item to Destruction players. I've yet to see an Order player pull that off, and trust me, if I did, I would be laughing my ass off in victory.

Tor Anroc is a hot mess for Order. We are consistently beat to the bauble, which, in my opinion is a situation that needs to be looked at very closely. I imagine it has to do with there being a number of better Marauders on my server than better White Lions -- the two classes that really have the speed based abilities to make the run along the paths to actually reach the bauble in reasonable capture time -- but the fact that every game begins with someone picking that bauble up and make it back to their spawn point without any conflict is a major problem.

I would almost promise you that Tor Anroc was created with the concept that we were supposed to battle on that center island BEFORE the bauble has been claimed. I'm pretty sure that the idea is to contend over control of the center of the scenario before you've even began the chase, hence why the bauble has a channeling period, rather than being an instant pick up similar to Mourkain Temple's relic.

As for the "White Lion" exploit, I have never heard a sadder complaint from able bodied players in my life. The general complaint is that the White Lion strategy is a terrain exploit, and is essentially cheating. Lets break down the White Lion strategy from an Order stand point and really look at how it works.

The theory behind the White Lion strat is pretty simple. If the Order spawn point is Point A, and the bauble is Point B, what would be the quickest way to reach the bauble? As Sam Neill so bravely explained with an astronauts titty magazine in Event Horizon, the quickest way between two points is a fold, bringing Point A to Point B. Well Sam, we can't ******* fold a scenario (although the way some people have *****ed, you would think we were), so we'll have to move on to the second quickest way between two points, a straight line.

This is where the White Lion strat comes in to play. The White Lion has both flee (essentially sprint) and charge (essentially sprint), which stack if queued in the right order, making it the fastest class on the Order's roster. Marauder's also have these exact abilities, which work the exact same way. When you toss two HoTs and a damage shield onto the White Lion, he can flee, and then charge, straight out of the Order spawn point, surviving the initial jump onto the first lava lily pad, stepping once into the lava, landing onto the second lava lily pad, then finally landing on the center island.

Now it's not as if the two HoT's and the shield are affecting or bugging the White Lion in any way. They are tossed on him so that he takes the least amount of damage off of the first jump, and has enough health to survive taking a single tick of the lava DoT. Now, considering how I've watched a Chosen survive at least five steps through lava, and countless other Destruction classes, I fail to see how anything that is happening here is an exploit. If Mythic didn't intend for people to be able to use the lava lily pads, they would have made it to where they were purely cosmetic, still rewarding curious explorers with the lava DoT.

The other complaint I keep hearing is that, Destruction cannot replicate the strategy. Again, utter BS. Destruction has access to a full range to HoT abilities that can keep characters up with as many as five Order members surrounding them, attempting to mash in their face. We've already confirmed that Marauders have access to the same speed abilities, I've seen them use it with my own eyes. Destruction also has access to a nearly identical set of lava lily pads, which would work perfectly fine. There is nothing stopping Destruction from doing it, as they have done it, plenty of times.

The only thing that may really be stopping them is a false sense of altruism, or as I had touched on in my last blog, self righteousness. This concept that because Destruction is vastly superior to the Order in the fact that they don't have to move in a straight line to reach the bauble first. It's amazing if you really step outside of your own element and think about it for a second. A majority of Destruction players truly believes deep down in their hearts that they are so good at Warhammer Online, and so far superior to the Order players, that they are better at running to the bauble at the beginning of Tor Anroc. They are all little race car drivers, screaming out "VROOM!" as they cut each corner more intelligently and intuitively than any Order player could possibly comprehend.

How ignorant is that idea?

Instead I've come up with another idea, and I feel I should label it with a disclaimer, much like some of my posts on the forums. I'm not complaining. I've found ways to win these scenarios just by having any sense of logic and combat knowledge. A little competitive gaming experience goes a long way. I'm pointing out the next theory because it's something that many people have ignored, and argued around, and I do feel it's something that should be fixed, if not at least, acknowledged.

I believe, similarly to Stonetroll Crossing, that the path from the Destruction spawn towards the objective is a shorter path than that of the path on the Order side. In Stonetroll Crossing, it is blatantly so. The Destruction reaches the top of the Destruction sided ramp to the top of the plateu, and the Troll Pacifier is on their side of the plateu. Anyone who tries to deny this is just flat out wrong. Unless Mythic have patched the game to place the Pacifier closer to the center of the plateu, it is, in fact, at the top of the Destruction side of the ramp. You can tell this simply by looking at it because the ramps so a small spiral towards the top of the plateu. The Pacifier sits on the side facing the Order spawn point, meaning the ramp that the Order take to get to the top begins just under the Pacifer, ending at the exact opposite side of it.

The design flaw with Tor Anroc sits in where Mythic has placed the Order spawn point tunnels. The spawn point tunnels are essentially U shaped, with a primary and secondary exit on each. The primary exit of the Destruction spawn point sits on the center axis of the scenario map, where as the Order primary entrance sits much further off of the center axis, to the right. The map had seemingly been balanced to adjust to this. I'll walk you through on the map I have put together here on the right.

When a Destruction play spawns, he runs out, cutting at an angle across the red A,  there is a pillar here, but if you cut on the inside angle of the pillar, over the lava, you make almost a smooth line out of the Destruction spawn. You can reach the red B without making too much of a curve. This area between the red B and C is where the balance was attempted. In order to account for the extra run from Order spawn to the blue B, Mythic has added in a narrow pathway here that is designed to slow down the Destruction players pathing to the bauble. The problem with this balance is, running from Destruction's spawn to the Red B hasn't deviated the players as far off course as running from Order's spawn point to the blue B has. If you've played the corners as Destruction, you're saving a couple of extra seconds. The only area that the Order have the ability to really play the corner at is near the blue C, which is actually not much of a corner, but a cliff that you cannot run up. You have to run almost to the center axis of the middle island, where as the corner by the red C banks with the path of the oncoming players.

It's a small difference, but enough to make a major consistency change, especially with a speed standard put into play.

Of course, I could be wrong, and I'm open to the idea of being wrong, but I promise you, Destruction is reaching the bauble before the Order on that map consistently without using the lava lily pads. If any Destruction players on Azazel are interested, we could get on a Ventrilo together and somehow measure the runs or time them. I'm willing to work with someone to really get to the bottom of this.

Overall, if I had to sum up my points about Tor Anroc... I just want Destruction to stop victimizing themselves over this. I realize that in any game that features opposing factions, both sides find their own legitimate reasons to complain and whine. In the Tor Anroc case, I think Destruction players are in a sincere need of a humility check. They haven't looked at it in a sense of, "What is the balance like on this map?" they have approached it with a concept of, "Why aren't we winning every damn game!?"

More important than everything, this will have hopefully created some dialogue between Order and Destruction players that may better the scenario as a whole for Mythic, when they notice that there is a clear issue involved, in some manner.

Tor Anroc & Roll's Soundtrack:

Boys Noize - Lava Lava