The Results are in…

… and the verdict is:

Build a Crafting Guide!

That’s what the majority of votes asked for. Turns out that no one cares about how to balance stats against one another to build a character, so hey – I’ll drop the topic. Less work for me; hurrah. I’ll indeed likely have to come back to work on the Chanter-specific guide, and I’ll talk more about them as soon as I get farther in the game and can thus have a better grasp of the class’s full dynamics.

There were also a handful of votes for “something else.” I’m not sure what these mean, as there’s no comments or E-mail that I’ve got to explain them. So, for cuiosity’s sake, I’ll make some guesses:

Combat Mechanics: There’s a fair set of nuances here, some of which I’ve covered with my statistics guide. There is more to talk about here, though, such as the order-of-operations (and thus knowing what has priority), the simultaneity confound, its effects and potential benefits, and other intricate elements of the combat engine. It’s a fun topic for experimentation and evaluation, but then I don’t know if I can codify a substantive guide out of it.

Grinding Optimization: This has been done. Given the level and ranking of enemies you can handle and your level, you can simply look up the set of enemy types that you can handle at aionwh.com – simply go to the tools section, and go to the Grind Optimizer (no direct links because the site runs on ajax – yay for simple directions!). So, if you’re wondering if you’re actually fighting the right type of stuff, you can use this little tool as a sanity check for your efficiency.

Gathering Guide: The question of “What stuff is where?” is already solved by aionarmory.com’s Gatherables section – every resource type that’s been encountered has its possible locations tagged on the appropriate maps. The mechanics governing these gathering attempts are synonymous with the mechanics governing crafting, so they’ll be covered in my crafting guide. Is there something I’m missing here, some other solution needed for understanding how to go about gathering materials? If so, let me know.

PvP Guidelines: I don’t think I’ll ever be as good at explaining good PvP guidelines compared to other players. I’m proficient in duels, and I have a fair grasp of scaled PvP combat by and large, but I’m no stellar player. I’m afraid that if you’re looking for more information on how to take down human-controlled adversaries, you’ll need to keep searching for a good, comprehensive approach. Be careful about the approach you execute, though: you will lose some fights, and if you go out into the world expecting to win everything you will be disappointed. I guarantee it.

However, I should note that it’s okay to lose. After all, your loss is someone else’s win, which at least makes that person feel better. If you don’t get depressed and angry about losing the fight, then there’s only gain to be had. Otherwise, it’s a zero-sum game: one side goes up, and the other side goes down equally. If it’s a zero-sum game, then on average you don’t gain anything. If there’s no gain, then why are you spending your time on it? I encourage you to take advantage of your losses as well as your wins, so that there’s always a positive takeaway.

Also, win or lose, don’t be an asshole. The last thing this game needs is more assholes.

Other: I’m really not sure if there’s other stuff out there that’s substantial enough to warrant a full guide. Other classes, perhaps, but I’m no expert on anything outside of what I’ve played (Gladiator and Chanter). Other than that, I’m a little lost. But, just because I’m lost doesn’t mean I can’t help, per se. If there’s something I’m missing, do feel free to tack it on here – I’ll find a way to make it fit, independent of my severe lack of free time lately.

So, there are some other possibilites. For now, however, I’ll be conserving my focus to building a comprehensive crafting guide. Some topics I know I’ll cover:

1. Basics of crafting: What crafts are there, what do they provide, and how a player can acquire and improve any craft.
2. Crafting algorithm architecture: How do the two bars work, and how can a player minimize his chance of failure.
3. High-Quality production: What is a high-quality product, what factors influence creating them, and what to do to turn a profit with high-quality materials.
4. Powerleveling approaches: Is the process of leveling crafting best done in tandem with leveling, or afterwards, and what arguments support either side.
5. Meta-crafting: How a player can make the most of the craft-leveling process, and how to handle the unavoidable downtime.
6. Advanced topics: To be extended for high-level crafting quests; Expert Craft requisites, limitations, and benefits; Other problems/questions posed.

The Advanced section will be empty in the first pass of this guide, as I can’t really speak to Expert crafting just yet, but I’ll add to it as soon as I can in the near future. If there’s something you think is missing, let me know now – I’ll work it in as best I can before actually posting the guide.

Gunsmith of Williamsburg: a comprehensive documentary of gunsmithing, if my guide takes too long.

So, there ya have it. The results say that people want to learn about crafting, and so I shall deliver. Yay for a free, long weekend ahead! Games, storytelling, and guide-writing are all on the horizon – such a welcome break from network graph transformations and sleep plasticity experiments.

In the Meanwhile: Check out The Gunsmith of Williamsburg for a comprehensive look at just what hand-tooling your own equipment can require. Sure, the movie’s about crafting a rifle, rather than a plate hauberk or wooden stave, but I think there’s a lot of overlap. It’s a shame how little we appreciate the enormous acceleration of crafting in current video games. That said, the actual process behind making this stuff is super cool, in my opinion – check it out!

What (Guides) do You Want to See?

Note: There’s a poll at the bottom – be sure to vote before you navigate away!

I don’t know how I still manage to have any free time these days. It’s getting absurd just how much work I have on my plate, yet I still somewhow find the time and energy to take one friend out for brunch, spend an hour plotting how to break into a locked room with another friend (to write a paper about the room for class, no less), and meet my parents for dinner. It’s busy as all hell, and I still manage to play a bit of Aion when my computer isn’t trying to fry itself.

Perhaps the strangest thing is that I’m not feeling stressed by everything. Indeed, I’m not here to whine or anything – I’m loving the work, and all the free time feels that much better because of the work I have to do to earn it. Rather, I’m looking for more direction in what I should be doing with this little corner of the Internet.

I set up a few stubs for guides on this website. If people are interested in learning more about any one of those topics, please let me know. I’m going to start by working on the “Character Design Guide,” which will aim to provide insight on which manastones you should use to enhance a certain element of your character’s performance. It’s not going to be a min/maxing guide, nor a guide on what a class needs to socket for. Instead, it’ll examine some more general character goals (more survivability, damage output, group viability, etc.), and discuss how to handle these goals for any class. After all, you can sculpt your character to be whatever you want – that’s the magic of manastones (and stigmas, coming soon).

Additionally, I have plenty to say about the playstyle, pros, and cons of Chanter play. It keeps creeping up between posts from my experience, which is fine, but I’m sure some viewers would love to have a single, consolidated file of all the goodness in a guide. Again, don’t expect me to explain a min/max strategy for Chanters: I really don’t believe in that playstyle, so I’ll be focusing instead on realistic, rounded performance improvement. Also, there are some quirks to keep in mind whenever playing a Chanter (positioning, balancing healing with offense, reactionary skills, etc.) – those will be covered in depth.

I even have some things to mention about the world of crafting. I don’t have full recipe lists, but I’m sure that Aion’s Powerwiki has a full compilation of those lists as it is. But understanding the inner-workings of crafting, especially those success-failure races? Yeah, there’s more than simply chance at play there. Rer of (Insert Awesome Aion Name) had some commentary on this topic a while back, and I wanted to expand upon it in a more thorough, comprehensive guide for permanent reference.

The question for you, then, is which of these topics would be most helpful for you? Generic Classes, Chanter-Specifics, Crafting Assistance, or something completely different? I’m open to suggestions – if there’s something you don’t understand, I’d be happy to investigate and provide whatever explanation I can. So, please, give me some feedback – vote in the poll for the field you want to hear about most! Also, if you fall in the “Other” category, please elaborate in a comment or E-mail (if you prefer privacy).

Thanks in advance for the input. I’ll be back in a bit with some storytelling fun; I’m aiming to keep posts distinct, so it’s time for a double. In the meantime, let me know what you want to see!

The Snail’s Report: Weaving Works!

Busy times sure do cut down on the ability to play the game. Unfortunately, this workload isn’t likely to let up anytime soon. That said, I have a bit of time now to check in with the snail’s progress report.

Theladas is slow. I find myself far too distracted by crafting and gathering to keep up with the grind-whoring masters. As such, I’ve only recently broken level 21 on my way to the top. To be honest, I’m really not too concerned about being behind. I won’t be the first of my class to get top-end gear, but there’s no way my schedule could support the necessary raiding times to get that stuff anyways. I’ll be more vulnerable in PvP to high-level enemies, but there’s not much I can do about that – only the first through the Abyss get to be on top, and they’ve easily had five times the gametime that I’ve had.

Theladas also has bad luck. When crafting a series of Handicrafting Jewelry pieces, I ended up with only one HQ proc out of the twelve attempts that I made. It’s demoralizing, really, when I had such good luck with these things in the Closed Betas. I suppose I wasted all of my luck back then – how foolish of me.

True to my word, I haven’t worked on Jerricah or the others yet. I’ve reserved the names and made initial cuts at their avatars (I may make a second pass some other time), but they’re all still stuck at level one. I really do want to see the middle and end-game content that wasn’t available in the Closed Beta, it’s just gonna take me a while longer to clamber through the leveling ladder.

Allison may not be a Daeva, but she sure has an awesome set of wings.

In the free time I’m not spending in-game, I’ve been watching Allison & Lillia. It’s a curious show that has a lot of Steampunk themes running through it. I find it very endearing, though the obliviousness of the characters is occasionally frustrating. The mysteries and adventures aren’t quite as engaging as the adventures of Ghost Hunt, but I like the setting: the technology, the times, and the conflicts are more believable (perhaps because they aren’t hinged on phantoms…). Anyways, it’s worth a look for anime enthusiasts.

On the questions front: More Weaving!

Theladas is a Chanter, which means his melee skills are sub-par compared to Gladiators and Assassins. His ability to push out numbers is still vital, however; I don’t ever want to be carried in a group, and killing enemies faster leads to less downtime in the solo venue. So I did a lot of experimenting on what approach to skill use was most productive.

First, some information to scope the Weaving problem for Chanters:

Chanters operate on an 8-second rotation with a 2-second swing timer. I have four skills that I use in the current rotation. All of my blackout periods seem to align at lasting for only 1 second, though the animations often bleed over (The animations are irrelevant for game mechanics, of course). Auto Attacks hit for 60-120 damage, while Special Attacks hit for 160-260. Given these parameters, I tried a few approaches to weaving:

• Skill Spam: I burn out my skillset in 4 seconds, give or take. Two swings go out, one at 5 seconds and one at 7 seconds. I can wait one second for a third attack to land at 9 seconds, or cut it off and return to the skillspam rotation.
• Tight Weave: With a bit of prediction, I can land a special ability just as the animation for the auto attack triggers. The result is essentially a boosted special attack, with the auto-attack damage and the special skill damage landing at virtually the same time. With proper timing, four boosted attacks will land in just over 8 seconds.
• Tight Weave Adaptations: On an 8-second rotation with 4 auto-attacks, there’s no break for throwing on a self-hot or using any more special abilities. But the solution is pretty simple, in principle: when faced with a new special ability, it will be concatenated into one of the two existing chains. I then adapt that half of the rotation to be three skill-spammed abilities, effectively cutting out one of the auto attacks in favor of a special attack. For off-chain abilities, such as an instant HoT, I slip the ability in between the two chains. Again, a single auto attack is sacrificed for the ability if proper timing is maintained.

So, what does this mean? Well, simply put I deal 120-240 additional damage every 8 seconds by using weaving over skillspam. At level 21. By planning ahead, I can prep a heal in between skill chains at the cost of only one auto-attack. When I finally acquire more attacks for the rotation, I can again drop a single auto attack to provide space for the special skill. Once I have 8 special attacks to use on every 8-second rotation, I will no longer be weaving; until that time, weaving provides better returns than skillspam.

Extensions to Gladiators, Rangers, and Assassins? You guys will have to test it out yourselves. I suspect that weaving will always have some benefit, if only to help you queue your abilities up consistently in PvE.

Bottom Line: Don’t be a carry, Chanters; unless assigned to main-heal a random farming group, there should be a cleric in charge of healing the team. Your mantras do part of your job, but only consistent and well-timed weaves will bring your DPS element up to par with the rest of the team.

Okay, back to work with me. It’s time to prep a robotic forklift for simulation.

Busy times sure do cut down on the ability to play the game. Unfortunately, this workload isn’t likely to let up anytime soon. That said, I have a bit of time now to check in with the snail’s progress report.

Theladas is slow. I find myself far too distracted by crafting and gathering to keep up with the grind-whoring masters. As such, I’ve only recently broken level 21 on my way to the top. To be honest, I’m really not too concerned about being behind. I won’t be the first of my class to get top-end gear, but there’s no way my schedule could support the necessary raiding times to get that stuff anyways. I’ll be more vulnerable in PvP to high-level enemies, but there’s not much I can do about that – only the first through the Abyss get to be on top, and they’ve easily had five times the gametime that I’ve had.

Theladas also has bad luck. When crafting a series of Handicrafting Jewelry pieces, I ended up with only one HQ proc out of the twelve attempts that I made. It’s demoralizing, really, when I had such good luck with these things in the Closed Betas. I suppose I wasted all of my luck back then – how foolish of me.

True to my word, I haven’t worked on Jerricah or the others yet. I’ve reserved the names and made initial cuts at their avatars (I may make a second pass some other time), but they’re all still stuck at level one. I really do want to see the middle and end-game content that wasn’t available in the Closed Beta, it’s just gonna take me a while longer to clamber through the leveling ladder.

In the free time I’m not spending in-game, I’ve been watching Allison & Lillia. It’s a curious show that has a lot of steampunk themes running through it. I find it very endearing, though the obliviousness of the characters is occasionally frustrating. The mysteries and adventures aren’t quite as engaging as the adventures of Ghost Hunt, but I like the setting: the technology, the times, and the conflicts are more believable (perhaps because they aren’t hinged on phantoms…). Anyways, it’s worth a look for anime enthusiasts.

On the questions front: More Weaving!

Theladas is a Chanter, which means his melee skills are sub-par compared to Gladiators and Assassins. His ability to push out numbers is still vital, however; I don’t ever want to be carried in a group, and killing enemies faster leads to less downtime in the solo venue. So I did a lot of experimenting on what approach to skill use was most productive.

First, Chanters operate on an 8-second rotation with a 2-second swing timer. I have four skills that I use in the current rotation. All of my blackout periods seem to align at lasting for only 1 second, though the animations often bleed over. Auto Attacks hit for 60-120 damage, while Special Attacks hit for 160-260. Given these parameters, I tried a few approaches to weaving:

Skill Spam: I burn out my skillset in 4 seconds, give or take. Two swings go out, one at 5 seconds and one at 7 seconds. I can wait one second for a third attack to land at 9 seconds, or cut it off and return to the skillspam rotation.

Tight Weave: With a bit of prediction, I can land a special ability just as the animation for the auto attack triggers. The result is essentially a boosted special attack, with the auto-attack damage and the special skill damage landing at virtually the same time. With proper timing, four boosted attacks will land in just over 8 seconds.

Tight Weave Adaptations: On an 8-second rotation with 4 auto-attacks, there’s no break for throwing on a self-hot or using any more special abilities. But the solution is pretty simple, in principle: when faced with a new special ability, it will be concatenated into one of the two existing chains. I then adapt that half of the rotation to be three skill-spammed abilities, effectively cutting out one of the auto attacks in favor of a special attack. For off-chain abilities, such as an instant HoT, I slip the ability in between the two chains. Again, a single auto attack is sacrificed for the ability if proper timing is maintained.

So, what does this mean? Well, simply put I get off 120-240 additional damage every 8 seconds by using weaving over skillspam. By planning ahead, I can prep a heal in between skill chains at the cost of only one auto-attack. When I finally acquire more attacks for the rotation, I can again drop a single auto attack to provide space for the special skill. Once I have 8 special attacks to use on every 8-second rotation, I will no longer be weaving; until that time, weaving provides better returns than skillspam.

Extensions to Gladiators, Rangers, and Assassins? You guys will have to test it out yourselves. I suspect that weaving will always have some benefit, if only to help you queue your abilities up consistently in PvE.

Bottom Line: Don’t be a carry, Chanters; unless assigned to main-heal a random farming group, there should be a cleric in charge of healing the team. Your mantras do part of your job, but only consistent and well-timed weaves will bring your DPS element up to par with the rest of the team.

Okay, back to work with me. It’s time to prep a robotic forklift for simulation.