Grab Bag - January 4, 2008

Here it is, in all its glory: The first Grab Bag of 2008.


Edited to add a raid invitation on Gaheris.

My Dragontooth Bracer has resists which are sheared during fights. What class is able to shear resists? Is this a bug? It's not like they are debuffed, because they are gone until I can reuse the bracer which may be 10 minutes or so. I have only had the resists drop during fights with alb groups.

Our Balancinator took a gander at this one: I will venture to guess that the group you fought had a Heretic in it. They receive a group buff shear reactionary proc in the enhancement specialization line. It is a 20-minute timed buff that is cast on the whole group. While the buff is active, it has a percentage chance to remove a buff from an attacker. For instance, the level 45 spell 'Accursed Misery' has a 5% chance to remove a buff from an attacker. This, most likely, is how the resist buffs are getting removed.

For those of you playing on normal servers, there is another way an enemy group can shear resists. The 'Battlemaster' level 10 ability 'Essence Shatter' is a style that procs a point black area of effect buff shear with a 350 unit radius.

Does the 5% to magic damage on the Dragonbane Recurve Bow count against other players in RvR? I ask because the info does not specify PvE or PvP.

The Bearded Wonder looked into this for us. Here's what he had to offer: The delve for the spell damage bonus lists the following: " - Requirement: vs Humanoids, Magical, Giants, Dragons" which indicates that the bonus is PVE based. You will not get any bonus against other players.

Before server clustering it was possible to macro a command to send a tell to a targeted person by using the format "/send <%t> ". This was very useful in combat communication when voice communication was not possible.

With server clustering this no longer works. You have to do a "/send <%t>< -server> " However, since there are many servers per cluster, you would have to have several macros, which defeats the purpose of the original idea of fast communication.

My question is, is there a way to affix several server designations to the end of a %t macro- or is there another way to do the same action that I don't know about?

Unfortunately, with the way clustering works in regards to messaging, there is no way to bypass the issue you present. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

I have seen a lot of people wondering... When are the Midwinter quests being removed?

According to the Bearded Wonder, the current plan is to let them run through the end of January. We don't know when the Medal and Cloak will be available again after that, so be sure to hurry and get yours as soon as possible!

Concerning the titles system, there are supposed to be titles for killing Legion. My question is this: Is the title only given for killing the Darkness Falls incarnation of Legion? Or can you get the title by killing the one that guards the main enemy's gate in the Circle of Five dungeon?

The only one that counts [toward titles] is the original, in Darkness Falls.

What mob, or mobs, drop the item "Polished Granite Pin" in Albion? I've seen it on housing merchants, but haven't been able to find out what drops it. I've asked around. Some say it drops of the mini dragons, but I've killed dozens of mini dragons and never seen it. Others have said it drops of a named Stonecrusher Ogre called "Kaq," who I've also killed numerous times.

The item in question can be dropped by the named mob Grogotos. He is one of the named stonecrush mobs in Grimspound. Killing him will negatively affect your faction though.

I have a significant number of leftover diminutive siege weapons made from before the Siegecrafting revamp went live, but I can't seem to figure out how they are supposed to be deployed post-revamp. Is there any way we can convert these into the new system equivalent or can we get some way to deploy the old siege weapons?

There is no way to deploy them in the new version of Siegecraft. This was done intentionally as they were replaced by various levels and types of siege. The diminutive siege apparatus can be sold to vendors if a player has any leftover. Thanks again, Bearded Wonder!

For a Shadowblade, is there any advantage in having anything above MOS2 other than movement speed?

According to the Balancinator: You gain no detection range benefits from 'Mastery of Stealth' against other Assassins and the ability 'Camouflage' limits its use versus Archers. You do have an innate detection range that is higher than an Archer and your total detection range is a cumulative sum of innate detection and 'Mastery of Stealth.' Many will train the second level of 'Mastery of Stealth' to bridge the gap with Archers that have trained higher in 'Mastery of Stealth. Many Assassins choose not to train higher in 'Mastery of Stealth' due to its limited detection range bonuses.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

It's a half-week this week, and so there isn't much to report in the way of news. The devs are chugging away working on 1.93 while you all test 1.92 on Pendragon. Other than that, the Herald will be back in full swing next week with the Scroll of Valor and Guild News and other news, too. I hope you all had a fantastic holiday. Have a great weekend everyone, see ya next week!

EDIT: The following announcement for a raid on Gaheris was supposed to be made in this week's Guild News, but since there is no Guild News this week, I thought I would post the invitation here so it would run in time for the event tonight. Click here for more information.