Mephs speaks

Mephs, legendary assassin of pre-gem era of Age of Conan took his time off assassinating people in real life to talk to me about his past experiences with assassin class:

Slith: Why assassin? Have you been plaing rogue-like characters in other MMOs?

Mephs:I never really played the ninja/stealth types in games prior to AOC. I usually played healers, actually. In FFXI I was a White Mage/Summoner, a priest in other MMOs, and a paladin in WoW (now a Warrior though). My assassin was essentially my real first character that was a stealthing type.

Slith: Your assassin wasn't stygian, why? It seems like majority of players rolled stygian characters

Mephs:He was stygian. :)

Slith: Your pvp movies were very nicely put together, do you have experience with movie editing? Made pvp movies in other games?

Mephs:I actually don't really do much movie editting, it was just kind of an opportunity for me to get creative and all that more than a way to show off "skills". I still don't make many movies and have made maybe 1 really lazily done pvp video in Warhammer Online, but that's all. Personally I thought the general production quality of my videos were pretty poor, but I'll blame that on the graphics card I had at the time and the fact I didn't really know what I was doing in Premiere.

Slith: Did you get into aoc raiding content or went pure pvp?

Mephs:Once I hit 80 I think all I did was randomly gank people in Keshatta for shits and giggles. I never set foot in a proper raid in that game, just kind of got really bored at 80.

Slith: Have you tried so called "hybrid build"? Your movies featured pure corruption and pure lotus builds (http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx?id=1#::efe3f4e2fefef15efe2fefefefef2ef2e3fefe2af19:)

Mephs:Yes I tried it, but wasn't very happy with it. It had a lot of flexibility but the thing it lacked was a real focus. Sure you had a series of cooldowns to use to almost guarantee a kill at the time, but if any of those messed up you were essentially defenseless. It was only really good for 1v1 situations, most of the time I preferred to try and pick off someone in a group and bail, so I built my toon more around making people really go "wait, what just happened" when their buddy dies right next to them - and in that respect I didn't want to get caught in the process of escaping so it made more sense to go all-or-nothing in the spec of choice.

Slith: In one of your movies begins with a story about duel on a snowy mountain. What was that about?

Mephs:Just a spout of creativity. I wanted a neat intro so I just got a friend of mine (Fatwa) to help film it. It was fun and I think it turned out pretty cool.

Slith: Are you keeping track of what is happeining to AOC right now?

Mephs:Nope.

Slith: Have you considered coming back to aoc?

Mephs:Not really.

Slith: Do you play any mmo right now?

Mephs:I'm back to playing WoW but even that's kind of boring lately. I haven't been real into MMOs lately.

Slith: Tell us a little about Entourage, the elite stealthers guild you were part of. How was that working out?

Mephs:It was kind of a small guild, I was good friends with Wohast, the leader, and Fatwa, his apprentice forum troll. I think it was more for them than anything else that I went to Tyranny to play in Entourage. Before that I had rolled an assassin 4 times on 4 different servers.

Slith: What gaming gear you have used for AOC? Any extraordinary keyboard or mouse?

Mephs:I'm still using the same $10 keyboard I got from Walmart, and a basic 2 button mouse. I'm not a fan of these macro keyboards and whatnot, its probably not ideal for fast action PVP but it gets me by.

Slith: Are you a fan of Conan lore? Have you read any Conan book before going to AOC?

Mephs:I only knew a little about the lore prior to AOC, just "wiki" knowledge I guess, other than that no it never interested me a whole lot.

Slith: Why have you started plaing AOC ina first place?

Mephs:Was incredibly bored with WoW and wanted to try something new.

Slith: After AOC you went to WAR, how was that?

Mephs:WAR I would play again but I still feel like I'm not interested enough or have the free time to really dedicate myself to two MMOs. That and my friends on WoW keep me there for now. WAR I wouldn't really know enough people to say the same so I've kind of neglected going back to WAR.

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If you don't know who is Mephs let me break it down:

Established pvper:
No Gimmicks I (40-50): http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=102091
No Gimmicks II (50-60): http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=116393
No Gimmicks III (60-70): http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=125342
and others,

Author of many guides and new strats (countless posts on assassin boards)
[Video/Tutorial] Mephs & Ragni: "Melee PVP Essentials"

Assassin guru:
When Mephs was posting, baby, that post was being readed like there is no tommorow.

The picture in this post features actual drawing of Mephs character.

That is soooo gosu

I was running with 20g in my pocket when I got stuck with "periodic temporary aoc burnout" (P.T.A.B). I have had enough with pvp xp grind, constant zerging of my ass and picts in the cellar whooping me. So I have prepared a "farewell" post and was about to quit when I got a great idea: yet another, 18g worth of a respecc - this time back into hybrid. All of sudden pvp was a breeze and PVE was E-Z mode . Is hyrbid overpowered? Hell yeah! I have made 110.000,00 pvp xp when specced with full Lotus and about 60% of that XP was from pure solo jumps in Kesh. I could kill clothies in general, but BSes and all soliders were hard as nails. With hyrbid that is hardly a problem. I know that I am switching back and forth and posting: "this is nice and that is nicer", but even when Lotus I was posting about hyrbid needing a kick.
There is not doubt that I have cut off my e-peen that grew out of being lotus (hybrid players should avert their eyes when confronted by lotus, they shouldn't speak if not asked to and also should be donating 1g a week to lotus playerbase) but hyrbid is just too gosu flavored- it kills stuff dead, and if not - it sure as hell can outlive that stuff). Oh and if you don't know what gosu means check it here.
Also in upcoming month of may I will be officialy playing assassin character without single alt for 1 year straight - I need to spin and change speccs to keep things as interesing and "fresh" as much as I can, or else I will get that "burnout" I have mentioned erlier (its not the first time as you can imagine).

Assassin advocate speaks

Our Beloved advocate - FURYBlakhart - posted a thread confirming that he keeps track of the stuff. The other advocate is nowere to be seen and presumed missing or dead. So apart from this small advocate bashing there is nothing really to report on.

Hope you like the cat, I had quite a lol at this pic :D

Important questions anwsered

Unexpected Dev reply to Patch Wish list thread gave us few ideas on how AoC will develop further down the line:

PVP resources need to be reworked:

Didek:

"We might make some changes to the pvp resources but not in the way you described. I was however looking at a different way to do something similar. This would expand on what is there right now.

We need player housing in aoc:

Didek:

"Hopefully some day."

We need Arathi Basin Style minigame - 12 vs 12 or bigger

Didek:

"I don't think it would be a straight copy of the battleground you mentioned. I would love to do a larger scale minigame."

We need rewards for minigames

Didek:

"This is being looked into."

We need a system preventing people farming each other for pvp xp, perhaps lowering dimishing returns to 0 will do it

Didek:

"Fight clubbing is being looked into. If this is one of the changes we decide to go with so be it"

People farm resources via bots

Didek:

"Not sure what you mean by this. If it has to do with no resource encounters happening outside of the Resource and Building playfields that has already been changed.

Give us 1vs1 arenas

Didek:

"Maybe one day"

We need dueling system that still yellds pvp xp

Didek:

"On my wish list but a duelling system as described for EQ2 is pretty expensive to implement. Hopefully we can get other ways that allow duels in the game soon enough"

Reduce sieges to 36 vs 36 to help with FPS/Lag issues, and because no guild out there can fill their own 48 man sieges

Didek:

"Changing the cap is not very likely. We are looking at the lag issues. Hopefully we can look at a proper merchenary system as well

Improve trade skills in such a way that they can help in pvp

Didek:

"This is something Ilaliya and me want to do"

Fix Battle Keep buff stacking

Didek:

"This is one of our priorities at the moment"

Open levels 6 to 10 for pvp advancement and new gear

Didek:

"Looking into the current PvP advancement is a bigger priority than expanding it. Once this works well we can look into expanding the system."

So as you can see a lot of good question anwsered - especialy it was important for FC to confirm existance of pvp xp guild farming (Fight clubbing or Naked RP) and fixing it before we can move further with pvp progression.

You can also get good test live news from my tweetter feedor via tweett's rss.

1.5 PVE needs balancing

The above video features my assassin barely holding his own in 80lvl Villa.
The developers are already aware of "mob damage" issue:

The balance between monsters and players will be tuned throughout the TestLive cycle. It is not Live just yet :-).

see the source.
I say - about damn time, killing mobs en masse = fun, half-killing yourself in order to take down 2 mobs = not fun. Agree?

Quick look on 1.5 Lotus assassin part 2

More issues that need dev's attention.

1/ Light footed anti snare chance doesn't work
2/ Flesh rots have low proc rate and barely do any damage befor expiration
3/ Flesh necrosis do next to nothing damage - 436 dmg from 4 stacks, up to WHOOPING 600 dmg on full 5
4/ Flesh necrosis doesn't give any visual sign that it has been used (some flashing on target would be nice)
5/ Flesh necrosis doesn't give any sound effect (perfect example: brutality, you can't mistake that sound with anything else)

Because youtube video is mightier than a sword

or a dagge for that fact.

Enjoy 1.5 preview of some of issues that still need to be fleshed out on test live