Blade of Carnage  

 

did anyone else notice the name of the guild that posted this? shock of swords, thats a 44 mage spell for gods sake. kinda hard to believe that an AoW compatible guild has the name of a lvl 44 spell.
it could have at least been shock of steel, or shock of firey blades :D
Faberin Midgetpunter
58 Magi
Tunare
You laugh at me because i'm different, I laugh at you because you're all the same.
-Jonathan Davis-

i dont see what the point is in comparing these weapons vs the war epics? the epics were made before some of these expansions came out. look at it this way, if you can compare this blade to the war epic, then I can compare war hate armor to ntov armor. does that make sense? hell no. theya rent even in the same league. same thing here.

now, if you want to compare the primal vs. this blade i agree with that.

point of it all though is, everyone is different. everyone can make tehir char how they want. for example, if I was playing a bard, i'd choose primal and epic. if a war, i would choose either yield the epics, or dont waste your time with them. the aow is a hella tough bastage, and no matter who will or will not admit it.. as people say, not everyone in the game was meant to get their epic. this is very true. same thing applies here tho. not everyone in teh game will get the chance to fight the aow, or any such mob.

... just being practical

Hmmm. Lot of things have been said about this blade.
Lemme try and shed some light on how this blade is viewed when you actually have it at your grasp.

I am a proud member of the guild Mortalis on Antonious Bayle. Recently we took down the AoW. It was a fantastic fight that I will remember always. I cannot start to express how fortunate I feel to be a member of such a fine guild. Just two months after Mortalis was formed we have AoW bite the dust without any allying guilds assisting. Being just one guild taking AoW down I think is an EQ first :-)

A little about The Avatar of War.
He is a quading flurrying mob, that hits for 1150. With warrior defensive skill I think this is brought down to round 700. AoW has round 500k HP. He has rather high AC so melee dmg is low on him.
AoW's dmg output is insane. If you get aggro you are basically dead in round 1 to 2 secs.
Taking AoW down is a full teameffort and also requires a little striek of luck. Fight is mainly about aggro control, placement, DPS and kickass healers working together to perfection.
We were like 81 ppl when the fight started. This may sound as a high number but we wanted to be sure on the outcome so basically everyone was there. Now discount the 5 or so ppl that went LD in the start of the fight and you have the actual number wich we took him down with. Stating level to attain as 55 seems funny to me. All 81 peeps but 1 were level 60. The slacker were our level 59 guildmascot Cralgar.
Casualties were like 10 deaths overall with just 2 being clicked back in. This leads me to think that with the setup we had, we probably could have succeeded with round 70 ppl. I wouldnt go lower than that. With SoL AA points kicking in sometime in the near future I predict he might be done with round 60 ppl on a more regular basis.
As of now I consider AoW the toughest killable mob in EQ. (But who knows what challenges SoL will unwield for us in the future?)
This info about AoW should put in perspective the risk involved.

Now to the reward.
AoW seems to drop 3 things everytime. According to my knowledge he only has a loot table of 6 items (I am not totally sure of this though). When we killed him, he dropped 2 of these blades and the AC55 Warrior Helmet which is arguebly the best warrior hat in game (some may prefere Hobart's).

We are a guild that uses a pointsystem where we earn points for raids and can spend those points bidding on drops in auctions.
To put things in perspective I can tell that the average Vulak loot goes for around 100 to 120 pts atm. These blades went for 35 and 30 pts if I am not mistaken. Helmet went for around 164 I think.
This should indicate that the attendies at the raid werent actually all that keen on this blade.
Truth be told... Many of the melees have better weapons than this. And no... we dont all have primals... yet :-).
I was the one paying 35 pts to get one of the blades. If I had had a Primal I most likely wouldnt have bid on this one, but since mainly all major encounters is a matter of aggro control, I needed something that wouldnt draw attention as the Earthcaller slowproc does. I was wielding Tolans Longsword of The Glade from Vulak and Earthcaller in mainhand, so I needed an upgrade which this blade provided me (untill primal that is if I should get so lucky :-).

Now what ppl seem to forget about this blade is, that it is dropable. I am not sure of this but I think this is about the best dropable weapon in the game atm for the dualwielding classes that can use.
This fact actually increases the reward value of the blade significantly. So whenever in the future when/if I get an upgrade I can pass this blade on to someone who needs it in guild. Most weapons we get on raids we cannot do this with.
If this blade was to be "no drop" I am sure it would be upgraded somewhat to fit the risk vs. reward.

Only thing that kinda bugs me a little is, that the blade has the totally newb Lammy graphic. I for one would love if the blade had a more unique graphic to match the blades unique quality. After all... It does drop from a most unique mob. To me it wouldnt really matter if the graphic was darn ugly as long as it was unique. (and yes... this may very well be a severe case of vanity ;-)

As of the tactic part, I would like to add that I can assure you there are other tactics to take down AoW than charming giants. And maybe that is what VI's intention was. /shrug.

Trackfinder Swifteblade
Mortalis
Antonious Bayle

this sword is better than the friggin warrior epic, damn, thats gotta be nice, well, cept the +'s compared to the epic =p

LOL! That breastplate of Zek! Exactly what guild got this?

He also drops a BP named Chestplate of Zek. Warr only +75 AC really awesoem stats, and effect avatar. One exists in the game

Risk vs Reward for this item sucks, badly. The Avatar of War is probably the toughest mob in the game designed to be killed. ToV dragons are much easier due to dragonbane (Giantbane doesnt work on the avatar, only Vindi/Tormax/Statue).

Anyone capable of getting this will have much greater weapons from ToV or Sleepers. Primal and Priceless drop like candy once you can get to the warders in ST (which any guild who can kill the AoW should).

AoW has been killed twice so far, both with 70+ people and many many deaths, even after using the giants in the arena to tank him. Since that isnt allowed anymore, he's going to be even tougher.

Anyway, main point: this item is horrible for risk vs reward involved. His other drops are much nicer though, ac35 mask, and ac 60 monk pants.

Griping about this weapon is as frivilous as it is ignorant. To me this is a warrior epic PRIMARY upgrade at best. They share many similar characteristics and are both nice weapons that few will ever wield.

Blade of Strategy Blade of Carnage
14 :Damage: 15
24 :Delay: 23
Str: +10 - +15
Sta: +15 - +15
Dex: __ - +15
Magic Resist: +5 - +3
Fire Resist: +5 - +3
Cold Resist: +5 - +3
Poison Resist: +5 - +3
Disease Resist: +5 - +3
HP: +50 - +100
Weight: 2.5 - 0.0
Effect: 100pt DD - N/A

You guys act like you can just walk into Sleeper's Tomb and pick a Primal off the floor!

The Priceless ones drop much more than the Primal ones, and of course, not everyone in the group(S) is going to get themselves a Primal. C'mon people, I know that Verant may not give out the best in terms of Risk vs. Reward, but what are you expecting?

Sword of GameOver
Damage: 10000
Delay: 1
Effect: Show Credits

OK,
AoW drops a 15/23 +stats 1 hander, which at that delay will most likely be used as an offhander. AoW = Arguably one of the 3 hardest mobs in the game.

Eashen of the Sky in ToV drops a 14/18 offhander with effect:haste. Eashen = Relative pushover for a larger guild to kill.

No rocket science involved to figure which is better, even for offhand.

Add to that a very major after-the-fact nerf of Vulak's weapon drop.

To that add the fact that you now can't charm the majority of giants in Kael => AoW WILL go unkilled for a long long time, if ever killed again (doubtful).

Not that 15/23 sucks, but anyone else see the problem here?

VI does not want their ubers dead yet. All methods used against AoW were perfectly legit, no question about it. So, they changed the rules.

I'm not normally a naysayer and it's the first time I've said anything on a public board, but VI really really needs to pull their head out of their *** lately.

IF it was sold, id try closer to 10 times that amount.