Aion Stigma System, The Gladiator, My Impressions, and Patch 1.3

“Aion’s Stigma System allows players to further customize their characters, so that players of the same class are not necessarily identical in their abilities.”¹

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“Each character can equip up to 5 stigma stones.
However, with the current level cap at 45, you will be able to equip a maximum of 4.

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Level 20: 2 Stigma Slots
Level 30: 3 Stigma Slots
Level 40: 4 Stigma Slots”²

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The Stigma system. I’ve read conflicting information about whether we can or can’t use other classes Stigma’s.  There are also faction specific Stigmas.

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We have translations of the current list of Stigmas in the Korean version of Aion thanks to Hellrose. Also, Aion Armory has the abilities from the translation in the English Beta. I combined these two sources and created this. A list of the known Stigmas in English Beta form. Also, I’ve written my opinions about the specific Stigmas.

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Something to note. On the Aion Armory tool tips for these abilities it says “Gains Stigma”. I don’t know what’s up with that. All the articles that I’ve read about the Stigma system have led me to believe that it’s similar to glyphing from WoW. Perhaps this isn’t the case.

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The Gladiator, the juggernaut in plate that does somersaults while swinging prodigious weapons in mid air (I ❤ the thesaurus). These stigmas are specific to the Gladiator.

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Improved Stamina I : (lvl20): Recovers your HP by 20% and increases your Maximum HP, Block and Parry by 20%, 150 and 100 respectively for 2 min.

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Seems like an IWIN button. But I guess that will depend on if it is enough to change the course of a fight. I don’t know. I haven’t played at that level yet or even PvPed.

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Ankle Snare I : (lvl28): Immobilizes a target within a 25m radius for 10 sec and decreases its Evasion by 1000.

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This is suppose to be THE Gladiator snare. With a two minute cool down it should be very useful. Perhaps, to useful. Needs tweaking?

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Howl I : (lvl 34): Lowers Physical Att of the enemies within a 7m radius of you by 300 for 15 sec.

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I used a similar ability like this in WoW on my Warrior. Good for both PvE and PvP. Not much to say.

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Armor of Balance I : (lvl 37): Increases your Stun, Knock Back, Stumble, Rotation, and Mid-air Binding Resistance Values by 1000 for 1 min.

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Same response to Improved Stamina. We’ll have to see how good this really is in end game.

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Crippling Cut IV : (lvl40): Inflicts 494~498 physical damage on a fallen enemy.

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I’m not sure what they mean by ‘fallen enemy’. But I’m guessing you would use this after knocking your opponent out of the sky with Forced Drop.

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Equip Off Hand Weapon II : (lvl40): Allows you to use two-handed weapons skillfully.

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I’m always in favor of giving players more options. Good stuff. The text is a little confusing though.

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Castle Gate Destruction : (lvl40): Inflicts 16~20 physical damage on the target. If the target is a castle gate, inflicts additional 4000 physical damage.

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Siege ability. Not much to say.

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Lock Down III : (lvl43): Inflicts 65~69 physical damage on the target. The target is bound for 3 sec.

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I’m taking ‘bound’ to mean immobilized. Let me know if I’m wrong. The cool down is 12 seconds. It seems logical that a melee class will need a snare of some kind to catch there opponents. I withhold judgment until I see it in action.

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Earthquake Wave I : (lvl44): Inflicts 258~262 physical damage on the enemies within a 10m radius of you and decreases their movement speed for 2~10 sec .

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Sounds really fun. I can definitely see it’s usefulness in mass PvP.

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Force Blast I : (lvl45 Elyos): Inflicts 286~290 physical damage on a target within a 15m radius of you and up to 5 enemies within a 10m radius of the target, and decreases their Physical Def by 500 for 30 sec.

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Ouch. That sounds really mean. Again, mass PvP application. Gladiator won’t be lacking things to do during sieges.

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Piercing Wave I : (lvl45 Asmo): Inflicts 691~695 random physical damage on the enemies within a 10m radius of you.

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Sieges, mass PvP, etc. You get the picture lol. The Asmo ability gets more damage. But the Eylos ability gets a debuff with the damage. What do you think of that?

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Now, all this comes with a disclaimer. They may change some things or all of it for that matter and we don’t know a lot to begin with.  This is the combination of Hellrose’s translation of the Korean Stigma list and Aion Armory’s list of English Beta abilities. Let me know what you think. I’ll write more about the other classes’ Stigmas at a later date.

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Edit: I forgot about Patch 1.3. New ‘High Grade’ Stigmas and a quest that will gain you an extra Stigma slot.

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¹ and ² are both from Hellrose.

Aion, “A Pretty Grind”

The biggest gripe people seem to have with Aion is that it’s to ‘grindy’. That you can’t level by quests alone and that grinding will get you more exp for your time. My knee jerk response to this is ‘Aw, are you use to Blizzard giving you cheat codes? L2P!’ (I admittedly have the maturity of a six year old whose just been handed a can of soda and a bag of pop rocks and has suddenly found themself lacking parental supervision).

I decided that I would wait a while to write about this so I would have some time to mull it over and not come off as an antagonistic nerd who has a vitamin D deficiency from never going outside. Here goes.

• Aion is not a replacement for WoW. If you want to play WoW, then…

• NCsoft West is adding more content. More quests and things to do while leveling up. “Westernizing” it.

• Some players are okay with grinding. Heck, some even enjoy it. If it’s not for you. Then there are these games with Orcs, Elves, and instanced PvP I’d like to introduce you to… (WoW, WAR, Etc.)

• The game will change and evolve over time as they add and change content. There are some big patches ahead in the next few months that will add a lot more to Aion.

Nerd rage in check, deep breath. Moving on. Oh and if you think that my four points could have easily been condensed to two. Your right, you caught me!

End of Beta 5, Guilds Gone Crazy, and an Aion Podcast

Well, Aion Beta 5 has ended. Moment of silence please.

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Okay good. Now, I’ll be blogging more about my thoughts and experiences during the beta later. But that isn’t what I wanted to write about right now (What? You tool!). I wanted to write about guild recruitment. In particular,  guild recruitment gone crazy. So welcome to the first installment of Hemostatic’s Guilds Gone Crazy!

In this GGC (Guilds Gone Crazy) we’ll be discussing Star Wars: The Old Republic. Hostility between guilds is common on the TOR Recruitment forums and causes the moderators no end of grief. E.G. My guild can beat up your guild! Nu Uh! Expletive! Slur! Expletive!

These Guilds also bump their recruitment threads with posts that have no actual content. They want to make sure that their guild is always on the front page. Which they believe will ensure them maximum access to the player base. Besides, you definitely want to drawn in that instant gratification crowd that goes with the first thing they see. I know that’s who I’d want in my guild.

But Bioware isn’t going to take it.  They have decided to remove it’s Guild Hall Forum.

On a side note. I usually think creating guilds before the game has even opened beta testing to players is silly. However, there’s exceptions when it comes to friends and past acquaintances or if your looking to join a niche’ guild (E.G. Hardcore RP Guild).

The lesson? Have some class people (Class, not Classes. Don’t touch that recruit more button!). You want your guild to have a good reputation, so act accordingly (Unless you want to have a bad reputation, which is a discussion for another time). Your behavior impacts your guild’s image. Remember this always. It will affect how other guilds treat you and your mates. And Guild leaders, to a certain degree your like parents. So the blame is going to work it’s way back to you if your letting your guild(children) act this way.

Also, if your part of a guild that can’t behave itself in public (or in private for that matter). Then leave. The epics can’t be worth the embarrassment and frustration of willingly working with substandard human beings.

Anyways, here is an Aion Podcast by G4. It talks about the classes and charecter customization. You’ve probably heard it all before. But you know your going to listen anyways.

Aion Beta 5, First Impressions, Mage and Scout

The servers seem to be doing okay. Pleasant surprise. Big props to NCsoft. They scored some points with me on that one. Though there were times I had to stop and take a break because of lag. But 10 mins later I’d come back and the latancy would be acceptable, except!

Except on my mage. The lag was much more noticeable when I was casting on my mage, then when I was stabbing on my scout. There was a frequent three second delay between when my casts would finish and when they would actually land. Annoying right? Right. Let me know if you’ve experienced anything similar in the beta. Especially if you were on Triniel server, where I was.

The scout, AKA kinda squishy and stabs a lot. This was the first toon I made and it took me a while to get the hang of it. It kinda sucked, at first. I died several times taking on mobs one level higher then me. But then I picked up a sword and started rockin’. I could kill two to three mobs before needing to bandage. At level five I picked up dual wield and it got even better. No ranged abilities. So no idea what the Ranger is like.

Initial Impression: A little slow at first, but in a few levels it goes at break neck speeds. Fun stuff. Scout gives me a pretty good idea what playing an Assassin would be like. But not a Ranger. I know that Assassins are top melee dmg in Aion. But I can’t help wanting to try a Ranger. Despite what people say about them.

The mage, AKA really squishy and throws flaming globes of death and destruction. Like I mentioned earlier in the post. My experience with the mage was tainted by lag. Inspite of that, I still had fun. Things were blowing up left and right. I smacked things around with my giant spell book (something which I found very amusing). A fine experience that could have been even better if it wasn’t for the lag.

Initial Impression: The mage is fun, even with lag. That says a lot about the class. I think that you’ll have a blast no matter which career you end up choosing. However, I haven’t gotten that far yet and I have heard troubling things about the Spiritmaster. But I’m an optimisit and I also love an underdog. Which is why I’ll be rolling Spiritmaster as well as Ranger.

I wanted to write a bit about some of the cooler quests I did. But I’m reticent because I don’t want to spoil something for someone who really enjoys quests and storylines. Let me know what you think. I could write a post with lots of spoiler warnings or I could just not write about it.

Last but not least. Check out Shadow-war, it’s a great general gaming blog. Though it does tend to focus on Warhammer. Which I haven’t played in a while. But still enjoy reading about it on Shadow-war.

Aion Beta 5, Self Employment, and Choosing a Faction

Well the scheduled beginning of Aion Closed Beta #5 is just a mere few hours away and I’m ready to get started! I for one and am looking forward to trying all the classes and exploring the game. In the last beta I came in late and didn’t get to do much. So this time I’m going to try them all or as many as time allows. Now I just have to decide which one to try first… decisions!

You may be wondering how I have all this free time to blog and play Aion during the day. Are you unemployed? A teenager? On vacation? No, I’m self-employed. I won’t get to into the nitty gritty of it (It’s pretty boring). But I do habillitation work with autistic children and because of it I have more flexible hours. So that’s why I get to play Aion. Hehe.

Getting back to Aion though. I have a lot of choices ahead of me. What Faction do I want to join and what class do I want to play. That’s not even mentioning creating the character. With all that customization I could be there for hours trying sooth my neurotic need to make my character look just the way I want it to (And I know I’m not going to be the only doing that either).

First decision, the Asmodians vs the Eylos. Looking at them from a purely physical stand point. I think the Asmodians win in that category. They can look like Drow and to me that’s enough to seal the deal. However I can see why some people would choose Eylos. They’re kind of cute and angelic looking, and if that’s your thang. Then more power to you. From a lore perspective, I again have to side with the Asmodians. To me they seem like the good guys. But again, if the Eylos are pulling at your heart strings. Then good on you. I want both sides to be populated. Otherwise how are we going to kill each other? I really think that faction choice comes down merely to esthetics. Yes the lore can certainly impact how you think about them. But I don’t foresee a lot of people making their choice based mostly off the lore. So it comes down to: Do you want to look wicked and dark or cute and cherubic.

Also, some people are going to focus on game mechanics when choosing their faction. I’ve read that the Eylos get better abilities then the Asmodians. I can relate to this. But I still think that I’m going to end up siding with the Asmodians. Even if this is true. I can always Learn2Play and win anyways.

More on this, the classes, and anything else I think is worth mentioning at a later date. See you in the beta!

Oh, and be sure to check out Aionic Thoughts it always has the latest information on Aion and is an enjoyable read.

New Project

I’ve beta tested games in the past. But never participated in helping to promote one. Since I really have enjoyed playing Aion in the beta.  I want to show other people what a fun game it is and maybe even try to help them love the game even more.

That’s my motivation in creating this blog. It’s my hope that if we work to spread awareness of the game. Then those of us who choose to play it will ultimately have better experiences. That whole community thang. You know what I’m talking about. Right? Right.

Besides, I have free time on my hands and am interested in doing this. So I really have no excuse not to try. I put up links in my blog roll to other sites that I’ve found interesting or want to help promote. Not all of them are about Aion or even gaming. But I still think that they’re worth the read.

I however do reserve the right to write about other things then Aion. It is my blog after all and if I want to write about a different game or something not even related to games. Then I’m gonna’ do it.

Anyways, enjoy your stay at Hemostatic. Let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like me to do an article or write up on. I will have posts and pictures of my experiences during the upcoming beta. Though I don’t know how much I’ll be writing while it’s going on. I’ll probably be spending most of my time playing Aion. =)