As you know, with 1.7 the PvP specific Souls and their associated achievement are going the way of the Dodo bird. If you are an achievement whore now is the time to pick up your “I’ve Got Soul and I Am a Soldier” before it’s gone! With the loss of PvP Souls we are being given a new PvP Planar Attunement, and I hopped onto PTS tonight to see what it has for us to play with!
Attunement of War sounds awesome, but with only the one tier available on PTS it’s just not as exciting as I thought it would be. Obviously this is still PTS, and it is all subject to change, so take the following with a grain of salt. As I said earlier, only the first tier of War is available for us to look at and it is pretty much what you expect. You can spend Planar Attunement Points to increase your Valor, Vengeance, Reduced Damage from player AoE, and oddly, increased mount speed. There are a few goodies thrown in such as Cleanse Soul, Anathema (reduce healing taken by target for 30 seconds) and Countering Strikes (resist based AP buff). The biggest bang for your buck seems to be Improved Break Free, which for 3 points will reduce the cooldown of Break Free by 30 seconds.
For those who want to know the full breakdown, here is what you will get if you completely fill out the first tier of Attunement of War as it is on the PTS today.
- 15 Valor
- 15 Vengeance
- Countering Strikes – 50% chance of increase AP by 5% when you dodge, parry or resist a player attack. (non-stacking)
- Anathema – Reduces healing taken by the target by 50% for 30 seconds. 30 second recharge.
- Strength of Will – Duration of stuff effects is reduced by 2 seconds (PvP only).
- Grip Like Steel – Duration of Disarm effects is reduced by 2 seconds (PvP only).
- Focused Intent – Attacks have 30% chance of making enemy players vulnerable to your attacks, increasing their damage taken by 1% for 10 seconds (non stacking).
- Cleanse Soul – Removes all hostile magical effects and grants immunity to the same for 1 second. 2 minute cooldown.
- Resilient – Reduces the chance to be critically hit by players by 10%.
- Expedited Wounds – Reduces the duration of DoT attacks received from players by 25%.
- Take Cover – Reduces the damage taken from Player AoE by 15%.
- Fleet of Foot – Increases mounted movement speed by 5%.
Overall, its basically what you’d expect from Planar Attunements, small character improvements that sound game changing, but once you have them you forget they’re there. Except these aren’t small changes. Strength of Will alone removes the usefulness of a large percentage of stuns in PvP, and Expedited Wounds will hurt the DoT specs the most. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of making a PvP PA tree instead of a PvP Soul, but this one needs a bit more work before going live. However, I’m already back to farming Plaques of Achievement in preparation to this going live. I’ll need plenty of Eternal Crystal Insight (currently at the low price of 30 PoA) to fill out my new and shiny Attunement of War!
