As I wrote in my previous post, I reached knighthood, and now I would like to share with you my thoughts about this Wartune feature.
As you know, the prerequisite for knighthood is at least 12000 points in tatoo. I wrote in more detail how much henna / adv. henna you need for this. As a mage, I can choose between arcane and restoration path. The arcane talent is damage skills, the restoration is heal skills. It's even simpler than the previous skill tree: there, you had to choose 5 skills to put in your skill bar. Here, you have only 5 skills to put there. The skills themselves are very simple too: 1 small 1-target spell (aka lightning), 1 small aoe (aka rain of fire), 1 big 1-target spell (aka delphic) 1 big aoe spell. Also there is an 5th skill wich restores 1200 rage and dispels 1 negative buff, for a mere 100 rage. There are also 4 passive skills with miscellaneous effects.
You can switch to the restoration path if you like, for that you need either 16000 total in tatoo, or have to use normal henna to change what bonus your abilities give. The 3 heal skills do nothing just heal, and they do it quite poorly. So even in group situation, I think the arcane path is better as long as there will be a time limit for fights. If you need heal, bring a poseidon :)
Advantages of the new skill system
1.) The big skills base damage is really big. 480-530% damage, you will deal almost as much damage with these as with your sylph skills. Comparison: criminal trial 530% damage, Odin Apocalypse Judgment 400%+ damage. Surely sylphing boosts my ATK rating by 20%, but still, the knighthood skill can compete. In World Boss, now I deal about the same damage in sylph and non-sylph. In arena, now I can kill opponents with the first aoe, and many I kill before they can sylph.
2.) Acquiring the skills grant you +20% ATK, +20% HP, +30% MDEF. That's sounds an enormous boost. BUT. Do not forget that you lose "Mana Master" (+15% magic attack boost), "Healing empowerment" (+20% MDEF) and "Sturdy" (+10% HP), or the equivalent of skills for other classes. Also there are some talents, like "Iron Wall" (damage received 14% less) which some say you will keep some say you will lose too. So the actual gain is much less than you would think.
3.) Talents. The talents are the real boost here. I had 90k bound balens, of those I spent 50k and got 14 talent points. You can buy offensive talents (+10% res reduce per level, +10% intensity/crit per level) and defensive talents (+10% tenacity/block per level, +10% to 2 resists per level, +10% influence/penetration per level). These gave me more BR boost than the skill bonuses.
Disadvantages
It has some disadvantages too - as you know, Wartune is never without a nerf, and any new feature is a good opportunity to take something away.
1.) No heal skills. No suntoria or restoration. I undertand that the devs wanted to resolve the problem with the forever-lasting fights. Still, a mage who can do nothing just nuke is just an archer. So yeah, we mages are now archers. Although I stopped using suntoria since a while, I miss restoration badly. It makes difference in many situations.
2.) No stun. Yeah, your influence skill does nothing after knighthood, just gives you partial protection vs non-knights stun. There will be a moment when everyone will be knight, and stun will be irrelevant. But until then, its a bit funny when knighted people stand stunned for rounds due to delphics and frost bolts and can't return the favor.
3.) No purify. Really, the 5th skill which dispels ONE negative buff for 100 rage is NOT a purify. So make sure you play with people who do not make knighthood and can still purify you.
4.) Rage. The skill "hear Elemental" (receive +2 rage each time you deal damage) is no more. Although the basic damage spell gives 10 rage instead of 6 now, you can't just cast an aoe and gain rage instead of losing it. So rage is now a problem. Especially with the cloth nerf taking away starting rage, prolly we will need to use rage rune again. Which is a pain since it means no more guardian rune. (Heal you must keep it, it's the only way to heal now).
Summary
So in summary, you lose EVERYTHING (heal, purify, rage, stun) but you will deal more damage. If you do not have a truckload of bound balens saved up for talents, the gain is just slightly better than the loss. Right now, knighthood is for cashers only, so these people have the bound balens for talents. When knighthood becomes free (I'm sure non-payers can reach it in max 4-6 months) then this will be a problem - although it seems a new item will be added, which you can substitute for bb when upgrading talents. If you have only limited access to talents (like most of us), I recommend offensive talents instead of defensive ones. And yes, casher will have a gigantic advantage here with talents, which you can't compete with up, even if you reach knighthood eventually.
Consequences
Still, do not think that knighthood is an optional thing. All must reach it before or later. Knighthood equipment, titan system and I bet a lot other stuff will require it as a prerequisite.
Also do not forget that getting the skill points takes an enourmous amount of XP. It takes month to max out your "knighthood level" and take full advantage of skills. So the eariler you can start it, the better.
Salsa
And here is one final point. I have been to a salsa weekend with my wife. It was an insane fun, we danced like 8-10 hours each day. On the pic you see us, in Sat evening there was a costume party with dress code from years 1920-30. And I didn't miss Wartune at all :) So there is life beyond the game, and if anything, I can suggest you dancing. If you have a partner already, you can get a better bond with her/him. If not, you surely will meet someone there, lot of singles. If everyone on Earth would dance, there would be no wars and no crime :)
Originally I wanted to write a full analyis of the new Wartune patch, but the Henna-Tatoo-Knighthood topic itself will fill a full entry, so I will continue with the rest only in my next post.
When they added the Tatoo system with the last patch, at first glance it seemed a small stat bonus, nothing special. But these stats are adding up, and as we learned from a Russian test server, can go up to +5000 stat per slot! That's pretty powerful, making Tatoo the next Holy Forge, being able to increase your attack and defense by as much as 20-30 percent. But hold on for a minute, and let's make the math.
On average, 100 henna gives you +5 stat increase. You earn 300 henna per day, so you can get +450 stat per month. To reach the maximum 40.000, you need almost 8 years. "Fortunately" we have advanced henna as well, which can give you something like +30 stat increase per 100 adv. henna used. Too bad that advanced henna is a purely cash item currently. And it's sold super expensive as usual - based on the stats given and BR for balen value, 100 adv. henna worth aprox. 100 balens. But the shop sold it for 500 balens, at 5x price. So far, I just said, who cares, ignore this new way to waste money in the game - it's so expensive, only the heavy whales will buy it, and they are already too strong compared to the rest of the players, it won't make any difference.
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| Tatoo of Quorax |
However, the current patch added a new feature, "Knighthood", the next step after Class Advancement. And it's prerequisite is +12000 total tatoo stats! Something you can reach in 2 years - or immediately, if you are willing to cough up 2000 USD for the advanced henna. Which only one player, Quorax did so far on the European servers. I say, do not worry much about this. You don't have to wait 2 years. Henna will be inflated like everything else in the past 3 years. First, they sell it at gold price to cashers. Then they will start to give more and more in gift packs. Then they reduce prize, and finally, we shall start getting tons of it as a free reward for some new event. Until then, just keep collecting the free henna, and don't even think about advanced as long as it's prize is not reduced to 1 balen apiece.
It is a pretty unfortunate thing to add a complex system to a game, which is available either after 2 years, or if you play 2000 USD. The devs obviously didn't do their math. But let's put aside this prerequisite, and check what Knighthood does actually.
The main feature is that both your skills and talents are replaced completely. Hold on... I lose all my skills? All my talents? No more Thunderblast? No more Restoration? I hope they give something really good instead.... Well, they do. For a mage, you can choose between 2 path, Arcane and Restoration. You can even have free switch between the two, but for that, you need 16000 total tatoo, not 12000. There are 2 basic skills which apply to both paths: one is an improved version of lightning bolt (more damage, more rage) the other is an improved version of Rain of Fire (more damage). But the bigger deal is that these skills give you a permanent passive bonus of +20% MATK, +20% HP and +30% MDEF. Thats a real kickass bonus, more than you get from all your tatoos (even when those are impressive too). So when you reach Knighthood, you will play in a different league, you will become a god.
About the rest of the skills: the additional arcane skills are great too, nice delphic, nice big aoe, cool passives like one which reduces the opponent's resists, the other reduces their awakening points. However, the restoration skills suck at first glance. Instead of restoration - which usually heals the caster to max hp - you get a skill which heals only 10% of your max HP at level 1. Same for the "big" group heal, restores only a percentage. Complete useless as long as Tritons and Blessing of Light exists. Even the new suntoria is a pale version of its previous version. Sure there are some passive mini-heals, but the fact is, mage loses it's ability to heal when reaching Knighthood. So this is also a nerf, disguised as a boost.
And what about the talents? I remember we were grinding XP for months to max out holy seal level 99 and the rest of the talents. Some (ok, most) talents are pretty useless, but there are some which are real good. Direct 14% damage decrease, 30% reduction in rage cost, extra heal for Restoration (wait, heal is no more), and Thunderblast slowing 100% chance (wait, Thunderblast is no more). These talents will be all GONE. And what you get instead? Some cool new talents: increased resist, resist reduce, tenacity, intensity, influence (although I wonder how can I use influence when I don't have frost bolt anymore, or any other skill which could stun, lol). But each level cost (bound) balens, the more talent points you have the more it cost. The total can be several hundred thousands :)
You can see a full video on youtube about the new mage skills and talens, thanks to chillin and wartunenewsfeed for making it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTrgb4Yb_ic
There is one more thing, you can upgrade your equipment further in the new mpds after you do Knighthood. It's a cool thing, too bad not available to 99,99% of the players either.
So what I think, this knighthood thing is messed up. It's something like, "Hey guys, business is not going as we used to. So please, please, give us 2000 USD, in exchange, we will give you 50% increase in your BR. You will be stroooong. (ok, we will nerf a few things, like healing and stun, but you didn't need those anyway)."
So I think Knighthood requirements are too steep. They should be lower, and they should add extra talent for pumping up your henna total (and not selling it for ridiculous balen prices). Also I don't see the point of replacing the skill system, they should have just boosted the old skills to additional levels. Fight is decided in sylph phase anyway, I don't see much point in totally revamping the skills, people will be angry losing the old skills they used to. Don't fix something that is not broken!
Still, do not think that knighthood is an optional thing. All must reach it before or later. Knighthood equipment, titan system and I bet a lot other stuff will require it as a prerequisite. 
