Why?

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Sarcan and I host our guides and FAQs for The Secret World here because it's really tedious to write and maintain long guides and FAQs inside of forums. Also, this wiki engine offers a built-in Google Translate feature for every page, which can be helpful for TSW's wide international audience. Also, most of the bigger game wikis and guide sites are full of annoying advertising spam, and the wikis can be especially hostile to posting guidance and advice. Here, we can keep everything updated nicely, no one can revert or delete our stuff, and one link from forums will always point to the latest and greatest. Also, this wiki engine renders nicely iPad-friendly websites.

So enjoy what you find under our two respective Guides/FAQs menus, and keep checking this home page regularly for notices about new updates and changes.

BTW, the traffic to this site is not monetized in any way, and you are not subjected to any advertising. This information resource is just a labor of love.

Update notices

Sarcan - Getting Started in TSW Video - 14 Dec 2012 21:17

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I have recently started to Stream my game play. I created a "Getting Stated in The Secret World: Reddit post that links you to my Youtube Video, my TwitchTV Channel and Twitter.

I repeat the links here to make it easier for you to get your questions to me. I have been on break from TSW for a bit, but will be back in more often and updating my Wiki pages as I get new information. So look for future streams of TSW and any other game I play.

Thank you for continuing to visit the Yokai and Sarcan Wiki. - Comments: 0

Yokai - I've given up on TSW - 05 Nov 2012 22:47

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Sorry folks, but after a long period of waiting for Funcom to fix the major issues that put up an effective brick wall for casual players and casual guilds, AND trying to rationally argue for some changes that would improve the picture for casual players and casual guilds in the more frank discussions in the TestLive forums, I have given up on Funcom, Joel and crew, and TSW. I won't be making further updates to my side of this site. I won't be "catching up" my content and making it current when Funcom "finally gives me a reason to come back by restoring my faith in this game and in Funcom's stewardship of this game".

Because I won't be coming back. I've grown tired of vague promises of making things better from the devs, who to their credit at least try to dialog with their community and who I know are indeed trying to do their best with limited resources. But I have been stepped on too many times now by their ham-handed forum mods who cannot even be arsed to fix a 3-month old bug with their forum software that prevented me from receiving all PMs since live launch, and by their wholesale deletions of reasoned arguments of mine that involved ZERO personal attack or disrespect against anyone.

Best of luck to Funcom and crew, and best of luck to the player community. It was a great idea. But Arenanet has "drank your milkshake" and with good reason. GW2 has kept my rapt attention for more than 2 months now with no sign of abating, and the same goes for the majority of my guild. The sheer amount of things to do and see in GW2 is nothing short of amazing for the genre. - Comments: 0

Yokai - Small correction to my FAQ section about SP buffs - 22 Aug 2012 14:38

Tags: updates

It turns out that my original FAQ section about whether SP buffs (one of the skill lines for a particular weapon) applied all the time or not was slightly incorrect. In general, applicable buffs are applied for both of your equipped weapons whether you're actually using a weapon (for an active ability) or not. See the updated Stats section of my FAQ for the full details. - Comments: 0

Sarcan - Crafting Patterns - 10 Aug 2012 20:55

Tags: crafting glyph glyphs patterns table update

I have added another table for values. This time I have ordered glyphs by QL to give your another way to view the data. I will take time to get all the values listed, but once filled out it will be a valuable tool to understand the power glyphs will have on your gear at every level. - Comments: 0

Yokai - Physical Protection might be more important than my FAQ would imply - 03 Aug 2012 15:39

Tags: tanking updates

The stronger theorycrafters and number crunchers are now starting to ply their craft on the empirical data coming out of Nightmare dungeon runs, and the results so far are making Physical Protection seem much more valuable to main tanks than a simple perusal of my FAQ would imply. Bottom line is that diminishing returns on the damage mitigated per second by each point spent on Protection is conceptually misleading, because the very complex math behind mitigation has shown in other games like WoW that even with these types of easily measurable diminishing returns, the underlying formulas might make it so that there is NO diminishing returns on the "time to live" conferred by Protection. In other words, if we discover that X Protection = Y additional time to live, then 2X Protection = 2Y additional time to live even when you clearly see diminishing returns on the damage mitigated per second by each addtional point you spend on Protection.

For more information on these concepts (and a peek at the hairy math behind them), check out this article by Satrina written for WoW tanks back in the day: http://evilempireguild.org/guides/diminishmath.php

Basically, there are Nightmare-mode tanks here in TSW now asserting that what they observe about Protection so far seems to follow the same basic formula as that used in WoW (for armor mitigation), but perhaps with the constant being derived differently.

What does all this mean in "plain words"? Physical Protection might be very good to prioritize over Defense/Block/Evade. To the point of as much as 1000 total Physical Protection being a "sweet spot" to shoot for (still under debate), with remaining Glyph stat points being spent primarily in Defense, with Block/Evade coming in last and used mainly to ensure a desired number of Block- or Evade-reactive procs (either from abilities or for bosses that are adversely affected when you proc a Block or Evade against them). And remember, you get 249 Physical Protection "for free" from having Skill 10 in Minor Talismans, so that means only +750 Physical Protection needed on your gear glyphs to hit that asserted "sweet spot".

My advice? Keep your eye on the following thread on the official forums. Once the dust settles, I'll be revising my FAQ somewhat based on the results. http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=51071 - Comments: 0

Yokai - More corroboration of possible Hit Rating bug - 31 Jul 2012 15:55

Tags: bugs

No replies yet from any Funcom dev, but over on the TestLive forum more players are chiming in with feedback that they are definitiely seeing a bug with too much Hit Rating actually causing more glances and evades, not less. The feedback seems to indicate that the magic breaking point is somewhere between 500 and 600 Hit Rating. Here's another example:

I went hit rate on some gear and I am running around 678 or so. The best I can tell is around 600 or 500 somathing does go wrong. i am getting evades and glances in elite runs and even on transylvina mobs. I went hit rate so even when i put on 1 or 2 pecies of tank gear for hps i should be asured to hit nm mobs.

Deffinatly needs to be checked. - Comments: 0

Yokai - FAQ update and Talisman Mechanics update - 30 Jul 2012 20:07

Tags: updates

I've updated the answer for Are multi-hit abilities better than single-hit abilities in the Combat Mechanics section of my FAQ to be more clear about the relative strengths and weaknesses of multi-hit versus single-hit attack subtypes. I also explain how to calculate exactly the increased chance of proccing an on-hit passive with a multi-hit attack. To summarize, it's not clear-cut that multi-hit is better, even if you are building around juicy on-hit passives like Live Wire from Elementalism. Yes, something like a 4-tick-per-second focus attack will increase your chance per second of proccing Live Wire significantly, but this is counterbalanced by some outright bugginess of the queueing behavior for various multi-hit attacks (especially the 1-second focus attacks like Hair Trigger), and also by decreased mobility that many multi-hit abilities cause.

On a different note, I've also updated my Talisman Mechanics guide to clarify that in the Live environment, the actual percentage ratio of stats conferred by your talismans is actually 21/16/10 and not 25/15/10. Details in the guide. I also took this opportunity to add two sections on Tips for farming up a starting set of blue talismans and Tips for farming up a set of purple talismans. - Comments: 0

Sarcan - Crafting Patterns - 28 Jul 2012 06:08

Tags: crafting firework glyphs patterns tsw

Updated the Crafting Page yet again. Added placeholder charts for Glyph Values and some addition discoveries about how Glyph Values compare to Dropped Glyphs. Values should fill in pretty quickly once I dedicate some time to just do it.

Secondly I figured out the Rocket Firework pattern.

Enjoy - Comments: 3

Yokai - Rumors, lies, and allegations about tanking - 27 Jul 2012 15:54

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No updates to any guides just yet, but I have been trying to do a lot of compilation and collating of the current state of tanking over on the main forums. (Because my primary cabal role is usually main tank.) Today, I simply present you with a few interesting tidbits that are not in the primary flow of opinion and information that most tanks see. Are these true? I don't know; I'm not in a position to test them for myself yet.

Allegation #1: Hit Rating is bugged and will actually cause more glances and evades if you go over 400-ish total Hit Rating. Remember, you might have as much as 300 Hit Rating just from your passive "World Domination" buff from PvP. If you feel like "why the hell am I glancing so much?", try actually dropping your hit rating below the reputed threshold for this reputed bug.

Allegation #2: Heal Tanking is possibly a strong method of hate generation in Nightmare dungeons. Especially if you use Blood as your healing weapon. Some players have posted interesting details from a few angles. For one, healers report frequently that Blood barriers seem to generate full hate for both the heal and the barrier component of the ability immediately upon casting it, and that the huge team-wide heal + barrier of Cold Blooded is especially prone to pull aggro right off a tank who is otherwise holding aggro fairly well. (Although I must report that my main healer never pulls off me with Cold Blooded, but I really stack a lot of hate multipliers.) For two, some tanks report they have good success with using healing not only to generate hate, but to even out their spike damage a bit. Third, and most intriguing, I've see several reports that Exquisite Corpse might be a wee bit broken in a good way. Apparently, EC will fully mitigate 50% of any attack that hits it. Even a huge attack, and the NM bosses can put out some really large attacks. So, for example, if an 8K boss attack hits your puny EC, they'll of course blow up the EC in that one single hit, but not before the EC barrier mitigates that 8K attack down to only 4K that actually gets through to you. Yes, I thought that might make you crook and eyebrow and go "huh?!". So what I wonder is whether a healtank setup with something like Chaos/Blood might actually be viable in NM dungeons (at least until Funcom decides to nerf EC or Cold Blooded). You'd use Cold-Blooded as your hate generator after the boss resets hate, and you'd use EC as a mitigation shield every time you knew a big hit might be coming. If you try this out, please report back!

Update: Player Krytical provided some excellent feedback about #2. Here ya go:

I messed around extensively with chaos/fists and chaos/blood healer tanks. They worked pretty well in elites to the point I could run SH with 4 DPSers, but it didn't hold up with my regular nightmare group. Survivability was fine, arguably more sustainable than the classic chaos/blade tank, but even with 3 healing pieces and 300% threat multiplier the DPSers would pull aggro occasionally. The build worked perfectly with sub 1.5K DPS, but I was not able to hold aggro against 2k+ DPSers, which my chaos/blade tank has no issues doing with just 2 DPS pieces. - Comments: 4

Yokai - Male deck costume screenshots added at last - 23 Jul 2012 20:18

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Thanks to forum poster Warrender, we now have screenshots of all male faction deck costumes! Look in my Faction deck costumes page to compare and contrast all the female and male screenshots side by side. Thanks so much for your hard work, Warrender! - Comments: 0

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