Kackles58 over on WarhammerAlliance is looking for creative names for his tank.
Personally I think he needs some help. Murderface is just too generic and we can't let him roll with a name he'll regret when his new girlfriend asks what his character name is when he finally tells her he's a WAR addict and that's why he's been sneaking off between love making sessions.
Wait I took that farther than I expected.
Get on over and help him out!
Give me a break, I think it's cool. I'm new to this!
Seriously though, a big thanks to Syp over at Waaagh He also gave me a bunch of good advice which I really appreciate.
If any of you tanks out there want to give me any encouragement, advice, flames, or topics you want me to cover, please leave a comment or send me an email at tank@warhammertank.com.
Spam away! I'll just throw up Shield Wall
This is a fun little quiz at the link above. It turns out chaos was my correct initial choice! It would be neat if it went a little further and picked your career based on your playstyle.
When I logged into the servers on the preview weekend I was pretty stoked. In hindsight I should have taken more notes. But heck. At that time I had no idea I was going to blog.
So I rolled a chosen. And at first when I looked around it seemed like everyone around was holding a shield. But I guess that was more due to the phenomenon you get when you own a car and it seems like everyone else has the same kind of car you do.
The first 5 levels went by so fast that I really didn't do much looking around. There was really zero requirement to group up and do anything. It did seem however that those non-tanks around me seemed to DPS a smidge faster and move on. Something I think you should fully expect from any tank focused class.
From level 5 to 10 it was interesting. I didn't feel any use as a tank at all really. In reality, I was a tank in my mind only. There is not too much to differentiate from other careers except for the odd skill. Still, it was frustrating a little bit.
When questing it was very easy to stay alive, in fact I was surprised how long it took me to die for my first time. I felt very survivable. Throw Axe, put some debuffs and buffs up, whack away, rinse, repeat.
When I found my first public quest I was surprised at how unhelpful I was. Everyone else was DPSing away, and every time the bonus to roll scoreboard came up I, and any other Chosen my level, were dead last. In fact when the little survey popped up I did mention that it seemed that ranged folks were way better there at picking up mobs and doing damage.
RVR and Scenarios weren't good. While I did enjoy them, and getting renown points was great, which I'll mention in a bit, I basically got focused and died way more times than I killed people. My damage output was always terrible, and my # of deaths was always top of the list. There was definitely some L2P going on there.
Once I got through there, 2 guildies of mine hooked up with me. As I waited for them to level, I did a bit of PVP and took my time in some public quests. It was a bit later in the weekend and I started to find my niche, for the level.
What I found was that, for the public quests, their success hinged on having a tank or two hanging around to take on the final boss, shield in hand. So what I would end up doing is running around, pulling npcs off of ranged, and then holding aggro when the miniboss would come out. Some of them were a bit tricky, depending on the group that was hanging around, but basically any group with a healer and a tank made out pretty good.
One final note. By the time I was level 12ish I was rank 7 (I think) in renown. For 1.5 gold I went and picked up the renown armour in the Keep in the RvR area in the next zone. It really seemed to make a difference and it also looked cool to have a complete set early on in the game. So when you get out there and start leveling up. Don't just grind away on boars. Go win some scenarios, have fun, and improve your leveling a bit with some gear.
Boots, Gloves, Belt, Body, Shoulders, Helm
Now if only that open beta would start...
I've known I want to be a tank for a while. Let me give you a little backstory.
StarWars Galaxies was my first MMO. I thought it was the best thing ever. Combat was fun, especially base killing, the social aspect of the game was great, and collecting up the gear was something to do. I was one of the original armorsmiths on Starsider and had a lot of fun equiping people to go off and fight.
That turned out to be a real job so I gave it up after a year or so. I ended up grinding out a Jedi to see if I could do it. And that was fun for a while. But what happened, if you remember, was that pretty soon, everyone was a jedi wacking everthing in site with sabers. Everyone was an individual.
So I followed a couple of really awesome guildmates over to WoW. At first I really didn't like it but after a few levels I decided that I really liked ranged combat, a carry over from SWG, and so I rolled a *gasp* hunter. I know I know...
After hammering my F5 key in raids for what I guess is now years, I decided I needed a change. This was pre expansion, and I was alliance, so I rolled a toon that could do multiple rolls. Pally seemed to do the trick. I knew that I wanted to be able to be useful to the guild in a pinch and step in for our normal Tankadin when he wasn't there.
All this to say that I really loved the tanking roll. Well, that was after I gathered up a bunch of gear as a healbot. Simply being someone who can be relied upon to step up to the plate and focus was rewarding in itself. And that feeling you get when you Main Tank a progression kill is not to be missed. (Especially when people are whispering other guild officers saying you can't do it cause you're a paladin)
So this brings us to Warhammer. I don't dislike WoW, but I'll be sticking around here for quite sometime and seeing what I can do to soak up damage and collect a wicked looking set of gear...
So... my top 4 List Why I Tank
