So I'm looking after my two little kids this weekend by myself, trying to get my butt out the door for a run. The last couple days I've been trying to squeeze in some actual gametime, hence the lack of posting.
However, as I've been playing I've been working on my renown, basically be queueing up for the Mourkain scenario constantly as I've been questing. For some reason I really like it and had some laugh out loud moments while I cut a swath through clothies.
Based on that limited experience here's a list of tips on how to Tank in RVR in Warhammer.
Wear a Sheild - You're way more survivable this way. Going with a two hander, I think, is only going to be really worth it later on in the game when you're speced for it. You won't generate that much more dps and will die way faster.
Throw up Gaurd - First, your squishies expect it. They won't thank you for it but it helps and it'll help your team win. They heal you, gaurd them. Or in my case, Save da' runts.
Don't Over Extend - When I die it's usually because I rush forward and get caught behind enemy lines. Be the front line, don't get out of range of the heals and dps. If you do, they'll likely fall back and you have the meat sheild title before you know it.
Go toe to toe with Melee DPS - Your first option is to pick up the slightly less mobile enemy. Get in thier way and do your best to make them fight you.
2nd Target, Ranged - Go after the ranged DPS if you have another DPS with you, preferably ranged, plinking away at your target. If you don't have that you'll get kited around like a fool. In my experience if another dps is on them they stop moving more, or get snared etc and it's a fast fight.
Healers - You can't solo them. Your only hope is to get them to run away and stop healing long enough that your team can take out the opposing front lines.
Disrupt - By charging in on someone who is looking comfortable you can change the flow of the battle. Keep pushing them back and try and break their line. Change targets often unless they are low on health.
Debuff! - Because you aren't the dps monster you think you are, make sure the first thing you do is debuff your target and if you can, buff the group. That's your priority to increase the effectiveness of the team.
Be unpredictable, it's fun - Some of the most fun I've had is when I've violated these rules. Run around behind the lines, take a partner and hang out at the spawn point, make it your mission to kill a particular player with a bad name or guild name as many times as you can.
One thing is for sure, is that premade groups are a ton more effective than Pugs in scenarios. If you can get a couple guildmates in vent and get queued up. When Destruction got rocked on Vortex there were enevitably 5 or 6 players from the same guild actually playing as a team.
Hope that helps. Say hi if you see me over on Vortex!
I've been getting a lot of google hits from folks who are looking for information on the different tanking careers. Most of them are somthing like "Ironbreaker vs. Swordmaster vs. Black Orc vs. Chosen"
So what I figure I'll do is post up some links to the best posts on Warhammer Alliance. There are some good contributors over there. And there is also some junk to filter through. I'll also include some links to a few of my favorite blogs.
So, for all you A.D.D. types who want a quick hit of information, here you go.
So I'm starting to get my mind in gear for opening day. Here are my thoughts for people rolling tanks on opening day. A few tips and a few "here's what to expect"
Get moving with the quests! As a tank it's slightly more productive to level with quests, in my experience. For the first little bit just rattle off all the quests you can. I think you can hold 25 so don't pass a green icon without stopping to chat.
Don't get stuck fighting the same way all the time. Put on a two hander when you are having an easy time with mobs. Throw on the sword and board in RVR, or when you are about to grab a few tougher mobs. Very early on a two-hander might be a bit tricky so grab the first one you see.
If you have a choice between armor and stats, chose stats, particularly for PVE
As soon as you get into your questing groove start switching it up. First, head into your Public Quests and grab some gear. There's a mechanic where if you don't get gear you get a bonus to roll for next time, and it keeps growing. By the time you've maxed your influence, you've got a loot bag. That means 3 Pieces of gear.
Keep your Renown within a level of your ... Level. Head to Scenarios. They take a long time to pop so keep one up while questing and doing PQ's. You can always decline if you're busy.
You are going to feel kinda useless in early PQ's and Senarios. Don't worry. It gets better.
Get in a group. Leveling is faster and frankly more fun. Once you get taunt they'll like you more.
Do all the RVR quests at the end of the first tier. They're good xp, and renown.
Find a partner. As a tank you need nearby DPS or Heals to be successful in RVR. If you come across another player or 2 you'll be kited if ranged. Or bored to death if out healed.
Pick up your renown gear, save your gold for that. Find it in your Tier 2 keep. It's got decent stats and will help you move quicker.
Bonus Tip - Try to stay with the wave. Things go a lot quicker when there are folks around. It's great to get the odd heal, or have someone pull that extra mob off you when you are in trouble. Return the favor, taunt mobs when you see a player low on health, or throw a couple cleaves up on the way by.
Those are just some things I picked up in the preview weekend and open beta. If you're just picking up the game, good luck, it's a lot of fun.
Cyris on the Warhammer Alliance forums has a nice overview of Swordmaster. Check it out if you're interested in it. I think its a bit underrepresented as a class right about now.
An Overview of the Swordmaster
The Swordmaster is one possible tank class that Order players can
choose to play in Warhammer Online. Originally designed as an
anti-magic tank, the boundaries have since become fuzzy. The strengths
of the Swordmaster stem from the ability to wear heavy armor, and the
ability to deal large amounts of spirit damage instead of physical
damage. (This checks against Spirit Mitigation instead of Physical
Mitigation)
The Swordmaster Mechanic
Swordmasters use a mechanic called Balance. It’s a fairly straight
forward system in which certain skills require either Normal Balance,
Improved Balance, or Perfect Balance to use. In addition, many skills
not only require a certain balance, but also increase your balance.
The path of progression through balance is as follows:
Normal -> Improved -> Perfect -> Normal
It is important to note that skills used from Perfect Balance do not consume any AP.
Maybe it's just me but I found that tonight, Sept 7th, I wasn't feeling good about leveling up a Chosen and Black Orc.
Tonight I felt like more laggy on both of them then I had been in the past weekend. I definitely felt like my Chosen was a bit slower to smash stuff than the orc.
The one thing that was really messing me up was the new button cooldowns. The countdown number and the flash of light when it was ready weren't matching up. On top of that I found that I could press the key early and the ability would fire. It was tricky to time, and sometimes I ended up going too early so my timing got all messed up.
On the Orc, I was always looking down to see if I was on "No Plan," "Da Gud Plan," or "Da Best Plan". I forgot to try and move the symbol around, I'll try tomorrow night. With the timing problem I frequently hit a builder twice, therefore setting me back. And, it was difficult to tell, by looking at the screen, to see if it went off. Mythic is really going to have to fix this or they might as well just turn off character animations altogether.
On the Chosen it was a bit different. I found I kept peering at the little debuff symbols below my enemies nameplate to see when they were cooling down to time putting them back up. The font is just way too small. It would be good if the button on the screen actually contained the debuff time also. But not using text! Sheesh, 5 point font just doesn't cut it.
I'm wondering about the macro language and it's use for putting up auras. It would be nice if we could use one button to cycle through 3 auras in turn. If anyone finds a link to more information on the macros let me know.
Syp has a really great blog at waaagh.wordpress.com where he talks about his first impressions of a Chosen. He's a great writer and I read his blog every morning while I sift through email and drink coffee. Definitely check it out and then pop back here for my take.
I'm not sure that he really captured the Chosen experience that I think many of you will have early on. Put another way, I found it to be different.
For sure, at the very early levels you can spam 1 key and win. I just assumed that that was normal at the very low end. But it wasn't long before I had a 3 key rotation going on, and then 4 or 5 buttons I'd routinely go to combined with my auras. This after 3-4 hours of game play. I'm not sure how much I enjoyed the whole aura thing but it did take some skill to keep the right stuff up all the time, plus keep up cleaves etc.
Also, I am not sure what had Syp dying so much early on. Maybe I just had more people around on the preview weekend but I died very little. I seem to remember getting to level 5 before I died. And, after that, the only moments I had of "for f*#@'s sake I'm dying a lot" was my first scenario experiences where I just got rocked and couldn't dps worth a crap.
While doing PVE I didn't feel like my dps was weak, unless I chose not to buff/debuff the target and work my auras as the situation needed. As I commented before, i felt a bit useless as a tank in the first PQs but better after about level 12.
That's just my 2 cents.
Hit me up with some comments if you have played a Chosen. What do you think?
So I've been drinking a bit and I figure, hey, I'd love to see some Elf on Elf action. Where better to look than youtube. After all, it's got almost anything a tank obsessed scotch drinker needs late at night.
I have a number of elf jokes lined up but that annoying dude on my shoulder keeps telling me to STFU and be quiet. After all, my friends will tell you I have a level 70 Night Elf Hunter in another life.
So this video, with it's crappy audio, (turn down your speakers) will give you a bit of the feel of a very early blade twirling high elf Swordmaster.
Just to repeat earlier posts, don't judge the class by this, only the feel of a new toon on Sept 18th.
Damond sent me an email. And because his email contained a number of characters used in languages from nothern europe his request moves to the top of the list. I'm imagining him in Norway, a couple of pairs of cross country skiis in the corner, some lefse on the table beside him... just waiting for me to write this post!
So his question was...
Anyway, what id like you to do is to make a black orc vs chosen post.
In this post id like you to discuss the ups and downs for the two
careers. Id like you to get into how well you think the black orcs plan
system works (to me this system seems a bit narrow and locked up to a
few attack combinations) and how well the auras works for the chosen
(switching around, having 2-3 auras on at one time). Also it would be
nice if you could tell which one you would pick and why.
The second thing id like you to post about, is how leveling as a tank
is. Does it take ages to level tank specced, or is it a good idea for
that matter? Or is it better to just go 2 hander and wack out as much
dps as you can, till you reach rank 40 and then respeck tanking?
I want to preface my next comparison, which will be short. First, I'm going to collect up some information from people who've played the classes more than me and give you some links to read more on after I summarize.
Second. It's very hard to predict how these characters are going to play in the end game. Invariably there will be several buffs and nerfs over the next couple of patches that might change things fairly significantly.
Third. In the grand scheme of things the amount of time it takes you to level won't make a big difference in your gameplay experience. In other mmo's the difference between a quick leveling character and a slow one has been plus or minus 30%. So if it takes you 8 weeks to level to 40 or 10, it's really not that big a deal. You'll be at the level cap before you know it.
So here we go.
Chosen
Overview
The Chosen are the tanks of the Chaos, brothers of The Magus, Zealots, and Marauders. They follow Tzeentch who is into messing up the status quo and magic. They're kind of despondent, cold bastards who summon magic to mess people up. They wear really cool heavy armour.
Main Style
Chosen are, of course Tanks, and as such are meant to be survivable, and deal less dps than many other careers. Their main advantage seems to be using buffs and debuffs on their targets and using auras. These effects are somewhat useful to you, but they'll really shine when you have a proper group put together.
The thing that really stands out is the auras. When you put one aura up you can put another up in 5 seconds. When you change auras the first will last 12 seconds before it fades. This means that you can have 3 up most of the time. If doing this sounds like a pain in the ass then being a chosen isn't for you cause you'll have to do that and generate threat on the mob, or debuff and dps the player you're attacking.
Perceived Strengths
This class is good at soaking up damage and helping out your group mates. I believe, although I am sure someone will tell me otherwise, that having a solid Chosen in the group will help the group kill enemies faster than the same group with an Orc in it.
Perceived Weaknesses
I think that Chosen will turn out to have lower one on one DPS and potentially lower threat generation. Combine that with having to be precise with twisting auras and you might find less chosen at higher levels than you might expect.
Black Orcs are well, big Greenskins. To me they really epitomize the Destruction side of things. They're big brawlers who grunt and smash things. They're not too smart but don't need to be.
Main Style
All indicators are that the Black Orc is a fun career to play, and it involves basically smashing stuff and knocking it down as much as possible. Obviously soaking up damage is key but it's straight forward, target something and use your abilities. They also have combos and finishing attacks to help improve your odds.
Perceived Strengths
Orcs are going to be fairly popular. They seem like strong tanks that do good dps on their own although not as much as the pure dps classes of course. If you get into your character the whole angry brute thing has got to be fun.
Perceived Weaknesses
I believe that initially the Black Orc will be a smidge inferior to the Chosen at taking damage. That's the word on the street anyway. This will likely mean you'll see more Black Orcs swinging two handers than carrying sheilds but that remains to be seen
Don't put a whole lot of faith into this very simple overview. A lot is going to change in the first couple of patches and you want to be playing a character you find fun where they playstyle and role match what you want out of the game.
It'll be interesting to see where tanking stands when everyone hits the end game. The whole Tank archetype hasn't done well in PVP in MMO's over the years.
Leveling
I believe that one should not decide to spec into tanking only when they hit level 40. There are a number of reasons for this.
You'll want to tank for your group all the way up to 40
You'll likely switch back and forth from questing, RVR, PVE Grouping many times while leveling up
You'll probably switch weapons/shield from fight to fight, rather than only after 40 levels
You'll want to know how to tank for real once you reach 40. There's no faster way to a bad reputation then by screwing up an instance run early on.
Banluil has written a decent initial overview of Ironbreaker over at Warhammeralliance here.
I'm not sure I agree with his comments on Guard. I know that I'll be throwing guard up on my squishy group mates every time I can. I think they'll get mad at me if I don't.
It seems to me, based on the responses, that the Ironbreaker comes out on top as a tank. Especially in the lower levels which is what most people got a chance to test on the preview weekend.
I've never played them, I haven't have the good fortune to get into the closed beta. But most of the posts seem pretty well thought out. The Swordmaster just plays as more squishy.
There's a couple things we know however. One is that in any MMO there needs to be balance and any spin on an archetype needs to be "the same but different" A tank of a certain level will inevitably need to absorb similar types of damage output in PVE, and be equally survivable in PVP. Especially in the end game. Otherwise you have thousands of screaming players on your forums giving you grief.
Certainly, different Tanks will have different roles in PVE and you'll want one of each tank in your guild, but in PVP balance is the watchword.
I fully expect that it'll take Mythic a couple of patches to make sure that tanks are well balanced in this regard. When the game launches there will definately be issues with all classes.
Personally? I'll probably roll 2 tanks, to hedge my bets.
