Question for all the tanks out there who like big weaponsFollow

Does the damage ever improve?

My rank 9 Chosen is doing horrible damage compared to my rank 6 Marauder, despite wearing better gear. He's equipped with a big ol' sword, but the damage done is not really that noteworthy compared to a sword and board. Maybe it's because all the attacks I've seen in the game have had fixed numbers (that scaled with rank) instead of "weapon damage + x" and while they do appear to scale a bit with weapon damage, it's nothing noteworthy.

If any of you have played a Warrior in World of Warcraft, I kind of feel like I'm a Protection Warrior stuck in Defensive Stance with Revenge, Thunder Clap and Rend as my only attacks. I'd like some attacks that did more damage, because I'm getting tired of spamming keys. Really. I'd love an attack that chopped off maybe 25% of an "Equal" target's health. Let it rip a hole in my AP tank if it helps. I'm tired of hitting the same three buttons a dozen times before my AP pool runs dry and I have to auto-attack for a while before repeating.

Does the hurtin' ever start? Or should I throw any Warrior expectations carried over from WoW out the window and go for a melee DPS class like the Marauder or Witch Elf instead? I really love the damage of the Marauder. It feels a lot like a Fury Warrior from WoW, except in leather gear, but I want the big armor and weapons!

Had been looking forward to running into battle as a huge Chaos Chosen or Black Orc, swinging my sword/axe and cleavin' stunties left and right, but so far I'm not seeing any reason to equip a Great Weapon instead of a board.

Edit: Changed title.

Edited, Oct 5th 2008 1:37am by Mazra

I realize that it's a bit odd asking why the tank does horrible damage compared to a dps career. I guess it's because Blizzard has spoiled me over the years, with classes that weren't locked into a single role.



My guess is that you've never played World of Warcraft. Granted, Blizzard has had four years to improve and balance out, but the balance in WAR seems very lacking. It's sort of a "the more damage, the less armor and health" balancing system, which, you know... works. It's not pretty, but it works. It just makes the career selection very boring, because you've got one career for each role.

Sure, they gave them different names depending on race and added a little something special to make it look unique. Like the Swordmaster (High Elf) with the Dance stances that unlock abilities, except, it's not much different from the Black Orc's Plan progression system. Bright Wizards (Empire) gain Combustion which enhances their spells, but also makes them blow up sometimes.. very identical to the Sorceress (Dark Elf) who gains Dark Magic and also risks blowing up.

The talent system of WoW is, in my opinion, what makes that game. It's the reason you can play it for years. Love your career, but hate your playstyle? Just switch around talent points and experience your career in a whole new way. Gosh, it's hard having to refer to classes as careers now.

Anyway.



From a PvE perspective, that's just dandy. However, in PvP (which I believe this game is heavily based on), having loads of tankability means absolutely nothing (or very little). I know that there are certain taunt/de-taunt abilities in the game that might force someone to attack someone he didn't want to attack, but I've used Taunt and De-taunt in scenarios and it didn't exactly stop them from either grinding my face into the dirt in case I was the de-taunter, or simply ignoring me if I was the taunter.

Unless I can utilize player collision to clog a passage way somewhere, I don't see why anyone would bother going for me instead of the squishy behind me.

Thanks for the "end-game" comparisons and examples of damage, though. I have no idea if 130k damage is a lot, but I'm guessing it's a fair bit.

Edited, Oct 5th 2008 4:18am by Mazra

Actually, my description of a tank was from a PvP perspective. Let me explain.

A tank in PvP is effectively a CC job (crowd control). Sure, the enemy can ignore me, but if they do, this is what happens:

1. I have guard up on my healer, who is usually the first target. So my healer is taking 50% less damage as long as we stay within 30 feet of each other. Sure I'm taking the other 50%, but my toughness mitigates most of it anyway.

2. Assuming they rush my healer, I have an AoE knockback I can use every 10 seconds. This AoE knockback is also a 40% snare, so after they go flying, they run back to us at a reduced speed. I have a single target knockdown that does about 700 dmg as well. 20 sec cooldown. While they are down I can DPS them along with any ranged DPS who happen to be nearby.

3. If they are still going I have another single target knockback, 20 sec cooldown. If we get rushed I have an AoE root, lasts 10 seconds. Just pop it and we back off til one of my knockbacks cooldown wears off.

4. Assuming they reach my healer and start beating on him, I have an AoE ability that reduces everyones dmg by 30%. Healers also have a detaunt move like all other classes.

5. Ok, so their hitting my healer, in the meantime I'm buffing my healers armour and toughness even further, and the enemy is doing 50% less dmg to my healer cause of guard, 30% less dmg cause of my Challenge ability, and 50% less dmg from detaunt.

6. At this stage my cc ability timers are well and truly back up and we start again.

While I'm keeping my healer free from harm, they are keeping our DPS alive, who are killing the other teams healers and ranged DPS.

Sounds good in theory, and sometimes things don't go to plan, but assuming you have more than one healer, and mroe than one tank, and your DPS classes are doing their job, tanks are very important in PvP.

Sure, you can ignore me and go straight for my squishy friends, but I'm going to be enough of a pain to you that either your ranged DPS will deal with me, or you'll be forced to try and get rid of me. All the while my healer is still spamming heals and keeping everyone up.

PvP is balnced around group play in WAR, which is exactly as it should be.

Your right, I haven't played WoW, but I've played plenty of other MMO's. And if you think your locked into one role, think again.

Each career has 3 mastery paths, similar to your WoW talent trees or w/e they were called. Each mastery path specialises you in a certain area. My playstyle is very different if I spec one path over the other, each has their strengths and weaknesses, but they are all good when used to fill a role within your group that balances your party/warband.

You can endlessly respec your mastery too, costs around 4-5 gold.

All this is obviously geared towards the kind of abilities you have near endgame, but thats where this game will be. I'm almost 40 and the game is 2 weeks old.

The other realm will have abilities to counter the kind of things I can do, or try and remove me from the equation, but thats what makes PvP interesting.

Then I'm just being too impatient.

Lower level scenarios just remind me too much of WoW battlegrounds which are basically "every man for himself" experiences. I've noticed that heals are being tossed around more frequently, though. Maybe I've just been too focused on rushing in and killing as many bad guys as possible before I drop to notice it. Again, something that has carried over from The Game™.

I'm sorry if I came off as a little naive and hostile. That was not my intention and I really appreciate that you took the time to explain the PvP mechanics to a nubcake like me. I just have to twist my head around it now, but it'll come.

I looked over the Black Orc paths (what do you call them in this game?) and the one that focuses on greatweapons seems to make the career pretty nasty later on. Maybe I'll give my stuntie stompa a chance, but right now I'm enjoying the Marauder, despite the lack of heavy armor and huge weapons. Having a big blade instead of your right hand makes up for it.

Most classes seem to mirror really well (as mentioned in this thread).


Black Orc/Ironbreaker --tank with high survive, lower dps
Witch elf/Witch Hunter --high dps and squishy when caught
Shaman/Archmage --good heal, okay damage from range and squishy when caught
Chosen/Swordmaster --tank as BO/Iron, though few swordmasters seem to play as a tank 1-20
Sorceress/Bright Wizard --high dps very squishy range
Zealot/Rune Priest --great healer from range, low dps
Disciple of Khaine/Warrior Priest --melee healer, godly 1-20 when played well
Magus/Engineer --turret pets and range dps

Though at this point 4 careers seem to be a bit cross-balanced in playstyle to me:

Squig Herder / White Lion and Shadow Warrior/Marauder would be the mirrors on the surface

SH- seems to be pet dps/utility with range damage
WL- seems to be pet dps while acting as pet cleric doing melee
SW- seem to all play from range, though I know the stances have midrange and melee abilities that make them squishy killers
M- seems to be all be played from close range melee, though my understanding is they have the arm-based stance mechanic akin to SW.

But that is just based on what I have seen levels 1-20 when lots are learning classes and not necessarily playing niche roles well.

Close, but not quite.

Black Orc = Swordmaster -> Both class use the same 'builder' system.

Iron Breaker = Blackguard (Who isn't in the game atm) -> The Breaker's Grudge system is going to be extremely similar to the BG's Hate system

Chosen = Knight (Who isn't in the game atm) -> Both are aura based tanks.


As for the 4 you left unlinked, from my understanding:

Squig Herder = Shadow Warrior... the SW's stance and different abilities are represented by the SH's pet. They also fill the same niche in RVR/pve.

Marauder = White Lion... again, they share many similar abilities (like that leap thing) and fill the same niche in RVR/pve.


Oh and, that leaves the obvious last pairing:

Hammerer = Orc Choppah

Now, forgive my ignorance here, I was lurking about in curiosity about people's experiences with WAR.

For the warrior/rogue comment, disregarding arenas, in BGs the fact that you are a melee class has certain impact in what I would describe as "infantry blob battles". It's something I came up with in the process of trying to understand BG strats better. When the size and variety of both groups is large enough (6+) that you can no longer distinguish individual abilities and have to treat them as a mass of infantry and assess it's quality based on size/proportions of types of abilities.

The closer you are to a blob of enemies the more enemy DPSers will have you within range of their attacks. If you eventually come into melee range with the enemy blob you're in range of all of it's DPSers, and also probably the only within range of the DPSers of the far back of the enemy blob. If it turns out to become important to kill someone at the far end of the enemy blob you will be within range of the attacks of the entire blob and outside of the range of your healers. So when gearing a melee class for WoW BGs I need to gear a lot more HP than when gearing a ranged class.

Thing is that being a squishy that fights in melee range is a very bad tactical decision for blob battles unless your -only- objective is to pick off enemy melee that get inside of your own blob. So I was of the opinion that giving high survivability to all melee was "balanced" along those lines.

I wonder how the melee squishy works in WAR, just thinking I probably wouldn't roll one.

I hope you don't mistake my opinions for the typical "I should be IMBA and you're wrong" types of posts that plague class related discussions.

I will admit I have been having a problem keeping my Witch Elf alive in T3 scenarios. Stealth seems too weak in this game, and I am unable to sneak behind enemy lines without getting caught. Assuming I do make it, and I pick out a squishy to kill, chances are I get taken out before landing a killing blow.

I am only rank 23, so I am still at the lower end of the tier, but I do have some concerns. If I get a little more burst damage to at least take out that primary healer target I will be happy.

i find healers are way too hard to take out. i prefer going after bright mages first if given the option, because theyll be the ones taking out your tanks on the front lines. then after that, ill go for rune priests, warrior priests, and archmages next, in that order (level changes this, as ill go after a low lvl AM before a high lvl RP).

having a DoK with you while you do this makes life a LOT easier. having a tank (BO or chosen) use guard on you and charge thru the front line (or do whatever it takes to stay in range so guard works) means you live a LOT longer. the extra DPS and the healing from the DoK make him a threat, and this tends to pull aggro off of you, but at the same time, they NEED to kill you, because youre such a high DPS class. meanwhile, your tank is swapping guard based on the most immediate need (and as limitations allow) as well as doing his best to disrupt things.

ive found that solo killing things as a Welf is just too difficult against a group thats coordinated, as the DPS will jump on you the moment you get on a target. but bringing just one more Welf with you (or a marauder) means you can take out 3-4 squishies in the backline before they take you down.

if it becomes too much trouble to get to the backline, ill usually at that point go into squishy defense mode, where i wait for witch hunters and white lions to come in after our backline and help finish them off faster. sometimes this pulls a tank or healer out of position in an effort to help the erstwhile DPS, and this can give you the opening you need to get thru into the enemy backline. of course, that requires actual coordination, which can be a problem at times.

Almost all classes have the -50% dmg move, its called deataunt. AFAIK only tanks ton't have it, for obvious reasons.

And that 2 handed hammer guy? Thats your mirror class, the Warrior Priest, not a DPS class. Of course you can tank him, your the same. Wait til your rank 40 and have a rank 40 White Lion tear you to shreds.

the way ive noticed it works is that ranged classes tend to have a single target detaunt, while melee dps (white lion, welf, witch hunter, marauder) tend to have an aoe detaunt. the difference there is that the aoe detauns tend to have half the duration of their CD, while the single target ones have equal CD and duration.

i think. ill know more for sure when my marauder gets higher.

With the stats on some chalices I see my healing potency go from 190 to 210 tic on all hots and my tier 1 moral ability jumps to about 950 ish.

Also I don't believe DOKs damage is worth the loss of ANY healing potency. I tend to always see myself being much more worth while when I play as a healer than as some DPS want to be. DOKs who front line and try to do damage exclusively are a waste of a slot....

Also with 50% damage reduction I have had all matter of 2 handed weapon users GIVE UP after attacking for little while. 2 hand sword users and white lions with their gimp pet. loltiger.. its like seeing a bst roll up with a crab familiar on your rdm/blu lol... I don't believe I have ever once died as a result of one of those lions. The owner of the lion is another story though..

Seriously 50% damage reduction is really strong.. I have often forced a good damage dealer, close combat melee or ranged, to waste time trying to kill me while all I did was target other people and toss out heals and such.

Edited, Oct 6th 2008 11:45am by thorazinekizzez

Edited, Oct 6th 2008 11:56am by thorazinekizzez