The White Tower Speaks: The Ironbreaker

I've always been a fan of Dwarves, and I'm not talking about Dwarves with contraptions, with their black powder weapons, and their whirly birds...no I'm talking about a good, old fashioned dwarf, the kind that still thinks cannons and organ guns are new-fangled devices and are no match for a longbeard with axe or hammer in hand. Of course, I'm talking about the Ironbreaker (R.I.P. Hammerer).

This was the one of the last classes I played around with during beta, I wanted to try one sooner, but I got distracted by all manner of things. Like my other main classes, I played this class to 21, and then played around with the templates, as well as spending an extensive amount of time in RvR.

My overall impression of the Ironbreaker? Not only is he the class I intend on playing at release, he is also, in my opinion, possibly the strongest class in the game at this time. The only classes I have seen that even come close to the survivability of the Ironbreaker are the Black Orc, the Chosen, or the Warrior-Priest. And if the Ironbreaker equips a shield? It's good game, you have arguably the toughest class in the game at your disposal. And if you're talking about damage, this little bearded man will definitely surprise you.

The truth is, I wanted to play the Ironbreaker with Axe/Shield in homage to their tabletop origins, and I wanted to tank my little heart out as Path of Stone. Here's the story of how my Ironbreaker learned to stop using a shield, and love the Great Weapon. For a short while during beta, shields were bugged and weren't blocking, and I won a pretty sweet two-hander in a PQ, so I decided to try it out in RvR.

Dear lord, what has Mythic done. Even without the shield, I mitigate a lot of damage, and thus still serve in tank capacity, especially with Guard and Oathfriend. If you have a pocket healer (Rune Priests are ideal), you can go on just about forever. Ironbreaker damage is moderate, but steady, early in the fight, but if the point ever comes where I build up 100 Grudge, the forces of Destruction start dropping like flies. Add Taunt into the mix, and the Ironbreaker's damage goes through the proverbial roof.

Pro Tip:
Target priority is very important in RvR. In Tier 1, you'll be seeing a lot of greenskins, so I recommend finding their Shamans and Squig Hunters early in every fight, and taking them out first. With full Grudge and Taunt (esp. if you're in the RR 6 gear), they go down easily. I recommend staying away from Black Orcs and Chosen, until all other enemies are dead, especially if they are toting a shield.

So what else do I love about the Ironbreaker? The deal breaker for me was their epic amount of CC (comparative to other classes in WAR). With proper tactics they have a slew of Snares, Roots, Knockdowns, Knockbacks, and AoEs. It's a Crowd Controllers wet dream. I can protect my healer all day with a slew of knockbacks and knockdowns on short to moderate cooldowns, add Guard and Oathfriend to the mix, and the two of us can take on quite a few enemies at once. I would even go so far as to say the Ironbreaker and Runepriest classes are some of the best classes in the game at this point, and when combined, they are nigh unstoppable. As others have mentioned, the synergy between these two classes is more than impressive.

As for specs, I see only one really. Vengeance/Brotherhood. The only question for me is whether or not I want to go all the way up the Vengeance line to Grudge-born Fury, or whether I want to get Earthshatter in the Brotherhood Tree. Two talents you should definitely keep your eye on are the Powered Etchings Tactic, and Punishing-Knock, which add a knockback and knockdown respectively to two of your core skills, always good.

Okay, now on to the bad stuff, and let me tell you, there isn't much. Firstly, Oathfriend's mechanic right now is kind of odd, you can only put it on a group member, not even on someone in your warband, and if you're just running around in Open RvR without a group, good luck getting grudge. Because the truth is, people avoid hitting me like the plague, which means no grudge, and without grudge, the Ironbreaker's damage is sub-par (as it should be). Allowing Oathfriend to be used on anyone in your realm would be an excellent change. If not anyone, then at least make it apply to Warbands to make scenarios easier. As recompense for this change, I wouldn't mind seeing the CD being increased slightly, or having our damage slightly nerfed (don't hurt me IB fanatics!).

Also, the Path of Stone is lackluster in RvR. Sorry, I said it, and I'm sad, because I'd love to throw on a shield and kick it old school, but right now the incentive just isn't there, many of the Ironbreaker's best abilities require or encourage Great Weapons. Sad, but true. If I had to suggest changes, I would say have knock downs and other CC (Silence or Disarm) be the domain of shields (Path of Stone), and maybe have Armor Penetration and perhaps AoE be the domain of the Great Weapon (Path of Vengeance). Right now, one of our best Knockdowns (Cave-In) requires a Great Weapon, that's a little backwards IMO. That said, Path of Stone is probably the premier PvE tanking Mastery, unfortunately, I didn't try any of the End-Game PvE, so I can't comment with any certainty.

Overall, the Ironbreaker is an incredible class, with extensive survivability and Crowd Control. With the right tactics and skill usage, their damage is also pretty impressive (I honestly expect this to be toned down). This will probably be my main class on release, duoing with my Rune Priest Roommate, we should have Destruction feeling the fury of the Ancestors in no time.

Cheers, and see you all soon!

Stormcrow

The White Tower Speaks: The Warrior-Priest

After enjoying a little bit of time on my Swordmaster (21 levels worth, and several hours of RvR and Templates), I decided to try the Warrior-Priest, and repeated the same steps for him. Leveled to 21, and then tried the templated characters.

My overall impression of the Warrior-Priest is that they are a very strong class. They have good survivability with Medium Armor, solid heals, and when specced correctly, they also do respectable damage.

Here's the catch though. As a Warrior Priest, I found it INCREDIBLY difficult to keep someone up through even a moderate assault (unless that person was myself, don't ask me why), and I just I don't see this class, in its current state, being a main/primary healer for RvR. Frankly, I think the Rune-Priest is the king of that arena (as he should be, considering his questionable damage output). There are people running around in beta as Salvation specced, with their little 1-handers and off-hands, spamming heals and supplication (converts AP to Righteous Fury). I think this play-style right now is weak and quite frankly, not the way the WP was intended to be played. If you want to stand in the back and spam heals, I strongly suggest the Rune Priest.

So you're asking now... well if I want to play a healing class, you just said Rune Priest was the best right? If you want to look at just healing, then yes, I would say the Rune Priest is a little better. What you need to be looking at is a combination of your damage and healing, as well as the buffs you bring to your group. Your big heal is a 3 second melee channel called Divine Assault. It's a doozy. It hits hard, and it hits fast, and best of all, it converts all the damage you do (times 2.5) into a heal to your defensive target. If you get hit, however, this spell loses a lot of its potency, but if you spec hard strength, this thing can deal a lot of damage, and return a good amount of health. Combine this with Divine Strike (a life tap ability), and your HoT's you can keep yourself going almost indefinitely, and after a while your not-insignificant damage will add up.

This, in my opinion, is what makes the Warrior-Priest truly shine. He's almost completely self-reliant, a jack-of-all-trades, and I strongly recommend him if you like soloing, or doing your own thing within a group. He is also very good at one-on-one's if that's something that's important to you.

As for specs, I found both the Grace and Wrath lines to be nicely done, in particular pay attention to the tactic in the Grace Line (Grace of Sigmar), that increases the power of Divine Strike (gain life on hit) to a greater % of healing. There is also a Tactic (Endless Guilt) early in the Wrath Line that makes your base snare (Weight of Guilt) last longer, and make it AoE, which I found interesting.

Note, however, that Career Tactic slots are very important, as you don't get many, so choosing your Tactics wisely is very important for any career.

Okay, on to the negatives. One I've already mentioned, they can't really main heal, though they do a decent job of back-up and group healing, and they keep themselves up well. This class is also, deceptively difficult to play compared to a lot of the other classes, in my opinion, having do deal damage and heal can be micro-intensive (not to mention daunting) if you're trying to heal someone other than yourself... not only that, but you have to do it from melee, something not even the Arch-Mage has to contend with.

Also, our Prayers (Aurs for you WoW Paladins), are trash. Absolute crap, the best one in my opinion is the one that increases armor, but it's pretty questionable. This is especially true when we match them up against the WP mirror, the Disciple of Khaine, that gets a Slow Aura! WTB that skill.

And, lastly, like the Swordmaster, our Snare is slow coming out, as the target must be crippled for it to take effect. It's a pain, but understandable for the sake of balance.

Overall, the Warrior-Priest is a blast, he was soooo very close to being my main, until I found the awesome that is the Ironbreaker, and I'll definately make a WP alt. IMO, the Warrior-Priest may be one of the best classes in the game right now, just don't think of him as a pure healer, I think you'll be disappointed. Play him for what he is, a melee dps/healer hybrid, and I think you'll find a lot of enjoyment in this class just like I did!

That's all for now, good luck and see you soon!

Stormcrow

The White Tower Speaks: The Swordmaster

Being a staunch fan of the Swordmaster in the tabletop, and based on the lore in general, you can be sure it was the first character I made upon downloading the WAR Beta. Let me say, firstly, that I was not disappointed, but it was not what I was expecting. Please note this is strictly from an RvR point of view.

I was not as "tanky" as I thought I would be (what did I really expect, I specced Khaine and Hoeth), but I was dealing more damage than I thought, also, so it all evened out. Please, realize, if I specced deep in Vaul and equipped a shield, this would probably have changed. But, I believe that style of tanking is purely the domain of the Ironbreaker, and I believe he does it far better at this point in time.

You're probably already aware of the Swordmaster's mechanic, the "Blade Dance", so I won't explain it further. It's a cool mechanic, I really like it, it's engaging, and requires choice and foresight (always good!). I really love the idea of "chains within chains", and many times you want to know what your finisher (perfect balance technique) is going to be before you start.

Firstly though, let me break a bubble for you. Early on, your finishers are not ZOMG DMG, they are utility, pure and simple. Unfortunately, the ones with the greatest utility (Knockback and Silence), were moved deep into the Vaul and Hoeth lines respectively (BOO!).

Unfortunately, the skill chain is sometimes cumbersome. Your snare is an "Improved Balance" ability, which means it has to be the second ability you use. That means you have to wait a vital global cooldown in order to slow your opponent. This is, simply, not good.

You want to know what is good though? The Swordmaster's damage, holy crap, it's impressive when specced and tacticed (um... sure tacticed is a word right?) correctly. I came into the Swordmaster class wondering (lore wise), why it wasn't Melee DPS, but also accepting the fact that it was going to be a tank, but by God I was not equipping a shield (I have scruples you know!) unless it was for a PvE tanking encounter.

At the current time, I have found two ways to play an effective Swordmaster in RvR (I'm sure there are more, these are the ones that popped out to me):

Khaine for single target, extreme burst dps using Ether Dance. You might not deal as much damage as pure melee dps but with taunt up (and it's pretty much always up) it comes pretty close, and you gain a moderate amount of survivability as well.

Or you spec to become what I like to call the DoT Master of Hoeth, which was my preferred spec, emphasizing DoT's, Blade Enchantment procs, and minor AoE. Throw up taunt, proceed with your chain to debuff Spirit Resistance, then spam Ensorcelled Blow and your snare as necessary... it's disgusting damage.

Overall opinion of the Swordmaster? Fun class, very fun. People will be happy to know that you can, in fact, play this class as DPS (IMO the way it's supposed to be played!). You can, probably, also play this class as a tank in RvR if you really wanted to, but I'm not going to lie: the Swordmaster is seemingly lacking in the CC department compared to the Ironbreaker, and to me, that's what makes an RvR tank.

Well that's it for now, hope I've provided you all with some useful information, and, as always, I'll see you soon!

Stormcrow

The White Tower Speaks: Things We Did Not Want to Hear

The WAR fansite community is abuzz today over Mark Jacob's earlier announcements. You can find those in an MMORPG.com interview here. I'm sure you've already seen it. I'm sure you have an opinion about it, and I'm sure it's not super-duper positive (if it is, you may need a reality check).

I'm going to skip the crap, and get to the part I'm upset over: the cutting of classes.

I have to admit I had to read the passage three or four times to make sure I'd gotten it right. I'm not going to lie, it seems like publicity suicide. I'm pissed and I really didn't have any intention of playing those classes. If they'd cut Swordmaster, I would probably have thrown a hissy fit right there at my computer, logged into my Amazon account, and canceled my pre-order on the spot, and I'm not usually prone to rash decision making, or lording my "customer rights" over the developer.

My group got lucky, we had one guy who was thinking he might go Hammerer, but that's it. I can only imagine the people who had their heart set on one of the cut classes, or guilds who had several people affected by the cuts.

I have to assume that Mythic had an excellent reason for cutting these classes, they said the classes cut were not distinctive or strong enough. This tells me there was a problem with the classes' mechanics. Does this bode ill for the Ironbreaker, who shares a mechanic with the recently cut Blackguard, or the Chosen who shares a mechanic with KotBS?

What exactly wasn't working with the melee DPS (hammerer, choppa)? Were they having problems getting kited, or was it too difficult to balance their survivability (medium armor) with their damage? Why were the stealth (Witch Elves and Hunters) and pet classes (White Lion) not having similar problems? What about the Marauder?

Were the hammerer and choppa's mechanics giving them class specific problems? Did their momentum mechanic make them early and frequent targets for focus fire? Did they not have adequate mitigation or escape mechanisms?

Is it possible that the melee dps were so fragile they couldn't make it to their targets without stealth or a built in tank (aka pet)? Or that they had to resort to running in well after the fight had already commenced to avoid focus fire?

Of course, we do have to salute Mythic for doing what they think is best. Cutting classes must have been very difficult for them to do, and I'm sure they knew the response would be widely negative. Mythic's commitment to excellence is admirable, let's hope it doesn't bite them in the ass.

Look for more on this later,
Stormcrow

The White Tower Speaks: Collision Detection Part I

Collision detection, yes please. To me, one of WAR's main selling points. Collision detection is awesome, it creates a more tactical game where positioning is key, adding a new layer of depth and strategy to game play. Not only this, but it creates a less cluttered game space because people can't pile on top of each other so it becomes near impossible to target them (talk about frustrating).

Collision detection allows you to clog a choke point, and hold off, and perhaps even help you defeat, a larger enemy force. Not only this, but you can keep your healers, support, and ranged DPS out of harm's reach! So why don't all games have collision detection?

Unfortunately, collision detection is difficult to properly implement because of the potential for same-side griefing. Yeah, those jerks who block off the bank or auction house all day just to be douches, ruin an otherwise fantastic feature.

So the question becomes, how do we implement collision detection, but limit the players' ability to grief his own faction?

WAR has one answer, turn collision detection on only against enemies.

I have to admit, when I hard WAR was only going to feature enemy collision detection, I was a little disappointed. I already hear you clamoring, "WAR BASHING? Not on my watch!". Just hear me out.

I think the greatest thing about (full) collision detection is that it allows a smaller force in the right position (say a hallway, or a bridge), to engage larger forces on more equal terms. Tight spaces don't allow your enemies' numbers to work for him.

So what is this really? A zerg counter. Numbers don't matter quite so much when they can only bring a few of them to bear. Eventually, they will probably overwhelm your position. Your tanks will run out of hit points and your healers will run out of mana (or should I say action points!). Hopefully, however, you've managed to take out a few of the enemy and slow their advance without losing too many of your own.

Enemy only collision detection negates this strategic advantage altogether. It doesn't matter if there's only room for four people in the hallway if 1,000 people can stack on top of them, and their archers and spell casters can fling their full arsenal at you despite their teammates being in the way (a separate gripe for another day).

Stay tuned for Part II, coming later, for other ideas on Collision Detection Implementation.

Thanks,
Stormcrow

The White Tower Speaks: Gear vs. Skill Part II

This article is a continuation of Gear vs. Skill Part I, which you can find: Here! So here's our problem. We need to balance gear so that it provides something for players to keep striving for, but at the same time, we need to keep it from over-powering those who attain it.

Now that's a quandary if I've ever seen one, but there are a few possibilities:

1. Don't make gear upgrades the reason people want to keep playing. This one seems pretty obvious. WAR looks like it's making a step in the right direction here. People will probably play just because the campaign is dynamic and fun, incorporating the best elements of RvR, PvE, and Realm Pride/Socialization.

2. Make gear about customization, not power. Have items be similar to your Masteries/Tactics, and allow them to further differentiate and customize your character. If you really hate casters, for example, maybe you can sacrifice some armor for spell resistances, and so you seek out a set with higher spell resistances bonus. Or maybe if you feel too squishy as a caster, maybe you can sacrifice some spell damage for hit points. This allows you to customize your gear to your play style, while allowing you to embrace your class role as well.

3. Have gear reduce your weaknesses, instead of increase your strengths. In a rock, paper, scissors environment, or indeed any environment where balance is desired, it's not always possible to achieve. Let's say you're a Tank, and you're usually pretty good against Melee DPS, but weaker against ranged DPS. Having better gear should mitigate your weaknesses in match-ups that are not usually favorable for you (ranged dps), instead of giving you even more advantages over classes you already do well against (melee dps).

There you have it folks, a few ideas on how to make gear desirable without being overpowering. If you have something to contribute, please do!

Stormcrow

The White Tower Speaks: Gear vs. Skill Part I

Before you read this, make sure to pop on over to the The Greenskin! and read Bo's article. It's all sorts of amazing, and provides a suitable base for what I'm about to talk about.

The eternal debate, Gear vs. Skill: the truth is, there's not much of a debate, as Bo mentioned, there are very few people who are going to say "I don't want to beat people because I'm 'better' than them. I want to beat them because I have better gear."

Does anyone really say that? To me, that statement makes no sense. When I beat someone, I want it to be because of my deeper understanding of game mechanics, proper use and timing of skills, solid team work, and generally just being faster or smarter than my opponent.

Does this always happen? Of course not. There is always someone out there smarter or faster than you. There will always be people who are capable of beating you, no matter how good you (think you?) are. That's a given. But what about the people who beat you, not because they out thought you, or outmaneuvered you, but simply because their gear allows them an unfair advantage over you.

That's what gets me. I can play a match-up perfectly: anticipating CC, interrupting heals, maximizing burst damage etc. While my opponent makes numerous mistakes: forgetting about diminishing returns, letting a heal get counter-spelled, and still win, simply because his gear allows him to take 3 or 4 times more punishment than me, or deal out twice as much damage.

No one (at least not me) wants to lose that way, and I really hope no one wants to win that way either.

But let's face it, gear is a large part of MMO's, it always will be. People have to have something to strive for, a reason to keep playing. Who's going to keep playing for an item that makes one stat .001 percent better? A few, maybe, but what's the point?

That's the problem, there's got to be a balance. How can we balance gear so that it provides a means for players to keep having something to strive for while keeping the gear differential in check?

Come back for the next installment of The White Tower Speaks: Gear vs. Skill Part II