With Ironbreaker currently sitting at 15, I’ve a little experience in both Tier 1 and Tier 2 scenario PvP, along with the comparison that can be made with my Marauder. As with my previous post, this will be interspersed with random scoreboard screenshots, as per my ego dictates.

Starting off at rank 4 or so, I have to say I felt pretty useless as an Ironbreaker. Healers and damage classes have their roles and abilities to perform them clearly defined from the beginning of the game. However as a tank I found I started with a series of mediocre damage moves, and nothing that made me feel very tanky. I basically just ran around with a two handed axe trying to chop people’s kneecaps. This proved vastly ineffective some matches, and slightly better in other matches when the opposition were unorganised and a healer decided to take pity on me.

I ended up avoiding scenarios until about rank 10, where things started to pick up. By this point I still wasn’t feeling very tank like, but being higher for the bracket and having a wider selection of skills made me a little angry powerhouse. Slapping your Oathfriend ability on whoever happens to be getting the snot beaten out of them helps keep your grudges high. Not that keeping your grudge level at 100 is ever hard when in combat anyway. Good matches in the later part of the Tier 12 bracket frequently ended in me topping the scoreboard, whatever metric I chose to look at.

At this point I was still thinking in a similar mindset to my Marauder; try and get lots of kills and do lots of damage. Yes I’d put more of a focus on protecting the healers if I saw someone break through our lines and attack them, but I still didn’t really have many tools to do much about it, aside from taunt.The only class that was consistently out damaging me was Bright Wizards, but then that’s not a surprise is it.

Moving onto Tier 2…

This coincided with my decision to try out sword and board (or axe and board in this case) rather than the two handed weapons. My main motivation for this was actually wanting to try out the shield skills, which had been sitting on my bar for a few levels and I’d never tried. In PvE questing I found the switch not to slow me down much, at least I haven’t noticed it so far.

I now have a series of skills that make me feel more like a tank, I won’t name them all (because I don’t remember the names) but in essence:
- Oathfriend – good for keeping my grudges up, as mentioned
- Guard – protect your squishy, or the guy carrying the scenario objective. Or maybe that Warrior Priest that you hope might heal you but never does
- Shield of Reprisal – activates on parry, knocks the opponent down for a couple of seconds
- The other shield ability (told you wouldn’t remember all the names) which allows you to swipe up to 3 opponents
- Away with ye’ – Knock someone down, 20 sec recast (I think)
- Hold the line – Increases block and disrupt chance for yourself and all team members who are behind you, good to use when moving forwards (if you remember to)

All these skills enable me to much better do the job that I’m supposed to be doing; protecting squishies, holding the line, generally making a nuisance of myself, AND dishing out whatever damage I can. This has lead me to change my focus a little. My focus has been more on protecting people and holding our lines, than trying to kill people myself. Often this involves knocking down and harassing the tanks or melee DPSers that are trying to kill our healers. I find that if I get my hands on a squishie I can dispatch them quite quickly too, so annoying the enemy healers myself also seems to be a valid tactic.

This new focus, combined with my low level for the bracket, and move to one handed weapons, has lead to be sitting much lower down in the tables as far as kills and damage goes. However In the matches that have gone well, I’ve still felt like I was doing a very useful job. After playing a DPS character though it feels slightly weird; you don’t have a metric on that scoreboard that you can use to measure how good your performance was. Yes I know that even for melee DPS characters if you’re just sniping killing blows, or doing loads of AOE damage without ever actually killing anyone you might end up topping the scoreboard without actually helping your team that much, but at least you have some figures on the board to show in most cases that you’re doing well. It’s both a blessing and a curse; I never feel like I really know if I’m doing well compares to other tanks, but at the same time I don’t feel the need to try and beat everyone in quite the same way. Essentially if you’re protecting the right people and doing the right things your team will win (in most cases) and people will recognise you did a good job. That seems to be about the closest you can get to knowing you did the “tanking” part of your job right.

To sum up my general strategy right now; slap Oathfriend on Warrior Priest, melee DPS or other tank, guard a healer, then head to the front lines and simultaneously try and stop the enemy getting through ours, while trying to get my hands on any squishies that venture too close.

In conclusion; Ironbreaker PvP just got fun!

So I find myself at somewhat of a crossroads at the moment. Usually I level one class to the level cap before I allow my rampant alt ADD to take over. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to have happened this time. With my friends trying Order, and me inevitably following, I’m now completely unsure of even which faction I’m going to keep playing, let alone what class. As the most important thing to me is playing with my buddies, the former is not necessarily my decision to make, and the latter depends on the former.

My little Ironbreaker is now lv10, and while I still haven’t felt that I’m that useful in PvP (though it’s getting better) he is so much fun in PvE. I’ve never been one to take to Dwarves in games (Golden Axe aside!) but WAR has changed that for me. Goodbye angry midget, hello cool looking ball of rage. The grudge mechanic is proving to be awesome. It acts to bolster a lot of my skill,s increasing my damage, and also acts as an additional AP pool to use when my actual AP is depleted. With strength, toughness and Armour buffs so far, questing is a breeze. My main melee attack getting an additional DoT aspect which scales with grudge is awesome, especially considering when questing you spend most of your time at somewhere near 100 grudges.

I do find myself missing my Marauder though, I played him a little last night and it just felt right. Currently he’s rank 23, and I’ve just finished Chaos and Dark Elf chapter 12 influence grinds. I have a feeling I’ll be flitting between these two classes quite a bit for the moment. If I end up sticking with destruction, then I desperately want them to brig Black Guard back, this mechanic feels so much better to me than any of the other tanks.

Without further ado, some pictures of Tnak, the mighty Dwarf.

I got this little thing I’m holding from a quest. I think it might be one of the collectors edition rewards, but I’m not entirely sure to be honest. I also have a mug of ale which increases my toughness temporarily, might come in handy. You can also see the little anvil trophy on my shoulder, isn’t it cute?

So far I’ve been favouring the two handed axe. Though I’ve recently picked up a couple of shield skills, so I might try the whole sword and board thing quite soon.

Making friends with the locals…

So my buddies decided to make Order characters, just to see how the other half lives. I already have enough problems with alts, so thanks guys. Anyway, I figured why not go along for the ride, not like I’ve doing anything else important.

So I was umming and arring between tanks and healers. I tried Warrior Priest, and it was cool, but doesn’t feel quite right to me. I obviously couldn’t play either of the High elf classes; a tank in a dress? no, a wussy healer in a skirt? no no. So that left me with the Ironbreaker.

So Tnak was born, apparently Dorf is 4 tnak. First thing I decided to do (naturally) was head over to the Empire T4 zone (after visiting Altdorf) and jump off the highest spot I could find. I assume this is standard game play for all level ones. This is of course after spending 20 minutes sitting in front of the Dye vendor trying to work out whether to stick a barrel in my beard or not. I decided not, but I’m keeping the barrel just in case I change my mind. It will come in handy when rescuing lost mountaineers from icy peaks. Anyway, on to the highest point I could find.

I forget the Chapter this was, but it was right next to the influence vendor in the Empire tier 4. I wont show you the “after” shot, but suffice to say my meeting with the rocks at the base of the mountain did not go well.

Currently the little tyke is sitting at rank 7, and I must say I am enjoying the Ironbreaker greatly. They seem to be powerhouses for grinding once you get your grudge level up and slap on all your buffs, I can literally chew through mobs without ever stopping. I even managed to solo a champion Orc mob that was rank 4, I think I was rank 6 at the time. Maybe that’s not amazing, but I felt quite powerful.

Only problem I foresee with Ironbreaker is that ALL of their skills look useful/good. I have no idea how I’m going to organise them all on my bars. Also RvR seems a little mediocre at the moment. I suspect that may be because I don’t have any knock-back or snare moves at the moment. Also I’ve yet to be on the receiving end of many heals.

Why is it that I spent every scenario I did on my marauder killing Rune Priests and Archmages, yet I can do 3 scenarios as an Ironbreaker without encountering more than one healer the entire time. The world conspires against me.

Just a quick update on the mutation animations, as this is turning out to be one of my favourite facets of the class. Every so often you get a little surprise, sometimes as subtle as an extra spike or two on your arm. In fact half the time I wonder if I’m imagining it, and looking for changes where there is none. I should really document them more closely. Either way, it all just adds to the feeling of the whole “Changes of ways” theme in my mind.

First up, the Monstrosity wrecking ball. I didn’t use Monstrosity at first, and have to say although this sort of appearance makes perfect sense for the stance, I didn’t find it very visually appealing. With it moving up onto my shoulder though, and the additional spikes I’m really warming to it.

Next onto spiky shark mouth guy. Somehow I don’t have an original picture of this guy, which I suppose is somewhat unhelpful. It’d basically done the same thing as the others, moved from my elbow up over my shoulder, and gained a bunch of spikes. This one also seems to have taken on an eerie metallic blue glow, which I’m sure it didn’t have before.

Next… well I don’t have an amusing name for this one. Spiky blue eyed baseball bat amputee hand? (spikes seem to be the recurring theme). Not the best picture to compare the two, but you can see the trandisiton.

Finally, I managed to break 90k damage in a scenario! This was done at rank 21.Emerald is a fellow guildie, sorceress who in the right conditions I seem to be able to just about keep up with damage wise. Ranged damage deals definitely seem to have the advantage as far as total damage goes in these scenarios, especially when they have aoe opportunities. However I’ve found Marauder robust enough to keep up with most ranged damage dealers, and exceed them if you get lucky with a dedicated healer and unorganised Order.

Did that work? It was supposed to be a play on the whole Marauder crab claw thing…

*snap snap*

Aaaanyway… Up until recently, I’d been focused almost entirely on Brutality spec; the single target burst dps mutation. This was due to two main reasons:

1. The mutations looks cool (the most important factor)
2. Front loaded burst dps usually serves well in pvp

Entering Mourkadin (I have no idea how to spell that) Temple recently, it occurred to me that this scenario is mainly one big zerg. There’s no splitting of team members towards control points, or people coming from all different directions; its basically like taking two bin liners full of rubbish and slamming them together for 15mins. In this metaphor, orders bin bag would be full of organic food packages and banana peels, whereas destructions would be full of rotten meat and dog excrement. Anyway, I digress.

I therefore decided to try out Monstrosity stance, as I figured I’d be able to up the damage I did a bit with all the targets there are crammed into one space. The extra toughness wasn’t going to hurt my survivability either. Not that Brutality hadn’t been serving me well, but managing to get yourself onto the back of a squishie without 3 people healing them and 3 others pounding on you is nigh on impossible in scenarios. Also, the fact that Dan has recently leveled a sorceress, which is very hard to keep up with damage wise, had nothing at all to do with my desire to increase my damage… yes, it’s very much an ego thing. Man-pride is delicate.

From what I’ve done so far, I’m extremely impressed. my position on the damage charts has switched from being “sometimes high sometimes low”, to “consistently high” (if not top). This is without respeccing my mastery points out of Brutality, so it should only get better if I respec too. These are the following advantages I see for Monstrosity spec, bearing in mind these only really apply in group zerg conditions.

My points will be interspersed randomly with screen shots of damage charts from scenarios I’ve done. It’ll subliminally start to make you think I’m a really good player.

(It’s a trick, I’m actually not)

(or was that false modesty?)

1. My survivability is much increased – The extra toughness helps, and the play-style is less prone to getting ganked, as you don’t feel the need to get to the back lines and eviscerate mage classes 100% of the time. I can stick to the front lines, lay down damage across as many targets as possible, and if we happen to be on the retreat I can back-pedal whilst continuing to spam my damage moves.

(See, you’re already thinking “Wow that Schozie must be good, look at those numbers!”)

2. Damage is consistently higher – Mainly due to the fact I’m hitting 5-6 targets at once. I’ve debated with myself to what extent I am genuinely helping the team, and how far this is just a big ego boost for me when looking at the charts; however the number of killing blows is usually pretty high too. In situations where kills counts, I think the damage spread across the team (and thus distracting/straining healers) makes up for the loss of any burst single target dps.

3. Targeting – I have big problems targeting in this game. Tab targeting (my preferred choice, clicking people is hard in big groups) seems to randomly scroll through enemy targets; presumably from left to right. However there’s no easy way to automatically target the enemy right in front of you. Either I click them (=anger) or I hit escape and then tab, which will take me to the target in front of me most of the time (also =anger). With the frontal aoe move, I just need to point myself in the right direction and I’m good.

4. Frontal attacking – no need to get behind people, makes things infinitely easier. Nuff said.

5. Fontal aoe disrupt - Great for when we push through their front line and I see a group of Rune Priests and Bright Wizards in front of me. Hit them with the interrupt, then spam the normal aoe move and they’ll usually start to scatter. Its hard to know which way to go when I’m manically running in circles round your group though eh? This also leaves any remaining order front line fighters exposed and with less (or no) healing on them.

(Sorceress damage in these is insane. Clearly the class for IWIN noobs)

6. It has that nice attack which causes people to do damage to themselves whenever they perform a melee attack. This is great for slapping onto tanks or…. well any melee class come to think of it!

Downsides:

1. I chew through my action points like an American at McDonalds
2. Single target dps is a bit low. There’s no massive burst when you manage to get behind a Bright Wizard (I hate Bright Wizards, and their stupid fire cages, gtfo)
3. The mutations don’t look quite as cool (though still cooler than Savagery ones).
4. It’s too easy, sometimes I end up spamming aoe and not really being strategic in any way.

My latest move has been to set some nice key bindings for the different stances/mutations. I’m starting to try and switch between Brutality and Monstrosity mid fight (only when necessarily or appropriate) and it seems to be working out really well so far. I can’t say I’ve noticed many other Marauders trying this so far to be honest. Spam the crap out of the squishes, when only one is left or their start to rout switch to Brutality and stab ‘em in the kidneys.

As far as mastery points go, I’m currently one point away from Guillotine, which is a big damage move in the Brutality tree that requires the target to be below 50% HP (execute anyone?). I’ve been really looking forward to trying this, so that’s next. I was considering speccing entirely into Monstrosity, but Brutality is nice for single targets and pve questing, so I’m going to leave my points there for the time being. After Guillotine I will start putting my next points into Monstrosity, for a while at least. I’m going to see how a dual spec suits me. 

*snip snip*