New classes coming

It is with glee that I say Mythic is announcing the coming of the Black Guard for Destruction and the Knight of the Blazing Sun for Order. I think they will offer some interesting gaming options for those who have been saying there are not enough tanking classes. The Knight will certainly have more tanking options. The Knight will have abilities that can protect other members of the team.

Population imbalance solution in Warhammer

Mythic has decided to offer xp and renown bonuses to Order side to solve the problem of Destruction population imbalances. I think it does show that Mythic is at least trying to help Order with the problem of too many Destro players. It also shows that they recognize the problem that we face of always facing off with higher levels. Now we can become higher level faster.

It does remain to be seen if this is a real solution, but at least Mythic is doing something about it. I notice it is offered only on certain servers, so I am fortunate to be on Ulthuan, one of the first servers offered these bonuses.

I do hope more players either come to the servers or switch sides to other servers to play Order. I find that the method of flying to all three warcamps, taking the quests from all of them, then queuing all 3 scenarios does work. Then I can get xp bonuses for killing players in the scenarios and for completing the scenarios.

This game is about the RvR, whether it be in scenarios or in territory acquisition. The rewards are better for renown it seems.

Last night, I joined a keep run for the first time. It was fun, but the leaders of the group decided to give up before we even killed the keep lord, at least as far as I could tell. I think it was because there was too much resistance from the Destro players. But I thought we were doing well to get as far as we did.

The Big Switchover

After much thought, I have decided to temporarily freeze (cancel) my subscription to World of Warcraft and continue with Warhammer Online. I have found a helpful casual guild in Aureus Knights and am playing on the Ulthuan server with Dracon, a 13 Swordmaster. I have found the fun of playing in RvR Scenarios and have helped win several for the Order side. So much for the domination of Destruction.

I am also considering some alts, perhaps a Witch Hunter or White Lion for melee DPS, a class that the guild seems to be lacking.

The fact is that I can't justify paying for more than one game on a monthly basis, given my meager budget, so I had to make a choice. Who knows? I may get back to WoW some day.

Swordmaster

Many players are discounting the power of the Swordmaster. I think it is a perfectly viable character, with skills and abilities to absorb damage as well as deal damage. An early skill at level 5 is Phantom's Blade, which gives a 25 percent chance of activating a shield that absorbs 45 damage over 10 seconds at first, and it scales up to 322 damage over 10 seconds. Of course, this is one of the blade enchantments, and you can only have one up at a time. Another blade enchantment at level 10 is Nature's Blade, which allows a chance of stealing 30 stat points from an opponent. And it stacks. I have seen 3 of these enchantments on monsters, meaning I was stealing 90 points. These enchantments scale up with level, as well as Mastery points.

Some players probably don't like the appearance of the character. As a male, I have to admit it is a bit effeminate and fopish, but I don't let that bother me.

I find once I got the hang of the 3 or 5 part series in the Sword Dance, it worked well. I saw an opponent get my Quick Incision, then try to run. He died as he ran. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing a plan work.

One bigger problem I had on a large population server like Vortex is that many of the Destruction opponents in the RvR scenario were much higher level than we Order players. I saw many level 11's and I think a level 3 that is hiked up to 8 (without the skills) is not going to do much against a level 11, no matter what class the opponent is.

A build I came up with maxes the damage of the Swordmaster. I call it Da Killer or the Crit Hitter. It has +12% crit chance, +120 strength, and +30 weapon skills. I think all the talk about tanks in RvR is useless. You don't need defenses in PvP. The idea is to hit hard and hit fast.