Altophiles Anonymous: a T1 Alt for All Seasons (Part I)

My name is Ysharros and I’m an altoholic– err, altophile. Just in case you’re new to this column.

This week, I’m going to take a quick(ish) look at the alts I’ve got on Averheim and their progress through Tier 1, since I spent much of the past week playing one or the other of them up to R10 or so. See, now I can add journalistic obligation to my reasons for altoholic enablement! Grab a drink, sit back, and get comfy, for while I’ll try to keep each mini-review short and sweet…I do have a lot of alts.

This is not a career guide, as there are plenty of good, in-depth ones already out there, including right here at Hammer of WAR. It’s more like a travel journal: what I’ve played through Tier 1, how much I liked it, what I didn’t like. It probably won’t help serial monophiles figure out what to play next, but it may well be of use to the hesitant or choice-paralysed altophile.

Ysharros, R21/RR16 Shadow Warrior

Shadow Warriors can be a challenge to play, certainly to play well. In the first dozen or so levels, you’ll have to learn to stance-dance: shadow warriors get their three stances within the first 6 levels, and each stance has its own specific abilities (many of which are shared across 2 stances) and benefits. Scout stance is the classic “plink from a distance” stance and gives ballistic & initiative bonuses; assault stance favours limited but mobile shooting and hand-to-hand attacks and gives strength and weapon skill bonuses; and Skirmish stance is a mobile, shoot and scoot type stance with toughness and crit chance bonuses.

Knowing which stance to use when, and being able to switch between them at the right time, can be a challenge, especially in RvR. Hotbar organisation can also be a real pain in the backside to begin with, since many abilities can be used in more than one stance, or across all stances; making sure all relevant abilities are present in each of the bars used by a given stance isn’t always easy, but it’s essential.

Perseverance and positioning are key for shadow warriors. Knowing your range and learning to stay out of sight, not to mention how to get a bead on a given target without the entirety of the opposition catching sight of you, takes some learning (or did for me). It is, however, a lot of fun. I found myself slinking from rock to rock and seeking out bushes or corners as cover in a way my other chars rarely bother with (though to a lesser extent it’s smart playing for ALL ranged classes). Great fun.

Death is frequent, and usually painful…but there are few things as rewarding as firing Destruction full of arrows when they’re too busy shouting about the incandescent Bright Wizard over there to follow your arrows back to their source. And of course the first R1 Morale ability you get is chock full of fun and RvR usefulness: Point Blank. Punting people into walls or over cliffs just can’t be beat for amusement and “Hah! Take that!” value. I can’t decide whether I prefer punting Witch Elves or Chosen, so I’ll just have to punt a few more.

Soloing can be a challenge, but it’s pretty similar to the challenges facing any relatively squishy ranged DPS class. Don’t expect to solo champions all that often (not without a lot of luck). That said, WAR careers are built around RvR and not PvE, and in RvR I have absolutely no complaints. I suspect Shadow Warriors are one of the frequently underestimated careers in WAR.

Amariel, R14/RR12 Archmage

Amariel hasn’t seen as much action lately as I’d like, because she’s the duo char reserved for playtimes with the spousal unit. I did play one a fair bit in beta though, and I’ve always found them rewarding. Damage is on the low end (as expected for a primary healer class) but respectable. Healing isn’t quite as good as the Rune Priest’s from what I’ve seen…but again, it’s more than respectable and balanced by the fact that Rune Priests really have to strain to do much damage at all, from what I hear. I think the reason many Archmages get short shrift compared to RPs is that many of them appear to see ArchMAGE and think Nuke! They’re not really all that good at nuking, and eventually players will figure that out and start doing what archmages do best: heal and sting the enemy with instant-cast DoTs.

Soloing is slow going, as you might expect, but not exactly dangerous or difficult with all that healing power available. At Tier 1 in RvR, the biggest thing to be learned is that nuking is all very well, but healing wins scenarios. You’ll also learn where to stand so that you can reach everyone easily for heals without necessarily drawing the opposition’s immediate attention, or at least without being within their range. Note that while Searing Touch looks cool, it also screams, “Archmage here!” in much the same way as the Shaman’s mirror ability does, and any smart Destruction player will follow that laser line right back to its source and beat you to a pulp–or at least distract you enough to make you heal yourself, which means you’re not healing your team.

It’s worth noting that Archmages can sell themselves very dearly in RvR and that sometimes dying is the best offense. It can take a lot of Destruction players to take a good archmage down, especially at Tier 1 where healing debuffs are few to nonexistent, and there’s something about a defiant healer that attracts Destruction players like moths to a flame. Sure, you’ll probably die in the end, but if it takes 3-6 of them to do it, that’s up to half the opposition kept busy. A variant on this tactic is to start a train–get a few Destruction players on you, limp a little, maybe cry, “Ouch! Oh, that hurts!” and make a beeline back to your waiting Order friends. Snicker snack!

I don’t have a Rune Priest character to compare with but again, in PvE or RvR I have no complaints.

Orlando, R11/RR10 Warrior Priest

As most people know from reading about the Disciple of Khaine/Warrior Priest mechanic, you can’t do much better for soloing. Medium armour, so fairly tough to begin with, coupled with reasonable damage and reasonable healing even in Tier 1. I have always enjoyed this type of hybrid mechanic, and WP hasn’t disappointed, though they can be tricky to play well, perhaps because they’re so initially easy to grasp. Nothing in PvE will really stretch a WP/DoK, and RvR can as a result be a bit of a shock.

You’re not as tough as a tank, so get over thinking that. You don’t heal as well as a primary healer (Archmage, Rune Priest), so get over thinking that too. However, you can do both, and there are no other classes who can. Just be prepared to spend a little time learning when to hit people (to build healing points) and when to heal (to keep your friends and yourself alive), and never, ever forget your action point –> fury converter, Supplication. An ineffective WP will be a mildly annoying speed bump; a well-played WP (or Disciple) will be one of those characters the other side howls, “DIE, already! Die die die!” about while wasting precious resources trying to accomplish exactly that.

Solo goodness in PvE, more than useful in group PvE, and a lot of fun when played well in RvR.

Aobheil, R10/RR7 Swordmaster

I mostly PvEd this gal so that I could get a feel for the Swordmaster mechanic and see whether I liked it or the Ironbreaker mechanic better. I was leaning towards IB, but as it turns out SMs aren’t just weird tall elves in bathrobes. Not at all!

The first blade buff SMs get, Phantom’s Blade, helps whether you’re going 2-hander or sword ‘n board (or in the SM’s case, sword and bloody huge kite shield). It’s a damage absorber, as if WAR tanks couldn’t absorb enough damage already. In PvE, it’s usually enough to handle equal-level champs with a little luck–and maybe a potion while solo–and lower-level champs with ease.

The hardest thing to get used to about Swordmasters and their Destruction counterpart, the Black Orc, is probably the Balance/daPlan mechanic. There are three mechanic stages, with ability choices for each stage. Balance leads to Improved Balance which leads to Perfect Balance, and then back around. As these careers level, they will acquire more and more opening, middle, and closing moves, some of which will be better for PvE and some for RvR. (I heartily recommend the PlanB mod for SMs/BO–essentially it hotbar-cycles for each stage of your balance/plan, much like the Shadow Warrior hotbars cycle during stance dancing. It can take a little getting used to but on the whole, it helps.)

Now, while the Ironbreakers get self-buffs (and oathfriend buffs) as actions earlier on and the swordmaster doesn’t, the SM picks up a useful snare very early on, a couple of DoTs, and some high-damage moves and morale abilities. The IB just somehow looks tougher, but that’s a very deceiving appearance. The few scenarios I played with Aobheil she was a constant thorn in Destruction’s side-protecting our squishies and annoying theirs, or slowing down their own tanks. Nothing namby-pamby about swordmasters at all.

Viridia, R10/RR6 White Lion

Last but not least, the White Lion. The mobile-pet careers (Squig Hunter and White Lion) have had well-publicised issues for months, and various fixes either didn’t or made problems worse. I’m happy to say that the most recent round of patches and fixes have made a very, very big difference in my enjoyment of the White Lion career. I had abandoned Viridia at R7 from sheer frustration at the bugs, but in playing her from 7 to 10 both PvE and RvR this week, the pet bar didn’t disappear once, the lion went where he was supposed to and stayed where he was supposed to, there were very few “out of range” messages (no more than other classes can get with lag and pathing), and on the whole it was like playing a whole new career. Well done on those fixes, Mythic!

Any self-respecting White Lion needs to know one thing before all others: you can rename your pet. Just type “/pet Newname” without the quotes, where “Newname” is whatever you want to call your lion. Viridia named hers immediately and the name has persisted, rock-solid, ever since. Good job.

Another thing that may well enhance your White Lion experience (it did mine) is making sure you know the keyboard “attack” and “come back” commands. I was advised by a guildie to place the pet on passive for most situations and learn to send it in when I wanted the lion to attack, not when the still-rather-poor pet AI thought it should. It gave me back the control I needed and made the White Lion partnership a great deal more rewarding. Sending it in to attack will soon become second-nature, too, and it’ll avoid intentionally aggroing an entire city block.

Just as the Shadow Warrior isn’t your typical WoW-Hunter clone, neither is the White Lion. For one, the WL prefers to slice things up from close range using a big honkin’ axe. For another, the lion itself is more than just a secondary sacrificial tank. Many of the abilities you and your lion will get through Tier 1 are positional, so learning how to get yourself and the lion on opposite sides of targets is quite important–fortunately, with positioning and pathing issues, this is much easier than it once was. I still get the occasional “you must be flanking or behind to use this ability” message, but that’s something other positional careers have to deal with now and then too, and it’s not the norm.

By Rank 10 you already have 2 different buffs to place on your lion, one of which is perfect for PvE (Trained to Threaten) and not bad for RvR, and one of which is very tasty in RvR. PvE is not difficult at all with a White Lion, so I won’t waste much time on it here. RvR is…different. For one, you have to keep track of the lion. For another, you’re a rush-in-and-smash sort of career. Hanging back won’t do a White Lion or their teammates much good. Besides, charging in axe-forward and lion beside you is very eye-catching, which has its uses in scenarios. One-on-one confrontations can go either way depending on what career you’re facing–I was sliced up many a time by Marauders, but that may be because I’m still learning to use my abilities and the lion’s. I did, however, scare the tatty pants off several Shamans, and the combo of player+lion is enough to give any opposition healer quite a headache. Casters too, of course.

This class will have quite a learning curve for me, but with the lion so well-behaved now I’m really looking forward to it. Knowing when to keep the lion close by and when to send it after a secondary target–knowing when to withdraw, when to change targets entirely, and so on–is going to be fun. Because of their previous issues, White Lions are severely under-represented on the Order side, and I suspect that having more of them later on will be extremely useful.

The Rest of the Pack

I was going to write a little about my Ironbreaker, my Witch Hunter, and my Bright Wizard, but none of them are Rank 10 yet, and though I played several Witch Hunters through tier 1 in beta, this week’s article is already longer than it should be. See you next week!