LAGWAR | GAMING'S BEST IN TOP NOTCH MEDIOCRITY

Slurmm the Ironbreaker is 22. He has been since last week, and gaining on 23 ever so slowly. That’s right, I’m back to my absolute favorite place to be in Warhammer Online; Tier 3. It can be hard to write sarcasm, but the previous sentence was LACED with it. Much like the punch at your high school prom was laced with…stuff. Like my high school prom, when I get to tier 3, I feel happy. Something’s got to happen now, wait for it….be cool, be smooth…but then it never happens. Then on the drive home you keep thinking of what a waste of time and money it was getting ready.

Where was I going with thi-OH YEAH, Choppas and Slayers. Last night in Avelorn, I went to join in on Keep defense and found myself face to face with a level 25 Choppa. I knew I wasn’t going to make it to the keep, and probably would make it back to camp with him nipping at my heels and eventually wearing me down. So, I squared off with him. I didn’t think I had a chance, but I immediately knew that this would be a great opportunity to see how these guys were one on one. I must say that it was a longer fight than expected. I figured I wouldn’t be able to throw out enough damage to really finish him off (I’m hammer and shield right now), and that it would take him at least a bit to get through all my hit points, but it was close. He initially wore me down and gave me the impression that I wouldn’t last long, but my grudge built up rather quickly. As I started laying dots on him and buffed myself up, the tables started turning. We soon were both at roughly 25% of our health…then he used a heal pot. I had none, so I was stuck helplessly watching him beat me down for the last moments of our scrap. Had he not had the healpot (working on Apothecary now btw) I would have most likely won the fight.

I’ve said numerous times in game that the Choppas and Slayers were overpowered, but I’m beginning to think I might be wrong. I think where they shine as a beacon of greatness is when they are running in a pack. Most times in scenarios now, I see Slayers run in 1 vs. 5. They go down like gravy to the onslaught of Destruction, which in turn makes them seem gimp. When I run in as an Ironbreaker, I’m usually faced with Choppas in a pee-wee soccer formation, flinging their arms around like Butterbean. I get no time to build my grudge because I can’t get enough heals to compensate for even half of that damage output. It’s not the healers fault, Mythic needs to fix them. Archmages and Shaman may be getting love soon, but I really think they need to do an across the board evaluation of the healing classes. They each need to get a defined role. When I’d rather have a Warrior Priest in my group than a Rune Priest…something is seriously wrong. In my humble opinion, a WP who stands at the back to heal should really not be helping as much as a WP who puts him or her self in the thick of it. Maybe give the WP/DoK’s less HoT and castable group healing output, and give them more single target healing from their Righteous Fury. On top of that, give them a Righteous Fury type ability which does group healing. Just a thought.

What are your opinions on how each healing class should operate?