MMORPG blogger with a focus on incentive structures in games and a preference for solo play seeks class with which to explore the latest new release. Cool looks not essential, but must not have an overly annoying voice/sound effects.
We don't post personal ads while looking for the class that suits us best in an MMORPG, but perhaps we should. It's a decision that has a big impact on basically everything we experience in the game from then forward. Choosing correctly (or incorrectly) can have a huge impact on whether or not we enjoy the game. And, perhaps most alarmingly to someone like myself who spends a lot of time out-of-game analyzing things, sometimes our best guesses on what we want in a class are wrong.
For example, my frost mage. The other specs do more damage, but nothing quite compares to having mobs freeze left and right and dying before they even reach me. The same is true of the Prot Pally; it's fun to pull a crowd of mobs and watch them disappear in a flurry of yellow numbers, to the point where I'm okay with the fact that I would have leveled faster as a Ret spec. Likewise, the Fury spec was what really got me interested in my Warrior, and the Champion was the class that really held my attention in LOTRO.
Trying out the classes of Warhammer
The reason why this topic is on my mind at the moment is because I'm trying to pick a class in Warhammer. I tried the White Lion, but I found the cat annoying. I tried the engineer and enjoyed it a bit more, but didn't like the limited survivability. Tried the Rune Priest, figuring that, if I was going to heal, I might as well try the pure healer, and I liked it somewhat, but I was constantly dying under focus fire. Went to the opposite extreme and tried the Iron Breaker and that didn't work out either; I lived longer but didn't really feel like I was accomplishing much, since no one would voluntarily attack me, but I wasn't really doing much damage to them either. Tried the Shadow Warrior, but I got tired of the sit and snipe aspect of the class.
Then I tried the Witch Hunter. I liked the Rune Priest, but I'm really liking the Witch Hunter. It's not that I'm necessarily more durable if I come under fire, but I guess I'm somehow more okay with being mobbed down because I'm harassing an enemy healer (or, if I'm lucky and the other side is foolish, actually taking out the enemy healer) than I am with being slaughtered as soon as anyone notices me. It feels more like a choice to me; I'm choosing to risk my character's neck to disrupt the enemy support, rather than being involuntarily singled out as a priority target.
Maybe I will try to give the Rune Priest a bit more patience, since I realize that they're much more in demand than yet another melee DPS, but I was really beginning to worry that there wasn't a single class in Warhammer that I really loved. It's interesting how a class that was so far down my list of things I thought I would like may turn out to be my favorite of the bunch. Guess that shows what I know. :)
I think Warhammer Online is a game that you have to play a class to level 10 to really get a picture of what that class is going to turn outlike and how it will play. My main at the moment is a Zealot (the chaos "Equivalent" of the runepriest) and once I was about ten was when I had enough heals and dps spells to make a difference and turn the tide of a rvr struggle just by running in and throwing indiscriminate heals, hots and dots around.
ReplyDeleteClass perception is changing constantly.. I really like almost every class i tested during open beta and live play (7 classes..only one high-elf class that i disliked, but that is something different. I just hate elves ;) )
ReplyDeleteRunepriests are quiet robust. My rank 16 Runepriest "tanked" a witch elf, while my companions killed her ;)
You have to get at least to rank 10-15 to get a good feel for a class. Especially (de-)taunts and stuff like guard change the perception of survivability and usefulness of a career.