WARHAMMER Chronicles: Episode 9 - Power Level service and BW vs. Marauders

Friday came and went, and I achieved what I set out to do. I gained 3 levels of Renown and two ranks. I am now 26 and well on my way to being the uber healer that shamans are required to be. How did I do this? Well here's the hint. Pick a level 31 sorceress friend. Preferably one that can actually do damage and kill people. Heal him out the wazzoo till he levels out of t3. Find another sorc friend and then repeat.

Me and two of my friends, a squig herder and that 31 sorceress, decided to group into scenarios. We won every single match we were in together and with the healing buff to renown again (thanks Mythic!) I was getting around 2k renown consistently. It was incredible, some of the most fun I've had in WAR since I started. I highly recommend actually playing with people. It makes the game more fun.

Well, after I had gotten to 26, with my sorc friend at 32 and playing his rank 13 WE, I decided to pick up my rank 7 marauder and just try him out for a little while. Now, I stopped playing him (if you recall) because there were so many snares going on without any ability to break them, that I was perpetually snared and couldn't do anything. But, I gave him another go and he, when used correctly, kicks butt. I had been playing a BW for a little while before this and found out what it means to have no survivability and huge damage. With the marauder, I got survivability by trading in the range damage with the big numbers. All I do now is look at which healer, runepriest or archmage, I want to kill and if I get within melee range of them and outlevel them at all (which at rank 10 isn't hard) I will kill them. Then it's the BWs turn and so on down the armor tree. I ended a T1 scenario with 24k damage. That's the most I've seen even with a well played SORC or BW. Luckily I had a bunch of healers and tanks to help out.

But why was it so much easier for my marauder than my BW? Well, I'm not gonna say it takes any more skill. Sure, I have to have position on my target, be within melee range and all that, but I have about 1k more health on my marauder than my BW. Also, and this is the biggest reason. The group makeup on destruction (no matter the server) is better than the order. Order plays 30-40% BW in almost any given scenario. Then they have 1 or 2 SW, 2 or 3 Engineers, 1 healer somtimes a low ranked one, a few witch hunters, and absolutely no tanks. Destruction, from my limited experience, has at least 1 usually 3 tanks, at least 3 healers, 2-6 sorcs/magus, 2 WE, 2, Marauders, and 2 DoK's. The balance is overwhelming. I get heals constantly on my marauder when I got none on my BW. Order is so much more about the big damage (another reason why they lose so often but have the most damage) that they don't care about winning.

It's not a difference in skill level, or maturity level (while the order do bitch and moan in scenario chat constantly while Destruction are either constructive or silent). It's entirely a mindset where the destruction want to have a balanced group, while the Order just want to have the best class. The heaviest played class is the BW, followed by the IB. Those are the two classes that grossly outclass their destruction counterparts or don't have a destruction counterpart. No one plays healers because people constantly claim that Order is inferior to destruction (check all the forums) so all the people wanting to play a healing class go destruction because the Order claim that their healers suck.

All in all, Order isn't any worse than destruction, they just don't work as a team together. That's pretty much the gist of it.

~J