Evoknox
Fledgling Freddie
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2004
- Messages
- 280
So, I just thought I'd share my experience with the Ironbreaker in the open beta. I'm currently lvl 14 with it so this might not apply to the endgame play.
Intro
The Ironbreaker is the dwarven tank-archetype. Like any other tank, the ironbreaker can equip the heaviest of armor types and can use 1-handed and 2-handed weapons.
His special treat is Grudge. You build up 5 grudge when you get hit, and 10 grudge when your Oath Friend (more on this later) is hit. Grudge is used for some abilities, but my experience is that it's best to keep your grudge as high as possible. Almost all Ironbreaker attacks get stronger if you have more grudge.
Many attacks of the ironbreaker also give you a periodical (10-20seconds) buff. These buffs can either give you bonus strength, armor, toughness etc. Most of these are defensive in nature.
Oath Friend
You can select a groupmember as being your Oath Friend. Whenever your Oath Friend is hit you gain 10 grudge. Also, the buffs you gain from your various attacks will apply to your Oath Friend as well.
PvE
Playing solo as an ironbreaker is a breeze. You're very tough and you won't die alot. You can easily handle 3 mobs of the same level at a time. Your killing speed is decent. It won't be as fast as the pure damage classes but you're definitally not hitting like a wet towel.
There's also very little cooldown (if at all), but I doubt any class in warhammer, atleast in the early levels, has much cooldown.
In groups you will be the tank. The Ironbreaker does a great job here, I didn't seem to loose agro at all. You have the skills you would expect from a tank, attacks that cause agro/hate and taunt abilities. Ofcourse wearing a big shield and being able to parry helps alot aswell. My Ironbreaker had about 28% chance to block and 7% chance to parry.
PvP
I am VERY impressed in how the ironbreaker perfoms in PvP being a tank class. In scenario's I tried to do as much damage as possible, and was number 1 in damage almost all the time. It's not that your abilities will do so much damage, it's the fact that you will be standing up front constantly hacking & slashing your opponents while you're very hard to bring down, especially when backed up by a healer or two.
For me, my interest lies in RvR. My role here was to protect the squishy targets such as healers and buff the melee guys and at the same time being a constant nuissance in the front of the battle. The IB has great skills to fullfill this role. You can guard a groupmember so 50% of the damage they take is done to you instead. The usefulness of this skill is obvious. The most logical class to cast this on is a healer, keeping them up much longer as they usually are the targets people go for. There's hardly any cooldown on it, so you can constantly cast it on other people who are being focussed.
I prefered my Oath Friend ability on other melee'ers, this makes them stronger and more durable up in the front and will also make sure you have a steady ammount of grudge generating.
I've also had quite some 1on1 encounters. Not to blow my own horn but I almost won all of em. Melee classes just aren't able to bring you down fast enough. Casters stood a chance if they could stay at range, which seemed hard for them cause I always used flee to get near. At lvl 10-11 in the lowbie scenario's I even won a few 1v2's. However, this is not a good impression since most of the people there are of a much lower level. Even if they get buffed to lvl 11 in there, they still don't have acces to the higher skills and are still wearing lower level equipment.
An ability worth mentioning is Hold The Line!, apart from having the coolest skill-name in game, it's probably the most group friendly skill I had. It gives you 45% chance to block attacks and resist spells. Also, it gives EVERYONE standing in a cone behind you an additional 15% chance to block/resist.
Morale
As for morale abilities, I've had access to 2. The first is an armor debuff which does an x ammount of damage over time. The second is shield wall, which gives you a 100% chance to block for 10 seconds. The cooldown on morale abilities is shared and is 1 minute. In RvR I found that I always had enough morale to use shieldwall every minute. If they do decide to attack you, popping shield wall + hold the line combined with masses of hitpoints makes you virtually invulnerable.
Conclusion
Being a tank you're able to take a beating in both PvE an PvP. You will still kill at a reasonable speed while solo'ing. I was even able to kill champion mobs solo.
In RvR you have alot of defensive abilities to help your group survive. You will be in the heat of battle most of the time dishing out some serious damage backed up by useful offensive abilties such as snares and knockdowns.
It will definitally be the class I'll be playing on release.
Intro
The Ironbreaker is the dwarven tank-archetype. Like any other tank, the ironbreaker can equip the heaviest of armor types and can use 1-handed and 2-handed weapons.
His special treat is Grudge. You build up 5 grudge when you get hit, and 10 grudge when your Oath Friend (more on this later) is hit. Grudge is used for some abilities, but my experience is that it's best to keep your grudge as high as possible. Almost all Ironbreaker attacks get stronger if you have more grudge.
Many attacks of the ironbreaker also give you a periodical (10-20seconds) buff. These buffs can either give you bonus strength, armor, toughness etc. Most of these are defensive in nature.
Oath Friend
You can select a groupmember as being your Oath Friend. Whenever your Oath Friend is hit you gain 10 grudge. Also, the buffs you gain from your various attacks will apply to your Oath Friend as well.
PvE
Playing solo as an ironbreaker is a breeze. You're very tough and you won't die alot. You can easily handle 3 mobs of the same level at a time. Your killing speed is decent. It won't be as fast as the pure damage classes but you're definitally not hitting like a wet towel.
There's also very little cooldown (if at all), but I doubt any class in warhammer, atleast in the early levels, has much cooldown.
In groups you will be the tank. The Ironbreaker does a great job here, I didn't seem to loose agro at all. You have the skills you would expect from a tank, attacks that cause agro/hate and taunt abilities. Ofcourse wearing a big shield and being able to parry helps alot aswell. My Ironbreaker had about 28% chance to block and 7% chance to parry.
PvP
I am VERY impressed in how the ironbreaker perfoms in PvP being a tank class. In scenario's I tried to do as much damage as possible, and was number 1 in damage almost all the time. It's not that your abilities will do so much damage, it's the fact that you will be standing up front constantly hacking & slashing your opponents while you're very hard to bring down, especially when backed up by a healer or two.
For me, my interest lies in RvR. My role here was to protect the squishy targets such as healers and buff the melee guys and at the same time being a constant nuissance in the front of the battle. The IB has great skills to fullfill this role. You can guard a groupmember so 50% of the damage they take is done to you instead. The usefulness of this skill is obvious. The most logical class to cast this on is a healer, keeping them up much longer as they usually are the targets people go for. There's hardly any cooldown on it, so you can constantly cast it on other people who are being focussed.
I prefered my Oath Friend ability on other melee'ers, this makes them stronger and more durable up in the front and will also make sure you have a steady ammount of grudge generating.
I've also had quite some 1on1 encounters. Not to blow my own horn but I almost won all of em. Melee classes just aren't able to bring you down fast enough. Casters stood a chance if they could stay at range, which seemed hard for them cause I always used flee to get near. At lvl 10-11 in the lowbie scenario's I even won a few 1v2's. However, this is not a good impression since most of the people there are of a much lower level. Even if they get buffed to lvl 11 in there, they still don't have acces to the higher skills and are still wearing lower level equipment.
An ability worth mentioning is Hold The Line!, apart from having the coolest skill-name in game, it's probably the most group friendly skill I had. It gives you 45% chance to block attacks and resist spells. Also, it gives EVERYONE standing in a cone behind you an additional 15% chance to block/resist.
Morale
As for morale abilities, I've had access to 2. The first is an armor debuff which does an x ammount of damage over time. The second is shield wall, which gives you a 100% chance to block for 10 seconds. The cooldown on morale abilities is shared and is 1 minute. In RvR I found that I always had enough morale to use shieldwall every minute. If they do decide to attack you, popping shield wall + hold the line combined with masses of hitpoints makes you virtually invulnerable.
Conclusion
Being a tank you're able to take a beating in both PvE an PvP. You will still kill at a reasonable speed while solo'ing. I was even able to kill champion mobs solo.
In RvR you have alot of defensive abilities to help your group survive. You will be in the heat of battle most of the time dishing out some serious damage backed up by useful offensive abilties such as snares and knockdowns.
It will definitally be the class I'll be playing on release.
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