It's been awhile since I last wrote about my experiences in WAR but since then I have done quite a few things. Starting off with my forays into a few new characters after seeing what a difference playing a tank was in PvP it inspired me to try out all of the roles.
I first started off with a Chaos Sorcerer(ess) which wasn't exactly the most diverse thing around, infact I have a lack of things to write about in regards to the sorcerer because I have a aversion to ranged classes most of the time, and as such I only got my sorcerer to level 2. She had 4 fairly standard attacks that I presume are used depending on the circumstances. While there isn't any thing in the regards of crowd control or ranged snares yet, there are different attacks that have different ranges and casting speeds; starting off with the first spell that you gain, it is a somewhat long cast that inflicts a large amount of damage in comparison to everything else. The Sorcerer also has a instant cast melee attack that also snares the enemy, it did a high amount of damage and since the npc enemies weren't exactly the strongest hitters around, it was very tempting to just hit that over and over again (which I did for awhile then stopped for the sake of learning the other skills), in any case it is most likely used to attempt to escape enemies, although from my experience in PvP combat so far, most of the time that won't be likely, without the help of additional abilities in any case. Finally on the next level I gained a rather odd spell, it had a decent range, and very fast cast speed but not instant, and it attacked the enemy 3 times, in normal grinding combat I used it after pulling with the heavy attack so I could quickly attack while the enemy was coming towards me, however I can't imagine the use of it in RvR as it limits mobility too much to cast while retaining movement speed, and if you're in any position to cast something, you would use the heavy attack, but unfortunately I didn't exactly test that out myself, however writing about it did give me some desire to give it another chance, but that ends my experience with the Sorcerer class, my conclusion based off that and observations in PvP is that ranged classes are fairly standard, some of them have decent melee abilities as well, whereas others lack them but make up for the lack with pets or more ranged power.
Last but not least, I tried out two healer classes. First one up was the Chaos Zealot, while none of the Forces of Destruction's healers really appealed to me conceptually, if I were to choose one, Zealot was probably the most interesting, followed by Shaman simply for being part of the Greenskins. The first thing I noticed about being a Zealot was that I still didn't use any different resources other than energy as my main one, I read in a FAQ by the developers stating that one of their main key objectives with the game was to limit downtime as much as possible, and with the healer class I definitely feel like they achieved that. The only downtime I experienced with the zealot, and my other healer class for that matter was when I was dead. Well onto abilities, with a level 7 Zealot I had gained quite a few, some were fairly standard while others were quite unique. The first thing I should say is that the Zealot is essentially ranged focus healer/DPS class that has the ability to switch between the two as they please. This is done through a toggled ability that when on, it converts all of your healing power, and stats associated with it, into damage oriented ones. Likewise, with the ability toggled off, all of the damage stats are converted into healing. The abilities also compliment this style, having received a pretty balanced assortment of healing and damage skills. In the way of damage there's a heavy cast such as what the Sorcerer has, a damage over time spell, and a instant cast, all of which are used in the idea that you're nuking someone down from a range. On the other hand healing abilities take a different turn as a Zealot, the first one I received was a instant cast small burst of healing, while the next one was a large heal but the catch was that it's only a heal over time spell, finally there's a castable absorption shield on people that absorbs a little bit of damage, and then heals the shielded person after the shield breaks. Lastly I also got a buff that improved the offensive stats of my target which is fairly standard, but the neat thing is that it also allowed the person I buffed to cast a ranged nuke on anyone of their choosing, I had it casted on me once when I played a Choppa, and I wondered where it was from. Abilities aside, actually playing the healer is quite interesting in itself.
Besides never having the need to actually wait for health to regenerate, a healer is pretty key in any sort of conflict in WAR, I would go to the extent of saying while all of the classes in WAR are required, and essential in their own ways to winning battles, being a healer is the role that makes you feel like you contribute the most towards winning a battle, even if again, it is the other players who are actually doing the killing, and keeping enemies off of you. Of course that can be said for most MMOs I suppose, well in any case, healing is surprisingly easy to get into in WAR, but also holds the same factors that make healing difficult in other games. The first thing unique to the zealot is that at least from what I've played, my primary source of healing was hitting the instant burst heal on people who were taking constant damage over and over again, in fact when I queued up at almost level 3ish, that was pretty much all I was able to do, but at the same time, it was also when I felt the most effective of all of the classes I went into PvPing with at a low level, as long as no one tried to attack me, I always felt like I was contributing towards the fight a lot. On the defensive side, sure if someone got me in melee range, and snared me or I got overwhelmed I wouldn't really last long unless I had a equally strong force of allies to back me up, but in terms of even fights, usually I could avoid getting hit at all by moving a lot while casting the same heal over and over again. This style of playing felt consistent as well, as when I got more abilities they were still instant cast healing spells, and on the damage aspect, if you focus on healing, then you'll hardly use the damage spells other than to add a little bit more, or to finish enemies off as they run away, more abilities however also resulted in more energy management, I found it possible to constantly spam the burst of healing spell even without a lot of energy and it would usually get to my target as they needed it due to how fast energy regenerates, however against overwhelming odds, energy becomes more of a hindrance than a help, and usually that's always the case in WAR.
Another thing that makes healing difficult but it is improved in WAR to aid it in being less of a hindrance, is targeting and casting healing spells themselves. Already at this point WAR has a significant improvement over MMOs in the fact that it allows you to have 2 targets up, one on a friendly, and the other on a hostile, at first I confused this with the target of target other games have, but once I started healing, I found out that it was completely unrelated. This feature helps in letting you cast offensive spells at enemies while healing your allies rather than requiring a macro or additional key bind presses to get the same result, and it definitely adds a score towards the base UI against using more specialized third party developer's modifications. The second thing is while healing using war band frames is still fairly difficult due to visibility obstructions, it is eased by having a arrow around your character's feet that directs you towards where your targets are, this combined with the fading of unit frames that are out of range, lets you heal using the raid frames only easier. Finally healing by clicking on people on the battle fields has definitely been improved with the ability to show health bars of people needing healing, while clicking obstructions such as the target moving, or other people in the way of the target still apply, and can't really be made easier, the health bars help distinguish and prioritize the people who need healing with simple visual awareness. So while WAR does make healing a lot more interesting, and unique from other games, and it also goes a long way in making healing more accessible, it does still suffer from the same things that people don't like about healing in general, and while it's hard to get away from those, WAR definitely has evidence to show that it tried.
Last but not least I'll talk about the final class I tried out, which is the other class that I've tried to keep a secret for dramatic effect, the Warrior Priest. This class was probably one that I was kind of iffy about trying when I first heard about it, partially because I was more interested in playing on the Destruction side, and partially because the name doesn't sound very appealing at all, it's only redeeming factor was how it was described, as a “healer that needed to be a active participant on the front lines to be fully effective”, so now I finally tried and found out what that means. The Warrior Priest is quite different from a Zealot in that it actually does live up to it's promise of you need to be a active participant on the front lines, in this case being melee combat, there's a few things that separate the two, the first being that the Warrior Priest's special mechanic is another type of resource called Righteous Fury, it fuels all of the healing spells I've gotten so far, and one offensive ability. You also have energy as usual which uses primarily offensive abilities, most of which are melee attacks, so like you can guess, you have to hit people to heal people essentially. There is however, one alternative to this method through a channeled spell that lets you convert energy into righteous fury but it doesn't fill the entire bar up, and it leaves you vulnerable for a short time while you regenerate the lost energy, plus while you cast the spell itself, while this is great for starting off as a healing role, eventually I found out that a Warrior Priest is able to do quite a bit of damage, it's not as much as a tank even, but it's enough to finish enemies off easier than the Zealot without being in damage mode is able too. The main problem I found out with this style of play is that it leaves you very vulnerable, the Warrior Priest has about the same armor as a standard DPS class, while playing the same as one, but at the same time doesn't have the same amount of versatility in their skills, and of course, it does not do as much damage as a pure melee damage class would be able too, all of this makes going into combat a struggle for balance, where you want to enter combat only to regenerate enough righteous fury to be able to heal allies, this is also a problem in itself however, as generating enough righteous fury this way to be useful would mean being in battle a lot. However another way to look at it, is you can enter combat to generate enough righteous fury to heal yourself letting you stay in combat longer, both of these styles work well, with the second to me at least being a little odd of being a healer class in the first place. In any case, like the Zealot the Warrior Priest has about a even split between healing and damage abilities, also to a lesser extent, the Warrior Priest also has the mode switching ability of the Zealot in being able to wield two different styles of weapons, one being a hammer, and a charm, this allows them to generate righteous fury while doing nothing, and it also generally focuses on stats that affect and improve healing, while the other, a two handed hammer, focuses on offense. I would however argue that the Warrior Priest's healing spells seem a lot stronger than the Zealots, presumably to even out the difficulty of casting them in the first place, as for the spells themselves, as a level 7 Warrior Priest I had a direct heal that had a short cast, and it also did a small fast heal over time, and like the Zealot, I also had a very strong heal over time spell, I found that using the strong HoT on people who were likely to take damage and then refreshing it as needed resulted in me doing much more healing than burst healing, while putting the HoT on people did while I was a Zealot. Lastly I received a aura that allowed me to heal nearby allies when they attacked a enemy in melee combat for a little bit, this further reflects the idea that generally the Warrior Priest is designed to be on the front lines in theory, but in result I believe a Warrior Priest could be effective at both ranges, but I went with the front lines approach to see how that would be.
In the end between the two I much prefer the Warrior Priest aesthetically, and possibly conceptually. I however doubt my like for healing in the first place however. So while that's a big negative towards both classes for me,they are both fun in their own ways, and someone who fits in their playing styles will find WAR to be a treat.
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