Black Orc vs Magus

[Greylor]

Right...I've been messing around with a number of the classes.

What I do know is that I'm definately going Destruction, and only two classes have interested me long enough to reach level 10....the Black Orc and the Magus.

What I'm trying to find out now is what the rolls of the Black Orc is in late game.

I've been trying to read up on it, but the information seems to be sketchy and spread all over, with most threads that could be informative land up turning into pissing contests between basement virgins.

So....what I'd like to know is, "in the end game as a black orc, ultimately what do you do on the battlefield?"

The information I've gathered so far is that my roll is to aborb damage, and harass the enemy lines by distracting their healers and having their dps spend time on me while my dps gets to hurt them. On top of that, it appears that at later levels I get a couple of moves that will quite radically reduce the amount of damage that my allies take, which appeals (due to the fact that I make a noticable contribution on the battlefield while the gameplay is passive enough to be highly latency friendly).

So would I be right in assuming that the roll of the black orc is not so much to fight the battle, but to try and influence the flow of the battle?

The main downside I see to myself playing an orc is the obvious South African latency. I often find that while on my screen I am chasing someone who is close enough to me to get hit, I am unable to hit them because in actuality they are further from me than the screen says. Also, I find that it is very hard to get moves off in battle as the delay means everything I do, I do slowly, so even my naturally low tank dps is even lower to the point of being almost non-existent.

If the black orc has the more passive roll in late game of simply aborbing damage to oneself and ones allies, and, essentially, screwing with the enemy lines, then that would make it quite latency friendly. If the roll is supposed to be something more active which I am unaware of, then it could be an issue for me.

The problem I have with the magus is that due to my latency, my dps is nowhere near as sharp as that of the enemies that I am fighting. My dps is shoddy, my survivability is non-existent, and my ability to run away is severly hampered. However, if things go right, I can actually still do enough damage to annoy someone....whereas with the Black Orc I often feel that I'm hardly even an inconveniance to the enemy.

Help!

 

[Greylor]

Must be said.....Black Orcs look freaking amazing btw

 

[Boerewors]

What kind of latency do you play with? Sadly the orc remains subpar on DPS for most of the game and is really just a minor threat. As tanks go the Chosen and BG do a lot more damage but are (arguably) a little softer than the orc. Playing melee DPS at anything lower than 900ms is not possible, especially if you have packet loss. Packet loss kills game play in WAR totally. If you have packet loss then the Magus will not be an option either, nothing will.

The magus is a lot better to play with high latency later on in the game as you are in the backline and your reactions only really count when a WH appears trying to climb up on your disc and wants to dance, then you are probably dead anyway. The magus is all about setup and DOT spamming, neither of which needs fast reaction. Go into the changing tree and just fill your screen with tab - dot, tab - another dot, tab - yet another dot. You get up to 6 dots you can stack at range, 5 of them group dots.

You wont be very efficient in that you will be re- applying dots often but hey, the hurt will continue.

So my advice would be stick with the magus, stay away from the front line. Once you hit 16 and you are in T2, you will see that having a pet that shoots through walls (for now) and the ability to hover behind everyone and just layout yellow numbers into the masses becomes quite satisfying.

Magi are really weak until 15-16 and really come into power with their KBs and dots later. You also get a DMG shield that can take 20 hits which increases your armour by a huge amount, makes surviving a lot easier, as well as a 30sec cooldown root.

Dont give up on the magus, just hang back and dot em up. Towards the end of T2 the magus (if played properly) rules the DPS charts alongside their mirror the engineer.

In PVE, you can pull 4-5 mobs and dot em all to death in a few seconds, quite impressive.

So if you are looking for a tank, go Chosen, they are just a LOT more scary than the orc or stick with the magus.

Good luck!

 

[Skurm]

Black Orc is an out and out tank. Roles in PVE are to tank. Role in RVR is to tank offensively as opposed to defensively. By offensively I mean charging into the enemy's ranks and causing as much chaos - not necessarily damage - as possible (by cc'ing and putting pressure and disrupting enemy healers and ranged/casters). Defensive tanking is about staying back with your own healers/ranged and defending them (keeping save da runts up on them and knocking back/down any melee/opposing tanks that get into the back line). Black Orcs make decent defensive tanks but due to their particular set of skills (ie, they're incredibly tough) they excel as frontline assault tanks.

Magus are support casters. Their job is basically to dot everything up and generally cause as much overall damage as possible as opposed to burst dps on single targets. You basically pressurize enemy healers by nuking their whole team with your dots, aoe and stationary pets. They arent really very good 1v1, as that's not really their role as support dps.

re: effects of lag, you can play a tank quite effectively with lag, I know I did, but you have to play like a pinball as opposed to chasing people around seeing 'out of range' all over your screen all the time. I'd say stick to the Magus. Your low DPS right now isn't a result of lag, the class simply comes into it's own later. Once you're AoE dotting everything in sight you should be hitting the top spots constantly.

 

[Greylor]

I have no idea what my latency is at. When I do that google ping thing you mentioned on the other thread it shows up as a constant 370ish...but I KNOW thats not the case in game. I don't seem to be getting any packet loss. Sometimes the delay between moves can get a bit big, but its more like going from 600 to 1000ms rather than actually getting the packet loss.

I suppose I should mention that tanking has always appealed to me in MMOs. I enjoyed my W/Mo in Guild Wars and have been a paladin tank for almost 3 years in WoW (recently changing to death knight tank).

Last night, after making this initial post, I went back to play my orc for a bit before I went to bed. I got my first real taste of what its meant to be like to tank, as you say, "offensively." Was hellova fun. I enjoyed fecking with their line, not only doing surprisingly decent damage (VERY surprisingly decent damage all of a sudden...not enirely sure how but I was out dpsing my magus ...I actually got the highest damage in the battle once) but also doing everything possible to make myself the target (in Gates of Erekund, standing on the bridge by the fortress, facing the lighthouse tends to make one a target for their entire team) and just keeping my armour self-buffs up, absorbing almost their entire teams damage (healers who are awake ftw), and just beating on them with ma choppa and it was the most rewarding feeling in pvp I've ever felt in any game I've ever played. I could actually feel and see the influence I was having on the battle...was awesome.

I know you guys say to stick with magus...but damn I was enjoying my orc yesterday. I think I might level both of them next to eachother so I can see both at a later stage. Magus dotting would actually be a familiar experiance for me....in WoW my first ever main was an affliction warlock which I picked pretty much exclusively because of the dots and how latency friendly it was...so its definately something I will look at.

I appreciate you guys taking the time to post btw. Thanks!

 

[Boerewors]

Which server are you on?

 

[Skurm]

VERY surprisingly decent damage all of a sudden...not enirely sure how but I was out dpsing my magus ...I actually got the highest damage in the battle once) but also doing everything possible to make myself the target

Theres a simple rule in WAR. The best DPS is the DPS that stays alive. Tanks, and particularly Blorcs, are very good at staying alive. This is why I've seen Ironbreakers in T4 crack 200K damage done, and that's insane. They might not have the same spike damage but by constanty cc'ing and bashing people in their backline you're creating a lot of pressure and diverting a lot of attention away from your own team's backline.

Once you get Down Ya Go!(your knockdown) and Big Slash(your knockback), you'll never want to play anything else ever again. If you like the Orc, stick with it. I've played WAR since release day and have a lvl 40 Ironbreaker which I loved to bits(only stopped playing because we all basically rerolled Destruction on K8P) and I have to say, tanks in this game are the most rewarding and powerful incarnation of tanking in any mmorpg I've ever played. In any other MMO tanks are weaksauce in PVP, but in WAR? They're wrecking balls.

This post has made me want to start levelling my Chosen

 

[Boerewors]

And me an IB ;-(. So much to do, so little time to do it all in

 

[Greylor]

Which server are you on?

I'm on Karak Eight-Peaks...as per your note on the other thread

 

[Boerewors]

ahhh lovely, provide me with a name dear sir, so that my minifriends add on will tell me where and when you are on ;-)

 

[Greylor]

Orc = Bakgat

 

[Boerewors]

Hey Grey, send Wargasm, Warganism or Bluejak a tell for an app to the Mox guild. Again, you are not reading your tells ;-)

 

[diabolus]

Yea as people mentioned tanks in WAR is definitely fun to play. It's the only type of class that can actually deal with a zerg..or get a shot off with a zerg coming at them. Other classes just die, even healers. And as it is, WAR is about who got the biggest zerg...

As for Black Orc, they are commonly known to be THE hardest tank to kill. BOs can heal themselves by quite a bit. Their dps is pretty poor , however due to their ability to live that few seconds longer they can do overall alot of damage...even if you're losing 500-0 , a BO can still suicide into a zerg, hit a few things and die and end up above real dps classes.

I leveled a Swordmasster to 40, and as gimp as the class is, it is alot of fun. Admittedly a SM is definitely the "AOE-tank", so running into a zerg and letting it rip is quite entertaining resulting in quite alot of damage.

Anyhow, since alot of us re-rolled destro i tried a whole bunch of other chars, DoK,SH,Magus too and eventually i gravitated towards a tank. I tried the BO, but their mechanic is identical to the Swordmaster ["da plans" ] , so i wasn't getting too excited with sitting with the same issues [having limited access to your abilities, being forced to hit things to get to a better skill etc] . The mechanic alone is not very lag-friendly mind you, if you really need to hit that person to "move up da plans" you get a bit annoyed when getting "target out of range" issues.

However the mechanic is very AP efficient, as you can't spam something over and over, need to always "cycle" through 3 or so skills and repeat.

So i ended up with a Chosen which basically have no restrictions , use any ability any time as long as you have AP. So a Chosen's bane is AP at the end of the day . Either way i'm having a blast (and i even get a skill called "blast wave" ) . The auras are cool, but twisting them is a waste of time imho (you can only have 1 aura active, but as soon as one drops it "lingers" for 12 seconds, resulting in having the ability to have up to 3 auras active at the same time...but you need to cycle through the auras every 4-5 seconds to keep this "plate-spinning-circus-act" up) . Twisting gets annoying and painful VERY fast, and once you realise the disadvantages of having 3 relatively "weak" auras up vs. being able to concentrate on other things (like support, cc, positioning, having AP) then you will pick a favorite aura and just stick with it. Plus, if you throw in some lag, i've found myself without ANY auras [all of them dropping off] if i twist , where if i just put one up and leave it..it's at least up 100% of the time.

Chosen so far seem to me a very "passive-aggressive" tank. In other words, they get ALOT of stuff that "reflects back to attacker" . If you use all of these "reflectors" at the same time, the damage gets crazy. This is why i'd say Chosen is the lag-friendliest tank out there, you just need to stand next to your group and throw up a few of these "reflectors" [some are auras, some are tactics, some are buffs] and you can kill AOE'ing engineers without doing anything . I don't even need to target anyone unless i'm punting them mostly. However since i'm no longer twisting i'm actually pulling a few more "reflector" stunts, i don't know if other Chosens every get to it [like putting a DoT on someone and anyone that heals that target takes 200dmg everytime they cast a heal on him]


Also Chosen is the best looking class in WAR, even Order players will vote that way .

 

[Skurm]

The more casters around, the more damage a Chosen does. A bunch of Bright Wizards are his best friends. I try and keep hots on all the Chosens I see, well, when I'm actively healing - right now I'm experimenting with dps and actually doing respectably - below the pure dps but usually above everyone else.

I have my own Tier1 Chosen sitting there waiting for me to one day throw all my toys out of the cot and ditch my greeny.

 

[BCO]

Also Chosen is the best looking class in WAR, even Order players will vote that way .

Personally, I think the bikini armour wearing WE is the best looking class.

@ Skurm re. BWs and chosen: my alt is a 21 BW, but I've levelled him up the whole time with 2 other mates (I'm called Painsauce, the DPSer, and I play together with Tanksauce, the SM, and Healsauce, the RP). Having a pocket healer is the ONLY way to deal with tank classes that wanna get up close and personal. A BW that doesn't receive a lot of incoming healing is pretty lame, IMO.

That's why on my main (WP) I ensure that I always have a HoT on all BWs around.