Blackguard!

Been a while since I posted; sorry =/

So, with the conclusion of the 'Heavy Metal' Event... and the introduction of 1.06 patch, the fury of a legion of Blackguards has been released on the world of Warhammer online! I was pretty stoked... I'd been waiting for the BG for about 2years now; its the class I wanted to play from the get go; then it got cut from production at the last minute. 

It's a "Hate" based class that's the Mechanic mirror of the IB, and role mirror of... the SM I guess.  Listed as an offensive, Anti-Magic tank, the Blackguard is designed as a caster killer.. with interupts, debuffs, disorients; you've got a lot of skills to knock casters out of a fight quick, coupled with high Magic defenses. 

First Impressions: The first night with the BG sucked. Bad.   There were only Knights of the Blazing Sun (Anti-Melee tank) in senarios... so we were getting rocked. The BG ISNT geared to tanking down other tanks; we've got very few skills oriented towards penetrating defenses. Also, I was trying to play it like an ironbreaker, and I was hoarding my Mechanic (Hate).

You can't play these things like an IB... you're missing 40% of the class if you try and hoard hate, unless you're building it for some defensive positioning. Hate doesn't augment most skills in a super-meaningful (read: dmg output) way... it augments secondary effects such as Crit-Chance debuffs and knockback ranges. Your high DPS skills (Pitiless Strike - 90 Dmg delve @ lvl11 + Tough debuff) cost hate to use... so if you're not spending hate, you're not shelling out the numbers you should.  It took me a solid night to get use to doing that.... cause its totaly opposite of a IB. 

Duoing with CJ on a Dok... and he's really getting the hang of a DoK too (which, to be honest, is my favorite class in the whole game. It doesn't work with our setups... but the DoK is just an amazing Machine of a class) adn we're able to take down just about everything. So that leads us to a short story....

I'm lvl11, he's lvl10... We start heading off to the Docks in Nordland, we've been just free roaming... kicking butt and taking names of solo's and trios for a little bit. We get to docks... 2 KotBS and 1 Shadow Warrior... Drop all three like bad habits. So we decided to take docks.. took like 2 minutes. 

So we're chillin, waiting for the 5minute timer to roll up so we can get our second round of Renown and Xp for 'defending' the Docks. I was trying to get out of my combat stance, so I was switching weapons in and out... going from shield + sword, to Halbred, back to shield.. so while I'm swapping in and out... in Rolls order in all their glory.  Initially.. 3 KotBS, 1 WP, 1 WH, 1 SW. 

Yeah, 6v2. 

So fight starts... first target was the WP... I start hitting and I see all this crap rolling across the top of my screen. I noticed we're having a little trouble getting this WP down... I mean, we dropped him, but it took a solid 15sec. Moved on to the WH.. she was like, lvl4, so she took like 10 sec... moved to a KoTBS.. and I finally paid attention to the message at the top of the screen

"You must have a melee weapon to perform that ability!"

Yeah. I didn't have a weapon equiped... my character is 'effn PUNCHING for 1-4 damage per hit.  In WAR, you can't swap weapons in and out during combat... so I'd have to wait until me and CJ were out of combat for 8 seconds. (Thank god the DoK's covenant still procs on Punches... let me do about 60 dmg per punch every 2 to 3 punches). So basically I'm there just absorbing damage for Carlton via guard... and my DoT styles, for some reason, were still applying. 

So, by sheer luck.. the SW is an idiot... and punts me, and Carlton, out of the fray. At this point it was about 2v2... (1 got killed while I was punted by my DoT's.. so 1v2 technically) me and CJ get punted pretty far, in roughly the same place... and there was just enough time, before the SW got back in range, for me to pop a weapon in my hand. 

2 More add in on the fight... 1 KotBS and 1SW. 

the rest of the fight took a solid 20 seconds. we ROCKED the two SW's left, then the KotBS tried to get away, but didn't. Swinging with a weapon instead of punching really helps. 

After we'd realized what just happened... me and Carlton laughed for a solid 3 minutes over Vent. We'd just taken 8 people... of which most were between lvl7-9 (WP was lvl10)... with me not having a weapon equiped for 90% of the fight. I mean... not only did we survive 8v2, which is a feat in itself.. but we did it without 1 of us having a dang weapon. 

If I was anyone of those 8 people... I woulda just quit for the night. 

In Short... the blackguard is really growing on me =)  I've just gotta get it out my mind.. 1) I'm not an IB, 2) I'm not designed to kill everything 3) I work EXTREMELY well with a DoK ;P