DAoC has two basic types of melee fighters – light tanks and heavy tanks. The light tanks are the big damage dealers. They hurt things, a lot. Their sole purpose in life is to end yours as quickly as possible. The heavy tanks, on the other hand, make it their mission to avoid death. They can take a tremendous amount of abuse without dying – but they don’t do much damage.

In WoW, the two types of melee are combined into just one class – the Warrior. A warrior is capable of using virtually any weapon in the game. As long as you take the time to practice with the various weapons, you can be equally skilled with any number of weapons, making it possible to switch your weapon on the fly to suit the monster you’re fighting. Find something that’s resistant to cutting? Switch to a hammer! Unlike DAoC, your various special abilities are not weapon specific. I can perform a Strike just as well with a hammer, axe, or sword.

Warriors in WoW get a “rage” bar that measures just how angry they are. Warriors use their rage to fuel their special attacks. These special attacks can take many forms, attacks that do extra damage, or cause the target to bleed, or slow down the target, or stun them momentarily. The warrior also gets a few special abilities to bolster his group, such as a battle cry that increases everyone’s damage in combat.

Additionally, warriors get three different stances to use in combat. Each stance has certain benefits, as well as limitations. The first stance you get, the Battle Stance, is very well-rounded. You earn rage by hurting your enemies as well as getting hurt yourself. You’ve got a tremendous variety of special attacks that work while in battle stance – great for soloing.

The next stance is a Defensive Stance. While in defensive stance you are harder to hit, but not as many special attacks are available to you, and many of the attacks that you can use rely on you blocking or parrying an attack first. This is great when you want to be a heavy tank, when you want to take lots of abuse without dying. Its very useful in a group situation, but not terribly helpful when you’re solo.

Finally, you get a Berserk Stance, which allows you to really dish out damage. You aren’t nearly as well protected in this final stance, but you can do tremendous amounts of damage. Rage piles up very quickly, and your attacks do lots of damage. However, with all that damage comes lots of attention from the monsters – attention that you won’t long survive without some help.

Posted on July 21 at 8:16 AM