The Psychology of Archetypes

So apparently there’s some article in the Escapist that discusses the psyche of someone who always tanks in a game. And there are those who always heal, of course. Or those who just do DPS while backseat driving both tank and healers to do their @#)*& jobs.

I wonder what it says about the psyche of people like me who just gotta try it all?

My WAR compulsion has now led to a 4th planned alt. This successfully rounds off all four main archetypes from tank, healer, melee DPS to ranged DPS.

I guess I just like being in different parts of a fight depending on the situation and what I feel like doing at any time. And it’s just more effective for everyone if you’ve walked a mile in somebody else’s footsteps and know what makes it easier and harder for another to do their job and all, y’know?

Priorities have changed somewhat after trying them out though. I’d initially been dead set on playing a Black Orc first for the tankiness and lore immersion aspect, but I’ve been finding it a very slow starter whose lowbie levels are like pulling teeth. The combat mechanics of ‘hit ‘em’ ‘gud plan’ ‘best plan’ limit me to repeating the exact 1, 2, 4 button combination ad nauseam for the greater part of five to six levels, doing pathetic damage and having little opportunity to improve it because all the good gear goes to people who are actually DPSing or healing, while you don’t even get a taunt until level 7.

Admittedly, things begin to improve past level 8, with more abilities beginning to offer a bit more tactical choice and all the nifty defensive skills that you can use to protect people start arriving, but it takes an effort to get there.

The synergy of a healer attached to your tank’s butt is also important. If I had a guaranteed healer buddy that I could always play with, I would totally be there as a Black Orc. Not that it’s a healbot I’m looking for. On the contrary, I would actually have a FUNCTION. Because I do cruddy if passable damage, but am a great meatshield who will steadily get a bunch of ally buffs and cc/debuffs to mess around with an opponent. Not to mention, have someone to actually…y’know, guard and protect. With skills and collision detection and what not.

In essence, WAR has gotten tank function down pretty pat. It’s a great ally support class, with dps that is godawful and slowly gets to passable then decent and better in your teens. But it’s hard finding an ally to protect and who will top off your brimming health bar from an onslaught of 4-5 opponents.

Because as usual, few people are playing healers who actually heal. So what else is new?

I guess the news is that -I’m- about to enter the healer’s world as my class of second choice.

I have been finding the Disciple of Khaine exceedingly thrilling. I dual wield (so I’m like Drizzt on a really bad Chaos warpstone day) and can produce very decent melee DPS that is higher than my tank can. So far, I’ve two heal over times and I’ll probably get a few other lifesteal/single target heal things and group heals eventually.

I already stand out for the sheer novelty of actually bothering to heal other people from time to time, as opposed to all the other n00b DoKs who will stand and stare dully while their teammates, or me, or themselves are taking rapid nosedives in hp from the onslaught of opponents.

Being able to assign a defensive target as well as an offensive one is very freeing. It leaves me able to mix attack and heals at the drop of a hat, and I’m thrilled after the limitation of “you can only pick these two skills until you have a gud plan, and these other two skills can only be used with a best plan, and did we mention the best plan evaporates after what seems like 2 seconds, and your skill global cool down is 1.5 seconds, so you better be on the ball and not lag” to be able to pick what I want to cast now, when I want it, thank you.

At lowbie stages, healing is placed on a pedestal in terms of value and effectiveness. I confess to not being as keen to heal once people have learned to target healers first and foremost (and yes, the pansy dark elf in robes with two swords is a melee healer, not a melee DPS nor a tank, as opposed to the pansy high elf in robes and a big two hander who is an Order tank) and have gotten all their healing debuff act together…

…but I suppose past level 10, it’ll give the many people playing tanks (my guild seems to have a ton of people playing BOrc or Chosen) a chance to shine and actually put some guarding tactics to use. Pre-level 10, all I can do is try and keep out of the way, in the background, when there are way too many to fight. Which isn’t the best of situations for a melee healer, dammit. I should be right up there, next to and being guarded by a tank, and keeping the frontline healed while chopping stuff up. Not easy when you get focus fired and your tanks are a bit too dumb to notice or don’t have the abilities yet to save you from it.

Anyway, the success or failure of tanks and other characters seem to hinge critically on if there are enough healers around to sustain them, and I’m always so rotten tired of looking around on a tank and not getting any heals.

So by Khaine, I shall do the healing, dammit. I will heal to the best of my ability, which also means I have to get up close and hit crap, thank goodness, and I shall proceed to multitask both happily, and the only thing you PUG putzes have to do is stop me from getting focus fired if I get noticed (and I try hard not to be), and if I die (or decide running away is the better part of valor) because you can’t handle that, then you get to die too shortly after because your heals have gone bye-bye.

For some reason, this strikes me as a infinitely more “fair” and less frustrating situation than the first, because half the time I can’t even find the existence of any healers as a tank, and without them, I’m just meat for a bright wizard’s BBQ anyway. It’s like, we had no chance at all.

Versus, “look, I’m healing you, we’re doing fine, we have a chance, AAAARGH, savemehelp, seriously, needhelphere, ohbuggerit” – see, that’s why we lost, we had a good chance but the other side was more competent and outmatched and out-organized us and ripped apart our healers (me included). At least we started out -having- a faint chance.

And the more healers the merrier. One healer is just asking to get raped by a sneaksy witch hunter. A pack of 4 pumping each other full of heals while going snicker snack slicey dicey will give any lone melee DPS a run for its money.

My altism also has led me into trying out something I normally don’t do – ranged DPS. Mostly because I’ve gotten too frustrated as an unhealed tank getting decimated by these jokers.

I’ve avoided the straight out offensive ranged dps for now because I prefer the Order Bright Wizard over its Destruction mirror – a near nekkid Sorceress (or -rer). Who cares about dark magic if I can be throwing *giggles insanely* Fire fire FIRE. *prances around with pyromaniac glee*

Well, maybe on another server, anyway.

The Squig Hunter looks interesting as a utility ranger-like DPS class, but plinking things full of arrows wasn’t quite the initial ‘magic glass cannon’ aspect I wanted to experience, so again, he keeps for another day.

That left the defensive ‘turret’-setup area-defence DPS class to experiment with. Dwarf engineers had been driving my Black Orc nuts, so I gave the mirror class, the Chaos Magus a try.

Amusingly, this finally seemed to be one class that ‘fit’ the Lycaeus moniker.

(I mean, a Black Orc named Lycaeus just wouldn’t make any sense, he wouldn’t get beyond pronouncing one syllable. I’m already using Stormscar for my Marauder cos it sounds a lot more Norse-y violent bragging rights over Lyc. And while I was initially thinking of naming the DoK Lycaeus, the son of a bitch elf stared back at me through the screen and said his name sounded much better starting with a “Mord-“ prefix type name.

But a noble dark archmage sort of bastard is just perfect for a Greek-Romanish wolf type name.)

Movement is unique, since the Magus floats around higher-than-thou on a Tzeentch disc. Funny bug in the character creation though, because after 15 seconds, this guy decided to float and flew his face beyond the screen so I couldn’t see what options I was changing. :)

He also feels a bit less mobile than my other characters. He can’t run away in a hurry. As I found out on a very badly imbalanced in Order’s favor scenario, which was all about being mobile enough to run to three areas to capture. Everybody ran off in various directions, I was puffing along behind, and when some pimped level 10s and 11s (near the upper limit, buffed out in renown gear) ran up to slice and dice the robe wearers… well, ouch. No chance whatsoever. I had tried to run, but it was a lost cause. Again, actually having a functioning tank + healer team around me might have helped. (Like such a thing exists in the first PUG scenario.)

Still, I found this fellow a monster in PvE situations. There’s nearly always a tank around to sponge off. All I need is five seconds set up time to conjure up my ‘turret’ – some type of pink or blue horror, and then me and my pet turn into a stationary sentry gun of destruction. I have spells for long range high damage sniping with longer cast times, some mid-range DoT/debuff spells that make me think of a WoW warlock, and one or two supershort range, decent but not great damage spells to defend against things that get into melee range.

I can also forsee some situations in RvR that this guy could get useful. Defending high ground areas. Especially in tandem with other Maguses. In big zerg standoffs where the melees don’t dare to approach each other, we could still snipe stuff, etc.
Anyhow, it was a nice change of perspective, especially since the class that I’ve settled on for a mostly-main is its nemesis. The melee-DPS brawler known as a Marauder.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to do decent damage in RvR. My playstyle tends toward being a wussy/canny survivor in PvP, ready to add on to a battle in progress to shift numbers from even to unfair in my favor, and being mobile and flanking things while having enough oomph in my attacks to either kill or be a significant distraction/impediment.

Plus being up close and personal hitting things with something sharp.
Tankiness is all very well. I can do it. I can play with collison detection and shoving my meaty green mass in between someone and my squishies. If I ever got decent cc skills, I can play the cc manipulate and control role right along with being tanky, but this assumes I actually have someone to be tanky FOR. Not to mention, a healer buddy that I can rely on.

I think it’s just not guaranteed to happen every time I log on. So why waste my time waiting for the team to align just perfectly when there are going to be guild mate tanks with their spouses as their pet healers, and other spare tanks with no healer companions?

Heck, we’ll play another role. Melee damage/debuffing, and squishy harassment. It’s not as core a function as tank+healer, but benefits very well from having such tank+healer teams in place. It can be done alone or as part of a group. I get to be even more mobile than most because I’m a brawler-type melee DPS rather than a stealther melee DPS, so I get a charge skill to add to runspeed, which is good for pursuit and capture objective/flag type games.

And I like the flexibility inherent in the class. I can pick one of three mutations at any time. One turns me into a single-target killing machine. Another is more of a throw-on-so-many-debuffs-you’re-no-longer-a-tank-or-healer sort of debuff spec. And the last is a cone AoE carnage spec, which should be good for chokepoints stuffed full of opposition or mass burning down of things in PvE.

I think the main problem is deciding which mutation to focus on and buff in my tier
tree. I’ll probably buff the single-target damage one because that’ll be useful both in my loner forays as well as in a group (more DPS on a boss or just plain dead people, nothing to sneeze at). But I like the option of converting into a debuff machine or aoe machine when the need arises. So I won’t do it as well as someone who’s spec’ed for it, but sometimes picking the right cheapo tool at the right time is more functional than an expensive tool for the wrong occasion.