Is there any point rolling a Black Orc if I have a Swordmaster already?

[GodlessCrom]

This is purely anecdotal obviously, but I will say I see quite a few more "good" Swordmasters than I do Black Orcs. I would say Black Orc is one of the most common tanks, and most go sword-n-board (Slagnarf and Heymate are the only two I see who go 2h with any regularity, and I haven't seen Heymate in a while, figure pan's been playing his WP and Magus more), and despite snb Borc being quite good as tanks go, I see them mostly accomplish very little relative to say, the Chosen (or those brave few Black Guards). The Swordmasters I see, on the other hand, often kick a considerable amount of ass: Celegion, Eiger, Cythe, Nensu and Syfalis are all ones I can recall offhand who do decent damage, get lots of dbs (relatively), and still benefit the rest of us Order scrubs with stat steal, guard, etc.

Could be a few reasons for this obviously. But speaking as someone who plays mostly Order, if you go Swordmaster, you got plenty of people with a decent amount of game knowledge to help you out, and Order players seem pretty accepting of various playstyles. F'rex, I never get **** for playing a 2h tank on Order, whereas as Destro (where there are fewer 2h tanks in general, in my experience) is quite hostile to anything that isn't snb deftard guard bot. This could be because the Order tanks are more suited to 2h anyways--SM is obviously the best one, and 2h IB is quite good as well--but still, I would say there is a definite bias among destro players against any tank with a 2her, if thats what you want. If you play with buddies, it doesn't matter as much obviously.

[blaqwar]

Borc more than made up for it with shield (hello +10% block tactic) which serve both as parry/disrupt where as SM needs to spec for and take 2 tactic slots

- SMs get a double parry tactic baseline, which is not the same I will admit, but I bet that it accounts for more than 10% parry increase when slotted. SMs are not out of options when it comes to baseline avoidance.

The "ONLY" thing SM have better is WoDS... which means you delay your death slightly because you aren't doing active dmg (reflect dmg are minimum) where as Borc with shield have defense buff at 100% uptime at lower dmg (1h vs 2h)

- WODS is usable with a 2 handed weapon, I was replying to your post arguing that BO was objectively a better 2 handed tank, yet you're comparing a S&B ability to a 2 handed ability (above as well), apples and oranges thus irrelevant.

There is a reason few SM runs Heaven blade, it takes too long to set up and you have no control over when the blade enchantment will proc. Where as Nature's blade is much better in group setting for strength, toughness, initiative steal (that's +100 to your stat and -100 to theirs)

- I'm sorry but how is HB any different than any other blade enchant/bellow? It procs 25% of the time, 1/4 hits, there is no setup time, you hit, it procs. If anything it's better than NB since stat steal is randomized (for example; stealing ballistic might not be that useful if you don't have an Engi/SW in the group). Sure it serves a more selfish role by debuffing spirit and increasing your own damage but there are other careers that can make use of it (primarily AMs). The major benefit is that it can make your damage ignore resists, which is huge.

Just a few points. Think what you will, enjoy whatever you choose to play!

[TenTonHammer]

lingering intimidation is pretty good

no one talk about it though

The reason Sm dont have a NiDF equivalent is ofc b/c of SL

[Dalgrimar]

Destro (where there are fewer 2h tanks in general, in my experience) is quite hostile to anything that isn't snb deftard guard bot. This could be because the Order tanks are more suited to 2h anyways--SM is obviously the best one, and 2h IB is quite good as well--but still, I would say there is a definite bias among destro players against any tank with a 2her, if thats what you want. If you play with buddies, it doesn't matter as much obviously.

Tbh in my opinion 2hander BO is allot better than SnB offensive BO but it requares allot of Parry wich is hard to achieve with the current gear and renown rank.
On Live i ran a beast 2hander BO but that was with TB and rr100 wich is different so ye.

[Razid1987]

Sovereign - 'nuff said

[7rere7]

The reason why the majority of BO's go shield is the damage between shield and two handed is not a big drop off for some reason. Should BO get corporal damage like SM has spirit damage? Idk but damage needs reworked.

SM doesn't have to worry about Weapon skill for damage but entirely one stat ,"strength " . Where as the BO focusing on weapon skill increases damage and small % of parry its not worth it cause strength is a better choice.

SM also has eagles flight ,25% parry that's huge cause parry blocks all types of guard attacks. Majority two handed BO dont use guard and if they do its range guarded ally ,which in most cases out of range during combat.

I think BO is strong but not the tank you want to pick if you want to go two handed weapon style of play.

[TenTonHammer]

Tbh in my opinion 2hander BO is allot better than SnB offensive BO

You sez me blok dat? makes this statement invalid

SnB BO is much more survivable, an has greater utility with access to things like you missed me and HTL while still putting out strong/good dps

[Earthpac]

SM Sov looks pretty decent?

Ontopic: A well played BO is a better tank than a well played SM. Especially for the long term towards rr80 itemization since SM damage will simply flat out plummit.

However you should play whichever realm and/or character you prefer (keep in mind that single faction lockout seems to be a very serious thing that is deemed to happen).

How come their damage drops off? I got the impression that their damage got better later on compared to BO's because armour gets so high.

If single faction lockout happens would it also have a system to stop people just making a different account for the other faction? That pretty much ties me to order for the moment though I guess.

And also, people seem to be saying that BO's have even more burst than SM's at the current level where SM's actually debuff resists to 0, is that right?

At the moment on my 31 SM I usually combo BS, Taunt, SS, WoH, ED (using 2 shifts before engaging for BS) which gets unguarded mdps or casters in the 20% or so range pretty quick, can BO's match that burst even without the spirit damage synergy?

[TenTonHammer]

How come their damage drops off? I got the impression that their damage got better later on compared to BO's because armour gets so high.

If single faction lockout happens would it also have a system to stop people just making a different account for the other faction? That pretty much ties me to order for the moment though I guess.

And also, people seem to be saying that BO's have even more burst than SM's at the current level where SM's actually debuff resists to 0, is that right?

At the moment on my 31 SM I usually combo BS, Taunt, SS, WoH, ED (using 2 shifts before engaging for BS) which gets unguarded mdps or casters in the 20% or so range pretty quick, can BO's match that burst even without the spirit damage synergy?

because resist values increase as the game progress

if there was a single faction lockout then people will just make another free account

BO's have more burst because of stab you gooder which means that their crits are bigger than SM's

Lastly the devs have stated that they have a goal to curtail the tread of armor stacking that was present on live so the armor increase will not be as significant

and furthermore BO can debuff armor pretty heavily with its own armor debuff/maras armor debuff and the M1 armor debuff

[GodlessCrom]

Resists softcap fairly hard at 40-45% though. Armor is stackable for a lot more. You will always get better returns from stacking armor than from stacking resists, once you reach resist softcap (which isn't hard to reach at current gear levels).