First Skirmish

Daily Ramble 179: First Skirmish

I made it to level 40 in Neverwinter Online and I am feeling a bit better about things today. While dungeons seem to just be walking simulators at this level and there’s no learning of my class, I’m feeling better about tanking after trying out my first skirmish. Granted, it did not go all that well but I can see how an Oathbound Paladin can be a decent tank in this game.

Dungeons = Walking Simulators

I suppose I’ve had the ability to queue for a skirmish for quite a few levels but have always passed on it in favor of running a dungeon. Dungeons have defined goals – basically you run through them killing some trash mobs and head to the big bosses where, at least in NWO, the fight is short and to the point. There’s not too much to them and the mechanics, as far as I can tell, are straightforward. Essentially all I end up doing is running along behind whoever in the group is the fastest and I pick up loot and maybe fight a couple stragglers that the front runner didn’t kill or taunt. It’s not too difficult and I really don’t learn too much about playing a Paladin or a tank.

First Skirmish: Ragnarok

Actually I think the first (and only so far) skirmish I’ve taken part in was called The Illusionist’s Gambit but it seemed like that scene in Ragnarok where Hulk and Thor were fighting. This seemed to take place in an arena and there were waves upon waves of bad guys that came at us.

Opposed to the Dungeons where 3 players team up, the Skirmish threw 5 of us into the fray and it seemed I ended up being the tank. I had a rogue, a hunter, a cleric, and a warlock in my party and then there was me…the Oathbound Paladin. I think this was fortunate since I had just been questioning whether I wanted to continue as a tank since I was worried I couldn’t hold aggro or survive taking tons of damage. Needless to say, I had to try to do both in this Skirmish.

Things started out well enough with the bad guys materializing outta thin air all around us and I dove in. Using Radiant Strike to leap at the mobs, I was able to get right in their faces without too much trouble. Then I unleashed my tab ability, Divine Call, to taunt all my foes in a 30 foot radius. This brought the rest of the baddies to me so I could be their focus of attention. For trying this out the first time, things worked pretty well. With the increased Damage Resistance and reflection of incoming damage I was ready to case Templar’s Wrath which provides me with 300% damage done as bonus HP. This really sets me up to tank. With the added hit points I can really take a lot of damage. And things seemed to be going well even with me playing the tank.

Until our Warlock started spamming that we should all just die since we don’t get any extra bonus loot for fighting through the skirmish…huh? yeah, she kept typing that we would simply be wasting our time if we tried to get Bronze . Whatever…I was actually enjoying being the tank. I didn’t get low enough in HP that I really worried since I had basically 2 HP bars – the normal red bar and a gold bar on top of it that showed my extra HP. Anytime the gold bar even got close to going away, I was able to recast Templar’s Wrath and boom! There were my extra HP again – not bad.

Anyway, the Warlock died early but not because I did anything wrong…she basically killed herself…and the other 4 of us fought through and killed off the first few rounds of bad guys to attain Bronze level. Then there was some kind of intermission where a wizard guy asked if we wanted to continue…I said yes…and so did 2 others and we went on.

Now, the first Bronze fight took about 5 minutes so I expected the next level to be similar…it was in types of monsters we were fighting but this time, they all seemed to have way more HP. We also had to deal with ice on the floor and something that was random;y turning us into chickens. This later was really annoying since when a chicken you could do nothing except run around.

Even more annoying was that the Wizard and the Rogue decided they didn’t want to participate in this round so they disconnected. And that was the turning point for a long drawn out fight and what made me really believe I could tank as a Paladin in this game.

The Hunter and Cleric stuck around and we fought…and fought…and fought. My recording of the fight ran outta time 15 minutes into this second round but we kept going. At one point the Cleric got too close to a boss and since I was a chicken I couldn’t pull ago so she died…but still the fight went on. Between the Hunter and I we were able to whittle the boss down and eventually after what seemed like forever, we beat him…but the fight was not over.

I’m not really sure how many rounds we went through or how many bosses we fought but it seemed like the fight would never end. But it did. Around the 25 minute mark, the Hunter went down…again, getting too close while I was a chicken…and I was fighting alone. I actually lasted a couple more minutes but with the chicken curse, eventually I couldn’t keep up my extra HP and they were able to get me.

I’m pretty sure the thing took about 30 minutes of non-stop fighting. It was fun, and I think I learned a bit about my Paladin tank so I feel it was time well spent.

I just hope this is not indicative of how Skirmishes will go every time though since I don’t have that kind of stamina every day.