So You've Decided to Play a Goblin Shaman?

Creating your character in WAR is a very easy and straightforward process. There are no stats for you to tweak, just the look of your character to customize. So without further ado make your Gobbo as funny looking or serious as you like and enter the game on your chosen server.

You've chosen to make a Goblin Shaman, so before we go any further let me explain what you have taken on by doing so. You are a healing class and so people are going to expect you to heal, whether you want to or not, and if you choose to ignore healing you are missing out on a large part of your potential. In addition to aforementioned items you have to learn the basic class mechanic for the Shaman, how to harness the power of the WAAAAGHH!

An interesting mechanic and one that ensures as a Shaman you don't fail to neglect either path. To be the best healer out there, you are going to have to attack the enemy at some point to build up that bonus. Which leads me to one of WAR's nice little features: offensive and defensive targeting? You are able to have two targets in the game, and as a shaman you will make extensive use of this feature. You are able to target an enemy and friend at the same time, ensuring that any damaging spells hit the enemy, and all buffs and heals hit your friend.

So you'll start at Rank 1 and with three abilities already on your hot bar. Brain Bursta, Gork'll Fix It and Flee. Brain Bursta is your very first DPS spell and will be the bread and butter of your arsenal, dealing 53 Elemental damage to your offensive target. One thing I should also mention here is that abilities learned at this low level scale as you grow, so even Rank 1 abilities are useful to you as you grow. Gork'll Fix It heals your target for 43 and then for a further 114 over 9 seconds, so essentially a small burst heal with a nice HoT (Heal over Time). Now Flee, whilst it is described as a buff is really an ability, you can use it to run places faster or for its proper usage, escape from a battle if things go a bit pear shaped. However, there is a down side. By triggering this mechanic you will lose all AP, all WAAAGHH! and your Morale will start to decrease too. Morale is something that is built up gradually over time, but only whilst you are in combat, as Morale increases it will make certain abilities available to you but, since you aren't able to train the very first ability till Rank 8 we will explore this in more detail later.

Now would be a good time to introduce you to the groundbreaking and innovative feature that is the Tome of Knowledge (ToK). If anyone has ever played Lord of the Rings Online, you may have a slight feel for what this feature entails, but let me tell you now, it is so much more. The ToK acts as many things, an in-game Encyclopedia, quest log, titles earned, mob kill count etc. One of the best details is that the tome levels with you. It starts out blank and you fill all the information in, so many months down the line when you've hit Rank 40, it will show all you've accomplished during your epic journey.



At some point in this game you are going to fight in a Realm vs. Realm (RvR) environment. RvR contributes directly to your Rank through giving you experience, and as a Shaman you will earn experience both from attacking enemy players and contributing to their deaths or by healing your allies. You also receive Renown Rank (RR) experience too, which simply put, is an RvR Rank. You are given a rank title too, and the first one you will receive as a Goblin is Little Git. Your RR will be important as you level, as it will unlock access to purchasing decent gear from vendors in conjunction with your Rank. Not only this but you gain one RR point per RR Rank, which you can spend at a Renown Vendor NPC to further specialise and personalise your class.

Public Quests (PQ) are another exciting invention for this game, and they work very well and very easily. To take part all you have to do is enter the area, and you will know you have done so as box will appear informing you of the current stage and progress. All you have to do here is take part; just do what your class does best. Once the PQ has finished everyone is rated on their contributions and receives a medal which will grant a point bonus. Once that has been done, everyone that took part receives a random roll from 0 - 1000, and then those that received a bonus get that added to their roll. If your score then comes in the top three (or six for some PQs), you will receive a loot bag and should collect it from the chest. There are varying colors of loot bags and various levels of each color which is determined randomly it seems. As a Shaman you will get a better contribution score if you DPS as well as heal, and don't forget to throw your buffs out too.

From: MMORPG.com