Tank Skill (WoW wins over AoC)

I'll keep this brief, because I'd like to expand on it later.

WoW's 5-mans require reaction and reflex at a level that other content really does not. This is especially true the quicker you pull packs of mobs. Being able to near-instantly respond to a target moving towards a healer, being able to handle multiple mobs through rapid tab targeting, these kinds of things let a Warrior really push ahead in terms of overall skill. There's no real point where a Warrior feels powerless in a 5-man if their healer is alive (granted, there may be points where new Warriors feel they aren't fast enough and become frustrated, but there's no hard cap on the potential at this stage).

Age of Conan (AoC) has some good concepts in it's combat system. However, it's combo system, where abilities require specific sequences of keystrokes to go off, makes much of tanking a zero-skill, unenjoyable experience.

Imagine in WoW if you pressed Shield Slam and needed to wait 5 seconds for it to go off or the Shield Slam was canceled. No matter how good that Shield Slam is, you're put in a retarded situation if you need to cancel it to pick up a runner. Even worse, all of the auto-attack damage you may have dealt while casting was returned in health to your target. That's what AoC is every step of the way.

After actually parsing out the abilities and their innate Hate bonuses in AoC, I was left completely unimpressed. It turns out everything is roughly normalized to produce the same Threat (some abilities which deal less damage provide more Threat to make up for it). Since mobs can put up varying amounts of shields on three parts of their body, the entire system of ability selection is 'attack the side that's unguarded.'

The next sin of AoC is it's relentless damage normalization. For those who remember when instant abilities in WoW were normalized, imagine that, but substantially worse from day 1. Instead of Mortal Strike, dealing Weapon Damage +X, we get Overreach, which deals 120% DPS. Not 120% Damage, but 120% DPS, the overall attack time, including latency, involved in the execution of an ability. Attack damage is even normalized to the length of the animation -- not the actual timer of the ability, but the animation. Funcom was apparently blindsided by discovering that their artists had given male and female animations slightly different timers, thus causing males to have substantially more DPS than females on certain classes and abilities. That's the kind of thing that is so stupid it can't be made up.

Normalization occurs elsewhere: lengthy mathematically-generated gear is the only kind of gear in the game. To be more specific, there was apparently no one who actually looked at the class gear.

Take the Guardian equivalent of Dungeon Set 1 -- the Indomitable set. When these are the first blue items you get, you can feel pretty happy about it. Until, that is, you start noticing bonuses like Mana on Full Plate, the one type of armor that cannot be worn by a Mana user. Or maybe you notice the flaw when you find armor 7 levels below your set that have substantially higher invulnerabilities and overall stats (the equivalent of Armor).

The class requires zero reaction time or thought to perform at top notch. Playing a Guardian well is a shadow of what it takes to play a WoW Warrior well. It's sad to say, but leveling it is far more entertaining than doing anything at endgame. From what raiding I've done, it looks similar to WoW, which at least gives a reason to keep playing to see if things turn upward (minus the fact that every single encounter is, at various times of any given week, completely broken, and there is apparently no Funcom test team).

It's not to say the Guardian is bad. In fact, it's probably the most fun class I've leveled in any game. The static combo system I described above works fine in a situation where you're not in any danger of losing aggro. The Guardian is amazing at AOE grinding, has a much more fluid playstyle. It also has something Warcraft needs now -- a large amount of natural health regen while in Defensive Stance.

Every MMO is rocky at the start; the concern is trends. Hopefully they fix this mess they've made by taking the easy way out on their endgame.

On a separate note, as I've said many times in the last two months, I'm greatly looking forward to WotLK.