Despite my fond memories, I find myself hating this game sometimes.

[Darrell]

I came back to it months ago after coming down with a bad case of 'Member Berries. I played RoR some time ago, before T4 opened, but ended up drifting away due to various reasons. I got an itch and decided to check it out again late last year, reading forums and watching videos/streams of people playing. I always liked the Warhammer Fantasy universe, and I enjoyed the larger RvR scale of the game. Taking keeps, roaming, the notion of a world of PvP that lacked in World of Warcraft for me and no game had really captured other than Dark Age of Camelot.

At first, I tried returning to my old characters. My Marauder, 40/28 was a disaster. Absolutely getting creamed everywhere; RvR, scenarios, everything. I tried my Witch Elf, which was 40/36 or so and is now 40/38. Same story; my damage is pitiful, my survivability is even worse. I've watched so many players show off their skill with Witch Hunters and Witch Elves, jumping someone and just murdering them without pause. I watch and think "Hey, I could do that". But then I try to emulate and I just can't make it work for me. So, I thought maybe melee dps isn't my thing. Maybe I could try tanking.

Collateral was very polite and patient in giving me advice with playing a Black Orc, which I managed to hit 40/40 with. I followed his advice through 99% of my BO career, spec'ing and gearing purely for tanking. At 40, I decided to give the dps BO a try and, as my thread on the Greenskins forum showed, that did not work well. My damage was awful. My survivability was awful. Even geared as pure tank, I don't feel tough enough. And, I don't particularly like just being a brick wall standing there. I like being a threat. I understand that I need the dps gear to play a BO that way, but in the meantime I feel stuck playing as a pure tank that doesn't feel particularly tanky and isn't the playstyle I wanted anyway.

So, for the past few days I've been bouncing around trying to find something that can work for me. I tried my Marauder again, but that hadn't gotten any better. I thought I had found a bit of success on my Witch Elf, hitting 1k+ punctures, but I guess I was hitting targets that weren't wearing any gear or anything because since then I've been hitting around 450. I have a 28 Witch Hunter that I've played, and I haven't been able to get that to work for me. I thought maybe if I could get enough mastery points to pick up Burn Away Lies, the fun would kick in but getting there is like dragging my tongue over broken glass. I also have a 28 White Lion that I tried. I thought, surely as much as people say this class is over the top, I could make it work. But no. Still no damage, still can't take any hits. I tried messing around with a 2H Black Guard in T1, but if anyone looks at me I melt faster than even my BO without a shield and as a tank I kind of have to be on the front line. But, what if the front line isn't that place for me? I switched over to Squig Herder and Shadow Warrior, both I had around rank 15. Still can't make it work. Every career seems so easy and fun when I see others play it but the moment I try it out, it turns into hot garbage. I know that's not the fault of the class and that responsibility is purely mine, but it's still a bitter pill to swallow.

I know it's not the actual case, but I can't help but feel like my combat log always looks like this after my death:

You attack Enemy with your Attack and deal 0 damage. Actually, less than 0. Your attack somehow healed him.
Enemy looks in your General Direction. He deals 100000000000000 damage to you. And to your family. And to their pets. And to everything you've ever loved.
You have died.

Scenarios feel like such a chore, beating my head against a wall for ten minutes at a time to maybe get 1 emblem. Mostly I pug, and I know the game isn't designed for that but my hours of playtime make it difficult to really coordinate with a group. My BO does run with a guild group when I can, but I often feel like I'm something of a seventh wheel. I don't know why I can't make it work. Collateral and ragafury and others have taken a lot of time and given me a lot of helpful advice. I just... I don't know. I can't figure out what I'm good at in this game and it drives me up the damn wall sometimes. Open RvR is fine if I'm zerging, but then I feel like I'm just riding other people's coat tails. Usually I just end up standing around not doing anything. Standing idle at a battle objective watching ticks go by, spamming Hold the Line, meandering about trying to find some stragglers to pick off, standing on a wall trying to look threatening.

I always sort of had it in my mind that I'd have this career I'd have a lot of fun with and get good at and I'd join groups and people would be like "Oh hey, it's Darrell, awesome. Things are so much better now." Like I'd be a valuable tank or dps or whatever and I'd feel like I was contributing in some meaningful way. But that hasn't happened. The only attention I've ever managed to draw to myself is being called out for being hot garbage. And I know I'm hot garbage but I'm trying to make something work.

This isn't a rant about anything in the game, or a career, or the other people playing it or anything like that. None of that is a factor here. The devs have done a great job bringing this game back to life, the game has a lot of great people playing it and I've been fortunate enough to speak with a few of them. It's the fault of no one and nothing but myself that I've been plagued with so much frustration with the game. I want to love it so much, I want to enjoy it so much, but every time I log in it's like the game is just kicking me in the balls for hours on end. Streams and videos and forum posts make it seem so fun and I just want to grab my monitor and scream "WHERE IS THE FUN? TEACH ME YOUR BLACK MAGIC, WIZARD!". I just have this constant feeling of dread over me like unless I'm Rank 40, Renown Rank 70, BiS geared, with full talis, fully potted, with two guards and two healers welded to my limbs like some bizarre Voltron that I can't be of use. Honestly, I suspect that if I had a class that had infinite health, did infinite damage, with infinite number of attacks per round, I'd still botch it somehow. I don't know how you people do it, I really don't.

I just wanted to get this off my chest. It's been a rough time. But I appreciate those of you who do make the game look fun. I enjoy watching your streams and videos, and reading your forum posts.

TL;DR: I want to love this game but it's like a drunk lover that beats me and keeps asking why I make it hurt me.

[Reesh]

1. Find a good guild to play with, this isn't a solo game. Without support and coordination with others playing this game is pointless.

2. Decide on character and stick with it without constantly switching. Learn the class, gear it.

3. Set up your addons accordingly. That game is all about buffs and debuffs. You need to know what is that effect on you and react to that accordingly.

[Darosh]

Spoiler:

I came back to it months ago after coming down with a bad case of 'Member Berries. I played RoR some time ago, before T4 opened, but ended up drifting away due to various reasons. I got an itch and decided to check it out again late last year, reading forums and watching videos/streams of people playing. I always liked the Warhammer Fantasy universe, and I enjoyed the larger RvR scale of the game. Taking keeps, roaming, the notion of a world of PvP that lacked in World of Warcraft for me and no game had really captured other than Dark Age of Camelot.

At first, I tried returning to my old characters. My Marauder, 40/28 was a disaster. Absolutely getting creamed everywhere; RvR, scenarios, everything. I tried my Witch Elf, which was 40/36 or so and is now 40/38. Same story; my damage is pitiful, my survivability is even worse. I've watched so many players show off their skill with Witch Hunters and Witch Elves, jumping someone and just murdering them without pause. I watch and think "Hey, I could do that". But then I try to emulate and I just can't make it work for me. So, I thought maybe melee dps isn't my thing. Maybe I could try tanking.

Collateral was very polite and patient in giving me advice with playing a Black Orc, which I managed to hit 40/40 with. I followed his advice through 99% of my BO career, spec'ing and gearing purely for tanking. At 40, I decided to give the dps BO a try and, as my thread on the Greenskins forum showed, that did not work well. My damage was awful. My survivability was awful. Even geared as pure tank, I don't feel tough enough. And, I don't particularly like just being a brick wall standing there. I like being a threat. I understand that I need the dps gear to play a BO that way, but in the meantime I feel stuck playing as a pure tank that doesn't feel particularly tanky and isn't the playstyle I wanted anyway.

So, for the past few days I've been bouncing around trying to find something that can work for me. I tried my Marauder again, but that hadn't gotten any better. I thought I had found a bit of success on my Witch Elf, hitting 1k+ punctures, but I guess I was hitting targets that weren't wearing any gear or anything because since then I've been hitting around 450. I have a 28 Witch Hunter that I've played, and I haven't been able to get that to work for me. I thought maybe if I could get enough mastery points to pick up Burn Away Lies, the fun would kick in but getting there is like dragging my tongue over broken glass. I also have a 28 White Lion that I tried. I thought, surely as much as people say this class is over the top, I could make it work. But no. Still no damage, still can't take any hits. I tried messing around with a 2H Black Guard in T1, but if anyone looks at me I melt faster than even my BO without a shield and as a tank I kind of have to be on the front line. But, what if the front line isn't that place for me? I switched over to Squig Herder and Shadow Warrior, both I had around rank 15. Still can't make it work. Every career seems so easy and fun when I see others play it but the moment I try it out, it turns into hot garbage. I know that's not the fault of the class and that responsibility is purely mine, but it's still a bitter pill to swallow.

I know it's not the actual case, but I can't help but feel like my combat log always looks like this after my death:

You attack Enemy with your Attack and deal 0 damage. Actually, less than 0. Your attack somehow healed him.
Enemy looks in your General Direction. He deals 100000000000000 damage to you. And to your family. And to their pets. And to everything you've ever loved.
You have died.

Scenarios feel like such a chore, beating my head against a wall for ten minutes at a time to maybe get 1 emblem. Mostly I pug, and I know the game isn't designed for that but my hours of playtime make it difficult to really coordinate with a group. My BO does run with a guild group when I can, but I often feel like I'm something of a seventh wheel. I don't know why I can't make it work. Collateral and ragafury and others have taken a lot of time and given me a lot of helpful advice. I just... I don't know. I can't figure out what I'm good at in this game and it drives me up the damn wall sometimes. Open RvR is fine if I'm zerging, but then I feel like I'm just riding other people's coat tails. Usually I just end up standing around not doing anything. Standing idle at a battle objective watching ticks go by, spamming Hold the Line, meandering about trying to find some stragglers to pick off, standing on a wall trying to look threatening.

I always sort of had it in my mind that I'd have this career I'd have a lot of fun with and get good at and I'd join groups and people would be like "Oh hey, it's Darrell, awesome. Things are so much better now." Like I'd be a valuable tank or dps or whatever and I'd feel like I was contributing in some meaningful way. But that hasn't happened. The only attention I've ever managed to draw to myself is being called out for being hot garbage. And I know I'm hot garbage but I'm trying to make something work.

This isn't a rant about anything in the game, or a career, or the other people playing it or anything like that. None of that is a factor here. The devs have done a great job bringing this game back to life, the game has a lot of great people playing it and I've been fortunate enough to speak with a few of them. It's the fault of no one and nothing but myself that I've been plagued with so much frustration with the game. I want to love it so much, I want to enjoy it so much, but every time I log in it's like the game is just kicking me in the balls for hours on end. Streams and videos and forum posts make it seem so fun and I just want to grab my monitor and scream "WHERE IS THE FUN? TEACH ME YOUR BLACK MAGIC, WIZARD!". I just have this constant feeling of dread over me like unless I'm Rank 40, Renown Rank 70, BiS geared, with full talis, fully potted, with two guards and two healers welded to my limbs like some bizarre Voltron that I can't be of use. Honestly, I suspect that if I had a class that had infinite health, did infinite damage, with infinite number of attacks per round, I'd still botch it somehow. I don't know how you people do it, I really don't.

I just wanted to get this off my chest. It's been a rough time. But I appreciate those of you who do make the game look fun. I enjoy watching your streams and videos, and reading your forum posts.

TL;DR: I want to love this game but it's like a drunk lover that beats me and keeps asking why I make it hurt me.

First of all: Play whatever is the most fun to you, the best metric besides that is visuals - endgame is all about fashion, once you are set gear/groupwise. Don't fixate so much on numbers ~

Judging by your elaboration in regards to the numbers you actually see on your dpsbots, you might wanna pick up Buffhead and have it display detaunts and guard. You'll need someone to strip guard for you, and preferably someone assisting you ~ or vice versa.
You can perform just well with entry-level gear; Anni/Ruin/Merc/BL/lair or T1 sc weapons, the biggest amplifier to your pewpew will ultimately be a group and general awareness (what targets to pick on, when to swap targets, when to pull out, yadayada). Now, don't fool yourself, a group doesn't have to be full or even optimized, any setup will give you an edge over the average pug - a group starts at two members, so just get yourself a buddy to run with.

Groupplay is so very essential, not only because of the dry math that comes with it, but because it helps alot combatting tilt. Its alot more fun to get steamrolled while having a laugh with other derps on voice or in the chat.

Just pick any class that you are naturally drawn to, stick to it for a while and try to build a roster of frendos to cover all your potential online times. Most importantly: have fun, and play the game to have fun - not to meet some mysterious epeen metric.
No one will care much if you mess up, people are alot more patient and 'forgiving' than you seem to think; if people were too upset with you, they wouldn't group with you at all... chances are you don't want to group with these very very salty specimen either, so there is nothing lost.
I'd suggest to maybe pick up an RP guild, most if not all RP'ers are hilarious people. If your major destro bias wouldn't shine through so very apparently, I'd suggest you to pick up just about any Dwarf and have a field day with it, well any class but Slayer as long you don't have a fix group. But Engi/IB/RP are incredible classes with the added benefit of being welcome at Bitterstone events.

Dwarf = master race. *cough*

[Glorian]

Pretty much what Darosh says.
Dwarf Masterrace and all.

On a more serious note.
In RvR you aren't a special snowflake that can kill people alone.

Nuclearpotato on his magus can do that with pet tank and two shamies that can kite you to Praag and back.

You like 99% of us are the happy dancing scum on the server. And our only chance to kill something is to find at least one other guy and use /assist or enemy addon to get the same target.

For example the engineer sniper has hard times to kill something alone. If you are top gear, talis, pots you can kill a tank in three shots. BUT if you are at a Tinkerer setup. If you team up with another Engi and focus your fire you can down targets repeatedly.

This is an mmo. Fun comes from teams. Not from the game itself. At least for me.

[Fallenkezef]

Had a sinilar problem on my slayer till I realised I was trying to force the class to fit me.

Now I'm rolling WH for solo with ny slayer for group play

[Sulorie]

Hello,
I can feel your frustration and I thank you for not writing the usual rant.

I have 2 questions:

Do you want to keep playing and get better?

Are you able to record your game session or a part of it, like one scenario?
I think it would help much more, when we could see how you play and recognize mistakes.

[szejoza]

For me it was weird, as I'm not heavy roleplaying guy but I always create my characters with some sort of backstory in my mind or at least basic background (where do they come from, why are they wearing this colours, why 1h+shield instead of 2h sword etc). This helps me to stick to one or two chars at most (and usually the second gets some sort of hiatus while I focus on one of the two). With that in mind comes the skill, which no matter how many advices you will get will come only if you practice. When I came back to playing my KoTBS I had troubles following my one guarded target, and now after 2 months of investment in this char I can guarddance as I wish and still properly execute the CC maneouvers that I want.

And it comes from the guy that 90% of the time is pugging, obviously having chill guild is nice, you will always get some advices, but the most important stuff is practice, if you jump too much from char to char you will be jack of all trades - master of none, and from your post I suppose it's not what you aim to be.

My advice is (somewhat different from the others) - go read a book or two from black library, they cover armies stories, hero stories etc. You probably already have your favourite army in mind so now you might as well check some of the books covering their most iconic units. Sadly, 'destruction' forces have less books than order ones (probably that's why there is so many roleplayers on order side ) but they are nice anyways. You will get a rest from the game, maybe you will find something that will hook you up, maybe you won't, but at least you will have fresh look at your chars after a short break.

[rmpl]

I've also had a similar problem and couldn't decide what to play until I just said screw it and chose my main based purely on its aesthetics/lore. Now I'm at RR60 and I'm glad I stuck with it. Go with your gut, while some classes are better than the other, none are unplayable. You have destro's two best mdps - witch elf and marauder, just pick one of them, whichever you like more and keep playing.

rr40-60 period is very often painful for new players because you finally get to play with the big boys who might have advantage over you not only in gear but also game knowledge.

I'd advise joining a guild but as an inexperienced low rank mdps it might be pretty difficult to find one. Don't be discouraged though, try to make friends in scenarios or pug warbands. You see that tank who's guarding you and assisting properly? Talk to him, maybe he'd be interested in queueing duo. Join King Ocara's warbands when you can, it's a great practice of playing in a warband since he actually uses discord for communication and stuff.

MMOs are social games, the more acquaintances you make the more powerful you become.

[Stophy22]

I think it's great your think it's your fault, now don't misunderstand haha, but that's the first step. A lot of people just explode and dismiss everything as unfair and overpowered when they just don't understand how the game works.

I think the 1st step is find a class you really enjoy. I myself am a tank player so I tend to enjoy playing those classes I could explain the classes a little better if you want, just send me a pm. I started typing out all the classes but the post was getting too long... But after you decide on a class I think it's important to play it from 1-40 in RVR. do not power level it.

The reason why I say this is If you play a class from "start to finish" purely in pvp you'll pick up the habits of the class: what you can do, what you should avoid, who you should target, which classes are easy to fight, which ones are difficult. Then you can start forming a plan of attack when you start solo pugging around as you said. And say you don't go and waste your time trying to kill a rumepriest on a 2handed chosen, as any good runie is just going to detaunt you and you can't do enough damage to be a threat.

Anyway the games got layers, even at times I feel like I don't know things so my second and most important advice I can give you is ask questions. If people asked, "why can the WL do x amount of damage so quickly and what can I do to counter play it" instead of something like, "games dead, destro never wins and I won't touch this game til beastmistress comes out as WL is too powerful." I think people would get better feedback and be able to form (or start to form) a plan to dealing with said class and be on the look out for certain things. This isn't a WL counterplay thread so I won't go Into it. But my point remains the same. Ask questions when you don't understand things, and if people don't answer the questions go make the class and figure it out for yourself. I still get my ass kicked by slayers cause I have 0 knowledge on this class, maybe one day I'll go and look up a think or two but for now I just tend to avoid them, as this is a smart option when you try to take on tough opponents.

Tldr: I feel like this is a wall of text that's try to help but idk if it's any help at all.
1.) find a class you enjoy and play it in rvr as much as possible to understand it's basics. Ask questions; best damage rotation? Best tactic set up for "this" play style? Etc.
2.) ask questions about the game. Why does this slayer have a shield and is absorbing all of my damage? How is he healing with no healers around? Why can't knock down this target after using my knockdown? Just anything you don't understand ask and keep an open mind.

On the very side note I think finding a duo partner really makes this game a good time, as some guilds can play too serious in a 6v6 environment or need you to play a specific class or whatever. Play the class you want, syngerize it with a bud-if you want- and go out there and get into some scraps and try and have some fun.

Some important things to note:
-destroy tends to lose during NA nights, this is after EU prime time and the server pop drops from 1k to about 300. So don't get discouraged by this.
-some players are very good and you should watch out for specific names as you roam lakes as to not take on an opponent too strong.
-keeping your RR higher than your lvl is strongly advised and gearing defensively with a cautious playstyle can be just rewarding as glass cannonry with a reckless play style. It really depends.

If you need anymore help or have personal questions you'd like to ask (and you play destro) I have labled myself as an advisor and feel free to message kurodon or archea in game as they are my most played. You'll get through this mate, WAR is just tricky.

[Darosh]

If you need anymore help or have personal questions you'd like to ask (and you play destro) I have labled myself as an advisor and feel free to message kurodon or archea in game as they are my most played. You'll get through this mate, WAR is just tricky.

Slightly offtopic, but I am genuinely curious, does the Advisor tag work? I figured the devs didn't fix it yet.