Please do not celebrate these "best players." It's because of these players and the fact that Warhammer had no effective matchmaking that WAR died. At the end of WAR's life, full premades of these players had the lakes and scenarios in full lockdown. Casuals that wanted to queue solo or pvp for fun weren't able to, as they would just end up getting roflstomped by geared and coordinated parties, discouraging them from logging in and eventually unsubbing.
Case in point: let's examine the last year of Badlands. At that time order was being completely dominated by a group of now legendary dps zealots. I am talking of the reign of forsseti, myndfreak, cyvik and others whose names now elude me since the bioware forums have been taken down. With their extraordinary aoe dps, aoe heal debuffs and ability to switch to heal mode at any point to be able to flex under pressure and be nigh unkillable, dps zealots were completely broken.
In rvr, guarded dps zealots with the odd magus to pull had a decisive advantage in lakes. The extreme aoe dps of these groups would kill any unguarded or solo rvrer in gcds. Fearful of dying, order's casual players had to stand back and many times you would see slayers just throwing axes from the backlines. Stripped of their pubbie support, while destro's pubbies were able to attack without fear, order had a massive numerical disadvantage and would always be camped at their spawn.
Dps zealots were even more ridiculous in scenarios. They had this destro-exclusive (runepriests didn't have it) ability that caused a continuous pbaoe knockback + virtually unhealable high aoe damage channel that (with tactics) applied an aoe heal debuff. With proper positioning, which destro's premades were consistently capable of, a two guarded dps zealot premade could set it up so that order that were punted by the first zealot's channel were punted into the second zealot's channel. Order was knocked back and forth between zealots, unable to cast heals, unable to fight back. All they could do was die - in droves. Scenarios were pathetic in the end. Order would often give up and remain in their spawn from the start (where they were safe from the zealot's pbaoe inside their guards), and eventually scenarios stopped popping as order gave up altogether.
Order could came up with no counter to the dps zealot comp. From pubbies to self-declared "top-tier" guilds, order players were stomped on, camped, destroyed, raped. Order either quit the game, like myrmidons a "top tier" guild that was shamefully showed up by dps healers and as a pro gaming team (they do the gw2 pro circuit now, look up ostricheggs, one of their players who won some competition) had to quit to save face, or switched to destro, in the case of such players as tankbeardz, arthem and liandel. The case of the player tankbeardz is especially galling. A kotbs and crucial member of a competitive order guild, who should have represented order and kept them in the fight, he grew tired of being farmed by dps zealots to play a magus by the name of riftbeardz. As a magus he became the buttboy for dps zealots, his sole job: rifting order into the aoe dps of the zealots for them to om nom on . What an ignoble thing to be remembered for! From intrepid solo tank and dependable guard to riftbot.
The only order player of any note was llondo, who like the also legendary xylophone before him, was a dps archmage. With the archmage's ap steal, the dps am was on the few comps that could shut down a zealot's channel and dps and swing the battle in order's favor. Still he was a drop in an ocean of bad. Unsubbing in despair at being so utterly dominated, the lakes become almost devoid of order, with almost constant aao in their favor. Now without anybody to fight, destro unsubbed in turn out of boredom. Seeing the population figures, EA made the only decision it could: it shut down the game.
And that is how Badlands died. With a dps zealot bang. In the end, chaos prevailed and the heralds of the apocalypse: the zealots forsseti, myndfreak, cyvik and co. Your like will never be forgotten.
Even though as a chosen player I glory in our victory, I am still sad WAR was closed because of dps zealots. The devs could have just nerfed them a bit and the game would still be running today. I have not found a game like Warhammer since. I have tried WoW and have no idea why people play it and pay for the devs to make no content for years. I now mainly play World of Tanks. I encourage everybody to try Elder Scrolls Online when it goes Buy To Play next month. I played it for a month and the game is solid, the sub (to keep up multiple subs big no no) was too much for me though.
