Always there, lurking in your basement, biding it’s time under your porch, peering at you through the ceiling tiles…it’s…THE ALT MONSTER!!!!

Our story begins in a Cloffice located in a cookie cutter home in a quiet town. Steve, an average white geek, was quietly plucking away at his keyboard while sipping on a cold can of Tahitian Treat. Everything in Warhammer Online was going fine. The Chosen that he’d been playing for the past couple weeks was on the verge of stepping through the threshold of tier 3, and then like a trick can of nuts, the snake-like Alt Monster SPRANG from the darkness and struck, forcing Steve to play…a MARAUDER.

No, not the Masked Marauder…

Noo, not the Mercury Marauder…

YES, that’s the one.

So, I’d given thought to playing the Marauder when we made the decision to stick with Badlands as our home for Multiplaying peeps, but instead I went and made a Chosen so that we could all be around the same level and play together, well, that and because the Marauder is so damn squishy! It’s been loads of fun playing the Chosen, but now that the big lovable hulk of metal and spikes is about in tier 3, I got to thinking about my other two characters already in that tier; my Disciple of Khaine and my Marauder.

Seeing Choppas tear through healers and DPS classes really got me questioning the tank. I love him, but I think I need a reminder of WHY I love him. So, for the next couple days I’ll probably be switching back and forth between the two characters to see which of the two a better fit for my play style is. Last night though, I almost immediately went back to the Chosen after my first scenario because I’m a dumbass.

A little back story first; The Murauder was the class I was absolutely most interested in when WAR was still being made. The description that Paul Barnett gave for the class was amazing, and I sat there in front of my PC in frozen astonishment that such a class would exist in an MMO. But, when the time came to roll my first character on launch night, I was quickly swayed to make a Disciple of Khaine instead. I’ve never enjoyed being able to be taken down quickly in an MMO. I don’t mind playing healers, tanks, DPS, or any hybrid of the three, but I really just hate feeling helpless in a fight. I saw that the Marauder was a DPS class with limited armor, and ran away to something with more survivability.

Eventually, I rolled one. I enjoyed him immensely, but due to server woes, I switched from playing Destruction to Order right when the bare-chested claw-monger got midway through tier 3. I’ve barely touched him since.

Now, back to last night…
First scenario I ran didn’t go so hot. I really didn’t remember what any of the abilities did, so I spent half the match reading descriptions while I ran after people shouting, “Wait! Let me try this on you!” Not only did I put out pretty horrible damage, but I was also getting maimed like I was the only Twinkie left in the zombie apocalypse and Woody Harrelson had me in his grip. The constant onslaught of death as soon as I entered the fray was unbearable, and reminded me why I like my tanks. But, I wanted to give it a fair shot, so I went in again.

Next round went loads better, I didn’t die constantly, and I felt that I was doing a pretty decent job on the attack. But then the numbers shown at the end of the match made me reconsider how good I actually did. I was down towards the bottom with the tanks. Heck, there were a couple tanks that did MORE damage than me, and were lower levels. What the hell was I doing wrong?

So I decided to go throw some abilities at a couple NPC mobs and see if I could find my problem. I’m Savagery spec, and I know it’s not the “best” spec for straight DPS, but I love the way Savagery works by attacking what a certain class does. Feel free to tell me how wrong I am for using it, I don’t care because it’s fun! But anyways, it didn’t take me long to realize that something was wonky. It took about everything I had to kill a mob just a couple levels higher than me. My chosen has NO problem killing mobs 3 levels higher, so what gives? I was close to level, so I kept going at the NPC’s, and eventually dinged 25. Yay! I can equip this axe that’s been sitting in my bag for a while and replace that lower DPS one. I right clicked on my new axe to equip it and…

Umm,….where’d my old axe go?

It’s not in my bag…

Oh….shit

I had totally forgotten that, while I was unsubscribed to the game, they changed the Marauder so that you could equip two weapons. I had been running around this whole time using one axe.

Let’s just say the next scenario went a bit better.