Dwarfs, sound off

[Hovis]

So Kneecap the dwarf axe merchant is now level eight, and rising, with Zibben and Flufball also rising fast. What other do we have, and does anybody have any pointers on playing them?

[Khammar]

Duck . . . and cover!

[Veth]

as ironbreaker your job is basicly to annoy enemy healers and soft dps, or guarding your softies. damage is quite nice and you can be a good assistance in killing other armored people with your stone breaker skill.

your main stats should be: str, toughness, willpower and wounds. weaponsskill/initiative is nice too but the other stats are more important.
in your mastery tree there is either the offensive 2 hand tree for the barbarian or the shield tree brotherhood. the 3rd tree seems more like an pve tank tree so i'd make a build of offence combined with the shield one.

something like that:

http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=1#9:672:0:0:10:672:25:1407:1410:503 :505::::1418:1419:610:613

[Felstar]

Strength, toughness and wounds particularly I try to build up. They really are your bread and butter. Willpower I wouldn't place as high because with inspiring attack at 100 grudge you gain roughly 400 willpower at 40 for 20 second (when you are likely to be using the skill very frequently with the stun you build into it).

Initiative and Weaponskill are also ok. If you gain a lot for losing very little of the other stats then I would opt for changing to that item.

Build wise I still need to do a hell of a lot of testing to find out the effectiveness of the mastery attacks but so far I am thinking of:

http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=1#13:10784:0:0:7:128:25:::503:505:: ::1418:1419:610:613

the stun on inspiring attack is very useful and gives you more options in a fight. The extra damage on the path of vengeance tactic is quite a lot at 10% with the added parry I think the tactic is worth it.

Ancestor's fury is what I would refer to as a clicky, waiting to see how effective it is but if you add in a stun and a taunt then I think it should allow you to shear very quickly through healers particularly. After that it is really a choice between grudge-born fury and earthshatter and I will be testing both at some point to see their effectiveness.

Targets wise as you say it pretty much is hunt the caster, healers first ranged dps second if you are chomping their rear. This works particularly well if there is more than one of you for the added interrupts and dps, if you are alone just stick like glue to the healers and the rest of your team should hopefully be able to do something about killing off their dps in the mean time.

If you find yourself on the defensive just about the most effective thing you can do is kill those bastard witch elves and reduce their tanks armour. You can also try to get them out of line of sight of their healers with a well timed knock back to finish them off. The other option depending on the terrain is employing your knockbacks to disable their tanks with really long runs or even terrain related deaths.

The only other thing I can say is binds, binds, binds, you have a hell of a lot of skills that are very situational so setting up good binds and learning your skills inside and out should help you a lot. Positioning is also important, with so many classes having knockbacks standing is such a way that leaves you wide open to being controlled easily is a big mistake; I doubt you are a keyboard turner so all should be good :P

My average start on a healer is binding grudge>stone breaker>heavy blow>(situational attack-rune etched if there are grunts nearby to spread the healing need, another heavy if I'm staying on target, maybe a guarded attack if I'm taking a lot of heat, etc, etc). Essentially I'm keeping them slowed and with reduced armour while managing my own situation. If they drop to 50% I drop in a taunt and follow it up with an inspiring attack for the stun and the str bonus. With a little luck they should drop while you are going nuts. My advice is not to spam your attacks too heavily or your AP generation wont keep up and you will be left without the options you need when the kill moment pops up. You should also try and keep the inspiring attack buff up if possible by using other targets to apply it (preferably not on your primary if it is a healer because you need the stun). If your target is anything else then go for the max dps rotation and include inspiring attack before heavy blow. Use either stone breaker or inspiring attack between heavy blows depending on cooldown to maximise the bleed damage making sure to keep a close eye on binding grudge duration.