This is from the Stratic Interview.

[WAR]Gersh: Black Guard is a ball of burning hot boiling rage that eats casters for breakfast.. Thats All I'll say right now.. More info to follow after we've had him in BETA for play testing a bit.

every class has a mirror class in the opposite side. the classes arent always directly opposite sides however. like the warrior priest (fighter healer) is NOT the opposite of the chaos priest (debuffer healer) he is the opposite of the diciple of khaine (melee healer)

the Black ork is anti melee tank, and the sword master is anti magic tank. the Chaos warrior is an offensive debuffer/melee and the knight is a buffer/melee so that pretty much leaves you to black guard being the opposite ofIronbreaker. if you look at their core skills you can see this. You hit an ironbreaker and it gains grudge and grudge makes him stronger. you hit a black guard and it builds vengance, and uses that to do special moves. so I am actually expecting the black guard to be just as unstoppable as the ironbreaker is. ironbreaker FYI is/was by far the most dominant of the classes. it was like playing a protection warrior in wow with full epics but a non epic green 1hander, and fighting a bunch of level 65's in normal items. your powerful and feel unstoppable, you just cant 1 shot anyone.

EDIT.

ok so you build vengance like an ironbreaker builds grudge. but your focus skills will be anti magic tank insted of anti melee tank. so your the opposite of a sword master only using grudge bearer mechanics.

Originally posted by WolfHaart

uk.gamespot.com/video/520538/6186186/videoplayerpop

03:19 - 03:25   -   Black guards

 

You can see Black guards from behind walking in a line towards the High Elf lands. They look awsome behind. Its sad tho they dont show them face-to-face instead of the backs. I cant decide if I´m gonna be a Black Guard - Black Orc - Marauder - Witch Hunter... I´m kinda bored with Tanks aswell. But I love Orcs, The Black Guards seems to me as a Brute in City of Villains. Which also hurts more the more hes in the battle. Witch Hunter becouse they look awsome and I love the coat. =P And Maruder becouse they are true barbarians. ^^

But its most likely I´m gonna be a Black Guard as a main char, and perhaps a Witch Hunter as a Second. I do have to try the Order side sometime. =P

Nice video!! Thanks for sharing. Dont know how I missed that one but thanks to you it is now locked into memory... haha

Your welcome.

I do hope they release something on the Black Guard soon tho. Cant wait. ^^

The fact that they are anti-magic makes me happy. I always hated fighting casters and now I can take my revenge for all that ganking.

Anyone have anything new?  This post is kinda old and I know they did a pass on the class.  Can anyone comment on the improvements and how the class plays, any insights are greatly appreciated.

I've personally never played one very high. I do know there was a guy named Axewulf (Axewuf) who built his toon through gear and spec to be a complete survivalist and as such was hard as hell to kill.

Was he harder than any of the other tanks who spec into survivability/tanking?

Well the different types of tank each have their own unique abilities that make them good at some things and worse at others depending on specs. For example, the Auras on the Chosen clas smake them an extremely valuable part of any group, especially melee assist trains.

As far as BGs, they have a few nice tools that make them pretty badass:

1) Detaunt ignore - IIRC they are the only class that has this. Detaunts cause you to do much less damage to your target, but the BG is able to ignore any detaunts thrown at it so it can keep hitting for maximum damage.

2) Hatred system & AP - BG is pretty good for AP management for 2 reasons. Many of your more useful skills require hatred instead of AP, so even if youre running low on AP in a long fight, or get hit with an AP drain skill, you can still get your hatred based attacks. Most other classes (besides dok/wp) rely purely on AP to keep attacking. Also the BG has a nice AP regen skill which uses a bit of your hatred to refill i think it is 3/4 (150 points) of your AP bar, and it only takes like 2 attacks to regain the Hatred you used to regain your AP.

3) Heal debuffs - always a + to have

4) Self heals & nice buffs - BG have at least 1, i think it might be 2, self heals they can use to keep their own HP up a bit even without a healer, and can also heal their Dark Protected target at the same time. They also have some very nice buffs which when triggered effect the BG + their Dark Protected target. Things like Toughness buff, Willpower buff, etc. IIRC a couple pretty decent group buffs too. BG with these heals & buffs, combined with a good DoK fighting alongside them = pure win thanks to their combined heals & buffs to eachother. A BG is already a real bitch to take down, a BG with a DoK assisting them becomes like 5x more trouble.

5) Group disruption - one of the things a BG is best at compared to other tanks is disrupting enemy groups, especially their backline ranged DPS & Healers. Casters & healers have a tough time doing damage to a BG due to its ability to get high Willpower & disrupt through buffs & tactics. They can also as i mentione dabove, throw out some heal debuffs, and have some other nice CC tools like knockdowns. Basically if a good BG rushe sinto your back line of RDPS and healers, you better either hope someone heals the shit out of you, run for your life, or hope several melee DPS jump on that BG very fast before he takes out all of the back line support.

Nice!  But I am thinking he is not the master of survival and raping the back line of casters/healers in the same spec, right?

Please don't necro old threads.