Wrath of Heroes BETA: Gromki Character Breakdown!

After reviewing Nethys, the vampire chick, now here come the turn of Gromki, the RunePriest. As one of the new heroes introduced in Beta 3 with Aessa, the White Lion, Gromki caught some eyes as a very unorthodox hero. Being the first described as a Debuffer/Supporter, Gromki has a very original set of abilities.

Where Nethys' review was essentially very good, Gromki's one will be a little less positive.

Gromki Abilities

1-Empowered Runestaff
Deals damage.
Description: Fire a laser-like projectile from your staff to the target. This ability is channeled and you can move as the ability channels. The goal of this ability is to provide your team with a visual clue of who to attack.

2-Rune of Dismay
Reduces Armor.
Description: Reduce the target enemy armor as long as the rune  is active. Heroes like Bax or Aessa seems like prime targets for this ability.

3-Rune of Spite
Reduces healing received.
Description: The most dangerous debuff, ideal to severely hamper healers.

4-Grudge Rune
Increases damage taken.
Description: Self-explanatory.

5-Shatter
Deals damage and shatters all your active Runes on nearby enemies.
Description: The dps ability! However even with all 3 runes being shattered on the same target, this only does some moderate amount of damage. Sole utility would to finish off weak targets.

Gromki's role revolve on one thing and one thing only, making the most dangerous opponent easier to kill. That's it. This first fact is the root of all the problems this hero has.

Before we go further, there is one important thing you have to keep in mind while reading this character breakdown:

Gromki drop really really fast.

Now, on to the lynching.

Gromki is essentially an incomplete hero. He has all the tools needed to perform his role, which is debuffing the target, but when it comes to other aspect of the game he is useless. Unlike Nethys, characters like Gromki force you into teamwork for the simple fact that alone you are as good as dead. And the worst thing is that even with your allies nearby, you are still a liability. Sure you help them focus on a target, but you yourself are defenseless and will drop as soon as you are targeted, leaving your team with one less member to fight with.

When you consider the fact that this game mostly revolve around kills to determine victory and defeat, you realize that, ironically, Gromki is one of the worst heroes you could pick if you want to be a team player.
I consider Kolrith, the Shadow Warrior, one of the worst heroes. With him too you also become a liability, one that will keep running away and be extremely difficult to heal, and will nerf the "team" abilities of several heroes, like the Goblin Shaman's 3rd ability "Ere' we go". However at least Kolrith directly do the damage and his damage is not dependent on your teammates actually realizing they have to attack the debuffed target, or worse, on the opponent healing it. Yes, Gromki is indeed worse than Kolrith if that was ever possible!

Oh Gods...!

It could be said that Gromki would only reveal its potential in a coordinated team, a.k.a. a warband with voice chat, as he gives the team a target caller, and make the elimination of healers and other pesky opponents easier. Even in such a case, Gromki is still a liability, especially if you are fighting skilled opponents. As soon as they will notice him, he WILL drop, and take his debuffs with him, leaving your team with one less body in the fight.

Also it is very odd to see Gromki labeled as a Support character when he is more about debuff than anything. He has no abilities that actually support your team, like an AOE Heal, or a defensive cleanse (an ability that remove a debuff from an ally). To simplify it, he has 0 abilities that target or affect his allies.

You could say that he is Support because he increases your dps on a target. However, the subtlety is in seeing that his debuffs do not affect your stats, but merely decrease the stats of their targets. Whatever angle you choose, Gromki cannot be reasonably labeled as Support. He is Debuff without a doubt, but not Support.
What could be done to make Gromki better, viable I could even say? Give him the ability to save himself.
Again, Gromki drop really fast, which is the prime factor that exacerbate his other weaknesses. It doesn't matter if his debuffs are potent, if they can be eliminated by the first hero who focus on him. What he needs in order to make his debuffs something that actually matter is an ability to make him able to survive focused fire. He needs a survivability ability.

This could be done in multiple ways:
• Since he is supposed to be Support, an ability that would reduce the damage he and his allies receive could be done.
• Going the Debuff way, an ability that dramatically reduce the damage of a enemy target.
• The CC way (which is the solution I like the best): Give him abilities that can CC attackers and give him some breathing rooms.
• Or just give him a self buff that reduce its damage intake drastically.

In either cases, with a way to remove himself from harm, Gromki would be tolerable, not yet viable but at least not ridiculously bad.

A Bad Omen!

Gromki remind me an issue I used to have when I was still playing Rift. I used to play a Rogue with a Bard soul (the equivalent of a WoW specialization in Rift), the Bard soul being the Support soul of the Rogue class. As a support in Rift, I was able to heal moderately, had some ok CC (Mesmerize was actually pretty wonderful), and... that's it. Yep, nothing else. Sure I was able to buff people, and in Trion's eyes it was considered a major feature of the Support role, but seriously, nobody relevant play this kind of game just to buff people, this is a lesson Blizzard learned the hard way through Paladins and Shamans. Trion have let Bards with mediocre heals (and by mediocre I also mean that couldn't heal yourself or someone specific directly, you could only AOE heal), CCs that became useless (like in WoW), and an emphasize on mindlessly providing passive buffs to other people. Bards could not compete in PvP without investing half of their talents points in a tank tree, and that was merely to be viable, while providing very slow and distributed heals (which are terrible in the fast-paced environment of PvP). Pretty much, Bards ended as one of the most useless and less sought after souls in the game. Performing Bard duties in a raid is considered a punishment by some, and to this day Bards on the Rift forums are asking for a reworking of the soul or simply a buff.

Now back to Wrath of Heroes. It seems like Bioware-Mythic are designing a lot of Bards, heroes that are dependent on others to be viable. Gromki is a prime example but other characters like that exist such as Kolrith, The Engineer, and The Assassin. Essentially characters that can only perform in one aspect, and are reliant on others' performance to attain their maximum potential. The Engineer need cover (other players) to be able to unleash its AOE damage, the Assassin has no way to avoid getting killed, and Kolrith is Kolrith, he got nothin'.

To say something positive about Gromki, the theme he is based around is very original and was needed in the game. Buffs and Debuffs have proved to create a lot of gameplay in all MMOs and Wrath of Heroes will be no exception. Heroes like Gromki show that Bioware-Mythic are not afraid to innovate with their heroes.

As a general impression, Gromkin gets a:

SIGMAR'S CURSE.

He deserved it!

After this breakdown I was originally going to cover the second hero introduced during Beta 3, Aessa the White Lion, however due to the new phase of the Beta happening this week-end, I will instead cover the newest addition to the cast, Albodi, the Scarred, a hero based around the Chosen class in Warhammer Online. Like Nethys, he is more powerful than he looks like. As always, leave a comment below so I can see what you guys think about the character breakdown, and follow me on Twitter @ControlBlue to know when future breakdowns are going to be released.

Until then, Stay Relevant!