A: hero doesnt have to drag the shield manualy from the inventory to the Offhand slot! You even get free Keyboard Binds for 1h/2h switch.

B: correct

There's generally 4 roles you can play as a tank:

Main Assist - BM and Hero are the same. They both get slam and they bot get det.
Peeler - BM is better. Both Heros and BMs get slam. Both get guard. The BM's snare is much faster than the Hero's spear snare. Hero can use blade snare but it's a unfavorable position.
Floater - BM is better. BM can pump out more dps on a healer while maintaining snare while stuck in a disease.
Assister - BM is better. As said before they pump out much more DPS

Another thing to add is if you are running a warden, the BM will benefit from damage add much more than the Hero. When we first started running, we always ran bubble during fights. But then we realized that running red damage add during fights significantly increased the Blademasters damage output. Even when we ran out of endurance, we were still killing things with auto attack.

The downside to BM though is the manual shield swapping.

Imo hero is the better peeler if spear specced.

BM is the better peeler once he has prevent flight around 5l0.
Ca double the chance of procing it with higher swing speed. No way hero is as good as a peeler after that.

Hero blows


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Your Mother blows....

But seriously, prevent flight is useless on a peeler as mentioned before, because its not reliable and affected by det.

You want easy accessible snare and easy accessible stuns.

Both hero provides if spear specced.

Bm there has the Problem that he needs to switch back and forth shield to apply backsnare and slam and vice versa.

You always lose too much time which means 1 or 2 swings unstyled or no melee atack at alls.

Prevent flight is amazing here because it stacks with snare, so it's pretty much a root.

Also BMs have a nice side snare in piercing so to slam snare is easy


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Never slam snare. Never ever.

Snare is to peel.

Slam is to kill. Or as a last resort peel.

Yea I'll let the savages reach my healers/casters first then as there evading my slams and kill my group mate I'll point them here


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Ever heard of guard?

Feel like the groups I join always lacking BMs, if I had the choice to do so I would go BM over Hero but honestly both work fine. They are both solid classes cant go wrong

Lots of things to factor between the 2

First for hero consider....
For 8man Spearo is better
1v1 LW is better because of 1v1 combat styles.

As a spearo most your 8man priority targets will be vulnerable to your thrust damage including the all the main targets: Cleric, healer, Shamy. Cloth Casters are neutral to all. Even secondary targets are vulnerable to you: skald, Minstrel.
Unless you are a Pierce BM your targets are going to be nuetral or resist. Same for LW hero nuetral or resists

LW only has a back stun
Spearo will anytime shield slam + spammable back snare
BM anytime shield slam + spammable back snare.

After stun Spearo can do 2hit side chain twice. This is more damage output than the BM can do in positional chains or LW hero vs a nuetral target. Against one of the above vulnerbale targets the damage goes up even further.
*** NOTE a VW can do the most damage out put on a stunned a target with their side chain but like a LW hero without slam has to land back style stun.

Against a non stunned target a BM will do more damage
VS a target attacking you a LW hero will take and trade damage better than a BM or Spearo.

For a BM to have slam they have to have 42 shield scrafice alot of Parry. If the target purges slam and engages you, your 42 points spend in shield are basically wasted and now you have low parry for your 1v1. Compared to the LW hero or Spearo who has very high parry +2hand parry bonus.

BM will do handle 1v1 against evading targets much better because of CD cutting evade skill in half.
Hero will handle fighter targets better because of 2hand weapon cutting parry skill in half.
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In my opinion as a 8man Fighter I would go Spear hero because most of your targets are vuln to you will die to your side chains before they come out of stun and you still have a back snare just incase they dont.

If you really want 1v1s I would make a VW or a Champ.

If you want to be all around good make a BM, if you want to be a little beefier but do slightly less damage make a Hero

when a hero starts hitting a cleric, shaman or healer, the hero is stupid, the fight is over, or the chain wearer is really overextended

as hero you will be on peel duty, so you hit mercs, savages, skalds or berserks.

Did you just try to say that prevent flight.... is bad?

Also, it doesnt stack with snare.

Kaziera wrote:when a hero starts hitting a cleric, shaman or healer, the hero is stupid, the fight is over, or the chain wearer is really overextended

as hero you will be on peel duty, so you hit mercs, savages, skalds or berserks.

Or the hero slams the healer / caster and the assist train drops them in a few seconds.... then moves onto the next healer / caster and does the same... If the Spear Hero is slamming and doing more damage to stunned targets than BMs are there is no reason why the Hero shouldn't be leading the assist train on healers and casters.

Generally bards lands mezz and druids clean up root. But you want to waste Hero DPS on snaring enemy fighters that are just going to be healed....

Not sure what game you have been playing for 16 years.....