PvP is a blast, my highest score is 600 something so far.
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"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
I just bought this game. I am definitely not an MMO guy, but the reviews this was getting were phenomenal, and the subscription price is perfect. I do like action rpg's, so this is likely up my alley.
What' a good starter class? Especially for a gamer but not one who plays many computer games or MMO's.
What' a good starter class? Especially for a gamer but not one who plays many computer games or MMO's.
guardian. It's always good
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Even if the author is silenced, the performance is stopped, the story will not end.
Whether it's a comedy or a tragedy, if there is cheering, the story will continue on.
Just like the many lives.
For the us who are still in it and still in the journey, send warm blessings.
- We will continue to walk down this path until eternity.
Beyond story and starting point, does race matter at all?
Also, I am getting my friend to start to. what's a nice two party combo? I've looked into some classes, and it seems that the magic classes aren't very good on their own.
Beyond story and starting point, does race matter at all?
Also, I am getting my friend to start to. what's a nice two party combo? I've looked into some classes, and it seems that the magic classes aren't very good on their own.
There's a definite learning curve to caster classes. I was putting my trait points into the wrong areas for two weeks before I actually read what they did. Also, your equipment is extremely important. My current armor setup has Precision and Condition Damage as my two most important attributes, which is funny because my Power is by far my highest stat, and so I crit like a boss but am rather fragile.
Out of all the caster classes I'd say Necromancer is probably the best in terms of soloing. During the BWE's my Necro never died and I didn't even use the Necro's most devastating weapon, their Death Shroud, but just got as many minion skills as possible and spammed all my AoE's. As an Ele, soloing is a dice roll. Maybe the bad guys will be nice and bunch together in my Lava Font or maybe they'll run up behind me(at about level 25 they start to do this!) and use a Knockdown and call a few buddies over to finish me off.
I'm level 48, and as far as I can tell, race doesn't matter aside from starting zone and some earlier quest interactions. Good classes to start on would be Guardian and Warrior, as they're pretty straightforward and pretty strong.
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"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
There's a definite learning curve to caster classes. I was putting my trait points into the wrong areas for two weeks before I actually read what they did. Also, your equipment is extremely important. My current armor setup has Precision and Condition Damage as my two most important attributes, which is funny because my Power is by far my highest stat, and so I crit like a boss but am rather fragile.
Out of all the caster classes I'd say Necromancer is probably the best in terms of soloing. During the BWE's my Necro never died and I didn't even use the Necro's most devastating weapon, their Death Shroud, but just got as many minion skills as possible and spammed all my AoE's. As an Ele, soloing is a dice roll. Maybe the bad guys will be nice and bunch together in my Lava Font or maybe they'll run up behind me(at about level 25 they start to do this!) and use a Knockdown and call a few buddies over to finish me off.
This.
If you haven't played the previously GW, or you aren't very familiar with fleshy backline characters then you will probably get very frustrated trying to go around soloing stuff with caster professions.
Necro is the only thing I have made so far. I'm still only at level 41 because I've had no time lately, but I have definitely noticed the necro's proficiency in soloing. The dodge system makes it even more pathetically easy. Being able to attack a crippled enemy while you walk away from it is stupid, melee enemies don't even stand a chance.
I'm also in love with the necros AoE capabilities. When I get bored while exploring areas that are leveled down from me, I like to aggro huge mobs and go Locust Swarm->Well of Suffering->Life Transfer. It's gross.
I've been really curious to start a mesmer just to see how it fares in this game, considering in GW it was considered the most confusing class and generally not favored very well when looking for parties in PvE.
Guardians and Warriors with a defensive weapon set and some sort of passive HP regen ability can, more often than not, just take hits and never have to dodge (while leveling). The only times I come close to dying while leveling is if I try to solo a group of higher level enemies; the damage formula seems to take level heavily into account.
So I would say one of those classes would be the easiest to level with.
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#define ALWAYS SOMETIMES
#define NEVER RARELY
#define ALL MANY
-=GIVE US SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN=-
I'm nerd enough to link my WoW Armory Though I'll put it in a small font.
Finally got off my duff and tried this out on a friend's account. The story is great, but end game play-ability concerns me.
Still trying to learn some things before I decide if I want to put money in it.
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Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
The warrior is great for PvE because of his healing slot amulet that gives him passive regeneration. Before the 2h sword nerf, I was using that + a rifle, now I'm using 2 1h axes and a longbow for aoe damage during events. There's an event chain in bloodline coast that I repeated while in between games of league and gained 7 levels in just a few hours.
Out-in-the-world PvE is different from the dungeons, anyway. It's generally speaking easy to run hearts by yourself. That is how they are designed. Events can be tricky depending on if you know what is going on and if your current spec works nicely against what you're facing.
All you need for events is AoE damage, the damage accumulated from the mob of players is almost always enough.
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"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Finally got off my duff and tried this out on a friend's account. The story is great, but end game play-ability concerns me.
Still trying to learn some things before I decide if I want to put money in it.
Basically, if you're not into WvW or Spvp then you better love 5 man dungeon running or completing the world map. At the moment there's only two world maps for level 80 characters - Cursed Shore and Frostsound Gorge. Both of them get stale pretty fast, but the good news is that unless you like farming you don't have to spend much time there.
Your level is automatically scaled down so as not to trivialize the content, but I honestly find that it gets a bet boring after a while. I farmed my way up to the tier 3 human cultural armor, and my oh my does it look amazing in high-definition.
The warrior is great for PvE because of his healing slot amulet that gives him passive regeneration. Before the 2h sword nerf, I was using that + a rifle, now I'm using 2 1h axes and a longbow for aoe damage during events. There's an event chain in bloodline coast that I repeated while in between games of league and gained 7 levels in just a few hours.
Guardian's do survivability better if they actually try to survive. Signet of Resolve is arguably the highest single target heal in the game, almost every weapon they have has inherent defenses (blind on sword, protection on hammer, block/heal on mace, etc), and the vast majority of their utility skills heal. It's absolutely great for not dying.
I can wade into about 10-20 people in WvW, kill a guy, run back to the gates, and not die simply because I'm so insanely tanky and I do monstrous damage. Without any orb bonuses I have 18000 health and 2710 armor, man I love playing the armored monk.
Even if the author is silenced, the performance is stopped, the story will not end.
Whether it's a comedy or a tragedy, if there is cheering, the story will continue on.
Just like the many lives.
For the us who are still in it and still in the journey, send warm blessings.
- We will continue to walk down this path until eternity.
Basically, if you're not into WvW or Spvp then you better love 5 man dungeon running or completing the world map. At the moment there's only two world maps for level 80 characters - Cursed Shore and Frostsound Gorge. Both of them get stale pretty fast, but the good news is that unless you like farming you don't have to spend much time there.
Your level is automatically scaled down so as not to trivialize the content, but I honestly find that it gets a bet boring after a while. I farmed my way up to the tier 3 human cultural armor, and my oh my does it look amazing in high-definition.
How is the WvW? I was an old DaoC player. I was excited about it in Warhammer, but it just failed to deliver in that game because everyone just wanted instance content to farm RP's/hr.
I like that the world fighting gives you realm bonuses. I'm in a guild with some friends right now which is probably a leveling guild. I've done hardcore arena style PVP before (I prefer GW1 to WoW arena by a long shot) but I don't really have a lot of time to practice so if WvW is exciting I could see doing it for a while.
One of my favorite things in GW1 was Codex. Did they bring anything back like that?
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Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
How is the WvW? I was an old DaoC player. I was excited about it in Warhammer, but it just failed to deliver in that game because everyone just wanted instance content to farm RP's/hr.
I like that the world fighting gives you realm bonuses. I'm in a guild with some friends right now which is probably a leveling guild. I've done hardcore arena style PVP before (I prefer GW1 to WoW arena by a long shot) but I don't really have a lot of time to practice so if WvW is exciting I could see doing it for a while.
I love WvW. Unless you're in a completely slanted server matchup (more on that later) the action is persistent, dynamic, and just plain awesome. Currently you gain points every 15 minutes based on how much of the map you own, and each piece is intrical to the map as a whole. There are three borderlands, one for each participating server, and an eternal battlegrounds.
The prize of each borderland is the Orb of Power, which grants everyone on the team (on all maps) that owns it 5% bonus health and +50 to all their stats for each one owned. The prize of the Eternal Battlegrounds is Stonemist Castle, which grants +35 score per point round and lets the team that owns it strike in any direction from the map. Needless to say, since it's the entire server working against two other servers there is always combat going on.
In order of score, it goes Supply camp (5), Tower (10), Keep (25), Stonemist Castle (35). Supply camps periodically send resources to the latter three, which is used to build siege equipment, repair walls, and build upgrades like cannons and mortars. A lot of emphasis goes into capturing and protecting the towers and keeps but the supply camps are probably the most important part - because without them you can't keep the towers and keeps.
The action varies based on the size of the zerg to be honest, and that's one of the defining features. Numbers are hugely important in the maps, but there is also the aspect of how well you utilize them - because if the other two maps put their attention on you you will be hardpressed to defend against the numbers. Larger groups should go against towers and keeps while smaller groups should aim at backcapping the enemy's supply camps and keeping them off supplies. Then there's defense - and that's everyone's job.
Siege equipment is another awesome feature and it's done really well. Weapons like Trebuchets, Balistas, Arrow Carts, and Siege golems all require supplies to build but they are fantastic at breaking through a defense or murdering an offense. They're also fragile, so it's important to protect them.
WvW is by far one of my favorite activities now. I love it
One of my favorite things in GW1 was Codex. Did they bring anything back like that?
Sadly, they did not. They do have arena pvp, though,
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Even if the author is silenced, the performance is stopped, the story will not end.
Whether it's a comedy or a tragedy, if there is cheering, the story will continue on.
Just like the many lives.
For the us who are still in it and still in the journey, send warm blessings.
- We will continue to walk down this path until eternity.
2H is still king for PvE even after the nerf, and I only use rifle for PvP the Bow just to handy for its AoE Burst for large mob packs.
Did the rifle get buffed when 2h sword was nerfed? It was pretty mediocre then, I'd rather just cc with hammer/mace. Bow and double axes is great for PvE events, which is what I was referring to. Unless something has changed in the week or so that I haven't been PvPing, double axes is awful.
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"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
I have a dumb question I haven't found a good answer to: How do I get to the next level of crafting stuff. As my warrior I picked weaponmaking and armormaking. And, I have all this silver and steel and soft wood at level 25, but still have not found out what to do with them. People only sell complicated recipes for very high crafting level. Who just has iron or steel axe and whatnot? Is there a good guide to crafting?
I have a dumb question I haven't found a good answer to: How do I get to the next level of crafting stuff. As my warrior I picked weaponmaking and armormaking. And, I have all this silver and steel and soft wood at level 25, but still have not found out what to do with them. People only sell complicated recipes for very high crafting level. Who just has iron or steel axe and whatnot? Is there a good guide to crafting?
You have to discover them yourself. It can be a little daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it it's quite intuitive.
Basically it goes like this:
Crafting Phase
refine your ingredients (i.e. copper ingots & bolts of Jute)
craft your inscriptions (i.e. healing jute insignia)
put the two armor pieces in the discovery window (important: they must be the same type)
if done right, there should be an option to craft the mystery piece. Doing so will give you lots of crafting experience.
important: try to level only though refinement and discovery. Yellow insignias will give you the most crafting experience for discovering them, you get no crafting experience for discovering from grayed out insignias. It is best that you level purely though the yellow insignia based crafting (they change color based on your crafting level) as this will ultimately cost you the least amount of materials.
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Even if the author is silenced, the performance is stopped, the story will not end.
Whether it's a comedy or a tragedy, if there is cheering, the story will continue on.
Just like the many lives.
For the us who are still in it and still in the journey, send warm blessings.
- We will continue to walk down this path until eternity.
Okay, for what my limited experience is worth, here's what I think of the game so far, so I won't try to say anything about stuff other than those classes because I just have not played them yet. I've basically played two classes so far (Necromancer to 20, Thief to 24).
I kind of like the Necromancer, but I think it has issues. It's certainly a very powerful class, especially once you learn to dodge and move around properly, but I dislike their minion system. What initially attracted me to the class was the idea of just summoning a horde of minions and sending them to do the hard work for me. I found this to be on the far side of impossible. They have too little health, do insignificant damage and when they do die (and they will, since their health does not regenerate), you'll be screwed because them dying initiates the thirty second cooldown.
However, once I just went the affliction spec instead of trying for pets (though being somewhat hampered in this because of the lack of being able to respec skill points) I found that running around, stacking conditions on yourself and enemies with the sceptre/dagger and some random other skills, I found I could kill large groups of enemies with ease. It became an even more trivial task once I got the skill which allows me to spread conditions on one mob to every mob in an area around it, when reduced my downtime to nil. I wasn't having much fun with it though, since I was just spamming everything which was not on cooldown and running in a circle to aggro other mobs, trying not to reset the ones I already did aggro and generally not being hit, which, despite the larger health pool of the class, still hurt enough you'd rather they didn't swing at you.
I cannot really say much about the Death Shroud stuff. I used it only as an "oh ****" button; something to press after seeing you cocked up. I used it pretty much only to survive until my cooldowns popped.
Weapons, overall, seem rather balanced, with the exception of the axe, which is more or less overshadowed by the dagger in every aspect. I'll have a lot of fun trying different builds based around each set.
I do expect this one to be fun in group though. Spamming area of effects and seeing the combo signs covering my screen was enjoyable in the few world events I've seen so far, but I do not really enjoy the journey to the end-game so far.
The thief has problems of its own, but so far is more fun to dick around with. I generally use a dagger/dagger setup to stack bleeds on a group of mobs and then get out of their way until they die, or use dagger/pistol and blind-tank everything with a slower attack speed than I have. I found that with the latter tactic, I could easily solo elite mobs a few levels above mine.
What does bother me is the initiative mechanic. Which it does indeed give the advantage of being able to spam your strongest attack until your eyes pop out, frequently I find I do little else. Sure, some of the spells may be quite useful in some situations, but I do think this does need some work.
The major issue at the moment for me is the weapons set. I found the balance between them to be quite off. The shortbow is by far the best of them, and there's no reason not to have it as at least my secondary. Brilliant on AoE with it's 1, 2 and 4 skills, very much able to both combo and set up combo's and the teleport on 5 is just icing on the cake.
Both weapon sets with the swords were rather lacklustre when I tried them. Sword/dagger has, I think, not too much to offer. The 3 skill (flanking strike) works about as often as it does not and though the 2 skill (infiltrator's strike/shadow return) is quite good, I do not see what it has to offer over other sets. I do see what sword/pistol has to offer: damage, but nothing else. The main reason to take it, pistol whip, does amazing damage, but its casting animation leaves you open for attacks for a long time, something which a squishy class as the thief really can't afford except for when you're sure you will not aggro the mob.
As you might have guessed: I'm a fan of both dagger/dagger and dagger/pistol. Dagger/dagger does good damage with its bleeds (though the value of that may be somewhat diminished in groups due to the 25 stack bleed cap) and has decent control and support with a multi-target cripple and a stealth spell. Dagger/pistol is brutal due to blackpowder and a quick attack speed, though multiple mobs can be troublesome. I'm still undecided how much head shot adds.
I'm undecided on the main-hand pistol builds. I can see the fun of pistol/dagger in pvp, with the good controll and support. A bleeding effect on the 1 skill is fun as well. Pistol/pistol to me seems like a ranged version of sword/pistol, but with more survivability.
I'm not sold on Steal either. I do see that it's a brilliant skill for close-range thiefs. It's both a gap-closer, a way to get more initiative, can do damage and poison. What bothered me about it as a melee was that I did have to spend quite a few points to make it worthwhile against monsters which do not give ridiculous stuff like a ground patch which gives chaos armour when comboed with a leap finisher, or axes which do ridiculous AoE damage.
When using a ranged build, Steal is just a liability. Sure, it's still a good way to get some effects if you specced for them, but why would you want to do that? You're using ranged weapons, so why would you want to place yourself in harm's way?
So that's all I can think of right now. I hope someone else playing this game can add to it, since I really like reading this sort of stuff. It's always nice to know what you can expect when starting a new game.
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We have laboured long to build a heaven, only to find it populated with horrors.
So, I haven't been playing very long and would appreciate some informed opinions about Mesmers.
Do they generally do less damage than other classes? I leveled my mesmer to 14 so far, and I feel that killing mobs is much slower on her compared to my warrior and thief.
Is this just the way of things, or do they ramp up better at higher levels?
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ashcoat Bear of Limited
What' a good starter class? Especially for a gamer but not one who plays many computer games or MMO's.
"Can you apply the penal code to demons?"
guardian. It's always good
Whether it's a comedy or a tragedy, if there is cheering, the story will continue on.
Just like the many lives.
For the us who are still in it and still in the journey, send warm blessings.
- We will continue to walk down this path until eternity.
Also, I am getting my friend to start to. what's a nice two party combo? I've looked into some classes, and it seems that the magic classes aren't very good on their own.
"Can you apply the penal code to demons?"
There's a definite learning curve to caster classes. I was putting my trait points into the wrong areas for two weeks before I actually read what they did. Also, your equipment is extremely important. My current armor setup has Precision and Condition Damage as my two most important attributes, which is funny because my Power is by far my highest stat, and so I crit like a boss but am rather fragile.
Out of all the caster classes I'd say Necromancer is probably the best in terms of soloing. During the BWE's my Necro never died and I didn't even use the Necro's most devastating weapon, their Death Shroud, but just got as many minion skills as possible and spammed all my AoE's. As an Ele, soloing is a dice roll. Maybe the bad guys will be nice and bunch together in my Lava Font or maybe they'll run up behind me(at about level 25 they start to do this!) and use a Knockdown and call a few buddies over to finish me off.
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ashcoat Bear of Limited
This.
If you haven't played the previously GW, or you aren't very familiar with fleshy backline characters then you will probably get very frustrated trying to go around soloing stuff with caster professions.
Necro is the only thing I have made so far. I'm still only at level 41 because I've had no time lately, but I have definitely noticed the necro's proficiency in soloing. The dodge system makes it even more pathetically easy. Being able to attack a crippled enemy while you walk away from it is stupid, melee enemies don't even stand a chance.
I'm also in love with the necros AoE capabilities. When I get bored while exploring areas that are leveled down from me, I like to aggro huge mobs and go Locust Swarm->Well of Suffering->Life Transfer. It's gross.
I've been really curious to start a mesmer just to see how it fares in this game, considering in GW it was considered the most confusing class and generally not favored very well when looking for parties in PvE.
Reckless Waif; It's the red Delver of Secrets.
So I would say one of those classes would be the easiest to level with.
Though I'll put it in a small font.
Please stop hijacking my reply box.
I'm having a blast so far, Engineer was my first class I made and...well....I can't play any other classes since they feel so boring.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsjKsaxbnds <- Me.
Trades! Alters! Oh My!
Legacy: WUBRGDredgeGRBUW
EDH:BG Nath of the Guilty GearGB (defunct)
BUGDamia, Toolbox of Stone GUB
-Guild Wars 2-
Server: Fort Aspenwood
Character: Anarchy Stockingu - Lvl 80 Asura Engineer
Still trying to learn some things before I decide if I want to put money in it.
All you need for events is AoE damage, the damage accumulated from the mob of players is almost always enough.
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ashcoat Bear of Limited
Basically, if you're not into WvW or Spvp then you better love 5 man dungeon running or completing the world map. At the moment there's only two world maps for level 80 characters - Cursed Shore and Frostsound Gorge. Both of them get stale pretty fast, but the good news is that unless you like farming you don't have to spend much time there.
Your level is automatically scaled down so as not to trivialize the content, but I honestly find that it gets a bet boring after a while. I farmed my way up to the tier 3 human cultural armor, and my oh my does it look amazing in high-definition.
Guardian's do survivability better if they actually try to survive. Signet of Resolve is arguably the highest single target heal in the game, almost every weapon they have has inherent defenses (blind on sword, protection on hammer, block/heal on mace, etc), and the vast majority of their utility skills heal. It's absolutely great for not dying.
I can wade into about 10-20 people in WvW, kill a guy, run back to the gates, and not die simply because I'm so insanely tanky and I do monstrous damage. Without any orb bonuses I have 18000 health and 2710 armor, man I love playing the armored monk.
Whether it's a comedy or a tragedy, if there is cheering, the story will continue on.
Just like the many lives.
For the us who are still in it and still in the journey, send warm blessings.
- We will continue to walk down this path until eternity.
How is the WvW? I was an old DaoC player. I was excited about it in Warhammer, but it just failed to deliver in that game because everyone just wanted instance content to farm RP's/hr.
I like that the world fighting gives you realm bonuses. I'm in a guild with some friends right now which is probably a leveling guild. I've done hardcore arena style PVP before (I prefer GW1 to WoW arena by a long shot) but I don't really have a lot of time to practice so if WvW is exciting I could see doing it for a while.
One of my favorite things in GW1 was Codex. Did they bring anything back like that?
I love WvW. Unless you're in a completely slanted server matchup (more on that later) the action is persistent, dynamic, and just plain awesome. Currently you gain points every 15 minutes based on how much of the map you own, and each piece is intrical to the map as a whole. There are three borderlands, one for each participating server, and an eternal battlegrounds.
The prize of each borderland is the Orb of Power, which grants everyone on the team (on all maps) that owns it 5% bonus health and +50 to all their stats for each one owned. The prize of the Eternal Battlegrounds is Stonemist Castle, which grants +35 score per point round and lets the team that owns it strike in any direction from the map. Needless to say, since it's the entire server working against two other servers there is always combat going on.
In order of score, it goes Supply camp (5), Tower (10), Keep (25), Stonemist Castle (35). Supply camps periodically send resources to the latter three, which is used to build siege equipment, repair walls, and build upgrades like cannons and mortars. A lot of emphasis goes into capturing and protecting the towers and keeps but the supply camps are probably the most important part - because without them you can't keep the towers and keeps.
The action varies based on the size of the zerg to be honest, and that's one of the defining features. Numbers are hugely important in the maps, but there is also the aspect of how well you utilize them - because if the other two maps put their attention on you you will be hardpressed to defend against the numbers. Larger groups should go against towers and keeps while smaller groups should aim at backcapping the enemy's supply camps and keeping them off supplies. Then there's defense - and that's everyone's job.
Siege equipment is another awesome feature and it's done really well. Weapons like Trebuchets, Balistas, Arrow Carts, and Siege golems all require supplies to build but they are fantastic at breaking through a defense or murdering an offense. They're also fragile, so it's important to protect them.
WvW is by far one of my favorite activities now. I love it
Sadly, they did not. They do have arena pvp, though,
Whether it's a comedy or a tragedy, if there is cheering, the story will continue on.
Just like the many lives.
For the us who are still in it and still in the journey, send warm blessings.
- We will continue to walk down this path until eternity.
2H is still king for PvE even after the nerf, and I only use rifle for PvP the Bow just to handy for its AoE Burst for large mob packs.
Did the rifle get buffed when 2h sword was nerfed? It was pretty mediocre then, I'd rather just cc with hammer/mace. Bow and double axes is great for PvE events, which is what I was referring to. Unless something has changed in the week or so that I haven't been PvPing, double axes is awful.
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ashcoat Bear of Limited
"Can you apply the penal code to demons?"
You have to discover them yourself. It can be a little daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it it's quite intuitive.
Basically it goes like this:
Whether it's a comedy or a tragedy, if there is cheering, the story will continue on.
Just like the many lives.
For the us who are still in it and still in the journey, send warm blessings.
- We will continue to walk down this path until eternity.
I kind of like the Necromancer, but I think it has issues. It's certainly a very powerful class, especially once you learn to dodge and move around properly, but I dislike their minion system. What initially attracted me to the class was the idea of just summoning a horde of minions and sending them to do the hard work for me. I found this to be on the far side of impossible. They have too little health, do insignificant damage and when they do die (and they will, since their health does not regenerate), you'll be screwed because them dying initiates the thirty second cooldown.
However, once I just went the affliction spec instead of trying for pets (though being somewhat hampered in this because of the lack of being able to respec skill points) I found that running around, stacking conditions on yourself and enemies with the sceptre/dagger and some random other skills, I found I could kill large groups of enemies with ease. It became an even more trivial task once I got the skill which allows me to spread conditions on one mob to every mob in an area around it, when reduced my downtime to nil. I wasn't having much fun with it though, since I was just spamming everything which was not on cooldown and running in a circle to aggro other mobs, trying not to reset the ones I already did aggro and generally not being hit, which, despite the larger health pool of the class, still hurt enough you'd rather they didn't swing at you.
I cannot really say much about the Death Shroud stuff. I used it only as an "oh ****" button; something to press after seeing you cocked up. I used it pretty much only to survive until my cooldowns popped.
Weapons, overall, seem rather balanced, with the exception of the axe, which is more or less overshadowed by the dagger in every aspect. I'll have a lot of fun trying different builds based around each set.
I do expect this one to be fun in group though. Spamming area of effects and seeing the combo signs covering my screen was enjoyable in the few world events I've seen so far, but I do not really enjoy the journey to the end-game so far.
The thief has problems of its own, but so far is more fun to dick around with. I generally use a dagger/dagger setup to stack bleeds on a group of mobs and then get out of their way until they die, or use dagger/pistol and blind-tank everything with a slower attack speed than I have. I found that with the latter tactic, I could easily solo elite mobs a few levels above mine.
What does bother me is the initiative mechanic. Which it does indeed give the advantage of being able to spam your strongest attack until your eyes pop out, frequently I find I do little else. Sure, some of the spells may be quite useful in some situations, but I do think this does need some work.
The major issue at the moment for me is the weapons set. I found the balance between them to be quite off. The shortbow is by far the best of them, and there's no reason not to have it as at least my secondary. Brilliant on AoE with it's 1, 2 and 4 skills, very much able to both combo and set up combo's and the teleport on 5 is just icing on the cake.
Both weapon sets with the swords were rather lacklustre when I tried them. Sword/dagger has, I think, not too much to offer. The 3 skill (flanking strike) works about as often as it does not and though the 2 skill (infiltrator's strike/shadow return) is quite good, I do not see what it has to offer over other sets. I do see what sword/pistol has to offer: damage, but nothing else. The main reason to take it, pistol whip, does amazing damage, but its casting animation leaves you open for attacks for a long time, something which a squishy class as the thief really can't afford except for when you're sure you will not aggro the mob.
As you might have guessed: I'm a fan of both dagger/dagger and dagger/pistol. Dagger/dagger does good damage with its bleeds (though the value of that may be somewhat diminished in groups due to the 25 stack bleed cap) and has decent control and support with a multi-target cripple and a stealth spell. Dagger/pistol is brutal due to blackpowder and a quick attack speed, though multiple mobs can be troublesome. I'm still undecided how much head shot adds.
I'm undecided on the main-hand pistol builds. I can see the fun of pistol/dagger in pvp, with the good controll and support. A bleeding effect on the 1 skill is fun as well. Pistol/pistol to me seems like a ranged version of sword/pistol, but with more survivability.
I'm not sold on Steal either. I do see that it's a brilliant skill for close-range thiefs. It's both a gap-closer, a way to get more initiative, can do damage and poison. What bothered me about it as a melee was that I did have to spend quite a few points to make it worthwhile against monsters which do not give ridiculous stuff like a ground patch which gives chaos armour when comboed with a leap finisher, or axes which do ridiculous AoE damage.
When using a ranged build, Steal is just a liability. Sure, it's still a good way to get some effects if you specced for them, but why would you want to do that? You're using ranged weapons, so why would you want to place yourself in harm's way?
So that's all I can think of right now. I hope someone else playing this game can add to it, since I really like reading this sort of stuff. It's always nice to know what you can expect when starting a new game.
Do they generally do less damage than other classes? I leveled my mesmer to 14 so far, and I feel that killing mobs is much slower on her compared to my warrior and thief.
Is this just the way of things, or do they ramp up better at higher levels?