Ooh! That does make me want to rejoin admittedly! I never had more fun in an MMO than I did when they did that human-controlled Baelzheron rampage event. It'd be good reminiscing. Asheron's Call was such a fantastic game.
Ooh! That does make me want to rejoin admittedly! I never had more fun in an MMO than I did when they did that human-controlled Baelzheron rampage event. It'd be good reminiscing. Asheron's Call was such a fantastic game.
The only thing I remember from that event is the guy that got teleported to Teth. Several miles above it actually.
seabass on
Run you pigeons, it's Robert Frost!
0
CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
Ooh! That does make me want to rejoin admittedly! I never had more fun in an MMO than I did when they did that human-controlled Baelzheron rampage event. It'd be good reminiscing. Asheron's Call was such a fantastic game.
The only thing I remember from that event is the guy that got teleported to Teth. Several miles above it actually.
Ooh! That does make me want to rejoin admittedly! I never had more fun in an MMO than I did when they did that human-controlled Baelzheron rampage event. It'd be good reminiscing. Asheron's Call was such a fantastic game.
The only thing I remember from that event is the guy that got teleported to Teth. Several miles above it actually.
I bet that left a mark.
Other MMOs should do this.
Other MMOs are designed-by-committee sludge that would never, ever risk something as dangerous as having a Dev controlled combat NPC. SOMEONE would bitch and moan about it in WOW, for example, or whine about how it wasn't fair that they didn't get a chance to farm B'Z for his ring, or somesuch crap.
The more games I play since AC, the more I realize just how magical and special AC is.
Ooh! That does make me want to rejoin admittedly! I never had more fun in an MMO than I did when they did that human-controlled Baelzheron rampage event. It'd be good reminiscing. Asheron's Call was such a fantastic game.
The only thing I remember from that event is the guy that got teleported to Teth. Several miles above it actually.
I bet that left a mark.
Other MMOs should do this.
Other MMOs are designed-by-committee sludge that would never, ever risk something as dangerous as having a Dev controlled combat NPC. SOMEONE would bitch and moan about it in WOW, for example, or whine about how it wasn't fair that they didn't get a chance to farm B'Z for his ring, or somesuch crap.
The more games I play since AC, the more I realize just how magical and special AC is.
The monthly story based content patch was absolutely the greatest thing about AC. The fact that you could permanently miss out on gear was AWESOME, not terrible. Mattekar robes and crystal orbs and so on, all really really cool things you could actually miss out on. You see somebody in one, you know either they paid a shit load for it, or they've been around for a long time, and you can start talking to them about the events that the items are from, knowing that they'll have a story about it.
Plus better gear gets introduced later on and the power base is leveled again.
seabass on
Run you pigeons, it's Robert Frost!
0
citizen059hello my name is citizenI'm from the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited October 2010
Yeah, the whole thing about that - it creates a world where events matter, and that goes a long way toward creating immersion.
Yes, there are repeatable quests, but the big event and the best reward only happened once. The people who won those first battles are written into the lore of Dereth forever (TD's Defense of the Shard, for example).
In most MMO's it's like watching the movie Groundhog Day - nothing you do has any impact because nothing ever changes.
citizen059 on
0
DyvionBack in Sunny Florida!!Registered Userregular
In most MMO's it's like watching the movie Groundhog Day - nothing you do has any impact because nothing ever changes.
Not enough lime! One day there will be another MMO where players have an actual impact on the world... and not just for the next 4 hours, or even the next 4 days.
Dyvion on
Steam: No Safety In Life
PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
In most MMO's it's like watching the movie Groundhog Day - nothing you do has any impact because nothing ever changes.
Not enough lime! One day there will be another MMO where players have an actual impact on the world... and not just for the next 4 hours, or even the next 4 days.
To be fair, they just gave TD a statue. The story still got made consistent across all shards.
seabass on
Run you pigeons, it's Robert Frost!
0
citizen059hello my name is citizenI'm from the InternetRegistered Userregular
In most MMO's it's like watching the movie Groundhog Day - nothing you do has any impact because nothing ever changes.
Not enough lime! One day there will be another MMO where players have an actual impact on the world... and not just for the next 4 hours, or even the next 4 days.
To be fair, they just gave TD a statue. The story still got made consistent across all shards.
True, but it was still one of the most important moments in early AC history.
You could easily argue that the players aren't really changing anything, they're just following along as bit players in the story already predetermined by Turbine...but the fact that there is an evolving story and the world changes as a result is what really makes AC win. You really get the sense that you're part of a living world, as opposed to a brightly colored theme park where everyone just goes on the same rides over and over again.
I wish someone would remake AC. Same game (with a few refinements, better graphics, better UI, and bank and AH). The evolving world was an awesome thing about AC. I haven't played for years but I still remember when logging in one day and Arwic was a crater. LOL.
WhoAreYou on
0
citizen059hello my name is citizenI'm from the InternetRegistered Userregular
I wish someone would remake AC. Same game (with a few refinements, better graphics, better UI, and bank and AH). The evolving world was an awesome thing about AC. I haven't played for years but I still remember when logging in one day and Arwic was a crater. LOL.
The fun part was standing at the crater and watching people's mules log in and drop to their deaths.
citizen059 on
0
DyvionBack in Sunny Florida!!Registered Userregular
I wish someone would remake AC. Same game (with a few refinements, better graphics, better UI, and bank and AH). The evolving world was an awesome thing about AC. I haven't played for years but I still remember when logging in one day and Arwic was a crater. LOL.
The fun part was standing at the crater and watching people's mules log in and drop to their deaths.
That pic reminded me of some of the sweeping vistas which I found amazing at the time. You could go up on the mountains (above one of the Lugian caves was my favorite) and look out and see forever, it seemed like. I've seen better vistas since then, but it was amazing to see that at the time. I grew up in Florida, and you can't see more than 200 yards in any direction because of the trees.
Dyvion on
Steam: No Safety In Life
PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
0
citizen059hello my name is citizenI'm from the InternetRegistered Userregular
I wish someone would remake AC. Same game (with a few refinements, better graphics, better UI, and bank and AH). The evolving world was an awesome thing about AC. I haven't played for years but I still remember when logging in one day and Arwic was a crater. LOL.
The fun part was standing at the crater and watching people's mules log in and drop to their deaths.
That pic reminded me of some of the sweeping vistas which I found amazing at the time. You could go up on the mountains (above one of the Lugian caves was my favorite) and look out and see forever, it seemed like. I've seen better vistas since then, but it was amazing to see that at the time. I grew up in Florida, and you can't see more than 200 yards in any direction because of the trees.
I had a friend that I ran around with in AC on an almost daily basis for a couple of years. We would be out hunting, just making our way across the landscape, and we would always find a quiet place to stop and view the sun coming up in the 'morning'. I can still remember thinking how cool it was to be able to do that in a game and how neat I thought the effect looked.
I hate this whole discussion for making me want to reregister. This freaking happens every couple of years. I know if I go back I'm not going to have much fun, but I still want to go back and look around.
I wish someone would remake AC. Same game (with a few refinements, better graphics, better UI, and bank and AH). The evolving world was an awesome thing about AC. I haven't played for years but I still remember when logging in one day and Arwic was a crater. LOL.
The fun part was standing at the crater and watching people's mules log in and drop to their deaths.
That pic reminded me of some of the sweeping vistas which I found amazing at the time. You could go up on the mountains (above one of the Lugian caves was my favorite) and look out and see forever, it seemed like. I've seen better vistas since then, but it was amazing to see that at the time. I grew up in Florida, and you can't see more than 200 yards in any direction because of the trees.
I had a friend that I ran around with in AC on an almost daily basis for a couple of years. We would be out hunting, just making our way across the landscape, and we would always find a quiet place to stop and view the sun coming up in the 'morning'. I can still remember thinking how cool it was to be able to do that in a game and how neat I thought the effect looked.
The only thing I did in AC for close to 2 years was run around and find new places. level 120 and close to 500 buffed run skill, I must have done laps around the main continent hundreds of times but still found new places every time.
I wish someone would remake AC. Same game (with a few refinements, better graphics, better UI, and bank and AH). The evolving world was an awesome thing about AC. I haven't played for years but I still remember when logging in one day and Arwic was a crater. LOL.
The fun part was standing at the crater and watching people's mules log in and drop to their deaths.
That pic reminded me of some of the sweeping vistas which I found amazing at the time. You could go up on the mountains (above one of the Lugian caves was my favorite) and look out and see forever, it seemed like. I've seen better vistas since then, but it was amazing to see that at the time. I grew up in Florida, and you can't see more than 200 yards in any direction because of the trees.
I had a friend that I ran around with in AC on an almost daily basis for a couple of years. We would be out hunting, just making our way across the landscape, and we would always find a quiet place to stop and view the sun coming up in the 'morning'. I can still remember thinking how cool it was to be able to do that in a game and how neat I thought the effect looked.
The only thing I did in AC for close to 2 years was run around and find new places. level 120 and close to 500 buffed run skill, I must have done laps around the main continent hundreds of times but still found new places every time.
I was similar, except I ran around finding things to jump off. Dark Majesty introduced the best tower for this.
I wish someone would remake AC. Same game (with a few refinements, better graphics, better UI, and bank and AH). The evolving world was an awesome thing about AC. I haven't played for years but I still remember when logging in one day and Arwic was a crater. LOL.
The fun part was standing at the crater and watching people's mules log in and drop to their deaths.
That pic reminded me of some of the sweeping vistas which I found amazing at the time. You could go up on the mountains (above one of the Lugian caves was my favorite) and look out and see forever, it seemed like. I've seen better vistas since then, but it was amazing to see that at the time. I grew up in Florida, and you can't see more than 200 yards in any direction because of the trees.
I had a friend that I ran around with in AC on an almost daily basis for a couple of years. We would be out hunting, just making our way across the landscape, and we would always find a quiet place to stop and view the sun coming up in the 'morning'. I can still remember thinking how cool it was to be able to do that in a game and how neat I thought the effect looked.
The only thing I did in AC for close to 2 years was run around and find new places. level 120 and close to 500 buffed run skill, I must have done laps around the main continent hundreds of times but still found new places every time.
I was similar, except I ran around finding things to jump off. Dark Majesty introduced the best tower for this.
Jumping off The Black Hill, or jumping on to the floating towers outside Sanctuary
Remember back when droppable desks had collision without being hooked? We Climbed to the top of the sky (couldn't go any higher) and jumped off. We died glorious deaths.
Bendery It Like Beckham on
0
citizen059hello my name is citizenI'm from the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited October 2010
My hobby was the other way around...I was always trying to go up on top of things I shouldn't have been able to reach.
Soooooo much XP [strike]wasted[/strike] invested in Jump. The first time I hopped my way to the top of the Mayoi mage tower was bliss.
That...sounds super cool, compared to basically every other addition to the game I've seen so far.
This is the first skill that's been added, that's not a tradeskill or something very supplemental like healing, right?
Well, there was 2 handed melee added a while back....
Was that actually a new skill? I thought it just let you have the option with your current sword(etc) skill, at the cost of a shield.
It was actually a separate skill from the regular melee skills, and let you use 2-handed maces, axes, swords, etc. You didn't need the regular mace, sword, or axe to do so either.
Ah. Still, I feel like this is the best skill they've added. It's more interesting to me than the 2h tradeoff of more damage for less defense, because melee skills are auto-attack anyway.
Also, as far as I know, two-handed melee actually has some different mechanics from sword/board, like a cleave/double swing thing. Which is somewhat significant considering the absolutely mechnically dull 1h style.
Still, it's pretty surprising that they're ading a new type of magic after all this time. So what does void magic do?
forty on
0
citizen059hello my name is citizenI'm from the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited November 2010
How does it work?
Void magic uses nether damage on all of its attacks. These attacks come in 4 forms:
* Direct cast Damage over Time
* Projectile Damage over Time
* Standard Projectile attacks
* Debuffs
What are the spells and what do they do?
The Top Level spells that Void Mages get are:
* Corrosion – A projectile which does 448 points of damage over 15 seconds
* Corruption – Shoots 5 projectiles which do 357 damage over 30 seconds
* Destructive Curse – Direct cast which does 357 damage over 30 seconds
* Festering Curse – decreases the heal rating of the target by 45 for 30 seconds
* Weakening Curse – decreases the target’s damage rating by 15 for 15 seconds
* Nether Bolt/Arc – A projectile which does 240-310 damage
* Nether Streak – A projectile which does 120-154 damage
* Clouded Soul – A nether ring which does 90-140 damage per projectile
The three types of DoT spells will stack with each other but two of the same DoT spell will not. This means targets can have a Corrosion, Corruption and Destructive Curse applied to them at the same time, but cannot have two Corruption spells applied to them at the same time.
On top of their damages, DoT spells cause the target to take a greater amount of incoming damage from all attacks. The amount the incoming damage is increased is based off of how high of a DoT the target is currently taking.
2h did normal melee damage (or a little less in some cases), but, it did it to all targets in a 90 degree arc in front of you, or 180 with some weapons.
It also did a double attack if it was only one target. So in essence, it was double standard melee damage, or the same damage to many targets.
It worked really well, is an overall great skill. I was a little irked when it came out because they balanced it really poorly.
A Melee character may lose his shield with 2h, but he has access to every damage type (unlike 1h melee skills, which are by and large short one damage type...some times 2+). He can also cleave through monsters at super speed.
Players where told 2h was going to solve the melee imbalance, instead...it just left 1h even further in the dust.
Doesn't matter, a single "non-bolt" DoT will devastate PvP. In fact, no one that isn't a Void mage will pvp at all.
Archery is broken as shit, any missile def (even trained) will negate even a max archer. Melee is laughable. War magic is the only way to really pvp. With the fact that Void mages will be able to apply a pretty sizeable DoT without missing....yikes.
DoT, DoT, they are forced to heal, run up next to them, AoE DoT, Ravens Curse. Laugh.
Void Magic is going to be busted in PvP, if the spells go through as listed there. It looks cool...but, meh...They really should have fixed Melee for everything, and Archers in PvP, before introducing a new skill to balance.
Doesn't matter, a single "non-bolt" DoT will devastate PvP. In fact, no one that isn't a Void mage will pvp at all.
Archery is broken as shit, any missile def (even trained) will negate even a max archer. Melee is laughable. War magic is the only way to really pvp. With the fact that Void mages will be able to apply a pretty sizeable DoT without missing....yikes.
DoT, DoT, they are forced to heal, run up next to them, AoE DoT, Ravens Curse. Laugh.
Void Magic is going to be busted in PvP, if the spells go through as listed there. It looks cool...but, meh...They really should have fixed Melee for everything, and Archers in PvP, before introducing a new skill to balance.
Pretty much all they have to do to fix that is make it so that attack bonuses and heart seeker work on bows again.
Also I'd be worried more about melee characters. They cant even scratch me with my defense bow on. +47% melee defense with appropriate buffs on. I think my actual buffed melee D is like 729, if you include the melee bonus from my bow. Even with maxed out gear, dude is only going to hit me half the time.
E: Also AC did not exactly have a lot of source material to read from in terms of their designs when they first started coming up with all these formulas and balances. I would say that the best way for them to balance the game at this point would be to normalize combat skills and defense skills. Combat skills ought to be twostat/3 (including bow and crossbow and magic skills as far as I'm concerned) and their associated defense skills should be twostat/5 or 6. Change the skill check levels for spellcasting and all is well.
That is indeed a huge problem. When I tried pvping on my swordsman....All anyone had to do was pull out a melee D tinkered wand or bow, and I'd never hit them. Even if I slammed them with debuffs, I'd rarely hit.
Melee is broke, and instead of fixing it, they add a new magic skill.
Asherons Call: Eleven years later, we're changing the name to Mages Call: Mage of the mage mage.
Not entirely. Mages rule PvE because they don't have to switch weapons to vuln/debuff. This is critical because it can turn a 10 second fight into a 30 second fight when you have to switch back and forth between weapons.
Then we get the fact that a Melee's vuln magics are always lower then a mages, so he has to switch weapons, get resisted several times, then finally land, reequip...kill.
Ok, now comes one of the biggest disparities. Even though a melee has a shield, certain area's (an ever growing number as they add end game content) are impossible for a melee. A Mage or Archer can stand up on objects and blast away, easily dodging hostile war magic. Now comes the melee, he gets mobbed by war spamming, level 8 vulning mobs that either ignore shields, or have a huge crit factor. They inevitably get behind the melee and insta kill him (This has happened to me more times then I can count.).
All the while, the mage or archer is just sitting up on top of a building killing away as the melee tries to do anything.
It's just an imbalance that's always been an issue in AC, but in the past few years we've seen it on the rise. Area's like the Graveyard, and Colo are tailored for killing melee's. And there is no reason for this, it's been discussed with the dev's and they won't acknowledge the problem. I've even lead a group of prominent melee players in a discussion with community reps and devs. We went to these places with the devs, and they watched us just die over and over. When the melee players logged on their much lower level melee's and archers and cleared half the GY....They still wouldn't admit a problem with melee.
By and large? Melee works pretty well, and a good player with great gear can still survive in the GY, but have to get carried in colo by and large. I can do the quests in GY, but casual hunting? Hell no, I just get face melted.
Sad part is, there really isn't any area tailored for melee's. There's a leveling zone called Path of the Blind. It's the single best place to get XP level 180+. You can go from 180 to 275 in 2 days in PoTB. But you can't level there, because even though melee's rock up the joint, no one really plays melee....and the few that do can't really get a group together to go level there.
Problem is, there are so few melee's you can never get enough of a group together to do Hollow content. Any hollow's in quests are either avoided, or done as a group where the lone melee blocks them off as mages beat them down. In fact, most of the time when a melee is necessary (I can't think of any quest where you HAVE to have a melee any way), they are told to just block off a hall and not attack. Forming a wall, while mages do all the heavy lifting.
Plus, hollow weapons are garbage. With tinkering and stuff...they just suck. No imbues, low base damage, just....general garbage. They got a buff that didn't do anything really. Made them a little better, but then they buffed armor twice making the hollow upgrade pointless.
Posts
The only thing I remember from that event is the guy that got teleported to Teth. Several miles above it actually.
I bet that left a mark.
Other MMOs should do this.
Other MMOs are designed-by-committee sludge that would never, ever risk something as dangerous as having a Dev controlled combat NPC. SOMEONE would bitch and moan about it in WOW, for example, or whine about how it wasn't fair that they didn't get a chance to farm B'Z for his ring, or somesuch crap.
The more games I play since AC, the more I realize just how magical and special AC is.
The monthly story based content patch was absolutely the greatest thing about AC. The fact that you could permanently miss out on gear was AWESOME, not terrible. Mattekar robes and crystal orbs and so on, all really really cool things you could actually miss out on. You see somebody in one, you know either they paid a shit load for it, or they've been around for a long time, and you can start talking to them about the events that the items are from, knowing that they'll have a story about it.
Plus better gear gets introduced later on and the power base is leveled again.
Yes, there are repeatable quests, but the big event and the best reward only happened once. The people who won those first battles are written into the lore of Dereth forever (TD's Defense of the Shard, for example).
In most MMO's it's like watching the movie Groundhog Day - nothing you do has any impact because nothing ever changes.
Not enough lime! One day there will be another MMO where players have an actual impact on the world... and not just for the next 4 hours, or even the next 4 days.
PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
To be fair, they just gave TD a statue. The story still got made consistent across all shards.
True, but it was still one of the most important moments in early AC history.
You could easily argue that the players aren't really changing anything, they're just following along as bit players in the story already predetermined by Turbine...but the fact that there is an evolving story and the world changes as a result is what really makes AC win. You really get the sense that you're part of a living world, as opposed to a brightly colored theme park where everyone just goes on the same rides over and over again.
The fun part was standing at the crater and watching people's mules log in and drop to their deaths.
That pic reminded me of some of the sweeping vistas which I found amazing at the time. You could go up on the mountains (above one of the Lugian caves was my favorite) and look out and see forever, it seemed like. I've seen better vistas since then, but it was amazing to see that at the time. I grew up in Florida, and you can't see more than 200 yards in any direction because of the trees.
PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
I had a friend that I ran around with in AC on an almost daily basis for a couple of years. We would be out hunting, just making our way across the landscape, and we would always find a quiet place to stop and view the sun coming up in the 'morning'. I can still remember thinking how cool it was to be able to do that in a game and how neat I thought the effect looked.
The only thing I did in AC for close to 2 years was run around and find new places. level 120 and close to 500 buffed run skill, I must have done laps around the main continent hundreds of times but still found new places every time.
Aside from that, my first memories of booting up the game, running into a building, then dying to a swarm of rats.
I was similar, except I ran around finding things to jump off. Dark Majesty introduced the best tower for this.
Jumping off The Black Hill, or jumping on to the floating towers outside Sanctuary
Remember back when droppable desks had collision without being hooked? We Climbed to the top of the sky (couldn't go any higher) and jumped off. We died glorious deaths.
Soooooo much XP [strike]wasted[/strike] invested in Jump. The first time I hopped my way to the top of the Mayoi mage tower was bliss.
Void Magic and You!
That...sounds super cool, compared to basically every other addition to the game I've seen so far.
This is the first skill that's been added, that's not a tradeskill or something very supplemental like healing, right?
Well, there was 2 handed melee added a while back....
Was that actually a new skill? I thought it just let you have the option with your current sword(etc) skill, at the cost of a shield.
It was actually a separate skill from the regular melee skills, and let you use 2-handed maces, axes, swords, etc. You didn't need the regular mace, sword, or axe to do so either.
Still, it's pretty surprising that they're ading a new type of magic after all this time. So what does void magic do?
Void magic uses nether damage on all of its attacks. These attacks come in 4 forms:
* Direct cast Damage over Time
* Projectile Damage over Time
* Standard Projectile attacks
* Debuffs
What are the spells and what do they do?
The Top Level spells that Void Mages get are:
* Corrosion – A projectile which does 448 points of damage over 15 seconds
* Corruption – Shoots 5 projectiles which do 357 damage over 30 seconds
* Destructive Curse – Direct cast which does 357 damage over 30 seconds
* Festering Curse – decreases the heal rating of the target by 45 for 30 seconds
* Weakening Curse – decreases the target’s damage rating by 15 for 15 seconds
* Nether Bolt/Arc – A projectile which does 240-310 damage
* Nether Streak – A projectile which does 120-154 damage
* Clouded Soul – A nether ring which does 90-140 damage per projectile
The three types of DoT spells will stack with each other but two of the same DoT spell will not. This means targets can have a Corrosion, Corruption and Destructive Curse applied to them at the same time, but cannot have two Corruption spells applied to them at the same time.
On top of their damages, DoT spells cause the target to take a greater amount of incoming damage from all attacks. The amount the incoming damage is increased is based off of how high of a DoT the target is currently taking.
It also did a double attack if it was only one target. So in essence, it was double standard melee damage, or the same damage to many targets.
It worked really well, is an overall great skill. I was a little irked when it came out because they balanced it really poorly.
A Melee character may lose his shield with 2h, but he has access to every damage type (unlike 1h melee skills, which are by and large short one damage type...some times 2+). He can also cleave through monsters at super speed.
Players where told 2h was going to solve the melee imbalance, instead...it just left 1h even further in the dust.
Archery is broken as shit, any missile def (even trained) will negate even a max archer. Melee is laughable. War magic is the only way to really pvp. With the fact that Void mages will be able to apply a pretty sizeable DoT without missing....yikes.
DoT, DoT, they are forced to heal, run up next to them, AoE DoT, Ravens Curse. Laugh.
Void Magic is going to be busted in PvP, if the spells go through as listed there. It looks cool...but, meh...They really should have fixed Melee for everything, and Archers in PvP, before introducing a new skill to balance.
Pretty much all they have to do to fix that is make it so that attack bonuses and heart seeker work on bows again.
Also I'd be worried more about melee characters. They cant even scratch me with my defense bow on. +47% melee defense with appropriate buffs on. I think my actual buffed melee D is like 729, if you include the melee bonus from my bow. Even with maxed out gear, dude is only going to hit me half the time.
E: Also AC did not exactly have a lot of source material to read from in terms of their designs when they first started coming up with all these formulas and balances. I would say that the best way for them to balance the game at this point would be to normalize combat skills and defense skills. Combat skills ought to be twostat/3 (including bow and crossbow and magic skills as far as I'm concerned) and their associated defense skills should be twostat/5 or 6. Change the skill check levels for spellcasting and all is well.
Melee is broke, and instead of fixing it, they add a new magic skill.
Asherons Call: Eleven years later, we're changing the name to Mages Call: Mage of the mage mage.
Then we get the fact that a Melee's vuln magics are always lower then a mages, so he has to switch weapons, get resisted several times, then finally land, reequip...kill.
Ok, now comes one of the biggest disparities. Even though a melee has a shield, certain area's (an ever growing number as they add end game content) are impossible for a melee. A Mage or Archer can stand up on objects and blast away, easily dodging hostile war magic. Now comes the melee, he gets mobbed by war spamming, level 8 vulning mobs that either ignore shields, or have a huge crit factor. They inevitably get behind the melee and insta kill him (This has happened to me more times then I can count.).
All the while, the mage or archer is just sitting up on top of a building killing away as the melee tries to do anything.
It's just an imbalance that's always been an issue in AC, but in the past few years we've seen it on the rise. Area's like the Graveyard, and Colo are tailored for killing melee's. And there is no reason for this, it's been discussed with the dev's and they won't acknowledge the problem. I've even lead a group of prominent melee players in a discussion with community reps and devs. We went to these places with the devs, and they watched us just die over and over. When the melee players logged on their much lower level melee's and archers and cleared half the GY....They still wouldn't admit a problem with melee.
By and large? Melee works pretty well, and a good player with great gear can still survive in the GY, but have to get carried in colo by and large. I can do the quests in GY, but casual hunting? Hell no, I just get face melted.
Sad part is, there really isn't any area tailored for melee's. There's a leveling zone called Path of the Blind. It's the single best place to get XP level 180+. You can go from 180 to 275 in 2 days in PoTB. But you can't level there, because even though melee's rock up the joint, no one really plays melee....and the few that do can't really get a group together to go level there.
I hope that answered that question well enough.
Plus, hollow weapons are garbage. With tinkering and stuff...they just suck. No imbues, low base damage, just....general garbage. They got a buff that didn't do anything really. Made them a little better, but then they buffed armor twice making the hollow upgrade pointless.