Something that surprised me was how essential good gear felt in the game. A lot of times, gear would look like a very moderate increase in stats for me, but there'd be a noticeable power differential each time I got something better.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
After playing a thief at 80 in structured PvP, then playing a thief at level 15, I felt like I was burning levels to complete my character.
At 15, I can agree a little, but at 20 all you're missing is an Elite skill. Granted you will have a lot of skills to buy still, but you can have an initial loadout complete fairly early (and can use Structured/WvW to get a feel for an early build you want to start with). As it was, on Ranger, even with only two support skills I didn't feel particularly incomplete. It may have just been down to having *EVERYTHING* available when you are in PvP vs having a lot of stuff left to buy/unlock in PvE pre 20, even though the support skills you'd actually want on your PvE side could be fairly limited and easily obtained.
Really, it was not having the traits that I had at 80 that made the biggest difference for me.
Ah, still, for me the only time I felt like I was counting down to level __ was for weapon swapping (which should really be available earlier). Maybe things were just fun enough as was that I didn't care too much about abilities and traits I didn't have yet.
I played as thief, and let me tell you - acrobatics made a huge difference in playstyle. Instead of only being able to dodge twice before having to soak up hits, I was able to dodge around 5-6 times, which greatly increased my survivability/mobility. Also, as I said about a billion times in guild chat, dropping caltrops whenever I dodge is fucking awesome!
How do you set up the traits to allow you to dodge that often?
iirc, they have 1 trait that makes endurance recharge faster and a second that makes dodge cost less. Just check out a calculator.
edit: Also, holding points in structured pvp with a turret specced engineer is super funny.
DemonStacey on
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SarksusATTACK AND DETHRONE GODRegistered Userregular
Yeah I am looking at a calculator and there's just one such trait in acrobatics. Is that all it takes to dodge a lot more?
I wonder if if we should start some profession threads along with the new general thread coming up. I really, really want to talk about the classes I played with other people that played them. See what everyone else feels how each class "should" be played, because I'd say there are three to five different ways to play each profession and like 5 or so builds for each of those playstyles. I could go on for many pages just talking about the different things I tried on the elementalist and thief.
What are our thoughts on that? Cause I really want to go into depth on the elementalist. I played it a lot, and unlocked every skill but definitely gravitated to certain load outs. Sometimes I felt very powerful, and other times I felt like I couldn't do anything. I want to talk for pages on the ways I felt worked well for me, and I want other people to discuss with me so I may find out how to overcome my short-comings because I found I had a LOT of them in Structured PvP.
Don't ever count on it, there was a reason they consolidated the WoW threads.
Those of you who loved guardian: Can you tell me what was awesome about them?
I found Guardian fun in PvE, for the most part (sword + focus, greatsword). Lots of gap closers, pull ins, shields, etc. I found it highly lacking in PvP where my heavy armor felt like paper and my sword felt like a wet noodle. I did have the ability to try to keep some buffs/heals on my teammates, but it never really felt like they were helping that much. And sieges? Once we took enough of the PvP objectives, I just went back to PvE because I felt utterly useless.
So, maybe I'm not the person you were addressing, as I can't say I love Guardian. It wasn't bad, and with some tuning I think it will be a solid class, but I felt it currently lacking (which is an opinion, and we all have our own).
Anyone else having trouble focusing on work or anything else? I just want to play more. I know there's almost no chance of this, but I desperately want another BWE this weekend.
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VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
I sure hope you guys are posting most of this feedback in the beta forums, too.
Cuz a lot of it is good stuff to make sure they see.
Melee
- The Greatsword offers incredible offensive power and AOE capabilities in PvE. Basically my goto weapon for any non-elite melee mobs. Leap -> Symbol -> Hallowed Ground -> Whirling can usually kill just everything non-veteran if all the abilities connect. Doesn't seem that useful in PvP though, the very very slow setup time for this means that enemies will be long gone out of your range before you finish the chain. Binding Blade isn't useful because it seems easy to dodge / LOS it. Still, Symbol and Whirling can put the hurt on other players quite well.
- Hammer seems odd. Trades a lot of killing power as compared to a Greatsword for just a bit more control. Felt out of place to me in PVE. PVP seems reasonable enough for small fights, but the slow attack speed and high recharge on the more useful stuff don't really make it appealing.
- Mace is a defensive weapon that excels in small group situations. Lacks any sort of firepower, but pretty useful for group support when fighting the centaurs at Bettletun, and a great weapon for PVP. Only complain I have is the skills have long cast times.
- Sword seems useless. It lacks both killing power and defensive capabilities. Zealot's defense doesn't do enough damage in PVE to kill alone, and in PVP, the fact that it's channelling means that all someone has to do is run through/around you to render it useless. The teleport seems inferior to the Greatsword leap somehow too.
Ranged
- Staffs are great for PVP! Damage, control and support skills all in one weapon, with AOE damage to boot. Fails for PVE though, the shotgun nature tends to result in hitting more enemies than what I want.
- Scepters are great for PVE kiting though. Thanks to whoever it was on this board that introduced them. Basically circle strafe all day long, while dropping skill 2 on the area where you're kiting them. Hit skill 3 if shit gets crazy and you need more distance.
Offhands
- Focuses and shields are great. Shields are a bit more defensive while focuses are more balanced. Torches seem useless though. The flame breathing takes very very long to cast and the range seems a bit iffy. Also, setting yourself on fire and running next to enemies honestly doesn't sound like the best idea.
In the end, I ended up with this for PvE - Sceptre/Focus for kiting, Greatsword for closeup, and for PvP - Staff + Mace/Shield.
I wonder if if we should start some profession threads along with the new general thread coming up. I really, really want to talk about the classes I played with other people that played them. See what everyone else feels how each class "should" be played, because I'd say there are three to five different ways to play each profession and like 5 or so builds for each of those playstyles. I could go on for many pages just talking about the different things I tried on the elementalist and thief.
What are our thoughts on that? Cause I really want to go into depth on the elementalist. I played it a lot, and unlocked every skill but definitely gravitated to certain load outs. Sometimes I felt very powerful, and other times I felt like I couldn't do anything. I want to talk for pages on the ways I felt worked well for me, and I want other people to discuss with me so I may find out how to overcome my short-comings because I found I had a LOT of them in Structured PvP.
Don't ever count on it, there was a reason they consolidated the WoW threads.
Just a thought. It doesn't need to be a permanent thing. I personally think those of us that like to over-analyze everything we do would benefit from a separate thread dedicated to class discussion that gets in the nitty gritty theorycraft of what works, what doesn't work. We will need a new thread here by the end of the afternoon I think. Things will likely slow down a little here over 3 weeks. The BWE put, what, 25 pages on this thread in 3 days?
I ran around with a warrior yesterday, full vitality set with a few toughness and power gems. For weapons I had a mace/shield with rifle. It was amazing. The mace/shield combo offers so much control and survivability. Whenever I needed firepower I just busted out the rifle. With brutal shot and "For Great Justice" my kill shot critted as high as 500 on even level mobs at level 14.
@Slimcea I think the fact that you consider Sword and Torch useless but I found it to be the best combo for a lot of situations shows how many different play styles there are.
So for thief... I never figured out how the steal thing is supposed to work. Is it just totally random with what skill you can follow it up with? Steal itself I used no problem, but then the skill slot then becomes a great number of different abilities with no tooltip really explaining why or how to effect it.
@Slimcea I think the fact that you consider Sword and Torch useless but I found it to be the best combo for a lot of situations shows how many different play styles there are.
Yeah I'm not really paying attention to people's thoughts unless they say THIS IS AWESOME because chances are my tastes vary from theirs. My needs are pretty shallow. Unless I find myself needing a specific weapon to counter something all I care about is how cool something looks when I use it.
So for thief... I never figured out how the steal thing is supposed to work. Is it just totally random with what skill you can follow it up with? Steal itself I used no problem, but then the skill slot then becomes a great number of different abilities with no tooltip really explaining why or how to effect it.
I think this has to do with the type of enemy. There's a nice, but short, list here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Steal which details some of them. I'll mention that the stuff stolen from bandits will also get taken from other human enemies like the Separatists in Charr areas and the Ghosts.
So for thief... I never figured out how the steal thing is supposed to work. Is it just totally random with what skill you can follow it up with? Steal itself I used no problem, but then the skill slot then becomes a great number of different abilities with no tooltip really explaining why or how to effect it.
You steal from somebody and you get one skill according to what you stole from. You click steal again to use that skill. You don't get to pick what you steal.
Of my limited time playing this weekend, I am completely sold on this game. I love the art design and the music, the event system is so much better than the standard quest system in traditional mmos. The combat felt satisfying and I loved that even level mobs could destroy you if not paying attention. The elementalist is such a fun class, and having the ability to switch between melee and ranged based combat is awesome.
After playing a thief at 80 in structured PvP, then playing a thief at level 15, I felt like I was burning levels to complete my character.
At 15, I can agree a little, but at 20 all you're missing is an Elite skill. Granted you will have a lot of skills to buy still, but you can have an initial loadout complete fairly early (and can use Structured/WvW to get a feel for an early build you want to start with). As it was, on Ranger, even with only two support skills I didn't feel particularly incomplete. It may have just been down to having *EVERYTHING* available when you are in PvP vs having a lot of stuff left to buy/unlock in PvE pre 20, even though the support skills you'd actually want on your PvE side could be fairly limited and easily obtained.
Really, it was not having the traits that I had at 80 that made the biggest difference for me.
Ah, still, for me the only time I felt like I was counting down to level __ was for weapon swapping (which should really be available earlier). Maybe things were just fun enough as was that I didn't care too much about abilities and traits I didn't have yet.
I played as thief, and let me tell you - acrobatics made a huge difference in playstyle. Instead of only being able to dodge twice before having to soak up hits, I was able to dodge around 5-6 times, which greatly increased my survivability/mobility. Also, as I said about a billion times in guild chat, dropping caltrops whenever I dodge is fucking awesome!
How do you set up the traits to allow you to dodge that often?
In Acrobatics, there's a trait that lets you regain endurance whenever you dodge, which effectively cuts the cost for dodging in half. I think, also there's a trait for regaining endurance quicker? I can't remember off the top of my head. Also, dropping caltrops on a dodge in awesome.
So I built my engineer as pistol shield, using Elixir heal, elixir B (the might buff one), personal ram, and either rifle turret or anti-cc elixir, with supply crate elite.
My traits were 25 power, 10 precision, 20 toughness, 15 vitality, and my armor was full runes of the dolyak.
I was a mid armored tanky point assaulting 1v2 machine. It was great when thieves would stealth into me, I would wait about half a second, activate my 5, they would hit me and become stunned. Then I proceed to lock them down with knockback on my ram and my 4, all the while critting them with elixir B. Then they would finally regain control after the knockbacks and couldn't burst me down because I was so tough.
Or maybe a ranger was rapid firing me from atop a window or something, and I would just hold my 4 shield and reflect all of his projectiles back at him, making him bring himself down to half health and forced to retreat.
The best thing was when I was fighting over a point, a ranger hopped up, shot me a couple times, I activated my reflect, and he shot an arrow that reflected and knocked himself back off the point, allowing me the neutralization.
@Slimcea I think the fact that you consider Sword and Torch useless but I found it to be the best combo for a lot of situations shows how many different play styles there are.
Same here, but with Sword and Shield. That combo works great against wave-based events as a front-line supporter, mainly for Zealot's Defense when the enemy archers inevitably target you. Scepter/Shield was good for backline support, but I found the elementalists tended to have that base covered. I will agree that greatsword was my go-to damage dealer, though, and worked great with the more defensive slotted skills.
As much as I enjoyed my time with ranger I'm pretty torn about weapon choices for wuvwuv. The horn is super useful for the speed boost, but I'm not very impressed with the sword skills. The main attack alone is pretty annoying as you tend to get stuck in the jump kick animation. Throwing axe doesn't seem to have the range or the damage for pvp.
If I go ranger again next beta maybe I'll give some time to greatsword along with my usual short bow.
Anyone else tempted to make a female asura rifle engineer named Tristana?
Yep, thought of this when they first revealed the rifle's jump ability.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
i havent seen anybody running a buff setup mesmer
theres on armour set that gives you every buff in the game when you activate an ultimate ability, and i can see some serious synergy with signet of inspiration there lol
Wish I could have played the beta for more than a couple minutes at a time without losing sound. Made it really unfun and I probably only got about an hour of playtime in.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Just an fyi, if you didnt go to the mists, setup a trait build and customize you char using the vendors then go test it out on the dummies / bots you missed out and have no idea what kind of playstyles your class has available yet :O
I wanna post a writeup when I get home on everything I learned, being a bigtime number cruncher/balance junkie. But the jist of it for those who arent like me (which is almost everyone, cause who likes math lols)
- stats make a HUGE difference. The way the numers are laid out is misleading. Base stats are relatively meaningless to completely ignored. This mean that even though at 80 you base stats might be around 1000 but the 300 you get from traits is much more impactful than it would seem. For perspective, at 1000 pre you have like 4 crit, but with a mere 1800 you go to 50 crit. So those trait line bonuses are significant.
- trait major/minor choices make your playstyle. They give significance to things that normally wouldnt have it. Through traits I was able to turn my rangers pet into a beast by knowing how to do so. Things dont gel on paper quite like they do in practice. This makes elementalist very difficult to learn, because you want to use all your elemental sets but you will have to choose to spec into one enough for it to be your advantage. Its hard to explain, but ele is definately a class that will ned to know thier build like the back of thier hand or suffer greatly.
- numerically there are balance isues.. Most people wont notice them because the combat engine hides them by emphasizing application over raw numbers, but I found the damage of some professions can reach absurd levels while others not so much. And some of them still get good survivability with those numbers.
I can say for sure though, they di a very good job of customizaton. Unlike some games, its not the illusion of choice. Everything is viable if you can use it right and its possible to be unique and not be punished for it. Which is like heaven for me.
So I played a norn elementalist named "Kir" the most during the weekend. I saw a lot of NICE tags out in the WvWvW the first day, and I believe I saw Rysk a lot wherever my friends(Reso) and I went.
I really enjoyed the playstyle of the elementalist. I tended to switch attunements a lot, and really enjoyed having 20(+4, +1 heal) skills to utilize. For the amount of skills I used, or felt I had to use, the profession came off weaker than I thought it would. I would go back and forth between "Yes! That was awesome." and "What the hell am I supposed to do against that?" quite often. Looking back, I have to wonder if they intended elementalists to stick to 2 attunements and to rarely switch into all 4 throughout a fight. There were times where I could destroy people quickly, and other times it felt like no matter what I did my damage just wasn't enough. I need more experience to know why I could have two very different outcomes in my combos I built.
Weapons.
Main Hand
Staff - The staff was great in any environment where there was a lot to AE. Big group quests and keep sieges are times where I would go into my inventory and equip a staff. The more enemies present, the stronger the staff got. Standing on top of a keep ramparts and raining down fire and ice, raising lava and breaking the ground made a lot of numbers come across the screen. I couple of elementalists could make a very dangerous area in front of a keep door with their AE. There were a lot of AE skills, but they all had a little bit of delay to them so you needed your enemies to kind of stand still for them to be effective. As such, it doesn't work well in small scale PvP or soloing PvE. People could too easily move out of most of your skills and not take damage from them. And unless someone was standing in your lava font, meteor show and ice shards, you aren't going to have a fun time 1v1ing anyone.
Scepter - I really liked the scepter's skills. A nice mid-range weapon with everything. AE, single target, condition damage, buffs and debuffs. It's damage however also seemed mid-range. It felt much more useful than the staff in small scale skirmishes, and I think works very well in those battles. Taking WvWvW camps with my friends had me using this weapon a lot, as it provided good AE damage for the guards as well as when groups of 7-10 enemy players would be in an area where the Dragon Tooth and Pheonix could consistently hit for multiple people for some decent damage. It's not too bad in 1v1, but the damage I feel is a little lacking because of the utility it provides with the buffs/debuffs.
Dagger - The trend continues with the Dagger being a great close range weapon and excels at 1v1 combat. Where the Staff and Scepter leave a feeling of wanting to be more powerful the dagger comes in and gives the damage you seek. The trade-off is that you have to get right in someones face as a cloth wearer to do that damage. The dagger is straight up Damage+Condition Damage. I enjoyed using the dagger in structured PvP and in small skirmishes in WvWvW.
off hand
Focus - I must admit I didn't play too much with the focus. I unlocked the skills, and they had some great utility to them. It left me wanting more from it though. I didn't feel it offered enough support for the lack in damage it provided. Again though, my experience is limited.
Dagger - The reason my experience with the Focus was limited. The dagger in an off-hand is incredible. Ride the Lightning will make playing any other class difficult for me. I found this weapon to be the most useful to my playstyle. It allowed me to cause the deaths of many people in WvWvW, where knocking down an enemy meant their imminent doom. I had a lot of fun riding the lightning into someone, and then knocking them down twice with the 5th air skill, and the 4th earth skill. They hardly ever survived that in WvWvW. The flame grab (5th skill in fire) I found to be the hardest hitting ability.
Skills and Traits Healing - The channeled heal felt very weak. The heal+boon skill I felt was the best. The passive healing the other skill gave from casting spells didn't seem to make much of a difference to me.
Utility - For my playstyle of being towards the front line, Vapor Form is a must have and will save you too much to not have on your bar. Signets I didn't feel buffed me enough to give up a castable spell. The conjured weapons were a lot of fun, giving the elementalist even more skills to utilize. Either I didn't understand how it worked or it just didn't work, but I tried Glyph of Renewal because I thought being able to revive people with different additional things like reviving with full health or reviving them and having them teleport to my locations(so a ranged revive) would be very useful. Unfortunately it never worked for me.
Elite - The tornado was pretty fun and menacing, but I preferred the conjured greatsword or the elemental.
Traits - For traits, I really liked Arcane. I couldn't pass it up, because of how much I liked switching attunements. I swapped back and forth between Fire and Air. Fire for when I played with Scepter+Focus/Dagger, and Air for when I was double dagger. I needed those run speed buffs in Air for Double Dagger or else people with ranged skills would kite me too easily. I also always put 10 into Water because the dodge roll to remove a condition was very nice to drop unwanted debuffs.
Overall, I'd say the elementalist is very fun to play. I go back and forth between thinking the damage is fine(and I need more practice) and the damage is lacking. There were times where I would use literally every skill I had access to at the time, and I would lose a fight. I can specifically remember fighting a thief, and after I had switched attunements 4 times and used every skill I had I died and the report was that he used Heartseeker on me and little else. I felt cheated, and so made a Thief to see if it was as strong as I though. I was pretty upset when I saw the auto-attack hitting for 1200 twice, and Heartseeker landing 2700 crits consistently. Up until then, I had seen some high numbers as 1200 on my elementalist, with a skill that has a long enough delay that anyone can easily get out of the way of it. I then tried out double daggers on the elementalist and was a little relieved. Even still though, I feel that elementalists lack in a little bit in the damage output and have to wonder if there are still things I am missing that can make me a lot stronger.
My first piece of advice for people that want to play an elementalist in structured PvP... the default loadout is terrible. You only have like 12k health with it, and you will get destroyed. I switched out the power amulet for the vitality amulet and increased my HP to 20k, which increased my survivability immensely. Before that, thiefs, warriors and rangers would kill me too fast for me to do anything. For WvWvW, have a staff on hand to switch to when you come up to a keep siege. Otherwise use the weapons more fitting for smaller scale combat, even when giant zergs clash as people move too much for the staff to be too effective when there is too much movement. If you have to go back to a waypoint, you can get back to your crew quickly by swapping in and out the staff and an offhand dagger. Ride the lightning to victory.
Over the classes I played(elementalist, thief, guardian and warrior), I felt I had the most survivability as the elementalist. Vapor Form and Ride the Lightning. Vapor aloud me to avoid getting insta-gibbed or zerged down and get some distance. Then Ride the Lightning aloud me to create some great distance if they were continuing to focus on me.
So what were the thief's elite skills, and what did they look like?
I was having trouble when fighting them with deciding whether or not I should counter their commit by using my own elite.
1. your next two attacks turn your foe to stone for 1s (there's a trait that makes this apply to all nearby allies, too), 45s cooldown
2. dagger storm, you spin around chuckin big damage daggers all over, you can move while using it
3. summon two thieves to join in
“You run around Queensdale, the human starter area, and maybe the Brood Mother shows up every X minutes,” Johanson continues. “We’re going to put another event that can happen there, and then slow down how often the Brood Mother happens. Not only are there new events happening, but everything you’ve seen before starts happening less often. The world gets larger and larger. Three years from now, if someone makes a brand new character in the game, a place that has 100 events in it might have 300 by then.”
I'm just worried about scaling, because general experience with any MMO, even Guild Wars 1, is that after some time everybody is clustered at the end-game areas. So while there might be a ton of events, new characters might find it hard to gather a group to go complete them. The downscaling of events doesn't seem to be working at this stage. Have faith that ANet will fix it though.
Going through withdrawls already, so decided to go check out the official forums. It is like some people want this to be like every other MMO out there. I don't get it. There are tons of cookie cutter same as WoW type of games why would you not play those if that is what you like? It boggles the mind.
[GIR is disguised as a government agent]
Gir: I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me.
So what were the thief's elite skills, and what did they look like?
I was having trouble when fighting them with deciding whether or not I should counter their commit by using my own elite.
1. your next two attacks turn your foe to stone for 1s (there's a trait that makes this apply to all nearby allies, too), 45s cooldown
2. dagger storm, you spin around chuckin big damage daggers all over, you can move while using it
3. summon two thieves to join in
So if I see them spin-to-winning, katarina style, I can feel confident that throwing my supply crate down was, at least, an even exchange of resource?
I'm just worried about scaling, because general experience with any MMO, even Guild Wars 1, is that after some time everybody is clustered at the end-game areas. So while there might be a ton of events, new characters might find it hard to gather a group to go complete them. The downscaling of events doesn't seem to be working at this stage. Have faith that ANet will fix it though.
I wonder how much this will be alleviated with the character level downscaling that happens. So people can explore where ever they want and still have a challenge. So you may see level 80 humans checking out the starting areas of every other race, or level 50's going back and checking on skill points they may have missed and to see if any new events have been added, etc. I guess time will tell.
Fletchsm on
[GIR is disguised as a government agent]
Gir: I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me.
I'm just worried about scaling, because general experience with any MMO, even Guild Wars 1, is that after some time everybody is clustered at the end-game areas. So while there might be a ton of events, new characters might find it hard to gather a group to go complete them. The downscaling of events doesn't seem to be working at this stage. Have faith that ANet will fix it though.
The scaling seemed to be more uneven than totally broken - I definitely was doing fine soloing one combat event, then two or three came over and suddenly things went downhill for me. Either it needs more granularity or they just need to tweak individual events a bit (or tweak the base formulas for scaling).
The Great DAMNED STEAM SALES AND WII/U Backlog Just Finished: Borderlands (waste of $7)/Mario Brothers U/The Last Story/Tropico 4 Currently Playing: NS2/ZombiU/PlanetSide 2/Ys/Dota2/Xenoblade Chronicles On Hold: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within/GW2/Scribblenauts Coming Next: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones/X-Com Classic
So what were the thief's elite skills, and what did they look like?
I was having trouble when fighting them with deciding whether or not I should counter their commit by using my own elite.
1. your next two attacks turn your foe to stone for 1s (there's a trait that makes this apply to all nearby allies, too), 45s cooldown
2. dagger storm, you spin around chuckin big damage daggers all over, you can move while using it
3. summon two thieves to join in
So if I see them spin-to-winning, katarina style, I can feel confident that throwing my supply crate down was, at least, an even exchange of resource?
i guess so, yeah
i was using the 45s cooldown one that gave me and allies some crazy lockdown in every single fight, and i was running those runes that give you every buff when you activate your elite skill
it was fun
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SarksusATTACK AND DETHRONE GODRegistered Userregular
I'm just worried about scaling, because general experience with any MMO, even Guild Wars 1, is that after some time everybody is clustered at the end-game areas. So while there might be a ton of events, new characters might find it hard to gather a group to go complete them. The downscaling of events doesn't seem to be working at this stage. Have faith that ANet will fix it though.
I don't know about anybody else but I intend to go back to lower level areas to check out new content. I am hoping it works out like Skyrim, where no area ever felt "obsolete".
So what were the thief's elite skills, and what did they look like?
I was having trouble when fighting them with deciding whether or not I should counter their commit by using my own elite.
1. your next two attacks turn your foe to stone for 1s (there's a trait that makes this apply to all nearby allies, too), 45s cooldown
2. dagger storm, you spin around chuckin big damage daggers all over, you can move while using it
3. summon two thieves to join in
So if I see them spin-to-winning, katarina style, I can feel confident that throwing my supply crate down was, at least, an even exchange of resource?
i guess so, yeah
i was using the 45s cooldown one that gave me and allies some crazy lockdown in every single fight, and i was running those runes that give you every buff when you activate your elite skill
it was fun
That was easily the most irritating skill to get hit with. Most thieves didn't pack it, but the ones who did were the ones that were able to kill me, for sure.
So what were the thief's elite skills, and what did they look like?
I was having trouble when fighting them with deciding whether or not I should counter their commit by using my own elite.
1. your next two attacks turn your foe to stone for 1s (there's a trait that makes this apply to all nearby allies, too), 45s cooldown
2. dagger storm, you spin around chuckin big damage daggers all over, you can move while using it
3. summon two thieves to join in
So if I see them spin-to-winning, katarina style, I can feel confident that throwing my supply crate down was, at least, an even exchange of resource?
i guess so, yeah
i was using the 45s cooldown one that gave me and allies some crazy lockdown in every single fight, and i was running those runes that give you every buff when you activate your elite skill
it was fun
That was easily the most irritating skill to get hit with. Most thieves didn't pack it, but the ones who did were the ones that were able to kill me, for sure.
chain cc seemed really strong but I suspect that that is because people aren't used to packing a skill that breaks stun and being able to use it on reaction, the way people use Cleanse/QSS in league
Posts
iirc, they have 1 trait that makes endurance recharge faster and a second that makes dodge cost less. Just check out a calculator.
edit: Also, holding points in structured pvp with a turret specced engineer is super funny.
Don't ever count on it, there was a reason they consolidated the WoW threads.
I found Guardian fun in PvE, for the most part (sword + focus, greatsword). Lots of gap closers, pull ins, shields, etc. I found it highly lacking in PvP where my heavy armor felt like paper and my sword felt like a wet noodle. I did have the ability to try to keep some buffs/heals on my teammates, but it never really felt like they were helping that much. And sieges? Once we took enough of the PvP objectives, I just went back to PvE because I felt utterly useless.
So, maybe I'm not the person you were addressing, as I can't say I love Guardian. It wasn't bad, and with some tuning I think it will be a solid class, but I felt it currently lacking (which is an opinion, and we all have our own).
Cuz a lot of it is good stuff to make sure they see.
Melee
- The Greatsword offers incredible offensive power and AOE capabilities in PvE. Basically my goto weapon for any non-elite melee mobs. Leap -> Symbol -> Hallowed Ground -> Whirling can usually kill just everything non-veteran if all the abilities connect. Doesn't seem that useful in PvP though, the very very slow setup time for this means that enemies will be long gone out of your range before you finish the chain. Binding Blade isn't useful because it seems easy to dodge / LOS it. Still, Symbol and Whirling can put the hurt on other players quite well.
- Hammer seems odd. Trades a lot of killing power as compared to a Greatsword for just a bit more control. Felt out of place to me in PVE. PVP seems reasonable enough for small fights, but the slow attack speed and high recharge on the more useful stuff don't really make it appealing.
- Mace is a defensive weapon that excels in small group situations. Lacks any sort of firepower, but pretty useful for group support when fighting the centaurs at Bettletun, and a great weapon for PVP. Only complain I have is the skills have long cast times.
- Sword seems useless. It lacks both killing power and defensive capabilities. Zealot's defense doesn't do enough damage in PVE to kill alone, and in PVP, the fact that it's channelling means that all someone has to do is run through/around you to render it useless. The teleport seems inferior to the Greatsword leap somehow too.
Ranged
- Staffs are great for PVP! Damage, control and support skills all in one weapon, with AOE damage to boot. Fails for PVE though, the shotgun nature tends to result in hitting more enemies than what I want.
- Scepters are great for PVE kiting though. Thanks to whoever it was on this board that introduced them. Basically circle strafe all day long, while dropping skill 2 on the area where you're kiting them. Hit skill 3 if shit gets crazy and you need more distance.
Offhands
- Focuses and shields are great. Shields are a bit more defensive while focuses are more balanced. Torches seem useless though. The flame breathing takes very very long to cast and the range seems a bit iffy. Also, setting yourself on fire and running next to enemies honestly doesn't sound like the best idea.
In the end, I ended up with this for PvE - Sceptre/Focus for kiting, Greatsword for closeup, and for PvP - Staff + Mace/Shield.
Just a thought. It doesn't need to be a permanent thing. I personally think those of us that like to over-analyze everything we do would benefit from a separate thread dedicated to class discussion that gets in the nitty gritty theorycraft of what works, what doesn't work. We will need a new thread here by the end of the afternoon I think. Things will likely slow down a little here over 3 weeks. The BWE put, what, 25 pages on this thread in 3 days?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
'sez you.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
Yeah I'm not really paying attention to people's thoughts unless they say THIS IS AWESOME because chances are my tastes vary from theirs. My needs are pretty shallow. Unless I find myself needing a specific weapon to counter something all I care about is how cool something looks when I use it.
I think this has to do with the type of enemy. There's a nice, but short, list here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Steal which details some of them. I'll mention that the stuff stolen from bandits will also get taken from other human enemies like the Separatists in Charr areas and the Ghosts.
You steal from somebody and you get one skill according to what you stole from. You click steal again to use that skill. You don't get to pick what you steal.
Totally need to take off next bwe.
In Acrobatics, there's a trait that lets you regain endurance whenever you dodge, which effectively cuts the cost for dodging in half. I think, also there's a trait for regaining endurance quicker? I can't remember off the top of my head. Also, dropping caltrops on a dodge in awesome.
My traits were 25 power, 10 precision, 20 toughness, 15 vitality, and my armor was full runes of the dolyak.
I was a mid armored tanky point assaulting 1v2 machine. It was great when thieves would stealth into me, I would wait about half a second, activate my 5, they would hit me and become stunned. Then I proceed to lock them down with knockback on my ram and my 4, all the while critting them with elixir B. Then they would finally regain control after the knockbacks and couldn't burst me down because I was so tough.
Or maybe a ranger was rapid firing me from atop a window or something, and I would just hold my 4 shield and reflect all of his projectiles back at him, making him bring himself down to half health and forced to retreat.
The best thing was when I was fighting over a point, a ranger hopped up, shot me a couple times, I activated my reflect, and he shot an arrow that reflected and knocked himself back off the point, allowing me the neutralization.
Mmmmm.
Same here, but with Sword and Shield. That combo works great against wave-based events as a front-line supporter, mainly for Zealot's Defense when the enemy archers inevitably target you. Scepter/Shield was good for backline support, but I found the elementalists tended to have that base covered. I will agree that greatsword was my go-to damage dealer, though, and worked great with the more defensive slotted skills.
If I go ranger again next beta maybe I'll give some time to greatsword along with my usual short bow.
Yep, thought of this when they first revealed the rifle's jump ability.
theres on armour set that gives you every buff in the game when you activate an ultimate ability, and i can see some serious synergy with signet of inspiration there lol
I wanna post a writeup when I get home on everything I learned, being a bigtime number cruncher/balance junkie. But the jist of it for those who arent like me (which is almost everyone, cause who likes math lols)
- stats make a HUGE difference. The way the numers are laid out is misleading. Base stats are relatively meaningless to completely ignored. This mean that even though at 80 you base stats might be around 1000 but the 300 you get from traits is much more impactful than it would seem. For perspective, at 1000 pre you have like 4 crit, but with a mere 1800 you go to 50 crit. So those trait line bonuses are significant.
- trait major/minor choices make your playstyle. They give significance to things that normally wouldnt have it. Through traits I was able to turn my rangers pet into a beast by knowing how to do so. Things dont gel on paper quite like they do in practice. This makes elementalist very difficult to learn, because you want to use all your elemental sets but you will have to choose to spec into one enough for it to be your advantage. Its hard to explain, but ele is definately a class that will ned to know thier build like the back of thier hand or suffer greatly.
- numerically there are balance isues.. Most people wont notice them because the combat engine hides them by emphasizing application over raw numbers, but I found the damage of some professions can reach absurd levels while others not so much. And some of them still get good survivability with those numbers.
I can say for sure though, they di a very good job of customizaton. Unlike some games, its not the illusion of choice. Everything is viable if you can use it right and its possible to be unique and not be punished for it. Which is like heaven for me.
I was having trouble when fighting them with deciding whether or not I should counter their commit by using my own elite.
I really enjoyed the playstyle of the elementalist. I tended to switch attunements a lot, and really enjoyed having 20(+4, +1 heal) skills to utilize. For the amount of skills I used, or felt I had to use, the profession came off weaker than I thought it would. I would go back and forth between "Yes! That was awesome." and "What the hell am I supposed to do against that?" quite often. Looking back, I have to wonder if they intended elementalists to stick to 2 attunements and to rarely switch into all 4 throughout a fight. There were times where I could destroy people quickly, and other times it felt like no matter what I did my damage just wasn't enough. I need more experience to know why I could have two very different outcomes in my combos I built.
Weapons.
Main Hand
Staff - The staff was great in any environment where there was a lot to AE. Big group quests and keep sieges are times where I would go into my inventory and equip a staff. The more enemies present, the stronger the staff got. Standing on top of a keep ramparts and raining down fire and ice, raising lava and breaking the ground made a lot of numbers come across the screen. I couple of elementalists could make a very dangerous area in front of a keep door with their AE. There were a lot of AE skills, but they all had a little bit of delay to them so you needed your enemies to kind of stand still for them to be effective. As such, it doesn't work well in small scale PvP or soloing PvE. People could too easily move out of most of your skills and not take damage from them. And unless someone was standing in your lava font, meteor show and ice shards, you aren't going to have a fun time 1v1ing anyone.
Scepter - I really liked the scepter's skills. A nice mid-range weapon with everything. AE, single target, condition damage, buffs and debuffs. It's damage however also seemed mid-range. It felt much more useful than the staff in small scale skirmishes, and I think works very well in those battles. Taking WvWvW camps with my friends had me using this weapon a lot, as it provided good AE damage for the guards as well as when groups of 7-10 enemy players would be in an area where the Dragon Tooth and Pheonix could consistently hit for multiple people for some decent damage. It's not too bad in 1v1, but the damage I feel is a little lacking because of the utility it provides with the buffs/debuffs.
Dagger - The trend continues with the Dagger being a great close range weapon and excels at 1v1 combat. Where the Staff and Scepter leave a feeling of wanting to be more powerful the dagger comes in and gives the damage you seek. The trade-off is that you have to get right in someones face as a cloth wearer to do that damage. The dagger is straight up Damage+Condition Damage. I enjoyed using the dagger in structured PvP and in small skirmishes in WvWvW.
off hand
Focus - I must admit I didn't play too much with the focus. I unlocked the skills, and they had some great utility to them. It left me wanting more from it though. I didn't feel it offered enough support for the lack in damage it provided. Again though, my experience is limited.
Dagger - The reason my experience with the Focus was limited. The dagger in an off-hand is incredible. Ride the Lightning will make playing any other class difficult for me. I found this weapon to be the most useful to my playstyle. It allowed me to cause the deaths of many people in WvWvW, where knocking down an enemy meant their imminent doom. I had a lot of fun riding the lightning into someone, and then knocking them down twice with the 5th air skill, and the 4th earth skill. They hardly ever survived that in WvWvW. The flame grab (5th skill in fire) I found to be the hardest hitting ability.
Skills and Traits
Healing - The channeled heal felt very weak. The heal+boon skill I felt was the best. The passive healing the other skill gave from casting spells didn't seem to make much of a difference to me.
Utility - For my playstyle of being towards the front line, Vapor Form is a must have and will save you too much to not have on your bar. Signets I didn't feel buffed me enough to give up a castable spell. The conjured weapons were a lot of fun, giving the elementalist even more skills to utilize. Either I didn't understand how it worked or it just didn't work, but I tried Glyph of Renewal because I thought being able to revive people with different additional things like reviving with full health or reviving them and having them teleport to my locations(so a ranged revive) would be very useful. Unfortunately it never worked for me.
Elite - The tornado was pretty fun and menacing, but I preferred the conjured greatsword or the elemental.
Traits - For traits, I really liked Arcane. I couldn't pass it up, because of how much I liked switching attunements. I swapped back and forth between Fire and Air. Fire for when I played with Scepter+Focus/Dagger, and Air for when I was double dagger. I needed those run speed buffs in Air for Double Dagger or else people with ranged skills would kite me too easily. I also always put 10 into Water because the dodge roll to remove a condition was very nice to drop unwanted debuffs.
Overall, I'd say the elementalist is very fun to play. I go back and forth between thinking the damage is fine(and I need more practice) and the damage is lacking. There were times where I would use literally every skill I had access to at the time, and I would lose a fight. I can specifically remember fighting a thief, and after I had switched attunements 4 times and used every skill I had I died and the report was that he used Heartseeker on me and little else. I felt cheated, and so made a Thief to see if it was as strong as I though. I was pretty upset when I saw the auto-attack hitting for 1200 twice, and Heartseeker landing 2700 crits consistently. Up until then, I had seen some high numbers as 1200 on my elementalist, with a skill that has a long enough delay that anyone can easily get out of the way of it. I then tried out double daggers on the elementalist and was a little relieved. Even still though, I feel that elementalists lack in a little bit in the damage output and have to wonder if there are still things I am missing that can make me a lot stronger.
My first piece of advice for people that want to play an elementalist in structured PvP... the default loadout is terrible. You only have like 12k health with it, and you will get destroyed. I switched out the power amulet for the vitality amulet and increased my HP to 20k, which increased my survivability immensely. Before that, thiefs, warriors and rangers would kill me too fast for me to do anything. For WvWvW, have a staff on hand to switch to when you come up to a keep siege. Otherwise use the weapons more fitting for smaller scale combat, even when giant zergs clash as people move too much for the staff to be too effective when there is too much movement. If you have to go back to a waypoint, you can get back to your crew quickly by swapping in and out the staff and an offhand dagger. Ride the lightning to victory.
Over the classes I played(elementalist, thief, guardian and warrior), I felt I had the most survivability as the elementalist. Vapor Form and Ride the Lightning. Vapor aloud me to avoid getting insta-gibbed or zerged down and get some distance. Then Ride the Lightning aloud me to create some great distance if they were continuing to focus on me.
1. your next two attacks turn your foe to stone for 1s (there's a trait that makes this apply to all nearby allies, too), 45s cooldown
2. dagger storm, you spin around chuckin big damage daggers all over, you can move while using it
3. summon two thieves to join in
Gir: I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me.
So if I see them spin-to-winning, katarina style, I can feel confident that throwing my supply crate down was, at least, an even exchange of resource?
I wonder how much this will be alleviated with the character level downscaling that happens. So people can explore where ever they want and still have a challenge. So you may see level 80 humans checking out the starting areas of every other race, or level 50's going back and checking on skill points they may have missed and to see if any new events have been added, etc. I guess time will tell.
Gir: I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me.
The scaling seemed to be more uneven than totally broken - I definitely was doing fine soloing one combat event, then two or three came over and suddenly things went downhill for me. Either it needs more granularity or they just need to tweak individual events a bit (or tweak the base formulas for scaling).
Just Finished: Borderlands (waste of $7)/Mario Brothers U/The Last Story/Tropico 4
Currently Playing: NS2/ZombiU/PlanetSide 2/Ys/Dota2/Xenoblade Chronicles
On Hold: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within/GW2/Scribblenauts
Coming Next: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones/X-Com Classic
i guess so, yeah
i was using the 45s cooldown one that gave me and allies some crazy lockdown in every single fight, and i was running those runes that give you every buff when you activate your elite skill
it was fun
I don't know about anybody else but I intend to go back to lower level areas to check out new content. I am hoping it works out like Skyrim, where no area ever felt "obsolete".
That was easily the most irritating skill to get hit with. Most thieves didn't pack it, but the ones who did were the ones that were able to kill me, for sure.
chain cc seemed really strong but I suspect that that is because people aren't used to packing a skill that breaks stun and being able to use it on reaction, the way people use Cleanse/QSS in league