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My melee guardian is tearing the gak of out everything

I've now tried out the mesmer, both in PvE and WvW, and must say that I'm really loving the Blink spell. Chaos Storm is my second favourite.

Will try more of my elementalist today.

Greatsword Guardians are awesome.

That will be all.

I'm finding my Thief to be surprisingly fun, very cinematic with all the flipping and teleporting around. Plus I'm Ash Legion Charr, so it totally fits the storyline.

Greatsword ANYTHING is fun.

Cause greatswords rock.

Hammers are better.

Sword+torch guardians are also awesome

I honestly prefer the Greatsword over the Hammer; I switched during a raid on a Centaur camp and never looked back. I'm going for a power build above all, and the GS has suited it far better than the hammer did; the hammer felt like it was trying to be defensive as well as offensive, and trying a little too hard at it to be efficient at either of them.

I died a lot more with the hammer than I have done with the GS, and I find it [the GS] a lot better for events too, since I can leap over to a group of mobs and blind them, chain them closer to allow spellcasters and ranged to get away, or others to heal up, and unleash my main AoE to deal very good amount of AoE damage.

With the hammer, i'd have to line mobs up and time the immobilise just right to even stop them, and then walk up to them unless I have the Teleport ability (Judge's Intervention or something like that). Leaping at single mobs or mobs already in melee can also be handy; Blind is never a bad thing.

Well, I have now used up all my character slots.

Hope the next BWE wipes our accounts, because I can't bring myself to delete my characters.

I like the hammer, it provides much better damage than the staff but still has defensive abilities so I don't get squished too easily.

My first time with the game this weekend. Tried a member of each race myself and played a few early levels for several classes.

Mesmer's pretty sweet, but I'm loving the warrior to (I went rifle and great sword). Gonna play a bit more today before the weekends over. It ends midnight pacific time right?

Impressed personally.

Yep, midnight pacific time!

What is your char name?

My Charr is Taylon Carn.

I have decided that my main, or at least first character, will be a Guardian. I am in love with it.

It's also quite ironic, since my first character for WoW was a Paladin, but got replaced as my main by my Warrior when I got sick of Blizzard being unable to actually balance my class.

But enough of that game; GW2! GW2! GW2!

I'm so indecisive on what I want my main to be. My first love was the warrior, but the thief and mesmer are shaping up to be really good.

I think I'll just get 3 more slots and make all 8.

I'm loving several classes. I'll probably role Warrior first, then mix in a Ranger, Mesmer, Guardian, and Engineer down the road.

Jesus that was the most annoying f'ing mission - the one in the second charr zone with the goddamned worms that keep popping up on the race track.

So I was looking forward to this beta weekend.

A game can mess with the Holy Trinity as much as it wants, but if it plays like a traditional MMO with a few gimmicks ( One is: Different attacks depending on the weapon? Cool idea, but I didn't see anywhere that you get more depending on your level, just extra utility spells through skill points), no matter what it is, the game won't go far.

AresX8 wrote:So I was looking forward to this beta weekend.

A game can mess with the Holy Trinity as much as it wants, but if it plays like a traditional MMO with a few gimmicks ( One is: Different attacks depending on the weapon? Cool idea, but I didn't see anywhere that you get more depending on your level, just extra utility spells through skill points), no matter what it is, the game won't go far.

Oh really?

The two main components of an MMORPG are the questing system and the combat.

Neither have had major changes in the genre since EverQuest 1. EDIT: TERA is trying to change the combat, but I haven't played a beta for it yet to comment on it.

I do kind of wonder if there will be more weapon abilities at release. No problem with what's currently there, but it would be nice to get more options.

And frankly, the trinity is still kind of there. They've just decentralized it.

I wouldn't call the game gimmicky though. It kind of strikes me as a dash of DA2's combat, except not bad, mixed into MMORPGness with a skill and talent system that isn't a pain in the ass to work with *glares at Rift.*

EDIT: Oh and one thing I've been trying to figure out. If I boost the duration of conditions, does that increase the damage of a bleed, or just spread it over the duration? My numbers are so low right now I can't really tell.

I think they did say that two-handed axes are saved for an expansion. Not sure about other weapons.

No, I mean the ability to pick from a selection of say, greatswords, rather than just have a single predefined skill set for the weapon.

LordofHats wrote:
EDIT: Oh and one thing I've been trying to figure out. If I boost the duration of conditions, does that increase the damage of a bleed, or just spread it over the duration? My numbers are so low right now I can't really tell.

It increases the overall damage.

Bleed damage is equal to (your level/2)+(condition damage/20) per stack. It can stack up to 25 times. So, for example, my character, a condition-based necromancer, has around 180 condition damage, and is level 28. I end up doing around 23 damage per second with each stack of bleed, and I apply around 10 stacks at a time, give or take a few. Add that all up, and that's around 230 damage per second just from bleeding, which is actually pretty considerable at that level.

Thanks. I've been looking at the traits, wondering how to build my warrior and its always a pain in the butt to figure out without knowing exactly how the numbers effect one another.

So the finale was pretty cool. I lasted a pretty long time against the corrupted players, not as long as a some, though I managed to kill quite a few corrupted players before I went down.

The event ended right as we were beating down on a branded champion. ):

The event started on my world five minutes before 3:00am, so we didn't really get to do anything...

AresX8 wrote:Oh really?

The two main components of an MMORPG are the questing system and the combat.

Neither have had major changes in the genre since EverQuest 1. EDIT: TERA is trying to change the combat, but I haven't played a beta for it yet to comment on it.

Seeing as the both the questing system and the combat are radically different to standard MMO fare I'm not totally sure what your point is?

I'm not saying dynamic events with liberal sprinklings of personal story quests are better than traditional quests, just that they are definitely different and the same applies to the action based combat.

@LordOfHats do you mean getting multiple sets of skills per weapon? So Greatsword set 1 would have A,B,C,D and E skills whereas Greatsword set 2 would have V,W,X,Y,Z, etc.

AresX8 wrote:Oh really?

The two main components of an MMORPG are the questing system and the combat.

Neither have had major changes in the genre since EverQuest 1. EDIT: TERA is trying to change the combat, but I haven't played a beta for it yet to comment on it.

I played the beta of TERA, and it's not changing anything. Its got the different aim-based combat system, but every spell or action roots you into the ground as you do the animation.

Its a Korean MMO that is trying to be popular over here, and that will not happen with Loli's and such. Its the same old grinding and questing that is popular with KR MMO's.

TERA has some other cool features like the high-level politics, but it won't succeed over here.

GW2 changed the questing system with their dynamic events. Coupled with the personal story, it's a really nice combination.

The combat system is different from WoW and EQ2. Bullets/arrows are actual projectiles and can be blocked, swipes from weapons are in a slight aoe due to the weapon swing.

Its not overhauling anything in the combat, but the questing is an entirely different feel and very refreshing.

- Dynamic events are no different from the public quest systems found in Warhammer Online and RIFT. Instead of being on a fixed time interval for respawning, they have a set list of "events" in a particular area that are randomly cycled. One cannot truly have dynamic events in such a large scale game. They still even have the reputation and contribution system found in Warhammer Online, except they fixed the problem of the contribution system where only a few people actually got items by not giving out items, which cheapens the experience. The only items you can get for those areas with the dynamic events are the NPCs that show up as hearts on the map (can't remember the exact name), when they act as vendors after you've helped them.

- The questing system is a point system that compiles all of the old design choices of MMO questing into one spot: Grinding, fetching, and item delivery are all still there, but you have a choice to "pick your poison" since they all give equal contribution to helping that NPC. The personal story aspect of the questing has its experience cheapened when you realize everyone else is going through it as well.

- The combat hasn't changed. It's all ability based and about spamming abilities. What's stopping a caster from standing in one spot and spamming spells when they don't have mana to worry about? Yes, melee weapons have a slight AoE. So? That doesn't change the fact that all you have to do is stand still and spam abilities. Sure, in higher levels you might have to start dodging, but even the implementation for that is shoddy (possibly because it hasn't been polished yet). If you want to see a combat system I wish would be used in more games, take a look at DC Universe Online. The game was absolute garbage when you look at everything else though.