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Few True Character Options?
tripsofthrymr
Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,624 Community Moderator
While Neverwinter seems intended around the premise that there are many ways to build a viable character, the reality seems that the real options are pretty limited.
Examples:
- While there are many weapon and armor enhancements available, only a small number are desirable (e.g. vorpal, soulforged).
- There are lots of pets out there (indeed, that is probably an important revenue stream for PWE). However, only the stone (or maybe cat for flair) is really viable in the end game because all other pets die too easily, do too little, and agro things you are trying to sneak by.
- Characters not optimized for the defined role intended by PWE (e.g. Cleric as healer, Wizard as control) will find little success. If a Wizard or Cleric wants to play offensively (other than tossing ads off the edge of a cliff) the party will quickly fail. There is no room for a successful Battle Mage.
Am I missing something? Is there more opportunity for unique-yet-successful characters than I am seeing?
Examples:
- While there are many weapon and armor enhancements available, only a small number are desirable (e.g. vorpal, soulforged).
- There are lots of pets out there (indeed, that is probably an important revenue stream for PWE). However, only the stone (or maybe cat for flair) is really viable in the end game because all other pets die too easily, do too little, and agro things you are trying to sneak by.
- Characters not optimized for the defined role intended by PWE (e.g. Cleric as healer, Wizard as control) will find little success. If a Wizard or Cleric wants to play offensively (other than tossing ads off the edge of a cliff) the party will quickly fail. There is no room for a successful Battle Mage.
Am I missing something? Is there more opportunity for unique-yet-successful characters than I am seeing?
Caritas Guild Founder (Greycloak Alliance)
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
Post edited by tripsofthrymr on
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1) A small developer force that has very short deadlines and very little resources to adeqautely design, test, and balance. So many bugged feats with inaacurate and/or vague information on powers.
2) There are 3 games within this game. PvP, 1-59, and endgame. They designed for 1-59 and it all falls apart at 60 and T2. T2 has very narrow ways to complete dungeons, and if you don't do it that way you are going to fail.
- Enhancements: Plague Fire, Negation, Lightning, Lifedrinker, Briartwine, Bilethorn, Flaming all have uses and are all heavily used. Just because you do not see it on a limited number of common guides does not mean they are not viable or extremely interesting in different kinds of builds. Just research around. The info is there, or you can just try things yourself and see. For example, did you know that Lifedrinker creates insane threat? Or that Briartwine on a DC procs healing? Or that higher ranks of Lightning is amazing aoe damage, etc...
- Pets: Cat, Stone, Lillend, Phoera, Acolyte, Wererat, other dps pets in endgame. For questing, foundry and farming, people use the shop tank pets (some of which are very effective at max level) and all the standard companions even more. Admittedly, here the advantages of the augment-class Cat and Stone pets are far clearer than for Enhancements for most endgame content.
- Playstyles: again, not true with the sole exception of endboss in Castle Never that (as far as anyone knows) requires ledge pushing. I have played in plenty of groups in T2 content that is pure dps with minimal control. I have seen dps clerics, dps GFs, and heck a couple of times I saw a healing GWF while levelling (their self-healing + companion easily outhealed me on my Cleric)! But,
1. Why would you play a "Control Wizard" and not use control?
2. The PvE endgame content of this game is built around single hours of frantic activity with large gaps between, i.e. Dungeon Delves. Players do anything in order to achieve as much as possible in that brief window of time. If that means pushing things off ledges, then that is what they will often demand. That is not, however, an issue of class design as it is as much the content systems.
3. The game is not complete (excluding content). There are new Paragons per class, new classes and new races supposedly due...
Compared to other action combat MMORPGs, the variety and options in NW is quite astonishing.
The main problem are the number of outstanding bugs and new almost-game breaking bugs introduced with every new patch. E.g. there are at least two classes whose tab-slots are ineffective much of the time. E.g. the latest patch just broke every single 4pc set bonus and some enhancements in the game for many players, rendering useless the main goals players are striving for or current advantages that they have worked so hard for...
The Control Wizard's can be split in two ways. One is control, where you focus on control over DPS. The other is DPS, where you focus on DPS. One has set your control powers to maximum, whilst the other has DPS set to maximum. Both still use control to get their end objective, so a CW without control doesn't really exist.
Content and class design go hand-in-hand. Go ahead an make an oppressor build and don't take shield and AS and see how many T2 dungeons you get invited to play. There is a good reason nobody uses Sudden Storm in T2 dungeons, but work perfectly fine in killing minions in 30-59 content.
Sure make a character that chooses the feats Battlewise Unrestrained Chaos, Severe Reaction, Alacritym Shattered Strike, and my favorite Lightning Surge!
PvP is an entirely different animal altogether. Many of the feats offer no value at all and are not worthy of being selected. Content and effectiveness are driving cookie cutter builds if you want to be competitve. There are not equaly effective choices and paths in this game.
The many different kind of pets work great in the 1-59 game. My cleric pet and my direwiold pet don't last 30 seconds in a battle in a T2 dungeon.
2 true hold powers does not make a control wizard (EF and Timesteal). The chill mechanic doesn't work reliably or quickly enough as a hold or damage multiplier in T2 content, but go ahead drop your Icy Terrain, on those 20 mobs following your around the Dread Vault Epic and see how many freeze even if you actualy can drop a tabbed CoI on them.
There are character classes that can almost solo T2 content if max-min. They can certainly solo a boss. There is no way in the nine hells a CW can solo anything. They have trouble killing minions in T2 content if they can't shove them off a ledge. If 3 minions are beating on them, they can easily be killed. Same for PvP.
There is a reason why there is a huge shortage of Devoted Clerics for similar reasons.
There will always be, in any MMO, min/maxed builds and gear that make choices seem limited.
This.
And every time a company makes an adjustment that reduces options (like, say, several of the Talent system reworks in WoW; D3) and people complain about the reduced options, they'll be blown off by forum warriors saying "No one cared about any of those options, they just went to MMOChampion/the wiki/wherever and copied The Build". And "well no one wanted your crappy toon in their party anyway" to anyone who said they didn't follow The Build. /eyeroll
Thank you for your perspective. It gives me hope that this game with huge potential might grow into something great.
Both the Briartwine and Lifedrinker tips are interesting to me, as my top 2 classes are DC and GF. Thank you for pointing that out.
My leveled purple Wolf always dies near the beginning of any T2 boss (it has all purple gear). When I let it loose while soloing and watch it fight something, the damage seems almost immaterial compared to what my DC60 can do, and that is not at all a DPS class.
I did just experience a good DD with all DPS and my DC. That worked well because the DPS team paid attention to when I had too many ads and came to handle them. Requires the right players certainly. I honestly cannot see how a DPS cleric can work out well in a team. Even with focused feat selection it seems DPS will lag far behind DPS oriented classes, and the loss to healing will hurt quite a bit if the party is well matched. I would love to be wrong, but that is my experience so far.
Agree, but some people (especially D&D players from the pre-4E days) want to play a magic using class to blast things. Such a class is not really present in Neverwinter.
Agree 100%. There is absolutely nothing of relevance for a 60 character to do in PvE other than DD (or I guess GG but not gone there yet).
I (want to) have faith that the game will grow into something spectacular. Unfortunatley committed deadlines for the new content seem to prevent many existing and long-known issues (for example I'm waiting to see anything other than blue crafting tasks right now) from being addressed promptly
The options are indeed great. The options that seem worth pursuing less so (see also http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?431221-Crafting-Levels-Under-20-Pointless&p=5433991#post5433991).
Hopefully that will evolve as the game evolves.
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
What annoys me most, though, is all these people advertising "looking for exp only" - how did they get their experience with Castle Never? Someone gave them a chance when they were lesser equipped noobs, but now they can't tolerate the same?
"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
Really? The problem is that people don't want to waste their time, AD, and gold trying to do a fail dungeon? When , for the hell of it, I join a pug dungeon and i see a single target or Tank GWF or a DPS DC, or say a low DPS TR why do i want to keep wasting pots and kits trying to hopefully complete the dungeon? Maybe the real problem here is bad dungeon design.
Or, y'know, you could talk to your team. Provide constructive feedback and actually explain to your less experienced teammates why a particular tactic or build isn't working... the whole "Teach a man to fish" saying and all that.
The devs also need to acknowledge the ramp up in difficulty between T1s and some T2s - perhaps better highlight some strategies that do work and reduce the number of Adds/frustration-inducing elements that are present in dungeons.
Everyone had to learn at some point, and some people need to be lead to that "eureka moment" as opposed to finding it out for themselves.
"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
You mean Cryptic games like CO where the customization and free form character building is simply unmatched. Or STO where even with only 3 classes and vessel types there is a fairly wide level of mixing and matching available. And lets not ignore the grand daddy of all Cryptic games CoH.
So like those games, that completely undermine your argument?
This games level of options and characterization is woefully abnormal for anything made by Cryptic
Right on the money. right here.
Though I will add. Pvp and PVP level 60 are two different catagories. PVP at pre 60 is balanced. PVP at 60 is very badly balanced. Mostly because the level applications from before 50-59 for example, cannot apply at 60. So there are instances where people can fight at level 60 with someone equivilant to level 75. ( in relative terms, not actually level 75).
there needs to be new sub divisions in pvp at 60.
Actually, I've tested Lifedrinker some. While it's actually pretty nice on a GF, the threat is unnoticeable on a GWF.
My friend and I, both on GWF, did non-epic Spider. We only used at-wills and encounters. He had Greater Lightning while I had normal Lifedrinker. The only time I could ever peel targets off of him was when I used Restoring Strike. That lasted for a few seconds, before they switched targets back to him.
The only improvement was it was easier to peel targets that he wasn't hitting.
They should really give Lifedrinker a secondary effect of extra threat per hit.