All it means is that we cannot punt 15 things off in a few button presses. It is obvious that they wish to eliminate bumping, learn to adapt. From the lengths they are going to remedy this, I doubt any crying will change their minds.
All it means is that we cannot punt 15 things off in a few button presses. It is obvious that they wish to eliminate bumping, learn to adapt. From the lengths they are going to remedy this, I doubt any crying will change their minds.
I really don't get it why it's so problematic for you guys when:
The squishiest, most vulnerable, robe-clad class in the game... has best (AoE) damage.
It's been like this in many RPGs. I rolled my CW specifically to deal lots of DPS, in the vein of what my WoW mage did, together with some CC.
The CW damage is quite OK I'd say. The other classes should come closer though than they are now... but at the expense of their tankyness.
- you shouldn't be able to heal AND push large DPS as well
- you shouldn't be able to tank AND push large DPS as well
Squishy char-->big DPS
Tanky/healing char-->low DPS
Hybrids in between.
This is common in MMO's, for sure.
In DnD, though, it's not bad for a class to have both tank and damage. Fighters are one of your go-to tank and damage dealers, or their various variations. Like Paladin, a tank who can hit hard AND heal.
Wizards have poor defenses, and a good bit of AOE damage and CC, including some of the most powerful abilities in the game. The issue with wizards is the trade off, as many spells just aren't applicable in every situation. Of course, then they also have utility, like throwing lights up or teleporting, etc. So many abilities outside of the damage/tank spectrum.
And what's going to happen to NWO's balance matrix, I wonder, when they come out with Warlock? That is a class intended to be a long-range striker. Will they nerf CW damage to make room? Or will they come out with a mage that does even more damage? Where will TR's fit in at that point?
"Every adventurer has two things in common: they don't like dying, and they love getting paid. The rest is just semantics." Brecken, famed mercenary of Baldur's Gate
In DnD, though, it's not bad for a class to have both tank and damage. Fighters are one of your go-to tank and damage dealers, or their various variations.
I don't see you writing about something that the GF in NW cannot do.
I don't see you writing about something that the GF in NW cannot do.
Trying to understand your sentence structure. Are you saying that GF are both tank and damage at the moment?
"Every adventurer has two things in common: they don't like dying, and they love getting paid. The rest is just semantics." Brecken, famed mercenary of Baldur's Gate
The shield nerf is absolutely needed, I hate pushing monsters down so very very much. Not only is that tactic lame it also trivializes fighters as has been rightfully noted in this thread already.
What I do not agree with are the people stacking CWs in groups, as a CW I enjoy most the groups with one of each class. And to this one angry GWF if it is of any condolence there is nothing that makes dungeon run smoother than good GWF, nothing, love those guys.
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pers3phoneBanned Users, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
In DnD, though, it's not bad for a class to have both tank and damage. Fighters are one of your go-to tank and damage dealers, or their various variations. Like Paladin, a tank who can hit hard AND heal.
We need tradeoffs in MMOs, you know how it works. We just can't have classes that do both great DPS and are tanks running around, same with healers. This is an MMO first by far, I hardly recognize any D&D elements in it, I never played pen&paper games but I was quite into D&D games such as BG and Icewind Dale series and NWN, so I now what you're talking about, especially as I played a damage dealer cleric that obviously could heal where and when needed.
I don't think this would work in an MMO though, especially one with a PvP side.
Or, just give us CWs armor and melee buffs and paragon path and let us be battlemages and we can talk... (never gonna happen as far as I can tell).
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gdante7111111Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 227Arc User
edited October 2013
gwf and gf need to be reworked, I know some changes that need to be made but the ignorant devs wont do it so no point saying.
Good CW's didn't use shield prior to this change....it really is a waste of an encounter slot
Shield is still useful in solo PVE when a CW knows how to play to not be hit (too often) during combat. The first impact can save a trip to the campfire if you know what you're doing.
I don't PVP but I would imagine that Shield, in its current form, is fairly useless there.
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twstdechoMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 630Bounty Hunter
No, you are looking at things in a very limiting way. What you want are options, options that are available to everyone from some core set of say 4-5 things. Defense, Control, Healing, Ranged DPS, Close DPS, Stealth, etc.
Let each class have access to 4 of the 5 but only able to effectively pick 2 at a time (maybe a third as a less effective option).
Want to be a tank? Go Close DPS and Defense (with a minor in healing or control)?
Want to be a battlemage? Go Ranged DPS and Defense (with a minor in control or Close DPS).
Shield is still useful in solo PVE when a CW knows how to play to not be hit (too often) during combat. The first impact can save a trip to the campfire if you know what you're doing.
I don't PVP but I would imagine that Shield, in its current form, is fairly useless there.
No
Well maybe before level60 shield can be useful in solo PvE but after you become AoE powerhouse instantly annihilating everything outside dungeons... No shield, do not slot it.
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pers3phoneBanned Users, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
No, you are looking at things in a very limiting way. What you want are options, options that are available to everyone from some core set of say 4-5 things. Defense, Control, Healing, Ranged DPS, Close DPS, Stealth, etc.
Let each class have access to 4 of the 5 but only able to effectively pick 2 at a time (maybe a third as a less effective option).
Want to be a tank? Go Close DPS and Defense (with a minor in healing or control)?
Want to be a battlemage? Go Ranged DPS and Defense (with a minor in control or Close DPS).
Options are good.
Well, you probably aren't familiar with how MMO balance works.
Options are amazing in an non-competitive RPG of any sorts. However... things change in a competitive MMO environment (NWO is not there yet). There you need to standardize as many things as possible (as in 2-3 viable specs and 1 gear set for PvP bracket or raid tier, just as an example), so the limited number of developers you have can fine-tune classes and content to be very balanced (NWO is nowhere near this).
Too many options are very hard to balance, especially for Cryptic with their limited number of devs and QA guys.
Well, you probably aren't familiar with how MMO balance works.
Options are amazing in an non-competitive RPG of any sorts. However... things change in a competitive MMO environment (NWO is not there yet). There you need to standardize as many things as possible (as in 2-3 viable specs and 1 gear set for PvP bracket or raid tier, just as an example), so the limited number of developers you have can fine-tune classes and content to be very balanced (NWO is nowhere near this).
Too many options are very hard to balance, especially for Cryptic with their limited number of devs and QA guys.
Keep it simple(ish), make it balanced.
I disagree wholeheartedly with this. This is why so many new mmo's feel so cookie cutter and repetitious. It's because of this level of thinking. They ARE cookie cutter and repetitious, because no matter what the graphics are, or how they change up quests or leveling, each class is so standardized and balanced along the "good at one" mentality, with a numeric balance between defense, damage, and mobility, that it becomes simply dull for many.
For example, in NWO right now, there is a very significant balance. But that balance is much harder to understand than most from LoL or WoW can understand. Though it's an action RPG with a simple combat interface (doesn't have 100's of abilities to queue and choose from, and is fairly point and click), it is based off of one of the most interesting and versatile game systems ever designed.
WoW simplified what DnD did to appeal to the masses. To make it simple enough that any soccer mom or 10-year-old could grasp and run with. That of course was part of it's success and appeal. It is also why players like myself have been left in the cold.
I understand what NWO is doing. I love how it doesn't follow the rules that the mainstream MMO's have adopted since WoW. There were great, complex PvP games well before WoW, like UO and DAOC and Lineage. It's about time there are great, complex PvP games again.
"Every adventurer has two things in common: they don't like dying, and they love getting paid. The rest is just semantics." Brecken, famed mercenary of Baldur's Gate
pers3phoneBanned Users, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited November 2013
It's a matter of perspective.
For me, balance is way more important than "diversity".
Also, you won't see 10 years olds and moms in the 2000+ Arena in WoW... only if they're truly talented and good... which is how it should be.
Also WoW was (still is? dunno) way more complex than NWO. The amount of theorycraftying and mechanics in WoW surpass this game BY FAR. This game is a simplified MMO, not WoW - at least up to Cataclysm, which was the last expansion that I've played.
hey, i started this game few weeks ago and read various CW guides and the ultimate combo i did read often about is arcane singularity + shield to deal lots of damage. i think a long time ago the shield also created AP from this... (at least it looked like that in a very old youtube vid)
so now with shield limited to 5 enemies and afaik not generating AP anymore ... how do you play a viable control wizard?
for dungeons i usually put arcane singularities, then before the final pull i place a (mastered) EF to gain lots of AP back and a COI for some area damage - if i am close i try to land a shield hit, too, but well, seems shield was nerfed a lot so i am not sure whether to keep it and what power to use instead if the answer is no (and COI, while loved on many guides, does not seem to be such an awesome power to me.... am i wrong with my intuition?)
i already screwed up some specs, i guess i am following a renegade path atm, but i think that thaumaturge might be more my thing (that's now only an option if i respec, i am already to far into the renegade path).
anyway.... while especially grimah's guide is very useful, all others are outdated and/or miss out lots of intel on WHY to take this or that power, gear, feat, ...
can anyone tell me whether shield is still useful for damage (for pushing things off the cliff it definitely still is )?
or point me to some more uptodate video guide so that i can try to bring my gameplay to a higher level of efficiency?
would be very nice of you
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uurbsMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 449Bounty Hunter
a) thanks for those tips w.r.t. to shield replacement. OF is a daily, do you imply that whithout shield AS also became a bit obsolete and should be replaced?
b) i found the versatile renegade build yday, looks very sound, but i will look at the other, too, especially since i am not sure i am the renegade guy... i already took the road down the renegade path, so a turnaround is not really possible, but i don't outrule the possibility to start a new char from scratch one day - and then it might be thaumaturge
thanks again - i guess that helped me a lot!
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pers3phoneBanned Users, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited November 2013
- you can respec (!!!) no need to start new char
- AS is not obsolete, just situational, OF is much better damage-wise, just make sure you time it properly when there are many mobs around and during EotS proc.
- there's also a test server where respecs are free and you can go copy your char there and play with different stuff to see how it works before committing to anything.
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twstdechoMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 630Bounty Hunter
Well, you probably aren't familiar with how MMO balance works.
Options are amazing in an non-competitive RPG of any sorts. However... things change in a competitive MMO environment (NWO is not there yet). There you need to standardize as many things as possible (as in 2-3 viable specs and 1 gear set for PvP bracket or raid tier, just as an example), so the limited number of developers you have can fine-tune classes and content to be very balanced (NWO is nowhere near this).
Too many options are very hard to balance, especially for Cryptic with their limited number of devs and QA guys.
Keep it simple(ish), make it balanced.
Thanks, Persephone, I'm well aware of MMO balance (and I'll just ignore the condescending tone and chalk it up to a miss-communication), but you don't have to have every MMO ending up as exactly the same game to promote balance. You might prefer that, you might prefer the ability to jump from one game to another with no significant changes but the overall look, but doesn't that just seem silly?
Not to mention, it's an over simplification and completely false that you need to lock everything down to limited number of specs and gear sets to have balance. That promotes boring, flavorless games that all play the same. What's the point in that?
Options are great. High end, hard to obtain options that, as a group, work well to counter the ability of each other can go a long way towards "balanced" play when you make those options fairly open to all. You don't have to lock each class down to a particular role, to two or three viable builds if you have those options available to everyone.
- you can respec (!!!) no need to start new char
- AS is not obsolete, just situational, OF is much better damage-wise, just make sure you time it properly when there are many mobs around and during EotS proc.
- there's also a test server where respecs are free and you can go copy your char there and play with different stuff to see how it works before committing to anything.
haha, i played D2 a lot and have like 20 characters at levels 80+, i am not scared of doing everything again, though, yes, I should respec, just to fix a slightly screwed char. Yet, I think that I might like to have *both* a renegade and a thaumaturge. for now i am fine with my char, i am not too far from the versatile renegade build, my problem is that i miss the insight of how to *play* my char right.
in that regard, many thanks for the tip with EotS, pers3phone!! i don't have that power yet, but i am grateful for the tip with OF
so, in what situation would AS be better then? in those cases when the enemies are too scattered or to save a dying team mate?
i have to look into the test server one of those days, i already read about it - though too recently and since i play the game with my GF (girl friend, which happens to be a guardian fighter as well ) and she is not too much into minmaxing, i am not sure i will do too much there.
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pers3phoneBanned Users, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Thanks, Persephone, I'm well aware of MMO balance (and I'll just ignore the condescending tone and chalk it up to a miss-communication), but you don't have to have every MMO ending up as exactly the same game to promote balance. You might prefer that, you might prefer the ability to jump from one game to another with no significant changes but the overall look, but doesn't that just seem silly?
Not to mention, it's an over simplification and completely false that you need to lock everything down to limited number of specs and gear sets to have balance. That promotes boring, flavorless games that all play the same. What's the point in that?
Options are great. High end, hard to obtain options that, as a group, work well to counter the ability of each other can go a long way towards "balanced" play when you make those options fairly open to all. You don't have to lock each class down to a particular role, to two or three viable builds if you have those options available to everyone.
It's your opinion. Balance is paramount in my opinion. Too many options, too few devs-->No Balance (like we have in NWO).
Properly balancing a game will not make it flavorless at all, for me. It will make it worth my time and worthy of respect.
Options are great indeed. But not too many.
Also, classes should not be locked down to a role at all. That's why we have paragon paths. But there must be tradeoffs. And I'll repeat again:
- you pick tank paragon with your fighter, you do lame damage to compensate
- you pick damage paragon with fighter, you do lots of dps but your survivability goes down significantly
- your class heals, then you won't be able to also deal massive amounts of damage, but
- if you pick damage paragon for your priest, your healing should almost disappear to compensate for your now good dps
- you're robe-dressed and terribly squishy, but you can hurl hugely damaging magics at your opponent
And soooo on...
Hire more devs, implement more and more options, which again... they're awesome.
But secondary to balance
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pers3phoneBanned Users, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
so, in what situation would AS be better then? in those cases when the enemies are too scattered or to save a dying team mate?
i have to look into the test server one of those days, i already read about it - though too recently and since i play the game with my GF (girl friend, which happens to be a guardian fighter as well ) and she is not too much into minmaxing, i am not sure i will do too much there.
AS coupled with Shield and/or Repel for throwing mobs off cliffs where possible, which is kinda <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> but people will expect this from you in quite a few places. When you get good gear, demonstrate to them that you can kill mobs faster than throwing off cliffs As well as the situations you have mentioned.
If you play with better geared and much higher DPS mages, it would be nice of you to use AS and gather up the mobs for their OF.
Keep in mind OF, Sudden Storm, Shard... neither can hit mobs in AS, which makes the skill even more annoying for frequent use. Also AS cannot crit for whatever idiotic reason.
You can use the test shard to try without costs the specs from the forums and see which one suits you best.
Also, classes should not be locked down to a role at all. That's why we have paragon paths. But there must be tradeoffs. And I'll repeat again:
- you pick tank paragon with your fighter, you do lame damage to compensate
- you pick damage paragon with fighter, you do lots of dps but your survivability goes down significantly
- your class heals, then you won't be able to also deal massive amounts of damage, but
- if you pick damage paragon for your priest, your healing should almost disappear to compensate for your now good dps
- you're robe-dressed and terribly squishy, but you can hurl hugely damaging magics at your opponent
My opinion?
- You pick fighter. You have great defense, do good damage up close and can control mob movement. You can spec to do more damage, have more health, increase your cc, or even add non-class traits like stealth or learn alchemy. You have almost no range and you are weaker than your buddies to getting controlled by opponents.
- You pick cleric. You can heal, boost your friends, do great damage against undead and the vile, and have a pretty good wallop with that mace of yours against all the other regular joes. You don't have alot of armor, but your willpower is strong. Almost no range except with a few heals.
- You pick paladin. Great defense, good buffs, and some heals. You get bonus damage against evil enemies, and you have pretty good damage otherwise. Almost no range except with a few buffs.
- You pick wizard. Great control capabilities, lots of utility powers, and good damage. You can fight at range and even have a few one-off defensive abilities. Your true defense is very weak, though, and you don't want people getting close to you.
Off to work. I'll add more later. But what your seeing is the difference between simplified MMO's loosely based off of Dungeons and Dragons, and Dungeons and Dragons itself.
"Every adventurer has two things in common: they don't like dying, and they love getting paid. The rest is just semantics." Brecken, famed mercenary of Baldur's Gate
pers3phoneBanned Users, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited November 2013
Looks pretty standard D&D from my limited experience (NWN, BG, IWD etc.). Works great in an offline RPG. I wouldn't want it any other way actually.
However, this game... it doesn't resemble ANYTHING D&D IMO. It's just an arcade MMO with nice combat and lacking in most other departments.
To be clear once again: I like a LOT of options - in offline games such as I mentioned above, Dragon Age: origins being the more modern version even if not D&D. These options many times lead me to find builds that completely broke game balance i.e. I was able to solo finish instead in a party of 6 etc. etc.
This should not happen in an online MMO with anything resembling competitiveness.
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twstdechoMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 630Bounty Hunter
edited November 2013
I wont go into the same points as lobo as he and I apparently see eye to eye on this, but I will point out that, as the original NWN grew from the community packs, as your options grew, so did flavor and balance. As you open those options to everyone balance handles itself.
Man, I miss those public server realms. There were some amazing places to play in those user generated realms and some really interesting work done by the community.
Every time someone thought they made a build that broke game balance, someone else would make something to counter it.
Options should be widely available, and the more you focus on one particular thing, the more you suffer in other areas.
Comments
All it means is that we cannot punt 15 things off in a few button presses. It is obvious that they wish to eliminate bumping, learn to adapt. From the lengths they are going to remedy this, I doubt any crying will change their minds.
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
Keep crying its funny.
PvP GWF - BizzyBedBug
PvE GF (salvaged)
PvE TR (salvaged)
GWF PvP/CW PvE @ http://www.twitch.tv/bizzyplusplus/
My CW is actually my main. But I've never really worried about hit caps. Thanks for the guide though, I'll be giving it a look over ^_^.
This is common in MMO's, for sure.
In DnD, though, it's not bad for a class to have both tank and damage. Fighters are one of your go-to tank and damage dealers, or their various variations. Like Paladin, a tank who can hit hard AND heal.
Wizards have poor defenses, and a good bit of AOE damage and CC, including some of the most powerful abilities in the game. The issue with wizards is the trade off, as many spells just aren't applicable in every situation. Of course, then they also have utility, like throwing lights up or teleporting, etc. So many abilities outside of the damage/tank spectrum.
And what's going to happen to NWO's balance matrix, I wonder, when they come out with Warlock? That is a class intended to be a long-range striker. Will they nerf CW damage to make room? Or will they come out with a mage that does even more damage? Where will TR's fit in at that point?
"D*mn wizards," said Morik the Rogue.
Learn what a GWF and GF really are: The History of Fighters
Trying to understand your sentence structure. Are you saying that GF are both tank and damage at the moment?
"D*mn wizards," said Morik the Rogue.
Learn what a GWF and GF really are: The History of Fighters
What I do not agree with are the people stacking CWs in groups, as a CW I enjoy most the groups with one of each class. And to this one angry GWF if it is of any condolence there is nothing that makes dungeon run smoother than good GWF, nothing, love those guys.
We need tradeoffs in MMOs, you know how it works. We just can't have classes that do both great DPS and are tanks running around, same with healers. This is an MMO first by far, I hardly recognize any D&D elements in it, I never played pen&paper games but I was quite into D&D games such as BG and Icewind Dale series and NWN, so I now what you're talking about, especially as I played a damage dealer cleric that obviously could heal where and when needed.
I don't think this would work in an MMO though, especially one with a PvP side.
Or, just give us CWs armor and melee buffs and paragon path and let us be battlemages and we can talk... (never gonna happen as far as I can tell).
Shield is still useful in solo PVE when a CW knows how to play to not be hit (too often) during combat. The first impact can save a trip to the campfire if you know what you're doing.
I don't PVP but I would imagine that Shield, in its current form, is fairly useless there.
No, you are looking at things in a very limiting way. What you want are options, options that are available to everyone from some core set of say 4-5 things. Defense, Control, Healing, Ranged DPS, Close DPS, Stealth, etc.
Let each class have access to 4 of the 5 but only able to effectively pick 2 at a time (maybe a third as a less effective option).
Want to be a tank? Go Close DPS and Defense (with a minor in healing or control)?
Want to be a battlemage? Go Ranged DPS and Defense (with a minor in control or Close DPS).
Options are good.
No
Well maybe before level60 shield can be useful in solo PvE but after you become AoE powerhouse instantly annihilating everything outside dungeons... No shield, do not slot it.
Well, you probably aren't familiar with how MMO balance works.
Options are amazing in an non-competitive RPG of any sorts. However... things change in a competitive MMO environment (NWO is not there yet). There you need to standardize as many things as possible (as in 2-3 viable specs and 1 gear set for PvP bracket or raid tier, just as an example), so the limited number of developers you have can fine-tune classes and content to be very balanced (NWO is nowhere near this).
Too many options are very hard to balance, especially for Cryptic with their limited number of devs and QA guys.
Keep it simple(ish), make it balanced.
I disagree wholeheartedly with this. This is why so many new mmo's feel so cookie cutter and repetitious. It's because of this level of thinking. They ARE cookie cutter and repetitious, because no matter what the graphics are, or how they change up quests or leveling, each class is so standardized and balanced along the "good at one" mentality, with a numeric balance between defense, damage, and mobility, that it becomes simply dull for many.
For example, in NWO right now, there is a very significant balance. But that balance is much harder to understand than most from LoL or WoW can understand. Though it's an action RPG with a simple combat interface (doesn't have 100's of abilities to queue and choose from, and is fairly point and click), it is based off of one of the most interesting and versatile game systems ever designed.
WoW simplified what DnD did to appeal to the masses. To make it simple enough that any soccer mom or 10-year-old could grasp and run with. That of course was part of it's success and appeal. It is also why players like myself have been left in the cold.
I understand what NWO is doing. I love how it doesn't follow the rules that the mainstream MMO's have adopted since WoW. There were great, complex PvP games well before WoW, like UO and DAOC and Lineage. It's about time there are great, complex PvP games again.
"D*mn wizards," said Morik the Rogue.
Learn what a GWF and GF really are: The History of Fighters
For me, balance is way more important than "diversity".
Also, you won't see 10 years olds and moms in the 2000+ Arena in WoW... only if they're truly talented and good... which is how it should be.
Also WoW was (still is? dunno) way more complex than NWO. The amount of theorycraftying and mechanics in WoW surpass this game BY FAR. This game is a simplified MMO, not WoW - at least up to Cataclysm, which was the last expansion that I've played.
so now with shield limited to 5 enemies and afaik not generating AP anymore ... how do you play a viable control wizard?
for dungeons i usually put arcane singularities, then before the final pull i place a (mastered) EF to gain lots of AP back and a COI for some area damage - if i am close i try to land a shield hit, too, but well, seems shield was nerfed a lot so i am not sure whether to keep it and what power to use instead if the answer is no (and COI, while loved on many guides, does not seem to be such an awesome power to me.... am i wrong with my intuition?)
i already screwed up some specs, i guess
anyway.... while especially grimah's guide is very useful, all others are outdated and/or miss out lots of intel on WHY to take this or that power, gear, feat, ...
can anyone tell me whether shield is still useful for damage (for pushing things off the cliff it definitely still is
or point me to some more uptodate video guide so that i can try to bring my gameplay to a higher level of efficiency?
would be very nice of you
Sorry, I don't know of any video guides, but I can recommend two very good guides (which are both still viable, even if not udpated):
- For Thaumaturge I would recommend: ((T2)) Thaumaturge Spec/Powers/Role
- For Renegade I would recommend: Versatile Renegade build - Feywild
The guides also include power rotations.a) thanks for those tips w.r.t. to shield replacement. OF is a daily, do you imply that whithout shield AS also became a bit obsolete and should be replaced?
b) i found the versatile renegade build yday, looks very sound, but i will look at the other, too, especially since i am not sure i am the renegade guy... i already took the road down the renegade path, so a turnaround is not really possible, but i don't outrule the possibility to start a new char from scratch one day - and then it might be thaumaturge
thanks again - i guess that helped me a lot!
- AS is not obsolete, just situational, OF is much better damage-wise, just make sure you time it properly when there are many mobs around and during EotS proc.
- there's also a test server where respecs are free and you can go copy your char there and play with different stuff to see how it works before committing to anything.
Thanks, Persephone, I'm well aware of MMO balance (and I'll just ignore the condescending tone and chalk it up to a miss-communication), but you don't have to have every MMO ending up as exactly the same game to promote balance. You might prefer that, you might prefer the ability to jump from one game to another with no significant changes but the overall look, but doesn't that just seem silly?
Not to mention, it's an over simplification and completely false that you need to lock everything down to limited number of specs and gear sets to have balance. That promotes boring, flavorless games that all play the same. What's the point in that?
Options are great. High end, hard to obtain options that, as a group, work well to counter the ability of each other can go a long way towards "balanced" play when you make those options fairly open to all. You don't have to lock each class down to a particular role, to two or three viable builds if you have those options available to everyone.
haha, i played D2 a lot and have like 20 characters at levels 80+, i am not scared of doing everything again, though, yes, I should respec, just to fix a slightly screwed char. Yet, I think that I might like to have *both* a renegade and a thaumaturge. for now i am fine with my char, i am not too far from the versatile renegade build, my problem is that i miss the insight of how to *play* my char right.
in that regard, many thanks for the tip with EotS, pers3phone!! i don't have that power yet, but i am grateful for the tip with OF
so, in what situation would AS be better then? in those cases when the enemies are too scattered or to save a dying team mate?
i have to look into the test server one of those days, i already read about it - though too recently and since i play the game with my GF (girl friend, which happens to be a guardian fighter as well
It's your opinion. Balance is paramount in my opinion. Too many options, too few devs-->No Balance (like we have in NWO).
Properly balancing a game will not make it flavorless at all, for me. It will make it worth my time and worthy of respect.
Options are great indeed. But not too many.
Also, classes should not be locked down to a role at all. That's why we have paragon paths. But there must be tradeoffs. And I'll repeat again:
- you pick tank paragon with your fighter, you do lame damage to compensate
- you pick damage paragon with fighter, you do lots of dps but your survivability goes down significantly
- your class heals, then you won't be able to also deal massive amounts of damage, but
- if you pick damage paragon for your priest, your healing should almost disappear to compensate for your now good dps
- you're robe-dressed and terribly squishy, but you can hurl hugely damaging magics at your opponent
And soooo on...
Hire more devs, implement more and more options, which again... they're awesome.
But secondary to balance
AS coupled with Shield and/or Repel for throwing mobs off cliffs where possible, which is kinda <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> but people will expect this from you in quite a few places. When you get good gear, demonstrate to them that you can kill mobs faster than throwing off cliffs
If you play with better geared and much higher DPS mages, it would be nice of you to use AS and gather up the mobs for their OF.
Keep in mind OF, Sudden Storm, Shard... neither can hit mobs in AS, which makes the skill even more annoying for frequent use. Also AS cannot crit for whatever idiotic reason.
You can use the test shard to try without costs the specs from the forums and see which one suits you best.
My opinion?
- You pick fighter. You have great defense, do good damage up close and can control mob movement. You can spec to do more damage, have more health, increase your cc, or even add non-class traits like stealth or learn alchemy. You have almost no range and you are weaker than your buddies to getting controlled by opponents.
- You pick cleric. You can heal, boost your friends, do great damage against undead and the vile, and have a pretty good wallop with that mace of yours against all the other regular joes. You don't have alot of armor, but your willpower is strong. Almost no range except with a few heals.
- You pick paladin. Great defense, good buffs, and some heals. You get bonus damage against evil enemies, and you have pretty good damage otherwise. Almost no range except with a few buffs.
- You pick wizard. Great control capabilities, lots of utility powers, and good damage. You can fight at range and even have a few one-off defensive abilities. Your true defense is very weak, though, and you don't want people getting close to you.
Off to work. I'll add more later. But what your seeing is the difference between simplified MMO's loosely based off of Dungeons and Dragons, and Dungeons and Dragons itself.
"D*mn wizards," said Morik the Rogue.
Learn what a GWF and GF really are: The History of Fighters
However, this game... it doesn't resemble ANYTHING D&D IMO. It's just an arcade MMO with nice combat and lacking in most other departments.
To be clear once again: I like a LOT of options - in offline games such as I mentioned above, Dragon Age: origins being the more modern version even if not D&D. These options many times lead me to find builds that completely broke game balance
This should not happen in an online MMO with anything resembling competitiveness.
Man, I miss those public server realms. There were some amazing places to play in those user generated realms and some really interesting work done by the community.
Every time someone thought they made a build that broke game balance, someone else would make something to counter it.
Options should be widely available, and the more you focus on one particular thing, the more you suffer in other areas.