I landed on GWF as my main after initially starting as CW. The relative difficulty in soloing was immediately apparent even for a player still learning mechanics.
40~ hours later I can't say my GWF has quite "bloomed" yet however i can attest to danger as a powerful learning tool.
GWF to my experience is a class that will punish you for playing poorly, a mob out of position, or a costly miss with your precious single target abilities can put you at a serious disadvantage. Using Not so Fast in combination with sprint to repeatedly set up reaping strikes seems to be the key to solo play before you get access to more of your kit.
Thus far it seems that GWF excels at two things. Capturing control points, and getting away from unfavorable skirmishes.
I suspect much of the difficulty specifically in early levels has to do with the order in witch we obtain our instance and at-will powers. The potential for excellent PBAOE is there but difficult to bring to bear in time to be of use.
On the other hand clever use of sprint and heroic leap can allow you to choose your battles witch is paramount due to your effectiveness being heavily subject to situation.
It is difficult to tell who is more slippery between GWF and CW, It is however not difficult to tell whom between the two is generally more useful.
CW has cake, and he gets to eat it.
Cake is a lie, Pi is a constant.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
It's good enough in pvp if you rely on its main advantage: Mobility. It's virtually impossible to kite a GWF as they can pop ability to ignore cc, they run quickly with the shift key, and punishing charge can be used interchangeably with sprint to follow those who try to flee. It's great for putting pressure on healers or squishes in order to forcibly overextend their melee by making them retreat. With a well organized team at your back you can use this to push into the point with your GFs and dps. I see them as being very good in a premade, and plays pretty well solo queue. That being said: If you play pvp like a chicken with its head cut off, you'll probably be about as effective, as the class does punish you for poor placement/movement and errors
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tarutaMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
ONe thing people FAIL to mention is that there is currently a scaling problem for lower level GWF because our weapons are not scaling to our powers.
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tarutaMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
Example being, Sure strike is doing 17-18 damage when my actual two handed swords damage is 38-48 you all do see what I'm talking about I hope.
Here is an update. I created a GWF after this thread and leveled it to level 5. It is a bit rough to stay alive without pots. One thing I love about the class is nothing will be easy for me. Positioning, timing of skills and use of dodge feel way more important to me on GWF than my cleric.
The problem with early crit imo is that you just can't get enough of it. So if you look at your character I would guess your at or below 5% crit. While armor penetration at early levels can easily get into the 8%+ range and "works" on every hit. Armor Pen also scales better against armored targets for obvious reasons.
Later on I will try and VERY heavy Armor Pen + Crit build to see if they compliment each other well enough to forgo +power items entirely. Only time will tell though.
I went with power and Armor pen last night and I saw a decent improvement. What does defense do? I would assume that it just helps keep you from taking damage but does it do anything else?
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astaziaMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 51
edited May 2013
The biggest problem GWFs currently have is that people think they are Strikers. They are not. They are Defenders. At low levels their damage is a little lower than GFs and definitely needs a boost, but it's not a class about topping damage meters and they are never going to get that much stronger.
Are they ever going to fix the placement of swords on the back of human characters? My sword goes through my body and it just looks HAMSTER, I've tried remaking my character a lot of times with different scaling but it's all the same...
"A Great Weapon Fighter has a secondary role of a striker."
"They rely on a strong aggressive offense, and yet are still durable enough to serve as a defender in a pinch."
When I read this we aren't going be as good as Guardian Fighter or Protecting Paladins as tanks, and we are 2nd at best to Rogues and Mages for damage.
Comments
40~ hours later I can't say my GWF has quite "bloomed" yet however i can attest to danger as a powerful learning tool.
GWF to my experience is a class that will punish you for playing poorly, a mob out of position, or a costly miss with your precious single target abilities can put you at a serious disadvantage. Using Not so Fast in combination with sprint to repeatedly set up reaping strikes seems to be the key to solo play before you get access to more of your kit.
Thus far it seems that GWF excels at two things. Capturing control points, and getting away from unfavorable skirmishes.
I suspect much of the difficulty specifically in early levels has to do with the order in witch we obtain our instance and at-will powers. The potential for excellent PBAOE is there but difficult to bring to bear in time to be of use.
On the other hand clever use of sprint and heroic leap can allow you to choose your battles witch is paramount due to your effectiveness being heavily subject to situation.
It is difficult to tell who is more slippery between GWF and CW, It is however not difficult to tell whom between the two is generally more useful.
CW has cake, and he gets to eat it.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Immediately rerolled rogue and started 1 shotting.
Stay mad turbo nerds
I went with power and Armor pen last night and I saw a decent improvement. What does defense do? I would assume that it just helps keep you from taking damage but does it do anything else?
That's how At-Wills on every class work. They don't use the weapon damage numbers, they use the weapon DPS, which for some dumb reason isn't listed.
"They rely on a strong aggressive offense, and yet are still durable enough to serve as a defender in a pinch."
When I read this we aren't going be as good as Guardian Fighter or Protecting Paladins as tanks, and we are 2nd at best to Rogues and Mages for damage.