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4. For Grape Justice!

That was a large part of it, all right! I'm afraid I'm in a place in my life where I'm not casual, I'm dumb. When I game it's to zone out and get away for a while. The last thing I want to do is, you know, think. I even bought the Pandexpansion so I could do dungeons on a monk occasionally. One button healing FTW!

The ranger strikes me as one of those classes that has a high skill ceiling but a low skill floor. I'm sure if you put the time in it can be a complicated, challenging, and powerful class. But it can also be a class where you just kind of shoot some arrows and dodge once in a while, if that's all you want to do, and still not die.

Plus I missed my Skyrim archer.

Yeah playing Ranger is relaxing. Plus collecting pets is fun. I enjoy my ranger a lot. My poor ele died so much at level 15 that she just asked me politely to please stop playing her for a while.

SpoilerOct 20th - Defeated Zhaitan (Arah Story Mode) on my necro!! Got some nice things...mostly trinkets, but I did get a rare spear that I actually will use.

Now I can spend all my time striving for world domination completion.

Edited, Oct 21st 2012 12:15am by Dyadem

Edited, Oct 21st 2012 12:15am by Dyadem

I'm actually really unhappy that Zhaitan is the first dragon you can encounter. I mean, they clearly designed the release version with him as the prime antagonist, but he's also the best antagonist of them all (well, of the 5 we know of).

I like when MMOs give you hope for the future plot lines. This is kinda like if Vanilla WoW was WotLK, and you could down Arthas one month in. Sure, Deathwing was cool... if you read the books. But the real villains in the WoW universe were the Burning Legion and the Scourge. It's not wise to tie up those loose ends too quickly.

[EDIT]

I got my Elementalist to 20, struggled through. I can assure you, 5 more levels doesn't help. Even unlocking a major trait. Too many of them only function in one element, and that's not something you want to be investing in until you can really iron out a play style and gear for it. Most endgame builds seem to be focusing on two elements and cycling through those specifically. But I'm also getting the feeling that it's a compound issue between stats not scaling well between them, on top of certain elements just being underpowered.

Edited, Oct 20th 2012 11:47pm by idiggory

I bet.



I, personally, found the Warrior to be more simple than the Ranger. The Ranger has to micromanage two pets while the Warrior just hits F1 once the Adrenaline meter reaches WINTASTIC! And Warrior AOE is so hilariously easy, most encounters are just a matter of plowing through throngs of slightly flabbergasted enemies while spamming that F-key to get phat lewt.

The Warrior also gets some ridiculous passives, like the passive health regen, which is just insane. I think I have a passive health regen, passive might (damage) and passive precision (crit). The downside is that using the actives on those buffs removes the passive until the cooldown is done, but since kiting as a Warrior is pretty easy in this game, it's no biggie.



D/D? I heard rumors that Necromancers were getting an overhaul, or maybe that's just people wishing out loud. Right now Necromancers lack... well, damage. Most of their damage comes at the cost of weakening themselves, which is pretty silly considering the amount of damage other classes can toss out without making themselves vulnerable. Their weapon combos also need some love. Way too many debuffs and not enough damage. Take the staff, for instance. I think four of the staff's attacks are Marks, which must be placed on the ground and walked over by friends/foes to activate. And once they do activate, the effects are underwhelming as well.

The whole Death Shroud thing also needs some work. Right now people are just using it as a secondary health bar to prevent getting instagibbed in PvP. The problem with Death Shroud is that there's no reason to use it since it only has four abilities of which only two are damaging abilities: auto-attack and an AOE with a huge cooldown. The silly thing about the auto-attack is that it gets weaker the longer you stay in Death Shroud. I played around with a Necromancer for a bit and only really used Death Shroud when I was dying, or during big AOE fights where I could pop the AOE for a fast clear (every 40 seconds, /groan).

On top of that, you're forced to go dual daggers since everything else just does no damage at all. Of all the professions I've played, Necromancer was definitely the least interesting and most frustrating. Where my Warrior can equip a greastword or dual axes and just whirlwind through stuff while laughing and regenerating health at crazy rates, my Necromancer is dying every other pull because the stupid pet pulls aggro and dies instantly to any attack, taking any healing with it and leaving my Necromancer to do what a Thief and Warrior does better.

If you've played an Elementalist, the damage is comparable to dual daggers in water spec. Good times.

Edited, Oct 22nd 2012 3:00pm by Mazra

Class strength is not linear or predictable is what I am finding. Thief for example started off really squishy but by 30 I had so many tricks and escapes that I could survive almost any encounter.

Warrior starts off feeling godly. Every weapon just wrecks things. But now that I am 30+ much of that earlier bravado has worn off and I need to play smart and careful at times again or it's rock throwing time.

The greatsword change is really irritating me. I don't care about the nerf aspect--literally means nothing to me--but they really destroyed the weapon's synergy and fun factor with the change. Design philosophy for GW2 was that it would be active play--you wouldn't just be watching your character auto-attack. You'd have some situational abilities, some reactive ones, some you use more-or-less on CD, and your auto-attack chain (which for most professions is somewhat dynamic). Of course, this is a generalization--everything is situational/conditional--but I'm talking about the difference between a skill that applies burning and one that applies blind, or has a block, etc. Sure, there are times when you'll want to save that burning condition for later, but usually you'll apply it right away.

Now, with the greatsword, you don't have that. You spend 70% of your time auto-attacking. Your only on-CD damaging ability is only up every 10 seconds (it's also apparently a dps loss on single targets, and I'm personally ignoring that because I refuse to spend ALL my time doing nothing). You have a symbol that applies retaliation on a 20 second CD, so now you have to save it for when you know it'll get the most impact (used to be able to use it on CD, which was great--created a geographic aspect to the guardian playstyle).

Other than that you have a Leap with a 15 second CD that applies blind. It's not bad damage, but that's a long CD for a blind, and since the GS is an AoE weapon a single-target blind doesn't do much. This is really only for gap closing, combo finishing, or when you only need to blind one out of the group.

Last skill is an AoE pull. Which is more or less pointless outside of PVP. Slightly useful if your group scatters (rare enough in PVE), and it has a slight DoT component, but it's long CD means you save it. I only ever use it in events to set up my whirl.

To add insult to injury, the Greatsword's best trees both involve buffing symbols (one of which has all symbol-based minor traits). When the GS symbol was a 10 second CD you could use regularly, that was awesome synergy. Not overpowered either (at least, nothing about the synergy made it OP).

Was that symbol OP, because it applied Retaliation? Maybe. But they broke the weapon with their fix. What they should have done was change the boon of the symbol to something less powerful, like Vigor or Stability. Maybe Might. Or hell, just have made it a pure AoE symbol without a boon. Anything would have been better than doubling the CD...

Worst part is it didn't fix the problem of Guardians having perma-retal. They can still do it--the GS was never necessary.

/rant


Anyway, finding a build that works well for both shouldn't be too hard, since you're only stuck with the minor traits. Maybe you won't have the BEST traits for each playstyle, sure, but you're sure to have good ones. I'd say figure out where you need the better traits to be working and go from there.

I think it's when you leap from a combo field, but it may also work leaping into one. I'm not sure there.

Spoiler tag because this is long and only interesting to people who play Guardians.

Spoiler
As for weapon swapping, I really do understand that. The problem, though, is that the GS has become too specialized in AoE. It's far too useless far too often against a solo target--its only use is realistically to put up Retaliation and maybe blind. Useless? Maybe not. But definitely not something you'll be switching too frequently if fighting one mob.

Even worse, because you'll be using one weapon that's more-or-less ONLY for AoE situations, your other weapon set will need to be tailored to deal with single target fights and defensive play for you to be effective in general play. With you needing to focus your attention there, chances are you aren't going to end up with something super useful in an AoE fight, meaning there's a good chance GS auto-attack spam WILL be more effective than weapon switching.

Most GS Guardian builds are ending up with a weapon set for single-target/defensive play, and their GS for AoE. Before the nerf, synergy created from Symbol builds meant that you could access decent utility from the GS in single-target situation, so you didn't need to tailor your second set away from AoE.

Now, though, that's really rough. GS + Sword/Torch gives you two sets that deal well with AoE, and one set that deals well with ST, but it has very, very little defensive capability. It's definitely a glass cannon build. Only really deals well against projectiles, and that's completely due to Sword 3. It can rip apart single targets and groups well enough, yes. But that has more to do with the fact that you have two separate sets, not because you are switching. You can DEFINITELY burst down a group with this, but it's entirely a damage race (especially because Torch 5, while amazing, means you cannot dodge at all).

Mace/Shield used to be a great pairing for GS because of a symbol build. It gave the GS enough utlity to be useful against a single target, and gave the Mace enough to be worth switching to against multiple opponents. You can still use a symbol build, but it's not as effective. Mace is still easily the best pairing for a GS, though. Even then, you're ultimate survivability by auto-attacking in GS is often better than switching to your M/S set. Mace/Shield is amazing for defensive play against single targets, but groups tear your down too fast for it to be useful in AoE. Better to dispatch your enemies fast. Not worthless, but not amazing (your #3 skill is a good AoE, but only blocks one attack. Your symbol gives Regen, but only one stack doesn't mean much in AoE. Shield 4 is the only really good AoE defensive skill, and that's because it gives protection). Worst of all, the Mace is less optimal for solo ST play, because it has the most group utility of our one-handed weapons. You won't take down a single mob anywhere close to as fast as a sword.

Final option is also good pairing for AoE, the Scepter/Focus/Shield, but it's FAR weaker in single target combat, so I'm not considering it a real pairing for normal play. If you have a group, it's a decent choice though--you get some utility, good AoE, and decent ST if you can keep the target stationary.

Really, the problem is lost synergy. Because the GS is almost ALWAYS a bad choice in Single Target combat. That only changes if you absolutely need the blind from GS3. And that means you need to be quick enough to switch and leap--that's a pretty big delay from when a combat animation would begin.

Not a bad weapon, but not a good one for weapon swapping. And boring to play, even if it's fairly effective at what it does.

Compare it to the Hammer, which still has a lot of synergy with other weapons. There's plenty of reason to use a Hammer in both AoE and ST situations, and it's AoE is only slightly lower than with the GS. Tradeoff is that you attack slower, but it's amazing with a symbol build, and it gives you a lot of control in both AoE and ST.

I generally use the GS instead of the Hammer, just because I like it more aesthetically. I'm well aware that it's inferior in just about every way though. Only thing it does better than the Hammer is apply burning to a group, but Torch does that better, and I don't even use a burning build so it's kinda a moot point.

Edited, Oct 22nd 2012 3:43pm by idiggory

So I just found out that Dulfy has been making GW2 entries on her site. For anyone who played TOR, you probably visited her site at least a couple times. Her guides were very well done, especially for events. She has a GW2 guide up for the Mad King scavenger hunt, here. While she doesn't seem to be doing anything on TOR anymore, the GW2 stuff is pretty up-to-date, and her site is worth a bookmark.

I can understand that. It's the difference between setup time and ramp-up time. Condition builds really require you to get them onto the target ASAP.

I'm also seeing Necros mad about the fact that they can't inflict burning, since burning is the highest damage condition. They get the more debilitating ones (like poison), but they end up lacking in the damage department. And while that makes sense for pvp balance, it's still tough to swallow when you are getting destroyed 1v1.

If there's a serious delay in the time it takes for them to actually get their conditions out there, that has to exacerbate the issue.

Of course, it's not all bad. Their ability to spread conditions through groups is higher than for any other profession, which makes for AMAZING support in group scenarios.

Last problem--there's a condition cap. I'm appalled that this made it into the game--BC/Vanilla WoW were plenty of reason for why no MMO should include this, ever. You can't build condition-based professions if you also code in blocks for them to be effective in group environments. And you DEFINITELY shouldn't create a group-oriented condition profession...

I think that's too dumbed-down a look at the utility abilities, tbh. Some of them are meant to be used more frequently than many weapon abilities.

The problem, really, is that "utility skills" can easily be a misnomer. For many professions/weapons, your weapons provide the utility and you supplement that with the utility slots, not the other way around.

Smite Condition, for instance, is a utility skill with a 20 second CD. It removes a condition from the Guardian and does very good AoE damage. When traited, one "charge" gets you two or three casts before you need to stop to recharge it. Yeah, you'll generally want to save it for conditions, but because it does such nice damage you might not.

Then they can summon a spirit sword whose only purpose is to damage enemies.

Judge's Intervention teleports you to a foe, damages them, and sets nearby enemies on fire. That's more offensive than many of our weapon skills (though it does have a 45 second CD).

And when you look at our weapons, most of them are a combination of damage and utility. And take Line of Warding, a staff skill. It has a 40 second CD, and it's only effect is to create an impassable barrier. That's nothing but utility.

Guardian actually isn't the best example, but still.

Maybe think about a minion-build Necromancer. ALL of their central skills are utility (/healing/hero).

So it's really profession dependent. That said, you can get all of your skills by 40 through normal play, barring the hero skills. So it's still something of an issue, imo.