Cryptic's D&D-based MMO officially launches today after months of beta. Ragar brings us his opinion on the state of the game.

Could Have Sworn There Were More Than Five Classes in D&D

Snarkiness of that heading aside, the number of classes in Neverwinter is one of the major complaints players have about the game. When you look at the source material of D&D, class options are plentiful. If there's a character concept in your head, there's probably at least one or two classes in all of the various sourcebooks you could use to bring your idea to life (well... maybe in 3rd Edition or 3.5E). Martial characters, divine classes, arcane casters - something for everyone. When you go from that to Neverwinter's five available classes, there are some understandable questions.

Players going into Neverwinter can choose one of the following: Devoted Cleric, Trickster Rogue, Control Wizard, Guardian Fighter and Great Weapon Fighter. While these classes do cover most of the core archetypes for these games, there are some questions these choices bring to mind. Why no Ranger or other archer-type character for people who want to be non-magical ranged DPS? Why make the two-handed weapon user a second Fighter instead of something different like a Barbarian? While most of us are sure that Cryptic will bring us these classes in future patches and updates, that doesn't help the players now who look at the classes they picked and say, "When's it going to be my class' turn?" Luckily for me, about 80% of my D&D characters were Fighters, in one way or another, so I was set.

Here’s where I admit that I have not reached level cap in Neverwinter. I’m still chipping away at it, but I’ve played enough that I feel comfortable talking about it. My main is a 47 Dwarf Guardian Fighter and there’s a 30 Human Great Weapon Fighter I’ve got as a side project for those days when my leveling friends aren’t available. While both are technically offshoots of the Fighter class from D&D, the two are functionally quite different other than they are both melee classes. GF has more threat mechanics and mitigation than their greatsword-wielding counterpart, but their mobility is severely hampered due to the lack of a roll/teleport/sprint (their Shift ability is a Shield block). GWF is extremely mobile, with multiple AoE attacks, decent control mechanics for a melee class, and the potential for high mitigation through talents and judicious use of the Determination buff, but their base survival is nowhere near that of the shield users.

While I love the mobility of the GWF and the feel of playing my old 3E greatsword fighter again, I focused on the GF since he was the “tank” class. I’ll admit to being tempted to play a two-handed tank, but the math didn’t seem to support it, so I grabbed my shield and brought the GF into Skirmishes and Dungeons with my Control Wizard and Trickster Rogue friends.

It’s Just Not D&D Without Dungeons

Early on I had a great time with the dungeons in Neverwinter. Cloak Tower felt like a well-polished instance and it seemed like that proper mix between normal trinity-style tanking and pen and paper chaos I’d been looking for. When we got to Cragmire Crypts and ran into the Competing Adventure Party, I wasn’t thrilled (bad memories of fights like Faction Champions in WoW’s Trial of the Crusader) but the encounter went by quickly enough that I couldn’t complain too much and getting to beat up a pirate at the end made up for the annoyance. The problem came with the next instance, Lair of the Mad Dragon…

Now you hear the name Lair of the Mad Dragon and you’re thinking, “Awesome! A dragon and his dungeon! That’s both Ds in D&D! This’ll be great!” It’s even a fairly difficult instance to boot, though some of that may be due to the way the game does its queue ranges (why it has you enter a dungeon with 34-35 monsters at level 31 seems odd to me but we did all right). The problem comes when you get to the last boss: Chartilifax, the aforementioned Mad Dragon. He’s got a ton of health, a breath weapon, acid AoEs and a tail swipe – all the ingredients for a good MMO-style dragon fight. The problem? Early on the strategy for dealing with him involved actually ignoring the very large and quite angry dragon in the center of the room (ZAM Note: this fight has apparently changed since I ran the instance, but since the game stopped letting me queue for it after my friend and I took a questing break for a couple hours, I can’t test it for myself). I know, it sounds suicidal, but there was a reason.

You see, the reason for this is that adds will spawn during the fight. A LOT of adds. Some will spawn as the health of the dragon reaches certain percentages, some will spawn based on a timer from the beginning of the fight, and I swear there are a few packs the game just throws in there because it didn’t think we were working hard enough. The idea was that as the tank, I would try and keep the big adds off of our Devoted Cleric healer and then help the rest of the group burn down the small stuff before we switched back to the boss until the next wave. As someone who’s been tanking for a while, the idea of a strategy focused on me not tanking all of the adds was bad enough, but my bigger issue came from the 50-ton green dragon elephant in the room that we were all supposed to ignore. It’s a dragon fight! Why in the world would we be ignoring the giant ball of scales and teeth in a boss fight focused on him in an instance named after him in favor of a bunch of nameless trash spawns?