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Might have found my favorite GW2 Class today

May 14, 2012 by

Center Keep of Eternal Battleground is huge and fun to siege!

I managed to get some play time in Guild Wars 2 today before succumbing to the 95% load screen hang; Having to Ctrl+alt+del out of the game and then having to restart the comp to recover wore me out after the fifth time.  Definitely performance issues during this event, but that’s the whole point of today. WvW was very, very laggy with massive framerate issues — everyone on ventrilo was complaining about it and I was getting < 10 FPS.

Found a Class I Love!

During the few hours I played around I tried an Elementalist for the first time and fell completely in love with the class.  I felt like a bender from Avatar with the four different elemental schools.  I could switch to fire, water, and air with one more school locked which I assume was earth.  Switching to the different schools gave me different abilities for each element.  Switching weapons gave me additional different abilities.  I tried three different weapons, with three different school, giving me more abilities to mess around with than any other GW2 class I’ve tried.

I managed to play a little bit of WvW before I simply couldn’t handle the framerate issues anymore. The Elementalist is really fun to play because I can target my AOE’s everywhere.  Using my water staff attacks/heals was useful to my team.  The air speed buff was great utility.  I felt useful and had fun, which is all I can ask for in a class.

I’m afraid of Elementalist being overplayed… but I was reminded that GW2 has no raids, individual loot, and little need of balancing classes within a guild.  I can play whatever I want as long as I can get past the psychological effect of seeing my class everywhere.

Keep at night (Thanks to Eternity for the screenshot!)

Game Breaking Overflow

Overflow is still terrible.  Randomly being separated from my friends with no control over how I get back to them is unacceptable and game breaking.  ArenaNet must fix it so that group members can transfer to the same instance their group leader is in, or some other solution of bringing people together.

WvW Fun

Despite the lag, my friends and I went to the Eternal Battleground (center zone of the WvW) and contested the big keep in the center.  We took down the outer door, inner door, then had a massive battle against the red server on the ground floor.  We ended up being wiped, all 50 of our server there, because half our server went up the stairs to fight the boss and the other stayed on the floor.  It didn’t take long before we were overwhelmed and wiped.  Tons of fun!

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SWTOR Launch Preparation

December 11, 2011 by

Other than studying my butt off for finals, I’ve been prepping for SWTOR to launch in just a few days.  I posted not long ago about my struggle to decide which class I wanted to play.  I ended up going back and forth over a Jedi Consular Shadow vs. a Jedi Consular Sage… and threw both out in favor of a Jedi Knight Guardian.  I want to tank and I just like the look at the Guardian.  That’s honestly all it boils down to for me.

Just look at their armor. Armor had a huge impact on my class choice.

I think it was the idea of being a Jedi using a traditional 1-hand lightsaber with a robe that hooked me.

Now I’m trying to choose which crafting professions I want.  I’m leaning towards a Synthweaving, archeology, and Underworld Trading combination which is, I like, all the stuff I need to make Jedi armor and stuff.  I find myself wanting to get into my ship.  I want to start my companions working on my crafting and I want to figure it all out — remember, I didn’t touch crafting in beta.

A very common theme among my circle of friends is the struggle to choose the right class.  The advanced class system is having more of an impact than I thought.  More than just doubling the options of what class to play, people are struggling with being a ranged or melee tank, or wondering which will be the ‘best healer’, ‘best dps’ or even if something will be over/underpowered.

My advice to all of my friends, and all of you, is don’t over think it.  Choose the class that looks fun to you for whatever reasons you have thought up.  Heck, I chose Jedi Guardian because

1) Looks cool in a hooded robe with armor that reminds me of Obi-wan Kenobi
2) Uses a 1h-Lightsaber
3) Can spec to tank

Switching gears, we have our guild set up and ready to go.  We’re not utilizing the auto-deploy feature because we’ll be playing on the RP-PvP server.  We welcome anyone interested in joining us.

Lots of excitement in the air again.  It seems to come and go with each new MMORPG.  The excitement feels different this time, as players in general become more aware of reality and jaded gamers become more prevalent.  I caution anyone to get too excited, since nothing lives up to what our imaginations concoct, but Bioware makes quality products and SWTOR is a good game with a healthy future.

Now the waiting game begins as we try to guess what day Bioware will grant our keys access to the early start.

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Choosing my class in SWTOR

November 26, 2011 by

It’s time to start narrowing down my choices for which class I’m going to play first in SWTOR at launch.  I’ve dabbled in the beta and like everything, which doesn’t help narrow things down at all.

The Advanced Class (AC) choice is where things get fuzzy.  It’s been confirmed that when you choose an advanced class, you can’t change your mind.  You can change your ‘talents’ within the trees of your advanced class, but when you choose to be a healing Consular or a DPS Knight, it’s permanent.

I love the permanence involved with the choice.  Switching to the flavor of the month won’t be as easy and players will need to think just a bit more about the choice they make — it actually makes choosing what path you follow a meaningful choice.

I’m torn between a Jedi Knight Guardian (Tank) and Jedi Consular Sage (Healer/Support).  They’re both team players since both have trees dedicated to helping the group, but both also have the ability to spec for damage dealing and ‘balance’ despite not going the Damage dealing AC.   I don’t have much experience with either, yet.  I played the opposite sides of the specs I’m debating.

Do any of you have experience with the Sage or Guardian and want to share your thoughts on how they compare to the other healers/tanks?  I’m also curious how the damage trees within the tank and healer AC’s do compared to their pure dps AC counterparts –  since I never reached the ‘end-game’, any insight there would be welcome.   I also need to consider PvP, since I’ll be doing a lot of it, but I figure either way I’m choosing classes with survivability.

P.S.: The skill calculator at TORHead is great for theory-crafting.

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SWTOR Beta Impressions

November 18, 2011 by

Below you’ll find my feelings about SWTOR based on the beta testing I have participated in for ~1 month.  I have no experience with the end-game, crafting, PvP (if you can’t predict the PvP you need to play more of these games) or much at all beyond the level 20 gameplay.  I felt no need to spoil the game for myself any further.  You’ll glean this from what I have to say later, but SWTOR is a predictable game and I am confident that I have judged it accurately, even with my limited experience.   I’ll be honest up front with you guys and tell you that I offer nothing ground-breaking by way of new information.  If you find my opinion helpful (whether it be we think alike or you know to think the opposite of me), then read on.

Note: I’ll break down individual mechanics, features and theorycraft about what they can improve upon after launch.

 

Overview (Read this, if nothing else)

SWTOR is a themepark through and through.  If you hate WoW for the kind of game that it is, don’t bother with SWTOR; however, if you simply hate WoW because it’s cool to hate WoW or you’re simply tired of playing in Azeroth, then you might want to give SWTOR a chance.

As a new game being released, SWTOR does nothing to change what we’re all familiar with in games.  It’s the same RPG story-telling we expect from Bioware and it’s the same WoW-clone we expect from MMO’s.  SWTOR does it well, though, and that’s where I justify wanting to play.

A line I have used in the past is, “If [MMO] is like WoW, but not better in any way, why not just play WoW?”  I like to use Rift as an example.  Rift is not a terrible game, but it does nothing better than WoW; content was boring, combat was stiff, etc.  That’s why I saw no reason to keep playing Rift.   SWTOR has fun and interesting PvE content that keeps me interested and wanting to see what happens next.  I’m confident that I will feel the drive to see every area and encounter the game offers.

Continue reading “SWTOR Beta Impressions” »

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