Tonight is the end of the Warhammer Online Preview Weekend and I find myself frantically getting as much play time in as possible. I’m unsure whether or not this is the end of the ‘closed beta’ phase entirely or if they’ll allow those of us testing to continue playing. Elder Testers (which I am one now they say) get to continue playing but at this point I’m hesitant to play level 31+ content anymore.
Class Impressions
Since I last updated you all, which was only yesterday but feels like forever, I had only played a Zealot. Later in yesterday evening and today I was able to play two more characters and get a lot of playtime in. I want to give you guys my quick thoughts on them and then continue with my impressions.
Ironbreaker
They are butterballs of pain! This class has a lot to offer people looking for a durable class that deals a lot of damage. Ironbreakers get to build up grudges based on taking damage. An IB can make one person in the group his buddy (I call it buddy, no idea what it is) and any time they take damage it builds grudges up for the Ironbreaker. The more grudges the IB has, the more potent his abilities. Also, he can spend grudges to use really good abilities. I absolutely love the grudges system.
Ironbreakers can take a lot of damage in RvR and dish it out as well. When accompanied by a healer they are often considered ‘invulnerable’ because of how powerful healing in WAR is and how much the IB’s abilities add to his defense. By the time my IB was level 5 he had two abilities that increased his armor and toughness for him and his ‘buddy’. In RvR I was enjoying how sturdy I was compared to other classes. I could run in and actually live while attracting the attacks from everyone. The best part of the night was in the Gates of Ekrund scenario when I blocked the ramp that the Greenskins use to rump up the walls. I stood my ground and blocked them all. I had three shaman trying to get past and ended up killing 1 and almost a second before they overpowered me… I had no backup whatsoever or else they would have all been smashed to pieces under my axe. Oh yes, I used a 2h axe. *drool*
Black Orc
WAAAGH!! Smash stuff gud! Stomp dem stunties! This is another really fun class! Like the Ironbreaker, the Black Orc can take a lot of damage and deal it out in turn. I really enjoy some of the abilities that the BO has and how offense oriented he is when speccing and using a 2hander. The one downside to the Black Orc is how simplistic and sorta boring the 1 – 2 – 3 mechanic can be. Using 1 ability to use the next to chain to the next is “meh”. It’s still a good class regardless.
Zealot
On my Zealot I was able to get in a lot more RvR the past two days. I still feel like his healing is way, way better than the Shaman – probably on par with the Runepriest – and perhaps even too good. I got a new ability at level 14 that worked like chain heal; it put a HoT on up to 6 targets by bouncing person to person – really neat. I also accrued several more buffs that let me buff willpower, intelligence, and probably more but I stopped paying attention.
Random Thoughts and observations
CTD’s – are still bad. I’m getting a lot of them.
Alt Tabbing = bad. When I alt tab back to my game it shows just my mouse cursor (in-game mouse cursor) but only a black screen. I can hear the stuff going on in-game and hear if I cast spells but can’t see anything.
Healing – I’ve been approached by several people and witnesses many people crying out in frustration that healing is overall too powerful. Mythic said quite some time ago that healers were going to be very powerful. Did they intend for them to be THIS powerful? I don’t know. I think the Warrior Priest survivability (possible DoK but I have no experience fighting them) and Runepriest/Zealot healing are all a bit much. The Shaman and Archmage healing is questionable right now but I’m leaning toward saying it’s balanced as anyone who has played the class will attest.
Tanks pwn – Yes, they do. Tanks are incredible in this game leading to a lot of complaints that they are so
strong that melee DPS stands no chance. I don’t know which side of the fence I’m on for this one. I like how tanks are super strong because it means they can actually run into the zerg in RvR and live. On the other hand I feel for the melee dps who get butchered. Perhaps this goes back to the healing being overpowered because if healing is overpowered then that would give the illusion that tanks (who receive the most heals) are overpowered.
Keep Sieges – A lot of fun. I’m loving the number of them already. It seems like you can’t go more than an hour without seeing “The lord of such and such is under attack!”. Keep ’em comin’! One Keep siege battle from yesterday was hilarious. We get the message that the keep is under attack so we respond just to find the doors open and no sign of Order. When we go up to the keep lord all looks well. We take a brief look around the walls then suddenly on ventrilo i hear “HOLY CRAP! They’re hiding around back!”. And there they were, standing on the catwalk behind the keep all huddled together hiding; easily 15-20 of them. A lot of laughing ensued. (PS: What WERE you guys doing hiding back there?!)
PvE – I’ve been denying myself a lot of the PvE. I don’t want to burn out on it. What little PvE I’ve done has been in the Chaos T2 area from Chapters 5-7. It’s a lot of fun so far.
I’ll give you guys more info tomorrow. For now I’m alt tabbing back to the game to enjoy the last few hours of the Preview Weekend…. if I can alt tab back. 😉
Meh. Im going to re-iterate my personal feelings for your readers, although I know you disagree with me. What we’re seeing now is this:
A. Too many people playing tanks vs pure dps. This means you have a ton of people who have big survivability but low burst dps, and very few with big burst dps. Which leads too..
B. Healers seem overpowered because there is no burst dps to kill them before they can heal themselves and heal through poor dps on the tanks. So nobody dies.
Also one other observation from the beginning of runepriest vs archmage play. I think the early spells on runepriest ARE slighty op for healing vs. archmage. Basically by level 8, they can insta Hot themself, then insta shield themself, so they have two seperate ways to heal/mitigate damage, while they can cast an instant heal. So they can basically run in circles and LOS/get behind tanks while stacking a hot/mitigation AND casting heals. This combo leads to them being very hard to kill before the mid teens.
Of course, in turn… because there are so many tanks, yes, nobody plays melee dps because you cant melee dps down the tanks. Its a downward spiral going on now :-/
we spent what 30 minutes killing those silly ghouls in that shot? grinding in this game doesn’t seem as painful, probably because of the density of the mobs and the pretty ridiculous respawn rate. it kinda makes me curious as to how high those kill counter achievements go since 100 kills was only the 4th achievement.
Heals are definitely a bit over powered. I would say a decrease of about 10 percent would be a good starting point. I think that would make it a bit better. Other then that I am pleased with the game. Iron beakers are godly but with a slight nerf to healing it wont be so bad, same with runepriests.
I love seeing you fun guys running around. I am in the After World guild and have seen ya around the keeps alot. I don’t think I will be playing any open beta because I want to be very fresh for release.
@Perce: Doesn’t matter how many people play a class. I don’t allow myself to be blinded by illusions. I’m playing a Zealot and I have 4 people beating on me. I toss my HoT on and run around insta-healing myself and never come even close to dying. Whether that is intended or not, it’s still a fact. 😛
Tonight in this one scenario in particular I had a Witch Hunter, 2 Ironbreakers, and a Runepriest on me. I didn’t die. I just ran around insta-healing myself all while shaking my head wishy my Shammy could do it too. I ended up dying when a Bright Wizard joined them and burnt me to a crisp… man those BW’s hurt.
Is there a lack of dps? Absolutely. I don’t disagree with you there. Healers and tanks are the majority right now but that will even itself out. Tanks actually being tanky and healers actually healing REALLY well and being fun -and- useful is not something people are used to in a mmorpg.
@Skuishe: Yeah, that was kinda fun even though it was definitely the first time I experienced any grinding in the game. The respawn rate was pretty insane.
I can’t remember if you have or not Keen, but have you tried the Marauder yet?
@Jeff: Yep, played one from 1-15 and a little at level 31. Really fun class! It reminds me of the Fury warrior from WoW. A lot of melee DPS and more sturdy than a Witch Hunter/Elf but not quite that of a tank. I really like their mutations and some of the utility they have. If you look at some of the end abilities in the mastery lines they sound like they can be a lot of fun with knockdowns and other goodies.
I plan to play one in open beta.
@Perce:
The one major downside I see to WAR class balance at the moment is that there isn’t enough… distinction between the classes. That’s what frustrates people about tanks, more than anything, I think. Why should one class get so much damage, so much survivability, and so many nifty features (like CC – knockbacks, knockdowns, etc.)?
From personal experience, even at T4 my Witch Hunter didn’t have that much. I had a set of positional attacks, combo attacks, then 4 executions, stealth, and a snare immunity, and only did about 20%-40% more damage. However, I did have some good burst damage.
Anyway — I would have LOVED for classes to have some more distinction. Ie., tone down tank damage but give them more CC. Remove silences from all classes EXCEPT stealth melee DPS. Give snares ONLY to engineers/magus. Something like that.
playing mostly the witch elf this weekend, I can say that with keeping up with gears and levels, we definitely have the capability to burst down a healer through his healing. I am reasonably certain that 2 witch elves with full action points can take down any equi-level rune priest easily, and a single witch elf might need a little luck. This for me at least usually requires the use of one of my morale abilities and maybe my prowl opener especially if I’m solo, and so can’t be done constantly at a killing frenzy rate. A tank and a healer on the other hand, forget about it.
The witch elf is more and more looking like a bit of a hit and run character to me, big prowl/frenzy/morale bursts and then get the heck out before the bright wizards notice you.
Awesome stuff going around here, cheers for that Keen. But my impression is that the melee dps is lacking alot, tanks healers and casters being very overpowered. Impliying that if u want to enjoy a melee class in pvp, you are very screwed going alone. Altough having one myself (raiding main) i am very gratefull that there is no rogue-like class.
@Perce
People are not playing melee dps because they see no point. Why play a mDPS when a tank does good damage and has SO SO much better survivability? Currently a mDPS can’t kill a healer by itself, two of them can maybe.
mDPS does not have enough burst to kill a healer by itself, leaving them only offensive casters really that they can kill. That’s a toss up if they have heals too. The problem is as I said, no burst. So they need to up their damage or make it so they don’t run out of AP in a matter of seconds. Otherwise why play a mDPS when your scissors gets smashed, by paper?
Ironbreaker + Rune Priest duo = Win!
Black Orc + Shaman isn’t a bad combo either 🙂
@Keen…Interesting that you have ctd and alt tabbing issues.. i played all weekend and did not crash once to desktop and was able to alt tab easily and quickly. Something with your system, drivers combo etc….
Anyhow i played 4 healing classes this weekend to test and I plan to write a review on your forums… they were all very fun and powerful… at the early levels anyhow.
Elder testers keep going, have not seen anything to the contrary
Had a lot of fun today playing a Marauder in the Gates of Ekrund scenario. Tanks do a lot of damage, I’ve played an Ironbreak a lot in previous phases, but classes like Marauder really outdo them. Going around the map and coming in behind the Order healers, I was able to explode a healer and disrupt the flow of battle.
I think once we start seeing more organized play, the classes will come into their own. A few classes need some serious love (Magus and Engineer come to mind), but I think for the most part things are fairly well balanced.
Healer domination isn’t as big an issue as players level up. They are incredible at low levels due to the lack of a healing effect debuff, but as players progress a lot of different healing debuffs come into play.
I really like the sorcerer. Only got to level 7, but enjoyed it more than my lvl 8 shaman or my lvl 6 chosen. Supposed to get good aoe too, thats always fun.
do the spells you learn level with your character, like there’s no doombolt rank 2 is there? the spells just scale with you?
Initially the Black Orc 1 2 3 system can get boring. But once you hit lvl 12. You have 3 options for #1, 3 for #2, and 1 option for #3. And I imagine the higher the levels get the more options you’ll have.
This will make weaving options together to meet your strategic need very fun. Basically it will be easy to learn hard to master.
Black Orc was my favorite tank in beta especially because of the simplistic mechanics. They left me more time to think about what target and how better to protect the squishies behind me.
As for healers being too powerful that’s been a complaint for too long and except for some minor tweaks I think it is the way it is meant to be. Always, always! Kill the healers first. That is what I always did in RvR and if everyone does that no healer can survive.
I laugh at melee dps complaining about tanks. They aren’t meant to take down tanks, they are supposed to break thru and kill the healers!! Everyone kill the damn healers!!!!
WAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!
Also I think it is a good idea you skipped the PvE because except for open parties (which too few people use) and public quests there really is nothing new there and it gets old fast. Chp1 PQ1-3, Chp2, PQ1-3, Chp 3 PQ 1-4, rince-repeat. For some variety, better gear, and good XP I highly recommend traveling to each realms warcamps via flight master. You’ll get some easy XP from visit quests and then can stop off and do the other realms PQs.
It’s so silly to make class balance judgments based on low level play with a relatively low understanding of the games mechanics compared to what our knowledge will be a few months after release. Or even a year after.
Who knows how the game will scale when everyone is R40? Maybe dps will scale better than healing, maybe there are important abilities post 20 that aren’t obviously important yet. Maybe strategies will develop making it almost impossible to heal a focus fired target.
If you just look at the evolution of WoW PvP and how it has changed independently of game updates, you’ll see that sometimes balance issues are in the heads of the players and eventually they flip flop without notice when someone develops a new uber strategy.
Tanks pwn
On my Archmage, I can tell you that I feared the engaging the Black Orc, Chosen and DoK much more than the Witch Elf. The BO and Chosen deal as much damage and are hard as hell to kill.
On my Witch Hunter, I got pwned by everything. If I caught a caster in a one-on-one situation, I could take him. In any other situation (which is most of the time), I was completely ineffectual.
I determined that Melee DPS has two issues:
1) the natural enemies are casters, so they need to close ranks with them. that means going through Tanks which will eat you alive.
2) if you do get past the tanks, then because casters tend to “group” they all just nuke you.
It’s not so much that the Tanks are overpowered (they are fine I think), but that Melee DPS is trash without a little more survivability.
I think I could live with getting pwned so badly by the tanks if I had more magic resistances. A melee DPS should force getting through should force the tanks to come to the caster’s rescue instead of them just collectively nuking you.
@sid67 You should play a marurader then. I had no trouble picking off any bright wizard I wanted. Find a wizard, charge in, and kill him. It usually wasn’t even that had to get back out again.
I originally started as a sorc in closed beta and the marauders owns. The only thing a sorc stands out at is keep defense/seiges for aoe. One on one they are trash. Anyone with half a brain can kill a sorc one on one except perhaps some healing classes. Even PvE the sorc is pathetic. I think the sorc is the only class that can’t kill 2-3 mobs her level without dying. Two mobs is possible but three, no way. My marauder was killing 3 mobs 4-5 levels higher and could even AoE way better in PvE solo and people have the nerve to cry nerf sorc because the one thing, keep sieges, they can do well with aoe.
Oh, I also top the scenario charts as my marauder in damage done. Marauder’s are fairly godly.
Alt Tabbing = bad. When I alt tab back to my game it shows just my mouse cursor (in-game mouse cursor) but only a black screen. I can hear the stuff going on in-game and hear if I cast spells but can’t see anything.
Healing – I’ve been approached by several people and witnesses many people crying out in frustration that healing is overall too powerful. Mythic said quite some time ago that healers were going to be very powerful. Did they intend for them to be THIS powerful? I don’t know. I think the Warrior Priest survivability (possible DoK but I have no experience fighting them) and Runepriest/Zealot healing are all a bit much. The Shaman and Archmage healing is questionable right now but I’m leaning toward saying it’s balanced as anyone who has played the class will attest.
Tanks pwn – Yes, they do. Tanks are incredible in this game leading to a lot of complaints that they are so
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1. Keen you need to check the boxxes in your setting windows to run in wondow mode and the other thing next to it. Alt + Tab with that is fine, you just have to make sure you have another Websit up so you actually can go to it.
2. Healing is semi overpowered at the low levels but it even up after rank 30 as then the ranged DPS really start coming into their own, lets not forget the slew of “Mortal Strike” type debuffs that come into the game later on as well. Mauraders and DoK’s both get great heal debuffs I think a few others do as well.
Shamans are a beastly healing class, arguably the best Destro main healer one reason is because of the waagh power making his bigheal intant, not to mention majority of his spells are insta cast letting him/her shoot an scoot.
DoKs and Warrior Priests are the worst healers in the game but hella lot of fun, lower dps then most tanks and all melee and ranged DPS + BAD healing = bad class, the Devs have already said they are getting boosted in patch 4.1 their healing sucks compared to everyone else and they must be in melee range to do so, which = deaths in anything not related to small scale 6v6 or less gank groups.
3. TANKS are crazy good even after rank 40, its really hard for even ranged DPS to being them down, today I got smoked by a rank 10 Chosen with 1h and shield in a random encounter in chaos T2 rvr zone, and I was rank 19!!! (granted he is boosted to R18 as well) thats jsut how bad Warrior Priests are versus anything not a squishy. Their heals are mitigated by the tanks armor which is bullshit IMO.
On top of that tanks are just so damn hard to bring down. hitting him WHEN I DONT GET PARRIED OR BLOCKED TO HELL for 47 dmg when i normally hit everyone else for 120’s. that makes my heals heal me for 23-24 where as normally they heal in the 60’s. I dont even have any other heals besides a weak 87 1 sec cast with a small HOT attached, my main Hot heals for 853 over 15 secs.
IMO the dmg of all 1h and sheild tanks need to go way down and the survivability of tanks with 2h need to go way down.
anyways thats my rant on tanks and how bullshit I believe the balance is in this game right now, basically if your not a ranged healer, tank or Bright Wizard or Sorcerer you aint shit and its true even at rank 30+. Not to mention those classes are also well off in keep siege and standoffs. so theres no reason to roll a melee healer or melee dps.
@Vort: Initially the Black Orc 1 2 3 system can get boring. But once you hit lvl 12. You have 3 options for #1, 3 for #2, and 1 option for #3. And I imagine the higher the levels get the more options you’ll have.
This will make weaving options together to meet your strategic need very fun. Basically it will be easy to learn hard to master.
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Theres a a couple tactics that are a must have for 2h B.O.’s one is the tactic that increases the charges and duration of their “sunder armor” effect. Each cast of this skill puts 2 stacks of armor penetration rather then the 1 plu it makes it lasts 20 secs instead of the normal 10. Then theres a tactic that increses their crit chance and another that increases their dmg done, Combine all those with the tree hit combo and you can reduce the armor of anyone to near 0% which lets your tree hit combo basically 1 shot anything not a tank.
the ease of the class + the knockdown snare combo + knockback to punt the silly healers away is downright ungodly in tier 4. The damge that a BO can put out with a 2h and their armor pentration makes Melle DPS cry themselves to sleep.
IMO The surviability of ranged healers need a small down turn, the DPS of Tanks need a major nerf, and the BURST of Melee DPS need a huge increase. mauraders are the only melee DPs that come close to being a good class but thats because their in med armor and have a slew of CC abilities.
Currently Order has way better healers and Destro has way better tanks, we need a nerf on both those archetypes in order to make melee DPS somewhat viable.
I’m starting to get worried that the hordes of WoW-style armchair devs are going to initiate the seesaw of the nerf/buff cycle.
People are already calling out certain classes as OP, when most of them haven’t played past 20?! Just wait and see how OP those healers are after more people have abilities that reduce healing by 50%. (a la mortal strike.)
To all people whining about melee dps – of course you will die to a tank, ffs. That’s what tanks do to melee dps – they SHOULD kill them with 90% hp… Now, let that marauder get closer to a BW or an Archmage and see how they unleash pain. Of course, with all the tanks running around melee dps is kinda screwed, simply because finding a lone squishy is difficult.
Tanks don’t do big damage. The just live long enough. That’s what they’re supposed to do. Otherwise we’ll be back at the WoW state of lol-protectionwarrior-lol…
I have to agree with Strzala’s sentiment. I would rather tanks be the way they are, tough yet still powerful then be tough and laughable.
At least now Mythic is close to perfecting a paper-scissors-rock sort of set up with their classes.
The only problem I currently see are the hybrid classes that don’t do anything the best but do everything decently. Those classes are just that…decent.
Hi, the problem is dps classes has no survivabilty at all and dps is week compared to heals and tanking mitigation.
I hear 100 time this is RvR get used to it. No sorry i dont want to get used to it. After our group been killed and was people was running in pairs spread all over the map there is no RvR.
Tanks do much too much damage. Paired with healer and we have something unstopable.
Right now its frustrating.
Thanks god this is beta! I see all this gonna change for better.
I played a DoK up to rank 10 and they are a very enjoyable class. You essentially only have 2 HoTs to use at that level and 1 instant heal morale ability for like 500 damage. I found RvR in the Empire/Chaos areas (open world) to be the most zergish as both groups were essentially locked in a giant standoff for hours on end as they went back and forth accross the area. I am sure it was fun for the ranged DPS.
DoK needs a snare. Other than that it was no problem in RvR. The ability to stack 2 hots on myself and use various drain type abiltiies where I do X damage and then heal myself for 1/2 * X means that 1v1 you can outlast pretty much anyone. But all through the weekend players just ran away when they got to below 50% health.
You don’t have to melee to charge your sould essences to keep the heals going but that is certainly the most effective way. They get an ability to refill it every 10 seconds or so and you can go right back to casting HoTs.
I can’t imagine that the BW mechanic is working as intended.
Meh. I still have the feeling a lot of the people posting here are posting their experiences up through 15-18 only. Most of the comments here dont preface with what level they’re playing, and have yet to hit the late teen DPS wall that I have personally experienced with swordmaster, and I know happens with other tanks as well.
@Keen: You playing on windowed or full screen? I have alt tab issues in full screen mode, but I can do whatever whenever in windowed. The game runs exactly the same in both ways for me, OTHER than the fact windowed mode is slightly darker.
I think you are dead on about healing Keen. My group chased a Level 11 Zealot down (battle ranked to 18). We had a Witch Hunter (Level 13), my Shadow Warrior (Level 11), and a Warrior Priest (Level 14). We literally chased the Zealot from our warcamp in Troll Country to his and were almost unable to outdo his healing. We were all in RR6 gear and had played together all weekend. Finally, we were able to take him down, but just barely.
Another issue I noted was the damage absorption shield that Destruction has can be stacked on a single tank making that tank impossible to kill. There were tons of invincible tanks this weekend. If it wasn’t for warcamp siege, they would have walked right into our spawn.
A lot of people talk about burst DPS and how the action point system balances it out. Well, that is a nice theory, but so far in practice it seems pure DPS blow all their action points on big damage attacks that do diddly squat on tanks and aren’t enough overall to take down a healer. So, DPS sits out of action points while tanks chop them down. Or, DPS go and attack other DPS, because they don’t have any defense.
Almost every scenario I was in, the top damage done went to a tank class. If it was a level 10-11 tank with RR6 gear, the damage was 3-4x that of pure DPS characters. Why? Because tanks live forever, especially with the healing.
DPS is out. Damage Per Minute is in with the WAR combat system. Tanks rule DPM.
I am not angry about it. It is a group-based balance. Hopefully, this was low-level issues and it evens out higher up with DPS. I just don’t want DPS turned into 1-2 hit wonders.
(Hey my first comment on your blog!)
That was my guild you ran in to trying to take the keep on Saturday night. I’m not sure if anyone else in my guild reads your blog, but I sure do. When we ran into you the other night two thoughts came to my mind:
1) “It’s a wipe†(I was trying to kill you Keen, I knew you were the healer…stupid collision detection wouldn’t let me get to you!); and
2) “Damn, I bet this is going to be on the interwebz tomorrow… sigh…â€
With regards to your question about what the heck we were doing up there, well, we trying to kill the keep lord of course! At that point we were pretty frustrated with trying to take the keep. In fact, we were having tons of issues with even trying to take control points! Invulnerable mobs, resetting mobs, etc… The list goes on. In fact, the hero from the Monastery of Morr was fighting the mobs in our warcamp for hours in a locked battle of epic unending proportions, causing that particular control point to become ultimately untake-able (sp?). Anyways, we were having similar issues with the keep lord you found us at. You actually caught us on our second or third attempt (and what I mean by that is we completely let the entire keep reset, doors/mobs and all), biding our time on the balcony trying to decide on Vent how to attempt to kill him…again. By that time, most of us were pretty frustrated with the issues we were having and the numerous CTDs. We had faced no significant opposition until you guys rolled up, so thanks for the fight! Ultimately, either we were stupid or the issue was reset/fixed because order took that keep in the wee hours of the morning while I was sleeping. (Then of course Destruction rolled the map).
Anyway, thanks for the fight! I hope we roll on the same server as Happy Fun Guyz, we can always use a little more reknown! 😀
Cheers
@Romble regarding the CTD issues. I have a top of the line rig that has a freshly installed OS and I too experienced these allot this weekend. As did several buddies of mine that are trying the game out. This is a common issue it seems as shown by the posts around the interwebs. 🙂
RE: Tanks. Well maybe I don’t know how to play them but I sure did die a lot in RvR. 🙂 Granted this was with a T1 Chosen, and with limited gear. Still, Too many times I was nuked to death in about 2 seconds (might of been lag) and with out any healing a Tank will die.
Granted I have never enjoyed RvR (or PvP) as much as I have in WAR. I just need to find a class that fits my play style.
@19: If Mythic claims that you can RvR throughout the entire game instead of anything else, then the balance should be fairly consistent throughout the leveling process. I know this is easier said than done but when I look at a scenario sheet after I’m done and see that 2 TANKS have out damaged my MELEE DPS character, I get a little annoyed.
During my brief (only level 12) experience, I found my role as a Marauder was quite useless in open RvR unless the enemy came right into our zerg. If I ran off like a tank, I would get targeted by 3566756 Bright Wizards and get blown out of the water regardless of healing. So most of the time I had to hide behind rocks and things and wait to ambush people when they walked by.
I plan on making another Marauder and leveling him up to his 20s at least during the open beta to see if things continue.
@Ernest: People are already calling out certain classes as OP, when most of them haven’t played past 20?! Just wait and see how OP those healers are after more people have abilities that reduce healing by 50%. (a la mortal strike.)
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ive been playing for almost a year in the beta program, I can unequivecally say without remorse how things stand right now in regards to balance, not only that but ive been playing MMO’s for over 10 years so I can without a doubt spot balance issues long before you would otherwise believe I can.
I was 1 of the most vocal people in regards to class balance. A few patches ago all this was in reverse, we had melee DPS and Melee healers doing all the overpowered stuff, then in 2 straight beta patches they nerfed them and buffed the hell out of tanks and ranged DPS. this ahs been a never ending struggle since the begining, and its always gone in cycles. But I will add its as close as its ever been to being balanced compared to the state of the game a few months ago.
@Travis: Yes, spells/abilities scale with you and also scale as you put mastery points into their corresponding line.
@Broadan: haha, awesome! I’m glad you posted Broadan. That was definitely a lot of fun. I was able to use my Zealot’s PBAOE for the first time with you all huddled up in a ball. Good times. 😉
@Everyone –
I just want to put this out there so that no one misunderstands the class balance issues. They’re not game breaking – at all. They’re frustrating more than anything but certainly not so horrible that the game can’t launch and patch these fixes in. Although, it would be nice to see SOME balancing before release. We still have 20 days until the head-start begins; plenty of time.
Well Keen WAR owes you some props. After my brother and I loaded up for the free weekend after each of us making a couple of lvl 2 characters we almost quit. I couldn’t belive the VERY first think i was supposed to do was “Go kill 4 of these and report back”. I just couldn’t handle it.
BUT…after some calming down we decided we had to at least try the RvR before I wrote this game off. And the RvR was fantastic. Most fun I have had in a MMO in a LONG time!
So now at the end of the weekend we will both be getting the game, I will just be running as FEW possible quests as possible!
Thanks for all your info…it was much appriecated and really made a big difference.
Also quick note…I couldn’t believe how well this game ran on high detail on 6800GT SLI. Very impressive. FPS never dropped below 20 in insane fighting.
Still getting a new card…but was still very impressed.
Playing a Disciple of Khaine during Preview Weekend, I can definitely tell you that gear and levels factor in a LOT in the early levels.
I felt the OPness of the DoK early on, but wasn’t experiencing what others were talking about with the Warrior Priest (mirror). After hitting 10/6 and getting my RR6 from our Tier 2 Keep, I was unstoppable. I joined a few T1 Dark Elf Scenarios and had 6 people beating down on me, while I would kill 2 before they got the best of me. I must say that while the Tank + Priest combo is durable, they really can’t do enough DPS to kill a healing class. The only reason I would die is the Bright Wizards and Engineers would start to focus fire me down.
All in all, Melee DPS really shouldn’t be trying to kill tanks, they should go straight for the clothies like in every other MMO. Mythic stated early on that Tanks would counter Melee DPS, Melee DPS would counter Ranged DPS, Ranged DPS would counter Tanks. Support varies, generally improves all classes, but is countered by Melee and Ranged DPS (not by tanks, as they can heal through their DPS).
Bottom Line: Gear matters a LOT, but it is easy to come by. You should push to hitting Rank 10, Reknown Rank 6 asap, saving approx 1g, 30s to purchase all the RR6 gear from a Keep.
[…] fun (but mediocre visual quality) screens I grabbed for you and read fresh WAR looks at: G-Spy, Keen & Graev, Ten Ton Hammer and Massively. Waaagh = […]
Just want to add the following experiences.
Arrived at a RVR area and found a bunch of tanks and melee dps in our team and maybe only a couple of healers and a couple of caster dps. Tanks and melee DPS got wasted by the enemy who had a great balance, probably with 60% of their group being casters. Their concerted firepower killed any tank or melee dps in a few seconds if we got too close to them.
We were able to take out the occasional straggler with lower health but they were basically utilizing our tactics against us. They would send out a tank who was getting uber healed and then caster dps would focus on one of us to kill us quickly. The only way we could take him down was if he extended himself too far out of their range which rarely happened.
About a half hour later, the tide had turned. Our group had at least five healers and probably that many caster dps as well. Big difference. I could actually charge into their front lines to take out their stragglers. Again not by myself though, usually with another tank. Even then, it wasn’t just us hitting them but caster dps support as well. In effect our concerted efforts allowed us to know out a single enemy character in a few seconds.
All in all, I found group composition really makes a big difference in a fight. Tanks aren’t uber powerful unless they have the support to make them work (i.e. healers and caster dps to finish off an opponent). So if you get wasted by a tank, double check to ensure it wasn’t actually the volley of spells from behind the tank that really finished you off. Healers on the other hand are extremely difficult to kill. We had to have four or five people on one healer and even then I think he only died because he stopped getting helpful heals from someone else in addition to his own heals.
PS. Oh best tactic I’ve found so far as a tank. If an enemy is running away slowly, just run in front of them and block them which stops them from moving, letting your teammates to gang up on him or her. That’s one nice thing about melee DPS I found is that they can surround an enemy opponent and prevent them from moving, thus killing them pretty quickly. And yes I agree that melee dps should be harassers, getting into the thick of the enemy from the sides and quickly killing some of the caster dps but only attacking in groups for maximum effectiveness (i.e. wolf pack that goes in, hits hard and gets out). Just the sight of four or five melee dps running in from the side as a pack, should scare the crap out of most casters.
Well I just played in the PW but I think Keens observations on a few things were spot on. Archmages and shamans should probably be healing for a bit more or doing a bit more damage. I didn’t play either but that’s just what I found from observation.
Tanks also seem to do a little too much damage.
Any class, including the healers, can die fairly easily if you focus fire them and their group mates aren’t paying attention. WP’s especially because they have no real nuke heals aside from their morale ability.
One problem I saw was that I would be at 1/2 health then suddenly die perhaps this was just server lag etc but when you die a lot of the time you’ll notice some real problems.
Just some observations from a WAR noob. 🙂
Well i got my Witch elf(Akisa)to lvl 11 this weekend and found a lot to like…but things to dislike as well.I feel like I can’t contribute much in open rvr except as mentioned earlier a sort of hit and run attack.And the scenario’s…man i got owned on a regular basis.The healing to me needs to be adjusted.Unless you’re playing a healer or a pure tank type, you feel rather pointless as far as contributions in these situations.I mean 4 or 5 people should be able to take out a healer.They need to work on balance some more imho.I still intend to recreate my witch elf for OB, but I’ll have to see how things go.
Keen now the weekends over do you know if we can keep playing or do have have to wait for the official release?
Unfortunately I couldn’t play the in PW, due to a DOA Mobo on my new computer, so I don’t have any first-hand playtime. But it seems from how people are talking about things that some of the tactics and strategies from Guild Wars are going to be applicable to WAR.
In GW, especially after the 3rd expansion, healing was *very* effective, and fights would often go back and forth for minutes on end without anyone really dying. Many group compositions were only able to drop a target after applying substantial pressure, (via stacked DoTs) to deplete the opposing healer’s resources.
Even then, careful target swaps and faked melee DPS spikes to draw out the powerful long-CD protective spells would sometimes need to be coordinated with a number of characters disrupting the healers with KDs, stuns, etc.
Now who knows whether these sorts of coordinated attacks are what Mythic is trying to encourage, or if they are just having problems balancing things. But it seems like a fun puzzle to try to figure out to me. But as I mentioned, I’m not suffering the frustration of dying to a ‘OP’ class even when I do everything right, so my opinion will likely be more optimistic! ^_^
@Howdy Doody, WOW you already got irritated at level 2 because you had a kill quest. That is just dumb. There will always be kill quests, get over it. I am just dumbfounded that you would post that you played to level 2 and almost quit because of getting a kill quest.
It wasn’t just the quests…it was (on first impression) a LOT just like WoW to me….which is kinda bad. I even found the combat (on first impression) not as good as even Connan.
Maybe I just built the game up so much that it kinda of crushed me.
And the reason I posted that incase others like me that get horrible WoW vibes to just relax and look at what the game really is.
May not have come through in text very well. Thanks for bringing it up and giving me a chance to clarify.
damn your blog is getting too popular Keen its annoying, I have to scroll for 2 weeks to tell you something 🙂
I thought you would find this funny
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI1Sjcbguw8
@Lumio: hahhahahahha Chickens!
@Andrew: Only Elder Beta Testers can continue playing. 🙁 I got my Elder stuff running though so I’m up and playing still.
Hey man had alot of fun with the RvR that we did. Gotta say that i wish i was a elder tester now. I NEED MA WARHAMMER!
I’m glad I’m not an elder tester. I’m afraid I’d get burned out on the game before it even launches.
Hey keen I have a few questions. Have you played a engineer a white lion or a sorcerer yet. My pick for the game will be one of these three im leaning at engineer right now, but i had little time to play all 3 classes, if you did have some time playing them tell me what you think about them and like about them most . I want to dish out alot of damage but not put up with dieing all the time.
thanks
-bludkraze
I’d probably do the same Bwast : )
Another question. When is the early start starting?
@Bludkraze: I played a sorcerer at level 31. He was a lot of fun. Lots of damage. I played an Engineer at level 31 as well and a little bit 1-10. He seemed like a lot of fun and has potential for improvement. I have not played a White Lion much at all.
@Andrew: The information I have indicated Sept 14 for CE and Sept 15 for SE headstarts. Game launches on the 18th. Those dates are subject to change and if I get more info I’ll let you guys know.
I decided to play Destruction this weekend since I was Order the last week or so in CBeta. I think my favorite was Disciple of Khaine. Decent DPS, even when using a single weapon, and good heals. The problem was seeing too many DoKs that just wouldn’t heal (??). Never did understand that one.
On the burst DPS issue…I played a Witch Hunter as my main in CB. The major misconception about the WH being overpowered I believe comes from the comparisons people make between it and a WoW rogue. WHunters aren’t supposed to take down tanks. They are supposed to take down heretics, I mean casters.
My opinion is with the folks that believe this whole class balance is working as intended and we (the players) need to adjust our thinking on what a classes role should be.
As for the performance issues: I’m running Win XP and I’ve had more CTDs and performance issues this past weekend than in the previous week of closed beta. One thing that did help with performance AND CTDs for me yesterday (much better performance and NO CTD) was to take my video cards out of SLI mode. Imagine that! Better performance when SLI is NOT enabled. Uh…WTF?
Great game and even with the “issues” I’m still very excited about release.
“Alt Tabbing = bad. When I alt tab back to my game it shows just my mouse cursor (in-game mouse cursor) but only a black screen. I can hear the stuff going on in-game and hear if I cast spells but can’t see anything.”
Keen-
I had the same problem until I went into options, set the windowed resolution to match the monitor, clicked off “Full Screen” and “Show Borders” (or something like that.)
Once it was in the “windowed” mode, it didn’t object to being Alt-Tabbed at all.
@keen: I had your issues with alt-tab only in the capital cities. Everywhere else it was fine.
@Werit: Yeah, capital cities are the WORST with alt tabbing. ALthough the window mode fix works… I still hope it gets fixed. 😉
ah cool, so between engineer and sorcerer , whitch one did you enjoy more , and why?
oh cool let me know when you try to white lion 😀
BTW: Does anyone know how the PQ loot system works as far as how the type of bag is chosen? We couldn’t figure that out. What determines if you get a Gold, silver, or common bag?
thanks in advance.
@ howdy doody: So far while i was playing it was just random. My guess is how fast or well done the PQ is i guess?
@Bludkraze: I liked the Engineer more.
I ended up playing a Swordmaster for most of the weekend. I was surprised at how fun it was. I never play elves, especially female ones, but mine had pretty, blonde hair and a nasty scar across her blind eye. Rockin’. As a shaman, I spent a lot of my time running from people and trying not to die. I had to be a sneaky little goblin.
I’m just glad the whole game is done and getting tested, unlike a certain other MMO this year.
cough cough age of crapnan
alt-tab solution – worked for me anyway – uncheck the FULLSCREEN option in the settings. The game still filled the full screen however when I alt-tab, the windows action was displayed on the bottom.
I had no issues using that method.
btw, Running Vista 32 and have the WAR icon set to run as ‘administrator’
I’ve noticed that melee DPS lacks to burst at low levels to bring down healers, so you encounter low level Melee DPS and they seem very weak, even by the very end of the first tier they get the burst they need to take a healer down. People just don’t use it all or burst it hard enough. I’ve found that relying on others to do the sustained damage while you work towards heavy bursts is essential. Great example, on my WH, I would just stack dots on a healer(They get a few good ones, including one that ticks for 600 dmg over 8(9?) seconds). One those are all layered on, you’ll be close to your 1st morale skill, so you use feigned positioning to spam your backstab type skill until you max out accusitionns, then you use your high damage finisher with the imbued bullet that slows and deals extra damage, and immiditally use the teir one morale you get at like, lvl 8(It’s servre nerve, and instant attack of around 400 dmg). You can burst for 2-3k damage in about 8 seconds, if you do it fast enough, you’ll have all your dots ticking on them too.
Also, ALOT later on you get skills like fanatical zeal that makes someone take damage every time they cast a spell, silence hieratic that is a 3 second silence on a reletively short CD. Basically, melee don’t have all their cool tools until higher levels to really burst people down. I have a feeling both tanks and healers will seem less overpowered at higher levels as players gain more tools to effectively deal with them.(I realize healers and tanks have alot more tools too, but you see my point hopefully)
Looking at the abilities in WarDB, it looks like melee DPS get abilities to debuff healing, Inquisition Witch Hunters get a 50% healing debuff at level 24. A healer would go down pretty fast with that on him and it looks like most dps get similar skills. So maybe heals only seem overpowered because dps doesn’t yet have the skills to deal with it at lower levels.
On tanks, I read a Marauder guide and it looks like they get abilities perfectly suited to kill tanks (-70% armor debuff and another that lowers block and parry) but again they seem to be high level skills. Dudes definitely in the running to be my main.
It looks like the classes balance out more as you get higher, however since I am not in the beta this is all just speculation from what I’ve read.
I wasn’t impressed at all. The game is trying to be like WoW and Dark Age of Camelot…