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in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

Engineer Elite Specialisation
(It’ll be a cold day in Junker’s Scrapyard before I use the other name for it)
One of the things I’ve noticed about a few of the elite specialisations (especially the ones that I really enjoy) is that they are essentially supporting a play style that I already have. This leads to a weird feeling that nothing has really changed, or that I’m not really testing the specs. However, as fun as hammer was with Engineer I felt that it just didn’t provide the raw power of the juggernaut build, so I stuck with the latter and had a marvellous time! I was running Soldiers armour with Strength runes, my dps wasn’t through the roof but the toughness and vitality did keep me standing through a few incidents that might otherwise have hurt a lot. I did give gyros a good try and, although they weren’t entirely horrible, the effects seemed frankly lacklustre and I probably won’t go back to most of them again. If they were permanent in their current state I think I’d be fine with them but with their short durations I would expect something significantly more effective in terms of their effects. Frankly I’d rather they were like more powerful (because they can be destroyed) signets, always on but with overcharge effects that deactivate them for a short while. If they stay in their current non-permanent state I can’t see myself bothering with them.

Druid
Really enjoyed Druid, very different to my normal Ranger play but super fun and I look forward to playing it come launch. I think that my gear choice (Shaman’s armour with Dolyak runes) might have been a little too weak in terms of doing damage but it did mean that I could stand up to quite a surprising amount of punishment. Also I was never in a position when using the Celestial (F5) skills were really worthwhile (see my comments on dynamic events below) so I can’t really talk about that and I found the tooltips for the glyph effects quite confusing as to which was regular and which celestial. As a consequence I didn’t really experiment with the glyphs very much. The staff was a lot of fun and felt very satisfying (with the caveat that I wasn’t exactly running the gear set to expect faces to melt … and they didn’t) but one key issue that bugged me was that I couldn’t use the autoattack on friendly players. I think it would be great to be able to target an individual player with the staff autoattack, the actual effects of damage to surrounding mobs and heal dealt to the player in question probably wouldn’t be that different (probably a little less damage, a little more healing) but it would really help the supporty feeling of the spec, and would probably offer some more engaging gameplay at higher levels (eg. raids).

Chronomancer
Late to the party on this and don’t have a huge amount to say. It struck me as quite a lot of fun and very active in play but it’ll take me a long time to properly get my head around it so I can’t see me being an early adopter … this is, I think, more an insight into me as a player rather than the quality of the elite spec.

Other Elite Specialisations
I didn’t play Dragonhunter, Reaper, Revenant, Daredevil, Berserker, or Tempest this time around, so can’t comment on any changes that may or may not have been made. However I enjoyed Dragonhunter, and Reaper very much in previous betas, Revenant was okay but I was struggling to find a sweet spot with it (almost certainly an issue with me rather than the profession), Daredevil I just didn’t enjoy but then I don’t enjoy playing vanilla Thief either so no big surprise. Tempest I didn’t try at all as it didn’t look like my cup of tea, I’ll probably take a look post-launch but I don’t play vanilla Elementalist well enough to provide any meaningful feedback on the specialisation. Berserker was probably the most fun I’ve had with any profession ever and it took an effort of will not to just play that constantly; needless to say I am really looking forward to converting my condi Warrior to a Berserker post-launch.

Dynamic Events
So I’m sure you’re aware of the various bugs that stopped the primary event chains from actually running, that was infuriating but I have every faith that the issues that broke them will be fixed post-launch.

However possibly the most frustrating issue for me was the very poor scaling in both day and night events. As it seemed like most of the testers either left Verdant Brink after dark, or just loitered around the raid entrance looking wistful; I spent an awful lot of time on my own in camps at night. If it was just me then I would be finished, I just couldn’t keep up with the sheer number of mordrem that appeared; and the respawn rate of the vines was so ridiculous that trying to just keep them cleared was a Sisyphean task. So soloing the events was impossible for me, eventually the weight of mobs would just grind me down. With a couple of other people participating, the events actually became super interesting … no room for laziness but if we worked really hard we could keep a lid on the spawns and win through. Small groups made the events very satisfying. Then you’d get the zerg … as soon as the zerg arrived at any event it went from fun to just trying to tag mobs for credit. Now I get that event scaling is probably a very hard thing to get right but it’s something that I really hope the devs can put some more time into because at the moment there’s a sweet spot that is incredibly rare to hit (I think over the entire weekend I just got two or three events with a small group) and the events really need to be agile enough to cope with both tiny and vast numbers. I really don’t enjoy face-rolling events but if the choice is between success or failure then I’m going to go with the success option every time; failure doesn’t progress my masteries. I really like the idea of defending the camps at night, actually I quite enjoy having just me and some NPCs defending a camp but if it is just me then the number and respawn rate of mobs really needs to reflect that.

The Wyvern fights were odd this time around, the break bars (I know that’s not the right name for them but …) seemed impossibly hard to break as opposed to the utter irrelevance of the bar in BWE2. I think there needs to be something of a happy medium between the two, not so easy that a single cc ability will stop it but not so hard that ten need to land either. Also a bit more time would be nice, I know I’m probably in a minority of being slow and middle-aged but my poor old brain needs a little bit longer to (a) realise what’s going on and (b) do something about it … add casting times into that and really just a couple more seconds would make all the difference. On the other hand, either people (including myself) were much better this time around (frankly unlikely) or the wyvern damage had been scaled down hugely. This was sort of good in that it made the unbreakable break bar less of the nightmare it could have been, but bad in that the fight didn’t feel as dangerous … and that’s a shame. I like my bosses to be … well … boss; and my trash mobs to be trashy.

I mentioned above about the Druid’s celestial abilities being largely unused and that is an issue with event scaling. Where there were only a handful of players at an event, it may have been worth using the transformation (that I didn’t is really down to not being in a group or squad so not having a clear idea of what was happening with people’s health until they were downed … so it’s me, not you ANet) but in a zerg either people were taking virtually zero damage or they were instantly downed, there was no middle ground. If you want healing to be a thing in the game then damage has to be less spiky but also needs to be more widespread, and there needs to be some damage that can’t be avoided actively. The time I saw healers really come into their own in the game was at the end of the sorties into the invaded Lion’s Arch, when the poisoned air was killing everyone as they scrambled to escape and healers were waiting by the gates rather than escaping themselves, dropping healing fields, shouting, throwing elixirs, dropping turrets, symbols, pulling out all the stops to keep the stragglers with enough health to just make it through the gates … while keeping enough healing up on themselves to be able to survive the experience. That was amazing and one of the very few times that people have widely acknowledged support roles in the game. When damage can be avoided with dodges blocks and blinds there is no reason not to run ’zerker because all health lost can be put down to a learning to play error. Put in damage that cannot be avoided, only healed, and suddenly the ’zerkers rely on the healers to stop them dying … while they still need to be avoiding the circles on the floor!

Verdant Brink
I’m sure there’s a lot of QQing on here about how the mobs were all too easy but I found that it was a massive improvement over previous BWEs. When I’m trying to run from point A to point B I do not want to be in an epic battle for my life every step of the way … mostly because it takes too kittening long that way. In terms of navigating around, I found it much less irritating this time around in terms of mobs trying to stop me, and could concentrate on the irritations of the place being a blasted maze. Hopefully come release the layers will allow for navigation to be a little more straightforward but at the moment because there is no way up other than waypointing if you miss a glide, navigation can be frustrating. But I digress! Trash mobs felt trashy this time around, and that’s how I like ‘em. I love big fights too but not all the time … even chocolate can get a bit much if that’s all you get to eat.

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in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Degine.1045

Degine.1045

Just to add my two cents, I agree the support classes are fun in design, but so far not much has changed or makes them really valuable. I too hardly used the celestial form on the druid, because there hardly was any use.

What I also noted is that the game is still really damage oriented. You can always see the health bars on damaged enemies in view, but not those of other players unless you mouse over. Arenanet please consider the health bars to make healing more intuitive. Spamming heals at random on a cluster of players isn’t so satisfying.