First of all, thanks for letting me be apart of the Stress Test for HOT. I do understand that it is in Beta and that things are still a work in progress, also that this beta stress test may not be the same as the end result.
Over all I enjoyed it, Loved the textures, the design and the animations. Having the characters talk i found amazing and a nice touch, other things like the helicopters falling out of the sky and landing right next to you i thought was also very neat. I never noticed and grafting or texture issues within the area, it all looked very smooth. So overall I found the area setting impressive.
I used a Revenant for the Test, new class, why not. It’s model I like the look of, the armor, the weapons and in a small way it reminded me of the select screen in Dragon Age 2 when you decided who Hawke was going to be. I used the Hammer most of the time as I found the Axe and Mace pretty much useless or perhaps it is just my style of play. Even with the hammer I found there were long periods of time with the Weapon Skills Activation, like skill5 for instance, it just seemed to take forever for that hammer to hit. I used the Dwarf spirit most the time, i think it just appealed more to me. I believe the Revenant would be an exciting class to play given the opportunity to explore more of an area with it.
I found the gliding pretty glitch, most the time I wouldn’t glide at all and just fall forever, other times it would throw me so high i died when I hit the platform. This made it incredibly hard to take a good part in the Wyvern’s Group Event (which i didn’t seem to have any of the problems listed by other testers when it came to the actual fighting) maybe because by the time I got over there, the thing would be almost dead. I can’t say it was lag as the rest of the time it all ran pretty smoothly.
The Mastery System, I think it’s interface is a little… yeah, rough, slapped together… don’t know why it hasn’t been given an icon at the top left screen or wasn’t added into the Hero tab under the Skills and Traits section, to me, i thought it would be more user friendly and keeps all your skills, Traits and Mastery all in one place. I mistakenly used 2 point on one Mastery when I was trying to work out how to use it, normally it would ask if ya sure, accept or a cancel select would be nice. I think an Interface like the WvW tab would also suit the Mastery System well.
All in all, i enjoyed the 4hrs of Revenant/ HOT time I got, I had hardly any lag issues, I found the people who were also testing incredibly helpful and sharing and I am very much looking forward to the time when I get so smash out HOT in all it glory.