Guild Wars 2 Guilds

When my friends and I began playing The Old Republic, we decided to create a guild for ourselves. In hindsight I think that was a bit of a problem, especially for me, as it limited me from the social aspects of the game more so than any other. And since at least one of my friends is very anti-social (in an online sense), trying to join another guild wasn't really possible. He would have quit first before ever considering that kind of switch. So, my options were limited in that regard and by the time I hit 50 I really had no social pull for any of the more difficult content.



With Tera we have not created a guild at all, though at this point we probably should go ahead and make one. I'm certainly not interested in the political aspects of the game--they are cool and all and present a more interesting form of end-game. But it is also something that is just as much of a commitment as a high end raiding guild. To be successful at that you need a big group, and you really need to commit to it to be successful in any meaningful way. And even if some of the Vanarch seats aren't heavily challenged, it's still way too much of a commitment for a game that I'm really only planning on playing for another month.

With Guild Wars 2 it looks like I can have my cake and eat it too. Apparently in Guild Wars you can create, and join any number of guilds, though you only 'represent' one guild at any given time. That means that we can create a guild just for our friends, but still reach out and join other guilds for more focused content (such as PVE, or PVP, etc). This is a very cool concept (FFXI had something similar, and hopefully this won't take up inventory space like Linkshells did in FFXI). This is again something that points to the way Guild Wars 2 seems to invert core basic concepts with an eye towards usability and openness.

Guilds also seem to include some leveling functions that allow you to increase the abilities of the guild. I looked at this, and this seems cool, though less impressive than the guild leveling I've seen in Warhammer Online, and in World of Warcraft. Of course, this could be expanded later and probably isn't really necessary for release. But I'm not entirely sure it's worth it just to purchase basic 24 hour buffs--it's cool, but not cool like some of the abilities you got in, say, World of Warcraft.

Thoughts on Guild Wars 2 Classes

Thoughts on Guild Wars 2 Characters

After my short experience with the beta I'm looking at playing several different characters. At this point I'm not sure what I'm going to be using as my main (and I won't for a bit), but here's what I'm considering at this point:

• Human Elementalist
• Asuran Engineer
• Sylvan Necromancer
• Char Warrior

Elementalist seemed like a lot of fun the time I spent with it. It's certainly fits with my play style (being a closet mage and all). Lots of options, lots of effect types, and lots of pew-pew. Glass Cannons, however, seem like they will have a hard time in this game, so this may or may not be the best class pick outside of PVE. I also have a friend who is definitely playing this class, so I might have to pick another instead. You can definitely make some very cool looking humans to with this game.

My next choice is an asuran Engineer. The asuran Engineer starting zone is just awesome. I really liked the human starting zone, but the asurans are just cool. The Engineer itself is a cool class, though I didn't get access to all of the class's weapons, I generally liked the mobility and flexibility of the class and it looks to be a lot of fun. It takes a bit of work, but you can also come up with very cute/ugly looking asurans through character creation.

Past that I'm looking at a Sylvan Necromancer. The Sylvan starting zone was the least interesting to me story-wise, but has a cool alien aestetic that I really liked. Everything I've read from people were stating that Sylvan = Elves, and that is definitely not true. They seem much more Fae-like to me--more like nature spirits than anything. The Necromancer Class itself looks a lot of fun--and it seems like it could be a very effective class. The mechanics of the class seem very interesting to me--and my work as an alternate spell caster if Elementalist doesn't pan out. Sylvans are somewhat hard to make look 'good' in the game, though I managed to make a few 'ok' looking characters.

My last thought was to try a Char Warrior, or possibly Thief or Ranger. I spent the least time in the Char zone, so I didn't really get to see much of it. Warriors look OK, and are apparently beasts in PVP. I usually don't like melee classes, but since there are very few true melee classes in this game I think Warrior might be good.

Honestly I didn't do much with Warrior (I only got to level 2). I never even touched Ranger, Thief, or Guardian, though a thief for PVP seems like that might be good. Whatever my main turns out to be, I'll probably be creating at least 2 other characters to play around with, and with those other characters I'd like to hit a wide variety of play styles.

Oh, and as you might have noticed I haven't mentioned Mesmer here. I did create one, but honestly I didn't like it very much (though admittedly I only got to level 3 before I quit). Mesmer is the only class that I'm not planning on touching at launch.

Guild Wars 2 (Beta Impressions)

So I failed. My intention was to completely skip the Guild Wars 2 Beta even though I had already preordered the game. My original plan was to simply look at the character creation options available, but not play the game at all so it would be fresh and new when I started playing next month. Instead I ended up playing the game for about 6 hours, including the end-of-beta event. And as expected I very much liked what little I saw of the game.

During my time with the beta I created 6 different characters of various races and classes: a Human Elementalist, a Auran Thief, a Norn Engineer, a Sylvan Necromancer. and a Char Warrior. The highest level I got on any character was level 5. This was enough to see some of the basic mechanics of each class. It was enough to unlock several weapons, and to see the 'heart?' quests and dynamic quests in action.

I have to say that Guild Wars 2 could very easily be relabeled ADD Wars and with good reason. Maybe it's just the game front-loading the starter zone, but with the heart quests, dynamic quests, and world events going on it became very hard to stay focused on one task. Event were popping up left and right, making the world seem very active and packed with content. This was both good, and bad. Good in the sense that there was always something to do, and it was easy to just get caught up in it and lost in the world. But bad in the sense that it quickly became a bit overwhelming at times. And this was made worse considering the sheer numbers of people in the game doing the events, where there were often scores of people doing the same thing at the same time. Things often became confusing and hard to follow, and since the world doesn't wait around for you it can sometimes end up with you getting lost, or missing out on things because you couldn't keep up.

The chaotic nature of the game made my transition with the interface itself a bit problematic. My fingers are now used to Tera, which has an interface different than most MMOs. Guild Wars 2 has a slightly more traditional interface, but it was one I was having a hard time adjusting to. I don't think this will be a major problem for most people, but I did end up heavily modifying the default interface to get it to where I liked it. By the time I was done, and Hunger Royal started, the interface wasn't bothering me so much.

I never figured out how to gather (I guess you have to purchase items to enable this but I never got a chance to test it). I also didn't get to do any crafting at all, so I don't know how good or bad that system is or how good the gear is. I avoided doing story quests (except for the ones you have to do in the starter area). Instead I primary focused on heart quests and dynamic quests, and a bit of exploring. I did a couple of skill challenges, found several vistas (which are very Assassin's Creed-like). There will be a LOT of possible exploring in this game, which should really help with the longevity of the game.

Overall my first impressions with the game are is that it is very beautiful, very smooth, and it can clearly scale pretty well. Combat is very tight, and combines some of the best elements of WOW and Tera. It seems faster paced than either of those games, though, and the game does suffer from having so many effects on screen that it can be sometimes hard to stay up with the action. I'm also not quite convinced about the way skills are tied to weapons. From what I can tell it doesn't take very long to unlock things, so it's pretty obvious that you can unlock all of the abilities of your character very early on. Weapon swaps will certainly help, and I presume will be a cornerstone of the system when that ability unlocks.

I'm definitely excited to get a chance to play the game in late obvious. Perhaps more excited than I was before. In the meantime, I've still got Tera to play around with and that's what I'll be doing in the short term I think.

On another subject, I finally cancelled by subscription to Star Wars: The Old Republic. While it had it's problems and the game lost its luster long too soon I have to say that I really enjoyed the game and will remember it fondly. Too bad TOR's end game was so boring. I have about 20 days to log back in and do stuff before my last play period expires.

Tera Mystic (First Impressions)

After getting Priest to level 30 I've now manage to get a Mystic to level 25. This wasn't really my intent, but as my other friends have been playing now I decided to create another healer to run through Bastion of Lok, and leveling Mystic to 20 was pretty easy. While I'm no means a master of the class, I do have a few things to say about it at this point, though keep in mind my impressions are limited to the level 1-25 range.

And unfortunately my impressions of the class up to this point is that it is a poor man's priest, and no where near as interesting.

Offensively Mystic works very much like a Priest (except with fewer spells). Mystics have a standard ranged attack (just like Priest, and Sorcerer), a short ranged cone-based AOE (like Priest), and a short ranged high damage strike (just like Priest). This combination is very effective at low level, just like priest, and I have to admit I was MUCH faster soloing this time around. But this isn't because Mystic is faster or harder hitting (quite the opposite I think), it's because my soloing tactics have changed due to experience.

While I leveled this range as Priest I stayed at long range, plinking and jumping to stay at range. This is a mistake, in fact. At low levels (up to 25), it's much more effective to pull packs of mobs, stay at close range, and chain your AOEs at close range while circling your opponent to avoid most hits. While before I was taking on 1 mob at a time, I'm doing 4+ as a mystic. And with packs of small mobs I'm pulling 3-4 packs at a time, and AOEing them. Priest could do the same thing, but I just didn't even think about it at the time.

Mystics do get an effective lock-on poison effect that is very effective and has the advantage of being castable in motion. This is a cool spell, which can stack up to 3 times on a target, but is hampered by a 10 second duration, which means that you will be casting this a LOT. Too bad, because with this spell, and other DPS spells, the Mystic would be much more effective, but as it is it can actually be somewhat annoying to keep 100% of the time this up while healing.

As a healer Mystics just don't have the options that a Priest does. Mystics can drop healing orbs, which are very nice. And they have an effective lock-on heal. They also have a lock-on cleanse...and a very expensive healing fairy that stays up only for a few seconds. That's it. Priest definitely feels more versatile.

Of course Mystics DO get summons, but in practice I've not been enthused with them. Besides the tanking summon, most of the summons don't last very long (10-20 seconds), have a high MP cost, and aren't  that affective anyway. The tanking pet, for example, holds aggro 'ok', but on average is hitting for about 28 damage and gets knocked down a LOT. The Thrall of Vengeance, a ranged attacker, lasts for less than 20 seconds, and does just about 180 damage a hit (about the same as the primary nuke at this stage), and uses a lot of mana so you can't just leave it up even if you wanted to.

In fact even with using my main nuke, with the DPS pet, and the poison debuff at 3 stacks I feel like I'm doing...less damage than any other class than perhaps priest (at range anyway). And this is simply not sustainable for very long even under the best of circumstances.

And unlike Priests, Mystics seem to have a mana issue. While Priests can easily get mana back pretty easily Mystics only have Circle of Corruption at this level and this is a low damage AOE that's short range and returns a relatively small amount of damage (though on the plus side it provides mana to everyone in range). From experience the spell is not that useful solo, and is harder to use in a party where there is a lot of movement and AOE. That's not to say it's worthless, but the spell would be much better with a slightly larger radius, or a reduced channeling time.

As for evasion the Mystic class gets Teleport (just like the sorcerer), which is a pretty cool spell by itself. But priests get two evasion skills, one with a damage component, so even in that regard Priest seems more versatile. Fighting BAMs solo, I definitely preferred the two jumping skills that Priests get over Mystics single (if cooler) teleport.

At 25 I think I have enough information to say that while the class is not broken, it may not be the one for me. It's features mimic those of other classes too closely and it's distinctive abilities (such as its summons) are just not that cool. They need to last longer, and be more effective than they are right now (it would also be useful if you could heal them). Party Auras are much more useful (at this point I've only got the party speed buff), but burn mana which is already a scarce resource.

The two Bastion of Lok runs I did with the Mystic showed me that unlike Priest, who can still DPS in a fight, as a Mystic mana was too much of a precious resource to burn. Every time I tried to heal and DPS, I ended up having to stop for fear of running out of mana. And Circle of Corruption was completely worthless in a boss fight--it wasn't worth the risk of getting that close and staying in one place long enough for it to be effective. At least 50% of the time I tried, I'd get knocked down, and loose the channel anyway.

So at this point I'm not likely to take my Mystic much farther. I might do a few more BOL runs, or possibly SM?, but I'm much happier with Priest at this point and am looking forward with the rest of my group catching up to 30.

Tera Priest (Impressions)

I decided to try the Priest as my main in Tera. This is not my normal choice—as this blog suggests, I prefer mage/wizards (the Sorcerer seems to be the Tera equivalent for the play style). I chose priest mostly because as a Priest I’d have an easier time getting into instances and seeing other content, which is especially important if I’m doing this just by myself. And I’ve gotten used to healing from my time in The Old Republic, so why not give it a shot?

At first you don’t really get a good feeling for the mechanics at first. This is very true of most MMOs, but it is especially true of a game like Tera which relies on skill chaining ability sets to distinguish the classes from one another. I didn’t really start getting a ‘feel’ for the class until around level 16 or so, and I suspect that this is true for all classes in Tera (and why the prologue provided starts at 20).

As a solo class, Priest is slow and steady with no downtime but taking some time to kill stuff. They are adequate solo, and effective but I’m sure other classes are better (or at least faster).

(And you’ll have to forgive me in advance. This is an impression post, and I do not remember the names of the abilities I’m describing here).

Priests have two main ranged nukes—a low-damage bolt with no cool down; and a higher damage bolt that you can fire in groups of 3 before hitting short  cool down. Both of these bolts chain into other abilities. Some of these are auto created for you, while others you get to set up and customize. This is one of the reasons why Tera’s combat is so interesting, and figuring out how to do this takes some real time and experimentation. 

For example, my main low-damage nuke chains into a short range cone-based AOE (useful for close mobs), which in turns chains into a staff-strike which does considerable damage to any enemy directly in front. The triple-strike bolt also chains directly into staff strike, so if you time it right you can hit them with that, and then immediately fire off a hit with the staff for high damage. Priests also get a short range ball of lightning that does considerable damage—and chains directly into the staff strike. That last example is a particularly heavy hitting damage, even though it’s short range.

As for moving and positioning the Priest has two key abilities:  a jump back, and a jump back-with-fire which does the same thing, but also does a little damage to everything close by. But you often have to do a lot of running, and these abilities are more useful for getting out of the way instead of kiting. This may change at higher levels, but I doubt it. Priests, from what I’ve read, are one of the least mobile classes in the game.

Priests have two abilities that give them a considerable amount of sustainability. They have a short-cast self-heal that heals for a considerable amount of damage (about 25% of the character’s health at this level), and a channeled mana regen that can be used in combat, and while moving, which can restore up to 800 mana in one channel. Both of these abilities mean that Priests can heal themselves, and keep doing so for an effectively indefinite amount of time. If a priest or someone in the group falls, it is normally due to the priest either being out of position, or simply overwhelmed by the amount of damage being thrown around.

As for healing the experience is a bit different than in other MMOs. Since you don’t really target people, healing is most definitely NOT whack-a-mole. Instead Priests heal primarily through lock-on abilities (which have to be targeted), and AOE abilities which affect an area of the ground (and this changes based on the ability in question).

Lock on heals are interesting in that when you use them you target them. You hit the ability, then have to lock on to them by aiming at them, and then you trigger the ability again to cast it. Priests have a lock-on heal that affects 2 targets (and up to 3 with a glyph). It’s a cool mechanic, actually, and it’s affected by line-of-sight which is frustrating, but again speaks to the fact that positioning is critical.

AOE heals vary a bit more (and I’ve not seen all of them by any means). Priests get a potent HOT with a relatively short targeting circle; and a much smaller HOT with a much larger radius. They also have a cleansing AOE, which cleanses friendlies within the range of the circle. This creates a different healing play style, since healing involves using the right heals, and then targeting them in the right location. It’s even more important since some of these abilities have fixed ranges/areas, so targeting them involves moving into the right position to cast.  

Other heals show up later, including a group shield and various hot-like effects. But the basics seem very straight forward, and they do a good job of showing just how Tera plays different than most MMOs. And while the classes damage options are relatively limited, they are effective enough and the class doesn’t lag far behind when it comes to soloing performance—if it lags at all. At this point, I’m not sure that it does.

At this point I’ve only scratched the surface of the class, and of Tera itself. Priest is fun with a variety of options on how to play. Its only downside is its lack of options when it comes to DPS—the abilities it has are fine, it just doesn’t have a LOT of them (at least through level 20 or so). If anything, I’ve heard people say that leveling Priest is easy-mode, which may or may not be true.

Either way I’m going to stick with the class until at least 30 before moving on to try some other things for a bit. As I go I may continue to post my impressions of the whole thing and if I do I’ll continue to post them here.  I’m definitely wanting to spend more time with Sorcerer, and Lancer, both of them look like fun, useful classes that will be worth checking out.