selfconfessedcynic

Fuck the haters - I'm totally up for an Elderscrolls MMO!

My only worry is that they'd either never finish it or it'd be even more broken than their previous releases...

@arch4non: Hmm - I see where you're coming from and somewhat agree, though I haven't seen TERA in action.

It's an interesting system, especially when coupled with what John Peters suggests in his post about melee vs ranged. The auto-melee facing already in the game (which I barely noticed) should help to some extent when following on from clicking to skill usage, but in my experience, yes, you are right. You want to let go of right click in order to select someone and if they're presenting a moving target this is one son of a bitch to do. Also, it would be great to be able to bind your right click to your auto attack or something along those lines which you simply can't feasibly do at the moment.

There is the issue of skills 5-10 though - they haven't put in toggle keys at the moment, so reaching over to those keys is something I HATE doing, and my mouse only has two hotkeys on it. At the moment, I'm using the mouse to click on them whilst actively hoping they put toggling in soon, but you can't do that with the Tera system from the sounds of things.

@Fattony12000: Hey dude, did you see that post I made on your wall (about the podcast)?

If you've already responded, sorry - I think I missed it >_>.

@boxoflawls: @Spiritgod:

Good to have you guys! Robbie will add you to the front page when he's next on.

@Spiritgod:

Yeah, I would agree with what @Subjugation said above.

If you don't already know, I'm one of the guild leaders of the Lincolnforce guild so I guess I can speak from experience on this one.

Here are some things to consider when thinking of being a guild leader / some things I've noticed:

• You spend a lot of time on administration - for example, I spent my first two hours of the beta making sure everyone was organised and cross referencing rosters. I talk about this on The Lincolncast like half way through.
• You need to have (or develop) a good idea of the game's guild mechanics before getting into it. For example, though I didn't do much of it in the beta as it wasn't permanent, we need to do things like spending the Guild's reputation-based points on bonuses for guild members, managing guild storage, figuring out what permissions you want for members / what they mean and how many ranks you want to implement, etc
• If you look at these forums, you can see how much me, @Dark_Lord_Spam and @RobbieMac do in terms of gathering and distributing information to the guild, setting up things like the Beta, and carrying out general support tasks like that - it's not a small amount of work, and the time involved does add up.
• You really do need to be an active member - perhaps amongst the most active in the guild - if you want to keep on top of everything and be there when people need you (or when decisions need to be made).

There are some positives, though:

• It's very rewarding, and there is a sense of accomplishment in seeing the guild grow and thrive.
• You meet some cool people, which is especially awesome when you've never heard of them before.
• You get to make choices which allow you to be surrounded by like-minded folks and can (quite simply) boot out the bad apples.

A lot of the above isn't TOO relevant if there's only the three of you, but if you're looking to expand, it becomes so quite rapidly. Oh, and remember you can be a part of multiple guilds across your account (it isn't even character specific) and you can even choose to represent any one of them at any given moment.

Fell free to join ours and see how we do things then use that experience to make yours even better.

@Seppli: Hmm...

I definitely respect the amount of depth you've gone into in your experimentation, and I simply didn't put that much into it - but I do have a couple of questions to ask as it seems as if you've only addressed one half of PvP. Survivability aside (since I was running around with a warrior with only 22k health, it's not like I got into that side of things) damage output is one thing, but tactical capability and shut-down capability are in many cases far more important.

With those builds, what kind of utility were you working with? To what extent could you help your allies? What kind of movement capability did you have? What role did you play in combat?

It sounds to me like we both got into situations where we were playing with dudes who didn't already have a good idea of how things worked and how to play structured properly - though I never met another player who seemed legitimately better built than anyone else, or perhaps they just didn't have the skill to match their builds. For example, I got into a corner in the clock tower where a hundred blades warrior had snared me and activated his skill - by the time he had closed the distance, I had almost finished my heal (which removed his snare) then dodged past the the third and fourth hits of his attack and jumped out of a window (then proceeded to another point and capped it).

Of course, we approached structured from different directions - you had builds worked out and an understanding of how things worked, whilst I just had the understanding and a bit of scrappyness.

In the end, re-balancing aside, I think I'll have to try to make a proper warrior in PvP myself to justify what I think is the case (that you can make one darned good, top-tier level ranged warrior), but until then, I would love to hear more of your perspective.

ED: Just on the point of damage though, if your numbers are consistent and accurate, you have me beat there. I just never saw anything like that in my playtime and didn't have the chance to try going down that road myself.

Well, I have some crucial tips for any who want to get good at a ranged class:

1. Always keep moving. Remember, most skills in GW2 allow you to cast on the move. The targeting system in GW2 is hard enough as it is for most people (especially melee), so exploit this to the fullest by moving constantly. Whether it be to dodge-cancel a long activation when you realise you're going to miss or just circle strafing, keep moving.
2. Move and heal! If you're ever standing still while healing, you're doing it wrong. Every heal skill in the game I've experienced myself or seen in action allows you to move whilst using it - do so! If you're standing still while healing, even if you don't think anyone is around, you're setting yourself up to be a real target (especially from thieves and mesmers who can turn invisible and/or bamf - or even worse, a rifle warrior with max burst).
3. Bring at least one immobilise or cripple with you - whether this is part of your preferred weapon set or one of your utilities, it doesn't matter. Bring one. (oh, and preferably bring two if you can - though more than that is a bit overkill)
4. As a counterpoint to 3, bring at least one condition removal skill with you, preferably one which targets speed-reducing conditions and/or can be used while dazed.
5. Last, but not least, use your dodge meter! It regenerates fairly quickly, so use it, don't save it up unless you know you absolutely need to (like if you know there are canons about in WvW)

Aside from those, remember to resurrect folks duders. Not only is it a nice thing to do, it also increases your team's long term damage and support.

@Seppli said:

From the 3 professions I played this BWE...

...PvP - Ranger > Mesmer > Warrior...

... The class [The Warrior] is decent at range, but shines as melee, which just doesn't perform well enough in PvP currently. Overall, I found the adrenaline mechanic too slow building and too one-note...

I have to say that I disagree with the above to some extent. As I've previously stated, I didn't get a chance to play either the Ranger or the Mesmer, but I DID face plenty of them in both structured PvP and WvW. Now, on the one hand, none of the Rangers I faced were good with their pets, so perhaps they were missing something really big there, but I can say without a question in my mind that not a single one of the above classes ever got me below 50% HP when I stumbled into them on the battlefield. For the rangers I met, I just out-DPS'd and out-armoured them (and, admittedly probably outplayed them - man people need to learn to keep moving and dodge properly) and for the Mesmers it was much the same, but GOD they were squishy.

I played (for structured) the standard Rifle Warrior set they give you with Bolas replacing one of the utilities (so not even an optimised build) and (for WvW) I played my lvl 4 Warrior I'd recently unlocked all of the rifle skills for (so very not optimised). I firmly believe that the rifle is the most balanced but focussed weapons in the game, and happily that focus is single-target-damage (I'd switch to the bow when facing a large group). It has a snare, inflicts vulnerability, has TWO spiking skills (the burst and volley) and all of them except the burst can be used whilst running and strafing.

The main clincher was knowing when to use the burst. I agree that they are boring skills, but damn are they effective. If I inflict vulnerability with skill 4 then hit the burst fully charged (I tested this on people and the targets in the mists) I could do anywhere from 2-8000 damage in a single chunk (depending on enemy armour). I out-damaged a friendly elementalist in the mists (we were standing in the targetting range and compared - and he seemed fine, though was using lightning magic instead of fire) and can take out all of the NPC class-masters one-on-one in the mists too (you find them all together, there's one of each class and if you agro them they chase you down and fight you).

*shrug* it could be that the build just clicked with me, but I think it is indeed legitimately good and definitely gives those two classes a run for their money at a minimum. Oh, and this isn't even touching on Axe/Sword or Axe/Axe (but admittedly, I liked playing ranged warrior more)

ED: What I DID fear were Eles and Necros. Goddamn, they are hard to pin down and dish out good damage to boot.

I didn't get a chance to play Mesmer, Ele or Ranger but I know I'll hate the last one (I've almost always hated pets).

For now, I was really impressed with how survivable and damaging a warrior can get if you spec him out properly and think that class is the way to go for sustained DPS. The others have their advantages in support, but so many people are playing them that I think straight out damage is a bit under represented at the moment.

My first character will probably be a human warrior.

Okay!

So this podcast is way more popular than I thought it would be. I just got an email stating that we've hit our 15gig quota for the month (or, I think more accurately, a subset of those 15 gigs since I uploaded it on the 28th of last month) so I'm sorry for the 6 of you who have received an error message on the DL instead of the file. For now, I think y'all can still stream it - definitely on youtube, and it also appears to still work on podomatic's website.

I'll upload the podcast to some form of file sharing site today and get a direct download link back up.