Guardian trap: I actually find the glowy trap kinda useful, since the aftercast isn't much of an issue when the mob is stunned and getting smacked. The other traps, however... Oh, and I was usually able to get the mobs to trigger the traps by simply standing in the trap, wait for the charge attack, then dodging left/right and watching them run right into it. Of course, that makes the trap have very, very limited use.
ChronoF5: F5 basically saves the state you're in (skill recharges, position, health, etc.) for a few seconds. You can spam all the skillz, and when the timer is up, everything resets to when you hit F5. So that's how you can spam shatters for a spike, but the setting up requires some time and the time it gives you to execute skills is pretty limited. Not as overpowered as it sounds. But it works decently well for wanting to spam certain skills twice. Again, not that overwhelming of a thing.
Masteries: The glowing points are so, so annoying. I know there's one more that I can't get because I haven't figured out how to get there. I can only hope that you get more points from simple leveling (like skill points of old), but so far haven't seen any gained. Supposedly, the quests/story also hand out more mastery points, which makes them not necessary, but still. Just kinda annoying.
Gliding: Yeah, I kept pushing F 'cuz I was so used to hitting F when seeing the yellow tag. Bleh. Granted, once I got used to the idea of gliding = double jump, it was a little better, but not by much. Again, it's because for some reason the reaction is so, so slow and about half the time my spacebar hitting didn't register.
Map density: Uuuuuurgh. I think the map might have been designed with the idea of it being mostly group events with tons of people running around all the time. Except, y'know, that's not the case at all. Anet is severely overestimating how attractive the maps are. I mean, maaaybe if the events had super, duper rewards, there would be more people gathered around there farming day in and day out, a la SW chest farm, but as it is...no. Even with gliding/jumping, it's still going to be a pain when there are absolutely no safe areas. Even the frog city/village thing was constantly being over run by mordrem.
And speaking of, good god I hate how they place so many mobs on tiny, squeezed together areas, where one misstep will lead to your doom. I totally accidentally dodged to death more times than I care to count. The dodge mechanic is so unfriendly with the narrow ledge ways, it feels like someone saying "You know what's a great idea? Jumping puzzles but with group events on them. Yeah!" WTF.
Graphics: Managed to get things to run at a slightly more tolerable level one I ran it in windowed mode and shrank the window size. At the very least it's running. But yeah, hopefully they optimize the shit out of those areas. It seems like I'm not the only one who's having issues with it and I am not upgrading my comp just to run a computer game. Geh. I mean, I've always had low FPS, but things didn't feel like it's going out of whack until the vines showed up. I really think the vines graphics is what's killing things on my end, since I have similar problems in drytop town of prosperity and silvewastes during VW/clear mordrem events. But at least it's not the entire map and are small, limited areas. Whereas Verdant Brink is just vines, vines, vines all the time and...yeah. /rant
Oh, right, tried out Rev today with the windowed mode. Thoughts: Still feels underpowered, much prefer hammer to dual swords, glad to see weapon swapping in addition to stance swapping. Still feels slow, but well, everyone feels slow in that map. Attack wise, dual swords feels more like a dagger thief/old gw1 assassin playstyle. Needs more AoE. Shiro's skills are good for position changing, but over all, still not a fan of the class. Also, Shiro's skills are a huge, huge drain on energy. More so than the other three, so do not like. They need to change the cost of those skills. And finally, when am I going to get that holo-dragon charging skill that Rytlock has? And I hope that skill is as powerful as advertised.
Over all, I think they need to rebalance the skills for PvE if the Beta is any indication of the difficulty they're looking for. Especially the snipers, who are impossible to tell apart from other less dangerous mobs. I shouldn't be standing behind a boulder, making sure I've selected sniper, before shadowstepping to the enemy and whale on it until it drops dead and/or get sniped just as I try to attack, which happens way, way more often. Maybe they should reduce the sniping power of that skill with distance, like the way long bow skills ought to be scaled. Oh, and looks like mez/guard is going to be even more necessary, since reflect is the only way I've been able to reliably kill those things. (At least shield engies will finally get a place, I hope.)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2015-08-08 10:59 pm (UTC)ChronoF5: F5 basically saves the state you're in (skill recharges, position, health, etc.) for a few seconds. You can spam all the skillz, and when the timer is up, everything resets to when you hit F5. So that's how you can spam shatters for a spike, but the setting up requires some time and the time it gives you to execute skills is pretty limited. Not as overpowered as it sounds. But it works decently well for wanting to spam certain skills twice. Again, not that overwhelming of a thing.
Masteries: The glowing points are so, so annoying. I know there's one more that I can't get because I haven't figured out how to get there. I can only hope that you get more points from simple leveling (like skill points of old), but so far haven't seen any gained. Supposedly, the quests/story also hand out more mastery points, which makes them not necessary, but still. Just kinda annoying.
Gliding: Yeah, I kept pushing F 'cuz I was so used to hitting F when seeing the yellow tag. Bleh. Granted, once I got used to the idea of gliding = double jump, it was a little better, but not by much. Again, it's because for some reason the reaction is so, so slow and about half the time my spacebar hitting didn't register.
Map density: Uuuuuurgh. I think the map might have been designed with the idea of it being mostly group events with tons of people running around all the time. Except, y'know, that's not the case at all. Anet is severely overestimating how attractive the maps are. I mean, maaaybe if the events had super, duper rewards, there would be more people gathered around there farming day in and day out, a la SW chest farm, but as it is...no. Even with gliding/jumping, it's still going to be a pain when there are absolutely no safe areas. Even the frog city/village thing was constantly being over run by mordrem.
And speaking of, good god I hate how they place so many mobs on tiny, squeezed together areas, where one misstep will lead to your doom. I totally accidentally dodged to death more times than I care to count. The dodge mechanic is so unfriendly with the narrow ledge ways, it feels like someone saying "You know what's a great idea? Jumping puzzles but with group events on them. Yeah!" WTF.
Graphics: Managed to get things to run at a slightly more tolerable level one I ran it in windowed mode and shrank the window size. At the very least it's running. But yeah, hopefully they optimize the shit out of those areas. It seems like I'm not the only one who's having issues with it and I am not upgrading my comp just to run a computer game. Geh. I mean, I've always had low FPS, but things didn't feel like it's going out of whack until the vines showed up. I really think the vines graphics is what's killing things on my end, since I have similar problems in drytop town of prosperity and silvewastes during VW/clear mordrem events. But at least it's not the entire map and are small, limited areas. Whereas Verdant Brink is just vines, vines, vines all the time and...yeah. /rant
Oh, right, tried out Rev today with the windowed mode. Thoughts: Still feels underpowered, much prefer hammer to dual swords, glad to see weapon swapping in addition to stance swapping. Still feels slow, but well, everyone feels slow in that map. Attack wise, dual swords feels more like a dagger thief/old gw1 assassin playstyle. Needs more AoE. Shiro's skills are good for position changing, but over all, still not a fan of the class. Also, Shiro's skills are a huge, huge drain on energy. More so than the other three, so do not like. They need to change the cost of those skills. And finally, when am I going to get that holo-dragon charging skill that Rytlock has? And I hope that skill is as powerful as advertised.
Over all, I think they need to rebalance the skills for PvE if the Beta is any indication of the difficulty they're looking for. Especially the snipers, who are impossible to tell apart from other less dangerous mobs. I shouldn't be standing behind a boulder, making sure I've selected sniper, before shadowstepping to the enemy and whale on it until it drops dead and/or get sniped just as I try to attack, which happens way, way more often. Maybe they should reduce the sniping power of that skill with distance, like the way long bow skills ought to be scaled. Oh, and looks like mez/guard is going to be even more necessary, since reflect is the only way I've been able to reliably kill those things. (At least shield engies will finally get a place, I hope.)