GW2 HoT beta initial thoughts

[tanithryudo]

The Classes:

Revenant - Improved a lot from the last preview, and that is just the Hammer/Jalis + Swords/Shiro combos. Still, I'm not too sure the double swords is the end all and be all of Revenant damage that people were thinking it is. My impression of it doesn't compare to the likes of Warrior/Guardian GS, Thief/Mez sword, or Ele dagger. Especially, it feels like there's not enough utility and defense baked in, unlike any other class' melee weapon. I might go back and do some further testing with non-sword weapon + Shiro legend, or sword/sword + Ventari maybe. Also, I want to check the other weapons again and see how they are doing since their buffs.

Guardian - Disappointment. Pretty much everything was an disappointment. I was so hyped on the Dragon Hunter, but it was quite meh. Longbow damage is lackluster, nor does its utility do much in PvE. Ditto traps. Both the weapon and utility skills I can see more useful for PvP than for PvE, honestly. The altered virtues...eh, too gimmicky. Plus F1 doesn't do enough damage to make up for the loss of regular F1 + Radiance + Virtues (aka everything is on fire all the time).

Mesmer - The shield is ok; not really my play style but not bad either. The wells I think are more suited for either PvE group play (dungeons/fractals) or PvP. The trait line I really like though, and will probably become my mesmer's 3rd traitline (along with inspiration and dueling) when HoT is released. Clones & phantasms everywhere! Shatter shatter everywhere MWAHAHAHA!!! *cough* Also, yay for 25% movement passive. Makes life easier everywhere else too. Have not had a chance to test the new F5; still not sure how that thing works.

Elementalist - The warhorn is decent, but seems to be very group focused and thus has its numbers balance around that. Trait line is... bland, I guess. Not great but not sucky either. The attunement overloads... ok, those were something of a disappointment, compared to what the ele is giving up (considering attunement swapping is what the rest of the whole profession is built up around). I can see x/horn + shout + aura-share builds work ok in group play (casual dungeons, WvW, maybe PvP), but arcane is still better for solo (and icebow is still king in "pro" dungeons and world bosses)


Verdant Brink: (pic)

This area gives me the impression that it's a place you need a group (or at least a partner) to move around in. A lot of places where trying to run past the enemy mobs to get somewhere will just get you dead. (Well, maybe a thief or mez specializing in stealth could do it...) I'm not sure if they meant the design to be anti-skipping. Makes it annoying to navigate solo though.

A lot of narrow paths, where a misstep is to fall to you doom. I'm of two minds on this design. It does make things tougher on people who have lag or bad keyboard/twitch response. Also, a lot of narrow passageways makes many places either confusing to navigate, or claustrophobic to to experience.

Events... all of the events on the map I was in were bugged, so I can't judge any of it.


Masteries:

Was only able to get Gliding 1. Feels a bit clunky. Maybe getting further levels in gliding will make it better, I dunno. Tried to do the mushroom mastery but it's not going anywhere. I think the slow progress is probably due to the events in VB being broken and thus not able to get xp from there. Ah well.

Comments

[cashew]

Have yet to retry rev and test out ele.

On Dragon Hunter: so, so disappointing. LB3 is useless. I tried to use it against a sniper. Died. The "destroy projectile" part of it seems to be very useless because unless the projectile just happens to be on the same x, y, and z axis, good luck trying to destroy anything. Also, there is a constant "no line of sight" despite the terrain being relatively flat. There is some serious clipping problems happening. The traps were eh, okay. The only one I found useful was the light trap. The elite trap was useless.

On Chronomancer: I like the shield, but it's definitely confusing to use. I find it actually better to stack shield and scepter, than shield and sword. The shield and scepter have about similar range. If you're too close to mobs, the skills don't get a chance to get off before getting interrupted. The wells were...eeeeeeh. Needs more boost. The F5 I found to be less than useful. The idea is that if you trigger it, a few seconds later, you return to the same state, in essence allowing you to spam a long re-charge skill twice. Basically a mimic for everything on the skill bar. Kinda gimicky with limited use, since you get dragged back to your starting point, so you can't use it to spam stealth twice in a row, which is the only time I find spamming long recharge useful.

Masteries: OMFG, I hate those mastery points. They are so impossible. Only managed to get like...2 out of the entire map. Also, the mastery entire concept is really confusing. There's too many things you can't use just because you don't have the masteries unlocked. I liked it better when you could just pick up whatever thing around you and freaking use it. I can't believe even gathering has masteries involved. Feels a little too grindy.

Gliding: Yeah, I got gliding 1 and it feels really, really clunky. First, half the time the stupid thing won't even deploy after I hit space, causing my character to fall to her death. Feels a bit like how jump works during jumping puzzles. I'm hitting the space bar, but the client isn't registering it. This is seriously annoying, because of how important having good, tight controls are for the area, and the stupid thing just won't respond to my keypresses. Second, it's really hard to judge whether you'll make it onto the ledge or not, because a few pixels are all it takes for you to come short. And the cost of failing is freaking hard. Which gets me to the map portion.

Map: I hate this map so hard. Everything feels like it's designed to kill me. I can't name the number of times I've accidentally dived off the wrong edge while trying to avoid mobs. There seems to be too much forced camera moving on a camera that doesn't work half the time. I mean, yeah, a lot of it is because my fps is crap, but that's the problem. I do have a computer that meets the specs of the stupid game, but it still runs like shit. Other areas, the old stuff, don't have problems. Hit the new area and suddenly my frame rate is shit. And that's the problem. The new areas are more taxing on the system, which I'm loathed to upgrade for a game. This is why I hate these constant upgrading MMOs that don't take into consideration that not everyone is going to have the best performing PC, yet continues to up the ante of how much processor their program needs to run smoothly. Just another reason I prefer consoles, because the developers know that there is a hardware limit to what they program and can't get over ambitious and stuff a bunch of things in that's going to crash 50% of the systems out there. (I'm just really, really bitter that GW2 used to run fine and suddenly it's slow as molasses.)

The thing is, I saw it coming with dry top and silverwastes already. Farming there is such a pain precisely because something about the "vine" part of the background absolutely kills what my computer can handle. Running event on Teq or Jormag? Fine. Vinewrath, slow and choppy. But since there's other people running around all the time, it's bearable because I don't have to be performing at top-quality to get credit. But the new HoT expansion is just...ugh.

So many things I hate right now. It makes me want to yell at the devs. It is literally not fun. Ugh. I doubt I'm going to do any more testing, since it looks like HoT is going to be unplayable for me. It's a shame really, but it looks like my GW2 progress has hit a wall unless they can figure out how not to make my computer burn into a crisp.