The Glade 4.0

Trickster Rogue (just made 20 with this.)
Control Wizard (have a lvl...7? Might switch now to getting this one to 20)
Great Weapon Fighter
Devote Cleric
Guardian Fighter

http://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Neverwinter_Wiki

Hmm. Is that a list set to expand as beta progresses? I was hoping some of the more esoteric/unconventional classes from 4th would be available.. PHB2 classes like the invoker, avenger, or warden...

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

They have one listed as coming soon...

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Raell Kromwell

Ah, cool. I mean, I guess I assumed that there were more in the works (what with the way F2P stuff goes beta early while not anywhere close to feature-complete these days), but I'm wondering whether they'll follow the 4th Edition rabbit-hole down to some of the more exotic classes that don't have roots in 2nd Edition.

I mean, rangers and paladins aren't in yet, so it's no surprise that they have one listed as "coming soon." But will they take it beyond the non-4th Edition comfort zone and start bringing in the divine strikers, primal power source, and so on?

I suppose time will tell.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Having fun with the web-based profession interface:

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

Trickster rogue is rawr.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

No barbarian yet, but I've reserved my name for it when/if (likely when) it comes. I did make a half-orc great weapon fighter on Dragon though by the name of Grumbuk. I think my handle is @kulban.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Darmot Kromwell@raellkromwell

I have noticed they are having problems with their launcher. At least I am. Once I get in game it has been fine.

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Raell Kromwell

Beholder - Shelgeyr@shelgeyrshynnagh

Am currently playing Devoted Cleric and waiting to see what/when other classes come out. Looking forward to Ranger, Paladin, Bard, and ... Scourge Warlock? That sounds interesting.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

So, quick question for someone who's played this more than I :

Are the 'at-will' powers that unlock later on (Paragon powers?) just *better* than the 'at-will' powers you start out with?
For that matter, are any of the "higher tier" powers better than the ones you get earlier on, or is it all just circumstantial/flavor?

My devoted cleric is lvl 35, and I'm still using Astral Seal, Lance of Faith, and Sun Burst, but lately I've been getting some pretty healthy portions of my *** handed to me. Am I clinging to obsolete powers or is that just the way the challenge level ramps up?

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

Im only mid-20s, but if it follows the path of 4E, higher level powers do more damage, and usually give status effects, and are almost always better. Of course, in 4E, you really dont get new at-wills, but just new encounters/dailies

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Aizle@aizle - Great Weapon Fighter (37 atm)




What I've found for the GWF is that some of the later abilities are either more powerful or have synergy with other abilities so that if you use them appropriately they are more powerful. In particular once you hit lvl 30 and open up Paragon powers, those in particular operate like this.

That said, it also seems that various classes get more and less OP at various points in lvling. For instance, back in the 15-20 range Rogues would do twice as much dps as I would in an instance. Now in the mid 30's it's usually much closer with a well played one coming out maybe 5% higher than may or so. I've also found that the game in general gets harder as the lvls go up, in particular "don't stand in the fire" type abilities that enemies have, so you have to be more aware of your surroundings and conscious of moving out of big attacks, etc.

Okay, that's not awful. Level 5 so far on a Guardian Fighter after seeing that there appear to be a) no polearms for Greatweapon Fighters, b) kind of meh animations for said Greatweapon attacks, and c) poor damage mitigation and an at-will dedicated to a charge attack on said Greatweapon Fighter.

So, okay. That's probably not terrible for grouping/duoing, but I'll pass and be happier on a sword and board that's fun, if a bit slow.

We'll see what they add, class-wise. I'd be interested in seeing if they try their hand at some of the movement-control classes like Warlords and Stormheart Wardens. If such things could be smoothly worked into a real-time video game combat format, it could be pretty neat. I have no idea how I'd go about doing so, though.

Follow the exclamation point quests are still follow the exclamation point quests, though. At least the quest dialogues are voiced (and having the voiceovers extend even after you close the window is a nice touch for those who play with ADD partners) well enough that they don't evince winces at every appearance.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

So far that only weapons that I've found or seen other than 2h swords for GWF is a big club. I have one banked if you're interested. I suspect we'll see more weapon skins later, and their skinning process doesn't care what the weapon type is actually. I was able to skin an axe over a 1h sword without issue.

Thus far I haven't had any problems what so ever soloing with my GWF. I'm also not a big fan of the charged attack and dropped it as soon as I got one of the follow up aoe abilities.

So far what I've found is that our at will abilities tend to focus on aoe dps, where our encounter abilities are more single target. Dailies have a mix of both, but definitely lean heavy towards aoe.

Just pick up the cleric companion when you get them at lvl 12 or so and you'll be golden for any solo questing.

Oh, I wasn't that concerned with the viability, just not sure whether I'd be into the playstyle. On the other hand, I've been having fun with the block and strike rhythm of the Guardian Fighter.

I may revisit Greatweapon later, when there are more skins, as you say. I'd love rocking polearms on my fighters.

Later this week, I may give Control Wizard a poke, too.

At this point, I'm really curious to see how deeply they delve into the 4th Edition well of classes. That they're breaking the build options (Greatweapon, Guardian, Trickster, etc.) into exclusive classes (whereas in Pencil and Paper 4e, you could take Cleave with a Greatweapon Fighter, for instance) could be either a move to get more classes out of less source material (which would make me less hopeful that we'll see PHB2 or even necessarily all the PHB1 classes appear), or it could simply be an attempt to keep players from hamstringing themselves with severely suboptimal (Tide of Iron for a Greatweapon build option, for instance) builds or reducing the analysis paralysis once you choose a class.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I suspect that all of those points were considered and that there's a bit of each in their decision.

Given their free to play model, I suspect that they are looking at the additional classes as a revenue source. They have done that in Champions Online, where you need to spend currency of some type to access the additional archetypes.

That said, they have confirmed that Archery Rangers and Warlocks are coming post launch.

To me the big thing is the Foundry. I've played a couple of Foundry quests and they can be quite fun. In effect it means that there will be an unending supply of content to choose from.

Ugh - one really bad PUG combined and amplified my misgivings about the 'action RPG' mechanics.

I queued up for Garrundar the Vile and it went something like this:



Only with much more fail. Not only have I found it increasingly more and more difficult to land my abilities where I want them (and being the cleric that applies to both friends and foes), but there's just way too much "don't stand in the bad" going on. I spend so much time trying (frequently unsuccessfully) to get out of the glowing red geometric shapes on the ground that I feel like I'm not getting any DPS or Healing done.

So, not a bad game but just not for me. Moving on to Rift instead.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

"Don't stand in the bad" is Rift's go-to mechanic for "difficult" boss fights. Just warning you.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

SWTOR has some of this too... We call it "Don't stand in the stupid"...

Then there is the variant... we call "Lucky Dog", where you get targetted by some crazy attack and have to move away from everyone else...

Both heavily popularized by WoW....

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yes, I'm aware of the historical precedents for "don't stand in the bad" and I'm totally OK with it as a boss mechanic, but NW seems to me to be overdoing it. There's more to it than that, though. There's also the fact that using your abilities practically roots you to the ground, making every moment of combat a choice between actively doing something or getting the hell out of the way; and I'm not a fan of the targeting mechanic or the camera limitations. I prefer being able to lock onto my target even when there are several enemies milling about, and I like being able to pan the camera to see what's going on around me. Basically, I prefer the kind of game Neverwinter isn't. I felt the same way about Tera. The only difference there was that I had no pre-existing attachment to the IP, whereas I wanted to like Neverwinter despite it having the wrong game mechanics for my playstyle.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

I don't mind the rooting mechanic. That's fine, and it's a stylistic design choice. I consider it valid to make me choose between attempting to do something positive and avoiding something negative.

My problem is that the queueing system doesn't abort attacks very readily in favor of blocking/dodging, so you can quite easily end up stuck there after trying to remove yourself from the area since they're still pretty short-notice warnings. Short notice is fine, but coupling it with a queued long activation rooting animation can get a little frustrating.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

So far, having done most of the dungeons on normal up to lvl 60 (haven't started the end game content yet), the stuff on the ground usually isn't too bad overall. Typically there is one or two fights per dungeon that can be a little annoying, and there's one boss fight (werewolf keep, whatever it's called) that is really bad. But also remember this is still Beta, so there will be tuning on many of these encounters I'm sure.

Personally, I'm growing to LOVE the no target mechanic. An elegant solution for tab targeting sucking in every game ever. It was weird to start with, but I very quickly learned to adapt, and now going back to WoW to raid occasionally has reinforced how sucky targeting is. I agree a little on the camera thing, but really only in reference to being able to zoom out to get a larger view. That said, I have yet to run into an instance where it's been a problem. As I think about it and type this, I realize that I've fallen back into old EQ habits related to mouselooking. As I played the game almost entirely in first person mode, I would quickly pan around and circle strafe targets while beating on them to get a lay of the battlefield, which seems to work just fine in Neverwinter as well.

The rooting in place/attack queue I'm still getting a hang of, but what I've started to find is that if I don't just Diablo-mash the left mouse button to spam abilities, but actually pace my clicks to the speed of my attacks, I don't get locked down. It also appears that the shift-movement ability pre-empts anything in the queue most of the time. Occasionally it seems like it doesn't, and I'm not quite sure yet if that's a bug/tuning or my own incompetence. I suspect the latter.

Jury is still out on if I don't like that you can't mark targets, but there also seems to be a lot of customization ability with the UI, so it's possible that I haven't dialed that in yet to exactly what I'd like.

I am loving that there isn't anything like recount during a dungeon run, only a scorecard afterward.

As long as they continue to expand the available classes to play, continue to add tools and features to the Foundry and create some raid content, I foresee this being my new MMO of choice.

I think you're right about shift-dodges. Of course, I've been playing a Guardian Fighter, and many area attacks (mostly magic-based ones) specifically bypass block. So that's why it's been something annoying to me. The tool I have that comes up quickly fairly reliably is specifically not useful for many of those types of attack. Don't get me wrong, it's great overall, I <3 block. But anything that knocks down in an area or lights **** on fire or whatnot more or less forces me to either attack or hold off except for right after said attacks so I can properly protect myself by moving. The reaction window is shortened, also, by the fact that I have to walk out of the circle, which is significantly slower in getting me out than dodging out of the circle.

As for not mashing.. the lack of a good UI indication of when your attack is considered complete makes me feel like I'm not getting the efficiency I should be if I don't do some degree of mashing. When there's a GCD indication in other games, you can time your hits w/o a queue to keep your efficiency up. Right now, Neverwinter doesn't have anything like that.

I definitely hope they continue to add classes, because they've got the bones of an interesting take on the genre, here.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I never noticed a problem with button mashing... but maybe its because Im playing a rogue, and sly flourish is a mashy type skill lol

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