Guildwars 2 Beta Thread

[zinfamous]

I thought Mes with teh staff was pretty badass (3 skills that buff alies/debuff enemies at the same time) and of course the Mes's clone abilities--watching your clones run around is really cool.

BUT

Mes With Broadsword--She shoots FRICKING LASER BEAMS out of THE SWORD!

:awe:

2nd skill is sword toss--it bounces around the room, hitting a few targets if they are there, and at the final target, spawns your clone.

 

[Punter]

With a bit more polish this game will be amazing. WvW is a riot.

At first I was saying WTF these graphics suck. After a couple hours I was used to the style and am starting to enjoy the atmosphere more.

 

[dougp]

Server is back up.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Great game, or greatest game?

 

[KMFJD]

Great game, or greatest game?

Very Solid for beta, laggy at times, but fun nontheless

 

[Worthington]

^ This

It has some issues but that's what beta is for. Having a blast playing it, but have to say considering starting a new toon. My thief just doesn't seem to be all that interesting atm. Not having access to my utilityu skills yet might be the issue though.

 

[zinfamous]

^ This

It has some issues but that's what beta is for. Having a blast playing it, but have to say considering starting a new toon. My thief just doesn't seem to be all that interesting atm. Not having access to my utilityu skills yet might be the issue though.

I'm rolling a thief in a bit. Love the mes, but need to switch things up. My biggest critique with mes, other than the steep learning curve, is that the utility skills are a waste of slots. All 4 are essentially the same thing: blow up clones, spread debuff/buff.

that's it--it only depends on which ~4 second debuff you want to cause, or the one buff. Not very inventive, imo. They could have just stuck with 2 skills--one for debuff and the other buff, then left the other for more traditional mes functions--spreading hexes to mobs, and/or removing them all for crazy damage. :\

The other issue, early on, at least--is that your clones will likely not live long enough to be exploded. They are simply two squishy to provide effective uh, spirit shields. Their also seems to be no function in the AI that causes enemies to randomly aggro your clones, as I believe they are intended. You will always be targeted. Conversely, I see Mesmers being studs in PvP, which I intend to mess with today. their AoE buff/debuff (Chaos Storm = tits) plus the cloning has to cause some major headaches.

 

[GaiaHunter]

The bad:
Friday - frustrating experience since it almost impossible to log in.
Game performance is low, although it is playable @20 fps. (Phenom II X4 3.6 GHz + 900/1150 6850).

Saturday - finally managing to get a few straight hours play.
Started with frustration again because if you go to an overflow your party members/friends don't go with you - that isn't good.

The good:
Big beautiful world, loads of people everywhere that naturally play together, stuff just happens as you explore.
Combat is good, especially for PvP.
Pistols and rifles sound really good.

Sometimes it feels it is a finished product, but others you can see why it is beta.

 

[VashHT]

I'm having a lot of fun so far, got to level 10 on my necro and so far that's my favorite class. I thought dagger+warhorn was fun but after unlocking the staff skills that's by far my favorite weapon for them it's pretty ridiculous. I'm thinking about trying either thief or ranger or mesmer next. Rangers look really cool using melee weapons, I'm glad they expanded on that as it was a pretty fun niche build in GW1.

Does anyone know what those little arenanet medallions are for? It says I have 38 of them so far, do they disappear after this weekend?

Edit: Performance for me has been pretty good, I get 60fps unless I'm in the middle of a big even then it drops into the 30s. It's definitely CPU bound like other people were saying, I was checking my cpu usage and all 4 cores were up in the 80s/90s. Now I kinda wish I had upgraded my cpu instead of my GPU, I wonder how the newer 6 and 8 core processors would handle this game.

 

[HarvardAce]

Looks like at least the login servers are down -- I wasn't in game, was there a message that they were going to have downtime? Is anyone currently playing?

 

[ddarko]

Same experience, I was in game, logged out for a sec voluntarily because I couldn't figure out how to leave a party and can't get back in now. Also the login for the beta forums seems down as well. Get message to "please check your information and try again" when i know my username and password are right.

Just got back in at 3:06 PM EST.

 

[NoSoup4You]

Maybe I need to switch classes, I want the combat to be more engaging - more action oriented and less of the typical MMO-fare. Playing a Ranger right now, might switch to a Thief next...

 

[drebo]

Login seems to be down again

 

[Punter]

ya not able to login. guess i will play tera for awhile.

 

[Wuzup101]

Maybe I need to switch classes, I want the combat to be more engaging - more action oriented and less of the typical MMO-fare. Playing a Ranger right now, might switch to a Thief next...

The thief combat seems like it probably will be engaging in the future. With the current server lag it is an exercise in... well banging your head on the desk. I like the idea of having a dodge mechanic, but from what I have seen thus far, balancing the game around avoiding huge hits from mobs completely breaks play if there is a decent amount of server lag. This is much more obvious when you are playing melee as opposed to ranged. On that note - thief ranged abilities seem a bit weak. That being said, you can certainly stay alive longer during lag sessions while using the short bow or pistols. The "1" skill for both shortbow and pistol/x seems weak relative to the dagger/x skill (I haven't tried a MH sword yet). The shortbow also becomes relatively useless in many areas because the "1" skill jumps to multiple mobs. The thief was definitely not designed to kite / fight a pack of crap at once. It's relatively hard to kite anything with that skill (or any jumping proj skill for that matter) because you are constantly tagging adds. In all honesty, this becomes a problem even with melee when you are constantly rolling all over the place and have abilities that hit multiple mobs.

Also, for the record, the thief game play doesn't seem to require any more "movement" than WoW rogue game play (though I haven't played WoW since the end of BC). I played a rogue in WoW... and I will say that a stunlocking / dagger build required more planning and movement than the thief is thus far.

I did have a chance to play the tera beta last weekend. I wasn't a huge fan of the combat at first... thinking that I would prefer the GW2 targeted attacks with the dodge / movement mechanic. After playing GW2 last night for a few hours... I'm not sure. Tera was certainly much more fluid; however, I'm assuming this is because of the maturity of the game compared to GW2. I do believe that many of my above complaints will be addressed as this game closes in on release and the server issues are worked out!

 

[Merad]

The thief combat seems like it probably will be engaging in the future. With the current server lag it is an exercise in... well banging your head on the desk. I like the idea of having a dodge mechanic, but from what I have seen thus far, balancing the game around avoiding huge hits from mobs completely breaks play if there is a decent amount of server lag.

Same goes for guardian combat. It's also nearly impossible in group events when there are two dozen players and mobs on the screen at once, but of course in that case most mobs die in 2 seconds anyway.

I also wish that guards had some ranged abilities... or gap closer skills that aren't on very long CD's. On these events with tons of people involved most of the time mobs are dead before I can even get in melee range.

 

[zinfamous]

I am somewhat disappointed with thief. Played one to level 6 today. For me, dual pistols is the way to go, or pistol/dagger. dual daggers is not what I was hoping it to be. Could be the lag, could be the overall confusion with large mobs (Very hard to see what anyone is doing--and how and when you can interrupt targets and such).

I guess I wanted dagger play to remain similar to GW1--but the initial/off hand/dual attack system is confined to your one F slot, and it rotates in that slot, as do skills for other classes. It's very hard to follow what is going on. Game seriously needs a more graceful tutorial period, lol.

And, it could all be my general noobishness--but this game is seriously hard.


I saw more Mezes in the Charr area today, which is nice. I seemed to be the only Mez anywhere I was yesterday in human territory. Perhaps their value will soon be realized, as many of these events are insane mob rushes. Mex is absolutely stellar for mobs, not so great against individual targets or tiny, squishy mobs. I would think that a few Mezes in a group is enough to take down most mobs and keep the party going--the additional mezes mostly accounting for cool-down of Chaos Storm--the skill is very OP, but very fun to unleash. Centaurs just melt away.


I'm going to take the mez into some PvP later, then roll an ele.

 

[zinfamous]

Same goes for guardian combat. It's also nearly impossible in group events when there are two dozen players and mobs on the screen at once, but of course in that case most mobs die in 2 seconds anyway.

I also wish that guards had some ranged abilities... or gap closer skills that aren't on very long CD's. On these events with tons of people involved most of the time mobs are dead before I can even get in melee range.

They need to tone down particle effects--it is absolutely impossible to see what is going on.

My grief with dodge is that double-tap is a bad initiator, and it lags much of the time, even without server lag. you can't dodge from left to right, either. you have to doubletap forward or back while moving to the side if you want to dodge that way.

I suppose I could get used to it, but more often that not, I fined myself dodging into worse situations, haha.

 

[SLU Aequitas]

They need to tone down particle effects--it is absolutely impossible to see what is going on.

My grief with dodge is that double-tap is a bad initiator, and it lags much of the time, even without server lag. you can't dodge from left to right, either. you have to doubletap forward or back while moving to the side if you want to dodge that way.

I suppose I could get used to it, but more often that not, I fined myself dodging into worse situations, haha.

Particle effects DEFINITELY need a tone down. Pull up large events and you cannot see anything, makes putting down healing fountains nearly impossible.

Also, I can dodge left/right with aa or dd, but lag makes it hard to time well.


Ele is a blast, but not a solo character. I've died so many times by pushing more than one mob

 

[GoodRevrnd]

I'm rolling a thief in a bit. Love the mes, but need to switch things up. My biggest critique with mes, other than the steep learning curve, is that the utility skills are a waste of slots. All 4 are essentially the same thing: blow up clones, spread debuff/buff.

that's it--it only depends on which ~4 second debuff you want to cause, or the one buff. Not very inventive, imo. They could have just stuck with 2 skills--one for debuff and the other buff, then left the other for more traditional mes functions--spreading hexes to mobs, and/or removing them all for crazy damage. :\

The other issue, early on, at least--is that your clones will likely not live long enough to be exploded. They are simply two squishy to provide effective uh, spirit shields. Their also seems to be no function in the AI that causes enemies to randomly aggro your clones, as I believe they are intended. You will always be targeted. Conversely, I see Mesmers being studs in PvP, which I intend to mess with today. their AoE buff/debuff (Chaos Storm = tits) plus the cloning has to cause some major headaches.

Those are the class abilities (or whatever). Your utility skills are keys 7-9 which you have to spec into. I took Blink and some kind of passive buff that I can't remember which stuns people on activation. I'll admit, I don't find this class very fun in PVE and I even have all my weapon skills unlocked. PvP on the other hand... oh man does the Mes tear it up. I haven't really hammered down my build yet, but blinking ahead of people and using the greatsword knockback to knock them back in/toward other people is fantastic. The stun is also great to pop when you think they're about to heal as it really throws them off. I'll probably get better at this once I understand what all the condition debuffs actually do and what the hell things like combo finishers are.

 

[Merad]

Also, I can dodge left/right with aa or dd, but lag makes it hard to time well.

Yep you just have to rebind strafe left/right to the A/D keys and it works fine (why do MMOs always default strafe to Q/E anyway? meh).

Edit: On the topic of keybinding. It's VERY annoying to me that you can't use modifiers in key binds.

 

[zinfamous]

oh, so you dodge with strafe keys. that makes sense.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

They need to tone down particle effects--it is absolutely impossible to see what is going on.

My grief with dodge is that double-tap is a bad initiator, and it lags much of the time, even without server lag. you can't dodge from left to right, either. you have to doubletap forward or back while moving to the side if you want to dodge that way.

I suppose I could get used to it, but more often that not, I fined myself dodging into worse situations, haha.

You don't have to use doubletap. I kept that bound as an option, but I also bound shift to dodge, which will dodge you backward if you're not moving or dodge you in the direction you're moving.

 

[Punter]

You don't have to use doubletap. I kept that bound as an option, but I also bound shift to dodge, which will dodge you backward if you're not moving or dodge you in the direction you're moving.

nice idea. thanks.

 

[drebo]

Yep you just have to rebind strafe left/right to the A/D keys and it works fine (why do MMOs always default strafe to Q/E anyway? meh).

Edit: On the topic of keybinding. It's VERY annoying to me that you can't use modifiers in key binds.

Interesting...perhaps I never noticed that because I always play in combat with the left mouse button held down, so my A and D keys act like strafe.