WAR beta so far
PostPosted:Tue Sep 09, 2008 7:53 pm
I really like this game as PvP goes. Basic concepts:
All your special abilities runs on a pool of Action Points. You never get more Action Points to your pool (210 or so). The regen never goes up except due to special abilities. AP do not regen while you're using any abilities that uses APs, which is everything except autoattack. You also build up Morale abilities which are equivalent of a limit break, generally doing very powerful stuff that takes a decently long time to charge.
The first thing of note is that everybody is very hard to kill in this game, especially healers. In fact a well supported healer might as well be immortal in equal number fights, as a healer can easily withstand say DPS from 5 guys combined at the same time (use your Morale when they knock you to critical) and your 4 other guys will be able to clean house while they're concentrating on the healer due to detaunt/taunt mechanisms.
The detaunt/taunt abilities pretty much form the core of the PvP. Every tank has a taunt, and every nontank has a detaunt. A target you detaunted does 50% damage to you unless you hit it. A taunted target takes 30% additional damage from you unless he hits you back 3 times. So basically concentrating on one guy is a bad idea, because your highest dps guy will get detaunted while your most vulnerable guy will get taunted and the tank will make short work of that guy when he's taking +30% damage.
Since AP never runs out due to gear consideration, fighting is very strategic. For example if you burn all your offensive moves early it always loses to the other side using all their defensive moves to counter. You simply cannot bring someone from 100 to 0 by burning them down assuming an evenly matched side, but you might be able to do it if the guy is at 50% health. Like I said before it is really not a good idea to beat on the healer all the time. If you simply use 1 guy on a healer to just annoy them, what happens is that guy gets detaunted and the healer continues healing as if that guy never existed. But, all the healing classes have a very big heal that is easily interrupted, so when you're attempting to burn someone down they either have to die in 3 seconds or you have to have someone on all their healers to make sure they can't cast their big heal, which pretty much guaranteeds survival if it gets off on time (heals for well above 50% of a person's total HP for a very trivial amount of AP).
The PvE side of WAR seems to be mostly an afterthought. Due to the AP system it is very easy to get some kind of infinite combos going as a mob that cannot outdps what a healer can heal via AP generation is never going to be able to kill anyone. Of course that's probably why there aren't even dungeons in the game until your city rank goes up. The pace of the level is relatively slow for a MMORPG, but you get XP while PvPing and since PvP is divided into tiers (level 1-11, 12-20, etc) this means you can actually PvP for a while if you're inclined and just level up naturally through PvPing, but you can't stay in a tier forever as you get a lot of XP for winning PvP stuff. Of course you could just always lose if you don't want to move on, but that's a pretty weird way to approach the game.
In the PvP areas the lower level guys are automatically bolstered to a certain level. In tier 1 they get bumped to level 8, though they will not any abilities that they aren't supposed to have yet. So a level 1 is still pretty weak, but it's not like a level 11 will one shot kill him. Of course as a level 1 you can't expect to contribute much against a level 11, but then he's worth a lot more XP to you than you are to him.
All your special abilities runs on a pool of Action Points. You never get more Action Points to your pool (210 or so). The regen never goes up except due to special abilities. AP do not regen while you're using any abilities that uses APs, which is everything except autoattack. You also build up Morale abilities which are equivalent of a limit break, generally doing very powerful stuff that takes a decently long time to charge.
The first thing of note is that everybody is very hard to kill in this game, especially healers. In fact a well supported healer might as well be immortal in equal number fights, as a healer can easily withstand say DPS from 5 guys combined at the same time (use your Morale when they knock you to critical) and your 4 other guys will be able to clean house while they're concentrating on the healer due to detaunt/taunt mechanisms.
The detaunt/taunt abilities pretty much form the core of the PvP. Every tank has a taunt, and every nontank has a detaunt. A target you detaunted does 50% damage to you unless you hit it. A taunted target takes 30% additional damage from you unless he hits you back 3 times. So basically concentrating on one guy is a bad idea, because your highest dps guy will get detaunted while your most vulnerable guy will get taunted and the tank will make short work of that guy when he's taking +30% damage.
Since AP never runs out due to gear consideration, fighting is very strategic. For example if you burn all your offensive moves early it always loses to the other side using all their defensive moves to counter. You simply cannot bring someone from 100 to 0 by burning them down assuming an evenly matched side, but you might be able to do it if the guy is at 50% health. Like I said before it is really not a good idea to beat on the healer all the time. If you simply use 1 guy on a healer to just annoy them, what happens is that guy gets detaunted and the healer continues healing as if that guy never existed. But, all the healing classes have a very big heal that is easily interrupted, so when you're attempting to burn someone down they either have to die in 3 seconds or you have to have someone on all their healers to make sure they can't cast their big heal, which pretty much guaranteeds survival if it gets off on time (heals for well above 50% of a person's total HP for a very trivial amount of AP).
The PvE side of WAR seems to be mostly an afterthought. Due to the AP system it is very easy to get some kind of infinite combos going as a mob that cannot outdps what a healer can heal via AP generation is never going to be able to kill anyone. Of course that's probably why there aren't even dungeons in the game until your city rank goes up. The pace of the level is relatively slow for a MMORPG, but you get XP while PvPing and since PvP is divided into tiers (level 1-11, 12-20, etc) this means you can actually PvP for a while if you're inclined and just level up naturally through PvPing, but you can't stay in a tier forever as you get a lot of XP for winning PvP stuff. Of course you could just always lose if you don't want to move on, but that's a pretty weird way to approach the game.
In the PvP areas the lower level guys are automatically bolstered to a certain level. In tier 1 they get bumped to level 8, though they will not any abilities that they aren't supposed to have yet. So a level 1 is still pretty weak, but it's not like a level 11 will one shot kill him. Of course as a level 1 you can't expect to contribute much against a level 11, but then he's worth a lot more XP to you than you are to him.