Guild Wars: Preview weekend over
Well, the preview weekend is over. No more Assassin and Ritualist for a while - but the other changes stay! (Yay!)
I played a bunch of CA and some TA over the weekend. I did play all the premades but didn't use any hard-won faction to unlock extra skills - I'm still working on unlocking superior runes for all the Necromancer, Mesmer, Elementalist and Monk classes since I have enough skills to actually play most builds of those classes required for TA, Tombs and GvG now.
I'm a big fan of the new training arenas and the Zaichen Challenge/Elites. I have a lot of wacky build ideas and it lets me give them a try without embarrassing myself in public.
Ok, now the Assassin and Ritualist. As per usual, the premade templates didn't seem optimal (rather reminiscent of preconstructed decks in M:tG) but the classes themselves are very interesting. If you didn't get to play, here's a summary:
I played a bunch of CA and some TA over the weekend. I did play all the premades but didn't use any hard-won faction to unlock extra skills - I'm still working on unlocking superior runes for all the Necromancer, Mesmer, Elementalist and Monk classes since I have enough skills to actually play most builds of those classes required for TA, Tombs and GvG now.
I'm a big fan of the new training arenas and the Zaichen Challenge/Elites. I have a lot of wacky build ideas and it lets me give them a try without embarrassing myself in public.
Ok, now the Assassin and Ritualist. As per usual, the premade templates didn't seem optimal (rather reminiscent of preconstructed decks in M:tG) but the classes themselves are very interesting. If you didn't get to play, here's a summary:
- Assassin is a melee, high-damage character. Armour is not great but offense is good. Has some interesting teleportation skills which will make for a strong primary/secondary class for flag running. For more detail and strategy, there's a great guide written by Panda over at the iQ forums. Here's their current skill listing.
- Ritualist is a caster class, primarily revolving around spirit summoning. Spirits work more or less like Ranger rituals but are mostly asymmetric - where Ranger rituals affect everyone, Ritualist spirits help your team. Some good healing abilities and reasonable offense. The spirits summoned do not move but have a fairly long range (something like 1/2 radar range) to their abilities. Aside from Spirits, they have some interesting weapon enchantments (notably Weapon of Warding, which seems excellent) and "ash summons" which conjure up an item which gives you abilities either while you hold it or when you drop it or both. Here's their current skill listing.
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posted by Clamatius | Monday, January 23, 2006
2 Comments:
I'm kind of worried that the Assassin may become as broken as the Rogue is in WOW. Rogues, as I am told by my hardcore WOW playing friends, are damn near invincible, which is why the class is so over-populated.
I don't think it's all that likely.
Assassins are fundamentally a melee class - more offense than Warrior but less defense too. They're significantly more vulnerable to disruption than Warriors because of the chain attack mechanic. Aegis, Guardian and the various defense stances on a target are really bad for the Assassin because it breaks their attack chain. Energy denial can also be bad because a bunch of the assassin attacks are expensive.
Right now it seems like a couple of skills may be a little too good - Temple Strike was particularly lethal - but generally the class seems fine.
Ritualist spirits encouraging camping in PvP is significantly more worrisome imho.
Rogues in WOW, as I understand it from my non-playing perspective, have actual stealth abilities (i.e. the other team can't see them) which assassins do not have. I think it's a bit of an apples to oranges comparison given the different game mechanics.
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