I'm slowly getting used to the new cleric mechanics. I still haven't figured out divinity management in my healing spec, but hopefully I'll get there.
The real problem is that I have seven more characters that I don't have a clue how to play now. Levelling them over the course of several years, I had plenty of time to get acquainted with how each one worked at least on a casual level. Now they've all had their mechanics changed, powers and boons reset, and I'm basically lost.
I have tentatively started logging into a few of them to get an idea of where things stand with other classes, and my first impressions can mostly be summed up as "uncomfortable":
Rogue: The basic mechanics (stealth etc.) of this one don't seem to have changed - thank god - however unfortunately the build I used to run with no longer exists. I used to rely on certain abilities having synergies (use A to trigger B and reset the cooldown on C) that are no longer in the game, so I did a lot of flailing about wondering why things weren't coming off cooldown as expected. Will need to look up a new build at some point.
Barbarian: I was crushed to find that Battlerage (formerly Unstoppable) no longer grants temporary hitpoints. It was a key part of the ability that it combined an incentive to not bother with dodging out of the red circles (the control immunity) with the ability to survive standing in them for a few seconds. The new version grants a slight damage reduction instead but that's not nearly as good. Not sure where to go with this one.
Warlock: This was the class I knew the least about since it was the last one I levelled, which has the advantage that I'm feeling less pain from my previous knowledge being made redundant now. I never really "got" warlocks, and the new and improved version is even more confusing to me. They have a new resource bar that doesn't seem all that great and depletes so rapidly that I feel like I should constantly hurry from combat to combat to avoid "wasting" the resource, which I don't like at all. But hey, I never liked the class much to begin with, so I guess this one's no big loss.
At level 28 my entire combat strategy on my Warlock consists of "hold down left mouse button". It's basically a firehose. Sometimes I use the rmb just for a bit of variety but I'm failrly sure that actually reduces dps.
ReplyDeleteWhen a big mob or a boss appears I hit 1 and the Soul Spirit ghost thing comes out. At this point one of two things happens: either the Spirit kills the boss in a couple of seconds or the boss is already dead before the Spirit can get to it because it turned out to be no stronger than a regular mob and I firehosed it to death.
The only time I've died (quite a few times) is when I've been mobbed, which tends to happen when I run around a lot in combat. If I actually play sensibly and pull things there seems to be no real risk at all.
Presumably this won't go on forever but it's already gone on a lot longer than I imagined it would.
I haven't played my new lowbie beyond level 10 yet, but at level 70 it's definitely not that easy. I currently don't have anything in-between but I suspect things get a bit more involved by level 60 at the latest.
DeleteOkay, because you posted about a Warlock, I couldn't help but add this little video when D&D 4e was coming out. For some ungodly reason the devs for 4e decided to take Gnomes out of the major races for D&D 4e. But they did elevate the Tiefling.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UqFPujRZWo