Class Confusion, Part 2

I made an effort to at least log into all my characters of the other four classes and have a bit of a play around.

Wizard: This one probably felt the least changed so far, with all of my favourite abilities seemingly still present, but similar to the rogue it still didn't feel quite right. The control aspect just wasn't entirely there and using the same rotation I used to use, instead of enemies getting locked down I just got punted around a lot and my damage output generally felt weak. It's possible that I missed something when setting up the feats; will have to investigate.

Ranger: Similar to the wizard, this one doesn't feel like it's changed a lot; it was just so much weaker in terms of damage output. Maybe it's a gear scaling thing and they'll all feel stronger again once at the new level cap.

Paladin: No more healing and doing damage (even a little) at the same time, bah! And they gave them a similar divinity mechanic to the cleric's, which I'm not a huge fan of. I may have to play a bit more to be able to make a definitive judgement, but my first impression is that like with the barbarian, they ruined another of my favourite classes.

Fighter: Like with the warlock, I don't actually have very detailed memories of playing this one, but I certainly wasn't a fan of the class's gameplay in the past. That said, the new seethe mechanic for the dps spec actually feels like it could be fun, setting up combos of first blocking damage and then hitting all the harder for it.

So far, it seems that the classes that I liked have mostly been made less fun, while a couple of the ones I didn't like have been improved a little. Homogenisation achieved?

Favourite Classes: Oathbound Paladin (3/3)

When my pet tank changed his main from Guardian Fighter to Oathbound Paladin I scoffed a little at this turn towards the "flavour of the month". In no other game had I ever seen a class that was this overpowered. Nothing ever seemed to be able to hurt him, yet at the same time he still did way more damage as a tank than I ever managed to do on my healer. I also remember watching a video of two OPs in an epic dungeon whose defensive abilities were caught in some sort of recursive loop so that the boss basically killed itself just by trying to hit them (though in fairness, I think this has been fixed since then). Still, how is that good game balance?

What eventually prompted me to roll a pally of my own was actually a desire to try out a different healing style, since I generally love healing in MMOs but had found the cleric sorely lacking. Fun fact: I actually still don't know whether pally healing is any good, because I have yet to take her into any content where healing would really be required.

But I can't deny it: just levelling as a hugely overpowered class was a lot of fun. I was kind of slow at killing things, sure, but the sheer level of indestructibleness was amazing. I could actually do quests that would (badly) sync me up to 70 because my character was so robust that it didn't matter that the level sync was poor. When I ran into a heroic encounter, I could just run in and start it regardless of other people in the area - lack of dps would potentially make it a struggle to complete it on my own, but I never had to worry about dying to elite mobs, even in crappy levelling gear (and once someone starts, other people are often all too happy to join in). In Icewind Dale I even soloed heroic encounters (albeit very slowly) that none of my other characters could take on solo to this day.

Yeah, sometimes the lack of dps feels tiresome, but I've always been a fan of slow and steady, and no other class in the game holds as steady as the Oathbound Paladin.

Simril Success

Despite of my earlier complaints, I finished this year's Winter Festival on a positive note, by achieving both of the goals that I had set myself initially, which were to earn the seasonal weapon skins for both my great weapon fighter and my paladin.

Funny thing is, I haven't even used the one for my fighter yet, because the one I used to "temporarily" turn her new artifact weapon back into a sword is actually quite nice, so I decided to just save the new skin for whenever I need to change weapons again. (ETA about two years?)

I do love my pally's new look though; I find that the sparkly theme fits the class particularly well. The only thing that disappointed me a little is how small the new appearance makes the shield look, as I always found it quite humorous to see my petite elf disappear behind a ginormous shield wall that she'd probably never even be able to carry.