Beta stuff

[Martok]

How's the beta for everyone? I have a ton of notes written down to post tomorrow or Monday of stuff that is either broken, fixed, needs fixed, or that I find just awesome.

Been trying more classes this weekend.

[Balandar]

I tried out the guardian. Not sure if I like playing that role... too supportive.

I also played around with the gem market (took awhile to get a credit card approved). I bought an extra character slot, dyes, keys, pirate outfit. Dyes are nice, except they are not account wide, only for that character. Not sure if it's supposed to be that way or not? It's not worth it to buy dyes if it's not account based.

I love having chat bubbles! Not many people RPing though, may be fun for guild meetings or tavern brawls. We'll see how many people we get from PGoH to play.

I'm trying not to delve too deeply into story lines at this point as I want to save that for release and not feel like I am repeating content.

[Gekigami]

Got my Elemantalist to 30 (finished the Demo story) and tried the Catacombs, It was a lot easier than the videos on youtube made it look (guess they nerfed it). Killed the Shadow Behemoth to (easy as well). I hope explorable mode is harder, besides WvWvW this game hasn't challenged me. Made a Guardian as well, didn't get it very high though. I enjoyed it a lot, beats dying in two hits on my ele.

[Martok]

I'm going to have a few posts in sections. First up is by class and current impressions. The game is NOT ready for release yet. There is still loads of balancing to do. I'd say a minimum of two months to a max of five is what we are looking at.

Elementalist- Good prof for newbs and advanced users. Easy to get into and has quite a bit of power. I would say this class has a low skill floor (easy to learn) and a high skill ceiling (can be incredibly powerful if you play it well). With that being said, I didn't care for this class in the least. I absolutely hated the attunement switching. I also didn't like the fact that you could not switch weapons in combat. I realize that attunements are supposed to take the place of your weapon switches, but I don't like it in the least. This was the least favorite class that I played (and I leveled one up to 22)

Warrior- I believe the warrior is the most balanced profession in the game. Very good damage with both ranged and melee attacks. Can be used for straight up powerhouse of dps or more support. Easy class to get the hang of. If you want to Hulk smash stuff.....you want to be a warrior.

Ranger- Good class but pet AI is still bad. Ranger has a good amount of weapon skills and abilities, can do decent damage, and spec'd properly can offer loads of support. They are still missing 3 of their final utility skills which should be in by the next beta weekend. I hope the new utility skills offer some "flash" as this is a boring class overall. Ranger class would be much improved and more fun to play if the pet ai worked properly; until then, I'd stay away.

Guardian- Loads of fun. Similar to a warrior but more support oriented. If you like melee and want all kinds of flashy spells and skills; this is your class. This was the ONLY class that I was afraid of in PvP....I couldn't kill em!

Necromancer- Very strong class. Hard to kill due to the class mechanic of death shroud (pretty much a second health bar) and can be traited for straight up damage or support. Necro's also have the best condition spreading builds out there. It is said this class has the lowest skill entry point and highest skill ceiling in the game. I believe it. Extremely easy to get into the basic mechanic, but a well played Necro will eat some serious face.

Thief- I have absolutely zero experience with this class.

Engineer- Too little experience to comment. I know that they are completely redesigning a good portion of this class.

Mesmer- Ok, this was the absolute LAST class I thought I would enjoy....but I love it. Their damage during the beta weekend was perhaps the worst in the game....but their overall ability to cause mass confusion and piss people off was right up my alley! Now you see me, now you are attacking my clone! Now I explode my clone in your face into a mass of pink butterflies!

[Chaz]

I'm getting to the point where I don't want to progress too much further in the game, so I stopped leveling my engineer and started messing around with the other classes. I can say I'm not interested at all in Elementalist or Necromancer, I don't play rogue-type classes to Thief is out, but I gave Warrior and Mesmer a go and thoroughly enjoyed them. If Mesmer's damage hadn't been bugged beyond all reason I might never have moved past them, but their mechanic was fun and the Greatsword weapon skillset was a blast.

What surprised me, however, is how much I thoroughly enjoyed Ranger, which I played last. I usually hate pet classes, but I think they have balanced it well. Your pet's commands were easy to access and use ( the F1 - 4 buttons ), and all abilities for support carried extra buffs / commands for your pets. I thought this was a very cool idea. What I enjoyed most was the weapons though...Rangers use axes, but not as melee. They throw them! I'm sold on that alone.

Warriors were, of course, pretty easy to play and thoroughly enjoyable. I tanked the Veteran Oakheart boss with my 2-hander and enjoyed directional dodging to avoid his swipes. I'm sure most 'bosses' won't be so direct and easy to read, but it was fun nonetheless.

Engineer was still as fun as always. They didn't change too overly much, and I was still able to pull off a healing / dps hybrid build with relative ease. They changed Elixer Gun though, and I'm not sure if for the better, and they also seem to have buffed mines / bombs on damage as well. Overall, very fun! Will probably still be my main, with an AoE dps / healing build in WvW.

I'm going to go with August / September for release. I think the game is close enough, with most bugs being minor fixes, I'd imagine, and waiting til December would be unwise as it would put them up against Pandaria. WoW may be getting older and slower, but I'm pretty sure that won't stop people from returning to play the newest Expansion. Arenanet needs to get in the door before that happens.

[Martok]

So, why is GW2 not ready for release?

- class balance is still messy. Utility skills still missing from some professions (ranger), AI is still buggy (Ranger and Mesmer). They are still adding and redesigning some traits.

-Experience/tuning issues- Many people complained that they ran out of "hearts" or dynamic events of their own level to further progress. I also found this problem when leveling my ranger. I simply ran out of areas to gain experience in the Char zone, so I had to go to the Norn and Human areas to get more exp. Shouldn't be too difficult a fix...

-WvW matchups are borked. Friday had WvW (World vs World) goodness! They switched our matchup on Saturday to some low population realms. We owned the entire map for the rest of the weekend...how boring is that? I think their match system might need some work. In addition, the gold and experience gained in WvW is too low...needs a serious boost here.

-Several skill point challenges are bugged and not working correctly.

-There are areas where about a dozen mobs will eat your face. They need to pass through and add/remove mobs in certain areas.

-The WvW dungeon that was added is complete fail. I didn't get far into it, but I don't think the traps were working. It was about thirty minutes of a jumping puzzle before I gave up. Thats boring as hell.

-Particle effects with lots of players on the screen still needs work (I'm talking about you Elementalists & Guardians!)

-More dungeons ? They stay there is a few in game....but only have opened up one to us to go through. They better get on the ball with additional endgame stuff or people will get bored too fast.

[Balandar]

-More dungeons ? They stay there is a few in game....but only have opened up one to us to go through. They better get on the ball with additional endgame stuff or people will get bored too fast.

+1

There has to be at least two more BWE's unless they plan to release without testing the Asura and Sylvari.