As a quick overview, I learned that a daggers necro feels like playing a touch ranger, energy potions won't affect skilled players, assassins are pretty much a lock for returning, and the blue mace lady is most assuredly an evolution of the active prot monk. More details after the jump, but first I'll update my profession predictions.
I'm 2 for 2 so far, correctly pegging ranger (3) and necro (4), and the closer we get, the more strongly I'm feeling about my next 3 predictions as well.
- was elementalist
- was warrior
- was ranger
- was necro
- will be assassin, with invisibility type stealth mechanic and gun use
- will be mesmer, potentially with a pirate vibe
- blue mace lady will be an evolution of active prot, extremely support skewed character
- still mysterious final class, temporarily called engineer
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Let's see, first things first, a daggers necro feels like playing a touch ranger.
I got to try out the GW2 demo in 3d on 3 screens. It was amazing, though bordering on overwhelming. I don't think I'd be able to marathon it for days, but for the 40 minutes of the demo it was fine. Surprisingly, the part that bothered me most was the peripheral vision from the surround screens. It was really cool, but would take a lot of getting used to.
Kekai gave me the tip that the necro spell effects were really cool in 3d, and he wasn't lying. The locust swarm had all the bugs buzzing forward and backward through space, and seeing the depth of that death shroud trail was neat.
I tried necro to see the 3d effects, but was pleasantly surprised when the dagger necro skills felt like I was playing a touch ranger in the old days of terrorizing random arenas because no one was smart enough to bring snares. Now I'll definitely need to make a necro... that makes a third character for someone who wanted to avoid alts.
The dagger necro is incredibly hardy with all that life stealing, and despite not using my death shroud once I never fell below half health even in the thick of the Shatterer fight. Despite spamming the heck out of my spells, my energy bar never budged from full. If you watched closely you could see the numbers changing, but it was never enough to move the bar graphic.
Touch ranger indeed!
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This brings me to my next revelation: energy potions won't affect skilled players.
I'm no longer worried about the energy potions, at least as far as PvE is concerned. 80% of the players playing the demo were really, really stupid, as you would expect from someone who's never played Guild Wars before and has been dumped into a level 47 boss fight. Almost every demo station told the same story, of players spamming their first two skills and then frantically dodging. They were burning through their stack of potions provided in the demo as though they were candy.
On the other hand, my boyfriend, myself, and the other GW1 vet that was in line with us didn't have to use a single potion the entire time despite throwing ourselves straight into whatever groups of enemies where available.
This could have been expected for warrior and ranger, but our new friend for those 3-4 hours played as an elementalist, and not conservatively either.
So basically my feeling is that potions are functioning as a stupid tax, if you will. It's a gold sink that disproportionately affects poor players. Its basically a way for the lesser skilled among us to work a little harder and buy their way through content they otherwise would have been locked out of.
While I thought I would miss the strategy that was energy management, so far I feel like there's plenty of new complexity to make up for it.
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One of my most unexpected insights was about the assassin's likely return with true invisibility.
The lowbie humans didn't get a full skill bar to start, as they had locked weapon skills they needed to yet earn, so I didn't even bother checking out pet skills on them. As one of my goals heading in was to check out the buffs of the moa, this was mildly disappointing.
On the other hand, I checked out the cat's skills on the 40-something Charr. While it was disabled for the demo, there was a skill for invisibility. Not stealth, but specifically "Invisibility." The elementalist also had a heal with invisibility attached, although for a very short duration. And it was true invisibility, where the only reason you could still see where the ele was was due to its spell effects still going off around seemingly nothing.
It seems highly unlikely that the invisibility mechanic would be implemented just for a pet and an elementalist heal, which strongly points to it being the assassin's profession mechanic. However, invisibility's failings in other games, and the primary reason why I believe we have never seen such a thing in Guild Wars, is its lack of an appropriate counter.
To keep gameplay balanced and engaging, your ability to defeat an opponent should never depend on that opponent making a mistake. If a strategy exists, there should also exist some tool you can bring to befuddle it. Such is how a healthy meta-game is born.
To that end, I noticed that the ranger has a tracking utility skill which is supposed to extend the range of the radar and reveal hidden monsters. "Hidden" monsters sounds a lot like invisible or stealthed ones to me. So not only do we have a stealth mechanic already in the game and on player characters, but we also have a counter to it in the game.
I can't wait for the next profession reveal so we can see the full extent of the assassin's stealth capabilities. ...also if it can use a rifle and thus if I'll be able to make my precious Sylvari sniper.
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Lastly, despite all the rabid fan forum hate for the monk, the blue macy lady profession is no doubt going to be an evolution of the active prot playstyle.
My boyfriend is the epitome of the GW1 monk. He's played every role the monk could fill, earned more millions of exp than my main toon despite my playing longer than him, and even played competitive GvG for a while.
None of the current classes available are really support oriented, but with the stunning effects of the mace, the ally shielding options of the shield, and the party-wide buffs of banners, he thought he would try to see what support options he could squeeze out of warrior. It really didn't work. Despite warrior being able to support on paper, the warrior will not play as a primarily support profession.
Later, he and I had the great fortune to get ourselves into the ANet after hours party.
Of course, my boyfriend had to bring up his disappointment to the designers, and they were more than happy to chat with him at length about the differences between healing and active prot. They were amused at his crippling red-bar syndrome, which to this day prevents this hard core GW fan from navigating between Ascalon City and Fort Ranik (two of the earliest starter towns which are in fact quite close to one another). They also weren't shy about pointing out that red-bar syndrome is why the dedicated healer has been abolished from GW2.
On the other hand, they assured him repeatedly, from many different mouths, that there will definitely be a place for people who played prot monks in GW1. Active situationaly aware support is something that will feature prominently in GW2, even though we haven't yet seen a profession that's really capable of it.
I almost guarantee we will see it come in the form of that second soldier class with all her Dwayna blue and mace-shieldy goodness.
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Lastly, here are a couple of other little trivia bits that came out of Saturday for us:
Katy Hargrove got asked why she gave the Charr 4 ears. Apparently the upper pair hears high frequency sounds and the lower pair hears low frequency sounds, but they're left with relatively poor mid-frequency hearing and as a result have trouble hearing human speech clearly.
Hooray for strained alliances being based on something other than just "we warred forever."
Kristin Perry said that the 90 or so dyes in the demo are just the tip of the iceberg. Apparently new characters in the real game will get around 6 or so dyes available to them, varying by race. Every character will eventually be able to unlock (buy?) every dye, but one would imagine accumulating a complete set would be a daunting task. Completionists everywhere rejoice! I know GW2 hasn't been too completionist friendly so far, but here's one aspect, at least, that could be.
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