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Post by Pikachu on Oct 14, 2010 12:36:11 GMT -5
I'm normally not a huge fan of grinding for what I *need*, but paradoxically, I sometimes like grinding for things I *like*. Not gonna try to justify this right now, but I'm down for getting some points. It's likely I'll be behind on the curve for this, but I think I can sneak in some time here and there between classes at school.
Resilience is easy enough if we're good about killing stuff. We should be able to gain money while doing the other objectives, come to think of it, so there's no reason not to deck every character out in elite armor.
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Post by buhwhyen on Oct 14, 2010 14:07:33 GMT -5
Grinding for drops/gear/stuff has never bothered me, thankfully I've got a lot of points already cause I've done a lot of the random stuff they wanted.
One thing I'm confused about is whether or not titles only need to be completed on a single character, ie does only 1 character per account need to complete prophecies to get the bonus points? (It sounds that way)
I just didn't have my necro's stuff displayed so I wasn't seeing my title for completing prophecies.
Major sigh cause I just burnt (over the past month or so) ~150k luxon rep on scrolls to sell cause I thought jadeite was useless (and it sells for less than the scrolls per rep point). Though I still have around 10 or 15? jadeite I think, I need to check again, if anyone actually plans on getting Luxon and not Kurzick armor.
I have no clue how to get a rare (gold) minipet, I guess I'll just have to pray for good drops? (other than nicholas traveler, birthday gifts, royal gifts)
tormented weapons...I think the best way is to buy one or we have to clear all of the domain of anguish? Gathering the margonite stones seems too dumb, need 60 total, 15 of each specific type for a single weapon.
Rofl....my shit luck with lockpicks may get me another title. HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA). There's the lucky/unlucky title which needs to be rank 2, you get points if you succeed in retaining or breaking lockpicks (among other things).
Alternatively to the pvp title, save all your zaishen coins and buy zaishen coins. A total of 200 zaishen keys gets you a zaishen title rank 3 which qualifies for the pvp title (3 points). Each zaishen key is 1 gold coin and 100? gold, though. Also bought for 5k balthazar points.
Is it possible to get both the luxon and kurzick titles if I get both to at least rank 4?
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I'm mostly going to be focusing on getting titles. I'll probably wait for other people to get hero armor remnants, probably can just run the destroyer challenge for all eotn heroes and then the nightfall challenge missions are really easy to farm the remaining remnants for nightfall heroes.
I'll probably be running all the trade contract quests across all my characters for vabbian armor...not sure if getting obsidian is worth it.
EDIT:
Tentatively planning to run all of factions in HM for both the title and to fill a Faction's HM book to turn in to kurzick (120k faction). Debating whether or not it's worth doing the same for Nightfall, HM books only give 9k sunspear or lightbringer rep. Will probably end up doing this anyways. Eotn HM books are easily the most worthwhile to do, even NM dungeon books are worth 40k each (I almost filled an entire book solo).
If we're all on, here's some things to do (nh):
-HM missions of ____ campaign.
-Vanquish areas of a campaign, probably factions? I dislike the idea of HM realm of torment.
-Run Sorrow's Furnace (prophecies), clearing this gives an achievement.
-Run Domain of Anguish? Or whatever the end game Nightfall area was called. Clearing all the areas gives another achievement.
-Fissure of Woe/Underworld (I got my title for clearing FoW, but Jon apparently didn't)
-Run Normal mode missions to get protector titles (all mission objectives need to be cleared, ie master clear)
-Run challenge missions to get hero armor
-War in Kryta stuff for more war supplies/medals of honor (oppressor weapons)
-Eotn dungeons - gems are actually valuable and you need quite a few to craft destroyer weapons, also fills the dungeon master books which are worth a lot of rep if they're filled.
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Post by feedback on Oct 15, 2010 0:57:09 GMT -5
You can get 50 free tournament points from High Priest Zhang in Balthazar's temple. You can trade those points in for 10 zaishen keys to help you towards the zaishen title.
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Post by feedback on Oct 16, 2010 1:03:24 GMT -5
My bad. I do have the title for FoW. I just didn't click far enough to display it. Yay titles.
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Post by Pikachu on Oct 18, 2010 15:01:47 GMT -5
Haha. Gems.
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Post by buhwhyen on Nov 8, 2010 20:54:35 GMT -5
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Post by feedback on Nov 21, 2010 4:57:11 GMT -5
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Post by feedback on Feb 14, 2011 4:36:08 GMT -5
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Post by Pikachu on Feb 14, 2011 17:56:37 GMT -5
Mesmer update got me interested again for sure. Here's hoping that Dervish will do the same.
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Post by buhwhyen on Feb 14, 2011 22:31:18 GMT -5
Wow. I thought the Dervish rework was mostly revolving around scythe damage...they didn't say anything about reworking the class entirely.
That being said, omg the changes look good. I had a few issues with my Dervish (which is why I haven't played it in ages); the main problems I had were:
-95% of the elites were useless
Realistically, you got THE best dps out of having zealous vow, no questions/arguments could really be made to justify otherwise. Infinite mana + 2 attacks based off cast speed (ignores scythe attack speed) and allows you to have mana to cast other stuff = good.
-Similar to above, I had a single build that left me feeling not at all tanky and really no *good* ways to change that because all good survivability options are earth spec and damage is wind spec, and you always need points in scythe/mysticism. (recently I've considered trying no mysticism builds, but I haven't tried it yet)
My dervish felt too squishy and does nothing but damage. My assassin can build knockdown to shut down a target, and can have either spell immunity or semi-permanent 75% block chance. Assassins also have options to teleport into and/or out of melee range while regaining a small amount of health. My warrior has near perma knockdown for 20 seconds if not blinded/blocked and does better single target damage than my Dervish. Warriors also have higher base armor (particularly against physical) and have more reliable/steady adrenaline gain to use "save yourselves" more frequently.
-I didn't use any dervish "spells," with very few exceptions. Casting for even 1/4 seconds interrupts attacks, and stops dps so you can do a little more damage for a short period of time. The constant need to cast Dervish buffs (hella short duration) and the mediocre regen off losing enchants turned out to just not be worth it. You're better off using 2, in very rare cases 3 enchants at a time. But these spells were always the same ones (kurzick/luxon damage buff, zealous vow, and asura scan, but asura scan can easily be replaced by by urals hammer so you don't have to interrupt attacking to use it).
Overall...I think I'll be unmuling my Dervish (again). Changes really do look promising. They should just release the patch already and give me 7 hero parties while they're at it.
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Post by feedback on Feb 18, 2011 7:47:06 GMT -5
Dervish update is live. It's... interesting. Brian will probably post a rant on this later. They fucking nerfed asuran scan and by ural's hammer though so that makes me sad/mad.
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Post by buhwhyen on Feb 18, 2011 20:19:08 GMT -5
Well...I was pretty disappointed with the Dervish update overall. The changes look really good on paper. But what isn't explicitly mentioned is the gigantic GIGANTIC nerf to Dervish damage. Dervish damage got double (maybe triple?) nerfed.
TLDR;
Dervish changes were meh...no good single target damage options atm, aoe damage has some potential for serious BS spiking. Your survivability options which were already really annoying to use properly are even less viable now. Still less good than warriors/assassins, but at least you get to push a lot of buttons for not much return.
***************************************************
First scythe crid damage got toned down. This change I can endorse because crit damage off scythes could range upwards of 300, 400 if you really put some effort into it. But I honestly can't even tell when I'm critting now, I have yet to see a number above 100 damage. This brings me to the second nerf, PvE skills. They completely changed all damage boosting PvE skills, this includes:
-By Ural's Hammer
-Asuran scan
-Intensity (whatever)
-Aura of Kurzick/Luxon
Basically they're all 99% useless now. You can go read the exact changes, but I don't think I'll ever use any of them with very few exceptions.
The third big change was the damage bonus on all scythe attacks got toned down ~33% on average. Scythes do attack considerably faster now, don't know the exact number but it feels about the same as sword/axe attack speed or somewhere there about. The base damage is "the same" but honestly base damage actually means pretty close to nothing for Dervishes.
A short side note for how damage is calculated in GW...The reason why crits did SO SO SO much damage is because when you registered a critical attack, it takes your MAX base damage (ie 41 for scythes, 35 for hammers, 28 for axes, etc) and applied the crit and damage modifiers. This meant higher max damage weapons crit harder. But since crit damage got nerfed, crits don't seem to matter much anymore, so having a larger range of damage values is more of a detriment.
Secondly, ~70% of damage comes from bonus damage off attacks. Actually this is THE reason why melee dps is just flat out better in GW than caster dps. Caster dps is basically you cast an elemental (or non-elemental) spell, it does "x" damage of "y" type. So a simple example is fireball may do 100 fire damage. But fire damage is midigated by armor, so the actual damage done when you apply armor is much closer to 60 in a lot of cases.
In contrast, physical dps do their base weapon damage (random value in the damage range of your weapon) and then you add a flat amount, ie the damage bonus on your attack skill. So for Dervishes, mystic sweep used to give up to +30 damage if you had 3 enchants. This means that you could do no less than 30 damage (ignoring defensive skills that reduced incoming damage by a flat amount). So the damage you normally got off a mystic sweep was 30 + base damage, which should end up being roughly 50 on average, but was actually considerably higher. (much closer to 70-80; this is mostly b/c the effective armor mobs have) Keep in mind this was all pre-damage boosting abilities and also hit up to 3 targets.
Currently Dervishes hit somewhere around 35-70. With most of the damage falling around the mid 40s mark. This sounds, and frankly is, atrocious. Dervishes no longer do any real amount of damage to single targets, but as that sentence implies, they actually do really good damage in an area. Well...they have the "potential" to do a lot of damage in an area anyways. More on this a later.
So what were the Dervish changes? They got "flash enchantments," enchantments that have no cast time and really function very much like shouts do. The new Dervish concept basically revolves around you putting up flash enchantments and removing them for bonus effects (you only get benefit from Dervish enchants. And skills specify that they remove only dervish enchants so you don't accidently remove a monk prot). On paper, this sounds really damn cool, and looking at the skills I would agree it looks amazing what you could potentially do. They gave Dervishes the ability to be a really damn good support class or more self sustaining than other melee characters. They can heal, remove conditions/hexes, interrupt, etc with new flash enchants and still get additional benefits from removing them.
Speaking of removing enchants, it's done mostly by using specific scythe attacks that will remove 1 of your DERVISH enchants for additional effect. So Irresistible sweep does +damage, on swing, but if you remove 1 dervish enchant it also becomes: unblockable, removes target stance and does additional bonus damage. Sounds damn good, but at 16 scythe skill the bonus damage is +16 without enchant removal and 32 with enchant removal (16+16).
So most builds I've been trying have revolved around this new enchant removal idea because your elites really push you towards it. Avatars give a bonus effect every time you lose a dervish enchant, so realistically you're getting up to a triple bonus for removing your own enchants (one from the weapon skill that removes it, potentially one from the enchant itself having a removal effect, and potentially one from your avatar if you're using an avatar build). Sounds awesome again...but it really does fall pretty short. Cool to see, yeah, but you do such shit damage compared to assassins and warriors it's laughable. I would have Lol'd at my damage if it didn't make me want to cry so much.
The current strength I can see is really just in synnergy with other classes, so reap impurities on a dervish and run a fragility mesmer with it. Reap impurities basically says if you hit more than 1 target with a condition, everything in the area dies. Hitting with reap impurities also removes 1 condition from each foe that is hit. So lots of potential for huge aoe damage...but I don't really see any hope (eww, hope) for single target dps. Currently the best you can really do is keep enemies around you burning and just swing and interrupt a lot...but you really just can't compare the dps/cc/survivability to other melee classes. Yeah I'm saying my assassin is more sturdy than my Dervish. Thanks Arena net.
How can a Dervish be squishier than an Assassin. Wtf. Previously you could midigate tons and tons of damage by using armor of sanctity and keeping enemies debuffed with conditions. This netted ~10-15 damage reduction on every incoming attack. Similarly you could have an easy 50% block chance at all times or you could have a perma +10 health regen via mystic regeneration? I think the skill is called. But when you think about it, they're both Dervish enchantments.........So if you're basing your build around removing your own enchantments, what happens if you get enchant stripped and then try to use an attack that removes your dervish enchants? Even if that doesn't happen. You have to be really careful about how many attacks you carry that remove enchants, because you need to keep certain enchants, but at the same time really want to remove others for bonus damage/effects. Also if you don't cast your enchants in the right order, they get removed improperly and more bad times. The current alternative I'm trying is actually to self prot myself with protective spirit, because I can't remove monk enchants with my Dervish skills.
**EDIT:
forgot to mention damage off enchant spells got raped too. Eternal aura (sunspear skill) used to to ~100 holy damage, not anymore. Same with non pve skill versions, they all do ~23 damage and most are affected (reduced) by armor.
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Post by buhwhyen on Mar 4, 2011 1:06:44 GMT -5
Logged in to get bounties, only to find they updated the game. 7 hero parties and Embark beach added (mission area). They also added Zaishen Vanquishes, apparently you can vanquish areas for more rewards (money and xp, possibly even rep - the current vanquish is the starter island for Factions. 1.5 plat, 10k xp, and 150 copper coins)...why could they not add this earlier when I was vanquishing a lot? Still yet, hella good way to get money, coins, and rep.
Also a new mercenary system...Awesome and yet totally flawed. Basically you have to first buy mercenary slots (can buy 1,3,or 8 at a time for $10,20,45 respectively WTF ever). A "mercenary" is any character on your account. So I could "hire" my warrior, and then while playing any other character on my account, use my warrior as a hero in my party. The real kicker, is you CANNOT use PvE skills on your mercenary. Useless.
Neat UI addition is the ready button. Probably so when you group with other people you don't have to constantly ask "are you ready? ready now, now...?"
They also added a Minion Master friendly UI interface to view Minion health? I think. Sounds neat, but I really don't think anyone really gives a shit because heroes are good enough MM and frankly, I want my minions to explode more often than stay alive and auto attack (unless I'm running a build that emphasizes having level 20 BONE minions, which quite literally bone just about everything - even in Hard mode, which is pretty lol).
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Post by Pikachu on Mar 4, 2011 22:01:52 GMT -5
Bone. Hard. Haha fag.
Glad to contribute to the discussion.
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Post by buhwhyen on Mar 22, 2011 4:57:23 GMT -5
We now have a guild hall. It's pretty damn cool looking. Fireworks are really pretty.
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