This thread is about Guild Wars (Factions)

Author

Topic: This thread is about Guild Wars (Factions)

Vorago

A completely different kind of Buckethead

posted 05-04-2006 06:59:26 PM

Man, getting wellll and hooked on this game. Factions is the expansion, recently released, which I picked up. Expansion is standalone, just can't travel to oldworld areas without the original game. The "free MMO" to speak, gotta pay to buy it but no monthly fees. Everything is instanced outside of towns, but there are always NPC henchmen to fill slots or act as your party if need be (Pretty good ones too, follow assist calls and everything)

Anyways, best way to sum up this game is half Diablo 2, half Magic the Gathering. Oddly enough.

See, how it works is you choose two classes, primary and secondary and then you get the skill pool of both those classes (Like 150 abilities total). These abilities are all baseline and scale based on your points in the different skill trees (Points in blood magic make blood spells stronger), making each spell more about different utility. There is only one fire direct damage nuke spell because that is all there needs to be, so other skills fill roles or are there to combo with other skills.

But, you can only use 8 skills at any given time, can change them freely (And respec) in towns for no cost but when running a mission, instance or questing you are locked in that set-up.

Which makes designing your character SO MUCH like designing a mtg deck it is silly. You have your basic, bread and butter spells then a few spells that combo in order for a greater effect, maybe a group buffing spell or two... maybe toss something from your secondary class in there, add some more utility.

For instance, just today, had a blast pvp'ing in the newbie arena (lvl 10 cap, 20 is limit, more on that later) with the most ghetto team ever... after 26 wins in a row, it proved a really effective ghetto team, heh

First off, new expansion class, assassins... stupidly popular... glass jaw pure offense melees with teleportation, combo style attacks (lead, offhand and dual attacks that chain) they hit like a TRUCK and everyone loves them. Well we didn't even have one (teams of 4 assassins are actually pretty common due to quantity), didn't even have a warrior!

One teammate was one of the best examples of class ingenuity I've seen so far, ranger/elementalist (mage)... he used a ranger spirit, brambles, whenever anyone is knocked down, they take damage and bleed (% based dot per second) over 13 seconds. Then with his elemental half he used meteor, aoe fire attack that knocks everyone down in the blast. He would hang back with his bow until enemies would pile up then bowl them over with his meteor, inflicting big damage and further damaging and bleeding everyone with Bramble.

But wait, it gets better, our Ritualist (Summons stationary spirits that all have some sort of effect) used Earthbind, spirit that increases the time someone spends knocked down to 3 seconds from 1, but every time it does this, it damages itself, it binds too many people and it self destructs.

Which meant everyone knocked down by the meteors were knocked down for 3 seconds instead of 1 and were then taking two extra seconds of bramble effects, the intiial damage was inflicted thrice and the bleed effect kept renewing, giving it two extra seconds.

And this was only a three skill combo that happened by chance, but it was INSANE together.

We were mowing down simple and boring pure assassin teams like it was nothing. God help them if they assist trained on me (Being a lifestealing necro I was what amounted to our tank), one time I watched the ranger meteor their entire team at once as they were around me, all get bleed by the brambles and earthbound for 3sec... it was crazy, their entire team took huge damage, will now bleed close to 20% of their hp away and are stunned for 3sec. Fight didn't last long.

Game is heavily based around skills and player skill, level cap is 20, I hit 10 in like 2 hours. But you only have a small initial pool of skills and as you quest and pve and even pvp you can unlock and buy more skills, giving you more variety.

In the pvp 26 win streak we had our entire team wasn't even lvl 10 (max for the arena), we had two 10s an 8 and a 6 (who became lvl 7 halfway)... and we were unstoppable. They even had bugged lvl 11s from time to time (go in at 10, almost 11, level in the arena, as long as you don't lose you stay in the queue and can keep playing past the max level.,.. lose though and you get locked out) and it didn't matter because we were operating together much better than they were.

Unlocking skills doesn't just give you them on that char, but your account. You can make PvP only characters at creation who start at lvl 20 and get a pre-selected pool of skills and gear to give you a basic idea of that character, so if you aren't sure if you want to be a Mesmer or something, make a PvP one and try it out. PvP chars cannot leave the pvp arena for obvious reasons. But if you unlock a necro skill while PvE'ing (Roleplaying char) you can then use it on any pvp chars you make. So you can make a PvE character, quest huge and unlock all sorts of stuff then make a PvP char, maybe fix a mistake or two and have access to everything you unlocked. Again the whole MTG reference, unlocking skills to then use or add utility reminds me so much of buying cards.

That and everything has a purpose or a counter, some skills are designed to counter someone else, the ritualist has a spirit that halves adrenaline (rage) for every enemy around it... useless against an assassin but crippling against a warrior for instance. Reminds me entirely too much of how if in MTG a deck gets too good another deck is created that 100% counters it.

The two class system is neat, everything is skill based so an elementalist/mesmer and a mesmer/elementalist will do the exact same damage with the same fireball if both have the same fire skill, no difference. What changes though is the bonus skill you get depending which class is your primary choice. The elemental primary will have more max energy, but the mesmer primary will cast faster.

Or for example, a warrior/assassin will have strength, makes your attacks penetrate a portion of your target's armor, while an assassin/warrior has increased crit chances and gains energy off crits. Both can pick the same skills and be 100% identical with those skills but their primary choices change a little bit how they function. Makes for a nice variety imo.

So, anyone else play this? I am freaking LOVING it so far, the huge win pvp win streak I just came out of was beyond a blast. 26 wins with a team I, at first, figured was destined to lose spectacularily, hehe.

The starting pvp arena is a simple 4v4 deathmatch type deal, randomly created teams, winning team stays together and stays to fight the next team, when they lose they get booted out and rejoin the queue as the new team that one stays. Nice king of the hill type deal, kept seeing people we fought before but always in a new set-up until eventually we lost to one hell of a good team.

"There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there you'll be free if you truly wish to be."