Fencer Archive
Thread: How are you finding fencer in the CU test?
Page 1 of 2
furrycat
Sat Apr 16, 2005 9:53 am
#2
Blue frogs are now offering skills. I tested for about half an hour before crashing, crashing again immediately after I came back and then being unable to reconnect.
First impression was that the UI has been considerably improved over previous attempts. It isn't quite so in-your-face and character names, con shield and HAM bars are a more sensible size. Music too is much improved. The new combat music is nice. Combat sounds are still uniformly terrible but I doubt that these are the final effects.
Toolbar icons are still too large, too colourful, too cartoonish, ugly, out of place, un-Starwarsy and generally awful. They also aren't going anywhere so I sucked it down and spent some time arranging my toolbar to be something close to my Live setup. I grabbed an acid sword and padded armour and headed to Fort Tusken. With Fencer and Bio-Engineer my health was up to 2080; I didn't take any buffs. Grouped with a friend I was combat level 80 which meant that I would theoretically meet little resistance from level 62 Tusken Warlords and their lower level friends[1].
Since the goal of the CU is to provide an exciting and tactical combat system and give players unique roles, I decided to concentrate on using playing the new Fencer hit-and-run style. I used the cripple attack and the bleed attack, and tried to strike and retreat to let my bleed tick. The cripple attack kinda worked. It was hard to tell when I had landed it as the - Snared - message showed up a lot more than the + Snared + one. My opponents did have state effect icons under their HAM bars at the top of the screen but due to a bug they were only partially visible. My own state effect icons were easily seen but were tricky to make out[2]. It was, however, clear when I was bleeding. A fountain of red blobs gushing out of my boots indicated this plainly. What was wrong with the blood droplets raining over my head from Live I don't know.
I did manage to land the cripple and I was able to hit and run. I was also able to land some bleeds. They didn't appear to do much in the way of damage though, and every time I closed in to make another strike I was instantly whacked by the Tusken. I tried the same tactics against several enemies and didn't find much advantage to it. I mixed in a few knockdowns[3] and found them to be much the same as the cripple. I could get in a strike and run away but soon enough I would have to come back and take damage.
So much for strategy. I decided to stand toe-to-toe and spam Melee Strike. This worked at least as effectively as putting the bleed and stepping back. At no time did I feel like I was in any danger in a one-on-one situation. A few more bad guys joined the fight so I ran away. Line of sight certainly seemed to work here. I ducked down a hill and they couldn't shoot me.
Alas I crashed before I could take on more challenging enemies or duel any players. Certainly my stint against the Tuskens didn't feel exciting or tactical in any way.
There's enough of an improvement here over what we had at the start of the month for me to hold out some hope of getting a passable CU on May 5th. It needs a lot of work though because right now today it looks ugly, sounds ugly and plays boring.
[1] This is comparable to Live in as much as a buffed and armoured master (and you would need buffs to gain 2000 health) faces no challenge at the Fort. It is also different in as much as an unbuffed player does face a challenge, though not an insurmountable one. Fight smart and you will win. Fight stupid and you will lose. Nice criteria for fun in my eyes.
[2] Like the toolbar icons, the state effect indicators are vastly inferior to the high-contrast, clean design of Live. They are too colourful and "busy" and thus hard to read.
[3] Knockdowns tended to work even if the Tuskens would get straight back up again.
First impression was that the UI has been considerably improved over previous attempts. It isn't quite so in-your-face and character names, con shield and HAM bars are a more sensible size. Music too is much improved. The new combat music is nice. Combat sounds are still uniformly terrible but I doubt that these are the final effects.
Toolbar icons are still too large, too colourful, too cartoonish, ugly, out of place, un-Starwarsy and generally awful. They also aren't going anywhere so I sucked it down and spent some time arranging my toolbar to be something close to my Live setup. I grabbed an acid sword and padded armour and headed to Fort Tusken. With Fencer and Bio-Engineer my health was up to 2080; I didn't take any buffs. Grouped with a friend I was combat level 80 which meant that I would theoretically meet little resistance from level 62 Tusken Warlords and their lower level friends[1].
Since the goal of the CU is to provide an exciting and tactical combat system and give players unique roles, I decided to concentrate on using playing the new Fencer hit-and-run style. I used the cripple attack and the bleed attack, and tried to strike and retreat to let my bleed tick. The cripple attack kinda worked. It was hard to tell when I had landed it as the - Snared - message showed up a lot more than the + Snared + one. My opponents did have state effect icons under their HAM bars at the top of the screen but due to a bug they were only partially visible. My own state effect icons were easily seen but were tricky to make out[2]. It was, however, clear when I was bleeding. A fountain of red blobs gushing out of my boots indicated this plainly. What was wrong with the blood droplets raining over my head from Live I don't know.
I did manage to land the cripple and I was able to hit and run. I was also able to land some bleeds. They didn't appear to do much in the way of damage though, and every time I closed in to make another strike I was instantly whacked by the Tusken. I tried the same tactics against several enemies and didn't find much advantage to it. I mixed in a few knockdowns[3] and found them to be much the same as the cripple. I could get in a strike and run away but soon enough I would have to come back and take damage.
So much for strategy. I decided to stand toe-to-toe and spam Melee Strike. This worked at least as effectively as putting the bleed and stepping back. At no time did I feel like I was in any danger in a one-on-one situation. A few more bad guys joined the fight so I ran away. Line of sight certainly seemed to work here. I ducked down a hill and they couldn't shoot me.
Alas I crashed before I could take on more challenging enemies or duel any players. Certainly my stint against the Tuskens didn't feel exciting or tactical in any way.
There's enough of an improvement here over what we had at the start of the month for me to hold out some hope of getting a passable CU on May 5th. It needs a lot of work though because right now today it looks ugly, sounds ugly and plays boring.
[1] This is comparable to Live in as much as a buffed and armoured master (and you would need buffs to gain 2000 health) faces no challenge at the Fort. It is also different in as much as an unbuffed player does face a challenge, though not an insurmountable one. Fight smart and you will win. Fight stupid and you will lose. Nice criteria for fun in my eyes.
[2] Like the toolbar icons, the state effect indicators are vastly inferior to the high-contrast, clean design of Live. They are too colourful and "busy" and thus hard to read.
[3] Knockdowns tended to work even if the Tuskens would get straight back up again.
SomeD00d
Sat Apr 16, 2005 10:31 pm
#4
TKM/Master Fencer/Master Brawler
I wanted to test this unarmored and find out if tka's natural armor works with fencer weapons(it does). I found a group of people that wanted to test taking on a krayt, I joined up with them and we decided to try to take a juvy krayt(level 120 or so) first. There were 8 of us, one of which was a doctor. We find a nice area that has krayts scattered about, the doctor starts the buffing as we spotted a juvy next to a giant canyon krayt. I chose to do this the same way I always try new things, unarmored. After a powerboost I had 5k health, nice I thought. One of our commandos goes out to aggro the juvy away from the giant canyon krayt, successfully bringing it to the rest of us. The combat begins, we did fairly well against the great might of it's 2500 damage hits, bringing it down to half of it's health. I assume it didn't like that so it retreated. We chose to take a moment to rest and heal the damage we had taken. As the doctor was tending to our wounds, the giant canyon krayt(level 340 or so) from before runs towards us and begins attacking. Words cannot describe the carnage that took place. Needless to say, we all died rather quickly from the 10k+ damage this beast did. Want to know the difference between wearing armor and not wearing armor in high level pve?.......about 2 seconds
. To add insult to injury(I think a dev was watching and laughing at our encounter), a drop ship swoops in right above our corpses and drops off several stromtroopers.
Here are some random things I noticed during my playing as a Master Fencer:
1. Bodyhit is pretty much the best attack. It does the most damage and the recovery to use it again is the fastest.
2. Bleedhit is useless as stated earlier in this thread.
3. Hit and Run tactics wasn't my strong point. If the mob you are fighting is lower level than you, just stand and use auto-attack. I realize that the tka's natural armor played a role in this, but if the mob is lower level, it doesn't matter. A Tusken Warlord did 50 damage per hit, missing about a third of the time. That 50 damage regenerates rather quickly with basic or no buffs.
4. I had improved Center of Being, which states that I get a bonus of 500 defese while it's activated. I did notice that I got hit less with it on, but not as much as I would think a 500 bonus would give.
Overall, I don't like the CU changes on TestCenter. I will, however, continue to test fencer and try to learn more of the changes from experience. My biggest problem is the combat level aspect. From what I have seen, a single master combat profession is a waste of skill points in this system. This is because damage mitigation now is directly affected by your overall combat level, and if you're not level 80, you are in trouble if you are looking for a fight. In my opinion, the CU has stripped away the indentities of the professions and merged them into one big mold of combat levels. The CU has taken a great concept of a skill based game, and thrown it out the door to become a level based game. Is balance defined as taking professions that are unique from each other, and merging them all into one category? I certainly hope not.
Before you flame me, please realize that I enjoy learning all aspects of games, from the graphical changes to the core game mechanics of rolling to hit. I continue to test things to find the reasons for changes, the reasons that cause things to work(or in some cases, not work). Also my views on the CU are simply my obsevations and my opinions, you may find the things I don't like about it are things that you do like. So this is all just my 2 cents on the matter, and if it helps anyone in testing, then I'll be happy
.
I wanted to test this unarmored and find out if tka's natural armor works with fencer weapons(it does). I found a group of people that wanted to test taking on a krayt, I joined up with them and we decided to try to take a juvy krayt(level 120 or so) first. There were 8 of us, one of which was a doctor. We find a nice area that has krayts scattered about, the doctor starts the buffing as we spotted a juvy next to a giant canyon krayt. I chose to do this the same way I always try new things, unarmored. After a powerboost I had 5k health, nice I thought. One of our commandos goes out to aggro the juvy away from the giant canyon krayt, successfully bringing it to the rest of us. The combat begins, we did fairly well against the great might of it's 2500 damage hits, bringing it down to half of it's health. I assume it didn't like that so it retreated. We chose to take a moment to rest and heal the damage we had taken. As the doctor was tending to our wounds, the giant canyon krayt(level 340 or so) from before runs towards us and begins attacking. Words cannot describe the carnage that took place. Needless to say, we all died rather quickly from the 10k+ damage this beast did. Want to know the difference between wearing armor and not wearing armor in high level pve?.......about 2 seconds
. To add insult to injury(I think a dev was watching and laughing at our encounter), a drop ship swoops in right above our corpses and drops off several stromtroopers.Here are some random things I noticed during my playing as a Master Fencer:
1. Bodyhit is pretty much the best attack. It does the most damage and the recovery to use it again is the fastest.
2. Bleedhit is useless as stated earlier in this thread.
3. Hit and Run tactics wasn't my strong point. If the mob you are fighting is lower level than you, just stand and use auto-attack. I realize that the tka's natural armor played a role in this, but if the mob is lower level, it doesn't matter. A Tusken Warlord did 50 damage per hit, missing about a third of the time. That 50 damage regenerates rather quickly with basic or no buffs.
4. I had improved Center of Being, which states that I get a bonus of 500 defese while it's activated. I did notice that I got hit less with it on, but not as much as I would think a 500 bonus would give.
Overall, I don't like the CU changes on TestCenter. I will, however, continue to test fencer and try to learn more of the changes from experience. My biggest problem is the combat level aspect. From what I have seen, a single master combat profession is a waste of skill points in this system. This is because damage mitigation now is directly affected by your overall combat level, and if you're not level 80, you are in trouble if you are looking for a fight. In my opinion, the CU has stripped away the indentities of the professions and merged them into one big mold of combat levels. The CU has taken a great concept of a skill based game, and thrown it out the door to become a level based game. Is balance defined as taking professions that are unique from each other, and merging them all into one category? I certainly hope not.
Before you flame me, please realize that I enjoy learning all aspects of games, from the graphical changes to the core game mechanics of rolling to hit. I continue to test things to find the reasons for changes, the reasons that cause things to work(or in some cases, not work). Also my views on the CU are simply my obsevations and my opinions, you may find the things I don't like about it are things that you do like. So this is all just my 2 cents on the matter, and if it helps anyone in testing, then I'll be happy
.
blackgunz
Sat Apr 16, 2005 11:14 pm
#5
Joliq wrote:Anyone got a fencer on TC5? how's it working out?
M fencer, M swords, M brawler, Medic 0040, Pikeman 0030
1 on 1 Duels won: too many to count
1 on 1 Duels lost: 1
start out by doing a parry and intimidate, then armor break, then cripple strike, then bleed strike, then blind strike, then either lunge or switch off between head hit and scatter hit. rinse and repeat untill target is incaped
Marsirion
Sat Apr 16, 2005 11:40 pm
#6
What weapon did you use?
blackgunz wrote:
Joliq wrote:
Anyone got a fencer on TC5? how's it working out?
M fencer, M swords, M brawler, Medic 0040, Pikeman 0030
1 on 1 Duels won: too many to count
1 on 1 Duels lost: 1
start out by doing a parry and intimidate, then armor break, then cripple strike, then bleed strike, then blind strike, then either lunge or switch off between head hit and scatter hit. rinse and repeat untill target is incaped
Rizzaka
Sun Apr 17, 2005 1:20 am
#7
Marsirion wrote:What weapon did you use?
blackgunz wrote:
Joliq wrote:Anyone got a fencer on TC5? how's it working out?
M fencer, M swords, M brawler, Medic 0040, Pikeman 0030
1 on 1 Duels won: too many to count
1 on 1 Duels lost: 1
start out by doing a parry and intimidate, then armor break, then cripple strike, then bleed strike, then blind strike, then either lunge or switch off between head hit and scatter hit. rinse and repeat untill target is incaped
Acid sword i'd think, thats my highest DPS weapon on there.
I'm Fencer/Swords/0404TK/Master Brawler/0010 pikeman (for spin attack)
thats a pretty rocking template, i hate 3 KD's and its nice to keep people on their back
Mcgreag
Sun Apr 17, 2005 7:19 am
#8
SomeD00d wrote:
4. I had improved Center of Being, which states that I get a bonus of 500 defese while it's activated. I did notice that I got hit less with it on, but not as much as I would think a 500 bonus would give.
These 500 defence should not only make them hit you less but also make you take less damage when you are hit as damage is not random anymore, instead it's based on accuracy and defences. If it works as intended needs to be tested.
Message Edited by Mcgreag on 04-17-2005 04:19 PM
blackgunz
Sun Apr 17, 2005 8:26 am
#9
Marsirion wrote:What weapon did you use?
blackgunz wrote:
Joliq wrote:Anyone got a fencer on TC5? how's it working out?
M fencer, M swords, M brawler, Medic 0040, Pikeman 0030
1 on 1 Duels won: too many to count
1 on 1 Duels lost: 1
start out by doing a parry and intimidate, then armor break, then cripple strike, then bleed strike, then blind strike, then either lunge or switch off between head hit and scatter hit. rinse and repeat untill target is incaped
Acid Sword
Fyrre
Sun Apr 17, 2005 9:40 am
#10
did anyone notice if stacking General Melee Speed had any effect? I was thinking of trying this but crash at every try to logon
SomeD00d
Mon Apr 18, 2005 12:01 am
#11
Mcgreag wrote:
SomeD00d wrote:
4. I had improved Center of Being, which states that I get a bonus of 500 defese while it's activated. I did notice that I got hit less with it on, but not as much as I would think a 500 bonus would give.
These 500 defence should not only make them hit you less but also make you take less damage when you are hit as damage is not random anymore, instead it's based on accuracy and defences. If it works as intended needs to be tested.Message Edited by Mcgreag on 04-17-2005 04:19 PM
Went back and tested this. I(ungrouped) took a quenker mission, went out to find that these were quenker ravengers(level 82). Unarmored, I attacked one that I thought was stray from the other 2. Only 2 levels higher than me, I thought, ok this will be fun. This one quenker did 800 damage per hit, 650 with center of being on. Difference between improved cob on and off?.....about 2 exta hits to kill me
. You'll also find that when you die, it isn't from Deathblow, it's almost always triple incap.
NaRfdk
Mon Apr 18, 2005 12:45 am
#12
against pve nothing at all totaly worthless the bleed is slower than the regen of lvl 60 animal, cant say much about pvp havnt triede that yet got so down over the pve that is just logged off.
SomeD00d
Mon Apr 18, 2005 12:47 am
#13
The problems of crashing are keeping me from testing PvP combat.
Page 1 of 2