Glyph/Deck Feedback

I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off...

"I do enjoy the card combat!" But it will take some more time getting use to...
Standing in one place empties focus and invites heavy damage. Yet if I just run back and forth and all around, I almost never use that amount of focus I have and most times only uses 10-20% of my focus per... let's say an elf. When I'm standing still, I'm only looking at the cards and when I'm running, I'm glancing at the cards and using them allot less, just auto striking while passing and then adding a second hit during the same pass using the cards. I'm not getting hit as much while running around "in constant motion", but it does get tiring... not to my character, but to me holding the mouse.


"Card Amounts"
I don't think there is a reason to play with only 4 cards, because that cuts out all the of the focus tree, so any player "must use at least 5 cards". I don't lock any cards and I'm not using armor when I'm in my fun character deck build.
In the pole arms, I have noticed that (so far) it makes little difference if I'm using a weapon that does 13 damage (one handed spear) or if I'm using a 2 handed pole arm. All the critters seem to go down just as fast with both.

"Checking the Tank Out"
I'm off now to see how heavy I can make a heavy and compare...
~Time Lord~

 

Ok, so I have spent the last 6 hours PvPing.

Noticed some things.

Mellee seems a little buggy on auto attacks.

Apart from that for my deck I only use 5 slots, with all up only 20 skills (individual glyphs). That mix seems to ensure you get what you need. You gotta invest in focus so you can get the pull time quick and discard time down. Cant mash your buttons.

I used range - spells only due to my latency and my problems seemed to go. If struggling use a staff to start with and get the hang of the cards. We are all at The Brave Coast if you want to practice getting the hang of your deck.

 

Heavy is better though otherwise nobody would have ever made it, or ever worn it. You really can't cast spells or move stealthily in heavy armor though. So wizards and rogues will not use it. However, don't you think everybody who is a warrior should be using heavy armor? It doesn't make sense that they wear anything less than at least chainmail.

People who want to cast spells or people interested in moving stealthily would consider the lighter armor already. If anything the balance tends toward light armor already.

 

Maybe its just because I am new to the game and need to do alot more reading on the glyph system but in all honesty and I am not trying to start a war or anything but I just dont seen the reason for it or really or how it makes sense.
Not to say that I am not willing to live within the constraints of it but I just do see the reasoning behind it.

If its trying to force players to not just mash buttons, ok fine but why? If I were some monster hunting battlemage in real life(how awesome would that be!) why would my skills or spells only be available to me in some random order? I mean is there lore behind this? What am I missing?

And ok so you allow players to lock their bar if they want a more classical set up but then you penalize them? Why?
It all just smacks of here is this novel little system we thought up and we are gonna force you to use it or you will be so crippled that you wont be able to compete if not.

Being a LONG TIME Magic the Gathering nerd I can see the coolness of having some sort of deck building in this game and it might even serve in some kind of metagame way I dont know. It just doesnt seem to make sense from a practical standpoint to me i guess. At least not yet. Maybe that will change but that is my honest feeling on it so far.

 

Plate Build is viable there are a couple of dudes kicking around whacking out 70hp crit

 

Give it some time it is functional. Although I think they really need to tweak it and use what worked good in R8. The more this system limits us the less fun it will be.

 

Guys come to The Brave Coast, we been doing ALOT of testing. The deck system is really cool, its just getting the knack of it and starting from a simple build that works then moving up

 

Thanks guys. I will try and find my way there tonight.
I am willing to give it time as I dont have much choice and if you can show me how to make it work and seem like it makes sense then I am all for it.

My main question was really why? haha Why would my skills me available to me in random order? Is it a lore thing? If not then why.

I do appreciate the help though and I will take you up on it sn0tub.
Is that down on the SE edge of the map? I am not real familiar with the map yet.

 

No. If I am to really test this system, I should be able to come up with a reasonable build myself. If there is a difficult learning curve, or we need to refer to a wiki to "optimize" our deck then maybe the system needs to become more user friendly. So just because "some" people have figured it out because they collaborated, doesn't mean this system is going to be good for a newbie to the game trying to do this all on his own.

Remember when people play this game for the first time after the release of the game, they won't be able to adjust all their skills like we do now. If this system is too complicated then there is a problem, and we need to give them good feedback. Right now this system is really complex. Don't tell me it isn't, because it is clear it is. If some people have optimized their decks to get a 70 crit that's great but how much mixing and matching and group collaboration had to happen for them to get there?

The truth is we have no idea what these skills do until after we pick them up and test them out. How will this work for a new player post release?

EDIT: Are we here to play and have fun only, or are we here to test it? It would be nice to have fun but lets test it. I'll tell you one thing, the guys who do 70crits will be having fun but the new players who don't will not be.

 

I have no problem with "optimized" decks. There should be a way to get the most out of what you want to accomplish, but for the beginner who knows nothing about slugs, how on earth will they ever figure out why they have slugs or not? I'm talking basics here. Imagine you haven't been discussing these features for many months, and also had some practice in R8. This is your first weekend playing, do you think you would be able to build a fantastic deck?

(Now, imagine if you couldn't mix and match and adjust the skills at will) This is more than deck optimization that is at stake here. The newbie will be at a considerable disadvantage, and be at risk of being even more upset they bought the game than any of us who are complaining about these issues.

 

I think you are over reacting just a bit.

The system isn't going to be presented like this when the game goes live, there will be help topics and info for each skill that currently is not up to standards. By all means test the system and make suggestions but don't make it sound as if it is the end of the world.

 

Good point too.
I have currently just using all locked because the other was just too random for my tastes, at least just to get in and run around last night like I had planned with limited time.

Tonight I was going to give the whole combat part more attention.
I think you are right there whole system not just the randomness but the skills/spell system is very confusing on just an initial look.
It didnt take long for me to decide, ok I know what these 5 things do so I am going to just use them.
I would say that is not a good thing.

 

Look at the start I was uber frustrated. Couldnt do anything. So I started tinkering, met some other dudes who wanted to tinker.

We went to a PvP zone and tinkered...for HOURS, its an alpha its never going to be smooth sailing.

Spells and a staff is the easiest way to get around how it works. From there you slowly work yourself into the build you want

But first y ou gotta work out how you wanna play your deck, what works for you and what doesnt. It all takes time. So use the alpha to smash it out.

Im glad its hard, its so much more rewarding when it comes together.

Wait till you see what Timelord does with his build, Grub and Jake's devastating plate builds, Alth owning you with his fire ely, Carlin Archer kiting you around the damn battlefield. Best thing is no one is roflstomping anyone.

The decks really bring in a random element to the fight! And what works for some doesnt work for another. Just gotta nut it out!

 

I like to keep an open mind. Just because it is there doesn't mean it is right. Lifeforms can adapt to the environment. Genetics proves this. Just because we are presented with a system doesn't mean we have to adapt to it. Why not break it down and analyze it and try to figure out if there is a better way.

If people didn't change their way of doing things then we wouldn't be using computers today. Sure let's adapt to things that we cannot change, like nature, and the laws of physics. However this combat system can change. I would rather it would evolve rather than me having to adapt to something that I am not finding very enjoyable. I have no problem adapting and meeting half way.

 

Haha nut it out! I like that!
I plan on playing a battlemage sort of. Mainly he is all about the blades, two handed only with just enough magic to use as a blast when needed to do some extra damage or to give himself some space to fight if needed. Maybe a fireball or lightening spell or something as well. And a full compliment of healing spells.
In all honesty I will probably focus on potions and herbal stuff if its possible to do a lot but we will see.

So I would be interested in learning the blade build to see if I can edit it and throw in some healing and offensive magic on a limited basis.

 

I honestly don't have the energy to spend hours to toy around with it in this release. Some people are playing this all day long with their buddies mixing and matching skills until they get the right combination of skills, and they have their buddies to test all this stuff out on each time they modify their skills.

sure the people who sit out on the coast are going to have more optimized decks. There was a lot to process in this release. I think it does take a team of people to figure it all out. The problem is, I am very analytical and I can reason through complex strategies rather well. So the fact that I am not able to come up with a deck I like on my own is a problem, and I don't think that falls all on me. There is so much to process, and so much field testing is needed to even know if the skills you picked are even good, I'm finding it exhausting doing this on my own. It takes a hell of a lot of work to come up with a build, then go test it to see if it works.

Keep this in mind too. How many people would give feedback like this when they know they are opening themselves up to looking like a fool because others can figure it out? I'm offering this feedback knowing full well that people will be saying stuff like "Oh if you're having problems it is because you just don't know how to optimize your deck."

I know I'm having problems optimizing my deck. I'm not a stupid idiot though either. People can call me what they like, but I'm giving honest feedback here. The answer "Oh if you're having problems creating a good deck it is your fault you don't know how to optimize your deck," will not be a good answer to a newbie when this game is released. SO it needs to get resolved.

Keep this in mind too. ANY DECK WORKS FOR PVE!
My decks work fine for PvE (But PvE is easy you can use any deck regardless of slugs in PvE)

Trying to make a competitive PvP deck is extremely difficult in this release. How long have the people on the coast been fighting and how many times have they modified their decks? Check the statistics and see if I'm right. I bet they have modified their decks many times over.

If your only response to me is "stop saying the world is ending" then you are proving my point, because you cannot argue the points I am making.

 

1. We are all PvPers
2. Without all the information present to you, its pretty damn hard to be analytical. On release we are going to have the data and then its just a matter of making up spread sheets and trial and error. Honestly it takes a day.
3. What the guys realised was is you need the strength buffs for the big two hander hits

If you dont want to work it out then dont whinge that you arent roflstomping content. It is good that we have a game that you cant just dominate in a a couple of minutes.

Here is my build:

Dodgy Dan

Blade
2 x thrust
1 x double slash
4 x rend
5 x vital points
5 x blade speed


Light Armour
1 x Dodge
3 x Swiftness
5 x Acrobatics

Tactics
1 x OH Attack
1 x brawl
3 x trip

Fire
2 x flame fist
2 x fire arrow
5 x Highly Flammable

Focus
1 x Higher Conc
3 x concentration
5 x mental reflec
1 x quick swappiong
5 x heightened awareness
5 x Inner Calm

Life
5 x Healing Touch
5 Life Power

Deck
5 Hand Size
Draw Speed Fastest
Discard Speed Medium

Glyphs
Double Slash
2 x fire arrow
2 x flame fist
5 x healing touch
1 x OH attack
4 x rend
2 x thrust
3 x trip

So you wanna dart in and out putting up your dots. Combine Trip with Rend gives you another dot.

Stay mobile break off n heal then come back in for the fight

 

Also get these weapons (easy to get some people might have extras)

Bludgeon: Lich's Axe
Blades: Skull Sword, Jewelled Longsword.
There will be other good ones Im sure people will list them and where they got it from - I was lucky and got given

 

I'm glad you like your build. I don't think I'm interested in PvP in this game at this point. It is too much work.

I'm also thinking of future releases too. Imagine when item damage comes on line, and even more skills come out. This game is really complex, and we have so many things to manage.

We will have to eat. We will have to repair our gear. We will have to make money. We will have to optimize our decks. This seems like a lot of work and it seems like this is headed toward being the most complex game I've ever played. I would rather there be character classes at this point.

EDIT: WoW may have been one of the most annoying games of all time, but one thing they did do well, was have skill trees that made sense. You knew what they would do just by reading the description. You knew how they would function. SotA requires trial and error, and you don't really know what a skill will do until after you use it in combat.

 

I have skull swords, and jewelled longswords.