Question as to progression

Hi everyone,

I try to play the game but always get stuck with which way to progress.

So my question is if you were to start from scratch which skills would you take for combat? Ranged or melee or magic?

My problem is I would like a set path that would help me progress to see the higher tier content with minor issues.

Can anyone help? Thank you

 

In general, what skill do you enjoy using: Melee, Ranged or Magic?

 

Tamer/bard will allow you to kill powerful things quicker than most other build. And you can use just about anything with it, so it's a great thing to level up with.

 

As Adam said, tamer + anything pretty much now. Tamed pets can be very powerful for the amount of xp spent, particularly if you specialise. Slap on a necklace and sit back and watch pet destroy things. That isn't to say that high level taming doesn't require gear and finesse, just its got a much much lower barrier to entry and doesn't require much in the way of gear to be powerful (compared to other skills). Bard is similar in that it doesn't really get any increased power from equipment (other than a couple of specific gems/artis) so for the most part its just learn and go. Almost anything else you choose - ranged, magic, melee - is going to require much higher skil/xp investment and a lot more thought about gearing.

As for the ranged, melee, magic question - this is largely a personal choice. Almost anything can be viable/effective, certain things are more so - it largely depends on what you want to play. Fire mages, tamers, and strength-based/lots-of-stacked-buffs-melee are more universally capable of killing things than other builds at the moment, from my observation. Pretty much everywhere you go to group nowadays, at least half the group are tamers because its a lot more 'bang for your buck' xp/gear wise than anything else atm. And in terms of being able to solo the biggest thing with the least amount of effort/gear - they are a clear winner. But, you sacrifice the necklace slot, you sacrifice a lot of gear slots to have gear that buffs the pet, there's costs involved in either taming or buying the pet(which must be replaced if you don't rez it), and there's consumables/foods/gear for the pet as well to get it to "that level". Pretty much, the pet is your weapon, and your character is like, a chaperone. :x

Magic in general is more costly to play, not only in reagents burned, but gearing a mage requires a lot of more expensive artifacts to get to the level where you are "competitive" than other choices. You have to focus a single element for the most part, because of the gear limitations with attunement, and almost all high end content is extremely magic resistant, with high end scenes like the breach having mobs that completely shut down mages (complete immunity). Unless you spec fire, with its resistance stripping and dots, you will run into a lot of areas where you simply cannot get things dead effectively with other magic, even with absurd levels/gear. That's not to say mage isn't "good" - its just got more limits than melee/ranged - since physical damage pretty much hurts anything. It hurts some things more than others, of course, but I've never run across anything that couldn't be killed by shooting, bashing, or stabbing it.

Once you've chosen your primary damage type (physical/weapon or magic/element), you gear and level the crap out of it. Weapons vary in technique, build, and style - my best advice would be to find what you like, and focus on it. Bludgeon is more about stunning/knocking things down, sword and spear both have bleed type attacks, sword has a powerful finisher in coup de grace and spear has more critical damage passives and cc like roots, knockdown, etc. There are many schools of thought re: archery, but in general, it plays similarly to melee just you can stand further away and you need arrows, and has debuff/slow shots to facilitate kiting things. This is a very very high level summary without a lot of nuance, I really do recommend experimenting with things and figuring out what suits you. Once you have a better idea of what direction you want to go, talk to the experts of those particular builds to learn about essential buffs, deck setup, gear requirements, etc.

 

Thank you for your responses.

I have tried most things and my xp seems to be everywhere at the moment in terms of investment. I do like fast paced combat as I felt bard with atonal was a bit slow to get going for me.

I will try tamer and see the compliment with bard.

Perhaps this is both the beauty and negative of open system. It can be daunting which path to choose as it requires more investment to "try" other paths which may or may not work out for you

 

@Chubbles , skills and experimenting in skills to see what best suites you is all about aquiring exp, lots and lots of it. To get lots of exp you need friends or an attentive guild to invite you into higher content.

I know there are many who may not want you in their hunting party "being new and all", but those are just the greedy, self centered, loner scallywags of we who play.

So, finding who you wish to play with and who wishes to play with you then fullfills the experimental desires where all skill experiments can be made from.

When you see others using a way of skill play you like, then copying your friend is the best way to finding a skill build happiness.

Seeking happy friends is best!

Then all happy skills will follow

We all want to hunt alone sometimes, but follow that path with those enjoying who you are to find what looks fun to you! ~Time Lord~

 

I’m far from an expert as I need to get into combat skill progression more seriously myself. I can say though, that I think the system is kind of designed so you can try just about everything with relative ease and worry more about specializing as you hit various softcaps.

 

I think all that is very true.

What I find is there comes a time when the fingers find a dance they want to do, which then translates into the skills those finger dance move make becoming what we most want to "play as".

Most of my characters transition into what they finally become, even moving through some later unwanted skills, which had seemed to have worked well in their begining. Some have even transitioned out and back into the same skills much later, having learned more from how others have used them.

I keep my eye on those here in our forums that seem to do very well and listen to what they have to say about what they're doing and how they're doing it. I find that just as facinating and entertaining as actually playing the game.

I've been here forever, but there are and have been so many players here that have always been much more talented than I could ever be. But, sometimes I get lucky and what they've done then fits nicely into what I can do or what dance moves my fingers want to do.

The transitions of our characters are facinating!
~Time Lord~