f13.net

I tried playing my Necro/War today and got a new sword, but even with a new sword and swordsmanship on 11 I hit for 6-9 damage at L20. I tried a elementalist/ranger from L1 and at L8 with 5 points in marksmanship and a pretty nice bow, the wand I found hits harder than his bow. It really seems they are forcing characters into narrow specializations to me and the secondary pick is going to be of limited use, or at least the melee secondarys.

Kind of disappointed at the moment, I was enjoying mixing and matching secondaries, looks like only a few will be viable now.

I don't think skills like marksmenship, hammer mastery, etc. actually increase damage. Even strength I'm not sure increased damage. I had 12 strength on my warrior and as far as I could tell it didn't do much for me. It pretty much all depends on the damage listed on the weapon and what mob you were fighting (because of their armor).

Those skills are listed as requirements on weapons.  For example you need X marksmenship to wield this bow. However, I can still wield a bow that is +4 marksmenship with 0 marksmenship. I had a +7 tactics shield and it works fine with no tactics. And then what happens when you're on a no tactics character? Seems I can still use the shield.

What happens is you do a ton less damage if you don't have the requirement.  I had a 9 hammer req rams hammer and i used it with 8 skill until i leveled, the damage pretty much doubled once i reached the req skill lvl.

I had a high damage sword and the skill to use it but it was that damn Riverside mission where all the guards cast the watch yourself buff, which appears to stack and adds a ton of ac. I augmented my sword for fire damage and it started doing decent damage again as it seems ac only protects against physical damage. I still think the progressivly higher skill requirements kind of spoil playing with multiple skills though as it means melee/caster combos are going to be weaker. I found a nice sheild that I barely have the tactics for. any more and I wouldnt be able to use it. As it is I had to dump death magic on my necro/war as I needed the points elsewhere. It looks like with the new spell set up, a pure 1 skill caster will be a lot more powerful than one who trys to have a few skills going. We got owned by a mage casting fire rain, it did humongous damage I can only assume was bumped up by maxed fire skill.

I have fire maxed (9 atm) on my warrior elemental and firestorm does 23 dmg/sec for 10 seconds. There is another spell, meteor storm, does something like 104 dmg/sec for 10 seconds.

I'm thinking maybe the spell that the mesmers get that explodes an enemy enchantment (?) might be good against the warrior monks. I did a 4x4 random PvP battle last night and all 4 of the other team were warrior monks. Suffice to say we lost.

Yeah someone with a break enhancement and someone with a break hex is absolutely essential to have in group pvp.  A mesmer supplementary assist would be a really amazing character.