Early Impressions: Power sets

[Nebu]

Any of you have any early feelings on the power sets?  It's a bit overwhelming trying to decide.  Seems that there are 3 categories: Hand-to-hand, magic, and arsenal.  One of the three in each is a heal secondary, the other two support.  Beyond that, It's tough to know what will work best out in the world and in pvp. 

Can you strip skills and relearn new skills or once you pick something are you stuck with it?

[Falconeer]

You are stuck with it, but believe me when I say that progression is ridiculously fast. I am actually worried about how quickly you can "finish" a whole weapon line. And there is only nine.

Also, no idea on sets and builds so far. There were a few OP things but they got nerfed and so lots of confusion about it. Seems like there are so manh combination that everyone is still into figuring out sinergies exploits, and hoping they won't get nerfed fixed too soon.

personally I am investing in one weapon and keeping all the points until I start feeling ineffective, at which point I'll invest wisely based on what I feel I'm missing. But be careful, there's a cap of SP points you can save, I think it's 50.

[Amaron]

Getting the first spammable AoE in blade seems really useful.   It builds resources and hits everything around you and can give you a hot.   I've mostly been leveling elemental but it feels pretty blah so far.

[Tyrnan]

If you go to your faction's training room you should be able to refund any points you spend there until you leave. It's not much but it'll let you at least get an idea if you like an ability before committing to it.

As for weapon combos, I've been doing very nicely with hammer/fist. Single target builder from hammer (with weaken from a passive), blast finishers from both it and fists, Stonewalled, Nurture and the passive that gives a stacking HoT on attack plus the HoT on penetrate from blades. There's more that I can't remember right now but that's a pretty solid base for early Kingsmouth. I'm also working on an affliction build using Ele/Blood for when I need ranged damage or come up against physical resistant mobs.

[Dark_MadMax]

Being OCD number junkie I ran some extensive DPS tests on testlive  using FATE's green QL10s and pretty much dps wise best builds come within 100 dps of each other ( 500-640). Which is actually not that much considering there are many other factors in combat beside dummy dps.  BTW best builds so far are either multhit proc based ( 550ish but very easy to use and ranged) either consumer based ( fast resource builders + all % dmg boosts for consumers and weapon lines - those can spike to 650ish). I also completed every elite dungeon in beta and really you need ranged dps if you are dps. As a tank you can go pretty much anything which is tanky(defensive cd, hate consumers), personally I prefer blade/chaos, but you can go pretty much one survival weapon line+anything.

You can actually unlock every single skill so I wouldnt worry too much about "gimping" - you never gimp , but explore  possibilities :). For begginners blades are solid choice - great for soloing ,easy tanking . U can do blade +one another consumer from other line for long time

[Falconeer]

Also, by being able to get every skill you are technically never nerfed. They screw with your build? Ok, let's just make another one right away. You can go FOTM at any given point if you feel like it.

[Nebu]

Early on I'm wondering what the point of being ranged is.  Mobs are on you so fast that it really doesn't seem to matter.  I'm guessing that it's a much different story in pvp and the late game?

[Dark_MadMax]

Early on I'm wondering what the point of being ranged is.  Mobs are on you so fast that it really doesn't seem to matter.  I'm guessing that it's a much different story in pvp and the late game?

Yah early one being ranged doesnt give you much. Point is in dungeons you dance around evading circles and cones constantly and mobs are on tank who is typically moves boss around all over the place (many boss have "need to move him there" mechanic). If you are melee your uptime on target is abysmal

PvP wise .... well pvp is garbage :) But really ranged aoe has obvious advantages especially in laggy clusterfucks. Though tanky melee  builds with lots of CC and pbaoe have its place in pvp, possibly even on top of the food chain ATM.

[Falconeer]

Kiting is as useful as in any other game, there's plenty of big, slow mobs you want to draw circles around.
That is even more obvious due to the "attack designated area" effects from mobs, which kindly suggest to get away from them.

[palmer_eldritch]

Early on I'm wondering what the point of being ranged is.  Mobs are on you so fast that it really doesn't seem to matter.  I'm guessing that it's a much different story in pvp and the late game?

You'll sometimes find you need to move away from mobs because they are about to do a nasty AOE. If both your weapons are close range, this can mean you actually have to stop damaging them and wait for the AOE to finish. If you are able to shoot them instead while they do their move (which usually means they are rooted for a second or two as well), it's nice.

Mobs also sometimes do dash attacks where they move away from you (assuming you got out of the way - otherwise they dash into you and knock you down).

Do get a second weapon as soon as possible. You will definitely be stronger with two than with one. Apart from anything else, the attacks which "builds 1 resource" usually do it for both weapons, so you can then use two "consumes all resources" abilities if you have two weapons equipped.

[Surlyboi]

I've been having a lot of solo success with pistol/elemental. I'm almost all the way to Gunslinger status at this point.

[Segoris]

I think one of the best tips is to find what passives work across specs (such as pistol's +10% crit when you hinder a target)

As for sets, I think shotgun/hammer or shotgun/chaos for tank, rifle/fists for healer, sword/blood or elem/pistol for dps are pretty easy and basic. Otherwise, hit N and on the left side of the screen there are decks that can give you some basic setups to aim for (and some badass clothing)

As for range vs melee - range is much easier in pve and even in pvp with the right range spec it makes life a bit easier in most of the areas of these battle grounds (melee have it a little easier in stonehenge then they do elsewhere, but otherwise I find it easier on range).

[Riggswolfe]

Am I hallucinating or are the decks unique across factions? Also, it seems like pistol decks are rare...

[Amaron]

Am I hallucinating or are the decks unique across factions? Also, it seems like pistol decks are rare...

The clothing and the setups are different.  Templars don't have an ele/blade setup for instance.

[trias_e]

I was trying Pistol/Blood, and while I think it could be an amazing pure healer choice, I was underwhelmed with it for offensive purposes.  It probably gets better later on.  It's really hard to say how the power sets really are until you actually start unlocking the deeper skills and creating legit builds, which you can't do for quite a while (sadly).

Anyways, I've since switched to Shotgun/Blood which I think is somewhat better.  Buckshot+Finisher is good single target DPS.  I've got a penetrate/impair/barrier build lined up that I'm hoping will be incredibly survivable and very effective.

[palmer_eldritch]

Am I hallucinating or are the decks unique across factions? Also, it seems like pistol decks are rare...

I think some factions even have different decks using the same weapons. Eg (off the top of my head because I am not in-game at the moment) one faction might have a fist/assault deck for healing and another might have a fist/assault deck for DPS. Same weapons but different abilities used.

[Falconeer]

Only the rewards are unique. The outfits you get. So if me (Templar) and you (Illuminati) have the same identical set of Actives and Passives, the same deck, I might get a reward and you don't (or the opposite).

But efficience-wise, they are absolutely the same. So yeah, different factions reward different decks/sets. But you can still obviously have the same "deck", just not the Deck Outfit (Reward).

[Lantyssa]

I think one of the best tips is to find what passives work across specs (such as pistol's +10% crit when you hinder a target)

This is highly important.  If a passive isn't tied to a specific skill, it can be used even if you are not using the weapon line it came from.

For example, Lick Your Wounds gives you a passive HoT for a 1 point investment in Fist.

[Amaron]

I found this somewhere so cut and paste:

Inner wheel
2 cells per weapon
19 AP per cell

Outer wheel
6 cells per weapon
169 AP per cell

Miscellaneous abilities
3 categories, 7 abilities per category
Unknown AP cost and distribution inner/outer
These are ignored in the calculations below

Single weapon
Inner wheel: 14 abilities, 38 AP
Outer wheel: 42 abilities, 1,014 AP
Total: 56 abilities, 1,052 AP

All weapons
Inner wheel: 126 abilities, 342 AP
Outer wheel: 378 abilities, 9,126 AP
Total: 504 abilities, 9,468 AP

The AP must really flow in later.

[Falconeer]

Total: 504 abilities, 9,468 AP

 

And I felt grand for earning 7 AP at once when turning in the PvP quest.

[tmp]

Early on I'm wondering what the point of being ranged is.  Mobs are on you so fast that it really doesn't seem to matter.  I'm guessing that it's a much different story in pvp and the late game?

A number of active 'elite skills' (the yellow border, last ability you buy from the basic set) put either root or snare on the mobs. There's also some other skills which cause either knockback to the target, or send your own character backward. Overall that means you can spend decent part of the fights out of melee range, but still able to deal damage if you have a ranged weapon.

[Falconeer]

Yeah, like in SWTOR, if you are a melee you should equip yourself with gap-closers and with on-hit snares to prevent enemies from getting away from you. Vicious.

[palmer_eldritch]

So what power sets are people using?

I'm going for a hammer & shotgun DPS build using some passives from the elemental tree too (the ones involving critical hits and strike attacks). The aim is to use "strike" attacks and a range of passive skills which boost your crit chance and crit damage, so that I'm consistently doing massive crits. Don't know if that's actually feasible but I'll find out. I'll also be applying weakness (reducing the mob's damage output), to increase survivability.

Then I aim to get some chaos magic skills to create a chaos/hammer tank (giving bonuses to both block and evade from the QL weapon skills) as well as pistol skills, so that I have a pistol/elemental glass cannon for PvP zergfests.

[Falconeer]

I am building a Puritan (Shotgun/Hammer) for the outfit at the moment, so more than being efficient I am focusing on getting there as soon as possible. THEN I'll work on a better build. But I must say, even without paying too much attention to everything, and only with skills from the Shotgun and Hammer trees, I am more than satisfied with my solo playing so far. It's mostly based on penetration, which cascades in more penetration with every penetrated hit. Fascinating.

That said, I love our basic weakening shotgun attack which stacks up to ten times for a massive 30% damage debuff to all monsters (bosses too). I really like that I have to choose how to build my finishers, if by using the strike attack which generates the penetration cascading effect, or weakening the mob to make it pretty harmless.

[Rasix]

Seems like hammer/shotgun is pretty popular with us.  Can't see I've seen in a lot walking around.

I'm going for the bodyguard outfit at the moment and have been pretty hammer focused only using one active shotgun skill.  I do need a gap closer or ranged pull at some point, but I haven't felt the need yet.  I haven't even put together a tank build yet, mostly focused on my own mob clearing proficiency.

[Falconeer]

See, opposite for me. I have 6 active shotgun ones so far, and only 1 hammer. It's amazing how different characters can be even with the same weapons setup. And that's only going to get crazier the more skills we unlock.

Also, of course they are popular! The shotgun's sounds are really satisfying. And big giant hammers, what's not to love?

[Rasix]

Right now I'm using a section of pipe for a hammer.    It sure is a lot more visceral than swords, that's for sure. 

[HaemishM]

There are definitely different faction builds. I went blade/chaos when I played Dragon for a little bit in beta. During release, I wanted the same thing, only with Templars and there is no corresponding deck. I'm not sure if I like chaos on the Templar side. It feels different somehow. (Either that or I'm misremembering the magic skill I took during beta).

[Riggswolfe]

Right now I'm doing mostly Shotgun/Elementalism. My build right now tears single targets up and I can generally kill in AOE pretty well too. That said I really, really need a self heal or for my wife to heal me more.

I've experimented a bit with sword/AR on my Illuminati and it is very,very satisfying. I AOE like a mad man and still hardly get hurt due to self healing.

[Lantyssa]

Lick Your Wounds passive from Fist.  It's a start at least.

[Riggswolfe]

Lick Your Wounds passive from Fist.  It's a start at least.

Alright. I bought it and equipped it. We'll see how helpful it is. :)

[Falconeer]

Wow. It helps a lot. Thanks for the tip!

[Amaron]

Is there a way to guarantee penetration hits?  Elemental has a couple things to allow you guaranteed crits but I haven't seen anything similar for penetration.

[tmp]

There's something like 40% penetration buff in the basic shotgun skillset (that's group-wide iirc) but i don't remember anything fully guaranteed. That is not to say it isn't there -- i didn't look too much into the outer wheel skills, and it's quite possible there's something to such effect either in shotgun or blade skillsed (since those seem to be oriented the most towards penetration)

[Lantyssa]

Blood (maybe Fist) has a penetration boosting power of +30 for each stack of affliction done.  Only useful for DoT builds, but quite handy if applicable.