Murder Night has inspired me to dig out my WE and play around in RvR again.
Alot of people come to WE's expecting them to be the equivalent of WoW's rogue. Sneaking around looking for target to take down behind enemy lines.
The reality is the witchy classes are ill equipped for this role. Specifically they are ill equipped to survive.
I have found that where i find myself most comfortable is operating slightly behind the tanks using stealth to close the gap to any caster who the eb & flow of combat leave isolated before retreating back to my own lines and then attacking any tanks or meele dps behind the tank line until my stealth cooldown is up.
Witchys lack the sort of ability rogues have to escape after their initial burst. Two in particular are sorely missed:
A in combat instant stealth ability (vanish)
A temporary near invulnerability to most ranged dps (cloak of shadows)
The other problem is WaRs battlefields.....
and the problem is exactly that, they are often open fields with very little cover. Scenarios are equally bad at this & sadly 2 of the most often launched ones (Tor Anroc in t3 & Serpents Passage in t4) are bare wastelands.
WoW pvp has alot of problems but they are never short on areas to break LoS.
Rainbow MMO has a nice concise article about the experiences he is having with his own WH in & around keep sieges, and I'm wholly in agreement that they can be a bore. But i feel the situation isn't much better for any of the meele DPS classes.
With the arrival of 2 more medium armored melee classes with he slayer & choppa the situation is only going to get worse.
I feel mythic has 3 options:
1. Fix the Pick Lock ability's.
2. Introduce seige engines beneficial to melee (Siege Towers are my particular choice for this).
3. Give them a AoE mitigation ability.
Id be happy with any of these for my witchy but i wonder which people playing the Ranged DPS classes think is the most reasonable.
This is a crucial issue to fix becuase until mythic do they cannot fix contribution either. The current system as reported by Witches and Wenches although broken is however equal in its unfairness. If contribution was fixed without also fixing the issues melee has in finding a role to play the likelihood is it would be almost impossible for any meele dps to get loot.
Two points:
ReplyDeleteI like the survivability-deficit. It enforces you to think about when and where to attack. No combo can safe you if you act bad. It's something I needed some time to get used to when I play my WH .. I think it's fun to try to kill someone and then run for your life and hope that you've got some attention from your healers ;)
Second:
On our server the melee chars often charge out of the gate and aren't restricted to wait on anything else to happen. So at least in defense melee chars have options. Being (soft) melee in offense is something different..
I'm no fan of picking locks.. A second keep door or orcapults would be more fun than sneaky/rogueish (is this a word? ;)) stuff.
I agree that the most fun would be ladders/siege-towers and counter-equipment to them, but they would be technically difficult and therefore take time.
I'm not sure what you mean with AoE-mitigation ability. Afaik AoE effect can mitigated to some extent e.g. by stacking up some initiative.
i think what you say about survivability is true you have to pick your target very carefully.
ReplyDeleteIn many ways we are very reliant on the performance of other players to create openings, a good tank with a pocket healer is a godsend to a witchy as they break up the enemy line and create openings for you to pounce.
I think that's my problem with the class. I feel sometimes your to dependent on others. Perhaps it becuase my WE generally plays in PuG rather than premades.
As for the whole keep thing, i really don't care what they do as long as something is done, rumors are beginning to surface from NYCC that keeps & forts are getting a big makeover so hopefully that will also solve meeles current problems.