Originally posted by Blacknd

Originally posted by Krytycal

Chaos will be pretty much mandatory for any build once people realize how good it is.

Hm? The best Chaos abilities I've heard of were role-specific or objective-specific. They do have some phenomenal PvP abilities, though.

They have the best mitigation out of any weapon, Evasion >> Defense >>>> Block. In addition, they get two of them. If you chain Illusion + Smoke and Mirrors you get 18 seconds of the best mitigation in the game. If you use them both at the same time, you get complete immunity to both damage and CC for nearly 10 seconds. Throw in Immutable when you're about to die for shits and giggles. That leaves you 4 abilities for DPS which is enough to DPS as hard as anyone else.

Keep in mind Chaos mostly shines in challenging situations though (ie. dungeons, PvP), regular PvE is so ridiculously easy you can complete 99% of it without popping a single cooldown.

Which weapon can spam those big blue hammers at range? i recall getting completely destroyed by those a few times

Originally posted by Krytycal

Originally posted by Blacknd

Originally posted by Krytycal

Chaos will be pretty much mandatory for any build once people realize how good it is.

Hm? The best Chaos abilities I've heard of were role-specific or objective-specific. They do have some phenomenal PvP abilities, though.

 

They have the best mitigation out of any weapon, Evasion >> Defense >>>> Block. In addition, they get two of them. If you chain Illusion + Smoke and Mirrors you get 18 seconds of the best mitigation in the game. If you use them both at the same time, you get complete immunity to both damage and CC for nearly 10 seconds. Throw in Immutable when you're about to die for shits and giggles. That leaves you 4 abilities for DPS which is enough to DPS as hard as anyone else.

Keep in mind Chaos mostly shines in challenging situations though (ie. dungeons, PvP), regular PvE is so ridiculously easy you can complete 99% of it without popping a single cooldown.

Ah yes. Evasion. I remembered hearing about it being the king of mitigation in the game so far.

I don't entirely expect it to become mandatory for PvP or even tanking, but if it does, I fully expect it to get nerfed until you feel like there are other choices again.

Elementalist's using thor's hammer, coupled with shotgun penetration bonus and the instant builder for elementalism that adds guaranteed crit, with ql 2 gear you can nuke for over 1200 dmg, ouch. In response to sword's being the flav, I don't think that's true. There are a lot of blades out there, but that's because they add soloability. Using hammer / sword is a pretty good tank build, but hammer / shotty / chaos would make you a much more powerful melee character, but you would have to rely on a healer to build your hp back up. Since most ppl didn't have time to think about making to builds in the beta, they wouldn't have a solo tank build along with a kick ass uber tank or dps tank build that would rock in pvp if you had a good team. Blade's will die after people get passed their need to solo out stronger more specialized builds.

Originally posted by Crisazgo

Which weapon can spam those big blue hammers at range? i recall getting completely destroyed by those a few times

That would be the elementalist (Thor's Hammer).

Little secret: That skill really isn't that good. There are better options for burst, that require less resources and don't have a cooldown. To make Thor's Hammer a really viable choice, you generally have to sacrifice additional skill slots. For a skill that doesn't hit that much harder than the next highest damage dealer, it's not a very good trade-off.

- back on topic:

I went mostly ranged. I was in the middle of working on a melee build when I ran out of time / AP. Got a ranged ele build that works really well, and an AoE build that surprisingly isn't all that useful in Fusang, but works great in PvE. I was really unimpressed with the benefits of AoE in PvP. There are massive zergs of players, but even still the range on most of the AoE is short enough where you still don't hit enough people to really make it viable.

I've seen some really good melee builds, but they are tricky to make. If you want to PvP at all you need to factor in a certain amount of survivability or you'll get rocked fast. Even most tanks I faced I could stun / burst before they could do much of anything.

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

What do you prefer in this game?

Honestly, I don't.    I'm not so good at making ranged builds yet.   So I'm better at the blade/blood build I found.   But once I get some good ranged combos, it'll be fine.

Originally posted by aesperus

Originally posted by Crisazgo

Which weapon can spam those big blue hammers at range? i recall getting completely destroyed by those a few times

That would be the elementalist (Thor's Hammer).

Little secret: That skill really isn't that good. There are better options for burst, that require less resources and don't have a cooldown. To make Thor's Hammer a really viable choice, you generally have to sacrifice additional skill slots. For a skill that doesn't hit that much harder than the next highest damage dealer, it's not a very good trade-off.

15 second cooldown but on crit it does 2k + damage or will take half the HPs off a DPS class. The only downside is slowdown to movement and it seems to have a long cast time.

Ranged is better, it does the same damage, there are skills without the slowdown to movement so you can kite, you don't give up anything for being ranged. In instances you can avoid a lot of damage by staying away from the boss or shoot at point blank. 

In SWTOR people loved ranged because it did the same DPS as melee but was much safer, risk vs reward.

In TSW ranged does the same damage as melee,

unlike SWTOR ranged doesn't have a cast time so is just like a melee.

ranged can shoot at a 180 degree arc. so they can start at ranged then strafe at full run speed while shooting

ranged have the same defense as melee

ranged get more snares than melee

PvP is zerg vs zerg and ranged gets blown up last

If you are DPS there is no reason not to be ranged. 

I find ranged a bit superfluous. EVERY mob is toe to toe with you in 1 sec. If you have a slow down in 2-3 secs. Just my 5 ct. Take one or two ranged attacks as openers, but focus on melee. Ideally AOE melee since many mobs are grouped.

I like a bit of both really...

Mainly cencentrate on ranged then melee..

Went fists and ele with a defensive build and self heals, sinergized around affliction, using a blood passive to stack a penetration buff. Went in with the defensive armor. I've killed anyone 1 vs 1, not joking, sometimes i've killed even packs of 2 alone. Crowd control is a problem tho.

Also tanked one of those Golems in Fusang easily (with outside heals but no dedicated healers). Yea, you need to be in melee range but i found the build very very strong, especially because i know i am terrible in pvp.

Originally posted by Elikal

I find ranged a bit superfluous. EVERY mob is toe to toe with you in 1 sec. If you have a slow down in 2-3 secs. Just my 5 ct. Take one or two ranged attacks as openers, but focus on melee. Ideally AOE melee since many mobs are grouped.

Why? ranged does just as well at point blank as melee. Someone forgot to test the combat.  Also, if you can move and shoot, 1/2 the mobs will wiff most attacks. Is broken right now, if the game released in a year it could be fixed but today in closed beta it is a mess.

This is one game where melee does not seem to be disadvantaged vs. enemies because most of the time you are going to be fighting in melee range anyway.

I tried a lot of different builds over the past 2 weekends and put a lot of time into a character that was initially a blade/elemental build then a blood/elemental until finally settling on a chaos/blade build.  All 3 of the builds I tried were quite viable and able to level, but I thought the chaos/blade one was the best for pvp because I could survive longer, especially with a couple of defensive cooldowns and some healing passives.

Last beta I also tried a pistols/AR and pistrol/blade builds on a new character.  Both did very well in PvE but took a while to develop in PvP.

For release I'm probably going to stick to my chaos/blade build however, it suits my play style.