Aion - The Tower of Eternity

[Tolanin]

Originally Posted by bofa

at this stage in the mmo scene..if you want an immersive, fresh, different game..should you go Mortal Online or Aion?

If you want different go with mortal, if you want a game that is gonna be very similar to wow go with aion.. dunno anything about aions world pvp or if you can do anything actually meaningful through pvp in the game world but in mortal you definitely can.. two completely different types of games.

[Man0warr]

Aion is all about PvP after 25.

Never heard of Mortal Online

[Zehn - Vhex]

Imagine taking the shittiest aspects of Oblivion you can think of and that's pretty much Mortal Online, with a few layers of shit on top.

As for immersion, depends on your definition of the word. If you mean what I mean when I say immersive and you sit down to play and suddenly the sun is rising and you look at the clock and go "Oh fuck, where did the last 8 hours go?" then Aion isn't too bad if you play with a few friends and just group all the time.

If your definition of immersion is that you'll feel like a pretty little elf and really think you're flying, then you my friend have issues.

[Inconsiderable]

Originally Posted by Draegan

Ranger won't be that popular because they are terrible to play from 1-20. Worst off than assassins.

From what I've seen Glads, Chanters, SMs and Sorcs will be the fastest levelers early on while Templars and Assassins are in the middle and Clerics and Rangers at the bottom. After 25 or so Assassins shoot up to the top. Not sure about Rangers, but apparently they get better.

After this weekend I still don't know what class I'd like to play.

In COB my friend as gladiator was QQing because I as cleric did outlast and outdps him. No way glads can be that good. Most funny things were the duels around 20 or so. I could kill him melee while healing myself every now and then, I could kite and slowly kill him without taking damage and I could simply burst him down. Funny stuff. Oh yea, buff cleric.

[Draegan]

C'mon, 1v1 duels?

[Vekruul Shuth]

I had a good time with the game. Like people are saying, nothing groundbreaking. But they polished the standards.

Templar I actually liked a lot, MINUS the lack of Holy Shit! factor. I hope they get a group aggro ability later. Got the Templar to 17. Have a feeling there won't be many tanks end game. I saw only a handful past lvl 12.

Didn't care for the Ranger. Give at least ONE chain off the bat. Didn't mind the weapon swapping...But it was annoying. Can see people giving up on this class early, leading to very few played. Lvl 19 to "take off" kinda does suck. Got mine to lvl 12.

Gladiator...Ya. There will be a bazillion of these. Good DPS, and some flash. Got this class to 14. Was funnest of the three classes I played. Easy to solo...Adds not an issue.

Tidbits:

I still don't get the gathering thing.

Allow chains between players.

Didn't even attempt crafting.

PLEASE kill the player shops being allowed to camp all next to each other, or near a teleporter.

Flight in the cities wouldn't hurt.

Double the bag space.

Few other VERY small things...But over all, pretty solid game up to 17!. Will buy.

[Pyros]

Gathering is a general skill, there's no specific mining or herbalism, you just gather whatever you want as long as your skill is high. Other than that, it's just right click and wait to see if you suceed or not. Bag space seems fine, there's not that many drops, and after you buy the 2nd upgrade it's pretty decent. Make a mule to mail stuff, or buy recall scrolls; in the town you teleport to in a new zone, you can buy scrolls to recall directly to that town, so you can recall there, use the broker that's usually in the town/go to capital for bank, then recall to your leveling area with your normal bind point.

Templars get some better stuff later on in terms of visual(AE pull is pretty nice and you should have the jumping attack thingie) and the shields are insane looking in this game. Also get a fuckton of not very visual but extremely powerful self buff stuff like the armor you got at 13, stuff that boosts your magical resist to insane level or boost your melee dmg by a good amount.

As for ranger, before they took the server down was leveling one myself, I haven't found it to be hard to be honest. I set up my G15 to do hotbar+weapon switch on one key press, and mobs would die rather fast in my opinion. Open with snare shot, snipe shot, some autoattack, snipe again, switch to melee, pop evasion if the mob has big melee specials, go through and backstab, usually mob is dead and I get hit like twice and no mana usage, so downtime is almost non existant. I only died once at like lvl 6, stupid mushrooms wouldn't leave me alone and got to 13 pretty nicely. Also played a sorc to 13, and while the sorc is much more brutal, it's also less mobile(spells force you to stop some and have longer cast times), weaker when you get in melee range and you have to sit down every 2minutes for like 25secs(or you can pop mana treatment after each mob but with the casting on it I calculated sitting was more efficient).

So will see next beta, but think I might be playing Ranger, it looks like it has a pretty high skill ceiling, also has the momentum mechanic where if you jump kite you do more damage due to forward movement giving more dmg, will see depending on how hard the 1.5 nerf to jump kite is though. Oh and the DP is excelent, become some kind of wolfman shit, tons of damage+speed buff and lasts for 1min.

[Draegan]

I couldn't get the jump kiting down, but I didn't practice it. Apparently you can jump through animations some how but I couldn't get it to work.

The ranger isn't HARD to play it's just irritating. Lot's of buttons to press. I think I just got sick of grinding rather than anything else. But I think I'm going to get a ranger to 20+ next beta just to satisfy my curiosity.

My one issue is that with rangers, the switch weapons command doesn't go through if you just got done with another command. Also lag sometimes sticks it and you hit the switch button again and you end up switching twice which is dumb.

I got to 13 myself pretty easily. I got stuck when you had to do the quest to get the bab Moogbears or whatever they were. Basically killing two mobs at once. Took a while to kite around and trap things efficiently. 13-16 is a nightmare solo (nightmare meaning drawn out). Hardly any quests and mobs start having more hps. That and my bow is getting a little old in it's tooth by then.

I got a chanter up to 12 last night before shutdown, and I was killing faster and more efficiently at that level than the ranger. But ultimately I think it's the fact you only get two bow attacks before 16. Your first bow chain should be at 13 not 16.

[Hatorade]

Forward momentum increases damage? What the shit is that?

[Pyros]

Well if you jump and use an ability during the jump, it'll skip the animation it seems, and since there's autoturning in this game, all you have to do is run away from the mob, jump, then spam whatever you want to shoot. But yeah I could see how 13-16 would be pretty bad, then again I guess grinding rogue type mobs for a level or 2 could be doable. I did hate the lag on weapon switching, especially the visual lag. You switch but it doesn't update for like a second, so you're not absolutely sure it did go through or what weapons you have at the moment. I expect some of this shit to be better in the later versions of the game though.

However disagree with the chanter statement, while leveling a chanter was very easy, I think I'm killing faster with my ranger than I was with my chanter. I found 3 physical crit mana stones though, so I already crit pretty often I found, and I guess it'll just get better if I focus on that. Might also just be my memory, but it's definitely faster than templar at least, and templars weren't much better on the 2 bear quests, because of the lack of burst to kill one.

Anyway don't think it matters, I hope I'll get to duo most of the time when I lvl on live, so someone can carry me to 30 then I can pewpew hard.

Edit: About the momentum, when you move during combat, there's little green arrows popping around your character, they seem to give bonuses, when you go forward you do more damage, when you go to the sides you evade more and when it goes back I have no idea. I'm not even sure it does anything big, it seems I'm getting slightly more dmg when using the front arrow, but it's also more annoying than sidestep kiting. No idea if these arrows work on anything but ranger/scouts though.

[Naj]

Originally Posted by Hatorade

Forward momentum increases damage? What the shit is that?

Moving Forward/Backward or sidestepping increases and decreases your stats.

Forward increases your damage and lowers your armor + magic resistance.
Backwards lowers your damage and increases your armor + magic absorption
Sidestepping lowers you melee + spell accuracy and boosts your dodge + magic resistance.

[Draegan]

Just for a littler clarity comparing kill speed of a ranger vs. chanter at level 13ish.

Rangers have two abilities (ranged) with 8s cooldowns. No chains. The also have a evasion buff, counterstrike, backstab and a melee chain with two abilities.

Chanters have ranged Smite spell, two melee abilities, one being a chain with two abilities.

Here's how combat usually went down, each line starts off with time in seconds.

Ranger:
00: Set Trap
01: Snare Arrow
02: Damaging Arrow Ability / Autoattack
10: Snare Arrow (target reaches or has reached trap and is snagged)
11: Damage Arrow Ability (after 8 second cool down)
12: Evasion Buff (guarantees a dodge on next attack)
13: Switch weapons, autoattack, wait for dodge
14: Counterstrike, mob stun.
15: Run through mob and Backstab
17: Melee Combo - 2 attacks.
18: Autoattack to finish off the mob.

An equal level mob is dead anywhere from 14 through 18+ seconds. This is if everything is perfect.

Chanter:
00: Smite
03: Smite
04: Melee Attack Chain
06: Melee Ability 2 / Autoattack
12: Melee attack (after 8sec cooldown)

Mob is usually dead here or after one or two more melee autoattacks.

My timing is probably off a little with global cooldowns and animation/cast times.

Here's the thing. The mobs die at 14-15 seconds more often as a chanter than a ranger. Why? Because you're not kiting all over the place, or waiting for cooldowns, or dodges, or running from trap breaks, or running from adds. Two mobs will kill you as a ranger and you can usually handle them as a chanter.

There is also a lot less going on with the chanter. I'm not running around. I engage the mob, run through my routine of attacks, and move on. The ranger has to do an assorted other things. You do get relief if you're in an area where you can kite easier, or fighting easier mobs. Things that screw you up there is lag switching weapons like we already mentioned, also if there is some server lag and your backstab is not behind the mob because the server says one thing and you see another your stab now does 20 damage instead of 240.

I'm pretty sure this gets much easier at 16 and at 19 when rangers get more ranged attacks.

It's just tiring to grind mobs when you have to do 5 million things each time you fight a mob.

[Pyros]

Yeah never said it wasn't much easier, just saying I'm not sure it's much faster on a chanter, but the fact I'm actually doing shit on a ranger makes it less boring that's why it's hard to judge objectively, and I guess looking at the cooldowns, chanter is faster. I just found the whole 1 2 2 wait 5s 1 2 alt2(for the other attack in the chain) wait 5s etc was pretty boring. Efficient, but it's not very interesting, on the other hand the ranger has so many stuff to do it makes it look like it's less boring. I guess later on when you can kill mobs before they reach you it'll be just as boring though.

Anyway will need a couple more weekends to figure what I'm playing for the release. Oh and since it's been a while since I last bitched about it, this weekend stuff is gay, at least make it every weekend, hate having to wait 2weeks between "events" where nothing happens anyway. Hell I couldn't even tell if they did anything since last phase, pretty sure they didn't.

[Draegan]

They didn't. The ranger gets tedious after doing all those steps for 1.5 levels of grinding. It's not so bad if you're doing quests but when you're in one spot doing it over and over you start wishing for 1 2 2 wait 5secs 2 2 for grinding.

[Hatorade]

Ranger is a lot of work that is for sure, I did not enjoy my time with them back in Chinese open beta. Almost hit 24 when they are start to get better but just couldn't play the class anymore to get there. Decent enough class though 10-22 in groups, get to just stand there and plink your bow for decent DPS. Wasn't just rotations though it was weapon switching and auto attack turning off at random that made the class unbearable.