Curse

Green_Lantern · Apr 24, 2005, 01:48 PM // 13:48

ok, I've read alot of guides and builds here at the guru. Lots of in-depth analysis of pros and cons etc, good stuff!

But, I'm missing something. When you start out your char, you can't base it on, for example, "Illusionary Weapon", in PVE you have to make do with what you have until you get to that skills location, which in this particular case is pretty late ingame.

So, what i want is solid builds for early - mid game PVE... what works best there? Skills, attribute spread etc... and which of these can be smoothly transitioned to the later power-builds?

Thanks!

/GL

Sausaletus Rex · Apr 24, 2005, 03:07 PM // 15:07

This is a topic I've given some considerable thought to. It's important to find and play with "transitional" builds along the way. Maybe you can't find that Power Leak for your Mesmer, say, so you'll run with Power Spike instead. And there's a lot to be gained from getting the most out of your attributes from levels 2~19, too.

However, the problem is that it's hard to say exactly. Builds are inherently flexible in GW so you can change them drastically as easily as you can tweak them along the way. It's better to be flexible and adaptable rather than to follow a set progression. You want to mold your character to the circumstances as you go along rather than try and fit your proto-build to those circumstances.

Look at an Elementalist. Heading out of Pre-Searing they're going to be Fire Mages. Air is just a weak alternative when Fire offers a decent spammable skill (for low-level areas, anyway) and an AoE nuke sure to devestate critters in PvE. But as you go along Fire is going to be a poorer option than other lines and the Flare and Fire Storm you're relying on are going to get rapidly outclassed by newer and better enemies and skills. Sure, you can buy some skills to supplement things once you get through the Academy but that brings up a real big problem.

Skill points, at the moment, are useless. Just as with skill rings and charms there's a way of getting around them. And that means that, since skill points are a finite and unrefundable resource, you'd be a fool to spend them when you can get skills for free. Shopping at a skill trainer is the last thing you want to do as long as a quest out there is giving that skill away for free. At this point, though, it's hard to know exactly what skills are out there - they change depending on your character's profession and some require other quests to be complete and so on, they'll be found out eventually but it's going to take a lot of time and effort - and until you can be sure you can't get a skill for free you're best to just avoid the trainers altogether. So respeccing as you go along is going to be pretty hard to do because you'll want to pass up a lot of skills because you'll get them later on down the line. You might spot Lightning Strike and Orb and Chain at a skill trainer and could build a deve
a pretty devestating Air nuker right out of Pre-Searing but if you're going to earn those skills in Kryta or the Shiverpeaks or somewhere else along the line then you're frittering away your precious skill points on something you'd get for free and you're wasting them. So, paradoxically you don't want to spend them because they're so rare but because you don't spend them you'll have a pile by the time you hit the endgame.

Until skill rewards are better known, I think any attempt at coming up with a transitional build is quixotic at best. Just know your circumstances and work with what the game gives you. Optimize your attributes, pump one or two as high as possible and use another as a dump stat, and get used to swapping skills in and out. What's more important is knowing things like DOT is deadly at lower levels but trails off by the time you get to the midlevels or that AoE works well with melee mobs or that holy damage works better against undead. Or that such and such a monster is likely to use this so if you have that defense, it's a good idea to take it. In other words, come up with a solid build from what you have and work on tactics rather than optimization because whatever you have will be poor pickings anyway.

Green_Lantern · Apr 24, 2005, 06:40 PM // 18:40

holding back skill pts until we know how much they're worth...? mm.. this aint diablo 2, I dont think sp's are that almighty, and prolly never will be. If they change something, heck, start a new char...
The sp's are there so we can go to a skilltrainer and get what we need to effectively play a character... holding back will just be frustrating... think of it as gold I say. A means to an end.

anyways, guess there arent any good answers for early builds out there. many things work. mid game is much harder to survive with a bad build tho. Got there with a pure hammer warrior last BE and I got mushed to a bloody pulp