Before you say “read through the dev blogs,” I’m looking for a concise answer to this question, and even then, from what I’ve read, the design has changed so much that I would have a hard time figuring out what is out of date. Moving on…
What is the focus and goal of combat design in this game. Is it supposed to be a lifestyle based systems, like e-sports and speed running, where you can tell who’s been playing for years and who just picked up a headset, or are decent players supposed to be able to reach the skill ceiling in a matter of months? On one hand, it looks like the devs are going for an in depth system, as I don’t expect any runemages to be consistently pulling off perfect level 3s quickly in combat for a very long time, but on the other hand, tanking as a warrior mainly consists of holding your shield between you and your opponent with horn blowing and unblockable dodging here and there for some flavor.
To be clear, I’m not talking necessarily about situational awareness, as even the most basic system can have fleshed out encounters based around that idea. I’m talking about skill in executing your moves. I’m talking about the difference between pressing A to do your ultimate and having to spin the dpad multiple times without jumping and then pressing A to do your ultimate.
I hope I can get some clarification from the devs on this so I can know what to look for and what to suggest moving forward.
As an Alpha player I’ve been around for a long time. You’ll find each class takes a while to master the basics but you learn the advanced moves yourself that give you an edge. It’s like knowing basic punches vs combo moves in a fighting game. There are a lot of tricks you’ll learn to do things faster, more reliable, and improve your overall efficiency/ survive ability
Edit:
Example: warrior basics= hold shield up, move shield to attack.
Advanced style= attack while moving your torso to swing the shield in during/after each swing to block while attacking
I don’t think the Dev Blogs are that out of date on this issue. We did a lot of discussion early on about how we designed each class.
That said, I will probably touch on this again in a future blog post (such as when we introduce the Talent System), but this is way too complicated and in-depth of a topic for me to sum in up in a one-paragraph forum post, so that means it’s Dev Blog material.
I appreciate your definition of what the current meta is since that provides some clarification for me.
From my point of view, though, what you describe as advanced warrior style is what I would call Week One if not Day One tech. (It’s a fighting game term that means techniques you’ll find in the first week or the first day, respectively. It’s pretty self explanatory) If that’s considered advanced at this point, then the Warrior as a class has a very low skill ceiling.
I think there’s more to the technique than you give it credit for, doing combos precisely and quickly while keeping up blocking at the precise times of enemy attacks is very tricky and takes practice, especially when there is so much else you need to do with positioning and awareness.
It’s not something that will take 100 hours to master for sure, but it’s not something you’ll figure out the first day. I am far from being able to do that reliably after 15 hours.
Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love seeing more combos and more depth in the class of course!
In a pancake game, yeah it would be very basic, but in vent isn’t, your combos are as fast as you are, and unless you are extremely fast U won’t even be able to get one off, and for blocking it’s not as simple as holding right click, you need to predict where your opponent will shoot, because if you just hold it in one place they can shoot around it
That’s actually a small problem I’m having with warrior. I’m too fast with my movements that it’s not registering a lot of my hits. Especially the last hit of Left,Up.Left,Right
If your hits are not registering than you are not following through the target. I my self had the same problem when I first started playing War. It has nothing to do with the speed that I was swinging and I swing very fast, After some help from a few of the other long time War players I was able to swing much faster and am still able to complete said combo. I can do a full combo in between each of the mobs attacks and can still block that attack. It just takes a lot of practice.
I’m not sure what time zone you are, but ping can have an effect on triggering swings. I can swing extremely fast in pve with 100% accuracy but in pvp I have to slow down my strikes to account for both players. I have met some players that have trouble having their swings register and when my connection is finicky my swings get delayed or not picked up at all.