Learning light attack weaving and combat intricacies breath new life into this game

[Night]

Hi folks.
This is a quick post to spark some discussion.
I'm a relatively new player and for the longest time I would just spam surprise attack (my '2' key) for every fight... over... and over... and over again thinking that was just how combat was done.

I recently learned how to light attack weave and this has really helped shake things up in the combat department.

I know it's not much, but weaving light attacks in between my skill spam has made things much more mindful/interesting.

This game sometimes receives some hate for it but without attack weaving the combat boils down to spamming your one skill until you no longer can.



Then there's blocking... it's not just for throwing enemies off balance! Why don't more people active block!?

This has increased my survivability ten fold at least. Learning that blocking works on ALL attacks (aside from AoE i believe) is such a boon.



If you're trying to weave in your light attacks, sustain your rotations, and active block to get the most out of your life pool/stamina/magic there is no way the combat is boring or 'spam-ey'.

Now my combat experience is much better and is, indeed, much improved both from a fun perspective and performance.

learning to block regular attacks alone has increased my survivability in dungeons. Some enemies hit HARD but move slow. I can weave 2 cycles of light attacks and skills and then block and barely take any damage.


Anyways, just curious what other people think about this. Maybe i'm even missing more combat minutia that I can use!

[Dubsky]

Nguyên văn bởi Night:

This game sometimes receives some hate for it but without attack weaving the combat boils down to spamming your one skill until you no longer can.

Light attack weaving is only one of the very basics. If you only light attack weave while using your spammable, then you still haven't learned how to DPS. What you need is a rotation, making use of 5 slots on 2 bars.

Nguyên văn bởi Night:

Then there's blocking... it's not just for throwing enemies off balance! Why don't more people active block!?

The only reason to "block" as a DPS is to mitigate damage from certain mechanics or to bash weave. I know that you prob. aren't familiar with mid-game+ PvE, but it's way different than solo overland content.

Nguyên văn bởi Night:

If you're trying to weave in your light attacks, sustain your rotations, and active block to get the most out of your life pool/stamina/magic there is no way the combat is boring or 'spam-ey'.

It becomes boring when you put much time into the game. In the very early stages of the game you can basically play anything because it doesn't really matter.

This stops when you're trying to perform at peak. There is no versatility. There is always a clear meta that you'll be forced to play when you're serious about PvE. This goes mostly for DDs.
If you begin to raid multiple times a week for 2-3 hours, then you become bored pretty fast.

[Halcyform]

Not to be a downer, but I see the light weave mechanic as a hamster wheel. Just another source of tedium because the game lacks a real combat system. It's a crutch that the devs lean too heavily on.

Blocking and dodging are required later on. They aren't optional.

And, Dubsky is right. You don't have much in the way of freedom later on if you want to pull better dps. You are pretty much locked into one or two builds. You'll pull garbage dps otherwise.

[Night]

Nguyên văn bởi Halcyform:

Not to be a downer, but I see the light weave mechanic as a hamster wheel. Just another source of tedium because the game lacks a real combat system. It's a crutch that the devs lean too heavily on.

Blocking and dodging are required later on. They aren't optional.

And, Dubsky is right. You don't have much in the way of freedom later on if you want to pull better dps. You are pretty much locked into one or two builds. You'll pull garbage dps otherwise.

isn't that the same for every game though? at the highest levels there is always lack of diversity. If you want the absolute highest dps in any game there's only going to be a few options available to you

[Dex]

The problem for me seems to be that only very few builds can do well dps wise, everything else is so far beneath them that it's just silly.

[Night]

Nguyên văn bởi Dubsky:

Nguyên văn bởi Night:

This game sometimes receives some hate for it but without attack weaving the combat boils down to spamming your one skill until you no longer can.

Light attack weaving is only one of the very basics. If you only light attack weave while using your spammable, then you still haven't learned how to DPS. What you need is a rotation, making use of 5 slots on 2 bars.

Nguyên văn bởi Night:

Then there's blocking... it's not just for throwing enemies off balance! Why don't more people active block!?

The only reason to "block" as a DPS is to mitigate damage from certain mechanics or to bash weave. I know that you prob. aren't familiar with mid-game+ PvE, but it's way different than solo overland content.

Nguyên văn bởi Night:

If you're trying to weave in your light attacks, sustain your rotations, and active block to get the most out of your life pool/stamina/magic there is no way the combat is boring or 'spam-ey'.

It becomes boring when you put much time into the game. In the very early stages of the game you can basically play anything because it doesn't really matter.

This stops when you're trying to perform at peak. There is no versatility. There is always a clear meta that you'll be forced to play when you're serious about PvE. This goes mostly for DDs.
If you begin to raid multiple times a week for 2-3 hours, then you become bored pretty fast.

A couple things about your last paragraph there.
I'd argue that every games combat system becomes boring if you've put two thousand hours into it and only play the same build with the same rotations.

As far as performing at peak, well, that is always the case isn't it?
No matter what you're doing the very top will always be devoid of diversity because it is virtually impossible to async balance perfectly. Games that rely on async balance (dota 2 for example) use character counters to balance them out.

There will always be some option that is just a hair better than the others for some reason or other.

That being said I've actually seen a lot of diversity in builds but I'm not a top tier trial runner.