Comments on: Age of Conan - Early Impressions

By: lufia22

lufia22 — Sat, 24 May 2008 06:58:13 +0000

Please don’t associate spellweaving with melee combos. They are not the same. Spellweaving is an incredibly long casting process that acts nothing like melee combos. Calling them spell combos is a nice summary, but really leads to some misconceptions.

Anyways, I’ve rerolled twice in this game so far. Started out as a level 18 Demonologist and started fealing the typical boredom of a ranged DPSer (granted, their feats seemed to really flush the class out, but I didn’t stick around). Then I rolled Tempest of Set, which I was originally going to play, and then I started fealing like a healbot that wasn’t very powerful in PvP (PvP being the main reason I’m playing the game)…which I have previously experienced on my holy Pally in WoW. I want to roll a class that can kill stuff, especially in a Conan MMO. So now I’m a level 28 Barbarian. I can’t believe it, I actually rolled an overplayed rogue class and am having a blast.

One thing I’ve really noticed, especially after looking at an online combo/spell list for each level of the game, is that you really learn your bread and butter combos/spells early on in the game. You don’t get that many new abilities as you level, just upgraded versions, especially for a melee character. What I have noticed is that feat trees seem to play a much larger roll in what abilities you have, as opposed to something like WoW where every class almost has every skill and talents just augment those skills, making frostbolt your primary nuke rather than fireball, or whatever. So in essence, I’m learning brand new skills from my feats, not from leveling up.

One last thing I’ll note, which is part of the reason I packed up my ToS, is that healing is a real chore in PvP. It’s mostly AoE type healing that requires positioning and often close ranges. Close range and being a squishy are just two things that don’t go together well, especially when the PoM and ToS are technically ranged nuker classes to begin with. PvP healing just feels odd.

Oh, and I lied, this is the last thing I wanted to note. While they released a smooth launch and a game that works pretty well without any giant gamebreaking bugs (except maybe the one people were exploiting to already hit level 80 that I’ve heard about), there are A LOT, and I mean A LOT, of things that don’t seem to be “working as intended.” Most noticeably being the skills that you allocate points to. Most people are baffled at how any of them work and some don’t seem to do anything for putting hundreds of points into them. Feats would be runner up on the list of things not working. It seems like there are numerous feats for each class that don’t work or cause buggy issues.

By: Ethic

Ethic — Fri, 23 May 2008 18:42:26 +0000

Yeah I figured out the combos last night while I tried out a melee class. Not totally sure what each combo does as combat moves so fast, but at least I know I’m doing them right!

Now to find a decent guild…

By: oakstout

oakstout — Fri, 23 May 2008 18:33:42 +0000

Apparently the melee classes get the combo attacks sooner than say caster types. But at level 50 casters can spellweave which from what I heard is pretty sweet, it doubles the output of certain spells.

I have encountered several head glitches that are much similar. When I was in the water swimming, my hair would disappear as I popped in and out of the water. I’ve also put on a cloth helm and it looks like I’ve got a giant cat with a huge tail under it. Apparently it turned my normal hair, which is red, to white and gave me a large pony tail out the back. But still not a huge issue.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:52:25 +0000

Well, at the very least you’ll have a few new title images to put into the random pool at the top of the page.

Very pretty images too…

By: Openedge1

Openedge1 — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:26:25 +0000

Despite the minor annoyances…the game just feels so much more fun than previous MMO’s…
It is making it difficult to think of going back to my Hit number key, and watch combat gameplay from my other MMO..
And visually, the game is a step way above all other games, as well as character models from any other game…

As to annoyances…mine is the chat system (the worst so far) and the guild system seems lacking…
But…these are minor annoyances that take nothing from the sheer pleasure of doing my bloody fatalities…(ps: the best way to get a fatality is learning how much damage your skills are doing…then to time a specific skill that will kill that mob…then you activate your fatality…takes some work..)

By: Ethic

Ethic — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:07:20 +0000

This is what I read about double-tapping from F13.net: “If in melee, double tap forward and you’ll get a short ‘momentum’ buff that increases your next attack to do its damage/effect + stun. Double tapping left, right, or backwards gives you a short evasion buff that increases your defense. Keep in mind that these double taps use up stamina.”

By: Genda

Genda — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:03:54 +0000

Actually, the double-tap lets you hop to one side or the other, or forward or back. It’s helpful if you are getting flanked (I think you take more damage if flanked, for sure you want all your enemies in front of you as your melee damage hits everyone in that cone) or if you need to get a spell off and don’t want to be interrupted.

By: Ethic

Ethic — Thu, 22 May 2008 16:57:35 +0000

@Angstrom: They way I have been playing so far, there is 3 directional attack buttons (left middle right) on keys 1, 2 and 3. That is your normal attacks. Seems to swing every time I press a key almost, but there is no auto-attack that I am aware of. The direction you want to attack from is keyed off a graphic display on the mob you are fighting which shows the direction they are shielding. You attack from an unshielded direction and they do change them around during the battle. Then on the rest of the number keys you will have special attacks to use. There is some sort of combo feature that pops onto the screen - or perhaps it is just a attack queue feature - not sure I have to spend some time playing around with it.

One thing is for sure, you can use terrain as an advantage. You will also move around during the fight. Root and back up - change positions, etc. Don’t stand in one place and swing your sword.

There is also some sort of double-tap key movement that I have not come to grips with understanding all the aspects of it. Like if you double-tap forward you get a bonus. Lots of little tricks in the game like that.