Why would you combine assassin, blade dancer, and nightblade? You're just duplicating abilities. I have blade dancer, ranger, and bard. The vast majority of the points are in BD and the R and B are just for specific things like healing with cadence and the pet
Wrong, you're not duplicating abilities. There are plenty of abilities that are necessary in both trees, not to mention passives that both increase your overall effectiveness. I'm 22 assassin to permanent stealth, 32 nightblade for nuking and death/fire damage boosts (stops at fell blades - necessary for PvP) and remainder bladedancer for defensive purposes.
You're playing what would be considered a hybrid spec. Not focusing on defense, melee, or range, or support. That's the beauty of the system. You can specialize or spread it out for whatever you think is best for your gameplay.
I have 3 roles that I'm actively using. First my stealther (mentioned above), second my tank (riftstalker, bard, bladedancer) and third my support (max bard, rest saboteur). I haven't purchased the 4th yet since it's a large chunk of change and I don't really need it as of yet.
This threat meter argument is funny. No, GOOD players don't require addons to raid. However, the majority of players are neither good nor ready for end game content. Therefore, addons give them a much needed handicap because advice always falls on deaf ears. If Trion wants the majority of players to stay with the game and do end game content (and get those purples they love), they are going to either have the game so easy all the good players will leave, or allow some sort of handicap system (such as addons) be available to help those that aren't smart enough to understand standing in fire is bad.
Absolutely true. In general, no game
needs meters of any sort, but they are a quick, mathematical, visual representation of what's going on. Obviously this "no health bars argument" is just absurd and shouldn't even come into the conversation. If you want to go back to keeping exact tabs on HPs then you tabletop. Enough said. DPS meters are nothing more than a tool on how to improve your rotation or which abilities you like or dislike. Once it becomes a pissing contest everyone gets all up-in-arms about it and dismisses its usefulness. I'm curious on how I stack up to others or which abilities are the most effective. I'm sorry if I like to be my best and improve on whatever I'm doing?
This game, as well as any other, doesn't need threat meters. When I'm tanking and I lose threat, I taunt and up my game or tell the party to give me at least 2 seconds before they go DPSlolCRAZY when I pull. Common sense > threat meters. But hey, most people don't have that now-a-days anyways.
Why is WoW the most common MMO out there? Because they cater to the lowest common denominator and thus allow the most amount of players to enjoy the game. While that's what some people want,
not everyone wants that. Why is Rift doing well from launch? Because they used very similar tactics that Blizzard did: fix bugs A.S.A.P. for a smooth launch; and modeled their UI/gameplay to that which the majority of the MMO gamer uses: I.E. WoW.
Levelling in all MMOs is a joke simply because of how they work. It is entirely ridiculous to have these spread-out mobs that will happily ignore you as you deal out death only a few yards away from them.
Very much wrong. Not in all MMOs are you spoon fed directions on what exactly you need to do and given every chance +infinity to advance your character without tribulation. For example, play FFXI then tell me that line with sincerity. (Especially prior to the advent of kill tasks that divided the community from partying together and made more people solo task their classes to cap.)
This wasn't just about threat meters, it was about all add-ons.
However there is nothing in the game that teaches players about threat at all. I haven't even seen it mentioned on any of my mage spells.
If you (in general) need something to teach you (in general) about threat, then you (in general) obviously are an idiot (in general).
Really. In no way -
ever - should you be a gamer, and be allowed to not understand that you can or can't take damage properly. This is a pretty basic understanding you learn within 5 seconds of playing
any game. [The (in generals) are for moderators who want to jump on personal attack modding.]
Also, I see a lot of your remarks resulting in "straw-man" and that needs to stop, please.
To everyone that got bored with the game after a few hours, you definitely didn't give it much chance. This game
isn't for grinding through hardcore style to top level and PvP'ing endless warfronts or for those that need raiding to fill a timeslot on their weekend. I ask the following to you:
Did you look around you to see artifacts hanging, from what in other games, would be considered impossible to reach places?
Did you explore at mountain-tops to get snow drift venues flowing over the top of it?
Did you find the puzzles in each zone to solve and get rewarded for such with a title, a unique rare and the satisfaction you didn't have to look up on some website for the answer?
Did you unlock
all of the souls and try
all of the possible combinations of each? (By my calculations is nearly 8,000 possible combinations
on each class.)
This game is a lot more than meets the eye.