Crossroad

[Amitaii]

Ive played my trader past 100 and can do the 132 wrangle along with a little nanoprogramming. I could make armor if i felt like gathering the cash to buy the tools needed. I dont see myself taking this trader to 200 as i prefer to be in the middle of all the action so im thinking Enforcer, Soldier or maybe Martial Artist. With the soldier or enforcer there are nice items to look forward to QB, Hellfury, Hellspinner etc so im leaning towards those professions but havent made my mind up. Anyway, i just wanted the guild to know what i was up to as Ami will retire after 120. Also if anyone has played the above professions past 150 and can give a little insight into the high level game that would be appreciated as well in making my decision. Thank you in advance.

[Flameforge]

Nice one on the wrangle, Ami I didn't actually realise it could be cast so early.

I'm "only" level 130, so I don't know what it's really like in the coming levels. At the moment weapons are a bit of an issue -- I have a longmoon with lowish damage but kinda fast, and a True Katana with awesome damage, but really really slow. For 2HE, that's really all there is until QueenBlade at 161.

The other thing... I can't think of any advantage to melee. With guns you have to look after ammo, but you can attack/fight from a distance, and you don't have to worry about parry. Soldier guns may use one or two more skills than an average sword though, I don't know.

[Ryorea]

So I haven't played those three professions you mentioned to 150+ but I'll offer *lots* of my opinions. ;p Excuse me while I spew out a huge amount of largely useless information.

So unlike some other professions soldiers are all about powerful specials. Like burst, fling, full auto etc. so as Flame said, yes it's true that your weapons will have a lot of requirements. It's not just rifle + aimed shot for instance. Some soldiers do crazy weapon-swapping things with their different guns but you'll have to ask them how they do that. ;p

All three of the professions are great with survivability if that's a concern for you. Enforcers with their health and Mongo HoT, MAs with their bad healing, soldiers with TMS (Total Mirror Shield, basically reduces damage drastically for a short amount of time and reflects some of that damage back at the attacker). And enforcers and soldiers of course make great tanks too.

As for melee...I can think of a couple problems with it other than the Parry problem Flame mentioned. First of all if you're doing outdoor hunting with certain people you can be sort of screwed. For example if you're the only melee person in a team working with a fixer pulling, the fixer might root a mob so everyone can shoot at it from a distance. If you get too close as a melee person, you run the risk of more adds or being shot by other mobs that are rooted further away. Second of all you might have problems in PvP with getting rooted. If you're an enforcer you'll have nanos that help break roots, but if you're a MA or other melee profession that might be a problem.

As for advantages to melee...again there aren't very many of them. One nice thing you can do is load up on weapons with specials. For instance use one 1he sword that's 1he/brawl/dimach and one in the other hand that's 1he/fast attack/sneak attack. (Keep in mind that sneak attack is the melee equivalent of Aimed Shot, so it's pretty lethal and you don't necessarily need Concealment to use it if you know what you're doing.) Of course 1he seems to be a sort of poor choice for enforcers nowadays but there are also 1hb equivalents of what I just suggested. (Unfortunately I know next to nothing about 1hb choices so get that info from enforcers. ;p)

I can give you loads of opinions on 1he/2he but most of those aren't too pertinent here because they're generally comparisons of different professions using swords. ;p

I have heard complaints from some high-level MAs about not being as effective as they were before. So MAs were the "profession-of-the-week" in the past since they're pretty easy to play and used to be pretty powerful compared to other professions. (I still think they're a good first character to play.) That doesn't seem to be the case anymore. MAs still aren't *terrible* at high levels but most of them don't outdamage everyone the way they used to. Also keep in mind that their healing isn't as good as many people think--it's pretty poor. There are also *lots* of different ways for playing MAs: weapons vs. fists only, different MA attacks, how much emphasis you put on evades and nanos, so forth. So talking to high-level MAs and finding out what works for them would be very important.

One more thing you might want to keep in mind about the "high level game" at 150+ is that profession distinctions blur a little bit. For example you'll have the IPs to be a MA who equips an assault rifle at the beginning of combat and unloads all of the gun's special attacks, then switches to bare fists for Blessed with Thunder, then switches to a shotgun for the crazy crits. I mean that's an extreme example but it's certainly possible since you'll probably be swimming in IPs after level 160 or so.

Those are my opinions so take them at face value. ;p

[Flameforge]

As for melee ... the fixer might root a mob so everyone can shoot at it from a distance. If you get too close as a melee person, you run the risk of more adds or being shot by other mobs that are rooted further away. Second of all you might have problems in PvP with getting rooted.

Oh boy, YES. For some reason this didn't spring to mind. Scenario:

BORGS (Mort or PW or anywhere)
Fixer runs off into the distance.
Fixer: Incoming!! Maybe 4 or 5!!
Fixer runs back followed by an angry mob. Borgs get rooted, or stop anyway because they are ranged (they always stop just outside melee range!). Whole team with guns stand back and shoot. Poor Flame gotta run in to the fray to fight. All the borg attack Flame. They do ranged damage PLUS, for more insult, extra melee damage because I'm too close.

Ouchies.

BTW, Mongo is pretty good as a HoT, but it's often difficult to use in hunting or missions, because if you have multiple mobs, some of which get calmed/rooted, if you do Mongo the calms/roots are broken. And you get an ear-ful from the angry trader/NT/crat.