New Player Help: Couple Questions

[Burton Cliff]

Hey guys, Im thinking of joining the B&S community but I have some questions, would you mind helping me?

(I know I could just google some of these, but player responses are always more trustworthy)

 

1) Is there a Healer/Tank/DPS thing like WoW or is it more free like GW2?

 

2) Are there instanced dungeons? The regular way: join group, enter, trash pack, sub-boss, trash pack, repeat... final boss, loot.

 

3) What about "epic bosses"? Where you need a big group and a lot of coordination to kill and that big fat loot at the end.

 

4) How grindy is the game? Do we have to do things over and over and over again often? (I don't mind it, I actually kinda like grinding)

 

5) How does the PvP work? Is it open world like everywhere? (I hope it does)

 

I might have more questions as the answers come, but I guess that is all for now.

 

Thank in advance!

:)

[Els]

1) This is not a trinity-based game, but BM and KFM have aggro buffs, and summoner's cat can taunt. Still, it's not uncommon to see a FM doing the tanking and by that I mean actual tanking not kiting and running around.

2) All dungeons are instanced, you have 6 man, 4 man, and something like instanced area for 24 persons (then it creates another instance for the other people that enter this area, so it's like a mix of area and dungeon)

3) There are some world bosses here and there, and 3 (well 2 of them are quite similar) "epic bosses" but it does not requires much coordination seems like more you go in, deals some damage, die and respawn. (quite hard to fight them because of low fps, and other faction can show up).

4) Leveling is quite fast, as for gearing up you'll have to do the same dungeon many times. At the moment we do not have much end-game content but the next big update or expansion (call it as you like) called Silverfrost Mountains will bring up a lot of PvE content as I heard. (I did not play other regions so I cannot be very specific here)

5) Open World PvP is costume based, some costume flag you as a member of a faction, and people using the costume of the other faction can attack you. If you do not use them, then you won't be flagged for open world pvp. (Note that there are some daily quests that require you to wear those outfits and they give an important material 'Soulstone' used for crafting and upgrading).
Then you got 1 v 1 arena and 3v3 arena.
1v1 is quite simple, Bo3, you win 2 rounds you win the match.
3v3 is akin to some fighting games where you can tag in and out such as Marvel vs Capcom, Tekken Tag Tournament. One player of each team is in the arena for at most 100 secs, but they can swap with another member. 
The ones being 'outside' can interfere for 5 secs (akin to assist in fighting games) but only up to 3 times during the match.
There are no round in 3v3, and you have to kill all 3 members to win (or until the end of the time : 10 mins).

EDIT : 
1) Every class got some form of self-healing, but some may heal teamates.
Summoner has a debuff that heal everyone near the target for 20% hp in 4 or 5secs.
Summoner can put a mist that block ranged attacks and heal people inside the mist.

Assassin have a smoke bomb that heals teamates too.

KFM can put an enemy under CC to the ground and stand on them for a few secs, there's a way to make that any ally that hit this target will heal himself for 3% hp per hit.

There are some other way to heal teamates.

2) There is a solo dungeon called Mushin's Tower, each floor is a fight, most fights are against bosses.

About the cons of this game :
Optimization, very CPU dependent (runs on UE3 / DX9), poses a problem when you meet a large crowd of players.
Lots of bots, grinding, gold spammers, PvP, farming. In some ways, they contribute to the economy and make mats cheaper.
Not much end-game content for now, but soon we will have plenty.
Lag for some during peak time, (I can play fine during the day, but during the evening it's kind of annoying).
Elitist kind of community, asking you to be overgeared to run any end-game dungeon, but this is everywhere I guess.

[Burton Cliff]

2 hours ago, Els said:

1) This is not a trinity-based game, but BM and KFM have aggro buffs, and summoner's cat can taunt. Still, it's not uncommon to see a FM doing the tanking and by that I mean actual tanking not kiting and running around.

 

I see. Are there any ideal group setups for dungeons, pvp, etc? Or each class is equaly useful?

 

I usually like to play as a support/healer kind because most people don't like and is always sought after in group situations.

 

2 hours ago, Els said:

Elitist kind of community, asking you to be overgeared to run any end-game dungeon, but this is everywhere I guess.

 

Yeah, I guess that is a thing of multiplayer games.

 

But how hard is it to gear up?

I can play almost every day for a couple hours and like 6-8h/day on weekends. Will I have a hard time trying to get the best gear possible?

(When I played Lineage 2 there was some thing that to obtain you had to like camp a boss the whole day with 50ppl to get 1 ring, so 1/50 chance to get)

[Hazriel]

7 minutes ago, Burton Cliff said:

 

Any group-setup can do any of the dungeons, but having a KFM or BM to deal with the boss is always good, and having a summoner for constant poke-heal is prefered as well (and this is the answer of the next question, summoner can be the healer-support). Tho each class has it's group-benefits in specific situations you won't get into any disadvantage if you can't squeze one particular class into your team, since each class has it's skills to deal with every kind of situation ^^.

 

Yeah, the comminity can be elitist, but if you're lucky and find a kind group, they will help you out pretty well ^^ (i personaly run with my friends, and villing to help out anyone in need, so feel free to find me ingame ^^). We're not pro players, but learn together to be better ^^.

 

Gearing up isn't hard if you have money (gold). Most (if not all) of the upgrade weapons are comming from chests which are dropped commonly, you just need luck to get the weapon for your class from it (or a shiny key), but the other materials especialy at maX lvl are kinda expensive to get (you either need to bid for them during loot, or buy them off marketplace (+1 of those materials comes from pvp maily beside AH). So gearing isn't hard but takes time if you can't find a way to make money(gold) fast ^^.

[Els]

1 minute ago, Burton Cliff said:

I see. Are there any ideal group setups for dungeons, pvp, etc? Or each class is equaly useful?

 

I usually like to play as a support/healer kind because most people don't like and is always sought after in group situations.

For most dungeons any composition is fine, but end-games dungeons have a 4-man version (normal version is 6 man) where everything hit about twice harder. So you'd like a tank, usually BM or KFM, a Summoner is helpful for healing, some classes have a very strong party buff, KFM has a crit dmg, crit rate, lifeleech buff, WL grants access to a more powerful version of a skill, FM also have a party buff. So if you could grab some party buffs in your composition, it's helpful. 

For PvP, well in 1 v 1 you'll see a bit of everything, but some classes requires a lot of effort while some are way much easier to play. Seems like BM is the less played class in PvP.
For 3v3, any class that can 'grab' is dangerous, as if they catch someone, and that person does not have his skill up to get out of the grab, and the enemy team uses an assist, and your team do not or cannot, it can easily result in a kill.

 

 

27 minutes ago, Burton Cliff said:

But how hard is it to gear up?

I can play almost every day for a couple hours and like 6-8h/day on weekends. Will I have a hard time trying to get the best gear possible?

(When I played Lineage 2 there was some thing that to obtain you had to like camp a boss the whole day with 50ppl to get 1 ring, so 1/50 chance to get)

It's not 'hard' but 'long', the economy is based on the players, selling stuff to a merchant will be sold to 1 copper. In party, there is a bidding system, the one that bid the most gets the item and the money is split to the other players. So even if you are outbid, you still get something, which is nice in my opinion. About getting the best gear, well they're trying to catch up with the korean server, so they've been releasing updates at quite the fast pace making it hard to get the best possible gears. Materials are always in high demand because of that too.

As Hazriel said, finding kind people and a good guild is very helpful =).

 

[Burton Cliff]

So yeah, I finally finished downloading and started playing, yay!

 

But damn, the high latency is killing me, almost literally. I'm from South America, playing on NA server (labeled new) so I thought I would have about ~150 ping, but Im getting 230~250 average. Is it because it is friday or something?

 

From what I could learn the combat relies on response time, parrying, counter-attacking... with this ping it would be impossible to play competitively, right?

 

Doest it get better?

[Hazriel]

Can't tell about the NA servers, i'm mostly playing on EU but we have some rubberband lag as well, and sometimes the ping spikes up realy high (most of the times i can't even respond with escapes on my warlock, because the skills disappear before i could press them). Most of the times i can bear with it (except in big fight situations lie Blackwyrm or Poharan, when i get laggy as well XD), but if you're worried, try to play Summoner...they can succeed even with higher ping, since the cat can save your *ss when your game won't respond ^^

 

Ps.: Using wtfast or similar programs are a risky busines, so i won't advise you to try them.

[Burton Cliff]

It seems to be better today, maybe it was something with my connection or something else, lets see.

 

Anyway, I forgot to ask something. Could you recommend a  YT channel or website I could look for some guides, newbie tips and stuff like that?

The amount of stuff is kinda overwhelming atm XD

[Hazriel]

Check Blade and Soul Dojo if you didn't do it yet, they are awesome ^^ Most of them are playing the game since it's first release and they have guides for everything (just make sure you're on the correct thread for NA/EU release). I usualy watch only playthroughs of bns on youtube, so i can't recommend video guides ^^