Heh, I remember when AOC was released, my girlfriend played a bear shaman and couldn't beat one of the volcano solo stages. After many tries I told her that I do that passage quickly for her. I died many times.
I played at release, and Bear Shaman was my first character.
>Praise HoX for challenge
>Complain that the Bear Shaman is challenging
I think I played every class at least trough Tortage
You learn jack shit about any class in Tortage.
I think I had more buttons to press with [Dark Templars] then all my wow chars together.
Shared Soldier combos
http://aoc.wikia.com/wiki/Combos/Soldier + DT combos
http://aoc.wikia.com/wiki/Combos/Dark_Templar ~ 10.
And I hope you're not counting 1 hour buffs as "buttons to press."
As for HOX having less melee combos then the other melee classes, I think you misremember.
HoX spells + combos:
http://aoc.wikia.com/wiki/Spells/Herald_of_Xotli
Guardian:
http://aoc.wikia.com/wiki/Combos/Guardian + shared Soldier combos
http://aoc.wikia.com/wiki/Combos/Soldier
It was poorly balanced as well, because some classes had most of their heavy attacks on one side, while others had variation in direction, so you could actually make use of the system.
Except that all Soldiers had a set of shared combos.
Moreover, the point is that you use one directional attack to "force" the NPC to move their shields towards that direction, and then you use the combo you want to use. NPCs didn't keep static shield directions.
BTW, not once did I say the directional attacks were challenging. I said they made me not pass out like I did when I leveled my Shaman alt in WoW. Literally passed out. I'm not exaggerating.
But it has nothing to do with shields, because Hell Strikes did damage to the left side (iirc) no matter which level.
In other words HoX combos were shitty in terms of directions, and you extrapolate that to the conclusion that all the other melee classes are equally shitty in terms of directions. Despite the fact that all Soldier classes automatically 3 shared combos.
Is the shittiest concept in MMOs ever.
The challenge in endgame raiding in MMOs lays on the guild leaders/officers in terms of logistics and management. I know, because I've been in such a position in vanilla. The main "challenge" for a regular raid member is keeping up with gear, not making obvious stupid mistakes, and hoping you don't have retarded people in your raid. If you think gearing is challenge then.. I dunno what to say.
Finally I have no idea why you'd want to do endgame PVE in a game designed with clearly no care for PVE.
I think I am pretty good when it comes to mmos
Unless you're talking about something like Eve Online, DAoC, UO, or being the #1 guild to figure out how to beat an endgame boss, then being "good at MMOs" is like having been potty trained.
I also think I played my HOX really well.
I hope you're not talking about attacking another player while you have the initiative, because HoXs are (or were) so glass cannon that they'll rape if the opponent is not expecting the assault (unless the "victim" is a PoM, in which case you become the victim).
Oh god.
WAR had cool RvR systems, but they didn't work and combat was shit (auto-attack lol). Still, I would play it again.
How dare you. Chosen aura(stance)-dancing, Black Orc three-step-combos, Disciple of Khaine/Warrior Priest melee-in-order-to-heal (like Bear Shamans, kinda), Engineer/Magus turret classes, Archmage weaving back and forth between healing and damaging spells, and my Squig Herder knocking people off walls and cliffs whenever I could. And then the TANK-based crowd control, which actually made tanks able to tank in PVP because they prevented enemies from running away from them (yeah they had taunts too but I found putting CC on tanks more interesting)
RvR was quite flawed though, I agree. Because (A) RvR DOESN'T WORK WITH AN EVEN NUMBER OF FACTIONS. (B) The only way to take over a tower/castle/whatever was battering ram and then rushing one out of two staircases. Apparently Mythic forgot how to do destructible walls like in DAoC.
Which MMO combat did you like then?
Uh... Planetside? lol.
I meant that they were fucking everywhere and you aggro everything wherever you go.