Ive put in 40 hours over the last few weeks on playing a different class character. Got trial gear, leveled skill lines and then learned rotation trying to build for cleave and single target in one build without using beam.
Even tho im close to 150k on the parse dummy with this build, in content i fall way behind. Arcanist beam can hit six targets that dont have to be stacked. Where as whirling blades for my build only works if the tank can perfectly stack. And even then dps falls way behind. Single target it can be competitive, but add 1 more target and now beam wins again.
I wish we could know why it is the case that one skill stands so far ahead of all the others. I remember Gilliams videos back in the day. That guy would absolutely be able to explain or teach the ways to compete with beam... or he'd be able to say that it is extremely imbalanced and needs adjusting.
Two things whilst in Gray Host last night.
Whilst in a keep that was under attack, the amount of EPs just standing around doing nothing was ridiculous. It was then I was told that other alliances, if they are not actively taking part in the game, would login to Gray Host with their EP characters and fill the keeps with useless AFKers just to fill up the cap for EP, Some even have second accounts just for this purpose. Does anyone know if this is true? It certainly looked that way.
Second thing, some person put a forward camp over the well near Aelswell Castle, so if you used it, you were stuck, you could not move and if under attack couldn't even use a recall stone. We couldn't take much damage, so we couldn't die to respawn. The only way to get out would be kill the game. Some DC took pity on us and managed to kill us with a CF ballista. I put a message in zone chat asking not to put forward camps over wells and got a reply XD from someone, so I assume they did it. This cannot be done accidentally.
Are EP so feared that other alliances have to resort to these tactics?