Tera – Page 4 – Windy Weather

Tera – Ninja and Other Changes

The Ninja class has finally arrived as of the May 17, 2016 Patch. Another race / gender locked class and the second one for the Elin lovers out there. And the forth in a series of Over Powered classes.

In spite of the cloth armor she wears, she’s a bad-ass DPS dealer. Mostly this is because, like the brawler, once she gets started, it’s easy to keep the target[s] from getting a spell in edgewise or any other wise. Like the Brawler before her, many Ninja spells elevate and silence the target[s] doing very effective crowd control on all but the bosses.

After being away for almost two months, I came back to Tera about a week after Ninja was released, and things calmed down a little, to she how she plays and to see how other things level, so I have almost finished leveling a Zerker as well as finishing the Ninja and a Brawler who was at about 40 to 65. Here are my thoughts on the current state of Tera.

Update at bottom: How to level 60 – 65.

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Unavailable Items?

World of Warcraft is notorious for this. Making items “no longer available” in the game.

Why should an item become “no longer available”?

The item must be kept in the client forever. Yes FOREVER, since some players will have the items and they must be displayed or otherwise operate correctly when they are used.

If an item is truly “removed” from the game, it must be replaced by something of equal value and there must be an overwhelming reason to remove it. I’m having a very hard time thinking of a reason that would call for an item to be permanently removed from the game.

Removing an item is not the same as changing it. If a weapon or armor piece or set is too powerful, or too weak, then one can easily change the stats on it to make it more in line with the play styles of the game. This is done all the time.

Here are some of the Excuses that game designers have used to remove items from the game, and the reasons that none of them hold up.

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Flying Mounts – Why Dumb Them Down?

In January 2007, Blizzard released World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. This expansion included flying mounts in Outland. You had to reach level 60 to purchase flight training and a mount. You could only fly in Outland, the new continent. In the Cataclysm expansion flight was possible in all areas, except the starting areas.

Now, after all this time, other MMOs are adding flying. Guild Wars 2, in Heart of Thorns, has added flight, well Gliding actually, where you can glide in the whole world, but only for a limited distance.

In a few days on May 17, 2016, Tera is adding flying mounts. Again these mounts have limited range. Why are these games dumbing down flight?

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My, Don’t These Trees Look Similar?

Trees Below Dalaran in Wrath of the Lich King

On 13 November, 2008, Blizzard released Wow Wrath of the Lich King including Northrend and the city of Dalaran. Below Dalaran there are two trees.

On 25 January 25, 2011, Tera was released in South Korea. On the Island of Dawn, the starting area for all characters is this tree at Tower Base.

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Tera – Layoffs and Rewards

Two things have happened in the last few days over at Enmasse, publisher of Tera in North America.

Enmasse just laid off a bunch of developers.

And they just started a new Rewards Program to encourage more participation among their player base.

First lets look at that Layoff Announcement. They say they have laid off Developers.

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Tera – How Long to Play

How long does it take to play Tera from character creation to level 65? It turns out that the game keeps track, so it’s really easy to tell. Here’s one of the early toons I created, an Elin Mystic. I like Mystics. They solo very well and are in high demand in dungeons so if you want to run a dungeon, you have a short wait. Some times only a second or two, so you better be ready when you queue. But back to looking at play times. 6 Days 6 Hours.

That is total time playing the character, from, for this character, creating it on the Island of Dawn way back when, until I cleaned up some quests back in Habere to get rid of some stale quest items from my inventory, which probably took an hour or so.

Now let’s look at some other characters, since I’m a real Altaholic.

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Tera – What Comes After 65?

Tera_2015_12_15_13_12_31_809x — An Explorer

So, the current level cap for Tera is 65. It used to be 60. What happened and what’s likely to happen next time and does that mean anything for how you might want to play this MMO or any other?

Let’s look at what happened:

When the “Fate of Arun” update happened, Blue Hole took a page from the Wow playbook. Briefly, this is what happened in the Pandaria expansion of Wow a few years ago: “A new threat has appeared on the horizon and we need to take a ship voyage to get there. The ship crashes and you begin a new journey on a distant land.” Sound familiar? In case you are new to Tera, this is exactly what you will see in Tera when you reach level 60 and then embark on the Sky Cruiser Endeavor.

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Tera vs Wildstar

Tera_2015_10_27_14_31_41_430x — Castanic Mystic

I’m back playing Tera and loving it. I played Wildstar for a few weeks, but it didn’t hold my interest. When the Tera Brawler came out, I jumped back and don’t feel like going back to Wildstar.

Let’s look at why I feel that way.

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Tera – Level 65 Slaying Crystal Test

After the previous test, it occurred to me that there were some additional tests that should be done.

Testing at level 65 rather than just at level 47. The discussion where Slaying crystals were mentioned was discussing high level dungeons.
Testing the obvious combination of One Slaying Crystal and Three Pounding Crystals.
Testing no crystals at all.

These tests have been done. But the results have not been that surprising. They show that:

One Slaying vs Four Pounding showed a little more than 9% improvement.
One Slaying and Three Pounding vs Four Pounding showed about 22% improvement.

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Tera – Slayer Crystal Test

I recently became aware of a method of fighting in dungeons that seemed quite surprising. Apparently some folks equip Slayer crystals in dungeons in an effort to up their Crit stat. These crystals only increase crit however, when your HP is below 50%. This causes some very strange behavior :

Healers are discouraged from healing players since they over heal – above 50%.
HP Pots are using during combat to manage HP to the correct level so that the Slayer crystals have their effect.
This causes an Economy in Pots apparently, where some folks make Gold based on the creation and sale of Pots.

I decided to do a test to see if Slayer Crystals had more benefit than the obvious other choice of Pounding Crystals which have recently been added to the game. I’ve done this test and recorded the video. The video and a PDF file of the data analysis spreadsheet are available for your review.

Bottom Line: Slayer Crystals, under the conditions of this test, appear to be about 20% better than Pounding Crystals. But the difficulty of keeping your health below 50%, and the issue of not being able to use healers, would seem to outweigh this advantage.

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