Hello friends, I’m new to the game started 2 days ago, I’m going lvl 14 and I still do not understand much how to builde the Punisher, I do not understand if it should be tank, healer, buffer or dps, or a mixture of both … Someone can provide me a guide to guide me a little please?
Thanks in advance
Hello and welcome. Shotgun and hammer are tanking weapons but certainly can be used for damage too, although consider the smaller attack range.
Shotguns are popularly used for their buffs and can be useful for healers/buffers too.
There’s no reason not to start out as dps and move towards tanking, but here are some of those guides to help.
The Ultimate Beginner Guide
Shotgun (dps) Shortguide
[Guide] Sustain-tanking for anyone
Quick guide for Punishers :
Just on principle (every weapon) you’re best off optimizing for a dps role until level 50, there’s nothing available until then that needs any other role. During that time you’ll get enough AP to fully unlock all your active abilities, and you’ll be able to switch to tanking simply by equipping different abilities, leaving your equipment alone. The game does technically have tank-oriented gear but it’s tuned to be so weak you’re kinda better off ignoring it and using self-heals (which mostly use your dps stats of crit/crit power)
Something worth of note, that sometimes get missed. What makes shotgun and hammer tanking weapons is largely the 3rd row of active. The two power abilities and the basic ability in that row, generate increased aggro when used. This isnt an issue when out on your own or in Story Mode dungeons. However once you hit 50 and unlock Elite dungeons, you wanna steer clear of those, unless you are actually the tank.
Also a comment on the classes like Punisher. The classes are an illusion, eventually you can learn every weapon, and combine them however you like. All weapons can be used for Dps, 3 of which can only do dps, 3 that got tanking abilities included, and 3 that got healing abilities included. Punisher is a double tanking weapon setup
I sometimes wonder how much classes have helped. I know they were an attempt to normalize SWL and make the starting player experience similar to other RPGs but the amount of times I’ve seen knew players ask about classes and the first thing everyone is thinking is. “So what weapons is that?” I remember one of the devs saying before though that it’s amazing how many players will turn away from a simple roadblock like not having classes even if in the end it doesn’t really determine anything.
Asthe one haunting discord. They really haven’t done the game a favor. Most people don’t see the intent between it and think they are getting long term restricted, asking for classspecific builds and comparisions when you actually end up being able to play all, even thought it gets harder toswitch as gear gets stronger.
Was that the developer claiming only 1% of the playerbase has even entered a dungeon?
Well not to bring an old statement back from the grave (since that was something stated very early on in SWL’s relaunch) I believe at the time he was referring to E1 difficulty and higher and that % is probably far greater now that the population of SWL has stabilized a bit but I would still be really interested to know statistics like that in the games current state.
I had heard that little things like the placement of a door or the way something was presented in a game tutorial for example could actually have a dramatic effect on how many people dropped the game before even giving it a chance. Sorta the rule that if you don’t capture someone in the first 15-30 minutes there a lost customer for games. That was more what I was trying to get at.
Helped add several layers of confusion to new people joining the game? I’d say they’ve done that job extremely well.
Agree with Drenneth.
The three “tank” classes can’t really tank endgame, thus in a uniquely MMO way qualify as false advertising.
And @darxide is right about the confusion. I saw plenty of new players interested in tanking being confused by the pseudo-tank classes (well, at least while there were substantial numbers of new players).,Given the poor endgame design/balance, that’s about the biggest problem the class system could possibly create.
So all in all, I would imagine it should be hard to come up with a worse class system even if one actively tried.
It’s perfectly possible to tank with shotgun/hammer (Punisher) but most people gravitate towards hammer/chaos, possibly because everyone advises them to do so. Just because sustain tanking is popular atm doesn’t mean that there aren’t other types of tanks out there.
TSW had a problem with the ability wheel confusing a lot of people, and I think the aim with classes was to provide a more structured and familiar starting concept.
The fact that new players are expected to find out for themselves that the classes represent a starting point, not a long term commitment was poorly designed and communicated.
I think that the term “class” carries a lot more connotations for players than the designers anticipated tbh. Saying that, there’s still plenty of confusion about how to play a role in titles which have much more distinct classes, so it’s hard to say where best to change things to improve that.
Confusion about how to effectively play a class is not as bad as confusion about whether a class even does what it says on the tin.
Not one of the SWL starting “tank” classes as presented is a meaningful endgame tank. Not even shotgun/hammer, because that’s not strictly the same as hammer/shotgun. It’s only endgame viable by going “off class” and switching weapons around. And how viable even that is, exactly, is a subject for debate.
The best tanking “class” bar none, on the other hand, is not even represented in the starter classes.
Really, SWL’s class concept a uniquely bad one. I’ve never seen another game deceiving new players by calling something a tank class that is apparently not even intended to be endgame tank capable. There’s good reasons for that.
I’ve run stuff with a shotgun/hammer tank before. Just because it’s not popular doesn’t mean it’s not possible. It’s like saying that no-one uses blade as an endgame weapon. Very few people do, because there are other weapons which are easier to master and perform well with, but there are also those who have decided that they want to use a sword and ignore people who tell them to stop.
You can tank with any of the tank classes. By the time you’re encountering content that you need specialist builds for, there’s a good chance you’re going to already have access to it.
Tbh, I think some of the confusion could be mitigated by calling them “starter classes” (or something similar). People were confused by the use of the word “deck” in TSW, but just calling them classes puts a set of expectations on them which they may not be able to meet.
I don’t think that any of the classes perform particularly well in endgame except the healing ones (and even then, there’s better combos really). But it’s always going to be the case that trying to select a variety of weapon combinations so that everything is a primary once and a secondary once will yield a limited number of combos.
I don’t think that the game is trying to deceive anyone tbh. I think that it could have been done a lot better, and tried to explain more that you aren’t limited to your initial weapon choice, but it does help spread peoples’ experience out across a variety of weapons instead of everyone just going cookie cutter.
Launch WoW. Go Warrior or go home.
Okay, I have to admit, I never actually touched that particular game.
[quote=“AWOL, post:15, topic:51480, full:true”]
I’ve run stuff with a shotgun/hammer tank before. Just because it’s not popular doesn’t mean it’s not possible.[/quote]
I’d seriously like to know how, other than by massively overgearing for the content you’re tanking. Overgearing makes a lot of builds possible, but it is kinda unsatisfying.
I wasn’t doing the tanking so I can’t say exactly how it was done, but we were running with a tank, healer and 3 DPS. Most dungeons (not HR) don’t really have crazy enrage mechanics, so as long as the DPS have good uptimes on the boss and don’t die, it’s doable.
Well, if the tank was a few e-levels higher than the dungeon, that would help. Being able to soak even one more big hit makes being healed easier.
There are certainly some fights that are easier to tank but at the intended gear level in e5+ dungeons I’m not sure there are any fights that work WELL with the traditional healer/tank/3x dps setup. Most of them have at least one fight that either is really hard to heal or punishes you for not having four dps.
Shotgun tanking is heavily hampered by being tied to evades and glances - this means that to get any benefit from them you need to gear in a way that loses most of your crits… and you still get killed from massive boss hits that hammer and chaos let you survive in full dps glyphs. Any percentage based survival (glances/evades) means that you’ll die when it doesn’t proc.