I ended up in the first dungeon yesterday, Stormtalon’s Lair. It is a fair bit different than other games in that the trash packs are not easy. CC options don’t really exist, outside of quick stuns/interrupts, so you need to juggle a fair amount. Plus, there’s a fairly large gap between the trash and boss fights.
Trash is more or less static combat. You move to avoid some attacks, just like single player combat. 2-3 enemies at a time. It’s fun enough.
Bosses though, wow. Everything is moving all the time. The video below is the first dungeon end boss – Stormtalon. The bosses before that are somewhat similar but this guy, just crazy. Of interesting note, I am thinking people will need to circle strafe AND click buttons. You don’t just move to avoid damage, you constantly move to avoid damage. So that means attacking while moving. I have a mouse with quite a few buttons, so there’s something beneficial there.
As an Esper, a static playstyle is challenging. As you’ll see in the video. I mess up a fair amount but it works out. Dungeons take about an hour. I died on the first attempt to the boss and died about 4 times total on the map.
Leo's Life 
That video reminds me a lot of the boss fights I’ve been seeing in Neverwinter. How would you say the styles of those two games compare?
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Good question and one I’ve been thinking about making a post on. Neverwinter has two basic things going for it, to be an arcade-y game. Press to activate and tons of crap on screen. You certainly need to move but once you do, you tend to be in a good spot. Plus you get next to no interrupts, so if you DO get hit, it’s going to hurt bad. NW skills are also press to activate, meaning that there are no charge-bars (or minimal ones). There are a lot of DoTs/HoTs because of that. Finally, each and every fight is against 3-5 enemies. Boss fights have “summon” phases, every 30-45s, where the big guy summons 4-6 helpers. There are always a ton of things to watch.
WS does this different. Moving out of stuff is important but you can take a couple hits or interrupt it. Most skills are charge/pulse mechanics. Either cast times to get the effect, or in-use timers after pressing the button. It is GCD locked after all. And bosses are mostly solo affairs with complex environmental effects.
I guess the difference is that NW puts a lot of focus on the tank and healer to get enemies and heal everyone. WS puts a LOT of focus on the DPS to avoid AE and interrupt.
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Interesting analysis. I had kind of got the opposite impression of Neverwinter dungeons so far: that they are very demanding of dps as they have to take care of their own health (drink potions if they take spike damage), focus fire the correct targets, peel adds, kite and control them etc. as no amount of tanking or healing will save them if those things aren’t executed correctly. But I can believe that Wildstar demands even more.
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