After some experience with some of the boss fights and Zhaitan, I’m wondering if it is possible for future expansions to create a combat that is much more similar to monster hunter.
I find MH’s combat system much more entertaining due to that it did well on indirectly force players to try to memorized monsters’ battle patterns. Making players not being too greedy with attacks and use dodge at the right time. Players in MH have more incentives to use melee weapons.
Although I’m no expert and did not do any extensive research but I can see there is a similarity between GW2 combat and MH’s. Both are active real time combat that want players to dodge and attack at the right time but the difference is that GW2 monsters does not always have more than 2 attack patterns (auto attack and a special) and the battle force player to zerg with long range. GW2 monster attack too often and sometime due to the particle effects it is hard to even see what the attack the monster will unleash. This make melee a not very fun option.
This is hard to explain, due to that I’m not very good with expressing myself. MH’s monsters does not always have an auto attack. Before they attack, they tend to show signs, and depend on these signs experience player can predict what type of attack is coming and how they should dodge it. Since these attacks are not auto (thus not being too often), melee players are not punished and have time to go in and land a few strong hits before they are force to move back and avoid the next attack. The range are still strong but in MH system range does more damage the closer they are. So it make range players try to play bit more risky, thus in a way reduce the range kite/zerging.
Another fun aspect is that monster have stagger system, where if you do enough dmg on a specific spot of the monster the monster would stagger for 0.5-1 sec which provide another window of opportunity for player to attack. This might be hard to implement and beside we have blind, daze and knockdown etc.. I agree that this isn’t very important but I still want to mention in case it would provide inspiration.
Not to forgetting to mention that the monster have their own stamina bar, these bar decrease each time the monster do an attack and when it reach 0 the monster will be tired and won’t attack until the bar refill up to a certain level.
Not sure if people understand my point but I just wish the elder dragon battle could be more like the one in Monster Hunter Portable 3, the “Amatsumagatsuchi” battle. And I apologised if my point of view is too biased towards MH and Melee, but my intention is just to contribute on building a fun experience for GW2 so more will enjoy this game.
-CookieQ