Guild Wars 2

• Aren’t these all pretty much the same? A finite resource used to cast skills, which develops/depletes over time and depletes/develops with use.
• I guess what I am trying to wrap my head around is, do they have to all be different? Aren’t they all just altered clones of the Energy Bar of Old GW1?
• Now I do understand that each one has some variations, (i.e. Adrenaline/ Life Force, build when you attack and Initiative/Energy depletes when you attack).
• But aren’t they all just slightly different methods of adding additional ways of restricting casting?

Didn’t a whole Energy Management system exist in the game pre-launch and was scrapped?

I have not played a Thief, Necro or HoT Revanant so I admidt my confusion is of my own doing

Whhh you’re not entirely wrong, but each one has a different usage, as well as ways of building.

Warriors build adrenaline passively just from attacking, boosting their gain from certain skills, to be able to inflict big damage/CC with an attack.

The necro life force bar can be looked at as another health bar, letting the better tank damage, and using their life force pool as a sort of sponge. As well as give them access to some more fear and other attacks, but they loose out on their utilities. It can be viewed as a sort of survival skill I guess. Plus requires you to use certain skills only to recharge it.

Initiative and energy I say have the most similarities, but initiative doesn’t recharge on weapon swap, energy gets set to 50% on legend swap. And energy can also be continuously drained for a prolonged effect on the revenant. Pretty much, a revenant used all his energy, he can partially recharge just by swapping legends. A thief uses all his initiative…he’s a sitting duck.

They all work differently. Especially initiative.

All the skills are different in their own respects.

Adrenaline is only built up in combat, and depletes while outside combat. Boosting it up lets you use a single skill tied to your currently equipped weapon, which has varying levels of power depending on how much Adrenaline you have when you use it.

Life Force builds up through skill use and having things around you die. It does not deplete outside combat. Activating it puts you in Death Shroud, which swaps in a new set of 1-5 skills, regardless of the weapon you have equipped. When active, Death Shroud serves as a buffer for your HP. You don’t take actual HP damage while in Death Shroud, your Life Force instead absorbs any damage you take, and it slowly depletes over time while active.

Initiative is the pool used for Thief weapon skills. It replaces the traditional cooldowns. A Thief can use the same non-auto attack weapon skill repeatedly, so long as his Initiative pool allows for it. Initiative regenerates at a set rate whether in or out of combat, replenishing itself at a decent rate. However, unlike other classes, a weapon swap won’t necessarily give a Thief a whole new set of abilities to use immediately. Initiative is shared between all Thief weapons, so depleting your Initiative on one set and changing to your backup weapon will still leave you with depleted Initiative.

Energy for the Revenant applies mostly to their 6-10 skills rather than their weapon skills, though some weapon skills do have small Energy requirements. A Revenant’s Energy defaults to 50%, and can only rise above that during combat. It depletes when activating skills with Energy costs, and returns to the 50% equilibrium when swapping Legends. Many Revenant utilities/elites have low or no cooldown, due to the Energy requirements, but it’s not like Thief where there are no cooldowns period. The Energy mechanic allows the Revenant to have some skills as ‘upkeep’ skills, which can give a constant effect at the cost of Energy degeneration. With the pips of regen/degen, it has the most similarities to the GW1 Energy mechanic, but is still different in several ways, mainly that you don’t start at 100% and that you can replenish some Energy via the Legend swap.

In their own ways, yes, they’re slightly different methods of restricting certain skills or opening other options. But that’s how class diversity is made. That’s why Engineers get extra skills on the F1-F5 for each skill they equip, that’s why Elementalists get access to twice as many weapon skills as other classes. Different classes play different ways. Variety!

They are all a bit different.

Also as far as how well designed each is energy & adrenaline far outclass life force in how well the mechanic is used & designed.

I know a decent number of necro’s who would redesign shroud & life force given the chance.
Most would redesign it into F1-f5 skills that each consumed life force & make life force generation more static so that the class could be better balanced.