Guild Wars 2

Didn’t read all posts.

I now have 8 level 80s, all professions level 80. This was a goal of mine for the purpose of buildmaking. I wanted to know how every profession plays in pve so I could more easily see which roles they fulfil.

With that said, every skill, afaik, has some sort of basic feature and can be modified through traits or even equipment. Unlike other games where you have a skill and that’s it (GW1 comes to mind a bit :p) in GW2, you modify your skills and in that way have a great variety in skills without having all those skills.

GW2 skills are like the introverted deep person that doesn’t talk much but once you take the time to get to know them a whole new world is opened up for you and you discover things you at first hadn’t thought about.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

TwoBit.5903:

Skills are too dps-centric, and by that I mean that design is too focused towards numerical values rather than the factors of their execution. It’s thoroughly designed with the mentality of MMO combat. It tries to be actiony by removing self rooting and making it so that new skills don’t phase out old ones, but all it ends up doing is removing the fat that made MMO combat interesting.

Games like Vindictus of DFO do action combat correctly because a skills in those games are balanced through the nuances of their execution- the hitboxes, windups, frames and so forth. Consequently those games tend to have even fewer overall skills, and little to no phasing of older ones.

And yet games like Tera and Vindictus who have ‘true action combat’ feel really really horrible (to me). GW2’s combat is exactly how it needs to be to avoid animation locks, which I love it for. If there is one thing I cant stand as a caster it is being forced to stand still to cast all of my skills, GW2 treats stationary skills properly by using them sparingly.

I think people just need to accept GW2’s combat for what it is. It is intended to please action combat lovers because that isn’t a gameplay style everybody enjoys. It’s quite simply meant to be a step up from traditional MMO combat, which it is. Even then there are a lot of people who complain about having to move while fighting, so you can’t win over everybody.

I love Vindictus’ combat (played a Fiona), quite a fan of Dragon Nest (played a sharpshooter/sniper), and love my warrior in Tera too (if only the former two weren’t run by nextard; I would still be playing them).

You don’t have to lock onto targets and have to be much more engaged in the combat than in GW2. Since you aren’t forced to “lock on” to a target your skills become much more versatile; you can use a forward dashing skill to move out of a line of attack, while at the same time still hit your target with the side arc of your weapons strike. “True action combat” games have a much more realistic flow to their skills in my opinion when I compare them to kendo and fencing (I have practiced both).

As for animation locks, in most action combat games they are there where it makes sense most of the time. GW2 has locks on many skills too, so that’s really a null argument (and they even have some where it doesn’t make sense…). Attacks should have three portions to their animations; the wind up, the action (hit), and the follow through. GW2 lacks one or more of these on many of their animations.

GW2 also has the opposite problem from being rooted or locked; you don’t have any sort of footwork built into you animation at all sometimes! This can just make many of the skills feel really spam some of the time.

As for the question proposed by the OP: GW2 has plenty of skills, you don’t even really use most of your skills in most other MMO’s for anything other than filler (there are maybe like somewhere between 12-20 skills that most players use in those games that actual do anything meaningful…).

However, with the lack of skills also comes the problem of keeping these “lack” of skills meaningful and useful. Something which Anet has partly failed on… interrupts often are meaninglessly spammed just to “hopefully” have it interrupt something important or you have passive conditions like confuse and retaliation punishing players for actually being engaged actively in the combat (and can essentially be spammed in way thats more along the lines of “have fun killing yourself”).

I think dividing skills between weapons was a failure, personally, and weapon switching and other such bar-swapping mechanics feel more clunky than complex and engaging. So many classes have weapons I only really want to use one or two skills in, and with only five per weapon set up, even if there’s only one dud it bothers me having that wasted skill sitting there. Plus, traits often focus your build on certain weapons making the secondary feel like something you’re “stuck” in until you swap back to your “main” weapon considering there’s a CD on weapon swapping.

The one thing that is nice about it, is having some versatility when it comes to range, but I don’t feel that makes up for the flaws. I’m not against multiple weapon sets if they could fix it up though, but the way they implemented it hasn’t panned out IMO.

There are too many CDs as well, every class but thief feels too similar due to this. Class choice becomes a matter of power/practicality or aesthetics/theme, and sadly some of the classes I like the latter of don’t cut it when it comes to the former. Having only one auto-attack/no-CD attack with the rest being CDs of often considerable length was a really poor idea. If a weapon has a fail auto-attack it can really ruin the rest of the weapon considering you know, everything else is on CD – making it more of a utility stick that you swap out of ASAP after popping the useful CDs on it.

Then there are utilities which vary, the short CDs can add a lot to a class giving them less time sitting on auto-attack or forcing them to switch weapons to keep doing decent damage or whatever. But some classes are really locked into a passive or two which again, with only 5, even having one that just sits there being a boon most of the time reduces complexity dramatically. And some are just excessively long, I’d take all 40 seconds or lower CDs for utility if I had decent options for such on every class if I could.

And last but not least, too many skills are quick and easy. . Building up power and/or creating opportunity to use more powerful abilities is mostly absent from GW2 and it feels spammy. Combos only go so far and many classes can’t smoothly/efficiently create them without weapon swapping – and even then some aren’t worth bothering with. Very little high risk high reward feeling. While a few classes w/certain weapons/traits are better than others when it comes to this admittedly, because of how quick and easy most other classes’ abilities are some of the high risk high reward skills just feel like extra work for the same result.

Overall, the combat just feels shallow and a significant part of that is of course the skill system and many of the individual skills across the classes. I’m sure almost everyone has skills they dislike using or don’t use for various reasons, but are stuck having on their bar because of the weapon system.

Sola.7250:

It seems anytime I mention GW2 to some one they tell me yea but, the skills are so boring? GW2 characters do seem to have fewer skills than other MMO’s but, do we really need 10 rows of skill sets?

GW2 skills and the use of them are in no way visceral and to me that’s such an important feeling. Tera, now that’s visceral combat.

To me the amount of skills usable at one time is not the measure of a boring or not game.

Lol I remember trolling with mind freeze and gale which was a 2s knockdown. Classic. Too bad you can’t do silly crap like that in GW2. I’ve used hundreds of builds in GW1, maybe used like 3 in GW2 on my thief. Quite sad….

If the Skills are boring ?
I would have to say personally yes. Why?
Because most of them simply aren’t visually impressive enough for my taste, but however, in regard of the game they do make their job and they do all work like “basic skills” to me.
I hope the skills will become more impressive in future in regard of character progression
Anet could absolutely make the Skills alot more interesting and flashy/spectacular. Thats why people suggest such things like skill alteration and skill skins.

When you look at other games and compare their skills, more especially how those skills are designed for those skills in their animations, most skills from other games do look alot more impressive/better, than most of GW2’s skills do.

I ask myself oftenly:

Why do I find this skill does look alot better/cooler/more impressive, than the compareable version of GW2??
Take for example the 0815 classic skil “Fireball”.

So why doe Fireball Skills in other games look better and oftenly more impressive, than in GW2.

The reason for this is – DETAILS. GW2 lacks in skill details, be it in regard of sound effects, visual effects or skill animations.
One reason for this lack of details surely is, that Anet wants to guarantee that as much as people as possible can play GW2, even with super old PCs on lowest graphic configurations…

But the point is, theres nothing in this game so far for those people under the configurations to improve the level of skill details for skills to make them look more impressive, if your pc supports it… as an option

Then theres still DX11 support missing, which would greatly improve alot of graphic details for environments as like surely also skill animations.

On the other hand, its surely also the overall graphic engine.
On this point you have to look only on other games like FF14, Blade & Soul, EIN, EOS, or BLESS and Everquest Next.
All games with much more impressive looking skills that do let a character look “powerful and heroic” due to very detailed animated skills with effects that let them look somehow special and heroic.

When I compare how impressive certain Archer/Hunter/Ranger classes are with their bow skills, compared to the bow skills of our GW2 Ranger, then our skills simply do look very “boring” compared to them, because they don’t give you the feeling of being someone special, being heroic ect.

Make the example guys, think on the skill animations of certain ranger skill like Rapid Fire, Hunters Shot (which looks a lot like just a normal shot…) or point blank shot, which again just looks like a total normal shot, but just launches the target back…
Think on them, visualize their animations in your mind and with them in your mind, look at this:

< here you see a REAL Rapid Shot that looks impressive cause it looks really “rapid”, an impressive barrage, an impressive explosvie shot, an impressive arrow fan (by the way nice flying mounts cough, did I already say it looks impressive??)

However, I say, it would make also sense to compare imporessive skills from offline games, especially in the case of bow skills, because they do often look alot better, than in most of all MMO’s, take for example Star Ocean 4.

It just takes the way of how you can make bow shots look special to a whole new level above everything else mentioned before.

Skill Animations and Effects do really make up for a huge difference when it comes down to the point, if a skill will be rather boring, or cool and impressive, especially in a fantasy rpg, where you somehow expect also that your “hero” is somehow special and hasn’t skills that just do look like 0815 normal attacks

However.. looks is just only one half of the medal that can lead to skills being felt as boring. The other half are the skill mechanics. If the skill mechanics make no fun from the used skill, then a skill quickly gets called boring too, because if a skill makes no fun, is useless or too hard to use to be efficient with it, all these points also can make a skill boring.
When skills do make fun, are nice to look at AND are useful, THEN you will never see people about them complaing, that skill X is boring. Thats my opinion based from my experiences in regard of MMos and alot of offline rpgs

The Lost Witch.7601:

Well, most of the skills in GW2 seem to be rather… carefully made. There are few potentially overpowered ridiculous skills in comparison to GW1. (Mesmer portal is one of those though, as is time warp, stealth and reflection in general and I guess the tome of courage with its full party heal)

In comparison GW1 had quite a few skills that were at some point broken (insanely good) and needed several nerfs.

The most famous was probably Shadowform, which started out as a 60s recharge enchantment that would last for 16 seconds or so, made you invulnerable to everything and then took you down to like 5% of your health. Risky, but a lot of fun. (Until permanent shadowforming became a thing due to the other broken skills…)

Other memorable extreme skills:

Protective spirit. (Enchantment that reduced every hit you took to 10% of your health)

Bonds. (Maintained enchantments that a player could cast on another player to prevent up to 90% of the damage they took)

Spiteful Spirit. A hex that would have a foe deal damage to itself and other foes around it whenever he attacked or used a skill. This ended up being a LOT of damage. Often singlehandedly offering over 50% of the damage your build could do.

Echo. This spell gave you a copy of the spell that you would cast after it. Allowing you to use the same skill twice, or even more often.

Edge of extinction. Whenever a player or other creature died, this ranger spirit would deal damage to all other creatures of the same type. This lead to crazy builds that would even wreck havoc in PvP, having almost the entire team suicide in order to kill the enemy team by having one player use:

Mark of Protection. An enchantment that would revert all damage to healing instead for 10 seconds.

Blood is power. A skill that would enhance the energy regeneration of allies massively but sacrifice 33% of your health! (Real health sacrifices!)

Power Block. This interrupt could lock entire skillbars for 12 seconds.

Backfire. This single skill would equal about 15 stacks of confusion for 10 seconds on a spellcaster.

Distracting shot. This arrow would interrupt a skill and put it on a +20 second recharge.

Grenth’s Balance. This skill would balance the difference between your health and the health of the enemy. Giving you health and taking the enemy health away.

Frozen Soil. A ranger spirit that would prevent any player from using ressurection skills for as long as it was alive.

Melandru’s Resilience. A ranger stance that you could keep up indefinitely that would not remove your conditions, but counter their effects with more health regeneration AND energy regeneration. The more conditions you got, the better the skill became.

Mind Freeze, this skill would slow your opponent massively if you landed it on a foe with less energy than you had. We’re talking an 11 second 90% slow. (Which was buffable up to 20 seconds)

Dash. A stance that gave +50% movement speed for 3 seconds every 8 seconds.

Those sound fantasticly fun and varied. I wish GW2 was not shy. Screw overbalance, I prefer having to find myself all “WTF did happen to me ?” and go for one hour against a specific opponent to find creative ways of defeating him with my own meanings, than just a shiny little balanced world where every skill feels bland and every fight feels as predictable as the previous.

The skill system is as good as you make it.

I mean, GW2 combat has animation cancels that usually only exist in fighting games. The cancels aren’t there by accident.

The skills are meant to be simple so that you can pay attention to the battlefield and react to telegraphs. They have long CDs because you’re meant to use them situationally rather than in rotation. Weapon skills lend themselves to certain skill combinations (Ele staff and the arcane blast and bolt abilities for example).

There’s depth there, it’s just not very obvious.

Skills simply lack depth, they are mostly one dimensional.

I find skill effects boring. None of them deliver epicness.

Anoddhermit.4602:

I think dividing skills between weapons was a failure, personally, and weapon switching and other such bar-swapping mechanics feel more clunky than complex and engaging. So many classes have weapons I only really want to use one or two skills in, and with only five per weapon set up, even if there’s only one dud it bothers me having that wasted skill sitting there. Plus, traits often focus your build on certain weapons making the secondary feel like something you’re “stuck” in until you swap back to your “main” weapon considering there’s a CD on weapon swapping.

The one thing that is nice about it, is having some versatility when it comes to range, but I don’t feel that makes up for the flaws. I’m not against multiple weapon sets if they could fix it up though, but the way they implemented it hasn’t panned out IMO.

There are too many CDs as well, every class but thief feels too similar due to this. Class choice becomes a matter of power/practicality or aesthetics/theme, and sadly some of the classes I like the latter of don’t cut it when it comes to the former. Having only one auto-attack/no-CD attack with the rest being CDs of often considerable length was a really poor idea. If a weapon has a fail auto-attack it can really ruin the rest of the weapon considering you know, everything else is on CD – making it more of a utility stick that you swap out of ASAP after popping the useful CDs on it.

Then there are utilities which vary, the short CDs can add a lot to a class giving them less time sitting on auto-attack or forcing them to switch weapons to keep doing decent damage or whatever. But some classes are really locked into a passive or two which again, with only 5, even having one that just sits there being a boon most of the time reduces complexity dramatically. And some are just excessively long, I’d take all 40 seconds or lower CDs for utility if I had decent options for such on every class if I could.

And last but not least, too many skills are quick and easy. . Building up power and/or creating opportunity to use more powerful abilities is mostly absent from GW2 and it feels spammy. Combos only go so far and many classes can’t smoothly/efficiently create them without weapon swapping – and even then some aren’t worth bothering with. Very little high risk high reward feeling. While a few classes w/certain weapons/traits are better than others when it comes to this admittedly, because of how quick and easy most other classes’ abilities are some of the high risk high reward skills just feel like extra work for the same result.

Overall, the combat just feels shallow and a significant part of that is of course the skill system and many of the individual skills across the classes. I’m sure almost everyone has skills they dislike using or don’t use for various reasons, but are stuck having on their bar because of the weapon system.

I think this is pretty accurate. MMO skills need to have a cerebral aspect to them and for me that’s where GW2 falls down hard. The theorycrafting aspect just isn’t there, which is pretty kitten disappointing given that that was the strongest feature of the first game.

The other thing I think that’s really missing is choice – I completely agree, fixed weapon skills were a really bad idea. Traits don’t really cut it because they’re either too ineffectual and/or too narrowly-defined to feel like they expand the range of choice and bizarrely, if anything, feel like they reduce the amount of choice.