Guild Wars 2

Sooo when im on youtube or reddit, seems like theres always a person saying how gw1 combat is much better than gw2’s combat mechanic. i had this game for 2 years on and off and recently i started to really appreciating the combo mechanic of gw2. now i didnt have chance to play gw1 at all so can someone explain to me wat was really great about gw1’s mechanic over gw2’s?

(cant get in to other mmos thx to gw2’s combat mechanic btw)

Not to say one combat system is better than the other, but GW1 had more skills to choose from, with the ability to change your second profession to access even more skills. GW1 was also very much so about split second timing for interrupts and knockdowns. GW2 is much more party oriented, movement is much more fluid (plus dodges), but lack in variations of skills. I do enjoy GW2 combat more, but GW1 I believe was more challenging.

Long story short, GW1 was back in the days a paradise for theorycrafter and build makers.

The profusion of skills and the ability to have a 2nd profession meant you could combine whatever you want. It opened the possibility for crasy and unexpected combos.

Just to put things in perspective :

• In GW2, what is the best defensive support ? The guardian. Right you expected that.
• In GW1, the best healer (remember GW1 is using Trinity) is hands down the… elementalist with a monk as a secondary. I bet you didn’t see this one coming!

Why is the ele so much better than a monk who is built around the idea of Healing ? Because of a bronken combo involving sustained enchantments and an elite skill (ether renewal GW1) of the ele that give energy and health proportionnal to the number of enchantments he has on him.

If you are limiting yourselft to just enchantments from ele you would be very disappointed and the elite would be just meh. However, with a monk secondary you have accesse to plenty of long-lasting cheap enchantments that synergise like mad with the GW1 ether renewal.

This is not the only oddity of the GW1 speed clear meta. In fact the ENTIRE PvE speed-clear meta is made of oddboys builds that a selected group of theorycrafters have carefully built to take advantage of every single broken skill combo possible.

In GW2, everything is extremely streamlined, meaning that each profession does what it’s supposed to do and not much more. Thus a lot of people from GW1 were disgusted when they saw GW2 : A game with a gameplay that limited the possibilities. These people left quickly after launch TBH.

The streamlining was necessary : because GW2 is an action game with no Trinity, you cannot have the same profusion of skills like in GW1 and picking the right skills is as important as knowing how to use them.

GW1 gameplay can be summed up as : find the perfect build -> start your rotation -> done. No dodges, no jumps, very few blocks/evades. GW2 at least tries to keep you on your toes.

VodCom.6924:

• In GW1, the best healer (remember GW1 is using Trinity) is hands down the… elementalist with a monk as a secondary. I bet you didn’t see this one coming!

This statement is misleading and not necessarily true. It depends on what you’re doing.

My favorite in Guild Wars 1 was the Necro/Ritualist. They made minions (like crazy numbers of them), healed, rezzed, and did damage. A team of necro/rits rolled over PvE content.

ahh icic so gw1 was based on skill combination and rotation of 2ndary class and ur mains while gw2 is more limited but action and using right skill at the right time. right?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

My favorite in Guild Wars 1 was the Necro/Ritualist. They made minions (like crazy numbers of them), healed, rezzed, and did damage. A team of necro/rits rolled over PvE content.

I do miss being a real minion master.

I miss being a real rupt mesmer too. It was so fun shutting people down to the point they started cussing at me…. Ah the good old days…

not gonna bother explaining how gw2 combat works so ill go with gw1

In very short: Its all about skills and tactics and team coordination (IN ALL ASPECTS OF THE GAME)

Im gonna tell you the 3 things that made gw1 combat much better than gw2.
1)Dual class system with over 280 skills to pick and attribute points
2)Building your team ,not just your own character
3)The enemies you are facing

First of all every class has about 90-150 skills, with another 90-150 skills available to you from another class which you have as secondary. You couldev been a Warrior/elementalist, or a ranger/necromancer and you couldev switched your 2ndary profession as you pleased.

You didnt increase your skills abilities by increasing stats on your gear…in fact there were no stats to get from gear except some basic +hp, +energy and +33% lengthen bleeding for any type of armor or weapon.

You had to invest attribute points in a specific attribute.(like traits,but without specific effects)
Investing points (that can be refunded for free when you are in a town) increased the potency of all skills inside that attribute, fireballs hit harder, incinerate had longer burning ect.

Example: if you wanted to be a elementalist that uses fire spells as well as being able to attack with a sword combo you can be a E/W and put attribute points into Fire magic and Swordmastery attribute.

And with over 1300 skills across 10 professions you could really make some fun, powerfull or even OP builds.

The 2nd part is that the entire game is played with you and 4-6-8-12 npc/human characters at all time. This means that from all the possible build combination from your elementalist that can have with any secondary profession..theres also 7 other characters around you that can support your build with their own.

Example: In some elite dungeon zones a organised group of 12 players each have their own role and a build that does something important or supports the other player next to you. From basic tank,healer,nuker, single target spiker, to a mesmer interupter,disabler, spirit spammer, minion master… even runners that can only run pass the hordes of monsters in order to go trough the zone exit and take the entire team with him.

The last part is the enemies that you were facing. While some of them attack once per second almost all of them have their own full builds made out of skills that any other player can use with their own class.

Enemies spawn in packs and some more “intelligent” packs have builds that support eachother. A group of canthan gang members have 1 healer, 1 aoe axe tanky warrior, 1 elementalist nuker and a ritualist that supports them all with spirits and spirit weapons.
If you arent prepared with your build along with the builds your other team mates has you have no chance of defeating that group.

Back on the old days there were good rangers and good mesmer, some say thats a myth becouse there were no zerker at that time.

You can’t even JUMP in Guild Wars 1.
All you need to do is spam 1 while your heroes do the work with splinter weapon,minions,death nova,putrid bile,etc…

I don’t get how more “challenging” GW1 combat was,it was okay,but definitely not challenging. If you had the 7 heroes (or even only 3) party,you could just roll through missions.
Even resses were almost instantaneous (and some were really instantaneous) and you could do it from afar.

Yes,it was fun,but GW2 is 1000x better. (it was good for the time it was released)

Sorean.5379:

You can’t even JUMP in Guild Wars 1.
All you need to do is spam 1 while your heroes do the work with splinter weapon,minions,death nova,putrid bile,etc…

I don’t get how more “challenging” GW1 combat was,it was okay,but definitely not challenging. If you had the 7 heroes (or even only 3) party,you could just roll through missions.
Even resses were almost instantaneous (and some were really instantaneous) and you could do it from afar.

Yes,it was fun,but GW2 is 1000x better. (it was good for the time it was released)

/jump

If you go into GW1 without reading PvX or a guide you’re going to have a hard time. Without proper builds your heroes will not be able to do the later content.

GW1 was/is a broken mess of a game that the Devs pretty much gave up on balancing.
They as much as admitted this as the reason they threw everything out and started anew in GW2.

Now they broke this one too, as the Zerker Meta and Zerk gameplay clearly shows.
Just open a random thread here and watch people get berated for daring to not play a Zerker equipped toon.

Probably the thing I liked most about GW1 was the need to manage your energy, which Anet is bringing back with the Revenant. It meant that every engagement required a certain amount of tactical and / or strategic thinking. You couldn’t just blast everything off cool down. You had to watch the enemy’s skill activation bar to time in your knock downs or interrupts. You do it in GW2 as well but it isn’t quite as critical as in GW1. Missed that interrupt on a Meteor Shower? Prepare to eat fiery knock downs.
Synergies were somewhat more intricate than in GW2.

For instance, my warrior ran an adrenalin build that revolved around unleashing lots of the elite skill Dragon Slash, which cost 10 points of adrenalin. That would normally take 10 basic attacks before I could unleash 1 after which, 10 more basic attacks. However, with For Great Justice! (100% more adrenalin / hit) and Enraging Charge (4 additional points of adrenalin on hit) active I could charge Dragon Slash on my first hit (EC (4 points) + basic attack (1point) x 2 (FGJ). Dragon Slash then returned 5 points of adrenalin for each hit and as long as I had FGJ up, I would get 10 points of adrenalin back with each hit. After that, I would use my other skills on the bar. This is a fairly basic synergy.

It’s one of a few mechanics I miss from GW1. The other one was cover conditions. Dropping conditions on a target in a particular order affected the order they would be removed. So, for instance, setting up your attack so you could cover burning and bleeding with cracked armour, poison, cripple etc was critical.

Sorean.5379:

You can’t even JUMP in Guild Wars 1.
All you need to do is spam 1 while your heroes do the work with splinter weapon,minions,death nova,putrid bile,etc…

I don’t get how more “challenging” GW1 combat was,it was okay,but definitely not challenging. If you had the 7 heroes (or even only 3) party,you could just roll through missions.
Even resses were almost instantaneous (and some were really instantaneous) and you could do it from afar.

Yes,it was fun,but GW2 is 1000x better. (it was good for the time it was released)

Did you even play Guild Wars 1? Ever? I’m honestly curious.

Apples and Oranges. They are so completely different.

TBH GW1 is about watching bars on the screen, or watching enemy animations and pressing your 1-10 keys at the right time…

GW2 is far more involved.

I’ve just started playing GW1 a couple of weeks ago (having played GW2 since shortly after launch), and I find it hard to even compare the combat of both games, it’s just so totally different.

GW1 combat is a lot more “front-loaded” in that you have to research the proper skill and class combinations for the content and know how to play your rotations to maximum effect. Quick on-the-fly reactions and proper movement play a smaller role than they do in GW2 combat. More strategy, less action.

Personally, I find GW1 combat (at least from what I’ve seen of it so far) easier to get into, since planning and strategy come easier to me while my reaction time isn’t the greatest. Still, GW2 combat to me feels more fluid, and lots of fun especially when things don’t go as planned and you have to react on the fly.

Both combat systems have their strong points (often mutually exclusive), and both cater to a different kind of player. It’s just personal preference which system you enjoy more.

Hamuko.3547:

Sorean.5379:

You can’t even JUMP in Guild Wars 1.
All you need to do is spam 1 while your heroes do the work with splinter weapon,minions,death nova,putrid bile,etc…

I don’t get how more “challenging” GW1 combat was,it was okay,but definitely not challenging. If you had the 7 heroes (or even only 3) party,you could just roll through missions.
Even resses were almost instantaneous (and some were really instantaneous) and you could do it from afar.

Yes,it was fun,but GW2 is 1000x better. (it was good for the time it was released)

/jump

If you go into GW1 without reading PvX or a guide you’re going to have a hard time. Without proper builds your heroes will not be able to do the later content.

Normal pve was as challenging as nornal pve in gw2 (doing story,quest,exploring) others words easily done unless you were too low level. Organized pve yeah it made a difference, trinitzzz metas for organized stuff like the deep and some others

StarNightz.8496:

Sooo when im on youtube or reddit, seems like theres always a person saying how gw1 combat is much better than gw2’s combat mechanic. i had this game for 2 years on and off and recently i started to really appreciating the combo mechanic of gw2. now i didnt have chance to play gw1 at all so can someone explain to me wat was really great about gw1’s mechanic over gw2’s?

(cant get in to other mmos thx to gw2’s combat mechanic btw)

GW1 and GW2 have completely different combat systems. The actual COMBAT mechanics in GW1 weren’t something amazing.

GW1 was challenging until you got the builds right, then everything was pretty much soloable. You could just stand in a corner and the heroes will do everything you want. GW1 was more about building your character, than playing it.

GW2 on the other hand is all about the actual gameplay. Of course I believe a very important reason for this is the easy build change. In GW2 you can change your build any time you want, in GW1 you had to plan for specific skills for specific encounters, for example stance removal for Shiro in Gate of Madness or Recall for Kanaxai in the Deep, even though those skills wouldn’t be the best option for the rest of the instance.

As for the number of skills, if you actually count them, GW2 has more skills than a single GW1 campaign and is very close to 2 GW1 campaigns (Proph + Factions). GW2 has way more skills to use in combat, in GW1 you just had your 8 skills, in GW2 you can have way more. If you are playing an Engineer or Elementalist the available skills are going through the roof

Is GW1 COMBAT better? Not really, combat itself isn’t better, it’s the character building that’s superior and has more choice.

Both games have their merits and these have pretty much been covered by earlier posts. I played GW for 6-7yrs and GW2 since the 3day pre-release. IMO a merging of certain aspects from each would make a truly fantastic game, so here goes:-

Take GW2 and throw away the traits system and the idea of skills being locked to weapons.

Replace this with GW primary/secondary professions, attributes system and skill energy costs.

Also add in Hero’s and their build and in combat control systems.

I could go into depth but as a quick overview I think these changes would make an MMO that has the potential to be truly massive. I expect some people to disagree but that’s fine as this is only my opinion.

Vyrulisse.1246:

Sorean.5379:

You can’t even JUMP in Guild Wars 1.
All you need to do is spam 1 while your heroes do the work with splinter weapon,minions,death nova,putrid bile,etc…

I don’t get how more “challenging” GW1 combat was,it was okay,but definitely not challenging. If you had the 7 heroes (or even only 3) party,you could just roll through missions.
Even resses were almost instantaneous (and some were really instantaneous) and you could do it from afar.

Yes,it was fun,but GW2 is 1000x better. (it was good for the time it was released)

Did you even play Guild Wars 1? Ever? I’m honestly curious.

Probably, yes. Everything they said is quite accurate.

I played GW1 on and off since its original release (about a month per expansion) with no real purpose. It was only until the GW2 HoM was announced that I actually bothered to do any of the extras, going from something like 500 hours to 3k.

GW1 was all about the builds you were using. With the proper hero setup, everything was as simple as going AFK and letting them kill everything. That’s how I did most of my hard mode vanquishing and missions – c, space and AFK. The only parts that actually required input were when I would need to position them, such as defending a specific area or preparing for AoE heavy areas. I pretty much used the same hero setup (spirit team/mes/necro something) everywhere I went with little effort, including most of the dungeons/elite areas (FoW, UW, etc).

Of course GW1 was much more difficult and very annoying prior to adding the positioning flags and back when my team consisted of only henchmen. (I played 100% solo)