Guild Wars 2

The title may sound cheeky but …

I have been on GW2 since closed beta and was following the game closely before that. I know it will never be “like good old Guild wars 1” but are we really doomed forever to get stuck with that very boring weapon system that breaks entirely the one fun thing that guild wars 1 offered being builds. I am tired to use the very same skills over and over and over and over for years now and have to stick with them. The specialization doesn’t change much things as they add only one new weapon and for most classes that means that they will still have “old” weapons as swap anyway.

Could we have over time added weapon spells and have for example a set of two or even three spells per slot to choose from (not necessarily all of them but at least have some more freedom). We could have one alternate for the 5th skill for each weapon, later one for the 4th and so on.

My biggest problem with GW2 by very very far is the huge lack of build customization. It got slightly better with the rework on specialization past years but it still is extremly poor and straightforward and most of the time it is solely about pure damage vs condition and balance/defense balancing. I’d like to feel I am actually playing a RPG and not a multiplayer hack and slash.

And a huge part of utility skills as they are called (and even elite) feel so underwhelming. I play almost only mesmer and most spells feel just meh. (the super clunky mantra and illusion of life being the most obvious examples to me).

I hate to say it, but … that’s really “I’d like a different game”, in more words. I understand your position, but I don’t think it’s really something that is within the scope of GW2.

If they would let people mix and match points into different trees so that you didn’t have to go all the way to grandmaster traits you could have multiple trees with varying amounts invested . . .I miss that a lot. .I lost my old builds when they forced us into only going full into 3 trait trees.

Anet wanted the game to be easier to balance. This means less skills because the less skills you have the less balances you have to do. Anet has done this with a lot of things, doing or making the stuff that is easiest and makes them the most money.

The thing with GW2 is that its more of an action-oriented MMORPG rather than a traditional one. This is why the skills are fixed to weapons. TBH its better that way because in a traditional MMORPG you are stuck with the same weapon and the same “hard-hitting, bread and butter skill” characteristic to the class. Sure, GW2 still has some of those problems, like not so useful skills, but not in such a severe way.

And mesmer, well, mesmer is a more PvP oriented class. In PvE, only a handful of skills are useful. I accept that as a problem though, they need to bring back the old GW1 system of splitting skills for PvP/PvE, they have done it to a certain level here, but its not so much.

I’m a mesmer and a lot of the problems people have regarding this game are directly tied to their classes. Such as Guardians being perceived as the tanky healer paladin class to pick at launch and then they got a ranged elite specialization with traps and such guardians are typically the first to start the warhorn against the elite specs.

In this case your main is a mesmer just like me and I agree wholeheartedly the game needs this because our utilities and especially our elites are horrible or primary output is our weapons.

The reason is because of three abilities/mechanics and of course raids those being Moa, Alacrity, and Continuum Shift.

In PvP if we had harder hitting skills it would only be a two button rotation to kill anyone you’d Moa them and then you’d use a strong skill to cursh them in a single blow. Instead it’s Moa and blow all your CD’s and resources(shatter).

In raids we provide alacrity to the group which secures out position and if we had decent weapon and utility skills then we’d go farther than we already are in that setup. We were already at two chrono’s needed for awhile but imagine if chrono had decent dps to back up all those one trick abilities then they’d easily start replacing the other classes it would be Chrono tank, dps, support, and something else for raw heals exc;uding most other classes.

In WvW people want us to portal golems or zergs into buildings and wvw is more a do what you want kind of deal but its never good for a single class to be in that high a demand so we must be kept in check there too.

In Pve content we have continuum Shift we can reset damage and effectively use every single skill under our belt twice. This includes elites and no other class in the game can spam there elites in the game as much as a Chrono. This means are elites or horrible on purpose if any other class in the game could use their elites twice in a row they two would have their elites effectiveness sliced in near half. So yes our elites feel and pretty much useless a back to back mass invis isn’t that good. Even the well isn’t that good because the first well already clumped everyone together for a burn.

You take all of those things and strip them from the base Mesmer and your left with core mesmer being one of the worst classes in the game in my book. Core Mesmer is balanced in group content against alacrity and its elites/utilities/weaponskills are all balanced to be used twice in a row with CS. The issue is core Mesmer can’t use any of these things aside Moa and even then the Chrono pvp player can Moa two people back to back.

All classes are well enough balanced aside Necro which balances itself against two healthpools. Mesmer on the other hand has spikes in its abilities and as high as alacrity, CS, and Moa spike the mesmer it also causes some really low dips. Hence why Mesmers are typically the ones to complain about skills and why I agree with TC. I’d rather have CS nerfed to not effect our elites and more classes given alacrity, portal, and a moa type spell so our rough edges and skills can get the improvements they need. Even in the last update patch we were only half done Anet provided some minor raw dps increases to our phantasms but they never updated all our phantasms and this is primarily a raw dps increase for the core Mesmer.

Though I agree with the whole “Mesmer is to set on one thing” part (specially tired to consider the mesmer as a human-teleporter; funnily enough season 3 of living world is treating mesmers solely as human-teleporter it made me laugh so hard).
I don’t think that weapons spells on Mesmer are bad anymore, I really love to use my Scepter, the changes (a while ago) on the last hit of the auto-hit Scepter combo is so welcome and so are the additions to a few spells (such as the 2 and 3 staff spells being tweaked, the pistol phantasm).

My problem is really that there is no real customization, if you want to be original you are very quickly sub-optimal and feel really under-powered.

I wanted to reply SlippyCheeze.5483 and kamedin.4698 in particular :

- The game does play a lot more like an action game. I think it is very refreshing and done very well. Though now it’s far from being the only MMO with that gameplay (basically every new MMO is doing that now) and most still offer some sort of customization (even if I’m very often disappointed in those other titles). Using the whole “it’s action focused” excuse is being lazy I think. Proof is all 9 classes share the same pool of weapons and a Mesmer and a Guardian will use their greatsword in very different ways. So I don’t see why it would be a problem that suddenly the same Mesmer can have a close-range auto-hit doing a big arc (similar to the sword combo but with bigger range).

- The whole balance thing is really not relevant either. I find GW2 by very far much worse in terms of balancing compared to GW1 where balance update were so regular and very well done. I never felt in GW1 that any of the class was overpowered overall (maybe Ritualist and Paragon a bit too niche most of the time though). Fact is GW2 has a very small amount of skills, and even less to choose from within each class and there has always been huge balance issues that are still noticeable. I mean the Engineer is very commonly pointed at as the underwhelming class while the Guardian and the Elementalist have always been at the top in all part of the games.

When you compare the huge amount of new spells each expansion GW1 brought and the ridiculous +7 to +10 spells (ok I don’t count shatter and such) per class added. The number would be ok all the spells were free to use anywhere on the build from 1 to 8 but no. If you want to use shield spells on mesmer you first have to keep chronomancer specialization at all times and to use the shield even though you may find no use in one of the two spells, on top of that you lose access to all other 4 and 5 slots.

I really have the feeling that developers never really considered that maybe people were finding the game repetitive and lacking in content because the core gameplay is crazy repetitive because of spamming the same spells over and over.

On top of that if we do get that awaited new expansion likely bringing one new specialization to all class the problem will still be there (and I think even worse). You will then have to choose one specialization over the other so losing access to your 7-10 spells over the other pack of spells. We already lost the double profession system so amazing from GW1 (which was supposed to be kept but removed during development, very bad idea in my opinion), it would be good if we could gain back some decent customization in the builds and not ending having all the same build.

(And just for info I’m playing confusion-based Mesmer Scepter/Shield + Staff with lot of interrupt spell, so really not the typical greatsword zerk)

Not so long as the dodge system is this untouchable sacred cow entirely removed from the remainder of the game systems.

In PvE dodge is a great mechanic, in PvP dodge and block can create so dumb scenarios. Some elite spells are barely usable because of that.

Sombrero.9204:

In PvE dodge is a great mechanic, in PvP dodge and block can create so dumb scenarios. Some elite spells are barely usable because of that.

This thread is primarily addressing builds, and dodge in PvE enforced a single set of stats for all PvE content until the release of raids, over three years. And even then the streak was only broken by content devolved down to the tank-and-spank trinity; a build system just as rigid, nonstrategic, and uncreative as the DPS singularity that was the zerker meta.

Dodge is a great idea, and I still think it could be an amazing mechanic in an MMO, and THIS would still be my preferred MMO to get it right. But with how it is currently executed in this game it is as far from a great mechanic as you can get.

Dodge shouldn’t give invul frames, just a quick, “get out of the huge AoE nuke” move or for dodging projectiles. Its incredibly dumb how you can “dodge”, for example, stuff like the legacy Skyhammer laser while clearly staying inside the blast radius, or 3 phantasms that just exploded in your face.

Invulnerability frames on dodges ruin so many perfectly fine abilities that I can say removing them would single-handedly fix a ton of “useless” tagged skills (in pvp).

A lot of people think the game already has plenty of decent builds.

Personally, I am a convert to GW2’s system where personal skill matters more than having a decent build. I think that’s a style issue, not a balance nor combat system nor skill|trait system.

GW1 (and many other games) can be very heavy on skill requirement and still allow for great build customization. You can play extremly well in GW2 but if you don’t have a meta build or at least near meta you will end up being drastically worth than a very very very bad player with the perfect meta build. And it’s sad, very sad.

Sombrero.9204:

You can play extremly well in GW2 but if you don’t have a meta build or at least near meta you will end up being drastically worth than a very very very bad player with the perfect meta build.

This just isn’t true.

When looking at it at equal skill level, a meta build can outperform non-meta builds in the role that they are built for, but even with equal skill level, if you know your build better than the other person (even if non-meta) you can beat them.

As a long time GW1 fan I was super disappointed when GW2 released with attacks bound to weapons with only certain professions being able to only use certain weapons. But as I played more I came to realise when playing GW1 the majority of players would use the same weapons and the same skills over and over anyway. Simply because some were more useful than others and the top skills were always on the skill bar.

With GW2 now there’s almost more variation available and still be viable (certain profs excluded). So I see no need to change how this game operates in that department.

Straying a little off topic, I’m just hoping the next set of elite specs don’t outshine the ones we have now, if there’s a definite reason to swap from one to another depending on scenarios then we will have a real ‘build system’ to please the pickiest of players.

Whitworth.7259:

As a long time GW1 fan I was super disappointed when GW2 released with attacks bound to weapons with only certain professions being able to only use certain weapons. But as I played more I came to realise when playing GW1 the majority of players would use the same weapons and the same skills over and over anyway. Simply because some were more useful than others and the top skills were always on the skill bar.

With GW2 now there’s almost more variation available and still be viable (certain profs excluded). So I see no need to change how this game operates in that department.

Straying a little off topic, I’m just hoping the next set of elite specs don’t outshine the ones we have now, if there’s a definite reason to swap from one to another depending on scenarios then we will have a real ‘build system’ to please the pickiest of players.

There is a difference though if we compare GW1 to GW2. Some skills were overused just as of now. However I think GW1 did it better anyway PvP wise because, speaking only as of warrior for example; no matter what weapon you used you had a meta build attached to it. For axe, you had the meta frenzy build, for hammer you had the double knock down hammer skills. And now in GW2, we don’t see much people playing with these weapons since the elite spec. I hope the next elite specs increases the use of other meta weapons in the future for all classes.

I don’t see what’s wrong with the idea of having an elite spec provide 2, 3 or 5 different skill options for a weapon that’s available to a core profession. Some professions have room for more “new” (i.e., existing in game but not for a given profession) than others. Warrior, for instance, has less wiggle room for a “new” weapon than, say, Engineer. That said, as much as I would not want to see Warrior getting scepter, staff or focus for an elite spec, I’m aware that my preferences are not universal.