Guild Wars 2

I’ll start by saying that GW2’s combat is the best one i’ve ever touched in more that 10 years of mmos. It is fast, cool and most of all FLUID.

I heard in some interviews that Anet wanted a more action focused combat but i think they went half-way on that. I’m opening this thread to start a discussion on how to improve GW2’s combat as a whole.

I believe they went half-way because the combat is fast and viceral but the targetting system isn’t. I play an engineer and the combat on an engineer is the coolest because of the ammount of skillshots we have. Grenades may look spammy to those who don’t use them but every single skill in that kit is a skill shot. As an engie you are constantly switching between range and melee, even the Flamethrower have to be aimed(because if you don’t it’ll miss a lot).

I want GW2 to have more skillshots, but how? Allow us to aim our skills. Many skills already follow your camera even if you have a target(like the FlameThrower one), if we aimed most of our skills the combat would be much more skillfull and fun because even spamming auto attack would require skill.

Things like the combat mod that was released a year ago prove that it’s possible. Even little stuff like the release to cast option improved combat tremendously. Classes like ranger, ele and necro would be so much more fun to play if many of our skills were aimed.

Making enemies dodge like they do in the training area of HoTM would make combat more interesting

It would. Heck even the enemies going into downed state made the combat more challenging.

GW2’s combat is good, but far away from being perfect.

GW2’s combat system is missing/lacking specific aspects that truly make the combat system full of action, worthy for E-Sport and give the player the impression of being heroic and very powerful.

1) The combat system is massively lacking a comple to its fullest extent usage of the z-axis.
The current usage of the z-axis is just pathetic and basically only to be found in underwater combat, but sadly absolutely not in land battles, how other Games like Blade & Soul make of an active usage of that mechanic to make battles look more impressive and full of action within its real time based fast paced combats

2) The Combat system still uses such silly oldscool mechanics like RNG/automatical based Blocking mechanics, which have to be reduced to 0, if Anet wants to make out of GW2 ever any kind of worthy E-Sport.
Blocking attacks and avoidign damage through this must become as 100% manually player based, like performing a dodge roll, which is also not somethign that a character does “automatically” or through RNG mechanics passively.
It happens only, if the player actively uses it and the same way has to functionate blocking/parrying attacks.
Means, if a warrior for example doesn’t use actively its shield, then you don’t block attacks..so simple … if a warrior blocks for too long, an enemiy will break trhough the defense, because of blocking attacks manually costing endurance (lesser than a dodge roll, but it costs endurance so that you can’t block attacks unendlessly)

3) The combat system around Combos could be improved…

4) The signals that warn you for where and when damage will happen could be improved, Look for that onto Wildstar Online.. imo this game shows alot better and easier to understand, where and when damage will happen.
It provides also mechanics that id like to see implemented in general for GW2 PvE.

WEAKNESSES and RESISTANCES.

These things are some great instruments of tools, that should be used more oftenly to make battles against foes in PvE alot more interesting.

That kind of mechanic came to use in GW2 on the Karkas..

Surely something also with that PvP in general could be improved to give all classes more strategetical skills at their disposal, that allow them to receive specific resistances, which can be only removed, if you successfully do something that abuses a weakness of a class to remove those strategetical advantages to be able to deal for some time increased damage to the enemy, while the enemy receives lesser damage than normal, while that strategetical advantage is active and the enemy hasn#t broken it up first.

Example: an engineer turret, that gives the engineer some kind of strategetical advantage (resistance), that leads to a distraction of incoming damage , because enemies will want to destroy first that turret to be able to deal again normal damage against the engineer or abuse something that the engineer uses against to to your own advantage to hit a weak spot in the engineers defense to be able to deal for soem time increased damage agaisnt them.

like deflecting an attack of the turret onto the engineer back, which gets hit by it then by surprise and receives then sme damage more for a few seconds

4) The whole condition system needs to be redesigned.
The game could need some helpful more boons. Currently Anet adds always only more and more conditions, but yet they have added no single new boon to the game, when there could be so much more interesting positive effects that could help to balance out the classes easier.
Not to mention that the condition system for PvE/WvW needs to get changed

5) The targeting needs to become alot more precise in this game and there needs to be an easy useable Target Lock System, that locks your chosen target and permenently keeps it locked, as long as you wish , or until you release the lock again manually.
Currently you lose so often your last target, unless you press T, if you have target locked your foe and it gets really annoying when you lose permenently your target.

6) As said, enemies with better A.I so that they use better doge mechanics or block/parry mechanis would be also very welcome to make battles more interesting.
Looking at the current LW patch I see, that Anet seems to have started on that, the nightmare court enemies do dodge alot more, than any other enemies before in the whole game, what ive seen so far…

7) Alot more enemies should have a downed state to be finishable
At least Veterans or higher should have this all.

8) Alot comes through Class balancing also, alot of skill and traits are still either useless, underpowered/overpowered or alot of traits could get basically merged with others or better said should get merged to make space for new traits.

I could list up some more points, but that list is already long enough to show alot of things, where anet could improve the general combat system of GW2.

What the point of a downed state in PvE ? Making it last 3 sec longer? The problem isint the downed state is how the skills work .

Engi nade is a good exemple or warrior’s whirlwind attack it forces you to aim somewhere . If all skills worked like this it would truly be skill based . Or thief’s cloak and dagger is very hard to land on a moving target .

GuilguiS.2738:

(SNIP) combat mod (SNIP)

I use the combat mod which i could not play without, if the mod ever stopped working or aNet changed their stance on it – i wouldn’t be able to play GW2.

I really have no idea why they have the combat the way it is now but to each to their own though as i personally would love for them to implement it themselves.

to evolve,we need to fix the current problems and imbalances before introducing new features.

1)damage coefficients need to be balanced first,getting backstabbed 7k dmg when ur hp is 14k means death in less than 3 seconds.

2)reduce amount of CC chain ,a DR for CC would be good to avoid complete shutdown of a player who cannot do anything at all due to perma immobilise/stun/fear chain until death.

3)condition application versus condition removal, requires balancing.

4)cheap conditions should be removed-

A)confusion, what can you do if you have 25 stacks of confusion. Do nothing until you die,or do something and die faster.

B)retaliation, the solution is to either remove the boon or don’t attack until the boon wears off. Boon removal ability is not available equally to all profession.

new features.

Active reflect to cause ricochet, active parry and riposte.

When using ranged weapons in main hand, defending an attack by your opponent using an active defensive button, if timed correctly at point of impact,will reflect the attack,receiving no dmg to self and ricochets it back to the attacker and his allies around him dealing massive dmg.2handed ranged weapons causes AOE dmg, 1 handed ranged weapon does dmg to single target.

When using melee weapons in main hand, defending an attack by your opponent using an active defensive button,if timed correctly at point of impact,will parry the attack,receiving no dmg to self and counterattacking, dealing massive dmg.2 handed melee weapon causes cleave dmg,single handed melee weapon does dmg to single target.

Defensive button has 2 bar that is similar to dodge and is affected by vigor as well. They do not share the same energy so you can dodge twice and parry/reflect twice in succession as you can do with dodge now before the bar is replenished.

Certain weapon skills can behave the same way for this feature.

Just like ranger/thief shortbow can cause evasion similar to dodge on skill 3,
a weapon skill that can block and counterattack,will share this feature upgrade.

Orpheal.8263:

Snip

I don’t think Anet wanted GW2 to fully become an action-MMO. There’s a lot of things thats good about a traditional MMO that can’t be captured by an action-MMO, which is why WoW is still king, and stuff like FF14 and TSW still gets made.

We do have fights that use the y-axis, like Tequatl. If you’re talking about aerial combos, it would be cool but you’d have to question if thats actually possible on GW2’s engine, and also what purpose would they serve other than just to look pretty.
You could make skills launch an enemy into the air and do an over-the-top DMC-style combo at it, but thats more of a gimmick than a real combat mechanic to me.

There’s nothing random about blocking or damage reduction in the game. If you don’t have Aegis or Blind on the enemy, you will get hit. If you don’t have protection and enemy isn’t on weakness, you will take full damage. There is critical chance which determines the damage you take, but …would you want to take it completely out of a RPG?

Orpheal.8263:

4) The signals that warn you for where and when damage will happen could be improved, Look for that onto Wildstar Online.. imo this game shows alot better and easier to understand, where and when damage will happen.
It provides also mechanics that id like to see implemented in general for GW2 PvE.

This is important and a signal for your own skills is also necessary. The Warrior skill Stomp should display a circle on the ground that shows it’s radius working like the release to cast option. it isn’t easy to guess what 450 or 360 radius means.