The design philosophy around the GW2 system vs the GW1 system was to lower the number of possible builds while simultaneously raising the number of viable builds. If you look back to GW1 and the popular builds used, there weren’t really all that many per class. Some had more than others.
Sure there were mathematically far more permutations, but an Echo Mending warrior is pretty terribad.
You must be talking about the GW pvp meta. PvE had tons of “viable” builds, if you could grasp playing outside the pvxwiki box.
Longbow Ranger is perfectly viable here. Bring one to a meta function.. and you will be shown the door based solely on weapon equipped.
Meta perception and actual viability in the big game are night and day. In any game.
Yes, I never got asked to leave a party because I wasn’t using the build of the month in PvE in Guild Wars 1…oh wait.
There were tons of players that required absolutely specific builds to participate in runs of almost all end game content, from voltaic spear farms, to the Underworld to DOA. Looking for an imbagon paragron. Looking for IWAY. These things existed. I ran into them all the time, because I enjoyed making my own builds.
Just a question here…
If you didn’t like the meta crowd in GW1, why did you bother trying to party with them?
I didn’t myself. I finished Proph with hench, solo. Finished Factions, NF and EoTN and Legendary Vanq with Hero/Hench. Finished DoA and other stuff with 7 Mercs. That did not mean I was unaware of LFG chat, speed clear LFG chat, and idiot statements like “show stones”. And I’ve had 12 years of mmo and min/maxer meta experience and observation.
ah.. oops. wasn’t addressed to me. oh bother.
But when I played Guild Wars 1, you could only bring 3 heroes, period. No way you can convince me you soloed end game content with 3 heroes.
Ha ha. See 8 pack of mercenaries. And so, I did, with 7 heroes. Old news as well.
Mercenaries weren’t introduced until rather late in the game’s life, long after I’d stopped playing seriously. By the time they came out I already had 50/50 and GWAMM. And even when they first came out, you could still only take three of them.
Now the game as changed, persumably because of lower population, that you can take 7 heroes. In the old days you could take only three heroes, and henchmen couldn’t enter elite areas.
Uh, they came in like 3 years ago at least. Long before the launch of this game. You could buy 8 from day one of the introduction of mercs, they were never limited to 3.
7 hero update was Oct 2010. Apparently you didn’t do WiK, WoC, Hearts of the North either.
Study harder next time before inferring that I’m a liar.
First of all the word is implying, not inferring. You’re inferring something I never implied.
You could always buy an 8 mercenary pack from the moment they came out> They worked jsut like heroes. You could have 8 mercenaries butyou could only pick 3 of them. I know this because I bought the 8 mercenary pack when it came out. You could only use 3 until the 7 hero update.
I did all the content in Guild Wars 1, including WiK, Hearts of the North and Winds of Change.