Guild Wars 2

Ok today I released a combat vid with combos and tactics. I didn’t however expect people to bash Gw2 on it being too shallow. This game has a lot of depth it’s just not face roll apparent. So much depth in that one class I couldn’t even cover it all in 30 minutes. And could easily go on for another hour plus fleshing out different combos and situations.

And this is just one class mind you. So it leaves me to wonder are people just whining or really just don’t know. And what is every ones idea of depth because maybe that is a problem itself. And how can you even define the true meaning of depth in this case. Who is to say whose right or wrong? It’s all in the eye of the beholder. I personally think the depth is fine. So much so I took the time out to make 2 vids on it. Time permitting to me I’ll do atleast 2 more classes.

My question to you guys without a flame war please lol. Do you think we have enough depth here? And do we need more for a better experience? It’s apparent a lot of people think so. And point to lack of a position pointing system in the game hurts game action.

I find it satisfying.

It’s not particularly bad, its designed for solo play and it is far from revolutionary.

The classes vary a lot in terms of depth of play, but even the more complex classes aren’t overly deep.

Not that it doesn’t have depth, but rather, those layers of depth are very intangible or ineffectual. Healing has little to no consistent value in this game. Communicating and strategizing specs / gear for dungeons? Unnecessary and pretty incommunicable otherwise. The Elementalist for example…one of the first classes ive actually felt restricted by with the skills. I wish there was more meat to the skill customization because i find the utilities unsatisfying. I just think that the differences in build or gear setup are too ineffectual.

In GW1, having a 40/40 set….that mattered a ****-ton.

What attunement you were specializing in? that mattered a lot more.

I just feel like this game was too homogenized in design from what its’ predecessor gave us and by association, the meat of the gameplay, the combat and group dynamic suffers for it. I’d almost go so far as to say it’s non-existent.

There is still new stuff I find out about my Ele after months of playing her. Sure this game has a lot of depth, BUT… there are comparatively few skills and builds that are competitive right now, so all the neatness and trickery often doesn’t matter because it cannot compete, and that’s why some people say the combat is shallow. As long as you can win by spamming buttons or using oneshot combos, combat will feel shallow and the underlying complexity won’t matter much.

I personally don’t think there’s enough practical depth. Like, useful, usable progression and builds that are meaningful. Most players don’t switch weapons, which means their skill set is extremely limited.

It’s not a good combat system.

Zeldain.5710:

I personally don’t think there’s enough practical depth. Like, useful, usable progression and builds that are meaningful. Most players don’t switch weapons, which means their skill set is extremely limited.

It’s not a good combat system.

I think you’re on to something. I think ArenaNet sees practical depth as a balancing issue whereas players see it as freedom, choice, and engagement. I believe that one huge principal behind designing the game’s combat / skill / class system, as noted by the developers (needs citation) , is that they intended to build on depth WITHOUT complexity.

As far as my thoughts go, i don’t like being pidgeonholed into the playstyle and skill-types that my elementalist has. I’d much prefer a less rigid skillbar system that lets me slot from a pool of skills like in GW1. Yes, we all know of the myriad balancing problems this caused, but am i the only one that sees the disconnect? Maybe i want a nuke build with water magic? Just as an example of what i mean by ArenaNet designing with depth, but not complexity would be the elementalist conjures. Give you a new separately balanced skill bar. This skill could have been a strong familiar that gave you a block percentage for a duration, but instead it gives you yet another pigeonholed weapon bar that is of little use to others because it is so specialized. That is not depth without complexity, that is going a full step forward and making something so niche that it almost doesn’t have a place in the skill system.

With this in mind and as far as im concerned, they’ve done the same thing with the skill system in GW1 as with GW2 except this time around, it doesn’t feel loaded with choice, preference, and fun. I really think they have their work cut out for them with the classes / combat / skills / traits. They are not well designed in my opinion. I really fail to see their direction.

Well Zeldain I was trying to enlighten peoplea little to show them switching weapons actually is fun. I didn’t go all out because the video be far too long. But it seems the game right now suffers from still too soon bug. What I mean about that is most companies are scared now to swing the nerf and buff bat.

After watching past games do that and implode. I have faith at the moment they will even things out. They do it slowly however which sparks impatient masses to rage.

You’re probably hearing the lack of depth from players like me who are coming from GW1. The combat itself is fine but skill choices are extremely limited in comparison, sure the combat is far more exciting than any other MMO (imo) but the lack of skills just makes it boring when I was able to choose from literally hundreds of them, and thousands of different combinations.

Also combat feels more single player than anything without roles, I’m not interrupting casters or snaring melee to protect my backline, it’s every man for himself and sure if you see an AoE on the ground go ahead and drop a finisher but it really doesn’t feel like team work. This is supposed to be an MMO, not a single player RPG.

I would say right now playing GW2 is akin to playing GW1 with a full party of heroes. Feels like no human interaction because it’s all about pewpew and nothing else. Builds, where are they? I had a new saved build every week in GW with a template changer for no cost at all. I could be an assassin with a hammer, a monk with daggers, etc.

The argument really depends on what games you are comparing the combat to. If you ask me, GW2 combat as a whole is crap because the choices you have run out incredibly fast. I’ve been using the same build, same combo, for months now. My only 2 choices are basically pure physical damage or pure condition damage.

This is a thief PoV btw.

I think the framework is fine. GW2 has strong bones as I see it, but the meat on the bones leaves something to be desired.
Weakness in skill/trait or even rune/jewels/sigil selection can make it feel like there is less depth but it’s just variety. Some of the uninteresting/garbage traits need to get removed.
I came from gw1 and I don’t mind the lack of skill selection, was playing other games too so it wasn’t like it was “new”. If gw1 was all someone had or other games like it then sure it might be underwhelming. Mind you in gw1, I felt kind of like I do right now, certain things fly and certain things didn’t. The limitations were supposed to make more things fly and it’s not happening right now.

Hmm well i do agree with you compaired to GW1 Rukia. But builds and info on builds is up to the community. First 2 links in my sig are builds that ended up popular. I made 5 in all people use or atleast liked or looked at. I see the same potential in Elementalist. But those are my only 2 characters.

Looking around I see plenty of ways guys can make good builds out of professions. But what I don’t see many people trying to make builds. Unless they feel it’s useless to do at all.

I have to agree with lothefallen’s viewpoints. As a GW1 veteran, I completely understand the point he’s making. Especially about the dungeons, there is very little reason to have communication.

Honestly, the combat is coming to point where playing the game is basically muscle-memory, I’m not doing any thinking, the game isn’t engaging me.

I do agree it will become rather boring as is. That’s why I made this post to discuss and get some ideas going. So hopefully stuff like that can be avoided. I got someone who liked the video and hit me up. He wants to do a engineer and warrior version.

Imo the problem with combos are twofold.

1. they bring nothing new that you can’t already bring with other skills. This in that the effects they output are nothing more than AOE boons and conditions, the very same boons and conditions that other skills produce.

2. they are static objects in what is supposed to be a dynamic fight. When you drop a field, it stays in that location. Except that with the defensive side of the combat mechanics focusing on movement rather than heals and armoring, there is no way to hold a mob in place long enough to actually make practical use of that field. Especially as the fields are short lived, can be overwritten by other fields, and can vanish in the visual spectacle that is the particle field of GW2 combat.

Never mind that most of the non-damage conditions are basically a waste (1-2s fear are not going to buy much time, blind making the next attack miss but can’t stack in intensity, that sort of thing) and the damaging ones are hard capped (25 stacks of bleed and confusion, 1 stack of poison and burning) and the fields become very very meh.

Basically nothing in the game allows players to control the battle, the battle is always a reaction to what the mobs do.

Some may find that fun, i find it a frustration.

Yes, without offering unikittenfects combo fields will never become more than a gimmicky combat element. I mean who needs a burning/poison combo field when such effects are applies by auto-attacks too?

The second problem is the downed system or more precisely the fact that you can rezz dead players in combat. It essentially means that it’s almost impossible to actually lose a fight completely as you can always find ways to rezz players. Kite or cheese a boss away and have someone rezz makes things really easy and much easier than they should be.

Imo complete resurrecting should be limited to out-of-combat.

The game has some combat depth, but:

1: it is not needed/visible. I went through single player using one build, because they all felt the same. Spam skills from 1-5, occasionally something from the second bar. Repeat 3k times.

2: in comparison to this: http://www.gwpvx.com/PvX_wiki any discussion about GW2 combat depth feels shallow for me… Or maybe I am just a GW1 veteran that is VERY dissapointed.

I feel that the depth in this game is largely unexplored so far, mostly due to the following reasons:
- Because the game is highly soloable, people are too used to building characters for solo.
- The game doesnt really offer any feedback or incentive to make effective group builds. (eg. there’s no ranking mode in dungeons that give you a score based on performance, there’s no “hard mode” content, etc.)

If there was a venue for competitive PvE (speedruns, increasing difficulty repeating content, etc), then we would probably start to see some more group tactics and group builds. This is untapped depth of GW2. (the single character mechanics are fairly shallow.)

Here’s a post I made in another thread:

If the entire party builds cooperatively (just like a trinity MMO party might choose the right members), then you can do the sort of coop tactics that you might find in a trinity MMO.

Just that the paradigms are a bit reversed:

- Many members of the party should take something that can heal allies.
= Everyone can heal, but heals are weak in this game.
= If a party member is low on health, rather than 1 Priest responsible for healing him, the entire party should temporarily get together and heal him.

- Many members should take skills that support others in a defensive way.
= If someone is being targeted by the enemy, the other members should cast their defensive support on him whilst he kites and dodges.
= That person is thus “tanking” the enemy, by being the focus of the group’s defensive skills. (the party should still continue to throw damage at the enemy as well, of course.)

- If the player who is targeted is adequately healed and defended, then people who are not targeted can focus on damaging skills without wasting time on self-healing or dodging.
= Thus we have “DPS” role.

- Dont forget CC skills like knockdown and stun, they can also be used to save other players.

- Most heals and defense skills in this game are AOE. So even if multiple players are targeted by enemies, you can defend all of them together if the targeted players stick close to each other. The non targeted players can keep away to stay out of AOEs and stay safe whilst DPSing and using their defensive support.
——————————-

So we see that we have GW2’s own trinity of damage, support, healing. But instead of single people occupying these roles, instead what happens is that the entire party will focus these activities on one player when required.

It just requires parties to create balanced coop builds that can support the party in a variety of ways. Everyone is too used to making optimised solo builds, or builds that focus exclusively on one thing.

If there was a community that was interested in competitive PvE (eg. the Devil May Cry community continually put up videos of ever-more-challenging runs, like, “SSS Rank all missions without getting hit, without buying any upgrades.”), then we could start to see the possibilities when 5 players try to tackle the dungeons as quickly as possible, without any deaths, in only white gear, etc.

I feel like, if a party really wanted to get optimised, then there is a lot of depth available for them to perform better than other groups. But sadly there isnt anything in the game to measure or reward that.

Rieselle.5079:

= If someone is being targeted by the enemy, the other members should cast their defensive support on him whilst he kites and dodges.

Good luck with that, as anything that is not PBAOE is ground targeted and so needs to be lead in some fashion unless it happens to be a over time effect (and even they are so short that noticing and reaching before they fade is almost a matter of luck). Never mind that you can’t tell what effect they actually give with a glance, so the caster basically need to announce it all or have some kind of drilled sequence…

digiowl.9620:

Rieselle.5079:

= If someone is being targeted by the enemy, the other members should cast their defensive support on him whilst he kites and dodges.

Good luck with that, as anything that is not PBAOE is ground targeted and so needs to be lead in some fashion unless it happens to be a over time effect (and even they are so short that noticing and reaching before they fade is almost a matter of luck). Never mind that you can’t tell what effect they actually give with a glance, so the caster basically need to announce it all or have some kind of drilled sequence…

This reminds me of a comment someone made in one of those “I’m a healer player but I can’t do it in GW2!!” threads.

They said, “I try to heal people, but where’s the skill when they immediately just dodge out of my healing circles?”

I didn’t respond at the time, but I was thinking, “You’re talking about your skill in targeting allies and casting heals. But what about their skill in receiving your heals? GW2 requires awareness and active choices both on the healer and the healed.”

So yeah, part of skillful play is to be able to receive the beneficial effects of your team’s support/defensive spells. Voice chat helps a lot, but you could also ctrl-click the skill which will announce that you’re casting it. Or work out some sort of short chat code, like “h1” = “healing player 1” or whatever.

And what’s wrong with having a drilled sequence? It’s quite natural that a team that trains together, and works out rote sequences and tactics, will be much more effective than a random PUG. Hard work, I know.

Like I said, there is depth in this game beyond what most players will bother with achieving, mostly because there’s no real venue or reason to put so much effort into it.

Let’s pretend ANet did some sort of competitive weekly PVE tournament. You compete by running a dungeon, and you get a score based on:
- How quickly you complete the dungeon.
- Whether you kill all bosses and fulfill all objectives.
- Not dying.

At the end of the week, the top teams get a big reward.

So now you have an incentive to be as efficient as possible. With such a format, will we see teams start to use voice chat, to design specific party builds, to train together and run drills of various tactics, to strategise about specific encounters and practise them? Of course you will, because those things will make you more successful at the tournament. That’s when we’ll see where the depth in GW2 truly lies.

(I’m not saying that there is guaranteed depth there – it might turn out there are some OP builds that negate the need for teamwork at all. I’m just saying we’ve barely explored the true limits of GW2’s combat system.)

Although I think there is some depth to the combat system, it’s not functional depth. What I mean is that for most of the content it doesn’t really matter what skills you bring or how you did your traits.

You don’t need to really worry about it in solo play, dungeons or WvW. For different reasons, but it does mean that you can level to 80 without really looking at your build more than which weapons do I like or rather which skill sets from weapons. The rest is immaterial as you can do all content without any fine tuning.

It is more important to know when to dodge and not be too static in general. Now if you get your gear together choose specific utilities and focus your traits it does actually make a difference. It does make you better at your role, however, you don’t need to.

In part this is because there is a level of complexity that people just aren’t really interested in. Partially this is because the trait system is not very clear and the layout isn’t either. It also puts useful traits for different weapon sets in one trait line. What if you don’t want to use one of these weapons. So it’s not well put together in my view.

Also changing traits is not flexible enough. Aside from having to go to a trainer to reset it, it also is clunky in that it refunds all trait points and you can only add points (+) but cannot take single points out (-) to reassign them.

I can only deplore the choice to link weapons to skill sets in general. I don’t want to have to choose a weapon for specific skills. Sure with melee weapons I can understand that to a degree, but not so much with caster weapons. The underlying problem is that you only get one skill set per weapon and do not get multiple choices.

Bottom line, the depth is not functional and it’s not flexible enough. And as you don’t really need to, it doesn’t matter in most cases, so why bother?

Just as a random thought to the discussion, I feel the boon/condition system is poorly implemented, relying on too many random elements and not being long enough to use in a proper tactical manner.

Of course, changing that would mean re-balancing the whole game, so….

Zeldain.5710:

Just as a random thought to the discussion, I feel the boon/condition system is poorly implemented, relying on too many random elements and not being long enough to use in a proper tactical manner.

Of course, changing that would mean re-balancing the whole game, so….

I agree. Especially the almost random separation between flat (de)buffs and intensity stacking (de)buffs.

It hits me that one potential interesting way to use boons and conditions would be in a manner similar to how some professions can convert one into the other. Say you could use a boon to directly cancel out a condition and vice versa.

That way you could allow them to be longer duration or quicker to apply as the opposition would be able to strip them away without specifically having on hand abilities that do so.

Then again, condition removers are already a must have for PVP. This then making intensity for the damaging conditions more valuable than duration.

Rukia.4802:

You’re probably hearing the lack of depth from players like me who are coming from GW1. The combat itself is fine but skill choices are extremely limited in comparison, sure the combat is far more exciting than any other MMO (imo) but the lack of skills just makes it boring when I was able to choose from literally hundreds of them, and thousands of different combinations.

Also combat feels more single player than anything without roles, I’m not interrupting casters or snaring melee to protect my backline, it’s every man for himself and sure if you see an AoE on the ground go ahead and drop a finisher but it really doesn’t feel like team work. This is supposed to be an MMO, not a single player RPG.

I would say right now playing GW2 is akin to playing GW1 with a full party of heroes. Feels like no human interaction because it’s all about pewpew and nothing else. Builds, where are they? I had a new saved build every week in GW with a template changer for no cost at all. I could be an assassin with a hammer, a monk with daggers, etc.

The argument really depends on what games you are comparing the combat to. If you ask me, GW2 combat as a whole is crap because the choices you have run out incredibly fast. I’ve been using the same build, same combo, for months now. My only 2 choices are basically pure physical damage or pure condition damage.

This is a thief PoV btw.

agree on that.

With the lack of choice, really poor weapons skill management, poor skill combo, poor stat-traits stuff
its the abandon of the rock paper scissor style really enjoyable into GW1, who miss in that game.
Like, debuff skill – condition removal, are nearly useless because of the short enchant – condition duration.
Interrupt something ? nearly pointless too, daze skill ( owned by all profession ) have to too high reload to be usefull, no skill casting indication = random interrupt

The lack of mana to have a more accurate skill balance between mana cost and reload is a huge lost compare to GW1. Even if on paper it look to be a good idea.
But in reality, it really prevent many in depth settings

So the stats linked to the traits… thats SO limiting.

which i lead to a poor gameplay who only involve into doing the highest damage in the shortest time. With a more than poor build diversity

Also, there isnt anymore class style, they can all damage a lot, all do condition, all melee or distance. Except the breaked mesmer clone, or thief stealth, class dont have anything really special anymore like in GW1

This game is not bad compare to most of the classic mmo, but this game is boring as hell compare to GW1. Just the ability of skill casting during movement give to GW2 a more dynamic fight look, but, its just appearence, Its far away less “dynamic” and tactic that GW1 for the player positioning, importance of dodge.. etc.

The dodge in GW2 is btw totaly bad made

So, Depth of combat, i dont think there is any depth, its just.. common. Nothing really bad so far, but nothing really interesting.

Combat depth is in the hands of the player. It’s neither better nor worse than the combat system in any other MMO. Buttonmashing is what bad players do in every game(including supposedly revolutionary MMOs like GW2, Tera, B&S), skill planning, timing, positioning is what good players do in every MMO. I’d actually say, dodging makes it easier(although I think it’s broken in GW2, because the invul frame isn’t always synced with the actual dodge animation)…especially compared to having to move out of range to avoid a skill in some other games. All of this(dodging, targeting etc) has always been there, just nobody advertised it…

TWMagimay.9057:

Combat depth is in the hands of the player. It’s neither better nor worse than the combat system in any other MMO. Buttonmashing is what bad players do in every game(including supposedly revolutionary MMOs like GW2, Tera, B&S), skill planning, timing, positioning is what good players do in every MMO. I’d actually say, dodging makes it easier(although I think it’s broken in GW2, because the invul frame isn’t always synced with the actual dodge animation)…especially compared to having to move out of range to avoid a skill in some other games. All of this(dodging, targeting etc) has always been there, just nobody advertised it…

It’s also on the hands of the designer to build encounters that take advantage of the combat depth. Say what you will about WoW and it’s trinity, but a lot of encounters do take advantage of the combat depth…. because it’s not just dps/tank/heal, it’s different styles of these which all have pros and cons. A tank warrior isn’t always the ideal choice, bear druids have lots of armor, dodge, and are better at handling aggro of groups rather than single target; similarly the prot pally is a hybrid that’s incredibly effective against undead (only played up the BC so I’m not sure how deathknights fit in). Sometimes effective tanking isn’t maximizing defenses like block, parry, dodge, and armor because you still have to generate a certain amount of rage (which is generated more from taking dmg than skills).

I do think GW2 has a lot better combat system in terms of potential, but the execution of encounters really doesn’t make you feel a synergy between classes. In many respects, it really does play a lot like D3 in the sense everyone is just adding a little something to the encounter than really needing to work together in a truly cooperative sense. Some encounters in GW2 are better than others, but often time the cooperation is more that someone (or a few folks) needs to interact with something while everyone else is doing business as usual. It’s not like "oh this boss takes heavy damage from combos, so we should really switch our skills around to maximize the ability to create and finish combos.

Rukia.4802:

You’re probably hearing the lack of depth from players like me who are coming from GW1. The combat itself is fine but skill choices are extremely limited in comparison, sure the combat is far more exciting than any other MMO (imo) but the lack of skills just makes it boring when I was able to choose from literally hundreds of them, and thousands of different combinations.

Also combat feels more single player than anything without roles, I’m not interrupting casters or snaring melee to protect my backline, it’s every man for himself and sure if you see an AoE on the ground go ahead and drop a finisher but it really doesn’t feel like team work. This is supposed to be an MMO, not a single player RPG.

I would say right now playing GW2 is akin to playing GW1 with a full party of heroes. Feels like no human interaction because it’s all about pewpew and nothing else. Builds, where are they? I had a new saved build every week in GW with a template changer for no cost at all. I could be an assassin with a hammer, a monk with daggers, etc.

The argument really depends on what games you are comparing the combat to. If you ask me, GW2 combat as a whole is crap because the choices you have run out incredibly fast. I’ve been using the same build, same combo, for months now. My only 2 choices are basically pure physical damage or pure condition damage.

This is a thief PoV btw.

Well said, I mostly agree with you. The only part I don’t agree is where you say GW2 is like GW1 with heroes, cause GW1 heroes had such a good AI that the interaction between party members could easily be as good as if they were human players. But on topic now:

Not only in GW1, but also in other games I felt like I had a lot more options than in GW2. In GW2 I used the same build for months too, and I almost said “same combo” but then realized it was more like “same skill” (axe auto attack skill 1)

This is also something that makes GW2 combat a lot more boring compared to any previous game imo, the fact that skill 1 is not only auto attack with no cost/recharge but also the highest dps, so you can just use skill 1 and win the whole game by doing so (well, by using skill 1 + dodge/heal). Cause depth is not only amount of builds, but also the amount of ways you can play with a given build.

In other games you could sometimes search for good rotations. Now some people may not have liked that, but it sure required skill/practice and allowed for a lot of creativity. For example in RIFT I played a mage and there were a lot of rotations possible while playing the same spec, and they all had competitive dps. In other games like LotRO and Aion, it was possible to “weave”, put in auto attacks at the right moment between skills. It was a skill requiring way to optimize both long term dps and burst.

In GW2 we can just spam skill 1, bye depth.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

It’s also on the hands of the designer to build encounters that take advantage of the combat depth. Say what you will about WoW and it’s trinity, but a lot of encounters do take advantage of the combat depth…. because it’s not just dps/tank/heal, it’s different styles of these which all have pros and cons. A tank warrior isn’t always the ideal choice, bear druids have lots of armor, dodge, and are better at handling aggro of groups rather than single target; similarly the prot pally is a hybrid that’s incredibly effective against undead (only played up the BC so I’m not sure how deathknights fit in). Sometimes effective tanking isn’t maximizing defenses like block, parry, dodge, and armor because you still have to generate a certain amount of rage (which is generated more from taking dmg than skills).

I do think GW2 has a lot better combat system in terms of potential, but the execution of encounters really doesn’t make you feel a synergy between classes. In many respects, it really does play a lot like D3 in the sense everyone is just adding a little something to the encounter than really needing to work together in a truly cooperative sense. Some encounters in GW2 are better than others, but often time the cooperation is more that someone (or a few folks) needs to interact with something while everyone else is doing business as usual. It’s not like "oh this boss takes heavy damage from combos, so we should really switch our skills around to maximize the ability to create and finish combos.

They do. And then people find ways to avoid the deep combat. I personally don’t like GW2 combat, but not because there is smth wrong with it, but because…I’m diehard healer and it’s severely lacking in that department. But it is just like every other game on the market. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn’t require more/less skill, effort, team work, knowledge, adapting, reaction time etc. And, yes, I adjust my playstyle, change traits and utilities/elite based on the situation/party. Just because people don’t do that doesn’t mean it’s not in the game. It just means that people are lazy(that’s also why no matter how many people kick about more challenging content, once it comes, people look for ways to simplify it through exploits).

Yeah anything takes heavy damage from a combo…. what I’m saying is there’s not necessarily an encounter where that’s especially important; or any encounter where there has to be a certain utility mechanic that people do other than provide damage. I think part of that has to do with the fact that every dungeon is supposed to be doable with any combination of professions…. So you can’t necessarily have an encounter where reflect is mandatory because an all necro party couldn’t get past it.

I like the combat as is BUT i would really REALLY like to see a deep combo system. I seriously hope they evolve the combo system to something that actually worth comboing cough mass effect 3 cough

The combat in this game IS incredibly shallow. Combo fields for the most part are gimmicky and redundant, I think light fields are the only combo field done right. They provide a situational, but extremely useful effect that completely changes the function of the skills used to achieve it.

For example, a guardian can lay a light field, then do a whirl finisher and dump conditions off of themselves, both usually just being pure dmg skills now become a great defensive tool.

Now compare it to other combo fields like Fire or Poison. The fields themselves are already applying burn/poison, what’s the point of stacking even more from a combo finisher? No reason at all.

Poison Blast finisher atleast provides weakness although atm it’s not the strongest condition right now, AND there are quite a few poison fields that already apply weakness, thus more redundancy. Fire Blast finisher provides might, which is nice but it’s just more dmg, it’s not really changing the function of your skills/combo’s like light finisher, although I can expect that from a “fire” field I suppose.

I would prefer if the “apply burn” combo field effect was turned into a basic “deals extra X dmg” instead, atleast it wouldn’t be a useless effect in most situations.

What saddens me is I’ve been having more fun customizing my playstyle and fighting in Torchlight 2 than here. As something I find important in an MMO and/or RPG, a fairly simple hack n slasher manages to be more entertaining for longer.

Well it does have a chance to be in depth as far as substance. What I showed is truthfully flash and dash. Truth be told I could almost auto attack and do the same thing damage wise in pve. However doing things like this in pvp has a mental effect on people. Because normally people don’t expect someone to chain things on them. When you do it kinda catches a person off guard.

Say like last night I did a JI/Hammer Slam/Smite Condition/Virtue of Justice/Purging Flames/Changed to GS Leaped after the person and Whirling Blade=Person whiped out in 4 seconds. Now you think ok he just got owned. But what it did is next time that person came to me. He backed off and ranged me almost ran just about. Things like this is the fun part of the game that should be augmented. Where skill can impose your will on a enemy more.

I think the GW2 combat system has a lot of depth, and the ability between fights to completely retool weapon and skill sets gives it even more. Perhaps the forums are dominated by much better players then myself and my friends, but given the fact we have not yet broken below 2 hours for a dungeon and many, many deaths there are clearly things we are still learning after months of play. Mind you, it took over 2 months for the first of the six of us to ding 80, and only 2 of us have made it to 80 so far, so things may look very different to a less casual player.

I suspect that as time goes on and the devs have more time to tweak individual skills and powers within skills there will be more viable builds in more professions, and more of the rock/paper/scissors people are looking for. I’ve read some strong arguments, though, that if a MMO build system is TOO unlimited, everyone winds up with ranged tanks, which ironically limits diversity. Only by enforcing some tradeoffs can you really end up with a variety of builds and playstyles within each profession and the game as a whole.

Zeldain.5710:

I personally don’t think there’s enough practical depth.

my hammer guardian would like to disagree with you.
- slam fire field – 3 stacks of might
- slam dark – aoe blind
- slam ethereal – aoe chaos armor (overpowered)
- slam poison – aoe weakness
- slam water – regen

my ranger would like to disagree with you.
- shoot ethereal – several confusion stacks
- shoot ice – chill
- shoot water – regen
- shoot smoke – constant blindness

i can keep going. anyway, you could not do any of the above and it would not have a huge effect on the fight, but if you choose to do the combos, you will win faster and easier. make sense?

@Nerva
I get you see the thing is a lot of the population button mash. And don’t even understand all the skills to begin with. Then come on the forum and say the game is shallow I can’t face roll. This game is anything but shallow I just gave you a massive example of how it’s not.

But it’s not also rock paper scissors or trinity. I see a lot of guys wanting this to be Gw1 updated. Guys you need to face reality a bit. Gw1 was a cult hit a upgraded version of it will be still a cult hit. It was never a major financial success it was average and popular that’s it. So wanting a company to repeat average is almost too silly for real life.

What they did this time was build on it. Which now made a average trademark good or even number 1 in the genre atm. It’s still early too early for bailing or crying. So what I do is work with it and explore. They got plenty of time to work it out B2p beauty there.

Everyone here is going to be on top of the ladder when it comes, because they’ve already mastered the combat in gw2. It’s going to be a very top heavy ladder.

I find that most of the fights aren’t challenging enough to require team synergy that forms that ‘depth’ found in MMOs. They also need to make up for the lack of the Trinity by using environmental weapons and the likes, otherwise the only reason you have other people in the party is to help you kill mobs/bosses faster. It really does feel like you just spam away half the time too, which is a problem. An interesting idea would make endurance a sort of mana bar, so you have to choose to either unload all your spells or save up in case you need to dodge.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a sort of combat ‘overhaul’ though, where it is tuned to more of an action-MMO type combat system. With this there could be a cross-hair and locked camera, where your right click is your ability 1 ‘auto-attack’.

Well we do have the true combat mod. But A-net won’t be official on how they feel about it. Even though it clearly makes things better.

Every profession is pretty pigeon holed build wise. There a very few builds that are competitive…. sure you can roll with a different build you think is good…. but reality is there is a very distinct setup for each profession. Thats my problem…. there is no way to really deviate and create your own style of play and still be competitive you are pretty much forced to run certain builds depending on your profession.

Which is something I thought they were trying to avoid. I think the lack of skill selection for weapons plays a big part in this.

Is there true combat depth for this game? No.

Do we need it for a better gaming experience? No.

There are many games that I can argue don’t have true combat depths but are still immensely satisfying in gameplay – Runescape, Counterstrike, Portal 2 (not a combat based game, but technically you only have ONE skill for the whole game). Of course we can say that the latter two games are not mmorpgs, but that’s the point of GW2 – its trying to reinvent the whole mmorpg genre.

If anyone playing this game expects some kind of idealist, conventional mmorpg gaming experience, then I would echo the rest of the views that they are in the wrong game.

Now it doesn’t mean that its all good. There are many times when I felt awkward with the whole GW2 gaming experience and I cant explain why -it could possibly be something good or bad. But it doesn’t matter. It feels different than any other mmorpg I played before -and is greatly immersive in doing so. So I got my money’s worth and am deeply satisfied.

Namu.5712:

Every profession is pretty pigeon holed build wise. There a very few builds that are competitive…. sure you can roll with a different build you think is good…. but reality is there is a very distinct setup for each profession. Thats my problem…. there is no way to really deviate and create your own style of play and still be competitive you are pretty much forced to run certain builds depending on your profession.

Which is something I thought they were trying to avoid. I think the lack of skill selection for weapons plays a big part in this.

This multi-build balance ideal is never going to be achieved, not in any game or in real life, ever. It defies logic and reality. Of course, any developer can just offer their gamers the privilege of being able to choose from as much number of possible builds they can come up with, to what each gamer sees fit for his preference. But there will always be just a few builds that are stronger than the rest. ALWAYS. In ANY game, now or the future.

Of course, we can always say “why would anybody in their sensible mind go for those builds that are weaker than the few best ones?”

Its not that there is no option. Actually, the game gives you options. But the pigeon-holing is a self-imposed one. If your problem is that you cannot have fun with deviation by accepting the fact that there is a chance that you may be weaker than the established builds (i.e. you want to be different and be the strongest too), then you will never be satisfied.

I don’t know about being stuck into one build to survive. I made 5 of them all up on the net. I can choose any of the 5 and compete. I don’t think it’s the games fault for peoples lack of imagination.

Also multi builds will almost never be balanced it’s impossible. Unless things start getting micro managed and programmed. I enjoy things for what they are and also enjoy finding ways around nerfs and op classes lol

PS= Gtfo wintersday jumping puzzle took you out in a hour! lol

Clearly not enough depth.
GW2 feels like a multiplayer Bayonetta with statistics.

Just give us 2 x more skills, 3 x more skills interdependancy, and 2 x more build complexity, so it’ll start to look like an RPG. (aka choice)
What gives me more hope in GW2 though, is that its core mechanics are brilliant. There’s just not enough of them. At all.

Old topic about the precise subject of depth :
http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Will-Combat-Mechanics-be-deeper

TL;DR : please stop making “Perpetual Tutorials”, devs, and take off the training wheel from our gameplay. Make us use our brain, on a regular tempo.

I’m not sure what to think atm. The recent patch to guardian helped and hurt our depth at the same time. I’m still questioning who beta test this stuff before it goes live. Because a lot of the patches lately don’t seem thought out.

The combat doesn’t feel very deep because the mob AI doesn’t do the combat system justice.

In GW1, the mobs were smart. Really smart. Which is why you had to make different builds for different stuff or, chances are, you were going to be hard-countered by the mobs. In GW2, mobs pretty much just rush you, auto-attack, and sometimes do a bigger hit. Most mobs in GW1 actually reacted based on what you were doing. If you were casting something big, a mob could interrupt your cast. If you’re starting to deal a lot of damage, a mob could blind you.

We just don’t see that in GW2.

kineticdamage.6279:

Clearly not enough depth.
GW2 feels like a multiplayer Bayonetta with statistics.

Been calling it DMC the mmo for a while now. Tho i wonder if SF2 the mmo may fit as much, with the focus on split second interrupts and dodges…

Knote.2904:

What saddens me is I’ve been having more fun customizing my playstyle and fighting in Torchlight 2 than here. As something I find important in an MMO and/or RPG, a fairly simple hack n slasher manages to be more entertaining for longer.

It’s funny you mention TL2, because I was playing Embermage and it really only took me about five minutes of looking at the skills before I created a self-made build that basically broke the entire game. I spent the remaining playtime face-rolling through everything. So forgive me if I question the “combat depth” in TL2. It’s even less balanced than Diablo 2 ever was. :P

GW2’s combat is fine, honestly. People say there’s not a lot of build depth and yet there’s plenty of personal variations on the most popular builds. People say there’s no combat depth and yet I have always felt pretty satisfied in the amount of self-management I’ve had to do. It never gets overbearing where I’m doing too much, or positively boring like many other MMOs I’ve played would get at times.

I do get a snicker out of people who say that GW2’s combat is “just spamming 1-5 as you run around” though, considering that many of these same folks praise GW1, a game in which you spam 1-8 on your keyboard as you sit perfectly still. Oh, but I forgot, you’re spamming those buttons “strategically” so it’s totally different. ’cuz you never want to use your skills in GW2 strategically, oh no.

Granted, there are situations where strategy goes out the window….namely, world bosses. Which is perhaps the biggest disappointment of combat for me. When the big boys boil down to a big ol’ zerg rush, it’s not nearly as fun as those small skirmishes with just me and a single veteran mob.

I think people get about as much depth out of combat as they choose to observe, really.

DAoC was the last MMO I played. My main was a cleric. I had 10 skills on my main bar and about 25-30 more abilities I used regularly in fights and more that I didn’t. For those not familiar with DAoC, it isn’t a cooldown based game, at least not for the basic class skills, so most of those abilities could be used at any time depending on what needed doing. I had to do a ton of different things, all with split second reaction times.

The level of mechanics, positioning, group interaction, and enemy interaction in DAoC was so incredibly far beyond GW2 that I’m having trouble playing this game for more than a handful of days here and there because I get bored. I’m maining an ele, the most intensive class this game has to offer, and it’s boring.

I also played GW1 from release until the first expansion. Again, there was a huge amount more depth. Tons and tons of viable skill builds, lots of interaction with your group, a heavy focus on reactive play, etc. The only reason I didn’t stick with the game is open world roaming pvp is my thing, and arena pvp isn’t.

There are very few actually interactive skills. You don’t really change much based on the situation. You don’t really do much with your group. You don’t really play off your enemy very much. You pretty much run through your rotations with minor adjustments. And there is a serious lack of viable builds. Changing a minor trait doesn’t make it a new build. I loved the ‘deck building’ aspect of GW1, and hoped to experience the same in GW2, but there’s just not much there.

So no, GW2 does not have much depth. Anet got greedy with the whole ‘easy to play difficult to master’ philosophy, counting on things like combo fields to add the high end depth, but the game just ended up ‘easy to play’ and that’s about it.

I don’t even hate the combat; it’s sort of fast paced as long as I stick to ele/engi and there’s some fun to be had with dodges, but it’s boring.

I agree with a few other people here who say the depth has not coalesced yet in this game because many potentially interesting builds just aren’t viable.

More professions need to be set up with many different builds that have the kind of synergy you see in elementalist D/D setups. (including other elementalist builds) If you had this kind of synergistic overlap, you’d have very few like-builds.

Additionally, you’d see more build flexibility if you were to remove the “+x attribute per trait”.

Mesmer is an excellent example of this synergy LACKING.

The base attributes are over-taxed (if you want to dps on another profession, you only need to stack two offensive attributes to be effective, if you want to dps on mesmer you need 4: critical and condition because the main source of bleed is crit dependent, power and crit damage because you’re still balanced around shatter)

Most of the traits lack synergy (the only ones that don’t are for shatter builds right now, hence everyone is a shatter build).

Confusion builds are pretty much garbage because confusion was nerfed to hell and back. Confusion used to punish people for not paying attention, and it used to do enough damage in pve to be worth traiting specifically for. Now it’s useless.

Another example of builds going in the wrong direction is the Guardian Greatsword change about 1.5 months into live. GS was then pidgeon-holed into offense-only specs, whereas before you could get one stacked with healing and defense and run a symbol support build.

I wish there was a word by class designers about all of this.

Part of the problem is that although there is a good amount of depth there, there is no need for it in 99% of the PVE content. Dungeons and WvW are the only times I find myself really having to play my class to its fullest and swap out utility skills and weapons. The core PVE content can be easily done by spamming aoe and knowing how/when to dodge.