Guild Wars 2

Because it just makes the game seem like a spammy zergfest with little resource management, it doesnt help the grindiness (which it doesn’t, as there is a still a lot of grind) or make the PvP any better if that was its intended purpose.

GW1 energy management required skill, in pvp especially HA and GvG energy management and energy denial tactics was itself a subset of game strategy, like with energy drain mesmers and weapon swapping to high energy sets for emergencies.

For instance many skills had high energy cost but low cooldown, such as the monks protective spirit which is almost instant cast to protect against over 10% health damage, this incentivized game sense and correct skill usage, and good monks were able to effectively use it to protect the team without running out of energy, on the other hand bad monks used it wrong or at the wrong times and burned out and probably wiped.

Energy, when done properly like GW1, adds another layer to resource management and strategy, cooldown only systems are similar but dont promote constant active play as a combined system, and generally falls apart in a team situation, ie you would only have “spike” teams which blow their cooldowns to burst down a target then do nothing for a minute later, instead of allowing for pressure builds. The energy aspect alone has more depth to it than GW2’s entire combat system.

I’m just curious about ANet’s perspective, if they have officially stated why they nixxed energy management.

You miss mana? Really it is one of the main things I am thankful for- no more need to fill my entire inventory with potions. It is awesome!
Also that kind of micro management? I would play the sims if I wanted that- it is not skill. It is finicky make work. If you want skill, develop your class- I learn new things everyday and it makes me a better player.

Energy in GW1 was amazing, but mana like in WoW is horrible.

Like you said in GW1 you had to manage energy both by choosing what to cast and when to cast it however in WoW I can burn all my mana and just evocate on my mage lolskillbro which basically makes mana a useless mechanic, but I’d love to see energy again.

Morrigan.2809:

You miss mana? Really it is one of the main things I am thankful for- no more need to fill my entire inventory with potions. It is awesome!
Also that kind of micro management? I would play the sims if I wanted that- it is not skill.

You have obviously never played Guild Wars. There is no need for potions or a slow regeneration rate in a mana system.

Besides your issue with a no-energy system, you’re complaining that GW2 doesn’t allow for gimmicky team comps? I’m thankful it doesn’t.

The really old system that GW2 was originally slated to use had a “mana” bar that was gradually chipped away by abilities and chunked horribly by dodging. To offset that, there were mana potions.

Now that I really think about it, our current skill system (12345 anyways) seems to have been based off an older resource requirement because very few of these abilities have any reason to not be spammed. I mean for crying out loud, the Ranger Speargun 4 does more damage per hit at its lower threshold than Ranger Speargun 1 (admittedly sans bleed). There’s no utility attached, nor is there repositioning associated. It’s just a “push me to do more damage” button. And having played most of the classes, basically everyone mashes all the buttons unless it’s either a Stun or Leap/Disengage.

Hey Joshua,

Guild Wars 2 may not have mana or other energy to manage, but its system works.
Players now have to deal with opportunity costs: “Which skill do I take the time to cast instead of casting a different skill? Which is more useful to me right now?”
As for skills that do not have cast times, they still cost time due to cast animations.

Signed,
Lalabu

Shhhh, I love the no mana. If you complain they might change it!

I miss it so much that if it wasn’t for this topic I wouldn’t even remember it’s not there.

If you’re just mashing all your skills every time they’re available, you’re not being as effective as you could be. You probably don’t notice when you’re running with the zerg, but if you go 1v1 with a champ or player that knows what they’re doing, you will.

Play a thief manage initiative

The one class that does have to manage mana (initiative) gets frequent criticisms that all you do is spam heart-seeker.

The recent big nerf to rangers (who weren’t outperforming by anyone’s reckoning) was to discourage shortbow users just hitting 1 and 2, or just 1.

ANet wants you to use your cooldowns. They want it so that if you use a really good skill, you can’t choose to use it again for a while, and they want direct control over how long it takes to refresh.

Except for thieves, all other skills except for #1 have a CD. This is unlike some MMOs, such as WoW, where you have many spammable abilities.

If they were to add “mana” without removing CDs from skills, we would be sitting around twiddling our thumbs.

In short: CDs ARE the resource management.

Energy denial was not fun. Sure, it might have been fun for the person doing the denying, but do you know how much fun it is to have 0 energy for minutes at a time? You had to do silly things like have low energy sets so you could “bank” energy, then quickly swap to the higher energy set to get a spell or two off before going back into hiding.

It was not fun.

I don’t miss energy at all.

One of the main things mana did in GW1 was to basically shred the actual number of viable builds you could take, because the best builds were capable of casting all their spells when they needed them, which would simply not be possible with a differently-constructed one. It also transpires that cooldowns do basically all the needed work of forcing you to not spam the same ability over and over, so the real job is just to make it such that wasting a cooldown actually hurts so you think about when to cast things. GW2 failed at this to some extent, but the partial success is still better than what they would have had with mana involved.

I’m so glad they did. I do not miss mana at all. Definitely one of the things they got right with this game.

It was one of the more shocking things, but one of the best things to happen to combat for casters in any MMO.

It’s fine the way it is. Energy management is essentially the caster equivalent of initiative management for thieves. If you miss it, play a thief.

I respect your opinion, but I simply disagree.

The basis for mana in GW1 was to support the magic the gathering style design to the skill system. Combat was mostly about how well you played your deck of cards vs the other players’ (or AIs’) deck of cards. Where deck of cards was their skill sets and mana pools. In magic the gathering you had more than one way to harm your foe. Out damage them with your cards (skills in GW1) or shut them down by tapping their lands (mana draining in GW1). In GW2 combat is not about that style of combat system and about actual skill in combat. This is why if you just sit and button mash you will probably die most of the time.

Yashimata.2986:

Energy denial was not fun. Sure, it might have been fun for the person doing the denying, but do you know how much fun it is to have 0 energy for minutes at a time? You had to do silly things like have low energy sets so you could “bank” energy, then quickly swap to the higher energy set to get a spell or two off before going back into hiding.

It was not fun.

I don’t miss energy at all.

I agree, energy denial was not fun. However, after playing this game of almost 2 months, I am starting to miss the energy a bit. Right now, when fighting bosses, everybody ends up just spamming every ability they have as soon as it comes off cooldown because there’s no draw back and because bosses have so much health, it takes an hour to kill one.

But I really do miss my monk >.< even though I know I won’t be getting it back.

Removing mana/resource system is fine as long as they make up for the complexity. Unfortunately I don’t quite think they did.

If combo’s were alot shorter than they are atm, and there was more of a “combo” system tied between each weapon skill I think it could be alot more interesting.

I think they need to utilize endurance a little bit more for each class…. endurance is like the energy required to dodge (maybe somehow tie that with defensive-skills or special skills).

They have stated that they don’t want people “waiting around waiting for regen” which I think is a good thing. Sucks just sitting there waiting for a mana refill to kill your next boar.

Jia Shen.4217:

The basis for mana in GW1 was to support the magic the gathering style design to the skill system. Combat was mostly about how well you played your deck of cards vs the other players’ (or AIs’) deck of cards. Where deck of cards was their skill sets and mana pools. In magic the gathering you had more than one way to harm your foe. Out damage them with your cards (skills in GW1) or shut them down by tapping their lands (mana draining in GW1). In GW2 combat is not about that style of combat system and about actual skill in combat. This is why if you just sit and button mash you will probably die most of the time.

That’s basically it. Most skills should not be mashed and actually have more value with being used at the right time instead of on cooldown.

i think it would be nice for 1 single proffession which depends on mana, but not for all
if you notice, some of proffessions have cooldowns, other as thiefes have initiative, its variable and that for awsome! dont put a coat of a single system over all of them,

but yes 1 new proffessions which relys on mana would be nice

I do agree at least in part with the OP.

GW1 had a much more interesting skill system and energy management was part of that system.

In GW2 it has been entirely absorbed in the cooldown system. The disadvantage of this is that instead of making choices between which skills to use when with a cost related to it, a lot of skills can only be used once a battle.

In boss fights this is most prevalent. A mesmer can use an elite to make everybody cast faster in an area. It lasts ten seconds and the cd is ages. In pvp this makes sense because it’s extremely powerful there. But in PvP with bosses that have a million hp or something it barely makes a dent.

The skill system suffers from its simplicity. It restricts which skills you can take by forced skills assigned to weapons and big cooldowns on most of the other skills. Not to mention that a lot of skills can’t be used under water.

Perhaps they thought it would make skill balancing easier…perhaps it has. But it hasn’t made playing interesting. I am sure that with the hundreds of skills and dual classes it was a nightmare for them to balance GW, but I think the GW2 system is too restrictive and is therefore lacking in depth and enjoyment…at least for me.

It’s not horrible, but it’s certainly inferior to the GW1 system from a player point of view. I now have 10 skill slots instead of 8 but with less variation and possibilities.

Energy management is simply an element that made the skill bar interesting and challenging. Just throwing everything on a cd timer and balancing around pvp, makes for a big missed opportunity to make pve more interesting on a combat level.

every class can activate their skills perpetually with cooldowns. why would you need to implement a mechanic that differentiates “spells” from this concept? Please leave out magic energy, whatever you want to christen it, out of the game.