Guild Wars 2

Knote.2904:

orlen.7810:

how odd, i actually like the lack of abilities, after years of wow i got sick of having 23 keybinds for umpteen spells you rarely used but had a reason to on the odd occasion during that random boss fight with a weird situation that demanded you use that spell you forget about all the time.

having a strict set of spells the way this game does it really is a breath of fresh air, there is such a thing as to much.

take pandaria, i pop on to the pre expansion patch…my pala has more sodden spells thanks to the talent tree, more i don’t know where to put more i could care less about, what with so many choices already for that odd situation you ended up running out of buttons in a set configuration that just bugs your happiness far to much.

gw2 imo got it just about right, sure i reckon adding another main auto attack type would be a good idea maybe something that has a slightly different purpose but no less potent would allow a broader game play choice but then thats just how i see it now how it has to be.

i play ele main, so staff (current choice) and 4 elements to choose from thats 20 spells which i often use, switching between fire/earth and out of combat air for speed/trap and water for healing i do fine and rather enjoy the variety of gameplay choices open to me.

but each to their own, some will be happy others won’t, can’t please everyone and there is no point in trying either.

For the last time, no is asking for 100 skills on 50 hotbars. Read.

Sometimes I think people forget that there was a game that came before GW2.

yeah GW1 took a while to get where you guys are quoting it from, even with the dual system I still remember their basically being about 3 builds for Pvp that anyone cared about..what Gw2 has done is made it so ANY class or build can compete not just the elite ones etc. You guys may not like having an even playing field, you want more skills, you want to be elite because you know how to set up your macros, ui and understand what particular synergies give you the best healing, DPS or aggro..and here it doesnt matter. They obviously have moved away from GW1 thinking and are trying something new, give them time to see what it might become before pining for the old ways.

The people saying only a few builds used in PvP in GW1 are usually just PvXers who couldn’t think up actual builds on their own, and just waited around for other people to think them up for them. I personally had an extremely long list of builds, all of which worked very well in various situations.

Now, once you get to GvG, you’ll run into more of a rut, since what you had to do there was so incredibly specific, but that was more a fault of the secondary objectives than it was the combat.

I’ll also point out that when it came to physical weapons (axes, swords, etc), skills were tied to weapons. You couldn’t use Hamstring with an axe, or Eviscerate with a sword. It’s basically the same system, and even in Prophecies the array of choices for even one weapon line were still pretty good.

I played GW 1 when it first came out, it was not the game it turned out to be many years later, it took time to develop. The best thing it had was the arena where people could PvP to their heart’s content

If you want GW1 then go find it, this isnt Gw1.5 its GW2..its a different game, it has some similar elements and lore, but it stands on its own. We’ll see what they turn it into.

Searingarrow.4637:

It would be fine if each weapon had 5 more abilities and they were interesting, unique abilities

That or they could go back to the guild wars 1 set up.

The same setup that had you pick 8 skills which you would then be stuck with for the duration of your entire adventure on a particular PvE map?

No thanks.

I’d rather have access to the entire 5 x weapon choices + healing skills + utility skills + elite skills + trait modifiers selection we have now, which can literally be changed between every fight.

The old way may have gave us more freedom to create combinations of our choosing (good or bad), but you were stuck with that combination the moment you left a player hub – which could literally mean the same 8 skills on your bar for an entire play session. I think you guys may be wearing rose colored glasses on this one.

What I think is missing is dmg BUILDUP. It certainly is weird because GW1 had that to some degree and is also WoW’s most exciting reason why combat feels great and rewarding. And no, I’m not talking about ‘rotations’.

As a result of this everything is rather bursty, it honestly takes the fun for me out of PvP. After some time everything is predictable. It’s missing tension and excitement. When the warrior comes I just wait for 100blades and dodge it, now he’s useless and I take him down. Same with Thiefs.

But it’s not even the fault of the players there. There is simply not enough toolsets you can play around with.

Only skill I can think of right now that has something like a ‘buildup’ is Feast of Corruption on my necro. Deals additional damage for every condition on my target. Problem is, it’s completely underwhelming in damage and I don’t even know if takes the amount of bleeding stacks into account. (it seems it doesn’t)

So, yeah. I agree with a lot in this thread. Combat feels stale and it’s hardly skill based.

Skill in GW2 is a result of:
- your chosen build as in, you can get your skill on the internetz
- knowledge of the enemy (and this boils down to a few burst skills and some nasty debuffs you have to watch out for like confusion/bleeds)
- good leader (tPvP only)
- actual player skill

It’s sad, but when someone can create a lvl1 mesmer(just an example, don’t hate on me mesmers ), go to the forum, take a build and roflstomp in PvP you know that you don’t have a very good competitive PvP game.

@OP: So an ability that provides vulnerability or cripple has no depth to it. Sure, if you are taking the ability at face value and for what is on your action bar, sure…very one dimensional. Take a look at your traits, however, and you’ll see that there are a few traits to use that synergize well with those abilities that you deem flat.

To the OP, the skills you list to me are like that because they make much more sense in small group PvP environment then vs PvE content. In GW1, the skills and PvE were there to prepare you for PvP (the first couple years anyway). This part of GW1 carried over to GW2, in small group PvP those small things actually matter. But I do agree for a pure PvE person, those aren’t all that exciting. Add to that, for a pure PvE player, not being a loot based game has to be very boring as well, looking the same when changing armor, boring, drops, boring etc.

@celticwish: Transmute. Once I began transmutting my leveling gear as I ago to stuff I wanted, it became quite interesting.

To be honest, I do agree to a certain extend that the Combat feels boring.
In its essence, GW2 is just another ‘’Hit Tab’’ and press ‘’1,2,3,4,5 +’’ and watch your charackter perform an auto-attack.

Unlike for example TERA, where the combat styles is unique, using a crosshair to aim and you are actually able to dodge attacks there better. You co uld jump down a hill whilst charging your attack and let go when you land on the enemy’s head for example. It felt more FUN and interactive.

This however did not become an issue for me yet at GW2, as the world is simply amazing. But I did wish that combat would be improved to match TERA’s style.

I had the combat mode add on for a while LOVED it. Ive only played the game once or twice since they said they will start banning people with it. The game felt so much better. The content gets stale running from map to map ignoring the monsters trying to jump up a ledge to get a vista.. no one enjoys the combat so you run past the monsters. You only fight them when you have to.

Novalitus.7382:

To be honest, I do agree to a certain extend that the Combat feels boring.
In its essence, GW2 is just another ‘’Hit Tab’’ and press ‘’1,2,3,4,5 +’’ and watch your charackter perform an auto-attack.

Unlike for example TERA, where the combat styles is unique

Here are three games that nearly no one mentions when talking “action based combat styles”:

Dragons Nest
C9
Vindictus

In those games you still get skills but also how you move towards/away using a skill, if you jump and use a skill, if you hold a MB down while using a skill, if you stand and use a skill. The same skill works differently, coupled with the secondary action you are doing with your mouse. They are much more advanced, they give a lot more options and are much more exciting, it feels like a real-time fighting game.

These games are all hub based grouping running instanced quests, they also feel like a 3d Diablo game. Very fast paced. The combat model is great, each of the games have their own flaws of not being very well balanced vs PvE.

I prefer these models over anything else I’ve played in the MMO genre, funny my next favorite model is a pure turn-based. So you can see I like the ends of the combat model spectrums. Almost all mmo’s fall in-between and to me those are tainted a bit, not being pure action or turn. But I can still find enjoyment.

CelticWish.2314:

To the OP, the skills you list to me are like that because they make much more sense in small group PvP environment then vs PvE content. In GW1, the skills and PvE were there to prepare you for PvP (the first couple years anyway). This part of GW1 carried over to GW2, in small group PvP those small things actually matter. But I do agree for a pure PvE person, those aren’t all that exciting. Add to that, for a pure PvE player, not being a loot based game has to be very boring as well, looking the same when changing armor, boring, drops, boring etc.

I agree. It looks like skills were balanced in favor of PVP. Adding new skills (weapon or profession based) would give us, PVE players, an option to choose better ones. Even an option of choosing makes this much, much better, Even if it is just a feeling we have.

I agree, and to me there would be only one way to fix this: more options on weapon skills. Good example would be to give every weapon skill a second variety, for example one with a condition and one with just damage. If this game is to remain interesting, I’ll need more options to customize my skillbar (GW1 did a great job there), else those 10 skills are gonna get boring really fast.

Love the trait design. Hate the depth of skill mechanics.

i agree the gw2 combat system is lacking in creative potential and feels dumbed down to make it more casual friendly.

gw1 combat system had much more potential for creativity and experimentation—which gives way more variety in the way your character plays and the types of pvp opponents you encounter.

the gw2 combat system is flawed from it’s conception, so i don’t think there’s much more that can be done to fix it. they would need to redesign the gw2 combat system from scratch or go back to using the gw1 system but, in practicality, that’s not going to happen.

anet got rid of the gw1 skill system because it was a nightmare to try and balance. People just ended up making the same few builds anyway.

gw2 just needs more weapons to choose from on each class, and more utilities (and elites that can be slotted into any kind of build – would be nice if there was at least one elite for each ability type, for example on my ele there is no arcane or signet elite, only transform, glyph and conjure)

Yeah I definitely miss the build variety in GW1. I think secondary professions had a lot to do with it. Experimenting and eventually arriving at a great build was one of the most satisfactory aspects of GW1. I think I was the only warrior in GW1 that ran the Southern Shiverpeaks =D

It’s funny. They reduced the ammount of skills, customization of skills in GW2 from GW2 in an attempt to allow more build variety and make it easier to balance. Yet what actually happened is the opposite, some classes are broken, and most classes have like 1-2 viable builds in PVP because the build variety is lacking to such an extent that only one of 2 things work in PVP. A Burster build or a Bunker build. An example Engis, Grenande build which was their only viable build in pvp which got nerfed.

What they studily did was by making the game easier to balance by throwing customization out of the window they made the game more rigid and actually harder to balance because of the simplistic design where things like Shatter or 100 Blades or 100 Nades only work because of their inherent designs which is deal tons of damage in the space of 1 second. And thing like condition builds don’t work at all because the simplistic design doesn’t allow any other window other than Burst target down in one second or be tanky to survive said burst.

In my opinion, I hope they add a “drop down” menu for the #1-5 weapon skills so you can choose which skills to put in the slot (like you can for utilities). Have the skills be based on the weapon type.

Example : #1 on a Longbow Ranger can be “Long Ranged Shot”, “Sniper Shot” or “Aimed Shot” – You pick one of those 3 skills from the drop down menu to be your #1 auto attack slot. Each slot has a different set of skills to choose from.

You basically “build” how you want your weapon to be.

Does that make sense at all? I’m not sure if I’m explaining it clearly enough. The point is, it’d give a lot of depth and variety to builds and your weapon selections. Instead of adding more weapon types and having a “locked” set of #1-5 skills, you’d have the option to “switch things around” like you can your Utilities.

Try using combo fields, they are a blast. I find most MMO combat stale, this one not at all. Very rare that I get two classes to level cap in an MMO due to combat boredom, I have 4 and working on number 5 now. To each his own tho.

Fallensbane.8420:

Try using combo fields, they are a blast. I find most MMO combat stale, this one not at all. Very rare that I get two classes to level cap in an MMO due to combat boredom, I have 4 and working on number 5 now. To each his own tho.

This is why most MMO players call this the MMO for people who don’t like MMOs. EVeryone i know including me has treated this like a single player game. Get to 80, get your exotics, get world completion and put the game down due to boredom.

It’s more you they are aiming this game at, the people who don’t like what makes an mmo an mmo.

Searingarrow.4637:

It’s bad enough you only have access to 15 abilities at a time but when those 15 abilities are uninteresting, recycled abilities you’ll see in any other MMO it gets really boring really quick. The abilities don’t even attempt to be interesting. We’ll take the warrior’s rifle for example:

• Aimed Shot – Small damage and cripples… yay?
• Volley – Pretty much a channeled auto attack that shoots faster… Also in just about every MMO
• Brutal shot – Slightly more damage than an auto attack and makes the target take 5% more damage. Boring standard MMO ability.
• Rifle butt – Knocks back.

You only get 5 abilities on a weapon. This kit is completely uninteresting. Things like cripples and vulnerability should be tied to other interesting abilities. They shouldn’t be abilities all on their own.

This problem isn’t just for the warriors rifle. Its practically for every weapon in the game. I feel like that’s why this games combat feels so stale. Theres not really any original ideas, just a bunch of sub par, one purpose recycled abilities from every other MMO.

I say these things because I do love guild wars 2 and I want to see it get better and become the amazing game it could be.

Can’t agree more.

OK
15 characters.

Why do people play a bow ranger and expect anything but a safe and familiar class?

The Combat in this game is very intensed.
It has a lot of depth for Solo and Team Play.

If you disagree with me then you probably don’t know the basics of GW2’s Combat system and dont exactly know how to execute them properly.

I wrote a thread called GW2 Combat System 101 to help people learn how the mechanics function. Please check it out:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-Combat-system-101/first

Pre-launch I was under the impression that weapon skills were the dough and traits would be the ingredients that let you make a cake or a loaf of Rye. For example, I thought traits would let me spec my warrior to be a stun machine or a buff monster, using the exact same weapon setup but differentiating it greatly with traits. Instead we got this system where you can differentiate only slightly and it’s not creative or truly unique at all.

I remember seeing a video pre-launch where someone from Anet was talking about how lots of things they developed were thrown out and that they sort of tested and retested and redesigned things etc. Already then I got this feeling that in their enthusiasm to bring it down to the core, that things would be too basic and too simplistic. My view is that that feeling was right.

What Juzztn describes is sort of what I was hoping for as well.

Gehenna.3625:

I remember seeing a video pre-launch where someone from Anet was talking about how lots of things they developed were thrown out and that they sort of tested and retested and redesigned things etc. Already then I got this feeling that in their enthusiasm to bring it down to the core, that things would be too basic and too simplistic. My view is that that feeling was right.

What Juzztn describes is sort of what I was hoping for as well.

This is reminding me of a AAA ARPG released earlier this year.

One of the major mechanics that they should have brought in from the original guild wars is primary and secondary professions that right there was guild wars’ bread and butter, that system would have worked wonders in this game. Also talent trees would of been great, in my opinion never walk away from talent trees, it’s like drinking your coffee without having caffeine in it.

In trying to achieve e-sport balance; the skillsets of all classes were dumbed down so much that a drooling monkey could figure it out.

I don’t think this e-sport is going to be very popular at all. Players need to be able to master thier classes in order for there to be a skill gap. The classes are so simplified and basic that there won’t be any skill gaps. Even worse, the elite player will become so bored of the classes that the e-sport won’t have the athletes. Without athletes you have no spectators. Without spectators you have no sport.

You’d think this would be basic knoweldge.

I have to agree. A lot of the skills just don’t seem too fun after a while. I also feel we don’t have enough variety. I would like to use different types of skills on a particular weapon.

Let us choose how we want to play. I would love to use certain weapons, but they just don’t fit my play style, or don’t interest me. Give us more options.

Yea, we need more flexibility in the skills and more skills to chose from. i.e at least 8 skills per weapon to choose

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

The Combat in this game is very intensed.
It has a lot of depth for Solo and Team Play.

If you disagree with me then you probably don’t know the basics of GW2’s Combat system and dont exactly know how to execute them properly.

I wrote a thread called GW2 Combat System 101 to help people learn how the mechanics function. Please check it out:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-Combat-system-101/first

This 100 times.

Seriously anyone claiming combat lacks depth is still in the very very very low-end ranks of sPvP/WvW and extremely far from knowing the basics of GW2’s combat.
That or he is playing a class that has yet to be given combat depth (I’m looking at you Warrior).

For all those thinking the combat is stale and requires little skill to master, I’ll take you guys up on that challenge.

First off, do you know exactly what all your combo fields do? There are 9 types of combo fields, and there are 4 types of finishers. 4×9 = 36 ways to combine and create new combos.

If that’s not enough, then let’s move to the weapon and skill system… You have 5 primary weapon skills, 1 healing skill, and 3 utility skills, and one elite skill. Your weapon skill can be swapped for your secondary weapon, which is 5 more skills. If you’re a elementalist, then you have 4 elements to attune to, which is 5×4 = 20 skills. Now, are you able to keep track perfectly of ALL your cooldowns across both your weapon sets? That might be more than 4 cooldowns to keep count on.

Now, back to the utility skills. You got 3 slots, and most professions have around 22 skills to use, so lets do a bit of math… 3 combination of 22 which is = 22! / (3! *19!) = 1540 different combinations of utility skills.

Healing slots: You have 3 healing skills usually, and one slot, so 3! / (1! * 2!) = 3 combinations. LOL. That was easy.

Now, onto your elite. 1 combination of around 8 different elites to use. = 8.

Now, let’s multiply this together for how many different builds you can do. 1540 * 3 * 8 * 5 * 5 = ?. Quite a lot right?

Is that “elitist” enough for some of you? The design of the combat system is quite interesting because it’s easy enough for people to pick up quickly and easily feel like they master, but at the same time, it has a very high bar for people to push. And I barely touched the surface of the combat system too because you have to account in teamwork synergy, terrain, and enemy combat.

Lafiel.9372:

Yea, we need more flexibility in the skills and more skills to chose from. i.e at least 8 skills per weapon to choose

No. We don’t need more complexity, we need more depth. I’m all for adding new weapons types, but 5 per weapon/weaponset is fine as is.

The only issue is that traits suck and aren’t nearly as interesting or specific as they used to be pre-beta’s.
There isn’t as much traits as there should be. Should be at least 1.5x as much for each line.