Guild Wars 2

Erasculio.2914:

TwoBit.5903:

Skill use is less tactical because of instant casting, instant canceling, balance through cooldowns and most importantly of all the lack of resource management.

I disagree. I think balance around cooldowns allows for interesting skills in which the goal is not to use a skill as often as you have energy, or as soon as the cooldown allows it, but rather when the moment is right. Missing the right opportunity is a waste of resources.

For example, take a look at the ranger shortbow skills:

• Skill 1 is actually the main source of damage there. Everything else is situational utility.

• Skill 2 shoots arrows that poison foes. The damage of the poison itself is relatively small, so just spamming it is bad. But poison has the unique property of reducing all heals a character receive… So proper utilization of skill 2 is right before an enemy is going to heal itself. Using it before or after that is wasting this skill’s most important resource.

• Skill 3 is a dodge that doesn’t require endurance, and it also gives swifness. Using it as an attack is a waste – it does less damage than the auto attack. Which means, the goal of this skill is using it when the time is right – when you want to save endurance but you need a dodge. Using it at any other moment is a waste of resources.

• Skill 4 is a cripple, with the pet inflicting bleeding. DPS-wise, considering the cooldown, this skill does less damage than the auto-attack. But the goal of this skill isn’t to do damage, it’s to provide utility by crippling the enemy. If used in a context in which cripple is worthless, it would prevent the player from using the skill in a moment, few seconds later, in which crippling an enemy would actually be useful.

• Skill 5 is an interrupt. Again, it does less damage than auto-attack, so just spamming it blindly actually does less DPS than just auto-attacking. But the main advantage of the skill is interruptin an enemy’s important ability; if used in the wrong time, the skill could be unavailable when it would actually be interesting to interrupt the foe.

In other words, all those skills have no energy cost, but all of them only show their full potential when they are used at the right moment. The resource management there is not using the skills in the wrong time, so they are available when the time is right to use them.

I have no doubt that this was the intent behind some — if not all — of weapon skill design. However, continuing with the example of this weapon, there are two issues.

1. In a lot of fights, the occasion to need skills 2-5 may not come up. This means the player is moving around (hopefully to be to the side or behind the target so as to proc bleeds) with the auto-attack on — and that’s it.
2. By locking skills in weapons, the devs are essentially saying, “If you use this weapon, play this way.” Sure, one can play using the skills differently, but the opportunity cost of doing so is that skill x might not be available when you really need it.

This is why GW2 is easier to balance than GW. Mike O’Brien admitted that players in GW came up with combinations the devs never envisioned. In GW2, the devs are better able to predict what players will do because they limit what goes with what.

Erasculio.2914:

In other words, all those skills have no energy cost, but all of them only show their full potential when they are used at the right moment. The resource management there is not using the skills in the wrong time, so they are available when the time is right to use them.

Which in the end means you use your auto attack 99% of the time…gg Anet.

IndigoSundown.5419:

1. In a lot of fights, the occasion to need skills 2-5 may not come up. This means the player is moving around (hopefully to be to the side or behind the target so as to proc bleeds) with the auto-attack on — and that’s it.

I agree. But I think that’s poor PvE design, not an issue with the combat system. If the AI were smart enough to heal itself once in a while, skill 2 would be useful more often. If the AI actually required a ranged attacker to kitte, skills 3 and 4 would be more useful. If the AI actually had attacks worth interrupting instead of dodging, skill 5 would be useful.

In PvP, the combat system works well. It’s the bad PvE design that prevents gameplay from being as good as it could be.

Galtrix.7369:

I feel like using the 20 skills I had in World of Warcraft was a better combat system than GW2’s combat

Didn’t you claim that WoW had better armor designs than GW2?

And that WoW has a better reward system than GW2?

I think there’s a pattern there somewhere.

Advent Leader.1083:

Nitpick on Era: the new ranger SB has all damage normalized between the attacks – ergo SB3 and SB5 have equal damage as the auto.

I was looking at the wiki… I’m not surprised that the wiki is wrong. Still, auto-attack can inflict bleeding, unlike skills 3 and 5.

Erasculio.2914:

IndigoSundown.5419:

1. In a lot of fights, the occasion to need skills 2-5 may not come up. This means the player is moving around (hopefully to be to the side or behind the target so as to proc bleeds) with the auto-attack on — and that’s it.

I agree. But I think that’s poor PvE design, not an issue with the combat system. If the AI were smart enough to heal itself once in a while, skill 2 would be useful more often. If the AI actually required a ranged attacker to kitte, skills 3 and 4 would be more useful. If the AI actually had attacks worth interrupting instead of dodging, skill 5 would be useful.

In PvP, the combat system works well. It’s the bad PvE design that prevents gameplay from being as good as it could be.

Galtrix.7369:

I feel like using the 20 skills I had in World of Warcraft was a better combat system than GW2’s combat

Didn’t you claim that WoW had better armor designs than GW2?

And that WoW has a better reward system than GW2?

I think there’s a pattern there somewhere.

Advent Leader.1083:

Nitpick on Era: the new ranger SB has all damage normalized between the attacks – ergo SB3 and SB5 have equal damage as the auto.

I was looking at the wiki… I’m not surprised that the wiki is wrong. Still, auto-attack can inflict bleeding, unlike skills 3 and 5.

Armor, yes. Rewards, no. Technically I could’ve used any mmorpg. Rift, Aion, Tera, Runes of Magic to explain what I was talking about, but I played WoW since its beginning so I figured it would be the best choice. Rift also has 20 skills if you wanted to know that. I bet you did.

Reading this thread it’s easy to pick who did and didn’t play GW1.

The degree to which skills can interact/play off each other is much smaller in GW2 compared to GW1. WOW-style talents (traits) and combo fields don’t really cut it. This has the effect of making combat seem shallow.

The other things that kill depth in this game are fixed weapon skills & fixed trait lines, e.g.: want to use GS? you’re strongly obliged to trait the “GS line”, which grants you specific stats and obliges you to take specific utility types, both of which narrow your build choice even further.

Someone brought up Ele as an example of “depth”. To me, Ele is an excellent example of how GW2 lacks depth — each of the Ele’s 4 weaponsets strongly enforce a particular playstyle that you cannot deviate from: staff = ranged AOE & support. dagger = melee. sceptre = burst. focus = immobile. Cantrips required for survivability. 20+ arcane basically required to play, because the only viable playstyle involves frequent switching. 15+ water required for survivability.

my only 2 level 80’s before i quit were an elementalist and an engineer. the engineer was very boring to play, with pistols being brain dead condi and rifle being slightly more interesting, but frustratingly lacking in damage. the kits were fun for a while, and my favorite was the flamethrower just because it was more challenging to wade into melee (was completely tired of the boring weapons), but even so it felt like an exercise in futility, since i didn’t do as much damage as my warrior. the ele was much more fun to play, but ultimately it became very obvious that i had to do quite a lot of work to even kill trash mobs with my scepter dagger setup. staff was boring and largely ineffective in normal encounters. it was fun for a while to have many options, and it is probably the most challenging profession to play in gw2, but it really felt like i was less effective than other classes at anything specific.

so, in conclusion, i’d say that the classes are on a spectrum of complex to effective, with the more effective classes being the simplest to use optimally, and the most complex being more “versatile” but this versatility was largely wasted on the boring ai encounters.

mjharrison.3209:

Someone brought up Ele as an example of “depth”. To me, Ele is an excellent example of how GW2 lacks depth — each of the Ele’s 4 weaponsets strongly enforce a particular playstyle that you cannot deviate from: staff = ranged AOE & support. dagger = melee. sceptre = burst. focus = immobile. Cantrips required for survivability. 20+ arcane basically required to play, because the only viable playstyle involves frequent switching. 15+ water required for survivability.

I apologise for what must seem like a really stupid question (but I’m genuinely interested and a bit confused!) but I don’t really see why parcelling certain playstyles with certain weapons results in the combat lacking depth?

Basically, I would expect a staff to be mostly ranged attacks, and daggers to be mostly melee, while foci are pretty good for defensive play. To me, that just makes sense. Do certain weapons in other games not affect the style of combat? If not, then what’s the case of having different weapons at all if all my abilities on them are the same?

I’m honestly trying to understand here. I understand why some people argue that traits can limit build diversity, and that limited skill options can become tedious (though ANet are addressing these issues, so I’m reserving judgement on them). But I’m afraid I’m not quite sure I understand where the skills being dictated by the weapons is a problem because to me it seems quite natural for the weapon I’m using to change what I can do in combat.

Erasculio.2914:

TwoBit.5903:

Skill use is less tactical because of instant casting, instant canceling, balance through cooldowns and most importantly of all the lack of resource management.

I disagree. I think balance around cooldowns allows for interesting skills in which the goal is not to use a skill as often as you have energy, or as soon as the cooldown allows it, but rather when the moment is right. Missing the right opportunity is a waste of resources.

For example, take a look at the ranger shortbow skills:

• Skill 1 is actually the main source of damage there. Everything else is situational utility.

• Skill 2 shoots arrows that poison foes. The damage of the poison itself is relatively small, so just spamming it is bad. But poison has the unique property of reducing all heals a character receive… So proper utilization of skill 2 is right before an enemy is going to heal itself. Using it before or after that is wasting this skill’s most important resource.

• Skill 3 is a dodge that doesn’t require endurance, and it also gives swifness. Using it as an attack is a waste – it does less damage than the auto attack. Which means, the goal of this skill is using it when the time is right – when you want to save endurance but you need a dodge. Using it at any other moment is a waste of resources.

• Skill 4 is a cripple, with the pet inflicting bleeding. DPS-wise, considering the cooldown, this skill does less damage than the auto-attack. But the goal of this skill isn’t to do damage, it’s to provide utility by crippling the enemy. If used in a context in which cripple is worthless, it would prevent the player from using the skill in a moment, few seconds later, in which crippling an enemy would actually be useful.

• Skill 5 is an interrupt. Again, it does less damage than auto-attack, so just spamming it blindly actually does less DPS than just auto-attacking. But the main advantage of the skill is interruptin an enemy’s important ability; if used in the wrong time, the skill could be unavailable when it would actually be interesting to interrupt the foe.

In other words, all those skills have no energy cost, but all of them only show their full potential when they are used at the right moment. The resource management there is not using the skills in the wrong time, so they are available when the time is right to use them.

The design is meant to spread out skill use rather than to design them with a inherent risk reward or tradeoff. This is only effective in games like MOBAs where timing of objective pushes is crucial. Gameplay in those game is based on prediction, with combat being decided very quickly. Often times you don’t get a second chance to use skills. This is the case with DotA’s Lina Inverse. You get caught in her combo early game, you’re dead. She miss predicts her assault or misses her stun, she dies. That’s how it often plays out anyway. Also what Indigosundown said.

A consequence of this, as I have explained earlier is a front loaded style of play. This is evident in both PvE and PvP. In PvE it causes players to cycle their skills with dps in mind, which ultimately means spamming 1-5 for most professions. Add to the fact that in many weapon sets the order of skill use doesn’t really matter (ranger axe, warrior axe, rather shortbow), and it devolves not only to DPS spam but dps spam that’s that’s not strategic. There are a few exceptions to this. The rotations for Elementalist do matter…but only to build up might for even more DPS.

In PvP gameplay becomes a DPS race due to point capture type gameplay. It’s a race for dps and sustain. The lack of risk reward also causes issues for certain professions, like the thief (invis>backstab>kite>invis) whose counter is to spam AoE. Where do you spam it? Who knows, just try and get lucky. Furthermore the system of checks and balances is deterimened solely by skill effect, while skills themselves don’t interact with each other to produce a meaningful level of counterplay due to blatantly imbalanced individual skill effects nor do they scale that well with the player’s level of execution. For example, you can technically counter a Necromancer with condition removals but some Necro skills are balanced (or rather unbalanced) such that conditions can be buffered through constant reapplication. The very same skill that Necros use to apply conditions is auto-aimed and spammable. There’s nothing to counter the very execution of the skill. I believe this was the issue Dhuumfire as it made scepter 1’s condition application so frequent and highly damaging. It could have caused similar problems with AoE well-spam as well spam provides instant area control with little counterplay. I don’t really follow the scene anymore, so I’m not sure.

TwoBit.5903:

replied in points below

• Furthermore bringing that up is logcially fallacious as well as dishonest. It’s a debate. You should let the facts of your arguments do the speaking, not how much your sensitive feelings happen to be jostled by someone else’ options. Speaking of which isn’t that just a form of complaining? Anyway, I’m just poking fun. Won’t bother to bring it up again~

Much of the counter argument presents fallacies to sensationalize their point. The simplification of the combat, mechanics, activities and choices are often thrown aside to strengthen soap boxes. While I can agree that GW2 isn’t all that deep, the points brought up are too mixed with hyperbole to ever agree with, including the points I’m about to reply to.

• Well, whatever. Because of movecasting, instant cast, canceling and “dodging” you don’t necessarily have to pay attention to where you’re attacking from as abilities remove a lot of pressure.

This is an over-simplification. Besides the point you’re mentioning a multitude of mechanics in one sentence, you’re brushing them aside as if they are some interchangable mechanic that all accumulate into one mechanic that wins the game.

No, movecasting is it’s own mechanic. Some skills you can use while moving and others you cannot.

Instant casting is its own mechanic. Not all skills occur instantly and while skill casts are often short, true instant casts are a whole other mechanic from what you’re talking about ontop of it, and have their own advantages and limitations.

Canceling skills is its own tactic, how it could be rolled into the previous mention mechanics and then brushed aside as if it doesn’t matter is beyond me.

And finally dodging, completely unrelated to the others. And this isn’t all there is in the game’s combat mechanics, just the ones you choose to mention and dismiss.

• Firstly, dodging allows you to instantly cancel the damage of attacks launched your way (if you can see them that is). You can “dodge” while not actually moving outside of them humorously enough because it’s really an invincibility toggle with movement tied to it.

It does not allow you to instantly cancel all attacks. Attacks currently affecting you still do damage. You can only dodge so many times in a given period of time as well. Also there’s the mechanic that you cannot dodge while feared, stunned, knocked down or immobilized. The mechanic itself emulates a block but with built in limitations like other mechanics. And it’s different from the actual mechanic of Invincibility which also exists in this game.

As for it being a toggle, it is not. Toggle would allude to the ability to stay in such a mode by swapping from that mode to the other and dodge only works for a short instance. It’s different from Invincibility as well, which allows you to use skills and absorbs them where dodging can pass through you and still hit another target or area.

continued:

• That’s why I opt to call it an invincibility toggle. Movecasting removes the inherent tradeoff to attacking where you’re stuck in an animation.

Not all skills can be used while moving, and again, you cannot attack (except with traits and only specific trait skills) while dodging. Whether a tradeoff is being negated or not is dependent on the circumstances of the current fight.

• Games like street fighter are balanced….

…completely differently. Moot.

• Did you overextend? Will you get away in time? In GW2 the answer is, respectively, no and it probably doesn’t matter.

You’d have to give more examples to explain how you draw that conclusion. Even with Ascalon Fractal, if you overextend and they are focus firing you, dodging twice might save you if you can manage to put enough distance between you to be able to evade their attacks without using dodge. Even then, they can easily still focus enough attacks to keep hitting you. Even if not, how does this support your previous statement that placement doesn’t matter? If you’re not in the right place, that Feedback bubble does ZERO if you actually have it available.

• In GW1 the front-mid-back row dynamic where each member of your party supports your team based on their relative positioning. It’d take me pages to explain the in depth details, but essentially the front row protects the mid row, which supports, while back row does the DPS (it’s been a looooong while so I could be off). If your front row doesn’t protect your mid or back row, they’ll wipe and so will the front row. If the mid row doesn’t support the front row, it’ll wipe and so will the rest of the party. If the positioning of your characters is off, if one character overextends or one is left vulnerable due to poor positioning you’ll be punished for it.

This is a difference type of positioning entirely. It’s static positioning. Nothing wrong with that. Same goes for Atlantica Online. Melee attacks can only hit the front row although some can hit a whole row, a spear and gun can hit in a column, arrows, cannons and some magic can hit any spot in a formation and some magic could only hit two rows in. The front row worked to stop heavy assaults on the mid and back row because being attacked 3 times in a row leaves you stunned and unable to attack or defend. But the important thing above all else is defending yourself because if you die, your whole formation loses.

That all said, it’s a whole different type of combat, apparently. Using the examples you put forward, it’d be like trying to link GW1 with Street Fighter. No…if someone uses a Hadoken, I can dodge or jump over it. If it were like GW1, the Hadoken just follows you and determines if it hits or miss depending on your stats. This is a very different core gameplay difference.

My problem with the gameplay in PVE is that it so often boils down to DODGE. And every class can dodge. So it often feels like the class system is just sort of aesthetic. I know it does have quite a lot of depth but when you get down to playing sometimes all the classes feel sort of the same. I wish they would extend the no-dodge gambit to dungeons and elsewhere in the game, the other gambits too, it would help differentiate the classes more perhaps. A constant uncleansable dot would make you want to take someone with good regen and water fields, no dodging might mean you’ll want a guardian for blocks…maybe they don’t want to create roles and uses so as not to create dependency, but avoiding that has lead to DPS and DODGE in your class “flavour”.

OP is obviously playing a Ranger. Don’t blame him. :/

Main thing I’d like them adding to combat is a cast timer underneath the mobs health or something. It just feels so arbitrary to make everything about dodging but then giving you no indication as to how far into a cast something is.

leviathonlx.2437:

Main thing I’d like them adding to combat is a cast timer underneath the mobs health or something. It just feels so arbitrary to make everything about dodging but then giving you no indication as to how far into a cast something is.

Supposedly the mobs have special animations for that, but thanks to how dodge is both a evade mechanic and a movement mechanic the timing becomes iffy between the various mobs.

One example is the ettins in Queensdale. You more often dodge them thanks to the movement part than the evade part (but only the evade part counts for daily “dodger”). Contrast that to the adult wurm, where if you dodge like you “learned” when dodging ettins, you still get hit.

This because apparently ANet wants us to react to the end of the animation, not the opening. And the only place i can think of that “document” this is in the south town in Queensdale, where you can practice blocking. Yet every avoidance instinct i have tells me to get out of the way the moment i notice something, not wait for it to be in my very face.

The kind of combat you’re describing does not exist in this game. There is no class who’s most efficient rotation is 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1. You’re exaggerating to make a point, and your point is wrong. There are plenty of interesting skills and talents in this game.

If you really believe your OP, just leave.

Pawstruck.9708:

The kind of combat you’re describing does not exist in this game. There is no class who’s most efficient rotation is 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1. You’re exaggerating to make a point, and your point is wrong. There are plenty of interesting skills and talents in this game.

If you really believe your OP, just leave.

My Axe/Shield + Hammer warrior most efficient rotation against bosses is 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 on Axe :p With an occasional F1 for the lulz but it’s not that important/

A little boring I must say but that’s what you pay for having a fun CC build for trash.

stof.9341:

Pawstruck.9708:

The kind of combat you’re describing does not exist in this game. There is no class who’s most efficient rotation is 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1. You’re exaggerating to make a point, and your point is wrong. There are plenty of interesting skills and talents in this game.

If you really believe your OP, just leave.

My Axe/Shield + Hammer warrior most efficient rotation against bosses is 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 on Axe :p With an occasional F1 for the lulz but it’s not that important/

A little boring I must say but that’s what you pay for having a fun CC build for trash.

The problem there is really more to do with Defiant than a lack of skill depth.

digiowl.9620:

leviathonlx.2437:

Main thing I’d like them adding to combat is a cast timer underneath the mobs health or something. It just feels so arbitrary to make everything about dodging but then giving you no indication as to how far into a cast something is.

Supposedly the mobs have special animations for that, but thanks to how dodge is both a evade mechanic and a movement mechanic the timing becomes iffy between the various mobs.

One example is the ettins in Queensdale. You more often dodge them thanks to the movement part than the evade part (but only the evade part counts for daily “dodger”). Contrast that to the adult wurm, where if you dodge like you “learned” when dodging ettins, you still get hit.

This because apparently ANet wants us to react to the end of the animation, not the opening. And the only place i can think of that “document” this is in the south town in Queensdale, where you can practice blocking. Yet every avoidance instinct i have tells me to get out of the way the moment i notice something, not wait for it to be in my very face.

Personally, it feels like one can use the dodge in a multitude of ways, not just learning ‘a’ way to dodge. You’re suppose to experience this throughout the game along with the applications of other defensive mechanics.

As for the blocking practice in Queensdale, my blocking instinct tells me to just keep my guard up all the time when in a fight, not particularly when you’re expecting an attack. My guess though, is probably the exercise is trying to emulate a point in combat, where you’re likely attacking the target (not just standing their watching) and you can’t very well be always guarding or guard the moment he takes an action toward someone else.

Energy System creates very interesting scenarios, like the choice between bursting at a high cost. Thief’s initiative is lacking in comparison because it’s global (disables the entire weapon skillset if you have no initiative), and because it’s designed around no cooldowns, which makes thieves very mindless (= spammable) to play at times. An energy system + low cooldowns (6-12s), as GW1 has shown, makes for an interesting balance.

GW2’s skill system was intended to be wisely used at the right time, at the expense of availability, but most skills aren’t simply designed to support that. What’s the best way to do it? By making most skills conditional, like ranger’s shortbow? But then, you would have an auto-attack spamfest.

That’s why an energy system would make it better. Low or no energy skills with high cooldowns would still exist, with the same purpose as GW2’s intended design skills, but there would be plenty of skills that could be used more frequently, at another cost besides time. This means that battles would never become an auto-attack spamfest, because even the more “spammable” skills would have costs behind them.

The elementalist class is a good example of a class that demands some skill to play well, working similar to the characters of a beat-em-up fighting game, but there’s no profession that’s really a shiny example of depth.

I personally don’t think an energy system would make anything better.

If we were trying to work with the GW2’s cooldown core system, why attach arbitrary costs from a tacked on energy system when you can just expand on how the game already plays? If you have 5 different skills on a weapon + the ability to add on to any of those skills to change their applicable uses, then you get your deeper combat along side your improved complexity and customization.

For example, if you add more combinations, effects and conditions for each skill that you have to choose and combine for your playstyle but some allotting a change to the cooldown to the modified skill, you then create different circumstances in which to use those skills and spamming any skill just lowers the opportunity you can use the skills in conjunction with their altered effects and in combination with other skills.

Beyond just a a change to the system of skills, a change to combo fields and finishers could add a lot to the teamplay of the game. I guess it’s more human instinct to impose tried and tested solutions when a problem exists instead of playing around with a problem until you get something truly unique.

I used to think like you, but after one year of playing GW2, I just can’t find a cooldown-only or energy-only system to be better than an energy+cooldown combo.

If you make skills conditional, it’ll lead to auto-attack spam whenever the conditions don’t meet. What would be the alternative, removing auto-attacks completely? :P Adding several different auto-attacks for more diversity? The later isn’t a bad idea, but it’s an even better idea if there’s different costs behind those auto-attacks. And if other skills are better than auto-attacks at any situation, even if they are conditional, players will spam them over auto-attacks – they won’t just hold them waiting for a perfect opportunity that might very well never happen, with the exception of specific situations.

Resource-managing also adds an interesting “mini-game” that allows combat to remain strategical EVEN when skills are simplistic (like they are in GW2), EVEN when enemy encounters are simplistic, etc.

But you’re right when you say that it’s natural for us to impose testes solutions instead of finding new solutions. I can think of a few different solutions. For example, Churning Earth and Hundred Blades (in PvP) are very interesting skills because they’re high-risk/ high-reward skills – using them comes at the cost of movement.

So what can I conclude from that? That skills are more interesting when they are flexible but come at a risk, than when they are conditional. The former skills can be used at any situation, but require skill. Conditional skills are usually spammed (if they’re better than auto-attacks), or ignored except in niche situations (if they are not better than auto-attacks). GW2 is filled with the former kind of conditional skills, and the later kind are cool but niche – they fulfill a purpose, but it would be boring if the entire skillset worked like that.

And what does an energy system do? It add a cost to skill usage. A cost that is independent of time restraints or conditional effects. An energy system is a very universal and proven-and-true formula to make skills more interesting without making them all conditional.

Pawstruck.9708:

The kind of combat you’re describing does not exist in this game. There is no class who’s most efficient rotation is 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1. You’re exaggerating to make a point, and your point is wrong. There are plenty of interesting skills and talents in this game.

If you really believe your OP, just leave.

Ranger Shortbow as well.