Guild Wars 2

I have felt that elemental damage in GW2 is pointless since its launch. In GW1 the damage type would matter because some of the enemies would have weaknesses to that type of damage. The Undead took double damage if the damage type was Holy Damage. Fire Damage would inflicted more damage against Plant and Ice enemies.

These mechanics justified the existence of these different damage types but in GW2 it seems like all damage types do ultimately the same damage. If this is the case then there is almost no purpose to the damage type other than for example, creating the burning condition with fire.

I would like to see damage types have meaning again in GW2. The combat was dumbed down way to much from GW1 and I would like to see GW2 get back to and surpass its complexity.

It’s unlikely to ever happen, and I don’t think it makes the game much weaker because of it. In Guild Wars 1. the entire game was about builds. You’d have to choose your skills before you left an outpost and you had to make sure you made the right choices. If you went into Shards of Orr with bleeds, poison and disease it was going to be a rough ride, because none of those things affected skeletons. In this way, Guild Wars 1 was more of a puzzle you had to solve.

Guild Wars 2 is more about active combat than solving a puzzle. It’s a definite adjustment in thought process. In a game where you can change your build out of combat at any point, this sort of thing doesn’t really have the same impact. There are a couple of things in the game that are sort of like that (dredge can’t be blinded, destroyers can’t be burned), but it really doesn’t make that much of a difference. Even with a burning spec I can still kill destroyers. And if it didn’t work I could get out of combat and change on the fly.

This isn’t as much of a strategy game as Guild Wars 1 was, which is probably why it’s reaching a wider audience.

GW1 was Rock, Paper Scissors approach to build design and deserves to be left behind.

I think it’d be kinda a neat mechanic for a dungeon/fractal/raid boss to be differently affected by different damage types in different phases, but I don’t mind not having to think about it during general play. It was fun in GW1, but this isn’t GW1 and can only do so much to pretend to be it.

There is no elemental damage type in GW2. There’s only direct damage, condition damage, and agony.

I agree with the OP that it was more fun in GW1.
But, in GW1 we actually had to use our brains and think rather than stack, smack and autoattack

I miss the variation in both damage type and build freedom, GW2 is very cookie cutter.