Guild Wars 2

Hi

Perhaps this has been discussed here before, as I don’t read these forums so much I have no idea. But I did search a bit and couldn’t find anything….

Am I the only one finding the games skill system to be too boring and too shallow?

I used to play Guild Wars 1 for a long time. My first one was Factions, around its release.
I found it really fun to level up to level 20 and be able to explore new areas of the game. Very quickly I noticed as a novice player I couldn’t beat all the monsters in the game even though I am maximum level.

From then on the game was about combining your skills, finding new skills and combining skills of other professions. Finding new and interesting ways to use them, a lot of skills seemed just to be odd or not really good, but if you combined them with another skill they could be an incredible combo.

And whenever you found a good build you would continue to explore the world, see you are weak in some aspects and figure out new ways to improve you. Also when you had Heroes, you learned other professions as well and spent a lot of time to make their skills proper. In the end after many years, I could master most of the PvE areas. And in PvP, people found a whole new slew of crazy combinations.

The game was great, level or equipment didn’t really matter so much, it was about your tactics. Even though 2 players were both level 20, the one who had thought before battle could outmatch the other by far.

But when I started to play Guild Wars 2 at launch I found myself getting bored relatively quickly. The game world is pure awesome, WvW is great too, everything is just as I want it too be, except for one thing, the skills.

I play as mesmer. Untill level 30 I experimented with different weapons and some skills. At level 30 I decided to go with one handed swords and a staff, illusion skills for my right hand side skills and I knew which branches I should focus my traits on….

The problem is, I am now level 80, and I am still using almost the same skills I did at level 30. And all the battles are the same, and there is really nothing I can improve or do with my character since level 30. I have no problems defeating monsters. But what I quickly realised is that there is not really any big difference between 2 players of the same class. Most mesmers play the same way, for the most players the game is alike.

While in Guild Wars 1 2 players of the same class could be miles away from eachothers playstyles and skills. Customization was key. Now the game feels mostly like any other action adventure game of some kind that is just pick up and play for anyone without any major depth to it.

My point is not that the game should be hard, or hard to pick up, but that there is no reall character evolution after a while. That after a while, all you do is just run around in the game, really not improving except your level increasing and a few traits making you stronger.

What are your thoughts about this?
And I just noticed this got quite lengthy…

1. I agree with you.

2. The lack of customization makes me sad.

3. New skills are on the way soonish I think…?

4. People are gonna chew you out for this thread because
—-A.) You criticized GW2, and B.) It’s been discussed a ton already.

I see.

1. Glad you agree.

2. Me too.

3. Oh really?

4.
A, meh, I played the game more than most others, I am allowed to.
B, woops, I didn’t see that…

The extreme cool-down times on most skills annoy me to no end.

I pretty much spec my characters around skills with cool-down of 30 seconds or less. What’s the fun in conjuring fire and hurricanes if you can only do it once every two minutes?

At least have more utility skills, or something. Maybe it works for your balance equations, fine, but you have to consider having a bit of fun in this game, too. Let me cook more than one Green Moa per minute with precision lightning, or something!

Skill system is a garbage. Most of the time you use “skill” number one.

it is not simple (on paper), but very boring. Possible interesting combinations (mostly of utility skills) are useless because of the very short duration of any special effects and the ridiculously long cooldowns.

A few months ago they said they were working on more character progression by introducing new skills/traits. The 4 teams working on living story have a 2 month development time window.

So if we are lucky may see some new skills/traits introduced before the end of 2013.

However, they have this HUGE and I mean HUGE oak table at Anet HQ and its piled with a mountain of stuff, that’s ‘on the table’, so hopefully new skills/traits won’t have been lost in that mountain of stuff. They can lose ascended armour if they want, that’s okay…

It’s dumbed down for those who suck at making builds. Everything past skill 6 is mostly useless due to horrendous cooldowns. Do like everyone else. Hit 1 and find something to occupy yourself for a minute or so.

I agree

This game is very shallow in comparison.

As a Ranger, (mostly melee), I’m often changing my weapons …AND traits… between EVERY big fight, and sometimes even my entire wardrobe … you basically have to when you’re not a just another worthless “Bear+LB backliner”. Thieves in PvE seem to have it even worse, I rarely see them getting “bored” with things being too easy/rote…

I don’t think It’s necessarily the skills, I think it’s just some of the classes ended up being way too linear. Mesmer & Warrior especially (though Guardian also gets boring quick just b/c it’s too easy by being too VIABLE without ever changing up its loadout ever)

Knote.2904:

You criticized GW2

kirima san.3760:

I played the game more than most others, I am allowed to

I’ve (probably) breathed more air than you have…but it doesn’t make me any better at it.
To answer your question, however, i don’t think the skill system is ‘boring’ as such – just limited but can be tweaked by altering traits, armor, weapon, sigil & runes – much to the same degree as skill swapping, for better builds, in GW.

Very much so. In this game with my main I’ve been using the same skill bar that I was using back in Oct. I change them around occasionally then revert and that’s about it. In GW1 my main had my all round build, a few dungeon builds, a build for when someone else was using the same elite as my main, blood is power build for the deep, AB, JQ etc. etc.

Some people say there were too many skills in GW1 but I’m not buying it, they were probably the ones that went straight to Ursan and Permasin. I was always trying out new builds with unused skills. Even when I asked others for their builds they would sometimes have a skill in there I wouldn’t have thought of combining the way they had. Then I’d try tweaking and improving on it with different skills than what they had used. In this game it’s just pick the best from your tiny supply and your set for the rest of your GW2 life on that toon. It’s sad when you compare the two

Elites and utilities needs a ground up rework.

As far as weapon skills go, it’s a step back limiting them so hard with weapon sets – manly for caster – but it does makes sense and it does helps (on paper) with balancing, so i can pass on.

But elites passed from being the core of your build to be the ultimate you can use once every 3 minutes. That’s horrible design.
Also utilities, they just aren’t…utile, most of the time. I mean, ofc it will depends on which one you choose and which profession: but for example Feedback and Veil are “utility”. FGJ SYG and few other skills are just “Hey pick those boons”. And i’m not even mention sigils (passive skills)…
Boo-oring.

ilr.9675:

As a Ranger, (mostly melee), I’m often changing my weapons …AND traits… between EVERY big fight, and sometimes even my entire wardrobe … you basically have to when you’re not a just another worthless “Bear+LB backliner”. Thieves in PvE seem to have it even worse, I rarely see them getting “bored” with things being too easy/rote…

I don’t think It’s necessarily the skills, I think it’s just some of the classes ended up being way too linear. Mesmer & Warrior especially (though Guardian also gets boring quick just b/c it’s too easy by being too VIABLE without ever changing up its loadout ever)

Way, way too linear. Especially thief how you are mostly using one button with the occasional 5 and 1 again woopty freakin doo. Most thief builds utilize a rotation of 1 button. Quite sad, and most definitely boring.

I completely disagree with ANets whole ‘spam 1 and only use other skills in certain situations’ philosophy they seem to have now.

I’m not asking for WoW DPS rotations, but kitten it is just way too simple right now. But again, this is because of the casuals. Apparently it was too difficult in GW1 to make your own builds and actually manage skill use. ANet officially touched on that, and I 100% disagree with it. Gamers are just way too lazy these days.

Everything has to be so mind numbingly easy a 3 year old can do it.

I could let my 4 year old niece play my ranger and she’d do decent DPS because all shortbow requires is letting your 1 go off, in WoW on the other hand she couldn’t possibly excel in any way at all because a complex rotation is required to get the ball rolling.

For ‘action combat’ (lol) this is pretty lame, maybe let us have interesting combo systems like the assassin in GW1 but instead they butchered that into a thief.

The game has endless potential but ANet refuses to expand on, or even comment on their incredibly mundane skill system. We don’t even have build templates after over a year. I mean really… so pathetic. Not to mention we have to pay to change builds now, oh I’m sorry I thought you didn’t want to be like other MMOs, ANet? I never had to pay to change builds constantly in GW1.

The issue with not being able to switch out skills on your bar has also not been touched or commented on that I know of, in over a year. Let’s say I play a BS thief, I have literally no use for death blossom so it’s a completely wasted skill on my bar. AMAZING design if I do say so myself.

This has been complained about since beta, there is zero variety in gameplay for a lot of the classes. Sure you can scream Ele and Eng, but what else can experience that type of play? Thief sure can’t.

TL;DR game too braindead easy and boring.

Mathias.9657:

ilr.9675:

As a Ranger, (mostly melee), I’m often changing my weapons …AND traits… between EVERY big fight, and sometimes even my entire wardrobe … you basically have to when you’re not a just another worthless “Bear+LB backliner”. Thieves in PvE seem to have it even worse, I rarely see them getting “bored” with things being too easy/rote…

I don’t think It’s necessarily the skills, I think it’s just some of the classes ended up being way too linear. Mesmer & Warrior especially (though Guardian also gets boring quick just b/c it’s too easy by being too VIABLE without ever changing up its loadout ever)

Way, way too linear. Especially thief how you are mostly using one button with the occasional 5 and 1 again woopty freakin doo. Most thief builds utilize a rotation of 1 button. Quite sad, and most definitely boring.

I completely disagree with ANets whole ‘spam 1 and only use other skills in certain situations’ philosophy they seem to have now.

I’m not asking for WoW DPS rotations, but kitten it is just way too simple right now. But again, this is because of the casuals. Apparently it was too difficult in GW1 to make your own builds and actually manage skill use. ANet officially touched on that, and I 100% disagree with it. Gamers are just way too lazy these days.

Everything has to be so mind numbingly easy a 3 year old can do it.

I could let my 4 year old niece play my ranger and she’d do decent DPS because all shortbow requires is letting your 1 go off, in WoW on the other hand she couldn’t possibly excel in any way at all because a complex rotation is required to get the ball rolling.

For ‘action combat’ (lol) this is pretty lame, maybe let us have interesting combo systems like the assassin in GW1 but instead they butchered that into a thief.

The game has endless potential but ANet refuses to expand on, or even comment on their incredibly mundane skill system. We don’t even have build templates after over a year. I mean really… so pathetic. Not to mention we have to pay to change builds now, oh I’m sorry I thought you didn’t want to be like other MMOs, ANet? I never had to pay to change builds constantly in GW1.

The issue with not being able to switch out skills on your bar has also not been touched or commented on that I know of, in over a year. Let’s say I play a BS thief, I have literally no use for death blossom so it’s a completely wasted skill on my bar. AMAZING design if I do say so myself.

This has been complained about since beta, there is zero variety in gameplay for a lot of the classes. Sure you can scream Ele and Eng, but what else can experience that type of play? Thief sure can’t.

TL;DR game too braindead easy and boring.

Didn’t you know they’re going to be adding more skills to the game pretty soon? Ones that are probably as dumb and useless as the current set is. But that’s what counts. Fill the patch notes up with stuff about skills so people think it’s getting fixed. Amusing really.

I am really happy that I am not the only one feeling this way. Paul and Mathias possibly put it even better than I did. I have not really been playing this game for half a year now. I still log in to GW1 when I want to play GW and not feel like playing another hold-your-hand-action-adventure game where everyone are the same.

It would be nice if they could change the skill system, not just the traits system. All the trait system does is to let me know stats and numbers will be different next time I hit someone or get hit.

I want something that forces me to think and act based on my situations, and progress more than just switch weapon.

The weapon skills system would be ok if your non-weapon skills were really important and interesting. Unfortunetly, they’re usually neither or just one of those things. Just compare GW2’s FGJ to GW1’s pre-nerf version of FGJ. GW2’s skill just gives you an attribute boost, while GW1’s skill gave you a unique bonus that doubled the amount of Adrenaline you got, making your skills “recharge” twice as fast.

I blame Boons and Conditions. While it’s true GW1’s buff/debuff system was a bit too complicated, Boons and Conditions are way too simple to be interesting.

kirima san.3760:

I am really happy that I am not the only one feeling this way. Paul and Mathias possibly put it even better than I did. I have not really been playing this game for half a year now. I still log in to GW1 when I want to play GW and not feel like playing another hold-your-hand-action-adventure game where everyone are the same.

It would be nice if they could change the skill system, not just the traits system. All the trait system does is to let me know stats and numbers will be different next time I hit someone or get hit.

I want something that forces me to think and act based on my situations, and progress more than just switch weapon.

This is what we want, but in reality, it won’t ever happen.

As stated before, the skill system is dumbed down to the point that anyone can play without having to build a bar.

GW had more than 1300 skills total, GW2 has at most 80.

Do you see the vast difference?

Skan.5301:

kirima san.3760:

I am really happy that I am not the only one feeling this way. Paul and Mathias possibly put it even better than I did. I have not really been playing this game for half a year now. I still log in to GW1 when I want to play GW and not feel like playing another hold-your-hand-action-adventure game where everyone are the same.

It would be nice if they could change the skill system, not just the traits system. All the trait system does is to let me know stats and numbers will be different next time I hit someone or get hit.

I want something that forces me to think and act based on my situations, and progress more than just switch weapon.

This is what we want, but in reality, it won’t ever happen.

As stated before, the skill system is dumbed down to the point that anyone can play without having to build a bar.

GW had more than 1300 skills total, GW2 has at most 80.

Do you see the vast difference?

Yeah I do see it, and it is quite saddening…
I just hope the would come to their senses before they loose too many players…
In GW1 they changed the Dervish and the Elemental significantly after a while, they could do those things again in a perfect world.

dekou.6012:

The weapon skills system would be ok if your non-weapon skills were really important and interesting. Unfortunetly, they’re usually neither or just one of those things. Just compare GW2’s FGJ to GW1’s pre-nerf version of FGJ. GW2’s skill just gives you an attribute boost, while GW1’s skill gave you a unique bonus that doubled the amount of Adrenaline you got, making your skills “recharge” twice as fast.

+1

And

I blame Boons and Conditions. While it’s true GW1’s buff/debuff system was a bit too complicated, Boons and Conditions are way too simple to be interesting.

+2

As i said before: make utilities real useful. No passive thing(signets), no plain boon/condition(FGJ), no plain attacks(bull’s rush)/spells(arcane blast)/skills with some flavours attached.

Also, give us back hexes.

AndrewSX.3794:

Also, give us back hexes.

And legit interrupts.

I think the limited skill system is problematic simply because it does’t offer enough tools for good counter-play.

In order to be equipped to deal with most situations you need a certain umber of skills.

But GW2 is so limited that often you can find yourself in situations you cannot win. Be that against a certain build that you just don’t have the tools to defeat or being susceptible to certain skills that end up being more devastating than intended.

This s by design to a certain extent but it’s frustrating for the players.

This is why I’ve had such a hard time deciding on a class as my main. I level up to 30 or so, realize I’ve settled into a small cluster of two or three builds, and that this is the entire game in terms of unique abilities.

The weapon system is far too restrictive atm, and for most classes the utility skills arent developed enough to remain interesting. (Lets not forget the fact that most classes have an entire skill line, sigils, that basicaly scream "I’m a placeholder skill that rarely does anything of interest and should have been weeded out in beta ")

They were on the right track, to be honest, with giving players more guidance in picking skills. Gw1 had an insanely complicated system that made creating an OK PvE buiild intuitively nearly impossible. I personally could never figure it out. They’ve swung way too wide here, though, and really ought to have given us more options to play with; especially since you can easily end up with most utilities (and certainly, any you’re particularly interested in), by level 30 (!). That is incredibly bad design.

I don’t think the skill system, at it’s core, is bad, but the cooldowns, particularly on the Utility skills, are pretty excessive, which makes a lot of the skill use kind of automatic/mindless outside of PvP.

I would like to see more short-cooldown Utilities, or Utilities in general having shorter cooldowns outside of PvP. That’s the main thing needed, because apart from that, GW2 is in a better place than some here are suggesting, skill-wise.

Skan.5301:

GW had more than 1300 skills total, GW2 has at most 80.

Do you see the vast difference?

Where the heck are you getting “80” from? That appears to be complete gibberish.

Ignoring the “chain” skills, ignoring downed skills, ignoring underwater skills, ignoring racial skills – Mesmer, for example, has 61 skills. Add in the rest and it’s a hell of a lot more.

That is for one class. Some classes have many more.

So this idea that GW2 is somehow lacking skills is just ridiculous. I am looking forwards to more skills, but “80”? Why even make such a junk claim?

Eurhetemec.9052:

I don’t think the skill system, at it’s core, is bad, but the cooldowns, particularly on the Utility skills, are pretty excessive, which makes a lot of the skill use kind of automatic/mindless outside of PvP.

I would like to see more short-cooldown Utilities, or Utilities in general having shorter cooldowns outside of PvP. That’s the main thing needed, because apart from that, GW2 is in a better place than some here are suggesting, skill-wise.

Skan.5301:

GW had more than 1300 skills total, GW2 has at most 80.

Do you see the vast difference?

Where the heck are you getting “80” from? That appears to be complete gibberish.

Ignoring the “chain” skills, ignoring downed skills, ignoring underwater skills, ignoring racial skills – Mesmer, for example, has 61 skills. Add in the rest and it’s a hell of a lot more.

That is for one class. Some classes have many more.

So this idea that GW2 is somehow lacking skills is just ridiculous. I am looking forwards to more skills, but “80”? Why even make such a junk claim?

I think I must disagree with you. While the mesmer does have 61 skills, most of them are skills you get from your weapon and you can not affect or change them. And even if you find a weapon there may be that 1 skill on it you actually never use because it does not fit in with your “utilities”.

Chain skills in Guild Wars 2 are not really fun either. In GW1 the assassin could use skill A to get skill B and then maybe get skill C. But when getting to skill B he could re use skill A instead of using skill C. But in Guild Wars 2 your skill changes into the next one and all you do is press the same button over and over again, and you can not jump in the chain either, like I already stated.

Mathias.9657:

Way, way too linear. Especially thief how you are mostly using one button with the occasional 5 and 1 again woopty freakin doo. Most thief builds utilize a rotation of 1 button. Quite sad, and most definitely boring.

I completely disagree with ANets whole ‘spam 1 and only use other skills in certain situations’ philosophy they seem to have now.

I’m not asking for WoW DPS rotations, but kitten it is just way too simple right now. But again, this is because of the casuals. Apparently it was too difficult in GW1 to make your own builds and actually manage skill use. ANet officially touched on that, and I 100% disagree with it. Gamers are just way too lazy these days.

I’m in the boat that tends to agree. I still have a blast with the game, but I do notice that for me to continue having fun with a game, I take breaks from those games and come back fresh and refreshed to basically do what I’d been doing before. And I notice that I tend to take more frequent breaks with GW2.

I don’t really expect PvP to vary unless the meta dictates it, but PvE really should vary more when it comes to approaching foes.

As for players being lazy, I tend not to point that out, but it really feels that way when they bring up certain complaints. Like in that other thread about knockdowns…I can see that enemies using knockdown so much can get boring, but lazy players are complaining about being CC’ed for long periods by lots of KD mobs. The object of combat with those foes is to prevent yourself from being knocked, not eat all their moves and spam 1. The reason I feel more variety could go into mob moves is because if you have certain set-ups to simply kill foes, dodging the KD is only to make sure you keep up the stream of attacks to kill faster.

Not only would adding more variety to your skills, but also more variety to combat in general would really help the game…more than just dodging CC and 1HKOs.

kirima san.3760:

Chain skills in Guild Wars 2 are not really fun either. In GW1 the assassin could use skill A to get skill B and then maybe get skill C. But when getting to skill B he could re use skill A instead of using skill C. But in Guild Wars 2 your skill changes into the next one and all you do is press the same button over and over again, and you can not jump in the chain either, like I already stated.

Manly, you could decide which skills use.

I mean, to make it easier to understand, there were the catergory of “opener”, “middle” and “finisher” (only for assassin tho). You could pick them freely.
Ofc some combo were better, ofc some wouldn’t have sense, but you could choose to change the middle for more pressure, or have 2 different finishers to use as needed, or trade the extra aoe dmg of a certain piece of your chain for another giving you a KD.

I partially agree. You guys forget the GW1 meta game. While the combinations were almost infinite most players had some builds they run for months. Simply be cause other builds were not as effective. Like the Discord builds, the SoS builds, the Pain Inverter builds. There were few tweaks here and there but that’s comparable to the utilities we have now.

I agree that the utilities have a bit too long CD. I think that’s due to the nature of the natural zerging in open world events. It would be too OP if we could chain some utilities (imagine constant feedback or wall of reflecion on an enemy – which works btw: i refelcted Bloomhunger in swamp fractals with another guardian and we had 100% reflection with WoR Shield of the avenger). I agree there are some ridiculously high CDs for racial elites and then some others.

I think they are still unsure how to balance and tweak the traits though. I still think the impact is a bit too less. Ok, we can reduce the cooldowns of most type of skills by 20% but i think they could do a bit more or introduce additional skills by traits similar to WoW.

But i am annoyed by the argument ‘just hitting 1’. This simply isn’t true. If there are players doing that, it is their fault. I constantly use my full skill bar. As a guardian is usually run with Hammer/Greatsword as Main weapon and Staff/Scepter/Shield as alternate weapon. During fights i have access to 2×5 + 5 + 3 (virtues) skills which i use situationally depending on encounter. If i see that the party needs a buff or a bit of heal, i use virtue of resolve or empower. If i know the enemy can knock me down i always wait to use my stun break(s). Etc. etc.

I simply can’t imagine there are ppl hitting just 1 (aside that this is usually the auto attack anyways).

kirima san.3760:

I think I must disagree with you. While the mesmer does have 61 skills, most of them are skills you get from your weapon and you can not affect or change them. And even if you find a weapon there may be that 1 skill on it you actually never use because it does not fit in with your “utilities”.

Chain skills in Guild Wars 2 are not really fun either. In GW1 the assassin could use skill A to get skill B and then maybe get skill C. But when getting to skill B he could re use skill A instead of using skill C. But in Guild Wars 2 your skill changes into the next one and all you do is press the same button over and over again, and you can not jump in the chain either, like I already stated.

You’re still choosing what weapon to use, so I think this is, well bullkitten, to put none to fine a point on it. You absolutely CAN affect your weapon skills via Traits, too.

I do think there could be more stuff done with them – more interesting stuff, where abilities interacted more, but the idea that there are hardly any skills? Nonsense.

ProtoGunner.4953:

I partially agree. You guys forget the GW1 meta game. While the combinations were almost infinite most players had some builds they run for months. Simply be cause other builds were not as effective. Like the Discord builds, the SoS builds, the Pain Inverter builds. There were few tweaks here and there but that’s comparable to the utilities we have now.

Yep. On my Paragon I ran basically one build for six months+, with at most minor variations for different circumstances.

Maybe we could do with some stuff like clkitten skills which punish specific opponent-types, like the Margonite-punishing skills, to help break up some of the monotony, though, in GW2.

Eurhetemec.9052:

You absolutely CAN affect your weapon skills via Traits, too.

Affecting weapon skills means making them recharge 20% faster.

I was a long long time player of GW1. I loved the game but it was not all roses and sunshine with its skill system either. The “power creep” in GW1 was “new” skills. For those that didnt biuy in to the newest release, they were consistantly “left behind” by the increased skills available from newer content.

Hell the old Imbagon paragon had half (if not more) of its skills from EotN, and if you didnt HAVE the imbagon build you could forget ever getting in a team for group content. This was on top of skill duplication, and frankly too many skills overall.

GW2 by comparison has too few skills, utility ones that is. I feel like I am constantly forced to cookie cutter. There is zero build “originality” or any real experimentation currently. Everythings been done already or tried by someone previously. Anet havent found the “sweet spot” in the number of skills nor the implementation of the ones we have. To many of the current skills are second rate versions of old skills from GW1 with idiotic cooldown times attached.

For there to be real build diversity and creativity we need more skills, but we also need better implemented skills. If Anet just tack on another load of pointless skills with extreme cooldowns it wont make a blind bit of difference to the game. Its just more of the same.

Eurhetemec.9052:

ProtoGunner.4953:

I partially agree. You guys forget the GW1 meta game. While the combinations were almost infinite most players had some builds they run for months. Simply be cause other builds were not as effective. Like the Discord builds, the SoS builds, the Pain Inverter builds. There were few tweaks here and there but that’s comparable to the utilities we have now.

Yep. On my Paragon I ran basically one build for six months+, with at most minor variations for different circumstances.

Maybe we could do with some stuff like clkitten skills which punish specific opponent-types, like the Margonite-punishing skills, to help break up some of the monotony, though, in GW2.

That is true, I also used to use similar builds for months on my Dervish. But the thing is, if I wanted, I could turn him in to a whole other type of Dervish within minutes. With a completly different style. And your Dervish, and my Dervish, could be 2 completely different Dervishes.

In Guild Wars 2, the only practical differences I can do is swap the weapon on my Mesmer. There are not nearly as many combinations of play style in GW2 as there were in GW1. Most people have very similar builds.

kirima san.3760:

In Guild Wars 2, the only practical differences I can do is swap the weapon on my Mesmer. There are not nearly as many combinations of play style in GW2 as there were in GW1. Most people have very similar builds.

That just isn’t any more true in GW2 than GW1.

I mean, do all Mesmers run with the exact same weapon combo? Nope. Do they all run with with the same Utilities? Not even slightly. Do they all run with the same Elite… er, maybe, but that’s something that would easy to fix by adding a couple more solid elite options.

A staff-oriented field-using mesmer is a completely different play-experience to one who is primarily greatsword-using and DD/phantasm-oriented.

The problem is that, in PvE, the latter mesmer tends to be a lot more effective. In PvP there is much less of an “identical builds” issue, despite the meta – most classes have at least two-three “strong” builds even if there is only one “meta” (but even in GWI, there was rarely more than one “meta” viable at a time for a class – not never, but not often).

And that PvE problem DOES NOT relate to the skills, much, it relates to the compounding effect of Berserker gear and the low caps on Conditions.

IF Berserker gear was not the only way to get good damage or do well in serious content, IF Condition caps were much higher or worked differently, (like, applying a Condition to a capped creature did direct damage instead or something), then I think there is no way anyone would be trying to argue that they didn’t have enough options.

That said, one of my biggest complains is that we don’t have templates. And even then the even bigger problem is gear. Just an example: my first lvl 80 was an asura mesmer. She used to have be a high critting condition applying duelist with rampager gear. So now i want to play a zerker mesmer. I have to kittening get ALLE THE kitten gear, including ALLE THE ASCENDED equipment again.

This is just broken, it’s not only for my mesmer. I did the same with my main – the Guardian. First – pretty noobish back in october 2012 – i had PVT gear. Then i decided to go for cleric. And now i use a combination of knight’s armor and zerker trinkets. I have now about 3 sets ascended trinkets. Each costing me a kittenload of time (daily —> laurels; weekly guild missions and fractals) just to make another build effective. New builds are tied to the gear we have and this costs time. One of the grindier games – WoW – made it far more efficient. Your gear doesn’t change (at least not significantly in stats if you play PvE only). If i decided to go switch from frost mage to fire, i just could change my skills. The gear remainded the same.

This has to be considered. It was no big deal for me with exotics but it IS one now with ascended gear. I play 6 different professions at the moment (some more some less, but still). And this makes it even worse. They really have to change there something if they want us ‘to play the way you want’. It’s simply not true with the setup they have now.

Lexandro.1456:

If Anet just tack on another load of pointless skills with extreme cooldowns it wont make a blind bit of difference to the game. Its just more of the same.

Sure, if they do that.

But I don’t think they will do that. They certainly learned to make cooler skills going from Prophecies to Factions, and Factions to Nightfall, and I think arguably from Nightfall to EotN (got a bit too obsessed with Faction-based skills but still).

Once we start seeing the new skills in the game, we’ll have a better idea, but I suspect that they’ll be pretty good, as long as ArenaNet have learned from making GW2, and I have faith that they have.

ProtoGunner.4953:

This has to be considered. It was no big deal for me with exotics but it IS one now with ascended gear. I play 6 different professions at the moment (some more some less, but still). And this makes it even worse. They really have to change there something if they want us ‘to play the way you want’. It’s simply not true with the setup they have now.

I completely agree, but this is proving my point – the problem is NOT the skill system.

The problem is the gear system. Gear is not impossible to obtain, but it does require significant effort, and to change builds you need ENTIRE other gear-sets, which you don’t have the storage space for, and which take a lot of effort to get.

And that’s just with Exotics!

With Ascended gear, it’s all time-gated, and the Weapons (and presumably armour) are hideously expensive to make, I mean just HIDEOUSLY, so your ability to change specs, to try something new – which was really strong in GW1 – is really limited.

But by the gear, much more than the skills. The dominance of Berserker is also an issue – currently it’s making the gear problems LESS bad, because all the good PvE specs tend to use it – but it also means that there are far fewer effective specs.

So ArenaNet is going to have to make some fairly serious changes to the gear, and make them fairly soon, if they want to keep people happy and interested. We don’t need new tiers – we need better storage and more ways to get gear (and perhaps more different stat setups).

ANet has not been able to address the condition cap problem, which has been an issue since launch. Does anyone really think they’re capable of doing anything good with the entire skill system?

dekou.6012:

Just compare GW2’s FGJ to GW1’s pre-nerf version of FGJ. GW2’s skill just gives you an attribute boost, while GW1’s skill gave you a unique bonus that doubled the amount of Adrenaline you got, making your skills “recharge” twice as fast.

I don’t want to be “that guy”, but… http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frenzy_

<_<

I agree with the OP about GW having such a diverse skill choice making builds and combos and synergy and tactics so much fun. I had a 20 of every class and exerimented my butt off. Creating new & interesting builds was my fav thing to do, and with so many skills and dual professions, doing so was like creative nirvana.

I too was very disappointed when I first started GW2 and noticed the lack of skills choices. GW let me choose every 1 of my 8 skills. GW2 gives me 10 skill slots, but choosing weapons pigeon holes 2, 3, or 5 of my skills right off the bat. As time went on I discovered that what defines and shapes a build in GW2 isn’t the skill choices, as much as the traits. What seemed shallow at limiting at first to me, became brilliant when I saw the potential synergy within the various traits.

However…..I’ve found that I get bored with any of my 8 characters faster than I think I should. And it’s because of the limited choices we have in build variety and skill selection. Thankfully, as an altoholic, I have 8 characters and can alleviate the boredom I feel with my ranger by playing my engineer, and then on to my thief when that gets stale.

I don’t think the combat is stale or simple. The heavy movement, dodging, boons, conditions, mitigation, combos…they all make comabt robust imo. But we need more skills. Thankfully, that’s just what Anet has promised to give us. From what I’ve heard, eventually all professions will have access to all weapon types, and traits will expand. That’s good news! Combat style can’t really be redesigned. Thankfully, that’s good. Skill choice, that can be expanded and that’s just what they’re gonna do.

So rejoice!

Don’t get me wrong, combat system itself isn’t bad, at all.

But needs a de-dumbing down process.

More stuff, more diverse.

Crescendoll.7612:

dekou.6012:

Just compare GW2’s FGJ to GW1’s pre-nerf version of FGJ. GW2’s skill just gives you an attribute boost, while GW1’s skill gave you a unique bonus that doubled the amount of Adrenaline you got, making your skills “recharge” twice as fast.

I don’t want to be “that guy”, but… http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frenzy_

<_<

That’s one of GW2’s few interesting skills, but it’s not as interesting as the GW1 Frenzy, because there are no stances and no cancel stances. Anyway, it doesn’t decrease your skills’ recharge, so it’s the GW2 equivalent of GW1 Frenzy, not GW1 FGJ.

Game is shallow if skill slots doesn’t fill at least half of screen.

Guess I’ll start by saying I’m a long time casual-medium player of many MMOs including GW, WoW, and tons of others that aren’t worth mentioning.

I kind of agree. Have a level 80 guardian and since I created him I’ve been changing weapons/skills/traits in an effort to constantly be better even though the game allows me to be “good” (but not great) right from the start. I think they’ve hit a pretty good balance there.

The reason it works for me is because I ~Love~ some skills in Guardian (mainly the shield weapon and its attached skills, and concecrations) so much that I’m constantly working to create a build to fit them in. I end up coming up with build after build that is better and better, but they rarely (if ever) have the skills I want to use in them.

A lot of the other classes I’ve tried though, I don’t see those skills that I love, so its just a mishmash of crap. If I was determined to level up a Mesmer, for instance, I’d probably just end up looking up a good build on the internet and going with it, but I’d be so bored I wouldn’t play then.

I think the team has done a fairly good job of making most skills viable where in GW they simply weren’t. I also think they’ve done a good job of making more aspects of the game accessible by everyone playing (interrupts and conditions for example) that were so difficult and confusing to some players they were just frustrating.

The system still needs work. I would love to see options to chose from for each weapon. It really sucks when you’re thinking to yourself “I love the greatsword, but with this class, in order to use a greatsword, I have to be twirling like an idiot”.

Really, the game is impeccably balanced, the biggest problem is the lack of options.

I think its the best system I’ve seen though. Rift had too many options, other games have so many skills that are all available and everyone had the same ones… Boring… I’m sick of that system. Original GW I found frustrating because there were so FEW buttons (I was playing Ranger and after my pet there were 5 buttons left). Now at least I have 1-5 (despite some hating how they’re selected) — 6-10 (Elites need to be better, I end up using the boring recharge my virtues button, yawn) F1, F2, F3, {F4 on some} dodge, weapons swap on some… Its actually a great system.

Junkpile.7439:

Game is shallow if skill slots doesn’t fill at least half of screen.

Gw1 had very shallow combat. So shallow anet deepened it.

What I’d like to see is:

Removal of the trait lines: Let players pick any combination of traits they like (7 Minor, 7 Major).

Leave stats to gear.

Also consider adding 1-2 new skill slots and a few new abilities.

Some skills are fairly weak in my opinion and need a reword, a lot of the elite skills aren’t that useful.

I agree about the elites in particular … can’t say i use them all that often on some of my chars, and in some cases, were it not for Hounds of Balthazar, I wouldn’t use it at all (looking at my mesmer, unfortunately) … now, it may be a completely different scenario for folks in WvW or PvP, but for PvE, I think another half-dozen truly useful elites for each class would be welcomed.

Personally I think they should’ve made it so the Elite slot was just a 4th utility slot, EXCEPT that it would make w/e utility you put in it stronger.

Take Ele’s elemental pet summons.

Glyph of Lesser Elemental could be slotted in the elite slot which would then make it Glyph of Greater Elemental, just as an example.

Would be much more interesting, and closer to how Elites were in GW1, which I loved way more as basically “Stronger” utility skills rather than these gimmicky iWin 3 min+ cooldowns.

Cool downs are far too long.

Not enough number of skills and utilities.

Weapon swap cool down is too long and not necessary.

The result is game with very low skill cap, and high predictability that has little rotation choice on PVE and virtually no counter play in PVP.

Combined that with the dual stats and linear trait progression system it has basically stagnated the game. It severely limits the number of builds and play style.

They should change the name of the game to build wars because that’s what it is. 9/10 fights, the results are determined by builds and not by skill. I don’t understand at all why the game has taken this direction given how much Sharp supposedly likes counter play when he talks about all this on SoTG.