Guild Wars 2

Aridia.3042:

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.

No the original GW was Build Wars. There were so many different builds that were viable that Anet took to changing the skills every month to keep things “fresh”.

haviz.1340:

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.

It wasn’t as shallow as GW2. Unless you had no build building skill whatsoever and relied on PvX for everything, GW had an almost infinite number of possibilities depending on the elite you chose.

GW2 has nothing on GW. Elites aren’t even worth mentioning because of the ridiculous cool down times. And lol at the utilities and signets.

Galphar.3901:

Aridia.3042:

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.

No the original GW was Build Wars. There were so many different builds that were viable that Anet took to changing the skills every month to keep things “fresh”.

The flux was amazing for PvP until because there were some that introduced so many different builds that no one used before.

haviz.1340:

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

I only hit 1 when I’m not sure if I’m in range and I don’t want to waste another skill, or if I’m on a siege weapon, or on a sword ranger, (because of the sword ranger auto-attack locking problem).

Otherwise 1 is always auto-attack, and I use all my other skills when I can. Why would you neglect crowd control and finishing moves?

If you’re just standing there auto attacking then what you’re doing is too easy. Try something harder, like PvP, or soloing a champ, or three veterans at once, or a swarm of risen by yourself.

Subjective, of course, but I was quite entertained seeing this match. And this is on a limited skill set.

Skills are limited so it forces you to actually value them. In GW1 there were many, many skills which no one used because frankly, they were either situational or complete crap. When I put in skills for GW2, I consider what benefits are harm I would get by putting them on. I can take WoR as a guardian, but that means I’ll be less protected on my shout guardian against non-projectile foes. I can take GS/Staff, and while it’ll give me much more mobility and support, I’d be missing out on damage compared to GS/Sword+Focus. Stuff like that.

Now that does not mean I do not want new skills. I just feel like I’m okay with the skill system as it is now. New skills would be nice, but I do not want it to be like GW1, where you have skills up the wazoo and 90% of them you don’t use. When I played GW1 as a Paragon, I always ran Imbagon. Sure, I could try other things from time to time, but Imbagon was the best possible build for that time. GW2 has builds that are better than some, but the low skill count means that more things are viable. My Hammer Warrior going full offensive skillset means better damage/control but crappier survival. I could kit in more survival skills but that would mean losing crit chance and added kds.

It is boring to the point where I hit the keyboard with my face more than any other game never happened to me wile playing GW1.

haviz.1340:

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

Lol, then you’re doing it wrong man.

Coffee.7058:

haviz.1340:

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

Lol, then you’re doing it wrong man.

No he’s doing it right, for a majority of weapons, autos is where your dmg is.

Knote.2904:

Coffee.7058:

haviz.1340:

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

Lol, then you’re doing it wrong man.

No he’s doing it right, for a majority of weapons, autos is where your dmg is.

This is why games are being dumbed down these days …

A couple of suggestions to make builds more interesting:-

1) Open up the Elite only skill so you can have any Elite or Utility skill in there. So you could have 4 utility skills no elite. You could be even more DARING and open up the healing slot too. So you could have the choice of any 5 utility skills, still restricted to 1 heal/elite but you could opt to have no elite/heal and have 5 utilitys.

2) Make the 5/15/25 traits part of there respective 1/3 of the trait line. Thus allowing people to choose 6 picks of traits from one trait line when you invest 30 trait points in it. No longer have 3 traits ‘forced’ upon you.

Both those would have a BIG effect but also bring back a lot of FUN.

Coffee.7058:

Knote.2904:

Coffee.7058:

haviz.1340:

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

Lol, then you’re doing it wrong man.

No he’s doing it right, for a majority of weapons, autos is where your dmg is.

This is why games are being dumbed down these days …

Don’t blame the player….

It’s Anet’s design, and something that’s been discussed quite a bit in Spvp forums recently.

Speaking from an Elementalist point of view, I can agree on the skills being simple. However, the tricks you can pull off aren’t that simple at all. Taking combos for example, what field you use your finisher on can make your skills do something quite different. Do you want to use your blast finisher for might or for healing? Burning projectiles or chilling projectiles? For the staff elementalist, swapping from Fire to Earth is a wholely different thing from swapping from Earth to Fire and the same applies to the other elements too. Since I’m personally playing a glyph build, it’s not just my weapon skills that change when I swap attunements, my utilities do something else too. Not to mention the elementals having vastly different skill sets and purposes. Evasive Arcana even changes my didge based on what I want to do with it. So if I want, I can change my playstyle on the fly and do something totally different…and I’ll have to use those tricks properly to be effective.

So to me, yeah the skills are simple…but if you wanna use them for maximum effect, you’ll have a lot of ways to optimize them.

Wanderer.3248:

I only hit 1 when I’m not sure if I’m in range and I don’t want to waste another skill, or if I’m on a siege weapon, or on a sword ranger, (because of the sword ranger auto-attack locking problem).

Otherwise 1 is always auto-attack, and I use all my other skills when I can. Why would you neglect crowd control and finishing moves?

If you’re just standing there auto attacking then what you’re doing is too easy. Try something harder, like PvP, or soloing a champ, or three veterans at once, or a swarm of risen by yourself.

You spend most of the time using autoattacks, in fact there are proper dps build using autoattacks in 99%.

Played ~1000 tourneys, everyone I played with left to other more skillful games. And 3 veterans? How about a lupi? Hard enough for you?

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.

This wasn’t the fault of the players though, imbagon was basically the only viable build for paragon. This is because ANet abandoned the game for GW2 and we didn’t and STILL haven’t seen any changes tot he paragon in GW1. Forever stagnant.. just like GW2 lawl.

The core issue for the skill system is that a lot of the tricks you can pull in SPVP are flat out worthless in PVE. This because while in SPVP there is a real tradeoff between defense and offense in builds. But in PVE the mobs are tankier than a SPVP bunker, and hit harder than a zerker.

I think that many of these whiners really haven’t even scratch the surface. I surely haven’t.

I’ve said it before, but I find myself just "afk"ing 1 during a lot of encounters in pve. Not that I just stand there auto attacking, but a lot of cool downs are a bit too long. Pvp/WvW is a bit more intensive, which I enjoy, I just find a lot of the combat in the game a bit too simplistic. No clue how they’d fix the PvE aspect to tell you the truth.

I’m going to answer the simple question from the OP only:

-No.

GW2 is a solution to the issue of ability bloat that other games have generated over the years. Every time there’s an expansion for WoW, for example, there’s at least 5-10 more abilities added to the already 30+ that someone has on their Skill Bar -that’s excessive bloat. GW2 isn’t the only one taking this step, as Wildstar is too sticking with a minimalist skill bar of having only 9 abilities on it at one time.

But GW2 still has complexity to it’s system. It’s not just 10 abilities, but it’s also the additional ones based on what skills take up your weapon swap – or kit swap- which is an additional 5 skills (15 base). Then you have your F-Key abilities, an additional 3-5 abilities. So, take that into consideration as well.

Siphaed.9235:

I’m going to answer the simple question from the OP only:

-No.

GW2 is a solution to the issue of ability bloat that other games have generated over the years. Every time there’s an expansion for WoW, for example, there’s at least 5-10 more abilities added to the already 30+ that someone has on their Skill Bar -that’s excessive bloat. GW2 isn’t the only one taking this step, as Wildstar is too sticking with a minimalist skill bar of having only 9 abilities on it at one time.

But GW2 still has complexity to it’s system. It’s not just 10 abilities, but it’s also the additional ones based on what skills take up your weapon swap – or kit swap- which is an additional 5 skills (15 base). Then you have your F-Key abilities, an additional 3-5 abilities. So, take that into consideration as well.

My point is not that there should be an addition of slots in the skill bar, my point is that there should be more build diversity. Players should be able to differentiate themselves from one another more.

In Guild Wars 1 you only had 8 skill slots and still there were way more options and interesting combinations than you can have in Guild Wars 2 with all the F keys and all the weapon switching.

Not unlocking anything useful from level 30-80 is just bad game design.

There’s a fair amount of slot skills, but just not useful slot skills.

Weapon skills on the other hand, we need a LOT more customization in there. For example, Warrior GS second-to-last skill, the one where you throw your sword and cripple targets.

That’s clearly a PvP-based skill for when you need to chase a runner down. Since nothing apart from Moas run away from you in PvE, thats basically a completely useless skill which we should be able to switch out of.

I play a Mesmer and I agree that the skills for us is pretty simple. I mainly play PvE so this is where I base my opinions on.

Weapon skills are boring after a while, I’d like it if they added a few ‘extra’ skills to weapon slots so there’s some more diversity there.
Example: GS#1 is a laser that is more powerful the further away you are, or you could change that to be a melee attack that does extra damage on the third attack.

Utility skills mostly situation and are based on opinion but I hardly break from my 3 (feedback, nullbreak, decoy) . Signets aren’t useful. Mantra’s… Idk how I feel about them but I don’t feel positive using them. P.defender and P.disenchanter pretty much useless. Mimic, veil, arcane thievery, portal (besides beggars in JP), never once used.
Elite skills aren’t that elite, Timewarp only useful in groups.
Mesmers, the most interesting class by design (IMO) are pretty boring to play.

Now build diversity a struggle, in PvE anything goes, but Condition builds need a serious rethink.

The thing with GW was that there were multiple builds(even in just Prophecies) that were viable in each setting(PvE, GvG, HA, Arenas, UW, FoW,, ect). In GW2 you have 1 maybe 2 builds that are viable in each type of play. If they would give us more skills than the 5 we are regulated to per weapon then the builds would become much more diverse and thus make things more interesting.

I think they should make that each weapon has its own pool of skills and that only the auto attack is prederemined by the weapon. So mesmer scepter would keep its auto but you could switch out the other two slots for other skills that you can only get with scepter.

Professions with few weapon sets, definitely have this problem. However for instance, mesmer skills are incredible good designed. For instance temporal curtain is one skill but it can act with 5 different/combination of them purposes. And that for ONE skill. gw1 could never achieve that. And the turn based system get boring fast. What i hate about gw1 is mana cost. Basically profession with ‘mana return’ option are overpowered compared to profs with bad mana handling (Ele gw1, totally screwed, by to high opportunity cost, 2 skill slots lost to just keep it ‘acceptable’.)

Some utilities have to long cooldowns, I agree on that. That could be improved apon, same for elites. But other than that i don’t have to much complaints, especially since they already confirmed new weapons are being made. Ele/Necro(ds)/engie have plenty of weapon sets available they can quickly switch too, and most with notable effect. I don’t see the problem with that. I like it. Is their room for improvement? Ofc.

But many people forget Gw2 isn’t gw1. It’s a different game, right where the op complains about it. To be honest there’s only 1 solution. Go back to gw1 if you really dislike gw2. Or deal with it. Give ele/engie a chance. Look further then the basic effects of the skills, and use secondary advantages of them. You’ll soon realize gw1 was a lot more stiff with 8 slots limitation discounted even more by mana management skills.

Galphar.3901:

The thing with GW was that there were multiple builds(even in just Prophecies) that were viable in each setting(PvE, GvG, HA, Arenas, UW, FoW,, ect). In GW2 you have 1 maybe 2 builds that are viable in each type of play. If they would give us more skills than the 5 we are regulated to per weapon then the builds would become much more diverse and thus make things more interesting.

With profession like Ele i agree. But look further then your that. Necro’s, ranger, engineers have TONS, of viable builds. You just have to experiment for them.

Yes and No. I agree with the “10-bar”, forcing players to make weighted decision. However, our selection of skills is a bit low. Now if every weapon came with 8 or so skills (of which you select 5) and we had more utils all together…

Did we play the same GW1? Groups pretty much demanded cookie cutter setups for dungeons there, though at least there were a few different cookie cutters that might need to be used depending on the mobs you faced (IE, no Searing Flames against destroyers — thank god, most boring ele build ever).

I feel much more flexible here tbh.

Rainshine.5493:

Did we play the same GW1? Groups pretty much demanded cookie cutter setups for dungeons there, though at least there were a few different cookie cutters that might need to be used depending on the mobs you faced (IE, no Searing Flames against destroyers — thank god, most boring ele build ever).

I feel much more flexible here tbh.

If you SC’d, then yea, there were pretty much cookie cutter builds used to make the run as fast as possible. Hence the name Speed Clear.

If you went in with heroes or friends, you had way more options just by taking a different profession.

More flexible how? 5 skills are chosen for you. The 6th which is a heal. That leaves 4 slots that provide maybe 5 skills that are useful in situations outside of PvP and maybe 3 elites that are considerable.

Skan.5301:

Rainshine.5493:

Did we play the same GW1? Groups pretty much demanded cookie cutter setups for dungeons there, though at least there were a few different cookie cutters that might need to be used depending on the mobs you faced (IE, no Searing Flames against destroyers — thank god, most boring ele build ever).

I feel much more flexible here tbh.

If you SC’d, then yea, there were pretty much cookie cutter builds used to make the run as fast as possible. Hence the name Speed Clear.

If you went in with heroes or friends, you had way more options just by taking a different profession.

More flexible how? 5 skills are chosen for you. The 6th which is a heal. That leaves 4 slots that provide maybe 5 skills that are useful in situations outside of PvP and maybe 3 elites that are considerable.

It wasn’t just speed clears, it was ANY pug dungeon group. For soloing with heroes/henchmen I ran one of the the same two team setups (depending on whether doing HM with party of 8 or party of 4) all but 95% of the time, because it just wasn’t necessary to switch.

GW2 feels more flexible because I can swap weapons/utilities on the fly and there’s no PvX wiki where people feel like if it’s not one of those builds, it’s garbage. That’s just me, though. Well, that and I love getting to use all attunements at once now.

Rainshine.5493:

Skan.5301:

Rainshine.5493:

Did we play the same GW1? Groups pretty much demanded cookie cutter setups for dungeons there, though at least there were a few different cookie cutters that might need to be used depending on the mobs you faced (IE, no Searing Flames against destroyers — thank god, most boring ele build ever).

I feel much more flexible here tbh.

If you SC’d, then yea, there were pretty much cookie cutter builds used to make the run as fast as possible. Hence the name Speed Clear.

If you went in with heroes or friends, you had way more options just by taking a different profession.

More flexible how? 5 skills are chosen for you. The 6th which is a heal. That leaves 4 slots that provide maybe 5 skills that are useful in situations outside of PvP and maybe 3 elites that are considerable.

It wasn’t just speed clears, it was ANY pug dungeon group. For soloing with heroes/henchmen I ran one of the the same two team setups (depending on whether doing HM with party of 8 or party of 4) all but 95% of the time, because it just wasn’t necessary to switch.

GW2 feels more flexible because I can swap weapons/utilities on the fly and there’s no PvX wiki where people feel like if it’s not one of those builds, it’s garbage. That’s just me, though. Well, that and I love getting to use all attunements at once now.

I played GW from Prophecies through EotN and I never felt the need to use a cookie-cutter build in any area including HA were they were most prevalent. I ran what I wanted and if the group I was in didn’t like it they were to to “F!@# off”. I wasn’t changing my build unless I felt it necessary for a certain boss or if I was getting kitten handed to me in HA. Hell I used to run a R/P beast master build in RA all the time. The other team would think I was a normal BM and then my wolf would two shot them while I stayed back and healed us.

I ran whatever the hell I wanted too when I soloed. The community was still very rigid and the design of some encounters really DID make some skills pretty much mandatory (Frozen Ground comes to mind in … crap … don’t remember the dungeon, Duncan the Black area though). Problem with GW1 is that if you tried something and it failed, you started over because you were stuck. Your group couldn’t replace you, you couldn’t switch any skills.

It’s no wonder people wanted to stick to tried and true in fear of wasting their time. It was partly the community’s fault, yes, but partly Anet’s fault for the way it was designed.

Thing is, while H/Hing stuff was often EASIER, I’m one of those types who enjoys grouping in general. Thus yes, there is pressure to conform. EDIT: I agree, however that unexpected builds were fun in PvP. My Spirit’s Strength rit was a blast, blendering people with swords.

EDIT EDIT: I also don’t think there’s anything “simple” about elementalists at least, when you factor in traits. As a very simple example, I gain brief stability for attuning to earth. In condi-heavy WvW, I have to choose whether to blow my earth attune to build might combos or hold off so that I can get stability when I really need it to ensure Ether Renewal isn’t interrupted. There’s a great dance between cooldowns, attunement swap effects, comboing and having skills available when you want them.

Rainshine.5493:

I ran whatever the hell I wanted too when I soloed. The community was still very rigid and the design of some encounters really DID make some skills pretty much mandatory (Frozen Ground comes to mind in … crap … don’t remember the dungeon, Duncan the Black area though). Problem with GW1 is that if you tried something and it failed, you started over because you were stuck. Your group couldn’t replace you, you couldn’t switch any skills.

It’s no wonder people wanted to stick to tried and true in fear of wasting their time. It was partly the community’s fault, yes, but partly Anet’s fault for the way it was designed.

Thing is, while H/Hing stuff was often EASIER, I’m one of those types who enjoys grouping in general. Thus yes, there is pressure to conform. EDIT: I agree, however that unexpected builds were fun in PvP. My Spirit’s Strength rit was a blast, blendering people with swords.

And that’s is one of the biggest problems with GW2, you only have 1 build(2 for some classes) per game-type and that’s it. What everyone is asking for is weapon skills that can be interchanged how we want them so we have more diversity in the builds. Hell I’d be happy with 10 skills per weapon to choose from. At least then I’d have a choice as to how I was able to setup my toon.

Sorry, I ninja edited on you

I have only really played ele and guardian (to 61) but both of them seem to have several viable weapon/trait combos, and guardians in particular have awesome utilities. Would I like more? Sure! Though I’d rather have more utilities/elites than weapon skills personally.

Still doesn’t mean that I feel GW2 is more rigid. I guess it just depends on what you focus on

I’d rather have a few skills done well that are all used frequnetly than a screen cluttered with ones that I will never, ever use.

Rainshine.5493:

Sorry, I ninja edited on you

I have only really played ele and guardian (to 61) but both of them seem to have several viable weapon/trait combos, and guardians in particular have awesome utilities. Would I like more? Sure! Though I’d rather have more utilities/elites than weapon skills personally.

Still doesn’t mean that I feel GW2 is more rigid. I guess it just depends on what you focus on

Hehe, NP I’ve done it too, lol

Ele does have a much better diversity than say a Ranger does. The biggest thing we have is which crappy weapon to use and which pet to watch run around and not respond to our commands. And I do know that Guardians have more diversity also. I run a Hammer/Great-sword build and the “Meta” is GS/Sword.

medohgeuh.4650:

I’d rather have a few skills done well that are all used frequnetly than a screen cluttered with ones that I will never, ever use.

We’re not asking for WoW type UI. We want the same 10 skill slots just a better choice in our skills for more diversity in builds.

Galphar.3901:

Rainshine.5493:

Sorry, I ninja edited on you

I have only really played ele and guardian (to 61) but both of them seem to have several viable weapon/trait combos, and guardians in particular have awesome utilities. Would I like more? Sure! Though I’d rather have more utilities/elites than weapon skills personally.

Still doesn’t mean that I feel GW2 is more rigid. I guess it just depends on what you focus on

Hehe, NP I’ve done it too, lol

Ele does have a much better diversity than say a Ranger does. The biggest thing we have is which crappy weapon to use and which pet to watch run around and not respond to our commands. And I do know that Guardians have more diversity also. I run a Hammer/Great-sword build and the “Meta” is GS/Sword.

I gotcha. Yeah, my ranger experience is really limited, though I intend to get around to fixing that once I get world completion done (95 percent there!). If they’re lacking complexity/ much build diversity at all, then that sucks and I feel for you guys. Imo eles (though right now with the condi meta some traits are mandatory even for us) and guardians are a nice “diversity” baseline that all classes should enjoy.

Galphar.3901:

medohgeuh.4650:

I’d rather have a few skills done well that are all used frequnetly than a screen cluttered with ones that I will never, ever use.

We’re not asking for WoW type UI. We want the same 10 skill slots just a better choice in our skills for more diversity in builds.

Every profession has several weapons, a plethora of utility skills and each has a unique class mechanic.

Some of it could use tweaking, sure, but to say there’s no diversity is being purposely dishonest.

medohgeuh.4650:

Galphar.3901:

medohgeuh.4650:

I’d rather have a few skills done well that are all used frequnetly than a screen cluttered with ones that I will never, ever use.

We’re not asking for WoW type UI. We want the same 10 skill slots just a better choice in our skills for more diversity in builds.

Every profession has several weapons, a plethora of utility skills and each has a unique class mechanic.

Some of it could use tweaking, sure, but to say there’s no diversity is being purposely dishonest.

Yes each class has several weapons with 5 skills each and then your 3-4 heals, your utilities, and finally your 6-7 Elites. The problem is say I’d like to use a Shortbow skill on my Longbow Ranger, I can’t. In GW I could use any Ranger skill I wanted with any bow whether it was the Horn-bow, Flat-bow, Long-bow, Short-bow, or Recurve- bow. The only difference was the distance it could shoot and the arc of the shot. In GW2 I’m stuck with the same 5 skills for each weapon.

GW2 makes more sense in that regard; a shortbow is designed for a different purpose than that of a longbow. The names even give it away.

GW1 may have had more skills, but let’s be honest: very few of them were ever worth using. It’s all about quality > quantity and that’s part of why I greatly prefer GW2 over its predecessor.

The skill system in this game is brilliant. But like most strokes of genius, the basic concept may have rolled out easily but the nuances have to be worked out over time.

• Volume is definitely key, we need more skills and most classes need skills to round out certain rolls, or even to open up a certain game mode (or two) for them.
• However prior to that, in my opinion, they need to work out some of their mechanics. Evasion and stealth are the two biggest offenders, having no counterplay whatsoever that isn’t found in kind with every other skill.
• Boons and conditions have counterplay in the worse most binary way possible, either they are a threat in the current meta and people build around them or they are not and people don’t. Zero middle ground, no real play, just building and a question of how dangerous they currently are.

This is far short of being a comprehensive list of GW2’s mechanical problems, and I’m not even going to get started on the class mechanics and trait trees, but these are those which I would say should be at the top of the list.

Build design was a HUGE part of the game for me back in GW1. I would spent hours wondering about what skills and traits I should use.

Not the case in GW2. I do miss it. But I think once they increase the number of utility skills available, things will be better.

What i would like to see is for each weapon skill slot have a variation on the theme of that slot. Meaning that each slot would have 3 or more skills you could swap between that behave somewhat similar, but still allowing the player to tailor for his play style.

And one crazy brainstorm. I would if ANet should change elementalist attunement swapping, so that rather than being how you get your weapon skills it would instead give a bonus for any skills from the currently active element. Instead, each weapon skill slot would have the elemental skills as selectables out of combat. Meaning that you could have a mix of elements on the bar.

ProtoGunner.4953:

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, by a wide margin, my biggest complaint with the skill system. I must admit to being spoiled by Guild Wars 1, having put over 7k hours in on my main account.

One of the key elements in keeping my attention for that duration was the ability to quickly and easily modify the builds of my characters and heroes. One of the more satisfying aspects of that game was developing builds (solo- or team-/hero-based) to overcome challenging content. This would require multiple attempts, usually ran back-to-back, until I found a successful build.

Due to the specific issue ProtoGunner describes, in Guild Wars 2 I am stuck running limited variations of, essentially, the same build for whichever class I’m currently using (I have at least one level 80 for each class on my main account and regularly play all of them). This isn’t really an issue in general PVE, other than becoming monotonous. I find that most of the content in general PVE can be accomplished solo with relative ease regardless of build. Even world events, which can be significantly more challenging (e.g., the recent changes to the Tequatl event) are not greatly affected by build choice as the mobs of surrounding players will often compensate for any weaknesses – provided the players’ build has any affect on the mechanics making the event challenging (so not things like unavoidable attacks or changes made to simply increase the length of events, like fear sending you across the map, boosting boss hit points etc.). So other than potentially introducing a greater element of exploration and experimentation to the game, I don’t feel the inability to conveniently make significant build changes in general PVE is a big issue.

In situations like dungeons and WvWvW (sPVP doesn’t suffer from this issue) this can become an enormous negative, particularly if you like to keep the game fresh by using different classes. In these environments a good build can make a huge difference! Particularly in WvWvW where you might decide that running in a ‘Zerg’ isn’t the only way to have fun (for those that consider it so). Or you may want to attempt to contribute to mob survival, or improve mob damage output using different builds. Or you may just want to try a new gameplay style using the same class. If you want to be successful/competitive you’ll need competitive gear. I would argue this is not essential in general PVE. You can get away with carrying a few sets of rare gear for each character so you can experiment, though even this can be difficult for casual players that enjoy playing multiple classes. To be competitive/successful (and hopefully have a little fun), exotics or ascended gear will be required (with the appropriate runes and sigils). This essentially means that casual players, if they’re even able to get a complete set of ascended gear for a single class, likely won’t be able to make significant changes to their builds (e.g., switching from a glass cannon to something tanky). And dedicated players, will likely be limited to making significant build changes on only a couple characters (due in part to time-gating etc.) for the near future.

It seems to be an unnecessary barrier to an aspect of the game that has incredible potential to keep the game interesting for both dedicated and casual players. As it stands now, the equipment requirements for significantly changing builds and remaining competitive seems far too difficult. I suspect that granting the ability to easily modify the stats on Ascended gear might remedy this (and not charging a fortune to do it…though I’m sure it would immediately become another gold sink. In fact, I’m sorry I suggested it…).

Honestly, the grind required to significantly change my build has really impacted my desire to play. As I admittedly focus on generally PVE, obtaining Ascended gear has simply fallen into the ‘Why bother…’ category as there is simply no way I’ll be getting multiple sets of ascended gear for the different classes I enjoy playing. And if a future update were to make a build no longer viable after making all the effort to get the gear to run it… It might be part of the game, but it’s a part I’d rather avoid.

It’s certainly one mechanic that is encouraging me to step out of this Skinner Box.

One of the main points Anet made when promoting GW2 was the “Holy Trinity” becoming obsolete. Every profession could tank, heal, support, or DPS. What we have now is all professions “zerging”. There is no support or tanking going on, just everyone DPSing to kill the mobs as quick as possible.

I think this has more to do with the mob AI than the way the professions are setup tho. We all can be any of those roles(Anet did that right). The problem is stupid mobs and bosses. I think they are on the correct track tho with how the redid Tequatl.

I will agree that the skill system does need a revamp tho. Having the same 5 skills ONLY per weapon is making creating new and inventive builds stagnant. Yes we can use 2 different weapons but that still limits things. In GW we had 50-100 different builds that were viable in PvE and PvP in Prophecies alone. Adding 5 more skills per weapon would up the build diversity (not to mention character diversity) 10 fold.

kirima san.3760:

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?

Nope in fact I’ve come around to the way of thinking that unless its a moba type game that the traditional hotbars you find in most mmorpgs are a better way to go than restricting the number of active abilities. Plus they need more weapon abilities.

Rainshine.5493:

GW2 feels more flexible because I can swap weapons/utilities on the fly and there’s no PvX wiki where people feel like if it’s not one of those builds, it’s garbage. That’s just me, though. Well, that and I love getting to use all attunements at once now.

Speed Clears in GW1 required cookie-cutter builds, “Speed Clears” in GW2 require Berserker power-based builds.

Anyways, I feel like the biggest mistake Anet made was removing the energy bar. Having every skill be balanced by recharge time lends itself to a system where you want to spam as many skills as possible. The only way to have a good effect for an elite under this system is to either make it so niche that it isn’t even worth taking in the vast majority of situations (see Moa Morph for mesmers), or with such a ridiculous cooldown that you have to guess whether you’ll get a better opportunity to use in before it would come off cooldown again.

That applies for weapon skills and utilities skills too. No shared cooldown mechanic (GW1 used energy for this) really limits how good individual skills can be, and really removes a good amount of depth from combat. I feel that until some system that strays from the “no downside” approach that GW2 currently has is implemented, skills will remain relatively bland and, frankly, underwhelming.