Guild Wars 2

Hello there ladies and gentlemen. I’m sure this question has been asked before, but eh, I can’t find a good answer. So here we go.

I’ve mostly been doing the open world stuff along with the story. I have 1 level 80 and 4 other characters between the levels of 10 and 35. I’ve been getting along fine in combat pretty much just spamming my skills without really knowing a whole lot about what they do.

I’ve heard open world basically teaches you nothing about your class mechanics or anything advanced about combat. So I’m just curious, what exactly makes combat deep here? What is the purpose of having more people in a party for a dungeon other than more damage and someone to revive you when you go down? What should I be looking to do in combat to maximize my character’s performance? I’m assuming it has to do with build as well, but just an example would be great.

Don’t take this as me bashing the game or anything. Quite the contrary. I love the game. Best MMORPG on the market currently for me and I’ve tried them all.

Thanks for the answers in advance. ^-^

Hi Aures…

The short answer is skill combinations and complements – meaning tactics within a party where one member uses a skill to complement or combine with a skill used by another member or members.

At the simplest level, heals overlayed with protects (Elementalist w Guardian) and condition effects overlayed with duration effects (Elementalist w Mesmer).

The ‘goal’ is to know the abilities/skills of each class and whatever your playing use your skills to complement or combine with your fellow party members – something that you only learn over time through experience playing.

This starts with open world play, where you learn everything about each of your skills/abilities – unless you ‘shortcut’ leveling/learning by using level up items or crafting, which kind of makes it harder for you in group play terms because you have more skills to learn at once instead of mastering them step by step as you grow your character ‘naturally’.

Parties share damage on enemies, each attacker contributing their share. In dungeons/fractals/raids/PvP/WvW and outside parties in open world/boss fights. This increases everyone’s chances for a quick/efficient win in addition to the ‘group heal/protect’ side of things. Basically, all the rewards that come from team work – over those from a group of random soloists who just happen to be in the same fight and who tend to fail/take longer to achieve a result by not coordinating.

As an example how not to do it – look no further than using a knockback skill that takes an enemy outside someone else’s combat/skill radius, possibly at a critical moment. Staying with the same example, the ‘right’ way to do it is to knock enemies into someone else’s area of effect/damage – that simple, thought and teamwork/coordination.

Hope these basic insights help and good luck with exploring the deeper sides of the game combat engine.

Thanks a lot for the detailed answer. Helps a bunch. Good to know I have a lot to learn and master. Looking forward to mastering this combat^_^