Guild Wars 2

So game is built on GW1 engine. All those wonderfully unique and interesting skills aren’t in this version… whhaa!? consider this Anet. A warrior in gw1 has more than 200 unique WEAPON skills. an assassin also has more than 200 unique WEAPON skills. thats 400 descending skills for each slot.
You get 5 skills in GW2 with interesting combos from other weapons. 5 from greatsword. 3 from 1h sword, 2 more in the offhand. 3 from mace, etc. the combos are pretty cool… for awhile. but since the skills are LOCKED there isnt much room for variability.
To be fair lets take ONLY the first 5 slots from GW2 and apply the concept to GW1 using 400 factorial down to 396… the math is simple. 400X399X398X397X396 = 9986232009600 different possible combinations you could potentially have available to just 5 weapon slots. you read that correctly. nearly 10 trillion. Then stack the variation available with the concept of traits and major traits?
Coming from GW1 I was shocked, baffled, disappointed.
Please answer us as to why you took such a huge step in this direction. It was so much FUN creating and tinkering with different ideas.

What isnt fair of me is you said you wanted to take out the overlapping, bland, etc type skills. Well why not a compromise? Use the 1handed sword on a warrior for example. Number 1 is a chain with condition at the end. Add different “chains” that vary those conditions as possible skill slots. 2 is a gap closer, so why not vary the method with which you close? or sacrifice the closer for a ranged movement impairment. 3. the cripple. take it out for more damage? or a shorter version with a secondary condition applied.
Do we need 200 weapon skills? maybe not. I’d love to see it. but a healthy 3-5 for each slot in varying degrees?
Then come Elites. my gosh your signature ability for christ sake! what happened?

I think your math may be wrong. But even if it isn’t, you’re not taking into account things like synergy. Sure, those big numbers may seem impressive on paper -“look at the billions of different builds we can make!”- but only a very small number actually have skills that synergize well with each other. The entire bloated system of skills gets condensed down to a few dozen builds across all professions, which are considered “meta.” Stepping outside these meta builds is sometimes fun, but it comes at the cost of efficiency.

Also, have you every tried to balance a system with that many variables? Many skill balances had to be retconned or re-balanced, because of skill interactions that weren’t even noticed until after the fact. The developers stated it themselves, balancing such a massive amount of skills is a logistical nightmare.

GW1 had so many skills, there’s probably hundreds I never even used once. Which makes them kinda hard to miss…

I think I actually use a larger variety of skills in GW2. Part of that simply because I can’t just swap in the dozen best skills in the game for every character. When you can just throw together whatever you want, a lot of situational skills simply never get used, as you can just swap in a more general alternative. The superstar skills simply crowd out all the alternatives.

I’d be willing to bet when it comes to actual builds, there’s a lot more variety of skills in actual use in GW2.

The original Guild Wars did have a ton of skills, and I liked the way it worked for that game. However, it’s not like there was some tremendous amount of build variety. I mean, look at the options on GW PvX for “Great” rated general builds. There’s only 33 of them in total, and 12 of those are full team builds. Paragon, Assassin, Monk, and Ritualist only have one build each.

Yes, additional build variety in GW2 would be great, but that should be done through trait/skill balance at this point, and not an increase in skills. Down the road there will probably be more skills added, but now’s not the time.

i agree Quark. 10 trillion is ridiculous. a couple of options for each slot, like the last 5 would be more in line with what they already have. having a cookie cutter preselection template would make it even easier for the casual gamer.

BRH CSULB Zombie.8421:

So game is built on GW1 engine.

Who told you that? Why would anybody even think that?!

KeikoTerada.1963:

BRH CSULB Zombie.8421:

So game is built on GW1 engine.

Who told you that? Why would anybody even think that?!

I like how you completely ignored the bulk of his rant and jumped right to this minor point.

I hate to break it to you, but he’s right (mostly).

Taken from the wiki: “Guild Wars 2 uses a heavily modified Guild Wars game engine which includes support for true 3D environments, more detailed environments and models, better lighting and shadows, new animation and effects systems, plus new audio and cinematics engines and a more flexible combat and skill-casting system.”

Quarktastic.1027:

I like how you completely ignored the bulk of his rant and jumped right to this minor point.

Naturally. Because it was the starting point for his post, and it is absurd – implying that it would make the skills system the same or similar to GW1.

We knew for YEARS before launch, that the whole skill and profession system would be massively different.

OP is several years too late coming out of the cave they’ve been hiding in, to be surprised by this.

Got to agree with the OP on this. While I can understand the reasons for not having 10 slots of anything you like, GW2 is too railroaded and versatility suffers badly for it. Boons are also horribly weak compared to enchantments/shouts from GW1, and the same applies to GW2 conditions compared to GW1 conditions/hexes.

In PvE, this makes combat stale. Bosses with high HP, immunity to interrupts and reduced condition duration, combined with ridiculously long cooldowns on utility skills, make dungeons a boring kite-and-spank fest.

GW1 dungeons were actually better, despite the prevalence of cookie-cutter builds. If there were one or two enemies that were going to cause problems, a party member could shut them down – completely – while everyone else took care of the weaker enemies. In GW2, you have to rely on cripple or reflection to do that, and hope it lasts long enough to do the job, if it works at all.

Power Block / Diversion type skills were one of the great things about GW1. That they had to be removed in GW2 because they would be too useful suggests to me that the GW2 encounters are just built wrong.

Vayne.8563:

Because GW 1 was very well balanced. It was so easy to balance all those skills. What you might not be realizing is that GW 1 was a nightmare for some people, because of the number of skills. People didn’t know how to make builds. A lot of people tried the game, failed heavily and went on to different games. Anet doesn’t want that to happen again.

Now people are forced to take a self-heal. They’re forced to have at least some skills that work together. Sure it doesn’t suit you, personally. Doesn’t particularly suit me either. But that doesn’t mean it’s not better from a design point of view, or better for the game.

The combination of the number of skills in Guild Wars 1 and the second profession mechanic made the game virtually impossible to balance. It screwed with PvP and PVe became so easy it was meaningless, down to the point where you could use a Rit to solo farm ectos in the underworld.

I too miss the skill selection from Guild Wars 1, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a good reason for not having it in Guild Wars 2.

Omg! A game that makes players think?! SAY IT AIN’T SO!

KeikoTerada.1963:

Quarktastic.1027:

I like how you completely ignored the bulk of his rant and jumped right to this minor point.

Naturally. Because it was the starting point for his post, and it is absurd – implying that it would make the skills system the same or similar to GW1.

We knew for YEARS before launch, that the whole skill and profession system would be massively different.

OP is several years too late coming out of the cave they’ve been hiding in, to be surprised by this.

Doesn’t make it any better that it was known. This game is so kittened boring and a huge departure from Guild Wars.

I would’ve traded all the new content added post release (other than tweaks and bug fixes) for, say, 10 new traits, 5 new utility and 1 new elite skill for each class.

with the large number of skills, people will make an ultimate built that other must follow and get punished if they don’t. why? because they’re sooo “synergic” soo good, that most of the seemingly useless skills are just a waste, and some will judge those who used skills they want “noob” and refuse to take em to groups..
bottom line… i like it gw2 way.
but an increase in usable skills wouldnt hurt

That was the concession they had to make to be able to enter the AAA market. The system has to be so easy that every potential customer, no matter how uneducated and simple minded, can and will make a “working” character.

Yeah I also was (still am) very disappointed with the route they chose to go, having the weapons determine have your skills. I do understand it. I do. I just don’t like it. I miss the monk almost as much. The combination of these things often makes the combat in GW2 feel a lot less interesting because it often feels like all the classes do exactly the same stuff only in slightly different ways.

That said, the variety in utility skills is even worse. There’s less of them than in GW1, and many of the ones we have are borderline useless.

But what gets me the most is the HUGE lack of Elites. Most classes have only two that can be used underwater, some have only 1. And several of the elites that ARE in the game are not even class-specific, but race-specific. None of them are really all that interesting. And all of them are essentially “oh-kitten” buttons with long recharges.

If I could have GW1’s skill system and combat in GW2 I’d take it without hesitation.

Czar Peter.7961:

I would’ve traded all the new content added post release (other than tweaks and bug fixes) for, say, 10 new traits, 5 new utility and 1 new elite skill for each class.

qft

gw1 is better than gw2 in every aspect

hopefully they dont shut down gw1 servers

The reason I didn’t buy GW2 when it released was because I was worried about the lack of variation in skills. GW1 was all about skills, and sure, some builds didn’t synergize well, but you could still use them if you had fun with them. If your party knew how to play you could get away with it.

Now that I am nearing level 80, I am definitely starting to feel the repetition. There seems to be a lot of illusion of choice, unless you don’t mind being a jack-of-all-trades master-of-none type mixing different damage types and survivability stats. Heck, even some of the trait lines don’t synergize with the builds they try to promote.

BRH CSULB Zombie.8421:

So game is built on GW1 engine. All those wonderfully unique and interesting skills aren’t in this version… whhaa!? consider this Anet. A warrior in gw1 has more than 200 unique WEAPON skills. an assassin also has more than 200 unique WEAPON skills. thats 400 descending skills for each slot.
You get 5 skills in GW2 with interesting combos from other weapons. 5 from greatsword. 3 from 1h sword, 2 more in the offhand. 3 from mace, etc. the combos are pretty cool… for awhile. but since the skills are LOCKED there isnt much room for variability.
To be fair lets take ONLY the first 5 slots from GW2 and apply the concept to GW1 using 400 factorial down to 396… the math is simple. 400X399X398X397X396 = 9986232009600 different possible combinations you could potentially have available to just 5 weapon slots. you read that correctly. nearly 10 trillion. Then stack the variation available with the concept of traits and major traits?
Coming from GW1 I was shocked, baffled, disappointed.
Please answer us as to why you took such a huge step in this direction. It was so much FUN creating and tinkering with different ideas.

What isnt fair of me is you said you wanted to take out the overlapping, bland, etc type skills. Well why not a compromise? Use the 1handed sword on a warrior for example. Number 1 is a chain with condition at the end. Add different “chains” that vary those conditions as possible skill slots. 2 is a gap closer, so why not vary the method with which you close? or sacrifice the closer for a ranged movement impairment. 3. the cripple. take it out for more damage? or a shorter version with a secondary condition applied.
Do we need 200 weapon skills? maybe not. I’d love to see it. but a healthy 3-5 for each slot in varying degrees?
Then come Elites. my gosh your signature ability for christ sake! what happened?

I’ll just say this. GW1 didn’t have all the skills it does now when that game first came out. Expansions will add new weapons and skills.

fellyn.5083:

I’ll just say this. GW1 didn’t have all the skills it does now when that game first came out. Expansions will add new weapons and skills.

True, although all skills we might get in the future will be limited by the highly restrictive weapon based groundwork they have set already.

The dual profession approach from gw1 basically meant, that each new class being added would directly contribute more options to your existing main classes. In gw2, this is no longer the case, because they feared too much complexity, both in balancing it and noob players comprehending it.

wintermute.4096:

fellyn.5083:

I’ll just say this. GW1 didn’t have all the skills it does now when that game first came out. Expansions will add new weapons and skills.

True, although a good amount of skills we might get in the future will be limited by the highly restrictive weapon based groundwork they have set already.

Depends. I think the system has potential if they let you choose between different weapon skills for example (e.g. Greatsword has 10 skills, you can choose 5 of them between combat). I think if they implement this, the system immediately becomes much more flexible without causing a lot of problems for balancing.
But if they’re actually going to do this… time will tell. For now, I’ll mainly play my elementalist, who has (4×5)+5=25 skills in combat

wintermute.4096:

fellyn.5083:

I’ll just say this. GW1 didn’t have all the skills it does now when that game first came out. Expansions will add new weapons and skills.

True, although a good amount of skills we might get in the future will be limited by the highly restrictive weapon based groundwork they have set already.

The dual profession approach from gw1 basically meant, that each new class being added would directly contribute more options to your existing main classes. In gw2, this is no longer the case, because they feared too much complexity, both in balancing it and noob players comprehending it.

Maybe. Maybe not. They could easily evolve the current system. I think eventually they’ll almost have to allow us to pick weapon skills because they’ll probably run out of weapon types (giant 2 handed axe for warrior please!) to give us long before they run out of skills to put on them. At the very least they might allow us to choose different complete skill sets for them.

Then when/if that happens, not so different from GW1.

this is their biggest mistake. release a game that has no build variety whatsoever

I loved GW1 unique skill system, with the way we could play endlessly with it; what I hated was that it mattered little, as most players wanted you to use cookie cutter builds for this or that, therefore negating the game’s greatest advantage-its build diversity.

There’s variety in GW2; it’s just very different, and ironically enough, despite the lesser number of build variety, one does have more freedom to use whatever works for you, and there’s no real need for specific builds in order to do well (despite whatever some may think.)

I would certainly not complain about having more skills to work with, especially if they are as fun as the current.

However a lot of people are missing that a lot of the gameplay has been shifted away from sheer number of skills and rather towards timing of skill use, combinations, and character movement, including dodge.

Marxo.3829:

I would certainly not complain about having more skills to work with, especially if they are as fun as the current.

However a lot of people are missing that a lot of the gameplay has been shifted away from sheer number of skills and rather towards timing of skill use, combinations, and character movement, including dodge.

No, we’re not missing that. We’re just getting bored with that already. Because you can’t ever iterate on that. You can’t add anything new and groundbreaking to that. Sure, you can add a few more skills and a few more combo fields but it all plays the same. There’s nothing that will ever force us to completely rethink our skill builds, nothing to force us to completely rethink our playstyles, nothing to make new content any different than current content. It doesn’t allow for any truly new class mechanics with a new class. It’s so very limiting on what they can do with this game long-term.

Star Ace.5207:

I loved GW1 unique skill system, with the way we could play endlessly with it; what I hated was that it mattered little, as most players wanted you to use cookie cutter builds for this or that, therefore negating the game’s greatest advantage-its build diversity.

There’s variety in GW2; it’s just very different, and ironically enough, despite the lesser number of build variety, one does have more freedom to use whatever works for you, and there’s no real need for specific builds in order to do well (despite whatever some may think.)

And the reason you have the freedom to use “whatever works” is because there’s a lot less variety to begin with. There’s a lot less meaningful difference between builds in GW2 as compared to GW1. You have melee DPS, melee dps/support, ranged dps, ranged dps/support. And that’s it. Every class can do everything. And they do basically all the same stuff only in slightly different ways. There’s no particular skill to running a necromancer “minion master” build in GW2. It’s just like a ranger more or less, only with a few more pets. There’s no such thing as a necro hex build, no such thing as a mesmer interrupt build, and never mind the fact that the dedicated healer (and along with it smiting damage) is completely gone.

There is a general trend in gaming to remove complexity in terms of build customization. WoW is much simpler than it was pre-cata, D3 looks more like GW2 than it does D2. I’m sure they want to save themselves the hassle of balance and want to make games more accessible to more people through implementing “training wheels”. The problem, of course, is that the training wheels aren’t removable; you are never allowed to grow up in today’s game. The richness in character customization is gone and many people miss it. Perhaps there is a happy medium somewhere that solves balance and accessibility and still allows for depth of customization.

I was told it was reduced to make the game more balanced, more viable builds, easier for Joe Q Public.

But then you go into dungeons and you quickly find out all builds are no where near equal. You have some people that can steam roll dungeons and others that cannot complete them. I have to assume build variation plays a large role in that variation.

Now for me, it was easier in GW1 to figure out a working build(s) for all content, then it is for me in GW2. Also saving load outs made it easy to change the build quickly when needed, you cannot do this today.

You cannot beat dungeons in this game with any build or character. It has to be planned. To me this goes against what they stated, but that is now par for the course. I’d check the air over there to be honest, somet’n fishy is goin on.

[quote=1321690;DocHolliday.5921:]

Hello OP. As much as I love this game, I too was extremely disappointed with the lack of things included from GW1. It’s a completely different game, apart from the lore being the only thing relevant from it’s predecessor.

When they said they will be simplifying the skills, I thought, like you said, they would remove all the skills that are useless or done the exact same as another. But to find out you have a maximum of 5 skills for each weapon set was very, very disapointing. That was the fun of GW1, being able to try hundreds of different skill builds, for every occasion. Sure there were meta-builds which people wanted you to use (especially in PvP) but they were the minority, the majority didn’t care as long as your build worked.

I was happy they went from 8 to 10 skill slots, but with almost 90% of the skills gone? Sense has not been made…

Like it’s been pointed out, your skill variety from GW1 was not at all what it was when it came out. We will get more utilities, elites, weapons (and maybe we will get to customize those weapons) over time, like we did in GW1, and like it happens in every other MMO. This will not be the end of your variety, nor do I think the combat system will remain so static that it will never add new mechanics or skill types that will result in new playstyles and builds.

To be honest, I’m of the opposite opinion where combat in GW1 was boring and repetitive for me (I don’t agree there’s no skill/build variety in GW2). You has a lot of skill variety that you could combine in different ways and customize your efficiency with them, but the fighting in and of itself felt very static to me. It had a lot of thinking, but not a lot of dynamics or really engaging your enemy like you can in GW2 (or actively layering skills with instant-casting/channeling). I played it and enjoyed it for the story, but spending a lot of time in combat in the open world ended up just being tedious to me.

athuria.2751:

Like it’s been pointed out, your skill variety from GW1 was not at all what it was when it came out. We will get more utilities, elites, weapons (and maybe we will get to customize those weapons) over time, like we did in GW1, and like it happens in every other MMO. This will not be the end of your variety, nor do I think the combat system will remain so static that it will never add new mechanics or skill types that will result in new playstyles and builds.

To be honest, I’m of the opposite opinion where combat in GW1 was boring and repetitive for me (I don’t agree there’s no skill/build variety in GW2). You has a lot of skill variety that you could combine in different ways and customize your efficiency with them, but the fighting in and of itself felt very static to me. It had a lot of thinking, but not a lot of dynamics or really engaging your enemy like you can in GW2 (or actively layering skills with instant-casting/channeling). I played it and enjoyed it for the story, but spending a lot of time in combat in the open world ended up just being tedious to me.

I was there in GW Prophecies from the beginning. I started 1 or 2 weeks after release. It had way more skills even at that time than GW2 has now. But quantity is only a small part of it. It had far, far more skill variety than GW2 does. The skill system in GW2 is just overall far more simple. Hexes/curses are gone. There’s nothing resembling smiting damage. Degen/regen is implemented completely differently, exactly like in every other MMO. Boons are a pale imitation and nothing really at all like enchantments (shatter enchantment, anyone?). There’s nothing really to cause you to be all that careful how and when you use your abilities. With the exception of a few “oh ****” abilities, you use them when they come off cooldown and that’s that. (Yes there’s some few exceptions to that last statement, but the point still stands.)

I come from WoW, where you have at least 4 or 5 action bars on your screen at any given time, and 90% of my skills don’t even get used on a regular basis. At the time, I felt appreciation for the “complexity” of the game, but looking back on it I think it was just poor game design. I much prefer GW2’s approach, with a single, tight action bar.

Could I appreciate having more skills? Sure, if they’re as good as the ones I already have, and are balanced fairly. But 200? No, thank you!

I would bet ANet will add more skills over time, though it’s hard to say how many, and when. How many skills did GW1 let you have equipped, at one time?

OP,

We’ve gone round and round and round with ANet on this issue. They’re not gonna budge. For the record, however, I personally agree with you. It was way more fun to have all those skills to chose from and experiment with and create teambuilds with.

GW1 is far superior to this…in so many ways…not just this one…

BRH CSULB Zombie.8421:

So game is built on GW1 engine. All those wonderfully unique and interesting skills aren’t in this version… whhaa!? consider this Anet. A warrior in gw1 has more than 200 unique WEAPON skills. an assassin also has more than 200 unique WEAPON skills. thats 400 descending skills for each slot.
You get 5 skills in GW2 with interesting combos from other weapons. 5 from greatsword. 3 from 1h sword, 2 more in the offhand. 3 from mace, etc. the combos are pretty cool… for awhile. but since the skills are LOCKED there isnt much room for variability.
To be fair lets take ONLY the first 5 slots from GW2 and apply the concept to GW1 using 400 factorial down to 396… the math is simple. 400X399X398X397X396 = 9986232009600 different possible combinations you could potentially have available to just 5 weapon slots. you read that correctly. nearly 10 trillion. Then stack the variation available with the concept of traits and major traits?
Coming from GW1 I was shocked, baffled, disappointed.
Please answer us as to why you took such a huge step in this direction. It was so much FUN creating and tinkering with different ideas.

What isnt fair of me is you said you wanted to take out the overlapping, bland, etc type skills. Well why not a compromise? Use the 1handed sword on a warrior for example. Number 1 is a chain with condition at the end. Add different “chains” that vary those conditions as possible skill slots. 2 is a gap closer, so why not vary the method with which you close? or sacrifice the closer for a ranged movement impairment. 3. the cripple. take it out for more damage? or a shorter version with a secondary condition applied.
Do we need 200 weapon skills? maybe not. I’d love to see it. but a healthy 3-5 for each slot in varying degrees?
Then come Elites. my gosh your signature ability for christ sake! what happened?

Did Guild Wars Prophecies start out with over 200 skills for each class? NO! all those extra skills, classes ect came in Factions, Night Fall and Eye of The North. Chill out people kitten Its already been said that classes will be given more weapons to use in the future.

Fyrebrand.4859:

I come from WoW, where you have at least 4 or 5 action bars on your screen at any given time, and 90% of my skills don’t even get used on a regular basis. At the time, I felt appreciation for the “complexity” of the game, but looking back on it I think it was just poor game design. I much prefer GW2’s approach, with a single, tight action bar.

Could I appreciate having more skills? Sure, if they’re as good as the ones I already have, and are balanced fairly. But 200? No, thank you!

I would bet ANet will add more skills over time, though it’s hard to say how many, and when. How many skills did GW1 let you have equipped, at one time?

Guild Wars let you have 8 skills on your bar at one time, but you had complete control over all of them. People came up with some really crazy builds that could do things the devs never expected (like the original 55HP monk with prot bond). I believe that’s ultimately what lead them to breaking off development for GW and changing the skill system in GW2… but the old system was still way more fun.

Scourge.4317:

Did Guild Wars Prophecies start out with over 200 skills for each class? NO! all those extra skills, classes ect came in expansions. Chill out people kitten Its already been said that classes will be given more weapons to use in the future.

And yet despite that, the skill system in Prophecies had way more variety and was way more interesting than anything GW2 has to offer. Why exactly do you think that is?

They really really need to add more switchable weapon skills. For me this is what’s boring me most about this game. I care not for gear and bullkitten they add that have nothing to do with combat. Give me more combat options and I’ll be happy with how the game is right now!
I can’t even get another class to 80, I get bored of the same 5 skills around level 10. And progression stops around 30 when you get your best elite and then your set to grind out 50 levels with the same boring ‘rotation’.

PS: Never played GW1, came from WoW.

Yeah in GW1 we had 200 skills… Except:
1) At least 50 were exact clones of other skills, i.e. Penetrating Blow and Penetrating Chop.
2) Another 50 were useless.
3) Another 50 were bound to primary attribute which means using them as secondary class was useless.

So you were left with 50 useful skills to pick from.
GW2 Warrior has a total of 65 skills none of which is useless.

But I guess for some people it’s enough to see “new iconz!!111” rather than have a properly done skill pool.

Also, I assume you’re talking of GW1 with 3 expansions?
GW2 is vanilla, if you haven’t noticed.

Red Falcon.8257:

Yeah in GW1 we had 200 skills… Except:
1) At least 50 were exact clones of other skills, i.e. Penetrating Blow and Penetrating Chop.
2) Another 50 were useless.
3) Another 50 were bound to primary attribute which means using them as secondary class was useless.

So you were left with 50 useful skills to pick from.
GW2 Warrior has a total of 65 skills none of which is useless.

But I guess for some people it’s enough to see “new iconz!!111” rather than have a properly done skill pool.

Also, I assume you’re talking of GW1 with 3 expansions?
GW2 is vanilla, if you haven’t noticed.

And how many of those 65 skills are in a preset of 5’s which you cant mix and match?

DocHolliday.5921:

Scourge.4317:

Did Guild Wars Prophecies start out with over 200 skills for each class? NO! all those extra skills, classes ect came in expansions. Chill out people kitten Its already been said that classes will be given more weapons to use in the future.

And yet despite that, the skill system in Prophecies had way more variety and was way more interesting than anything GW2 has to offer. Why exactly do you think that is?

That’s your opinion. Guild halls and other forms of pvp that are in Guild wars will be in Guild wars 2 in the future.

In GW1 I ended up getting every elite and every normal skill available. I used maybe 20 of them. Ok, 25 if you count the ones I’d toss on specifically for things like Vaettir farming and otherwise never use.

As an Elementalist in GW2, I may be limited to five skills per attunement & weapon combo (Staff, scepter/dagger, dagger/dagger, scepter/focus, dagger/focus x 4 attunements = 60 skills), but I actually use them. All of them. I switch attunements in the midst of combat and even have various skill chains I that start in one attunement and end in another that are very, very effective.

That’s without counting my utilities or elites – which I rarely end up using (except my heal which I have auto-casting).

That’s also without counting the additional bonuses and effects I have firing based on how I allotted my points – like the fact that with my heal auto-casting, I essentially have an endless 33% speed boost whenever I’m attuned to air and usually for a full 60 seconds after I leave air.

My point being – I end up using one heck of a lot more of the skills available to me under this system than I ever did with the near endless pool of skill combos available in GW1 – and as an added bonus, I’m effective when playing my own class… I don’t have to essentially pretend to be a Ritualist just to survive harder areas or to farm. I can do it as the class I actually CHOSE to play. Imagine that.

It’s ok if you don’t like the system… it’s ok if it isn’t enjoyable to you… but for others, it’s working out to be a great deal more fun than GW1’s system was.

Different strokes for different folks.

Airala.8629:

In GW1 I ended up getting every elite and every normal skill available. I used maybe 20 of them. Ok, 25 if you count the ones I’d toss on specifically for things like Vaettir farming and otherwise never use.

As an Elementalist in GW2, I may be limited to five skills per attunement & weapon combo (Staff, scepter/dagger, dagger/dagger, scepter/focus, dagger/focus x 4 attunements = 60 skills), but I actually use them. All of them. I switch attunements in the midst of combat and even have various skill chains I that start in one attunement and end in another that are very, very effective.

That’s without counting my utilities or elites – which I rarely end up using (except my heal which I have auto-casting).

That’s also without counting the additional bonuses and effects I have firing based on how I allotted my points – like the fact that with my heal auto-casting, I essentially have an endless 33% speed boost whenever I’m attuned to air and usually for a full 60 seconds after I leave air.

My point being – I end up using one heck of a lot more of the skills available to me under this system than I ever did with the near endless pool of skill combos available in GW1 – and as an added bonus, I’m effective when playing my own class… I don’t have to essentially pretend to be a Ritualist just to survive harder areas or to farm. I can do it as the class I actually CHOSE to play. Imagine that.

It’s ok if you don’t like the system… it’s ok if it isn’t enjoyable to you… but for others, it’s working out to be a great deal more fun than GW1’s system was.

Different strokes for different folks.

Elementalist is one of the few classes they got right in my opinion. Should have been the template for all classes.

Lifeson.4352:

And how many of those 65 skills are in a preset of 5’s which you cant mix and match?

And how many skills you use at the same time in GW1? Eight.
In GW2 you can use 16 to 20 skills during combat, and still swap them when not in combat.

Go play GW1 if you prefer it, no one is holding you here.

Red Falcon.8257:

Lifeson.4352:

And how many of those 65 skills are in a preset of 5’s which you cant mix and match?

And how many skills you use at the same time in GW1? Eight.
In GW2 you can use 16 to 20 skills during combat, and still swap them when not in combat.

Go play GW1 if you prefer it, no one is holding you here.

I’ve never played GW1, that has nothing to do with it.

It wasn’t hard for players to balance, it was tough for the devs to balance every month. They told us that years ago. Still think it was a mistake to limit skills so drastically, but I can understand their reasoning for doing what they did.

@Red Falcon: GW1 may have had only 8 skill slots, but you got much more utility and a far greater variety of choice in skill sets than GW2 will ever have. GW2 skills are ok, but apparently some people weren’t satisfied with how this has been implemented and stopped playing because of it. Unfortunately it’s something they won’t ever modify and have never planned on changing.

Chuo.4238:

OP,

We’ve gone round and round and round with ANet on this issue. They’re not gonna budge. For the record, however, I personally agree with you. It was way more fun to have all those skills to chose from and experiment with and create teambuilds with.

GW1 is far superior to this…in so many ways…not just this one…

Also agreed, though the new rewards are a step in the right direction. They should have done this months ago, instead of focusing on one dungeon that made the vast majority of PvE irrelevant.

I think I’m beginning to see why most people here like the GW2 skills better than GW1, and why they don’t understand how GW1 was more interesting. It seems most people don’t really know how to see the potential of all the different skills and how to put together builds on their own.

This is evidenced by all the fallacious claims of “a lot of clone skills” and “I only used 25 skills”. If that’s the way you saw GW1’s skill system, that’s a very distorted view. Even Prophecies had a lot more potential than that. I know it did, because I was there. I myself found lots of interesting ways to use skills, and virtually none of them were useless. Over the course of the 3000+ hours I played, I found uses for nearly every skill in the game. Yes, even the ones that actually were clone skills. Sometimes it was useful to have a second copy to use when the first was on recharge.

DocHolliday.5921:

athuria.2751:

Like it’s been pointed out, your skill variety from GW1 was not at all what it was when it came out. We will get more utilities, elites, weapons (and maybe we will get to customize those weapons) over time, like we did in GW1, and like it happens in every other MMO. This will not be the end of your variety, nor do I think the combat system will remain so static that it will never add new mechanics or skill types that will result in new playstyles and builds.

To be honest, I’m of the opposite opinion where combat in GW1 was boring and repetitive for me (I don’t agree there’s no skill/build variety in GW2). You has a lot of skill variety that you could combine in different ways and customize your efficiency with them, but the fighting in and of itself felt very static to me. It had a lot of thinking, but not a lot of dynamics or really engaging your enemy like you can in GW2 (or actively layering skills with instant-casting/channeling). I played it and enjoyed it for the story, but spending a lot of time in combat in the open world ended up just being tedious to me.

I was there in GW Prophecies from the beginning. I started 1 or 2 weeks after release. It had way more skills even at that time than GW2 has now. But quantity is only a small part of it. It had far, far more skill variety than GW2 does. The skill system in GW2 is just overall far more simple. Hexes/curses are gone. There’s nothing resembling smiting damage. Degen/regen is implemented completely differently, exactly like in every other MMO. Boons are a pale imitation and nothing really at all like enchantments (shatter enchantment, anyone?). There’s nothing really to cause you to be all that careful how and when you use your abilities. With the exception of a few “oh ****” abilities, you use them when they come off cooldown and that’s that. (Yes there’s some few exceptions to that last statement, but the point still stands.)

I honestly didn’t watch my skill usage in GW1 any more then than I do now—I had some sort of buffer that I need to around manage around (energy/cooldowns), control skills I had to manage timing of so as not to waste, and I had skills that were important for specific situations but dropped where they would be useless, which I also have now (I just don’t have to wait to get back to a town to change them) in both skills and traits.

And while I dearly miss proper hexes I don’t think our class mechanic variety was a lot more, in the beginning, than it is now. Classes still have 3-4 different ideas that they focus around, and these ideas function differently between classes like they did before, even in overlapping areas (like summons).

If variety has been lost, I would say it’s not in individual classes as much as it is the loss of dual professions—because our skill list didn’t actually center around 3-4 ideas, it centered around 6-8. There was more breadth because you had a customizable overlap where you could specialize in 3-4 ideas between two different class concepts (or spread yourself out to 5-6-7 ideas, if you wanted), rather than just the ones your class was designed around.

athuria.2751:

DocHolliday.5921:

athuria.2751:

Like it’s been pointed out, your skill variety from GW1 was not at all what it was when it came out. We will get more utilities, elites, weapons (and maybe we will get to customize those weapons) over time, like we did in GW1, and like it happens in every other MMO. This will not be the end of your variety, nor do I think the combat system will remain so static that it will never add new mechanics or skill types that will result in new playstyles and builds.

To be honest, I’m of the opposite opinion where combat in GW1 was boring and repetitive for me (I don’t agree there’s no skill/build variety in GW2). You has a lot of skill variety that you could combine in different ways and customize your efficiency with them, but the fighting in and of itself felt very static to me. It had a lot of thinking, but not a lot of dynamics or really engaging your enemy like you can in GW2 (or actively layering skills with instant-casting/channeling). I played it and enjoyed it for the story, but spending a lot of time in combat in the open world ended up just being tedious to me.

I was there in GW Prophecies from the beginning. I started 1 or 2 weeks after release. It had way more skills even at that time than GW2 has now. But quantity is only a small part of it. It had far, far more skill variety than GW2 does. The skill system in GW2 is just overall far more simple. Hexes/curses are gone. There’s nothing resembling smiting damage. Degen/regen is implemented completely differently, exactly like in every other MMO. Boons are a pale imitation and nothing really at all like enchantments (shatter enchantment, anyone?). There’s nothing really to cause you to be all that careful how and when you use your abilities. With the exception of a few “oh ****” abilities, you use them when they come off cooldown and that’s that. (Yes there’s some few exceptions to that last statement, but the point still stands.)

I honestly didn’t watch my skill usage in GW1 any more then than I do now—I had some sort of buffer that I need to around manage around (energy/cooldowns), control skills I had to manage timing of so as not to waste, and I had skills that were important for specific situations but dropped where they would be useless, which I also have now (I just don’t have to wait to get back to a town to change them) in both skills and traits.

And while I dearly miss proper hexes I don’t think our class mechanic variety was a lot more, in the beginning, than it is now. Classes still have 3-4 different ideas that they focus around, and these ideas function differently between classes like they did before, even in overlapping areas (like summons).

If variety has been lost, I would say it’s not in individual classes as much as it is the loss of dual professions—because our skill list didn’t actually center around 3-4 ideas, it centered around 6-8. There was more breadth because you had a customizable overlap where you could specialize in 3-4 ideas between two different class concepts (or spread yourself out to 5-6-7 ideas, if you wanted), rather than just the ones your class was designed around.

I agree with you for the most part. Except for having to be careful about using skills. Just a few examples… first, mesmer or ranger interrupt builds. Should be obvious. But second, you also had to be careful depending on what enemy hexes you had on you. And depending on what skills the enemies had, you had to be very careful when to use skills (for example, don’t use healing breeze if you know someone hkittenter enchantment off recharge). That’s just a few examples I thought of quickly. I’m sure if I were to go back and play GW again (which is seeming more and more likely of late) I’d find a lot more.