Guild Wars 2

I think something the game does incredibly well is that the combat looks action packed.

The problem? It doesn’t feel that way. My mind isn’t engaged the way that it has to be compared to say, Dota or even World of Warcraft.

I’ll use the game that everyone, for whatever reason, loves to hate, as a comparison.
In World of Warcraft, if you see two people engaged in combat, let’s just use a duel as an example, you might see some action, some flashy moves. Mostly you’ll just see a ton of circle strafing. What you don’t see is an incredible layer of depth and reactionary timing required by both players, both striving to get their damage rotations off in an optimal manner, while also countering the other player’s moves.

Guild Wars 2? Essentially just a manner of wack a mole. Daze the heal/rez, dodge the key moves. Yawn. It took me simply a few hours to feel unbelievably comfortable with my class in PvP, not matter which one I chose.

What about PvE?

I don’t care how you spin it, there is literally almost no way to properly determine the difference between an incredibly skilled player and a novice in PvE. That’s because there basically isn’t any.

This topic’s been beaten to death, but we simply need more buttons to push. Not World of Warcraft numbers, because that’s absurd. We just need more…stuff. More intelligent and purposeful stuff. More complexities in our damage rotations or priorities that give us satisfying results.

Currently its very difficult to keep myself playing the game, simply because it isn’t challenging me mentally at ALL.

GW1 did fine by giving us more skills to choose from even though you only had 8 skills at once. The problem with GW2 is that your options are limited so if you hate 2 of your 5 weapon skills you’re kitten out of luck.

I definitely agree. I think that a contributor to this feeling is the fact that by level 30 you essentially have access to all of the abilities your character might use. This means that by level 40, the combat will feel stale. Throughout WoW, for instance, you would look forward to the next level where you get to buy your next set of new abilities, and go through the process of thinking “hm, how will this new ability work into my combat?”
There is none of this in GW2 since you essentially get half of your possible abilities at level 1 (from weapon sets) and it only takes up to level 30 to get your elite. Simply put, there isn’t much compelling a thought process about skills or excitement about them either.

Mekboss.5069:

GW1 did fine by giving us more skills to choose from even though you only had 8 skills at once. The problem with GW2 is that your options are limited so if you hate 2 of your 5 weapon skills you’re kitten out of luck.

This is a good point. While I certainly didn’t like 100% of Gw1’s combat style (just didn’t allow for enough control of movement in my opinion), it absolutely had depth.

I respect your opinion, but I actually find GW2 skill-based combat miles above “spamming a pre-made rotation with low ping while having all castbars and other babyproof systems” WoW gimmick.

In WoW every class has a precise rotation that is just the best, with a couple cooldowns to time and that’s about it.
In GW2 there is no rotation, you need to use your abilities when they are actually needed – and timing is crucial.

If you believe the WoW gimmick is better then I’m afraid this game is not for you.
To each his own I guess, but there is 0% chance that Anet will change this awesome combat to meet the needs of a WoW player.

Tyler Ferguson.4965:

Guild Wars 2? Essentially just a manner of wack a mole. Daze the heal/rez, dodge the key moves. Yawn. It took me simply a few hours to feel unbelievably comfortable with my class in PvP, not matter which one I chose.

Yet you also said this about ele…

Tyler Ferguson.4965:

Sorry kiddos, but get over yourselves. It’s okay to be new or poor at a class. You will improve. I was convinced that eles were incredibly useless at first as well. After a week of practicing and tweaking my setup, I’ve been having an incredible amount of success, not even using the build Kyros is using.

So which is it?

In PvE the problem is not the “battle system depth” is that PvE is way too easy. All the bosses are just big pinatas waiting for the arrows/bullets to hit them. Normal enemies are… meh and dungeons are balances by raising the damage or HP of the enemies, with no real challenge at all more than evade that 1 one insta kill attack…

The combat is fine, the PvE dificult is for a 4 years old boy, and i say this cause my little bro is 5 years old and yesterday he finished a map, well, i have to do the jumping puzzle and killed a champion. But… kitten

youre confused. WoW was whack-a-mole. GW2 is skill based (timing, positioning, evading, etc). by 30 you have most things unlocked, but the funnest part of the game is trying out different builds, and making loadouts for specific situations.

WoW combat lacks depth too.
More abilities on your bar =/= more engaging combat.

In WoW there is no movement what-so-ever. You just stand there and dps. Unless you need to move out of the fire. That’s it.

Warrior DPS “rotation”: 1,2,3,2,1,2,3,2,1,2,3,2
Rogue DPS "rotation: 1,1,1,2,1,1,1,3,1,1,1,2,1,1,1,3
Mage DPS “rotation”: 1,1,1,1,1,2,1,1,1,1,1,2,1,1,1,1,1,2

And yeah, you have have an extra ability or 2 you use once per fight…and thats about it.
So how is any of that more engagin?

I will agree that the static nature of the weapon abilites can get a bit stagnet. Hopefully they will make it so that you can change out weapon skills in addition to the weapons themselves.

I disagree. WoW and other games in the end always relied on stupid simple rotations. You got plenty of skills that where worse than the other ones, and you ended up with a simple rotation while half your screen is cluttered with UI elements. I don’t wanna look at buttons.

GW2 has a lot more finesse, you get to swap your set (minimum of 15 skills then) – everyone is their healer, endurance(dodging) is a constant, skills when downed/underwater is a constant.

I love how they simplified it. And the benefits? GW2 is more balanced now, than WoW has ever been. It takes more skill, simply due to visual coordination more self-survival reliance.

Every weapon set you bring is a new class. Thats the idea. You make your own dual class, by bringing your two ideal combinations of weapon sets. A warrior who is Greatsword/Rifle is magnitudes different froma Greatsword/Longbow.

Throwing more skills at the problem is silly. I haven’t been bored at all. I’ve swapped weapons and tried different weapons at a lot of points in time during my characters life to spice it up and test new builds. Sigils and upgrades is also very very important to how you make builds.

Quality over fluff. Lets not go down the Call of Duty road of bombarding the players with stuff. The problem with GW1 ended up being too many skills, to hard to balance. The more skills, the less attention the existing onces have.

I love the action skill based system of GW2, and I love how it’s not rooted like TERA. I will never go back to these idiotic auto-attack no-coordination based games like WoW. So I think the OP is dead wrong. GW2 best combat system I’ve played in an online RPG ever!

If Anet could just take the combat mod and incorporate it as an optional way to play the game… So much win…

I’d love to see wow pvpers/pve’ers vs gw2 pvpers/pve’ers and see who has the ability to adapt on the fly better.

WoW pve was just a rotation fest but the fights had mechanics. they got stale after you learned the mechanics and became a grind.
WoW pvp was about adpating and low ping of course. Quick reaction and a wrong call could get your healer switched bursted.

Gw2 pve is random attacks you just hit whatever ability that pops up. In reality it can go like this with dodging incorporated with no real hard boss mechanics
(auto attack) (2) (3) (4) (5) utility if required almost all elites are useless and don’t feel elite.

Gw2 pvp is just dodge the burst and counter with your own burst. You must have a bunker build on your squad to secure 1 spot. Mesmers are 100% required in WvW and Spvp.

I believe the devs are just to restricting of gameplay. I can’t use macros to improve myself I’m hindered because other people don’t want to rebind keys or come with with something to make themselves more efficient.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a macro like this
Keybind – G8 use utility 9 —-> If on cooldown use Utility 6 instead.
Or even a simple Keybind G5 swap to warhorn offhand if out of combat then G5 to activate locus swarm.

They already took away circle strafing and gave us something worst which is how stealth is registered in this game. Make thieves work for that backstab and if they don’t set us they are punished with initiative lost

To be honest, I don’t care for weapon switching.
I mean I only use Shield and Mace and staff for Running quick on my Guard. I don’t like the other weapons though. I feel like there should be more variety on skills somewhere down the road for every weapon but that’s my 2 copper.
MMO’s you got tons of skills and you use like 3 of them the entire time others are crap lol. I use all mine here. Either way, I still love my shield and mace in this game so I’m not too bored yet. ~ I have never loved that combo in any MMO. GW2 just sold it for me. <3

Red Falcon.8257:

I respect your opinion, but I actually find GW2 skill-based combat miles above “spamming a pre-made rotation with low ping while having all castbars and other babyproof systems” WoW gimmick.

In WoW every class has a precise rotation that is just the best, with a couple cooldowns to time and that’s about it.
In GW2 there is no rotation, you need to use your abilities when they are actually needed – and timing is crucial.

If you believe the WoW gimmick is better then I’m afraid this game is not for you.
To each his own I guess, but there is 0% chance that Anet will change this awesome combat to meet the needs of a WoW player.

this is the funny part..there is no need for “rotations” for this game becuase its all gear check/traits. This game is a copy of wow plane and simple. Only difference is the deves tried to be different by adding a dodge skill..But realisticaly its wow in a sense but worse then wow. Devs realy screwed up on this game when it came to dungeons and combat for this game. Im in no way shape or form wanting things like in wow.. but i wish things where more like in d2. in d2 you control your own defensive moves as well as offensives. Modern gaming they have programs that does it all…imo they fail.

I so miss pvp in diablo2. thats real pvp period. Player is 100% in control.

Tyler Ferguson.4965:

I think something the game does incredibly well is that the combat looks action packed.

The problem? It doesn’t feel that way. My mind isn’t engaged the way that it has to be compared to say, Dota or even World of Warcraft.

I’ll use the game that everyone, for whatever reason, loves to hate, as a comparison.
In World of Warcraft, if you see two people engaged in combat, let’s just use a duel as an example, you might see some action, some flashy moves. Mostly you’ll just see a ton of circle strafing. What you don’t see is an incredible layer of depth and reactionary timing required by both players, both striving to get their damage rotations off in an optimal manner, while also countering the other player’s moves.

Guild Wars 2? Essentially just a manner of wack a mole. Daze the heal/rez, dodge the key moves. Yawn. It took me simply a few hours to feel unbelievably comfortable with my class in PvP, not matter which one I chose.

What about PvE?

I don’t care how you spin it, there is literally almost no way to properly determine the difference between an incredibly skilled player and a novice in PvE. That’s because there basically isn’t any.

This topic’s been beaten to death, but we simply need more buttons to push. Not World of Warcraft numbers, because that’s absurd. We just need more…stuff. More intelligent and purposeful stuff. More complexities in our damage rotations or priorities that give us satisfying results.

Currently its very difficult to keep myself playing the game, simply because it isn’t challenging me mentally at ALL.

I am more of a PVE player, not sure if I am off topic, but I do share similar sentiments after awhile of game play. But recently, Arenanet seems to unknowingly trigger a bug with the undead/risen creatures running speed. They are now running so fast towards/around us that there is no point strafing or circling the opponent as you can hardly circle around them as they would be behind you straight off in no time. Couple with my character being a ranger and constantly trapped in the slow motion animation bug that Anet till now hasn’t fix, it just made the game more and more like a stand and button mash combat.

The depth in WoW, Kotor and other standard mmo’s was just having a bunch of skills that do the same thing or do one thing and nothing else, there was no fun to it, you just hit 20 buttons on rotation when the cooldowns come up. I like that GW2 keeps it down to just a few buttons to press.

More skills to chose from on the other hand are always welcome, I think GW1’s system was great in that, hundreds of skills to chose from but with just 8 on your skillbar at once it never got cluttered.

In summary, yes to more skills, no to more buttons, keep the interface simple.

also combat in this game…..just plan sucks.

Players in the game have the uphill battle to get ahead no matter if you are lvl 80 or lvl 1. Npcs can out run you no matter what buff you got on and ontop of that they can out run you while your in combat.

You people saying WoW was easymode and that this game doesn’t have a rotation, that is completely false.

There is most definately “optimal rotations” for classes in this game, in some cases there aren’t any just because auto attacking is the best dps. There are too many moments where you are “safe” and unchallenged so naturally, you’re doing your best to put out the most dmg.

It was the same thing in WoW, when you were doing something actually challenging or when sh** hit the fan, you were no longer just sitting there doing your optimal rotation, you were doing your best to put out dmg as well as moving/kiting/cc’ing whatever.

In the end, whether or not you’re “just doing a rotation” or not has to do with the fights and how challenging they are. For the most part it’s just : Kite kite, do best dmg rotate, kite kite kite, dodge big hit, kite kite, more dmg spam, kite.

Again, the only reason you may think there’s no rotation is because for most it’s just : Put stuff on cooldown, then go back to auto attacking.

The rotations/abilities/traits could definately use more depth. Think of something like Ranger abilities that boost pet skills and how they combo together, could work the same way with weapon skills : Skill #2 causes your next (#3 skill) to cause X and (#4 skill) to cause Y. And not just “more dmg” of course, but other effects like CC, so you’re thinking about your combo’s.

I prefer the less buttons 1-10 instead of wows loads of skills but I must agree that having 5 set skills with weapons doesn’t leave much depth,what I would like to see is more skill options per weapon so with say Greatsword you can pick from maybe 10 skills for the first 5 keys,this would at least give a few more options than just which weapon you use.

I disagree
Guild Wars 2 combat is fastpaced, classes play differently and it has a lot of depth.
The average human can hold 5 items in his working memory and compare them simultaneously. At a point in time you have 10 abilities + Profession mechanic at your disposal. That offers more than enough depth.
Ever played Arkham City? Its combat has even more depth with less buttons.

I agree. The combat in PvE lacks any depth at all for several reasons.

In events, unless you are playing with a large group of friends or fellow guild members, then there is no way to co-ordinate your actions with other people. There is no time, and even if there were in-game voice capacity to talk to whoever is in the area, you would probably find people saying ‘we don’t have to work together like that because there is no leader’ sort of thing. All the fights are exactly the same: a big scrum with zero finesse.

There are so few skills and no secondary classes so everyone ends up using pretty much the same skills, especially since some of the skills just don’t work very well. I really miss the secondary classes of GW1. It added real tactical choice to people’s builds.

Then there is the healing, or lack thereof. With no dedicated healing class, everyone is responsible for his own healing, but that healing is weak. Further, even though healing can be shared, in its own weak way, no-one knows whose responsibility it is to do it. So maybe, for example, maybe an elementalist will cast the spell to make a healing spring or maybe not; it’s not his job to look after others, after all.

All this leads to combat simply being a game of numbers. If you have enough people to beat a particular monster, then, really, it doesn’t matter much which skills they use. If you don’t have enough people, then you are probably dead.

GW1 was a much better game than this, and far more replayable. Really, I wish they hadn’t gone into GW2 but instead had put out the Utopia expansion for GW1.

How is GW2 like “Whack-a-mole” and WoW not? They’re exactly the same in that respect, you stun where a stun is needed/move out of the fire etc, but instead of just looking at a cast bar and CCing you have to judge what your opponent is doing by his animations which is FAR more skill based.

Also dodging and movement whilst casting. That adds a whole other level.

Ironcloud.3892:

Also dodging and movement whilst casting. That adds a whole other level.

Dodging would add depth to the combat if it mattered, but it doesn’t. If you don’t have the numbers to beat your opponent, then all dodging does is delay the inevitable by a few seconds and if you do have the numbers, then you don’t need to dodge.

All MMORPGs that I’ve played have some skills you don’t use, for whatever reason. Maybe you don’t play in the style that skill requires. Maybe that skill is weak (relative to cost / cooldown / etc) except in certain situations. Maybe it’s just weak regardless.

In GW1, there are enough skills that no matter how you play, you will be able to build a useful skill bar. That’s a big part of the tremendous tactical flexibility that GW1 has. It’s possible and sometimes necessary to create situation-specific builds. Now, in GW2, we are very limited. Sure, I can swap weapons (unless I’m an engineer or an ele), but that’s not nearly the same thing, since I go from this fixed skill set to that one. As others have said, during fights, there is limited (at best) scope for applying the coordinated tactical finesse that is characteristic of GW1 combat. This is for various reasons, not the least of which is the “just a bunch of random idiots” problem. There we are in the worm cave north of Claypool, and some half-wit picks up the troll rune, because he doesn’t know what it’s for, or because he’s a malicious so-and-so. Now the collection of ill-assorted adventurers need to fight the troll. Are they ready? Are they able to coordinate their actions?

And perhaps the most important question: does it matter whether they can coordinate their actions? And for that, the answer is a resounding “No”. It matters more that they can or cannot overwhelm the troll with sheer numbers. If there were two non-half-wits in the cave, they are probably dead. If there were ten, maybe, and if there were fifty, almost certainly some of them will be killed along the way, but the troll is doomed.

And the half-wit? He dropped the rune and lit out like the proverbial bat out of the Infernal regions. He survived, and got daily-achievements credit for the event by tapping the troll as he went past.

No, tactics don’t form a large part of the combat in this game, except in a few cases, like waiting for slow-recharge high burst-damage skills before starting a fight.

sixfeetunder wrote:

….also combat in this game…..just plan sucks."

Players in the game have the uphill battle to get ahead no matter if you are lvl 80 or lvl 1. Npcs can out run you no matter what buff you got on and ontop of that they can out run you while your in combat….."

What game are you playing? With axe/warhorn equipped, my ranger runs thru Orr with no issues. Weapon switch for another speed buff…then rampage as one for the next buff…back to warhorn.

Nothing even comes close to me. All the classes have some sort of run speed buff mix.