Guild Wars 2

I just want to ask people what they think of shouts in this game, both the ones that already exist and the ones that are coming out. The reason being that so far over half the professions will have access to them once HoT releases (at least that we know) and I’m curious on peoples views.

Just some questions I’d be interested in:
1. Which shouts do you think are good, and which are bad?
2. What do you think makes the good shouts viable and the bad ones poor?
3. What should Anet aim to do when they make a shout and/or what kind of things can shouts reasonably accomplish and what can’t they?
4. Do you think traits can make bad shouts into something people will use?

It just seems odd since Guardian shouts are all pretty much solid gold and I’ve never really seen complaints, Warriors have decent options and people don’t really seem to complain about those much either (not that I’ve looked for complaints), but pretty much every other shout so far has been shot down Ranger, Reaper, and quite a few of the Tempest. So I’m wondering if there’s a pattern.

The only shouts that have problems are the Ranger ones…. I blame that entirely on, and connected to, a number of design inconsistencies that class has.

As for the Guardian and Warrior. Shouts are supportive; making that zero cast time and untargeted AOE a major advantage to its function. Reaper should see a similar advantage being offensive; but the reason its not as well received is this notion that lingering AOE fields are better for offense.

Another issue could be that other utilities just look better, as the offensive shouts are very one off type skills. Seeing the reaper line up, I can understand since the Necros have some very strong utilities when paired with the Reaper’s faster play style.

starlinvf.1358:

The only shouts that have problems are the Ranger ones…. I blame that entirely on, and connected to, a number of design inconsistencies that class has.

As for the Guardian and Warrior. Shouts are supportive; making that zero cast time and untargeted AOE a major advantage to its function. Reaper should see a similar advantage being offensive; but the reason its not as well received is this notion that lingering AOE fields are better for offense.

Another issue could be that other utilities just look better, as the offensive shouts are very one off type skills. Seeing the reaper line up, I can understand since the Necros have some very strong utilities when paired with the Reaper’s faster play style.

Faster playstyle I was under the illusion that reaper was a slower playstyle then lets say dagger+wh/dagger

Necro was gypped again. So nothing new, some what disappointing.