Guild Wars 2

Wierd title? Hear me out….

I love mage types, always have, especially necromancers.

I’m currently playing gw1 with a less than optimal build, but it works… Regardless, I feel like a caster, I have my staff and I have my spells and I have my combos…

GW2? Staff, Scepter… That’s the limit of the true caster weapons, daggers are used as melee instead of something along the line of a sacrifical knife focus (which is what I first expected from necro dagger tbh), focuses are also pretty ok, albeit riddled with some meh skills at times.

I get that GW2 seems to be designed around teambased pvp combat, the skills and skillsystem reflects that heavily… But the combat FEELS amazing, the game is gorgeous and I just love getting sidetracked into a gazzillion events.

So it really saddens me that the lack of true caster feel is so apparent.

Staves seems entirely regulated to a support role, with a few exceptions but still…

Elementalist fire staff is probably the only staff skillline even close to being a true caster, but outside of pvp you only use 3 skills, 4 if your dodge roll is on cd and you need to get out of a smash.
The utility skills? I love the arcane blasts, but I cant deny the difference in damage when you use frostbow, glyph of storms (which I dont mind btw, except the hefty CD), etc…

The elementalist elites are again very… Meh, glyph of elementals is the only one I truly feel as a caster with and rarely does it get its full use except for bosses here and there..

Now the scepter? Honestly the scepter would be great if only a few things changed, make shatterstone stick to the target its cast at, not a ground target aoe with 2 seconds to detonate, make dragon tooth also stick to the target its cast at, and change the fire autoattack, because unless you stack condition dmg it does a pitiful ammount of dmg.. And I’ve not seen a condition elementalist yet, in fact the ones I see mostly run D/D…. Which is not why I wanted to play a caster.

Now, the necromancer, honestly I dont mind how the staff works in general, if scepter was a better caster weapon, the only way it works for me is to use corruptions, pass said corruptions to my target then use scepter 3 to deal dmg while stacking conditions with scepter 1…. And it still feels very meh…

Axe? I love how they made this a caster weapon, I dont love how meh it is…. The animations are great, the dmg… not so much.

Greatsword and reaper? I approve, a true in your face sort of shadow knight/ spellsword feel, I honestly have no complaints about it.

And then.. the Mesmer, greatsword feels like a caster weapon and works like one, so I cant say it doesnt have a true caster role…. it’s just that I wish that staff and scepter would support it more.

In short, I’m honestly hoping that druid will not just be another kitten staff support spec, and if it isnt, I know what I will be maining for my caster main.

Incantus.8960:

Wierd title? Hear me out….

I love mage types, always have, especially necromancers.

I’m currently playing gw1 with a less than optimal build, but it works… Regardless, I feel like a caster, I have my staff and I have my spells and I have my combos…

GW2? Staff, Scepter… That’s the limit of the true caster weapons, daggers are used as melee instead of something along the line of a sacrifical knife focus (which is what I first expected from necro dagger tbh), focuses are also pretty ok, albeit riddled with some meh skills at times.

I get that GW2 seems to be designed around teambased pvp combat, the skills and skillsystem reflects that heavily… But the combat FEELS amazing, the game is gorgeous and I just love getting sidetracked into a gazzillion events.

So it really saddens me that the lack of true caster feel is so apparent.

Staves seems entirely regulated to a support role, with a few exceptions but still…

Elementalist fire staff is probably the only staff skillline even close to being a true caster, but outside of pvp you only use 3 skills, 4 if your dodge roll is on cd and you need to get out of a smash.
The utility skills? I love the arcane blasts, but I cant deny the difference in damage when you use frostbow, glyph of storms (which I dont mind btw, except the hefty CD), etc…

The elementalist elites are again very… Meh, glyph of elementals is the only one I truly feel as a caster with and rarely does it get its full use except for bosses here and there..

Now the scepter? Honestly the scepter would be great if only a few things changed, make shatterstone stick to the target its cast at, not a ground target aoe with 2 seconds to detonate, make dragon tooth also stick to the target its cast at, and change the fire autoattack, because unless you stack condition dmg it does a pitiful ammount of dmg.. And I’ve not seen a condition elementalist yet, in fact the ones I see mostly run D/D…. Which is not why I wanted to play a caster.

Now, the necromancer, honestly I dont mind how the staff works in general, if scepter was a better caster weapon, the only way it works for me is to use corruptions, pass said corruptions to my target then use scepter 3 to deal dmg while stacking conditions with scepter 1…. And it still feels very meh…

Axe? I love how they made this a caster weapon, I dont love how meh it is…. The animations are great, the dmg… not so much.

Greatsword and reaper? I approve, a true in your face sort of shadow knight/ spellsword feel, I honestly have no complaints about it.

And then.. the Mesmer, greatsword feels like a caster weapon and works like one, so I cant say it doesnt have a true caster role…. it’s just that I wish that staff and scepter would support it more.

In short, I’m honestly hoping that druid will not just be another kitten staff support spec, and if it isnt, I know what I will be maining for my caster main.

Ultimately this is limited by how Anet treats skills in GW2. Unlike in 1, you don’t get a blank skill bar and so many skills that even Izzy can’t make ALL of them useless. When you tighten up the choices, being a “pure” caster is difficult. Ele obviously has an advantage as the class imo is one of the more faithful translations from 1.

Play a Staff or scepter Ele.

You can be a traditional caster.

staff ele can literally do everything, if you combo trait from f4 earth eruption to f3 water cleansing and heal boost or f2 fire to give might to team mates. Also you can play dps caster on mesmer greatsword or condi caster on necro with staff. There not your tradional casters but are casters.

You mentioned this is your post but in your own post you say there casters but you want more from other weapons which makes it really hard to debate if you already know the caster skills/weapons but want more caster stuff.

Snip. Now the scepter? Honestly the scepter would be great if only a few things changed, make shatterstone stick to the target its cast at, not a ground target aoe with 2 seconds to detonate, make dragon tooth also stick to the target its cast at. Snip

To address this point only. I don’t think they will ever have attacks that follow the target when they move. This would be a problem in WvW or PvP where your target would not be able to dodge away from an attack. In addition the attacks in this game are straight line attacks, unlike a game such as WoW where attacks will go around corners to hit someone. There would need to be a lot of rebalancing if attacks could chase people down no matter if they dodge or use terrain to hide.

Why isn’t there a single traditional caster?

Simple.

A traditional caster would actually be fun to play.

Also if you want your scrifical dager, use it offhand with scepter. There you have it all now nice terrormancer build and you are golden

you could go sinister or rabid (or dire) allowing for glass hybrid or durable condi

Should work, I have both… is nice…

Ele:
Staff : you use fire 1,2,3,5, water 1,2,3,5 with and occasional 4 in earth 2, wind 4,5 and you’ll use arcane brilliance and arcane wave…. for the other skils I will not interfere but I use glyph of storms and glyph of elementals and the last slot switches (Icebow, mistform or other utility.) If you use less you are not using the potential of your ele.

Mesmer has staff & scepter/(torch) for good potential , running PU you’ll be having fun in WvW, for PvE I’d suggest the Sword/focus and GS. Or dungeons S/S & S/F
GS and Staff is not my thing… way to distant…. I prefer making a happy dance while my phantasms kill ’m….

There is no such thing, in my opinion, as a “traditional caster”. Mechanically, games don’t distinguish between “spells” and “skills” — it’s only a matter of perception that players do.

So the OP is actually asking, “why isn’t there a caster that follows the expectations that some of us have about how mages behave in other games?” To me, the answer is obvious: because GW2 doesn’t care about behaving like other games. That can be a great thing or a terrible one, depending on whether you mind being moved from your comfort zone.

I, too, typically play mages. I like the mechanics to be far-removed from something that happens in real life. I like the AoE and the sparkling effects. I like the challenge of being squishy and still delivering the damage of traditional melee.

And yet I love the casters in GW2. They offer all that plus the ability to play upclose and personal.

tl;dr Why isn’t there a traditional caster? Because the GW2 choices are a lot more fun to play.

By design, all classes are Hybrids, and gain a huge amount of playability through that concept. With an active combat system, doing only “One” thing ends up being hindrance, as the physics alone impart tons of dynamics that you’d have to go out of your way to block off in design if you want to avoid players from using it.

Consider VATS in Fall out 3. Its a turn based system, built on top a real time shooter platform, using an RPG calculation system….. The whole concept was just a huge mess. Mix in the clunky controls, and its not hard to see why combat in that game was so terrible.

With GW2, everything is fast, surprisingly smooth, and highly intuitive with its basic mechanics. I would go as far as saying Caster designs in most RPG themed games extremely lazy; focused more on micro managing class mechanics then actual combat application. Even on backline, Staff Eles have to do a lot more thinking, and a much better notion of timing and battle flow then the WoW mage bombing. And thats not even considering the value of combos and support tools. You also seem to under value the concept Arena Denial, despite its huge impact it has in fights in this game.

I think the problem is you see the Elementalist as “Mage”, when in reality they are, quite literally, a mobilized force of nature.