Guild Wars 2

Gap closers (or openers) are abilities which rapidly move you from point a to be, such as teleports, leaps, charges, etc. These are diferintiated from speed boosts.

One major part of tactical play involves and centres around lines of combat. Where they are, when people cross them, and how effectively you can punish someone for ‘diving’ or crossing your front lines threat range.

Even in chess, an archaic and classic game which often seems a scrambled mess of threats and counter threat, zone control plays an important and highly spectatable role.

gap closers trivialize this. They enable dives, which permiate front lines and they also allow back liners free escape from enemy dives. It makes your game harder to watch or understand for the uninitiated and it generally leads to a scrambled mess that’s difficult to understand from a distance.

in short: while interesting, gap closers should be issued sparingly. Gw2 hands them out abundantly. I optomistically consider this a ssymptom of PvE. please remove.

Changing gap closers would be tantamount to redesigning the game. With less gap closers, you’d need to reduce the number of gap openers. With less gap closers, you’d have to adjust melee damage lest you make ranged the clearly superior option in any fight. You’d also have to re-examine any root/snare/stun.

In short, don’t count on it.

Dude, you seem to dislike this game a lot. Now you hating on gap closers? Leave hem be, they are integral to the way combat works in GW2 which is fine.

I do dislike the game alot. Gap closers are a good starting point for why:

yes, you would have to redesign a alot of this game if you changed gap closers. Much of this game needs redesigning

In your opinion only, and luckily your opinion is rather insignificant in the broader scheme.

If you don’t like the game don’t play the game. Don’t create 5 threads/day complaining about the game.

I want the devas to read this forum and feel guilty that they ruined a good IP and didn’t deliver on advertisements. Hopefully they won’t kitten up whatever game they’re hired onto next.

but aside from my deep and passionate dislike for what they did with gw2… gap closers, seriously this is one of my few constructive threads. Most of the timeI just say wah I hate arenanet,

Maybe, just maybe, the next time one of these developers is hired to write a sequel, they’ll play the original and talk to original players about what keeps them interested.

LooI i have followed other sequels before. Im a tribes fan. HiRez made some mistakes, but they made a tribes game. i offer quality feedback and give them kudos for not following T:V. i have lots of criticisms for them, but im polite and i respect them.

arenanet done kittened up too much for respect, they get scorn and keyboard wrath! maybe next time they’ll learn. maybe one thing they’ll consider next time will be the importance that positioning plays in any form of strategic gameplay – and how gap closers undermine that. again, some gap closers OK, blink would have started as an ultimate in my version of gw2, but it would be there.

ryston.7640:

Gap closers (or openers) are abilities which rapidly move you from point a to be, such as teleports, leaps, charges, etc. These are diferintiated from speed boosts.

Okay, let’s talk about gap closers.

ryston.7640:

One major part of tactical play involves and centres around lines of combat. Where they are, when people cross them, and how effectively you can punish someone for ‘diving’ or crossing your front lines threat range.

Even in chess, an archaic and classic game which often seems a scrambled mess of threats and counter threat, zone control plays an important and highly spectatable role.

Lines of combat also tend to make games a little static in my opinion. Since you mention Chess I would like to bring up the game of Go (or Baduk). In scope it easily matches Chess but it doesn’t have the same “frontline combat” as Chess. In fact, you are able to place your stones whereever you wish (unless you commit suicide). The question is: Can your opponent punish you for a reckless move?

ryston.7640:

gap closers trivialize this. They enable dives, which permiate front lines and they also allow back liners free escape from enemy dives. It makes your game harder to watch or understand for the uninitiated and it generally leads to a scrambled mess that’s difficult to understand from a distance.

in short: while interesting, gap closers should be issued sparingly. Gw2 hands them out abundantly. I optomistically consider this a ssymptom of PvE. please remove.

Gap closers may trivialize frontlines but so what? The developers never promised up frontline combat in GW2. Gap closers give you more opportunities to attack but using them isn’t a free ticket out of danger. You can maneuver yourself into a dangerous place when using them recklessly.

From an observer standpoint I can’t really see a difference. When spectating a game of Chess or Go (Baduk) or Gw2, it only makes sense if you know at least the basics of the game. If you have no idea of the rules of Chess, observing a game of Chess will be boring. Once the observer knows about gap closers (and other things), observed games will be less “messy” to watch.

Gap closers and gap openers increase the complexity of combat. It’s not a free ticket to a kill. You still have to judge when to use it wisely. For example. As a mesmer, I have blink. It could be used to create a gap or close a gap. I"m melee, but I generally use it for creating a gap if i need breathing room, but once in a while i’ll use it to close one. But when I’m fighting guardians, I know they will teleport to me. So if I use my blink too soon, I wont have anything to escape when they teleport on top of me. So either he uses his first and I counter by using mine right after, or I use mine first and he counters by using his right after. Or someone uses a knock back attack on me. I could quickly close that gap created by the knock back. But if that person waited for me to use my gap closer before knocking me back, he can control the fight so he’s always in a position to keep me at a distance and kite. It always keeps me on my toes and I have to always be aware of what my opponent can use to create or close a gap, and when is the best time to use mine so I can counter.

I think the combat in this game is to complex for some people. It truly is easy to play but hard to master. Doing away with gap closers/gap openers would only make combat less fun, more static, and no one would melee. And I could maybe see your point if in this game everyone was either melee or ranged. But everyone can be both. Someone gets in your face, switch to your swords or axes or w/e and start hacking away. Someone creates a gap and is kiting you, you can’t close the gap so switch to a ranged wep and shoot them far far. I love the complexity of the combat. I think it’s genius and genius is often times lost on some people.

Gap closers are there to balance the advantage of ranged over melee. Warrior deserves more gap closers IMO, either that or more condi clears to deal with how badly they get kited right now (maybe make signet of stamina instant cast and bring CD down to 25s, or swap out passive burst damage on Discipline trait line for -condi duration).

They nerfed RLT on ele pretty hard, but they might need to bring the CD up to flat 40s in PvP (even if it hits someone, maybe 30). Overall, a ranged class archetype should never have more access to gap closers than a melee class archetype. The fact that many classes can simply spam gap closers for roaming should testify to their abundance in GW2, there’s nothing wrong with this abundance, but it must be distributed fairly between melee and ranged builds.

Gap closers are countered by movement-impairing skills. If gap closers were reduced, by necessity all cripples, chills, immobilizes, knockbacks, knockdowns, and stuns would need to be reduced as well—otherwise all melee builds would instantly become non-viable.