Guild Wars 2

it’s truly frustrating, infuriating at time to see this gem of a game reduced to such state. Here we are, two years after release and each profession got at most a couple of builds commonly used in PvP, in some case.. a single build (ele/Mesmer).

In the beginning you Devs promised us that having fewer skills would have facilitated the balancing of the game, faster updates and greater build variety compared to GW1.
I see nothing of what you promised with all due respect.

The minimum number of builds you could have for each profession was 4, and the number of skills you were able to use out of thousand….was even smaller than the current total number of skills available in GW2.

Take ele for example, I could choose between 5 viable elites( searing flames, shockwave, mind blast, blinding flash, invoke ) out of 12 elites…in GW2 I have at most 1 and half elite out of 3, how is it possible?.

At this point I know that the generalization is too much, GW1 and Gw2 are two different games I know, still the simplification we see in GW2 should have made the game better according to you….

To create more build options for each class should be a top priority for the devs, my 2 cents.

You still feel the need to post this with an expansion on the way?

Supreme.3164:

Take ele for example, I could choose between 5 viable elites( searing flames, shockwave, mind blast, blinding flash, invoke ) out of 12 elites…in GW2 I have at most 1 and half elite out of 3, how is it possible?.

That is a gross overstatement: we have at most 0.5 elites (glyph of elementals)!

Build diversity is hard here because, and I’m just being honest:
1.) Top tier players focus on the absolute “best” and when considering esports, those are the builds focused on. Everything else takes a backseat. They basically become display builds for the classes. They tend to make too insignificant of changes to underperforming builds to change that unless something is fret over nerfed. (With some exceptions, dhuumfire was a bit out of left field.)

2.) Low tier PvP keeps a lot of build diversity from happening because it’s taboo for a high skill floor to be overly effective, despite its high tier effectiveness. So instead of increasing the skill cap, it’s often handled with a “kill it with fire” by the community, and that also tends to be the easiest on developers because it’s not easy to rebalance fairly, pushing something out of use though is much easier.

3.) Some abilities require far too much investment to be use outside of a traited “obvious” spec, for example Spirits, Minions, Meditations, to an extent warrior Shouts, Spirit weapons, most thief venoms except maybe the immobilize and elite.

These skills are too lack luster to use much of in normal builds and require too much investment to make them worthy, so you end up with “all of nothing” niche builds or they’re otherwise not often very utilized.

That is opposed to other skills that fit in ANYwhere, such as Spectral Armor (even though I feel it’s a bit lacuster, it requires no traits for effectiveness), stances, decoy/blink, shadow step and refuge.

There are many skills that are too potent and don’t require traits to be effective allowing the person to focus on themselves and I feel it keeps a lot of abilities out of general use.

My 2 cents!

im sorry, your complaining about how many skills you get to use in pvp. Its a bit silly because your talking the elite skill where 1/2 the people use the greatsword or the glyph. Im sorry but what do you want? Theres 3 elite builds, 1 staff, 1 d/d and 1 s/f. Seriously you have a choice, what else are you looking for? Your seriously complaining becuase you want more options?

Also this isnt gw1, only robots could play gw1. Alot of the gw1 fans obviously bought this game thinking it expand off of that but this game is so much better in every aspect other then lore, all im asking is you to take that game for what it was and see the beauty in this system.

This game has more viable PVP builds than any nearly all other PVP MMO’s.

I haven’t played a PVP MMO with more viable builds and I’ve played a lot.

What this guy said ^^^^^

This isn’t guild wars 1. Guild wars 1 had a problem where it a lot of lot of skills but those skills were simply a slightly more potent version of another skill.

Yes, developers promise stuff and it did not delivered in the way you imagined they would, that is life.

Shiyo.3578:

This game has more viable PVP builds than any nearly all other PVP MMO’s.

I haven’t played a PVP MMO with more viable builds and I’ve played a lot.

whats REALLY REALLY sad is that this is very true.

It is funny and sad that on necro we pretty much run the same spec (terror) now as we did 2 years ago.

Only thing was 2 years ago necro was fun as the game was more skill based and less about dying to air sigil procs.

Try playing the same spec for 2 years and then you will realise how one of the BEST games EVER has been failed by a lack of updates to keep things fresh.

That’s good design, it makes it much easier to balance the game. Would you prefer WOW style flip flop from op to up style balancing?

I don’t see how the system lends itself to build variety until physical damage skills get base damage in addition to scaling.

GW2 has build diversity i just wish meta would change more often and we wouldn’t be stuck with garbage like celestial for a year

its always fun to see complaints about the lack of diversity in builds and compare it to gw1 which supposedly had millions of builds.
truth is gw1 had for each class 3-4 builds in the meta too. 90% of the skills where not effective or to obscure to be seen as useful, and even with pvp skill updates the meta quickly reset itself to very few builds.
in pve even you ahd to have THIS ONE BUILD to even be concidered to be brought along.
Diversity my butt.