Guild Wars 2

Here is the main reason that GW2 currently has a low skill gap and low skill ceiling: Failing to properly use your defensive cooldowns is far too forgiving in this game.

Because professions have so many defensive and escape tools, you can get away with mindless dodging, blocking, and blinding, and often mitigate enough damage through uncaring use of defensive cooldowns to then pop your heal and reset the fight. As a basic principle, if you are using your dodges to mitigate 1-spam that barely scratches you, but then are eating the damage from longer-cooldown offensive abilities, you should die. But currently, as long as you are running a balanced build or a bunker build, you can get away with using defensive abilities at idiotic times, but nonetheless staying alive long enough to heal and reset the fight. That’s abhorrent from a skill-gap perspective.

It is clear that Arena Net does not view offense as a major source for creating skill gaps. Skill shots are not rewarded appropriately. AI is capable of doing massive amounts of damage. And the easiest offensive classes in the game require very little effort to pull off effectively. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this design. It has instant appeal to new players who typically care more about offense than defense, so it makes sense to have a fast learning curve and low skill ceiling on offense.

But defense should be a different story in this game. Defense actually creates opportunities for reaction-based play by reading animations and responding appropriately. Defense requires a rich understanding of multiple classes. The sort of intelligent, reaction-based play that you can achieve defensively is exactly what you need to increase the skill-gap and skill-ceiling in this game. But then Arena Net gave classes way too many dodges, heals, blinds, blocks, and invulns, so that you don’t actually have to think about what your opponents are really doing, you can basically just play your own healthbar and stay alive.

But the good news is that it can be fixed.

I think the risk vs reward of all abilities need to be re-examined. I typed a long post but it got erased when my browser decided to close so I will try to keep it shorter.

There are 2 thief skills that I think are worth examining for this discussion, cloak and dagger and heartseeker.

I think cloak and dagger is a well designed skill, it is melee (130) range and has a .5s cast time. If you aren’t using steal or some other gap closer to insure its hit, it actually takes some skill to land.

Now compare that to heartseeker. It is a 300 range gap closer, leap finisher and a huge source of damage which is spammable. Instead of asking for a straight nerf to what it does, I would rather see a change in its difficulty of execution. Even making it so that it was 300 range but not a gap closer would allow it to remain strong but not a total crutch for a thief who can’t stick close to a target.

Here are a bunch of ideas for allowing abilities with higher risk vs reward:

Ground targeted
Rooted in place
Long cast times
A cast time period
Provides negative effects to the user: i.e engi’s overcharged shot, or one which would snare you after use or something similar.

However, I think that if you were to look at the abilities which do have negative effects attached to them, they pale in comparison to abilities available to others which have just as much of an impact but no negative side effects.

I know these changes would take a bit of an overhaul of some skills but lets be realistic here, this game is in a beta state and it needs some bold decisions to be made to right its course.

Generally good post seether. Against my own interest (since i play a thief) i have to confess heart seeker is a little Op.

My experience with mmos lends me to belive a very small nerf would do the trick. But some small balancing on that skill woudlnt be terrible.

It’s interesting that you say the game is too forgiving on the defensive side. A double-cantrip ele is pretty forgiving, for example. As long as a thief saves some initiative, he can always shortbow out. Guardians rotate through defensive cooldowns.

On the other hand, warriors must position well or die. Necros are also generally unforgiving defensively, even with the double-health bar. Spamming dodge doesn’t exactly save those professions.

In general, dealing damage is pretty easy. Most damage in teamfights seems to come from AoE, auto-aimed closers (heartseeker, etc.), and shatters. You might have to time those skills well, but they will never miss unless the defender actively avoids them.

So I would say we need to keep defensive cooldowns strong, at least for now. It’s so easy to land damage that the real skill of the game is avoiding a little bit more of your opponents’ damage so you kill them first. No one wins by pulling off a leet heartseeker.

I would argue that the skill-gap is actually the gap between the average and expert players.

I agree with your assessment about the types of skills and how you can generally get away with “spamming” or using defensives without thinking about it. That is to be said of average players. I think for the people that DO know the proper timing and when to use said skills against specific class and specs properly, there is a large payoff.

I can’t think of a game where the difference between an average player and an expert (pro if you will) is so visibly evident and effective.

So if this problem is truly all you see, then you just might not be facing good players enough. I am definitely not claiming that I am one of these players, but I have played to the point where I have encountered them and noticed the difference.

There is def a reason to master your class and to figure out all the classes and specs you will come up against.

You can see the defensive cooldown skill gap most at work with glass cannon builds, actually. As a glass cannon, you dodge at the right time or die. Noobs cannot pull off running a Zerker’s, where experienced players can.

However, there is a major defensive-based skill gap issue when a class has so many defensive utilities, that they can literally botch half of them and still enjoy a fight reset. By fight reset, I mean that they are literally able to get back to full health through healing, while their defensive abilities come back off cooldown. Now, if only a super skilled player were able to accomplish this, great. But currently, it’s fairly easy for a much larger percentage of the player population to achieve these fight resets even when playing badly.

I do definitely concede though that you can experience just how great the defensive-based skill gap is by playing glass cannon, but right now, the risk-reward from going that route just isn’t there because you can go full glass and because the game has such a defensive-bent, it can still at times be difficult to punish players that are not effectively using defensive cooldowns.

Bunker guardians are the worst to fight against – Unless you can stun/daze them and burst them down from 60-70ish %, you’re guaranteed to see the words “Block” or “Immune” while you watch them heal to full – over and over and over and over again. At least when I fight a bunker Ele I feel like if they were to screw up, the fight would tip in my favor.

I think an issue might be that the defensive skills provide largely binary outcomes. You are either taking full damage or no damage at all. Blinds, blocks, invulns, dodges all completely negate damage. Weakness and Protection are the only defensive effects that don’t result in all or nothing damage distributions.

I believe these binary outcomes is why we see most builds being nearly pure glass or nearly pure bunker with limited numbers of viable hybrid builds. Since power/precision/crit builds scale exponentially while defense scales linearly in order to hybridize many builds you have to give up a lot of damage to get a small increase in survivability. Since the vast majority of your avoided/mitigated damage comes through using dodges/other abilities that mitigate all incoming damage, having a small decrease in the unavoided damage isn’t worth the loss of damage to hybridize a build.

I imagine that people would be going for more survivability if dodge only negated say 75% of the damage and stopped ccs from affecting you while dodging.

Seether.7285:

I think an issue might be that the defensive skills provide largely binary outcomes. You are either taking full damage or no damage at all. Blinds, blocks, invulns, dodges all completely negate damage. Weakness and Protection are the only defensive effects that don’t result in all or nothing damage distributions.

I believe these binary outcomes is why we see most builds being nearly pure glass or nearly pure bunker with limited numbers of viable hybrid builds. Since power/precision/crit builds scale exponentially while defense scales linearly in order to hybridize many builds you have to give up a lot of damage to get a small increase in survivability. Since the vast majority of your avoided/mitigated damage comes through using dodges/other abilities that mitigate all incoming damage, having a small decrease in the unavoided damage isn’t worth the loss of damage to hybridize a build.

I imagine that people would be going for more survivability if dodge only negated say 75% of the damage and stopped ccs from affecting you while dodging.

Well I moved from bunker ele to guardian for tourneys for the point control and stability benefits, but as a bunker guardian I feel so slow and clunky. My damage is terrible, but I do what I am meant to do very well, I can hold a point against multiple players for a good amount of time (depending on classes and skill level of the opponents obviously) but it is terrible for a 1v1. I just don’t have the damage in a 1v1 fight to drop the enemy, in group fights its a little different as I can sit and dps away and get lost in the chaos for the most part. Try player a bunker hammer guardian against a LBD thief with caltrops and heavily specced for steal thing frequently, it’s a nightmare right now for me, as the hammer is so slow, they spam LDB and just evade my attacks, while dropping caltrops then they kite around off point and stealth till they can LDB invincible again. I think some abilities (like spammable evades) offer to much reward for little risk, but that’s just me. (I know the same is true with guardians and other classes, not defending the class I play). I also play a thief, and I ran caltrops and LDB build for quite awhile when backstab was big, after awhile I just got really bored as it didn’t feel right just dropping loltrops and spamming evade, then stealth when you need to regen initiative, it just felt really cheesey to me. Anyways I agree about the Risk v. Reward needing to be re-evaluated on some skills, I have played all of the professions to learn them, (only played a few on the engi) and I think it can be applied to all classes in some area, thieves only stick out more to others because their skills are spammable. I’m not complaining about thieves just expressing my opinion.

Atlas.6901:

Here is the main reason that GW2 currently has a low skill gap and low skill ceiling: Failing to properly use your defensive cooldowns is far too forgiving in this game.

Because professions have so many defensive and escape tools, you can get away with mindless dodging, blocking, and blinding, and often mitigate enough damage through uncaring use of defensive cooldowns to then pop your heal and reset the fight. As a basic principle, if you are using your dodges to mitigate 1-spam that barely scratches you, but then are eating the damage from longer-cooldown offensive abilities, you should die. But currently, as long as you are running a balanced build or a bunker build, you can get away with using defensive abilities at idiotic times, but nonetheless staying alive long enough to heal and reset the fight. That’s abhorrent from a skill-gap perspective.

It is clear that Arena Net does not view offense as a major source for creating skill gaps. Skill shots are not rewarded appropriately. AI is capable of doing massive amounts of damage. And the easiest offensive classes in the game require very little effort to pull off effectively. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this design. It has instant appeal to new players who typically care more about offense than defense, so it makes sense to have a fast learning curve and low skill ceiling on offense.

But defense should be a different story in this game. Defense actually creates opportunities for reaction-based play by reading animations and responding appropriately. Defense requires a rich understanding of multiple classes. The sort of intelligent, reaction-based play that you can achieve defensively is exactly what you need to increase the skill-gap and skill-ceiling in this game. But then Arena Net gave classes way too many dodges, heals, blinds, blocks, and invulns, so that you don’t actually have to think about what your opponents are really doing, you can basically just play your own healthbar and stay alive.

But the good news is that it can be fixed.

I’m sorry, but you’re saying this game has a low skill-ceiling?

1. No player or team in this game is anywhere near reaching the skill-ceiling in this game.
2. I don’t see your name anywhere on the QP ladder
3. Where does that put you in comparison, and how can you say the skill-ceiling is low?

Sorry if that’s mean, but this is how I see it: if you don’t consistently play at the top then I don’t think you should be talking about how the skill-ceiling is low.

But yes, bunker and glass cannon builds are relatively easy to play at a low skill level. They scale very well as you improve both on an individual and team level. Thus you can’t really say this game has a low skill-ceiling.

basically having all these dodges, heals, blinds, blocks, and invulns is a good thing, and as the game gets older you will start to see the difference between someone who uses these things well and someone who does not.

The same goes on the offensive side of things, but that’s more about team coordination, which is basically non-existent in this game right now. But it will get there in time.

Problem is to, while these defensive options may seem really strong in small scenarios(1v1, 2v2) you also have to balance around large team battles, when players can die in seconds under focused burst.

I will have to disagree with you.
It is true that people can spec in such a way that they can survive a lot of mistakes. However, their damage will suffer in that case. Hence while they will be able to live long with mediocre performance they will, at the same time, not be able to kill anything.
The better you become the less you should spec in a way that your defensive mistakes are forgiven and put more into offensive capabilities (supposedly your survivability will stay high due to skill but now you will be able to kill more opponents and kill them faster).
So I do not think that tradeoff between offense and defense has been designed badly, rather it is a problem of (the only) official game mode available. This would be obvious to people who 1v1 a lot (or generally play deathmatch type of game). Small (yes aoe can pretty much cover it) point control, the (only) official game mode ppl play, besides being really bad pointless and boring, is giving importance to these pointless specs that put everything (or almost everything) into defense and do not have to do any dmg essentially. His job is to ‘hold the point’ as long as possible, and the most forgiving way to do that is to ‘tank up’.
In deathmatch this build would be almost completely useless, they cannot provide any help to the team to kill enemy, so that is 20% dps loss to the team right there (assuming team of 5), while defensively they would not help much either because they would be ignored and just killed last after all dps-ers are dead and enemy team can focus on them.
So blame the designers for forcing us to play this boring game mode (guilty), not for bad core design (not guilty).

I would also blame devs for mixing up ‘skill’ with ‘robotic key pressing’. They call elementalist a class with ‘high skill requirement’. No, d/d ele has no skill requirement pretty much in its current state. As it is a bot could play it and achieve better results than 99% of players out there. Class requires pretty much no reaction to what enemy is doing (except to pop stuns/invuls and even that can be programmed (on stun or on low health) ). It even does not require you to face target much (since skills autoturn you, autoclose/charge, and they are largely aoes). Just robotic key sequence pressing gives excellent bunker results and what is worse they also do decent dmg (aoe on top of all). No devs, that is not ‘high skill requirement’, anyone can learn proper key sequence with some practice and keep pressing them over and over again. Skill is in properly reacting to other player, playing mind games with them, properly positioning yourself when taking offensive action (yes facing proper direction when casting a spell, not facing 180 degrees away from enemy and letting the spell autoturn you)….

What i would also blame devs for in terms of bad design is: autoturning. “Ride the lightining” will go after target even if you are facing the other way. Same with ‘heartseeker’ etc. Same with ton of other attacks. Really? You should attack in the direction you face and if you miss, well…too kittening bad, learn to face your target.

Follidus.8027:

1. No player or team in this game is anywhere near reaching the skill-ceiling in this game.
2. I don’t see your name anywhere on the QP ladder
3. Where does that put you in comparison, and how can you say the skill-ceiling is low?

1. The post was specifically focused on increasing individual skill gap, not team-based skill gaps. There is a huge difference between those two concepts. If you think this game has a individual high skill ceiling as designed, you are delusional.

2. True. I am not currently playing on an organized team, which makes it hard to gain QP.

3. Irrelevant. See above. How can I say the skill ceiling is low? Re-read my original post, which explains my views on the issue with individual skill gap in this game.

Your post is not mean, just idiotic. Anybody who has ever played a real competitive game, including games with complete joke competitive communities (like most FPS titles, sans Counterstrike) view GW2 right now as beyond irrelevant. So, while you might be proud of your QP accomplishments and think you are therefore an authority or guiding light for GW2 skill-based commentary, you might table your urge to pat yourself on the back and actually consider the content of your posts.

For all you know or don’t know, I could be a very skilled gamer who has played various titles competitively at a very high level, albeit mostly FPS games, and a person whose vast experience qualifies me to comment, even if I do not currently have the time, patience, or desire to grind QP points.

In any event, here’s the basic point broken down for you (because you might be too dense or blinded by your self-deluded view of your personal accomplishments to digest this otherwise):

In my view, reactionary defensive play has the greatest prospect for creating a robust individual skill gap given the current game design (which does not focus on rewarding skill shots and other difficult offensive play). However, defense is trivialized when classes have an over-abundance of it, such that the margins for error are so high that most players (beyond the top 1-3%) can either maximize or come close to maximizing defensive effectiveness. Therefore, one solution would be to take a close look at defensive cooldowns to determine whether they should be toned down, so that players will be punished more severely for failing to identify the proper times to use those abilities.

You can debate the merits of the point, but honestly dude, tossing QP into this debate is sort of the pinnacle of d-chery. If that’s what you were going for, gratz.

Mufa.1326:

The better you become the less you should spec in a way that your defensive mistakes are forgiven and put more into offensive capabilities (supposedly your survivability will stay high due to skill but now you will be able to kill more opponents and kill them faster).

Good comments, of which I pulled out one nugget. I agree with this completely, and as I mentioned briefly, I do think that the game’s skill gap is most evident when you see glass cannons playing effectively because they do manage to effectively use their defensive cooldowns, where a failure to do so means death.

I think my basic point is that it should be more difficult to spec in such a way that you aren’t facing certain death if you screw up. If you are glass, and you screw up, you should die. But if you aren’t glass, and you screw up a few times, you should also die. As is, the game seems to be balanced so that you can make a hell of a lot of mistakes and keep on trucking. Granted, maybe you sack damage to be able to avoid dying. However, if you can constantly reset fights, then you basically get infinite tries to either get it right or force a stalemate. And that seems like a problem.

I don’t see anything wrong with how the skill cap progresses in GW2 (I use to think the same as you OP, but have since come to realize so much of this game is based on
skill timing’ than builds).

Being able to get out of fights at key times and reset the fight is how it was intended to be, and there’s really no reason to fix it. Although I see where you are coming from OP (as I once were) the reality is this: GW2 combat has set itself to be in a sense like an rts game in terms of using skill abilities, and then in a sense ‘a lot’ like an FPS game in terms of timing the skill mechanics.

But the difference in terms of player skills is not just based on builds alone which many GW2 players seems to believe. It is also based on the “timing” of your skills (ie. how to take advantage of the person when he’s down, stuned, immobolized, etc.), awareness of simultaneous stats (ie. using condi. remover when noticing a stack of bleeds starting to stack), and most importantly your “quickness” to react/execute (if you have lag, you are screwed, because if a person leaps at you and you’re about to finish casting a knock-back skill while the guy is leaping in midair, but you lag for a momentary sec…. you don’t make the play). So basically, if you want to be at a higher skill cap in GW2, work on your timings.

Even in more competitive tourney matches that I’ve seen, the PvP right now is more of a solo oriented game (like typical FPS matches) where low number encounters happens more often than actual ‘entire team vs entire team’ scenarios. And often times the bigger/rare plays in the game happens when someone ‘interrupts’ the skill of another player (ie. a person is using ‘Signet of Mercy’ while 2 of his teamates are down and he gets smacked across the map by a warriors Rifle Butt…. that’s an example of a game-changing defensive play that wasn’t about offensively doing damage).

Like I mentioned and I’ll do it again; it’s mostly 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 in GW2’s PvP (5v5). So no matter what combo is used in teamfights, the PvP itself is still oriented around those self-builds/skilled mechanics which are gravitated against taking advantage on a “single ~ low number of opponents”.

So to OP: If you’re looking at why “failing to properly use your defensive cooldowns is far too forgiving in this game”, it’s because in most cases instantly dying in a 1v1 is not fun in pug games where nobody knows how to time their skills properly, as oppose to a pro that has his mechanics perfected under his sleep.

So what am I saying that a pro can do? A pro can make a fast enough/accurately timed play that disallow players from resetting, by A) knowing how to lock the person in range with build & skill combo, B ) ^having no butter fingers — Time things accurately and not kitten up, and C) Have no lag!! There ain’t no pro gamer out there who plays with lag, because how are you suppose to time a Rifle Butt at someone if by the time your skill executes the dude’s already 1 feet outside your range.

[And when I say pro, I mean any player who makes highly-skilled plays in a game]

-

In summary, first take an FPS game -> get rid of crosshair and put in autoaim & autotarget -> replace bullets with skills -> add some RTS elements of ‘classes’ to it ; you get how GW2’s PvP gameplay works.

And then think of it like… in a typical FPS pug games, the players uses a lot of bullets to kill one guy. But in competitive FPS, even the dude who uses spray only kills his opponents with 2-3 bullets.

Now take those two ideas, and try to understand the follow two concepts:

- how much damage you do in an FPS game is determined by where you aim.
- how much damage you do in GW2 is determined by your build / how you use them.

How you get from lower tier to a higher tier in both FPS games and GW2 is exactly the same, with slightly different criteria.

Atlas.6901:

Follidus.8027:

1. No player or team in this game is anywhere near reaching the skill-ceiling in this game.
2. I don’t see your name anywhere on the QP ladder
3. Where does that put you in comparison, and how can you say the skill-ceiling is low?

1. The post was specifically focused on increasing individual skill gap, not team-based skill gaps. There is a huge difference between those two concepts. If you think this game has a individual high skill ceiling as designed, you are delusional.

2. True. I am not currently playing on an organized team, which makes it hard to gain QP.

3. Irrelevant. See above. How can I say the skill ceiling is low? Re-read my original post, which explains my views on the issue with individual skill gap in this game.

Your post is not mean, just idiotic. Anybody who has ever played a real competitive game, including games with complete joke competitive communities (like most FPS titles, sans Counterstrike) view GW2 right now as beyond irrelevant. So, while you might be proud of your QP accomplishments and think you are therefore an authority or guiding light for GW2 skill-based commentary, you might table your urge to pat yourself on the back and actually consider the content of your posts.

For all you know or don’t know, I could be a very skilled gamer who has played various titles competitively at a very high level, albeit mostly FPS games, and a person whose vast experience qualifies me to comment, even if I do not currently have the time, patience, or desire to grind QP points.

In any event, here’s the basic point broken down for you (because you might be too dense or blinded by your self-deluded view of your personal accomplishments to digest this otherwise):

In my view, reactionary defensive play has the greatest prospect for creating a robust individual skill gap given the current game design (which does not focus on rewarding skill shots and other difficult offensive play). However, defense is trivialized when classes have an over-abundance of it, such that the margins for error are so high that most players (beyond the top 1-3%) can either maximize or come close to maximizing defensive effectiveness. Therefore, one solution would be to take a close look at defensive cooldowns to determine whether they should be toned down, so that players will be punished more severely for failing to identify the proper times to use those abilities.

You can debate the merits of the point, but honestly dude, tossing QP into this debate is sort of the pinnacle of d-chery. If that’s what you were going for, gratz.

I’m going to agree with follidus here, I’m not on a team either and i got 110 QP so yeah…

but back to the main argument. You’re claim is that GW2 has a low skill ceiling in comparison to common FPS. In that sense you’re absolutely correct. I’ve talked to people on top tier TF2 and counterstrike teams and they’d probably agree with me that it’s 80% aim and 20% strategy that makes a good player.

But this is not a FPS, the only thing that involves aiming is fatty circles for your aoes and fire dash on elementalists. This game acts as a median between strategy and skill. It’s smack in the middle between league of legends and your FPSs when it comes to skill and strategy.

Anyway, to further explain myself, every game will have skill tiers even crates. Right now i see the tiers as: PvE casuals|Hotjoin casuals|Free Tourny players| Paid tournament players| And then the guys who actually win paid tournaments regularly.

in TF2 it might be: Hat Traders|PUB noobs| PUB Stars|Lobby lurkers|Highlander league players|amateur league players| then invite level

It’s all the same, there is a skill gap and no one has hit the skill ceiling yet the game has only been out for 3 months…

Atlas.6901:

Follidus.8027:

1. No player or team in this game is anywhere near reaching the skill-ceiling in this game.
2. I don’t see your name anywhere on the QP ladder
3. Where does that put you in comparison, and how can you say the skill-ceiling is low?

1. The post was specifically focused on increasing individual skill gap, not team-based skill gaps. There is a huge difference between those two concepts. If you think this game has a individual high skill ceiling as designed, you are delusional.

2. True. I am not currently playing on an organized team, which makes it hard to gain QP.

3. Irrelevant. See above. How can I say the skill ceiling is low? Re-read my original post, which explains my views on the issue with individual skill gap in this game.

Your post is not mean, just idiotic. Anybody who has ever played a real competitive game, including games with complete joke competitive communities (like most FPS titles, sans Counterstrike) view GW2 right now as beyond irrelevant. So, while you might be proud of your QP accomplishments and think you are therefore an authority or guiding light for GW2 skill-based commentary, you might table your urge to pat yourself on the back and actually consider the content of your posts.

For all you know or don’t know, I could be a very skilled gamer who has played various titles competitively at a very high level, albeit mostly FPS games, and a person whose vast experience qualifies me to comment, even if I do not currently have the time, patience, or desire to grind QP points.

In any event, here’s the basic point broken down for you (because you might be too dense or blinded by your self-deluded view of your personal accomplishments to digest this otherwise):

In my view, reactionary defensive play has the greatest prospect for creating a robust individual skill gap given the current game design (which does not focus on rewarding skill shots and other difficult offensive play). However, defense is trivialized when classes have an over-abundance of it, such that the margins for error are so high that most players (beyond the top 1-3%) can either maximize or come close to maximizing defensive effectiveness. Therefore, one solution would be to take a close look at defensive cooldowns to determine whether they should be toned down, so that players will be punished more severely for failing to identify the proper times to use those abilities.

You can debate the merits of the point, but honestly dude, tossing QP into this debate is sort of the pinnacle of d-chery. If that’s what you were going for, gratz.

1. This is not a 1v1 game, so team play and team coordination can’t be ignored. Especially if you’re going to go on about how defenses are too high in a 1v1 environment. This game is not built for 1v1. Classes might have “too many” defensive abilities for a 1v1 (they don’t), but it balances out in team fights. In a low skill environment a bunker, or any class really, can get away by just spamming abilities. As players improve this is no longer true, which is my next point.

2. Because you lack a team, and because you don’t play top teams on a consistent basis means your experience in this game is what, free tournaments and hot join? In the same way you can’t determine how skillful WoW is from just doing BGs, or how skillful counter-strike is from pubs, you can’t determine how skillful or unskillful this game is at this point in time if you aren’t playing and winning paids against top teams.

3. QPs are like being a gladiator in WoW. It’s not hard to get a lot of QPs, and it certainly doesn’t mean you’re good. But if you aren’t able to reach that point, which means for whatever reason you aren’t able to compete with the best players at the current time, then who are you to say this game has a low skill-cap? Who are you to say you know what the skill-cap is when you’re not near it. Who are you to say you know what the skill-cap is when no one is near it? This is what I’m getting at. The game is vastly different than what you see in hot join, duels, or free tournament queues.

Also, where in my post did I say I was good? Where in my post did I say I have a million QPs so I’m better than everyone else? The truth is, I’m not very good at this game. I have miles and miles to go in terms of improvement before I would call myself “good.” So you can drop that entire distraction.

The reason for this? Because the game has a high skill-cap. However, the mindset that most people tend to gravitate towards is that they’re amazing at gaming and it’s the game that’s why they aren’t having success. Be it balance, low-skill cap, too many defensive abilities, or whatever excuses you want to make up to make yourself feel better.

HappinessFactory.4910:

A) But this is not a FPS, the only thing that involves aiming is fatty circles for your aoes and fire dash on elementalists.

B) This game acts as a median between strategy and skill. It’s smack in the middle between league of legends and your FPSs when it comes to skill and strategy.

A) You do realize that there are two parts to how ‘having a good aim’ works in FPS games.

1) You got to have good enough coordination to click on the guy when he’s running and jumping around with a 1-2 cm plus shape sign at the middle of your screen (or however big that typical tiny crosshair is; it always seems too small for my liking^ indicative of why I play a soldier in TF2).

2) When you click on the guy, you got to understand what ping you have. In tf2, there’s something called cl_interp (default 0.5, you want it set to 0.0152). That makes you shoot faster the lower you have it (and you can have it lower with lower pings, but by default it’s just at 0.5 [in seconds]).

Think about two Soldiers with 1 hp; the person that fires and lands his rockets against the other person first – Wins. Fat circle or small circle; it requires first that you hit, and secondly that the time from clicking -> rocket coming out of launch -> rocket hitting the other person -> hitbox registering damage = processed faster than the other player’s in terms of packets delivery.

B)ut getting to your other point….. I can see what you mean by “this game acts as a median between strategy and skill”, it’s a good point you brought up; one that (again) I can see where you’re coming from……… but it’s just 100% inaccurate & a general mislead that the public has about GW2’s PvP.

1) League of legends have far more mechanics variety than GW2. At least 50 heroes with at least 1-2 special mechanics within each hero, vs. 8 classes that at best has 2-4 core builds amongst them.

2) GW2 is a 3D game!!! This game is as close to an FPS game as just missing a crosshair in the game (even though that’s quite a major MISS); the point is that it ain’t got league’s ‘core gameplay’ whatsoever. If you want to debate against it, then let me recall somethings about your previous mentioning of TF2:
Isn’t a Soldier in TF2 a burst class? Isn’t a Pyro in TF2 a DPS class? Isn’t a medic in TF2 a healer (no duh) class? So is TF2 really a FPS game or an RTS game? Actually no need for a debate, we all know that “Team Fortress 2” is a FPS game.

And I would go as far as calling it out-right ‘wrong’ to judge a game’s genre based on gameplay visual rather than gameplay structure. How GW2’s gameplay is structured (ie. the way that players mechanically function while combating…) is much much closer to an FPS game rather than RTS (it ain’t no equally spaced median). Like I had mentioned, if GW2 had a crosshair – it be called an FPS game especially in that case you take out a rifle on a warrior or a dual pistol on a thief.

There ain’t no depth strategy. Players see other players, they fight, trade hits, move around the map while shooting….. cough – my bad, I mean casting spells, and you’re going to tell us that that’s a median between FPS and RTS in terms of gameplay structure?

Anyway you want look at it; GW2 combat is FPS-style with like the S in FPS extended towards the primitive mechanics of RT ‘S’, Strategy’. It’s blasphemous to even try to debate that GW2’s PvP gameplay/strategy is similar to League of Legends gameplay (ie. not acknowledging that it’s got more FPS combat mechanics than RTS combat mechanics).

And beside the fact that they both have CTP (capture the point) PvP maps, there ain’t nothing about the structure of gameplay in League of Legends that can be pertained in GW2.

… (you talking roamer, bunker, and buffer that all can heal vs. professionally classified roles such as pure range dps, pure magic burst, pure tank, etc. Those difference alone makes these two game have a [X] instead of a [=] sign in between them)

By individual skill gap, I don’t mean 1v1 necessarily, I am simply referring to what you need to do to play your class effectively individually. I agree that the skill-cap is greater on a team-wide basis, absolutely. That’s always true. You can take various small skill caps, multiply them across a team, and all of a sudden, you have a significant skill ceiling.

From an individual profession perspective though (again, not necessarily 1v1), I don’t see it for the reasons I already explained. I hope you’re right and I’m wrong, but based on my experience, if you have the right build and some time to play it, you can pretty close to maximizing a class’s effectiveness pretty quickly. To the extent there is a skill cap at a high level, I’m not sure the skill cap is material, that is, actually makes a difference. I am sure there are some Guardians that are better bunkers than others, but if that only makes a difference 1 out of 100 times, then it becomes almost irrelevant.

And although I sort of dropped off right around the time QP’s came out, I was playing with top teams consistently throughout launch. I really do not think that is relevant though to be able to form a basic opinion about the individual skill gap in this game. But if it is, then I suppose I’m not qualified to post at this point, so please disregard my concerns. I don’t plan to play this game again seriously until it gets a modicum of competitive support, so I guess I’m mum until then.

@ Atlas: here’s a GW2 Tourney gamplay for you to examine:

As you can see, most encounters are 1v1, 1v2, 2v1, 2v2, 3v2; basically 3! -> 6 types of number variant fights that you’ll see in this 9 min video. But in majority, it’s usually either a1v1 or 2v2.

Also note that this thief has a very good understanding of his 1v1 mechanics, and talks about it mainly in this video. He doesn’t go into too much teamfight situations, but as you can see it’s clear that he doesn’t really need to play as a teamplayer “as a thief” in general because he roams most the time and at the end there pressure/hold the points with his team. Again, his emphasis on survivability/doing consistant dmg is the key to them winning the game, as you’ll find with a lot of our tourney vids that you watch; being able to keep yourself alive is what it’s about in GW2’s PvP, which is fairly similar to the key to most FPS games (in RTS games, you see more kill trades for benefits and such where as in GW2 there simply isn’t a huge benefit to dying for anything rather than staying alive and being able to utilize the what-would-have-been {the few seconds of time down-time} to wait for your heal to come up while heading to another point).

Unless you’re a Thief who can just stealth and leave, or a Mesmer who can crap more clones and leave, failing to use stun breakers or defensive abilities in general will usually result in your soft little body being shattered or backstabbed to death.

Some classes might require less defensive “skill” to perform correctly, but for some other being unable to time a defense skill perfectly is too unforgiving: hope your stunbreaks are available or you’re down. I don’t know what makes you think that defense is too easy in this game (and I’m assuming you play either thief or mesmer), but I can assure you that most of the people out there need to rely on perfect reflexes or equip 2-3 stunbreakers to survive a burst.

This game is way less than forgiving when it comes to defensive skills, I think you’re completely out of your way.

I disagree with this. As a glass cannon, your survival is entirely in the other players hands. If they dodge well twice, you’re boned. You will die to autoattacks and incidental aoe. Nothing you can do except try to reset. Playing glass cannon well is almost entirely about staying the hell out of the way until someone has blown his defensive cooldowns and/or is out of position, then exploding him. If anyone wastes their dodge on autoattacks, they’re dead. Sure in a 1v1 or poorly coordinated environment it’s simply build wars, but in team fights vs good players, your endurance bar and other defensive cooldowns are your LIFE.

kagemitsu.3657:

Unless you’re a Thief who can just stealth and leave, or a Mesmer who can crap more clones and leave, failing to use stun breakers or defensive abilities in general will usually result in your soft little body being shattered or backstabbed to death.

Some classes might require less defensive “skill” to perform correctly, but for some other being unable to time a defense skill perfectly is too unforgiving: hope your stunbreaks are available or you’re down. I don’t know what makes you think that defense is too easy in this game (and I’m assuming you play either thief or mesmer), but I can assure you that most of the people out there need to rely on perfect reflexes or equip 2-3 stunbreakers to survive a burst.

This game is way less than forgiving when it comes to defensive skills, I think you’re completely out of your way.

Agreed. Perfect reflex is debatable, but at least no responsiveness-lag.

Mammoth.1975:

I disagree with this. As a glass cannon, your survival is entirely in the other players hands. If they dodge well twice, you’re boned. You will die to autoattacks and incidental aoe. Nothing you can do except try to reset. Playing glass cannon well is almost entirely about staying the hell out of the way until someone has blown his defensive cooldowns and/or is out of position, then exploding him. If anyone wastes their dodge on autoattacks, they’re dead. Sure in a 1v1 or poorly coordinated environment it’s simply build wars, but in team fights vs good players, your endurance bar and other defensive cooldowns are your LIFE.

So true

Goob.9752:

Mammoth.1975:

I disagree with this. As a glass cannon, your survival is entirely in the other players hands. If they dodge well twice, you’re boned. You will die to autoattacks and incidental aoe. Nothing you can do except try to reset. Playing glass cannon well is almost entirely about staying the hell out of the way until someone has blown his defensive cooldowns and/or is out of position, then exploding him. If anyone wastes their dodge on autoattacks, they’re dead. Sure in a 1v1 or poorly coordinated environment it’s simply build wars, but in team fights vs good players, your endurance bar and other defensive cooldowns are your LIFE.

So true

It’s as simple as players who has latency advantage doesn’t care, and player who doesn’t have great ping does. And the excuses is always “it’s your reflex/computer” problem which is sadly of no help, and yet some short-sighted players still agrees with these useless posts; I hope Anet will see this and beg to differ.

Most skills in GW2 are free of cost besides cooldown and there is no global cooldown. Many skills are of the “fire and forget” type, including defensive skills.

I used to compare skills of GW2 with WoW and it seems to me that the design mentality of Anet is the polar opposite to Blizzard’s design mentality: Blizzard repeatedly stated that their way of designing abilities is trying to make a skill as cool and powerful as possible, then tone it down in beta until it’s in line with the rest. Many skills in GW2, on the other hand, leave the impression that they were designed to be as weak as possible, because they cost much less than their WoW counterparts.
The result is, that a single skill in WoW feels much more worth it and you often have to use 2 or 3 skills in GW2 to achieve the same effect (take for example the Mage’s Frost Nova spell, which is an AoE root “combo field” that lasts a lot longer than 2 seconds, if untouched).
The combat flow of WoW is also slower, thanks to global cooldown, so that it’s possible to react to these more impactful abilities accordingly, resulting in a beautiful interaction between opposing players called PvP.
Of course WoW has lost its glamour regarding PvP long ago, but there was a time when PvP was a hell of a lot of fun and I did nothing else, because skill and knowledge of classes mattered a ton! Warcraftmovies.com was full of excellent PvPers making movies back then. Many of them could take on multiple enemies on a regular basis, and not all of them had good gear. The game gave them the chance to play exceptionally well and they used it.

Xolo.3580:

Of course WoW has lost its glamour regarding PvP long ago, but there was a time when PvP was a hell of a lot of fun and I did nothing else, because skill and knowledge of classes mattered a ton! Warcraftmovies.com was full of excellent PvPers making movies back then. Many of them could take on multiple enemies on a regular basis, and not all of them had good gear. The game gave them the chance to play exceptionally well and they used it.

WoW PvP was fun but it had problems like any PvE focused game. Maps came out a snail’s pace, seesaw balancing, limited and the awful progression grind every single expansion. They should have kept it to just battlegrounds and promoted World PvP like the old days.

Mammoth.1975:

I disagree with this. As a glass cannon, your survival is entirely in the other players hands. If they dodge well twice, you’re boned. You will die to autoattacks and incidental aoe. Nothing you can do except try to reset. Playing glass cannon well is almost entirely about staying the hell out of the way until someone has blown his defensive cooldowns and/or is out of position, then exploding him. If anyone wastes their dodge on autoattacks, they’re dead. Sure in a 1v1 or poorly coordinated environment it’s simply build wars, but in team fights vs good players, your endurance bar and other defensive cooldowns are your LIFE.

so its skill if they are forced to dodge two big hits from someone else then you jump in and spam 2 keys and kill them? lolwat

Sprawl.3891:

Mammoth.1975:

I disagree with this. As a glass cannon, your survival is entirely in the other players hands. If they dodge well twice, you’re boned. You will die to autoattacks and incidental aoe. Nothing you can do except try to reset. Playing glass cannon well is almost entirely about staying the hell out of the way until someone has blown his defensive cooldowns and/or is out of position, then exploding him. If anyone wastes their dodge on autoattacks, they’re dead. Sure in a 1v1 or poorly coordinated environment it’s simply build wars, but in team fights vs good players, your endurance bar and other defensive cooldowns are your LIFE.

so its skill if they are forced to dodge two big hits from someone else then you jump in and spam 2 keys and kill them? lolwat

If they’re standing somewhere you can jump on them with zero endurance and their team doesn’t/can’t kitten you up for doing so, and you set up that situation before they set up the same situation on one of your guys, then yeah, they’re going to die. Your team is trying to create that situation, and the glass cannons job is to capitalise when they do.

I’m not good, but Follidus is right. Some of the complaints about ‘low skill cap’ are caused by people being so far from reaching that ‘low’ cap that they can’t even see it.