Guild Wars 2

I bought this game a while ago but then MoP expansion from wow was released and since I had pre-ordered it might as well try it. Well…long story short I am sick of the in-balance wow has and how blizzard patch after patch ignores any feedback given. So my question is as follows:

Is this much better? Because I wanna get into another game and tired of blizzard but I see a lot of mixed reviews in this game. All games have problems and balance issues but are the devs here always fixing and doing a good job at it?

< played an elemental shaman all the way through cataclysm , so trust me I KNOW where you are coming from, downright THE most ignored class in the game for YEARS (i was there , and got forum banned, for the Tseric ragequit, and emonix ..well…emo rants…)

been playing this game since day 1 , and i can say its a lot better balanced that Wow and their pvp-in-a-box will ever be , stats dont matter here for pvp so much as your build, everyone gets put at lvl 80 , and given all their trait points, (you go to a different zone, heart of the mists , to do pvp and q up for BG’s)

you get separate traits(talents) , gear, and setup in the heart of the mists for pvp, everyone is maxed out and you can freely customize your setup , vendors sell free runes and pieces of gear so you can do what you like, but as far as stats go, all pvp gear has the same stats (meaning you cant really “upgrade” anything ) and theres just a lot of visual customization for your character , wich is what you get out of pvp chests and glory and such (its somewhat different and long to explain here but plenty of info on pvp crafting / grinding around) but a crafted/chest dropped axe is going to have teh same top end dmg and stats that the default free axe that you start with (as is the case with all weapons for all characters on pvp)

you just change the sigils and runes on them to get the stat combination you want for the traits you are gonna run with , but there is no blue gladiator/epic gladiator / pro ranked gladiator set like there is in wow, classes dont have class specific pvp gear for them or anything

as far as balance goes, Anet has always focused more on pvp, so as you can expect its a little more balanced and polished combat and class wise than WoW , but for now we are limted to 4 domination maps (capture points and hold them ) and WvWvW , wich is pretty fun but timeconsuming and somewhat of a mess right now with people still transfering around (free 1 day cooldown server transfers atm, but thats temporary)

the fun part is, you dont have to level anything here to try the other classes, all you need to be il lvl 2 to go to the mists and pvp, since you get leveld to 80 in the mists anyways, also, glory ( valor) rank and progresson is ACCOUNT wide , not character base, so you can grind all your pvp rank as you see fit with a different class everyday if you wanted

it IS different but once you start getting into the intricacies of combat in GW2 and really learn some classes , combos, etc. you really have a blast on this games pvp

i myself havent had this much fun pvping since the days of vanilla wow running WSG/AB teams on the low lvl 30s and having a blast

in any case, the game is definetly worht the 60 dollars, and you can play it whenever being that it has no sub, ive only spent 10 dollars on cash store so far to buy another bank tab and some left over gems to turn into gold

hope that helps!

well , forgot to say , that for W v W ( or server vs server vs server) is open world, meaning you use your pve gear and talents, and that uses your real level , so one does have to level the class if he intends to use it to play world pvp and actually do some contribution in sieges etc.

They removed the traditional holy trinity. Instead we now have bunker builds. i dont see much of a difference as against healers you could at least nuke them down, or CC them. But in this game think of a prot warrior with many more knockbacks and self heals and with a buff added that ignores all CC. It takes far far longer to kill a bunker than to kill a traditional healer.

Burst is also far higher in this game. It truly is a game with extremes. They’ve changed the name of Rogues to Thiefs, even tho their steal is basically a nuke button. Thiefs are much more Rogues than the actual WoW rogues, as weird as that sounds. Thief dmg is far higher and we have the same problem where classes with good base defense can go full out dmg stats and not suffer much for it in terms of survivability. If you liked Vanilla WoW Rogues, then you will love this game.

There are no arenas, only battleground type maps, where each one has either PvE creatures or Siege Weapons, and there are circles instead of flags. These things get boring very quickly, for me at least. I’ve played WoW BG’s for about 200 times longer and havent gotten anywhere as bored in that time as 2 months here..

Variety between builds and classes really isnt that much higher. The amount of game breaking bugs are immense. Certain classes have about 60 bugs easily, and the entire mechanic of Stealth has a rendering bug that still isnt fixed since the very first Beta Weekends. I’d say the degree of FOTM players in this game is even higher than WoW.

Oh yes and the glory grind (even though you dont actually get any advantages for it) will kittening blow your mind after rank 30. WoW has nothing on this massive grind, which is all about time invested. In Arenas you could play a minimal amount of games to get the best stuff as long as you were good enough. There is no matchmaking in this game, its all time spent. Because of this even more people will roll the FOTM since its possible to double your glory gain / wins by playing a class which is double as easy to play.

Very helpful and thank you for the well thought out reply. My worry is that the game will die like most pvp focused games because people get tired of no end game content.

At the moment its pretty poor but I still have hope it can fulfill its potential in the future. Ignore 8v8 is all I’ll say.

Hmm, does not sound promising at all. Like I said i have the game just have not played in a while due to MoP from wow. I liked it but maybe it was because i wanted a break from wow. I do not know. I can not make up my mind.

I dont see why you cant just install it and try it. Its cool for burning an hour or 2 a day. However, and i might get some flack for this, i dont think the game is serious enough to be played seriously. At least not for me. And my friends.

Luckily you keep any glory you make forever, on all of your characters, which is what keeps me playing from time to time. WoW has had enough chances from me so thats out of the question, so i’ll just play little bits to at least get some glory going, then play for real when the game actually makes me want to play it seriously.

At least it was cool at the start.

I think it’s good that OP can read someone that likes the game and someone that is bored with it to have two perspectives.

GankSinatra.2653:

Oh yes and the glory grind (even though you dont actually get any advantages for it) will kittening blow your mind after rank 30. WoW has nothing on this massive grind, which is all about time invested. In Arenas you could play a minimal amount of games to get the best stuff as long as you were good enough. There is no matchmaking in this game, its all time spent. Because of this even more people will roll the FOTM since its possible to double your glory gain / wins by playing a class which is double as easy to play.

But this is a pretty bad mentality to have. There is no grind in pvp, unless you want to grind. Grinding does nothing for you but give you cooler looking armors. If you don’t like grinding… then don’t do it. “I hate this grind that does nothing for me and I could stop at any time but I feel compelled to continue and to complain about it.”

It was an argument about why there is more fotm in the game…I’ve even said that you dont really get anything for it. Im pointing out differences, not implying whatever you think i am.
Say you wanted a new item in WoW, you played a few hours, and bought it. If you want a new pvp item here, you have to spend up to hundreds of hours. Which then gives you all of the tiers items, and then double or even triples the amount needed for the next tier of items.
As such you would actually be ‘done’ in WoW with gear after a while, afterwards playing against people in the exact same gear (throwing the whole gear imbalance argument out of the window but thats not your point so forget that). At least for a few months until the season reset. In this game, you wont be ‘done’ for years. Not saying its worse than WoW, its just a different system that does feel…slower, and more grindy to me.
Getting stats or not has fairly little to do with it.

The game’s pvp is in active development. I think this is the most fair statement to make, whether you enjoy it or not. I do happen to enjoy it quite a bit. If GankSinatra is “grinding pvp” it sounds like (but he doesn’t specify) that he is doing random spvp. I really don’t like that too much. It’s not organized and it’s just a zerg 80% of the time. The reason I like pvp is because of the tournaments (tpvp) which I do every day with a few groups of other tourny players. They recently added “paid tournaments” which are the next level of competitive pvp where the prizes can offer gems for use in the game store and qualifier points (for some other form of higher pvp that is not released yet I assume).

I think the game is lacking in several areas (such as ladder and more game variety) but I like what we have so far.

I do do tournaments, have done so seriously near the start of the game until my standard group of pvp buddies quit. I still play em, but even back then i just did not feel the whole ‘fighting over a circle’ pvp. Conquest just doesnt get me going as i feel it brings some boring unfun mechanics with it.

If you do, then all the more props to you. If OP likes it, then he should play this game. However pointing out its only conquest without any real matchmaking to a WoW player seemed fair to me.

So from what I take it there is no actual ranking in the game? I have in installed btw just have not played it since the couple hours a day I have to play i used to cap myself in wow. It seems like it’s mainly a pvp game? The trouble with these in the past is that they end up never working out because of no end game content like warhammer. However do not get me wrong I play these games for the pvp. Just wanna play a game that is actively being worked on and is not just like “aion” disappointment.

WoWs endgame was get 9-39 of your buddies, control aggro, and don’t stand in the bad. The rest was gearchecks. I dunno why people even mention it like it’s a thing. What was that first boss in cata? Perfect example.

As far as grind goes, the “You don’t NEED cosmetics” argument falls flat with me. You don’t need to play the game either. You don’t NEED anything associated with it. It’s about enjoyment, and people derive enjoyment from personalizing their characters. Gating that to a slow crawl encourages grind because people want to have that experience at a rate they consider normal. When you unnaturally space rewards out to the point you become aware of the gap between them, you have grind.

There’s no reason for the rates of xp gain in PvP to be as slow as they are. Just because looks aren’t required to participate is not an excuse to drag out the only objective that pvp has, long term. I think too many people get caught up in rhetoric and can only repeat “BUT YOU DON’T NEED IT” without understanding anything about design or how to make your game fun to play. It’s witless.

This game is broken and balance is as bad as in wow.

Pvp will soon be extinct due to developers unable to take any decisive actions. Overpowered classes, skills that should never find their way into competitive game (moa bird- 10 sec. stun, ‘I win’ with no counters), mesmer teleport making other classes obsolete on one of three pvp maps, broken critical damage mechanisms allowing lucky thieves to kill anyone in 1.5 seconds and many, many more.

Those two games have one more thing in common: happy developers unwilling to listen to anyone. Wow’s developers lack skill to balance pvp, Gw2 developers lack the will . The keyword is here ‘WAIT’. Devs don’t want hasty nerfs so some people keep waiting while majority already gave up.

GankSinatra.2653:

I’ve played WoW BG’s for about 200 times longer and havent gotten anywhere as bored in that time as 2 months here..

omg this ^. and here i was thinking i was the only one. game is ridiculously boring, literally the entire game was half baked. hopefuly the new maps and game modes ive heard rumors about will motivate me to take a peak. how is it possible that a pve based game like rift releases with at least double to triple the amount of pvp content as a guild wars game? multiple game modes, diverse maps, multiple viable pvp builds per class, gosh sounds like what GW2 should have had at release.

Welcome to Thiefcraft or better to the Thieves guild.
The game has potential but at the moment it has a lot of glaring balance problems.

Down states should be normalised or at least give each class 1 avoidance ability and not more. Thieves and Mesmers have the luxury to have 2 abilities to avoid stomping and if you are not quick enough the cooldown is so short that they can use it again.