Guild Wars 2

Does anyone else feel that the skill-cap of this game is too low? I believe that thieves have a relatively high skill cap, which is why you see so many bad thieves and many thieves that seem to be “OP”. However, on my mesmer I don’t really feel like there’s much more to learn. Keep in mind that I’m not talking about strategies (Capping points etc etc). I’m mainly concerned about profession skill-caps. For example, I feel like that most of the times when I’m against another mesmer, the build we are using is what mostly determines who is going to win the fight.

Does anyone else feel the same way about any profession?

PvP in GW2 is 90% team interactions and 10% being able to perform your build at a sufficient level to carry out team strategy. This is why you generally see very low risk builds in tournaments, because it allows players to reroll quickly to adapt to the best possible build for the team, instead of playing the build you are mechanically best at.

The teams who win tournaments though are not necessarily the ones with the best players. They are the ones with the best rotations, the best team comp, and the best team play.

To directly answer your question: the game just isn’t really suited for having a lot of high skillcap builds, since the skillcap is almost entirely focused into team-based things. Thieves aren’t even that hard compared to actually difficult games, its something you can pick up fairly well pretty quickly if you just devote a lot of game time to it. Certainly builds have varying amount of skill differences, but even the hardest build to play in the game isn’t that hard to play.

Gw2 has a high skill cap. Despite what the average player thinks. People always reference games like wow ect (which I was a 3 time gladiator mind you), due to ability bloat, and number of skills, when in reality you only used a handful of them, and most rotations were 4 or so skills.

Defense in gw2 is very much “active” if you are “on the ball” and know what to avoid and when, you come across as godmode.

If you think pvp in gw2. Has a low skill cap, or is cheezy. You’re doing hot join or scrub soloq. Try playing against skilled players.p

Bhawb.7408:

PvP in GW2 is 90% team interactions and 10% being able to perform your build at a sufficient level to carry out team strategy. This is why you generally see very low risk builds in tournaments, because it allows players to reroll quickly to adapt to the best possible build for the team, instead of playing the build you are mechanically best at.

The teams who win tournaments though are not necessarily the ones with the best players. They are the ones with the best rotations, the best team comp, and the best team play.

To directly answer your question: the game just isn’t really suited for having a lot of high skillcap builds, since the skillcap is almost entirely focused into team-based things. Thieves aren’t even that hard compared to actually difficult games, its something you can pick up fairly well pretty quickly if you just devote a lot of game time to it. Certainly builds have varying amount of skill differences, but even the hardest build to play in the game isn’t that hard to play.

I see. Very informative answer. I guess I’m gonna have to join a PvP guild for hardcore tPvP if I want a bigger challenge. Thank you for your reply.

Bowflex.4502:

Gw2 has a high skill cap. Despite what the average player thinks. People always reference games like wow ect (which I was a 3 time gladiator mind you), due to ability bloat, and number of skills, when in reality you only used a handful of them, and most rotations were 4 or so skills.

Defense in gw2 is very much “active” if you are “on the ball” and know what to avoid and when, you come across as godmode.

If you think pvp in gw2. Has a low skill cap, or is cheezy. You’re doing hot join or scrub soloq. Try playing against skilled players.p

I wasn’t really comparing wow’s skillcap with Gw2’s skillcap (I think wow’s skillcap is lower than GW2’s). I was mainly comparing it with GW1’s skillcap. I used to play PD mesmer in GW1 (HA, RA and TA when it was around). I had to look through all the players and interrupt the most devastating skills (e.g. Warrior’s knockdown, Monk’s elite skill etc). That took a lot of skill and I knew that there was enough room for improvement, which is why I’m finding Gw2’s skill cap relatively low.

I mean, yeah I can save my dodges for devastating skills, know when to use my distortion, blink away when an enemy’s leaping on me, even interrupt (Although interrupting in GW2 is much less reliable than in GW1). I feel like I’m doing all these things almost perfectly. This must make me seem arrogant but if you played GW1 I think you’ll understand what I mean. In the recent tournament I noticed a necro that spammed his skills on-cooldown for a little while, and I find myself doing the same thing sometimes simply because in some occasions that’s the best thing you can do. I mean, if I have a skill that simply deals X amount of damage, why wouldn’t I want to use it on-cooldown? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that’s the case in every occasion and with every build. I’m just giving an example on how the skillcap could be improved (e.g. More skills whose effect is greatly affected by external factors).

Of course, I know that good team coordination, various combinations with allies and strategic decisions are a very hard thing to achieve, but I’m talking about profession skill-cap.

Personal mechanics just aren’t that big in this game. You have quite a lot of time to do things like dodge (with 3/4s cast times it is easy to always dodge a skill so long as you know what it looks like), targeting takes nearly no skill, about half of your skills are used consistently on CD or in a pre-practiced rotation (that requires no though), the other half have very simple decisions involved (big damage incoming? press defensive button, someone out of defensive CDs? press burst buttons).

The real “difficulty” in personal play comes down to knowledge. As long as you know how and when to take actions, it is actually very easy to accomplish those actions. Compared to other types of games, you just have so much time to react and so little that requires difficult thought I can’t consider the game mechanically difficult.

warrior has low skill cap now because they “fixed” building momentum

Using the class is easy, avoiding skills, positioning, and timing is hard. There are a few things that are mechanically difficult but for the most part playing the class is really really easy lol.

Bhawb.7408:

PvP in GW2 is 90% team interactions and 10% being able to perform your build at a sufficient level to carry out team strategy. This is why you generally see very low risk builds in tournaments, because it allows players to reroll quickly to adapt to the best possible build for the team, instead of playing the build you are mechanically best at.

The teams who win tournaments though are not necessarily the ones with the best players. They are the ones with the best rotations, the best team comp, and the best team play.

To directly answer your question: the game just isn’t really suited for having a lot of high skillcap builds, since the skillcap is almost entirely focused into team-based things. Thieves aren’t even that hard compared to actually difficult games, its something you can pick up fairly well pretty quickly if you just devote a lot of game time to it. Certainly builds have varying amount of skill differences, but even the hardest build to play in the game isn’t that hard to play.

Lets clarify a bit though.

This game has an incredibly high skill cap.

However, as Bhawb says, the individual player skill simply matters much less than the overall team strategy and mechanics. One single incredible player simply can’t carry a team, so it’s much more important that your team works well together, has a good composition, solid strategy, etc.

The only really “competitive” online gaming I did before gw2 was LoL. I personally find this game pretty easy to pick up compared to it. Some classes are a little awkward to start out with, but thats the extent of it.

In tPvP I find myself worrying much more about what my team is doing and what rotation is best rather than how I’m playing the class itself.

This game has extremely low skill cap. It’s nothing compared to GW1. However, teamplay, minimap awareness and rotations are where real skill and experience shows. That is what makes the difference.

Skill cap =\= skill floor

It’s also pretty much an unobtainable goal in many ways; nobody is playing close to skill cap currently, they’re just finding it difficult to progress.

The idea of using the phrase ’ skill cap’ to describe skill rotations (what is a skill rotation in spvp anyway) is probably what’s causing the confusion.

When the burst meta hits we can start discussing skill cap