Guild Wars 2

Hello fellows.

Some of you may have noticed, anyway I did, that all the viable builds in tournaments are at the same time the most simple and easy-to-play ones.
There is no skill-requireing build in the game at the moment wich can compete with the usual button masher builds following simple rotations.

Exapmples:

Mesmer -> Shatter. Noone can tell me that playing a shatter mesmer requires the faintest amount of skill. I´m playing one myself and it didnt take me 10 minutes to become efficient with it and its – without exception – the same rotation all over again. There is no other mesmer build as viable in tournament pvp.

Beastmaster Ranger Can build extremely tanky while having no impact on the pets damage. Coupled with the huge amount of cc it makes playing this build totally overpowered (my opinion here) while not relying on any kind of player skill but spamming 1 and evade skills while dodging anytime possible.

Hybrid Elementalist: Just spam all the weapon skills on cooldown and you are an addition to the team.

HGH-Grenade Engineer: Like elementalist. This build actually incourages wasting utillity skills in order do stack might. And noone can tell me that hitting with grenades is a skillshot, as stated by arenanet.

…

Im not saying these ways of playing should be removed. And im not saying everyone playing these specs is bad.
Im just saying that every atempt to play a build requireing skill to WORK means a huge loss in efficiency.

What I want is more builds avaliable. And I dont want to be punished for playing builds beginners cant master.

For example interrupts. Those were and would still be a great addition to skillful play, as interrupting key skills in larger scrimishes is a real challange. Yet the only profession having enough skills to play this out efficiently as a key build mechanic is the mesmer. And the mesmer traits related to interrupting are a joke.
Allso interrupted skills are only put on a two second cooldown, making interrupts basically useless except for very rare situations in wich a life saving skill is interrupted less then two seconds before the target dies.
My Idea would be to make interrupts invoke 1/2, 1/3 or 1/4 of the normal cooldown on skill usage. By this a good placed interrupt would actually have an large impact, while not disabling the target of taking part in the fight.

Mechanics like this, and different builds in general need some kind of buff. For in my oppinion it cant be that the easiest way to go is at all times the best-without-alternative aswell.

I think there is no one, who does not want more build diversity / more viable builds.
The Devs have already mentioned it very often, so I personally don’t see a point in making an additional thread for that.

GW2 is still a game, a game is meant to be beatable and playable. I like to have a challenge like the clocktower-jumping puzzle from Halloween, but I think you can remember to what this has led to.

As for the classes: I don’t really see any class or spec which will take more then 10 minutes to play effective on a normal level, but there are still player getting more out of their class, then other can ever image to do (and are often disappointed, because they can’t reach their skill level) (f.e. have you ever seen someone playing an engineer as good as Teldo?)

Still, every constructive suggestion to make the game better is always welcome!

Its been over 8 months and build diversity hasnt improoved.
So I think this is worth a thread.

In regards to hgh engi in a team fight grenades are not that difficult to land. In a 1v1 or 2v2 at ranges other than melee it get’s pretty difficult due to hang time. To effectively land grenades at range requires you to be able to predict and control your enemies movements. You also need to make sure to prioritize landing certain grenades over others to increase effectiveness. Imagine if shatters were ground targeted and utilized one clone at a time for aoe damage. Shatters would be easy to land in melee/ teamfights but would have issue at range (without the immobilize from sword 2 of course).

Also the only utility your wasting is elixir b which is supposed to be used for your benefit much like warriors signet of rage. In regards to the elixirs on the tool kit you can either preserve those for condi cleanse or for the might stacks as well as RNG buff which is the intended purpose of the build. No Engi in their right mind wastes elixir r or elixir s (weather in the tool kit or stun break solely for more might stacks). Couple all this with the fact that you are vulnerable to burst, boon steal, and can be overwhelmed by mass conditions leaves an impression of a high risk high reward build.

So yeah…grenades are not that easy to land consistently.

HGH simple? What the? Its damage comes from the hardest weapon ingame to use, every single ability is a skillshot.
Just because you refuse to believe it doesnt mean it isnt true…

What more do you want to add? Damage comes from ground-targeted, projectile AoE. It comes with a hefty dose of micromanaging boons and cooldowns, and weighting them with saving them for condition removal. Its a fairly squishy spec (1 stunbreaker, thats it) that means picking your fights and positioning is vital.
There is a bunch of RNG involved that cannot be anticipated and has to be responded to AFTER rolling the dice to see what the outcome is. (Big difference between something like Stealth and Stability). Very reactionairy playstyle.

It is one of the hardest specs to play.

Regardless of the specs, those aren’t the things that are the issue.

The issue is the simple mechanics the pvp game is designed around, which are just: do damage, avoid damage, and hold capture points.

In guild wars 1 there were specs dedicated to shutting down other specs, or specs entirely dedicated to boosting the entire teams efficiency, while having little to no impact outside of a team setting.

However, we’re left with a damage focuses/oriented game, where counter building has taken a backseat to min/maxing and optimization, allowing for people to build entirely for damage, entirely for defense, or entirely for node holding (probably defensive, categorically speaking).

The issue at it’s core is that with the simplicity of mechanics, it doesn’t require a “high skill” build to effectively accomplish what needs to be accomplished to win a game, and that is probably the core problem; the mechanics allow the game to remain too casual(by casual I mean low skill cap) at times.

Blimm.5028:

Its been over 8 months and build diversity hasnt improoved.
So I think this is worth a thread.

8 months for anet to balance new builds? I really think you are discounting the amount of effort it takes to make new build viable when there are tons of bugs to be fixed.

One year is around average for most MMORPG and especially a game that wants to become an esport.

Anet is just being cautious.

BTW, shatter mesmer is not easy to play without IP trait.

There are less builds viable/considered now then at release lol.
Release had D/D D/P S/D and S/P thieves all doing their thing. 8 months later its D/P.
Fantastic.
Warriors had frenzy supporting quite a few options now they dont.
For the sake of balance variety has gone down and now balance is between a few builds per profession. Its taken 8 months to move backwards from variety goals. If they start now maybe we can get options back and more in 4…hell maybe less I’m optimistic.

Complex builds aren’t going to be heavily rewarded since simplistic builds are intended to be able to be equivalent.

Terrahero.9358:

HGH simple? What the? Its damage comes from the hardest weapon ingame to use, every single ability is a skillshot.
Just because you refuse to believe it doesnt mean it isnt true…

What more do you want to add? Damage comes from ground-targeted, projectile AoE. It comes with a hefty dose of micromanaging boons and cooldowns, and weighting them with saving them for condition removal. Its a fairly squishy spec (1 stunbreaker, thats it) that means picking your fights and positioning is vital.
There is a bunch of RNG involved that cannot be anticipated and has to be responded to AFTER rolling the dice to see what the outcome is. (Big difference between something like Stealth and Stability). Very reactionairy playstyle.

It is one of the hardest specs to play.

i think you are confusing a moderate amount of manual dexterity for skill. everything else you wrote is greatly exaggerated.

edit: also OP is right on the money. +1

grenades hard to land? lol. try landing dragon tooth, you tell me which one requires more skill to land.

Thanks to zoose guide, well mainly his ‘combo’ techniques, s/d ele is very enjoyable to play. Most other guides don’t give you combo’s, like with hgh engy, ostrich eggs never gave a combo that he uses a lot. I don’t know of any Mesmer combos, all I know is to land mind rack as often as I can. Thief combo? Caed never told us one, all I know is that you never keep pressing one till there hp is half, so…. what skills do I use then??

@OP:
I like the idea of putting interupted skills on a 25% cooldown or somehing, bu right now i feel as if interupts and Ccs are already very effective. Not because they can finish the skill they were using, but because it makes them ulnerable to a (coordinated) burst.
Example: i use temporal curtain to pull the enrmy team together in the circlr, where a friendly engi is spamming dem grenades, then i inmediatally immobilise them all and stack 25 vulnerability on 1, then we all burst and magic happens.
On a sidenote: just because people fail to dodge your basic shattercombo or phantasm doesnt mean the spec doesnt take skill. Try duelling a very skilled player (assuming youre using the easy spec for only 10 mins) and see what happens.
Hint: it wont end well for you.

@Op:

Sorry but I feel Offended when you said this :“Hybrid Elementalist: Just spam all the weapon skills on cooldown and you are an addition to the team.” Sorry man, only a New Elementalist would do that way because all of your skill has VERY HIGH CD . Once u spam them all, you are a DEAD MEAT and a nuisance to the team.

I can only agree with the OP.
Pretty much every viable build is easy to play. This does not mean you cannot be bad, just that you cannot be exceptionally good.
There is some skill in playing well together with your team and having map awareness.
Build diversity would not create harder to play builds, because the reason for the easy-builds are somewhat the core mechanic.
There are too many vital skills that have a low cooldown and cannot be interrupted (for instance), and as you said interrupting a skill only puts it on a small CD.
Another reason is the amount of vigor in game. With so much endurance regeneration from sigils and traits it’s more efficient to spam your dodges randomly than to wait for certain skills.

Engineers used to have other builds. Most experienced engineer players are still valiantly trying to make non-cheese builds work.

There is something terribly wrong with this thread’s title.

“Make hard to play builds viable” …..

Hard to play doesn’t necessarily mean it’s viable.

Don’t you think this is like asking Anet to make all skill combinations viable?

Think about it. Let’s take the Warrior for example; If you make a Warrior build, using all Physical skills on your utilities and you keep dieing whilst using it, which makes it “hard to play”, you’re asking Anet to make that viable when the real problem is, you chose a very unsynergetic set of skills. Don’t you think that’s a little….. misguided?

Blimm.5028:

Beastmaster Ranger Can build extremely tanky while having no impact on the pets damage. Coupled with the huge amount of cc it makes playing this build totally overpowered (my opinion here) while not relying on any kind of player skill but spamming 1 and evade skills while dodging anytime possible.

Ye but tbh that’s true for every build in this game. There are no hard to play builds imo. Take the bm ranger for ex (that’s what i play the most in tpvp)…i’m not saying it’s hard to play, quite the opposite (i’m not one of those “no wayyy my build is hard to play” phantasm mesmers), still you can tell the difference between a good and a bad ranger. Good ones rarely spam evades and dodges, use interrupts at the right time, set up burst using pet f2 etc. But yea this kind of builds forgive mistakes more than others.

For those being offended by me talking stuff extremely easy.
I´m not saying that – for example Hybrid eles all just spamm off their skills. Im saying by just spamming stuff mindlessly they allready gain a good amount of efficiency.

How do you guys think more complex/skill REQUIRING builds could be introduced. We all know you can place the simple combos in the game intelligently and by that show skill, but the build its self doesn´t need skill to be played.
Builds that are a challenge at themselves should allso be viable, and not sub par.

My oppinion about the interrupt matter: They should not solely be for coordinated bursts, but allso useable for actual controll. And a 25% cooldown on interrupts would not make the burst-bit more powerful, but just add another component to this kind of skills.

The majority of the “skill” in this game comes from other areas besides actually using your characters abilities. You have to have timing, positioning, coordination, and map awareness. You have to have knowledge of the other classes and know what cd’s they have and haven’t used. You have to keep track of boons and conditions so you dont heal when you’re poisoned and try to cc when they have stability. This is just to name a few things.

Performing combos and damage rotations are such a small part of the actual gameplay that it really doesn’t bother me that some builds are easier than others to execute with.

Problem is builds hard to execute are rarely viable. Tell me one build apart from shatter for a mesmer for example wich is viable in high end tournament play.

Blimm.5028:

SNIP.

Everyone says HGH is incredibly easy to play. There’s a kitten good reason why there’s under a handful of people who can play the build at a high tourney level. It’s not cuz it’s easy, it’s because it’s an incredibly squishy build that will get your kitten killed if you miss a single grenade.

The build I’ve been playing recently is 30 times easier than HGH ever was. I’ve seen too many noobs miss important grenades to believe a word you say about grenades not being a skill shot.

Yes, IF you land your grenades you’re going to kill someone. Some shots are easier than others. But the build itself is EXTREMELY punishing to those who miss their dodge rolls, position wrong and miss their skill shots. It’s not forgiving in the slightest and to play it at a high level requires far more skill than any engi build I’ve seen just in the sole fact that it’s incredibly invested in dishing out the most damage possible. The trick isn’t killing things, it’s killing things efficiently, 1v1ing things and staying alive.

Thieves fall in the same category. Their burst is incredibly easy and tell-tale, but IMO it’s one of the highest skill cap classes in the game next to engis because of the fact that if a ranger pet sneezes on them they’ll go down.

True skill in this game is about eeking out the extra 20-50% a build can provide by reacting correctly to what your opponent is doing. Truly difficult builds provide substantial benefit from reaction rather than proactively going through a rote rotation (see: Eles). “Simple” builds usually have a deceptively high skill cap when played at a high level. When speaking about hard-to-play builds you should take into consideration the skill cap rather than the skill floor for any particular build. The difference between those players who are at or near the skill cap and those who just picked the class up is substantial enough to justify calling a build difficult. Most of the stellar players have almost no rivals for their particular class or build by a very long shot. To ignore that is to completely render your entire post invalid. f you haven’t reached said skill cap or don’t understand the build well enough to have reached it, you really shouldn’t talk about how easy it is.

Shatter mesmers, HGH engis and backstab thieves are some of the hardest builds to play in the entire game at a high level.

@blimm
Bunker mesmer. Not the mid point though, but for the far or close point. I never choose to run it because its just less fun for me. I prefer supporting the mid point by jumping in and out and landing bursts.
Blimm: “but the build itself doesnt require skill to be played” (my mobile cant coick the quote button so im doiin i like this).
What you say there id somewhat true, but it also isnt.
The “easy” specs dont requireskill to be played, but it requires skill to be played good.
There are also many ways to land a burst as a shattercat, its not always as easy as “use Ileap and mindwrack”, any decent player will dodge that and counter you.
There are also many variations on the shattercat build, you can spec for burst, support, mobility, phantasm hybrid, condition hybrid and all thosrthings.
Maybe the reason why “hard to play specs” arent viable is because, well, theyre not viable. If its not viable youre going to have a hard time. Maybe when you play an “easy” (viable) spec, maybe all youre doing is facerolling people with unviable specs?

TL:DR: it doesnt take much more than a good build to get started, but theres a huuuuge skill cap, especially on shatter mesmer. (I cant really much judge for all professions but im sure there is a high cap)

uberkingkong.8041:

grenades hard to land? lol. try landing dragon tooth, you tell me which one requires more skill to land.

Thanks to zoose guide, well mainly his ‘combo’ techniques, s/d ele is very enjoyable to play. Most other guides don’t give you combo’s, like with hgh engy, ostrich eggs never gave a combo that he uses a lot. I don’t know of any Mesmer combos, all I know is to land mind rack as often as I can. Thief combo? Caed never told us one, all I know is that you never keep pressing one till there hp is half, so…. what skills do I use then??

Dragons tooth doesn’t take skill to land because you’re forced to chain hard (or soft, depending on spec) CC into the dragons tooth. Quite literally the only trick to landing dragons tooth is switching to fire quick enough after updraft.

To imply that’s harder than landing a ground targeted AoE on an actively moving target is incredibly asinine

Ostricheggs.3742:

uberkingkong.8041:

grenades hard to land? lol. try landing dragon tooth, you tell me which one requires more skill to land.

Thanks to zoose guide, well mainly his ‘combo’ techniques, s/d ele is very enjoyable to play. Most other guides don’t give you combo’s, like with hgh engy, ostrich eggs never gave a combo that he uses a lot. I don’t know of any Mesmer combos, all I know is to land mind rack as often as I can. Thief combo? Caed never told us one, all I know is that you never keep pressing one till there hp is half, so…. what skills do I use then??

Dragons tooth doesn’t take skill to land because you’re forced to chain hard (or soft, depending on spec) CC into the dragons tooth. Quite literally the only trick to landing dragons tooth is switching to fire quick enough after updraft.

To imply that’s harder than landing a ground targeted AoE on an actively moving target is incredibly asinine

Tbh that’s a pretty bad argument since you could say exactly the same about ground targeted AoEs. Why don’t you CC your opponent before using them?

Imo Dragon’s Tooth is one of the worst abilities in the game when it comes to hitting your oppenent. Ground targeted AoEs give you the option to cast it in the direction your enemy runs (it takes skill but it’s definitely possible) or on a certain part of the map. They are also faster most of the time unless you cast them on max range.

It’s different for Dragon’s Tooth. You either use your long CD CC (40sec Updraft / 45sec Earthquake) and hope your opponent can’t react fast enough or there is no way to deal damage to him with this skill.

Blackhat.4016:

Ostricheggs.3742:

uberkingkong.8041:

grenades hard to land? lol. try landing dragon tooth, you tell me which one requires more skill to land.

Thanks to zoose guide, well mainly his ‘combo’ techniques, s/d ele is very enjoyable to play. Most other guides don’t give you combo’s, like with hgh engy, ostrich eggs never gave a combo that he uses a lot. I don’t know of any Mesmer combos, all I know is to land mind rack as often as I can. Thief combo? Caed never told us one, all I know is that you never keep pressing one till there hp is half, so…. what skills do I use then??

Dragons tooth doesn’t take skill to land because you’re forced to chain hard (or soft, depending on spec) CC into the dragons tooth. Quite literally the only trick to landing dragons tooth is switching to fire quick enough after updraft.

To imply that’s harder than landing a ground targeted AoE on an actively moving target is incredibly asinine

Tbh that’s a pretty bad argument since you could say exactly the same about ground targeted AoEs. Why don’t you CC your opponent before using them?

Imo Dragon’s Tooth is one of the worst abilities in the game when it comes to hitting your oppenent. Ground targeted AoEs give you the option to cast it in the direction your enemy runs (it takes skill but it’s definitely possible) or on a certain part of the map. They are also faster most of the time unless you cast them on max range.

It’s different for Dragon’s Tooth. You either use your long CD CC (40sec Updraft / 45sec Earthquake) and hope your opponent can’t react fast enough or there is no way to deal damage to him with this skill.

Almost every GTAoE in the game has no flight time. Necro marks are substantially easier to use than grenades for a similar effect. They land instantly, all it takes is point and click. The only thing that really comes close to how grenades work is pheonix on the scepter, but that’s a pretty bad comparison because of how pheonix works and is generally used.

Dragons tooth is either hit or miss. There is no skill on the side of the player casting dragons tooth to determine whether or not it hits or misses outside of chaining CC from either immobs, updraft or earthquake (the latter only usable after casting dtooth, not before).

And I rarely CC my opponents into my grenades. Why would I CC into my nades if I don’t need to to land them?

Ostricheggs.3742:

uberkingkong.8041:

grenades hard to land? lol. try landing dragon tooth, you tell me which one requires more skill to land.

Thanks to zoose guide, well mainly his ‘combo’ techniques, s/d ele is very enjoyable to play. Most other guides don’t give you combo’s, like with hgh engy, ostrich eggs never gave a combo that he uses a lot. I don’t know of any Mesmer combos, all I know is to land mind rack as often as I can. Thief combo? Caed never told us one, all I know is that you never keep pressing one till there hp is half, so…. what skills do I use then??

Dragons tooth doesn’t take skill to land because you’re forced to chain hard (or soft, depending on spec) CC into the dragons tooth. Quite literally the only trick to landing dragons tooth is switching to fire quick enough after updraft.

To imply that’s harder than landing a ground targeted AoE on an actively moving target is incredibly asinine

Of course theres skill in landing dt you oblivious engie elitist.. :P
Actually turning it in gtaoe it would effectively make 10 times easier to use it now..So plsss dear engie give us the skill cap of your nades..cause now dt is way easy to use

The noob ele will think its either it hit or miss with dt..but the experienced ele will know that you can use it for zoning,ativate when enemy passes a combo field,use it without target onto a combo field like forstealth etc
Besides you can take elem surge and make arcane builds that are many times harder than your hgh only because now your fire burst is not so “activate and hope to god it hits” like you said..
Imo dps/burst ele is much harder to play than hgh and i think a lot of pople even at top teams would agree with me here.Besides if youd bother to make some calculations about what effecient ele play is you would see that it gets a lot more complicated thatn a simple rotation even on easier builds like d/d..
That of course if we are talking about MAX potential..which means you need to factor specific boons uptime,skill cds and cost of staying in current att,skills availability in next 10 sec if you leave, opening for burst and having the cc and their attunements ready to set them up etc..
In fact logic wise i can tell you i find it a lot harder to calculate the exact perfect play for a situation on ANY ele than your hgh engie..the only difference was and is still to a degree that you DONT need to play at max potential ele to be effective.To that i agree

Lastly is good to notice that engie requires a lot lower skill compared to any class when it comes to predicting or beng proactive.With engie you can pretty much react to situation .Doesnt matter that you miscalculated and are stuck on wrong kit..Just switch back!

Absolutely agree. Skillcap for all classes has to be increased in order to create diverse combat.
And also, it is probably moveton to quote yourself, but i will do it anyway.

…
Suggestion:
Increase casting time for a lot of skills to 0.75-1 seconds.
Make interrupted skills to be put on full cooldown.
(those changes will reward players that actively interrupt foes, thus increasing the importance of control)
Give some skills endurance cost, for example 4 and 5 on twohanders have endurance cost, 3 on onehanders and 5 on offhanders have endurance cost.
(This will give a lot of defence/offence tradeoffs, also improving risk vs reward factor:
you tried to finish your enemy with 80 endurance cost hammer bash, he dodged and now you lost your advantage)

Stealth.9324:

@Op:

Sorry but I feel Offended when you said this :“Hybrid Elementalist: Just spam all the weapon skills on cooldown and you are an addition to the team.” Sorry man, only a New Elementalist would do that way because all of your skill has VERY HIGH CD . Once u spam them all, you are a DEAD MEAT and a nuisance to the team.

Disagree. Ele has 16 skills on cooldown.That means that he always has something to cast.

There will always be one “most effective for least input” build that most people play.. how this translates to being “the only viable build” is beyond me.

Gamers are just lazy.. goes without saying.

kostbabis.8791:

Ostricheggs.3742:

uberkingkong.8041:

grenades hard to land? lol. try landing dragon tooth, you tell me which one requires more skill to land.

Thanks to zoose guide, well mainly his ‘combo’ techniques, s/d ele is very enjoyable to play. Most other guides don’t give you combo’s, like with hgh engy, ostrich eggs never gave a combo that he uses a lot. I don’t know of any Mesmer combos, all I know is to land mind rack as often as I can. Thief combo? Caed never told us one, all I know is that you never keep pressing one till there hp is half, so…. what skills do I use then??

Dragons tooth doesn’t take skill to land because you’re forced to chain hard (or soft, depending on spec) CC into the dragons tooth. Quite literally the only trick to landing dragons tooth is switching to fire quick enough after updraft.

To imply that’s harder than landing a ground targeted AoE on an actively moving target is incredibly asinine

Of course theres skill in landing dt you oblivious engie elitist.. :P
Actually turning it in gtaoe it would effectively make 10 times easier to use it now..So plsss dear engie give us the skill cap of your nades..cause now dt is way easy to use

The noob ele will think its either it hit or miss with dt..but the experienced ele will know that you can use it for zoning,ativate when enemy passes a combo field,use it without target onto a combo field like forstealth etc
Besides you can take elem surge and make arcane builds that are many times harder than your hgh only because now your fire burst is not so “activate and hope to god it hits” like you said..
Imo dps/burst ele is much harder to play than hgh and i think a lot of pople even at top teams would agree with me here.Besides if youd bother to make some calculations about what effecient ele play is you would see that it gets a lot more complicated thatn a simple rotation even on easier builds like d/d..
That of course if we are talking about MAX potential..which means you need to factor specific boons uptime,skill cds and cost of staying in current att,skills availability in next 10 sec if you leave, opening for burst and having the cc and their attunements ready to set them up etc..
In fact logic wise i can tell you i find it a lot harder to calculate the exact perfect play for a situation on ANY ele than your hgh engie..the only difference was and is still to a degree that you DONT need to play at max potential ele to be effective.To that i agree

Lastly is good to notice that engie requires a lot lower skill compared to any class when it comes to predicting or beng proactive.With engie you can pretty much react to situation .Doesnt matter that you miscalculated and are stuck on wrong kit..Just switch back!

It’s very clear that we don’t see eye to eye and any further input would result in derailment.

It took me 10 games to become effective at using dragons tooth on my ele. It took me 5,000 games to become as good at landing nades as I am.

I continually see people claiming that HGH is a faceroll build for scrubs. I would truly like to see those who claim it to join the next big tournament on their HgH engi and show me how it’s done, because I clearly have much more trouble playing the build than you guys.

Goorman.7916:

Absolutely agree. Skillcap for all classes has to be increased in order to create diverse combat.
And also, it is probably moveton to quote yourself, but i will do it anyway.

…
Suggestion:
Increase casting time for a lot of skills to 0.75-1 seconds.
Make interrupted skills to be put on full cooldown.
(those changes will reward players that actively interrupt foes, thus increasing the importance of control)
Give some skills endurance cost, for example 4 and 5 on twohanders have endurance cost, 3 on onehanders and 5 on offhanders have endurance cost.
(This will give a lot of defence/offence tradeoffs, also improving risk vs reward factor:
you tried to finish your enemy with 80 endurance cost hammer bash, he dodged and now you lost your advantage)

I don’t think asking the devs to increase casting times for so many skills is a realistic suggestion. Even if it would improve gameplay, they won’t do it as the amount of balancing decisions they’d have to make would be insane. Instead I think a start would be like you said having interrupted skills put on full cooldown. At the very least, skillful players would be able to interrupt long cast time utilities, though there is still much work to be done in the way of telegraphing and unique skill animations.

Additionally, there aren’t really many convenient interrupts in the game. Your best bet is fear, but all the other interrupts require you to either use something like SoA or a melee KD/KB. What I’m trying to say is that the chances that you’ll be able to interrupt anything worthwhile is pretty low. Most skills cast in < 1 second and unlike GW1, you don’t have specific targeted interrupts like http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Savage_Shot etc, let alone a cast bar.

As for the endurance requirement, it will never happen. The developers absolutely do not want an energy system like GW1 (for better or worse). The thief’s initiative system is the closest we’ll get.

I do wonder why they bothered giving the thief an energy system at all though, and no other class.

Ostricheggs.3742:

It’s very clear that we don’t see eye to eye and any further input would result in derailment.

It took me 10 games to become effective at using dragons tooth on my ele. It took me 5,000 games to become as good at landing nades as I am.

I continually see people claiming that HGH is a faceroll build for scrubs. I would truly like to see those who claim it to join the next big tournament on their HgH engi and show me how it’s done, because I clearly have much more trouble playing the build than you guys.

It really took you 5000 games to figure out that you need to aim in advance making up for the travelling time? What can i say..we do see things differently.It took me 10 games to figure that out..it helped though that i had experience with staff ele which is by far harder to land spells than nades.In fact too hard for its impact.
If you want my opinion your problem is actually 5000 games on engie!
Lack of in depth knowledge of other classes possibilities and a huge insight of engie gives you the impression that engie is only class with that depth, which is not true at all. But anyway ..offtopic!

Blimm.5028:

Hello fellows.

Some of you may have noticed, anyway I did, that all the viable builds in tournaments are at the same time the most simple and easy-to-play ones.
There is no skill-requireing build in the game at the moment wich can compete with the usual button masher builds following simple rotations.

Exapmples:

Mesmer -> Shatter. Noone can tell me that playing a shatter mesmer requires the faintest amount of skill. I´m playing one myself and it didnt take me 10 minutes to become efficient with it and its – without exception – the same rotation all over again. There is no other mesmer build as viable in tournament pvp.

Beastmaster Ranger Can build extremely tanky while having no impact on the pets damage. Coupled with the huge amount of cc it makes playing this build totally overpowered (my opinion here) while not relying on any kind of player skill but spamming 1 and evade skills while dodging anytime possible.

Hybrid Elementalist: Just spam all the weapon skills on cooldown and you are an addition to the team.

HGH-Grenade Engineer: Like elementalist. This build actually incourages wasting utillity skills in order do stack might. And noone can tell me that hitting with grenades is a skillshot, as stated by arenanet.

Best of luck trying to get this community forum to understand all of these “low skill, high reward” builds. I have been trying to get people to understand the cheesiness of it for a while and all they do is mock.

Some people believe it actually takes skill to hit with grenades -_-….
Better yet, some still claim that a Shatter Mesmer is hard to play….

I agree OP, things need to change to make this game better but I am doubtful at 8 months in for the change to happen.

Dear Anet,

I don’t feel like this game takes skill here’s why:

[Insert oversimplification of popular specs to make it seem like I’ve played them all at an expert level and “noone” (Who’s noone anyways? why doesn’t he step in?) can tell him otherwise]

My solution:

[Insert very large sweeping change that alters the very core of combat in the game instead of small incremental changes to smooth out imbalances which allow the players to become more creative.]
_____________End Satire______________

Do you really think it’s a lack of ideas that hold Anet back? Companies like this are rarely at a miss for ideas. It’s the fact that they have a relatively small team that moves at an even slower pace to get things implemented (Probably due to a very cumbersome system of changing things).

The basics of gameplay here are pretty solid, those are not really the problem. It’s the specifics about how things balance out that are causing droves of people to go to one build or another (And human nature to seek the path of least resistance). Every game suffers from this and has to keep evolving to keep things interesting. The real issue is the frustratingly slow rate they fix real issues like bugs. Hell half the reason classes are the way they are is because some things still don’t work.

Vanthian.9267:

Best of luck trying to get this community forum to understand all of these “low skill, high reward” builds. I have been trying to get people to understand the cheesiness of it for a while and all they do is mock.

Some people believe it actually takes skill to hit with grenades -_-….
Better yet, some still claim that a Shatter Mesmer is hard to play….

I agree OP, things need to change to make this game better but I am doubtful at 8 months in for the change to happen.

That’s not it. Those builds may be ‘easy’ to play, but that doesn’t mean they are easy to play effectively. You can tell who is more skilled between two, lets say, BM Rangers, even if they are playing the same build. It’s an easy-to-pick build, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy to master.

However, the true problem with these called cheese builds, is that they are too good, even in the hands of a not so skilled player. And what’s even worse, they can actually shadow some trully hard to master builds! An ‘mediocre’ mesmer player may have better results than an skillfull zerker necro, thanks to the profession and build…

Asomal.6453:

Vanthian.9267:

Best of luck trying to get this community forum to understand all of these “low skill, high reward” builds. I have been trying to get people to understand the cheesiness of it for a while and all they do is mock.

Some people believe it actually takes skill to hit with grenades -_-….
Better yet, some still claim that a Shatter Mesmer is hard to play….

I agree OP, things need to change to make this game better but I am doubtful at 8 months in for the change to happen.

That’s not it. Those builds may be ‘easy’ to play, but that doesn’t mean they are easy to play effectively. You can tell who is more skilled between two, lets say, BM Rangers, even if they are playing the same build. It’s an easy-to-pick build, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy to master.

However, the true problem with these called cheese builds, is that they are too good, even in the hands of a not so skilled player. And what’s even worse, they can actually shadow some trully hard to master builds! An ‘mediocre’ mesmer player may have better results than an skillfull zerker necro, thanks to the profession and build…

I still feel like the skill ceiling isn’t high enough. Or maybe that’s incorrect. Basically I think the problem now is the skill floor is too close to the skill ceiling. Any complete noob can just luck out and get some kills, not only because of the fact that support is desperately in need of an overhaul(inb4 shout spam guardian), but due to the fact that you can only be ‘so good’ as any particular build/class. I feel like combat does need more depth, contrary to the sarcastic reply above.

I recognise that giving combat more depth isn’t easy or something you can rush out in a month, but I still want to see it. I think adding some more decent support skills will go a long way towards raising the ‘team’ skill cap.

For instance, a skill that applies protection, regeneration, removes a condition and lasts 10 seconds, cooldown 45 seconds, single player targeted? Yes please. If we had powerful skills like this there wouldn’t be any need to continuously go back and forth on minor changes to skills (like nerfing moa) because raw skill and coordination could make up for the shortcomings of UP builds.

Overhauling support will do much of the work for us without resorting to completely changing the games fundamentals, like energy pools, etc.

Vanthian.9267:

Blimm.5028:

Hello fellows.

Some of you may have noticed, anyway I did, that all the viable builds in tournaments are at the same time the most simple and easy-to-play ones.
There is no skill-requireing build in the game at the moment wich can compete with the usual button masher builds following simple rotations.

Exapmples:

Mesmer -> Shatter. Noone can tell me that playing a shatter mesmer requires the faintest amount of skill. I´m playing one myself and it didnt take me 10 minutes to become efficient with it and its – without exception – the same rotation all over again. There is no other mesmer build as viable in tournament pvp.

Beastmaster Ranger Can build extremely tanky while having no impact on the pets damage. Coupled with the huge amount of cc it makes playing this build totally overpowered (my opinion here) while not relying on any kind of player skill but spamming 1 and evade skills while dodging anytime possible.

Hybrid Elementalist: Just spam all the weapon skills on cooldown and you are an addition to the team.

HGH-Grenade Engineer: Like elementalist. This build actually incourages wasting utillity skills in order do stack might. And noone can tell me that hitting with grenades is a skillshot, as stated by arenanet.

Best of luck trying to get this community forum to understand all of these “low skill, high reward” builds. I have been trying to get people to understand the cheesiness of it for a while and all they do is mock.

Some people believe it actually takes skill to hit with grenades -_-….
Better yet, some still claim that a Shatter Mesmer is hard to play….

I agree OP, things need to change to make this game better but I am doubtful at 8 months in for the change to happen.

Ill just say the same to you as i do to everyone who claims shater mesmer is easy:
Find a good shatter mesmer and duel them.
Rhen you can judge abou how low the skill cap is and how easy it is to faceroll >_>
All professions have a high skill cap, and any experienced player will destroy a new player.
Alternatively: click the link in my video and try to do the exact same, fight multiple at a time with your “lolzeasymodespec”.

OP is exagerating. Although there is a niche to every class and a set meta, I dont mind. It is the people that bother playing these builds over and over and over again until they know it backwards and forwards who are the pros. And well you can tell just by fighting them. You can tell a newbie mesmer who just started, verse a veteran mesmer by experience when you come across them. I agree with Ostricheggs.

I wouldn’t mind more “viable” builds to play but if I wanted that, I probably would just play PvE or WvW. There will always be a set meta for competitive PvP in games like this. Unless its like these contrived dota clones where you have a billion characters to choose from….for a reason, there is no need for a plethora of pvp builds.