Guild Wars 2

One of the biggest problems with Guild Wars 2 game play is the spamming of abilities.

I know that you don’t spam every skill, its important to land condi trasfers, stomp/rez stabilty, vital escape and important skills/utilities etc etc..but a lot of classes and builds spam many things simply because it not on CD.

Spamming boons/conditions, whole weapon sets, switch weapon spam again, spam utilities. Because everyone is spamming so many abilities, this leads to spam dodging. Spamming dodge when its up just to neutralize the chaotic damage going on instead of saving it intelligently.

Where are the skill shots that are so rewarding if you land, but really hurts you badly if you miss? Where is the intelligent play? I really wish there was more room to read your opponents and counter them.

Warrior is about to get one of those skillshots!

There are only a few gamechanging hits like Pin Down for example that make saving it and even fakecasting worth it. For most offensive cooldowns applies the faster you use them the faster you have them back up again though. Using mind wreck twice in 15 seconds and risking one missing is usually better than waiting 10 seconds for the perfect moment.

Kinda sad but that’s just how it is when you have no resources and one random dodge can ruin your whole most perfect burst. The only thing i could think of to change that without changing game mechanics would be to decrease endurance regen and increase cooldowns.

Or to switch everything to a mana pool, but at this point that’s probably just ridiculous

NeXeD.3042:

Or to switch everything to a mana pool, but at this point that’s probably just ridiculous

At first i thought it was a cool idea for a game to have no mana pool, but thats before this problem became so apparent.

Making hard choices on what skills to use would make this game so much better.

But your right, its absolutely ridiculous to add such a game changing mechanic this far down the road. Be cool if some one made a mana version ina private server in the future.

That is an issue in lower tier of play. When you win more in sQ or tQ, you will get higher in the leaderboards and you will face better opponents which will not spam skills and there will be intelligent play.

You will have to think about what you’re doing, why, is it worth using the skill that you’re about to use, cancel it if not, track their cooldowns, try to figure their plan out, all in team fights or 1v1.
Then at a larger scale you need to keep track of where everyone is on the map. Who is fighting who, who needs help, where. What’s the best way to rotate to get points, who to send to buffs, is it worth going boss, lord ect.

It takes care of itself. People who spam like that stay in the lower tier of play until they learn that it’s not the best thing to do and learn to manage cooldowns.
I love seeing a person that spams all their skills. Just LOS, dodge or invuln for a few seconds until they’re out and then I can just kill him with 0 issues.

About using MW 2 times in 20 seconds than once – This is a BAD, BAD, BAD idea. You will see with time. Best thing to do is wait until you have a good opportunity. When you get the enemy to 50% or lower HP and have 3 clones up, use mind wrack and get ready to daze the heal = win. In the mean time, let him blow all his CD trying to get you and simply kite using the terrain and the least amount of CD you can. You need to play smart and not just do as much as you can. I’d rather hit all my skills over 30 seconds than have 70% of my damage miss in 5-10 seconds. If you use MW 2x in 20s and 1 misses. That’s 3 clones wasted right there. And in those 10s that you need to recharge MW, you could of had a really nice opportunity to burst down and couldn’t. He gets his heal off and gets his CD back, kills you. Either way, you got 1 burst in, the opportunity way you won, the other you didn’t because you lacked cooldowns.

NeXeD.3042:

Or to switch everything to a mana pool, but at this point that’s probably just ridiculous

Somewhere.. far in the distance a necro looks up as he feels someone is speaking about him, but then realizes it’s vain and precedes cutting himself… why me..why meeeee… ^^

well played merlin…

In regards to spamming, sometimes I feel like I am learning the Gun Kata. 1-2-3 dodge, 4-5 swap, 1-2 dodge, 3…

Login.5102:

Where are the skill shots that are so rewarding if you land, but really hurts you badly if you miss? Where is the intelligent play? I really wish there was more room to read your opponents and counter them.

There are quite a LOT of skills on certain classes that have a big reward or a big “god kitten it he dodged that”, just like you said. It takes a player with a lot of knowledge and experience to understand and react accordingly to the “chaos” that goes down in the game.

What is so frustrating to a lot of players, myself and yourself included, is that while there ARE classes and specs that have interesting dynamics and skillfull play, the game is effectively populated with certain classes and specs that are just the opposite; they are quite effective for very minimal risk or skill.

I don’t mean to hijack your thread, but I’m just saying that spamming has literally nothing to do with skill and is not even bad in this game. It’s quite obvious that players are going to attempt to dish out the most damage within a period of time if that is their job. The entire idea of what you ranted on has far more to do with skill vs reward than with “spamming”.

“spam” is essentially a buzzword that doesn’t make any sense within the context of the game, really. If you spam effectively you’re doing your job, if you spam just to throw kitten out you will be punished by a better player sooner than later…. I think a lot of the QQ with spamming has to do with dodging, but dodging is such a skill to learn and appreciate in and of itself that once you learn it you’re kind of able to tell who does and does not dodge for any reason at all and know that they’re gonna get screwed for being “spammers” in the long run.

Ostricheggs.3742:

What is so frustrating to a lot of players, myself and yourself included, is that while there ARE classes and specs that have interesting dynamics and skillfull play, the game is effectively populated with certain classes and specs that are just the opposite; they are quite effective for very minimal risk or skill.

I should be careful when I say this, because overall I find the balance in this game to be quite good. However, in my opinion, the biggest standouts right now are warrior and S/D thief.

Warrior is a class that anet basically created to say, “You want to tunnel-vision an opponent and not worry about anyone else around you? Do you not want to worry about positioning? Go ahead Warrior!” They have the highest armor, highest health, and some of the most reliable damage in the game. They are perfect for pushing an enemy. On top of this, they get a skill that prevents 5 different ways in which people would typically be able to help any teammate against any other class. With one button press, they prevent immob, chill, cripple, fear, and blind. I should be fair to say though that, if you’re running a killshot war or greatsword war, these general rules significantly don’t apply as much – but only because their damage is not as reliable as any other spec.

Then there is the S/D thief which, for the very same reasons, is ridiculously hard to get them to back off of a target. It is a more active playstyle than the warrior – by far – but that still doesn’t change the fact that it is incredibly difficult to get them to back off from their target because evasion and dodges do essentially the same thing.

Thankfully both of these classes/specs are being addressed in the next coming patch.