Guild Wars 2

As Guild Wars 2 is reaching it’s 2 year mark (HOLY SMOKES, 2 years!) a lot of people are beginning to understand some weapons are useful than others, some weapon are more supporting or offer CC than others. The way weapons are designed now haven’t changed since beta, they have been balanced but other than the Ranger Longbow, completely unchanged.

This is not a topic based around how poisonous the current boon and condition mechanics are but rather the design focus of each weapon. What their intended purposes are and how they affect play style of yourself and your enemy.

With designing combat, you always start with a base and right now ArenaNet has a good idea of each weapons role; damage, support and control. Using skills to make up for weaknesses of the weapon, look at the Warrior Longbow, utilizing Pin Down to land slow moving attacks. Guardian Hammer is a controlling weapon with a leap to close distance. Each weapon have a weakness and skills to make up for the weakness.

This is done TOO well. A lot of weapons offer to much of one and not enough of the other, so what is why you have weapon swapping to fix that, right? What is the Longbow to the Warrior? Obviously, a melee snare with a powerful condition spike useful for both power and condition users. A large, practically unavoidable fire field that damage is low but can deal enough to negate regeneration.
What you have is a weapon that offers too to cover it’s weakness. So much so, it’s a melee weapon rather than a ranged weapon. What was suppose to be a snare to land Arcing Shot is just a buffer to get to your melee weapon, the slow ranged attacks can be fired at the Warriors feet no problem.

Is the answer to make a minimum range? Heck no, before I answer that, lets look at a bad weapon.

Warrior Rifle (sorry for picking on the Warrior, I love them, I really do <3 ) this is the power house long range weapon. It’s power is massive, scales so well too. Even with high defense won’t help you. A cripple and knockback to keep distance, Vulnerability to increase your damage and 2 very powerful and bursting ranged attacks.

By comparison, the Rifle for the Warrior should blow the Longbow out of the water. Yet, everywhere you run in PvP, Longbow. Every Warrior always carry a longbow. Both are ranged weapons, both have snares and yet one does vastly less damage than the other. The one that does less damage, is simple used more.

The answer is simple, the Longbow isn’t covering it’s weakness via skills, rather the positioning. Making for a VERY forgiving weapon.

To fix this, combat needs a better base design.

So what does this mean for combat design? It means weapon assignment isn’t good and is jumbled badly. You know your combat isn’t ideal when even the most glassy classes will take a condition, control or support weapon instead of the powerhouse available.

That doesn’t mean you can’t take those weapons, but it does mean you are going to run into combat problems.

What ArenaNet fails to do is assign weapons to their Holy Trinity. Trying to hard to make the weapons cover their weaknesses instead of giving them a focus. ArenaNet defined their combat Holy Trinity as control, support and offense. This is where the base of design suffers as the their current Holy Trinity will not work.

Support – Power – Utility – Conditions

This should be the base of how weapons are assigned, another way to look at it.

Defense – Damage – Alternative Defense – Alternative Damage

There are four ways to design each weapon in the game. With this as a base, Guild Wars 2 combat can start evolving, allowing more weapon types to more classes.

Once you have a BASE then you can design your weapon and fix it’s weaknesses and you can do anything with these bases. Instead of the Rifle being a powerhouse ranged weapon for the Warrior, how about giving it a support ranged focus? Able to lay down a smoke field for blasting, able to apply a blast that damages foes and gives Protection to allies. It’s basic attack gives might on each it to the Warrior and nearby allies and for added fun having Kill Shot grant 10 stacks of might on hit.

It’s damage would be gone but like the Longbow it transfers well with other weapons. That is exactly what you want.

You want support to transfer well with condition or power, you want power to transfer well with utility and support.

Do you know what you don’t want?

Condition transferring well with power. Support transferring well with utility.

It is combat design SIN to design combat with the idea of being able to hit extremely hard with all kinds of damage. It is a SIN for a setup where the class can not only support but offer utility in forms of high mobility and CC.

It should NOT be on the same weapon.

Guild Wars 2 proves this is a bad design. Classes that can take a lot of hits while aiding their allies, classes that have high damage output and high condition output.

Classes that have high damage output yet high amount of condition spamming should be extremely vulnerable to all types of damage with no chance of recovery when caught. Classes that have a lot of utility and support should find themselves unable to contribute everything to a teamfight.

Guardian Staff is a perfect example bad design, it offers both support and control. It can have support and condition/power. It can have utility and power/condition. It just cannot have both, force the player to swap to a weapon that has the other component missing.
Longbow for the Warrior, good condition and power output. Once again, you can have one or the other, not both. If you want both, you must switch weapons.

A character can have a support and utility in the same build as well as condition and power focus on the same build. Just not on the same weapon. I cannot stress this enough.

So there you have it, the evolution of combat is not started with balance, more weapons, utilities or traits. You start with a base and build outwards.

Oh and ArenaNet, I’m still awaiting for my apology. This isn’t cool, at all. I figured I started on the wrong foot, so don’t delete this thread and ban me again.

Luv u <3

Hmm, this is an interesting read.

The weapons that seem to best represent specific roles seem to be offhands in my opinion, but even then its not fully specialized

For example take the necromancer, that has 3 offhands.

Focus is the offensive weapon that offers a damaging vuln stacking skill and a form of offensive control, which is the ranged chill and boon removal.

OH dagger, while usually though of as a condition weapon is actaully more of a defensive weapon in general, with the AoE weakness and AoE blind/condition transfer.

Warhorn is utility weapon through and through, with swiftness, AoE cripple, and an interrupt that an hit multiple utilities.

For me it makes sense when viewing the weapons as offensive, defensive or utility, with smattering of damage, support and control, but trying to find similar analogies for the mainhand weapons or twohanded weapons is a bit tough, unless the weapon is already etremely specialized which is rare. To use necros again, their staff is probably the most specialized 2-handed utility weapon in the game, because its all about area control, while the types of area control vary between each skill. 3 marks can be offensive, 2 marks can be used for control, and 2 marks can be used for utility.

Looking at other classes its a bit harder. Mesmer offhands seem to fit an offensive (sw pist) defensive (torch) and utility (focus) pattern, while for rangers, thats less obvious, in part because the OH axe has both a purely offensive and purely defensive skill on it, while the warhorn has a purely offensive and a purely utility/support skill on it. Their OH torch though is purely offensive/condition unless used to might stack, and their OH dagger is a defensive weapon that provides evades while also giving offensive poison/bleeds and a control based snare.

I couldn’t help myself but to laugh with this recent balance patch.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as bad as the Stun Bug or Dhuumfire but it gets the bronze medal.
I main an Elementalist so I don’t care, my favorite, most used class is still broken anyways so this patch doesn’t affect me, I can pretty much wreck any class, even the rangers everyone is complaining about.

But when watching the balance patch it became very clear how the balance team, “balances.” Number crunching. That is a MUST have for any balancing but here is the thing, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t need number crunching, it needs roles.

The buff to Mesmers was a great choice and on the right track.
The staff has always been a support+condition weapon and now the scepter is more of a control+condition damage weapon thanks to it’s offhand choices which offers a lot of control.

Although the scepter base damage is higher and yet the staff applies vulnerability, whatever, I’m giving props where it’s deserved.

As for power, greatsword which is damage+control and sword, which is… damage+control?
Well, one step at a time I suppose.

This is where my praising ends though…

Lets look at Rangers.

Longbow – control + damage
Greatsword – control + damage
Shortbow – control + damage + condition damage
Axe/torch – control + support + condition damage
Sword+Dagger – damage + condition damage
Sword+Warhorn – damage + support

This is just Rangers, there are 7 other classes I can strip down and easily point out their flaws. There is WAY to much control and effort to keep a ranger, ranged. Replying super heavily on distance and healing utility to keep sustain instead of adding support versatility.

With so many gap closers, instead of so much control you should adding self support for sustain. This is why Elementalist staff is not viable. Reduce the recharge and durations of the CC and have better self support options than rolling backwards and temporary reflect projectiles.

I must say, it’s a great learning experience of the do’s and don’ts.

I’m going to keep enjoying this meta with my Elementalist, as for everyone else. Sorry