Guild Wars 2

Constantly I see players saying the level of content isn’t good enough. Or that the rewards aren’t enough. In my opinion the game should be good enough that repeating content (for a reasonable period of time, at least) should be rewarding enough on a core level of simply enjoying the combat itself. The problem lies in that most skills/weapons are really pretty shallow and with most professions I feel everything falls onto watching yourself autoattack. Certainly, you use other skills when appropriate, but either the cooldown timers, general effects of the skills, or tuning of the skills keep the game from being more engaging than it potentially could be. Let me elaborate with an example weapon combo I have on my Necro.

Dagger/Warhorn

Dagger
-Autoattack outshines most everything. It’s a simple chain of damaging attacks that give life force. Not very interesting- this is the case with most autoattacks.
-Life Siphon does pitiful damage so you won’t use it when not in danger. When you are in danger it doesn’t heal enough to have much impact on anything.
-Dark Pact also does pitiful damage. Most single mobs aren’t threatening enough to even bother immobilizing. Most mobs you would like to immobilize are unshakeable/defiant champions. This skill is rarely used.

Warhorn
-Wail of Doom. This skill does no damage and has a sizable cast/aftercast time. In most situations you’re better off just autoattacking through. For example- WvW guards that heal. The opportunity cost of interrupting the heal vs. doing damage is so break even that you’re better off saving the daze in case a player comes around.
-Locust Swarm. This is an example of a well designed ability. The damage over the duration of the skill outweighs the opportunity cost of autoattacking and additionally it cripples nearby enemies. More skills should follow this model.

This is, admittedly one of the more lopsided combinations in the game. The point I’d like to make with it, however, is that the development team decidedly need to take the combat in one of two directions to keep the combat interesting.

1) More interesting skills. Any given skill needs to be more impactful to the flow of combat. A great example would be the guardian skill, Binding Blade. It has a powerful crowd control effect that manages to transcend the otherwise dull boon/condition system that holds other skills back from being more interesting.

2) Tone down autoattacks. In this method the balance between autoattack and the 2/3 skills on a given weapon would shift so players are actively using more skills, even if situational uses are not currently needed. Lets use the Warrior’s sword as an example. The damage/bleeding from auto would be reduced, however Savage Leap would do more damage and apply an AOE bleed upon landing. Final Thrust’s cooldown would be reduced and it would also apply a longer duration bleed. In this way it would be a skill worth using over autoattack- as an opener perhaps, but it would be a very useful skill against foes below 50% health.

Or a combination of the two above proposals. This game has a great deal of promise, but as a long time powergamer there is, in my eyes, a great deal of improvement to be made on the core combat of GW2. Knowledgeable players don’t just press buttons for no reason. In far too many cases skills sit idle on our bars because there is no reason to be using them. We stare at our character autoattack because that is the optimal action. Optimal and fun shouldn’t be mutually exclusive and I feel is a large detriment to the game.

I appreciate any comments/criticism. Thanks!

Great post on a topic that seems to be often overlooked as of now.

What makes a great game that’s tons of fun to play even when repeating old content? Gameplay, depth, and control. GW2 does have those factors down to a pretty solid degree. It is just that for us players who have played “too much” and explored all the game’s capabilities, the new content focused on zones and events seem more stale than it really is.

Simply put, I feel veteran players need more toys to play with rather than places to go. More ways to expand our characters other than 5% stats upgrades or new skins.

Skills and weapons are additions that will most probably be enjoyed by everyone (and adding flavor to some of the more bland skills: shoot arrows/gun/attack 5 times in a row is bland after a while). But hey “save something for expansions”.

I think option 1 would be best. I agree that combat needs a boost, but I think Anet is not going to be too quick to add new skills/weapons until they have a very good handle on balance. But then again, if that is the case, we will probably never have new combat related content lol.

My main concern about lowering skill #1 damage is that everything else is on CD. Take the necro dagger skills the OP discusses. Everything else on the dagger/dagger or dagger/warhorn bar is a situational skill, and CD’s are as a whole longer than some other professions. On dagger/dagger, the CD’s are 12, 25, 18, 25. On warrior ax/ax the CD’s are 6, 10, 12, 20. Now, add in that Necro dagger has worse damage coefficients across the board.

On my necro I’m using dagger/focus, and use primaily 1 and 4, with 2 used when low on health and 3/5 on those occasions when I want to slow something. Reducing dagger 1’s damage would have to be compensated for by changing other skills completely, not just upping their damage. Because of the situational nature of those skills, and because Necro power builds are handicapped by the devs’ vision of the class as an attrition class, just adding more damage to situational skills is not going to compensate for lowered damage on the spammable skill, especially when the class’s direct damage is already handicapped by the class design.

I believe that the rework the OP is suggesting would be good for the game, but it must start from the ground up, with the class philosophies. If I were doing it, I would ask things like, “Why must a class be shoehorned into one style of play?” and “Shouldn’t an equivalent investment into direct damage, condition damage, support, defense, etc. produce equivalent results?”

Good post. As a fellow necro, I agree wholeheartedly. I know that currently the community looks at us as “op” so this post might get stigmatized and de-railed, but there are several weapon abilities that are just so useless that there’s never a good time to use them. In theory I’m supposed to have 10 weapon skills to swap between, but it usually feels more like 5-7 depending on my weapon combo. It makes “rotations” appear too (which are the worst part about mmos imo): "cast spell 1, 3, 4, then swap weapons and use spell 1, 2, 5. Repeat. Yaaaawwn.

It’d be awesome to see Anet go through and re-vamp a bunch of the really lackluster weapon skills (for all classes ofc) as well as some of the utility skills that never get used (I’m looking at you, Spectral Grasp)

What a good post. This is how someone should offer criticism.

The depth of a game is often correlated with MEANINGFUL choices that one makes. The problem as you stated is that while we have so many skills, that most of them are not worth interrupting the auto attack chain for, meaning that we put more effort into less effect. This is bad. The necromancer is especially guilty of this, because even though they do pretty good damage, it’s also a lot of 111111111111. To make matters worse, only the third attack in the auto chain

This is also why Guardian Sword is so much more boring than GS.

Foehn.2489:

Great post on a topic that seems to be often overlooked as of now.

What makes a great game that’s tons of fun to play even when repeating old content? Gameplay, depth, and control. GW2 does have those factors down to a pretty solid degree. It is just that for us players who have played “too much” and explored all the game’s capabilities, the new content focused on zones and events seem more stale than it really is.

Simply put, I feel veteran players need more toys to play with rather than places to go. More ways to expand our characters other than 5% stats upgrades or new skins.

Skills and weapons are additions that will most probably be enjoyed by everyone (and adding flavor to some of the more bland skills: shoot arrows/gun/attack 5 times in a row is bland after a while). But hey “save something for expansions”.

I agree. They should add 1 alternative skill to every weapon skill or even add new weapons that can be equiped to all classes. In that way you could customize better, explore the game better and even set a new level of gameplay (adding a new weapon skill to every slot).

To add a new weapon skill to every slot may be difficult due balance, but I hope they do it at least in a expansion (maybe 1 new skill to every slot each expansion).

I really don’t care much “these new content” since I hate jumping puzzles and story, but some people do. What I reaaly wanted is a new way to play the game, in a more diversified way.

Atheismo.5164:

Good post. As a fellow necro, I agree wholeheartedly. I know that currently the community looks at us as “op” so this post might get stigmatized and de-railed, but there are several weapon abilities that are just so useless that there’s never a good time to use them. In theory I’m supposed to have 10 weapon skills to swap between, but it usually feels more like 5-7 depending on my weapon combo. It makes “rotations” appear too (which are the worst part about mmos imo): "cast spell 1, 3, 4, then swap weapons and use spell 1, 2, 5. Repeat. Yaaaawwn.

It’d be awesome to see Anet go through and re-vamp a bunch of the really lackluster weapon skills (for all classes ofc) as well as some of the utility skills that never get used (I’m looking at you, Spectral Grasp)

I agree with you. I play Guardian as my main, the shield skills have insanes cooldown and you only have to wait the right time to use them becouse that. This is good and bad. Good becouse you have a resource (the cooldown) that must be administered correctly and bad becouse you will almost never use the skill and when you use you’ll have to wait a long cooldown time. Also, all elite skills I feel that way (with some exceptions).

Maybe adding new skills to each slot would be extremely interesting becouse would allow you a several new styles to play, but also allow you to use the same weapon in the 2 sets, each one with different combinations. That should be really nice, I hope they implement this in the future or in a expension.

I don’t get why this got moved to the Necro forum. The OP used Necro as an example (as did I) but I think the overall idea here was referring to all classes.

I am surprised so many people agree with this. Especially with the example. I use D/WH always, and I think the skills are almost perfect.

I understand the point (a little) that some auto-attacks are so much stronger than the other skills. But this game isn’t all about hitting hard.

I play mainly WvW, and quite frankly, a necro planning to spam 1111111111 with their dagger is going to be an extremely dead necro.

Dagger:
1. Auto-attack: This hits hard. it hits hard, and generates life-force. Nothing wrong with this.
2. Life Siphon: This can also hit very hard. (I can crit for around 3-5k) This is a hugely useful skill. Took too much pressure in melee range? Now you can kite around your target, stealing health, and doing decent damage to keep up the pressure. This has kept me alive in many fights. I believe from a full chain you gain ~2k health. Not too much. 1/10th of my health. But if the fight lasts longer than 12 seconds, you can use it again. I have been in long duels lasting a few minutes. That means that using this skill effectively will have done an entire lifebar or more of healing. It is all about sustain. A dead person is a person dealing 0 damage.
3. Dark Pact: This is where you really lost me. Bad damage? It is not supposed to damage the foe. It is supposed to create an opportunity to damage the foe. It is so easy to dark pact an enemy, circle behind them and auto-attack, dropping their health rapidly. This skill is a crucial part of my build (wellbomber), and my entire build almost revolves around it. It may not do damage, but it has led to many deaths to my enemies.

Warhorn:
Wail of Doom: Long cast time, yes. Aftercast, sure. But is a 2 second UNBLOCKABLE daze that can hit multiple foes. If you ever run a wellbomber, drop the wells, wait a second or two, use that, and watch as you interrupt people’s heals, and watch them fall down and die. See an enemy ressing an ally and you are all out fears? Interrupt the res with an easy to use skill. And what is wrong with the aftercast? If you use the skill successfully, you have 2 seconds of time before the enemy can restart the attack.
Locust Swarm: It doesn’t outweigh the opportunity cost. If you play with the idea that auto-attack with dagger is so much better than everything else and choose not to use Locust Swarm, you are only hurting yourself. It amplifies the auto-attack. The only thing that is lacking about this skill is that the swiftness does not apply to allies.

I hate to say this, but I believe this is a huge case of L2P. Your evalutaions of the skills are just…. wrong. All I seem to get is that you cast Locust Swarm, and auto-attack until the fight is over. And that is a terrible way to play.

These skills all amplify the auto-attack and the weapon set, not ruin the weapon set. Melee face-tanking can leave you vulnerable. What better way to recoup some of your lost health with a midrange life steal that can hit for a decent amount and also heal you while at a safer distance than point-blank. If you play well, this skill is invaluable. Now you are trying to autoattack a pesky foe who is constantly kiting you, and your autoattack seems like it will never be used. So we have a skill that can shut down an enemy’s movement, and give us 3 seconds to close the gap and smack into them. You are up close and personal smacking them in the face with your dagger, and you see the enemy start to heal. here comes your 2 second unblockable heal. That guardian that blocks while healing, his skill was jsut interrupted, and you have a good advantage. And whilst you smack faces, you can have swiftness on, allowing you to catch up to your enemies, cripple fleeing foes, and supplement your already strong auto-attack with even more damage.

I hate to reiterate, but learn to play. Although some of your thoughts seem to stem directly from PvE, which is a cake walk whatever you play, all of the skills you listed are highly useful, and go hand in hand with the auto-attack. You talk as if they clash, that the skills don’t eqaute to the auto-attack, but in actuality they make the auto-attack more viable. The sad thing is, I rarely sit and auto-attack players. And hardly anyone does. Why? Because auto-attacking more than likely will get you well and dead. I have to sue all the skill in my arsenal to press and wait for the advantage, and when I have the moment, I can waltz in, smack them with my dagger, and watch them drop.

And all it sounds like you do is auto-attack…..