Guild Wars 2

Miku Lawrence.6329:

You can’t tank in this game.

It depends on how you describe tank.
With the right build played perfectly, you can mitigate and absorb a lot of damage and thus, you become extremely hard to put down.

It is certainly not optimal, mainly because this game is heavily oriented on offense with almost no point to focus on defense. But it can be done !

Acceptation with others is another topic through

But killing might not be the purpose of every players! I do admit that sometimes, I like running into a tough battle in WWW and survive a very long time while everything dies around me. My main concern is how I can survive while still doing something usefull.

I will never follow the crowd that tell me to play zerk and play with a GS.
Even if at times, I like to play glass-canon, I definitly prefer to play what I like to, with no regard to efficiency.

I have played this game intensively for 4 months after more than 4000 hours in GW1.
I enjoyed a lot GW2 when I was playing, but now, I don’t even want to log in, IMO:
- open world is made for solo players, totally group unfriendly, a killer for a MMO game. I have spent most of my exploration alone because doing hearts in group is pointless. Plus, it is rather easy to move anywhere alone, monsters can’t kill any skilled player. In GW1, it was almost impossible to run in any difficult map without a well-prepared group. Monsters would knockdown, curses to death, slow, …. they were a real pain and I love that. All you need in GW2 is 1 or 2 dodges at proper times when running, as if you were walking in a park.
- dungeons are boring because they all follow the same tactic: focus fire and dodge all those veterans+ monsters. I enjoyed a lot more GW1 missions because you actually had to think a lot more how to use your skills and group coordination.
- dodge is too much important and out of place in a MMO game. I mean, you can be the most fragile class, if you know how to dodge and manage to get vigor, you don’t need any other defense. I can build the most defensive character, I’ll still almost get one-shot by most champions and the only way to survive is… dodging ! boring…
- variety of skills : very poor. I agree that GW2 skills are more interesting than GW1 but, it comes with a tremendious drawback : less skills. Sure, you can swap your weapons, but do you really have a large choice? No. And 3 elites per profession? Well, I really miss GW1 elites, where I could spend hours to build my skills around my elite. Here, elites are almost useless. So long cooldowns that I always telling myself “I don’t need to waste my elite now, I can manage without”
- average traits system: so many bugged or useless traits lead to very few possibilities. I played elementalists a lot, water and arcana had very good traits, but it was pretty much all of it. Fire, air, and earth to a lesser extent, have too many unwanted (or boring) traits. If GW2 is supposed to be fun, I would start by replacing any traits that add “+x% damage” or whatever boring stuff. A fun trait is tied to a new ability, this is why water and arcana traits were so brilliant.
- worst queue system in WWW with no queue position indicator. “change server if you don’t want to wait”, great answer! Is that so hard to add a queue position indicator for those used to wait more than 20 minutes without knowing how long it would take…
- boring pvp with only one conquer type map. I mean, conquer is fun at times, but not all the time! Annihilate enemy team is fun too and I miss it from gw1. As well as things like Fort Aspenwood, I had a lot of fun in this map.
- I could go on…

Sirius.4510:

That was the thing… if you were just running with a party of five henchmen, they didn’t actually react to the meteor cast – they wouldn’t move out of the way, and wouldn’t even cast protective spells most of the time – they just sat there and took it up the backside. This was also before you could order them to move elsewhere without using the leash mechanics (difficult if even possible to pull off effectively in that situation). For that same reason, pulling them rarely worked unless you were very careful, because the henchmen would instantly engage as soon as you did that. So pretty much the only options you had were
1) Try to DPS it into the ground faster than it could get the cast off
2) Bring interrupts (probably the better option)
The chances of this working dropped away exponentially the more hydras you engaged at once, of course.

This is exactly what I meant. Meteor wasn’t actually easy to avoid even if you try to run away. Sometimes, it just hit whatever you did.
Protection was good but henchman weren’t really good at it, especially because they started to cast after initial big hit.
With 5 henchies, you had to interrupt and what if you couldn’t? You didn’t pick mesmer primary or secondary?
Even with mesmer primary, it was easy to interrupt first meteor, but since they were usually at least 3, they were 2 more to interrupt and it needed some pratice to do it properly.
Then, fireball hit as hard as meteor but without knockdown.

Even with PUG in the 2 first years, it was really difficult because many players were bad to average.

I now understand that they made GW2 monsters easy and it saddens me. GW1 pve was so much challenging and it could still be completed with some builds but it needed some studies or researchs.

And it’s not all about game difficulty but also diversity, in GW1, you had to adapt your build in some areas. GW2 could have done the same, where players should change their weapon or utilities/elite to succeed in some areas but clearly not the case. One build is enough to do all open-world.

Creeper.9360:

What made monsters in Guild Wars 1 more interesting was that they were in groups and they had synergy together along with group tactics. If you took them as individuals they would be just as mundane as it is in Guild Wars 2.

I prefer squad based games in large part because they can make more interesting encounters with it.

Even alone, many of them were equal to 2-3 gw2 monsters. Karka are an exception but find one GW2 monster that can come close to an hydra in GW1 ?

Rouven.7409:

Aigleborgne.2981:

(…)Because monsters had skills: they slow you down, stun, knockback, and some of them do high damage.(…)

That sounds like Orr. Everyone, come!

Seriously? Orr? I can walk over all the map in Orr and kill any veterans alone with my staff elementalist. There is definitly not a real challenge there. Except temples and champions, but this is special.

In GW1, we had heroes and henchmen because everything was instance, so it was needed. In GW2, you can found some people here and here, different game.

Plus, I don’t like concept to be able to do anything alone in a MMO. First, because it’s a MMO and second, because if you gave that possibility, most players will play solo (why loosing time to group when everything can be done solo?)

maddoctor.2738:

Jade Knights, Wind Riders, Moss Scarabs and Earth Elementals weren’t exactly challenging. Hydras could pose a threat if you didn’t THINK before engaging them, they only had a SINGLE skill you need to look out for and most professions can deal with it. GW1 was so full of OP builds that rolling one of those made soloing a breeze, not to mention the “easy-mode” Heroes that allowed you to use a zero build and afk everything.

The normal mobs in GW2 are just filler content, they provide no real challenge that’s true, but GW2 is an open world game, they can’t balance the encounters for a specific party size and more importantly, they need to make content doable by the majority of players. If they make mobs move around in groups and impossible to solo, it will cause an outrage…. I’m not sure Anet would want that to happen.

Jade Knights: they are formidable warriors able to do massive damage if you let them. Without any EotN op content, it took me some time to find a build to solo the 3 of them outside an outpost.

Wind Riders: when you play through campaign, playing with pug or mercenaries, you encounter groups of 6 wind riders (level 17) when you are about level 15-16. They move fast and interrupt and degen, I have never been able to kill them at this level !

Moss Scarabs: when you first enter crystal desert and get ambushed by 6-8 of them, it hurts a lot when unprepared

Earth Elementals: first trip through crystal desert, running with pug or henchies, those 5-6 elementals with their boss are killers for most parties. They can be killed even with henchies with good hit & runs and even then, not easy.

So, because they want a solo open world, they can’t put some difficulties?
MMO are just becoming more and more easy, because if it is too difficult, some players whine…
Are you wondering why some many players already left? It is so easy to run through all content that it becomes boring!
And if it was difficult, it would encourage social by grouping with others players instead of soloing…

maddoctor.2738:

There was absolutely no mob you couldn’t take 1vs1 if you were a competent player, much like in GW2, the big difference is that mobs in GW1 were always in groups, and those ORGANISED groups, with healers, aoe dps, buffers, interrupters were the hardest fights, harder than the dungeon bosses. That didn’t make those mobs any harder individually

If you exclude bosses, this is true, but it requires some preparation to fight some monsters.
For example, let’s try to kill a desert crystal hydra alone. If you can’t interrupt meteor, fireball, or inferno, you were just dead.

You have to know monsters to understand how to defeat them, and for many encounters, you have to change some skills because if you couldn’t prevent their heal or big spells, your group could be killed.

Now, compare with GW2, I never need to consider my utilities or weapon to fight monters because they are all dumb without any consequent challenge. Only ettins and their knockdown gave me some challenge early on.
In GW1, I could dress a huge list of challenging monsters (solo or in group): jade knight, hydra, wind rider, moss scarab and earth elementals in crystal desert, […]

Finally, compare GW1 monster groups with GW2 and it is exponential.

Vayne.8563:

Sure because you don’t have eight guys with you all the time. And later in Guild Wars 1’s life span, even hard mode was ridiculously easy. My heroes were specced out and I could literally go afk and come back to a field of dead bodies. I didn’t have to play at all, my heroes were so good.

Exactly what I meant, you should see heroes as humans.
Heroes were introduced to allow “solo” in difficult areas. It was far harder to play with PUGs (and no pve skills).

Now, think of GW1 without heroes as it was before nightfall. It wasn’t easy and require skills to succeed. Because monsters were tough !
In many outposts, you could see players unable to win a mission or a difficult quest. They didn’t have skills to outperform monsters and mercenaries were bad.

Some of you spoke about dungeon but I’m talking about open world. Now, if you want to speak about dungeons, I globally found GW1 dungeons more interesting because mobs died rather quickly, but they did good damage and without a good teamplay, it was easy to get wipe.
GW2 is all about surviving big hits (dodging mostly).

Now, in open world, it was clearly made for solo play and because of that, most people solo. They just regroup for events but even then, they don’t really have to play “together”, no need, just solo stuff with other people around.

If open world was a lot tougher, people would need to play in groups, that’s what an mmo is for. Even if you want to, doing hearts in group is not fun because it is mostly solo play (except some of them like elemental arena).

GW1 End game for easy only when you had heroes and pve skills. Without overpowered pve skills and full hero teams, it was not easy.
And when you had 7 heroes, you ended with a good synergy skill sets and teamplay.

All of this is useless in GW2 open world and it is sad because they made a great world with very detailed maps. But it is pointless to explore because there is no danger, no challenge. Almost anyone can run solo anywhere and survive.

If challenge comes only in fractal and dungeon, then it’s a bad design for me.

Ever remember you first run to prophecies campaign? It was actually hard, even in ascalon. I can remember dying a lot when doing diessa lands with some random pugs.

GW2 was clearly designed to low-skilled players, so they added some challenge in dungeons to please everybody. At least, it is my point of view.

Hey,

What you do think of GW2 monsters compare to GW1 ?
Personally, I miss GW1 monsters, they were a lot more interesting because they had all player skills (including elite!!):
Hydra with meteor (shower)
Moss scarab with vampiric touch
Wind Rider wih degen and interrupt (killed me so many times)
And mixed group of monsters with deadly combination of interrupt, damage, hexes, …

There were many areas where I was cautious to walk because I feared those monsters (crystal desert with mercenaries, not heroes). I could be stressed when 2 more hydras joined an already very difficult fights.

Now, what’s about GW2 monsters? Seriously, most of them are a joke. Some might have some skills, they are still doing pathetic damage or effect compared to what player can do to them. I think it is one of the main reason open world is so easy and not so interesting. Monsters are not impressive.
Except champions, but they are boring because all they do is massive damage with massive health. It was more fun and challenging to fight huge mixed groups in GW1
(like the ones in DoA).

Plus, it is so easy to disengage from combat in GW2. I can run accross most areas, aggroing all monsters in the way, and still survive. Try doing that in GW1 ! (even a run like droknar requires lot of pratice).
Why was it difficult? Because monsters had skills: they slow you down, stun, knockback, and some of them do high damage.

Here, you just dodge from time to time and run like if nobody coukd kill you, and most of the time, nobody will.

Well, this is one of the reason I got bored with GW2. “you want challenge? play dungeon or fractal !”. But it doesn’t change anything, monsters do more damage, have more health, they still don’t do anything special.
Numbers is a compensation, you will usually fight multiple opponents but as most professions have area of effect damage and survival skills, you are far from gw1 difficulty.
And if you play in group (after all, it is a mmo), it becomes a race at who will land a hit before that monster falls. Because yes, things die so fast it isn’t even funny.

I have read almost everywhere how bad or average was Conjure Fiery Greatsword.
My elementalist is currently level 36 and have unlocked this elite to test it myself. I have also used quite some time Glyph of Elemental.

So, I expected to be disapointed but I wasn’t, far from it.
Granted the fact it disables all other weapon skills, this is my main issue.

Now, when I’m fighting several tough monsters or veterans, this elite makes the fight a lot easier.
- Auto-attack deals good and AoE damage (a lot more than my weapon)
- Fiery Eruption does great burning
- Fiery Whirl is, IMO, exceptionnal: high damage to several monsters + cripple. with this along with auto-attack, I can destroy most melee mobs without beeing touched.
- Fiery Rush: classic charge skill with good damage
- Firestorm: I haven’t mesured if it is very good or not, but I always cast it first.

How I use it: I start with normal weapon skills to cast my most important skills and when I’m starting to hit big cooldowns, I cast FGS.
Then, I consume all charges quickly, use some protection/heal skills, and pick the second one.

Globally, I think that this elite does more damage than anything else I have. But it does have several drawbacks:
- almost only raw damage, but very good at this
- disable other weapon skills, it is a pain when you need protection skills.
- not always convenient to pick the 2nd one on the ground
- 60s timer AND a timer. it is common to every conjures but I don’t understand why there is a timer? charges aren’t enough?

It is said that it also offers great mobility? Beside Fiery rush, I suppose it is tied to Fiery Whirl, I suspect it does quite some distance when whirling (more than warrior GS maybe).

So all in all, I really like it as much as Glyph of Elementals.

I must agree with you on the fact that condition removal are too easy in this game.
In GW1, it was more difficult and without enough removals, some fights were really difficult. On top of that, conditions lasted longer. With condition proper builds, you could be very dangerous as it wasn’t easy to remove many conditions. Plus, conditions were overall more deadly.

Now, in GW2, conditions are a lot shorter and if it wasn’t enough, they are a lot removal abilities/traits, and some of them are even affecting allies. Stacking is almost useless as all stacks are removed by one removal.

IMO, this is why burst damage is a lot better ! Against a good burst, you can eventually use a heal but this is pretty much all you can do (beside moving/dodging/protection).
Even outside burst damage, raw damage outshine conditions for the same reason.

Now, a condition build will not rely on raw damage to win, this is a fact. As a necromancer, it will be mostly with bleed stack and poison. All these conditions are applied with short duration, it can be extended with proper builds but it can be removed quickly.

A new or special condition is probably not going to happen because it’s quite complicated to implement. ANet already have trouble to fix bug or useless traits so adding a new condition…

I guess the best solution would be to significantly tone down condition removal.
Good condition removal on a class should come with a high price

Conditions should be as viable as raw damage in PvE/WWW/PvP. This is not the case because healing is vastly inferior to current raw (burst) damage but condition removal is superior or equal to condition damage builds.

Last thing: weakness is a very weak condition vs high critical enemies. IMO, this condition should prevent or reduce critical hit. For example, weakness would add glancing hit AND reduce critical hit by 50%. This way, it would be a great condition to disable glass canon.

PS: sorry, english is not my natural language

I am extremely disapointed by this patch.
Sure new content is always welcomed but what about massive bug corrections and skill/traits balance?
Just looking at bug thread in each profession subforum show how many bugfixes have been waiting for a long time and still not adressed 3 months after launch.

And what about useless traits that many professions have? Can we expect a change one day?

To me, this patch only address minor changes at best, and a few nerfs here and there.
A few things were buffs but we expected something big from this patch as it was announced (4 pages patch notes).

Corrections and balance changes are way too slow to come, players won’t wait for 2 years to get all fixes, they might quit before…