Guild Wars 2

Almost everything in the HoT areas is not solo-friendly, in the sense that a single player wouldn’t be able to complete those events and would likely die constantly to event mobs.

You don’t need to join parties, there are (almost) always people around doing events and you just have to do your part.

So I would say that it is playable solo, but it’s not exactly solo-friendly.

Came back to GW2 to finally play the HoT storyline and… holy crap, is this thing grindy.

Having to replay the same metaevent multiple times just to fill an arbitrary bar is not what I wanted from Guild Wars 2. This wasn’t supposed to be a game about repetitive grind.

Why can’t I just advance to the next story chapter already? The things gated behind masteries are extremely silly and are only there to artificially pad the content. Pad it with grind, grind, grind. Exactly what GW2 wasn’t supposed to be about.

I see it used to be even worse at release. It’s still bad.

I am playing a Tempest Elementalist wielding a staff and I’m Asura. I have played for 268 hours over the past 21 days and died 393 times.
I am currently at 74 agony resistance with 6 Ascended items (Shoulders, Gloves, Staff, Amulet, Ring, Ring). I have killed all raid bosses, except Matthias and Xera (no ley line gliding).

You quite literally played (and achieved) more in 21 days than I did in almost 4 years.

I don’t really have much to add to the discussion at hand, I just found it interesting to note how discrepant the time investment and goal focusing can be between players.

Cleric’s is pretty good for some builds in WvWvW or sometimes even sPvP.

Elementalists and Engineers can provide a really high amount of healing, for example.

sercommander.6817:

Why force ppl through stupid queues and 3-map selections which crash 50% of time (figures u dont play PVP, it is guaranteed to crash 50% the rimes).
Let people choose maps and hit random/ranked then. It will cut the time in queues and crashes.
Cause now i wait like 4 mins for ready window, about 15 secs till ready window crashes or map selection pops out and crashes and i have to wait in queue AGAIN. Not counting 1 minute 30 secs i have to wait in the map cause ppl just dont hit Ready button.
And make the queues shorter. They are awfully long + chance of crash on ready window. Maximum i waited in Starcraft 2 was like 70 secons, and that was on its multiplayer peak with tens of thousands online.

If there was some sort of crash that happened 50% of the time, this forum would be flooded with people (rightfully) complaining about it.

You probably should post in the Tech Support forum, I don’t think other people are having this issue. I know I’m not.

Really not having fun with this map.

I even do like the idea of making a MOBA-style map, but I’m not enjoying the way this one was implemented.

One “attack lane” and one “defense lane” doesn’t feel like a good setup, and there’s way too little incentive to fight players.

Honestly? I think if we are to have a MOBA-style map, just go all out MOBA-style. Three lanes, symmetrical, automated towers, automated minion spawn, some sort of in-match power up, etc.

I’m from South America, Brazil.

My normal latency used to be around 200ms to 300ms.

Since a few weeks ago, my average latency sits above 400ms constantly, some days reaching even 750ms (basically unplayable).

Doing a tracert, I had pretty standard latency time in the 11 connecting hops (~40ms in the first few ones, increasing to up to 200ms on the last few ones), and then 300ms+ on NCSoft ip.

As someone who primarily plays a Support/Healing Elementalist…..

Yeah, this is an issue.

I only ever realized how much rewards I were “missing” when I first played WvWvW with another class. It’s really weird that healing doesn’t give you credit.

The point of Elite Specialziations, since the beginning, was to make something different from the base class.

Elite Specialization were never supposed to “fix” a class problems. Otherwise they would become an obligatory trait line / obligatory weapon. They are supposed to be just an option, and one that changes how you play the class.

Substance E.4852:

Anet isn’t going to make an entire specialization nothing but “Healing with a side of Healing” if it wasn’t going to be useful to the point that it’s wanted.

Oh, it can’t?

I take you aren’t familiar with all trait lines in the game. This isn’t the first trait line focused on Healing.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I will miss the free-for-all active combat nature of the game.

How can you miss something that isn’t gone…?

Ehecatl.9172:

Every character in the game has an effective self heal skill that would allow them to recover from damage that can’t completely avoid. As long as we all have strong self healing potential a dedicated healer will never be entirely MANDATORY and so the trinity will never be a hard rule.

However having someone who has a heavy healing build allows other players to focus entirely on DPS without worrying too much about their own health bars. In this way a healer can be very useful to a team but not mandatory to succeed.

The problem was that until now most of the game’s healing options were just far too weak to make any noticeable difference on the team’s health pools and were outright inferior to self healing. Now that healing specced characters can provide more healing to the group than pure self healing would provide they can actually find a role in a group, but that doesn’t mean the content will be impossible without a healer like in a trinity game.

Thanks to more eloquently saying what I’ve been trying to say too.

The fact that we might now have strong, significant healer-focused character doesn’t suddenly makes healing obligatory and required.

Olba.5376:

Oh come on. So the druid has a skill set where attacks heal allies. We’ve already seen a similar thing with Staff Eles, not to mention Water combo effects.

And Engineers.

The fact that you have a one spec focused on Healing doesn’t suddenly means that healing will be obligatory.

The whole point of Elite Specializations is to go on a different route than the base job, OP.

Purecura.1795:

Ellye.9123:

Druids heavily reminded me of FFXIV’s Scholar.

They are healers with pets, and this create a very interesting dynamic: FFXIV is a game with a hard trinity, but Scholars can still contribute to the party DPS thanks to their pets. But it’s a reversed to what we’ll have here, because the pets are the ones doing the healing while the Scholar is the one doing the damage.

It would be interesting to have a Healer pet here too, maybe.

This! I mained a Scholar in FFXIV and its my favorite JOB in the Final Fantasy UNiverse! Which is why I’ve been drawn to DRUID! Id love to heal while my pet can heal too, or even tank while I heal it.

Same here, that’s why I’m starting a Ranger today on GW2.

I’m fine even if I need to heal while the pet deals damage (different from what happens in FFXIV, but still interesting).

Remember that at least you still have your other weapon besides the Staff, so you won’t be completely defenseless alone.

Same issue today.

Druids heavily reminded me of FFXIV’s Scholar.

They are healers with pets, and this create a very interesting dynamic: FFXIV is a game with a hard trinity, but Scholars can still contribute to the party DPS thanks to their pets. But it’s a reversed to what we’ll have here, because the pets are the ones doing the healing while the Scholar is the one doing the damage.

It would be interesting to have a Healer pet here too, maybe.

phys.7689:

You cannot make healers desirable without being obligatory.

Of course you can.

Example:

With Healers:

- Most players on the party can spec for pure damage, because the party has a Healer to keep them alive.

Without Healers:

- Players need to slightly hybridize their selection of skills and/or gear so they survive the damage, reducing overall DPS output.

Ideally, the total DPS output of both examples could even be identical.

I do not think Healers will be flat out required.

I think the best balance point here is to make Healers desirable, but not obligatory.

It’s true that this also means that the “meta” crowd, who feels the need to do everything in the most optimal way, will in the end either require healer or shun healers (whichever case turns out to be most optimal), but there’s no way around: for those that want to play “optimal” there will always be a set of classes/roles that are “obligatory”.

phys.7689:

Its not that healers have no skills, its that they are forcing them down your throats and making you fail encounters unless you bring x job.

Do we have any source saying that Healers will be obligatory or are we just heavily extrapolating here?

Are we forgetting that every class, regardless of role, have at least 01 healing skill? And very often way more than this, with combos and such?

So yes, there will be unavoidable damage – but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we will need dedicated Healers.

It does means that characters might need to change their gear slightly so that they won’t be killed too quickly by said damage, so that they may heal. But that’s kinda of the point of the whole thing, after all.

In regards to “Trinity” / roles / etc:

Things I never wanted – and still do not want – from GW2:

• Rigid, obligatory, “Holy Trinity” that means that a party can’t do dungeons if they don’t have the exact needed roles.
• Rigid roles that mean that a “Healer” character should only ever Heal and never contribute to damage, or that a “Damage dealer” character should only ever maximize his DPS and never care about his survivability or some bit of healing, etc.

Things I wanted from GW2 since the beginning:

• Flexibility to make any class fulfill any role, even if some classes might be better suited for some than others.
• Flexibility to make groups with a variety of role combinations, so that we can, for example, play with our friends without restricting people based on what role they intend to play.
• Necessity to change your tactics and playstyle, even if slightly, based on the roles available to your group. If you’re doing content with a group full of damage dealers, you’d play it in a noticeably different way than if you’re doing the same content in a group that has a balance of damage, control and utility – but both would be viable.

So far, GW2 has been a bit of hits and misses in those regards, for me. It looks like HoTs might improve things.

I miss Ritualist. By far my favorite class in GW1, it felt really unique and interesting.

I don’t think it “became” any class in GW2.

Looked around a bit on wikis and such, couldn’t find any.

Are there any light armor sandal or similar footwear skins?

Some Engineer builds will reward for you being constantly at mid/long range from your targets.

Rifle, Grenade Kit, Mortar Kit for attacks.
Something like Slick Shoes for kiting / retreating.
Tool Kit for a bit of everything.

Most often I just make a build that seems interesting, try it out for a while, change it a bit here, a bit there, try it out again, etc.

Sometimes I’ll browse sites to see what the current “meta” builds are, and if I see something that seems interesting I’ll try it. If not, I won’t.

And sometimes some of the builds that I’m used to play turn out to be pretty nearly identical to the current “meta” builds.

roachsrealm.9284:

necro is awesome.

all professions are awesome if you enjoy playing games.

if you enjoy min/maxing, forums, and complaining, then none of the professions are awesome. some of them are only tolerable, and a few are barely playable.

Someone should enshrine this.

Seriously, GW2 can be played with any class in almost any build (I think you’d need to go out of your way to make a build that flat out doesn’t work).

I think the base healing values on most skills are fine, but the way they scale with Healing Power could use a revision.

I’ve noticed the same as the OP: the “Healing Power” stat makes almost no difference in your actual healing output, while almost every other stat makes a substantial difference in their respective area.

And yes, it’s true that Healing Power and Toughness kinda of multiply their effectivness together. But that’s not unlike Power, Precision and Ferocity.

paintpixie.7398:

Hyble.4271:

Also, I agree with others that getting LS1 into a LS2 type of purchasable package should be a high priority after HoT comes out. It really should have been a priority before that, but I can understand that there is only so much time in the day. However, now people coming back or getting into the game for the first time with HoT are going to be confused and disappointed.

I wholeheartedly agree. I feel like I have two options:

1.) skip content, and do it out of order when it’s available, or
2.) delay going any further with the story until I can do the story in order.

I don’t really like either of those options. : /

Well, Option #3 would be to read the lore summary for Season 1 and skip doing it.

Not ideal, but it’s what I’d recommend for now.

I’m a person who always enjoyed MMORPGs, ever since Ultima Online, playing through a myriad of games in the genre across nearly three decades now.

Nowadays, I simply don’t have the time and, frankly, neither the desire to engage on the constant catch-up process that has become the norm for MMOs:

“Oh, you spent a year without playing? Well, everything you had is now basically trash, because each new patch brings gear that is exponentially better than the previous ones, and won’t enjoy the new content without it! Good luck playing catch-up!”

But GW2 is an exception. I can simply play for fun, without artificial barriers. I do activities and complete events and play PvP not in order to grind, but simply because I feel like doing those things.

Never change.

Nyawk.7834:

Hello. I am an experienced mmorpg player and I’ve played all the big games so far. I’m new in GW2 (joined about 2 months ago) and so far I got 3 characters to lv80 and im working on another one atm.

In two months you probably played this game for more time than I played in almost three years.

No wonder you’re finding it boring and a grind fest.

Not every game is about quantity. I play relatively little GW2, and I find it to be a perfect game for that style of casual play. This game is only a grind if you want it to be one. The gear system here means that you’ll never need to grind anything, and will still be able to participate on any content that you wish to.

For me, a core part of playing Elementalist has always been to constantly switch between stances. Whenever a stance comes out of cooldown, I’m switching to it.

Tempest wants me to stay in the same stance for a long while.

That’s certainly a change in playstyle.

In fact, I probably won’t be playing Tempest myself exactly because I really, really like the constant switching of stances. But it does seem really cool – and, more to the point here, that’s another sign that it is indeed a different playstyle.

Mostly, I’d like to say that I really enjoy this model for the Living Story.

Having it behave the same way that our Personal Story behaved, and being able to complete it at a later date – either after freely unlocking it by being active at the right time, or by purchasing it later – is much better than the temporary, often open content from Season 1.

Also, I feel like the price for purchasing it was fair. It’s a decent amount of content, fully optional and can easily be gotten for free – purchasing is just a convenience for those that missed the activity window and don’t want to tag along another player in order to complete it now.

As for the content itself: I think the story is alright, nothing specular but nothing terrible either, about average for the genre. The writing is, unfortunately, a bit poor; and most characters come out as bland. Taimi is great, though, even if her quirks are a bit overplayed.

Some of the combat encounters had gimmicky mechanics that were quite annoying instead of challenging, especially at the beginning of the story, in Dry Top.

But overall, it was enjoyable and I mainly want to reinforce my initial paragraphs: I really hope they keep this model for Living World after Heart of Thorns.

Aenaos.8160:

Ellye.9123:

Since the beginning of GW2, my main characer has been a bunker Arcane/Water/Earth Staff Elementalist.

I’ve always played her a in a more supportive role, providing boons, regenerations and being able to tank stuff if needed.

The playstyle and the effectivness of the build are viable; the issue is that there’s a certain style of player that doesn’t care about “viable” exactly – they care about doing things as fast as possible.

We reach a bit of a design pitfall. Arena.net is afraid of creating content that requires “tanks” or “healers”, since that would be reminiscent of the holy trinity that GW2 has done away with. But if content doesn’t require tanks/healers, it means that focusing solely on DPS should work – and should, logically, be the fastest way to do it.

So people that want to farm will tend to favor playing with all-out DPS builds and will often want their partymates to also be that way.

Still, I do find dungeons and fractals parties from time do time that don’t seem to care about that, and it’s a fun experience.

Regarding PvE and Dungeons,Fractals.
It’s not just about the speed.
A defensive built player in a zerker party will most certainly
result in the party wiping.
I see a lot of people not getting this.
When you come in defensive,and you get the perception that you keep
your party alive,the truth is that your defensive build created the need
for more defence in the first place.
Whenever I join a proper zerker party the difference is very noticeable,
I get a lot less pressure from boss damage,when compared to parties with
support and tanky players.
Content can be done with any build,but not all builds work well together.

Oh, I agree with you actually. A team with 4-zerk and 1-tanky doesn’t work well. The zerk builds need everything to be destroyed as quick as possible for them to work properly.

I prefer to play my tanky-support character together with more balanced characters, that tend to works well. Certainly not as quick as a full zerk party, but I don’t play for speed, so I’m fine with that.

ThyShadowPaladin.9521:

If anyone wants to bring up grinding vs “fun”, let me tell you. GW2 is nowhere NEAR as much a grind for ANYTHING compared alot of other games. We have it easy.

Oh, I won’t disasgree at all.

Even playing casually like I do, I still manage to get some of the more “grindy” stuff from GW2 – something that just wouldn’t happen in many other games.

FrostSpectre.4198:

Well, for PvE, ANet did state that they’re gonna update all maps and dungeons, except Starter maps, to contain more proper foes that forces players to use more active combat mechanics and provide use for other builds than just forfull berserker DPS.

Oh, that’s good news that I wasn’t aware of.

Do you remember where they mentioned that? I’d like to read more about it (if there’s more).

Jockum.1385:

Since Anet failed to introduce new dungeons more and more players did dungeonpaths very often, get better and start to be more picky. After having done a dungeon like 100 times many players just want to finish the dungeon quick and are not willing to spend more time then necessary in it.

At that point I always wonder why people even bother still playing at all.
If my mentality in a game ever gets to a point like: “I just want to get this over with as fast as possible”, I’d question whether I was even really enjoying my time with the game. This is supposed to be entertainment, not work.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m just talking about myself specifically. Different people have different tastes.

Anyway, I tend to enjoy joining parties for people doing dungeons for their 1st time. They are the most enjoyable and fun parties, for me.

Since the beginning of GW2, my main characer has been a bunker Arcane/Water/Earth Staff Elementalist.

I’ve always played her a in a more supportive role, providing boons, regenerations and being able to tank stuff if needed.

The playstyle and the effectivness of the build are viable; the issue is that there’s a certain style of player that doesn’t care about “viable” exactly – they care about doing things as fast as possible.

We reach a bit of a design pitfall. Arena.net is afraid of creating content that requires “tanks” or “healers”, since that would be reminiscent of the holy trinity that GW2 has done away with. But if content doesn’t require tanks/healers, it means that focusing solely on DPS should work – and should, logically, be the fastest way to do it.

So people that want to farm will tend to favor playing with all-out DPS builds and will often want their partymates to also be that way.

Still, I do find dungeons and fractals parties from time do time that don’t seem to care about that, and it’s a fun experience.

Alice has low condition damage.
Bob has high condition damage.

Scenario 1:
Alice applies 3 seconds of burning to an enemy.
Bob applies 2 seconds of burning to the same enemy, roughly at the same time.
The enemy now has 5 seconds of burning. How much damage will it take?
Will it be 3 seconds of low damage, followed by 2 seconds of high damage? Will it be averaged?

Scenario 2:
Alice applies 5 stacks of bleeding to an enemy.
Bob applies 3 stacks of bleeding to the same enemy.
The enemy now has 8 stacks of bleeding.
What will be the bleeding damage?
Will the stacks have different damage, based on who applied them?

Scenario 3:
Alice applies 25 stacks of bleeding to an enemy.
Bob tries to apply 4 stacks of bleeding to this same enemy.
What happens?
Would it be different if Bob was the one that applied 25, and them Alice tried to apply more?

Scenario 4:
Bob, who has no Healing Power, gives 5 seconds of Regeneration to a friend.
Alice, who has high Healing Power, gives 6 seconds of Regeneration to the same friend.
How will the healing amount be? Low for 5 seconds, than high for 6 seconds? Averaged?

Thanks in advance.

My favorite things about GW2:

- The seamless level scaling. The fact that you never “outgrow” any part of the world, and can still adventure anywhere without it becoming a boring one-hit-kill-everything. This is by far the best thing about GW2 for me, as I enjoy exploring and that often means going back to places below my level.
- The separation between PvP and PvE equipment, level and stats. It’s the only decent way to have PvP, otherwise it simply becomes a matter of whoever plays longer has an advantage.
- The fact that the game rewards cooperation, even without the need of formally making a party. I can easily buff strangers, I can assist with events, I can revive downed players, etcetera.
- The community. While those forums often pass the wrong idea, being quite toxic and negative at times, the actual in-game community tends to be extremely friendly and helpful.

What I don’t like about GW2:

- Targeting. I don’t know how it could be improved, but sometimes it feels too hard to sticky to the correct target. It often feels I’m playing against the UI.
- Underwater combat. I don’t know why game devs even bother trying to make underwater combat.

This doesn’t apply just to GW2, but to any game which uses a similar leveling system:

What’s the point of lvl 1-29, lvl 31-35, lvl 37-41, lvl 43-47, etc?
Leveling up and having no reward for it, no sort of character point to spend, is extremely dull and boring. Every level should make you feel like you gained something (and basic automatic stat improvements doesn’t really cut it for this).

Those in-between levels are just buffer and filler. They’re just there to make character progression seem bigger and longer, and frankly, neither of those things is even wanted by the Guild Wars community as far as I recall (Guild Wars was supposed to be the one MMORPG that didn’t focus on over-extended character progression, remember? GW1 had only 20 levels, and it worked fine).

If such an overhaul was to be made in GW2, I’d rather it was a major overhaul that changed the level structure so that we’d only have levels that mattered. In other words, cut down to a level cap of 15, each level after the first giving you one trait point.

Warrior, Guardian, Mesmer and Ranger are the ones I tend to see the most in PvE.
Guardian, Mesmer, Ranger and Thief are the ones I tend to see the most in PvP.

Engineers are the ones I see the least in both modes.

I’ve found a suggestion to disable “Attack / Interact with Right Click”, and that indeed helped a bit in the “why am I randomly losing my target after I finally manage to select it?” department.

I have always been a huge fan of GW1, and a huge fan of ArenaNet philosophy that a game should be fun from the very start. It should not require the player to go through unfun grinding and busywork in order to get to fun content. I was a big fan of GW1 PvP model, allowing everyone to fight on same footing, and not requiring you to play PvE with a PvP character, etcetera.

I was underwhelmed with Guild Wars 2 a few months after release, because I expected it to be a modernized, better, Guild Wars 1. And it wasn’t that. After a while, I moved on.

And in the meanwhile, I played a lot of other MMORPGs. I’ve both gone back to old ones and tried new ones. And recently, I decided to try GW2 again, and I must say that I’m really pleased with it. What I got from this is that, as long as I don’t approach GW2 expecting a “better GW1”, and instead simply like I’d approach any other MMORPG, it’s actually a very good game, and the best MMO I tried this year.

At times, especially in sPvP when my screen is full of pets and minions (and Mesmer clones, but those are indeed supposed to be confusing, I guess), I have trouble with targeting.

I know I can call targets with ctrl+T and then use T to re-target, and that this is a group-wide function. But aside from that, I have a lot of trouble actually targeting who I want to, and having my selection actually stay locked on that target.

Relevant options I have:
[ ] Show All Enemy Names
[ ] Show All NPC Names
[X] Show Player Names
[ ] Stop Autoattacking on Target Change
[X] Autotargeting
[X] Promote Skill Target (What exactly does this one do? I didn’t notice any difference with it on or off)
[ ] Fast Cast Ground Targeting
[ ] Melee Attack Assist

Any tips? Do people tend to use Tab or Clicking to select targets in crowded situations? And why does sometimes it seems that my target changes without me clicking anything?

Thanks in advance!

I’m on a similar situation.

I bought the game on release, and played casually for a while. I stopped playing around January due to a lack of faith in sPvP (and mostly due to a busy life at the time), without ever truly giving PvE a chance.

I decided to reinstall the game this past weekend, and I quite pleased. There has been a lot of improvements here and there, small things that add up nicely. I’ve played quite a few MMOs in the meanwhile that I wasn’t playing GW2, and now my impression of this game is quite better than it was, for some reason.

So yeah, having a blast with this game. I had forgotten how beautiful this world looks, and I was surprised to see that Tarnished Coast was still full of nice people (serious, this might be one of the best MMO communities I’ve seem).

Ugh, I was hopeful that I was just missing something and/or it just got delayed… But if ANet idea of a big spvp patch is to add a new map and some balance tweaks…

Yeah.

I remember talk about a big (upcoming at the time) February patch for sPvP, but I went away from GW2 for a while.

I was looking up patch notes, and I can’t find anything noteworthy regarding sPvP. Am I missing it or was the patch delayed?

Fully agree with a F2P pvp mode and an urgent need for solo queues.

Chi Malady.2015:

The only way to profit off of a F2P is if you sell items/gear that make you better (i.e. P2W).

Some of the most successful games currently are completely free to play with only cosmetics and conveniences as cakittenems, with absolutely nothing that affects your power in a match.

Also, a F2P PVP mode would for GW2 would most certainly generate a decent amount of retail purchases – many of the people that get the game for free for the PVP Mode would end up buying the PvE mode later on.