Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I’m not, but i might be that one single guy who’s thinking “dropping my money into gemstore?….i dunno”. Unless i clearly see the money not only gives me virtual (let’s keep that in mind) items, but also is used for the growth of the game i spent it on, rather then feeing another project i don’t care about or fattening shareholder’s wallet for his new mercedes..

When I buy a bottle of coke, I don’t buy it because I expect future development by coke. I buy it because I want a bottle of coke.

When I buy a book I buy it because I want the book. That’s what most people probably do.

But I also like the direction of the game right now, and I like where it’s going, so I’m happy to spend money in the gem store, because I understand that it takes time to do stuff.

Anet fixed HoT. Maybe that doesn’t mean anything to you but it’s made it a whole lot better for me. That was only in April. It’s three months since a very large work intensive upgrade.

It wasn’t just rewards redone. It wasn’t just a few events added. It was a rework of stuff like de-linking day and night cycles and working on scaling and population density in certain areas.

I’m not sure why people think that isn’t worth supporting because I believe it is. Anet listened to the community and made changes. Changes that were asked for.

No doubt work on the LS has continued through that, but I have no doubt it would have been slowed.

Had Anet not made those changes, though, it would have been worse.

Sometimes you have to look at the big picture. I know you’re not the only one who feels disenfranchised but I also know I’m not the only one enjoying the new zones. Plenty of people there.

You stop buying gems, I buy more gems.

It all balances out in the end.

When you buy something with money, you’re paying more than the actual worth of the product because you are also paying for a service, but most importantly, a convenience. For some reason, the most profitable entertainment industry on earth consistently gets away with shoddy, unfinished product quality. It doesn’t balance out because video game consumers are typically, somehow, terribly irresponsible with money.

You don’t buy a broken or unfinished product because you expect the manufacturer to fix or complete it later.

What is the downside to taking an elite specialization? What truly changes when an e-spec slaps an extra button onto a player’s profession mechanic bar? Are there any reasons not to use those abilities when they’re available? Are there any situations in which a player would just rather forgo that button because of how combat is flowing or do players simply wait with baited breath for them to come off of recharge? Did e-specs truly add anything new to the game other than more rotations and blatantly obvious, minimalistic combos bound by high cooldowns?

How about mechanics? What new mechanics did e-specs add to the game? Alacrity? Alacrity doesn’t change how anyone “uses” a skill. A player affected by alacrity still uses the same skills, they just come off of cooldown faster. Utility skill types? Most were recycled (although they were implemented at a level that made the HoT ones direct upgrades), and we’re still nowhere near the point at which one’s utility skill type selection matters to anyone but that person who selected them. Given the lack of interaction between the abilities of any given player and the abilities selected/employed by any other player, there is quite arguably no reason for utility skill types at all. The only thing keeping the existence of such “types” remotely relevant are trait passives.

• Healing
• Damage (condition; power)
• CC (stun; daze)
• Stun-break
• Immunity (stability; invulnerability; evasion; “damage reduced to 0”)
• Scripted movement (leaps; dashes)*

Fundamentally, there are about 5 total unique, combat-defining actions that any player can take in Guild Wars 2. This leaves us with a very shallow basin to fill (or overfill) with classes who sport—at the very least—16 skills (average being more like low 20s). With this sort of set-up, is it any wonder we have weapon sets that have duplicated skill functionalities, “wasted” skill slots (those which feature an ability which nobody necessarily values as a standalone effect) or weapon sets which invite players to effortlessly cast all available skills and then wait until they can swap weapons? Abilities that are part of a weapon bar, but aren’t necessarily ever prioritized, included into a rotation as an afterthought/very low-priority addition or are ignored entirely because they don’t do enough damage or have a “useful” effect?

What about utility skills? Aren’t there enough utility, heal and elite skills just lying on the ground never equipped by anyone anymore? Things that were maybe flavor of the month once but were either replaced or reduced to worthlessness by damage/effect or cooldown nerfs? The same could be said for traits as well. Even the respective pools of runes and sigils are bursting at the seams with wholly neglected assets (although, that’s probably a different issue than what’s discussed here).

So then I ask, what is the point of adding more assets to the game when there are perfectly good foundations for additional elite specs already in the game? Whether it was Anet’s intention or not, we’ve seen that skills can be entirely altered in game-changing ways. In the interest of removing the illusion of choice in order to provide actual, meaningful options to players, why not transform underused or unused abilities into the cornerstones of future elite specs?

The biggest example I could push related to this approach would be a revamp to the Ranger class’ specialization options and profession skills:

Specialization 1 (base at character creation): RANGER

• Condition/Control spec
• Access to traps (traps are entirely reworked to promote more unique usage among them individually)
• Preparations as profession mechanic (F1-F2; options taken from a pool)
• Preparations are charge mechanics with multiple stages. Each stage that is successfully fully charged will reward 1 stack of the related preparation when the channel is released. Preparation charges are consumed by various actions and have unique control, damage and support roles.
• Preparations have no cooldown, but each reaching a stage during a channel will consume a set amount of resource from a resource pool which regenerates over time.

Specialization 2: BEASTMASTER

• Power/Tank spec
• Access to pets and shouts (shouts could probably use a rework given their current, bland nature)
• Profession mechanic: Pets (F1-F2; skill slots with options taken from a pool; identical to Revenant spirits)
• Healing through Elite skills altered to function identically to Revenant spirits. Skills change depending on the active pet.
• Pets have a shared health bar which functions the “resource” mechanic. Current active pet can be stowed instantly with F3. Swapping or stowing a pet puts it into a 10s cooldown. If the pet health bar is below 50%, swapping or stowing a pet while still in combat will automatically restore the bar to 50%.

Specialization 3: DRUID

• Healer/Support spec
• More or less unchanged except for various adjustments to traits to make it more of a specified choice with a clear role rather than just a direct upgrade to other “options.”
• Profession mechanic: Celestial Avatar (F1)

Ranger pets have never been a refined addition to GW2. Since launch, Rangers have complained about pets dying all the time to ambient AoE and asking for more control over the pet in order to prevent this. Instead of addressing the issue of the disconnect between this forced AI unit and player control, anet just made pets constantly teleport and move at blinding speeds toward the Ranger at any given moment. Then they buffed their stats by absurd amounts across the board. Then after that, they just made them take outright 90% less damage from all sources while in PvE. Finally, they introduced the HoT pets, among which the meta PvP options simply teleport, evade and blind while continuing to take very little damage via their yet absurd baseline stats.

By freeing all but one Ranger spec from the chains of bad GW2 AI, we can focus on improving the individual contributions of the player within the scope of those specs. By then designing the Beastmaster as the only spec with the AI unit and having it focus on damage reduction while also giving it a better interface with which to control the pet’s actions, we can cover every single base GW2 has to offer mechanically with a mere 3 baseline specializations (a mere 3 trait lines).

Ranger is not the only case like this. Aside from the Reaper (which still ended up being a direct upgrade anyway), the other specializations don’t truly change the way that the base classes already work; they typically just slap another skill onto the profession bar and call it a day. Sure, rotations may be different and some new little mini-combos may crop up here and there, but ultimately there is still that old profession still sitting there trying to pretend that an F5 can cover it up all up with a rug. If we keep things simple and utilize what the game already has, we can envision a GW2 with actual options, defined player roles and fairer balance among options within a single class and across all classes.

LouWolfskin.3492:

But Parasitic Contagion isn’t that big a heal, plus passive should be in big quotation marks as you have to deal damage, quite a lot of it in conditions, if you want to get any significant heal.

I dunno then. It just seemed like I was surviving a lot more garbage that normally would have otherwise killed me.

I tried this trait out and was actually able to sort of match toe-to-toe with condi warriors and other random cancer. While akaCryptic is right (it’s only a “viable” choice for stock necro), when I paired it with Parasitic Contagion, the passive healing (also a blight on GW2, but that’s a different topic) sort of sustained me rather well while I negated incoming stuns by just pressing F1. Unfortunately, the damage sacrifice is legitimately too much. The build can do basically NOTHING on its own, but it wrecks people as a support option because of what it does to boons.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJArdn0ICV2gd2A+2Ac4gDchi2FxxXAHgAYBib9EcvA-T5QHwAC3fAZZAAPAAA

I could probably just shuffle some stuff around to fit staff in there, but this was basically just me mucking about.

Zenith.7301:

But somehow you expect them to nerf/revamp the entire row of classes when their balance patches happen every 6 months and amount to merely tooltip changes and a couple of miserly tweaks?

If you’re going to just cry about GW2’s glaring flaws (facts with which everyone is very familiar), then you might as well not post anything at all. Either accept the fact that anet isn’t good at balancing and be quiet or go out of your way to verbalize an alternative that is above their level. Envision the game that isn’t bad or just go along for the ride.

Gwilym.4257:

What we see in the management of GW2 over time are developers attempting to learn from their mistakes. No grand plan, success, or failure.

Anet hasn’t learned anything. The only path they’ve chosen is to constantly re-write over what has already been established. They ram square pegs into round holes and cover it in glue hoping nobody cares about the final product. They’ve gone back on their word so many times and made a myriad of small to large changes that have either made no sense within the context of the game or were “solutions” to things that were never even problems to begin with.

While it’s admittedly easy to go about and pick out the individual positive changes made to GW2 since release in 2012, on the whole, the game has taken one step forward and five steps back from its original manifesto, its original spirit and its original roots.

The biggest issue is probably a heavy focus on time-gated grind rather than new content generation. It’s quite honestly offensive.

Zenith.7301:

So, no constructive feedback, got it. Just more reminiscing of GW1 which has a snowball’s chance in hell of being reproduced in GW2.

Don’t be like that. You know what I’m saying is true. You can’t balance things as they approach closer and closer to instant while also being on demand if they’re off cooldown. Instead of the game being about timing and positioning, it’s about cooldowns and twitching with passives that carry the rest.

If you want things to be “balanced” GW2 in its entirety needs a fat nerf to action speed, AoE size and a general restructuring of the role passive triggers play in combat. I’m not being specific, because that would mean going directly in and reworking the overpowered garbage with a concrete replacement. Every time that happens, everyone cries about not having a huge crutch anymore. They all think in a vacuum because they can’t imagine their own class remade into a fair player in a balanced game alongside other classes remade in the same way.

It’s a stretch because it’s so expansive in scope, and if actually written out would just bring a lot of whining and crying out of the woodwork. Don’t ask for your “constructive criticism” if you aren’t prepared to not cry about what the game would look like if GW2 combat were actually made into a fair game.

Zenith.7301:

It’s not just the invulnerability.

It’s the fact their autoattacks and weaponskills hit significantly harder, hit significantly faster, their tratilines aren’t horrendous gimmicks, and their utilities are not weak.

If you think that they will nerf all classes one by one to create parity when they can’t even buff a simple one, you’re delusional.

The problem with GW2 is the playerbase (and anet too) still thinks that some things need a buff. Nothing in GW2 needs a buff, and most everything either needs a nerf or outright removal. “Instant and off-cooldown” does not provide room for proper counterplay, and that’s the only direction this game has been moving since Day 1. There’s something to be said when the average autoattack speed going from GW1 to GW2 has devolved from ~1.33s to roughly 0.5s.

Zefrost.3425:

I tried slapping on my full zerker gear on my necro again last night in WvW. Ran into a zerker warrior with greatsword/axe. I also had greatsword/axe.

Yeah, I didn’t stand a chance lmfao. Even if I had played 100% perfectly, literally everything is skewed in the warriors favour. Even their “when you reach 50% health” trait is better – they get endure pain (used to be 25% health, power creep Anet plz).

Nothing new. Necromancers greatsword is too slow and has too little mobility. Good luck trying to fight a thief as well as a zerker necro lol. Headshot Headshot Headshot Headshot

I don’t have much issue with axe main-hand as I feel is has decent burst with the right setup but our focus skills are total kittening trash as is our greatsword. Some of our traits need to change too.

Your issues aren’t so much necromancer being underpowered as it is “direct damage underperforms against players” and “class balance across the board is completely borked.” The whole game needs a great big nerf to invulnerability-to-damage/effects spam and passive triggers which play the game for people. Instead, everyone just asks for more and more of it so their class is “better.”

Bluewizard.2694:

Rending Claws

It’s damage get’s increased by 5%. But it now will only take 3/4 second instead of 1 in order to faster apply vulnerability.

this could be a first step to make axe more useful for every game mode.

This is basically what anet has been doing to most weapons since release: lower cooldown/faster activation/higher-lower damage. You’re not changing the functionality of the weapon. A buff isn’t going to make USING the axe any less insufferable than it is now. The only thing this change encourages is axe’s extremely niche usage in winning cheesy 1v1s.

Most importantly, you don’t balance skills in the scope of “first steps” or a “progression.” Change the skill into something more sensible! Don’t pretend that players are going to be content with going on a journey along your side as you slowly push and poke a skill into its “ideal” state.

Bluewizard.2694:

Ghastly Claws

It’s damage get’s increased by 5%. It’s channeling time gets reduced to two seconds. But instead of dealing damage to one target, targets in a radius of 150 of the target also receive 25% of the damage received by the main target.

This is a direct downgrade to regular AoE for the sake of trying to be unique. More importantly, your “AoE” is still tied to a target: it’s not manually aimed. If you’re fighting 1v1 against a player with stealth, this skill still remains useless much as the current necro axe 2. If you want to influence enemy player movement with a player-targeted skill, it’s easier to model it after the Thaumanova Anomaly “bomb” skill that deals damage in an AoE around the player after a delay. However, such a mechanic shouldn’t be designed as a weapon set’s primary/secondary means of dealing damage. Those attacks need to be more reliable and natural in the hands of the user. It’s a better concept for a 5 skill with a moderate cooldown and dangerous damage/control effects.

Bluewizard.2694:

Unholy Feast

It’s damage get’s increased by 5%. Cripple nearby foes and turn their boons (1) into conditions (1). Gain retaliation for each foe you strike. Punish foes with boons by dealing 10% more damage for every boon on your foe.

Again, this is just another damage upgrade. Most people, when speaking about doing what you’re doing with this sort of change, instead say “Just slap a blast finisher onto it.” Unholy Feast is probably the only skill on necro axe that is sort of in an OK spot. I personally removed retaliation on it because retaliation is an un-fun mechanic that encourages people to play poorly for a reward and punishes the success of an attacker. I focused on giving the skill a unique support mechanic without denying the skill’s the already expected damage and powerful anti-boon potential. The cripple and retaliation on Unholy Feast were clearly afterthoughts anyway.

Bluewizard.2694:

Unholy Fervor.

Reduces recharge on axe skills. Axe skills deal 1% more damage for every stack of vulnerability on your foe. Ghastly Claws generates an additional 0.2% life force for every stack of vulnerability on your foe.

This is just another damage buff that doesn’t address in any way how USING necro axe is a pain. Moreover, the weapon already has plenty of standalone Life Force generation. Like the majority of these changes, the efforts are all entirely in the wrong place.

I don’t want to be overly negative here; I’m just saying what needs to be said. GW2 doesn’t need more “anet-style” balance changes which only concern themselves with already-in-place numbers going up and down. Most abilities in GW2 suffer from fundamental design flaws or identity crises. Those need to be resolved before we start talking numbers.

Lahmia.2193:

Erasmus.1624:

Lahmia.2193:

gavyne.6847:

Lahmia.2193:

gavyne.6847:

At the moment I wish they would buff staff more than anything else, because it’s still a go to ranged weapon for us that’s lacking in every way possible when compared to any other class’ ranged weapons.

Clearly you don’t play WvW much. Don’t tread on my staff.

I don’t? lol… If you think staff is powerful then I have a bridge to sell you. It’s an OK utility ranged option at best, something we’re still for the most part forced to use because it’s our only ranged option. By no means it’s powerful.

I never said it was powerful. I’m saying it has its place. Sure you could buff it but that would only bring about inevitable nerfs given anet’s record of “balance”.

People use “buff” when they either want to (or should) mean “rework.” Staff has a place, but that place is so uninspired and boring that it’s more of an insult to its existence than it is a real home for it. I’ve posted my alternative to “autoattack + 4 circles” plenty already. There are ways to make a fair necro staff with plenty of unique utility and support without sacrificing its ability to tag mobs or deny area.

We all know Anet’s record of more unique skills like Grasping Shadow or the old Ranger sword auto attack. Both unique, both utterly terrible.

What did you have in mind for staff though?

Support options with staying power via persisting damage and lower cooldowns which are balanced by the ability to “miss” attacks by mistiming them or positioning them poorly.

Lahmia.2193:

gavyne.6847:

Lahmia.2193:

gavyne.6847:

At the moment I wish they would buff staff more than anything else, because it’s still a go to ranged weapon for us that’s lacking in every way possible when compared to any other class’ ranged weapons.

Clearly you don’t play WvW much. Don’t tread on my staff.

I don’t? lol… If you think staff is powerful then I have a bridge to sell you. It’s an OK utility ranged option at best, something we’re still for the most part forced to use because it’s our only ranged option. By no means it’s powerful.

I never said it was powerful. I’m saying it has its place. Sure you could buff it but that would only bring about inevitable nerfs given anet’s record of “balance”.

People use “buff” when they either want to (or should) mean “rework.” Staff has a place, but that place is so uninspired and boring that it’s more of an insult to its existence than it is a real home for it. I’ve posted my alternative to “autoattack + 4 circles” plenty already. There are ways to make a fair necro staff with plenty of unique utility and support without sacrificing its ability to tag mobs or deny area.

Lahmia.2193:

gavyne.6847:

At the moment I wish they would buff staff more than anything else, because it’s still a go to ranged weapon for us that’s lacking in every way possible when compared to any other class’ ranged weapons.

Clearly you don’t play WvW much. Don’t tread on my staff.

“Utility” weapon basically means it might as well have been part of a better weapon set. It’s only something you swap to for a very niche reason or it has a very one-dimensional usage. Just because you can tag mobs with it in zergs or plant a fear circle around you when fighting a thief doesn’t make it a well designed weapon that has good versatility.

Ultimately, this is all borne from anet’s decision to make all skills bound to oppressively high cooldowns. Risk of use and the ability to miss attacks is a more natural way to “balance” a skill rather than “oh, it’s impossible to miss and is super powerful but you can only use it once every 40 seconds.”

Obtena.7952:

Flavour is not a strong foundation for balance, that’s true, I don’t actually see an argument that Axe isn’t balanced here. Frankly, I think the only thing I find displeasing about Axe, or any other midrange weapon is that they perform THE SAME at any range. If the weapon is a poor performer, it’s poor close or far. The idea of the midrange weapons are to open up you choices and be less ‘black and white’ limited on range. I mean, we can dream up all sorts of different ways to make Axe do the things we all want it to do because lets face it, conceptually, wielding a big axe is pretty bad kitten and we all want to do it and this is our primary motivation to see something ‘cool’ happen with it.

Again, this isn’t about flavor. This is about making a cosmetic weapon into the weapon it was intended to be.

Obtena.7952:

I’m just being wise here … Anet provided Necros with a midrange weapon that is rather average at any range. That ‘averageness’ makes sense to me if you do consider balance; should range size impact weapon capability? I think absolutely and you do see that with other classes (LB on Ranger, GS on Mesmer).

You’re inclination toward flavor is hardly wise. However, you’re actually not off-base when you speak of how it would be ideal to see damage vary based on its range between user and target.

Obtena.7952:

So for me the question is; how do you balance that midrange concept with skills on the weapon … just the same way LB on Ranger or GS on Mesmer are. Axe fails because of mediocre performance, I suspect due to the increased range past melee.

First off, the only skills on either of those respective sets which actually have damage influences based on range are the autoattacks. Every other attack is basically just as effective at any range (even though Point Black Shot has a range modifier on the push-back, the CC duration remains flat and positioning is easily compromised by invulnerability, teleports or line of sight).

Obtena.7952:

BTW, I am ignoring the fact that GW2 is suffocating under teleports or whathaveyou because never will you see weapon skills changed because of temporary ebbs and flows of metaplay.

You can’t do that. That’s what anet has done for years. It’s entirely possible. The game has gotten out of control and it’s honestly very easy to see paths out of the mess. People just don’t want to imagine a world without their crutches. Most importantly, things like stealth, teleports and instant damage are not just ebbs and flows of metaplay.

Thief basically isn’t a class: it’s a showcase for stealth; it’s worthless without it—it’s barely functional with it in the current meta now. Mesmer is worthless without a selected target and works entirely on instant travel hitscan with AI spam. Warrior is a crippled, shallow class that is only made “viable” by rapid passive regen and extended, instant-activation invulnerability to damage and effects. These and more design issues have all been establishments since launch, but that doesn’t mean that they need to be absolutes forever.

AoEs in this game’s engine do not seem to be capable of scaling damage within themselves. That’s something only for cones and projectiles. If anet finds a way to engineer that (which I don’t see happening ever), we’ll have to stick to what currently works. I’ll fix up a way to engineer some damage scaling into the autoattack, but that’s the only real concession that could exist for this rework. The 3 skill remains functionally the same but with added support; the 2 skill’s function is changed entirely for the sake if promoting area control as an aspect of the weapon set. Overall, together, these changes make a far more functional and versatile power-based weapon set than the current Necromancer axe.

Obtena.7952:

The axe for many professions is a midrange weapon so I think whatever is proposed needs to align to that concept, even if the midrange concept is not that useful in GW2.

Flavor is not a strong foundation for balance. If it looks pretty, but is functionally worthless, it’s a cosmetic item. Necromancer axe is currently very much a cosmetic item outside of the occasionally gimmicky 1v1 in WvW. That is a waste of assets. It needs to be functional.

Obtena.7952:

Personally, I don’t think Necro lack in the melee range arena, so as a justification for change, I don’t see the value.

Necro doesn’t lack in the melee range because Reaper exists. Reaper Shroud isn’t a weapon. Moreover, the dagger AA is overpowered like most AAs, so it makes up for shroud not being permanent if we’re talking about low number target fights. All that aside, conditions are meta nowadays anyway.

The most important fact, though, is that Necromancer on its own is only sustained in melee only by dagger AA spam. Stock Necromancer melee is pretty pathetic, and Powernecro hasn’t been good (or at least superior to conditions) for many, many months.

Obtena.7952:

If anything, I would keep the midrange concepts it already has and examine ways to address multiple targets in the melee range to reduce it’s disadvantage as a primarily midrange weapon.

So, what, you’re talking about just changing the “9” in “900” back to a “6” again? That’s fine because my suggestion has already blatantly addressed the single-target limitations of the current Necromancer axe. However, you can’t ignore the fact that GW2 is suffocating under the pressure of teleports (instant movement) and perfect damage/effect negation (blocks, evades, stability, resistance) that players have been pigeon-holed into max or melee range over the past several years due to poor design choices. Making the axe a 600 range attack weapon wouldn’t save it even if the attacks were made into (relative) AoEs.

Melee players would simply walk/teleport into the 600-range Necromancer axe while coated in damage immunity or while simultaneously casting stuns. Max range players would simply get all of their favorite combos and CC off before the 600-range Necromancer axe would have a chance to open with anything. 600-range dooms a weapon to line-of-sight tactics for every fight. 900-range at least gives the weapon a bit of a chance to have some buffer between itself and an opponent.

I reworked the idea of necro axe being a melee weapon. It’s fine as a ranged, power option. Necro sort of needs one anyway. It just needed a lot of help. Feel free to critique.

Alright, did some touch-ups. Dark Path is a little more teleporty, but the most important thing is that it’s split into a chain set so the player can decide whether to keep pressure up with a low-cooldown ability or use the ability to reposition instantly with the penalty of a slightly longer cooldown.

slamfunction.7462:

First of all, i don’t see an issue here. “Old players” had to farm/buy the mats, just as you do now, along with waiting on the daily reset of globs and etc.

I’m aware, and I’ve done that, and I have my full set. However, we got to do that along Anet’s abysmally slow “content” release schedule, so it didn’t seem too ridiculous when players were confronted with things like ascended rings, then earrings, then amulets, then weapons, and then finally armor (over the course of like 2 years). There was so much time to stockpile materials that by the time anything released, it was terribly easy to get aside from waiting for the awful, arbitrary timegates.

Now when a player jumps into GW2, that person is confronted with over a month of timegates and hundreds of gold in material costs. It’s terrible. It needs to be reformed.

Brokensunday.4098:

Dirame.8521:

Erasmus.1624:

Longbow. Ritualist spec. Nightmare weapon, Spirit(Soul) Rift and spirit utilities.

Not Longbow. An Urn. Necros would just carry an urn of ashes around.

Or a Ritualist Drum!

Call the Elite spec; Spirit Caller! or just Ritualist cos who cares?

problem is shroud name lol ritualist shroud sounds bad and carry an urn meh, i peronally prefer a pistol, sword or long bow but shroud can be called spectral shroud if this ritualist spec goes

It’ll just be a spirit shroud. F2 is a pool of abilities like the Revenant F-skills and it determines what skills you’ve got in the F1. F1 manifests the spirit next to you so you can judge people with your stand.

There’s no real sense in adding new, unique weapons to the game if only one class is going to ever use them. If anything, Ritualist item spells could just become Engineer kits for the Necromancer, but that would probably just lead to more bomb and grenade kits with 5 of the same skill. Boring.

Bbear.7830:

(i) The ‘meta’ is a player choice, not a game requirement. Absolutely no reason why anyone can’t try whatever gear build they like and the wide range available makes for good fun experimenting to find one a player enjoys/has fun with. My Ranger runs with necro runes for the jagged horror proc and demon sigil for the fleshreaver proc…because why not and because no-one except the Spanish Inquisition expects it.

And nobody but the Spanish Inquisition would defend it as more viable than any commonly known meta build. I’m not saying that meme strats aren’t fun, but there’s ultimately no point to them when there are objectively better options that are always used by the majority of the playerbase. There’s no reason to build or preserve content if only 1 out of thousands of players actively participates in it. We’re talking about a better, streamlined, overarching design principle that is better for the game on the whole—not some random guy’s anecdotal story about how he killed 25 things for a proc to go off.

Bbear.7830:

(ii) Ascended gear with agony resistance is only needed for fractals at a fixed level and above. Other than that its just another armor/look and alongside weapons can be runed/sigiled/upgraded however a player not into fractals feels like. 3 years in and counting I’ve only ever been into fractals a handful of times (3 or 4), because it’s not my choice of game mode. When I did, Exotic armor/trinkets were fine for the fractal I wanted to play (Urban Battleground, solo’d on my last playthrough and was done). Once again, player choice.

Your arbitrary, anecdotal reasoning is not a valid point. Just because you don’t personally feel like you want to invest into higher-end fractals doesn’t mean that brand new players should be denied the option of it for a whole month’s (or more) worth of timegates. We can remove those timegates and you could still perfectly well choose not to engage in fractals. It would be better for the player-base, and you would still get your way.

BunjiKugashira.9754:

I don’t see the problem for 3. in the aquisition of ascended equipment. Ascended stuff is only required for mid-high lvl fractals and raids. Fractals are meant to be played while you slowly aquire more ascended stuff, which enables you to tackle higher fractal levels. Raids on the other hand are especially designed for players who have the maximum achievable amount of power and teamwork. This is not something a new player is supposed to enter after a month or two of play.

Says who? According to what metric scale? Why are players seemingly disallowed from content until they gain a certain amount of experience? The raids aren’t terribly difficult. The only thing stopping newer players from getting into them is basically gear exclusion. Plenty of people already do pug runs or carry runs anyway and the raid content isn’t even like 3 months old yet.

BunjiKugashira.9754:

In my opinion ascended gear is in a good place. If you don’t have the means to aquire ascended gear, then you most likely also don’t have the necessary experience to play the content that requires it.

Refer to the first point. There isn’t a lot to learn when playing GW2. It’s a fairly basic, straightforward game. The only thing anyone really needs to learn are any sort of convoluted raid mechanics. The rest can be gathered via tooltips and wiki articles. Players shouldn’t be excluded from certain gear based on timegates. It doesn’t take 36+ days to learn how to play a class well in GW2. It takes a few days tops, especially if that new player is being mentored by veterans.

BunjiKugashira.9754:

The only problem is that ANet should make it more obvious to new players, that it’s perfectly sufficient and fine to go for exotic equipment and play with that for a while. The difference in stats is so low, that you will only notice it at all once you’re at a skill level where aquiring ascended equipment is no longer a dream. The rush for bis gear tends to ignore this though.

That’s the point, though. The rush for BIS gear is always a rush. It’s so obvious to people who play the game what BIS is, that they are willing to pick up Ascended players over Exotic. There’s no reason not to despite the basically meme difference of 5% total stats. MMOs are all about number crunching anyway. The Ascended guy is an objectively better investment.

Most importantly, regardless of how you “feel” about ascended’s “place,” you didn’t touch on how we have legitimately like 25 stat spread options that NOBODY uses because there’s no reason to do so.

Dadnir.5038:

Life blast :
Superspeed : No no no no no and NO!

This is a boon that fit

“Fit” is a thematic term relegated to flavor purposes. Flavor is not a means to balance mechanics. The mechanics of a class or ability need to be sound and fair. Then flavor can come and coat them. It doesn’t have to be superspeed, but it was a means to provide not only mobility for the form, but also an active trigger that fairly telegraphs big incoming damage while also providing the user an repositioning or escape option.

Dadnir.5038:

life blast only need a faster cast time and a faster projectile speed not more damage.

This has been the only change that GW2 has seen to the majority of its skills throughout its lifetime. The current meta is dominated by passives and instant abilities or abilities that activate below a threshold of time which would otherwise provide a fair opportunity for enemy counterplay. We’re talking about providing active triggers to fairly telegraphed abilities, not more of the same “balance” decisions we’ve seen for 4 years.

Dadnir.5038:

Dark path :
This skill have pretty good effect in itself. Which will lead me to simply say that it need no change except more reactivity. To make it good the dev only need to remove the fact that it is a projectile and make it a teleport. This projectile is burdensome and have virtually no interest for the game in itself. Beside, your idea become totally broken as soon as you take the trait path of corruption.

My point from before stands: if it’s made into a teleport it’s going to waste half of its potential with every use. If you use it to attack, you compromise your position as usual. If you use it to escape or reposition, you can easily waste the attack on nothing. It’s best off split into two triggers so players can keep it always as an attack, but still have the option to utilize a secondary effect as a mobility tool. I designed the idea on the basis of making it a good skill, not based on passive trait nonsense that can be redone anyway. If we’re so worried about that, the skill could just become a single arcing blast attack on a low cooldown to save the set from being nothing but 4 buttons into autoattack spam (like basically every other set).

Dadnir.5038:

Doom :
Honnestly don’t touch this one, this is probably the best interrupt skill of the necromancer due to the fact that it’s one of our very few instant skills.

Fast, but again ultimately unfair because of the instant cast. It’s also unwieldy to use because of the required target and it cannot be used against stealthed foes. Making it a secondary effect that it is tied to an AoE autoattack with a decent telegraph not only makes the ability fair, but also more flexible in use against larger numbers and stealthed foes.

Dadnir.5038:

Tainted shackle :
Not sure that it would end up better than what we already got.

Given that the rest of the set now revolves around long range damage, it would be a very strong addition to the shroud kitten nal. The fact that it’s a fast snare would also complement both long and close range playstyles.

• 1) There is an inarguable meta in place in GW2. Metagames are not necessarily a bad thing.
• 2) There is a flagrant oversight in rune and gear-set usage: the vast majority of options are entirely ignored in favor of only a tiny, select pool of viable gear options across all game-modes and among the 32 total stat spreads in place at this point in GW2’s life.
• 3) There is currently an arbitrary and taxing timegate system in place which drags out the acquisition of Ascended armor for new players. While older/established players have no real issue gearing out an alt, GW2 currently chases away new players by featuring end-game content in which older players have come to expect players who are, ideally, fully fleshed out in Ascended tier weapons, armor and trinkets.

While the first point is entirely expected and understandable, the latter two are almost counter to nurturing the “ideal” or “meta” way that players wish to tackle the content in this game. If things are going to be so obvious, then why are they so tedious to attain? Most importantly, the level of grind and lack of proper explanation or documentation relating to Ascended acquisition further at best obscures new players’ trek to “top level gear,” and at worst chases them away entirely by presenting them with a task that could easily be defended as a waste of time.

With such a case currently governing the progression of players in GW2, isn’t it time to ask for a little bit a clean-up? Do we really need all these gear stat options when we only use like five of them? Do we really need all the runes available to us when there are clearly only the obvious few that anyone uses at any given time (especially considering the price for a full set of “good” runes)? What about all of the sigils in the game? Who uses any but the 8 or so that are the only clear fit for any of the obvious, respective meta builds? Isn’t it time to simplify?

Whereas it’s easy to just to thin out the bloat from sigils and runes, reworking armor to be more accessible for new players requires understanding the meta and contemplating what to keep, what to throw out and how to treat what remains. So what are your thoughts then? Can’t we just glean the useless garbage from the stat options and make GW2 more alt-friendly and inviting to new players? If the change is enough, it would be worthwhile to even advertise it as an invitation to new people.

MasterElements.5023:

Eazy peazy lemon sqeazy, Death Shroud 2 is ground targeted(No other changes like casting time) and number 5 stacks on less then 5 targets /fixed

But then we’re wasting the fact that DS2 is a potential control ability. Either you teleport into someone for the CC and then use your 4/5 (both of which have relatively high cooldowns) before engaging in melee with the rest of your lower cooldown abilities which are all more appropriately used at long range. There’s no consistency between half of the bar. Why make the primary CC and autoattack max-range when the secondary CC can only forcibly bring you directly into a target? Yes, we understand that there is the potential to use DS2 for skipping through a field of enemies, but it is unblockable, not piercing. It’s an unwieldy ability to use as a raw repositioning skill, and turning it into a targeted blink would just probably end up seeing a lot of the enemy-targeted pressure wasted on an empty-area teleport or it would just plop a ranged Death Shroud user smack dab into the middle of an enemy’s range as it does now.

It needs more flexibility than it provides or would provide even as a targeted blink. Making it an area denial pressure skill with a free movement option along with CC makes far more sense than just turning into a ground-targeted skill.

Making Tainted Shackles into a long range, targeted ward line only helps to further complement this sort of design.

Longbow. Ritualist spec. Nightmare weapon, Spirit(Soul) Rift and spirit utilities.

Just give it hyper armor oh wait

Death Shroud isn’t exactly underpowered, but it is comprised of a somewhat awkward amalgam of long and mid-ranged abilities while also being outright outclassed in many aspects by Reaper Shroud and the traits/abilities that come along with that spec. In an effort to give DS a more consistently sensible design and promote a competitive presence in combat, it may be best to look at investing in a primarily long-range design with emphasis on area denial and control, improvements to potential contribution in larger fights (more AoEs), and a more flexible mobility option (brief superspeed in place of a forced teleport to target when the set’s autoattack and CC—primary damage sources—are both respectively max-range abilities).

Phyrak.7260:

It was actually reading your changes that got me thinking on staff tweaking

I really do like the new mechanics involved and I think they would do nicely
All staff needs now is to share boons with minions and maybe be a little bit of a buff share to those surrounding pc/minions

Wouldn’t mind if aa was a little stronger or gave some sort of (non damaging) condition (imo)

Oh, I’m flattered.

I think that boon sharing (with players and/or minions) would probably fit best as a trait option. Given how it’s best to keep things relatively active, it might even come down to tying such an effect to the autoattack. Since the AA in my spoilered idea is basically fireball (which can be manually aimed to a degree and has a pretty substanial splash AoE) it could easily be the trigger to proc boon sharing properties on allies or minions (not that it has to be the only thing that does it).

It might also be a good way to rework Soul Marks given that that would need to change if necro staff became anything remotely more interesting than AA + 4 circles.

Axe needs a rework, but throwing in some might isn’t going to fix the set even if the autoattack is reworked to some degree. The problem with Necromancer axe is that it’s presence on the field is very limited the moment that more than 1 enemy shows up (and it’s incredibly limited even with just 1 if that one has stealth).

Also, I’m fairly certain that boons/conditions have been entirely out of control in GW2 for years now. If a single class was in charge of applying 1-2 respective boons or conditions, it wouldn’t be so bad, but a “condi” class coats a target in every condition in the game while most people nowadays run around with a passively self-generated 20+ might along with fury, swiftness, stability and protection. Addressing this issue would indirectly, but very adequately solve some of the weapon problems in GW2.

While it’s not necessarily a bad idea to sort of engineer a weapon set with a utility skill group in mind, it also runs the danger of pigeon-holing that weapon into an obviously meta set-up with no other play-style alternative. I had an idea about revamping staff a while ago, and I could drop it here as debate fuel. Basically, the biggest idea is increasing the staff’s staying power as a mainstay/camp weapon rather than it being a gimmick “blob tag” circle spammer from which a player swaps away once the functionally identical 2-5 skills are blown within 2 seconds.

The trick to doing this is making a weapon with low cooldowns, but some sort of risk factor (typically a cast-time or resource consumption) to balance it out. Low cooldowns give the player more consistent options and more presence on the battlefield (given how the player often has more abilities available for use at any given time).

All that said, I actually kind of like the idea of scrapping the garbage staff design, consolidating all of its condi spam onto another weapon set-up and then giving it another combat role entirely that isn’t just the typical babby rotation into an autoattack for 9 seconds.

Cecilia.5179:

What if they made axe 2 like the guardian scepter skill and gave it a 1s immob to guarantee some good hits?

I was actually tossing around an idea like that. No immobilize, though. Hang on, I’ll just throw the thing up.

Land spear
[15 memes]

flow.6043:

First of all, Necrotic Grasp isn’t homing, if that’s what you mean.
Secondly, the only thing identical about those 4 circles is that they are circles.
And your sarcastic reference to how you feel all marks are similar has nothing to do with mark mechanics in general, which when compared with other weapons is indeed unique.

I guess I was saying how selecting a target will initially aim the attack for you. You’re right, though, it’s not a perfect track that bends around corners and whatnot. That said, you can’t argue that 2-5 on Necro staff are all functionally identical. Yeah, the skill might do something different, but there is factually no difference between, say, the activation of Reaper’s Mark and Mark of Blood. They are the same skill in application.

flow.6043:

L2staff bruh.

Dude, seriously, you have an l2p issue here.
Your opinion of the staff seems to be that it’s good for nothing except getting life force. And if that’s really the case you’re not only wrong but you’re probably losing a lot of fights because you can’t use the staff properly.

I named more than Life Force to merit staff’s contributions. And believe me, staff can swing fights very easily, but it’s ultimately a bland weapon that can very quickly trap the player into a long period of autoattacking. Thank goodness the weapon is saved by the F1 being another weapon set that has something to sort of do.

And how can I l2p Necromancer staff when 4 of the skills work in an identical manner? There’s nothing to learn.

flow.6043:

In short: even if there suddenly was another ranged weapon like a longbow, the staff would never be less popular than it is now. Not for fluffs or appearances, but because of it’s unique gameplay.

“Tracking, ranged autoattack and 4 identical circles” = “unique gameplay.”

The staff isn’t unique, it’s a braindead skill dump """utility""" bar. While it does charge Life Force and contributes a condi transfer along with a fear, ultimately the weapon set is quite in fact the most uninspired design in GW2 apart from Herald with very little staying power considering how effortless it is to blow any skill on the bar. Paired with offensively long cooldowns, Necromancer staff is quick to slip into autoattack spam until weapon swap is off cooldown. If Necro staff were to compete with another max-ranged weapon option, it would need staying power outside of 1 spam and a Mark of Blood every 4.75 seconds. If another weapon could provide something more than that (which isn’t hard), it would very likely become an outright upgrade to staff (given that there would be no way that the other ranged option wouldn’t also provide some sort of means to charge LF).

Krysard.1364:

Condi transfer is insane, but it also is the amount of condis flying around pvp.

Not exactly part of this conversation, but I’m seriously baffled as to how anet kept caving so hard to people crying about how “damage over time” wasn’t as effective as “spike damage” (i.e. direct damage). Not only does GW2 have too many boons and conditions, but it really just was not a smart idea to give any given build/class responsibility for/access to more than 2 (maybe 3) conditions and boons respectively. It would have really helped with screen clutter and would have promoted more combat legibility and class flavor.

As it stands now, everybody does the same thing.

Dignified Loser.7689:

I too agree that axe should remain as a ranged weapon, but, no matter how unlikely, I’d like it to be almost completely reworked. My biggest gripe is that it’s boring to use and I can do similar, if not better, “things” using a dagger at close to mid range (Life Siphon and Dark Pact). I also feel this way about the corresponding trait Unholy Fervor. So if we’re bullkittenting ideas I might as well put my two cents in.

Axe Skills (skills are no longer “hit-scan”):

Show Spoiler

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1a. Rending Claws: Slash your foe twice with ghostly claws to make them vulnerable.
-Damage (2x): 260 (0.9)?
-2x Vulnerability (7s): 2% Incoming Damage, 2% Incoming Condition Damage
-Range: 900
-Cast Time: 1s
-Projectile Finisher: 20%
1b. Ghastly Claws: Summon spectral claws to slash your foe in a quick flurry of strikes, gaining life force per strike.
-Damage (3x): 375 (0.9)?
-Life Force: 6%
-Range: 900
-Channel Time: 0.75s
-Projectile Finisher: 20%
1c. Ghastly Talon: Slice foes in front of you with a conjured spectral scythe, gaining life force for each foe struck.
-Damage: 214 (1.3)?
-Life Force: 2.5%
-Number of Targets: 3
-Range: 1200
-Cast Time: 0.75s

2. Debilitating Talon: Weaken foes and make them vulnerable with a conjured ghostly scythe (15s cd).
-Damage: 380 (2.1)?
-3x Vulnerability (18s): 3% Incoming Damage, 3% Incoming Condition Damage
-Weakness (4s): -50% Endurance Regeneration, 50% Fumble (Unrestricted)
-Number of Targets: 3
-Range: 1200
-Cast Time: 0.5s

3. Unholy Feast: Cripple nearby foes and convert their boons into conditions. Gain retaliation for each foe you strike (12s cd).
-Damage: 272 (0.8)?
-Retaliation (3s): Reflect incoming damage back to its source.
-Crippled (5s): -50% Movement Speed
-Converted to Conditions: 1
-Number of Targets: 5
-Range: 600
-Cast Time: 1s
-Combo Finisher: Blast

Trait (switches tiers with Spiteful Spirit):

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Unholy Fervor: Regenerate health every second and deal more damage while under the effects of retaliation. Rending Claws and Ghastly Claws projectiles can now bounce, granting struck allies retaliation. Axe skills have reduced cooldowns.
-Healing: 75 (0.18)?
-Retaliation (2s): Reflect incoming damage back to its source.
-Number of Bounces: 1
-Damage Increase: 10%
-Cooldown reduced: 20%

I can appreciate the work on trying to update the weapon! My only issues are:

• 1) The cooldowns you’ve slapped onto the 2 and 3 skills are horrendous. I mean, I get that most weapons are often skill dumps that lead into 9 seconds of autoattack spam with sometimes 1 skill in reserve for panic twitching, but it’d be nice if we could move away from that for the sake of making a weapon set worth camping outside of it having a powerful auto.
• 2) The single bounce in the trait isn’t going to be worth it because of how cluttered fights will probably end up seeing that effect lost in a cloud of AI units and players of both sides. It’ll be probably OK in a 1v1, but that’s it; that really sort of dooms its potential versatility and pigeon-holes it into a selfish role. I know that that’s probably what you were going for (buff for 1v1s), but balancing around 1v1s really limits the potential of an ability when the rest of the game often involves far more numbers on either side.

I kind of like the Unholy Ferver rewarding the maintenance of a boon (or at least promoting a window of benefit), but keeping boons up in this game is too easy. It’s not an intuitive benefit; it just encourages spamming to maximize the retal upkeep. Sure, there’s some level of optimal usage placed in the hands of the player (waiting for a lot of targets for longer retal) and the fact that you might want to corrupt a specific boon, but ultimately the fact that boons are so widespread and spammy nowadays undermines any sort of intended accuracy for a single-boon corrupt and leaves the player mostly just recasting the ability off cooldown with no real consequence.

OK, so consensus wants it to stay as a ranged weapon it seems, but no one can argue that single-target ranged abilities that forego projectiles are the clumsiest abilities in the game in how they require a target at a reasonable angle that isn’t stealthed or teleporting (they also are cheesy in how they bypass reflects and have instant travel time). Even if the set is to remain a ranged set, it still needs improvements/reworks to how it inflicts its damage so that it’s viable in both large-scale and 1v1 engagements (making it contribute more to large-scale encounters will naturally trickle down a quality-of-life improvement to smaller fights). Adding AoEs to the skills will help with this, but it can’t just be a slap-on effect. It’d be better to see them slightly reworked for the sake of better contribution to fights and also easier, more fluid usage for the player.

Ranged single target abilities are easily compromised by stealth and teleporting (both of which are pretty rampant in the game), and in general are just infinitely more unwieldy than using WASD/mouse or a reticle to aim an attack. On top of this, “mid-ranged” abilities are sort of already passively suppressed by how powerful max ranged weapons are in the game right now combined with how easy it is to close gaps or escape from any sort of engagement. It’s melee or max range. Mid-range hardly had any place in this game to begin with by virtue of how movement works, and after years of favoritism to max-range conditions and melee auto-attacks, it has been completely removed from relevance. It’s also the reason why the “big change” to necro axe a while ago was “Look at how we made the 600 into a 900, guys.”

At this rate, given how necro axe is almost entirely neglected in all modes, it might as well be reworked into something that Necromancer players can use comfortably within the scope of the current game: a ranged weapon which provides support, utility, area control and also direct damage befitting a power build option.

The set is 4 identical skills and a floaty autoattack. If you want a necro staff (or just any weapon set in general) that is more than 3 seconds of Spirograph Adventures, you need low cooldowns balanced by risk/reward factors. Unfortunately, making necro staff into a legitimately well-designed weapon worth camping as a primary source of damage/field presence would mean removing or completely changing the lamebrain stuff like the Soul Marks trait. However, at the same time, there’s no reason why the weapon couldn’t retain its purpose as a LF battery while being independent from boring traits. I took a shot at it a while ago:

… something that can still be good for tagging, but now has more staying power as a versatile utility/damage weapon.

HardRider.2980:

It just takes a little bit of skill

One doesn’t need skill to use Master of Corruptions properly. One needs only elementary literacy to read which tooltips say “transfer” in them. It’s a trait with lazy, arbitrary and flavor-based draw-backs that pigeon-holes players into making obvious skill choices on their skill selections.

leasm.1279:

ANet said the Dagger is supposed to be the single target

Single target is such a pain in a game with obnoxious teleporting and stealth. GW2 would honestly be better off making most skills into limited AoEs/cleaves and then pruning the damage. This is also why you say that GS feels nicer than dagger when it comes to single-targets even though the dagger is supposed to be designed for that “role.”

I personally wish we had a lot more Fireball projectiles. They’re pretty well cued and can be manually aimed by the user without requiring target lock-on.

Honestly, Life Siphon would be neat as a Coalescence of Ruin attack. If all three hits struck a target (doesn’t have to be the same one), we could see a flip into Blood Renewal. However, it’d probably be best to keep it a heal. Maybe lowering the cooldown would be nice just so it’s not such a braindead dive into autoattack spam for 10-12 seconds (like basically every weapon set). I’d like to see Dark Pact as a fireball projectile with an AoE splash that still retains its current effects. The mark to enhance Life Siphon would be a nice finishing touch, though.

Justine.6351:

In short,
too few skills causes stupid repetition,
too many skills causes overwhelming ui problems and learning curve for newer players

Stupid repetition with a small pool of skills will be the fault of bad players if the game was designed properly. GW2 somehow managed to create stupid repetition with a moderately large pool of skills, though. That’s a bit of a feat.

Justine.6351:

Something that would help with your tells is if anet would stop adding traits that auto-cast actual skills.

Traits were actually the worst thing by far to happen to this franchise.

Pompeia.5483:

I think revenant was the first step with this in mind. Each stance is a meager ten skills and you can only change their order, not what they are.

Rev used to only have 1 weapon too. That aspect should have stayed. That said, Herald is the worst thing design-wise in the entire game by a country mile, and a lot of their abilities in general are mindlessly straightforward anyway.

Sartharina.3542:

… reduce the skill bar even more? OH HELL NO!

I do not want the mind-numbing lack of diversity in attacks found in MOBAs or Overwatch in this game.

Just because a skill set has less total unique skills doesn’t mean that it has to be mind-numbing. The total number of actions a player can take in the Souls series can all fit onto a console controller, but the game is entirely balanced around telegraphs, spacing and resource consumption. What this means is that even though the actions taken by a single weapon or weapon set might be limited, they create a very unique play-style that can be both mastered by a player and punished by opponents. The biggest triumph in a weapon set is when a player is allowed to spam certain attacks with no real cool-down, but he/she chooses not to because the player knows that that is bad play. GW2’s skill sets quite generally and extensively feature rotations which are easy to cast, don’t have to be aimed or timed and are difficult or impossible to punish while active (due to things like the player being invulnerable while attacking or snapping into invulnerability at any given time from a CD that was ready before combat began; or the rotation happening so quickly and from max range that the risk to the user is mostly nullified).

I’m not saying that GW2 has to be like Dark Souls 3 or anything, that it needs parries or backstabs or anything, but the fact is that combat actions that players take in GW2 are almost never punishable because of how fast they occur, the range from which they occur, and/or the circumstances involved which basically ensure that players will a full bar of CDs are just never in any danger while doing something stupid like bullrushing/teleporting into a pile of red circles (or just into the range of an opponent at all) while hammering through a simple rotation that never really changes.

MOBAs and Overwatch are bland because their skills do exactly what they say on the tin with no real alternative utility or usage. Their straightforwardness is what limits them (much like every ability in GW2 outside of the few that existed before anet removed their fun).

Sartharina.3542:

In fact, I find Warrior Sword to be boring enough with it’s auto attack and three situational skills.

Warrior Sword (and basically every other weapon/utility skill rotation) in GW2 is boring because they have obnoxious recharges that players never use except when it’s obvious to do so. That’s the whole point of this idea: limit the abilities to lower CDs which can be interwoven in ways that don’t end up being the same rotation or reaction twitch every single time.

So when we look at any weapon set or kit, is there not always a skill or maybe even two on that five slot line that has a drastically lower rotation priority than the other 3-4 (or maybe goes ignored entirely)? Or what about the case of skill types (i.e. Marks, Symbols, Wells, etc) which are all identical to one another in regards to functionality (the way in which a player uses/activates the skill) or in environmental presence (the way in which the skill appears on the field/affects enemies and allies). More importantly, aren’t there always those two or maybe just the one skill that really defines a weapon set far more than any other option on the bar; the one or two skills for which opponents and allies alike watch? Furthermore, there’s always the fact of how even the fastest recharging abilities on any given weapon bar are almost entirely competitive with the recharge of the weapon swap ability itself. This only leads to rotations which really do encourage prioritizing the easy, big-hitter skills while skipping over other “less effective” abilities in a rush to burn through the rotation. It forcibly omits a lot of thought and choice from the gameplay by dictating which skills the player should use and when.

Anyone else think that maybe if the total skill bar in Guild Wars 2 was a little more compact, we could see more telegraphs, better diversification of abilities by combining or removing some (cutting the fat) and even lower total recharge times?

Mortifer.2946:

Masteries are rewards for mastering the game. You can’t master some content? You won’t get mastery for it. It is a simple endgame progress system.

There’s no mastery in tedious, braindead grind. The content locked behind masteries is content that should have been available on release. The only reason that masteries were created was to artificially lengthen the progress of players through “content.”

I’d rather just have titles work in this fashion. We have enough, and there are enough good words, names and places mixed in that we could have some really neato names, but the customization just does not exist.

Carighan.6758:

It’s why Team Fortress 2 was so well-received when it showed up, because its classes embodied exactly this.

The success in TF2 is that the weapon sets in that game challenge the player to stretch what they can do with them (because they often are rather limited in their base scope but can be enhanced with timing and creativity) whereas GW2 takes any thought out of combat by lathering the player in excessive skills and tons of passives which do nothing but what they say on the tin. I’m pretty sure that GW2’s engine isn’t built for positioning-based gameplay anyway.

Carighan.6758:

And mind you, quite a few weapons do somewhat fit this role. But it also needs to be consistent, for example it helps if a Greatsword is always a heavy, slow, hard-hitting weapon independent of class. The specifics might vary, but the overall role of the weapon doesn’t.

I honestly questioned why weapons didn’t all just have a generic autoattack across all classes—or at the very least have skills corralled into similar cast-time brackets across classes (despite different effects). Having a generic autoattack could punish players for not using other skills properly while also pushing for a more condensed and utility-oriented weapon bar on a class-by-class basis. Then again, this game has no overarching resource mechanic and there’s no real sign of trigger synergy like “Generate a bonus effect if you have X or more stacks of Y/are under the effects of Z when this skill hits”

It’s honestly hard to punish anyone for anything in this game. There’s practically nothing that a player can do wrong outside of losing out on “muh optimal DPS” by not following the super 1337 hardboyz rotation to a T or somehow deciding to press all of my “haha I’m invincible now” buttons before a pvp encounter actually begins.

Also given how homogenized and straightforward GW2’s combat is, the skillbar really should have stayed at 8 slots if they wanted to promote clean combat with some unique role definition. It could easily be 5 at this point.

Solved the problem of not being able to finish someone underwater.

The proper way to limit battlefield clutter is by designing combat around easily-identifiable weapons, limited ability sets with diverse applications for damage and a single unique role (movement, area denial, etc) for any given weapon, and by including projectiles with movement speed and path arcs that can be easily seen and tracked by the eye or by implementing proper delay periods should there be a ground-targeted attack which immediately pops up at the targeted location. Guild Wars 2 basically does none of this. It has too many skills per bar for its own good given how homogenized combat is across all classes, and the majority of skills are always going to be instant and ranged with no travel time or delay period if the player can help it (and the game caters to this anyway in most instances). Combined with the unhealthy amounts of on-demand invulnerability, Guild Wars 2’s combat will never be anything less than a quagmire of instant and passive ability spam no matter how much the devs cut from the visual effects.

Also, anet doesn’t like admitting that they’re wrong, so you’ll never get your fireball back. I hope you took screenshots.