Guild Wars 2

You know… I don’t think any of that is the problem. When I think about it, I really don’t have any idea what a “good” value is for any given stat.

I seem to die more than I feel I should, so I add some vitality + toughness… but how much is enough? Is 600 toughness and 630 vitality good for level 52? Is it laughably bad? I have absolutely no idea what these numbers mean, where they should be at and whether by raising them how much my other stats will suffer.

Is 884 power too much? Again… I have no clue what this number means and how much damage I should be doing at this level.

Add to that the jack-of-all-trades trait system and I can’t decide whether I ought to build for teamwork (not that there’s many people on my server anyway) or solo, so I just plop points in whatever sounds good. I’ve picked up enough lingo on these forums to tell you that I am currently 20/0/10/10/0… but again, I have no idea if that is good, bad or ugly.

None of the skill descriptions sound particularly awesome… most of them having something like a 3 second buff with a 30 second cooldown. I mean… why bother for 3 seconds of mediocre damage reduction or a paltry handful of restored HP? 3 seconds later and the next hit is gonna take a 1/4-1/2 of my HP anyway, while I wait for my one heal to countdown.

I dunno… it just doesn’t feel “right”. Maybe I’m just jaded from playing things like Tera, where skills and combos flow naturally and obviously, attacks can be seen and dodged successfully because they’re not hidden behind a mess of flashy FX and you don’t spend most of a fight running in circles waiting for your heal to come off cooldown…

Maybe I’m just too old for this level of rock-paper-scissors.

Is it just my imagination or do all the stats, traits and skills feel very underwhelming and inconsequential?

I mean, it really doesn’t seem to matter if I equip a weapon with +60 vitality or +60 power…. my damage doesn’t noticeably change and neither does my survivability.

It’s very difficult to see any benefit from using a skill such as “Hold the Line” or “Retreat”. The same five greatsword skills are cool and all, but it doesn’t really matter how much +condition damage I have, Binding Blade doesn’t seem to do any additional damage over time, and neither does setting mobs on fire.

Also, it can be really hard to see what is actually happening among all the combat fireworks. I was fighting a champion wasp last night and it took me 3 deaths and an analysis of the combat log to find out what I was dying from, because the attack animation looked almost exactly the same as the flying animation.

And that’s fine… live and learn and all that. But a heal that is only available every 40 seconds kinda forced me to plink away with the scepter and run whenever it got too close. Which seemed completely counter-intuitive for a Guardian…

Which reminds me, Shield of Judgement is another skill that doesn’t seem to have any noticeable effect. You still get hit and it still hurts.

Am I doing it wrong, or are all these things deliberately overly subtle and unimpressive? I’m currently level 52, just playing about with the open-world stuff and following the personal story (although I’m currently about 15 levels above it).

Rising Dusk.2408:

If you’re doing Fractals at character level 38 in blues and greens I have no doubt it would be a nightmare. Sure it upscales, but you’d be a huge burden on your team, if not a considerable reason for failure en masse. Definitely get to max level, gear out in exotics, and then try again. Scaling can’t make up for the differences in gear tiers or the differences in having gear not your level or in a lot of things really. You probably don’t even have all of your utility skills unlocked yet.

Well, this begs the obvious question… why are Fractals even available to noobs, if the gear available at that level isn’t good enough, even after scaling up?

jessiejay.3625:

Miszou.3158:

Heh, you got further than I did.

On my first fractal run, my computer blue-screened in the middle and then spent 20 minutes rebuilding the game. So we won’t count that.

And earlier this evening, I spent 50% of my time either dead or downed, after suffering massive damage from out of nowhere. 8k followed immediately by 7k at one point. All of us just running along and then I’m dead for no apparent reason.

I had no idea what to do, why I was dying, who to attack or generally wtf was going on. And being in melee range, I couldn’t see the actions of the mobs because of sparks flying everywhere, so I had no idea when to dodge.

I died almost immediately trying to destroy a couple of ballistas, only to watch someone else destroy them while I lay on the floor. And then they respawed about 3 seconds later. So that seemed rather pointless.

I quite clearly mentioned that I was new to this, but no-one seemed to care. Eventually I just quit the group and turned the game off.

Possibly for good.

Theres many variables at play here.

>Are you at minimum Exotic geared?
>Did your team have a competent guardian? Wall of reflect, shield of the avenger is golden.
>Are you dodging properly? As everything hits for massive damage in fractals compared to dungeons. In levels 30+ most foes can one shot you if you let them.
>Sounds like you were in the ascalon map. Ballistas hit for minimum 1/4 HP and the casting foes do massive AoE damage compared to the warrior and rangers.

Dont get discouraged as fractals i would consider the best challenge in the game. With practice it will become a friendly managable challenge instead of a dead end.

Exotic gear? No, I am level 38 and using Masterwork weapons with blue crafted armor.

I was the guardian… :/

Sure I know how to dodge. The problem however, is being hit from offscreen by random attacks that take 1/2 my health in one shot. Or being in melee range, and not being able to actually see the enemies due to all the fireworks and lighting fx that are right on top of some veteran mob that hits for ludicrous damage, and who apparently takes none in return.

“Don’t get discouraged” is something of a platitude really. I really just wish the game could make up it’s mind whether it was a tab-target or action MMO, because quite honestly, the combat is just a mess of both concepts.

On the one hand you have to “target” mobs, yet on the other you can leap and dodge and do all these other things. You have to hold the right-mouse down to look around, but you can’t properly attack the thing standing directly in front of you. None of the stats or skills seem to make any noticeable difference. A sword with +power doesn’t do appreciably more damage than a sword +40 healing. And similarly, I don’t notice a huge boost to my healing abilities either.

The skills just seem completely underwhelming, and in the clusterf—k of combat, it’s hard to tell whether they’re even working.

meh. I’ve given this game it’s fair shake of chances, but I really don’t think it’s for me.

Heh, you got further than I did.

On my first fractal run, my computer blue-screened in the middle and then spent 20 minutes rebuilding the game. So we won’t count that.

And earlier this evening, I spent 50% of my time either dead or downed, after suffering massive damage from out of nowhere. 8k followed immediately by 7k at one point. All of us just running along and then I’m dead for no apparent reason.

I had no idea what to do, why I was dying, who to attack or generally wtf was going on. And being in melee range, I couldn’t see the actions of the mobs because of sparks flying everywhere, so I had no idea when to dodge.

I died almost immediately trying to destroy a couple of ballistas, only to watch someone else destroy them while I lay on the floor. And then they respawed about 3 seconds later. So that seemed rather pointless.

I quite clearly mentioned that I was new to this, but no-one seemed to care. Eventually I just quit the group and turned the game off.

Possibly for good.

3-4 hours on and off … so far this evening. I’ve been walking off and playing Rocksmith in between dying trying to solo some dynamic events. But feel free to poke through my post history and criticize a new player for finding a good game riddled with issues.

And yea, I might try guesting to another server. Because Anvil Rock is just depressing. Could be the time zone, I dunno… is there an indication of the time zone on the server list? Probably not :/

What’s the point in having a huge world to explore, only to join a zerg-train in Queensdale for 80 levels? Talk about soul-crushing.

And I dunno what “peak hours” are for this thing, but I’ve never had a problem seeing more than 1 player an hour at 10pm on a friday night in any other game. Ever.

And I’m not about to give ArenaNet any more cash just to get a playable game out of this. Server population says “high”, and that is a complete fabrication. No way I’m giving these guys $20 more just to find another dead server.

After making a ranger then realizing it was riddled with year-old unfixed bugs and rerolling another class, being forced to hold the mouse button down 95% of the time, constantly failing to find groups for the dynamic events and then asking another $20 to move to a server with actual people in it? No, I don’t think so.

I’m honestly considering just throwing in the towel at this point. They only reason I’m playing is because I can really see an enjoyable game through the muck, but every time I wipe away a piece, more slop falls on to my plate.

…seriously, where is everyone?

Been playing for about 3-4 hours on and off now, and I’ve seen about 3 people in that whole time.

I’m level 27 in Gendarran Fields on Anvil Rock, and the place is a total ghost town.

My biggest complaint about the control scheme is that you have to play 98% of the time holding the right mouse button down.

I’d pay good money for an option to fix this.

Is it just me, or is the “search” thing completely broken?

For example… searching the guild recruitment forum for the word “guild” finds one result. Searching for the word “social”, which is contained in one of the forum topics, returns zero results.

Am I doing it wrong, or is the search box really about as useful as a chocolate teapot?

Why do Greatsword and Sword have 2 very similar skills, but they are in different, unchangeable positions on the skillbar?

Greatsword – Leap of Faith – position 3
Sword – Flashing Blade – position 2

Both of these skills do almost the exact same thing (teleport/leap and blind) , so why make it so cognitively difficult to memorize a key rotation with different weapon setups?

FWIW, this is my second serious attempt at trying to enjoy this game, my first being a ranger which I pretty much dropped at level 24 after discovering the pet names bug, then subsequently reading the litany of ranger doom threads. I really want to enjoy GW2, but it seems at every turn there is some bizarre issue that just makes it more painful than it ought to be.

Vaxx.3178:

Anet “cant” fix it, according to them.

heh… I hate to do this but, as a software developer myself (eww, see what you made me do!) I call BS on “can’t” fix it.

Vaxx.3178:

Not to rain on your parade, but soon you realize pets are just disposable and not worth naming anyway. They don’t grow in size with levels, they don’t learn any new skills, they are very bland and generic.

Well sure, but still… you’d think a rename feature would like, you know… actually rename something wouldn’t you? They might as well just remove the renaming ability completely and replace it with a fixed “Miszou’s Pet”, which is only marginally less awful than “Juvenile {generic beast}”. At least that would maintain some semblance of identity.

I’m a new player (just bought the game over Christmas) and I’ve just run into the Ranger Pet Naming bug, that I’m sure everyone here is already aware of.

Are there any plans to actually fix this, because quite honestly it’s pretty much destroyed the enjoyment I was getting out of playing. I don’t want to sound melodramatic here, but half the fun was running around with a faithful companion, not a “Juvenile {generic beast}”

Sure, it’s not game-breaking, but it is pretty sloppy. I found a thread from 2012 complaining about this and it is unfathomable to me how it can remain an obvious issue for so long.

edit: dam-with-an-n is apparently a swear word. Awesome.