Guild Wars 2

I have a laptop that doesn’t have a great processor, but my graphics card is pretty good. Skyrim runs at really high settings without a problem for me, but GW2 at just about lowest settings has run ok for me.

I can deal with this limitation (I’m one of those people who wonders if DX11 would have helped the game run better), but in the HoT area it does not run smoothly for me. Shadow effects everywhere, fire effects everywhere, particle effects across the sky, all across multiple vertical layers (which probably means more stuff has to be loaded than usual). As this is a beta I’m sure that some things can be tweaked, but I doubt it will be enough.

I can get older and newer MMOs to look better and run smoother, but if the expansion for GW2 is going to run slower and force me to turn down the settings, then I’m just not interested. I’m sorry, I’m not picky about graphics, but I shouldn’t have to sacrifice my enjoyment in every possible way. Even one of my friends who has a top of the line gaming rig gets fps drops in GW2, so clearly the game is not as efficient as it needs to be, which is a shame.

There were times when it felt cool to be a Revenant but some things did bother me.

Hammer felt underwhelming so I switched to mace and axe. I preferred those skills, but most of them had a wait time before they went off. I’m not used to waiting for a second after using most of my skills. They do have shorter cooldowns, but having to wait after casting most skills feels weird.

Having the 6-0 skills change is interesting and allows for more support options, but I find it slower/harder to get the right skills off with that setup. An elementalist can do just about everything they need with their left hand, and they don’t have to look at the keyboard. Revenant users would best be served moving their mouse to a skill and then back to where the fight is. It just doesn’t flow as smooth, which is unfortunate.