Guild Wars 2

It is quite normal, all classes are actually really squishy if you’re just standing still and not doing anything.. There isn’t really any traditional warrior tanking with tons of health and armor.
I can’t tell what you’ve been doing, but as a rule of thumb, never stand still.
At least circle strafe the mobs, which will make you avoid a lot of special attacks and try to dodge often too if you see something coming. Just dodge whenever you can really to buy time for your heal to recharge.

Obviously now that you hit 20 and get access to another utility slot, you may want to put something defensive in there as well.

Khisanth.2948:

Ticee.2451:

But yeah I think the way to look at it is that necromancer has a lot of expendable pets that you can in theory resummon during the fight if the CD allows, and I’m sure you can make some use of them if you want to,

That sounds like a mesmer.

Yeah difference is that as a mesmer you CAN resummon them a lot during a fight, not just in theory

I’ve kinda found the necromancer pets to be.. underwhelming to put it diplomatically. I could also say shockingly useless compared to pretty much anything else you could fit in those utility slots, but I won’t! ^^ the elite one is actually quite nice though to be fair.

But yeah I think the way to look at it is that necromancer has a lot of expendable pets that you can in theory resummon during the fight if the CD allows, and I’m sure you can make some use of them if you want to, while the ranger has a companion animal which you would always want to keep alive. Kind of like teamplay almost. Also you can get many different ranger pets, which means you can choose something appropriate for many different situations.

As for guardian.. they can get some useful pets/spirit weapons, but they only last for a short while unless you’re specced for them specifically. Which is perfectly viable as well of course, just don’t except to do it from level 1 :P

I’m just wondering why they would choose the first dungeon of all to make ultra hard.. rather than keep that fairly easy and then crank up the difficulty for the last high level dungeons instead? :o

lcpdragonslayer.7895:

I levelled my first character from 5x to 80 and my second from 35 to 80 almost exclusively through explorable modes of AC, CM and TA. I intend to do the same once I get my third character to 35. Don’t listen to these elitist ‘level 80 full exotics over 9,000 achievement points required’ whiners. The forum posters are not representative of the GW2 community. Most of them who come here with horror stories probably don’t know how to dodge.

If you’re in an NA server and are around level 45, I’m happy to take you on an AC or CM run if we’re ever online at the same time. Give dungeons a go with a more open-minded party and if you decide you don’t like it – at least you’ve tried it and you know what it takes to see a run through.

Hehe I was hoping it wasn’t representative on that point at least

Unfortunately I’m on the EU servers, it’s a shame you can’t guest other regions really.. but thanks for the offer though!

And thanks for the replies everyone, I will definitely give it a try on story mode at least when I got a few hours to play uninterrupted

Alright thanks, that’s nice to know. I was mostly also thinking of story mode first obviously ^^ Time to do some dungeoning then I think!

So basically I’ve been playing a bit GW2 recently, and I’ve now got an engineer which is about level 43, which is my highest level character.

I was starting to think that maybe it could be fun to try some dungeon stuff, but I’ve read a lot of horror stories here on the forums about having to be a fully decked out lvl 80 warrior in order to do any dungeons at all.. So would it make sense to try getting into it or is dungeons basically not an option? :o

Personally I think the droprate is much much too low.. I mean it’s a skin, how many people stops to study your skins and compliment you on your achievements? I find it really difficult to justify spending that incredibly many hours grinding for it (hours you’d wish you had spent with your family instead, once you get old and look back :p).

Evidently some people have done it though, and I can entirely imagine how they’d feel if things were changed and casual people would be able to get the same skins without having to quit their job and leave their girlfriend.
That was a joke, but yeah would probably be unfair to those that managed to get the items already if the droprate was increased noticeably much. I’ll just skip on those skins I suppose.

This has never happened to me thankfully, but I imagine I would be foaming uncontrollably in rage if it did.
I shall definitely not try to be heroic and save a teammate at the last minute if it endangers myself :P

George Steel.1804:

Old excuse: Raids give the best gear in the game. More commitment/time investment, more rewards to reap. Not everyone can form an organized group based on skilled play and communication and do what other players do. /wah

In GW2: People shouldn’t be scared by raids. There is not much for a level 80 with exotic gear to do in this game minus WvW. The only rewards would be visual upgrade and guess what, THATS FINE, no one is crying for stat upgrades. But many want something challenging that can include more than just four other friends to complete. (And I’m not including open-world zerg events)

You’re always going to get the people who cry about raids. Guess what, I’m kitten I’ll never get a legendary because the grind is so stupid insane. But I deal with it. I’m okay with not experiencing and acquiring something within the game. You should do the same.

Not everything in the game needs to appeal to every person.

I vote /for raids (15-25man, no stat upgrade, purely based on challenging content & new weapon and armor skins)

This is acceptable to me.

I find it silly to argue whether you ‘have to’ raid or not. It’s a game, you don’t ‘have’ to do anything, you don’t even ‘have’ to level up or play at all.
It’s a matter of whether you have to raid to experience the game in a satisfying manner, which usually would mean to get raid gear in order to be competitive with everyone else.. If no one will have you in a group because you’re a “noob” without raid armor, then it’s not a satisfying experience. That’s just a very basic, but hopefully illustrative example.

I’ve managed to raid twice in my life, and I’ve played a lot of MMOs.. But I simply can’t just tie myself in front of the computer the entire night without having to leave for this and that and getting interrupted by other people.
I don’t necessarily mind having raids for other people to do, I just find it annoying to always be massively outgeared because I’m unable to sign out of RL for so many continuous hours.

I find that Asura looks quite disturbing, so the more small and unnoticeable they are, the better I would think.
I support the OP

Wanderer.3248:

“Guild” Wars is not about guild wars. Eve Online is not about a naked chick and a snake.

But if you want drama, and corp warfare, and griefing and generally waving your online snake around you should check out Eve.

I believe EVE is to be understood in a more metaphorical sense, like for instance humanity having a new beginning in a far end of the universe after the wormhole back to “earth space” unexpectedly collapsed, to cut it short. Reversely eve also means evening, which would also make sense as the general state of civilization isn’t terribly good and it’s only getting more violent and belligerent with every step, but it’s not all out war yet.

How is Guild Wars supposed to be understood? Or is it just a completely random name that was chosen because it sounded cool? :o

Indeed, switching attunements a lot are a key to victory. That may seem sad if you were keen on being a dedicated fire mage or healing waterfall, but that’s how it is.. It’s not a very forgiving class, so you have to pull out every drop of strength in it to just be mediocre. Unlike some other classes like warrior for instance, yes.

I think the things you mention are completely valid, but also I would think the “not having any great urge to log on and progress” is caused by the fact that there is very very little sense of progression in the game. You get pretty much everything thrown at you within the first 3-4 levels, which is nice for a little while, but when you don’t really gain a whole lot else for the rest of the game.. Well even a somewhat amusing combat system gets repetitive after a few weeks.
In PvP for instance, all you can ever get is cosmetic upgrades. That’s nice as a little bonus, but as the only progress you can make? Not going to hold up in the longer run. The fun factor alone wears off after a little while, as it does with all non-mmo games.

lagrangeify.5641:

It’s all about approach really. I’m absolutely done with rotation heavy min/max gaming. Some people are not in a mood to give it up, and I don’t blame them – whatever floats your boat. But GW2 is not that game and never will be

It just confuses me, because one of the most common arguments I hear when people complain about the skills being boring and useless and restrictive and such, is that it’s a hardcore pvp game that must be totally balanced and also every little otherwise useless condition/boon matters there.
So now you say that GW2 is in fact a sort of casual game where numbers doesn’t really matter so much?

I sometimes get the feeling people are making up excuses for themselves as they go, to avoid bursting their hyped bubble. That may just be me though :p

lothefallen.7081:

Kanark.8716:

I am glad to hear i am not the only one who feels this way. It is horribly depressing for me as i was looking forward to this game since the announcement and followed it religiously. I also pre-ordered as soon as it was possible. I think both of you make great points and i agree fully. I just wish the development teams could do something about it, but i fear that it is too late for a recovery.

I am going back to EVE Online and League of Legends myself.

Yeah, i followed it religiously for 5 years as well. I’m just miserably disappointed. Had to take a break from University to just calm myself down. I have been really depressed and unfocused lately. Gonna just try to stop gaming for a while.

That is one disillusioned GW1 fan right there They really did manage to get GW2 hyped up to godly levels too though.

I am incredible bored with the same few skills and presets, and was so after a week or so. Just the thought of having all my weapon skills unlocked at level 3 essentially killed my sense of progress noticeably.
I really liked my necromancer using a dagger setup.. but having to spam the same couple of skills until 80 and beyond.. well that’s not a nice idea.
As for utility skills and such, that’s very lacking as well, with only a few being generally useful. Most of them are extremely situational, and with the limited amount of utility skills you can equip, you can’t justify using those over other skills that are generally useful.

And yes if you look closely enough, you can get into fine tweaking your build and such, but you can do that in any MMO. Build customization is as a whole extremely limited in GW2. I would for instance have loved if trait lines would unlock new related weapon skills you could equip instead of the preset ones, or just new utilities or something like that.

I really think it’s a shame, because the game does many things right in terms of combat.. but I have no idea why they decided to violently destroy and molest the GW1 skill system that made the game so popular in the first place and replace it with the restrictive horror we have here. It’s beyond my comprehension.

Nismu.4019:

I would be very surprised if they wouldn’t add new skills sooner or later. Game has just come out they wanted to keep it balanced and thousands of skills and class mixes sure would make it hard to make it balanced.

Well it’s not about the amount of skills available (although that could be much better too), it’s about the skill setup being so restrictive.. Like your entire left bar is a preset depending on your weapon, why is that? Why not give people a couple of different skills they could choose from that’s relevant to the weapon.
On the right side you’re forced to have 1 healing, 3 utility and 1 elite.. Why not let people have 5 utility if they want? or 3 healing, 1 elite and 1 utility?

That would allow people to play and set up their skills the way they want to, not the way that somewhat best resembles what they want, given the few options they have to do with. I really hate how they forced everyone to have that particular setup.. It’s the direct opposite of what GW1 was/is famous for.

I think the fact that so many people complain about the lack of content kinda suggests that either Anet failed to make the game right, or they failed to advertise it right.. I mean it’s not just one or two confused hobos who don’t have a clue what’s going on, it’s a pretty sizable amount of people.
That’s a problem, one way or another.

Also this may not be Anet, but thousands of people constantly claiming with total holy confidence that GW2 will be the MMO that kills off all other MMOs, particularly WoW, because it’s just so unimaginably awesome on all thinkable points.
After having listened to that rant for years, I think it’s justified that people are slightly meh, when they figure out there’s nothing to do after a few weeks of play.

I really liked the GW1 and the skill system, and would like that in GW2 or something somewhat similar at least.. But not only that, a lot of skills in GW2 largely seem useless outside high end competitive pvp. I mean most crowd control skills or any skills in general are in the range of being up for 1,5 sec and then having a cooldown of 45 sec.. Way way too long cooldown, and way too low effect time, it renders the vast majority of skills pretty pointless in casual pve for instance.
In GW1 the skills in general lasted so much longer and really made a difference. On top of that putting points into traits would extend the duration of skills drastically, as in from 4 sec to 18 sec. Of course you couldn’t do that to all your skills though.

So basically GW2 just feels so restrictive and superficial, you really don’t have any major choices to make, neither in choice of skills or traits. It’s all a matter of tweaking the finer details that’ll make a difference in a tournament battle, but otherwise won’t really make any noticeable difference.

I really tire of the weapon preset skills as well.. The idea of weapon specific skills is fine, but give people a bunch of different skills they can choose from themselves, as they like.

AndrewWaltfeld.4621:

Ticee.2451:

AndrewWaltfeld.4621:

Kimbald.2697:

If someone in WoW would spam trade with ‘Rogue dps LFG’ (which is the WoW equivalent of Andrews example above) than he would be mocked and asked what else a rogue could be…

I’m afraid your example says more of that particular player, or type of players, than of the trinity habit

True. but I play engineer.

However – it was just a purest example I could think of that you can tell people were playing in past games with the trinity. I have seen “Healer Engineer LFG” or whatever profession etc in chat as well. Though as stated above, time goes on, less about the roles and more of what profession.

But then I will ask you, what makes it better that you’re advertised as a profession rather than a role? :o

Because frankly, yes it’s technically possible to run thru the dungeons with five of the same professions… but people tend to want an variety group. So they end up choosing the ones that they don’t have already. They may already have two guardians but they don’t want a third for example.

If you have 5 of the same profession, you’ll want to have roles – of course. But most people don’t like stacking more than one or two of the same professions in a group. Unless you want to be silly like one of the last dungeon runs I did which was 4 guardians and an engineer. I looked so out of place with my gear like I was that midget that followed all the humans and norns around.

Well you basically just described why it’s important to have different roles – variety. And what GW2 has done is severly limiting the possibility of variety a lot by removing the vast majority of roles, forcing everyone to be dps, dps with support flavor or dps with a twist of crowd control.

The whole game is built up to fit the playstyle of being a squishy dps type that jumps and dodges around to avoid getting hit, and strangely enough the thief profession seems to be doing pretty well too.

AndrewWaltfeld.4621:

Kimbald.2697:

If someone in WoW would spam trade with ‘Rogue dps LFG’ (which is the WoW equivalent of Andrews example above) than he would be mocked and asked what else a rogue could be…

I’m afraid your example says more of that particular player, or type of players, than of the trinity habit

True. but I play engineer.

However – it was just a purest example I could think of that you can tell people were playing in past games with the trinity. I have seen “Healer Engineer LFG” or whatever profession etc in chat as well. Though as stated above, time goes on, less about the roles and more of what profession.

But then I will ask you, what makes it better that you’re advertised as a profession rather than a role? :o

Phy.2913:

Ticee.2451:

Well the thing is.. You have to ask yourself why the so called holy trinity or what I would more overall call specialized roles was invented in the first place.
Could it be that it was a way to make group interaction more meaningful and make it feel like everyone is essential to the group, as they all play a vital role (and a role for whatever playstyle you like)? It could perhaps.

Now that they’ve tried removing it and make everyone more or less jacks of all trades for some reason, it does indeed often seem very chaotic and meaningless what you do in a group.

The very vague specialization that you can do in GW2 only really starts working well in extremely well organized groups, which is a very small minority. So for most casual players it’s just a mess with no one knowing what they’re supposed to do other than spam whatever attacks they have, because roles have effectively been removed.

Or, the trinity is a really easy way to design encounters, and removing it requires making a much more robust combat system.

But who knows.

Well it should just be noted that it wasn’t invented by WoW.. It originates back to the original pen & paper games with a fat man and his piles of rulebooks being the game master. So yeah I just think there’s a reason that’s generally the way to do it in RPGs.

It should also be noted that you are never forced to be a healer or tank, you can be a dps or support type if that suits you better.. And even though there’s a general consensus that the tank should hold aggro and such, actually doing it can be very challenging and intense if the dungeon is difficult enough. Same thing with healing, for instance if something pops massive AoE damage, there goes your “spam Healing Light on tank guy”, and suddenly you’ve got to prioritize who to keep alive and who to let die, and if the tank dies then who should you make an effort to keep alive next.

That’s just to say that just because it’s a well known concept, doesn’t mean that it’s a simple task or a walk in the park, as a lot of people here mockingly state with sly remarks. It simply means that people have an idea of what they should try to be doing, which they evidently don’t in GW2.
Maybe they’re all dumb I guess.

Well the thing is.. You have to ask yourself why the so called holy trinity or what I would more overall call specialized roles was invented in the first place.
Could it be that it was a way to make group interaction more meaningful and make it feel like everyone is essential to the group, as they all play a vital role (and a role for whatever playstyle you like)? It could perhaps.

Now that they’ve tried removing it and make everyone more or less jacks of all trades for some reason, it does indeed often seem very chaotic and meaningless what you do in a group.

The very vague specialization that you can do in GW2 only really starts working well in extremely well organized groups, which is a very small minority. So for most casual players it’s just a mess with no one knowing what they’re supposed to do other than spam whatever attacks they have, because roles have effectively been removed.

Well I think the greatest issue is the skills thing.. GW1 was fabled for having so many skills and unrivaled freedom in how you mix and match them, plus the fact that you could have a secondary profession too with that profession’s skills thrown in your pool as well. Endless possiblities! (well almost at least)
GW2 for some unknown reason decided to go the exact opposite direction and make an extremely restricted and limited skill system, unparalleled to any other MMO.

I find the combat system as such pretty nice in GW2, I’m just a really sad panda that they decided to kill the skill system that made GW1 so popular in the first place.

I find that possibly the biggest problem in GW2 is the general lack of progression in everything. All your weapon skills are pretty much unlocked straight away, and they’re presets, so you’re not going to gain or change anything on that front ever in your quest for level 80.
Then you have a handful of utility and healing skills, but you can quickly see which few ones are worth equipping in your very restrictive skillbar and which are not. Sure you can unlock more fancy situational and amusing skills, but the majority just aren’t worth filling up one of your few skill slots, so you never use them anyway.
This is pretty much what happens in the middle ground too, you’ve picked out all the skills you find useful, and while you can still unlock more, you aren’t going to be equipping them, so it feels like a waste and you aren’t gaining anything.

It’s the same in sPvP, only worse. You start out with all the skills, so obviously they aren’t a means of progression. The only thing you can gain for spending hundreds of hours pvping, is cosmetic upgrades.. That’s kinda nice for a few days, but gets meaningless pretty quickly, and the fun factor is lost long before then as well. To me at least.. Gaining nothing at all makes it hard to justify spending so many hours doing it.

As annoying as it is with pvp gear with superior stats, it does give you a strong incentive to progress as a noob, so you can get that gear too one day. PvP doesn’t necessarily always have to be bland 100% fair tournament style all the time. It’s a game, not a sport.

Hm it would appear that the rifles have been cursed.. it’s something fairly recent, no? I don’t recall it happening on my engineer when I played it a while ago. Could technically be some kind of exotic bug.

Well actually you can make a new character and drop the starter headpiece in your bank, and then just put that on your old engineer.. I know you can do it with the necro head tattoos at least, so you probably can with the rest as well, although not 100% certain.

Add a “opt out of events” button! Meaning you forfeit any possibility of gaining rewards, but the event will disregard you as well ^^ Good for the dedicated resource gatherer or RP type.

grifflyman.8102:

Also, many people will say you need to manage the trade post and work the economy…that sounds like god darn work and I want to play this game for fun, not play wall street with fake money…

Word :p I often get the feeling some people forget that video games fall under the category of entertainment, which is oftentimes regarded as the opposite of work, or should be at least since we paid for it.

Well I think it would be common courtesy not to place yourself in an area that’ll result in other people getting pwned because you scale up the event. I mean obviously you could be standing around randomly and cause it by accident, but when you’re completely aware of it.. It’s a bit of a kitten move I think. :o

Untouch.2541:

Ticee.2451:

There’s a lot of this “You’re stuck in WoW thinking! Think new!” I think it’s a futile argument. The thing is as the OP says that traditional quests are gone, we all agree on that, yes?
Now, being a new revolutionizing game in itself is not a good excuse to remove something quite essential to this genre (and don’t tell me it’s not an MMORPG :p), unless you replace it with something new and revolutionizing and preferably better.

The problem here is that what they put in place instead of quests is (in the opinion of some, at least) not better, it’s actually just even more boring than traditional questing. It’s nothing to do with thinking outside the box and what not, it’s a matter of whether something is interesting and fun to play or not. Quite simple ^^

That’s actually not what people are saying, they’re saying the story and lore is there, you have to look for it.

That may be, but my point was just.. Is it more fun this way? That’s basically what the matter is about I think.
People aren’t stupid after all, we can all see things are done differently here, there’s no need to keep telling them to think new.

There’s a lot of this “You’re stuck in WoW thinking! Think new!” I think it’s a futile argument. The thing is as the OP says that traditional quests are gone, we all agree on that, yes?
Now, being a new revolutionizing game in itself is not a good excuse to remove something quite essential to this genre (and don’t tell me it’s not an MMORPG :p), unless you replace it with something new and revolutionizing and preferably better.

The problem here is that what they put in place instead of quests is (in the opinion of some, at least) not better, it’s actually just even more boring than traditional questing. It’s nothing to do with thinking outside the box and what not, it’s a matter of whether something is interesting and fun to play or not. Quite simple ^^

I don’t necessarily mind losing the holy trinity.. The problem to me here is that they replaced it with.. basically nothing. The gameplay is essentially still the same as other RPGs, you have stats, a healthbar and a mix of abilities and so does the enemies.
But however you want to look at it, there are still skills that heal, do tanky stuff (block and give protection and such) and dps.. Thing is just half your skills are presets determined by weapon, so you have to make do with that odd protection spell even though you just want to hit hard from a distance.
Further more on the right side you’re forced to have one healing spell, three utility and one elite. No more, no less.
This pretty much forces everyone to be jack of all trades, despite the fact that healing and tanking abilities do exist, you just can’t really decide how you want to set things up.

I would prefer if a weapon had for instance 10 different abilities which you could then pick and choose from yourself, based on how you want to play. Kind of like a mix of GW1 and the current GW2 I suppose.
I’d also prefer if you had the option to replace your healing ability with a utility skill, if you don’t want to do any healing, that should be your choice. Maybe you could replace utility skills with healing as well, although that would perhaps be OP as things are now.

As for traits, sure they add a bit specializing.. But it’s really not fundamentally changing your playstyle.

Yay for that, still from a usability point of view I think the vast majority of people want to buy specific amounts of gems, and not have specific amounts of gold they want to spend. That’s traditionally how you do it when it comes to stocks and investments, which isn’t what GW2 is primarily about I imagine. ^^

I mean why do you have to type in a random amount of gold you want to spend, and then try to approximate and narrow it down until you eventually find the amount that equals the amount of gems you need.. rather than have it the other way around.
It’s one of those extremely basic things that should have been there from early alpha stages, as it’s so obvious, and would make the lives easier for so many people wanting to buy gems. Unless there’s some underlying business model to it of course.

Yeah I would prefer it if you enter a number a gems you want to buy as well.. Since when I buy gems it’s often because I need a specific amount, say 800 for a new character slot. I rarely go around thinking that I need to hoard gems randomly because I have too much gold on me.

At least you could have both options, which would be pretty obvious when it comes to user-friendliness. :o