Guild Wars 2

Greetings from the future! Here in the future gold is now approaching 11 gold per 100 gems.

Looks a bit silly how you were complaining about 3 gold a year ago, huh?

Its a double-edged sword. I often don’t log in for days because there’s no incentive to do so other than “oh, this might be fun” At the end of my play time I rarely feel like I accomplished anything.

Even with hating the standard gear grind, at the end of my play I’d get that warm fuzzy feeling of “Yeah! I got a bunch of shiny new gear, leveled, got some new skills, feelin’ good” In guild wars 2 I only really feel like I accomplished…Playing a match of pvp…or…Tediously running around for an hour to complete an area.

What exactly is it that you guys find so hype about this game, again? The whole pve environment is garbage…You literally just walk around and unlock things by walking. Oh, unless you bump into a heart, then you do the same re-hashed quest you’ve always done in every mmo…Only you don’t have to talk to an npc first! WOO

Also don’t get me started on events. 95% of them are “Gather this” “Kill this” or “Escort this”

So yeah, I’m quite skilled in pvp, or so I’d like to believe. I play mostly supportive roles, mostly. Most fun is had on my support guardian.

I’d like a guild I can run tournaments with, PvE, WvW, whatever.

Looks like the server name cut off up there: Eredons Terrace.

Skritt…

More words to get past the post limit

Not until we get fencer and monk

Okay so, I know people think steal is weak for whatever reason, but I’ve got a build actually based around it, and it works wonderfully. Let me break it down for you all.

10 traits in deadly arts, taking the mug trait. The 5 slot also gives a free “poison on steal” effect. Doing a good 2.5-3k damage on a good steal + poison trickle.

30 points in shadow arts Trait points in
Shadows Rejuvination
Hidden Thief
The last trait can be whatever you like

30 points in trickery Extra initiative to use skills, Stealing gives even more initiative, 30% extra cooldown speed on stealing, Everything about this is wonderful
Traits
Thrill of The Crime
Sleight of Hand
Bountiful Theft

This build is based more around supporting and making full use of steal. You’ll have to get used to when and where to steal specific items from certain classes to make full use of this build. My personal favorite steal item is the warriors.

ALL OF THESE THINGS HAPPEN WHEN YOU SUCCESSFULLY STEAL FROM A TARGET.

-You steal 2 boons from the enemy target and apply them to all allies in the area
- All allies gain Vigor
- All allies gain fury might and swiftness
- Target takes damage and is poisoned
-Target is dazed for 1 second
-You become stealthed for up to 3 seconds
- You gain a free skill to use against the enemies
- Gain 3 initiative immediately
- Gain Extra might due to Hidden Assassin

You may want to get runes and sigils that focus around power and damage, considering the trains do a really good job of giving survivability, you don’t need any extra.

I recommend you take AoE stealthing skills, it can help you pick up allies and set up for large ambushes. This build also comes with huge amounts of survivability. Its not uncommon for me to never die during a round of pvp Thank you for reading.

If you want a support build thief, look around and put as many points in as you need to to get all the buffing and damaging bonuses for steals.

You’ll apply boons every time you steal, get a free effect to use on the enemies, damage them with steal, and get a free stealth! Plus the build is fairly tanky.

I would have to agree. I noticed this early on. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, but grew into one.

Its the same way with “Individualized loot” There’s no sense of “I got this good loot, its useful for me and not him” It doesn’t matter in the slightest. There are also those of us who enjoy helping others by giving gear and resources, because we understand that things like that can be hard to obtain. Since its not, there’s no reason to bond or help one another.

In the end this is a single player game that has an "mmo’ package.

Vaeyrune.6804:

Zetoe.1327:

Vaeyrune.6804:

I feel like these ideas encroach too much on the Guardian.

Meditations, projectile reflecting, 1-hand sword play, etc.

applying an effect to surrounding allies that applies boons, or removes conditions

Sounds very Guardianish to me.

Zetoe.1327:

rarely use a 1h sword on my guardian, its kinda’ crappy.

Disagree, I find the 1h sword to be amazing on the Guardian.

Zetoe.1327:

You know, get in-get out stuff.

The 1h sword for Guardians have a teleport-in ability. Much like your ‘Dashing in’ suggestion.

“guardianish” Try, just about every class-ish. “Dashing in” You mean like…Warrior, Thief mug, Guardian teleport, Rangers leaping 1h sword ability, the list goes on. Since when was any of this exclusive to guardian? Plus…that is a teleport. As I understand it close range classes enjoy having gap-closers….you know…to close gaps? I guess you’re entitled to your opinion that only guardians are allowed to have gap closers.

This is the type of game where every class can play more than a single role, If you’re going to compare things and go “oh but this class does this too” then every class is going to do what every class does. I don’t really understand your argument.

Smelly Bookah.6957:

New class: The Jester. He could make fiery farts. That would be epic, wouldnt it?

I think you failed to read my post, otherwise you would understand that these classes have something to bring to the table, and would help add depth and decision making. This obvious trolling attempt is entirely unnecessary. I get it, you’re one of those people that hates people coming up with “x class would be really cool!” threads. I’d appreciate if you’d ignore them or add something constructive, though.

What would this Farting Jester bring to the table?

Monk would add another demension to gameplay all about positioning, removing bunkers, and ignoring certain terrain constraints. I understand this would make some jump quests really easy for them, but I don’t see that being a bad thing per-se.

For example, I forget the map name, but the one in sPVP with “Keep” as the middle point, how mages and Rangerss can just sit up on a platform and rain hell on the point. There are ways to stop them, but you’d have to go around, or pull them down to you.

Monk could use a high jump ability to leap up there, then kick them off the ledge. The problem would be balancing wise, he’d have to either be pretty squishy, or do lower damage than warrior. This is just one idea for the class, mind you.

Fencer would add variety to melee combat, and critical thinking. Fencer would be all about avoiding stuns and damage, avoiding projectiles, dodging attacks in creative ways. If say, a warrior bull-charges you, and has a greatsword, That is a wrap for you, Unless you’ve got a signet or skill that removes cc off cooldown at the time.

Vaeyrune.6804:

I feel like these ideas encroach too much on the Guardian.

Meditations, projectile reflecting, 1-hand sword play, etc.

I’m talking about actual meditation, not instant use abilities that are just called that. You know, like crossing legs, floating in the air and applying a concentration type effect to surrounding allies that applies random boons, or removes conditions, Adds effects onto abilities, Creates a combo field around the monk, Applies conditions to surrounding enemies. Possibilities endless.

Plus, “1-hand sword play” ….you mean like…about 5 other classes? Plus I rarely use a 1h sword on my guardian, its kinda’ crappy. Also, guardians use aoe auras and retaliation to reflect. I’m talking about actual abilities to do so. Example being “3 second cooldown, reflect the next projectile shot at you within the next .6 seconds with your rapier, if the reflected projectile makes contact applies cripple.” or “Block next projectile and dash to the source of the projectile applying a short daze” or even “Parry next physical attack, shifting around to the back of the target and applying weakness. Reactivate to stab and dash backwards applying a short cripple”

You know, get in-get out stuff.

Raine Akrune.8416:

If there’s even a remote chance of getting my monk back, even without healing abilities, I’d play it.

I can see the monk having a supportive side, using meditation type abilities, and auras. Just not based on healing as a main thing like in gw1

Monk(No, not the healer kind) and Fencer.

Monk would make use of tons of position based skills, High jumps, Kicks that launch enemies, Bonuses to rolls, Cartwheels, Throws, Skills that launch the monk to an enemy, send them flying and if they collide with a wall they take damage, and are stunned. That type of stuff.

Fencer I feel is what melee ranger should have been, but is done badly. Riposte and counter type abilities, Lots of dodging and timed projectile returning and blocking. Dashing in and out of combat quickly, etc.

The monk would help with bunker busting, as well as adding some movement variety, and another class aside from guardian that can help keep melees off of your casters. It’d add depth to gameplay.

The Fencer would be like a warrior with more timing involved, and more dashing in and out of combat to survive. Thief is sort of like this, but relies far less on timing, and more on continued stealth through the fight, which personally I’m not a fan of. it almost seems that this is what “close range Ranger” was intended to be, but it was seemingly designed as an afterthought, and is executed badly. (I’m talking about 1 handed sword skills mostly)

I suggest these because I want more close range combat variety. As it stands the most efficient close range builds are “Stealth in and burst quickly” or “Stun and burst quickly” for warrior and thief respectively. I want a more dynamic fluid and sustained type of melee combat. I mainly play as my thief and warrior, by the way. They’re cool but not quite what I’m looking for.

I also see need for a more supportive type caster, but guardian can fill that role well enough, so it isn’t entirely necessary.

Healing power is indeed garbage. All heals that don’t specifically target the player using them are also painfully bad. I feel this was on purpose, but I also feel that it should just be removed from the game if they’ll allow it to be this bad. Its a slap in the face.

Elixir/Elixir gun build on my engineer which relied on the large amount of healing skills that are given to me, overall I’d heal about as much as….1 backstab from a thief, This is having popped about 6 or so healing skills, mind you. NOT okay.

Helping anybody but yourself is against game design, I guess.

GW2 isn’t innovative, its different.

They do a horrible job of dismissing the holy trinity.

Also they made anti-social players interact with others, however, they also made social players have less social activities to take part in. The whole game is a “do everything on your own, but with other people!” mentality. I’ve been saying this since launch.

I’m the only one who like Zojja?

I don’t find this game that entertaining, the community building is a joke, there is no teamwork, the classes are uninspired. Builds are all way too shallow, everything is a zerg. The quests are a joke. Sometimes literally.

Yet, ask me if it was worth my 60 dollars? Absolutely.

Would I buy it again? Definitely.

I only noticed all the glaring flaws this game had after over 100 hours of play, that for 60 dollars is well worth it.

This game does a really bad job at building the community. Most of your experiences are “do your own thing while everyone around you does their own thing, and everyone gets their own loot” That is not really good for causing player interaction. The most you get is a “Good job” from one guy. then everybody leaves.

Its largely the same with dungeons. People say there is teamwork in this, and I laugh at them. They don’t know what teamwork actually is. Equipping a bunch of skills that have secondary effects your team can trigger passively is not active teamwork.

You don’t ever NEED anyone on anything. I’ve yet to make any friends due to events that took place within the game that we actually needed eachother to work through. I’ve made friends in many other mmos this way, yet here It seems absent. They got rid of the holy trinity, sure, but they did it the wrong way. The end result was more harm than good.

You people honestly think people will just run past people who are downed or dead any more than they already do just because they’re faster?

Here’s 2 key points for you.

1. Almost everyone already does pass you up when you’re downed
2. The mounts aren’t traveling at the speed of light, you can see downed people on your map, and anyone observant will notice a dead guy as long as you aren’t traveling 100,000 mph

Sondergaard.8469:

Okay, after reading through this thread I have to say I couldn’t disagree more. The tank, support, dps roles still exist, they just blur the line enough that classes aren’t bottlenecked into a single role because that’s the only role they’re good at.

The other side of that is though, that no class is at it’s best or strongest when alone. Every class is reliant on other people performing well in their own role to bring you to your maximum potential. This means that if you are playing a healer, the person you are healing has to also be doing their part.

For example, lets say you’re in a dungeon. You’re playing healer. If the person you are trying to heal is ‘tanking’ but they are not spec’d properly for it and are not using skills, movement, dodge, etc to counter damage guess what’s going to happen? You guessed it! SPLAT!

If you have a guardian who is full on spec’d for tanking, in gear appropriate for the level of content you are doing, and you are the same I can guarantee you your heals will keep them up through the content if they know their class and are effectively using their skills. But guess what? It’s not all on you two. There are 3 other people who need to be using buffs and support to make the whole team more effective.

The M.O. here is teamwork. What you are suggesting would have the opposite effect. You want to be able to outheal incoming damage on your own without being reliant on other players to perform their role, use their heals, and counter damage intelligently. That’s not possible, nor should it be.

Way to once again miss the point entirely. Self healing is so effective that there is no reason to heal them, but there are traits and builds specifically allowing you to be “better” at healing, which is still garbage. The effect of said build is that you can heal for poor amounts, while doing poor amounts of damage. The game would be exactly the same without this build option. Healing is barely stronger with a build based around it. You may as well just build straight damage and just shoot enemies with your gun. You’ll be more useful that way. By building to be a support all you do is heavily hinder yourself, when you SHOULD be using all your resources to help others.

Instead the game forces you to build like a fighter, and just fight, while your friends get supported passively while you fight.

There is “no roles”? Wrong, there’s only 1 role, now. Fighter. That is it, everything else is a waste.

You guys seem to be missing my point, entirely. I think its because I got on a wierd tangent on “roles”

If you build your character right, everything you do passively helps your team, the only thing that helps your team that is specifically not passive is the downed system, which ironically, takes away from the flow of battle.

Since there’s no Tank Support DPS variation roles, the game has 2 ways to fight bosses. Kite like mad(woo hoo) or its a big stationary boss. Thats it, there’s your variety. However, my problem AGAIN isn’t about there not being roles, its about there not being any community building teamwork.

This is it, you’re all going “Oh, dude get on a voice chat!” Yeah…Okay, thats not really a community builder, to be quite honest. That normally happens after you join a guild. I’m talking about the massive about of passivity, and self dependence.

My point with healing being weak was simple. Self heals are enormous half-your-hp bar filling moves with fairly short channels, or an immunity, etc. Yet if you go to heal a teammate you heal for about 1k total, which is a single attack from anyone built for damage. That completely defeats the purpose of the whole role. The makes DO NOT want you healing AT ALL. Apparently this type of direct supporting is against their design. Same with skills that “bounce between allies and enemies” The ally bounce is if after-thought. This is evident with the fact that you can’t target an ally to start the bounce.

The only direct supporting I’ve been able to do is CC, and CC is a huge factor in this game. Too big, in fact. Its kind of disheartening. Its so hard to kill other players while they’re dodging around and constantly sustaining themselves, the game has to heavily rely on CC in order to make them stop so they can be killed. Are you a good player? Now, Have you ever tried to have a 1v1 fight with another good player? If neither of you has a huge whopping mountain of cc the fight WILL go on indefinitely. I’ve proven this on multiple occasions.

Your cc is fully dependent on your weapon, I use rifle because it gives me a cc move and an escape. Aside from that, I have the use of…3 slots with which I can use to heal teammates or CC. This is a false choice.

I can take 1 healing skill and heal for….about 1-3k damage total (oh boy) and then get 2 cc skills, so now my cc is far less effective, and I heal for garbage. Or I can go with healing well or CCing well.

Trying to go for both ends badly. Healing yourself is great, mind you. All the self healing is huge, too huge, in fact. The moment you try to heal others, though, its a huge no-no all of a sudden.

My problem isn’t specifically with how weak healing is, and isn’t evwn my main argument. My point is more that there’s no actual sense of teamwork. all your “teamwork” is passive. There’s no cohesive unit.

As for how weak healing is, though, There’s 2 options here, Buff it, or remove it from the game. As it stands I’d be better of just filling my slots with 3 cc skills, so I can prevent the damage entirely instead of trying to heal it up in the middle of a fight. WHICH by the way is the only time TO try to heal it, because autoheal kicks in after they get out of combat, making any healing you attempt to do moot.

Oh right, this fails to mention that the Healing will be even weaker because you won’t be specced into it, so it’d actually be far less. Why even give traits for healing if its still going to be garbage? The problem isn’t that healing is bad, the problem is that its completely and utterly worthless. Just about every other option is a better one. So why not just remove it from the game entirely?

So what you’re suggesting is a supports role is to be a huge ball of CC? That is extremely lame, and sort of shoehorning the role.

The game specifically allows the player to build into healing, it also has a multitude of skills specifically for that purpose, yet all of them blow. Its sort of a low blow “There’s healing skills, they’re all just really bad to keep you from using them”

Reihert.1509:

Try dungeons on explorer mode and you’ll see you either are a team player or you won’t be able to do it at all.

And by team means actually resapeccing to be able to support, actually coordinating and actually L2P

The only class I’ve seen actually support well is guardian, only because they have a lot of shields boons and blocking capability.

As I said in my previous post, I completely specced my engineer out in sPvP to be a good healer, Giving boons, doing over-time heal, big heals…

With all that work, I had a heal that would hit for an initial…400, then heal like 80 a second for a couple seconds. thats…what…a single attack from a warrior? Then I had a skill that would regen for about 2k….Oh…good…whats that? 1/4th a thief backstab? about 2 hits from a warrior? Super! First aid kits that heal for 1.1k each on a pretty heavy cooldown….

Mind you all these healing abilities and boons I have are complete garbage AFTER dumping just about all my points and resources into making them powerful. So, now I forewent a ton of power and traits I could be using to simply do good damage. My choice is heal about half of my teammates hp, or in the same amount of time that takes me down 2 enemies.

All my healing abilities which I would use to the fullest of my ability would amount to about 10k healing spread out over time….My warrior with no points into health has about 27k hp. He can also heal himself for about that much by simply hitting 6.

You see where this is a problem? Supportive build choices are completely null. Its pathetic. Now, if health didn’t regenerate outside of combat, and I was needed to actually patch people up to run in and fight, that’d be one thing….I’d be a lot better off just helping my team deal damage in a fight, then everyone can auto-heal after the fight is over.

There’s also a HUGE problem with supporting being passive to a disgusting level. For example, I’ve got a skill that launches a projectile that slows enemies and speeds up allies. Why am I unable to shoot this projectile at an ally to start the bouncing? Why am I forced to shoot it at an enemy? This basically solidifies the point that the game DOES NOT want anybody directly helping anybody. You simply attack enemies, and thats supposed to passively help your team…Ha…great.

There’s also only one single sense of “Wow dude, you really saved my buns!” its when you down an enemy to revive an ally. Thats it, the only time. There’s rarely clutch healing. Downed state also completely ruins the flow of the game. Having to stop and deal with an enemy you already killed can very easily get YOU killed, making it extremely hard to deal with multiple enemies as a single player. The main problem with this is, Say you just downed someone and are going to finish him off, but his teammate shows up and knocks you back. As cool as this factor of teamwork is, You just deprived this guy of his ENTIRE HEALTH BAR doing a lot of work in the process. Yet there goes all sense of satisfaction.

Reviving said teammate is equally as bad. Sure it sort of feels like you’re helping, but you now have to completely stop what you’re doing, and sit completely still for some seconds doing nothing instead of fighting.

This’ll be a bit of a long read, and may come of as “complainey” but I assure you I type this up with the fullest intention of helping better this game. Granted the harsh nature of this feedback, I feel I must clarify that in no way to I find “Guild Wars 2” a bad game. I’ve had more enjoyment with this game then I’ve with many others.

I’ve been playing for some weeks now, while trying to figure something out. Something was off-putting. I didn’t quite know what it was. Then suddenly one day I noticed that someone next to me just gathered from the same node I did. I thought about it “Oh, so gathering is individual player instance-based” Not actually a bad thing, It meant fields weren’t devoid of all resources for newer players because of farming. I kind of liked it, in fact!

This is where I started to notice something, though. Dropped gear was instance too! Huh, Okay. That sort of made me draw back and think for a bit. That kind of defeated the purpose of classes using different gear, and working as a team to get eachother gear. The gear grabbing was more “self-serve” This could, however, be forgiven.

Next stop, events! I started doing a bunch of events, as I went I noticed a theme. Nobody really helped anybody else do any objectives, in most cases. No cool team puzzles or the like. Mostly just smash the hell out of a boss, or everyone collect loot individually. Notice the use of the word “Individually” Nobody was “really” working together. It was just a big zerg, you follow it around, you do whatever, you get loot.

I thought surely pvp would be different, right? It has to be! The whole point is teamwork, right? Well yes, and also. . . no. I noticed a theme, and I tried out every role in PvP and PvE to try to clarify this theme and pattern. The pattern is thus; “Do whatever it is you do, and your teammates will get buffs and such as you go.” There are some exceptions, but allow me to make some examples below.

Supporting with my engineer: I build runes around boons and healing, Used all my heals in succession, and kept all conditions off my allies, yet they still died at about the same speed. I have a couple healing abilities, and after using every single one of them, doing a little math, all the healing I did amounts to about 6 smacks from an enemy warrior, or one “2” from a warriors greatsword. Maybe less. This is with 3 monk runes and 3 water runes, and +300 healing from traits, as well as traits specifically to help my healing and buffing. Naturally I did other things to help, too, but the effect of boons can be quite minimal in a lot of cases, and I sacrificed so much of my damage and power to do the garbage amount of healing I was doing, that I wasn’t useful at all.

Why is the above important? Self heals are extremely powerful, and almost every buff you give to allies you also give to yourself. The game is just too self-reliant. I find that regardless of how useful I try to be, the end result is me having to smack the hell out of the enemies to do so. Class not mattering. PvP boils down to whoever gets the jump on the enemies and zergs better. There’s no reason to even try to help your team, everyone helps themselves.

The same is evident in dungeons. Everyone has just about the same job. You hit it until it dies while dodging and healing yourself.

I’m sure I did a bad job of illustrating my point, in at least a few cases. If you’d all kindly do some critical thinking to understand what I mean, I’m sure you’ll all see it. Take off your Guild Wars 1 Nostalgia goggles, turn off your Troll Radar. Sit down, and have a good think.

TL;DR I’m trying to have a serious discussion, here. Come back when you feel like reading.