Guild Wars 2

I have no idea what the OP is talking, other than he probably played a diff game, or played ESO up to level 20 or so.

You can keybind any of your abilities, everyone does. You can import your keybind to mult chars.

ESO pvp is a not only a blast, but very well-done. Primariy reason – and something I don’t see much in this thread – is gameplay.

GW2 is pretty, and can be fun at times, but the gameplay imo doesn’t hold a candle to ESO’s. Combat in ESO feels much sturdier, more dynamic and responsive. It’s engaging, like you’re actually doing combat.

GW2’s gameplay is pretty but often feels disconnected, like watching nice animation in a viewer after a button push. Characters feel like they’re floating, and not sprinting after someone.

GW2’s gameplay has a lot of depth, if you take the time to learn it. Knowing how to dodge, block and interrupt is probably more important than swinging your sword – certainly in pvp.

Both games in the end are different, and fun. But if I could only enjoy one, it would be ESO hands down 9 out of 10 times.

my experience of the game has been that traits make a big difference. on my guard, for example, being able to activate that virtue after every kill makes a huge diff (only avail now at lvl 60 to my knowledge).

or generating a clone with a dodge.

etc.

sure, you’re not adding buttons, but you are changing your gameplay.

leveling for many new player will be fun even without a trait system. but the system is there already allowing players to have MORE FUN. it makes better sense for the leveling experience if it were available earlier rather than later.

leveling for many will still be fun even without the trait system

^Thanks for the good news. I hope they make the trait system available to levelers earlier rather than later.

traits come far too slowly now, compared to launch – adding significant tedium to the leveling process. returning to my 40 mesmer after a year was disappointing, and felt like i had lost 20 levels and was a new 20.

I rolled a new elementalist, and having to see how many levels i’d need to slog thru in order to get a fun and interesting trait build – led me to scrap that idea. this is not because my new elem would apparently have to go into the world to unlock new traits – but rather because trait tiers are now opened only at far later levels, limiting your build options severely while leveling.

This is really bass ackward. The leveling process should allow experimentation with traits, so that players can learn their options and for chrissakes HAVE FUN.

Wanted to return to GW2, and will probably continue to dabble – but this bad leveling experience cause me to download ESO and pay a sub to cure my MMO itch (it goes ftp on the 17th…yippee). I find leveling there more fun than GW2, and such a shame that the latter would actually regress in terms of leveling fun over the years.

The elementalist should be given the option of weapon swapping like the other classes to increase it’s effectiveness at diff ranges and diff situations.

Limiting the elementalist to a particular range is something the other professions – at least the 4 others that I’ve leveled to 30+ – do not contend with.

My Warrior carries a rifle to be effective at long range.

My Mesmer carries a weapon set for aoe and swaps to another to increase single target damage – again effective at any range.

My Guard carries a staff or scepter for effectiveness at range.

My Thief carries a shortbow for ranged combat.

Among these professions, only the elementalist is locked into melee range if he goes d/d for better damage (and the damage here is arguably not enough to justify the greater risk of melee combat).

Each weapon set for the elem locks them into a particular range of effectiveness. This limitation to gameplay I find to be unfun – and makes the profession sub-par compared to the other 4 I listed.

In addition I do not see this limitation as needed for balancing purposes. Nothing to my mind would overpower the elementalist given weapon swapping cooldowns and the inability to combo between diff weapon sets.

Weapon swapping would increase the fun and effectiveness of the elementalist, with negligible (if any) consequences to balancing. It’s something to consider.

I’ve leveled 5 professions to 30+ now: guard, warrior, mesmer, thief and lastly elementalist.

So I feel confident saying that for at least the first 30 levels, the weakest in PVE by a good margin was the elementalist.

I read through various forum posts here and at other sites and researched build options and the whole deal. I learned to dance through the diff attunements to get to the skills that actually do anything, but even so, the class is still sub-par by a pretty fair margin in PVE.

By sub-par I mean specifically that those other classes can take do more dmg with less risk, and therefore plow through PVE more efficiently.

Completely disagree with those who say crafting is fine, and crafting to your level is easy.

Even focusing on discoveries, you will not acquire enough rare mats to keep your crafting at level.

You have two choices in this game to keep crafting at level: either farm for the mats or purchase them on the trader.

Increase the drop rate of these things so that crafting is more fun and less onerous.

Couldn’t agree more. The drop rate for the required rare crafting components is too low.

I bit the bullet and bought the rare stuff I needed from the trader (not talking about the rares reqs for making sigils, but the “ordinary” rares needed to level the basic crafting skill.) I refuse to farm for mats, because there is no quicker way to kill a game for me.

Increase the the drop rate, or provide a butter merchant who will accept butter in trade for the things I need.