Guild Wars 2

Again, I ask you people complaining about this, have you never even seen Guild Wars 1? Did you not read a single developer interview pre-release? Did you miss all the manifestos? Did you not do any research at all?

This game is not about the “gear progression” you are looking for. I am sorry this bothers you, but there are plenty of other MMOs out there that will suit your needs just fine and you are more than welcome to go play them. If this game doesn’t suit your style, that’s absolutely fine, don’t play it. You have no ground to stand on if you want to come and complain and try and get it changed when the majority of us playing it researched it and, unlike you, knew what we were getting and are happy with what we got.

I am not saying that you are wrong to want what you want, but you are wrong to want it in this game when 15 minutes of reading pre-release would have told you exactly what it was going to be like. I am sorry, but I feel no sympathy for you and will stand my ground that your complaints for “powerful gear” are ridiculous.

Don’t any of you realize that Guild Wars 2 presents a long sought after style of game for the thousands and thousands of us that don’t enjoy the gear treadmill and aren’t foolish enough to think it represents any actual “progression” when in truth it represents nothing more than a slap in the face saying you can’t actually enjoy the game fully until you hit a certain gear level? Why can’t you all just go back to the games that ALREADY give you what you want and stop trying to corrupt this one?

Finally, to the individual who said people enjoy fighting overgeared people for a chance to win. When the difference is minimal that has some merit, however you knowkittenwell the difference is rarely minimal. Gear difference in certain other games was so huge the person in the better gear could practically go AFK and not lose. That is not fun for anyone, and if you are the geared playing claiming it is fun, well, that means you just don’t like and/or are scared of challenges.

Killidrix.7093:

Remember that time everyone was having a friendly discussion about gear/reward/treadmill PVP philosophy and then you had to come in ranting and raving like a lunatic and half of which you were crapping on about nobody even brought up in this thread?

No, but I do see the posts above where people are complaining about the lack of a gear treadmill, which is the entire point of my “ranting and raving like a lunatic” reply…

Do you recall that time you quoted me and ignored the first sentence of my reply? The one where I address it directly to those complaining about no gear treadmill?

To those saying the game will fail due to not granting gear that is significantly more powerful as a reward… GW1 is still around. Want to rethink that argument?

Second, why is it fair that those with more time to play should be able to facestomp those with less time to play? More time =/= more skill. The best PVPer in the world might only have 5 hours a week to play and in that time they simply can’t “progress” their gear so they get facerolled by people that are far less capable but are better geared because they can play 5+ hours a day. In a competitive PvP system rewarding people with uber gear that makes them near impossible to beat by those in lesser gear is absolute crap and always has been.

Third, did NONE of you that complain about this concept follow the development of this game, or pay any attention to GW1? ANet said it would be this way from the beginning so if you came here expecting a typical MMO gear progression system, that is YOUR fault and the devs should not change the game to appease you since it is targeted at those of who are fine with cosmetic rewards and titles and like to PvP against people on an level playing field.

Finally, yes, “fun” is more than enough reason to play a game and those of you begging for a gear treadmill of ever increasing stats are truly the minority. As I mentioned above, this game was not targeted toward you, ever, so get over it. Also, if you don’t believe it is possible to have a game where people do PvP for fun, just look at DAoC and what happened AFTER they released the Trials of Atlantis expansion. In vanilla and the first expansion all you needed was the time to get to 50 and some time to farm gold so you could get the best possible gear CRAFTED for you, and then you had no more gear progression left to do and all that was left was PvP. When they released ToA that brought in mandatory PvE and gear progression to compete in PvP, people left the game in droves… so badly, in fact, that they later released servers with no ToA content to try and win people back.

This has nothing to do with being a “fanboy” either and has everything to do with actually following the development of the game and coming to play it specifically BECAUSE it has no gear treadmill and competitive PvP is all done on a level playing field with no gear advantage.

EDIT:

Also, since we are talking about a competitive style PvP system, I seem to recall playing Quake 3 for ridiculous amounts of time everyday when I was a teenager. I got not a single thing for it, ever. No new guns, no new abilities, no “I win” button. All I got was better at aiming, better at finding the best routes around the maps, knowing where the items were, and how to just outplay other people. It was competitive and it was fun, and that was enough for me then. Guess what, it’s still enough for me now in sPvP in GW2 since it is a meta-game within the game, so to speak.

The common answer to “how to dps with a mesmer?” is usually to go Sw&P/GS, however I found a different setup that works really well in Scep & P/SwSw. At level 33 I am 10 into Domination, 7 into Duelist and 5 into Illusions. The only major trait I have right now is Empowered Illusions from the Domination line. Regarding stats, you are going to stack power and crit since it is a condition-lite build.

I mow through single targets at my level almost as fast as more DPS heavy classes such as thieves and even warriors. Groups take a little more finesse, but aren’t impossible by any means, especially since sword 1 and 2 do AoE damage. General “rotation” looks like this:

Start with Sce/P and load up iDuelist, followed by Sce #3, throw out P #5 if you want to keep them at range longer, but I usually save it for “omg” moments. If you have aggro, let them close and hit Sce #2, dodge and swap to sword and throw out iSwordsman and let loose with Sw #2 when they get close. If they aren’t dead, hit Sw #4 and they should drop, but if not, shatter the illusions/phantasms.

I kill almost all single target mobs with this rotation before the weapon swap cooldown is up. Regarding gear, I am in level 26+ greens, so that helps.

Not sure how it will carry over to later levels, but right now I have no trouble and find it easier to manage than any of the other builds I’ve tried.

Good luck!