Guild Wars 2

I disagree entirely.

If someone were to be trying to finish a JP or following a Taco killing things (keeping citizens alive), or even doing Rubble Runs. They are playing the Event AS INTENDED.

Rubble Runs are INTENDED. Doing JPs or getting WPS/POIs in Lion’s Arch, are INTENDED.

AFK’ing for the sole purpose of doing NOTHING, in a PvE zone, just to get free rewards is NOT INTENDED behavior. When Lion’s Arch was a city, it was intended people AFK for hours. Now that it is an instance that you get BOOTED OUT OF at the end of. It is not intended that you AFK in Lion’s Arch for hours on end.

The act of entering Lion’s Arch just to AFK and leech, is not intended game mechanics. (Just because you can do it, does not mean you should be doing it. Just because I can “loiter” in real life, doesn’t mean I can’t be told to “move along” or be fined for it.)

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

On the live servers, special Dev abilities (like immortality or teleportation) are limited to GMs, and all dev commands are logged and reviewed to make sure no one is abusing the system. The integrity of our live servers is very important to us.

It’s a shame Chris can’t use the immortality to help us kite a Wurm into the wall. Darn these morals! :P

But yeah, I’m very glad the GMs take the time to kick AFK leechers. I would go as far as calling them exploiters, since they’re abusing an in game mechanic that supposed to reward for rescue participation. Getting full credit for 1200+ rescue rewards while AFK is like buying Rare weapons for 10 Karma.

Over react much? AFK has been a part of every open meta, and never addressed until now, since it is perceived to be effecting Farmfest 2014. It has been an issue since launch and ignored. Some people are doing what they have done, with impunity, for more than a year. Now it’s an enforceable issue? Cuz bags?

Calm the rhetoric. I’d rather see 5 afks at the port in then deal with dumb zergs scaling every escort to champ level and ignoring civs.

Not sure you understand what’s going on here. When we do mass guild runs, each one of us is putting in efforts to help the server we guest to get the 1200+ loot drops. Even if there’s only 5 AFKers, each of those AFK players reap the benefits of our hard work. I’m completely fine with newbie players only doing what they can to help, since they’re actually doing something. But to let a character sit for 45 minutes and benefit for free, my opinion is that’s close to an exploit in the mechanics. But I’m sure it would be difficult for Anet to alter the way loot is rewarded without causing problems.

TTS back patting? Well, technically, every person that zones in to do a JP, explore the zone, do Achieve Events, hunt rubble is ALSO reaping the benefits of “your hard work” and not working on the civ counter. People mindlessly hitting 1 hugging a dorito are also “leaching” your civilian count.

You want GMs to also enforce those people to play “your way”?

It is not your call to “be completely fine” with what other players do. It is an open zone. If a new AFK policy needs to be in place, it should be in the TOS, effect all zones and all meta events, and be equally enforced throughout the game and not driven by players looking at one aspect of a zone full of different options and goals.

Im not in favor of unattended play, but this is all just “new event, different scapegoat”. Can’t blame bearbows, zerks, bads, etc so.. omg its all the AFK people’s fault!!

Blame. It’s what this “community” does.

Since we have this handy forum I might as well dump some of the things that I’m sure a lot of us were already thinking, which is that holy kitten, this game promotes the hell out of just stacking DPS and blowing through everything. This is fine in some areas but it also creates problems in others because:

The less you contribute, the easier it is:
- Make the aggro system more transparent: the more health/armor/healing you have, the more aggro you take. The more damage you deal, the less aggro you incur.
- Give mobs in general more low-damage, unavoidable attacks (swipes for 1k per, etc.) that prioritize

Explanation: Right now, zerker/assassin gear are pretty much the only viable gear sets because the game heavily favors just hitting everything as hard as you can and dodging any one-shots. Reducing the frequency of these attacks and replacing them with faster, smaller hits that can be tanked, but not easily avoided, means that defensive stats actually make a difference. The more straightforward aggro mechanics means that these attacks will primarily be directed at the tankier players. This will have the effect of forcing low-DPS players to pull their weight more and also incentivize players to balance their stats a bit more.

Put DR on damage received:
- Implement DR on the amount of damage a mob can take at any given time, so that DPS scales down the more of it you have.
- Significantly reduce mob health across the board.

Explanation: Taking ten minutes to kill a boss is lame but so is one-shotting it. There is a ridiculous damage disparity between organized groups and pugs. The former SHOULD be incentivized to have good DPS but not to the extent they do currently. Reducing boss health pools makes ordinary pugging less tedious and organized speedrunning less faceroll, resulting in a more balanced gameplay experience.

More emphasis on boons, CC, and conditions:
- Rework condition-stacking issues and overall condition power. Not going to go into this as I’m sure Anet has plenty of ideas stewing about this.
- Rework Defiant to be a property on certain moves (i.e. cannot be interrupted) rather than a constant buff. Normal attacks without Defiant property can be CC’d normally. This includes blind.
- Rework the effectiveness of certain boons. For example, regen and weakness could stack in intensity.
- Give mobs more reliance on boons and conditions that aren’t straight-up boonspam. Adjust mob health and damage output to compensate, i.e. give a boss the ability to put protection on itself but also reduce its total health by 33%.

Explanation: Most fairly self-explanatory. Encouraging build diversity by making it so that straight DPS isn’t always the best option for every single fight. The regen/weakness change would also be a good way to allow players to deal with higher levels of unavoidable damage by giving more ways to mitigate it short of going full tank.

Look, I usually find Vayne’s blind devotion to the game annoying, but on this point, you really can’t argue with him.
“Disappointing everyone” is a generalisation. You are stating that everybody playing the game is disappointed by it.
You really cannot prove this, and you cannot speak for others.

Prysin, you’re fighting a losing battle mate. Every class excels in different areas. For a ranger that is roaming and small scale. Rangers don’t show their true potential in zergs and even the best they bring to the table can be beaten by another class in a zerg. A lot of your arguments are based on things the pet does, which don’t lie, dies on the first push.

You have to play a class to it’s strengths and zerging isn’t rangers. That’s not to say they can’t be of use TO a zerg. On my ranger I usually try and harass their backline, focus eles, necros etc, and with considerable effectiveness. I’m not right in the middle of the action so my pet doesn’t die straight away meaning i’m not horribly kitten.

Spirits are bad for zergs. Sure the buffs are nice, but that’s only if the spirits live long enough to provide them. Spirits need to be within range of the team meaning you are going to have to run pretty close to everybody, which will be in aoe damage. Spirits can also take stability from a guardian shout, or any other boons from shouts counting as one of the 5 the shout affects. Now a spirit that stole stability from a party member or fury from you is a spirit that is more nuisance than help.

Yes, rangers can immobolize, and that is very usefull given that it stacks now. However to try and fully spec immob you are losing out on alot of other usefull things meaning literally ALL you will do is immobilize.

In summary, Ranger have their strengths and weaknesses, like every class. Rangers excel at roaming and small scale, not zerging and large scale. A thief is the same, they preform much better roaming than in zergs, but thieves aren’t bad as a result. Guardians aren’t the best roamers, but the shine in zergs, guardians aren’t bad at all.

Don’t judge a class by it’s weakness while ignoring it’s strength.

The current state of acquiring ascended weapons/armor limited to crafting only, is severely contrary to the core foundation this game was built on… or better put, its simply boring and linear.

Before ascended we all had a goal of doing dungeons to acquire tokens to in turn buy our exotics. This goal was obtainable to the psyche of the typical gamer because one could see the goal on the horizon. To acquire ascended gear on the other hand that very horizon view of gear (carrot on a stick) is fundamentally gone completely. Sure people have gone broke getting ascended weps, but at the cost of what? the cost was no fun and very grindy experiences. Is this the goal of the end game content and gear? This is not what makes me hungry to play more of the game.

I have just one request. At least make it fun to acquire these ascended pieces. I would gladly pay 50+ pristine relics or 8k wvw badges to get 1 piece of ascended.
Making all facets of your game able to acquire ascended only makes the game better and brings in more diverse players. No one wants to stand for hours at a crafting table to get their endgame gear.

Hey everyone, I had a good opportunity this week because of how often we are outnumbered to make a video on showing how we can cycle skills and cooldowns to survive getting focused down in small group fights. I did not intend this to be a step by step on how to not die, but rather to show how I personally cycle my cooldowns to stay up as long as possible, and avoid the DS lockout.

Ever since the introduction of the class icon on player portraits, necro has become a favorite target for any organized group.

Excecpt for a few parts, I am running a very offensive 30 30 0 0 10 build. I wanted to show even without any real survival traits or skills, you can still take hits for a long time. I also wanted to show the importance of a proper group support structure to being effective in 5 man teams.

Thanks to the guild group with me for most of the fights, helping to see how effective boosting up a single necro can be.

Comments always welcome.

To your questions let me start off asking what starts all of these commander solutions to begin with. Do you log into WvW expecting to take keeps and camps while defending territory? Do you want your commander to defend your territory over taking enemy territory? Do you think having rank 400 will make a commander do these things or even see the value in it?

This adds a time gate that will take longer than 100g to complete. I’ll start over on the guild thing. Sure they can get their leader a tag. That leader just has to WvW constantly. Then, once he’s rank 400 he can get a tag. Until then that guild cannot lead anything more than themselves in WvW. It stifles their growth due to exposure. They’ll have to recruit PvE more than WvW until the pugs notice “hey theres this new guild [xxx] who’s really good”. If they get their commander a tag earlier they would be noticed faster. I sure don’t know what that guild’s leader has been doing to get rank 400 though. Was he just riding the karma train? did he flip camps all the time? Killing roamers?
There’s an interesting note. The most times I’ve seen the applied fortitude buff was on a roaming thief. Would that guy make a good commander?

While I’ll take back the idea of the guild not getting a tag I can’t take back the idea of the karma trainer. This is your ranger who hangs out in the back of the zerg. He’s built some rams, killed the NPCS. He runs some signet pet build he saw on youtube. He is the first to run away when guild [xxx] on the enemy server crashes the karma zerg and wipes them. This guy still gets rank 400. What will he do when he’s commander? Probably more karma training.

I think these ideas go about it the wrong way. Anet shouldn’t be choosing who we follow in WvW. It is up to personal choice to determine that. If Commander Bob wastes time attacking green’s keep while they flip our keep then make a choice whether you want to help him or not follow him. Same for Commander John who flips stonemist all the time. If you can’t remember the names of all the bad commanders then they’re not being bad enough to stick in your memory and you should let it go… that or get a tag and start commanding yourself. My point is that ANET can’t find the commander you want to follow. You’ll have to do that yourself. They can maybe give you a tool to do that with.

That said I apologize if my first post was a little harsh and knee jerk of a reaction. It was that 400 rank is a really big time gate for something that might not be the answer.

ArchonWing.9480:

So umm, if I go into wvw to finish my gathering daily, am I a terrible person for not “participating in the match in good faith” and should be prohibited from doing so?

Yep. According to people like Riondron or Sir Arthur.8905, you should be banned from every regular activity taking place in WvW apart from siegeing and defending castles. Even open-field battles are frowned upon by the new generation of WvW purists, because they at best have the same effect points wise as a GvG. Going by this new doctrine you are to avoid any fights (or like mentioned any other activities) that don’t take place in the context of capturing an objective.

… I would like to know if all of these people can attach a screenshot like this.

This game doesn’t have a lack of content. This game has a lack of people who know how to enjoy it without grinding, ascended items or carrots in a stick. Because if you, people, are only able to get fun grinding, I suggest you to apply for a job in a cardboard box factory instead of wasting your time playing. It something like gathering materials and you earn some real money at the same time.

So thanks to every dev who has made possible all the fun content. Specially Josh Foreman and his team, who has been able to add new enojoyable content despite isn’t farmable and his “only” reward is the fun. You are a genius, tyvm.

Some people just don’t understand how “high level” PvE is played in this game. It’s a total joke when executed well. Everyone runs full damage gear and builds and it just shreds everything because mobs don’t ever avoid damage. When everyone is coordinated and running full damage in a dungeon group, mobs die so fast that survivability barely matters. When you do need survivability, you just time dodges/evades/blocks properly (something most people still can’t do) or cheese the content.

However, in relatively difficult dungeons (ones you can’t do asleep like CoF path1), that method falls apart quickly if people don’t know how to avoid damage, don’t all run heavy damage builds, or don’t use CC well on trash. The longer it takes to kill things, the more survivability stats and traits matter, and the group as a whole shifts that way. Yes, it does make the dungeon longer, but for the average player, it also makes it less frustrating because they’re not constantly dying when they miss dodges or don’t cheese an encounter.

For WvW, it really depends on what you’re doing. Are you roaming by yourself or in a small group looking to gank, looking to do outnumbered fights, are part of a zerg, etc?

In a larger group when you’re front-lining, you want the survivability of AH and honor traits as well as the condition clear. Let the full DPS players in the back such as staff elementalist pump out the damage. But you don’t need full survivability stats since a properly coordinated zerg has lots of group healing and CC.

If you’re roaming looking to gank, you’re in a full damage setup and you pick only fights you know you can win and survive. This is somewhat difficult for guardian because the professions doesn’t have many ways to run from a fight.

In you’re looking for outnumbered fights, as a small or medium sized group, you need survivability and group support. You could go heavy damage, but guardians have few abilities to let them temporarily disengage in a longer fight (things like stealth).

Ascended gear is not as bad as people make it out to be. If you are following the crafting guides they are highly inflated. For multiple reasons. One being that the market is not quite stable yet. It went though a bit of a shock. Also It only feels extremely bad as you are already 80 and thought you were done.

Interesting tip: With WvW you can get the mats for ascended gear easier then PvE. Why? Because you don’t have to wait for timers and it is one per location. And you get it just by playing the game. PvEers have to go complete multiple dungeons in vastly diffrent locations or wait for world event timers.

WvW see Interesting tip.

The Eternal Grace.3157:

ThiBash.5634:

There’s a lot wrong with this game, but the birthday gifst aren’t among them.

Maybe to you…if you ask any proud GW1 fan, you’ll get a different view.

I am a proud, loyal, GW1 fan, having over 7000 hours invested, and my view isn’t really different. We were not even absolutely sure we would receive birthday gifts, or if we would be remunerated in some other way, or not at all. I suppose, when people’s expectations are not met, there is a feeling of disappointment. I expected nothing, and was pleasantly surprised at receiving 3 gifts (or more) per character. =)

Oh my God, there’s complaints about a free gift? As part of a package that says, “thanks for playing the game”? Wow. I don’t understand that mindset. I played GW1 and completed all 4 campaigns and always thought the birthday minis were icing on the cake. I’m not a collector so my opinion isn’t geared towards collecting every mini. But this is a free gift! What you paid for is the right to play the game, not for specific items of content. Keep it up and we’ll start getting nothing free – I sure wouldn’t continue to give stuff to someone who doesn’t appreciate it. Just wow.

It’s effin free, why you kittenin?

Yes, commander seals should be removed and replaced with commander qaggans! I don’t even remember seeing seals in the game… but whatever.

All zergs are evil? So we need to shut down temples and boss events too? They are big groups that move, a zerg, and that is bad?

My one and only real complaint are these farming zergs that shut the game down for others. So the peeps in CS are doing temples as they do every day, but a farming zerg comes along from outside of CS and breaks everyone’s toys and temple events stop. Thus why we can’t have nice things. But I’m not saying all farming zergs, just those that do that (because you know some peeps will read that in).

Why blame it all on commanders? You actually play this game? Zergs happen with or without a commander. But things like temple assaults or maybe some boss events really-really do need at least one commander. You sure you not just a 1337 zerg farmer trying to shut down regular events so more people will have nothing other to do than zerg farm with you?

BetterMixMaster.8153:

I got into an argument with other players over this and it got me wondering what the general opinion is of this.

Currently, if a Mesmer finishes a jump puzzle they can use their portal ability to bring up anyone they want to the end of the puzzle. This also gives the achievement and the items in the chest at the end.

I always believed in having at least one thing in a game being purely skill based and jump puzzles fit it pretty well. Not everyone likes them, a lot hate them but others like me LOVE them. I have done every JP in the game and have not needed a single Mesmer portal. At the same time while I put the time and effort into beating this really hard jp, people can get a free ride up if just one Mesmer does it for them giving the same reward for someone who did the entire puzzle by them self. To me this devalues the actual achievement of finishing a puzzle because a large handful of people got a friend to do it for them and didn’t personally spend the time doing it.

So is it fine that someone can carry their friends to the end of a jump puzzle they couldn’t do or should it be earned by yourself alone?

I’m actually torn on this one.

I understand how it seems that using a portal is actually “skipping content”. And that players are being carried. I am uneasy over that myself.

However, the jump puzzles themselves are such an abomination of issues regarding jump box sizes, race height, and server-client location disagreements, never mind lag that I can understand the desire to use existing in-game mechanics to compensate.

In the end, if ANet insists on having them in this game, then players can avail themselves of anything that will allow them to complete them.

I understand jump puzzles appeal to a large number of players.

I will never change my belief that platform play (best served by Nintendo hardware) has no place in a mainstream MMORPG that uses a server-client paradigm.

First Suggestion:

I think it would be very helpful if when we select an achievement, it displays what we accomplished in it and what we are still missing. Two examples:
1- Dungeons: We have to predict to know what we’ve accomplished and what we are still missing. It only states the number of paths we finished, but not which ones.
2- Invasion Maps: Now I’m at 11/13 and not sure which ones I’m still missing.
Works with any progressive achievements.

Second Suggestion:

Considering we worked so hard to acquire a Legendary weapon, and we only got a pitiful 5 AP, we should have something else that represents such an accomplishment. My suggestion would be to have a Legendary frame shown when our character is selected. Just like completing the world map gives a star next to our names, the Legendary should give us a Legendary frame. Like the picture in the attachment.

1) thos stupidly overpowerd @#$%s

2) the insanely broken %@#&s

3) those brainless pos #$#%s

4) those unkillable trash $%@$s

5) those incredibly lame @$%&s

6) thos facerollkeyboard @&$%s

7) that annoying as fuk $@%#

8) My class

This was by no means easy for me and downright infuriating at times, but I managed after repeated effort.

Screencap of my traits/skills.
http://www.imagebam.com/image/6bcbf9269801572

As for armor, everything was zerker with ruby orbs, outside of my amulet which was PTV. Superior SIgil of Energy on one or both of your weapon sets will help a great deal as well.

This build may not be optimal but it is viable. It’s also important to note that Fast Hands in the discipline trait line is glitched during the Liadri fight and it does more harm than good.

A few pointers that may help —

1.) If Liadri starts spinning next to you just bash her with your shield and she’ll come to an untimely hault.

2.) Focus on damaging her while kiting the minions into the white vortex. You don’t need to be in a safe zone a lot of the time because with this build you have a ton of endurance regeneration and a few get out of jail free cards. The shield in particular is amazing and is a good way to clear some of her minions off the map, as they will just walk into the shield and die. Unfortunately, endure pain isn’t so hot since it doesn’t do a kitten thing against her minions, but it does save you from her spinning attack and the black rain of death.

3.) Only use balanced stance if a vortex pulls you into a messy situation. And never use Signet of Stamina. That is to give you faster endurance regeneration and nothing more. I specced into strenght tree solely for restorative strength. So your heal will cure you of all of her condition damage. And the Lemongrass + doggedmarch helps as well.

4.) Only use your rifle to damage her. The sword is for maneuverability and the shield is to bash her when she spins plus block pretty much everything she can throw at you. Try to keep a distance from her, and only close in when you need to pick up a crystal to throw at her.

Well, this may mostly seem obvious, but I hope I heleped some of you. Sorry I don’t have a recording…

Thieves! Too much heal, too much condiremove, too much stealth, too much deeps and too much mobility.

Guardians! Too much heal, too much invul, too much deeps and too much teleports.

Mesmer! Too much heal, too much stealth, too much deeps, too much shatters and too much mobility.

Engis! Too much heal, too much stealth, too much deeps and too much mobility, too much CC, too much explosions, too much condistacking and too much blocks.

Necros! Too much heal, too much fear, too much deeps, too much condistacking, too much 9k critting, too much hp-pool.

Warriors! Too much heal, too much burst, too much deeps,too much hp-pool, too much armor, too much condiremove, toom much stuns and too much mobility.

Rangers! Too much heal, too much stealth, too much deeps, too much CC, too much pets, too much longbowsploitaion and too much mobility.

Buff Ele till it is fine. Thank you!

No heal, no stealth, no deeps, no mobility, no hp-pool, no blocking, no weaponswap, no burst, no condistacking.

Me so sad!

I’ve promised allot of people who keep up with my WvW builds that I would make a thread about my build and answer and questions people might have on it so here it is!

My build is based on a standard requirement for a Wellomancer build except I’ve based my entire build around the Cavalier’s ascended trinkets. This particular style puts out allot of damage with higher toughness to make up for the drop in vitality.

The concept is to maximize AoE damage whilst maintaining a high level of survivability as expected. With 50% critical chance the build benefits heavily from Vampiric, Vampiric Precision and Sigils of Blood to provide routine healing and the Melandru + Lemongrass combo to null out most of the condition damage.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBHhZakRLcvSTTjfPBIz46nnU494xMGeZA-jUCBoiCiEGBiIAMBqIaslRFRjVbDTFjIq2cORG0DrWKAmEGB-w

When tweaking the build I stick to the following set of rules:

• 2700 or more attack.
• 2700 or more armour.
• 50% critical chance.
• 50% or more critical damage.

With this being the minimum requirement for skills, traits and armours:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBHhZYkRvSTTjfPBIV46JFAMekihXG-jkwAEmAVGLiGbMAMB-w
(Choosing Bloodthirst if below 40% critical chance or Vampiric Precision if above).

Pros of the build:

• Deals heavy AoE damage regularly.
• Heals allot more health over time then a standard build.
• Can front-line Plague tank much longer then a standard build.
• Can solo supply camps.

Cons of the build:

• Extremely expensive to put together.
• Terrible at solo fighting.
• Riskier playing then a standard build for inexperienced players, a death could mean a 40-man enemy rally.

Happy to answer any and all questions on this build, any build or WvW in general.

SOOOOOO

for all we know Necromancer’s warhorn skill is basically about blowing a swarm of locusts out into the air using that horn.

Now, the amount of locusts generated by Warhorn #5 is huge. There is not enough space for so many locusts to live in the warhorn, so it would need to be

SOMEWHERE ELSE

from inside the mouth of the necromancer. Or some place deeper.
As deep as one’s imagination can go.

There, our necromancers have locusts that live inside their bodies.
Yuck.

On a 2nd thought, this is freaking genius.
Om nom nom.

:D

so, what has angered you today?

I would like to know, it might make me feel better

SO today, I buy my shopping, I let some guy go infront of me, because he had less to shopping.

He buys a scratch off card, money multiplier; I buy two of the same, I finish my shopping and head towards the exit, the guy rushes back into the shop.

HE HAD WON £2000 THAT TICKET WOULD HAVE BEEN MINE if I were a kitten like everyone else in my area..

What really kitten ed me off was the fact that he had a sports car worth atleast 60k and was wearing more gold than mr T with is trade name clothes…

Setun.4368:

Guardians are crazy strong in any pvp format, be it spvp or wvw. small group, large group, gvg, or zerg v zerg Guardians have a roll for each type of engagement. My personal playstyle preference is running meditations and being in the middle of the enemy pinning them in place with ring of warding + the immobilizes on hammer and scepter. Hell, you can even solo roam pretty easily as well. Just keep a staff in your backpack (if you don’t use it as your secondary weapon) and you can cross the maps easily. So yes, Guardians can wvw kitten well.

People won’t like hearing this, but I have to say it. The reason that guardians are so viable isn’t something inherit in the class. It’s the players, and the forums where those players congregate. Go look at some of the other forums. Their idea of math is “well this feels good”. Here we have good theory crafting discussions pretty much daily. It also isn’t a constant “QQ buff me nerf everyone else”. We all know the limitations we face, we are also all adult enough (mostly) to know QQing isn’t going to change anything. So for the most part we just figure ways around those limitations.

I tell people in game this plenty, the Guardian forums are the best. These players, and forums, are why guardians are in such a good spot. If the other professions had players/forums (necro is close) as helpful as the Guardian forums I don’t think they would be in such a “bad state” either.

edit: That isn’t to say we don’t have trolls sadly. Guardian is an awesome profession, and it can do lots of little things. Where it shines is that you have the choice to specialize. Do you want to go into support, straight damage, conditions, mitigation, avoidance etc. That’s why I say it’s the forums/players that make it great. They have all theorycrafted out builds for these that let you pick and choose. They also give you the information you need to make an accurate choice.

Constantly I see players saying the level of content isn’t good enough. Or that the rewards aren’t enough. In my opinion the game should be good enough that repeating content (for a reasonable period of time, at least) should be rewarding enough on a core level of simply enjoying the combat itself. The problem lies in that most skills/weapons are really pretty shallow and with most professions I feel everything falls onto watching yourself autoattack. Certainly, you use other skills when appropriate, but either the cooldown timers, general effects of the skills, or tuning of the skills keep the game from being more engaging than it potentially could be. Let me elaborate with an example weapon combo I have on my Necro.

Dagger/Warhorn

Dagger
-Autoattack outshines most everything. It’s a simple chain of damaging attacks that give life force. Not very interesting- this is the case with most autoattacks.
-Life Siphon does pitiful damage so you won’t use it when not in danger. When you are in danger it doesn’t heal enough to have much impact on anything.
-Dark Pact also does pitiful damage. Most single mobs aren’t threatening enough to even bother immobilizing. Most mobs you would like to immobilize are unshakeable/defiant champions. This skill is rarely used.

Warhorn
-Wail of Doom. This skill does no damage and has a sizable cast/aftercast time. In most situations you’re better off just autoattacking through. For example- WvW guards that heal. The opportunity cost of interrupting the heal vs. doing damage is so break even that you’re better off saving the daze in case a player comes around.
-Locust Swarm. This is an example of a well designed ability. The damage over the duration of the skill outweighs the opportunity cost of autoattacking and additionally it cripples nearby enemies. More skills should follow this model.

This is, admittedly one of the more lopsided combinations in the game. The point I’d like to make with it, however, is that the development team decidedly need to take the combat in one of two directions to keep the combat interesting.

1) More interesting skills. Any given skill needs to be more impactful to the flow of combat. A great example would be the guardian skill, Binding Blade. It has a powerful crowd control effect that manages to transcend the otherwise dull boon/condition system that holds other skills back from being more interesting.

2) Tone down autoattacks. In this method the balance between autoattack and the 2/3 skills on a given weapon would shift so players are actively using more skills, even if situational uses are not currently needed. Lets use the Warrior’s sword as an example. The damage/bleeding from auto would be reduced, however Savage Leap would do more damage and apply an AOE bleed upon landing. Final Thrust’s cooldown would be reduced and it would also apply a longer duration bleed. In this way it would be a skill worth using over autoattack- as an opener perhaps, but it would be a very useful skill against foes below 50% health.

Or a combination of the two above proposals. This game has a great deal of promise, but as a long time powergamer there is, in my eyes, a great deal of improvement to be made on the core combat of GW2. Knowledgeable players don’t just press buttons for no reason. In far too many cases skills sit idle on our bars because there is no reason to be using them. We stare at our character autoattack because that is the optimal action. Optimal and fun shouldn’t be mutually exclusive and I feel is a large detriment to the game.

I appreciate any comments/criticism. Thanks!