Guild Wars 2

I used to have a problem with melee, but then I starting thinking maturely. I can’t have the attitude “I’m entitled to play however I want and if I can’t play a certain way, then this game is imbalanced!” Man, I’m disappointed about my initial reaction. The whole point of the weapon switching system is to use and abuse it. Give yourself a ranged offhand weapon, learn it, master it. Then learn to use it with great synergy with your melee weapon. My Mesmer Greatsword and Sword/Sword combination is a beautiful example. Start off with Greatsword, and when they close in finish them off with sword/sword.

Take a moment to learn the animations and timings of enemies. My Guardian never had a problem fighting Undead Giants in Orr, and he melee’s 99.99% of the time!

As Picolo would say to Gohan in TFS Abridged; DOOOOOOODDDDGGEEE!!!!

EDIT; I’d also like to say there are traits that provide you with 1 second of vigor every time you crit. Get it and abuse it. 1 second can turn into 5 seconds with a lucky stroke of crits. This alone provides melee with amazingly large amounts of dodging capabilities.

Fantastic post! I’ll be favorite’ing this one and checking it daily to go through the list when I can’t figure out something to do.

+1 from me!

Snaylor.2760:

Just wait until you hit end-game.

It goes from a 9/10 to an 7/10 really quick.

Bwahaha, what? Disappointed there’s no raidng?

Jeez, it’s not like we didn’t know what there was/wasn’t in this game when we started playing.

Game went from a 9/10 to a 9.5/10 for me when I hit 80 on my Guardian. Orr is a blast. Crafting got excitingly powerful. New goals formed.

Malakree.5912:

Problem with the mesmer atm is it’s a sustained ramp profession that lacks some of the up front spike other classes can bring. A thief can burst a mob down in 2/3 seconds while that same 2/3 seconds we just preping the fight. Also we lack decent consistent aoe atm.

What drugs are you on? It takes me three seconds max to destroy a mob with no preparation. Throw greatsword while close so it bounces and gives me six stacks of might, watch clone get summoned and finally mind wrack for deathblow. If thats not enough, I just shove an ether blade up hiskitten People are making mesmer way too complex than it actually is.

I’ll second, er -looks at thread of all the signatures-, I mean two-hundred-twenty-second this. :p

Main hand pistol would be really cool. I also like the idea of being able to dual wield daggers and use them as throwing daggers. That would make for a unique ranged weapon as well.

In fact, why not just let every profession use every weapon in the game and such for the next expansion? Hmmmmm?

Okay, okay, that’s totally unreasonable. But a fanboi can dream, can’t he?

Ideas for mainhand pistol skills:

1.) Basic Autoattack:
Ether Shot; Shoot a bullet that inflicts moderate damage, bounces three times between mobs, and causes a random condition – crippling (1 s), invulnerability (2 s).

2.) Clone generator:
Bullet Blink; teleport to target location, dealing moderate aoe damage and create a clone at your previous location.

3.) Single target DPS:
Magic Roulette; Unload five shots on your target that inflict confusion every other shot (three stacks of confusion) and then teleport away from your target 600 distance.

Just some ideas.

I’ve returned to this thread to update my thoughts upon dungeons. I recently did Sorrow’s Embrace in Story Mode with a group of five friends over mumble (ventrilo). We did amazingly well, with no wipes the entire dungeon and a few deaths here and there. Our party consisted of; 2 Ele’s, 1 War, 1 Guard (me), and 1 Thief. With lots of coordination over voice speak, we were able to effectively work as a team. When one of us went into the downed state, we would let the others know. One Ele went water to cast healing geysers and rain while the other went full on offense. The warrior and I acted as melee damage, while I also took the role of meat shield, utilizing my mace and shield to mitigate most incoming damage, while also throwing out walls of reflection to cause ranged attackers to damage themselves, giving our team breathers. The thief did what he did best; stabby stabby in the back of enemies. We had no complaints about the difficulty except that the Kudu fight was overly long.

My general dungeon advice; never ever think you’re stuck in one mindset the entire dungeon. Change your utility skills as necessary to fit the encounter’s setting. And remember; you’re on a team, so speak up! Communication is key to survival. Also, don’t pug these things. Pugging will lead to bad experiences, unless you luck out and get really good players. Otherwise, save these dungeons for guildies/friends that are competent gamers.

Overall, I enjoy the lack of the “Holy Trinity”. It provides for a much more unpredictable, chaotic and stay-on-your-toes style of dungeon crawling. Kudos to ANet for thinking outside the box.

I’m with Elrim on this one. This game’s dungeons aren’t tuned well. I like a challenge that can be overcome with skill. But most dungeon fights aren’t skill based. They’re simply chaos with no “correct” way to do them, which bothers me. I like when there is a correct way to do something. It gives me something to strive for and it allows me to know precisely when I am and aren’t performing well. As it is currently, dungeons feel like a buggy alpha stage. Some bosses are interesting and some are boring as a box of nails. I hope ANet seriously rethinks their dungeon designs and manages to create challenging dungeons, not pure chaos-fests.

Edit: I forgot to add, dungeons need more appeal to them than just “cool looking apparel”. Give us rare crafting material perhaps, or even better; gems. At this rate, most people will hardly find any reason to play dungeons due to their lack of rewards and chaotic design.

If you aren’t having fun, don’t play it. Dungeons are meant to be hard, even in story mode. However, I will provide some tips for you guys;
-Go in with good players. These dungeons require good players because of their difficulty. If you go in with even one bad player, you might as well throw in the towel before you start.
-Build a well balanced build; don’t neglect your defense stats and remember to dodge the important things, not the small ones.
-Rez your downed allies, NOT your defeated ones! It takes too long to rez a defeated ally in the midst of combat. Not to mention its way to dangerous.

Expect to die until you come up with an organized and tactical plan. It’s hard and I don’t see that fact changing anytime soon.

It never hurts to start with Guardian. Easiest to learn profession, in my opinion.

But please don’t think that just because their easy to learn means they’re easy to master, because they’re not.

The Mesmer profession has always been a very intriguing one to me, but I hear horror stories all the time about how squishy they are or how little damage they do, so I normally steer clear when I get the urge to roll one. Are there any high level/experienced Mesmers out there willing to provide some feedback on how they feel about their profession and what they’re able to do? Also, are there any tricks/tips for beginning/advanced players that you’re willing to share?

Just wanted to know, thanks!

Well, I’m using mace/shield and hammer and going into vitality/toughness/precision, and this is my current results;

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WZcOKdaouE0

There is no “Tank”. No taunts are in the game. There is support, but not “Healers”, because most healing skills are on massive cooldowns. ANet effectively turned every character into a self-efficient character that, when grouped with other skilled players, can combine their debuffs, buffs, and damage to successfully complete content.

Just my two cents.

Sometimes I’ll use the skill and, even if I’m standing still or moving, the block affect won’t take place and enemies will continue to hit me, even though my character is clearly channeling the block. It gets rather confusing and can lead to death sometimes in the midst of chaos when it doesn’t work right. I’ve noticed it more oftenly not working against ranged characters than melee, but it’s failed against both before. I’d say every 20th use of the skill results in a fail for me. Has anyone else noticed this?