Guild Wars 2

Currently, this trait (Spite Grandmaster) provides added damage to low health enemies. Certainly not a bad trait allowing you to finish enemies easier, but it could do so much more. My thought would simply be for it to increase damage to enemies that are within a certain range. This could be accomplished in one of two ways, each with their own benefits.

1) A flat damage increase to enemies within a certain range. Say being within 400 range gives a 15% damage increase. Probably easy to implement, but it provides the same benefit to already melee ranged weapons as it does weapons you might not use in range. This is simple and elegant, but applies to all weapons equally, for better or worse.

2) An increase to the damage of skills based on their range. Maybe dagger skills get a 5% boost (because they’re already melee), axe a slightly larger one but Scepter and Staff get a much larger boost to the direct damage they do. I’m partial to this option as it opens the more conservative weapons up for more aggressive melee uses. Pick this trait up if you’re built tanky or just want to play aggressively, but pack some solid AE damage with the Staff, or do respectable single target direct damage while still stacking bleed/poison up.

Let me know your thoughts on this. The idea just came to me today, but I’d love something along these lines that made it applicable to run Dagger/X + Axe/X or use the Staff or Scepter for melee/power applications. More build versatility is always great, especially when one trait could provide it.

Avatar.1923:

as a guardian, if i want to stay alive when the S hit the fan,
i have to use my 5 weapon skills, swap weapon for 5 more, and my utilities and use my virtue (f1 and f3 especially) on time to block attacks.

seriously, what do people want? to play with their toes too?

This game is fine in the situation you described. GW2 is great when you’re an inch from death. The problem being the other 80% of the time when you’re doing just fine, in no danger at all, merrily staring at your character auto-attack for optimal damage. While it’s certainly a larger problem on Necro than other professions my optimal damage is:

Staff: Drop Chillblains and Mark of Blood while running to the enemy. Swap to Dagger. Drop Enfeebling Blood. Autoattack.

Seriously, that’s all I have to do for top damage. Everything else is utilitarian or defensive. Even if they were damage gains over auto-attack the cooldowns are simply too long to be interesting. I realize this game isn’t about damage meters, etc. but it can’t just be about survival either because you aren’t always needing a means to survive. The game becomes stale when doing generic content and you can’t spend every moment doing dungeons or PvP. They need to better balance the focus between offense and defense to make the game at least moderately involved even in the tamest of circumstances.

I understand and agree with the point being made here- but the steal skills are pretty much all rather strong because what you get is random. It’s more about putting randomly chosen skills to proper use than it is the power of said skills. Just sayin as a Necro main Thief alt =D

Dwarf. I play a Dwarf in everything else but they’re all dead here…
I don’t like Asura.

I personally prefer ranged condition stacking and like how you can go between SB and P/D depending on your needs. That being said if the weapon roles were to be consolidated a bit I wouldn’t mind seeing something like below…

1) Trick Shot gets bleeding from Vital Shot, but just on the first target. Balance damage/attack speed as necessary.
2) Cluster Bomb moved to a burn effect. For being a relatively tough skill to use it should be more rewarding with a burn.
3) If Sword/Dagger were made more viably tanky (I’m looking at you Flanking Strike) that would make for a decent second set to duck into in bad situations, leaving SB as your primary ranged condition weapon.

I agree with most of what is being said here. DS can be strong if traited for (which I am) but I still find it dull, lacking in versatility and seems like minimal effort was put into its design. It’s still a great concept. The idea of building up LF to go into an overdrive mode of sorts with unique skills is a great one. The implementation past the design board falls flat on its face, however.

I like the idea of your DS skills being based on your weapons. It allows for more depth to be build into the system. This route would probably take a while to implement/test, still a great option though!
or…

The other idea I’ve seen thrown around is doing away with the form itself altogether and just having F1-F4 act as unique skills that each consume a portion of LF. No cooldown on these skills, strictly regulate them through LF costs.

-F1: Life Blast: Damage your enemy. Does more damage the closer you are to the enemy and extends the duration of your bleeds and poisons by 2s. 10 Life Force.
-F2: Doom: Fears your target for 1s and chills all nearby enemies for 5s. 20 Life Force.
-F3: Life Transfer: Damages and bleeds nearby enemies while granting might and healing to allies. 50 Life Force.
-F4: Death Shroud: Gain stability for 5s and a damage shield equal to (X% of HP * armor) type of deal. 50 Life Force.

Offense, control, support, defense. We lose Dark Path’s teleport, but I’ve always been a fan of baking this into Dark Pact in some fashion anyway. The teleport was marginally useful to non melee specs anyway.

If anything MH dagger dmg needs to go down, at least in relation to most other skills. I get so frustrated because doing damage as Necro is so boring. Drop Enfeebling Blood. Proceed to stand there and autoattack. I wish I could weave between other skills for DPS gains like other professions, but instead I get snooze mode damage dealing.

I can name on one hand the things I don’t like about GW2 (traits/weapon skills/etc and general combat flow being my primary gripe) but could name many times more great features I do like. Great job overall.

Added customization with existing weapons similar to the OLD trait system Anet was leaning towards. I’d like to see a single trait slot for each weapon (two for 2 handers) where we can somewhat customize skills.

For example, On my thief I’m focusing on condition damage. I’d love to use my mh pistol trait slot to make Body Shot change to “Burning Shot” so instead of vulnerability I get burning.

^

I think the point being that this game isn’t turning out to be something you feel like you’re investing in. It feels like yet another time waster like most games. MMOs, and only some of them at that, have a unique quality of pulling you in so you feel like you are investing in them. GW2 doesn’t do this, despite hitting the nail on the head on just about everything else. I don’t feel anything pulling me to play the game. No connection to my character. In past MMOs before they were changed for the worse (WoW) or the population died off (insert one of many good MMOs that slowly died off) I would flip my kitten if my character somehow got deleted. I’d be annoyed if this happened in GW2 but I’d just walk away from the game and probably not come back.

There’s just no good MMOs in the market right now. GW2 had (and still has) the promise of filling this hole, but currently the aforementioned sense of attachment from one’s character just isn’t there. If this game, or any game, could meet this need I’m sure a sizable portion would pay well for the game upfront as well as a subscription if necessary. We’re here ready to throw our money at the right game, but it just hasn’t arrived.

Corian.4068:

Schurge.5194:

I think that these players who continue to say that “Guild Wars 2” is about fun are missing the fact that people don’t repeat dungeons for fun. For most people leveling is not fun after the first go ’round.

This is exactly the kind of thing I meant. If you aren’t having fun with the gameplay, why in the world are you playing to begin with? I’m not saying quit, but have you seriously evaluated why you’re spending time on something you consider to be “not fun after the first go’round”?

Because persistent gameplay is what we expect from an MMO. If we want a “play it once and drop it” type of game we’d be playing a single player title, probably outside of the RPG genre. With MMOs the expectation and desire is to have something with some personal investment and attachment over a very extended period of time. That isn’t to say it has to be based on the +1 stat progression grind, but GW2 fails in this regard in that most of us aren’t getting the sort of attachment or sense of personal investment in their character.

Edit: At this point I feel they have one of two routes, where faltering in between either won’t work.

1) Go the traditional gear grind route.

2) Move more in the direction of a high intensity, high difficulty action game. Despite what many players say about GW2 combat I really don’t find it all that complex. Combat lacks a certain nuance that even MOBAs have, the lack of build customization that GW1 had, and the sheer number of abilities (even factoring out the useless ones) that traditional MMOs have, the twitch reflexes that shooters have, etc. It’s trying to combine too many aspects of different genres without going far enough in any of them to achieve enough depth to make combat truly engaging.

While I don’t agree with all the fine details of the OPs post I do like the idea of expanding life force into a resource to be used for a variety of purposes. Having something to use LF on be it tankiness, damage, conditions, minions, control, etc. would be very much welcome. This way Anet would quite having to make DS be everything for everyone, because I just don’t think it can be.

Rare mobs with higher drops too. Nothing was more awesome than finding a rare spawn in WoW- they might not have dropped amazing gear, but 2-3 green quality items was normal. Still, it’s a feeling of discovery “AMG LOOT PINATA” even if the loot isn’t amazing.

knightblaster.8027:

I think that vet/champ rewards could use a reworking. Random chests are actually around in the world (as seen on the map here — click only if you don’t mind a spoiler for their locations: http://gw2cartographers.com/).

Those aren’t random. They’re pre-determined and reset every day. If they’re random there couldn’t be a map with their locations =D Just saying I’d like to see truly random chest spawns that you have to explore to find.

ravinhood.3981:

If you have one level 80 or more in the amount of time GW2 has been out then you are addicted and have a problem. You’re playing waaaaaay too much when you should/could be doing other things like exercising and socializing and procreating. You should be bowling, playing golf, intramural sports, bbqing in the backyard. You should be doing a plethora of things not just playing a silly game.

As I posted in another thread. Some of us work the night shift. Our leisure time is when everyone else is asleep or at work. Don’t act like everyone is giving up social activities to play a computer game when that simply may not be an option.

I just wanted to comment on the “you need to get a job” comments. I have a full time job. I work as a broker on our night shift team. I work 9 hours a day and have an hour drive in each direction. I stay pretty busy, but did take a week of vacation when GW2 came out. Since I get home at 1am there’s nothing outside or social to do because everyone is asleep, so I play GW2 when I get home.

While I’m not quite at the saturation point that many are, I’m starting to feel the lack of drive to do anything in game. Everything feels samey and the rewards are off. And I’m not even talking raids or gear progression- little things like no random chests in the world to rewards exploration, no suitable reward for killing challenging champions/veterans rather than menial enemies, doing an epic event over 15 minutes only to be rewarded with the same thing I would get from a 3 minute event. Things need to be further incentived- maybe not in a hardcore way, but MMOs are about reward.

If the combat itself was more involved I think one could play it more like an FPS or action game and not have to shoot for rewards. Me and my hardcore ex-WoW friends aren’t missing the gear progression so much as the more complex and semi-rotational skills. The problem being that autoattack does so much damage and most other skills are just defensive- there’s not much going on with your skills compared to other, less skill intensive games. This makes GW2 great fun when you’re an inch from death, always dodging and timing your skills perfectly- but you aren’t always about to die. If they could tweak weapon damage away from autoattack, lower some cooldowns, and make all traits more potent and gameplay changing we would be able to have more fun with the actual combat itself and make the act of doing damage interesting. Build more on the action RPG roots that the game is clearly erring towards.

Since beta I’ve been wanting to play a condition focused Shortbow + Pistol/Dagger thief for my main alt. My problems are our class mechanic feels ineffectual as a ranged thief (enough threads on this already so I won’t go into it any further) but my other concern keeping me from playing it is skills requiring a melee hit first before you can get the other “half” of the skill.

Cloak and Dagger is my primary concern here. I’d gladly pay the initiative cost just for the cloak even if the damage/vulnerability don’t go off. Separate the two and don’t make cloak working dependent on the dagger hitting. It would be amazing to pop cloak at range, either to drop ranged aggro or offensively for a sneak attack for several bleed stacks. The same could be said for Shadow Strike. Being able to use the teleport but forego the damage it provides would be a great option to have.

Thoughts?

I would like to see Master of Terror renamed and be more of an overall crowd control buffing skill.

Master of Torment: Increases duration of Fear, Chill, Immobilize, Cripple by 30%.

I agree… I don’t find myself wanting to rush home to play like I have past MMOs. Even though I’m still just in level 80 greens I just don’t feel like there is anything meaningful to be doing or anything urging me along to progress, even within the confines of things I haven’t achieved.

The game inspires a sort of laid back lackadaisical attitude in me, and that’s not why I play MMOs. The drive just isn’t there for me and I’m not blaming the lack of loot progression- it’s something else about the game I can’t quite put a finger on.

This is a totally, completely selfish idea to suit my playstyle, but I’d like to see a trait that increased the duration of non-damaging conditions or maybe even just control conditions. Currently the only methods to increase all of these are…

Condition Duration Runes- Minimal effectiveness as I’m sure it’s watered down to account for bleed/poison/burning.
Investing deeply in Spite, which is otherwise counter intuitive for a tanky/control build.

It would be cool to have a trait in Death or Soul Reaping just to bump up the durations of Fear/Chill/Immobilize/Cripple. Probably not a bad idea even to just rework Master of Terror to provide a ~25% boost to these specific conditions, slap a new name on it and you’d have a trait I’d invest in. Especially considering Master of Terror is just not Worth it just for 50% on fear.

Thoughts or glaring holes in my logic before I shoot it to the suggestion forum?

nerva.7940:

as i outlined Draehl, if we had dps meters, we would need to use all of our abilities and combo fields to maximize our efficiency, thus making the rotation incredibly organic, spontaneous and more complex.

imagine WoW without dps meters. no dps chain priority because we could all just mash 1,1,1,1 and nobody would know =) in GW2, you could try doing that but the game just doesnt let you. if GW2 had dps meters, your rotation would be huge. i pretend there is, so my hands and mind are always busy

Again maybe with another profession. Perhaps it is just the Necro. Apparently people aren’t having this problem with Elementalist in particular.

Riles.4568:

“The problem with this being that you’re not always in a constant state of near death.”

You should play a necro then. This happens to me if I have to deal with more than one enemy at my level.

I don’t know what type of Necro you’re playing, but I’m running power/toughness/vit with 10/0/0/30/30 and Spectral/Well utilities and I’m rather hearty.

nerva.7940:

there is no “dps priority” in GW2 simply because youre too busy trying to survive (dodge, reposition, buff, cleanse conditions, smash a combo field). hitting little pictures on the bottom of your screen in a specific order is something i never wish to do in my MMO. this is why i never raided in WoW. it was…really silly to me.

Nerva, you are correct in what you post. The whole point that we’re trying to convey here is for situations where you are not busy trying to survive. The game shouldn’t be boring in these situations but it is. We’re not trying to take the focus away from needing to survive dangerous situations. We’re trying to make the game more interesting when you’re safe.

bump for further discussion.

I can’t help but agree. See my thread for a similar take on why combat needs some work.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Autoattack-Isn-t-Fun-or-I-Miss-DPS-Priority-System

Undertow.2389:

I agree that when there are a large number of players doing an event they get pretty boring in general due to not really needing to use defensive or supportive abilities that much. Players aoe/cleave mobs down too easily, and the mobs don’t know how to aoe back. Perhaps this will fix itself somewhat over time just due to lower concurrent players in the world as the game gets older.

There is a significant difference among the classes still. Try playing an elementalist, engineer, or mesmer if you want a bit more activity just doing offense. I just deleted my warrior because he was so boring and shallow to play, but have lots of fun with the more complex classes.

The answer though, is NOT to homogenize the complexity/difficulty of the pure offense toolkit of the classes like WoW did. WoW moved in that direction too far, it’s surprising how much you could apply a generalized “how to play” to all the dps specs:

This is your dot, keep it up as often as possible.
This is your harder hitting ability/spell, use it on cooldown.
This is your random proc ability/spell, use it as soon as it lights up.
This is your filler, spam it when none of the above are applicable.
This is your 1.5-3 min dps booster cooldown.

I played that game for 6.5 years, I don’t want to play it here too.

The answer is to always make sure the defensive, survivability, and control matter. I think for the big zerg DEs they need to start spawning more veteran/champion mobs, not just increase the number of normal aoe/cleave fodder that comes running at you.

The best dissenting opinion so far. And more likely what is to actually occur (in your last paragraph) I still think Necro at the very least needs more damage transferred off the autoattack, but from most responses this seems pretty much a Necro problem if you all aren’t running out of things to do for damage with the other profs.

Fate.8034:

I think OP is just above the learning curve and is yet to actively engage challenging mobs on a regular basis. The difficulty does increase a lot especially if you’re not a heavy armour class.

Unless he’s max level already. Then he’s probably on a warrior.

Max level Necro. And contrary to making a thread about optimal damage I actually play a very defensive spec in dungeons focused solely on fearing, chilling, immobilizing, healing allies. Etc. Damage is of no concern in dungeons. But one also solos and runs events. The game should still be compelling when you’re not having to fight for dear life or CC mobs off allies.

jonG.8369:

I agree somewhat with the OP but at the same time I think MMOs that required having an overly abundant supply of abilities and cooldown to manage meant that I spent more time watching my toolbar than anything else. Me, personally, that takes away from the overal thrill and enjoyment that comes from engaging in combat.

The theory crafting behind setting up solid rotations using your abilities, utilities, elites and sigils and weapon swaps does exist in this game. It’s just that we don’t have 30 other useless or very situational abilities getting in the way.

Agreed. And I wouldn’t even touch on suggesting adding more skill slots because it’s perfect on this front. The cooldown and damage of the 2-5 (and to a lesser extent 7-9) slots could use some adjusting. Obviously while bringing down the damage of autoattack.

It should be a consideration whether or not to use a 2-5 skill for the damage it provides OR for the defensive/utility it provides. This I feel will add a whole other level of skill. “Do I save this blind for the boss to avoid that hit OR use it for a modest damage increase?” In the direst of circumstances you’ll save it for the blind. When soloing mobs you’ll use it for damage. It’s the fringe cases where it becomes much more interesting =D

Rizzy, I think you misunderstand my meaning. I don’t have a problem with autoattack. I have a problem with autoattack outshining the other skills. When I’m fighting something that isn’t a threat to kill me combat is boring because most skills are so defensively focused.

You bring up GW1 but I would say you could make very interesting builds there. I played a Blood Necromancer with Dark Pact, Vampiric Gaze, Offering of Blood, Shadow Strike, Unholy Feast, etc. The cooldowns on these skills were rather low and the ebb and flow of sacrificing and expending health was interesting. You were nearly constantly activating one skills or another. This simply is not the case in GW2. And yes a certain credence should be given to avoiding damage, but you aren’t always being attacked, endurance runs out, and not all enemies are going to kill you if you don’t dodge. There’s a gap of interactiveness here that bores me more than a lack of “endgame” content ever could.

I’ll take either casual or hardcore content and run with it.
Grind? I’ll take it or leave it.
Gear progression/power creep? I see merits for and against either loot system.
Massive gold sinks? Doesn’t bother me one way or the other.

These among a few others are the pressing issues of the forum yet I see very little, if any, commentary on a core facet of the combat system of GW2. *Combat being interesting is wholly dependent upon trying not to die.* The combat in GW2 is deep and engaging when you are involved in a situation where you’re an inch from death. Between dodging, defensive skills, managing conditions on you, etc. it’s a LOT of fun. The problem with this being that you’re not always in a constant state of near death. In many scenarios you’re fighting a single non-threatening enemy. Or wailing on something that is currently attacking another player. Doing damage in most cases simply boils down to popping a long cd utility skill, maybe (if you’re lucky) using a weapon skill or two for some damage. The vast majority of time, however, autoattack is doing a huge portion of your damage and combat is non-engaging.

Now, I hate to bring WoW up, but it’s a relevant example so I’ll take the plunge. I primarily played an Affliction Warlock and Fury Warrior. The priority systems with these classes were supremely executed. With Fury you rarely were not using a rage dump. Even when soloing a lowly non-threatening enemy the rotation was interesting and fun cycling between the various damage skills. Affliction wasn’t quite so engaging against a single foe, but when you pulled 2-3 enemies it became rather fun to manage your various DoTs between the targets, making sure you were doing optimal damage to each target.

These opportunities for interesting damage/skill priorities simply doesn’t exist in GW2 (again, a game that I find superb in nearly every other way) Don’t get me wrong- something that complex simply wouldn’t work in GW2 because of the emphasis on defense and dodging. Could there not be some sort of middle ground between a game obsessed with maximizing DPS (lol dmg meters) with complex damage rotations and the other extreme where most skills are situational and you spend most of your time staring at your character autoattack? I may be hyper sensitive to this as I play a Dagger/Staff Necromancer, but the issue seems relevant across the whole of the game. Even Warriors (at the other end of the spectrum) are only mildly interesting in non-threatening scenarios.

TLDR:* Combat is interesting and fun when you’re worried about dying. Combat is dull and non-interactive the other 70% of the time. There is too much dead space between skill activations because a skill is either saved for a particular defensive purpose, it does less damage than autoattack, or if it’s a higher damage output than autoattack you’ve already used it and it’s on cooldown. I would very much like to see a balancing of defensive and offensive combat focus in this game. Combat should still be engaging in non life-or-death combat situations. I would point to increasing the damage output of the 2-5 skills (while lowering autoattack) and/or lowering cooldowns of the the 2-5 and 7-9 slots. I leave the specifics beyond that to discuss here.

Thanks for reading.

Valkyrie.2678:

You can still have a build of your own, thanks to slot skills and trait system. Now tell me you didn’t search for GW2 builds on the net.

In addition, runes and sigils are creating differences between builds a lot. While there are features like traits, slot skills, sigils and runes, if you’re complaining about lack of ability to make a build of your own, it is just your problem. (that you is not personally you, I’m talking in general)

I didn’t search for GW2 builds on the net. People who do this are missing the whole point of a customizable skill system. And I think you are overestimating the number of people who feel the need to do this. There is a definite creative element to coming up with a build that is fun and works well for you. Sure, there’s plenty of kids who have little interest in the gameplay mechanics and just want to win for a pathetic ego boost, but again I think you overestimate them as a proportion of the population.

I’d wager there are more completely clueless players with terrible builds than there are those who Googled builds to steal from other players.

Valkyrie.2678:

If there are any skill tree fans out there, let’s be realistic now. When there is a skill tree, you just go on google and type “best <class name> build”

The fun in skill trees is coming up with a build for yourself that is both effective AND mechanically interesting. The same can be said for skill trees as far as “google the best build.” The system doesn’t matter, there will always be players who are too lazy to come up with anything on their own. Whether it’s traits or skill trees it doesn’t matter.

See, that’s the thing. I don’t have a problem with the damage (it needs work but not the point of the OP) so much as the distribution of the damage. Our damage could stay the same but the damage different skills did could still be re-distributed to make doing damage more interesting.

No comments? Good or bad please!

Necro needs works but there’s a great deal to like about the profession.

-My skull face mask I’ve kept transmuted and on my character since level 1.
-Lifesteal is awesome thematically, even if currently if ineffective.
-Being a gray haired Norn Necro decked out in blood red and white makes me feel like some sort of sinister santa clause.
-Death Shroud is a creative and interesting mechanic, that does admittedly need work.
-It’s fun proving people wrong by doing well with an underplayed and undervalued profession.
-Addendum to the above, it’s great getting questions asking “where are your minions?” and explaining how the profession works.
-Spectral Grasp + WvW. Nuff said.
-Blind on Plague is one of the best “oh ****” buttons in the game.

Necromancer is a great deal of fun when you’re trying to hold on for dear life. However when you’re simply fighting a run of the mill enemy when there’s no worry of dying most skill are a damage loss compared to auto attack. I’m currently running a tank/lifesteal/power build (10/0/0/30/30) with D/D and Staff with Spectral utilities and Plague elite. I’ll swap Well of Suffering for Spectral Armor when soloing. Anyway, most skills are simply a damage loss compared to Dagger auto attack. It gets a little more interesting when fighting multiple enemies, but when fighting a single enemy it would be so much more interesting if the 2-5 skills provided more damage compared to autoattack. Mark of Blood/Chillblains/Enfeebling Blood are great if a mob will be up more than 5 seconds (many die quickly to Dagger #1) or aren’t already loaded up with bleed/poison as a boss mob might be.

Mark damage is too low. Dagger skills across the board need to do more damage compared to autoattack. Combat would be so much more engaging if I actually had to make the decision of “do I use Life Siphon/Dark Pact/Deathly Swarm” for a damage boost or do I save them for defensive purposes. They need not do massive damage, but something modestly better than the autoattack would keep things much more interesting and comparable to when I play my Warrior or Engineer.

Necro. Interesting and fun in dire situations. AFK autoattack on easy content.

I’ll keep it short.

More damage for being in melee isn’t cutting it when you’re always getting instagibbed, especially in PvP. Rather than continually increase the damage of melee weapons why not give “free” vitality and toughness based on the range of weapons? These stats would be in addition to and not count towards an item’s stat budget.

Long range weapons would get zero bonus stats.
Medium range weapons would get a modest boost like 100 toughness/vitality
Short range weapons would get a large boost like 300 toughness/vitality

Surely, damage for shorter ranges would need to stay in some form, but the larger adjustment IMO needs to come from survivability. This would help achieve that without having to tweak dozens of individual skills across multiple professions.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

Daggers don’t need a gap closer. We have DS for that.

Dark Path has it’s own issues. The projectile is too slow and the range too short. I’d take a longer cooldown on it if it was just a cast-time teleport.

Zinnabun.3560:

I completely agree with you. They better be listening or else! waves fist

I don’t know if I’d wave my fist, but I agree with the rest of your post. Here’s hoping they make changes soon.

I hardly played any games since quitting WoW back in 2010. I picked up GW2 and took a week off from work to play with old friends who are no longer geographically close. I wasn’t part of the initial batch to hit 80, it took two weeks. I can say, however that I’m already getting somewhat bored. But it’s not so much a lack of content (there’s plenty of achievements/exploration/aesthetic rewards to go for/etc) so much as the quality of the content.

1) Dynamic events I feel were hyped up a bit. Their quality in many lower level zones is better than in the higher level ones. What we experienced in beta was a better taste than we’re getting at level 80. So many events are just swarms and swarms of weak mobs you AoE down, or one big boss everyone piles on. We need more events that spread players out, with more veterans and less normal strength mobs.
2) Combat gets pretty stale after mastering the basics of your profession. That may be more the case for Necro, but so much damage comes from autoattack I rarely need to use other skills because they’re all so situational and do less damage than auto.
3) Most traits are so terrible it leaves little room for build experimentation. There are clearly best choices, occasionally useful choices depending on the content you’re doing, and then the other 50% that are simply bad.
4) WvW, which was my main interest, has come down to being a huge zerg fest. I was hoping it would be more about small group content and that there would be more smaller PvEvP objectives. They tried with the Centaur/Skritt/etc but they’re just events for karma/coin. I would have hoped they would have more actual impact on the WvW battle.

Having nothing to do I feel stems less from having completed everything (there’s no way anyone could have completed everything available to them) so much as not enough entertaining or meaningful content to do.

I made a Necro more for the blood mage vibe. While health sacrifice is gone I’m enjoying the lifesteal (as weak as it is) tanky build and stacking a bunch of (non damaging) conditions like chill, weakness, immobilize, etc. More like a Death Knight of sorts, but I like the overall style aside from some balance/design issues.

I’ll keep it brief. The lack of needing to grind for gear to stay competitive is very much welcome. I was somewhat hardcore back in college with WoW being able to obtain the best gear, but don’t have that level of time to commit any longer. This is great on so many levels I’m glad we don’t have to do this. At the same time after reaching max level I’m somewhat at a loss of what to do. The natural thing to do is go run dungeons to improve my gear, but the stat gains are minimal and the best looking armor I already have (norn cultural cloth tier 1 is awesome) Orr just isn’t interesting due to the zergyness, dungeons are just chaotic and lack structure and you can only get rolled by a zerg in WvW so many times before becoming frustrated. The poor quality of most traits discourages experimenting with builds.

I hope things will improve in the near future. GW2 has a very very good core setup here, but I guess I just had higher expectations for the epic scope of the events/dungeons and had thought the combat would be somewhat deeper/complex than it is.

Still, worth every bit the $60 I paid for it so I can’t complain too much. Kudos to Anet but I hope refinements come sooner rather than later =D

Necro has major issues but I keep playing anyway. Dark caster has always been my style and that won’t change just because of some issues.

After that I’d say Mesmer & Engineer to round out the three worst.

Dagger and Axe definitely need more differentiation. IMO Axe should be all about the single target damage and Dagger more of a defensive/control weapon. As it is axe is totally outclasses and while Dagger does nice damage I would trade 10-20% of it for a bit more control/defense/mobility.

I can’t agree more. Surely, from a PvP perspective, but also in PvE it’s rather boring to have optimal damage simply be autoattack. When facing a non-challening encounter I hardly use my weapon skills because auto attack is simply better. I hope more damage is shifted to the 2-5 slots. Not so much that they’re specifically being used for damage rather than their “intended” uses, but enough to tone down the auto.

Olkyr.4821:

I agree with most, but I’m confused about GTAOE. Do you have the option enabled to instantly cast at your mouse, or do you hit the button, target, then cast? I’ve done all my PvP mouse-turning with necro with GTAOE marks and wells and engineer throwing elixirs and I have never had an issue, and I play without the insta-cast-at-mouse feature.

It is very clunky, to be fair. If you’re holding RMB to turn your mouse pointer disappears. Mouse movement is the most efficient way to move and having to use the same input to aim GTAOE spells doesn’t work well.

There is a mod out there that makes RMB always held down, adds a crosshair, and makes your GTAOE spells aim at the crosshair. This solves the issues and apparently, Anet says it’s legit to use because it just alters your inputs and adds an overlay to the game screen, but I’m still wary to use it. Something like this should be part of the game by default.

While it’s not a huge deal, Malchor’s Leap feels from both an aesthetic and event perspective as the endgame zone, yet Cursed Shore is actually the level 80 area. Malchor’s feels much more dark and ominous, and the event structure seems set up better overall.

Anyway, not a huge gripe but I just thought I would point this out.

I just wanted to express the lack of options that we have for defending (and to a lesser extent attacking) towers/keeps

-Axe & Dagger MH are obviously out due to range issues.
-Scepter is out as it’s essentially a condition stacking weapon with minimal effectiveness with power.

-Staff is really the only logical choice, but there are several problems here, also.

1) The autoattack only hits one enemy due to attacking from an incline not allowing the hand to pass through to other enemies.
2) We can cast marks on the enemies below, but Marks do very little actual direct damage, similar to Scepter.
3) The beneficial effects of marks can’t help allies up on the walls because there are no enemies to trigger them. I’d love to be able to drop Mark of Blood or Putrid Mark to give allies regen/condition removal, but it simply doesn’t work.

The only real effect you can have is the 3/4 combo to poison and weaken enemies below, which is generally cleansed within a few seconds.

I’m not going to suggest how to remedy this, but simply point it out as being a problem.

Eochaidh.4106:

It is not ANet’s fault that everyone want to be the glass cannon berserker pow/per/critdmg guy. They don’t use the variety given because that’s the only way they know how to play.

I play a very defensive/support focused Necromancer and can still say traits are mostly bad. Lifesteal traits are terrible as it barely scales with the healing stat, 5% more damage when over 90% health minor trait in a support focused trait line makes little sense. Some of the more useful support traits are stuck in the minion line, which is a huge waste for someone not using minions. I could go on.

We could offer more specific examples, but the overall point of this thread is that traits simply aren’t powerful enough. Outside of a couple of traits that are rather nice it feels like we’re picking the “least bad” traits to fill our build with.