Guild Wars 2

Terrahero.9358:

“worst elite: Mass Invisibility”

You must’ve never heard of Mortar. Mass Invisibility has some use, Mortar is a personal debuff in damage, cannot be moved (enjoy eating aoe), has a deadzone close to the mortar that it cannot target (enjoy getting enemies within melee range), and it’s stupid arch of fire will often cause projectiles to not even reach targets (enjoy seeing your shells collide with tree branches, ceilings, etcetc)

It’s such a bad elite, racial elites are better. And I would take Mass Invisibility over Mortar any day of the week. I’d even come in extra on Saterday and Sunday just to pick Mass Invisibility over Mortar.

Actually, I’d blame my overlooking of mortar on the fact that I don’t play Engineer, and thus admittedly don’t know much about their skills. My list was based purely on my own experience and it’s only natural others would have different experiences and thus, different opinions from me. I was actually kinda hoping for that. XD

Rauderi.8706:

Doggie.3184:

Worst; All Thief Traps. They all need redesigned and their method of adding a rune set to buff them was unnecessary~ just turn those into traits so Thieves can actually be trappers without relying on runes. Even if you do use Trapper runes it’s an absolutely horrendous choice in PvE since enemies have to run over the tiny spot it places and doesn’t work well as aoe.

Gah, Thief traps. :\ I don’t even know why they say they hit multiple targets. They’re gone in one tick.
Ranger traps. <3 Decent cooldown time and condition, and they pulse for a few seconds.

Can’t say I’m fond of Thief poisons, either. Longish cooldowns, the effects aren’t overly useful, and autoattack can just eat the charges on one target. I think a redesign so that they’re more like Mantra charges could make them more strategic.

Thief venoms are actually quite good, but mostly when traited for. I’d say their use is far more obvious in PvP than it is in PvE though. Sharing a venom with nearby allies, so that each of them can inflict long duration immobilize, torment, chill or petrify is actually incredibly useful, because you give other classes access to forms of control that they might not have actually had access to otherwise.

I think the main mistake that people make with venoms though, is assume they are strictly for condition builds, when in reality they don’t actually offer much in the way of condition damage. They’d work just as well for power builds really and more for the control, healing and might they bring than for any damage.

In PvE though, their use is quite limited.

TexZero.7910:

Sanctuary

The cooldown is far too long for the effect.

I’ll admit, I actually overlooked sanctuary. It would be pretty high on the list of “worst slot skills”. XD

JChaosmaster.5918:

I want to thank everyone in helping me decide to try out my new character which is a Human Ele. Everyone’s advice has been helpful and it was nice not to get flamed instantly like you would on other games.

I never did really judge my sylvari ranger as bad and I will keep him to play later.

I’m glad this helped you, and I hope you find more great help on the forums and in the game in future. Have fun.

maddoctor.2738:

I would be more interested to see a list of skills that are useless in all game modes first. Some skills might be worthless in PVE but if they work in PVP then they aren’t very bad. However, finding the skills that are completely useless in ALL game types can give some info to the Devs on what to change FIRST.

I’m all for all skills being useful on all game types, but let’s first find skills that are completely useless on every game mode. Also, some skills might not be as useful in general, but they have some uses in other parts of the game, for example most Speed boost signets aren’t very useful in general gameplay, but they are great when you are running to some event in PVE, or when roaming in WvW.

Yeah, I agree that it would be nice to fix completely useless or broken skills (and I’m sure I could come up with a reasonable list in that regard), but the focus of my post was more for interests sake and fun. There are already plenty of posts out there with players pointing out completely broken or useless skills, so there’s more than enough information being offered for devs to act on already (though whether they will or won’t act on them is another question).

Randulf.7614:

Litany of wrath can be useful if you trait meditations to heal. Its really only for solo usee but can give increible healing when needed, giving up to double the healing plus the heal on hit

Honestly, I have used Litany of Wrath with a pure meditation build, fully traited with monk’s focus and all, and even then, it’s still too situational to be considered a good heal. Shelter will always be the superior choice in just about any situation, and what makes it worse is that I’m comparing a fully traited skill to an untraited skill. O_o

Hey guys!

I decided to create another topic for the sake of interest and fun, with the theme being “The best and worst skills in the game”. Now, I know the usefulness of a skill can change drastically in various kinds of content, like PvE, WvW, or PvP, so this will be focused mainly in the context of PvE.

The idea is to list what you think is the best and worst skill (for PvE) in each major skill category and why, with the four main categories being weapon skills, healing skills, utility slot skills and elite skills (across all classes). I haven’t included any racial skills, because I think they’re mostly useless anyway, so I focused only on class skills.

As an example, I will list mine here:

Weapon skills

Best: Phoenix (Elementalist scepter skill 3).

Why? Not only does phoenix do quite good aoe burst damage, but it also gives the user 5 seconds of vigor, removes a condition AND acts as a blast finisher. I don’t think there’s any other single weapon skill in the game that brings to much usefulness to the table, and at a relatively low cooldown to boot.

Worst: Hornet’s sting (Ranger 1h-sword skill 2).

Why? There were actually a few skills that came to mind when it came to the topic of “worst weapon skill” but most of the alternatives I thought of, despite being weak, still worked to a degree. Hornet’s sting does work as far as the initial roll back and evade is concerned, but in my experience, the follow-up leap strike NEVER hits its target, even when used from point blank range, which renders this skill largely broken. A broken skill, to me, will always rank lower than any working but weak skill.

Healing Skills

Best: Hide In Shadows (Thief heal skill).

Why? I was actually really torn on this, because there are a few heal skills that are really great, like shelter, ether renewal, and consume conditions to name a few. But to me, Hide in Shadows’ combination of a good heal amount, the removal of some conditions and the bonus regeneration, combined with the fact that it stealths you, was enough to put it slightly ahead of its competitors.

Worst: Litany of Wrath (Guardian heal skill).

Why? The only way to make this healing skill even marginally useful, is to trait the living daylights out of it, and use it in the most absolutely ideal situations. Even then, it’s still outperformed by the guardian’s untraited and more useful alternatives, like shelter.

Utility slot skills

Best: Shadow Refuge (Thief Skill).

Why? Honestly, I think this is very debatable, because there are a lot of super useful slot skills across all classes that can completely change the difficulty of an encounter in PvE. So, I just went with the skill that seemed most universally useful in a variety of situations (as opposed to a more situational skill like wall of reflect, etc). Shadow Refuge can be used to skip mobs in dungeons or even just in world exploration, as a group heal or rescue skill, and as a handy skill to help you or your party revive downed or dead players without risk.

Worst: Spectral Grasp (Necromancer Skill).

Why? I’ll admit, I’m not very experienced with necromancers, but as far as I am aware, this skill was very easy to avoid (thanks to it’s long cast animation and slow projectile speed), or very easily hindered by obstacles. It didn’t seem to be very useful, especially in a PvE situation where other classes sport far superior group pulls.

Elite Skills

Best: Battle Standard (Warrior Skill).

Why? Time warp was also on the cards here, but battle standard just brings so much to the table. The obvious group dps increase and swiftness aside, it also acts as a fast resurrection skill that can resurrect multiple players at once within an area, and can easily save a party from wiping where conventional resurrection is either difficult or impossible (like during Tequatl, or Mai Trin cannon phase, etc).

(EDIT!)

Worst: Mortar (Engineer skill). Changed from Mass Invisibility.

Why? As some have pointed out in the comments, it’s completely useless. XD

This particular issue has actually been bought up a number of times, and not just for Zealot’s defense, but also for shield of absorption as well. It does seem kinda silly for the guardian to have traits that work on block, but then have half the skills available to them that could be blocks, be absorption skills instead.

The problem is, despite the various degrees of attention this topic has been given on the forums over the years, ANet has displayed no interest in changing these skills at all, so I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. They appear to be “working as intended”.

Renewed focus is actually a very handy elite, especially if traited for in a medi build. Outside of medi builds though, it loses some of its charm, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that certain elites are better for certain builds and benefit from trait synergies (I think more elites should actually).

In fact, I think this is the main downside for the two tome elites, and that is that they have no real synergies with any guardian builds and only actually benefit from two traits in the virtues line that no-one actually uses for the most part (I don’t think any player would ever build solely around elite skills). Another downside is that when you activate tomes, you lose all of your slot skills and virtues, and only get access to five skills dependant on the tome in question. For tome of courage I suppose this isn’t so bad because you get protection for the entire duration and can heal yourself quite sufficiently, but for Tome of Wrath, this is a death sentence. Without heals, virtues or utility skills to help keep you alive, popping Tome of Wrath is pretty much akin to inviting your enemies over for a quick and rather easy kill. What’s worse is that the damage and support functionality of the tome isn’t good enough to warrant that loss in survivability and utility. Hell, an ele just using a scepter/focus/dagger would be able to offer more offensive support for their party than a guard with the tome of wrath, and they can do it without sacrificing utility skills or class mechanics, that’s how bad it is.

What I don’t understand is why the tomes remove your other skills. An elementalist summoning a fiery greatsword doesn’t lose access to their utility skills, so why should a guardian summoning a tome suffer such an incredible gimp?

I will say one thing though. I have used tome of courage in PvP, traited for stability while active, and I must say that if used at the right time, during a heated battle with multiple players, it can lead to a rather easy victory for your team. The amount of healing and damage resistance it provides can keep your teammates alive pretty easily for the entire duration of the skill. It is situational, thanks to its long cooldown, but still very reliable in situations where it can be allowed to shine.

To be honest, I lost interest in these sets ages ago. They look interesting and all, but not interesting enough to warrant the sheer amount of time and effort it would take to acquire them. If I have to play a few years just to get one set of armor, I’d expect that set to be exceptional, and I just don’t feel that the Radiant and Hellfire sets are that exceptional relative to other good looking armor sets we already get in the game, which all don’t take a few years to acquire.

And I’m sure by the time people have gotten to a point where they can acquire them, there will already be other, possibly even better armor sets that have come out, possibly even legendary armor sets. It really just doesn’t make sense to me. But, no biggie. I lose no sleep over it. XD

Meanwhile, back in the Asura camp…

I think one thing ANet could do to avoid confusion is to make it clear on the gem store that the item in question (in this case, the wings) will return again at a later stage. Not everyone reads GW2 news on the main site, and some rely solely on the information provided to them in game when it comes to informing their decisions. I believe that information should be as clear there as we’d expect it to be here on the site.

Invoker.5462:

Anyone here in PVP who clicks on screen onto the target they want? I didn’t think so.

Actually, I always select my targets on screen, as opposed to trying to cycle through them using the tab button. It just seems simpler and faster, and it’s what I’m used to.

One thing I would like to point out, given your original comment, is not to judge melee combat in this game based on your experience with a ranger, especially if you were using a 1H sword. Ranger sword auto attacks are very sticky and tend to move your character in very wonky ways, or even just miss entirely in some cases. No other class has this issue with their melee attacks and most are much more easy to control and use.

That aside, as the others have said, the elementalist is probably the best support class right now, thanks to their access to a wide variety of different combo field types, group healing, group condition removal, the ability to stack might and endless fury for the party, CC. and the ability to summon weapons like frost bows for allies to use.

Another alternative to the elementalist for a support class that sits in the middle of the action, is the guardian. They focus more on defensive support than offensive (though they still have some offensive support), but they bring a lot of useful skills to the table that can really get a party through a lot of content, like group stability (which the ele mostly lacks), projectile reflects and blocks, condition removal, protection and group blocks in the form of aegis. Two of their elite skills are also solely support oriented and they have their class mechanic, virtues, which also offers an extra layer of free support, which can be quite potent when traited for.

Out of the two classes (elementalist and guardian), the guardian is the easiest to play for new players. Eles can be quite squishy and it can take some time to get used to cycling through elements and using the proper skill rotations to maximize performance or use combo fields/blast finishers properly (not really a friendly class for inexperienced players). Guardians, on the other hand, are a lot simpler to play (hit button x to get effect y) and are generally easier to survive with for new players.

Visit a black lion weapon specialist in any city, and they will exchange your soulbound gathering tools for account bound ones.

Gibson.4036:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Here’s the male version previewed without a helm.

Nice, thanks!

I thought previews didn’t reflect hidden slots.

Much appreciated.

No worries. :P

Gibson.4036:

I had no idea you could hide helmets on outfits. Anyone got an image of the male Lich outfit with helmet hid? Googled for it, but didn’t come up with any.

When I first saw it, I thought parts of it would make a great Satyr themed outfit with some dye changes, the was very disappointed to learn it was an outfit, and not a real armor skin.

Here’s the male version previewed without a helm.

Elestian.6134:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Actually, from what I have seen, gloves can be hidden on outfits (I tested it on the Hexed outfit, and hiding your gloves does indeed hide the gloves on the outfit as well).

So I’ve never looked into this and don’t have or make use of nearly enough outfits to have noticed on my own. Apparently the ability to hide gloves is an exception made for certain outfits and not others. So for example, gloves can be hidden on the Hexed and Mad King Outfits, but not so for Ceremonial Plated or the upcoming Crystal Nomad Outfit. I also could not find any mention of this made on Wiki.

I honestly can’t tell if this is by design or oversight.

Yeah, I mostly discovered it by accident. I was also under the assumption that gloves could not be hidden on outfits, until I activated Hexed outfit while I had my gloves hidden on my armor. It’s a pity other outfits don’t let you hide the gloves though. I wonder if any of them let you hide the shoulders?

Just remember guys, the OP isn’t just asking about the tankiest class. He’s asking what class can survive the best while still doing lots of damage. So listing super tanky classes or builds with clerics or nomads armor, etc, is missing the mark a bit.

For those who like JP’s and want a reason to revisit them (now that monthly JP’s are gone), then why not introduce a JP race system?

The idea is that in a manner similar to how bosses have spawn timers, JP’s can have race timers. So every 15 minutes, a race will take place at a specific JP somewhere in the world. People who want to take part can wait in the starting area for that JP (just like you’d wait for a boss), and then when the spawn timer enters its window, it gives a 30 second preparation time for everyone. Then the race starts and everyone tries to finish the JP before the rest of the competition.

Give nice prizes for the top few places, and you could even have leaderboards showing the best time for each JP. If you break an old record, give a special reward, etc.

Also, to prevent screen clutter, ANet could use the same mechanics as they did for the Clock Tower, where other players are shown as wisps during the race. This would make it easy to see where you’re jumping irrespective of how many other players are partaking in the race with you.

Also, during the race you can disable class skills to prevent any particular class with leap skills, swiftness or portals, etc, from having an edge over the rest.

Elestian.6134:

(That shoulders and gloves cannot be hidden could be an arbitrary limitation and design decision.)

Actually, from what I have seen, gloves can be hidden on outfits (I tested it on the Hexed outfit, and hiding your gloves does indeed hide the gloves on the outfit as well).

Dawdler.8521:

Caedmon.6798:

The heal from adren will be used for bursting/cleansing mostly,its not consistent and it isn’t a usable heal on command.You can’t slap that together with healsig and say oh look warrs have a constant 400hp sec incoming regen,thats plain bullkitten.

Well except the fact that you can say that.

There is a reason why zerker specced classes can barely bring down Warriors below 90% hp in WvW before they are promptly slaughtered by the Warrior because he is having very high damage at the same time.

I don’t know, my medi guard doesn’t have much trouble with warriors in WvW. In most cases, they are free kills, unless they switch to greatsword and run away with super mobility.

If you need any personal help, you’re welcome to message me in game some time (or mail me) and if we’re on at the same time, I can show you around or point out some good farming spots, as well as give some tips for gear/builds, etc, to make things easier for you in PvE.

If we’re on the topic of annoying sounds, I’d say some of the weapon skill sounds for some classes are annoying. Take Orb of Wrath for the guardian scepter as an example. It’s a very rasping/ear scratching sound that easily overpowers other sounds, especially for a skill that is an auto attack. I wish they’d mellow it down a bit and make it more subtle.

Another annoying sound is the electric sound that plays whenever you use any skill with bolt. It’s very grating and I wish they’d find an alternative that’s not as harsh. It’s the only thing I don’t like about bolt as a legendary.

Zenith.7301:

You just named a bunch of skills that come off in one strike. When that fractal 50 archdiviner lands a melee on you, let’s see which is the profession that doesn’t get one shot. Same goes for the mossman dagger throw from stealth let alone his normal autoattack swings. In Colossus when the zealots are pelting you with arrows/heartseeking, all at the same time, a single blind isn’t going to prevent you from taking some hits.

When the captain in the ascalonian fractal does his fire swirl, the class that can take that hit and not be instadowned is called a warrior. Guardian’s blinds don’t even reliably work on bosses.

There’s a good reason why berk eles learn much quicker to max melee range archdiviner or mossman. Because it’s not optional, it’s quite frankly a necessity to not getting one shot by a single quick autoattack that has little tell.

How many 11.5k hp berk eles you see around in WvW versus 17k hp berk warriors? Higher health pools and the armor difference does matter. A guardian or warrior make for much better bunkers in spvp in staying inside a point and holding it than do the other classes. The difference in damage potential of a warrior vs guardian bunker is vast.

There are bad players for ALL classes, let’s not bring up the argument that because bad players gravitate toward one class, the class is underrepresented. The bias for a warrior/guardian frontline in WvW is real it’s not some figment of people’s imagination. Remove stand your ground from guardians and the WvW melee frontline would suddenly shift in proportion heavily for warriors.

Some of the skills I mentioned don’t come off in one stroke and can take multiple hits (guardian focus blocks) or are channeled (shelter/renewed focus). In most cases, you only actually need to avoid one powerful hit at a time. In other, more exceptional cases, a well time dodge roll or focus skill 5/renewed focus/shelter will suffice, especially considering most of the strongest boss attacks are well televised. As for things like mossmans axe throw and such, there’s a reason skills like wall of reflect or shield of vengeance exist.

I’ve played a lot of fractals, and I can honestly say I see warriors go down a lot more often than guardians. Maybe it’s just my luck with less skilled warrior players, or great guardian players, but that’s just my experience. Yes, warriors do have higher health pools, and in some cases take two hits to down where another class might take one, but if you use those other classes properly, you won’t get hit in the first place, or at the very least, you should get hit a lot less often. Of course, you did well in cherry picking a few odd encounters that might (and I say ‘might’ with a lot of trepidation) favor the warrior, but what about others like the Harpy Fractal, Molten fractal, Swamp Fractal, or Aether fractal, where guardian defensive skills like group stability and projectile reflects/blocks become much more important? In these cases, the guardian is still more versatile when it comes to defensive options, not only for personal defense, but also for group defense as a whole.

Damage avoidance is the single greatest aspect that contributes to survival. Health pool and armor come secondary to that, so the class avoiding the most hits comes out on top in this debate. I still think thieves are at the top of the list because stealth is the single most spammable defensive skill in the game, and the easiest way to lose aggro and thus avoid all damage (unless you get caught in an aoe). However, I also think guardians still have more up time on defensive skills and a greater variety of defensive skills than warriors though, and many of their defensive skills can be used without interrupting their damage.

As for the WvW and PvP arguments, they are pretty much irrelevant here, because the OP was asking his question in the context of PvE content. Suffice to say, armor and health are much more useful stats in PvP than they are in PvE, but in PvE… well, let’s just say there’s a reason everyone runs with zerker armor.

Panites.6798:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

I really wish they’d release this as armor and not as outfits. I’d love to use parts and mix them into existing sets, but outfits as they are now, are just really boring. All you get is hundreds of players with the exact same look, because none of them can customize that look in any meaningful way.

I don’t know who thought this was a good idea, but it isn’t.

Clipping.

What about clipping? It’s natural that players would just use whatever combinations work best, as we’ve always done with all armor sets.

maddoctor.2738:

If you want the best survivability combined with the best DPS, look at the Thief. The best survivability for a Thief is with full Berserker gear, use S/P and get the trait Invigorating Precision and just Pistol Whip everything. It’s maybe the only profession that has zero benefit from investing in defensive gear at all. Full Berserker allows you to heal yourself to full with IP with 1 Pistol Whip, that is semi-spammable if you know what you are doing.

If you want extra survivability, a few trait changes can help, Feline Grace for extra dodges (you will never run out), Shadow’s Embrace with D/D for great on-demand condi cleanse, you rarely need more condi cleanse in PVE etc

So yeah Thief is the best combo for damage+survivability but it does require more skill to play than say a Warrior or Guardian.

Yeah, this is my opinion as well. Thieves have the best combination of damage and survivability if you are a skilled player and use them properly.

Guardians are the best alternative for players who aren’t very good with thieves and want an easier to play class.

Zenith.7301:

Warrior is the one class that can be survivable and still keep its high damage builds. In order for your guardian to be survivable he has to give up DPS sources.

Warrior has Healing signet, the best heal in the game (that and the healing from 3 bar adrenaline basically gives you a free 400+ hp regen per tick, it’s insane).

Warrior also has heavy armor an a 7k base hp advantage over low hp classes. That means he can also absorb burst. Then you have stances like endure pain and shield stance on his offset (axe+shiel instead of axe+mace if your group is fine stacking vulnerability) and it’s really no contest.

All the other classes who want to build tanky will not come close to touching the damage of a warrior.

You see, I think this is the problem with player perceptions. They think high health and armor = survivability. Then you do a higher level fractal with said players and they wonder why they get one shot buy a boss despite having high health and armor. Also, that regen sustain is not as good as it seems if you’re being downed in one or two hits. Burst heals and damage immunity are more important.

Also, I’m not sure where you got the idea that a guardian has to sacrifice damage to get survivability, but this is certainly not the case. The highest damage guardian builds right now use greatsword + sword focus alt and usually build into the radiance line, which means they also get justice is blind + renewed justice. That means they have access to an aoe blind from greatsword, an aoe blind from sword, a blind from focus, a block from focus, a block from shelter, a free block from aegis + an on demand party block from aegis, and spammable aoe blinds from justice is blind, which refreshes every time an enemy is killed (which is super useful for stacking situations). I’m not even factoring in other non-heal slot skills like renewed focus.

The skills you mentioned for warrior, on the other hand, aren’t near as numerous or spammable. To put it plainly, I’d say guardians are far above warriors from a pure survivability perspective, even in full zerker gear (keeping in mind we are speaking in the context of PvE, as the original post pertained to).

Zoltreez.6435:

Guardian.

is this realy a question ?

I don’t see the issue with the question, especially for new players who might have very little experience with the classes.

Zaklex.6308:

Here’s something for everyone to chew on, and a question for you. This is just an example and in no way reflects reality, but, consider it might take them a week to design an outfit. Now take that week and multiply 50 fold to design an armor set, that gives you some idea of the complexity involved in making an armor set vs an outfit. Now the question, would those of you wanting armor skins instead be willing to pay 3000 gems for an armor skin vs 800 for an outfit?

For those that think it’s just a bit more work to make an armor set vs an outfit, you’re in fantasy land, it’s a lot more complex than you think and takes a considerable amount of addition time, resources and money…all of which come out of the same budge so that would reduce the amount of money for some other area of development.

My question would then be this, if outfits are so much easier to make, why are they being charged about as much as armor sets then? Why not be sold at a cheaper price? Why must it always be the longer process made more expensive, and not the shorter process made cheaper?

As it is right now, I’m not even willing to buy outfits, simply because they lack customization. To me, if a product on sale is giving me less features than another product of a similar type, then it should be charged for at a much lower price. You don’t go buy a car that has no air conditioning, airbags, electric windows or power steering and expect to pay a similar price for another car with all those features included.

At the same time, however, you can’t just increase the price of gem store armor just try try make outfits more appealing, because the price of gem store armor still has to compete with the availability of in game armor. If I can get T3 cultural armor for 150 gold and there’s gem store armor that sells for 500+ gold that is of a similar level of quality, I’ll never buy the gem store armor. Both took the same amount of time and effort to make, so why would I buy the one that costs more than 5x the amount? It just wouldn’t make sense. It would also make it very inaccessible for a majority of players if you start charging exorbitant prices, which would decrease overall sales for ANet.

In my opinion, the whole situation is very lopsided. I think ANet, in many ways, is letting down the community by over-focussing on outfits while introducing very few new armor sets for those who prefer customization. I wouldn’t mind if it was a 50/50 split with regards to armor being released vs outfits, but as it is right now, outfits are way too much of a priority.

JUN YANG.4328:

they will just keep making outfit. outfit get big income,

think about it.
1 set armor skin cost 800gem
the game designer need to design 3 set plus combination each part.

1 set outfit 700 gem
1 set design no combination.

save labour fees, safe time big profit.

WHY NOT.. they will never change….

You seemed to ignore one particular point in your comparison. If ANet is releasing 3 combinations of armor sets for each weight, it means potentially 3x as many sales, which makes up for the extra time. In a sense, they might actually be gimping themselves by only releasing one new outfit now and then, rather than three new armor sets each time, especially given how many players seem to prefer armor sets over outfits if the forums are any indication.

If you want high survivability and also lots of damage, I’d say it depends a lot on how well you play. Thieves probably have the highest survivability/damage ratio in the hands of a good player, because their stealth makes it easier for them to lose aggro and they have easy access to blinds (we all know the easiest way to survive is to not get hit in the first place).

The problem is that you really have to know what you’re doing when you play as a thief. I see a lot of inexperienced thieves die over and over, simply because they don’t know how to time their attacks/blinds/stealth properly. But in the hands of a master, you can pretty much go through any fractal or dungeon without dying while still dishing out lots of damage.

After that, I’d say guards are pretty good with respect to the damage/survivability ratio, thanks to their easy access to blocks, blinds, stability and projectile block/reflect skills, and on top of that, they’re a lot easier to play as well, so you’d probably find a lot of inexperienced players will find this to be the easiest class to survive with. If you use a sword focus/greatsword, you can pop blocks and blinds like crazy, and avoid a lot of potentially lethal blows, while the 20k health warrior next to you loses half his health in a single strike (keep in mind that large amounts of health and armor will not keep you alive in higher level fractals and some dungeons, it’s all about avoiding hits, not facetanking them).

All-in-all though, you can survive with pretty much any class if you just play them well and make the most use of their mechanics (eles with mobility and easy heals, rangers with well timed evades with melee weapons and stealth with longbow, mesmers with clones, stealth, distortion and reflects, etc).

I really wish they’d release this as armor and not as outfits. I’d love to use parts and mix them into existing sets, but outfits as they are now, are just really boring. All you get is hundreds of players with the exact same look, because none of them can customize that look in any meaningful way.

I don’t know who thought this was a good idea, but it isn’t.

Takoyakii.2146:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

I personally think it’s a very bad idea to punish a player’s dps if they enter stealth, especially when you consider that a majority of a thief’s personal dps comes from stealth skills. It would completely go against their play style, which, by the way, is pretty much forced on them because without stealth, their survivability goes to hell.

I would personally make a few tweaks to though. For example, make it so that mesmer phantasms don’t attack when they enter stealth. It feels kinda unfair that rangers and thieves get revealed if they do any damage while in stealth, but mesmers can continue to do damage with phantasms while hiding. Also, maybe remove the ability to stack stealth duration from shadow fields (in other words, if you use a finisher on a shadow field, it only applies the stealth once, and cannot be extended in duration by using more, subsequent finishers on the same field), because sometimes it is too easy for a thief to enter stealth for a long duration without any risks just by using pistol 5 or smoke screen + spamming a leap finisher. In my opinion, long duration stealth is what shadow refuge was made for, and it’s balanced by the fact that you have to remain in the aoe of that skill until it disappears, because if you leave the field early, you get revealed (which gives other players a chance to try and kill you with aoe skills while you are in the aoe).

Smoke field is the one that create stealth

And shadow refuge use stealth stack for long duration stealth.

Just to correct you :l

Yeah, thanks, I’ll edit my post with the correction. I always think of smoke fields as shadow fields. I got the shadow refuge part right though. XD

I personally think it’s a very bad idea to punish a player’s dps if they enter stealth, especially when you consider that a majority of a thief’s personal dps comes from stealth skills. It would completely go against their play style, which, by the way, is pretty much forced on them because without stealth, their survivability goes to hell.

I would personally make a few tweaks to though. For example, make it so that mesmer phantasms don’t attack when they enter stealth. It feels kinda unfair that rangers and thieves get revealed if they do any damage while in stealth, but mesmers can continue to do damage with phantasms while hiding.

Also, maybe remove the ability to stack stealth duration from smoke fields (in other words, if you use a finisher on a smoke field, it only applies the stealth once, and cannot be extended in duration by using more, subsequent finishers on the same field), because sometimes it is too easy for a thief to enter stealth for a long duration without any risks just by using pistol 5 or smoke screen + spamming a leap finisher. In my opinion, long duration stealth is what shadow refuge was made for, and it’s balanced by the fact that you have to remain in the aoe of that skill until it disappears, because if you leave the field early, you get revealed (which gives other players a chance to try and kill you with aoe skills while you are in the aoe).

Lifestealer.4910:

It is definitely subjective, no doubt about that tho I would argue that there are data that would show that most people would say games like league are better. Personally for me i like to look at games from a gameplay perspective. Gw2 imo is a good looking game but when you start unraveling the gameplay mechanics behind the classes, boss fights, pvp objectives, wvw objectives etc.. they are extremely shallow and some mechanics are outright broken, especially on the PvE end.

I can understand people being turned away by the community of mobas but for me, the toxicity is actually what makes the game even better. Don’t get me wrong, i am not a toxic person, but the uncertainty that you would get into a team with a bunch of angry Russians which will start complaining randomly is what spices things up.

I personally wouldn’t make any assumptions about what kind of games are being claimed as “better” by gamers, not unless there’s solid, accurate data that can be shown to prove it. If we just went by popularity though, or number of players/sales, then first person shooters would likely be near the top of the list, if not at the top, and I certainly doubt MOBA’s would be. Ironically, shooters are also usually much simpler in terms of depth and gameplay mechanics.

In any case, a game doesn’t have to be deep to be fun. Some of the most fun games ever created also have the most simple gameplay mechanics. I think that’s one mistake a lot of gamers make, and that is to assume “depth” is directly proportional with “fun” when in many cases, it is actually the opposite. Too much depth can over-saturate a game experience with unnecessary tedium that gets in the way. It’s all about balance and, ultimately, it falls to the individual tastes of each player regarding what kind of game they like (some like more depth, others like simplicity).

Anyway, I digress, I think we’re getting a bit off topic with the MOBA vs GW2 discussion. If I were to answer the OP’s original question, I’d say that a great game doesn’t make a great community, but a great community can make a game “better” (though it may not necessarily make it great, that still ultimately depends on the game itself). I do think others have put it well in saying that GW2 isn’t a game where you’re overly reliant on others for success, and that’s why there’s typically less volatility, however, I’d personally prefer not to praise or blame games for the behavior of their players, because we are ultimately responsible for that ourselves.

Lifestealer.4910:

Invoker.5462:

DeathPanel.8362:

Invoker.5462:

In the case of GW2 i have found that the community here is somewhat of a bastion away from what has become of most of the gaming community- People here are decent, nice, and helpful quite often.

I have come back from a 2 year break and this is my second week. I have had people guide me to vistas, volunteer on lowbie story mode dungeons, and of course, answer my noob questions.

Even more- people in gw2 are likely to be “light” roleplayers, not going full on roleplay but rather acting in character as select times to increase overall immersion.

In contrast- my 2 years spent in WoW a while ago i found a large portion of the playerbase to be like zombies, some of which didn’t even seem all that happy about what they were playing yet ran several raids per day. It got real awkward before i quit, i remember i could confront with 100 players in a day and not socially interact with a single one.

On a broader note, games in general i.e H1z1, Dota 2, Rust, Archeage and a number of first person shooters are filled with toxicity- trolls and people who find that yelling and spamming and just generally being annoying is entertaining. Quite sad.

It is my opinion that in its current state (as its clearly been updated over the years) Gw2 is by a large margin the best all around game that i own. The fact that its so well polished and that they spend the extra effort to add social stimuli to the game i.e the harp, the bobble head thing ect- shows that these developers are EXTREMELY active and caring about their product- and i think that love for their game spills over into the community.

It’s hard to believe that a game which is 3 years old is the best one i own but Arena net has really stepped up.

P.s. Havent seen a single bot! This used to be a MAJOR problem, glad its fixed!

No, great games don’t inspire great communities. Case in point are games like LoL, Smite, Dota2, WOW, diablo 3 (post patches) and etc.

What inspires good behavior and good community are game mechanics that encourage good behavior such as ones in GW2.

Those game’s are not really all that “great”. Sure, the Moba scene is a fun one for many people but they are more like indie titles without much depth. The substance of a Moba comes from how simple yet complex its basic game mechanics can be. The items and item recipes can actually be completely removed from the genre and it still works (HoTs).

World of Warcraft on the other hand – now you have an argument. I can’t really say that its not a great game. But my overall opinion which would take several pages to write would state that for a sum of all its parts and design decisions, Guild Wars 2 far greater than WoW. And you’re right, the Gw2 dev team seems to have taken major leaps to promote a good community. And i’m glad its payed off.

Moba don’t have much depth?.. you kidding right?.. there is a reason why they are considered E-sports while this games pvp is considered a laughing stock. There is more mechanics to master and just things to learn compared to Gw2 brainless spamfest.

Gw2 is pretty much forgotten by the masses, while a game like league has as much people playing it as the entire Xbox live which is saying alot.

League and dota 2 are probably the greatest games of all time, surpassing gw2 by a HUGE margin.

“Great” is a very subjective opinion when it comes to the quality of a game as determined by players. So, while you might think League and Dota 2 are the “greatest games of all time” that doesn’t mean they are. It’s just your opinion.

I for one cannot consider MOBA’s great, simply because their communities ruin the experience with their toxicity. In my personal opinion, games are made for the sake of entertainment, and are to be enjoyed, so when people start taking games too seriously, and start attacking other people for the way they play, then I think there’s a serious issue.

I also think that’s why a lot of people enjoy GW2. It may not be the deepest game in the world, but the community is amiable enough to make the game experience enjoyable for a lot of players, especially new players. Perhaps even more enjoyable than the game would be if such a great community didn’t exist, based on mechanics alone. Imagine how much more fun MOBA’s would be for new and veteran players alike if they had similarly great communities. The reality is rather sad in comparison.

Silk is sooooooooooooooooo easy to get. I really don’t see why it’s an issue. I get way more spools of silk weaving thread than I actually need, relative to the amount of other mats needed to craft bolts of damask. If they reduced the amount of silk required, that would just unbalance it even more, and I’d have to sell silk constantly just to keep my inventory from being cluttered by it.

If there is an issue, it’s with other cloth mats like Linen, not silk.

Thaddeus.4891:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

5th in DPS? What exactly outdamages them? Eles and thiefs maybe, but I can’t see engineers, necros, rangers or mesmers outdamaging warriors (Mesmers might if they had all phantasms up at the same time, but that is realistically almost never the case). And as you said, guardians are a bit under them as well.

Holy crap guys, keep up with the news. Warrior was 4th for like a year and it dropped 5th in september last year.

Eles and Thief are the top dps profession. Engineer was 3rd for a long time. Ranger got 4th in september with their buff and the nerf to warrior. That doesn’t mean that Engineer and Ranger are better than warrior overall. Ranger fill the same role in PvE as the warrior with offensive buff, but the warrior is twice as good as the ranger for this. And the engineer is good at giving might but not as good as warrior/elementalist, while it’s the best at giving vulnerability, but warrior/ele/guardian/thief can do the job just fine. So ranger and engineer kind of fall between two stools.

Well, I knew ranger got buffed but I didn’t think it was enough to surpass warrior dps, with their 100% fury uptime and easy access to might. But the other point you and others bring up is good, and that is that warriors bring more to the table than just personal dps.

Thaddeus.4891:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Warriors still have top tier dps and the highest combination of base armor and health in the game. Aside from that, your build will obviously dictate your damage, support, control and survivability, just like it does for every other class.

I don’t see the issue here. O_o

Poor necromancers have a lot more to complain about.

Hey hello. How is 2012?

Warrior is 5th in dps now, very close with guardian at 6th so Top tier dps not do much. But seriously Warrior were overpowered when the game was launch and now that warrior was nerf on several occasion ppl freak out about it and complain that it was too much. What is the right balance, its hard to say. Personnally, I find warrior in a good place right now. Its part of the meta in WvW, any speed run want to have 1 for banners and in sPvP we have a couple of good build.

Does it still need a couple of tweaks to make it more balance? Probably, but I personally feel the warrior is in a ’’ok’’ situation right now. Mesmer and Necromancer probably need a little bit more love right now than the warrior.

5th in DPS? What exactly outdamages them? Eles and thiefs maybe, but I can’t see engineers, necros, rangers or mesmers outdamaging warriors (Mesmers might if they had all phantasms up at the same time, but that is realistically almost never the case). And as you said, guardians are a bit under them as well.

Warriors still have top tier dps and the highest combination of base armor and health in the game. Aside from that, your build will obviously dictate your damage, support, control and survivability, just like it does for every other class.

I don’t see the issue here. O_o

Poor necromancers have a lot more to complain about.

CobaltSixty.1542:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

When we’re talking about a game where you can set dust storms on fire, blind bats and bleed earth elementals, or where you can fall from 3 stories + height and live, I think it becomes clear that realism was not the goal here as far as game mechanics were concerned.

Bats have amazing vision.

Irrespective of what kind of vision they have, bats use echolocation to navigate and hunt prey in the dark. So technically speaking, blinding them wouldn’t prevent them from being able to locate and hit you.

I honestly don’t struggle much with solo roaming. I’d say I have a very good win ratio in 1vs1 fights and I only ever really feel like I’m at a disadvantage if there are multiple opponents. I use sword/focus and scepter/torch as an alt. Scepter is actually really good for dealing with kiting enemies, believe it or not (I’m not sure why so many guard players think it’s crap, you just have to use it properly and it can be devastating).

I just cycle between weapons as the battle goes depending on the situation, and I don’t even use swiftness or movement speed runes (medi guard here). Sure, some enemy players disengage and run away to the extent I can’t catch them, but I still wouldn’t be able to catch them even if I had swiftness, so that’s a bit of a moot point.

When we’re talking about a game where you can set dust storms on fire, blind bats and bleed earth elementals, or where you can fall from 3 stories + height and live, I think it becomes clear that realism was not the goal here as far as game mechanics were concerned.

I really don’t think stealth is that OP. I mean, maybe in terms of survivability and escape mechanics, it has a lot of uses, but from a pure combat perspective, there’s enough counter play to make it a bit of a moot point.

I don’t play PvP and WvW too often, but when I do, it’s usually with my medi guard and I have to say, I really don’t have many issues with stealth backstab thieves at all. I have enough blocks and blinds to avoid any big backstab bursts and usually those four seconds that the thief is revealed for are enough to dish out heavy damage to them, especially if they are glassy. More often than not, a thief is either running from me after a short exchange, or they are dying. The only time it feels like they have an overwhelming advantage against me is when they have friends.

Mesmers are a but more of an issue because clones can confuse, but their stealth skills have longer cooldowns so once you zone down on them it becomes a bit easier. I will admit to having more issues with mesmers than I ever have with thieves though.

Rangers are okay as well. With rune of the trapper they can stealth quite often, but no more than thieves can and they don’t get any particular advantage to entering stealth like thieves do, aside from avoiding damage for a few seconds or gaining an opportunity to escape combat. Still, I don’t often fight stealth rangers 1vs1 so it’s hard to tell how balanced it is overall.

All-in-all, I haven’t been in a situation where I ever thought “OMG! Stealth is so OP! PLS nerf!”. When I do lose to stealth characters it never feels like an overwhelming loss and feels more like it’s just because the other player played better than me. If I was losing constantly to it despite player skill, then yes, I’d call it out, but I’ve never really felt that way. Maybe that’s just my class and build though. Maybe other classes have a lot more issues with it.

Ralanost.8913:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Ralanost.8913:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

There are very few instances (like maybe two) where you need to do a JP to complete a map and typically those are very easy instances as well. If it’s really that hard for you, just ask a mesmer friend to help you and portal you up, it’s really not that hard.

The issue with arguing that some forms of content should be “optional” is that it then opens the door for a lot of other arguments. Someone could argue that doing hearts should be optional. Others will go as far as arguing that combat should be optional, and so on, so forth.

It’s just silly to ask for certain kinds of content to be removed or segregated from the main game simply because some individuals don’t like it. JP’s form a core part of the GW2 experience just like other features might form a core experience for another game. If you don’t like that core experience, perhaps this is not the right game for you.

Why? I would love the idea of anything you do being viable and not feeling punished for not wanting to do any part of the game you don’t enjoy. I would much rather the game be a la carte then told I need to eat everything to get my dessert.

Here’s the thing, you don’t actually “need” to do everything. You only do something if you want to achieve a particular goal. Want that Flame legion armor? Do CoF. Want map completion, do that one JP to get a vista. Want fractal weapons? Do Fractals. Etc and so on.

However, you don’t HAVE to have dungeon armor. Nor do you HAVE to complete a map 100% or do fractals or anything else. You can play however you want to. The only thing that dictates what you do, are your own personal goals. And let’s face it, that’s what games are really about these days. Completing a specific goal to get a specific reward, and this is the same for all games, not just GW2. In fact, I’d say GW2 is a bit lenient in this regard because it often offers players multiple ways to achieve specific goals. For example, if you don’t want to do a dungeon to get a specific kind of armor, you can do PvP and get the same armor. Or, if you don’t want to do crafting to get a legendary, you can just save gold and buy one doing other content, etc.

I would like to make Mawdrey. It requires time in Dry Top which is essentially one big jumping puzzle. Not going to happen. The current legendaries ask you to participate in multiple parts of the game. There are plenty of other things that if you want to complete them or get a new skin, you can’t stick to your comfort zones. I just want things to have more options on how to acquire them. They can be equally hard or time consuming, I don’t care about that. I just wish I could avoid parts of the game I don’t enjoy and still eventually get things I want.

But if they create to many options to acquire currently existing gear, all they’re doing is over-saturating the game unnecessary mechanics instead of focusing on introducing new, meaningful gameplay mechanics or fixing other, far more important issues. The only way I could think of resolving the issue you’re bringing up, is to make all items sellable on the TP, including the currently account bound ascended items. That means people who don’t want to acquire the items to get Mawdrey, for example, can simply just buy it from someone else who did.

Still, this, to me, is simply a very arbitrary way of trying to circumvent content when really, players should just be trying to improve their skills so that they can complete that content. I find it highly ironic that you often see posts on the forums about players complaining that the content in this game is too easy or simplified, but then when it comes to the kind of content they find difficult, they have no interest in improving their skills to overcome the challenge. Or they write it off to being unenjoyable, and if that’s the case, then I’d say they’re playing the wrong game.

I do understand that there are some players who can’t do things like JP’s because of physical conditions and such, but even then, there are so many ways to circumvent them it’s a rather moot point. Get a mesmer friend to open a portal and the entire effort of completing a JP suddenly gets reduced to the act of simply pushing one button. It can’t get much easier than that, and if people still can’t be bothered to put that little effort in, then I think we can rule it off to little more than laziness. Hell, even the new JP in silverwastes can be completed with a mesmer helper. Sure they can’t take you to the end in one foul swoop, but they can get you through it milestone by milestone if they wanted to.

I would probably like it more if it was a bit more balanced. From a pure gameplay and mechanical perspective it is well made, but my issue is that after partaking in it, I often end up just feeling frustrated because the teams never seem well balanced enough.

Players leave or dawdle, and I often find myself in situations where I get ganked by the opposing team who end up outnumbering me 3 to 1 in any given encounter. Or, alternatively, I’ll find that the team I am on is performing too well and ganking other players where ultimately, you get a boring, easy win where no real skill or effort is involved. If ANet found a way to better balance teams for these kinds of mini games (like we see in a lot of other multiplayer games), that would go a long way towards making it a much more fun and less frustrating experience.

Ralanost.8913:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

There are very few instances (like maybe two) where you need to do a JP to complete a map and typically those are very easy instances as well. If it’s really that hard for you, just ask a mesmer friend to help you and portal you up, it’s really not that hard.

The issue with arguing that some forms of content should be “optional” is that it then opens the door for a lot of other arguments. Someone could argue that doing hearts should be optional. Others will go as far as arguing that combat should be optional, and so on, so forth.

It’s just silly to ask for certain kinds of content to be removed or segregated from the main game simply because some individuals don’t like it. JP’s form a core part of the GW2 experience just like other features might form a core experience for another game. If you don’t like that core experience, perhaps this is not the right game for you.

Why? I would love the idea of anything you do being viable and not feeling punished for not wanting to do any part of the game you don’t enjoy. I would much rather the game be a la carte then told I need to eat everything to get my dessert.

Here’s the thing, you don’t actually “need” to do everything. You only do something if you want to achieve a particular goal. Want that Flame legion armor? Do CoF. Want map completion, do that one JP to get a vista. Want fractal weapons? Do Fractals. Etc and so on.

However, you don’t HAVE to have dungeon armor. Nor do you HAVE to complete a map 100% or do fractals or anything else. You can play however you want to. The only thing that dictates what you do, are your own personal goals. And let’s face it, that’s what games are really about these days. Completing a specific goal to get a specific reward, and this is the same for all games, not just GW2. In fact, I’d say GW2 is a bit lenient in this regard because it often offers players multiple ways to achieve specific goals. For example, if you don’t want to do a dungeon to get a specific kind of armor, you can do PvP and get the same armor. Or, if you don’t want to do crafting to get a legendary, you can just save gold and buy one doing other content, etc.

The only people who would notice you doing the “walk of shame” are other people doing the same thing, which means they have nothing to scoff about. I can assure you that people doing events like Tequatl or temple events, etc, are far too busy focusing on the event itself and trying to find their cursor in a sea of special effects, to be bothered to notice anyone walking back to their general vicinity from a WP. And if they did notice you, they’re more likely to applaud you for WP-ing and coming back rather than lying around dead, as opposed to scorning you or thinking badly of you.

Lying around dead is much more shameful.

There are very few instances (like maybe two) where you need to do a JP to complete a map and typically those are very easy instances as well. If it’s really that hard for you, just ask a mesmer friend to help you and portal you up, it’s really not that hard.

The issue with arguing that some forms of content should be “optional” is that it then opens the door for a lot of other arguments. Someone could argue that doing hearts should be optional. Others will go as far as arguing that combat should be optional, and so on, so forth.

It’s just silly to ask for certain kinds of content to be removed or segregated from the main game simply because some individuals don’t like it. JP’s form a core part of the GW2 experience just like other features might form a core experience for another game. If you don’t like that core experience, perhaps this is not the right game for you.