Guild Wars 2

ArenaNet needs to look back at Guild Wars 1 and realize what went astray.

Campaigns after Prophecies saw players reaching statistical caps very early on – it was the content that came after that really challenged players. As you progressed further, you often encountered enemies and mobs with higher stats than what normal players could reach, and it gave players an incentive to figure out what skills or strategies to employ (well, at least before PvXWiki became too prominent).

The point here is that anyone can try these content, but they challenge players equally without giving them statistical crutches. If you couldn’t complete late-game areas (see DoA in Nightfall as an example), you had no reason to complain that it was because your gears weren’t up to snuff – the “best” armors and weapons statistically were widely available early on. You had to adopt a different approach, or simply admit that you weren’t good enough.

In GW2, I was somewhat disappointed by the relative lack of difficulty in general PvE. Compared to GW1, the only explorable areas that felt remotely challenging was Orr, and I see everyone in the forums wanting to tone down Orr. Sigh.

ArenaNet should definitely add more challenging areas. These don’t have to be lv80 areas – you guys could even modify existing areas so players have a smoother difficulty curve. I know for many players, jumping into Orr was a pretty stark change – not unlike players in Factions jumping straight from Shing Jea into Vizunah Square.

But please, no statistical progression. ArenaNet already has prior experience designing non-gated content – they just need to look at their previous game to do it.

For those of you that play mostly other MMOs and very little action/shooter games, give this a shot. No outside modifications required!

1. Hold down the right mouse button at all times, unless you need to sift through menus/inventory. As long as the right mouse button is held down, the A and D keys will automatically become sidestep left/right instead of merely turning your character left/right.
2. Use WASD extensively, and sidestep/dodge whenever necessary. Always be on the move in combat (circle around enemies with A/D while facing them, for example), unless a skill requires you to stand still.
3. Disable double-tap to dodge and bind the dodge button to Left Shift (or another key that’s within reach while keeping your left hand on WASD). You can still dodge in various directions via WASD + Dodge key.

Now most of these may feel like common knowledge, since GW2 has been advertised to have a more active combat system. To my surprise, judging from people I have spoken to, both ingame and with RL friends, it seems that many people don’t take enough advantage of this, so I’m just posting this as a PSA.

One thing is for sure, though – Elementalist (and probably a few other classes like Engineer) almost plays like a different profession once you treat the game as an action game.

Thoughts?

greg.3792:

So I would be happy doing a long quest that covers this world and which forces participation in groups if it…

a) Gave me a mount for WvW because I hate running around that place.
b) Gave me a skill slot so I can introduce more variety into my attack routines..
c) Gave me access to PvP potions that I can use in WvW.
d) Gave me a new trait line.
e) Gave me links to the hottest GW2 girls on facebook.

what would you grind for?

None of these. Instead:

- Have more visible attack animations for all enemies (not just Ettins)
- Increase natural endurance regeneration rate a bit
- Add a key so we can manually block for the same amount of time that a dodge roll animation would take. This will use up 1.5x more endurance than a dodge roll.
- Reintroduce the secondary profession mechanic from GW1, except limit the skills of your secondary profession to only support skills. Make the acquisition of these skills to be obtainable by skill capping only, and the devs may wish to limit the secondary support skill pool for balancing reasons if needed. This gives players another incentive to explore – to capture more skills.
- Eliminate waypoint fees for areas where you achieved 100% completion. This will make veterans more likely to check out older areas on a whim.
- Add more DE chains across all world maps.

My two cents.

cargan.5689:

Reciprocity.8021:

I’ve played every MMO since Meridian 59 and MUDs for years before that and never ever had this must frustration and lack of fun as this game right now. Just seems like I’m missing something here.

I know the feeling a little and in part i think it is from being too experienced.
Played eq eq2 Aion Rift even a bit of the game that shall not be named hey i know how things work.

Seconded. If you keep thinking of GW2 as an MMORPG of the traditional sort, you’ll be easily frustrated with this game. If you think of this game as an action game instead, you’d already have improved just by switching your mindset. I currently play an elementalist as well and whether I roll dagger/dagger or staff, survivability was never a huge problem.

Hold down the right mouse button and actively use WASD to sidestep. Disable double-tap to dodge and bind the dodge key to your Left Shift button. Dodge when necessary. If you’re playing Staff, when aiming your AoE spells, anticipate where enemies will travel rather than where they currently are standing at (if you’re being chased).

Be aware of your surroundings. The last thing you’d want to happen while kiting mobs is to get cornered against a wall or worse, by a cliff. The goal is to mitigate damage by avoiding yourself from being hit, not to stand still and rely solely on your Water attunement to heal 24/7. Sometimes dodging forward (and right past the mob you’re facing) is a wise move.

If you haven’t played a whole lot of action games, you’ll have to readjust your mindset (and reflexes too), especially for a class like elementalist, where the learning curve is somewhat high.

Personally I’ve been a fan of Glyphic weapon skins in general – hammer isn’t too shabby and I use the skin too.

Moreover, Glyphic weapons are dirt cheap on the TP if you want to just use them as skin material for transmutations

As someone who played mostly first-person shooters and other action games (I can count the number of MMORPGs I played with one hand) before starting GW2, it’s in my opinion that an endgame isn’t necessary for a skill-based game, and I don’t see GW2 as an MMORPG in the traditional sense. Character progression does exist and yes, it does reach a cap early on, but only in a statistical sense. What I see is another side of character development – and that character is you. You, as a player, after learning about your favorite profession, mix and match skills and traits and learn to play better by timing dodges and chaining skills your own way. This is most felt in PvP but is also apparent in PvE to a limited extent. I feel that this ultimately gives players a better sense of progression because over time, you will actually realize that you, and not just your character, has improved.

I realize that it’s probably the total opposite of what the MMO grinders are accustomed to, but I personally never felt a sense of achievement from simply padding on gears with better stats because in the back of my head, I know that it’s an artificial limit imposed by the game developers and that, ultimately, your “progression” never stays with you – some months later, new gears would have been released and I would feel like I wasted my time grinding gears because I’ll have to do it all over again, and that nothing truly stayed with me.

Not so with a skill-based game; when you learn to ride a bike, you won’t forget. The same logic applies here – once you mastered the timing of dodging, you’ll always know when to dodge, as if by instinct. That skill can never be taken away from you. You made a commitment to invest time to improve that skill set and it’ll always be useful in GW2 because dodging is a major part of the game. The same goes for jumping puzzles; it may feel daunting at first, but as you learn the little nuances in the game (for example, you can slightly change your direction while mid-air during a jump), you start to incorporate them into your skill-set and in this way, you grow as a player.

That said… there is one thing I would like to see changed in this game: lower or eliminate the waypoint teleporting cost. This is important because it encourages players to re-explore areas that they previously have discovered. In GW1, fast-traveling between towns and outposts were free and I was more inclined to visit older areas. But this is more important for GW2 because without the teleporting cost in the way, there’s nothing to stop the older players from accessing the lower-level areas on a whim and it’ll recreate the magic that GW2 was during the first few weeks of release, where every area felt more packed instead of having all the lv80s crammed into Cursed Shore – and on that note, perhaps a distribution of resources amongst all the maps would be ideal as well, to encourage the vets to rediscover older areas. This will truly make every area feel like “endgame” area as most of you would put it.

Guild Wars 2 has a built-in frame rate limiter, use it!

It mostly comes down to being at the right place at the right time, especially if you’re alone and relying solely on the zerg and whatnot. Speaking from having 100% completion by relying mostly on just the zerg and not transferring servers, I suggest finishing your own Borderlands and your server’s corners of the Eternal Battlegrounds first, as those should be the most accessible (“home turf” if you will). This is so that even if your server doesn’t do well enough, you have at least your home areas explored and come next rotation, your home turf will automatically become one of the other Borderlands/corner of EB.

Next, if your server controls Stonemist, definitely grab that! I would concentrate on prioritizing Eternal Battlegrounds over enemy Borderlands until rotation. That way, you’ll eventually get everything regardless – if your server does well overall, getting Stonemist and everything else will be easy, and if your server does badly, it’ll eventually be dropped into brackets low enough so that you’ll face weaker servers, which will lead to your server getting everything else.

IV Endu.8920:

Some of you may suggest using Judge’s Intervention but why do we have to waste a utility slot just to land a Weapon Skill? I’d rather not.

Ah, but Hammer 3 is a snare with 1200 range and it isn’t on a utility slot. Yes it’s 2 seconds, but more often than not, it’s enough time to catch up.

Long-time reader, recent poster here.

I started with the old crithammer thread and it’s great that you made a new thread about it. Thanks Brutaly! Very informative despite the fact that you’re not a native speaker. This deserve to be stickied.

I started with the 15/30/20/5 build with Knights armor and Berserker weapons and trinkets after hitting 80, and I started deviating from there… tried out a bunch of combinations involving mixing gears and trying out the 5/30/30/5 builds, but I still found 15/30/20/5 to have the best balance – not just between the offensive and supportive playstyles, but between PvE and WvW as well. I run a small personal guild with friends and I help them plow through general PvE content, and Renewed Justice is just too good to pass up. It’s also not too shabby in WvW in some group settings. So if you’re just getting started with the hammer, you can’t go wrong with starting at 15/30/20/5 and continue deviating from there

Also, thanks for the gif and video showing the animation cancelling. I’ve got the dodging part down but the animation cancelling needs more work. Once again, great guide.