The Guild Wars 2 Thread

[Castanova]

So can someone summarise this for me.

What I enjoyed about GW1 was the focus on skill based and not item based (you could buy top items from merchants for pennies).

Does GW1 stick to this, or has it gone full retard with weapons of doom that can only be farmed by Chinese bots.

You will be disappointed. In GW2, 5 of your 10 skills are determined by the type of weapon you're holding. And 2 of the remaining 5 slots can only be filled by a very small subset of potential skills. So, the skill-based character building revolves around picking a weapon skillset and then picking from a set of about 20-30 skills, of which you can only use 3 at a time.

 

[Angthoron]

So can someone summarise this for me.

What I enjoyed about GW1 was the focus on skill based and not item based (you could buy top items from merchants for pennies).

Does GW1 stick to this, or has it gone full retard with weapons of doom that can only be farmed by Chinese bots.

You will be disappointed. In GW2, 5 of your 10 skills are determined by the type of weapon you're holding. And 2 of the remaining 5 slots can only be filled by a very small subset of potential skills. So, the skill-based character building revolves around picking a weapon skillset and then picking from a set of about 20-30 skills, of which you can only use 3 at a time.

3? Aren't you forgetting Heal and Elite, which makes 5? Still isn't a flight simmer's dream, granted, but a good amount more than 3. Naturally Heal and Elite are situational but then again everything is.

 

[Castanova]

3? Aren't you forgetting Heal and Elite, which makes 5? Still isn't a flight simmer's dream, granted, but a good amount more than 3. Naturally Heal and Elite are situational but then again everything is.

I wouldn't count Heal as a choice. They all do basically the same thing with minor variation and it seems fairly obvious to me which one is the best for a given situation. Same to a less extent with Elite skills -- it's a high cooldown "special ability," not really a normal build choice. I had more interesting choices to make 45 minutes into Path of Exile than I have in the entire time I've played GW2.

 

[Angthoron]

3? Aren't you forgetting Heal and Elite, which makes 5? Still isn't a flight simmer's dream, granted, but a good amount more than 3. Naturally Heal and Elite are situational but then again everything is.

I wouldn't count Heal as a choice. They all do basically the same thing with minor variation and it seems fairly obvious to me which one is the best for a given situation. Same to a less extent with Elite skills -- it's a high cooldown "special ability," not really a normal build choice. I had more interesting choices to make 45 minutes into Path of Exile than I have in the entire time I've played GW2.

Oh, I don't know, having tried some switching in sPvP there's a decent amount of variation with elite skills at least, though some are certainly more viable than others, and there should've been more elite skills to choose from to begin with. Not sure about heals though, the default one "works", and I don't really need any switches for now, but once I get some points to spare, might see the actual difference for heals as well. But yeah, I see your point, long CD/no clear reason to switch is fair enough there.

 

[Castanova]

3? Aren't you forgetting Heal and Elite, which makes 5? Still isn't a flight simmer's dream, granted, but a good amount more than 3. Naturally Heal and Elite are situational but then again everything is.

I wouldn't count Heal as a choice. They all do basically the same thing with minor variation and it seems fairly obvious to me which one is the best for a given situation. Same to a less extent with Elite skills -- it's a high cooldown "special ability," not really a normal build choice. I had more interesting choices to make 45 minutes into Path of Exile than I have in the entire time I've played GW2.

Oh, I don't know, having tried some switching in sPvP there's a decent amount of variation with elite skills at least, though some are certainly more viable than others, and there should've been more elite skills to choose from to begin with. Not sure about heals though, the default one "works", and I don't really need any switches for now, but once I get some points to spare, might see the actual difference for heals as well. But yeah, I see your point, long CD/no clear reason to switch is fair enough there.

Yeah, I mean, there's certainly SOME character building going on. You have to choose traits, too. The choices just feel pretty shallow and uninspiring to me so far. I don't at all feel the urge to level up in order to build up my character, to get that one additional unlock. You unlock the most commonly used skills on your skill bar about 30 minutes into the game, or maybe 60 minutes if you count the time it takes to unlock the skills on all the different weapons. So, 30 minutes into the game, you already have 80% of your character. Then you spend the next 50+ hours unlocking the remaining 20%. Zzzzzz.

 

[Angthoron]

The 20% (not counting traits etc) do make a lot of difference later on, specially in WvW, as we saw yesterday when running into a guild of L80ies with our half-lowbie team. That's with all the upscaling at 80 business, too - the difference is clear, even though obviously you can beat their asses too. It does feel less compared to the skill numbers I've seen in GW1, but it's by no means pointless. Just depends if you feel it's worth it or not, I suppose.

Also, I just made an orange item out of combining greens at the Forge, so it's not ENTIRELY useless! A very good orange, too.

 

[Metro]

The more I read/hear about the character system the less this game appeals to me.

 

[Average Manatee]

The skill selection is absolutely horrific. About half the skills are useless, and a select few are actually worse than useless to use (since the passive effect is disabled when a skill is recharging). The worst thing by far though is the removal of secondaries. The game is now essentially Diablo 3 skill-wise except with a markedly less (though by no means small) amount of derp and an OTS camera.

The one potential hope the game had for further customization was the trait system. Unfortunately it's about the same case there. Maybe 2 traits out of 12 for a line will be useful to a particular build, the rest are either designed for an entirely different build or just plain useless. And it's always obvious which lines are meant for your build.


The whole thing feels far too sanitized gameplay-wise in favour of having AWESOME effects constantly. In GW1 the graphical presentation was muted in favour of having the AWESOME come out from what you could actually do with a build. In GW2 it's the other way around, everyone is intended to be equally powerful (i.e. just barely balanced vs. mobs) and the only reminder of how you are supposed to be AWESOME is through ridiculously overblown combat effects.

For example, you have Necromancers with the supposed ability to turn into an incarnation of death (from level 1 I might add)... which lets you output some decent but not fantastic AoE DPS. But with AWESOME effects everywhere as pulsating green jizz streams from everyone nearby. In GW1 you didn't need any fancy shit like that. Necros could simply raise a horde of minions and roll entire groups while the rest of your party just sat around making sure nothing killed you. The class itself worked like you expected it to and it was 100x more satisfying than anything the GW2 necromancer offers.

 

[DakaSha]

Keep in mind that character races change literally nothing as far as i can tell part from some shitty racial skills you cant even use in pvp lolool. This is so bad im hoping im wrong (please tel me if i am) but i cant seem to find anything stating otherwise. (not that ive looked very hard)

Still having fun despite al this retardedness though


edit: played a thief till level 18 with guns and thought class sucks.. now i go for daggers and class is fun as hell (relatively speaking)

 

[DakaSha]

Sovard and yes you can be in multiple guilds shithead

 

[Castanova]

Keep in mind that character races change literally nothing as far as i can tell part from some shitty racial skills you cant even use in pvp lolool. This is so bad im hoping im wrong (please tel me if i am) but i cant seem to find anything stating otherwise. (not that ive looked very hard)

You are not wrong.

 

[Metro]

My friend who has been playing endlessly basically told me the same thing. He laughed when I linked him that talent calculator explaining that the choices were largely meaningless/matter of taste and gear is the ultimate determination of skills/abilities. Honestly this game just sounds like a non-isometric Diablo.

 

[Average Manatee]

Honestly this game just sounds like a non-isometric Diablo.

Pretty much. I mean, there are some good skill synergies and the game does force you to pay attention to your build unlike Diablo. It's just incredibly simplistic and obvious because you have so little real choice beyond the unless you want to roleplay someone who dies a lot more. Also you can join 30 man parties if you enjoy being a bystander to an infinite light show of graphical effects. I supposed thats an advantage over D3.

edit: played a thief till level 18 with guns and thought class sucks.. now i go for daggers and class is fun as hell (relatively speaking)

Same, dualing daggers. Sword and gun on switch, but it's mostly to look cool.

 

[Condiments]

My friend who has been playing endlessly basically told me the same thing. He laughed when I linked him that talent calculator explaining that the choices were largely meaningless/matter of taste and gear is the ultimate determination of skills/abilities. Honestly this game just sounds like a non-isometric Diablo.

Yeah one of my biggest complaints with the game is certain weapon style combinations are essentially different playstyles, which determines what trait lines and utilities you'll be picking up. Like a dagger/dagger with shortbow thief might focus in condition damage with the use of leaping death blossom, and the poison field and bleeds with the shortbow. Most with daggers go power and trait themselves around heartseeking enemies to oblivion, which is effective in hot join PvP situations. I can surmise they've done these predetermined weapon slots so PvP balance isn't a nightmare, but it would be nice to see more options in the future.

Utility and trait choices actually matter quite a bit, especially if you're going to be running the "high difficulty" wings of dungeons, or going to be running tournament PvP(the meat of the game). Its there the lack of a trait and utility allotment in things like condition removal or stability will cost you games depending on team composition. I usually work between pistol/dagger+shortbow venom sharing condition build, and sword/pistol+shortbow precision with steal buffs and executioner traits depending on what my team needs.

 

[Mangoose]

So can someone summarise this for me.

What I enjoyed about GW1 was the focus on skill based and not item based (you could buy top items from merchants for pennies).

Does GW1 stick to this, or has it gone full retard with weapons of doom that can only be farmed by Chinese bots.

You will be disappointed. In GW2, 5 of your 10 skills are determined by the type of weapon you're holding. And 2 of the remaining 5 slots can only be filled by a very small subset of potential skills. So, the skill-based character building revolves around picking a weapon skillset and then picking from a set of about 20-30 skills, of which you can only use 3 at a time.

ITT all everyone cares about is deck building and who cares about anything else in the game.

Anyways, you are wrong, because Aron didn't ask about deck building. He asked about how much emphasis gear and items have on your effectiveness versus the natural strength of your skills and how well you play them. Not deck building.

Yes, obviously GW2 is not a good deck building game, especially not as GW1.

The one potential hope the game had for further customization was the trait system. Unfortunately it's about the same case there. Maybe 2 traits out of 12 for a line will be useful to a particular build, the rest are either designed for an entirely different build or just plain useless. And it's always obvious which lines are meant for your build.

LOL sure. In the mean time I'm constantly tweaking my trait build on my Mesmer for both PVP and PVE/WvW. How's about linking your own build and facing some criticism, huh?

For example, you have Necromancers with the supposed ability to turn into an incarnation of death (from level 1 I might add)... which lets you output some decent but not fantastic AoE DPS.

You do realize the point of that ability is survivability, not DPS, right?

Necros could simply raise a horde of minions and roll entire groups while the rest of your party just sat around making sure nothing killed you.

Who says you can't do this?

edit: played a thief till level 18 with guns and thought class sucks.. now i go for daggers and class is fun as hell (relatively speakin)

[Perception] So, you think a class sucks for 18 levels, but you didn't bother to unlock all of its weapon skills by level 5. Even though you know that there is a lack of deck building and that the weapon skills affect the gameplay style of your character.

Smart.

About half the skills are useless, and a select few are actually worse than useless to use (since the passive effect is disabled when a skill is recharging)

Yeah, no. Only if you play PVE and nothing else. Otherwise in PVP and WVW there is utility to a lot of skills.

Why don't you give examples instead of making baseless conclusions?

For example, you say Signets are shit because the passive effect is disabled during recharge. Let's look at my Signet of Domination... Passive improved condition damage, Active stun my foe. Oh man, the Active part is so useless - Why would I ever want to sacrifice my condition damage so that I could stun my PVP enemy so that he can't get away, or to stop him from finishing me off with a high damage ability? No man, I'd rather just leave my Signet on passive so that I can die in 2 seconds.

Yeah man Signets are total shit because the passive effect is disabled during recharge.

I wouldn't count Heal as a choice. They all do basically the same thing with minor variation and it seems fairly obvious to me which one is the best for a given situation

Mesmer Heal 1: High HP heal, added by the number of illusions I have out.
Mesmer Heal 2: Medium HP heal, and absorbs projectiles during its duration. Slightly lower recharge than (1).
Mesmer Heal 3: Instant low-medium HP heal, but I must "pre-charge" it for every 2 uses.

Yup, minor variation.

best for a given situation

And this means what in PVP?

Same to a less extent with Elite skills -- it's a high cooldown "special ability," not really a normal build choice.

It's still a choice, and the cooldown is low enough to use every 2-3 fights in structured PVP.

Mesmer Elite 1: Turn single enemy into a Moa bird.
Mesmer Elite 2: Turn your whole team invisible within 1200 range.
Mesmer Elite 3: Time warp field, speeding up your team and slowing the enemy team.

Nope not a choice with much effect at all.

 

[Mangoose]

Also,

In GW2, 10 of your 15 skills are determined by the type of weapons you're holding.

Fixed.

gear is the ultimate determination of skills/abilities.

Oh really?

It's the same in that aspect, max stats are capped

Also you can join 30 man parties if you enjoy being a bystander to an infinite light show of graphical effects. I supposed thats an advantage over D3.

Also, you can play in structured PvP or play in WvW.

Or are those disadvantages over D3?

Keep in mind that character races change literally nothing as far as i can tell part from some shitty racial skills you cant even use in pvp lolool. This is so bad im hoping im wrong (please tel me if i am) but i cant seem to find anything stating otherwise. (not that ive looked very hard)

Name another game where character races make a big difference.

You unlock the most commonly used skills on your skill bar about 30 minutes into the game

What kind of bullshit is this? Clearly there is a tier system in the slot skills, in that within the first 30 minutes you only have selection of the 1st tier of skills. Either (1) your class's skills suck, (2) somehow all your useful skills are bunched in T1, or (3) you are a dumbfuck. Because I definitely waited for some of my T2 skills and T3 skills, and I only "commonly use" one T1 skill. Given that T2 skills cost 3 points each and T3 skills cost 6 points each, surely I did not get all my commonly used skills in 30 minutes.

 

[Mangoose]

The more I read/hear about the character system the less this game appeals to me.

It's not the deck building game GW1 is. That's definitely true. If you want that and can't handle not having that, then you should move on, and there's nothing wrong with that.

It's also an open world MMO rather than designed for instanced teams.

Those are the two dealbreakers I can think of, IMO.

You get charged out the ass for equipment and for miscellaneous stuff like the trait books.

Weird. Actually I almost never buy equipment, at least with gold. I almost always either use new drops, or I buy from Karma merchants. The heart quest givers sell equipment for Karma after you finish their quest, BTW.

 

[Castanova]

You unlock the most commonly used skills on your skill bar about 30 minutes into the game

What kind of bullshit is this? Clearly there is a tier system in the slot skills, in that within the first 30 minutes you only have selection of the 1st tier of skills. Either (1) your class's skills suck, (2) somehow all your useful skills are bunched in T1, or (3) you are a dumbfuck. Because I definitely waited for some of my T2 skills and T3 skills, and I only "commonly use" one T1 skill. Given that T2 skills cost 3 points each and T3 skills cost 6 points each, surely I did not get all my commonly used skills in 30 minutes.

L2r foo. You unlock your weapon skills within 30 minute of starting the game. You start with a healing skill which is functionally similar to the other 2 healing options. 30 minutes in you've seen 60%, by count, of your character class. However, your weapon skills are the main thrust of your build. So, really, we're talking 80% of your character completed in the first 30 minutes. Are the rest of the 20% important? Sure. Is it fun to spend 50 hours unlocking 20% of your character? Nope.

 

[Average Manatee]

Mangoose, try not to slurp too much of the cum. You'll get some on your face.

LOL sure. In the mean time I'm constantly tweaking my trait build on my Mesmer for both PVP and PVE/WvW. How's about linking your own build and facing some criticism, huh?

You're joking, right? There are such great traits as "+50% damage while downed". The number of crappy traits in the game is amazing. If you need to "constantly tweak" your build, it's a good sign your build was designed by an idiot in the first place.

FWIW, Signet of Malice/Infiltrators/Signet of agility/roll for initiative + dual daggers build is what I'm running atm. Just spamming Death Blossom because it is overpowered and counts as an evade. Basically I get 6-7 uses of DB in a row, hitting up to 15 applications of the imba bleed at a time while buffed by as much as 15 might at a time, and since each DB evades I effectively get 11-12 dodges and 2 shadowsteps in a row before enemies can even think about damaging me. For shits and giggles I'll even have a 60% crit rate. Traits are Signet of Power and Thrill of the Crime because it's pretty damn obvious those are the only useful ones. It's almost funny to see me doing story missions where I solo groups of enemies 8-10 levels above me (due to some oversight normal damage gets reduced to nothing vs higher levels but bleed damage works fine).

I'm sure there are other builds I might use once the glass cannon approach fails, but that isn't the point. The point is that within a build concept the useful skill choices are painfully obvious and there is no reason to deviate from them.

You do realize the point of that ability is survivability, not DPS, right?

You do realize that I wasn't criticizing the point of the ability, I was criticizing the fact that every damn ability in GW2 makes the area light up like a christmas tree even when it does almost nothing, right?

Who says you can't do this?

...the game mechanics. Have you even looked at them? It is impossible to build a proper MM even approaching the versatility and damage output of a GW1 MM.

For example, you say Signets are shit because the passive effect is disabled during recharge. Let's look at my Signet of Domination... Passive improved condition damage, Active stun my foe. Oh man, the Active part is so useless - Why would I ever want to sacrifice my condition damage so that I could stun my PVP enemy so that he can't get away, or to stop him from finishing me off with a high damage ability? No man, I'd rather just leave my Signet on passive so that I can die in 2 seconds.

Do you not even read the words you quote? I said a select few were shit. If you want a concrete example, Assassin's Signet. Passive is +power. Active is +50% damage, for one attack. The benefit from +power is approximately +20-25% damage, so activating it drops your damage by 20% for an entire 45s in order to deal +20% damage (debuff is applied before buff) for one attack. Upon bringing this up in-game I got insulted for being a powergaming nerd, because apparently GW2 is designed by and for people who pick make builds and don't give a shit about anything other than LARPing while spamming skills they don't understand

Mesmer Heal 1: High HP heal, added by the number of illusions I have out.
Mesmer Heal 2: Medium HP heal, and absorbs projectiles during its duration. Slightly lower recharge than (1).
Mesmer Heal 3: Instant low-medium HP heal, but I must "pre-charge" it for every 2 uses.

Yup, minor variation.

Yes, that's pretty fucking minor variation. Good to agree with you on one thing.

And this means what in PVP?

Nothing, because GW2 PvP is a useless clusterfuck.

Name another game where character races make a big difference.

Funny enough, Race does make a big difference in PvP. Specifically, Asura are overpowered because they can't be seen half the time. It's almost like the developers know jack shit about balancing PvP.

 

[Condiments]

You're joking, right? There are such great traits as "+50% damage while downed". The number of crappy traits in the game is amazing. If you need to "constantly tweak" your build, it's a good sign your build was designed by an idiot in the first place.

FWIW, Signet of Malice/Infiltrators/Signet of agility/roll for initiative + dual daggers build is what I'm running atm. Just spamming Death Blossom because it is overpowered and counts as an evade. Basically I get 6-7 uses of DB in a row, hitting up to 15 applications of the imba bleed at a time while buffed by as much as 15 might at a time, and since each DB evades I effectively get 11-12 dodges and 2 shadowsteps in a row before enemies can even think about damaging me. For shits and giggles I'll even have a 60% crit rate. Traits are Signet of Power and Thrill of the Crime because it's pretty damn obvious those are the only useful ones. It's almost funny to see me doing story missions where I solo groups of enemies 8-10 levels above me (due to some oversight normal damage gets reduced to nothing vs higher levels but bleed damage works fine).

I'm sure there are other builds I might use once the glass cannon approach fails, but that isn't the point. The point is that within a build concept the useful skill choices are painfully obvious and there is no reason to deviate from them.

What you found sounds like a good farming build for PvE. Shortbow is just as good for that if not better, because you don't put yourself in physical range of enemies while laying down condition damage and AOE. You're getting to get stomped in harder dungeons and most PvP related situations with that build unless you trait for all initiative regen so you can keep LDB up.

 

[Mangoose]

Castanova. You'd rather take longer to unlock weapon skills, or is that a veiled reference to lack of deck building? If the former you can argue with Manatee over when stuff gets unlocked.

Manatee, pvp a clusterfuck? Oh okay. Yeah 5v5 tournaments are such a clusterfuck.

On the necro ability. I don't care about your point lol. I was making fun of you not even knowing the purpose of a class'a defining skill. Obviously means you have spent no time in structured pvp.

Heal variations being minor in structure pvp good one lol

LOL at complaints about race size. Go into game that had a small race and is surprised about that race's models are small in game. Ohhh boy. The hitboxes already are the same size. Cry more(

Wait, why is 20% more damage bad when you're trying to finish someone off in PVP?

 

[Mangoose]

I like how the majority of my rebuttals are not addressed lol

 

[Mangoose]

As far as reading carefully when you guys wrote ... Lol i don't because actually I like to skim around and just make fun of stupid comments and that's pretty much all I really don't care about

 

[DakaSha]

Seriously im enjoying the game but you sound like the fanboys in the D3 thread.


Ok that was harsh but you are getting close.

Name another game where character races make a big difference.

Horrible. On so many levels

 

[Black]

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/account/CHARACTERS-DELETED

ANet trying to one-up Blizzard, seems like they're doing a decent job at it
Also please notice the "no roll-backs" thing. Guess what other MMO doesn't have it? It starts with an S and ends with WTOR.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRooZqSgcAc