Story mission skills.

I'm so utterly sick of story missions taking away your attack skills for a ham hock version of attacks. It's not fun being a ranged class forced to fight in close combat where you take tons of damage. The Balthazaar machine just kills you over and over, it's not fun, it's not interesting, and being forced into close combat fighting when everything around is ranged its just infuriating. Add to that all of your attacks lack conditions where your class and gear is designed around boosting them. Can you please offer us more options at least? A choice of ranged vs close combat would work, though the condition nerf is frustrating. That last fight with Balthazaar is a mess. It's noting but AOE and knockdown spam. Also fights where you're constantly dying aren't fun.... They just aren't.

You can swap weapon...

Yeah, none of the story instances FORCED you away from your skills. You could swap to personal skills in the Awakened mission, and you could drop Sohothin in the last mission anytime you wanted. There's even an achievement for not using it.

Im always a little uncomfortable when Anet makes me use something im not familiar with knocking me out of my comfort zone ... but thats part of the excitement of the story as Sohothin has a history. I used it , and I also swapped it out for my skills .... its about balance ^.^

For the PoF missions, you can use your weapons as much as you want. The only reason you'd possibly be REQUIRED to not use your own weapons is if you're going for one of the achievements that asks you to do that. Otherwise, you can just opt out of using the story-given items. I do appreciate that we have that option; I honestly hated having to use Caithe's skills in the Season 2 episodes where we played as her.

A lot of older missions have alternate ways to fight. Arrow carts for those who can't handle melee, tons of allies so you can focus on healing them as they slow chip away at the enemies, etc. It also made those less boring to replay, since you could always try some other way to fight.

But these recent ones are too linear, it feels like I'm playing a bullet hell game. They're all pretty much the same: learn the attack patterns, then hope that your reactions are good enough to keep dodging (or ccing) for several minutes (because these mobs have way too much hp). Tedious.

For clarity the last story mission you're forced to use the sword. There is no back out option. Believe me I looked, yes many of the other's were that way but not the last one.

@Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921 said:For clarity the last story mission you're forced to use the sword. There is no back out option. Believe me I looked, yes many of the other's were that way but not the last one.

You didn't look hard enough. There is a button to drop the sword then another button to pick it back up again. You can swap back and froth from using your own skills and Sohothin's skills. You are not forced to use the sword.

@SevenBitBrian.8413 said:

@Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921 said:For clarity the last story mission you're forced to use the sword. There is no back out option. Believe me I looked, yes many of the other's were that way but not the last one.

Yea, I kept getting kicked to MY skills during that fight when I wanted to ONLY use Sohothin. I don't know if it's because I kept accidentally hitting the = button (I've got a mouse with the numbers 1-12 on it and button 12 is the = key) or because it kept bugging out on me, though.

@Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921 said:For clarity the last story mission you're forced to use the sword. There is no back out option. Believe me I looked, yes many of the other's were that way but not the last one.

Unless your instance was somehow bugged, it was definitely there. I'm pretty sure it was the special action key, right above your bar.

Edit: Just went back into the instance to check, and you can definitely switch back to your old weapons. Sohothin acts as a bundle; just press your Drop Bundle hotkey or click on the Drop Bundle arrow to switch to your normal weapons. You switch back to Sohothin with the special action key.

@Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921 said:The Balthazaar machine just kills you over and over

I'm assuming you stood underneath it and tried to attack inside of its hitbox. Otherwise it shouldn't have been killing over that many times...

But yeah, I learned the hard way after a bit of taking damage and wondering wtf was going on...turns out the thing drops down on you and deals absolutely massive damage if you stand underneath it.