Swagg.9236

Not that I didn't read the rest of your post, but I think this is sort of the crux of everything, and it's a very good question. My answer for it would be something that allows a player to be creative about how they affect the field and negotiate hazards on the field; specifically with regards to GW2: high mobility with a lot of freedom in direction (i.e. mount movement) and single-hit, free-aim attacks on low cooldowns with legible wind-ups and no built-in damage-negation (i.e. lots of attacks like Mighty Blow, Savage Leap, Swoop (no evasion), Phase Smash (no evasion), Arcing Shot (if it had a 1s cast and a minimum range of 200 units), basically all of the Elementalist staff one-hit skills, etc). Basically, following a paradigm evident in games like Dark Souls: lots of hard-hitting attacks that players can technically spam, however taking actions will naturally put any player at a risk by committing them to a fixed cast animation and possible travel time. In this paradigm, counterattacks aren't instantaneous, zero-input garbage like Illusionary Counter but rather just timing an opportunistic attack during an opponent's actions or miscalculation; risk-calculation, reads and prediction become a big aspect of combat rather than just how much of one's build insulates the user from damage while firing off attacks. Add a lot of individual movement into this, and you have a strong foundation for baseline combat that can be further enhanced by unique effects and methods of control. The only real item left hanging with this sort of combat paradigm shift is the fact that GW2 combat terrain was designed like we're playing Diablo lmao. Combat in GW2, no matter how much you think verticality matters, really does play out almost like an isometric design. Just because teleports can blink people through terrain or the bottoms of bridges doesn't mean that the game truly allows freedom of movement (or that baseline movement matters that much); if anything, GW2's crippling dependence on scripted movement (leaps, slides, and especially teleports) only demonstrates how limited WASD's impact is on this game's combat. That said, if one were to redesign GW2 to be a fast, read-heavy game with a high freedom and creativity of movement, it'd almost need to entirely change how levels would be designed (particularly in PvP because they're so horribly flat and cramped in most cases). Also, I agree with your wishes to return to GW1. Complete freedom to make individual builds that amounted to trash or a monstrosity was what defined that game not only on a creative level but also on the scale of full teams of various sizes. In fact, that limited choice and strict design philosophy filled with various drawbacks and pitfalls was what made team coordination and build synergy so vital in that game. GW2 abandoned all of that to just make everyone run basically the same playstyle: mash buttons during fixed periods of low risk to the user.

Bro, you can play scepter ele with a steering wheel. It's somehow even less interactive than sword/X weaver, and that build is straight up just baby rotations.

This game could have easily gotten away with 4 skills on the weapon bar; and every weapon bar could have been actually good instead of just relegating 70% of the options to a burning trash pile. You could have given all weapons generic, slower, low-power autoattacks (incentivizes game design toward more high-impact, low-CD active skills and generating unique ways to provide damage support instead of falling back on automated spam to finish PvP encounters or carry DPS between burst intervals). With less weight on weapon choice as the means of "forging a playstyle" (which, in GW2, is akin to just pressing the buttons off cooldown), roles and playstyles could come from an expanded utility bar. It's easy to adjust damage values, and GW2 design isn't much more complicated than a numbers-game; so even if you removed a bunch of pure-damage skills from the game (or relocated some of them to the utility bar pool), it'd be easy to make up for the loss by adding appropriate impact to whatever skills were deemed valuable enough to stay by means of lower CDs, more damage, and stronger on-field effects. The main way to balance a refocus of impact into fewer, more focused skill sets would be to remove any sort of risk-insulation which saturates the current GW2 metagame: evasion or block periods that are tied to attacks or allow users to take free actions during their durations, protracted damage negation (i.e. Block attacks for X seconds), teleports tied to attacks, ranged attacks without projectiles or appropriate delays, and no attacks which flow from damage negation into instant, auto-targeted retaliation (i.e. Illusionary Counter, Riposte, etc). If you're going to attack, your attack is going to put you at risk; however, if it connects, it's going to definitely impact the overall game-state. This shifts the current GW2 metagame of stacking risk-insulation effects so one can just act with impunity during protracted periods of time toward one of legitimately reading opponents and timing strikes. On top of all of this, and in order to prevent certain weapons from just being consistently sub-optimal in certain regards, it'd be more than possible to make sure that each weapon set featured at least two of the few features that most players seek in a "good" GW2 weapon: CC/area control, mobility, support (healing, condition removal, damage negation) and/or a high-damage/big threat attack. Under this formula, it'd be possible to design weapon sets which not only establish distinct roles, but at least allow the weapon-swap mechanic to allow a player to cover certain sets' weaknesses (i.e. "equip a high damage set with no mobility but have a mobility skill on tap with the other weapon set"). The game would also benefit from mobility options being generally very powerful rather than hindered by long cooldowns; without being necessarily tied to game-ending attacks or free damage negation, mobility skills in GW2 could be free to be consistently super strong utility options and a potential source of combo generation (i.e. imagine multiple classes getting low-CD Ride the Lightning or Infiltrator Arrow variants with unique support gimmicks; or even more interesting movement mechanics entirely like those seen on the raptor, springer, jackal or griffin mounts). On top of this, it's more than possible to re-balance elite skills into effects which don't necessarily have to completely warp any active game-states with the press of a button (i.e. a comprehensive "elite skill" design paradigm that mimics the Mirage's [Jaunt]; it's not like the world is cripplingly dependent on "whenever you activate an elite skill" procs anyway) such that elites could be folded into the utility skill pool rather than remain as their own specific skill bar slot. In effect, if you wanted a GW2 weapon bar that is conducive to a PvP experience based on player intuition, creativity, reads and timing: Slot 1: [Generic, low-impact autoattack based on main-hand weapon; no combo effects allowed; no conditions allowed] Slot 2: [High-damage, low-CD, multi-ammo wind-up attack] - based on main-hand weapon Slot 3: Choose one: [Mobility / Support / Damage Negation / Lethal Damage] - Thief Dual Wield gimmick generates skills based on weapon set Slot 4: Choose one: [Mobility / Support / Damage Negation / Lethal Damage / Area Control / Hard, Free-Aim CC] - based on off-hand weapon Slot 5: [Healing Skill] Slots 6 - 10: [Utility Skills] More creativity for build-making in general, but more importantly, the way skills are used determine how the game resolves more so than the current metagame (which is far more about which builds show up to the field rather the potential finesse behind how any individual player necessarily operates one).

Bro, full-power dagger/warhorn tempest is so braindead. It's all I use lately since staff ele, despite actually requiring more than 12 brain cells to use, is just not cut out to compete with most of this game's garbage right now. There is almost no bad time to use Burning Speed into anything. You evade and force every sort of panic CD under the sun if you don't outright kill anything (since it's constantly critting for 5-7k).

Just because something isn't effortlessly free doesn't mean it's bad. It's not like GW2 isn't already incredibly straightforward to play; why nit-pick about the little leftover quirks? I understand that I'm not addressing your "point" directly; you don't even really have a point anyway--you're just complaining about a skill not being as fire-and-forget as basically every other skill that sees use in GW2. So what?

lmao, yeah RIP Edit: As a note, full-glass power staff ele is not exactly a complete loss in sPvP, but the problem is that it requires a lot more team support and coordination than any other mainstream meta build in GW2. If anything, staff ele's extremely high damage potential and area control properties often falling short outside of certain comp set-ups just shows how shallow GW2's PvP is fundamentally: the build, while certainly capable of yielding results on its own, sees ridiculously strong results particularly when favored by matchmaking RNG.

Wildstar Esper did it better. Their builder system was also WAY less jank than this one.

The issue with just throwing a bunch of free boon removal everywhere in response to the fact that boons have traditionally been out of control in GW2 is akin to taking melatonin to sleep (but you're also drinking 7 energy drinks a day and well into the night). How about you just cut out the garbage from your diet and then you don't need the medication to counter the results of your bad habit? Just reduce free boons.

Putting a fixed, 0.75s-long, damage negation period on a scripted movement that also deals a large AoE which can crit in the 5-6k range is what's really god awful about Burning Speed.

The elitism in GW2 spawned from the fact that the game is very shallow and homogenous at a fundamental level. The moment that the PvP community's delusion of "high level competition" was acknowledged with a couple of pity seasons in ESL, the few people who managed to scratch out a meager shred of renown from the experience clutched to it like Gollum to the One Ring. If you really set things level with reality, GW2 never had a PvP future going for it: it never provided any outlets for community contributions or customization, there was never any consistent development for new features or gamemodes, and the baseline game itself is just too darn simple. The worst attitudes in GW2 aren't necessarily out of spite or meanness; they're just the results of people trapped in the mirage of a "competitive, high-skill GW2 PvP experience," when in reality, there never was anything like that in the first place. It really is a case of "don't hate the player; hate the game." GW2 is too easy to play; the skill ceiling is super low, but unfortunately, accessing the base level of that skill floor is still difficult only because of how obtuse and esoteric everything about GW2 PvP is. GW2 is painfully easy to play, but to get to the point at which one can even play it at all, it's just this terrible drudgery of wading through skill text and passive effects until one realizes that the best build for any class is the same exact one: be passive; be reactive; stack up protracted damage/effect negation that can tick while you teleport to your target or attack with impunity. GW2 isn't hard to play, but it tries to pretend it is by making it awkward to read anything that's happening on the screen unless you dissect all of the passive/instant garbage ticking constantly during any given frame of combat. The people who have a bad attitude are desperate to hold up that façade, since it's the only thing keeping their egos intact.

Like I've said a million times for everything else about this game: every class in GW2 has too many weapons (even Ele and Engineer at this point). It would make far more sense to just make one or two good weapons with a lot of flexibility and movement directed toward a particular role rather than have a big pile of throwaway bloat exist in shambles like it does now.

Trap utilities would be so gross lmao

So at some point, I came back to make conversation here and found that some random update to this site must have broken the formatting for my entire post (and probably others but whatever). Fixed it and also just changed a few things because I'm bored. Staff ele is still probably one of the most fun ways to play this game (by a longshot), so I just wish it were a tiny bit more fluid and fearsome in PvP without completely wrecking what makes it somewhat skillful.

Yeah, they went way too hard on policing what they thought was their perfect image of the game that they had made, and instead of adding any long-term, replayable content, they just went on anti-fun patrol for the first couple of years; randomly adding invisible walls or removing consumable items from use in certain places. I think this is the problem with MMORPG development in general (at the very least, it's a terrible and pervasive mentality at anet): developer perceptions are far too rigid, and nothing is spared when it comes to bringing things into line with the "right way" to play "their game." For instance, if anet had developed Quake, we would probably never have had rocket jumping. The only reason rocket jumping ever existed in the first place was because ID developers found it while playing around with the raw pieces of their engine and assets; and at that early point in development, they decided to incorporate that unintended effect into their baseline gameplay. The way GW2 turned out over its lifespan is a testament to Anet's development style: they clearly never do a lot of in-depth play or experimentation with their engine and assets in a way which brings their potential to the surface. They are far more concerned with superficial appearance and flavor rather than innovative gameplay. That's why not only did anet have a whole bunch of "bugs" that players found and started using after the game launched (since anet devs never play their own game enough to know that these things exist at all), but they went on an retroactive crusade against them; plucking them out of the engine one-by-one with haphazard updates whenever players would start using them consistently.

Yeah, over GW2's lifetime, anet has continuously removed or crippled any sort of movement or z-axis related tech in the game. Whether it be more complicated changes like adjusting engine-level values to make strafing in mid-air functionally impossible to simple things like removing player ability to use certain moves in mid-air (no more bungee-jump Necromancers--WHICH WAS SUPER UNIQUE--or using Ride the Lightning mid-air to boost travel distance on the fly). Movement is probably the best way for players to express themselves in a game, and anet has been solidly committed to stripping away that expression and creativity whenever it gets a little too salient. At this point, any sort of cool WASD tech or movement is trapped exclusively within PvE-only gimmicks. It makes PvP into what it is today: hopelessly addicted to builds with built-in scripts that move avatars at the press of a button rather than anybody having to do any manual inputs for split-second jukes or jumps.

Yes, but GW2 caters to players in a way that makes all of those interactions artificial (often protracted far longer than they would normally be). There is no extra layer of instant/passive triggers or buttons in a soldier bomb: either you surf the damage, you scare him away, or you kill the guy after he lands (or you die). If TF2 played like GW2, the party getting bombed would just stand still and press a button to absorb the first 2-3 rockets before the soldier felt like either pressing his own special button to instant reload 4 more rockets or maybe just rocket jump away for free while negating all incoming damage (in the end, the game state wouldn't really change much--which kind of calls into question why anybody did anything at all). That's GW2's issue: it's super passive and reactive; everyone is waiting for other people to make a move half of the time, and those who make moves generally only do so because they know that they can get away with whatever they're about to try without dying.

Soldier doesn't magically press a button to double his HP. Nobody in GW2 will attack if they know that they're going to outright die. That's the difference. TF2 features fast-paced sacrifice plays for higher value targets. In GW2, everyone is basically the same value since combat and movement are so generic and homogenized. GW2 may feature focused attacks on certain targets, but combat is always artificially lengthened by instant/passive defenses and protracted damage negation or instantaneous health generation. In TF2, a fully-buffed enemy team can be brought low by a single soldier bomb in exchange for that soldier's life; in GW2, nobody is going to do much alone to anybody in a quick amount of time because everybody in PvP plays with built-in or instant defenses that outright negate opponent inputs. To be frank, most soldier bombs are sacrifice plays. To willingly go super far away from a medic and directly into the heart of an enemy team (even if you got a buff prior to leaving) is knowing that it's a one-way trip. GW2 is always obsessed with get-out-of-jail-free buttons whenever bad things happen (or just artificially prolonging combat by making one's own HP bar freeze in place or go up instantly). And you kind of need to be in the latter mindset with GW2 because movement is so worthless in PvP. If you don't have a button to make all damage on you just turn to 0 or just to teleport/walk out of a bad situation, you're going to die (since WASD doesn't consistently do anything of high value in GW2 PvP).

GW2 functions perfectly fine without--what is it--like, 10 random traits that are just annoying, passive procs?? Even if they were re-worked, what would you have them be? Traits--since they're already the most passive aspect of a build by nature--won't fix the main issue discussed in this thread. The game already has loads of "good" builds that function fine without those traits. That means that they were bloat to begin with. Better off focusing someplace else worthwhile.

I actually really enjoy games, which is why it's so sad to see this one wasted like it is. Also, I ended up reading over the "not even from GW2" part, so I'm sorry about that. If you give me that parameter, I'd probably just skip straight to Team Fortress 2. That's a game in which gamesense, coordination and timing are the key to set up victory, but when it comes down to execution, there is a lot of individual playmaking and improvisation. However, at the same time, it's very possible to go into a game with some kind of "meme loadout" but still manage to carry or rack up a pile of bodies throughout a match (even in competitive pugs with examples like Sticky Jumper rollouts). TF2 is a game with simple, defined roles and weapon kits for its classes, and yet it features a skill ceiling high enough to allow individual player expression to shine. As for a single example, it could be as basic as a soldier doing a bomb. Soldier has to jump up really high or go really fast toward a target. In doing so, he consumes health (or wears gunboats which denies him a secondary weapon--strong tradeoff rather than a direct upgrade like most things are in GW2), which means he either needs cooperation with a medic or just runs in knowing that he'll have less health to spend taking hits while trying to get a kill. While in mid-air--if spotted--that's the big interaction: if somebody sees a bombing soldier, a whole bunch of things can start happening independent of each other: - Enemies on the ground can start shooting the soldier - Soldier in the air can start air-strafing to avoid fire or just to break off the bomb - Potential, vulnerable enemies on the ground can look up and get ready to time a jump when the soldier attacks in order to surf a rocket explosion It instantly and naturally creates this whole scenario without worrying about cooldowns or class match-ups: everybody has something to do regardless of their class, and surprises can happen all the time--from air-shots to big surfs to some random dude walking out of nowhere to finish the soldier unexpectedly right before he gets off the final rocket to kill something of high value. However, the factor that determines all of this beyond just the lack of cooldowns is that these actions are telegraphed to a degree and in-game movement can provide an out or advantage in most any situation because of that timeframe. Basically, what it comes down to is the relationship between attacks and player movement speed. If a player can reliably use WASD to avoid incoming damage by just syncing up prediction with inputs, then the game provides a lot of room for player creativity to blossom. GW2's problem is that most damage comes instantly, features tie-in teleports, pulses in AoEs the size of objective nodes, and often flies out of players that flicker between invulnerable and out of reach. There needs to be a risk when attacking; none of this "teleport to target" or "evade/block while moving/attacking" garbage. GW2 insulates players from risk and basically neuters movement to a cosmetic gimmick in PvP. Nobody uses WASD to avoid damage or get from point A to B quickly; that's why Thief is a side-noder/roamer and not core mesmer: it's not about how good you are at moving; it's about how many teleports and scripted movement skills your class gets. Player creativity and skill in GW2 is trapped in a straightjacket sewn from scripted movement and built-in, passive damage negation on skills that otherwise would be risky to attempt.

Yeah, that's actually the hilarious thing about GW2, since there are no universal resource mechanics (and even the resource mechanics that do exist don't really promote any creative use of the skills they fuel) and all of the active abilities (along with most of the passive ones too) are all governed exclusively by cooldowns (because there are very, very few abilities in GW2 which actually take long enough to cast or put their caster in any sort of danger that they would warrant careful consideration of positioning and timing when activating), that most GW2 PvP interactions are binary and flow-chart in nature. In PvP specifically, as I've already mentioned (and maybe you just didn't feel like recognizing or reading it), the issue comes down to the minimap basically giving away all relevant information that would otherwise have to be manually collected by players via team communication and gamesense. Since each class or specialization generally only features one (MAYBE two) prominent/viable builds, the GW2 metagame has historically been very, very stale and homogenous: combat generally trends toward the same paradigms, and all of the classes basically follow the same rules of engagement; the only things that have traditionally tipped the metagame have been patch notes. In that light, because of the nature of GW2 PvP combat (propagated by how effectively all of its mainstream builds employ, instant or rapid-cast abilities that often pulse, leave residual effects on the field, simultaneously shield the user from incoming effects while attacking/healing, or feature effects which just follow players around automatically), combat engagements often come down to knowing one's best match-ups rather than just taking someone by surprise or being extra aggressive (OR EVEN JUST AIMING since everything is aimed for you in this game). There is no reason to press advantages because GW2 PvP is very cyclical: driven by cooldowns rather than engine-based movement, player prediction or mechanical skill, most combat is a waiting game: - Is this a good match up for me? Yes. -> Get into range / No. -> Run away/wait for ally - If yes, are my best cooldowns up? Yes. -> Engage / No. -> Literally just stand around like a clod (or go to an empty point that isn't my team color) until I can press my buttons again. People complain about GW2 PvP matchups being "bad' because team comps are often comprised of "disparate skill levels," but it's more about the team compositions. If people are just playing what they enjoy playing most, you are going to effectively create an RNG effect in GW2 PvP modes: the game is binary in nature and the choices are driven by build match-ups rather than player expression. I really just wanted to discuss auras being bland and boring, but you've forced me to dig down into the crux of GW2's design flaws: there is no player expression because every effect which defines "good GW2 PvP" is very passive and reactive in nature. You want to play the quick-time minigame and feel good about succeeding. You don't actually want to try to win. You'd rather have your abilities carry you with little effort. Otherwise, you'd probably not be asking me to find an example of a creativity-driven interaction in GW2 PvP and instead just present one yourself.

All the "urgent things" that people want changed in GW2 PvP ultimately just perpetuate the same cycle of boring interactions that rule your dying gamemode. You never get more than number adjustments most days, and yet everybody always seems so obsessed or satisfied with doing no more than that. You're convinced that the solution to making GW2 PvP into an engaging, creative experience is just to subtract a second here, add 2 seconds there, throw on some passive damage negation here, give that guy slightly less effective HP. You'll never see a viable competitive PvP scene with that sort of trash management. You aren't changing lanes at all, you're just varying the speed on the same old, gravel road.

While you're not wrong that blocks and stealth are also super boring mechanics which typically deny combat interaction, this thread isn't about making any class "better" for the purpose of any particular matchup; it's about discussing how GW2 is fundamentally a very passive game because of how its combat is so littered with effects that have no consistent interactions. If anything, along with auras, it'd be better to see a big culling of protracted damage negation effects (i.e. blocks, invuln, evasion, ticking/passive blindness and stealth) across the whole board.

Things like Lava Font and Meteor Shower are definintely passive in nature after their casts resolve, but the respective differences between these two cases and auras (or personal buffs in general) is that Meteor Shower requires a legitimate time investment in order to deliver a worthwhile payout (far longer casting time than anybody else has to field, rooted casting and no free evasion period) and both of these things are also fixed AoEs; they don't travel around with a target like ranged attacks (or personal buffs with their users). Players can use WASD to avoid hits from them. Passive player buffs are often instantaneous and follow the user around, often reducing counterplay to a boring binary decision between "pile on more damage" or "stop attacking that guy." Maul does feature an extremely passive effect. The hit already went through, however, it just generates an extra hit (no user aim, timing or investment required) after the first one connects. Stability is perhaps one of the worst boons for GW2, yes. Being able to passively negate opponent effort or set-up with an (often instantly applied) buff is very destructive for dynamic PvP interaction. If it boils all possibilities down to binary choices, then it's not good. That's what stability does; turns combat into a flow chart: - Target has stability? -> Can't use [all these moves]; possibly just time to run away. - Target has no stability -> Spam CC while also layering on damage for easy wins. Honestly, GW2 PvP is already a console quick-time event. All you do is run around, watching a minimap that gives you all the information you will ever need; hunting for the easiest fight or interaction possible and then, once you find it, you literally just sit still while a point ticks into a different color or you spam everything on a vulnerable target (that's probably already fighting somebody else). GW2's skill ceiling is INCREDIBLY LOW because it's combat is so homogenized and shallow. If you want your game to evolve past a glorified quick-time event, then you'd rather have less passive, player buffs and more risk/investment for every attack.

You used to be able to do a weird sort of bunny-hop for momentum boosting way back during the early game betas. Anet removed it because it could cause desyncing with bad connections, but the way that they did it basically made it way more sluggish to wiggle around in mid-air, and it also made you fall a lot faster than the game's earlier builds. Consequentially, it also radically increased fall damage and led to weird instances where going down (certain kinds of) staircases too quickly could outright kill you from fall damage.

You guys don't even use 80% of this game's available choices because they're all just bad compared to the leftover 20% of homogenous, low-effort, passive spam which comprises basically every "good" build in GW2. You don't actually know what you want, and your adamant defense of this game's suffocating amount of worthless bloat is testament to that. I don't care if I really enjoyed playing Dervish, Ranger, Mesmer, Elementalist, Ritualist and Assassin; GW2 doesn't have enough unique abilities and roles to deservedly feature more than 3 professions. You could legit fit everything distinct and viable in this game into Warrior, Elementalist and Mesmer with zero effort and just a little flavor fenagling. You'd also have it a lot easier when it came to designing and balancing things too rather than having to worry about everybody crying over how their favorite weapon or profession suddenly isn't "good" anymore the moment that anything changes.