Swagg.9236

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.

You're not wrong, but that's also not at all the point of this thread.

Passive buffs are bad because they're, at their least offensive, just boring and inconsequential (and therefore better off not existing for the sake of combat legibility); at worst, they're annoying and frustrating because they disrupt play without any active or sustained input. By writing out the effects of the auras (which we already understand how they work), you're straight up just reinforcing my points about why auras are bad. I'll ask you the same question as I did the other guy: which class (aside from a single weaver build) actively seeks to gain specific auras for a defined benefit? Moreover, which class or build intentionally uses combo finishers in order to consistently gain or provide auras? If people are, more often than not, gaining auras passively through traits, by means of skills introduced outside of the fact that aura combo finisher moves already exist, or just entirely by accident while using skills in combat, then auras are probably not an appreciated or truly functional aspect of the gameplay.

You're also getting at my main criticism of GW2: the game really is just incredibly shallow. No resource management or time investment into skills on the whole has rendered most of its combat environments little more than muscle-memory spam-fests. There is never really any huge consequence for just rotating through skills in most situations (in PvE or PvP), and the game plays much of itself for the player simply by means of activating any given skill. If an attack isn't already an automatically guided projectile, it's an AoE that covers the entire objective area or a skill that just tracks your character right up to its selected target without any need for orienting your character or timing much of anything. GW2 is painfully simple--which is a shame considering the cool things that are trapped in the game's code (like weapon-swap canceling movement animations mid-air, the mount movements they've added, a few subtle movement mechanics based on attack positioning, and what used to be a whole lot of air movement control that the game had waaaaay back when during things like the betas).

I didn't say that Light Aura was "useless;" I said it has a "forced and flawed implementation" which it does. Light Aura was jammed into the game randomly in 2014 without any real justification, and it only has any impact now because it passively generates "condition protection." The fact that you use the word "thematically" when speaking about Dark Aura is exactly the root of the problem I'm discussing: auras are often inconsequential bloat in GW2 because they're more tied to flavor rather than function. It would be a much better solution to either make auras uniquely beneficial and interactive rather than just slapping them onto skills as passive effects; or giving them some free, no-effort buff by means of some background mechanic like traits (or just deleting them outright and replacing them with something better). Chaos being random is NOT nice because it doesn't provide predictability, and therefore legibility, to combat. It's been nerfed over the years because sometimes randomly giving people certain boons and inflicting others with random conditions can be really frustrating when those conditions and boons give way too much payout for being just instantly slapped onto somebody without any real warning. This is why Chaos Aura has been neutered into its current form, and also why the concept of auras being reactive, on-hit buff dispensers isn't healthy for any sort of PvP interaction. I'm not debating the effectiveness or usefulness of any given aura here. Everybody already knows that reflecting every projectile at you for a protracted period of time is stupidly strong while the effects of Dark Aura are laughably inconsequential. The point of this discussion is to lay out how auras, at their fundamental design level, are low-effort, annoying bloat that don't promote any sort of interactive gameplay (since the only effect they have is granted when the user is struck repeatedly by an opponent).

I'll grant that using a leap combo through a specific field is technically an active means of participating in combat, but give me a list of actual builds/professions which regularly do that specifically for a type of aura? Berserker? And how many King of Fires builds do we see running around being effective and feared? Combining a leap finisher and an aura-granting field isn't so much difficult or interesting as it is entirely dependent on arbitrary factors like whether or not an effective build has leap finishers already built into it alongside certain combo fields. Auras (outside maybe one or two weaver builds) are never the principle thought process for build-making; it's always far more passive or instant-gratification mechanics. As for your "it takes eyes to play against an aura" opinion, noticing the aura isn't really the problem; the problem is that once somebody activates an aura, there is no way to remove it, and there is technically no counterplay to it outside of ceasing all action against the aura player. I understand that giving somebody 2s of resolution or a stack of might might not really be that huge of a deal from a power-scaling perspective, but the fundamental behind the mechanic is the antithesis to interactive and creative gameplay. Forcing an opponent to just stop doing whatever they were doing and wait for 2-4s is NOT a fairly balanced exchange (especially when the mechanic in question is self-applied so easily as most auras are in GW2). Also, I play Elementalist, so go and get off your hill; even I know how dumb it is to see people explode themselves because I instantly pop mag aura with no real warning for them.

Core zerker staff ele. Everything else is easy mode.

AURAS IN GENERAL: THERE ARE TOO MANY, and they're all downright bad, inconsequential or extremely annoying due to their inherently passive nature (they give out rewards for letting someone hit you). Light Aura: Flawed and forced implementation. It doesn't need to exist; super narrow purpose that feels very arbitrary and flavor-based. It's only remotely worthwhile now because a flat -33% decrease to a certain type of incoming damage is going to make anything undeservedly strong. It would still make far more sense to just make a better light-leap combo effect. Dark Aura: Exactly the same as Light Aura—except even worse off—since there is basically no way to gain Dark Aura except through dark-leap combos, and it shares neither synergy nor conditional trigger with anything else in the game: an utter dead-end mechanic. Chaos Aura: Effectively same boat as Light and Dark Auras, however, anet made the extra mistake of making this a weapon skill (so unless you truly want a different/more engaging Mesmer Staff 4—the better alternative—you're stuck with this forever). "Gain random boons when hit; inflict random boons on attacker" is not "unique" or interactive in any way, and if you really wanted to, you could just jam this uninspired effect onto any weapon set or utility bar without really messing with any profession's "flavor." ELEMENTAL AURAS: These can be salvaged, but only because the Elementalist was (halfway) built with them in mind. They currently aren't good in a gameplay sense, but they could be re-worked into a decent and unique suite of support effects without breaking the game (if anything, turning auras into more active effects would be the goal since they are so low-effort and thoughtless as they are now). ELEMENTAL AURA GLOBAL FUNCTION CHANGE SUGGESTION All auras now use the stack mechanic. Aura stacks cap out at 10 for each respective aura (i.e. it's possible to simultaneously maintain 10 stacks of Fire and Magnetic aura respectively, but never 11 or more stacks of any single aura). In the case of aura stacks exceeding the max 10 cap, the oldest instance(s) of an aura will be replaced with the most recent instance(s). Ideally, the damage calculations for any damage effects associated with aura stack loss or usage should be calculated respectively based on the individual players affected rather than all of the calculations tying back to the originating source. ELEMENTAL AURA WEAPON SKILLS ELEMENTALIST TRANSMUTE SKILLS SKILLS RELATED TO ELEMENTAL AURAS TRAITS RELATED TO ELEMENTAL AURAS AND THEIR BUILDS OTHER SOURCES OF ELEMENTAL AURAS

Six seconds of protracted invulnerability is pretty awful for PvP interactions (especially when both instances of invulnerability are instant-activation and 3 of those seconds also passively pulse a PBAoE and allows for simultaneous player action).

You need distinct roles for teamwork, and GW2 PvP is more about running generic, one-man-army builds that don't necessarily rely on anybody or contribute uniquely; it's just a big dogpile of people passively flickering in and out of invulnerability while attacking.

Yeah, this will somehow probably be better lmao