For long, I've wondered why I didn't fully enjoy GW2's combat

[Aodlop.1907]

I get it now. It's the lack of instant cast abilities.

 

Nearly all spells in this game have a cast time, which makes everything somewhat delayed and a bit clunky. It's just not very smooth.

Are you telling me that abilities such as Necromancers' Locust swarm are so insanely good that they need a cast time?

 

Having more instant cast abilities, and abilities that are usable while casting, would go a long way in making the combat feel more dynamic and less sleep inducing.

[Linken.6345]

1 hour ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

I get it now. It's the lack of instant cast abilities.

 

Nearly all spells in this game have a cast time, which makes everything somewhat delayed and a bit clunky. It's just not very smooth.

Are you telling me that abilities such as Necromancers' Locust swarm are so insanely good that they need a cast time?

 

Having more instant cast abilities, and abilities that are usable while casting, would go a long way in making the combat feel more dynamic and less sleep inducing.

Play firebrand.

[Kanek.5472]

Ew instant cast.

 

I like my abilities to have a  bit more weight please.

[SuavePuppy.2809]

Just gonna have to disagree on this one 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

The cast times are there to put weight and commitment to your decision.  This game was designed from PVP up, so having a crapton of instant-cast abilities would make PVP into a macro-fest.

[Ashen.2907]

In terms of instant cast and/or ability to be used while doing something else there are:

Mantras

Shouts

Signets

Illusions (some)

Stun breaks

shatters

and more that I dont remember off the top of my head.

Other skills that do take a second, or fraction of a second, to use....well, how many things can you do in zero time?

Edited October 20, 2022 by Ashen.2907

[Vanz.8753]

guess you dont play any pvp or wvw.....😶

[Padrion.7382]

12 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

Nearly all spells in this game have a cast time, which makes everything somewhat delayed and a bit clunky. It's just not very smooth.

Well, originally coming from a certain other game where my main spells had 3 seconds of cast time (skilled down to an amazing 2.5s), which was interrupted by any form of movement, I have to say, I didn't really notice...

[LadyKitty.6120]

In GW2, most skills with cast time don't have any waiting but the cast time is actually the animation duration for most skills, excluding ones with aftercast (that can usually be cancelled by using other skill or stowing). Combat speed just isn't super-arcade fast (for most classes, though some classes have really fast rotations) like might be a case with some other games. Asking for instant casts in this context would be essentially asking for lightspeed skill spamming without any animations which would be ridiculous. And it's not like other games don't have skills without animations actually taking a bit, right?

And tbh, it's actually happened before with Deadeye's Shadow Flare bug that allowed them to do ridiculously broken DPS to the point of making any CMs at the time 15s fights and many in the raid community at the time used that bug to get their VitVs through that bug. That alone gives enough of a reason to have actual animation/cast times on skills.

Also, GW2 doesn't root you for the cast time like many classic MMOs do (back in 2012 essentially every MMO rooted) which is why coming to GW2 actually required learning how to move while playing piano rotations which complicates the gameplay.

[Gehenna.3625]

14 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

In terms of instant cast and/or ability to be used while doing something else there are:

Mantras

Shouts

Signets

Illusions (some)

Stun breaks

shatters

and more that I dont remember off the top of my head.

Other skills that do take a second, or fraction of a second, to use....well, how many things can you do in zero time?

Most signets have a casting time, so are you saying that while casting, for example, the guardian's heal signet or signet of mercy I can cast something else? I had no idea lol.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

17 minutes ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

Most signets have a casting time, so are you saying that while casting, for example, the guardian's heal signet or signet of mercy I can cast something else? I had no idea lol.

Signet of Might, Stamina, and Dolyak on warrior do not have cast times. Fully 50% of warrior signets have no cast time. Stances also do not have cast times on warrior other than the heal.

[Aodlop.1907]

19 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

This game was designed for PVP 

 

And yet, combat in PvP feels much better in WoW than it does in GW2. I just don't think this works very well.

[oscuro.9720]

43 minutes ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

 

And yet, combat in PvP feels much better in WoW than it does in GW2. I just don't think this works very well.

Maybe this game isn’t for you my friend. Not every game is for everyone. WoW combat is borderline torture to me it’s so dull, but if you enjoy it, that may be what is best for you 🙂 

[Cyninja.2954]

55 minutes ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

 

And yet, combat in PvP feels much better in WoW than it does in GW2. I just don't think this works very well.

Complains about cast time, mentions a game with a global cool-down of 1.5 seconds (best case 1 second) which essentially adds cast time to each and every followup skill, or the very least wait time which could absolutely qualify as delayed and clunky.

Somehow I don't think your issue is with cast time, without even getting into the tons of skill types in this game which are instant.

Edited October 20, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Infusion.7149]

Are we even playing the same game?
Mantras are instant, shouts are instant, stances are instant, most stunbreaks are

High damage or high impact skills need a cast time or some drawback otherwise whoever fires off their skills fastest or first will win in PVP.

[AliamRationem.5172]

23 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

I get it now. It's the lack of instant cast abilities.

 

Nearly all spells in this game have a cast time, which makes everything somewhat delayed and a bit clunky. It's just not very smooth.

Are you telling me that abilities such as Necromancers' Locust swarm are so insanely good that they need a cast time?

 

Having more instant cast abilities, and abilities that are usable while casting, would go a long way in making the combat feel more dynamic and less sleep inducing.

The piece you're missing is the lack of a GCD.  Instead of a set period of time between skills, GW2 skills are based on animations and aftercast.  This requires players to learn the timing of specific skills rather than just hitting a button every 2.5 seconds like clockwork.

I think that makes the combat feel better, but YMMV.

[Kalthea.4326]

I sort of understand where OP is coming from?

 

For me, it's Weapon Skill 1 attacks that throw me off, especially with the introduction of the Action Camera. When I click to swing, it can take what feels like ages for the attack to come out, and then waiting for the chain to play out just feels bad. It just feels like wading through mud sometimes. However, the best thing to do in that situation is just don't use Action Cam, and just learn to play without it. But even then, I'm bad at Auto-Attack usage, I just don't feel the feedback.

[Cuks.8241]

Skills need to have cast/animation times to open up counter play in pvp. It would be unplayable otherwise.

I wouldnt say WoW combat is better or worse (its different, slower) but WoW has longer cast times, most skills are on 1-1.5 sec global CD and often root you. They added many RNG procs (its been a long time since I quit wow so maybe this was reverted) which might feel fun in pve but just bring another rng layer to pvp which I dont like.

Also the animations are better in gw2, wow has mostly generic animation that dont tell you much. So you have to rely on cast bars which with borderline cheating addons  turn the game into watching bars and frames instead of the animations.

Maybe its not the cast times that actually bothers you.

[HowlKamui.5120]

12 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

 

And yet, combat in PvP feels much better in WoW than it does in GW2. I just don't think this works very well.

Aaaaand you just lost my support.

I could've understood your position that the cast times feel clunky to you (even though this game's pacing a lot), which makes you not enjoy the game. That's normal, GW2 doesn't have to be for everyone.

But then you mention that WoW,  a game that has a BUILT IN global cooldown of 1.5 seconds per skill input, is less clunky is.... confusing to say the least.

I'm willing to bet that you did decently well in WoW PVP, but then went to GW2 and found yourself not getting the same success as you had in WoW. 

[Kalthea.4326]

For those wondering why the OP is comparing WoW PvP and GW2 PvP, my assumption is thus:

 

The 1.5s Global Cooldown is universal to all classes. On top of this, every class has a few skills that are instant-cast. This, in-turn, makes the gameplay feel a bit smoother as you're able to cast a long-cast time spell, and as that's about to complete, you pop an instant cast skill. That makes the gameplay feel (key word) smoother than the GW2 combat, where every skills has a different wind up speed, ending animation, channeling duration, etc.etc.

 

So, I understand where OP is coming from on that front, assuming my thoughts are correct. Though I will agree, comparing the PvP systems from both doesn't really work out at the end of the day.

[Vordrax.5243]

WoW is kind of an edge case of that model of gameplay (tab-target, almost all abilities just directly affect the target other than a handful of ground-target abilities.) In most games I've played with that combat style, they all feel extremely loose, and the animation feels very disjointed from the gameplay. Blizzard has put a lot of time and effort into eliminating that feel in WoW with a tremendous amount of polish, such that most classes kinda feel like you're playing a rhythm game. (I've heard FFXIV has gotten to that point as well but I haven't put more than a couple of hours into it a while back.)

 

Guild Wars 2 plays a lot more like an action game. The closest analogue I think I've played to GW2 is perhaps Terra, which was actually fairly lauded in terms of its gameplay. I think that coming from a WoW-style game dramatically increases the skill floor when you first start playing GW2, because you have been conditioned to certain behaviors. So I definitely get where you're coming from.

 

But give it some time and try to approach GW2 on its own level. The interplay of varying cast times, animations and animation cancelling, the skill required to land attacks, the constant movement, the dodging, it all becomes very satisfying. There is a level of visceral chaos in GW2 that you just don't find in WoW, even in PvP. Plus, in WoW, most instant abilities are there to allow you to cast while moving, which the majority of ranged specs can't do. In GW2, you can move during most cast animations, so the opportunity cost of your abilities not being instant isn't nearly as high as it might appear at first glance. As others said as well, there are several abilities that are effectively instant, such as shouts. In fact, many of GW2's instants can be cast during the casting of other abilities, which is something WoW doesn't offer at all.

[Hashberry.4510]

Relying on watching animations is just a total fail in this game.

[Vordrax.5243]

3 hours ago, Hashberry.4510 said:

Relying on watching animations is just a total fail in this game.

Counterpoint - relying on watching animations is a total WIN in this game.

[oscuro.9720]

3 hours ago, Hashberry.4510 said:

Relying on watching animations is just a total fail in this game.

Please expand on this. How/why has it failed?

[the krytan assassin.9235]

Lolol cant believe this OP. There are SO MANY instant cast abilities in this game. If you dont like your current build, just pick another one with more instant casts. 

Also having cast time on your skills adds weight to the impact of it. Reducing all skills to instant cast also is also in general terrible for any skill rotation. Try out playing scepter ele in air (all skills are instant cast) you'll quickly find out that you basically run out of skills to cast in 1 second. 

The apm in this game is also on the top end of any MMO game. There are already loads of people struggling to keep up with the pace. Instant skill casts, an increasing amount of skills on elite specs and  quickness+alac widely available play a huge part in this. 

If you really want more instant casts, try to play some condi untamed or cata in PvE. You'll quickly find out how much of a hassle those instant casts can be. 

I could understand it if you want more utility skills (and in general more utilities that are not part of your normal rotation etc) but that's an whole different subject.