Better Combat Part 1

[Echostorm.9143]

Most of us can agree that combat in GW2 is not in a place that many people are happy with.  From my point of view combat has veered too far into piano playing for its own sake.  We are at at a point where you must constantly swap weapons and hit buttons in combat not because conditions of the fight favor a different weapon or require that skill but because it is step 12 of a 35 step loop.  To me that is madness, it is humanity aspiring to become a flesh macro.  To me it sucks the fun out of combat and replaces reacting to mechanics with boring muscle memory.

I think a better way would be to put the bulk of your damage in your auto attack and reserve the other skills for mechanics, things to be held in reserve for things like blocking, breaking a defiance bar, taunting, healing, riposting, opportunity attacks, shadowsteps, short buffs and other general "oh kitten" effects.  Focus on the fight, not your fingers.

[Sweetbread.3678]

If you're allergic to effort then just go Mechanist or spam 1 dps button on basically any Thief spec.

[Riba.3271]

Just stop using arcdps, and press whatever buttons you want. Might not hit benchmark dps, but at least 70-80% of it. Which is plenty considering the powercreep.

After all, the game isn't about being the top dps, but not hindering your team by dying or failing mechanics.

Edited October 24, 2023 by Riba.3271

[Aaron Forestman.4758]

Real skill in this game involves doing both at the same time: navigating the mechanics of the fight while performing a good rotation. Some classes have more spare skills and abilities than others, but everyone can weight the pros and cons of departing from the perfect golem rotation in order to deal with what's coming at you, whether that's using a movement/teleportation skill out of rotation to chase a moving boss, getting CC skills off out of rotation to break a bar, or salvaging an interrupted rotation due to getting CC'ed or because of needing to move around mechanics/kill ads.

Good endgame content will always be a mix of time to do good rotations and time to deal with mechanics. Balancing the two is far more interesting than just one or the other.

Some specs are higher effort than others; if you don't like how much effort your class is requiring, there's always virt. 

[Beddo.1907]

As long as there are multiple buttons in an MMO, someone will make a rotation. (Edit:) Even if you change skills into utility, someone will min max it into a rotation anyway.

Also putting everything into AA sounds boring as kitten.

Edited October 24, 2023 by Beddo.1907

[Puck.3697]

4 hours ago, Echostorm.9143 said:

Most of us can agree that combat in GW2 is not in a place that many people are happy with.  From my point of view combat has veered too far into piano playing for its own sake.  We are at at a point where you must constantly swap weapons and hit buttons in combat not because conditions of the fight favor a different weapon or require that skill but because it is step 12 of a 35 step loop.  To me that is madness, it is humanity aspiring to become a flesh macro.  To me it sucks the fun out of combat and replaces reacting to mechanics with boring muscle memory

Lol what?. 

I'd love to know how uve applied this to more then maybe 1 or 2 elites lol. Because its untrue. 

And no. Gw2 combat is the only thing carrying this game lol, its the only flawless aspect realistically. This game faciliates auto attack builds that can do over 30k dps. I have no idea wtf ur going on about, this games no where near piano gameplay. 

Gw2s combats built on the concept of weapon swap, it always has been lmao. 

This is a really long winded whine to say "I need to l2p"

Because no. Outside maybe condi weaver. There is no specc using a 35 button process in a dps rotation. Im sorry but ur lying lol. 

How can 10 abilities and 5 utility skills transfer into. 35 button process?. Lol it makes litterally no sense as a rotation in most classes cases can be a maximum of litterally 10 abilities. 

Even classes with additional things like shroud, generally find their classes are balanced to use far less different weapon skills to equalise this. 

And where u got "most people" from is even more questionable litterally nobody complaining about this? I've heard many complaints, I've heard many people hate tbis game. 

But I've never heard someone say gw2 is too complex lol

Edited October 24, 2023 by Puck.3697

[KryTiKaL.3125]

5 hours ago, Echostorm.9143 said:

Most of us can agree that combat in GW2 is not in a place that many people are happy with.  From my point of view combat has veered too far into piano playing for its own sake.  We are at at a point where you must constantly swap weapons and hit buttons in combat not because conditions of the fight favor a different weapon or require that skill but because it is step 12 of a 35 step loop.  To me that is madness, it is humanity aspiring to become a flesh macro.  To me it sucks the fun out of combat and replaces reacting to mechanics with boring muscle memory.

I think a better way would be to put the bulk of your damage in your auto attack and reserve the other skills for mechanics, things to be held in reserve for things like blocking, breaking a defiance bar, taunting, healing, riposting, opportunity attacks, shadowsteps, short buffs and other general "oh kitten" effects.  Focus on the fight, not your fingers.

It more has to do with fight design than anything else.

Look at any Legion Raid in Lost Ark, thats probably more what you likely desire. GW2 just doesn't design their raids or strikes like that and its likely due to an accessibility concern. GW2 caters far more to the more casual player rather than the high APM, high difficulty kind of player with their content design.

[Zlynnt.5390]

skill issue~

Edited October 25, 2023 by Gerplunka.3861

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Nerf dmg from everything and buff auto attacks. 

Got it. 

 

[Fueki.4753]

14 hours ago, Echostorm.9143 said:

We are at at a point where you must constantly swap weapons and hit buttons in combat not because conditions of the fight favor a different weapon or require that skill but because it is step 12 of a 35 step loop.

The last time I checked, I didn't have to swap weapons at any time in combat, nor was I restricted to some loops of activating abilities. I'd argue that most players don't have to.

If you feel like you need to adhere to the top end 0,1%, because they posted their way of playing on some random website, that's a you issue. And only you can fix that.

In regards to actually fixing combat, they should reduce the overall damage and boom spam back to pre-HoT days to remove the unnecessary powercreep of the last 8 years. Also, the particle effects should be toned down substantially (at least by 80%).

They really should have focussed more on mechanics and readability than on boon spam, numbers bloat and particle vomit.

[Puck.3697]

14 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Nerf dmg from everything and buff auto attacks. 

Got it. 

Isnt this already the case tho? I swear Teapot did a whole series showing builds that used primarily only auto attack and were doing 35k+ dps?

[Beddo.1907]

14 minutes ago, Puck.3697 said:

Isnt this already the case tho? I swear Teapot did a whole series showing builds that used primarily only auto attack and were doing 35k+ dps?

That's a result of stacking multipliers where possible. Not really a DPS shift, just unexpected result from changes that slipped by and didn't need attention cause you want to go over 40k anyway.
Also pretty sure nearly all of them went down in dps under 30k, but could be wrong.

[Puck.3697]

1 hour ago, Beddo.1907 said:

That's a result of stacking multipliers where possible. Not really a DPS shift, just unexpected result from changes that slipped by and didn't need attention cause you want to go over 40k anyway.
Also pretty sure nearly all of them went down in dps under 30k, but could be wrong.

You only need to manage 20k dps to be fine in all content lol, I'm sure auto attacks are still capable of tbis. 

[Beddo.1907]

44 minutes ago, Puck.3697 said:

You only need to manage 20k dps to be fine in all content lol, I'm sure auto attacks are still capable of tbis. 

Powercreep tends to affect everything yes.

[Puck.3697]

14 minutes ago, Beddo.1907 said:

Powercreep tends to affect everything yes.

Well yes I'm Aware that's the issue and not the builds. 

My point was OP is acting like raiding in gw2 requires knowledge of the inner workings of quantum physics. While every boss in the game has been dropped by stacking auto attack builds lol. 

I'd pay to see them play ffxiv or WoW if they think gw2s over complex and "piano key rotation lengths". 

Edited October 25, 2023 by Puck.3697

[Puck.3697]

On 10/24/2023 at 6:54 PM, Echostorm.9143 said:

I think a better way would be to put the bulk of your damage in your auto attack and reserve the other skills for mechanics, things to be held in reserve for things like blocking, breaking a defiance bar, taunting, healing, riposting, opportunity attacks, shadowsteps, short buffs and other general "oh kitten" effects.  Focus on the fight, not your fingers

This has litterally never been the case in gw2, how u have decided it "went down this path" is amazing. 

Rotational abilities have been the core concept of mmorpgs since like 2004. Auto attack builds are a large No. If they were to do this gw2 would become a auto attack simulator. 

Sometimes I almost enjoy the fact devs don't listen to feedback. 

[Mhina.1827]

On 10/24/2023 at 5:05 PM, Puck.3697 said:

And no. Gw2 combat is the only thing carrying this game lol

Fact.

[nthmetal.9652]

On 10/24/2023 at 7:54 PM, Echostorm.9143 said:

From my point of view combat has veered too far into piano playing for its own sake.

From my point of view, the opposite is true. The only piano-playing spec I know is weaver, I am much more unhappy with the performance of Low Itensity builds. They do have their place, but they should not perform as good as they do. Also LI builds should not be limited to specific professions, but an LI build with ~60% performance of top-tier builds should be available to any profession.