Weaver... and I thought ele was off-putting

[Swagger.1459]

Rant incoming, sorry, but I'll try to keep this constructive.

I know you want to make things unique, but in your quest to be "different than other mmos", you peeps needlessly make off-putting profession and skill designs. Instead of improving all of your professions, and taking out all of the frustrating mechanics, you make them worse.

First off, it's not engaging to have each profession with completely different gameplay mechanics. It's frustrating. The uniqueness should come from the actual skills and roles, not needing to relearn different mechanics per class. It makes playing certain professions unapproachable. Second, you have all these weapon combos to memorize with elementalist, and now you make it worse with weaver combos. Third, there are sooooo many skills with completely different ranges... talk about awful while in combat.

You peeps really need to go back to the drawing board with each profession, and come up with unified core profession designs and mechanics. Picking up any profession should feel and be mechanically the same. "Different" should come from the unique effects from skills, and the role you want to put out there for players to use. Skill ranges should have some consistency, not all over the darn place...

So tired of the funky and clunky designs here that are sold as engaging, and portrayed as quality "twitch" gameplay... when they are not. Also, you will never reach a state of "closer to balanced" with all these weird designs... most of which are not even fun either.

Funny old vid, but it sums up the spirit of the thread...

[Razor.6392]

First off, it's not engaging to have each profession with completely different gameplay mechanics. It's frustrating.

Wrong. It is engaging for the majority of players.

How can someone enjoy completely dull linear gameplay and lack of variety? Any game that has a multitude of characters, heroes, champions, classes or teams, the main charm in them is that they all look different and play different. If I wanted to have classes that are just roles and nothing more I would play CoD.

Not every class is for everyone, that's why there are 9 different ones for you to choose! You in your infinite selfishness want ANET to cater directly to your needs because according to you every class has to be extremely simple for you to pick up and play. What about the people who enjoy more complex stuff? The beauty of variety is to have a pool of choices that suit each and every human's different tastes as closely as possible so that all playstyles are equally represented. You can enjoy ranger or warrior for some straightforward gameplay and leave ele, mesmer and thief for those that enjoy a slightly harder challenge!

Sorry but nothing about your rant was constructive. Instead of throwing a temper tantrum because some professions are "unapproachable" maybe you should train harder! Trust me, it is incredibly satisfying to learn a complex character.

[Davi.4920]

Also to add, it is sometimes good to know your limits. I personally cannot play ele well. I've tried but its just not for me. Thats fine. But that doesn't make me want them to change it to fit me.

[Flarre.4850]

@Swagger.1459 said:

First off, it's not engaging to have each profession with completely different gameplay mechanics. It's frustrating. The uniqueness should come from the actual skills and roles, not needing to relearn different mechanics per class. It makes playing certain professions unapproachable. Second, you have all these weapon combos to memorize with elementalist, and now you make it worse with weaver combos

I have already learn all skills/combos from staff,scepter/focus,sword/focus et sword/dagger,learn to memorize...or play warrior!Elem isn't a noobish class and this is why i love it,why change it to fit you?A lot of classes are easy to play,necro,pew pew ranger,warrior and guardian are safe pick.

[lucadiro.4519]

Actually all what you listed is what make me, and I think the majority of ele players, have fun playing ele, and weaver!You probably just need to play another class, a simpler one.Try with warrior or guardian or Necro

[Forz.1725]

@lucadiro.4519 said:Actually all what you listed is what make me, and I think the majority of ele players, have fun playing ele, and weaver!You probably just need to play another class, a simpler one.Try with warrior or guardian or Necro

Exactly my thoughts. Each of the classes having different mechanics and playstyles makes each class unique...I don't get why the OP, or anyone, would want them to be homogenized.

And the Ele playstyle is the most fun I've had as a spellcaster in any MMO. Every other class just feels "slow".

[demonsmind.4327]

Weaver isnt clunky its actually pretty awesome even if it has afew things i would change. This spec wants you to be more percise and combine all 20+ skills together to make it all work. Weaver isnt a class that you can auto atk. Also you might have to change your key binds so you can have flow as your attuning.

[Swagger.1459]

@Razor.6392 said:

First off, it's not engaging to have each profession with completely different gameplay mechanics. It's frustrating.

Wrong. It is engaging for the majority of players.

How can someone enjoy completely dull linear gameplay and lack of variety?

Any game that has a multitude of characters, heroes, champions, classes or teams, the main charm in them is that they all look different and play different

. If I wanted to have classes that are just roles and nothing more I would play CoD.

Not every class is for everyone, that's why there are 9 different ones for you to choose! You in your infinite selfishness want ANET to cater directly to your needs because according to you every class has to be extremely simple for you to pick up and play. What about the people who enjoy more complex stuff? The beauty of variety is to have a pool of choices that suit each and every human's different tastes as closely as possible so that all playstyles are equally represented. You can enjoy ranger or warrior for some straightforward gameplay and leave ele, mesmer and thief for those that enjoy a slightly harder challenge!

Sorry but nothing about your rant was constructive. Instead of throwing a temper tantrum because some professions are "unapproachable" maybe you should train harder! Trust me, it is incredibly satisfying to learn a complex character.

No, I'm not wrong.

See all these "profession" roles and skills?

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Archetypes

I could pick up any one of them and their core designs were the same. Each was still unique, in many respects, but felt similar to pick up, use and control despite their differences. There was a heck of a lot more "balance" and diversity to be had as well. Also, comparatively, there were more viable roles and power sets to play in every game mode.

[juno.1840]

I think variety is good for the game - so I disagree with OP comment about different mechanics. That being said, I am disappointed with how cumbersome it is to get skills 4 and 5 to the desired attunement.

Case in point: you need Focus 4 to help clear a condi spike. If your main hand is not earth, you are at least 3.5s away from getting to Earth Focus 5. That is not a L2P issue because there are times where players need to react instead of predict (we're human). So in this case, I will need to eat 4 ticks of condis before I can clear.

That makes the weaver harder to play than the ele/tempest. That's ok if it comes with some big kitten rewards, but those rewards are +dmg traits and some dual skills that are not game-changing.

[EndlessRambler.4567]

@Swagger.1459 said:

No, I'm not wrong.

See all these "profession" roles and skills?

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Archetypes

I could pick up any one of them and their core designs were the same. Each was still unique, in many respects, but felt similar to pick up, use and control despite their differences. There was a heck of a lot more "balance" and diversity to be had as well. Also, comparatively, there were more viable roles and power sets to play in every game mode.

City of Heroes is a terrible example to use for play variety. Not only was alt progression incredibly grindy and basically identical for every single character, but gameplay was incredibly repetitive. If by 'balance' and 'diversity' you mean incredibly old school tank and spank battles for group content and incredibly stale ad nauseum skill rotations for solo play then sure. It's easy for things to be 'viable' when you boiled down gameplay to the most basic elements possible. I think I could clear 90% of content pressing the same 6 buttons in a row.

Plus I wholeheartedly believe you are in the remote minority when you say that you don't want variation in the gameplay of classes and specs, as you can see by the fact that literally noone has agreed with you so far. This game may simply not be your style if you want archetype gameplay.

[Selendile.9106]

Weaver has a learning curve, it's one of the things I love about it. Playing sword/dagger for an afternoon, I learned all the weapon skills. Now, when I switch to my deadeye or mirage, I'm DREADFULLY bored playing it. Weaver spoiled me. Easily my favorite new elite spec, though sword needs a tad bit more power scaling.

[Forz.1725]

@Swagger.1459 said:

@Razor.6392 said:

First off, it's not engaging to have each profession with completely different gameplay mechanics. It's frustrating.

Wrong. It is engaging for the majority of players.

How can someone enjoy completely dull linear gameplay and lack of variety?

Any game that has a multitude of characters, heroes, champions, classes or teams, the main charm in them is that they all look different and play different

. If I wanted to have classes that are just roles and nothing more I would play CoD.

Not every class is for everyone, that's why there are 9 different ones for you to choose! You in your infinite selfishness want ANET to cater directly to your needs because according to you every class has to be extremely simple for you to pick up and play. What about the people who enjoy more complex stuff? The beauty of variety is to have a pool of choices that suit each and every human's different tastes as closely as possible so that all playstyles are equally represented. You can enjoy ranger or warrior for some straightforward gameplay and leave ele, mesmer and thief for those that enjoy a slightly harder challenge!

Sorry but nothing about your rant was constructive. Instead of throwing a temper tantrum because some professions are "unapproachable" maybe you should train harder! Trust me, it is incredibly satisfying to learn a complex character.

No, I'm not wrong.

See all these "profession" roles and skills?

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Archetypes

No, you aren't wrong since you are free to have an opinion, but it seems like many of us disagree with that opinion. Perhaps you are just playing the wrong game/genre. You linked a MOBA and are comparing it to an MMO's unique approach to class design, so maybe you should give LoL, DotA, or HOTS a try. Just a thought.

[Swagger.1459]

Forums are acting funky

[Swagger.1459]

Formatting is funky... will delete this comment

[Swagger.1459]

@Forz.1725 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@Razor.6392 said:

First off, it's not engaging to have each profession with completely different gameplay mechanics. It's frustrating.

Wrong. It is engaging for the majority of players.

How can someone enjoy completely dull linear gameplay and lack of variety?

Any game that has a multitude of characters, heroes, champions, classes or teams, the main charm in them is that they all look different and play different

. If I wanted to have classes that are just roles and nothing more I would play CoD.

Not every class is for everyone, that's why there are 9 different ones for you to choose! You in your infinite selfishness want ANET to cater directly to your needs because according to you every class has to be extremely simple for you to pick up and play. What about the people who enjoy more complex stuff? The beauty of variety is to have a pool of choices that suit each and every human's different tastes as closely as possible so that all playstyles are equally represented. You can enjoy ranger or warrior for some straightforward gameplay and leave ele, mesmer and thief for those that enjoy a slightly harder challenge!

Sorry but nothing about your rant was constructive. Instead of throwing a temper tantrum because some professions are "unapproachable" maybe you should train harder! Trust me, it is incredibly satisfying to learn a complex character.

No, I'm not wrong.

See all these "profession" roles and skills?

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Archetypes

No, you aren't wrong since you are free to have an opinion, but it seems like many of us disagree with that opinion. Perhaps you are just playing the wrong game/genre. You linked a MOBA and are comparing it to an MMO's unique approach to class design, so maybe you should give LoL, DotA, or HOTS a try. Just a thought.

Yeah, that's not a moba...

[Swagger.1459]

@EndlessRambler.4567 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

No, I'm not wrong.

See all these "profession" roles and skills?

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Archetypes

I could pick up any one of them and their core designs were the same. Each was still unique, in many respects, but felt similar to pick up, use and control despite their differences. There was a heck of a lot more "balance" and diversity to be had as well. Also, comparatively, there were more viable roles and power sets to play in every game mode.

City of Heroes is a terrible example to use for play variety. Not only was alt progression incredibly grindy and basically identical for every single character, but gameplay was incredibly repetitive. If by 'balance' and 'diversity' you mean incredibly old school tank and spank battles for group content and incredibly stale ad nauseum skill rotations for solo play then sure. It's easy for things to be 'viable' when you boiled down gameplay to the most basic elements possible. I think I could clear 90% of content pressing the same 6 buttons in a row.

Plus I wholeheartedly believe you are in the remote minority when you say that you don't want variation in the gameplay of classes and specs, as you can see by the fact that literally noone has agreed with you so far. This game may simply not be your style if you want archetype gameplay.

There were a heck of a lot more roles and viable unique power sets than what we have here.

Nobody is talking about "alt progression". Nothing to do with the topic.

Again, missing the point of discussion. "Balance" being I could take almost every power set, in any mode, and be competitive and contribute despite their differences. You seem to forget the diverse amount of power sets, skills and roles that game offered... That's the "diversity" I'm talking about.

You are totally off the mark with your responses and don't understand the spirit of the topic I presented. I'm not asking to remove "variation in the gameplay of classes and specs"... I'm asking for a better core design and to remove the needlessly off putting funky designs and mechanics.

[Feanor.2358]

@Swagger.1459 said:Rant incoming, sorry, but I'll try to keep this constructive.

I know you want to make things unique, but in your quest to be "different than other mmos", you peeps needlessly make off-putting profession and skill designs. Instead of improving all of your professions, and taking out all of the frustrating mechanics, you make them worse.

First off, it's not engaging to have each profession with completely different gameplay mechanics. It's frustrating. The uniqueness should come from the actual skills and roles, not needing to relearn different mechanics per class. It makes playing certain professions unapproachable. Second, you have all these weapon combos to memorize with elementalist, and now you make it worse with weaver combos. Third, there are sooooo many skills with completely different ranges... talk about awful while in combat.

You peeps really need to go back to the drawing board with each profession, and come up with unified core profession designs and mechanics. Picking up any profession should feel and be mechanically the same. "Different" should come from the unique effects from skills, and the role you want to put out there for players to use. Skill ranges should have some consistency, not all over the darn place...

So tired of the funky and clunky designs here that are sold as engaging, and portrayed as quality "twitch" gameplay... when they are not. Also, you will never reach a state of "closer to balanced" with all these weird designs... most of which are not even fun either.

That's an awful lot of subjectivity right here. So let me answer in a similar manner.

Elementalist is by far the best take of the "master of raw elements" archetype I've seen in a game. Next best is the Tal Rasha wizard in D3, but it has nowhere near the versatility of the ele. To put it short, Ele is what I have always searched for in an RPG. There's a mage class? I take it. There are elemental magics? I go for these. But I've never been as satisfied by another take of it as I was by ele.

Then Tempest came. And I absolutely loved it. It was a different gameplay, but still unmistakably a "master of elements" one.

Then Weaver came. And though I did have my doubts about it, I absolutely love it, too. Again, it's a different gameplay. But again, it fits what I seek from the class.

It is engaging, and it is immersive. It's the best class, by far, the game has to offer. For me. Have you considered this might just be the wrong class for you?

[Zoid.2568]

Are you serious? The new classes are great. The Weaver is much more my playstyle than Tempest is.

[AliamRationem.5172]

Personally, I love elementalist and I'm sure once I figure it out I will love weaver even more! The attunement swapping mechanics are my favorite thing about the class. No way would I want them to do what you're suggesting!

[squiggit.2357]

Not liking something is perfectly fine, but I've never understood this thing where people say they don't like something and insist that them not liking it makes it fundamentally bad design and not merely an issue of preference.

[Aether McLoud.1975]

@lucadiro.4519 said:Actually all what you listed is what make me, and I think the majority of ele players, have fun playing ele, and weaver!You probably just need to play another class, a simpler one.Try with warrior or guardian or Necro

This, so much. It's also what makes almost all other classes extremely boring to play if you main an ele, at least for me. Putting balance aside for a second, the minute to minute gameplay of ele is so freaking fantastic, all other classes just pale by comparison. Just design wise (again, no balance) I can't really think of ANY game that does the elemental caster archetype better than GW2 (maybe the casters in Dragon's Dogma, though they pretty much only have fantastic looking spells but almost no gameplay to it). Usually it's just "do you want to be an ice mage or a fire mage? If you want to be a battlemage, choose a different class that's probably not element themed." But GW2 ele is like "here's 4 different elements, go freaking wild with them, here's a staff if you want to do ~~shit ~~ kitten from range, caster style, here's daggers and other cool stuff if you're more battlemagey, have fun!"

I'd say Mesmer is a distant second in the fun department, since they also have plenty of options with lots of little intricacies and cool little combinations of moves and skills, and they only get more complex with elite specs. Engi can be fun to but feels rather spammy with kits having no cd and feels extremely boring without 2+ kits equipped, and Thief can be fun too since it has a completely different and unique resource system instead of cooldowns like all other classes.

All other classes (at least to me, and I'm sure no expert on them) feel mostly like "just hit whatever's off cooldown, there's not much options at any given moment anyway".

Weaver is exactly what I wanted tempest to be - a new playstyle, that actually changes how and when you use weapon skills and attunements, and that's exactly what I got and what made me come back to GW2 after a long hiatus too. I love how weaver changes how I think about what attunement I want to switch to at any given moment, instead of having a rather strict-ish attunement rotation with old d/d or other builds (like air->fire->earth->water most of the time for example).

[Castleguard.2498]

What I got out of the responses in this thread:

git gud

[sephiroth.4217]

@juno.1840 said:I think variety is good for the game - so I disagree with OP comment about different mechanics. That being said, I am disappointed with how cumbersome it is to get skills 4 and 5 to the desired attunement.

Case in point: you need Focus 4 to help clear a condi spike. If your main hand is not earth, you are at least 3.5s away from getting to Earth Focus 5. That is not a L2P issue because there are times where players need to react instead of predict (we're human). So in this case, I will need to eat 4 ticks of condis before I can clear.

That makes the weaver harder to play than the ele/tempest. That's ok if it comes with some big kitten rewards, but those rewards are +dmg traits and some dual skills that are not game-changing.

I don't understand. Do you play Fire/Air/Weaver or something?

You can trait for Water/Arcane for a tonne of passive condition removals, you can trait for Water/Earth for an immunity to conditions, you can mix and match sigils and runes in line with traits, such as granting swiftness from some passive that also applies regen that also clears conditions, changing attunements gives condition removals...

Weaver really needs a sword range buff and a damage increase though otherwise it's a solid spec.

[juno.1840]

@sephiroth.4217 said:

@juno.1840 said:I think variety is good for the game - so I disagree with OP comment about different mechanics. That being said, I am disappointed with how cumbersome it is to get skills 4 and 5 to the desired attunement.

Case in point: you need Focus 4 to help clear a condi spike. If your main hand is not earth, you are at least 3.5s away from getting to Earth Focus 5. That is not a L2P issue because there are times where players need to react instead of predict (we're human). So in this case, I will need to eat 4 ticks of condis before I can clear.

That makes the weaver harder to play than the ele/tempest. That's ok if it comes with some big kitten rewards, but those rewards are +dmg traits and some dual skills that are not game-changing.

I don't understand. Do you play Fire/Air/Weaver or something?

You can trait for Water/Arcane for a tonne of passive condition removals, you can trait for Water/Earth for an immunity to conditions, you can mix and match sigils and runes in line with traits, such as granting swiftness from some passive that also applies regen that also clears conditions, changing attunements gives condition removals...

Weaver really needs a sword range buff and a damage increase though otherwise it's a solid spec.

I can see how my statement could have been read different. I didn't mean to say Focus-4 is required for condi-spikes. In my example, I was describing a situation where you want to get to Focus-earth-4. Clearly you can trait water/arcane/weaver and clear condi's with lots of regen application.

My point is weaver makes it difficult to react when that reaction requires a skill on 3-4-5 (dual-attune skills mask 3). You can come up with many examples using staff and large-team WvW. Another good one is the commander calls for a water field -- unless you were camping water, or had main-hand at water, you cannot satisfy that water field request for 3.5-4.0 seconds (unless you take a utility to override the dual-attune mechanic). You can come up with examples on other weapons like Focus-earth-5. I find that aspect of weaver cumbersome.

[Argol Vazin.3061]

@Swagger.1459 said:Rant incoming, sorry, but I'll try to keep this constructive.

I know you want to make things unique, but in your quest to be "different than other mmos", you peeps needlessly make off-putting profession and skill designs. Instead of improving all of your professions, and taking out all of the frustrating mechanics, you make them worse.

First off, it's not engaging to have each profession with completely different gameplay mechanics. It's frustrating. The uniqueness should come from the actual skills and roles, not needing to relearn different mechanics per class. It makes playing certain professions unapproachable. Second, you have all these weapon combos to memorize with elementalist, and now you make it worse with weaver combos. Third, there are sooooo many skills with completely different ranges... talk about awful while in combat.

Never play a Moba, something like SMITE where most characters have different play styles even within that role due to unique mechanics/passives.Someone that mains one mage might not be able to pick up and play another mage despite them being the same role.

Actually it is kinda like fighting games. Sure every character will punch and kick when you press the corrosponding buttons. but the playstyles are vastly different based purely around the combat style. You can;t play someone like say Fox in smash then transition to say Kirby and expect to play the same.Or maybe I should use Tekken. Going from someone like King to ling xiaoyu is a massive change in playstyle.