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Need advice to improve my combat
ananda
Member UncommonPosts: 45
So i got to see my downed skills way, way too often during the beta. I have read about having to dodge, only use the skills when necessary, watching the enemies, etc. They do help a bit once I practice and got used to them a little, but I'm still very confused about how the combat is supposed to work.
I'm using a dual sword and rifle warrior. I can only dodge twice before running out of stamina. Running backwards is very slow and doesn't seem to be useful. Turning my back on the enemy means I can't really do anything to them, so doesn't help in the long run unless I'm just waiting for a healing cooldown. Basically, to do damage to the enemy I can't avoid getting some damage myself. If it is only 1 enemy, I can handle it quite well in the end. But a lot of the time, there will be multiple enemies coming after me. Or, while running around avoiding 1 enemy, I would run into another. Or an earlier enemy would have respawned because I ran around dodging too much and took too long to kill. Or the game would suddenly spawn several enemies around you, like in some skill challenge. In all of those cases, almost all the time I will end up dead. I can avoid a few big hits, kill maybe 1, but in the end I will run out of gas and die.
Is dual sword just not viable for solo play? It basically only has bleed and cripple, and i think leap does a very short stun. In other words, very lacking in disabler. If it is viable, what can I do to get better?
I'm thinking of training a bit in Amalur. Maybe purposely never buy or craft any gears to keep it as difficult as gw2. Previously I played as mage in fully crafted gears, and the game was too easy with so many I Win buttons. Maybe if I play as a melee rogue/fighter who only dodge once in a while it would be similar to gw2? Would doing this help at all?
Btw, I'm not looking for comments that melee is currently inferior to range. I've seen some great melee players doing very well in the game, so i think the two are more or less balanced for the skilled players. Need advice on how I can become one, though. Any pointers would be appreciated.
Comments
"Running backwards is very slow and doesn't seem to be useful"
Yep. That's not useful.
I played a thief and I understood it as you can't do any one thing too much, you need to change tactics constantly as the situation dictates.
For example, I would get great DPS with two daggers sword/dagger combo, but as soon as I'd start losing HP I'd have to hit the tilde key and switch to my ranged set and dance away with evasive skills.
I also unlocked a skill that healed me for every hit of damage I put out, it was pretty sweet.
So the moral of the story is to keep it moving and never do one tactic too much. (As far as I know at this point!)
I found circle strafing to be highly effective. Save your dodge for when you see big attack animations coming and use it to get behind stuff. I also noticed that your first ability usually auto-attacks after you press it once. So you can use that a lot while you're strafing and throw the other abilities in when their timers come up.
That seemed to be what worked for me anyway.
Your average mob that has like one forward facing special attack can usually be kited in a tight circle without needing to dodge.
Mobs that you can't kite to avoid damage take different strategies. I did something like let my health get to about 1/3 down, then healed to get the timer running, then dodged, wait 3-4 seconds and dodge again, and then dodge when I'm able and heal when I'm able after that. Sometimes that didn't work out and I'd have to pop some CDs and sprint behind an obstacle or get a pet out to let the mob focus it while my heal/dodge CDs reset. Also, if you're not sure when to blind/impair then just spam it to help reduce damage.
Obviously if a mob has a special attack then you dodge that, not just at random... but if the mob doesn't have a recognizable special attack (which usually means you just haven't figured out the animation yet), you have another way to stop that attack (stun, knockback, blind), or if you can avoid the attack without blowing a dodge then that's when you can use the dodge CD for the damage immunity.
Stick & move, stick & move.
Since you feel like this:
Btw, I'm not looking for comments that melee is currently inferior to range. I've seen some great melee players doing very well in the game, so i think the two are more or less balanced for the skilled players.
There is really is no more advice I can give you. There are ways to overcome the annoying animation lock and studder step of Warrior skills and Guardian skills, but since you feel melee is perfectly fine then my only advice is to play melee with the mindset of going in, doing damage, and side dodging out until cooldowns are ready. Then charge in again from a flanking position (the mobs will turn slow enough for you to pull this off) unload burst dps, then tumble sideways again, rinse & repeat.
Never stand still. If you got an issue with moving while fighting, just press "A" and circle your enemy while you fight, that helps a lot.
And switch tactics once in a while.
Also try the different classes to find the ones that fit you most. I had a great time with the theif and did really well with it, but playing the Ele was a massacre, I died all the time. Some classes will fit your playstyle better even though you will learn as you play.
I played a melee elementalist for more or less the entire Beta upto level 24/
First of all, take out ranged mobs first. They stop you kiting melee mobs and were more often than not the reason I died.
For myself I was using Air when close range and Water to kite/support.
For my utility slots I had an AoE, a single target nuke and a skill which made the next few attacks crit.
I would single out the ranged mobs first and bring them down asap. If there was others around I would wait either until all the mobs were bunched up or I would initiate into the biggest group of mobs.
I would use my gap closer (1200 range, ride the lightning OWNS) and at the same time hit my skill to make things crit and as soon as I landed on the mob I would unload as many skills onto them as possible, most of them were aoe so it would bring them either very low or already dead. Air with Daggers has a nice shield that stuns things that attack so this brings up survivability a bit if you time it correctly, there is also an evade skill that knocks the enemy back and causes your character to dodge backwards and then gives you a 33% speed buff for a few seconds.
I would jump in and unload all the skills and try stick around until the ranged mobs were dead or I'm taking too much heat I would get out with the skill that knocks them back and switch to water attunement.
Water attunement had a longer range auto attack that could easily hit multiple mobs, especially if they are chasing, and it has two skills that can chill the enemy as well. I would kite them with Water until Air was back off CD (15 seconds) then jump back in using the same combo as before.
That worked for most encounters, obviously there was some adapting done for specific mobs but it was mostly timing or positional changes. I would imagine a similar approach would work for other close range classes but obviously with different skills. The biggest difference I believe is that a lot of the skills on elementalist are either instant cast or very quick. I did notice that all my utility skills were instant cast and not on any sort of global cooldown.
Hello Ananda!
Playing a warrior needs some tricks, overall you need to prioritize some utility to let you escape from airy situations, then it depends on what weapons you use.
I kept using savage leap not to initiate combate but to escape combate, one thing you need to remember is that you can use skills without targeting so savage leap, charge and so on can be used to escape.
Other then that this game will have you pratice strafe circling more then others before.
While you have your blocks / stuns / heals on cooldown i recommend dodging back once, changing weapon (preferably one that has a ranged option, even axes are fine) doing some sort of knockdown / cripple and strafe circle periodically gaining distance.
This will enable your heal to come back up and then you can jump back into the fray.
Overall it just takes pratice and not thinking about rotations or perfect dps, this game is more about survival then achieving perfect damage.
As warrior you are going to see lot of game from your back
They are real hard to play, especially at start.
But the game is honestly hard - i mean challenging.
Finally fun
So dont worry.
Just play and the skill will come.
And yes...dodge a lot
Thanks for all the advice. I guess I need to rethink my build. As some of you pointed out, I was too focused on dps. It was planned to be dual sword and 5 signets, for maximum crits and bleeds. On paper it looks synergistic as hell lol. The plan was indeed to run in, apply lots of bleeds, and then run out while they bleed to death.But seems that doesn't really work out. Perhaps i should instead try a build with more survivability and disablers instead, at least while I'm still learning the game.
I did try an elementalist with staff, and I did find it easier to play, at least so far. Still died a lot, but the 20 skills from the attunements instead of only 10 from 2 weapons really opens up a lot of options on how to deal with a particular situation. I think I am more suited with that play style, but want to try out all the classes during the BWEs. Now if only the next one will start so I can try out the advices...lol. Should have posted before beta ended, but was too busy playing then.
This is truly amazing, a player who has problems with the combat and instead of making posts to rant about how umbalanced or hard it is, he just asks for help to improve.
Im going to cry...
LOL. I was a necromancer. I figured from the pre-beta videos that profession was the one that could survive the best. It did not work out that way. Whenever I used my melee or close combat skills and fought more than 2 mobs - down I went. I got better at surviving as I got into the "higher" levels (14) but in any restricted area with multiple mobs - I died.
Still, the necromancer was a better survivor than my engineer. I got to level 5 and quit - I died so much that I ran out of money!
I never died with my Engi in PVE, the class has so much potential !
I love jump shot, rocket boots...so much fun.
I never died as an engineer. But, I made up for it when I tried elementalist, necromancer, and mesmer.
Lol same here, thanks to playing that warrior, I found out that if you die with no money, you get to teleport for free lol. Still a net loss since you now have to pay for repair tough.
I died hundred times with my Mesmer and Thief.
But I was tackling red opponents all the time too
You know, I found the mesmer to be underwhelming. I don't know if its because it takes a lot of practice to be a good mesmer but everytime I fought one it wasn't that hard to take it down(unlike guardians) and they never seemed deadly enough for me to worry.
Now the thief....wow some thiefs put on a pounding on me. That was awesome though, thats what a thief should be. I want to feel that to take a thief 1v1 I have to be on top of my game.
Learn to circle strafe. Mods don't seem to be able to handle it well. You can even circle strafe in a very tight circle to keep form aggroing nearby mobs. It also helps to get a mouse with thumb buttons so you can still execute attacks using the strafe keys without having to contort your hand to press 1,2,3 or whatever.
Also, learn to be proficient at switching between ranged and melee weapon sets so you can seemlessly move between modes. Example, leap in + stun, melee a couple of times with your long cooldown attacks, then dodge backwards, switch weapons, begin circle strafe.
The combat in GW2 definitely takes some thought, strategy, and skill. It's not your run-of-the-mill MMO with boring/pointless encounters just to grind up a level.
I had to spend 30 minutes yesterday explaining the importance of sound while fighting champions and legendary monsters. As they almost always have some sort of audio que that is followed by their attacks.
The human brain can respond faster to sound than it can to a visual cue.
Play with your sound on, and it will make a difference.
An example will be something like the Champion Svanir Marauder's icy haymaker, as he is about to do it he makes a vacuum like sound before the impact, this would be your cue to dodge. Recognizing these audio signals is the key to survival as a melee Soldier profession in PvE.
My best advise would be:
Never ever stop moving, just don't ever stop, learn to fight without stopping ever, use both mouse/swad for that. Learn to go out of melee range and back in all the time.
Strafe a lot, but change direction often. Bind dodge key to your thumb button mouse, or to a easy key like "a" or "e", don't use double tap, its just not effective at all, use a bind to dodge.
Have an easy to access key for your self heal (i used my second and last thumb mouse button) and use it!.
Swap weapons all the time its needed, try to use both a ranged and a melee set (every time i lost in competitive pvp it was due to me screwing my weapon swap), if you do it well it will make your damage a lot better even in pve, and raise your survivability by a lot in pve. (i wanted to bind it to my middle button click, but for some reason you can't, grrr Anet
On the elementalist (no weapon swap) i used a short range/melee weapon set, and it worked amazingly well for me. I don't know if i was good at it (died a lot from failed dodge with my ele, didn't died much with my thief/warrior though), but i just liked it
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Hehehe, yeah my death total on the Warrior and Mesmer were quite hilarious too.
Warrior specially, you really need to break from other game patterns.
Ranger and Necromancer require the less movement in PVE.
But the combat system is designed to make you love moving around.
I played a Thief which, based on how it's set up (move in, quick strike, move out, quick range, repeat...), I think it shows how the game is intended to be played overall. Most importantly, keep moving and keep hitting - the hitting part is not so hard as skill 1 autoattacks.
Also, keep changing your tactics. This is where the weapons swapping comes in, I think. Even just a weapons swap that has the same weapons as the first set, but reversed. For example, with my Thief I used a Main Hand Dagger and an Off Hand Pistol which gave me some pretty good quick strike melee and ranged options. My swap was a Main Hand Pistol and Off Hand Dagger which gave me different enough skills for different situations.
The main point though is that the combat is very fluid in this game. Especially when you're alone. With others, it can actually be easier as you can use what other people are doing to your advantage (for instance if someone was kiting a mob, I usually ran up behind it before starting my attacks).
Basically, just play with different ideas and methods until you find what is suitable for you. But remember - Keep Moving!
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