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Is my thinking the combat is boring because of the professions I play?
JonnyBigBoss
Member UncommonPosts: 702
in Guild Wars 2
There are a lot of things about Guild Wars 2 that I like, combat is not one of them.
When I engage with an enemy, I want to feel like I'm constantly inputting actions. With my 80 Engineer and 80 Revenant, I feel like I'm constantly auto attacking while waiting for the few situations where my other abilities are useful, such as AoE attacks, increased damage, ranged attack, etc.
Reading how much people enjoy this game, I have a feeling it's the professions that I'm playing that are the problem. Are there professions that have exciting rotations?
When I engage with an enemy, I want to feel like I'm constantly inputting actions. With my 80 Engineer and 80 Revenant, I feel like I'm constantly auto attacking while waiting for the few situations where my other abilities are useful, such as AoE attacks, increased damage, ranged attack, etc.
Reading how much people enjoy this game, I have a feeling it's the professions that I'm playing that are the problem. Are there professions that have exciting rotations?
Comments
I would say, the problem is that they are trying to do this in the 1st place. In theory, it's a good idea. But how many times will you engage in combat in your MMORPG? I don't care how fun and exciting you make it. Do it enough times, it gets old. And on top of that, if it's challenging now, after 100 hrs or so, it becomes that much more of a chore.
MMORPG combat (IMO) should be fluid, intuitive, and simple. It should be such that after 2-3 hundred hrs, you don't think about it anymore. It will probably never be that much fun....well, except for new power ups, those are fun......for a little while anyway.
I personally have played an Elementalist since release. I found it so entertaining that I never leveled a second 80 character for the 3+ years I have been playing.
There are huge differences between the professions. An Elementalist has the highest number of skills. It has 4 elements with 5 skills each (6 skills if you have the new expansion), plus your 5 utility spells. This means you have 25 skills in combat, all of which you use regularly. The great thing is the skills change with your weapons, so using a different weapon means you have 25 completely different skills to use.
Compare this to something like a guardian, which is a much more static class, with fewer skills. I played it up to level 30 - the combat was very different. There you spend most time rotating 5 skills, watching your enemy and blocking at the right time. In some ways it has it's own challenges - in a game with no clear aggro, you need to protect your team with the few skills you have. But I can see how that could get monotonous after some time.
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The other important thing is that GW2 is at its core a team game. This is not really apparent. The 1-80 leveling content is fairly easy. You can do all of it solo, not really thinking about team work. Once you reach endgame, many of the dungeon run groups are quite dumb. They ask for high gear, allowing them to faceroll most of the dungeons in the game.
In other words, you can beat most of the content in the game without using much teamwork. Personally I find this approach very boring.
There is an alternative though - and that is playing as a team. In many cases it allows you to beat the content as effectively as the faceroll groups, without the need for specific gear sets. In some cases you might take 40 minutes to clear a dungeon instead of 20, but you will have a lot more fun doing so.
I've played with a group of friends since release. All of the challenging content we overcome through combining our skills, dodging, smart positioning, synergy in our builds and masteries. If you take the time to learn how to play this way, the game actually offers a lot of systems that let you do this (and in my opinion, have a lot of fun).
I highly recommend finding a group that shares this mindset, as it will let you play around the mechanics of the fights. Some can get very elaborate and I've had many fun evenings with my friends trying to understand how to beat each fight in an efficient manner, without the "stand here and spam your skills into a wall" approach.
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The expansion content is actually great when it comes to PvE difficulty. We have been running it with my sister. Even with 2 players, it is a real challenge in many cases. This comes from someone who finds all of the previous PvE content really trivial.
The expansion is also somewhat similar to WvWvW, in the sense that you build up camps. You take them over and then protect them from invasions (a bit like the non-expansion 80 zones). You might find that interesting.
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Standard PvE is definitely faceroll when you're a full exotic level 80. Are you getting into the high level fractals yet and trying to take on champions solo? That makes you have to try harder. The problem with GW2 is the zerg.. you can literally do what you want in a zerg. Silverwastes and Heart of Thorns is definitely a step up in difficulty because the enemies have a lot of conditional things to be aware of... such as the wolf type things doing double damage to you if they attack you from behind.
Combat in most MMOs is boring tho, it's a genre staple. ESO has too few skills on the bar, Rift and WoW have overused macro systems.. and so on.
To me GW2 is just a mess of ideas and maps tossed together to call it a game. I guess in a sense it is still a game and seems many people are satisfied with just a sloppy game design,but there are still in my belief some hardcore mmorpg gamer's who want a better game design.
Every single developer seems to have a plan to sell it's product,either a one trick pony or selling it's pay method.GW2 was selling it's pay method and art,Rift sold it via it's Rifts,SW via the IP and so called important story,Wow via instance raiding,Skyforge unlocking via points,it goes on and on NOBODY is designing a quality COMPLETE game,just bits and pieces.
It really takes a massive effort,to be honest i doubt i would want to undertake making a game,it is just too costly and too big a risk to do it right and that is why developers are just rushing out minimal efforts and praying it sells.We can just look at that now defunct Goblinworks game,they KNEW what it would take to make a decent game but were asked to make it for a fraction of the cost.So they knew they were not building their best effort and still went through with it.That is imo what Arena does and EV1 of these devs are doing.
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I keep switching kits, laying down combo fields, triggering them, etc.
Although I guess it is a change from the "it's a spam feast".
Currently playing: GW2
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No offense but I felt the same with you when the game was released 3 years ago. Last year when i returning the game during living story s2, I did some research about gw2's combat system and i realized I was wrong . Combat in gw2 may not as complex as those 40 buttons smash game, it's still much more than just auto attack. There are some less complex class like warrior, but definitely not an engineer.
It might be , I felt so boring when I was playing my warrior but then I found thied. The combat felt completely different. All classes has very different play style so if you don't enjoy one class then try another and it might hook you.
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Most fast paced combat in GW2.
You have to be changing between the 4 elements in all combats.
Playing Ele is playing over +20 skills!
I would tend to agree that combat is not its strength, it looks and runs fantastic, the crafting system is different and fun, but I've tried just about every class in the game to end game, and nothing hooks me. Its like mash button until mob dies.
The skill's don't compliment each other in a way that makes it fun, its just robotic memorization, there is missing symmetry there. Also most games that incorporate weapon or stance switching in combat don't get it right. ESO barely pulls it off, this game not even close.
Probably the main reason I could never stick with this game, combat. Engineer was my main, you have to switch weapons, tool kits and bombs too often to be affective, I feel more like a carpenter than an engineer. Weapon and style switching (say like with the elementalist) should not dominate the majority of combat. Same with Hunter. "You can put the same weapon in both slots and have access to more skills from that line". Huh? I have to SWITCH to the SAME weapon to use more skills from the same weapon? Broken.
Your scared to give me too many skills at once, but your okay with me switching weapons and styles like a crack head to gain access to more skills. Its the old story of taking an existing system and making it unnecessarily more complicated and calling it a feature.
I could also put two door knobs on the same door and claim my door takes more skill to open, but since at the end of the day it still just opens the door, what's the point?
but I can suggest you to try elementalist, a lot of active skils (biggest amount in the game in comparison with any other class thanks to 4 attunments),
if you play good you will feel youself as a god, if not - you will be very weak
Also elementalist even alone can stack necessary buffs using combo fields (might, regen, swiftness, auras, chill, etc, etc)
Profession choice has a lot to do with it too. Reapers are great fun, but the core Necromancer is horribly boring in combat. Guardians can be a pretty one-note class too. Certain types of Thieves, Engineers, Elementalists, Rangers, Mesmers, and Revenants, on the other hand, can be a lot of fun to play.
I've had a ton of fun with my Revenant so far. Jalis is an enthralling legend and the staff is a well-nuanced weapon.
If you're running an Engineer with a pistol and relying on the auto-attack then you're playing the Engineer well below its potential. The Engineer pistol is fundamentally a condition weapon, with access to bleed (1), poison (2), blind and confuse (3), and if you're running dual pistols then burn (4) and immobilize and cripple (5). To get the best effect out of the conditions you should be dumping them all on the enemy as early and as often as possible, so the condition stacks can build up. Because of this it's common for pistol Engis to also use the Grenade kit, and switch between pistol and grenades. Grenades offer more bleed, chill, blind and poison with their attacks, so you can switch kits and then rapidly add more conditions while the pistol skills are in cooldown.
Alternately, you could try the Engineer rifle if you just like to sit on a single weapon. The rifle hits much harder than the pistol, with some satisfyingly powerful attacks that fling your enemies (and yourself) around the battlefield. I sometimes run a high-alpha rifle build combined with static shock, and wrench (tool kit tool belt skill) and surprise shot (rifle turret tool belt skill), and just instantly blow away enemies the moment a fight starts.
The only reason you can get by with just pistol auto-attack is because most of GW2's open-world PvE content is very easy and doesn't require much effort from the player. However, If you run some of the harder dungeons, fractals, the new Heart of Thorns zones, or any WvW or PvP, you'll need to use a lot more of the Engineer's repertoire.
As other's have stated, you need to try a different profession. The Revenant has a very simplistic skill rotation as they depend on auto attack and then lining up burst for burst situations. If you can line up the appropriate skills in those burst situations it is extremely devastating, but it's a matter of having patience and recognizing when to burst. Revenants also excel at breaking break bars, which can be the difference in many fights.
IXJac covered the engineer very well.
Other's mentioned to try an elemenatlist. Dagger/Dagger eles especially are in a constant state of switching attunements, and if you run fresh air in the air line, then you need to watch your air attunement recharge since it can reset at random times. It is possible to camp in fire as a staff ele, but that only works if you're either not taking damage or don't need to support your allies.
Thieves, especially with the new Daredevil line are extremely active since your typical daredevil build doesn't use stealth. If you're not constantly moving and using your skills and attacks at the right moments you're going to be dead...a lot.
Ironically, Warriors for as simple as they are can be a class that is very 'button spammy' if you're looking for that. I run greatsword and hammer in the new content and it can be a hell of a fun time. You constantly need to switch weapons in order to move between burst moments and control moments. Hammer is especially good at destroying breakbars and controlling your enemies in general.
At the end of the day, despite the highly predictable hate from the usual talking heads around here, you're going to get out of the game what you put into it. If you're going to stand around and auto attack without using your abilities to their fullest potentially, yeah it's going to feel boring. If you actually want to attempt a higher level of play, well you'll quickly realize that it takes more than just spamming 1.