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Skills and Combat
guildwarz
Member Posts: 23
GuildWars skill and combat system is awesome havent seen a better one yet in any MMO. Here's an example:
Theres a mission where at the end of it you gotta hold of hordes of enemy and protect an allied NPC as he takes time to cast some spell that will let us escape.. You can only take 8 skills with you out in the world so its a matter of finding the best combination of skills to get the job done which varies from mob to mob quest to quest, mission to mission. There are general builds that will work for most situations but if you wanna customize for a specific situation you can.
In this case I take advantage of the fact that theres hordes of enemy by using a combination of 2 skills VigorousSpirit and Cyclone axe. VigorousSpirit is a enchament spell that heals you for 15 or so odd health everytime you hit an enemy. Cyclone axe does what it sounds like you spin around hitting every enemy around you, the combination of useing those skills allowed me to hit all the enemies at once using clyclone axe and the get healed at the same time for 15hp for every enemy i hit. Do the math thats a lot of healing... But its wasnt that easy, the enchament only last 20 or so seconds and its relativeley expensive to cast me being a warrior my magic energy isnt that big and doesnt recharge as fast. So I find another skill that comes in handy - Bathazar's Aura, which gives you magic energy every time you get hit by an enemy and with lots of enemies hitting you I had tones of energy to spam the enchement spell everytime it ran out. But that wasnt enough as this misisons was pretty hard to do solo and if you made a few mistakes you were finished. 20 seconds for the enchament wasnt long enough to make up for inevitable mistakes you make in combat until I found an axe mod that increased my enchaments duration by 33%, now im in the clear, not only did I hold off all those hordes I actually stuck around and killed them all even after the NPC finished the spell and we could escape. Yeah I could ahve brought a party of 6 and cruised through that mission but whats the fun in that? I figured out how to beat it solo which was more profitable and satisfying thanks to the skill and combat system allowed me find the best solution to the problem.
This is just PVE, PVP is just as skillfull if not more where the opponents are unpredicatble and bringing the rights skills, knowing how to synergize them with the skills of others in your party makes all the difference, -SKILL, TEAMWORK are the key NOT levels.
Now if only the other MMO's could learn from this system and treat skill and combat with the respect it deserves. But to be fair these systems take all of thought and care to get right and with all the new MMO more interested in charging you $15 a month for a chat room it shouldnt be expected that only one or 2 mmo's would have gotten it right and GW definatley has.
Comments
That's what I love about Guild Wars...it's not all about gear
I agree. If they hadn't implemented the system with only 8 skills and attributes and so on I would probably not be playing the game; theory crafting is what I find to be by far funniest. Especially designing builds for Heroes Ascent is what I find most enjoyable; you got such a freedom to create what you want and it's still very challenging.
Definately would love to see more games take the care in their skill design and the art of design that Anet took with this game. The animations on top of that are top-notch to. And I hear yah on the $15 a month thing, I think some of these places see that first and then start figuring out what they can do to get that. GW's is a game that players cry for every day. It was released done, there were betas and they worked and there were fansites with great amounts of pre-data so you could learn and plan proir. It came out of the oven when it was done. Just for that they get +2 in the respect category. The whole thing was so professionally done and you can just see the work and the time in design they took to make it truly a gamers game.
That said I wasn't a fan of the Power 8 I thought it limited too much, I really hope they do something to expand on that perhaps 10 or 12 or 15, but I would also like to see a sidebar for a class of spells that can be used situationally. As we know there are so many skills and some are so specialized that it's hard to ever make them part of your 8, but in the right situation that comes all to rare it could be a perfect answer. My suggestion is 2 classes of spells, the 1rst class goes on the normal power bar while 2nd class spells on another, perhaps a scrollable which works off your mouse-wheel and you can put as many of these 2nd class spells on that bar as you like and rotate around the horn and use them with your middle mouse wheel/button. These won't be Power Attack, they would be like Protection Against Cold. I just see that as really expanding the game, it still leaves all the strategy imo and adds more. I have taken a lot of heat suggesting this over the years but I still feel there are a lot of skills that are never used and this is a way to get some action for these situational skills. To me it seems like a no-brainer.
I wish all games were desinged and executed like GW's, the world of gaming would be so much the better. And if there was a company I would love to give them $15 a month it would be them... I also still thnk they should charge $5 for GW's2 if it's more open world, as they want to do it for free. But I'd love to give them something back to help fund more development.
Good points HorrorScope, I feel the same way, I actually feel like I owe Anet more than I gave them. And you appreciate what they've done more and more when all these bad mmo's keep comming out. Best you could do I guess is buy all the expansions, ,use their online store, recommend their game. With the skills system I also agree, the limit of 8 forced you to be tactical and effecient but I dont see a problem adding more or another dimension to the already 8 we got giving us more options and depth to the combat, maybe making those flavour of the month builds harder to make or counter with the increased posibilities. Whatever they do Im sure they know what they're doing and will do it right. Now only if they released something before GW2 comes out to pass the time... oh yeah I still havent played Nightfall. Now I know what to do with my $50 I was almost going to waste on Age of Conan.
Gear does not matter in GW