the answer is very simple: you dont use conditions on enemies for your benefit but for the benefit of your group - the age of the solo pvp'er is gone.
a good group can mow through enemies and people will at least need half a year to adjust to the awesome pvp-style GW2 offers.
You see the adjusting-problem with comments like "melee got this and that problem" ... "self heal blabla" -- there is no 'melee-class' - if you are using melee in the wrong situation you'll die. on self heal: people havent even started to HEAL in pvp (as heal skills scale with lvl and arent boosted.)
is it just me or was WAR pvp a lot better than GW2 pvp ? in WAR it was a lot more slower paced, there was less particle effects so u could see whats happening. therefore u could be more strategic rather than button mash in a mob of fireworks in GW2.
Oh yeah War PvP was great. Engineer /Chaos mage pulls everyone in. AoE, everyone dead.
Yeah seriously where do people get this? Bright Wizard's slaughtering people and the incredibly stupid magnet instagib were awful.
I had a tank class in WAR and the magnet instagib still killed me in seconds when it was done right. Yeah I got away sometimes but that was mistakes on their part. Correctly done it was a true insta-gib with no real counter.
I must admit I'm disappointed with the combat in PvP. If you get a group working together players go down way too fast.
Sure, 1v1 you get some good fights, though Mesmer is a pain to deal with. But when its grouped PvP, its just over too quick.
Over too quick for solo players, or over too quick for members of an equally organized group?
over too quick? they need to hire a trio of Water Eles spamming heals. Those medicore heals go a looooong way and sway the balance of combat in favor of the smarter group.
Originally posted by Atlan99 Oh yeah War PvP was great. Engineer /Chaos mage pulls everyone in. AoE, everyone dead.
I loved WAR but this is 100% true. Even in late WAR we had an engi on our server who made himself a full survival build and pretty much acted like an unkillable puller/disabler. He was quite good at it and annoying as hell.
MMORPG genre is dead. Long live MMOCS (Massively Multiplayer Online Cash Shop).
Seems like the combat, and this affects all professions, boils down to who has the biggest dps hits.
The CC and debuffs and buffs are all so short lived that it feels pointless to cast them.
I think mostly it just feels like combat is way too fast. You arent one-shotted, unless facing a veteran 3 levels over you due to scaling, but you are three seconded.
I know people hate in pvp when CC is overpowered or it feels like you are always locked down, but they specifically said pve was different than pvp, so why cant the pve cc have more of an effect?
i felt the exact same way... and i mentioned it in Local chat and about 10 fanboys and gals wanted to lynch me... rofl at these rabid zombie fans.
but ya... combat is a meaningless blur of spamming your best DPS... very little reason for meaningful use of debuffs and CC's. dodge once and a while and dont get caught in AE. ooops im on fire? errr. 1 v 1 duels you can weave in special attacks and skills but in WvWvW... and group vs group combat... pshhhh its just spam and pray and watch the kaleidescope of colors.
and this is coming from someone who competes in amateur speed chess so dont anyone start explaining it away saying i must be an old fart with a slow mind and reflexes...
I tried WvWvW with my warrior and bow. I just kept spamming fire. Yeah, theres no real thought to it though. Like you said, just bunch of flashy colors and a few dodges. Then spam your abilities hoping you down someone. AOE rules as king. If you get a bunch of arches, they can shutdown a group of people.
What heal are you guys using that's "bringing you back to full health?" So far as I knew, no one had a heal that gave you any more than HALF health except really a necro......
Seems like the combat, and this affects all professions, boils down to who has the biggest dps hits.
The CC and debuffs and buffs are all so short lived that it feels pointless to cast them.
I think mostly it just feels like combat is way too fast. You arent one-shotted, unless facing a veteran 3 levels over you due to scaling, but you are three seconded.
I know people hate in pvp when CC is overpowered or it feels like you are always locked down, but they specifically said pve was different than pvp, so why cant the pve cc have more of an effect?
I didn't get to try many classes, especially since I was busy all day saturday and couldn't play, but as a staff elementalist, I found was able to CC and kite multiple mobs indefinitely without ever taking a single hit. Between the 66% slow on my #4 water attunement spell, the cripple on my #4 earth attune spell, the stuns/immobalize on my #5 earth and air spells, the knockback on the #3 air spell, the speedboost on my #4 air attune spell, the rollback escape on my #4 fire attune spell, the chill from glyph utility skill I took and the active dodge mechanic, I felt like I had more CC than any class in any MMO i've ever played.
So you need 3 "healers" to make combat last? And thats meant to be ok?
The point was with GW2 that you didnt need the triad, tank/dps/healer. Everyone can self heal. Everyone can support heal.
So the first question with your arguement, why ele healers, why not thief healers, should be just as viable.
But the major point is it doesnt solve pew pew mentality that makes GW2 combat so instagib fast.
People cant deal with CC, so lets basically remove it. Sigh. CC means strategy, when to employ it and when to use your breaks and removes.
In GW2 there are a lot of CC abilities, but they last 1-3 seconds in general.
Plus, each ability is so fast its basically a button spamming FFA.
I tried out a thf healer/range dps set up. It was ok but people were too stuck in the typical mmo mentality that they didn't bother gsteping into the AoE to get healed. Also casting that heal on the people fighting next to the boss is a bad idea. They go stealth and drop "aggro".
Seems like the combat, and this affects all professions, boils down to who has the biggest dps hits.
The CC and debuffs and buffs are all so short lived that it feels pointless to cast them.
I think mostly it just feels like combat is way too fast. You arent one-shotted, unless facing a veteran 3 levels over you due to scaling, but you are three seconded.
I know people hate in pvp when CC is overpowered or it feels like you are always locked down, but they specifically said pve was different than pvp, so why cant the pve cc have more of an effect?
Combat feels faster before you have mastered it. I had the same feeling the first few hours but it felt slower and slower the more I got used to it. Then I changed class from Thief to Ele and it started all over again...
Once you played it a while it will be fine. I didn't CC much though, spent half the time with my thief and the rest between a warrior, a ranger and a ele. It might be that they need to improve the CC skills a little, it usually takes a year after launch for a MMO to get at least acceptably balanced.
i felt both PvE and PvP took alot more skill then other games. In PvE i found people thought it was ok to tank damage and not dodge or put at least 1 survivability utility trait. As far as PvP is concerned 1v1s where exactly what they needed to be skilled, yes skilled becuase there is no more button smashing not u actually need to identify what a heal looks like or the proper time to knock down or stun to be able to let out a burst if u have burst. the game is great.
acouple changes i would like to see:
W v W v W: need a hastener liek DAOC had where u talk to him and ur given swiftness to run around teh map IF your attacked you lose it but till then u at least run at a decent speed.
Defending a keep should be a event: what i mean by that is that each time u engage in a battle u gain the small event repelling the attack but defending the keep its self should be 1 large event cause last not i got into a 5 hour keep defense and tho i did get in alot of the small events that give decent xp if you can deal alot of damage to a target i wanted everyone to benefit for staying there and defending the keep.
I have to respectfully disagree with the OP. I played way too much GW2 this weekend. I can say that I have now played every profession, and all but 2 to level 10 (others close). I played a ton of structured pvp as well.
I was trying to get a feel for each profession to decide which I like the most. For pvp I am definitely set, but pve I am torn. Granted I could have built/played each class differently than I did but I found myself thinking late Sunday (I went back and streamed gameplay of my 5 different current classes for a friend) was that when I played a class that had no cc at all I felt..underpowered...at much more risk, and consequently less successful. I did more damage with the profs that I went away from cc on but really it didn't make the fight any easier.
slows, launches, pulls, knockdowns, all made fights go so much smoother. In PVP as well, I found even 2 seconds of the right cc was critical. Actually I wll go as far as to say especially in pvp. Every good player has 'get out of jail' abilities to get away when they know the fight is going south. whether it is a stealth a snare, a heal, a teleport, whatever. A good player has a plan to get away. Amazing how that does not go so well for them when you see they are about to enact this plan and you stun them for 2 seconds and spike them.
In Pve, you can fight things higher level than you and never get hit, or dramatically decrease the amount of damage your team is taking. So to reiterate my opinion, I have to disagree with the OP. Although if you asked me Friday at 8pm when I was reading abilities with 1s daze and one shot blindness with long cooldowns I would have agreed.
I keep hearing about melee being hard, but I still sayu thats people not mastering the dodge and moving away. This is fluid combat. The way melee looks if u were really in a fight. You don't see two people standing their and hitting one another ala a boxing match. I had a melee engineer build. A medium class character. I used lotso f dodging in, getting a couple hits in and then dodging back out or knocking back the opponent or CC'ing him.
As others have said, cc and conditions are perfect, they are small timed and there togive u breatheres and plan your next attack. I didn't lose a single 1 on 1 battle in wvw, and i switched between tool belts and bombs mostly spiking the gound with nails sending opponents flying with bombs and a wrench, it was pretty fun. But i certainly had to play the game different.
The problem is people not learning a new style of playy. So melee gets you killed standing there for too long, not being observant and watching for the animations, not dodging at the right time. Melee is a challenge to play but rewarding with its increase in damage. IN a since, it's the new "burst" damage. IF you have someone good at melee with you, you will own a lot of fights.
The problem with a melee dodging and positioning in order to survive longer means you're not netting very much damage because of heals.
My experience is that 1v1 or 2v2 can last a long time because of the heals that are powerful. Group combat people die quickly when properly focused but I don't see why they shouldn't. A player with only his/her own buffs shouldn't be able to survive 5 equally geared/leveld people attacking him/her for very long.
What heal are you guys using that's "bringing you back to full health?" So far as I knew, no one had a heal that gave you any more than HALF health except really a necro......
every class has a self heal on slot number 6
I know this. I played. My question is.....WHICH heal heals for FULL HEALTH? I know that my elementalist's self heal heals for HALF health. I was not aware that some classes had full health heals. Oh....and what I don't know....do those heals continue to scale with your level, because if not....they won't BE full heals for very long.
What heal are you guys using that's "bringing you back to full health?" So far as I knew, no one had a heal that gave you any more than HALF health except really a necro......
every class has a self heal on slot number 6
I know this. I played. My question is.....WHICH heal heals for FULL HEALTH? I know that my elementalist's self heal heals for HALF health. I was not aware that some classes had full health heals. Oh....and what I don't know....do those heals continue to scale with your level, because if not....they won't BE full heals for very long.
I played ele and there was a heal that did at least 75% of my health heal. Keep in mind there are various heal skills per class.
First, let me say I am an old school mmo gamer. My first MMOG was Ultima Online, followed by Asheron's Call, then the legendary Everquest... After my glory days in EQ, I bought pretty much every other mmo ever released including WoW... Now I played WoW off and on for like 5 years.. I have to admit the combat system and UI set up in WoW was probably one of the most polished and perfect combat system I ever played... WoW was also the last mmo I played before trying Guild Wars 2..
When I first logged into GW2 I was blown away with the graphics, atmosphere, terrain, and game world... It literally reminded me of being in Everquest, but better... Exploring the city, towns, etc was awesome... With that said, I was expecting everything from the graphics to the combat to be perfect... Well,,, In my honest opinion, It's not... To me, combat seems waaaay to fast. It feels as If my toon is lagging every second and all my attack animations are in super flash fast forward lag mode... This was my first impression for the first hour or so.. It's far different than the perfect smooth feeling of WoW where you know exactly what to do at all times. After playing WoW so long, you have the combat rotation down to a science.. In GW2, everything is new. We have to remember that were playing a totally different game so things will be different than they are in all of our other favorite mmorpg's..
After an hour or so, I began to get a better feel for the combat system.. Eventually, I started to become more comfortable and from there It didn't really bother me that much... However, I would like to see the combat animations slowed down, so I can actually have a better feel of my character's movements when performing attacks..
I played a thief and some of those abilities I'm just watching him zoom around like a pinball.. I don't mind it, but I feel it should be slowed down to look,,,, more realistic?
Overall, I like the game and had a lot fun playing this weekend. But that first hour I will admit I scratched my head thinking, omg wtf?!?! But as time went by as many of you said, I started to become used to the quick combat and from there a bit more comfortable with the combat system..
It's a new game and not every mmo released will have the same combat system as WoW.. If your going to play gw2, you'll have to learn to adapt or just decide not to play... Do I feel things should be tweaked? Absolutely.. I'd love to see them slow things down some. But that's just me..
Rallithon Oakthornn (Retired Heirophant of the 60th season)
To the OP: The game is the straight opposite of what you describe. Buffs/debuffs are EXTREMELY potent and hence a large part of your success (e.g. weakness - 50% of just getting glancing hits which is -50% dmg plus half endurance regeneration and so on).
Secondly, all damage can be avoided through dodges timed right and positioning making movement the most important parameter of both delivering and receiving damage. The implication is that all buffs/debuffs that effect movement are king.
Net-net: Your direct damage abilities are your third priority. Movement>>>debuffs/buffs>>>>>>direct damage
I saw alot of people during the week end that completely missed this however and played the game direct damage>>>movement>>>>>>debuffs/buffs which results in a huge lack of effectiveness. I found the game to have a huge depth due to this and look forward to PvP alot.
What heal are you guys using that's "bringing you back to full health?" So far as I knew, no one had a heal that gave you any more than HALF health except really a necro......
every class has a self heal on slot number 6
I know this. I played. My question is.....WHICH heal heals for FULL HEALTH? I know that my elementalist's self heal heals for HALF health. I was not aware that some classes had full health heals. Oh....and what I don't know....do those heals continue to scale with your level, because if not....they won't BE full heals for very long.
I played ele and there was a heal that did at least 75% of my health heal. Keep in mind there are various heal skills per class.
Oh shoot, you're right....I forgot about the utility heals choices. /facepalm I didn't put points in any of those. I suppose it might have been a good idea. I only died 5 times in 10 levels though. For this game, and for just starting....that didn't seem too excessive to me. I'm still in that learning stage, after all.
To the OP: The game is the straight opposite of what you describe. Buffs/debuffs are EXTREMELY potent and hence a large part of your success (e.g. weakness - 50% of just getting glancing hits which is -50% dmg plus half endurance regeneration and so on).
Secondly, all damage can be avoided through dodges timed right and positioning making movement the most important parameter of both delivering and receiving damage. The implication is that all buffs/debuffs that effect movement are king.
Net-net: Your direct damage abilities are your third priority. Movement>>>debuffs/buffs>>>>>>direct damage
I saw alot of people during the week end that completely missed this however and played the game direct damage>>>movement>>>>>>debuffs/buffs which results in a huge lack of effectiveness. I found the game to have a huge depth due to this and look forward to PvP alot.
This is a really good point and sadly for most of the weekend I think I fell into the group of folks who put my high damage abilities first in priority. It didn't work out all that well. On Sunday I spent some time really looking over how the debuff skills worked and started seeing that it was almost always wiser to think about buffs/debuffs first in relation to damage. I tried this on the ranger I was playing to much greater success. I'm looking forward to another beta weekend to try it out on other classes!
Dunno what game you were playing, dude. Maybe it's just the way you were playing? My experience was the complete opposite. I killed by stacking confusion on my mesmer. In fact, between my necro friend and I, there was a noticeable speed increase in big boss characters dying when he and I got to the scene to help (in smaller events, hard to tell stuff like that in bigger ones where the HP pools rise dramatically), and we're both build for conditions and boons rather than raw damage.
The classes are built differently, and within each class are a variety of additional builds depending on the skills you choose, the weapons you choose, and the traits you choose. Something as over-arching as "biggest DPS" wins doesn't really apply. Or did you mean like, there's no pure control, like mass sleeps or mass holds? GW1 didn't have that playstyle, I wouldn't expect GW2 to have it either, and neither sleeps nor holds cause damage in the first place, so still yes, of course the people who do the most damage per seconds are going to...well...do the most damage per second. There's still plenty of different ways to go about that, though.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Seems like the combat, and this affects all professions, boils down to who has the biggest dps hits.
The CC and debuffs and buffs are all so short lived that it feels pointless to cast them.
I think mostly it just feels like combat is way too fast. You arent one-shotted, unless facing a veteran 3 levels over you due to scaling, but you are three seconded.
I know people hate in pvp when CC is overpowered or it feels like you are always locked down, but they specifically said pve was different than pvp, so why cant the pve cc have more of an effect?
i felt the exact same way... and i mentioned it in Local chat and about 10 fanboys and gals wanted to lynch me... rofl at these rabid zombie fans.
but ya... combat is a meaningless blur of spamming your best DPS... very little reason for meaningful use of debuffs and CC's. dodge once and a while and dont get caught in AE. ooops im on fire? errr. 1 v 1 duels you can weave in special attacks and skills but in WvWvW... and group vs group combat... pshhhh its just spam and pray and watch the kaleidescope of colors.
and this is coming from someone who competes in amateur speed chess so dont anyone start explaining it away saying i must be an old fart with a slow mind and reflexes...
Feel the same way, PvP just seemede over simplistic and not innovative in anyw ay (As Anet promised...)
Comments
the answer is very simple: you dont use conditions on enemies for your benefit but for the benefit of your group - the age of the solo pvp'er is gone.
a good group can mow through enemies and people will at least need half a year to adjust to the awesome pvp-style GW2 offers.
You see the adjusting-problem with comments like "melee got this and that problem" ... "self heal blabla" -- there is no 'melee-class' - if you are using melee in the wrong situation you'll die. on self heal: people havent even started to HEAL in pvp (as heal skills scale with lvl and arent boosted.)
Yeah seriously where do people get this? Bright Wizard's slaughtering people and the incredibly stupid magnet instagib were awful.
I had a tank class in WAR and the magnet instagib still killed me in seconds when it was done right. Yeah I got away sometimes but that was mistakes on their part. Correctly done it was a true insta-gib with no real counter.
Over too quick for solo players, or over too quick for members of an equally organized group?
over too quick? they need to hire a trio of Water Eles spamming heals. Those medicore heals go a looooong way and sway the balance of combat in favor of the smarter group.
So you need 3 "healers" to make combat last? And thats meant to be ok?
The point was with GW2 that you didnt need the triad, tank/dps/healer. Everyone can self heal. Everyone can support heal.
So the first question with your arguement, why ele healers, why not thief healers, should be just as viable.
But the major point is it doesnt solve pew pew mentality that makes GW2 combat so instagib fast.
People cant deal with CC, so lets basically remove it. Sigh. CC means strategy, when to employ it and when to use your breaks and removes.
In GW2 there are a lot of CC abilities, but they last 1-3 seconds in general.
Plus, each ability is so fast its basically a button spamming FFA.
Explorer 73% Achiever 53% Socializer 53% Killer 20%
MMORPG genre is dead. Long live MMOCS (Massively Multiplayer Online Cash Shop).
i felt the exact same way... and i mentioned it in Local chat and about 10 fanboys and gals wanted to lynch me... rofl at these rabid zombie fans.
but ya... combat is a meaningless blur of spamming your best DPS... very little reason for meaningful use of debuffs and CC's. dodge once and a while and dont get caught in AE. ooops im on fire? errr. 1 v 1 duels you can weave in special attacks and skills but in WvWvW... and group vs group combat... pshhhh its just spam and pray and watch the kaleidescope of colors.
and this is coming from someone who competes in amateur speed chess so dont anyone start explaining it away saying i must be an old fart with a slow mind and reflexes...
I tried WvWvW with my warrior and bow. I just kept spamming fire. Yeah, theres no real thought to it though. Like you said, just bunch of flashy colors and a few dodges. Then spam your abilities hoping you down someone. AOE rules as king. If you get a bunch of arches, they can shutdown a group of people.
every class has a self heal on slot number 6
I didn't get to try many classes, especially since I was busy all day saturday and couldn't play, but as a staff elementalist, I found was able to CC and kite multiple mobs indefinitely without ever taking a single hit. Between the 66% slow on my #4 water attunement spell, the cripple on my #4 earth attune spell, the stuns/immobalize on my #5 earth and air spells, the knockback on the #3 air spell, the speedboost on my #4 air attune spell, the rollback escape on my #4 fire attune spell, the chill from glyph utility skill I took and the active dodge mechanic, I felt like I had more CC than any class in any MMO i've ever played.
I tried out a thf healer/range dps set up. It was ok but people were too stuck in the typical mmo mentality that they didn't bother gsteping into the AoE to get healed. Also casting that heal on the people fighting next to the boss is a bad idea. They go stealth and drop "aggro".
My theme song.
Combat feels faster before you have mastered it. I had the same feeling the first few hours but it felt slower and slower the more I got used to it. Then I changed class from Thief to Ele and it started all over again...
Once you played it a while it will be fine. I didn't CC much though, spent half the time with my thief and the rest between a warrior, a ranger and a ele. It might be that they need to improve the CC skills a little, it usually takes a year after launch for a MMO to get at least acceptably balanced.
i felt both PvE and PvP took alot more skill then other games. In PvE i found people thought it was ok to tank damage and not dodge or put at least 1 survivability utility trait. As far as PvP is concerned 1v1s where exactly what they needed to be skilled, yes skilled becuase there is no more button smashing not u actually need to identify what a heal looks like or the proper time to knock down or stun to be able to let out a burst if u have burst. the game is great.
acouple changes i would like to see:
W v W v W: need a hastener liek DAOC had where u talk to him and ur given swiftness to run around teh map IF your attacked you lose it but till then u at least run at a decent speed.
Defending a keep should be a event: what i mean by that is that each time u engage in a battle u gain the small event repelling the attack but defending the keep its self should be 1 large event cause last not i got into a 5 hour keep defense and tho i did get in alot of the small events that give decent xp if you can deal alot of damage to a target i wanted everyone to benefit for staying there and defending the keep.
also maybe some type of mounts would be nice.
I have to respectfully disagree with the OP. I played way too much GW2 this weekend. I can say that I have now played every profession, and all but 2 to level 10 (others close). I played a ton of structured pvp as well.
I was trying to get a feel for each profession to decide which I like the most. For pvp I am definitely set, but pve I am torn. Granted I could have built/played each class differently than I did but I found myself thinking late Sunday (I went back and streamed gameplay of my 5 different current classes for a friend) was that when I played a class that had no cc at all I felt..underpowered...at much more risk, and consequently less successful. I did more damage with the profs that I went away from cc on but really it didn't make the fight any easier.
slows, launches, pulls, knockdowns, all made fights go so much smoother. In PVP as well, I found even 2 seconds of the right cc was critical. Actually I wll go as far as to say especially in pvp. Every good player has 'get out of jail' abilities to get away when they know the fight is going south. whether it is a stealth a snare, a heal, a teleport, whatever. A good player has a plan to get away. Amazing how that does not go so well for them when you see they are about to enact this plan and you stun them for 2 seconds and spike them.
In Pve, you can fight things higher level than you and never get hit, or dramatically decrease the amount of damage your team is taking. So to reiterate my opinion, I have to disagree with the OP. Although if you asked me Friday at 8pm when I was reading abilities with 1s daze and one shot blindness with long cooldowns I would have agreed.
I keep hearing about melee being hard, but I still sayu thats people not mastering the dodge and moving away. This is fluid combat. The way melee looks if u were really in a fight. You don't see two people standing their and hitting one another ala a boxing match. I had a melee engineer build. A medium class character. I used lotso f dodging in, getting a couple hits in and then dodging back out or knocking back the opponent or CC'ing him.
As others have said, cc and conditions are perfect, they are small timed and there togive u breatheres and plan your next attack. I didn't lose a single 1 on 1 battle in wvw, and i switched between tool belts and bombs mostly spiking the gound with nails sending opponents flying with bombs and a wrench, it was pretty fun. But i certainly had to play the game different.
The problem is people not learning a new style of playy. So melee gets you killed standing there for too long, not being observant and watching for the animations, not dodging at the right time. Melee is a challenge to play but rewarding with its increase in damage. IN a since, it's the new "burst" damage. IF you have someone good at melee with you, you will own a lot of fights.
The problem with a melee dodging and positioning in order to survive longer means you're not netting very much damage because of heals.
My experience is that 1v1 or 2v2 can last a long time because of the heals that are powerful. Group combat people die quickly when properly focused but I don't see why they shouldn't. A player with only his/her own buffs shouldn't be able to survive 5 equally geared/leveld people attacking him/her for very long.
I know this. I played. My question is.....WHICH heal heals for FULL HEALTH? I know that my elementalist's self heal heals for HALF health. I was not aware that some classes had full health heals. Oh....and what I don't know....do those heals continue to scale with your level, because if not....they won't BE full heals for very long.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I played ele and there was a heal that did at least 75% of my health heal. Keep in mind there are various heal skills per class.
This is my 2 cents on the combat of GW2..
First, let me say I am an old school mmo gamer. My first MMOG was Ultima Online, followed by Asheron's Call, then the legendary Everquest... After my glory days in EQ, I bought pretty much every other mmo ever released including WoW... Now I played WoW off and on for like 5 years.. I have to admit the combat system and UI set up in WoW was probably one of the most polished and perfect combat system I ever played... WoW was also the last mmo I played before trying Guild Wars 2..
When I first logged into GW2 I was blown away with the graphics, atmosphere, terrain, and game world... It literally reminded me of being in Everquest, but better... Exploring the city, towns, etc was awesome... With that said, I was expecting everything from the graphics to the combat to be perfect... Well,,, In my honest opinion, It's not... To me, combat seems waaaay to fast. It feels as If my toon is lagging every second and all my attack animations are in super flash fast forward lag mode... This was my first impression for the first hour or so.. It's far different than the perfect smooth feeling of WoW where you know exactly what to do at all times. After playing WoW so long, you have the combat rotation down to a science.. In GW2, everything is new. We have to remember that were playing a totally different game so things will be different than they are in all of our other favorite mmorpg's..
After an hour or so, I began to get a better feel for the combat system.. Eventually, I started to become more comfortable and from there It didn't really bother me that much... However, I would like to see the combat animations slowed down, so I can actually have a better feel of my character's movements when performing attacks..
I played a thief and some of those abilities I'm just watching him zoom around like a pinball.. I don't mind it, but I feel it should be slowed down to look,,,, more realistic?
Overall, I like the game and had a lot fun playing this weekend. But that first hour I will admit I scratched my head thinking, omg wtf?!?! But as time went by as many of you said, I started to become used to the quick combat and from there a bit more comfortable with the combat system..
It's a new game and not every mmo released will have the same combat system as WoW.. If your going to play gw2, you'll have to learn to adapt or just decide not to play... Do I feel things should be tweaked? Absolutely.. I'd love to see them slow things down some. But that's just me..
Rallithon Oakthornn
(Retired Heirophant of the 60th season)
To the OP: The game is the straight opposite of what you describe. Buffs/debuffs are EXTREMELY potent and hence a large part of your success (e.g. weakness - 50% of just getting glancing hits which is -50% dmg plus half endurance regeneration and so on).
Secondly, all damage can be avoided through dodges timed right and positioning making movement the most important parameter of both delivering and receiving damage. The implication is that all buffs/debuffs that effect movement are king.
Net-net: Your direct damage abilities are your third priority. Movement>>>debuffs/buffs>>>>>>direct damage
I saw alot of people during the week end that completely missed this however and played the game direct damage>>>movement>>>>>>debuffs/buffs which results in a huge lack of effectiveness. I found the game to have a huge depth due to this and look forward to PvP alot.
Oh shoot, you're right....I forgot about the utility heals choices. /facepalm I didn't put points in any of those. I suppose it might have been a good idea. I only died 5 times in 10 levels though. For this game, and for just starting....that didn't seem too excessive to me. I'm still in that learning stage, after all.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Because you aren't supposed to spam skills and CC someone to death.
That 2-3 second slow/CC/stun/interupt can and often does make the difference between win and loss.
My first time in a structured PvP match this weekend, as a Mesmer using a staff I took on 2 people and won.
I killed one and the other ran from me after he used his heal and I got him back down to low health.
Granted, they were probably just bad, but CC is short in this game for a reason.
This is a really good point and sadly for most of the weekend I think I fell into the group of folks who put my high damage abilities first in priority. It didn't work out all that well. On Sunday I spent some time really looking over how the debuff skills worked and started seeing that it was almost always wiser to think about buffs/debuffs first in relation to damage. I tried this on the ranger I was playing to much greater success. I'm looking forward to another beta weekend to try it out on other classes!
Dunno what game you were playing, dude. Maybe it's just the way you were playing? My experience was the complete opposite. I killed by stacking confusion on my mesmer. In fact, between my necro friend and I, there was a noticeable speed increase in big boss characters dying when he and I got to the scene to help (in smaller events, hard to tell stuff like that in bigger ones where the HP pools rise dramatically), and we're both build for conditions and boons rather than raw damage.
The classes are built differently, and within each class are a variety of additional builds depending on the skills you choose, the weapons you choose, and the traits you choose. Something as over-arching as "biggest DPS" wins doesn't really apply. Or did you mean like, there's no pure control, like mass sleeps or mass holds? GW1 didn't have that playstyle, I wouldn't expect GW2 to have it either, and neither sleeps nor holds cause damage in the first place, so still yes, of course the people who do the most damage per seconds are going to...well...do the most damage per second. There's still plenty of different ways to go about that, though.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Feel the same way, PvP just seemede over simplistic and not innovative in anyw ay (As Anet promised...)