I’ve slowed down a bit over the last week for GW2 play time. I mostly get on some point for the weekend, explore an area, collect the ‘points’ then pop off to do something else. Not because GW2 has lost my interest, but because I’m feeling like there is a lot to do in a “Skyrim – your journal is full of stuff” only there is no real journal so it leaves me sorta freaked out that I’ll forget something.
Yes. I am too lazy to write down areas to revisit or even alt-tab and type it into Notepad.
PVP goes well enough though it seems I’m suffering from the success of the evening groups (which I’m never a part of). They do very well at their time frame, dominating the map then disappear come morning and afternoon when I play. That means we’re always facing top of the line servers and I find myself stuck in with the less organized casuals.
Yeah, I’m casual too, but I’m willing to collect the supply, build siege weapons and follow orders.
I think another source of my lack of enjoyment is that I have no one to share my successes with – that is more my fault than anyone else though. I don’t participate in guild activities or even chat much. See? My fault. I think if I knew people better or was more involved I’d have more of a stake in doing is available.
Guardian is at level 34, Warrior and Engineer are up to 11, Elementalist is sitting at 9 and I have a low level Rogue.
I have yet to do that level 30 dungeon but I figure I’ll get to it.
Combat
Evolving Squid commented in my last GW2 post that he found the combat somewhat boring. I somewhat agree.
Ultimately I use sword and shield so the first three abilities are my attack abilities: autoattack chain, teleport to target and strike, series of strikes that can also be ranged for less damage+sets up a close shield. The offhand abilities consist of one shield attack that raises protection for me and nearby allies and impacts nearby foes negatively while the last item (5) is a shield that knocks people back. The heal ability I use is an auto-cleanse of one condition every 10 seconds but is otherwise unexciting. For my talent base abilities I typically run with an increase to Power passive with knockdown active, the ring of fire (sort of like a WoW Paladin’s Consecrate ability) and teleport to target+strike and AOE ring of fire ability. For my Epic ability I took the Bearform (since the toon picked Bear totem – yeah, I’m a Norn Guardian – I regret going with a female though… I think the male would have been more impressive).
The Epic ability is actually somewhat amusing. When I change form I end up losing my typical action bar and it’s replaced with 5 abilities; attack chain, powerful sweeping attack, series of progressively more damaging attacks, a shout (PBAE ally buff/enemy debuff) and a charge attack that is wicked fun – bowls everyone over on my way to the target then slams the target and knocks them back.
I’m sure most readers (I do still have readers, right?) who are familiar with WoW are probably thinking, “I really don’t press more than a few buttons in WoW either…” which is true but I find WoW tends to have more of a build up or require a little more attention to elevate the damage output. You have to use things in an order and fire off some sort of finisher while with GW2 it’s a lot of button mashing.
Example? My DK in WoW typically uses Horn of Winter to buff up, pops the ability to dump all the diseases on a target, then Pestilence to spread it, then Death and Decay, then Death Strike or Heart Strike. If that disease dump ability isn’t available, I have to add Plague Strike, Icy Grip (or whatever it is called) and Death Strike (or Heart Strike) to get the diseases up to a target.Usually popping a Boil Blood in there because DPS is too impatient to wait until they see I have Death and Decay down… then I spread the diseases and drop Death and Decay, etc.
There is more of a purpose to what I’m doing than just “the ability is ready”. Maybe it’s just my lack of understanding of the abilities, but there doesn’t seem to be as much of a build up to them as there is in WoW.
For the Thief (in GW2) you have your main attack which is mostly a builder of resources then you have your other abilities which consume that resource and that’s about it.
For a WoW Rogue (Rouge, sorry!) you build up your combo points with various abilities then apply a finisher that consumes them all granting more of a result based on whether you hit the 5 point cap or not. These results can be a number of things and it matters. You’re not just hitting the button because it’s available. i.e. for Combat Rogue you want to Sinister Strike, Revealing Strike and pop Slice and Dice for haste increase, then build up again and pop Eviscerate for big damage… unless you have a bleed buffer then you might want to pop Rupture. There just seems to be more to it.
I guess you can say most GW2 classes feel like an Arcane Mage… sorta. Mash the 1 button and pop a few other buttons when they’re available but even the Arcane Mage has to keep track of the build up for Barrage.
Again, maybe I’m missing something or just playing the wrong classes… but it doesn’t feel that way.
I recognize the Warrior builds up Adrenaline and then dumps it for some effect depending on his weapon equipped and sometimes you want to swap your weapons out to gain access to different abilities, but even then you’re still limited to that one set.
My Guardian’s second weapon set is a Scepter and Torch which I typically use during sieges in WvWvW because they give me a ranged attack, a ground AOE, a root (good for catching runners) and for my Torch I get another ranged (fire damage shield that you can toss at someone) and another cone AOE (it does crazy damage).
Admittedly in WvWvW the combat is more entertaining because people do different things.
One upside is that you do get a lot of Talent abilities that you can swap in and out for different effects and swapping weapons often gives you different types of abilities – you just do tend to button mash with those too.
Another upside to PVE combat is that mobs don’t typically die in one or two abilities and with the downscaling of levels as you enter areas, this (mostly) remains true. This means DoTs aren’t somewhat a waste like in other PVE in MMOs (Oh hai WoW!).
Still, I can’t break the feel of mashing buttons until another ability is available in PVE.
Is GW2 dead to me already?
No. I’m not paying a monthly fee for it so I can pop back to it whenever I feel like it.
Auction House
There has been a lot of talk about the cross server Auction House… I like it. It becomes a Buyer’s market which I like but then I’ve never been one to play the Auction House or get too into Crafting that others were. I don’t care that materials cost more than finished product (even though I recognize that is ass backwards), but it really does come down to (I believe Tobold said this) supply and demand. GW2 does not take items out of the game which means there is less of a demand on the finished products. Everyone is looking to do some crafting (because it’s not overly painful to do) so there is a demand for crafting materials.
I have not play Wow, so I may be wrong. The combinaison you proposed, seems to be always the same. You are not adapting to whatever comes to you and if you can have a macro, it will do the jobs with only one push, am I right ? – one more time I do not know Wow and I can totally be wrong.
The spirit of GW2 – not always – is not to push buttion when they are on cooldown. In fact for a lot of abilities the DPS of these abilites is inferior to the 1 button : the goal is to press the button when they are needed : you root the enemy when you are low life and they are melee, blind them before an attack, put an AOE when you can make them still, etc…
This is in part a theory, and I often play as a button masher ^^
I agree – the rotations or priority systems in WoW are typically the same for each class (though different from one class to another). Macros don’t quite work for all classes though. The difference is that each class plays differently from a mechanics stand point. It doesn’t play the same but generate different effects.
I also agree with your assessment of GW2′s intent and it applies very well to PVP – but only to PVP. In PVE it doesn’t really matter what order you do the ability. Though I’d argue that having to mash 1 over and over isn’t really all that better – it’s worse because now you mostly ignore the other abilities and mash one key.
The abilities and theme of the weapons are great for PVP – you want to use the other abilities to apply status effects to the enemy but in PVE it doesn’t really matter, while they won’t die as quickly as in WoW, they will still die easily enough.
XP speedbumps.