The Official Guild Wars 2 thread

Intel_Hydralisk said:
Played a TON this weekend. Ordered pizza, quarantined myself from society and went at it with some buddies.

- Made 5 characters, PvP'd on my ranger. In general, tried to get to 7 for weapon swap to really see how a class plays. First thing I went for with each class was to buy all their weapons and unlock all the skills.
lvl 29 Ranger
lvl 7 Warrior
lvl 7 Necro
lvl 7 Mesmer
lvl 7 Engineer
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What was your impression of the classes that you played? Because of finals I couldn't spend too much time ingame this weekend, but I enjoyed playing elementalist for plopping combo fields everywhere. I found ranger gameplay fun when using the bows. For some reason I've never been a huge fan of melee classes which may make things interesting because most professions have the option of ranged or melee combat. I made other characters but I couldn't spend much time on them.
 
Very lovely screenshots.

My only gripe with the game would be the optimization of it.
My q6600 was definitely struggling on it.

Played mostly a ranger and engineer. I have to say i really enjoyed the ranger.
One of the very few games i can be a pet class that is melee.

Looking forward to release
 
First BWE experience was awesome - got a lvl 17 ele, which I thought at first was the character I would play at launch. Turns out, I like the mesmer far more for a whole slew of reasons, both pve & pvp. In any case, I'm more than ready for the next BWE to test out my final mesmer builds :D

Performance wise, the game did okay on my q66 + gtx 260 build at 1680x1050 res, not perfect though. The game ran perfectly great on my 2600k + xfire'd 6950 at 5760x1080 though. No visible moments were visual lag was an issue.
 
kirtar said:
What was your impression of the classes that you played? Because of finals I couldn't spend too much time ingame this weekend, but I enjoyed playing elementalist for plopping combo fields everywhere. I found ranger gameplay fun when using the bows. For some reason I've never been a huge fan of melee classes which may make things interesting because most professions have the option of ranged or melee combat. I made other characters but I couldn't spend much time on them.
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I think in general, melee does significantly higher dps than ranged provided you can sit still and whack away. That said, melee is very risky and has a low life expectancy. There's a lot of talk about this on the GW2 forums. The devs put up an official post regarding melee vs. ranged. I found that if survivability wasn't an issue, then I'd prefer to go melee simply because it killed so much faster.

I've always been a ranger fan, so I would like to stick with ranger if I could. My biggest gripe about ranger is the pet. The pet is generally not incredibly useful. It can tank a couple hits, but that's literally about it. The DPS output is actually decent... if it weren't dead most of the time. You can try to make up for this by using the pet swap smartly (swapping out of combat has essentially no cooldown, but swapping in combat will make it go on a lengthy cooldown. Generally if you're just questing away, try to wait until after the fight is over to swap for a free res... boss fights are another issue. The pet will pretty much always be dead). Also, there is currently a bug where pets (necro and ranger) will stop attacking.

Necros are incredibly strong. I liked them a lot. I think my alt will likely be a necro since my first GW1 char was a N/Me after all. I think a lot of it is due to relatively high dps at medium range with the axe. Think melee calibre damage at 600 range. Staff provides good AOE and shadow form is basically another life.

I tried Engineer since I was really interested in trying out guns (something that rangers can't use...). I wasn't impressed with the weapon skills of the Engineer. Most of their purpose is supposed to come from the kits, so I wasn't sure how this would turn out in the end. I did try a grenade kit and some deployable turrets. Wasn't into it, so I will likely not explore Engineer.

Warriors right now are pretty beefy ranged DPS. Their rifle has similar single target dps to the Ranger's longbow and has a giant nuke with adrenaline. Their longbow has incredible AOE potential. I didn't like any of the warrior's melee weapons ironically.

Mesmers were the bane of people in PvP. I found that while they can be annoying with images, their dps is generally not very high. I didn't really like Mesmer that much but it was an interesting concept.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
Necros are incredibly strong. I liked them a lot. I think my alt will likely be a necro since my first GW1 char was a N/Me after all. I think a lot of it is due to relatively high dps at medium range with the axe. Think melee calibre damage at 600 range. Staff provides good AOE and shadow form is basically another life.
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I agree, got my necro to 15. With an axe/dagger I was doing good single target DPS and decent AOE, and shadow form is crazy.
 
I was excited for Engineer, and I was kind of hoping they would play similar to Engineer in Warhammer Online actually. I only got to level 8, but the turrets seemed a little weak and were destroyed too quickly for my liking. The Med Pack kit was also a little weak. Basically you can drop 3 med packs, each with a separate 30 sec cooldown. The problem is they only heal for about 0.5% each, so it's not very effective in WvW where people are taking massive amounts of AoE damage. I didn't experiment with the grenade kit.

Rangers are WvW Gods. With 2-3 Rangers, you can hold just about any choke point (Bridge, Gate, etc) with Barrage. I like the fact that you have a wide variety of weapons you can use, both melee and ranged. Sword/Axe combo was fun, combined with Longbow for ranged attacks. I agree that the pets need work. The controls are limited and they have poor AI so they stand in stuff and take a lot of damage. During WvW, my Bear pet was dead most of the time because I just got sick of rezzing him every 2 minutes.

Overall, I really liked the game. I think the voice acting is pretty 'meh', and the storytelling isn't the greatest but I'm not buying it for the PvE. If they can keep it balanced and fun for lower level characters competing against min/max'ers, then it will have some long-lasting value.
 
Biggrich76 said:
I was excited for Engineer, and I was kind of hoping they would play similar to Engineer in Warhammer Online actually. I only got to level 8, but the turrets seemed a little weak and were destroyed too quickly for my liking. The Med Pack kit was also a little weak. Basically you can drop 3 med packs, each with a separate 30 sec cooldown. The problem is they only heal for about 0.5% each, so it's not very effective in WvW where people are taking massive amounts of AoE damage. I didn't experiment with the grenade kit.

Rangers are WvW Gods. With 2-3 Rangers, you can hold just about any choke point (Bridge, Gate, etc) with Barrage. I like the fact that you have a wide variety of weapons you can use, both melee and ranged. Sword/Axe combo was fun, combined with Longbow for ranged attacks. I agree that the pets need work. The controls are limited and they have poor AI so they stand in stuff and take a lot of damage. During WvW, my Bear pet was dead most of the time because I just got sick of rezzing him every 2 minutes.

Overall, I really liked the game. I think the voice acting is pretty 'meh', and the storytelling isn't the greatest but I'm not buying it for the PvE. If they can keep it balanced and fun for lower level characters competing against min/max'ers, then it will have some long-lasting value.
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sounds like I fucked up not doing WvW PVP, I just did the battlegrounds.


I actually like the PvE though. Voice acting isn't too bad I though... what I really like is the questing. Heres 3 objectives you can do all of them or just one. Plus the dynamic events with 100 people killing a giant spider in the orchard is just awesome. However the spell effects are very visual so you can only see a circle of doom
 
I have to say, after pla ying the beta and spending time as mostly melee classes, the combat is a little disappointing In terms of mechanics/skills.

It seems they'v ewent more for quanity (with all the weapon type differences, etc) rather then quality in each individual move.

I find Tera to have better melee combat, at least better more "involved" melee combat, the feeling of dodging a blow, or using a skill that fkips you over someone's head behind them right as they go to attack to be much more rewarding of an experience as far as combat goes.

It'd be sweet if you could take TEra's combat (at least melee wise) throw it in with Guild Waras Area-based spells/class buff system (IE arrows shot through a flame wall = fire arrows) and then have the guild wars WvsWvsW pvp and events.

Perhaps ranged combat is more fun, but I tend to go for the melee heavy armor/dps type classes.


I tried also a ranger and Necro. I played a Necro in Guild Wars 1 when it came out and remember liking it. I don't remember if it even had a pet in it.

I found hte pets of both, rangers and necro's, to be near USELESS. I mean they just didn't seem that useful as far as tanking/aggro or anything. They died so quickly, it seemed almost impossible to have a single fight with your pet surviving that wasn't a single mob ou fought. In an event my pet would die in seconds.

Really hope they fix up pets an dmake them useful.
 
I havent played this beta yet, and I am itching for a good PvP game. But is this game full of stuns, mezz's, roots, slows, etc like SWTOR? That annoyed the crap outta me
 
Sage2k said:
I havent played this beta yet, and I am itching for a good PvP game. But is this game full of stuns, mezz's, roots, slows, etc like SWTOR? That annoyed the crap outta me
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I didn't see any stuns... just straight up fights.


I had a dope one on one fight with a guardian, on my thief is was sick. no stuns or slows that I really noticed, just exchanging blows and dodging attacks :D
 
I played Warrior (8), Engineer (10) and Necro (20) over the weekend. I found the game to be very fun, the graphics are gorgeous, very well worth the prepurchase and i intend to play it a lot once it goes live.

What i didn't like:

- The walking animations need more work to feel more fluid... the "gliding" effect is something that gets on my nerves and is hard for me to not notice it.

- The combat mechanics imho need a bit of work/change. Kiting every single mob (as all classes), because characters can't take regular hits is not something i would call making the game challenging or requiring player skills.

Making you avoid special attacks using the dodge system and kiting and being punished heavily if you don't is skill, having to notice what to avoid and how is skill and i wish they go that route instead of having to kite everything any kind of mob do like my character is high on amphetamines.

- Melee instant dying to random targeting or aoe that you cant predict on event bosses.

- Targetting and noticing the circles on the ground of stuff you need to avoid is a bit hard when you have dozens of other players around the same area with 100's of effects going on.
 
dremic said:
I didn't see any stuns... just straight up fights.


I had a dope one on one fight with a guardian, on my thief is was sick. no stuns or slows that I really noticed, just exchanging blows and dodging attacks :D
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There are fears and alot of slows/barriers and such but I also did not notice any stuns.

There is the daze mechanic with lets you move but you can't attack or use any abilities which is like a stun but either way all of those abilities only last like 3 seconds and have long cooldowns.
 
Sage2k said:
I havent played this beta yet, and I am itching for a good PvP game. But is this game full of stuns, mezz's, roots, slows, etc like SWTOR? That annoyed the crap outta me
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There's plenty of CC, but it's limited in duration, (1-3 seconds) and really chain CC isn't possible unless you have multiple people chaining and being extremely coordinated in their approach.

CC is important, and if you spam it you'll wind up not having it when you need it.

If you are using TOR as a gauge, it's no where near as prevalent.
 
EvilAngel said:
I played Warrior (8), Engineer (10) and Necro (20) over the weekend. I found the game to be very fun, the graphics are gorgeous, very well worth the prepurchase and i intend to play it a lot once it goes live.

What i didn't like:

- The walking animations need more work to feel more fluid... the "gliding" effect is something that gets on my nerves and is hard for me to not notice it.

- The combat mechanics imho need a bit of work/change. Kiting every single mob (as all classes), because characters can't take regular hits is not something i would call making the game challenging or requiring player skills.

Making you avoid special attacks using the dodge system and kiting and being punished heavily if you don't is skill, having to notice what to avoid and how is skill and i wish they go that route instead of having to kite everything any kind of mob do like my character is high on amphetamines.

- Melee instant dying to random targeting or aoe that you cant predict on event bosses.

- Targetting and noticing the circles on the ground of stuff you need to avoid is a bit hard when you have dozens of other players around the same area with 100's of effects going on.
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maybe this is more of a problem at higher lvls because I was only about lvl 8 ish. But I did not have any trouble with mobs.. dodging make things a lot easier
 
EvilAngel said:
- The combat mechanics imho need a bit of work/change. Kiting every single mob (as all classes), because characters can't take regular hits is not something i would call making the game challenging or requiring player skills.

Making you avoid special attacks using the dodge system and kiting and being punished heavily if you don't is skill, having to notice what to avoid and how is skill and i wish they go that route instead of having to kite everything any kind of mob do like my character is high on amphetamines.

- Melee instant dying to random targeting or aoe that you cant predict on event bosses.
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Those two things are my biggest gripes currently, too. Combat feels out of place and especially the dodge mechanic works only half the time and then not the way i would want it to, so i could totally live without that one.
 
ScYcS said:
Those two things are my biggest gripes currently, too. Combat feels out of place and especially the dodge mechanic works only half the time and then not the way i would want it to, so i could totally live without that one.
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i disagree espelially about char ability. its the best thing about this game imo. well one of. no more messing around finding a healer lol
 
EvilAngel said:
I played Warrior (8), Engineer (10) and Necro (20) over the weekend. I found the game to be very fun, the graphics are gorgeous, very well worth the prepurchase and i intend to play it a lot once it goes live.

What i didn't like:

- The walking animations need more work to feel more fluid... the "gliding" effect is something that gets on my nerves and is hard for me to not notice it.

- The combat mechanics imho need a bit of work/change. Kiting every single mob (as all classes), because characters can't take regular hits is not something i would call making the game challenging or requiring player skills.

Making you avoid special attacks using the dodge system and kiting and being punished heavily if you don't is skill, having to notice what to avoid and how is skill and i wish they go that route instead of having to kite everything any kind of mob do like my character is high on amphetamines.

- Melee instant dying to random targeting or aoe that you cant predict on event bosses.
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I don't think most classes 'have' to kite everything, but there does seem to be a pretty big learning curve to being effective in combat.
 
Oomps said:
I don't think most classes 'have' to kite everything, but there does seem to be a pretty big learning curve to being effective in combat.
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agreed. My personal skills mesh best with using a rifle. the ability to shoot from a distance + knockback + dodge = a deadly combo
 
The devs tried to convey that GW2 is about positioning, awareness, and dodging. In reality, almost all mobs boil down to circle strafe kiting. Melee users have very little options. So the combat in essence gets dumbed right back down to standard MMO combat.

I think they had a grand idea in mind with the dodge mechanic, but the fact of the matter is that it's not implemented very well at all.

For example, if a ranged boss was auto attacking you - could you really dodge all of the attacks? No. Your best option is to literally tail it and hide.

If a boss does a 900 range AOE around him that kills everything, do you really have any options as a melee character? No, you better pull out a ranged weapon.

If a boss does so much random AOE that it's impossible to dodge... where is the positioning/AOE skill if the design of the enemies don't even allow for it?

I did Ascalon Catacombs with a few friends and it literally boiled down to just trying to res the NPC's since they were so much beefier than you. Most things weren't dodgeable in the way the devs described. It's overall quite poorly implemented.

When I think of skill and dodging / positioning in a MMO, Vindictus comes to mind. In that respect, GW2 will never ever be on the level of fluent combat skill dodging as Vindi.
 
Wow was really looking forward to this but the description of the combat seems extremely flawed. I've always hated kiting in general, feels like a cheese mechanic, so to have most combat focused around it...?
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
When I think of skill and dodging / positioning in a MMO, Vindictus comes to mind. In that respect, GW2 will never ever be on the level of fluent combat skill dodging as Vindi.
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I definitely agree with this. In terms of the action style combat Vindictus has a much better feel.
 
It's not something that they can fix since I believe it's a fundamental flaw in the engine and the way it's designed. I doubt a MMO like this can reproduce the fluidity in something like a real action game. Vindictus was locally hosted instances so response / delay was very snappy for the most part.

I think they can improve it greatly with tweaking how the dodge works and how the enemies are designed. There shouldn't be blanket PBAOE's that absolutely destroy everything within melee / medium range. That's just poor design. Bosses that toss out ranged AOE skills should be avoidable! I can't express the frustration when a ranged AOE skill is essentially impossible to dodge since it will hit the spot you were at and end up AOEing you anyway. Ranged boss auto attack is something that is fundamentally unavoidable in any sort of sustained fashion. They really need to look into that.
 
We did a boss in the Norn starting lands and his AOE attacks were easily avoidable and so were his melee. At first as a warrior I got rolled, but after a few attempts I learned his animations and behavior. After that it was on lock. Big circles on the ground and huge wind ups are great signs that damage is coming and to GTFO.
 
Amaroth said:
We did a boss in the Norn starting lands and his AOE attacks were easily avoidable and so were his melee. At first as a warrior I got rolled, but after a few attempts I learned his animations and behavior. After that it was on lock. Big circles on the ground and huge wind ups are great signs that damage is coming and to GTFO.
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There was a boss that spawned in a Charr town. When my friends and I got there, there were upwards 20 dead bodies on the ground, including NPC's and other players. I thought "what the heck?"

5 seconds later my curiosity was answered as he basically did a 900 range AOE that 1 shot everything around him. My friends were shock and awed, dead on the ground. Good thing I was shooting away at 1000+ range.

This is basically poor design at its best.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
There was a boss that spawned in a Charr town. When my friends and I got there, there were upwards 20 dead bodies on the ground, including NPC's and other players. I thought "what the heck?"

5 seconds later my curiosity was answered as he basically did a 900 range AOE that 1 shot everything around him. My friends were shock and awed, dead on the ground. Good thing I was shooting away at 1000+ range.

This is basically poor design at its best.
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I don't think it's poor design. I think it is different design then what we are used to. I remember old school WoW where each boss had very odd abilities and they were actually difficult to defeat. Every fight wasn't just stand in one place and DPS. I think the actual issue is that we haven't yet figured out the strategy needed to easily kill the bosses. You have to remember that even "melee" classes can use ranged weapons, sometimes they may need to use them.


EDIT: Also, I'm not saying it doesn't need work. I'm just saying I don't think it's as bad as some people let on.
 
Was able to play a fair bit this weekend. 2500k @ 4.5, CF'ed 6950 2GB (didn't bother to turn it off per the dev recommendations, only hit one card in any case) @ 1440p was pretty smooth when I got on Friday night after work to play. Averaging 40-70 FPS depending where I was, so long as I left shadows turned off, everything else at max. Large WvW castle fights were mostly in the 30's, rarely dipped down to mid 20's. And of course the end beta event was mostly 25-30, dipping down to 15 when Izzy's Rose got bored of Champion Moas and started spawning giants and keep lords on my group.

Combat was kind of a mixed bag for me, early on there was a lot of mobs 2 hitting me and I had to find a ranged weapon and do a lot of kiting, then dodge into melee for a few swings and dodge back out whenever something looked at me funny. After I hit maybe 15 or so and started filling in trait points, there were a few mobs I could be in melee longer on.
Once I got used to it, dodging was pretty useful, but there were many mob abilities that couldn't be dodged no matter how I tried to change my timing. The only mob I ran into that did PBAoE that one shot me was the keep lord in WvW, and the second time I engaged him I was able to notice the red circle more easily and dodge out.

Speaking of which, dear lord the WvW! I spent all of Saturday doing WvW with 4 of my buddies and we had a blast! Managed to get in at the start, and while everyone was fighting over Stonemist castle in the middle we ran off to the blue zone (we were red, Eredor's Terrace or something) and just hit a spree of hitting unclaimed locations there. Southern supply depot, SE tower, the depot next to that, and then the Eastern Keep which we claimed in the name of our guild, DGAF. :) Traded the depot north of it with blue a few times.

Intel_Hydralisk said:
There was a boss that spawned in a Charr town. When my friends and I got there, there were upwards 20 dead bodies on the ground, including NPC's and other players. I thought "what the heck?"

5 seconds later my curiosity was answered as he basically did a 900 range AOE that 1 shot everything around him. My friends were shock and awed, dead on the ground. Good thing I was shooting away at 1000+ range.

This is basically poor design at its best.
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I remember that giant, he spawned relatively quickly too. His AoE wasn't quite 900 range, but still very annoying. If I was an inch closer than my rifle's max range, I got one shot with no tells. Definitely sent some scathing feedback on that event.

I agree with the earlier poster in this thread about coordinated groups being able to hold off much larger zergs. We held our keep multiple times against 15-20+ groups of people while counting down the seconds until supply showed up so we could repair our door. At one point, we decided we were done trading the depot north of our keep with blue, so 4 of us headed up and left one at the keep to defend the depot under attack. We managed to hold off about 15 blue at the depot by being annoying and rezzing npc's when we could, and managed to kill quite a few of them and force them to run back. Then some green guild we developed a rivalry with came around and hit us in the back with some friends and we finally lost the depot. All in all, great fun. I played primarily a hammer warrior with a rifle in WvW, with a ranger, thief and two elementalists in our group.
 
Scooty Puff Sr. said:
I don't think it's poor design. I think it is different design then what we are used to. I remember old school WoW where each boss had very odd abilities and they were actually difficult to defeat. Every fight wasn't just stand in one place and DPS. I think the actual issue is that we haven't yet figured out the strategy needed to easily kill the bosses. You have to remember that even "melee" classes can use ranged weapons, sometimes they may need to use them.


EDIT: Also, I'm not saying it doesn't need work. I'm just saying I don't think it's as bad as some people let on.
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That's a good point. If ranged dps (both AOE and single target) were implemented into boss mechanics, then you just solved the problem of melee classes having to dps all the time.
 
My biggest gripe for the game is that there is no GvG. Only Guild 8v8 sPVP with rented servers. They took out the GW1 GvG and thats what I think made the game along with the huge amount of ways to spec your toon. WvW feels like PVE because all enemies are labeled Red,Green, Blue Defender.... I'll be canceling my preorder tomorrow. I hope they change this.
 
l0x said:
My biggest gripe for the game is that there is no GvG. Only Guild 8v8 sPVP with rented servers. They took out the GW1 GvG and thats what I think made the game along with the huge amount of ways to spec your toon. WvW feels like PVE because all enemies are labeled Red,Green, Blue Defender.... I'll be canceling my preorder tomorrow. I hope they change this.
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I'd say massive scale WvW, ala DAoC, is far superior to 8v8. The competitiveness between guilds in DAoC was very high. I do miss local kill spam, though. It would be nice to know who is killing who.
 
Scooty Puff Sr. said:
I don't think it's poor design. I think it is different design then what we are used to. I remember old school WoW where each boss had very odd abilities and they were actually difficult to defeat. Every fight wasn't just stand in one place and DPS. I think the actual issue is that we haven't yet figured out the strategy needed to easily kill the bosses. You have to remember that even "melee" classes can use ranged weapons, sometimes they may need to use them.


EDIT: Also, I'm not saying it doesn't need work. I'm just saying I don't think it's as bad as some people let on.
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It is poor design because the bosses give no visual, textual or aural feedback that they are about to perform a move that will wreck your shit. It was poor design in vanilla WoW 8 years ago and it's poor design now. You will die a lot in Guild Wars 2 and have no idea why or how it happened.
 
krameriffic said:
It is poor design because the bosses give no visual, textual or aural feedback that they are about to perform a move that will wreck your shit. It was poor design in vanilla WoW 8 years ago and it's poor design now. You will die a lot in Guild Wars 2 and have no idea why or how it happened.
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That specific boss in the Char area didn't give any warning but I fought bosses and mobs during the beta that did give warnings. Either red circles on the ground or their animation showed they were about to do a certain move. Once again, I'm not saying that everything is perfect and nothing needs to be fixed but people arguing that all the boss fights are flawed and have poor design because one or two did AOE damage that killed everyone is a stretch.
 
Yea I had that happen on the tutorial boss for the Norn.

I seemed to be the only one human player there fighting at the time (right after server went down and came up), I died in one-hit from some aoe thing I didn't even see, literlaly full helath to 0 with no visual indication of any move or damage.

They really need to design bosses and sucht hat you see moves, can learn patterns/strategies like most action games have done for the past two decades or more.
 
krameriffic said:
It is poor design because the bosses give no visual, textual or aural feedback that they are about to perform a move that will wreck your shit. It was poor design in vanilla WoW 8 years ago and it's poor design now. You will die a lot in Guild Wars 2 and have no idea why or how it happened.
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In my play experience during the weekend 80-90% of the bosses and mobs had animations that showed they were about to wreck your shit. The only complaint I actually have with the dodge mechanics relate to the special effects. Its hard to see when something bad is about to happen when 100+ spells are going off on the target. That got me killed more than anything.
 
Stiler said:
Yea I had that happen on the tutorial boss for the Norn.

I seemed to be the only one human player there fighting at the time (right after server went down and came up), I died in one-hit from some aoe thing I didn't even see, literlaly full helath to 0 with no visual indication of any move or damage.

They really need to design bosses and sucht hat you see moves, can learn patterns/strategies like most action games have done for the past two decades or more.
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I read somewhere that the Anet staff put the instant death in place so that players could see the downed state, and it was normal for everyone to die at least once. Might have been on the forums.
 
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