Guild Wars 2 - Skills and such

[The Almighty Aardvark]

A couple years ago I got Guild Wars 2 at launch. I played it a couple days, and I really liked how dynamic and engaging combat was. However, I couldn't get past the fact that in choosing my skills I pretty much got to choose a weapon and then my choice was gone. That killed it for me pretty quickly and I put the game down at around level 12.

Recently I had an inexplicable itch to try it out again. I rolled a Norn Guardian and am now at level 18. I find I'm enjoying it quite a bit, and I would be all gung ho on the game if it still wasn't for the skills. At this higher level (and knowing the game a little better) I've found out that my choice in skills has expanded from just the choice of weapon to three additional skills that do rather little with 30-40 second cool down times.

I can tolerate it for now, but I'm not sure I can go from level 18-80 with still using the exact same skills 90% of the time. I like my character to feel like they're evolving as the game goes on, and using a skill I got to choose every 15 seconds or so isn't really doing it for me. I've noticed that there are elite skills, and specializations after I get to level 21, but I'm suspecting those will be just more of those 30-60 second cool down skills.

In addition, I'm feeling like there's almost nothing to differentiate me from the million other players that are probably playing my class. All they need to do is pick up one of the weapons I'm using and they're pretty much an exact clone of my character

My questions here are:

1. Does it get better? Do you ever really do anything substantially different than you did at level 10?

2. Did this bother you? I haven't been able to find anyone other than myself who complained about this, so I'm wondering if it's just me who it's bugging

(Added for more discussion value)
3. What skills/builds do you find the most fun to use/play?

I really want to like Guild Wars 2, I enjoyed the first game even though I never got the chance to spend too much time playing it. There are parts of this game I enjoy more, but I wish it hadn't dropped a number of the things I liked in the previous game.

 

[Silvanus]

1. Does it get better? Do you ever really do anything substantially different than you did at level 10?

Very much so. You'll end up with four non-weapon skills, plus one elite, many of which don't have long cool-downs at all. You can craft a whole build around a single skill, so there's no reason your weapon skills should be the basis of your build.

Then there's weapon-switching, which most (but not all) professions can do. So, it's not just the weapon(s) you choose, but how you switch between the two and make them work together. Lots of variety for a Guardian.

2. Did this bother you? I haven't been able to find anyone other than myself who complained about this, so I'm wondering if it's just me who it's bugging

It didn't bother me, but I can sort of see what you mean. I say you should just experiment. There's plenty of variety to unlock; just don't focus on your weapon skills. They should just be the foundation.

 

[Scarim Coral]

1. Well I felt I did performed better than I did at the start as in not dying as much. My current guardian skills (shout build) pretty much means I have a high survival rate in PVE for the most part.

2. Somewhat at the start. I mean I played GW which was all about skills (so many skills to choose compared to GW2) but I got used to the simpler selection.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

*snip*

*snip*

This is good to hear. I'm not sure if I'll ever totally get over the static weapon skills, but I'm glad to find out that there becomes more to it than at the beginning.

I actually haven't been switching weapon sets much at all. I found I like the hammer the best, and my second weapon set has just been sitting there unused. I'm going to try playing around with some of the others, switching regularly between two sets would at the very least give me a bit more say in my skills.

Still hoping to hear more perspectives on this, but I think I'm going to add another question for more discussion value

 

[halisme]

1. Hell yes. The elite specialisations have revived this aspect of the game. I too play guardian, now dragon hunter, and use a full trap build which not many other people run.

2. Yes, it does, the lower levels seem droll and I struggle leveling characters.

3. I'm currently running a trap and burns build, greatsword/bow with might, toughness and condi gear. The other skills are fully traps, ignoring fragments of faith. I could go into a detailed talk of my build and playstyle, but I shan't. Anyway, it's a really fun build with something useful in every situation, and scales well against larger groups of enemies, only weakness is the lack of speed, and destroyers.

 

[Asita]

One of the things you'll want to keep in mind for Guild Wars 2 is that it's less about the variety of skills than it is skill and trait synergy. Take Guardian as a case in point. As you well know, Guardian's unique mechanic is its Virtues, which can be used either actively or passively. Virtue of Justice passively inflicts burning on the foes you hit after every few strikes or on activation makes you and your allies inflict burning on your next strike. It's a nice DPS boost on its own, but it gets much better than just that.

See, Guardians can also spec in a trait that gives them a damage boost against foes that are burning and another that gives your symbols (you know, those light fields you put on the ground) a chance to inflict burning. For bonus points, that trait tree also makes your symbols inflict vulnerability (the enemies take extra damage from all sources) and another that gives you another damage bonus against any enemies standing in one of your symbols. And that's the cliff notes version. For the full version...well look at the Zeal, Radiance and Virtues trait trees.

 

[Worgen]

I can understand how variety of actions is a worry but you don't really have too. Really its more of an issue your first play through since you won't really understand utility skills that early on and how much of a difference they can make. Probably my favorite profession to level was the engineer and they have the smallest number of weapons they can use of any class. But even with that it was a ton of fun since I found more effective builds for them than any other class I tried. They can have an alchemy build that involves flinging potions and buffing themselves, a kit build which totally changes all your attack skills to one of a number of different kits, and a turret build which involves making a very hostile area with a lot of automated damage dealers. Plus they can combo those skills quite effectively and its just fun.

 

[Durai]

1. Does it get better? Do you ever really do anything substantially different than you did at level 10?

2. Did this bother you? I haven't been able to find anyone other than myself who complained about this, so I'm wondering if it's just me who it's bugging

(Added for more discussion value)
3. What skills/builds do you find the most fun to use/play?

I really want to like Guild Wars 2, I enjoyed the first game even though I never got the chance to spend too much time playing it. There are parts of this game I enjoy more, but I wish it hadn't dropped a number of the things I liked in the previous game.

1.Yes it gets better, at least for most part. Your standard 5 weapon skills +1 heal skill are soon accompanied by 3 utility skills (your choice) and an elite skill.

2.No, I wasn't bothered at all. I, like most people I assume, am intimidated by games that use a ton of skills in their interface. Guild Wars 2 is all about quality over quantity, which is something I can get behind 100%. Even their traitlines have been streamlined, which means I can choose 3 of 9 awesome major traits instead of 3 of 17 where about 10 are totally pointless.

3.Depends on the class. When I first started out, I loved playing a support Guardian. I wielded a Mace/Shield + Staff combo that let me heal my allies while providing damage mitigation boons.

As for you favoring your Hammer over your second weapon set, that's actually quite normal. Some players specifically have 1 melee weapon set and one ranged weapon set for when they either need to recoup, or when the game forces them to fight from afar.