The Average Skill Level in Guild wars

Maybe a little, but largely because they are more and more prot-heavy. SoA is an elite that isn't elite, Aegis got a lot cheaper with GoLE, and gift of health plus all the choice elites (ZB, Divert, RC) lets you heal quite a bit from within a high prot spec. There used to be a time when a heal-specced monk was a standard player alongside your prots outside of arena, but it's not such a given anymore.

Either that, or the fact that good players dont do PUG's says enough.

I kind of figured Factions was based around PvP. Ritualists and assassins rock in PvP if you haven't noticed. And obviously all the core classes are common. I don't think there's a shortage of skill in PvP. There is an abundance of morons and disrespect, but that's another topic altogether. Even the biggest of idiots can have skill.

I actually think dervishes are ultimately easier to play than warriors in a PvP setting. Warriors have a number of mechanics that require a fair amount of skill:

a) Adrenaline-do I build on a hard target and spike or do I try and pressure squishies but at the cost of slower adrenaline gain?

b) Proper use of frenzy

c) Bull's strike/prot strike. Bull's strike in particular requires a fair bit of thought to use-quite often you'll have to predict when someone is going to move to score that KD since it's a regular speed attack.

d) Interrupts

and finally

e) Proper use of healsig/healsig cancelling

Dervishes don't have to worry about any of these things. They do have to worry about being spiked since they're soft(er) targets, but there's nothing you can do about that personally, you don't have room to take defensive skills on your bar, so basically it's up to your team to make the save.

There is enchant management to worry about, but effective derv builds do not stack tons of enchants because you want to minimize time spent having to recast them in combat.

Warriors are a class with surprising depth.

To me it's just the raw power of this skill when combined with the burning aspect and a 1 second cast time and 2 second recharge makes it a very spammable skill. But I digress, as I said before these are subjective. How do I know for sure this skill is overpowered? The truth is I don't, I only speak from experience when going against it as an Ele and Necromancer.

Where do you think the average skill level in Guild Wars is right now?
Very Low

Do you think this is a good or bad thing for the game?
Probebly a good thing, as many of the lower skilled players still find mid level PvE missions/quests difficult.

Why do you think it's at the level it's at?
Combination of a low average age of gamers (Maturity), low knowledge of the game/build/and experience in general. It's simple to be active on forums, in order to understand what you don't know.

How do you think you rate personally in relation to the average player?
Well above average.

How would you remedy the problem (if you think there is one)?
Just leave it as it is. If everyone played at high level, 99% of the game would be empty, and these forums would overrun with e-peen braggin.

Are new professions too easy to play?
Nope. Just too many brainless people playing them in an incorrect way.

Where do you think the average skill level in Guild Wars is right now?

PvE: Better than it used to be but still not great. I can't count the number of times in nightfall that I've given a pug a try only to be dissapointed in the utter lack of coherance and ability and then simply gone and hero'd through the mission without a death. One thing I hate is when I monk and my partner is a hero monk someone else is controlling and they pick the worst possible monk bar I've ever seen. I cry at that point.

PvP: In some sense better, most teams in GvG at least try running sensible builds. But at the top I've noticed a lot of the old strong guilds playing less which is unfortunate. No Evil, No WM, Not much IQ. There are good teams up there of course, but I feel like the quality at the top has diminished.

RA Is a crapfest as always. I know its a time for people to screw around and try stuff, but really if I see someone using another warrior trying to do blood magic/healing/prot/illusion/nuking I'm going to scream. Roll a pvp necro/monk/mesmer/ele and do those things rather than trying to cram them on you pve warrior. HA is meh, TA meh, HB sucks. The factions PvP is bottom of the barrell.

Do you think this is a good or bad thing for the game?

Bad. Especially in the top end of GvG. Keeping good players interested is important for the growth of the competetive aspect of this game.

How do you think you rate personally in relation to the average player?

Well above average

How would you remedy the problem (if you think there is one)?

In PvP proper fixes are needed for Tombs and GvG in order keep top players playing this game. More candycane fun seasons, no tournaments, and skill imbalance are killing things. In PvE, I dunno, get rid of heros and force people to learn to work together in pugs again.

Have we begun to reach the upper level for the amount of skills the game is capable of working with?

I'm not sure. If you look at magic, they are able to keep things fresh by implimenting new mechanics. If something analogous can be done in GW then I think we're aren't near the end.

Are new professions too easy to play?

Dervishes are stupid easy. Paragons are pretty easy, though there isn't much to do with them really.

Where do you think the average skill level in Guild Wars is right now?

Very very low. I judge skill level based on PvP play which is the height of skill and strategy in Guild Wars in my opinion. It is the measuring stick of skill in a player because lets face it, PvE is FAR easier in comparison. I don't hate PvE, but I think most people can agree PvP is much more challenging. The reason the skill level is very low is because most players are PvE players who have no sense of how to play PvP properly.

Do you think this is a good or bad thing for the game?

Horrible. PvE can be a lot of fun at times, but it will eventually die...the unique PvP is what is going to keep GW alive in the long haul. If the competition and skill level of the game dies, so does PvP right along with it.

Why do you think it's at the level it's at?

Because PvP is not promoted heavily enough and is made FAR too difficult to get in to for the average player. Anet does not do nearly enough to promote GW as a fun competitive game where skill matters. Instead most players just go through a heavily promoted PvE campaign and never play again nor care about their skill.

How do you think you rate personally in relation to the average player?

Far above average.

How would you remedy the problem (if you think there is one)?

There are so many ways I can't even think of them all right now. Promote GW more as a game of skill. Promote PvP more. Make it easier to get in to just like just about every other good PvP game (no unlocks or having to grind to play). Much more frequent updates. Just overall taking the damn thing more seriously instead of the sad and confusing state the game is in now. This is just my opinion on things at the moment.

Have we begun to reach the upper level for the amount of skills the game is capable of working with?

No, just as in Magic the Gathering, Guild Wars potentially can handle tens of thousands of skills. The problem is that we only have hundreds of skills right now and they aren't properly balanced AT ALL. In order for more skills to be introduced, there needs to be a large TEAM of people working on updating them regularly so they are all decent. That is not a bash against Izzy, but you have to look at Magic again...they have large teams of people working on any given set which is what GW should have.

Are new professions too easy to play?

I don't really understand the question, but I'll try to answer anyways. Going back to assassins and ritualists...Rits are ridiculously easy to play. Their best builds all consist of sitting and spamming spirits. Assassins are more difficult because they are usually played as solo characters who need to be self dependent. Paragons are easy to play, they just use shouts mostly. Dervishes are easy to play because they are overpowered. I don't have a problem with any of these classes though as long as they don't screw the game up.

A discussion about what makes an overpowered skill also came up in this thread. An overpowered skill is anything that screws up the metagame or makes the game unfun because almost everybody plays it. A good metagame is one that has a LOT of viable builds in the field. When you have a field of Searing Flame spammers, Grenth dervishes, and teleporting Warriors backed up by machine gun Mesmers, you have a crap metagame full of OP skills. Go back to pre-factions metagame I say.

The average skill level can be found by going to

www.gwonline.net.

going to the general forums.

And reading through the 14 PAGE THREAD on stances and if they are interuptable.

14 PAGES. MODS EVEN RESPONDED.

Seriously. If you dont know. It takes 1 friend, 2 heroes and 30 seconds of your time.

So true the I recently went through nightfall again with just heros all the way to torment then guildies on last 2 missions. I had one attempt at pugging and the monks did not think prot spirit was worth taking at all and the healing monk had conjure phantasm and vital blessing! I really wonder how these people progress through the game at all.

People suggest heros have ruined the game in some way but they are a sheild to the horror of such bad players. With heros you never need to know those players exist

PvP is different. GvG is still competitive possible more than it used to be for most mid to high ranked guilds. However HA is a joke and has been for some time the skill level decreased because of the low amount of teams actually playing after 6v6 being introduced.

Overall people tend to find players about the same skill level and once they do they are fine from then on.

Someone earlier made a point about Monk skill level being higher than it used to be. I thoroughly, THOROUGHLY disagree with this, and here's why :
All concept of pre-prot has gone out of the window because of two skills : shadow prison and avatar of grenth.
Shadow Prison first : it basically means you cant presume spike targets due to warriors approaching, due to the fact that they can fake you out by running towards one guy, then shadow prisoning another. It means monking is a lot harder, and your only option is to pre-prot dped/60AL targets, rather than the target being converged upon.
Secondly, Avatar of Grenth rips apart enchantments, and means that monking is more based on twitch heals than protection, and damage mitigation.
These two skills have made monking a lot, lot less skilled, and if you hope to have a chance, you have to abandon the concept of pre-prot

Where do you think the average skill level in Guild Wars is right now?
PvE: Very low. Bad players used to learn pve builds from grouping with someone else with a good build. Now they good players go w heroes and the bad players are left to figure things out on their own.

PvP: Lower than before. Innovation in team builds seems to have gone down too. A lot of good players seem to have moved on.

Do you think this is a good or bad thing for the game?
Bad for PvP. Even worse for PvE b/c the social aspects of the game are dwindling. Good players use heroes mostly and the bad players group with one another and think, "Hey, I'm just as good as that other guy. We must be failing the mission b/c it's just too hard."

Why do you think it's at the level it's at?
For PvP: Less interest in coming up with builds and more interest in just winning using standard builds.

For PvE: GW has incredibly poor training built in. They need to include some pre-made builds for pve so players can try them out and see what a coordinated skill bar looks like.

How do you think you rate personally in relation to the average player?
A few standard deviations above the mean.

How would you remedy the problem (if you think there is one)?
Give PvP players what they want in HA. Improve training for PvE players.

Are new professions too easy to play?
No. They take as much skill as the other professions. For eg, playing a resto rit requires similar skill as a monk. A SS or MM necro or a GoR/MS Ele or a stance tank are not harder to play than the new professions. Your first professions will always appear more difficult. Just like pre-searing was harder than the noob islands in factions or NF.

Et voilá. My opinion has been "italiced" in. Coming from a mixed view on the game.

Well that entirely depends on your scale, in my opinion. What is the minimum/maximum here? Are we going straight from Farm Bot to Last of Master (before Factions :P), or are we being more specific, like, for example:

WoW player >_>
FarmBot
Harold J. Chow
Mending Warrior
SS/AV LF 55 Monk
Rit in RA
Thumper in TA
SS Warder in HA
GlyphSac MetShower in GvG
Spike in GvG
"Euro"spike in GvG (that includes blindbots and diversion spammers)
Core Front/Midline in upper tier gvg
Core Split in upper tier gvg
Core Monk in upper tier gvg :P
Last of fkn Master Chuck Norris himself pre-factions ^.^

in this kind of scale I'd make a wild, uneducated guess (weighted by the crazy number of farmbots of course :P) and put the average gw player (that actually plays pvp) at the "Thumper in TA" level.

I don't think the current skill level of any player is a good/bad thing for the game, but rather an indication of the requisite for winning.

What do you need to win? If you need less to get by, and the incentive to win isn't hard enough for you to play more complicated but potentially more rewarding builds/environments/positions, then you stay there and refuse to move on because it's easy this way.

I think the average level is there for the same exact reason you think it's there; the game is slowly being dumbed down, and I agree with you a second time in that I believe it's being dumbed down because the devs are doing one of two things. They're either A) Not stepping out of their comfort zone and including wild new game mechanics that adds a whole new dimension to the game, or B) not creative enough to think of wild new game mechanics to the game. Thus, the safe road makes itself apparent: Let's take game mechanics and skill synergies (that were uncovered by players, mind you) and water them down into one skill, as you pointed out. What's the big idea, then? Are they trying to phase out old skills and make them redundant by making them into new, more appealing skills? Here are some examples:

Ether Prodigy Blindbot -> Blinding Surge
Ether Prodigy Heal Party -> Light of Deliverance
Guardian Healing Breeze -> Weapon of Warding

Or, let's take an existing skill and change the numbers (or format). This is clearly just a way to fill up the requisite hundreds of skills per chapter, and I don't blame them. That's a BIG quota to fill, and these skills don't take away from the game, for the most part. Examples:
Eviscerate -> Decapitate
Lightning Orb -> Lightning Hammer
Ice Prison -> Freezing Gust
Endure Pain -> Signet of Stamina
Protective Spirit -> Shelter
Aura of Restoration -> Glyph of Restoration
Crippling Shot -> Crippling Slash, Crippling Anthem :P

and finally let's add more versions of Otyguh's Cry into the game. Examples (there's a ton out there, these are just 1 elite from each class):
Rage of the Ntouka
Lacerate
Balthazar's Pendulum
Soul Bind
Tease
Energy Boon
Wastrel's Collapse
Xinrae's Weapon
Grenth's Grasp
Focused Anger

So anyway since I've went on this tangent, the reason I believe the skill level of GW is descending dangerously towards Harold J Chow level is because the skills in this game are slowly becoming, for lack of better terms, dumber.

I honestly wouldn't put myself beyond "Rit in RA" level, because as I've been playing more WoW I find myself attempting to jump when I'm in danger. Trust me the last thing you wanna do when in danger is space-bar whatever you currently have targetted.

I think the solution to the skill balance / variety problem that GW suffers is quite simple: Hire more people. It's clear that the number of people writing and balancing skills is lacking. If it's true that Izzy's the only person responsible for balancing skills, that's quite sad. He needs more opinions. He needs more opinions that matter, and more opinions that when faced with failure are also there, with him, to be blamed. :P

Sorry Izzy <3

Also, a brief alpha rant. What's with the secrecy? As much as I understand GW doesn't want to take after WoW, you have to consider that open alpha testing with open alpha forums and discussion, and open book development is a very good way to get a very broad perspective on what skills or mechanics in the game are working, what are not, and what are almost there but need some tweaks. If it's bad, the customers won't know until they've already made the purchase!

Begun to reach? I think we've went beyond it by a couple leagues myself, in terms of sheer number. If we take out the redundancies (For the love of god, what's with the duplicate skills? There are no competitive pvp players that don't have Factions AND Prophecies.) and the space-filler skills that I've pointed out, and replaced them with really innovative skills that recieve proper community input

I wouldn't say that anything about a profession or class independant of skillbar is easy or hard to play. It's what you bring. It's harder to play a ganking ele than a flagstand blindbot. It's harder to backline monk than LoD flagrun, and so on.

So in terms of the new professions, nothing about them makes them easier or harder to play than the existing ones, other than what skills are available to them.

Shut up.

I think that the point of being skilled is your ability to stay on top.

I dunno about that, Phaern. Ability to stay on the top appears to be more about how committed you are to the farming of the ladder. Maybe this will change with the new way GvG will work, who knows.

Where do you think the average skill level in Guild Wars is right now?

Mediocre to reasonable. It's very situational though.

Do you think this is a good or bad thing for the game?

Again, situational. you can choose your party, but you can't choose your opponents.

Why do you think it's at the level it's at?

Admin's Bane is spot on about this... FtP...

How do you think you rate personally in relation to the average player?

I'm a hardcore player, so obviously I'm going to have the practice it takes to be above the average level - I'd say fairly skilled, but not game breakingly good, not by a long shot. I only want to have fun, after all. Don't take this the wrong way tho, I don't think that highly of myself, it's just I've seen 'mediocre' first hand.

How would you remedy the problem (if you think there is one)?

There is no remedy - Guild Wars is a game designed to appeal to a wide variety of people - the player demographic is typically much wider than in most other MMOs. As such, you'll never be able to please everyone.

Have we begun to reach the upper level for the amount of skills the game is capable of working with?

Not at all. If the game were to stop expanding in this respect, gameplay would become stale very quickly. The trouble is that there are various skills that already exist which are ether useless or far too powerful. The pvp metagame should not be about 20 skills from each profession, every skill should count in some way.

PvE is a different ballgame, as you don't need a perfect stratagem to win even at the highest levels, but then again, skillbalances need to take into account the effects they have on PvE more.

(Aside from the obvious 'farming nerfs' )

Are new professions too easy to play?

YesNoYesNo - Rt, A, D, P. There's your answer. But frankly I'd be more interested in;

Are new professions fun to play?

Yes on all counts. Frankly thats the most important thing, as if the new professions were staid and boring, it would put people off of playing guild wars altogether.

I'd rather have an imbalanced, imperfect game that people play than a balanced, perfect game that nobody bothers with because everything is too similar. Anyone agree with me on that?

On your last statement, Moa Bird Cultist I'd have to disagree. Think of Counter-Strike :P

Quote:
I've mainly spoken about PVP here because it's what I know, feel free to discuss the PVE side of this. I'm interested in where the game is going as a whole and I'd like to hear how its evolving in terms of PVE also.


Shut up.


So true..

Lmao...it's funny because it's true.

Reading the OP I know he wants PvP answers, but I only PvE at the moment.

So my opinions on PvE:

Average skill level depends on time of day and players I play with.
When I play during the day in the weekend, I sometimes feel frustrated by the lack of understanding of the missions/enemies other players have.
Like a 4D/2P group that wanted to invite me (monk) at Gate of Madness mission. Or people at Grand Court of Sebelkeh killing everything and not having a clue how to capture the portals (we finished in 31 minutes).

When I play late at night, it's usually easier to progress.
And with my guild we did some 3 / 4 player farmings (faster and less lonely) which went very fast. Did only a couple of missions with some of them, even easier than above average PuG.

On average, the PuG's i've met seem to have improved over the last year.

I rate myself around average for Ranger and Necro.
Ranger has one exception, that's interrupt build. I am above average on that one.
My monk slightly above average.
My mesmer above average.

The reason:
I know my enemies and how to encounter them.
I've learned the professions and studied the various skills and how they affect the enemy or own team. I know the casting times and when they will cast the one I want to interrupt. Or the ones I should be prepared to counter as a monk.

I don't think there is a real problem.
I have dedicated quite some time to the game and don't expect others to do the same.
Besides playing the game I spend time reading this forum and doing some investigating on wiki.
Mostly check on skills I don't have unlocked and want to know stats of without obtaining them (that's 1000g / skill on most characters, i'd rather spend that on something else).
That would add about 1/3 of time on top of 1200 hours/year playing GW.

I don't think the new professions are too easy to play.
When I got guildwars, most people started warriors as first profession.
I thought that was the easy profession, so I started Necro (specialised in curses and blood).
I managed to finish Prophecies faster with my warrior than with any other character, so it's probably the easiest character indeed.
But when I see some guild mates using their warriors, I know I could have learned a lot more and the W can be more complicated.
When I compare that experience to my Dervish and Paragon, I'd say the D is on the same level as the Warrior.
Easy to learn, hard to master.
I still have to learn the Paragon. He's ok, but I just can't find a decent skillset for a non spear-powered P.
Perhaps I can make the full skillset when I get to Realm of Torment, but now the builds on my hero P's are just not that good.
The skills don't give the advantage the skills of an other hero I know better would give.

Earlier there were the Sin and Rit.
I liked the sin, but many teams could not handle the solo-caster killer I ran.
Sins require good team coordination, which the average PuG did not have at that time. Also the way hench worked (switching targets when you did) was not helping to get the right way of thinking.
Rit is easy and was somewhat overpowered (like the non-nerfed Rit Lord build).
I only have the Factions skills, so I don't know how my rit would perform with the new NF ones.

The only opinion I have on PvP is based on RA.
I noticed that's harder because you don't know what you'll encounter.
When you use a generic build, you could be dealing not enough damage.
If you use a specialised build, you could be facing the wrong type of enemies.
I think I would be a very below average PvP player, but will work up to average in some time (I know my skills and weaknesses).
I just like PvE too much to dedicate time to PvP.

I'm pretty much exclusively PvE.

Where do you think the average skill level in Guild Wars is right now?
An average doesn't tell you much. Newbie islands are full of newbies, and difficult missions are bottlenecks for tards, and elite areas are full of twitchy neurotics pushing the limits of the game mechanics. In general I find PUGs to be more competent than AI, and I find the frequency of total idiots to be less than in the past.

Do you think this is a good or bad thing for the game?
Good! Complete idiots are the players that can ruin your fun. Crazy diamonds have always been a precious commodity.

Why do you think it's at the level it's at?
Most of the players I meet have played through all of the campaigns multiple times. Even the dimmest eventually pick up basic competence.

How do you think you rate personally in relation to the average player?
As a monk, particularly a twitch healer, excellent. I make an entirely average necro and barrager, and I'm a newbie to paragon.

How would you remedy the problem (if you think there is one)?
Honestly I think in PvE the biggest problem is population. I hero/hench my way through the vast majority of quests, and some of the missions, not so much to avoid PUGs as to avoid waiting to form a PUG. (I'm still shopping for an active guild.)

Have we begun to reach the upper level for the amount of skills the game is capable of working with?
There's a lot of repetition. Some skills are powerful enough that a team has to specialize to counter them.

Are new professions too easy to play?
Not at all. Rits, sins, and dervishes all require some finesse to play well, and while my paragon is still a noobcake I can tell that at the upper levels she's going to feel a lot like a speedy rit.

Where do you think the average skill level in Guild Wars is right now?
Hmm, most players I've run into are either good enough that I won't notice them doing anything good or bad, or horrible enough that I'll notice and get annoyed. Since I get on average, 1-2 bad players per pug, I'll be nice and say in a 8 man group 1 player is bad, 1 is new, 2 are average, and 2 are good.

Do you think this is a good or bad thing for the game?
I think this is a good thing, as it means most players aren't idiots. And since there's usually a bad player in the group, the new players can see what not to do.

Why do you think it's at the level it's at?
Well, guild wars has been around for a while now. If there really were a lot of bad players, it would mean information isn't really getting out about GW. So I'll be optimistic and say this is a good thing.

How do you think you rate personally in relation to the average player?
Actually, I'd like to say I'm fairly pro at PvE. I play all the classes, and know most of the tricks you can do with them. I'm versatile and can switch builds easily. I learn new builds in a few minutes, the harder ones taking possibly a few more, mostly cause I have most (if not all) the skills memorized and have tested them before. I keep up with GW news and usually know more about the game than players in my groups.

On the other hand, I'm only average at PvP. Sure, I won't make stupid mistakes and I know how to do stuff like split team. But compared to a serious PvP player, I can't really compare. Doesn't mean I won't make them work for it though ^_^

How would you remedy the problem (if you think there is one)?
Actually I'm seeing a lack of players in the missions around the middle of the PvE storylines. It's fairly annoying, especially the first time I played the game through. I like pugs, despite all the problems, and even if heroes and henchies are easier, it's less fun. Like the mission where you kill varesh (ruins of morah?) It's so easy to do it with heroes/henchies. But I find it more fun with more players. Missions like Vizunah Square are fun too, but you'll find more often than not that the other side is filled with just computers.

I don't really think there's a solution to this. You could rush through the game with all your characters in the beginnig, I suppose, but I'm sure most of us don't want to spend the time, or effort to do so that quickly.

Have we begun to reach the upper level for the amount of skills the game is capable of working with?
Actually, I think we could use more skills. Some of the skills in GW right now, are just waiting for other similiar skills to appear that will compliment them. I've played TCG games for quite a while, and I know I'm always happy to have new tools to work with. It spices up the game, and keepts it fresh.

Are new professions too easy to play?
Hmm, I actually find all the classes easy in PvE. But in terms of a new player coming in and picking them up, I'd say some classes are harder than others.

Assassins would most likely be played poorly, as shadowstepping is almost entirely exclusive to them (Ride the Lightning, whil technically not shadowstepping, functions the same way) New players will find the style at odds with the basic melee warrior stereotype, and will most likely make suicide runs.

Ritualists would be confusing, as they can do a lot, but not in any traditional way. New players would find themselves discouraged as they won't be dealing high damage, and setting up spirits can be a bit boring at times. Nothing really hard about them, but nothing awesome to attract new players.

Dervishes are a cinch. Heck, I could've played through NF with the same basic build I used in the beginning if I wanted to. Though they have the same armor as Assassin, they have access to more defensive skills than Assassin. This, combined with the fact they don't need to bring skills for attack chains, makes them VERY easy to play.

Paragons aren't hard. But they're not easy either. For a new player coming in, they'd probably find a paragon a nice middleground character. A nice balanced profession, that excels in group enviroments.

Where do you think the average skill level in Guild Wars is right now?
Most players have builds worse than henchmen. They also have less coordination and teamwork than henchmen.

I think the reason for this is that ANet makes huge areas of the game C-Space-able. Nothing required to progress till the very last missions.

By making it too easy for people, they become even worse players. A vicious circle.


I rate myself as a very good PvE player, having one of each primary profession played through all chapters (still working on NF) and having done almost "everything" with heroes and henchies alone. Except DoA.

Let me just give an example of the skill level in PvE.

I come into the Gates Of Madness and want to try to form a party with reall people. I have already beat GoM with 4 chars, all with pure Hero/Hench teams, 2 with Bonus.

So I get into a group and its the saddest bunch of noobs in the friggin game. I give some pointers and say lets give it a go. We go in, die. I say "I really don't want to lose faith in pugs", lets try again...with more pointers. We go in, wipe...I hard rez everyone and some noob runs directly into two mobs and we wipe again.

I say "I have to eat". I go eat and come back and beat it easily with my Heroes and Hench.

In the GoA Elite I wont even consider a pug, nor will anyone that I run with to make serious time on multiple area runs.

Most people have very little knowledege of the finer points of making GW easy as all hell. But some PvE ppl are Genius in the crazy stuff they come up with to beat missions and farm, so props there.

In PvP, I give most people a decent grade, but then again I play with or agaisnt very good players. I give idiots in RA an "F-".

I might be one of the few PvE people who likes monking for PuG (more of a challenge), but if we have to take a Hero monk, I insist on it being mine. Why use someone else's hero if we can use mine, which has a skill bar perfectly addapted to my own one?

Haha. Very nice hidden way of proclaiming yourself to be super l33t ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation#Rules_for_normally_distributed_ data

- Xeeron

I really think this topic deserves a bump, GW is being tardified and something must be done about it! <_<

I don't think the skill lvl of people is really as big an issue as the intent of the majority of players.

Let me explain.

Most people, when prophicies first came out, were totaly into the game and pushed as hard and as fast as they could. Some took there time to do every quest, explore every map and fight every monster.

As of today there are possibly 75-90% of players that have beaten 2 or 3 campains. These people are still playing but not with the same drive that they used to have. So they log in to have a little fun, maybe 1-2hours max. They put together a standard build, or something creative that may work or fail, then they do a quest or mission either that they enjoyed in the past or that there char needs to advance. Or they go to Random Arena.

At this point they split into two catagories: 1) Those that expect to win, regardless of others skill lvl
2) Those that do not care if they win or lose, they just want to have fun/kill time.



When these two groups mix, you get trouble every time.

The only means of fixing this problem is to talk to people, let them know if your out for fun or blood!

In the end though every team will have somebody that cares less than you and somebody that cares more than you about it. If your not prepared for the possibility then it can be extremely frustrating. However as long as all in the party are on the same page, it can be a ton of fun!

Some of the most fun I've had playing was with my guild all using totaly bad builds and dieing in the most brutaly total team whipe possible!