GW 2 - What would you change?

First off, I'm assuming they will go with a similar design of health, energy regen, and limited skill slots. I'm also assuming they may go with very similar game mechanics. The core game design should remain the same. The appeal of Guild Wars is the challenge of creating a complete character out of hundreds of available skills and only using a very limited number of them


So, on to a few game mechanics I would change:

Tanks - Give the Warrior their role back. Every class in Guild Wars and most MMOs has a primary role to perform better than all others. This is supposed to be facilitated by the class-specific statistic, armor, and energy regen rate. Warriors have never been the best tanks in all situations. I've always wanted to make one, but it seems like specific builds (Perma-'Sins, Ele Terra Tank, 600 Rit, 55 Monk) can out-tank the Warrior in most situations.

Armor-Ignoring Damage - Another factor that reduced the Warrior's ability to tank is the abundance of armor-ignoring damage. If the Warrior's only advantage is taken away by so many spells that ignore armor, why have a "tank" class in the first place?


Taunt Skills - Where are they? I know GW1 never wanted them, but controlling aggro is another thing that makes a tank... well, a tank. I also know people have found ways around the game mechanics by exploiting the AI with body-blocking or other tricks. If monsters are just running around and hitting random players and the Warrior is just a pile of metal that gets ignored half the time, then why bring a Warrior? Bring another DPS class so your monks don't take as much of a beating. After all, the job of the tank is to keep others from taking a beating. By not having aggro management, the tank doesn't perform that job very well. On a side note, to balance taunts in PvP, do something similar to Warhammer Online, where taunts make the enemy target do less damage to all but the tank.


Hexes and Hex Removal - There are so many hexes in the game. Many of them are easy to apply with low cooldowns and low energy costs. Where are the low cooldown, low energy cost hex removal skills? Almost all of the hex-removal skills are on 12-second cooldowns and only remove one hex at a time. At least condition removal has Restore Condition.


Conditions and Melee vs Casters - Blind, cripple, and weakness all affect melee characters more than spell-casters. Dazed is the only condition which hinders a caster's ability to perform their role. The balance is a little off here, especially when you compare how many spells cause anti-melee conditions against the melee skills which cause daze. Reduce condition availability or make an extra condition for casters, or make blindness cause spells to fail (after all, you can't see who you are casting a spell on while blind).


Enchantments and Enchantment Removal - As with Hexes and Hex removal, the offending side has a major advantage again. Enchantment removal is easier than applying them when you compare the recharge times and number of enchantments removed by a single skill. It is almost pointless to "prepare" for a fight by applying enchantments to yourself because enchantment removal will be one of the first things the enemy does to you. Necromancers have two ways of removing ALL enchantments from foes in an area, to make things worse.


In conclusion, I am in no way saying Guild Wars 1 isn't fun or has something horribly imbalanced with it. The challenge and fun of Guild Wars is bringing the right classes and builds to meet the demands of the situation you are facing. However, I will say that after four years of changes and expansions, the game's focus has shifted away from the traditional MMO it used to try to be.



---IMPORTANT---Please do not consider this a complaint post or whine thread. This is a serious discussion about general game mechanics which I would like to see different in the next Guild Wars game, not this one. This is also not a debate about which skills are overpowered or don't belong in GW 2.---IMPORTANT---

Get rid of hexway

There's no point in theorycrafting change based on an already theorycrafted perception of Guild Wars 2.

This is not to mention the fact that you are under the false presumption that tanks were meant to exist in Guild Wars. While indeed, aggro is an important factor against AI, it's not nearly the end-all-be-all of Guild Wars. Melee classes, warrior included, were designed to deal DAMAGE. That is there role, and that is what they're best at. A well-placed prot spirit or guardian could help a warrior to achieve more than a pure tank ever could. In fact, it's the ingenuity of prot skills in Guild Wars that makes the game unique. Unique enough that tanking is not a necessary, or integral, part of the game.

Hexway- Far too bloody powerful right now, 2 hexes can shut down a class for a ridiculous amount of time and can be re-applied with easy, there are few skills with the ability to fight back against this kind of power effectively at all. Faintheartness/Empathy/Backfire/VoR, all come to mind.

Evasion/Blocking ability - This needs to be closer watched, monks and rangers, and assassins with critical defenses, truely wreck melee combat ability and forces long drag outs of fights or truely stupid curb stomp battles just because the warrior does not carry wild blow/rip enchantment. You can say "Without it we'll get owned", well I'm not saying those skills are bad, they do have a place, but they need to be closer watched and not make so quick n easy.

Touch Ranger - Send this bonehead build the grave

Easier to say what id keep, and that would be the 1 login server model.
No multiple servers seperated by region with characters tied to them as per the traditional MMO.
The rest, well, that could do with some work.

2nded, 3rded, 4thed, it was a major major part of my love of the game.

Poke, you have never said anything that I have MORE agreed with

Amen Brutha, Amen!

Aggro is gameplay style....you cant have skills affecting it. That's like using a skill to remove a wall in the way.

Two comments:
1) You speaking about what you want to change in present GW, not about GW2 (how to speake about GW if we know near nothing about it yet?).
2) About tanking - I play mainly earth ele, which can be super tank, it has some use in PvE, but in most situations is not too usefull. Why insist warriors shoud be best tanks when they excels in so many others roles? Eles/monks can be better tanks but not better frontliners. (Common complain here - please balance shadow form a bit).
3) You are com plaining that warriors are too vulnerable to conditions/hexes/ench. removal - I recommend this threads Why Nuking Sucks, where casters complains that warriors and sins are too strong, superb DPS even without any skills etc, skills so fast to use and no/minimum aftercast and recharge, no problem with energy denial and much less vulnerable to interrupts... Maybe good idea for both "sides" to try oposite profession a bit.
4) Armor-Ignoring Damage - I agree it is an issue, hope will be different in GW2.
5) Taunting - this approach would split PvP and PvE. Better find some way usable in both (like stance which extends bodyblock size of warrior temporarily, punish by damage/knockdown runing aroud,attack which throws enemy in oposite direction a bit...). Anyway even as it is - you can get similar efect with knockdowns and/or criple builds.

Things I'd keep:

Warriors: This is largely in response to the first post in the thread. In every RPG I play I always aim to be the melee damage dealer. This is different in MMO's: I hate tanking. Granted okay I don't *hate* it but I'd *much* rather be actually hitting things to kill them. Tanking rarely made sense to me, honestly.

Things were different in GW. My role was to get to the frontlines and deal some damage. No tanking, just pewpewpew. I loved it. If things change to the typical "tank and spank" mold in GW2, things are going to look quite dark - not just for Warriors but for all classes.

The Core Classes: All have a role and can fit it well. Things got a bit jumbled as GW went on, but if they kept it stable in GW2 like the earlier days in GW1 then they'll hit gold.

Things to change:

Skills: Too many and you get boned. If you keep expanding the mechanics you'll lose grip of the balance of your game.

New classes: Similar to adding too many skills. There was nothing more additional classes could add that the original six couldn't. The only thing you'll gain from more classes is pretty much more imbalance. They need to watch this in GW2.

Aggro: Because of the way aggro worked in GW1 you were able to effectively perform the "tank and spank" mode of gameplay. The game wasn't made to fit this mold, hence why became insanely game-breaking, and being generally easy to do.

That's because a warrior isn't supposed to tank, and you're a terribad player for thinking it is. A Warrior is for high single-target damage and sometimes knockdown spam. Not a tank, never was, hopefully never will be.

Guild Wars isn't meant to use tanking, which is part of why SF is so problematic.

How do non-segregated servers co-exist with a persistent world design? I don't want to be artificially walled off from players either, but how could that work?

I would make Armor-ignoring damage less prevelent. In Prophecies, there were very few skills that ignored armor and the ones that did were expensive (Obsidian Flame, Dust Trap, etc).

Have less skills than GW1, but make all skills useful. For new expansions, release ~5-10 skills per profession.

Revert to the 6 core professions. But, merge rit spirits into the necro profession. Make the primary attribute a Soul Reaping/Spawning Power hybrid.

Make smarter AI. For example, make monsters move to account for obstructions, make them not always attack themselves to death if they have something like Empathy on, and give better them builds.

Agreed, less skills and professions is better. Problem is that Anet needs sell new campaign from time to time and need add new skills in new campaign but... Maybe add new attributes in different GW2 campaigns like spirit would be new attribute for necro, scythe+spear+leadership for warrior. Maybe even lets have profession (after few campaigns) have choice from few primary attributes.

And please, to split skill between PvP and PvE version if necessary is OK, but not so much super-strong PvE only skills ...or at least limit them to specific area.

And let most ares have 4 and 8 people mode (switchable in outposts like NM/HM), if you play alone, it is not much fun to have so many henchies and heroes.

Remove all titles and associated grind from the game.

warriors are the damage dealers in guild wars, not tanks. their high armor is intended to compensate for their vulnerable positioning on the field, not to stand there and absorb damage from idiots who can't see the squishy targets behind them. there is no designated tank class because guild wars is a heavily pvp-based game, and tanks are utterly useless in pvp.

oh god no


agreed, hexes and hex removal just aren't balanced right. there's always PnH if you know or think you're going up against hexway but broken counters doesn't really solve the problem of a broken mechanic, it just promotes build wars. idk what anet could do to make them better, tho.


there are plenty of anti-caster counters. hitting them with a hammer, for instance; you'll notice they take more damage. this makes them better targets for warriors, and therefore they have to kite more often. kiting = not casting spells. dshot-ing them also works. while you can interrupt a physical, it isn't nearly as detrimental to their ability to perform their task as it is to a caster; an auto-attacking warrior is still a threat. also, cripple isn't just an anti-melee counter; cast it on an enemy and your frontline will find it much easier to hit.


agreed, deep, fast-recharging enchantment removal makes pure spike builds a little too appealing because you can guarantee a good opportunity for a spike every 20-30 seconds with little to no spec in a single skill.

Another GW2 thread

I'd blame the AI more than anything, honestly. Make them aware of the person who's dealing damage to them and things would be a lot more functional, and would actually make sense.

Tanks are the most lame rpg archetype in existence. I'm glad GW discourages them.

Why would we want a skill that has the sole purpose of making the ai dumber? Isn't more intelligent ai more fun to play against?

Anyway, things I'd like to see:

More viable pressure damage from casters - they can spike, but fighters are where it's at for pressure so far. Maybe make wand/staff damage better so they can do something useful without expending energy?

More health on characters, and weaker healing. I think spikes are a little too easy provided you have an organized group, and I think that monks are too strong compared with the rest of the classes. I would like to see healers be weakened, but give players more health instead so they can still last.

More freedom with PvP formats. Why not allow players to hold a 6v6 or a 10v10 GvG match? Why not let them hold one where all teams are randomized like in RA, but in the GvG format? Most other online multiplayer genres allow players to change these settings to their liking, and I think Guild Wars would be better with it as well. Why not let players host games with whatever rules they like, and then let other players choose which ones they want from a list of all the available games? They could also allow new players to join a match in case of a leaver or something.

More skills on a skill bar. The skill bar idea lets players go a long way towards making their characters unique, but I think they're too marginalized. You can either make a versatile bar or a bar that's only really good at one thing, and that sounds like it should be fair enough, but the problem is that if your bar/team isn't balanced, you run the risk of being hopelessly stomped by a gimmick group whose strength is something you don't cover. For this reason, I say that players should be allowed a bit more versatility by giving a few more slots on their skill bars. Why not use, say, the 9 and 0 buttons so you can have 10 skills instead?

1. Skills would be level based and characters would only receive half the benefits of secondary profession skills. Its easier to balance and less skills would be nerfed.
2. No more metagame. There is like 101 ways to defeat you opponent. I don't need to be told to run these specfic skills all the time.
3. Players should be able to craft their own gear and weapons. Why ? Because it simply adds depth to the game.
4. A consignment house instead of an auction house so this way players can not overprice items.
5. Goodbye hard mode - The game should be challenging from the start. I shouldn;t need hard mode.
6. Better character customization
7. Instead of titles we can have achievements where if I eliminate 200 wardens I can get a +5 damage to wardens.

Just ideas I am throwing out because I have nothing better to do at the moment.