Stray thoughts and Holy Hand Grenades

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From: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/c...t10503959.html

Crom's reply got me thinking,

I've only been playing this game a couple month's but there are definately things about the game that seem counter intuitive to me...

Like your really pushed by the Tutorial section to take a 2nd profession; and the implication is that the game rewards the adventurer with a wide varity of skills to fall back on; but it's simply not true; the game mechanics really reward specialists (IMHO) - the player who pours 30 Points into Divine Wrath (not really an Attribute) so they can spike folks with their Holy Hand Grenade in PvP; will do well, the Player to spreads his Attribute points to thin will not.

Or the Fact that even with a +7 Attribute, and a +7 Weapon; you're still nerfed; just not as badly as you would be with a +6 Attribute and a +7 Weapon; because you need 12 in an attribute to get the full value out of any weapon.

Or that a Skill Like Frenzy is a 'Stance'
Which at the very least seems a very odd use of Language to me.

Don't get me wrong I don't want this thread to be a bitch session; but I was thinking maybe other players might share other tips and observations where the game seems counter intuitive to them. (or is it just me.) that might help others get a little more out of the game, or their toons. BB.

I have aways felt this to be true also... It really is counterintuitive to use 2nd professions at all. I remember when I 1st started playing Prophecies and thinking " Why do I have so little skill points?"

All well I gues that's why GW2 did away with them.........

The point of secondary professions is that you can spend points in a secondary line to make yourself more effective or to do things you can't do with your primary class. Splinter Barrage is a perfect example of a good use of secondary class, as are pretty much all necromancer meta builds. ER Protter is another good example.

Just how useful secondaries are depends a lot on your primary class. For instance, starting in Prophecies as a warrior, you might as well not have a secondary profession because they're all caster classes and you won't have the energy to use their skills anyway.

On the other hand, starting as an Ele or necro in prophecies, mesmer makes a good choice as a secondary because it provides good energy management.

The reality though is that secondary professions only really make sense once you hit 200 attribute points, since you can get a decent spread into 3 lines.

My first impression of secondary profession

Ranger / Elementalist

I will be super, long-ranged, damage dealer with my super natural area effect spell and my bow attack. Hell yeah, my fire storm wipe all ice elementals foe.

*Leave pre-searing*

Oh god, why.....

I promise you, my n/w was worse.

"I have all these touch skills that require melee range..."

I was such a noob

I should also say that I took a lot longer to learn the game than most people who are just starting out now do because it was just prophecies and there was no rush at all. I played with that crappy /w secondary for eight months before I finally ascended. Now I've been playing so long that pretty much everything in GW seems second nature and nothing jumps out as counter-intuitive. I suppose Barrage stripping preparations, but working with ritual and spell buffs is pretty strange.

In trying to be devil's advocate on this I've managed to swing myself right around.

I kind of agree. Things way back in the day of just prophesies was a bit more laxed. Wammos were pretty commonplace and not too hated on. I remember a point where self sufficient builds were pretty meta, be if Offensive/Defense or Offense/Self Heal, Even up to the beginnings of Nightfall (I missed the whole Factions era, TBH. I came back around NF.

And now I'm thinking about it and I legitimately can't say for sure if It was because I was a noob back then, or if that really WAS meta. I'd probably have to hear someone else's experience that was around back then.

But I do remember getting through a lot of the game, even up to the Ring of Fire Islands, with such builds. It wasn't until Hell's Precipice did I realize to beat this, I had to specialize in one particular thing. The was really the end all mission back then, and I remember it really pushing the limits and making you really synergize between teammates and not in your own little builds. Wammo just wasn't going to cut it.

When I came back to Nightfall, I have to admit I didn't quite like it. Even though Prophesies was hard as heck back then to get through, Nightfall seemed to make things too easy too early, and the rest was all end-game content that only seemed to simulate the struggle I had with prophesies, but instead I was max level sooner.

They, Anet, knows this too. they aren't stupid. I suspect that's why a lot more of the skill bar is designated to self-sufficiency. I don't think we were meant to go as FAR as we did in terms of specialization. I think GW was more supposed to be about teamwork and tailoring your build a bit to the area, now it's about AI synergy and killing things fast enough that none of that stuff I said earlier matters.

One of the first things I noticed with GW2 was that the lack of secondaries, and designated healing skill sorta forces the game to be played like we all used to.

All of this you mention now was actually quite intuitive back in the day before the release of Factions, and Guild Wars' respective expansions (when you could allocate skill points in explorable areas;many farming builds relied on strange secondary combinations). The expansions effectively killed and limited those "previously effective" combinations by simply "making better and more effective" combinations thus forth.

In fact, on the original artwork for the Guild Wars Prophecies game box, they even encouraged the now "ineffective" builds such as these:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hamstorm

Going off what enter_the_zone said, Splinter Barrage is a great example of where it might not seem at first like two professions can be compatible but then work like they were designed for each other.

I remember thinking "why on earth would I unallocate ALL these attribute points and put them into my secondary? there's no way this can possibly be effective..." and then I spiked my first group of mobs and thought "oooooooh".

One thing that doesn't make much sense to me though is the way that Barrage will wipe out preparations, but enchantments are still OK. If enchantments are still okay, why am I stuck not being able to use so many of my ranger preps? I *really* hope that ANet will give rangers something in the next few rounds of updates to allow us to use preparations with Barrage...it's not like we've got much else. Splinter Barrage is basically the only really viable ranger build at this point in the game and that blows.

Actually I'm still having a good bit of Fun with my r/Elm, and still plan to complete Prophecies with her; but I would not start a new Charactor with the combination; my Oh moment was making my Cynn Merc Clone and seeing how much more powerful a true Elm is with all that Energy available. At the same time with Nearly all her points in Fire/Air/Markmenship; she does pack enough Wallop for PvE; at least so far. BB.

I think th esecondary profession is pushed so much in the tutorial to make sure you know it exists, make you aware of other professions and this skills and the diversity in the game. You don't get another chance to pick for quite a while. The problem is, as mentioned, is that for most, certainly in the early stages, the secondary adds very little.

It does vary a lot depending on your profession and what skills are available. e.g. these days there are very few ranger skills worth putting on a ranger!

The funny thing is though, a lot of the current meta builds do include an element of self sufficiency, or, more accurately, healing/prot distributed across the party. Spirit spammers, mm's, ROJ's etc. Even mesmers usually carry a rez to take advantage of fast casting it.

The game was much different back in 2005/2006. Back then a second profession could do a whole lot more. However as time progressed the secondary profession mechanic became broken in PvE due to specialization required by HM and the endless skill combinations that need to be studied and balanced for PvP.

Still, certain builds require specific secondary professions to operate. Builds such as Imbagon, Terra SF and Splinter Barrage(if in a human group).

When EoTN was released secondary profession skills were replaced by the OP PvE only skills because they don't require attribute points to become fully powered and some of them allow a primary profession to access abilities outside of what their primary profession allows. A good example would be Pain Inverter on an Ele when Pain Inverter is more of a Mesmer skill.

Secondary professions are there just to give you a little variety with the occasional build that relies on them to operate.

In principle, i am the archenemy of the secondary profession system in GW. This is the main reason why this game is not, and will never be, balanced. The possibilities given by secondaries, and the fact that the secondary system is so deeply entwined with the core mechanics of professions, are simply impossible to balance out. The only 'good' way of dealing with secondaries i've seen in MMOs was done in Runes of Magic, however there is an obvious line between strong and weak secondary options for any given primary class. Yet this is a system that can be balanced out to give Priest/Mage a completely different gamestyle than Priest/Knight, rather than just changing animations and numbers here and there. Still, it's possibly the most consistent secondary system up to date, unless Frogster broke it since i've played last time.
Ad rem. Given that the secondary system is there, it has to be learned. And a good tutorial should encompass all the elements of the game, or at least those most important ones. The secondary class system is, obviously, one of the most basic and crucial factors of GW, whether i like it or not. A newcomer must be aware of it, both in terms of mechanics and possible uses. It is, actually, a good thing that the tutorial forces you to pick a secondary class before leaving, especially that you can freely change it later if you're not satisfied with what you chose in the first place. It's not like you are forced to use skills from your secondary or rely on it anyhow; you are only forced to get aware of and learn the basics of one of the core mechanics. And that's crucial for any tutorial.

Oh, but you have access to hell lot of skills, much too many to properly balance out, giving us obviously stronger and weaker skills, even if we only limit ourselves to the elites. Investigate the elites of any given class, and you will easily notice that some prove more useful/powerful than others, making it into most of the builds out there.
That said, there are many skills to use and rely on, and if you don't mind getting the highest numbers possible, utilizing your character to 140% and cutting through content with game-breaking ease, you are free to run anything you like. And there are loads upon loads of possibilities, if we talk about only working, and not necessarily powerful builds. Then there are all possible cross-class combos you can try out...

Erm, that's pretty standard for any game out there. If you spend some points into this and that, you are not good at anything and only mediocre at two or more options. Just take a look at Diablo 2 - it's obviously much better to max out your favourite skill tree, or at least the certain branch of it (though with the addition of synergy, you're pretty much bound to the whole tree now), rather than getting a bit of all elements if you're playing the sorceress. Heck, even in Starcraft, a game of completely different genre, it's quite obvious that you can't go into several builds at once if you want to win an online match. It's obvious that if you don't specialise, you won't deal as much damage as someone who devoted their build for one attribute, with support of another. You can trade off higher damage/healing/protection potential for access to a greater variety of skills (by spreading your attributes too much), but then you will be only mediocre at most, and not at your full potential.

What do you mean by "+7 Weapon"?
You get all the bonuses from your weapons even if you do not meet its requirement, except for its auto-attack damage, or armour/energy in case of off-hand items (in short, the item's 'primary statistic'). So if you want to use a staff for additional energy and other bonuses, you don't need any attribute points in its line - the only drawback is that you won't deal 11-22 damage by wanding, which you shouldn't be doing in the first place, as any class.

I don't have much experience with non-caster classes in GW, but it's pretty obvious that if you're using a weapon for auto-attacks as well as skills, you need as many points in its attribute as possible. To be precise, you need 16+ in an attribute to get the full damage potential of any weapon's auto-attack, with its requirement being the minimum (usually 9).
Then again, if you are using a hammer to fight, you will also use skills from hammer mastery, what gives you even more incentive to max out this attribute, thus getting full benefits from both hammer's auto-attack and skills. I do not see a problem here.

Oh, it's perfectly fine. "Stance", according to Merriam-Webster, refers not only to one's body and feet position right before doing something (like assuming a certain position before swinging a sword), but also to a certain attitude towards the action, object, undertaking or phenomenon.
That said, Frenzy works pretty much like the original berserk, and perfectly falls into the "stance category", both linguistically, and mechanically, game-wise.

If you're playing without heroes, only henchmen, and you run a caster profession other than necro, go /N and raise minions since the beginning. Perfect tactic even for a newbie. And that comes from a Mesmer player who went /N in pre-searing, and never dropped minions until he got a necromancer hero...

That's the problem of attribute points quests coming late in the campaign progress. If starting in Factions, you can get additional att points as early as the noob island, whilst Prophecies require you to get to Droknar's Forge before you can finish the second quest. And yeah, that sucks.

You actually still can beat the game with mediocre or even crappy builds, as long as you're familiar with some basics of the game's mechanics and follow the common sense (careful pulling, flagging, etc). Heck, you can run a blank bar and only wand from time to time, even if you're using the most crappy henchmen and not heroes, following only some basic rules.
That said, it's not as entertaining - and certainly not as rewarding - as running a proper build, that makes you feel powerful, or simply needed and helpful. Nowadays, with easy access to information on builds, no one will run a wammo unless at the very beginning (thus before falling for the whole meta thing) or trolling purposes. It's not really because you wouldn't complete the game as a wammo, but people usually prefer to be good at what they're doing, adding more meaning to it.

It's an easy way to maintain Barrage as good, viable and useful elite skill without breaking it with power creep. If you could keep preparations on top of enchantments and weapon spells when using Barrage, it would simply be too powerful. More balancing like that would actually be useful (that is, rendering some of your/allies' skills useless if you're using X).
More so, it simply makes sense - if you're shooting several arrows at once, you're not able to dip them all in poison, or put them on fire, or whatever else. Firing two-three arrows at once, and hitting targets with them, is difficult enough. On the other hand, enchantments are, well, enchantments, magical boni cast upon you by a mage.

You should have seen my R/N.
"I'll raise minions to keep foes occupied while i'll snipe them from distance." - seemed a good idea back 2005.

I always found secondary professions a kind of support to the primary:
-mesmer for e-management or nuking with echo/arcane echo chains
-monk mostly condition removal
-elementalist for conjures and glyphs
(don't really remember using anything else as secondary back then)

Now we either don't use them at all or abuse it:
-warrior for SY spam
-ritualist SoS, healing (especially on necros due to SR)
-assassin SF

And this not mentioning skills like CoP that got hit by the nerf bat and PI probably coming next.

Oh and regarding attribute spread and team composition.
I do remember teams composed of the weirdest combos back in the day but even then i didn't find much people that invested in more than 3 attribute lines.
I guess it was fairly obvious than we can't do everything at the same time and that's why we need a team to cover for each other weaknesses.

Actually they had serious problems with cross profession combos in PvP, they are very hard to balance. So the game rewards creativity, but maybe you were searching at the wrong places :P

This is where I need to stop you because its not Barrages fault that preparations make zero sense.

The whole point of a preparation is to prepare arrows with an extra affect before using them and you should be able to use them with barrage regardless because you took the time(two seconds) to prepare the arrows to be fired. Right now in game if I use Apply Poison it suggests I dip an infinite number of arrows in poison but the poison only lasts 24 seconds? You can't tell me that makes any sense whatsoever. Poisoned weapons can last longer than 24 seconds, a lot longer.

The logical approach to preparations is to have the wilderness survival preps switch to an arrow count mechanic without a time limitation and remove the preparation removal from Barrage and Volley. To protect the balance of the skill I would have Barrages damage nerfed to 0...12...15(+1 damage per marksmanship rank) and Volley to 0...6...7(+1 damage per 2 ranks of marksmanship)

There is the question for certain preparations under Marksmanship and Expertise such as: Disrupting Accuracy, Rapid Fire, Read the Wind and Expert's Focus(Glass Arrows is excluded because it manipulates the arrows). These prepare the user and not the arrows so its up for debate whether its possible for a ranger to read the wind and fire 6 arrows at the same time. It could work if you gave these skills an expertise requirement.

Sorry to break it to you but Hamstorm was never an effective build.

Certainly most people pump their main attribute, especially in PvP, for DPS but I enjoy the freedom to use other secondaries for utility.It's one of the best things about GW imo.

Your also pretty screwed in PvP if you don't embrace this concept.

Personally I think you just need more game time to realize how the mechanic is actually advantageous as opposed to a hindrance.

Stop being nostalgic about class combinations back in the day. People just weren't as good at the game on average.

I tend to make 2-attribute 1 profession builds.
I only use secondaries for things like Antidote signet on a warrior to get rid of weakness and blindness. (By the way, why can't the Signet of Strength do that? It's rarely used for extra damage with that long recharge, when you'll do more damage with another attack skill anyways.)

I even have 1-attribute builds, like one I made using Master of magic.

I wish there were 10 skills, and only 3 of them and no elites could be from the secondary profession, and that all attributes were set to 1..12...16 depending on your level and equipment, and the 'attribute points' where not for attributes, but for 'cost' of equipping skills, giving higher costs to those that are effectively 'better'. Get too many good skills, and you run out of points, and have to fill slots with those skills that are usually less used. Imagine how much easier would be to balance the game when the cost to equip a skill is part of the equation. The skill is too used? The skill is too powerful in a certain combination? Increase its equipping cost, so it can't be equipped so easily along other things that are also powerful and expensive.
But then the skill hunter title would have to be account-wide, and you'll need at least 10 characters, or require all skills, not just elites.

The only thing I really don't like that come with secondaries is things like W/Rts using full SoS builds because they can't find anything they like with warrior skills, or EMos. Damn Emos, healing more and better than monks whenever there's no heavy enchantment removal around.
You don't make a warrior to go around summoning spirits. Or an elementalist to babysit allies. I'm not against eles healing or protecting, but it shouldn't be like that.

But now it's too late for all that stuff.

So I'll be happy now just with some love for paragons, smiters and rangers, and elite kurzick and luxon armors for dervishes and paragons so players can fill a HoM with those the same way other professions can.
And of course, more Beyond content.

When I first started, I said to myself that I don't want to use other skills from other classes simply because I wouldn't want to diversify my attribute points unless everything was equal or in equal power.

Also, what exactly is a holy hand grenade and how does it pertain to this thread?

True. To be more precise: At 12 points there's a "soft cap" in weapon damage, meaning any point after 12 gives less benefit than points up to 12. There's still a benefit though. Also, after 12 your critical hit chances and critical damage multiplier keep going up. This is significant, for example at 12 your crit multiplier is something like 1.4 while at 16 it's 2.0

I have always found this system weird and not beginner friendly. One reason is that it's never explained ingame and you need a wiki page to find the info. The main reason is that there's just no point in having weapons say "requires 9 ... mastery" if your damage is actually crap at attribute level 9. This is very misleading, and I don't get why it was never changed.

Primary profession is for primary role and secondary profession is there for utility.. Whats really so wrong with that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOrgLj9lOwk

If I may you seem to have completely missed the point I intended for the thread and gotten un-necessarily defensive in your replies.

The point is not that whether rewarding specialization is standard in MMOs or even if it is a 'better' or 'worse' than a more Generalist option. The point was and is - the Expectation is raised that the game would reward the player - Say Wammo's they seem to have been particularly promoted with a more diverse tool box; but the reality has turned out otherwise.

Again the point is that if you invest 7 points in a 7 Str Req sword the expectation is raised that you get the full say 14-22 value for the sword, not that you get 14-22x a.7 Nerf on the sword; its not only counter intuitive, IMHO; this one is actually misleading. So again if a newer player should be advised of this hidden nerf.

And while it is not best play to use the Auto Attack on your 14-22 Wand very often that too is misleading; because when you pick it up on a drop; especially as a new player you can be forgiven for thinking that should be useful. My r/Elm taught me soon enough to keep casting as much as possible. (Honestly it makes me nuts when I see my Henchies Wanding but that’s for a different (AI) thread.


The point of the Thread was not to Dis the Game.
So your line by line Debunking was off point... sorry if the Question offended you, but honestly you didn't get it.

The point was, for the benefit of other new players; myself included mostly; more to point out those area's where the Game, or Game Lit says Go Left - but the Player is in point of fact better off going right. Any tips in that way would still be very welcome as you obviously have a great deal of experiance with the game.

Blessings BB.

I think you may be misunderstanding the point of the tutorial. The game does reward having a more diverse tool box in that the challenges you face are not always best met with higher damage (holy hand grenades, so to speak). Sometimes a good interrupt or condition or hex removal is more important, and access to second professions allows all members of the team to bring utility skills as the situation calls for.

That said, and it's been a while since I actually read anything in the tutorials, if they are giving the impression you can do more damage by spreading your attribute points too thin, then that would be bad. But I don't think they do, and it should make sense that the game is very skill (and I mean Frenzy, Spiteful Spirit, Firestorm, type of skills, not how well you do something type of skill) based and having more points in a particular attribute line will result in more power to the skills in that line. So it should make sense that too much diversity will lead to a jack of all trades, master of none type of problem.

Admittedly, people frequently get carried away with build diversity, but I think that's more a problem of not paying enough attention to tutorial information rather than paying too much attention to same.

If you meet the requirement, you are doing very close to the rated damage on the weapon. R12 actually ends up with you doing more than the rated damage.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Damag..._calcul ation

I doubt that most people in the game are aware of how damage is calculated. That info on the wiki was reverse engineered by the players, not provided by Anet (at least I'm pretty sure it was...it was on the unofficial wiki which predated the official one by a few years).

And like I said, the game is skill based, so you will want to have as many points in your main attributes as possible, taking points away only because they allow you to do something more important than the loss in effectiveness.

Also, you can easily put max points in a single attribute and have plenty of points left to still run two other attributes effectively. A 12/9/9 split is very common on my elementalist builds as I build energy efficiency into them so 9 in e. storage is usually plenty for them, leaving me 9 to put in another attribute for utility/party support/special dungeon or mission needs.

Every little bit of damage helps. But usually you should be activating skills to be most effective, not sitting around wanding things. Henchmen generally had pretty bad bars until NF came out.


MMOs generally have a lot of stuff to learn to play most effectively and they don't usually spell this stuff out as they try to keep people playing as long as possible, so having more stuff to learn about the game is almost a "feature."

Seriously though, you're right that these kinds of details could have been conveyed better to new players, but I feel they're mostly either invisible to the player (just meeting the req for a weapon vs having r12) or easy enough to learn through general play or asking others in the game...which is another type of activity that MMOs like to encourage. Although all the faq and "remember to search" reminders in the Newcomer forum is certainly a strong argument in favor of your overall point!

Some of the things the game does a bad job of teaching:

- Pulling and aggro management in general.
IMO, this is consistently far more important than having the right builds/team, etc. I moderately strong team w/ good aggro management will outperform a much stronger team with poor control. However, I can't remember the number of times I've had a new player be dumbfounded that my casters all have a flatbow/longbow handy in a weapon swap slot.

- How Runes and Insignias work.
Frankly, the simple phrase "non-stacking" just doesn't convey "only one rune of this entire class will take positive effect, but all the negative effects will happen." There's no clear distinction what things are grouped together for "no stacking" and which aren't. And then explaining how +AL insignias are per piece, but most others affect the whole character. And then of course the whole balance of extra attrs vs health loss thing.

- Attribute Point Quests are too hidden.
I've seen too many players who are starting to vanquish, or working on other endgame content, who then ping 10/10/9, 12/10 or the like attr splits, because the never noticed they were missing the last 15-30 points.

Blade DVD
That part I do generally get, but I certainly need a good bit of work esp in terms of Hex removal, not even sure if my Mesmer Henchie is really doing Anything; much less pulling his weight; Still I make no claims I grok it all; If I did there would have been no point in starting the thread; thanks for your thoughts, really.

Rod: Thanks for the above, thats exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to prompt when I when I started the thread. : ) And Ironically I just got my #### handed to me over agroing a band of Mantle thinking that mission was pretty well done and I was just playing out the string to the end credits; well the end credits were mine. LOL Blessings, BB.

This is definitely the most annoying thing I found. Two whole levels worth of attribute points that could easily be missed by people less active in the community (like me).
I only stumbled across one of those quests by chance, which is the only reason I even know that the max attribute point total is 200. (That and PvP characters having more than PvE seeming off I guess).

But at the same time, theres a part of me that likes these things in the game, that give the game a sense of adventure and reason to explore by not telling you about them. I guess it's only really a problem when you get into the more hardcore parts, but by then, you should probably be sort of into the community anyway.

As for the 'hidden' quests, remember the Imperial Guide.

I always wished there was a list of 'priorities' for all quests. And one NPC would tell you the next priority available quest in that list for that campaign.

Let's call that "Xunlai Representative", bringing back those old lost NPCs.

"They'll use their network of chests to contact each other, and anyone with a request."


Mechanically, there would be an internal list of all quest by priority. First the 15-attribute quests, then the primary quests, and then the secondary quests, chronologically.

Whenever you talk to them a Xunlai Representative in each region, they'll tell you to go to the NPC that gives you that quest, and they'll have one of those green icons over them for as long as there's non-repeatable quests left to do in that campaign.


That would also save time for those of us that want to do all quests but find it really annoying to check the missing ones by using just the Wiki.

I started Guild Wars back in 2005 as an Elementalist/Ranger with that in mind, Fire + Bow. I think I used that all the way to the end of Prophecies too . At least he's GWAMM now .

The additional damage comes from customization if you read the description and the formula in the link provided. Remove that bonus, and you get 15-22 at R12. Granted, not customizing your weapon is dumb if damage is your goal.

TraceIrving Said
Not against that at all per se, but I did stumble on a perfect example of what I'm thinking of last night; I was working through Riverside Province and one of the Objectives is 'Avoid detection on your way to the temple." So I'm trying to Stealth around for the first half of the mission so as to not set off some general alarm and trigger some End Mission credit;

But the reality seems to be it's just a clumsy way of warning the player(s) not to over Agro the Mantle; by the end of the Mission I was just chewing through them with Double Dragon Blazing; and 'Claudia' could have been seen from the Moon.

I'm Actually planning to play through the last couple missions again without DD on the Skill bar as it's just too powerful for the content; it was nice to play walking nuclear weapon (Sort of gives you an Idea of what Godzilla feels like) but it was not particularly challenging. BB.
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Oh BTW - Thanks for the Attribute Tip; I had no clue and I expect I'm a good few points shy there. BB.

I had a avid gamer friend.. who tried to play guild wars..
He was so turned off by the tutorial (pre-searing).. he thought the whole game was was like that..poor guy
He told me it was counter intuitive to not have Pots (potions).. I laughed at him.. and tried to explain about player skill and not mindlessly clicking pots for LOLZ GoD mode.. I have a feeling this issue turns allot of (WoW fanboys) away from Guild Wars (at least it did when the game came out in 2005)
Coincidentally it is the reason why i loved Guild Wars...and seemed completely natural to me.. I hate clicking pots just to play a game. ( or buying into them)

Maybe the people that have a hard time in this game are still in the WoW mindset...I find almost everything in this game really easy to figure out... Indeed I wish there was more challenging side quest and mini games to play.