Curse

Blackbirdx61 · Feb 19, 2012, 01:43 AM // 01:43

.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crom The Pale

Try leveling up your character by killing creatures around your level or even 1-3 levels below you. You should also make certain that you have spent your Attribute points in the correct way, ie. place as many as you can in your primary attack, don't spread them out.

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.

Not New · Feb 19, 2012, 03:25 AM // 03:25

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.........

enter_the_zone · Feb 19, 2012, 03:59 AM // 03:59

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.

pakhavit · Feb 19, 2012, 04:00 AM // 04:00

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.....

enter_the_zone · Feb 19, 2012, 04:04 AM // 04:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by pakhavit

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.

Axel Zinfandel · Feb 19, 2012, 04:42 AM // 04:42

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.

_Aphotic_ · Feb 19, 2012, 04:44 AM // 04:44

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

Kada · Feb 19, 2012, 06:28 AM // 06:28

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.

Blackbirdx61 · Feb 19, 2012, 07:32 AM // 07:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by pakhavit

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.....

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.

Fay Vert · Feb 19, 2012, 11:01 AM // 11:01

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!

enter_the_zone · Feb 19, 2012, 12:17 PM // 12:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Axel Zinfandel

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.

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.

Swingline · Feb 19, 2012, 05:40 PM // 17:40

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.

drkn · Feb 19, 2012, 06:30 PM // 18:30

Quote:

Like your really pushed by the Tutorial section to take a 2nd profession

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.

Quote:

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

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...

Quote:

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.

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.

Quote:

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

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.

Quote:

because you need 12 in an attribute to get the full value out of any weapon.

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.

Quote:

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

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.

Quote:

It really is counterintuitive to use 2nd professions at all.

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...

Quote:

I remember when I 1st started playing Prophecies and thinking " Why do I have so little skill points?"

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.

Quote:

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.

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.

Quote:

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?

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.

Flameseeker · Feb 19, 2012, 06:42 PM // 18:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by pakhavit

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.

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.

keli · Feb 19, 2012, 06:53 PM // 18:53

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

Swingline · Feb 19, 2012, 07:38 PM // 19:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by drkn

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.

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.

Kunder · Feb 19, 2012, 09:14 PM // 21:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by _Aphotic_

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

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

fireflyry · Feb 19, 2012, 09:30 PM // 21:30

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.

*lemming* · Feb 19, 2012, 09:53 PM // 21:53

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

MithranArkanere · Feb 20, 2012, 12:20 AM // 00:20

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.