Arquenya, on 16 January 2013 - 10:27 AM, said:
Personally I find GW2 FAR MORE confusing than GW. Especially all the trait stuff, with healing/crit in one line for one class, crit/condition damage in another and all the skills that may have or may not have to do with the stats that come with it. And it's different for every class.
Sometimes it doesn't make a lot of sense, for instance guardians and warriors hardly have any viable weapon setups with conditions, yet there's seperate trait lines for condition damage and duration, Are they both useless? Do I waste my points or do the skills make up for them? Or like the warrior shout build, generally accepted as one of the best warrior builds.While I actually don't want even more vitality (as warriors already have an abundance of it) but rather toughness - but shout means vitality so you have to take it.
I fail to see the logic behind it. GW was far, far more straightforward.
Arduin, on 16 January 2013 - 04:39 PM, said:
Considering I can clear any content with a full set of whatever rare gear, I'm not sure if anyone needs to bother with spreadsheets. Maybe if you are aiming for lvl 80 fractals, Arah explorable mode or make a name of yourself in tPvP you need to spend some time with calculations.
For the rest, knowing what to dodge and what not to dodge seems to me like of more importance than +200 toughness, for instance. Knowing when to rez and when to help downed players rally by themselves by assisting at killing a foe is more important to me than +50 power. Playing with people you know, knowing how they play while using voice software makes even more of a difference.
You are of course welcome to spreadsheet all of you want and I'm sure you'll be able to eke out a bid of advantage compared to someone that simply slaps some gear together, but in the end it'll probably only allow you to clear any content faster.
So no, GW2 doesn't seem overly mathy to me. You can play this game perfectly well without ever using a spreadsheet or look up builds and such stuff.
These two responses, which touch upon different aspects of how GW2 works, are close to my own experience. On one hand, my gameplay experience tends to mirror Arduin's. Knowing how to play my character seems far more important than what equipment I have. Paying attention to my team mates, assisting them in appropriate ways, figuring out appropriate tactics for a particular boss fight, and playing to my strengths all seem to be very effective at success in PvE content.
But then, "playing to my strengths" has turned out to be an experimental, intuitive experience rather than an analytical one. Obviously, I have some control over that. By selecting mace/shield & staff with cleric armour on my Guardian, I'm clearly aiming for a somewhat tanky, supportive build. Beyond that, however, my experience leans toward's Arquenya's. I picked my traits based upon the major traits that I wanted and just accepted the stat boosts that came with those major traits. Would I be better off doing without 10 points in Virtues and instead putting 10 points into Zeal or Valor? I hardly know how I'd even begin to answer. Are the major traits I've selected the "right" ones? Do 10 points in a trait line really have that much impact on my numbers? Is a major trait worth 10 points in, for example, boon duration, when I'm applying relatively few boons? The answers to these questions don't actually seem all
that important but it is nonetheless a little frustrating that I can't answer them.
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