Guild Wars, A Fine Game Or Lousy Wannabe?

[WillSimplyBe]

Classes in GW are very diverse and interresting, especially since you can make anything built the way YOU want. Some people, like myself, actively just go around making builds for different things. Guildwars is a great game, oh, and to new players, I'd recomend starting off with Nightfall, its the most "New Player friendly" installment. Not to mention, you get heroes.

But yeah, classes can be quite interresting, considering there are well over a hundred skills for each class.

*EDIT*
shoot, I didnt read enough of the post above mine, bad me! *slaps hand*
Yeah, classes are very unique in this game, They all do things that they do best, and they do it THEIR own special way. I hope that made sense, I have a headache right now, and was too shocked to see a guildwars thread to really think to much at the moment ...*rambles*

 

[meatloaf231]

Hey Guys and Gals, as you can probably see, I'm new here. I'm considering getting Guild Wars and would like some opinions from you and if it can match a game such as WoW in enjoyment without the time dedications.

Thanks

It doesn't want to be WoW at all, so it's certainly not a wannabe.

The PvE is plot-oriented moreso than focused on raiding and the like. The PvP is built so that it's far more balanced between everyone, no matter how long you've been playing - you can create a max-level character from the start that's dedicated to PvP if you want. The gameplay is also focused on the player's skill rather than the player's gear, as most of the weapons and armor you use will be customized by you with runes and weapon parts. You end up using only 8 skills at a time, so you've got to choose wisely and align your items to augument your skills - I.E. a Warrior with a bleed effect skill could use a sword hilt that extends the bleeding time. The choosing of a secondary class is also unique and adds a lot of depth to the game, as a Warrior/Assassin will play much differently than a Warrior/Monk.

Also, there's no subscription fee. That's a plus.

 

[Deacon Cole]

Well, I had fun with it. I've been giving some consideration to picking it up since it doesn't have a subscription fee, but I may not as I've found MMORPGs to be mostly a waste of my time as the MMO aspects of them never come into it for me.

But, if you're into that kind of thing, you can do much worse than Guild Wars. Two Moons for example.

 

[Blind0bserver]

I dont experience any lag, Im on a 10mb connection and have instant messenging clients and xfire open at the same time, but i dont play that much pvp in the game to be honest.

Mesmer is my secondary profession, Im an elementalist as primary with my main account.

I got a trial key for 10hrs/14days use of Nightfall when i bought the game, I think its still valid but im not certain, I havent used it, might be worth a go, if you interested i can pm it to you to try?

Thanks for the offer, but no thank you. I'm waiting till ater my exams finish and then i'll buy the whole thing.

Are the classes diverse enough to be interesting though? In that each class has its own role that helps a team rather than being replaceable by just about anything (Example, in WoW, a Mage could be replaced by a Druid, Shaman, Shadow Priest, Warlock etc, losing a lot of the reason for taking that class) I understand it happens at times but I would like to know that each class is appreciated rather than set into the catergory of 'Tank, DPS or Healer'

Well, there are ten classes: Warrior, Monk, Elementalist, Dervish, Assassin, Ritualist, Necromancer, Paragon, Mesmer and Ranger. Your character can have a secondary profession that you can change at will after you get to a certain point in the game (or whenever the hell you want for PvP). Each class has it's own attributes that you can put points into, and considering that you can only have 8 skills at a time each player's "build" tends to be radically different, even if they have the same basic "purpose".

Sure, some classes like the Warrior and the Dervish can tank and if tooled right classes like the necromancer or the monk can "nuke" a target, but it isn't quite as simple as 'Tank, DPS or Healer'. I've seen builds who's soul purpose was providing energy for spells to teammates. I've seen and used builds that actually steal and break an opponent's build. A certain class on it's own can already do a variety of different things if you tool it right. Factor in a second class and the possibilities are almost limitless.

Now, the "tl;dr" version: class selection does matter.

 

[Cantrix]

Guild Wars was my first MMORPG, and I've had god knows how many hours out of it. Even now I still have to complete Nightfall, but I'm just too busy to play at the moment.

Obviously, the main attraction is the lack of a subscription. Apart from that, there's plenty to do in PvE - the storyline missions in each campaign and sidequests add up for a lot of playing time, and even after finishing those there's plenty to do in getting titles, etc. I also preferred the look of the graphics in Guild Wars to WoW at the time, though that may just be a personal thing.

You say you're interested in playing mesmer? I play mesmer 95% of the time, so I think I've got a decent feel for the profession. I'd say it's the most difficult class to play well, particularly in PvP - you tend to get very good mesmers or very bad mesmers, but not many average ones. A mesmer with a good build, however, is as annoying as hell for opponents, since there's nothing more aggravating than having most of your actions interrupted or essentially disabled while you're being attacked! It's also got a bit more challenge than nuking or tanking.

I also like that because the level cap is 20 and you make builds of only 8 skills, there's more to getting good than just grinding. It doesn't matter if you're maximum level and have the Awesome Axe of Awesomeness if you can't play your build

I started on Prophecies, which is good for beginners and has the longest PvE campaign, but if you're more into PvP I'd go for Factions. The PvP missions and big Factions battles are a fun addition

 

[WillSimplyBe]

I dont experience any lag, Im on a 10mb connection and have instant messenging clients and xfire open at the same time, but i dont play that much pvp in the game to be honest.

Mesmer is my secondary profession, Im an elementalist as primary with my main account.

I got a trial key for 10hrs/14days use of Nightfall when i bought the game, I think its still valid but im not certain, I havent used it, might be worth a go, if you interested i can pm it to you to try?

Thanks for the offer, but no thank you. I'm waiting till ater my exams finish and then i'll buy the whole thing.

Are the classes diverse enough to be interesting though? In that each class has its own role that helps a team rather than being replaceable by just about anything (Example, in WoW, a Mage could be replaced by a Druid, Shaman, Shadow Priest, Warlock etc, losing a lot of the reason for taking that class) I understand it happens at times but I would like to know that each class is appreciated rather than set into the catergory of 'Tank, DPS or Healer'

Heh, some classes (namely Mesmer) Can even "shutdown" an opponent's build by making their skills go into super long cool downs if they even try and fight back. Or kill their energy for attacking.

Warrior has always been a favorite of mine when it came to keeping foes stunned or knocked on their asses with a hammer.

Rangers excell at DPS, but can also do many other things from stopping enemies from pulling off spells to even altering the characteristics of the environment itself (nature rituals).

just to name a few possible things that just a few of the classes can do. And because of the 8 skill at one time limit, you can even tailor builds specifically for a certain situation, or have your own secret weapon of a build, heh.

 

[Woe Is You]

Heh, some classes (namely Mesmer) Can even "shutdown" an opponent's build by making their skills go into super long cool downs if they even try and fight back. Or kill their energy for attacking.

Yeah, the mesmer is one of the coolest classes I've seen in any game like this. Basically the whole idea of a class that has very few direct attacks and is basically all about reading your opponent and punishing them for it appeals to me.

 

[Kushin]

You say you're interested in playing mesmer? I play mesmer 95% of the time, so I think I've got a decent feel for the profession. I'd say it's the most difficult class to play well, particularly in PvP - you tend to get very good mesmers or very bad mesmers, but not many average ones. A mesmer with a good build, however, is as annoying as hell for opponents, since there's nothing more aggravating than having most of your actions interrupted or essentially disabled while you're being attacked! It's also got a bit more challenge than nuking or tanking.

Yes, i'm quite interested in that. My main worry is that I wont be able to do much solo play thanks to it's 'squishyness' and its apparent lack of damaging spells.

Any advice on that?

 

[Woe Is You]

Any advice on that?

You actually pick 2 classes for every character, so one of the combinations you can make is a Warrior/Mesmer. That's actually what I used to run the missions with last I played the game.

 

[Kushin]

Any advice on that?

You actually pick 2 classes for every character, so one of the combinations you can make is a Warrior/Mesmer. That's actually what I used to run the missions with last I played the game.

Yes, but thats with Mesmer as the secondary. I wanted Mesmer as the Primary and either Necro or Elemental as my secondary. I just meant at higher levels when the secondary class doesnt mean as much as the primary.

 

[Cantrix]

You say you're interested in playing mesmer? I play mesmer 95% of the time, so I think I've got a decent feel for the profession. I'd say it's the most difficult class to play well, particularly in PvP - you tend to get very good mesmers or very bad mesmers, but not many average ones. A mesmer with a good build, however, is as annoying as hell for opponents, since there's nothing more aggravating than having most of your actions interrupted or essentially disabled while you're being attacked! It's also got a bit more challenge than nuking or tanking.

Yes, i'm quite interested in that. My main worry is that I wont be able to do much solo play thanks to it's 'squishyness' and its apparent lack of damaging spells.

Any advice on that?

Well, personally I've soloed a lot of the game with AI heroes/henchmen. Some missions are really better done with other players, in which case it's easy enough to find groups at the mission start. Players tend to be a mixed bag - I've had a great time in random teams before, but obviously you get annoying people too. (General rule is that if there's a jerk in the group, it's going to be a Warrior, Dervish, or occasionally Assassin. Couldn't say why ) Still, it's not been bad enough to put me off!

I didn't enlist my guild's help for much of it, and since my friends joined after me they were all too far behind me to help on missions. So you can definitely get by by yourself!

As for the mesmer class in PvE...if you have a good enough build, you can do enough damage to be fine for PvE, especially since you can use heroes/henchmen to tank and heal. A couple of the early skills, Empathy (which causes the enemy to take damage every time it attacks) and Backfire (same, with spells) got me through the lower stages just fine, and you can put together more sophisticated combinations later

Only thing I would mention is that if you're looking for a team for a mission, mesmers are not as in demand as say, a warrior or a monk. I think it's partly because they're not generally essential for PvE and partly because a lot of people don't play it brilliantly. Still, like I said, I managed!

One thing I would recommend is getting the Eye of the North expansion. How far you have to be before you can access it depends on the campaign, but it gives you a good set of level 20 heroes to solo with. Henchmen are AI characters you can team with if you're short on members, but the easier the area, the lower the level they'll be. Heroes you level up, so you can have them higher level than hench, and you can customise their equipment, builds and give them more specific instructions on where you want them to go or what to do. So a GOOD THING TO HAVE if you're soloing.

Hope that helps!

 

[kezla]

I echo whats been said about 2nd professions, you really have no worry with mesmer as primary as you can choose a second profession and use those skills too.

Im an ele as primary specialising in air magic, mesmer is my 2ndary and i use the spells that heal me or steal energy from foes which compliments my spell casting as ele as its gives me more energy to cast but equally i could have used more brute force fighting styles being a warrior or something.

Wow, so good to see a few GW players on escapist, I hadnt thought of there being that many

And Cantrix has made me consider buying eye of the north now! ...

 

[WillSimplyBe]

I echo whats been said about 2nd professions, you really have no worry with mesmer as primary as you can choose a second profession and use those skills too.

Im an ele as primary specialising in air magic, mesmer is my 2ndary and i use the spells that heal me or steal energy from foes which compliments my spell casting as ele as its gives me more energy to cast but equally i could have used more brute force fighting styles being a warrior or something.

Wow, so good to see a few GW players on escapist, I hadnt thought of there being that many

And Cantrix has made me consider buying eye of the north now! ...

Yeah, really, I didn't even know there were this many GW players here.

Anyway, every class is pretty much fine with the PvE. If monk can do it, Mesmer definitely can as well with attack denial skills. You'll get good skill synergies as well, and you can change your second profession down the road if you so choose.

Players I've met are usually pretty nice, most jerks I've found usually tend to play assassins, but thats a huge generalization as well, and I even know some of monk jerks, so I guess that kind of conflicts general rule. Anyway, for the most part, average players are nice, its easy to get into a community with the THOUSANDS of guilds in the game, and you can even solo with a full party if you cant get a team(though with a guild, that usually isn't a problem as well)

 

[Count_de_Monet]

The skill system in Guild Wars is it's best feature in my opinion. There are so many combinations and few skills ever become obsolete that it allows you to do a lot with any character. I used to play Everquest and you were essentially given 12 skills to play with and they were regularly upgraded so that there weren't many options for builds. In my experience WoW hasn't improved skills that much since the EQ days, however, Guild Wars gives the player an insane amount of choice.

When I played my Necro was fun and then he hit the point where he could have multiple secondary professions and my progression through PvE stopped dead for a while as I collected skills from various professions for him. Necro/Mesmer for spike damage, Necro/Monk for pet build, even some playing with Necro/Warrior for an extremely specialized but very fun high damage melee build and Necro/Elementalist which was surprisingly difficult but ended up with some odd high damage short term pet swarm builds unlike the maintaining build with the N/Mo.

 

[Count_de_Monet]

That being said, I always though AreaNet managed to over-manage the game since the very beginning. When the game first opened there was a section near the beginning with dragony/lizard monsters that you could farm for items with a pretty decent drop rate and a good group. Well, AreaNet squashed that quickly because it threw their idea of the economy out of whack. Then another farming spot popped up and the squashed it, then the invincimonk was created and they did their best to squash that but I think it still exists in various forms, and so on. People were constantly able to find new farming locations and ways around Areanet's restrictions because of the wide range of skills available.

I don't know what the economy is like now but the destruction of some of my favorite farming spots was one of the things which drove me to quit when I did. I wasn't even in it for the money, it was therapeutic for me to sit down and destroy a bunch of monsters all on my own after a tough day and since I never made a significant amount of money and kept all of my superior vigors to put on my other characters it sort of killed the game for me when I did away with that stuff.

 

[Desaari]

Yes, i'm quite interested in that. My main worry is that I wont be able to do much solo play thanks to it's 'squishyness' and its apparent lack of damaging spells.

Any advice on that?

Mesmers have no lack of damaging spells, the problem is that their spells rarely target more than one enemy at a time. While this is good for early PvE, and great for PvP, by the end game PvE a mesmer becomes far less useful for inflicting damage (due to the toughness and amount of enemies), and becomes much more of a supporting class (e.g. interrupting enemy healers & nukers).

There isn't much solo playing to be done though I'm afraid. You can certainly play without other players, but this is usually done by substituting them for bots (henchmen or heroes). The only soloing you can really do is farming, which you will be able to do as a spellcasting class (by going mesmer/monk and using an "invincimonk" build), but you'd be hard pressed to play through the game alone, although it can be done.

On a sidenote, the mesmer is probably the most difficult class to play in PvE (along with the assassin). I consider it to be more of an advanced class, and I nearly always reccommend that a new player doesnt play these classes. But if you have your heart set on playing a mesmer then you'll make it work.

Oh, and Eye of the North sucks.

 

[Jupsto]

The skill system in Guild Wars is it's best feature in my opinion. There are so many combinations and few skills ever become obsolete that it allows you to do a lot with any character. I used to play Everquest and you were essentially given 12 skills to play with and they were regularly upgraded so that there weren't many options for builds. In my experience WoW hasn't improved skills that much since the EQ days, however, Guild Wars gives the player an insane amount of choice.

When I played my Necro was fun and then he hit the point where he could have multiple secondary professions and my progression through PvE stopped dead for a while as I collected skills from various professions for him. Necro/Mesmer for spike damage, Necro/Monk for pet build, even some playing with Necro/Warrior for an extremely specialized but very fun high damage melee build and Necro/Elementalist which was surprisingly difficult but ended up with some odd high damage short term pet swarm builds unlike the maintaining build with the N/Mo.

I agree the skill/class system in guildwars is the best i've seen in any rpg, you could make your own classes instead of pigeon holed roles ala other mmo's.

its a shame more games don't rip it off, maybe because they are too lazy, adding as many skills as guildwars has is a feat in itself.

 

[Gutrot Grimtoof]

It basically comes down to this:
If you want good balanced PvP, play Guild Wars.
If you want alot of PvE content, play WoW.




(Gutrot does not seek to endorse, advertise or support World of Warcraft©, Blizzard Entertainment.)

 

[Desaari]

I agree the skill/class system in guildwars is the best i've seen in any rpg, you could make your own classes instead of pigeon holed roles ala other mmo's.

its a shame more games don't rip it off, maybe because they are too lazy, adding as many skills as guildwars has is a feat in itself.

True this, I'd like them to take it further though. I'd like to see a warrior class feasibly capable of switching weapons without returning to an outpost, or a spell-casting class feasibly capable of using a melee weapon without dying "because spell casters are squishy".
A spell-caster should be able to use armour just as good as any other class, but with drawbacks e.g. casting slower. Or something, I don't know. The more choice the better.