Guild Wars 2

[Ratman_tf]

I hate, hate, hate having endless skill bars.  It always makes me feel like I'm inferior for only being able to handle 5-6 abilities.  It's a system that works well for me, and I'm glad there is a game balanced around it.

This.

Me too. If I have to put it on more than one bar, I'm gonna forget about it until after the party's dead.

[Tarami]

Yes, less of this kind of setups, please:

[Zetor]

A WOW prot warrior is a tame example, even. My shaman easily had 40+ keybinds... my lotro loremaster had even more. Those were all abilities I used regularly. 

Anyway, I've been playing GW again with guildies [going over factions with new characters] and the GW ui does feel kind of dated (can't bind keys with modifiers? wut?). Here's hoping they make it more flexible for GW2!

[Stormwaltz]

On behalf of every happy and effective Lore-Master in LotRO, I reject your least-common denominator, anti-intellectual, Glenn Beck Kool-Aide drinking single skillbars!

...with a caveat.

The bread and butter skills you're using 90% of the time should all fit on one bar. Your battery of utilities and special-case tools can stretch over another two or three.

[Sheepherder]

A WOW prot warrior is a tame example, even. My shaman easily had 40+ keybinds...

That would be hard, given that the Shaman class has 23 non-talent / non-totem / non-weapon imbue spells according to what I can filter out of the Wowhead list.

[Tarami]

The bread and butter skills you're using 90% of the time should all fit on one bar. Your battery of utilities and special-case tools can stretch over another two or three.

I've found that's how LotRO's classes largely function. My prot warrior on the other hand is ALL OVER the bindings all the time. I find it much more demanding to play her than I do playing my LM. LMs are kinda zen.

[Shatter]

I can only bind so many keys, I have small hands :( 

[Nebu]

My initial point was: If the game is going to give me access to 20 abilities, let me use 20 abilities at my discretion.  

If you want me to use 10 abilities, then make sure that you balance those 10 abilities better.  

GW is a game of very specific boutique builds that seem to change with every patch.  I don't enjoy micromanaging builds for every encounter and would rather alter my play on the fly than have to change my preset build every time I zone into a new area.  Last time I played, I had like 20 saved setups on my main.  Then you have to repeat the hassle for all of your henchmen.  If I want to micromanage, I'll play Civ.  

[tazelbain]

My initial point was: If the game is going to give me access to 20 abilities, let me use 20 abilities at my discretion.  

If you want me to use 10 abilities, then make sure that you balance those 10 abilities better.  

GW is a game of very specific boutique builds that seem to change with every patch.  I don't enjoy micromanaging builds for every encounter and would rather alter my play on the fly than have to change my preset build every time I zone into a new area.  Last time I played, I had like 20 saved setups on my main.  Then you have to repeat the hassle for all of your henchmen.  If I want to micromanage, I'll play Civ.  

You have personal issues.  There was no need to do that.  You did that to yourself.

[Draegan]

On behalf of every happy and effective Lore-Master in LotRO, I reject your least-common denominator, anti-intellectual, Glenn Beck Kool-Aide drinking single skillbars!

...with a caveat.

The bread and butter skills you're using 90% of the time should all fit on one bar. Your battery of utilities and special-case tools can stretch over another two or three.

That's fine.  I'm playing EQ2 right now and I've got my highest character on there ever (level 30).  I was grouping with a buddy of mine (he's 84) and he was telling me he was using 20 or so attacks per long fight.

Fuck that.

[Zetor]

A WOW prot warrior is a tame example, even. My shaman easily had 40+ keybinds...

That would be hard, given that the Shaman class has 23 non-talent / non-totem / non-weapon imbue spells according to what I can filter out of the Wowhead list.

Not hard at all. I had keybinds for individual totems for pvp reasons (earthbind, grounding, searing, magma, cleansing, stoneclaw, manaspring, healingstream, frost/fire resist). I was resto so I had riptide/ns/tidalforce/earthshield/manatide. I also had my mount hotkeyed (clicking mount in pvp = not a good idea) along with boots (nitro), cloak (parachute), gloves (haste / rocket), bandages, and I could've bound a frag belt too if I bothered to make one. Is that sufficient? :p [edit: also gift of the naaru, healthstones, pots, trinket1, trinket2... I didn't have astral recall and buff totems hotkeyed, that was about it]

Re LMs in LOTRO: I didn't mind having an asston of keybinds (like 5 full hotbars of the stuff including pet abilities / potions / specific condition remover draughts and they couldn't be macroed together like you'd macro charge/intercept/intervene or castsequences onto one hotkey), the only problem was that I sometimes was at a loss just what to cast. Do I drop a protective circle for more damage against the boss along with a bit of a damage reduction, do I refresh debuffs early in case I have to drain, or do I toss the minstrel some mana instead? In those cases I usually just shrugged and started casting embers so I'd figure out what to do in those 3 seconds..

[Mosesandstick]

Wait, what about those thingies (I can't even remember the name of? Macros?) With those you can fill up as many slots as you want!

[Lantyssa]

GW is a game of very specific boutique builds that seem to change with every patch.  I don't enjoy micromanaging builds for every encounter and would rather alter my play on the fly than have to change my preset build every time I zone into a new area.  Last time I played, I had like 20 saved setups on my main.  Then you have to repeat the hassle for all of your henchmen.  If I want to micromanage, I'll play Civ.  

You really don't need to do that.  I run around with the same set of skills 99% of the time.  [Barrage, Bleed, Interrupt, Pet-mana return, Pet armor/unblockable, Pet damage redux, Capture Signet, Pet Heal]

I change only to test out something new I've acquired, if I'm curious about trying something new, or in the incredibly rare instances where I'm dying and simply cannot proceed.  Switching up my heroes or setting their locations tends to have a much larger effect than a different build though.  As it is, I've dedicated most of my heroes to include a pet since I'm trying to train everything in my menagerie.

[Sheepherder]

That would be hard, given that the Shaman class has 23 non-talent / non-totem / non-weapon imbue spells according to what I can filter out of the Wowhead list.

Not hard at all. I had keybinds for individual totems for pvp reasons (earthbind, grounding, searing, magma, cleansing, stoneclaw, manaspring, healingstream, frost/fire resist). I was resto so I had riptide/ns/tidalforce/earthshield/manatide. I also had my mount hotkeyed (clicking mount in pvp = not a good idea) along with boots (nitro), cloak (parachute), gloves (haste / rocket), bandages, and I could've bound a frag belt too if I bothered to make one. Is that sufficient? :p
[/quote]

Got it, only shaman can engineer or bandage.

I laughed at your list of totems.  Call buttons, use them.  Also, fuck healing stream, searing, and possibly stoneclaw.  Also, macros and clique.

[kildorn]

iirc, healing stream on a resto shaman isn't actually that shabby. It scales remarkably well.

Stoneclaw is fun in BGs. I smile a little any time someone gets stunned hitting it. It's like a test to see if you're paying attention or just mindlessly attacking totems.

[Zetor]

Got it, only shaman can engineer or bandage.

I laughed at your list of totems.  Call buttons, use them.  Also, fuck healing stream, searing, and possibly stoneclaw.  Also, macros and clique.

So who peed in your wheaties today?  

To humor you: Stoneclaw when glyphed is one of the best pvp abilities a shaman has. Clique and friends are all but useless in (esp small scale) pvp and clicking = death.. yes, I use grid and clique in pve. You don't always use totemic calls or macro totems like earthbind/grounding/stoneclaw in pvp when it wastes their cooldowns and/or a ton of mana (you DO have them in a totemic call for an emergency situation), you save them for the appropriate moment and/or you recast important totems like tremor and cleansing or even manaspring when they get stomped. Searing is still useful in certain situations and when you only need a single fire nova with no other fire totem down and don't want to burn your mana pool with magma. And yeah I know everyone can have engineering, that also has buggerall to do with my original point (I wasn't even singling out shaman) Hell, if you wanted to be super serious, you'd have arena1-5, focus and mouseover macros for 2-3 key spells as well...

Anyway, that brings me back to my original point, which is that you can have an insane number of buttons and have them all be useful at certain situations in current games [wow, lotro]. I didn't even say that was bad or good, just different from how GW does it.

edit: unfucked quote

[DLRiley]

The difference between Guild Wars and every other mmo on the planet is simple.
In guild wars when you meet rock to your scissors, you are forced to work around your disadvantage.
In every other mmo when you meet rock to your scissors, you press the paper button or log off.

[Ingmar]

I laughed at your list of totems.  Call buttons, use them.

Um, no. In PVP you really do need to have some of those on individual binds, especially tremor, grounding, and earthbind. And stoneclaw totem with the personal shield glyph is *invaluable* in PVP at times.

[Sheepherder]

Huh?

Clique is faster than all other options aside from a macro that combines targeting and cast into a single spell with a single keypress.  That's why it's used in raiding, the same applies equally to pvp.  It lets you keep your hand on the movement/strafe keys, which is good.  It also lets you unbind a lot of shit, which helps with mis-presses and reaction speed.

Um, no. In PVP you really do need to have some of those on individual binds, especially tremor, grounding, and earthbind. And stoneclaw totem with the personal shield glyph is *invaluable* in PVP at times.

Yeah, I have those three on individual binds.  Binding six or seven totems is still fucking insane though.

I'm not sure how great Stoneclaw is later on, since it doesn't scale beyond 4400 damage.

EDIT FOR RELEVANCE: The point, I guess, is that people choose to be insane with keybinds.  As far as I can tell WoW doesn't really reward this type of play: you have more buttons to counter other buttons, but your capability to manage them all still sucks to a point where people would probably be better off combining them with macros or just not using those capabilities.

[Modern Angel]

False. I remember watching Arena videos from the POV of the top players. Their mouse never moved. It never touched a button. It never touched a unit frame. You can't turn quickly while clicking stuff on your hotbars and if you're a keyboard turner well...

[Sheepherder]

You have 180* of freedom to move with strafe and forward keys, and if you ever stop to cast (like a Riptided healbomb) you are free to turn for 1.5 seconds.  You are also not supposed to be clicking hotbars, you're clicking unit portraits.  Which is why I mentioned Clique, the mod specifically designed to allow you to initiate a cast by pressing a mouse button on a unit portrait, which is how normal people target allies anyways.

I'm also wondering how the hell you're supposed to select players without a mouse.  Keybinds to tab through them?  Five additional buttons to allow targeting each player?

EDIT: It's probably worth mentioning that a number of recording utilities I've seen are designed to be capable of editing out the mouse cursor.

[kildorn]

It's been a while since I've healed without a healing frame, but I'm pretty sure that F1-F5 target your group members. The reason we made heal frames is that it was a bitch to target people OUTSIDE your group. But for arenas that shouldn't matter.

[Sheepherder]

They are normally.  It still leaves the question of how you're supposed to retarget and toss an Earth Shield or Riptide without moving your hands from the movement keys.

[kildorn]

The first few F keys are pretty close to the movement keys. I never had much of an issue with it. I mean, primarily what you'll run into are keyboards with 3 key press limits causing some of your input to be discarded.

But you can also bind modifiers to mouse buttons all over the place, too.

Personally, I use healframes in pvp. But I also refuse to do competitive arena.

[Ashamanchill]

This is the one new MMO I am actually allowing myself hope for....well that and the WoT one, but that is hope for another reason entirely  . I'm with all the soft cores here, a change down to six buttons again is going to be nice.

This is going to be like a second chance at GW for me, since the first time around my friends and I hated it. It was our first MMO, and it just didn't feel, well, RPGy enough. We were used to the Baldur's Gate, and NeverWinter Nights, and to us the leveling up was the fun. We had no concept of 'endgame' yet. Looking back on it, it is entirely naive. Ironically, if we had played it now (or more accurately in a few months) we probably would have dug it, but we dont want to buy six xpacs or so just to get to the fun.

So this one is looking sweet from my perspective!

[Draegan]

Wow wrong thread.

[EWSpider]

Fuck WoW.  More Guild Wars 2 news, please.

[Nightblade]

Yes, less of this kind of setups, please:

Please don't make me recall the repressed memories of my time with WoW... For God's sake, there was a point where I was dicking around with my UI more than actually playing the game.

[caladein]

But there's that certain appeal to making the space your own.  Guild Wars has the best out-of-the-box UI and is also reasonably customizable so I have high hopes that GW2 will at least match that level of quality.

That said, anything shy of Guild Wars doesn't stand a chance being as useful as my customized WoW UI.

[Ingmar]

Guild Wars has the best out-of-the-box UI

wat

The UI is possibly the worst thing about GW. Healing is a huge pain in the ass, and the icons that tell you what effect are on you are pastel colored and nearly indecipherable. The power/health/mana bit of the UI is OK, but the rest of it is  .

Interface is one of the areas I am really, really hoping GW2 improves on because there is a LOT of room for improvement.

[caladein]

Oddly enough, I never really played a healer in GW so I can't speak to that except the party interface was a bit crappy if I remember right.

The health/mana bars being centralized is the big thing that stands out to me (especially when so many games still stick them off in a corner).  I also liked color-coding the bars and the use of arrows for gain/loss.

[Fordel]

Guild Wars has the best out-of-the-box UI

wat

The UI is possibly the worst thing about GW. Healing is a huge pain in the ass, and the icons that tell you what effect are on you are pastel colored and nearly indecipherable. The power/health/mana bit of the UI is OK, but the rest of it is  .

Interface is one of the areas I am really, really hoping GW2 improves on because there is a LOT of room for improvement.

You're just blind is all.

[Gunzwei]

Oddly enough, I never really played a healer in GW so I can't speak to that except the party interface was a bit crappy if I remember right.

From the new post/article it appears you won't be playing one in GW2 either.

http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death/

We're making players more self sufficient, but are also providing appealing ways for them to effortlessly work together to create a more inspired moment-to-moment experience. That is why Guild Wars 2 does not have a dedicated healing class.

[DLRiley]

And the brass balls has just been dropped. Is someone listening to my vent conversations? Next we will find out there won't be a dedicated ranger/archer class.

[Typhon]

Oddly enough, I never really played a healer in GW so I can't speak to that except the party interface was a bit crappy if I remember right.

From the new post/article it appears you won't be playing one in GW2 either.

http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death/

We're making players more self sufficient, but are also providing appealing ways for them to effortlessly work together to create a more inspired moment-to-moment experience. That is why Guild Wars 2 does not have a dedicated healing class.

I can't tell you how happy I am to hear this.  For those that love healing, or love the holy trinity, sincerely sorry (but it's not like you don't have enough holy trinity games already).  REALLY looking forward to this game now.