Jan 3, 2012

My skillbar goes to 15!

A lot has been made of the changes to the Guild Wars 2 skillbar in comparison to it's predecessor.  Most of the negative comments have focused on how the first five skills are set by the weapon choice of the player and so they only really have five slot with which to make their build.


What seems to have been lost in the discussion is the fact that for 6 of the 8 professions, the skillbar actually contains fifteen skills, not just ten.  How's that, you ask?  Beside each skillbar there is a button to switch weapon sets (for everyone except the Elementalist and the Engineer).  I haven't seen it discussed much before, but choosing what two weapon sets to bring and then appropriately switching between them at the right times in combat will be as much a part of making your build as selecting the utility skills.  And a player that takes advantage of both weapon sets instead of just sticking with one set will be what separates the "pro" players from the casuals.

For example, let's look at the Ranger.  They have several obvious options for ranged attacks: Longbow, Shortbow and mainhand Axe.  If they choose the Axe for one of their weapon sets, they then can choose from an offhand of Axe, Dagger, Torch or Warhorn.  Each of these will bring different options to the build and will have even more benefit if the weapon sets are switched during combat.

The most obvious example of this is if one weapon set contains an offhand Torch while the second contains a bow (either the shortbow or the longbow).  The Set Ablaze skill on the Torch can be used to start a fire.  Then, the Ranger can switch to her bow and fire through the inferno, setting her arrows on fire for extra damage.

As another example of how setting up complementary weapon sets will be important, and how it relates to your personal play style, let's consider the Warrior.  If you really like getting up close and personal, you'll probably want a mainhand sword for Savage Leap to allow you to close in on foes quickly.  You might then opt for a Hammer as your second set so that you can use Backbreaker to put your foe on their backside with a knock down.  On the other hand, a Warrior who prefers to stay out of melee combat can choose a Rifle or Longbow as their main weapon and then could opt for a second weapon set of Mace and Warhorn so that they have access to Charge for fleeing and a Daze and block from the mace for some defence.

Warriors will get the option to slot a trait which will reduce or even negate the cooldown between weapon sets so that they'll be able to quickly switch between different sets.  This will really make them feel like they have a 15 slot skillbar.

So what about the Elementalist and Engineer?  They don't get two weapon sets because they have profession-specific mechanics which also increase their available skills.  In the case of the Elementalist, they can switch attunements.  During the demos at the conventions, some players noted that one successful tactic was to unload all of your longer-recharging spells, then switch to a different attunement, dump all of it's spells, etc.  By the time they'd gone through all four attunements, the spells in their original attunement had pretty much recharged.  With the energy bar gone from the game, an Elementalist who sticks with Fire for an entire fight and winds up just casting Fireball repeatedly while waiting for Meteor Shower to recharge probably isn't going to be nearly as effective as one who drops Meteor Shower, then switches to Earth and drops Unsteady Ground on the same area to cripple foes and keep them in the Meteor Shower longer.

The Engineer has a slightly different mechanic with their Kits, but it amounts to much the same thing -- they actually have access to more than just the 10 skills on their bar during any particular combat.  Like the other professions, the key to victory will be knowing what all of the skills you can potentially use are and what they do and how best to use them to synergize for better effects than if they were used separately.  An obvious example that comes to mind is using Glue Shot on the offhand pistol to immobilize some foes and then switching to the grenade kit to lob death onto them before they can get away.  Sure, you could just stick with dual pistols and simply fire bullets at your immobilized foes, but you won't be making the most of your skillbar if that's all you do.

It won't matter as much in PvE, but I suspect that weapon switching and which combinations of weapons to bring will quickly become one of the key player skills that separates the pros from the pwnd in PvP.  And if you're tempted to complain about only getting to pick three utility skills on the new bar and how that's so limiting compared to the original, just keep in mind that you've now got access to at least 15 skills (25 for an Elementalist) compared to the eight in the original.

11 comments:

  1. and the guardian? he have option?

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  2. Guardian has access to 2 weapon sets, so 15 for them as well.

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  3. Guardian works like warrior. Two weapon sets to swap between.

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  4. I've been looking at necromancers and they have great condition synergy between many of their weapon choices. for example a fleeing necro can freeze the foes with the focus then switch to war horn and gain swiftness...weapon switching will be important

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  5. Some of the classes also have skills which chain attacks (Warrior and Guardian come to mind) so that's usually 3 attacks to one slot.

    Some of the classes like guardian, also get additional static, class specific skills that rest above the skill bar.

    The guardian could have access to as many as 22 skills in battle, not including downed status or water combat: 3 static class skills, 5 chosen skills and 7 skills per weapon set.

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    1. Yeah. I was just going with a simple case to make my point that via weapon switching (and toolbelts and attunements) you will actually have access to more skills than it appears at first glance. Plus, I was trying to put in a reference to Spinal Tap. :)

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  6. and something else that people may over look is in gw2 there will be much more team synergy, with cross-class combos you can set up teams in pvp to make us of this too, giving you more options to customize as a team.

    Also, don't forget the downed skills, there is another 4 :P

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  7. Don't forget that the Engineer also has the four additional Toolbelt skills above the normal bar.

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  8. I love the versatility offered by the Guild Wars 2 skillbar. It gives less able players a good base to work with while allowing the more adept players to create a more sophisticated skillbar to suit their playing style.

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  9. What I am curious to know is that if you would set a warrior with the same main hand and two different off hands would it remember where you are in the chain skill if you would swap sets or if it would be locked to that set and essentially reset when you swapped over

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    1. Yeah, I'm curious to see how that works too. Is there just one cooldown timer for the skill, for one per weapon set even though the skill is the same?

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