Is this a Theorycrafter's game?

[IDooMx.1289]

I have come to GW2 to push aside all the power treadmills most MMOs offer. Last year I had my first child. I've tried to keep up with other games and their treadmills, but I can't considering my new bundle of joy. That being said, a game where the power treadmill is no longer a factor for me, can I expect to have an experience where I may come up with many many builds on a single character and be somewhat unique in that regard?

I've tried to understand the the class system by reading and it's confusing. I would play enough to find out, but I dont want to spend time doing something if I decide it wasnt what I wanted. Ultimately the decision is mine. I am aware. But i trust veterans have the ability to influence, inspire, and ultimately be a factor in my decision.

 

I hope you all have a wonderful day! <3 :)

 

P.S.- I have other games in mind. I just appreciate experienced points of views.

[ProverbsofHell.2307]

As long as you don't care about min/max and the metagame... yes you can have any build you want.

[IDooMx.1289]

But are the options many? I don't quite understand the class system. Thanks for your reply. :)

[ProverbsofHell.2307]

> @"IDooMx.1289" said:

> But are the options many? I don't quite understand the class system. Thanks for your reply. :)

 

Ah I see. Let me explain.

 

There are "trait trees" in the game which are termed specialisations. Originally in the core game, Warrior for example, had five trees to choose from: Arms, Tactics, Discipline, Defense and Strength. In Heart of Thorns it gained Berserker and in Path of Fire it gained Spellbreaker.

 

You can choose any 3 of those trees. You can then pick traits inside of those trees. You can change them freely at any time.

 

[IDooMx.1289]

Oh my.. that sounds amazing. I will take faith in your reply. That is everything I needed to hear. Thank you so much! :)

[ProverbsofHell.2307]

You're welcome. And furthermore, on a personal note... as someone who especially enjoys build-making, I'm quite confident that even though you will find certain trees and traits to be more optimal than others, you will easily have enough room to enjoy some theorycrafting.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

Not really. Theorycrafting ends here with copypasting builds prepared by current self proclaimed meta dictators.

[ProverbsofHell.2307]

> @"Kheldorn.5123" said:

> Not really. Theorycrafting ends here with copypasting builds prepared by current self proclaimed meta dictators.

 

Let him worry about that if he decides to do raiding.

 

[Danikat.8537]

This game is a bit more restrictive than some because several things are grouped together. For example the first 5 skills on your bar are determined by the weapon/s you're using - each weapon has set of skills and there's no way you can change them. But every profession (class) has multiple weapons to choose from and they'll often play completely differently. And as ProverbsofHell said passive skills (traits) are grouped together and you can only pick 3 groups to have active at a time.

 

So it's not totally free choice, but even with the restrictions there are hundreds of possible combinations on each profession. Of course not all of those will be optimal and even fewer will be popular with groups doing 'end game' content, but if you're not worried about that you can do pretty much whatever you want. I frequently play builds I'm told are terrible (and some I know myself are not very good) simply because I find them more fun.

 

(In fact sometimes it's the fact that they're not very good that makes them fun. If you're not doing the highest possible damage fights last longer and you need to get more creative to survive and win. Of course I wouldn't try that in a raid or high level Fractals, but when the only person I'm inconveniencing is me I quite enjoy it.)

[GrubySzymek.1362]

> @"ProverbsofHell.2307" said:

> > @"Kheldorn.5123" said:

> > Not really. Theorycrafting ends here with copypasting builds prepared by current self proclaimed meta dictators.

>

> Let him worry about that if he decides to do raiding.

>

 

or fractals

 

or pvp

 

or organised wvw

[AliamRationem.5172]

> @"IDooMx.1289" said:

> I have come to GW2 to push aside all the power treadmills most MMOs offer. Last year I had my first child. I've tried to keep up with other games and their treadmills, but I can't considering my new bundle of joy. That being said, a game where the power treadmill is no longer a factor for me, can I expect to have an experience where I may come up with many many builds on a single character and be somewhat unique in that regard?

> I've tried to understand the the class system by reading and it's confusing. I would play enough to find out, but I dont want to spend time doing something if I decide it wasnt what I wanted. Ultimately the decision is mine. I am aware. But i trust veterans have the ability to influence, inspire, and ultimately be a factor in my decision.

>

> I hope you all have a wonderful day! <3 :)

>

> P.S.- I have other games in mind. I just appreciate experienced points of views.

 

There is no "treadmill" here. Ascended gear has the highest possible stats and that doesn't change. Neither does the level cap (80). Further, ascended gear is account bound and may be passed between characters on the same account!

 

Build diversity depends very much upon the game mode. Open world, storyline, lower tier fractals, dungeons, and unranked PvP are a playground where anything goes. You can also get away with it in WvW, provided you aren't playing with a well-organized team. However, raids, high end fractals, ranked PvP, and organized WvW tend to push the meta builds because they generally produce better performance. Generally speaking, the more organized group content you participate in, the less build diversity you will find. However, if you're mostly a solo open world and pickup group sort of player, you shouldn't have any problems.

 

 

[Buddy.7563]

Here's a pretty handy website for planning out builds.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

[Neutra.6857]

One thing you should also note, a lot of your stat points are tied to your armor, weapons, and trinkets as well as the items you customize them with (infusions, sigils, runes, etc) While there is a meta in some content, with pugs insisting on people using this meta, there is a lot of different possible builds.

[Airdive.2613]

Yes, the game is very theorycraft-friendly.

 

Attributes: affect your build heavily and somewhat restrict your power levels in different fields (dealing damage, mitigating damage, supporting). The good news is it's relatively easy to find good enough gear with the attributes you like, and it's also relatively easy to change attributes of your top-tier gear.

 

Weapons and utility skills: restrict your build to several choices out of many available. Every choice matters, and there's usually no room in your build for useless (in your particular situation) skills.

 

Specializations and traits: allow you to spice up your build with juicy passives. While some of them are literally "+150 toughness aura" and the likes, many of them can change your playstyle drastically and/or synergize with each other in exciting ways.

 

Playstyle: ultimately, everything can be done in many different ways, and the current meta is just one (reliable, but not the only and not necessarily fun) way of playing, I'd say even in PvP (but you still need to be good at what you're doing). In every area of the game it comes down to your individual skill, your game knowledge, and your ability to ignore the herd.

[Curunen.8729]

What you can do to experiment is quickly make a new character and run it through the intro (takes 5-10 mins depending in how long you take in character creation), and immediately jump into the pvp lobby - there are npcs to test builds against there and all traits/skills/weapons are unlocked as well as access to limited gear (amulets, runes and sigils). That could help you identify a class to play (easy to start a new character) before committing to it.

[Crossaber.8934]

> @"IDooMx.1289" said:

> Oh my.. that sounds amazing. I will take faith in your reply. That is everything I needed to hear. Thank you so much! :)

 

There is one important thing you need to know about elite specialization.

For example warrior: berserker and spellbreaker are the elite specialization, which means you can only equip 1 elite spec traitline at a time.

When you choose 3 core trait line, you are core warrior; when you take up berserker traitline, you are a berserker; when you take spellbreaker instead of berserker, you become spellbreaker, you cannot equip berserk and spellbreaker at the same time, each elite specialization have his own corresponding weapon and skill type accordingly.

[ButcherofMalakir.4067]

The fact that there are 7 trees to chose from (and choices in them) and also that skills are tied to weapons makes many builds possible

[IDooMx.1289]

Thank you all for the helpful info. I really appreciate the community doing this for me. :)

[Randulf.7614]

The options are extremely varied. Play what you want, how you want and have fun with the experimentation. I've never looked at a meta build and I get along just fine with anything I want to play across a variety of characters and classes. The freedom to design a class round your playstyle is quite refreshing

[Stand The Wall.6987]

short answer: nope. there aren't enough skills to have tons of builds. you can have a few tho, but its nothing close to gw1.

[Crossaber.8934]

> @"Stand The Wall.6987" said:

> short answer: nope. there aren't enough skills to have tons of builds. you can have a few tho, but its nothing close to gw1.

 

We don’t need tons of builds, i have 17 characters in which 5 of them are warriors, people said warrior is the most boring class but my 5 warriors have 5 different builds and are all viable in wvw. I enjoy every moment with them.

[Dreamy Lu.3865]

I am a veteran. For several years, I have not been caring at all about builds. Though, I got a maximum of fun and reached exactly same level of progress and amount of achievements than players caring about builds.

I started to change that about one and a half year ago, because I started to do fractals and passed a certain level, it needs specific equipment and build. I also started to do WvW a bit more seriously, so I had to care more about class and builds. And last but not least, builds are mandatory for raids, that are a special activity of the game.

 

But if you want to play casual, what seems to be the case, you don't need to care at all and you will enjoy as much as I did during all the years I played without caring. The only thing is that you will probably tend to do more PvE than anything else.

The activities fractals (above level 20), WvW (if you want to do it seriously) and raids are a bit different, but you can simply stay in fractals below level 20, do WvW casually within zerg and ignore raids.

 

Side note: In all cases, this is also a matter of choosing the team suiting you the most. There will always be teams where the players request you to have specific class and build, and more casual teams who will not care. So you can just go with the second ones. :)

 

I don't do PvP, so I cannot tell anything about.

[mercury ranique.2170]

This game, when it comes to stats is not always viable, but often more then people will claim.

 

There are two important things in making a build

1: It has to keep the PC alive.

2: there is never enough dps.

GW2 is build in such away that you do not have to worry about staying alive. The game is very forgiving and you can beat anything but group content without ever having to worry about staying alive. Group content is build in such a way that most formats also never need special skills to stay alive. Damage mitigation by the numbers is enough.

So most optimum builds evolve around getting more dps. in that there are limited options. You either can go viper (condition) or zerker (raw dps)

 

However. within that situation, the classes themself are very unique. The elite specialisations add another dimension to it as well.

For example, when levelling, I never really liked my engineer. But with the holosmith I really love it and it feels like a very different class.