Combat
Note: Check out the "Professions" page for videos of in-game combat for each profession.
"Combat in Guild Wars 2 is visceral, dynamic, and visually impressive."
Turn the tide of battle with improvised tactics. Combine attacks from different professions for extra damage, like shooting arrows through a flaming wall to create a barrage of flaming projectiles, or sending pets through a cloud of poison so they spread the toxin among the enemy. Search your surroundings for powerful environmental weapons. In the hands of a skilled elementalist, a simple boulder can be turned into a meteor storm. Save the day by taking control of a siege weapon on the battlefield!
The skill system is easy to learn and rewarding to master. In Guild Wars 2, you start with a strong base set of skills, but the game allows for deep player customization. You get your base skills from the weapons you wield and then customize your skill-set with racial skills, healing skills, profession skills, and even a devastating elite skill.
-The Basics
Being able to jump and swim freely.. also translates directly into combat. To reinforce the importance of movement in the game, ArenaNet wants your character's position in combat to really matter. You'll see a lot of attacks in Guild Wars 2 that encourage and reward tactical player movement and positioning.
Combat in GW2 is really visually appealing. They want you to be able to identify the skills being used at a glance and also have a good idea of what that skill is doing. Does a skill have an area of effect? Is it doing damage? What type of damage? Their goal is to design skills that are visually unique and explain them without overly complex skill descriptions. This has resulted in a lot of distinct and impressive skill effects in the game. Even a simple skill like fireball explodes in such a way that you can clearly see the area that they will affect. Beyond your typical fireballs and lightning bolts, you'll see skills that create giant crushing stone hands, turn their users into massive tornadoes, and summon flocks of vicious birds of prey (A particular favorite skill of many people after they see it in action).
Death in GW2
Defeat in GW2 is intended to be an experience, not a punishment. Let's face it: dying never feels great, even without a death penalty. As weird as it might sound, they decided to look into what would make dying a more enjoyable and memorable play experience.
Rather than being presented with immediate failure, when a player loses all of their health in GW2, they are put into "downed mode." In this mode, the player has a number of downed skills they can use to target enemies and fight for a chance to survive. A downed player can still be attacked, which will send them into a defeated state, leaving them to either wait for an ally to resurrect them, or to resurrect at a waypoint.
-Downed
Downed skills are less-powerful skills that a player can use in a last-ditch effort to turn the tide. A warrior might daze an enemy by throwing a rock. An elementalist might lock down their foe with Grasping Earth. While you are downed, if you manage to kill an enemy, you will rally, returning to life to fight again. When you rally, you are thrust right back in the action. This potential to rally from the edge of defeat adds greater drama to combat and gives a player some tactical control while in a state where they normally have none.
Some professions will have special skills that will instantly rally a fallen ally. For example, when a warrior uses "I Will Avenge You," and then kills an enemy nearby his fallen allies, his allies will rally. While you are downed or defeated, any other player can come to you and interact with you to bring you back to life. This is called "reviving" and everyone, regardless of profession, can do this starting at Level 1. Awesome! You can, however, just release to a waypoint if that's what you want to do. This brings up the world map and allows you to return through any discovered waypoint.
The cherry on top of all of this: GW2 will have a much milder death penalty.
Players who have recently been downed several times will take longer to revive each time. If no one revives you, you can spend a small amount of gold to come back at a waypoint. It's as simple as that, and why not? Why should they debuff us, take away an experience, or make us run around for five minutes as a ghost instead of letting us actually play the game? Death penalties make death in-game a more tense experience. It just isn't fun. Defeat is the penalty; we don't have to be penalized a second time.
NO HEALERS?!
If you have played enough Guild Wars, or any other MMO with healers, you've sat around waiting for the right mix of players before being able to continue. I know I don't like sitting around spamming "LF Heals" or "LF TANK.. WILL PAY!!" in trade chat. That feels an awful lot like preparing to have fun instead of having fun. Or even worse, feeling that I have to heal because no one else will... when I really just want to run around and kill stuff! Instead of the traditional trinity, every GW2 profession is self reliant... not only can we all help each other by reviving in combat, but all professions have ways to build our characters differently to make a more versatile for group play. Ultimately, DPS/heal/tank just didn't cut it for Guild Wars 2.
Control is the only thing versatile enough to get away from the rock-paper-scissors gameplay of other MMOs. It's healing when you need it and damage when you need it. From controlling movement to controlling damage, there are tons of exciting dynamic scenarios that control can set up. You can use a stun to save another player or to finish off an enemy. Immobilize that warrior to get away from them, or use it on an elementalist to close in on them.
There are a lot of different levels of control, from a simple cripple, to an immobilize, to a knockdown. Each one has its place. The more devastating control effects are, the more infrequently they need to occur, and their duration needs to be shorter. Knockdown is one of the strongest forms of control in GW2, but you won't see a character that can just keep knocking someone down indefinitely, and you won't see a knockdown that puts an enemy out for so long that they won't be able to react. It's simply a tool that we'll be given to use at the right times to turn the tide of a battle.
You could say instead of DPS/heal/tank, they have their own trinity of damage, support, and control, but prefer to think of them as the variety of elements that create a diverse and dynamic combat system that gives us a toolbox to work with to solve any encounter they might throw our way. If that sounds like the kind of combat you are interested in, Guild Wars 2 is going to be a great place for us to fight together for many years to come.
