I've heard people talk about it but can't seem to find exactly what makes a giantdad build.  Is it literally just a dad mask and giant's armor?  Why so popular?

puaemerson

I'm playing it right now.  The problem must be you.  

I've been playing WoW for several years now, off and on. I've played pretty much every MMO in the market. The user reviews are premature. WoW is the juggernaut that keeps destroying other titles chances at succeeding, its made a lot of enemies because of this. It should come as no surprise that the initial reviews are overwhelmingly negative because the expansion has been live for exactly one week today and the only people reviewing are people who haven't finished leveling or don't even have the game but hate WoW.

Very few people have reached level cap, raid dungeons just unlocked this morning, and there is no longer an established endgame because of the lack of endgame players. I'm a hardcore gamer, and if I'm to believe these people reviewing this game with 1.0's etc. are actual players who have actually experienced all the content it would also require me to believe that they play more than myself or my friends by more than 2-3 times. Suffice to say there aren't enough hours in the day.

If you don't think WoW has changed, then you don't play WoW. Since the 5.0.4 patch all tanks were forcibly changed from passive tanks to active tanks. This means tank survivability is no longer an expectation, but every tank without exception now has to play well to achieve their survivability. This is a monumental change to game mechanics that literally took place overnight. Since the 5.0.4 patch all manapools have been normalized. No class, including healers, can increase their mana pool through gear anymore which means healers can no longer bank on excessively high mana pools to cover rotational mistakes, every healer has to watch what he is doing at all times. This is another monumental change to mechanics. Each healing class now also has at least 8 different healing abilities to cover different situations which is a gigantic change compared to only 1 expansion ago most healers used at most 3 heals over the course of an entire fight. I haven't even touched on decursing mechanics which have now been vastly modified. Suffice to say if you think a child can handle tanking or healing in the modern WoW system as you claim "reviewers" are saying, you are sorely mistaken. Unless the reviewers are saying only children can handle the depth and complexity required of all the current classes, which would be equally incorrect. Then there is the completely revamped specialization system.

As for never changing: new gameplay concepts implemented with Mists of Pandaria: scenarios including timed runs which beta players have been identifying as the toughest content Blizzard ever released. These scenarios don't require the trinity system, just well played characters. The new battle pets system was also implemented which includes its own version of a PvP finder. And here's one you won't find in ANY other game: Cross-realm zones. If you are in a low population zone, you'll be phased into a cross-server where people from other servers will be merged with your zone. No more running around a big empty zone.

I am not a die hard WoW fan. I've subscribed maybe 3 months over the last expansion (2 years). What I am is an MMORPG fan. And what I'm sick of hearing is complaints about how MMO's are MMO's. Its like a bunch of babies whining about how "why are there GUNS in my FPS!!! THERE ARE GUNS IN MY FPS WHY DO THEY NEVER TRY ANYTHING NEW!!!!". If you don't like the genre, don't play the genre. But showing up to Resident Evil and complaining that they keep making games about zombies is the height of stupidity.

I mean really what sort of "different" are you expecting? They revamped tanks and healers. Last expansion they revamped DPS by having things like haste increase your resource regeneration. That's a complete mechancis overhaul. This expansion they flat out removed talent trees and replaced it with specializations, now your talents are statistically equivalent flavor choices. They added 2 new types of endgame content, a new class with a tank, healer and mdps spec, as well as revamping class mechanics for all of the existing classes. You want them to abandon endgame dungeons and raiding as a concept? Its their most popular feature, and they are the only game providing content on that scale. Unless you are actually going to argue Rift's Infernal Dawn was signicantly equivalent to the Dragon Soul raid.

So I cleared the my human warrior story up through the Field of Ruins (30-40), finishing the area at level 40 and moved on to some crafting etc, that helped bump me up to level 42.

I completed my story (for lvl 42) in the next zone (45-55) but obviously since I fall short of being able to competently participate due to my lower level, I'm thinking I've missed something.

Has anyone else experienced this abnormality?

I'm aware that I could just grind and/or repeat dynamic events I've already completed, or I could farm mats and craft again but I'm more concerned there isn't content for completion in the area my story has sent me to. There is no bread crumb to any quests my level and it feels awefully derailed at this point.

DarkManiaN_1979

You can't efficiently farm mats because ANET has anti-farming software built into the game.  That's not a joke, there is really anti-farming software built into the game.  So save yourself a world of trouble and don't try to level through crafting.  The original people who leveled through crafting did it during the early access using guild-donated materials and they immediately hotfixed the exp so what used to give you 10,000 exp now only gives about 180.  Seriously, don't try to level through crafting.

You aren't missing anything, you're running into the crunch most people start hitting about level 25.  For whatever reason, maybe it was lucky Dynamic Event spawns throughout your leveling, you are just now hitting this wall.  There's really nothing you can do about it.  Check your world map and see if there is an undiscovered area within your level range and go do the hearts and DE's in that zone.  You'll eventually catch up.  The other option is to go shouting for a party for dungeons, go to town and find a battlemaster for SPvP or use your finder for WvWvW.  If you go the WvWvW route, make sure you bring a Rifle and/or Longbow because melee is a total nonstarter in WvWvW, you'll be slaughtered.  Take it from me, scoring kills is hard in WvWvW so someone stupid enough to charge into melee is asking to get DPS trained I do it with my Mesmer every time someone tries to play Rambo.

Professional raiders, wut.

2bitSmOkEy

To put things into perspective for you: there are over 65,000 raiding guilds in WoW. If you are in the top 500, you're a professional raider.

I want to level through dynamics events while I queue for dungeons and SPvP. ANET didn't release their title with a dungeon OR PvP finder so no, I can't level any way I want. If you push your main story by leeching on high level friends there is only enough EXP to get maybe 20 levels. You also can't level through exploring because the high level mobs will kill you. And you absolutely cannot level through crafting, that's just an outright lie. Not only is crafting prohibitively expensive, ANET included anti-farming software so you can't farm for mats.

Im not a huge fanboy of GW because I hate persistent world MMO's, I got f... bored in my first 15hours of WoW barely reaching lvl 20, everybody knows WoW shines only late game, but I can say I have fun with GW2 from lvl 1 even if its still a MMO.vezon

GW2 is a persistent world MMO. There are the same Dynamic Events in every zone. You don't suddenly get a DE from the Charr starting zone appear in the Human starting zone. The only MMO that isn't a persistent world is Rift, due to rifts and invasions. How exactly were you dealing with a persistent world in WoW considering each zone only lasted 5 levels and were 3x larger than any zone in GW2? You wouldn't have had to deal with the persistent world because you'd be constantly changing zones.

And one of the biggest stupidity I am seeing against GW is the 10skill slotbar. I tell that I watched a lots of highlevel plays of WoW and other MMO's with 4 slotbars that occupy half of your screen. And guess what I observed? They use the same 3-4 skill over and over again. NO ABSOLTELY NO VARIATION in used skills. SO WHERE IS YOUR ... DIVERSITY?

here at least I use constantly 4*2+4 and the elite, which are 12 skills most of the time on cooldowns.vezon

Let's take my Mesmer as an example. I use Staff + Sword/Focus. My Staff has 5 abilities. Of those 5 abilities, 2 are attacks. My sword has 5 abilities. Of those abilities: 2 are attacks. Of the 4 attack abilities I've already listed, 2 are AUTOATTACKS. So that means my entire Mesmer has 2 actual attacks. one, Chaos Storm, has a 45 second cooldown. I also have 2 Phantasm abilities which remain up 100% of the time the enemy is alive. I also have 2 clone generating abilities which remain up 100% of the time. I can only have 3 clones or phantasms up at any given time so that once I've spawned three I no longer have a use for those abilities. My utility skills are attacks I can only cast twice in a fight (Mantras) because their cast time is so long its ineffective to recast mid-fight, or utilitiy abilities like Null Field or Feedback. These are not abilities you keep on cooldown because they are utilities, you use them when you need to use them. So out of my entire hotbar, my Mesmer has 2 buttons I press regularly (really only 1 every 45 seconds since its really stupid to run in and melee to use Blurred Frenzy) with a couple buttons I press at the begin and a few more situational buttons.

Let's compare that to my Mage in WoW. Mages are considered the easiest class to play with the least number of buttons to press. I have my own version of Chaos armor (Ice Barrier), and I have 3 versions of Chaos Storm (Blizzard, Arcane Explosion, Flame Strike). 2 of these have no cooldown, 1 of them has a 12 second cooldown. This is versus a 45 second cooldown on Chaos storm. My damage rotation includes 5 buttons: Frostfire Bolt, Pyroblast, Inferno Blast, Living Bomb and Combustion versus the 1 or 2 button every 40+ seconds rotation of Mesmer. I also have numerous utility abilities that I can slot all at once simultaneously such as: Cone of Cold, Frost Nova, Deep Freeze, Polymorph, Spellsteal, Counterspell, Dragon's Breath, Evocation and Alter Time. I also have numerous damage increasing cooldowns such as: Time Warp, Mirror Images, and Alter Time, I also have numerous "quality of life" abilities that function to make my life easier outside of combat such as: conjuring free food for my friends, casting slow fall so everyone is immune to falling damage. Then I have numerous emergency survival buttons such as: Ice Block and Invisibility. I haven't even included abilities that you have to talent for except Ice Barrier because its the one everyone picks. These include: Prescence of Mind, Scorch, Ice Floes, Temporal Shield, Ice Barrier, Blazing Speed, Ring of Frost, Ice Ward, Frostjaw, Greater Invisibility, Cauterize, Cold Snap, Nether Tempest, Living Bomb, Frost Bomb, Invocation, Rune of Power and Incanter's Ward. Tell me again that GW2 classes are as deep and complex as WoW characters.

The bottom line: if the players you were watching didn't use their cooldowns they were bad players. If they were in PvE and not needing to use survival cooldowns or utility spells that's the same in GW2. If I'm in a dungeon I rarely have to do anything outside of spamming Winds of Chaos. I have 100 times the depth and complexity in the simplest, and easiest to play class in WoW than anything GW2 has to offer. And if you're literally telling me that you're spamming your low-damage roots, snares, knockbacks, charges, and retreats on your weapons in GW2 then you are a flat out BAD player. You don't use utility abilities unless you need them. And EVERY weapon set up has at least 5 utility/situational abilities that you do NOT use on cooldown not counting the 3 actual "utlity" slots.

JUST PLAY A F.. MOBA with that 4 skill u have pretty deep tactics, so .. your stupid 40 skills bar which u never use but are there because they were unlocked at lower level.

I can't say its an awesome game, but definitely one of the best MMO's outhere.

vezon

The reason the people have 40 skill bars in the videos you're watching is because they are professional raiders. Bad players don't make use of all their abilities. WoW players have to make use of every advantage their class offers. If you were to watch a PvP video, you'd see players using upwards of 25 abilities over the course of a match.

lol I'm not even a guild wars 2 fanboy. The fanboy in here is quite obviously you and your obsession with swtor, which again, is a good game but for me personally it was just way too similar to WoW. Playing through swtor on my sith assassin was a ton of fun, but shortly after experiencing the end game all it did was make me want to play WoW, which imo is far superior in that regard.

 

That said, the quality of gw2 is blatantly obvious, no one needs to defend it because it speaks for itself.

2bitSmOkEy

The funniest part is I'm not even playing SWTOR right now.  I only bring it up because its one of 4 major western MMO's right now and since this conversation veered towards "exploration" its the only MMO that I even know of that rewards exploration.  I won't be playing SWTOR again until it goes F2P in October.

You're right though, GW2 quality is available for all to see like here.  Its already dropped 52.5% of its player activity in 3 weeks.  Even if you isolate Sunday's (its peak days) its already lost more than 25% of its player activity in only 14 days!  By this Sunday it'll likely have lost 33% of its player base.  It took SWTOR 3 months to see this kind of disastrous decline.  BTW I also bring up SWTOR because most of the GW2 fanboys consider it the biggest disaster in MMO history so I use its "failure' as a barometer for GW2's failure.  

GW2 needs defenders.  Because its so helpless and indefensible it can't defend itself.  Your game will just be an afterthought in 2 weeks, with ghost town servers and its only memory being the most crushing disappointment fanboys ever tried to defend.  

Megotaku77, coming from someone who actually likes this game, you take fanboy to the next level. Move to F2P because of how lucrative it is, not because of a lack of subscribers? You're nutty.

Murazor

lol it's not like you're drawing a line between everything on your map or something. You still have to go out and actually explore the points on your map. Not to mention, you have to first discover these so called "dots" in the first place, they aren't already laid out for you on the map as you say. 2bitSmOkEy

No there are NPC's called Scouts that are marked on your map and they reveal them for you.  I'm wondering if you've played this game since the game forces you to use a Scout in every starting area.

And it's not like that even matters, it's the actual act of exploring the world and uncovering all the secrets of a zone that is so fun. You're over simplfying it with your extreme bias.2bitSmOkEy

You're the one that said the EXP system fostered exploration.  I'm pointing out the simple fact that there is no exploration and every feature on the map is revealed for you.  SWTOR had exploration.  As far as I can tell, its the only MMO that actually rewarded exploration with more than a tabard and a title.  

I don't know anything about this rifle warrior build you bring up, I almost never see it in spvp, must suck. You act as if gw2 has like violated your life or something, you may need to go take a breath of fresh air or something?2bitSmOkEy

Rifle warrior?  When did I say "rifle warrior"?  Oh you mean when I said 5 Signet GS/Rifle.  Which is the most popular build of warrior, the most popular class.  You stack a healing signet, 3 utility signets and 1 elite signet and then destroy people/mobs with your GS.  This means Greatsword, which anyone whose actually played this game longer than 5 minutes should know already.  You only use the Rifle because it has high power DPS cooldowns to mow down fleeing targets and provide pressure DPS in PvE.  Wait... omg you don't know you can weapon swap in combat.  How cute, and you were trying to talk to me about the benefits GW2 without even knowing that you could weapon swap in combat.  Because that is literally the only explanation for why you ignored the GS in GS/Rifle.

This is why I have little patience for GW2 fanboys.  Not only have you not played the game enough to even know what I'm talking about, you automatically assumed you knew exactly what I was talking about and jumped on a strawman without even considering you didn't understand me.  Then you do that same conscending schpeel despite being a semi-literate twerp about how I need to "get some fresh air" despite the fact that you've been here just as long as I have.  Did it ever occur to you that there's such a thing as "tabbed browsing"?  Did it ever occur to you that maybe I'm a college student with my browser running in the background while I write my research paper, play Skyrim and watch youtube?  No, because the world revolves around you fanboys.  You're so important that after you type something people sit here with bated breath simply awaiting the moment you grace us with your presence again.