I just started myself, and if you can't see how Guild Wrs combat is skill based there's something wrong :P

one of the most skill based MMOs I've ever seen.  far more so than button mashers like god of war (don't get me wrong, I love god of war) and thus i feel this is a very bad troll.

hear that? bad troll, not even a good troll!

Comparing GW to FPS is like comparing an american football game to 100m dash.

Sure you can hammer your way in PVE, never knowing there is skill involved, but once you get to PVP and GVG in particular, it is more and more like a highly strategic game with individual skills and the design of the entire 8 group builds.

You say, just pick the best skills, but what are the "best skills" ?

Lets just say, you do it, later I may explain why you cannot have a concept of "best skills".

Now even the most single minded build in GVG will have the following skills:

pure-damage skill, deep-wound skill, knockdown skill, weakness or poison or slow down skill, interrupt skill, maybe some healing skill, maybe some  condition removal skill, maybe some regeneration skill., maybe some speed boost and some accelerated hit rate skill.

Lets say two players fight, what skill do you use and how, will influence what the outcome will be.

If you Deep-wound a guy, he does not heal so good, if you wait, yu may knockdown him when he's low in life and then DW him to finish him off, however if he slows you down, you will not catch him, so your plan goes away. He may also apply weakness on you, so you dont hit him as hard.

Lets look at the interrupt skill, when will you use it ? when the foe try to knock you down ? when he heals ? when he DW you ?

And so on and so forth, you see, the simplest 2 person fight, has many choices to make in split seconds and each will influence the outcome.

Now we dont fight 1Vs1, we fight 8Vs8 with several objectives, not just killing the other team. Also the builds are not the same, and you take sub-par build, to cover all the possible other build you may encounter. So it gets more and more complicated.

There is some skill involved in the game.  And usually somebody who has some skill defeat those who don't have any.  However, this supposed "skill" is fairly limited and doesn't take long to master. 

I would say that battlefield awareness is the most important and difficult "skill" to get good at.  And even it is not all that difficult, it's just that the other stuff is really easy.

My God, the OP needs to stop being desne and listen to the comments.

You are utterly confusing different types of skills in completely different games.  Guild wars skill comes from preplanning and tactical use of moves (aka skills).

Counterstrike is reflex skill.  God of war is button memoriazation and stat builging skills.  Zelda is puzzle and item usage skill.  THESE ARE ALL COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TYPES OF SKILLS.

Guild wars skill comes into play in this order.  NOW READ!

1- choosing your skills.  You only get to use 8. You have over 50 to choose from.  choose wisely.  Oh and btw, these skills have all been balanced to near perfection, so no one skill is going to dominate.

2-  Now that you chose yoru skill, distribute you stat points wisely.  Each skill becomes more powerful is you increase its appropriate stat.  But you only have so many stat points and the more poitns you layer into one stat, the more points it will cost.

3-  Grab a team.  You are part of a team, you are either a damage dealer, healer, fixer, debuffer, or pet maker.  you need to work with your team well.

4- Use your skills correctly.  Now you can use your skills in a combo to kill the enemy or use them sparingly to heal allies.  It depends on yoru setup, but you can't just go out there spam moves.  Everything takes timing.

If you want to feel this game at full difficulty, roll a PvP monk.  Go to the random arena, setup your monk and go in there and start healing.  You will quickly find out how friggin hard this game is when you have 4 people running all over the place that you have to, cleanse, and rez.   You will find out real fast just how important your setup is.  you will notice as lose battle after battle that you need a skill to counter this debuff and that debuff.  you need a skill to defend yourself and you need a skill to quickly heal this person and that person. etc. 

If this game takes no skill, then I expect you to play a monk flawlessly and win nearly every battle in the random arenas.  Good luck.

Originally posted by Urrelles

My God, the OP needs to stop being desne and listen to the comments.

You are utterly confusing different types of skills in completely different games.  Guild wars skill comes from preplanning and tactical use of moves (aka skills).

Counterstrike is reflex skill.  God of war is button memoriazation and stat builging skills.  Zelda is puzzle and item usage skill.  THESE ARE ALL COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TYPES OF SKILLS.

Guild wars skill comes into play in this order.  NOW READ!

1- choosing your skills.  You only get to use 8. You have over 50 to choose from.  choose wisely.  Oh and btw, these skills have all been balanced to near perfection, so no one skill is going to dominate.

2-  Now that you chose yoru skill, distribute you stat points wisely.  Each skill becomes more powerful is you increase its appropriate stat.  But you only have so many stat points and the more poitns you layer into one stat, the more points it will cost.

3-  Grab a team.  You are part of a team, you are either a damage dealer, healer, fixer, debuffer, or pet maker.  you need to work with your team well.

4- Use your skills correctly.  Now you can use your skills in a combo to kill the enemy or use them sparingly to heal allies.  It depends on yoru setup, but you can't just go out there spam moves.  Everything takes timing.

 

If you want to feel this game at full difficulty, roll a PvP monk.  Go to the random arena, setup your monk and go in there and start healing.  You will quickly find out how friggin hard this game is when you have 4 people running all over the place that you have to, cleanse, and rez.   You will find out real fast just how important your setup is.  you will notice as lose battle after battle that you need a skill to counter this debuff and that debuff.  you need a skill to defend yourself and you need a skill to quickly heal this person and that person. etc. 

If this game takes no skill, then I expect you to play a monk flawlessly and win nearly every battle in the random arenas.  Good luck.

Let me guess the next thread by OP:

"Monk in GW is broken. You cannot even heal yourself, you die before you do any damage. Thise game is broken."

I think that the OP just doens't understand fully. Some people just don't get it...it took me awhile to get it and maybe it's the same way for him. I bought guild wars and played it for about 1 week, and then said screw it. I thought it was stupid and didn't see how others could play for years. Then I saw how much my brother was having fun with it, so I decided to give it another chance. When I realiezed how to do things it was a ton more fun. The key here is to like things for what they are. If you like console fighting games, then your probably not going to like most mmo's. Doesn't mean guild wars it good or bad. It just means you probably don't like this genre, or this style of gameplay. There is skill involved in both, and I can see the skill in both...but it seems that you cannot. This game is kinda more like chess. You have time to think strategically about what you are going to do, and that takes skill...but it doens't take the kinda of skill that something like Counter Strike takes....which is fast reflexes and good timing.

There are a lot of examples of how GW is a "skill based game"

- you can dodge some forms of ranged attacks by skillfully maneuvering your character (twitch based)

- There are interrupt skills that fire off within a fraction of a second that can be used to disrupt spells/abilities used by other players, but only if that fraction of a second interrupt is used within the casting or usage time of the other guys ability which is generally also anywhere from a fraction of a second to maybe 2 seconds tops in "casting time" (twitch based)

- There are extremely short duration skills that can allow you to dodge otherwise unavoidable attacks that require practice and timing to effectively use (twitch based)

- success in pvp and some of the more difficult pve areas requires a good team build (understanding of the game mechanics, which imo is a skill)

- success in pvp and some pve areas requires a high degree of cooperation between many players (requires practice and again, skill)

- success in pvp and some pve areas requires tactics and strategy (both of those are skills).

You simply cannot win in guild wars simply because you have enough levels or gear.  You cannot win in guild wars simply because you mash 1 button or a series of buttons over and over.

Guildwars isn't quite the same as a first person shooter, where you can win by having awesome aim, map control/understanding, etc, but it's as close as any rpg I have ever played.  Anyone who says different either hasn't played guildwars at a high level (ie has never been in a top 20 or even a top 50 pvp guild) or is just plain making stuff up.

IF you don't think GW is about skill, form a guild with your friends and join the pvp ladder.  If you can maintain a top 10 ranking for at least 60 days and you still feel GW requires no skill, you are correct.

It is clear the op has never played the gvg aspect of GW.  If so, he wouldn't be making these posts.  Try winning in gvg by just clicking on the enemy and spamming abilities.

It's a complex game, that on the surface doesn't appear so.  That's basically it.

Peace.