Core game Elite Specializations

There was a recent post on this forum that had an interesting idea, but was overshadowed due to undesirable elements in the title of the post. So I am starting this thread to focus on that interesting idea.

First, this idea hinges on the thought that core specs, should be "brought up" to be more competitive with the current elite specs. By more competitive, that could mean more interesting mechanics, or a dps boost or more support or whatever. If you believe core specs should not really be "brought up" then this idea has no merit. I'd like to hear your response either way.

Core game elite specializations. Guardian was brought up in the original post, so we will go with that. You could choose Guardian Elite in the third specialization slot only. This spec could focus on symbols, or shouts or something new, whatever. As it would be an elite spec, it would not singularly affect the balance of the other 2 elite specs. (though it would most likely affect comparative balance). All 9 (or 8?) professions would get this core elite spec. I suppose Revenant doesn't have a core spec. per say.

Again, I don't know if this is even warranted. Is it worth the development resources that would need to go into it? Should core game specs to be more competitive or desirable? I know some currently already are (Condition core Ranger comes to mind). I do think this idea is interesting though and deserves a bit of discussion on its own.

I've made the recommendation before that the core trait lines that focus on the profession mechanic should all get buffed to Elite level making them the core "Elite". This would mean you would no longer be able to mix them with HoT or PoF specs, but that should make balance changes easier.

So far I haven't found an elite spec other than Daredevil that I enjoy, so it would be nice if I could retain a core build and still be viable. It hasn't been an issue for me yet because I don't pvp and don't raid, but I might want to start...

@Biff.5312 said:So far I haven't found an elite spec other than Daredevil that I enjoy, so it would be nice if I could retain a core build and still be viable. It hasn't been an issue for me yet because I don't pvp and don't raid, but I might want to start...

Yeah, I like a lot of the HOT ones but the new ones? No thanks. To me they were just extra HPs to get in advance of the 3rd expansion. Some of my characters are still playing core-spec only and I would LOVE a buffed third trait line if I elect not to use one of the elite specs.

Ore make core elite stronger than expansion ones

Nothing of this should happen , all of this is the complete wrong way to touch the problem of powercreep...You don't fight powercreep by adding more powercreep through buffing core trait lines ..fighting fire with fire is always the WORST decision.

You use water!! Thats the right decision and using water in terms of fixing the problem that GW2 has is literally spoken to broaden the access of what Expansion -Specs provide over time in form of character progression partially to the Core Classes, so that Specializations will be, what they are meant for - Specializations, not more powerful upgrades.

A more powerful upgrade can stay a more powerful upgrade only, if its content stays forever as standalone content uniquely for itself, because of its very limited access to it (receivign the content only in 1 way for you to use)Thats where Naet needs to change the system.

Elite Specializations must become completely part of Character Progressions.. thats the WHOLE POINT of them ,why they even do exist.... I must know it best, because Im personally the reason most likely, why they even do exist now, cause wouldn't I have suggested in the past in the CDI for improved Character Progression on which Anet wanted to hear our suggestions and ideas the proposal for implementating "Sub Classes" what ANet turned then out of copyright reasons most likely into "Elite Specializations" - and I doubt it very hard, that Anet had even before of this CDI at all ever plans on implementign them as a feature, otherwise they wouldn't have had at all a reason, an intention to make the CDI at all from the start - they made it, because they wanted to get to know through them our wishes for what we wanted to see in the very first expansion and by doing the CDI, which were practically nothing else than lots of brainstorm cells coordinated and guided by the devs on specific topics.

Wouldn't that CDI for Character Progression have been, nor my proposal of Sub Classes that got kind of remodeled into Elite Specializations for HoT (and that I do have to admit, much quicker than I thought would have ever been possible, personally I thought that proposal might become realized perhaps first with the second expansion...not already so rushed with the first one), then I guess we would by now still already play only with the Core Classes and no E-Specs at all being part of the game.Could you imagine this? How GW2 with the two expansions would be now, if E-Specs wouldnt be part of the game?? A completely different game!!

With masteries anet surprised me alot, so more was I disappointed, that they didn't use this great system to make E-Specs also part of it to make them not such a halfhearted originless character progression like anet implemented them, but a fully implemented lore based meaningful feature, that is INTEGRATED completely in your whole character progression - and to this belongs for me also being integrated and being part of the mastery system, which Anet implenmentated into GW2 as secondary system basically mainly only to improved our Character progression in this Game, so that progressing in this game becomes more meaninfiul and more, than just only collecting 80 levels and being done with it forever ...

Character Progression means, that somethign you specialize into is at first somethign very special to you, but over time shoudl become also a Specialization a normality, meanign that once you learned something, then its a speciality - but once you have mastered something, thigns that were first a speciality to you, have become a normality to you, and things that are a normality to yiou, should become over time useable also too by the Core Profession.

This includes Weapons/Weapon Skills and Utility Skills. Makiing it possible to use these with your Core Class once you have completely mastered your Elite-Specialization over time of progressing with your character on it, learning everything about being specialized, what your pros and cons and, having being tested of beign worthy of becomign that specializaized master of your profession by a grandmaster of your teachings and surpassign that test successfully - that means character progression!!It would broaden the build diversity, while helping balancign out the game by giving Core Classes at last over the course of masterign their specializations access to their weapons and skills.What should stay specialization focused are the Elite Skills and the Traits, they define your profession the most with the Elite Skills being basically a specializations signature abilities and their traits their signature talents that define the gameplay of the specialization which must stay unique to the specializations at all costs. But Weapons and their Skills, Healign and Utility Skills, these are completely free to become useable for Core Professions as well, once you have truly mastered your Specializations of your Professions on your journey of growing more powerful and experienced and expanding your wisdom - that is Character Progression.

The right way of the path of balance to handle the current powercreep is to slowly enable Core Professions to use the same features partially, thats the way of solving burning problems with water... instead of making them only worser by confrontign them with even more fire ...

So, in essence, asking for a new Elite Specialization that doesn't require purchasing an expansion? And if one chooses to use only the Core Specializations, what difference has this made? Does it include a new weapon? A new armor piece?

Or is the idea to change one of the existing Core Specializations? Which one?

It's a nice fantasy that adding a "simple" specialization can make core builds more acceptable to elite teams. It's unlikely to be true, plus it undermines the advantage of purchasing an expansion, adds to the balance work that ANet has to do, and costs ANet resources in the near future to make it happen in the first place.

The original post complained that there weren't enough core-only builds within the meta. That's an issue that cannot be addressed by adding a new, core-only elite specialization. What ends up in the meta depends partly on ANet's idea of balance (and that's it's own sort of discussion) and how players adapt to whatever tools the game offers.

For example, ANet never intended Chrono to become the go-to aggro-holding part of raids. That was us (or at least, the build theory parts of the community), realizing that (a) we wanted quickness & alacrity and (b) it turned out that you could have more of that and damage mitigation up the kazoo. Chronos became meta, where core mesmers never were, because they offers all kinds of critical support to maximizing squad (and fractal party) DPS plus all sorts of control plus damage mitigation.

The stated issue, whether in this thread or the old one, is that somehow ANet is responsible for ensuring that everyone in the game have access to a build set on their preferred profession, regardless of which expansions they own. That's not a sustainable point of view. Teams that care about squeezing that last bit of efficiency (whether thoughtfully or blindly) are always going to prefer this over that; ANet can never keep up with that sort of arms race. Which means that anyone lacking some expansion is going to feel left out of something. Look how hard it is to balance the game now, without even worrying about all the different ownership varieties or preferences.

tl;dr it's nice to imagine that there's a simple fix to the issue of some people choosing to only allow certain types of builds, except that it's (a) not fundamentally a balance issue (it's a social one) and (b) it's not simple at all.

It's amazing how we go back and forth. Too much condi...power creep...too much condi...power creep... and so on. There will always be a way to figure out a balance in favor of the player. Prior to patch my thief could go toe to toe with power Mesmer and die quickly to the condi. Today in WvW I was 2 shot by power Mesmer but had no issues taking out a condi one. There are ways to combat or counter if you will almost every build type. For instance how do I deal with the Necro condi blitz and now the power Mesmer? I went Deadeye....TODAY...first time since PoF release and eh...it was ok but not my play-style... only had to swap a few things around it is NOT META even close lol and I found a way.

I am not saying there are still not some balance issues but the longer you people play meta and not try different traitlines, runes, sigils and food...the longer you will think the balance is completely hosed. I am not a good 1v1 type of player as I run away alot...I mean ALOT. However, today I felt good that I could compete against classes that own me. Much has to do with the way I play and I am fine with that but I think my kill ratio will go up for now.

EDIT: I know this topic is more about core specs but the power creep complaint and such is what I am responding to. I don't mean to hijack the post :)

Not for me, thank you. I like the idea of having access to all 5 core lines when I make a build, regardless of whether I am using an Elite line or not.

Also, I don't see this happening from a business standpoint. ANet is using Elite Specs as a selling point for expansions. Making one without tying it to a pay point would be a use of resources that in all likelihood would be better spent (from ANet's perspective, if not from the perspective of players who don't want to buy XPac's) making a new Elite Spec that could be tied to a revenue-producing package. While ANet could charge for a Core Elite Spec, this would doubtless lead to accusations of pay-to-win.

Sorry but it's not a good idea - it limits creativity even more.

We need variety, not restrictions.

I could imagine some sort of "buff-tree", with less traits per tier than other trees, e.g. for Guardian:

Minor 1Reduce cooldown of weapon swap by 1 second

T1Reduce cooldown of melee weapon skills by 20%Reduce cooldown of ranged weapon skills by 20%

Minor 2Increase damage done with ranged weapons by 5%

T2Reduce cooldown of utility skills by 20%Reduce cooldown of elite skills by 30%

Minor 3Increase damage done with melee weapons by 5%

T3Reduce cooldown of active effects of Virtues by 5 secondsIncrease passive effects of Virtues by 20%

or something like that :-)

Minor 1, T1, Minor 2, T2 and Minor 3 could be the same for every profession. T3 varies.

I agree with the notion that an elite spec for Core/vanilla players could or should be done, but I'll be honest that I'm not sure how. Each trait line handles some weapon/skill and has a theme related to it (power, crit/condi, support/heal, defense, profession), and without tweaking the actual profession mechanics, there's little room to do much else.

What probably should have happened was during the transition to HoT, to have released a core-available Elite spec and have the HoT one. That way f2p/new players can see how they work and have at least one set of new options at 80. Kinda too late for that now, though.

Every core traitline is essential to every class. Reducing the choices a elite spec as well as limiting core build with a core elite line, will do more harm to the class as a whole. If it was the time our trait line also hold part of our stat, a elite trait line can be designed with a certain core traitline as replacement in mind.

For example, the strength line of warrior which were +power and +condition duration, a elite spec with strength replacement in mind can be created with the same +power and + condition duration. The limitation will be a player can only choose the power elite spec or the power core spec. Then elite spec can be balanced according to the original core trait line easier. But that boat has long sailed...

i think it is more reasonable by bringing down elite spec a bit to about 5~10% better than core spec, but balance more to all elite spec.

Instead of another elite-tree I also could think of something completely different in the elite-tree section: e.g. a socket-tree with six sockets to put runes in, to get the benefits of a second rune set, attribute points and other values maybe reduced by 50% if they are superior ones.Else it also could have two sockets for minor runes and four for major ones to give runes an additional purpose than just converting them into superior ones.

After reading these comments, I tend to agree with most of the sentiment above. While it could have been something at the time of HoT release, that ship has pretty much sailed at this point.

heheh Guardian elite core spec alowoing hammer+shield gemeplay with true guardian skills rather than a dps gimmick.

Orpheal.8263, not what Anet have been doing, they add dumb broken gimmicks, then counter with another broken gimmick, powercreep, well they add a counter to powercreep with more powercreep on range class so u can powercreep kill the powercreeper.....

lamers park gameplay nothing else...If they created sucj elite core specs they would actually have to make strong skills on one side with sacrifice on other stuff in mind, we already have to much carry on some classes with hoT and PoF.

@"Aeolus.3615"

believe me, I'm for sure not so happy with what has Anet done with the classes balance wise in the last 3 years, despite me giving the spark that brought us to where we are now basically, but the main reason for this is mostly only, because of anet still ignoring most of their own combat system to get peroperly adapted and modernized to their new standards, instead of keeping on usign the sasme old 2012er mechanics, which are way too outdated now for this game.If you just make permanently only changes on skills and traits - or one sided bigger changes on only 1 single class, while ignoring all the others like now done with the latest patch with the mesmer, which would need to receive all like they are there in their own the same treatment, then this naturally can lead only to chaos in the game, which are cause by gimmicks over gimicks, one more broken than the one before... or would anyone realy have believed, that giving Mesmers free Phantasms on top of their Clones would end up being a real good idea, without that the other classes get changed around this sudden impact of gameplay on this class as well too??

The problem with this game is already, that balancing it outgrows quicker the competences and especially the ressources of Anet which they have at their disposal...They sadly can't fix their own game fast enough, can't react fast enough on made mistakes. Required reactions take just too much time to happen here.Balance Patches must be made more oftenly than like every 3+ months, they should be made rather every 2 months, to react quicker on bad decisions and general things that need to be balanced more, like all the mentioned outdated combat system mechanics, that need finally to get overhauled - beginning with the boon and condition system, followed by the health system and upgrades and endiing it with a rework on the attribute system, cause this would require the most effort.

That these things get so long ignored for so long time is a more than obvious indicator for it, that this game lacks ther ressources on all ends, yes sure, anet's doign their best they can do for sure - but if their best is basicsalyl always teaking numbers only on skilsl and traits for years, then I sadly must say, their current best is just not enough for what this game needs to get back on the right track on which this game was back at around 2013/14 around, where this game was balanced on multiple levels alot better, than it is right now in 2018.Elite Core Specialisations won't be a solution at all, no they will be the absolute opposite and will make things only worser, while also being an extreme cut in into the build diversity of this game at the same time - real bad idea that shows only the lack of understanding of a person who doesn't understand for what reason Elite Specializations are there now - surely not to turn Core Professions themself into a Specialization, just only because some people want to see the basics of their classes getting buffed and as a cheap solution to reduce the powercreep of the actual specializations for the cost of lesser build diversity at the same time.

Build Diversity shouldn't suffer for Balance, when there is a solution, that can balance the game better, without sacrificing build diversity for this, which is making usage of the Mastery System and making it completely integrated in the Character Progression process - this will allow like descrived Core professions to receive slowly access onto the Specialization Skills and their Weapons to thin out the gap slowly between the Core professions and the Specializations, while keeping a little uniqueness for the Specializatiuons via their Traits and their Signature Moves, their Elite Skills to still have a reason for playing the Specializations, even if you have with your Core profession acces to their Weapon and Skills after truly mastering your Specializations first.It is a way of doing a slow Soft Balancing by just bringing over time Core Professions and their Specializations closer to each other, while keeping still a thin line between both, that keeps them still being different with traits and own unique Elite Skills, which is essentially the reason why you could call them "Elite Specializations".

The moment where Core Professions and their E-Specs become again closer together through an overwork of the Mastery System, it will automatically become easier to rebalance the game again and the powercreep will become lesser - plus Character Progression will receive more depth this way and this is in the end the sole reason, for why Elite Specs and the mastery System got implemented - to give the player a more dense and meaningful impression in this game that there exists character progression in this game, that is more than collectign 80 levels and being done with this game already when it comes to this topic...Character Progression is more, than collectign only some new map based features, it belongs also to the Class System (and its specs), but instead of including them into the process of character progression, anet whyever excluded them out of the Mastery System - personally this is something where I'd really like to get to know Anets reasoning for this decision, why they thought its a good decision to not combine both systems for a more meaningful and depthful form of Character Progression in this game.

I'm happy to say my Core Spec Ranger in full Ascended Wanderer armor with Marauder weapons and trinkets is more than capable of holding her own.My Ranger