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Why not make Elite Spec weapons baseline once you unlock the weapon in the ES line


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Why not make Elite Spec weapons baseline once you unlock the weapon in the ES line?

I don't see how that could be unbalanced. Look at Revenant for example. What's OP about the core Revenant using Short bow or Shield? What's OP about a Herald Revenant with a Short bow? I don't see the problem with this idea. Make the elite spec weapons baseline once you unlock the ability to use the weapon. Elite Specs they belong to are the only way to access their respective weapon only trait upgrades anyway. So what's the problem?

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=> @Obtena.7952 said:

Because the weapons are part of the elite spec definition.

As a suggestion to unlock them for the overall class, which this is, i dont see an issue, outside of them simply not wanting to.

@otto.5684 said:The game balance will go bonkers big time. It will require major rebalance from the ground up.

How though? Im looking at all the weapons i dont see what would be OP about a ranger having access to staff or dagger baseline, or even as a SB or druid. Or ele having access to sword, or warhorn. Which combos would be so OP that theyd stop all the other classes from having access to their elite specs weapon as baseline?

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Can you imagine the horror of holiday with hammer, mirage with shield , soulbest with staff in PvP? The list goes on of horrible and straight up broken synergies between some weapons and the other elite specs. I also think people underestimate how strong three core traitlines with elite spec weapons would be since your aren't making the trade off.

Also elite specs are all self contained. When designing a new one Anet Neve a has to consider how the new specs would work with the old weapons. They also wouldn't have to revisit specs like weaver and add a bunch of new skills all the time.

This suggestion comes up so the time but it never prevents it from being s bad idea overall.

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@Dante.1763 said:=> @Obtena.7952 said:

Because the weapons are part of the elite spec definition.

As a suggestion to unlock them for the overall class, which this is, i dont see an issue, outside of them simply not wanting to.

@otto.5684 said:The game balance will go bonkers big time. It will require major rebalance from the ground up.

How though? Im looking at all the weapons i dont see what would be OP about a ranger having access to staff or dagger baseline, or even as a SB or druid. Or ele having access to sword, or warhorn. Which combos would be so OP that theyd stop all the other classes from having access to their elite specs weapon as baseline?

Mirage with shield in PvP will be beyond broken. Same for soul beast with staff. I am sure there much more examples I cannot see.

It is not question of wither it can or cannot be done, but the amount of effort that will be required to balance it.

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@otto.5684 said:

Because the weapons are part of the elite spec definition.

As a suggestion to unlock them for the overall class, which this is, i dont see an issue, outside of them simply not wanting to.

@otto.5684 said:The game balance will go bonkers big time. It will require major rebalance from the ground up.

How though? Im looking at all the weapons i dont see what would be OP about a ranger having access to staff or dagger baseline, or even as a SB or druid. Or ele having access to sword, or warhorn. Which combos would be so OP that theyd stop all the other classes from having access to their elite specs weapon as baseline?

Mirage with shield in PvP will be beyond broken. Same for soul beast with staff. I am sure there much more examples I cannot see.

Ah, in pvp maybe, still dont see how.

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Primary reason to not do it, is a mechanical one, to keep the amount of variables as low as possible. The more weapons you give to core, you also gives to other elite's, and end up multiplying the amount of things they have to balance up against each others. The elites was likely designed this way to let us get new weapons, without creating more balancing headaches down the line.

The same applies even if they do the logical "nerf the weapon if you don't have the elite spez equipped", unless they basically neutered the entire weapon until it's practically useless outside of the spez, someone out there would find a way to break it.

Disclaimer, would love to be able to use weapons outside of elite's myself. I want to level with most of these weapons.

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@Dante.1763 said:

Because the weapons are part of the elite spec definition.

As a suggestion to unlock them for the overall class, which this is, i dont see an issue, outside of them simply not wanting to.

@otto.5684 said:The game balance will go bonkers big time. It will require major rebalance from the ground up.

How though? Im looking at all the weapons i dont see what would be OP about a ranger having access to staff or dagger baseline, or even as a SB or druid. Or ele having access to sword, or warhorn. Which combos would be so OP that theyd stop all the other classes from having access to their elite specs weapon as baseline?

Mirage with shield in PvP will be beyond broken. Same for soul beast with staff. I am sure there much more examples I cannot see.

Ah, in pvp maybe, still dont see how.

Sword/Shield Mirage would have so much evade that it would be really impossible to kill it.And chrono using CS to double the axe burst would make it completely insane.

And lets not even think about giving riffle to daredevils!

Its already terrible that core specs get nerfed because of how their weapons are used by some elite specs (See staff ele and FA core ele completely destroyed because of weaver). We really don't want to have the problem caring over from one elite spec to another.

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@lLobo.7960 said:

Because the weapons are part of the elite spec definition.

As a suggestion to unlock them for the overall class, which this is, i dont see an issue, outside of them simply not wanting to.

@otto.5684 said:The game balance will go bonkers big time. It will require major rebalance from the ground up.

How though? Im looking at all the weapons i dont see what would be OP about a ranger having access to staff or dagger baseline, or even as a SB or druid. Or ele having access to sword, or warhorn. Which combos would be so OP that theyd stop all the other classes from having access to their elite specs weapon as baseline?

Mirage with shield in PvP will be beyond broken. Same for soul beast with staff. I am sure there much more examples I cannot see.

Ah, in pvp maybe, still dont see how.

Sword/Shield Mirage would have so much evade that it would be really impossible to kill it.And chrono using CS to double the axe burst would make it completely insane.

And lets not even think about giving riffle to daredevils!

Its already terrible that core specs get nerfed because of how their weapons are used by some elite specs (See staff ele and FA core ele completely destroyed because of weaver). We really don't want to have the problem caring over from one elite spec to another.

Oh mirage and chrono i could see totally, i meant druids staff on SB.

However i do agree with your last point.

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Elite specializations, their weapons, traits and unique profession mechanics allow isolating balance for each specialization individually. If they could be mixed, that would greatly increase the number of possible combinations and variables.

It would not be fun having a weapon nerfed for an elite specialization because it's too strong in the hands of another, and moving power to the first trait of the original elite that holds the weapon would often make the weapon useless for the other elite anyways.

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@Dante.1763 said:=> @Obtena.7952 said:

Because the weapons are part of the elite spec definition.

As a suggestion to unlock them for the overall class, which this is, i dont see an issue, outside of them simply not wanting to.

@"otto.5684" said:The game balance will go bonkers big time. It will require major rebalance from the ground up.

How though? Im looking at all the weapons i dont see what would be OP about a ranger having access to staff or dagger baseline, or even as a SB or druid. Or ele having access to sword, or warhorn. Which combos would be so OP that theyd stop all the other classes from having access to their elite specs weapon as baseline?

I'm guessing you're not seeing it, because theres a 50/50 split on Espec weapons actually being meta, and how the weapons are weighted into the Espec. Theres also the issue of 2h vs 1h weapons, where 2h weapons tend to be stronger kits, while 1h have very narrow focus to get the most of out if its limited skill count. This is on top of the fact that most players see OP combinations as a good thing for themselves, due to the high performance. But has been an intentional limiting factor is making sure each build is always short one obvious synergy that would push the whole build over the edge into "absolute dominance".

But the real problem with the premise of opening Espec weapons is permutations with future Especs. But if you realy need examples of existing ones, the most obvious is Mirage with Shield. If Scourge has a stronger power option, it would pair insanely good with GS's ability to pull and unload damage simultaneously with the shades. Holo Hammer has a lot of potential given Hammer's ability to Shutdown, adding on top of Holo's shockwave opening and massive damage burst. Pre-Rework DE mark + Staff- Do I even need to explain how bad that would had been at POF launch? Speaking of which, Staff with the sheer amount of Stealth potential of Deadeye. (Notice how these are all damage builds?)

The ones that are failing are the weapons that aren't good on their own, or have incomplete synergy with Core. Rev shield is the biggest offender, and has been the one weapon thats been almost at the bottom of Espec buildcraft since its inception. Sword Tempest has potential, but it lacks CQ defenses to really bring it together; while warhorn has very limited applications to be of use to a Weaver. Both SB and Zerker operate in synergy, so that potential is lost in cross pairing. Theres a similar issue with FB and DH, with the weapons being the least important aspects, and thus doesn't create OP combos; but at the same time lacks a reason to even run FB Bow, or DH Axe (sans Pull/trap combo, which could equally be accomplished with JI teleport). SoulBeast Dagger sits on a line where if it ever got improved, it would become the main condi weapon for Ranger; but on the Flipside Staff/Soulbeast fails because theres no strong build around Support pets.

The rest I see as mostly middling options that might have better alignment, but lacks synergy in either direction. Like Torch on Condi Reaper is just an extra condi weapon, or Axe on Chrono for condi damage instead of power (not that it matters much to a Chrono build). DH Bow's only really has value in the fact that Guard had no other 1200 range damage weapon, and the bow isn't even good enough to fill that role (change that, and it instantly replaces Scepter in all PvE/WvW builds). I'm also unsure if Condi Herald could be a thing with Short bow, mainly because Kalla can stack condi bonuses on top of Might, where Herald lacks anything for that. Condi Druid with MH Dagger would only be a thing because the only other option was Axe.

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I think the core underlying issue is that there are many core weapons that are underperforming or are not suited to being a good power or Condi weapon.

When you look at engineer MH pistol, for example, it becomes painfully obvious that since it is a poor weapon, it also makes shield hard to use. Were holosmith's sword available, you might see more people running shield in core builds. But without it, you have a poor Condi weapon, and no alternative that even opens up the option to play shield.

I used to be like the OP, now id rather they just fix the core weapons to make them viable.

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@"IndigoSundown.5419" said:Aside from the usual, "It shouldn't change because that's how it is." argument, ANet has done a lot to avoid players finding "unexpected synergy" in builds going all the way back to the game's beginnings. I don't expect the leopard to change its spots, though it might be interesting to tinker with what would be possible.

Kinda funny since GW1's skills were loved BECAUSE you could find unexpected synergy from mixing them up.

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Highlighting these two comments:

@joneirikb.7506 said:Primary reason to not do it... is ... to keep the amount of variables as low as possible. The more weapons you give to core, you also gives to other elite's, and end up multiplying the amount of things they have to balance up against each others.

@starlinvf.1358 said:... the real problem with the premise of opening Espec weapons is permutations with future Especs.

Exactly. ANet has said this: they add the weapon to the elite spec to make it more interesting and aren't planning to include it in core or other elite specs so that they don't have to rebalance everything each time they look at the next elites.

@Ephemiel.5694 said:Kinda funny since GW1's skills were loved BECAUSE you could find unexpected synergy from mixing them up.

That's a bad thing from a balance point of view. And, importantly, only a subset of players like to look for weird synergies; most of the rest just leech off that effort. (And there's a large portion of players that isn't interested in adjusting builds more than once or twice every year or so.)

So it's not that we won't have them because that isn't how the elite specs are defined. The elite specs are defined to include just one alternative weapon deliberately so we don't have an increasing number of permutations.

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Personally, given the general power creep, they could just create one elite spec per core class (without changing the base classes mechanics) and make the election independant of the trait lines.

It will create a lot more balance problems, but will give more builds options (viable if they balance it properly), effectivly unlocking skills, weapons and traits for all elite specs.

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"It would be too complex and would require a whole game balance" isn't a really good argument since they do that when an elite specialization is introduced to the game. How would allowing unlocking the weapon class wide no matter which specs you use be any different?

I can see that the ONLY reason they haven't allowed the weapons to be used freely is because its tied to a spec and they don't have the tech to have a per character unlock.

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@Dante.1763 said:As a suggestion to unlock them for the overall class, which this is, i dont see an issue, outside of them simply not wanting to.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I'm not the one programming or designing this game and I suspect neither are you. It's a safe assumption to make that we cannot see everything. So let me ask you a question with regards to the guardian. If you were able to use the longbow without using the elite spec, would you use the bow? And linked to that question, you already have a staff as ranged weapon for a guardian. Why not use that?

You see, I wonder if people would choose the bow over the staff basically always and not use the elite spec at all. That would make the spec pointless aside from the bow unlock and also make the position of the staff as ranged weapon pointless. And if the bow is more powerful as a dps weapon than the staff, then that would point at the balancing issue.

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@Ephemiel.5694 said:

@"IndigoSundown.5419" said:Aside from the usual, "It shouldn't change because that's how it is." argument, ANet has done a lot to avoid players finding "unexpected synergy" in builds going all the way back to the game's beginnings. I don't expect the leopard to change its spots, though it might be interesting to tinker with what would be possible.

Kinda funny since GW1's skills were loved BECAUSE you could find unexpected synergy from mixing them up.

Yes, and when GW2 was being discussed before launch, the "balance problems" those presented were something ANet stated they wanted to limit as much as possible.

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