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Should the Specializations be expanded?


Lily.1935

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@Moradorin.6217 said:

@"Lily.1935" said:This is a question I've been asking myself for quite a while and I'm interested in what the community's take on it would be. If you're just going to respond with "Anet will never do it because its too much work" or something similar, I'll have to ask you to not respond. This is more of a speculation post and I want to discuss the pros and cons of such an action and the general thoughts on the idea. As such, this isn't a request from the devs just something they can listen in on and take notes if they feel so inclined.

So I've been playing a lot of other RPGs lately and have been experiencing other systems such as Point allocation systems, leveling skill systems and skill tree systems. All of them have their pros and cons to them with GW2's system being the most clean and simple of them. GW2's Specializations demand that you take a Adept, master and grandmaster trait of each one which limits the players but also prevents them from making a mistake. I'm not going to suggest we change that as the pros of this system outweigh the cons in my head as I've thought about what it would be like if we tried something else and I came to the conclusion that it would only over complicate things when it really doesn't need to be. But what I did get from those systems was just how much fun I was having with the exact same skills I was using before but with slight variation to them that adjusts their general impact in the game. And this really got me thinking that perhaps we could look at GW2 and see if something similar could be implemented to prevent the stagnation of classes as well as open up more space for more niche builds.

Excuse me if I'm rambling. Would it be a bad idea to add new Adapt, Master and Grandmaster traits to each of the specializations? How would this impact the game? Could we possible take variations of traits in each spec and adjust them slightly while keeping the original? Anet said they want the Sagas to feel like expansions and I'd imagine traits have the lowest amount of effort required to implement when compared to Skills from elite specs or new weapons.

Yes they'd have to change the UI for the specializations, but That's not really a big problem. What do ya'll think? Is this something you'd like to see? Why or why not? (Also, I know the "No cuz balance reasons" and that's going to be an issue no matter what happens without without.)

At this point I would have to say no to new Especs. At present with the changes to current especs I feel that the continuation of what has now been done to Mesmer and now to a lesser extent to ranger especs so far suggest that more especs are a bad investment for the players. What I mean is, after investing significant time into playing mesmer only to have the class die due to new especs Im inclined to suggest I would prefer to see the same thing that has been done to mesmer done to every class in the game to the point that core is the only good, viable option for every class. That especs should just go away because Anet cannot properly manage them. Granted I love playing certain Especs, BUT the fact is Anet cannot manage to avoid destroying things. So from a player time investment standpoint alone I would argue we are all better off in a gw2 in which especs are gone and everyone is stuck on core. Maybe then anet can get balance right and stop turning classes upsidedown and backwards like they did to mesmer.

So no I dont want to see new especs because I have no faith in Anet's ability to not screw everything they do up!

The thing is that let's take necromancer in this example. Core necromancer is absolutely not fun for me to play. And its Especs are so wildly different from the core that their play pattern often requires different muscle memory. It might be easy for you to say remove them when the member's core mechanic is actually really good while other classes like necromancer and ranger tend to have extremely linear and poorly implemented mechanics.

Removal of the elite specs also wouldn't make balance better. It would just make the game more stale. Arena net doesn't add new skills, traits or classes without elite specs and if they did it would likely be an extremely slow crawl to add new options. Fatigue with the game is already setting in for long time fans such as myself and the lack of this horizontal progression for what we do 90% of the time has lead to extremely predictable play patterns. Guild wars 2 doesn't have endless vertical progression like other MMOs like WoW so it absolutely needs this horizontal progression to compensate for that lack.

If we remove that horizontal progression from the game you hasten its inevitable death. This is a fact. Variety is the spice of life. And this applies to MMOs.

Another thing is, an unbalanced game doesn't mean it's not fun. Take a look at Magic: The gathering. They have a format called Commander and it is the most broken game I have ever played. It's got thousands of different cards compared to our handful of skills and it is busted beyond fixing. And it is the most popular format for that game in its history. Just because something is unbalanced does not mean it is not enjoyable.

With our hyper linear options now unbalance seems just awful, but that's because the pool of potential options so very limited and so predictable when its unbalanced there isn't a counter meta to break the mold and excite people. We don't have the process of discovery. We don't have meta upsets like we do in games like GW1 or MTG or even smash bros. We have a fixed meta until a balance patch comes out. The process of discovery isn't there. Eventually all metas will be solved. That's true. However the fewer options you give to players the quicker this happens. If you want a perfectly balanced game the original street fighter. It's not an exciting game to spectate and it's not very popular especially compared to its sequels which expanded the roster greatly.

Unbalance isn't the problem. More options isn't a bad thing. It is harder to find that right balance with more of everything. But the meta shifts and adding of new skills, traits and elite specs excites and entertains people. Without that we have a stagnant game. Which gw2 is stagnant.

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Unbalance isn't the problem. More options isn't a bad thing. It is harder to find that right balance with more of everything. But the meta shifts and adding of new skills, traits and elite specs excites and entertains people. Without that we have a stagnant game. Which gw2 is stagnant.

This. It’s going to be tricky adding things without causing another powercreep.

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@Lily.1935 said:

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:Mmm more power creep.... Just give warrior pistols this time.

Not a warrior player myself. Got like 50 hours in warrior or something low like that. But what about staff? Or shortbow?

Well, Warrior is really lacking in a good range power option, and in a good support spec that isn't lazy banners, so pistol/pistol with some sort of support built in would be awesome. Like a field commander sitting in the mid line barking orders and popping shots off with pistols.

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@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Well, Warrior is really lacking in a good range power option, and in a good support spec that isn't lazy banners, so pistol/pistol with some sort of support built in would be awesome. Like a field commander sitting in the mid line barking orders and popping shots off with pistols.

Pistol would be a great addition.

Rifle is a pretty strong weapon set.The reason Warrior can't use Rifle well is because it has 0 synergy with any of Warrior's other aspects and heavily disrupts flow the moment yu swap to Rifle.

Pistol would be perfect to complement Rifle for full ranged combat.

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@Yasai.3549 said:

Well, Warrior is really lacking in a
good
range power option, and in a
good
support spec that isn't lazy banners, so pistol/pistol with some sort of support built in would be awesome. Like a field commander sitting in the mid line barking orders and popping shots off with pistols.

Pistol would be a great addition.

Rifle is a pretty strong weapon set.The reason Warrior can't use Rifle well is because it has 0 synergy with any of Warrior's other aspects and heavily disrupts flow the moment yu swap to Rifle.

Pistol would be perfect to complement Rifle for full ranged combat.

Rifle is in a better spot now, but still needs work. If they didn't nerf it's damage along with everything else it would be soilid.

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  • 1 month later...

I'd love to see more customization.

More trait choices, up to 4 per tier (With a rebalance of many lacklustre traits... Sucks picking a specialization purely for 1 GM Trait with the rest of the spec being garbo and that 1 trait being better than other specs garbo)

Additional options for the current 3 bridge traits per spec. Some can be meh depending on spec and playstyle and there's currently no options available for them...

Heck, additional skills for existing weapons too! While it would be an enormous task, it would be nice to have options for alternate skills for weapon sets. Since sometimes you have skills that are mediocre for the content you're doing (For example, Ranger LB Skill 4 in PvE... I can push my enemies out of my skill 5? wew so stronk!) or seem awkward in the weapon archetype (For example, D/D Feef has its AoE and Ranged options as Condi skills, but literally the entire rest of the weapon set is hyper tuned towards Power... In fact, Feef seems to completely lack any Power based AoE in its core weapons only having Daredevil's Staff filling that particular role)

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@Yasai.3549 said:

Well, Warrior is really lacking in a
good
range power option, and in a
good
support spec that isn't lazy banners, so pistol/pistol with some sort of support built in would be awesome. Like a field commander sitting in the mid line barking orders and popping shots off with pistols.

Pistol would be a great addition.

Rifle is a pretty strong weapon set.The reason Warrior can't use Rifle well is because it has 0 synergy with any of Warrior's other aspects and heavily disrupts flow the moment yu swap to Rifle.

Pistol would be perfect to complement Rifle for full ranged combat.

I agree, I feel the same problem exists with Longbow as well which is disappointing because that leaves Warrior with very subpar range play capability.If all Rifle skills pierced then it wouldn't be so bad but atm it's a mediocre weapon, same for Longbow although longbow is slightly better with Crackshot adding burn to the auto.

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@Teratus.2859 said:

Well, Warrior is really lacking in a
good
range power option, and in a
good
support spec that isn't lazy banners, so pistol/pistol with some sort of support built in would be awesome. Like a field commander sitting in the mid line barking orders and popping shots off with pistols.

Pistol would be a great addition.

Rifle is a pretty strong weapon set.The reason Warrior can't use Rifle well is because it has 0 synergy with any of Warrior's other aspects and heavily disrupts flow the moment yu swap to Rifle.

Pistol would be perfect to complement Rifle for full ranged combat.

I agree, I feel the same problem exists with Longbow as well which is disappointing because that leaves Warrior with very subpar range play capability.If all Rifle skills pierced then it wouldn't be so bad but atm it's a mediocre weapon, same for Longbow although longbow is slightly better with Crackshot adding burn to the auto.

Crack shot used to make them all pierce. It was much better then.

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Traits are supposed to complement your build, they are not to blame for lack of build depth. I think the issue is with the active portion, the skill themselves. There are weapons that are left to collect dust for years, and the relics of past design that still haunt the current skill system, mainly the concept of "utility" skills taken too literally (warrior is perhaps the worst offender, their core utilities have no offensive skills - I guess Bull's Rush counts for pve only), and elite skills designed like MOBA elite skills with enormous cooldowns. So, that leaves weapons having to carry most of the weight of active combat, and as said above, when specific weapon options are left unchanged, that only reduces build options.

For what it's worth, I feel like anet are doing a better job with trait design these days, there have been a lot more cases where a newly-introduced trait has made me want to try a new build, and a lot more competing traits making for tougher choices, while before there were a lot of traitlines with 1 "real" major in each category and 2 fillers.

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@"RabbitUp.8294" said:Traits are supposed to complement your build, they are not to blame for lack of build depth. I think the issue is with the active portion, the skill themselves. There are weapons that are left to collect dust for years, and the relics of past design that still haunt the current skill system, mainly the concept of "utility" skills taken too literally (warrior is perhaps the worst offender, their core utilities have no offensive skills - I guess Bull's Rush counts for pve only), and elite skills designed like MOBA elite skills with enormous cooldowns. So, that leaves weapons having to carry most of the weight of active combat, and as said above, when specific weapon options are left unchanged, that only reduces build options.

For what it's worth, I feel like anet are doing a better job with trait design these days, there have been a lot more cases where a newly-introduced trait has made me want to try a new build, and a lot more competing traits making for tougher choices, while before there were a lot of traitlines with 1 "real" major in each category and 2 fillers.

I never actually noticed that before, you are correct.. outside of the Physical skills almost all Warrior core Utility's focus on buffing the Warrior, it's allies or enhancing stats in some ways.With exception to On My Mark and Fear Me which are enemy debuffs.

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Old post of mine necroed.

I do enjoy this idea quite a bit as there is so much space in the core spec designs. As a necromancer player I currently dislike the fact that Death magic has 3 dedicated minion traits but if there were far more options in all trait lines and other skill types and weapons had multiple traits that changed the way they played instead of always strict upgrades I'd be far more on board with it.

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  • 4 weeks later...

@Yasai.3549 said:My only annoyance with Traitlines right now is that they are becoming more and more boring(?) or one-dimensional.

There is always :

One traitline to support Profession MechanicOne traitline to support CondiOne traitline to support PowerAlternative one traitline to support healingOne trait to support one utility type

So in the end most builds end up with :The traitline that supports Profession MechanicThe traitline that supports their damage typeAn elite or a third Traitline which complements their damage type if they are playing Core.

Kinda meh imo.But it's still functional because every now and then yu get funny builds which use underused traits/traitline and it gives a wow factor.

That's always been the case. Even when it wasn't called Specializations, they severed the same function. I think the Specializations clean things up.

I also realized, with the respect to the original post, elites serve the purpose of adding to existing Specializations. You can see that some Specializations benefit more some the elites than another. So you can technically say, that what they're trying to do. Add to the Specializations. It's not a coincidence that Ranger's Nature Magic benefits more from Druid than Beast Mastery, or Thieves' Critical Strikes with Deadeye, than Acrobatics.

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