Were Elite Speccs and Permanant Boons a Good idea with hindsight.

[Puck.3697]

Back in HoT, we saw the Birth of this System and the added proffession Revenant, and to begin with looked like a cool twist on how Other MMORPGS introduce new Content, however we are now 3 Down. we're seeing the only value they bring is if they're a Power creep on what the proffession had before and large amounts of Core Weapons, Traits and Utilities being left in bad states while continously Pushing new Traits, New Weapons and new utilities Pushed ontop of it making it "ignorable".

but i wondering what are players census on it now.

I've seen the argument "Something new for everyone is better then a New Proffession being introduced which will appease a Portion of players looking for its introduction". but is this actually true. in all MMORPGS which run the "New Class for a expansion" Concept you find the old Classes have been re-expanded upon, they take Reworks, introductions of New abilities, and Updates to things didnt that didnt work out. How many times prior Borrowed power did WoW Rework its classes. Basically every Expansion completely changed the way the class played and Never required this Elite specc concept.

I feel this argument is Driven by people who've become too used to Anets ways of Leaving Old content abandoned and drive the new content. so People Immediately beleive, if Elite speccs didnt exist. they'd still be playing the exact same build since Core til now, which isnt really true. if Elite speccs didnt Exist. anet would have had to look at other Avenues to Update Proffessions. a New Elite is no more New content then having a Traitline Reworked + a new weapon introduced

For example

Necromancer into Reaper.

Reaper Only gave Necromancer Greatsword, Something core Necromancer was Almost going to have anyway but was given to mesmer and Necro got Daggers, when u boil it down to the actual Playstyle the big difference is the Shroud. Now Necromancer at core, could have had a Traitline reworked some fidgetting about to create a Alternative Melee playstyle Option through them, with a Trait or Even the ability to Swap Shroud Types alike Swapping utlities in and out which would have offered you that Exact same Shroud and pretty much the Exact same Playstyle. Without the existance on Elites.

Now Sure. not every Elite could have been done this way, but at the same time the Ability to add New Classes covers this issue. for the bigger concepts that you simply could not just Rework parts of a proffession to make work, as it wouldnt require 3 Elites to be designed at the same time, New Proffessions would have been a Option. Some of these new Elites have been cut Short in what they could be. or come at the cost of Things that existed in the proffession prior to create.

As the Elite concept has grown, it has felt more and more alike it Exists to barrier the Playstyle from f2p Accounts to sell expansions. and Sure the game does need one of them, theres no Verticle progression to drive new Gear, theres no Level progression as the games level cap never goes up, everythings Optional because ascended can be obtained from the core game and is as powerful as EoDs. Fashion is Entirely driven by the Store, so the only thing you ever unlock via expansions outside of Elites are Optional Content.

but im curious to what players think of the Elite specc now its been with us this long and we've seen the direction their travelling in the past 3 iterations of them and what has been traded off or compromised on because of this Design path.

while im always excited for a New Elite, it seems a bittersweet trade off for what could have actually been realistically.

As even with the New elites. Old problems arent fixed. Weapons go unused due to completely fixed to the Elite specc your leaving behind and it almost feels like u suddenly become less powerful when yours isnt a Direct upgrade to ur prior one and with the lack of updating Previous things due to so much of the budget spent to create Elite speccs, they dont have time or money to fix them, so elites almost feel like a Bandaid to core proffessions.

or maybe the system isnt the problem and its Implementation is the problem, Due to being fixed to 1 Traitline 5 utilities and 1 Weapon maybe the elites are cut short in concept and they simply share too much with core proffessions, but this would to do 9 times likely come at a huge increase of Expenditure and time investment to create something Wider in scope to a actual Class accessible through your own class.

was the Loss of potiental New Classes.

the Time sink required to make 9 elites which only build ontop of and Dont Fix the old rpoblems.

and this continous Requirement to in someway power creep the proffession.. or homogenize the proffession to offer identical things to another proffession.

Worthwhile in the long way. This is in no way to bash the system.. it has had Positives aswell as Negatives realistically and has given Expansions a selling point without the need to drive Verticle grinds and things into the game to make happen.

Im just curious to what other players think and is this Proffession Design choice Seen as a overall Positive by the community.

[Fueki.4753]

Elite specializations are good as a concept of being side grades and new ways to play a profession.

However, the execution and powercreep betrayed that concept in a negative way. Outside of Warrior, most elite specializations are upgrades instead of side grades, which is terrible.

Permanent boons outside of Might and Fury are disgusting. In my opinion, Alacrity and Quickness should not exist at all. Cast speeds and cooldowns should have been adjusted instead of implementing those two boons.

Edited April 25, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[Dadnir.5038]

I think the picture is a bit bigger than "e-specs and perma boons".

Before HoT players had more or less reached the limits of what the previous traitline system could offer. Which led to a revamp and opened up the possibility for "e-spec". This was an acceptable way to offer more build diversity on paper and thus bring back players on a game that was losing it's momentum.

For boons, the issue is that not all professions were equal when it come to grant or even build self-boons. Some professions were even pushed away because they were hindering boon generation. This led the devs to be more generous with boons. As a result boons started to overflow in WvW which led the devs to powercreep boon hate. I guess, from the devs point of view there was a cycle that they deemed as "healthy" that was starting to take form. The other side of the coin is that players started to get accustomed to boons and asked for more because there is never enough of the good stuff.

[Redfeather.6401]

The elite specialization system doesn't check the boxes for long term character progression and an outlet for player creativity. It's not a good rpg system. I prefer other games systems. But gw2 is not going to change any of itself. It's dying on this sword.

[Puck.3697]

8 minutes ago, Redfeather.6401 said:

The elite specialization system doesn't check the boxes for long term character progression and an outlet for player creativity. It's not a good rpg system. I prefer other games systems. But gw2 is not going to change any of itself. It's dying on this sword.

while you are correct. its Unlikely Anet will get up and delete Every elite in the game.

It doesnt mean it couldnt be improved upon to make it a Better system.

Currently Elite Speccs are being used as a Method of pushing Access to boons etc etc, rather then things fit for the proffession realistically, also Elites could be Expanded upon. If there was a Drop down menu where u pick one and it came with its Own Traitlines you would see the system flesh out far more naturally and share less space I.E more grounds to target nerfs at specific Speccs and Not causing a Ripplnig effect across the board.

re-iterationing and Improving is the Key here, Elites arent inheritly bad. but the way this games doing them and the path they're being thrown down is pretty bad.

i mean we now have Support thief. after their continous gutting of the core thieves access to support they've lobbed it in. it has 0 Synergy.. but it now exists "becuase thief must be able to also support" I feel we are at the point where while we cannot revert what has been done. we can push for change to how they're handling this.

 

5 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

For boons, the issue is that not all professions were equal when it come to grant or even build self-boons. Some professions were even pushed away because they were hindering boon generation. This led the devs to be more generous with boons. As a result boons started to overflow in WvW which led the devs to powercreep boon hate. I guess, from the devs point of view there was a cycle that they deemed as "healthy" that was starting to take form. The other side of the coin is that players started to get accustomed to boons and asked for more because there is never enough of the good stuff.

the issue is. the games current targetted audience quite litterally never see their proffessions in full swing due to the gating with boons, Most players play this game in a Entirely solo fashion. One that doesnt use boons etc etc, this was Heavily shown in tthe dragons end meta, which forced group comps etc etc and was met with a incredibly low winrate and outrage.

surely the fact the moment Anet tried to force this boon system on the majority. it Ended up being a Point of Quitting the game for many and pure outrage from alot of the others, it must show their boon system isnt all that liked, its Just a simple case of the fact 90% of the games Playerbase had never had to care enough about it before to have a opinon on the situation.

Edited April 26, 2022 by Daddy.8125

[Dadnir.5038]

5 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

the issue is. the games current targetted audience quite litterally never see their proffessions in full swing due to the gating with boons, Most players play this game in a Entirely solo fashion. One that doesnt use boons etc etc, this was Heavily shown in tthe dragons end meta, which forced group comps etc etc and was met with a incredibly low winrate and outrage.

It's the same as saying that the average population don't do hard boss meta events. What difficulty players face on dragon end meta event is true for many meta event in this game. There even are players that publish simple builds for Open world players to make sure they don't drag the other down. I mean, that was the case in the vanilla game, the case in HoT and the case in PoF. Why would it be different and impactful all of a sudden in EoD?

Just go try and kill the giant wurm with people that play "in an entirely solo fashion". You'll never make it, yet that's a core game event.

Just go try and do the big chack meta event with people that play "in an entirely solo fashion". You'll have so much fail you'll be disgusted.

The Octovine? You don't need much for everything to be screwed.

The marionette?

And the list goes on...

It's just time to admit that dragon end isn't a PoF bounty or one of those vanilla game world boss that you just mob to death but a proper difficult meta event like many more. There is something that players feel they really want from this event? They just need to discipline themselve, accept that the build they use might not be proper for the event, adapt and learn.

In this case, boons isn't the issue as with or without the boons (in an optimal state or not) those hypothetical very individual players would still fail the event.

[Mell.4873]

I think people are learning slowly, I mean the number of players I have spoken to still think their are healer and tank roles like in wow in end game content. 

Rather the end game meta revolves around dps, quickness and alacrity applications. HB is barely healer and the reason it has supremacy as a support is due to might, protection and quickness. 

[ASP.8093]

13 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

I think people are learning slowly, I mean the number of players I have spoken to still think their are healer and tank roles like in wow in end game content. 

Rather the end game meta revolves around dps, quickness and alacrity applications. HB is barely healer and the reason it has supremacy as a support is due to might, protection and quickness. 

While it's true that healers without boon output are worthless, the actual healing or barrier they put out is hardly negligible. The value of Healbrand is also tied very directly to its ability to quickly give someone ~5k hp to keep them from eating dirty. (Consider also the Healscourge's ability to scoop up downs.)

The idea that all characters are fighting while also healing, buffing, &c. might feel unusual to someone used to a very "trinity"-based MMOG, but it's right in line with how those roles work in, say, Dungeons & Dragons or many single-player RPGs.

[ASP.8093]

On 4/25/2022 at 8:57 PM, Redfeather.6401 said:

The elite specialization system doesn't check the boxes for long term character progression and an outlet for player creativity. It's not a good rpg system. I prefer other games systems. But gw2 is not going to change any of itself. It's dying on this sword.

I don't think most games with a "skill tree" type build system actually give you any more flexibility or variety than GW2.

And one nice thing about GW2 is that you can change your build from encounter to encounter — all sorts of abilities that might not useful "all the time" still see situational usage.

[Mell.4873]

4 hours ago, ASP.8093 said:

While it's true that healers without boon output are worthless, the actual healing or barrier they put out is hardly negligible. The value of Healbrand is also tied very directly to its ability to quickly give someone ~5k hp to keep them from eating dirty. (Consider also the Healscourge's ability to scoop up downs.)

The idea that all characters are fighting while also healing, buffing, &c. might feel unusual to someone used to a very "trinity"-based MMOG, but it's right in line with how those roles work in, say, Dungeons & Dragons or many single-player RPGs.

Yeah I agree, my point was that Healers in this game are confusing for people. 

I mean I have seen some nice stuff like in Dragons End like organised groups trying to check is each subgroup has quickness and alacrity. 

[ASP.8093]

1 hour ago, Mell.4873 said:

Yeah I agree, my point was that Healers in this game are confusing for people. 

I mean I have seen some nice stuff like in Dragons End like organised groups trying to check is each subgroup has quickness and alacrity. 

Now that you mention it, I do feel like the way we talk about roles in game does make it hard for people new to instanced play to pick it up.

Because the standard team of 5 is really 3 dedicated DPS + 2 supports:

• 1 defensive support that provides Quickness or Alacrity, AND a ton of Might, AND lots of barrier/healing,

• 1 offensive support that provides the missing boon and otherwise performs close to the level of a "DPS."

One key difference between the two being that the offensive support is running gear optimized for damage + Concentration (Diviner or Ritualist, for example), while the defensive support is running Harrier (or even Magi/Minstrel in certain cases). And the "3 DPS" are also typically sharing some group buffs, they just don't have to build for boon duration in order to do it.

And often as more experienced players we just ask for "quickness and alac" and work out the whole thing with the healing and Might and whatnot automatically without drawing too much attention to it ("yeah, go Healmech and I'll go Quickbrand," that kind of thing).

Edited April 30, 2022 by ASP.8093

[VocalThought.9835]

On 4/25/2022 at 8:39 AM, Daddy.8125 said:

Back in HoT, we saw the Birth of this System and the added proffession Revenant, and to begin with looked like a cool twist on how Other MMORPGS introduce new Content, however we are now 3 Down. we're seeing the only value they bring is if they're a Power creep on what the proffession had before and large amounts of Core Weapons, Traits and Utilities being left in bad states while continously Pushing new Traits, New Weapons and new utilities Pushed ontop of it making it "ignorable".

but i wondering what are players census on it now.

I've seen the argument "Something new for everyone is better then a New Proffession being introduced which will appease a Portion of players looking for its introduction". but is this actually true. in all MMORPGS which run the "New Class for a expansion" Concept you find the old Classes have been re-expanded upon, they take Reworks, introductions of New abilities, and Updates to things didnt that didnt work out. How many times prior Borrowed power did WoW Rework its classes. Basically every Expansion completely changed the way the class played and Never required this Elite specc concept.

I feel this argument is Driven by people who've become too used to Anets ways of Leaving Old content abandoned and drive the new content. so People Immediately beleive, if Elite speccs didnt exist. they'd still be playing the exact same build since Core til now, which isnt really true. if Elite speccs didnt Exist. anet would have had to look at other Avenues to Update Proffessions. a New Elite is no more New content then having a Traitline Reworked + a new weapon introduced

For example

Necromancer into Reaper.

Reaper Only gave Necromancer Greatsword, Something core Necromancer was Almost going to have anyway but was given to mesmer and Necro got Daggers, when u boil it down to the actual Playstyle the big difference is the Shroud. Now Necromancer at core, could have had a Traitline reworked some fidgetting about to create a Alternative Melee playstyle Option through them, with a Trait or Even the ability to Swap Shroud Types alike Swapping utlities in and out which would have offered you that Exact same Shroud and pretty much the Exact same Playstyle. Without the existance on Elites.

Now Sure. not every Elite could have been done this way, but at the same time the Ability to add New Classes covers this issue. for the bigger concepts that you simply could not just Rework parts of a proffession to make work, as it wouldnt require 3 Elites to be designed at the same time, New Proffessions would have been a Option. Some of these new Elites have been cut Short in what they could be. or come at the cost of Things that existed in the proffession prior to create.

As the Elite concept has grown, it has felt more and more alike it Exists to barrier the Playstyle from f2p Accounts to sell expansions. and Sure the game does need one of them, theres no Verticle progression to drive new Gear, theres no Level progression as the games level cap never goes up, everythings Optional because ascended can be obtained from the core game and is as powerful as EoDs. Fashion is Entirely driven by the Store, so the only thing you ever unlock via expansions outside of Elites are Optional Content.

but im curious to what players think of the Elite specc now its been with us this long and we've seen the direction their travelling in the past 3 iterations of them and what has been traded off or compromised on because of this Design path.

while im always excited for a New Elite, it seems a bittersweet trade off for what could have actually been realistically.

As even with the New elites. Old problems arent fixed. Weapons go unused due to completely fixed to the Elite specc your leaving behind and it almost feels like u suddenly become less powerful when yours isnt a Direct upgrade to ur prior one and with the lack of updating Previous things due to so much of the budget spent to create Elite speccs, they dont have time or money to fix them, so elites almost feel like a Bandaid to core proffessions.

or maybe the system isnt the problem and its Implementation is the problem, Due to being fixed to 1 Traitline 5 utilities and 1 Weapon maybe the elites are cut short in concept and they simply share too much with core proffessions, but this would to do 9 times likely come at a huge increase of Expenditure and time investment to create something Wider in scope to a actual Class accessible through your own class.

was the Loss of potiental New Classes.

the Time sink required to make 9 elites which only build ontop of and Dont Fix the old rpoblems.

and this continous Requirement to in someway power creep the proffession.. or homogenize the proffession to offer identical things to another proffession.

Worthwhile in the long way. This is in no way to bash the system.. it has had Positives aswell as Negatives realistically and has given Expansions a selling point without the need to drive Verticle grinds and things into the game to make happen.

Im just curious to what other players think and is this Proffession Design choice Seen as a overall Positive by the community.

I don't see a purpose of adding a new class, especially the way you did in your hypothetical mean of estimating them. I think GW2 does a great job in:

1) Creating the 9 professions. Each profession has a distinct archetype theme and does a good job being an umbrella to the array of classes found in Fantasy RPGs. Each profession has the essence of a type of hero or villain in a fantasy story. 

2) Defining the Traits. Each trait category, "Specializations", really captures terms used to describe each profession and to have traits that reflect the Specializations, really adds the sense you definition to your character. The fact that were picking 3 of 5 Specializations feels like we're picking subclass or variation of the classes. 

3) The Elite Specializations is a really nice touch. Instead of trying to create a new themed class, the found a way of drawling the similarities between other fantasy rpg class with the professions and made them another spoke to the umbrella. For them to slightly change the playstyle, add options that buffed some core traits, skilks similar to other professions, and captures what the prof. was missing, make them feel like secondary profession from GW1.

 

I truly can't think of a class that couldn't fit under one of the current 9 professions and suitable in this rpg genre. With the core traits and skills, I can find 4 types of significant builds and playstyles that that would have been whole classes in other games. Creating a new profession, at this point is totally unnecessary.

 

They'd be better off creating new races, new specializations outside of professional,  or creating more masterys. I would love to see alignment based masteries that helps with diplomacy and requires you to select the correct responses in conversation, plus bonuses from particular personalities types, to get aid in PVP or WvW.

[ZDragon.3046]

Elite specs were a great idea no doubt about that period. They are like 50% of the selling point for the expansions.  As much as i love gw2's story i got into gw2 for the combat before anything else (in both pvp and pve) so I always look at the elites before taking interest in the story.

Perma boons are kind of a double edged sword imo.

Yes they are good because they make you feel strong and powerful but they are technically also a QoL bandaid fix at this point. Imagine if quickness did not exists and every class just had its animations sped up by 50% as a base default or when you take a weapon trait to show your character with that specific build setup has great mastery with that weapon etc. You really at that point could throw quickness out the window and the game would be just fine. 

Alacrity is a bit harder but ideally you would need base line traits several per class among different traitlines that work similarly to the ones like necro signet of suffering or mesmers Duelist's Discipline. Where doing something recharges certain skills and you not only do your rotation but you play your class a specific way to reduce your skills instead of just allowing a boon to do it for you. 

Other boons are less problematic as they just dont hold the same weight as quickness or alacrity.

But for anet to do something on that big of a scale they really would have to heavily rework several classes some of them multiple times over before people were happy with them. It's easier to just let boons do the work and let players focus on having new ways to apply boons. 

I would suggest unique effects but anet has already stated they want less of those in the game as it is so i doubt they will utilize what a good feature that could be in place of some boons like fury etc. 

Edited May 10, 2022 by ZDragon.3046