Locking new weapons behind Elite specs was a mistake.

[Sobx.1758]

On 5/12/2022 at 6:18 AM, Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

It is inevitable as they release more expansions, they will remove weapon restrictions to elite specs.

There's literally nothing "inevitable" about what you've just said.

[Diovid.9506]

5 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Yes, after reading some of the responses, it became painfully obvious that I have. 😄

Having all spec weapons available to the profession as a whole, regardless of their selected third trait line, would definitely increase the problem of balancing immensely.

Had they stuck to GW1's skills system, there wouldn't be an issue and weapon choices wouldn't be so limited.

Your last statement there is a bit ignorant. First of all, weapon choices were very limited in GW1. Even the Warrior only had access to two main-hand weapons, one off-hand weapon and one two-handed weapon (to which you could add the very limited weapon options of your secondary profession), plus you could only use a single weapon type with most attack skills (i.e. heavy blow could only be used when you had a hammer equiped).

 

Second of all GW1 was not balanced which created further limitations. People are always quick to praise GW1 for its freedom compared to GW2 and it's true that unlike its successor it doesn't have dedicated skill slots for weapon skills, healing skills, utility skills and elite skills but it instead gave you the options to slot whatever you want.

 

However this freedom plus the dual class system plus the introduction of new professions with expansions meant that it became impossible to balance which lead to two major and related problems. Veterans ignored 90% of the options because they were suboptimal (thus there appeared to be a lot more freedom than was actually there). New players on the other hand were overwhelmed by options and could easily make terrible builds. By Anet's own admission GW2 sought to address these issues. 

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

i think a clarification may in order.

 

in GW1, all classes could equip all weapons, but only certain classes had skills for certain weapons. equipping the weapon meant you had access to the autoattack (which the autoattack was not a skill), but to use the skills for that weapon, you had to also spec the appropriate class as your secondary profession.

for example, a warrior could equip a staff, but only use it for autoattacks, while that same warrior could equip a sword, and use skills designed specifically for sword. those warrior sword skills would only work if the warrior currently had a sword equipped, and those sword skills would not work with any other weapon. If that warrior took "monk" as a secondary profession, then the warrior could equip monk's staff skills to gain more abilities for their staff. (EDIT: yes, i misspoke, there were no actual staff skills, but warriors could still make the autoattacks for staffs more powerful through speccing more points into appropriate attributes.)

GW1 rangers were known for their "bunny thumper" build, but they had to spec into warrior as their secondary profession to gain any skills for their hammer, but they could still equip hammer without warrior, if they were okay with only getting the hammer autoattack. (EDIT: I thought that saying the phrase "spec into" would indicate that there was more involved than just selecting warrior as the secondary profession, especially in order to increase power levels.)

Edited May 13, 2022 by Forgotten Legend.9281

[Ashantara.8731]

2 hours ago, Diovid.9506 said:

Second of all GW1 was not balanced which created further limitations.

Okay, I did very little GvG in GW1, so you are right that my claim wasn't very educated in that regard.

I guess it was mostly driven by the fact that I miss the dual-classing option and the simpler design of GW1's skill and attribute system.
 

Edited May 13, 2022 by Ashantara.8731

[Diovid.9506]

9 minutes ago, Forgotten Legend.9281 said:

i think a clarification may in order.

 

in GW1, all classes could equip all weapons, but only certain classes had skills for certain weapons. equipping the weapon meant you had access to the autoattack (which the autoattack was not a skill), but to use the skills for that weapon, you had to also spec the appropriate class as your secondary profession.

 

for example, a warrior could equip a staff, but only use it for autoattacks, while that same warrior could equip a sword, and use skills designed specifically for sword. those warrior sword skills would only work if the warrior currently had a sword equipped, and those sword skills would not work with any other weapon. If that warrior took "monk" as a secondary profession, then the warrior could equip monk's staff skills to gain more abilities for their staff.

 

GW1 rangers were known for their "bunny thumper" build, but they had to spec into warrior as their secondary profession to gain any skills for their hammer, but they could still equip hammer without warrior, if they were okay with only getting the hammer autoattack.

You forgot a few essential points:

 

1. You forgot about attributes. Yes all characters could equip all weapons but without investing in the attribute related to that weapon you would deal almost no damage, no matter whether you used the auto attack of that weapon or skills related to that weapon.

 

2. Caster weapons (staffs, wands and foci) had no weapon skills associated with them and attributes only mattered for these weapons to reach a minimum attribute threshold (I.e. you needed a 9 in Healing Prayers to get the most out of a Healing Prayers staff but anything above a 9 did not increase your effectiveness with that staff). For Martial weapons that worked very differently. There was also a minimum threshold but reaching ranks above that still increased your damage (and crit chance I think). 

 

These points mean that your Bunny Thumper example is incomplete. Not only did the Ranger needed to be a secondary Warrior to gain hammer skills but also to gain access to the Hammer Mastery attribute to be able to deal a significant amount of damage with hammers (though there were a few ways around that). 

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

44 minutes ago, Diovid.9506 said:

You forgot a few essential points:

 

1. You forgot about attributes. Yes all characters could equip all weapons but without investing in the attribute related to that weapon you would deal almost no damage, no matter whether you used the auto attack of that weapon or skills related to that weapon.

 

2. Caster weapons (staffs, wands and foci) had no weapon skills associated with them and attributes only mattered for these weapons to reach a minimum attribute threshold (I.e. you needed a 9 in Healing Prayers to get the most out of a Healing Prayers staff but anything above a 9 did not increase your effectiveness with that staff). For Martial weapons that worked very differently. There was also a minimum threshold but reaching ranks above that still increased your damage (and crit chance I think). 

 

These points mean that your Bunny Thumper example is incomplete. Not only did the Ranger needed to be a secondary Warrior to gain hammer skills but also to gain access to the Hammer Mastery attribute to be able to deal a significant amount of damage with hammers (though there were a few ways around that). 

i honestly didn't forget, i just didn't want to train everyone in a different game. i know my examples were incomplete. i was responding to a comment about how a warrior only had access to certain weapons in GW1. when in fact they had access to all weapons. the power level of those weapons is really a much more specific attribute to the game that i thought was irrelevant to the clarification.

but to add to that clarification. yes every weapon had a "required attribute level" in order to do "full" autoattack damage. If you didn't meet the requirement, you could still equip the weapon, but it did starter damage for it's autoattacks.

and yes, increasing the appropriate attribute of a weapon increased the amount of damage that the weapon's skills did. but it still didn't affect whether you could equip the weapon, only its power.

and yes, there were weapons that didn't get actual skills that required them, but you could still equip them.

yes, you could still equip the weapons, even if they hit like wet noodles, and that's part of the balancing nightmare that GW1 had, which is actually relevant to the discussion of why GW2 weapons give you your 1-5 skills, now.

Edited May 13, 2022 by Forgotten Legend.9281

[Biermeister.4678]

Been that way since HOT

[Dante.1508]

Its nothing to do with balance its another time gate thing so to get it you must go through all the hero points to use it..

Edited May 14, 2022 by Dante.1508

[Mrs Lana.2506]

9 hours ago, Dante.1508 said:

Its nothing to do with balance its another time gate thing so to get it you must go through all the hero points to use it..

Yet you can stockpile hero points from the previous expansion and insta unlock the new elite specs as the expacs come out.

There is no time gate.

[Dante.1508]

15 hours ago, Miss Lana.5276 said:

Yet you can stockpile hero points from the previous expansion and insta unlock the new elite specs as the expacs come out.

There is no time gate.

Only if you've been playing forever..

[Mrs Lana.2506]

3 hours ago, Dante.1508 said:

Only if you've been playing forever..

It does not take that much effort to get HPs ahead of time. There's so many HP trains, and they're easy as hell to unlock if you WvW. There is no time gate. If you choose not to do it ahead of time then that's your choice.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

I'd be interested in Axe/Dagger-Shield Mirage, sounds fun, or a Pistol/Scepter-Torch Harbinger or Scourge, that sounds like even more of an abomination.
On a serious note. No. The latter is a really good example why limiting some weapons to elite specs is not a mistake.