Non-Choice Traits: EOD's slide into simplicity, and some alternatives to discuss.

[Vooksa.2941]

-FORWARD: I know the game is complicated. I know it still has things to fix. But please, please, spend the time and resources to make the game better, instead of rolling out bad changes faster. I'd rather have great fixes to only a couple elites once a year than tone-deaf changes to uninspired elite specs every few months. Simpler tech interactions may be easier to code and for new players to learn, but that's not what got us 10 years of fans. We'll have to see how things feel post-patch, but big numbers and better survivability wasn't what made this game feel fun, and changing skills to be about big numbers won't make it better. okthxbyeilu

-I'd appreciate even single-profession or single-elite responses from people who are knowledgeable about it, and whether the ideas contained here would work, or be a huge problem.

Some call it homogenous design, some say that the devs aren't prioritizing fun in their elites, some complain that the only focus is on PvP/WvW balance, but at the end of the day, there's been a noticeable shift in the level of interaction between traits and skills in the EOD era compared to just years prior.

• In a bid to make balance easier, Guild Wars 2's iconic buildcraft has given way to extremely stagnant trait interactions, many of which are laser-focused on simple %-number enhancements for pDPS, cDPS, or healboon builds, (often in that specific order), while completely dropping any unique theming, flavor, or interaction, or getting to see a profession's core traits or skills from a unique perspective.
• With the loss of different builds' niche, much of EOD's PvE content is being pumped out to be as broadly approachable as possible, undermining the purpose of different elites, and the approach they use to solve different challenges.
• EOD elites especially become solitary exercises of either relying on full boon uptime, or providing it, a conceptual black box that's not designed to interface much with core traits: very little goes In, and almost nothing comes Out that another trait somewhere could make use of. It either heavily pushes the new utilities, or ignores them entirely, with little room to reselect and adjust for either specific purpose or for personal preference without significant drops in effectiveness. Some of this is getting fixed this June, but the point remains that the devs continue to push "press this button to win" build features.
• These rigid builds that aren't meant to be modified or changed when faced with different challenges also means rapid burnout for players after only a year and a half of EOD material, compared to players who still enjoy HOT or POF content to this day, and run the risk of dropping both new players who feel they've already seen it all, and veterans who are bored and frustrated with gradual shrinking of diversity.
• By easing away from the GW2 philosophy of changing your build, for free, anywhere, to mix and match traits and weapons where (Action/effect/boon/condition) goes In and (Action/effect/boon/condition) comes Out, in favor of "One effect goes In, tops, and +X% modifier comes Out) design, a lot of excitement, interest, and personalization for the game is lost. Everyone excited for new elite specs were explicitly looking for fresh new ways to use their skills and approach new challenges, not 28 different ways to press the same sequence of buttons in a specific order to win. That shift represents a shift in Guild Wars 2 as a brand, and alienates the people who carried and supported the game for years.

-So, what can be done about it? Individually, nothing, but I hope to generate discussion that the devs might see that helps to clarify exactly what it is that people dislike about the current direction, and offer examples of how to fix it that others might find they agree with. At worst, I get a talk-down where I get to learn more about the game and how others are playing it, and at best, maybe it goes somewhere, but at least, it's an interesting thought exercise.

• 1) More traits need to engage with a wider variety of core specialization effects. Simple on paper, and a lot more work for the programmers, but ultimately necessary for players who are a fan of what Guild Wars 2 is to not walk out the door sometime in the next year. The next expansion will be a major test of whether it produces something new for us to do, or if it'll be the same head-empty slogfest that most of EOD fights are.
• 2) Support builds should rely on 'Spill' as a major mechanic, "sharing effect/boon Boon X to nearby allies when you apply it to yourself", with or without reduced duration. This means booncasters generate value by playing the game, not by fiddling away by themselves with whatever silly trick the devs expect you to spam on cooldown, whether it be wells, Spheres, Celestial Avatar, or what have you. The greater the number of Ins, the more options we have to build to preference.
• 3) More challenges need to have greater diversity of content. Superspeed and high-mobility professions like Thief and Willbender are wasted in PvE when they could be used to shift the fight in a large room, go press buttons in hard to reach places, or 'chase the ball' and kill a fast monster that's supporting a boss from the sidelines, while boonrip/corrupt needs bosses to have boons, and condi-cleanse needs them to inflict conditions. The more fights are an immobile meatbag we hit until it dies, the less novel the experience is, and the sooner people quit.

The following examples do keep PvP/WvW in mind, and assume skill/duration splits would be applied where absolutely necessary.

NECROMANCER

• Reaper's Relentless Pursuit: "Gaining stability grants you resistance. Stability you grant to yourself is applied to up to 5 allies within 600 range." Reaper is already a great example of core interactions, gaining more chill sources, chill enhancement, a cDPS build relying only on [Chill:Bleed], and Spite's Dread post-2020 granting boons on fear and resetting Reaper's shroud3 on kill, which inflicts fear. Shivers of Dread converting [Fear:Chill] marries the two, and Rise creates a new option for minionmancy that doubles as Shout tech. Dropping Relentless Pursuit's passive behavior in favor of a boon instead, and sharing the stability you receive from Infusing terror, Well of Power, Lich Form, and Chilled to the Bone, would be the perfect support spill option to lead your own unstoppable army of darkness.
• Scourge's Herald of Sorrow/Sandstorm Shroud "Grants 15% of barrier applied to self to up to 5 targets within 600 range." Paired with the new Desert Empowerment for alacrity on barrier, this would turn Blood Bank, as an alternative to Transfusion, into a passive alacrity machine, and not rely exclusively on Scourge utilities to provide barrier to allies.
• Harbinger's Deathly Haste "Grants quickness for 3s when entering shroud. You pulse any non-damage effects of entering shroud every 5s, and the boons are applied to up to 5 targets within 600 range." The option to pulse might from Spite's Awaken the Pain, fury from Curses' Furious Demise, Death Magic's Armored Shroud carapace, and Blood Magic's Unholy Martyr vacuuming up group conditions, each every 5s, would allow you to mix and match core Necro specs based on what support elements you actually wanted pulsed, on top of group quickness.  Note that this doesn't grant the effects of Spiteful Spirit, Plague Sending, or Soul Barbs. Harbinger's Alchemic Vigor "Gains +240 increased Vitality, and heal when you receive life force" would let us generate healing from all our sources of life force, from weapons, Spectral skills, the Elixir of Bliss, staff marks while under Soul Reaping's Soul Marks trait, Blood Magic's Unholy Martyr consuming conditions, Soul Reaping's Fear of Death on fear application, passively by using Soul Reaping's Eternal Life, and even Harbinger's own Corrupted Talent granting life force when you enter shroud. Elixir skills should grant group boons at baseline, with Harbinger's Twisted Medicine causing "Using an elixir skill cleanses the conditions they apply to foes, and corrupt the boons they grant you into conditions on enemies" turning elixirs into situational cleanse/corrupt effects, and Elixir of Ambition being a cleanse/corrupt bomb. Meanwhile, the damage and the consume-Blight enhancement of elixirs should be dropped from baseline and added to Vile Vials and buffed. There's no reason to have that much conditional text on a skill without an appropriate trait, and would provide the option to redefine Elixirs as an offensive effect, instead of it only sometimes being one already.

MESMER

• While lacking experience in Mesmer, it seems ridiculous that all Mesmer specs and skills fail to have even a SINGLE way to grant regeneration to allies, considering the interactions with Inspiration, Chaos, and Mirage. A simple spill trait somewhere that grants allies regeneration when you grant it to yourself, such as with Healing Prism, would greatly improve their support capabilities with just a single change.

ELEMENTALIST

• If Tempest's Tempestuous Aria made "Using a shout while overloading separate you from your storm, which continues to pulse, and disappear after achieving singularity", while Transcendent Tempest "Increases the duration of the storm following an overload, and grants a damage boost while overloading and for 7 seconds afterward," the 'dps increase' of shouts would be from actually getting to use your abilities, while still fully enabling the pulsing alacrity from Lucid Singularity, as well as the bonus damage on achieving singularity on Transcendent Tempest, without demanding the incredibly embarrassing weapon-stow to cancel/vegetating while forced to constantly whirl, with the combo cost being shout CD and no final storm itself.
• Weaver's Elemental Pursuit "Grants yourself resistance when you grant yourself superspeed, and swiftness and superspeed you grant yourself is granted to 5 targets within 600 range." Weaver is essentially perfect at what it does already, but Pursuit granting a bonus only after you've hit someone kind of detracts from the 'pursuing' part. Sharing that speed with others would create a support play to either help carry your allies to the front line or escape the fight.
• Catalyst is- sorry but this entire spec dude, let's just fix what we can fix
• 1) Rather than all attributes, each of Catalyst's nine major traits should grant Elemental Empowerment a different attributes, for a total of three. Hardened Auras "Granting Elemental Empowerment when you grant yourself an aura, and Elemental Empowerment granting you damage reduction," as the exception, for raid toughness reasons. If the advantages were arranged so that each rows, left to right, granted [Power/Precision/Ferocity], then [cDMG/Vitality/Expertise], and [Heals/damage reduction/Concentration], you could still mix precision into a condi build, or go for health or damage reduction instead, without clotheslining yourself on the extremely rigid Willbender/Harbinger/Mechanist 'three-rows' design schema.
• 2) Other traits would grant different ways of getting Elemental Empowerment, with Vicious Empowerment (expertise) "granting EE when you disable or immobilize", while Energized Elements (healing) "grants EE and energy on attunement swap". Empowering AUGMENTS (power) "grants EE when you use an Augment, and Augments grant energy on use". The idea is that your customized playstyle generates EE, and the benefits of EE are aligned with your playstyle, rather than demanding the auras that Catalyst struggles to apply to itself, and a furious whirlwind of unrelated skills just to trigger passive buffs.
• 3) Spectacular Sphere "(EE concentration) Grants all Jade Spheres quickness. Using augments or transmuting auras within the radius of your Jade Sphere reapplies any boons granted by the casting or pulsing of that sphere," while Sphere Specialist "(EE vitality) Doubles the radius and duration of the Jade Sphere, but pulse half as often, and follow on your position." Trading EE ferocity and expertise to turn your sphere into a mixing-pot for you to slam out quickness and other boons, and trading EE precision and toughness to turn yourself into a mobile combo field, combine to make you a more durable mobile field at the loss of major crit chance and damage and condi duration.
• Without substantially more core Ele keywords, Catalyst ends up being just another auramancer who relies on fire fields for damage. My most sincere wishlist item is that Elemental Epitome "Creates an elemental once every 20s when you combo in a Jade Sphere, that seek out the nearest foe and explode," and that our Elemental Celerity augment "Animates any field you combo in as an elemental, turning it to your side and causing it to attack nearby enemies." This is beyond the scope of easy fixes, but it's embarrassing for Catalyst's only major theme to be 'create fields' and then only have one 10sCD trait and reducing augment CDs to engage with that.

RANGER

• Druid trades spirit skillspam for Celestial Avatar skillspam, for its alacrity, damage, AND healing. It's frankly disappointing that we weren't given a 'quickness Firebrand' access/treatment of alacrity, where it's an expected part of the kit, but mostly, it'd be nice if there were different playstyles for each of the different effects. It'd also be nice if there was a color change for CA based on if it's  healing or damage, but that's mostly cosmetic. 1) BOONS: Cultivated Synergy "Heals and grants alacrity to allies around you and your pet when you use your heal skill." | Verdant Etching "Grants Glyphs protection to nearby allies, and additionally alacrity when used in Celestial Avatar state." | Grace of the Land is replaced by Howl at the Moon: "Boons granted by using Beast abilities pulse three times, and grant allies alacrity for each pulse." By loading our only source of alacrity into a single trait, we're right back where we started with skillspam; it's better to have multiple traits so that we can mix and match our build based on what we need more or less of. Our pets' role for druids should be supportive, and give focus to the underused boon-granting pets. 2) HEAL: Natural Mender no longer increases healing to allies, while Lingering Light "increases healing to others, which is significantly increased while in Celestial Avatar form, and cleansing conditions reduces the recharge of CA." Between this and Cultivated Synergy, as well as core healing traits like Invigorating Bond, Instinctive Reaction, and the new Lingering Magic and Windborne Notes, there should be plenty for a healer build, if Druid isn't meant to be an exclusive healer anymore. 3) DAMAGE: Blood Moon "Inflicts immobilize equal to your disable duration. Inflict bleeding for every second a foe is immobilized" would take Blood Moon out of black-box mode, and start to create new advantages when combined with Marksmanship for stun duration, as well as pushes for longer immobilizes, not just more of them (Unclear if Natural Convergence is 1 bleed or 5). Eclipse is replaced with Wildfire, "Celestial Avatar state no longer grants you skills, but grants you a mobile fire field, and fire field combos inflict burning on nearby enemies. Burning you inflict removes a boon," completely distancing us from any residual heals and giving torch, Sun Spirit, Flame Trap, and skills from fire wyvern and salamander drake additional offensive utility, as well as promotes different weapons for different reasons.

• Soulbeast is actually a great example of a spec gaining access to more quickness than core Ranger, and using quickness applications, not duration, to extend the duration of other boons, and using poison application, not duration or damage, to steal health. Increased damage under fury and after disabling a foe is reasonable, Oppressive Superiority enables both pDPS and cDPS builds with a single trait, and Leader of the Pack is a perfect example of a spill trait extending personal value to nearby allies, all while Soulbeast engages with Beastmastery, Commands, and pets in a fresh new way.

• Untamed is a mess of themes, but ultimately arrives at "pets disable, you attack/you disable, pets attack", while poison spores feel residual, and other skills seem PvP/WvW exclusive. Like Mechanist (and recommended Catalyst EE), I'd like if different traits modified us, our pets, or our spores for different effects, but a much stronger pet is also a popular idea. First and foremost, the new Let Loose "Grants allies quickness when within spore radius. Grow a spore beneath your target when you disable a foe." The 'fervent force' identity is retained, and we're able to use those disable options to generate significantly more spores, and thus, quickness. Meanwhile, without the need for quickness, Enhancing Impact is replaced: Guerilla Tactics make "Evades and movement skills cause your next attack or Beast skill to be unblockable and deal increased damage. (10s iCD)" Ranger has several evades and leap finishers, and it suits Untamed as a skirmisher perfectly, for use of Unleashed Ambush, disables, conditions, or just repositioning or escape. Ferocious Symbiosis "Increases the size of your pet, granting it greatly increased attributes. Conditions your pet applies have increased duration, and your pet's first attack after unleashing taunts nearby foes" allowing us to get behind a truckpuppy and support it, especially with conditions it applies in Beastmastery.

ENGINEER

• Scrapper's [Superspeed:Quickness] skillspam wasn't because of gyros, but because the quickness didn't last long enough, and not enough sources of superspeed applied to allies as well. A simple spill, "Superspeed you apply to yourself is applied to 5 targets within 600 range for 0.5s" helps solves that issue, allowing Slick Shoes, Gadgeteer and Rocket Boots, Streamlined Kits and Tool Kit, and Kinetic Battery's burst after five tool belt skills to all be alternative options for superspeed outside of gyros and the function gyro. It'd be nice if the function gyro could be customized as well, instead of loading it up with multiple different effects for free, and forcing investment to be able to res allies from range.
• Mechanist is a black-box design that tries too hard to be too many things, with another top-cDPS, mid-pDPS, and bottom-healalac snooze. Alacrity on barrier, and barrier on mace and some mech skills is fine, but without group barrier on core, or a new way to generate barrier with core skills, alacrity becomes a "press the alacrity button for alacrity" design, and with such powerful signets that also have reduced recharge, maintain their passives on CD, and improvement from Overclock, which itself can instantly res the usually unkillable mech, the whole kit feels shockingly rigid. My wishlist sees a variant form for each adept trait: Mech Arms Jade Cannons converts our mech into a stationary ranged Turret, and allows Turrets to walk, while using Inventions' Experimental Turrets to put up reflective barriers and grant boons to allies (decided by your Mech Frame trait). Toolkit could repair the mech this way, but Toolkit would be better off with a skill that allows your turrets to overcharge additional times, while the mech turret would normally overcharge on crashdown, which would be largely necessary to reposition our turret. Our High-Impact Drivers would actually put the mech on your back, and give you empowered arms, removing your pet but greatly boosting your own skill damage and causing mech skills to emanate from your position. Simply recoding Mech Core: Barrier Engine to "Unlock the Mech Command Barrier Burst. While in combat, explosions grant a small amount of barrier to allies in the area" would unlock rifle, Bomb Kit, Mortar Kit, Flamethrower, Grenade Kit, detonating turrets, Throw Mine, the Aim-Assisted Rocket, Bunker Down's crit, Explosive Entrance with dodging, Grenadier's lesser barrage on heal skill, and mech's Core Reactor Shot, Explosive Knuckle, Jade Mortar, and yes, underwater Depth Charges, to all be alternative options for generating group alacrity.

THIEF

• Again, I'm not an expert, but I think Thief's elites and trait interactions are in a reasonable place. We'll have to see what effect June's patch has on how it feels to play, but stripping back stolen skills should mean Thief can get much stronger targeted buffs, but these numbers might be a long time coming.

GUARDIAN

• Firebrand is a masterwork of blowing out the function skill bar, but it's handling of quickness is excellent, from having multiple different traits for sources, to having bonus stats while under it, to Stalwart Speed converting [stability:quickness] and [aegis:quickness], two of guardian's favorite tricks, and Quickfire granting [quickness:group burning]. It'd be great if Quickfire's 7s iCD reset with Radiance's Renewed Justice, but otherwise, contrary to popular belief, I think FB is doing great so far as build interactions go.
• Willbenders are incredibly fast, powerful, and durable when played well, and have some good tech behind them that interfaces with Guardian's core traits, but not nearly enough. Lorewise, as 'protectors of the throne' meant to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right skill, eliminating threats "for the sake of the empire", our Willbenders are completely selfish, granting only themselves boons and effects. A third Guardian elite spec able to provide damage, healing, and aegis at any time for no investment, Willbenders are difficult to balance, and absolutely frantic in their minigames of landing consecutive strikes while Flames are up and spamming Flames to maintain Lethal Tempo's damage boost.
• 1) Redefine Willbender Flames as all the same virtue, determined by your choice of trait. Force Willbenders to specialize, being either DPS, healers, or bodyguards. 2) Make each Virtue have its own version of Lethal Tempo, and be based on the 5th strike/heal/boon within a span of time, with Flames contributing additional impacts and repositioning skills, rather than being mandatory. Having established the pattern of "be effective where you need to be", here are some examples of traits that would generate more interesting builds:
• Power for Power defines your Willbender Flames as Justice, causes your 5th strike to deal increased damage, and have longer condition duration. | Searing Pact is swapped with Conceited Curate, which defines your Willbender Flames as Resolve, makes your flames heal OTHERS, and your 5th strike grants you regeneration. | The third trait, defining your Willbender Flames as Courage, grants increased toughness and causes your flames to grant barrier, while your 5th strike grants resistance and resolution (1s). 
• Restorative Virtues causes your Tempo to cleanse a condition and grant alacrity when you apply regeneration. | Holy Reckoning places a symbol instead of your Flame, pulsing burning and fury. | Vanguard Tactics grants aegis to up to 5 targets at the destination of your shadowstep, once whenever you achieve Tempo.
• Phoenix Protocol causes your symbols to cleanse a condition and revive allies by 8% on impact. | Tyrant's Momentum grants increased damage for a duration whenever you shadowstep, and cause your Tempo to inflict a follow-up strike. | Deathless Courage grants you barrier and taunts a nearby foe when you shadowstep. Blocking an attack while this effect is active applies it again. 5s duration, 20s iCD
• There's a lot this does here: With all Flames as Justice, you can choose to spec for pDPS boosting your fifth hit, or cDPS, where Radiance's Renewed Justice would reset your flames on kill. With Flames as Resolve, Battlefield Presence shares the effects of your Tempo, granting allies the regeneration to gain alacrity from Restorative Virtues (but which can also be granted with a mace symbol), as well as the follow-up attack when you proc Tyrant's Momentum. Defining Flames as Courage lets you use Indomitable Courage to use Flames to break stun and grant stability to allies and use Tenacious Defense to reduce your Flames' cooldowns when aegis blocks an attack, and turns you into a tank that makes a very good bodyguard when combined with Deathless Courage. Symbols on Flame use can mean protection, damage, vulnerability, stacking damage, or healing, or trigger Phoenix Protocol's cleanse and res, while shadowstepping for aegis, bonus damage, or barrier/taunt allows use of hammer4/3, sword2, sword5, Merciful Intervention, or Judge's Intervention, as well as your F3. All this is much more of a change than Willbender mains would probably appreciate, but at this point, Willbenders are basically only good in PvP/WvW, a place Guardian has already dominated for years.

WARRIOR

• Before removing quickness from core Warrior entirely, Martial Cadence would have been a perfect spill option, but given how Berserker essentially stole Martial Cadence, it can be reused the same way. Heat the Soul "Grants quickness when performing a burst attack. Granting quickness to yourself grants that quickness to 5 targets within 600 range" allows Strength's Aggressive Onslaught [disable:quickness], Discipline's Heightened Focus [low enemy hp:quickness], axe Dual Strike, and the Frenzy stance (lol) all generate group quickness, while warhorn Charge and Banner of Tactics all generate extra uptime.
• If Bladesworn HAS to provide alacrity (bleh), it'd be nice if it could have been attached to ammunition. Instead, Daring Dragon is a black box where Dragon Trigger goes In, and alacrity comes Out, with very little to modify either. Instead, if Lush Forest "Grants nearby allies alacrity whenever you use the first round of an ammunition skill", and Daring Dragon "Has a lower maximum charge level, and extends the duration of boons on allies struck by 2s", you'd have a really solid pair of set pieces that don't EXPLICITLY require each other to function, and makes use of Dragon Trigger's Flicker Step, pistol's skills, gunsaber's Artillery Slash, Overcharged Cartridges, and Tactical Reload, as well as several Physical and Shout skills, axe, longbow, and rifle to generate alacrity instead.

REVENANT

• I actually had a document ready to go before the patch preview where I recommended generating quickness via Herald's energy upkeep, but I really don't agree with tying it to the heal trait. Instead, Draconic Echo "Retains the boon and upkeep cost effects of upkeep skills and shield skills for a period of time after using their consume skills" would create a 'ghost' effect, where you could maintain higher uptime of energy cost effects, without it actually costing you the energy each second. It'd also make shield able to artificially increase the traits that use upkeep as a kind of totem weapon, like Corruption's Replenishing Despair [Upkeep:extra pips and self torment], Retribution's Steadfast Rejuvenation [Upkeep:self heal], and Herald's Rising Momentum[:movement speed] and Hardening Persistence [:reduced strike damage].
• Renegade having always-available button-press alacrity is bad if alacrity isn't rolled into it's trait interactions somehow. Option 1, remove access to Citadel Order abilities unless you have the appropriate grandmaster trait, or, option 2, considering the incredible availability of Kalla's Fervor, Citadel Order skills now consume all available stacks of Kalla's Fervor, granting Citadel Bombardment missiles per stack, Heroic Command might per stack, and Orders from Above group alacrity per stack. Vindication now "Grants you energy for each stack of Kalla's Fervor spent, and causes your next attack to deal increased damage." | Lasting Legacy "Increases your boon duration per stack of Kalla's Fervor, which you retain the effects of for a period of time after you spend it." | Righteous Rebel "Reduces ALL damage you receive for every stack of Kalla's Fervor." At least this way, you're forced to choose what Orders to spend your Fervor on, and when, and to actually engage with the seven different ways we can earn it, including core's Song of the Mists.
• I've gone off about Vindicator a lot. Between swimming in might, regen, endurance gain, it's own vigor, it's a 7-of-11-traits pogosticking nightmare that has no specific use for greatsword and doesn't reimagine core tech in any way. It needs Energy Meld scrapped, to be stripped of almost all it's sources of endurance, and to be given traits that other legends will care about. Without being able to customize Legendary Alliance with our trait choices, or individually out of combat, Alliance Tactics is a bore too, since it doesn't trigger legend swap effects, but an easier solution would be just to make Archemorus and St Viktor be separate legends, and for traits to offer advantages for slotting them both at the same time.
• MINOR: Strength in Unity "Reduces the CD of legend swap by 1s when you dodge." | New: Empire UNITED "Grants +150 increased attributes based on the legends you have equipped. Shiro (Precision), Mallyx (cDMG), Jalis (Ferocity), Ventari (Healing Power), Archemorus (Power), St Viktor (Concentration)." These allow you greater flexibility with your legends, as well as allows you an advantage based on exactly which combination you take, even if you don't use your off-legend. Half-health as a mechanic is really strange, much less anything divided in an elite about unification, and the better a healer you are, the worse at healing you get.
• Replace Leviathan Strength with A Worthy Adversary: "Legend skills that affect multiple foes strike defiant creatures an additional time," benefitting Archemorus skills in fights with no adds, and causing Jade Winds and Energy Expulsion to hit harder, double Banish Enchantment, Call to Anguish, and Embrace The Darkness's control and condition effects, and turning Jalis into a boss-shredder with Vengeful Hammers and Forced Engagement. More importantly, the extra CC means we could realistically get off of having staff as an offhand on every build. Reaver's Curse now causes "Movement skills to inflict chill (1s, 10s iCD). Inflicting chill inflicts 1 bleed and 1 vuln." Condi is weird on Vindicator, with chill on greatsword and Vassals of the Empire dodge for PvP purposes and not for Corruption's Abyssal Chill, and torment and burning on Archemorus. Extra vuln can ramp damage from Devestation's Targeted Destruction,  plus proc Dance of Death for battlescars, which would help the healing from St Viktor's side. Chill and movement is on a lot of core weapons, and on Shiro, Mallyx, and Archemorus, and the extra bleed gives Mallyx a little damage buff, especially if Empire United granted some bonus Expertise from slotting Mallyx. Forerunner of Death now applies chill, instead of Vassals of the Empire.
• Amnesty of Shing Jea: "Legend swap or Alliance Tactics grants aegis (15s iCD). Blocking an attack cleanses a condition and heals you." Archemorus and Viktor are already swimming in might and regen and don't need more of it. Blocking is available on greatsword and staff, and can be used as an 'emergency refuge'. Angsiyan's Trust is removed, and replaced with "Legendary Alliance skills grant you endurance when used," and Vassals of the Empire "grants allies boon duration increase for each enemy struck, up to 3s." Getting to use either Archemorus or St Viktor to support dodges is fine, and Vassals would combo with Worthy Adversary to allow boon-extension on bosses as well as in high-population fights.
• Redemptor's Sermon "Increases the duration of boons applied during active upkeep skills, and for 2s after, by 1s." This text would also mean changing focus on core legends from being about maintaining damage, and more about extending Shiro's quickness and fury, Mallyx's resistance and resolution, Jalis' resolution and stability, and Ventari's protection, plus Serene Rejuvenation's vigor, regen, swiftness, and resistance, as well as any boons granted by St Viktor while using Urn, which is an interesting skill, but with short boons. Song of Arboreum "Heals in an area around you when you grant regeneration," making use of St Viktor's EXCESSIVE overlap with Ventari as a source of regen effects. Saint of zu Heltzer "grants barrier, applies regen 3 times,and increased healing power after dodging", because we already have a dodge that heals in Salvation.

This turned out to be a long post, and if you read the whole thing, I'm grateful to you. It's something I feel really strongly about, and have clearly been thinking about for a long time (a year and a half, even), and conceptualizing and doing the research for it helps work out my grumbling issues with the way that these elites currently are, as well as sometimes even leads me to builds or interactions I wasn't previously aware of. If any part of this stands out to you, please let me know your thoughts; I'd rather be proven wrong and learn from it than not, and if I can inspire anybody (or the devs...) to try something different than usual, that'd be fantastic.

 

Edited June 23, 2023 by Vooksa.2941
a word

[Batalix.2873]

This definitely hits on a lot of my problems with EoD specs: the traitlines are all too streamlined for specific builds and don't encourage much modular experimentation/interaction. Virtuoso especially is just an embarrassment, an entire espec that does nothing but blades and more blades.

I initially was apprehensive about your "spillover" proposal because that seems too passive, and I think the game should be moving *away* from Mech-like design. But some of your ideas I do actually like:

* Tempest changes to Tempestuous Aria and Transcendent Tempest are solid. I don't like the aura change in the new patch, but making shouts interact with Overloads just makes too much sense.

* Catalyst changes would help a lot: the change to EE on all traits and hardened auras deriving from EE would be a very welcome change. Animating the celestial elementals upon comboing would be amazing and add some much needed flavor. I don't really care for the flavor of augments generating EE, both ludoconceptually (since they are supposed to benefit from and augment from an already powered sphere, not power it themselves) and the fact that likely EE would be too accessible on top of the many other sources you propose. I would rather Augments summon orbs and give the Catalyst opportunities to do more with mixing/matching orb types outside of the very limited, railroaded hammer 3.

* Druid - I hate your addition of fire to Druid. The game has so much fire everywhere: Firebrand, Willbender, Berserker, Scourge, Ele. Druid is the only espec that has a watery subtheme that differentiates it from the other genero-fire mages. I would say you could slap it on Soulbeast instead, but the PoF especs already heavily overlap in fire theme overusage. Just dont' do it, not every profession needs to burninate everything.'

* Untamed - thank you for the proposed "increase size of pet" concept. It's something I've wanted on Untamed for a while.

* Willbender - changes aren't going hard enough. I like the traiting into virtues idea, but why should they all be stupid, boring flames? (see above). Let Resolve make healing pools of water and Courage summon impassable walls of light (while keeping fire for Justice as you propose). You've hit on the fact that Willbender doesn't feel very Guardian, being all offense with none of Guardian's characteristic defensiveness, but I say take that change not just mechanically but also aesthetically/flavorfully. DOWN WITH STUPID FIRE TRAILS. GIVE ME MY TRON GUARDIAN FANTASY.

* Mechanist - also I don't think going hard enough. Just having some builds that combine the two-body problem into a Mechpack doesn't obviate the many builds where Mechanist is still separated, automatically doing a bunch of things, while the player can still play OP autoattacking rifle and nearly full core Engi utility at range on top of that. Instead of traiting to combine the two bodies, I think the smarter solution is just to remove weapons from the "weaponless" profession that is Engi. Replace rifle/pistol/mace attacks with remotely controlled robot attacks, or don't, but baseline need for Mech is to take away the weapon. The J-Mech is already their ranged weapon.

* Berserker/Bladesworn - I think these spillover quick/alac concepts just aren't going to work much on the Warrior specs. I would rather the devs revitalize banners and make a soft "fourth 'tactician' espec" that all Warriors can easily slide into in the event they need an emergency alac/quickness provider. Banners could actually be fun now that they aren't obligatory. I would absolutely play pure support banner warrior now that it's not "meta" but would simply be something to have onhand as a gap-filler.

* I also don't think your Vindicator changes really solve the problem. Vindicator just has no real "identity". It has its pogo hops and two elites, and everything else feels generic. The 6-9 slot skills especially don't communicate any sort of identity, on top of being largely redundant and impotent rehashes of Shiro skills. Before I would worry about balancing and spillover, I would first fix the job fantasy. The dodge and the artifacts are the lynchpin: you throw the Spear of Archemorus, you slam the Urn of St. Viktor down to the ground; the dodge somewhat combines both actions in a single throw/smash. The two things Vindicator really needs are: (1) A GS ability that throws the sword like a spear for a smash AOE, followed by a leap through the mists to it (GS already has an "urny" feeling ability, but no "spear" feeling ability); (2) Reconfiguring the 6-9 skills to also use the Spear/Urn so Vindi has an overall "artifact apotheosis" vibe.

 

Edited June 23, 2023 by Batalix.2873

[Vooksa.2941]

4 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

* I would rather Augments summon orbs and give the Catalyst opportunities to do more with mixing/matching orb types outside of the very limited, railroaded hammer 3.

I don't actually think EE being available is as much of a problem if it's limited to just 3 attributes, and doesn't have the double-EE trait at max stacks. Moreover, the slowness Catalyst gains EE means that it has heavy ramp-up for fights, just to get to DPS levels that other professions are doing from the first second.

I personally don't really like Catalyst's orbiters, and am not sure what everyone is so fascinated with them for. They don't look like much, and they don't do anything except for grant passive, non-interactable bonuses. Augments giving you an orb of the corresponding color could help give them that theme, even one Augment that grants you an orb based on the Sphere you use it in. Another alternative is Augments/an Augment that animates the spirit conjured by the Jade Sphere you're standing in, rather than it being based on any/all combo fields.

Quote

* Druid - I hate your addition of fire to Druid. Not every profession needs to burninate everything.'

It's moreso that burning is the go-to condi DPS condition. Bleed is too slow, poison has anti-healing utility but is also low, confusion and torment don't make sense, and "forest fire" is something that we'd otherwise have to wait for an elite spec to introduce, which won't be coming. It's also because we don't have any interactions with torch yet, outside of Ambidexterity, and Druid can retain it's healer identity with "controlled burning" to remove group conditions, so it's not relying on Healing Spring, Glyph of Stars, or Alignment or Equality's CA version. But I respect that you don't like it!

Quote

* Willbender - changes aren't going hard enough. Let Resolve make healing pools of water and Courage summon impassable walls of light (while keeping fire for Justice as you propose).

More specific/cosmetic descriptions of the Willbender Flames are welcome, I hadn't really went there. I was more focused on what the traits would make them do. Impassable Courage-Flames sounds very strong, but considering the cooldown of Courage effects, maybe that's justified?

Quote

* Mechanist - also I don't think going hard enough. Just having some builds that combine the two-body problem into a Mechpack doesn't obviate the many builds where Mechanist is still separated, automatically doing a bunch of things, while the player can still play OP autoattacking rifle and nearly full core Engi utility at range on top of that. Instead of traiting to combine the two bodies, I think the smarter solution is just to remove weapons from the "weaponless" profession that is Engi. Replace rifle/pistol/mace attacks with remotely controlled robot attacks, or don't, but baseline need for Mech is to take away the weapon. The J-Mech is already their ranged weapon.

Part of my approach to the redesigns was having as little modelling/art as possible. Even the Jade-Turret was pushing it. Rather than remotely-controlled robot attacks, I think that'd be covered by the trait giving Turrets legs; let them wander around, shooting and netting and thumping and splashing around you. I don't think that ranged-Engi manning a long-range turret is especially a bad thing; we already have Deadeye as a sniper, and longbow Rangers are monstrous on WvW wall defense. Having to set up an excuse to use your big Overclock beam and lay into people with Elite Mortar skills would be neat. Hey, even the idea that the Mech gets it's own unique elite toolbelt skill based on which elite you're slotting is interesting and could be explored. But I don't think those are changes that are going to happen with the current dev resources.

Quote

* Berserker/Bladesworn - I would rather the devs revitalize banners and make a soft "fourth 'tactician' espec" 

I kind of thought they'd commit to quickness-Warriors and alacrity-Rangers, and just give their elite specs different, additional ways to grant it. I really didn't like banners, but I'll still use them post-patch, since they do actually have some solid boons on them. I thought Doubled Standards could stay if Martial Cadence boon-spilled personal quickness to allies in a range based on Soldier's Focus. I actually don't see why Spellbreaker couldn't take on the battlefield tactician role a bit, but I'm not prepared to comment on what'd need to change, and to what.

Quote

* I also don't think your Vindicator changes really solve the problem. Vindicator just has no real "identity". The two things Vindicator really needs are A GS ability that throws the sword like a spear for a smash AOE, followed by a leap through the mists to it

My theory was that Vindicator's theme was "the alliance". An alliance between Archemorus and St Viktor, sure, but also an alliance  between them and other legends, an alliance between your legends and you, and an alliance between you and your fellow players. The dodge-leap is secondary to a blend of extremely aggressive fighter, the destroyer of enemies to Cantha, and the restorative magic of a spiritual leader who protects, nourishes, and bolsters. Adding a "throw greatsword" would be really cool, replacing greatsword3, and triggering the revised Reaver's Curse as a movement skill, but I don't actually think Legendary Alliance is altogether bad, the Spear and Urn are about as useful as the ults on any Rev legend, it just has no good ways to interpret the things that it does, like movement, conditions, and so much regeneration.

Thanks for reading over it all though! You've definitely got some good ideas of your own

[Batalix.2873]

I'm just gonna respond without quoting since I had parsing segments out:

* Channelers/Shamans/Summoners using baubles as foci is a pretty well established job fantasy. Plus slinging orbs around would help make Catalyst more of a ranged spec which is what people wanted it to be. I don't particularly like the way hammer 3 implemented orbs either, but if the player had more selectivity with which orbs to summon--like the option to summon multiple orbs of the same type--I think it could make for a fun approach.

* Druid - Ranger is all about being one with nature, not burning it all down. I will never be on board with this idea. Some professions just naturally have holes in their design space.

* Willbender - I am not talking within the context of flames. I am rejecting that narrow, crummy frame altogether. Flames should ONLY be on justice. Resolve and Courage shouldn't have flames at all and leave behind something else. Courage should leave behind walls of light, not walls of flame. WB isn't Firebrand and needs to stop acting like it--with futurist jade tech there is much more design space than lame edgelord flame trails. Guardian is more about light magic, wards, and healing than it is about fire, and Willbender trails should reflect that more.

* Mech - I don't really care how they improve Mech at this point as long as they replace weaponskills with things that don't allow the player to do damage--especially ranged AA damage--on top of the Mech's own high passive, noninteractive DPS. Even after that I would likely still want even more nerfs to the core Engi contributions to the build, but removing the weapons is a must for me.

* Warrior - I'm of the opinion that quick/alac don't feel native to any of the especs, but could both feel very natural on banners. So while yes I think SpB could work as a boon provider, I generally only think of that in the context of slotting banners, because SpB itself is very anti-magic. And similarly I think banner-Zerker and banner-BS just feel like more natural variants for warrior support than...what we are getting. I don't want to feel pressure to keep my burst rotations flowing just to keep up boons, and I don't want to be a boon provider with no real gameplay loop that makes me feel like I am earning the boons. Chrono demonstrates we don't need the 1:1 espec model on every profession, and Warrior is on several levels the best candidate to do something different than the other professions (closely followed by Thief).

* I'm not opposed to Vindi adopted more of an alliance vibe, even though that is kind of conceptually very close to Kalla's thing. I just want it's slot skills to have more personality and distinct features. The 1-2-3 dodge, stunbreak, ranged blast trio communicates virtually no job fantasy identity.

[Vooksa.2941]

I'd not have an issue with Catalyst being about revolving orbiters, if more of the class interacted with it. I'd wanted a new ranged Ele, but hearing we got hammer I was excited for a Water/Earth brutalizer that constructed and destroyed walls, and I feel like maybe the orbiters' biggest problem is that you shoot them all in Grand Finale. People suggesting longbow Ele with an elemental quiver wanted to build a set of elemental arrows to fire, and Catalyst ends up not being any one thing consistently.

In the case of Druid, wildfires, controlled burning, and revitalizing old forests and grasslands with the occasional blaze IS a part of nature. Our torch though has never really been anything except "throw to apply burning" and "fire AoE", so if condi Druid is going to be using it for damage, I thought it'd be nice to have a specific way to benefit from it.

Willbender flames are pretty much just a cosmetic issue then. EOD didn't have a lot of time for dev and art (some elites had ~6 months?) and our current Flames are just the name of a mechanic, they don't burn 2/3rds of the time. I'd disagree that Guardian is about light magic and wards more than fire, but I agree that we should have the opportunity to explore all the Guardian options.

Part of the issue with quickness-banners is that they're not interactable or fun. They weren't being used for clutch moments or to react to different fights, and the effects they gave out weren't passing through almost any other Warrior trait in a way that created a trait/skill combo. It's part of why I'd wanted each Warrior elite to have additional options for producing quickness, but for Martial Cadence and Doubled Standards to present those options to all elites. Because at the end of the day, this post is complaining about us having options, and whether the singular ways the devs make for us to generate team value are actually fun to do.

Kalla's theme is being a guerilla fighter and leading resistance. Her warband has elements of an 'alliance', since one or two members grant your attacks effects only if you are attacking, but other than that there's not really any way for you to return the favor in the exchange. More of a, "calling in favors" than a "fighting as one" kind of thing. Archemorus's skills are a little iffy, to be sure, but that's because they had to be able to be flipped into a reverse-copy for St Viktor; it'd be like complaining Druid glyphs don't have a theme or fantasy identity. Archemorus is about being a raider, gapclosing and getting into the thick of things, taking on multiple foes at once, and being able to prioritize high-priority targets. We don't usually see that in instanced PvE, but it happens in PvP, WvW, and open-world meta events.

[SlayerXX.7138]

22 hours ago, Vooksa.2941 said:

By easing away from the GW2 philosophy of changing your build, for free, anywhere, to mix and match traits and weapons where (Action/effect/boon/condition) goes In and (Action/effect/boon/condition) comes Out, in favor of "One effect goes In, tops, and +X% modifier comes Out) design, a lot of excitement, interest, and personalization for the game is lost. Everyone excited for new elite specs were explicitly looking for fresh new ways to use their skills and approach new challenges, not 28 different ways to press the same sequence of buttons in a specific order to win. That shift represents a shift in Guild Wars 2 as a brand, and alienates the people who carried and supported the game for years.

That is an entirely player made problem. That is just the reality of Player optimizing dps, in a game that wasn't meant to be played that way. Some thief player already did the maths for daredevil and figured out what buttons to press, and the patch is not even out. He already can give you a estimate what the benchmarks will look like.

22 hours ago, Vooksa.2941 said:

Scrapper's [Superspeed:Quickness] skillspam wasn't because of gyros, but because the quickness didn't last long enough, and not enough sources of superspeed applied to allies as well. A simple spill, "Superspeed you apply to yourself is applied to 5 targets within 600 range for 0.5s" helps solves that issue, allowing Slick Shoes, Gadgeteer and Rocket Boots, Streamlined Kits and Tool Kit, and Kinetic Battery's burst after five tool belt skills to all be alternative options for superspeed outside of gyros and the function gyro. It'd be nice if the function gyro could be customized as well, instead of loading it up with multiple different effects for free, and forcing investment to be able to res allies from range.

Again player made problem in pursuit of DPS. Looking at the snowcrow build, Power quick scrapper runs 2 diviner gear pieces rest berserker and then scholar runes. That seems like plenty of quickness. Like can you explain what more duration of quickness accomplishes?

People have plenty of choices and they choose dps. 

 

Edited June 24, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138

[Vooksa.2941]

4 minutes ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

 Some thief player can give you a estimate what the benchmarks will look like.

So, part of the issue is that when all you're pointed at is a nail, you're gonna use the hammer you've got, and not the screwdrivers and saws. When every challenge is solved via DPS rotation, then of course people will figure out how to do the most damage in the least amount of time consistently. Meanwhile, Thief sees heavy useage as a point decapper in PvP, due to their stealth, speed, and ability to shadowstep through platforms. Scourge barrier doesn't see any use in casual play, because you can't kill anything with barriers, but in instanced play, barrier and Transfusion are considered broken because of the problems they solve.

The issues with skillspam builds isn't the damage they do, it's the flexibility they have to perform them. Snowcrows has determined that the minimum amount of concentration you need only requires two Diviner pieces and to use three gyros, their toolbelt skills, and the function gyro in order to cap 100% quickness uptime on the group, but that means there's a lot of core Engi tech that you can't afford to take due to half the bar being full. Tech like Slick Shoes would be able to let them zoop around the arena performing side objectives, if there were any, as well as produce group quickness due to the sharing of superspeed you grant to yourself, but because it's not a gyro, it doesn't contribute to the group, and is seen as a DPS loss.

Half the problem is that EOD-era content doesn't challenge our various utility options. The other half is that our builds are being heavily constricted, being discouraged from using said various utility options.

[SlayerXX.7138]

1 hour ago, Vooksa.2941 said:

The issues with skillspam builds isn't the damage they do, it's the flexibility they have to perform them.

But you have the flexibility? It just comes with a dps cost. A dps price a lot of player can actually pay. Btw your spill over ide would delete boon support and we would run content with 4 real dps and a heal, powercreeping the game even more.

 

Edited June 24, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

I didn't read the entire post, but I agree with the central statement made in the opening paragraph, that the game is too simple, and more than likely is the cause for nearly all of it's balance problems in the first place. I don't think its only EOD, it's across the whole game...where balance changes over time has been squeezing the interaction space of skills out of existence, all in the interest of trying to "balance" the game easier, resulted only in the homogenization of skills, which by making skills so simple it becomes easier for players to min-max, and therefor find optimal builds, which makes balance worse.

The issue with understanding this problem is due to nomenclature. "simple" has a stigma or cultural context behind what that is supposed to mean, while "complex" also implies certain properties from cultural context. But both of these things are informally defined in culture, specifically the  gaming community. In computation, which is where I spent a lot of time studying this kind of stuff, these two concepts, the simple and the complex, are both one in the same thing, which is counter-intuitive to most people that see arguments made about whether skills should be complicated or simple.

Folks are familiar with the subject, but are not us-to the intuition. For example, there is a difference between the kind of simple where you have A) two skills that each do 300 damage...and the kind of simple where a skill is described like B) "Utility skills now effect allies." 

Both of those things are "simple" but one of them leads to incredibly huge increase in "possibility space" and it's this huge possibility space which is what people mean when they want the game to be complex. This possibility space has a formal definition, by computer scientists like Stephan Wolfram, and Game Designers like Will Wright. In other words, there is math and science to back up what is being said here in the original post (stuff i've studied myself for 4 years) and people should be paying way closer attention to it.

Anyway, I'm just rambling on about how others can learn conceptually about what the heart of this post is getting at. I agree heavily with your 3 tenets for an actionable design/balance philosophy being this quote :

• Quote

   

  • 1) More traits need to engage with a wider variety of core specialization effects. Simple on paper, and a lot more work for the programmers, but ultimately necessary for players who are a fan of what Guild Wars 2 is to not walk out the door sometime in the next year. The next expansion will be a major test of whether it produces something new for us to do, or if it'll be the same head-empty slogfest that most of EOD fights are.
  • 2) Support builds should rely on 'Spill' as a major mechanic, "sharing effect/boon Boon X to nearby allies when you apply it to yourself", with or without reduced duration. This means booncasters generate value by playing the game, not by fiddling away by themselves with whatever silly trick the devs expect you to spam on cooldown, whether it be wells, Spheres, Celestial Avatar, or what have you. The greater the number of Ins, the more options we have to build to preference.
  • 3) More challenges need to have greater diversity of content. Superspeed and high-mobility professions like Thief and Willbender are wasted in PvE when they could be used to shift the fight in a large room, go press buttons in hard to reach places, or 'chase the ball' and kill a fast monster that's supporting a boss from the sidelines, while boonrip/corrupt needs bosses to have boons, and condi-cleanse needs them to inflict conditions. The more fights are an immobile meatbag we hit until it dies, the less novel the experience is, and the sooner people quit.

   

   

That 1) traits need to engage with abilities, rather than heavily restricting them. For example, specialization weapons shouldn't be locked behind the spec...Traits shouldn't also require a weapon to use a trait and so on.

That 2) builds should "spill" and have effects on things around you rather than be selfish or self-contained. This is a really big one for me, and i think the notion of spill, is way under-utilized, and completely untapped. 

Anyway...good post, cheers.

 

[Vooksa.2941]

1 hour ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

But you have the flexibility? It just comes with a dps cost. A dps price a lot of player can actually pay. Btw your spill over ide would delete boon support and we would run content with 4 real dps and a heal, powercreeping the game even more.

The point remains, that these rotations are all designed to work in a perfect vacuum and rarely are asked to sacrifice dps for a utility, if ever, and decreasingly so in EOD content. The fact players are so comfortable standing still and performing the same series of actions until the boss is dead is bad, actually.

I legitimately don't understand where you're coming to the conclusion boonspill traits would delete boon support. The only reason there are boon builds is because a profession has access to a skill that grants group boons, and has to choose to take that over another skill that does better healing, cleanse, CC, stunbreak, or damage, or because a trait allows them to grant boons to a group at the cost of any competing healing/dps traits. Gyroscopic Acceleration itself is a spill trait, granting superspeed to allies on gyro use, because you don't provide group superspeed without it, and your alternatives are System Shocker for better defensive response, or Mass Momentum, which makes your function gyro grant group stability. The quickness scrapper build does not exist unless you take the trait that grants group superspeed. All I'm asking for is a few more ways to grant superspeed to allies, other than gyros and the function gyro. The Tools traitline could do that, but there's currently no content that would benefit from the enhanced utility that it provides over using Explosives and Firearms to just wallop a boss into submission.

[Vooksa.2941]

Thanks for reading as much as you did. I'm not as involved in the computer science portion of game design, but a good amount of my considerations come from whether my recommendations would be easy to program, and whether the code for how it works exists somewhere in the system already and can just be copied over. A lot of the discussion about game design spooks people who are used to only seeing the woman in the red dress, and using mechanical interactions and numbers to tell a story is the kind of abstract a lot of people don't get practice doing.

28 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

That 1) traits need to engage with abilities, rather than heavily restricting them. For example, specialization weapons shouldn't be locked behind the spec...Traits shouldn't also require a weapon to use a trait and so on.

That 2) builds should "spill" and have effects on things around you rather than be selfish or self-contained. This is a really big one for me, and i think the notion of spill, is way under-utilized, and completely untapped. 

Decoupling elite spec weapons from the elite specs is what I assume they meant when they said that the next expansion was going to 'lift restrictions and produce an unprecedented amount of build variety'. It's simple, easy to do, doesn't disrupt existing metas too heavily, and looks good on a poster. Evidence for this is a lot of traits losing mention of the elite spec's weapon in this new patch, but it's not consistent. I've also been waiting for them to remove mention of "gain extra stats while wielding X weapon" for years, because it limits buildcraft rather than promotes it, but that might be some time coming.

Spill is also one of the simplest ways of giving new life to existing traits and skills, without having to invent new content. It asks that we construct a build to make use of tech we normally save for ourselves, or rely on others for, and says that now we're the ones who provide that value, and it uses completely different traits and utility skills than what a DPS or healer would take.

[Batalix.2873]

Decoupling weapons seems like a bad idea to me. There are very few instances where I have had any desire to mix weapons across especs, and in nearly all instances that desire would be equally solved by just making the espec itself more distinct and fun. I.e. I wouldn't want to play GS outside of Vindi if Vindi itself had a stronger class fantasy.

Opening up weapons would just be more of the same bad direction balance patches have been taking the game.

1. Espec class fantasies already lean heavily on weapon to execute their class fantasy (with the exception of EoD specs which are the garbage non-design all of these changes are in service of normalizing). So removing that from them would just dilute/gut large swathes of espec uniqueness and gamefeel.

2. On a slightly broader scale, just generally the espec system will fall apart for a similar reason, since a good third to half of the whole system depends on weapon exclusivity to function and encourage meaningful choice.

3. Quite likely the meta will become even more narrow and more especs obviated once that deliberate restriction is removed. The more specialized a weapon or skillet it is, the more likely it will be used by all three especs, or none at all.

Overall, bad design decision. If the devs do that, I will probably quit the game, just because at that point the espec system will be largely meaningless and superficial. And that's not really arguing from tradition, or rigid hierarchies, or anything--I just think there is a spectrum between dynamic design and the mere illusion of choice/skill, and that would be pushing the game too far in the latter direction for me.

Edited June 24, 2023 by Batalix.2873

[SlayerXX.7138]

52 minutes ago, Vooksa.2941 said:

legitimately don't understand where you're coming to the conclusion boonspill traits would delete boon support.

More free boons-> more Resources you can put into damage. So boon will be provided by dps with so little dps loss, making a distinction between dps and boon dps will be almost meaningless. Quickness harbringer already benches higher then Power daredevil for example. Like man, that is not a hard concept. You clearly a better player then me. I'm scratching my head here how you can not see the obvious.

1 hour ago, Vooksa.2941 said:

All I'm asking for is a few more ways to grant superspeed to allies, other than gyros and the function gyro.

Someone did no read the patch preview? Superspeed is death, it is combo time. 

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

1 hour ago, Vooksa.2941 said:

Thanks for reading as much as you did. I'm not as involved in the computer science portion of game design, but a good amount of my considerations come from whether my recommendations would be easy to program, and whether the code for how it works exists somewhere in the system already and can just be copied over. A lot of the discussion about game design spooks people who are used to only seeing the woman in the red dress, and using mechanical interactions and numbers to tell a story is the kind of abstract a lot of people don't get practice doing.

I'd read more of your post and I might do so later, but this is just a personal thing, I have to be in a particular state of mind to concentrate on reading text. But I totally resonate with the essence, of what I read. 

But ya indeed, what you said here in the quote is precisely true. The stuff you are talking about totally easy to program, the problem, in my opinion lies within how game devs, and the majority of players, think about these problems to begin with which informs how one constructs solutions, and this puts said people in a certain box in a certain worldview. When the game is described by numbers, all people can think about is "the numbers must be balanced" without even realizing that numbers is just a near meaningless drop in the proverbial bucket for what is possible out there in the space of all possibilities. 

Maybe, just an example to better illustrate this point. Consider the game "Game of Life" which was made by this dude named John Conway in the 1970's. The Game of Life game has two amazing properties: The 1st amazing property is that it is Turing Universal. Turing Universal, means that this game has the same capability and complexity size, as your computer...that it can compute all possible computable functions...which includes Guild Wars 2. So in fact, one can create Guild Wars 2, inside the Game of Life game. The 2nd amazing property, is that Game of Life is very very simple...so simple that the length of it's program is about a page long.

The above serves as solid example, that some simple rules, lead to infinitely complex behavior, and that to get this behavior you don't need to program the thing with a zillion lines of code. What follows through extrapolation is that, game mechanics, like skills, are also rules, and are therefor also subjected to this ability to have arbitrarily complex behavior. That skills and game mechanics can have this arbitrary complexity without it having it all be "programmed" into the skill with zillion lines of code or sheer number of mechanics bloat. We recognize this to some degree...SPVP's Game mode for example, is a game based on simple rules (control the majority of nodes more than the opponent) and leads to what appears to be near endless novelty. 

Long story short, I really strongly believe in what you are putting out and saying here...I also believe there are mountains of evidence that support it. So I'm here to be that guy to provide that and support this any way I can...and expand on it if need be.

[Vooksa.2941]

4 hours ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

More free boons-> more Resources you can put into damage. So boon will be provided by dps with so little dps loss, making a distinction between dps and boon dps will be almost meaningless. Quickness harbringer already benches higher then Power daredevil for example. Like man, that is not a hard concept. You clearly a better player then me. I'm scratching my head here how you can not see the obvious.

Someone did no read the patch preview? Superspeed is death, it is combo time. 

The thing is, superspeed isn't death. It's still a crucial part of Scrapper's DPS, which means that they're still locked into using the options that give them superspeed. Scrapper could take the Tools spec for a couple traits that help them with personal superspeed uptime, but they won't, because it's inferior damage to Explosives/Firearms, which they've proven they can maintain full superspeed on by slotting three specific gyros. The ONLY way that [Combos:Group Quickness] works as a trait is if it has an iCD long enough, with a duration high enough, that you're forced to take more pieces of Diviner's gear to achieve full uptime with the ONE TRAIT. You can't do anything about the [Intake], beyond having more ways to combo, which won't matter if it's iCD is long enough, and you can't do anything about the [Outtake] beyond having more concentration, so the only thing that changes is that you maybe have to swap grenade kit for bomb kit to have a second blast finisher after Blast Gyro. Literally nothing else changes because of this change.

Heck even a change reading "while you have superspeed, you pulse quickness to 5 targets around you" would have solved this, if the amount of quickness you granted was low enough, and there was only one gyro that gave superspeed instead of all of them. "All gyros have superspeed" is a good mechanic on paper, but when EVERYTHING produces the same value, it makes it very easy to compare options, and find the one that has the highest effect output. With only one gyro producing superspeed, you'd be pushed into using options like Tools, and Kinetic Battery, Rocket Boots, Slick Shoes/Superspeed, Toss Elixir U, etc etc. They can control how much superspeed we have from different sources, and how much concentration we'd need to pulse permanent uptime quickness. "Quickness on combo instead" is just a panicked bandaid fix in response to accusations that the game is getting too spammy, it isn't thought out, and it's not going to change anything.

[Vooksa.2941]

14 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

When the game is described by numbers, all people can think about is "the numbers must be balanced"

SPVP's Game mode for example, is a game based on simple rules (control the majority of nodes more than the opponent) and leads to what appears to be near endless novelty. 

This is essentially the gist of it, yeah. Everyone who gets bored of PvE is encouraged to go play PvP/WvW, because they actually are entirely different experiences and playstyles and having to react to other players is way more complicated than what an enemy AI is ever programmed to do, but because the challenges are entirely different and varied, the approach and solution is entirely different and varied. When you don't know the challenge you'll face going in, you can only diversify your build so you have some reasonable reactions, or choose to specialize and hope you don't get hit in your blind spot. Condi cleanse, stunbreak, personal healing, protection, stability, superspeed, invisibility, shields and blocking and unblockable, all take on wildly different outlooks when every fight is lethal and getting knocked over or caught by surprise is a death sentence. PvE content by comparison has explicit instructions on how to beat predetermined content, the easiest, in the least time, with the least risk of failure. Predetermined content that won't break the rules should be the perfect place to play what you want to play, but instead, we're having our options chopped, and the predetermined content simplified even further, so our only option is to play the game the devs WANT US to play it.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@Vooksa.2941

Expansion announcement (Buildcraft and Battle) looks promising. I hope they really take this far because this is exactly what the game needs. Maybe i got this news late 😂

Edited June 28, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Vooksa.2941]

On 6/27/2023 at 10:34 PM, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Vooksa.2941

Expansion announcement (Buildcraft and Battle) looks promising. I hope they really take this far because this is exactly what the game needs. Maybe i got this news late 😂

The expansion's additional weapons are interesting. On one hand, people had a blast figuring out how to use tools made for elite specs, on different elite specs. Elementalists especially had fun (even if warhorn will get nerfed), but interesting combos like hammer on Druid means three of their five skills can be used to proc Blood Moon and inflict bleeding.

On the other hand, a massive number of weapons now get heavily overshadowed. Pistol is just a straight upgrade to Necro scepter, provided you don't need boon-corrupt, due to better physical damage, better condi damage, bouncing bullets for group cleave, and a stun. Revenant especially doesn't see ANY additional interaction between shortbow, shield, or greatsword on any of Herald, Renegade, and Vindicator. Adding 1-2 new weapons to every single profession runs the risk of overlapping even further, since they really have to design a universal PURPOSE for things like Necro swords or Guardian pistols, one that could realistically interface with each elite spec in a meaningful way.

Elite specs like Druid and others will have some things to look forward to, but elites like Catalyst and Vindicator will essentially have to have their entire traitline redesigned, since they hid behind their hammer and greatsword as excuses for their power.