Individual traitline and skills per weapon set

[ZhaKuL.1609]

I know this is not possible and I understand many would say that "just prepare for the fight beforehand and change whatever you want", but I think it would be a really nice feature if we could have individual traits and utility skills based on whichever weapon set is currently active. For instance: playing a Thief, you could have D/D and Rifle. For D/D you'd of course choose the traits and utility skills that benefit the D/D playstyle, whereas for Rifle, you'd very likely want to change some traits and also utility skills to fit the Rifle play style.

Having this possibility, changing between different encounters could make the entire encouter and experience more fluid. Of course, if you can prepare for the encounter, then this is a non-issue, but when you can't, e.g. you suddenly find yourself in a situation when cleave damage would be way more advantageous than single-target, then (WvWvW? PvP? - and of course, assuming you have a single-target and cleave setup configured already) you could just swap to your cleave set and bam! This could obviously be extended to armor sets as well (being able to switch from a Power to Condi set on the fly - it could still be monetized somehow, this feature unlocked with Gems, so that no one can complain about people not buying additional bag slots to carry their 2nd armor set around all the time, and yes, I understand this might sound a bit like Pay2Win)...

I'm quite sure this idea has been brought up before and I totally understand people who might feel that it might make the game too easy, it might take away of some of the difficulty, preparation, planning, thinkings, etc. aspects, but would it really be that terrible? At the end of the day, setup itself is not everything so it's not really taking away the decision and prepration aspects, the skills caps are still there, it just perhaps makes them a bit more efficient and the entire experience more enjoyable (not making you feel kinda handicapped when swapping weapons to a secondary and doing half the damage just because your traits and skills are not suited for it, yet the unforseen has happened).

[Trise.2865]

In other words, you want to be able to use every single weapon-based trait with no choices or opportunity costs.

For that matter, why have selectable traits at all? why not just turn them all on once they're unlocked? Nothing broken about that.

[ZhaKuL.1609]

@Trise.2865 said:In other words, you want to be able to use every single weapon-based trait with no choices or opportunity costs.

For that matter, why have selectable traits at all? why not just turn them all on once they're unlocked? Nothing broken about that.

I'm not sure I follow, I said nothing of the sort. :) What I'm mainly saying is that since we have the possibility to swap between 2 weapons, it would perhaps also be nice to be able to swap traits / utility skills / armor sets in the same manner... when the weapons swap, one could have different traits, skills, etc. preconfigured for the other weapon (instead of having a main build where usually the secondary weapon suffers in a way or another - or is a utility at best, e.g. Thief short bow in most situations - due to the build being tailored towards the primary weapon set, we could have an efficient setup for both sets... this could perhaps allow for combining builds in a more fluid and hopefully enjoyable way).

[ROMANG.1903]

Basically you want build saving.

You might want to look around with arcDPS, it has a build saving option.

[Trise.2865]

@ZhaKuL.1609 said:

@Trise.2865 said:In other words, you want to be able to use every single weapon-based trait with no choices or opportunity costs.

For that matter, why have selectable traits at all? why not just turn them all on once they're unlocked? Nothing broken about that.

I'm not sure I follow, I said nothing of the sort. :) What I'm mainly saying is that since we have the possibility to swap between 2 weapons, it would perhaps also be nice to be able to swap traits / utility skills / armor sets in the same manner... when the weapons swap, one could have different traits, skills, etc. preconfigured for the other weapon (instead of having a main build where usually the secondary weapon suffers in a way or another - or is a utility at best, e.g. Thief short bow in most situations - due to the build being tailored towards the primary weapon set, we could have an efficient setup for both sets... this could perhaps allow for combining builds in a more fluid and hopefully enjoyable way).

Precisely. Changing traits on the fly means having access to more, specific traits at any given time, and combining traits that - by design - shouldn't be able to combine. In this scenario, choosing any individual trait is no longer a decision one has to make, but an automatic part of using any individual weapon, which defeats the entire purpose of having slot-limited traits in the first place. Why would a Warrior ever need to choose between Tactics and his Greatsword vs Strength and his Sword/Axe combo when he can have them both regardless of his build? What choice is there when a Necro can flip between Scourge and Reaper with a button press? How would anybody be able to counterplay a Mes that can flip from perma-dodge to Power spike, when they already can't counter either?

It's a powerful idea, and would be really fun in theory... for awhile. But all it does is turn everything on, and that's not a good thing.

[joneirikb.7506]

So, basically, I could have one DPS weapon with dps traits and gear/runes/sigils/utils etc. Then swap weapon into full minsitrel tank guard ? :p

That, and Ele and Engine says hi, and hands you a bucket of tears.

This essentially would let you swap between 2 specks with the weapon swap button. It might seem/feel empowering, but would turn into a nightmare for pvp/wvw etc.

---

I'd rather like to see a redesign of how traits works. One of the things I'd love to see is to remove the old weapon traits that boost specific traits, and instead have traits that does something specific to ALL your weapons, for example have a own trait line called "weapons" where on the first line you can chose if hits gives you bleed (for condi builds), might (for power builds), or cripple (for cc/support/other synergies), where the middle trait can let you choose between something like 10% CD reductions (for all your weapons), a 5% damage bonus, or a x% critical chance modifier etc. Then have something else more game changing on the last tier.

Basically, it would allow us to change how ALL weapons worked, in order to fit into more play styles. Most weapons would likely need a reduction in amount of boons/condi they give for this though. Basically make weapons slightly more hybrid in general, let our traitline decide how we play them.

[sokeenoppa.5384]

Lol yes. Give My thief and option to play little tanky and then let me go to stealth and with one Button, let me change to full classcannon for backstab.

That dont sound broken? :D

[ZhaKuL.1609]

I see your points, from a PvP point of view, it might indeed make things a bit more coplicated. While it might make PvE a bit more interesting and/or convenient at times, it might indeed not be necessary (as I have already repeated multiple times: "if there's time to prepare between fights, all the above is already achievable, it just needs a bit more manual work). Thanks for the replies. ;)

[Ashantara.8731]

@ZhaKuL.1609 said:Individual traitline and skills per weapon set

While I would love that, along with being able to use any weapon on every profession, I believe it would be an impossible endeavor on ANet's end regarding balancing. It is already a difficult topic as it is, adding more variety would make game modes like PvP even more unplayable.