Radical idea to tackle skill availability bloat

[The Boz.2038]

Firebrands' tome skills share cooldowns. Use F1 #3? Can't use F2 #3 or F3 #3.  

Engineer? No more elite or heal kit skills. Elixir and medkit get folded into one skill. Utility #3 becomes a mandatory, single, only kit skill.  

Elementalist? No more of that "cast conjures on the ground" nonsense. Just a kit-like skill with a cooldown. Lowest impact from this.  

[Dadnir.5038]

Sorry to say it but it feel pretty "random".

 

Firebrand: Personally, I think the issue is more a number of page use per minute issue. I think ANet's mistake here is that they tried to balance throught the availability of the tomes instead of balancing through the number of skills that can be used over a definite frame time.

 

Engineer: I'll be honest, what you write for the engineer don't make sense to me. Merging kits? Mandatory skills? Why?

 

Elementalist: To me this is the only attractive suggestion (if conjure worked like engineer's kit, even with a CD, elementalist would certainly be in a way better place in game. The fact that conjure are sharable used to be useful as "support" but it's no longer the case, it's a support that's long been outclassed and casted away). Yet, granted that it's been asked for nearly a decade already, I think it's fair to say that it's highly unlikely that ANet will make the change.

[The Boz.2038]

For engineers, the mandatory "kit" would effectively and officially replace their weapon swap. Merges because elixir and medkit have some tiny overlap, and each "skill type" needs to have 4 utility skills total, as there would be *no* heal or elite kit.

[Caitir.6947]

The Engineer change looks like it's aimed entirely at PvP modes without considering implications it could have elsewhere, and it also doesn't even consider the actual ramifications it would have even in those modes. I say it's likely PvP-aimed because I can't recall any time I've heard in PVE, in any context, "kitten, that heal scrapper is OP! They really shouldn't have access to both Medkit AND Elixir Gun freely." Except this skirts around the context of WHY they're so prevalent in those modes, WvW most especially. Heal Scrapper is a response to a very prevalent set of problems that they happen to be good at dealing with. Remove their ability to effectively deal with them without fixing the problems they're used to solve, you will genuinely make the current WvW situation worse. Even if the principle concern sounds as benign as "they have overlap," the skills in there that Heal Scrappers use number more than just 5, so they'd lose value by merging the kits. In Medkit they use all 5, and in Elixir Gun there's 3 that they frequently use. How would you even determine what to merge in this case among 8 skills becoming 5 without making some of those 5 skills just absolutely stacked to absurdity?

The Elementalist thing has been proposed before, and frankly I support them just becoming a bundle they can enter into like an Engi kit. It'd certainly  feel better to use than having to stop your rotation and pick up the conjure off the ground, because that just feels clunky and no other class has to do anything like that, for good reason. But they haven't done this despite it being asked from them for years now, so I'm not sure if it will ever happen. I would like if they could, though. Currently the only real positive thing of note from them being droppable on the ground is from allies picking them up in fractals to really stack on some initial burst. 

The Firebrand suggestion... is just awkward, at best. I feel like there would be better ways to limit their tomes than this incredibly unintuitive idea for someone worried about how much utility they can pull from them. We can say what we will about Firebrand's overloaded nonsense, there's a distinct chance that if they don't have versatility to pull from as needed then they just become a completely underwhelming elite spec in general. Having a lot of skills like that becomes a very precarious balancing act, if other games have shown me anything. Firebrand can throw out tons of boons, but their healing is already not particularly amazing and their main supporting falls upon Aegis for damage mitigation, Stability which I lowkey actually like because ANet is absolutely in love with making enemies that just kitten CC and I shouldn't have to tell anyone about how much CC flies around in PVP modes, and quickness. Though, outside of WvW blobs Firebrands are pretty underwhelming in PvP modes, so fat lot of good their buckets of boons are doing for them there. Honestly, as a support build I only find Firebrand overwhelmingly strong as Quickbrand, where they do pretty good damage on top of all that potential utility. As a healer, I don't find them particularly necessary as long as you have other sources of Quickness in your squad/group. 

I don't know, I think the Engi and Firebrand ideas are a bit much. Loathe as I am to admit it, I think they need that array of skills to do their job properly. As for bloat... Some classes use more buttons, some classes use less. That's just how it is in some games. The engineer idea is a particularly interesting suggestion since they're outright known for their vast number of skills.

[The Boz.2038]

45 minutes ago, Caitir.6947 said:

Remove their ability to effectively deal with them without fixing the problems they're used to solve

With this attitude, you can shoot down any suggestion for improvement in any area of the game, so long as it is not a fifty-page tome of changes that rework everything into an entirely new paradigm.

  

43 minutes ago, Caitir.6947 said:

I think they need that array of skills to do their job properly

Your earlier comment about "omg elixir and medkit too much op" made me thing you misunderstood the idea. This just confirms it.

With this change, they'd be *solidified* into *always* having one kit. Always that one extra array of skills. All specific-kit traits? Global. Juggernaut? Stab and might with *any* kit, as an example. Perhaps with this, they might, *might* give back weapon swap, too! OMG, could you imagine that!

Edited June 11, 2021 by The Boz.2038

[Dadnir.5038]

2 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

For engineers, the mandatory "kit" would effectively and officially replace their weapon swap. Merges because elixir and medkit have some tiny overlap, and each "skill type" needs to have 4 utility skills total, as there would be *no* heal or elite kit.

 

This is quite a big rework you're suggesting then.

Personally I'm not in favor of such rework, it would feel like engineer lost part of it's identity. It would be like a necromancer without any option to have minions (not that minions are great in GW2 but they add to the flavor and that's what make them important).

[The Boz.2038]

1 minute ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

This is quite a big rework you're suggesting then.

Well, I did say it was *radical*. 😛

[Kodama.6453]

3 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

With this attitude, you can shoot down any suggestion for improvement in any area of the game, so long as it is not a fifty-page tome of changes that rework everything into an entirely new paradigm.

  

Your earlier comment about "omg elixir and medkit too much op" made me thing you misunderstood the idea. This just confirms it.

With this change, they'd be *solidified* into *always* having one kit. Always that one extra array of skills. All specific-kit traits? Global. Juggernaut? Stab and might with *any* kit, as an example. Perhaps with this, they might, *might* give back weapon swap, too! OMG, could you imagine that!

I have to ask: do you actually play engineer? Because this idea suggests that you don't.

While the idea to make all kit specific traits global might sound good at first, if you look deeper into it, it really doesn't make much sense. Neither thematically nor gameplaywise.

 

Grenadier is increasing the velocity of grenades.... how is this going to do anything for bomb kit, for example? I can see it increasing velocity of projectiles in general from kits, but there are some kits without any projectiles, like bomb kit and tool kit.

 

Another problem: multiple cdr sources. So with all kit specific traits working for all kits, I can get 33% cdr from power-wrench for all kits, including elixir gun. Elixir gun can also get cooldown reduction for some of it's skills by picking HGH. So acid bomb and super elixir are supposed to have a total of 46%? Don't think this should be a thing.

 

Further, you are destroying many builds for engineer this way. Many of our damage builds are dependant on taking multiple kits. Even worse, condi engineer builds are basically required to take 3 kits to be competitive in the first place, since all condition skills are splattered over all the kits. Usually, for a condition build, you will take grenades, bombs and flamethrower.

Support builds also want to take 2 kits with med kit and elixir kit. And if you just stack both kits on top of each other, then you get an absolutely ridiculous kit that is overloaded beyond belief.

 

You are extremely limiting engineer build diversity.... for no apparent reason. Engineer got balanced over years around having multiple kits, you want to make Anet start from zero and rebalance the entire class with this change. Because all kits across the board need to get heavily stronger to compensate.

 

Weapon swap also is next to useless for engineer. Because we are lacking the weapon pool to chose from in the first place. Want to play a power core engineer build? Literally your only option is rifle, so what is a weapon swap good for? That you can swap to another rifle to trigger sigils? Lol.

 

Oh, and you also want to delete an elite skill for engineer without any compensation? So we are the only class with just 2 elite skills to chose from? Yeah, seems really fair. /s

 

Nothing of this seems to be thought through.

Edited June 11, 2021 by Kodama.6453

[The Boz.2038]

There goes that fifty page tome again.

[Obtena.7952]

Is skill availability bloat even a problem that deserves class changes? Just seems like a bunch of random ideas going on here. 

Edited June 14, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[The Boz.2038]

I do think it is a root cause of some, yes.

[Obtena.7952]

3 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

I do think it is a root cause of some, yes.

Well, your going to have to explain that because it's not clear why you think it's a problem and why the changes you are promoting fix them. Again, it's just ... random. 

 

I don't see a problem with having lots of skills available because the limiting factor isn't how many skills you have, it's the bandwidth you have to use them. 

[The Boz.2038]

The state of the elementalist is partly because "they can have tons of skills, so they need to be weak". The only high end viable engineer is very recent, and it literally made possible because it pretty much has to devote all non-weapon skills to a non-kit. The "these guys can have tons of skills, we need to tread carefully" thing is really keeping ANet from taking some steps here.

Meanwhile, Firebrand.

[Astralporing.1957]

On 6/14/2021 at 2:17 PM, Obtena.7952 said:

Is skill availability bloat even a problem that deserves class changes?

Depends on whom you ask, but there are some good arguments to that end.

 

 

On 6/14/2021 at 2:17 PM, Obtena.7952 said:

Just seems like a bunch of random ideas going on here. 

With that i do have to agree. Even if we assume OP has diagnosed the problem well, the proposed "solution" does not seem to be well thought at all.

[Obtena.7952]

4 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

The state of the elementalist is partly because "they can have tons of skills, so they need to be weak". The only high end viable engineer is very recent, and it literally made possible because it pretty much has to devote all non-weapon skills to a non-kit. The "these guys can have tons of skills, we need to tread carefully" thing is really keeping ANet from taking some steps here.

Meanwhile, Firebrand.

I don't think those are sensible conclusions. What makes you think that ele is weak because they have tons of skills? Maybe they are weak because of other reasons you don't know. 

 

Frankly, I don't think skill volume has anything to do with weak or strong. We have classes with a wide range of skill access that are both weak and strong so to claim there is a correlation there is rather contrived. 

Edited June 15, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Astralporing.1957]

4 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

I don't think those are sensible conclusions. What makes you think that ele is weak because they have tons of skills?

Actually, from what i remember, this is the exact reason devs once mentioned about ele weapon skills being balanced at lower level than for other classes - the fact that ele has 4 sets of weapon skills, not 2, so if only half of them are good, compared to other classes, they still are at a relatively same level.

Unfortunately, due to the different elements being suited for different things, it doesn't work all that well in practice (besides, with such a reasoning onehas to wonder what all those remaining skills were even for, if they couldn;t be good), but it was one of the balance factors. It's one of the original "great" balance ideas, alongside the "let's cut the dps by 20% due to pets" for rangers and "but you have shroud, so you can't have competitive levels of dps" for necros.

 

Still, that's old story. I'm quite sure that the reason for why ele is in the place it is now is primarity due to the absolutely OP levels of dps it had shortly after HoT.