Guild Wars 2

(Long Post, Conclusion is at the bottom)
The thing I enjoy most out of an MMO is not it’s story or it’s gear grind or it’s lore (although its fun to speculate on that). I enjoy the development of my personal playstyle and the ability to show off how skilled I am at it, be it in PVE or PVP. I don’t want to show off a legendary with too much pixeleffects, or an xpensive piece of armor. No, i want to show off how skillfull i can approach different kind of game mechanics (boss fights, dungeons, pvp, ..)

To be able to do this there are 2 requirements:
1) An AWESOME combat system with a high skill cap
2) A lot of diversity in possible playstyles (yes, BUILD DIVERSITY)

Let me get my nostalgia on and tell you why i was drawn to the Guild Wars series all those years ago. Exactly, those two reasons. GW1 combat system was dynamic (not as much as gw2’s but it got the job done) and it took many many hours to master. Here I’d like to give the example of the Famous Spike builds (Rift spike, blood spike, ranger spike) that were run in Heroes Ascent that took hours and hours of team practice to get exactly right. I would also like to remind you off the elaborate weapon swapping builds (backbreaker assassins, or even the warrior “4 WEAPON DOMINATOR” (thumbs up if you ever played this build)). One last example, the art of INFUSION, people that took years to master this one specific skill and to be able to safe someone by their developed microsecond reaction speed.
Second, GW1 had THE MOST DIVERSE SKILL SYSTEM EVER and that is what kept me clustered to this game hour after hour , day after day, year after year. There were never-ending lists of skills from all professions too choose from to fill up those 8 precious slots and thus endless combinations of potential builds. Back then, it meant something when you invented a new build. If it was good it would get picked up by many until something better was invented, or until a strong counter build was created (in pvp). This allowed for an ever changing “meta-game” and challenged players to try and break the meta by originality in their builds.

Now, back to GW2 and the point of this post. What GW2 does really well is the Combat system. It is all I could ask for, it’s dynamic, fast paced and difficult to master the timing of key skills (stunbreaks, heals, cc, teleports). However GW2 lacks BUILD DIVERSITY. We are 18 months into the game and by now all professions have about 2, maximum 4 different build (traits and skills) setups that are viable. That’s it! And after playing through most of them I have gotten bored with the skill system. When I play a pvp match i just have to see what profession with what weapon i am up against and i know immediately what build they run. There is no more room for creativity. This happened as well after a while GW1 Prophecies. However not much later there was an expansion with a SH*TLOAD of new skills, and even new professions, allowing me to further define my playstyle and try different ones. GW2 however doesn’t do expansions, they focus on living world. OK, i am totally fine with that so far as story and lore content. However, these living world updates don’t seem to change a lot about the skills and trait systems. Very scarcely there is a BALANCE UPDATE and it is meant for exactly and only that, to BALANCE. These mostly revolved around toning down overused and overpowered traits a little with the small exceptions of sometime completely changing the functionality. But that is all that happens and it is not enough. In my eyes, to make this game compelling again, we don’t need new areas, or new living story quest lines.
What we need is:

1)A thorough rework of many traits and skills that have never been used because they are simply not viable
2)Addition of traits and skills with completely new functionality, opening up different build options and re-sparking the creativity involved in build-crafting. And i want to say that the adding of a new healing skills is a good start but it is NOT ENOUGH. I want to ask for a living world release which adds:
A) at least 10 utility skills to each profession
B) a new weapontype which again adds skills. I am thinking: Spear (on land), Crossbow, Conjuration Book (2handed, bit like guardian elites, which are a nice idea but not very viable due to short duration)
C)new traits that are linked to these new utilities and weapons

I think i am not alone in wanting this since the amount of discussion a simple balance update get’s on this forum alone shows that people are very captivated by the gw2 combat system and playstyle.

Thanks for your attention!

PS: I REALLY like what your are planning on doing with the sigils and runes rework. This is exactly what this game needs for allowing more build diversity but it is not enough. So i kindly want to ask you to consider my requests. Thx!

PS2: As a reaction to this topic i would like your suggestions for new skills and traits (consider all professions not just your main)

First off, good post! GW1 had virtually infinite build diversity, and if you put a build together yourself, it still mostly worked ~90% as well as the meta builds, when in GW2 it is like ~66% as well (for example; using a signet build instead of cantrips on ele).

I think it would be wise for the devs to first focus on changing useless, unused traits before adding new skills. I know this only for sure about the Elementalist, but I presume it counts for other professions as well: in each trait slot, there is almost always only ONE trait worth picking, as it outperforms all the other traits in that tier. For example: Fire 10 points: you take the 10% increased damage, no question, unless using conjured weapons. Water 20 points, you take Cleansing Wave. Arcana 20 points you take Elemental Attunement. All the traits that are not too specialized and that do not compete with the best trait in that tier ought to be changed or buffed, or that single best trait should be moved somewhere else.

If we get more specific, I can not consider other professions than my main, since I have really ONLY played elementalist (see my name? xD), all of my other chars are lv 5.
The Elementalist needs to have more defensive traits in the offensive trait lines. This is because eles are very squishy and always need quite a bit of defense. Going into the offensive trait lines, but picking defensive traits would allow for more build diversity over the one build which ALWAYS uses Arcana for more dodges and boons and Water for healing, or the other build which is just all-out damage, then dead.

Anyway, good post, I hope Arenanet take a little time to look at their design philosophy and change things up a bit

I posted a suggestion that certaintly caters to your opinion.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvE-Balance-in-General-Secondary-Profession/first#post3705835

It’s about to introduce secondary professions back to Tyria