Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I recently started a new segment on my youtube channel called Discussions and I’ve done 3 episodes so far. This latest episode is called Caveats and I talk about how the GW2 gameplay and build diversity could be improved by injecting certain skills, runes, sigils and traits with drawbacks, as many of the skills in GW2 do not have any.

I give an example using a trait for the Guardian called Inner Fire and how that trait is totally useless to the Guardian as it stands right now. What Inner Fire does, is it gives the Guardian 3s Fury when burning is applied to him but you can’t always guarantee that you’ll get to fight a character or characters that allow you to proc that trait. But if we decided to add a caveat to that trait, for instance, if the trait said; Gain 3s of Fury when you receive burning. When you apply burning to a target, you gain 1s of burning yourself.
All of a sudden the Guardian could play off of that trait by applying burning to a target every 5 attacks and then using Smite condition to remove the burning to do extra damage.
This is, in a nutshell what I discuss in the video I linked above. How the devs could improve the game by adding caveats to not just traits, but skills, runes, sigils and everything that makes up a build. These Caveats don’t necessarily have to be all negative but you can watch the video for more on that.

I just thought I’d share this with you guys to get all your opinions. So let me know your thoughts even if you don’t click the link to watch the video.

The death of synergy
Self-reliance in GW2 far, far outcompetes altruism. There’s no Foul Feast into Plague Sending . Every profession builds to be an island unto themselves, which erodes the Support role and de-emphasises team play.

What teamplay there is in PVE revolves around blasting Fire Fields for max might, someone stacking Vulnerability, and everyone DPSing when a party member goes down to tag for rallies. If that is the only extent of demand for Damage, Control and Support in GW2 then clearly something has gone wrong

In PVP, teamfights in GW2 boil down to targets being called, a CC/damage train happening, the target going down/escaping, and resses or cleave being dropped. High preponderance of AOE and ports minimise positional plays, whilst simplistic and cramped map design lead to team splits being the most viable play in Conquest and thus further diluting the spectator experience of a real, ebbing and flowing teamfight.
There are less team plays as there are individual plays – what teamplay there is being focused into AOE pressure and Condi cleave. Whilst the action and flow of GW2 combat is great, the need for co-ordination is virtually zero outside of rotating to be in the right place at the right time to win fights.

There’s no clutch Enigma Black Hole into Invoker Meteor at mid lane that wins a fight and takes 2 towers as it is in DOTA, or the Thresh Death Sentence + Lantern that drags the jungler over into the Baron Steal as in League of Legends, or even the Blood Spike of a Blood Magic Necro GW1 team. Instead one observes the occasional Sanctuary to res a downed team member, or the Thief diving the Mesmer with ports and downing the Mesmer with Air/Fire procs. If that is the maximum depth of play possible – plays that require little to no team execution, then the skill ceiling for GW2 will forever be depressingly low and accordingly, its competitive scene forever hobbled in growth potential.

Opportunity cost
One of the biggest issues with GW2 right now is definitely the lack of downsides to skills. There’s no punishment in terms of lost energy or even negative triggers when a skill whiffs aside from the cast time and cooldown.

Accordingly, every skill is theoretically high impact, with the skills that require too much effort to land for their cast time like Warrior Whirling Axe or Ranger Whirling Defense or Ele Churning Earth seeing less play outside of more organised teams that can set them up. Even then, there are skills and setups that outcompete them; that offer higher return for less risk and so these cooldowns are thus ignored.

Thus, GW2 combat is a maelstrom of individually low impact skills leading to an opponent going down, maybe, let’s hope for crits oh wait he’s popped a heal.

Then there are the traits, that are almost univerally positive without any downside besides internal cooldowns. Thus, the traits that offer the greatest utility for the least opportunity cost, such as War Cleansing Ire, Ele Evasive Arcana, Gurd Inspired Virtue, Rang’s Companion’s Defense or Engi Incendiary Powder – are taken to the exclusion to many other traits, as their situational nature or lower power level makes them inferior.

Anet has definitely hobbled themselves in balance terms by sticking to nerfing trait efficacy or internal cooldowns or by moving tiers. Simply making traits more situational – as you mentioned as with Gurd’s Inner Fire – then allowing players to “break” these traits by letting them trigger the negative effects by themselves – definitely raises the skill floor and opens up the balance team’s avenues of attack.

The fact that an entire class was built around this concept of self-buffing, then removing those buffs for another effects – the Dervish – attests to the levels of risk-reward achievable with such a balance mindset. Later skills like Crystal Wave or Reap Conditions or Foul Feast – these are skills that play with conditions beyond simple application and self/ally removal and instead have specific triggers or support elements to them that are altruistic – something that is extremely under-leveraged in GW2 and as such every person is unto themselves, which erodes team play.

As for Necro’s Corruption Skills in GW2; they are a pale imitation of what GW1’s Corruptions were. Blood Is Power involved actual HP sacrifice, not a mere 1k worth of Bleeding out of 18k base vitality in a Condi build – and it was fully altruistic. The Mind Wrack/Aneurysm Mesmer combo gave foes Energy back – yet made them take damage for all that was gained. The caveats that powerful profession skills had in GW1 were great, and accordingly their power level could be all the greater. In GW2, almost every aspect of every meta build aims to minimise any caveat or opportunity cost, offering easy damage, easy defense and easy setup to land.

What caveats that do exist in Profession skills are easily outcompeted by others – some, even within the profession itself. This kind of internal imbalance has ramifications for not only the skill ceiling achievable but also the choices players make in creating builds.

As an example, take Ele Fire Dagger 5 – Fire Grab. 1.7 Coefficient going up to 2.8 if target is on fire, on a blisteringly fast 45 second cooldown. Compare it to Warrior’s Axe F1 – Eviscerate. 1.45 Coefficient at 10 Adrenaline going up to 2.18 at 30 Adrenaline; on a desultory 10 second cooldown. One of these skills is easier to land, is less conditional, and has less opportunity cost. I’ll let you guess which one.

In case the “but you can’t compare across professions!” card is played, let’s go over why Scepter Focus burst Ele is increasingly favoured over Scepter Dagger burst ele.

The reason is Phoenix. Quarter cast, 0.7 coefficient on flight, 1.7 coefficient on Blast, plus another 0.7 coefficient if Phoenix manages to hit twice when going through the target. Total coefficient, 2.4 to 3.1. Longer range, Blast Finisher, removes a Condition, and grants Vigour on return; on half the cooldown of Fire Grab. No caveats, no conditionals, no worries. The advent of Fresh Air magnified this internal imbalance something fierce, as now Ele could also have access to Air Magic 15/3 Lightning Strike, Scepter Air 2 Lightning Bolt, and the least-awful autoattack of Scepter, Arc Lightning more frequently.

There’s a clear internal imbalance here where one skill clearly supersedes the other in terms of opportunity cost vs damage output.

Runes, Sigils, Counterplay, Caveats

Right now Runes and Sigils are universally positive, which limits the avenues of attack Anet has in balancing them. Some combos are simply stronger than the rest – Strength, Pirate, Balthazar, Forge, to name a few.

Triggers are also similarly leashed; such as 25% HP triggers, or on hits, or %chance procs. Making, say Strength rune also inflict Weakness on oneself when a Boon is removed allows boon-less classes running Boon Hate to limit the power of Strength Rune users.

There’s no downside to Runes, no -75HP as in GW1, or negative effects as in the Jewels of Path of Exile. It was part of the reason why players elected to run sets like 2 Strength, 2 Fire, 2 Hoelbrak and although the new stipulations of only being able to run 6 of 1 set are helpful, it simply magnifies internal imbalance that some runes being less situational than others are stronger simply by dint of being useful in the most situations.

Strength, Pirate, Balthazar and Nightmare Rune are the latest offenders here, incorporating RNG into their design with very little sacrifice for their non-situationally powerful effects. How do you counterplay an RNG proc? The answer is, you don’t. And combat is significantly less readable as a result.

Then there’s the RNG procs.

Random Fear when you attack a condi class, thus forcing a stunbreak just because they slotted Nightmare Rune? Hilarious, except it’s not funny, it does not increase the skill floor and it does not promote skillful play other than sitting there and taking hits.
Everyone remember Rune of the Air before the nerfs where people autoattacking you suddenly fell over? That’s some quality gameplay design right there.
How about Sigil of Rage, where suddenly you crit someone then you are able to dump cooldowns in half the time and make them fall over before anyone knew what was happening?

The preponderance of RNG procs that still permeates the Rune and Sigil designs smacks of a lazy nod to old-school RPG and MMO mechanics where the dice gods, not player skill or player smarts decided fates. It makes for combat that is explosively unreliable and calculated plays practically impossible.

All the while, triggers like on-heal, on-elite, on-profession mechanic, on-utility type use are underleveraged and in fact the most reliable runes such as Lyssa for its On-Elite trigger or Scholar for its damage have been nerfed; either directly as for Lyssa, or indirectly due to the Ferocity nerf as for Scholar.

There is room for Anet to seriously improve the play and counterplay here of certain runes and here’s a few examples:

For Rune of Balthazar or Flame Legion, should have their % Burning procs reworked to require self-burning; then, to have the Rune also apply Burning to oneself.

• Balthazar could have its 4 rune trigger for Quickness instead trigger from On Heal, but then one also sets oneself on Fire and foes around oneself on the 6 rune trigger.
• Rune of Flame Legion could be similar; setting oneself and enemies close by on Fire and thus gaining a damage boost against them.

For Rune of Strength and Pirate, the 4 bonus of %on being struck to grant Might or summon a Parrot could be reworked to requiring the activation of an Elite to trigger.

• The 6 bonus of Strength could stipulate that having a Boon removed would inflict Weakness on oneself of 20 seconds AND to lose 3 Might Stacks, with other Boons ending also reducing one’s current Might Stacks by 1. Thus it is difficult as a boon-spamming class to justify spamming more than 2-3 covering Boons as their ending would reduce one’s damage output, and Boon Hate classes and Builds are extremely potent against Strength Rune users. It also makes Strength rune less universally applicable, as one would need at least 1 other Boon to cover it, lest even 1 Boon removal landing also require a cleanse to counter the Weakness.
• The 6 bonus of Pirate could again, require an On-Elite trigger, with the 4 bonus being On-heal. The caveat here is that the Parrot disappears if the Might stacks originating from the 4 bonus only end. Thus one needs to Heal constantly if one wants to maintain the Parrot.

Rune of Nightmare simply needs a trigger that reflects its counterpressure nature.

• The 6 bonus of Nightmare could trigger only when one is interrupted while casting an Elite, or casting a skill that would heal (as in, Med Kit swaps don’t count, but Bandage self would. Similarly, Mantra of Recovery’s initial cast counts, but not the use of the mantra charges)
  Accordingly, Nightmare’s ICD is lower. However, the caveat is that snare Condition durations (Chill, cripple, immobilise) and CC durations on oneself are longer. Thus, one is disabled for longer, but disables others when key skills are interrupted.

All this reminds me of the first time i read over the GW1 necromancer skills. Not even the expansions, just the Prophecies set.

Ran into one skill that hurt the enemy, but put a debuff on the necro, then another that would send any debuffs on the necro to a target (or all enemies without range).

The whole thing reminded me of the shenanigans i could get up to with a proper hand in MTG or other trading card games.

I miss this type of gameplay from GW1 TERRIBLY on the Mesmer. For example:
Signet of Midnight
Blackout
Psychic Distraction

Honestly, those types of skills and the ability to provide SKILLFUL counters to an enemy team (by locking down a Monk or Ritualist or a high priority target while the rest of the team spiked) were some of my favorite gaming moments. When I did well as a Mesmer, I felt truly satisfied with a job well done and like I had accomplished something tangible for my team.

This sounds all interesting but I do have some questions:

“Do we have enough room to make this happen”. I mean from what I hear in the forums (I never have played GW1) in GW1 every class had around 200 skills and weapons with swapable skills. GW2 is far more restricting then that in skills and weapon choices. So do we have enough skills/traits/runes to make this happen while maintaining (viable) build diversity and class diversity?

“Does this playstyle depend on a lot of UI visibility?” I believe that for this kind of playstyle we need a lot more focus on our UI and right now UI is already strained in what information it gives. Is it wise to add a lot more focus on the UI while we also have too watch out for the tell of our enemy.

“Does the way CC/conditions interact not hinder this playstyle?” Right now stun/dazes/… overwrite each other and by giving some skills negative effects would it not mean that you can negate a powerfull enemy effect what a weaker of your own? The same applies to conditions and maybe even boons.

Tim.6450:

This sounds all interesting but I do have some questions:

“Do we have enough room to make this happen”. I mean from what I hear in the forums (I never have played GW1) in GW1 every class had around 200 skills and weapons with swapable skills. GW2 is far more restricting then that in skills and weapon choices. So do we have enough skills/traits/runes to make this happen while maintaining (viable) build diversity and class diversity?

I’d like to believe there’s plenty of room to make this happen because even now, they are trying to apply downsides to things. Just look at the upcoming change to the Warrior Burst skills, they now lose adrenaline when they miss. If there was a trait that affected the Warrior better, when he doesn’t have adrenaline, then Warriors could play off of that.

If there isn’t enough room, then I’d like to know why. Not that Anet owes me anything, it’s just for my own sanity because it frustrates me that the game isn’t reaching the potential I think it can attain.

Tim.6450:

“Does this playstyle depend on a lot of UI visibility?” I believe that for this kind of playstyle we need a lot more focus on our UI and right now UI is already strained in what information it gives. Is it wise to add a lot more focus on the UI while we also have too watch out for the tell of our enemy.

Not always but if it does, it won’t require more than it does now.

Tim.6450:

“Does the way CC/conditions interact not hinder this playstyle?” Right now stun/dazes/… overwrite each other and by giving some skills negative effects would it not mean that you can negate a powerfull enemy effect what a weaker of your own? The same applies to conditions and maybe even boons.

The only CC/condi that overwrite each other are daze, Stun, Fear, KD, knock back and pull. This can be avoided but, if it ends up being something that someone can do, I would consider it a smart tactic for the character that gives himself a negative condition intentionally, in order to escape a bad situation. That’s the kind of smart play you want in your game is what I would like to think.

MonMalthias.4763:

In reply to all things Malthi as can be seen on youtube

Yea, I remember crystal wave. I actually made a very weird build around that. You make me want to go play it now.

Just thinking about the old Energy control Mesmer, they could evolve that into an Endurance control Mesmer. Something to counter the constant dodge spamming. It wouldn’t work in PvE because I don’t believe mobs have endurance bars, but if they did…maybe anet should give them endurance bars so we can have smart Ai.

And for Foul Feast, I thought the new trait for the Necro Called Unholy Martyr could be changed to make the function of Life Transfer into something similar to Foul Feast. So you just activate Life Transfer and it does damage but it also pulls 2 conditions from allies and for each condition it pulled, it would give you Life Force. Changing the function and the way a Necro would think about using Life Transfer. And the Necro doesn’t even have to use Plague to remove it, he can just transfer with weapon skills and Epidemic.

And for that example you gave about Runes of Balthazar, another suggestion could be; it impairs your healing by 20% but you gain that AoE burning benefit and maybe your team’s Ele could take the Aquatic Benevolence (25% increase to all ally heals) to cancel that out for you.

The possibilities of smart interactions just blow my mind

Tim.6450:

This sounds all interesting but I do have some questions:

“Do we have enough room to make this happen”. I mean from what I hear in the forums (I never have played GW1) in GW1 every class had around 200 skills and weapons with swapable skills. GW2 is far more restricting then that in skills and weapon choices. So do we have enough skills/traits/runes to make this happen while maintaining (viable) build diversity and class diversity?

The question, “do we have enough room to make this happen?” is easily answered with “Yes.”; because the essence of trade-offs kicks off the concept of perfect imbalance . You can have a build be strong in terms of CC output, but itself have little burst damage. Or have ridiculous Condi output, but itself be weak to CC. It’s when builds emerge that reduce or eliminate these tradeoffs to combine several aspects like Hambow for damage and CC, or Celestial Strength rune Dagger Dagger ele for sustained damage and group support that things begin to unravel.

I would argue that Anet’s balance team has no easy way forward unless they begin to explore the concept of tradeoffs as the GW1 team had done so well with their skill designs. By only leaving the positive of each skill, rune and trait, there is nothing to increase variety without also introducing the possibility of power creep.

Look at it this way. Right now, would you say that viable (and by viable I mean meta, or slightly off- or close to-meta) build variety is truly extant in GW2’s PVE and PVP?

In my mind, the answer is absolutely no, not at all. When I list builds like Hambow, like Celestial Strength Dagger Dagger Ele, like pre-nerf Spirit Ranger, like D/P and S/D Thief, like 6 Explosives Engi with Balthazar Runes and Incendiary Powder, do trade-offs for what they bring to the table come to mind? No, because each and every single one of these builds are only there because they have the minimum of all trade-offs. They each incorporate some degree of CC and Condi mitigation, are (relatively) tanky and sustainable in rotational and team fights, and are generally self-reliant in terms of positioning, self-peel and self-setup of burst (direct or condi) damage.

The observation that these meta builds also exist to outcompete others in PVE also holds. The 30 Fire LH Conjure Ele with FGS, the GS Axe/Mace Warrior, the Consecration Guardian with Reflects and GS/Hammer, the Grenadier/Steel Packed Powder/Modified Ammunition Engi; all running Berserker, stacking mobs in corners, all spamming Boons and Vulnerability to shorten PVE encounters to bare seconds as a result of multiplicative damage and the insane scaling that Boons offer. You can choose to bring a Condi build, or run full Soldier’s or even run off-the-wall specs like Interrupt or Minion or Traps or whatever else – but every single one of these specs is outcompeted due to lesser efficiency of exploiting the brain-dead mechanics in dungeon encounters.

The recent skill bar changes and the April Feature patch have brought some variety to the table, but again, clear internal imbalances such as Strength rune outcompeting most others; and the fact that multiple rune and sigil sets are clearly superior above all speaks to Anet’s failure to take into account the power creep of certain combinations leaving others in the dust.

Trade-offs force players to really think about and plan out their moves, tactically and strategically. I would argue that the latest Warrior Skill bar changes to adrenaline is a great example of Anet finally utilising this avenue of attack for balance by making Adrenaline harder to sustain. In the end, greater build variety is possible once players figure out how to build to counteract their trade-offs. There’s already talk of the upcoming Adrenaline nerfs pushing warriors away from Cleansing Ire and towards things like Sharpened Axes or Warhorn Quick Breathing or Shouts because the Adrenaline nerfs make frequent Burst skills harder to push out in the absence of more generation besides CI alone.

In the end, applying tradeoffs to all things – not just the opportunity cost of Trait tiers, or ICDs, or efficacy of traits, will be what drives build variety. This kind of building to turn tradeoffs into strengths is one of the reasons why Magic: The Gathering is so enduring; as the depth of play explorable deepens when you don’t just stick to the positive and allow some controlled sacrifice on the player’s part to produce results above and beyond straightforward attack and defense.

As an example of building to counteract caveats in GW1, here’s one for a PBAoE elementalist (and no, it’s not viable as in meta as skilled opponents will focus you down, but it’s fun to play):
Star Burst – for that PBAoE Burning
Flame Djinn’s Haste – for more PBAoE and rushdown
Glyph of Restoration – to sustain through the inevitable incoming damage when running in
Yeti Smash -Hilarious naming aside, this is PBAoE knockdown – on Burning Foes.
Renewing Smash – for that single target Execution factor
Conjure Flame – for armour ignoring Elemental damage; but can be replaced with Mark of Rodgort for Burning damage instead.
Fire Attunement - for Energy management
Resurrection Signet - to help res, but can be replaced with None Shall Pass! for more Knockdown as anti-kite by moving points from Hammer Mastery to Tactics.

PBAoE Builds in GW1 had a short run when people discovered that Ride the Lightning being a teleport was a great opener and escape for some “meleementalist” builds, but lacked soft or hard CC to keep up once RTL was on cooldown.

By exploiting that Star Burst causes Burning, then that Yeti Smash causes KD on conditioned foes, and also that Flame Djinn’s Haste being a good movement speed buff as well as a strong PBAoE skill once in melee range, whilst using Renewing Smash as an Execute once a target is Knocked Down and other skills are on recharge. General utility skills made up the rest for sustained DPS and sustain through combat in terms of energy and health.

In GW1, practically every skill had a caveat that required setup. Accordingly, their power levels were high: Hard CC often lasted 2-3 seconds, Conditions like Burning could degenerate 7HPS out of a usual 500HP health pool, and damage output routinely did 25% or more in a single hit for spells and 10% or more for weapon skills before factoring in Monk Protections . This allowed Anet latitude by making skills be more situational and thus require players dedicate more skill slots to meet the requirements for powerful damage or CC or healing effects, or tune a skill’s output to a fine degree by altering other skills in the combo as well.

That so many skills in GW1 were altruistic as well – as in, dealing either insignificant damage by themselves, but buffing team-mates, or directly buffing team-mate’s defenses without self-benefit at all – required greater team co-ordination and synergy. This is not to say that a return to the GW1 days where running without a team was suicidal if one wanted to have any chance of winning PvP is called for, but it certainly speaks to an under-leveraged aspect of GW2 where the extent of support is AOE boons, some reflects, but skills like Plague Signet’s passive are practically insignificant in terms of team support as the player has no control as to how many condis are drawn and when, which nullifies any possibility of clutch play.

I think it’s time that Anet looked into the possibility that maybe the reason why GW2 PVP lacks individually distinguishable plays unlike GW1 is because one can spam cooldowns in GW2 and still have some modicum of efficacy; whereas this is not the case at all in GW1.

I would like to point out that even the energy system in gw1 was kinda its own caveat that gw2 forgo’d.
It rewarded smart efficient play, and proper management, allowing you to use any skill at anytime if you were careful enough, but could easily run dry leaving you vulnerable if you weren’t. The choice of how much and the type of energy management you had dictated the play style of your build or speed of combat.

That’s the one thing i missed about gw1, imo it was really different then most other games out there, in the way they do a mana system. For better or for worse, the closes thing that they got to that in gw2 is the thief’s initiative system.

BobbyT.7192:

I would like to point out that even the energy system in gw1 was kinda its own caveat that gw2 forgo’d.
It rewarded smart efficient play, and proper management, allowing you to use any skill at anytime if you were careful enough, but could easily run dry leaving you vulnerable if you weren’t. The choice of how much and the type of energy management you had dictated the play style of your build or speed of combat.

That’s the one thing i missed about gw1, imo it was really different then most other games out there, in the way they do a mana system. For better or for worse, the closes thing that they got to that in gw2 is the thief’s initiative system.

But even that feels spammy without cooldowns.

Dirame.8521:

BobbyT.7192:

I would like to point out that even the energy system in gw1 was kinda its own caveat that gw2 forgo’d.
It rewarded smart efficient play, and proper management, allowing you to use any skill at anytime if you were careful enough, but could easily run dry leaving you vulnerable if you weren’t. The choice of how much and the type of energy management you had dictated the play style of your build or speed of combat.

That’s the one thing i missed about gw1, imo it was really different then most other games out there, in the way they do a mana system. For better or for worse, the closes thing that they got to that in gw2 is the thief’s initiative system.

But even that feels spammy without cooldowns.

Because it is.
Such a system can never work, because you will just look at the numbers, and in case of being a pure DD look for the skills which has the best damage per initiative. Then you spam that skill. Sometimes you might mix in an Infiltrator’s Strike or a Headshot but at the end of the day, you use those skills maybe once or twice for every 15-20 times you use your damage ability.

The skills on a thiefs bar are basically in a constant fight for the limited ressource they all share. One of them will be the winner, and you will see people spam that skill.

The endresult with the current system will be that thief will either be too strong or too weak, regardless of how much they tweak numbers or skills.

A complete mechanic rework is needed, but it is for most classes regardless (sorry the no mana idea was nice until you try PvP).

Varonth.5830:

Dirame.8521:

BobbyT.7192:

I would like to point out that even the energy system in gw1 was kinda its own caveat that gw2 forgo’d.
It rewarded smart efficient play, and proper management, allowing you to use any skill at anytime if you were careful enough, but could easily run dry leaving you vulnerable if you weren’t. The choice of how much and the type of energy management you had dictated the play style of your build or speed of combat.

That’s the one thing i missed about gw1, imo it was really different then most other games out there, in the way they do a mana system. For better or for worse, the closes thing that they got to that in gw2 is the thief’s initiative system.

But even that feels spammy without cooldowns.

Because it is.
Such a system can never work, because you will just look at the numbers, and in case of being a pure DD look for the skills which has the best damage per initiative. Then you spam that skill. Sometimes you might mix in an Infiltrator’s Strike or a Headshot but at the end of the day, you use those skills maybe once or twice for every 15-20 times you use your damage ability.

The skills on a thiefs bar are basically in a constant fight for the limited ressource they all share. One of them will be the winner, and you will see people spam that skill.

The endresult with the current system will be that thief will either be too strong or too weak, regardless of how much they tweak numbers or skills.

A complete mechanic rework is needed, but it is for most classes regardless (sorry the no mana idea was nice until you try PvP).

To spam with most classes, is really bad. In PvE it’s basically spammage but PvP it’s all about timing and that’s where the Thief mechanic shows how broken it can be.
If they had a diminishing returns type of deal with the Thief, where if he spammed a particular skill too much, it would either go on a short cooldown or it could cost more initiative each time it’s used back to back, that would get people mixing things up quite a bit.

The D/P thief is the only spec that truly mixes things up and wouldn’t suffer from either of those limitations.

Dirame.8521:

Hey guys, I recently started a new segment on my youtube channel called Discussions and I’ve done 3 episodes so far. This latest episode is called Caveats and I talk about how the GW2 gameplay and build diversity could be improved by injecting certain skills, runes, sigils and traits with drawbacks, as many of the skills in GW2 do not have any.

I give an example using a trait for the Guardian called Inner Fire and how that trait is totally useless to the Guardian as it stands right now. What Inner Fire does, is it gives the Guardian 3s Fury when burning is applied to him but you can’t always guarantee that you’ll get to fight a character or characters that allow you to proc that trait. But if we decided to add a caveat to that trait, for instance, if the trait said; Gain 3s of Fury when you receive burning. When you apply burning to a target, you gain 1s of burning yourself.
All of a sudden the Guardian could play off of that trait by applying burning to a target every 5 attacks and then using Smite condition to remove the burning to do extra damage.
This is, in a nutshell what I discuss in the video I linked above. How the devs could improve the game by adding caveats to not just traits, but skills, runes, sigils and everything that makes up a build. These Caveats don’t necessarily have to be all negative but you can watch the video for more on that.

I just thought I’d share this with you guys to get all your opinions. So let me know your thoughts even if you don’t click the link to watch the video.

Do better research first. Torch skill 4 sets the guardian himself on fire. This will work synergistically with inner fire.

Assassin X.8573:

Dirame.8521:

Hey guys, I recently started a new segment on my youtube channel called Discussions and I’ve done 3 episodes so far. This latest episode is called Caveats and I talk about how the GW2 gameplay and build diversity could be improved by injecting certain skills, runes, sigils and traits with drawbacks, as many of the skills in GW2 do not have any.

I give an example using a trait for the Guardian called Inner Fire and how that trait is totally useless to the Guardian as it stands right now. What Inner Fire does, is it gives the Guardian 3s Fury when burning is applied to him but you can’t always guarantee that you’ll get to fight a character or characters that allow you to proc that trait. But if we decided to add a caveat to that trait, for instance, if the trait said; Gain 3s of Fury when you receive burning. When you apply burning to a target, you gain 1s of burning yourself.
All of a sudden the Guardian could play off of that trait by applying burning to a target every 5 attacks and then using Smite condition to remove the burning to do extra damage.
This is, in a nutshell what I discuss in the video I linked above. How the devs could improve the game by adding caveats to not just traits, but skills, runes, sigils and everything that makes up a build. These Caveats don’t necessarily have to be all negative but you can watch the video for more on that.

I just thought I’d share this with you guys to get all your opinions. So let me know your thoughts even if you don’t click the link to watch the video.

Do better research first. Torch skill 4 sets the guardian himself on fire. This will work synergistically with inner fire.

Doesn’t actually sets you on fire nor does it actually work with inner fire

Assassin X.8573:

Do better research first. Torch skill 4 sets the guardian himself on fire. This will work synergistically with inner fire.

Dirame.8521:

Assassin X.8573:

Do better research first. Torch skill 4 sets the guardian himself on fire. This will work synergistically with inner fire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mZlCx3ZdD8#t=447

Heh, this reminds me of GW1’s Burning Speed where you could set yourself on fire and become Sanic for 7 seconds.

That gives me an idea for making Torch Skill 4 both supporty and strong,_ yet still counterbalanced by its caveat:

Zealot’s Flame
Set yourself on fire, emitting periodic bursts of Zealot’s flame.

• Gain unique buff – Zealot’s flame.
• Once per second for 2 seconds, emit Zealot’s flame in pulses in a PBAoE of 180 radius. You gain the Condition Burning for 3 seconds every pulse.
• Each pulse cleanses 1 condition on allies and Burns foes for 2 seconds. Target limit: 5.
• Conditions cleansed on Allies grant them Burning for 2 seconds on their next attack. (Basically a Virtue of Justice proc)

• In total, this skill puts Burning on oneself for 4 seconds, and on foes for 6 seconds (Initial pulse + 3 pulses per second). Up to 3 conditions are cleansed on allies, and up to 3 allied attacks inflict burning for another 2 seconds.
• This buff to allied attacks, which is basically 3 Sun Spirit procs in a row is counterbalanced by applying 9 seconds of Burning to oneself. In a condi build that is a lot of self damage, but thankfully, there’s Smite Condition for that; and at most one only has to take 4 ticks before cleansing.
• In a support build, the cleansing will be appreciated against condi-cleave, which gives Torch a defined role when facing things like GK Engineer or a Necro running Staff marks. Whilst it pales in comparison to the other traditional Bunker guardian weapons, this one is no slouch either.

I think it should work like it currently does but also set you alight whilst cleansing conditions on yourself like you said. And when you toss Zealot’s fire at someone, it removes the burning you have as well. I’m not entirely sure about the ally cleansing though because Cleansing Flame already does that but sounds interesting regardless.

i stand corrected.

serves me right for believing non-updated tool-tips!

Assassin X.8573:

i stand corrected.

serves me right for believing non-updated tool-tips!

By now you should know not to trust tooltips whatsoever, regardless of profession, weapon, mechanic, trait, sigil, rune, or even the damage numbers. Damage is especially deceptive as it is calculated from average weapon damage vs 2600 armour target, which makes newer players reading the wiki presume there are “baseline” numbers for skill damage values when it’s clearly not the case – There’s only weapon damage x power x coefficient / armour value.

Anyway, I think a good starting point for players to counter their own condi-spam would be to (re)-introduce skills like Crystal wave from GW1 or Reap Impurities to Traits. It allows players to frontload their condi damage to reduce risk, but at the same time, players lose the control effects of condis like Immob, Poison, Chill, Cripple and Weakness; so there’s a real tradeoff.

Scaling should be Power based instead of Condi damage based to encourage hybrid (and this means true hybrid, not Might stacking) builds and to reduce players “double dipping” their condi damage stat whilst reducing their risk as condi gear already incorporates defensive stats as part of their backloaded escalating damage design. This has the potential to:

• Reduce Engineer reliance upon Incendiary Powder for sustained damage
• Allow more cerebral play rather than simply spamming all condi skills for diversity of condi cover. The order in which conditions are applied matters more than ever to the aggressor rather than the unilateral, anti-fun FILO condi watching on the defender’s part.
• Make professions that rely upon conditions for their Control component (Necro, Engineer) have to trade off kiting their opponent against going for the throat (carpe jugulum)

As an introductory idea, Necro’s Feast of Corruption could receive even greater LF and damage reward; same as with Necro Staff Necrotic Grasp .

Engineer could receive the same reaping through Acidic Elixirs ; Evasive Powder Keg ; Concussion Bomb ; and Jump Shot .

Other classes could have various skills and utilities and traits updated with the new Reap Mechanic – or even have new skills created – to take advantage of the mechanic.

MonMalthias.4763:

As an introductory idea, Necro’s Feast of Corruption could receive even greater LF and damage reward; same as with Necro Staff Necrotic Grasp .

Engineer could receive the same reaping through Acidic Elixirs ; Evasive Powder Keg ; Concussion Bomb ; and Jump Shot .

Other classes could have various skills and utilities and traits updated with the new Reap Mechanic – or even have new skills created – to take advantage of the mechanic.

It would be pretty funny to play against. It would be a race to get rid of your conditions before you got bursted down.

Interesting idea. It could really help with this problem GW2 has with Apex choices.
I remember my W/N back in GW1. Drunken Blow + Plague Touch was fun.

Dual.8953:

Interesting idea. It could really help with this problem GW2 has with Apex choices.
I remember my W/N back in GW1. Drunken Blow + Plague Touch was fun.

Or Headbutt, Plague touch.

Dirame.8521:

MonMalthias.4763:

snip of own post

It would be pretty funny to play against. It would be a race to get rid of your conditions before you got bursted down.

Having done some more calculation, I think that having Reaping scale with Condition damage, then also having a Power coefficient for baseline damage would be better as this would already require a diversification in stats that sacrifices Vitality or Toughness for scaling than simply Power replacing Malice.

As this is pretty much generating an entirely new mechanic from scratch, let’s puzzle out some design goals to begin:

• Reaping ameliorates risk for condition builds, trading in burst damage for less total damage than if the condition were to tick fully. I think this would be essential to prevent the creation of new apex choices. Therefore, condition reaping should not scale with multiplicative damage such as Ferocity as total possible damage could be a runaway if people simply ran Berserker then stacked condition diverse builds.
  • I think it might be best if the Reaping damage did not have a possibility of critting. The base power coefficient of the Reaping skill should, in line with any other skill.

• At the moment Precision is an underleveraged stat in Condition builds, being present for crit-proc condition applying traits as the design of conditions at present does not require Precision inherently once conditions are applied. We could throw in some scaling there.

• Stacking large amounts of a single condition is far riskier than spamming out diverse numbers of conditions, so there should be some reward for that. Stacking large amounts of a single condi then reaping should still be less rewarding than letting it tick over as it is more risky.

So we could make the reaping mechanic:

• Scale with number of remaining seconds of condition applied. This rewards early reaping for more damage, and prevents reaping late to “double dip” damage.
  • It is therefore a designed-in trade-off for the reaping mechanic as neither choice of reaping early for more frontloaded damage or letting it tick out for more total damage is an apex choice.

• Scale with Precision as well as Power at certain coefficients to reward builds investing Precision in Condition builds without resorting to crit-proc condi traits.
  • As the reaping component of skills cannot crit, there should be some compensation with investing Precision, and the Precision coefficient is the answer. All hail Rampager and long may it reign.
• Scale with number of stacks reaped, with a greater reward on reaping large stacks than large numbers of single conditions.

So with the design goals and mechanic puzzled out, let’s figure out a formula.

• Reaping skill X: (Condition-specific power coefficient) * Power coeff. * Precision coeff. * (Number of seconds remaining of each stack of condition reaped) * (Number of stacks reaped) + Reaping skill X’s baseline power coefficient

As an example, let’s take 10 stacks of Bleed, each with 10 seconds remaining per stack, on a character of 1500 Malice, 1500 Power and 1500 Precision and 1500 Condition damage

• Bleed: Currently does 0.05*Condition damage + 42.5 per stack at 80 per second. 10 stacks for 10 seconds at 1500 condition damage yields: 11750 total potential damage left uncleansed.
  • Now, let’s reap it. For the sake of calculation, let’s assume that our weapon damage is ~1000, and our reaped target has 2600 armour for the direct damage component. As it is a condition based attack, we’ll set the very modest baseline power coefficient at 0.3, which yields 173 direct damage before reaping damage to be added on.
  • We’ll set the condition specific power coefficient to 0.02, 40% of the Bleed damage condition damage coefficient
  • We’ll set the Malice coefficient to 0.1 and Precision coefficient to 0.15.
  • We’ll presume that the number of stacks (10), duration remaining (10 seconds) are the same; i.e. instant Reap at time of Bleed application. Totally unbalanced, but calculating for optimal conditions as a baseline lets one see the peak damage.

• The result is 6923 damage, of which 6750 damage is from Reaping, and 173 from direct damage without crits. This is just under 60% of the total potential damage, which sounds like a lot, and it is.
  • Obviously animation/cast time would have to be balanced accordingly. For more granular balance, Reaping could instead go by individual stack rather than reaping individual conditions; although damage calculation would then be quite complex.
  • It does, however, prove to be quite problematic in the user’s prediction of how much damage they will do when reaping. In the event of reaping the conditions of multiple people on a single target each with their own Malice, it becomes very difficult to determine just how much damage a reap will do.

MonMalthias.4763:

So we could make the reaping mechanic:

• Scale with number of remaining seconds of condition applied. This rewards early reaping for more damage, and prevents reaping late to “double dip” damage.
  • It is therefore a designed-in trade-off for the reaping mechanic as neither choice of reaping early for more frontloaded damage or letting it tick out for more total damage is an apex choice.

I don’t think double dipping damage is something that should be shied away from. In fact, as you mention later in your post, cast time, animation, blind, dodge etc Can all factor in and waiting for that double dip can be a major risk you’re choosing to take. I think it’s a choice that a player would be grateful to have.

Blow them up early or blow them up late.

tldr: There are at least some skill synergies in GW2 but you dont have the possibility to build and customize them as much as in GW1. Complexity is missing

The overall skill system is one of the biggest flaws of GW2.
The major problem is that they designed a system that is easy to understand for everyone.

Unfortunately it is a very basic system in the game that can’t be easily changed.
I really wish they’d change it. But i know that this might never happen.

Having a skill that gains additional effects when a condition is met (like a skill that does X damage per condition on the enemy) is way more interesting then a passive trait like “+10% damage when target is suffering a condition”

In GW2 the Necro has the scepter mainhand 3 to deal damage depending on the number of conditions on the enemy. But at the same time the scepter gives you bleed+poison from auto attack and cripple from the 2nd skill. You dont get the same freedom to combine everything yourself like in Guild Wars 1.

In GW1 you would have the complete freedom to choose the skills to apply the conditions YOU want to synergize with the skill that does more damage depending on the number of conditions on the enemy.

The preponderance of RNG procs that still permeates the Rune and Sigil designs smacks of a lazy nod to old-school RPG and MMO mechanics where the dice gods, not player skill or player smarts decided fates. It makes for combat that is explosively unreliable and calculated plays practically impossible.

Although I initially wanted to address your posts as a whole – I’m going to start here and move into some more general ideas afterwards.

The idea here is this whole “rng based benefit” works as a skill gap compressor.

In a game designed and built for more casual minded players that don’t have the time, capacity or will power to invest heavily in a game without these skill gap compressors the difference between people who can put in a lot of time into playing GW2 or are just generally very good at video games and the rest of the players – the average joes would be immense.

I’ve seen a few of your suggestions MonMalthias and while they aren’t necessarily bad they’re just not fit for the game GW2 is and wants to be.

Look at it objectively.

We have a game that :

-Has skills tied into weapon in order for even the most inexperienced/bad players to be effective by just slotting a weapon.

-Has a downed mechanic that simply washes away most mistakes in any engagement setting because the res is usually really fast.

-Has had its trait points reworked because too many people couldn’t even understand how to trait their classes right and were slotting points without unlocking traits.

This game is targeted towards a casual player base. The kind of casual player base that wouldn’t really like or be competent enough to look into risk/reward play like what you suggested with some runes.

Casual players want a simple "pick up and play " experience. They want things to be easy to understand and use, fast and rewarding.

GW2 in a sense has become less like GW1 and more like CoD – where the perks are very simple, don’t really have trade-offs and generally work in all situations.

Why? Because compared to GW1’s player base GW2’s player base is more similar to CoD’s player base. It’s more casual, more relaxed, more into “pick up and play” and less into number crunching, thinking about strategy and synergy and whatnot.

Also – The lack of player interdependency is not a bad thing in my opinion. There are a lot of games where this is enforced.
GW2 offers a new perspective for those players who prefer to do things on their own with others around rather than together with others.

The difference is that in GW2 you can still do well while your team does poorly.
In other MMO games if your “x role” isn’t performing up to par, the whole party is going to suffer.

This is one of the strengths of this game in my opinion. The fact that my personal ability and skill can make the difference and the mistakes and inadequacies of others aren’t going to take that much of a toll on me.

Example : FOTM 49 – bonus stage – molten facility – 4/5 party members go down : Berserker is at 50%ish health and the other boss is at 100%.

Through my skill and ability I managed to bring down the Berserker and allow my party to res in order to take the other boss down and finish the instance.

It was one of the most fun experiences I’ve had in the game – because even though 80% of my party was dead the game didn’t punish me for their mistakes and it made a difference.

Also – as a general trend I’ve noticed with games these days : games that intend to become a huge commercial success ( and cater to as many players as possible as opposed to catering to a small niche of players) tend to go towards the “simplified” game model – with less things cluttering, fewer and more evident mechanics, less numbers and generally an easier to access and master gameplay.

Because ultimately by making your game less strategic, less tactical and less complex from a theory crafting perspective you might alienate some players who like/require these aspects to be in the game but on the other hand the reduced simplicity makes it more accessible to the average player who can now play easier and even perform better which in term makes it a better experience for him.

I think it’s pretty clear that in the last 10 years video game player types have shifted dramatically – with the majority now consisting of hypercasual or casual players rather than hardcore “die hard theory craft experts and master strategists”.

Simply put – you can make more money making a game simpler so simpler players have fun in it and find it accessible than making it complex – too complex for your average player to do that good in.
Especially true for PvP settings – where the more complex your game is and the more steep the difficulty curve the more average players will be stomped by players who know what they’re doing thus driving them away from the game.

Harper.4173:

Through my skill and ability I managed to bring down the Berserker and allow my party to res in order to take the other boss down and finish the instance.

It was one of the most fun experiences I’ve had in the game – because even though 80% of my party was dead the game didn’t punish me for their mistakes and it made a difference.

The cool thing about what we’re asking for is that, it doesn’t really over-complicate things.

What I’d like to see does not have to be to the level that GW1 did it. It just has to incorporated in places that need it. Like the new Adrenaline bar. The use of adrenaline when you miss an attack is not hard to understand for a casual player but it wasn’t there to begin with. These are the kinds of things that need to be modified so that the game can grow.

The bad thing about making your game too shallow is that the really good players will get bored or frustrated with the game really early. This may end up in your game falling by the wayside because the people everyone aspired to beat, end up leaving.

Dirame.8521:

Harper.4173:

Through my skill and ability I managed to bring down the Berserker and allow my party to res in order to take the other boss down and finish the instance.

It was one of the most fun experiences I’ve had in the game – because even though 80% of my party was dead the game didn’t punish me for their mistakes and it made a difference.

The cool thing about what we’re asking for is that, it doesn’t really over-complicate things.

What I’d like to see does not have to be to the level that GW1 did it. It just has to incorporated in places that need it. Like the new Adrenaline bar. The use of adrenaline when you miss an attack is not hard to understand for a casual player but it wasn’t there to begin with. These are the kinds of things that need to be modified so that the game can grow.

The bad thing about making your game too shallow is that the really good players will get bored or frustrated with the game really early. This may end up in your game falling by the wayside because the people everyone aspired to beat, end up leaving.

People will either leave because it’s too complicate, or leave if its not complicated enough, in the end it who ever makes the company more money that gets most of the attention. Can’t really blame anet for going where the money is (i’m sure people will though)

Tnx Harper for that elaborate formulation of my objective analysis of GW2, this gives me the opportunity to formulate a ;tldr for you (based upon how I view GW2 combat when i have a morning grudge):

GW2 combat system is about as interesting as whack a mole with two alternating moles linked together (aka. whack one the other comes up), it has counter play on the level of rock/paper/scissors, with an imbalance to rock beating everything. And the reward system is about as straight forward as ‘draw a string’. (sorry I could not find a traveling fun park equivalent to ‘rock/paper/scissors’).

Actually, and this is something I can still get worked up about, the statement that GW2 wasn’t: ‘Swing your sword, Swing it again’; is so the opposite that I can’t be reminded of that statement without popping a vane in my forehead.

GW1 was a good game with a decent to mediocre story, with period gfx, and no Z axis. GW2 is a good LOOKING game, with a decent to mediocre story, with stunning GFX and an Z axis. (hope you notice how gameplay isn’t even in the GW2 line-up)

Add. Though I will say that GW1 wasn’t without it’s balance problems, f/e Insidious Parasite as a one skill option against anything melee (mainly Sins). And ohboy, all the ‘balance’ horror we went through in GW1. The gameplay could be much more interesting though (when you got to the PvP), although PvE was reduced to the trinity ‘whack a mole’ standard of the time, with a few locations where other strategies prevailed. Still though, within a profession and role there were still a couple viable variants…

Add2. and I will say that the combo skill mechanics are still interesting and fresh! Guess GW2 combat ‘has that’…

There, glad I got that off my chest… I couldn’t have done it without you Harper! As my objective non grudged mind sees things exactly as you do. Still though, I am only human and do come with emotions (at times).

To then comment on this, and where I think the OP and MonMalthias are right, is that GW2 offer no options beyond ‘noob toob’ level of play. Seeing you brought up FPS (COD). When I first analysed the professions, it was blatantly clear to me that it were just a couple of builds cut up and put together in an illusion of choice model. When it turned out that the game itself had this ‘rock’ imbalance in it’s counterplay, and worked like the linked together moles, only a few builds turned to actually viable. (any uber-combo’s were quickly disposed off.) I gave up early on, and just went with what I liked, which is just fine to work through PvE content (like just about anything).

side note. I still think that Anet threw out the baby with the bath water, when they made this choice. GW2 is pretty much everything GW1 wasn’t, except for the decent to mediocre story (depending on your p.o.v).

But as time progresses I do think that, seeing it is combat what you do most in the game, not having any true options or interesting mechanics/play styles, will bore me at some point (together with the increasing need to farm farm farm, not just because it is still way to rewarding, seeing the whole 300g cmdr-tag colour discussions (after 2y im at my highest gold ever, 92g ! — but also because end game content (most noticeably ascended crafting and this new backpack, require it. — but anyways… ).

I realize the need for a noob toob, and that the game should come with understandable mechanics (f/e Ice creatures being invulnerable to freeze, or fire creatures to burning), but that doesn’t mean that it should be ‘the only’ way! Can you imagine a COD where the unlocks are just more noob toobs. Though arguably, I haven’t played FPS’s for years, so maybe that is exactly what they turned into (Friendly fire, ever played with that? man, those were the days!)…

An interesting game has an easy entry level, and gets progressively harder and more interesting with marginal to very limited more power or options, without the entry level being entirely unviable for most of the main content. (in this case f/e how the New Mordrem are a lot harder than anything in the game, and how these are put into the story (the wolf challenge being in the actual story line, and the choice to put the ‘Shadow o/t Dragon’ in it as well) are just bad game design! As they break the social contract that the rest of the game seems to convey to you. — but that’s another story I guess…)

Personally I think this game should increase the amount of utility skills by at least 4 – 2x catagories, or simply reduce the amount to 3 skills per category and introduce 3x 3 more skills. It should also come with 2 more ‘choice’ skills on weapons, for the slots 2 & 4; so that there are 3 skills to choose from in those slots. So that there are more choices to be had, in both weapons skills, and utility skills. (some new weapons wouldn’t hurt either; f/e fighting staff for thief, nature magic for ranger)

Then more then likely the whole Trait system would need to be reworked, to give 7 points to slot BUT, as you slot higher into a trait tree the earlier levels blank out. This gives the option to put ‘entry level’ traits in the lower levels, meaning as you level up the obvious choices are a 5x lvl1 slot setup. Then as you progress beyond that, you can still keep 3x at the lower levels, and 2 medium, for a seasoned yet average player. The last level with a maxed setting of 2x lvl3 and 1x lvl1. Would give more elaborate options to the seasoned specialist. With the following overall setup (or something similar):
lvl1 traits – mediocre increase base functionality
lvl2 traits – (mediocre+low) increase of base functionality, or mediocre new options.
lvl3 traits – (mediocre+low) increase in lvl2 options or entirely new options.

Sure it would mean you would only have 6 traits at the highest level (being the auto given trait for the levels, and 3 choices) but these would really be defining your build. The trait off is obvious, you have access to the highest level of different stuff, than the average 3x 1lvl 2x 2lvl, stuff, but that level could be the ‘balance’ level of most of the PvE game play. Going deeper to lvl3 would give you some advantages in certain area’s, but at the same time you loose 4 of the ‘noob toob’ options in lvl1 of the trait system.

BobbyT.7192:

Dirame.8521:

Harper.4173:

Through my skill and ability I managed to bring down the Berserker and allow my party to res in order to take the other boss down and finish the instance.

It was one of the most fun experiences I’ve had in the game – because even though 80% of my party was dead the game didn’t punish me for their mistakes and it made a difference.

The cool thing about what we’re asking for is that, it doesn’t really over-complicate things.

What I’d like to see does not have to be to the level that GW1 did it. It just has to incorporated in places that need it. Like the new Adrenaline bar. The use of adrenaline when you miss an attack is not hard to understand for a casual player but it wasn’t there to begin with. These are the kinds of things that need to be modified so that the game can grow.

The bad thing about making your game too shallow is that the really good players will get bored or frustrated with the game really early. This may end up in your game falling by the wayside because the people everyone aspired to beat, end up leaving.

People will either leave because it’s too complicate, or leave if its not complicated enough, in the end it who ever makes the company more money that gets most of the attention. Can’t really blame anet for going where the money is (i’m sure people will though)

Anet just needs to be constantly aware that they walk a fine line between having their game be stale when a person has reached a cap in build diversity and having their game be bloated to the point where they can’t balance it anymore. Right now I think they don’t have have to worry about the initial part and keep one eye on the latter part.

Arghore.8340:

Tnx Harper for that elaborate formulation of my objective analysis of GW2, this gives me the opportunity to formulate a ;tldr for you (based upon how I view GW2 combat when i have a morning grudge):

GW2 combat system is about as interesting as whack a mole with two alternating moles linked together (aka. whack one the other comes up), it has counter play on the level of rock/paper/scissors, with an imbalance to rock beating everything. And the reward system is about as straight forward as ‘draw a string’. (sorry I could not find a traveling fun park equivalent to ‘rock/paper/scissors’).

Actually, and this is something I can still get worked up about, the statement that GW2 wasn’t: ‘Swing your sword, Swing it again’; is so the opposite that I can’t be reminded of that statement without popping a vane in my forehead.

GW1 was a good game with a decent to mediocre story, with period gfx, and no Z axis. GW2 is a good LOOKING game, with a decent to mediocre story, with stunning GFX and an Z axis. (hope you notice how gameplay isn’t even in the GW2 line-up)

Add. Though I will say that GW1 wasn’t without it’s balance problems, f/e Insidious Parasite as a one skill option against anything melee (mainly Sins). And ohboy, all the ‘balance’ horror we went through in GW1. The gameplay could be much more interesting though (when you got to the PvP), although PvE was reduced to the trinity ‘whack a mole’ standard of the time, with a few locations where other strategies prevailed. Still though, within a profession and role there were still a couple viable variants…

Add2. and I will say that the combo skill mechanics are still interesting and fresh! Guess GW2 combat ‘has that’…

There, glad I got that off my chest… I couldn’t have done it without you Harper! As my objective non grudged mind sees things exactly as you do. Still though, I am only human and do come with emotions (at times).

This is my rage in a nutshell. I keep telling myself that it took GW1 at least 1 expansion to get things on the right track. No one liked Prophecies all that much.

More options (in skills) and Trade-off in specs, could do a lot to revitalize the combat in GW2, while at the same time KEEP the noob toob options in there for new players, and those that just want a base functionality for PvE content.

Personally I also wouldn’t mind seeing Energy make a return, and if you check some utility skills they specifically mention 0-energy, almost as if GW2 has an energy system build in, but it is simply set to 0 for every skill ?! Why would I want it returned, simply for balance purposes and as a short term resource, like it was mentioned earlier in this thread, it offers a whole skill based mechanic on it’s own, that is easy to understand, and the utilisation of the mechanic increases as your skill level increases, mainly it is relatively forgiving for low skill players (with the whole everybody heals, the res system, and easy and close proximity waypoints as well as 0 cost armour repairs) and with how mass PvE works in this game, if a few run out for a short while, nothing is lost; for the mediocre player is offers a side challenge, where more skill full play and rotations offer a better output; and at the highest level of play efficiency is the goal, while at the same time it offers a limit to what is possible (aka. a balance ceiling). And speaking of balancing, it also offers a 4th way to scale skills (beyond Dam, CT, RC) … Why ‘on Tyria’ would you throw out such a system? Heck, for PvE and WvW you might even be able to introduce a food buff to energy regen, as it competes directly with damage food buffs! And in a system like this energy = damage = energy, so any buff to damage is a buff to energy, hence it wouldn’t mind.

One other thing, mainly at MonMalthias, I fear that it is impossible to create a ‘perfect imbalanced’ game with GW2. Even with the skill additions I mentioned it’s more than likely not enough to attain this. And I fear that trying to go for a perfect imbalance will just lead to a shallow rock/paper/scissors version, which you can already see in some parts of the game now. And people talking about ‘meeting your hard counter’ when a condi thief comes across a anti-condi Necro f/e. It’s no fun, except for the one that is obvious to win… … so really, it isn’t fun at all … and there is a high chance that hot join PvP will end up like the random arenas, where people just left a fight after going:
My team: no monk -> leave, if monk, check ‘amount of rocks, papers, scissors’ -> see opponent, if monk -> check amount of rocks, papers, scissors’ -> check them off, if we loose we loose, might as well leave now… bye! (well the bye would either be silent or come with a ‘cY4s L8rz Nubz’).

Personally, I would be more interested in giving more professions more options, to being almost equal in options, yet, at the same time limit the amount of options that can be taken at the same time. Aka. trade offs. This would still mean that you might run into a counter to your play, but it might not be ‘hard’, and you would just have to fight through it. Or adopt, which I noticed at some times in random arena, where besides a hard-meta there was also a ‘roling meta’ during the evening, as players adapted to changes back and forth.

So a (I would guess calling it) ‘soft’ perfect imbalance, is more interesting and likely easier to achieve, then a ‘hard’ perfect imbalance. Which can turn out into a ‘rock/paper/scissors’ play out, and fights that are simply not to be fought, instead of a game where every fight is possible, just some are a tad harder than others. And while in a ‘soft’ perfect imbalance, it is possible to meet your entire hard counter, if it becomes the meta, it is easier dealt with then a hard-counter setup, where ‘you know’, L2P, or You ‘just’ met your hard counter, deal with it..

Lastly for those that have a hard time seeing how ‘choice skills on weapons’ could work, and how it could enable interesting build options, as well as provide more ‘counter’ play; and even add something that I personally miss, the ability to customize your character…

Ranger Axe
1. Ricochet
2. Winters Bite (freeze) / Summer Blaze (fire) / Snake Bite or Autumn Rot (poison)
3. Split Blade.

4. ‘Pull’ + damage / Loose Boon (which could be stabo) + Knock Down / Push Back + Cripple;
5. Whirling Defences.

Warhorn
4. Call o.t Wild (Gain 2 Might, 1 Fury) / ‘Timber Call’ (Gain Protection + Swiftness) / Call of Attention (Gain Aegis and Stability)
5. Hunters Call (Summon Hawks (damage))

Dagger
4. Crippling Talon (throw bleed & cripple), Freezing Talon (throw & Freeze), Tormenting Talon (throw and Torment)
5. Stalker Strike (stab, poison & evade)

Sword
1. Slash+Kick+Pounce
2. Serpent’s Strike (evasion + poison) / Crane’s Strike (block ‘stance’ for 1/2 sec (which is cast time for) damage, if no block then also bleed.) / Crab’s Strike (gain protection, apply vulnerability)
3. Hornet Sting+Monarch’s leap

Torch
4. Scorche Armour (apply torment & vulnerability), Blow Smoke (blind foes in cone, apply confusion), Blow Flame (damage foes in cone).
5. Throw Torch/Bonfire (throw torch to foe and set area on fire, burn foes in it)

Long Bow
1. Long range shot
2. Hunters Shot (stealth, pet swiftness) / Guards shot (Protection, pet Fury) / Archers Shot (Aegis & Stability, pet Regeneration).
3. Rapid Fire
4. Point Black Shot (push back) / Weighed Down Arrow (Knock Down + Daze) / Roped Arrow (Pull foe)
5. Barrage

Short Bow
1. Crossfire (fire arrow, bleed side/back)
2. Poison Volley (5 poison arrows) / Toxic Volley (5 confusing arrows) / Venomous Volley (5 vulnerable arrows).
3. Quick Shot (evade, gain swiftness)
4. Crippling Shot (cripple, pet bleeding) / Knee Shot (torment, pet vulnerability) / Debilitating shot (weakness, pet ‘micro’ fear)
5. Concussion Shot (daze, stun side/back)

Great Sword
1. Slash+Slice+Power Stab.
2. Bear ‘Maul’ (force of bear) / Devourer ‘Lash’ (force of devourer) / Minotaur ‘Charge’ (force of the Minotaur)
3. Swoop (Run + Leap, damage all)
4. Counter attack + Crippling Throw (block, on block cone push + throw to cripple 1) / Counter blow + Blinding Kick stab your sword in the ground and kick it (block, on block knockdown + cone blind) / Counter Bash + Chilling swipe (block, on block Daze + cone chill)
5. Hilt Bash (Damage and Roll back, Stun if behind and roll back, + pet +50% dam on next)

Guess you will see that something similar could be done with the underwater skills … I only made minor changes to the setup of the weapons, left most skills in tact, and only added similar skills to be chosen from (instead of doing something completely different on a choice) so that the ‘feel’ of the weapon will remain largely the same, yet for the play style choices do matter, as well as for customization and synergy.

There are no ‘bad’ choices again, in this setup, which makes it pretty noob proof, if you’d ask me, the order of unlocking, might warrant a slightly different order from how I presented them, as some are easier than others, while presenting slightly more advanced options. No drawbacks here though, except for the fact that if you choose one skill, you can’t have another … recharges/cast time/‘energy costs’ could differ a bit from the options though, just to shave them a lil bit more in line with each other.

@Dirame, guess I’m nobody then :/ I rather liked Prophecies … but I’m glad there is somebody that shares this feeling, which I might add isn’t prohibiting me from having fun in the game… it’s just that some of the fun I had in GW1 I am no longer having…

Dirame.8521:

Harper.4173:

Through my skill and ability I managed to bring down the Berserker and allow my party to res in order to take the other boss down and finish the instance.

It was one of the most fun experiences I’ve had in the game – because even though 80% of my party was dead the game didn’t punish me for their mistakes and it made a difference.

The cool thing about what we’re asking for is that, it doesn’t really over-complicate things.

What I’d like to see does not have to be to the level that GW1 did it. It just has to incorporated in places that need it. Like the new Adrenaline bar. The use of adrenaline when you miss an attack is not hard to understand for a casual player but it wasn’t there to begin with. These are the kinds of things that need to be modified so that the game can grow.

The bad thing about making your game too shallow is that the really good players will get bored or frustrated with the game really early. This may end up in your game falling by the wayside because the people everyone aspired to beat, end up leaving.

Guild Wars 2 isn’t in my opinion about aspiring to anything.
It’s about vanity and gratification.

How can we have something to aspire towards when you can buy the game’s most prestigious and good gear right off the trading post without lifting a finger towards obtaining it other than farming gold.

The majority has spoken – whenever something hard was introduced in the game the overall community asked for a nerf.

I understand what you’re saying – but even the adrenaline changes are somewhat resulting from the fact that the casual majority can’t be bothered to find counters or play counters to powerful meta builds and demand the game to be changed instead of them changing their own builds.

And I didn’t say more player interdependency would complicate things – but it would bring them to a place that I personally wouldn’t like.

Right now – the more you cooperate with your team the better things go and teams that are coordinated and work together are rewarded in GW2.

But teams that don’t and keep their interaction to a bare minimum aren’t punished and I feel that’s a good thing because it opens up a lot more variety in game play.

I don’t feel that being punished for other people’s mistakes or failures is a thing I want in my game experience.

Edit : Just like Bobby pointed out – the top 1 or 3 or 5% don’t matter – they can come and go as they please. The majority of players who don’t even care about improving themselves but pay for the newest gimmick in the gem store are what’s making Anet money.

@Arghore.8340

Glad to hear my post was helpful to you.

I see how you feel things and I understand your gripes with the game.
I just don’t think much will be changed since it’s making good money.

These caveats you speak of will never happen unless we get a completely overhauled trait system that is 10x bigger and 100 more utility skills to choose from.
The only reason the negative effects of runes/ skills in GW1 worked is because we had so many options to choose from.

Harper.4173:

@Arghore.8340

Glad to hear my post was helpful to you.

I see how you feel things and I understand your gripes with the game.
I just don’t think much will be changed since it’s making good money.

Well I do hope you got from that, that I fully see your points, and agree with it. Thing is though, I think we can have both, which would make for a better game, and would likely make Anet/NCSoft even more money, especially in the long run.

And I do think it will hurt the game in the long run if they don’t. Because people will learn and as they find out there isn’t much more to learn or to expand, they wonder where the early adopters, early followers and long lasting GW1 players have gone, and they would likely ‘be gone’ to the next and ‘better’ game.

You already see people asking for more of a challenge, the Mordrem difficulty is a direct response to that (though I think most people mean ‘throw up the general difficultly in high level areas’ and ‘tune up the scaling options’ – but hey, it’s a start). And the main gripes with it were where this harder content was making the normal players not able to avoid it. Aka the mordrem hound being in the normal story path, and the Shadow ot Dragon being there all of a sudden throwing all sorts of ‘kitten litter’ at you that one could not be prepared for in any other location in the game. And while I like the challenge I fully agree with the criticism, it’s great if you know it’s coming as some sort of challenge, it’s hardly fun when it’s just thrown at you in the middle of something, while the rest of the game is nothing like it…

It would be like you talking to somebody you knew for 2 years and then just slapping them in the face for no obvious reason, and expecting a normal reaction. No! That’s not how social interaction goes. If anything you announce you will make things more difficult and challenging, you do so by taking on the lvl60-80 area’s, and making the group scaling more steep. You then introduce the harder (now in line with the rest) foes, and quite possibly introduce a dungeon of sorts (or open world event) with them, to then put them (shadow o/t dragon) in some story instance. And I still think the wolf had no business being in there besides a challenge, if it isn’t possible to not have it in there, then put it somewhere in the back, far away from ‘normal play through’… gah, I’m going of a tangent here…

let me get back on track… Same applies to tournament play, now sure, you may see some hotshots go for the money, heck maybe I should try… but even they wont stick around for long after the money’s been had, simply because they lack the challenge… And that challenge can certainly be build in without hurting the herds/droves of people quite happy with a build that can carry them through most of the PvE content and provide a decent challenge in high level areas. At least I think it should be possible, more skills and a more intricate trait system as well as the possible reintroduction of energy would all do the game play a lot of good, with out punishing the pugs… And lets face it, most of those would love more skills, and more customization, more ways to define oneself from some other.

I think the desires of the majority pretty much align with what is needed to make a more intriguing, interesting and possible better game. And retaining players is one of the most important things, because they actually get you word of mouth spreading, which draws in more players. As opposed to people moving onwards to other games, proclaiming how it’s gameplay is so much better than GW2, except for feature X or Y perhaps. Still though, as the gameplay is the meat of the game, how many people will say ‘well hmm, if (s)he says this is better than GW2, let me go and try, and see for myself!’ … no! they will just agree and say they like this new game better than their old one too! because confirmation of the own choice/opinion is what people like better than any objective report (it’s how the media makes it’s money these days)…

Well anyways, I had my time on my soapbox, time for some WvW… ill check back and let some others comment.

@OP, and the rest, do realize that Caveats seem to better fit certain professions than others, but yes, it is certainly part of the equation! (to help get this back on track)

MonMalthias.4763:

Everything I just said.

Absolutely freaking nailed it. Most good game design yields increased reward for increased risk and thus things without a “risk” have repercussions which need to be considered. In an ideal world, RNG does not exist – because one can not evaluate and make calculated counter-play efforts towards RNG except operating under the pretense something will happen – which for an action-based game, is really not a good idea.

And the person above me: Absolutely. A game succeeds when it’s constantly giving players a reason to play and keep being invested. LS isn’t enough – especially since it doesn’t actually change the gameplay at all – it’s the same thing with a different name, done maybe a little differently. Giving players a reason to be engaged in something is achieved by giving them options and tools to build with. I still swing my sword the same way I did two years ago. The same with every class and every weapon in every encounter. Nothing has changed but the enemies.

The thing I noticed about GW2 and I think they mentioned this at some point, is that, they are going for a very free-handed skill interaction system. What this means is, they don’t want to dictate the way you combine skills like they did in GW1. Where most builds dictated the order in which you pressed buttons.
Most of the fights were not reactionary, just press buttons in a sequence and kite whilst the Monk does the real reactionary combat.

I can say they successfully side-stepped that problem and created a game that is more free form in it’s execution. For Example, the way a necro could perform a condi combo that can render the use of signet of spite extinct but not very many necros perform that combo because the skill descriptions don’t allude to that sort of use.

Now they just have to fine tune that execution with better traits and more varied interactions that will serve to not only improve the build diversity but also limit OP builds.

Just think, what if Rune of Balthazar reduced your healing by 10% whilst giving you the benefit of causing burning when you heal. One way around that would be having your teammate make up for that loss in healing using Aquatic Benevolence (Aquatic Benevolence and Rune of the Monk can also counter poison without cleansing it directly).
Or another more apt example would be, Necros and burning, just have Guardians use Virtue of Justice or get a Ranger to bring sun spirit or get an engineer to apply burning and the Necro could just epidemic that.
Or what if when you take Reaper’s Protection, it also has the caveat of removing 10% of your Deathshroud every time you feared someone.

So many things they are doing/could do. They just need open their eyes and see.

I agree completely with MonMalthias, too bad it doesn’t matter.
Not to be a total wet blanket, but it’s never going to happen. Anet are not going to be adding any more depth into GW2. I don’t think they have a balance ‘team’, it’s like one guy in his basement because it wouldn’t take them 4-9 months just to put out a simple, run of the mill balance patch. (half joking)

When they seem to struggle to get even the most basic of basics done, you can f-en forget about anything that would actually require hard work on their part. Their not even willing to split their skills and balance accordingly, despite having once said that they will, and supposedly learned this lesson back in GW1.
Clearly, they learned NOTHING from GW1.

All they do is make excuses. Where GW1 was very much a game with a specific audience in mind, and tried to give them a truly wonderful experience, which it did exceedingly well. GW2 motto on the other hand, seems to be ‘everybody wins’.
Every win is easy, no effort or thought required, and you cannot lose. And thus, victory is meaningless and trivial as a result.

GW2 is like the chameleon personality, always trying to please everyone, feigning interest in you and your interests, and trying to be the center of attention.
But when you scratch beyond the surface, you find nothing, they are really just that shallow. No depth, no real interests or hobbies, just a fake smile.

-
Make no mistake, which it is conceivable possible for the game to turn around, mechanically, because anything is possible. I just don’t think it’s remotely likely or probably given Anet’s track record on this.
To think that the Anet of GW1 and the Anet of today are they same lot of people would be a mistake, they share the same name and nothing else.

Well, besides Gaile Gray’s general awesomeness that is.

I wouldn’t call a system of caveats and costs a solution as much as a beast with a host of different problems than the one we are facing. I’ve heard this debate in many different forms, from other MMOs to Yugioh and other card games, and there are multiple sides to it.

First and foremost is that caveats aren’t an instant resolution to stale gameplay. Diversity is from creativity, and diverse gameplay can exist in a system of only positives. Adding detriments to abilities will just add another layer of imbalances and flaws to the system, unless it was done just right.

Currently, there are several factors that determine the overall usefulness of a skill:

*Cooldown Time
*Activation Time
*Aftercast
*Range
*Radius
*Target Limit
*Number of effects
*Type of effects
*Potency of effects
*Overall pool of support for that ability
*Activation Condition (equipment only)

To these ends alone, there is a lot of depth that can go into designing any one skill without tacking on negative effects or additional costs. I personally like a system of all positives, mostly because my entire experience with negatives is trying to minimize or reverse them, and resource pools resort in spamming efficiency based techniques and periods of inactivity in the heat of a battle.

Has GW2 made the best of this system? Undoubtedly no. GW2 is currently ruled over by procs, hard CC, paper/rock/scissors gameplay, overly large AoEs, and long invulnerability periods. The balance is in shambles due to widely disproportionate potency and ease of use in abilities. But, by proper usage of the above factors, as well as a wide diversity of effects, it is easily in the realm of possibility to make a game that works in positives.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I wouldn’t call a system of caveats and costs a solution as much as a beast with a host of different problems than the one we are facing. I’ve heard this debate in many different forms, from other MMOs to Yugioh and other card games, and there are multiple sides to it.

First and foremost is that caveats aren’t an instant resolution to stale gameplay. Diversity is from creativity, and diverse gameplay can exist in a system of only positives. Adding detriments to abilities will just add another layer of imbalances and flaws to the system, unless it was done just right.

Currently, there are several factors that determine the overall usefulness of a skill:

*Cooldown Time
*Activation Time
*Aftercast
*Range
*Radius
*Target Limit
*Number of effects
*Type of effects
*Potency of effects
*Overall pool of support for that ability
*Activation Condition (equipment only)

To these ends alone, there is a lot of depth that can go into designing any one skill without tacking on negative effects or additional costs. I personally like a system of all positives, mostly because my entire experience with negatives is trying to minimize or reverse them, and resource pools resort in spamming efficiency based techniques and periods of inactivity in the heat of a battle.

Has GW2 made the best of this system? Undoubtedly no. GW2 is currently ruled over by procs, hard CC, paper/rock/scissors gameplay, overly large AoEs, and long invulnerability periods. The balance is in shambles due to widely disproportionate potency and ease of use in abilities. But, by proper usage of the above factors, as well as a wide diversity of effects, it is easily in the realm of possibility to make a game that works in positives.

It’s possible to make a game that works in positives alone but that game wouldn’t be a PvP game.
Like you said, there is already a good amount of caveats within the current system of things but what we’re finding is that these side-effects aren’t really up to par. They need to be fine tuned, added to, changed, and there are some things that are just begging for an additional effects to make them useful (Just take a look at the example I gave in my original post).

I’m not asking them to go around adding caveats to everything like a mad cowboy shooting off his guns in a saloon. I’m asking that they re-evaluate their skills and traits, runes and sigils to see what would be made more balanced/useful by introducing caveats to them.

Yoh.8469:

When they seem to struggle to get even the most basic of basics done, you can f-en forget about anything that would actually require hard work on their part. Their not even willing to split their skills and balance accordingly, despite having once said that they will, and supposedly learned this lesson back in GW1.
Clearly, they learned NOTHING from GW1.

All they do is make excuses. Where GW1 was very much a game with a specific audience in mind, and tried to give them a truly wonderful experience, which it did exceedingly well. GW2 motto on the other hand, seems to be ‘everybody wins’.
Every win is easy, no effort or thought required, and you cannot lose. And thus, victory is meaningless and trivial as a result.

GW2 is like the chameleon personality, always trying to please everyone, feigning interest in you and your interests, and trying to be the center of attention.
But when you scratch beyond the surface, you find nothing, they are really just that shallow. No depth, no real interests or hobbies, just a fake smile.

-
Make no mistake, which it is conceivable possible for the game to turn around, mechanically, because anything is possible. I just don’t think it’s remotely likely or probably given Anet’s track record on this.
To think that the Anet of GW1 and the Anet of today are they same lot of people would be a mistake, they share the same name and nothing else.

Well, besides Gaile Gray’s general awesomeness that is.

They’ve learned a lot from GW1 – they’ve learned that in order to make more money off their game they should make a game that’s more accessible to the masses.
And that’s exactly what they’ve done – and it’s worked.

They’re making more money now than they would have if they had made GW2 be a “true” sequel to GW1.

Now I understand what you want from the game – but keep in mind that what they want from the game is primarily profit.
They have a completely different perspective and from their POV they’re doing great.

The motto is " Everybody wins and afterwards everybody spends some cash on the gem store".

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I wouldn’t call a system of caveats and costs a solution as much as a beast with a host of different problems than the one we are facing. I’ve heard this debate in many different forms, from other MMOs to Yugioh and other card games, and there are multiple sides to it.

The thing is, caveats are already in the game; it’s just that actually using them is sometimes inferior. I already compared Fire Grab against Phoenix ; and one of these skills are clearly superior to the other in terms of opportunity cost; is less conditional to deal its full damage, and is easier to execute.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

First and foremost is that caveats aren’t an instant resolution to stale gameplay. Diversity is from creativity, and diverse gameplay can exist in a system of only positives. Adding detriments to abilities will just add another layer of imbalances and flaws to the system, unless it was done just right.

Again, the mere fact that apex choices exist in GW2 serves as a chilling effect against innovation when one choice of Trait, Weapon, or Rune/Sigil is clearly superior to another. Sure, a system of only positives can work – if every effect had a duplicate with a difference in kind. But internal imbalance ensures that players will gravitate towards the combinations that have the least execution for the greatest reward, leaving others behind.

• We see Strength rune dominating the Power and Hybrid setups; propping up Celestial.
• We see Air/Fire become another tool for spiking classes.
• We see Lyssa runes dropped after the nerf to only 5 conditions converted to boons where previously it was dominant in Thief, Mesmer and Warrior specs.
• We see Necromancer fall by the wayside (again) now that Elementalist has come back when Cleansing Water’s ICD was removed
• We see 2012 Ele 0 0 2 6 6 running triple Cantrip back in full force since nothing significant has happened to other trait lines to make Eles gravitate to them.
• We see that the April Feature packs’ new Grandmasters have done little indeed to shift the meta; instead creating a new host of “off-meta” specs; and the dominant trait lines of each class remain unchallenged.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

But, by proper usage of the above factors, as well as a wide diversity of effects, it is easily in the realm of possibility to make a game that works in positives.

Remember that Caveats don’t just have to be about inflicting negative conditions on oneself, or having some major cut in survivability in one area for a gain in another – it can also apply to what situations empower a skill to be strong, and then allowing players to create those conditions to power that skill up.

There is not enough differences in kind (i.e. diversification of specific functionality such as condition cleanse, boon output etc.) whether by addition of new triggers for the same effect or by implementation of new trait synergies to drive innovation. There is no innovation because what’s explored is superior to what’s innovated. Arenanet wanted players to drive their own meta, and then concentrated specific functionality – without means of access to similar functionality by different mechanics – into specific trait lines. (Water Magic, Defense, Explosives, Wilderness Survival, Valour, etc)

On the one hand this prevents “double dipping” overspecialisation to result in new synergetic hard counters; on the other hand, the build variety will forever be hobbled because internal imbalance will happen with such an implementation. On the flipside, if you then implement caveats to these traits to offset double dipping, then:

• The skill floor is raised as players must use new mechanics to exploit them
• Greater build variety is possible as it’s no longer as clear which choice is superior
• Stronger effects are possible as they are offset by their conditional requirements (i.e. Target is burning, target is CC’d, On Heal, On Elite, On Profession Mechanic, X seconds before incoming CC or Condition, On Boon, Lose Boon for X effect) .

That we are 2 years past launch into the game and the new Grandmasters still play off of the following:

• RNG, because we all know RNG is great design towards active play, transparency of action, and empowered player agency
• Single target ICD, because taking a GM trait for duels grants it broad base applicability
• Weaker mechanics than traits at lower tiers, because your build can be defined by how much less you do than the meta spec
  - speaks much about the depth of creativity Anet has plumbed to bring us these new mechanics.

Seriously, there is a dearth of the following mechanics in the game; all of which can be exploited by Anet to remove the RNG (Engi!) and allow players new ways to build:

• On Profession mechanic use (looking at Engi)
• On Elite (most Elite traits are junk)
• Target is Conditioned (Burning, Bleeding, Poison, etc.) – the greatest depth here is %increased damage and not much else
• Target is Interrupted/CC’ed (Most notable is Unsuspecting Foe and Chaotic Interruption; then most other classes don’t exploit it much, if at all)
• On Heal (Not much in the way of defensive counterpressure traits)
• On Utility X use (The most recent is Survival of the Fittest; but many utility skill categories lack anything beyond CDR)
• X seconds before incoming effect (CC, Condi) – this would open up an entire avenue of reactive play that encourages player prediction i.e. for 2 seconds after using Profession mechanic X, incoming Condition is converted to Boon
• Lose X Boons, gain Y effect (An entire class built around this in GW1, conspicuously absent mechanics in GW2)
• Sacrifice X health, gain Y effect (GW2 Corruptions don’t count because they’re barely a sacrifice at all)
• Draw conditions to self, gain Y effect (Save Yourselves! ; yet Necro has no control over Plague Signet as the Condi Master)
• Replace Weapon Skill with X (saves on Anet inventing new weapon sets for classes, reinvigorates a weapon set. Win-win)
• On Evaded attack (Imagine actually being rewarded for dodging correctly; then look at Feline Grace and despair)
• On Block/Missile defense (Only Defender’s Flame and Missile Deflection here; yet Mesmer, Engineer, Ranger GS / offhand Axe, Ele Earth Shield/Magnetic Aura etc have these mechanics; and nothing to reward them in the way of traits)
• Resets/Cooldown reduction with X trigger (Imagine being rewarded with lower cooldowns when X trigger is reached. Playing well i.e. interrupting target is rewarded with a lower CD on X skills)