Guild Wars 2

-Weapon traits needs a revision all around
-Some are single weapon and some are multi weapon, this creates a hard inequality
-Single weaponed traits needs to be removed, or made easier to take more than one. (Not being in the same slot on skill lines if its reasonable for a person to use the weapons togeather) Guardians mace/shield/hammer is painful example of this
-There need to be more traits with weapon characteristic ex. 2hmastery, Martial mastery, 1h strength things that apply to more than one weapon due to a characteristic they share. Blunt, sharp, 1h, 2h, magical, melee, fire arm, bow
Or these sort of traits need to be removed entirely. Because right now just having one or two lying around leaves players out in the cold who don’t want to use that sort of weapon set.

Reasons-
1,Nobodys going to use a single weapon, ever, it nerfs the character they are playing too hard. And nobodys going to trait for a single weapon they use half the time when they can get something else they can use all the time. unless they can get two weapon traits that synergize (like all the other traits)
2. Some weapon traits are clearly superior to others. Nobody uses shield mastery, like…ever
3 Some weapons don’t even have specific traits to boost them. (Guardian staff anybody?)
4. Many traits are specificly put into the same slot to force you to choose between them. Guardians have shield, mace, and hammer all in 20 points in the Valor line. We will never be able to trait for all of those weapons at once even if we wanted to spend three slots on it, meanwhile a 2h guardian can use a single trait to increase both of his weapon sets abilities, while a person who uses hammer/mace/shield would need to use THREE slots.

Edit-Commentary- I’ve helped alot of friends start off in this game, and alot of them ask “how should i build my character” and the first thing i tell them to do is figure out the weapon they like, build their stats, and then trait for the utilitys that complement that. Never, ever, ever have i told a buddy to start off by traiting for a weapon, not ever, because it just doesn’t work. All of these weapons traits are complementary of other traits but you cant use them for specialization. Never have i managed to help somebody build their character around a weapons trait. I would like to see that changed.

In an attempt to buff or functionally change how a given weapon-set feels, one should never begin with passive additives that aren’t even the actual skills that make up said weapon-set.

If you want to properly address perceived weapon-set issues, work with the skills first. Working with traits will only either have little/no effect or make the weapon-set unfairly overpowered without any counter-play whatsoever given a trait’s passive/instant-activation nature.

On the other end of the spectrum is necro staff, which has four traits tied to it: one for higher direct damage on skills 2-5, one for faster recharge, one for larger areas + unblockable on 2-5, and one to make skills 2-5 generate life force. These are in 3 different lines and grabbing all four means you have 10 points to spend (only one of these is Adept level, the rest are all Master).

This is extreme, especially as necro staff is ill-suited to be a primary weapon. Some people make it work, kinda, but it really should not have so many traits dedicated to it.

I am all for standardizing weapon traits a little more. They don’t all need to be the same (and realistically shouldn’t be), but a number of them can be merged.