Guild Wars 2

I dunno about you, but I’m not terribly impressed with many of the Elite skills. It feels like a wasted slot in many instances. (What’s the point of the Norn shape-shifting Elites? It expires almost before you can use each skill one time, and takes what… about 4 minutes to get it back again?)

I would welcome the ability to put a normal non-elite skill into slot 0 if desired.

Agreed, some classes the elites rock, some others I’d be much happier with just another utility slot.

agreed for most classes but not on mesmer

Agreed! Far too many elites don’t match my play style and end up feeling like a wasted skill slot. Would love to be able to equip another utility.

Elite skills being lackluster is a reason to improve Elite skills, not to allow other skills be used in the slot.

Design consistency > The crazy combo/build you’re thinking of cooking up by having 4 utilities.

DreamOfACure.4382:

Elite skills being lackluster is a reason to improve Elite skills, not to allow other skills be used in the slot.

Yeah, sure. That’d be fine too. Improve the Elite skills. Most could be improved with simple lowered recharge times or extended durations (making them more like… normal slot skills?) But at least give me SOME reason to use the doggone thing. My “0” key is getting rusty.

+1 Been suggested before but glad to see others feel the same way. I believe a lower cooldown would be helpful, or you know make them actually ELITE for the cooldown they have.

I agree with DreamOfACure. The 3 utility limit is most likely there for balancing purposes. I would much rather see elites improved.

If they dont impove alot of the elite skills then sure, but Id much rather they made the elites actually (drum roll please) ELITE

Lutharr.1035:

If they dont impove alot of the elite skills then sure, but Id much rather they made the elites actually (drum roll please) ELITE

This. Two things have to be done:
- seriously buff elite skills, including racials
- every profession needs far more choice, 10 would be a bare minimum. These skills should define your build next to your weapon.

I speak as an engi.
- bazooka: virtually useless. I actually never used it.
- Elixir X: pretty nice, if only it wasn’t that random
- Supply drop: useful, flexible but not “elite”. Turrets should be unique, not clones of utility skills.

So the choice is between worthless, flexible and random. I’d like a whole lot more.

elites tied in with grandmaster traits would be ELITE!

I’d say just get rid of the concept of elites entirely. They are actually poor and sloppy game design. By which is mean, not that they are underpowered or unuseful in their current form, but the very idea is bad for gameplay. After the release of GW1, I recall a very well reasoned post on GW1guru forums(?) discussing why the very concept of an elite was bad for truly skillful gameplay.

agreed, it should be a “special slot” rather than an exclusivly “elite” slot
so you can put either an elite or an extra skill in.

+1
It would really be great to have some more flexibilty on this. Their are professions where the elites are not even as usefull as a utility skill. Not to mention the fact that the choice is even narrower when underwater.

DreamOfACure.4382:

Elite skills being lackluster is a reason to improve Elite skills, not to allow other skills be used in the slot.

Design consistency > The crazy combo/build you’re thinking of cooking up by having 4 utilities.

This, this, and more of this. There comes a whole new aspect of balance if we were allowed 4 utility skills. As for the OP, those are racial elite skills not profession elite skills. Racial elite skills are supposed to not be as attractive so in no way are races better than profession. I do believe, however, that some racial skills need to be looked at since they simply lack the “boom” most people are looking for from choosing that race.

Re-thinking about this, I suppose it would allow you to equip all 4 utility skills of the same type. So long as it did not introduce overpowered combinations (which unfortunately I feel it very well could do) I would actually be ok with this.

The only problem I can see from it is it would introduce more balancing issues, as you would be allowing players to mix and match more skills together. For all the good things about GW1’s build complexity, it’s biggest problem was trying to balance out all these build possibilities. The more options players have the harder things are to balance. So if an extra utility slot added serious imbalances I would prefer them to kept it as it is and improve elites instead.

Id agree with the perspective that elite skills need more work rather than giving the option to scrapping them all together.

However, if players want to do it and it wouldnt cause ridiculous balance issues, more customisation and player choice never hurts IMO.

Parlourbeatflex.5970:

Id agree with the perspective that elite skills need more work rather than giving the option to scrapping them all together.

However, if players want to do it and it wouldnt cause ridiculous balance issues, more customisation and player choice never hurts IMO.

Given enough time, anyone who doesn’t care would spend their nights looking for the special match where they just become unstoppable. The idea of adding more options for skill slots would easily lead to more angry posts asking to then remove the optional elite slot. It is inevitable with how the generation of gamers are today…

While they are fixing theElite skills it sure would be nice to have more than 1 option when under water.

And it’s not just the Racial elites. Almost every elite skill in this game is a wasted slot that never gets used

Lutharr.1035:

elites tied in with grandmaster traits would be ELITE!

This, traits have yet to give more customization, atm every class is the SAME when using the same weapons, giving skills depending on ur traits would add some more customization. Like ‘oh kitten that ele is fire i better run’ or ‘that ele is d/d but earth so i better dont waste my time’. Now its like ‘oh that ele is d/d’ and thats it!

DreamOfACure.4382:

Elite skills being lackluster is a reason to improve Elite skills, not to allow other skills be used in the slot.

Design consistency > The crazy combo/build you’re thinking of cooking up by having 4 utilities.

+1 for this.

I know the feeling of wanting to have another utility slot, but part of the challenge of crafting an effective build and allocating skills strategically means working within limitations. Giving everyone four utilities would diminish the impact of your decisions by that much, it would screw with class balancing in ways the game wasn’t built for, and suddenly everyone would be even more powerful for no good reason.

You’ll have Thieves with even more opportunities to stealth than they should, you’ll have Elementalists who no longer have to sacrifice power for an elemental summon or revive skill, you’ll have Rangers using Frost Spirit + Sun Spirit + Quickening Zephyr + Sharpening Stone just to push out more mindless DPS, etc. It may feel beneficial for the individual player in the short term, but skillful play in an MMO is about min-maxing and dealing with sacrifice, not having consistent access to everything at all times.

Some of the Elite skills are less desirable than others, and the hefty cooldowns often mean they don’t get factored regularly into everyday strategies — and I could see improving those, but simply giving us another utility skill instead is an unnecessary non-sequitur.

If all the chef knives in your kitchen are dulled, you go get them sharpened — you don’t just buy more forks and spoons.

NinjaEd.3946:

There comes a whole new aspect of balance if we were allowed 4 utility skills. As for the OP, those are racial elite skills not profession elite skills. Racial elite skills are supposed to not be as attractive so in no way are races better than profession. I do believe, however, that some racial skills need to be looked at since they simply lack the “boom” most people are looking for from choosing that race.

Sorry… the Norn Elites were just what popped into my head as pretty obvious. I know that the racial skills are intended to be a little less powerful than the Elites available to all.

It’s just that the Elites available to all tend to be pretty unhelpful. I have characters of all 8 Professions, and less than half have Elites that I actually make use of. It’s a wasted slot.

I have no wacky new builds in mind, DreamOfACure. I am just dreaming of a cure for that 0 key one way or the other. Fixing the Elites to make them worthwhile WOULD be the better way to go, probably.

But if they DID allow normal skills to occupy the Elite slot, nobody is better equipped than the Guild Wars team to keep things in balance. They did it for years in GW1 with far more skills than we have now. Maybe just give a normal skill equipped in the Elite slot an extra 5 second cooldown, or something like that.

they should never allow this…if you don’t want an elite skill, then it’s actually a failure on the dev side….

in GW1, NO one would have suggested this because elite skills were amazing…you were seriously gimping urself if you didn’t have an elite skill on your skill bar…..unless it was some crazy farming build

Jordo.5913:

they should never allow this…if you don’t want an elite skill, then it’s actually a failure on the dev side….

in GW1, NO one would have suggested this because elite skills were amazing…you were seriously gimping urself if you didn’t have an elite skill on your skill bar…..unless it was some crazy farming build

In GW1 no one would have suggested that because you were not forced by the game to have an elite skill in your build. I knew some people who could create some very good builds without any elite skill at all. It’s all about synergy.

Agreed – this topic has been around before, but it’s worth seeing again. In GW1, many of the elite skills were balanced by the fact that you could only have one of them on the skill bar at a time. In GW2, it feels like the elite skills are balanced by long cool down times. Many of the elites are lackluster anyway, but even the ones I like I find myself avoiding their use because I might need them at a more critical moment and the CD is so long. But often that critical moment doesn’t happen so for most of gameplay the elite goes unused.

Also I’ve seen some folks say they don’t support this idea because an extra utility skill in slot 0 would be overpowered. I guess that underscores how weak the elites are if an extra utility skill would be overpowered…

I could go ether way however I would say maybe allow healing and elite to be optional or use them for normal skills. I mean healing is used often but theirs times depending on what I am doing I have no need to use it. Extra slot for normal skills would be nice. On the other hand so far its working out just fine the way it is for me anyways. However i would like more skill choices. Maybe allow to use skill points to purchase neutral skills that could work for any class or something. Dunno

mnwolfboy.9348:

I could go ether way however I would say maybe allow healing and elite to be optional or use them for normal skills. I mean healing is used often but theirs times depending on what I am doing I have no need to use it. Extra slot for normal skills would be nice. On the other hand so far its working out just fine the way it is for me anyways. However i would like more skill choices. Maybe allow to use skill points to purchase neutral skills that could work for any class or something. Dunno

I would like you to look at the idea of no healing skill and tell yourself you’d be better off replacing it. Unless you got amazing traits and sigils and runes that help you sustain you are defenceless if not uselss without some form of a dedicated heal. I’m sorry but I completely disagree with making the healing slot optional. Utility for elite slot, like stated, just needs to instead focus on making better if not more elite skills to better suit the various builds. I forget who stated it but making an elite skill a better utility skill is kinda lackluster. Like Thieves guild is just small buffs to Ambush (how long they stay, and you get 2 of them in exchange for a long cooldown).

emm no!..
fix the kittening elite skills which sucks instead!.

NinjaEd.3946:

mnwolfboy.9348:

I could go ether way however I would say maybe allow healing and elite to be optional or use them for normal skills. I mean healing is used often but theirs times depending on what I am doing I have no need to use it. Extra slot for normal skills would be nice. On the other hand so far its working out just fine the way it is for me anyways. However i would like more skill choices. Maybe allow to use skill points to purchase neutral skills that could work for any class or something. Dunno

I would like you to look at the idea of no healing skill and tell yourself you’d be better off replacing it. Unless you got amazing traits and sigils and runes that help you sustain you are defenceless if not uselss without some form of a dedicated heal. I’m sorry but I completely disagree with making the healing slot optional. Utility for elite slot, like stated, just needs to instead focus on making better if not more elite skills to better suit the various builds. I forget who stated it but making an elite skill a better utility skill is kinda lackluster. Like Thieves guild is just small buffs to Ambush (how long they stay, and you get 2 of them in exchange for a long cooldown).

Not necessarily, i mean yes 90% of time you need that heal skill, but what then again if you have more defensive skills then you dont need it making it optional. And there’s some instances were i don’t need it cause maybe i do fine running skills if im trying to quick run somewhere. Anyways It was just a thought didn’t say it was a very good one.