Guild Wars 2

Last update ArenaNet stated their goal would be build diversity without diving into power creeping.
Needless to say, they succeeded! With mediocre results. Why is that? When you ‘build’ a character using different traits and weapons due to the more diverse build options, it still felt stale.

It’s because your play style never changed, you are still using the skills and traits you always knew.
Why is that?

Build Diversity——————

*A ‘build’ is your character stats, armor, weapons traits and utilities. It determines how effective you can and cannot do. Range, speed, control, taking hits and giving hits are components in build diversity. This is what ArenaNet improved upon last update, minus the obvious flaw in Necromancers.

*Build diversity complements play style diversity, a condition crit Mesmer for example, will set up clones and spam invisibility. The Mesmer is able to do that viable because his build allows it.

*Without build diversity, play style diversity becomes stale and vise-versa. You can change the way people play their class but not altering what they can or cannot do effectively is bad combat design.

*ArenaNet has no worries when it comes to effective build diversity.

Play Style Diversity done wrong—————

There is where I want to take the combat designer for ArenaNet, slap him across the face and shout “GET SOME REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE GAME DESIGNER!” There is the biggest issue with Guild Wars 2 combat, the play style diversity design is just awful.

*An example: Glyph of Elemental Power: Gain a Chance for Spells to inflict a condition based on your attunement. This is BUILD DIVERSITY, heck, I wouldn’t even call it diversity, it’s just power creeping. Glyph of Elemental Power does NOTHING to change how to play the Elementalist. Stun Breaker? On a skill you ideally using on recharge?! That’s not build diversity nor play style diversity. That is what I call, stupid.

*Embers Might and Burning Rage, both traits in the Elementalist Fire Magic trait line, what do they do? Deal +5% more damage against burning foes. That’s right, 2 traits, do the exact same thing in the same trait line. LAZY!!

*Any trait that adds just pure damage SHOULD NOT EXIST! That isn’t build diversity, that is just purely power creeping. For a subject the last update tried to avoid it also never tried to fix!

Proper Play Style Diversity—————

First off, completely rework things that are purely power creep. Any trait that flat out increases or subtracts damage is BAD, it’s nothing but more numbers. It’s okay to increase damage but when it becomes bad as it ONLY increases damage, nothing more.

What to do with those reworked skills? How do I introduce play style diversity? Simple. GET CREATIVE! (Glares are ArenaNets combat designer,* listen up noob, creative lessons 101 for you) do things that will change the way the player plays at their skills.

*For example for an Elementalist Trait: While you or an ally holds your conjured weapon, summon a Lesser Elemental based on the weapons element. When the conjured weapon is destroyed, so is the Lesser Elemental.

*Here’s another example for an Elementalist trait: Arcane skills deals 50% less damage, but gain the following effects upon activating an Arcane skill:
-Using Arcane Wave, gain Arcane Power.
-Using Arcane Power, creates an Arcane Blast.
-Using Arcane Blast, creates an Arcane Shield.
-Using Arcane Shield, creates an Arcane Wave.

*Play style diversity is achieved when you can customize what you already have. Now, don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t always have to be when X happens, so does Y. You make it so that a single trait, just using one trait changes everything so much that it is an entire build and play style! You can add counters that come directly from traits. You can change already existing weapon skills to a completely new one, add new animation to aid the trait.

*When you can customize your play style, you done it right!

Closing————-
Builds are your materials; play style is your tools. Both exist only to complement the other. Right now Guild Wars 2 has amazing material to work with but no good tools to use.

ArenaNet if you truly wish to improve your game play, start with play style diversity.

it is an excellent point, you can agree or disagree in some aspects, but you got my approval overall

Amadan.9451:

it is an excellent point, you can agree or disagree in some aspects, but you got my approval overall

The biggest issue would be of coarse, balance.

Mechanics on balancing numbers is a lot easier to balance than play style.

If you’re talking PvP, yes the established builds are the way to go.
If you think WvW you get more freedom to experiment.
PvE is all you can think of.

I remember my ranger started out with GS/SxA and now its just bows, it’s not every MMO that offers that kind of diversity and room to change when you start getting a bit bored of the character
But at the end of the day you can never expect a class to excel at everything or be great no matter what you come up with build wise.

And as always, if some of your suggestions were implemented you could get really, really OP stuff

Dean Calaway.9718:

If you’re talking PvP, yes the established builds are the way to go.
If you think WvW you get more freedom to experiment.
PvE is all you can think of.

I remember my ranger started out with GS/SxA and now its just bows, it’s not every MMO that offers that kind of diversity and room to change when you start getting a bit bored of the character
But at the end of the day you can never expect a class to excel at everything or be great no matter what you come up with build wise.

And as always, if some of your suggestions were implemented you could get really, really OP stuff

I’m… I have no clue what you are implying. It’s clear you didn’t even read my post.

Well from what i understand, you want traits to work in a completly difrent way whit every skill/utility, like trait X have an Y effect when used whit skill 1 but when used whit skill 3 it will give Z effect, well that certainly will creat more play style diversity, which i would realy love to have, but it would be also realy hard to balance as ther would be more possible outcomes in terms of skill+trait combos.

anet did open the way for more builds, just not enough builds. imagine watching league of legends streams where they could only pick from 20~ champions. thats how it is in gw2 right now because there only 20~ viable builds for all the classes combined.

if we could get 100+ viable builds id have SO much more fun

this might involve more classes or level cap increase but when we can have THAt many options for playstyles the fun level would just shoot up imo

Well it sure would be fun but as i said it would be harder to balance things out, so the chances for it are slim.

Also lets not use the “viable” or “valid” terms, cause in gw2 they are not facts but pure opinions, as not everyone have the same idea about usefullnes of skills/utilities/traits.

Cold Hearted Person.6154:

Well it sure would be fun but as i said it would be harder to balance things out, so the chances for it are slim.

Also lets not use the “viable” or “valid” terms, cause in gw2 they are not facts but pure opinions, as not everyone have the same idea about usefullnes of skills/utilities/traits.

league of legends have 114 champions each with more than one possible build. thats atleast 230 different builds fairly balanced.

guilds wars has a total of about 20 different builds that work in high level pvp for their classes combined. this is one of the reason tpvp is kind of stale. youre playing the SAME thing over, and over, and over. and if you want to try something new or different you end up failing because there 20~ builds that work are just simply the best.

you dont see necros going for lifesteal builds because it just doesnt work.

you dont see gaurdians going for condition builds and the ones that do arent as effective as a support/bunker gaurdian

high lvl rangers are always using spirits or traps

warriors have a grand total of 3 or 4 effective builds in tpvp

if we really want esports coverage (which id really like)

we need a LOT of new ways to build the classes we already have, or a LOT of new classes.

no one wants to watch the same (or close to same) team comp game after game after game. its just plain boring. theres no interest to people running the same build over and over and over.

what you said it’s true, but i think, and this is only my opinion, it has more to do with players than builds.
people doesn’t even want to try builds that are not the established one, because most of them, when they play a class in pvp they don’t play it because they like the class and the possibility it offers, they play that class because they think it’s the best for winning if played with the build other players had come up to.
it’s not a coincidence that you see few warriors in pvp and tons of minion necro, thieves, mesmers, engineer and ranger

Amadan.9451:

what you said it’s true, but i think, and this is only my opinion, it has more to do with players than builds.
people doesn’t even want to try builds that are not the established one, because most of them, when they play a class in pvp they don’t play it because they like the class and the possibility it offers, they play that class because they think it’s the best for winning if played with the build other players had come up to.
it’s not a coincidence that you see few warriors in pvp and tons of minion necro, thieves, mesmers, engineer and ranger

Agreed, it’s why you’ll never see a lot of champions in League Tournaments like Nautilus, Annie, Master Yi and many others.

Does that mean they don’t work? Hell no, you can see Nautilus carry teams, Annie wreck mid as well as Master Yi backdoor so well he turned a losing game into a win.

Even against an average opponent, I can never win with a condition Guardian, Elementalist or Warrior regardless of my own skill. Warriors and Guardian only have like 2 conditions at their disposal and lack the ability to stack well. Elementalist is FORCED into an Element to use certain conditions, which is awful for a class you ideally want to constantly switch attunements.
Condition thieves are more viable than those builds, at least you evade when you use Death Blossom.

This is because there is no play style diversity. For the Guardian and Warrior you don’t work with your conditions, they just happen. As long as the traits for the Elementalist conditions are tied to an element, it will never be viable.

When you go from Condition Damage to Power, if your playstyle doesn’t change, it means you have no Play Style Diversity.

Envy, Amadan, Nova Stiker, i do think that you are right in some aspect, tho i still think that if you know what your build is capable of you still can pull of a win even whit the least “viable” build out ther, like me and my Engineer that doesn’t use any of the established builds.
Also you pointed out to one of the bigest issue that gw2 currently have even whitout build diversity, and that is lack of balance between current builds that are avaliable in game, like you said some builds no matter how used will never be on equal ground whit others, so before anet start to think about adding new possible builds to game they should first fix the balance between current one.

But that aside, the real cause of lack of “vialbe” builds is, this maybe just my opinion, lack of balance between core mechanics of game, like power vs condition damage,
no matter how much power you have its always usable, always valid as a means to attack, but if we talk about conditions thats completly different matter.
Condition are only valid if you have lots of source of that condition and you can apply many stack of it, also you need atleast around 900 condition damage for that condition to be usable as an attacks, and that is if we dont meantion how easy is to remove it.
Guardian whit condition build is not realy an option cause of that lack of balance. I had few fights whit condition based guardians on my engineer, and even if im in real disadvantage against condition attacks(i have only H turret to remove conditions) and the damage of conditions was high, their attack still did not pose a threat to me.
Of course every profesion have their strong and weak points so forceing profession to play in a way that it was not realy meant to wont do any good.

All in all, its just my opinion, we have more builds than just that “viable” ones but because of lack of balance in some of the game mechanics only few of the builds are realy usefull, so before anet starts to add new stuff to the mix they should first work out their basics.

Tho im not against your idea, i just think its too early to ask for it.

i feel like i have to clear something, i know there are people that play different game style, they know the class so well they can do a lot with pretty much the build they like.
i only said that because i notice that after some patches the population (at least at low level ranks) in the pvp arenas really change.
first you could see tons of mesmers all with the same build, i fought teams with 3 rangers in the rank, thieves are always there more or less and they all turn invisible, lately you’ll see tons of necros and of course most of them are using the same build.
and this happen despite the fact that all those classes are still viable more than enough and most of them still allow a lot of build diversity.

anyway, yes i agree both with the need of balance and the need of different play style.

Looking Ahead 2013

We’ll begin regularly adding new skills and traits to the game for each profession to expand your characters and builds! You will be able to earn these new traits and skills by unlocking them. To go along with this, we’ll expand the content and options to earn skill points to help encourage players to experience different challenges and content throughout the world. These skills and traits will be designed to be balanced with the existing skills/traits we currently have in the game, and will simply compliment and expand the range of abilities and tactics available to each profession. Both WvW and PvE players can acquire skills and traits, and additional means of earning skill points will be addressed for both core content areas.

Oh my, I am proud of ArenaNet.

They basically mentioned they will add exactly what this thread is about.