Guild Wars 2

Anet will eventually need to add more skills in GW2, or make lots of modifications to some of the existing weapon skills (EDIT: especially the main-hand skills) so they aren’t simply incapable of synergizing with other weapon skills. After hours of Mesmer, I’ve realized that there’s really just a few ways to pair up your weapons in certain playing styles (due to lack of main-hand weapons & lack of synergy capable of two-handed weapon).

The main-hand weapon has a huge part in dictating how you play, since:

A) It will determine if the player hits range/melee.

B) Major attack spells come from skills 2-3.

While the off-hand posses skills which usually have much longer CD times (from skill 1-5, there’s a frequent tenancy of CD time, from auto-attack [shortest skill CD time] to eventually skill 5 [longest skill CD time]).

Currently (taking a common-sense guess here), the builds in gw2 have mostly been preset by the developers and by their internal testers, who have already come up with many different ‘core’ builds for a class for players (us) to figure out without being told (simply a large system built from ‘branch customizations’). I’ve noticed that these builds are all designed around the same structure I stated above (though they’re only my personal pattern observation).

But, if you look at the system… it is still considered not ‘truly customizable’ since if that’s really the case – the devs wouldn’t have been able to keep the skills balanced at all (like in GW1 and in much of any other skill based games in the past/present, they can only keep nerfing or buffing the skills that are unbalanced, in which case ultimately leads to wasting a lot of time due to a not detailed enough thought about ‘synergy’…). From a player’s point of view, Anet seems to want to move away from this type of skill system from the looks of what they’re doing in GW2?.. * Get it right the first time as much as possible.

But even though it’s also understandable by changing one skill in the game now would possibly cause a huge ripple effect on other skills, so they’re letting the ‘meta’ of the game sink in first… eventually though the reality is that the players would get bored of using their same skills over and over again, especially for casual players who don’t like to 24-7 skill building & also players who’ve figured out those 3-4 core weapon builds.

IMO, what’s also lacking in the skills right now is the fact that it’s not totally true that each class can do exactly what the other class can do, some classes are better at stacking in duration (DOT damage) because they have more weapon skills/stats contributing to it, while other class are better at stacking in intensity (shorter duration but bigger damage, similar to burst damages) because again their traits and weapon skills together synergizes to that style better. This ultimately results in a class being better at DPS while other class being better at Burst – which comes back to my point of saying that each class aren’t as good at dps as the other and which means if I want to be the “best DOT class or burst class in the game” – I’d have to relevel a new character to do so, which is the single worst thing in MMOs; a player has to give up their favorite ‘class style’ in order to presume a role, IE. I like my mesmer clones and I want to be able to pick between DPS and Burst for my clones… but I can’t because the skills synergies don’t support both.

Anyways, that’s my thought for why I think GW2 desperately needs to make more weapon skills (especially for main-handed weapons) for the players, because much of the core synergies are repeatitve with occasionally altering a few ultity skills & skill trait options in the same trait line to better suit/counter certain situations (ie. change from damage buff to condition removal against opponents with condition skills).

That you WANT more weapon skills doesn’t mean the game NEEDS them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d be all for customizing some or all of the 1-5 slots myself (even at 2 choices per slot per weapon the customization options would be immense), but let’s not get it twisted. This is just something you want, and nothing more.

Corian.4068:

That you WANT more weapon skills doesn’t mean the game NEEDS them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d be all for customizing some or all of the 1-5 slots myself (even at 2 choices per slot per weapon the customization options would be immense), but let’s not get it twisted. This is just something you want, and nothing more.

It’s fine if nobody agrees with WANTING more weapon skills, but the problem remains that they need more “main-hand weapon skills” which are the skills that controls how a player syngerizes his traits, off-hand weapons, and utility skills around.

EDIT : I’ve edited the post to clarify that my point is directing to having more “main-handrf weapons” → and in terms more main-handed weapon skills.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Polearm

the Polearm was considered as another weapon type.
type in [&AgFPWQAA] in GW2 and you can see the Steady Weapon version of the Polearm.

I think this falls to traits imo.

Traits need to change things up more, there are still too many boring traits you sift through.

Traits such as “Torch skills now remove conditions” are a good example of traits that can add or completely change the function of your abilities. More traits should be like that. Each trait slot should be a struggle to choose from many good/fun traits that actually change things up. Usually it’s too easy (these 5 suck, this one’s good ^slots^).

I don’t mean any disrespect but don’t just say we need need more main-hand weapon skills. Propose main-hand weapons that could be added that would be viable .

@ Knote.

Yes, that was also my earlier conclusion of why skills weren’t synergizing better… although, as Anet prolongs about doing ‘nothing’ on skill traits… it made me wonder if it was because the impact of skill traits on the overall skill balance in the game is something “very delicate”. While for weapon skills, you can simply add new traits that only effect that new weapon itself… in which case, it would not effect other weapon skills as long as you get the stats themselves right.

@ Adine

I simply don’t like to tell Anet how to do their job especially when it comes to designing (IMO, that’s what a suggestion for new weapons is; it’s telling Anet to make this!.. make this!..)… plus, we don’t even know if they are going to implement new weapons, right now it’s more about finding out if they’re going to, and if so… we have to give them a reason why, or else the decision comes down to either a popularity contest or what the designers see fit in implementing in their eyes.

I think it’s really just that we need more time to settle into the game. LoL, for example; its champions only have 4 skills and a passive effect, but the core of the customization comes from rune page set up (think of that as armor), their masteries (traits if you will), and lane composition (who plays what role in a dungeon/PvP match.) Given that we allow weapon variety, I’d say GW2 is fairly more customizable, but then again we also don’t have 100+ weapons to choose from….

@ Painking.

For a mesmer… you’re choice for weapon are as simple as: Range DPS = Greatsword, Melee = 1H sword, AOE= staff, Conditions = scepter. And the off-hand weapons are just add-ons/adjustment for builds. But as you can see… the core build with your main-hand weapon is either a sword or sceptor.

Two weapons, two types of core differences.

I think it would be great if they balanced the weapons so they are all usable first.

Hotdogs.8934:

I think it would be great if they balanced the weapons so they are all usable first.

All the weapons are usable o.o… but I get what you’re trying to say

What I’d like to see is alternate 1-5 skills for different weapons. For example you might find a Longbow that changes warrior 4 to be a cripple rather than a blind. Or a staff that changes elementalist Water 2 to be a blast with a self heal component.

Not sure if it’s practical, it would mean adding a huge extra number of weapon skills and the balancing would be really tricky but it would add a lot of excitement to looting and bringa bit more to the levelling once you hit 30.