Guild Wars 2

I like this idea a lot. I typically don’t like to make cookie cutter builds and I don’t like success being forced through 1 or 2 avenues.
I would at least like to be able to change the order of the skills I have now… It’s a start

I totally agree.. have a set of slot 1 skills to choose from. slot 2 skills and so on. each slot would have a set of skills to choose from for your weapons. i also think there needs to be more underwater weapons so we have more underwater skills that we can use. definitely bring back some of that gw1 feel in almost a limitless possibility of builds. also i am a little dissappointed in the elite skills. elite skills should be ELITE. example.. the tornado skill isn’t really that bad, but the fact you can still be downed while in tornado form is bad. like some other skills tornado should have its own life force so either the life is drained and you turn back or time runs out. the take root elite i like. you are invulnerable to damage and you make about 4 seed turrets. but summon a cat that fights by your side and dies easy is not elite.

no one else would like to see that ?

Late reply I know, but I had the same idea so I completely agree.

Agreed! Full control and fun combinations is what GW was all about imo. I feel way to limited in this versions. There really are no “builds” in this game

More skills on weapons is a must, even if there are only 2 choices of auto-attack, and a handful of choices for #2 to #5.

Whether it comes sooner in a patch, or later with an expansion we’ll have to wait and see, but I would be very surprised/disappointed if we never see alternative skills for weapons.

Lets bring this topic back people! I was reading again the list of changes they claimed would take place during the end of this year, and this is at the top of the page:

“Announced changes
These changes are intended to be released in the second half of 2013.
Professions and balance
There will be new unlockable skills and traits.”

That was directly taken from the official wiki. Was what we got in the 12/10/13 update really it? Just some healing skills, and re-positioning of current traits? I’m surprisingly bored with build creation in this game! Not gonna lie the new healing skill for the ele is nice, and I can stack might like a boss, but that now more then ever keeps me playing S/D or D/D.

There are 2 more weeks left in this year. I’d honestly like to see a noticeable amount of skills pop up, or that promise of additional skills and what not are going to seem very disingenuous to a lot of people. One healing skill per class is a little soft. We could also talk about the skill point cost of those new skills, but I digress.

I play a guardian, I would very much like the option to -block with my shield-. If new weapon skills get made, this should be in the front of the line, kthx

Please please please. We really need new weapon skills. We have plenty of utility skills and only 5 skills per weapon, especially for straight-on melee professions like Warrior and Guardian. I swear the GW1 warrior had as many Strength skills as the GW2 warrior has Utility skills.

In my humble opinion, instead of introducing more STUFF to do, it would be better to introduce more WAYS to do stuff. Or a healthy balance of both.

It’s not so much a lack in number of skills that can be used, but a lack of variety in skills and the way we can play each weapon. Honestly, boredom creeps in because your weapon is the main vessel for combat and if you’re limited in options there, you’re kind of stuck.

P.S. This concept has been around in the forums since the dawn of time so I hope that at some point, someone will tell us whether we can expect anything to change or if we should just stop posting about it.

Don’t hate me for saying this, but I think Diablo 3 had a great skill system – in principle.

I’m not saying that it was balanced, or that it’s an awesome game (it isn’t), or anything else – just that the basic infrastructure for skills was one of the best I’ve seen in awhile.

I know its not GW1, but I have to say coming from that to this is a little sad in build creation. I can’t think of too many games that have as small amount of skills as this one.

Rather then just complaining I’ll add what I think would be good additions to the game.

First and the largest would be a solid pool of weapon only skills with the removal of #1 being our base attack. Honestly why would I want my most basic of auto attacks in a slot in my skill bar. For all weapons skills 1-5 should be select-able from a small pool of skills for that weapon only.

In the case of the ele the same but still select-able for each element. I mean when playing GW1 as an ele if I wanted to be dumb enough to play nuke heavy skills with large cool downs I could. I should be able to do the same now.

I guess I could give many examples but I think everyone gets the point. A bar of 5 skills I can’t control, and 5 I can is weak!

MAKE A POOL OF WEAPON SKILLS AT LEAST PLEASE!

True Windigo.1704:

I know its not GW1, but I have to say coming from that to this is a little sad in build creation. I can’t think of too many games that have as small amount of skills as this one.

Rather then just complaining I’ll add what I think would be good additions to the game.

First and the largest would be a solid pool of weapon only skills with the removal of #1 being our base attack. Honestly why would I want my most basic of auto attacks in a slot in my skill bar. For all weapons skills 1-5 should be select-able from a small pool of skills for that weapon only.

In the case of the ele the same but still select-able for each element. I mean when playing GW1 as an ele if I wanted to be dumb enough to play nuke heavy skills with large cool downs I could. I should be able to do the same now.

I guess I could give many examples but I think everyone gets the point. A bar of 5 skills I can’t control, and 5 I can is weak!

MAKE A POOL OF WEAPON SKILLS AT LEAST PLEASE!

Totally agree re: weapon 1 skill being on the skill bar, It’s a weapon, you should have a standard attack and all the skills on the skill bar should be extra

I agree with the multiple weapon skills. What if I hate mesmer staff autoattack and want it to be more burst-dps? :/ That’s really sad what we’ve got now.

Supporting this.

This really needs to happen.

On a skill vs trait look…. for a progressional standpoint…. Path of exile was pretty darn variable.

for example, being a standard caster, until one “trait” completely changes you into a blood mage.

If you can guys lets keep this alive. I don’t want this to die, because this is what I feel is one of the over all missing parts of this game.

I mean who would think that you could pick up a sword and only be able to use 5 skills on it. When I bought this game I had the expectation that cool skills would pop up over time, but I’m seriously disappointed. I think one of the things that they went wrong with the weapon skills is that they created CLASS ONLY skills for the same weapon. So that every class used the same weapon differently.

How about mixing some (cross class) or having a pool of general weapon skills. In GW1 if I had an mes pick up a sword they would then have to equip sword skills. Yet there were mes only skills like illusion weapon. Not to say I’m looking for those skills exactly, but get where I’m going?

Either way lets keep this alive. I’d like to see some ideas for what changes you’d guys like to see. I’d really need help from the other GW1 old guys out there!

You know what, you’re missing a major point. A great game is born through simplicity, not through a massive amount of skills that introduce complex systems and chaos overall.

Some ideas here are fine, some are way too “not guild wars 2”. What I love in this game is how simple, yet how genius the combat phase can be. (when the battle is not happening between passive playstyles. This is another issue to be fixed though and has nothing to do with the number of available skills – but still.)

I know many people loved guild wars 1, but seriously, if you want to play guild wars 1, go ahead and play. The concept of guild wars 2 is to be a different game, with modern game structure, philosophy and graphics. Moving away from the x/5/1/3/1 skill system and adding more on that, would just not feel like Guild Wars 2.

If it makes you feel any better – if I’m not mistaken, they’ve already announced that new utilities, elites and weapon availability will be added. Somewhere in the CDI thread, a dev said that they’re chatting in Anet about sub-classes or something and that it makes him excited as a player.

My point is though, the number of available skills during combat should not change. 10 basic ones, plus weapon swapping, plus class mechanic is more than enough. Combat should be about playmaking, not buildmaking, that’s the exciting part about a game, that’s what makes games popular, not the luxury to give some weird guys (and this comes from a mathematician), numbers and trinkets to build with, without actually using them.

I’d personally like to see more weapon profession combos then individual weapon / profession skills.
However more utility skills would be nice but over 200 hundred would just be silly.
I’d like more freedom in my build, allow myself more play styles but having 50 damage abilities, or 60 healing abilities seems useless since there will always be a optimal choice meaning that 59 healing abilities or 49 – 46 damage abilities will be useless. By more abilities I’d prefer more variety more utility to enable more play-styles, not simply more random arbitrary same-y skills.

Eh, I’ve suggested having pool of skills for each weapon to choose from myself a few times since BWE1.
And I still support that idea. I love being an Elementalist, and I love the range my staff offers. But I’m getting a bit tired of my weapon skills.

i would love that we get more utility, elite, healing skills but for weapons just new sets of skills.. so you couldnt change each skill serpatly like in gw2 beacuse than builds would be way to good..

like in gw1*

I’m not sure if they would be “way too good” per-say. When I’m playing ele, there are very few builds I could do. I’m sure at time mes, and eng feel the same way. It just seems to me regardless of the build I create I’m locked into a very simple play style.

As my example before. Why can’t I choose to play a nuke (heavy dmg/long cool down) build? If I play an ele that option isn’t even there without me going S/D or D/D which is melee range. Which seems so ANTI-CLOTH to me. I guess my rant is more directed at the lack of build diversity. Thus the reason why I wanted to keep this alive and get peoples input.

This thread may be old, but the idea is golden!

i wish they would add more aoe nuke skills for mesmer staff so i can actually use it in pve without people going “omg noob mesmer staff is for noobs kick”

im tired of conditions being near useless in pve in general.. i would love if they gave mesmer staff some aoe damage… as mesmers currently lack it outside of 2 skills on 2 completely different weapons.

How about ideas for weapon skills if anyone has any?

This idea is about as old as the announcement of the skill system for GW2, ‘unfortunately’ … back when all those that commented on anything related to GW2 were merely the players that were still active in GW1, it was mentioned in multiple threads, that choosing such a narrow skill choice would be like ‘throwing away the baby with the bathwater’ (if you happen to be familiar with this saying, if not: like taking one of the best and most defining things of GW1 and throwing it out).

Next to this suggestion, there were also suggestions along the line of giving weapons themselves different skills. So that one would choose the weapon to go with the build…

I still think the lack of skill choices (as currently there are just a few build per profession that have been ‘cut up’ and hidden as the illusion of a choice, is somewhat sad. Especially if you see what GW1 came from… And sure, from those roughly 150 or so skill per profession (so 300 for a character), you could use only 8 and the amount of options in a synergetic build were few and far between. Still though, you could at least personalize your build if you wanted to, atleast for a few skills, and as such play as you want to play. (instead of merely choosing a way to play from a set of given builds, that once chosen need to be followed through. It’s not ‘how you want to play’ its choose from how we want you to play).

Anyways, to get back to this suggestion, I (amongst other ppl) suggested the same thing. But besides adding a couple of skill choices for weapons, I personally think Anet should take it one step further…

1. Each weapon should come with a basic set of skills on them, that are equal to all professions. This way, any class can pick up any weapon, which obviously makes a lot of sense… And while we are at this, also add skills for bare handed combat…

2. Then a class would get their ‘profession skills’, these would be choice skills that can be chosen for each weapon. Here in comes the difference in professions, as some weapons are NOT bound to a profession, these weapons would keep their basic skills for this profession.

As you unlock (via skill points) a certain weapon skill, it becomes an option in the pull down menu for that specific weapon, for the specific slot the skill is intended. Because lets face it, some skills are balanced through the location they have on the weapon, the cool down associated with them and the traits that influence those slots.

3. Now it becomes much easier to add weapon skills to the bunch, some skills may even warrant themselves to be in on different weapons as different combo’s. Heck, a ‘weave hand’ skill could even be a choice on the bare handed combat.

It also becomes easier to add a certain weapon (or merely part of it) to a profession, by adding one or more profession skills to the specific weapon. This could be as much as 1 skill even.

f/e: The warrior could still be the master of weapons, for having warrior specific skills for the most amount of weapons. But a ranger could still equip a staff, and fight with the basic skills on it. As could the warrior with a short bow, with ‘its’ basic skills…

4. More options, more customization, and thus more ‘play like you want to play’. And increasing the amount of builds could be as easy as adding say 2 skills to 2 choice slots. Increasing the amount of permutations significantly with just a minor addition.

5. Last but not least, to this then would be added the trait system. (which at one point was communicated to work like Diablo3, but then Diablo3 had that system and for lack of the actual reason we ended up with what we have, the idea of having a system like diablo3 got tossed out, likely because GW2 didn’t want to be associated with having the same system.) Which I think is too bad, because it could have been the same but entirely different at the same time, but w/e…

Traits could function as they do now, though I would personally have preferred it if they would actually mean something, because right now a lot of traits just seem like needed things for certain pre-intended builds that got tossed in some other part of the game.

• in short, to me the current skill system feels like a couple of build puzzles thrown into 3 piles (weapon, utility, traits) and the choice is to go and make the puzzle (build) that’s the most powerful or mess around in the side lines. While both GW1 and GW2 both had a certain amount of ‘illusion of choice’ in them, GW2 enlarged the illusion, by taking away the fluff that hid the illusion. (Or to put it more directly, where GW1 actually had the illusion of choice, the lack of choices in GW2 makes it blatently obvious that you have none).

Adding some skills to the weapons, as suggested years back, would at least add a little bit more choice to the professions, and as such add back a bit of the charm that GW1 had. I for one am all for this !! (if fact the system as described above is in my ’if I ever get the opportunity to build a game, this would be it.doc)

I like this idea, but I would like to add that for balance’s sake, that only 2-3 moves are available for each button. So for instance:

1. is auto attack X or auto attack Y
2. is ability W, ability V, or ability U
3. is ability T , ability S, or ability R

There needs to be some sort of limit to skill set-ups, because more variety just means more likelihood for an extremely overpowered setups to emerge that only undermines the amount of variety this change was trying to encourage.

Adding skills (that are actually useful) is a nightmare on profession balance, so I can certainly see why they haven’t done much in this regard in game yet. Its extremely hard to create a skill that isn’t too strong, too weak, or too boring.

Myrias.8732:

I like this idea, but I would like to add that for balance’s sake, that only 2-3 moves are available for each button. So for instance:

1. is auto attack X or auto attack Y
2. is ability W, ability V, or ability U
3. is ability T , ability S, or ability R

There needs to be some sort of limit to skill set-ups, because more variety just means more likelihood for an extremely overpowered setups to emerge that only undermines the amount of variety this change was trying to encourage.

Adding skills (that are actually useful) is a nightmare on profession balance, so I can certainly see why they haven’t done much in this regard in game yet. Its extremely hard to create a skill that isn’t too strong, too weak, or too boring.

Scrubs, for all of time, will ALWAYS, re-emphasising again, ALWAYS go with the meta builds. Players who play well and co-operate well with other players will always use different builds from the meta.

Also the skill selection should be: 1 autoattack, 2-5 choice. Applying limits like in your case only emphasises poor build variety and guarantees every scrub will run the same build as a smart player.

@FootDive, I totally disagree with you on the way to implement such a system. The 1 auto attack and 2-5 choices does one thing, it adds to the nightmare of balance, and with 1h and 2h weapons also becomes a nightmare to implement.

With linking the choices to the weapon slots, the choice skills can be balanced for said slot, and as such balanced to the other choices in other slots. When you add the choices on one pile, all the skills need to be balanced against all the other skills.

f/e the 5 skill on almost all weapons is a bigger impact skill than all the others. This skill would then become one of the choices. Now ‘we’ add in another intended nr5 bigger impact skill. In the ‘bound to slots’ choice options, there is no balance problem, a player can NOT take both high impact skills and has to choose one or the other. And obviously the same goes for the lighter impact skills. A player would not be able to weaken himself un-intended by putting a small impact skill on the nr5slot. In the case where all these skills are put on one big pile, this is no longer the case. players can take both high impact skills, or weaken themselves.

Same with balancing, in the case of slot bound choices, the balance only has to be taken into account for the possible combination. As opposed to the free choice, where balance can become a nightmare, because it has to take into account ALL the combinations. Or to put this into math:

Choices linked to slots:
slot 1 has auto, slot 2 has 3 choices, slot3 has 1, slot4 has 3 and slot5 has 2, slot 3 has 1 because of the Thief mechanic, this amounts to a total of 5 skills added per weapon for a total of 10 weapon skills

1 * 3!/(3-1)! * 1 *3!/(3-1)! *2! = 18 combinations

Choices on one pile:
same amount of skills, but only nr1 skill is bound to nr1

1 * 9! / (9-4)! )= 3024 combinations

dang I reserve the right to totally mess up the math here :P … been to dang long since I been playing with this, and I may have got the amounts not entirely right Thing remains though, that the amount of combinations linked to one big pile, tends to be bigger than the amount of combinations possible where these choices are linked to certain locations.

*in regards to the math, the amount 3024 is to high, as this still counts the builds that are practically ‘the same’. Unfortunatly my statistics book is somewhere packed away, and while searching the internet Is a breeze, actually finding something is a hairball in the kitten. … principle remains though…

Does the “nightmare of balance” not then take away from the variety of builds. I guess what I’m more interested in is the role a class can play vs the skills they could utilize to get there.

They would have to redo/adjust all the trait lines if they added more skills, so I doubt we will see this in a patch, only an expansion (if even then). Sucks because some weapons just have lame skill sets and the game definitely needs more variety.

As for certain choices for certain slots, the easy alternative is have 2-3 options for autoattack, 6-9 choices that can be placed into slots 2-5, and 2-3 that can only go into slot 5 (like healing, utility, and elite skills). Then make is so we can place a normal skill into the “elite” skill slot.

The elementalist has the most skills in the game at about 160, it hasn’t had more than two functioning builds at any time since launch.

I think we are solving the problem right here!! lol Something like 1 is a base auto 2-4 pool and 5 is always something stronger with a larger cool down. ie 100 blades or meteor shower.

That would be interesting!

I like the idea of having more skills per weapon, but merely as a question of variety. I do like how one weapon seems to be more “condition based”, another weapon more “healing based”, another weapon more “support based”, another more “damage based”. That said, I certainly don’t agree the game is locked down. I believe everything I need is right there. The good choice for the right moment. No BS, not too many extra useless skills like GW1 had.