Guild Wars 2

I’ve hit lvl 80 few days ago, and it’s still weird for me that I’m using the same 5 weapon skills that I’ve used from lvl 1.

So here’s my idea, why not add tiers of weapon skill so we can change them like the slot skills? It could bring a bit of fresh air to the game, especially if you unlock those skills at specific levels such as 20, 25, 30 etc.

On the other hand, it could be bit confusing to new players maybe and it might be hard to balance it, but it might not be a bad idea for a future plan.

What do you think?

It would be extremely confusing for new players, especially with the already difficlut trait system in place. (also Runes and Sigils)

What I would love to see is some sort of mechanic, where you can optimize each weapon skill to your personal flavor. Example:

FIREBALL
Damage: 314
Area of effect: Circle 120
Range: 1,200

Option 1: Increase the AoE to 200, decrease the range to 900
Option 2: Increase the damage by 10%
Option 3: 10% chance to cause an additional fireball.

What do you think about this?

As for enhancing your current skills, that’s a great idea, at least for me since I love diversity and customization, but I think it would be hard to balance since you need to have both cons and pros or else everyone would go for +10% damage if there’s no drawback, and the normal skill (non-enhanced) would become obsolete.

As for new skills, they don’t have to be more powerful or anything like that, it would be stupid to move from one set of basic skills and never go back, but personally I wouldn’t mind having more weapon skills.

As for learning curve, I don’t see a problem if you unlock your first Tier 2 skill on lvl 40, since you’re going to have some knowledge regarding the game mechanics.

I had a similar idea i posted about but instead of levels have it tied to weapon master achievement. so at tier 1 you unlock another set of skills for that weapon. so 5k kills for staff will unlock all tiers of skills (account wide) for that weapon only. This would allow for 1 a reason to use different weapons and 2 it will add some depth to the skills. And you can switch out skills so ur not just stuck using tier 1 tier2 btu u cna mix have slot 1 tier3 slot 2 tiers 1 and yadayadayada

I think the system is great the way it is. I hate mmos where I have to relearn my class every x amount of levels because I’ve received a crapload of new abilities.

I want to know my utility bar like the back of my hand and learn new ways to apply them as the situation changes. And I still get to unlock the slot skills and create a custom bar. best of both worlds imo.

Well, the game has a realistic approach to the mechanics.

A swing of a sword is the same Swing whether you are lvl 1 or lvl 80… Like in real Life.

However, a swing from a level 1 is much less powerful and precise than a swing of a level 80. Again, like in real life a novice swordsman and a master swordsman.

The bigger issue here with adding tiered skills or any other enhancement to classs weapons. Like I though maybe there should be a more thematic approach, such as a Ranger should be better with a Bow than a Warrior for instance, and a Warrior better with a sword. But then we start deviating from the no Holy Trinity design.

The idea here is for all classes to be able to Tank, DPS and Support equally, if each class starts getting enhancements to certain areas compared to others then certain roles start becoming better for certain classes, and voila we are back to the holy trinity.

It is very difficult in reality, albeit I agree, that it does feel like something is missing.

In my view it’s a bad idea to add new skills based on levels.
What I suggest, is that you make people EARN their new skills.
If you go to your Hero (H) screen and go to Achievements and then
go to “Slayer” you’ll see that there’s challenges for every weapon.
Such as “Get 500 kills with a Sword”. Therefore, I say, that when players
complete one of these, THEN they unlock a new skill.

Why is this good? Because it eliminates the confusion moreso than what
the OP suggested. For instance, if you’ve ACTUALLY gotten 5,000 kills with
that sword (which is an actual Achievement you can get) then surely
you’ll be familiar with your sword skills by then; enough so as to reward you
with a new skill set perhaps.

This is also logical and adds some “realism” to the game, because in real life, the
more you practice, the better you get; thus I think this might work.

The LZ.7891:

In my view it’s a bad idea to add new skills based on levels.
What I suggest, is that you make people EARN their new skills.
If you go to your Hero (H) screen and go to Achievements and then
go to “Slayer” you’ll see that there’s challenges for every weapon.
Such as “Get 500 kills with a Sword”. Therefore, I say, that when players
complete one of these, THEN they unlock a new skill.

Why is this good? Because it eliminates the confusion moreso than what
the OP suggested. For instance, if you’ve ACTUALLY gotten 5,000 kills with
that sword (which is an actual Achievement you can get) then surely
you’ll be familiar with your sword skills by then; enough so as to reward you
with a new skill set perhaps.

This is also logical and adds some “realism” to the game, because in real life, the
more you practice, the better you get; thus I think this might work.

I like your suggestion that you get new weapon skills as you get more kills, but there’s a tiny problem with it. For example as a ranger I don’’t like the skills on my sword, and if I want new sets of skills for it, I have to use it (or dare I say to grind) to get 1000 or more kills to upgrade unlock new skill). This system would be great, but it mustn’t feel like grinding.

The system is already like that in my view…. with the same sword and skills you do much more damage at 80 than at 1.

Well at 80 you have went through many kill and used swords in many adventures so it is realistic that you know how to wield it better and do more damage with it. That is what levels are meant to represent in reality…the game already has a realistic approach to skills.

Realistic i guess but also with becoming more proficient with something you do acquire new skills with it. That’s not the point though the point is the game lacks a depth in skills. We don’t need 400 skills per class but there needs to be more depth to the skills.

I would like to see some way to add or alter weapon abilities. Perhaps new abilities could be unlocked and you’re given the choice to replace a particular ability with an upgraded or more powerful version (more than just level/damage increase).

If they did something like this I would almost rather see it PvE only as to not upset or add complexity to PvP balance. With the PvE and PvP connection separated they would be at more liberty to add more powerful and daring ability replacements.

Egads! No. No to that complexity that would only inject more pointless grinding into the game. 2 really horrible suggestions…customize individual weapon skills by play style…and unlock weapon skills based on achievement. None of that.

You already get to customize your weapon skills to your play style. It’s called switching weapons. If they implemented your system it would make the game more fun because the’re would be a “right answer” for different kinds of players and all you’ll have added is one more thing we have to know/tediously configure to make our characters optimum.

And unlock weapon skills by achievement? Are you kidding? You want to kill 10 things with each weapon just to unlock your number 2 skill? That’s an insane level of grinding. Especially for elementalists who have to unlock each weapon 4 individual times. No no no to that.

You don’t HAVE to go and grind out 5k kills but just playing game nets you things anyways. Also you don’t have to use the complexity of the skills if they did make it that way. And switching weapons engineers and elementalist can’t do that. The game play with normal skills that your using now can go unchanged just added for those who would like a little bit more depth and complexity into a game. Don’t say it’s a terrible idea just because you don’t want to work for added skills.

If anything they should add tiered spell effects. The skills are the same, but the low level ones are dull and boring and the higher level ones are more flashy.

I think new mechanics or effects for attacks would be nice. Like for example instead of skill 4 damaging and adding a stack of bleed it could dmg and cripple or poison, or Skill 1 bouncing off multiple targets could be swapped for a further range single shot or quicker flying arrow thats harder to dodge (YES I HATE SB BASIC ATTACK ON THIEF).

Up up for Diablo 3 skill customization.
I’m against skill ranks.

hmm not skill tier or trait tree like diablo but just a second attack set you could change to also when in combat and get 5 more skills with every weapon could get interesting.

Being able to change the 1-5 key attacks would be nice.

But,
1) that they aren’t much different in power from the original ones
E.g. Skill 1 does say 600dmg but the alternative one does 650
Or skill 2 does 700 but the alternative does 500 but does 2s burn

2) unlocking via achievements is good on paper but it could cause people to bot just to get improved skills. Id say introduce a nice hard solo dungeons or team dungeons or some sort of challenges to unlock it. No one wants to run around aimlessly killing just to get your skill. You should need somewhat of skill to get the alternative skill.

Let’s see some nice ideas

D I V A.6018:

It would be extremely confusing for new players, especially with the already difficlut trait system in place. (also Runes and Sigils)

What I would love to see is some sort of mechanic, where you can optimize each weapon skill to your personal flavor. Example:

FIREBALL
Damage: 314
Area of effect: Circle 120
Range: 1,200

Option 1: Increase the AoE to 200, decrease the range to 900
Option 2: Increase the damage by 10%
Option 3: 10% chance to cause an additional fireball.

What do you think about this?

I like it, and this could easily be done with traits if they expanded on the already existing system. I would say they could even take this a little farther and change the standard usage of a skill.

In my opinion it’s a little early to be asking for this as pretty much every class needs at least a few skill revisions. I can’t believe I’m saying this but give the game some time to mature and the developers time to catch up on bug fixes.

Looking to the future I think this would be a great feature to have in conjunction with being able to move the skills around in your bar.

Mentalhead.5721:

The LZ.7891:

In my view it’s a bad idea to add new skills based on levels.
What I suggest, is that you make people EARN their new skills.
If you go to your Hero (H) screen and go to Achievements and then
go to “Slayer” you’ll see that there’s challenges for every weapon.
Such as “Get 500 kills with a Sword”. Therefore, I say, that when players
complete one of these, THEN they unlock a new skill.

Why is this good? Because it eliminates the confusion moreso than what
the OP suggested. For instance, if you’ve ACTUALLY gotten 5,000 kills with
that sword (which is an actual Achievement you can get) then surely
you’ll be familiar with your sword skills by then; enough so as to reward you
with a new skill set perhaps.

This is also logical and adds some “realism” to the game, because in real life, the
more you practice, the better you get; thus I think this might work.

I like your suggestion that you get new weapon skills as you get more kills, but there’s a tiny problem with it. For example as a ranger I don’’t like the skills on my sword, and if I want new sets of skills for it, I have to use it (or dare I say to grind) to get 1000 or more kills to upgrade unlock new skill). This system would be great, but it mustn’t feel like grinding.

Yet isn’t that also adding a little realism? As in, yeah you don’t like it, but like in real life, you have to work for it, if you want something better. Plus, there’s going to be weapons which you do like, thus you’ll level them mostly. I don’t see any harm in not delivering everything in a challenge-free way. Maybe when you’ve got time, you’ll start using that sword perhaps? ^^.

I would love any of those ideas to be implemented as long as they give more freedom and specialization to weapons skills. Giving certain skills different effects/traits while on the other hand decreasing dmg or range etc. would be the right way for balancing sake.
I think this game also misses some unique spells with penalties and requirements , this could be achieved with skill traits. I mean the preconditions are there as many skills of different classes don’t differ at all.
May be they should make spells drop from bosses or champion mobs, even traits.