Guild Wars 2

I personally think having so much of your stats tied to traits is a bad idea. There’s too many cases with builds where you feel like you have to trait a certain way just because of the stats you gain, especially when leveling.

Not to mention it only forces certain stats on you when you want to trait a specific way. The traits themselves should be good/specific enough to warrant traiting into a tree based on its playstyle. Like a Condition Necro will still trait into Curses because the traits deal with improving conditions, and not because it gives you up to 300 more condition dmg, which is ALOT.

Another example is a squishy class like Ele that feels obligated to spec into Water just because it’s extra Vitality they desperately need to not die from a sneeze.

Instead the 700 Primary and 70% secondary stats (Boon/Cond/Crit Dmg) from 70 trait points could be baked into gems instead, maybe adding gem slots to Armor and/or Weapons if you want it to be spread out more. And the stats for the class specific trait bonus (Arcane/Soul Reaping/Beast Mastery/Trickery/Illusions/etc) could be similar to how WoW’s Mastery Stat works.

This could also give way to adding new secondary stats for people customize their playstyle even further.

I definitely agree with this.

I would love to see stats from traits removed and stats on gear just bumped up an appropriate amount to roughly compensate for it.

Another even easier (and more desirable imo) way to do this would be to just add a second screen for stats in your trait screen. Each trait point you get would give you 20 points to allocate to stats (instead of you placing it for 10/10 like you do now). Limit the total that can be placed in a stat to 300, so it works out as it does now.

Then you could pick the traits you wanted, you could pick the stats you wanted, and your character would be truly customized for your needs.

I’m personally against this.

For me, the +stats allows another degree of flexibility. I can choose my gear to be a bit more damage oriented by statting for Toughness or Vitality, or I can choose my gear to be defensive by statting towards Precision and Power. However, while I am doing that, I also have to make some actual decisions: do I want this trait or the stats from the other tree? And that’s a valuable thing.

Also, there would be some pretty serious backlash or balance issues with removing it. If you just smacked those stats onto the level 80 base stats, or onto gear, you’re pretty much left with two ways to do it: Firstly, you can add a certain amount across the board, but that would just cause a backlash from people who specialized in damage. Similarly, if you added it to gear, you would end up limiting the current flexibility, or you would end up creating overpowered gear.

If you were allowed a total of 700 stat points that you could allocate however you want to each of the four stats, with a cap of 300, you would probably end up with even more balance issues, as people wouldn’t be limited by the traits. Right now, you often have to “sacrifice” the stats you would gain for a good trait skill. Remove that, and you get “perfect” builds. And that’s not balanced, nor is it ideal. Having a de factor “perfection” to builds leads to everyone going the same route, which goes against everything GW2 stands for.

At first I was against this, but then…

… I had this idea. What if they removed all trait lines, and gave you one big pool of traits? Now you could chose your own set of traits. They could make it so that the cost varies, so a trait that gives invulnerability at 25% would cost more than one which inflicts a short bleed on crit.

If they wanted to keep the custom stats, it doesn’t have to be linked. They could pull the stats onto a second point system, where you could spend another 70 points purely on stats. That way, chars would be as powerful as they are now, but with more customizability. It would reintroduce part of what made GW1 great.

I have mixed feelings about this.
I think basic stats like Power and Condition Damage should be removed from Traits.
However, I think properties like reduced Virtue Recharge Time, or increased Condition Duration are a good thing.

I too have mixed feeling against this. The freedom of trait allocation with no regard to stats allows people to come up with really whacky builds. But these whacky builds are probably going to ruin balance. So I will agree with the OP only if the trait abilities are toned down as well.

I don’t know about this – I like having the balance of damage-orientated gear and defensive traits. It just…works.

I made a suggestion about 3 things I would improve in Traits, stats being one of them.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Traits-Superior-Elite-Stats/first#post608173

Stuff like the Necromancer Curses Adept Minor Trait Barbed Precision (66% chance to cause bleed on crits), or the Guardian Retributive Armor (5% of toughness adds to your Precision) should be what the Trait lines give you for investing in them.

So if you invest like 10 points into Curses your total Condition Damage would increase by 30% of your Crit Chance.
So if you have 30% crit chance, you’d be increasing your total Condition Damage by 9%.

I say this, because several Traits scale in usefulness with your equipment, like the Virtue/Shatter recharge traits, or boon/condition duration.

The rest, however, doesn’t.

I like it the way it is . It makes you have to think about your build a little more

Adine.2184:

I like it the way it is . It makes you have to think about your build a little more

Wrong.
90% of builds only care about the Minor/Major Traits, not the Trait Line bonuses.

The importance of Trait Line Bonuses such as Precision, Power, Condition Damage, Toughness, Vitality or Healing Power and even Crit Damage grows weaker and weaker as you obtain better gear.

The only exceptions are Boon/Condition Duration and Mechanic Recharge.

My suggestion:
- Don’t remove Trait bonuses
- Replace the boring ones with interesting ones – lots of good examples in existing Minor/Major Traits.

I don’t like the idea, it would just be a first step to simplify traits and go the way of WoW, which has now 6 talents per class instead of the previous 80 or so. I’m against anything that simplifies building and traiting.

Once you’re level 80, you don’t look at the stats anymore anyway, you only look at the minor and major traits. The stats only really matter at low level, which is when traits don’t matter yet, so it’s just fine the way it is.

@Zsymon
You’re saying that removing them simplifies it to the way of WoW.
And then you say they are too weak to matter at low level, and don’t matter at high level either.

Congrats, you just defeated your own point and proved the OP is right.

I am against the OP for a different reason – replace the boring trait bonuses with interesting ones, instead of removing them.

This way, you will actually have to WEIGHT Minor/Major Traits VERSUS Trait bonuses.