Guild Wars 2

I read a lot about weapon skills on this forum and even if some suggestions are already in this forum I think I came up with something much more balanced and with a bit of the feel Guild Wars had.

Situation : the skills 1, 2 and 3 are for the right handed weapon, the skills 4 and 5 are for the left handed weapon. In the case of a two-handed weapon, all 5 skills are tied to the weapon.

Problem : we don’t have enough customization on the first 5 slots of our skill bar. The skills are linked to the weapon we choose and we have no choice in those. Using for example a Rifle will always unlock the 5 same skills for a given profession.

Solution : adding a choice in the skills that are on this first part of the skill bar.

How : the goal is to keep the skill allocation described in the “Situation” but also allowing the player to change the skills linked to each hand. It would be easy to add variations of the existing skills for each weapon and the player would have the choice between a crowd-control, direct-damage, area of effect abilities, damage over time…build for his weapon skills.

This would work like it did in Guild Wars where weapon skills were available for different professions. In this game we had the following attributes (with 3 skills as examples) :
– Axe Mastery : Axe twist, Axe chop, Cyclone Axe
– Hammer Mastery : Crushing blow, Hammer bash, Heavy blow
– Swordsmanship : Gash, Knee cutter, Sever artery
– Dagger Mastery : Death blossom, Disrupting stab, Lotus strike
– Spear Mastery : Blazing spear, Swift javelin, Wild throw
– Scythe Mastery : Crippling sweep, Eremite’s attack, Farmer’s scythe
It would be really easy to create an attribute for each weapon type and then release skills for each attribute. You would be allowed to equip skills 1, 2 and 3 from the attribute of the right hand and skills 4 and 5 from the attribute of the other hand (only one attribute for 2-handed weapons).

This way we keep the hand limitation for the skills and we add a large personalization to the different builds. Of course with such system a build saving tool would be gladly welcome since many players will want to experiment and change skills with situation.

Creating the skills for each weapon would take some time to design (even if Guild Wars can be a good inspiration for start) and the balancing would be something that need precision. But it’s always possible to include this new system over time with small skill packs. ArenaNet could start with adding 3 skills to each right handed weapon, 2 skills to each left handed weapon and 5 skills to each 2 handed weapon. And with an iteration process see if this works and then decide to add new skills.

Acquisition of the new skills : it could be fun and epic ! There could be a new quest added in game with a mini-dungeon and a boss at the end. Each time you kill this boss you’ll unlock a new skill for each of the equipped weapons. Then you would have to do it for each weapon you want the new skills.

With different boss unlocking different skills, this would also reconnect with the skill scavenger-hunt we had in Guild Wars.

I hope you’ll like my idea and I’ll be glad to discuss it with you and operate some changes if you have nice additions or modifications for it !

this would be a little tricky with ele’s attunement…

I don’t think it will, in the current state of Guild Wars 2 every weapon comes with 4 skills for each slot depending on the attunement. It will still work the same.

If you equip “Dagger” in the right hand you could select your 3 skills for slots 1, 2 and 3 from the “Dagger” skills. Each “Dagger” skill will have 4 abilites (1 for each element).

It’s exactly like this right now, since when you equip you weapons you have 5 skills * 4 attunements = 20 skills.

I see no difficulty here, like in current game each weapon skills will be specific to each classe. Rifle skills for the Warrior are not the same the Engineer has. This will not change to keep balance.

Bump because i changed the title to make it more accurate.

Totally agreed! Having the weapon skills customizable would bring a new depth to the game!

Also, Elites and Signets of Capture!