Guild Wars 2

One of the things I loved about GW1 was the concept of elite skills. Often, these were just stronger variants of a standard skill, but strong enough that they were worth building your entire character around.

There were three major factors at play here:

• Shorter cooldowns. These skills could be the core of any encounter you had, as opposed to 3 minute cooldown panic buttons.
• Large variety. Self-explanatory – I have three necromancer elites and I’ve only unlocked one, because the others don’t interest me. There’s not much to choose from here.
• Flexibility of the rest of the build.

The last bullet is important – my weapons lock in anywhere from 2 to 5 of my skills in one swoop. In GW1, choosing “Spiteful Spirit” as my elite meant I probably wanted to take Arcane Echo as a second ability (and that’s only if I subclassed Mesmer! there were so many other choices…), and then I largely had an empty skill bar to play with.

In GW2, even assuming I had a GW1 style elite, I would be locked into one generic “healing skill” (again, variety is a problem), and then effectively two choices to make as far as weapons (making up 3 skills). My utility skills are sort of free form, sort of not, as I need to synergize with the traits that complement my weapon skills.

I think what it boils down to is that I really miss the flexibility that the empty skill bar provided me in GW1. I had a lot of interesting choices to make when customizing my character, and I feel like I have far fewer interesting choices to make today.

Yes please. God yes. This is an incredibly good idea. I need more creativity in my character builds. Having the same 4 slashes with a sword is killing my brain.

If you want to limit the skills, do so by category.

For example, there should be ample amount’s of ideas that could fit into a “2” slot instead of a teleporting stab maneuver.

How about this idea……… change the current elite skill into just another utility slot, (giving use a total of 4).

Rework the old Elite skills into the skill current skill tree, by adding another group to buy from, using skill points and give use a few more choose of each type of utility skill per profession.

Ok…..here is the idea…… Give us the option to pick which of our skills like in GW1 would be our elite skill.

I would love it if we would have to get them like in GW1.