Guild Wars 2

Now, perhaps I’m reminiscing too hard to my days of Guild Wars.
Perhaps there’s some huge balance oversight that would cause this to break the game and make this a terrible idea.

But basically, I’d just like the option to use a normal slot skill in the place of the “0” slot reserved for Elites. I’d imagine a character would still be required to have access to the elite slot, for PvE purposes, but could opt to carry 4 slot skills plus their heal on the right side of the bar as opposed to 1 heal, plus 3 others plus an elite that they won’t use.

Obviously this all depends on the build, but with the current pool of elites and the way certain race/class combinations get, I don’t think it would hurt to allow players to tack on another slot skill in the place of the elite, to allow more versatility of builds and such.

The only problem I might see is the difference in cooldown between most slot skills and most elite skills. Which I could see an argument for since this might become too good just because of the cooldown difference giving more versatility. Or I’m overthinking this.

Alternatively, make more and more varied elite skills.

I actually like this idea a lot. I have only one useful elite skill at the moment but I have a ton of other utilities I would rather use in its place. As a human ranger, the only skill useful for me in my elite slot is the speed/crit buff, which I only use as a speed buff. It would be really nice to be able to use a different skill instead of that.

Hum… Not so sure how imbalancing that would be… Another short use skill or signet… I do not think this is a good idea.

I prefer the 2nd option, to have more elite skills. Maybe some generic ones everyone can purchase. A summon, a transform, etc.

I play a guardian, and the tomes are really good for WvW, but they kind of suck for soloing. Luckily, I’m also human, so I can summon 2 hounds, which is great for soloing. So adding more elite options would be good.

Ah, Signets. yeah. That has some potential, I guess.
I dunno, maybe I’m just pushing too hard to make this more like GW1, but in theory, deciding to give up your elite slot for one more signet (for example) to max out your signet-centric build, seems like a fair trade off to me. Since a majority of elites seem to be high cooldown and quite impactful. Whereas a signet is a consistent buff. I think having that as an option would be good and could open up some more interesting strategic dialogue. While it might sometimes be better to have a normal slot skill most of the time, sometimes it won’t be and sometimes it will. Maybe you want crazy elites for WvW just because a lot of time can pass between encounters while sPvPers might want slot skills instead for more consistent versatility. I don’t think there’s anything quite wrong with opening up strategy more.

At least that’s how I’m seeing it.

+1 a million times over I cannot stress how many of the normal ability’s are easily better than most of the elite slot ones.