Guild Wars 2

Here are some suggestions regarding improving the game, specially its customizability and fun in experimenting with builds.

After each suggestion I try to give a brief explanation on the logic behind it.

Related Topics:
Skill Variants
Sollution to Condition Stacking
Trait Concepts
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Conditions, Hybrids & Stats

1. Condition Damage renamed Malice once again
2. Every single damage skill in the game is given a coefficient for both Power and Malice.
   - Single-hit attacks benefit mostly from Power
   - Conditions benefit mostly from Malice
   - Multi-hit (Hundred Blades) and periodic damage (Symbols, Traps, etc) benefit from both Power and Malice
3. Allow Conditions that do NOT stack Intensity (Burning, Poison) to benefit from Precision and Crit Dmg (either becoming able to Crit or having their damage modified directly by the Crit & Crit Dmg percentages)
4. Add Traits adjusting the Power and/or Malice coeficcient(s) of specific skills, in order to create a compromise.

What’s the logic behind this?
Currently, the way Stats interact forces players to invest in specific groups of stats, like Power+Precision+CritDmg

• Malice only interacts with Precision if you have specific Traits (like Bleed on Crit).
• There’s nearly no point in mixing Power with Malice
• There’s absolutely no point in mixing CritDmg with Malice

By allowing non-stacking conditions to benefit from Crit and Crit Dmg, professions that don’t focus on Bleeds can effectively play around with Malice
By giving periodic damage skills a Malice coefficient, you can have builds that focus on Power + Malice.

Healing & Vitality

1. Remove Healing Power from the game
2. Make Power and Malice affect outgoing healing (dealt by you to others and yourself) at less than 1/2 the effectiveness of the current Healing Power
3. Make Vitality affect incoming healing (received) at less than 1/2 the effectiveness of the current Healing Power

What’s the logic behind this?

• Healing is the only support that requires stat investment.
• You can support your teammates at full power through Protection, Aegis, Blindness, Daze, Stun, Condition Removal, Convert Conditions into Boons, etc, regardless of your stats.
• All the defensive Boons (except Healing) scale with incoming threat.
  - Protection will reduce incoming damage by 33% whether it’s 1,000 or 15,000 damage.
  - Blindness will make the attack miss whether it deals 1,000 or 15,000 damage.
  - Condition Removal will take care of your Bleed whether it has 1 stack or 25 stacks.
• But if you want to heal at full power, you have to sacrifice 1 Stat, and it doesn’t even scale with incoming damage.
• Vitality is also a stat that does not scale with incoming damage, unlike Toughness, and serves only as a Buffer.
  You take the same amount of damage no matter how much Vitality you have. It just makes you take a few hundred damage more to die.
  So combining Vitality & Healing Power for incoming healing makes Vitality a little better, more on par with the usefulness of Toughness.

Trait Lines & Stat Bonuses

1. Replace Power, Malice, Precision, Toughness, Vitality and Healing Power with interesting bonuses that actually scale with your gear.
2. Examples of fun bonuses can be found in several Traits:
   - Increased damage versus X (poisoned foes, etc)
   - Chance on Crit to do X (apply condition, heal, etc)
   - Chance when you apply a Condition with a skill to apply it again.
   - Bonus to Stat A equal to X% of Stat B

What’s the logic behind this?

• Condition Duration, Boon Duration, Crit Dmg and Mechanic Recharge (Burst/Virtue/etc) are interesting and fun bonuses
  - They also scale with your gear
• Power, Malice, Precision, Toughness, Vitality and Healing Power are boring
  - They also become weaker as your gear becomes better.

I think with the above suggestions you can actually start building what you like, rather than being forced into stat+build combos that everyone uses, with minor changes to an Utility Skill and/or Major Trait or two.

Included a link to related suggestions I’ve made in the past that, in my opinion, complement this one.

The small variety of working, useful builds for each profession+weapon combo evidences the issues with the stats.
Some stat combos, like Power+CritChance+CritDmg, increase your damage exponentially.
Others, like CritChance+ConditionDmg+Toughness, not so much.

I would appreciate some constructive feedback on this important matter.

As the game mechanics settle in, it’s becoming more obvious what – and why – certain builds are clearly superior.

The way traits and stats interact is effectively broken and needs a change.
Changing numbers in itself isn’t enough.
The mentality behind the various trait lines, bonuses, stats and interaction between stats needs to change.