Guild Wars 2

In it’s current state, Guild Wars 2 offers a little amount of skills during combat itself. 5 skills are static, 5 skills are weapon dependent and can only be replaced by 5 other skills using weapon swap.

Naturally, it is unthinkable to overthrow the entire combat system that was designed for GW2, but I do feel like there should be a wider array of skills available during combat. Thus my idea would be to, at a certain level, give the ability to swap utility skills during combat to make a more versatile feeling possible. There would be no need for GUI changes, no need for entire overhauls or adding skills, just that.

Please share your opinions on this idea.

I like it, but it should be based on the same cooldown as weapon swapping so if you swap utility skill slots, you can’t change weapons and vice versa. However at this point of the game where there is a very limited skill pool in terms of the utility skills you can choose it wouldn’t be as groundbreaking improvement after all. Maybe in a year or so when we hopefully get some new skills we’d see this feature added to the game.

The problem is you have 30 skills, 10 PVP 10 Never usefull , 10 PVE
Result: Same skills from level 30-80.. Freakin boring.
In GW1 my characters could choose between like 400-500 different skills

The problem with that is a game with many skills is not spectator-friendly. You don’t really see games like WoW PvP turning into an eSport, while League of Legends stormed the scene within its first few years.

ANet is gunning for the eSport scene – And I’m assuming they’re still aiming for it.

ANet specifically reduced the number of skills you can access to give the game more clarity. Less skills to choose from reduces the learning curve significantly with minimal loss on game depth because now you just have to choose more carefully, making the game more spectator-friendly.

Swapping during combat is a definite no-no, because it would lead to some screwed up abuse issues like using all your shouts and then switching to all-signets for tons of passive power, or chaining different CC abilities and effectively CC-locking someone indefinitely by yourself.

It throws balancing completely out the window.