Guild Wars 2

Warning: this is very long. TLDR alert.

I have an idea that might be worthwhile to look at for the trait reiteration that the devs have talked about recently. It centers around organizing traits into five categories that everyone benefits from, replacing what i think is a redundant attribute, and doing so without sacrificing the identity of professions.

I. 5 Concepts

So there are 12 traits per trait line, for a total of 60. If you take the concepts of damage, control, and support and dedicate the traits for those alone that would be 20 for each, however, I do not believe that is a total picture of how the game works.

So I’ll start by talking about two more concepts that are worth putting into traits – mobility and active defense.

Mobility is mainly defined by speed, stun breaks, and creating / closing distances. This is critical to aggressive play, getting to points for capture, getting out of trouble, and resisting control.

Defense is mainly defined by endurance by either using it or not. I think there needs to be a paradigm shift on endurance, with it either being a source of passive bonus or using it actively for benefit. This is similar to how signets are designed, and I think would make every profession similar in capability for survivability in conjunction with support.

Currently, every profession already has traits that fit into these categories, so they wouldn’t take a total revamp or anything – warrior’s sprint as an example of mobility, and vigor on stances for defense.

This would make for 5 different areas that everyone benefits from, for 12 traits each.

II. Endurance Regen > Critical Damage

I propose merging Precision with critical damage as an attribute, with critical damage scaling by how much Precision you have.

The reason for that is because anyone who wants to itemize critical damage and precision necessarily has to give up a significant amount of potential defense, healing, or condition damage, when it is redundant. Critical damage ought to be a rune and major trait thing, not a bonus to choosing a certain trait line.

I suggest making endurance regeneration rate its replacement. Nobody doesn’t benefit from endurance regen, and would fit the theme of defense quite nicely without upsetting the balance of the game. Endurance is already given incentive, why not make it just another centralized option?

Would it make precision too strong? Not if you scale it appropriately. The goal with precision is to make it a risk/reward option vs. the flat bonuses you get from power and condition damage, but to not have to give up too much.

Right now, we have so many options for offensive play and about half as many for defense. Critical Damage, Precision, Condition Damage, Condition Duration, Power, Boon Duration vs. Toughness, Vitality, and Healing Power?

You will see my strategy that makes this more balanced below.

III. Allocation of Traits

With 5 different concepts and 5 trait lines we have a nice round number, but obviously it would not be good to just give a certain trait line all of the concepts as a theme.

The way I organized this was not based on the primary attributes, but on the secondary attributes as follows:

Condition Damage = Damage. Best paired with profession, power or precision.
Boon Duration = Mobility. Paired with profession, power, or precision.
Condition Duration = Control. Paired with profession or unfilled option.
Healing Power = Support. Paired with profession, toughness, or vitality.
Endurance Regen = Defense. Paired with profession, toughness, or vitality.

Mobility and Damage are offensive because any glass cannon players will tell you that they need to get out of dodge if they get surrounded. I think every profession needs to have its own way to use guerilla tactics, however subtle or overt they may be, and to be able to do strong area of effect and single target damage in their own unique way using DoT conditions, direct damage, or gambling with Precision and procs.

Control is the great equalizer in GW2, which bridges the balance between offense and defense. If you’re disabled how do you support or damage? How do you flee if you’re stuck? How do you dodge if your rate has been shot? Every profession ought to be able to specialize in a way where they can disrupt an area and single targets by investing in it.

Support and Defense would compose the survival part of the trait line, focused on being very hard to kill, helping your teammates, making dodging or a full endurance bar very useful, reviving quickly, etc.

It would not be very good if all the trait lines were split evenly between all the concepts, so I have set it up so there are a bunch of different options for each within the lines that are most associated with them, but some in other areas so that there is incentive to go “off spec” for a more versatility.

Condition Damage > 6 damage, 3 mobility, 1 defense, 1 support, 1 control
Condition Duration > 1 damage, 2 mobility, 2 defense, 1 support, 6 control
Endurance Regen > 1 damage, 1 mobility, 6 defense, 3 support, 1 control
Boon Duration > 2 damage, 6 mobility, 1 defense, 1 support, 2 control
Healing Power > 1 damage, 1 mobility, 2 defense, 6 support, 2 control

The most polarized attributes are condition damage and endurance regen, the more hybrid lines that have more control choices are boon duration and healing power, and control is even between offense and defense

IV. Fitting this for Professions

This might seem like its “homogenizing” all the professions without looking deeper, but that’s the beauty of the system – it fits the unique ways each profession work.

Every unique profession concept has a purpose that fits in one of these areas more so than others. Eles are more mobile, Warriors are supposed to be really hard hitting, Guardians make a group stronger with virtues, etc.

In addition, the utilities, which are already organized into five groups, would be tied to a certain trait line.

This would work by starting with the profession’s unique trait line and saying, “Ok what concept fits their unique ability the most?”

As an example, I’ll do warrior. They have burst, so it makes sense to tie that with DoT conditions damage. Burst skills and spending adrenaline ought to be a source of genuine fear for other players. With this in mind, the other trait lines then become about filling the other roles.

Strength would be the Control line and would be tied to Physical Skills above water, fear below water, and benefit maces, hammers, rifles, and spearguns. This lets them have control at range and up close.

Arms would be the Mobility line, giving swiftness, movement speed, on critical bonuses, and tied to Signets. Their weapons would be swords, axes, greatswords, and longbows. Longbows make sense here because fire fields do damage and provide might, which goes hand in hand with boon duration. Vigor and swiftness being tied to signets would have the desired boon duration complement. Since movement can get you in and out of combat, this ought to be a bit more hybrid than Discipline.

Defense is Endurance Regen line, providing a choice between spending your endurance often and using Stances to keep it going, or not using endurance by going Roman legion Testugo style with a shield. Since stances have invulnerability, stun breaks, and adrenaline could be given incentive here to be defensive, that would be balanced.

Tactics is the Support line, as it was before, but benefiting Banners exclusively instead of being responsible for two utilities at once. In addition, the line is tied to Warhorn, as before. The reason Shouts aren’t here will be explained in Discipline. Since you can support and damage or control, this ought to be more hybrid than Defense since you can use support aggressively. Since this would be tied to healing power, there needs to be a diverse active vs. passive healing strategy.

Discipline would focus on using boosting shouts, adrenaline, and adding DoT conditions in a diversified way, mainly bleeds. Shouts are offensive in this idea because we have Great Justice and On my Mark, and we can boost the others for their purposes with the other lines. Discpline would make spending adrenaline a really good idea, and for burst skills to have lingering effects that make people go “CRAP!” if they get hit by one.

V. Trait Options themselves

Let’s do Strength as an example. I dont know if this will be excellent, but here goes.

Control
- Knockdowns and Launch cause weakness and cripple
- Daze applied on Throw Bolas and Kick
- Cooldown on hammers and maces, longer weakness duration
- Fear Me immobilizes for short duration
- Cooldown on rifles and spearguns, pierce, longer cripple duration
- Cooldown on physical skills, blind on use

Mobility
- Physical skills grant swiftness
- Stomp breaks stun

Defense
- 25% Endurance recharged on interrupts
- Blocks grant vigor

Damage
- Mace and Hammer bursts cost less adrenaline, and do more damage.

Support
- Backbreaker grants stability in area

As far as the placement goes, the adept level ought to have the widest variety of choices, since that’s where you “dump” points after you’ve built the setup you want. This is the same strategy they already have, but it’s worth mentioning.

It’s important to remember that you’d only be able to choose three of these as you put 30 points into Strength. I think the choices out of these would be pretty hard to settle on. Do I want to be an annoying sniper or is it hammer time? Do I want to have my utilities control or my weapons?

VI. What about Minor Traits?

These ought to be passive benefits that stick to the general theme of the trait line, like longer duration on control effects and conditions, passive damage under certain health conditions, etc.

If minors are too good, then we see what happens with certain trait lines in professions, like the Arms line in Warrior. The minors are actually better than many of the majors, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, like chance to bleed on critical, more damage to bleeds, etc.

VII. Conclusion

If you’ve read this far, thank you very much. If Arenanet is reading this, I am excited!

I thought of this to see what you guys think, poke some holes in it, etc. I want traits to be better, just like everyone else, but…

I still have to say that GW2 is absolutely incredible and I’m finding it very difficult to go back to SWTOR, WoW, or any of the others.

Bump and reserved

This took a while to think of any thoughts?