Guild Wars 2

Signed for approval, something I already had in mind, but some food for thought: Weapon Skill challanges, like they already have with skill challanges.

You have to unlock the right to use new skills.

Yep that would be a good idea as well

Signed for approval, anything to get more variety in my characters animations!

I should amend my suggestion slightly… As we don’t have quests as such and really we don’t want them added to the game. Instead make specialized Heart Event people where when you complete the task you can purchase a skill for your character and it’s profession. Make the Heart a little tougher than other Heart Event’s and I think it will be fun.

Anyone else have any suggestions?

Gonna Bump This Up And Hope Some More People Will Reply And Add Their Own Suggestions!

Yep, I have thought this would be a good idea also. It would let people use the weapons they like in even more builds and would diversify builds a lot.

Definitely could be very fun.

Thank you for the replies. Anyone else want to chip in and make a suggestion and also the more replys and ideas the more the devs may take this idea seriously.

Nice idea!

There is one thing I don’t agree on though, I actually would like a quest to get the skill, a bit like personal story or something like the drinking game.
Have people actually earn the skill instead of “oh hea, look I spend 2 minutes killing centaurs, and I found out a new way to shoot my bow in the meantime.”
I would think it better/more realistic if you actually learn the skills in a more peaceful environment before you put them to the test.

Curae.1837:

Nice idea!

There is one thing I don’t agree on though, I actually would like a quest to get the skill, a bit like personal story or something like the drinking game.
Have people actually earn the skill instead of “oh hea, look I spend 2 minutes killing centaurs, and I found out a new way to shoot my bow in the meantime.”
I would think it better/more realistic if you actually learn the skills in a more peaceful environment before you put them to the test.

Altough I do agree with you there that killing centaurs for 2 minutes wouldnt give the skill. But neither a drinking game or not a skill either since that’s like a one time thing. I think if you would implement this it would have to matter on how many times you use skill 1 etc.

Example. for every time I make a sucessfull hit with my 1skill it will add “experience” in that skills tree.

Meaning: You will have to make lets just say now but 3000 sucessfull hits before you actually unlock the new 1skill to be able to switch between or just unlock another animation for it with an extra damadge boost. The animation still being the same amount of frames as the first to allow a feature to switch between the types of animations you want to do. This will make players get an illusion of that their character learns a new skill or improves it’s skill by training in actual combat. This is also a realistic way of learning improvenments of ones skill. If I practive swordplay I need a sparring partner and what better if it’s in combat since I will act by instict during combat as I will improve my skill.

Curae.1837:

Nice idea!

There is one thing I don’t agree on though, I actually would like a quest to get the skill, a bit like personal story or something like the drinking game.
Have people actually earn the skill instead of “oh hea, look I spend 2 minutes killing centaurs, and I found out a new way to shoot my bow in the meantime.”
I would think it better/more realistic if you actually learn the skills in a more peaceful environment before you put them to the test.

Yeah I don’t know why I changed my idea to a heart quest skill person, that was silly, a actual quest line would definately be better, or as you suggested a actual personal storyline for new skills would be great for sure.

Comeon people please don’t just view this topic either put your support behind it and post in here or even better add your ideas to make the idea better.

Thanks

Firebird Gomer.9563:

Now I think to keep things balanced the setup would be if you wanted to change skill 2 you have to get a new 2 skill you couldn’t put skill 4 into skill 2 otherwise people would go for the strongest hitting skills they could. That bit might be hard to understand as I know what I want to say but can’t seem to type it out right.

What you wanted to say here(i think) would be easier to understand if you phrase it this way

Skills shoul be split on tiers or groups that would relate to skills slots, like:

tier/group A
- Skill 1(random name)(random effect)
- Skill 2(random name)(random effect)
tier/group B
- Skill 3(random name)(random effect)
- Skill 4(random name)(random effect)
tier/group C
- Skill 5(random name)(random effect)
- Skill 6(random name)(random effect)
tier/group D
- Skill 7(random name)(random effect)
- Skill 8(random name)(random effect)
tier/group E
- Skill 9(random name)(random effect)
- Skill 10(random name)(random effect)

and skill slots:

1. skill slot = tier/group A
2. skill slot = tier/group B
3. skill slot = tier/group C
4. skill slot = tier/group D
5. skill slot = tier/group E

so if two skills are from the same tier/group(like skill 1 and skill 2 from above example) you can put only one of them(skill 1 or skill 2) in skill slots designed for that tier/group, this way it would be impossible to chose only the storngest one, it would work the same way as whit traits.

I think this way people can visualize it much better.

Also skills could as well be split on effect(condition), like skill whit the same effect(condition) would be in the same group, so to remove possibility of having 5 skills whit the same condition.

Anyway i must say that im quite dissapointed whit skills in this game, not only you unlock them all in just 5-10 minutes but you also have ready unchangeable preset for every weapon, whit a bit lacking animation(the flashy effect of the skill shown on the oponent doesn’t match that subtle animation of the attack itself).
Tho im not saying that the fact that every weapons having their own skills should be changed, its just that like OP i would like to have some choice in what skills will be on my weapons, effect and animation wise.

Also some use for skill points would be nice, like you first need to get the training scroll of that skill as a quest reward than you need to use certain amount of SP to unlock it and use it.

Yes Thats what I meant. As a idea further you could have Conditions that are instead of whats there normally. IE: if skill 1 had weakness, skill 2 bleeding, skill 3 nothing, skill 4 immobalise, skill 5 nothing then you could have skill 1 poison, skill 2 nothing, skill 3 chill, skill 4 nothing, skill 5 interupt (lol couldnt think of anything else at the time), that would be something along the line.

Thank you Cold for helping explain more indepth. I like the idea for the SP usuage as well.

Just like utility skills, would it be a neat idea to be able to swap weapon skills also? I’m not talking about weapon swapping in combat.

Any thoughts about this?

I’d agree only when an alternative weapon skills are available and you’re still restricted to what slot it goes in. So you’d be able to swap out your GS5 for the alt GS5 but not swap out your GS5 skill for the alt GS4 skill.

I’ve been suggesting/hoping for that for a while now. I posted it first in the warrior forums a couple of months ago and I think a month or two ago here.

@sinzer I personally prefer a “pool” of weapon skills to choose from (exactly like utility skills). Force the auto attack to stay, but give say 8 options for a 1h weapon to let us pick 2, maybe 5 for an off hand, and say 12 for a 2h weapon. It would be harder to balance, but it has more of the gw1 feel where you could choose any 8 skills you had. Even if that meant adding in some sort of "skill synergy " to avoid OP builds (oh you took two AoE high damage moves, well both have their CD +5 now to compensate)

It’d allow you to use a weapon you like not to be pigeon holed into a certain build and for PvP and WvW would keep opponents on their toes (as they don’t know what build you are just by looking at your weapon).

I think sinzer is right. If devs are going to balance it, the simplest solution would be to restrict where it can go.

I feel as if the weapons were designed for each slot to have a specific function. I.e. a gap closer, CC effects, conditions. It could turn out that without restrictions they would just stack multiple gap closers. a restriction does sound necessary. I also think that adding the swappable skills can add more to weapons not commonly used.

There can be a lot of pros and cons to this. A discussion would help a lot on this idea.

Oh, I agree that it would be harder to have a pool, instead of each 2-5 skill only having 2-3 options. I’d just love to have more customization options. The “synergy” I just thought up as I was writing my above post, but it is a way that balance could be achieved.

Also, if you do take pick 3 gap closers, that would limit your DPS potential, wouldn’t it? I still don’t have one of every class, and I don’t use every weapon on them, so I don’t claim to know everything about them, but I think there can be more fun with a pool over the slot method. “Well which of the 3 gap closers do I want to use, this one makes me go farther, that one applies a cripple to the enemy, and this one gives me vigor/swiftness” Instead you can choose that you want 2 on one weapon set and none on another.

Honestly, I would welcome either (or any other use for my backlog of skill points) but you’re right ArkAngel a discussion would be useful in either case.

My Assassin/Necro from GW1 , the forerunner of the Thief, every class in GW1 had the ability to use 2 classes skills , and you could put your entire skill bar together , i SO want this back , i hate the limitation of pre-set skills for each weapon combo .

You had 4 Weapon slots too, meaning you could go with any of them at any time, and no delay between swopping

I’m game for this as well! Hoping it will be introduced with new weapons in the future after more traits and skillpoints!

Shall I beat my head against the wall for an hour or so?

I’ve had this https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Weapon-Skills-A-choice-of-weapon-skills/first#post2435475 posted in the first 2 pages of the forums for the last week! WHY doesnt the search work! lol

So people can see it! Again!

Funny thing is, I did do a search, and nothing popped up. I had “Weapon Skills” as part of my search.

I know I did the same thing as well and it didnt find it either! So sorry if I made yoiu upset I didnt mean to.

Well now the moderator merged our threads! Its all cool man we want the same thing

Yay

please people ADD your support to the idea!

I really hope that the new “Skills” they are talking about are weapon skills and not Utility Skills, tho that is in fact what I think they mean. Which of course is sad, for as good and useful that utilities are. They are not Weapon Skills which I would hope people want more.

Please no. It’s an interesting idea, but in the end it would lead to more professions being unbalanced.

I declare my support for this idea

Balkarra Dmort.5039:

i hate the limitation of pre-set skills for each weapon combo .

This…pretty much.
Except for some minor dabbling in traits – everyone is basically a cookie-cutter of everyone else.
More variety please.

The restriction of weapon skills is the biggest issue I had with this game since the betas.
Skill progression is one of the major motivations in rpg’s for me and utilities come with too big CD’s to be useful in proper situations. So I’d agree with anything that gives us more freedom with our weapon skills , even a skill tree or specific runes.

The OP already gave a solid and balance friendly solution , which could be implemented immediately and wouldn’t brake anything.

Yeah, I do hope we get more weapon skills in one way or another, but I do they if they tried they could come up with a way to let us choose from a pool of skills instead of just limited to 2-3 skills per number slot (though that’s still a big improvement from what we have now).

Besides some sort of penalty that hurts certain skills when paired together, another option is give each skill a “cost” and only allow us to pick skills up to a certain total. I know I’m just throwing ideas out there, but I would really like the customization. Heck, in gw1 you could stack a bunch of high cost spells/skills on your bar and it could work well if you had good team balance. But I don’t know if its worth doing all that extra balancing.

The only way how ANet could improve the basics around the weapon skill system is, by adding basicalyl multiple “weapon skill sets”

if anet would make every single weapon skill changeable, then the weapon skill system would make absolutely no sense at all, because then we would have nothing different else, than what we had in GW1, where players could decided their skill bars by 100% self for every single skill slot.

So the best thing Anet can do is implementing “Battle Styles” for all other classes, except the Elementalist and the Engineer and add for the Elementalist more Element Attunements and for the Engineer just more Tools similar to the Flamethrower.

A Warrior for example could change then between 3 Battle Styles.
“Gladiator”, “Mercenary” and "Legionnaire for example, which would change the weapon skill sets among the used weapons.
So a Sword/Shield Warrior fighting with the Gladiator-Style would have different Weapon Skills, than a Sword/Shield Warrior fighting in the Mercenary-Style.

Same thing would work with the other classes.
For Elementalist would it be good to add:

Light Attunement and Shadow Attunement so that we could have also Light Elementalists and Shadow Elementalists, which could be quite seriously something totally different compared to Guardians and Necromancers, because they would be clear from those holy/unholy aspects those two classes have and be in regard of the two elements be more “neutral” in their gameplay design/skill design.

I for myself would love to play my Elementalist as a kind of “Light Mage” attacking enemies with various light magic spells

had the same idea before also, glad I’m not alone! +1 for this idea, it has a lot of potential

Orpheal I really like the light and dark Ele idea cool idea.

Thanks everyone else for making suggestions and supporting the post lets keep it up. Please other players add your support to the idea, don’t just read post your support!

Orpheal.8263:

The only way how ANet could improve the basics around the weapon skill system is, by adding basicalyl multiple “weapon skill sets”

if anet would make every single weapon skill changeable, then the weapon skill system would make absolutely no sense at all, because then we would have nothing different else, than what we had in GW1, where players could decided their skill bars by 100% self for every single skill slot.

So the best thing Anet can do is implementing “Battle Styles” for all other classes, except the Elementalist and the Engineer and add for the Elementalist more Element Attunements and for the Engineer just more Tools similar to the Flamethrower.

A Warrior for example could change then between 3 Battle Styles.
“Gladiator”, “Mercenary” and "Legionnaire for example, which would change the weapon skill sets among the used weapons.
So a Sword/Shield Warrior fighting with the Gladiator-Style would have different Weapon Skills, than a Sword/Shield Warrior fighting in the Mercenary-Style.

Same thing would work with the other classes.
For Elementalist would it be good to add:

Light Attunement and Shadow Attunement so that we could have also Light Elementalists and Shadow Elementalists, which could be quite seriously something totally different compared to Guardians and Necromancers, because they would be clear from those holy/unholy aspects those two classes have and be in regard of the two elements be more “neutral” in their gameplay design/skill design.

I for myself would love to play my Elementalist as a kind of “Light Mage” attacking enemies with various light magic spells

This idea doesn’t change the fact that you can’t change your skills to your liking. Besides , why should they do something like this when it’s simpler to just implement new weapons into the game which you can even change in battle?
It’s just a complicated version of that.

And why shouldn’t it make sense to change the weaspon skills? Does it say anywhere that actually weapons are the primary source of magic? Or that no one is going to change his weapon in combat when you have the same option of skill types but expanded on the way how they work?
Example: Slot 2 – Skill1: dmg + 3 second bleeding / Skill 2 : dmg + 6 seconds bleeding when target is moving etc….
Now you choose which you prefer but it shouldn’t change the weapon style…
Why shouldn’t I change the weapon then , when the other is based on support or aoe dmg and so on…

Although on the surface of it, it might sound like a good idea, I’m not convinced.

One of the aims of Guild Wars 2 as an evolution of Guild Wars 1 was that it would simplify the skill system and focus on a reduced number of skills that require player skill to use effectively.

I fear that adding in a choice of weapon skills would just complicated matters and would mean the developers will once again start to struggle to ensure that skills are balanced.

Cheers, Ben

I couldn’t agree with you more about GW2 needing more skills. I posted somthing about this a moth ago. here is what I posted:

“There are a lot of weapon skills. However, you unlock them all by lvl 10 and then decide about your weapon and you are stuck with the same skills. Moreover, if you still manage to change your weapon alot there are still no new skills after the first 10-15 levels. The utilities are good but there aren’t lot of active skills with combat use and short cooldown. This is why I’m suggesting a solution: to any weapon make 2 sets of skills instead of one. The first set will be like now and the second will unlock at level 50. The player will be able to choose between 2 skills for each key (like you choose utilities) and then you get a lot more skills and a LOT more build variety. Another suggestion is to add more active utilities (like summons or attacks).”

It’s just boring to play so much with the same skills…

I agree that skills need a little revamp.
Another options for #1-#5 (additional effects or completely new skills), cosmetic/effect changes (also for traits – minions for necro I strongly have in mind >: ) ).
There could be quests related to classes which unlock skills. They should be soloable and hard (very hard) – just an idea.
If cosmetic changes were to be added, unique weapons also could change skill effects to being one of a kind.
Maybe utilities could depend on equipped weapon (necro spectrall wall with staff chill, with dagger cripple, with axe weaken, with scepter fear for example).

It could be interesting that traits improving one type of skills (like minions) would weaken another (-20% on minion cooldown, +20% on spectral cooldown). Same with weapons – (-20% on axe skills cooldown, +15% on staff skills cooldown).

It all should be implemented as part of character development, so it should take time and effort to get it.

new suggestions anyone?

One thing that comes to mind in making skills more diverse and not create more of them would be a system that’s similar to Diablo 3. Each skill could be modified in one of few minor ways. Combining similar modificator with all #1-#5 skills could create interesting effects. Quick example:
Each of necro staff skills get a modificator – target’s movement speed is slowed for 3% for 3 seconds (stacks effect (not time) to max of 5). This ways necro or necros could sustain this effects on enemies but it would require coordination and of course use of this particular modificator.

Maybe creating a system for skill combos could provide completely new ways to use them. We can combine max 3 skills as one which use all effects and increase their efficiency or introduce new effect but after use cooldown for each skill is increased.
Quick example here:
We combine necro dagger skills #1-#3 to create prison of green flame which bind target in place, damage it over time and siphon life (effects last 3 seconds). Target may destroy this prison but after the prison is destroyed, it explodes damaging target and fearing it for 1 second. After use dagger #1-#3 skill are put on cooldown that last 150% of original time. This combination cannot be used if any of selected skills are on cooldown.

Any thoughts?

As a former diablo 3 player, that has spent more than 200 hours in the game (diablo 3) , I can say that skill runes are NOT the solution. They are very boring, they don’t create new skills and in most of them the change is just a different color. Moreover, the main problem in GW2 is that after the first few lvl there aren’t any skills that the player can look forward to, skill runes won’t change that. And as a RPG player I can say that skills are one of the most important things in the game, it’s the main thing that keeps combat fun.

i like this idea.

@GodAmongUs:
Way to customize skills like in D3 is ok IMO as long as it improve skill, not change it completely. Hydra is good example of how it should be done – it’s the same skill, mechanic don’t change but effect is different.
I’ve provided example that it can be a lot different from D3. My point was that we don’t necessary need new skills, only ways to use existing ones in different ways.

We still want new weapon skills please Anet

erm aslong as those skills can be achieved with wvw and not some random pve instant im ok with it.would love to get new skills for my mesmer