Guild Wars 2

I’ll just be brief with this.

Right now, two-handed weapons decide all 5 of your skills, one-handed weapons decide the first 3, and off-hands decide the last 2.

Instead, I am suggesting the following:
-Two-handed weapons give you a choice of 7 skills
-One-handed weapons give you a choice of 4 skills
-Off-hands give you a choice of 3 skills
-Allow for the reordering of the first 5 slots of the skillbar

If people are wondering why this might be a good idea, or are unsure if this is a good idea, or think this is a bad idea, I will post back later as to why this is a great idea and will liven up the skill system. I think this is self-explanatory as to why this is a great idea, so I won’t go into that unless the need arises (well, and I have to go to class now so I don’t exactly have the time to explain).

No one has any thoughts on this?

I’ll elaborate a little.

Right now, builds are extremely predictable simply by seeing their weapon. You already know half of their skillbar, and you have a pretty good guess of the other half just based on their weapon. If anyone would like to disagree you’re more than welcome to, but I have yet to come across someone where I had no idea what they were capable of. I see their weapon, and it’s extremely easy to deduce what to expect.

By adding in a few extra skills for each weapon, that will greatly increase build diversity and allow you to better tailor your character to your play style. Example: warrior hammer. I like the hammer skills, except for the 4th skill. I don’t want a pushback if I’m a melee character—I want to stay in their face and do as much damage as possible. If hammer had 2 other skills, I could replace that skill for something that I would actually use.
As it currently is, I am forced to choose to use a weapon in which I don’t use one of the skills, or I just have to use an entirely different weapon that I like less if I want to utilize all 5 skills. That isn’t a great decision either way. Either I miss out on a skill, or I miss out on the weapon I would rather use. What kind of choice is that?
Now, if hammer had two other skills to choose from, I wouldn’t have to decide between the lesser of two evils. I could use the weapon I prefer to use, and I could use all 5 skills. Now, if hammer was given two other skills, for example something like Bull’s Strike and Belly Smash from GW1 (for those of you that don’t know or don’t remember—Bull’s Strike knocks down a moving foe, and Belly Smash blinds adjacent foes if your target is knocked down). Now I can combo with the knockdowns hammer already has—I can drop the pushback and pick up Belly Smash and now I offer more utility to my team since I can blind foes! This is of course just an example, but I think it illustrates why adding extra skills will be beneficial.

Thoughts?

You raise some interesting points that may give a little more diversity to the game, but keep in mind what you are suggesting is something that would take a good amount of time in terms of design, concept, balancing, QA testing, etc. This type of change would have a better chance of happening in say, a future expansion / upgrade, in which new features are introduced.

I like the direction of your suggestions here, so please do not take my response as negative, just wanted to share some knowledge and feasibility.

i think more skills is a great idea, but the keyboard is crammed enough as it is already! I think they should add more weapon skills and allow an elective mode for weapon skills like they did for the utility skills to make it more like guild wars 1. also make new weapon skills cost skill points like utility skills to purchase but still have to learn them in combat.

Paladin.5268:

You raise some interesting points that may give a little more diversity to the game, but keep in mind what you are suggesting is something that would take a good amount of time in terms of design, concept, balancing, QA testing, etc. This type of change would have a better chance of happening in say, a future expansion / upgrade, in which new features are introduced.

I like the direction of your suggestions here, so please do not take my response as negative, just wanted to share some knowledge and feasibility.

I appreciate the response. Of course I wasn’t suggesting this happen in a week or something—I realize something like this will take quite some time to get right, as well as a lot of time to just plan out and design. I just think something like this would do well for the health of the game in the long-term. It’ll definitely bring a lot more variety and customization to the game. While there are already difference between professions, and then differences between weapons within each profession, this would allow for differences within each weapon within each profession.

Hylox.9746:

i think more skills is a great idea, but the keyboard is crammed enough as it is already! I think they should add more weapon skills and allow an elective mode for weapon skills like they did for the utility skills to make it more like guild wars 1. also make new weapon skills cost skill points like utility skills to purchase but still have to learn them in combat.

You misunderstand. I’m not saying to add all of these skills in so that you have 7 weapon skills. I’m talking about keeping a 5 max for weapon skills, but giving you 7 skills to choose from—so you will have 2 unused skills. Makes more sense now?