Guild Wars 2

We need a whole new traitline for weapons only for all the weapons for each class. You don’t want fear on staff for necromancer? change it with traits, make it do something else. Rather than swappable weaponskills i think this would be better and easier for ArenaNet to balance.

GW2 had traits for weapons only in alpha but ArenaNet removed it.

Example on weapon traits for Hammer Warrior

Minor Weapon Traits.
- All hammer skills decrease cooldown by 20%. The standard one.
- Staggering Blow now knockdown instead of pushback.
- Hammer Swing and Hammer Bash are now AoE but do less damage.
- Hammer Shock immobilizes foes instead of crippling.
- Fierce Blow do high amount of damage instead of weakening your foe.
Backbreaker is the same, let’s not change that one.
Earthshaker is the same.

Major Weapon Traits
- All hammer skills have 5% chance to cause vulnerability.
- Staggering Blow cause 5 stacks of vulnerability.
- Hammer Shock have a bigger radius of 240 degree.
- Hammer Swing and Hammer Bash have 10% chance to stun.
- Fierce Blow ignores armour.
- Backbreaker now hit up to 2 foes near your target.
- Eartshaker has a decreased cooldown by 20%.

Earthshaker Burst ¾ 10 Jump to the targeted location and slam your hammer down, damaging and stunning foes.
Hammer Swing ½ Bash your foe.
Hammer Bash ½ Bash your foe again.
Hammer Smash ½ Smash the ground and damage nearby foes.
Fierce Blow ¾ 12 Weaken your foe with a fierce blow.
Hammer Shock ½ 12 Smash the ground and send out a crippling wave.
Staggering Blow ¾ 20 Push back nearby foes with a staggering blow.
Backbreaker 1 30 Knock down your foe.

I don’t see how you could possibly do this without a massive overhaul of the current trait system.

All of your examples are limited to a single weapon, but we only have 3 minor traits and 12 major traits per tree. So while you could do things like taking every weapon cooldown trait and putting it as a minor trait in the line, editing the effects of every single weapon skill just couldn’t happen. Not unless you redid the whole trait system.

And honestly, revamping the full trait system is a much larger thing to pull off than some of the suggestions for additional weapon skills.

And FYI, I don’t know if you noticed it, but your suggested traits come to a total of -40% cooldown on Earthshaker. Add in the 30% from Discipline and you have Earthshaker with a kitten cooldown. And man that would be ridiculously OP.