Guild Wars 2

One of my favourite innovations in Guild Wars 1 was that the “attributes” system allowed players to switch around their build (and what in GW2 or in most MMOs get called Traits or Talents or whatever) without any payment or penalties etc. whereas many other games punished you for this, either by charging increasing amounts of in-game cash, or, in the case of some games, making such choices totally permanent.

(I’m aware that GW1 originally had this system called “respec points” or similar but that was removed from the game very early on)

In GW2, admittedly, you can respec quite cheaply (in the grand scheme of things) but it would be nice to have four or five “slots” of builds (so armour/weapon set, slot skills and traits) and be able to swap between them at will.

This applies doubly so to those of us who play both WvW and PvE, because the builds for things like open world PvE, dungeons and WvW can be so drastically different (for a Mesmer anyway).

Have the devs given any impression that something like this is in the pipeline?

I know some players get cynical about anything that costs money in-game (due to money being a purchaseable resource) but I don’t think this is a case of ArenaNet being greedy; the amount it costs to respec are tiny in the grand scheme of things (compared to armour repairs, for example) so it wouldn’t really affect the economy.

I would at least like to see a dual spec so I don’t have to change every time I decide to WvW a bit.

I would like to have a trait switching ability as well, when farming on my Necro I like to use the minions and be spec’d for minions but that is not viable for dungeons (general consensus) and it would suck to have to tell people to wait for me while I go to a trainer, and re-allocated my traits. Fortunately for my Necro my dungeon and farming gear is practically identical so I wouldn’t have to tote around 2 sets of gear.

Kromica.2831:

I would at least like to see a dual spec so I don’t have to change every time I decide to WvW a bit.

Yeah, I certainly think we need this. It’d be nice if your slot skill/trait build in WvW was independent of your PvE build in the same way as SPvP is.

Given, that wouldn’t fix everything, but it’d be a step in the right direction.

Thing is that with the attribute numbers on gear, switching builds may well require switching out the whole wardrobe…

digiowl.9620:

Thing is that with the attribute numbers on gear, switching builds may well require switching out the whole wardrobe…

I have 3 sets of exotic armor already. PvE/WvW/MF I don’t see how having 2 specs would hurt at all.

digiowl.9620:

Thing is that with the attribute numbers on gear, switching builds may well require switching out the whole wardrobe…

So? I don’t see that as a problem. The different selected builds would hypothetically switch everything; traits, slot skills, weapons, armour and accessories. Simple enough.

It would be nice if we could purchase these slots, having maybe 2-3 for each mode, that you could only switch between in major cities (you don’t want it to become expected faire that people have multiple builds for one dungeon!). However, failing that, as a minimum I would like to have my build in WvW separated from my PvE build, because the two builds have practically nothing in common.

It’s just that people seems to have enough trouble scrounging together one viable set as it is. Expecting them to build 2+ sets may well find them abandoning the game altogether.

digiowl.9620:

It’s just that people seems to have enough trouble scrounging together one viable set as it is. Expecting them to build 2+ sets may well find them abandoning the game altogether.

That only applies to those of you who are dead set on having the absolute best of everything; I spent less than 2 gold on my most recent armourset at level 80 for my Mesmer, and it’s perfectly “viable”, but then I don’t need to have the very top tier of stuff; I’m fine with 97% of my possible stats even if some people need 100%.