Guild Wars 2

I feel that the lack of playing around with builds is so missing in gw2.

In gw1 there was nothing better then mucking around with the selection of a secondary skill set to make your toon more interesting to play.

I feel that there isn’t enough choice of skills with the weapon setups locked and the rest don’t have enough diversity .

I do hope that the devs will see that this is a point that should be addressed to make the game more diverse to play.

It’s the fact that on general PvE, you find the utility skills that works best for you, you use the weapon you like the best on each of your characters and so everytime you play that character you basically play the same way. In GW1 as a necro you could go Minion master, Spiteful Spirit, Blood Battery. As a Ritulist you could be a Spirit spammer, the other spirit spammer (with communing spirits instead of channelling) Healer…. As an ranger you could go out as a beast master, a trapper, a condition spread or Splinter Barrage.

It’s kind of sad that in a game where you no longer need parties you don’t have the flexibility within your class to play as different things.

The one thing I miss the most from GW is the ability to swap out builds without having to pay for wiping the build and rebuild test another build.

I hate traits that apply effects to utility skills in a set, such that you’re encouraged to just use that kind of utility.

I miss the last two threads that covered this issue in depth. So much so that I’ll post here too. lol

I really liked playing with builds in Guild Wars 1. I mean, that was the whole game for me. But I also recognized the way builds work in Guild Wars 1 has certain inherent problems.

First and foremost, in Guild Wars 1, you could only change builds in an outpost. So if you were in a dungeon and you wanted to test a new build, you would have to go back to the outpost, run back to the dungeon in hard mode and get back to the point you wanted to test. Aside from that, very often your success or failure in PVe at least, was often determined before you left the outpost.

And with so many skills, there were inherent problems balancing. People say Guild Wars 2 is imbalanced, but there’s nothing in Guild Wars 2 like the ursan builds, or the permasin, or sabway or the 600 monk or the 55 monk or the discord builds…or any of dozens of others.

And of course many of the skills were completely useless (quickshot for the ranger comes to mind).

In Guild Wars 2, I can swap out skills out of combat between encounters in a dungeon, something I could never do in Guild Wars 1. I can even change major traits out, if I need something different. This is a different type of flexibility that people seem to ignore.

I mean in Guild Wars 1, your skills were your skills out in the world, and they had to count for every single contingency. In Guild Wars 2, there are ways to change what you’re doing, even your entire playstyle by changing weapons. Which means you don’t have to go back to town every time you want to play differently.

Both systems have advantages and disadvantages, but this is how I see it.

I was far more involved in builds in Guild Wars 1. I’m far more involved in actual combat in Guild Wars 2.

There isn’t enough variety in builds, and having to invest so much in gear kind of discourages variety in the first place. I miss just having to swap out a headpiece to use a completely different build with a completely different playstyle.

Sure.

I dont mind paying the 3-4 silver to respec my traits, but it would be awesome to be able to save different builds like in GW1 and change them as we wish, without having to respec everything all the time.

That is one of the major things I miss about GW1.

No thanks. It was build wars and it can RIP.

Not to say that GW2 isn’t without some problems. There is too much focus on balancing profession A with profession B and not enough on balancing profession A’s build 1 with profession A’s build 2.

I think it would open things up if they brought back the whole primary/secondary profession thing. In the case of taking on a secondary profession, when it comes to weapons that are shared (eg ranger and thief with shortbow), when out of combat you now have that little arrow indicating that you can switch skills. This way for skills 1 through 5 you can mix and match between what the ranger has for SB skills and what the thief has for SB skills.

The same would go for utility where they can add a second profession tier that can be the secondary profession’s 1st tier utility skills. Same with the Elite skills. They can add a third tier which would be the secondary profession’s first tier elite skills.

With the trait lines, they can change it so that the current forced traits (the ones you can’t change) can now be switched between the primary’s or secondary’s.

phabby.8945:

I feel that the lack of playing around with builds is so missing in gw2.

In gw1 there was nothing better then mucking around with the selection of a secondary skill set to make your toon more interesting to play.

I feel that there isn’t enough choice of skills with the weapon setups locked and the rest don’t have enough diversity .

I do hope that the devs will see that this is a point that should be addressed to make the game more diverse to play.

Completely agree. Right now as a PVE engineer if you don’t absolutely pick certain things in your trait lines you will not survive.

You actually have to nerf yourself as an engineer (like we need any help with nerfs!) to get things like a faster run speed or boons. You really do. It’s sickening. We’re supposedly versatile then why am I being pigeonholed into a single set of choices that if I don’t take them I and killing myself in game?

phabby.8945:

I feel that the lack of playing around with builds is so missing in gw2.

In gw1 there was nothing better then mucking around with the selection of a secondary skill set to make your toon more interesting to play.

I feel that there isn’t enough choice of skills with the weapon setups locked and the rest don’t have enough diversity .

I do hope that the devs will see that this is a point that should be addressed to make the game more diverse to play.

YES! 100% yes!

tigirius.9014:

phabby.8945:

I feel that the lack of playing around with builds is so missing in gw2.

In gw1 there was nothing better then mucking around with the selection of a secondary skill set to make your toon more interesting to play.

I feel that there isn’t enough choice of skills with the weapon setups locked and the rest don’t have enough diversity .

I do hope that the devs will see that this is a point that should be addressed to make the game more diverse to play.

Completely agree. Right now as a PVE engineer if you don’t absolutely pick certain things in your trait lines you will not survive.

You actually have to nerf yourself as an engineer (like we need any help with nerfs!) to get things like a faster run speed or boons. You really do. It’s sickening. We’re supposedly versatile then why am I being pigeonholed into a single set of choices that if I don’t take them I and killing myself in game?

I agree, a lot of the Engy traits are less than stellar. I had to meticulously fiddle with them to get a decent roaming build for WvWvW (though I haven’t gotten around to playing him since the last patch). I manage to plow through Thieves and solo supply camps with pretty high consistency, the latter being far more interactive and fun unfortunately. Just being allowed to save utility presets would be a step in the right direction IMHO

They had to stupidify it so they could lower their balance team to two devs who only play warriors.
Btw it took them years to come up with templates in gw1 should take them about the same this time,since no lessons were learned in the last game.

Yes i do, its one of the biggest flaws in Guildwars 2 (too me) i miss all my skill selections and builds i could make in GW1, everything feels so Generic and i feel like a clone of everyone else..
You must either jump on the best build bandwagon in this game or be sub par, traits make zero difference to builds…

I ran my engineer for almost a month with no traits because i had no idea what to do with them after all the nerfs, it made no obvious difference to game play..

Gear is the problem less than the builds. The fact different builds and play styles rely heavily on gear; that’s not to say GW1 didn’t depend on gear at all – but typically it was sufficient to have a different attribute headpiece or two in your bag since most of the attributes came from your headgear + rune and most people put their main rune on their headgear to keep it simple.

In GW2 if you want to swap from support to tank to glass cannon DPS, you need to swap as many as 22 items – you can’t just bag those easily (Well you can if you have ~20g to spare on a bag slot and a 20 slot bag) you need to visit your bank and then spend ages loading up or unloading – you need not only a skill swap option but a gear set swap option.

Hey ty for your thoughts guys,

I do wonder if the dev’s have any thoughts to expanding the skill sets, especially the weapon slot skills, or are contemplating allowing a secondary class profession like they had in gw1.