What is the downside to taking an elite specialization? What truly changes when an e-spec slaps an extra button onto a player’s profession mechanic bar? Are there any reasons not to use those abilities when they’re available? Are there any situations in which a player would just rather forgo that button because of how combat is flowing or do players simply wait with baited breath for them to come off of recharge? Did e-specs truly add anything new to the game other than more rotations and blatantly obvious, minimalistic combos bound by high cooldowns?
How about mechanics? What new mechanics did e-specs add to the game? Alacrity? Alacrity doesn’t change how anyone “uses” a skill. A player affected by alacrity still uses the same skills, they just come off of cooldown faster. Utility skill types? Most were recycled (although they were implemented at a level that made the HoT ones direct upgrades), and we’re still nowhere near the point at which one’s utility skill type selection matters to anyone but that person who selected them. Given the lack of interaction between the abilities of any given player and the abilities selected/employed by any other player, there is quite arguably no reason for utility skill types at all. The only thing keeping the existence of such “types” remotely relevant are trait passives.
- Healing
- Damage (condition; power)
- CC (stun; daze)
- Stun-break
- Immunity (stability; invulnerability; evasion; “damage reduced to 0”)
- Scripted movement (leaps; dashes)*
Fundamentally, there are about 5 total unique, combat-defining actions that any player can take in Guild Wars 2. This leaves us with a very shallow basin to fill (or overfill) with classes who sport—at the very least—16 skills (average being more like low 20s). With this sort of set-up, is it any wonder we have weapon sets that have duplicated skill functionalities, “wasted” skill slots (those which feature an ability which nobody necessarily values as a standalone effect) or weapon sets which invite players to effortlessly cast all available skills and then wait until they can swap weapons? Abilities that are part of a weapon bar, but aren’t necessarily ever prioritized, included into a rotation as an afterthought/very low-priority addition or are ignored entirely because they don’t do enough damage or have a “useful” effect?
What about utility skills? Aren’t there enough utility, heal and elite skills just lying on the ground never equipped by anyone anymore? Things that were maybe flavor of the month once but were either replaced or reduced to worthlessness by damage/effect or cooldown nerfs? The same could be said for traits as well. Even the respective pools of runes and sigils are bursting at the seams with wholly neglected assets (although, that’s probably a different issue than what’s discussed here).
So then I ask, what is the point of adding more assets to the game when there are perfectly good foundations for additional elite specs already in the game? Whether it was Anet’s intention or not, we’ve seen that skills can be entirely altered in game-changing ways. In the interest of removing the illusion of choice in order to provide actual, meaningful options to players, why not transform underused or unused abilities into the cornerstones of future elite specs?
The biggest example I could push related to this approach would be a revamp to the Ranger class’ specialization options and profession skills:
Specialization 1 (base at character creation): RANGER
- Condition/Control spec
- Access to traps (traps are entirely reworked to promote more unique usage among them individually)
- Preparations as profession mechanic (F1-F2; options taken from a pool)
- Preparations are charge mechanics with multiple stages. Each stage that is successfully fully charged will reward 1 stack of the related preparation when the channel is released. Preparation charges are consumed by various actions and have unique control, damage and support roles.
- Preparations have no cooldown, but each reaching a stage during a channel will consume a set amount of resource from a resource pool which regenerates over time.
Specialization 2: BEASTMASTER
- Power/Tank spec
- Access to pets and shouts (shouts could probably use a rework given their current, bland nature)
- Profession mechanic: Pets (F1-F2; skill slots with options taken from a pool; identical to Revenant spirits)
- Healing through Elite skills altered to function identically to Revenant spirits. Skills change depending on the active pet.
- Pets have a shared health bar which functions the “resource” mechanic. Current active pet can be stowed instantly with F3. Swapping or stowing a pet puts it into a 10s cooldown. If the pet health bar is below 50%, swapping or stowing a pet while still in combat will automatically restore the bar to 50%.
Specialization 3: DRUID
- Healer/Support spec
- More or less unchanged except for various adjustments to traits to make it more of a specified choice with a clear role rather than just a direct upgrade to other “options.”
- Profession mechanic: Celestial Avatar (F1)
Ranger pets have never been a refined addition to GW2. Since launch, Rangers have complained about pets dying all the time to ambient AoE and asking for more control over the pet in order to prevent this. Instead of addressing the issue of the disconnect between this forced AI unit and player control, anet just made pets constantly teleport and move at blinding speeds toward the Ranger at any given moment. Then they buffed their stats by absurd amounts across the board. Then after that, they just made them take outright 90% less damage from all sources while in PvE. Finally, they introduced the HoT pets, among which the meta PvP options simply teleport, evade and blind while continuing to take very little damage via their yet absurd baseline stats.
By freeing all but one Ranger spec from the chains of bad GW2 AI, we can focus on improving the individual contributions of the player within the scope of those specs. By then designing the Beastmaster as the only spec with the AI unit and having it focus on damage reduction while also giving it a better interface with which to control the pet’s actions, we can cover every single base GW2 has to offer mechanically with a mere 3 baseline specializations (a mere 3 trait lines).
Ranger is not the only case like this. Aside from the Reaper (which still ended up being a direct upgrade anyway), the other specializations don’t truly change the way that the base classes already work; they typically just slap another skill onto the profession bar and call it a day. Sure, rotations may be different and some new little mini-combos may crop up here and there, but ultimately there is still that old profession still sitting there trying to pretend that an F5 can cover it up all up with a rug. If we keep things simple and utilize what the game already has, we can envision a GW2 with actual options, defined player roles and fairer balance among options within a single class and across all classes.