Guild Wars 2

I put this in Guild Wars 2 discussion rather than PvP subforum because these suggestions affects all. I am playing PvE recently while I used to play PvP in the past while it was fun. My suggestions is to aim for balance for both game modes. I don’t know enough WvW to make a judgement.

There are four suggestions that I would like to see happen.

1. Charges
2. Traits Minor bonuses
3. Toughness and Vitality removed for Aggression and Denial
4. Splitting Core specialization and Elite specialization

Charges- First is charges, charges are simply a mechanic that allows skills to have a limit more than one on the number of uses. For example, a warrior could have charge of 2 in their kick utility skill. This allows the warrior to consecutively kick two times. Not every skill is going to need this, so don’t worry about triple endure pain.

Why have this? ANet can then have another layer of balance. Right now, it is Cooldown vs. Effect. How much cooldown should this skill be before it becomes useless/overpowered? Instead, ANet could give useless skills and skills with long cooldown extra charges. Also, I expect almost all skills to have one charge.

As a side note: The 30+ second cd party healing skills like Healing Spring, and well of blood would have 30% less self healing while having two charges. Thus having more uses in party support.

Traits minor bonuses- Secondly, Trait minor bonuses are traits with a secondary use. As an example, What if Forceful Greatsword gave might on any weapon skills, while additionally Greatsword gain +10% damage and 20% cooldown reduction. Also, this will extend to fall traits, and other utility skills/weapon skills trait; Giving those niche traits some small bonuses to make it useful for all builds.

Why have this? I would like to have more choices. Don’t limit my choice down to two just because I don’t have this particular weapon/utility skill. The other two traits may not even work at all with my build. This skyrim mod is the example of what I am suggesting.? In this mod, the skill, ‘Bladesman – Attacks with one-handed swords are 30% faster. Attacks with all other weapons are 15% faster.’ This perk is useful even if I don’t use swords at all. I could use axes but I would bring the bladesman perk because I attack 15% faster.

Toughness and Vitality removed for Aggression and Denial- this is about removing all the toughness and vitality for a new stat called Aggression and Denial. Aggression is a stat that empowers or extend disables skills. Denial extends slows like Immobilize, chill, and cripple. Meanwhile, condis and other debuffs that do not fit in either categories do not gain a stat of their own. Disables and slows base stat will be reduced to 1 second maximum. Players with no aggression and denial stat can use their cc skills to interrupt rather than crowd control. More Aggression and Denial does more damage to the breakbar.

Why have this? In PvE, toughness and vitality are simply worthless. It is only good at allowing yourself to make more mistakes instead of protecting your allies. In other mmos, toughness and vitality would be useful because players can tank mobs to keep them off allies. There are no such role in Guild Wars 2, toughness and vitality is a selfish stat. The nomad player can protect their party by CCing enemies and use slow skills to stop enemies movement.

In the PvP side, ANet cannot balance Toughness and Vitality. Bunker amulets are being removed. With aggression and denial, battles become more team focused and professions can have more roles. Meanwhile ANet could create more game mode with balance easily transferable. Without toughness and vitality, battles would be more shorter because there wouldn’t be a bunker vs. bunker. No bunker stats is going to keep players alive, only active skill would. Meanwhile stability and stun breaks become less important because players can’t bring full damage + CC at the same time, although they can balance it.

I would like to feel like a tank by protecting my allies by getting on the enemy’s face and ccing them rather than vs. having tons of armor while letting all my allies die before me because my toughness doesn’t actually help them.

(part 2 coming)

Splitting Core specialization and Elite specialization- This splits core specs from elite specs completely. Elite specs will have their own traits while core specs have their own traits. None of the core and elite specs are truly shared.

Why have this? There is the short term reason and the long term reason on why it is very important.

Short term, Core specialization are nerfed because of elite specialization. By splitting the two, ANet can nerf elite specialization without hurting the core specialization. Thus, making elite specialization a side grade rather than a upgrade. ANet can revert the nerf on Moa form for mesmers while keeping the nerfed version for Chronomancer. Secondly for the short term, Core specialization would have their mechanics be stronger than the elite specialization using the core spec’s mechanic. A Warrior’s F1 skill would be stronger than a Berserker’s non-berserk F1 skill.

Long term, newer Elite specialization will also have to be balanced against its predecessor elite specs. If a core trait is a problem, then not everyone gets hurt. The core and the older elite specs will remain the same while the newer elite gets nerfed. Secondly for the long term, Newer elite specialization and existing elite specialization can actually have their mechanics to be original. As an example, Druid pets can be removed completely because Traits depending on pets can either be modified or removed completely. Newer Elite specs for engineer could get rid of the toolbelt skills(with some necessary changes) while adding completely new mechanics.

These suggestions aren’t meant to be an easy fix, I know that. These suggestions are meant to be worth the dev’s time as a direction for balance. I would like to see all skills to be viable. The small details to balance can be left to the devs. I would like to see more variety of builds instead of devs just playing whack-a-mole balancing with the strongest build for each class.