Guild Wars 2

It feels completely shallow. The depth of this part of the game can barely accomplish at all what it is trying to, to increase versatility enough to really make a difference consistently in the way you want to, to really round out the amount of choices and playstyles you can accomplish. Yet, I feel compelled to take things over other abilities simply because they are better.

As an Elementalist that likes PVP, there is no way I could not go into the Arcane tree. 20% CDR on my attunements? Making the AOE on my staff bigger?! (Holy cow! I couldn’t live without this, your effectiveness skyrockets completely). How can I not go for that?

A ton of the minor traits just straight turn me off, and in some trees the incredibly useful, gamechanging major trait make you have to put up with taking complete crap against your playstyle sometimes to achieve something you feel you can’t go without.

I don’t know, it just feels so incomplete. Maybe it’s just me?

I think it’s because so many of the traits don’t change how you play, and are just generic stat buffs. Especially ones that shoe-horn you into certain builds, as the effects of the trait are 100% exclusive to a single weapon type or a certain secondary skill type.

The traits that aren’t generic +10% damage skills are overly concerned with forcing you into using a very specific kind of build ANet has carefully planned for. You could honestly just get rid of everyone’s traits entirely and you wouldn’t see too much of a difference in normal gameplay. Just one or two traits that actually do something, that everyone uses.

I agree. I feel like, more often than not, the minor traits you are forced to take do not have any synergy with the build you are attempting to make. Couple that with the fact that many major traits belong in different trait lines and the whole system just feels off. I hope that this will be addressed in an upcoming profession tweaking patch, whenever that will be.

It’s about as important as your gear in pve. If you just choose what traits sound good, vs a min-max optimized build, it probably is about the same effect as if you just bought the cheapest 80 exotics off the TP versus planning for your build.

Run by a good player, both characters will do fine in DEs, dungeons, etc. Perhaps the well-equipped character wins a couple more close fights than the other, or has a quicker kill speed, but the difference is prob’ly minimal. That’s why so many of us have a magic-find set of gear, too.

Run by a bad player, both characters will struggle.

Maybe you’re just choosing the wrong traits? I never thought a tanky engineer would be possible, but I absolutely cannot live without the bombs-gives-heals trait. I admit sometimes traits tend to shoe-horn you into certain builds, but that may not necessarily be a bad thing. Also, those minor traits somehow can help you better play your character. For example, the minor trait in guardian’s +health line gives you 1sec vigor for every successful crit. I thought, this is pretty useless. But the next minor trait gives a small aoe heal at the end of a dodge roll, and suddenly it all made sense.

i love it. many interesting builds. they just gotta fix all the bugged traits, and buff some.

I like the traits but I don’t like how the stats are tied to trait selections.

Stats should be allocatable separately.

the trait system reminds me of the skill tree used in AoC,
but without the colourful icons and the tree…
it seems to still be a WIP.
hopefully it will function better in the future.

Other MMOs have more intuitive and fun specialization trees. GW2 should’ve kept what they did in GW if they wanted to be different. Just let players choose from a big list and be whatever they want to be. Basically if you’re not going to do the trees right, don’t bother doing it.

Most of my experience is with the Necro, which was obviously thrown together by blind monkey’s, since they barely make any sense or have any real synergy. But reading through other classes, its not much more “fun”.

I like the variety it enables.

I dislike how flat it feels as you level.. +10 power? woo.
I dislike the way stats are tied to some lines of traits.. the necro ‘Curses’ line of traits is such a mess for example.

I think the trait tree works well, though maybe some classes get a little more flexibility in what they can do than others. For example, engineers and mesmers have all sorts of different builds that all are pretty good. Necros seem to have far fewer builds (not just because certain traits don’t work, but just given the scope of what is offered in the trait tree and what they can do).

I agree that traits should be a little stronger. but as a guardian warrior conjurer – i benefits alot – summons lasts 50% longer. sword heals me. fire does 10% more damage. etc…

I liked the freedom I had in GW1 to play around with my point distributions as much as I wanted without being locked in to anything. I wouldn’t mind the trait tree as it is currently implemented if I had to flexibility to redistribute my points whenever I wanted to. Or perhaps there could be an NPC in the capital cities that would reset them for free; this way (as in GW1) you’d still have to travel to a town to change your point allocations.

Eli The Yahoo.9782:

I agree that traits should be a little stronger. but as a guardian warrior conjurer – i benefits alot – summons lasts 50% longer. sword heals me. fire does 10% more damage. etc…

As a guardian, you have to be especially careful of the traits that simply don’t work. Too many are bugged.

On the other hand, the effects of most of them aren’t going to totally kitten you if they aren’t there.

I look at the trait system as kind of a “Magic deck” where you look for the synergies between the traits to complement your style of play. It rely helps to start with a theme for your play style and work up from that.

The problem is many players just want to build a glass cannon instead of exploring the benefit of a supportive or damage mitigation builds.

On guardian side, depending on your traits it change your gameplay drastically.

I hate the trait tree. It static and uninspired. And the guy who came up with it must have been in marketing, and must have uttered the lines:
“SO! We need to hijack players from all the popular MMO’s, lets do a trait tree; all other MMO’s have that right? People are familiar with it right? So they will feel right at home!!”

A static trait tree is not something I’d expect to find in a Guild Wars game, considering what we had in GW1.

Traits as a concept are actually very well done when compared to other MMO customization systems. The problem at hand is simply the traits themselves. Anet clearly erred on the side of caution with weak/boring traits as to avoid a balancing nightmare close to launch. I estimate they will over the next few months begin doing revamps to make traits more interesting, powerful, and game changing.

Minor traits are simply a manifestation of your PC’s growing expertise in the area he invests in. Major traits are specializations. However, i agree that we need more variety with this system.

I really like the Trait system. Though, I do agree some of the minor traits are bad, but thats why they’re minor. I wouldn’t mind seeing maybe 2-3 different options to coose from for each minor trait

Edit: For example, Warrior Defense Line

Minor Trait 1: Thick skin, Armor is improved while health is above 90%.
Other possibilities (just coming up with these on the spot) Name: 5% longer stun duration or Name: 10% faster Endurance Regen while health is above 90%.

Minor Trait 2: Adrenal Health, Regenerate Health Based on Adrenaline level.
Other possibilities Name: Gain 50 toughness while a Hammer/Mace/Shield is equipped or
Name: Counterblow blocks up to 2 attacks dealing damage back each time.

Minor Trat 3: Armored Attack, 5% of Toughness is given as a bonus to Power
Other possibilities Name: Gain .5 seconds of protection for each second of stun a skill casues (maybe OP and reduce the duration more). or Name: Healing is increased by 10% while wielding a Hammer/Mace/Shield

Again I came up with these on the spot so if you think they’re bad ideas don’t be surprised

Logun.2349:

I look at the trait system as kind of a “Magic deck” where you look for the synergies between the traits to complement your style of play. It rely helps to start with a theme for your play style and work up from that.

The problem is many players just want to build a glass cannon instead of exploring the benefit of a supportive or damage mitigation builds.

This is pretty much how I see it. And with what I’ve done with my Ele I really feel like it actually fits with the way I play my character. I was able to balance a good trait build with gear to make up for maybe what I decided not to take in traits and personally I feel like it came out the way I want.

While I do agree some of the minor traits and trait lines seem a bit underwhelming, I think the overall idea works quite well. At least for some. Having more choice and variety may be something we see in future expansions its hard to say.

Traits need to make more of a meaningful difference.

respecced my thief recently, playstyle changed completely.

so yeah, i like them.

all games like this have better and worse attributes, perks, whatever they are called. Good builds find synergies in them. I do not really understand your problem. Try to get the traits and stats that maximize your chosen playstyle the best just like everyone else in any mmorpg.

Personally it boils down to the disparity between meaningful and gameplay changing traits that are available between the classes. Like the OP I mained an Ele and i must say our traits are utterly crap compared to the other classes I have.

I also detest the fact that I cannot retrait on the fly, guess I was spoilt by playing The Secret World before GW2 launched but they got the idea right in my books.

I just can’t believe that after having templates for so many years in GW1, some how they derped and didn’t add it into GW2… seriously? C’mon.

Only makes it harder to play around with builds and traits. And yeah, a lot of traits are weak or worthless unless you are playing an extremely specific build pretty much around the trait itself.

Not to mention stat allocation should be separate from the traits themselves. I am forced to go shadow if I want defense and healing, really? Even if all the traits have literally nothing that really benefit my build? That’s just low.

Tying stats to certain trait lines was not a great move and forcing minor traits on certain lines is bad. Using the necro as an example, If I want to spec into staff skills I am forced to take minion minor traits that do not help me one bit. If I want to be a condition staff build well too bad! You get toughness and boon duration in the staff line. You know all those boons you get from staff skills…

If they would just do away with trait lines, attach a cost to each trait with how deep it is in the line(ie Tier 1 major trait is 10, tier 2 20, tier 3 30), and allow us to just spend our points directly on traits I’d like it more. Then move the stats to their own progression system so people can put points into the stats they want, not the ones they get stuck with.

To expand on that! You would get 65 minor trait points and 130 major trait skill points. Meaning you could get 4 tier 3 minor traits, 6 tier 2’s, or 13 tier 1’s. Obviously they would need to expand the number of minor traits(they already had a bunch more iirc). Obviously the same would be possibly with major traits, meaning that you can either have a few powerful traits or a lot of slightly less powerful traits.

Stats is just as simple as any other stat point system. Give people 140 points, each point increases a stat by 10(or 1%). Cap each stat at 30(or 30%), perhaps even a soft cap, and let them mix and match as they please!

As far as traits go I don’t try to optimize my toon rather than optimize myself. I play a particular support-through-conditions style and in other games there wouldn’t be a single talent or what-have-you. Instead I was always forced into warlock or summoner type classes which were cool but also often underpowered or mechanically kittened. My style however works with every profession in gw2 as long as I pick the right traits and weapons. That’s good because I tend to prefer engineer-style professions because of the way they parody my real job.