Guild Wars 2

Greetings fellow forumers and ArenaNet

I am impressed by all the trait reworks you are planning to implement, and I think this is the perfect opportunity to rework something that has been annoying a lot of people. “Well do say it then.” – I will!

My concern:
… is with movement runes, skills and traits. As most of you know most classes get an option to boost their movement speed, some do not. Some get it through a trait, others get it through a passive skill and still others need to buy runes to actually have the same movement speed. This is, from a point of balance, rather startling and from the point of the individual player, annoying.

The current situation:
The situation right now is this:

• Guardian has no trait or skill for movement speed: none
• Warrior has 25% movement boost (using melee weapons): trait
• Thief has a 25% movement boost (always): skill
• Ranger has a 25% movement boost (always): skill
• Engineer has a 25% movement boost (always): trait
• Elementalist has a 25% movement boost (when using daggers): trait
• Necromancer has a trait and skill (ty for pointing out): trait/skill
• Mesmer has no trait or skill for movement: none

For the two classes with no skill or trait, the common option is to use [Rune of Speed] or [Rune of the Traveller] which both grant 25% movement speed boost. This is neither necessary, nor useful.

My proposal:
My proposal is to bring all of this in line. This can be done in several ways: giving everyone a trait, giving everyone a skill, or giving nobody any of that.

I propose that every class gets a baseline 25% movement speed boost, without needing a trait, or skill, or rune to access it. I personally have 2 classes using [Rune of Speed] and I paid dearly for them, but I do not care, so long as everyone finally gets the same access to movement speed.

I hope my proposal is to your liking and wish to see everyone move faster in Tyria from this day on!

The Necromancer has Signet of the Locust which gives 25% increased movement and the trait “Quickening Thirst” which increases movement speed by 25% when you wield two daggers and 15% when wielding only one dagger.

Also I disagree with your proposal. Moving faster should be a choice!

Necromancer has 25% Signet

mesmer will get permanent swiftness with signet as announced

guardian has none yes but can at least keep permanent swiftness up with Retreat+Save Yourselves+Staff and has Greatsword Leap and Sword Teleport

• There’s a reason for the current baseline speed: it allows people to traverse maps without using waypoints at a reasonable rate without making it feel too slow during combat, which must be slower, otherwise it becomes too easy to avoid combat.
• It makes sense that each prof has different mobility options, some of which are mostly about speed and some which involve blinking around.
• Your analysis leaves out a number of mobility options as well as some speed boosts, including mesmer focus-4, guardian staff-3, guardian shouts (+related traits), necro locust signet, necro spectral walk, and so on.

Straylight.7529:

Also I disagree with your proposal. Moving faster should be a choice!

It can only be considered a “choice” if there are options to choose from. As such not all the professions (currently) have access to movement speed boosts, there is no choice.

Either way, it’ll get address with the trait changes, all class would have access to constant swiftness or trait/utility movement boost.

Or just remove all the permanent 25% movement speed effects from traits, runes and skills and implenmt therefore simply rentable as like also tameable/breedable own prestige MOUNTS that give players simply permanent 33% movement speed increase and change Swiftness from a 33% to a 50% movement increase that works only while being in combat and remvoe that silly in combat movement speed reduction while also reducign the amount of waypoints in each map so that each map has maximum only 5 wps and not more (which is more than enough, would make exploring also a bit faster for world completion) and anet would get a great new way to make money with the gemstore by selling mount skins

win/ win for all including Anet and not only the selfish player side

Akikaze.1307:

Straylight.7529:

Also I disagree with your proposal. Moving faster should be a choice!

It can only be considered a “choice” if there are options to choose from. As such not all the professions (currently) have access to movement speed boosts, there is no choice.

You can choose to use the signet/trait or sacrifice the speed boost for something else, therefore it’s a choice.

All professions have access to movement speed boosts in one way or another (signet/trait/runes/abilities) The OP simply doesn’t like the fact that some professions have to put some more “work” into it instead of simply equipping a signet. Does that mean it’s a bad thing? In my opinion: no. I like the fact that different professions need to do different things to reach the same goal. Increasing the speed for every profession as a baseline ability like the OP suggested is boring and unimaginative. It would eliminate the choice.

Actually, it’s not ideal, but the skill “Retreat!” Works as a movement speed boost for Guardians. It’s limited and there’s a decent sized cool down, but it is a speed boost.

I would suggest people in this thread to get a better understanding for how different profession and movement speed work from reading this: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Movement_speed

You are wrong about your example for how much movement speed an Elementalist could have as your example isn’t for a permanent movement speed.

Elementalist do have Windborne Dagger which provide 10% for off-hand and 15 % for main-hand dagger in Arcane Trait line as Adept, but this will only be working while in combat according to wiki and will add up to 25% when using both daggers.

This is not the same as a permanent movement speed like when you would use Signet of Air (Passive: Grants a 25% increase in movement speed; Active: Blind your target and nearby foes). Signet of Air will occupy one utility slot, so from an elementalist point of view there would be a desire to have some other way to get a permanent movement increase in speed, at least to travel around in the world from one point to another without using WP or gates.

In trait line for Air you will have Zephyr’s Boon giving you Swiftness for 5 s (and Fury) when using an Aura and the minor trait Zephyr’s Speed which will give you a movement speed increase of 10% when attuned to air (Lingering Elements from minor trait in Arcana will give 5 s after leaving that attunement).

Here you will see that we need to make clear what kind of movement speed we are going to talk about and for how different type of movement (swiftness (as a boon), movement speed in combat vs out-of-combat movement) would effect each other. There are also different speed depending on condition damage (like cripple) and direction of movement that change effective movement speed, so it is important to make clear what kind of movement we are talking about. As there is a difference between being in combat and out of combat according to this page on GW2 wiki and how would this work with combo fields which also could change speed both in positive way (boon) or negative way (condi)?

Today we have a base for movement speed which is capped at 133% for out-of-combat and 125% in combat according to this wiki. If you would use a trait which will provide you with 25 % movement speed in combat and then have swiftness of 33%, then you will only get 33% working as it will not stack according to wiki.

I do not understand how it is possible to get an elementalist to have 133% movement speed when it is only possible to use One With Air (Adept/major trait) for a very short duration of 1.5 s at 100% as swiftness do not stack and base movement do not seem to add up?

Something which is left out are skills and elite skill that might change how movement feels like Ride the Light or using FGS to use as means of transportation or movement. I think when one wish to change movement speed that those skills should also be added into discussion as some might give a burst for a short duration in movement and/or speed.
_

Problem with movement speed are also related to how visual distance displayed on screen feels like while moving. For some years ago when most resolution had a goal to be around 1920 × 1080 pixel and output on 22-24 inch display then the feeling of running where something else then when you might have a larger display with a higher resolution. This might be a reason to why some feel more of an urge to have higher movement speed and other will still be content as it is today.

I agree with OP but have a different proposal:

Make all the movement speed buffs and reduced fall damage part of the Mastery system.

@Shadowcatz,
The wiki isn’t updated properly. Windborne Daggers still grants the movement speed bonus off combat.

And if 2 effects grants bonus movement speed, the one with higher bonus takes priority. That’s why having Signet of Air (25%) and Windborne Dagger (25%) does not add to 133% (capped off combat speed). Also if you add Swiftness (33%) to that, the trait/utility would get overrided and count swiftness’ bonus only.

Akikaze.1307:

@Shadowcatz,
The wiki isn’t updated properly. Windborne Daggers still grants the movement speed bonus off combat.

And if 2 effects grants bonus movement speed, the one with higher bonus takes priority. That’s why having Signet of Air (25%) and Windborne Dagger (25%) does not add to 133% (capped off combat speed). Also if you add Swiftness (33%) to that, the trait/utility would get overrided and count swiftness’ bonus only.

Thank you for your try to make things more clear! I feel a bit confused about how these things works…

What I do not understand is how would one get 125% or 133%? If it is the highest percent that will be in effect (like when trait for One with Air at 100% for 1.5 s), then it would only be possible to get 100% as swiftness would be 33% and base movement with SoA will be only 25%, if neither will be added to these 100%?

In any case, it would be an extremely short duration for that boost in speed…

ShadowCatz.8437:

Akikaze.1307:

@Shadowcatz,
The wiki isn’t updated properly. Windborne Daggers still grants the movement speed bonus off combat.

And if 2 effects grants bonus movement speed, the one with higher bonus takes priority. That’s why having Signet of Air (25%) and Windborne Dagger (25%) does not add to 133% (capped off combat speed). Also if you add Swiftness (33%) to that, the trait/utility would get overrided and count swiftness’ bonus only.

Thank you for your try to make things more clear! I feel a bit confused about how these things works…

What I do not understand is how would one get 125% or 133%? If it is the highest percent that will be in effect (like when trait for One with Air at 100% for 1.5 s), then it would only be possible to get 100% as swiftness would be 33% and base movement with SoA will be only 25%, if neither will be added to these 100%?

In any case, it would be an extremely short duration for that boost in speed…

Here’s an example that might make it easier to understand. Take the default movement speed as 100%.

• You have Signet of Air (+25%). Movement speed total 125%
• You add on the Windborne Dagger (+25%) trait. Since they don’t stack. Total still 125%.
• Someone buffed you with Swiftness (+33%). The trait and utility is negated and only counts the swiftness bonus. Total increased to 133% movement speed.
• You attune to Air and gets a proc from the ‘One with Air’ trait. Super speed (+100%) would override all previous examples. Total 200% movement speed for that short duration.

Not all professions need to have passive speed boosts in combat. Some professions are not meant to run around as much and as easily as others.

But out of combat, things can get slow unlees you bring passive boosts. You may often arrive at places after players who ran faster have already killed everything and completed the event. And bringing them just because you want to run faster is kind of annoying, and limits your builds. You may rather bring something else instead that passive speed boost.

So, at very least, the passive movement while out of combat should be increased to the same as while running with swiftness while out of combat: 33%. That will also stop charr from looking stupid when they run out of combat without speed boosts, running in all fours in slow motion. Norn also look horribly slow out of combat.
Swiftness would effectively do absolutely nothing while out of combat, since it would not go past the speed cap.

There could even be a core mastery available to all even if they do not have HoT, with relatively low exp requirements to max each track.

For example:

• Mastery name: “Traveling”
  • The first level would increase the existing passive speed boost while out of combat in PvE and WvW to the max: 33% movement speed, so there’s no need to carry other passive speed boosts, but combat is not affected.
  • The second one will give 50% fall damage reduction in PvE areas without having to trait it. For WvW traiting it would still be required.
  • The third would give a permanent 33% discount on the waypoints of the map your character is currently in.
  • The 4th would unlock the ability to use contested waypoints by paying 10 times the cost.
  • The last would make all the waypoints within cities your character has 100% explored free or charge from anywhere in the same continent.

First off – Sorry to the necromancers I had no clue they had the trait/signet.

I have a few replies on ideas presented by you.

1. “It’s a choice”
   I do not agree with this, and the reason why is that for some classes it means sacrificing everything to movement speed. In PvP or PvE it might not be of concern, but it certainly is in WvW. Guardians can currently choose 2 builds: shouts or meditations. When running meditations they have 1 shadowstep, and no swiftness. When running shouts they have swiftness but no shadowsteps, and their offensive abilities are highly lowered. The at this moment necessary solution is to buy runes that allow for speed boost. This limits playstyle in not few ways, instead of broadening them. Therefore movement speed should not be a choice that is to limiting. While I agree it need not be necessary to give everyone base 25% movement speed boost, it should be accessible to any class. Why? Because most classes have ACTIVE weapon or utility skills to ensure they have higher mobility capacity. Think of Engineer’s rocket boots, Warrior’s bull’s charge, rush and leap, Guardian’s leap, Elementalist’s RTL and Lightning Flash, etc. These, I think, create variety which is good. Passive movement boosts however do not.
2. Swiftness
   I did indeed leave this out of consideration, simply because it does not count as permanent. Yes, some classes can reapply swiftness a lot, this is good, but I simply do not see the point. Why should we need this at all, can’t it be base? Everyone tries to get as much of swiftness as possible because they feel characters run too slow without it. Imo that’s just bad game design.
3. Mastery
   @MrIllusion.5304; MithranArkanere.8957: this is an interesting way of looking at it. Making movement speed unbound from traits, skills or runes could be rather interesting, without giving it out to everyone just like that. This is actually a really acceptable alternative.