This thread will be just 1 post to explain the main problems I have with the new specializations and explain why I don’t have much faith in them.
I will begin with the main problem that I have with a few examples of it:
1)
Due to being forced into 3 traitlines, we’re being forced to take traits we don’t want just to get a trait we do want. This was somewhat the case last time, but only if you were diving into a traitline with the intention of getting only a GM trait. Now we have this problem even if you only want an adept level one.
I will give a few examples of this:
On a warrior when I want both Forceful Greatsword and Berserker’s Power, I have no relevant adept level traits, Restorative Strength is only relevant if I use the “To The Limit” heal, but not when I use either Healing Signet or Defiant Stance.
Also on a warrior if I want Burst Mastery or Heightened Focus, I’m forced to take irrelevant adept level and master level traits. Literally all of the adept level and master level traits are niche except Inspiring Battle Standard which isn’t really meaningful or something I’d willingly pick over anything else in the old system.
On an elementalist if I want both Piercing Shards and Aquamancer’s Training, I have nothing at the grandmaster level that’s relevant for me in the water specialization.
Additionally for elementalist, I want Bountiful Power but I don’t care about any of the master level traits for the arcane specialization. Previously this trait was a grandmaster minor trait, and both the adept and master level traits were relevant damage modifiers.
So you see… in the past, every single trait I would pick was relevant towards what I was trying to achieve. If I wanted to spec for optimal DPS on an elementalist, I’d go 66200, 66002, 64220, 64202 depending on the encounter and what was being used. If I was in a low man setting and needed vigour for whatever reason to dodge more often I’d go 64004 to sacrifice some of my personal damage for sustain.
In any case, I was able to trait for exactly what I wanted/needed. This is no longer the option now and I’m forced to pick many things that are irrelevant to what I am doing, just to get 2 or in some cases, 1 thing.
2)
I think there should be an option to have specializations save the trait selections you last had when you swap them out. It shouldn’t always save them, no. I just think it would be nice if we had a clickable icon somewhere on the interface where we could toggle it on or off.
3)
Changing specializations is kind of irritating because I need to memorize the pictures that represent each specialization. For example all of the warrior specializations have pretty bland images and I need to remember for example “the slightly lighter-coloured image is tactics, the slightly darker ones are either strength or defense” which is just inconvenient. In my opinion the order of each specialization needs to be the exact same when you click the icon to change them. This would relieve annoyance with it.
4)
In general these specializations just don’t really feel all that special due to the fact that so much less customization is available. While I understand there are some benefits to merging some traits and allowing us to pick an extra grandmaster trait, some of our grandmaster trait options quite franky suck and due to the fact that everybody is shoehorned into just 3 lines with only 3 options at each pick, it’s a much less complex and much less satisfying experience to customize builds now.
In the past when I first was learning the trait system, back during the 30 trait points per traitline days, it felt a lot more fun trying to learn about all of the options available to each class and all of the ways I could achieve the best output for each scenario.
Less customization results in less effort into having to balance things, but I’ll be honest about my opinion here too; with all of the alarmingly horrible problems that exist in the game now since the patch on the 23rd, the game feels much more broken than ever as a result of these changes. I’m sure that eventually they will start fixing the worst ones, such as the engineer grenadier and guardian symbolic avenger bugs, but do I believe they will fix most of the problems?
Eh, probably not.