Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen a lot of posts on the profession forums discussing possible ideas for future elite specs but I’m worried about something.

Anet has said they want the spec system to be a way to expand/develop our characters moving forward, but if future elite specs are tied to hero points (as I assume they will be), that creates some possibilities: Would there not be enough hero points to max more than one elite spec? If not, could you “unspend” points to change specs? Or does it mean we won’t get new specs until we get new maps (I.e. possibly years from now)?

Any ideas how this will pan out?

i don’t see why they couldn’t introduce a new way to obtain hero points at any given time. for example, wvw has the means to earn hero points now. i could see hero points being added to achievements or world boss kills or difficult fractals.

i am not saying any of those are great ideas, just that the concept of how hero points are earned could be changed.

They actually seem to be able to crank out high quality maps at decent pace. Living story updates gave us quite a few maps and min-maps. I strongly suspect we’ll get some new maps in the upcoming living story.

HPs won’t be what holds us back, I just don’t see them adding 9 new “professions” anytime soon. Maybe in a couple years. We just had a massive meta upheaval with an enormous amount of new stuff for people to learn about, particularly in PvP. It’s way too soon for another.

well, as an elite spec now costs 250 HP, there certainly is enough, I have 280 something left over and I haven’t gotten every single one in maguuma jungle yet, or wvw areas for that matter. And I think that maybe they don’t intend to have every elite spec available on all charecters.

Any new elite spec would probably require 250 HP. I wouldn’t expect any new elite specs until the next expansion. It’s always possible to add new HP. Anet has already done so with SW and Dry Top.

Well… let’s see. We have..what? 214 in the core world? Another 200 in HoT? It takes 250 per spec, we’re setting at 414 right now of 500 (total) we’d need to support 2.

I’m fairly certain we might see another map or two (akin to DT orSW) when LS spins back up. They could easily sprinkle in a half dozen or so hero challenges that way, to round out what we’d need for another spec. So a second might not ‘years’ away, although I’d definitely say don’t expect on seeing one in the next 6 to 9 months either.

I expect new elite specs to be tied with future expansions.

In the new maps there are enough hero points to fully unlock an elite spec. That’s probably no coincidence. I’m sure that they’d make a new elite spec fully accessible for a character with one already unlocked, or players would cry out saying they are forced to buy another character slot/level + explore on a new character.

I doubt we’d see elite specs before a future expansion because it requires so much beta testing and rebalancing before going live. The amount of work required to design an elite spec is quite high, meaning making and releasing 9 whole elite specs in an LS is unlikely. I doubt they’d release small numbers of elite specs as well (e.g. elite specs for 3 classes at a time) as I’m sure this would be frustrating for players who get the elite spec for their profession last.

So the impression I’m getting is “not for years” not because of hero points but because it’s a lot of work to do 9 specs at once but they can’t do one at a time because people cry if their main isn’t first.

I’m not saying we should expect them so soon after HoT, I was just curious if new specs are even something reasonable to speculate about yet.

My guess would be we’ll see them continue the popular LS2 method of adding maps in pieces, and developing new elite specs alongside that content.

Once you see enough hero points to fund that new spec added to the game through the new maps from the LS, that’s about where you could expect to see the spec hit the game.

I also wouldn’t be suprised if they rolled elite spec releases in to the quarterly balance update schedule they have put themselves on in order to chase esports money and get people to actually care about sPvP. Maybe twice a year? That would put it right on track with LS releases right?

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Well… let’s see. We have..what? 214 in the core world? Another 200 in HoT? It takes 250 per spec, we’re setting at 414 right now of 500 (total) we’d need to support 2.

It’s 400 in HoT, so we’re currently at 614 – enough for 2 and nearly half way to a third.

I have 363 Hero Points spare after maxing out Herald. (Krait Shard Bugged so I am missing one)

I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t add just spec’s without new content.

Ron Cordova.9824:

So the impression I’m getting is “not for years” not because of hero points but because it’s a lot of work to do 9 specs at once but they can’t do one at a time because people cry if their main isn’t first.

I’m not saying we should expect them so soon after HoT, I was just curious if new specs are even something reasonable to speculate about yet.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they can make new elite specs much faster than the first ones. Since January, they’ve not just been creating the new skills and traits for the elites, they also had to revamp the core ones for the new system – in some cases (i.e. Engineer) this involved some significant changes. Any new elite specs should just be able to slot into the new system without needing any revamps.

I’m not trying to suggest it’d be trivial, just saying that the time taken for the elites for HoT is probably the worst case for how long it’d take.

Ron Cordova.9824:

So the impression I’m getting is “not for years” not because of hero points but because it’s a lot of work to do 9 specs at once but they can’t do one at a time because people cry if their main isn’t first.

I’m not saying we should expect them so soon after HoT, I was just curious if new specs are even something reasonable to speculate about yet.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they can make new elite specs much faster than the first ones. Since January, they’ve not just been creating the new skills and traits for the elites, they also had to revamp the core ones for the new system – in some cases (i.e. Engineer) this involved some significant changes. Any new elite specs should just be able to slot into the new system without needing any revamps.

I’m not trying to suggest it’d be trivial, just saying that the time taken for the elites for HoT is probably the worst case for how long it’d take.

Stitch.1794:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Well… let’s see. We have..what? 214 in the core world? Another 200 in HoT? It takes 250 per spec, we’re setting at 414 right now of 500 (total) we’d need to support 2.

It’s 400 in HoT, so we’re currently at 614 – enough for 2 and nearly half way to a third.

Oh right….40 HC, not 20. Yup, I blame Monday lol. Thank you for the correction.

They probably won’t want to add elite specs too quickly because both Anet and players need time in between for people to experiment with them, find out what’s over-powered (or under-powered) and try to balance/counter it.

Especially since they keep pushing these big PvP tournaments. Those are never going to work if new specialisations are coming out all the time and changing things.