Guild Wars 2

Even with the critical damage changes there is still no reason to run anything other than zerker. Part of this problem is with design encounter, however I think a larger part of it is tied into how gear is completely separate from roles.

Let me explain. Take guardian for example. Everyone loves having a guard in their group. They do great dps AND they can provide nearly 100% uptime of pretty much every boon in the game. You get all the boons, all the reflects, AND all the damage. There is no trade off. Same thing with healing classes, an ele with healing traits and healing utilities in zerker gear gets almost all the damage and almost all the healing.

I propose changing this so that if you want to do full damage then you actually have to sacrifice something. Take a boon crazed guard/ele. Currently they get 5s+ boons on short CD’s even when fully specced zerker.

Instead reduce the boons to 0.5s base duration but make boon duration gear scale up to 1000% instead of 100% and add in more boon duration gear. Now they can still get the same duration and boon spamming but only if they sacrifice a damage stat. Apply the same thing to conditions, and healing as well. Reduce AOE heals by a factor of 10 but increase the scaling on gear an equal amount. Reduce condition duration by a factor of 10 but introduce condition duration gear that scales up to 1000% so you need to sacrifice a defensive stat if you want to be full condition damage.

The main problem with build diversity in this game is that there are no tradeoffs, you can get full damage gear and still retain all the healing/boons/defense that are built into your class.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Let me explain. Take guardian for example. Everyone loves having a guard in their group. They do great dps AND they can provide nearly 100% uptime of pretty much every boon in the game.

Who exactly is supposed to continue reading after this nonsense?

How about, “No!” I’d like to see the game go a different way than back towards the antiquated gear-based builds of games past. Let’s get rid of stats on gear (other than the defense provided by armor, and weapon strength).

Now, that’s not going to happen, but neither will your suggestion. Why? Roles in GW2 were intentionally designed to be largely independent of gear. The game’s combat would have to be completely overhauled, essentially rebuilt from scratch. Making drastic changes to the way boons work would break PvP. Ain’t happening. Nor should it.