Guild Wars 2

Currently, to trait a weapon directly, you find the one trait in a sometimes arbitrary traitline and maybe take it depending on what it is competing with.

Sometimes it’s a simple -20% recharge reduction + something token.
Sometimes it’s weapon altering and is borderline mandatory.
Sometimes it’s competing with a trait that is so good it simply has to be taken over it.
Sometimes it’s competing with a trait that the only choice is the weapon trait.
Sometimes you are not running the weapon and the other 2 competing traits are useless to you.
Sometimes it’s affecting 5weapon skills.
Sometimes it’s affecting only 2.

My suggestion is to seperate weapon traits from the trait lines and create a new panel specifically for traiting weapon skills.

Every class has a unique line per weapon.
Everyone is given ~10 points to allocate.
Each weapon skill gets 3 options, base(free) and 2 different competing improvements that cost a point.
Elementalists’ and engi would need some tailoring into this system. I’m not qualified to purpose them as I don’t play them enough/at all.

An example of a weapon line for Mesmer focus would be:

Temporal Curtain
-base
-reflects/etheral field
-removes conditions/grants stability

Phantasmal Warden
-base
-reflects/can move while attacking/is sturdier
-ground targeted/steals boons/immune to foes with boons

I would also add in a 3 trait option that would affect the weapon as a whole,
Mesmer focus example again:

Focus
-base
- -20% recharge/ skills pulse retaliation/aegis/vigor randomly
- +10% dmg/condi dmg to 5 allies within 600 range of a focus skill

Thoughts?
Ty for reading.

Very unlikely to happen. Mostly because weapon pool of professions are so much different.

Warrior has 10 different weapons available (profession with the most weapons), engineer just has 4. This would mean MUCH more traits are choosable for warriors than for engineers. And this means more versatile, so in strong advantage.

I know you already mentioned that engineer and elementalist would need some fixing in that regards… but still, they are not the only ones. Revenant has 6 weapons.
Since there is such a huge gap in number of weapons, I don’t want a system like this in game.

Stuff like this has occurred to me as well. ArenaNet took stats off when the traits became specializations (except for a few bonuses in the spec lines, like the added damage in Elementalist—>Fire, which is fine). If they separated the weapons from the specs, they would probably do a weapon line but not the ability line; separating things so you have to get reflect separately from the two focus abilities might be seen as taking a step backward since you could do it with one selection before.

Could be cool, but you might have to wait for Guild Wars 3. Definitely something I want to think more about though.

Kodama.6453:

Very unlikely to happen. Mostly because weapon pool of professions are so much different.

Warrior has 10 different weapons available (profession with the most weapons), engineer just has 4. This would mean MUCH more traits are choosable for warriors than for engineers. And this means more versatile, so in strong advantage.

I know you already mentioned that engineer and elementalist would need some fixing in that regards… but still, they are not the only ones. Revenant has 6 weapons.
Since there is such a huge gap in number of weapons, I don’t want a system like this in game.

DEFINITELY won’t happen, but it’s fun to think about.

Actually I was thinking in an expansion, maybe 2 out.

I’m under the assumption they are planning for 3 expansions in total, 3 elite specs per class.

So probs not next one, but maybe, just maybe they could impelement a system for weapon skill tailoring by expansion 3.

Cool idea, but unless it is implemented for core and expansion then there will be more fuel to the HoT vs. Core fire.