Guild Wars 2

First a small disclaimer. I don’t know if this is the right forum or not. Furthermore, I am unsure about the balance consequences of these chances. Having said that, here are the traits:

Elementalist
Name: Arcane Warrior
Type: Major Grandmaster trait
Line: Arcana
Effect: Can now equip Medium Armor.

Engineer
Name: ?
Type: Major Grandmaster trait
Line: Firearms / Inventions
Effect: Can now equip Heavy Armor.

Guardian
Name: Priest
Type: Major Grandmaster trait
Line: Honor
Effect: Can now equip Light Armor. Every piece of light armor equipped increases healing power by x%.

Mesmer
Name: Swashbuckler
Type: Major Grandmaster trait
Line: Dueling
Effect: Can now equip medium Armor.

Necromancer
Name: Death Knight
Type: Major Grandmaster trait
Line: Death Magic
Effect: Can now equip Heavy Armor. Every piece of heavy armor equipped reduces toughness by x%.

Ranger
Name: Druid
Type: Major Grandmaster trait
Line: Nature Magic
Effect: Can now equip Light Armor. Every piece of light armor equipped increases boon duration by x%.

Warrior
Name: Barbarian
Type: Major Grandmaster trait
Line: Strength / Arms
Effect: Can now equip Medium Armor. Every piece of medium armor equipped increases Power (or Precision? Possibly both?) by x%.

The basic idea is that if a profession goes up 1 category in armor class (Elementalist, Engineer and Mesmer) then he gains no additional benefits or penalties. If a profession goes up 2 categories in armor class (Necromancer) he gains some penalties to off-set this. If a profession goes down one or more categories (Guardian, Ranger, Warrior) then he gains some benefits for doing so.

Now, one reason to be against this is because Arenanet wants every profession to be clearly identifiable. However since skills, skill animations, weapons and the like do not change that might not be a problem.

I realize I didn’t present a similar trait for the Thief but to be honest it didn’t really make sense to me for a Thief to wear anything else besides Medium Armor.

Interesting idea. But it would probably make the game extremely unbalanced. Imagine a Light armor class running around in heavy. And with all those armor skills they got… they would be invincible xD

Hehe. Like I said, I am unsure what the balance consequences would be. I just thought it could be interesting. Also, for the look and feel of some of those options.

…why on earth would necromancers want to wear heavy armor, and at a loss of toughness to boot?
If there’s one thing we don’t need, it’s more armor oO (I’d take decent, reliable access to aegis or invuln. any day though)

I would much rather just see new traits that augment how you can create a build. Like, for example, you suggested Guardians could wear light armor to get more healing power. How about just a trait that gives them more healing power, or converts toughness into healing power somewhat?

I don’t even understand why a Necro would equip heavy armor at the cost of toughness. Doesn’t that defeat the point?

You can accomplish all this stuff without it being about gear.

i like the idea in theory, but i can’t even begin to think of the balance issues.

about the only real objection i can think of is how profession recognizability (is that even a word?)

smekras.8203:

…recognizability (is that even a word?)

Recognition?

yeah, recognition works. didn’t know it works in passive

Well…I would love to equip heavy cultural armor on my sylvari mesmer. You could call it Phantom Knight

But thats the only reason I would love this to happen. Yeah…+300 armor would be cool too, but you would really sacrifice build diversity for it. Also, would have to make special heavy armor just for this build. Though, I would have totally gone for it, if it were possible

to be perfectly honest i mostly want this for iron ma… i mean, heavy armour on engineers

…yeah

Who would waste their Grandmaster trait for something so arbitrary?

And if any balance issue is changed such that another build is viable, we’ll have 5000 threads on ‘refund my ascended armor’.

Fyrebrand.4859:

I would much rather just see new traits that augment how you can create a build. Like, for example, you suggested Guardians could wear light armor to get more healing power. How about just a trait that gives them more healing power, or converts toughness into healing power somewhat?

But that’s not the same, at least not to me. This suggestion is just as much about the look and feel of wearing different armor, as it is about the mechanical benefits of these traits.

Fyrebrand.4859:

I don’t even understand why a Necro would equip heavy armor at the cost of toughness. Doesn’t that defeat the point?

Not if the reduction in toughness is less than the benefit of heavy armor. The point there was to make it balanced compared to the other traits because the jump from light to heavy is bigger than the jump from light to medium for instance. A reduction of toughness would not be the only solution to that problem however, it was just the one I went with.

Saint.5647:

Who would waste their Grandmaster trait for something so arbitrary?

Believe it or not but some people actually care about the way their character looks. I’ve read about how people want to play a Guardian but are turned off by the prospect of it not wearing ‘cloth’ for instance.

Besides, if you think the traits are too weak, maybe there are ways to make them stronger?

The difference between light and heavy armor is around ~300 Toughness worth of armor rating. Try Knight’s armor, it gives a lot of toughness or put points in the Tougness trait line.
Btw any reasoning why this idea is “good”?

I understand why the armor weights should and sort of need to be separate. I’d still like to be able skin for another weight though. I’ll keep my light stats, but kitten it, my ele wants some pants! (And not look like I Dream of Jeanie) Unfortunately, from my understand of how the underlying framework is designed and works, that will probably never happen.

Since getting my hands on this game, I think one of my top 5 wants have been to release the connection between stats of armor weights and looks of armor weights.

It would only further the level of customization imo.

The two largest opposing positions to this in other threads even hinting at this have been something along the lines of:

“It’s immersion breaking to see plate wearers running around in robes”, or “In pvp I look at what a person is wearing to tell me what class I’m fighting”.

The latter version is pretty laughable to me. The former, well, apparently we didn’t both play GW after they had the cover me elmo costumes. My ele til this day is sitting in PRE Searing Ascalon wearing

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Grenth's_Regalia

Armor is the last thing I look for when pvping. Gaining target, skill animations, weapons sets and pets all tell me more about what I’m facing than that of armor. As far as immersion goes, I personally am more concerned about my own characters choices than what others do. They are far more immersion breakers in the game already than to be concerned about what another player is wearing.

As far as having traits be connected to what armor type I would wear, I dunno. Does seem a bit arbitrary just to get a different look, especially going so deep in a line just to make it happen.

Personally, what I would want is an armor shell column that had your stats (doesn’t have a look at all) and a wardrobe column that had the actual skins you would wear.
Either that or two additional ways of getting that armor bonus:

1. remove armor bonus and add a new slot to gear, light/med/heavy. Have it be something like the worthless crest/marks/talismans/seals and medallions we have now.
Heavy can only equip heavy, so on and so forth.

2. Build the armor bonus directly into each profession to reflect the level+quality of gear you are wearing.

By the way, this is the look my ELE has for pve in gw1

I think a much more reasonable solution to the likely underlying problem here is we need more skills (utility, healing, weapon and elites) at this point. We, as a playerbase, pretty much need more content and more armor sets/weapon sets to be obtainable.

That’s just my thoughts on the topic, instead of going through such a radical change to what already exists, the underlying problem might be that the game has stagnated and we need more content. It’s been 20 months, the game’s not getting any younger!

I also made a post the other day about why I give removing weight restrictions a two thumbs down: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/I-wish-ANET-make-all-armors-for-all-class/first#post3851367

Absolutely for the engineer. It’s a great idea. This class should have been a soldier class anyway.

hannah mee.7925:

I think a much more reasonable solution to the likely underlying problem here is we need more skills (utility, healing, weapon and elites) at this point. We, as a playerbase, pretty much need more content and more armor sets/weapon sets to be obtainable.

The idea was to introduce more archetypes from rpgs / mmos into the game. Of course armor alone won’t make that work. Weapons and skills are way more important for that. However together armor, weapons and skills could really drive this home. For instance, a Death Knight is not just a necromancer in heavy armor, it would also need something like a greatsword or scythe and utility/healing/elite skills to really finish the picture.

Again, let me say that I’m not married to the exact execution of the way I described it above. For instance, perhaps they could work better as adept or master traits than as grandmaster traits. Perhaps the benefits for Guardians, Rangers and Warriors should be better or different. Perhaps the penalty to Necromancer should be different. And so on.