Guild Wars 2

I’m just thinking out loud here, which is why this isn’t in the Suggestions forum.

The problem with only ever having one set of weapon skills per weapon is that a great sense of progression and customization is lost. You learn your weapon skills very early on, and it’s not uncommon to have learned them all by level 10-15. From then on, you have no new skills to learn for your weapons.

I realize the original intent of this is to make balancing easier in GW2, as opposed to how it was in GW1, where players could equip any set of skills they liked.

But why not introduce more than one set of weapon skills? It’s going to be a lot of work, especially for some classes like Elementalist. So, I just wanted to get some other people’s opinion instead of blindly throwing this idea in the suggestions forum.

My suggestion is as follows:
Upon reaching 30 points in any one trait line, unlock a new set of trait-related weapon skills for each weapon. Since you can get two trait lines to 30, you would have to pick which weapon set you want to use (original, from trait 1, or from trait 2)

This would allow an extended sense of progression as you get to higher levels (since you can’t even unlock the 30 in any trait until you get to level 60), and it would also allow for some interesting customization.

Each trait line would have its own theme – the Strength trait line for warrior would force all weapons to deal direct damage. The Arms would focus on condition damage, Defense on defensive abilities, Tactics on healing/support, and Discipline on crowd control.

Another example, with Thief:
Deadly arts would make all weapons deal direct damage to groups of enemies. Critical strikes could focus on strong single target damage, Shadow Arts would make all weapon skills be far more defensive, Acrobatics would grant all weapons various dodging and survival abilities, and Trickery could focus on condition weapons.

You could also use these trait-specific-weapon-sets to add a short prefix to the character’s class.
Say a warrior who has selected the Tactics weapon sets, would have the title Tactician under his name. A thief focusing on the Critical Strikes could have the title Assassin, etc. etc.

As I said, this would require a lot of work, especially with some professions (and I’m not quite sure how it can be made to work with Engineer Kits). It would also require a lot of separate re-balancing, and since balancing is already hard enough as it is, I don’t hold any major hopes for this being ever implemented.

I just liked the idea, thought I’d share.

My issue is the fact that adding more weapon skills per each weapon would require a lot of rebalancing. As is one of the largest issues is class balance. We also aren’t looking at just making weapons balanced between each other but between different traits and utility skills. At best you make some things OP, but there is a high risk of a worst case of just adding useless junk. Much easier to whittle down OP than to buff something to par it seems judging from just general class progression.

The better option is to add new weapons in controlled amounts, then they are looking at balancing 5 skills per class and maybe adding new traits to go along vs 5 skills per weapon per class along with changing existing traits and possibly adding new.

Second addressing your class getting marked based on your traits, bad idea. PvE this wouldn’t be a horrible thing at all of course. Issue lies in PvP, both WvW and sPvP. Knowing what you are up against is half the battle in PvP, something that takes that away and even partially reveals your build is like playing poker with all your cards on display. Unless you are just referring to the weapon you are currently using only, in which case why would this addition be of any value?

I agree that this would only worsen rebalancing. It’s one of the things I mention at the end, as a reason why this isn’t in suggestions forum.

Also, I did not mean the weapon you have equipped, but rather the trait-based weapon skill you have selected – much like Borderlands does its modifications based on the class mod you’re using in that game.

Agreed that it would not be the best idea for pvp/wvw, but that wouldn’t be entirely too hard to limit I think.