Guild Wars 2

It isn’t a make or break thing for me, but…

Why are Stats tied to Trait Lines?

Seems to me like that REALLY restricts the builds on the game. If you want any kind of damage build, you (generally) max out Trait lines 1 & 2. The ignore the other 3 Trait Lines (almost) entirely.

What about players who want a combat Earth Magic build (just for example)? Or water build? (Not to mention other class’s Trait lines of course.)

Why not separate the Stat bonuses from the Trait lines? That would allow for a much more diverse series of builds for classes across the game. You would see (again, for example) JUST fire and/or lightning elementalists.

Seems to me that could be a pretty big improvement?

B

couple of things:
1) not every optimal build is 6/6/x/x/x.
2) if you separate them, then you guarantee people will max power/prec and then take whatever traits without any trade off.

I’d happily run a phalanx war with +300 power + 300 prec + 300 in whatever else.
Would you want the minor stats on each trait line to be selectable separately too?
If so + 300 fero and +30% boon duration please!

Also GL with balance.

Hence my comment of “generally.”

Most build structures I see out there focus very heavily on Power, Precison & Ferocity. In terms of DPS, that makes total sense.

I have no idea how to balance it. That would be ANet’s job. I’m just pointing out that the present system restricts what players (generally) do in terms of DPS builds. But if you’re worried about balance then tether the lesser stats together to address that, I dunno.

Yes, tank & condition build, speed builds, etc do not focus on 6/6/x/x/x, but I don’t see many builds like that are touted.

B

Artemis Thuras.8795:

couple of things:
1) not every optimal build is 6/6/x/x/x.
2) if you separate them, then you guarantee people will max power/prec and then take whatever traits without any trade off.

I’d happily run a phalanx war with +300 power + 300 prec + 300 in whatever else.
Would you want the minor stats on each trait line to be selectable separately too?
If so + 300 fero and +30% boon duration please!

Also GL with balance.

Thats more a symptom of the offense heavy meta game than anything else, and the current system often feels like I am just “settling” rather than what I want to pick, because if I don’t go 6 power, i’m out 300 power. Like maybe the power-6 slot for my class is terrible. I’m still at worst, going to 4 or 5.

Speaking from a PvE perspective, giving people control of their own survivability stats is a mistake. It creates situations where a soldier might be tickled and be under no danger whatsoever of dying, and a berserker gets one shot. It makes it impossible to tune in a way such that its threatening to the soldier without feeling unfair to a berserker.

You want to break the power/precision/ferocity triangle, there just needs to be more options. Things like cooldown reduction, attack speed, damage vs. flanking, armor penetration, damage vs. impaired and such.

You’d still be limited to just three stats per item so its not like people would become ridiculously powerful and have all of them.

I, for one, am heavily in favor of UNLINKING the Traits with Stat lines.

As a Warrior player, some of the traits and stats are a huge mess, and dont really fit together very well at the moment. Here are some examples, all of them from a Warrior perspective, since it is the class I know best:

Want those Longbow traits? Enjoy your +boon duration. What? Longbow has no boons? Nonsense.

Lets try a shout-healing build! Wait, healing+ isnt in that stat line at all. Banner healing build? Nope.

Greatsword power build? Well the Greatsword trait is in arms, so enjoy your +200 condition damage on a weapon with literally 0 damaging conditions.

Better still… want to make a shout Warrior who wields a longbow? Well unfortunately thats 4 traits that happen to exist in the same tree, even though they’re completely unrelated.

However, I understand that TOTALLY unlinking them may encourage min-max so here is what I consider a perfect solution:

You can pick any 6 traits you want from your class. Each has a stat bonus attached for slotting it, in addition to its current standard effect.
Examples:
Forceful Greatsword: 50 prec/5% boon
Shield Master: 50 tough/50 vit

And for the minor traits? You get them based on what your stat bonus from traits work out to be.

Example:
If you have +50 prec and +50 condi, you get the Precise Strikes minor trait.
If you have +150 tough and +150 healing, you get Adrenal health minor trait.

^You misunderstand something. The reason there’s 2 stats per trait line is because each trait line has multiple builds within it. Take necro traits as an example. Both power and condition (and hybrid) builds take points into Spite and Curses, for two different reasons. Just because a tree has a stat that any given build wont use compared to the other, does not mean there’s anything wrong.

Additionally, the 300 power is often not an issue at all. Back when I ran Juggernaut engi, instead of 6 points into line 1, I’d put 6 into alchemy and get HGH and other elixir benefits. Sure I’d lose 300 power or so from trait points, but the gain I get from traits, especially because with HGH and juggernaut together, I’m sitting on top of 25 might in combat within a couple seconds (this is paired with sig/rune of strength). I’m pretty sure 875 power outweighed 300 power by a large margin.

They are tied to it because it is for branching your build.
As Aidan said each trait tree/line is for multiple builds.
I will say they should be moved around because as Dand said longbow and healing power doesn’t make sense to me either.

Lastly in guild wars 1 we also had these traits, the mechanics were different, but the names were kept. Regardless they also offered stats. Dagger mastery on an Assassin gave damage boost on daggers for example while critical strikes gave critical chance.

Aidan Savage.2078:

^You misunderstand something. The reason there’s 2 stats per trait line is because each trait line has multiple builds within it.

This means some builds will naturally just have higher stats and be more viable, than others.

Again, going back to Warrior Longbow, you get Vitality+ and Boon+.

Neither of these stats help out a longbow build. Well, yeah, ok, vitality helps everyone, but it has nothing to do with longbow performance.

Completely agree, I was going to make a thread about this. There’s a very heavy incentive to get the trait line that gives +300 power. There’s no reason to have stats attached to trait lines. It makes certain lines more desireable just because there’s stats attached to them, and not because you think these traits would be the best for your build.

If I don’t want to get the Explosives trait line with Engineer, well I’m kittened because I miss out on a lot of power.