Guild Wars 2

I have not looked at each professions access to weapons, but I just noticed that the warrior has access to 11 different weapon sets while a class like thief has only 6…

Is this some oversight? Will disparities like these be fixed?

Something as simple as this reaffirms my conclusion that profession still need a lot of work and that there are many other poor design decisions and flaws, so I sincerely hope the developers start treating professions, weapons, skills, combat mechanics, balancing… seriously and as the most important aspects of this game, and stop treating profession development as something secondary like they have been doing up to this point. Hopefully HoT will be the catalyst for these improvements and the devs finally start treating profession improvements with some sense of urgency going forward.

It will not be ‘fixed’ because it is not broken, it was designed that way.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that is intentional. Warriors are meant to be masters of using as many weapons as possible, hence the high weapon count. Other professions have different mechanics to make up for this supposed disparity. Elementalists, for example, have access to only a handful of weapons, but they make up for it through the attunement mechanics.

Don’t think I’ve heard a thief complain about lack of weapons before lol. I mean you want another way to backstab or something? Thieves get a ton of utility through their steal mechanic (and they can trait it up the wazoo) as well as all the utility/teleport/ease of (repeateable) blast finisher they can have access to.

Thieves have a lot more utility built in (more quality per weapon), warriors have more quantity/passive defense. Anet actually did a really good job in making things fairly balanced that way while making all classes feel unique.

As other people have said it’s not going to be ‘fixed’ because it’s a deliberate part of the profession design.

It’s not like they intended to allow every profession to use every weapon and simply forgot to add the rest, or haven’t had time/resources to do it yet. Which weapons a profession can use, how they use them and how many they have are a big part of what defines them and makes your profession a meaningful choice.

Also those with the fewest options generally have other mechanics to make up for it. For example engineers only have 3 weapons (and a total of 3 possible weapon combinations: rifle, pistol/pistol and pistol/shield), but they have kits which give them another 6 possible weapon skill sets and 4 extra skills from their profession mechanic (tool belt) where the warrior only gets 1.

I think Vesuvius’ explanation is pretty good.

I would argue that the reason why Warrior has so many weapon options is because it doesn’t really have many class mechanics. The large choice of weapons increases the “play” of the class.

Here’s a really good table to look at: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Weapon#Weapon_usability_by_professions
Note the row second from the bottom, including the bracketed numbers. All professions (except ele) are floating around 40 different weapon skills, even if they have a low number of standard weapons to equip.

Even if engineers have just 4 equipable standard weapons and at only one set at a time, I would argue that actually most Engi builds (especially meta) have some of the most weapon skills available of any build. The same applies to Ele.

Danikat.8537:

As other people have said it’s not going to be ‘fixed’ because it’s a deliberate part of the profession design.

It’s not like they intended to allow every profession to use every weapon and simply forgot to add the rest, or haven’t had time/resources to do it yet. Which weapons a profession can use, how they use them and how many they have are a big part of what defines them and makes your profession a meaningful choice.

Also those with the fewest options generally have other mechanics to make up for it. For example engineers only have 3 weapons (and a total of 3 possible weapon combinations: rifle, pistol/pistol and pistol/shield), but they have kits which give them another 6 possible weapon skill sets and 4 extra skills from their profession mechanic (tool belt) where the warrior only gets 1.

Is this sarcasm? Because…

What’s more is that the team is also working very hard to finding a way to make it so that every profession has access to every weapon and their own weapon skills for those previously locked weapons.

Source

They actually were planning on doing exactly that. Plans change, obviously. But you can’t say it was never intended. (The bolded “to” that doesn’t make grammatical sense above was originally “on,” but the forum filters kittenized it.)

To be honest, the weapon disparity seems a bit jarring at first, until you actually get a bit deeper into a class’s mechanics. Then the reason behind it becomes clearer.

You used thieves in your example, and although they do get fewer weapons than warriors, you also have to take into account their dual weilding skills, which change every time you pair two different kinds of weapons together, as well as stealth skills, which change the nature of the primary attack on your main hand weapon. These increase the thief’s weapon skill pool to a greater amount than it seems at first glance. It also goes without saying that while adding one new off-hand weapon (for example) would only give a warrior two new weapon skills, adding one new off-hand weapon for a thief would give them 5 new weapon skills (the two offhand skills + 3 new dual weild skills). Likewise, adding one new main hand weapon would add new stealth skills and new dual wield skills for each off-hand weapon you can pair that main hand weapon with.

To put it plainly, if thieves had the same number of weapons as the warrior, they’d end up with a good amount more weapon skills than the warrior, which is partly why disparity exists.

The same applies to some other classes, like elementalists, who get 4x the amount of weapon skills per weapon as a warrior, because of elemental swapping, hence they get a considerably smaller amount of weapons to choose from to offset that. Regardless, elementalists have the most weapon skills in the game, despite having so few weapons to choose from. Engineers, on the other hand, have less weapons but make up for it with lots of kits and tool belt skills that change depending on what utility skills you equip.

To make a long story short, you can’t just look at each class and how many weapons they have and call it unfair. You have to actually understand how every class works and how their class mechanics add to their overall diversity.

I know you guys can try to justify the whys, whens and hows… There are also other factors to account for… Those are the fun factors and variety factors. This is not a card game or moba with preset stuff, this is an mmo and the mmo style characters that we play are vital to the experience. You guys can niggle about this and that but this is a company that makes a lot of money, and honestly professions seem unfinished in many ways. Also, we only have 5 skills per weapon, some 3 and some just 2… You don’t think this group of talented developers can creat interesting weapon sets and skills if that put their mind to it? It seems after launch that the profession development department runs on low resources because it it’s creeping up in three years now and it’s still mostly about traits, traits and more traits that run numbers in the background. I get that hot is coming with new stuff, but profession improvements and reevaluations are at a snail pace here…

Also, think about this… For almost three years there have been complaints about how the ranger sword functions poorly. I guarantee if the developers datamined how many regular sword users and builds were being used that number would be tremendously low in comparison to other weapons and builds… 3 years and they can’t improve sword functionality for a better end user experience?

Anet has a headquarters filled with a ton of talented staff and makes millions of dollars per month, don’t you think they are capable of doing a better and more meaningful job with professions?

Actually Theif has more than 3 skills per main hand weapon.

Swagger.1459:

Anet has a headquarters filled with a ton of talented staff and makes millions of dollars per month, don’t you think they are capable of doing a better and more meaningful job with professions?

I have no doubt that ANET is fully capable of developing stuff given their talented staff, but that stuff doesn’t come for free. You have to throw money at it first. You claim they make “millions of dollars per month”. Can you cite any sources for this?

Guhracie.3419:

Danikat.8537:

As other people have said it’s not going to be ‘fixed’ because it’s a deliberate part of the profession design.

It’s not like they intended to allow every profession to use every weapon and simply forgot to add the rest, or haven’t had time/resources to do it yet. Which weapons a profession can use, how they use them and how many they have are a big part of what defines them and makes your profession a meaningful choice.

Also those with the fewest options generally have other mechanics to make up for it. For example engineers only have 3 weapons (and a total of 3 possible weapon combinations: rifle, pistol/pistol and pistol/shield), but they have kits which give them another 6 possible weapon skill sets and 4 extra skills from their profession mechanic (tool belt) where the warrior only gets 1.

Is this sarcasm? Because…

What’s more is that the team is also working very hard to finding a way to make it so that every profession has access to every weapon and their own weapon skills for those previously locked weapons.

Source

They actually were planning on doing exactly that. Plans change, obviously. But you can’t say it was never intended. (The bolded “to” that doesn’t make grammatical sense above was originally “on,” but the forum filters kittenized it.)

I completely forgot about that. Ok, it would be more accurate to say they intended it to be the way it is at launch and have since changed their mind.

Swagger.1459:

I know you guys can try to justify the whys, whens and hows… There are also other factors to account for… Those are the fun factors and variety factors. This is not a card game or moba with preset stuff, this is an mmo and the mmo style characters that we play are vital to the experience. You guys can niggle about this and that but this is a company that makes a lot of money, and honestly professions seem unfinished in many ways. Also, we only have 5 skills per weapon, some 3 and some just 2… You don’t think this group of talented developers can creat interesting weapon sets and skills if that put their mind to it? It seems after launch that the profession development department runs on low resources because it it’s creeping up in three years now and it’s still mostly about traits, traits and more traits that run numbers in the background. I get that hot is coming with new stuff, but profession improvements and reevaluations are at a snail pace here…

No one’s said Anet are incapable of adding new weapon skills or weapons for professions that can’t use them currently. Just that they’ve chosen not to do it (so far).

Just like how they could add mounts, or new equipment tiers or let us all fly (in fact making us fly, or at least levitate might be easier than making us walk since it’s less physics to program in).

Vesuvius.9874:

Swagger.1459:

Anet has a headquarters filled with a ton of talented staff and makes millions of dollars per month, don’t you think they are capable of doing a better and more meaningful job with professions?

I have no doubt that ANET is fully capable of developing stuff given their talented staff, but that stuff doesn’t come for free. You have to throw money at it first. You claim they make “millions of dollars per month”. Can you cite any sources for this?

Look up ncsoft’s public financial records that can be found on their site for yourself..

Swagger.1459:

Vesuvius.9874:

Swagger.1459:

Anet has a headquarters filled with a ton of talented staff and makes millions of dollars per month, don’t you think they are capable of doing a better and more meaningful job with professions?

I have no doubt that ANET is fully capable of developing stuff given their talented staff, but that stuff doesn’t come for free. You have to throw money at it first. You claim they make “millions of dollars per month”. Can you cite any sources for this?

Look up ncsoft’s public financial records that can be found on their site for yourself..

Umm why would I look up NCSoft’s public financial records if I want to find out what ANET is making? You really have no idea, do you?

Vesuvius.9874:

Swagger.1459:

Vesuvius.9874:

Swagger.1459:

Anet has a headquarters filled with a ton of talented staff and makes millions of dollars per month, don’t you think they are capable of doing a better and more meaningful job with professions?

I have no doubt that ANET is fully capable of developing stuff given their talented staff, but that stuff doesn’t come for free. You have to throw money at it first. You claim they make “millions of dollars per month”. Can you cite any sources for this?

Look up ncsoft’s public financial records that can be found on their site for yourself..

Umm why would I look up NCSoft’s public financial records if I want to find out what ANET is making? You really have no idea, do you?

Because Anet, as a wholly owned subsidiary of NCSoft, does not publicly report their own earnings. But NCSoft does (for their current shareholders and potential future shareholders) and they break it down by game (at least for the top earners) so it shows exactly how much profit GW2 is making.

Edit: It’s quoted in this topic, with a link to the original report: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/NCSOFT-1Q-2015-Results/first#post5062053

Vesuvius.9874:

Swagger.1459:

Vesuvius.9874:

Swagger.1459:

Anet has a headquarters filled with a ton of talented staff and makes millions of dollars per month, don’t you think they are capable of doing a better and more meaningful job with professions?

I have no doubt that ANET is fully capable of developing stuff given their talented staff, but that stuff doesn’t come for free. You have to throw money at it first. You claim they make “millions of dollars per month”. Can you cite any sources for this?

Look up ncsoft’s public financial records that can be found on their site for yourself..

Umm why would I look up NCSoft’s public financial records if I want to find out what ANET is making? You really have no idea, do you?

No need to split hairs here. The company earns many millions for ncsoft per year, these companies are not hurting for money or reinvestment resources. look it up yourself and stop being lazy and stop derailing this thread unnecessarily.

Warrior is the Sugarbaby class of GW2 so they get everything.

Assassins are actually the Masters of all weapons but ever since Cantha was kidnapped and taken away they drifted to petty Thievery and forgot all their training over the years while Tyria wined and dined Warriors with brilliance.

Maybe one day we’ll rediscover our teachingz and become weapon masters again.

Since the discussion in this thread has derailed and is no longer constructive this thread is now closed.