Guild Wars 2

Man, this forum view bug is pretty awful.

sigh… here we go again…

let’s compare build diversity in the old system to build diversity in the new system by comparing two builds…. Minon Master Necro, and longbow ranger.

MINION MASTER NECRO
~old system MM builds.: 4/0/6/4/0 or x/x/6/6/x
4/0/6/4/0 variant: 4 spite for extra minion damage, 6 death for all minion traits, 4 blood for minion lifesteal
x/x/6/6/x variant: 6 death for all minion traits, and 6 blood for minion lifesteal and condi transfer to minions from necro.

~new system MM build: death: all three MM traits. leaving you to choose the other 2 specializations however you want. you want to run a vampire MM? you can. you want to run a condition death – shroud MM? you can now.

LONGBOW RANGER
~old system longow: 6/4/x/x/x with 4 trait points available for build customization. required traits: marks, both the master and GM slot, for taking any 2 of the 3 traits. and skirmishing master trait.

~new system: marksmanship: Lead the Wind. leaving 2 traits for diversity within the one trait line, and 2 more full specializations to build however you want for whatever weapon or utility or general traits you want.

you want to run longbow greatsword? take marks and beastmastery to take both traits. you want to run a defensive longbow? take wilderness survival and nature magic along with marks. you want to run a boon longbow? marks, nature magic, beastmastery? you want to run a poison – trapper longbow? marks, skirmishing, nature magic.

CONCLUSION:
there are many more variants for builds now, compared to the old system. i didn’t even compare old/new shoutbow warriors, meditation guards, staff elementalists, reflect mesmers (that can now build manipulations – evade, or signet – distortion, or warden’s feedback – glamour.)

ASP.8093:

Warlock.7136:

read other forum threads our mathimatician players out there did the math. there ARE less builds available to play, ALOT less.

There are fewer available combinations, in the rawest sense.

Most of the combinations we lost were, in all honesty, absolute trash. Do-nothing skills and do-nothing builds. There are very few exceptions to that… stuff like clone-death mesmers; and, enh, I really can’t say giving clone-death builds the axe hurt the game in any way.

to add to what ASP said: the main builds that went bye bye were mesmer clone-death, ricochet thief, and elementalist signet fire-aura builds. the minor builds were essentially the proverbial 3/3/3/3/2 type hybrid builds.

i could spam this thread with examples of fun builds i played before that had their use and are now unduplicatable. the optimal build is not always the fun one as i have said before. meta is the gaming lobotomy. you drool on yourself and play the meta and it’s all “optimal mathmatic effeciency”. or you break from what everyone else is doing and play something that you find enjoyable. that is no longer possible. I am CERTAIN that that aweful metabattle build numbing site will soon have all 495(a number i have heard repeatedly on forums but not one i have checked) builds listed. gg. only not really when before we had thousands of builds possible. this is an obvious attempt by the dev team to limit the number of builds that need to be balanced.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

let’s compare build diversity in the old system to build diversity in the new system by comparing two builds…. Minon Master Necro, and longbow ranger.
…

there are many more variants for builds now, compared to the old system.

At best, you showed there are more variants for META builds now. But since folks are complaining about losing their non-meta builds…

Warlock.7136:

the optimal build is not always the fun one as i have said before. meta is the gaming lobotomy. you drool on yourself and play the meta and it’s all “optimal mathmatic effeciency”.

The metagame right now is super loose. Lots of opportunities to experiment and find something that works.

Moreover, between trait consolidation, trait realignment, and new traits that fill missing niches, lots of stuff that was just garbage in the past is usable now. When the metagame shakes out, there’ll be a few “meta” builds for each profession (that’s how it always works), but those other builds will continually to be useful and fun. Because there are more good traits, because it’s (mostly) easier to get the right ones together, because quite a few profession-wide “must-haves” have been transformed into baseline features of the classes instead.

All in all, at the moment, the possibility space of builds that don’t suck is looking pretty good.

Warlock.7136:

or you break from what everyone else is doing and play something that you find enjoyable. that is no longer possible.

Sure it is. Plenty of awesome totally off-the-wall builds are available to your right now. Folks are messing around with Signet mesmers, Flamethrower engies, all kinds of weird stuff that was just universally rubbish before.

But, yes, you can no longer build 3/3/3/3/2/0 or try to stack retal on a mesmer. Quite a few do-nothing traits and newbie traps are gone, probably forever. Quel dommage!

ScribeTheMad.7614:

“Play your way” was marched into the street and executed 5 minutes after launch.

. . . before that, when I couldn’t “play my way” by executing every single charr in the Black Citadel on reaching 80.

I will give one example. this is what happened to my main character who should have been done/complete on his gear as it was all full ascended.

Skills: Hammer/Healing signet/shake it off/Berserker’s stance/Signet of fury/Signet of rage. Stats prepatch:Max toughness/Max Healing Power/High Vitality(32k hp) medium precision/medium Power

Stats After Patch:High toughness/High Healing Power/High vitality/Low Precision/medium Power(this is mostly due to stats being in armor combinations only but the nerf to the passive bonus to pre that signets gave did have an affect.)

Prepatch traits:max healing/vitality line/max toughness line. power and precision boosts from traits/trait lines.

Current Traits:

Defense:Thick Skin/Dogged March/Adrenal Health/Gain power based on toughness/Spiked armor(ret damage)Rousing resilence(least useless grandmaster trait. still pretty aweful though)

Tactics:determined revival/leg specialist(useless randomly chosen as all traits in this choice are useless) reviver’s might/Shake it off/Inspiring presence/Vigorous shouts

Discipline:Versatile Rage(useless) Warrior’s sprint(not useless but i don’t see a better choice) fast hands(useless) Destruction of the empowered(useless) Versatile Power(useless) Merciless hammer(only trait needed from this line)

gear:nomad backed by dolyak runes. food:mango pies.

How it works/worked: You attach to a player that has gone down. you deal ret damage while doing this to insure spiking players from ret damage attach to the keep lord/key npc or a particuarly annoying zerker. I.E> make a nuisance of yourself. you out heal/out tank the damage removing it from your zerg. you get thanked for the rez. player friendliness towards you improves.

the basic math of it:Prepatch=toughness reduces all damage to double digit/healing rate regens triple digit per tick.ret damage goes out killing zerker meta with it’s own high damage low damage absorb flaw. Effective up to 8-10 enemies. After Patch:toughness reduces all damage to 4 digit/healing rate is 3 digit. effective up to 4 players.
Cost full gear conversion:100 gold+70 ectos through mystic forge/replacement runes. loss of full infusions on armor as well(nice loss of laurels)

want to try and fix it?

wildcode.5403:

Secondly now I have to unlock all the traits skills before I can use any of them. Where as before I could use them as I unlocked them.

…

You have to unlock traits to use them now. However, before, you had to unlock traits to use them.

That is what you just said.

The truth is:

Before you had to unlock points and tiers via leveling, then you had to unlock individual traits via action and unlock points and tiers via leveling. Now you have to unlock traits by leveling or action in a specific order.

It’s actually better than before. The actions before were far harder than now. In this regard, it was a great improvement and no hindrance to play how you want.

In all honesty, the only hindrance to " play how you want" was the NPE.

Mr Snotty Pants.3980:

Forgotten Legend.9281:

let’s compare build diversity in the old system to build diversity in the new system by comparing two builds…. Minon Master Necro, and longbow ranger.
…

there are many more variants for builds now, compared to the old system.

At best, you showed there are more variants for META builds now. But since folks are complaining about losing their non-meta builds…

Except it’s not just meta builds nearly every single build type among the professions are like these examples. I’m trying to figure out what many of these doomsayers are so indignant about. Almost as if they were playing their forma build specifically to ‘not be meta’. Would be terrible for the hipster crowd (while currently a new meta hasn’t been established) to come up with a build they like and then it ends up becoming meta. Oh, the horror. :/ We’ll have a new set of builds soon so you guys can do the opposite. Don’t worry. :p

I guess my few paragraphs a bit ago where too long winded as the last 5ish posts were basically excerpts of what I said. There are now more good builds (and variations on them), and what’s even better, when pugging, it’s now much harder to make an absolute trash PHIW build as most of the traits are pretty good and the lines Specs much more synergetic. It’s a win win.

one thing about my last post “useless” refers to a trait that had to be taken to get to another one but does not affect the build in any way that can be seen as benefical to that specific build.

With a pre-exisiting 80 with account wide unlocks…new system is ok I guess.

But on a fresh account, all these changes leads to much much frustration and makes the game pretty unfun to play. I mean before you get to level ten and start dishing out points…now you gotta get to lvl 21 for that to happen; that is a looooong time to go before you are allowed to customize your char imo.

It hasn’t been like that in over a year though. With the last system, you started at level 30 – sure, it’s not starting at level 11, but it’s better than what we’ve had. You can actually get traits while leveling again, instead of having to spend skill points and gold (that new players won’t have), or search for events (or some things like, when it launched, map completion in a 70-80 zone for an adept), and in some cases, hope they’ll be up so you can actually earn it.

Hum, well there is lots of restrictions now on new accounts. I guess they did many these to combat botters/rmt’ers…but for new player it is frustrating. But many you would not know that b/c you are lvl 80 and long since have things unlocked. Like being able to mail, use banks, etc which once unlocked apply to account but if you don’t have em unlocked it sucks and turns new players away. Already had this happen with some people I lured here, it’s so…restricting. It wasn’t like this when I started to play at launch, that’s for sure.

Mr Snotty Pants.3980:

Forgotten Legend.9281:

let’s compare build diversity in the old system to build diversity in the new system by comparing two builds…. Minon Master Necro, and longbow ranger.
…

there are many more variants for builds now, compared to the old system.

At best, you showed there are more variants for META builds now. But since folks are complaining about losing their non-meta builds…

Yep you nailed it. People are complaining about losing their builds. I played Guild Wars 1 for years and during those years, there were many times balance patches killed builds. Nothing to do with more variety or less variety. People are saying I have this build and I want to keep it.

And when I hear that, I say to people the same thing I say on every MMO forum. Too bad. You don’t get to keep your builds when the game evolves. This isn’t a complaint that’s unique to Guild Wars 2 or the Guild Wars series, or even a complaint that has to do with a complete conversation of how traits/specializations are handled.

This is the same complaint we see over and over again, that people don’t want change. And if you don’t want change, the one genre you should absolutely avoid entirely is MMOs.

Warlock.7136:

Cost full gear conversion:100 gold+70 ectos through mystic forge/replacement runes. loss of full infusions on armor as well(nice loss of laurels)

want to try and fix it?

You can change stats on ascended https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Ascended-Gear-Anet-please-fix-this/first#post5174104

You can change it to any stats
- 10 spirit chards
- Piece of ascended armour or weapon
- exotic insignia of your choice
- 5 ectos

Warlock.7136:

i could spam this thread with examples of fun builds i played before that had their use and are now unduplicatable.

… and that would prove nothing except Anet has made changes that prevent you from playing those builds. If there is no combination of traits you can find to give you a pleasurable build, I don’t think your looking hard enough. In fact, whatever build you want to keep, there is one that is VERY similar under the current system that should be close to it. Sounds to me more like your complaint is simply that you don’t want to use new builds.

fixit.7189:

With a pre-exisiting 80 with account wide unlocks…new system is ok I guess.

But on a fresh account, all these changes leads to much much frustration and makes the game pretty unfun to play. I mean before you get to level ten and start dishing out points…now you gotta get to lvl 21 for that to happen; that is a looooong time to go before you are allowed to customize your char imo.

But those points you were ‘dishing out’ didn’t really even matter until lvl 15 when you could pick your first Adept Minor, which was hardly to be considered ‘customizing’ as they were pretty negligible. Also, not the the last trait iteration drastically reduced the exp needed to get to lvl 15 anyway, so the ‘new lvl 21’ is pretty equal to the ‘old lvl 15’. Also, while leveling to 21, you’re unlocking weapon and utility skills as well as class mechanics. It’s important for new players to have a good grasp of these things before they get into trait building.

We hated the NPE and the infamous ‘trait revamp’ and so they tried to find a good solid middle ground. Seems appropriate to me. I’m thankful they listened to us and were willing to work with us and take OUR feedback to come to a better consensus with THEIR game design. Instead of being indignant about it not being enough, be thankful they listened to veteran opinion while still trying to maintain their goal of ease of accessibility for incoming new players to the game.

CalamityO.2890:

Warlock.7136:

Cost full gear conversion:100 gold+70 ectos through mystic forge/replacement runes. loss of full infusions on armor as well(nice loss of laurels)

want to try and fix it?

You can change stats on ascended https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Ascended-Gear-Anet-please-fix-this/first#post5174104

You can change it to any stats
- 10 spirit chards
- Piece of ascended armour or weapon
- exotic insignia of your choice
- 5 ectos

So, with the increase in stats to the Nomad’s gear, you should be able to only change maybe your Chest and Leg pieces to something like Zerk (requiring only 2 new Runes) to make up for the damage stats lost and then take HUGE advantage of the fact you can now spec into three full trait lines which have all been considerably buffed. This hyperbole only makes you sound stubborn and close minded. Try calming down and giving some logic a go.

Also, if you had “maxed Defense and Tactics lines”, there is NO WAY you had “medium Power AND Precision” with with your remaining TWO trait points to spend. I, as well as any other theory craft will only regard this as a complete impossibility.

If you would like some tips and how to adapt yourself to the latest changes, I’m sure I or any of the other build crafter’s could get you back to a build very similar to your old one with minimal investment on your part. Heck, with the new Specs we could surely make it better than what you were using before.

Feel free to hit me up in game if your truly interested in solutions and not just here to make a scene about it. GL and hope to hear from you.

gw2 is still in beta, it has been 3 yrs, i know, but gw2 is still testing and reworking everything.

SkyShroud.2865:

gw2 is still in beta, it has been 3 yrs, i know, but gw2 is still testing and reworking everything.

By that definition WoW is still in beta.

As far as play styles go, it seems to me that only one of my characters plays significantly differently, and that’s the engineer — and that’s just with grenades. No more grenades from 1500 (I’m assuming they’ll reduce grenade damage back to the realms of the not-bugged sooner or later).

Play style is much more a function of weapon and profession than it is of traits. Traits seem to produce minor changes in play. Switching from D/D to Staff on Ele, for instance, produces a major play style change.

So, while I have no difficulty believing that some (maybe many) build options are no longer possible, I have a hard time accepting that one is no longer able to “play their way.” I might suggest, “Play with every single minor variation to build I used to have.” But, that sounds so much less dramatic.

What happened to “Play your way”?

It died with Guild Wars 1, and I’m not joking.

DeWolfe.2174:

Notice it’s the Mesmer’s whom love and praise the new system? Don’t worry your nerf is imminent

For the OP, yes I have to agree the Dev’s are trying to force play styles too much with this patch.

Well this is one Mesmer who loathes what this patch did to the profession. I used to run a clone-death build and it was a play style that I really enjoyed and had a fair bit of success with in SPvP and PvE (WvW not so much unless I was roaming) but most importantly it was the build that really clicked for me, prior to running clone-death I just wasn’t enjoying Mesmer at all. Now I’m sure that there are Mesmer builds post-patch that are extremely successful but if I wanted successful then I’d be running the meta on all my characters, what I want is to enjoy my gaming experience but with the Shatter or GT(Kitten)O attitude of the new system Mesmer just isn’t fun for me at the moment.

Thus far I’ve tested a few alts and a lot of them are the same or better than previous:

Hybrid power/condi warrior – currently broken … might be fixable but not without quite a few sacrifices, though it’d help if the bow and rifle traits had their paths swapped.
Regen/tank warrior – absolutely superb, used to be pretty lacklustre but is now insanely powerful.
Heal/tank guardian – not properly tested yet but things look pretty good.
DPS guardian – feels pretty good, though I’ll probably switch him to dragon-hunter when the time comes.
Zerker Ele – not much change.
Zerker Ranger – not much change
Heal/tank necro – since I’m not a fan of ground targeting I threw out the well build but have adopted minion mastery instead and am having fun with it. Not currently viable in dungeons due to shonky pet AI.
Condi engineer – feels pretty good and the guided missile is a laugh.

So some stuff was broken, some is the same, some is better, some is just different. In terms of trait acquisition, I can see why people would prefer the current system (I didn’t level anyone under the Patch 2 system but I understand it was horrid) though I really liked the system we had at launch. I’m really sad to have lost my beloved mesmer build but I guess I’ll just put him on the shelf for a bit and concentrate on the characters that weren’t broken.

“Play your way”?
I think you have the wrong game, I mean they went out of their way to pre-spend your hero points after the specialization patch went live.

Those below lvl 80 got their points spent based on profession not even on weapons equipped.

GW2 is obviously “play OUR way”…

BrotherBelial.3094:

dragonfighter.4098:

the reason for those whom don’t understand " play your way" its the choices we make while building our toons. We are not moaning we are letting Anet know we are unsatisfied with their choices at the moment. We do this so maybe they understand why a lot of us are leaving the game and actually giving them the option to fix it. players whom have played for a long time really don’t want to give up on them, they just want them to realize that some changes are not wanted nor needed and costing them time , effort and money to fix and that causes loss of many players.

No, “Play your way” means you can get anything in the game by playing how you want. Some ways take longer than others, but you do not “have to do” any thing in game you don’t want to. That is what “Play your way” means. Not what you want it to mean.

Conditions in general was a massive mixed bag of problems. The recent changes addressed the most obvious ones, but many more problems still remain in the basic mechanics behind them.

Probably one of the least obvious improvements was essentially getting rid of passive Condition and Boon duration increase. This leads to a new discussion of HOW to reimplement duration increase for non-stacking boons and conditions, so they don’t balloon the existing (rather insane) DPS potential of the stacking ones. But attached to this discussion is yet another problem…. pulsed effects which are designed to circumvent condi clearing.

Right now pulsed effects are the most effective at application, because they can reapply just as fast as any skill can clear them. But condi cleanse tend to be geared toward single OR burst removal; making the only 2 healing skills that work by pulse (Healing Spring and Ether Renewal) arguably the most powerful outside of highly specialized builds.

Next we have the newly visible problem of weapon traits and utility traits being forcibly paired together. This does infact kill a number of hybrid builds, and intentionally hinders some obvious synergistic builds, because the utility trait you want doesn’t support the weapon traits you want. This is a “unified design” flaw that causes problems with the PvP vs PvE meta; And wouldn’t be difficult to address if they they simply reorganized the “weapon cool down” to be more broad by type (main hand, off hand, 2-hand, or blade, blunt, projectile ), and redistribute the secondary effects into another logically paired trait line based on effect theme (condie, defense, support, control, symbol, ). This should offer more freedom with choice of weapon vs choice of utility skills, making hybrid builds easier to accommodate with the new 3 line limit.

Being able to trait all 5 lines had situational usefulness. You still have the ability to swap traits based on the situation.

Prior to this change, you had parameters and found the traits that you enjoyed running. The system has changed (IMO for the better), so now you need to adapt and find the traits you enjoy playing. I don’t see how that is a not being able to “play how I want” issue, versus simply a “I hate change in any form” issue.

SirDrygan.1823:

wildcode.5403:

Ok so in a recent update traits and skills got a major overhaul. While I like they style I am dismayed at the reduced choice.
….

ANET threw out that motto after launch. Now it’s “Play how we want you to play.”

^this.

I don’t understand how people can be upset – the functionality increase on all choices is incredible… You have access to so much more diversity and power and you want to throw that away for some of the worst builds imaginable?!

Warlock.7136:

want to try and fix it?

Enh, I’ll take a shot.

What did you try?

From your description, it’s not exactly clear what your old build was, besides Spiked Armor for retal. (You list “power and precision boosts from traits/trait lines” but my only barometer on what your traits were was the ones you don’t flag as “useless.”)

You complained about dying faster due to the damage bumps a few classes go. Did you consider Last Stand + Defy Pain? That gives you two useful “virtual” skills without having to spend slots of your skill bar. Automatic-triggering limited-duration damage immunity is a pretty good way to facetank more damage from bursty zerkers.

Moreover, you picked an entire trait line of useful buffs for swapping weapons and labeled them all “useless” because… you don’t intend to swap weapons? (There’s no role in your build for a weapon like mace, warhorn, longbow, or shield?) Just for Merciless Hammer? Maybe you should swap weapons more or not take Merciless Hammer? Nothing about the build you described demands 20% CD reduction on hammer skills or parking hammer full-time.

a lot of builds would go 6, 4, 4 ( 30, 20, 20.) instead they just let you max your lines.

In some cases they made the major traits you could grab between adept and master and they just tweaked and made them GM traits.

Most of your options are still there unless you were one of those ppl who did like 2/2/2/2/1 or something and thought it was good cuz balanced build lol.

I’m only going to miss going 2/4/0/2/6 but I’m sure I’ll be ok lol.

CalamityO.2890:

Warlock.7136:

Cost full gear conversion:100 gold+70 ectos through mystic forge/replacement runes. loss of full infusions on armor as well(nice loss of laurels)

want to try and fix it?

You can change stats on ascended https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Ascended-Gear-Anet-please-fix-this/first#post5174104

You can change it to any stats
- 10 spirit chards
- Piece of ascended armour or weapon
- exotic insignia of your choice
- 5 ectos

I did this THIS is what cost the 70 ecto the runes and infusions and NEW gear cost the remainder. now that all stats are in gear gear had to be adjusted to compensate.

ASP.8093:

Warlock.7136:

want to try and fix it?

Enh, I’ll take a shot.

What did you try?

From your description, it’s not exactly clear what your old build was, besides Spiked Armor for retal. (You list “power and precision boosts from traits/trait lines” but my only barometer on what your traits were was the ones you don’t flag as “useless.”)

You complained about dying faster due to the damage bumps a few classes go. Did you consider Last Stand + Defy Pain? That gives you two useful “virtual” skills without having to spend slots of your skill bar. Automatic-triggering limited-duration damage immunity is a pretty good way to facetank more damage from bursty zerkers.

Moreover, you picked an entire trait line of useful buffs for swapping weapons and labeled them all “useless” because… you don’t intend to swap weapons? (There’s no role in your build for a weapon like mace, warhorn, longbow, or shield?) Just for Merciless Hammer? Maybe you should swap weapons more or not take Merciless Hammer? Nothing about the build you described demands 20% CD reduction on hammer skills or parking hammer full-time.

the only time i swap weapons on my tank is when range becomes a must,at that time i switch to rifle. yes imo weapon swapping traits on a hammer tank are useless. also about the precision thing. it is my understanding that what determines if you hit a toughness character is precision it is your crit% and your to hit roll. previously i could sit signets on the character and gain a passive pre boost. now you must use them for a temporary pre boost/damage boost.

the build description was given. but i will reexplain here.

In WVW you are part of the zerg. when facing an enemy zerg you charge in frontline. you take damage. you deal most of your damage by spiked armor.(yes i am spiking players reguarly this way) when something in the frontline gives(aka a player dies) you attach to the player(begin rezzing) and one of two things happen. enemy zerg focuses on you increasing the number of ret strikes going out and decreasing damage to the rest of the zerg or you rez the player and move to next rez. thus maintaining the high dps but fragile characters in your zerg. when defending a keep etc you may also attach to the keep lord etc. when nothing is dead around you you “facetank” as you put it using the hammer for control/mild AoE damage. it was designed as a build to help reduce player stress(others not mine) from dying repeatedly to the meta of high damage low damage absorb(zerk). often my wife is by my side and she plays a sword sword condition war. so sometimes she is my damage and sometimes other players are. but i do spike ALOT more players then one would expect by retal.
At least i used to before tanking ten players and still getting 1.5k crits was possible. man i miss the passive signet pre bonus.

Coulter.2315:

I don’t understand how people can be upset – the functionality increase on all choices is incredible… You have access to so much more diversity and power and you want to throw that away for some of the worst builds imaginable?!

Not at all… some weapon sets are impossible to use now. (due lots of bugs offc..)

Hey OP.

Sorry that you are having trouble with your old builds.

I think that most people are not, and are enjoying the new build system. That does not diminish the fact that some people got absolutely screwed over, however.

I am deeply sorry that you are one of the people who was screwed over.

I love these posts with the generalizations all the previous builds were trash or * so many of the old traits were useless* No examples, (trust me we had uses for them) it’s kinda sad you can’t think out of the box and make viable builds without dumbing down templates with 10x buff on everything to make you believe its better. these people need 3 choices per class, thats it, dps bunker or condi. click and play, is the direction were going in this game