Guild Wars 2

whats a way to make a Dual Class system work in GW2?

Many games have Dual Class systems that work. But how would such a system work under GW2’s rules?

A watered down version that probably wouldn’t be actually considered a duel class.

With all the problems they had with balancing in gw1, they really kinda turned away from that system with this game. For them to put it in this game, they would have to rework the weapon skill and/or utility skill system. Not to mention all the balancing around the different trait and skill combinations.

The quick and easy way: you gain the healing skills, utility skills, elite skills and first four trait lines from your second profession. You still get the same number of trait points, but you now have 4 additional lines to spread them across. The fifth trait line is not included because it boosts your profession-specific attribute, much like how in GW1 you cannot raise a secondary profession’s primary attribute. Your armor-class, weapon skills and profession-specific mechanic remain tied to your primary profession.

While some traits simply wouldn’t be applicable since they only affect your weapon skills (e.g. the warrior’s Stronger Bowstrings, which increases long bow range, would be completely useless on an engineer), there would still be room for some interesting builds. For example, a thief/guardian could spec into Radiance (increases Precision and Condition Damage), and take Blind Exposure (applying Blind also applies Vulnerability) and Powerful Blades (sword and spear damage is increased). Or a Guardian/Ranger could spec into Nature Magic (increases Vitality and Boon Duration), and take Nature’s Bounty (regeneration you apply lasts longer) and Two-handed Training (great sword damage is increased; great sword attacks have chance to grant Fury on hit).

Maximus Delion.8719:

The quick and easy way: you gain the healing skills, utility skills, elite skills and first four trait lines from your second profession. You still get the same number of trait points, but you now have 4 additional lines to spread them across. The fifth trait line is not included because it boosts your profession-specific attribute, much like how in GW1 you cannot raise a secondary profession’s primary attribute. Your armor-class, weapon skills and profession-specific mechanic remain tied to your primary profession.

While some traits simply wouldn’t be applicable since they only affect your weapon skills (e.g. the warrior’s Stronger Bowstrings, which increases long bow range, would be completely useless on an engineer), there would still be room for some interesting builds. For example, a thief/guardian could spec into Radiance (increases Precision and Condition Damage), and take Blind Exposure (applying Blind also applies Vulnerability) and Powerful Blades (sword and spear damage is increased). Or a Guardian/Ranger could spec into Nature Magic (increases Vitality and Boon Duration), and take Nature’s Bounty (regeneration you apply lasts longer) and Two-handed Training (great sword damage is increased; great sword attacks have chance to grant Fury on hit).

This stuff here sounds real good and plausible. I for one think Dual Classing certainly could work in GW 2 and be a great addition to the game. Necro/Ele Necro/Mesmer would probably be good mixes as well~

Why introduce this to GW2? I see dual-class systems as basically saying that the existing professions don’t stand well on their own and need to be supplemented by skills from other classes.

For build diversity, I’d rather see ANet introduce a few new skills or traits or eliminate those skills and traits that don’t see “significant” usage. I wouldn’t be against new professions either, but I can imagine that makes balancing PvP and WvW much more difficult.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Why introduce this to GW2? I see dual-class systems as basically saying that the existing professions don’t stand well on their own and need to be supplemented by skills from other classes.

For build diversity, I’d rather see ANet introduce a few new skills or traits or eliminate those skills and traits that don’t see “significant” usage. I wouldn’t be against new professions either, but I can imagine that makes balancing PvP and WvW much more difficult.

The advantage of a dual class system is that one gets greater diversity without having to create any more skills/traits/etc than would be the case without dual classing. All of the skills needed to add the diversity would exist anyway.

I think that professions could potentially still stand on their own just fine. “Pure,” class builds could be very effective in GW1 for example.

The sticking point would be in balancing so great a variety of combinations as would be possible in such a dual class system.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Why introduce this to GW2? I see dual-class systems as basically saying that the existing professions don’t stand well on their own and need to be supplemented by skills from other classes.

If they did it right and balanced the skills and traits properly, I think we’d have some interesting debates about pure vs. dual builds. Staying with a single profession would be more straight forward, and would be perfectly viable for folks who just want to jump in and play without too much number crunching. But allowing the option of secondary professions would bring back some of that collectable card game like deck building that we had in GW1. Back in GW1 there were plenty of viable pure builds.

Also, people are itching for new skills and traits. While introducing a dual profession system wouldn’t really be adding “new” skills and traits, it would be adding a lot more variety to every profession without as much additional work. ArenaNet would still need to do some balancing, but they wouldn’t have to create all new skills and traits from scratch. Also, many of the skills and traits could be used by every character, which adds a lot more mileage for every new skill or trait they add.

But to your point, I think the key to the system would be to ensure that single-profession builds were still very viable. It would be like playing with the standard starter deck in Magic: The Gathering vs. playing with the starter deck plus several boosters. Both are just as viable, but the latter provides more options and variety but not necessarily more power (hello, horizontal progression!).

Anet designed GW2 solely around a 1 profession set-up when they made the weapons/weapon skills/traits how they are now like how certain professions can only use certain weapons. Unless they ever start to let us pick and choose our skills (not talking about traits) this will never happen or work in-game. The only thing they could do is like others have said is only unlock the other professions traits but what would be the point.

Also like others have said the balancing nightmare that was GW1 set-up was a leading reason they went to this set-up in GW2 for the sake of balancing and simplicity.

Not to forget to bring up in GW1 and the huge amount of skills you could choose from at any given time do to the double profession set up was one of the biggest turn offs to players in the game, more so the people that started to try and get into it since they felt overwhelmed according to Anet. So how did the double profession set up work out in GW1? I would say 90% of all the skills across all the games went unused in favor of the skills that were involved in over powered builds. The in-game economy crashed and the overpowered builds also destroyed player to player interaction. Why find a party when you could just take henchmen/heros or solo?

Anet is overly paranoid about GW2 in-game economy and another reason why they went with this set up is to try and eliminating over powered builds from running the game into the ground and keeping it to where no one profession is better than the others, thus we are stuck with the set-up we have now.

One of the main reasons they even made GW2 was the horrible mess the balancing of the dual classing in GW1 had become for them.

The last thing we want is that the devs will need to dedicate 90% of their resources to balancing the (dual) classes.

Is this a dualing thread?

While I think dual classing could work in GW2, I’m pretty sure that ANet will not step away from their stance on keeping the game simple to balance. As far as making it work, the hardest part would be convincing ANet it’s worth the effort.

The unfortunate side effect of ANet’s stance is that there is a demographic that likes to tinker. Simple means fewer options, which means less opportunity to tinker.

I think a more realistic hope is that ANet add new weapons to existing professions. While they might not add very much if anything in the way of new mechanics (buffs, conditions), they might open up an option or two that specific professions did not have.

I think the game has quite a bit of room to tinker as it is, especially in WvW where you can mix and match stats pretty freely and add buffs from WXP and food. Plus also being able to switch traits and weapons between fights.

I know it’s not enough for some, but for me the bazillion different variations you can make from the 8 different professions is already quite a bit to chew.

Obviously I still wouldn’t mind another profession, switchable 1-5 skills for existing weapons and/or new weapons for the professions. The fact just is the more they add, the bigger the weight of the balancing effort will be.

id assume we wouldn’t be able to use the 2ndary traits
id also assume that my heavy armored staff wielding guardian would have 25 skills when guard/ele…thenswitching to scepter focus with another 25 skills?

Knighthonor.4061:

whats a way to make a Dual Class system work in GW2?

Many games have Dual Class systems that work. But how would such a system work under GW2’s rules?

Name one game where a Dual Class system actually worked well (and take balancing and such into consideration).
And no, it didn’t really work all that well in Guild Wars 1.

Maximus Delion.8719:

The quick and easy way: you gain the healing skills, utility skills, elite skills and first four trait lines from your second profession. You still get the same number of trait points, but you now have 4 additional lines to spread them across. The fifth trait line is not included because it boosts your profession-specific attribute, much like how in GW1 you cannot raise a secondary profession’s primary attribute. Your armor-class, weapon skills and profession-specific mechanic remain tied to your primary profession.

While some traits simply wouldn’t be applicable since they only affect your weapon skills (e.g. the warrior’s Stronger Bowstrings, which increases long bow range, would be completely useless on an engineer), there would still be room for some interesting builds. For example, a thief/guardian could spec into Radiance (increases Precision and Condition Damage), and take Blind Exposure (applying Blind also applies Vulnerability) and Powerful Blades (sword and spear damage is increased). Or a Guardian/Ranger could spec into Nature Magic (increases Vitality and Boon Duration), and take Nature’s Bounty (regeneration you apply lasts longer) and Two-handed Training (great sword damage is increased; great sword attacks have chance to grant Fury on hit).

There are 2 major problems with this idea, first is stat boosts and second is damage modifiers.

Stats from trait lines are meant to be capped at 300, that’s how the game is balanced around. Remember that in GW1 there were no actual stats, each trait line affected the specific skills tied to it, in GW2, trait lines affect every single skill.

What happens if someone max out 2 trait lines that offer the same stat? For example an Elementalist/Thief could use Fire Magic and Deadly Arts to get +600 Power. This could lead to seriously overpowered builds, making balancing a complete nightmare. All other stats can become over the top, like getting Water and Shadow Arts and have extreme Healing Power.

And the second huge problem is damage modifiers. Allowing players to use traitlines from 2 professions can lead to insane amounts of damage if you add up damage modifiers.

For the Thief/Ele example:

2 points in Earth (Stone Splinters 10%), 2 points in Water (Vital Striking 10%), 2 points in Trickery (Flanking Strikes 5%), 4 Deadly Arts (Dagger Training 5%) for a +30% damage boost.

I’m sure given some more time I could find an even better build with even more damage modifiers. (Warrior/Elementalist maybe)

Knighthonor.4061:

Many games have Dual Class systems that work.

Many being GW1 and technically Rift, two games so huge on the market that everyone keeps talking about them at business meetings?

lordkrall.7241:

Knighthonor.4061:

whats a way to make a Dual Class system work in GW2?

Many games have Dual Class systems that work. But how would such a system work under GW2’s rules?

Name one game where a Dual Class system actually worked well (and take balancing and such into consideration).
And no, it didn’t really work all that well in Guild Wars 1.

Rift

maddoctor.2738:

lordkrall.7241:

Knighthonor.4061:

whats a way to make a Dual Class system work in GW2?

Many games have Dual Class systems that work. But how would such a system work under GW2’s rules?

Name one game where a Dual Class system actually worked well (and take balancing and such into consideration).
And no, it didn’t really work all that well in Guild Wars 1.

Rift

The Rift i played had no dual-classes. You had different souls so you could mix from
different aspects of a class .. but you couldn’t play a warrior/cleric or mage/thief or
whatever.
Please correct me if that has changed meanwhile.

Else .. AD&D has dual-classes, however those for me are more like 2 half classes
where you can only use small ascpects of each class, and thats maybe the only
way to make it not overpowerd.

Would end here maybe in things like you can’t use any grandmaster traits at all as a
dual-class .. for example. And then all the meta-players tell you how those classes
suck because its the same es celestial gear ..

It won’t work because you only need one armor weight.

Rift had a small scale dual system with different types of a similar class.

Like warlock/necro/elementalist…. but not warlock/thief

Runes of Magic has a huge dual system and it’s awesome.

I’d really like to see a small scale version of it in gw2, if for no other reason than making a viable condition guardian.

I really don’t think you’ll ever see dual classes in Guild Wars 2. They’re struggling to balance as is and they can’t seem to get new weapons/skills out to us. You think adding the intense strain of dual classes will even be considered?

Ezeriel.9574:

I’d really like to see a small scale version of it in gw2, if for no other reason than making a viable condition guardian.

That can be achieved with new/changed traits and/or weapon/utility skills. No need for dual classing.

Path of the Exile did something similar with the way their trait tree ‘branched’ out. For example, you could play a warrior that summoned minions.

Still, regardless, I’m not crazy about this idea either.

So no thank you,