Guild Wars 2

This question, which many now may be asking, made me think:
GW has always aimed to be “skill based”, right?

TL;DR:
I would love it if playing specializations would punish you much harder for making mistakes (e.g. through long cooldowns on Chronomancer).
But, if you get it right; you’d be equally more rewarded.

That way; playing specializations could be something you’d NOT wanna do when playing more casual gameplay.
Whereas normal mesmer could give you a good steady base damage for less effort. Harder content could absolutely require specialization and the players’ constant focus.

This would be a very interesting way to “give us what we’ve wanted”: hard challenging gameplay. But not just through bosses with more health and more output dmg.
Future specializations could play into this in a great way; being even harder and literally exhausting to play; at the reward of a small advantage over the easier play styles.

I imagine it’d be hard to pull off though (finding the right balance for how hard vs how much you’re punished and rewarded), but I really like the idea in general.

I’m confused. The subject title does not match the content of the post.

Yes, there will be a reason to play a normal mesmer. You may want 3 base specializations because the shield may not do much for your spec particularly compared to the pistol.

Could classes be built to be easier as their base class and harder as their elite spec? Sure.

I’m sorry if it confused you. What I meant was that Chronomancer at this point seems like a much more fun and stronger ‘profession’ than the normal mesmer.

That has made many ask “why would I play normal mesmer anymore?”. I’ve simply tried to propose one possible answer to that. Make Chronomancer so hard to play, that it’s a lot easier to make decent damage with normal mesmer.

I hope that answers your doubts about “subject title vs content”.

There will be more specializations for each class added later to make more options for what to be and they’re aiming for all the normal skill trees to be amazing so you may not want to use an elite specs. Adding any kinda punishment for whatever reason for using an elite spec lowers the fun factor too much to be a good idea.

They will not devote a bunch of money to build a class design so difficult that you want to play the pre-existing class designs more.

Sylv.5324:

They will not devote a bunch of money to build a class design so difficult that you want to play the pre-existing class designs more.

That is the purpose of balancing.

So I can play the pre-existing class and the new class.

I’m really not into “hard, challenging gameplay.” GW2 already has a lot of challenge in it, anyway. For instance, many of the LS2 achievements were plenty challenging, and there’s a lot of challenging jumping puzzles. I’m hoping the new HoT content has some PvE and achievements that are fun and relaxing as opposed to really challenging.

One reason Chronomancer seems so much “cooler” is that it’s new. If it’s still more represented than vanilla mesmers once the shine’s worn off, then some more design effort might be needed to reinvigorate the base class’ attractiveness to players.

Sylv.5324:

They will not devote a bunch of money to build a class design so difficult that you want to play the pre-existing class designs more.

If they want to maintain the ideal of balance then they have to make the elite specialization no more powerful than the base profession.

Otherwise every game format will be imbalanced. Those with HoT will have an advantage over non-HoT owning (or level 80) characters in PvP and WvW; those with HoT elite specializations will be overpowered in core locations like Orr, thus facerolling all old content, and dungeons, even fractals.

The idea of elite specializations should be “more options” not “more power” – something that the change for the trait lines into the core specializations doesn’t seem to adhere to.

Otherwise it isn’t the balance they’re so proud of trying to maintain and claim to maintain, and we enter the feel of Blizzard games where players are massively overpowered.

Donari.5237:

One reason Chronomancer seems so much “cooler” is that it’s new. If it’s still more represented than vanilla mesmers once the shine’s worn off, then some more design effort might be needed to reinvigorate the base class’ attractiveness to players.

While the newness has a hold on the “cool factor”, going off of the blog posts the Chronomancer certainly does sound overpowered compared to your base professions.

Not only does it sound a bit overpowered, but it does sound much more complex. That’s what made me think about this topic in the first place.

Don’t you agree that it certainly sounds much more complex in terms of timing, chaining skills together, etc.?
If so, wouldn’t there be very little incentive to play Chronomancer (other than the initial “cool factor”) if it’s been balanced equal to the base profession?
=> basically: equal strength, harder to play.

The more I’m thinkning about this, it looks to me that we’re getting at least some of the aspects I’m hinting towards in my OP. It’s not nesessarily a good idea though, I agree with all the potential issues you’ve pointed out – but still think it’s an interesting concept.

P.S. I thought profession specializations would become open to all players, and that only certain Masteries (e.g. gliding) would be locked off to HoT players only.
If not, I’d see that becoming a big issue regardless of how they balance (or not balance) the new professions.

Titus.4285:

P.S. I thought profession specializations would become open to all players

You thought wrong. The trait-lines renamed specializations will be open to all.

Elite specialization lines like the chronomancer will only be for those who buy the expansion pack.

Certain builds will still use three base specializations. The only reason you would want to run chronomancer is if you want access to chronomancer stuff (shield, wells, traits).

I mean, look at your typical burst shatter build. After the update, it’ll still probably be a 66006-style build. Chronomancer won’t necessarily allow you to use that type of build the same way anymore. So if you want to play that, you wouldn’t use chronomancer.

We still have a lot of details we need on the specialization systems anyhow. If they do end up creating a situation where there’s no point in not running chronomancer, I’m sure they’ll rebalance a lot of stuff to make that not the case.

Titus.4285:

I would love it if playing specializations would punish you much harder for making mistakes (e.g. through long cooldowns on Chronomancer).
But, if you get it right; you’d be equally more rewarded.

That way; playing specializations could be something you’d NOT wanna do when playing more casual gameplay.

Doesn’t that sound exactly like the current situation with zerker meta? Notice, how that one is not too well liked. I’d rather that the base classes simply weren’t inferior to the elite specs.

Celtic Lady.3729:

I’m really not into “hard, challenging gameplay.” GW2 already has a lot of challenge in it, anyway. For instance, many of the LS2 achievements were plenty challenging, and there’s a lot of challenging jumping puzzles. I’m hoping the new HoT content has some PvE and achievements that are fun and relaxing as opposed to really challenging.

what is an example of fun and relaxing to you, any other games for reference?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Otherwise every game format will be imbalanced. Those with HoT will have an advantage over non-HoT owning (or level 80) characters in PvP and WvW;

That’s how it was in Guild Wars 1. I doubt they care.

those with HoT elite specializations will be overpowered in core locations like Orr, thus facerolling all old content, and dungeons, even fractals.

I think you’re dramatically exaggerating this, but moreover this already happens. Have you never been in a dungeon speedrun group? Dungeon bosses die in less than 10 seconds most of the time.

New things often seem more fun. We’ve been playing with the same basics specs and weapons for 2.5 years. Of course the new stuff will intrigue.

What often ends up happening is that everyone will play new stuff…the revenant, elite specializations, etc and then gradually some will swing back, each for his own reasons.

New is fun. But some people don’t love change, some will go back for nostalgia, some will not like the new stuff, some will find it too hard to time to get the best effect.

I play a lot of builds as more fire and forget builds due to latency in Australia. I’m not sure how effective I’d be as a Chronomancer, but it looks like a lot of fun on paper.

The problem with this is that there is a huge range of different ability levels between players.

If they tried to make the chronomancer much harder to play than a normal Mesmer some people would complain that it’s still too easy and there is absolutely no reason not to use it all the time (especially if it’s also more powerful when used well, or gives greater rewards). Meanwhile others would say it’s so hard it’s impossible to do anything while playing as one as feel frustrated that they don’t get to use the specialisations.

This already happens to some extent with things like some players using beserker stats for everything because it makes combat faster, while others feel they need knights or soldiers (or another set) for some extra defensive abilities to make mistakes less punishing. But at least with the systems we have currently you’re not locked out of part of your class if you choose a ‘safer’ build.

Also I suspect a lot of the reactions to the chronomancer are simply because it’s new, and because Anet are naturally going to try to make it look awesome in their videos. The same thing happened with every single profession as it was revealed before launch. That’s what the Commando was all about. Every single profession had people crying that it was obviously OP and there was no reason to play anything else, so they announced one that really was.