Guild Wars 2

one of the problems with gw2’s current balance is that many of the traits limit or pigeon hole your build possibilities.

eg. warriors trait that gives precision for each unused signet, ele traits that gives boons when you use a cantrip.

when you have traits designed like this, of course people will just take all the cantrip traits that they can, and then load up their bar with cantrips. combine with the fact that cantrips are the only stun breakers, and stun breakers are mandatory in pvp, is it any wonder that all-cantrip builds are so popular?

the effect of this kind of trait is that the space of optimal builds gets vastly reduced. builds that mix skill or trait types usually end up losing synergy.

I think it would be much better to design traits that encourage a wide variety of builds.

eg. “if you have a cantrip equipped, using any utility skill will grant boons”
this has a similar effect to the current cantrip traits, but supports much more build possibilities.

eg. a good example that already exist, the warrior trait that makes all movement skills break stun. This grants an important mechanic to various skills (some on weapons) which means you don’t have to take the existing stun breaker skills.

eg. a borderline example is the warrior trait that grants Regen to banners. normally this would be bad since it encourages loading up with lots of the same skill type, but since a single banner has almost 100% uptime, this means people can still take other skills whilst being optimal. Thus it has a similar effect to the previous example.

eg. hmm, how about traits that enable other traits? trait: “signets are now also considered cantrips” I guess this is similar to the “creates an aura when you do x” trait that interacts with the “auras grant boons” traits.

I hope one day ANet will consider a broad revamp of their skills and traits. and when they do, i hope they design things to encourage a wide range of builds rather than encourage the limiting of builds.

Mobile Strikes only breaks immobilize not stun. Not quite as powerful.
A single banner can be kept up nearly permanently but that seems to be a bug. The banners are only supposed to be last 60s but right now they last for 90s. Even with the bug still requires two traits to get that uptime and regen.

well, at any rate the banner one still allows a fair bit of room to take other skills. you don’t need more than 2 banners or 1 other trait and 1 banner to take full advantage of it.

as for mobile strikes, i guess people get the concept I’m trying to express. just that the specific example is not quite accurate

by trait limits do you mean the amount used for markmenship on ranger and like that?
and yes it is kind of limiting to have 200 skill point and 70 traits.
it be neat if they increase the traits up little but how can that be done?

They limit because they suck.
The precision on Signet?
Trash level once you reach level 80.

With some careful min-maxing, there will always be ‘the one best’ build for PvP, even if only on paper. PvE side, tho, is much more forgiving and allows more variation – lets you play what you actually like, most of the time, rather than what you need.

I get the feeling most either haven’t read my OP correctly or are mistaken on what I’m trying to say….

As for the “there will always be one best PvP build”, that’s a terrible oversimplification that just isn’t true in most good competitive games.

What you see as limiting, others see as enabling.

Specific traits make specific styles of play, specific choices of utilities or weaponry, better. Personally, I think this is a good thing. Of course, some traits have balance issues, but that’s not because the trait system is bad, it’s because the trait itself or the combinations are bad.

If you ask me, the only bad thing I can see with the traits as a system is that certain utilities or weapons lack support. For example, Warriors have barely any support for longbow or shield from traits. Similarly, Pistol/Sword, Sword/Dagger and Shortbow on Thief lack traits to power them up.

I believe the problem with traits is that the ones that scale vertically in efficiency are always the most preferred one. This extends to DPS, sustain, and boon duration, etc. You’re more often than not building for some type of efficiency rather than looking for new and distinct playstyles. Each profession only has 1 or 2 max efficiency paths and it’s easy to think that you’re forced into them because everything else just doesn’t work as well. To be fair this is the case for all mmos, and the only way to fix it would be to severely limit vertical scaling.

I’ve honestly hated talent trees ever since they became a thing.

It seems like all they do is take away your options. You get to use a bunch of things while leveling then for some reason a system is in place penalizing you for continuing to do so.

All under the guise of “specializing” in things.

Because they designed the combat in a very shallow way, they want to do as little balance work as possible. This is their idea of designing with depth, but removing the complexity, or shoe-horning people into cookie cutter builds due to the severe bar and skill system limitations.

Hmm, people still aren’t really talking about my point. Maybe I haven’t explained myself clearly enough? Or perhaps no-one else agrees with my concerns?

Anyways, the gist of it is:
- A trait that gives you Boons when you use cantrips will encourage you to fill your bar with cantrips. This is very limiting.

- A better but similar system would be, “Gives boons when you use a utility skill, if you have a cantrip equipped.” This provides pretty much the same thing, but gives you a much broader range of skills that can be used with the trait.

Of course, a concern would be that suddenly you can cherry pick all the best traits and skills without needing to match types. (eg. pick the best trait that happens to be for cantrips, get the best cantrip, and then 2 more of the best skills, which happen to be a signet and a glyph…)

I suppose the only solution to this problem is hard work – with regular and wise balancing, make sure enough skills are viable/optimal so that you see a wider variety of skills being used, not just “the best 3.”

Anyways, the examples and discussions in my OP provide further detail than this one specific example.

There use to be no grandmaster traits. So you could get the talent that took 30 points for 10 but they changed it. I think that may be why some professions talent trees make no sense. It was fine when you could use 20 points in 2 trees to get 2 talents that work together but sometimes you have to put 60 to get down the whole line to get traits that look like they are meant to go together. Since they made grandmaster traits right before release I think synergy was looked at less between trait lines.

If that makes sense lol.. it is early still waking up :P