Create a Utility Traitline
I think you should change the title line, as your post is clearly a suggestion….
Personally I have to disagree with that suggestion in regard of making “a traitline” out of utility effects.
A much better suggestion would it be in regard of increasing build diversity to do these things:
- 1) Increase the amount of actively useable Traitlines for all Classes from 3 to 4 and increase the total amount of chooseable Traitlines for all Classes from 5 to 7. This will lead to more Build Diversity and will make up also for more creative builds due to more synergies between the now 4 active traitlines at the same time, while you can choose now between 7 instead of just only 5 traitlines, thus you have more choice options than before.
- 2) Remove all kinds of passive Utility Traits from their current Traitlines and rework those Utility Traits and Effects into a complete new “Talent System” that will work similar like the Mastery System, just with the difference, that you learn here certain Basic Talents that all Classes will share, like +25% Movement Speed, while there are also class specific Talents there, which are based on the various class different gameplay Elements, like the F-Skills and their mechanics.
- 3) After having done 1 & 2, replace the created Trait Gaps with complete new Traits, that are like all Traits should be – based on Weapon Skills, Combat Mechanics like Dodging, Blocking, Boons & Conditions, Cooldowns, Weapon Changes, amount of equippabl Weapons ect. pp
GW2 needs in regard of character progression finally a clear split between active and passive effects and both should be handled with own different progression systems.
Traits should stand for all active Gameplay Effects while
Talents should stand for all passive Gameplay Mechanics, stuff the class comes with basically naturally born with, effects, that are always there, and which define the specifics of each individual class, while you use Traits to finetuning your combat style in regard of the weapon skilsl you use and how your characters acts in combat – thats what I undrstand under a trait system, how it should functionize best for GW2.
GW2 has had from begin on always the big problem, that the devs never seem to have had a clue, what they actually wanted the Trait System to be – thus we had with it already multiple redesign tries…
Personally I like the idea behind sub classes ~ quoted from Chris Whiteside
Example for the “Basic Talents” that every Class should have and should learn through obtaining "Talent Points that the player should be able to obtain via exchanging a specific amount if “Skill Points” into a Talent Point. That way receives the game also a new sink for Skill Points with the amount of required Skill Points becoming higher and higher, so higher your Talent Level rises through used up Talent Points for either learning Basic Talents or Class Talents.
10 Basic Talents.
- Unlock Ability to use Waypoints = 1 TP Cost
- + 25% Movement Speed = 2 TP Cost
- Unlock Build Templates = 4 TP Cost
- Fall Damage Reduction 25% + Class Specific Fall Skill unlocked = 8 TP Cost
- Unlocks Racial Skills (Those require now no Skill Points anymore, with this you instantly unlock all Racial Skills) = 16 TP Cost
- Unlock your Break Bar, making it harder now to CC you, unless you get hit by some coordinated Enemy CC Spikes = 32 TP Cost
- Instant Weapon Changing = 64 TP Cost
- Increases Jump Height by +25% = 128 TP Cost
- Unlocks + 1 additional equippable Weapon Slot 256 TP Cost
- Unlocks another +1 additional Weapon Slot 512 TP Cost
As Thief would you have then for example these additional Thief Talents to unlock:
- Unlocks 6 new Dodge Styles (Dash, Bounce, Lotus, Warp, Shadow, Smoke) as F3 (Yes, still thinking its best to merge DD into Core Thief to give us a real E-Spec) = 1 TP Cost
- Increase Endurance Bar by +1 = 2 TP Cost
- Unlock Staff & Offhand Sword as new Core Weapons and gain new Physical Skills = 4 TP Cost
- Unlock +1 Steal Skill Slot = 8 TP Cost
- Attacks from Stealth are now 100 always Critical = 16TP Cost (Remove the Trait for this)
- Gain on Weapon Changes random Venom Effects = 32 TP Cost
- Physical Conditions are 25% less effective on you (Poison,Cripple,Blindness,Vulnerability,Bleeding,Weakness) = 64 TP Cost
- Hard CC Skills are now 25% less effective against your Break Bar = 128 TP Cost
- +50% Endurance Regeneration = 256 TP Cost
- When you gain Swiftness it turns into Super Speed with 10% Chance instead and Critical Hits let you gain for 3 seconds Quickness every 10s. = 512 TP Cost
Personally I like the idea behind sub classes ~ quoted from Chris Whiteside
Some of these are things that are already a good use of additional core mastery lines. In fact, increased movement speed (in cities) is already included. Falling damage should definitely be moved away from traits, as it has nothing to do with combat for most people most of the time.
Some of them don’t belong in an “everyone gets it” trait line, including open world increased movement speed — there are reasons (covered in plenty of other posts) for limiting top speeds in combat; the game already allows us to move much more quickly outside of combat.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I can agree with OP as long as there is an actual, meaningful tradeoff.
The game is obviously designed to present you with choices – extra runspeed or fall damage reduction etc should come at a price; currently a trait, skill or rune slot.
This is why I’m also leery of a mastery-like option of permanent unlocks.
Yes please, will be great!
I can agree with OP as long as there is an actual, meaningful tradeoff.
The game is obviously designed to present you with choices – extra runspeed or fall damage reduction etc should come at a price; currently a trait, skill or rune slot.
This is why I’m also leery of a mastery-like option of permanent unlocks.
The price is that if you choose 25% movement speed increase, then you don’t get the fall damage trait, and you don’t get the Passive CC breaker trait. You can only choose one.