Guild Wars 2

So far we have had a glimpse of a new specialisation interface that combines skills & traits into one page. With hind sight why this didn’t exist to start with is a question some might ask, but the advantages this will now provide for players & build crafter’s are leaps & bounds ahead of what we have now.

And this I can’t wait for, as this will provide the ability to instantaneously observe what changes & effects modifying specialisations (specs) & traits will have on skills and what effects skills will have when swapped with the existing spec & trait choices.

Looking at the existing interface shown in the blog specializations-part-one-a-primer let’s discuss it’s layout, functionality and possible Hero tab redesigns.

Layout & Functionality
We can see that like all Hero tab windows it’s split into 2 distinct operating areas, the Left panel provides navigation, information and tool bar (selectable/drap & drop components). The Right panel provides the summary overview / workspace for skills & specialisations selection & management.

On a whole I appreciate the general layout which fits in with the current designed Hero tab but lets discuss some modification & additions that I think can improve what’s current been displayed.

Right Panel
First of the right panel. It’s here that you can see a complete summary of the current profession skills, spec lines & traits choosen and also have the ability to change and modify any of these options. Again this panel is also divided into 2 sections. The top section displays current weapon & slot (Heal, Utility, Elite) skills and the bottom section displays current active spec lines & traits. This bottom section also has a hidden tab on the left side for each spec line that provides the ability to select & modifiy the corresponding spec line which is a nice additional option to do this.
Now the top section is were I’ll be looking at for some improvements;

1. Profession Skills – You also want to see the effects specs & traits have on these skills (Believe this was just missing as ele).
2. Weapons swap – swaps between current equiped weapons & displayed corresponding weapon skills. (If profession can weapon swap, again believe missing)
3. Weapon/Engineering Kits selectability – I’m looking at providing the ability to view other weapon skill other then the current equipped weapons to observer how these skills effects would also change with the current selected spec lines & traits without needing to equip them or leaving this tab.

I would look at adding small weapon symbols to the top left of the top section which would display/highlight current displayed weapon / engineering kits and give the ability if clicked on to display that weapons / engineering kits skills.

Left Panel
Now for the left panel and It’s here that I could see larger changes and greater improvements to what was shown in the blog.

But first a large change to the existing Hero Tab. With the announced specialisations and the interface shown I can see arenanet moving towards a Build Template functionality for skills, specs & traits but these are only part of a build, the other part being amulet (PvP only), equipment(PvE, WvW only), sigils, runes & food (PvE, WvW only).

Now for the change, I would be looking at would be a modification & rearrangement in the existing Hero’s tab. I would change the existing upper level tab of “Skills & traits” to a Profession Build Tab and move the current Equipment Tab under the upper level “Equipment” tab to be located in this build tab and rename the upper level “Equipment” tab to Cosmetics. This would locate all the cosmetic under one tab and all the build related parts under a build tab.

Now on to the inner workings of the left panel which will be like the right panel having 2 sections which are navigation & toolbar. I would like to use a navigation bar like the upper level tabs using symbols locate on the left side of the left panel which can swap between the equipment & items part of your build and the skills specs & trait part.

The toolbar would match the requirements for each of the sub tab:

• Weapons Skills – Purely information tab displaying the skills for each weapon like the existing Weapon Skills tab also with the weapon symbol next to the name. This could be dragged & dropped to change displayed weapons skill as an addition option.
• Slot Skills – Another information tab having a similar format to the Weapon Skills tab.
• Specializations – List Core & Elite Specializations with corresponding symbols, dragged & dropped functionality with maybe a lore description for the specialization. Would also provide access to the specializations reward tracks for upgrading which would change the Right Panel. I would maybe look at listing all specializations and displaying the reward tracks much like PvP reward tracks. This would provide the ability to keep all spec reward tracks at one time. List the 3 active specs at the top and the others underneath in alphabetical order.

Okay just one bump.

Was wondering if anyone else was interested in the design of the new Specializations Panel & “What functions other’s might what from this new Panel?”

Could this be an indication Build Template’s are coming with the expansion as well?

What are others thoughts?

Bezagron.7352:

Okay just one bump.

Was wondering if anyone else was interested in the design of the new Specializations Panel & “What functions other’s might what from this new Panel?”

Could this be an indication Build Template’s are coming with the expansion as well?

What are others thoughts?

link to it so we can see

Bezagron.7352:

Okay just one bump.

Was wondering if anyone else was interested in the design of the new Specializations Panel & “What functions other’s might what from this new Panel?”

Could this be an indication Build Template’s are coming with the expansion as well?

What are others thoughts?

Arenanet has already stated that templates won’t be coming with HoT.

Aye, but its possible the changes will make it easier for them to create build saves/templates.
They also said it’s something they want to add. I doubt it’ll be included in HoT, but may very well come some time in the following months (/years).

If they make it so each trait line remembers your previous trait selections, that would make it a lot easier to swap trait lines about, while we wait for a proper templates system. I really like the new design, it should be a lot easier to use..

Rin.1046:

If they make it so each trait line remembers your previous trait selections, that would make it a lot easier to swap trait lines about, while we wait for a proper templates system. I really like the new design, it should be a lot easier to use..

That is pretty much half the work of templates
But yeah, that would be useful alongside templates. I hope that does make it into the release for trait changes.

Guess I didn’t catch that Arenanet said build templates wouldn’t be coming with HoT’s. I was just analysing Specializations Part One a Primer and what was shown & discussed in Ready Up Esp 32.

Specialization Template
From what I could gather like Rin & Artemis Thuras mentioned above it shouldn’t be to hard to save specialization selection & selected traits. I could be wrong but you only need to save spec line & the 3 major trait choosen for each of the 3 specializations chosen. This is at least a Specialization Template.

Skills Template
For Skills you need to save weapon choices 1 set or 2 depending on Profession and Slotted skills chosen. Now the problems here are characters not having the required weapon(s) and/or slotted skills (Healing, Utility, Elite) to equip for the template.

So for this Skills Template I would look at the base function as a View Only mode that displayed the weapon(s) & slotted skills chosen for this saved build. Now in this mode weapon(s) & slotted skills that were unavailable for you would be displayed greyed out & available weapon(s) & slotted skills would be coloured.

I would look at 2 load functions, one for weapon(s) & one for slotted skills;

• Slotted Skills – This load would be enable once you had available the required slotted skills and would equip these skills.
• Weapon(s) Skills – This would look at your inventory and equipped weapons to match these with the required weapon(s) for this build. It then would allow you to select each weapon to equip. For example;You have 2 different stat swords in your inventory & the loaded build requires a sword. This load would list each sword and allow you to select which once to equip.

An add function could list recommended weapon stats, highlighting which weapon matched the recommended stats. It could either auto load that weapon(s) or require you to still select and load manually.

Armour Template
Would again similar to the Weapon(s) skills being a View Only mode that greyed out the armour piece unavailable for equipping. The important part about armour is Stats, so I would display the armour as stats (Berseker, Valkyrie, Cleric, etc..) rather then show the cosmetic piece. Each stat combination would have it’s own symbol.

Load function would be similar again to weapon(s) but you could either load individual pieces or the complete set.

Sigils & Runes
Could be display on the Armour Template and I would only look at a View Only mode. These would display the sigils & runes chosen for this build, they would highlight if you had then & greyed out if not. But not be part of the loading of a build due to their equipping/removal design.

There would be a complete build load function that would load the whole build if you had all the parts.

Lastly other then wishing for a build template what other functions would players want the new specialization tab to be able to do?