Guild Wars 2

Hello, i wanted to share feedback on the trait/specialisation system as a casual player i.e. as a player that does not participate a whole lot in a challenging content.

TL;DR I want less traits that do random stuff with random cooldown with random chance on usage of arbitrary skills or upon satisfaction of arbitrary condition. I want traits that give strong synergies to weak by default combinations without overshadowing other traits.

Here is what i want from the trait system:
1)Clarity.
By clarity i mean the possibility to clearly understand what happens on the screen with other, but primarily with my character. This feature as of now is heavily diminished with the trait system, that consists of a huge number of passive bonuses, that happens randomly over obscure conditions with an arbitrary cooldown that we have no option to see. Ideally everything that happens on the battlefield should be a result of somebody somewhere pressing a button. This will also help the watcher experience, as he will have better idea of what is happening.

Example 1: Sharpened edges – ranger skirmishing adept
This skill gives ranger a chance on critical to inflict bleeding on target. What if instead it took three ranger weapons, e.g. shortbow, mh shord and mh axe, and gave the autoattack of these weapons a tooltip (on critical: inflict bleeding)?

Example 2: Earth’s embrace – elementalist earth adept
The problem with this trait is that it happens on passing a percentage of hp. That means that i as a casual player and people watching the game at an arbitrary moment of time will see an explosion of particle effects, and then a new countdown will go off, that prevents this from happening, but we dont have any way to see this cooldown going off.
The solution might be to make the trait like this:
on 25% of hp recharge equipped earth utility skill with maximum recharge time left. Cooldown 60 seconds.
Magnetic shield, Earth’s armor, earth signet.
It is not the best, since it happens at an arbitrary moment, but it is already better than what is now, and it is by default will have a place to show the recharge time – on the tooltip of equipped earth skills.

2)Satisfying bonuses.
By satisfying bonuses i mean bonuses that clearly affect my strategy on the battlefield in positive way, but on the other hand do not make me feel handicapped with the same weapon/utility if i do not take this trait.

Example 1: Lead the wind – ranger marksmanship grandmaster.
This is a fine trait, that has one flaw – it improves the longbow so much, that every build without this specialisation that dares to wield longbow will feel handicapped. So the longbow will no longer be an option for builds without this line, and this is not something desirable for a game trying to incentivise build diversity.

Solution: since the purpose of this skill is to increase longbow DPS against enemy groups, why not focus it on improving skill Barrage? Let this skill make Barrage toggleable, that means that you can toggle it on and off any time with a cooldown on retoggle 5 seconds, and the barrage will go on as long as you channel it.

Example 2: Vigorous shouts – warrior tactics grandmaster
This is an example of a trait that i call “utility bar locker”. Look at the metabattle. All the best builds have one thing in common: utility bar has 2-3 skills from one category: shoutwarrior, cantrip ele, deception thief, meditation guardian. The reason is because there are traits that improve one category of skills so much, that either you do not use this category at all, or you use all of them with the “utility bar locker”.

Solution is to make traits, that encourage build diversity, not limit it. For example, vigorous shout now do this:
Make offhand warhorn 4(charge), offhand axe 5(whirling axe) and offhand mace 4(crushing blow) give you a buff vigorous shout for 5 seconds. This buff is consumed after next shout, to reduce its cooldown by half and heal surrounding allies by 3k.
This way shout build does not have to have all shouts in the world, more than that you can utilise this trait completely with only 1-2 shouts.
And all traits, that reduce recharge times of weapons or traits should be either removed, or made baseline. They are a main example of “feeling handicapped” traits.

I hope this desires are shared by the community, and since you(the developers) want to simplify and clarify the game, then do it in places that really need it, rather than places that need it the least.

Most of your solution is a big utility locker and make the game much more rigid than what we have.

Example 1: Lead the wind – ranger marksmanship grandmaster.

Example 2: Vigorous shouts – warrior tactics grandmaster

These traits are Grandmaster tier. They are suppose to be build defining. If you don’t use these weapons/utility, you can always grab the jack of all trade trait where it doesn’t need a specific weapon/utility.

This is a fine trait, that has one flaw – it improves the longbow so much, that every build without this specialisation that dares to wield longbow will feel handicapped. So the longbow will no longer be an option for builds without this line, and this is not something desirable for a game trying to incentivise build diversity.

Make offhand warhorn 4(charge), offhand axe 5(whirling axe) and offhand mace 4(crushing blow) give you a buff vigorous shout for 5 seconds. This buff is consumed after next shout, to reduce its cooldown by half and heal surrounding allies by 3k.

The difference between Lead the wind vs. your vigorous trait example is that your example will make the game less diverse and rigid.

With all the Longbow traits in Lead the wind, ANet devs don’t need to spread traits around. Players can choose what master/adept trait they want. They don’t need to go to Skirmisher or Beastmastery because another Longbow trait is in there. They can go to Nature magic because they can survive more.

Your vigorous shout example forces me to use a warhorn/axe/mace in order to be a shout warrior. I may have to equip a useless axe and a mace in order to get the full benefit. I still have to go into the tactic trait to get this vigorous shout trait if I want healing.

1)Clarity.

So your idea of clarity is to destroy the specialization that ANet dev’s showed on the stream and rewrite to what you proposed?

Goorman.7916:

Example 2: Earth’s embrace – elementalist earth adept
The problem with this trait is that it happens on passing a percentage of hp. That means that i as a casual player and people watching the game at an arbitrary moment of time will see an explosion of particle effects, and then a new countdown will go off, that prevents this from happening, but we dont have any way to see this cooldown going off.
The solution might be to make the trait like this:
on 25% of hp recharge equipped earth utility skill with maximum recharge time left. Cooldown 60 seconds.
Magnetic shield, Earth’s armor, earth signet.
It is not the best, since it happens at an arbitrary moment, but it is already better than what is now, and it is by default will have a place to show the recharge time – on the tooltip of equipped earth skills.

Arbitrary, you keep using that word but im not sure you know what it means. Arbitrary means that it happens for no specific reason at all. Every trait specificly outlines when it will happen. For example: “Chance to Cause Blindness” is that was the whole text of a trait, then it would truly be an arbitrary condition. It just happens when the game wants it too. “When you drop below 25% health” “When you Critical” “When you Evade” these are all finite, definitive events that you can watch for.

There is no solution to your precised problem. of “I want to use X trait, but dont want to use Y weapon or skill.” Even in your vigorous shout example, if you want to have vigorus shout but want to use great swords, you don’t get it. So why not just make the trait “Using any weapons gives you the vigorous shout buff”

I’m not trying to sound salty, but every trait is designed to focus a class, and they do a good job at that. If every class could use all of its traits at once, every warrior would be the same, every necromancer would be the same, ever mesmer would be the same, every…. etc etc