Guild Wars 2

They are taking away guardians virtues.-..nice…kill us more and give us warhorn and 6x shouts. R.I.P. Longbow.

Dadnir.5038:

In one word : disappointed.
In more word : Like said by the OP, it seem even more restrictive than the current system. At the same time there are tons of question that follow this announcement like :

- Will we be stuck to use only 3 traitline?
- How do we feed this reward tracks? (this is absolutely oblivious. xp? skill points?)
- How many point can we use?
- Does trait and skill are linked? Like : I’m an Elementalist specialized in fire magic, air magic and signet. (reducing even more our build freedom)
… etc.

1) Will we be stuck to use only 3 traitline? – Yes, but you can swap out trait lines freely like you can now.

2) How do we feed this reward tracks? (this is absolutely oblivious. xp? skill points?) – Hero points (what used to be called skill points)

3) How many point can we use? – Good question, an additional question would be how many points would be needed to get X far in a reward track. We probably won’t know this until release.

4) Does trait and skill are linked? Like : I’m an Elementalist specialized in fire magic, air magic and signet. (reducing even more our build freedom) – I don’t believe trait spec and reward track spending are linked. i.e. you can be spec’d in fire, air, and water but still fill up the earth, arcane, and signet reward tracks…their just wouldn’t be as much pay off. I could definitely see people locked in certain builds during leveling up due to reward track spending, only to be free to switch in and out of builds after they are post level 80 and have filled out multiple reward tracks.

You see people are looking at this all wrong. Forcing people into 3 lines instead of allowing people to spread their points around actually leads to more diversity between builds in the community.

In the current system people spend their points in order to overcome as many weaknesses in their build as possible. This leads people taking very similar builds as to minimize their short comings.

In the new system you will have to make a decision as to what you character will be strong in and what he will be weaker in. This means there will be more skill involved as you will be strong in a few areas and have to make up your short comings in you build with skill rather than just picking traits to get yourself out of it. Alternatively, you will be forced to rely more on your team to make up for those short comings. This makes support builds actually viable in the game.

The new system should make your character weaker in a few areas. This is what leads to diverse builds in the community. Rather than everyone picking the go to build, they have to decide, do I want a max dps build, do I want to be harder to kill to hold points in PVP or do I want to be a support build to help keep the DPS up during dungeon fights.

Think about this, currently the go to build for pretty much every class is DPS. The reason for this is it’s too easy for a pure DPS build to get enough survivability while spreading out their points. If in the new system you have to sacrifice more of that survivability in order to get the best possible DPS then it will create incentive for other people to actually run a support build. As they will be needed in the team in order to make up the difference on the survivability of the DPS in the group.

This will actually make other builds viable in the system. Will this new system destroy some of the current builds? Most likely yes, and that is the beauty of it. People will be forced to come up with new builds in order to be relevant. This new system should allow more builds to be viable, rather than everyone just going straight DPS all the time.

People seem to be looking at these changes all wrong. Reducing choices sounds bad but it in turn makes each choice you make much more meaningful and leads to more diversity in the community.

Bovan.9481:

Valento.9852:

Yeah! At least we can see different types of zerker, this 6/6/x/x/x crap was long overdue. +1 Anet

It’s not going to change, now you will be fully locked into the trait lines which give the most damage multipliers. You will be fully locked into 3 trait lines instead of being able to deviate a little and go 4/6/0/2/2 for example. Now if you need a certain minor trait for something, you either can’t pick it because you have to give up too much from a different trait line or get a flat out worse set of traits just to get that minor thing.

I’ll wait till I see everything before judging, but I’m a little worried to say the least. I can see the good sides though, and it’s good that some of the current issues are getting fixed.

EDIT:
On a different note and this needs to be said, thank you so much for showing something we can at least somewhat work with arenanet. I’m genuinely happy we get to see some updates of the actual game instead of just cosmetic stuff or recaps of things we already know.

Don’t worry, I’m confident the PvE will work out how we need to adapt our builds. ANet cannot fail us after almost 3 years of live game.

I am thrilled with the news and it seems like an interesting way of doing traits and skill lines. I’m looking forward to it!

My concern is the new weapon sets. In the TenTon Hammer interview, ANET addressed the issue of some professions getting a two-hand weapon and some getting one- and off-hand weapons.

“Ten Ton Hammer: Where Elite Specializations are concerned, it seems slightly unfair that some only get an off-hand when some get a two handed or main hand weapon (thus more skills). How are you making this appealing for professions who only get an off-hand?

Jon: Fair doesn’t always mean equal. It’s fair because we’re trying to make sure that they all get a lot of really cool things and they get a new way to define their profession. Like we did with the original professions, it doesn’t mean that one-to-one trying to make an equal number of skills one-to-one. To give an example with engineer, we made what felt like it would be like to be an engineer.

The other thing too is that the weapon is just one component of what makes a spec what it is. Weapon skills don’t define the spec. Just like the new healing skills, the new elite skills and the new traits, they complement it and altogether build the spec out. Because of that we feel it’s fine if it’s an offhand, a main hand, or a two-handed weapon, it’s just part of what defines what that spec is."

http://www.tentonhammer.com/news/guild-wars-2/guild-wars-2-heart-thorns-specializations-and-jon-peters-qa

I gotta say, I don’t have a warm fuzzy yet. I will keep an open mind, but a Mesmer getting two skills with a shied doesn’t seem congruous to an engineer getting 5 with a hammer.

Ragnarox.9601:

They are taking away guardians virtues.-..nice…kill us more and give us warhorn and 6x shouts. R.I.P. Longbow.

Where are you getting this from? Besides, Guardian already has shouts… The post said that 1 specialization is getting 6 shouts, which comes out to 1 heal shout, 4 utility shouts, and one 1 elite shout. I highly doubt that they would give 6 new shouts to a Guardian.

(I miss my imbagon)

ArenaNet’s been working to get as far away from the Guild Wars 1 hundreds-of-skills mess as they can since GW2 released. This is the next step in the cycle.

Anyone with at least one point spent in Observation can tell what ArenaNet’s ideal is – they want to trade in number of choices for impact of choice. In the minds of the current GW2 dev team, given a choice between one choice with impact value 6 on a character (work with me here, kitten it :p), or six choices, each with impact value 1, they will go for the single choice every time.

This is mostly because we all remember what a balancing nightmare GW1 was. If they slim down to what are, essentially, traditional RPG skilltree systems in these new ‘Specialization’ bars, then they can restrict the interplay of choices a player can make and therefore do a stronger job of balancing things. No longer could someone go, say, 2/6/2/1/3 in order to get just the right combination of offbeat effects to produce something wholly unanticipated or undesired on ArenaNet’s part. Nope – now every gets to pick three different 6’s, no more half-treeing, but in turn ArenaNet can make the trees you do get to pick more powerful because they don’t have to worry about players mixing bits and pieces of all five(six) lines into one ridiculous whole.

They did it with the skillbar on release, with the whole weapon-skills thing, they’ve been working steadily on doing it with gear, and we’ll all recall that the traits system has been spasming for a while now as ArenaNet tries to do the same thing with them. They’ve finally figured out how they want to do it. Frankly I’m figuring it’ll work out well enough. Yeah, we’ll all be flipping builds like mad for a while, and a lot of niche builds are about to receive the mightiest of boots, but overall they seem to be condensing traits designed for similar builds down into one trait instead of getting players to try and find room for two or three. The Water trait line, for example, looks like it manages more overall effects than current Water masters. Piercing Shards, Soothing Disruption, and Cleansing Water all together give you five effects – longer Vuln, +damage to Vuln enemies, Cantrip regen/vigor, reduced Cantrip recharge, and a cleanse any time you apply Regen to yourself or anyone else. This is on top of the minors. They’re working to emphasize any given trait/specialization tree’s role/flavor – frosty Medic, in the case of Water Magic – so that when you pick that specialization tree you do it because you want that playstyle rather than because you want one specific trait in the line.

While it’s going to cut down on the amount of fine-tuning a player can do – which sucks, a lot of us live on fine-tuning and deckbuilding and this is going to hurt that quite a bit – it looks like ArenaNet can afford to make each given playstyle in a specialization tree stronger due to the decreased mixing. We’ll have to see if it evens out in the end.

As for things like +Condition Duration or +Boon Duration? Congratulations, you’ve figured out that these stats are being significantly lessened. I don’t expect them to show up anywhere they don’t already show up; we all know ArenaNet doesn’t particularly like overstacking one particular effect. The only reliable source of +Duration you’ll get now is going to be equipment, either runes or a handful of lowball stat sets. Or food for those with infinite wallet capacity. Doubled condition duration? Thing of the past – though hopefully the rest of ArenaNet’s Condition Damage Fixes make doubled duration les of a necessity for condition specs.

Anyways. Beyond feeling vindicated in that I correctly predicted these forums would collectively lose their minds with disapproval over whatever changes ArenaNet decided to make, I’m honestly looking forward to seeing where this goes. The current game’s trait system doesn’t really encourage build diversity anyways – too many garbage traits, stats tied to traitlines forcing choices between traits or numerical strength, relatively few traits with truly powerful effects worth hanging a build on. Leaves us with what we have – a handful of builds optimized for pure deeps ruling the roost with no real variation encouraged/allowed.

Maybe this new specialization system will fix that, eh?

Gibson.4036:

It would probably help if they didn’t keep finding ways to lock content we already had access to. They should have learned from the first trait rework.

It’s okay to add new things and give us a hunt to get them. But don’t lock out old things with much more difficult gating and don’t replace them and make us earn their replacement all over again.

Yes, that is annoying. Correct me if i’m wrong, but I didn’t see anything in the article that tells us that characters who are grandfathered in will have to gain all of their skills back. So…I don’t see an issue with old characters. If it is in there then feel free to quote and correct me for being wrong.

Yes, newer characters most likely will have to do this after HoT. But we don’t even know how quickly we can unlock skills or traits through this system. For all we know it could be really easy. Or it could go hand-in-hand with the NPE, for which you don’t even unlock utilities until later now but by the time you do you will have plenty to choose from. From what I understood from the article, every time you level up or do skill points (which will be renamed) you get progress towards new traits/skills. Considering how abundant they are in the game, it shouldn’t be hard at all.

But they didn’t lock stuff that we had access to previously. When they reworked the trait system it was bad, but for people that already had their trait unlocked, nothing changed. It was only for new character/players who didn’t had access to those trait in the first place. I don’t why they would change that now. If you already have stuff unlocked, they will most probably still unlocked with the expansion.

Guys, lets not get ahead of ourselves! They could easily change features as its not even in public testing atm.

Zelkovan.2630:

Yes, that is annoying. Correct me if i’m wrong, but I didn’t see anything in the article that tells us that characters who are grandfathered in will have to gain all of their skills back. So…I don’t see an issue with old characters. If it is in there then feel free to quote and correct me for being wrong.

It’s difficult to tell from the blog. The way it is written, it sounds like old characters will be reset, and awarded Hero Points equal to their level and skill challenges completed. This sounds like a big step backward for characters that have unlocked traits and skills without doing skill challenges. It’s possible there will be grandfathering, but that has not been stated.

Thaddeus.4891:

But they didn’t lock stuff that we had access to previously. When they reworked the trait system it was bad, but for people that already had their trait unlocked, nothing changed.

I had characters who had access to grandmaster traits, and no longer did after the trait system rework until they leveled to 80.

I don’t why they would change that now. If you already have stuff unlocked, they will most probably still unlocked with the expansion.

It’d be great to get confirmation of this, but the blog post doesn’t read that way. It is vague enough, however, that grandfathering could be possible. It’s also very possible that they are thinking, “New system, no way to convert it directly, sorry” and that players who have everything unlocked without doing skill challenges will be screwed.

Gibson.4036:

Thaddeus.4891:

But they didn’t lock stuff that we had access to previously. When they reworked the trait system it was bad, but for people that already had their trait unlocked, nothing changed.

I had characters who had access to grandmaster traits, and no longer did after the trait system rework until they leveled to 80.

Your character was like between level 60 and 80?
Once you were at level 80 did you have access to all basic grandmaster trait or you had now to unlock them?

The first problem I understand, but it’s really not a big deal. After all you pass only a fractal of the time between 60-80 compare to the time you play at level 80.

The second would be a huge problem. That would be stupid if Anet did that.

I had all my character at level 80 so It wasn’t a problem for me.

DevilLordLaser.8619:

ArenaNet’s been working to get as far away from the Guild Wars 1 hundreds-of-skills mess as they can since GW2 released. This is the next step in the cycle.

Anyone with at least one point spent in Observation can tell what ArenaNet’s ideal is – they want to trade in number of choices for impact of choice. In the minds of the current GW2 dev team, given a choice between one choice with impact value 6 on a character (work with me here, kitten it :p), or six choices, each with impact value 1, they will go for the single choice every time.

This is mostly because we all remember what a balancing nightmare GW1 was. If they slim down to what are, essentially, traditional RPG skilltree systems in these new ‘Specialization’ bars, then they can restrict the interplay of choices a player can make and therefore do a stronger job of balancing things. No longer could someone go, say, 2/6/2/1/3 in order to get just the right combination of offbeat effects to produce something wholly unanticipated or undesired on ArenaNet’s part. Nope – now every gets to pick three different 6’s, no more half-treeing, but in turn ArenaNet can make the trees you do get to pick more powerful because they don’t have to worry about players mixing bits and pieces of all five(six) lines into one ridiculous whole…..

This is absolutely correct…but they did this in WOW and I hated it.

Roseblood.6793:

I’ll be sorely disappointed if the necromancer got all those shouts. I mean, yes, we lack support, but we are not Trahearne. We aren’t meant to lead/give commands… It’d be the REALLY cheap way out.

They talked about an elite spec full of shouts and another full of traps, then continued to say that they chose to add skills with pre-exisiting types (like Traps or Shouts) that are supported by the current traits.

Basically, that confirms that these elite specs are for professions that already have access to Shouts and Traps.

Koorii.6752:

“Hero Points will be limited, and they’ll be earned strictly through what are currently called skill challenges (these will become known as hero challenges) and leveling up. A level 80 character that’s done none of the hero challenges should be able to unlock more than enough skills, specializations, and traits to make several unique full builds. A single character who’s done a fair amount of the hero challenges should be able to unlock all of the core specializations, skills, and traits. PvP players won’t have to worry about unlocking anything, as all skills and traits will be automatically unlocked upon entering the Heart of the Mists.”

So, this doesn’t mention level 80 characters with 100% world completion. Will those characters get all of the hero points they’d have? I know Anet is usually really good about retroactive rewards, but the wording here leaves something to be desired. :s

I’m looking forward to see how this is implemented and plays out over all, though.

If you have 100% completion, then that means you’ve finished all challenges, and I doubt Anet will go out of their way to lock them again.

binidj.5734:

Siloing Traits
From the blog post it looked as though adept traits could only be placed in adept slots, master in master slots, and grandmaster in grandmaster slots. On a couple of characters I have the current equivalent of putting an adept in my adept slot, another adept in my master slot, and a grandmaster in my grandmaster slot; will this be possible under the new system? If it won’t be possible then, again, we’re actually having flexibility taken away from our builds … and that is a bad thing.

Ground-Targeting Wells
Please, I beg of you, do not make this obligatory. Having a trait that allows me to ground target my wells is just perfect for me because I can ignore it. If you make ground-targeting compulsory then chances are that I’ll be changing my entire build, and not for any good or positive reason. I’m sure that it’s incredibly useful to have ranged wells, however it’s not useful to me.

Please let us choose the way we want to play this great game, don’t shoe-horn us into a way of playing or building our characters that you think will be better. We’re all different, and sometimes what we enjoy playing isn’t necessarily the most optimal build or stat combination.

I’m not too excited about not being able to pick an adept trait in the master slot either, but a lot can change between now and release. We also do not know what the traits are going to look like, and could potentially not be a problem if the master traits are better than the adept traits.

Also, I don’t understand why you aren’t a fan of things like targeted wells being baseline? Do you not want skills to be buffed and made better? How could having ranged wells baseline ruin anyone’s build?

Ragnarox.9601:

They are taking away guardians virtues.-..nice…kill us more and give us warhorn and 6x shouts. R.I.P. Longbow.

Lol where the hell did you hear this?

Some math for those who don’t think we’re maybe losing a bit of diversity with the new Specializations set-up.

• Right now a single trait line take to 6 points has 418 possible arrangements of traits. Ignoring anything other than 6/6/2 set-ups (and there are many other combinations that have well regarded examples) that gives 31,450,320 traits combinations per class.

• The new system allows a total of 27 arrangements per line. If you like two adept level traits, tough, you can’t have them. Ever. Being locked to exactly 6/6/6 means there is a total of 10 possible unique line combinations bringing the total number of trait set-ups per class to 196,830 (27^3×10). Add another 196,830 for each elite line they introduce.

• At HoT launch including the one elite spec-line per class we are going to drop down to one-eightieth (1/80 or 1.25%) of our current range of choices.

This is not subject to discussion. This is math. Almost 99% of all potential Build Diversity will be annihilated (and I’ve hedged heavily in favor of the new system by ignoring 6/4/2/2 builds and other non-standard but fun/effective set-ups).

I hope that the massive push to center where there are fewer terrible builds and no clever ones is worth it. That will be a topic for discussion for a long time to come .

bigbobpataki.4796:

binidj.5734:

Ground-Targeting Wells
Please, I beg of you, do not make this obligatory. Having a trait that allows me to ground target my wells is just perfect for me because I can ignore it. If you make ground-targeting compulsory then chances are that I’ll be changing my entire build, and not for any good or positive reason. I’m sure that it’s incredibly useful to have ranged wells, however it’s not useful to me.

Also, I don’t understand why you aren’t a fan of things like targeted wells being baseline? Do you not want skills to be buffed and made better? How could having ranged wells baseline ruin anyone’s build?

Targeted wells means one extra click, assuming that I can find my cursor (which I frequently can’t) and my reactions are quite slow enough at the moment. At present my (primarily PvE) build is characterised by always opening wells at point-blank range, the occasions when I would want to move them away from me are few and far between. Forcing a mouse click (and possible repositioning) would be sufficiently inconvenient that I’d almost certainly abandon the build, which is a shame because at the moment I quite enjoy it.

The thing is that to you it may seem like a buff, for me it’s game breaking … but that’s the great thing about the flexibility of the current system, we can both play the styles that we prefer. While I welcome an overhaul, I’d rather they didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

binidj.5734:

The thing is that to you it may seem like a buff, for me it’s game breaking … but that’s the great thing about the flexibility of the current system, we can both play the styles that we prefer. While I welcome an overhaul, I’d rather they didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

With the current system though, the rest are forced to waste points to do that, so it’s not just a simple option.

As for the extra click, there are 2 other options to choose from, cast on key release and instant cast on key press, both of which remove the need of clicking with your mouse. You still have to be aware of your cursor’s position, but I doubt that is so hard to get used to that you’d have to scrap your build altogether.

That been said, I do still think my suggestion about a new keybind would make things easier and not only for Necros.

Looks pretty good to me …

The stat change means you are speccing for the right reasons (i.e. traits/ability modifiers and not stats). Given armor can be swapped and adapted that is a perfectly good place to move the stats.

The wells are really a non-issue … if engineers can pvp with grenades, you can figure out ground targeting.

As for the three trait lines, it will depend largely on what the trait changes are. Hopefully they have learned enough by now that the garbage grandmaster traits will be mostly gone while the best master traits will be moved up. A combination of any 3 of 6 trait lines that each have 3 different grandmaster traits is more than enough build diversity as long as you don’t have a majority of grandmaster traits being awful. Most of the complaints seem to stem from 4/2/2/6/0 type builds, and those exist mostly because of minor and master traits that are much better than the grandmaster options. The argument that we will have 100 times fewer options is quite frankly pointless when each class has only 4-5 viable builds anyways. Just having a lot of permutations does not constitute build diversity when many of the traits are useless and many more are only useful in a very specific build.

I actually came to the rather sad realization recently that the engi celestial pvp rifle, power nade pve and rabid condi builds are identical or close to identical except in the weapon and stat choices. The skills and traits are so far above the alternatives that they remain identical (mostly because grenades are great and you need to go deep for grenadier, then you always want swiftness and vigor … and you have only a few points left to choose from, even the bomb variant only swaps a couple traits). The alternate build for pvp is turrets, which takes a rather specific combination of traits, all focusing on turrets, and then picks a whole lot of turret skills. Most of those traits and skills are never used outside this very specific build because their value relies entirely on synergy with the other traits and skills in the build.

My only real worry right now is with the current mandatory traits. For example speedy kits is the only reliable way engineers have of getting swiftness on a regular basis. Given the class has no dash or swiftness on weapons, the alternative would be to burn long cooldowns on sub-par utilities to get places. The problem being that if such traits remain, most engis will be using the Tool trait line just to get access to that adept trait.

That being said, Anet have an opportunity to make sure things like swiftness that most classes want are accessible in one form or another through multiple trait lines. For example the engi trait could be split so that the Tool trait line has an option for swiftness on toolkit swap while the Explosives line has swiftness on bomb or grenade kit swap and the firearms allows swiftness after a dodge roll or something.

Nate.3927:

Vorch.1807:

Don’t like one thing -only one elite specialization per class at HoT launch/ and
I don’t like “holy archer” type specs for my guard (give me “Monk/friar” pls)

staff, mace/focus? that’s kinda monkish, then put on that outfit that looks like a robe and you’re done

Plays and looks like are different things. Gw1 monks were like friar(mellee weapon-staff) from Daoc(but greater inclination to support). For me fantasy monks differs from clerics/pally : matrial arts/HtH&staff&blunt-close combat/high mobility/atk.speed/body&mind control/avoidance /parry-No shields.

Koorii.6752:

So, this doesn’t mention level 80 characters with 100% world completion. Will those characters get all of the hero points they’d have? I know Anet is usually really good about retroactive rewards, but the wording here leaves something to be desired. :s

I’m looking forward to see how this is implemented and plays out over all, though.

This could be done on a case by case basis:
-Players who are level 80 and 100% world completion have all of their skills unlocked, for sure. That could translate to having enough points to unlock all of the Skill specializations (or having them unlocked by default, grandfathered in).
-Players at level 80 with all traits unlocked (either the new system or being grandfathered in) should ideally get enough Hero points to unlock all Trait specializations too (with the exception of Elite, for which they’d need to earn Hero points first, perhaps exclusive to HoT challenges).
-Players without any traits unlocked, or partial traits (due to the current trait system) shouldn’t get any Hero points (or the number of points can be prorated) to allow players to re-unlock the traits they had previously (although it could be messy with the re-arranging of traits). In this case, Hero points will have to be earned to unlock traits specializations.

The absolute simplest approach would be to grandfather in every character made before the expansion into the new system (regardless of current skills/traits unlocked, with the requirement that they be level 80), giving them enough points (calculated based on how many they’d receive leveling up and based on how many skill challenges they’ve completed) to unlock Skill and Trait specializations, and progress tracks, with the exception of the Elite specialization track.

Time will tell how it’ll get implemented.

binidj.5734:

The relevant blog post can be found at: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/specializations-part-one-a-primer/

From my first read-through three issues immediately cropped up: removal of traitline stat bonuses, (apparent) siloing of traits, and (Necromancer specific) ground-targeting wells.

Removal of Traitline Stat Bonuses
First off let me say that I don’t hate this idea as such, however what I do hate is the proposed implementation. Please, please don’t transfer stat gains to armour, by all means give us a UI attached to Specialisation with sliders (or whatever) to manage our stats but lumping them all (or the majority) into armour sets will actually reduce the ways in which we can tinker with our builds … and that would be a terrible shame.

Siloing Traits
From the blog post it looked as though adept traits could only be placed in adept slots, master in master slots, and grandmaster in grandmaster slots. On a couple of characters I have the current equivalent of putting an adept in my adept slot, another adept in my master slot, and a grandmaster in my grandmaster slot; will this be possible under the new system? If it won’t be possible then, again, we’re actually having flexibility taken away from our builds … and that is a bad thing.

I really like the idea of a character stat allocation page, where you get to place up to 1000 stats however you see fit in intervals of 50 at a time (20 points). This could work for pvp and all other regions of the game. It allows players just as much flexibility with stats as we have now, without tying them to traits (or specializations in hot).

Also, I have really like the flexibility of traits being able to go in any slot. Having three adept traits in a line seems silly, but can make some good builds. I’m so excited for the news in 12 hours, I can hardly bring myself to get on the game now… XD I hope the news doesn’t crush my hopes for this game.

I think necromancers will get shouts because they don’t have supportive skills at all and shouts might be usefull to them in PVE events and dungeons.

To someone like me who really loves making hybrid builds, the stats being removed from traits is really worrying to me. I get most of my power on my Soldier’s builds on my Warrior or Guardian from my traits and only my weapons and like two trinkets. This sounds to me like I’m going to be completely useless now instead of contributing to my team (god forbid I want to not die in like 3 hits while still being able to do some damage) and also that this will just make the zerker meta even worse than it already is. More stats to equipment? Sounds like a very nice bonus for people who run zerker builds. They really need to have some other way to get these old bonuses rather than give it as a base and to equipment.

Ragnarox.9601:

I think necromancers will get shouts because they don’t have supportive skills at all and shouts might be usefull to them in PVE events and dungeons.

Uh? Wells? Spectral Wall? Pulling conds from allies with a signet?

Ragnarox.9601:

They are taking away guardians virtues.-..nice…kill us more and give us warhorn and 6x shouts. R.I.P. Longbow.

I was saddened to see this as well. I would have loved for Guardians to have had the chance to become Miko like characters (bowwomen shamaness’s in Japanese culture who symbolize purity). That would have been awesome.

And I agree with the OP on yet another point, transferring stats to the armor is not a smart thing to do it will increase the already present gear treadmill problem not solve it!

Sephas.8793:

Old skill points in excess of those earned by leveling and skill challenges will be converted into crafting materials for the Mystic Forge. Items and activities that were previously repeatable sources of skill points will now also provide that same crafting material.

What Material?

This. I’m very concerned that the “material” given is going to be some useless account bound thing like bloodstone dust turning valuable skill points that are worth gold right now into useless junk filling my bank.

If ANet turns them into something like “Forge tokens” that can be traded at the forge for anything we can currently buy for skill points then I will be ok with that.

tigirius.9014:

I was saddened to see this as well. I would have loved for Guardians to have had the chance to become Miko like characters (bowwomen shamaness’s in Japanese culture who symbolize purity). That would have been awesome.

And I agree with the OP on yet another point, transferring stats to the armor is not a smart thing to do it will increase the already present gear treadmill problem not solve it!

There’s a gear treadmill problem? Since when? If you’re talking about the gap being potentially widened between exotic and ascended, theres no way that happens because no matter how much stats increase on gear, its still going to be a 10% gap between ascended and exotic regardless.

MokahTGS.7850:

This. I’m very concerned that the “material” given is going to be some useless account bound thing like bloodstone dust turning valuable skill points that are worth gold right now into useless junk filling my bank.

If ANet turns them into something like “Forge tokens” that can be traded at the forge for anything we can currently buy for skill points then I will be ok with that.

We cant jump down anet’s throat until we know enough info. If worse comes to worse nobody is stopping you from converting your skill points into gold/stones/crystals etc. right now.

My big fear is that there will be a hidden mega nerf for mesmer. ANET always seems to be looking for a chance to cripple Mesmer

I love my build. I DON’T use grandmaster traits because they dont give me anything that I can or like to use.

They better add a grandmaster trait that improve firethrower for engies… or I’ll be kittening all over this place like a rabid racoon.

Ragnarox.9601:

They are taking away guardians virtues.-..nice…kill us more and give us warhorn and 6x shouts. R.I.P. Longbow.

Umm.. just NO.

The “gains 6 shout specialization” is almost certainly NOT going to be a class that already has shouts.

And “taking away virtues” and “Changing the active effect of virtues” are UNRELATED STATEMENTS.

Sixes.5824:

The stat change means you are speccing for the right reasons (i.e. traits/ability modifiers and not stats). Given armor can be swapped and adapted that is a perfectly good place to move the stats.

I really like the idea of separating stats from traits, I’m just not keen on making/buying a whole new armour set if I want to try out a build. Or, worse, carrying around multiple armour sets … though if I’m honest that is just not going to happen.

Sixes.5824:

The wells are really a non-issue … if engineers can pvp with grenades, you can figure out ground targeting.

They may be a non-issue for you but the same is not true for everyone; clearly for me it is an issue, and a significant one. I don’t often use grenades on my engineer specifically because of the ground targeting issue, though I’m all over them underwater where the cluster is centred on the targeted player/mob. If wells are changed to ground targeting without any way of opting out (fast-cast is no use at all when you have no idea where your cursor is) then a well-heavy build will stop being either fun or useful to me … and isn’t “fun” the main reason we play this game?

Sixes.5824:

My only real worry right now is with the current mandatory traits. For example speedy kits is the only reliable way engineers have of getting swiftness on a regular basis. Given the class has no dash or swiftness on weapons, the alternative would be to burn long cooldowns on sub-par utilities to get places. The problem being that if such traits remain, most engis will be using the Tool trait line just to get access to that adept trait.

That being said, Anet have an opportunity to make sure things like swiftness that most classes want are accessible in one form or another through multiple trait lines. For example the engi trait could be split so that the Tool trait line has an option for swiftness on toolkit swap while the Explosives line has swiftness on bomb or grenade kit swap and the firearms allows swiftness after a dodge roll or something.

I hope you’re right, lots of my characters are specced into lines they aren’t otherwise bothered about for increased speed (whether swiftness or +25%) or (more frequently) fall damage mitigation (without which WvW is an exercise in pain). I would still like to see these being a choice rather than just given to us on a plate but, as you’ve suggested, I’d like to see them copied across multiple trait lines or available to every profession as utilities.