In WvW there is a fairly vibrant build crafting reality. You can change the specs of any of your 16 pieces of armour/weapons to best produce the stats you want your dude to have whilst you fight.
Secondly, you then have food and nourishment which can make also synergise well with builds. As a result, theory crafting builds is possible and you can actually gain an edge from the build you run if you are smart enough to pick a build which synergises with your play style. For example, you might decide to have 4 zerker, 6 solider and 2 knights in your armour/accessory slots. But testing can led to replacing 1 zerker with another knights.
The point is, WvW builds have depth. Do you want to take that condi clear ability or will anti condition food mean you can run something else a bit more offensive? Perhaps you can run the food if you get slightly more vitality to fight against conditions on 2 of your weapon slots.
There is a constant tinkering process which keeps the game fun in WvW. With no gear grind in PvP this would be so epic.
But no, this is what we get. A set number of predefined amulets which just limit builds to an insane degree. There really is no tinkering to be done in pvp. Builds are all so black and white. It is very rare you ever have a hard decision with this kitten. It is as mindless as the current pvp builds are.
What I dont understand is WHY they did something so limiting. There are so few skills. And the trait system is so constrained that the game basically makes you take certain traits to run certain builds. Which is dull. Combine this with the amulet system and the whole thing is just boring. It is same old, over and over again. Just like conquest.
And here is the thing. They talk about inspirations including fps games and trading card games. Well let us look at both of these shall we.
FPS games
The big two are BF and COD. COD is reknowned as a brain dead game. BUT even they (!) introduced a “pick ten” system which opened up builds entirely to the players choice (this was maybe their most popular addition EVER to COD). Players had the freedom to pick between many thousands of different builds, and to continue making fine changes to these builds as their play style changed. It kept the game fun and added a fun element where people would spend hours upon hours considering and testing what to play.
Trading card games
In magic the gathering there are literally hundreds of cards for newer formats. And there are many different archetypes. Even people playing the same archetypes will vary their builds slightly depending how they play, their personal views and the meta. So people will literally have 6 hour discussions and testing about the 75th card in a 75 card deck. This keeps people entertained.
So why do arenanet put us down this route where everything is so limited and boring. Why not just give us 2000 points and let us put them into our character as we choose (maximum 1k into a tree). And why is the trait system so restrictive. It really makes for dullness.
A hotfix would be to give more customisation to amulets (changing the names isnt important). This would not take any time at all. It might cause imbalances but who cares. This game is as dead as a dodo competitively anyway. And new competition can arise out of such a change. And then they can balance any OP builds which come as a result.
Personally I dont play PvP very often at all anymore. And when I do its just to mess around with people I enjoy playing with. The more you think about everything wrong with this game though – the more I think an expansion is the only possible saviour of the game. But this has been said to never be coming. So, yeh. Not good.
