Guild Wars 2

Someone brought up a good point in a thread I was reading about elite trait line specs.

Here is the post below by LughLongArm.5460

The elite trait lines are stronger by design, how do I know? They’re being referred to as an “Elite” and have a restriction which limits the player to play with only one of them at a time.

We feel the power creep now because this is the first “Elite” trait line. Next expansion when we’ll have 2 elites trait lines, I don’t think the new elite will be a power creep over the current one, Just a different way to play your profession.

Because we supposed to pay for extra content only and not for a power creep, we need to address the gap between core professions and elite professions, the solution is simple.

*Make the old profession mechanic trait line an “Elite” trait lines, because you can’t run 2 elites trait lines this change will break most if not all, meta builds.

*Making the old profession mechanic trait line to be classified also as an “Elite”, is enough to bring back pre-hot builds and reduce the effectiveness of current elite builds.

Like you I think that the elite trait lines, while very strong, by themselves are not as powerful as most think. It’s the synergy with the old profession mechanic trait lines which makes the builds very superior compared to non elite builds.

*Just think about druid without the BM trait line, Reaper without the soul reaping trait line, DH without the virtues traitline etc….

*I do think that any new profession content that comes with expansion like weapons and skills, should be locked behind the “elite spec” as its more of a content issue rather than a balance issue. Some of the Meta builds even don’t use the new weapons and utilities some use a combination of both old and new. I rarely see a player with running around with all the new toys as an effective build. For that reason, the old profession mechanic trait line, even when classified as an “Elite”, will not lock any content from players specing into HOT elite builds, but will deny the strong trait synergy between two very strong trait lines.

TLDR: There used to be a profession specific trait line that was tied to an attribute specific to your class. For example warrior with discipline. Spec into this line would do a specific reduction other classes could not get.
This was also back when stats were tied to traits as well as amulets.

So the point here is, What if there was a “core elite” traitline and a “HoT elite” trait line, and you were only able to take one of them.
Discipline or Berserker? Tempest or Arcane?

Would this help to balance out the core specs vs the HoT specs?
Promote build diversity?
Or just make watered down builds?

I think elite traitlines themselves aren’t exceptional. What makes elites meta (and why you can only take one) is because they include a change to the class mechanic. (Reaper’s shroud, Berserk mode, Continuum, etc.) If you ignore the class mechanic change most (not all) elite traitlines are pretty average. Heck if it wasn’t for the new class mechanics, many of the classes would have no use for their elite traitline.

If I was forced to choose between Soul Reaping and Reaper, I would honestly take Soul Reaping every time, because the only exciting trait in reaper is chill damage.

But realistically I believe elites are fine, and build diversity will come back when new elite traitlines are introduced in the future. A better thread would be why hasn’t Anet released more elites yet. Elite specs are in essence, subclasses.

Crinn.7864:

I think elite traitlines themselves aren’t exceptional. What makes elites meta (and why you can only take one) is because they include a change to the class mechanic.

This. When they first talked about Chronomancer, I was excited at the prospect of new weapons opening up new possibilities in terms of build diversity. But no, it’s all shatter, all the time. The only thing carrying it is Alacrity and F5. This makes the entire Chrono feel cheesy and gimmicky, just like the post-rework shatterlock with the incessant mantra spam.

Used to be that when I fought another Mesmer, I never knew what to expect. Would it be a power shatter, a phantasm build, a glamour build…?

Now I don’t have to wonder. I fight the exact same Chronoclown one after another. Oh so exciting.