Guild Wars 2

I wanted to use this thread to inspire Anet to bring back some of the skills that made GW1 such an amazing game. Don’t get my wrong, some GW2-skils and traits are amazing, but many of them are a bit unimaginative. I want to go over a few classes and how they were played in GW1 and try to transform those gameplay-mechanics into skills that could be implemented into GW2. I tried to balance them to fit into the current competetive sPvP-metagame and to fit into the builds that are currently played most of the respective classes.

Quick Disclaimer: When looking at the GW1-skills; notice there are also elite-skills, which are obviously more powerful and if you look at the „Progression-levels“, you can probably set it at around 10 to get an accurate depiction of how effective it was in PvP.)

Mesmer

The Mesmer in GW1 dealt moderate DMG, but offered several options to control either the defensive or offensive capabilities of the enemy team by interrupts, manaburns and other skills, like these:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Diversion
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Power_Block
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Blackout

General changes to GW2-Mesmer: I’d tone down the DMG a bit and heavily increase the possible control-options to give it a more distinct role. I’d also cut some traits like Confounding suggestions and mental anguish.

Now for the possible new traits and/or modified old ones:

[Powerblock: If you interrupt a skill that has a CD, that cooldown is increased by 15 seconds. The interrupted enemy is weakened for 5 seconds and slowed for 3 seconds]
-> (Domination T3 major trait)
I removed the added DMG, but added the slow, which has both offensive and defensive usage. It’s imho important to design the skills in a way that makes it possible to use them offensively as well as defensively, because the quick decision-making whether you take out DPS or defensive capabilities of the enemy team in a fight makes the class more interesting and versatile to play.

[Blackout: When target enemy is hit by cry of frustration emanating from yourself (so not an illusion), target enemy has all weapon-skills disabled for 5 seconds]
-> (Domination T3 major trait, replacing mental anguish)
I tried to keep it melee-range like in GW1, so you could dodge it and see the mesmer coming, but added a unique effect that you cannot simply get rid off with a stunbreaker. To balance this, I think only disabling weapon-skills is a fair trade.

Elementalist

In GW1, this class was probably closest to what could be called a jack-of-all-trades, because it offered support, healing and dmg. Still, most characters in GW2 can survive better on their own than even a roaming-oriented Ele in GW1. The coolest thing about Ele was IMHO the blinding-aspect, which worked differently in GW1:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Blind

The skills mostly used by support-Eles to apply blinding were:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Blinding_Surge
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Blinding_Flash

When applying blinding, you had to mostly focus on high-DPS bursty classes, sth. like how Warriors and Thiefs are played now. It was absolutely crucial for them to get rid of the blind before they spike (or have it cleansed by the monks). Compared to the blind in GW2, the GW1 blind was more balanced accross classes (blind in GW2 hurts some classes way more than other, who don’t care about it at all) and ppl actually had to react to it: 5+ seconds without doing dmg is a big deal, but do I really want to use my cleanse to get rid of it, or do I need it for more defensive purposes later? Again, like with the mesmer-skills, there was a constant trade-off, which was hugely important for mana-management (but works in GW2 just as well): Do we need the DMG or do we need defense more? Can we get the target down when I cleanse the blind, or will the target live anyways and we die later cuz I used my CD offensively? My trait that encapsulates this would be:

[Blinding Light: Your blinding flash, Lightning Surge, Signet of Air and blinds from Elemental Surge now apply 20 stacks of blinding, each attack draining 1 stack.]
-> (Air magic T3 major trait instead of Lightning Rod)

Ranger

In GW1, ranger was often used as a roamer to slow down flagrunners or in teamfight, to spread conditions and slow down either melee attackers to give your backline room to breathe or to slow down the enemy backline, to make them eat more pressure from your melee damage-dealers. Wow!Another skill that could be used in both defensive and offensive ways! Interrupting was another big part of the ranger, mostly to take out enemy casters. The following skills were the most interesting to me:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Apply_Poison
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Crippling_Shot
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Distracting_Shot

The ranger was constantly switching targets applying crippling and poison and had to decide every few seconds which target needed to be slowed down. AoE-Condition-removal (and condition-removal in general) wasn’t as common as in GW2, so targets could be crippled/poisoned for quite some time.

To make the „GW2-crippling shot“ fit into current builds (marksmanship isn’t really used by condition-builds and simple crippling alone won’t do the trick) I added it to skirmishing instead of Most Dangerous Game, which isn’t really used anyways. I also wanted to bring smart pet-control into the trait, to distinguish the ranger more from other classes. To make the skill powerful enough, It defenitely needs to add more than just crippling, so I added another condition that is useful for both offensive and defensive purposes; weakness.

[Predator’s instinct: Enemies hit by your pets basic attack are crippled and weakened for 5 seconds. The same enemy cannot be crippled and/or weakened again in this way for 10 seconds]
-> (Skirmishing T3 major trait, replacing Most Dangerous Game)

[Refined Toxins: Your pets basic attacks inflict 5 seconds of poison. The same enemy cannot be poisoned again in this way for 10 seconds]
-> (simple rebalancing to fit more to what „apply poison“ felt like, again tied to the pet and with a cooldown on the target affected by it)

I think these two traits would have some interesting effects to how the ranger is being played: Controlling the pet and switching targets effectively would become important, it would give the ranger quite potent skills in teamfights (condi-ranger has been more commonly used as a node-defender, which would make these traits loose effectiveness) and the skill-ceiling for using this trait would be quite high. (keeping CD’s in mind of ppl you’ve already affected with the traits, not affecting targets too soon to not be able to cripple/weaken/poison them when you really need to etc.)

[Moment of Unclarity: If you interrupt a skill that has a CD, that cooldown is increased by 15 seconds. Your stun and daze durations are increased by 100%]
-> (Replacing Moment of Clarity. I think another trait similar to powerblock could be very useful, since fights, especially teamfights, often don’t last long enough to make 1 „powerblocked“ skill a huge factor. Also, it would add more of a controlling effect to the pewpew-ranger, which would reward masterful interrupts instead of simply packing more dps onto the build).

Warrior

The most intriguing thing to me about warrior, which could be applied to GW2, was the following skill:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Frenzy

The skill had a very low CD, but there was a harsh trade-off to the added DPS; taking double dmg. The stance could be cancelled by using another stance, but those often had longer CD’s (15-20 seconds), so you had to be very careful about using Frenzy and the enemy team needed to be quick to capitalize on a used Frenzy, which made a very tanky warrior (which also often was a main damage-dealer), very squishy for a short time.

[Reckless Frenzy: Reduce the cooldown of Frenzy to 15 seconds. When you activate Frenzy, you take double damage from physical attacks for 5 seconds]
-> (Strength T3 major trait, replacing distracting strikes, because I don’t really see it being used and it fits the trait-line and current builds well).
I think the warrior currently has enough ways to get out of the double-DMG, similar to stance-cancelling by using another stance in GW1 (no two stances could be active at once), like endure pain, shield block, dodges, tons of movement-skills to get away, but they would mean either not doing using the quickness effectively, or using a big cooldown.

That’s it for now, maybe I’ll write down some other ideas at a later time.

placeholder! ^^

It was actually GW1 mesmer & ranger I wanted to play in GW2 – unfortunately they are nothing like they were back in GW1.

In addition there is ofc also spirits, which worked very differently back in GW1, and imho they were a much more interesting part back then. In general, the whole point of skills giving you an advantage at the cost of a drawback is an aspect I miss, even if it does promote build-wars.

The problem for mesmer with the reduced dmg and general functionality is ofc thieves and thieves ability to port, connect and burst. As a clothie and in general very reduced ability to body-block, mesmers would be reduced to thief-fodder. Reduce the burst of especially thieves and reduce their ability to connect, and this would certainly be some very amazing changes for mesmer.

Poxxia.1547:

It was actually GW1 mesmer & ranger I wanted to play in GW2 – unfortunately they are nothing like they were back in GW1.

In addition there is ofc also spirits, which worked very differently back in GW1, and imho they were a much more interesting part back then. In general, the whole point of skills giving you an advantage at the cost of a drawback is an aspect I miss, even if it does promote build-wars.

The problem for mesmer with the reduced dmg and general functionality is ofc thieves and thieves ability to port, connect and burst. As a clothie and in general very reduced ability to body-block, mesmers would be reduced to thief-fodder. Reduce the burst of especially thieves and reduce their ability to connect, and this would certainly be some very amazing changes for mesmer.

I played mostly monk in GW1, but it’s kinda hard to implement stuff from monks into GW2. ^^’

Mesmer vs Thief: In teamfights, I think mesmer wouldn’t really be worse against thiefs by implementing the new Powerblock and switching mental anguish for Blackout. Yes, you’d loose some dps, but I think both the slow instead of dmg on Powerblock and the Blackout instead of more dmg on the shatters are a fair trade-off. In Teamfights, the Blackout would negate tons of dmg and teleport and smokefield+leap, so could also potentially lock down the thief a bit.

In 1v1’s DMG is pretty important VS thiefs, if your class is pretty squishy as well, but most mesmer don’t really want to go into 1v1’s and the new skills would make the mesmer IMHO better in teamfights, so I think it could work out fine.

Blackout used to be double edged sword. I’m against as long as it would affect only enemy.

lol at the OP’s suggestion for Blackout

GW1’s version of the skill disabled both the user and the affected player’s skill bar for x duration, it was mostly used to disable the opposing team’s monks prior to a spike, at the cost of the user’s entire skill bar also being disabled (which for all intents and purposes, a ranger/mes or warrior/mes isn’t nearly as important as a monk in a flag stand fight)

Darknicrofia.2604:

lol at the OP’s suggestion for Blackout

GW1’s version of the skill disabled both the user and the affected player’s skill bar for x duration, it was mostly used to disable the opposing team’s monks prior to a spike, at the cost of the user’s entire skill bar also being disabled (which for all intents and purposes, a ranger/mes or warrior/mes isn’t nearly as important as a monk in a flag stand fight)

Well, my reasons for not making Blackout also disable your own weapon-skills were:

- It’s a 5-man game, not 8, and in GW2, weapon-skills are still mostly offensive, so you’d disable a huge part of your offenses, which would mean it could only be used defensively to take out dmg.
- Mesmer in GW2 is much more used for it’s DMG than it was in GW1 and taking out the mesmers DMG would actually hurt the DMG-output of your team heavily.
- Disabling Utility/Heal-skills would simply be too strong and there is no dedicated backline who have mostly defensive weapon-skills, which means Blackout won’t ever disable enough healing in GW2 to make up for the DMG lost due to the mesmer being unable to add DMG.

-> There’s simply no way to make a trait worth it in both offensive and defensive ways if you are disabled as well.

Srsly guys, I thought this stuff through. ^^’

Also, I was playing GW1 in Top-20 GvG Guilds for years (BdV, Capita Cerberi etc.), I know how Blackout worked in GW1, no need to “lol” at me.

GW2 is extremely straight-forward compared to GW1. Classes are no longer designed to function around a particular set of roles, and can instead fill a wider variety of roles, though to a lesser extent in terms of efficiency.
It’s likely ArenaNet’s attempt at expanding their playerbase by making the game more “casual”.

GW1 had skills where you had to make important compromises and well-timed decisions in coordination with your team, something which spiced the game up a lot.
GW2 on the other hand, is targeted at the more typical MMO player with more generic skills, individual gameplay and less focus on strategy at a medium/low level.

Despite how much I’d love to see skills that actually offer some strategical value, that’s not how ArenaNet designed their game to be. It’s really a shame, because GW2 is such a repetitive game with so little variation.