Guild Wars 2

Understandably, not everyone will agree with me. It’s impossible for this to happen- you can’t please everyone, but if I were a lead developer from the beginning of GW2 this is what I would have pushed for. Some things may seem out of place, be sure to take the whole picture into consideration. As is, if parts of these were implemented and not others, clearly it would create some serious issues, so take this as a package of how I would have liked to see things. Some of the headlines can be a bit daunting, so I’ll try my best to explain my idea of implementation and how it would fit into the game, so you don’t think I’m crazy and just spouting out nonsense. Again, this is my opinion and how I’d have liked to see things so please respect my opinions, even if yours differ. Enjoy.

If I were a Game Designer in GW2’s alpha:
I would have focused on the GW2 trinity more.
Guild wars two lacks what would make it a great group competitive game (overall) due to its lack of trinity. Of course, this is all my opinion, but I feel like this has simply pushed us into a game where there is no diversity. Everyone is damage, with very powerful utilities (I will call these enfeebles), or are very tanky with quite a lot of buffs and healing (which I will refer to as support). While it’s fine to have created a game for people to play what they want and how they want, it clashes with the competitive and team-building goal they also set. Someone has to win, and currently, of course, solo-build how you want has pretty much taken precedence. However, this is only true, in a pinch, for PvP. In PvE all we’ve really accomplished is forced everyone to play DPS because it’s the only thing not wasting everyones’ time! Truth be told, you really have the same effect in PvP, though slightly more giving with allowing bunkers to exist, but the main goal is still to control and kill an enemy as fast as you can with as little time to think as possible. This reminds me less of an MMO, and more of a hack-and-slash, which I love, I love hack-and-slashes as much as the next guy, but that isn’t what a team-MMO is all about. So, they didn’t want the tank, dps and healer trinity. That’s understandable. Tanking is only usually usable in PvE and useless everywhere else. Healing is usually playing the UI and not the game, so what would I have suggested? Here’s my Trinity:

- Damage dealers: Damage dealer focus on stats such as Power, Precision and Ferocity to deal lethal damage, effectively taking out the competition. Damage dealing weapon-sets and utilities would lose many (not all) boons and conditions, and play very similarly to power players today, minus some condition support here and there. Damage dealers are also (now) the primary interrupters/controllers. For those who lose conditions while blowing up their enemies, they’d be given tools to try to control an enemy’s movements and ability to perform their roles to their maximum capacity.
- Healing Support: Healers focus on stats such as Healing Power, Will (Boon Duration), and Toughness, and focus on providing game-changing boons to allies and healing them to keep important fighters in the fight. This means boons like fury, high might stacks and protection would mostly come from team supporters or those who chose to hybrid-specialize. To add healers each class would get a new weapon specifically designed for healing. (Only 1, so healers would be forced to have an enfeebling or damaging off-set, and still need to focus on battle) Healing weapons would deal damage with their #1 ability, #2 would be a zero cooldown casted AoE/cone heal of SOME sort, small but constantly usable like a basic auto attack. This would never require the healer to target an ally, just watch heal bars (as players already need to do), and would heal the HEALER for 50% less than allies.
- Enfeeblers: Enfeeblers focus on stats such as Power, Pressure (Condition duration), and Toughness. These are our attrition set ups. Their focus is to apply crippling conditions that make it easier for other roles to perform. Enfeeblers also have medium amounts of damage supported by their power. Enfeeblers would be much like condition builds today, except without condition damage (discussed later), they’d focus on condition duration and power damage with the primary focus on supporting allies by applying crippling conditions such as poison, blind, and chill (etc).

Trinity Continued
This would be a rough role set up. Traits and hybrid stat placement (like today) would allow for hybrids to still exist allowing you to use celestial and perform a mix of roles, such as healing and swapping to a power weapon and dealing moderate damage. Because of this, players would still be able to play how they want, and even more-so, since it would allow players to hybrid specialize and fit in many group settings.

Removed Downed State.
Downed state would have to go with this new set up. With the removal of downed state, enemies across the game would have to be toned down. Constantly being one-shot would no longer happen, but with healing skills (explained later) being toned down, sustaining yourself would be more important, and evading major attacks would become far-more important. These hard hitting attacks would be animated much better and in free-for-all modes, much slower. The reason I wish to remove downed state is that I personally feel it is a back-up for team members not doing their job properly, and is forgiving of death. This also leads to unfair skill fights where one player would usually win 1v2 or 2v3, but numbers ultimately winning, which isn’t fun to deal with. Instead, finishers would instantly proc on death (from the killing blow) with an internal cooldown in PvE, so that they don’t become too spammy.

Added healing supporters.
With healers added to the mix, as explained they would have their own weapon sets and still focus heavily on combat and more importantly positioning and balancing self-sustain while trying to continue to support allies. Self healing portions of supporters heals would be significantly lower than others it affects, thus the idea would be that heals can (roughly) negate all damage to one ally that another damage dealer could do to them, however a damage dealer could out-damage a healers ability to sustain themselves. Enfeebling via poison would help assist in killing a healer, or allow the death of a damage dealer even with the support of a healer. Two new boons would be added (with the removal of vigor, 1 total new):

- Cleanse: Stacks in duration, and each second it removes a condition. (Most other condition removals would be removed with the addition of Cleanse)
- Refreshment: Stacks in intensity. Acts as a reverse bleed. This is a stackable heal that gets stronger with consecutive stacks, ticking once per second.

Significantly lowered self-heals
Because healers would be added, self-heals again, would be brought down, but still be useful. Instead of a stream of healing, as they are now, they’d likely have longer cooldowns and be used in a dire-spurt situation to be brought back up to buy time for assistance, or to seal a kill. In addition to this, time to kill across the board (which would match healing, don’t worry) would be increased. So you wouldn’t have to worry about a thief 2 shotting you and not having healing to pro-long the fight, HOWEVER, now you also wouldn’t have the self healing to make fights last forever, with skillful play, fights would last longer and allow for more thinking time, but inevitably someone should die, providing a Support healer is not within range to support one of the combatants.

Removed Condition Damage and changed condition effects.
As discussed with adding Enfeeblers as a primary trinity-set up, I explained they would focus on Power. Why? Condition damage has caused too many issues, and separating them from power has caused even more. Conditional damage would no longer act as a primary damage source, and most condition damage coefficients would be reduced (since enfeeblers are to have medium damage) but use power to gain damage for their enfeebles. This also means direct damage on enfeeble attacks aren’t left to their base damage, thus serve a purpose. Also, because enfeeblers aren’t trying to kill you with conditions (but instead, now a mix of power AND conditions which scale from power as well) Torment, Bleed and Burning would be toned down much further and have additional supporting effects. These are suggested changes:
- Burning: Burning like all conditions would do less damage. Additionally, burning would now remove 1 boon from the enemy per second and be less easily obtained than live. (Most other boon-removals would go with the addition of this burning mechanic)
- Bleeding: Bleeding wouldn’t actually be much different than live, but it would be the only primary damage condition. Many would have longer durations, but slower application and less damage. This means the damage starts slow, but gradually gets stronger as more application is added. (Most bleed attacks would be slower than live and not stack as many, maxing bleed caps would not be the same as live) All enfeeble builds would have some access to bleeding, and bleed stacks would be separate per player. Also removing condition effects of Cleansing no longer removes full stacks, but the longest remaining bleed on the stack.
- Torment: Torment would replace Bleed for some classes just for theme (necromancers and mesmers would torment enemies instead of causing them to bleed). They would essentially work the same, except torment would have lower base-damage, but deal more damage per unique condition on the enemy. (Minor, maybe +/- 10% damage from 1 to max conditions). This adds some team play since necromancers no longer cause bleeding, but torment, having a bleeder in the group further increases damage.
How these roles would work in PvP.
These would affect PvP in major ways. One, there would be less of a “bunker” issue, one player maxing defenses to stand in a point, thus it would force players to try to work together more, and not rely on a silly live-forever mechanic. Typically, an enfeebler would replace the idea of a bunker to slow an enemy’s access and fight-progression enough for back up to assist. Healers would not always be optimal, as they are more for supporting (aka will be expected to roam where needed most) others, and not living infinitely. Or you can leave your best damage dealer who’s good at holding his own to try to kill anyone who tries to steal the point. The overall idea would be to support the idea of group play. Having healers to support the fight, enfeelbers to slow the enemies down, make healing harder on the healers and adding some damage pressure, while damagers add brute pressure to take out either healers OR significant damage/enfeebler threats, granted access to poison is available to ensure a swift-enough dealth, without wasting too much time and dying. As you could hopefully see, this would surely add some play and active thinking, trying to decide who needs to go, in what order, and determining the best path to accomplish that goal.
Added an additional mode to all PvE instances/fractals.
Okay, I went over a LOT and people fear, what will this do to “play how you want”?! GW2 is supposed to be a team and competitive game, so I feel, having to think and communicate isn’t bad! That’s why I support healing, enfeebling and damaging (aka role filling). But I wouldn’t want to leave anyone out. Instead, every instance and fractal would have two modes.
- Free-For-All, which would be “easier”, and allow any team setup to participate, and as long as on their toes with dodges and personal heals, could accomplish their goals, even without downed state. However, the challenge would persist, if enough sustained hits or enough mistakes were made to not avoid hard hitting attacks or fight mechanics, death would soon follow!

- Legendary, which would be the battle of the legends! This would standardly require an Enfeebler, Healer and damage dealers all who know their roles in a team to accomplish. Enfeeblers would actively have to hinder enemy npc healing, or remove boons via burning, or slowing their attacking via chills, etc. Healers would have to support their team mates by supplying boons such as fury and might to deal enough damage to avoid being over-ran, or applying protection and stability to allies to push through difficult encounters. Damagers would have to actively control larger mobs my using control attacks during unblockable power attacks, that could only be stopped by a well timed control attack during an enemy’s time of weakness (while powering up their attack). This mechanic would replace defiance, as defiance would be permanent on larger enemies, but vanish when they are readying certain power attacks that are intended to be interrupted. Teamwork!

Had less passive traits and more evolutionary traits, instead.
Instead of having so many x% chance and hidden cooldowns, it’d be cool to have more evolutionary traits. For instance, things like Terror, Deceptive evasion, and things like adding 1 stack of Refreshment to “Support heal” abilities (#2 on support weapons). Things that aren’t by chance, but simply evolving functionality. In many cases this could be the way to evolve certain weapons into dual-type weapons, such as adding enfeebles to daggers attacks for thieves, or adding healing components to damage weapons as a guardian.
Made Stats in the following manner.
Power: Increases damage by all attacks.
Precision: Increases critical hit rate.
Ferocity: Increases critical damage.
Will: Increases Boon duration.
Healing Power: Increases healing done.
Pressure: Increases condition duration.
Vitality: Increases Health.
Toughness: Decreases damage taken (from all sources).
Added more PvP Types.
Capture the flag, Node-cast-capture conquest, 2v2, 3v3 would be my first contenders. Additionally, Conquest, CTF and NCC conquest would all share a pool randomly selected when you join PvP. You can opt out of certain game-type modes but your wait time may be increased based on how much you choose to opt out of. 2v2 and 3v3 would be completely separate. You could que as a team or solo. All game times would have a check mark, allowing you to play rated or not rated at any given time, so you could solo-que or play with buddies who aren’t your pro team without risk of hurting your score.
Add a touch of PvP instant gratification.
It’s no myth people LOVE instant gratification. If they said they don’t, they lied. But there has to be some give/take and luck involved. At the end of EVERY solo-que/tPvP, I’d add 1 “rare” drop, that the winning team could roll on. A person could roll to win or pass on the item, but a person who could actively use the piece would have a 25% roll boost. These items would be both, harder to get pvp pieces, and some very rare items only obtainable via this rare method. (Added rare prestige, something that comes from no-where that you can be unexpectedly surprised by and excited for having a rare item) Not everything has to be set via goal. (Unless your goal is to play a lot and hope to get lucky!)
Removed AI.
There wouldn’t be a single AI in the game spawned by players (outside MAYBE ranger). Some abilities that want to give an effect of having “allies” may be added for visual effect, such as a ranger could “Spawn 3 ravens” that flocked around their head. Each press afterwards would direct a bird to charge the enemy dealing damage and dazing them. Essentially they’d be flavorful mantras with effects that are out of the way and not hindering of the gameplay.
Made Thief Cooldown-based.
Unfortunately, I’d have to say, thief would be best as a cooldown-based class to match the rest. They would however be given proper tools to sustain themselves (remember everyone’s self sustain would go down and the overall TTK would go up regardless), but would no longer be able to spam certain abilities, which would stop perma-stealthing. Some stealth abilities may have their duration increased to compensate.
Removed Vigor and evade-attacks.
Vigor would go, and so would all attacks with evade frames. It’s a lazy way to increase a class’ defenses and isn’t fun to fight, and has no counter-play at all. Some blocks may be given in lieu of evades, but will be counterable by unblockable attacks.

Taken a more pro-active approach to balancing.
It doesn’t take long for the dust to settle. I’d take a slightly more pro-active approach to balancing making small changes much faster to keep classes closer together faster. Of course it takes time to discover all “over powered” builds, but this approach not only would allow quicker balancing, each balance would be less dramatic, and would promote looking for other options. So instead of “waiting for someone to discover alternatives rather than playing the 1 proven-to-work build”, in a sense we’d try to give incentive to try other things by making sure nothing is the absolute way-to-go.

That’s all, that’s for reading. Sorry it’s so long. Again, remember these are my opinions, so please respect my right to have my own opinions, even if you disagree.

That sounds like a cool game, is there a trailer out yet?

“It’s impossible for this to happen” – you said that in the very first line so I’m sure you only spent all that effort typing it up for giggles.

If you were a developer during alpha suggesting “hey, how about trinity?” you would’ve most likely been fired…because GW2’s biggest strength is that it’s NOT like WoW and a completely different experience, that was one of the primary design goals.
Just stepping back from all the balancing specifics (forum noise!) and looking at GW2 as a whole, it dared to be different from WoW in huge ways and absolutely succeeded.

Don’t get me wrong, holy trinity is one of the best concepts ever with a big list of strengths…but it also has some weaknesses, nothing is perfect. I got tired of it and wanted something different, so here I am playing GW2.

Why during alpha tho? You couldve made a “if i got hired as Anets new pvp dev today….”. describing some realistic plans that could turn GW2 in to a pvp powerhouse.

That’s called being a game designer, not a lead dev.

Locuz.2651:

describing some realistic plans that could turn GW2 in to a pvp powerhouse.

Realistic? When has an MMO been able to change the way the trinity, base stats, entire professions and post-release?

Any rate of change faster than what we’re observing in GW2 now is unrealistic.. the systems in place are performing well enough in PvE and WvW that this level of overhaul isn’t necessary, and what developer would even bat an eye at a list of changes like these for the benefit of PvP.

Small PvP player base → small PvP development budget → Small PvP player base.

Chaith.8256:

Realistic? When has an MMO been able to change the way the trinity, base stats, entire professions and post-release?

Any rate of change faster than what we’re observing in GW2 now is unrealistic.. the systems in place are performing well enough in PvE and WvW that this level of overhaul isn’t necessary, and what developer would even bat an eye at a list of changes like these for the benefit of PvP.

Small PvP player base -> small PvP development budget -> Small PvP player base.

Thats exactly what my thoughts are about this subject.

My comment was purely targeted at the OP. I wouldve loved to see a post describing what his plans wouldve been if he was the pvp lead; while having similar resources at his disposal as the current team.

Thats where the realistic statement comes from. Since a lot of people seem to think that anets resources inexhaustible.

Locuz.2651:

Thats where the realistic statement comes from. Since a lot of people seem to think that anets resources inexhaustible.

That’s very true. And to add on to that, the interests of the sPvP community and where the development budget needs to go is completely out of alignment.

I would have settled for a sequel to gw1 pvp, but your idea sounds ok too.

Good read. I would probably enjoy playing it. It does sometimes irk me when on my guardian in Pvp that much of the support I gave, that i scarificed doing damage to have is ignored by any team mates around me. They can see turrets spamming stuff..they can see the iduelist unloading..they can see the thief with shortbow out..but they refuse to stand behind Wof for a few seconds to offset and mitigate all that incoming damage. Why? they only value this stuff in PvE and in PvP it is all about self.

Wintel.4873:

it dared to be different from WoW in huge ways and absolutely succeeded.

Don’t get me wrong, holy trinity is one of the best concepts ever with a big list of strengths…but it also has some weaknesses, nothing is perfect. I got tired of it and wanted something different, so here I am playing GW2.

hmm, to be honest I got bored by GW2 PvE after about a year (living story is only temporary content and after missing one or two chapters I also stopped doing these). And there’s not much you can do besides that. I’ve seen all dungeons and I have full exotic/ascended gear (armor is only exotic because I don’t want to grind hours for gear I won’t use much because I don’t do PvE anymore), 100% map-completion etc. Dungeons aren’t challenging and you don’t get gear there so there isn’t really a motivation to do them. All that is left is WvW (I don’t like it because it’s just zerging and spamming AoE) and PvP – which is the only thing that I’m doing now.
Due to the lack of the trinity it’s also rather boring to play other classes because they’re all kinda the same (damage-dealers …)

On the contrary I play WoW since about 6 years and never really got bored. I have many different characters which are all unique in their role and playstyle which can’t really be said about classes in gw2. Doing dungeons in WoW with two different classes is a complete different experience whereas doing a dungeon in GW2 with let’s say an ele and a warrior is practically the same.

Couple things I wanted to add. To the guy who corrected me, yes you’re right this is a game Design element. I chose to use the term dev (incorrectly) because people seem to respond “well” or relate to the term dev/developer in forums because that’s what they call anyone they talk to haha.

As for beating the holy trinity. Guild wars never intended to beat the trinity. They wanted to introduce their own (dps, utility, and support) and that’s what I went by. If you’ll notice, there are no tanks in this format, it just gives respective roles their place in the game instead of having all DPS with a load of utilities too. It is my opinion that all the tools given to dps builds (perma max might, fury, poison) killed the idea of having support and utility. Essentially a DPS is a do all show, while those who focus on support and utility don’t typically have either of the other two roles (for example support guardians and utility permachill necros). They perform their duties well but don’t have much damage. However many damage builds can spout out blinds, poison, have perma swiftness fury and might stacks etc. So that’s why, here, I wanted to make those roles a bit more defined and explained why they would be important to have around, whereas they do it currently.

Also, I’m not trying or even asking to change the game. Hence the title relating to alpha. GW2 is too mature for really any of the major differences I discussed to be implemented. This is simply my idealistic view on what I personally feel would have done better in the long run, but would have had to be done before people got used to how things are now. Things like removing downed state would be too controversial at this point.

Edit: I changed it to the correct term of Game Designer just for you.

I love it Ron,

I’ve been considering going back to WoW, my guild even offered to take me through the recent heroic raids to get gear. I love GW2, the game play is amazing, but everything else is just sooooooooo kitten that I just get annoyed more than anything. everything seems the same, no progression, nothing to aim for.

their selling slogan should be : Play GW2, grind for skins so you too can look like that special little snowflake you’ve always dreamed about ….

I’m so dam bored of you spamming new skins into the game, I WANT SOMETHING TO AIM FOR THAT ISNT SKINS

and not that crap ascended armour that they put out with barely a different in stats compared to exotic, I want tiers just like WoW or ya know what, im gonna stop buying diamonds and i’m gonna kitten off back to WoW because I’d rather pay the 10 quid a month sub compared to this.

Looks to me like GW1. The lack of the trinity is also the reason why deathmatch in this game will fail, due to no active healing/protting.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Looks to me like GW1. The lack of the trinity is also the reason why deathmatch in this game will fail, due to no active healing/protting.

Personally when reading about GW2 it wasn’t the lack of trinity that excited me, it was their own trinity that they abandoned. My idea of Dps, healing/support and enfeebling is nothing more than expanding on their own idea of Dps, support and utility, which unfortunately evolved into an all DPS meta with utilities built in and self-support (1 guy does it all) sort of thing. It promotes playing how you want with whoever you want just fine, but it leaves the game very lacking and requires not fun mechanics to support (ie Bosses one shorting everyone.)

Personally, I dislike Tank, Healer, Dps trinities! Tanks are only useful in pve leaving pvp with a dual-type system which isn’t very exciting. Additionally, tanking never made sense. Its full of “taunts” and weird mechanics forcing brainless AI to attack the toughest dude in a crowd of people. Very lame, if you ask me. And healing is boring, nothing short of playing the UI.

But guild wars 2’s dps, heal support and enfeebled trinity would have provided VERY unique roles that could be played and utilized game-wide, wouldn’t be crutching on terrible logic (tanks), and everyone would have had their place. This would have also solved the issue of cc abilities against bosses without using cheesy mechanics like “oh he can shrug off being knocked down x amount of times”, and replaced with the idea that “he’s a tough dude and not easily controlled but when he’s going for a special kill his guard is down, so that is the best time to strike to send him off balance”. This game had the layout it needed to be epic, but in parts were lazy and in other parts they just aren’t true to their design.

Wintel.4873:

“It’s impossible for this to happen” – you said that in the very first line so I’m sure you only spent all that effort typing it up for giggles.

If you were a developer during alpha suggesting “hey, how about trinity?” you would’ve most likely been fired…because GW2’s biggest strength is that it’s NOT like WoW and a completely different experience, that was one of the primary design goals.
Just stepping back from all the balancing specifics (forum noise!) and looking at GW2 as a whole, it dared to be different from WoW in huge ways and absolutely succeeded.

Don’t get me wrong, holy trinity is one of the best concepts ever with a big list of strengths…but it also has some weaknesses, nothing is perfect. I got tired of it and wanted something different, so here I am playing GW2.

DO you find it ironic that whilst they decided against the trinity, which is neither good or bad really, just a different approach. But at the same time, started adding lots of grind (ascended gear etc) and for some reason trying to bunch people up into main cities (lions arch basically), some of the very things some people hate wow over (one of the reasons I left was because towards the end of cata I had to accept the pvp was never going to be anything than a grind fest for the most part, and how hard it was for newer players to get into it made the numbers seem to be ever dwindling.)

runeblade.7514:

I know a solution.

The front page sounds very familiar. But let say that Anet truly wants to make your dreams reality. They will have to have a massive overhaul on everything. It is much easier to just create a new game.

If you’re going to direct people to WoW you should at least be honest about what PvP really is there.

• You have to grind out 90 levels of PvE before you can play PvP in any kind of balanced way.
• You have to run PvE raids for the best trinkets or legendaries to be competitive.
• If you try to level in PvP battlegrounds you will be facing heirloomed players that will instantly destroy you (PvP is more about stats in WoW than skill). There is simply no way to beat someone that outgears you by factors of 10x, 15x, 25×. In other words it will take years to level in PvP.
• You have to pick the right race/faction which determines what class you can play. Alliance factions lose 90% of battlegrounds, some racial skills are always overpowered over others. This goes beyond simple class balancing.
• If your class gets hit with a change you don’t like you cannot jump over and play a different one immediately like you can in GW2 – you have to go through the leveling and gearing process all over again!

But if anyone is curious about it I suggest trying their free trial – you can enter your first battleground at level 10 – go for it!

would not play that game

I know how you feel OP. If I had a time machine I would be rich.

silvermember.8941:

I know how you feel OP. If I had a time machine I would be rich.

My perspective on this, is honestly, we shouldn’t so much need a time-machine. The foundation was laid out for them, but they took the wrong paths. Of course a time-machine would help now, but they should have seen many issues with GW2 coming just looking at the design plans and made adjustments before releasing the product. Especially since once they released, they had no intentions of ever making huge game-altering changes, specifically mechanically. Just disappointing how amazing this game could have been, considering it even had the brand to go along with it.

I would have loved it if Charged Skills weren’t scrapped off the game. It’s a nice mechanic with lot’s of pros to promote skilled gameplay since the longer you charge a Charged Skill, the greater the damage/effect however dodge/avoid damage while channeling but you can release it early with less damage/effect. It has a risk/reward aspect to it. Skills that was or would have been under this category are Churning Earth and Killshot.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

I would have loved it if Charged Skills weren’t scrapped off the game. It’s a nice mechanic with lot’s of pros to promote skilled gameplay since the longer you charge a Charged Skill, the greater the damage/effect however dodge/avoid damage while channeling but you can release it early with less damage/effect. It has a risk/reward aspect to it. Skills that was or would have been under this category are Churning Earth and Killshot.

I didn’t know this existed. Add to the list. :P

I don’t really have anything to say except that I wholeheartedly agree with all of this. While it seems impossible to do now with how far along the game is, it doesn’t mean that some of the concepts are completely out of line. With additions of new equipment stats (Zealot/Keeper), heading towards a healer path isn’t completely out of line if there were to come an expansion-size change.

All the overall damage/down state/healing skill changes are great and WOULD raise the skill cap. That’s where it gets iffy, since part of a lot of players appeal towards GW2 is the pick-up and playability skill floor of all the classes that these changes would raise.

Overall, I think this raises a lot of good points and should definitely be seen for possible implementations of some sort. Whether it’s just ideas that stem from this post or anything.

ronpierce.2760:

Personally, I dislike Tank, Healer, Dps trinities! Tanks are only useful in pve leaving pvp with a dual-type system which isn’t very exciting. Additionally, tanking never made sense. Its full of “taunts” and weird mechanics forcing brainless AI to attack the toughest dude in a crowd of people. Very lame, if you ask me. And healing is boring, nothing short of playing the UI.

Mostly a lurker, rarely post. Wanted to point out “tanking” works in pvp without any “taunting”. A tanks role in player-vs-player in any game is about charging into the other team and wreaking havoc (via various cc, nullifying certain strategies/mechanics [e.g. mass poison if the team relies on healing or something], or doing just enough damage to seem like a threat). Tanks in these competitive setting are about getting in the other teams face and making as much noise as possible. Obviously, experienced teams wouldn’t fall for this so easily or can adapt on the fly (and thus experienced tanks have to adapt to their adaptations), but you get the point.

Anyways, the point of this is that I love utilizing defensive tactics as a source for counter-offense (e.g. giving ground to reposition for a renewed advance in ancient battles), and is something that isn’t quite there in this game. CC builds are mainly damage dealers, and if it wasn’t for the capture point mechanics, bunker builds aren’t a threat and can be ignored with little consequence. The strategic play around defense-to-offense doesn’t exist (besides the feint to capture a point and flanking to capture a different point, but that’s another discussion).

Ok, sorry for the threadjack.

/tangent

Chaith.8256:

That’s very true. And to add on to that, the interests of the sPvP community and where the development budget needs to go is completely out of alignment.

Just play dota Chaith. U know you want to. It’s free and they have better pvp than GW2.

I don’t see how the Condition Damage change would really do anything other than add one less stat to the game.

Right now you can have a graph of damage condition application skills do based on their direct damage and scaling plus their condition application type and amount. The devs can, even with the current game, alter condition application skills by upping their base damage, lowering their scaling with power, and either adjust the amount or duration of the condition skill, or even just lower condition damage scaling across the board since its a game wide mechanic.

Your proposal with changing all the scaling to power would just leave the developers with the same exact knobs to balance condition application with. They’d still would have to alter base damage values as necessary, direct damage scaling with power as necessary, the amount of stacks and duration of the applied condition, and whether or not they want to rework the scaling for that condition across the game.

You’d lower the build complexity to the game, which I’m not necessarily against, but that change and many others could still be applied to GW2 as it is right now. In fact, more of a focus on control/enfeebling abilities combined with better support options for all classes is something I think GW2 will end up moving more towards right now.

But I agree with your general sentiment. GW2 as a whole currently feels like it has one foot going in one direction and the other foot in another direction.

No offense, but all I see is you drawing back to tocken MMOs.
Nothing great, nothing new.

IMO, I’d work with what is there, there is so much potential…
Conditions should be debuffs.
That’s how cleansing was designed to deal with them.
That’s how abilities were designed to apply them.

The game should have stuck with 5v5 team on team slugfests.
If anything, taking the same sort of deal GW1 had and just tweaking the objective would have made a great game mode.

Healers…
Na.
I’d rather Anet replaced healers with generally un-spastic healthbars (not these mandatory half~ health heal skills) and combo fields.
I mean, if combo fields were well made, like ‘a combo field’ was a slot on the toolbar like a utility skill, every spec had a combo field (each class has one different one, I’ll explain why one in a bit) and combo’ing (attacking in it or leaping through it, exc.) gave strong buffs/debuffs. Like fury was a stacking +10% crit chance and crit dmg, you got a stack for 3-4s for each time you combo.
Bam.
If you want some of the best spikes in the game, you now have to set them up.

Same sort of deal with debuffs, instead the field would apply weakness to the target which would lower damage on crits by a third.
Bam.
Counterplay to spikes.

Anyways.
That ‘only one combo field per class’ deal.
At a glance you have to be able to tell how an enemy functions to be able to counterplay the guy. That means each class in GW2, regardless of how they spec have to fallow a central playstyle.
For example, warriors could revolve around landing hits, the more they attack the more percs they get. A solid central mechanic for a class. You can build tanky off it, you can build many different takes on it through weapons and utilities, but it always revolves around a central theme to keep counter-play in the game.
Having many different combo fields would create largely changing central theme, do you have to worry about a spike (fury combo field) or debuff? (weakness) you have literally no idea until the guy plops it down… unless each class only gets one main type to work with.

If there were more water fields and blast finishers with a very low cd, then that would be the best thing for gw2.
Conditions are fine in gw2, but condi removal is not. Instead of long cd bulk cleanses, smaller over time cleanses are more fitting to counter the easily re-appliable nature of condis.
Stats, ai, thief, and vigor are all fine. AI is easy to deal with, thief should have an improved steal and more revealed, vigor should be harder to get.

The trinity is a structure to determine class architypes and is not a requirement to achieve the gameplay that i believe most of us miss. Its mostly about having a degree of the defence coming from an external resource. No one said a classes singular role has to be to contribute to this external resource, though it is a trend to make a game simpler.

Now an external resource helps to shape positioning and lines as this also means you have to be within range of certain allies to benefit (current positioning structure of Gw2 needs WAY more than this to work). It also creates more dynamic targeting of foes as you have to adapt to where this resources is being spent.

Now an enfeebler is a class architype as opposed to a trinity. The trinity is a gradient that naturally exists consisting of offense, personal defence, and ally support most prominently in the form of defence. The relative portion of each of these components can vary and there is no need to lock yourself into 3 distributions.

I do not agree with any of what you have said Ron. I apologize. If I wanted a Trinity I would simply go play another game. It is quite refreshing seeing the varying builds in GW2. I think the only real problem we are seeing concerning build diversity is that most people go with condition builds (in PvP).

I agree that damage specs rule PvE. But instead of changing how all the classes in the game works. Just design harder PvE content. Don’t change the current content to be harder because this game has a fairly large casual fanbase, and that is fine. I would like to see harder instanced content, similar to raids. Having you talk to your guild and make up new builds that help the team would be awesome. And would promote more than just “damage, damage, damage”.

bobomb.5209:

I think the only real problem we are seeing concerning build diversity is that most people go with condition builds (in PvP).

Even before the condi meta hit, GW2 was hemorrhaging players. I don’t think it could have stood up to the next wave of MMOs coming out even if the meta never went condi or spam heavy…