One of the biggest limiters to build diversity in sPvP is the small selection of stat combinations on amulets that often put all your eggs in one basket. This immediately weakens many trait combinations and weapon choices and leads to the prevalence of glass cannon DPS.
Issues with Current Implementation
1. Amulets are not varied enough to supplement the stats from traits. Traits and weapon selection should govern how a build plays. Stats should be customizable enough to support that playstyle. The current stat choices on amulets cannot fill in the gaps for the numerous combinations.
Power damage builds are most impacted, so using that as an example, only Berserker and Soldier are widely viable (Valkyrie has limited scope). Unless you went down your toughness line and used toughness runes, you’ll be very squishy with a Berserker amulet. Similarly, a power damage build without precision and critical damage isn’t very threatening. If you don’t go heavily into your precision line with precision runes, you have to pick the Berserker amulet or have mediocre damage with the Soldier amulet.
The lack of customization also limits power-condition hybrids and offense/defense hybrid builds. About the only builds not limited by amulet choices are condition damage builds that use the Rabid prefix. It provides them two offensive stats with a damage one as a primary and a powerful defensive stat.
2. Builds are often extremes of high damage with low survivability. Using the same example as the previous item, the power damage builds often choose heavy damage low defense options over too little offense. And with a good chunk of a team’s players making these choices, everyone dies quickly and kills quickly. The result is much faster paced gameplay.
If all of these builds could pick up maybe 300 more toughness, it could cut incoming direct damage down by 15-20% with a small impact to outgoing damage. It becomes far more difficult for any single player to burst down a target from full in seconds, furthered by the small drop in damage from everyone transitioning to a little defense. The inability for a single player to kill another quickly in turn necessitates team coordination for burst setups, peels, etc.
3. PvE/WvW players are discouraged from doing sPvP. Although it means nothing for those that sPvP regularly, a lot of people I know that PvE and WvW don’t want to play sPvP because they can’t replicate their build in sPvP. Even if their build is bad, it’s still a barrier to entry and them learning a better one.
Suggested Changes
1. Change the PvP Knight combination to Toughness primary. No one uses the current PvP Knight amulet and few use the jewel. In a team-based setting with lots of small group heals, a moderate amount of armor is far more valuable than extremely high HP which can never be replenished except outside of combat. The PvE Knight combination would give power-based builds much needed survivability through armor without dramatically sacrificing their damage.
2. Split the amulet into multiple items This is the biggest roadblock to increasing build variety. Subtract out one more jewel’s worth of stats from the amulet and then split the remaining stats in half and make them rings, each with a jewel slot. This gives you the same total stats as we currently have (well, actually +1 because of rounding), but you can now supplement missing stats better. Each ring would be 337 primary and 247 secondary.
3. Increase the stats on PvP Celestial Amulet. Another un-used combination. If you do the math, the PvE Celestial combination has each stat at about 60% of the secondary stat of a three-stat combination. PvP Celestial Amulet is 50% (the jewel is at 60%). When you spread stats around so much, they all need to be a little higher. Reduce the critical damage on the amulet slightly if needed.
TLDR: Amulets limit build diversity and lead to glass cannons. Split up the stats to allow less extreme builds and fix bad stat combos.