Guild Wars 2

I firmly believe that the game should be balanced by…

A : creating good/balanced weapon skills that don’t necessarily require traits to be effective.

B : creating good utility skills that don’t require traits to be effective.

C : Traits that help people distinguish and diversify builds that add synergies to your weapon skill/utilities. ( Should not be “20% faster recharge on sword skills” and such. We clearly have more imaginative devs than that. )

Just going to use thief as an example ( as it’s my main ).

So let’s begin with a few examples of how thief doesn’t follow the above list. ( Please note that I don’t main or use the other classes as much/at all in PvP to give any insight, but I do know that thief isn’t the only class with these problems. )

So lets begin with utility skills.
Venoms are a HUGE offender of the above. They simply aren’t used unless traited for a “venom share” build ( which in itself is pretty average at best ).
Traps, they aren’t used period. The reason is rather simple.. traited or not, they are simply outclasses by practically every other utility.
How about utilities that actually follow the correct trend ? how about deception utilities ? They’re very good on their own, and if they’re traited, they can be enhanced to help your play style.

Weapon skills.
P/P anyone ? The weapon set itself has a huge weakness that requires utility skills to function properly (0 mobility for a class that’s supposed to specialize in speed.) ( Even at that, utilities/traits don’t save this weapon set tbh. )
It’s just a very awkward set in general that offers quite honestly nothing.

A class I enjoy playing that feels like traits simply enhance rather than make viable is mesmer. Let’s say I use GS + S/P, no matter how I trait, I feel like It can work. I might not be as effective, but I’m certainly not useless. Engineer also has this same feeling, where I can trait into anything and I can potentially make it work ( but that may be due to the raw #of skills I can use that can make any trait set up function in some way. )

I just feel like weapons should be first balanced without traits in mind to make them all equally viable, and really rework traits afterwards. Currently some balance discussions probably go along the lines of.

Dev1 : “Alright, well we need to tone down hundred blades.”
Dev2 : “Hundred blades is really balanced when it has a 10 second recharge.”
Dev1 : “well with our 20% faster recharge, it’ll go under 10 seconds”
Dev2 : “it’s settled, let’s change the recharge to 12 seconds then to compensate.”

This effectively makes the skill kitten unless traited to make it 10 seconds. See what I mean ?

If this post makes no sense, I apologize.
It’s just a jumbled mess in my head as well, hopefully my point has been made though.

I fail to see why you should be apologizing for saying nothing offensive, first of all. Second, I would like to say that I’m inclined to agree completely, ESPECIALLY on the bit about P/P for Thief.

By itself, it is an unreliable / weak / hard to make even remotely useful weapon set. Even with traits … it’s still questionable how strong it is, and furthermore, they tried to make this a hybrid weapon set (kind of like D/D) has both physical, but also condition type properties.

This just doesn’t work, period. They also spread the traits for Pistols through crit tree and the … TRICKERY TREE? Well if you’re specing into crit traits, I can’t see a need for going at least 20 into trickery as to make it “20%” more effective. And that’s another thing … did it really take them nearly a year to realize that the initial 7% chance to have a bullet ricochet to another target wasn’t worth squat? So they buff it to what, 10 then 20% chance? Oh still no one is using it?

Lawl … if you’re spec’d deep into trickery, I can’t imagine you’re aiming for a raw damage build, and it’s GOING to kitten the already weak damage of pistol … so why the ricochet at all? That damage is going to be negligible, and here’s another question … will it carry the same effect as the first shot? Will it bleed other opponents or just be meh added damage to a target you aren’t focusing? And then lastly there’s the RNG of whether or not it bounces to something worth a kitten having it bounce to.

Lastly … in response to OP again … if this is just a jumbled mess in your head. I’d like to know what your ideas are when you don’t have a jumbled mess in your head. ;P

Just saying, I agree completely. I really would like to see traits reworked in many cases. So many of them feel sub-par / like they’re just pigeonholing an already stale setup. Build diversity was really a letdown in this game. I spent the first 3 months after launch simply playing around with traits, just to find that most of it was mundane trash not worth using at all, and that build diversity didn’t really exist and that you had few choices to go with that actually made you more useful.

Go figure … all hype and no quality makes this a dull game.

…you guys should try dual sword on warrior…i mean… for real…

And the way this game is balanced feels like this:
Dev 1: hey, they complain about this being too strong, we should double it’s cost/cool down and half it’s damage.
Dev 2: sounds awesome! Forget all the calculation, lets just do this!
Dev 1: They didn’t complain about this, but it’s pretty much all they do in a fight (read cluster bomb nerf), so we should definitely make it useless.
Dev 2: awesome! This sounds like a good patch. We’re so going to be the next esport.

I mean. Some times it feels as if they do it this way…

Agreed. Weapon skills first, then utils then traits.

This just doesn’t work, period. They also spread the traits for Pistols through crit tree and the … TRICKERY TREE? Well if you’re specing into crit traits, I can’t see a need for going at least 20 into trickery as to make it “20%” more effective. And that’s another thing … did it really take them nearly a year to realize that the initial 7% chance to have a bullet ricochet to another target wasn’t worth squat? So they buff it to what, 10 then 20% chance? Oh still no one is using it?

Hmm Jes?
Just because a trait says Pistols in it does not mean you have to take both tbh. Ricochet seems to be indicating a bit of a playstyle tweak where you can do some side damage to other players/creatures. Tbh I think the trait shouldn’t exist but having traits in different lines is fine.

Lighter.5631:

…you guys should try dual sword on warrior…i mean… for real…

Made me laugh out loud. For real. Thank you.

On the serious note, I agree with OP, although I only read a few lines. He seemed like a nice gu… I trust he’s telling the truth!

P.S: “nice gu” equals “nice guy”… But it’s just the new cool way of saying it… In the ghetto…