Guild Wars 2

Hi Josh/the team..

I’d like to know your balance philosophy towards implementing specialisations; will it be similar to the introduction of healing skills (flavour, mostly unviable), the GM traits (some create new second-tier builds – rest fillers), or arcing slice (release slightly UP then buff once game has settled)?

Will this be used as a way to mechanically challenge players? I’m on to my fourth class now in order to continue pushing my mechanical abilities on this game. There are certain classes which desperately need a higher skill ceiling.

By the way this post got infracted when I asked it in the stronghold thread… am I the only one that thinks this is significant?

It doesn’t have anything to do with Stronghold, and as such posting it there would be off-topic and thus worth moderation.

I would say that it is unlikely that we will get much information about this here until we have seen the deep dives about the specializations, since we right now doesn’t really know anything about it and as such it would be more or less impossible to discuss it.

I agree, I think this is significant.

But I think we first need to get more infos about the specializations before getting the devs to answer pvp specific questions and before worrying.

Well, maybe I’m wrong, and at least they’ll tell us about their balance philosophy

We can’t even get 8 classes fairly evenly distributed in PvP with any kind of diversity. It’s safe to assume that increasing this to 18 will be disasterous.

Atherakhia.4086:

We can’t even get 8 classes fairly evenly distributed in PvP with any kind of diversity. It’s safe to assume that increasing this to 18 will be disasterous.

There are 4 strategies i can think of for every new trait/wep/util

1. Make it OP so people will roll it. Think Dea…Revenant

2. Make it unviable at top tier: a common trend for most content in gw2 thus far; the safest option however. PvE can still get something out of it, where variety is key.

3. Make a filler: think the virtues GM on guard. Probably would only be the case with traits/a fourth new util.

4. Employ autistic people to predict the meta and its multiple facets. vaible at top tier without shutting out its natural counters/count(ees?)

I think they might have an impact – I suppose at first people will be learning thier subclasses and after some time new meta builds may form, as one or maybe 2 of the spec can turn out to be OP or be more useful then others in the stronghold in fulfilling their roles.

Each new specialization is 5 weapon skills (unless ele), 4 new utilities, heal, elite, and traits. Plus a trait rebalancing unrelated to new traits, and an unknown degree of profession mechanic changes.

Even with the awful job they did with heals, 11+ skills per profession, one of them must be worth using, plus a whole new profession.

Specialization= New Masterie system ??
If it is so, isnt it just a pve thing

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/reimagining-progression-the-mastery-system/ ??

No, specialization is GW2’s equivalent of a secondary profession system.

Roxx.8713:

Specialization= New Masterie system ??
If it is so, isnt it just a pve thing

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/reimagining-progression-the-mastery-system/ ??

No mastery is further character progression, a continuation of progression after traits. I do think it will be limited to pve since they already have something of its like for wvw and it would unlevel the playing field for pvp.

Specialisations are about variety and are being compared to the secondary profession you could have in gw1.

Personally I think if they find it being too unbalanced they could always disable specialisations in pvp while they sort it out

I hope the specializations will bring a significant change to sPvP, because I think this game needs more build diversity.