Guild Wars 2

I think fall damage traits are too situational. What these traits say to me is:

“Easily circumvent fall damage while out of combat, but only if your current build happens to have 10 points in this particular trait line (20 if you’re an ele, just ’cause).”

For the most part, people just equip them, use them as a safety net, and then unequip them. Why would people running certain builds that invest a small amount in one line get a random way to cheat death that’s for the most part irrelevant to combat?

It’s just weird.

Suggestion

• Add passive effects to these traits to at least make them legitimately useful. Maybe combine them with the passive movement speed buffs that every profession seems to have.

• Make their effects widely relevant in combat, less situational.

• After making them worthwhile traits, either remove the -50% fall damage altogether or move them up to 2nd tier, so people don’t gimp themselves by putting 10 points in suboptimal locations just in case they want jump off a cliff in WvW.

I think it’ll be better if there was some kind of ‘common’ trait slot with a few triats you can put there that affect generic properties that can affect any profession like -50% fall damage or +50% damage while downed.

That way you could put it there and forget about it affecting the trait lines.

“Maybe combine them with the passive movement speed buffs that every profession seems to have.”

Well, not every profession gets a passive speed boost (I’ve posted about this a number of times), Ele, Necro, Thief, and Ranger get 25% passive buffs, Warrior gets 10% while wielding a melee weapon, and Engie gets 25% but only when in combat.
Guardian, Mesmer, Warrior, and Engie were given the short end of the stick here.
People will argue (and they have) that those classes have Swiftness skills so they don’t need a passive boost. Which is kinda stupid, relying on the Swiftness buffs to try to match the passive boosts means being locked into a specific weapon as well as 1-2 utility slots (for the warrior that’s the Warhorn and a specific Elite).
Someone, arguing against my suggestion, pointed out that the Ele can maintain near or perma Swiftness when built right. Great, and that helps my Guardian move faster than a turtle stampeding through peanut butter how?

If they added a 25% speed boost to the falling damage traits that would be great though, I could live with that.

“Make their effects widely relevant in combat, less situational.”

Not sure what you mean here, reducing falling is the point of the trait, want something more battle relevant? Pick a different trait.
That said, reduced falling damage has saved my bacon numerous times (when the game allows a mob to knock me off a cliff despite not allowing me to knock a mob off a cliff as a tactical move), and it greatly helps when wandering around the world, where sometimes to only way to escape certain death is over a cliff where the mob won’t follow (okay, and sometimes I’m just feeling lazy and want to take a shortcut). Having this trait increases my chances of surviving the fall.

“After making them worthwhile traits, either remove the -50% fall damage altogether or move them up to 2nd tier, so people don’t gimp themselves by putting 10 points in suboptimal locations just in case they want jump off a cliff in WvW.”

What?
You want it moved higher, and thus costing more, so people don’t waste 10 points to get it. Great, then they’d be spending 20 and gimping themselves further, rendering even more builds not viable. So people aren’t using the exact build you would, so what, if they can make it work more power to em. Here it sounds like you mean they’re gimping your team in WvW, not just themselves, but I could be wrong.
One solution however could be to take the falling damage out of the trait line and stick it on a signet. Combining 25% speed with -50% fall damage on one might be a bit much so you’d like end up with people running both signets (but hey, at least it wouldn’t cost the 10 trait points to get it and it can easily be swapped out before going into combat). And if in the process they gave the speed gimped classes a decent boost more the better (I don’t make this argument out of “fairness” in WvW/PvP, I make it because half my characters are a lot less fun to play because they move at a glacial pace compared to the others)

Edit: I like MithranArkanere’s idea, a basic trait slot with stuff like -50% fall damage or coughspeedboostcough would work well too.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

Edit: I like MithranArkanere’s idea, a basic trait slot with stuff like -50% fall damage or coughspeedboostcough would work well too.

I second that as well but lets make it cost skill points rather then trait points as the traits are already well restricted. This would have the added balance of slowing new toons down as we learn the mechanics and level the playing field at high levels because everyone will have spent those points along the way.

I like your idea Mithran but after 7/8 years or so of GW1 I’ve never seen Anet add new mechanics like that. It would be nice and GW2 could be different, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

“Make their effects widely relevant in combat, less situational.”

Not sure what you mean here, reducing falling is the point of the trait, want something more battle relevant? Pick a different trait.

By that I meant they could give different triggers to the effect of each class. Triggers that are relevant in combat. For example, engies could release a grenade barrage after taking falling damage or when… stunned or something. Not exactly like that, but that’s the general idea. Triggers. Or just a completely separate effect, something relevant to combat.

I also saw an old idea that suggested the effect could trigger whenever a player falls from any height greater than jump height, so you could just jump off of a fence or something and get your cool effect. It would still play on the environment, but it would work in a greater variety of environments.

“After making them worthwhile traits, either remove the -50% fall damage altogether or move them up to 2nd tier, so people don’t gimp themselves by putting 10 points in suboptimal locations just in case they want jump off a cliff in WvW.”

What?
You want it moved higher, and thus costing more, so people don’t waste 10 points to get it. Great, then they’d be spending 20 and gimping themselves further, rendering even more builds not viable. So people aren’t using the exact build you would, so what, if they can make it work more power to em.

Alright so the idea here was that people would put just 10 in a trait line fairly easily. Like, I have 10 points left and I could put it in this one trait line that’s more useful in combat, and this other trait line has worse combat traits, but it also has the -50% fall damage trait. So I go with that just in case I need to jump off of a cliff. I don’t think people’s builds should be influenced by such situational things.

If it was moved up a tier, you would have to legitimately invest in the line, you know? It would reduce this problem somewhat, but not entirely. Frankly, I think the -50% traits should be changed completely, either made more widely available or not at all. I thought others could see that as too radical, though, so I included the alternate suggestion.

Ah, fair enough, fair enough.
Doesn’t each class already do something different when it triggers? iirc Ranger casts muddy terrain, Guardian casts mark of protection (or is it symbol?), um….Mesmer I think drops a chaos storm, and the engie does actually drop a barrage of grenades when it triggers (I had to log in to check that one). So they do have different effects, but like you said those effects really aren’t that useful tactically speaking because of how far you have to fall to trigger them. At least a couple classes have skills that activate when stunned as well but those are grandmaster traits I think.

It would definitely be interesting if they lowered the distance needed to trigger it (except that the skill triggers on taking damage from falling, so without rethinking the skills a bit they’d also have to shorten the distance required to take damage, which would likely also shorten the fatal fall distance lol)
I’ll admit I hate spending 10 points to get them if I’m not already in that trait line, but they’ve saved my bacon so many times I’m loath to give them up too.
So if the falling damage and speed boosts were set up as some sort of general trait skills you didn’t have to spend trait points to get that’d be optimal [as long as they don’t make me choose between speed and falling safety:( ]