Guild Wars 2

Resetting traits costs all of 3 silver…go kill 5-15 enemies and you paid for your reset typically speaking. All of 3 minutes time tops.
Resetting them in main cities only makes sense from a practical standpoint. Your choices now have meaning and cannot be “covored up” by staying out of combat for a minute while you change things. Even teleporting around…add 6 silver to it and another 30 enemies. Seriously it is not that big of a deal…and no I don’t use a standard build. I worked with the traits till I found one that fit me perfectly.

Runiir.6425:

Resetting traits costs all of 3 silver…go kill 5-15 enemies and you paid for your reset typically speaking. All of 3 minutes time tops.
Resetting them in main cities only makes sense from a practical standpoint. Your choices now have meaning and cannot be “covored up” by staying out of combat for a minute while you change things. Even teleporting around…add 6 silver to it and another 30 enemies. Seriously it is not that big of a deal…and no I don’t use a standard build. I worked with the traits till I found one that fit me perfectly.

This. Respeccing is so cheap that it shouldn’t be a problem. SPVP players can select their build for free due to the intended competitive nature of the play format, whereas PVE is a cooperative format, relying more on a core build and ability swapping.

You are completely missing the point. I can’t save my builds the I invent either. Its not just the cost, but time and energy required to play how I desire. I am, in a sense, being punished for my choice in play style. It may not be a big deal to you, but for me its like grinding my teeth against the wall.

I agree, kinda annoying that you gotta travel to change your build. Its not like hes asking for them to add a reset trait idea in game, its already there but its annoying to use. Just make it from your trait tab(charge me if you want 5 sc ) but don’t make me pointlessly TP to a NPC to do it.

and for the love of the 5 gods+kormir make me save my builds so i can load them in no time. if i have to pay silver to do it or be in a city it’s fine, but please don’t make me do it manually

Yeah, sure it may only be a few silver, but if you go change trait several times a day, it adds up, ohh and you might make a missclick 2-3 times as well having to respec again, making another couple silvers on top too

Completely agree, check this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Tool-Build-Saving-system-Template/first#post1530738

Runiir.6425:

Resetting traits costs all of 3 silver…go kill 5-15 enemies and you paid for your reset typically speaking. All of 3 minutes time tops.
Resetting them in main cities only makes sense from a practical standpoint. Your choices now have meaning and cannot be “covored up” by staying out of combat for a minute while you change things. Even teleporting around…add 6 silver to it and another 30 enemies. Seriously it is not that big of a deal…and no I don’t use a standard build. I worked with the traits till I found one that fit me perfectly.

Experimentation takes reiteration. No matter what ya do, you always need to pay to get to the location, and then pay for the trait reset. If you can’t find the correct combination on the first go, you might need to respec 10, maybe 20, maybe more times. Adding up, you’ll end up using 100s-200s = 1g-2g on just finding a set of traits that is particularry effective against the types of enemies you encounter at the area you were experimenting for.
Now, why people do not do that, is partially because it gets expensive in the end, and its major pain. You need pen and paper to save the build, and a whole notebook to save different builds for different areas.

But to be honest, I wouldn’t mind the small respect fee if it would help stop inflation. However, it does not. All it does is stop experimentation.

And yes, I know, we can go to the mists and trait against dummies, but its not quite the same hitting a dummy as it is hitting a mob that has resistance to X, immunity to Y, uses build Z and has group behavior / does not have.

Runiir.6425:

Resetting traits costs all of 3 silver…go kill 5-15 enemies and you paid for your reset typically speaking. All of 3 minutes time tops.
Resetting them in main cities only makes sense from a practical standpoint. Your choices now have meaning and cannot be “covored up” by staying out of combat for a minute while you change things. Even teleporting around…add 6 silver to it and another 30 enemies. Seriously it is not that big of a deal…and no I don’t use a standard build. I worked with the traits till I found one that fit me perfectly.

I’m getting that you missed the op’s point a bit. While the cost is somewhat a nuisance, it is not the major prohibitive factor. His problem is that he likes have multiple builds/armor for any situation, just as he did in gw1, but cannot be as fluid switching between them. A similar post was made for multi-traiting, ie having multiple traits sets that could be switched to out of combat/out of dungeon.

Personally, I’m all for the ability to switch between specs easily, as I carry around 3 sets of gear (plus what I have equipped) for different situations, but have to run back to town if I want to make my traits match my gear/skills.

For me as an engineer, I have p/p/mf gear for farming orr, which I use with FT build, p/p/conditon for dps dungeon/general mess around grenade build, p/v/t for tankcat wvw/dungeon tanky build, and p/t/healing gear for elixir gun support build. Paying 3.5s plus waypointing isn’t the problem, it’s joining a group, realizing they need support, traveling to LA, respeccing, going back to the dungeon, and then halfway through having someone drop and get replaced by another dedicated support, meaning your dps suffers and there’s not much you can do about it (engineers are only really good in the roles the spec for, versatility is a joke).

A sane person would just give up and rukittenerker warrior for everyone, but personally, I believe that everyone should be allowed to play their way. If we complain/make suggestions and the developers feel the complaints/suggestions are valid and make changes accordingly, that’s great for us. If they don’t, it’s a shame, it won’t make me rage quit, and I’ll be glad I at least tried/helped someone try while finding ways around whatever is bugging me.

Thank you, and have a nice day.

I agree with this, its about efficency not cost.

I also had a differant build and sometimes armor set for any given situation not because those situations required a differant build but because that build made it more efficient.

Travelling to the nearest city then to where you was going is not efficient its a pain in the backside.

You and some guildies might decide to do 1 path of each dungeon in a day, So to be a well oiled team you may want to rework a trait or 2 depending on the dungeon but that means porting to the nearest city, then the time to respec then port back,
This is anti efficent and just makes life harder, not money wise but time wise.

I’m on board with this idea. One of my favorite aspects of GW1 was exactly what you mentioned. Buildcrafting WAS my playstyle lol. But when I got to GW2 I was really disappointed that not only did they not include a similar system for loading builds, but they seem to discourage running multiple builds on the same character. It requires multiple sets of gear (usually), you have to manually swap out traits, trait skills, use different weapons occasionally, and you can only swap your traits with the aid of an NPC that you give money to. While I doubt anyone will argue money is the problem, the whole system seems to point towards them being anti-multibuild, and yet the very core of their game demands that you be flexible. Idk it’s really confusing for me but I for one would really like the old GW1 build swap system back, or at least some version of it. If they saw fit to add in a gear swap option too, all the better.

Lily.1935:

You are completely missing the point. I can’t save my builds the I invent either. Its not just the cost, but time and energy required to play how I desire. I am, in a sense, being punished for my choice in play style. It may not be a big deal to you, but for me its like grinding my teeth against the wall.

You hit on something here that I’ve asked for in another long forgotten post… I’d love to see “Profiles” or whatever you want to call it where my traits and armor look one way, I change “Profiles” and now I have a different set of traits, armor, etc, you name it.

This would make it so that players could have a Dungeons path 1 build, Dungeons path 2, build, a PvE Build, a PvP and a WvW build all easily switchable to. I believe this feature would address a number of your issues.

-Mog

Mogturmen.2638:

Lily.1935:

You are completely missing the point. I can’t save my builds the I invent either. Its not just the cost, but time and energy required to play how I desire. I am, in a sense, being punished for my choice in play style. It may not be a big deal to you, but for me its like grinding my teeth against the wall.

You hit on something here that I’ve asked for in another long forgotten post… I’d love to see “Profiles” or whatever you want to call it where my traits and armor look one way, I change “Profiles” and now I have a different set of traits, armor, etc, you name it.

This would make it so that players could have a Dungeons path 1 build, Dungeons path 2, build, a PvE Build, a PvP and a WvW build all easily switchable to. I believe this feature would address a number of your issues.

-Mog

This wasn’t an issue in GW1. we had saved builds with the skill bar and attributes points saved in the build. What I’m asking for is something similar. Saving the traits and chosen traits in a pull down tab would be nice. Hell, they could do it like in GW1 where these builds where saved to our computer and not the GW2 data base. This would save a massive amount of time and a few silver that I can use for more armor and weapons.

Just to be clear to people who don’t know, you buy books to open the higher trait lines. You do NOT however re-buy the books to change traits. You simply talk to an npc and he resets them for a small fee.

As for the changing traits on the go (I think this is how I read it, correct me if I’m wrong its 2am ^^; ) I think PVE would be fine but not in WvW or Dungeons. At least not yet as classes are not balanced as is.

What would be nice is if you could save trait builds and swap at some point, either through an NPC or a timed limit. Basically Arenanet wants to keep the game simple and not complicate skills and setups more then they need to. So adding too much is going against their vision. And for some the quick and easy skills are a comfortable change from the 7-9 row skill bars and the 300 builds. Sometimes I play with UI entirely off

Geotherma.2395:

Just to be clear to people who don’t know, you buy books to open the higher trait lines. You do NOT however re-buy the books to change traits. You simply talk to an npc and he resets them for a small fee.

As for the changing traits on the go (I think this is how I read it, correct me if I’m wrong its 2am ^^; ) I think PVE would be fine but not in WvW or Dungeons. At least not yet as classes are not balanced as is.

What would be nice is if you could save trait builds and swap at some point, either through an NPC or a timed limit. Basically Arenanet wants to keep the game simple and not complicate skills and setups more then they need to. So adding too much is going against their vision. And for some the quick and easy skills are a comfortable change from the 7-9 row skill bars and the 300 builds. Sometimes I play with UI entirely off

I’m not suggesting a player be allowed to “Switch profiles” in the middle of combat, perhaps it would work just like it works now, you cannot warp to a Way Point or change up signets, etc while “in combat” – The same logic could be used to prevent the “Profile” change.

As to your point on UI clutter, it wouldn’t be hard to add a simple drop down and allow the user to select the “Build” they desire based on that drop down. Perhaps managing it would be a bit more tricky, but during normal game play, I think a simple drop down would easily do the trick.

Thanks for your input!

-Mog

I see multiple people responding with “build for this encounter” style…er…don’t pidgeon hole your build? Build to be flexible not to fight specific enemies. A truly good build is good against ALL enemies, not just one type. Perhaps THAT is your problem…the old GW1 mentality of changing builds to fit what you fight. That was NEVER fun. That was tedious and boring. It is far more fun to build how you want to play, what works for you personally against all comers, then just stick with it. Sure…may burn through a gold or two to find this perfect build, but once you find it you will never change it again.

Also…why are you writing it down? You cannot remember 7 traits or 3 numbers? Not that hard to remember…and I deal with number all day long, ontop of theories and psychiatric work. Your memory should not be so bad that when something works you forget it very easily.

I agree to the OP. While the cost for retraiting is marginally, it just is a waste of time running to the ‘retrainer’ only found in cities, every time you want to play a different role. The fact that you can’t save builds is also very very lame. You find a nice build, though you don’t wanna play it all the time, so you switch… but you forgot what your earlier build was… Mhmmm

Even in GW1 you have to be on an outpost or city to respec your toon. So the same applies to GW2, i don´t see the point here except for not having a fast gear change or build saving.

Runiir.6425:

I see multiple people responding with “build for this encounter” style…er…don’t pidgeon hole your build? Build to be flexible not to fight specific enemies. A truly good build is good against ALL enemies, not just one type. Perhaps THAT is your problem…the old GW1 mentality of changing builds to fit what you fight. That was NEVER fun. That was tedious and boring. It is far more fun to build how you want to play, what works for you personally against all comers, then just stick with it. Sure…may burn through a gold or two to find this perfect build, but once you find it you will never change it again.

Also…why are you writing it down? You cannot remember 7 traits or 3 numbers? Not that hard to remember…and I deal with number all day long, ontop of theories and psychiatric work. Your memory should not be so bad that when something works you forget it very easily.

Changing my builds all the time was a blast. I don’t know what you are talking about. it helped the profession from getting stagnant. Playing the same thing for hundreds if not thousands of hours is boring. I like to spice things up. And if my build isn’t good in all situations it means that this “We want your play style to be unique” mentality that Arena Net where selling doesn’t exist.

It isn’t 7 traits and 3 numbers. Remembering 1 build on 1 character isn’t hard. Remembering 50-80 builds across 5-8 characters along with the gear specs for each of them and placing where each trait goes for your character is a completely different story. And this is only saying that I could only find 10 builds for each profession, which is a pessimistic view because I believe I can find a lot more.

I agree with the OP for sure here. I am a builder, its what is most fun for me in the game finding different skill combinations, I can do this quite often in pvp but for pve it is not nerely as fluid as it could be and I have for now made all of my pve builds in pvp first then transfered them over, it would save alot of hassel though to create a way to reset traits on the fly and a way to save and load templates like on GW1, this would be a great addition to the game.

I’ve said this before, I’ve never had more fun making builds than I had in GW1. Partly, it was the sheer depth of the huge skill pool, partly the fact that it didn’t cost me a thing to change my build around, so I could experiment all I wanted. This is something I miss from GW2, and at least the latter part would be possible to change for better.

evolverzilla.2359:

Even in GW1 you have to be on an outpost or city to respec your toon. So the same applies to GW2, i don´t see the point here except for not having a fast gear change or build saving.

You also had to be in towns to make your parties, use trade chat, access your bank, ect so your point is moot. An instanced game cannot be compared to a persistent open game in that way. Quick load builds , however are a different story. We’re only using the methods in GW1 as a reference because I can’t think of any other game that allowed you that kind of flexibility. Here the restriction would be not being able to change it while in combat, which would be fine and still far superior to the current method. If pvp/wvw was a huge concern, Just lock them out of changing it at all in matches like they do already and for wvw make it so you can only change it in your home’s immunity area (which would honestly make it the same as it is now for wvw since the npc is right there, so I stepped on my own foot on that one).

Nay of the Ether.8913:

evolverzilla.2359:

Even in GW1 you have to be on an outpost or city to respec your toon. So the same applies to GW2, i don´t see the point here except for not having a fast gear change or build saving.

You also had to be in towns to make your parties, use trade chat, access your bank, ect so your point is moot. An instanced game cannot be compared to a persistent open game in that way. Quick load builds , however are a different story. We’re only using the methods in GW1 as a reference because I can’t think of any other game that allowed you that kind of flexibility. Here the restriction would be not being able to change it while in combat, which would be fine and still far superior to the current method. If pvp/wvw was a huge concern, Just lock them out of changing it at all in matches like they do already and for wvw make it so you can only change it in your home’s immunity area (which would honestly make it the same as it is now for wvw since the npc is right there, so I stepped on my own foot on that one).

RIFT, had something similar, you could save 4 builds from start (was later changed to 5, dunno if you got even more now a days don’t play it anymore), that you could change between as long as you were indeed out of combat, EVEN inside dungeons and such, and that worked pretty well

Runiir.6425:

I see multiple people responding with “build for this encounter” style…er…don’t pidgeon hole your build? Build to be flexible not to fight specific enemies. A truly good build is good against ALL enemies, not just one type. Perhaps THAT is your problem…the old GW1 mentality of changing builds to fit what you fight. That was NEVER fun. That was tedious and boring. It is far more fun to build how you want to play, what works for you personally against all comers, then just stick with it. Sure…may burn through a gold or two to find this perfect build, but once you find it you will never change it again.

Also…why are you writing it down? You cannot remember 7 traits or 3 numbers? Not that hard to remember…and I deal with number all day long, ontop of theories and psychiatric work. Your memory should not be so bad that when something works you forget it very easily.

One should always remember that other people have different opinions. Therefore, please do not tell me what I consider fun. That was one fundemendal idea of GW2: Play the game how you want. There are a lot of people who enjoyed finding out the weak spot of the enemies in GW1 and acting (including building your build) accordingly, some might even consider that a skill.
Besides, I think you agree that the various builds in GW1 were what made it so great. And those builds were largely thanks to experimentation. Experimentation that is now being negatively affected by the need to visit the NPC and pay seemingly small fee for changing the traits.

Runiir.6425:

I see multiple people responding with “build for this encounter” style…er…don’t pidgeon hole your build? Build to be flexible not to fight specific enemies. A truly good build is good against ALL enemies, not just one type. Perhaps THAT is your problem…the old GW1 mentality of changing builds to fit what you fight. That was NEVER fun. That was tedious and boring. It is far more fun to build how you want to play, what works for you personally against all comers, then just stick with it. Sure…may burn through a gold or two to find this perfect build, but once you find it you will never change it again.

Also…why are you writing it down? You cannot remember 7 traits or 3 numbers? Not that hard to remember…and I deal with number all day long, ontop of theories and psychiatric work. Your memory should not be so bad that when something works you forget it very easily.

Also to add on to what Fred said, there is NO WAY you can make a build that is good against every single enemy in the entire game (both openworld, dungeons, fractals, WvW etc etc)

They also made it so if you want to change your stats, you need to get a whole new set of armor, different ‘builds’ in this game typically require a combination of stats, traits and skills, and because it takes a lot of effort to get multiple armor sets, you are restricted in your experimentation.

Ash Flamerazor.8243:

They also made it so if you want to change your stats, you need to get a whole new set of armor

Sorry, I might have trouble understanding you, but last time I checked, changing armor wasn’t a requirement for changing traits.

Ash Flamerazor.8243:

, different ‘builds’ in this game typically require a combination of stats, traits and skills, and because it takes a lot of effort to get multiple armor sets, you are restricted in your experimentation.

People already pointed out that they’re carrying 2-3 sets of armor with them, which they can change for free btw, on the spot out of combat. Traits greatly limit changing the build for no real reason. (Yes, there is a money sink. Does this particular money sink stop or hinder inflation? No, not really. It has very slight effect when comparing to BLTC, armor repair or WP fees. Therefore, it is quite pointless.)

Fred Fargone.3127:

Ash Flamerazor.8243:

They also made it so if you want to change your stats, you need to get a whole new set of armor

Sorry, I might have trouble understanding you, but last time I checked, changing armor wasn’t a requirement for changing traits.

you quote his part about stats and reply about changing triats? you know the MAJORITY of your stats come from the armor?, and you cant truely change a build either without changing BOTH stats and traits.
Matter of fact i long wnated to try to make a shatter build or something similar to try on my memser, but becasue im running full Rabid, i have not really, as i dont feel like grinding out a whole power/x/x gearset

GummiBear.2756:

Fred Fargone.3127:

Ash Flamerazor.8243:

They also made it so if you want to change your stats, you need to get a whole new set of armor

Sorry, I might have trouble understanding you, but last time I checked, changing armor wasn’t a requirement for changing traits.

you quote his part about stats and reply about changing triats?

Oh, that’s what I was mixing up. Thanks for pointing that out.

The main impression I get about this game is its designed so whatever you do, you will win, whatever class and build you use, you will win, providing you dodge the insta-kill nonsense at the right time. There isn’t really much need to adapt. I get the point about individuality, its not really obvious to other players that you have ’ 5% extra fire damage vs burning foes ’ or whatever. This game actually reduces individuality compared to GW1 since there’s not much choice of armor, most people just wear CoF dungeon armor or Orr karma or exotic crafted or something, sure you could get T3 cultural but its not even exotic so you end up paying twice as much THEN you have to micro-transact for fine transmute stones, I actually usually transmute into low level appearance armor since it looks better, but then there’s no prestige to my armor, nobody recognizes like ‘cool you have that’.

Same with legendary weapons, everybody warrior is probably just going to end up with Twilight, where is the individuality in that ?

I actually play mostly Elementalist at the moment because you get twice as many skills and nearly all of your weapon sets are useful in different ways, your not just restricted to a combination of 2 weapons ( 10 skills ) which is are the most efficient, and you can actually do some interesting things with the traits, but you do still end up with general roles like ‘healer’ that you can just use in dungeons and fractals, but THEN when you want to go and farm orr, you don’t want to be going with a healing setup, so you have to go through the re-trait process, which then encourages you to use one build that works everything ( which is what I have at the moment ), rather then optimizing for various situations, this does tend to make the game less interesting.

Sounds like a good way to add a real time strategy teamwork competition to the game!

Ash Flamerazor. That is exactly the problem I have on elementalist. When I go healing I use d/d – water/toughness traits. When I go dmg I use staff – fire/air traits. Why do I need to put these traits up every single time? Can’t we just save them and keep them? We already had to pay for the skills (skillpoints), why pay more for the traits? :/

GummiBear.2756:

Nay of the Ether.8913:

evolverzilla.2359:

Even in GW1 you have to be on an outpost or city to respec your toon. So the same applies to GW2, i don´t see the point here except for not having a fast gear change or build saving.

You also had to be in towns to make your parties, use trade chat, access your bank, ect so your point is moot. An instanced game cannot be compared to a persistent open game in that way. Quick load builds , however are a different story. We’re only using the methods in GW1 as a reference because I can’t think of any other game that allowed you that kind of flexibility. Here the restriction would be not being able to change it while in combat, which would be fine and still far superior to the current method. If pvp/wvw was a huge concern, Just lock them out of changing it at all in matches like they do already and for wvw make it so you can only change it in your home’s immunity area (which would honestly make it the same as it is now for wvw since the npc is right there, so I stepped on my own foot on that one).

RIFT, had something similar, you could save 4 builds from start (was later changed to 5, dunno if you got even more now a days don’t play it anymore), that you could change between as long as you were indeed out of combat, EVEN inside dungeons and such, and that worked pretty well

That’s a good point, I totally forgot about the Rift system. I only played it briefly. Yeah I’d be behind this idea, having a limited number of builds you could fast swap. I think the fee should still be there though, I have no problem with the measly 3 or 4 silver it costs. I would just enjoy a faster swap, not many groups like waiting for you in a dungeon while you swap builds and gear between fights. No matter how many times I do it and how quick I click, it still takes more time than most people are willing to wait on and it hangs up the party unnecessarily.

I miss how GW1 you can save your build template and even share it through link in chat. Even if they maintained that miniscule fee, I would like an option to save my trait set up to change to it immediatly rather than reclicking everything back to the other build. It isn’t game breaking, but it surely does take away from being conveinient.

I completely agree with this idea
It would be really nice if we could save builds since i use 2 separate builds for pve/dungeons and wvw , especialy since my wvw build is really bad in pve.
Would also be nice if this includes utility skills/weapons/armor/etc.

So you could completely switch between 2 builds
That it costs some silver is not so much of a problem imo.

They could do it simulair to the town clothing in the Hero menu just a button that allows swithing between 2 (or more ) builds

Runiir.6425:

Resetting traits costs all of 3 silver…go kill 5-15 enemies and you paid for your reset typically speaking. All of 3 minutes time tops.
Resetting them in main cities only makes sense from a practical standpoint. Your choices now have meaning and cannot be “covored up” by staying out of combat for a minute while you change things. Even teleporting around…add 6 silver to it taand another 30 enemies. Seriously it is not that big of a deal…and no I don’t use a sndard build. I worked with the traits till I found one that fit me perfectly.

Because Higher level fractals are completely different than map dungeons and PVE is completely different than WvW. Yes, to maximize our efficiency we change builds and sets. Some of us change traits very often. We are not casual players saying “I don’t know if my set and traits are very efficient but I will handle it anyway”.

Do you imagine how much this pains an experienced player? It’s not about a few silver, it’s about the endless loading screens and the manual work. It’s time wasted when we were suppose to play not travel around. Add to this that some maps don’t don’t even have banks or trainers.

The feature of using secondary armor and weapon sets has been around 15 years ago. I don’t see why it shouldn’t be implemented in GW2. For traits as well. First slot should be free, and the more sets a maniac player wants, the more he can buy. Just like inventory space. I would instantly buy 3 for:

1) My berserker damage build
2) Condition damage wit Carrion set
3) Healing build with Cleric’s armor