Guild Wars 2

INTRO

So, while explaining the differences between Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2 to my fiancee, it suddenly hit me…

To my knowledge (and in my own personal experience), when there is a complaint about the Guild Wars 2 skill system it typically comes down to it being too bland. You know that the Guardian standing across from you wielding a Sword & Focus has the exact same weapon skills as the Guardian in your own party wielding a Sword & Focus. So the only thing differentiating those two (as far as the SKILL BAR itself goes) are their chosen Utilities and Elite.

Compare this with Guild Wars 1 where you could see a Warrior standing across from you wielding a Sword & Shield and using completely different sword-based skills from the Sword & Shield Warrior in your own party. The Warrior across from you may have specialized in the Swordsmanship Attribute and be wielding Swordsmanship skills focused on causing Bleed/Cripple/Deep Wound, whereas your own party’s Warrior may have focused on the Strength or Tactics line, focusing either on delivering hard hits via Strength or utilizing Blocks and Stances/Ripostes/Parries via Tactics.

There is a stark contrast in what can be done with weapons in Guild Wars 1 compared to Guild Wars 2, mostly due to the difference in skill systems between the games.

But what if we could alleviate some of the difference while expanding gameplay AND all while not destroying the current skill system at the same time?

IDEA/SUGGESTION

What if an aspect of the old Dual Profession system was brought back…so that you could choose a secondary Profession and wield the Weapon Skills (ONLY the Weapon Skills, not Utilities or Elites) of your chosen secondary class?

For example, let us say that I am a Guardian who has chosen Warrior as my secondary. Both the Guardian and the Warrior have many over-lapping weapons available to them. Let’s pretend that I wish to wield a Sword & Shield, weapons that are common to both Professions. Now, under this theoretical system, whenever I wield a weapon for which both my classes have skills, I would be able to choose which Profession’s skills I have on my bar for those weapons.

So, as a Guardian, I would have the option to either be using the:

(A.) Guardian’s 1-handed Sword Skills + Guardian Shield Skills
(B.) Guardian’s 1-handed Sword Skills + Warrior Shield Skills
(C.) Warrior’s 1-handed Sword Skills + Guardian Shield Skills
(D.) Warrior’s 1-handed Sword Skills + Warrior Shield Skills

This new system could potentially be intentionally limited to help preserve Profession weapon identities as well, simply by only allowing you to swap one of your equipped weapon’s skill sets to that of your secondary class (IE You can have either A, B, or C from the list above, but you can NEVER have D. Or in other words, one of your equipped weapons must ALWAYS be using the skill set of your main Profession, so that you can’t just be using an entire other class’s weapon set with your own Utilities + Elite slapped on).

CLOSING

Obviously this system would not be balanced in the current game. I’m not suggested something like this should just be slapped on. But imagine if the game was made this way from the start or if the weapon skills system was redesigned to implement such an idea?

In my opinion, this would bring back some much needed variety and build diversity to Guild Wars 2, particularly to the PvP side of the game (not to mention the slew of options it would open up in WvW small-scale combat encounters as well as PvE…though PvE is not difficult regardless, so the tactical variety offered by this system wouldn’t change much there unless PvE becomes more challenging).

This would bring back the Dual Profession mechanic of the first game in the form of Cross-Class Weapon Skills, it would bring variety to the gameplay (imagine seeing an Axe/Axe Warrior…but using cross class skills on his main hand…perhaps throwing the axes by using the Ranger main hand Axe skills while keeping his native Warrior off-hand axe skills!), and it would potentially spice up the game and build diversity in a great way that hearkens back to Guild Wars 1 without entirely destroying the new and separate system that Guild Wars 2 has.

I haven’t really sat and fleshed the entire post out as well as I like, and it may be a bit of a read, but thoughts anyone?

I don’t see it working, as there are too many class specific mechanics on some weapons.

Do warriors with a mesmer staff get clones?
What about ranger skills that affect your pet?
What about thief weapons that use initiative, not cooldowns?

And the balance would be impossible.

Also posted this in General:

I’d say rather than dual professions, give each weapon slot a pool of, say, 3 skills (meaning you got a maximum of 9 skills on MH, 6 skills on OH, and 15 skills on 2H) that keeps with the theme of the weapon. I’d say it’d be also easier to balance cool-downs (say all of the skills in slot 2 have the same cool-downs, or marginally different depending on the effectiveness).

For example, Warrior Sword 5:

Riposte: As is.

Seeking Blade: Does damage. Also inflicts bleeding if the target is blocking (Sacrificing some defense for an attack against a defense).

Disciplined Strike: Does Damage. Also interrupts if in a Stance.

(Don’t take these as actual skill suggestions, they’re just examples).

IMO that’s kinda what turned me off the gameplay of GW1 a little bit. I didn’t feel enough of a sense of identity with a class, but maybe that’s just me..

I think they could do a lot more with the combo system, make it have more of an impact on the battlefield. And I mean there could be a system where you influence or change the way certain skills work, or giving them a certain ‘flavor’ from another class?

Exemplar.1479:

IDEA/SUGGESTION

What if an aspect of the old Dual Profession system was brought back…so that you could choose a secondary Profession and wield the Weapon Skills (ONLY the Weapon Skills, not Utilities or Elites) of your chosen secondary class?

For example, let us say that I am a Guardian who has chosen Warrior as my secondary. Both the Guardian and the Warrior have many over-lapping weapons available to them. Let’s pretend that I wish to wield a Sword & Shield, weapons that are common to both Professions. Now, under this theoretical system, whenever I wield a weapon for which both my classes have skills, I would be able to choose which Profession’s skills I have on my bar for those weapons.

So, as a Guardian, I would have the option to either be using the:

(A.) Guardian’s 1-handed Sword Skills + Guardian Shield Skills
(B.) Guardian’s 1-handed Sword Skills + Warrior Shield Skills
(C.) Warrior’s 1-handed Sword Skills + Guardian Shield Skills
(D.) Warrior’s 1-handed Sword Skills + Warrior Shield Skills

No, just no. It would never work. Firstly, there would be balance issues like D/D eles who end up with CnD. Secondly, there would be skill issues such as Thieves with their stealth skills and their off-hand dependant third skills.

And what would happen with all the class mechanics? For example, would choosing the main hand of a different class give Warriors new burst skills as well? Would choosing an elementalist MH/OH allow any class access to attunement swaps? What about kits on an engi?

And how would it work with an Elementalist? Would they be able to choose a different profession’s skills for every attunement, or would they have to settle for just one combination for all the attunements?

This new system could potentially be intentionally limited to help preserve Profession weapon identities as well, simply by only allowing you to swap one of your equipped weapon’s skill sets to that of your secondary class (IE You can have either A, B, or C from the list above, but you can NEVER have D. Or in other words, one of your equipped weapons must ALWAYS be using the skill set of your main Profession, so that you can’t just be using an entire other class’s weapon set with your own Utilities + Elite slapped on).

But how would that work with 2h weapons? Or Thieves who use only a mainhand weapon? It would be insane to implement a ton of new skills and then restrict those to setups that use an off-hand weapon.

Obviously this system would not be balanced in the current game. I’m not suggested something like this should just be slapped on. But imagine if the game was made this way from the start or if the weapon skills system was redesigned to implement such an idea?

The thing is, tons of skills would have to be nerfed as new combinations that arise would be far too powerful. And that would leave no one happy. Because believe it or not, there are people who play a class because of the skills they get. Those people have little desire for cross-class skills.

All these topics asking for new skills miss one thing. When GW2 was in production, they said multiple times that one of the biggest issues with GW1 was that the amount of skills was out of control and balancing was a nightmare.

And honestly, the ability to know what your enemy is likely to do is a rather important part of the PvP gameplay. Adding in diversity where you cannot guess what your opponent will come at you with before they’re already on you is just going to result in the “element of surprise” playing a far too big role in things.

I’ve posted about this before, but I feel like skills being “hard wired” to weapons is a good system. Where we could expand it is in terms of weapons being able to drop or be crafted with variant skills, and adding a sort of advanced transmute to combine weapons to get exactly the skills you’d like on your weapon.

This would also open up some fun loot possibilities in that weapons could contain alternate versions of skills with prestige effects, character shouts, and other distincitive visual flair which would really spice up the loot pool. Imagine that each named exotic had at least one “unique” skill animation effect for every class capable of wielding it for example, and that all rares had a good 40%ish chance to have some sort of unique version of a skill.

Instantly all of your loot is a lot more interesting, the economy is more interesting, and you can do a lot more to distinguish yourself visually and in terms of game play by deciding which skills you want on your weapons (standard skills are easy to find, drop randomly on blues+, skill transmutes are a cheap crafting service) and (optionally) hunting down any “visually upgraded” versions of those skills in the same manner you hunt down dyes or specific armor pieces for transmuting.

PopeUrban.2578:

I’ve posted about this before, but I feel like skills being “hard wired” to weapons is a good system. Where we could expand it is in terms of weapons being able to drop or be crafted with variant skills, and adding a sort of advanced transmute to combine weapons to get exactly the skills you’d like on your weapon.

I sometimes find myself wishing that a specific weapon would have skills from other weapon sets. But then I realize how much of a balancing nightmare it would be. Even if you were only allowed to choose from all the available skills in specific slots, it would end up with things like Warriors with axe auto-attack, Savage Leap, 100 blades, Charge and Shield Stance all in one. Or Thieves with Backstab, Heartseeker, Shadow Shot, Headshot and Cloak and Dagger.

This would also open up some fun loot possibilities in that weapons could contain alternate versions of skills with prestige effects, character shouts, and other distincitive visual flair which would really spice up the loot pool. Imagine that each named exotic had at least one “unique” skill animation effect for every class capable of wielding it for example, and that all rares had a good 40%ish chance to have some sort of unique version of a skill.

You would have to be pretty careful though. There are some exotics, plus of course Legendaries, that give trail effects, so giving flashy effects to skills could be seen as a bad thing.

Also, the visual effect was a big hook on the Molten pick.

Personally, I would love to have my human using the voice overs from other races, especially if they came with an awkward tone to them.

Olba.5376:

PopeUrban.2578:

I’ve posted about this before, but I feel like skills being “hard wired” to weapons is a good system. Where we could expand it is in terms of weapons being able to drop or be crafted with variant skills, and adding a sort of advanced transmute to combine weapons to get exactly the skills you’d like on your weapon.

I sometimes find myself wishing that a specific weapon would have skills from other weapon sets. But then I realize how much of a balancing nightmare it would be. Even if you were only allowed to choose from all the available skills in specific slots, it would end up with things like Warriors with axe auto-attack, Savage Leap, 100 blades, Charge and Shield Stance all in one. Or Thieves with Backstab, Heartseeker, Shadow Shot, Headshot and Cloak and Dagger.

This would also open up some fun loot possibilities in that weapons could contain alternate versions of skills with prestige effects, character shouts, and other distincitive visual flair which would really spice up the loot pool. Imagine that each named exotic had at least one “unique” skill animation effect for every class capable of wielding it for example, and that all rares had a good 40%ish chance to have some sort of unique version of a skill.

You would have to be pretty careful though. There are some exotics, plus of course Legendaries, that give trail effects, so giving flashy effects to skills could be seen as a bad thing.

Also, the visual effect was a big hook on the Molten pick.

Personally, I would love to have my human using the voice overs from other races, especially if they came with an awkward tone to them.

You misunderstand. I mean doing something like “expand the number of greatsword skills to 10, with 2x complete greatsword bars” Weapons will drop with a random selection of these skills slotted, and you can use crafting at a low cost to destroy one weapon to move its skill to that slot on the other. So, basically, if you wanted hundred blades and in stead you have th other #2 skill, you need only find a GS with hundred blades and transmute the skill to yours.

I wasn’t really thinking of flashy particle effects for the rarity options as much as variant animations. This game already has too many particle effects, but what if, say, in stead of a spinning cartwheel flip you could find a “unique” version of Death Blossom that in stead executed a ground based cartwheel, or one that sort of ballerina pirouettes with stabbing. If you could find a “unique” hundred blades that was a bit more acrobatic, or one that was one handed while you scream and beat your chest with the other hand. Stuff like that. That said, Legendary weapons aren’t the only weapons with unikittenfects. Many named exotics have unikittenfects that can’t be found on other items.

PopeUrban.2578:

Olba.5376:

PopeUrban.2578:

I’ve posted about this before, but I feel like skills being “hard wired” to weapons is a good system. Where we could expand it is in terms of weapons being able to drop or be crafted with variant skills, and adding a sort of advanced transmute to combine weapons to get exactly the skills you’d like on your weapon.

I sometimes find myself wishing that a specific weapon would have skills from other weapon sets. But then I realize how much of a balancing nightmare it would be. Even if you were only allowed to choose from all the available skills in specific slots, it would end up with things like Warriors with axe auto-attack, Savage Leap, 100 blades, Charge and Shield Stance all in one. Or Thieves with Backstab, Heartseeker, Shadow Shot, Headshot and Cloak and Dagger.

This would also open up some fun loot possibilities in that weapons could contain alternate versions of skills with prestige effects, character shouts, and other distincitive visual flair which would really spice up the loot pool. Imagine that each named exotic had at least one “unique” skill animation effect for every class capable of wielding it for example, and that all rares had a good 40%ish chance to have some sort of unique version of a skill.

You would have to be pretty careful though. There are some exotics, plus of course Legendaries, that give trail effects, so giving flashy effects to skills could be seen as a bad thing.

Also, the visual effect was a big hook on the Molten pick.

Personally, I would love to have my human using the voice overs from other races, especially if they came with an awkward tone to them.

You misunderstand. I mean doing something like “expand the number of greatsword skills to 10, with 2x complete greatsword bars” Weapons will drop with a random selection of these skills slotted, and you can use crafting at a low cost to destroy one weapon to move its skill to that slot on the other. So, basically, if you wanted hundred blades and in stead you have th other #2 skill, you need only find a GS with hundred blades and transmute the skill to yours.

Even with just 2 sets of 5 skills, by being allowed to pick any 2, you’re left with a total of 2^5 = 32 different sets and that’s for a single weapon. Right now, Warriors stand at the top of having the most weapons at 21. 21 is a lot less than 32, and clearly all of our weapon sets are not balanced.

Right now, Warrior has a total of 21 different weapon sets, each with 5 skills. That’s of course 21 different combinations you can choose from. But if you were able to choose from 2 skills for every slot for every combination, that’s 32*21 = 672 different skill sets for a Warrior. Oh, double that if you think of in-combat weapon set pairs.

Currently, Warrior+Necro+Mesmer+Guardian+Ranger have a total of 72 weapon combinations that require balancing. With your suggestion, it’d be 32 times that, for 2,304. And that’s not a manageable number at all. Naturally, adding in Ele, Thief and Engi would bring that number up significantly as well, but computing the exact combinations is a bit complex.

And that’s only balancing within the class. Balancing across all classes, with that many possibilities, would probably be an impossible task. Heck, even attempting to balance it would be a tremendous uptaking.

Mirror Edge + Hundred Blades.

Who is the real one? Oh wait, you’re dead.

disagree. It’s well within the realm of possibility to balance that many skills.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page

It worked pretty well for seven years, and I’d trust them to balance a fraction of that number within a much more limited and controlled framework as we have in GW2. Throughout my time in the first game I saw constant and air balancing that never threw anything out in the trash that wasn’t an extreme outlier. In addition, the problem with the GW1 system was the complexity and freedom of the bar in and of itself. This led to a lot of “trash skills” because hey, if I’ve got an ability that does a cripple, and an ability that does a cripple AND damage… well the straight cripple is usually not worth it in most cases.

When gauging skill interactions you had to consider literally every other skill on every other profession on the same bar, factor in that everything that wasn’t a condition stacked with other effects of the same type, etc. This system is FAR simplified. There are a limited number of buffs and debuffs with static effects, and what’s more, any given skill would only ever need gauged in terms of its interactions with three utilities, one elite (and let’s face it, elites more often than not don’t interact meaningfully with any other skill on your bar anyway), and a maximum of four other weapon skills from an extremely limited pool at a time.

That’s EXTREMELY limited in scope compared to the first game, where each character had around 100 skills per class by the time EOTN hit, that, with the exception of elites, could be slotted in any combination on an 8 slot bar, were buffs/debuffs all by themselves, and every character had two classes. Here you’ve got seven skills with extreme exclusivity requirements, and only three that are “freeform” in the manner that GW1 skills were. I really, Really don’t think making a pass on professions and adding an alternate 1/2/3/4/5 option per weapon (and many classes have offhand-only limits on several types, further cutting this number) is outside the realm of possibility for reasonable balance.

PopeUrban.2578:

It worked pretty well for seven years, and I’d trust them to balance a fraction of that number within a much more limited and controlled framework as we have in GW2.

Yes, it worked so well that we have developers saying that one of the reasons GW2 was made because balancing GW1 was a freaking nightmare.

When gauging skill interactions you had to consider literally every other skill on every other profession on the same bar, factor in that everything that wasn’t a condition stacked with other effects of the same type, etc. This system is FAR simplified. There are a limited number of buffs and debuffs with static effects, and what’s more, any given skill would only ever need gauged in terms of its interactions with three utilities, one elite (and let’s face it, elites more often than not don’t interact meaningfully with any other skill on your bar anyway), and a maximum of four other weapon skills from an extremely limited pool at a time.

That’s EXTREMELY limited in scope compared to the first game, where each character had around 100 skills per class by the time EOTN hit, that, with the exception of elites, could be slotted in any combination on an 8 slot bar, were buffs/debuffs all by themselves, and every character had two classes. Here you’ve got seven skills with extreme exclusivity requirements, and only three that are “freeform” in the manner that GW1 skills were. I really, Really don’t think making a pass on professions and adding an alternate 1/2/3/4/5 option per weapon (and many classes have offhand-only limits on several types, further cutting this number) is outside the realm of possibility for reasonable balance.

It might be a limited scope in comparison, but that does not mean that it’s not going to produce issues.

And even if you discard the balance issue as irrelevant, that still does not solve the issues with class-specific mechanics such as Warrior burst skills, Thief dualwield and elementalist attunements.

And heck, even if it was all somehow doable, that does not make it a good thing. The classes are there so that they are unique. Your option would kinda make that go away. Thieves lose their unique stealth because all dagger-wielding classes could get Cloak and Dagger. Guardians lose their unique symbols. Mesmers would lose their phantasms and illusions. Necromancers would lose their Marks.

And to answer the question you will ask: No, it’s never worth it to lose class uniqueness in the name of build diversity. You can get build diversity elsewhere, but you cannot get back the feeling of uniqueness if you take away classes. After all, the only difference between two professions of the same race is the profession.

Can’t work because of the lack on an energy bar. Or for non-GW1 players, mana bar.

With only cooldown restrictions to the spells, a warrior could be excaty as good at spellcasting az an elementalist.

Can you imagine a warrior blinking at you and then using Time Warp to boost his haste a bit? Or with elementalist skill RTL?

Or a ranger with necromancer minions.

Gandarel.5091:

Can’t work because of the lack on an energy bar. Or for non-GW1 players, mana bar.

With only cooldown restrictions to the spells, a warrior could be excaty as good at spellcasting az an elementalist.

Can you imagine a warrior blinking at you and then using Time Warp to boost his haste a bit? Or with elementalist skill RTL?

Or a ranger with necromancer minions.

Time warp is an elite skill. Necro minions are all utilities, heals or elites. The OP is talking about weapon skills only.

And even then, he’s only talking about using weapon skills of a specific weapon. For example, a Warrior could use the GS skills of a Guardian, but not the dagger skills of an elementalist, as Warriors cannot use a dagger.

Naturally, that brings troublesome issues with all dagger classes gaining access to Cloak and Dagger.

Olba.5376:

And to answer the question you will ask: No, it’s never worth it to lose class uniqueness in the name of build diversity. You can get build diversity elsewhere, but you cannot get back the feeling of uniqueness if you take away classes. After all, the only difference between two professions of the same race is the profession.

What? Again, no. Thief dagger skills are not = other class’s dagger skills. You’d be developing 5x dagger skills for thief, 5x for ele (per attunement) etc.

I don’t know where you got the idea that I was suggesting a “Give other classes each other’s skills” idea as you’re right. It’s a stupid and horrible one that would completely screw up traits, class specific mechanics, and a host of other things. I’m suggesting a single alternate option for each individual slot per weapon, per class

I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear about that.

Also, the GW2 system was put in to place not because managing the skills from a balance standpoint was excessive, but because the dynamics of the skills creates too much potential for “trash builds” and often, due to the freeform interaction of the way the skill bars were set up, some skills were just plain not useful because they didn’t synergize well with anything. Additionally, it became a chore to add new skills because of these factors. You can’t just add a given skill to a class in GW1 that’s extremely similar to another because it often has no value. In GW2, something as simple as giving, say, the warrior greatsword the option of either hundred blades OR a lesser damage PBAoE is actually a valuable skill addition, despite the fact that the warrior has other PBAoE options. It doesn’t devalue the skill as it would in GW1 because that warrior has a finite and controlled number of mutually exclusive attacks on the greatsword. Thus, if you like the current setup of mixed mobility and high rooted damage, you can still use that, but you’re given damage options on the mobility slots, and mobility options on the damage slots. The weapon fulfills the same two basic roles, but its given to the player to choose how heavily slanted his GS is one way or the other.

Thus, in stead of viewing weapons per profession as suited to one specific role, you’re designing two complimentary roles and allowing the player to tweak by selecting those choices.

The GW2 weapon skill system is a much more controlled system for that reason, and for that reason it’s actually much easier to QA skill additions because there are far far fewer potential build interactions. In fact, GW2’s combat system is better suited to adding skills than the GW1 system because of the massive exclusivity requirements. The vast majority of skills are locked to a specific place on the bar, which are mutually exclusive to every other skill on the bar. Bumping up the potential number of weapon skills is no harder a QA check than adding an extra healing slot skill because _all weapon skills are locked to a slot, and all weapon skills per slot are mutually exclusive with one another.