Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone,

It seems that Anet likes their Ability Lines and is currently building WvW content this way. Although interesting, the content additions do not add a lot to WvW and do not fix any of the bigger problems. With my ability line suggestions i try to work on punishing blobs and rewarding organised guilds a bit more.

Because we have to remember that there are two kind of WvW players. The ones that live for siege, defense, world pts etc. and the ones that love to fight in the open field. So far, there has not been any love for the latter. I bet we will see ram, treb or golem mastery (lol) before seeing fixes to actual problems.

With the help of new skill lines, we can start working on the blob issue (for example). Of course, there are tons of great ideas to fix the big issues in WvW but because Anet is adding content this way, i’ll try to provide solutions this way as well. Here are my ability line ideas, with argumentation. Feedback is always welcome.

All names and pts are placeholders of course.

Ravager

This line is dedicated to field combat and will help organised groups/guilds to deal with skill-less and mindless blobs. Also a bit helpful for destroying enemy siege without building counter-siege.

Destroyer – You deal 25% more damage to siege weapons with normal attacks. [5 pts]
Punisher – You deal 10% extra damage to upscaled players. [10 pts]
Focused – You recieve 10% less damage from AoE attacks. [20 pts]
Finisher – You deal 25% more damage against downed enemies. [40 pts]

The line above should give organised groups a small boost. Blobs tend to run with a lot of upscales. A big problem when fighting big blobs is that there are 20 downed enemies on the ground but you can’t manage to finish them because you got 30 other enemies chasing your small groups. While the AoE limit punishes both blobs and organised groups, i believe that AoE spam (fire and forget) is way too effective in blob play. smaller groups just get demolished. This ability line also helps with that.

Charismatic

This line will lure casual and PvE focused players. The line will encourage usefull play in WvW.

Karmatastic – You recieve double karma for escorting and killing Dolyaks. [5 pts]
Investor – Camp, tower and keep upgrades cost you 15% less gold. [10 pts]
Pillager – You recieve 25% more gold for capturing camps and sentries. [ 15 pts]
Treasure Seeker – You recieve a big Magic Find boost in WvW [ 30 pts]

Encourages Dolyak escorting and killing, upgrade buying and camp/sentry capturing. Lots of people might invest in this line to get the MF boost. In the meantime they might do more of these useful things in WvW, giving less attention to allied blobs as well, hopefully.

Note: Reduce centaur, krait and other monster population. They are annoying and might attract farmers with this new ability line, heh.

Note 2: I still have my doubts about this ability line but it might give good discussion.

Inspiring Hero

This line will encourage solo play and reward those who already do.

Savior – Ressurecting a Supervisor, tower or keep lord) will give them Righteous Indignation for 10 seconds. [5 pts]
Sharpened Spears – Damage of nearby mercenaries is buffed by 10% in your presence. (non-stackable) [10 pts]
Protector – Camp NPC’s have 25% increased HP in your presence (non-stackable) [20 pts]
Leader of the pack – A mercenary will follow you arround. [35 pts]

Allows people who play alone or who are outmanned in the mornings, to be more effective arround small-scale objectives. Interracting with an allied mercenary leader, will spawn a mercenary at your side who follows you around till he dies. Despawns after 1 hours, which is also the cooldown before you can aquire another mercenary.

Dolyak Mastery

This line will encourage more play around Dolyaks and supply control.

Dolyak Slayer – Deal 5% more damage against enemy Dolyaks [5 pts]
Dolyak Defender – Dolyaks in your presence (900 radius) have 25% increased HP. [10 pts] (non-stackable)
Dolyak Destroyer – Deal 5% more damage against enemy Dolyaks [20 pts]
Hidden Supplies – Always recieve 10 supply when killing a Dolyak. [40 pts]

Speaks for itselfs

Trap Mastery

While having only 2 traps available doesn’t really justify having a ability line dedicated to them, i hope to see more traps in the future. Especially one that can punish blobs in some sort of way,

- Fast Fingers – Place traps twice as fast. [5 pts]
- Throw Traps – Traps are ground targeted (900 range) [10 pts]

Thanks for reading. Let me hear your thoughts.

I think these are fantastic suggestions. I want trap mastery so bad but like you said need to wait until they add more traps. Its quite hard trying to figure out coming with new traps that would be as viable as supply traps though.

Looking at each one though some of them seem logically streamlined while others could easily be spread out into different WXP lines.

For e.g. Trap Mastery is sensible and streamlined

Dolyak Mastery makes sense but that is way too many boosts going by current standard it would be more like – Deal 2/4/6/8% more damage to Dolyaks then the 5th ability point would be Dolyak Defender and the 10th would be Hidden Supplies and if it requires a lot of points to max out , the Hidden Supplies should be 15 an not 10 (sort of like Defence vs Guards).

Inspiring Hero makes little sense to me, I don’t think it would be a valid WXP line that many would invest into ( a bit like buring oil mastery ) – Savior and Protector are the only questionable viable abilities there, I could care less about a Merc following me around (oh my god I can already see the buggyness there).

I am not much of a PVE-r so I would let someone else comment on the Charismatic line but it makes sense.

Now the ravager in my eyes is all over the place, I think that could easily be split into two separate trees or be key abilities in already existing trees. For e.g. I think the Focused skill could be #8 or #10 for Siege Bunker. Whereas the other three offensive abilities can be separated into an open-field mastery tree.

so going by ANET so far

- Trap Mastery & Dolyak Mastery are definitely viable trait lines
- Inspiring Hero would not work imho (not worth investing into) also some of those abilities can be added to the existing merc tree.
- Ravager can be split into a pure Open-Field Tree (for offense) and the defense protect skill can be added into Siege Bunker.

IDarko.4709:

Ravager

This line is dedicated to field combat and will help organised groups/guilds to deal with skill-less and mindless blobs. Also a bit helpful for destroying enemy siege without building counter-siege.

Destroyer – You deal 25% more damage to siege weapons with normal attacks. [5 pts]
Punisher – You deal 10% extra damage to upscaled players. [10 pts]
Focused – You recieve 10% less damage from AoE attacks. [20 pts]
Finisher – You deal 25% more damage against downed enemies. [40 pts]

The line above should give organised groups a small boost. Blobs tend to run with a lot of upscales. A big problem when fighting big blobs is that there are 20 downed enemies on the ground but you can’t manage to finish them because you got 30 other enemies chasing your small groups. While the AoE limit punishes both blobs and organised groups, i believe that AoE spam (fire and forget) is way too effective in blob play. smaller groups just get demolished. This ability line also helps with that.

I don’t see this one solving any problems. This would make zergs stronger too. In most zergs, people join into 5-man parties.

Wow. Traitlines that actually benefits the player who plays WvW and not with a stupid gear symbol over his head? BLASPHEMY!

Also

Golem Mastery!

RANK 5! Transform into a red and blue truck. Golem speed increased by 150%. Cannot attack!

Good suggestions here that never will be taken into consideration since we do not have Revive Mastery yet :/

Agree with all beside ravager…especially the thing on upleveles, they are already squishy and at a big disadvantage, no reason to harm them anymore especially the ones who are new players trying WvW

I’d really like these WvW ability lines, but only if Wexp points functioned in a similar way to character traits, i.e. we earn a limited amount of resettable points over time and allocate them based on preference to create ‘WvW builds’ (you’d still get increases in rank with loot, but no Wexp ability points would be awarded after a certain rank is reached). Currently though, as you can gradually learn every single ability in WvW there’s very little point in having WvW abilities that distinguish between casual more PvE focused players and the hardcore zerg busting WvW players.

Hmm, maybe Anet should create specific WvW traits lines separate to the WvW ability lines, so they can use your ideas ;-)

Trap Mastery:

Improved Stealth Trap: Stealth trap will now also blow up all golems within a 10000 radius.

I kid… mostly.

These seem like very well thought out suggestions. The only thing I would disagree with is the bit about up levelled characters. I understand it’s designed to punish blobs of people levelling alts however there are some people who have just joined the game or don’t even have the time to reach level 80 and I think it’s great that Anet makes an effort to let these people participate in content like WvW and the living story. Something like this would discourage new or time restricted players who I assume do a lot to support the game.

Thanks for the replies guys!

Some good insight here. The reason i went for upleveled charakters is because they are part of the problem. A blob is a wxp train, so people will level their toons by blobbing up. Punishing them a bit is not that harsh, considering that they are alrdy “useless” in fights. They are great for running supply, using utility skills, reviving, manning siege etc. tho. On top of that, i think 10% is not THAT much, considering that upscales die very fast anyways. But if most people are against it, any other good ideas that might give organised guilds a boost?

Lanimal, you have some good ideas. Defy think anti-siege could be added to siege bunker. Inspiring Hero would be a niche line, and let’s face it. Anet doesn’t shy away from making niche lines. Mortar, cannon and burning oil mastery are good examples of that. But yeah, it’s not a very clear line. It’s kinda “weird” i guess.

While Ravager looks a bit messy, i think it could be very helpfull. But maybe, more themed like you say.

Ravager:

- +5% damage against downed enemies.
- 5% less AoE damage.
- +10% damage against downed enemies.
- 5% less AoE damage.
- + 10% damage against downed enemies.

Then anti-siege damage with normal weapons can be added to siege bunker and the upscale punisher can be removed i guess.

This was my older version of this thread if you read this thread I’d take a glance at the link below as well. I’ll count it as my constructive input to this thread for more ideas.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Real-tools-for-the-WvW-player/first#post2179364