Guild Wars 2

World ranks have been in the game for a while now and I think it’s time for some more constructive QQ.

First off, I am glad they are in the game because they reward me (additionally) for spending time in WvW,which is something I enjoy greatly anyhow.

That said, after earning a combined 250-300 ranks on four alts, I feel that there are some things that could improve the experience.

Account bound World Ranks
Apparently the reason for the character bound World Ranks is to allow us to get different builds on different characters.

Has anybody ever heard a guildie say “We’re taking Hills? I’ll better relog on my Siegemight Warrior then.” or “Defending briar? Time for cannon mastery necro.”?
I sure haven’t. On top of that, even if I made different choices on all of my alts, I’d still be inferior in terms of world abilities to my guildies with only one character as they can have the same abilities on just one character. Character bound World Ranks are not an incentive to try out different lines as ANet might have hoped. They are an incentive not to play your alts when you could be playing your main (so are the timegated gear mills known as Ascended Trinkets but that’s a rant for another day!).

Please make world ranks and abilities account bound so that the people who enjoy different alts feel less at a disadvantage over people who only play one character.

World Ability Reset
If one truly want us to try out different builds we need to be given the ability to respec. Maybe someone who really likes sitting in a tower went fully into cannon mastery and now realizes that ACs are even better. Tough luck, he can’t make a new build unless there’s another buggy update to merit us a world ability reset. It makes little sense that in order to try out a ‘new build’ he’d have to keep all his old traits and grind for the new ones. That’s not a new build that is just more traits.

Please, give us the ability to reset World Abilities every once in a while. To counter abuse one could introduce a cost or a timegate: One reset every 50 ranks or every 2 months or make it cost gems or 1s per point.. Just give us some way to undo misallocated world points, please.

kthxbye

I completely agree with the OP.

I Agree too.
I have several alts because in our small guild we dont have one stable WvW party. In stead we always have about 3-4 people groups because of RL.
And one party need ele, one necro, one guard, one thief etc
So I have about 100 ranks combined on my alts and each of them need to have AC mastery (as defending scout mostly i need this to slow attackers on our towers)

So yes, account abilities will be great to even try other abilities.
And reset every new ability is needed. Each month Anet introduce new ability and you need to grind for it.

I think allowing people to reset their world abilities on a whim would be a really bad idea, and I’d suggest making the penalty period longer. I think scheduled 3-6 month resets would be a good idea; not able to do it on a whim, but something that’s announced and that you can plan around. It’s not even necessary to have respecs at all- There’s no cap, so you can just keep working towards whatever WvW ability takes your fancy.

Also, account-bound levels would be fantastic. I’d love to level my alts in WvWvW but it feels as though whenever I enter on anything but my main I’m wasting my time. Even if WxP returns were reduced on a lower level character, if the ranks were account wide, I’d find it much less painful- And that might even help to disincentivise people from bringing their low-level characters to filled zones, as WXP from kills increases.

Also, it’s not actually in this thread just yet, but in case it comes up: Allowing different characters to have the same rank, but allow them to place their points differently, would be a bad idea. It might seem innocuous at the ranks we have now, but later on it’ll bite the game in the butt when people are pushing rank 500-1000; instead of respeccing or grinding for the traits they want, they can just powerlevel a new character through crafting and gear them up completely, for about 150g, at a high-end estimate.

I couldn’t agree more with this. Both of these are huge problems – I hate that so much WxP feels ‘wasted’ because it’s on the wrong character. And there’s literally no reason to make respecs impossible.

Even making it hard is unnecessary. Just make it purchasable from the Trait master for 5s a time like a normal respec, it’s not like it’s some completely overpowered ability.

In short: OP is 100% correct, and I hope Anet listen.