Guild Wars 2

They have became “meta” traits for PvE since players HAVE to pick as much of them as possible as they stack multiplicatively.

Meanwhile in PvP making build(traits) more offensive can be done through other various ways.

Taking Warrior’s Strength trait line as he is the simplest profession out there:

Examples of bad % increase traits:

1. Stick and Move: Get damage bonus when endurance is not full.
2. Wielding: Damage increase when having sword/axe/mace in offhand.
3. Axe mastery: Increased crit damage with Axes.
4. Slashing Power: Increased damage with greatsword and spears.
5. Berserker’s Power: Increased damage based on adrenaline.

These traits do not change game-play of the characters and contribute ONLY to damage output.

Not all traits are bad, here are GOOD examples of offensive traits that add gameplay to character:

1. Reckless dodge: Damage at end of the roll
2. Death from Above: Damage and knockback foes when taking failing damage.
3. Distracting Strikes: Condition on interrupts.
4. Powerful Banners: Banners do damage when summoned.

They all add gameplay to Warrior. Normally you wouldn’t stomp banners on opponents or roll onto them.
Unfortunately they all are overshadowed by damage increase traits.

Here’s few examples how those BAD traits could be changed into GOOD traits:

1. Stick and Move: Can dodge roll while immobilized, but drains all remaining endurance.
2. Axe Mastery: Thrown axes bounces back into your direction, catching axe resets cooldown of Throw Axe.

Both require additional attention and allow player to make additional decisions when playing Warrior without directly increasing damage done.

No.

Stick and Move and Berserker Power are OK IMHO because they’re affected by active conditionals. The others are quite lazy design, and obvious targets to work on IF devs were interested on shaving max attainable damage even more.

I agree.
I definitely think the ‘get a % damage buff just for equipping a weapon’ traits are pretty lackluster all around. Truth be told, I’m not much of a fan of static % damage buffs on Sigils and Runes either.

Something like the Order Buffs from the LA living story chapter were a real cut above that lot on a gameplay level. I’d like nothing more than Sigil of Force to be left on the cutting room floor and replaced with Vigil’s Valiance or Quickness of Whispers.

I’m not sure about this suggestion. Not everything should be done in the act of execution, it will overload the players with information they have to remember/process when they fight. In other words they will have to make too much decisions in too little time.

Also these traits does change gameplay a person wielding axe mastery will be less likely to switch to another weapon.

I think you just have to make sure you’ve got a healthy balance of character building proactively shaping your gameplay across the whole of combat, and also giving you events within combat to reactively respond to. Esp; by segregating categories along character building slots.

Like;
Procs (Valiance, Sigil of Air) come from Sigils. Triggers (When Swap, When use Banner) come from Major Traits. Conditionals (If have full adrenaline, if Flanking) and Native Properties (Piercing, Bouncing) come from Minor Traits and Runes.

So that way it’s just not possible for you to overload your plate with too many reactive things to pay attention to, or have so many passive things combat isn’t dynamic. But all of your character building options still shape your combat experience in some way.

Vox Hollow.2736:

I think you just have to make sure you’ve got a healthy balance of character building proactively shaping your gameplay across the whole of combat, and also giving you events within combat to reactively respond to. Esp; by segregating categories along character building slots.

Like;
Procs (Valiance, Sigil of Air) come from Sigils. Triggers (When Swap, When use Banner) come from Major Traits. Conditionals (If have full adrenaline, if Flanking) and Native Properties (Piercing, Bouncing) come from Minor Traits and Runes.

So that way it’s just not possible for you to overload your plate with too many reactive things to pay attention to, or have so many passive things combat isn’t dynamic. But all of your character building options still shape your combat experience in some way.

I may be wrong but this seems to be from a power perspective where active combat is a given due to the high burst skills. The other aspect of the damage conditions will not work in this system. This is because condition damage is far more passive in damage then power damage. This is to make sure that conditions becomes a steady stream of damage if conditions were more active then it would be useless to take said actives because of the nature of condition removal.

Don’t blame ppl for beeing efficient.

I’m not really sure I’m catching all that.
Run that by me again?

The point is that with your changes you would reconstruct the concept of condition damage. Right now condition damage is a weak, consant stream of damage. Conditional traits combined with the forced Triggers would remove the consatnt part of the trait. If condition damage isn’t constant then it is useless because the conditions will be removed after when you reached the peak of your damage. Also by moving all the procs to sigils would mean that either:
-condition builds are pidgeon holed in taking certain sigils
or
-condition builds have no use precision
Both changes are unfavorable in gw2.

Bargaw.4832:

They have became “meta” traits for PvE since players HAVE to pick as much of them as possible as they stack multiplicatively.

Meanwhile in PvP making build(traits) more offensive can be done through other various ways.

Taking Warrior’s Strength trait line as he is the simplest profession out there:

Examples of bad % increase traits:

1. Stick and Move: Get damage bonus when endurance is not full.
2. Wielding: Damage increase when having sword/axe/mace in offhand.
3. Axe mastery: Increased crit damage with Axes.
4. Slashing Power: Increased damage with greatsword and spears.
5. Berserker’s Power: Increased damage based on adrenaline.

These traits do not change game-play of the characters and contribute ONLY to damage output.

Not all traits are bad, here are GOOD examples of offensive traits that add gameplay to character:

1. Reckless dodge: Damage at end of the roll
2. Death from Above: Damage and knockback foes when taking failing damage.
3. Distracting Strikes: Condition on interrupts.
4. Powerful Banners: Banners do damage when summoned.

They all add gameplay to Warrior. Normally you wouldn’t stomp banners on opponents or roll onto them.
Unfortunately they all are overshadowed by damage increase traits.

Here’s few examples how those BAD traits could be changed into GOOD traits:

1. Stick and Move: Can dodge roll while immobilized, but drains all remaining endurance.
2. Axe Mastery: Thrown axes bounces back into your direction, catching axe resets cooldown of Throw Axe.

Both require additional attention and allow player to make additional decisions when playing Warrior without directly increasing damage done.

No. The game needs a blend of active and passive gameplay. Not everyone wants to be doing stuff 24/7. Not everyone wants super fast paced active gameplay. That doesn’t mean people should be less viable just because they dislike having more gameplay-altering traits.

The game already promotes an active and skilled player through the dodge mechanic, blocks, blinks and overall positioning.

Also you would be surprised at how few actually play " the norm " in PVE.

i totally agree with OP. The passive traiting does nothing but be a minmaxing feature that does nothing to benefit the actual build diversity. you either pick more damage when this or more damage when that. or better you pick every single one.

I would probably like synergies more, since there is close to none until now.
by synergy i mean stuff like the engineers’:

• swapping to medkit trigger on-heal-runes
• getting swiftness via a trait on kit swap and then getting addtionally vigor via another trait

fictive examples for well designed traits that add diversity, meaning you can use skills in a different way than before, aswell as adding synergies, means a net of different skills, traits and runes working together in a meaningful way:

• Greater Conflagration: burning you apply spreads up to 4 nearby targets (120 range) —-— people could start using single target skills in more situations
• Active Defense: blocking a melee attack using shield stance knocks the attacker down (X s cooldown) —-— produces synergies with blocking skills and attack skills
• Slippery Ground: when attuned to water your attacks on blinded, moving targets knock them down (X s cooldown) —-— creates synergy between attunements and traits
• “Bed of Coals”: when attuned to fire, your weapon skills apply burning on knocked enemies. —-— creates synergy between attunements and traits
• “Come at Me, Bro!”: gain adrenaline each time you attack an enemy with a melee attack above 90% health (x s cooldown) —-- promotes not using a ranged weapon before entering a combat
• _ “I Meant to Do That!”_: When you get knocked down, you gain one bar of adrenaline and gain 3 seconds of quickness (X s cooldown) —-— promotes not using perma stability.
• Furious Healing: Reduces the cooldown for your healing ability by 30%, but also reduces its healing by 15% —-— creates synergy with runes that trigger on healing

it’s important when adding trait to not simply BUFF a certain way of play like those %dmg traits, but instead adding DIVERSITY, by adding a different synergizing effect or enhancing a secondary effect. only this promotes build diversity.

gw1 was full of those synergies. they all got lost in gw2. i believe it’s more “newbie friendly”…. the big boys in anet should start playing other games like diablo 2 and 3, to see that this concept was a successfull one, and the main reason why guildwars was alive for so long.

I think an important point that the op failed to clarify is that a change like this wouldn’t (read: shouldn’t) be an actual nerf to damage output, but instead of having simply damage boosting traits, cause the player to actually use the traits to get the damage boost.

Warrior definitely isn’t the only offender here. Look at empowering mantras on Mesmer. % boost traits don’t get any more boring than that trait. It actually gives you a damage bonus for not using your utilities.

If these borin passive boosts were replaced with active effects that boost damage instead, not only would it make pve more interesting, but it would also raise the potential skill cap for dealing hgh damage, and allow highly skilled players to do even higher damage than just with the boring % boosts.

pretty sure, they stack additively.

Ah, I think I understand your concern. You’d just be sure all major ways of building had some form of representation in each of these categories.

For example; We don’t have any condition-build-related Procs in this game as far as I know. (At least, not without relying on precision, which I agree, isn’t a good situation). So you’d just add a few. Like; ‘5% chance on Tick to gain a ghostly appearance and add Lifestealing to your next 3 Damaging Conditions. 20 second cooldown.’

Or something along those lines.

dont remove those traits, Just make them apply their % damage modifier to all types of damage and not only physical damage.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Ah, I think I understand your concern. You’d just be sure all major ways of building had some form of representation in each of these categories.

For example; We don’t have any condition-build-related Procs in this game as far as I know. (At least, not without relying on precision, which I agree, isn’t a good situation). So you’d just add a few. Like; ‘5% chance on Tick to gain a ghostly appearance and add Lifestealing to your next 3 Damaging Conditions. 20 second cooldown.’

Or something along those lines.

Not really the problem is you’re trying to put a playstyle in system which promotes the opposite of said playtsyle. Condition damage is for the most part passive, this is done so that the condition user has a relative stable amount of damage all the time. By forcing situational/trigger traits, condition damage cannot maintain the stability it once has so why would you play condition damage if it has no advantages over power damage.

Another thing you risk lies in your sigil when procs are moved to sigils alone it means all class has equal access to them and must be balanced around the class the proc works the strongest. So 7 other classes will have a subpar proc and will never take them thus never invest in precision because that’s why condition builds take precision to make procs proc more often.

Ps: what class do you play? because there are a decent amount condition based procs.

I was hoping this update would address some of them. Thieves for example have a number of really, really bad traits, like 5% Critical Strike Chance for ability no 3 or +5% Damage for Daggers.

Most Adept traits are better than that and yet these are Master level or beyond.

But alas, it did not seem important to ANet.

naphack.9346:

pretty sure, they stack additively.

Nope, multiplicatively.

How do you figure that?
I had active proc-based play on DoT classes all the time in WoW. Active Play was never naturally contrary to the concept of damage over time.

Vox Hollow.2736:

How do you figure that?
I had active proc-based play on DoT classes all the time in WoW. Active Play was never naturally contrary to the concept of damage over time.

Conditions in gw2 isn’t just “damage over time” conditions is about having a secure and relitively stable amount of damage with as trade offs being dps and set up time. DoTdoes not equal conditions, pulsing skills like wells are also damage over time (in my opinion as least)but are completely different from conditions. I may not know how the Dot in wow works (gw2 is my first mmo) but I’m pretty sure how conditions work in gw2.

The problem with making conditions more active especially on long cooldowns lies in the way condition removal work :

Let’s say you managed to get one of your powerfull power attacks off you can immediately work with making your next powerfull move hit since the damage is done the only thing the opponent can do is healing but that is no relative to the damage done to you. In conditions this won’t work let’s say you managed to get your active and powerfull skill off and you immediately managed to place your next attack and then the opponent cleanses them , you just lost two strong attacks because the first attack was still ticking. With power builds you lose around one strong attack per migitation skill with condition skills you lose more due damage over time aspect. You could wait untill your first skill is done but that doesn’t work. To counter this problem conditions must be spread over small time intervalls so less damage is lost when cleansed. The relatively long cooldown on active skills make it less suited for such tasks. That is why conditions need more passive skills.

ps: for me a proc means an effect that repeatly activates on recieving/taking a (critical) hit. What is your definition?

Def. agree on Dual Wielding and Slashing Power. Would be nice if these had more interesting elements. Just raw damage on a weapon set isn’t very interesting; at least add skill CD reductions.

Also agree on Stick and Move. Traits should not reward players for doing things that they should be doing anyway. Where does a decision come in here? Do you actively go “oh hey i should dodge roll and get my damage up”? Dunno about everyone else, but I don’t.

Don’t quite agree on Axe Mastery. It’s not raw damage, it’s crit damage, so it encourages a different stat weight; one emphasizing Precision to capitalise on the extra damage. Not the same as raw damage increasers, which don’t care which stats you use, so long as the stat you pick isn’t condition damage.

Completely disagree on Berserker’s Power. The trait introduces a conscious decision; sit on max adren and the damage bonus, or use a potentially powerful finisher?

A Proc is when the game randomly causes something to happen.
Although that technically covers a lot of things, you’re more likely to see the term when the random occurrence has enough impact to cause a reaction in you or your opponent. For instance, nobody really calls a Critical Hit a Proc, because it doesn’t do anything.

It’s true that the condi/cleanse structure in this game is awfully……..haha…I can’t even think of a polite way to put it. And if you were completely married to the idea of things as they are now, you’d tweak in the direction of things ‘counting’ for more applications such as all ticks within a time basis, or offering front-loaded benefits, or treating conditions like empty counters towards something else.

I gotta’ say, the condi/cleanse interplay in this game could die in a fire tomorrow and I’d dancing on it’s stupid spammy grave. So, admittedly, not really all that invested in supporting it in an imaginary hypothetical. You know?

I agree that they should be completely revamped. Traits should tweak your gameplay further than just not using adrenaline to get damage increase. At the same time anet should just eviscerate all other passive and bunkerish gameplays but those are just dreams.

Pyroathiest.4168:

I think an important point that the op failed to clarify is that a change like this wouldn’t (read: shouldn’t) be an actual nerf to damage output, but instead of having simply damage boosting traits, cause the player to actually use the traits to get the damage boost.

Warrior definitely isn’t the only offender here. Look at empowering mantras on Mesmer. % boost traits don’t get any more boring than that trait. It actually gives you a damage bonus for not using your utilities.

If these borin passive boosts were replaced with active effects that boost damage instead, not only would it make pve more interesting, but it would also raise the potential skill cap for dealing hgh damage, and allow highly skilled players to do even higher damage than just with the boring % boosts.

This man knows what’s up. Percentage damage boosts do not alter gameplay in any meaningful way except making combat encounters shorter. When traits like these exist, they also introduce artificial caps to weapon power, as now balance must also consider the damage increases through traits. Conversely, altering playstyle by making players “earn” the damage boost then allows weapon power to be “uncapped” and then the individual traits balanced upon their power level alone.

This is an extremely important factor that people against removal of percentage damage boosts should also consider. As an Engineer, I remember well December 2012 as that was the time when Grenade Kit damage was reduced 30% overall by nerfing the coefficients. The balance change was spun as reducing GK’s relative power due to Kits being made to work with Sigils. Instead of addressing the source of imbalance – Grenadier improving Grenade Kit condition application and damage output by 50% – Arenanet chose to make the baseline Grenade Kit practically useless, with the Grenadier trait bringing back prior GK damage output. Mechanically, Grenadier did not alter Grenade Kit’s playstyle as it simply added another Grenade. This is a prime example of a DPS output increasing trait causing negative balance repercussions on the baseline presentation of a weapon.

pza.8024:

i totally agree with OP. The passive traiting does nothing but be a minmaxing feature that does nothing to benefit the actual build diversity. you either pick more damage when this or more damage when that. or better you pick every single one.

I would probably like synergies more, since there is close to none until now.
by synergy i mean stuff like the engineers’:

• swapping to medkit trigger on-heal-runes
• getting swiftness via a trait on kit swap and then getting addtionally vigor via another trait

fictive examples for well designed traits that add diversity, meaning you can use skills in a different way than before, aswell as adding synergies, means a net of different skills, traits and runes working together in a meaningful way:

• Greater Conflagration: burning you apply spreads up to 4 nearby targets (120 range) —-— people could start using single target skills in more situations
• Active Defense: blocking a melee attack using shield stance knocks the attacker down (X s cooldown) —-— produces synergies with blocking skills and attack skills
• Slippery Ground: when attuned to water your attacks on blinded, moving targets knock them down (X s cooldown) —-— creates synergy between attunements and traits
• “Bed of Coals”: when attuned to fire, your weapon skills apply burning on knocked enemies. —-— creates synergy between attunements and traits
• “Come at Me, Bro!”: gain adrenaline each time you attack an enemy with a melee attack above 90% health (x s cooldown) —-- promotes not using a ranged weapon before entering a combat
• _ “I Meant to Do That!”_: When you get knocked down, you gain one bar of adrenaline and gain 3 seconds of quickness (X s cooldown) —-— promotes not using perma stability.
• Furious Healing: Reduces the cooldown for your healing ability by 30%, but also reduces its healing by 15% —-— creates synergy with runes that trigger on healing

it’s important when adding trait to not simply BUFF a certain way of play like those %dmg traits, but instead adding DIVERSITY, by adding a different synergizing effect or enhancing a secondary effect. only this promotes build diversity.

gw1 was full of those synergies. they all got lost in gw2. i believe it’s more “newbie friendly”…. the big boys in anet should start playing other games like diablo 2 and 3, to see that this concept was a successfull one, and the main reason why guildwars was alive for so long.

The last time players discovered multiple synergies across utilities, traits and weapons was during the era of the 0/10/0/30/30 Elementalist – and this was nerfed over a period of 12 months to weaken the class to the point that it was only good to build glassy with and kill before being killed. I wouldn’t exactly say that GW2 is bereft of Synergy as a result; rather, builds that have demonstrated extreme synergy have in general been considered a little “too good” and removed from the meta by dint of successive nerfing.

Having said that, I would love a return of things like Slippery Ground or Bed of Coals. There is also a significant lack of conditional triggers for skills, which is why combat is “spammy” – there is little incentive to combo your skills when they all do damage in different ways. The only classes significantly affected by conditionals are Thief and Ranger by dint of flanking. Comparing GW1 Freezing Gust" to GW2 Freezing Gust , it is disappointing that this legacy of clever skill design was abandoned in favour of making the game more “accessible”.

There is a point where treating players like idiots does have a negative impact upon the depth of a game and no-where is it more evident than within the design of the weapon skills for many professions.

The issue here is not % traits – those are fine. If you want more variety I believe more weapon skills should be added. Players should have a wider array of skills to choose from when it comes to picking which weapon skills you want just like the system works with utilities.

I think these traits are bad mostly because they are boring, but if you want to pick on passive traits dont forget the defensive ones.
These are often even more passive, to trigger something on hit means atleast i need to attack, to get a free Endure Pain or transfer a CC to my pet doesnt require any input from me at all.

So dont single out offensive passive traits, but take them as a whole.

Terrahero.9358:

I think these traits are bad mostly because they are boring, but if you want to pick on passive traits dont forget the defensive ones.
These are often even more passive, to trigger something on hit means atleast i need to attack, to get a free Endure Pain or transfer a CC to my pet doesnt require any input from me at all.

So dont single out offensive passive traits, but take them as a whole.

True, Engineer as a whole is filled with these lazily designed passive defenses. But I do think that this is a topic for another thread. We haven’t even touched upon crit-proc condition application traits yet, and how they contribute towards mindless autoattack spam.

MonMalthias.4763:

Terrahero.9358:

I think these traits are bad mostly because they are boring, but if you want to pick on passive traits dont forget the defensive ones.
These are often even more passive, to trigger something on hit means atleast i need to attack, to get a free Endure Pain or transfer a CC to my pet doesnt require any input from me at all.

So dont single out offensive passive traits, but take them as a whole.

True, Engineer as a whole is filled with these lazily designed passive defenses. But I do think that this is a topic for another thread. We haven’t even touched upon crit-proc condition application traits yet, and how they contribute towards mindless autoattack spam.

Currently crit-proc condition application is the reason why condition builds go for precision. Without such traits, runes or sigils, there would be very little reason for a condition builds to go for precision.

So i dont have a big problem with these traits because essentially they are a more interesting version of “convert x% of stat A to stat B”.
And untill we see a total redesign of conditions, i feel these traits are neccesary. Else every condition build will simply go Dire, because the added damage from anything else is not worth the loss of survivability.

MonMalthias.4763:

True, Engineer as a whole is filled with these lazily designed passive defenses. But I do think that this is a topic for another thread. We haven’t even touched upon crit-proc condition application traits yet, and how they contribute towards mindless autoattack spam.

Are we really going to talk about a 2~4 second bleed with a chance of 66% on critical hits?

Terrahero.9358:

So i dont have a big problem with these traits because essentially they are a more interesting version of “convert x% of stat A to stat B”.

I must admit I never looked at them like that and indeed it is an interesting vision we could use for other stat types.

I’ve been all for this idea since day one. Having direct access to percentage-based damage modifiers makes power creep too easy. They’ve fixed part of it with the crit damage rework, now they need to do this as well.

Black Box.9312:

I’ve been all for this idea since day one. Having direct access to percentage-based damage modifiers makes power creep too easy. They’ve fixed part of it with the crit damage rework, now they need to do this as well.

Fixed what ? Nerfing damage across the board for all classes is somehow a fix now?
It could have been a fix if they only transferred the stats and didn’t nerf the damage.

Harper.4173:

Black Box.9312:

I’ve been all for this idea since day one. Having direct access to percentage-based damage modifiers makes power creep too easy. They’ve fixed part of it with the crit damage rework, now they need to do this as well.

Fixed what ? Nerfing damage across the board for all classes is somehow a fix now?
It could have been a fix if they only transferred the stats and didn’t nerf the damage.

Being able to scale critical damage directly is problematic because it makes balancing much more difficult. By scaling it with an indirect modifier now they can simply adjust the ratio to increase or decrease damage by smaller increments.

And obviously just changing the scaling of critical damage isn’t the solution, but it was a necessary first step to prevent power creep.

Black Box.9312:

Harper.4173:

Black Box.9312:

I’ve been all for this idea since day one. Having direct access to percentage-based damage modifiers makes power creep too easy. They’ve fixed part of it with the crit damage rework, now they need to do this as well.

Fixed what ? Nerfing damage across the board for all classes is somehow a fix now?
It could have been a fix if they only transferred the stats and didn’t nerf the damage.

Being able to scale critical damage directly is problematic because it makes balancing much more difficult. By scaling it with an indirect modifier now they can simply adjust the ratio to increase or decrease damage by smaller increments.

And obviously just changing the scaling of critical damage isn’t the solution, but it was a necessary first step to prevent power creep.

That makes 0 sense. Just because it’s a % doesn’t mean you can’t apply math to it like any other number.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Black Box.9312:

Harper.4173:

Black Box.9312:

I’ve been all for this idea since day one. Having direct access to percentage-based damage modifiers makes power creep too easy. They’ve fixed part of it with the crit damage rework, now they need to do this as well.

Fixed what ? Nerfing damage across the board for all classes is somehow a fix now?
It could have been a fix if they only transferred the stats and didn’t nerf the damage.

Being able to scale critical damage directly is problematic because it makes balancing much more difficult. By scaling it with an indirect modifier now they can simply adjust the ratio to increase or decrease damage by smaller increments.

And obviously just changing the scaling of critical damage isn’t the solution, but it was a necessary first step to prevent power creep.

That makes 0 sense. Just because it’s a % doesn’t mean you can’t apply math to it like any other number.

It makes perfect sense if you actually understand what I said. Which it appears you did not.