Guild Wars 2

I’ll try to be extremely succinct.

The weapon traits hurt build diversity, and make players feel kitten when they try to use a weapon without the trait.

Forceful Greatsword – Make the damage and recharge baseline for Greatsword, change the trait to “Forceful Strikes – Might 5s on crit.” so it works with all weapons.

Axe Mastery – Make the recharge baseline for Axe. Toss out the ferocity. Change the trait to “Weapon Mastery – Crits grant 1 extra adrenaline, and gain a stacking ferocity effect” (similar to the Furious trait in ARMs tree)

Blademaster – Make the recharge baseline for swords. Change the trait to “Bleedmaster – 20% increased crit vs bleeding foes.”

Sundering Mace – Make the recharge baseline for maces. Keep the trait as is, except it applies to all attacks, and call it Sundering Strikes.

Burning Arrows – Make the recharge baseline for longbow. Change the trait to “Burning Projectiles – All ranged attacks have a 50% chance to cause burning 1 second.”

Crack Shot – Make the recharge, and 2 adrenaline on auto-attack, baseline for rifle, and just ditch this trait entirely. Rifle is barely worth using with it, much less without. Something brand new could go here. Remember, whatever it is would compete with Warrior Sprint.

Merciless Hammer – Make the recharge baseline. Drop the bonus damage versus stunned targets. The hammer auto-chain could REALLY use something fun, baseline. Maybe a blast finisher, or self-protection 1s. Anyway, replace this trait with a shiny new trait, maybe something like “Merciless Advance – Gain stability 1, 3s, every time you disable/knock/stun/etc a foe.”

Thoughts?

Funny how these things come back in cycles. I remember proposing something like this (making the “weapon traits” nonspecific to weapons) a long time ago. I’m sure others did it before me too.

No real objections to what you’ve proposed (no point quibbling over specifics), but there’s not much to discuss until Anet gives an indication that they’re interested in reopening the trait system.

Arguably the best thing anet could do is just get rid of trees.
Players get to choose;
3 x grandmaster traits.
3 x master
3 x adept
6x conjunction traits.

They can choose from any trait line tree to make a specific build for their play style.

A few people have brought this up, alot of people use the description of warrior to make a change like this. “Master of weapons” except i cant use hammer because of its in discipline trait line, cant use GS or Axe because of power trait line.

Heck even HOT gave warrior a torch and it might be the best torch weapon in all the game but no one uses the trait lines for torch.

The whole idea here is to lock certain builds into certain trait lines so there are FEWER viable options and thus it is easier for them to balance out the classes.
Another issue is that the trade-off created between having to spec into a certain line to improve a certain weapon through its trait creates opportunity cost.

More viability in builds means more balancing on Anet’s end of things. And I don’t think they want to do that.

Weapon traits has never been my favorite thing in this game.. while there are always must have traitlines and must have traits overlapping weapontraits.

I also prefer they just remove those traits and make some stuff baseline.

PS…. warrior also have the MOST weapons and weapon traits.. so this just DECREASES our total other traits options.

From a PvE perspective, these changes wouldn’t change my traits at all. I still need the might and dps boost from strength. I still need EA and phalanx from tactics. I still need the dps boost from berserker. I might be able to use different weapons or something to get a little more dps, but I feel like GS would still be the best weapon. In PvE the build of a warrior is more determined by its role as a might factory for the group than by weapon choice.

I can’t speak to PvP and WvW though. I can see how there could be more build diversity there.

Warrior trees are reminiscent of the old trait system where stats were tied to the trees themselves. It is amazing that we have never seen any changes to this. Like not being able to play Greatsword well because I do not want to take strength line? lol.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Arguably the best thing anet could do is just get rid of trees.
Players get to choose;
3 x grandmaster traits.
3 x master
3 x adept
6x conjunction traits.

They can choose from any trait line tree to make a specific build for their play style.

i like this idea.

I do like this idea, but this would be even less balanced. Like I would pick:
cleansing ire, rousing resilience, and heightened focus.
greatsword trait, endure pain trait, and brawlers recovery
shield block trait, berzerker reduction trait, and berzerker stun break trait.

That build alone would be very kitten good. And this is just me thinking up 30 seconds. I am sure it could be even better. The same can be said about other classes.

Fivedawgs.4267:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Arguably the best thing anet could do is just get rid of trees.
Players get to choose;
3 x grandmaster traits.
3 x master
3 x adept
6x conjunction traits.

They can choose from any trait line tree to make a specific build for their play style.

i like this idea.

It would get ridiculously O.P.,…but everyone is in the same boat now.

My condi fractal build can take furious, body blow, Rousing Resil, king of flames without having to kiss warrior sprint or fast hands goodbye..I can even throw in longer bow strings and actually make a condi build..not a “kinda condi”..or “the best condi I can manage.”

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

I do like this idea, but this would be even less balanced. Like I would pick:
cleansing ire, rousing resilience, and heightened focus.
greatsword trait, endure pain trait, and brawlers recovery
shield block trait, berzerker reduction trait, and berzerker stun break trait.

That build alone would be very kitten good. And this is just me thinking up 30 seconds. I am sure it could be even better. The same can be said about other classes.

It would be less balanced in terms of PvP, but would optimise PvE, raids,fractals. Ultimately in regards to PvP, when you create a PvP scene of pure chaos, everyone is equal now,…so in a demented kinda way, it still works. It would be Survival of the fittest, not survival of following a meta.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Arguably the best thing anet could do is just get rid of trees.
Players get to choose;
3 x grandmaster traits.
3 x master
3 x adept
6x conjunction traits.

They can choose from any trait line tree to make a specific build for their play style.

Dude the amount of power creep that would do would break the game.

Creating builds should be a pro/con thing not a “pick all the pros”

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

everyone is equal now,…so in a demented kinda way, it still works. It would be Survival of the fittest, not survival of following a meta.

That’s not how it would work. There would be a meta and it would be even more locked-in than the current one.

It would take people a day to figure out the god combinations of traits, and they would be up on metabattle and the forums in less that a week. Within two weeks it would become fairly apparent to which classes had the strongest god-builds and viola the meta is established.

All your system would do is increase the discrepancy between meta and non-meta builds.

Dand.8231:

Forceful Greatsword – Make the damage and recharge baseline for Greatsword, change the trait to “Forceful Strikes – Might 5s on crit.” so it works with all weapons.
……

Thoughts?

You Really really reallly should not have opened ur argument with this point. Really Really Really not a gooooooooooood idea to automatically give +10% dmg to our highest dps weapon. The meta builds dont have access to the strength line and berserker…..the meta build NEEEED to NOT have access to more gs damage. But ya other than that…..this change would work great for my own build and free up axe mastery builds….but because it buffs the meta builds that arent taking the strentgh line, its a big nono. You would need to change the idea a bit more. Honestly keeping it and making the might stacks work with all weapons is an option…..or divide it into 2 separate traits.

Cerby.1069:

Really Really Really not a gooooooooooood idea to automatically give +10% dmg to our highest dps weapon.

I think you missed the point a tad. I’m saying we need to shed the Weapon Specific traits.

I’m not saying we must buff baseline GS 10%, just giving an example of one possible route to that goal, ie basically rolling the effects in baseline to the weapons and creating new more broad traits from the remains. This is by no means the route we MUST take towards this goal. You may well be right, and a different method would be better, but the real point is the removal of the hyper-specific weapon traits.