I had been out of business more than a week and i lost track of the posts (thanks to Bezagron for his summary, helps a lot) , i’m sorry if someone already said something like this. I think that weapon variety and their skills are more a character determinant factor, subs are just going to be rated good or bad based on synergy with the builds and weapon traits are big deal when making one.
[Disclaimer, this entire post is pve wise]
I always wondered how much would be interesting to master weapons instead than classes for a hybrid horizontal/vertical/quality of life increase. Let’s say one could “master” #x skill trough a mix of quest and several reagents (new order mission reward and skill points?) to unlock it. Once unlocked the skill can be selected on the same slot #x of any weapon of the same kind (1h melee, 2h melee, weapon offhand, pure offhand etc…). Repeating this process could lead to a complete #1-5 custom selection. This would need some tweak regards animation but could be managed using some of the actual piece of existing skill and would also require some name altering.
The pros i can think about would be:
-From the simple time/material sink needed in the mastery competition to the ones spent in collecting more “skins” for weapon people previously didn’t use.
-Minor build tweaks without the need of a new weapon.
-More legendary becomes desirable, people could grab that legendary they always loved but used to sucks on his profession/build.
-It would ease the introduction on “new” weapons since the skill set won’t need to be strictly balanced as stand alone.
-At this point a single introduction like a new #1 chain could generate an entire new play stile (a condi guardian could be an expample)
-Close to complete controll over your character apparance and playing style.
On the other side there are some great problem. (for most could not find a viable solution)
-Meta-build: I would like to hear form some numbers guru the implication of a possible skill selection but i suspect it won’t, on average, be an excessive increase since most dps come from #1.
-Warrior F1: not sure… need help, pve wise they are a rare click.
-Ele and Engi: Heh, how about the poor dudes with no alternative (same kind) weapon? it would need new weapons in order to be viable, suspect would still be a mess with ele swap.
-No benefit to Staff, Scepter and pistol.
-Weapons like the ranger’s Axe pose a classification problem with related skill mixing results.
-Thief dual skill: it’s going to be hard balancing the #3 skill and it’s binding. This is a major problem as a main profession mechanic.
-Traits issue: are +% dmg, -% cooldown and special weapon effect traits going to work on the whole category or on the single original weapon skill set?
…Actually after putting together my toughs on “paper” it looks like a lot of work for a opinable addition. Still hope may be a spark for some better idea, maybe subclasses could obtain a exclusive 2nd skill set for some weapon?
