Guild Wars 2

Thanks very much for these great answers.

I suppose some sort of dilemma in which players seek optimal builds through either calculations or on the internet is unavoidable.

I will say this though: GW1 did it. It was a different game altogether, but for me it wasn’t a game of downloading build templates. It was a game of trying new stuff to see what works and what doesn’t. A factor that probably contributed to this is the relatively simple stat system, where numbers were a lot lower. This way calculating was kind of obsolete, but trying things was still useful.

However I am not that nostalgic and do enjoy GW2 ofcourse ;-) It has its own merits.

Thanks for your reply SlippyCheeze.

You make an interesting point. One I did not think through enough.

However, is it really a given that players will calculate optimal builds? Isn’t GW2 flexible enough with its skills to avoid this? For example: dmg of a certain skill ramps up so gradually, that one or two points of power don’t make that much of a difference, right?

I definitely see the problem though, as others aspects of skills might encourage player to calculate optimal stats for everything, such as manipulating stats to turn a 2 second daze into a 3 second daze…

Maybe if somehow everything related to skills would increase gradually and proportionally with these custom stats this can be avoided? It would make for an incredibly difficult update though…

Dear devs and GW2 community,

Since the last couple of years, GW2 has gained a lot of skill-dependent late game PvE content. Which I absolutely love. I stopped playing for a while, but I am hooked once more. But. Because of this new content, I feel a specific change in the way stats are determined would do a lot of good for the game.

*What I propose is this: Armor pieces/Weapons/Trinkets yield stat point instead of prefixed stats. For example: A body piece might give you 300 stat points, which the player can then attribute to stats like vitality or precision… Higher tier gear yields more stat point of course, so people still want that ascended stuff This proposed system resembles the PvP stat system somewhat(where all stat are on your amulet I believe?), but it ensures the relevance of each piece of gear you can equip.

This way, GW2 becomes a lot more flexible when it comes to changing builds. Especially with raids/fractals on my mind: It suddenly becomes a lot easier and more fun to organize an efficient team. Also, I believe this was(and is) one of GW1’s strongest points. In GW1 messing around with different skills and builds was amazing. If this is ever implemented, loading/saving build templates like in GW1 would also be a logical step.

Furthermore I believe it fits with the GW2 design philosophy, which is all about flexibility within the individual classes. I think a change like this will reinvigorate existing content, because a lot of people haven’t really tried being efficient with different builds(mostly berserker builds it seems). I understand that legendary armor already has an option to change the stats on the fly, but I think this is not enough for the majority of players.

This is my first post and I am curious what you guys think. Are there flaws in my proposal? Does it have potential?

Thanks for reading!