I’m more or less done with GW2 but always loved what the game could be, so decided to compile all the thoughts I had on different mechanics in GW2, how a number of tweaks could really change them, seemingly, for the obscenely better.
I bolded/ital important parts and put fixes in spoilers so any sane person could just skim threw it.
Complaints lately seem focused on leaderboards, queing and balance. Not that there aren’t problems in those parts of the game, but I’ve seen, many games thrive with worse, if any of those aspects.
With people who left GW2, the main issues seem to always come back to pug playing and bunker/spike conquest, instead of trinity/team-based.
The map and combat scheme is where great games define themselves. A few stellar ideas there will hold a population for ages.
When it comes to combat scheme, the trinity is a staples of the genre for a reason, it brings groups together and create innate, game carrying combat. It should never be tossed without just compensation.
The core of GW2 combat…
-lacks team dynamic in combat
-forces bunker/burst/condi
-rezzes
-awkward boon/condi situation
-mediocre weapon setups
-bad amulet-stat distributions
How well power/crit/crit-dmg scale together forces anyone interested in physical dmg to have to play as glass or cheese. Just power or crit will lead to negligible physical dmg… you have to run berserker or valkyrie w/ fury to do notable physical dmg.
Raw stats/traits/PassiveMight being the only source of hitdmg causes glass dps to be the only way to have notable dmg. Glass dps should be a perc (less situational necessities in dmg) instead of outright necessity (2~ in EVERY premade) to pull off the dmg GW2’s combat revolves around.To help that…
-other factors should be involved in hitdmg (spike debuffs/boons)
-crit damage should be dropped.
-power scales differently for dif abilities? (spike attacks have high base dmg but don’t scale well, auto attacks have low base but scale well)
The game should stray a bit away from trait-based passive dmgs bonuses, burning, exc. and more towards ‘active’ percs. Like gain fury and might for 2s along with 10 stacks of vuln for 2s on axe skill use.
Anyways, I’ll start where seems best, tweaks to heal skills and combo fields. That can improve the team dynamic, vigor spamming, make spike boon/condi’s, it’d make teamwork matter and spike dmg more ‘noob friendly’ and ‘skill dependent’.
The typical heal skill would pulse aoe heals and a short duration boon.
If you take the 25s CD heal and make it aoe heals at the area you cast it for 8~ seconds, healing allies for half it healed you, a group dynamic will form as people now have reason to group up…
Different classes, different heals
necros – a 10s~ Troll Ungent like heal, but it aoes out healing while in death shroud
Ranger – a 5~s spring that bursts an aoe heal at the start and end.
Most heals should, over time, pulse out 8s~ of vigor, sometimes a lil protection. ‘Easy access vigor’ traits have to be dumped though.
That’d kill two birds with one stone, create more need for good positioning and make vigor uptime scale mainly with fight size (get ally heal-vigor pulses) so dodges can always be a viable first layer of mitigation, instead of continually less effective as fights get larger.
(edited by garethh.3518)