Guild Wars 2

EKAN.4051:

Miss Lana.5276:

Zackie.8923:

it looks like crap to be honest.

That’s your opinion, and you’re entitled to it, but others – like myself – do quite like them.

But this thread is not about whether they look good or not. This thread is asking Anet to bring them back.

Agree, they do, and u cant fly either

You can’t fly with any wing backpack that they’ve given us, what’s your point?

This still isn’t about people’s opinions, this is a request to bring them back.

Q: How hard is it for people to stay on topic?
A: As long as someone can interject their opinion they won’t.

With the exception of stats the old system did factually allow for more diversity. That’s not even up for debate. In this system you are forced to pick from just 3 traits at every tier. It may seem better for diversity because you wont pick the pest traits in each line but its ruins creativity. For classes that can go against purely cookie cutter builds and players who enjoy the untraveled path this is actually a very bad development.

For example many traits that made builds that most people didn’t use work are gone. Like deployable turrets. thief is is a precarious situation because in many cases 4 lines and the minimal invest in SA was necessary to keep some sort of condition clearing while still running builds that weren’t the norm. As it is now some builds that don’t use stealth (like SP and PP) were basically gutted with this patch.

While you may disagree if you take a hard look at work could work before and what can now you’ll see many builds of certain paths were actually nerfed into uselessness for no other reason than they saw most of what made them work disappear for simplicity sake.

Don’t believe me do you?

Try theory crafting some off the beaten path builds and see how much synergy you can produce.

+1 for against new traits system.

Apparently Anet thinks less choice is more exciting.

I dislike that the Mesmer is so heavily incentivized to shatter illusions under this new system. At least that is how it really feels like right now. However, I wouldn’t be going as far as to say bring the old traits back. Even though I think lot of “bad” builds have disappeared, which is entirely subjective assessment, under this new system, I can see a bunch of limitations with it as well.

Only three specialization slots with three trait tiers with three traits each (see the trend here) means a few things. One it is difficult to add new traits to the game, right now it seems the system is designed so that the only new traits added will be through elite specializations or if they decide they need additional traits galore what they could do is add an extra tier of minor and major traits but this is a path that I don’t think would be very practical either. Increasing number of possible specializations one can equip is probably the most pain free way to extend this system if there is need to do so without excluding another option, however, with these new more potent traits (as in they do more stuff) the chance of unexpected power creep is real if this path is taken.

What is more, the current trait UI, although a huge improvement over the old one in my opinion (and really pretty to boot), it basically screams inflexible much like the old wallet UI and we see what happened with that in the end.

Anet pulled through, and introduced a transgender NPC into the game! A big Thank You to Colin for showing love to my LGBT friends.

Aid Worker Sya, formerly know as Symon. Tyria took one step closer to equality for all!

I agree. The 24hr window is bullkitten and it has to be on the day I didn’t log in! The news on the website should have been more clear and precise that it was only going to be available for 24 hours.

Releasing the long sought after White Feather Wings, only to take them away after one day is truly a travesty. This 24hr time window thing is absolute bull. Please bring them back Anet, or suffer my eternal wrath.

Thank you

Look I can’t do one of these 3 page post with lots of graphs, numbers, and charts. But I think I can keep it short and get he point across.

We liked it more, it had more diversity, and this one just isn’t really that much fun to explore.

That’s all I got. I know it likely won’t happen but……..

Knighthonor.4061:

nightwulf.1986:

If you don’t want to use the three grandmaster traits, you would be in the same position as those people who put points in trait lines without actually reaching the next major or minor trait in the old system. That was a thing. Degenerate builds I think they called them. It was allowed, sure, but it wasn’t elegant or ideal to allow people to do that. I’m pretty sure that’s the same conclusion they reached when considering all the people mixing only adept or major traits in a line and avoiding grandmasters. I’ve done it and I imagine a lot of builds do. This is where the question of design, intent and balance comes in. The devs have an intent for how they expect you to interact with the trait system and that’s why they are shifting the paradigm to make build choices clearer, redefining trait lines to include specializations, and changing up some of the grandmaster traits. If the loss of the sheer number of potential trait combinations is a problem, consider they intend to add new lines of elite specializations and the number will continue to rise with time. And some of those potential trait combinations really were a non-option for a lot of players as evidenced by how many took them anyway. So, not a real loss outside of looking at the total number of combinations.

people do that because in many lines the grandmaster traits were weak or useless for your build so you didnt take them.

That’s been established. But the changes coming up mean you either have to make the choice to select a grandmaster, or not select one at all and end up with unused points, much like how they changed the number of points in a trait line from 30 points to 6. Seeing how many people didn’t take grandmasters at all meant that grandmasters were too weak, unwanted, and being circumvented by players too easily. It’s speculation based on their recent design choices, but it seems Anet really wants players to use grandmasters instead of using only adepts and majors. They’ve made them semi-required now, the balance portion of this scheme is what it takes to make them desired.

Windsagio.1340:

Was deciding which off the many threads to put this in, this wone will do.

DIfferent builds aren’t diverse builds

Adding Bolt to the Heart and Vital striking and stone splinters didn’t change the way you played, they just increased damage (the limitations weren’t meaningful),

Taking all 3 symbol traits in the guardian Honor line, was meaningfully playstyle defining, and it required you downgrade your GM trait to master… So they made it so the ‘play defining trait’ is the grandmaster in the tree. Similarly in the same tree if you wanted to do shouts.

Almost all the ‘diversity’ people are complaining about is minor damage optimizations and nothing that speaks to the real play style.

In fact, that’s my challenge.

Present a play style that’s lost with this change NOT a specific build, but a way of playing.

I honestly can’t think of any.

Ok Let’s see what we got :

An AA tanking gardian lose either heal/defensive symbole for sustain which are in Honor or pure blind defensive power by spamming F1 in radiance or easy boon generation which is in Virtue. Overall it’s a net loss in survivability because you need this minor trait to survive and this is 4 different traitline.

Playing a tanky Necromancer based spectral, WH and siphon. I had a build that needed curse, Death magic, blood magic and soul reaping. A build really effective that didn’t care about bad GM trait. Now, I can stretch it in whatever way I want, I can gain meaning full buff here and there but whatever I do, I still have a net loss in survivability. (I could even say that these changes shut down any hope for necromancer’s siphon to have any usefullness ever, people tried and tried again it’s impossible DS hurt siphons and with these change DS will remain whatever elite specializations they can add)

Lot’s of mesmers builds are shaken to their very core because deceptive evasion is becoming a GM trait which will result in a net loss of dps, survivability and support.

I think it’s already enough for the challenge.

There is one more thing. This system, with the traits as they’ve been presented lock down a lot of prefession into their own weakness without any hope that a specialization may correct any of them.

The most meaningfull exemple being the necromancer which starve to be free from the shackles that come along with DS. DS prevent any buff to siphon and at the same time DS prevent siphon to be effective. DS prevent any new defensives means to appear because DS is supposed to be the defensive mean (with it’s strengh and flaw). DS prevent any new support because it’s also supposed to be the support mean. Each and every trait that are scattered in all necromancer’s traitline are Nails on it’s own coffin preventing him to see the light of an evolution.

And it will be the same for every other profession, this system only allow poor addition like the underwater DS that can’t even work with some of the necromancer’s DS traits.

Lana Del Rey.1873:

Totally disagree.
They want us to make bigger decisions, to actually think.

For the record, this is completely untrue. They want the process to be almost mind-numbingly easy.

Choosing 1 from a limited pool of 3
Then choosing 1 from another separate, limited pool of 3
And finally choosing 1 from another separate pool of 3

Takes a ton less thought than~

Choose 1 from a pool of 6
Then choose 1 from a pool of 11 that includes 6 new choices
And finally choose 1 from a pool of 13 that includes 3 new choices.

The psychology of choice in game systems is actually a pretty well understood field and “choose 1 of 3 options” is the holy grail of “most people can accept they’re just guessing in the absence of experience”. It is designed to reduce option paralysis and measured in those terms it will succeed brilliantly.

This system is not for dedicated build-crafters. It is for the most casual of the casual, like the New Player Experience.

runeblade.7514:

I don’t see whats wrong niche traits existing like “Expeditious Spirit,” “Amplified Wrath,” “Perfect Inscriptions,” or “Radiant Retaliation” as long as they have a purpose.

I didn’t mean that those traits existing was wrong. They’re interesting traits, and they can bring about some unique possibilities. But there does need to be some flexibility to where you aren’t forced to choose between a set of niche traits, or have an obvious choice you’re herded into picking.

The Radiance line has the first problem. You’d most likely be better off passing on the grandmaster trait in favor of another line’s adept. But that is no longer an option. If a more generally useful trait is put in the line, then that trait becomes the obvious choice for anyone not running one of the niche builds. This is a better situation, but still more limiting than the current system.

The latter the issue is what Zeal has, but to a more extreme degree. The minor traits (and weapon skills) are pretty much herding you into choosing Symbolic Avenger. Even if you are going for a niche build that could use the other traits, Symbolic Avenger is still the better option.

The core problem is being forced into choosing grandmaster traits. Its hard to give us good choices when there are only 3 possibilities for that slot. Being able to place lower tier traits there, or simply not investing fully into a line, give more opportunity to have niche traits. You don’t have to shoehorn in a general trait just to make the line viable.

I don’t know how anyone can look at the system for allocation and selection of traits, and think it does anything but limit diversity. I’m not referring to the trait mergers, new traits, removed traits, or the fact that there are overall fewer traits. For the most part, the changes to the traits themselves are great. It could use some shifting around between tiers and lines, but I don’t see that many issues nor have I seen many complaints about that aspect.

The problems are the very strict manner in which trait points are allocated (3 lines, all or nothing allocation), and being forced to take a trait from each tier instead of multiples from lower tiers. These two aspects, by their very nature, limit diversity. They are nothing but restrictions that limit the number of possible trait combinations and combinations of traitline/spec use.

Tell me then does this look familiar? http://images.mmosite.com/bbs/upload/2010/11/19/e9213598ea111fa2c8f321b47ad04905.jpg oh thats right…..

its what anet is mimicing with this change, only instead of being given so many branches to pick form up the tree we get 3 per layer of the tree, whats that under? that’s roots powers you unlock the more you put on the tree, but with gw2 bits baseline powers.

in rift these are called souls each of the 4 classes use, and that game’s build environment is very toxic, bring X build to Y content or you cant do the content/party-kicks.

the difference her ewe are getting even less options then rift’s souls

the people who say this 3 line system is better are dead wrong, its easier for the company to control what builds come into play an dhow they work, some people hope ‘elite’ specs fix this but it won’t. It will just create new premade builds with no diversity and if/when we get templates we will have people telling us to bring pre-made builds to content especially in pvp.

‘yo dude get your morter support build while our guardian plugs his bunker spec and our ele plugs their healing spec’

right now we just got demands for zerk builds, this 3 line system rails players into less build potential, gives the company more direct power to force premade builds and then if/when we get templates we will see these premades getting demands to be brought.

Some peole even say thats short term think long term, I AM! people say we got useless ‘traits’ now well down the road we will get useless lines instead.

the limited room of spec-lines means less diversity and more dedication based on that line, aka dps line tank line support/heal line. Its a dangerous change that could sneak the trinity into guildwar2

I know what I’m talking about, gw2 isn’t my first mmo and like others wise enough to see the signs, this is something gw2 doesn’t need because it will push it towards a bad place it doesn’t need to be.

Conncept.7638:

Galeskyring.9617:

Tell me then does this look familiar? http://images.mmosite.com/bbs/upload/2010/11/19/e9213598ea111fa2c8f321b47ad04905.jpg oh thats right…..

That looks like every trait tree since Diablo 1.

Rift is a more recent game, a toxic system for builds is never good, seeing it come here is a very bad sign people need to realize.

Galeskyring.9617:

Tell me then does this look familiar? http://images.mmosite.com/bbs/upload/2010/11/19/e9213598ea111fa2c8f321b47ad04905.jpg oh thats right…..

That looks like every trait tree since Diablo 1.

Useful diversity? Useful? To whom?

Some folks don’t care if one of the ‘new’ builds hugs corners better, or some other ‘new’ build can go from 0 to 60 in under 6 seconds. They’d rather drive the one they customized themselves from parts they scrounged from the junk heap out back. So what if it gets poor gas mileage and the windshield wipers don’t work. Is this game some sort of race? Is the EPA running Anet? The point being, these individuals paid for the game just like everybody else. Their money is just as (insert appropriate color here) as anyone else’s. Why are they the ones whose vehicles are being crushed into neat, easily stackable squares?

“Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” ~ Henry Ford.

When there are only three traits per tier (Adept, Master, Grandmaster), seeing a fall damage reduction trait fills one of those spots makes me angry and bitter. Traits and specializations should all be combat-oriented.

Yes, fall damage reduction is neat to have for jumping puzzle (JP), and JP is one of the major aspects of Guild Wars 2. However, I feel like ALL the fall damage reduction traits in Specializations should be moved into one rune family.

Anyway, thank you for reading thus far on my rant. I hope you have a good day!

Combine all Fall damage traits and “on revive” traits into pure “survivor” traits. Freeing up slots and making them more worthwhile as even if you’re not near a cliff it’ll help on pickups, even if you’re alone it’ll help you traverse area, less situational as it’d have more possible applications.

To someone like me who really loves making hybrid builds, the stats being removed from traits is really worrying to me. I get most of my power on my Soldier’s builds on my Warrior or Guardian from my traits and only my weapons and like two trinkets. This sounds to me like I’m going to be completely useless now instead of contributing to my team (god forbid I want to not die in like 3 hits while still being able to do some damage) and also that this will just make the zerker meta even worse than it already is. More stats to equipment? Sounds like a very nice bonus for people who run zerker builds. They really need to have some other way to get these old bonuses rather than give it as a base and to equipment.

binidj.5734:

The relevant blog post can be found at: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/specializations-part-one-a-primer/

From my first read-through three issues immediately cropped up: removal of traitline stat bonuses, (apparent) siloing of traits, and (Necromancer specific) ground-targeting wells.

Removal of Traitline Stat Bonuses
First off let me say that I don’t hate this idea as such, however what I do hate is the proposed implementation. Please, please don’t transfer stat gains to armour, by all means give us a UI attached to Specialisation with sliders (or whatever) to manage our stats but lumping them all (or the majority) into armour sets will actually reduce the ways in which we can tinker with our builds … and that would be a terrible shame.

Siloing Traits
From the blog post it looked as though adept traits could only be placed in adept slots, master in master slots, and grandmaster in grandmaster slots. On a couple of characters I have the current equivalent of putting an adept in my adept slot, another adept in my master slot, and a grandmaster in my grandmaster slot; will this be possible under the new system? If it won’t be possible then, again, we’re actually having flexibility taken away from our builds … and that is a bad thing.

I really like the idea of a character stat allocation page, where you get to place up to 1000 stats however you see fit in intervals of 50 at a time (20 points). This could work for pvp and all other regions of the game. It allows players just as much flexibility with stats as we have now, without tying them to traits (or specializations in hot).

Also, I have really like the flexibility of traits being able to go in any slot. Having three adept traits in a line seems silly, but can make some good builds. I’m so excited for the news in 12 hours, I can hardly bring myself to get on the game now… XD I hope the news doesn’t crush my hopes for this game.

There’s a simple solution, just like many combat-related stuff in Options panel, add an option to automatically cast ground-targeted skills centered on the player.

I completely agree.

It’s nice to have that option without spending a trait on it. But it needs to be just that, an option.

The Problem: mandatory ground targeting = not good

So Necromancer Wells and Guardian Consecration skills get ground targeting built into the skills with the new specialisation system. I am sure that this change was meant well and considered a free improvement for those skills.

HOWEVER, unlike longer duration, reduced cooldown, longer range, etc. ground targeting is not always and objectively better than having the skill targeted at the player’s location.

Yes it can be useful to have the option to place my wells/walls/whatnots somewhere where I am not currently standing. But it also makes the skills slower to cast and more fiddly and prone to mistakes. Placing the target takes time. And in a game where tons of visual effects are commonplace it can be hard to see where you are targeting the skill. And if you are unlucky the game will decide that the part of the ground you wanted to target is not eligible an the skill won’t be cast at all.

In most cases, when I need my well of blood I want it to appear right where I am standing and right now! If I want well of power for the stun break, I am already in a bad spot and I do not want to fiddle with the targeting, I want my stability and my stun break as fast as possible. Likewise, while a ground targeted wall has it’s uses (though in PVE it’s mostly for argueably somewhat questionable strategies when fighting Lupi ;-)), more often than not, if you excuse my terrible punning for a moment: I want it wall and I want it now!

The Solution: let us opt out

So PLEASE give us a choice in this and let us decide for ourselves how we want the targeting to work. It doesn’t necessarily have to be through traits. My idea for an easy soultion would be to add more options to the options menu in regard to ground targeting. E.g. let us chose between ground targeted or player targeted for all affected skill groups (currently only Consecrations and Wells come to mind, but maybe I forgot something).

TL; DR

Ground targeting for skills like Wells or Consecrations is not always better. Please implement a way for us to chose whether we want it or not, be it through traits or through the options menu or any other way you see fit.

Thank you!

DevilLordLaser.8619:

ArenaNet’s been working to get as far away from the Guild Wars 1 hundreds-of-skills mess as they can since GW2 released. This is the next step in the cycle.

Anyone with at least one point spent in Observation can tell what ArenaNet’s ideal is – they want to trade in number of choices for impact of choice. In the minds of the current GW2 dev team, given a choice between one choice with impact value 6 on a character (work with me here, kitten it :p), or six choices, each with impact value 1, they will go for the single choice every time.

This is mostly because we all remember what a balancing nightmare GW1 was. If they slim down to what are, essentially, traditional RPG skilltree systems in these new ‘Specialization’ bars, then they can restrict the interplay of choices a player can make and therefore do a stronger job of balancing things. No longer could someone go, say, 2/6/2/1/3 in order to get just the right combination of offbeat effects to produce something wholly unanticipated or undesired on ArenaNet’s part. Nope – now every gets to pick three different 6’s, no more half-treeing, but in turn ArenaNet can make the trees you do get to pick more powerful because they don’t have to worry about players mixing bits and pieces of all five(six) lines into one ridiculous whole…..

This is absolutely correct…but they did this in WOW and I hated it.

I do not mind the stats being removed from traitlines ,

BUT I do wonder how condition duration will be implemented, or boon duration or other small often passed by attributes…

I play a elementalist with 6/2/2/2/2: just tell me how I’m goint to build a comparable build now… I mostly use the minor traits….

I think I’m going to make a list of builds and check how many are limited by a maximum of 3 traitlines… Well here it is:

war 1 (PvE) 2/6/0/4/2 (sinister) or (WvW) 0/6/5/0/3 (rabid/sinister)
war 2 (Dungeons) 4/4/0/6/0 or 0/5/0/6/3 or 6/5/0/0/3 (zerk 3x)
war 3 (All-round) 2/2/6/0/4 (zerk or pvt) or (PvE) 0/0/6/6/2 (zealot/zerk)
grd 1 (WvW) 0/0/4/6/4 (clerics/nomad)
grd 2 (PvE/Dunegons) 3/0/4/6/1 (zealot/zerk) 3/5/0/4/1 (zerk)
rng 1 (All-round) 6/6/2/0/0 ((soldiers)/zerk)
rng 2 (All-round) 4/6/4/0/0 (sinister)
rng 3 (WvW) 0/6/6/2/0 (rabid)
thf 1 (PvE) 4/3/0/3/4 (zerk)
ele 1 (Dungeons) 6/2/2/2/2 (zerk or CELESTIAL??)
ele 2 (PvE/Dungeons) 0/2/0/6/6 (zealot/zerk)
nec 1 (All-round) 2/4/4/0/4 (sinister) or 6/2/0/0/6 (zerk)
nec 2 (All-round) 3/2/5/4/0 (zealot)
nec 3 (WvW) 0/6/4/0/4 (rabid) or 3/0/5/6/0 (clerics)
msm 1 (WvW) 0/5/6/0/3 (rabid or sinister)

The choice to drop a grandmaster trait so you can take a minor/master trait seems strange but this does sometimes ()well often) allow for more versatility, also some grandmaster traits are utter garbage. in some cased the same can be said for masters traits…

We’ll have to wait and see how it plays out, but it didn’t seem half bad and I’m grateful for the information!

My biggest complaint is to how it sort of puts on you rails. I don’t like being pigeonholed into exactly 3 specializations. What if I want to more deeply specialize in one thing, or hybridize into all 5?

Teon.5168:

This sounds like the OP hasn’t been playing the game very long.

After reading the WoW forums where they might have hours of waiting in a queue during busy times, I can see his concern. We are lucky to have a game that doesn’t have log on queues or has hours of downtime maintenance every week.

We don’t need new servers.
We don’t need players only ever aiming to get in the top 3 servers.
What we do need are players willing to join all the remaining servers.
…..sadly I don’t see that happening.

It stopped spawning vortexes, what should I do?

Edit: Just kited it with my pathetic 16-20 damages for 20 mins. Finally finished. The boss wasn’t hard to figure out and would have been fun if it hadn’t stopped giving me vortexes to use