Guild Wars 2

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As an alternative option, why not a ‘Hard Mode Toggle’?

When you enter a zone, it gives you the option to switch this toggle on. When this toggle is on, the only way you can switch it off is by leaving the area, and then it goes onto a cooldown.

The toggle would:

• Apply scaling to gear stats, trait stats ect.
• Reduces stats by a further 10%
• Reduces the effectiveness of Traits, Sigils ect.
• Reduces boon duration and condition duration that you inflict.
• Increases condition duration applied to you

And so on, with increased rewards (bonus gold, karma ect).

Since this only affects your character, there’d be no need for creating seperate maps.

Maybe even make it so you have a list of debuffs you can choose rom, similar to the Gambits in the Queen’s Jubilee?

The Megaserver System: World Bosses and Events

• The large scale fights will now be on a schedule, and will start at the same time on each copy of the map. The Orr temple events will not be affected by this.
• Any fight in the list that didn’t have a failiure timer on it will recieve one in order to keep the schedule.
• Some bosses have had difficulty, event chains and abilities updated.
• Guilds will be able to activate these events at will, providing they don’t conflict with the schedule.

The Megaserver System: Guilds and the Future

• Working on a way to unify all chapters of guilds that are spread over different servers.
• No intention to remove server affiliation from WvW.

I somewhat agree that more could be done to make the word bosses more engaging (there’s a serious problem if you don’t need to play a game to win – winning in this case beating the boss).

• Add zerg and stack breaking abilities. For exampe, deals more damage the more people it hits. Likewise, mix in some abilities that do less damage the more people it hits.
• Add scaling of the mechanics. For example, the Underworld Portals of Shadow Behemoth. The more people, the more portals which are spread out (say, an extra portal for every 4 players) and then extra adds (starting at 4 with an extra 1 per player, which resets to 4 adds when an extra portal spawns).
• Have abilities cause % damage. The advantage of this is that abilities won’t have to be tuned for a specific level range; 50% damage (before taking into account things like armour) on a level 5 will have the same effect as on a level 80.

+1.

It’s not like players can scam the achievement and gemstore skins. All would be needed is for them to check Achievements and Transaction history.

With the new Trait system and the reworking of lower levels mobs to compensate, have you looked at the scaling system for downscaling as well? Otherwise, wouldn’t higher level characters go from being able to sneeze lower level mobs down to just being able to glare them down?

shogei.8015:

Dude….. You are leaving a heck of an opening.

Mistakes like that get people killed on the battlefield.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I would also like to do a Guild CDI soon.

Chris

Hear that? That’s the sound of a hundred people typing ‘Guild Halls’ and ‘GvG’. :P

Dusty Moon.4382:

Ever think it will be in the next edition of the LS or something similar? Remember that HoM was in the Northern Shiverpeaks and it could be that is where the next dragon will appear (the one that was awaken by Scarlett).

Na, Mordemothe is down in Magumma, near the Sylvari. Jormag is up north. Forgive my spelling, I’m running on about an hour’s sleep

If they make it so that the achievement skins and HoM skins are in the wardrobe and you have to pay to transmute them, I can imagine the servers exploding with rage.

Realist.5812:

You should probably read the news.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/account-bound-wxp-legendaries-and-ascended-gear/

In the upcoming April feature build, we will be converting all legendary and ascended equipment to be account-based. This means ascended equipment will always remain account-bound and will not soulbind to a character when equipped. Legendary weapons will continue to be tradeable until equipped, at which point they will become account-bound (rather than soulbound). As part of this change, we will convert all the existing ascended and legendary equipment that is soulbound to be account-bound instead.

OP was talking about making them account bound on creation, not on equip.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Sehson.2930:

Legendary Armor????

Did I miss something I thought legendaries were only weapons, and ascended was the cap for armor????

They have mentioned Legendary armour in the past, but it isn’t currently in the game.

However, as long as they maintain the same functionality as Legendary weapons (that is, you can swap to any stat combination outside of combat), you’d be able to swap the stats, which would make Catalyst’s comment a non-issue, really.

It would be nice, but given ANet’s history, I think they would prefer people to grind out several sets rather than giving that functionality to a single set. If they make obtaining legendary armor as grindy, tedious, and annoying as obtaining a legendary weapon, then I could see them allowing you to swap stats. If that ends up being the case, have fun with it for the next year unless you drop hundreds of dollars in the cash shop.

I actually agree when it comes to the ‘Legendary’ weapons. It comes to something when low level Karma items have more of a story that the ‘Legendary’ weapons. Not to mention the process is completely mundane. They really dropped the ball on them.

As it is, the only Ascended pieces I own are an amulet and rings. I function just fine with Exotics, and I’m not locked out of any content, so I don’t feel the need to aim for them.

Sehson.2930:

Legendary Armor????

Did I miss something I thought legendaries were only weapons, and ascended was the cap for armor????

They have mentioned Legendary armour in the past, but it isn’t currently in the game.

However, as long as they maintain the same functionality as Legendary weapons (that is, you can swap to any stat combination outside of combat), you’d be able to swap the stats, which would make Catalyst’s comment a non-issue, really.

Dalanor.5387:

phys.7689:

also, anet combined CC and DPS skills, which makes many classes use CC or makes them lower DPS to allow some CC.

Can you help me out what do you mean? Only ability came to my mind is Pistol whip, due to the daze it cause, which is actually isn’t bad dps.

What I think he means is is that all CC skills also has a damage component. Since that skill has a damage component too, it’s a DPS loss if you don’t use it.

When you have the weapon skins and use them, they’re unlocked in the wardrobe, where you can use them as many times as you want, providing you have the transmutation charges to apply the skin.

phys.7689:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

I find that the combat here is really, really, shallow. There’s no point in releasing more dungeons, because given the current combat mechanics, it’ll just be the same old thing with different scenery slapped onto it.

There’s no strategy or tactics here, other than stack in a corner, go zerker, and press dodge once in a while. The mechanics don’t allow for that, so they resort to one shot mechanics, defiant, etc. And you want to know why the current meta is zerker or die? Because it’s the most efficient. If I’m doing one of a handful of dungeons for the 50th time, I want to be in and out as fast as possible. Special snowflake builds just hold that entire process up.

what you are talking about is due to encounter design, not battle mechanics.
enemies swing once every like 4 seconds
Enemies stay in the same place
Unshakable defiant requires 5 CCs for one CC effect.

The combat mechanics are extremely deep, there are 10 ways to skin a cat, and multiple possible ways to deal with any situation.

Encounters are just designed in a way that people exploit simple AI scripts

To add to this, the encounters that do have fairly decent mechanics, the encounter mechanics are not enforced nearly enough, making players able to brute-force them with sheer damage.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

CptAurellian.9537:

Meleeing the stuff is at least still a lot more interactive than pewpewing away at range while being practicallly AFK.

Yeah, I blame all that on the fact that GW2 pretty much has no aggro mechanism of any kind.
If the bosses were any dumber, they would forget breathing and die on their own.

Though, to be fair, bosses in games that do have aggro mechanisms also tend to come with aggro management, which makes the bosses just as dumb (that is, completely ignoring the people actually doing damage and wiping the minions out, and that guy waving their glowy hands and keeping the guy insulting / shouting obscenities about said bosses mother alive).

Vexander.9850:

The Holy Trinity promoted teamwork and friendships amongst players. Why? Because you need your tank, you need your healer, and you need your damage dealer. The system we have now? You don’t need anything, just yourself, because you’re a damage dealer with one powerful heal. All the mobs and bosses and dungeons were designed around this.

Maybe some people enjoy the Zerg. It’s not my personal cup of tea, but the game is still good. GW2’s claim to fame will be its amazing graphics and art. Its just a shame Anet isn’t capitalizing on that by adding new permanent zones or anything.

That’s the thing though. The current system could achieve that level of teamwork, as well as added depth.

However, the content needs to be designed not around the average joe being able to zerk through, but the get players to think of their approach; to make small tweaks without funneling players into a, b or c. It needs mechanics that challenge the players ability to understand their profession’s toolset, and them mechanics need to be enforced (since there are some pretty nifty mechanics if you examine some of the encounters).

I agree on the zerging though. I play by switching my UI and map icons off and just wandering around. I find the game much, much more satisfying that way.

Vexander.9850:

Yup, and I’m still playing. Imagine that, someone who’s willing to try something different and stick with it? I knew going into GW2 there wasn’t a holy trinity. That doesn’t change the fact I enjoy playing a healer, or that one could say I’m being, “forced to play the way someone else wants.”

Shrugs

The game is what it is. Zerg-fests are certainly… different from what I’m used to, and there are other games I can play a Healer in.

Why not find a group of like-minded people and play a support-oriented character?

In terms of PvE, I think the Trinity-less system can work, providing the content in the game encourages players to think out their approach (unlike in the Trinity system, where players are already told ‘you need this, this and this’). This is the main advantage of GW2’s current system; it can potentially offer more depth than a system designed around the Trinity (note the potentially).

I can’t really comment on PvP and WvW, since I don’t really play them to the level as to where I could compare it to other games (although, me and my friends used to roam quite frequently, and because our builds were built around each other to cover out stregnths and weaknesses, we could often take down numbers larger than ours).

In terms of addictiveness, addictiveness doesn’t always equal fun. I find this game fun, and yet I don’t feel the need to play everyday, whereas with WoW, I had to take a step back and ask myself why I was logging in everyday, despite being bored out of my mind. Not to mention everyone finds different things ‘addicting’ or compelling; one person might find healing addicting, another might find a particular game-mode addicting, regardless of how they’re playing it, whereas I personally get the most pleasure out of coming up with builds, testing and tweaking them.

In the end, I don’t think it makes for a weaker game. Unless I get proven wrong, I’ll always believe that the current system can work, and there isn’t inherently anything wrong with it, rather it’s the content not making use of the entirety of it.

Vexander.9850:

Jski.6180:

No.
Your more or less asking for ppl to play the way you want and not let them have the freedom to chose how they play.

It goes both ways you know. In games I love playing a healer. Can’t do that here.

You shouldn’t have expected to be able to either.

That’s not being rude. It’s just they said right at the beginning, before the game was even in beta, that there’d be no dedicated healers.

Deamhan.9538:

I know you’re presenting an example but the lovers? I solo AC story on my ranger. The girl is weaker and my tank pet can keep her busy while my Condition Bunker Regen (CBR) built ranger deals with the guy. I actually treat it as a race between me and my pet lol.

That’s because the core mechanic of that fight (them trying to get close) isn’t enforced enough for people to have to pay attention to it.

If that mechanic come into play more often (say, X amount of condition / % health / x players attacking at the same time) and the effects ramped up / additional effects added (more healing, more defense ect), how do you think you’d fare?

Deamhan.9538:

That is indeed true under the typical circumstance.

However, by allowing every profession to spec into any of the five roles and have the ability to re-spec whenever, they don’t have to worry about designing content that has to be trinity specific.

There is no constant. If they design something for which a tank isn’t needed, or ranged dps is the only thing that’ll work, then they can do so without excluding any of the player base. They won’t exclude any of the professions. That’s the advantage of allowing all professions to spec into any role instead of just one or two. Also, now that I think about it, there is more than just a trinity going on here.

Tank, heal, cc, conditioner, and dps.

That’s five roles, not just three.

Eh, I’m using ‘Trinity’ as a general term, but you’re right.

However, once you start naming roles, and designing content around them roles, that’s when the roles become required.

It doesn’t matter whether a person can spec into them roles on the fly, since it doesn’t change the fact that that role is now required, as in, a person is forced into that particular role, and potentially outside their preferred playstyle, in order to complete the content.

Rather than thinking of Control, Support and Damage (which is what all of them can be broken down into) as roles, think of them as themes around content can be designed.

Using the basic mechanic of The Lover’s fight as an example (keeping them apart), players can approach this in a number of ways:

• Two Control-Heavy, 2 Heavy Damage split up and One Support Oriented bouncing between the two. The aim here is total control over the situation with little risk.
• 1 Tanky, Control-Heavy on the one, 4 High Damage with a small amount of control between them on the other. The aim here is that the tanky player keeps the one pinned down, while the others deal with the other as fast as possible.
• 5 High Damage with a medium amount of control between them. The aim here is to deal burst damage in between keeping them separated.

This is where the ‘depth of choice’ comes into it. The basic theme is ‘control is needed to kill them’ but it allows players to choose how they approach the fight and how to tweak their build without forcing them to drastically change their playstyle.

Deamhan.9538:

Keep in mind that I couldn’t care any less whether or not there is a trinity or isn’t one. Both ways have their advantages and disadvantages. I recommend to some to remove the blinders and open their eyes, the GW2 system has just as many flaws as the trinity system. A different set of flaws but just as many.

The point was to bring the best of both worlds together. As I said, a compromise.

Except the main advantage of the Trinity and the main advantage of GW2 are sort of at odds:

• The advantage of the Trinity is that you have a solid base to design your content, since you know, 100%, that you’ll have a certain group comp. The disadvantage of this is the lack of depth it allows when designing encounters, since you have to work within them constraints.
• The advantage of GW2’s system is that it allows for encounters to be varied in terms of requirements, and not tied to a specific group composition (everyone brings a small bit of control vs one control-heavy and 4 damage dealers), thus allowing players the depth of choice without players being funneled into set roles (for the Lover’s fight, I swapped out the Power trait for the trait that Immobilises when applying Cripple) and drastically forcing them to change their playstyle. The disadvantage of this is that it’s harder to make this sort of content while not falling into the trap of requiring a set group composition.

Of course, this isn’t a full rundown of advantages and disadvantages, merely showing how the two main advantages are somewhat at odds with each other.

Deamhan.9538:

Yup WoW did do duel spec. Look at the Priest. You could be the healer or you could be dps. Very few, if any, could spec into all three though. However the biggest problem for the wait time didn’t come from game design. It came from player attitude.

I didn’t say that the fault was with design. In fact, I agree that it is the attitude of the player, but from the angle of ‘most don’t want to play Tank / Healer’.

Regardless whether it was game design, player attitude or player preference, there’s still the fact that the demand for less desirable roles (Tank / Healer) is high, while the players who play them roles are low in relation to Tank and Healer to DPS.

Deamhan.9538:

How about CC? Right now most bosses have perma buffs that severely hamper the point of CC builds. Why not make these buffs fall off and come on at key times. For example they fall off when the boss is about to perform a rather nasty move, so CC is required to prevent this nasty move.

Personally, I feel if they:

• Remove a lot of the damage from Control skills
• Design control skills to reward skillful play (for example, if Dazed and Weakened, this stun lasts 100% longer, or If this skill Interrupts an attack, the stun lasts 100% longer)
• Give bosses stun-breakers (that is, design mobs to play under the same rules as players [10 skills]).

then Control would be more rewarding to play without worrying about stunlocking (since it wouldn’t really be viable because of the low damage output).

Deamhan.9538:

-You get the added diversity that the trinity will bring (instead of all zerker everywhere).

Deamhan.9538:

-Boss fights can now become less of a “stack in the corner and press 1” and actually require the group to position and reposition. Sync their movements and the use of their skills with not only each other but with the boss too. Require that there be a tank, healer, dps, conditioner, and cc.

I maintain that these are issues with encounter design with mechanics either being non-existent or not enforced enough, rather than the fact that there aren’t any fixed roles.

If you want proof that the current system could work, look no further than the Lover’s fight mechanics:

• Have awareness of your team; if they were keeping one busy, you needed to make sure that the other was away from them.
• You needed to bring control to stop them running towards each other.

Unfortunately, that particular fight suffers from a) not enforcing the mechanics enough and b) littering the place with boulders so players could KDlock them.

Ideally, with the current system, you want a variety of mechanics that encourage the player to look at their toolset and, if they fail. think ‘What could I bring that would give us a better chance?’.

A fixed, required role system (which is what we’d have, since content would be designed around the assumption that you have one of each role) would remove that depth, simply because encounters would require mechanics that encompassed all of the roles.

Deamhan.9538:

-You don’t have to worry about, “healer needed” for an hour because they are in such short supply. Swap traits and put on your healing attribute gear and fill the role regardless of what your profession is.

Except you may very well still get that case. Shortage of healers / tanks is caused by people not wanting to play that sort of role, not through the fact that people are bound to a particular role.

Case example; WoW. It has dual traits and gear management, and yet when I was playing as DPS (I didn’t always want to heal), I was still waiting anywhere between 1/2 hour and an hour.

I honestly don’t see the issue of not being able to play a dedicated healer. Before the game even went into beta, we knew that there’d be no dedicated healer, and, IMO, there aren’t many mechanics that can be tied around the Healer role other than ‘burst heal here’ and ‘buff’.

Celestina.2894:

I’m just confused as to why we will still have armor being damage, if repairing it costs nothing.

That being said……removing restrictions sound so much more….promising, even at it’s worst.

We feel the time penalty to return and repair accomplishes our goal enough to not need a secondary cost that punishes newer and less experienced players the most.

The repair is there as a penalty.

It’s kind of like balance, if you think about it.

People got excited over the removal of soulbound, so this post needed to keep the excitment in check.

Benkei.6293:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Something tells me you don’t work in advertising.

And you do?

In a sense (I work for a small computer shop, and as well as repairs, I deal with advertising the shop).

Point is, they worded it the way they did, because ‘we kittened up’ doesn’t really endear confidence in potential customers.

Something tells me you don’t work in advertising.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

TheDaiBish.9735:

It’s up.

/15chars

no it’s not?

Wishful thinking

It’s up.

/15chars

azizul.8469:

DOES THIS INCLUDE TRINKETS ?

YES! OR AT LEAST IT SHOULD!

:D

To give people a chance to discuss one at a time? If they’re about fundamentally different things (unlike the wardrobe and dye), then it makes sense to not overload people with information.

Given how the precursor crafting has been held off, I can’t see them introducing new Legendaries at the moment.

Acid rain!

Curse you, global warming!

1. There’s no point in having a beta server of every server, since there aren’t any differences between the servers in terms of content. One would suffice.

2. The usefulness of a PTS is entirely depentant of whether the players give feedback outside of ’it’s too hard, nerf it’.

Sarie.1630:

A FAQ thread on Reddit states that deleted skins will not be replaced or added to the wardrobe. This is the case for gemstore items but I imagine it will also be the case for unique Living Story skins too.

Citation: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/21d7s5/dyetownwardrobes_clothes_faq/

That’s…kinda stupid.

All they have to do is look at the player’s transaction history and achievements to see if they obtained it or not, and award appropriately. It’s not a case that player’s can scam the skins.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Immunity never makes an encounter more interesting, immunity only makes things drawn out and annoying.

If you need to resort to immunity then it needs a redesign.

Damage bonuses are fine, but immunity is never fine.

I’d say immunity is fine, as long as the same rules apply to players as well.

For example, if a mob had, say, Endure Pain, or if mobs had traits with specific traits attached (like the new Ele Earth trait).

Zepidel.5349:

Wont work, will still be a DPS only meta.

Encounters need to be created that require group cohesion besides dealing damage and on a personal level not taking any / dying. But because there is no trinity, making an encounter like that is impossible.

Why is it?

Just because there isn’t a Trinity set for each encounter, doesn’t mean encounters can’t be designed to require players to use the different aspects of the combat.

For example, The Lover’s in AC, if the mechanics were more forcibly implemented:

• You’d require Control to keep them away from each other.
• You’d require Support, since the team would have to split.
• Damage is obvious.
• You’d require positional awareness in relation to the party.

Even the Effigy in CoF if it was altered slightly, even though the majority of that fight would be damage, it could be made so that other elements are needed (such as group awareness, control ect).

Swagger.1459:

Dwarves will make a big comeback Orpheal!!!

One has to wonder how you’d reproduce with petrified genitals.

It’s a bit…bare on details:

• What support for guild members?
• What backend changes changes to help against griefing? Griefing in what parts of the game?

I can imagine a lot of people being happy with the last logged in addition though.

Orpheal.8263:

No, it would be kind of restricted, otherwise it makes no sense and would end only in the same balancing chaos, that was GW1.

Also each Sub Class, that unlocks the same Weapon gets with it different Weapon Skills. Alone out of this reason it would not make sense to become able to unlock again just everythign and becoem again the silly jack of all trades…

Have you even understood the meaning behind of “Specialization” and making characters more unique to strengthen their specific Class Roles??

Yes, I understand the meaning behind specialization.

However, specialization wouldn’t really solve any problems with balance. If one sub-class can do something better than the sub-class of another (say, the control specialisation of a Thief is better than that of a Warrior), then 9 times out of 10, most will want the Thief. It’ll still lead to groups seeking out specific sub-classes, while ignoring others.

On the polar opposite of the scale, if everyone is equally effective, then there isn’t any point to the sub-class system outside of aesthetics.

However, if balance was aimed for with the current system (more weight put into choices i.e. if you choose a control heavy weapon, you shouldn’t be doing much damage) and content was designed in such a way where players had a number of ways of approaching it (thus forced to think of their approach), i’d say it’d open up more uniqueness and depth than what you’re suggesting (such as players could come up with builds themselves, rather than the game already neatly packaging playstyles up for the player).

Also, with GW1:

• Players had access to 2 professions at a time, as well as the secondary attributes.
• Skills, for the most part, were unbound from weapons.
• GW had a metric tonne of skills. At any time, players had access to a minimum of 170 skills, to place how they felt.

In GW2:

• Skills are tied to weapons and slots.
• There is no dual professions.
• For the most part, skills only increase in effectiveness if Traits are selected for them.

Orpheal.8263:

However, players would not be restricted to keep forever a chosen Specialization.

If for example you have chosen out with your thief Charater to follow first the Path of the Rogue and then a month later you think you want to try out somethign different and play a completely differen build with your character, then you go to a Class Trainer, pay a small fee and doing so you can change then your Sub Class to a different one.

Its the exact same thing, why we can#t have also at any given time all of the Crafting Jobs with our characters, but are limited to have maximum 2 and have to pay a fee, if we want to change out one or both of the current used Crafting Jobs with different ones . That’s 100% exactly the same thing and nobody complaints about that being restricted here. Therefore you have multiple different Characters to give them different Crafting Jobs.

The same way would a player be able to do, if you don’t want anymore to pay the fee for the Sub Class Change, the system incentives you to make a new Character that you can then permanently specialize in a different Sub Class, so that you just swap out Characters having that way then not to pay a fee for the Sub Class Change.

However, that discussion leads to a new point, that would have Anet to decide, how they would handle it.

Theoretically there could exist more than 4 Sub Classes per Basic Class (but in my opinion that would go out of control) and a player could have like a Crafting Job maybe up to 2 Sub Classes within that a player could change out of combat without having to pay a fee.

What would you think about that ?

I personally disagree with the paying gold to relearn something you know. All it is is a money sink.

I’d still prefer the freedom of creating a build suited to me without some arbitrary restriction that ‘I forgot how do do this’. The game already provides restriction through limiting the number of skills, traits and weapons we can equip.

In order to ‘specialise’, you’d need to stick skills with similar themes in the same subclass. Kind of like how Hammer for the Warrior is specialised for Control. What if I want to heavily invest in one area, but sacrifice some of that for something else (my first Warrior build sacrificed range and some damage for a greater degree of control)?

Maybe if we had access to the skills, weapons and traits of the two sub-professions we had equipped, but saying players have to specialise in one thing kind of takes away a lot of the freedom of building a character how you want. I personally enjoy coming up with my own builds and testing them, and no, I don’t simply play wacky builds. I do my best to make my builds as effective as possible.

1. Agree with scaling
2. Disagree. Denying new players the chance to run dungeons because some players are jerks is just bad. Dungeons, when designed properly, can be used as a tool to help players improve. Rather than making dungeons only available at cap, normalise the stats and balance the encounters around them stats. Most of the dungeons in the game don’t actually require you to be 80; it’s simply quicker, which is what you’d expect.
3. Another potential solution could be: Make all damaging AoE hit a higher number of players than friendly AoE. If the support AoE can only affect 5 players at once, while the damaging AoE can hit, say, 20, then that increases the effectiveness of AoE and smaller groups against larger groups, and reduces the effectiveness of stacking. It sort of balances the scales a little
4. Another potential solution: Give foes stack-breaking abilities. Maybe they can leap in and scatter players. Maybe they have an AoE that deals damage / increases in effectiveness based on how many people it hits (for example: Despair – Rips one boon off of each player in the area / converts one boon to condition and one more for every player within 300 units of each other). At the same time, have abilities that give an advantage when players are close by (For example: “You’re all alone!” – Fears the target and deals damage. If the target is within 200 units of an ally, the fear is negated and damage is reduced). The reason for this mix and match being it allows for mechanics that require group awareness.

Orpheal.8263:

Phadde.7362:

No! Improve the Professions that already exists!

Btw, I want a 2H Greataxe on my Necro, a Hammer on my Engineer, and Maces on my Thief!

That could also belong into Sub Classes, to enable that way the basic Classes new weapons to use, that the Basic Classes weren’t able to use.

Example for Thief:

become a Rogue: Unlocks access to Offhand Sword, Dual Axes, Dual Maces
become an Infiltrator: Unlocks access to Longbows, Offhand Swords, Quarterstaffs
become a Saboteur: Unlocks access to Rifles, Offhand Sword, MH Mace and Torch
become a Strider: Unlocks Longbows, Whips and Torch, Offhand Sword, Quarterstaffs

That way could this Class progress with unlocking access to new already existing weapons as also complete new weapon types, like Quarterstaffs and Whips.

As long as I’m not restricted to one sub-class at a time (that is, I can master Rogue, then move to Infiltrator, while still retaining Rogue skills to create the build I want) I’d be on board with that.

ANet’s patchnotes on April Fools for GW were always a laugh.

Personally, I don’t mind the new system. Looks easier to use than the current system, and, if Trans Charges are automatically stored in the UI and Stones phased out, it saves a little bank space.

However, I feel functionality could be further improved by:

• Expanding it to a gear locker as well. Not only this, tie in Trait and Skill templates, so it’s sort of like a Complete Build template. Maybe if something like this was implemented, reduce the cost of skinning, and add an option to purchase more template slots.

phys.7689:

mesmer doesnt gel well with chronomancer or bard. You are married to a class mechanic of shatter, which is dmg confusion daze and distortion, if one was going to do a chronomacer its mechanic should have more to do with time. bard should have support or songs or something, and mesmer has some of the worst boons, and nothing really boonlike about its playstyle, or singing.

This is why the class actually doesnt have every archetype, because the class mechanics of a class actually do define it.

theif is a quick agile fighter, but its basis is initiative, which means you use whatever skill is the best for that situation(not combo driven) and powerful skills when you stealth, which doesnt gel with a stay in your face fighter. They have also built them to be primarily about evasion, and primary defense is to pick battles and escape.

essentially theif isnt quick fighter, its quick fighter with stealth and a stamina system
mesmer isnt CC mage, its illusionist
ranger isnt wilderness hunter, its beastmaster
etc.
Point is there are playstyles that are currently missing and dont fall into line with current proffesions. Proffesions are not broad enough to handle all playstyles currently

While I personally don’t agree with sub-classes outside of them being cosmetic or opening up options (rather than simply saying "You’ve specialised as a Bard, so you can only use X, Y and Z), the whole idea of a subclass is to specialise. With this specialisation, what is lacking for that profession would become available.

For example, lorewise, Mesmer’s are somewhat like performers. It sort of makes sense then that they’d be able to manipulate their foes with sound and music. While studying as a Bard, Mesmer’s could learn to use skills such as:

• Elite : Lullaby – The Mesmer plays a soothing lullaby and channels a CC on a target and nearby foes for a maximum duration of 6 seconds. While this channel is in effect, the target and nearby foes are stunned. Movement, using another skill and damage will interrupt this effect.
• Heal : Allegro – The Mesmer plays a lively beat, rapidly regaining health over 5 seconds (with a 50% effect for allies) and applying swiftness to all allies in range for 10 seconds.
• Grandmaster Trait: Sostenuto – Any effects caused by musical skills are increased in duration by 20%.

These are examples, not serious suggestions as skills and traits that should be implemented.

I personally like the fact that we’ll have the option to hunt the traits down.

I consider it more meaningful in terms of progression than simply going back into town, buying a book and then having it unlocked.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Face it. The GW2 model doesn’t work. It results in shallow, zergy combat with very little build diversity. Trains in both PvE and WvW with cosplay in the LA chat room.

• Little build diversity is a) an issue due to balance and b) prevalent in a lot of MMO’s.
• Shallow combat (both instanced and OW) is more down to the encounter design, rather than the core system itself, although I’d argue that being able to drive of a zerg of 30 when there’s only 4 of you shows what using the true depth of the system can accomplish.

Dragonic Elemental.2674:

I would love this. Pyromancer, Aeromancer, Geomancer and Aquamancer armor for Ele, like in GW1!

Or…one set where certain details change depending on attunement? For example, in Fire Attunement, the shoulders have licking flames, while in Air, traces of lightning flicker over them.

I’d say link this to progression as an unlock before being able to buy them, rather than simply being able to buy them outright:

PvE: Unlock all traits and skills for that profession.
WvW: Get to Rank X.
SPvP: Get the Champion [Profession] title.

SirMorgenStar.6721:

I’d like them to bring back Dervish class + Scythe weapon.

Yes please, along with the Dervish mechanic of using boons to empower attacks.