Also remember guys that weapons are associated with specific skills that have specific purposes in this game.
So while it may seem like a great idea to just specialize in one weapon and nothing else...you may find yourself in a heap of trouble if you put all your points in greatsword and then discover that you really needed a ranged weapon. And it can even get more specific than that. Maybe you're still meleeing, fully specced in greatsword, but your group members are all dying because you can't disable or knock back your enemies like you could have with hammer.
So basically, speccing in a weapon isn't as cut and dry in GW2 as it is in other games. In most other games, a weapon is just a stylistic choice with maybe one ability associated with it, so there really isn't a reason to not just specialize in one. But in GW2, a weapon is your abilities.
I'll go ahead and say that unless you're an engineer or a elementalist specializing into one weapon is a major mistake.
If you look at the videos of the gameplay you'll see that rotating your weapons is a must to keep yourself out of cooldown issues, unfortunatly most beta players stuck with one weapon and spammed 1.
Just played around with the build maker and i have no issues with traits.
I found it preety much impossible to do a "heal only" or "tank only" build, and trust me i tried, there's very little on the way of making any class good enough to take the all beating for the team and it's even harder to come up with any kind of build where the aoe healing would be enough to sustain a group.
With that said, man are some of the trait builds amazing, if you check out Necros for example you can clearly see at least 5 great builds with alot of variation between them.
Also remember guys that weapons are associated with specific skills that have specific purposes in this game.
So while it may seem like a great idea to just specialize in one weapon and nothing else...you may find yourself in a heap of trouble if you put all your points in greatsword and then discover that you really needed a ranged weapon. And it can even get more specific than that. Maybe you're still meleeing, fully specced in greatsword, but your group members are all dying because you can't disable or knock back your enemies like you could have with hammer.
So basically, speccing in a weapon isn't as cut and dry in GW2 as it is in other games. In most other games, a weapon is just a stylistic choice with maybe one ability associated with it, so there really isn't a reason to not just specialize in one. But in GW2, a weapon is your abilities.
I'll go ahead and say that unless you're an engineer or a elementalist specializing into one weapon is a major mistake.
If you look at the videos of the gameplay you'll see that rotating your weapons is a must to keep yourself out of cooldown issues, unfortunatly most beta players stuck with one weapon and spammed 1.
Just played around with the build maker and i have no issues with traits.
I found it preety much impossible to do a "heal only" or "tank only" build, and trust me i tried, there's very little on the way of making any class good enough to take the all beating for the team and it's even harder to come up with any kind of build where the aoe healing would be enough to sustain a group.
With that said, man are some of the trait builds amazing, if you check out Necros for example you can clearly see at least 5 great builds with alot of variation between them.
My knowledge of guild war 2 skills and stats is limited to say the least. But I've played a tank in more then one mmo and this is not much different of a build then most tanking trees. http://www.gw2tools.com/#t-m-aapfp:aaa.aaa.Xcd.daa.bZY
Also remember guys that weapons are associated with specific skills that have specific purposes in this game.
So while it may seem like a great idea to just specialize in one weapon and nothing else...you may find yourself in a heap of trouble if you put all your points in greatsword and then discover that you really needed a ranged weapon. And it can even get more specific than that. Maybe you're still meleeing, fully specced in greatsword, but your group members are all dying because you can't disable or knock back your enemies like you could have with hammer.
So basically, speccing in a weapon isn't as cut and dry in GW2 as it is in other games. In most other games, a weapon is just a stylistic choice with maybe one ability associated with it, so there really isn't a reason to not just specialize in one. But in GW2, a weapon is your abilities.
I'll go ahead and say that unless you're an engineer or a elementalist specializing into one weapon is a major mistake.
If you look at the videos of the gameplay you'll see that rotating your weapons is a must to keep yourself out of cooldown issues, unfortunatly most beta players stuck with one weapon and spammed 1.
Just played around with the build maker and i have no issues with traits.
I found it preety much impossible to do a "heal only" or "tank only" build, and trust me i tried, there's very little on the way of making any class good enough to take the all beating for the team and it's even harder to come up with any kind of build where the aoe healing would be enough to sustain a group.
With that said, man are some of the trait builds amazing, if you check out Necros for example you can clearly see at least 5 great builds with alot of variation between them.
My knowledge of guild war 2 skills and stats is limited to say the least. But I've played a tank in more then one mmo and this is not much different of a build then most tanking trees. http://www.gw2tools.com/#t-m-aapfp:aaa.aaa.Xcd.daa.bZY
Though I think it would be very fun to play.
You have a lot of toughness bonuses in that build which do look very tanky on paper, but remember this class is a cloth wearing caster .
Also, you didn't really invest heavily in the vitality tree for the HP bonus.
Also remember guys that weapons are associated with specific skills that have specific purposes in this game.
So while it may seem like a great idea to just specialize in one weapon and nothing else...you may find yourself in a heap of trouble if you put all your points in greatsword and then discover that you really needed a ranged weapon. And it can even get more specific than that. Maybe you're still meleeing, fully specced in greatsword, but your group members are all dying because you can't disable or knock back your enemies like you could have with hammer.
So basically, speccing in a weapon isn't as cut and dry in GW2 as it is in other games. In most other games, a weapon is just a stylistic choice with maybe one ability associated with it, so there really isn't a reason to not just specialize in one. But in GW2, a weapon is your abilities.
I'll go ahead and say that unless you're an engineer or a elementalist specializing into one weapon is a major mistake.
If you look at the videos of the gameplay you'll see that rotating your weapons is a must to keep yourself out of cooldown issues, unfortunatly most beta players stuck with one weapon and spammed 1.
Just played around with the build maker and i have no issues with traits.
I found it preety much impossible to do a "heal only" or "tank only" build, and trust me i tried, there's very little on the way of making any class good enough to take the all beating for the team and it's even harder to come up with any kind of build where the aoe healing would be enough to sustain a group.
With that said, man are some of the trait builds amazing, if you check out Necros for example you can clearly see at least 5 great builds with alot of variation between them.
My knowledge of guild war 2 skills and stats is limited to say the least. But I've played a tank in more then one mmo and this is not much different of a build then most tanking trees. http://www.gw2tools.com/#t-m-aapfp:aaa.aaa.Xcd.daa.bZY
Though I think it would be very fun to play.
You have a lot of toughness bonuses in that build which do look very tanky on paper, but remember this class is a cloth wearing caster .
Also, you didn't really invest heavily in the vitality tree for the HP bonus.
Also, GW2 seems like a game where you don't want to stay there and get beat up, avoiding, blocking damage seems much more important, something that build doesn't have.
Also remember guys that weapons are associated with specific skills that have specific purposes in this game.
So while it may seem like a great idea to just specialize in one weapon and nothing else...you may find yourself in a heap of trouble if you put all your points in greatsword and then discover that you really needed a ranged weapon. And it can even get more specific than that. Maybe you're still meleeing, fully specced in greatsword, but your group members are all dying because you can't disable or knock back your enemies like you could have with hammer.
So basically, speccing in a weapon isn't as cut and dry in GW2 as it is in other games. In most other games, a weapon is just a stylistic choice with maybe one ability associated with it, so there really isn't a reason to not just specialize in one. But in GW2, a weapon is your abilities.
I'll go ahead and say that unless you're an engineer or a elementalist specializing into one weapon is a major mistake.
If you look at the videos of the gameplay you'll see that rotating your weapons is a must to keep yourself out of cooldown issues, unfortunatly most beta players stuck with one weapon and spammed 1.
Just played around with the build maker and i have no issues with traits.
I found it preety much impossible to do a "heal only" or "tank only" build, and trust me i tried, there's very little on the way of making any class good enough to take the all beating for the team and it's even harder to come up with any kind of build where the aoe healing would be enough to sustain a group.
With that said, man are some of the trait builds amazing, if you check out Necros for example you can clearly see at least 5 great builds with alot of variation between them.
My knowledge of guild war 2 skills and stats is limited to say the least. But I've played a tank in more then one mmo and this is not much different of a build then most tanking trees. http://www.gw2tools.com/#t-m-aapfp:aaa.aaa.Xcd.daa.bZY
Though I think it would be very fun to play.
You have a lot of toughness bonuses in that build which do look very tanky on paper, but remember this class is a cloth wearing caster .
Also, you didn't really invest heavily in the vitality tree for the HP bonus.
Also, GW2 seems like a game where you don't want to stay there and get beat up, avoiding, blocking damage seems much more important, something that build doesn't have.
Thats true and this is all just speculation however the creation of clones breaks targeting on the mesmer, and makes the mesmer more tanky.
could also work, and may work better, it gives me the vitality bonus, plus the flexibitly of staff or scepter+torch as I think http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusionary_Counter works well with the overall feel of the build. Also charging up mantra of healing with this new build pre-fight gives me a self heal that I can cast in the middle of casting something else that also heals my party.
Looking at these known traits I'd also argue that the pure amount of toughness is there to make up for the fact this is a cloth wearing class, I didn't see anywhere near those amounts in the other trees.
Of course in all honest I could have made the biggest fail build ever known in any mmo, until we can play the game its just what it looks like on paper.
There was a thread on guru where someone compared the maximum attainable attribute numbers. I cannot find that thread again for the life of me, but it was there.
Bottomline: A scholar profession focused on maximizing Toughness (traits, runes) is slightly above the numbers of a soldier profession that completely ignores it.
I do understand you, cali, I just disagree. I know how important 5% may be in some other games. I've played them for 12 years. They are not that important in this game. 5% flat damage is one hit saved out of 20. That does not make a fight in a game where combat dynamics are so reliant on actual player skill. Synergy is fun because it rewards smart play, but it hardly affects raw performance.
Traits matter for your style, not your performance.
I was coming up with a concrete example, but it was for GW2Guru (I saw your other post. No smiting here!). I think it's going to be more than just 5%, I think switching even just one trait line can have a dramatic impact.
I should probably post it here but I'm getting really tired of debating this issue in general, much less in two places at the same time.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Also for the comment of no healing trees I would say this guy would be a somewhat decent healer. Now I understand you wouldn't play this as your traditional healer as a matter of fact I would prolly start the fight taking damage to get my health down as some of the better stuff kicks in at 25% health. There is alot of flexibilty here as well, healing turret, med kit or elixir gun, healing mist and with the trait grenades will also heal. Also I've heard that one of the reason there won't be healers in this game is because heals have a long cool down but Automated Medical Response pretty much makes it possible for a good player to dance around 25% health and refresh his cooldowns every 90 seconds. Now granted in pvp it would be kinda hard to bounce around but its possible in pve.
Also remember guys that weapons are associated with specific skills that have specific purposes in this game.
So while it may seem like a great idea to just specialize in one weapon and nothing else...you may find yourself in a heap of trouble if you put all your points in greatsword and then discover that you really needed a ranged weapon. And it can even get more specific than that. Maybe you're still meleeing, fully specced in greatsword, but your group members are all dying because you can't disable or knock back your enemies like you could have with hammer.
So basically, speccing in a weapon isn't as cut and dry in GW2 as it is in other games. In most other games, a weapon is just a stylistic choice with maybe one ability associated with it, so there really isn't a reason to not just specialize in one. But in GW2, a weapon is your abilities.
Just because you have your points in greatsword doesn't mean you can't say "Hey, I need to knock back enemies here...hm I'll just switch to my hammer 'cos I have one". The only thing that can limit a character is if they don't have the weapon for the job in their inventory, if they do, it doesn't matter what spec they have, the weapon will work as intended every time.
Also for the comment of no healing trees I would say this guy would be a somewhat decent healer. Now I understand you wouldn't play this as your traditional healer as a matter of fact I would prolly start the fight taking damage to get my health down as some of the better stuff kicks in at 25% health. There is alot of flexibilty here as well, healing turret, med kit or elixir gun, healing mist and with the trait grenades will also heal. Also I've heard that one of the reason there won't be healers in this game is because heals have a long cool down but Automated Medical Response pretty much makes it possible for a good player to dance around 25% health and refresh his cooldowns every 90 seconds. Now granted in pvp it would be kinda hard to bounce around but its possible in pve.
It's not because heals have a cooldown, it's because heals from a single player won't keep up all the players. Heals from every player on the other hand, would.
Also for the comment of no healing trees I would say this guy would be a somewhat decent healer. Now I understand you wouldn't play this as your traditional healer as a matter of fact I would prolly start the fight taking damage to get my health down as some of the better stuff kicks in at 25% health. There is alot of flexibilty here as well, healing turret, med kit or elixir gun, healing mist and with the trait grenades will also heal. Also I've heard that one of the reason there won't be healers in this game is because heals have a long cool down but Automated Medical Response pretty much makes it possible for a good player to dance around 25% health and refresh his cooldowns every 90 seconds. Now granted in pvp it would be kinda hard to bounce around but its possible in pve.
Also for the comment of no healing trees I would say this guy would be a somewhat decent healer. Now I understand you wouldn't play this as your traditional healer as a matter of fact I would prolly start the fight taking damage to get my health down as some of the better stuff kicks in at 25% health. There is alot of flexibilty here as well, healing turret, med kit or elixir gun, healing mist and with the trait grenades will also heal. Also I've heard that one of the reason there won't be healers in this game is because heals have a long cool down but Automated Medical Response pretty much makes it possible for a good player to dance around 25% health and refresh his cooldowns every 90 seconds. Now granted in pvp it would be kinda hard to bounce around but its possible in pve.
It's not because heals have a cooldown, it's because heals from a single player won't keep up all the players. Heals from every player on the other hand, would.
Until these have been tested there is really no way of knowing that. I mean that engineer can have 2 hots, a bandage allies can run over to heal themselves. While bomb explosions will also heal. Thats an awful lot of healing going out. Even more so if his health drops below 25%
Also for the comment of no healing trees I would say this guy would be a somewhat decent healer. Now I understand you wouldn't play this as your traditional healer as a matter of fact I would prolly start the fight taking damage to get my health down as some of the better stuff kicks in at 25% health. There is alot of flexibilty here as well, healing turret, med kit or elixir gun, healing mist and with the trait grenades will also heal. Also I've heard that one of the reason there won't be healers in this game is because heals have a long cool down but Automated Medical Response pretty much makes it possible for a good player to dance around 25% health and refresh his cooldowns every 90 seconds. Now granted in pvp it would be kinda hard to bounce around but its possible in pve.
I actually though about going that route, my concern how much are heals improved when under 25% if its a pretty big number you'd want to stay there as long possible lol. From reading the tip it would seem you only get that bonus when your below, so if you went below, and regeneration ticked you above you may lose it. Transmute is nice though I'd just like to grab it without the regens when under 25%.
I think it brings traits more in line with what I think we think they should be (not to put words in your mouth)
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Also for the comment of no healing trees I would say this guy would be a somewhat decent healer. Now I understand you wouldn't play this as your traditional healer as a matter of fact I would prolly start the fight taking damage to get my health down as some of the better stuff kicks in at 25% health. There is alot of flexibilty here as well, healing turret, med kit or elixir gun, healing mist and with the trait grenades will also heal. Also I've heard that one of the reason there won't be healers in this game is because heals have a long cool down but Automated Medical Response pretty much makes it possible for a good player to dance around 25% health and refresh his cooldowns every 90 seconds. Now granted in pvp it would be kinda hard to bounce around but its possible in pve.
I think it brings traits more in line with what I think we think they should be (not to put words in your mouth)
I have to read that a few more times, I don't think I get the advantage. I get the seperation of stats and traits. Then, instead of having fixed minors and a set of majors to chose from, you would have traits that combine the stats of a minor and the ability tweaks of a major into one trait? What if that combination doesn't suit the style I want? Isn't that just as restrictive as the current solution? More restrictive even?
I think it brings traits more in line with what I think we think they should be (not to put words in your mouth)
I have to read that a few more times, I don't think I get the advantage. I get the seperation of stats and traits. Tehn, instead of having fixed minors and a set of majors to chose from, you would have traits that combine the stats of a minor and the ability tweaks of a major into one trait? What if that combination doesn't suit the style I want? Isn't that just as restrictive as the current solution? More restrictive even?
What am I missing there?
Hmm, it seemed clear to me when I wrote it. I'll try to explain it better.
Right now you have 70 traits which you can distribute any way you want, so if you put 30 points in one tree, you end up with 3 minor and 3 major traits in that tree, as well as +300 to attributes which synergize with that tree.
One problem that I'm seeing is that if for a particular encounter you need to change your skills, you can end up with unsynergistic traits, even though you're still able to switch the major ones.
The example I gave is if you have a warrior with 30 points in Defense who needs to use a rifle, yes he can still use a rifle at the base level. But his traits in defense are going to be pretty unhelpful. If instead he could swap to 30 points in Arms, he would get +300 to precision for crits and malice for conditions, and 6 traits that all benefit from crits, bleeding, or using a rifle. It's completely optimized for this encounter.
What my proposal says is to get rid of attributes from traits completely and put them on gear (which is itemized for generalization anyway).
What it also says is to get rid of investing points in trees, and just let people pick two or three traits from every one of the five categories (for a total of 10 or 15 compared to the 14 we'd get currently). Instead of distinguishing between minor and major traits, they would all be available as choices (though probably would need to be balanced). So you pick 2-3 from Strength, 2-3 from Arms, 2-3 from Defense, etc. You would only be able to change these in town.
What I think this does is it makes them feel like bonuses or tweaks to your playstyle without feeling like you're missing out on 6 synergistic traits from one tree that you wish you had for this one encounter. If you take that +5% damage to axes trait, you don't feel too cheated if you need a different weapon for a while, it's only 5% as you say. You're not going to run back to town to change them everytime so there is that sense of permanence. The system could also free you to choose traits you might only use situationally, like for a shield you think you may end up needing on your 2nd weapon set.
Please let me know if this isn't more clear.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Also remember guys that weapons are associated with specific skills that have specific purposes in this game.
So while it may seem like a great idea to just specialize in one weapon and nothing else...you may find yourself in a heap of trouble if you put all your points in greatsword and then discover that you really needed a ranged weapon. And it can even get more specific than that. Maybe you're still meleeing, fully specced in greatsword, but your group members are all dying because you can't disable or knock back your enemies like you could have with hammer.
So basically, speccing in a weapon isn't as cut and dry in GW2 as it is in other games. In most other games, a weapon is just a stylistic choice with maybe one ability associated with it, so there really isn't a reason to not just specialize in one. But in GW2, a weapon is your abilities.
Just because you have your points in greatsword doesn't mean you can't say "Hey, I need to knock back enemies here...hm I'll just switch to my hammer 'cos I have one". The only thing that can limit a character is if they don't have the weapon for the job in their inventory, if they do, it doesn't matter what spec they have, the weapon will work as intended every time.
Yep, that's true!
The point of my post was that you can't really just specialize in one weapon and then ignore the rest.
wow. obviously we're all doomed. i don't get it with you people. i just know you guys would sh** bricks if there were no traits ("but i want to specialize! if you don't have them everyone will be the same!"), and with them it's just the same ("you're pigeonholing me!") gods. get a grip. seriously. if you need a game to compare it to try diablo 2: you get some points every level to assign to some discrete trees. there are level requirements, and point requirements for some of the skills in the trees, but you can pick and choose what direction you want to go in. sure there are "optimal builds" for this or that, but nothing is "right" or "wrong" if you want to play your own way, and the game is just as viable any way you go.
GET. A. GRIP.
this trait system will work fine. there's no pigeonholing going on. you can do whatever you want. sure there's going to be optimal builds, but, like GW1, there is going to be plenty of cool stuff for people to do with their chracters. gods.
Also remember guys that weapons are associated with specific skills that have specific purposes in this game.
So while it may seem like a great idea to just specialize in one weapon and nothing else...you may find yourself in a heap of trouble if you put all your points in greatsword and then discover that you really needed a ranged weapon. And it can even get more specific than that. Maybe you're still meleeing, fully specced in greatsword, but your group members are all dying because you can't disable or knock back your enemies like you could have with hammer.
So basically, speccing in a weapon isn't as cut and dry in GW2 as it is in other games. In most other games, a weapon is just a stylistic choice with maybe one ability associated with it, so there really isn't a reason to not just specialize in one. But in GW2, a weapon is your abilities.
Just because you have your points in greatsword doesn't mean you can't say "Hey, I need to knock back enemies here...hm I'll just switch to my hammer 'cos I have one". The only thing that can limit a character is if they don't have the weapon for the job in their inventory, if they do, it doesn't matter what spec they have, the weapon will work as intended every time.
Yep, that's true!
The point of my post was that you can't really just specialize in one weapon and then ignore the rest.
People can and they will. They'll then complain about the game being unbalanced and too difficult because standing still pressing 1 also isn't viable.
I can just see people asking "LF Ele Water/Arcane spec".
I dont see how are those healer builds, the first one is more like a support empowering allies (working as intended for a guardian) and the second one is more to self sustain and the stone atunement bonus doesnt make sense if he wants to go only water.
Also, there cant be a healer in GW2 because nobody can maintain alive a party of 5 on a dungeon using those skills, the point on healing is to help others, so to make healers work ALL the party must be using healing skills, so all the 5 get healings from 5 men.
It is clearer, but we're back to the point where I disagree with you about untraited abilities being useless. Your proposition fixes a problem that I don't think exists.
Your example is that of a Warrior who decided to, at least partially, trait for defense, and is then faced with an encounter where he can't benefit from it. You propose a solution to micromanage your traits to squeze the last bit of efficiency out of them, and I just don't believe that's neccessary. I've never been much of a fan of going to such extremes with minmaxing.
I don't think traits are intended to be something you switch all the time. They are intended to allow you to play a profession in a personal style, and once you've found that style, you'll want to stick with it.
EDIT: Okay, WTF! ArenaNet iterated on the Attributes... yet again. They never seem to be happy with a part of the game. Loving all the new options though, especially professions specific attirbutes.
I think you mean REiterated. This is certainly not the first time. Oh.....and iterated, the way you used it, looks like it means "shit" on. lol Which may or may not be the case.
Comments
I'll go ahead and say that unless you're an engineer or a elementalist specializing into one weapon is a major mistake.
If you look at the videos of the gameplay you'll see that rotating your weapons is a must to keep yourself out of cooldown issues, unfortunatly most beta players stuck with one weapon and spammed 1.
Just played around with the build maker and i have no issues with traits.
I found it preety much impossible to do a "heal only" or "tank only" build, and trust me i tried, there's very little on the way of making any class good enough to take the all beating for the team and it's even harder to come up with any kind of build where the aoe healing would be enough to sustain a group.
With that said, man are some of the trait builds amazing, if you check out Necros for example you can clearly see at least 5 great builds with alot of variation between them.
My knowledge of guild war 2 skills and stats is limited to say the least. But I've played a tank in more then one mmo and this is not much different of a build then most tanking trees. http://www.gw2tools.com/#t-m-aapfp:aaa.aaa.Xcd.daa.bZY
Though I think it would be very fun to play.
You have a lot of toughness bonuses in that build which do look very tanky on paper, but remember this class is a cloth wearing caster
.
Also, you didn't really invest heavily in the vitality tree for the HP bonus.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Also, GW2 seems like a game where you don't want to stay there and get beat up, avoiding, blocking damage seems much more important, something that build doesn't have.
Thats true and this is all just speculation however the creation of clones breaks targeting on the mesmer, and makes the mesmer more tanky.
http://www.gw2tools.com/#t-m-afppa:aaa.Xaa.Xcd.dbY.aaa
could also work, and may work better, it gives me the vitality bonus, plus the flexibitly of staff or scepter+torch as I think http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusionary_Counter works well with the overall feel of the build. Also charging up mantra of healing with this new build pre-fight gives me a self heal that I can cast in the middle of casting something else that also heals my party.
Looking at these known traits I'd also argue that the pure amount of toughness is there to make up for the fact this is a cloth wearing class, I didn't see anywhere near those amounts in the other trees.
Of course in all honest I could have made the biggest fail build ever known in any mmo, until we can play the game its just what it looks like on paper.
There was a thread on guru where someone compared the maximum attainable attribute numbers. I cannot find that thread again for the life of me, but it was there.
Bottomline: A scholar profession focused on maximizing Toughness (traits, runes) is slightly above the numbers of a soldier profession that completely ignores it.
I was coming up with a concrete example, but it was for GW2Guru (I saw your other post. No smiting here!). I think it's going to be more than just 5%, I think switching even just one trait line can have a dramatic impact.
Here's the example I came up with.
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1172404&postcount=1728
I should probably post it here but I'm getting really tired of debating this issue in general, much less in two places at the same time.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
I agree, no point in further discussion, it all boils down to the numbers at this point. We'll see how it plays out in the next beta.
Also for the comment of no healing trees I would say this guy would be a somewhat decent healer. Now I understand you wouldn't play this as your traditional healer as a matter of fact I would prolly start the fight taking damage to get my health down as some of the better stuff kicks in at 25% health. There is alot of flexibilty here as well, healing turret, med kit or elixir gun, healing mist and with the trait grenades will also heal. Also I've heard that one of the reason there won't be healers in this game is because heals have a long cool down but Automated Medical Response pretty much makes it possible for a good player to dance around 25% health and refresh his cooldowns every 90 seconds. Now granted in pvp it would be kinda hard to bounce around but its possible in pve.
http://www.gw2tools.com/#t-e-fapap:Vaa.aaa.ZbW.aaa.bZX
Just because you have your points in greatsword doesn't mean you can't say "Hey, I need to knock back enemies here...hm I'll just switch to my hammer 'cos I have one". The only thing that can limit a character is if they don't have the weapon for the job in their inventory, if they do, it doesn't matter what spec they have, the weapon will work as intended every time.
This is not a game.
It's not because heals have a cooldown, it's because heals from a single player won't keep up all the players. Heals from every player on the other hand, would.
This is not a game.
Because I don't know much about the skills for the Engineer (I don't know what Elixir S and B do), I'd actually play it more like this;
Edit: I took a second look; Actually, more like this
http://www.gw2tools.com/#t-e-fapap:Vaa.aaa.ZbW.aaa.bZX
This is not a game.
Until these have been tested there is really no way of knowing that. I mean that engineer can have 2 hots, a bandage allies can run over to heal themselves. While bomb explosions will also heal. Thats an awful lot of healing going out. Even more so if his health drops below 25%
I actually though about going that route, my concern how much are heals improved when under 25% if its a pretty big number you'd want to stay there as long possible lol. From reading the tip it would seem you only get that bonus when your below, so if you went below, and regeneration ticked you above you may lose it. Transmute is nice though I'd just like to grab it without the regens when under 25%.
I proposed an alternative which you might be interested in.
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1172767&postcount=1805
I think it brings traits more in line with what I think we think they should be (not to put words in your mouth)
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
I think than more than a healer that build makes you quite resistant, and u can go with your bomb kit and drop all the love in the monsters faces.
I have to read that a few more times, I don't think I get the advantage. I get the seperation of stats and traits. Then, instead of having fixed minors and a set of majors to chose from, you would have traits that combine the stats of a minor and the ability tweaks of a major into one trait? What if that combination doesn't suit the style I want? Isn't that just as restrictive as the current solution? More restrictive even?
What am I missing there?
And so it begins... http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/best-healer-build-t29807.html?t=29807
I can just see people asking "LF Ele Water/Arcane spec".
Hmm, it seemed clear to me when I wrote it. I'll try to explain it better.
Right now you have 70 traits which you can distribute any way you want, so if you put 30 points in one tree, you end up with 3 minor and 3 major traits in that tree, as well as +300 to attributes which synergize with that tree.
One problem that I'm seeing is that if for a particular encounter you need to change your skills, you can end up with unsynergistic traits, even though you're still able to switch the major ones.
The example I gave is if you have a warrior with 30 points in Defense who needs to use a rifle, yes he can still use a rifle at the base level. But his traits in defense are going to be pretty unhelpful. If instead he could swap to 30 points in Arms, he would get +300 to precision for crits and malice for conditions, and 6 traits that all benefit from crits, bleeding, or using a rifle. It's completely optimized for this encounter.
What my proposal says is to get rid of attributes from traits completely and put them on gear (which is itemized for generalization anyway).
What it also says is to get rid of investing points in trees, and just let people pick two or three traits from every one of the five categories (for a total of 10 or 15 compared to the 14 we'd get currently). Instead of distinguishing between minor and major traits, they would all be available as choices (though probably would need to be balanced). So you pick 2-3 from Strength, 2-3 from Arms, 2-3 from Defense, etc. You would only be able to change these in town.
What I think this does is it makes them feel like bonuses or tweaks to your playstyle without feeling like you're missing out on 6 synergistic traits from one tree that you wish you had for this one encounter. If you take that +5% damage to axes trait, you don't feel too cheated if you need a different weapon for a while, it's only 5% as you say. You're not going to run back to town to change them everytime so there is that sense of permanence. The system could also free you to choose traits you might only use situationally, like for a shield you think you may end up needing on your 2nd weapon set.
Please let me know if this isn't more clear.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Yep, that's true!
The point of my post was that you can't really just specialize in one weapon and then ignore the rest.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
wow. obviously we're all doomed. i don't get it with you people. i just know you guys would sh** bricks if there were no traits ("but i want to specialize! if you don't have them everyone will be the same!"), and with them it's just the same ("you're pigeonholing me!") gods. get a grip. seriously. if you need a game to compare it to try diablo 2: you get some points every level to assign to some discrete trees. there are level requirements, and point requirements for some of the skills in the trees, but you can pick and choose what direction you want to go in. sure there are "optimal builds" for this or that, but nothing is "right" or "wrong" if you want to play your own way, and the game is just as viable any way you go.
GET. A. GRIP.
this trait system will work fine. there's no pigeonholing going on. you can do whatever you want. sure there's going to be optimal builds, but, like GW1, there is going to be plenty of cool stuff for people to do with their chracters. gods.
People can and they will. They'll then complain about the game being unbalanced and too difficult because standing still pressing 1 also isn't viable.
I dont see how are those healer builds, the first one is more like a support empowering allies (working as intended for a guardian) and the second one is more to self sustain and the stone atunement bonus doesnt make sense if he wants to go only water.
Also, there cant be a healer in GW2 because nobody can maintain alive a party of 5 on a dungeon using those skills, the point on healing is to help others, so to make healers work ALL the party must be using healing skills, so all the 5 get healings from 5 men.
It is clearer, but we're back to the point where I disagree with you about untraited abilities being useless. Your proposition fixes a problem that I don't think exists.
Your example is that of a Warrior who decided to, at least partially, trait for defense, and is then faced with an encounter where he can't benefit from it. You propose a solution to micromanage your traits to squeze the last bit of efficiency out of them, and I just don't believe that's neccessary. I've never been much of a fan of going to such extremes with minmaxing.
I don't think traits are intended to be something you switch all the time. They are intended to allow you to play a profession in a personal style, and once you've found that style, you'll want to stick with it.
We want traits to be different things.
I think you mean REiterated. This is certainly not the first time. Oh.....and iterated, the way you used it, looks like it means "shit" on. lol Which may or may not be the case.
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