You can't min-max in GW2 and you'd be foolish to try. The dynamic combat, the ability of enemies to dodge and avoid damage, the necessity for you to stop attacking and dodge, move, use supportive or controlling skills all break any attempts to min-max your character, so cast that idea from your head now before you get into GW2 and not only look silly but prove to be one of the least effective overall players in your group. You cannot min-max and be effective, period. Good, now that's settled. As such...
The new trait system works out nicely to be honest. It allows you to build templates for various builds. Within the template you create you'll have what, five to seven major traits you can swap out to give you a specific flavor. So, between swapping traits at need, swapping weapons and swapping utility skills, all when out of combat, you have a ton of flexibility available to you... enough to be a skilled and effective player in most every situation.
If you decide you want a new trait template, head to town, refund all your points and traits and build a new one. You then have a huge number of new builds to play with.
When you forget about the fallacy of being able to min-max and look at it from a balanced, no specific role based system it's actually rather elegant, giving you a large number of options.
In the case of a warrior, while no single trait line has traits for every weapon, all of them have traits that can be used with every weapon which in the case of a line which had a trait of a weapon you wanted to augment, if you put traits for that weapon, your other weapons wouldn't benefit from it. Confusing phrasing, sorry.
Examples:
If you put the "Axe Mastery" (+ axe damage) trait from the Strength trait line, you couldn't put, in its slot, "Physical Mastery" which increases the damage of all utility physical skills.
The trait "Blademaster" (+crit chance with a sword) in the Arms line could be replaced with traits to increase bleeding duration, extra damage to bleeding foes, +50% crit chance versus stunned foes, or Frenzy at 25% health.
In most cases you'd be giving up a boost to any weapon you might have equipped to give a boost to a particular weapon.
I'm not saying that weapon-specific traits are bad, but you can choose to trait for benefits applicable to every weapon.
Oh c'mon now cali. I could come up with a purposefully useless build in your proposed system as well. That's hardly a convincing argument against the current one.
Other than that we're running in circles. We DO get what you're talking about, we just don't agree with you.
I do think it's a valid objection.
For instance, I have no problem with the talent system in WoW allowing people to make terrible builds.
The problem I have with it happening in GW2 is due to their stated desire to not allow people to make bad skill choices. The response of "they could fix it with a respec" or "nobody should be that terrible", or "if they want to play that way, let them" don't hold water to me. If ArenaNet feels a certain way about skills, they should also feel that way about traits which appear in every way to be a much more complicated system.
My proposed system, where players just pick 3 traits from each category doesn't have the issue of misallocation of points.
Honestly, I very much dislike specific weapon traits and I'm also with you in my dislike of generic flat damage traits as well.
Traits like "do damage when you dodge", or "reflect missiles when you block" or "using a burst skill restores endurance". These are the kinds of traits that I want to see, because they are all customizations based on your playstyle.
That I think the traits themselves are bad is a complaint I haven't even gotten to yet until just now because of trying to argue my 6 other complaints about this system.
"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
'We want experimentation with traits to be fun and engaging, so we've made the rules for changing traits extremely flexible. With no in-game cost, you can respec at will, outside of combat. This means you are open to experiment with what works and what doesn't work on the fly, without having to go back to town or worry about if you have enough gold. '
I see current changes as a step back. They now want to tax experimentation, it makes no sense according to their own design philosophy. The whole point was that professions are supposed to be flexible. Put the goldsink on something else please and let us save PVE templates too.
this
Indeed. The flexibility was something I was looking forward to.
You bring up an interesting point. I'm not sure I agree with it, but there is something to the idea of having traited for support and support still being useful in that fight.
It did make me think of something. Having to choose your trait points beforehand gives you an idea of what kind of character you want to play, and then you can change the major traits for the encounter. Like if you put 30 points in Defense, you're saying that you're a control kind of guy. If you also put 30 points in Tactics (which ups your Vitality), you're really a control/support kind of guy.
The five of us rarely communicated. I know my mic was pretty much broken. We just played. With the weapons and utility skills, I think we just kind of each lightly modified our loadout and tactics until we gelled. I don’t know how it happened, but after the first boss, we were simply smashing through story mode.
The elementalist I talked to afterwards said he was playing around with the fire attunement mostly in the beginning, but he ended up playing with water after seeing how aggressive the warrior and thief were playing. If things felt good he would switch to kill the gravelings with fire. Interestingly enough, I switched from engineer rifle (decent damage + crowd control) to flamethrower (short range area of effect (“AoE”) damage + crowd control) because I noticed the gravelings loved to swarm. It was almost as if I unknowingly assumed his role as AoE damager as he shifted to something more supportive. The two melee guys also loved going in to my napalm wall for extra damage against the mobs.
To me, this is the kind of thing that this system prevents. The elementalist in this example went into the dungeon thinking they were in a fire based damage role, then found that based on the group dynamics, he should go primarily water but with a fire backup. Sure, under the current trait system the elementalist can still use their water abilities, but potentially without 6 traits that would support them.
"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
Well traits are suppose to maxium your playstyle and in a group dynamic people adapt their playstyle to every situation. It is just like when I used to do 5v5 in Wow when I was a shaman. If one of my healer yells that they are CC, oom or no los and if I did not toss out a heal on our lock we would loss the match. I adapted to the situation until and went back to dps after I knew our priest/paladin could heal again.
Like I said in an earlier post (#74) of this monstrosity thread. It seems like people want to have a universal builds which enables them to be the best at everything. Your weapon/utility selection are suppose to be versatile to enable you to swap your role as needed.
I just do not see why you think the trait system would stop you from swapping weapons to support/control. Yes you would not do it as good as someone speced for it but you are not the only person who will have a control/support spec in the group. Traits help to enforce the role you want to play but that does not mean you will not have to adapt your role to clear a boss every now and then.
Well traits are suppose to maxium your playstyle and in a group dynamic people adapt their playstyle to every situation. It is just like when I used to do 5v5 in Wow when I was a shaman. If one of my healer yells that they are CC, oom or no los and if I did not toss out a heal on our lock we would loss the match. I adapted to the situation until and went back to dps after I knew our priest/paladin could heal again.
Like I said in an earlier post (#74) of this monstrosity thread. It seems like people want to have a universal builds which enables them to be the best at everything. Your weapon/utility selection are suppose to be versatile to enable you to swap your role as needed.
I just do not see why you think the trait system would stop you from swapping weapons to support/control. Yes you would not do it as good as someone speced for it but you are not the only person who will have a control/support spec in the group. Traits help to enforce the role you want to play but that does not mean you will not have to adapt your role to clear a boss every now and then.
I totally believe that switching what you're doing as the situation demands is definitely the way to go, and not swapping weapons is a bad idea.
You think this thread is a monstrosity, the one on GW2Guru is currently 110 pages. I've posted over 30 times there and about 20 times here about this change. I've said my I don't even know how many objections to it.
The thing is that this system isn't even necessarily a BAD system, but I don't think it's great by any means, and I don't think it fits with what they're trying to do with this game. I've done my best to point out flaws and offer a constructive alternative, but I just can't do it anymore.
I'm just going to walk away for a while because this is killing my love for GW2.
"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
Comments
You can't min-max in GW2 and you'd be foolish to try. The dynamic combat, the ability of enemies to dodge and avoid damage, the necessity for you to stop attacking and dodge, move, use supportive or controlling skills all break any attempts to min-max your character, so cast that idea from your head now before you get into GW2 and not only look silly but prove to be one of the least effective overall players in your group. You cannot min-max and be effective, period. Good, now that's settled. As such...
The new trait system works out nicely to be honest. It allows you to build templates for various builds. Within the template you create you'll have what, five to seven major traits you can swap out to give you a specific flavor. So, between swapping traits at need, swapping weapons and swapping utility skills, all when out of combat, you have a ton of flexibility available to you... enough to be a skilled and effective player in most every situation.
If you decide you want a new trait template, head to town, refund all your points and traits and build a new one. You then have a huge number of new builds to play with.
When you forget about the fallacy of being able to min-max and look at it from a balanced, no specific role based system it's actually rather elegant, giving you a large number of options.
Oderint, dum metuant.
In the case of a warrior, while no single trait line has traits for every weapon, all of them have traits that can be used with every weapon which in the case of a line which had a trait of a weapon you wanted to augment, if you put traits for that weapon, your other weapons wouldn't benefit from it. Confusing phrasing, sorry.
Examples:
If you put the "Axe Mastery" (+ axe damage) trait from the Strength trait line, you couldn't put, in its slot, "Physical Mastery" which increases the damage of all utility physical skills.
The trait "Blademaster" (+crit chance with a sword) in the Arms line could be replaced with traits to increase bleeding duration, extra damage to bleeding foes, +50% crit chance versus stunned foes, or Frenzy at 25% health.
In most cases you'd be giving up a boost to any weapon you might have equipped to give a boost to a particular weapon.
I'm not saying that weapon-specific traits are bad, but you can choose to trait for benefits applicable to every weapon.
I do think it's a valid objection.
For instance, I have no problem with the talent system in WoW allowing people to make terrible builds.
The problem I have with it happening in GW2 is due to their stated desire to not allow people to make bad skill choices. The response of "they could fix it with a respec" or "nobody should be that terrible", or "if they want to play that way, let them" don't hold water to me. If ArenaNet feels a certain way about skills, they should also feel that way about traits which appear in every way to be a much more complicated system.
My proposed system, where players just pick 3 traits from each category doesn't have the issue of misallocation of points.
Honestly, I very much dislike specific weapon traits and I'm also with you in my dislike of generic flat damage traits as well.
Traits like "do damage when you dodge", or "reflect missiles when you block" or "using a burst skill restores endurance". These are the kinds of traits that I want to see, because they are all customizations based on your playstyle.
That I think the traits themselves are bad is a complaint I haven't even gotten to yet until just now because of trying to argue my 6 other complaints about this system.
"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
Indeed. The flexibility was something I was looking forward to.
You bring up an interesting point. I'm not sure I agree with it, but there is something to the idea of having traited for support and support still being useful in that fight.
It did make me think of something. Having to choose your trait points beforehand gives you an idea of what kind of character you want to play, and then you can change the major traits for the encounter. Like if you put 30 points in Defense, you're saying that you're a control kind of guy. If you also put 30 points in Tactics (which ups your Vitality), you're really a control/support kind of guy.
I'm reminded of this quote by Ravious from KillTenRats about his experience playing a dungeon. http://www.killtenrats.com/2011/06/29/gwfanday-the-dungeon-gel/
The five of us rarely communicated. I know my mic was pretty much broken. We just played. With the weapons and utility skills, I think we just kind of each lightly modified our loadout and tactics until we gelled. I don’t know how it happened, but after the first boss, we were simply smashing through story mode.
The elementalist I talked to afterwards said he was playing around with the fire attunement mostly in the beginning, but he ended up playing with water after seeing how aggressive the warrior and thief were playing. If things felt good he would switch to kill the gravelings with fire. Interestingly enough, I switched from engineer rifle (decent damage + crowd control) to flamethrower (short range area of effect (“AoE”) damage + crowd control) because I noticed the gravelings loved to swarm. It was almost as if I unknowingly assumed his role as AoE damager as he shifted to something more supportive. The two melee guys also loved going in to my napalm wall for extra damage against the mobs.
To me, this is the kind of thing that this system prevents. The elementalist in this example went into the dungeon thinking they were in a fire based damage role, then found that based on the group dynamics, he should go primarily water but with a fire backup. Sure, under the current trait system the elementalist can still use their water abilities, but potentially without 6 traits that would support them.
"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
Well traits are suppose to maxium your playstyle and in a group dynamic people adapt their playstyle to every situation. It is just like when I used to do 5v5 in Wow when I was a shaman. If one of my healer yells that they are CC, oom or no los and if I did not toss out a heal on our lock we would loss the match. I adapted to the situation until and went back to dps after I knew our priest/paladin could heal again.
Like I said in an earlier post (#74) of this monstrosity thread. It seems like people want to have a universal builds which enables them to be the best at everything. Your weapon/utility selection are suppose to be versatile to enable you to swap your role as needed.
I just do not see why you think the trait system would stop you from swapping weapons to support/control. Yes you would not do it as good as someone speced for it but you are not the only person who will have a control/support spec in the group. Traits help to enforce the role you want to play but that does not mean you will not have to adapt your role to clear a boss every now and then.
I totally believe that switching what you're doing as the situation demands is definitely the way to go, and not swapping weapons is a bad idea.
You think this thread is a monstrosity, the one on GW2Guru is currently 110 pages. I've posted over 30 times there and about 20 times here about this change. I've said my I don't even know how many objections to it.
One of these posts on guru would be a response to what you just said. http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/search.php?searchid=659708
Probably this one. http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1176943&postcount=2170
The thing is that this system isn't even necessarily a BAD system, but I don't think it's great by any means, and I don't think it fits with what they're trying to do with this game. I've done my best to point out flaws and offer a constructive alternative, but I just can't do it anymore.
I'm just going to walk away for a while because this is killing my love for GW2.
"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