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Build Concerns
Kleir
Member UncommonPosts: 155
So far this brand new build system that GW2 has looks great. But when it comes down to the first five weapon skills, I have a slight concern. I haven't played the demo so if anyone could clear this up for me that would be great. My question is if you can control which skills you would have when you wield that particular weapon. For example, if an elementalist wields a staff at level 10 and she has 5 different fire spells while in her fire attunement, will those be the same 5 fire spells that she would have at level 80 wielding the same staff? Do different staves have different fire spells? Does the elementalist get to choose 5 different fire-staff spells from a list of fire-staff spells whenever she wields a staff while in her fire attunement? They say there is so much freedom and diversity when it comes to making builds in GW2, and I was just wondering how much freedom there was when it came to weapon skills.
"Many have eyes, but few have seen." - Goddess Lyssa
Comments
Actually, they said there was less freedom when building your character. This doesn't mean there are no choices, just less than GW1. And yes, those 5 skills will stay with you through out your levelling, but....
A lot of it has to do with compression of skills. For example, take a look at a warrior from other games, including GW1. Everyone of those warriors has a few skills that GW2 has compressed. In those games, warriors tend to hit a 1-2-3 combo to get a good effect/damage. Skill 2 was only effective if skill 1 was used. And skill 3 was only effective if skill 2 was hit. GW2 takes all these three and puts them in one skill slot. So you you hit skill 5, and it changes to the next chain. Hit skill 5 again and it will change to the next chain. Similar to this is the necromancer minion skills. If you picked a certain minion in GW1, you pretty much always took another skill that was effective for that minion. GW2 takes both those skills, and puts them into one skill.
Though there are 5 skill slots per weapon, there are MUCH more skills than this. For example, an elementalists with ONE weapon has 20 different skills in their first 5 skill slots. The only thing is... not all 20 are availble at a given time. They are swappable in combat and on the fly, but do have short cooldowns. Just as the warrior does not only have 5 skills in their 5 skill slots. There are 3 adrenaline levels, and some weapon skills changes with each level. To this extent, a warrior can have upwards of 20 skills for a single weapon. All this WITHOUT the 5 utility skills which may also have similar effects.
It's not entirely a bad thing, even if it pretty limited. For one, every class in every game only has a handful of good builds. GW2 makes sure you know what they are by pointing you in that direction. Look at WoW's warrior, how many builds are viable? How many are viable for the warrior in LoTRO? This is also used to make sure newcomers DO NOT grab bad skills. They will always have potential to be decent.
With all that, there are traits. Traits can change your skills in small or big ways, depending on if the trait is minor or major. Changes can be anything from adding DoT damage, to AOE, and some even change a melee attack to a ranges attack. Now if you were to look at other games, an attack that does damage would be a different skill from an attack that does bleeding. But in GW2, both are one skill, they are just altered version of each other.
And finally, to the main point. GW2 does not rely on builds as much as GW1. In GW1 it was pretty much whomever had the better build was the better team. This is why some call Guild Wars "Build Wars." What GW2 does is make each skill more or less effective depending on other factors. Take the guardian's sphere shielding ability for example. In other games, that "guarding" class would simply use skill 5 and all his allies would gain +30 armor or whatever. A noob can hit skill 5 just as well as a pro can hit skill 5. But in GW2, to use a guard skill, you have to make sure whomever you're protecting is... behind you, or in your sphere, or behind the wall you cast.... or wherever it is you are protecting. Now noob can stand in front of someone and raise his shield (literally), but a pro might see that if he just stand 3 feet to the left, he can protect 2 allies instead of one.
So at the end of the rant, it comes down to this. Builds still have flexibility, they just appear the same on your skill bar as another build. And more importantly, GW2 is designed so that beginners can play decently, while pros just murder.
Thanks a lot, you really answered a lot of my concerns. I didn't see a direct answer to the main question though, but I'm assuming the answer is yes... that a particular weapon will always give that profession the same skills?
"Many have eyes, but few have seen." - Goddess Lyssa
Yes, you will have the same core skills for that weapon throughout levelling.
Just wanted to add a few things, another thing that gives the skills more.. variety.. is traits. I don't think the previous post mentioned it. You get traits by doing certain class events or something, sorry it's early can't quite remember too the fullest. Anyways, these traits charge skills giving them certain properties, such as they mentioned fro the Guardian: the skill that creates a big bouble, well there's a trait for it that'll knock back enemies if their in it. So depending on which traits you have it could greatly change your build.
Also a fun little build creator that was posted a while ago, it's fun to mess around with:
http://www.gw2tools.12hp.de/index.php
@Blahteeb
Dude, that was one of the best posts I've seen here in a long time. That answer should be under consideration as being worthy of a sticky.
Oderint, dum metuant.
first i want to say hi to ya all
OT
i wish that the build in gw2 will be much simpler that in gw 1
Yeah I think with all these posts it shows that GW2 builds will be simpler to make, yet have more possibilities when performed. It all sounds very exciting!
"Many have eyes, but few have seen." - Goddess Lyssa
These replies have excellently answered the main question seem to ask after thinking of transitioning from GW 1 to GW 2.
Traits add affects, properties, and sometimes completely change moves. As you level up you can gain points to add additional traits to your character. For example, one trait might turn your basic fireball into a shotgun of six fireballs. Tehre will be many many possibilities for builds and making a unique and functional character.