GW1 had template codes which would automatically populate attributes/skills. I don't see why they wouldn't re-implement this feature and simply add traits to the code. Any equipment based stuff though will likely be kept separate.
Pets?
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Guild Wars 2 Press Beta [Prepurchase Is Live]
- Thread starter Jira
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You'll have saved builds for PvP, no word on PvE/WvW.
I mean in a single line. There's no change in the traits you can pick at 10 points, or the one you can pick at 30 points.
The minions. I generally hate any kind of summonable shit in these kinds of games. In GW2 it looks like the AI has full control over them; this is probably good for PvE stuff, but in PvP it means enemy players are going to have a lot of control over how useful they are.
What he means is that in each of the five lines, the major traits you can slot in that line are the same, so if you feel one is better than all the others you can just take that one immediately.
And I'd counter with the fact that not specializing in a line means a marked decrease in the stat bonus you bring into battle.
I made the mistake of going to Guru to get some info for my thread and I stopped by the new Traits thread and all I could think was this...
Is it any surprise ArenaNet hasn't bothered to set up Official Forums when the Guru forums (which have been filling in) have become such a dumping ground? I mean, it's not quite to WoW Forum levels yet, but it's alarmingly close.
I hope they don't set up anything beyond a Support forum; I'd rather see the Devs continue what they've been doing, writing blogs and working on the game, not spending all day fielding questions from idiots.
As I mentioned earlier, I'm glad they do "Game-y" stuff rather than "Math-y" stuff. When I first read over this latest blog, I was a little concerned about the new stat system and how you have some stats existing only to boost other stats. For example, why does a Guardian need Concentration stat (Increases the duration of all boons) when they could just have a trait that does the same thing?
I realize they need to have some stats so there's more degrees of growth to manage, but sometimes I feel like MMOs need to drop more RPG (and don't get me wrong, GW2 is a big step towards that) and stop with the itty bitty baby steps and just say "Okay, you take this trait, your boons last twice as long." No fiddling with stats that affect stats that affect other stats. So far, that's my only real gripe with GW2; it doesn't go far enough in putting player skill ahead of stat management. I'm sure many will disagree, but that's my opinion.
The problem with this is the same problem WoW had with it's talent system; you *MUST* spec completely into one tree to get the uberskill buried at the bottom of it, or you're just so wildly ineffective you can't compete. By allowing you to pick the specific things you want, you're giving more freedom across the whole system.
The idea is that there are (or at least, should be) multiple Major Traits in each line that you want.
I agree; this is a penalty to something players will want to (and should) experiment with, not for making poor choices. If they feel like it needs some degree of permanence so people aren't swapping out their traits between fights, keep the "Visit an NPC" option or have some kind of inventory item or better yet, something actually within the trait window.
For example, every respec could cost one "Reset", with players only able to have 5 of at any time. You're refreshed back up to 5 every time you visit a city, so f you use all 5 resets up, you can't respec again until you head to down. One benefit of this is that you can hang around just outside of town (or in it, if they have a training dummy-esque feature) and experiment as much as you want because the resets are constant.
Minions are never useful actively in PvP. You use them the same the dumb mesmers use their clones. Putrid Explosion for damage, Taste of Death for heal. So even if they don't actively pressure opponents, they can still be used as utility. But they will likely not be powerful in PvP.
Necro fans though should keep in mind that you do actually have to do damage. Necros are condition masters and have nice support. But none of that is going to down an opponent and GW2 is much more individualistic in DPS. The three main DPS areas appear to be axe attacks, forms, and life steal. I personally see a combination of life steal and forms to be what makes necros scary. That's a combination of dagger and axe use. Daggers have multiple life steal and also work conditions in as well as a bit of support. FoC on the axe can strip boons and do direct DPS so you aren't a soft attacker. Utilities could be BiP for more life force, signet of undeath for life force, and a well/spectral. Spectral armor is pretty good.
That leaves you with the forms. Lich form turns you into a pain in the ass condition spammer. So you don't lose your condition application from staff/scepter/focus/warhorn. And you should enter death shroud constantly. Life blast, dark path, and life transfers are fucking dangerous especially the fact that you gain a teleport. And the DS traits only sweeten the deal.
Soul Reaping
- Foot in the Grave applies Stability when you enter Death Shroud.
- Speed of Shadows move faster while in Death Shroud.
- Vital Persistence lose life force more slowly while in Death Shroud.
- Near to Death reduces cooldown on Death Shroud by 50%.
- Furious Demise applies Fury to you when you enter Death Shroud.
- Death Shiver applies Spinal Shivers to enemies when you enter Death Shroud.
- Spiteful Spirit applies Retaliation when you enter Death Shroud.
- Deathly Invigoration heals area when you leave Death Shroud.
I'm sure trickier and more team based necro builds will spawn later. But a day1 build that can DPS will have legs. And exploiting life steal / forms is my current guess towards something that can do that.
Kos Luftar
Member
You used to have to pay to respec you attribute points in GW1 also, and I don't remember many people complaining about it but, ANET changed it anyway so you can respec whenever you want for free. I feel like a lot of people who post on GW2Guru forums really wanted just another expansion to GW1 not a sequel.
That's why I don't like them, though. They're like utility skills where a function of control in how I use them is given to my opponents rather than kept for myself, because they can either influence their AI or invalidate their presence in other ways. I'd just rather my class weren't wasting slots on them and had different utility skills in those slots.
That's also why the "pets" for the Guardian - the spirit weapons - don't really bother me at all. They are totally untargetable and invincible, so I retain full measure of control over them.
Edit - Part of this depends on the specific of how Necromancer pets target, mind you. If I have some way to control them directly, even if they always simply attack what I am attacking (and targeting), it will be less bothersome.
Pinko Marx
Banned
Necromancer is the class I plan on maining.
he'll use Axe/Focus & Dagger/Warhorn
goin 20 Spite, 20 Blood, 30 Soul. Thats the theory, at least.
Won't really be using minions at all.
he'll use Axe/Focus & Dagger/Warhorn
goin 20 Spite, 20 Blood, 30 Soul. Thats the theory, at least.
Won't really be using minions at all.
There was non-stop bitching about the refund system in GW1. It was absolutely stupid.
RepairmanJack
Member
At first I was for it costing just because it was what I was used to, but I am in complete agreeance with you. Something like this would work perfectly.
Right, and if they wanted to they could tie it to their Training Manuals; One reset at level 11 (adept), one at 40 (master), one at 60 (grandmaster) and one at level 80, so you'd be able to respec 4 times 'in the field'.
Bam. When you have zero left, a small message appears that says "Visit a city to refresh". I really like this approach because as long as you're in a city, all of your respecs are free, meaning if there's a "Training Ground" or something where you can fight and try out your setup, you can just experiment to your heart's content.
Well, Guild Wars has that AI targetting feature now, so I don't understand why they wouldn't carry the technology over into GW2.
I'd say that the whole trait respec is in flux and they could very well be open to feedback on it in beta so we could see the fee or needing to talk to a trainer removed at the very least. I'd prefer that we don't need to go talk to a specific NPC every time we need to respec, I mean they got rid of the need to buy skills so why handle traits like this?
Yeah, I don't think it's set in stone yet. The problem is, the actual useful feedback is so buried in whiny bullshit that I worry there's no way they'll get the message. I mean, if I were part of the Dev team and I said "Hey, let's see what people think", I'd see the venomous, hyperbole-laden clusterfuck of a response over at Guru and put a gun in my mouth.
Okay, so, if any GAFer gets into testing, be sure to give some kind of feedback ticket on the trait system using the method I outlined above; players get a set number (<5) of Trait Resets, located within the actual Trait window, that are used up each reset but are automatically refreshed whenever entering a city. This costs nothing and is fully automated. It beats the alternative, I guess.
I would be surprised if this happens, ANet isn't stupid and knows better than to do that nickel-and-dime crap that most F2P games implement. In fact, calling this a F2P game, as true as that description is, actually does GW2 a disservice by association with those kind of borderline scam 'games'.
They won't, the uproar would be....like a nuke going off.
Yeah, it's B2P, not F2P. There's a MASSIVE difference.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
To make it clear that your not supposed to change traits, unless you make a mistake. Buying skills was just a nuisance and a gold sink every level. a gimmick to travel into town. makes no sense to buy rank 2, 3, 4 of a same skill, with no new visual que or splendor.
They could offload it onto the waypoint travel costs.
Right now we have 3 gold sinks that we know of:
- Waypoint travel
- Durability repairs
- Trait respecs
I guess you could say Siege weapon blueprints, but I was thinking more along the lines of general systems that all players will have to use at some point.
I think Retro's idea is the best - it allows them to maintain some sort of permanence in your builds, but also make the player want to shuffle off to the towns to have true freedom.
It should cost money to refresh the total before you head out, though. As in, you go back, respecs are free, but when want to leave, you "stock" 4 resets (or arbitrary number) to use out in the "field".
I don't understand why they don't want players to roam in the wilds - the game world supports being out and about for hours upon hours.
It should cost money to refresh the total before you head out, though. As in, you go back, respecs are free, but when want to leave, you "stock" 4 resets (or arbitrary number) to use out in the "field".
I don't understand why they don't want players to roam in the wilds - the game world supports being out and about for hours upon hours.
RepairmanJack
Member
With Retro's idea you could also say in a way the waypoint travel cost to a city is the cost of refreshing your resets. I think this system could work perfectly, if anything maybe they restrict it somehow in dungeons or pvp? Maybe lower the number of resets?
Disciplines you mean?
The only sinks there are if you want to switch from one to another, you're able to buy basic crafting mats with Karma. Oh and crafting tools too. Although, I've seen someone gather a plant without the tool in their character sheet, so maybe the tools just provide yield bonuses or something and aren't required to gather.
Pretty much what I was thinking.
Guardian Holy Fire Build (Burning, Burning Everywhere!)
http://www.gw2tools.com/calc/#t-g-ppaaf:dZb.ZXc.aaa.aaa.Xaa
I really like this build - building up burning damage while also generally keeping two-handed sword damage high.
Fits my playstyle - 2H Sword / Sword / Torch is what I'm going to try out at first.
Basically, use spirit weapon sword (which I think actually gets a boost from the trait 5% more sword damage), spirit weapons don't die when you command them, so use its ability (whatever it is, damn you GW2 wiki for not being updated!) over and over - they also burn on hit, you do 10% more damage when they're burning, (so basically 15% more damage when they're on fire), and with 10 points in virtue burn does more damage overall. It's not so much about burning them is it is keeping up the burn for the extra personal damage.
Also crits are fun, they'll blind and such.
I'm gonna go look at Jira's build now
http://www.gw2tools.com/calc/#t-g-ppaaf:dZb.ZXc.aaa.aaa.Xaa
I really like this build - building up burning damage while also generally keeping two-handed sword damage high.
Fits my playstyle - 2H Sword / Sword / Torch is what I'm going to try out at first.
Basically, use spirit weapon sword (which I think actually gets a boost from the trait 5% more sword damage), spirit weapons don't die when you command them, so use its ability (whatever it is, damn you GW2 wiki for not being updated!) over and over - they also burn on hit, you do 10% more damage when they're burning, (so basically 15% more damage when they're on fire), and with 10 points in virtue burn does more damage overall. It's not so much about burning them is it is keeping up the burn for the extra personal damage.
Also crits are fun, they'll blind and such.
I'm gonna go look at Jira's build now
That.. actually makes a lot of sense.
This actually might be the better system. Neat, can't wait to try it out for myself.
Guardian Holy Fire Build (Burning, Burning Everywhere!)
http://www.gw2tools.com/calc/#t-g-ppaaf:dZb.ZXc.aaa.aaa.Xaa
I really like this build - building up burning damage while also generally keeping two-handed sword damage high.
Fits my playstyle - 2H Sword / Sword / Torch is what I'm going to try out at first.
Basically, use spirit weapon sword (which I think actually gets a boost from the trait 5% more sword damage), spirit weapons don't die when you command them, so use its ability (whatever it is, damn you GW2 wiki for not being updated!) over and over - they also burn on hit, you do 10% more damage when they're burning, (so basically 15% more damage when they're on fire), and with 10 points in virtue burn does more damage overall. It's not so much about burning them is it is keeping up the burn for the extra personal damage.
Also crits are fun, they'll blind and such.
I'm gonna go look at Jira's build now
It's important to get the full picture, look at my link here:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...about-Cross-Profession-Combos-for-my-Guardian
Too early even for me.
The build is very,very dependent on other players to function - meaning, solo wise, it's not very handy.
You think that was good? Look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRlF...xt=C370537dUDOEgsToPDskKaBGYujNcbQNqHVOwHtrx9
You can combo off of yourself for the CPCs and yeah I'll admit some of it requires allies to be effective, but I don't have much plans on soloing and I don't think you're going to run into too many circumstances where you're alone. If that does happen I'll just switch to a different build.
RepairmanJack
Member
This video almost put Thief over Elementalist for me.
You understood the blasphemy in taking that stance.
RepairmanJack
Member
I just watched the pvp video of the dev playing elementalist and it squashed all second guessing.
Yeah. The refund system didn't last long in GW1. It really was a terrible idea.
Personally, I'm not too bothered by the current system in GW2. It was a little off-putting at first, considering GW1 let me do it whenever I was in a town for free. As long as the costs stay reasonable I won't really care. Not being able to do it anywhere else but a trainer is really no different than only being able to change your build in a town in GW1.
That's pretty much what Martin (ANet CM) over there is doing at this point. You can tell from his responses that he's getting really fed up with the way the community is acting.
Yeah, if he could I'm absolutely positive he'd tear them a new one.
That's kinda beside the point, I think. Eliminating barriers to experimentation is just flat-out, full-stop more important than an economy of fake video game money. If they can come up with an alternate gold sink, then they should do it, but it's preferable to have full flexibility in character customization and a busted-ass economy than to keep your economy intact but put a significant limitation on a player's ability to be flexible or to do multiple iterations on a new idea.
I don't disagree, but really what I'm getting at is that they have to do both. Neither of those scenarios are acceptable. So, if there aren't very many sources of outbound gold paths already, something needs to take the place of the one for traits when it is changed.
If they insist on giving a shit about their economy, trait refunds are the wrong place to target anyway; all that the fee is going to do is encourage people to follow guides that other players have written instead of learning and experimenting for themselves (and that's going to be a problem even if respecs are completely free, so I don't know why they'd want to exacerbate the situation).
If they want to take a significant amount of money out of the economy, they should be taking a percentage out of every transaction that goes on in the auction house - and if they already are doing that, then they should just increase the percentage fee until it's at the level they want.
At least if you want to avoid participating in a gold sink that revolves around the auction house, you need to take the time to arrange buying and selling over some external auction site/forum (which is much less convenient than the AH, and requires that you personally invest time in setting up the deal - time that you could have used to make more money had you gone with the automated AH solution). Avoiding a respec cost is as simple as sticking to whatever cookie cutter 'build guides' happen to be in vogue, and never straying from them.
Edit: If GW1 is what most people would call a 'broken economy' (and I don't know if that's really true: it's a pretty functional and relatively stable one, even without any gold sinks to speak of; it's just that cosmetic upgrades cost a lot, and the difference between a 99.9% effective and 100% effective variant on the same kind of equipment can seem disproportionate), then imagine what would happen if it cost gold to respec there. Would it really affect the people contributing to inflation - the ones who load up on a farming build and then do the same thing over and over four hours/days/weeks, amassing hundreds of thousands of gold in between build changes? Or would it just become a nuisance to people who are playing the game for fun, and who like to play around with a different loadout for every new story mission?
If they want to take a significant amount of money out of the economy, they should be taking a percentage out of every transaction that goes on in the auction house - and if they already are doing that, then they should just increase the percentage fee until it's at the level they want.
At least if you want to avoid participating in a gold sink that revolves around the auction house, you need to take the time to arrange buying and selling over some external auction site/forum (which is much less convenient than the AH, and requires that you personally invest time in setting up the deal - time that you could have used to make more money had you gone with the automated AH solution). Avoiding a respec cost is as simple as sticking to whatever cookie cutter 'build guides' happen to be in vogue, and never straying from them.
Edit: If GW1 is what most people would call a 'broken economy' (and I don't know if that's really true: it's a pretty functional and relatively stable one, even without any gold sinks to speak of; it's just that cosmetic upgrades cost a lot, and the difference between a 99.9% effective and 100% effective variant on the same kind of equipment can seem disproportionate), then imagine what would happen if it cost gold to respec there. Would it really affect the people contributing to inflation - the ones who load up on a farming build and then do the same thing over and over four hours/days/weeks, amassing hundreds of thousands of gold in between build changes? Or would it just become a nuisance to people who are playing the game for fun, and who like to play around with a different loadout for every new story mission?
Guardian Balanced
Mace/Shield
Sword/Focus
-Healing Breeze
-Tome of Wrath
-Smite Condition
-Renewed Focus
-Hammer of Wisdom
Use CoP or SoR if condition spamming is prevalent
Traits:
http://www.gw2tools.com/calc/#t-g-ffkkf:Waa.baa.cXa.YZa.Waa
Would take way too long to explain. But it is well structured.
Mace/Shield
Sword/Focus
-Healing Breeze
-Tome of Wrath
-Smite Condition
-Renewed Focus
-Hammer of Wisdom
- Mace chain heals, has a symbol and prot skill
- Shield for defense, low health, runaway
- Sword has blind and tele
- Focus has blind and prot
- Tome of wrath for time burst damage
- Smite condition due to 60s CD on CoP
- Renewed focus timed properly for defensive resets
- Hammer of wisdom for timely KD due to loss of hammer
Use CoP or SoR if condition spamming is prevalent
Traits:
http://www.gw2tools.com/calc/#t-g-ffkkf:Waa.baa.cXa.YZa.Waa
Would take way too long to explain. But it is well structured.
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