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Lewis B. has a great article up over at Guru GW2 forums explaining the trait system and answers some questions that have been coming up from players that don't quite understand what the new system has to offer. Although there is no longer a "holy trinity", some believe that they may be able to trait their GW2 personas in such a way that they may still be able to play as such. And that is fine so long as you don't mind being possibly less effective as you could otherwise be. I'll just let Lewis B. explain it all, he does a much better job of it than me! Hopefully, after reading his article, you will come away with a better understanding of what to expect from the trait system and relief from any fears you may have had. You can find the article here:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/articles/the-sky-is-falling-traits-are-here/
And for those that perfer to read it here:
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http://www.guildwars2guru.com/articles/the-sky-is-falling-traits-are-here/
And for those that perfer to read it here:
Thanks to Lewis B. for his insightful article and to Guru GW2 forums for sharing!!The Sky Is Falling! Traits Are Here!
I don’t suppose that was the reaction ArenaNet were hoping for when they revealed the new trait system. After what has undoubtedly been months of development time spent fine tuning the intricacies of major and minor traits alongside trait lines, it has all been eclipsed by the prospect of having to return to your trainer to refund your points at the cost of a small fee. To add insult to injury, trait builds have already begun to appear that propose to revive the holy trinity (isn’t that just a horrible phrase?).
As someone who’s heavily invested in Guild Wars 2 and who was fortunate enough to play it during the last beta phase, it’s been interesting to watch such developments unfold, not just the theorycraft behind such builds but the anger and hysteria from a very vocal minority that have overshadowed what is a wonderful system of customisation.
In an effort to dispel some of the anxiety, I thought it might help to produce a Q&A based on concerns I’ve seen raised in the community, in order to restore a little calm.
1. Why is there a respec cost?
Traits are designed to provide players with the ability to customise their character. Traits aren’t designed to be a forgettable system where you continually adapt and change, specific to each and every circumstance. Without some feeling of permanence attached to specialising in trait lines, it would undermine their fundamental purpose of building your character. ArenaNet haven’t specifically stated what the cost will be, but a single trait manual during the beta only costs around 8 silver, which can be earned in a matter of minutes. ArenaNet are also providing you with the opportunity to respec for free three times; every time you use a training manual, you also receive a refund of all your trait points so you can experiment with your new options.
There is also nothing preventing you from travelling to The Mists and the training area (complete with working dummies and targeting range) to experiment and test your trait builds before committing in the “real world”. Finally, waypoints make map travel incredibly fast and with class trainers easily identifiable, swopping traits (should you so desire) will be relatively quick.
2. But why do I even have to travel back to town to change my traits?
This again comes back to creating a sense of permanence and encouraging players to make a choice. Allowing players to permanently change traits, dependant on the situation and anywhere in the game world undermines their entire purpose. Traits aren’t about regularly changing entire lines for one boss or a particular enemy encounter; they are about complementing your chosen play style on a semi-permanent basis. It is wrong for the game to become a case of “Before this boss equip X, Y, Z and you equip A, B, C”. Instead it should be “This is my warrior, this is how I play and these are my traits.” Should you and your group feel the need to regularly change your traits in this way however, the trainer is available to you, but again this will mean you need to choose wisely before venturing into dungeons or PvE content.
3. Isn’t this just restricting my play experience?
It depends if you are a half-full or half-empty sort of person. This system draws parallels with Guild Wars 1 where you had to return back to town to change your skills and attributes, it is also (again) about placing importance on traits and encouraging individuals to think about their character and their builds in their entirety rather than on a situational basis. Your primary class flexibility whilst out in the field comes from swopping weapons and skills freely. Don’t forget, The Mists also grant you a perfect opportunity to experiment at your own leisure free of charge, complete with training area.
4. Why put minor traits and stats in trait lines that can’t be changed by the player?
The purpose of traits is to present the player with a choice (a conflict of sorts) to ask questions of the player on how they really want their class to be.
If you look at the Engineers traits, here, and with only 70 points to spend, it is going to be difficult for many to decide which trait lines and traits to choose. All the minor traits are excellent, but to reach some you really want will unquestionably cause you to sacrifice points in other lines.
“Is the minor trait worth it?”
“Is it worth spending a few more points to get the major trait also?”
“Should I just go for 1 minor trait at the start of a line or ignore it altogether?”
Where trait lines being tied to “stats” are concerned, this is again part of encouraging player choice and compromise and when coupled with traits makes for a brilliant array of choices.
“Do I want a really powerful character who hits hard with a high critical chance?”
“Do I want a well rounded character?”
“Do I want a character with a great deal of health and defence?”
5. Is there not the risk that traits encourage a soft-trinity or the holy trinity?
Based on some builds people have placed on the forums, it could be interpreted that some classes will offer a level of support far superior to others. However, these builds could be seen as extreme and for all that they may gain in improving their support (lets not confuse this with direct “healing”) they will likely lose out in other areas.
6. But these builds are clearly going to be desired. I’ll be forced to run a “Healing Guardian” build or “Healing Elementalist”!
This concern isn’t without merit, however, where opinions are being drawn from is pure theory rather than through hands on experience. Whilst on appearance these builds could readily be painted as “healer” specialisations, this really couldn’t be further from the truth and is confounding issues.
The first, irrespective of how someone chooses to label a series of traits, is that there cannot and will not ever be a class that can proficiently heal or support a group alone.
• There still remains no ally targeting
• Everyone can still only equip one heal
• Splash heals for all classes heal for very little, have reasonably long cooldowns and require a specific weapon set and/or attunement.
What these builds are (again) is an example of an individual gravitating towards the extremes of support, not healing. Whilst such a heavily specialised builds may be able to provide marginally more support than another guardian or elementalist (and we are only talking minor percentages from certain skills) this fails to factor in:
• What other classes who don’t specialise so heavily in support bring
• What such heavy specialisation doesn’t do for the player.
A build as heavily centric as those demonstrated could be seen as incredibly limited and I have already experimented with similar builds in the last Beta phase.
Playing as the engineer (in the company of Jon Peters also as an engineer) in The Mist and focusing entirely on support, I found the results of a pure support build were very mixed. Jon was traited in a variety of lines (in what I would describe as a balance build) and it was evident from the very first tests that his damage was almost double mine, whilst my support skills (healing turret/med packs) were obviously better.
When in structured PvP, the impact of my build was even more noticeable. In over 20 structured PvP matches I didn’t kill a single person by myself because my damage was so low. I’d sacrificed my damage so heavily as a result of my extreme build that every class could ‘out-last’ my damage or ‘out-heal’ it. If I survived long enough to dwindle down my enemies health (which I often did as I had a great deal of vitality and constitution) it took so long to do it my opponents heal had often recharged allowing them to reuse it several times. This sometimes caused a stalemate before one of us would be joined by team mates.
Irrespective of the improvement to my self heals (or Healing Turret) and Med Packs (from Supply Crate), their long cooldowns still restricted my playstyle and the improvements to heals over my reduced damage output made me in some ways no more desirable than any other engineer. On a personal level, I consider I was in a worse position because I wasn’t fundamentally capable of doing what other engineers were and that was killing. However, this depends entirely on your playstyle and if you are happy to rely entirely on others to do the killing, that is your perogative.
In contrast, I attempted a “DPS RANGER!” by traiting heavily in power and precision. My health pool and defence were incredibly low and whilst my damage could be considered high, the sacrifice was a health pool of less than 16,000 that would see me regularly die in just 3 hits from a Warrior. Having looked back at the footage I recorded, I simply couldn’t release it because all it would show people (because you can’t see my traits) is that rangers are made of glass. This just isn’t true. Whilst some people may enjoy this play style, for me it wasn’t a viable approach.
7. When you say “extreme” build, what do you mean?
This would be focusing your trait points almost exclusively on two lines to achieve the maximum output but also focussing your characters equipment entirely on those two trait lines, leaving you with near base statistics on other attributes.
8. Are you saying you don’t think such extreme builds shouldn’t even be used?
Not at all! The brilliance of the system is that such extreme builds are possible and that the game naturally takes such builds into consideration. For an example, if you were seeking to make a thief that deals great damage who also has a high chance to critical hit this is more than possible, by exclusively specialising in Deadly Arts and Critial Strikes whilst also ensuring all your equipment focuses on the same. You should however be prepared to have significantly less health and defence than a thief who specialised in only Shadow Arts or Acrobatics. However, if that is how you choose to play your thief, then that is your character and traits have served their purpose.
9. But if these extreme builds are viable, then how is it not a return to a soft trinity? Can I not play just a support character?
People are fundamentally misinterpreting the word support. Support comes in many forms and isn’t restricted primarily to skills that directly heal or protect another player (I call these green support skills). A thief coming to your aid by killing your opponent, just as you’re about to die, is support. As with point 6, there still remains no ally targeting and all classes (for the vast majority of the time) need to rely on their own personal heals coupled with dodge to survive. The game simply isn’t designed for one character to support exclusively due to the limited number of green support skills (i.e those that remove conditions or heal others) and long cooldowns attached to such skills.
For example, an engineer wielding the Elixir Gun would, on the surface, be seen to be providing more support than an engineer wielding the Flamethrower. However, what if the Flamethrower engineer pulls an enemy away from you by using Backdraft or knocks back a foe using Air Blast that allows you to be revived. Is that not as useful?
Support in Guild Wars 2 isn’t exclusive to skills that purely heal or apply a boon. The dynamic nature of its combat and the necessity to aid others, in all forms, is the key to a successful group.
10. So why is there a respec cost?
*sigh* see 1.
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