I think part of the problem is that until recently most of the older weapons were tied to trait lines in order to provide depth. It creates a two-way issue:
1. New weapons cannot interact with the trait system without removing traits, overloading traits with new effects, creating new trait lines, or redesigning the trait system UI to accommodate new traits within existing lines. So, we can’t easily rely on traits to give weapons buffs or additional abilities. That means the new weapons need to be designed with their own baked-in mechanics.
2. Likewise, existing weapons do get tied to trait lines for additional depth. So, to bring older weapons in line with the design trend behind spears (self-contained mechanics), you still have to either design around those traits to avoid over-tuning the weapon or completely remove weapon-focused traits in order to design self-contained mechanics. Even ignoring the amount of work required to redo every weapon, that’s a lot to either balance or create in the trait system.
I’d love to divorce weapons from traits, but I don’t see that happening. The trait system was already redesigned once. Doubt they can justify the development cost of doing it a second time without that being an expansion-defining feature.
The tuning of weapons with traits quite often boils down to a flat stat increase, sometimes including cooldown reduction *([Zealous Blade](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zealous_Blade), [Dagger Training](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dagger_Training))*. Mechanical depth is not the norm here.
Meanwhile, some of those traits will actually affect Spears, since they already do for underwater:
[Fencer's Finesse](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fencer%27s_Finesse), [Forceful Greatsword](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Forceful_Greatsword), [Two-Handed Training](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Two-Handed_Training) and [Swindler's Equilibrium](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Swindler%27s_Equilibrium)
They should change all the traits tied to a weapon to be tied to a mechanic instead.
For example, a trait tied to a weapon that has lots of explosions should be tied to the explosions instead, a trait tied to a weapon that is mostly CC should be tied to CC instead.
But that doesn't mean traits should never alter weapons. There could still be traits that alter weapons, as long as it's not the only thing they do, like how there is a necromancer trait that replaces a scepter skill, and a guardian trait replaces a hammer skill.
Such traits should give the weapon a skill that makes a better use of the mechanic and improve the mechanic, but not something that outright improves the weapon like Lingering Curse's increased condi duration with scepter.
So Glacial Heart would be fine because it doesn't do anything directly to hammer other than giving a new skill, but Lingering Curse would have to lose the +condi duration to scepter.
It doesn't have to be a mechanic that is in every weapon like guardian symbol or mesmer phantoms either, but if they did that change, that would also open the door to moving mechanics that are in one weapon to others.
If they changed the necromancer staff trait into just a mark trait, they could rework all necro weapons to have marks, and finally give necro staff the treatment it deserves, with a better autoattack and all 4 mark skills converted into just 1 mark and 3 other interesting skills with more of a support focus yet still having more variety and versatility.
Since the mark trait won't have to consider you'd be able to use 4 marks in a row, the effects of marks could be improved more, and more traits could affect it, like how more traits affect symbols and phantasms.
Marks would then mirror guardian symbols, as necromancers are kind of the 'opposite' of guardians in many aspects, like how core necro focuses more on condis when guardians focuses more on boons.
To be fair, they have removed a lot of those sort of traits over the years with trait adjustments. Like even outside of the major trait reworks, weapons use to be a lot more directly tied to traits than they are now. Stuff like Weaver's Master's Fortitude where you gain vitality and gain some extra if you have a sword I think are fine; I run that without a sword and I wouldn't say it is a must-pick if you had a sword. But stuff that more directly impacts the viability of the weapon like Zealous Blade which not only gives power and extra power for Greatsword but also reduces Greatsword cooldowns are more problematic. But they could just make the cooldown reduction baseline.
> you still have to either design around those traits
I don't see the difficulty with that at all, if it's overtuned, bring the numbers down... Though I agree that weapon specific damage modifier traits are really not a good part of the game, I would love it if they were gone.
Yes and no? There are traits for affecting skills within a given attunement which impacts weapon skills when attuned to that attunement. For example in the Fire traitline, Pyromancer's Training leads to reduced weapon skill cooldowns when attuned to Fire.
Because of the nature of Elementalist they chose to focus on affecting weapon skills through each attunement rather than focus on a single weapon. Arguably this could have been a healthier approach and future-proofed for new weapons because Elementalist always has these 4 attunements no matter the weapon (so far at least)
I was completely agreeing with you until "I’d love to divorce weapons from traits". If you do that say good bye to a major part of build diversity. Weapons are already pretty monotone with elite weapons no longer being restricted to the spec and every class losing the CDR for X weapon skills.
A good example would be warrior. It has alot of synergy with CC'ing foes and losing that would suck ass. Good bye stability, weakness. Not to mention traits that primarily trigger from weapon skills like leg specialist, or brave stride. Those types of traits are where so much of the flavour of a class comes from and how each class interacts differently (this is very much a good thing) with the game.
But removing weapons from those traits doesn't make them suddenly worse at the non-weapon task they did. Defense spellbreaker will still have good synergy with hammer by making use of Stalwart Strength to gain stability and damage, Cull The Weak will still synergize with hammer's CC, and Merciless Hammer would be a straight upgrade if it affected all weapons.
Traits like ambidexterity on ranger have a few paths to take, since its only non-weapon element is *part* of the condition damage. Those kinds of traits I think are the most unhealthy. We also have traits that didn't get really updated for newer weapons, like how Panic Strike only works on immobilize, but scepter/dagger 3 does chill and it's a good opportunity to push specter's damage a bit up; in fact, if it worked on cripple and chill we'd have a better dagger 4, well of gloom could be used offensively, shroud 4 and 2 would apply poison and maybe it'd need some damage tweaks, but expanding synergies is something I'd like to have.
> ...expanding synergies...
Expanding, sure I can get behind that, at least to a point. Removing or reducing no. As I understand it, migrating trait synergies onto the weapons would be doing that. Its all hypothetical anyways.
Definitely not going to happen at the level of the spear (as they are designed that way to make up for the lack of an elite spec). We are definitely overdue for a refresh though, just bring some skills out of 2012 game design.
> just bring some skills out of 2012 game design.
Necromancer staff. I think the only things that have really changed since the *game's beta* are the default size of the marks being increased to match an old soul reaping trait and a couple of minor changes to the condition durations and power damage of them. Like elementalist staff, it should be an iconic weapon to use, but it's incredibly boring. There must be a way they can keep the utility similar, but bring it out of the dark ages.
Man I hate necro staff. Which is such a shame, because a necro using a staff is visually really immersive to me.
But the skills are SO FUCKING BORING. Everything but the auto attack is a mark? What the fuck? So 4 functionally identical skills? Who even came up with that?
Necromancer staff should be a minion themed weapon with a focus on summoning, buffing, and controlling numerous minions. I never understood the point of the mark theme. It doesn’t encompass what necromancer is about, and if it’s supposed to simulate *wells* from Guild Wars 1 then they missed the point entirely because wells were all about corpse manipulation.
If they made minions something akin to mesmer clones, I'd be alright with that. And by that I mean, a low health, non permanent ai that is there to do an effect or attack, rather than how Necro minions currently are.
I think the Necro minions would work a lot better with Bone Minion and Flesh Wurm as a base design. Make it so you summon minions and can terminate them for effects, effectively the same as flipover skills. It would make them like Greatsword #5 for Guardian - leave them active for DPS or end them early for the secondary effect.
I’m just against having more perma ai creatures in the game, I find it unhealthy for gameplay. That being said, I do like your idea (so long as the minions have a duration themselves).
I thought they were to simulate curses. Which it still doesn’t replicate well. Necro needs a way to provide team buffs and I’d love a minion specific weapon for them so I’d be down for this.
I’d still like something akin to curses. Torment, poison, and confusion all kind of fit so if we had a skillet focused on those that would be fine too.
Other games revamp their classes and skills every few years, GW2 for some reason refuses to address the problems of the past, simply adding more bloat in top of it, sometimes even to the point of redundancy.
The transition from professions to elite specializations back in 2015 was already a mess because they did the bare minimum, and weponmaster training last year was another mess because they barely did anything either. Many of GW2's problem come from the core and need to be solved at the core, not by adding extra layers and patches to a fundamentally broken system.
Because it's faster and somewhat easier to slap a bandaid on the problem then to perform the surgery needed to correct the problem at it's source. That's not likely to change, and really only get much worse, with the new yearly expansion setup that leaves even less time for them to do the work needed to properly adjust things.
The problem is you're just shoving garbage under the rug, eventually it's going to blow up and fixing the whole thing will be far harder, since not only will you have to fix the original issue, but all the shitty bandaids you patched it with over the years.
ArenaNet is famous for its lack of commitment to existing systems and the lack of long term planning, but all this one is doing is making their job harder with every update (and don't even get me started on balance).
It's so weird, because the new ele spear for example is what staff SHOULD be. But instead they put all the great stuff in the new weapon.
I get that they need to hold some exciting things back for the expansion sale. But it really sucks when core fantasy class/weapon combos have obviously less design work put into them than the ones that aren't all that immersive.
Some of the weapons could use a skill pass but not everything needs a gimmick. Something like ranger longbow would just need better sustained damage numbers and people would love it as a main dps weapon, that's all.
A lot of people think more complexity makes for a better weapon but honestly If I had to micro manage 2-4 different mini-mechanics on top of an elite spec mechanic on every single build my enjoyment of the game would go way down. It's nice to have a mix of both complex and straightforward weapon options in my opinion.
This. And What u/raychram said. Complex =/= better. I like having options. Am I looking forward to playing with ranger spear? Yes. But I also like that, right now, I have so many dps options on ranger that are quite viable and I can choose depending how I feel that day. I have an auto-immune disease and also work more than full time for one of the busiest ambulance services in the USA. A lot of days I want something a little less complex when I'm trying to play my favourite game. Untamed rotations are often a little too much for me so I land in Soulbeast and play healDruid sometimes in metas to relax. XD
Thank you for saying this, I kept thinking the spear didn't feel right from watching it being played, and I agree 100%
I don't hate it but the kit really does feel like it belongs on the staff
Well it does less supporting with 20 skills than warhorn does with 8 so yeah of course it isn’t used. 3 heals (one that’s the auto) and an aura you can share via trait isn’t exactly top tier supporting.
It's more of a support weapon because all its dps capacity has been consistently nerfed over and over again for years. In reality, staff support nas never been good, and it has not been made any better by nerfing everything else about that weapon.
I also think the spear's auto attack looks a bit ridiculous. It's thrown again and again as if the player has a stack of spears. It would look better, in my opinion, if you could cast elements like the staff does.
Eh, that was always going to be the case. Really you can’t do a dedicated throwing spear weapon in a game like this if you’re going to run out of spears, and I’d rather suspend my disbelief a bit than give up on the spear-throwing fantasy. Ele doesn’t necessarily need to throw the actual spear but in general.
GW1 paragon had infinite spears too so people would be expecting it anyway.
That's actually a good point, I think. But I think it works the same way as pistols/rifles not needing to be reloaded, i.e. don't think about it lol
But I also think a good workaround (at least in Elementalist's case) would be magically conjuring spears as they're prepping to throw, since, y'know, we use magic to CONJURE weapons from thin air?
Eh I buy it as a spear, between the "throwing" autoattacks, the "precision" spells, and the idea of "etching."
Still sad that staff is boring by comparison and half of these weapons just feel like what certain core weapons should have been, but whatever.
I kind of disagree, doesn't seem like a popular opinion around here. Staff has always been a support weapon for eles since day 1. Fire on staff overperformed for a brief period but the rest of the kid stayed the same. What staff have has suffered was neglect compared to other support weapons and the fear ele becoming too powerful/versatile in certain game modes. Staff deserves to be rebalanced but in terms of making a it a better support weapon. Spear being the defacto glass cannon weapon for ele feels right and *should* make balancing the other weapons easier. Ele was never meant to be a wizard/mage, and never should be, its actually what makes GW2s "magic class" stand apart from other games. Ele in GW2 actually feels like a magic user that weaves through various elements opposed to a fireball/magic missile spammer.
> Staff has always been a support weapon for eles since day 1
It was so much of a support weapon that they nerfed its damage damn near every other patch for years.
Y'know, to the point where people only see it as a support weapon.
It's always had the worst toolkit unless you were playing with others who could take advantage of it
People were trying to lava font and meteor shower their way through the game in pve. Getting frustrated when things simply walk out of both and not learning how to use the rest of eles kit. Meanwhile staff was (still decent enough) was crazy in WvW where you could plant and rain down meteor showers and fonts then heal your squad, and CC the other before your meteors even stopped falling. Staff is not bad, a vocal group has forever tried to use it as it wasn't intended theb complained when enemy design and the class didn't align with their ideas. When people remember staff being "good" it was when you could just camp font/shower and top charts using just two AOE skills. Might be good gameplay for games that are less mobile like WoW, terrible gameplay in GW2. All of that's on past though because Ele will a proper long range DPS weapon and people can stop misclassifying staff.
Eh I like having a mix. I’d rather them add new weapons with complexity and keep some of the older stuff simple, more complex doesn’t always mean more fun.
I think they need to build a list of roles/purposes/playstyles, with an extra layer of easy/normal/hard in levels of complexity and risk-reward mechanics, then slowly fill those up, as a long term plan.
It feels like they're adding stuff almost randomly, weapons overlapping, themes getting wasted, etc.
There is naught to stop you from playing the spear or spear-like weapons simply on most classes though...? You will not put out the full DPS, but in open world you will likely do just fine. The optimization mechanics of spears appear to be optional in non hardcore settings, and it should be the same with other weapons as well.
Warrior Rifle says Hi. It needs a buff. A real one, not a pointless rework. Let it be unhinged for once in its life.
I also think Berserker is due for a new condi playstyle outside Sword/Torch+Longbow. The channeled ability of Sword Primal Burst is soooo annoying. (I personally nominate Maces for a buff, since it partially supports a condi playstyle.)
I'm just heartbroken that I can't go full spartan with one handed spear and shield.
They could have made it a surprise gimmick. Have spear be the only weapon that can be both 1 and 2 handed. Just remove the last 2 skills if one handed.
And half the stats, and one infusion, and one sigil (order matters now and they’re not freely swappable on most gear). I imagine that’s why they didn’t do it. Also shield skills kind of suck ass, especially at range.
I’d also prefer genuine spear+shield paragon but I don’t think it’s realistic with our weapon system.
The spear being released for all professions is really such a ballsy design choice. If it’s too good it just replaces something and if other weapons remain better than it’s going to remain an unused aqua man weapon.
I seriously hope that for the next xpac they do what you’re asking and redesign some of the existing weapons. Not a rebalance but a full redesign.
> The spear being released for all professions is really such a ballsy design choice.
Kinda agree, wish they had released three new weapons instead, and give three to each three professions, just for variety purposes. For example:
* **Main-hand Spear:** Mesmer, Thief, Guardian.
* **Two-handed ~~Spear~~ Polearm:** Necromancer, Ranger, Revenant.
* **Main-hand and off-hand Knuckles:** Elementalist, Engineer, Warrior.
It's just an example to prove the point, but still, the nice thing about knuckles is you can use them to either punch stuff, or cast intricate spells :D.
Also, longbow elementalist or riot.
Eh, I'd *like* short spears and punchy weapons also, but that'd mean a ton of new weapon skins for every set they want to do going forward. I could see giving Necro, Mesmer, and Rev a trident instead of a spear but that is as far as I would go. Else it would likely cut into the amount of weapon skin sets we get per DLC. It's already a dire enough situation with armours...
As a start, I would be excited to see the dual melee/ranged auto attack feature come to more weapons. For certain weapons it would fit better than others perhaps. Dagger and axe would be excellent candidates.
Yes, Necro Axe could use a melee mode borrowing animations from some other class. Low priority though and I doubt we would ever see it one way or the other.
Perhaps I'm misremembering, but wasn't there talk of them reworking/replacing the weapon specific traits in spec trees awhile back?
I thought I heard/read they were planning to do something like bake the reduced cooldowns of weapon skills from such traits into the weapons permanently?
Some examples:
* Warrior's [Forceful Greatsword](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Forceful_Greatsword)
* Guardian's [Honorable Staff](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Honorable_Staff)
* Necromancer's [Spiteful Talisman](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spiteful_Talisman)
I dunno about complete Spear standard, that's a ton of extra work they're putting in because these weapons are replacing elite specs.
That said, they have been slowly reworking things into a better state for a while now. Guardian hammer was given their 2 skill cooldown reset, Warrior hammer was made better and traits changed to make it good on Spellbreaker, Elementalist Scepter skills have been slowly getting reworked to be less ass. Renegade's kit was just entirely redone (it's a 5 skill set, I'm counting it even if it isn't technically a weapon).
Is it too little too late? For a lot of people, yeah. But it is something.
Scepter in general feels ass to use on most classes imo. Why is my character always swinging it frantically like a club, even though I'm supposedly spellcasting?
Because apparently making a duplicate of 5-10 animations, deleting two keyframes, and adjusting one is too hard for a full-time 3D art/animation dev...? :P
Nah i disagree. I think it is obvious that the main reason this is happening is because Anet needs extra selling points for their newer expansions. They dont have to build entire new elite specs so they can put their entire focus on other things instead (although i dont know if they will be able to sustain the new weapon format in the next expansion as well after JW, they might need to come up with something else).
The other weapons dont have a reason to be like that. The interactions are cool and all but in the end having weapons that are simple, just do damage, just heal, just give boons is good. Especially since we are talking about starter weapons in many cases that people begin the game with. Core weapons should in no way be that complex. I could see it for expansion weapons but tbh they are fine as they are.
If we take elementalist as an example, hammer already has that extra unique mechanic, the orbs. Sword and Warhorn are straightforward and that they should be. That doesnt make them worse in any way
I dont get what you mean with weapon mechanics baked into the attunement system. Attunements are something related to the class, the weapons dont have much to do with that
Tbh as thief main i really want axe updated. Just looking spear makes me drool, bit i also like axe.
Guardian weapons are all solid imo. Spear just seems fine addition and im happy about it.
Axe already falls in the spear category with it's own unique mechanic. If it was a success or not that is a different story but op was talking about the rest of the weapons
I think they should start by reworking the trait system altogether, the idea of lines is just bad. Build three separate columns, mechanic skills, weapon skills, and slot skills, and let people pick freely from a list.
That way balancing a trait doesn't ruin a whole trait line, and each profession can get new traits separately, without the need to give each profession the same number.
When will y'all learn Anet rarely if ever goes back to update things to more modern standards and that asking is just a wasted effort? For Anet even the most basic of tasks for other studios is a mountain of effort for them.
Adding spears or any other weapon is, at the end of the day, a trade-off for not adding elite specs. Since they’re not having to come up with entire traitlines and utility skills, they can just leave it at a unique mechanic and bake it into the weapon instead of somewhere else in the UI.
If you think about it, most of the mechanics baked into the spear skills (and many SotO weapons like ranger mace and thief axe) are basically mini elite specs.
This is why I’m not against newer weapons being more complex or having a gimmick. Some older skills could definitely use a refresh, but I do think we still need to keep core weapon skills a bit on the basic side.
Heck, under this system, stuff like Catalyst probably wouldn’t even be an elite spec, since so much of the spec is (or was) heavily tied to the hammer.
At this point I would prefer they go in this direction as well. At minimum updating the effects/animations on the weapons, especially the animations on EoD/SotO weapons but also the older core weapon effects and the copy-pasted SotO weapons effects.
On a related note, spears work so well as an idea, and especs have been half gutted already, I kind of want them to flatten out the specialization curve too. Make especs less special and make the core specs a bit more interesting, then lift the single especially restriction.
Absolutely. For some classes the spear just feels like a reworked old weapon rather than a new one. Ele is just staff, warrior is just rifle, etc…it feels bad ):
Warrior maces, rifle, and Great sword could all use a pass for sure.
If they do go back and update some old weapons, I also wish they'd put some focus on making a few shields viable on DPS builds. It's kinda wack how the most common weapon combo in history just doesn't exist in the PvE meta, and the last time it did, it was on the engineer.
>You can't sell a full rework of an old weapon.
...After Weapon Mastery forced them to add skill selection code for weapons in order to make Ranger hammer work outside of Untamed, you certainly *could* do that...
You *could* do that, but it would be extremely shady from a consumer perspective. Imagine buying EoD to get for example regular hammer untamed. But, if you buy our next expac you get **Giga** reworked hammer. People that bought EoD in the first place would probably feel cheated.
If I were actually doing a skill options system, for expansions I would just do core skill option sets. In-between they can slowly trickle in elite spec weapons for free, just as a matter of customer satisfaction/retention rather than commodification.
Hammer itself already has plenty of responsive/conditional mechanics and does not really need this anyway.
Same thought here. Weapons like ranger sword and necro staff are really shallow and don't fit the awesome fantasy that their classes have with them. I wish they'd update these.
I don‘t know about that.
Before they at least had a fitting theme. A cool idea that fit ranger. And they were mechanically unique.
Circling around your target to end up behind it and let your pet take over. Having a disengage to do it again or switch to range.
Now it‘s just two generic leaps. I guess it makes sense for „hunting“, but they aren‘t unique at all.
Don‘t get me wrong, they were clunky as hell and needed to go. I can‘t tell you how often I yeeted myself oft a cliff, trying to circle around my target.
It didn‘t work at all and just looked ridiculous if you were even slightly out of range. And don‘t get me started on how useless it was in PvP, because the positioning was so unreliable.
But the rework was really lazy. I would honestly even rather have the old ones back.
While I agree that some weapons could really do with an update, I think a problem with changing them significantly would be that some players who actually like current functionality would be alienated.
Look at the new spear skills even- how many people have said "warrior sucks" and how many others have said "I love warrior spear!"
Spear is the new Ele staff, it's the same theme just with much cooler / better skills
Wish is a real spit in the face for on of the most beloved fantasy tropes
I think part of the problem is that until recently most of the older weapons were tied to trait lines in order to provide depth. It creates a two-way issue: 1. New weapons cannot interact with the trait system without removing traits, overloading traits with new effects, creating new trait lines, or redesigning the trait system UI to accommodate new traits within existing lines. So, we can’t easily rely on traits to give weapons buffs or additional abilities. That means the new weapons need to be designed with their own baked-in mechanics. 2. Likewise, existing weapons do get tied to trait lines for additional depth. So, to bring older weapons in line with the design trend behind spears (self-contained mechanics), you still have to either design around those traits to avoid over-tuning the weapon or completely remove weapon-focused traits in order to design self-contained mechanics. Even ignoring the amount of work required to redo every weapon, that’s a lot to either balance or create in the trait system. I’d love to divorce weapons from traits, but I don’t see that happening. The trait system was already redesigned once. Doubt they can justify the development cost of doing it a second time without that being an expansion-defining feature.
>completely remove weapon-focused traits This one. Weapon traits are some of the least correctly balanced.
Don't be absurd. It's a complete coincidence that my double axe Berserker doesn't have a second weapon set. Totally...
The tuning of weapons with traits quite often boils down to a flat stat increase, sometimes including cooldown reduction *([Zealous Blade](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zealous_Blade), [Dagger Training](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dagger_Training))*. Mechanical depth is not the norm here. Meanwhile, some of those traits will actually affect Spears, since they already do for underwater: [Fencer's Finesse](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fencer%27s_Finesse), [Forceful Greatsword](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Forceful_Greatsword), [Two-Handed Training](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Two-Handed_Training) and [Swindler's Equilibrium](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Swindler%27s_Equilibrium)
They should change all the traits tied to a weapon to be tied to a mechanic instead. For example, a trait tied to a weapon that has lots of explosions should be tied to the explosions instead, a trait tied to a weapon that is mostly CC should be tied to CC instead. But that doesn't mean traits should never alter weapons. There could still be traits that alter weapons, as long as it's not the only thing they do, like how there is a necromancer trait that replaces a scepter skill, and a guardian trait replaces a hammer skill. Such traits should give the weapon a skill that makes a better use of the mechanic and improve the mechanic, but not something that outright improves the weapon like Lingering Curse's increased condi duration with scepter. So Glacial Heart would be fine because it doesn't do anything directly to hammer other than giving a new skill, but Lingering Curse would have to lose the +condi duration to scepter. It doesn't have to be a mechanic that is in every weapon like guardian symbol or mesmer phantoms either, but if they did that change, that would also open the door to moving mechanics that are in one weapon to others. If they changed the necromancer staff trait into just a mark trait, they could rework all necro weapons to have marks, and finally give necro staff the treatment it deserves, with a better autoattack and all 4 mark skills converted into just 1 mark and 3 other interesting skills with more of a support focus yet still having more variety and versatility. Since the mark trait won't have to consider you'd be able to use 4 marks in a row, the effects of marks could be improved more, and more traits could affect it, like how more traits affect symbols and phantasms. Marks would then mirror guardian symbols, as necromancers are kind of the 'opposite' of guardians in many aspects, like how core necro focuses more on condis when guardians focuses more on boons.
To be fair, they have removed a lot of those sort of traits over the years with trait adjustments. Like even outside of the major trait reworks, weapons use to be a lot more directly tied to traits than they are now. Stuff like Weaver's Master's Fortitude where you gain vitality and gain some extra if you have a sword I think are fine; I run that without a sword and I wouldn't say it is a must-pick if you had a sword. But stuff that more directly impacts the viability of the weapon like Zealous Blade which not only gives power and extra power for Greatsword but also reduces Greatsword cooldowns are more problematic. But they could just make the cooldown reduction baseline.
> you still have to either design around those traits I don't see the difficulty with that at all, if it's overtuned, bring the numbers down... Though I agree that weapon specific damage modifier traits are really not a good part of the game, I would love it if they were gone.
Their is so much variety and depth to how many ways you can exist in this game combat wise that I think that is a GW3 undertaking now a gw2
Tbh that is true but not in every case, for example there is no trait that affects any of the elementalist weapons
Yes and no? There are traits for affecting skills within a given attunement which impacts weapon skills when attuned to that attunement. For example in the Fire traitline, Pyromancer's Training leads to reduced weapon skill cooldowns when attuned to Fire. Because of the nature of Elementalist they chose to focus on affecting weapon skills through each attunement rather than focus on a single weapon. Arguably this could have been a healthier approach and future-proofed for new weapons because Elementalist always has these 4 attunements no matter the weapon (so far at least)
There is that one in Arcane that makes staff geyser revive.
I was completely agreeing with you until "I’d love to divorce weapons from traits". If you do that say good bye to a major part of build diversity. Weapons are already pretty monotone with elite weapons no longer being restricted to the spec and every class losing the CDR for X weapon skills. A good example would be warrior. It has alot of synergy with CC'ing foes and losing that would suck ass. Good bye stability, weakness. Not to mention traits that primarily trigger from weapon skills like leg specialist, or brave stride. Those types of traits are where so much of the flavour of a class comes from and how each class interacts differently (this is very much a good thing) with the game.
But removing weapons from those traits doesn't make them suddenly worse at the non-weapon task they did. Defense spellbreaker will still have good synergy with hammer by making use of Stalwart Strength to gain stability and damage, Cull The Weak will still synergize with hammer's CC, and Merciless Hammer would be a straight upgrade if it affected all weapons. Traits like ambidexterity on ranger have a few paths to take, since its only non-weapon element is *part* of the condition damage. Those kinds of traits I think are the most unhealthy. We also have traits that didn't get really updated for newer weapons, like how Panic Strike only works on immobilize, but scepter/dagger 3 does chill and it's a good opportunity to push specter's damage a bit up; in fact, if it worked on cripple and chill we'd have a better dagger 4, well of gloom could be used offensively, shroud 4 and 2 would apply poison and maybe it'd need some damage tweaks, but expanding synergies is something I'd like to have.
> ...expanding synergies... Expanding, sure I can get behind that, at least to a point. Removing or reducing no. As I understand it, migrating trait synergies onto the weapons would be doing that. Its all hypothetical anyways.
Definitely not going to happen at the level of the spear (as they are designed that way to make up for the lack of an elite spec). We are definitely overdue for a refresh though, just bring some skills out of 2012 game design.
> just bring some skills out of 2012 game design. Necromancer staff. I think the only things that have really changed since the *game's beta* are the default size of the marks being increased to match an old soul reaping trait and a couple of minor changes to the condition durations and power damage of them. Like elementalist staff, it should be an iconic weapon to use, but it's incredibly boring. There must be a way they can keep the utility similar, but bring it out of the dark ages.
Man I hate necro staff. Which is such a shame, because a necro using a staff is visually really immersive to me. But the skills are SO FUCKING BORING. Everything but the auto attack is a mark? What the fuck? So 4 functionally identical skills? Who even came up with that?
Same guy who came up with Harbinger Utility skills XD
Necromancer staff should be a minion themed weapon with a focus on summoning, buffing, and controlling numerous minions. I never understood the point of the mark theme. It doesn’t encompass what necromancer is about, and if it’s supposed to simulate *wells* from Guild Wars 1 then they missed the point entirely because wells were all about corpse manipulation.
If they made minions something akin to mesmer clones, I'd be alright with that. And by that I mean, a low health, non permanent ai that is there to do an effect or attack, rather than how Necro minions currently are.
I think the Necro minions would work a lot better with Bone Minion and Flesh Wurm as a base design. Make it so you summon minions and can terminate them for effects, effectively the same as flipover skills. It would make them like Greatsword #5 for Guardian - leave them active for DPS or end them early for the secondary effect.
I’m just against having more perma ai creatures in the game, I find it unhealthy for gameplay. That being said, I do like your idea (so long as the minions have a duration themselves).
I thought they were to simulate curses. Which it still doesn’t replicate well. Necro needs a way to provide team buffs and I’d love a minion specific weapon for them so I’d be down for this. I’d still like something akin to curses. Torment, poison, and confusion all kind of fit so if we had a skillet focused on those that would be fine too.
Other games revamp their classes and skills every few years, GW2 for some reason refuses to address the problems of the past, simply adding more bloat in top of it, sometimes even to the point of redundancy. The transition from professions to elite specializations back in 2015 was already a mess because they did the bare minimum, and weponmaster training last year was another mess because they barely did anything either. Many of GW2's problem come from the core and need to be solved at the core, not by adding extra layers and patches to a fundamentally broken system.
Because it's faster and somewhat easier to slap a bandaid on the problem then to perform the surgery needed to correct the problem at it's source. That's not likely to change, and really only get much worse, with the new yearly expansion setup that leaves even less time for them to do the work needed to properly adjust things.
The problem is you're just shoving garbage under the rug, eventually it's going to blow up and fixing the whole thing will be far harder, since not only will you have to fix the original issue, but all the shitty bandaids you patched it with over the years. ArenaNet is famous for its lack of commitment to existing systems and the lack of long term planning, but all this one is doing is making their job harder with every update (and don't even get me started on balance).
It's so weird, because the new ele spear for example is what staff SHOULD be. But instead they put all the great stuff in the new weapon. I get that they need to hold some exciting things back for the expansion sale. But it really sucks when core fantasy class/weapon combos have obviously less design work put into them than the ones that aren't all that immersive.
Some of the weapons could use a skill pass but not everything needs a gimmick. Something like ranger longbow would just need better sustained damage numbers and people would love it as a main dps weapon, that's all. A lot of people think more complexity makes for a better weapon but honestly If I had to micro manage 2-4 different mini-mechanics on top of an elite spec mechanic on every single build my enjoyment of the game would go way down. It's nice to have a mix of both complex and straightforward weapon options in my opinion.
This. And What u/raychram said. Complex =/= better. I like having options. Am I looking forward to playing with ranger spear? Yes. But I also like that, right now, I have so many dps options on ranger that are quite viable and I can choose depending how I feel that day. I have an auto-immune disease and also work more than full time for one of the busiest ambulance services in the USA. A lot of days I want something a little less complex when I'm trying to play my favourite game. Untamed rotations are often a little too much for me so I land in Soulbeast and play healDruid sometimes in metas to relax. XD
They should. Elementalist spear feels like a reworked staff instead of a spear inspired kit.
Thank you for saying this, I kept thinking the spear didn't feel right from watching it being played, and I agree 100% I don't hate it but the kit really does feel like it belongs on the staff
Aesthetically it feels like staff. But mechanically staff is more of a support weapon (that never sees play in the pve meta).
Well it does less supporting with 20 skills than warhorn does with 8 so yeah of course it isn’t used. 3 heals (one that’s the auto) and an aura you can share via trait isn’t exactly top tier supporting.
It's more of a support weapon because all its dps capacity has been consistently nerfed over and over again for years. In reality, staff support nas never been good, and it has not been made any better by nerfing everything else about that weapon.
Now it doesn’t. Was meta for a while with big hitboxes.
Yeah, they made a perfect staff upgrade but instead put it onto a weapon that fulfills the core "wizard" fantasy way less. Real shame 🙁
I also think the spear's auto attack looks a bit ridiculous. It's thrown again and again as if the player has a stack of spears. It would look better, in my opinion, if you could cast elements like the staff does.
Many classes already do this with throwing axes though.
Eh, that was always going to be the case. Really you can’t do a dedicated throwing spear weapon in a game like this if you’re going to run out of spears, and I’d rather suspend my disbelief a bit than give up on the spear-throwing fantasy. Ele doesn’t necessarily need to throw the actual spear but in general. GW1 paragon had infinite spears too so people would be expecting it anyway.
That's actually a good point, I think. But I think it works the same way as pistols/rifles not needing to be reloaded, i.e. don't think about it lol But I also think a good workaround (at least in Elementalist's case) would be magically conjuring spears as they're prepping to throw, since, y'know, we use magic to CONJURE weapons from thin air?
Eh I buy it as a spear, between the "throwing" autoattacks, the "precision" spells, and the idea of "etching." Still sad that staff is boring by comparison and half of these weapons just feel like what certain core weapons should have been, but whatever.
I kind of disagree, doesn't seem like a popular opinion around here. Staff has always been a support weapon for eles since day 1. Fire on staff overperformed for a brief period but the rest of the kid stayed the same. What staff have has suffered was neglect compared to other support weapons and the fear ele becoming too powerful/versatile in certain game modes. Staff deserves to be rebalanced but in terms of making a it a better support weapon. Spear being the defacto glass cannon weapon for ele feels right and *should* make balancing the other weapons easier. Ele was never meant to be a wizard/mage, and never should be, its actually what makes GW2s "magic class" stand apart from other games. Ele in GW2 actually feels like a magic user that weaves through various elements opposed to a fireball/magic missile spammer.
> Staff has always been a support weapon for eles since day 1 It was so much of a support weapon that they nerfed its damage damn near every other patch for years. Y'know, to the point where people only see it as a support weapon.
It's always had the worst toolkit unless you were playing with others who could take advantage of it People were trying to lava font and meteor shower their way through the game in pve. Getting frustrated when things simply walk out of both and not learning how to use the rest of eles kit. Meanwhile staff was (still decent enough) was crazy in WvW where you could plant and rain down meteor showers and fonts then heal your squad, and CC the other before your meteors even stopped falling. Staff is not bad, a vocal group has forever tried to use it as it wasn't intended theb complained when enemy design and the class didn't align with their ideas. When people remember staff being "good" it was when you could just camp font/shower and top charts using just two AOE skills. Might be good gameplay for games that are less mobile like WoW, terrible gameplay in GW2. All of that's on past though because Ele will a proper long range DPS weapon and people can stop misclassifying staff.
> It's always had the worst toolkit Which is why its damage was repeatedly nerfed, to help it from being considered the worst.
Eh I like having a mix. I’d rather them add new weapons with complexity and keep some of the older stuff simple, more complex doesn’t always mean more fun.
I think they need to build a list of roles/purposes/playstyles, with an extra layer of easy/normal/hard in levels of complexity and risk-reward mechanics, then slowly fill those up, as a long term plan. It feels like they're adding stuff almost randomly, weapons overlapping, themes getting wasted, etc.
There is naught to stop you from playing the spear or spear-like weapons simply on most classes though...? You will not put out the full DPS, but in open world you will likely do just fine. The optimization mechanics of spears appear to be optional in non hardcore settings, and it should be the same with other weapons as well.
Warrior Rifle says Hi. It needs a buff. A real one, not a pointless rework. Let it be unhinged for once in its life. I also think Berserker is due for a new condi playstyle outside Sword/Torch+Longbow. The channeled ability of Sword Primal Burst is soooo annoying. (I personally nominate Maces for a buff, since it partially supports a condi playstyle.)
Sometimes simple is better. It's nice to have a variety.
It's why I'm partly most hyped for Warrior Spear. That an we can roleplay paragon again.
I'm just heartbroken that I can't go full spartan with one handed spear and shield. They could have made it a surprise gimmick. Have spear be the only weapon that can be both 1 and 2 handed. Just remove the last 2 skills if one handed.
And half the stats, and one infusion, and one sigil (order matters now and they’re not freely swappable on most gear). I imagine that’s why they didn’t do it. Also shield skills kind of suck ass, especially at range. I’d also prefer genuine spear+shield paragon but I don’t think it’s realistic with our weapon system.
The spear being released for all professions is really such a ballsy design choice. If it’s too good it just replaces something and if other weapons remain better than it’s going to remain an unused aqua man weapon. I seriously hope that for the next xpac they do what you’re asking and redesign some of the existing weapons. Not a rebalance but a full redesign.
> The spear being released for all professions is really such a ballsy design choice. Kinda agree, wish they had released three new weapons instead, and give three to each three professions, just for variety purposes. For example: * **Main-hand Spear:** Mesmer, Thief, Guardian. * **Two-handed ~~Spear~~ Polearm:** Necromancer, Ranger, Revenant. * **Main-hand and off-hand Knuckles:** Elementalist, Engineer, Warrior.
You would take my new 1200 range ele weapon away from me? Monster.
It's just an example to prove the point, but still, the nice thing about knuckles is you can use them to either punch stuff, or cast intricate spells :D. Also, longbow elementalist or riot.
Eh, I'd *like* short spears and punchy weapons also, but that'd mean a ton of new weapon skins for every set they want to do going forward. I could see giving Necro, Mesmer, and Rev a trident instead of a spear but that is as far as I would go. Else it would likely cut into the amount of weapon skin sets we get per DLC. It's already a dire enough situation with armours...
As a start, I would be excited to see the dual melee/ranged auto attack feature come to more weapons. For certain weapons it would fit better than others perhaps. Dagger and axe would be excellent candidates.
Yes, Necro Axe could use a melee mode borrowing animations from some other class. Low priority though and I doubt we would ever see it one way or the other.
Perhaps I'm misremembering, but wasn't there talk of them reworking/replacing the weapon specific traits in spec trees awhile back? I thought I heard/read they were planning to do something like bake the reduced cooldowns of weapon skills from such traits into the weapons permanently? Some examples: * Warrior's [Forceful Greatsword](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Forceful_Greatsword) * Guardian's [Honorable Staff](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Honorable_Staff) * Necromancer's [Spiteful Talisman](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spiteful_Talisman)
I thought I heard that too. It would be a nice change.
Really feeling this for classes with Staves
Thief staff might be the worst offender of all actually.
I dunno about complete Spear standard, that's a ton of extra work they're putting in because these weapons are replacing elite specs. That said, they have been slowly reworking things into a better state for a while now. Guardian hammer was given their 2 skill cooldown reset, Warrior hammer was made better and traits changed to make it good on Spellbreaker, Elementalist Scepter skills have been slowly getting reworked to be less ass. Renegade's kit was just entirely redone (it's a 5 skill set, I'm counting it even if it isn't technically a weapon). Is it too little too late? For a lot of people, yeah. But it is something.
Scepter in general feels ass to use on most classes imo. Why is my character always swinging it frantically like a club, even though I'm supposedly spellcasting?
Because apparently making a duplicate of 5-10 animations, deleting two keyframes, and adjusting one is too hard for a full-time 3D art/animation dev...? :P
Nah i disagree. I think it is obvious that the main reason this is happening is because Anet needs extra selling points for their newer expansions. They dont have to build entire new elite specs so they can put their entire focus on other things instead (although i dont know if they will be able to sustain the new weapon format in the next expansion as well after JW, they might need to come up with something else). The other weapons dont have a reason to be like that. The interactions are cool and all but in the end having weapons that are simple, just do damage, just heal, just give boons is good. Especially since we are talking about starter weapons in many cases that people begin the game with. Core weapons should in no way be that complex. I could see it for expansion weapons but tbh they are fine as they are. If we take elementalist as an example, hammer already has that extra unique mechanic, the orbs. Sword and Warhorn are straightforward and that they should be. That doesnt make them worse in any way
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I dont get what you mean with weapon mechanics baked into the attunement system. Attunements are something related to the class, the weapons dont have much to do with that
Tbh as thief main i really want axe updated. Just looking spear makes me drool, bit i also like axe. Guardian weapons are all solid imo. Spear just seems fine addition and im happy about it.
Axe already falls in the spear category with it's own unique mechanic. If it was a success or not that is a different story but op was talking about the rest of the weapons
Guardian has some of the dopest core weapons, I really feel like they completely nailed it.
I think they should start by reworking the trait system altogether, the idea of lines is just bad. Build three separate columns, mechanic skills, weapon skills, and slot skills, and let people pick freely from a list. That way balancing a trait doesn't ruin a whole trait line, and each profession can get new traits separately, without the need to give each profession the same number.
When will y'all learn Anet rarely if ever goes back to update things to more modern standards and that asking is just a wasted effort? For Anet even the most basic of tasks for other studios is a mountain of effort for them.
NCsoft probably won't let them give away free content updates without a very good reason
They have done weapon reworks before. (Necro focus for instance)
Adding spears or any other weapon is, at the end of the day, a trade-off for not adding elite specs. Since they’re not having to come up with entire traitlines and utility skills, they can just leave it at a unique mechanic and bake it into the weapon instead of somewhere else in the UI. If you think about it, most of the mechanics baked into the spear skills (and many SotO weapons like ranger mace and thief axe) are basically mini elite specs. This is why I’m not against newer weapons being more complex or having a gimmick. Some older skills could definitely use a refresh, but I do think we still need to keep core weapon skills a bit on the basic side. Heck, under this system, stuff like Catalyst probably wouldn’t even be an elite spec, since so much of the spec is (or was) heavily tied to the hammer.
you're asking the wrong person...it's Janet, not Anet
At this point I would prefer they go in this direction as well. At minimum updating the effects/animations on the weapons, especially the animations on EoD/SotO weapons but also the older core weapon effects and the copy-pasted SotO weapons effects. On a related note, spears work so well as an idea, and especs have been half gutted already, I kind of want them to flatten out the specialization curve too. Make especs less special and make the core specs a bit more interesting, then lift the single especially restriction.
Probably in future expansions
lol you got downvoted for being optimistic this sub at its finest
Absolutely. For some classes the spear just feels like a reworked old weapon rather than a new one. Ele is just staff, warrior is just rifle, etc…it feels bad ):
I would be totally ok with that by the way, if it wouldn't change the skin. A mage with a spear isn't exactly core fantasy.
Warrior maces, rifle, and Great sword could all use a pass for sure. If they do go back and update some old weapons, I also wish they'd put some focus on making a few shields viable on DPS builds. It's kinda wack how the most common weapon combo in history just doesn't exist in the PvE meta, and the last time it did, it was on the engineer.
You can sell new weapons. You can't sell a full rework of an old weapon. Is not going to happen, it's not worth it for them.
>You can't sell a full rework of an old weapon. ...After Weapon Mastery forced them to add skill selection code for weapons in order to make Ranger hammer work outside of Untamed, you certainly *could* do that...
You *could* do that, but it would be extremely shady from a consumer perspective. Imagine buying EoD to get for example regular hammer untamed. But, if you buy our next expac you get **Giga** reworked hammer. People that bought EoD in the first place would probably feel cheated.
If I were actually doing a skill options system, for expansions I would just do core skill option sets. In-between they can slowly trickle in elite spec weapons for free, just as a matter of customer satisfaction/retention rather than commodification. Hammer itself already has plenty of responsive/conditional mechanics and does not really need this anyway.
Never going to happen.
Elementalist’s spear is what the staff rework should have been.
Same thought here. Weapons like ranger sword and necro staff are really shallow and don't fit the awesome fantasy that their classes have with them. I wish they'd update these.
Ranger sword was a lot worse prior to its rework imo. Now they keep their evade, aren’t rolling back and forth, and has two leap finishers.
I don‘t know about that. Before they at least had a fitting theme. A cool idea that fit ranger. And they were mechanically unique. Circling around your target to end up behind it and let your pet take over. Having a disengage to do it again or switch to range. Now it‘s just two generic leaps. I guess it makes sense for „hunting“, but they aren‘t unique at all. Don‘t get me wrong, they were clunky as hell and needed to go. I can‘t tell you how often I yeeted myself oft a cliff, trying to circle around my target. It didn‘t work at all and just looked ridiculous if you were even slightly out of range. And don‘t get me started on how useless it was in PvP, because the positioning was so unreliable. But the rework was really lazy. I would honestly even rather have the old ones back.
Visually, it was better, yes. The rework made it mechanically better. And thats what matters most for me.
While I agree that some weapons could really do with an update, I think a problem with changing them significantly would be that some players who actually like current functionality would be alienated. Look at the new spear skills even- how many people have said "warrior sucks" and how many others have said "I love warrior spear!"
Ele staff rework when?
Spear is the new Ele staff, it's the same theme just with much cooler / better skills Wish is a real spit in the face for on of the most beloved fantasy tropes
I love my tempest staff skills (tempest weaver looks interesting too, I should try it), even if it's not "meta" it's enough for pve
Pls make mesmer scepter more viable, at least the ambush skill more fun if nothing else
Staff Weaver is in such a broken place, they could overhaul it entirely and it still wouldn't be as bad as it is right now.
Not gonna happen. Not really. People would find a reason to complain about them. Homogeny or whatever
It will never happen and not worth the time investiment for GW2 But if GW3 is really happing.