6 replies to this topic

[Zanos]

So, here are the classic specific attributes:

• Willpower — Decreases the recharge on all virtues.
  
• Brawn — Improves the damage of warrior burst skills.
  
• Ingenuity — Reduces the recharge on all tool belt skills.
  
• Empathy — Improves pet attributes.
  
• Cunning — Decreases the recharge of the steal ability.
  
• Intelligence — Reduces the recharge of the four elemental attunements.
  
• Guile — Reduces the recharge on all shattering skills.
  
• Hunger — Increases the size of the necromancer’s life force pool.

Credit to the ever wonderful Guild Wars 2 Wiki.

Now, my question is the following: some of these attributes will likely be taken by people for both competitive PvP and PvE. Some of them are far more 'selectable' than others. Let's run through them:

Willpower is useful but not necessarily essential.
Brawn is very useful as every Warrior typically uses his or her burst skill.
Ingenuity would be useful if all of the belt items were useful, and ANet mentioned they will probably be getting a buff.
Empathy seems optional albeit convenient, depending on how much you really rely on your pet. It seems more likely to be taken in PvE. PvPers are more likely to opt for other attributes when focusing.
Cunning seems optional, especially in competitive play. While the environmental weapons can be a convenience, they aren't necessarily essential to the abilities of the thief.
Intelligence seems definitely worthwhile both in PvE and PvP.
Guile seems useful. Perhaps not absolutely essential, but definitely useful.
Hunger is as useful as Brawn is to a Warrior, what Necro wouldn't want a larger life force pool?

It seems logical that if ANet improves the special abilities of each profession to a level of usefulness and viability then all of these skills would be considered useful and some even essential, but at the present moment it seems that some of them are skewed in favor of being essential and very useful while others are merely a convenience...if that.

Thoughts?

Edited by Zanos, 07 May 2012 - 03:11 AM.

[Craywulf]

Basing their value strictly on attribute effects is only small part of the unique attribute's trait line. Just saying that just because it might seem useless attribute, the traits available in the line might be very useful.

[Lyuben]

There is a big problem with the engineer currently, and their stat. Ingenuity, is useless for several builds.

Notably turrets, and the mine kit. Good news is, you can easily fix the turret situation. Bad news, the mine situation is almost impossible to fix.

[Gen1tor]

Personally I didn't like the fact that in order to lvl your class attribute, u have to lvl a specific tree line. I found this a bit restricting in a system that tries so hard to allow players a lot of space to experiment and innovate. Imho a class attribute should lvl up automatically every time we spend a trait point in any of the trees. In that way it would really be class specific attribute. It 's supposed to be the attribute that makes your class unique after all.

As for the mine kit, I found it very, very usefull in choke points in PvP where I d booby traped the whole place and then sit back and watch my enemies blow to the sky

[Lyuben]

Gen1tor, on 07 May 2012 - 08:39 AM, said:

Personally I didn't like the fact that in order to lvl your class attribute, u have to lvl a specific tree line. I found this a bit restricting in a system that tries so hard to allow players a lot of space to experiment and innovate. Imho a class attribute should lvl up automatically every time we spend a trait point in any of the trees. In that way it would really be class specific attribute. It 's supposed to be the attribute that makes your class unique after all.

As for the mine kit, I found it very, very usefull in choke points in PvP where I d booby traped the whole place and then sit back and watch my enemies blow to the sky

I agree, mine kit has uses. Even though it did no damage in the BWE. But the issue is, its toolbelt does not benefit from ingenuity.

It does benefit from the traitline that gives ingenuity though. And hilariously, if you put 5 points in tools so you have "10% endurance when you use a toolbelt", you can literally gain perma dodging, because it has no cooldown.

[Zanos]

Lyuben, on 07 May 2012 - 08:44 AM, said:

I agree, mine kit has uses. Even though it did no damage in the BWE. But the issue is, its toolbelt does not benefit from ingenuity.

It does benefit from the traitline that gives ingenuity though. And hilariously, if you put 5 points in tools so you have "10% endurance when you use a toolbelt", you can literally gain perma dodging, because it has no cooldown.

Well, ANet did mention they'll be giving the Engineers some love, so I guess we'll see what exactly that means.

[Alberel]

Most of the profession boards have discussions regarding their class-specific mechanic and there is a lot of debate over the fact that they don't seem well balanced at this stage. Guardians and mesmers in particular actually have a trade-off to use their mechanic as they sacrifice other things to do it (e.g. mesmer illusions are destroyed to use the shatter skills, but currently the illusions themselves are far more useful alive, which makes shattering useless).

Elementalists, necros and warriors probably have the most useful mechanics. Hardly surprising that warriors are also widely considered the most overpowered profession at the moment seeing as they're the only class whose mechanic directly increases their damage output. I mean really? On the profession that already has the highest health and armour?

The other professions really need to see their mechanics tuned up, and I reckon warriors could probably do with a tweak down a bit as well.