Specializations, Part One: A Primer

[Karizee]

Specializations, Part One: A Primer

by Jon Peters on April 23, 2015


In our reveal of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™, we told you that specializations are our way of giving existing professions new skills and traits. Specializations are actually a much bigger addition that will have an impact on both new and existing skills and traits. Here are some of the big reasons why we’re excited about specializations:

• They separate stats from traits, opening up builds by trait choice rather than stat choice.
• More power! You now get to select nine major traits instead of seven, including three grandmaster traits.
• Each trait is more impactful, so choices are more build defining and meaningful.
• The new, more streamlined unlock system is friendlier to new players and much less of a burden on players with multiple characters.
• This new system is one that we can continue to expand while maintaining a strong sense of balance.

The original goal of the Trait system was to create a way to customize your character beyond their skills. What we’re trying to do with specialization is take everything that was positive about the Trait system and boil it down while removing or modifying the parts we felt held it back. This new system provides a solid foundation for our plans to expand the number of available traits and skills in the future. So how do specializations work?


Core Specializations

Each profession will have five core specializations corresponding to the old trait lines. The first step in customization will be to select three of the five core specializations. These determine the basis for your other build choices. For example, an elementalist may choose to specialize in Fire Magic, Earth Magic, and Water Magic. The ability to select one, two, and finally three core specializations will unlock as you level your character from 1 to 80.





Traits

Each core specialization will have three minor traits associated with it. These are automatically equipped along with the specialization itself and help define the playstyle of that particular specialization.

In addition, there will be nine major traits tied to each specialization. There are three different tiers of traits: adept, master, and grandmaster. Once a specialization has been equipped, a character will be able to select a single trait for each tier to help customize that specialization. By locking traits to tiers and reducing the overall number of traits, we’ve made each choice much more compelling.


Where Did My Trait-Line Stats Go?

We feel that separating build choices from stat decisions provides greater build flexibility, so you’ll no longer gain attribute points through a given line. Where will these stats go? Here’s a quick summary:

• Base player stats will be increased from 926 to 1000.
• Base attribute points on equipment will be increased so that all the gear in the game will give higher stats than it did before. This should account for most of the missing points.
• Each profession’s attributes will be updated to have half of their functionality be part of a specialization and half of their functionality will be a baseline for that profession. For example, elementalists now have a base attunement recharge of 10 seconds, which is reduced to 8.7 seconds when the arcane specialization is equipped.

These changes should keep the total stat numbers roughly the same as they were before, even though you’ll get them from different places. In addition to these changes, the need to unlock skills and traits will be removed from Player vs. Player entirely, and you’ll automatically have all the specializations available to you whenever you’re in PvP.


What Does a Specialization Look Like?

To help clarify, I’m going to take an example line, Water Magic, and show you the exact changes we’ve made. Keep in mind that, as with all things currently in development, there may be differences between the updates I’m showing here and the traits that make it to the live game.





Minor Traits

• Soothing Mist: You and nearby allies regenerate health while you are attuned to water.
• Healing Ripple: Heal nearby allies when attuning to water.
• Aquatic Benevolence: Healing done to allies is increased. (25%)

Major Traits

Adept:

• Soothing Ice: Gain regeneration and Frost Aura when you are struck by a critical hit.
• Piercing Shards: While attuned to water, your spells deal more damage to vulnerable foes. Vulnerability lasts longer.
• Stop, Drop, and Roll: Dodge rolling removes burning and chilled.

Master:

• Soothing Disruption: Cantrips grant you regeneration and vigor. Cantrip recharge is reduced.
• Cleansing Wave: Remove a condition from you and your allies when attuning to water.
• Aquamancer’s Training: Deal extra damage when your health is above the threshold. Reduces recharge on all water weapon skills.

Grandmaster:

• Cleansing Water: Remove a condition when granting regeneration to yourself or an ally.
• Powerful Aura: Auras you gain from weapon skills are also applied to nearby allies.
• Bountiful Power: Deal more damage for each boon on you.

If much of this seems familiar to you, that’s good; specializations take many of the aspects of the existing system and break them down into a similar system that is clearer and easier to use.

As you can see, traits have been merged, moved, and culled, and new ones have been created, but it lets us introduce more skillful traits and more meaningful trait choices that are going to really change how you play. Although some traits are being removed, we’re doing our best to preserve as many of the current builds as we can.


Core Skills

In addition to core specializations, we’re making some changes to skills. Some skills’ base functionalities will change to incorporate lost behaviors from the removed traits. For example, the necromancer’s wells will all become ground targeted and the trait allowing ground targeting will be removed. All legacy skills will be assigned a category if they don’t already have one; for example, the engineer’s Mortar elite skill will become a kit. This means that traits and potential rune sets that affect kits can be triggered by this skill.

Core skills and core specializations set us up for our new skill and trait unlocking system, which you can find out more about in the companion piece to this blog post. We’re looking forward to letting you get your hands on specializations so you can try them out for yourself!


https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/s...-one-a-primer/

[zito]

So they are basically just giving us less options with the new trait set up with a new shiny UI. Not being able to mix adept traits in a grandmaster slot will be missed and they mention nothing of fixing the new grandmaster traits which ended up mostly being horrible across the board.

[Kazgrel]

So they are basically just giving us less options with the new trait set up with a new shiny UI. Not being able to mix adept traits in a grandmaster slot will be missed and they mention nothing of fixing the new grandmaster traits which ended up mostly being horrible across the board.

My first knee jerk reaction is this is the WoW talent tree revamp, but in GW2 form. At this very moment, there's more questions than answers, since this stands to completely change any sorts of metas within the game. I dare suspect the possibility of several traits being merged into others.

Eager to see what comes of the AMA tomorrow.

[zito]

what I don't get is adding more stats to armor.

Like why not just not have them at all? Why do they need to even exist?

[lawow74]

So they are basically just giving us less options with the new trait set up with a new shiny UI. Not being able to mix adept traits in a grandmaster slot will be missed and they mention nothing of fixing the new grandmaster traits which ended up mostly being horrible across the board.

My hope is they'll look at the traits that are getting selected over other traits in higher tiers(slotting Adepts over Master/GMaster cos of x)and start baking x straight into the spec so the need to do that gets taken out.

But given ANet's track record of 'improving' things, I'm fearful it's just going to fuck up another aspect of the game.

[Valeron]

so less freedom, fantastic

[zito]

so less freedom, fantastic

Like wells being ground targeted is awful imo. I think it's one of the worst things ever which is why I never picked the trait on my necro. But now I have to.

d

[Shakadam]

Like wells being ground targeted is awful imo. I think it's one of the worst things ever which is why I never picked the trait on my necro. But now I have to.

d

wut? it's a must-have trait for both spvp and wvw if you're using wells. Not so much for pve but who the hell pve's on a necro anyway.


OT: It's too early to tell yet if this is good or bad, need more info on exactly which traits are changing/being removed.

[zito]

wut? it's a must-have trait for both spvp and wvw if you're using wells. Not so much for pve but who the hell pve's on a necro anyway.


OT: It's too early to tell yet if this is good or bad, need more info on exactly which traits are changing/being removed.

It's not a must have anything, it's a horrible waste of points imo, such an odd place to get it and more ground targeting when you have staff? The thing is annoying an ineffective. There is never a moment where someone will 100% range you and if they do they would never stand in a well so ground targeting is moot.

[worprz]

It's not a must have anything, it's a horrible waste of points imo, such an odd place to get it and more ground targeting when you have staff? The thing is annoying an ineffective. There is never a moment where someone will 100% range you and if they do they would never stand in a well so ground targeting is moot.

Personally I see it as a win win, you don't have to put points into it, but you now have the option to use it.

I wouldn't say it is useless though, it's good for wvw and spvp.

[Kazgrel]

Maybe it could become a toggle-able option somehow? Perhaps bring it up on the AMA tomorrow (or someone else will).

Disclaimer: I've spent next to zero time playing necro.

[zito]

Personally I see it as a win win, you don't have to put points into it, but you now have the option to use it.

I wouldn't say it is useless though, it's good for wvw and spvp.

No you are forced to use it, it is going to be baseline.

[Fencers]

This seems sorta lame and not very interesting. It seems more action game-y than other systems in GW2 though. Which kinda makes me feel this is how traits always were meant to work- Z, X, S set up and so forth.

[nevermore]

This seems like a pretty good start to me, reminds me of the talent overhaul in WoW which turned out to be a great change (although people whinged about it endlessly because change is scary).

[Lotus Victoria]

I like the new idea. Yea, it reminds me of WOW in some points, but if that makes things more useful, then so be it.

[Usagi Senshi]

This seems sorta lame and not very interesting. It seems more action game-y than other systems in GW2 though. Which kinda makes me feel this is how traits always were meant to work- Z, X, S set up and so forth.

That is exactly why I like this new system. Reminds me a bit of TERA's glyph talent trees (which I really like since you can make some crazy builds) mixed with WoW's current one (I still like the new talent trees since Cata but the shaman one can still go to hell).

[Kazgrel]

Overall, I like the direction this is going. Cleaning up a lot of traits by either making them baseline or combining them with other traits (the warrior greatsword traits being combined stood out to me). I do agree, though; it does smack of the WoW talent changes from...MoP, I think? Whenever they broke it down in 15 level intervals and gave you 3 options per tier). Out of all the "choices" available, people were gravitating towards whatever is classified as the best options for the content they are participating in (PVE, WvW, sPVP). The only time some of those get used now is simply due to the awful setup of the current system, ie "it's the only thing I had unlocked". While I main an ele and see they are looking at nerfing some of our ridiculously good goodness, we still have no idea what our Tempest elite profession will offer. Here's hoping it'll be amazing (as I would any elite spec for any class, really).