Increasing Skills Slots ...

ok i got tired of reading the flames...

now here is mine

trully it is a bad idea to expand the number of skill slots in its entirety... keep it short the reason their are only 8 is because of balance... limiting a player to 8 skills of the 100's per class is what creates diversity and keep any single class from being overpowered (yea this is debatable in the spirit of all those who hate gimp builds)

HOWEVER... i like a lited version of the idea...

aka have a dedicated res skill slot (res sig only perhaps) i dont believe this would cause much havock when it comes to any pvp nor is it something i feel threatens pve... there are a lot of classes such as the assassin that surely could use a spot dedicated for res ... there are a few other classes i feel arent quite complete do to the limit of 8 skills minus 1 for res...

and possibly a dedicated spot for perhaps elite skills....

so this would allow still only 1 elite but also no more sacrificing utility for a res... and in full effect allow trully 8 skills between the chosen professions
AND lol we only have 10 number key buttons

AND I know that to some even adding dedicated non skill slots for an elite and res sig still sounds like an imbalance issue...but please remember they alter skills all the time to balance and simlar could be done to not allow these dedicated slot to have any inherent/underlying effects for the actual 8 skill limit... also everyone would have the same slots with the same change in skill theory INCLUDING the AI

it is possible... and it also may be something that does happen to expand guildwars gameplay in the future.... sometimes when game eventually gets dull, such a little change brings back a big enough spark to make the same game completely different and fun all over again.

/notsigned

8 skill slots are part of the basic balance in gw

well search is not running at 100% yet and OP is kind of new here(Join Date: Jun 2006)

Yeah....8 is what makes guildwars unique IMO. In WoW you can setup your UI so that you can acess every one of your skills at the same time, and change at any time.

/not signed

/notsigned

I don't feel the need to have a 9th or save 10th skill slot.

The lack of room limits one's capabilities at times, but, it makes this game very demanding in terms of one's build.

Here's the deal. With MMO's, you can go one of 2 ways. Skill based. OR! More Time Put Into Farming and Buying Stuff Off Ebay to Pimperize Yo Character Based. Anet made the RIGHT choice and went with Skill based. If you increase the number of available skill slots, It takes out a good 50-75% of the skill involved. If you dont like being forced to use your brain when playing an MMO, fine. Go play WoW and leave us all alone. No way in the ninteenbillionOMGIMFREAKINGONFIRE Hellz will this ever be a reasonable idea. and btw, what we are placing here are our opinions.

/notsignedforever

There have been multiple occasions where I've been working on builds and struggling between adding that 8th skill I want or a res, where I've thought about this topic. I even had it justified at one point that it wouldn't bee too much freedom in the fact that your skill choice would still be limited by attributes and attribut points. However, I always realize that these are just temporary periods of me being upset that I can't make the decision to cut a skill myself. It's true what everyone is saying that it's a fundamental game mechanic. The game is great and really fun as is, and I personally do not want to take the risk to see what kind of changes something like this could bring.

So, long story short, I have to give it a respectful
/not signed

/notsigned for the original idea

The game runs perfectly fine with just eight skills. Also, the game was designed so that it is dependent upon each player's personal skill, not a specific skill or level they have. That was the reason for the level 20 cap, and the reason for the 8 skill cap. A person needs to be able to fit all facets of a character (attack, defense, utility, resurrection) within eight skills to have a character most would find "acceptable." This challenges the players, and thereby increases their personal skill. Remember the 55 soloers for UW? Anet made it tougher, with the Dying Nightmares and the Prot Bond nerf, and players got better because of it. So when Anet makes something hard/harder, it ends up making the players better. And who doesn't want to get better?

However, the following idea intrigued me, as I had had the same one a little while ago.

While this would in effect give another skill to everyone, it would also ensure that everyone on your team has a resurrection skill, which can be invaluable in both PvP and PvE. A nice idea, but it won't happen. Even one more skill slot would totally throw off the game as new FotM are created, and new PvE farming builds are formed. Though I'm all for new builds, I think it would be too advantageous to have another skill, and bad things would happen.

Definately /notsigned

To be honest, I would love it if they added one more skill slot. Who's to say they won't? Adding another skill slot is 1 more bullet on the back of a Guild Wars expansion (even though they would impliment it for everyone, whether they got the new chapter or not).

Although my ranger (usually), nor my monk don't need the extra slot... my mesmer and my ritualist always seem to be short. For the record I almost never bring a res signet. Only 2 of my characters have a permenant res and I bring those, but never a res signet. You may say that's irresponsible, but in the 13 or 14 months I've played this game I have only needed it, I think, twice.

And would 1 more slot really break the game? Hardly. The monsters only use about 3-5 skills usually, so they don't really matter. If you think of all the FOTM builds, they only really relied on a handful of skills, sometimes even just 2 skills. I don't see how an extra slot would be overpowered when the overpowered builds don't even come close to using all 8 slots. It's the skills that are overpowered, not the number of skills.

I'll tell you what an extra slot adds; diversity. I love to experiment with new builds people haven't tried yet. Having an extra slot only increases the size of my canvas. A 9th skill slot would definately make me play more Guild Wars. If it means my mesmer would actually be able to do something besides wand against an all-melee group when he went all anti-caster then I support it.

But an extra 6 slots or so.... nah. That's unneccessary.

its fine - learn 2 play.

GW is not WoW-lite.

GW is not for you.

I am against any change in the number of skill slots. If it is increased to 9, then when will it stop? People will complain for 10 because it's "only one more." And eventually we're sitting at 15 slots wondering what happened.

Omfg.. A thought stroke me, imagine rerolling with more skills?

No way!

How about a form of compromise between 8, and more then 8.

Simply give 2 more skills. This would work easily, since there are 10 number keys. And have the last two disabled during combat. This would basically be for "Parking", skills that you almost never use/need, but might have to be carried (charm pet for ranger). You can also place something like resurect there. This would let you return a character, but only after the combat was finished.

This would not greatly unbalance the game, since it would have little effect during combat. It would allow Rangers to get use of all 8 slots, without having to carry one just to have a pet. And everybody could have a resurect, without having to sacrifice a combat slot. The only drawback is that if you are in deep kimshe, and you really need to bring back your Monk so they can revive other members of your party.

/unsigned for extreme unbalance issues

I guess it isn't so briliant afterall if you don't have room for a res.

The skill limitation is a natural way of making teamwork neccessary, all players arn't ment to do everything. But against certain classes like Ritualist and Elementist, who use a skill that lasts for a few seconds and can't be used again for a minute, those skill slots sufficating, and for classes like Assassin who need a minimum of 3 skill slots just to make a reasonable combo, it is difficult to afford other skills.

A Good Assassin combo takes at least 3 skills, often 4, along with the supporting skills for his manuevers and survival, it is easy to run out of slots, and with such a defenseless class, hard to justify a rez sig, if they are a /mo or /rit, a reusable rez is alright, but a one time rez on a stressed skill build, is hard.

I always hoped that swimming and climbing mechanics would be added to the game, and that two skill slot exclusive to swimming and climbing be added that way exsisting class builds can still be used along with new exploration based features.

If they just add more skill slots than all classes will improve in functionality, with appox the same balance, I don't think it is a bad thing, but what we have is alright. If they added more skill slots, I can't see them adding any more than two.

There are alot of skills which have very low frequency, making the cost of a skill slot very unfavorable, for a powerful skill the character can only use one minute, means he is down one less function for the majority of the time, and often the short term function doesn't provide enough punch to match the usefulness of most frequent skills. With this limitation in skill slots comes the need to have skills which are balanced in output and frequency, if the frequency is so high that even a strong output doesn't match a simple reusable skill, than it isn't balanced, and I think that is the largest balance flaw in A.nets skill selection. With such massive recast times it is almost neccessary to have additional skill slots in order to remain active during combat.

As for the sterio typical 3 hit combo Assassin, that only inclucdes a hand full of skills. The most popular builds are two interchangable 2 hit combos, which often require particular triggers, adding at least one more neccessary skill to the mix, on top of that, there is the lack of frequent knockdown skills which makes one of Assassins favorite skills difficult to meet, often requiring 2 trigger skills along with the other 3 combo skills (as well as Falling Spider). With a useful Assassin build you will be lucky to have 3 slots for defensive and raise skills, and that often excludes mobility skills, the one good mobility skill is an elite, any other "in and out" function will cost you 2 skills, and to make that even more difficult, many of those skills are infrequent themselves. Beyond that, mega combos that include Mobius Strike can easily take 5 slots, reducing available slots for mobility, hexing, survival and rez to 3 slots, and most of those functions can easily take 2 slots. All slots are not equal, for a class that requires a chain of skills to even execute, it is very difficult to manage skill slots, not all attacks have a 10 second recast, and not all spells can be recast every 20 seconds either, so don't bring up a mindless cliche build when you don't know what your talking about, just because Assassin attacks involve lead, off-hand, and dual attacks doesn't mean they default to 3 skill slots to make a useful build.

Just because something would work differently doesn't mean it couldn't be balanced, assuming current balance is the only balance is ignorant, and pretending like the balance we have is uncontested is also ignorant. The balance we have isn't perfect, not by a long shot, the only real balance we have is that A.net shoots down any overpowered and broken builds so no one combination is unbeatable or unfair, it certainly doesn't make all skill combinations equal, nor does it mean that each skill has the same value as any other skill in its best combinations, there are plenty of imbalances. Adding a 9th skill slot is a new threshold, it means new options, it would probably require that some skills be altered, but it doesn't mean that the game suddenly goes broke. The game could work on 6 skill slots, it could work on 10, all that really matters is that it functions well and that players enjoy it, and the game most certainly woln't be less enjoyable if you have more skills to use.

I wouldnt mind one more but thats it.

First I find you talking about ignorance laughable, ignorant is actually using huge texts to explain 5 lines of content but whatever, this is just a single minded rant about having to read that whole thing and achieving the same conclusion I had before, no need to take this in consideration.

Second, it took Anet years of hard working to achieve some kind of balanced game using 8 slots and 20 lvl cap, YOU said that even after all that the game still have some unbalances (and I agree in some level), and even after stating you have knowledge of that you still think that a change directly to the core of the gameplay wouldn’t break the game OR IN BEST CASES result in another years of hardworking looking trough skills, weapons and builds to make sure you don’t create something utterly unbalanced is viable?! Sorry to repeat myself, but that is also blind ignorance, its not like you are requesting a new minipet class or anything, you are changing the game core.

Third, this is getting to big, the subject of 8 skills have been discussed by the game designers (people with MUCH better understanding of the game mechanics then us) probably over 10 000 times and its a dead subject.

Latter.

Actually, making a special PvP area, where you could only use say, 4 skills, would be very intresting.

That something is fine not mean it can't be improver or changed. If guy come this forum and says GUI suggestion before current GUI and idea is excatly same looking GUI what we use now ingame. People go fast "/not signed". However when ANET does same change people accept it.

Also if you write "/not signed" try to think alternative way and not just bash idea.

In my opinion slot change most likely will work if here is just slot reserved to Resurrection Signed ability.

Ignorant:
1. lacking in knowledge or training
2. lacking knowledge or information as to a particular subject or fact

Ignorance is not knowing, simply. An opinion is subjective unless you justify it, and meaningless to others. I take the time to recognize a much wider spectrum of opportunity, as well as justify it. Only an idiot like you would assume that what you think is self justified.

There is Always a better way, it is impossible to be perfect, and whatever it is that man can create can be done better. Anet chose 8 skills as a strategic limitation because they thought it would make the game, fun, they made it that way because it would attract gamers, and make them money. Assuming that their original decision cannot be swayed by the interest of gamers, which is ultimately their paycheck, is ignorant, which is why players come here and voice their interests in hopes that the community agrees and that Anet will consider adding what will make them money, bottom line.

I made very clear explainations of how 8 skill slots is ment to make the game strategicly enjoyable, and how it fails to do so in some aspects. A narrow mind like yours has nothing to offer, because it does not recognize the possibilities for improvement. The fact that your too immature and impatient to respect a dedicated explaination and recognition on the subject further discredits your imput. Consider yourself flamed, and ignored, tell it to anyone else who doesn't give a damn about your narrow recognition.

The second paragraph you wrote just made me ignore you, I actually haven’t read anything other then that.

I will just end this here w/ out further explanation, this is not the place to start personal argues and some one that tries so hard to pass as an intellectual like yourself should know better, a person that talks crap and run away to avoid responses don’t deserve my keyboards time.

Latter.

/not signed

ok 8 skills is the deal, the norm

sure, id like to dump 6 or 7 meteor showers in a row or have a pet for free
but after that i would want more and more......
as EVERY Player worth his/her salt has a res,accept it and move on

i would rather see more class levels(and i dont want too)than more skill slots.
it goes against the whole consept of the game.

as someone else said if yer in a good party you wont need a rez anyways.....

P.S. someone needs to close this ................

/notsigned

This is another "WoW idea" and yes the reaction is always the same.

I'd say more but everyone else beat me I think

I am new to the game (2 weeks), but have my level 20 character. I was wondering if I missed something that you would get more Skill/Spell slots as you got more skill point or something.

So, I decided to look at the forums to see if I was missing something, but found two camps; increase and don't change. Reading through the thread I found not too many mentioned why 8 seems to some as confining.

IT'S BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY SPELLS FOR EACH PROFESSION. If we had say 15-20 total spells/skills, then 8 would seem like more than enough, but we have like 10 fold or more available. The Elementalist alone have 135, which is overwhelming, but now couple that with your secondary class and your are numb with choices.

Like I said, I am new to it, so maybe this is why it feels so overwhelming, but the numbers do seem a bit much. Also many of the spells are so similar you quickly feel like you are reading the same thing. I am still trying to whittle it down or develop a criteria for choosing the best for my specific professions and typical enemies.

I know veterans out there may be able to cattier their 8 to each mission/quest, but I just want to mostly have the 8 set and play, as that seems like more work than play. Occasionally you may want to go after an elite spell, but its not necessarily because of an upcoming mission/quest.

So all of this begs the questions is their a tested optimum for each Profession combination? Or at least dog spells/skills that generally are poor choices? Where can I get a list of the best or most recommended spells?

^ You should probablly check out the build section. If you can't decide what spells would be usefull before a battle; you'd be even worse off trying to decide which of your 20 equipped skills to cast in battle >_<

First of all, welcome.

Guild Wars has 768(correct me?) skills.
You have room for 8.
You have two proffessions.
That leaves you with a lot of choices.
Choices are good and create diversity.
8 skills is good.


It's a very simple version of the logic involved.

Personally 7 slots is enough to make a build. Its just much more fun. Your forced to weed out any weaknesses in your build to maximise your skill slots and build efficiency. Thats all part of what a SKILL based game is. Though if you want a game with tons of slots. Might I suggest something like World of Warcraft or something along those lines. Since guild wars has and will always remain a skill based game.

Ok the OP is asking for it ahem:

Learn2play Ur class NuB!

ok anyway no way, 8 is a awsome number, just enough that you can get creative and yet not enough that it unbalances the game.

If you added even 1 more skill slot, many many MANY builds could get unbalanced. If this was ever implended, I would walk to ANet's building and slap each and every one of them.

8 and thats enough. WHy? Its not another game where you have access to all your skills, But it actually brings strategy. The One BIG Aspect of this game. 8 skills forces you to think your character through. Cover your weaknesses, Or have a team mate fix it for you. If You think about it, The most fun aspect of this game is thinking of 8 skills and going at it. Heck PVP and most of PVP would be uterly and completely destroyed if we had more skills. Its not about Using 10 different High powered skills, But 8 skills to cover each aspect.

/Not signed.

/not signed

I don't usually mention people's typing ability, but reading the op's post made my eyes bleed. Please don't use leet speak or whatever to subsitute words like 'you'.
On topic: I won't comment on just adding one or two slots, others have talked this over, and I will allow wiser heads to debate the matter. I'm a monk, so I'll explain this from that perspective and with the assumption that we have doubled the amount of skill slots. All I have to do now is get duplicates( or triplicates) of all the core 5 energy heals with an elite energy management(how about that new one from nightfall: doubles healing, halves cost of next 26 healing prayers, I think?).
All I have to do now is hit that and run down my skill bar of 5 energy heals until the first one recharges, and then use all the extra slots for condition removal, hex removal, big heals, etc. Way overpowered. The only thing that would limit such a build would be an inability to manage energy, in which case I would run out. But even with a limited knowledge of energy management, one is now able to spam massive amounts of heals. You've just removed the need for skill in this type of build.

Fitting that same amount of power in 7/8 slots shows skill, and inspires creative uses for builds, as well as teamwork. I don't have room for a hex removal in my special build? Another monk can carry it while I remove conditions. Problem solved.There isn't a second monk? Either I adjust my build, or I learn what types of conditions/hexes I may go up against, and decide which is more useful to my team.
This game(last I heard) isn't about one person carrying the team on their back. It's about the synergy between players allowing difficult situations to be overcome. And due to the tension of relying on someone else to help, the feeling of exultation when you do overcome that obstacle is all the more rewarding.

But that's just my two cents.

8 slots is somewhat limitting, especially for skill-chain-dependent classes like assassins, but it is part of the game's design.

What I'd like to see is skill switching outside of towns (doubtful this will ever happen).

Switching outside of town? I'd have to disagree with that. When leaving a town your supposed to set yourself up to be able to take on any of the enemies in the area. If you are an experianced player you know what your going up against when you leave town, so you should be ready.

Now to the skill slots, /notsigned.

Basicly the same exact thing every other person has said, strategy.
If they start adding more and more skill slots there wont be any builds. You could just throw skills on your bar and hit each one as you think you need it...

/notsigned

This is like the idea sum1 posted to "lets have a lvl 30 lvl cap." Sry, but this idea is never gonna b used, and will make them rebalance the whole game. Its guild wars, not some other game, stop every1 tryna change it w/ dumb ideas. Next ppl will want to b able to use 2 elite skills per bar.
8 skills is plenty, you can always change ur skill bar, but dont change the number of skills in them.

also, you mentioned 14 skills on a bar. my keyboard only goes up to 0, that would b 10 skills....which would also be to many.

Well, IMO, I think there should be 12 skill slots. Just like in most MMO games. With Assassins, you need 5 slots for your one combo. Offhand, Dual, Special off-hand, Dual, (insert special skill that follows dual.) Then you need an enchant, because 85% of Assassin builds require Golden Phoenix Strike, which requires you to be enchanted to skip the lead attack. That's 6. Then you need another for mabye an attack speed/moving speed boost. That's 7. Finally, you would need a healing skill or a rez sig... in which most cases Assassins choose healing, attack/moving speed boost, and the 5 combo. With 12 slots, it would help newbies MUCH more to get used to the game. Some people may only need 8 slots, but for those newbies who just want to enjoy the game with as much leisure as possible, why not do that for them? o.o

I would agree with allowing to change build in PvE when there are no enemies on sight or when the area is cleared, but this? XD

This sounds a bit like a joke... the 8 skills system is one of the basics of GW, the ninth skill vanished long ago.

I bet that GW2, even after the changes, will have a pretty similar system.

Eight is enough.

/basta