Mods and Weapon Effects

Having an awesome weapon is a major thing for most players. *'Perfect' mods, nice skin... its awesome to have it.

The problem comes in though, when everyone has exactly the same thing, which happens alot in gw. Having a req9 Colossal Scimi with a 15^50 inscription and a +30hp and 20/20 mod is becoming all to common.

Which brings to mind an interesting thought...
What if the weapons had many more mods, with alot more effects? Imagine a sword with a mod that has a 7% chance to blind an opponent for 3 seconds. Or a dagger that has an extra 15% chance to crit on each hit. A staff that has the chance to increase hex durations by 20%.

One of the very few disappointments i had when first starting to play gw, was the lack of mods and weapon effects. Having a 'Dark Gothic Sword of Haste', giving an x amount of chance for blinding and a fixed increase in attack speed, is something i would really have appreciated, and im certain many would agree.

Your thoughts on this?
and
Which mods and effects would you like to see on weapons?

*For those of you who dont understand why i put inverted commas around it 'perfect'... 15^50, +30hp, 20/20 has become the seemingly perfect mods. I do not agree with this, as i do find that certain other mods are of better use, in other situations



[Note: I apologize if this was supposed to be in the sanitarium, please move if necessary]

The overall game idea behind GW is to keep it relatively easy for everybody to get the optimal weapon of their choice (not including skin) - I feel this is still the way to go.
I don't mind if others have the same weapons as I do!

More Mods would be FTW.... and they'd be awesome if they had been in there from the start...

BUT.... A-Net in one way or other decided not to do any such thing. They have a fixed set of mods and prefer to keep them the way they are in that respect. As such, if any were changed, the PvP community would QQ about it incessantly and scream nerf until the new mods were killed beyond any usefulness. PvPers just seem to hate new content that way.


Reminds me a while back of when I suggested that a +20% longer Stances mod be made for weapons to match the +20% longer Enchants... and I got a resounding "NO" from the PvP'ers and no good reason given. They just all cried about it being "imbalanced"... without considering for an instant that +20% longer Enchants is, if anything, far moreso. It is just that they're familiar with what is in the system and simply don't want anything changed that might give someone else an advantage.


I agree though. The mods are crap.... but we make do with what we have, basically.

You not understanding the reasons is not the same as there not being a reason.

How many builds these days are extremely benefited by duration enchantments? Oh right, almost none.

How many builds these days would be benefited by a potential +20% to stance? Natural Stride, Soldiers defense, recently MoR, Trappers, and quite a few others. Passive defense by making stances longer (people WILL swap for them) is not a good idea.

Because there is no stance-removal skills in the game.
Honestly, more mods would be great, but eventually players are going to find the most effective mods via complicated charts and mathematics, and everyone will go back to using the most popular mods again. And the effort required to keep two or three times more weapon mods balanced would be more time-consuming than skill balancing already is. Look at all the useless skills in the game; we'd just be getting more useless mods. I'd love a chance for more variety, but at the end of the day, it will be more of the same, but with more balance issues.
EDIT: This belongs in Sardelac Sanitarium.

When the game first came out, there were more weapon mods available than the standard upgrades, and some of them are still in the game. The -50 HP Cesta is the most popular example by far. Some were removed, or changed, like the Nolani collector fire wand, the fiery flame spitter and the Denravi weapons(sword,axe, and bow). Sorrow's Furnace introduced the Rockmolder(sp?), and then there was the bugged dual-handled Scavengers of Ascalon axe. So there have been a number of unusual mods, but as they were not as readily available to PvP characters, they were removed or changed. This was done for balance and equality, and that was a good thing. I only play PvE, now, so don't bother with the PvP vs PvE card.

The difference between +20% enchants and stances weapon mods really shouldn't require explanation; it should only take a moment of thought. For one thing, there are exactly 3 skills in the game to remove a stance, and exactly 1 is a core skill.

I don't mind everyone using so called "perfect" mods when in fact there are alot better mods than that, you just need to use your brain instead of copy pasting everything from others.

Oh rly? Damn, I'm sure I was making those monks pretty mad removing their stances all the time. I guess I'm the only one that has access to Wild Blow

What now? o.O Are those PvE only or something?

I'm afraid i would have to disagree with most of the things you said.

First but least important, there are about 3 stance removal skills if im not mistaken, though i also feel a longer stance duration weapon might be a bit imbalanced.

Second though, is that you are kindof missing my point about the mods. Unlike the way it is now, where you can basically take any weapon into any mission, quest or area [Note the 'basically' part, there are situations where it makes quite a difference which weapon you take], with more weapon customization players will start using different weapons in different situations more regularly. There will be no 'apparently useless' mod, only one that is not fitted for the current situation, which is rarely the case at present. More customization means more effectiveness in battle.

I can understand that and i must agree with you, though the point is not whether or not players care if everyone has the same stats on a weapon or not, but to improve effectiveness in the pve/pvp environment.

Since this is only a discussion without chance of actually being implemented, splitting of pve/pvp is allowed, thus my thread was more directed at the implications in pve.

Read your own post in this order:
2nd paragraph,
3rd paragraph,
1st sentence.

Let me see here...
My two average party set-ups.... both of them have around 6 out of 8 characters using Enchants, and at least three with Enchants up CONSTANTLY. There might be between 0 and 1 using a Stance.

You've noticed you can count the stance-using builds quite easily. The enchant-using builds on the flipside are so numerous you don't even bother to start counting... and 20% longer duration helps all but the very most ludicrously short of them.
And so you claim there aren't any? I'm not sure what world you're talking about, but it sure isn't Guild Wars.

Add on to that the simple fact that Stance effects are almost universally LESS than Enchant effects on average, AND that you can only have one active at a time.... and it demonstrates quite clearly that a +20% longer Enchants mod is FAR more broken than a +20% longer Stances mod could ever be.

And while there might be loads of Enchant removal skills in the game, there are still at least three Stance removal skills as well (and for the record, Wild Blow is good enough to be used on ANY Melee character with Warrior Secondary, due to it being unlinked). What does this tell you?
If it is telling you that longer stances would be a disaster because you don't have a way of removing them: you're barking up the wrong tree.
On the other hand, if you're learning that Stances aren't that dangerous that there is great need to remove them.... then you're starting to get the point.

I'm using Mend Ailment on Karyuu and Washi's Sarcasm detectors!

Whew, thanks! They needed a boost.

I would like weapon mods to have certain effects on weapons:

Fiery e.g.: Flaming Blade/Axe/Spear
Shocking: Lightning running up and down the blade
Ebon: Dirty, dusty, rusted weapon...^^
Icy: Like ice, frozen water, shiny

Sundering, Furious and Zealous would also have their special kind of glow, Vampiric could have blood dropping from the blade's point or so...^^

Some people will probably hate that and demand an option to switch it off, but other would like it. But there could be a toggle to display the effect, but you would be disadvantaged if you would uncheck it, especially in PvP.


Basically, instead of adding more effects by now that the game is in its final stage of development is not going to happen. But added "effects" for the various mods we already have would be a nice thing, also for GW2.


After all, WoW has it, too! And we want to copy everything that WoW has, but still be different. SCNR, excuse my sillyness...^^

I typed out a long reply, but really, I don't care.

I don't care about your PvE setup, this is discussion of actual game balance.

I'm sure that 20% of duration on Spirit Bond and RoF makes a major difference.

Total logical disconnect? What is your point.

Counterable is not the same as balanced.

A skill being in the game does not mean it is viable.

Fail @ correlation on your part then.


Amazingly enough, there are premature-termination stances too. Even then, the extra time doesn't go amiss if the conditions for the termination are not met immediately. You're not making any point there.


Since you're having difficulty connecting the dots, as you admit.... it is just this: There is no reason why +20% longer Stance mods shouldn't be in the game that wouldn't also justify removing +20% longer Enchants... as the Enchant mod is more "imbalanced". Counterwise, the presence of a +20% longer Enchants mod justifies the less-abusable +20% longer Stances mod.
Simple as that.


Now what are you calling imbalanced? Stances are very easily counterable, and when you compare the ratio of useful stances (discounting simple A-to-B running skills) to stance-removal and enchants (discounting running skills likewise) to enchant-removal ... the ratios aren't all that different. What IS notable however is that there is more to abuse with the Enchant mod than the hypothetical Stance mod....

... and Wild Blow IS viable under a great many circumstances... just as Wild Strike is a natural Offhand on any Assassin chain that begins with a Lead (i.e. not GPS or BLS starters). Heck, the Shiro solo build I used in Gate of Madness uses both without any setback.