Guild Wars 2

“Powerful Banners
Your Banners deal damage when summoned.”

The minimal amount of damage this causes combined with the long cooldown on banner skills makes this trait very weak. I would like to suggest a replacement trait of my own creation.

“Fog of War
Banners blind nearby foes with a dust cloud. Combo Field: Smoke”

This would give warriors a decent control-oriented trait and access to a second type of combo field.

What do you think?

I’m building a multi-banner support warrior, and I was looking at this trait and thinking….’What’s the point?‘…as you only summon them in once (Twice during longer battles.) and it seems like it wouldn’t do any real damage.

Blind seems like it would be kinda useless (Tactics/Defense tree is what I built…so I can already handle taking a lot of hits…so I don’t see a reason to blind them for a bit.) too. They need to revamp it somehow though, I will agree with that much.

What I’d really like to see ‘Powerful Banners’ be turned into is a small but steady bit of continuous damage that ticks like the buff does, so if it’s a bad fight you can throw em down, and run circles and still be damaging them when you’re needing to heal up. I can see how people would try and exploit this though.

“Blind seems like it would be kinda useless (Tactics/Defense tree is what I built…so I can already handle taking a lot of hits…so I don’t see a reason to blind them for a bit.) too. They need to revamp it somehow though, I will agree with that much.”

If you’re building a “support Warrior”, shouldn’t you also be taking your party members into consideration? If an enemy is blinded, that means extra survivability for your party members.

This would be a tier 1 trait in Strength, allowing you to go 10/0/30/30/0 an grab an extra bit of light control. It wouldn’t only blind, it would lay down a combo field that would allow you and allies to stealth. Do you really think that is useless?

Does “Powerful Banners” only deal the damage when summoned or every time you pick it up & rejam it into the ground? Cuz that might be an interesting mechanic to work off of. Give it an internal CD to avoid spamming exploit, but have an effect each time the banner is planted, rather than summoned. This way, you can summon the banner and move it around as the fight progresses or still use it when questing, moving from one fight to the next. Maybe a small aoe field that grants a condition for a couple ticks or something like “Cracked Ground: cripples nearby foes when jamming the banner into the earth.”

I would like to point out that banners give swiftness and do a combo finisher. Summon 3 banners = small AoE, have 3 people pick them up and replant them in say a fire field = a second AoE of fire.

“Give it an internal CD to avoid spamming exploit, but have an effect each time the banner is planted, rather than summoned.”

“Plant Banner” has a cooldown of its own, so a mechanic like this could not really be exploited.

Blast + Fire doesn’t deal damage as I recall, it grants AoE Might.

Blast + Fire grants 3 stacks of might, leap + fire is the fire aura (no idea what that does). Doesn’t blast + frost grant chill and blast + dark do life steal?

Fire Aura burns attackers. Dark Blast causes blindness. Ice Blast grants AoE Frost armor which chills attackers.

What does this have to do with the topic, though?

Progulous.1763:

If you’re building a “support Warrior”, shouldn’t you also be taking your party members into consideration?

The problem I’m seeing with your idea is this…

“Fog of War
Banners blind nearby foes with a dust cloud. Combo Field: Smoke”

…since the other folks that are ‘in the thick of things’ should probably also have built toughness/vit builds and should be able to absorb a lot too. Blind is really only helpful for a single hit of avoidance. Then people are back to dodging like mad or absorbing hits.

I’ve actually seen the battle move away from the range of my banners a few times and nobody bothered to pick them up and bring them over. (I was usually busy taking the hits and couldn’t run and grab them.)

It wouldn’t only blind, it would lay down a combo field that would allow you and allies to stealth. Do you really think that is useless?

Yeah, because having the slightly tanky guy ‘disappear’ for the monster means he shoots someone who is more squishy. I find that to be ‘bad’ for a team.

Not trying to jump on your idea, I just don’t agree with it.

AGREED +1

As is, powerful banners is a very very weak trait. And ironically, even more useless for banner traited warriors since they summon them less often.

A few ways to fix this:

Up the damage and make it happen everytime I plant the banner, not just on summoning. And make it so I do more damage with banner skills if I want to wield the banner

Provide a very small but constant area damage

Or maybe make it so that banners give me a combo field to play with

MilitiaMasterV.7216:

The problem I’m seeing with your idea is this… (Nearby was bolded)

The problem is that the dust cloud is “nearby” the banner’s impact…? Where else would it appear?

…since the other folks that are ‘in the thick of things’ should probably also have built toughness/vit builds and should be able to absorb a lot too. Blind is really only helpful for a single hit of avoidance. Then people are back to dodging like mad or absorbing hits.

There are so many things wrong with this sentence.

First of all, you are completely discounting the possibility of ANY encounter outside of the frame of reference dictated by one specific build (Defensive Support PvE, if I am not mistaken).

Second, you are making the assumption that the only place you can place banners (And thus the Smoke Combo Field) is “in the thick of things”, which is innacurate considering the 600 range of all banner skills.

Third, you are implying that there is a “place” in the battlefield for every role, when Guild Wars 2 is a very mobile game. Think Rangers should be in the “back”? What if they want to set a trap, or strategically place Healing Spring? What if the “back” is covered in red rings? Blind is just one of the ways to keep “squisher” builds alive.

I’ve actually seen the battle move away from the range of my banners a few times and nobody bothered to pick them up and bring them over. (I was usually busy taking the hits and couldn’t run and grab them.)

This comes off as nonsequitor to me. Perhaps there is confusion because I formatted my trait description in a nondescript way, like ArenaNet? I’ll try to explain it a bit better.

The way it would work is you would summon a banner as usual, but your banner would also produce a fairly long-duration (8 sec or so) smoke combo field in the same area. The combo field would not last the same duration as the banner, and it would not be movable along with the banner. It would essentially summon a “Black Powder” (Thief Skill) effect whenever you summoned a banner.

So it wouldn’t matter if the battle moved away from your banner, or if nobody picked it up. It would be a one-time thing.

Yeah, because having the slightly tanky guy ‘disappear’ for the monster means he shoots someone who is more squishy. I find that to be ‘bad’ for a team.

Assuming people know what they’re doing (which you seem to be doing a lot of) people won’t stealth if they don’t want to. And if the “Tank” (No tanks in this game by the way) uses a blast finisher and stealths everyone, he would be perfectly capable of breaking stealth in a split second, giving all “non-tanks” the chance to reposition themselves. This would create a situation where the “tank” would be the only visible opponent for mobs. How is that not helpful?

Although, once again you’re discounting the possibility of using the combo field for blinding (Projectile, Whirl) which, no matter how much you protest, does in fact help with the entire team’s survivability.

Not trying to jump on your idea, I just don’t agree with it.

I can understand if you have your reasons for not liking my idea, and I respect your opinion. Looking at all your reasons leaves me puzzled, though. You didn’t point out flaws in the trait’s mechanics. What you did was said “This wouldn’t be useful for my particular favorite build in PvE, therefore it would be useless”— even when “X” was short-sighted and riddled with fallacies and assumptions.

I think you’re just underestimating how powerful a control tool blind is.

Progulous.1763:

The problem is that the dust cloud is “nearby” the banner’s impact…? Where else would it appear?

I traited banner radius/range increase/faster banners. So the banners sometimes get thrown way out of ‘nearby’ range (Usually this nearby mechanic is referred to as ‘melee’ range.) I usually throw them mid-way between myself and the ranged characters if at all possible so we both get the buffs. Can you see how this would be a problem for affecting ‘nearby’ monsters? (This is what I was referring to as ‘useless’.)

Second, you didn’t clarify what the ‘radius’ of your smoke field would be. Are you just assuming it would be the same size as the banner’s radius (And then what happens for increased radius trait folks?)?

Third, since the blind is a one hit avoidance and then gone (Now you appear to be linking it to planting the banners) which would give it a few chances to apply blind each time a banner is picked up and planted, and with 4 banners up that’s probably like 4 times approximately 5 (Amount of times you can pick up/plant a banner before it disappears with CD on the plant feature during a single banner period.) chances to apply blind during a fight. (Don’t know if they put a limit on how often you can blind.)

Not counting the effect of the combo field. Do you not see how this could be exploited? (This is why I don’t agree with your idea.)

If your banners caused blind, wouldn’t be prudent to adjust your banner placement accordingly? Nothing is stopping you from summoning your banner near enemies. Even if you place your banner in the usual place, it gives allies an opportunity to blind from a distance with a combo field.

The radius of the dust could would be independent of of the banner’s radius, and about the same size of the Thief’s skill “Black Powder”, as I stated before.

“It would essentially summon a “Black Powder” (Thief Skill) effect whenever you summoned a banner.”

I also mentioned that the dust could would be a “One-time thing” per banner, so picking it up and re-planting it would not create another dust cloud.

“So it wouldn’t matter if the battle moved away from your banner, or if nobody picked it up. It would be a one-time thing.”

I don’t think they put a limit on how much you can blind, but they do put a limit on how many times you can use “Plant Banner”, since all five banners share a “Plant Banner” cooldown.

So first you don’t find my idea useful because blind is weak and only lasts for one hit, and then you turn around and say that the reason you don’t like my idea is because it “could be exploited”? I’m even more confused than before.