Guild Wars 2

In this thread I wish to focus on traits that reduce recharge on weapon skills, and leave those which improve utility or other skills for another discussion.

I have noticed that some reduced recharge traits improve the effectiveness of the associated skills in addition allowing them to be used more frequently.

For example, contrast “Sundering Mace” with “Focused Mastery.”

Sundering Mace — Mace damage is increased by 10% when a foe is weakened. Reduces cooldown of mace skills by 20%

Focused Mastery — Focus skills recharge 20% faster.

I have also noticed that some reduced recharge traits affect multiple weapon types while others affect only one.

For example:

Hair Trigger — Rifle, pistol, and harpoon gun skills recharge 20% faster

Two-Handed Mastery — Two-handed weapon skills recharge 20% faster.

vs

Staff Mastery — Staff skills recharge 20% faster.

Malicious Sorcery — +50 malice when wielding a scepter. Reduces recharge of scepter skills by 20%

More important and, in my mind, frustrating are the discrepancies in the amount recharge reduction itself. 28 out of 31 weapon-skill recharge traits offer 20% reduction, while the remaining 3 offer only 15%

They are as follows:

Banshee’s Wail — Warhorn skills recharge 15% faster, and their effects last longer.

Dagger Mastery — Dagger skills recharge 15% faster.

and lastly (and certainly leastly)

Radiant Fire — Torch skills recharge 15% faster.

That last one is noteworthy as being a Master level trait (Dagger Mastery is Adept) that affects a single weapon type by an unusually small amount without secondary bonuses of any kind.

My problem with this situation is not the relative effectiveness of these weapon skills, either traited or untraited, but the relative atractiveness of the traits themselves and the subsequent excitement or sense of satisfaction in choosing them. I for one “feel better” taking Off-Hand Training or Sundering Mace (or even Chaotic Dampening) than I do taking Banshee’s Wail.

My only proposal (and I can see some difficulties about implementing it) is to add some small, even minuscule, auxiliary bonus to recharge traits lacking one and increase the strength of the three outlier traits from 15% to 20%. If this somehow creates an imbalance with certain Necromancer or guardian builds (highly unlikely), then increase the base cooldowns of the associated skills very slightly to lesson the impact.

Perhaps in the long-term development as more trait ideas are developed they can put space for them in the trait lines by combining more of these recharge traits as well.

I hope someone with a mind more organized than my own can step in to help me by expounding upon this.

TLDR?

Buff Necro/guardian reduced recharge traits =)

The % reduction is more or less effective based on the skills’ original cooldown. For this reason, cooldown reduction traits are normally taken specifically for weapon skills 3 to 5. I haven’t done any math, but I would compare the actual time reduction rather then the percentile reduction.

Also, some traits that are bundled together make sense. Although Hair Trigger does give 20% cdr to three weapons, Engineer does not have weapon swap. He’s getting use of the 20% cdr to either a rifle or pistol on land and his speargun underwater. I wouldn’t want to punish an Engineer by having to choose more then one major trait slot for an underwater weapon. Underwater weapon CDR or damage buffs are generally bundled.

For trait like Banshee’s Wail that has increased effect duration, I would treat the extra time as if that was part of the cdr.

Again, I can’t speak for every single CDR trait as I have not played all professions. There does seem to be some fairness that reflects each individual profession.

I just went to look at the base cooldowns of a few of the abilities and I am fairly confident that they do not correlate to the strength of the reduction. You do make a good point about locust swarm though, as I had not considered just how much uptime was improved.