Guild Wars 2

I realize that there is this thread for some post-specialization meta discussion, but it’s disorganized and very hard to make conclusive decisions based on it. This is a mission critical discussion topic for us where my report may actually result in some of the terrible changes being averted and some of the best changes being praised and reinforced.

First, let’s link the changes in their entirety:

Elementalist

• Fire: http://i.imgur.com/HOLoIGu.jpg
• Air: http://i.imgur.com/sedmwsr.jpg
• Earth: http://i.imgur.com/fzRs1qr.jpg
• Water: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/specializations-part-one-a-primer/
• Arcane: http://i.imgur.com/DH70jqk.jpg
• Blasting Staff is now a default. That is just how staff works right now.
• Evasive Arcana and Boon on attune. Those are very core to elementalists and that is why they need to be a choice. You will be either a dodge ele or a boon on attune ele. You’re going to make up for that by having an extra grandmaster in some line that compliments what you are really trying to do. Also now since you getting 3 full trait lines you are getting a lot of power etc back from there to compensate what you lost.
• Windborn Dagger – We are talking now if there are things we could do for dagger. We didn’t feel windborn dagger was super exciting and we might have to roll that into something. The windborn dagger and scepter one with endurance weren’t super exciting so we are going to give you something more exciting.
• Icebow and Lightning hammer won’t be doing the damage they are doing right now when this ships. They are problematic and cheesy.
• Bleeding stacks over 25 stacks during the Revenant beta weekends – we are testing that right now and they are just getting past the first base.

Thief

• Deadly Arts: http://i.imgur.com/AAKfqHT.jpg
• Critical Strikes: http://i.imgur.com/80hbwYG.jpg
• Shadow Arts: http://i.imgur.com/h89VO99.jpg
• Acrobatics: http://i.imgur.com/38S946i.jpg
• Trickery: http://i.imgur.com/mw4pbze.jpg
• Deadly arts will now be much focused on poison and delivering debilitating conditions.
• Regarding Dagger Training – the tooltip shown above is outdated. We rolled the 5% damage to baseline and your dagger attacks will now have a chance to inflict poison.
• Lotus Poison CD cooldown reduced slightly so you can poison your enemies more frequently.
• Exposed weakness is more general now.
• We took away the damage portion of stolen items and will be doing some rebalancing on the stolen items themselves.
• Quickness is now a boon and can be removed.
• Ambush is now a Deception ability. Dagger Storm is now a Trick, Hide in Shadows is a Deception and Withdraw are Tricks.

Guardian

• Zeal: http://i.imgur.com/ZIck4Jo.jpg
• Radiance: http://i.imgur.com/uPYjyun.jpg
• Valor: http://i.imgur.com/Z6u8QVh.jpg
• Honor: http://i.imgur.com/WH4J3MI.jpg
• Virtues: http://i.imgur.com/0qpvpof.jpg
• Ground targeting (for Consecrations) has been made base, just like with necro wells
• Glacial Heart trait was removed as Guardians doesn’t really do chill at all and remade into Virtuous Mallet.
• Healing Breeze will become a Shout skill. Shelter needs a category and Tomes need a category.
• Elite duration increase has been made baseline.
• Improved Spirit Weapon duration has been made baseline.

Engineer

• Explosives: http://i.imgur.com/TAvQ5TU.jpg
• Firearms: http://i.imgur.com/qfBXg8U.jpg
• Inventions: http://i.imgur.com/RiR3lVz.jpg
• Alchemy: http://i.imgur.com/Mh0DUbq.jpg
• Tools: http://i.imgur.com/HNLIwNX.jpg
• Grenade kit and Med kit got new graphics/animations.
• Med Kit #1 skill now blast people in the face with a healing breeze. #2 now drops a buff pylon that buff allies nearby. #3 drops a glowing syringe on the ground.
• Mortar Kit is now an kit like skill. You can run around with the Mortar kit and it will serve it as a long range solution with fields. Grenade kit distance will get reduced a bit to 900 and will do no more fields.
• All elite skills now have an F5 skill
• Supply Crate will become a turret – you can overcharge/detonate it etc. Elixir X now transform enemies in an area to Moas.
• Grenadier trait no longer increase the range of grenade or add more grenades (has been made baseline) It now only increase the radius of the impact and velocity.
• Accelerant Packed Turrets (only on detonate, not on kill) and Forceful Explosives trait from Explosives have been made baseline.
• Pistol 1 and Rift 5 skills become explosions.
• Firearms – Rifle/Speargun trait will reduce the recharge and increase crit chance on these two weapons.
• Rifled Barrels and Coated Bullets from Firearms have been made baseline.
• Inventions line got nuked and remade.

Mesmer

• Domination: http://i.imgur.com/IVzYWca.jpg
• Dueling: http://i.imgur.com/fIH0J9L.jpg
• Chaos: http://i.imgur.com/DKixfqQ.jpg
• Inspiration: http://i.imgur.com/LwCb3lm.jpg
• Illusions: http://i.imgur.com/h7a0WHQ.jpg
• Chaos Armor will be added to one of the Trident skills
• The stealth duration increase on Prismatic Understanding from Chaos line is only on Mesmer stealth skills, not on stealth applied on the Mesmer by other classes.
• Glamour all had their recharge rate reduced as a baseline
• Traits that are made baseline: Illusionary Persona, Illusionary Elasticity, Protective Mantras (gain extra armor when you cast a mantra), Phantasmal damage boost traits,Manipulation range.
• Alot of the retaliation traits in Mesmer got removed as we didn’t feel like you want people to hit you as a mesmer.

Necromancer

• Spite: http://i.imgur.com/o358xCI.jpg
• Curses: http://i.imgur.com/l8t5vY9.jpg
• Death Magic: http://i.imgur.com/DPwxkjk.jpg
• Blood Magic: http://i.imgur.com/oTYI7gr.jpg
• Soul Reaping: http://i.imgur.com/16d5R75.jpg
• Damage increase while a Necro is downed has been reduced.
• Minion Master trait has been reduced since Minion recharge reduction is now baseline. Dark Armour (toughness while channeling skills) got removed as no one was using it. Spiteful Talisman trait got removed but all the focus range skills increases were made baseline.

Ranger

• Marksmanship: http://i.imgur.com/TVN0V2u.jpg
• Skirmishing: http://i.imgur.com/KEbw3B0.jpg
• Wildernesss Survival: http://i.imgur.com/1PB9JAo.jpg
• Nature Magic: http://i.imgur.com/YjY7I7U.jpg
• Beastmastery: http://i.imgur.com/VFtz017.jpg
• Troll Unguent will be made into a Survival skill. Heal as One and Rampage are placed into the Shout category.
• Traps will now have an arming time once thrown down but they will be balanced around it
• Velocity increase on longbow attacks have been made baseline.
• In the Skirmishing line, they want to move Most Dangerous Game to Grandmaster and move Light on your Feet down to Adept.
• Spirits cannot move anymore. We will buff up their passives.
• 75% trigger rate is baseline for spirits now

Warrior

• Strength: http://i.imgur.com/093v9dI.jpg
• Arms: http://i.imgur.com/NXziANk.jpg
• Defense: http://i.imgur.com/2JQNZNA.jpg
• Tactics: http://i.imgur.com/2Zax5ek.jpg
• Discipline: http://i.imgur.com/BnWw8Fh.jpg
• Physical skills have a new thing where if your endurance is above 50%, they are more effective (Stomp further, kick further for example). Rampage and Mending are now physical skills.
• Healing Surge is becoming a Shout skill. No Elite shout.

Beyond the changes themselves, I’m curious what your thoughts about the individual classes are? Are the changes to LH/IB worthwhile? Do we think Necromancer will contribute anything to teams now? What changes are we happy with? What changes are traps because the lines are still bad? Things like that. Try to isolate your discussions and keep them related to specific classes, but do feel free to talk about the meta overall a little as well.

This is a huge set of changes, and I want to make sure my report gets to them ASAP so that we can see some adjustments in response to our thoughts. Now’s the time to speak up if there ever were one.

Icebow change kinda expected but LH? Really? They want to nuke everything and force eles in to staff? I hope it will not be another “lol 70%” nerf.

Oh don’t worry, Necromancer won’t see any more daylight in dungeon groups than it currently does.

The BttH change + LH nerf will pretty much ensure the only worthwhile ele build will be staff, which is also the most boring ele weapon. So you go from 3 good builds to just 1. It’s dumbing down the class a lot tbh.

Guardian change I mostly like. I’m just hoping the symbol trait won’t dumb down my rotation to spamming hammer 1. Sad to see sword and scepter go… =/

I have remarks about other classes (mesmer for example), but other people here know those classes much better and can go more in detail.

It’s pretty disappointing that staff ele gets even further buffed (it was already way over the top), while other builds, that require more skill and are more fun to play (Dagger and scepter/Lightning Hammer) get nerfed.
With blasting staff as default you can now trait fire, air and water and take all available dmg-modifiers, which is a pretty huge dmg-boost for staff-eles.
On the other side, there is no reason anymore to play dagger/focus in any situation, especially when bolt to the heart and fresh air are both air grandmaster traits.
I can’t really understand the lightning hammer nerf, as it was already weaker than staff.
I don’t know how exactly they will nerf icebow, but in my opinion they should not reduce the dmg of skill 4 but rather make it ignore hitboxsizes (similar to rangers barrage) so that it ticks once per second or so, because on normal sized hitboxes icebow never was op, especially when you consider that its a utility skill with 60s cd.

Edit: Also mesmers are nerfed even further, because the good traits are split up in 4 different traitlines. If Wardens Feedback would become a grandmaster trait in the illusions line, than mesmer still would not be good but at least medium.

Targuil.3741:

Oh don’t worry, Necromancer won’t see any more daylight in dungeon groups than it currently does.

I wish for One With Air to give Quickness, instead of Super Speed, on a shorter duration, or a longer cd.

I wish for a complete rework of Ferocious Wind. Healing Power has a very low baseline value (1/10 of Toughness or Vitality). 7% of Healing Power is like next to nothing. So change that!

Earth is fine, I’m happy.

Water is fine, I’m happy.

Elemental Contingency should have a CD per attacker, or lower universal CD (5s).

Blinding Ash needs a cd per attacker.

One with Fire is really weak for a Master trait. Move “Grant Fire Aura by activating a signet” from Conjurer to One with Fire.

Lingering Elements … What does it do even?!!

Lingering Elements makes you keep the first minor trait for each attunement for 5 seconds after swapping. So if you invest in air, you get the 10% speed in air, and you keep it for 5 seconds after swapping out of air attunement. It doesn’t (as of right now) affect damage modifier traits like internal fire and piercing shards.

My thoughts:

Engineer: Looks nice, I don’t think out of line nice, I mean just nice.

• with the rifle and pistol changes to explosions, Flame Blast from Flamethrower has always bugged me that it’s not an explosion, I mean, it’s a fireball you detonate and then it bursts and causes a blast. What about that doesn’t scream explosion?!
• Kit Refinement with speedy kits has lots of potential, but with that also the potential to screw you over and get you in combat. I would love if they made the kit refinement part of it “in combat” only, let me swiftness myself up outside of combat, but not be dropping magnet bombs or anything while I do that.

That’s really all I got for Engi right now.

Guard: OMG the damage, BUT!!! we’re losing support on some builds, losing viability on weapons, and just overall it’s concerning. I believe the changes wanted to create more diversity, not less, and right now I’m seeing some almost set paths for guardian to take and I hope they can adjust some traits to counter that.

• Zealous Scepter, seems like a solid trait as is, however, it competes with fiery wrath, 10% strait damage vs at most like 8 stacks of might? Yeah, not sure it’s worth it. This is a major issue because it will likely determine the viability of an entire weapon being used in ideal situations. I’d propose at the very least it gets an additional 10% damage, but truly more likely it should receive like 15-20% damage to not only counter Fiery Wrath but also counter the symbolic power that mace/hammer will do so well with. Or they could make Smite a symbol?
• Sword viability, we have this pretty mediocre trait “wrathful Spirit” that also competes in that same line. Looking things over that’s the biggest “weak spot” of the entire new design IMO. I’d propose scrapping that and putting in a Sword trait, with again 15-20% damage, alternatively you could combine the sword and scepter traits so that both are giving might and countering the limitations of the weapons that are now more glaring.
• Shield… c’mon… Who uses it and who the hell is going to trait for it jsut for 20% less cooldown on pathetic abilities? Trait needs to give it some oomf. I liked someone’s idea of Aegis on anyone hit by the effect of a shield skill, meaning 1 more aegis potentially for us with the 5 skill, 2 more potentially for the group with 4 and 5 skill. Powerful? Sure, limit the duration of the aegis to require well timed activation. I’m honestly thinking like 2s duration.
• Honorable Staff & Virtuous Mallet, I think these should be swapped. Honor is our Hammer Tree with the Symbol buffs, Virtues is our support tree, which if there is any reason to use staff, it’s in a support role. With the 3 tree max rule we honestly probably won’t be able to touch the hammer trait currently.

Overall I love the changes, but I’m concerned on the diversity it will bring as I feel like we’re all going to go 66006 grabbing all the damage modifiers running GS/Mace+Focus, and swapping in Unscathed Contender for MoC when MoC isn’t needed, that or a full DPS hammer build of like 66060 losing your support. No longer will we be mixing up mace/sword/scepter depending on the fight, which is not something good IMO.

Elementalist:…ugh

• LH nerf, is it really needed? It was good damage, but nothing amazing, nothing gamebreaking, just solid damage that allows us to have Scepter builds compete. I’m honestly curious what about it they felt was overpowered? If there’s any way to leave the auto attack alone it’d be nice. Ice Bow I understand and even kinda agree on but, yeah…
• Stone Splinters & earth modifiers, loss of those pushes us to 66060 build in PVE almost certainly, which is again a shame if all this work was supposed to lead to diversity.
• Air Training, is the ferocity going to make up for the loss of a flat 10% damage? I don’t think it will and I’d really like that 10% back to keep options viable, /mourn DF the best Ele build.

Main thing here is trying to salvage the viability of D/F and S+LH builds, being stuck in the most boring build ever (staff Ele) would just not really be something I’d desire. I was hoping for the reverse of what seems to be happening, in that Staff needed toning down and the other two up.

Necromancer needs group play, might on lifeblast, ferocity on deathshroud, group lifesteal to nearby allies (like the signet but not kitten). If they need to lower its baseline health to do it they should.

I have a bad feeling that they will just increase mobs’ toughness multiplier to counter all the power creep. Straight damage will still be king in the core Tyria but lose its effect in the new maps.

Two big topics I expected to come up were Elementalists and Necromancers, so I think it would behoove us to talk about them first before we start talking about every class. This post will be about Elementalists, and I’ll make another about Necromancers afterward.

Elementalist

• Ice Bow Nerf
  • I think a nerf here is warranted because it’s a little too meta-defining, but it’s really important that this skill be a positive DPS gain over Staff rotation DPS when used or else it will be removed from bars in every format forever.
  • While we’re here, the 2 skill and autoattack are pretty terrible, so it’d be nice if they saw buffs to encourage their usage.
• Lightning Hammer Nerf
  • This is completely unwarranted. LH has already largely been pushed out of the meta by Staff elementalists, and is completely unused in PvP. If anything, the 2 through 5 should be buffed in intelligent ways to encourage their use. This will crush non-Staff Elementalists.
• Bolt to the Heart GM Trait
  • This trait is nowhere near good enough for a GM trait. Executioner (Thief) and Close to Death (Necromancer) already deal +20% damage <50%, so why is BttH still under 33%?
• Arcane Lightning moved to Arcane Spec
  • This one hasn’t gotten a lot of publicity, but now it’s merged into a GM trait down in Arcane, which means we won’t be getting it assuming we take Water as the third specialization for Piercing Shards and Aquamancer’s Training.
  • I think this is probably okay, but still worth noting.

Summary: Scepter and Dagger main hands will be completely pushed out of the PvE meta in favor of using Staff on everything. Lightning Hammer needs to retain its high DPS and Dagger needs some trait to justify its use or this will be a serious net loss for the diversity of builds in PvE. In reality, Lightning Hammer could use a DPS boost to its 2 through 5, and maybe the Conjurer trait could boost damage of Conjured Weapon skills by 10%. Dagger really needs damage modifiers that it can take advantage of, such as:

Evasive Destruction: Dagger skills deal 15% more damage after successfully evading or blocking an attack. Lasts 4 seconds, 4 second ICD.

Just a thought, and I welcome others.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Lightning Hammer needs to retain its high DPS and Dagger needs some trait to justify its use or this will be a serious net loss for the diversity of builds in PvE.

I’m not disagreeing with the assertion that the Lightning Hammer nerf is coming from a place of deep ignorance, but don’t you think though that Lightning Hammer is just a band-aid for how bad the Scepter auto-attacks are?

Nokaru.7831:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Lightning Hammer needs to retain its high DPS and Dagger needs some trait to justify its use or this will be a serious net loss for the diversity of builds in PvE.

I’m not disagreeing with the assertion that the Lightning Hammer nerf is coming from a place of deep ignorance, but don’t you think though that Lightning Hammer is just a band-aid for how bad the Scepter auto-attacks are?

That’s true. If they simply made scepter autos do more than lightly tickle the enemy, then s/f eles wouldn’t need to run LH in the first place.

You’re right—Scepter autoattacks are weak, but Scepter burst is quite strong. That’s not necessarily a bad design decision, though, because Scepter enables a significant amount of team DPS support through its ability to generate a great deal of might. Staff, on the other hand, doesn’t have much might generation, but has high sustained DPS. I think that’s intentional and is the desired tradeoff. Lightning Hammer complements Scepter very well for the downtime between bursts, and gives a lot of sustained AOE damage that Scepter otherwise lacks at the cost of a utility slot (another good tradeoff).

Basically, I think if they buffed Scepter autoattacks to the point where it was comparable sustained DPS to a Staff, it would seriously outclass the Staff. Even closing the gap a little may not be necessary; I think the series of tradeoffs made currently between Scepter and Staff puts the two weapons in a good place next to each other.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ice Bow Nerf

• I think a nerf here is warranted because it’s a little too meta-defining, but it’s really important that this skill be a positive DPS gain over Staff rotation DPS when used or else it will be removed from bars in every format forever.

In terms of dps icebow is only op on big hitboxes. On small hitboxes it might be a dps increase aswell, but not so much that it would be op. Deep-freeze is the main reason why icebow is used on pretty much every boss.

Since I main a Ranger…

Overall in the end it’s going to be better for melee Rangers.

Normal Utilities will be:
*TU or HS
*QZ
*SotW
*Whatever
*RaO

1st Weapon Set:
*Sword+Axe or Sword+WH

2nd Weapon Set:
*LB or GS

Assuming QZ and SotW don’t change substantially I’ll still be running those on my bar.

#Marksman
*Predators Instinct
or
*Call of the Wild
—
*Steady Focus
*Predators Onslaught

Predators Instrinct to activate Predators Onslaught. Steady Focus for the obvious damage increase.

#Skrimishing
*Most Dangerous Game
*Spotter
*Strider’s Defense
or
*Light on Your Feet

Most Dangerous Game because it sucks the least out of those options. Spotter because duh. Striders or Light on Your Feet will change depending on the situation. Not to mention MDG and LoyF are getting switched. Probably just stick to Strider’s Def for GM then and pick up one of the other two for the adept.

#Wilderness Survival
*Muddy Terrain
or
*Expertise Training
*Peak Strength
*Poison Master
or
*Empethic Bond

In Wilderness Surivial all the adept traits suck equally. I guess I’ll take Expertise Training most of the time. I’ll be running Empathetic Bond if I need extra condi removal or Poison Master if no one else is throwing down poison.

#Beast Mastery
*Resounding Timbre
*Two Handed Training
or
*Natural Healing
*Zephy’s Speed

Of course I’ll be testing out the Beast Mastery line once HoT drops since they say they’re improving the AI so much.. so… Resounding Timbre > Companion’s Might. Reducing the CD on RaO is worth it. If I’m running Sword+X I’ll be using Natural Healing, but I’m I’m running GS I’ll be using 2h Training… And Zephyr’s Speed is far-and-away better than the other two terribad GM traits in this line (although I still think ZS shouldn’t have been put in GM — that was just a grossly bad decision). All that being said I doubt I’ll run the BM line before HoT drops.

I play melee most of the time, either sword or GS. I use LB to open up the fight but after that it’s all melee if I can help it so I want to pick traits that are going to help in that regard. I’ll be running zerker gears so…

I wrote up a decent sized response to this, but it got deleted before I could post it -_-

Basically: Necromancer high +vuln application- good. Vuln application competing with damage modifiers- bad. No increased group support, might, blasting, anything to make it viable in PvE group scenarios- very bad.

Engineer rifled barrels and forceful explosives baseline, as well as jump shot counted as an explosive (twice) are good. +10% explosives mod as a minor trait is also good. The blast finisher on dodge thing would be cool if PS warriors weren’t going to be so big after this. Meta will probably be 66006 still, and it’s nice that we can get SD and speedy kit refinements. Hopefully the GM ‘TBD’ trait in tools will be good for PvE.

Ele- fire line good, air bad, earth bad (+damage within 600 range gone), water good, arcana bad. Bolt to the Heart moved to GM, not buffed to the same level as thief/necro equivalent GM traits, and competing with Fresh Air very bad. LH nerf very bad. D/F and S/F dead – terribad.

Didn’t look too hard at guard stuff, but it looked like hammer and mace were getting buffed hard with the symbol thing, while sword and scepter fall behind. I’m okay with mace replacing sword, but the scepter thing sucks if it falls far enough behind to ruin its niche use as max dps on large hitbox targets.

Rising Dusk.2408:

You’re right—Scepter autoattacks are weak, but Scepter burst is quite strong. That’s not necessarily a bad design decision, though, because Scepter enables a significant amount of team DPS support through its ability to generate a great deal of might. Staff, on the other hand, doesn’t have much might generation, but has high sustained DPS. I think that’s intentional and is the desired tradeoff. Lightning Hammer complements Scepter very well for the downtime between bursts, and gives a lot of sustained AOE damage that Scepter otherwise lacks at the cost of a utility slot (another good tradeoff).

Basically, I think if they buffed Scepter autoattacks to the point where it was comparable sustained DPS to a Staff, it would seriously outclass the Staff. Even closing the gap a little may not be necessary; I think the series of tradeoffs made currently between Scepter and Staff puts the two weapons in a good place next to each other.

You forgot to mention the main reason scepter can’t get a buff… pvp. In PVP if it was both good pressure and good burst… my god, new meta inc. So LH allowed the PVE side to still use that weapon but just with certain limitations.

I fully agree on the Dagger stuff too, it needs something. Really, I think Air Training needs to return, that alone would do just right I think. I can only imagine that they wanted to keep it limited for Fresh Air PVP builds which rely on the air attunement to burst things down withthe lightning strike. That’s really pathetic though screwing over a weapon completely in PVE for PVP balance. Give it something, please, D/F was the most fun build of all of them, having it be pathetic would be so sad, it was already behind it didn’t need a kick to the gonads.

Lendruil.9061:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ice Bow Nerf

• I think a nerf here is warranted because it’s a little too meta-defining, but it’s really important that this skill be a positive DPS gain over Staff rotation DPS when used or else it will be removed from bars in every format forever.

In terms of dps icebow is only op on big hitboxes. On small hitboxes it might be a dps increase aswell, but not so much that it would be op. Deep-freeze is the main reason why icebow is used on pretty much every boss.

I believe this is the main concern, ice storm on big hit boxes most likely adjusting for potential big bosses come expansion and to stop the overload of elementalist on silly things like borrows on ac P1.

My personal preference change with ice bow is to make the entire function similar ranger longbow but with frost flavors to it.

to summarize my personal desire with ice bow.

skill 1 fast and hard hitting auto attacks akin to ranger longbow auto
skill 2 rapid fire in the same way, adding a deepfreeze chill with the last shot
skill 3 staying the same
skill 4 ice storm skill functionality altered to simulate ranger barrage but with chill rather than the monstrous amount of hard hitting individual pellets
skil 5 aoe deep freeze but with very short duration used in almost a makeshift aoe interrupt of both movement and skills rather than a very long cage

in thus the potential power is both normalized across the board with the rest of the skills gaining a boost in sacrifice of the potential punch possible with ice storm incentiving the use of ice bow as a versatile hard hitting long ranged option rather than just simply going into ice bow for a deep freeze ice storm combo as part of your regular dps rotation, encouraging to stay in ice bow for the entirety of the conjure for ranged potential.

Speculative I would imagine it would be getting some treatment like this kitten to incentive using the entire weapon for the entire duration rather than picking it up using it for cheese and tossing it.

I’ve been pretty accurate with their desire to start implementation of hard support options (engie medikit auto attack is a straight conic heal, more outgoing healing being again dished across the board via traits for guardian, warrior, out, etc etc) so I imagine this next forecast for how conjured weapons being handled may be close to accurate.

Since the elite PvE players are represented by this forum more than any other, perhaps our Specialist can voice concerns to Anet about not being able to slot lower level traits (e.g. adept in grandmaster slot).

It’s extremely restricting and magnifies dev mistakes (bad traits, bugged traits) as every useless trait greatly reduces your build options.

I don’t think Anet will listen to the unwashed masses of the general forum, but maybe the “elites” of the dungeon forum? (Probably not, looking at the interface they’ve already created for the new system.)

For necro, it’s hard to pin down just a few things because as Bhawb said, “while we did retain some buffs, these buffs might not keep us up on the level of power creep other professions had. Meaning we took one step forward, but if everyone else took two – we’ve effectively gone backwards.” Overall the changes just feel lackluster, not enough. But there are a few things that seem to keep popping up.

- No power-focused GM option for the Curses traitline, a traitline which otherwise works well with a power build – things like furious demise and banshee’s wail.

- 2 Death Magic GM’s are minon based, meaning non-minon builds specing in to DM are pigeon holed into a single GM (which isn’t that great.)

- Reaper’s precision is bad, and it was left basically unchanged. If you’re running a ds based build, you have decent lf- regen from your weapon skills, so reapers precision isn’t going to make a difference. Otherwise you are on scepter, where the aa is to slow for reapers precision to matter. If you buff the trait, it becomes OP with lf – regen weapons. Better to just scrap the trait entirely.

- ICD returned for DS-entry traits , needlessly nerfing DS flashing dagger necros.

I’m also going to link spoj’s write up from the necro sub, because I think it shows the though process a pve necro goes through looking at the traits, and where things become problematic.
Dagger necro // DS necro

Ive given so much in depth feedback and suggestions for the necro now (all in the necro subforum). I usually only give PvE feedback. Not anymore! Now to sit on my hands, hope they listen and actually make some drastic changes. Im actually twitching with frustration right now thanks to the mess in curses, death magic and blood magic.

Slightly crestfallen Necro here!

I mostly read the forums but, like Rising Dusk has said, I think that this is our chance to get heard: with all this traits still (supposedly) in alpha, there’s still chance for improvement. While I share the annoyance at the lack of significant (and long overdue) changes, I feel that shaking our fists at the heavens and cursing Anet isn’t useful to either the devs or us. Voicing our concerns and dissatisfaction one more time has nothing but upsides.
Disclaimer: I’m a scrub. I’ve been playing Necro since release, but the only area in which I’ve played seriously enough was WvW. Aside from the first weeks of the game (where everyone was running around with whatever and you could still WP while the party was in battle. The memories!), I’ve tried to pick up dungeons for a month or so, before stopping because I felt I wasn’t able to pull my weight (both because of my and the class’ shortcomings). I’ll be mostly commenting on the things that look too weak/out of place to me, and let people more experienced than me propose something to patch the class’ shortcomings.

Soul Reaping
I’ll start from the best one. Honestly…I really like what they did here! I was kind of depressed going trough the lines, but seeing what they did with this line restored some of my faith in Anet. They are perfectly capable to make useful and cool traitlines, this is the proof! Ideally, I think this is an example of what we should be shooting for in the different lines: it has a particular shtick (LF, DS and spectral skills), but it doesn’t pigeon-hole you in a particular build (read: the problem that curses has now).
Is that the original Dhuumfire?

Spite
I like this line, too, but there are a couple of things that doesn’t convince me fully. While I really like the minors in concept, I think that the ICD and durations limit them somewhat: spiteful removal and death’s embrace are fine, but what if we removed syphoned power ICD/ tweaked the numbers to allow it to stack? As of now, it just gives a 100% uptime of two stacks of might: would making this a way for Necros to stack might on themselves be useful in PvE, to at least up their damage?
Most of the other minors are cool (could bitter chill be useful to stack vuln, or are engis and eles still doing it better? What if the GS’s autoattack will actually inflict chill?), but a couple of the worry me a little: axe training, signet mastery, and spiteful spirit. Signet mastery just doesn’t feel like a GM trait, while the other two have bigger problems, I think. Axe training should at least get a much bigger damage bonus for such a restrictive condition, and the cooldown reduction is negligible: beside just upping it, what about making it reduce also the off-hands CDs (Reaper’s Touch spam?), or even the utility ones? Too powerful?
As others have said, I really don’t know why spiteful spirit needs an ICD: by being on DS activation, it already has a cooldown by itself.

(Continues in the next post)

Curses
Ugh, now we’re starting to get worse. First: could we ax reaper precision to make room for other traits? It always seemed pretty negligible to me. By removing it, you could also address one of the othe big problems of the line: all 3 of the GM are condition based, and one it’s rather important. I think we should move down the Lingering Curse trait down to master, so that condition build can take both it and either terror or the now-not-so-terrible parasitic contagion (15% is not that bad, I think): we could then fill the third GM spot with a trait useful to a greater number of builds.
Second: do we really need toxic landing? This fall damage reduction trait always seemed a little bad to me, even if master of corruption is now merged with it. Speaking of which: what if master of corruption also briefly granted you the new Resistance (or how it’s called) boon for a couple of seconds after you use a corrupt skill, like the Mallyx Rev trait does?
Third: I’ve always wondered: what if target the weak influenced also nearby allies? Would that make Necro a little more desirable to carry around?

Blood Magic
Is this trait line all over the place because it’s blood magic? Not only the traits are lacklustre (except vampiric rituals. By Dwayna’s feathery hairstyle!), but the line lacks focus and specialize in healing, something that it’s a little useless in PvE. For starters: merge a ton of the traits. Seriously. Bloodthirst+vampiric precision, and deathly invigoration+transfusion. From there, the minors need some serious buffing: extra healing power? That’s…uh. The majors, too need some help: Unholy Martyr is a really cool idea cursed by minuscule numbers.

Beside nuking it and rewriting it from the ground (like they did with Engi’s Invention line), I’d like to talk about what Blood Magic shtick could be: what if Blood Magic was focused on giving you bonuses for having near to max health/endurance, like a turbo-scholar rune trait line? The minors point to that, and the vampiric thing (on paper, conceptually) is supposed to do that. If that was the case, the blood magic line could be the place where we get a (limited) access to defensive boons, like Protection and Vigor: without going overboard (I’m not talking about a 100% uptime), I’m sure it could be possible to come up with necro-y ways to give the class access to an important part of high-end PvE defence (I doubt that DS facetanking does the trick). For example, what about a trait that gives you Vigor (or directly endurance!) when you syphon from foes? A boring but efficient +x% damage when health is above the threshold?

Death Magic
I’ve really not played around with this tree, or minions, enough to make sensible comments. I’ll let more minion-versed people talk about this.

I’m finished (for now): it’s getting late here, and the post has gotten way longer than I imagined…

well… on lightning hammer… the thing is, when you have a scepter ele around, you end up walking out of a boss fight with a minute of fury if hes got someone elses fire field. and you dont really need any other might stacking during the fight. you prestack might to start at 25 stacks + 1 min of fury, and the ele can maintain it by autoattacking.

i dunno. maybe the damage isnt op. but trivializing the 2 major dps boons is kinda silly. at least PS war cant maintain the 25 might with just autos and has to push 100blades every once in a while…

i have a feeling engis may start to have the same problem if mortar 1 gets that traited blast finisher and it deals dps like bomb 1. an engi can provide his own fire field and stack vuln too. maybe thats too much for 1 toon autoing.

insanemaniac.2456:

well… on lightning hammer… the thing is, when you have a scepter ele around, you end up walking out of a boss fight with a minute of fury if hes got someone elses fire field. and you dont really need any other might stacking during the fight. you prestack might to start at 25 stacks + 1 min of fury, and the ele can maintain it by autoattacking.

i dunno. maybe the damage isnt op. but trivializing the 2 major dps boons is kinda silly. at least PS war cant maintain the 25 might with just autos and has to push 100blades every once in a while…

i have a feeling engis may start to have the same problem if mortar 1 gets that traited blast finisher and it deals dps like bomb 1. an engi can provide his own fire field and stack vuln too. maybe thats too much for 1 toon autoing.

Trivializing? A scepter or dagger focus ele has to execute their rotations perfectly in order to keep their might up at 25. The auto attack on hammer only blasts on it’s 3rd hit and if you simply camp lightning hammer on a fire field you are going to eventually see your might stacks drop faster than King Kong from the top of the empire state building. If you get cc-ed or dodge / move around too much or get your firefield overwritten by another field you won’t be able do your rotations or easily maintain 25 might on a scepter/df elementalist. Have you even tried playing a scepter ele?

Guardian:
I don’t like the changes in radiance. It loses a 10% dmg mod and a 10% dmg mod for swords.
It “only” gets +25% crit chance against burning and +15% crit chance for onehand weapons. Do I need +40% crit chance?
Some burning stuff, ok. Hard to tell if its usefull when burning will stack.
So atm I see some blind/vuln/might spam on the pro side for radiance, which ony works on trashmobs, not on bosses.

Atm I think it would be better to drop F1 spam and run 60066.

Well, I play all 8 professions (main warrior/thief/mesmer) in all game modes and I’m happy overall.

I wanted elementalist nerfed. It’s a bit harsh from what we see so far, but I don’t think they will suddenly be trash either. I rather this than seeing 2-3 eles in every run.

Necromancers could still use at least 1 useful party utility (like say a party-wide life steal on hit effect for a party DPS boost or something… I know reflects/blasts don’t really fit the character theme). I think GS necro will get such help but we will see.

I am still waiting for the elite specializations though. I think we will see some cool stuff and it will put a lot of these changes in perspective.

I’m excited for the elementalist, mesmer and engineer elite specs assuming they really are sword/shield/hammer respectively.

I’m thinking of adding engineer to my list of “mains” because they look like they will be so much fun in the future. High skill cap too.

Mesmer interrupt + shatter spike will be so much fun I can’t wait.

Honestly I’m excited to play every profession except ranger/guardian/necro and to be honest those are already my least favorite (and the elite specs for ranger/guardian don’t look like they will be my type).

The Necromancer class is walking into these changes as the single worst class in the game for PvE no matter what. In dungeons it is completely cast out of the meta for two primary reasons:

• Low DPS
• Zero team support that matters

These two things, unfortunately, were not addressed at all in the trait revamp. Let’s look at what happened and what yet needs to happen.

Important Necromancer posts I want to include in my report: Spoj #1 | Spoj #2

Necromancer

• The new Death Shiver is good. We wanted this, and it helps, but not enough alone.
• The change of Target the Weak to critical chance is a huge damage nerf, and weakens the value of this line tremendously. It should be back to the damage modifier against conditions.
• The change to make Toxic Landing self-weaken via Corrosive Poison Cloud hurts this trait a lot and essentially prevents us from traiting into Corruptions. This trait should give Resistance when you use a corruption skill to make it competitive for that slot.
• No meaningful team support added. We need an AOE ferocity buff that acts like Empower Allies in the Curses line as a GM trait.
• No damage option in the grandmaster spot for Curses, which seriously hurts our ability to contribute to damage in all formats. Terror is mandatory for condition builds, which will mean that Parasitic Contagion and Lingering Curse will never see play in this line. See above suggestion for good option.
• No meaningful finishers. Make offhand Dagger 5 a blast finisher and echo that change to Weakening Shroud. That would help.
• Siphoned Power is pretty weak. It should be: Grant 3 stacks of Might (10 seconds) to yourself and nearby allies (240 radius) when you enter Death Shroud. This is the kind of team support we need.
• Reaper’s Precision is bad. You could gut this trait and use it for something team supporty, something that adds damage modifiers, or even something cooler like adding a blast finisher to Tainted Shackles.
• If you really want to help Necromancer have relevant builds in PvE, consider making Corrosive Poison Cloud have the Toxic Krait dome and block projectiles. That’s a type of functionality we really need for team support.

Those are the big problems I see as far as dungeon relevance goes. There are a few others I want to call out that are particularly problematic in general for the class.

• Splitting Staff traits between Death Magic (Greater Marks) and Soul Reaping (Soul Marks) is bad form. Merge these traits together and put them in the major slot of DM. Get rid of the life force gain if you must, but having two traits for Staff like this is pretty awful.
• What should really happen in Blood Magic is to merge Bloodthirst with Vampiric Precision as an adept trait, and then merge Transfusion with Deathly Invigoration as a GM trait. This gives you space to create some offensive options in this line with value.
• Hopefully you look into Signet of the Vampire and making it useful. The best way to do this is to turn it around so it steals life when you attack.
• Death’s Embrace has too many limitations on its vulnerability. Under 33% and an ICD means this will scarcely matter. A better incarnation would apply 1 stack of vulnerability per hit but without an ICD, encouraging skillful multi-hit burst to stack short-term vulnerability.

Summary: Without even looking at what this patch does to PvP Necromancers, Necromancers will be completely irrelevant in all forms of PvE and will be frowned on. Jon Peters explicitly asked us in the livestream to analyze these things so that they could be addressed, so here’s to hoping some of our suggestions make it through and Necromancers won’t continue being as bad as they have been for nearly 3 years.

I think Elementalist and Necromancer were big misses, so I’m glad we covered them first. I’ve heard a lot of praise for Thief / Warrior / Guardian changes, though, so I am curious to hear what your all’s thoughts are there.

insanemaniac.2456:

well… on lightning hammer… the thing is, when you have a scepter ele around, you end up walking out of a boss fight with a minute of fury if hes got someone elses fire field. and you dont really need any other might stacking during the fight. you prestack might to start at 25 stacks + 1 min of fury, and the ele can maintain it by autoattacking.

i dunno. maybe the damage isnt op. but trivializing the 2 major dps boons is kinda silly. at least PS war cant maintain the 25 might with just autos and has to push 100blades every once in a while…

i have a feeling engis may start to have the same problem if mortar 1 gets that traited blast finisher and it deals dps like bomb 1. an engi can provide his own fire field and stack vuln too. maybe thats too much for 1 toon autoing.

Even if it’s achieved by spamming autos, there’s at least some minor group strategy to make LH might stacking work. It’s probably unconvenient to have something like this in the game, but I will never see PS Warrior as an improvement.

Phalanx works without even trying. Just grab a greatsword, play as you would normally do and you will cover most if not all the group might requirements.
It might demand more finesse for optimal damage, but still does fine with a crappy performance and is extremely PUG friendly.

It’s might be controversial topic, but I honestly can’t see these kind of low entry level – high reward builds as something positive for the game.
Since I can hardly think on a PvP build working around Phalanx, I’m also fairly sure on ANet disagreeing with me :P

For guard the only real concern after the fact that I’m pretty sure power creep is going to set in. That would be Sword/Scepter’s viability. With the symbol buff mace/focus + GS will likely easily take the cake for a 66006 build and maybe hammer pulling away in damage. Scepter needs a MASSIVE buff to Zealous Scepter to compete with Fiery Wrath. Sword needs some sort of trait to keep up.

I think the weapons on guard aside from shield are all in a very good place right now, with the heavy boost to symbols (not just the one trait, but also getting the minor in zeal) I can’t help but think we’re going to get pigeon holed into using only half our weapons.

I’d also mention shield trait lacking and all the retal traits… really we need that many weak traits? They become the filler that I thought this whole change was supposed to be removing. 3s retal on aegis break, 3s aegis on heal, each individual traits… as well as retal using condi damage which simply isn’t good. You already have amplified wrath for condi builds to compete with and no one will use it.

Overall sure we’re getting a lot on guard, I can’t complain, but I do think they missed the mark of trying to create real choices and cut the fluff combining what they can to promote the use of some less effective traits.

Vargamonth.2047:

insanemaniac.2456:

well… on lightning hammer… the thing is, when you have a scepter ele around, you end up walking out of a boss fight with a minute of fury if hes got someone elses fire field. and you dont really need any other might stacking during the fight. you prestack might to start at 25 stacks + 1 min of fury, and the ele can maintain it by autoattacking.

i dunno. maybe the damage isnt op. but trivializing the 2 major dps boons is kinda silly. at least PS war cant maintain the 25 might with just autos and has to push 100blades every once in a while…

i have a feeling engis may start to have the same problem if mortar 1 gets that traited blast finisher and it deals dps like bomb 1. an engi can provide his own fire field and stack vuln too. maybe thats too much for 1 toon autoing.

Even if it’s achieved by spamming autos, there’s at least some minor group strategy to make LH might stacking work. It’s probably unconvenient to have something like this in the game, but I will never see PS Warrior as an improvement.

Phalanx works without even trying. Just grab a greatsword, play as you would normally do and you will cover most if not all the group might requirements.
It might demand more finesse for optimal damage, but still does fine with a crappy performance and is extremely PUG friendly.

It’s might be controversial topic, but I honestly can’t see these kind of low entry level – high reward builds as something positive for the game.
Since I can hardly think on a PvP build working around Phalanx, I’m also fairly sure on ANet disagreeing with me :P

Correct me if I’m wrong but we’re losing 20% boon duration with the change of stats and all that. At least that will make it tougher to maintain 25 stacks?

Rangers had the worst and most boring traits among the 7 classes, so I knew they couldn’t possibly make them worse (even if for a moment… nevermind); I’m satisfied but in doubt. Will it have a bigger role in parties, mostly due to ele nerfs? Doesn’t matter to me, I’m still gonna play it no matter what – it was viable before, now it’s better.

I like the new traits, especially the quickness on down—-erm. Ok, I see a lot of laziness as usual when it’s about rangers (steady focus a master? With no change? Seriously?), BUT the other beastmaster traits are very interesting and are a damage boost – as it was supposed to be, plus a small QoL change to the terrible cd on pet swap and pet down. The reduced cd will make things less clunky in places where the pets are at a disadvantage.
Exactly how it was supposed to be. Yet they still left an entire traitline to rot for 3 years. It’s pretty hard to put reins on negativity, but… well, they have a chance to do things right, this time.
I’m sure there’s gotta be a catch, somewhere… /cough – pardon.

Quick draw and strider’s defense… Quick draw with lb/gs would make for a pretty impressive burst (mindbrain is minding and braining right now, can feel it), but I wonder if the 10% on sword works better for long fights. /scratches head
I’m bad with numbers!
… but it probably isn’t due to the sword’s crazy clunkiness. On what boss that lasts long can you actually camp sword?
Some theorycrafter, somewhere, is working really hard.

Predator’s onslaught, damage modifiers, spotter, frost spirit – everything seems pretty much in order. I also see added team support in the form of the warhorn, exactly how it’s supposed to be. My baby will be happy IF the changes make it to the live servers, which is utterly impossible.

Fear not, comrades: they’re gonna nerf it to the ground before it’s released! Yay! All hail the pve game balanced around pvp!
\0/
kitten, I said I was going to be more cheerful… owell.

Lemme try again…

Good changes:
- reworking the terrible beastmastery line;
- traits that aren’t too specific (relates to ex beastmastery line);
- traits that open for build diversity in the form of weapon synergy – quick draw with gs/lb, strider’s with sword;
- something, ANYTHING to make pets less clunky and the swapping less punishing;
- spirit changes… with reservation on that;
- more fury and blasts, more offensive group support, .
These changes are worthy of praise.

Bad changes/not changes;
- Steady focus.. like really, no. No, no, no, NO, alright;
- silly GM traits, weak adept traits with no synergy in nature magic;
- some minor traits don’t make any sense…
- why is the gs trait in the beastmastery line?

Overall, it’s a +1, but I want to see some changes in the utilities too.

As for warrior, two strong greatsword focused master traits were merged into one powerful master trait, but two weak axe focused master traits were merged into one weak grandmaster trait.

Previously, pure axe and pure gs (no phalanx) had similar dps, with phalanx build taking a huge dps loss in exchange for group might. Now, greatsword will have higher dps and group might both.

Ideally, I would like to see phalanx to be changed to simply grant group might on crit with any weapon and axe trait moved to master.

Oh Rising. Something ive left out in all my Necro feedback posts. I mentioned the ICD of siphoned power is limiting it. That is also true of Deaths Embrace. Which is also limited by the 33% health threshold. The ICD on deaths embrace is especially bad in PvE because of vuln duration reduction. 5 stacks of vuln for 2.5/5 seconds on a 5 second internal cooldown when a mob is below 33% hp. Why so many restrictions?!?!

Jerus.4350:

Correct me if I’m wrong but we’re losing 20% boon duration with the change of stats and all that. At least that will make it tougher to maintain 25 stacks?

Yes, it will make it tougher, but so will do for any other might stacking build (even more, as they lack the 10% minor trait).
EDIT: Just realized that most other builds don’t have points (or so many points, at least) in the Boon Duration line. Yes, it will be tougher; it might even require some backup, which is fine.

In any case, it’s not the optimal performance, which might be tough, what bothers me.
As I said, my rant is more about the low entry – high reward. I’m fairly sure that the guys pushing the limits and going for record runs could handle pretty much anything and will chose just the mathematically beswt option.
If a bad player can’t reach the performance of a good one and averages 19 might stacks instead of lets say 25, that’s still a 76% of the optimal result without even trying, without having to care about combo fields and on a bigger radius than a blast finisher (so it allows other team members to freely disengage and go medium range for a while without so many issues).
The viability of this kind of specs feels like ANet making things even easier for bad players and/or PUGs, allowing builds to reduce what could have been a performance gap achieved by skill and/or teamwork.
This kind of “shortcuts” might easily cut the desire of players to improve, to get mechanically better, and by doing so prevent us from seeing content expecting more from the playerbase. That makes me sad :P

It’s exactly what they want to achieve with this game. Just sayin’…

deSade.9437:

It’s exactly what they want to achieve with this game. Just sayin’…

I know, I know. As I said earlier, it’s hard to imagine Phalanx in a PvP build (with the current system at least, there might be some options with the new one) so it probably was released with PvE in mind and exactly for this purpose.
Knowing it doesn’t make it less depresing though.

Vargamonth.2047:

deSade.9437:

It’s exactly what they want to achieve with this game. Just sayin’…

I know, I know. As I said earlier, it’s hard to imagine Phalanx in a PvP build (with the current system at least, there might be some options with the new one) so it probably was released with PvE in mind and exactly for this purpose.
Knowing it doesn’t make it less depresing though.

Yeah, I know. Just embrace it… /sigh

I have a few things to say about the patch.

First off Elementalist:

• Staff is in a pretty good place right now. However, it is the most boring build in the game by far to play. Buffing this weapon set is not what we need leave it as is.
• D/F and S/* are extremely fun and quite challenging to play correctly. I was really hoping to see D/F get buffed to the point where it would revival Staff but this does not seem like it will happen. D/F really depends on Fresh Air and Air Training to make it even somewhat viable in it’s current state and these trait changes will effectively nerf it into the ground in PvE. ArenaNet seriously needs to consider moving Bolt to the Heart back to adept or master level and giving us back Air Training to make this bearable or it will ruin the class for many people and it will not be played as much.
• Bolt to the Heart is in no way Grandmaster worthy. Necromancer and thief both have a similar trait but it procs when your target is below 50% not 33%. This makes this trait a 13% DPS increase at best and 7% at worst this is nothing to write home about. S/* in PvP is in a pretty good spot its pretty balanced right now in my opinion. Forcing someone to pick between fresh air and Bolt to the Heart is just kittened.
  *Lightning Hammer and Icebow. I can see the nerf justification for Icebow however I think it needs to be done in an appropriate manor. Sure Deep Freeze is OP but that will be obsolete with the new defiant changes anyways and if that is the reason for the nerf then reduce the stun duration by all means.

1.) Lower the number of projectiles but leave its damage in-tact is the best way I see to bring it inline with other skills. This would give it a purpose still.

2.) An even better solution, would be to fix hit boxes and hit detection so that any one skill can only proc damage once per boss or per target. Icebow is only such strong DPS because of the fact that one projectile hits many times on a single target. This is the same issue with Lightning Hammer 4, Lightning Storm, Meteor Shower and many other skills and in my opinion it does not deserve a nerf but rather a hitbox detection fix.

• Lightning Hammer nerf. Are you serious? This skill is not OP by any means period. It’s damage is similar to that of Lightning Whip nothing more. This is used after the S/* burst in PvE which is primarly for might stacking and LH is to supplement the seriously crappy auto attack on all Scepter skills. I’m not saying Scepter should be buffed and it shouldn’t as this would completely break PvP. But LH is never really used in PvP anyways so I don’t see an issue here they really need to think long and hard about this especially since all Conjured weapons were complete crap about a year ago until they were buffed to bring out more builds and I believe they are in a decent place right now. Are we really just going to nerf them into the ground again to be as useless as Spirit Weapons?

• Honestly these changes really put me off as I personally do not find camping staff lava font and auto attack on fire very fun. I was really hoping to see D/F be comparable to staff however all I see is nerfs for the other 2 builds we have at the moment and really puts Elementalist in a bad spot. Wasn’t the idea of Elementalist in the first place to pull off some sick skill combos for massive damage? Apparently ArenaNet has shifted the classes focus. Maybe I’m missing something but this is what it seems.

Necromancer:

• I don’t see a single change worthy to bring a Necromancer in PvE. Maybe Greatsword will be a thing but considering they still have no group support it would require Necromancer to be capable of 16k+ DPS to even be considered in my opinion which would obviously break PvP and I just don’t see it happening. These changes are very underwhelming and quite sad. I really had hoped they would give this class a chance to shine but I guess thats not the case.

In General:
I feel that a majority of the changes will change the game in a major way which is both a positive and a negative thing. However, I feel that pushing classes towards a particular build and the ways that many of these changes are implemented are just poor and not thought out and change the nature of many classes in general. They also are forcing certain classes towards a very specific playstyle and build that I find is bad for the game. In my opinion, classes should have several playstyles and builds open to them that are viable for all game types not just PvP or PvE or WvW. That said, I think they really need to consider balancing the game around all game types or splitting skills or traits in game types or even entire specs. I know this is a lot more work for balance however it would really make a lot more people happy. These are some of my thoughts on these purposed changes and hope that someone at least considers the impact this will have on the game and the classes.

stephoa.7082:

insanemaniac.2456:

well… on lightning hammer… the thing is, when you have a scepter ele around, you end up walking out of a boss fight with a minute of fury if hes got someone elses fire field. and you dont really need any other might stacking during the fight. you prestack might to start at 25 stacks + 1 min of fury, and the ele can maintain it by autoattacking.

i dunno. maybe the damage isnt op. but trivializing the 2 major dps boons is kinda silly. at least PS war cant maintain the 25 might with just autos and has to push 100blades every once in a while…

i have a feeling engis may start to have the same problem if mortar 1 gets that traited blast finisher and it deals dps like bomb 1. an engi can provide his own fire field and stack vuln too. maybe thats too much for 1 toon autoing.

Trivializing? A scepter or dagger focus ele has to execute their rotations perfectly in order to keep their might up at 25. The auto attack on hammer only blasts on it’s 3rd hit and if you simply camp lightning hammer on a fire field you are going to eventually see your might stacks drop faster than King Kong from the top of the empire state building. If you get cc-ed or dodge / move around too much or get your firefield overwritten by another field you won’t be able do your rotations or easily maintain 25 might on a scepter/df elementalist. Have you even tried playing a scepter ele?

no i dont play ele, i play engi. so despite your unreasonably offended attitude, i do actually know about complex rotations and finicky blasts, thanks.

Because edit isn’t working…Append this to my previous post

Warrior:

• Might on rez trait? Really is this a joke? Who’s actually going to use this…definitely not me. If you insist on promoting your team dying then at least change it to give regen, protection, and or aegis while rezing. You wouldn’t even be able to take advantage of the might anyways so whats the idea behind this please explain.

@Rising Dusk

I’d sign a petition to move Zephyr’s Speed (10% increased movespeed while attuned to air) to the baseline default just like Blasting Staff is now. And find another replacement for that spot. Why?

Because it’s just too useless/uninteresting. Any average elementalist knows how to stack swiftness or atleast how to gain it, which means this trait is effectively useless when you are under the effects of swiftness: max cap is 33%.

Please foward this intention of switching this trait with another one to the devs.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Since the elite PvE players are represented by this forum more than any other, perhaps our Specialist can voice concerns to Anet about not being able to slot lower level traits (e.g. adept in grandmaster slot).

It’s extremely restricting and magnifies dev mistakes (bad traits, bugged traits) as every useless trait greatly reduces your build options.

I don’t think Anet will listen to the unwashed masses of the general forum, but maybe the “elites” of the dungeon forum? (Probably not, looking at the interface they’ve already created for the new system.)

Not that I agree with Anet on this, but I can give you the reason: they don’t want Masters and Grandmasters to ever be worse than Adepts, because that would be confusing for the average GW2 player, since they are supposed to be stronger. It’s a noob trap and they are removing the illusion of choice in order to streamline the game for a more “casual/confused” audience.

Mesmer review

Baseline is always good

• Glamour recharge rate -20% = Great addition, more utility, more portals, more reflects
• Illusionary Persona = Great addition, more damage, utility, self support, Game-changing
• Illusionary Elasticity = Irelevant for Vanilla Dungeons; Good addition, more damage in Open World
• Protective Mantras (gain extra armor when you cast a mantra) = Nice addition, Not Game-changing
• Phantasmal damage +15% = Great addition, more damage overall
• Manipulation range 1200 = Great addition, more utility

Domination

Its a given for PvE, Empowered Illusions and Blurred Instriptions are a good pick (Signet of Ether) and Mental Torment has good synergy with Persona being baseline. Minors are all good, they give vulnerability and a steady +10% damage mod.
Changes :

Dueling

Minors are a nice thing to have, nothing game-changing. DD and Phantasmal Fury share a common slot, that sucks. DD seems very promissing (+20% damage). Blade training is a given. GM traits are bad however : Mantras got nuked (PvP balance, yay!).
Changes : I would suggest move Duelist’s Discipline to GM instead of Mistrust (which has nothing to do with a Dueling line btw). That would allow us to pick both DD and PF…

Chaos

Nobody cares about Chaos. It’s a skip-line (MoM + PU)

Inspiration

Here comes the good stuff, Inspiration is our reflect line where we used to pick Glamour CD and Warden’s feedback. Now that Glamour CD are baseline (and TW is a glamour !!) we only need this line for our focus abilities. Tl;dr – Warden’s feedback is a given. Minors are great : more HP and invuln on spawn will allow for a slightly better Phantasm uptime in combat, always welcome. The drawback of Inspiration is that we pick it for one only trait, Phantasm damage +15 being baseline…

We are left with a choice of Adept and GM traits and I feel like they all have their weight. Medics feedback is nice for casual dungeons or lowman and Mender’s purity is a nice in combat aoe condicleanse when you lack it (no guardian) (Vigor on shatter is useless). For GM traits, we can overload with glamours by picking Temporal enchanter. The other two are really situational, everyone’s wetting their pants for iInspiration but the 45 second CD makes is worth barely anything – nobody needs to copy might or fury (Ele/PS war combo) and the only Protection/Regeneration you’ll have will be applied at the second half of a fight and you won’t be able to copy it because you’ll be on a 45 sec ICD.

Changes : Shorten ICD of iInspiration, Merge Vigorous revelation with Illusionary Celerity ?

Illusions

2 Minors are shatter focused so useless, 1 is Celerity (nice touch). Illusions are our to-go line for fights without reflects, given the in-memory save for trait allocation per line, swapping Illu/Inspi will be so easy and natural it’ll be meta to use both every time.
Traits : Compounding Power and Phantasmal Haste are a given (as they used to). GM traits are useless because shatter/condi focused, might have kittene of Master of Fragmentation.

Changes : You either go Shatter or Phantasm, why mix both in ILLUSIONS line? Rework Persistent memory to 2 second instead of 2%, it is useless as of now. Re-allocate minors are Traits with Inspiration. Move Sum of all Fears down, merge shatter minors and move Protected Phantasms to GM?

Mesmer is in a wierd spot, the baseline buff is awesome and is a true QoL change. The trait allocation is however kittened up. It needs to be reworked to have 3 opposit ideas per line instead of 4 or 5… Instead of Power/Condition/Shatter and Phantasms in Illusions is should’ve been Power/Phantasms/Conditions… Dueling should have been Phantasm/CC/Power instead of Shatter/Power/Phantasm/CC/Condi…

Only minor traits are worth taking 100% of the time for Dungeons, everything else is PvP related.

(Might comeback with an ideal re-alocation)

MODIFIED TRAIT LINES https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1weRTxaaGunZFEEKZg-zy4x2A50GFVqSNJ7YwMtWr-jw/edit?usp=sharing

• Moved some traits in Dueling to save PvE builds w/o hitting PvP builds (nobody cares for Blade training at its current state).
• Mistrust makes no sense in Dueling, its a Interupt/Condi and thus should be in Chaos so people can pick it w/o speccing in Dueling or by taking a better trait (DE) instead.
• MoM is in Dueling
• Merged Compounding Celerity + Vigorous Revelation and placed to Adept so people can pick the other Shatter trait too in Master.
• Moved Sum of All Fears down, is a combo with Torment damage +50%
• Persistence of Memory is now GM but recharges Phantasms on Phantasm death. It makes sense with PH and Celerity and C.Power.
• Merged 2 Illusion minors

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Since the elite PvE players are represented by this forum more than any other, perhaps our Specialist can voice concerns to Anet about not being able to slot lower level traits (e.g. adept in grandmaster slot).

It’s extremely restricting and magnifies dev mistakes (bad traits, bugged traits) as every useless trait greatly reduces your build options.

I don’t think Anet will listen to the unwashed masses of the general forum, but maybe the “elites” of the dungeon forum? (Probably not, looking at the interface they’ve already created for the new system.)

Not that I agree with Anet on this, but I can give you the reason: they don’t want Masters and Grandmasters to ever be worse than Adepts, because that would be confusing for the average GW2 player, since they are supposed to be stronger. It’s a noob trap and they are removing the illusion of choice in order to streamline the game for a more “casual/confused” audience.

Interesting take on it. We have seen the progression towards less and less customization in this game; I guess their “too confusing” quote sums it all up.

I guess there’s kind of two ways to go about development:

1. create interesting traits and allow players to invent builds from these traits;
2. or start with builds you want players to play, break them up into traits and restrict the selection of traits so that players will “discover” those preferred builds.

Anet is obviously doing the latter, which is too bad because the former would make a much more interesting game.