Guild Wars 2

I feel while playing across the different classes that I run into a lot of abilities and traits that are either unnoticeable in combat, absolutely useless, or useful but absolutely boring to pick.

I’d say Jagged Horrors is the worst thing in the world and I wish I could choose minor traits.

Can you guys list your thoughts on what abilities or traits you think follow under this? I just want to compile a list of stuff you guys don’t like.

I had jagged horrors in mind when I opened this topic. You didn’t disappoint.

The second Earth ability on the Elementalist’s staff comes to mind too.

You create a pile of rocks that puts on a good whopping 6 stacks of bleed. That’s kind of cool except…

It also takes around 5-6 seconds to explode, making it in both PVE and PVP a completely useless 1 out of 20 (made-up statistic ;D) successful lands.

The only way I really make it work in PVE is by either opening up with it pre-aggro or just running around in circles through it so they are always near it… which isn’t an optimal strategy.

In PVP landing the ability is absolutely nothing besides inattentive opponents or sheer luck.

I was hoping traits and abilities would more be distinctive, really allowing us to customize builds.. but yeah, between being so weak, and sticking too closely to the theme of the class, they don’t really do that. Just makes it even worse that most of them don’t do anything particularly flashy or fun to use, either.

I agree, and as time goes by more and more guides come out on preferred builds further burying what we already knew to be useless traits and abilities. Most MMOs evolve over time, I’m hoping for the same from A-NET.

I feel like they have absolutely no depth besides “a chance for a condition to happen every 40 seconds or so”, an ability having a passive and active that have no synergy (all signets in the game pretty much), and others that feel like fillers, are no different than other abilities other classes have and otherwise.

Anyone have any more specific abilities or traits?
They JUST added a new one to the Guardian in these patch notes!

“New trait Glacial Heart: Critical hits with a hammer have a 50% chance to chill your target for 4 seconds. This effect can only occur once every 45 seconds.”

How is that not the most boring thing you have ever heard?!
45 second cooldown too! Super effective in the all out fast-paced war that constantly goes on right? Completely unnoticeable.

And what’s even worse is that this was included in an UPDATE… meaning they think they are going the right direction with this crap.

Anet may be starting off slow for the sake of balance, but I hope that over time they increase the potency of all traits to have a larger impact on gameplay.

They should look at diablo 3 and runes, those can change your gameplay drastically if implemented properly. Having % increases is boring, but having a trait that change your skills (your sword no longer do__ but instead now you can___ ) for example, is more dynamic and can create good synergies with your playstyle.

I have to agree. I find myself just wanting to use signets for passive stat increases as the other traits just add nothing to my gameplay. There is too few interesting ones, that are completely situational and most of the time aren’t reliable… then there is the exceptionally long cooldowns.

I’m going to disagree, as a guardian there are plenty of interesting traits to pick from. The new hammer one is meant for small scale PvP and could be pretty useful if you’re a crit hammer build, but there are other great choices here. Some good examples are the one that makes my symbols twice as large, and another that lets me use ground targeting for my consecrations.

They also synergize very well together, allowing for some really neat combos. With a few clicks I can change from a front row tanky support to a back row revival medic. Sure, there are some boring, uninspired ones(+5% damage traits, I’m looking at you), but for the most part I’m satisfied with the options I have. I only wish I had more points and longer trees to play around with.

Aesti.3725:

I have to agree. I find myself just wanting to use signets for passive stat increases as the other traits just add nothing to my gameplay. There is too few interesting ones, that are completely situational and most of the time aren’t reliable… then there is the exceptionally long cooldowns.

wtf, are you talking about traits or utility skills?

signets arent traits

but yeah, all of the “+5% damage while using X weapon” traits are horribly boring

Just a few from the Elementalist:

Lava Tomb: Create a lava font when downed (once every 30 seconds) – SOOO GOOD! Just what we wanted.

Burning Fire: Cleansing Flame, Signet of Fire, Conjure Flame, and Conjure Fiery Greatsword inflict 3 seconds of burning – EXCEPT THEY ALREADY CAUSE BURNING ON ACTIVATION.

Vital Striking: Deal 10% more damage while health is above 90% – How long are you going to stay at >90% health?

There are so many more. So many that discourage attunement dancing. Fail traits for eles. I could go on and on.

Eclipses.7152:

Just a few from the Elementalist:

Lava Tomb: Create a lava font when downed (once every 30 seconds) – SOOO GOOD! Just what we wanted.

Burning Fire: Cleansing Flame, Signet of Fire, Conjure Flame, and Conjure Fiery Greatsword inflict 3 seconds of burning – EXCEPT THEY ALREADY CAUSE BURNING ON ACTIVATION.

Vital Striking: Deal 10% more damage while health is above 90% – How long are you going to stay at >90% health?

There are so many more. So many that discourage attunement dancing. Fail traits for eles. I could go on and on.

There are things that are not as great as they could be but those I don’t think are it – I can see uses for those.

Lava Tomb – makes it harder for people to finish you off if they have to walk into a fiery pile of death to finish you off, buying you those few precious seconds for Vapor Form to come up so you can get away.

Burning Fire – the extra burning effect will stack. So instead of only getting 3 seconds of burning, you now get 6. Bonus free damage? Sure!

Vital Striking – How long are you going to stay above 90% HP? Well in PvE, hopefully most of the time. So this could be a nice overall damage boost for PvE builds.

As for some traits discouraging attunement dancing, that’s up to the player and how they decide to build. You’re only locked into certain attunements if you choose to be. For example the trait Internal Fire would seem to encourage staying in Fire all day. Useful for a leveling build since many use Fire while out questing, especially in Scepter/Dagger setups where you can sit in Fire all day killing mobs. But you only have to go 10 points into Fire for that, so it leaves you a lot of room for other trait lines in your build. Even if you properly attunement dance, Fire is usually the dps attunement so an extra 10% damage when you do enter fire would be a great boost if you can fit it into your tree, no matter how much time you spend there. And don’t forget – you can switch these traits on the fly, so you may want to use that trait for one specific situation and then switch to something else later. The system was designed to be flexible and not lock you into anything permanently.

The problem is they tried to solve what they thought was the boring passive talent trees, but I liked the old system better, I would much rather prefer traits that added 10% power or toughtness then more damage against burning or blindness causes vulnerability, at least you know they are working and are always with you.

I think mmo’s are going over the cookie cutter builds the wrong way these days, instead of making traits that are more appealing, they are taking away the traits we all want to pick, they inherently made building traits worse, not better.

I agree. There are a ton of traits and skills that really make little difference. They tried to make a lot of options for individual likes and dislikes but in reality people just learn what is a “good” skill and what is not. people gravitate towards useful skills. This eliminates personal individuality.

It takes too much thought and effort to create skills that are truely unique and at the same time not have one be better than the other.

The one thing I do not like is the fact that some skills are copied in multiple proffesions.. Ie… removing 3 debuffs ect.

I thought ANEt were visionary. The skills really show a lack of creativity.

If you are going to have skills which basically do nothing “visually” they are usually seen as boring. You should get a visual aura around you or something. Or make using non-active skills some sort of spec line.

My #1 problem with GW2 is the way they did skills. The game is amazing but the skills are pretty dull. I mean really you can play any class and half of the skills will not be purchased or probably used. Thats how bad and indifferent they are.

You should have warriors that if choosing to spec for boons and heals should have to heavily invest to get that play style. For thiefs you shouldn’t basically be stuck with “steal” build or “condition”. There should be many more options with very specific paths.

The way the skills are make every class very Vanilla.

They should have designed it so that you were constantly unlocking or working to unlock higher lvl skills EVEN AT 80.

Just to clarify. The skills should be set so that there are basically 4 different types of each class.

Everyone in the same class is bassicaly the same. And if they aren’t they are probably playing a sub-optimal build.

Trenith.1832:

The second Earth ability on the Elementalist’s staff comes to mind too.

You create a pile of rocks that puts on a good whopping 6 stacks of bleed. That’s kind of cool except…

It also takes around 5-6 seconds to explode, making it in both PVE and PVP a completely useless 1 out of 20 (made-up statistic ;D) successful lands.

The only way I really make it work in PVE is by either opening up with it pre-aggro or just running around in circles through it so they are always near it… which isn’t an optimal strategy.

In PVP landing the ability is absolutely nothing besides inattentive opponents or sheer luck.

It’s not really a skill for solo questing (I find fire skills is a much faster, easier way to get mobs down and Ice/Earth or even Air 5 for CC purposes). It’s better used in dungeons or DEs where you the Ele don’t have to worry about kiting the mob around (although honestly, I don’t find landing our AoE’s is all that hard, it just takes practice. I’ve played a lot of action combat games so I’m used to free targeting). Besides, 6 stacks of bleeding in one skill is huge (and makes up for that long cast)! Most classes don’t have that. And it has a short 6 second cooldown. Pretty nice for the right situations.

Eclipses.7152:

Just a few from the Elementalist:

Lava Tomb: Create a lava font when downed (once every 30 seconds) – SOOO GOOD! Just what we wanted.

Not the best one in the world, but it’s an adept trait, it’s not supposed to be the best on in the tree. Helps you bring whoever killed you down, and can be quite useful in WvW if you get downed near a lot of enemies.

Burning Fire: Cleansing Flame, Signet of Fire, Conjure Flame, and Conjure Fiery Greatsword inflict 3 seconds of burning – EXCEPT THEY ALREADY CAUSE BURNING ON ACTIVATION.

And how is more burn bad? If you focus on condition damage, those can be very useful.

Vital Striking: Deal 10% more damage while health is above 90% – How long are you going to stay at >90% health?

Uh, quite a long time depending on the situation. It’s quite a nice boost, the condition for its activation is very fair. This is far from useless.

There are so many more. So many that discourage attunement dancing. Fail traits for eles. I could go on and on.

Right, ones that bring in a strategy that you don’t use. Might not be useful for you, but they can be handy for those who use different strategies.

While many traits are bland, others are good. For example: Rangers can unlock Zephyr’s Speed which gives 2s of quickness when swapping pets. This has some interesting uses—when I down an enemy player I can swap pets for quickness and finish him twice as fast (enemies with interrupts won’t expect it).
I would like to see more traits that open up new tactics like Zephyr’s Speed does.

Roga.3284:

I agree. There are a ton of traits and skills that really make little difference. They tried to make a lot of options for individual likes and dislikes but in reality people just learn what is a “good” skill and what is not. people gravitate towards useful skills. This eliminates personal individuality.

It takes too much thought and effort to create skills that are truely unique and at the same time not have one be better than the other.

It is not ANet’s fault that everyone want to be the glass cannon berserker pow/per/critdmg guy. They don’t use the variety given because that’s the only way they know how to play.

The one thing I do not like is the fact that some skills are copied in multiple proffesions.. Ie… removing 3 debuffs ect.

Condition removal is essential in every profession, especially if you are going PvP.

I thought ANEt were visionary. The skills really show a lack of creativity.

If you are going to have skills which basically do nothing “visually” they are usually seen as boring. You should get a visual aura around you or something. Or make using non-active skills some sort of spec line.

“Flashy” skills have nothing to do with creativity.

My #1 problem with GW2 is the way they did skills. The game is amazing but the skills are pretty dull. I mean really you can play any class and half of the skills will not be purchased or probably used. Thats how bad and indifferent they are.

I think SOME skills may indeed be dull, but in general they are okay. We could have more skills for more strategies to be possible in my opinion.

You should have warriors that if choosing to spec for boons and heals should have to heavily invest to get that play style. For thiefs you shouldn’t basically be stuck with “steal” build or “condition”. There should be many more options with very specific paths.

It really is harder to make a support thief, but venom support thieves are VERY useful in WvW and tournaments and no one uses them. This is not an issue of lacking option, it’s an issue of no one even wanting to use anything different.

The way the skills are make every class very Vanilla.

They should have designed it so that you were constantly unlocking or working to unlock higher lvl skills EVEN AT 80.

I did like GW’s skill system, but that was only possible because there were so many skills.

I just want to point out that when I first started playing, I thought a large portion of the traits were useless. The better I get at playing an elementalist, the more I realize that those traits can be part of very effective builds.

I also saw someone mention the 2nd earth ability for staff eles. We have a good deal of slowing/stun mechanics that can be used before using that ability. I like to open with Static Field and then drop the 2nd fire ability in the middle of it on the target. I then switch over to water, drop the 2nd ability and then the 3rd right after. That will then slow the target right as they are coming out of the stun from the static field. I then quickly switch over to earth and drop that 2nd ability on then while they are slowed. This causes that earth ability to have a much higher rate of success and unless the opponent is quick enough to dodge out of it, they will get hit with the bleed.

Trent.3256:

I just want to point out that when I first started playing, I thought a large portion of the traits were useless. The better I get at playing an elementalist, the more I realize that those traits can be part of very effective builds.

I also saw someone mention the 2nd earth ability for staff eles. We have a good deal of slowing/stun mechanics that can be used before using that ability. I like to open with Static Field and then drop the 2nd fire ability in the middle of it on the target. I then switch over to water, drop the 2nd ability and then the 3rd right after. That will then slow the target right as they are coming out of the stun from the static field. I then quickly switch over to earth and drop that 2nd ability on then while they are slowed. This causes that earth ability to have a much higher rate of success and unless the opponent is quick enough to dodge out of it, they will get hit with the bleed.

+1, that’s how Ele’s are supposed to be played and a lot of people miss that and instead just want to be a Fire glass cannon machine. That skill chain you just mentioned is a Stun into a now unavoidable damage pile that also serves as a Fire combo (so usually will produce either Burning or Might stacks, both of which mean more damage), straight into Vulnerability (more damage), into a Slow (you’re still not moving sucka), into a 6 stack of bleeds on top of that Vulnerability and Burning. Pretty good deal IMO.

Eochaidh.4106:

It is not ANet’s fault that everyone want to be the glass cannon berserker pow/per/critdmg guy. They don’t use the variety given because that’s the only way they know how to play.

I play a very defensive/support focused Necromancer and can still say traits are mostly bad. Lifesteal traits are terrible as it barely scales with the healing stat, 5% more damage when over 90% health minor trait in a support focused trait line makes little sense. Some of the more useful support traits are stuck in the minion line, which is a huge waste for someone not using minions. I could go on.

We could offer more specific examples, but the overall point of this thread is that traits simply aren’t powerful enough. Outside of a couple of traits that are rather nice it feels like we’re picking the “least bad” traits to fill our build with.

Guys, post it in the appropriate profession sub-forum as ANet said

Aesti.3725:

I have to agree. I find myself just wanting to use signets for passive stat increases as the other traits just add nothing to my gameplay. There is too few interesting ones, that are completely situational and most of the time aren’t reliable… then there is the exceptionally long cooldowns.

- These are exactly my feelings when I look at slot skills available to most professions.

Let’s take Mesmer’s Signet of Illusions active as an example: "Active: Recharge your shatter skills. "

So what do you have to do to use this skill? First you got to summon clone / phantasm. Then you have to shatter it. Then you got to summon another clone / phantasm while shatter skill is on cooldown. Now you get to use that signet active and afterwards you can shatter again. Talk about complicated process!

I feel busy enough trying to get the five weapons skills to work in some kind of synergy. Ten is just too many to bother.

Trenith.1832:

The second Earth ability on the Elementalist’s staff comes to mind too.

You create a pile of rocks that puts on a good whopping 6 stacks of bleed. That’s kind of cool except…

It also takes around 5-6 seconds to explode, making it in both PVE and PVP a completely useless 1 out of 20 (made-up statistic ;D) successful lands.

For what it’s worth in PvE it’s actually kind of fantastic I’ve found. Start off in water, lay down a frozen ground, pull the enemies over it, switch to earth and lay down eruption on the edge of that, switch to fire and lay down a lava font and when eruption goes off hit ’em with flame burst. If you get the timing right you end up with enemies that are chilled with six stacks of bleed and on fire while everyone around the lava fond has at least 3 stacks of might (possibly 4 stacks and some protection left). Yay for eruption being a finisher.

You can also use it to both bleed enemies and AoE heal your friends if you lay it down and then put a geyser or healing rain on top of it, or do AoE frost armor if you put frozen ground on top of it.

Look at warriors utilities. They are very lame and not interesting enough to want to buy with skill points.

blarg. I want to respond to each of you but have no time.

Guild Wars 2, I feel has stepped away from letting a player truly make their build. Weapons currently define your role. Coming from Guild Wars 1, and enjoying customization first hand… this is unacceptable.’

To help improve this, I have spent many hours devising a way to make it so that players such as yourself can run your own custom builds and play your own way without falling sub-par.

The link is in my signature.

Sorry again for not having time to reply to you all. Very nice thread discussion.

There are probably many of these traits that appear useless that synergise really well with certain specs or team builds, in particular situations. There were many skills that seemed pointless in GW1, but with a little balancing and theory crafting, were turned into very viable skills for certain aspects of the game.

Just to bring up your initial example, I spec heavily into minions, so for me, the jagged horror is great. Each time it dies (and it dies within 10 seconds) it’ll spawn a pool of poison and generate Life Force (for me and surrounding Necros). It lasts longer when specced into, and siphons health for me and grants additional toughness (and power).