Guild Wars 2

Title.

Hey there,

Certain trait lines have become a cornerstone to playstyles or a meta build – be it in increasing survival or an alternate trait line in outputting damage.
As such, there is little diversity in such places as meta battle where or even taking on traits to have forcible synergy rather than a natural synergy or a freedom of choice rather than an illusion of choice in playstyle and not being able to compete in specific content.

Naturally, meta builds will occur but at current each class seems to have at least one line and/or set of utility skills that are nigh useless to use in any higher end play, let alone natural synergies with other lines or weapon skills.

I am a little bit of a generalist in playstyle, I jump from profession to profession when playing with a friend depending on what is needed at the time.
Thus, my in depth knowledge of the class(es) may be a little rough due to either experience first hand or theory crafting with it – some grace would be appreciated.

To demonstrate this point, I’ve picked out a few classes which rely on specific trait lines.
Please note, this is not a point to say please nerf x – rather that other lines should be able to complete with or have a skill similar that allows for more freedom of builds.

Ele: water magic
Water magic has become a staple of cleansing conditions, with its only challenger being Diamond skin from earth magic.
Both air and fire have little competition in such a focus of cleansing conditions – in turn, both become an absolute focus rather than have a little freedom for what they do and meshing into other builds.

Thief: trickery
Thief seems to be balanced around trickery yet the initiative given doesn’t support that.
Base initiative forces hand and gives little freedom, sided with both physical and condition damage buff placed within the line which could very easily fit into both critical strikes and deadly arts – both of which have been gutted of various traits in the past.

Engi: Alchemy
A trait line much like ele that forces ones line with a specific focus.
Boons and condition removal.
Inventions being the other support/defence line can do little to compete with Alchemy with its stagnant playstyle and few cleanses.

Each of these three examples quite easily show the issues of a trait line become a crutch.
Now, as spoken earlier- there are trait lines or utilities that are used far less that do make it into meta but are more than likely to be neglected to a lack of strength, synergy or completeness within the line itself.

What can be done?
Particularly referring to engi;

The engineer is an enigmatic class that can do many things well but nothing great.
This is the inverse with the utilizes- one or two perform head and shoulders above others.
Turrets make this quite apparent- with a very passive play style and little interaction with the world or other players apart from afk farming or using the healing turret, Sided with the inventions lines, there is little reason for using them over shield.

Perhaps applying the guardians rework of the spirit weapons to them, allowing for temporary appearance on the battlefield with greater kick – be it in damage or utility, both in skill bar and f keys would certainly give them a reason to use such a little used family.
The new ammo system would work very well in showing the sporadic and combustible nature of such Inventions within this utility family and in turn buff the lesser used line of Inventions.

Another example is that of the guardians consecrations.

In my 5 years of playing on and off, I think I may have used them once or twice.
Thematically they suit the guardian but they have little play aside from 5-7 guardians in wvw armed with staves blocking passage of an invading force…this happened to a friend of mine – something like 5 vs 30 and the 5 couldn’t be shaken…
Rare occurance aside, they do play a roll into the natural role of the Guardian.
Consecrate an area for the betterment of allies or the damage of foes.
Such a way could occur giving small buffs, bonuses or boons to those who stay within the consecrated area surrounding the guardian – on activation, target an area to consecrate it doing x, y or z.
Trait wise, it would stay the same with the addition of keeping passive buffs on cooldown.
Sided with a consecration in the heal and elite skill and there is now a utility family which is no longer neglected or at least has a greater role than what it had previously.

Please contribute your thoughts on how lesser used trait lines or utility skills could be improved and what could be done to bring them up to par with other lines, or to even share a burden to become a hybrid of cc, condi cleanse, damage etc etc.

Thank you for reading,

-Phyrak

What Anet should do and what is long overdue is to merge more of the neglected Traits ands especially Utility Skillsl together – yes, thats effort – sure, but neccessary effort, which needs to be doen once every several x years, just to sortate out the garbage from the good stuff and to cleanse the game from unneccesary weight, so that they create this way fresh space for new traits and new skilsl which have maybe the potential to fresh up the meta of the game, to change somethign positively on the game and to create most likely hopefulyl also more build diversity through such alterations and changes.

So this belongs also redesigning and reworking all skilsl in such a way, that all skilsl need to become finaly useable everywhere – means, on land as like also under water.
if there is a skill, which can’t work everywhere and you have no idea of how to make it work everywhere – then throw this garbage out of the game and replace it with a new better skill, which CAN WORK EVERYWHERE.

The Thief Class has been now for 5 years the victim most which loses felt 66% divisity of their builds the moment they touch water – whioch gives you the impression like thieves beign cats scared of water so much ,that if they get in contact with it, they suffer on alzheimer and forget like half of their knowledge instantly due to be so under shock of beign in water >.> Seriously.. its just bad game design, if you just produce constantly 1 way skills, that can be used only on land, the deadeye is again the best example of it, more than half of their new skills are all not useable underwater – thats ridiculous -why? because anet chose to give them the most idiotic longrange weapon ever – the rifle (sorry, but just my opinion), instead of givign them longbows to counter the argument, their utility skills could be linked in any kind of way to the rifle, which can’t work due to blackpowder in water … when in real these utility skilsl are all ased on lore by black magic (cantrips) and by this effectively should work everywhere, because magic cant get wet and lose its function >.< and magical fire burns also in water (Shadow Flare) /facepalm /doh

Thief
Utility Skills

Venom Utility Skills should get turned all into F3 and F4 where the player can decide, which two Venoms of the existing six you want to have with you, reducing Basilisk Venom to a normal Utility Skill that gets merged with Devourer Venom as a double sided sword that punishes stunbreak usage with petrification as a follow up cc after immobilize, so that BV as Elite SKill gets then replaced by a new Signet Elite Skill
Venoms should just get reworked as baseline F3/4 skills where the player just can choose out, which two of them you want to have with you always.
A thief using venoms is absolute thief basics and needs to become baseline, then theres space for 5 completely new skills (4 new utlity skills, 1 new healing skill) to make Core Thief more interesting and versatile.

I’d give them as a new Utility Skill Type “Pilfer” with skills like this

Heal:
Stolen Clothes > Heal yourself by the amount of Vitality you’ve stolen your enemy on touch as you’ve stolen your foes clothes. Gain Stealth, Swiftness, Vigor and Protection for a few seconds if you steal the clothes from a foe with more health than you.

Utility
Stolen Weapon
Shadowstep to a target foe, daze it with a strike to the weapon and temporarely steal the weapon of your enemy which you can use then for a few attacks with skills from your enemy as environmental weapon, before you throw it away and your foe can grab it again from the ground. (long CD as counter balance)

Stolen Accessoires
Gain Fury , Might and Stability with their durations based on the amount of Concentration that this skill has reduced on your target enemy (up to minus 150 points, when 150 have been reduce, all 3 boons last 10s)
Once all 3 Boons ended or have been removed the victim regains his reduced Concentration back

Stolen Boots
Knocks down the fow as you strike your target to steal its boots. When the target stands up, it will suffer on Cripple and Slow and you gain Super Speed and Quickness for 5 seconds. Within that time is the Expertise of your target reduced and yours increased as well.

Stolen Coin Bag/ Alms
Steal the Coin Bag of your foe and gain Steath. The Skill turns while under Stealth into Alms, which lets you toss the Coins of your foe (enemy will lose no money for real) at a ground target into the sky, causing a rain of coins that dazes foes inside of it, where each coin that hits you deals a randomous amor igniring amount of damage ranging between 111 to if you are really lucky 7777 damage a coin. if the enemy has luck instead, it is no damage, its heals instead.

This skills is a little FF homage as also being at the same time a high risk high reward skill

In regard of Tricks id merge together Haste + Roll For Initiative as new “Quick Roll”

Evade backwards to regenerate Initiative and lose 2 Conditions. Was that evade successful, then you gain Quickness, Fury and Swiftness too.
Creates space for 1 new Trick Skill, like

Thief Traps
Exchanges your Weapon Skills with a set of various Trap Skills
This can then be used to put all Trap Skills under this single Trick Skill together:
- Needle Trap
- Trip Wire
- Shadow Trap
- Ambush
- New Trap Skill for Slot 5

This would free up again 4 mostly useless trap skilsl and merge them up into just 1 single skill that allows to to have acccess onto all of them at once, giving the Thief the kind of “Trapper Build” they should have with this.
again free space for 4 new Utility Skills that can help making Thief more interestign and versatile. I’d suggest this time “Shadowplay” with skill like

Shadow Doppelganger
Create for a specific time a shadow doppelganger of yourself which assists you in combat and performs exactly the same skills as you against your targets, which runs after you with a slight delay. While hes up will last Boon and Stealth Effects longer on you by+ 2s

Nightraid
Throw a Smokebomb at your ground target and shadow step with short delay into its area performing under the blinded foes a multi hit blade dance that causes bleedings and vulnerability on each hit. Gain Stealth as you leave the Smoke Area.

Cat Eyes
Become temporarely immune to blindness, become able to see stealthed targets if you are in stealth as well and gain Fury, Quickness and Vigor for a few seconds if you attack a target from stealth while the skill is active. Hit targets from stealth with this skill active will get revealed!

Dark Avenger
Activate a Counter Attack Stance which lets you gain a chance to counterattack with a critical unblockable strike each time when a blinded foe attacks you in melee range. Each of these counter attacks steals a boon from your enemy you hitted.

Lastly in regard of Deceptions, id merge Shadow Refuge with Smoke Screen as “Shadow Veil”

Shadow Veil
You and your allies in the ground target area gain Stealth and Resistance on pulse and while being under the Shadow Veil, will projectile attacks get blocked. No Regeneration anymore, the initial heal gets slightly increased thefore from 1,775 to 3000

Id merge Blinding Powder with Shadow Step as “Flashing Bladet”

Flashing Blade/Quick Retreat
Shadow Step to your target area and blind your nearby targets with a flashing blade attack that blinds foes in your target area, hitting up to 5 targets with flashing blade.
Quick Retreat then follows, which enables you to quickly return to your original position.

New space for two new Deception Skills for the Thief, which i’d use then for skills like:

Thieving Magpie
A skill, which instantly recharges your Steal Skill and replaces this skill slot with 1 Enemy Utility Skill that you can use, before Thieving Magpie goes onto recharge.

Pantomime
Copy with this Skill the Healing Skill of your Target Enemy in a 25% less effective way.
The skill goes first onto recharge, when you have used your copied Enemy Healing Skill.

Warrior: Tactics for Phalanx Strength, Strength for Forceful Greatsword, Discipline for Warrior Sprint and Fast Hands. I’m surprised Berserker ever squeezed into the meta.

For Guardians I find that Valor and Virtues are used in almost every build I see. And usually Dragon Hunter on the last one.

Valor is good and works with just about any build somehow. Honestly wouldn’t know what to do to change it. Probably swap some traits with Honor.

Virtues is just so good for the improvements to the Virtues. Especially since they also work with Dragon Hunter.

Something I’ve suggested before, is to make Virtues a “core specialization”, so it can’t be used in combination with DragonHunter (And probably given a slight buff to make it roughly equal in power to DH, to make competing choices). Then you’d have to pick which way you wanted to change your virtues, not stack both on top of each others.

Alternatively do the same with Valor, but I suspect 90% of the guardian players would lynch me if they could no longer play Medi-traps…