Guild Wars 2

Hi People..

Generally I’m quite happy with the New Trait system:
I understand trait lines do not give any points whatsoever anymore, And I like it.
But I do have some concerns.

I play 15 lvl 80’s: 3 wars, 3 rangers, 3 necro’s, 2 eles, 2 guards, 1 thief and 1 mesmer. And I have all kinds of builds and some of these proposed changes are giving me some concerns:

I’ll start with Warrior:
- DPS warrior (GS, A+M) PS or DPS. (0/5/0/6/3)/(4/4/0/6/0) or (6/5/0/0/3)
- Condi/DPS Hybrid) (S+S, LB) (2/6/0/4/2) or (0/6/5/0/3)
- Hammer, shout heal somtimes with mace or rifle or whatever…. (whatever I like tbh)

Most builds seem more or less Okay, Except for:

1. INSPIRING BANNERS (CD reduction, larger radius) which has seemingly gone missing, which could be placed in a Minor (defence) to the trait where 2 res options are atm. Or discipline in the master Inspiring Battle Standard ( which would NOT be my preferred choice)
2. Longbow trait (Tactics) clashing with Empower allies (Empower allies is very usefull to add some power to allies for support but also to self in Hybrid builds…)
   IMHO the longbow trait could be swapped with leg specialist OR “powerfull synergy”….
   To allow hybrid builds to use both, hybrid builds will most likely not be enticed to use PS… leaving the double leap finisher, which I find -way- underwhelming atm…
3. The strength minor traits all feel like fillers except for the new one, which would synergize withh a physical/hammer/rampage build…

I run several Rangers…
- LB & GS or S/W DPS (6/6/2/0/0)
- ? and ? Hybrid. (4/6/4/0/0)
- SB & A+D Trapper (0/6/2/6/0)
Looking at the new traits:

1. (wilderness survival:) Ambidexterity and Expertise Training would be very nice if split up to 2 trait lines instead of cancelling. I can see either oakheart salve or shared anguish move 1 tier down.
2. Quick Draw with 2 LB’s will have a person turning into a AC …. either by using Barrage or rapid fire…

3 necro’s
- DPS D/F & A/W
- Support D/F & Staff
- Condi/terror S/D Staff.

remarks:

1. Curses, “Either you now go terror mancer, or conditions…” – REALLY, That is a curse on it’s own, right!?!
   Curses Master trait line is -useless- for condi users in PvE. Yes, you can convert boons… PvE doesn’t see so many buffed enemies. Or get some life force, which is WAY underwhelming,.. not a little way: A HUGE WAY ! Terror can be used in PvE and adds up to your condition damage and is a full conditions trait and -should- be available when running full condi. We are going to get enough problems with mirror and resistance. Please either move lingering curse down 1 step or do so for terror. Please do not destroy terrormancer by removing it’s ability to use a scepter and thereby losing 100%(?) condition duration. Nerf the c. duration if neccesary.

2 Ele’s
- staff (water) support 0/2/0/6/6
- Staff (fire) DPS 6/2/2/2/2
When looking: I really hate we need to make a choice between Evasive arcana and ellemental attunement. Especially for my water build. I looked a bit longer and I can to the conclusion the water build might be changed to a Fire/water/arcane now… And I want on to the DPS ele and I came to the conclusion I might change to Fire/Water/Arcane now. For PvE this will be the build. Lightning and Earth are BOTH underwhelming.

1. Lightning has no use except adding a bit of ferocity from healing or a bit from faster casting lightning spells, DPS has no healing. lightning has 2 possible uses for adept 1 for master and 1 for grandmaster
2. Earth is mildly enticing if you can get enough condition dmg from fire (7% from power) and earth (10% from toughness)…
   I highly doubt much build diversity will appear for PvE Ele’s…

2 Guards….
- M/S & staff(0/0/4/6/4)(0/1/6/6/1) bunker heal/booner
- Mace/focus & Hammer (symbol master) (3/0/4/6/1)
also running GS & S/F(2/5/0/6/1) support DPS

Virtues is needed for virtue use, mandatory, honor seems mandatory for me on both lines for heals. For my bunker I seem to need to focus towards valor, for the symbol master. towards zeal, I might need to lose the hammer and replace it by a staff, but i do not care I use both frequently.
For the DPS build…. Guess radiance , zeal and virtue will be enough…

1 Thief, running whatever I feel like, I like P/P & S/P… No real thief
I can make several builds I like… Ok for me…

1 Condi 0/5/5/0 4 Mesmer

1. Hmmm, pistol seems quite mandatory… Somebody got completely brainlocked into interupts… Just a question CAN WE INTERUPT BOSSES NOW??? if you do not get credit for your attempts It wll make any interupt build useless…in PvE…
2. Chaos line: staff (= condition weapon) cancels the ability to take chaotic transference… Why? I cannot see the use of all adepts… maybe master of manipulation should be moved up to master traits and chaotic transfertence be moved 1 down to adept….

Hmm I think i should post here as well ^^ maybe I will make a overdo later of this after rereading what i wrote :P

I like what they did to Engineer for some stuff but why the hell this extrem nerf on Grenades?

Grenadier was one of the only Grandmasterskills which ever earns that title from the beginning allowing u to threw an extra grenade for a total range of 1500 AOE based. now it get a nerf to 900 in total with maximum 2 Grenades with only a bit higher radius? Thats bullkitten and destroys this specialisation of the engineer completely.

I used Grenadier as one of the best balanced Traits and Skill combination in the whole game. Now it will be absolute useless! the whole redesign of the grenade-kit is done for nothing as no one will use it anymore.

With the new traitsystem we also had anotherproblem for the defensive explosive Build a combination of Explosives and regeneration on kit use with a speedbuff at kit change on cost of firearms. It was a nice build and the new build variant of this will lack in damage which will destroy the whole balance of this combination.

When it comes to balance I can really tell u something as I use a whole celestial statset for my engineer with dolyakrunes which gives a perfect impression how the balance could work in this game without just zerkstats and powerbased builds (Yes I really use the gear and runescombination of the Hot Beta and I love it)

So the only way to play now is the offensive buildvariation of the old explosives engineer with a mortar (also lacking in selfhealoptions now as u have to use mortar as the eliteskill) and use something different for the now "for nothing good grenades " this inflicts also a riflebased explosive-engineer as he now has way less possebilitys to inflict conditiondamage. Or of course use a defense-explosive-engineer-build with less damage and less conditions on a lower maximum range.

It will be even harder in WvWvW now against a single enemy with high range (had a fight theese days with a mesmer who could easely attack me even on maximum range of my grenades from the top of the wall of course he was on zerkerstats and it was hard enough to stay alive on this range allready even with my defensebuild.)

There is even another problem I do not unterstand at all why the Napalm Grandmastertrait? At beginning of the game we had the Incendary powder with a high chance to burn enemy at crit it was one of the strongest burning effects of course and the nerf was legitim but also made it not usefull anymore in most builds. The Napalmtrait was allways behind that effect and less effective while playing as the engineer had way more chance to cause burning than he needed and napalm effect was never usefull at all.

So far this grandmastertrait does not feel right even in combination with the way stronger incendary powder but this is not the main problem of this grandmastertraitat all! The main problem is the other grandmastertrait that effects the mainweapon for a flame-engineerbuild! Yes Juggernaut! Juggernaut is the grandmasterstrait of choice for the flame-thrower based engineer a rare but proofed build beside the more effective engineer-builds like the explosive-engineer and the pistolero-build (this one really gets a strong boost that made rifle looking even worse than before).

So Juggernaut and Napalm on the same spot simply doesn’t feel right and destroy the flamethrowerbuild.

But before I end we have to discuss something else. It was announced that the Tower-engineer build should be redesigned as it is very strong in PVP but what?

Did you even have looked at the traitline for tower-engineerbuild?

Of course u have made it dealing less damage but on the otherhand it is even stronger in defense now. The engineer behind it now is even way stronger in healing himself and defense than before that will made it exremly hard to operate against him there. You may thought of knowing bunkerbuilds? You have never seen the meaning of a really bunker-towerengineer with that kind of traits!

Explosive-traitline or firearms-traitline, Inventions-traitline and Alchemy-traitline will grand an extremly strong bunkerbuild.

This really allows some changes in buildvariations for some spots at all but on the cost of 2-3 others named grenades, rifle (u really do not like them do you? even with such a beautyfull Legendary) and flamethrower.

So please rethink it and do not press the comunity in clothes they do not want to wear.

Also something I need to add to show you what u do to grenade kit and rifle:

Firearms now grants the strongest pistoltraits named rifle barrels and coated bullets.
This grants piercing pistolshots with an aoe effect for skill one and 2 of the pistols and also the range of pistols grows up to 1050. with the possebility of beeing explosive based the mainskill 1 of the pistols now easely add cripple, 2 times bleeding and vulnerability up to lots of enemys (backdays i hat up to 40 hits for some pve fights this way ) On the other Hand we now have grenades which loose 40% of maximumrange and 33% of effect total. So u gain a kit by far less effective than the pistols harder to aim and with a maximum range lower than them. So why should i use it anymore? the last way to use it would be in underwatercombat and even there the range is not worth to think about it anymore. Rifle is effected by this too as the weapon is allready weaker than the pistols in it’s AOE and PVE ability u will also need lots of experience to get at least as good as the weakest pistolero-build nowadays not to mention the now stronger one coming up.

this are some facts i had to add to understand the problems we got from this changes.

Also pls add a nice looking new pistollegendary i do not like the current one and i have to much nice rifleskins on the other hand (predator, zodiak, vigil, red-lion skin and so on ^^ And yes i love cats meow)

It looks like, at least until the TBD traits are decided on, that both grenades and flamethrower are taking significant hits. Grenadier is going to be inc. radius and velocity, and is losing range and 50% damage (no 3rd grenade). Flamethrower is losing both Juggernaut, now looking like a stability trait and Deadly Mixture gone. The coefficients on these kit skills are bad enough that users are going to feel the significant damage loss. It looks like ANet is pushing Engi towards turrets, which means I’ll be pushing my engi to the end of my character list. :p

Edits:

I’ve seen anecdotal evidence that the Juggernaut trait will be keeping its current functions and adding the Stab pulse. If this is true, then some of the flamethrower concern is ameliorated, but the 15% from DM made up to some degree for really lackluster damage and will be missed. There’s a reason bombs are considered the best and FT is an also-ran as far as Engi builds and reducing the options to buff FT is definitely reducing the options for Engi builds.

I’d also like to postulate that there ought to be at least one trait per tier per line that is generally useful, rather than a niche trait. I think this because with the all-or-nothing nature of specializations (take the whole line or not), it’s possible to be saddled with 2 traits useless to a build to get one that’s central — even if that is an Adept trait.

In that regard, I do not consider the falling damage or revive traits to fit that description. Thief (Shadow Arts) does an OK job in this regard. The revive and falling traits are paired with Shadow’s Embrace, which procs off stealth. There are enough options to produce stealth, and conditions are an issue with the theif profession, so this is generally useful. Guardian (Honor) pairs the revive and falling traits with Invigorated Bulwark, a small Healing Power proc when blocking while wielding a mace. This is not a generally useful trait.

Mesmer splits the revive and falling traits into different lines. Guard and Thief, they’re in the same line and tier. I find the split to be a better idea than putting things I’m not inclined to take together, as this limits options to one in that tier should I want that line for something else. Ommv.

Necro Death Magic GM is also questionable. Maybe this is because the entire Necro Class design chafes. The line pushes me into Minions (2 traits) and Death Shroud — neither are play styles that I want to embrace, despite death Shroud being the only meaningful choice for a power Necro. Call it a foible of mine. As it is, I’m struggling to find a third line (other than Spite and Blood) for my Necro as Death means 3 wasted traits, Curses is a heavy investment in conditions, which I find unappealing and Soul reaping is all about Death Shroud. I’ve kind of accepted that Necro is not the prof for me, even though it was my favorite in GW, so take all this with a grain of salt. I’m hoping that the elite specialization will resurrect this class (pun intended), though I’m not going to hold my breath.

Shattered Aegis and Spirit Weapon recharge reduction are in the same tier. The spirit shield is one of the few sources of Aegis for guardians outside of communal defense abuse.