Guild Wars 2

With the balance changes coming, what do you think is the most useless skill/trait for your profession/build/game mode and why?

Starting with my own thoughts:

Guardian/DH
Torch 5 skill
Small aoe, Low damage, require channeling, no self condi debuff.

I’ll be impressed if anyone across all professions can beat this:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Predator's_Instinct

The worst part is, its an elite spec trait and tied to the weapon no less.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Soul_Eater

Quite of the elite skills, actually.
Like, they should feel like peak performances. Having a long cooldown, and then a super effect. But a good majority of them are worse than utility skills, and still have a super long cooldown. On some classes I just selected a random elite skill and accepted I’ll just never use it.

there are a ton, but…
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gadgeteer

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shocking_Speed

(inb4 somebody comes along and explains how it’s the best thing ever)

Whole revenant class. Everything apart from auto attack is useless.

Ariurotl.3718:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shocking_Speed

(inb4 somebody comes along and explains how it’s the best thing ever)

cough cough used during golem rushes in between portals for superspeed golems

I’m not seeing anything worse than a trait that applies a conditional cripple once every half a minute. I win.

If this were still in the game it would win automatically:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Disruptor's_Sustainment

Never forgive. Never forget.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Repeater
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Twisting_Fangs
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stab_

The most useless Skills in the whole Game as they require of you to abandon valuable Stat Points by forcefully equipping only one out of your two 1h Weapons, just so that you become even able to use these Skills based on what your Main hand Weapon is …

Nothing, absolutely nothing is more useless, than this garbage…Fluffs mentioned trait even has some kind of small usage compared to this junk here

These skilsl would be at leaset kind of interesting maybe to use, if it wouldnt be meaning automatically, that you lose alot of valuable Stat Points, which is another reason, why this idiotic Stat Gear Design has to get removed, because without it it would make sense as Thief to fight eventually with only 1 Weapon to play around with these kind of skills, if the Thief would get for the empty Hand then also two “Empty Hand Skills”, which would be kind of logical for Thieves to have – or when going further, basicayl all classes should have some kind “Empty Hand Skills”…

There are no more pointless Weapon Skilsl, than these 3, unless ANet fixes the Combat System of the Game by removing obsolete Gear Stats and giving all Classes basicalyl Empty Hand Skills so that Thieves, which decide to fight with only 1 Weapon in Hand don’t get by design the disadvantage of losing alot of Stat Points and having lesser SKilsl ready at use in Combat compared to somebody whos using either a 2H Weapon or two 1H ones.
—-

In regard of a useless trait, take this one here:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Revealed_Training – A trait, that is like felt 90% of all the time you play useless, unless you get into a short window of revealed, or enemies put some long lastign reveals on you, the only moment, where the trait becomes for a longer tiem useful for the time that you lose the ability to stealth and run around like a kill target on the silver platter that has lost its only effective defensive mechanism

oh oooh oh,h or take this one

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Keen_Observer – a trait, that becomes mostly useless immediately after you take just 1 hit from your foe … great trait design, really ….NOT

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Concealed_Defeat – Best way to tell your target – IM HERE, KILL ME OFF /facepalm

For necromancer and regular PvE I’m going to add Corrupt Boon as there are so few mobs in PvE that have boons, making this an almost only PvP skill.

The game would have been so much better if mobs had player skills and boons as well as a cast bar, instead of using tells with their few monster skills that they slowly use and you’re supposed to memorize what movements with what mobs go with what attacks.

I always forget that Signet of Undeath exists until topics like this come up =P

lol, the res signets for each class sound good at first, but in practice cuz of rally they aren’t very useful.

Res signets do have their place sometimes, mostly only in PvP though and mostly only for support builds. Warbanner is still useful with the right builds.

But I agree, for PvE res signets and warbanner are all but useless nowadays. But back before they removed the ability for these to revive dead NPC’s they were incredibly useful. My warrior always had warbanner equipped when doing PvE stuffs, especially during living story instances that required you to escort or defend NPC’s. As soon as things started going south you could drop warbanner and immediately revive a group of dead NPC guards to keep the event alive. Extremely useful in Silverwastes when doing defend events and you were overwhelmed and there was only a few seconds left before failure. Warbanner panic button FTW.

RIP warbanner/signets.

Personally I’d say ele’s water signet. By the time it takes effect most of the damage is already done.

Thief Pistol: Body Shot. The wasted space causes me emotional trauma. I never use it and in situations where you’d actually think it could have use it really doesn’t. Does no damage, very short duration and vulnerable condi doesn’t really give us much team support when its such an easy condi for other classes to stack while actually doing something useful. It’s just a waste of ini and skill slot.

I always wished it was some type of decent damage AoE to make P/P less dependent on Staff/Shortbow to hit more than one enemy since they removed my beloved Ricochet. It’d also be nice if it had a finisher of some sort to make more use of P/P black powder.

WvW: right-click>report>Botting.

Seriously though, and looking at PvE mode, I think Ranger/Druid Longbow #3 (Hunter’s Shot) was terrible in its original form and… is still terrible.

It would be nice to see it reworked into something that is powerful, but has a drawback that makes a player need to think about whether or not they should take that risk (bad example: does a kitten load of damage, but also applies 3 stacks of vulnerability to self)

Engi med kit, nuff said, nothing can be worse than that. It replaces ALL of your weapon skills and NOT one of them does any damage. They are useless for any healing and on top of that the skill one has to be spammed since it has to target a friendly (actually more correctly you can’t even target you just have to aim it thus no auto).

Pure pathetic.

Doggie.3184:

Thief Pistol: Body Shot. The wasted space causes me emotional trauma. I never use it and in situations where you’d actually think it could have use it really doesn’t. Does no damage, very short duration and vulnerable condi doesn’t really give us much team support when its such an easy condi for other classes to stack while actually doing something useful. It’s just a waste of ini and skill slot.

I always wished it was some type of decent damage AoE to make P/P less dependent on Staff/Shortbow to hit more than one enemy since they removed my beloved Ricochet. It’d also be nice if it had a finisher of some sort to make more use of P/P black powder.

It’s not completely useless if you need to keep something away from you perm, a good example could be say those exploding Zombies.

I offer the guardian elite signet: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Courage
Hilariously long passive interval for a paltry heal and a suicide button when you activate it.

Seed Turret or most of the Human Racial skills.

Paulytnz.7619:

Doggie.3184:

Thief Pistol: Body Shot. The wasted space causes me emotional trauma. I never use it and in situations where you’d actually think it could have use it really doesn’t. Does no damage, very short duration and vulnerable condi doesn’t really give us much team support when its such an easy condi for other classes to stack while actually doing something useful. It’s just a waste of ini and skill slot.

I always wished it was some type of decent damage AoE to make P/P less dependent on Staff/Shortbow to hit more than one enemy since they removed my beloved Ricochet. It’d also be nice if it had a finisher of some sort to make more use of P/P black powder.

It’s not completely useless if you need to keep something away from you perm, a good example could be say those exploding Zombies.

No.

my vote goes to Vamp Signet on necro,
a passive heal smaller than warriors healing signet (which ticks every second)
but vamp sig only ticks when you are getting hit (and has a 1 second internal cooldown),
when activated it gives you 6 seconds to get a maximum of 5 heals of around 500 each (2500 health total…)
terrible terrible signet.

for the passive i’d remove the ICD and also make it buff all life steals on you by a percentage (30%?)
for the active rather than targeting an enemy it should be a buff on you which works as it currently does (but with no ICD).

Neural.1824:

WvW: right-click>report>Botting.

Seriously though, and looking at PvE mode, I think Ranger/Druid Longbow #3 (Hunter’s Shot) was terrible in its original form and… is still terrible.

in PVP its absolutely amazing for finishers and also pretty handy for escaping

Guardian spirit weapons. I havent seen anybody using this for 3,4 years.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Water
/thread

A lot of choices really. However, I’d revise the question, as “most useless trait/skill in ALL game modes”. Sometimes a skill/trait might be good in PVP but terrible in PVE and the opposite.

My suggestions from the Elementalist:

Shatterstone, a complete waste of time and effort. Elementalist Scepter needs a re-work in general, it’s not entirely useless because there are some good picks, but Flamestrike and Shatterstone are really terrible skills.

For Elementalist utility skills I’d say Conjure weapons outside Fiery Greatsword and Frost bow are nearly useless.

From traits I’d pick
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/One_with_Fire

Doggie.3184:

Paulytnz.7619:

Doggie.3184:

Thief Pistol: Body Shot. The wasted space causes me emotional trauma. I never use it and in situations where you’d actually think it could have use it really doesn’t. Does no damage, very short duration and vulnerable condi doesn’t really give us much team support when its such an easy condi for other classes to stack while actually doing something useful. It’s just a waste of ini and skill slot.

I always wished it was some type of decent damage AoE to make P/P less dependent on Staff/Shortbow to hit more than one enemy since they removed my beloved Ricochet. It’d also be nice if it had a finisher of some sort to make more use of P/P black powder.

It’s not completely useless if you need to keep something away from you perm, a good example could be say those exploding Zombies.

No.

Lol care to expand on that?

Fluffball.8307:

I’ll be impressed if anyone across all professions can beat this:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Predator's_Instinct

I’d use it if it were a wilderness survival adept trait. 10sec cripple at the right kind of time would be glorious for condi longbow.

Justine.6351:

Fluffball.8307:

I’ll be impressed if anyone across all professions can beat this:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Predator's_Instinct

I’d use it if it were a wilderness survival adept trait. 10sec cripple at the right kind of time would be glorious for condi longbow.

But it’s not and is the worst trait in the entire game without question. The traits it is up against are no joke either, they’re totally solid traits.

Any of the fall damage traits because we can all literally fly now. They aren’t even useful on jumping puzzles

Stand The Wall.6987:

there are a ton, but…
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gadgeteer

oooh that’s a good one

Mesmer… Illusion of life…I use this for the Lols

Some ppl get really confused lmao

Liewec.2896:

my vote goes to Vamp Signet on necro,
a passive heal smaller than warriors healing signet (which ticks every second)
but vamp sig only ticks when you are getting hit (and has a 1 second internal cooldown),
when activated it gives you 6 seconds to get a maximum of 5 heals of around 500 each (2500 health total…)
terrible terrible signet.

for the passive i’d remove the ICD and also make it buff all life steals on you by a percentage (30%?)
for the active rather than targeting an enemy it should be a buff on you which works as it currently does (but with no ICD).

So much this! Vamp Signet is so much bugging itself that it makes Necro even more a class for masochists than it is already.

Every falling trait ever.

This trait otherwise is the most useless thing EVER…
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Latent_Stamina

Who in their right mind would take this over an aura on overload or a stunbreaker?

This utility is complete garbo:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glyph_of_Lesser_Elementals

They die in a few hits.

And now for the worst skill EVER….

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Flame

No self condi cleanse, a channel leaving you vulnerable, and poor DPS.

Samnang.1879:

Mesmer… Illusion of life…I use this for the Lols

Some ppl get really confused lmao

I’ve seen it used quite nicely in WvW, since its the fastest instant up res skill (search and rescue requires the pet to res them first which can end up getting very sticky quickly).

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Health_Insurance

There is no way to beat that…

Merciless Hammer: unless you have a pocket headshot thief, hammer is too slow to take advantage of small exploits of stun/disable.

Powerful Synergy: most leap finishes are auras or otherwise lackluster. Doubling them does what? Maybe some utility with stealth/water/blind in the right situation, except Warrior doesn’t get those fields on their own.

Fluffball.8307:

I’m not seeing anything worse than a trait that applies a conditional cripple once every half a minute. I win.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Powerful_Synergy

Unless some other class is around to provide a water it does practically nothing. Auras do not stack so that is no effect. Extra stack of blind/weakness? Meeeh. 2s of daze instead of 1s? Only useful when dealing with breakbars or maybe in a PvP(not WvW since there is a ICD on how frequently you can strip stability stacks) scenario where you are trying to strip stability stacks. Double duration of stealth? I don’t even know what to say about that one.

Additionally Predator’s Instinct is only adept tier while Powerful Synergy is grandmaster tier. Maybe Powerful Synergy actually allows you to jump through two stacked fields and proc one of each but that would still require someone else to provide a field since warrior can only generate fire fields. Requiring another class to be around is a much harsher condition than a 50% health threshold.

Orpheal.8263:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Repeater
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Twisting_Fangs
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stab_

The most useless Skills in the whole Game as they require of you to abandon valuable Stat Points by forcefully equipping only one out of your two 1h Weapons, just so that you become even able to use these Skills based on what your Main hand Weapon is …

Nothing, absolutely nothing is more useless, than this garbage…Fluffs mentioned trait even has some kind of small usage compared to this junk here

That is the pessimist’s view.

The optimist’s view would be that without those skills a thief wielding a single main hand weapon would only have 2 skills instead of 3. Their only purpose is to fill the slot and they do that well enough. None of those skills are better than any of the alternatives so not having them isn’t a sacrifice.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Revealed_Training – A trait, that is like felt 90% of all the time you play useless, unless you get into a short window of revealed, or enemies put some long lastign reveals on you, the only moment, where the trait becomes for a longer tiem useful for the time that you lose the ability to stealth and run around like a kill target on the silver platter that has lost its only effective defensive mechanism

+200 power is roughly equivalent to a sigil of force. That is hardly useless unless you think a thief doesn’t have enough ways to trigger revealed. Revealed Training is just being scapegoated because the alternatives are worse.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Keen_Observer – a trait, that becomes mostly useless immediately after you take just 1 hit from your foe … great trait design, really ….NOT

That is also true for Superior Rune of the Scholar’s 6th bonus. Last time I checked that was a very popular rune.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Concealed_Defeat – Best way to tell your target – IM HERE, KILL ME OFF /facepalm

Against AI they see exactly where you are regardless.

Against a human player they will see where you are as well unless you just lost a fight against a blind person. The primary benefits of that trait would be the CD reduction. The aim is to not get downed in the first place which is what the CD reduction helps with since it allows you to use those skills more often and they are mostly defensively oriented.

CptAurellian.9537:

I offer the guardian elite signet: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Courage
Hilariously long passive interval for a paltry heal and a suicide button when you activate it.

Full health equals suicide? O_o

Paulytnz.7619:

Doggie.3184:

Paulytnz.7619:

Doggie.3184:

Thief Pistol: Body Shot. The wasted space causes me emotional trauma. I never use it and in situations where you’d actually think it could have use it really doesn’t. Does no damage, very short duration and vulnerable condi doesn’t really give us much team support when its such an easy condi for other classes to stack while actually doing something useful. It’s just a waste of ini and skill slot.

I always wished it was some type of decent damage AoE to make P/P less dependent on Staff/Shortbow to hit more than one enemy since they removed my beloved Ricochet. It’d also be nice if it had a finisher of some sort to make more use of P/P black powder.

It’s not completely useless if you need to keep something away from you perm, a good example could be say those exploding Zombies.

No.

Lol care to expand on that?

Definitely a PvE player. Interrupt on next to no cooldown is incredibly useful for ending fights early. I’ve been on the receiving end of that one a few times.

Powerful Synergy and Health Insurance seem like the contenders to me – first a trait that sounds great until you actually look at what this “synergy” gets you, which is dubious at best, and wastes a grandmaster slot. The second is a trait that makes a useless kit a slightly more powerful useless kit. Can’t imagine why it’s not more popular.

What Powerful Synergy should have done is give you an extra blast finisher with the leap, instead. Then we have a trait that means something.
And Health Insurance… well… nothing to be done there without a rebuild of the healing kit.

Fluffball.8307:

snipples

don’t be so dramatic. it would be fine if some changes were made, problem is the other traits its up against are too good.

lLobo.7960:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Health_Insurance

There is no way to beat that…

I herd it’s 100x better on the EU servers.

Fluffball.8307:

I’m not seeing anything worse than a trait that applies a conditional cripple once every half a minute. I win.

It’s not that terrible in pvp…? Maybe? I can imagine it might help finish off someone low on health who is trying to run away. It’s a lighter version of https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Panic_Strike

Xenon.4537:

Fluffball.8307:

I’m not seeing anything worse than a trait that applies a conditional cripple once every half a minute. I win.

It’s not that terrible in pvp…? Maybe? I can imagine it might help finish off someone low on health who is trying to run away. It’s a lighter version of https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Panic_Strike

Find me a ranger who has ever used this in favor of the traits it is up against, or even if it was against nothing, and I’d agree. If you’ve never played PvP or ranger before, it sounds like a reasonable trait. It’s beyond useless.

Coffietire.2783:

snipples

lol I saw this youtuber gw fox from eu use med kit… it worked out alright I guess.
looks too fruity for me tho lol.

Fluffball.8307:

Xenon.4537:

Fluffball.8307:

I’m not seeing anything worse than a trait that applies a conditional cripple once every half a minute. I win.

It’s not that terrible in pvp…? Maybe? I can imagine it might help finish off someone low on health who is trying to run away. It’s a lighter version of https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Panic_Strike

Find me a ranger who has ever used this in favor of the traits it is up against, or even if it was against nothing, and I’d agree. If you’ve never played PvP or ranger before, it sounds like a reasonable trait. It’s beyond useless.

Yeah I’ve never really played pvp ranger. I don’t even know what the other 2 traits are in that tier lol.

This is a great thread for more Boott’s bad builds.

Doggie.3184:

Thief Pistol: Body Shot. The wasted space causes me emotional trauma. I never use it and in situations where you’d actually think it could have use it really doesn’t. Does no damage, very short duration and vulnerable condi doesn’t really give us much team support when its such an easy condi for other classes to stack while actually doing something useful. It’s just a waste of ini and skill slot.

I always wished it was some type of decent damage AoE to make P/P less dependent on Staff/Shortbow to hit more than one enemy since they removed my beloved Ricochet. It’d also be nice if it had a finisher of some sort to make more use of P/P black powder.

Works fine in groups if you have long condition duration in your build. By long i mean long. This generally means condition p/d or a condition build p/p.

Works fine solo for the same reasons albeit not as useful as in a group. The VULN in condition builds is very useful if soloing as a cover and to get higher condi ticks.

The number of people I have helped kill by simply using body shot so others can wail away on them beyond count. Works like a beaut if you have a field down as well such as that out of caltrops and just use body shot to keep the person there.

My Body shot is a tad under 2 seconds per on the immob. Put two togtehr and that a 4 sec immob with 10 vuln at 6 secs. The P/d build I use also uses needle trap so if the trap triggers I get 6 sec immob with 5 more vuln at 10 seconds. In other words in short order I can be boosting my condition ticks by 15 percent and can use on demand immobs to kite.

4 ini for a 1 second immob and 5 vuln for 3 seconds is meh. 4 INI for a 2 second immob and 5 vuln for 6 seconds , not bad at all.

I would never use it in a power build. The payback is just not there. I do wish the projectile speed faster.

I am so legit right now it physically and mentally hurts to even glance at this trait. Brace yourselves. The one and only trait that is 100% utterly useless.

Expeditious Spirit: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Expeditious_Spirit

BECAUSE NOBODY USES SPIRIT WEAPONS.

e v e r.

Zephyra.4709:

I am so legit right now it physically and mentally hurts to even glance at this trait. Brace yourselves. The one and only trait that is 100% utterly useless.

Expeditious Spirit: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Expeditious_Spirit

BECAUSE NOBODY USES SPIRIT WEAPONS.

e v e r.

Hey! On VG I totally use spirit weapons when doing green circles because I’m too far away for traps. Though I still don’t use that trait…