Guild Wars 2

This is just a list of skills that you never really see used because they are underpowered or just overshadowed by other skills. I am still hoping one day Anet will take a good look at these skills and make them interesting again. (this list is just from personal experience, if you think one of these skills is actually used more often feel free to correct me).

Ranger:
1) Storm Spirit: Since vuln is usually capped out on bosses and the active is ridiculously slow, small area and unreliable, this skill is very underpowered.
2) Water Spirit/Spirit of Nature: Same problems as Storm spirit: passive isn’t strong and active is slow and unreliable.
3) Muddy terrain: been a while since I’ve seen this used. Purely immob/cripple field isn’t very fun or effective to play.
4) Sick ‘Em: This skill actually isn’t bad. The pet is just bad. No use buffing pet dmg if it can’t hit moving targets.
5) Frost Trap: Since trapper builds are usually heavy condi-dmg builds, a trap that only inflicts chill isn’t preferable to a trap that deals dmg.
6) Glyph of Unity: this skill is just extremely underpowered. Probably the worst elite in the game.

Elementalist:
1) Signet of Stone/Water: These skills aren’t actually bad compared to other signets in the game. They are just overshadowed by the other options ele has and lack flavour.
2) Conjure Flame Axe/ Earth Shield: While Frost bow is usable and Lightning hammer can sometimes be useful, these 2 conjures are just utter crap.
3) Glyp of Elemental Power: Low proc chance, 5 sec internal cooldown and only the burning from fire could be useful.
4) Tornado Elite: Transforming in a tornado isn’t really usefull if it means lower dmg and no increase in survivability.

Thief:
1) Ambush: Summon an npc that deals super low dmg, how very useful!
2) Thieves Guild: same problem: the thieves are just underpowered.
3) Ice drake Venom: 4 seconds of chill isn’t all that great.

Guardian:
1) Spirit Weapons: While the sword can be usful in pve burn builds, the other weapons are pretty bad (bad ai) and have too long cooldowns. Also only the sword actually gains the burning benefit from the trait, whose idea was that?
2) torch #5: while torch 4 is very strong, torch 5 is basically a wasted slot.

Engineer:
1) Med kit: have you honestly ever seen someone use the med kit abilties? The only thing useful about it is the toolbelt heal, the kit itself is terrible.

Warrior:
1) Banner of Tactics: healing power isn’t really useful (bad scaling) and the other banners are just a lot better.

Mesmer:
1) Illusion of life: Yeah basically none of the other revive skills like this is ever used, but this one is especially bad as it doesn’t even fully revive allies
2) Phantasmal disenchanter: never good enough to sacrifice a phantasm slot.

Necro:
1) Signet of vampirism: I guess it has a pretty long cd for the effect.
2) Flesh wurm: It’s immobile. And while it should theoretically do the highest minion dps, it performs worse than shadow fiend.
3) Bone Minions: bad dmg and the explode mechanic is pretty awkward to use.

I think many of these skills could be made a lot more interesting with some slight adjustments. Other skills need a more significant rework (mostly the ones related to AI) What do you guys think?

All of them are used by people. Not everyone uses the “meta” flavour of the day. I sure don’t. I use what I want at the time I pick it. Even if a lot of people do use the meta flavour of the day, most just copied it off of a website and most of those probably do not understand how it’s supposed to be used and when to push the keys in a battle to make it work like the meta it’s supposed to be.

PyrateSilly.4710:

All of them are used by people. Not everyone uses the “meta” flavour of the day. I sure don’t. I use what I want at the time I pick it. Even if a lot of people do use the meta flavour of the day, most just copied it off of a website and most of those probably do not understand how it’s supposed to be used and when to push the keys in a battle to make it work like the meta it’s supposed to be.

I’m not talking about meta/non-meta here at all.
I’m just talking about what skills are rarely used, why that is and how they could be made more interesting/flavourful.
If a skill is unpopular because it just doesn’t do the role it’s supposed to fit very well, then that means there is room for improvement. ‘Meta’ has absolutely nothing to do with that. So please stay on topic here.

PyrateSilly.4710:

All of them are used by people.

It’s not about using a meta or non-meta build, most of the skills on that list are terrible compared to the alternatives.

Now some notes:

Sic ‘Em: This skill is rather useful in WvW when roaming to expose thieves and other characters using stealth. The damage buff is actually good (40% extra damage) but the very low attack speed of the pet reduces it’s worth.
Maybe giving Quickness to the Pet while it’s active would make it more worth using?

Thieve’s Guild: Thieve’s Guild is not a terrible elite in many situations. It can help in PVE when taking on multiple enemies or veterans/champions, it’s just not a tool for team play. But I think that’s intentional, it’s your go-to solo play skill.

Spirit Weapons: Shield of the Avenger is a good Spirit Weapon for projectile heavy encounters, like the Uncategorized Fractal. It has many uses in PVE, lasts for a good duration and grants Aegis on activation. I don’t think the Shield needs any kind of buff honestly. The other spirit weapons are worthless and need an overall re-work to be worth using.

Alexander.6250:

Necro:
2) Flesh wurm: It’s immobile. And while it should theoretically do the highest minion dps, it performs worse than shadow fiend.
3) Bone Minions: bad dmg and the explode mechanic is pretty awkward to use.

2: You forget that the you can teleport back to the wurm. This is a very powerful “get out of dodge” ability. Like most skills, situational. But this skill does not need to be changed.

3: The primary use of this one I’ve found is to increase your minion count which can grant additional benefits if you are traited for such. Wish it would summon more than two when you consider that 4 are created when you use Litch form elite skill. (that may be a traited thing as well, I can’t remember.)

Alexander.6250:

Thief:
1) Ambush: Summon an npc that deals super low dmg, how very useful!
2) Thieves Guild: same problem: the thieves are just underpowered.
3) Ice drake Venom: 4 seconds of chill isn’t all that great.

Supposedly there is a condi build in WvW that uses thieves guild, venoms can be shared with summons so you get a pretty good condi bomb. It basically triples the effect of poisons.

Alexander.6250:

PyrateSilly.4710:

All of them are used by people. Not everyone uses the “meta” flavour of the day. I sure don’t. I use what I want at the time I pick it. Even if a lot of people do use the meta flavour of the day, most just copied it off of a website and most of those probably do not understand how it’s supposed to be used and when to push the keys in a battle to make it work like the meta it’s supposed to be.

I’m not talking about meta/non-meta here at all.
I’m just talking about what skills are rarely used, why that is and how they could be made more interesting/flavourful.
If a skill is unpopular because it just doesn’t do the role it’s supposed to fit very well, then that means there is room for improvement. ‘Meta’ has absolutely nothing to do with that. So please stay on topic here.

There’s more to GW2 than PvE.

From a post I made earlier Re: Necro

Warhorn:
-Problems-

• Necro/reaper access to swiftness is limited to (aside from Spectral Walk and the underwater thing (what did the Romans ever do for us, eh?)) an ability that puts them in combat (Warhorn #5), negating the purpose of swiftness.
• Necro’s most prominent blast finisher is an proximity mine (Staff #4) (they also have a flesh wurm, and the bone minion that can blast, but those are niche skills) meaning enemy has to be close to trigger it. It doesn’t get used to combo with other classes as often as LOTS of other classes get to use their blasts.

-Proposed Solutions-

• Make #5 (Locust Swarm) a blast finisher : #5 Becomes Blast finisher & Swiftness.
• Move locusts from #5 to #4 (Wail of Doom) : #4 Becomes Locusts & Interrupt.
• Swap the names of #4 and #5 skills on Warhorn.

I know these are not the best solutions, but I hope they provide food for thought.
[edited: thanks for the corrections, Muchacho]

Blue Hare.8612:

Alexander.6250:

Thief:
1) Ambush: Summon an npc that deals super low dmg, how very useful!
2) Thieves Guild: same problem: the thieves are just underpowered.
3) Ice drake Venom: 4 seconds of chill isn’t all that great.

Supposedly there is a condi build in WvW that uses thieves guild, venoms can be shared with summons so you get a pretty good condi bomb. It basically triples the effect of poisons.

It’s not really anything new; the old skool venomshare builds of the day used to run it with P/P. It only somewhat works in 1v1 fights and it’s still pretty match-up dependent. Foes with decent cleave will one/two-shot the AI’s. Imho, if the CC component was removed from the summons and the duration reduced, I think it’d be good enough to just drop the cooldown massively to like 75s, as 180s is really long and often not seen as worth it, especially now that venomshare builds got nerfed.

I feel like a lot of the list is either debatable or missing skills. For the most part, anything not running the meta is pretty underpowered. There are tons of skills and traits people never use on anything, and I wouldn’t get hung up suggesting fixes because ANet doesn’t care.

OneYenShort.3189:

Alexander.6250:

Necro:
2) Flesh wurm: It’s immobile. And while it should theoretically do the highest minion dps, it performs worse than shadow fiend.
3) Bone Minions: bad dmg and the explode mechanic is pretty awkward to use.

2: You forget that the you can teleport back to the wurm. This is a very powerful “get out of dodge” ability. Like most skills, situational. But this skill does not need to be changed.

3: The primary use of this one I’ve found is to increase your minion count which can grant additional benefits if you are traited for such. Wish it would summon more than two when you consider that 4 are created when you use Litch form elite skill. (that may be a traited thing as well, I can’t remember.)

Flesh Wurm is also used for blocking projectiles.

maddoctor.2738:

Sic ‘Em: This skill is rather useful in WvW when roaming to expose thieves and other characters using stealth. The damage buff is actually good (40% extra damage) but the very low attack speed of the pet reduces it’s worth.
Maybe giving Quickness to the Pet while it’s active would make it more worth using?

Yeah as I said this skill isn’t bad, it’s just the pet mechanic holding it back. If you want to use it with quickness: unfortunately quickness is bugged and doesn’t work on the majority of pet aa chains.

OneYenShort.3189:

2: You forget that the you can teleport back to the wurm. This is a very powerful “get out of dodge” ability. Like most skills, situational. But this skill does not need to be changed.

3: The primary use of this one I’ve found is to increase your minion count which can grant additional benefits if you are traited for such. Wish it would summon more than two when you consider that 4 are created when you use Litch form elite skill. (that may be a traited thing as well, I can’t remember.)

Yeah the teleport can be useful, although I think it’s rather strange to put this mechanic on a minion. (teleporting sounds more like a spectral thing). It can indeed be useful in specific situations.

About the bone minions: I don’t think the +20 bonus toughness for having 2 minions instead of one makes very much of a difference :P, unless you really need the condi pull from minions I don’t think 2 weak minions are better than 1 more powerful minion.
The dmg from summoning and exploding them actually isn’t too bad, but the fact you have to resummon them with a long cast time constantly kinda screws this up.