Guild Wars 2

What do you guys think the worst Major Trait in the game is? Here are some of my votes:

Warrior
Physical Training- Physical utility skills do 100% more damage and recharge 20% faster.
A very underwhelming Grandmaster Trait. The payoff for this is barely anything since the damage of every Physical Utility skill is fairly low in the first place.

Berserker’s Might – Go into Berserker’s Stance when you gain over 5 stacks of might. This effect can only occur once every 45 seconds.
Another underwhelming Grandmaster Trait. Adrenaline is not needed in this much supply and can be gained much more easily with other traits.

Guardian
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.
A dull Master Trait with a CD too long to make it worthwhile. It’s almost as though the Chill effect was supposed to do something much stronger.

Engineer
Acidic Elixirs – Thrown elixirs cause damage when they land.
A worthless trait that barely does damage at all.

Autodefense Bomb Dispenser – Drop a smoke bomb whenever you are disabled (stun, daze, knockdown, knockback, launch, float, sink, fear). This effect cannot trigger more than once every 60 seconds.
This has too long of a CD to make it worthwhile, and it also doesn’t do anything against ranged CCs.

Acidic Coating – 20% chance to cause poison for 5 seconds when struck with a melee attack. This effect cannot trigger more than once every 10 seconds.
Worthless trait that doesn’t do anything practically. At that chance rate, you’d lose about half your life before poisoning a foe for 5 seconds. Joy.

Always Prepared – Drop bandages and a Flamethrower or an Elixir Gun when downed. Downed damage is increased by 25%.
This trait actually makes it harder to res you because your FT or EG will get in the way, and teammates will usually accidentally take the bandages before you are even back up so you can’t use them to get yourself a bit more health on rally.

Thief
Hard to Catch – Shadowstep away and give[sic] swiftness (12s) when you are disabled (stun, daze, float, knock down, launch, knock back, sink, or fear). This effect cannot occur more than once every 60 seconds.
This trait makes you shadowstep in a random direction, making it randomly helpful and randomly awful. That’s pretty bad for a Grandmaster trait.

Mesmer
Retaliatory Demise – Gain 5 seconds of retaliation when you are downed.
Gaining Retaliation when you lost a fight doesn’t help in most situations. Waste of a trait and barely a contender for a choice at all.

So what are your thoughts on what the worst Major Trait in the game is?

I was going to say Glacial Heart, but you beat me to it.

The Ranger’s ‘bleed on crit’ and ‘pet might on crit’ are both pretty terrible, as they only last 1 second.

Another bad one is Thief’s ‘Sundering Strikes’ – 40% chance to cause 5s vulnerability on crit’. The problem with it is that it has an internal cooldown of 2 seconds.

You can’t be serious about physical training. The 20% is what makes it worth it, the extra damage is just icing on the cake.

Acidic coating and acidic elixirs are definitely two of the worst. In fact the engineer pretty much gets screwed all around when it comes to higher tier traits.

So far as PvP is concerned, the necros spiteful removal is one of the worst. Reaper’s Precision procs so little it might as well be an empty space. And Fetid Consumption is one of the most useless grandmasters.

Conncept.7638:

You can’t be serious about physical training. The 20% is what makes it worth it, the extra damage is just icing on the cake.

Acidic coating and acidic elixirs are definitely two of the worst. In fact the engineer pretty much gets screwed all around when it comes to higher tier traits.

Just can’t see a build where another trait/build wouldn’t just all around be better. Show me, though. I’m interested.

As for Engie, yeah. I only said Major Traits because I didnt’ even want to start on some of the Minor Traits and the discrepancies between some classes’ majors/minors.

Spot on on the engineers list. There’s plenty there. Don’t forget that these traits don’t overlap either. The lightning effects from Static Discharge don’t actually function with tossed elixirs. The Coated Bullets actually don’t do anything to improve overall damage.

Not to mention all of the new problems with the nerfs to retaliate, confusion, and vulnerability being a joke at this point.

AlietteFaye.7316:

Conncept.7638:

You can’t be serious about physical training. The 20% is what makes it worth it, the extra damage is just icing on the cake.

Acidic coating and acidic elixirs are definitely two of the worst. In fact the engineer pretty much gets screwed all around when it comes to higher tier traits.

Just can’t see a build where another trait/build wouldn’t just all around be better. Show me, though. I’m interested.

As for Engie, yeah. I only said Major Traits because I didnt’ even want to start on some of the Minor Traits and the discrepancies between some classes’ majors/minors.

I’ve gone full control warrior and had quite a bit of success with it. Hammer/Macex2, three physical skills and the rampage elite. You have 14 control effects on your skill bar and 16 interrupts. Nobody ever gets any skills off without your say so. If you’re lucky enough to get someone without stability slotted, you can juggle them almost indefinitely.

Can we vote for broken traits that still don’t work?

Thief deadly art traits, with the exception of mug and the two 30 points ones (and the venom one is still debatable, especially as a 30 point trait). You know something is wrong when you always pick mug and then you choose randomly between dagger training, improvisation (hey, maybe it will instantly reset deceptions), backfighter or sundering strike. Hard to catch is indeed terrible, it’s more effective at screwing you than anything else.

As for guardian glacial heart, not only does it makes absolutly no sense on a guardian, but it is infact terrible.

darkace.8925:

Can we vote for broken traits that still don’t work?

Nahh. That’d be too easy. Scope all day!

Puru.4217:

Thief deadly art traits, with the exception of mugh and the two 30 points ones (and the venom one is still debatable, especially as a 30 point trait).

Be specific! Can’t do the +50% damage while downed trait because every class has that useless thing. Traps applying Vulnerability isn’t that bad, Mug is still decent, Venomous Strength is fine for Venom Builds, Potent Poisons I can say is pretty bad, Sundering Strikes is meh, but I wouldn’t say the worst, Improv.. is pretty silly, Quick Venoms is fine for Venom Builds, Dagger Training is Dagger Training, Combined Training is fine, Panic Strike is pretty meh, and Residual Venom is.. okay?

Conncept.7638:

I’ve gone full control warrior and had quite a bit of success with it. Hammer/Macex2, three physical skills and the rampage elite. You have 14 control effects on your skill bar and 16 interrupts. Nobody ever gets any skills off without your say so. If you’re lucky enough to get someone without stability slotted, you can juggle them almost indefinitely.

Ah, okay. I guess it’s not so bad, then.

Puru.4217:

Thief deadly art traits, with the exception of mugh and the two 30 points ones (and the venom one is still debatable, especially as a 30 point trait).

Be specific! Can’t do the +50% damage while downed trait because every class has that useless thing. Traps applying Vulnerability isn’t that bad, Mug is still decent, Venomous Strength is fine for Venom Builds, Potent Poisons I can say is pretty bad, Sundering Strikes is meh, but I wouldn’t say the worst, Improv.. is pretty silly, Quick Venoms is fine for Venom Builds, Dagger Training is Dagger Training, Combined Training is fine, Panic Strike is pretty meh, and Residual Venom is.. okay?

Backfighter: I actually like this trait on my necro, otherwise i agree it’s not so good, still arguably the best choice as a secondary trait though.

Traps are aweful so this trait is basically useless, and honestly 5 vulnerability stack is kinda meh. It either need to be combined with the 20% cd reduction or they need to add another effect (destroy a boon for example, i mean it’s called corrosive trap after all)

Venomous strengh i agree, it’s good for venom share.

Potent poison is useless, i think we agree on that one.

Sundering strike could be ok if they removed the internal cd to be honest, the worst is that i still believe it’s one of the best current choice, even if i almost never use it.

Improvisation is a joke, i already don’t really like engi rng on elixir but it’s still manageable, this horrible trait however is pushing rng to the limit, you can either hit the jackpot and its actually really strong, or it does nothing. Need to be removed asap.

Quick venom once again i agree. An idea, why not combining it with potent poison, that would leave room for a new useful trait and remove a useless one.

Dagger training should have a secondary effect, like pretty much every “X utility skills or weapon 20% cd reduction” and “X weapon damage increased by 5%” traits. Still useable but meh, i really hate those lazy traits.

Combined training is terrible, it’s litteraly “one of your 10 skills damage is increased by 5%, i hope your not using a shortbow otherwise that’s 1 skill out of 15”. Even if it was combined with combo critical chance (another terrible thief trait) i would still not consider it.

The 2 level 30 traits i consider them okish, maybe it’s not worth investing 30 point for panic strike but i find the effect somewhat decent. As for residual venom, well it’s pretty much for venom share builds so it has some uses.

That’s pretty much how i feel about that tree in term of major traits, the tree itself is worth it for the power, mug and minor traits.

Mesmer

Confusing Cry
Cry of Frustration grants retaliation.

This was worth it until they nerfed retaliation, we have better traits that we can spend so now this one is lacking a lot.

Phantasmal Haste
Phantasms recharge 20% faster.

Phantasms skills recharge faster, but not all of them. It’s semi broken still.

Imbued Diversion
Diversion hits multiple targets.

Illusionary Persona is strong, I’d go as far to say it’s overpowered.

Rending Shatter
Shattering illusions causes vulnerability for 8 seconds to nearby foes.

One stack of vulnerability per illusion shattered. Worthless whenever the two minor traits pretty much handle vulnerability.

Vigorous Revelation
Shattering illusions grants vigor to nearby allies.

This should say, “Shattering skills grants vigor to nearby allies.”