Guild Wars 2

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/traits-unleashed-forty-new-traits-and-more/

New grandmasters for every class, 40 new traits, and more! They weren’t kidding when they said big changes, particularly hyped for that lockdown Mesmer buff!

Elementalist: Aquatic Benevolence

The elementalist is getting a variety of traits, ranging from damage and utility to survivability and support. The one we’ll introduce today is Aquatic Benevolence. This trait contains a new mechanic that will increase all healing to allies by a percentage without affecting the character doing the healing. Aquatic Benevolence has the highest of all outgoing healing effects currently in the game, sitting at a solid 25% healing power bonus when supporting allies.

Engineer: Fortified Turrets

Engineers will be getting additional support and survivability with their new turret trait, Fortified Turrets, which is part of the Inventions line. Each time an engineer with Fortified Turrets equipped spawns a new turret, that turret receives a defensive bubble that reflects projectiles for four seconds. This works with all turrets, including the Supply Crate.

Guardian: Force of Will

With the current traits available to the guardian, their Honor line has multiple support traits that heavily assist allies but have less individual benefit for the guardian. With this patch, guardians will have the option to unlock Force of Will, a trait that grants three hundred extra vitality when slotted (which amounts to three thousand health at level 80 from this trait alone). The result is a guardian that is much more durable when facing conditions and physical attacks.

Necromancer: Unholy Sanctuary

In addition to a bit of a trait line rework, the necromancer’s Death Magic will be gaining the ability to heal your health pool while Death Shroud is active. Unholy Sanctuary allows you to turtle in your Death Shroud and slowly heal yourself, granting you additional survivability in situations that might otherwise spell certain death. The healing rate of Unholy Sanctuary is the same as the regeneration boon and will be affected by healing power.

Mesmer: Power Block

Enemies of mesmers beware: they’ve learned how to mess with your skill recharge! The new trait for mesmers allows them to gain additional benefit when disrupting enemy skills. Power Block will be introduced to the Domination line and will change the recharge of an interrupted skill from 5 seconds to 10 seconds. This will not affect skills that have no recharge, but I’d imagine that stopping a necromancer from consuming conditions would surely put a nail in their coffin.

Ranger: Read the Wind

Ranger: Your arrows are swift and deadly, but in some scenarios they are not as fast as they need to be and your enemies can dodge them easily. With Marksmanship’s new Read the Wind, your longbow arrows will fire at twice their base velocity, allowing for supreme accuracy at long range.

Thief: Invigorating Precision

Thief will be gaining a new survivability trait in their Critical Strikes line with Invigorating Precision. Five percent of damage from your critical attacks will now be returned to you as healing. With this trait, you’ll be able to sustain yourself in scenarios where your base healing just isn’t enough.

Warrior: Dual-Wield Agility

Warriors who love to dual-wield will have a new option in their Arms line with Dual-Wield Agility. This trait will increase your attack speed by ten percent when wielding an off-hand axe, mace, or sword.

Can’t wait to see which new and sexy traits we’ll get!

All I wanna do is DEEPS and Anet wants me to be a healer. Fml

Zoose than you should challenge your skills because S/F ele is doing insane damage…

Topic: We need nerfs not buffs…Hope Arenanet will realise that someday.

yes, again ANet is changing the complete Meta. Hopefully this time not a overpowered class for the next 6 months

Can’t wait for the next few ready up’s see what else they got in store for us

Remember it’s just a preview of a couple of the new traits, going to be new GM traits for each line.

The game is not balanced so lets add a bunch of stuff that may or may not be ridiculously op and that was only tested internally. Seriously big changes like these need to be tested by many people. They need to be given to the player base way ahead of time like 2 months and comments taken. I don’t understand why people get excited by change for change sake. I like new additions but the way stuff is tested in this game dampens any enthusiasm I have for it.

^we’ll be all testing it in a few weeks.

butch.8136:

^we’ll be all testing it in a few weeks.

Yes and dealing with the pain inflicted by it for months.

The mesmer trait seems brokenly OP to me. And once again is useless vs thieves lol

I like that they are gonna shake up the meta a bit.
Hopefully, they will add QoL improvements and soothe the pvp crowd somewhat.

Rickster.8752:

The mesmer trait seems brokenly OP to me. And once again is useless vs thieves lol

Nah nah its totally fine i mean you can just protect your casts with block or some invulnerability or just use instant casts… oh wait im playing necro and i dont have such things… well at least it takes alot of skill to interrupt 1.25 sec cast with 1200 range instacast… oh wait no even clicker can do it…

You will still eat mesmers alive if you get a good condi bomb and can fear their lyssa :x

Vuh.1328:

You will still eat mesmers alive if you get a good condi bomb and can fear their lyssa :x

Dunno, mesmer vs necro is a close fight already. I would say mesmer has the advantage to be honest. If they run the stealth off hand weapon anyway.

All I did reading that article is lol

Guys this is a PvE WvW game. Period

Vuh.1328:

You will still eat mesmers alive if you get a good condi bomb and can fear their lyssa :x

Ye only if we would have a way to apply conditions without cast times or if mesmer wouldnt be able to protect lyssa with invulnerability, and next patch there wont even be dhuumfire on scepter 1 spam , not even talking about that i play power necro.
Decent interrupt mesmer currently shts on necromancer, next patch it will be just easier.

Dear God. They’ll never be able to balance the game now…

We are getting a new meta. That is awesome. Be stoked that change is coming and deal with the fall out later. There are announcements for the next two weeks as well. Get Hype!

Leeto.1570:

Vuh.1328:

You will still eat mesmers alive if you get a good condi bomb and can fear their lyssa :x

Ye only if we would have a way to apply conditions without cast times or if mesmer wouldnt be able to protect lyssa with invulnerability, and next patch there wont even be dhuumfire on scepter 1 spam , not even talking about that i play power necro.
Decent interrupt mesmer currently shts on necromancer, next patch it will be just easier.

Yeh absolutly. I would say 1v1 mesmer is the hardest (possibly?) match up for necros. I started to do way better vs warriors since I started running the meta condi spec. So ye, mesmers are an issue.

I’m not even sure, if we will get a new meta…or at least not necessarily a better one.

Think about it:
The only way, we might get a new meta is, that either the new GM traits will create even more powerfull builds than those in the current meta, or will create builds which hardcounter the current meta.

Both don’t seem like sth you should try to achieve.

Interesting additions. I sure hope they also added some traits or changed existing skills on elementalists to actually help the ELEMENTALIST survive. It’s great to heal your allies, but you won’t be healing anyone if you are dead yourself.

Logic.

well done, youve done kittened it up again! seriously how is this happening? now warriors are going to be so dominant there will be no chance for anyone. and not to mention the only class that can counter the meta at the moment which yes is necro is getting such a heavy nerf its gonna just be terrible seriously necros getting such a nerf???? and warriors getting BUFFED?>!!!!! omfg this is just the end of this game totally well done just well done.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/traits-unleashed-forty-new-traits-and-more/

New grandmasters for every class, 40 new traits, and more! They weren’t kidding when they said big changes, particularly hyped for that lockdown Mesmer buff!

The game needs to avoid strong passive or AI specs since the game isn’t team centric. Team based fighting is social, which gives allot of lee-way, it also in and of itself adds allot to the skill-floor and skill-cap making mindless specs and traits seem allot less mindless. GW2 doesn’t do that, which means it needs, it kittening NEEDS dynamic active specs.

So…
Seriously?
These are their ideas to make the game better?
Click-and-forget-me bonuses to vitality or healing or attack speed…. like what the kitten?
Are you sure they didn’t say PvE patch on the 15th???

I mean the elementalist one is the closest to a PvP change (if useless) I’ve always saw allot of good potential in ele-healing, it is allot of fun and positioning and teamwork related.
To do that, they really should have focused on revamping a few skills though, to make it more play/counter-play centric, and stronger, so it could be a viable, entertaining mid.
Like adding channeled heals or more lingering aoes that heal.
Passive buffing what healing eles have already at the cost of a tier 3 trait… it’s not bad, but it’s sure as hell not good either.

jmatb.6307:

All I did reading that article is lol

Guys this is a PvE WvW game. Period

It kittening sucks.
They have no will to make PvP anything more than a mini-game for PvE’ers.

For everyone who is apparently very concerned with this initial news, it’s probably a good idea to keep in mind these are only 8 traits revealed of the 40 announced. So it may stand to reason the other 32 unannounced traits (assuming 4 per class) might put these 8 into better context, or even possibly make more sense.

Or maybe not. Maybe we’d rather they not give us nuggets like this.

I await our new Gaurdian overlords, and I like the read the wind trait, it reminds me of a gw1 skill.

Idk what’s going on with the trait point changes tho

Yeah, like skcamow said it’s a bit early to start sprouting tears when every traitline is getting a new grandmaster / sigils & runes are getting reworked / existing traits * skills are getting rebalanced.

If I were an Anet employee I’d be scratching my head. “This.. This was what they asked for, why’re they so mad!? What else do we do?!”

I’m not sure why the ranger trait is grandmaster, seems like it should be combined with another or be a minor. I can’t wait to hear some of the logic behind these traits

garethh.3518:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/traits-unleashed-forty-new-traits-and-more/

New grandmasters for every class, 40 new traits, and more! They weren’t kidding when they said big changes, particularly hyped for that lockdown Mesmer buff!

The game needs to avoid strong passive or AI specs since the game isn’t team centric. Team based fighting is social, which gives allot of lee-way, it also in and of itself adds allot to the skill-floor and skill-cap making mindless specs and traits seem allot less mindless. GW2 doesn’t do that, which means it needs, it kittening NEEDS dynamic active specs.

So…
Seriously?
These are their ideas to make the game better?
Click-and-forget-me bonuses to vitality or healing or attack speed…. like what the kitten?
Are you sure they didn’t say PvE patch on the 15th???

I mean the elementalist one is the closest to a PvP change (if useless) I’ve always saw allot of good potential in ele-healing, it is allot of fun and positioning and teamwork related.
To do that, they really should have focused on revamping a few skills though, to make it more play/counter-play centric, and stronger, so it could be a viable, entertaining mid.
Like adding channeled heals or more lingering aoes that heal.
Passive buffing what healing eles have already at the cost of a tier 3 trait… it’s not bad, but it’s sure as hell not good either.

jmatb.6307:

All I did reading that article is lol

Guys this is a PvE WvW game. Period

It kittening sucks.
They have no will to make PvP anything more than a mini-game for PvE’ers.

Of course there have no will to make it anything more than a mini-game, and with good reason. I’ve got a post about that on here somewhere. In any case, they stopped calling this a pvp patch a long time ago – it’s a feature patch for the game, the main part of the game being pve (and the other part being wvw).

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Yeah, like skcamow said it’s a bit early to start sprouting tears when every traitline is getting a new grandmaster / sigils & runes are getting reworked / existing traits * skills are getting rebalanced.

If I were an Anet employee I’d be scratching my head. “This.. This was what they asked for, why’re they so mad!? What else do we do?!”

Listen. That’s all they had to do. Shaking things up is great when you already have some reasonable form of balance, but they do not.

Why should we think this isn’t “Healing Skills 2.0” – a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?

brannigan.9831:

butch.8136:

^we’ll be all testing it in a few weeks.

Yes and dealing with the pain inflicted by it for months.

Well, you rather have no change? Competitive pvp is pretty much death atm, so doesn’t really matter how they release their changes.

Power Block will be really good against thieves “Sarcasm Intended”

Countless

The new patch should be released on 1st April. It would do the content of the patch justice.

I don’t like almost any of them. They are a bunch of passive crap that mostly inflates and buffs current specs through passive increases or just provide a boring and passive alternative (there’s no direct interaction with the player, they just happen). +10% more attack speed while wielding a sword/axe/maze offhand… OMG! so impactful! so awesome! this opens up so many builds! …really? +3000 more hp… really? That amount of feedback and you come up with that? I’m really disappointed in this regard.
Only two of them are worth of any mention. Fortified Turrets and Power Block. The last one being quite possibly too strong. You can’t add penalizing interrupts to a class that has a ridiculous amount of them already (even more when buffed through traits; immob or 2/3k damage). Unless this particular trait has a hefty internal CD, you are not providing any meaningful counterplay unless you seriously tone down the pletora of interrupts mesmers have (if they are going to have such strong interrupts, they should have less of them). Mantra of Distraction>Power Lock (instant, 1200 range anyone?). How do you expect me to counterplay that? Fakecasting is a stupid attempt at counterplay mechanic that only favours those with less lag, you also said many times before that you wouldn’t introduce something to force just that. Lame.

With that said, I’m expecting to see the other changes (runes, sigils, trait rebalance, etc.) to take into account the whole picture before my final and better-founded /rant. If the, yet, unknown changes are even remotely like these, don’t expect me to be any positive.

Can’t really pass judgement on the new traits without actually seeing how they affect the game/meta. What bothers me is that while they’re hyping up this balance patch, there’s no mention of new game modes. If there were more game modes, certain specs that are considered OP might be rendered useless. That’s why I feel there should be less emphasis on the conquest meta. Actually there should be less emphasis on conquest period and the devs shouldn’t be wracking their brains trying to balance everything when they should be making a more diverse game that doesn’t force you into one mode that everyone’s been tired three months after launch.

People need to realize that there is never going to be complete balance (although the devs should act sooner on hotfixing certain things in order to keep off-balance in check) and that doesn’t bother me one bit. What Anet should focus on is class specialization and give up on 1v1 balance. If you want to tank, play a guard or war. If you want to dps, play an ele or thief, etc., or at least limit each class to performing two roles well(e.g. eles can heal or dps, but can never bunker).

The no “trinity” idea was great prior to launch, but after a year and a half, I feel it’s never going to work because (1) it alienates a group of potential players who actually enjoy healing, and (2) there’s more balance in a team setting if say, two dps classes goes up against a healer and tank. Even the top esports games (a la LoL) have defined roles that each player must fulfill in order to win and that forces players to actually use teamwork.

garethh.3518:

The game needs to avoid strong passive or AI specs since the game isn’t team centric. Team based fighting is social, which gives allot of lee-way, it also in and of itself adds allot to the skill-floor and skill-cap making mindless specs and traits seem allot less mindless. GW2 doesn’t do that, which means it needs, it kittening NEEDS dynamic active specs.

So…
Seriously?
These are their ideas to make the game better?
Click-and-forget-me bonuses to vitality or healing or attack speed…. like what the kitten?
Are you sure they didn’t say PvE patch on the 15th???

I mean the elementalist one is the closest to a PvP change (if useless) I’ve always saw allot of good potential in ele-healing, it is allot of fun and positioning and teamwork related.
To do that, they really should have focused on revamping a few skills though, to make it more play/counter-play centric, and stronger, so it could be a viable, entertaining mid.
Like adding channeled heals or more lingering aoes that heal.
Passive buffing what healing eles have already at the cost of a tier 3 trait… it’s not bad, but it’s sure as hell not good either.

This is more likely what I feel after reading the preview for the upcoming patch. The things that are most likely complained about in-game like passive and AI stuff are now being increased by adding more passive traits and AI stuff improvements. Yeah, the previewed traits are the tip of the iceberg but knowing that the things previewed are of this kind, I can’t help myself thinking too negatively for the things yet to be revealed.

Whereas traits like Evasive Arcana, Deceptive Evasion, Illusionary Persona, and the upcoming change to Dhuumfire, which changes how skills work or add flavor to simple skills and dodges are much for fun to experiment, play with and play against, passive bonuses and stats does not add more depth to gameplay. I know things like these need more time and creativity, but waiting for too long just to see a bunch of “click-and-forget-me bonuses” just saddens me.