Guild Wars 2

Currently, every single class has a whole slew of utilities that are unusable in almost every build. While some of these are good in pve, some of them are unusable everywhere. What utilities are wholly unviable for you class, and what could be changed to make them viable?

Ele:
Earth Shield (not viable anywhere) – Make it 1/4s cast and put a stunbreak on it
Signet of Water (not viable anywhere) – Make the active 1/4s cast and cure 2 conditions (maybe make signet builds viable)
Glyph of storms (not pvp viable) – Make it 3/4s cast, reduce CD to 45, reduce field durations by 25%
Glyph of lesser elementals (not viable anywehre) – keep it this way
Arcane Power (not viable anywhere) – Reduce CD to 20s
Glyph of elemental harmony – Reduce cast time to 1s

Warrior:
Kick (not viable anywhere) – Add might/fury/other boon
Mending – Make it a Physical utility

Ranger:
Most utilities seem to at least have a niche use. Trapper runes should help traps be better in stronghold type maps.
Heal as One (not very good anywhere) – Make this a survival skill

Necro:
Corrosive Poison Cloud (not viable anwhere) – remove the self-weakness. Self infliction seems to be a revenant mechanic now anyway.
Blood is Power (maybe viable in pve) – Activating now gives 10% lifeforce
Well of Blood – Reduce the CD to 30, rebalance active portions

Guardian:
Signet of wrath – Give retaliation on active?
Most utilities seem to have a niche use

Thief:
Traps – perhaps make them ground targeted. Alternatively, trapper runes might do the trick too. Adding a stunbreak to one might also be nice.

Engie:
A little different because of kit reliance. Some gadgets could use some work, but others have talked about this. Please feel free to add below.

Mesmer:
Phantasmal Disenchanter – Make this a stunbreak, lower the cast time. Perhaps apply reveal aoe around the disenchanter every few seconds.
Mimic – Make the copied boons shared aoe.
Mirror (not pvp viable) – Reduce cast time to 1s.

Please feel free to add your own suggestions below. Do not add skills that are very commonly used in pvp, or even work very well in a slightly off-meta build. Please only address skills that could be improved to increase skill variability and not risk buffing the top meta specs.

Kick should have a high damage ratio so traiting for Physical Utilities would actually be an okay option. Double it’s base damage or something, it probably won’t be broken even then.

Don’t forget Well of Darkness on Necromancer. That’s a pretty abysmal utility in its current incarnation.

Necros:
CPC – absorbs projectiles
Blood is Power – applies 4 stacks of bleeds for half duration to enemy, same 2 bleeds to yourself and 6 stacks of aoe might for 12 seconds.
Well of Blood – reduce CD to 35 seconds, increase healing power scaling back to prenerf levels
Well of Darkness – reduce CD to 30 seconds.
Well of Corruption – Now an ice field
Signet of Vampirism – Back to the beta version of this skill that was actually useful and had an impact before Anet changed it to kitten then balance the numbers, not the effects.
Plague Signet – reduce cooldown to 50 seconds
Signet of Locust – reduce cooldown to 30 seconds
Minions – 3/4 second cast time, immune to conditions and crits (simply die to easily to aoe)
Blood Fiend – Active now removes 3 conditions
Spectral Wall – reduce cooldown to 40 seconds, make it wider so that it’s easier to blast.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Don’t forget Well of Darkness on Necromancer. That’s a pretty abysmal utility in its current incarnation.

Yea, I am not a necro expert. What changes would you propose that could make it useful while maintaining the theme and intent of the skill?

BlackBeard.2873:

Yea, I am not a necro expert. What changes would you propose that could make it useful while maintaining the theme and intent of the skill?

I’d say make it a Smoke Field but we don’t exactly have a viable way of using a field ourselves anyway.

BlackBeard.2873:

Blood is Power (maybe viable in pve) – Activating now gives 10% lifeforce

Would you be amused if I told you that back at launch when they were changing BiP’s functionality every week or so it actually functioned like that for a while. Just gave a straight 20% LF on use and nothing else.

I think in Well of Darkness’s case I’d definitely recommend the cooldown be much faster. 40 seconds is pretty horrendous given that something like Black Powder is available for so much less and is on a weapon set no less. Well of Darkness could potentially even use a damage component on the order of Well of Corruption and still be fair.

Signet of Vampirism should really just be changed to life steal on hit rather than life steal when hit. Its current form is basically garbage no matter what.

Also, let’s talk about Litany of Wrath on Guardians. Even when you fully trait meditations, which is when this healing skill should shine, you still never want to take it over Shelter. Honestly I would like it more if Merciful Intervention were made into a heal skill with a teleport/stunbreak, but given Litany’s current design, the best I could think of here is to reduce the cooldown on it and increase the base healing component by 25%. That would go a long way to justify losing the huge block on Shelter.

Aktium.9506:

I’d say make it a Smoke Field but we don’t exactly have a viable way of using a field ourselves anyway.

I’ve always liked this idea too. Necromancers could use the smoke field.

I’d actually suggest a new form of Utilities that would encourage very teamfight-oriented builds and teamplay:

I’ve written this in another thread before:

" Just give each class 1+ Utilities they can target on teammates and teammates only – not on themselves! Or maybe it would just get way weaker if they use it in themselves. Sth like this:

Guardian: 20 sec CD, target ally gets Aegis and 5 seconds of protection. If used on yourself, gain 3 seconds of protection (instant)
Ele: 15 s CD, target ally gets Frost Aura for 3 seconds and 5 seconds of regeneration, if used on yourself, gain 5 seconds of regeneration. (3/4 s casttime)
Ranger: 30 sec CD, send your pet to guard target ally for 5 seconds, absorbing 50% of the dmg received and drawing two conditions from them. If used on yourself, your pet will draw two conditions from you. (instant)"

I heavily stand behind this being a good Idea and I can’t see a reason why we can’t have a single skill that can be targeted on teammates. Some of my best memories from GW1 are becuase of skills like “infuse health” and other skills you target on teammates as the healer.

Yes, there are no dedicated healers anymore in GW2, but why does every supportive skill have to be a dumbed down easy to use AoE like stuff on the warrior-warhorn, staff-ele, shouts etc. It’s just all stuff with massive AoE you basically spam when they aren’t on CD…. ;(

just give some good skills with fairly low CD but appropriate strength/duration (rather short) so you can use them intelligently on allies. Not another insanely strong Skill with huge CD’s plz!

*Edit:

A few other Ideas:

Mesmer 15s CD: Target ally gets 1,5 Seconds of distortion, cannot be used on self. (instant)

Mesmer 20s CD: teleport target ally to you and leave behind a clone of him on the original location. (3/4s casttime)