Guild Wars 2

I’m sure this isn’t the biggest influence on why the top Meta classes are as dominant as they are, but it occurred to me while looking through the different trait specs for the various classes that when Guardian and Mesmer were more dominant both had their vigor on crit traits nerfed from 5s recharge (essentially perma-vigor) to 10s recharge. Meanwhile, the current meta classes never had their easy perma-vigor traits reduced… Elementalist’s vigor-on-crit trait remains at 5s recharge and Engineer’s vigor-on-swiftness trait also remains at 5s recharge. It’s a small change but can make a fairly big difference, so I hope this will be fixed to bring all the vigor traits in-line before HoT is released.

Vigor has been a problem since release.

Mesmer and Guardians were minor traits, Ele requires a 2 point investment and engi a 4 point investment for 50% uptime (it’s bottlenecked by speedy kits). That’s probably the reasoning behind it. Thief can also have permavigor with a 6 point investment but you don’t see much of accro lately. Eles access to vigor is probably undervalued yeah.

Engineer’s vigor trait was indirectly nerfed, when speedy kits ICD was increased from 5s to 10s (with 10s of swiftness).

Ele’s vigor was not nerfed for a few reasons:
- Aside from D/D ele (which takes every possible defensive skill/trait it can), survivability on ele is really bad (with very long CD’s on survival skills). Even the “next-best” ele spec besides the 0/0/2/6/6, which is S/F ele isn’t viable b/c survival mechanics are on a long CD so you get rekt by patient thieves.
- Ele survival mechanics are healing and some evasion, while mesmers have more ports and stealth and guards have blocks and heals. (You can’t look at cross-profession comparisons 1×1, but need to account for the whole thing).
- Ele’s vigor trait is a major-tier trait, not a free 1-pt minor trait.

you can essentially get perma vigor on ranger too, but that still doesnt mean it can make it into the meta because of it.

The current issue is not vigor itself, it is rather the amount of extra heals coupled with strong base heals.