Guild Wars 2

In short, everything is changing and the devs are listening very closely to your feedback right now.

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE POSTING ABOUT THE CHANGES!

Important Notes

1. When you choose your traits, you select three FULL traitlines. This means you get all three minors, one adept, one master, and one grandmaster. Again, that’s three minor traits, not three adept traits.
2. You can NOT choose more than one adept or master in the same line. It MUST be one adept, one master and one grandmaster.
3. This means that it doesn’t really matter what level the traits are in, but rather what they are competing against!
4. If your favorite trait has seemingly disappeared, it is very likely that is is now baseline. For example, Illusionary Persona and Focused Rituals are now simply baseline.
5. Some traits that were considered useless OR promoting bad gameplay will be removed. For example, Dark Armor will be deleted because it’s a weak trait. Clone death traits will be deleted because they promote passive and strange gameplay.
6. All healing and elite skills will be relisted to join groups of skills. For example, Tornado will be a cantrip. Dagger Storm will be a trick. Rampage as One will be a Shout. Mortar will be a KIT (yes, a kit. Get hype).
7. Quickness is now a boon
8. Burning and Poison are changing to stack in intensity. Damage was reduced on both. Poison will NOT stack the healing reduction!
9. Engineer and Mesmer were confirmed to have the most work done on them so far. It’s possible other classes (Like necromancer) will have more work done on them in due time.

For a full list of information from the live stream, read HERE

I see a lot of changes but in the end i dunno if final results will change.

I mean, i see Thief and Mesmer extremely strong (Thief a nuclear weapon and probably mesmer stronger than now with a lot of old traits baseline (IP most of all) and a lot of interesting stuff), Guardian too, and they are already the best zerker classes.

Engi changes a lot, it’s hard to say, IP moved to completely different line, Grenades nerfed in range (from 1500 to 900 is huge) but they reworked completely 2 elites (mortar a new kit and Elixir X with MoA AoE) and there are a lot of stuff TBD so honestly i dunno how it will be new engi (different for sure).

Ranger is interesting but there are a lot of anti-projectiles / reflection skill on other classes so i dunno how it will be the final meta balance.

Necro didn’t surprise me, and warrior i dunno, i see condi warrior (a cancer) stronger and some mods on shout and zerk warrior but honestly mesmer and thief gave me a better impression.

This is in general, after this there is a condi change pretty huge (poison and burning stack is huge) with new condis/buff like slow and resistance and other things are non decided yet.

Everything will change but i dunno if at the end prof tiers will change

I think the changes were presented too soon. Elementalist was good, but the rest were too raw.

In most professions besides elementalist, there is still a lack of focus in many specialization choices. The old system spread traits for specific abilities around or traits which did similar things (swiftness, healing, etc). The new idea seems to want to join them together in the same place, often making you choose between different triggers for an effect, but it’s not there yet.

I think ANET was unwise to reveal HoT so far out and that this livestream was a bid to maintain enthusiasm.

The Engineer looks to me to be getting a thermonuclear buff and stealing a unique Mesmer asset ( Moa ).

Mesmer is losing a playstyle ( condi clone death ) that was a substitute for the difficult to use shatter mechanic. With the amount of AOE in most games and the poor targeting of clones, most shatters are at least partial misses. The clones die prematurely or simply fail to detonate anywhere near the target.

I lost interest after that. Truthfully though, my impression is that ANET has some misperceptions. The devs stated that people believe ANET dislikes Engineer. In truth, Engineer is currently OP or nearly so and looking for a huge buff. I’ve seen 5 engi teams dominate a match with very little effort. Now they will have a mobile mortar? and an extra elite that will stop all powers and heal for an enemy team? ( aoe moa ) Insanity in my view.

Necromancers don’t have a single reflect skill to counter ranger.. and don’t even get me started on the overbuffed ranger.

This presentation needed more thought before it went live.

Ithilwen.1529:

I think ANET was unwise to reveal HoT so far out and that this livestream was a bid to maintain enthusiasm.

The Engineer looks to me to be getting a thermonuclear buff and stealing a unique Mesmer asset ( Moa ).

Mesmer is losing a playstyle ( condi clone death ) that was a substitute for the difficult to use shatter mechanic. With the amount of AOE in most games and the poor targeting of clones, most shatters are at least partial misses. The clones die prematurely or simply fail to detonate anywhere near the target.

I lost interest after that. Truthfully though, my impression is that ANET has some misperceptions. The devs stated that people believe ANET dislikes Engineer. In truth, Engineer is currently OP or nearly so and looking for a huge buff. I’ve seen 5 engi teams dominate a match with very little effort. Now they will have a mobile mortar? and an extra elite that will stop all powers and heal for an enemy team? ( aoe moa ) Insanity in my view.

Necromancers don’t have a single reflect skill to counter ranger.. and don’t even get me started on the overbuffed ranger.

This presentation needed more thought before it went live.

I feel like whatever mesmers lost in Clone-Death, which was a very passive and hated playstyle which accomplished little in the first place, we gained in phantasm and condition and interrupt. Our Lockdown builds were buffed into what seems to be powerful viability, we’re now the powerhouse of confusion [and even torment] that we’ve been wanting to be, and phantasms for both support, interrupt, and condition seems to be a huge buff from what it was before.

Simply put, we lost a passive playstyle to give us room for more dense and impactful active playstyles. I’m pretty supportive of the changes, so long as phantasms are indeed powerful enough to justify not taking DE.

@ Dondagora. Switching to condi-clone death has been my first taste of success as a Mesmer. I came in around the time of the huge confusion debuff. and the year of more of being badly underpowered that followed.

Do you honestly think anet will allow an effective confusion build? History says a resounding “NO.”

Sure, shatter is pretty neat, against other Mesmers in the OMFG private arena. Having spent a good year trying to play it in regular pvp and WvW though.. I don’t think it’s viable for an average player as it stands now.

So yes, I’m upset to see condi clone death go. Passive? hardly! I bust my butt kiting and trying to place clones. Unskilled? I downed Chaos Archangel…

Some time ago, one of the devs mentioned losing to a condi – clone death mez and was upset about it. ( that’s what prompted me to try it and possibly why it’s “hated” ) .. I honestly think this is the result of that duel.

Ithilwen.1529:

@ Dondagora. Switching to condi-clone death has been my first taste of success as a Mesmer. I came in around the time of the huge confusion debuff. and the year of more of being badly underpowered that followed.

Do you honestly think anet will allow an effective confusion build? History says a resounding “NO.”

Sure, shatter is pretty neat, against other Mesmers in the OMFG private arena. Having spent a good year trying to play it in regular pvp and WvW though.. I don’t think it’s viable for an average player as it stands now.

So yes, I’m upset to see condi clone death go. Passive? hardly! I bust my butt kiting and trying to place clones. Unskilled? I downed Chaos Archangel…

Some time ago, one of the devs mentioned losing to a condi – clone death mez and was upset about it. ( that’s what prompted me to try it and possibly why it’s “hated” ) .. I honestly think this is the result of that duel.

Hm, I see your point, and will now give my counter point: Confusion, given how much we can see it in the new traits and how its getting a rework [to become more like torment is, but with skills instead of movement], might be coming back into the limelight as our main condition. They’ve buffed many of our other condition options, which I feel is compensation for the clone-death removal. It won’t allow the same builds, of course, but if it’s condi I don’t believe there will be a lack of it from now on.

As for passive, I’d still say it was compared to other builds. I’ll be more careful, however, when speaking of skill, though your killing Chaos Archangel has nothing to do with the skillcap of clone-death builds in general but rather speaks either of your own skill or the strength of clone-death, or both in an ambiguous amount. Still, it is a loss of a style of play, and one that did make sense for mesmers, so I won’t say it was fine for clone-death traits to be pushed aside, just that I don’t feel nerfed even with them removed given the buffs to condi mesmer we’re getting.