Guild Wars 2

Hi guys, so we all have our opinion on what sucks and what is nice in the new traitline.
After almost 2 weeks I will be giving my opinion from a PVP/WvW perspective with a few shoutouts to PvE since some traits are purely useful in that setting.

I will outline each traitline in summary and then follow up after each trait individual description with the goods and the bads.
After the trait discussion I will be discussing a few other things that are relevant after the changes.

Please use my numbering for easier discussion.

1. Explosives : This traitline has always been a staple of any build and mostly centers around turrets, bombs and nades.

1.1 Evasive Powder Keg – the ICD on this is extremely unnecessary, especially post vigor nerf, it is gated by Endurance.

1.2.1 Grenadier – Despite the known bug this trait is still pretty good, i don’t have anything to say really.

1.2.2 Explosive decent – Kind of takes diversity out of the tree. But yeah, niche usage in WvW.

1.2.3 Glass Cannon – PvE orientated trait, maybe a bit of use on SD builds with good burst. Mostly useless otherwise and flavourless trait I really feel is boring, don’t even know why this is in explosives. Should have been in firearms to replace High Caliber or something if they really wanted it in the game.

1.3 Steel packed powder – meh, nothing special but makes sense.

1.4.1 Aim assisted rocket – I like this, its clearly a bit buggy and not working with all explosives traits though.

1.4.2 Shaped Charge – Boring again, these boring traits feel like minors… Don’t get it… Anyway oriented to PvE more than anyhing else.

1.4.3 Short Fuse – Lovit. Although we all know the radius of these bombs are odd, I cant seemt to figure out if 240 is baseline and if so, not in all game modes.

1.5 Explosive Powder – this being a minor in Expl is great and very impactful on most builds, sadly this minor is better and more important than bloody Shaped charge, go figure.

1.6.1 Siege Rounds – while a pretty cool trait, i honestly think this could have been a minor to replace shaped charge, alternatively leaving it as a GM and added a dmg boost to it for mortar would be nice.

1.6.2 Shrapnel – Love the cripple on this but the bleeding is terrible post condi changes. Chance is too low for Bombs too.

1.6.3 Thermobaric Detonation – overall a game changing trait in idea that promotes skillful and interesting play, but in practicality useless. You sacrific endurance for it to get an extra blast, but due to the CD on Evasive Powder keg, this trait will see no use. Very disapointing.

Now for a quick discussion.
Explosions was always the tree you went deep into for meaningful gameplay defining traits. This is still the case in many way but most of the traits are underwhelming.
Short fuse is VERY impactful but the whole traitline is balanced around 3 grenades per skill instead of one bomb. This promotes the grenade kit way more, nades were always better but bombs have never been this badly suboptimal, the extra fields barely incentivize this using bombs now.
For condi engineers we have to go into this tree, but the only reason to do so is for shrapnel (the vuln isn’t reliable enough), but shrapnel is quite useless after the condi changes, bleeding means little vs the insane poison, torment, burning or confusion some classes can stack VERY quickly.

2. Firearms : Condi heavy line pre and post 23rd as well as weapon improvement, however more crits has been added as well.

2.1 Sharpshooter – Not bad, but as mentioned, bleeding sucks these days.

2.2.1 Chemical rounds – Now from my rudimentary testing (i could be wrong) the condi duration ONLY applies to the condis directly applied by the pistol itself, not traits proc’d by the pistol. I am not sure if this is intended or not, but WOW that is bad. A good engineer uses their weapon so little compared to kits.

2.2.2 Heavy Armor Exploit – Meh, its okay I guess. But really nothing special.

2.2.3 High Caliber – This fits pretty well with the engineers short to medium range playstyle, I do think the radius needs in increase. Maybe 320-360?

2.3 Hematic Focus – We apply ons of bleeds, so makes sense, boring as it might be. 10% is plenty and significant.

2.4.1 Pinpoint precision – On paper this looks nice, but Flat conversion traits have never been great for condi, its usually better to apply more condis rather than have flat increases, due to that, this trait is very underwhelming.

2.4.2 Skilled marksmen – The CD reduction is quite nice for some builds but honestly the attack speed increase is pointless. We never actually use autoattacks to DPS. Overall a nice trait, but considering what some classes have gotten for their weapon traits, quite underwhelming.

2.4.3 No scope – This i REALLY like. Unlike the more boring High Caliber going into tight range just to gain fury for a burst and then creating distance is really a nice mechanic.

2.5 Serrated Steel – Bleeding you apply last longer. Terribly boring and incroaches on Warrior territory. Since bleeding sucks, this isn’t helpful whatsoever.

2.6.1 Juggernaut – Decent I guess. Interval can be changed to every 2seconds on Stab though. FT still is relatively bad choice to be camping in, decreasing the interval can incentivize it a bit more. Alternatively the increased damage on FT should be added as FT dmg is terrible even with the old trait.

2.6.2 Modified Ammunition – Never been a great trait but has its uses in PvE. Honestly don’t think this deserves to be a GM.

2.6.3 Incendiary Powder – Sounds good, feels terrible compared to the old IP. Sure the old IP was a bit too strong. But this is pretty bad, it might be bugged though. Have not had a chance to test.

Discussion :
This trait line was always quite underwhelming. Going into it now still isn’t great. Its condi focus is pretty lackluster but very much improves our CritChance.
Overall there are very few game changing traits in this line and that saddens me, we are at the second tree and very few traits stand out as gameplay altering, among those that do are more niche play that few people will end up using like juggernaut.
The lack of proper conditions besides burning also means that condi engineer will fall out of favour completely.

3. Inventions : Always been about utility and defense, more so now.

3.1 Cleansing Synergy – Absolutely amazing trait! Love it for being a minor.

3.2.1 Overshield – On paper this really sounds nice, i have always been a fan of the shield on all classes. However the sad thing is the way it applies Protection, at the START of shield skill usage. This means that after the 3second block on shield4, we only get 1/4 of the protection in reality. Sure there are unblockable skills, but these are few and far between. Oh and you say it applies to allies? Sure, on a rediculously small 240 radius. YAY!

3.2.2 AMR – Has not change, this trait is better than anything else in Inventions. Nothing else worth taking in the adept slot. This is BETTER at supporting your team, its better at self sustain even considering the added block and protection on shield. I mean really, who thought this up?

3.2.3 Autodefense bomb dispenser – Remove this, its junk without even considering the insane 30 seconds CD. Geez.

3.3 Heal Resonator – Pointless. For more reasons than just small radius.

3.4.1 Experimental turrets – Meh for the few that want to run niche builds, could increase the duration on most of the boons though.

3.4.2 Soothing Detonation – Quite a cool trait. Like the idea and fits our playstyle.

3.4.3 Mecha legs – very much a good trait. Would even have competed with the old speedy kits in this form.

3.5 Energy Amplifier – We all know how great 250 healing power is right? Meh…

3.6.1 Advanced turrets – Niche build, don’t care, turrets suck. Although some people would like you to add autorepair to the turrets somewhere. This could be the place.

3.6.2 Bunker Down – Pretty cool trait that fits amazingly well with our thematic. The healing isn’t passive so it promotes skillful play which is a refreshing adition.

3.6.3 Medical Dispersion Field – Cool idea, wrong place. Two support like traits in the same GM slot seems stupid. Its not a bad trait but just seems odd.

Discussion :
Inventions got a lot of love with these changes and most of them are good. Most of the traits are defining your role and gameplay significantly even if some are niche.
Devs did really well on this one! Bar the adept choices obviously.

4. Alchemy : My personal favourate now that it effects my favourate kit the Elixir gun. This has always been about elixir and passively gained boons. Still is with some extra perks.

4.1 Hidden flast – Hasn’t changed, still good for a minor! Far from boring considering the thematic.

4.2.1 Invigorating speed – Despite the buff to the trait itself, this is underwhelming, especially with Adrenal implant being a choice. Not bad by any means, but yeah, could be better.

4.2.2 Protection injection – by far the best choice in the adept tier, pretty much vs any class this is extremely good!

4.2.3 Health Insurance – Niche again, ill leave it be. However the medkit really really really is bad.

4.3 Transmute – Has not changed, I like it, always have. Has even more synergy in this alchemy now.

4.4.1 Inversion Enzyme – Really cool trait, has great synergy. Even considering that Engis can not keep up with condi cleansing post patch in PVP.

4.4.2 Self Regulating defenses – never liked it, never will. But its not bad and fits well.

4.4.3 Backpack regenerator – great trait as always.

4.5. Alchemical tinctures – Good that its a minor now.

4.6.1 HGH – great trait now that it effects EG skills(some of them atleast). Can be taken for great benefit even if you just use EG if you run any might duration.

4.6.2 Stimulent supplier – I like it, it just does not feel grandmaster. The 600 drop range is a little too large though.

4.6.3 Iron Blooded – Pointless really. has no meaningful gameplay inpact as any grandmaster trait should be. Also does not feel like GM material but if moved down to master, would be cool.

Discussion :
Right so another mostly well done traitline by the devs.
Ignoring the botchjob of the adept choice there just is one or two things feel wrong but overall quite nice.
Its worth noting that the build defining traits are mostly in the master tier with the exception of HGH.

5. Tools : Always has been about tool belt skills with some utility mixed in. Still is.

5.1 Optimized activation – Post vigor nerf and the existence of Adrenal implant(does not stack with vigor) makes this useless.

5.2.1 Static discharge – Some weird bugs reported for it, has its uses. Always been fun. Nothing to say otherwise.

5.2.2 Reactive lenses – INSANE cooldown on this one, I would rather have shorted duration immunity to blind and shorter duration fury than have a 40sec CD on this thing.

5.2.3 Power Wrench – Previously a staple of A LOT of good builds, it has fallen out of favour because investing deep into Tools is not that worth it, sigil of energy outperforms Adrenal implant and the new vigor.

5.3 Mechanized Deployment – Fine and needed if you want to prioritize toolbelt skills.

5.4.1 Streamlined Kits – I have no way to express my sadness at how bad this is post patch. Its nice that we have an icon to indicate the cooldown, but no engineer in their right mind would swap to a kit for a specific effect just to swap out again and lose an opportunity for a much better usage of skills. Separate the cooldowns(increase and decrease individually as needed) and lower the CD on Swiftness application/duration.

5.4.2 Lock on – Love the flavour of this trait.

5.4.3 Takedown round – Thematically fitting, but low damage, overall boring and don’t like it. Guess it fine in PvE.

5.5 Excessive Energy – Its ok i guess.

5.5.1 Kinetic Battery – Has its uses. Even considering the long CD.

5.5.2 Adrenal implant – fine i guess, however it does not stack with vigor. It is also outperformed by Sigil of energy, which feels like its a must these days.

5.5.3 Gadgeteer – The only trait I have not used extensively. So I reserve my opinion on it.

Discussion :
Is it really worth going into this line? Hell no.
The only truly useful trait is power wrench.
Only time I would bother going for tools is when using SD or some niche Toolbelt build.
Over all failed traitline by the devs.

A quick final summary. Damage traits are poor for both condi and power, condi is few and far between and power is too specific conditions(such as aboe 90% HP) other than increased crit chance.
I honestly think we got the short end of the stick and I hope that engi will not fall into the support only meta after the grenade bug is fixed, as the traits seem to imply.

Thanks all for reading! Look forward to reading your responses!

Seems like pretty accurate assessments. I think the tooltip for Takedown Round is wrong though, I notice it doing about the same damage as Aim Assisted Rocket, possibly slightly more. So it’s not a bad trait for pve if you take Inventions as well, since Mecha Legs basically replaces Streamlined Kits. It would be a lot better if they got rid of the stupid health threshold, since the 1-second delay is already enough of a downside.

ANort.1425:

Seems like pretty accurate assessments. I think the tooltip for Takedown Round is wrong though, I notice it doing about the same damage as Aim Assisted Rocket, possibly slightly more. So it’s not a bad trait for pve if you take Inventions as well, since Mecha Legs basically replaces Streamlined Kits. It would be a lot better if they got rid of the stupid health threshold, since the 1-second delay is already enough of a downside.

Inventions is worth going into as no matter what, so yes.
So if you are correct, then Takedown Round might not be so bad, I do think that the 50% threshold is odd.

Something interesting a user on reddit said that I completely agree with :

Traits like Siege Rounds that affect Elite/Primary weapon or Healing skills are limiting the choices for any builds that don’t run this specific skills. They should have added some bonuses to Supplycrate and elixir X to this trait, you can’t take multiple at the same time anyway so it would only increase your choices when you are running other elites. This problem is especially noticeable in Firearms: if you run pistol, you get 3 choices on adept, but only 2 on master. If you rune rifle on the other hand, you get 2 choices on adept and 3 on master. If they merged this two weapon specific traits together then we could have much more interesting choices on every line. The current split is a waste of trait space in an already limiting system.

Jut going to disagree on Heal Resonator and Medical Dispersion Field. Heal resonator is still a regen on yourself disregarding the benefit to allies, which is at least tangible compared to some other minors, and generally useful any time you actually need healing. Medical Dispersion field sucks because it’s hard to control (since heals from any source triggers it and the cooldown). It needs to be adjusted so that it only triggers off your own heals and/or have the cooldown removed (even if you reduce the % at the same time and/or limit number of targets affected)

Personal opinion : now firearms is better than explosive. inventions is better than alchemy … if i have to chose betwenn them , excluding hgh build i prefer to give away alchemy). Tools is a strange trait. I saw it bad at start but now i am reviewing my idea on it . Tool sinergy really well with alchemy for hgh becouse of toolbet reduce cd and it is really strong for perma vigor and lock on … so at the end , i think the best combination of builds are base on firearms, invention tools or firearm alchemy tools ( 6 sec stealth every 32 sec is quite strong as having 1 elixir S every 24 sec )

I mostly play an SD Rifle build in PvE as I despise grenade kit and multi-kit builds. Granted, I don’t do high level play; however, I do play enough to have an idea of the new changes.

I don’t completely agree with your assessment of Firearms. Considering it was previously giving extras for being at mid to long range, it is now a HUGE improvement as Engineers are strongest at close to mid range. It also adds a ton of synergy with the upcoming Hammer. I do agree that the range on some things needs to be increased. Your assessment on Sharpshooter I disagree with. Lowering the cast time and CD of Blunderbuss and Jump Shot have made them easier to land (at least for me) and land more often. I do notice the difference in the increase…but again…I don’t play a meta build so I use Rifle AA.

Tools has a lot of synergy with Firearms now (especially if you’re like me and run an SD Rifle build). It’s easier to dodge and easier to stay in melee. This will probably have a lot of Synergy with Hammer as well. Yeah…sucks Adrenal doesn’t stack with vigor, but the other two have their uses. I do agree on the assessments on each trait, but overall the traitline is stronger with more synergy.

Only thing I have to say about Grenadier is that I wish they made the radius increase baseline and the trait increase velocity and reduce cooldowns of grenade skills by 20%. Really miss that cooldown reduction like in the old Short Fuse.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Only thing I have to say about Grenadier is that I wish they made the radius increase baseline and the trait increase velocity and reduce cooldowns of grenade skills by 20%. Really miss that cooldown reduction like in the old Short Fuse.

Sorry , i was speaking only from a spvp point of view . In my opinion for spvp firearms is better than explosive

PierPiero.9142:

Sorry , i was speaking only from a spvp point of view . In my opinion for spvp firearms is better than explosive

Wasn’t responding to what you said. That was just my own opinion on that one trait.

Ouch, looks like we have a 90 second on AMR now. I’m seriously considering autodefense bomb dispenser now (running rifle build). Bleh…

I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said Novauke. All except the idea that Chemical Rounds isn’t good. It may only affect pistols but, considering that if you’re using pistols you’re definitely going to be using the 3 skills on it often, it works exceedingly well.

But yea, I’m glad it’s not just me that sees the weakness in a lot of the traits.

What really bothers me is how poorly bombs fair now. My favourite kit before, and because of the overlap with gernades they suffer horribly. At least pre-patch you could sort of justify them relative to gernades, if you squinted a bit. Now I only run them out of pity and a desire for a messy death at close range.

My problem mostly comes from the lack of effective grandmaster traits we now have.
Gms used to be the build defining traits and some of them like juggernaut still are, but there are so many that when I come across I just think “why is this here?”. I feel part of the problem as to why many engineers are having a hard time finding a new build is that a lot of these GMs are unappealing. Simply, If they don’t make the player want to use them, then you will have little build diversity. These are some of traits that should be changed if we want to have more builds open to engineers.

In explosives:
Evasive powder Keg – It can probably support a build, but no where close enough to define a playstyle by itself. And it doesn’t even buff a skill, its a trait that buffs a trait.

In Firearms:
The problem in this traitline is that all these GMs support condition builds, yet the only rifle trait is here. So if you are going for power rifle, theres not much to pick other than maybe modified ammo, and then that only shines in boss encounters. My suggestion is to add another effect to MA that benefits power builds.

In Alchemy:
Iron Blooded: Running around with an average 4- 6% damage reduction in any form of pvp isn’t going to do much. Unless you are planning on stacking this on top of protection for a little extra mitigation, you would be better of just taking protection injection or overshield for an actual noticeable damage decrease. My suggestion is to either increase % or drop it to master so people have the option to take HGH + IB, instead of having them compete for just one.

Penguin.5197:

My problem mostly comes from the lack of effective grandmaster traits we now have.
Gms used to be the build defining traits and some of them like juggernaut still are, but there are so many that when I come across I just think “why is this here?”. I feel part of the problem as to why many engineers are having a hard time finding a new build is that a lot of these GMs are unappealing. Simply, If they don’t make the player want to use them, then you will have little build diversity. These are some of traits that should be changed if we want to have more builds open to engineers.

In explosives:
Evasive powder Keg – It can probably support a build, but no where close enough to define a playstyle by itself. And it doesn’t even buff a skill, its a trait that buffs a trait.

In Firearms:
The problem in this traitline is that all these GMs support condition builds, yet the only rifle trait is here. So if you are going for power rifle, theres not much to pick other than maybe modified ammo, and then that only shines in boss encounters. My suggestion is to add another effect to MA that benefits power builds.

Exactly, GMs are rarely build defining.
Condis are spread across firearms and explosives but the rest of the traits in those lines don’t really benefit condi builds much…

Dirame.8521:

I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said Novauke. All except the idea that Chemical Rounds isn’t good. It may only affect pistols but, considering that if you’re using pistols you’re definitely going to be using the 3 skills on it often, it works exceedingly well.

But yea, I’m glad it’s not just me that sees the weakness in a lot of the traits.

2 skills, you should never be auto attacking with pistol. Of which only one is used for reliable damage and utility and the duration of it matter, confusion/blind.

Novuake.2691:

Dirame.8521:

I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said Novauke. All except the idea that Chemical Rounds isn’t good. It may only affect pistols but, considering that if you’re using pistols you’re definitely going to be using the 3 skills on it often, it works exceedingly well.

But yea, I’m glad it’s not just me that sees the weakness in a lot of the traits.

2 skills, you should never be auto attacking with pistol. Of which only one is used for reliable damage and utility and the duration of it matter, confusion/blind.

it’s for pp. you can get some insane long burns with it.

Yea, I was pretty surprised when I first looked at the blowtorch tooltip with my condi/balth/condi-duration setup.

I don’t have screenshot but gw2skills shows same figures:

http://i.imgur.com/o9NZqU5.png

Yup, that’s 26k of burning from one skill.

(Build)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqalUUhSuY7WwALw6FLsF1YbMGfB4HWiBgYHVFPBA-TVyCABQoEEgHEwJ7PAoegX0QYgJIsU+5p6PUcCBCAgAMzyMAO6RP6RP6Rbmz8oz8oJFAMTjA-w

Yea, I realise that most folks will be able to cleanse rather than remaining on-fire for 17 seconds, but you can often bait out the cleanses with the high duration poison of pistol & elixir gun, prybar confusion and AA bleeds.

Oh right, forgot about offhand pistol Never use it.

Then that trait is a little better than I thought