Guild Wars 2

Hey guys!

Ever since the trait changes came out I have been testing around with the new traits. After a while I have finally come to this review.
Please note that this is my opinion about the current state of our traits. If you have your specific opinion about it please keep it constructive

• Explosives
  On a first glance at this trait line it seems fairly nice. Many of the needed traits have been merged together which allowes us to make stronger combinations. But after further testing this trait line feels dull to me. Some of the traits, like Glass Cannon and Shaped Charge, seem not very impactful. They do not seem to really affect your playstyle but only some lesser changes in numbers. The worst part of it has yet to come: Once you are using explosives in your build who are not grenades, you seem to be kind of forced into at least one of these traits. Such a shame in my opinion.
  As for it Grandmaster traits they seem really cool and unique. All of them bring a very different effect to the ground which can be used in many ways. The one big thing that is bothering me is the internal cooldown on Explosive Powder Keg and thus Thermobaric Detonation. I have never found any use for this trait since it is way too hard to time your EPK in a certain field when you have to dodge.

• Firearms
  This traitline has some of the best offensive traits of all lines I think. Wether it is condition or power or even hybrid you are running. There are always traits here that fit in your build. This line also gives me the feeling that it incentiveses you to use your normal weapons more rather than your kits, which is something I like.
  This trait line does have a few downsides however. Again traits like Pinpoint Distribution seem very dull and underwhelming. I also expected some more unique traits for the rifle as instead an unnoticeable 10% more damage speed.

• Inventions
  This was one of the trait lines I was most excited of because it has some very unique traits in it. However….I was let down. I found this to be the most horrible trait line of all.
  To start of I feel like many of the traits seem to be very strong on paper but are really disappointing in practice. I had high expectations for Soothing Detonation however it does not heal yourself at all. Medical Dispersion Field also had high expectations. The 5 second cooldown however killed it for me next to the fact that it can trigger off a very small heal too like a pulse from a elixir shell. This means that it is useless to use my healing skill while standing in such field since it is already on cooldown then.
  There is one trait that I would like to give some credit here and that is Over Shield. This trait has proven to me that it can be very very useful and strong but is now never utilized by me since the other traits are not that good.
  What I think this line really lacks is some good self support. With the loss of Elixir Infused Boms the engineer loss the ability to bunker up. This line desperatly needs some sort of self healing.

• Alchemy
  I will start my pledge here with clapping my hands. This trait line is in my opinion brilliant. It has so much to offer that I cannot miss it in any kind of build in WvW or PvP and has some really original traits.
  Some of the traits here were already well known, so I am not really going to talk about these. However the newcomers are very strong too. Iron Blooded is a brilliant trait that can find a place in many builds just like Stimulant Supplier.
  Ofcourse this trait line does have some downsides. To start off quickly I think that Health Insurance is not very good, but that is probably because of the state Med Kit is in: Very underused because of many reasons. To move further to other traits I come down to Inversion Enzyme. At a first look this trait seems really cool, but on another it seems not that good. This one has most synergy with Elixir Gun #3 and does not allow you to benefit from this trait at all. Only from EG#5 which is sadly only 1 condition converted.

• Tools
  The Tools line is one of those other lines that rarely can be missed. This also seems to be one of the most balanced lines since it offers you utility in many forms and measures. The Vigor nerf made Adrenal Implant totally worth taking in multiple situations.
  The placement in this line is however kind of confusing me. To start off it seems like Gadgeteer got even weaker after the patch. Yes before the patch you had to take 2 traits in order to get the current effect, but your Gadgets would always have additional effects as instead of the strange “after kittens”.
  Also the trait Takedown Round seems very boring in my opinion. I was hoping they would get rid of these kind of traits where something not so special happens at a certain point in the fight making them aventually just flat damage boosters. Lock On is also in a weird place. It is contesting against permanent swiftness and a damage booster while this trait is only effective against targets with stealth making it very situational. I would rather have seem this being stuffed together with a trait as Reactive Lenses which is a cool trait by itself.

• Traits in general
  Something I found very odd was that the Developers team told us that trait specialisations would have those kind of horizontal lines that would reflect a certain playstyle. However there is not a single specialisation where I can see this back.
  Also I think that some traits are currently very underused limiting the ammount of builds the engineer can actually play and are viable. I’m hoping this is just a matter of receiving feedback from us as players and tweaking them.

• Final Verdict
  The engineer specialisation had very high expectations from me and were found to be very disappointing. A lack of unique mechanics, too many unimpactful traits and the strange order of classifying traits made me realise this.
  However I do have to give the team credits for stuff like Kinetic Battery and buffing HgH which did aventually open a few more builds.
  The lockdown of bunker builds was a very big letdown for me and I think that Inventions is the specialisation that most desperatly needs to be looked into.
  The class still functions very well with the limited ammount of viable builds it has and therefore I’d like to give the Engineer traits 6.5 out of 10. Offers limited ammounts of builds and unique mechanics, but the few builds it does offer are incredibly strong. It needs tweaks or maybe even a small overhaul on certain places, but I think I do see a bright future in that

Thank you for reading, or skipping the reading to the final verdict. Whatever you did Let me know how you feel about the traits

Greetings, Fvux

Inventions is probably the worst line. The functionality looks good on paper but any sort of testing would have revealed the clunkiness of trying to utilise them in the fast paced action based combat that is GW2.

Cleansing Synergy, great minor, no 2 ways about it.

Overshield, AMR, ABD, after the nerf AMR just isnt as good, overshield is good and ABD is good, probably should be a smoke field.

Heal resonator is kind of meh as regen as a boon is virtually useless, but its a minor so im not caring too much. It is probably meant to synergise with Energy amplifier for the boost to healing power, but again, meh.

Mecha legs is a solid trait, not only do you get the movement speed increase but a 33% rduction in all movement impairing effects. If you are into turrets im guessing experimental turrets would be a good choice looking at it.

Soothing detonation is crippled by it’s range which is far too small, why wouldnt this be the same as the healing turret at 480 or a blast at 360? Makes no sense to me that you would have this on 240 radius rather than 360 which is what the blast area is if it’s meant to you know, enhance our blasts?

But a mild dip into healing power, say 300, means ur detonation will be 400 with no ICD. So throwing down a water field and blasting it twice will throw out on top of your 2 blasts for 2760(@300 healing power) another 800hps so a total of 3560 burst healing for your group. which is okish, throw some monk runes in there and delicious rice balls for 20% outgoing healing means you now have 4272 burst for those 2 blasts which is tidy.

If the water field was generated by say a healing turret, the healing increases further, throwing down the turret at 300 healing power nets you 2670 burst(add 20% for the outgoing 3204) now add on the 2 blasts plus soothing detonation for a total of 7476. This is all calculated without taking into account the +250 healing power from Energy Amplifier for using a healing skill(healing turret).

Energy amplifier, +250 to the most useless stat in the game when we have regen placed upon us, kind of meh. But again a minor that has synergy with our other minor in this line so im not overly concerned.

Bunker down is ok, i use it in some builds. I have never used or probably will ever use turrets so i cant really comment on advanced turrets. Maybe some turreteer could give a better valuation of the traits worth.

What i can comment on is the worthlessness of medical dispersion field(MDF), as far as i can tell its not even worthy of being a minor trait. Not only is the range on this again useless at 240, a lot of the times when im putting down a water field to blast the healing isnt for me. It is for some group member that really needs that burst. I could be on 95% health when i throw the turret down or the mortar water field. I receive very minimal healing to top me up to full health and 12% of that very minor amount goes to my allies and puts MDF on a 5sec ICD. Or the fact as you mentioned that it can trigger off a pulse from something putting it on a 5 second cooldown.

I hate it how they forced old traits that no1 used on us like “throwable medkits” making med kit unusable and “Kit Refinement” (useless trait!) increasing speedy kits cd from 10s to 20s (cd of kit refinement), so when you get boon striped its gonna take a long time before you get swiftness back. The nerf to vigor + increased cd also ruined the “invigorating speed” + “speedy kits” combo (they should have just kept speedy kits with kitten cd imo). The nerf to backpack regenerator was disappointing (was it necessary? whats your opinion?). I do like how some elixir gun skills are now considered elixirs. The gadgeteer trait then again was a step backwards. Im not gonna name all the useless traits or whine about the good ones that got lost.

Im not much of a grenade user but aren’t you again pigeonholed into the explosives trait line (grenadier to essential) when you want to use grenades ? i vaguely remember they wanted to avoid that or something?

santenal.1054:

Im not much of a grenade user but aren’t you again pigeonholed into the explosives trait line (grenadier to essential) when you want to use grenades ? i vaguely remember they wanted to avoid that or something?

This is true. Grenades without grenadier suck, even though they feel kind of sucky overall since the mortar being introduced allowed them to nerf the nades range and field.

Grenadier should either do more, or just be baseline.

Also, the other big problem with explosives is shrapnel. The condi pressure from this trait is horrible, in part because bleed does too little damage in comparison to burn that does too much damage. If you don’t run mortar, you essentially have a wasted GM trait, since shrapnel and theromobaric both suck. In fact on most traitlines this is the case. In alchemy HGH is good, but with no elixirs, you don’t get much use out of the other two.

Anyway yeah, shrapnel sucks so bad, that incendiary powder should just be moved back there to replace it, and maybe a cele build can sort of come back again like it was prepatch, assuming damage reduction gets improved.

nearlight.3064:

santenal.1054:

Im not much of a grenade user but aren’t you again pigeonholed into the explosives trait line (grenadier to essential) when you want to use grenades ? i vaguely remember they wanted to avoid that or something?

This is true. Grenades without grenadier suck, even though they feel kind of sucky overall since the mortar being introduced allowed them to nerf the nades range and field.

Grenadier should either do more, or just be baseline.

Also, the other big problem with explosives is shrapnel. The condi pressure from this trait is horrible, in part because bleed does too little damage in comparison to burn that does too much damage. If you don’t run mortar, you essentially have a wasted GM trait, since shrapnel and theromobaric both suck. In fact on most traitlines this is the case. In alchemy HGH is good, but with no elixirs, you don’t get much use out of the other two.

Anyway yeah, shrapnel sucks so bad, that incendiary powder should just be moved back there to replace it, and maybe a cele build can sort of come back again like it was prepatch, assuming damage reduction gets improved.

Maybe moving Shrapnel to adept, replacing Explosive Decent, and then IP to replace Shrapnel in Expl GM would be a good idea?

GrandHaven.1052:

nearlight.3064:

santenal.1054:

Im not much of a grenade user but aren’t you again pigeonholed into the explosives trait line (grenadier to essential) when you want to use grenades ? i vaguely remember they wanted to avoid that or something?

This is true. Grenades without grenadier suck, even though they feel kind of sucky overall since the mortar being introduced allowed them to nerf the nades range and field.

Grenadier should either do more, or just be baseline.

Also, the other big problem with explosives is shrapnel. The condi pressure from this trait is horrible, in part because bleed does too little damage in comparison to burn that does too much damage. If you don’t run mortar, you essentially have a wasted GM trait, since shrapnel and theromobaric both suck. In fact on most traitlines this is the case. In alchemy HGH is good, but with no elixirs, you don’t get much use out of the other two.

Anyway yeah, shrapnel sucks so bad, that incendiary powder should just be moved back there to replace it, and maybe a cele build can sort of come back again like it was prepatch, assuming damage reduction gets improved.

Maybe moving Shrapnel to adept, replacing Explosive Decent, and then IP to replace Shrapnel in Expl GM would be a good idea?

Maybe make velocity thing in grandier baseline, and merge granadier then with explosuive descent (Both nades) and create a new trait

The V.8759:

Maybe make velocity thing in grandier baseline, and merge granadier then with explosuive descent (Both nades) and create a new trait

Sounds good! Although I would not mind if they even get rid of the velocity thing completely. Really feels like a wasted trait.

GrandHaven.1052:

The V.8759:

Maybe make velocity thing in grandier baseline, and merge granadier then with explosuive descent (Both nades) and create a new trait

Sounds good! Although I would not mind if they even get rid of the velocity thing completely. Really feels like a wasted trait.

“The velocity thing” is useful in Pvp with the faster pace of the fights currently, and could be even more useful with the “challenging group content” incoming. The main problem in the Explosive traits line is that it’s only “oriented” for nades. We don’t really have a useful grandmaster trait if we don’t use the mortar, glass canon is a joke, the cd on power keg to compensate “a possible use” of a useless random blast finisher grand master trait even more(you will never know when you can use the blast, you only know it is every 10 sec… so “surprise”!, and moreover you need to use a dodge for this).

Oh and overshield is terrible……..

Most of the time you will be blocking for 3 of the 4 second protection… So unless your allies are 240 range from you, it has no use.

GrandHaven.1052:

Oh and overshield is terrible……..

Most of the time you will be blocking for 3 of the 4 second protection… So unless your allies are 240 range from you, it has no use.

It can be used in a very supportive way. For exmaple I tend to play a healer build in PvP where I do not use shield 4 for the reflect but for blast. Create water fields => Blast with Shield4 => Heal allies and give them protection. It’s a minor trait and you should not expect anything huge from minors.

GrandHaven.1052:

nearlight.3064:

santenal.1054:

Im not much of a grenade user but aren’t you again pigeonholed into the explosives trait line (grenadier to essential) when you want to use grenades ? i vaguely remember they wanted to avoid that or something?

This is true. Grenades without grenadier suck, even though they feel kind of sucky overall since the mortar being introduced allowed them to nerf the nades range and field.

Grenadier should either do more, or just be baseline.

Also, the other big problem with explosives is shrapnel. The condi pressure from this trait is horrible, in part because bleed does too little damage in comparison to burn that does too much damage. If you don’t run mortar, you essentially have a wasted GM trait, since shrapnel and theromobaric both suck. In fact on most traitlines this is the case. In alchemy HGH is good, but with no elixirs, you don’t get much use out of the other two.

Anyway yeah, shrapnel sucks so bad, that incendiary powder should just be moved back there to replace it, and maybe a cele build can sort of come back again like it was prepatch, assuming damage reduction gets improved.

Maybe moving Shrapnel to adept, replacing Explosive Decent, and then IP to replace Shrapnel in Expl GM would be a good idea?

I could get behind that. The fall damage trait would have to merged with either grenadier or shrapnel though as well which would be fine. This change is honestly crucial to get hybrid builds to be viable again.