Guild Wars 2

During the beta weekend, I felt that in terms of usefulness, the traps were all less useful than another meditation, but ranking them from nearly as useful to much less useful they were Test of Faith > Fragments of Faith > Procession of Blades > Light’s Judgement. Same for PvE. Purification varied a lot with the level of the area – in starter zones it was a strong option.
So the first set of balance changes I feel hit about the right spot, except the lack of buff to Light’s Judgement.
The second set I’m more divided about. Traps really lacked a defensive component, that’s what made Procession of Blades of blades so weak. And the daze component will make for more fun play, by making each trap multi-functional. – it removes too much damage. Purification and Fragments of Faith only get stronger by the change, and for Test of Faith the daze should be about as useful as the bleed was (it’s a trap you’d generally place a move away from). But Procession of Blades loses like half its damage, and Light’s Judgement loses as much bleeding. The problem is the same as bleeding removal from warrior rifle and ranger greatsword, it took a lot of buffing to the greatsword until it turned viable after that.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Purification: Increased bonus healing based upon level by 50%.
• Test of Faith: Increased the damage multiplier on this ability by 20%.
• Fragments of Faith: Decreased the duration that fragments remained on the ground from 15 seconds to 10 seconds. Increased the duration of the aegis granted from fragments from 5 seconds to 8 seconds.
• Procession of Blades: Increased the base damage by 36%.
• Dragon’s Maw: Increased the maw trapping duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds. Damage increased by 20%.

• Piercing Light: Added a 20% recharge reduction to Traps.

Karl McLain.5604:

Adept – Piercing Light: The bleeding effect only really benefited a couple traps, where we wanted the effects of this trait to enhance each one in the same way.

• The bleeding functionality has been removed and will now daze enemies for 1 second when traps enter their ‘activating’ state.

Traps need a stun on activation (or at least an immobilize), not a daze. People will continue to just walk right out of them and render them useless otherwise.

Black Box.9312:

Traps need a stun on activation (or at least an immobilize), not a daze. People will continue to just walk right out of them and render them useless otherwise.

It is better than you think. Most traps are instant or nigh-instant activation, so they’re essentially just a delayed daze skills. For the ones that aren’t, there are several abilities the guardian gets to hold enemies in place. The daze means they can’t immediately warp out.

There’s also the new Zealot’s Aggression which will apply cripple on passive SoJ. That will help keep enemies in your traps, or it requires them to spend resources they might not want/have to use.

I actually find the daze intrigueing

but even the heal trap is now an interrupt + a blind potentially avoiding two attacks.
… of course a stun would be better but putting that on a Adept trait is a little too much to ask.

Looking at all the soruces of blinds we can produce as we speak. add in sigil of mischief, rune of the flock and blinding jeopardy there might be a cool 1vs1 spec there ….

Do not forget the guild halls … 1on1 will become another game mode we can build for.

HoT will be awsome …

I’d rather not have a stun/immobilize on the trap trait – during the beta weekend I had too much fun comboing traps with snaring skills like hunter’s ward and dragon’s maw.

There’s a good chance the defensive traps (purification, test of faith, fragments of faith) are viable now. The heal looks really good with two attacks negated by daze+blind and a sturdy heal, and once you take the trait and adopt a playstyle where you force enemies to trigger the trap, the other two defensive traps should be easy to slot in.

The offensive traps (procession of blades, light’s judgment, dragon’s maw) look weaker as a group. Dragon’s maw.. six seconds of warding is great! as long as you have pulsing AoEs to combo it with. The other two are on the weak side, so throwing out two suggestions for the fun of it:

• add pulsing weakness (with short duration) to procession of blades, to make it work for both defensive and offensive trapping playstyles.
• add ramp up damage (like revenant’s Vengeful Blast has) to light’s judgment, to give it non-bursty damage that rewards snaring enemies in the trap.