Guild Wars 2

In case the devs take a look at this forum and need some ideas, I thought it might be nice to keep an updated list of traits that could be moved to a more appropriate place. I believe this issue is particularly acute for mesmers, as we have a number that are rarely used because of where they are located, and others that force you into unwanted traits only to get a useful one.

Examples:

Phantasmal Haste: Only one phantasm puts out condition damage (save for sharper images), yet this trait is in the Condi/Shatter line despite being useful only in phantasm builds.

Cleansing Conflagrations: The torch is a pure condition weapon, and while the domination line does include condition duration, most of the other minor or adept traits deal with direct damage and vulnerability.

Confusing Combatants: This is high up in a crit/crit damage line, and it’s almost impossible to go above 20 points in Dueling in a condition build.

Vigorous Revelation: Most useless trait. Should be moved off the board, or replaced with something more useful like one second of swiftness every time you use an elite, or something like that.

Anyway, what are some others?

• Shattered Conditions/Restorative Ilusions
  • 2 grandmaster traits that rely completely upon shattering in a line devoted to boosting phantasm damage and durability? Ok…
• Protected Mantras
  • Increasing toughness by 400 when you are channeling mantras in a line devoted to crits and crit damage.
• Retaliatory Demise
  • Why…does this exist?
• Chaotic Revival
  • Why…does this exist?

Well, three of the primary mantra traits are in dueling, so that part makes sense to me, but the issue is that mantras aren’t nearly worth enough to spec all out in them, “wasting” those traits. Maybe in that case it would be better to spread those out a bit – or at least protected mantras to another tree and maybe make harmonious mantras a master trait (I think I recently read a post about that). That may be OP though.

Completely agreed about Chaotic Revival and Retaliatory Demise, though the latter is much worse. I can (barely) see a use for CR in team PvP where being downed is, well, kinda the norm. RD is completely useless but also lends much more to a PvP setting.

Decent into Madness irks me as well. It’s pretty much a WvW trait, pure and simple. Why in the world would one use this anywhere else? And rarely do you see someone taking it when in real WvW action. They just trait in/out as needed when they’re jumping off a cliff. I say solve the falling damage issue another way and give us a better trait selection here instead.

Maybe replace something useful for Vengeful Images, like maybe Compounding Celerity (since it’s rarely used anyway)? Would rather they revert VI though.

skcamow.3527:

Well, three of the primary mantra traits are in dueling, so that part makes sense to me, but the issue is that mantras aren’t nearly worth enough to spec all out in them, “wasting” those traits. Maybe in that case it would be better to spread those out a bit – or at least protected mantras to another tree and maybe make harmonious mantras a master trait (I think I recently read a post about that). That may be OP though.

Completely agreed about Chaotic Revival and Retaliatory Demise, though the latter is much worse. I can (barely) see a use for CR in team PvP where being downed is, well, kinda the norm. RD is completely useless but also lends much more to a PvP setting.

Decent into Madness irks me as well. It’s pretty much a WvW trait, pure and simple. Why in the world would one use this anywhere else? And rarely do you see someone taking it when in real WvW action. They just trait in/out as needed when they’re jumping off a cliff. I say solve the falling damage issue another way and give us a better trait selection here instead.

Maybe replace something useful for Vengeful Images, like maybe Compounding Celerity (since it’s rarely used anyway)? Would rather they revert VI though.

Descent into Madness is just the standard fall damage trait. Everybody has one, and it finds uses, whether cliff diving in WvW or doing a nasty jumping puzzle.

Bunda.2691:

Vigorous Revelation: Most useless trait. Should be moved off the board, or replaced with something more useful like one second of swiftness every time you use an elite, or something like that.

This trait is awesome, actually. It allows for perma party-wide vigor if you spam shatters.

Pyroatheist.9031:

• Retaliatory Demise
  • Why…does this exist?
• Chaotic Revival
  • Why…does this exist?

Maybe… if they merged it, buffed it and added “deception uses ground targeting”, it would be a bit usefull in very specific situations :/.

So it would be: _you have retaliation and chaos armour while downed (permanent). Deception uses ground targeting.

It would be somewhat usefull in open world leveling, and in dungeons wit environmnetal hazards you can get downed in. Like lava or electric floors.

• IMO Cleansing Conflageration makes more sense in Chaos, but it would be annoying in some builds.

• Signet Mastery doesnt really ‘fit’ in Domination, only 1 signet is control based.

• Malicious sorcery… Scepter or condition damage jsut has nothing to do with inspiration. Maybe swap it with phantasm haste?

thats all i can think of atm :/.

Alissah.9281:

• Malicious sorcery… Scepter or condition damage jsut has nothing to do with inspiration. Maybe swap it with phantasm haste?

I’d personally love to see Malicious Sorcery swapped with with Cleansing Conflagration, but I think Malicious Sorcery is pretty strong, and while not ideally situated, it’s meant to allow you to go into Inspiration and still play condition (example: 0/20/30/20/0 is a very durable Blackwater variant).

I feel like they put Cleansing Conflagration where it is because there didn’t seem to be another logical place for it. And looking over things, I can’t really find a place where it would be less bad. (That said, it should still be moved.)

Re: mantras and signets, they both constitute a whole different problem. I forget who once called them the “spices” of builds, but that is what they are—meant to add a little extra to other builds. Traits that improve them are just such a waste, because mantras/signets don’t (and shouldn’t) play a large enough role to build around (and thus spend valuable traits augmenting by a small degree).