Guild Wars 2

I was just going over the new specialization traits on dulphy and I just could not help but be baffled at the current state of them…

Some of the trait placements just don’t make sense in terms of balance and diversity. Several traits have been merged and moved down a tier (why move shatter conditions down a tier after merging it? It should stay grandmaster as a shatter support play style….)

Cant help but feel that the preview they showed us long ago was closer to perfect than this one…..

Feels like traits are in the wrong tiers destroying certain play styles and options among other things….I hope there not done working on this.

Info can be found here:http://dulfy.net/2015/06/16/gw2-june-23-specialization-changes/

Your thoughts on the current mesmer traits?

I think overall they’ve improved over the last interation, but yes there are some odd placements. In the example you gave, however, I feel that they made the right choice. Between HM+MoR allowing MP to clear 6 Conditions AE in rapid succession, I don’t think the Shattered Conditions trait is balanced anymore. It would be too much AE Condie Clearing coming from a single line basically.

Also, the new GM trait that replaced it is simply awesome! I really like pDefender, but there is neither room on the utility bar, nor is the cast-time bearable. This is a neat way to ensure that we get use out of a decent utility that we have, without the drawbacks. Although in bigger battles it’s almost kinda useless, in 1v1 or 2v1 the pDefender can definitely be a fight-changer. (Especially against Thieves it will be really useful to buy reaction time and frustrate the crap out of a Thief who thinks he found an easy meal in the Mesmer.)

With Illusions and shattering 2 Phants on average, you can have the CD down to 16s.

Now what is up with keeping a seriously bad Trait like Rending Shatter, and seemingly rather useless Torch traits, I really don’t know.

I also don’t expect that the Scepter GM trait is warranted in that spot. It’s definitely something the Scepter needs, but GM? This should be how the Scepter works, period. Having to spec a GM to make a weapon half-way decent is a bit silly to say it nicely. (And I’m not so sure it’ll even make much of a difference. The projectile speed is IMO the worst part of is, although as Pyro said the attack speed might make the block a little more usable? )