Guild Wars 2

No doubt this opened up more builds but I felt a little let down based on my playstyle/builds getting any real attention.

-Many Blood majors are still terrible- I’m looking at you Deathly Invigoration and Transfusion… and the Lifesteal buffs (which we are thankful for) still leaves it largely laughable. The ability to viably structure a build around lifesteal still doesn’t exist. I’ll be keeping my Soldier gear on for now, in anticipation of swapping to Clerics if it gets buffed to a reasonable level.

-It’s been said before, but why were there no real changes to Death Magic? Staff traits absolutely need consolidation. Minion minors make zero sense in a traitline (theoretically) supporting non-minion builds. Dark Armor as 10pt minor. Reanimator buffed & moved to 20pt minor (still can be useful to non-minion builds). Protection of the Horde made a major (as it absolutely should be as this is entirely dependent on having minions slotted) and add some completely new major to fill the gap for the consolidated Staff majors.

-I still don’t see any noticeable differentiation between mh dagger and axe. They function rather similarly with axe simply giving up damage for range… but aside from that if you really look at them they are incredibly similar. I really don’t care what direction these are taken in, but anything to differentiate them would be welcome.

-Dhuumfire is all the rage. I get why its popular, but I was really hoping for something more Spite appropriate… along the lines of “Oppression: Apply Vulnerability when applying Chill, Fear, or Immobilize. You deal 10% more damage to enemies with 10 or more stacks of Vulnerability.” Or really anything that meshes well with condition duration, keeping enemies controlled, etc. Dhuumfire just seems like a consolation prize for 30/30/x/x/x type builds rather than contributing anything unique or playstyle defining.

Anywho. Just my thoughts from the perspective of a tanky/power player. Not a bad patch, but I didn’t get a whole lot of mileage from it outside of the well buff for dungeons.