Guild Wars 2

Anyone else noticed that they’re pretty dull and fairly ineffective? Plus there’s a definite bias towards power builds.

Spite – Might on hit below 25% HP. Pretty useless, as 25% HP is 4-6khp and most of us would be desperately trying to avoid taking another hit at that point, or you’d be healing. Even if it wasn’t the case, that’s still only a single stack of might, which compares poorly with other classes.

Curses – 2% increase in damager per condition. Power damage only.

Death Magic – 5% of toughness as power. Power damage only. Dull. Assuming 2k toughness, that’s 100 power.

Blood Magic – 100 power if 90% HP or more (tooltip is wrong). Power only, dull.

Soul Reaping – 100 power if LF is 60% (?) or more. Power only, dull.

Where’s the love for conditionmancers? Where, more to the point, is the variety?

wasnt soulreaping “5% more damage if life force is >50%”?

same with blood magic?

and i agree completely. the curses#25 is good, rest is kinda meh. i dont like traits a la “5% of X become Y” and “+5/10% damage if Z”.

i would rather have traits that give new, unikittenfects, not just a slight damage/attribute-buff.

Yeah, both SR and BM 25pt traits are actually just 100 power.

Its a pretty common theme across the classes, the grandmaster minor traits are basically all small damage boosts, although some of them have “more interesting” effects like doing it with vulnerability.

SR and curses ones are fine imo.

Bhawb – good point, hadn’t considered that. Still, point remains – they’re boring and of no use to conditionmancers :P

spoj – given the SR, BM and DM (assuming 2k toughness) are identical, why is the SR fine but BM and DM not?

I do wish that at least the +% damage worked with conditions, it seems somewhat silly that they wouldn’t.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Bhawb – good point, hadn’t considered that. Still, point remains – they’re boring and of no use to conditionmancers :P

spoj – given the SR, BM and DM (assuming 2k toughness) are identical, why is the SR fine but BM and DM not?

Power is not the same as percentage damage so you can ignore DM. Its fine seeing as every class has a traits like these. Soul reaping is more of a power tree anyway so thats completely fine. Id prefer and 10% boost in damage though to keep even with most other classes. BM is pretty crap because you need to be full hp but it makes sense to put it in seeing as thats a life steal tree. Curses one still benefits condition builds. It just means the auto attacks and non condition damage is boosted which is pretty fair for all types of builds.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Where’s the love for conditionmancers? Where, more to the point, is the variety?

I’d pretty much kill anyone you want if you could get us something like the mesmer’s 5% of toughness = condition damage.

I would love it if the buffed the curses one to affect condition damage as well, but I just don’t see that happening. Almost every class has grandmaster traits like these, conditional small boosts to direct damage.

Spite – Might on hit below 25% HP. Pretty useless, as 25% HP is 4-6khp and most of us would be desperately trying to avoid taking another hit at that point, or you’d be healing. Even if it wasn’t the case, that’s still only a single stack of might, which compares poorly with other classes.

This.
It could be something pretty common across classes, but tbh this trait is still pretty usefull also for powerbuild. We are not a class with an high burst or buffs sustain that allow us to be aggressive with low health.
Maybe just if you have full LF and the enemy is near to death, but outside this meh.
Always imo o course.

The spite trait in particular is just a massive joke. Why might and not protection?

Because it is the (direct) damage line. Protection would be out of place.