Guild Wars 2

Hello all,

I made a Mesmer a few days ago and yesterday read all the traits they have.
Something I have spottet are the weapon traits.

Some examples:
(Mesmer)
- Greatsword training:
+50 power and reduce recharge of greatsword skills by 20%
-Duelists discipline
increased range and redusced recharge by 20% of pistil skills
-Blade training
+prec and reduced recharge by 20% for spear and sword
-Chaotic dumpening
+50 toughness while trident/staff equipped. 20% reduce of skills for staff (not trident tooltip error?)

(Necromancer)
-Axe training
Axe damage increased, 20% recharge of axe skills
-Staff mastery
20% reduced recharge of staff skills
-Banshees Wail
Warhorn 15% reduced cd, longer effects
- Dagger mastery
15% reduced cd

Not sure if these are all.
Assuming that weapon traits are the only ones that are more or less comparable between the classes, I was kinda puzzled why the necro traits seem so bad choices in comparison to the Mesmer. I can just imagine, that the necro was forgotten, when these traits were updated on the mesmer or that maybe the cd reduction on weapons is for necros already strong enough (not realy or?).

While banshees wail and axe mastery always add a bonus effect to the cd reduction (as mesmer traits always seem to do), staff mastery and dagger mastery just give cd reduction. I realize that these weapons have 5 skills while warhorn or axe are just 3 or 2 skills getting buffed, so this might explain the extras on the traits. But the Mesmer at least gets some basic stats on his two hand weapons and has weapon traits also for under water combined to it. I remember that the necro also had some Spear trait a long time ago. Thats just gone for good?

I dont want to blame the mesmer here, I just would like to know if there is a reason or if this is completely forgotten by the devs? I do realize that there will be a patch this month, but did they really not consider a small changes in the last 9 months to fix this?

Greetings
Hoshi

Our traits are from a time in development before ANet went back and streamlined most classes trait trees. We never got that streamline process, and ANet hasn’t taken the time to go back and give us a streamline pass over yet either. This is why we have traits in seemingly random places that don’t make any sense.

Necros are the only class with no traits relating to underwater weapons, but truthfully, we don’t really need it.

Mesmer, honestly, is probably the worst class to compare to on that front. Most professions don’t get bonus effects plus large cooldown reduction (and don’t forget that they have a minor trait that reduces all illusion-creating skills, like those found on every weapon, by 20%). Mesmers were somebody’s baby, and it shows with the traits.

Yeah, best designed class in the game imo.

While the mes’s had the dev’s on the forums asking players how they’d like to re-balance & what direction they’d like the mes to go. There was over 160 broken skills & traits on the necro. Without the dev’s saying anything.

Anyway, the dev’s have said they doing ‘rebalance’ with necro sometime soon. They did talk of fixing up some of our traits. Huge rework on DShroud. A new condition that they actually asked the players for ideas.

The devs have a great idea about where to take Necros in theory. If you go and listen to whats been said by them, they obviously recognize our problems, and are looking into ways of fixing them while keeping Necro flavor. That is really big to me, because it would be easy for them to give us stability and a few other things and “fix” us by basically making us emo Guardians.

Mesmer was the last class released in production. Either its a case of power creep, or they just had a much more solid handle on the combat and mechanics of the game at that point and built a profession that was truly complete and self sustaining.

But it rates over favorably with some others with more obvious flaws and weaknesses.

Okay, for me it seems that there is no reason why the traits are so different.
I know that Necro is quite strong under water and does not need the cd reduction for a spear. Still I would like to have seen maybe Staff and Trident and Spear and dagger or axe to synergize in a trait. I am still hating that a lot of skills are unusable under water though, but this is not necro specific and a completely different story.

I guess the game meachanics were changed or tweaked before release, as the mesmer also has a lot of interrupts and interrupt traits. Thats how the Mesmer worked in GW1 and confusion is actually the combined condition of Necro and Mesmer skills that punish the enemy for attacking or casting, sand those I loved the most in GW1. Still the game lacks interrupts that put skills on max cd or even moreto be a viable build. Hobefully the game develops to become more strategical in the future. I guess the Mesmer really suffers from the good old power kreep of some motivated designer. Same as the necro with his fast update to DS, the mesmer may have been tweaked before release and interrupts have been taken out of the game. Just DS was a lot less subtle, so it got nerfed early and heavy, while the phantasms and mesmer damage needed some more refined gameplay to shine.

I guess the mesmer is currently the status quo class, and after all bugs are fixed, A-Net will try to bring every class on the same level in PvE as well as in PvP. Especially as the mesmer is good in both.
For the Necro, it seems A-Net realized that some bug fixes and some traits would not be enough to make the class what it should be and they may have worked in the background on a complete revamp (thats my hope…). Even though, they should have updated some parts like the mentioned weapon traits to be as strong as others.

Necro is still suffering from the pre-release nerf hammer that was unleashed. In the beginning the game was so devoid of boon counters that Necro had a niche role and you could make it work. Since then other classes have gotten boon counters, creative players found work arounds and necro has gotten more nerfs than buffs. A total rework is in order, but I expect that getting the professions “fixed” will be a slow process as there seems to be an aversion to aggressive changes since release.

Don’t bother comparing Necro traits or weapons to other classes, because even Warrior is miles better in both areas. The only reason that Warrior isn’t better than necro is that their primary attribute is entirely useless, and their profession mechanic is mostly harmless while our Primary attribute and profession mechanic are only sub-par.

OP hit on something I noticed too when I made my Necro. Mes and necro are my 2 favorite classes to play in the game. Sometimes, I think I like the necro so much only because of the challenge of the class. Anyone who has built characters with both the Mes and the Necro like I have can easily spot the glaring differences in the trait lines. The necro traits are such a mess. There’s no cohesion whatsoever. Sometimes I think I know where the devs were going, then other times I think they just threw the kitten together quickly b/c they were out of time. Hopefully, when they actually take the time to review traits, they will fix some of the mess they created.