Guild Wars 2

Hey. Didn’t post here for a long time. Since we basically just wait for the next balance patch and I got in the mood to be a bit creative I thought about what the next Elite Spec could look like.

Pathfinder

Role: Offensive Melee Skirmisher/Roamer
New class mechanic: Tracking
New weapon: Dagger Mainhand
New utility skills: Tricks

Tracking

This class mechanic makes the attacks of the pathfinder and the pet add a debuff called ‘Marked’. Whenever this debuff reaches 5 stacks the enemy drops a ‘Trace’ which can be picked up by the Pathfinder or his allies by walking over it. This deals X direct damage to the enemy that left it behind. ‘Traces’ expire after 6 seconds.
Example: If the target has 3 stacks of 'Marked' and 5 stacks are added a 'Trace' will drop and 'Marked' will be set to 3.

Dagger Mainhand

1. Fierce Dagger -> (Fierce Stab -> Fierce Slice): Fierce Dagger has 900 range. If it hits a target in melee range it swaps to a full chain. 2nd and 3rd attack are melee and add 1 and 2 stacks of bleed (5 seconds) in addition to dealing more damage.
2. Dazing Dash (5 seconds cooldown): Small leap (450 range) that damages and dazes your foe for 0.5 seconds. If it interrupts the target cooldown of Dazing Dash is doubled (10 seconds).
3. Falcon Strike (12 seconds cooldown): Melee. Damage your foe and add 5 stacks of ‘Marked’. Your pets next three attacks apply 5 stacks of ‘Marked’ each instead of 1.

Tricks

• Feign Death (20 seconds cooldown): Trick. Healing Skill. You and your pet get knocked down for 3 seconds and become invulnerable to direct damage. After those 3 seconds you both get healed. Prevents capture point contribution.
• Camouflage ( 30 seconds cooldown): Trick. Remove 3 conditions from you and your pet. You and your pet gain stealth for 4 seconds.
• Sense Foes ( 25 seconds cooldown): Trick. Stunbreak. Reveal all enemies in 900 range around you and apply 5 stacks of ‘Marked’.
• Throw Dirt (10 seconds cooldown): Trick. 450 range. Blind target foe and remove all boons. Add 3 stacks of ‘Marked’.
• Hold Breath (40 seconds cooldown): Trick. Deal 50% more damage on your next 5 attacks. Each of them adds 5 stacks of ‘Marked’ and they cannot be blocked.
• Chase Down (35 second cooldown): Trick. Stunbreak. Remove movement impairing conditions and dash forward (600 range). Add 5 ‘Marked’ stacks to all enemies you pass through.
• Tracker’s Focus (90 seconds cooldown): Trick. Elite Skill. ‘Traces’ don’t expire. Activate this ability again to instantly collect all ‘Traces’. Ends and automatically activates after 30 seconds.

Traits

Those are a bit specific for just a concept but they obviously would use/modify the ‘Marked’ mechanic. I definitely would like to see a Grandmaster Trait that adds condition damage like bleed stacks when picking up a ‘Trace’ to enable condi builds. Maybe I add some more traits at a later point but this is just a concept.

Feedback appreciated.

Marks need a duration on them, maybe 5sec?

Could use some bleed and poison traits for sure ya.

Just a set of traits for condi off the top of my head

*Toxin: Poison your attacks causing 1poison for 3sec whenever you cause bleeding.
*Blood Trail: Whenever marks reach 5stacks apply 3bleeds for 5sec (10sec ICD). Picking up traces removes stealth.
*The Hunter: Poison and Bleeding cause 25% more dmg to moving foes. 33% if suffering from both.

You are right about Marked. While it mechanically would not matter much since stacks alone don’t do anything it would be certainly stupid if they remain forever. 5 seconds is a bit short though and especially when the pet attacks they might disappear too fast. What about 10?

I like your trait suggestions. Wish more people would give feedback but I guess this forum is primarily for complaining.

Minor

• Tracking: You and your pet apply ‘Marked’ stacks. You can now wield a dagger in your mainhand. You can now use tricks.
• Fierce Hunter: Reaching 5 stacks of ‘Marked’ removes some Endurance on the target (10% of the bar).
• Easy Prey: Deal 10% more damage to targets with less than 50% Endurance.

Adept

• Infectious Wounds: Apply 1 second of poison whenever you apply bleeding (multiple stacks still only apply one stack of poison). Thanks to Justine!
• Replenishment: Picking up a ‘Trace’ applies Regeneration (3 seconds).
• Last Straw: Gain 5 seconds of Resistance when your health reaches 10% (60 seconds ICD).

Master

• Stay on Path: Picking up a ‘Trace’ removes one condition.
• Fearless: Take 10% reduced damage from ‘Marked’ targets.
• Knife Juggler: Reaching 5 stacks of ‘Marked’ with a dagger attack removes a boon.

Grandmaster

• Blood Trail: Picking up a ‘Trace’ applies 2 stacks of Bleeding to its source (5 seconds). Thanks to Justine!
• Outrun: Picking up a ‘Trace’ applies Slow to its source (0.5 seconds).
• Unseen Predator: Picking up a ‘Trace’ applies Stealth (1 second). This one is propably broken but I wanted to throw out the idea.

your traits are not strong enough to be in line with current elite specs. Be bold.

Most of them depend on how frequent traces are generated. Imagine running from a sidenode to mid on Legend of Foefire and picking up like 8 on the way. This stuff has to be tested and tuned, hard to estimate the strength in theory but the potential is huge. I don’t think they are weak if you consider all the stuff, weapon skills, tricks, that can apply Marked. Also consider the Elite Trick. And like I mentioned traces can be picked up by anyone which means your pet or allies.

I’d make it 500% more powerful.
…
What? They’d nerf it by 400% afterwards anyways.
Having it overpowered only means there will be some store of what to nerf without becoming useless like we usually get.

I like the the main idea and design.

Please don’t make this a salt thread. The balance is off anyway. The concept counts, not the exact values.

I love the concept, especially the traces. Gives rangers the feeling to be a true hunter.
But I still have some thoughts about it.

Throw Dirt: Complete boon remove with 10 seconds CD is much too strong.
Tracker’s Focus: I think this would be OP because of the traces don’t expire effect. You would have 30 seconds to produce as many traces as you can get, then collecting them all at once which would be a absurde condition burst with your grandmaster trait that collected traces will cause bleed.
Hold Breathe: 50% damage boost is too much and ranger already has enough damage boosters. I would replace it for something else. The pet doing 5 stacks of marked with the next 5 attacks is too strong with the elite.

Your traits are too much bound to the class mechanic I guess. 7 of 9 traits use the mechanic (traces or marked). And we should stick with the concept “each line of traits has a role”, so one line for condition damage, one line for sustain and one for direct damage as an example.

Nice to see someone that actually thinks this stuff is too strong. You are propably right but like I said it is kind of hard to anticipate how often the traces can actually be spawned.

The elite really does seem a bit too good I guess. Then again keep in mind that you, your pet or allies still can pick up traces even if the elite is running and propably they will do it. They would have to actively try to avoid them to make them all apply as a burst. So again hard to estimate how good it really would turn out. The pet applying 5 stacks seems strong aswell but then again pets often have a hard time to hit their targets at all. Maybe it should only be on autoattacks?

Also the traces already deal direct dmg baseline. The value of that dmg has yet to be decided aswell.

Read it another time and noticed some detail again: You don’t have a trait, which will grant an effect to your new skill type (tricks). ^^

All elite specs have a trait, which will grant an additional effect to the new skill type, except Revenant if I remember correctly (because they have no choice in their utility skill, they have to use them).

I would suggest something like this: Reduce recharge of tricks by 20%. After using a trick, all effects of the next picked up trace are doubled.

About elite: I like the idea of it, it would feel just awesome to have a skill that works like that. But the rest of your concept doesn’t allow it. You have a utility skill, which will give 5 trace for the next 5 attacks of your pet (which are unblockable too!). Some pets aren’t reliable to hit, that’s right, but there are some ranged pets. Look at devourer for example. It is ranged and has 2 projectiles with 1 AA, build up traces with this would be easy. Also you have a dagger attack, which will give your pet another 3 insta-traces. So just 2 skills would give you 8 traces for a target in a short time, that alone are 16 stacks bleed with your gm trait and with the other trait (poison when you cause bleeding) you would get 8 stacks poison from it too.

You are right about no tricks trait. The reason there is so much stuff focussing on Traces right now is because I kind of wanted to copy the Daredevil theme where the grandmaster trait dictates your playstyle. Without the 3 gm there are not that many and you are forced to chose there. Also you kind of suggested another trait that is bound to the class mechanic. :P I like that suggestion but it is imo a bit complicated considering that the Marked into Traces into Run over Traces is already a rather complex mechanic. Also what I don’t like about these is that they often turn out as a must have pick due to the cooldown reduction. I mean it is kind of obvious already that you want to play Tricks if you pick that spec. But what about:

Craftiness: Reduce recharge of tricks by 20%. Using a Trick grants 2 seconds of Resistance.

Throwing in multiple small ways to fight condis is better than having 1 or 2 must have traits imo (kind of the issue with core ranger).

For the Elite: Don’t you think it could be balanced by reducing the duration? Maybe 20 seconds? This directly influences the potency of the burst. I just like how flexible this Elite could be for playstyle: Burst damage, burst condi removal, condi spike, long duration stealth, long slow.

I’ll be honest, I was hesitant to click this thread at first. I didn’t read all of it, but I’ll read the rest later (need sleep). I will say that your idea had me at “Dagger main-hand” and “Tricks utility.” lol

I was a bit worried that is feels like a thief ripoff. Then again Tricks is just the name for what otherwise are completely different skills and dagger just fits ranger as good as thief. Also the Tracking mechanic should promote a very different playstyle.

Btw as a not native english speaker. Would Tacker be a better name? Or Scout?

Love the main-hand dagger skills.

Not so sure about the heal. I don’t like preventing my own movement. Perhaps the heal skill should give a small burst of healing, and additional healing while striking marked enemies.

I kind of feel like the tricks you’ve designed would end up leading to people using this spec as an on-point bruiser, similar to what the old engineer was. These utilities are very useful in team-fights. I would definitely enjoy roaming WvW with this spec.

I really like the concept!

About sense foes though, would it reveal enemies already in stealth? Because applying 5 ‘marks’, stunbreaking, and revealing enemies in stealth with a 25 second cd seems very powerful to me.

I love the concept, and for utility I think it could also add in some mechanics for more detecting/prevent enemy in stealth capability or even identifying Mesmer clones . And it could possibly bring in some reworking on traps to bring them into line with tracing mechanics. But for the pathfinder the name to my mind brings the idea concept of tracking, speed, versatility, and durability in rugged terrain. So the Question is how would this be balanced for melee and or range survive ability while using proposed mechanics like tracking? ex: Trackers Sneak Attack: When attacking a foe with a trace you get 5 sec of quickness, and foe receives a 3sec knockdown, and a 10 sec cripple with a 45sec CD

But one problem I feel is that the current ranger off hands would feel a bit wonky under this setup.