Guild Wars 2

I propose that these traits should swap places and be changed to the following-

Empathic Bond- Your pet attacks transfer 1 condition from you to your foe (3 sec internal cooldown)

Honed Axes- Gain 150 ferocity for each axe equipped, winters bite is an aoe attack, axe skills recharge 20% faster.

The changes to EB would make it fit nicely in the BM line, it provides synergy with poison master and encourages you to actively use your pet instead of keeping it on passive to soak up as many conditions as it can .

Honed axes in its current form is not worthy of a GM trait and it is up against 2 much more powerful choices. These changes would give back the cooldown reduction that was lost with the change to off-hand training, it would put the damage boost on the offhand axe where it makes more sense, and make axe/axe power slightly more viable.

Thoughts?

I’d rather see Honed Axes give 10% crit chance for each axe equipped, since ferocity doesn’t do much for condition builds. At least this way, you get a benefit to power builds and condition builds through on-crit procs.

Otherwise. Perfect.

Sevans.4619:

I’d rather see Honed Axes give 10% crit chance for each axe equipped, since ferocity doesn’t do much for condition builds. At least this way, you get a benefit to power builds and condition builds through on-crit procs.

Otherwise. Perfect.

I thought about that but I’d be really interested in seeing how much damage an axe/axe power build would do with 300 extra ferocity and might stacking. Right now there are very few power builds that a main hand axe is useful, this may be enough of a boost to make it an option.

Sevans.4619:

I’d rather see Honed Axes give 10% crit chance for each axe equipped, since ferocity doesn’t do much for condition builds. At least this way, you get a benefit to power builds and condition builds through on-crit procs.

Otherwise. Perfect.

Agree this would be a brilliant change.

Puck.9612:

Sevans.4619:

I’d rather see Honed Axes give 10% crit chance for each axe equipped, since ferocity doesn’t do much for condition builds. At least this way, you get a benefit to power builds and condition builds through on-crit procs.

Otherwise. Perfect.

I thought about that but I’d be really interested in seeing how much damage an axe/axe power build would do with 300 extra ferocity and might stacking. Right now there are very few power builds that a main hand axe is useful, this may be enough of a boost to make it an option.

I’ve always found the axe main hand to be rather poor for power builds. It only maximizes it’s damage output when you’re fighting clusters of enemies, so you always need something else to handle single target situations.

I’ve never seen a build go for might stacking with the axes, but the duration just seems to be too short to do that much with.

There’s also a problem with the mainhand axe skills being rather sluggish. Sometimes, if I try to use splitblade after auto-attacking, there’s this weird pause for about a second before it actually comes out.

I made an axe/axe build that I’m looking forward to tweaking for the specialization updates, but I still have little faith in it being any good (although it’s also a shout build, so that probably doesn’t help at all).

NO. running EB with WK, SoR, and Quickdraw would make us godmode. basically completely immune to condis. especially if you decide to run a brown bear in there as well. please stop suggesting these swaps. youre completely out of touch with reality. Honed Axes is pretty useless and it does need a buff, but i wouldn’t be moving it around too much.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Puck.9612:

Sevans.4619:

I’d rather see Honed Axes give 10% crit chance for each axe equipped, since ferocity doesn’t do much for condition builds. At least this way, you get a benefit to power builds and condition builds through on-crit procs.

Otherwise. Perfect.

I thought about that but I’d be really interested in seeing how much damage an axe/axe power build would do with 300 extra ferocity and might stacking. Right now there are very few power builds that a main hand axe is useful, this may be enough of a boost to make it an option.

I’ve always found the axe main hand to be rather poor for power builds. It only maximizes it’s damage output when you’re fighting clusters of enemies, so you always need something else to handle single target situations.

I’ve never seen a build go for might stacking with the axes, but the duration just seems to be too short to do that much with.

There’s also a problem with the mainhand axe skills being rather sluggish. Sometimes, if I try to use splitblade after auto-attacking, there’s this weird pause for about a second before it actually comes out.

I made an axe/axe build that I’m looking forward to tweaking for the specialization updates, but I still have little faith in it being any good (although it’s also a shout build, so that probably doesn’t help at all).

Yeah I agree with pretty much everything here. Especially main hand axe being a little poor for power builds. I just figure 300 ferocity comes out to something like 20% more crit damage. That mixed with some boon duration or strength runes to make might last longer and provide more stacks should bump up the damage, especially if you get path of scars to crit.

If it still ends up being weak they could consider tweaking the trait to buff the attack speed on axes.

mistsim.2748:

NO. running EB with WK, SoR, and Quickdraw would make us godmode. basically completely immune to condis. especially if you decide to run a brown bear in there as well. please stop suggesting these swaps. youre completely out of touch with reality. Honed Axes is pretty useless and it does need a buff, but i wouldn’t be moving it around too much.

What does quickdraw have to do with any of that? As for the condi removal you listed, we have all of that available at the same time right now and no one is crying about us being god mode.

Currently it is extremely unlikely that anyone will bring Honed axes or poison master. Moving the traits opens up options for grandmasters that are currently completely ouclassed.

quickdraw has absolutely everything to do with it. when you stack a bunch of very good GM’s with a lot of utility, you get a very good build. one that is better than others. quickdraw allows things like double Hunter’s Shot, or double swoop. so it hugely increases our survivability (as well as damage).

yes we can slot EB and SotF right now. but we do way less damage than we’ll be doing after the patch. and we don’t have quickdraw. pure condi builds aren’t prevalent in the meta, so slotting both in fact is wasteful. next week, we’ll have a ton more survivability via BW, Protective Ward, Oakheart Salve, Quickdraw, and Barkskin. we’ll also be stacking lots of poison, our pets will be hitting harder, and our bleeds will be doing +33% damage.

when you make suggestions like these, you have to take into account the ENTIRE picture, and how GM’s interplay with each other.

Honed Axes needs to be competitive with BW. it needs to reduce OH axe recharge (like in original reveal), and buff richochet damage by at least 30% so power builds can include a/a.

mistsim.2748:

quickdraw has absolutely everything to do with it. when you stack a bunch of very good GM’s with a lot of utility, you get a very good build. one that is better than others. quickdraw allows things like double Hunter’s Shot, or double swoop. so it hugely increases our survivability (as well as damage).

yes we can slot EB and SotF right now. but we do way less damage than we’ll be doing after the patch. pure condi builds aren’t prevalent in the meta, so slotting both in fact is wasteful. next week, we’ll have a ton more survivability via BW, Quickdraw, and Barkskin. we’ll also be stacking lots of poison, our pets will be hitting harder, and our bleeds will be doing +33% damage.

when you make suggestions like these, you have to take into account the ENTIRE picture, and how GM’s interplay with each other.

Honed Axes needs to be competitive with BW. it needs to reduce OH axe recharge (like in original reveal), and buff richochet damage by at least 30% so power builds can include a/a.

Oh I am looking at the entire picture. Quickdraw is powerful but you have to look at the changes to all the other professions, not just ranger. Everyone is going to be much more powerful (except necros who got screwed). I don’t think these changes are out of line at all.

Depending on player skill and utilities you can get by just fine with either EB or SotF even against a condi heavy player. Having them in separate lines doesn’t mean people will automatically grab both, they will both be up against other strong traits. All this does is open up build diversity. Beastly Warden alone is enough to ensure EB won’t be taken by everyone.