Guild Wars 2

So I have been playing around with power builds a lot lately especially for dungeons and fractals, and I have been using the opening strike traits in the power line. Remorseless gives us opening strike on kill or on entering stealth and when using longbow, I often pop the #3 to gain stealth just to regain opening strike again.

However for most situations, I am not using longbow, I am using sword/x

In melee we don’t have any stealth options, and the only way a ranger can gain stealth unless a theif is in the party is through LB #3, which kind of limits the stealth part of the remorsless trait to 1 weapon… so what if stalkers strike on dagger gave 2-3 seconds of stealth instead of the poison but kept the evade? This would allow us to reapply vulnerability to our targets, and would also add a bit of extra survivability in melee. This would be great in longer boss fights where vulnerability starts to drop off after the initial vuln burst at the start of the fight. It would also make dagger a more interesting offhand and could have its uses in pvp and wvw.

It could also open up a whole lot of new build possibilities and different play styles.

I see this as also having some potential without even considering the remorseless trait.

What do you guys think? Personally I think this would be a great idea but I’d love to hear your thoughts

Its not just MHS that needs a stealth for Remorseless to be useful, but it would be a start.

The more pressing issue is that the 25 and 30 point opening strike traits should be switched, because the 5, 15 and 25 point traits are a waste of space without the 30 right now.

Honestly, the 5-pointer should give OS to you and pet, the 15 the reset on kill (like the 15-pointer guardian burn virtue reset on kill 15-pointer) the 25 the crit. New Grandmaster trait.

I thought about reset on interrupt, but that becomes ludicrously powerful when paired with Moment of Clarity – 5-10 vuln + 100% crit + 50% damage boost + 50% longer daze/stun = lolspike.

Although the improvement to Remorseless was very welcome, it’s definitely not good enough yet.

Longbow is the only weapon that benefits from it, but the Longbow already has about four other traits to pick for the 20 and 30 point slot in marksmanship: Piercing Arrows, Eagle Eye, Spotter and Signet of the Beastmaster. Eventhough I use Longbow a lot, I never slot Remorseless.

I think Remorseless also doesn’t give the pet Opening Strike, only the Ranger, so it’s only 5 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds. I’m not impressed. It also forces me to “waste” the stealth from Hunter’s Shot which in turn stops my auto-attack. So I really think it isn’t worth it.

Maybe Remorseless should reset when you swap weapons as well. Or on pet swap.

I’d rather not have that as Dagger functions more as a defensive condi offhand and not a power one. For my set (a/t s/d) both sword 3 and dagger 4 are needed to maintain poison uptime to beat certain (warrior) classes.

Holland.9351:

Maybe Remorseless should reset when you swap weapons as well.

This right here makes Remorseless suddenly seem more viable.

Actually, come to think of it, opening strike really sucks. It’s just guaranteed crit and vulnerability ONCE at the beginning of a fight. Compare it to the WS minor traits or Skirmishing minor traits; they’re both tons more useful.

Remorseless certainly needs help… and I guess your idea is OK… but I dont really want them doing anything to the dagger simple because its perfect as it is. Probably our best weapon which in itself is sad because its just an offhand…

So yeah I’d rather they didnt touch it because they will inevitably break it

i kind of actually really like the idea of regaining remorsless on weapon swap/ pet swap, that would work. actually thats an awesome idea its true that remorsless is currently underwhelming, and definately needs to be looked at. Its good when clearing trash mobs, but useless in drawn out fights.

ok new question, what if they removed the regain on stealth aspect of remorseless and changed it to regain opening strike on weapon swap for player and pet swap for the pet?

The issue I have with remorseless is who cares if the vast majority of a Ranger’s skills crit? Only 2 skills do what could be considered ‘burst’ damage and none of them are available to the weapon that can use remorseless. Until this class gets more burst or a way to reduce the cooldown on weapon swap the trait will never have any realistic use for this class.

The same is true with moment of clarity. Who cares if the vast majority of a Ranger’s skills do 50% more damage? Again, only 2 skills do enough damage to even notice this trait worked in the first place, but unlike Remorseless, at least moment of clarity synergizes well with the burst skills we have because of hilt+maul combo.

These are both just total trash talents with the way the class is designed right now. Not going to care if my #1 skill crits or not and the vast majority of our weapon skills do the same damage as our #1 skills or less. Honestly speaking, I probably still wouldn’t use remorseless or moment of clarity even if it triggered off weapon swap or dagger #4.

That sounds pretty nice! The amount and duration might need looking at when it’s triggering that often, but something like:

MMS 5: You and your pet have opening strike.
MMS 15: OS reset after a kill.
MMS 25: OS reset on weapon swap. Pet OS reset on pet swap
MMS Grandmaster: OS always crits.

Is a good framework for turning 4 trash traits into useful traits.

i agree Taverius, that would be awesome. Personally, i dont particularly use the OS for the 100% crit particularly or for the “burst”, moreso for applying vuln to enemies, and we currently have no way to reset this apart from longbow #3 in long boss fights.

The crit trait would mainly be of use to MHS+X/GS setups, sure, but that’s still better than no use

oh yeah, the 100% crit chance is icing on the cake

Nty, with sword/dagger I can keep perma poison, and that is amazing against warriors who run healing signet. I do agree though more stealth would make that trait more usefull.