Guild Wars 2

On first stream about balance changes Brutish Seals have really impressing to me note about refreshing Opening Strike at activated signet.

But on recent stream/changelog this line is gone:

• Brutish Seals: Activating a signet grants 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds to you and your pet. Your signets gain 20% recharge reduction.

I just want to up discussion about this change, because i really like it at first instance.

First, i know what this change is due to the fact that we have very extensive access to Fury: on weapon swap with Skirmishing traitline, on adept trait Clarion Bond, on Wilderness Knowledge Surival skills, and etc.

But in result we still have so much access to give Fury for self only at Survival utility skill activation’s with GM trait in Wilderness Knowledge line, why we do not receive access to refresh Fury/Opening strikes on Marksmanship traitline for signets utility skills, and where Opening Strikes/Signet trait’s live?

Our character have only 3 utility slots, it’s not changing something so much, but we will have some build diversity to mix survival and signets utility skills (core Marsmanship utility skills) and still have access to GM trait proc. for our Core Ranger profession.

And due Specialization mechanic, that leave us with only 2 traitlines.

For example, picking Marksmanship with this GM trait leave us with almost no source to refresh Opening Strikes and leave us in situation to pick Wilderness Knowledge for good access to Fury uptime, but Suvival skills in most case is conditionclears and situational skills, we cannot pop up it just for crit proc.
And what if Druid specialization have really nice condiclears itself and/or CC skills on staff/utility skills, and we just don’t need this traitline for Survival utility Fury procs.
And we stay to add Beastmastery or Skirmishing, itself it have 1 Fury proc traits, what’s not enough.
Also in Future we have some new Specialization’s, which also can be affected not adding this line.

I think this change must be revert, it’s not so game-breaking.

I honestly could not see a reason why they removed it, but having OS refreshed on SoTW makes for an absurd Maul or PoS. Then I got to thinking that maybe Druid has a trait that interacts with OS and having too many of them would be super OP.

It is already pretty amazing that we get it on fury. Combined with cavalier/Valkyrie gear, you get the best of both worlds.

It pidgeonhole us into taking Remorseless for simply getting something out of the three minors, that’s my main problem about it. The cooldown on our signets are way too long to abuse the proposed signet trait, but it still gave us a bit more to play around with without neglecting the minor traits.

The new Remorseless is great, but it only partly solves what used to be the problem, the mere fact that the only trait we had to utlize the minors was horrible. Now we have a great trait for it, but it is still just one trait. I’m all for about having tough choices, but those choices shouldn’t make the minor traits obsolete.

They could at least have merged Predator’s Instinct and Onslaught, and an add OS on signet use as a seperate adept trait if they felt the old signet trait was too strong.

Lazze.9870:

It pidgeonhole us into taking Remorseless for simply getting something out of the three minors, that’s my main problem about it. The cooldown on our signets are way too long to abuse the proposed signet trait, but it still gave us a bit more to play around with without neglecting the minor traits.

The new Remorseless is great, but it only partly solves what used to be the problem, the mere fact that the only trait we had to utlize the minors was horrible. Now we have a great trait for it, but it is still just one trait. I’m all for about having tough choices, but those choices shouldn’t make the minor traits obsolete.

They could at least have merged Predator’s Instinct and Onslaught, and an add OS on signet use as a seperate adept trait if they felt the old signet trait was too strong.

I can imagine that a Longbow Swapped > 125% Auto Attack crit > Signet of the Wild > 150% Auto Attack Crit > Zephyr > 150% Auto attack crit > Rapid Fire into 25 vulnerability (3 hits of you and a pet with Opening strikes) > 2 hits and another Rapid Fire into all that would be way too powerful.

Yes, that was my 1st idea that ran through my mind. A hybrid of the signet and Wilderness Knowledge. A super skilled ranger could force a target into downed state even now. After this change? Nope. That would be an Armageddon.

We got more than enough possibilities with live traits. Believe me. That asked for a Nerf.

It’s worth mentioning that it was changed. I was really looking forward to the “old” version, but can 100% see why it had to be nerfed. Attack your target the first time (let’s say with some ranged weapon) for 5 stacks vuln + 5 from your pet. Switch to Greatsword, (fury gives opening strike back) use greatsword 5 to stun your enemy. 5 more stacks vuln. Use Maul with Signet of the Hunt. You get 5 stacks vuln again from maul and another 5 stacks from another opening strike. You also get the opening strike damage bonus, 100% crit chance and the bonus damage from signet of the Hunt on top of having stacked 25 vuln on your enemy in a split second with few skills and a single pet attack. Your pet also receives a few damage modifiers meanwhile, and in theory actually stacks even more vuln. All this needed 2 trait lines and the use of Signet of the hunt a 24s cooldown.

I understand why they decided against the On Signet Use OS Refresh, but man, I thought it was perfect. In my opinion, they could’ve put both the signet trait and the remorseless trait on the same Grandmaster tier (and switch the LB to master). You’d choose between either OS Refresh on Fury+25% more damage OR all the signet traits and OS Refresh on Signet Use (totally a GM tier trait me thinks) for more ‘build variety’ I guess.

Alternatively… Add a short ‘Fury’ effect on Signet of the Hunt active Perfect synergy with remorseless and a bit more utility on the Signet of the Hunt

Yeh I think they’ve got this wrong. The two big “nukes” that will benefit from remorseless are maul and pos, and they are power melee skills.

And for me power melee requires sos or protect me…

Tragic Positive.9356:

We got more than enough possibilities with live traits. Believe me. That asked for a Nerf.

I’m excited abobut the changes, you know that. And it was strong, a potential overkill, I’m fully aware of that. Doesn’t change the fact that we only got one way to play around with the minors. To me, that’s a little disappointing, but at least they adknowledge how lackluster the current opening strike is.

That being said, there are other traits I would rather have them take a second look at.

Lazze.9870:

Tragic Positive.9356:

We got more than enough possibilities with live traits. Believe me. That asked for a Nerf.

I’m excited abobut the changes, you know that. And it was strong, a potential overkill, I’m fully aware of that. Doesn’t change the fact that we only got one way to play around with the minors. To me, that’s a little disappointing, but at least they adknowledge how lackluster the current opening strike is.

That being said, there are other traits I would rather have them take a second look at.

Definitely. This is what I’m thinking about. While people are bringing up traits that already seem fine for both sides (rangers and their enemies), the most important underwhelming issues have been put to dirt and not mentioned again ever.

For example… Why was instinctive reaction HealingPower>Power transfer nerfed? The design was debatable even before, so I don’t see a reason to nerf an already strange trait…
There are almost no builds that would like to focus on healing power and power at the same time. There aren’t any. In case you want to run Valkyrie, you will gain 50 bonus power. If you want to run Cleric – you’ll gain 130 power without any ferocity or precision – which is pretty horrible for a Ranger that has no burst abilities and focuses on stable direct damage application (channel-like).

It might change if my numbers on Remorseless Cleric are wrong and the build actually becomes powerful… But that build wasn’t even close to others I ran the numbers on.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Then I got to thinking that maybe Druid has a trait that interacts with OS and having too many of them would be super OP.

Highly unlikely Druid would get a trait that interacted with opening strikes directly, at least not without its own traits that affect your opening strike. Druid getting opening strikes traits would hurt the identity of Marksmanship and make not taking the two lines together an incorrect choice.

Druid providing a ton of fury procs though? More flexible and gives the same interaction.