Guild Wars 2

This Grandmaster Trait gives a stacking 2% crit chance every second and resets when you crit. This is, in effect a fancier way of providing an increased crit chance trait that is slightly more interesting than “Increase crit chance by 15%” or similar.

The reality is that the trait is very weak because of the fact that even at low crit rates it resets itself pretty regularly. The best case scenario is for a person with a base 5% crit chance, who will gain an average of 12.64% crit chance from the trait if they attack once per second. If you take this at a more typical 20% crit chance, that bonus drops to and average of 6.01% bonus crit chance.

I know some people have suggested making the increased percentage higher per tick, but even at 5% steps, the trait is worth less that 10% crit before you even get to 30% crit chance. I’ve attached a chart that shows the average value of the trait at different crit levels and at three different stepping intervals (the current 2%, 5% and 10%) and even at 10%, this trait is fairly weak for anyone with a decent starting crit chance.

In short, this trait is pretty ‘neat’ but is woefully underpowered, and lacks the ability to scale for people who want to add more precision to their existing gear.

Yeah, I’ve looked at that too and have a similar conclusion. Remember it also scales terribly to multiple targets and faster attacks!

A few approaches to improving it:

• buff it massively (20% per tick)
• buff it a lot and lower the tier (10% adept)
• make it stack per hit, not per second (no variance for weapon speed or targets) – even here 5% is a more reasonable value, capping at a 21% boost.

make it a stacking precision gain on noncritical hit, and stacking ferocity on crit.

would make it workable for both low and high crit builds.

I believe its meant to allow Revenant to stack non percision on gear to still get added dps options from other conversions.

Either it should also provide extra stacks by getting hit or hitting enemies or it should also give some fixed percentage based crit chance boost like +10% on top of its current effect.

“Maniacal Persistence – pointless trait. Rework it to provide a 33% chance to inflict condition on critical hit based on channeled legend. Jalis 4 sec weakness, Mallyx 6sec poison, Shiro 3sec chill, Ventari 4sec burning. 15 cd. Master trait.”

that… wouldn’t improve it o.o

right now it’s a very minor dps increase, the sort of trait you stare unhappily at and then assign anyway, because meh, dps is dps.

your suggestion would turn it into the kind of trait you stare at in incomprehension, trying to puzzle out WHY it has a cooldown, what it’s supposed to achieve, and then pick another trait in the line because maybe that will actually do something?

Being a master trait and swapping it with bolstered anguish would make it more useful tho. By alternative they add similiar effect to to the above trait by icnreasing critical chance on for every condition on you/your enemy

We don’t need another critical chance increase.

Instead, rework it to increase attack speed, similar to Risen Abomination’s Frenzy, stacking whenever you gain a condition/going up with stacks the more conditions you have on yourself.

And it’s in the Corruption line (the Mallyx line), Mallyx is preferably used with Mace, and Mace’s attack speed is pretty fast (3 auto-attacks in 1¼ seconds), making this trait even more useless, since you will reset it much faster…

Rym.1469:

We don’t need another critical chance increase.

Instead, rework it to increase attack speed, similar to Risen Abomination’s Frenzy, stacking whenever you gain a condition/going up with stacks the more conditions you have on yourself.

The last time i saw similiar suggestion..was back in 2013 before warrior buffs xdd

But why you would increase atk speed on already somehow fast paced weapon (mace aa)? We need more traits linked to our mechanic – legends. Right now we have barely anything to enhance them.

What if the trait only resetted when you leave combat? If it did that it could be an interesting choice.

skowcia.8257:

Rym.1469:

We don’t need another critical chance increase.

Instead, rework it to increase attack speed, similar to Risen Abomination’s Frenzy, stacking whenever you gain a condition/going up with stacks the more conditions you have on yourself.

The last time i saw similiar suggestion..was back in 2013 before warrior buffs xdd

But why you would increase atk speed on already somehow fast paced weapon (mace aa)? We need more traits linked to our mechanic – legends. Right now we have barely anything to enhance them.

Well, Condition Mallyx is likely to just grab Diabolic Inferno (after tweaks) or Pestilience, so third option could be there for Revenants focused on other weaponsets.

Unless weapon skills wont get modified based on legend theres inst any reason to mix Mallyx with something else than mace. Not to mention that these attack speed modifiers are stupid and they always ending up being broken. Just ask ally to get quickness.

Rym.1469:

We don’t need another critical chance increase.

Instead, rework it to increase attack speed, similar to Risen Abomination’s Frenzy, stacking whenever you gain a condition/going up with stacks the more conditions you have on yourself.

That sounds more in line with what the Mallyx/Corruption line than many other posts here: growing more powerful based on more conditions.

AzureSky.3175:

And it’s in the Corruption line (the Mallyx line), Mallyx is preferably used with Mace, and Mace’s attack speed is pretty fast (3 auto-attacks in 1¼ seconds), making this trait even more useless, since you will reset it much faster…

The actual cast time, including aftercast animations, for the Mace Auto-Attack chain is 2.25 seconds. Which makes it pretty typical for 1h weapons that are not daggers. It is the same animation time as the warrior’s MH Sword chain if you are looking for a reference on the Live server.

For comparison, the Revenant Staff Auto attack chain hits 4 times in 2.2 seconds, and Necromancer and Thief Daggers hit for 3 times in 2.05 seconds.

Knox.8962:

The actual cast time, including aftercast animations, for the Mace Auto-Attack chain is 2.25 seconds. Which makes it pretty typical for 1h weapons that are not daggers. It is the same animation time as the warrior’s MH Sword chain if you are looking for a reference on the Live server.

For comparison, the Revenant Staff Auto attack chain hits 4 times in 2.2 seconds, and Necromancer and Thief Daggers hit for 3 times in 2.05 seconds.

Okay, I’m sure that you’re right If I think about it, 3 auto-attacks in 1¼ seconds does sound way too fast. I didn’t test it since Revenant is not available at the moment, I just summed the cast time numbers from the wiki up without thinking about it… I’m sorry

It is bad.

/15chars :P:P:P

skowcia.8257:

Unless weapon skills wont get modified based on legend theres inst any reason to mix Mallyx with something else than mace. Not to mention that these attack speed modifiers are stupid and they always ending up being broken. Just ask ally to get quickness.

That’s actually wrong. There’s not really a reason you cannot take Mallyx in a power based build. The legend does give you loads of resistance which is useful by itself. A boon strip talent, an elite that improves all your stats by 10%. A talent that moves people around. A heal that removes all conditions at once.

Add on top of that the elite form that copies your conditions around you. Applying weakness, slow, blind or vulnerability around you is useful, even as a power build!

I completely see myself switching to Mallyx with a dual sword setup in a condition heavy situation to get loads of resistance and send back the CC style conditions to the attacker.

stof.9341:

skowcia.8257:

Unless weapon skills wont get modified based on legend theres inst any reason to mix Mallyx with something else than mace. Not to mention that these attack speed modifiers are stupid and they always ending up being broken. Just ask ally to get quickness.

That’s actually wrong. There’s not really a reason you cannot take Mallyx in a power based build. The legend does give you loads of resistance which is useful by itself. A boon strip talent, an elite that improves all your stats by 10%. A talent that moves people around. A heal that removes all conditions at once.

Add on top of that the elite form that copies your conditions around you. Applying weakness, slow, blind or vulnerability around you is useful, even as a power build!

I completely see myself switching to Mallyx with a dual sword setup in a condition heavy situation to get loads of resistance and send back the CC style conditions to the attacker.

Haha. Theres barely any resistance to cover your own self conditions let alone enemy one. The olny thing that is worth considering is boon strip but then again i play classes that doesnt have access to boonrip and are completely fine. 10%+ stats is no big deal either, i rather get (fixed) Jalis or Glint as they will offer me much more.

Also keep in mind that once you enter embrance the darkness you cant really do anything else than autoatk in current state as it drains tons of energy. You also need to have these conditions on yourself, but without 100% uptime resistance you also weakening yourself by not cleansing it.

So im not really sure where you getting that idea of loads of resistance when you can have at best 50% uptime by spamming banish everytime you get energy and autoattacking olny and naturally camping Mallyx. Not to mention that resistance can be stripped.

Also lol at Mallyx healing skill removing conditions. Like…really?

Knox.8962:

This Grandmaster Trait gives a stacking 2% crit chance every second and resets when you crit. This is, in effect a fancier way of providing an increased crit chance trait that is slightly more interesting than “Increase crit chance by 15%” or similar.

The reality is that the trait is very weak because of the fact that even at low crit rates it resets itself pretty regularly. The best case scenario is for a person with a base 5% crit chance, who will gain an average of 12.64% crit chance from the trait if they attack once per second. If you take this at a more typical 20% crit chance, that bonus drops to and average of 6.01% bonus crit chance.

I know some people have suggested making the increased percentage higher per tick, but even at 5% steps, the trait is worth less that 10% crit before you even get to 30% crit chance. I’ve attached a chart that shows the average value of the trait at different crit levels and at three different stepping intervals (the current 2%, 5% and 10%) and even at 10%, this trait is fairly weak for anyone with a decent starting crit chance.

In short, this trait is pretty ‘neat’ but is woefully underpowered, and lacks the ability to scale for people who want to add more precision to their existing gear.

Yeah, science kitten!

Edit: autocensor ruining my quote from Breaking Bad…

skowcia.8257:

Haha. Theres barely any resistance to cover your own self conditions let alone enemy one. The olny thing that is worth considering is boon strip but then again i play classes that doesnt have access to boonrip and are completely fine. 10%+ stats is no big deal either, i rather get (fixed) Jalis or Glint as they will offer me much more.

But those are numbers that can change a lot in between patches. As I said, it does feel like the revenant skills have mostly placeholder numbers.

I agree, I love the idea of the trait but in practice, man it’s just not very good… the stacking should be more like 10% each stack imo, I mean it’s a grandmaster trait

The only way to make this trait good is to give it a bonus crit rate proportional to your current crit rate, meaning that if you have 0% crit rate, the bonus is 2% per hit, if you have 90% crit rate, the bonus is 10% per hit. This way normal builds with 50-80% crit rate, at least can get a 5-6% bonus.

Even at a 10% stepping, if you have more than 63% crit chance, this trait is worth less than 5% bonus crit.

If you have 90% crit rate and the bonus is 10% per hit then you have a 5% average bonus.

First hit is 90% crit rate.
Second hit is 100% crit rate and resets.

Average is 95%, so +5% from your initial rate.

At 63% you only need about 6-7% stepping to have a bonus close to 5% average. Any higher bonus would be OP.

That’s why they’re not giving us more then 2% flat. However if you make it not flat…

That isn’t how the math works. Look at the graph in the first post.

I don’t see anything wrong with two different crit bonuses in different trees. Reaper has an (up to) 25% added crit, deathly precision and crit chance per condition on target. It works well to provide people with a play style that fits armor types such as Crusader’s stats (PTfh).

However, currently both are weak. Roiling Mists is essentially a 10% crit chance with a hefty requirement of 100% fury uptime to see that benefit, something that we don’t currently do well. Roy has said this will likely change though so that’s good!

Manical Persistence and Bolstering Anguish give a unique purpose for power builds in that line, but still deal with or benefit conditions, so thematically they make sense. Manical Persistence is just weak though, sadly. The average “realistic” crit chance added is incredibly low and it takes too long to get to a meaningful point.

They could either make it 10% per second. Or, do something like a stacking buff that adds 5% crit per non critical hit (max 10) and making critical hits only remove a single stack. Only problem with this is it might not be intuitive that it’s more intended for lower crit chance builds.

Or… Maybe… Scrap it all together and make it like…

“Increase Crit Chance by 10%. Critical hits generate 5 energy. 2 sec ICD.”

Knox.8962:

That isn’t how the math works. Look at the graph in the first post.

90% + 10% step is a bit special, because you get critical at 90% or at 100%, so you don’t get any early reset and you can flat out an average.

80% + 10% step is already way lower, because you can get a reset at 90%, so at the second attack. With 90% + 2% step you have a high chance to reset the bonus.

Your graph is right, but it would be more precise with a peak when you have situations like 98% and 2% or 95% and 5%, where it becomes just an average.

That’s why I’m suggesting to make it proportional to your current crit rate, so higher the crit, higher the bonus.

Honestly they should just make it do something on Crit

I was thinking “On critical hit add 1 second to all enemys condition times”
Internal cool down of 3 seconds.

Would let you get some extra stacks for a lot of things.

KingFarout.1092:

Honestly they should just make it do something on Crit

I was thinking “On critical hit add 1 second to all enemys condition times”
Internal cool down of 3 seconds.

Would let you get some extra stacks for a lot of things.

I’d still prefer my 10% crit and critical hits give 5 energy (2 sec ICD). :}
I’d use it…

First, excuse me for any mistakes, English is not my native language.

ronpierce & KingFarout have a good point here. I think we can work arround that.

On a flavour point i see the “Maniacal” part of that trait but not the “Persistence” aspect. That’s why i suggest to make this trait in two part : one for Maniacal (crit increase) and one for Persitence (resistence).

1st point : With the recent changes on the invocation line they add Fury and some Fury support. So why not add Fury on this trait to add synergies ?

2nd point : My uncle once told me that RESISTANCE IS FUTIL (yes my uncle is a Borg)but i disagree with him. Mallyx is all about self conditions and resitance but it have trouble to maintain a good uptime of that boon.

My proposal : 50% Chance on critical hit to gain 2sec of Fury and Resistance (4sec cooldown).

Flavor wise it make sense and keep the original idea of a crit chance increase trait. Build wise it add a little help for Shiro/Mallyx/Invoc build against conditions and help any build with Mallyx.

I would say switch it with Demonic Defiance, because THAT is worth a grandmaster slot. That way you could also have both Resistance on Mallyx use as well as incoming conditions healing you, which is amazing synergy on a tanky spec.

Lol, been using Superior Rune of Rage and Invocation traits. Was easy to keep 100% Fury uptime, expecially with 2 healing skills. No problem reaching 40+ seconds of Fury, ending just in time for another heal.

Of course you can achieve that if you keep using Scholar runes, but I think that creative builds are always better.

This analysis is very good.

look at him, fueling the hype train.

Kidel.2057:

Lol, been using Superior Rune of Rage and Invocation traits. Was easy to keep 100% Fury uptime, expecially with 2 healing skills. No problem reaching 40+ seconds of Fury, ending just in time for another heal.

Of course you can achieve that if you keep using Scholar runes, but I think that creative builds are always better.

I used Runes of Rage too. There were no problems keeping fury up an entire battle.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

There will be some tweaks to this trait soon™.

Spoiler Alert: What is it?

ronpierce.2760:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

There will be some tweaks to this trait soon™.

Spoiler Alert: What is it?

3% per second :-p

Dstroya.6705:

Kidel.2057:

Lol, been using Superior Rune of Rage and Invocation traits. Was easy to keep 100% Fury uptime, expecially with 2 healing skills. No problem reaching 40+ seconds of Fury, ending just in time for another heal.

Of course you can achieve that if you keep using Scholar runes, but I think that creative builds are always better.

I used Runes of Rage too. There were no problems keeping fury up an entire battle.

Same here – in most PvE Situations this may be a point – but i doubt that we will get the same uptime in high fractals where we are one hit wonder as we need to take some hits to trigger our fury. – i think some additional source of fury is still needed (maybe like mesmers and their <75% health thingy)

Loex.5104:

Same here – in most PvE Situations this may be a point – but i doubt that we will get the same uptime in high fractals where we are one hit wonder as we need to take some hits to trigger our fury. – i think some additional source of fury is still needed (maybe like mesmers and their <75% health thingy)

Don’t know fractal (I didn’t want to cry if I got a weaponskin) but in AC it was pretty easy to keep Fury up with Fierce Infusion.
Start the fight with Shiro heal (10.4s), get hit (19.5s, 29.9s total), and even like that you already have 99% uptime (since Enchanted Daggers only has 30s cd), so the second healing skill or Incensed Response are just 13 more seconds of Fury respectively (way over 100% uptime).

I didn’t even pick Incensed Response since it’s useless if you also have Rune of Rage and Fierce Infusion. I basically had +30% crit rate and +12% damage all the time.

Fury shouldn’t be easier to access then that. It’s a strong boon.

Kidel.2057:

Loex.5104:

Same here – in most PvE Situations this may be a point – but i doubt that we will get the same uptime in high fractals where we are one hit wonder as we need to take some hits to trigger our fury. – i think some additional source of fury is still needed (maybe like mesmers and their <75% health thingy)

Don’t know fractal (I didn’t want to cry if I got a weaponskin)

I got a Weapon Skin (Scepter) on a regular Character. During the Beta I ignored the rewards I got with my Revenant and looted nothing in Fractals. The Problem is that once I had too many unopened bouncy chests, the rewards from them are dropped into the inventory. and I just found my very first Fractal Armor Chest in my Inventory :-(

NapTooN.6283:

ronpierce.2760:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

There will be some tweaks to this trait soon™.

Spoiler Alert: What is it?

3% per second :-p

10% would be cool

Knox.8962:

This Grandmaster Trait gives a stacking 2% crit chance every second and resets when you crit. This is, in effect a fancier way of providing an increased crit chance trait that is slightly more interesting than “Increase crit chance by 15%” or similar.

The reality is that the trait is very weak because of the fact that even at low crit rates it resets itself pretty regularly. The best case scenario is for a person with a base 5% crit chance, who will gain an average of 12.64% crit chance from the trait if they attack once per second.

This maybe more true for pvp than pvp but you have to dodge, chase enemies, kite, heal, wait until target comes out of stealth etc. so it is a lot more ufesul than it seems. For bursting its bad but for sustain damage it is good.

It is marginally useful when you have big gaps between attacks to frontload your damage with a nearly guaranteed crit. It is about as useful as an intelligence sigil that only procs one time (that isn’t very good).

I’m curious to see what they do to the trait to help it.

Kicker.8203:

This maybe more true for pvp than pvp but you have to dodge, chase enemies, kite, heal, wait until target comes out of stealth etc. so it is a lot more ufesul than it seems. For bursting its bad but for sustain damage it is good.

combat only.

the moment the gold mist disappears, you’re back at base crit rate.