Guild Wars 2

I just don’t understand why only Dagger has a chance to apply poison, while dagger AA already applies poison. Why not change the trait to Blade training and give sword attack access to poison? That should open up some interesting build

Because sword gets damage and Steal cooldown reduction in Acro with Swindler’s Equilibrium, just like pistol gets Ankle Shots, and staff gets Staff Master. One trait per weapon. (except short bow <. <)

Edit: Also, Sw/X provides no other conditions. No builds would really benefit from this. Maaaaybe if you trait pressure striking, but it’s still not a great option.

The thing is, poison can actually be a very strong condition. Since sword has lower dps compared with dagger and staff, and the evasive playstyle of s/d sometimes tends to drag the fight into a relatively long marathon, the heal reduction effect of poison is very useful.

Also, with the torment on interrupt and condition on dodge trait s/d can actually have enough access to other conditions. Note that thief has quite a lot of utilities that apply interrupt and conditions too.

I’m not saying I’m against it, but they specifically wanted one trait per weapon, so this likely won’t happen.