Guild Wars 2

I was focused on seeing what effects these changes could have on various builds and while testing limited and only to wvw I am optimistic that we will see a bit more diversity in builds that can be effective.

WvW builds.

Haste. I have a build with a relatively high boon duration that was using trickster in any case so slotted this in. I also took flanking strikes version of haste. This can be quite effective as with 50 percent boon duration you can get 18 seconds of haste every < 48 seconds. This was used with my Staff AA and it really pumps out the damage. Note that the cooldown on the flanking strikes version as per tooltip is now affected by trickster trait. That said the base for that version uses the old 60 second base. I am not sure that intended.

New Venoms. While we will see some increase in sharing of venoms it not the doom and gloom some suggest. The lower range from which you can apply this makes it hard to share unless at the start of a battle. Thieves tend not to fight inside of a zerg mass so once battle starts it rare to share with others. I can live with the might loss.

Rending Shade. I can grow to really like this skill and can see a number of reasons to take over the other two GMS. I traited up for the maximum boon theft possible with sigil of absorption on main weapon set and traiting SOH (interrupt) and BT. You can rip boons away in seconds and really leave an enemy vulnerable. Without boons a number of classes see a sudden drop in staying power.Especially effective against engineers and Eles in my tests.

As I like to min/max and go to the extreme i took the food that allows 10 percent damage mitigation along with unhindered combat and weakening strikes. When you DO get all of this running at once (albeit rare) there 10+10+10+10 plus fumble chance off weakness and it very noticeable . If you happen to be stealthed you get another 20 percent and the chances of stealing protection and or using durability for the same are also very possible.

Having all those boons on can be dangerous if you met a necro. It would be nice if there a trait that could leverage all these boons such as gain 15 ferocity for each boon on you.