Guild Wars 2

I’ll be doing a thread with my opinions on each Specializaiton line:

• RU AMA Initial thoughts: Deadly Arts
• RU AMA Initial thoughts: Critical Strikes
• RU AMA Initial thoughts: Shadow Arts

High Level Thoughts:

• Screen shots of the traits
  The set previewed appears to be perfectly themed for Acrobatics. There’s a lot of stamina like traits that play off of endurance and initiative and there’s also damage avoidance traits. There’s far less power creep in this line and I’m a bit surprised to see no Stability here.

Minor Traits
The biggest change in the Minor traits is Feline Grace. Even with Endless Stamina to play off of, it’s nowhere near as powerful. Currently FG instantly returns 3 seconds of endurance regeneration or 1.5 seconds of vigor endurance regen and that’s on top of the current regen rate you have. The new Acro line will give you back 1 second of Endurance every 5 seconds you have vigor on you. This means you can get one dodge almost every 4.25 seconds, but only if you have vigor on you, so you still get 1 dodge every 10 seconds without it. Whereas currently without vigor you get one dodge every 7 seconds, and with vigor you get one dodge every 3.5 seconds. Without vigor this is a 43% nerf, and with vigor it’s a 21% nerf.

I would really like to acrobatics naturally have Long Reach when you pick the specialization. I feel like a longer range steal would go a long way in setting Acro apart from other specializations.

• Expeditious Dodger – Unchanged.
• Feline Grace – It’s been heavily reduced in potency. Instead of Granting vigor, I’d like to see dodges and other evades simply grant 5 to 8 endurance per attack avoided. Having it provide 2 seconds of vigor is technically stronger, but the issue I see is that even if you’re skillfully evading, because vigor is a DoT effect you have to wait for the benefit.
• Endless Stamina – This is interesting in concept. I feel like it might have a potency issue at this spot, so I would think moving this to the Minor adept slot and merging Expeditious Dodger’s effect into here. I’d then put Long Reach in this spot, and if need be merge some other effect into Long Reach.

Adept Traits
The adept line lacks an offensive option in my opinion. I would like to see a Building Momentum like effect implemented in here.

• Fleet Shadow – This trait feels slightly out of place. That aside though this trait feels challenging to make use of with certain weapons as well, builds using Main-hand or offhand dagger could get a lot of use out of it, but I think you’re hamstrung to having a dagger if you’re going to pick this trait. Maybe it could be right at home in this if it also had an ICD effect that applied stealth when you successfully evade, maybe start ICD as 30 seconds and move it up or down from there, I don’t know.
• Vigorous Recovery – Unchanged. I’d consider replacing this with Build Momentum or maybe merging this into Building Momentum, I’d also adjust building momentum to behave more like Feline Grace where you a couple stacks of might when you evade an attack and put it on a 2 second ICD. I’m looking for an offensive option in this set.
• Pain Response – Unchanged. As of the AMA though it’s probably the only adept I’d take.

Master Traits
The master traits are all interesting. I’m especially excited about having a trait that provides benefits to achieving a first trike. I’m really disappointed though that there’s a weapon specific trait here, I’m not a fan of weapon specific traits as they kill the options you have.

• Guarded Initiation – This is really exciting to me. Getting first strikes is often strong and this is an interesting way of making a first strike strong without adding offence. I’d open up the trigger threshold to be at 90% like other first strike effects. It does only benefit vs condition’s though, I’d experiment with 3 seconds of Protection too.
• Swindler’s Equilibrium – I don’t like this trait’s trigger. It sounded like this trait specifically exists for Flanking Strike and Pistol Whip. However the effect of recharge steal by 1 second on evade is interesting, my fear is that if you’re running an acrobatics build that people won’t want to target you because they’d give you steal more frequently.
• Hard to Catch – I like the changes here, no more random teleport straight into the fray and you can double dodge immediately after stun breaking. A strong defensive option.

Grandmaster Traits
The grandmasters don’t really feel build defining to me, except for quick pockets. I’d like to see either a standout utility option or a standout offensive option.

• Assassin’s Reward – The effect is unchanged. Turn initiative into health, this has a potency issue. It could be given higher numbers or maybe given a small passive benefit of to the effect of gain 5-7 health per second per initiative you have. Maybe merge it with Don’t Stop, I don’t know, but it feels weak and not build defining.
• Quick Pockets – This is solid. I’d like to see how thief would play if it had a reduce recharge on weapon swap by 2 to 3 seconds, and this seems like the appropriate place to try that, though I’d say reduce the initiative gain on weapon swap to 2 if that were implemented. Reduced weapon swap recharge feels very build defining in my opinion.
• Don’t Stop – I’m not a fan of this one. It feels too unreliable and passive for a grandmaster even though you can kind of control it if you don’t already have swiftness on you. I’d change this or replace this.

Acrobatics has some really interesting ideas that are being floated around in it. As of the AMA though I’d say this is clearly the 2nd weakest specialization, but numbers can be adjusted to change that. The concepts they are going for in acro feel right thematically, once specializations get to more of a balancing stage I think this will be a strong choice, especially if Long Reach is integrated into here.

Don’t Stop is being changed for sure. They said on stream that they weren’t happy with how it feels and so it’s going to have some other effect. The idea they put across was that you would evade the next attack when you gained Swiftness. That would be much stronger than what this is. We’ll have to see what they end up with.

Auesis.7301:

Don’t Stop is being changed for sure. They said on stream that they weren’t happy with how it feels and so it’s going to have some other effect. The idea they put across was that you would evade the next attack when you gained Swiftness. That would be much stronger than what this is. We’ll have to see what they end up with.

If they go with this one, it’ll hopefully quell all the FG complaints. A free second evade every 5 seconds when you dodge (since you get swiftness after you dodge) combined with the increased vigor effect and vigor uptime is nice. It would also work well with Thrill of the crime and steal (assuming it’s off CD). It’s a little clunkier to use, but more powerful since you’ll just evade the attack regardless what you’re doing.

Endless stamina needs to be a 50% boost. Seeing 50% makes it look big, but in reality, that would just make the rate 150% of normal instead of 100%. So instead of the base of 5 endurance per second back or 10 with vigor, you’d get 12.5. At a cost of 50 endurance per dodge, that’s 1 dodge every 4 seconds instead of every 5, which seems fair considering we don’t have other defensive boons (except limited regen). That means every 20 seconds we have one more dodge than an elementalist.