Guild Wars 2

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

• Ready Up AMA Inititial thoughts: Deadly Arts
• Ready Up AMA Inititial thoughts: Shadow Arts
• Ready Up AMA Inititial thoughts: Acrobatics

High Level thoughts:

• Screen shots of the traits
  This line is the weakest line currently. It doesn’t have a role, besides grabbing certain traits for pistol and minor damage. An important thing to remember is that this line was taken originally for its Grandmaster damage modifiers and the stats from trait points.

Minor Traits

• Keen Observer – Unchanged. Basically do 1 more crit out of every 20 hits while you have high health. It’s pretty RNG, so you never notice it. Maybe numbers get tweaked or change this to have a decent ICD and guarantee 1 crit upon recharge.
• Unrelenting Strikes – This one confused me a bit, the description says one thing while the tool tip indicates another. Executioner fulfills this role already.
• First Strikes – Unchanged. Still a good damage modifier.

Adept Traits
Currently these are subpar due to potency, but numbers can change. Basically your only option is the situation to do more damage, it feels like they all have the same role.

• Side Strike – It’s an okay trait. 1 more crit while flanking out of every 15 hits.
• Signets of Power – An okay trait. You get some more damage when you Infiltrator’s Signet. Works with the signet burst build, though not viable in competitive play. Maybe merge with Signet Use and move to Master.
• Combo Critical Chance – This translates to one out of every 20 skill three hits does a crit. Maybe junk this.

Master Traits
Currently you only take Critical Haste or Signet Use from this line. Both of those are gone, but as I mentioned Signet Use can be merged. Here we have another potency issue for the AMA traits. I’d bring back Critical Haste.

Weapons Traits aside
In my opinion weapons traits being specific to one weapon is not something anyone would want unless it’s very potent. Even then you’re only ever going to take that trait if you use that weapon, so these traits limit build diversityheavily by existing. Since Weapon traits are build defining, if they are going to stay, they should be put into Grandmaster, which means they should also be extremely potent in their effects and should compete in the same specialization so that you aren’t stuck as stongly with weapons defining your specialization used.

• Sundering Strikes – Unchanged. Weak. The overall effect is an average of 3-4 vulnerability for melee and only works out for Pistol Whip and Unload. Maybe look into giving this an internal cooldown and giving 5+ stacks of burst vulnerability like the domination line.
• Practiced Tolerance – More health is always a nice choice, depending on how the final set of Master and Adept traits shakes out, I’d considering moving this back to adept.
• Ankle Shots – The Pistol Traits need to be either one trait or core in my opinion. Weapon trait aside this again has another potency issue for the Master Line.

Grandmaster Traits
2/3 I like in concept. There’s a weapon trait here, weapon traits sadden me. I like the idea of guaranteeing crits or getting benefits from them though.

• Ricochet – Unchanged. Please put the range as core to pistols. If I got rid of this trait and I’d add the bounce as core to unload.
• Hidden Killer – Unchanged. I like the concept, but the potency isn’t build defining. I’d change this to "Gain bonus critical-hit chance while in stealth or revealed. Maybe keep the 100% for stealth but do 30% for revealed. This helps Pistol Whip builds and Unload builds benefit. Also revealed training synergy.
• Invigorating Precision – The design of this trait is not happy for a thief. You don’t want to take hits. This trait’s design is low potency all the time and fits a warrior better as they can trade blows. A thief plays hit and run, so allow this trait to play more like mug so you can turn a fight around on someone. Give it an ICD and maybe make it static heal on crit plus a percentage the critical damage inflicted retuned as well, seems more build defining this way.

Currently Crit strikes is by far the weakest line. It only does low potency damage. I’d like to see some other objective added to the critical strikes line, offensive utility, incoming critical hit counters, trigger self revealed removal.. something.

Shockwave.1230:

Invigorating Precision – The design of this trait is not happy for a thief. You don’t want to take hits. This trait’s design is low potency all the time and fits a warrior better as they can trade blows. A thief plays hit and run, so allow this trait to play more like mug so you can turn a fight around on someone. Give it an ICD and maybe make it static heal on crit plus a percentage the critical damage inflicted retuned as well, seems more build defining this way.

Invigorating Precision heals based on outgoing crits, aka crits that you do to other people.

Softspoken.2410:

Shockwave.1230:

Invigorating Precision – The design of this trait is not happy for a thief. You don’t want to take hits. This trait’s design is low potency all the time and fits a warrior better as they can trade blows. A thief plays hit and run, so allow this trait to play more like mug so you can turn a fight around on someone. Give it an ICD and maybe make it static heal on crit plus a percentage the critical damage inflicted retuned as well, seems more build defining this way.

Invigorating Precision heals based on outgoing crits, aka crits that you do to other people.

The sky is blue.

Kicker.8203:

Softspoken.2410:

Shockwave.1230:

Invigorating Precision – The design of this trait is not happy for a thief. You don’t want to take hits. This trait’s design is low potency all the time and fits a warrior better as they can trade blows. A thief plays hit and run, so allow this trait to play more like mug so you can turn a fight around on someone. Give it an ICD and maybe make it static heal on crit plus a percentage the critical damage inflicted retuned as well, seems more build defining this way.

Invigorating Precision heals based on outgoing crits, aka crits that you do to other people.

The sky is blue.

kitten … Why is mine orange than…

I agree with all, especially that Combo Critical Chance is rubbish and, Invigorating precision is bad in concept: totally not what a thief should have. And the traits need more juice overall.

Softspoken.2410:

Shockwave.1230:

Invigorating Precision – The design of this trait is not happy for a thief. You don’t want to take hits. This trait’s design is low potency all the time and fits a warrior better as they can trade blows. A thief plays hit and run, so allow this trait to play more like mug so you can turn a fight around on someone. Give it an ICD and maybe make it static heal on crit plus a percentage the critical damage inflicted retuned as well, seems more build defining this way.

Invigorating Precision heals based on outgoing crits, aka crits that you do to other people.

Yup, I would never use it at the current potency because it won’t trigger for enough healing reliably, and Thief doesn’t have the sustain to stand in fights to make the most of it, you don’t want to trade hits because of the lack of sustain and that 1500 health you might gain from dealing 10000 critical damage isn’t worth it as a grandmaster trait. You’d be better off taking Practiced Tolerance in my opinion.

I think it’d be more interesting to make this trait’s healing spike with an ICD creating vulnerability Windows and allowing you to turn a fight around or combo this heal off other Heals to get high health bonus effects like Scholar runes.

That’s just my opinion though.

Shockwave.1230:

Softspoken.2410:

Shockwave.1230:

Invigorating Precision – The design of this trait is not happy for a thief. You don’t want to take hits. This trait’s design is low potency all the time and fits a warrior better as they can trade blows. A thief plays hit and run, so allow this trait to play more like mug so you can turn a fight around on someone. Give it an ICD and maybe make it static heal on crit plus a percentage the critical damage inflicted retuned as well, seems more build defining this way.

Invigorating Precision heals based on outgoing crits, aka crits that you do to other people.

Yup, I would never use it at the current potency because it won’t trigger for enough healing reliably, and Thief doesn’t have the sustain to stand in fights to make the most of it, you don’t want to trade hits because of the lack of sustain and that 1500 health you might gain from dealing 10000 critical damage isn’t worth it as a grandmaster trait. You’d be better off taking Practiced Tolerance in my opinion.

I think it’d be more interesting to make this trait’s healing spike with an ICD creating vulnerability Windows and allowing you to turn a fight around or combo this heal off other Heals to get high health bonus effects like Scholar runes.

That’s just my opinion though.

Ah. When you referenced not wanting to take hits, I thought you had the traits functionality reversed, since the trait actually doesn’t encourage you to take damage any more than mug does.

I can understand wanting to make the trait more pivotal, so that its effects are concentrated in one powerful moment rather than spread out over an entire fight, but I think you’re underestimating the amount of healing you should get out of this trait in a fight when used on an appropriate build. In a build with a good crit chance and some ferocity, crits compose something like 2/3rds of all your damage. (50% crit rate, 200% bonus damage on crits hits this). At which point you’re basically gaining 10% of your damage output as healing. In a 1v1, that’s similar to a 10% boost in damage, since you’re causing that swing in your relative life totals, and that’s comparable to a 20% boost that’s only available 50% of the time.

To compare it to Practiced Tolerance: You’d need around 2140 precision to get 1500 extra health from that trait. At which point you have a crit rate of 60%, I think? So barring other tricks to manipulate your crit rate for important skills and the availability of fury and assuming zero ferocity, you’d only need to deal around 11,000 damage before crits to heal 1500 health across a fight. (11000 * 0.6 crit chance * 1.5 crit multiplier * 0.15 heal from crits).

Again, the major drawback of this trait is how its spread out across a fight. You can overheal with it, you can’t spike your health back up if someone does some burst damage to you, but all in all, it provides substantial healing that’s rather easy to access throughout a fight.

I played and play p/p thief using IP off the CS line. It was relatively easy to keep your health up near full in a high crit build supplemented with other heal types such as SOM or heal on crit foods in wvw.

The issue with p\p is a lack of condition cleanse.

I am intrigued with the trait that provides resistance for 5 seconds when attacking with full health.

I currently play with a high boom uptime build of 80 percent. In theory I could get resistance for 9 seconds of every ten if I attack with full health.

Now I will no longer have access to 30 percent boon duration off acrobatics line but if I can get something reasonably up there i think IP coupled with that new trait in something like a 0/6/6/6/0 or 0/6/0/6/6 is worth trying.

Since vitality now decoupled from the acrobatics line one could counter intuitively design with low vitality so it easier to keep health at full .

I’m still favouring Critical Strikes over Trickery, I consider Hidden Killer to be the foundation of my zerk dd build.

Shockwave.1230:

Softspoken.2410:

Shockwave.1230:

Invigorating Precision – The design of this trait is not happy for a thief. You don’t want to take hits. This trait’s design is low potency all the time and fits a warrior better as they can trade blows. A thief plays hit and run, so allow this trait to play more like mug so you can turn a fight around on someone. Give it an ICD and maybe make it static heal on crit plus a percentage the critical damage inflicted retuned as well, seems more build defining this way.

Invigorating Precision heals based on outgoing crits, aka crits that you do to other people.

Yup, I would never use it at the current potency because it won’t trigger for enough healing reliably, and Thief doesn’t have the sustain to stand in fights to make the most of it, you don’t want to trade hits because of the lack of sustain and that 1500 health you might gain from dealing 10000 critical damage isn’t worth it as a grandmaster trait. You’d be better off taking Practiced Tolerance in my opinion.

I think it’d be more interesting to make this trait’s healing spike with an ICD creating vulnerability Windows and allowing you to turn a fight around or combo this heal off other Heals to get high health bonus effects like Scholar runes.

That’s just my opinion though.

I thik the trait was initially designed for giving more sustain to pistol whip builds. The problem is: Is it realy worth it?

I’ve been using Invigorating Precision on my PvE Thief for the past few weeks (S/P set) and i’d like to share my experience with it.

Full Berserker set, 25/30/0/15/0 signet build that revolves around might stacking with runes of Strength.

The trait is absolutely invaluable in Silverwastes or for other hard hitting solo content. You can literally stand in front of every boss in SW and sustain yourself during the whole fight. A single Pistol Whip can heal upwards of 2000 and with bosses that spam attacks a lot all you see is EvadeEvadeEvade and green numbers flying everywhere.

Remember the boss where everyone drops reflects right at the end of the assault? You can “facetank” the whole thing! same goes for every other boss. Not even my guardian or warrior come even remotely close to this level of sustain for such prolonged periods, especially in full Berserker gear.

That being said, for organized dungeons, Executioner reigns supreme obviously. Same probably goes for WvW or sPvP, Exe. or HK. For solo/open world/lazymode content though, this trait is absolutely amazing, particularly with the Sword/Pistol set.

Something I’d like to point out for PvE is that you can now take Invigorating Precision in a 66006 DPS setup with absolutely no DPS loss, since you can reach 100% critical chance without Hidden Killer in most organised setups eg. Discipline banner, Fury, food, CS traits and Spotter (which may well be much more common as Rangers got a huge PvE buff). As a result, PvE survivability has gone up MASSIVELY across the board. You could already sustain yourself completely against bosses in a solo environment using this trait alone, but now you have the benefit of Executioner to go on top of it.

Also a thing to note is that First Strikes has changed – it’s 10% CRITICAL damage, not just a 10% damage modifier, which is worse (or a typo). However, Lead Attacks is up to a 15% modifier, usually around 10% in a PvE rotation, and we have the benefit of Flanking Strikes, Trickster and regular Haste to up our overall DPS with 25% Quickness uptime. I would estimate that our DPS goes up by about 10% or remains the same as before depending on how much Quickness we utilise. Sometimes group Vigor is more important on harder encounters. I also forgot that Poison stacks now, and DA Adept will allow Daggers to stack more Poison. That will be some extra DPS on top but I don’t imagine it will be a LOT more. Maybe 2-3%.

EDIT: Just worked out, if we can maintain 5 stacks of Poison with that trait, we’d get about 500 extra DPS at 0 Might and nearly 1k DPS at 25. That’s very strong. We’ll have to see how much Poison we can actually apply.

Vavume.8065:

I’m still favouring Critical Strikes over Trickery, I consider Hidden Killer to be the foundation of my zerk dd build.

Take your base crit chance up way high and you do not need hidden killer. My p/P build used a base 80 crit chance with near permanent access to fury.

This might be even easier to do with attributes pulled from the trait lines.

babazhook.6805:

Vavume.8065:

I’m still favouring Critical Strikes over Trickery, I consider Hidden Killer to be the foundation of my zerk dd build.

Take your base crit chance up way high and you do not need hidden killer. My p/P build used a base 80 crit chance with near permanent access to fury.

This might be even easier to do with attributes pulled from the trait lines.

Then you lack power, no thankyou. I crit 13k backtabs due to my power 3.1k+ (WvW), and thats the way I will be keeping it.

Vavume.8065:

babazhook.6805:

Vavume.8065:

I’m still favouring Critical Strikes over Trickery, I consider Hidden Killer to be the foundation of my zerk dd build.

Take your base crit chance up way high and you do not need hidden killer. My p/P build used a base 80 crit chance with near permanent access to fury.

This might be even easier to do with attributes pulled from the trait lines.

Then you lack power, no thankyou. I crit 13k backtabs due to my power 3.1k+ (WvW), and thats the way I will be keeping it.

No you do not lack power. Power/crit no longer come from trait lines. You can make up some of the disadvantage from the gear with might on crit stuff. (my current build I can get 25 stacks might easy)

Further to that while your backstab might get 13k that does not mean more damage over all. It takes several seconds to setup a backstab. In that time a person with a high crit rate will be getting a crit on every hit including his heartseekers

babazhook.6805:

Vavume.8065:

babazhook.6805:

Vavume.8065:

I’m still favouring Critical Strikes over Trickery, I consider Hidden Killer to be the foundation of my zerk dd build.

Take your base crit chance up way high and you do not need hidden killer. My p/P build used a base 80 crit chance with near permanent access to fury.

This might be even easier to do with attributes pulled from the trait lines.

Then you lack power, no thankyou. I crit 13k backtabs due to my power 3.1k+ (WvW), and thats the way I will be keeping it.

No you do not lack power. Power/crit no longer come from trait lines. You can make up some of the disadvantage from the gear with might on crit stuff. (my current build I can get 25 stacks might easy)

Further to that while your backstab might get 13k that does not mean more damage over all. It takes several seconds to setup a backstab. In that time a person with a high crit rate will be getting a crit on every hit including his heartseekers

You lack power if you are using assassin gear to get the high crit rate you first spoke of… secondly I play a DD burst build, all my damage is up front and I can burst 23k in literally 1 second. It would take you some time to build up your might, whereas my power is ALWAYS there.

>>You lack power if you are using assassin gear to get the high crit rate you first spoke of… secondly I play a DD burst build, all my damage is up front and I can burst 23k in literally 1 second. It would take you some time to build up your might, whereas my power is ALWAYS there.

Actually no. You are not lacking power in assassin build. I use it and not lacking in power.

There is crit food out there that gives might on crit with no ICD. You can stack might easy. Again you predicate your own build on attacking from stealth. That certainly a valid choice but a whole lot of damage can be laid down when NOT stealthed and so that trait of “hidden Killer” is not doing anything in your build when you are not stealthed even as IP heals .

Of course all remains to be seen when we look to the gear/trinket changes as stats move to gear.

babazhook.6805:

>>You lack power if you are using assassin gear to get the high crit rate you first spoke of… secondly I play a DD burst build, all my damage is up front and I can burst 23k in literally 1 second. It would take you some time to build up your might, whereas my power is ALWAYS there.

Actually no. You are not lacking power in assassin build. I use it and not lacking in power.

There is crit food out there that gives might on crit with no ICD. You can stack might easy. Again you predicate your own build on attacking from stealth. That certainly a valid choice but a whole lot of damage can be laid down when NOT stealthed and so that trait of “hidden Killer” is not doing anything in your build when you are not stealthed even as IP heals .

Of course all remains to be seen when we look to the gear/trinket changes as stats move to gear.

Assassin lacks power, not going to argue any more over it, its main stat is prec, I play full zerk. I also stealth and have access to hidden killer every 3 seconds. Anyway, we have totally diff play styles, you play PP its like comparing apples and oranges. GL with your build, its vastly different to mine.

Vavume.8065:

babazhook.6805:

>>You lack power if you are using assassin gear to get the high crit rate you first spoke of… secondly I play a DD burst build, all my damage is up front and I can burst 23k in literally 1 second. It would take you some time to build up your might, whereas my power is ALWAYS there.

Actually no. You are not lacking power in assassin build. I use it and not lacking in power.

There is crit food out there that gives might on crit with no ICD. You can stack might easy. Again you predicate your own build on attacking from stealth. That certainly a valid choice but a whole lot of damage can be laid down when NOT stealthed and so that trait of “hidden Killer” is not doing anything in your build when you are not stealthed even as IP heals .

Of course all remains to be seen when we look to the gear/trinket changes as stats move to gear.

Assassin lacks power, not going to argue any more over it, its main stat is prec, I play full zerk. I also stealth and have access to hidden killer every 3 seconds. Anyway, we have totally diff play styles, you play PP its like comparing apples and oranges. GL with your build, its vastly different to mine.

I used p/p as an example of a set that takes advantage of IP.

I play three different thieves and on d/d preferred executioner over hidden killer all while using assassins. Assassins armor set loses out some 90 points power easily made up for with 3 might stacks or an extra trigger of a proc on crit like Air sigil.

The current build i focus on I use assassins armor d/p and focuses on high boon uptime. There no lack of power in the build as i can so easily generate might stacks and run with perma fury and 57 percent base precision. This base precsion ios with NOTHINg in the CS line. In intense battles I can get might stacks to 20+ and added to my stacks push the total power well over 3000 in WvW with the skills I decide to take. this is not a lack of power while ensuring beter crit chance for those procs. More power is always easier to get in game them more crit chance is my own philosophy.

babazhook.6805:

Vavume.8065:

babazhook.6805:

>>You lack power if you are using assassin gear to get the high crit rate you first spoke of… secondly I play a DD burst build, all my damage is up front and I can burst 23k in literally 1 second. It would take you some time to build up your might, whereas my power is ALWAYS there.

Actually no. You are not lacking power in assassin build. I use it and not lacking in power.

There is crit food out there that gives might on crit with no ICD. You can stack might easy. Again you predicate your own build on attacking from stealth. That certainly a valid choice but a whole lot of damage can be laid down when NOT stealthed and so that trait of “hidden Killer” is not doing anything in your build when you are not stealthed even as IP heals .

Of course all remains to be seen when we look to the gear/trinket changes as stats move to gear.

Assassin lacks power, not going to argue any more over it, its main stat is prec, I play full zerk. I also stealth and have access to hidden killer every 3 seconds. Anyway, we have totally diff play styles, you play PP its like comparing apples and oranges. GL with your build, its vastly different to mine.

I used p/p as an example of a set that takes advantage of IP.

I play three different thieves and on d/d preferred executioner over hidden killer all while using assassins. Assassins armor set loses out some 90 points power easily made up for with 3 might stacks or an extra trigger of a proc on crit like Air sigil.

The current build i focus on I use assassins armor d/p and focuses on high boon uptime. There no lack of power in the build as i can so easily generate might stacks and run with perma fury and 57 percent base precision. This base precsion ios with NOTHINg in the CS line. In intense battles I can get might stacks to 20+ and added to my stacks push the total power well over 3000 in WvW with the skills I decide to take. this is not a lack of power while ensuring beter crit chance for those procs. More power is always easier to get in game them more crit chance is my own philosophy.

Compared to my build it lacks power… I have 3.1k without might… and that is always on from the first second of an engage, anyway not going to continue going around in circles here.

Looks like anet forgot why people pick certain trait lines atm, it’s for stats + traits. Just because many players tend to pick ferocity/prec lines doesn’t mean the traits in those lines are way too strong.

Remove stats from CS and all I see is IP, which I do like a lot (awesome with sword) but won’t be worth it over other trait lines.

Btw, those classes that don’t have fer/prec lines will essentially get dps buff in HoT. They are not full zerkers now but with stats only from gear, they won’t be limited in expansion. It doesn’t seem like big buff but it won’t be irrelevant either.

Yes one reason my current d/p took Vitality to the top was so as to get the higher boon uptime and health so i did not have to use vitality boosters in my gear and could focus damage.

The boon uptime was to get boons to 80 percent so that thrill/might/fury off the pack runes alone was 18 seconds (20 second cooldown innate). This then give 9 seconds might even off the lowestv base duration might stack of 5 seconds. It than became pick and choose traits that awarded a boon in that line so as to garner the most sources of boons as possible.

NOW the only reason to go that line will be the traits. It will ruin my current build which I really liked I now wait on what new base attributes will be and how much boontime will be increased via armors/runes if at all given none of our traits allow it.