Guild Wars 2

Is there any good documentation about WHAT traits are, how they function and to WHICH skills they apply to?

This is what I mean…

I have “Deadly Arts” though none of my skills are “Deadly Arts”.

I have “Trickery”, do those apply to “trick” skills like rolling and dodging?

Shadow something-or-other – I’m assuming they apply to my stealth skills.

Here’s the problem though;

After I spend the traits, I find out that those hidden traits in the tree don;t apply to to the skills I’m using. Thus, I keep wasting silver trying to guess what does what.

I think Anet need to get back to the drawing board on this. There’s no logical progression in the trait system for a thief, and any of the traits offered in the tree are basically useless, except for one; the stacks from traps.

unless it states specifically that it effects a certain pool of skills they are global effects.

And those that do effect specific skill pools state which pool (and what pool a skill belongs to is written in its tooltip)

So they really don’t have anything to do with skills? Meaning, there’s really no “Shadow Arts” , it’s just a name given to a category, of which, adds additional numbers to my stats?

yep, the +stats for each trait line is global and just added to your basic stats