I was quite excited when there were these GW1 dervish elements in the spellbreaker. Weapon, burst, and trait wise the SB feels like a denial mesmer from GW1, but then we have this curious heal skill that removes our own boons. They even mention the class as being these magic hating warriors but the gameplay itself doesn’t capitalise on any of it.
The utilities are garbage and too underpowered, but whats worse is that there could have been a real opportunity for some dervish shenanigans.
For those who don’t know, dervishes in GW1 removed their own enchantments (GW1’s version of boons) to enhance their attacks.
To make SB meditations more thematic, it should have an optional cost of self boon removal. I’m not just suggesting this for thematic additions to the class, but that it should open up more.
For starters, the heal should only remove offense boons, because a healing skill is thematically defensive. This also makes the skill better because as of now, it kinda sucks to lose protection, or resistance, or stability.
The other utilities should also follow a boonstripping behavior, making the skill more powerful if your own boons were stripped. For instance:
Featherfoot grace gets extended superspeed if stability is removed (because you’re going so fast you can’t be stable)
Then, we need some traits reworked that gives the SB benefits for self boon removal.
e.g. Inner Might: Whenever you remove a stack of might, gain a stack of inner might. Inner might grants +20 power and condition damage, maximum stacks 25.
Here we have a trait that is functional and promotes setup. You build up might, you strip it yourself so it can’t get corrupted, and you get an effect that will give you a buff that rewards that setup.
We definitely should have a trait that removes enemy boons whenever we remove our own boons, with a removal cap and an ICD of course.