Guild Wars 2

I guess healers need that kind of trait (+outgoing healing) to avoid getting too tanky, allowing the devs to put lower healing numbers on skills. I remember the unkillable monks (in 1vs1) in GW1. And druids are always healers, since even the non-staff builds will use celestial avatar now and then (assuming they get the astral force generation right, unlike at BWE3).
Also, I’m not keen on a PBAoE trait as minor, it would affect playstyle a lot.

I switched from jaguar to lynx, for that 7k F2 skill.

Adding for completeness: longbow AA dps is within like 2% difference from scepter AA dps, so should theoreticaly take it down in 29-30s.

Great changes, can’t wait to try out test of faith (looks great for kiting away from melee) and dragon’s maw+procession of blades. The Purification buff increased the reward rather than reduced the risk… but with hunter’s verdict (which is not 100% reliable since you have to hit with a projectile first, but reliable enough) I guess you can get it to activate often enough.

Honorable Staff trait + staff (5s on 12s CD) + retreat (24s on 40s CD) is perma-swiftness.

KotCR.6024:

A solution must be implemented to this issue before final release;
Possible Solutions
1 – Enable all Legends’ utility skills underwater. The best fix, but also the most work for ANet.
2 – Have the game remember a Revenant’s Legend selection when underwater, and swap between a different set of selected Legends whenever you enter water, or come up onto dry land, respectively. This is currently how the Ranger’s pet selection works, so it’s definitely doable and would be less work for ANet. It would also be more consistent with other classes, as other classes can pre-pick a different set of utility skills for underwater combat as opposed to land combat.

Totally agree, so annoying to have to manually change legends – and I guess you can’t even to so in-combat.

Nokturn.8695

How is the weapon damage wise and how did the skills/synergy with the legends feel?

It’s a blast on a condi build. On a power build, so and so, felt like ranger spear. The revenant’s built-in self-healing from traits is a rather too strong for the poor fish in sparkfly fen, I was still alive and near full HP after going afk for a while.

KotCR.6024:

in addition, one of these must be implemented:
3A – Make Shiro the starting legend for Revenants instead of Jalis.
3B – Enable the use of the Jalis Legend’s utility skills underwater (preferable).

I don’t think that’s much of problem: healing skills cost 2 hero points, and you should have managed at least 2 skill challenges by level 8 (when underwater skills start to unlock).

Lunar Impact + Moment of Clarity made some areas of HoT solo PvE way too trivial – just perma-daze and wait for the pet to kill the mob. One of them should be nerfed. But an ICD will be annoying, making you feel like the trait sometimes work and sometimes doesn’t, and it won’t solve how you start out in celestial avatar with 9s daze. Heimskarl Ashfiend’s suggestion is good, reducing the daze duration on Lunar Impact. If Moment of Clarity were the one hit, perhaps make it prolong daze/stun by a set amount, 1s or 1.5s instead of doubling duration.

No I don’t think it should.Adding burning to the autoattackwould make it a pure condi weapon, locking it out from power builds. It already kind of works in condi builds, I think staff should just get minor additional condi damage (like a single bleed on vine surge) and have most of its damage through power dmg.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Damage reduction is for pve (dungeons and some world bosses, also the upcoming raids I guess), and for wvw zerging. It’s not needed anywhere else.

Pets don’t seem to take damage in raids (or at least parts of the raid, can’t remember). Made it a bit too easy to self-revive – I noticed that the last to be defeated in our raid party was always one of the druids (I was one of them).

I think Jalis is too weak and Glint is too strong. Inspiring Reinforcement is a really strong skill even after the nerf and the reason to take Jalis, but not good enough to carry the whole legend, I think the other skills could use energy cost reductions (esp. the taunt) or other buffs. The regeration and fury are the strongest elements of Glint, they could both use an unpeek increase of one each. The protection isn’t as strong as on paper (where it looks really strong) since is not so on-demand and expensive to cancel, but still strong.

Reflexive summon could use an effect buff and a duration decrease.

Spirit of Nature passive didn’t give me astral force.

Rashagar.8349:

Yeah I’ve a feeling they’d have to make Natural Stride weaker if they moved it to the GM minor slot to keep it in line with Chronomancer. I also can’t really see anyone taking Natural Mender in it’s current form if it was in the Major slot.

As to the original suggestion, I’m not sure I like the staff cd reduction trait clashing with the glyph cd reduction trait.

So move the staff CD reduction trait to master instead of cultivated synergy?

I don’t like the new Unyielding Anguish ( in land, firtunately the old version was kept underwater) – too similar to the elite skill, and too frontloadedin terms of delivering conditions. I would like more non-damage area denial to it somehow, also a single condition teansfer would fit, but cut down the torment.

Still missing being able to slot dufferent legends for land abd water.

I think staff could use some condirions, like adding bleeds to vine surge. Other than its current power dmage, staff has more synergy with condi weapons than with longbow/greatsword/warhorn, as the long range and teleport makes uo for weaknesses in the current condi and hybrid weapon sets.

I would like the fire wyvern’s F2 fueld to leave a less black field, I think the vusual is overtuned and distracting/unpretty.

Not every build needs natural stride, I disagree abour making it a minor teair. I do like the original suggestion though, swapping place of verdant etchings and cultivated synergy.

edit: Adding some reasoning: natural stride as minor would make druid have antisynergy with shouts – not a good thing.

I was surprised to see Signet of Courage not heal 100% but only 50% (to the Stronghold lord). I guess there is a set amount somewhere (25k? can’t remember which number I saw). IMO it should be written in the tooltip.

If you lost (bug that permastows them) your pets after entering and exiting the PvP lobby, jump into the nearest water and reequip your land pets.

Tried out druid in Verdant Bring and Chanmpion’s Dusk – so fun, esp. in big PvE events where you feel your heals might reduce the number of downed players. Staff works well with the pet and the positioning playstyle of the ranger.

The strongest PvP builds I found use druid traits and F5, but not staff and no glyphs, or only the daze glyph, and take troll unguent to power up druidic mana.

Glyph of tides is nearly as good as glyph of equality, except it interferes with melee (staff doesn’t really need defensive PBAoE, it has great mobility). I suggest swapping the push and the pull.

Glyph of alignment would be good if 3 glyph builds were good. I moving verdant etching to adept tier, swapping place with e.g. primal echoes (which might need a buff in case of a move).

Glyph of rejuvination is weak, both numberwise but also because it doesn’t contribute much to charging F5, I sugget adding a minor pulsing AoE heal to it.

Staff and F5 didn’t do enough to win 2vs2 fights in PvP. Staff #4 (vine surge) felt especially weak.

It’s hard to target moving allies with cosmic ray, I suggest increasing the radius a bit but reducing the number of targets cap to 1 or 2.

I don’t like the basic wyvern attack animation: they’ve got long teeth, yet attack with their flimsy wings, I wish it were a bite animation instead.

I use it so that I can build up boon durations while using dragon stance and keep e.g. fury and regeneration after legend swapping.

Your build lacks Signet of Courage, which IMO is a must-have in Stronghold, for healing the lord and heroes.

I appreciated Serenawyr’s tally, so here’s my update to it:

Druid 8.0=((8.4*37)+9+6+9+8+9+5+7+1+9+9+8+8+8+7+7+2+9)/54
Reaper 7.2= ((7.2*37)+7+8+7+9+7+9+5+8+6+5+9+9+5+8+4+7+8)/54
Herald 6.7=((6.7*37)+4+9+8+4+8+8+9+5+2+8+7+3+7+6+9+8+7)/54
Chronomancer 6.7=((6.6*37)+5+7+6+7+6+7+6+7+7+7+6+6+9+9+6+9+5)/54
Scrapper 5.4=((5.4*37)+6+5+3+6+5+4+8+9+3+6+5+7+6+5+8+6+4)/54
Berserker 3.7=((3.8*37)+3+3+4+5+4+6+3+2+1+3+4+5+4+3+3+3+3)/54
Daredevil 3.4=((3.4*37)+2+2+5+3+3+3+4+3+4+4+1+4+2+4+4+5+6)/54
Tempest 3.0=((3.3*37)+8+4+1+1+1+1+1+4+8+1+3+1+1+1+1+1+2)/54
Dragonhunter 2.2=((2.1*37)+1+1+2+2+2+2+2+6+5+2+2+2+3+2+2+4+1)/54

4 elite specs have clearly less support for them. Tempest has a few big fans and lots of people placing it last, Druid has the opposite. The daredevil fans haven’t found this thread or are diminishingly few.

Rym.1469:

From my experience, at least untill the inner gates are broken, it’s more than healing/support does better on offense rather than defense, while good defensive wave clearer is often your dps.

Now that you write that, I remember ending up playing my revenant pretty much only on offense. That’s sustained healing though, I’m not sure it applies to burst healing – the guardian signet wasn’t that useful on offense, even if the weapon heals were (I’ll test some more).

I’m playing Stronghold PvP during the weekend on longbow/sword ranger, as a defender. I have most things in my build for that role – snares, long range, high damage, temporary invulnerability – allowing me to take down NPCs efficiently and fight from the trebuchet hills. But I could use more swiftness and snares and, most importantly, ally heals – I’ve noticed how much Signet of Courage can turn the battle in the lords room. Druid has all those extra things, while letting me keep the elements that made power ranger a good defender in the first place.

Druid could be the ultimate Stronghold defender. I guess dragonhunter and pony revenant are contenders.

1.Druid (more positioning-base skills with staff, and heals!)
2.Reaper (awesome low-mobility melee playstyle)
3.Dragonhunter (more ranger-style stuff, yay!)
4.Herald (makes revenant work)
5.Tempest (overloads allows mixing range and melee, which ele was missing)
6.Scrapper (might solve some of engineer’s design downsides)
7.Daredevil (still rough design, but has promise)
8.Berserker (clunky, too much about watching timers and bars)
9.Chronomancer (even more convoluted than base mesmer – no thanks)

Black Box.9312:

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Hamartia.3421:

4. Longbow does not come anywhere near close to the DPS OR utility of current Guardian weapon combinations. I can see how it almost does, but it isn’t there yet. I’m not sure it even beats Scepter/torch single-target DPS.

I ran the number (and dummy testing) during BWE1: it does outdamage scepter/torch.

Anyway, I like the OPs direction, suggesting something to separate dragonhunter builds better from current mace/torch gruadian builds while also dealing with longbow’s currently a bit low damage.

Do you have these statistics on hand? Because the thought of longbow doing more DPS than scepter/torch with Radiant Fire has me pretty skeptical, honestly.

I recalculated to include Radiant Fire. You’re right, longbow doesn’t outdo scepter/torch in terms of damage.

Numbers below with the 10%/25% damage buffs to longbow #1 and #2 incoming for BWE3:
Longbow (with Pure of Sight):
#1: 316dmg per 1.0s
#2: 932dmg, 4s CD
#4: 5×205dmg, 6×4s burning (6×524dmg), 15s CD
DPS (up to 3 targets): 742 ((13*316*1.1+3*932*1.1+5*205*1.1+6*524)/(13+4*0.75))
Mobility DPS (not #2, #4 hits once): 382 ((13*316*1.1+2*205*1.1+2*524)/(15+0.75))

Scepter/torch (with Radiant Fire, excluding PBAoE)
#1: 237dmg per 0.8s (calculation below is by counting attacks in-game though)
#2:16×117dmg, 6s CD
#4: 720dmg, 3×3.5s burning (1179dmg), 12s CD (usable twice because of trait)
DPS (single-target): 747 ((6*237+2*16*117+2*720+2*1179)/12)
Mobility DPS (not #2): 494 ((9*237+2*720+2*1179)/12)

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Hey all,

The Reflexive Hammers trait in retribution is going to be changed after BWE3, before launch. Right now since it uses projectiles that hover around you, they currently don’t work underwater and I think it no longer really fits the line as that is more about damage, plus it muddies the FXs around the character when the actual hammers are around you.

Soooooo…. I wanted to throw out an idea I had about a new GM trait for retribution to place it and see what you all think. The trait would be more dwarf stance focused since we don’t have a dwarf stance specific trait.

• It would give you some way to proc Rite of the Great Dwarf like at some percent health trigger or something and then make Rite of the Great Dwarf (both proc and the skill) have reduced condition damage taken as well while allies have the buff.

Let me know what you think.

Reflexive summon was a fav trait of mine, especially for the animation but also for providing a damage option in the line when I only wanted moderate tankiness. Lack of underwater function isn’t much of a problem, eg traits like vicious lacerations are worthless underwater too, just write something in the tool tip so it doesn’t give a buggy impression. I hope the hammer trait stays, there are two other GM traits thst could be hit, esp the vengeance one.

While traits are currently the worst part of engi (forced to take traits that are pointless in ones builds because a key trait is in the same line), it’s not the only issue. Engineer suffered from not focusing enough on the underlying archetype: mechanical summons, support/utility, a specific kind of weapons (shotgun/pistol/hammer/wrench in my gaming exp), and surprising everone with novel gadgets. It’s like you currently can make a build with neither support, turrets or using your gun and yet do fine. That weakness of the class at least will be ameliorated by the elite spec.

Black Box.9312:

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Hamartia.3421:

4. Longbow does not come anywhere near close to the DPS OR utility of current Guardian weapon combinations. I can see how it almost does, but it isn’t there yet. I’m not sure it even beats Scepter/torch single-target DPS.

I ran the number (and dummy testing) during BWE1: it does outdamage scepter/torch.

Anyway, I like the OPs direction, suggesting something to separate dragonhunter builds better from current mace/torch gruadian builds while also dealing with longbow’s currently a bit low damage.

Do you have these statistics on hand? Because the thought of longbow doing more DPS than scepter/torch with Radiant Fire has me pretty skeptical, honestly.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Longbow-vs-scepter-torch/first#post5359160
It’s old numbers, so they are missing two rounds of longbow buffs. Also I didn’t add in pure of sight or radiant fire.

I’m happy about the longbow changes. More mobility from F2 is also nice, and trap changes are first step in the right direction. The rest I’d need the beta weekend to try out.

I’ll drop some trap suggestions since the dev seems to want some of that from us:
First off, I like traps as a mechanic/skill type. I like how arming time has ben added to them, and if you’d go the route of thrown traps ( I hope not) the arming time should go up to keep them from being grenades.

Condi removal: give 1 condi removed per pulse to purification and lights judgment. Thst should end up similar to medi guards condition removal.
Stun breaker:. Put one on laying down Fragments of faith. That’s the most defensive trap so it’d fit with its playstyle.

Damage: increase procession of blades damage to where it was with bleeds, which did like 2k damage iirc. Maybe add an inital pulse of damage (not cripple) to test of faith since the triggering enemy would only hit the blades ince, unlike the enemies that followed.

Other: I’d like longer duration on test of faith, to more often force ene ies across the blades and to cut off chokepoints even better.
On purification, I have a suggestion for reducing the risk: replace the heal on laying down the trap with a 10 second troll ungesnt style heal (but only at like 2-3x the current inital heals strength in total), but have that heal end prematurely if the trap is triggered. Currently " toe-bombing" (laying trap under the feet of the enemy) is the best way to use purification I found, my suggested change would favor pre-laying more and decrease the penaly in ranged vs ranged fights.

I like the changes, like all of them. Unsure about that herald trait buff.
Would like a bit less then 10 seconds cd on unyielding and jalis road, like 8 instead, to still feel that energy is the limiting factor. Speaking of long recharge – I dont like pain absorption much, what about giving it a long cd and adding some new effect,or at least more resistance.
To the poster discussing the (much needed, much wanted) buff to energy expulsion: the skill is limited by the need to resummon the tablet, so you multiple casting times that give it a little cd in effect. I think this skill should be fairly spammable, because sometimes you want to stay in ventari but theres no need to heal others so your energy goes to max.

Hamartia.3421:

4. Longbow does not come anywhere near close to the DPS OR utility of current Guardian weapon combinations. I can see how it almost does, but it isn’t there yet. I’m not sure it even beats Scepter/torch single-target DPS.

I ran the number (and dummy testing) during BWE1: it does outdamage scepter/torch.

Anyway, I like the OPs direction, suggesting something to separate dragonhunter builds better from current mace/torch gruadian builds while also dealing with longbow’s currently a bit low damage.

Ohoni.6057:

I think it’s important to keep in mind that the Tempest’s role is not likely to change. It is intended to be a skirmish range damage/support role, and while they might make it better at doing that, I think it’s almost impossible that it would ever do anything entirely different from that.

A shift to condition damage is still possible – decrease direct dmg and bump burning on wildfire, replace vuln and some dmg on lightning orb with torment, replace blast finisher on sand squall or vulnerability on dust storm with bleed, add bleeding to overload earth and aftershock – and tada you’ve the condi tempest. Shifting damage to support ratio should equally still a possibility.

Specializations

• Were they fun?
  - Reaper and dragonhunter were great fun. While I’m hardly a thief player, I did enjoy daredevil. Tempest is ok, but mostly because of the base class – it adds little by itself. Not a mesmer player and chronomancer was just more mesmer, so didn’t enjoy it much (though slightly more than standard mesmer). Berserker I didn’t enjoy much even though I like playing warrior – too much keeping track of timers and bars and combos, and general feeling that my warrior was an elementalist.

• Did they Change how you play your profession in a meaningful way?
  - Dragonhunter brought a ranger feel, but with guardian melee to it. Tempest got to to run in more to use overloads, and to use air attunement more. I used shround much more on reaper than otherwise on necro because it has more fun skills (I don’t enjoy the standard death shroud).

• How were the improvements to the previous Specializations? (Dragon Hunter, Tempest, Chronomancer, Reaper)
  - Reaper had the biggest changes to how they felt, and it really helped. Tempest and dragonhunter felt the same, though traps and overloads were more ok in numbers now, e.g. fragments of faith got a long enough aegis duration which was an irritation before.

Creatures

• How is the difficulty of the new hostile mobs, and are they fun and exciting?
  - Difficulty is generally fine. Pocket raptors are too easy.
  Most are fun. Mordrem snipers and teleporting frog archers are great. The mushroom type enemies (esp exploding omes) are so and so. The mordrem cavaliers are not fun to fight, takes foreverand I’m mostly waiting around for them to do something, and they have oversize health bars that just drags out the encounter – I found myself avoiding those fights just like the mushroom ones.

World

• With the Opening of two new outposts, we are adding in a bunch of new events. Are they fun?
  - I like them

• Do the new events bring you more into the world?
  - Yes, they tell stories

Stronghold PvP

• Feedback on the new UI
  - The loading graphic is pretty, the hero symbols are clear, the downed lord symbol is hard to see when is health is low

Staff was fun. But I never found a use for staff skill #3.
Also really enjoyed fist flurry.

Taldren.7523:

Ele already has enough support and bunker specs.
The class has been missing a viable condition and viable ranged nuker spec since release.
It’s maddening that our first new trait line since release almost mirrors the auramancer I have been playing since release.

That’s true, a condi spec would be nice. As for nuker, I thought staff was supposed to fill that role

Don’t know about meta, but I won as often as I lost when I played greatsword+shouts, so the balance felt right.

Arkblue.6129:

I have only one gripe with Dragon Hunter. As many have stated, the longbow is a ranged weapon while traps are cast on position. This means that the best case scenario is only when the DH is when moving backward and setting traps for enemy that chase. This scenario is pretty uncommon in PVE, outside of kiting enemies while leveling or solo.

Because of that, there is one thing that Dragon Hunter sorely needs: a backstep, or retrat. Sure, we have Merciful Intervention, but that requires an Ally to shadowstep. My idea is to add a backstep or retreat to one of the traps OR add a traits to make Judge Intervention and Merciful Intervention ground-cast for DragonHunters. Another useful thing would be increasing the traps cd while drastically lowering the cast time.

Wings of Resolve. Same function as Ranger’s Swoop. The range is a bit lower though.

Mid-range (at ~500 range on average, but moving back and forth is fine) support would be my desired role for tempest.

RebornbyFire.7913:

I realize not everybody wants or likes a relatively selfish, ranged damage/area control class with traps, especially as the E.Spec. for Guardians, but come on, people, since that’s what we’ve got, let’s at least focus on how we can make it do what it’s supposed to and do it as well and in as interesting, powerful, and fun a manner as possible, rather than trying to make it do everything that it can’t and shouldn’t.

Well stated. Dragonhunter is about snares, positioning and damage, while base guardian focuses on support and active defense. So Defender’s Dogma is a misplaced trait.

As for what would fit – perhaps something like “gain swiftness when you use a healing, utility or elite skill” – would help with traps at least since they require you to run around to place.

Assic.2746:

Before Karl posted some changes comming to Dragonhunter in the next BWE this trait was really weak, but it will become better… in the future:

• Spear of Justice passive will apply 1.5s of Cripple,

Good, fits the theme and helps the playstyle.
The vuln effect I though was already in the game in one of the traits.

I’m struggling to kill with the longbow in Stronghold mode, too often I just end up switching to melee and running in because I don’t see the opponenents health bar dropping as fast as my own, or they manage just run past me. Is the weapon too weak? Or is it good enough, and someone can provide advice on how to use it?

Totally agree with removing the normal burst skills.
My fav elite specs are reaper and dragonhunter, they both nicely lose baggage from the base class. And it would help the current messy UI (it’s both an issue of not seeing the F2 label, having the recharge partially hidden, and having to alternate between pressing F1 and F2 instead of having a single button).

I tried the air overload and looked for interrupts. Yup, I get interrupt messages and I see mobs suddenly standing still at the edge of the overload field.

Reaper spec made me create a necro character in the base game, eagerly awaiting HoT. It’s like everything the necro needed. Still learning proper use of gravedigger, but the damage numbers popping up are just awesome.

I seem to die more often in PvE when I have Purification as my heal. That heal is just so risky to use.

Just gap close with your axe or use the long range of the fire field.

I’ve been running mace/shield + mace/axe, works fine. And it’s refreshing to play something that doesn’t rely so much on weapon swapping.

Longbow is really fun. It’s like they took what people wanted in the ranger forum back when ranger longbow was in great need of buffing (esp. true shot looks like one of the top requests) and put it on a pet-less class. And power-based traps are great! And an interesting change from the ranger condi traps. Just need to iron out the balance and get a bit more defense onto them.

I’m getting to learn how those longbow skills work now with second BWE – there’s positioning involved in puncture shot to get the bounce, and true shot requires you to look at your surroundings to make sure you can root yourself – I like these little bits of depth that base guardian is a bit low on – I guess I like positioning-based combat over skill rotation-based ones, and dragonhunter delivers when it comes to positioning requirements.

Azure.8670:

Amineo.8951:

Revenant support makes me cringe everytime I look at it, it’s just way better than Guardian and there’s a good chance we might get replaced by Rev for Fractals and some Dungeons when HoT comes out, DH is just bad, traps are useless in all game modes, Longbow skills aren’t good enough to pressure somebody in PvP like Ranger and does not have good DPS compared to Scepter, and Virtues are downgraded when you switch to it…

Also, Shield and Torch skills better on Berserker and Herald…

Berserker is currently worse than DH. watch your tongue

I’m so disappointed by berserker – it’s like just more warrior, but with magical attacks (why?!) and poor UI.

I tested underwater combat, both with condi gear (carrion) and power gear (clerics). The spear skills are awesome! With power, you get to choose from aggressive (melee with shiro) to cautious (use mallyx, attack at the far end of the 270 range while using the spear’s CC skills) and still do a bit of long-range damage when needed. With condi it’s long-range damage, with enough CC between spear skills and the legends to keep the range often enough yet not enough to be no challenge.

Two things I’d like to see changed though:

• allow equipping different legends on land from underwater. I noticed when I come up from the water I still had shiro+mallyx, even though I had changed legends when underwater from glint+mallyx.
• get rid of the second underwater weapon slot. It looks silly, and if you want weapon swap sigils to work there’s legend swapping already

Edit: the drowning skills are missing, I only had bandage.

On overloads:

I like how they’re 2 damage ones and 2 defensive ones. They’re fun, but too risky to use which causes a bit frustration.

Overload fire: the damage on this one sure is great – when I can get it off. I kills non-veteran mobs by itself in verdant brink. But most of the time I either get interrupted or the mob moves away. Some more reliability would be welcome, like a larger radius, but it sure doesn’t need more damage.

Overload water: this was the most useful overload, I reliably got it off (since I could use it while at a distance from mobs) and it heals well considering it’s easy to heal several allies.

Overload air: more reliable than overload fire since more of the hits come during the channeling and the radius is bigger. But the damage is low, doesn’t feel worth the effort to use it, and the radius is still small enough thay I’m only hitting one mob with it.
edit: I learned it has some kind of stun on its edges, I guess I have to reevaluate it

Overload earth: very reliable, but it feels like it doesn’t do much, neither to hurt enemies nor to keep you alive. Extra defense on this one (e.g. ground AoE immunity, damage reduction or block) would be very welcome.

On shouts:

Haven’t used the air or elite ones (didn’t seem appealing on their BWE2 form), but the other ones are fun. The earth one is a bit weak for the effort it takes to use it, at least if you use ranged weapons like I’ve done.

On warhorn:

Glad to read about future changes to Sand Squall, because that’s the warhorn’s least fun skill, needed more than just number changes.

Kidel.2057:

Astralporing.1957:

Yep, at level 80 it will be comparable. Not so at lower levels. At those, you will be incentivized to max 2 legends first, before starting to work on others – otherwise you will end up with theoretically unlocked, but unusable utility slots.

You know that you can get hero points from hero challenges, right? You can always farm some of them and unlock every skill you can in every legend.

If you only count points from levelup, you have 2 options: spec into everything and gain more options but less skills equipped at the same time, or focus on 2 legends, getting the same number of skills at the beginning, but progressively more towards the end of your levelup (as soon as you can get 3 skills, revenant gets 6).

Either way you still have some disadvantages, but also some advantages. It’s not a big deal. Nobody is forcing you to play revenant if you don’t like a different approach on little things, but honestly, skill progression is fine.

Sign a petition for MISTfire wolf.

You’re both missing one thing: utility/elite slots have a level requirement (13, 15, 22, 31). You get hero points faster than you can fill out a line, e.g. rangers get 3 utility slot spirits for 15 points and 3 utility slot traps for another 15 points, yet get 32 hero points from leveling rewards alone. And at early levels you can get as many hero points from skill challenges as from leveling. So it should be doable to have enough unlocks for 3 legends in parallel, the advantage on focusing on two lines will be that you can choose which utility skills to use during level 13-21.

I’d rather not have a stun/immobilize on the trap trait – during the beta weekend I had too much fun comboing traps with snaring skills like hunter’s ward and dragon’s maw.

There’s a good chance the defensive traps (purification, test of faith, fragments of faith) are viable now. The heal looks really good with two attacks negated by daze+blind and a sturdy heal, and once you take the trait and adopt a playstyle where you force enemies to trigger the trap, the other two defensive traps should be easy to slot in.

The offensive traps (procession of blades, light’s judgment, dragon’s maw) look weaker as a group. Dragon’s maw.. six seconds of warding is great! as long as you have pulsing AoEs to combo it with. The other two are on the weak side, so throwing out two suggestions for the fun of it:

• add pulsing weakness (with short duration) to procession of blades, to make it work for both defensive and offensive trapping playstyles.
• add ramp up damage (like revenant’s Vengeful Blast has) to light’s judgment, to give it non-bursty damage that rewards snaring enemies in the trap.