Guild Wars 2

AlphatheWhite.9351:

When I said “If they give back some of the duration on Veil/MI, I’ll be fine,” you do know that MI = Mass Invisibility, right?

MI got lost in all the other letters of complaint floating around. Cool.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

But at 7.5s, MI is still providing a somewhat useful amount of group stealth. At 3s, Veil is not (4s really wasn’t great either).

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Furthermore, I don’t take chaos and inspiration together on any builds. Do you?

Maybe there’s an opportunity there. I actually have a Chaos,/Inspiration/Illusions build I’m looking into. It’s certainly not for PvE, which is the vibe I’m getting.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Seriously, you ask what my “issue is”, but your response demands that more than mine.

Just wondering what was so great about 4s veil compared to 3s, but apparently that’s nothing either.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

And Veil even worse than it was before…

Veil works out to be the same as +1s, for 3s total stealth instead of 4, plus you still get superspeed from the glamour trait.

Not sure what your issue is. It hurt Mass Invis much more than veil, but no mention of that.

Your attitude determines everything. If you think it has potential, you’ll be able to make use of it and be happy. If not, you’ll continue to look at the negative aspects. Warrior used to be considered useless in pvp. After a few months, even without balance changes, some people decided to figure out what they could do with warrior. All of a sudden, it started tearing through pvp, culminating in the venerable Hambow build we remember so fondly. Every class and every elite spec has that potential, especially with how HoT is going to change the scene. What used to be considered useless will now be desirable.

No doubt it was a suggestion, but it’s severely lacking… foresight. It was surprising to say the least. Any sort of +1er that has resistance access now becomes a duo to build a comp around. Especially 2 +1ers that can rotate home-mid or mid-far. In wvw it would be absolutely ridiculous with the potential access to such a boon. PvE it’s somewhat of a wash really. And now as of this post, we’ve got the druid exacerbating the potential problem.

I probably have the unpopular opinion that Hunter’s Fortification is good where it stands. Yes conditions fall out of the sky faster than a stork drops babies in the ghetto, but it gives you incentive to continue blocking and get rid of those conditions to nullify whatever attacks might not deal conditions. No doubt there are situations in every game mode where the damage reduction will be felt if we could see the numbers. I think that’s the main issue when we feel something is underpowered. Without the visibility of the trait in action, we can’t see the impact it gives.

You know what’s cheese? Mozzarella
You know what isn’t cheese? A profession’s build.

Guardian’s burning capability isn’t a problem. The builds don’t prey on anyone unnaturally.

Dat Shattered Aegis tho
Dat Amplified Wrath + Guardian Rune burning
Dat healing with Pure of Heart
Dat condi removal from Hunter’s Fortification.
20-25% prot and aegis uptime, and 1:1 damage: power ratio. Shield 4 is quality.
Shield 5 roving bubble? Excellent.

FmW cooldown to kitten Honestly not a huge deal. It’s significant, but not hugely significant.

SY! PvE normalization? Taste the rainbow, feel the boons

Arken.3725:

What if you take less damage for each condition on you (say 5% each?).

There are 13 conditions. Do you really want to have a trait that could give you 65% reduced damage, on top of toughness, protection, and other things?

I would really care one way or another if their had a D/S/U option in each trait line. I don’t really care that they don’t either.

Things like Invigorating precision and Mug are interesting. Mug still does damage in addition to healing, so even if it doesn’t crit, you could place it under damage or survivability. Invigoration precision heals, but only if you crit. Looking through the line, there seem to be 3 main ideas that don’t actually revolve around the D/S/U concept. As they stand, I wouldn’t consider them to follow that line of thought, but rather something closer to More crits, heavier crits, and utility based around crits. Even among those, they don’t fit perfectly, but better than D/S/U. Could the traits be reworked? Sure, but we’d need to see a drastic change from how they are currently. Practiced Tolerance was recently changed from granting vitality to granting ferocity. That’s changing what would be considered a survivability trait into a damage one. Ankle Shots and Sundering Strikes should both be considered Damage and Utility.

So what caused these traits to be as they are now? I think it’sa combination of giving lines distinct flavor, and keeping lines from being self sufficient. Critical Strikes is straightforward. Shadow Arts deals with Stealth. Acrobatics deals with mobility, etc. With this refocused attitude, if you want damage you go into the line that gives you more damage. If you want survivability grab the line that helps you survive. Within each trait line, you should expect different options to accomplish your goals. They already had this idea going before the specialization patch. Each line distinctly gave 2 sets of attribute points.

I’m the end, I believe it’s less about a D/S/U dichotomy, and more about getting the flavor you want. There are multiple ways to deal damage, survive, and provide utility, so grab the options that serve your ideals best.

Were Smite to be a symbol, it should last 3 seconds in duration. It should have a special mechanic (for symbols at least) that sends out 3 fists to attack each second that have their own 3 target aoe, reminiscent of Meteor Shower. Keep each fist’s damage about the same.

My only fear is that it gets stupid when you combine Zeal, Honor, and Virtues. Smite would definitely be smiting some foes

One problem with that idea is that it becomes visible that you’ve placed traps around, because now you’ve got that trait icon above your head (of we assume that’s the case, and it really should be with the many recent changes in that regard)

I’m interested in the idea that you get something for having a trap placed, I’m just not sure how it would work between all the traps in the game. This isn’t some simple solution to just add damage modifiers and boons out something, but there’s a smidgen of potential in the idea.

No reason you can’t make it work though. If you have a group that’s adept at buzzing the tower of enemy zergs, your might stacking could be very welcome to your mobile group. You’d need to develop some Dive Bombing tactics combining evasion (dodge roll, GS3, etc), outright defense (certain traits, stances, etc), and positioning. I know it might sound obvious, but that’s the basis of finding new ways to play. It’s always worth experimenting on.

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

I don’t agree that Crit Strikes can’t be built with the design philosophy in mind. They would just have to be implemented in a creative way…for example

on crit – gain health (defense)
on crit – regain initiative (utility)
on crit – apply harmful condition (offense)

Oh, don’t hey me wrong. It absolutely could be designed with that in mind. It just hasn’t, as defined by the original post and other’s. I’m not here to argue that it can’t be designed similarly, I’m just here confirming that is not designed that way, just like it’s been explained before I got here. Why people are complaining about it is really beyond me. Each trait line of thief (and every class) is internally different from another. Even if you shoehorn all the traits into the three extremely broad and not well defined categories of Damage, Utility, and Survivability, you’ll end up with very uneven numbers for each line. One could then assume, each line individually is not based on Damage, Utility, and Survivability, but rather something else likely more specific to their respective lines.

This all comes back into some of the discussion that isn’t directly related to design and design philosophy. Traits like Escapists Absolution are naturally going to work differently with certain weapon sets, utility skills, and various other factors. It’s not really particularly useful in complaining about why it doesn’t work well with X weapon when they haven’t been designed to work well. What gives us power, is creating builds using the tools we have to either improve our strengths (if we’re good at evading, EA works very well), or shore up or weaknesses (if we already have removal on stealth and we don’t need more removal on evade, then maybe we could take a different, more useful trait instead. Or perhaps, we’re just that weak to conditions, we need to double up on traits, and even take a sigil or two to increase our capabilities).

This all may seem obvious, but it’s so easily forgotten.

The skill is called “Sword Wave” is it not?
And we already have a wave attack in Staff 1 do we not?
Why not just have each projectile become it’s own small wave covering the same area as the projectiles?

Zealot’s Defense really just needs a smidgen faster projectile speed. However, if I had my actual wish for sword, ZD would become Symbol of Reflection. Projectile reflection from attacks outside the symbol boundary so that the ranged attack aspect isn’t lost. That way instead of yet another boon, the allied benefit would be the projectile defense while still providing all the other symboly things.

Arnath.2319:

Word of advice, avoid reddit, so many destructive comments from players deliberately trying to derail the discussion.

The range increase on Wings is nice, but Traps still need an urgent redesign.

I think it is time to make them Marks with an optional Grand Master trait that makes them invisible to enemies.

Traps aren’t visible to enemies. It has never been the case that an enemy could see a placed trap. Marks would actually make them visible, and therefore not traps.

I don’t know if we need a tooltip spelling out out or what. If anyone watched the livestream or played against the class, or even played against anything that laid a trap, you’d know you cannot see an enemy trap.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

That utterly made no sense.

The Design Philosophy in question is about their belief that there should be a choice between damage, survivability and utility.

So what in the world are you talking about?

Every line has its own design philosophy. The reasons daredevil is created the way it is, is not the same as why critical strikes or any other line is created. Not every line is going to have damage, survivability, and utility. Those three are extremely broad representations of daredevil only. Crit strikes is not necessarily going to be built with damage, survivability, and utility sub-lines in mind.

That’s the whole point.

The traps don’t all have kitten cooldowns (the wiki is outdated). There’s no reason to expect the symbols would either.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

His explanation was acknowledged as part of one of my questions that you obviously skimmed to make such an unproductive and unrelated comment.

Care to explain how the Core trait lines are not related to this design philosophy? As far as the design decisions that were made on the DD spec that they follow such belief, yet failed to incorporate this belief to other trait lines.

My question is why?

Why must there be two types of philosophy when it comes to the Core vs Elite traits?

You, sir, are the very example of what you have described in your post.

Thank you for your contribution.

Each trait line has its own individual design philosophy. Likewise, the trait lines combine to form the overall profession design. So then, it is not unreasonable to expect that different lines might use a different philosophy in their design.

Take Guardians and Dragonhunter for example. The Dragonhunter has concepts of Virtues, Longbow, and trapping (literally or conceptually). These 3 are not the same as Daredevil’s 3. Likewise, the design for daredevil is not the same as it was for critical strikes, nor for shadow arts. They’re different for a reason.

So that’s why I made a post equally as useful to a third party as OP’s. You’re welcome.

And yet, with that functionality, they still aren’t traps. Traps have certain functions that have been defined (and recently clarified) by Anet. There’s no pressing need to have traps be at range, mesh with symbol traits, or anything of the sort. At that point we might as well ask for engineer kits and call them phantasms.

Tungsten Monarch.6058:

it is not 8 symbols per guardian the most would be 6 1 from weapon, 1 from heal, 3 skills, 1 elite.
it is not 8 k damage per tick

How is this any less dangerous than a group of Staff / Marks wielding “Well” life stealing necro’s?

It’s actually 2 weapons, heal, 3 utilities, elite, and at least 1 trait proccing regularly. In pvp or wvw, you’d definitely be proccing at least one of those trait symbols. In PvE, you wouldn’t necessarily be proccing the traits, nor would you take the elite symbol (unless it gave quickness, otherwise FmW would be the best choice for your party of 5). Using the extremely conservative assumption that each symbol would tick about 1k per (which is like, 1800 power levels of damage), to could have 6k dps by hardly doing anything. If you’re actually in a dungeoning group, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect 3-4k per tick, or more. That’s 18-24k+ dps for no effort. Numbers similar to these would be available in pvp and wvw, which is absolutely no bueno.

One thing I don’t understand is why someone would want people to be placing ~8 symbols per guardian around a battlefield. ~8k damage per tick, ~1k healing when traited, 8 vuln per tick, 8/3 chance to cause burn per tick, and 8 different boons or other effects. It would be impossible to not ever stand in at least one symbol, likely multiple, and any kind of lockdown would be terribly devastating. PvE metas would just be 5 guardians with about 6 symbols a piece with permanent might, fury, quickness, vuln, and something stupid for burn stacks (not to mention the boons from the symbols themselves). Why would that ever seem like a good idea?

eleshazar.6902:

It’s essentially because the whole elite specialization was half kittened. My guess is that each of the devs that are managing an elite spec (Robert Gee, Karl, Roy, etc.) each got assigned a few to manage. Basically we got the short end of the straw and our dev did nothing to actually make this work. It was like a kid turning in a homework assignment just trying to get the passing “C”. I mean, come on, even the name reeks of lack of effort.

Robert, Karl, and Roy are design leads, but I can nigh guarantee not only do all three of those work on every elite spec, but they have a team larger than just those three working on every single profession.

All I have to say, is that I’m glad the majority of you in this thread are not in charge of making any sort of decisions towards the directions classes go.

Honestly, traps don’t need condition cleanses, sun breaks, or other things like that either. Traps are traps, not symbols or wells. They shouldn’t be spreading protection and regen. Fragments of Faith gets an exception because of how aegis synergizes with Guardians as a whole (especially shattered aegis, amplified wrath, pure of heart, and hunter’s fortification.)

Some traps could definitely stand for some more utility though, I won’t deny. Purification is the one trap where condition cleanses could be a good fit. Currently Fragments of Faith serves that purpose when combined with Hunters Fortification, but there’s no reason purification can’t purify. Procession of Blades probably really should have a whirl finisher, or stack bleeding natively. Traited Test of Faith compares very well to Purging Flames, and Lights Judgement is just plain useful all around.

Likewise, no traps deserve to be thrown at any range.

And here we find the Superior Gamer in its natural habitat. It roams the forums puffing up its throat, using the display to intimidate others from their prey. Watch as they thrust around their dangling bits in disgust of people having badwrongfun.

Geiir.7603:

I miss it tbh. Seeing a Headshot bounce three times was hilarious! Same with Unload and lucky rng against a ranger.

Ricochet never bounced to a previously hit target, so I’m not sure why the ranger is significant.

I would absolutely not take any of these suggestions

Ausfer.1853:

Kocoff.7582:

the Ricochet effect is mostly why Thieves picked the trait, not the other way around.

I would like to emphasize this for its truth. Karl seems to believe that most players preferred playing without riccochet, when that was not the case at all.

Now that I think about it, in all the time spent playing this game, I haven’t seen or heard anyone ever say that they preferred p/p without riccochet.

Implying…

Facts are things like “Pistols attack from 900 base range” and “Unload fires 8 bullets”. Opinions are “p/p can be effective at single target damage” and “p/p is fun to play in X style”. If you want facts just go to the wiki, there’s no point listing them here. Facts don’t get people excited to do something, opinions do. Opinions are what will convince you to try p/p. Your experience will then let you draw your own conclusions.

Cooldown length, blast radius, and condition application are not aspects of marks. Traps can have all of those things.

Zero Day.2594:

(Actually why post at all, asking opinions of others at that point)

That’s like, the entirety of why this thread was created, to get opinions. Many things people think are fact are not, like what is “good”, “fun”, or “worthwhile”.

Rodzynald.5897:

I don’t get this “being in a good spot” argument that I hear most of the time, would someone care to explain ?

It was based on a comment Anet made over a year ago, possibly towards 2 years, that keeps getting brought up by people who don’t understand how Anet balances. Now, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing necessarily. Most people don’t really know how Anet goes through with their balancing because they aren’t Anet. However, it’s fairly clear in hindsight who understand better than the rest, or at least who is better at guessing.

Zero Day.2594:

Was it:
Have a positive attitude about it and ignore the fact that it’s kitten?

No. It was “If you think it’s good, then it’s good. If you think it’s bad, it’s bad” Your experiences will generally confirm your opinions. If you think there’s potential and you can make it work, you’ll probably have a higher opinion than someone who thinks it’s worthless. It sounds pretty obvious, but it’s incredible how often people assume their opinion is fact applicable to everyone.

I would rather keep traps than have marks.

It doesn’t make the popular opinion objectively right either. We’re all just slinging around opinions. But, it’s ultimately up to arenanet to make these decisions. If we want to point out we dislike something, then we should give well thought out and concrete reasons, and offer equally well thought out alternatives. Criticizing someone’s singing doesn’t make them change or improve. Letting them know what you don’t like, how to change, and also what they’re doing well is what will allow the singer to produce more works cohesive to your opinion.

Let’s speak it out for you because your comprehension is failing you today.

ALL BWE2 THREADS ARE UNSTICKIED

The threads and discussion are still relevant and important, but the event has passed. They do not need to be so prominent anymore. They are not ignoring Guardians. Fix your victim complex. There’s less drama in a middle school girl’s bathroom than this thread.

Zero Day.2594:

Beetamus.6403:

So they are just as good as D/D Elementalist? Must be why so many pro’s use them in tournaments…

The real answer is they are not great, but they are a lot of fun if you like the gunslinger theme, and if you kill people, you can relish it more.

If you stay oblivious and ignorant to everything, then they might actually be good. That and muting/blocking most people in PvP while doing so… :P

Basically, living in your own little world where you think that dual pistols are amazing.

Both of you severely misunderstood the entirely of that post

Just like everything else in the game, they’re just as good as your opinion of them is.

Shield helps give more prot uptime without needing Hammer. Also has a1.0 power scaling, which isn’t terrible. Shield 4 in pvp needs to use pve numbers, and then the shield trait could give something more interesting than 180 toughness, and shield will be a nice option.

Pretty Pixie.8603:

My main dislike for traps is their long CDs. They’d be a lot more useful in the 20-30s range, instead of the kitten they are now. With a shorter cooldown trapper runes become interesting. Plop down the one with the lowest CD to proc stealth, then drop the others unseen where you need them.

I can’t remember where these are, and I apologize. Traps aren’t at kitten cooldowns like the wiki lists. Procession of Blades is around 25. 2 of Fragments of Faith, Test of Faith, and Lights Judgement are around 30-35s iirc. On top of this, the trap trait also reduces cooldown by 20%, so expect traps to be around the 20-36s areas when traited.

That build does have some aegis, but it doesn’t really have anything about FoF. It’s probably a wrong link?

For these builds, just keep in mind the changes mentioned in the op. Hunters Determination drops a FoF on control effect, and Hunter’s Fortification now removes a condition on block.

Power Shatter
Heal Support
Condi Burn

I really, really like the idea of swapping Pure of Sight and Zealot’s Aggression. It’s true it would likely make a more cohesive snapshot of the spec (though, there are some times you might not want to cripple on VoJ. Then again, that might be a case for proper planning ahead).

If it doesn’t happen, and Pure of Sight stats as is, I’m not going to be terrible upset at least. It increases any ranged damage I can put out however I can put it out, and more damage is always welcome.

I’m chalking that up to a misinterpretation of the definition. You can have that opinion, I’m not arguing that, but redundant is not the correct word.

Also, Traps causing damage beyond 360u isn’t “when the stars align”. How incredibly easy is it to place a trap, walk behind 360u, and then have an enemy activate the trap? It’s a concept that even works on human players, so don’t tell me it doesn’t work in pvp. Also, Wall of Reflection definitely applies. WoR procs Glacial Heart while you have a Hammer equipped, so you should expect it’ll be affected by Pure of Sight. You conveniently forgot other skills like Zealot’s Defense and Zealot’s Embrace. Even ignoring those, 37% is plenty large. Plenty of traits won’t involve that many skills.

Wanting to change the trait is fine. Go ahead and make some constructive suggestions. But most of the comments I see are just empty melodrama.

Players think that they have a 50% win rate when it’s actually around 66%. There’s a distinct bias that we experience with statistical things because the brain cannot into statistics.

Talking about what we feel should change is great. Skill changes and balance updates are some of my favorite things in the game, or in competitive games in general. However, when asking for things to be changed, the mindset that drives those changes needs to be cohesive to the overall picture.

I had heard about that, but I want completely certain. This just gives us even more skills that work with it.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Black Box.9312:

Rune of the Ranger’s 6th bonus is a damage boost when you have an active companion. I think summons count for this, however it’s still pretty class-specific. I wouldn’t rule out something specifically tailored to Revenants.

Only classes who can’t use this are engies and warriors. So I wouldn’t count it as being “pretty class specific”

Can’t remember if it’s been changed, but active mini pets also count as a companion.

A Revenant Rune will definitely be geared toward what the Revenant does well, or what they’re “supposed” to do, but it won’t be something revenant specific.

It’s not particularly redundant. There are plenty of other ways to deal damage past 600u. For an elite spec that’s thematically able to fight at ranged it certainly makes sense.

I understand some people don’t like it. Defenders Dogma is kind of weird also, but with some of the recent changes to skills it’s much more useful. It’s existence really isn’t a huge deal.

“Good” isn’t a math-like term. You reference “us”, but who knows who you’re speaking for. Certainly not me, and I’d expect many other people would pipe up that you don’t speak on their behalf either.

Viable is opinion. Balanced is also more opinion than fact, because with all the variance in builds and performance, there isn’t any real mathematical balance. Hand designers want to get close for sure, but they also want to intentionally create certain imbalances. This creates an intricate rock-paper-scissors effect all throughout the game. Because of that, what exactly feels balanced or not is certainly opinion and not factual, mathematical balance.

Procession of Blades is already 25s with access to 20% reduced cooldown. How fast does it need to be?

When the devs introduced the trait, they said the heal over time style things wouldn’t proc the trait. They did mention that blasting water fields and the blast equals heal trait will proc it, so I expect the threshold is around the 1k mark

If you’re just getting poison to replace sigil of doom with torment, why not just get torment?

There’s lots of different ways to go about it