Guild Wars 2

Yeah from what they said, and as always, subject to change,

You ‘activate’ it, there’s the small arming time, and once you reach appropriate criterias, it procs. The criterias seem to be

- Standing on it (obviously)
- Having a certain % of health (or lower)

(traited)
‘We heal as One!’ -

• High Heal Burst
• Swiftness
• Regen (With another specific trait, 5% less incoming dmg when you have regen)
• With Rune of the Trooper you gain a condi cleanse (Up to 5 allies)
• 16s CD

Troll Unguent

• 10s Pulsing Heal per Second
• Fury (With another specific trait, Fury refreshes Opening Strike)
• 2 Conditions Removed
• 20s CD

Darn… they both sound like awesome heals now

Healing Spring will be less reliable because of its arming time + criteria to proc, but with some trait you gain a blast finisher on pet swap (as you cast Call of the Wild on pet swap) on the longest water field in the game, but I can see new combat dynamics with it.

Water Spirit … Let’s… not talk about spirits :’(

They could also still categorize it as consecration, the trait would affect the blocking duration to 2.4s, but the cooldown could become too low (at 24s traited)
They could tweak the CD a bit to balance it out

Pretty sure it was an error and it was ‘Heal as One’ being renamed to ‘We Heal as One’

Healing Spring keeps its name and becomes a trap

They said in the livestream that HaO and RaO are shouts.

RaO is even renamed to ‘Strength of the Pack!’

They just didn’t specify e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g

Yes, huge heal, low CD, swift, regen, with of the trooper it removes a condi

Though troll unguent is not far behind; Traited, its 2 conditions cleansed, fury and 20s CD!

I agree :/

They should change it so that each trap has an additionnal condition applied to target in theme with the trap itself;

Flame trap also adds Blind (3s)
Viper’s Nest adds Torment (2 stacks 4s)
Frost Trap adds Vulnerability (5 stacks 8s)
Spike Trap adds uhm… Immob! (1s?)

Heal as one is becoming a shout yes, and Rampage as One is also becoming a shout and is renamed to ‘Strength of the Pack!’

StickerHappy.8052:

mistsim.2748:

all offensive traps have cripple when traited. frost trap also chills.

but chill>cripple so adding cripple on frost is………

…More conditions to cleanse!

Let’s say Shelter is a Meditation and Traited

Heals for (revised) 3900 health
+heal for an additionnal ~1980 health from trait
+4s Fury (allies affected)
+Blocks for 2s

Let’s say Litany of Wrath is a Consecration and Traited

Heals for (a revised) 2800 health
+10% to 15% from outgoing damage (self and team standing on it)
+lasts for 7.2s
> Could also become some combo field

Not too mediocre

I’m sure quickness is getting a somewhat low duration cap
…but yeah… even then, wowzer. We don’t need chronomancers HA!

Even with a 60s /48s Trait’d it’s pretty powerful. VERY powerful.

The Condition to Boon conversion would change slow to even MORE quickness… Wowowoww

Sykper.6583:

WE HAVE BUT ONE HOPE.

Calling it now, our specialization involves Pistols, and that traitline specifically promotes guns both small and large!

CLEARLY, clearly that is why they made Rifle worth less than dirt! Because its going to be SO broken when we get that traitline!

….I can only dream.

That

would

make

perfect sense.

I’ll remember this post when the elite spec pops. * FINGERS AND TOES CROSSED *

As a boon it’ll definitely stack in duration, but there’s most definitely a duration cap

According to Josh Davis, Shelter won’t be categorized

Not sure how I feel about that, I understand it is a pretty powerful heal, but here’s a suggestion:

Shelter becomes a Meditation – Somewhat fits the theme

Traited, it would grant fury, grant additionnal health and have lower CD. Now that is extremely powerful, so for balancing, the healing value could be lowered to compensate for the traited additionnal heal, and it’s CD could be slightly raised, again to compensate for the lower CD trait. 35s base could somewhat work: traited, that would lower to 28s.

Now, we already have a meditation heal, which is ‘Litany of Wrath’

Litany of Wrath becomes a Consecration
Like most consecration, it’ll become a AoE skill that would affect those standing on it, up to 5 allies. lower the coefficient a bit, 10 to 15% healing from damage dealt, but maybe slightly up the initial self-heal. It’ll bring additionnal utility for teammates

As a consecration, it would be ground targetted, and with traits, would last longer and reload faster.

Of course some tweaks in numbers would be greatly needed, but at least all skills would be categorized

Oh I absolutely love Of Altruism for shoutrangers. Between that one for more support and Of the Pack for perma team swift, shoutbow rangers are getting really interesting. I still hoped for some additionnal effects from Ranger Shouts but I guess it’s alright.

“Protect Me!” over Signet of Stone for the stun break and lower CD sounds interesting, and with the vit and tough buffs for pets, it could be viable without instantly killing the pet

Lightning Stomps, Flash revives, or just a nice damage boost… With added evasion utility, gotta love that!

Remember that Super Speed while in combat mode is the speed of swiftness out of combat – you can distance yourself QUITE a bit (especially if you cleanse movement impeding conditions thanks to the SotF trait!)

Optimise Class-specific Synergy

They kinda did that indirectly with thief traps, they removed the direct damage component so it doesnt break stealth; Rune of the Trapper has even better synergy

WD doesn’t need rework, except maybe the current radius/range increase, which I really hope is made baseline.

It’s effect is almost elite-skill worthy (see Daggerstorm), the upside is the low CD (compared to daggerstorm) and the downside is the fact that it’s a rooted skill, which is perfectly balanced.

Ranger’s have access to so much cripple/immob that using it for the damage effect (and vulnerability stacking) isn’t hard at all. And on top of that, projectile reflection AND retaliation. And whirl finisher. I don’t see how its a ‘disaster of an ability’

In short; I really hope the range and radius is increased baseline, for both Path of Scars and Whirling Defense.

…maybe add a small 1-2s of cripple on the first Path of Scar hit?

Upgraded Remorseless refreshes Opening Strike when you gain fury

Now, the Rune of Evasion has EXCELLENT potential synergy; You gain Swift and Fury on dodge, which would refresh Opening Strike, the only problem though is that the 6th rune bonus deals direct damage so my suggestion to Arena.net is

Could it be possible to proc the crippling attack from 6th bonus JUST BEFORE the Fury proc? alternatively, remove the direct damage component entirely?

That way, Opening Strike would’nt be wasted on the direct damage from the 6th bonus cripple effect. I understand a quick workaround would be to limit the runes to 5 but cripple on dodge is a pretty solid effect still.

I’ve been running Survivalist Builds since the introduction of ‘Survival of the Fittest’ in any modes and I absolutely love it.

Removing the healing efficiency debuff and adding the Super Speed buff is just delicious!

Also with the upgraded ‘Remorseless’ trait, it’s gonna be awesome.

About Remorseless builds, one huge suggestion: Invest in ‘Rune of Evasion’
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Evasion

You may want to apply 5 runes only so that you don’t waste your refreshed Opening Strike on the 6th rune effect though… Unless we can convince aNet to make the attack proc BEFORE getting Fury, that’d be PERFECT.

thank you! Where was it mentionned? The stream? Gotta rewatch it ASAP!

I only watched few bits of the stream but read the notes on the forums, not sure if I missed it or if it wasn’t mentioned, but what category was Healing Spring put in?

And maybe add a Right Click on utility skill to open the skill selection panel as some people suggested

THANK YOU ANET. I’VE WAITED SINCE PRE-RELEASE. It’s a ‘small’ change, but a very huge QoL improvement!

I do have a smaaall suggestion though, and I’m not sure how much effort would be needed, but, would it be possible, maybe in the future, to actual sort them to their appropriate category line, but from lower cooldown to highest? That would be fantastic!

But again, thanks for the fix. Much easier to swap skills now that they’re fully fixed in place.

I know how pet works, I just don’t get why the healthpool is different from PVE to WvW…

I only used the Jaguar as example but all pets have diff PVE and WvW healthpools. Bears go from 50K or so health to like 38k or so, canines have same health as felines so they go from 25K to 16K too etc

Thanks Harnel for the answer
___________________________________
But yes Genlog, pets are slightly more fragile in WvW, but not completely useless. Micro-management is key, knowing when to swap, call back, etc is vital, but they should find a middle ground for health in both environments ahhaha
For a quick review,

Drakes are best for groups, somewhat tanky and have nice damage and condition damage (and blast finisher on one of their skill chain) and usually bouncing attacks or multitarget cone attack

Solo, Canines are good for all their CC skills, knockdown on skill chain and usually the F2 (in exception for the fern hound) is related to some form of control (Fear, Immob, Chill, hyena calls a second hyena, double chain skill knockdown at the cost of half the power)

Spiders aren’t too bad thanks to their range and the immob from skill chain (jungle spider gets an additionnal immob)

Devourers have highest toughness and have some CC skills too, and they’re ranged

Birds and Felines are glass cannon, they’re okay-ish in solo play but they’ll pretty much die in a few sec in groups. Birds have nice auto-attack range and usually double attacks, while felines have vulnerability stacks on auto attack

Moas are usually tanky-team utility, usually boons or some support skill and AoE ally burst heal on skill chain.

Porcines are somewhat all rounders with a condi skill, a cc skill, a direct damage skill and a ‘random’ skill from the F2, but the Forage Skill varies from porcine to another
___________________________________

I still think they should up the pet’s health in WvW by 20% or so

Not sure if I missed something somewhere, but why is the pet health different in WvW than it is in PVE?

For example, my Jaguar would get 25016 HP in a L80 PVE map, yet he’d get 14593 HP in WvW. Pet stats are the same, same traits, same everything, just different ‘maps’

What’s up with that?

Signet of Courage (Untraited)
Passive: PBAoE Heal every 10 Seconds
Active: Light of Deliverance
Cooldown: 120s

Signet of Courage (Traited)
Passive: PBAoE every 8s (OR 20% more healing efficiency every 10s)
Active: Light of Deliverance
Cooldown: 96s
___________________________________________________________
“Feel My Wrath!” (Untraited)
Grant 3s of Quickness
Grant 10s of Fury
Cooldown: 40s

“Feel My Wrath!” (Traited)
Grant 3s of Quickness
Grant 10s of Fury
Cooldown: 32s
Convert 1 condition to a Boon

Yeah, sounds delicious

If they’re changed though, I absolutely love the new elites.
Would the new Light of Deliverance still be targetted?

The suggested elite categories have excellent synergy with traits and runes too

Tome of Courage – Make it a CONSECRATION
Traited with Master of Consecrations, the tome duration is increased and both Tome CD and Skills CD are lowered
Change the duration from 20s to 25s, so traited it becomes 30s, and take into account that in that 30s the skills themselves have lower CD, so you can use them more often

Tome of Wrath – Make it a SPIRIT-WEAPON
Traited with Expeditious Spirit, the 1-5 skills will inflict 1 stack of burning (so Conflagrate will grant 2 stacks of burn since its initial affect is 1 burn) and the skills will have 20% lower cooldown.

A while ago there was this enormous Black Skinned Afro Wielding Male Character, he was a thief, and his name was ‘Token Black Guy’. It was during the old days of the Queensdale train, and as a token black guy (and rather fragile thief)…He was often the first to die Ahahaha

Back in the beginning when I thought Heal as One and Rampage as One should be shouts, I always pictured the ranger shouting ‘As one!’ for the healing, and ‘Together!’ for the elite

Protect Me could apply a few seconds of Resistance to the ranger, as far as I remember you are still affected by Condition Damage, could add a bit more utility without completely reworking the skill

Or rework the skill completely and remove the damage transfer, but apply taunt to foes, targeting the pet and granting the pet Protection; The foes will be forced to attack the pet instead of you. Still a stun break, 50s CD, 4s of taunt.

Search and Rescue could be reworked in the way the cooldown works: If it fails to detect a downed ally, the cooldown is halved, so you can take advantage of the Resounding Timbre trait (swift and regen on shout) and Rune of the Trooper (remove condition on shout) It’ll still become a somewhat long cooldown even with traits, but reasonable, as if it fails to detect a downed ally, which is its only use, its basically like having no use at all.

I really like that mechanic in the volcanic fractal, where there’s this specific debuff that burns foes around you,

Maybe they could play with the affected range based on the stacks;

1 stack of Burning : No effect
2 stacks of Burning : Anyone that collides with you directly get 1 stack of burning for a small duration
3 stacks of Burning : Anyone in a very small radius get 1 stack of burning for a small duration

Yeah the Consecration Trait could simply affect the Tome of Courage duration (…didn’t even think of that, woops!) Although with the current durations, the current/old Tome and Traits would change the 20s duration to 30s, maybe they should adjust durations. 25s base and 30s traited? Not such a big duration change though

OH right, with the trait, it could also affect the tome’s skills cooldown, so basically, the tome would go from 25s to 30s, BUT ALSO the skills themselves would cooldown faster, allowing you to use Tome of Courage skills more frequently

Tome of Wrath could have great synergy with spirit-weapon category as it’s more offensive oriented, so gaining a burning effect on hit would fit it greatly

Oh I love the concept around boons too! Or maybe reduce boon duration on foes by 10%?

I was also thinking about some kind of funny twist; Burning foes move 20% faster ( speed not stackable of course)

I’ll definitely go with Nature/Wilderness/Forest themed ones, such as

Angchu Spire
Bramblethorn
Gnarled Walking Staff (currently my top pick)
Melandru’s Gaze
Memory of the Sky
Wolfborn Staff

But it’ll also greatly depend on my overall theme and look

Yes, yes and yes

But it would add a new dynamic to combat if, for more survivability when burning, you’d be ‘forced’ to move (rooted channeled skills)

Just something to make Burning unique and not a condition too similar to Bleeding

Based on the comments on the forums, most people suggest putting both skills in the same category (often debated between Consecrations or Spirit-Weapons)

My suggestion is to actually do both! Here’s how it goes:

Tome of Courage – Make it a CONSECRATION
Traited with Master of Consecrations, the 1-5 skills will last longer, and have a lower cooldown. The skills’ effects would be:

1. Heal Area could last 1s, or grant 20% more healing
2. Purifying Ribbon could have an additionnal bounce
3. Protective Spirit could have it’s cone last 20% longer OR have its boon grant 20% longer duration
4. Pacifism could daze for 20% longer
5. Light of Deliverance would stay as it is

Tome of Wrath – Make it a SPIRIT-WEAPON
Traited with Expeditious Spirit, the 1-5 skills will inflict 1 stack of burning (so Conflagrate will grant 2 stacks of burn since its initial affect is 1 burn) and the skills will have 20% lower cooldown. The skills effects would be:

1. Conflagrate would grant 2 stacks of burning instead of 1
2. Affliction the projectile would burn foes it hits
3. Smiter’s Boon the cone would burn everything it touches
4. Zealot’s Fervor could become a short-ranged AoE effect that burns foes
5. Judgment would burn knocked down foes

Of course the skill mechanics are different from typical consecrations and typical spirit-weapons, but hey, they’re elite skills, they could behave slightly differently! Perhaps the slot skills could be disabled during the use of any of those tomes for balancing issues as it does currently in the game.

It’s been HEAVILY hinted burning and poison will become stackable conditions, and since burning and bleeding will become almost the same condition with different names, I think they should add an additional effect to burning.

Before burning was stackable, it was unique due to the fact that it had a pretty high damage coefficient on single stack, while bleeding was more efficient in damaging by stacking.

Now, burning will stack, and bleed already stacks, so they’ll become 2 very similar conditions, effects-wise.

My suggestion is to add an additional effect to burning;
Double Damage to standing targets – If you stay still, burning will grant double damage, and if you move, ‘normal’ damage. Of course the ‘double’ damage could actually be the current damage and if the target is moving it’ll become the new base damage, which would be current/2

I understand they mentioned the smart thing to do to poison and burn (since they’ll stack) would be to lower the damage value a bit, but by adding this effect would make burning unique over bleeding.

Almost all damaging conditions will have an effect:
Poison reduces healing efficiency
Torment deals double damage to moving targets
Confusion deals double damage to foes using skills (newest POI episode hinted at a base damage per tick and bonus damage on skill use, I love this addition)
Burning deals double damage to targets standing still
Bleeding remains as it is, since the sources of bleed are numerous

I kinda like it as it is, BUT, it’d be interesting to up the damage modifier when the foe is Dazed/Stunned or simply Stunned, something like

You and your pet deal 10% more damage to foes that are crippled, chilled, immobilized
You and your pet deal an additionnal 10% damage if the foes are stunned or dazed

So if crippled/chilled/immob’d AND stunned/dazed, its 20% dmg boost from both you and pet. Excellent synergy with Greatsword Hilt Bash (AND synergy with the Moment of Clarity Trait)

Actually with mending becoming physical, they could merge the condition removal and the endurance mechanics;
100% Endurance >> Remove 3 conditions
<100% Endurance >> Remove 2 Conditions
<50% Endurance >> Remove 1 condition

Yeah they also need to work on the sequence skill activation time… Extremely slow and Extremely telegraphed

I’m pretty sure it interrupts, as would the Basilisk Venom effect if they ever implement it

As previously mentionned, Elixir X borrows from other professions, so why not apply that concept to the F5 skill?

Chance for Moa
Chance to give the same effect as Entangle, Immob and Bleed (although much shorter, of course)
Chance to give the same effect as Basilisk Venom (again, much shorter, basically a stun)

Maybe twist the boon removal concept and add an effect where
Poisoning a foe has a CHANCE to convert a boon to a condition
15% chance sounds kinda balanced, considering rangers have a LOT of poison, maybe add a cooldown once it triggers?

It does sound a bit necromancer-ish, but poison can also be defined as ‘a person, idea, action, or situation that is considered to have a destructive or corrupting effect or influence.’

Yeah I’m thinking the boon application could be on activation of the spirit sequence skill, so you can time them and not rely on non-player skills. For example, time the stability from Spirit of Nature when you see a big CC coming or Resistance from the Stone Spirit when some heavy conditions are applied etc

So probably join them with ‘Activated Skill’ and by extension, on death?

My poor poor spirits… I really loved the mobile aspect, oh well! I really wanted a Spirit-Based Druid! I guess that could still happen, provided they get appropriate balance! Here’s my take on such balances.

¤ Trigger Chance
They already mentionned the trigger chance to become baseline 70%, that’s perfect.

¤ Make them survive longer
They also mentionned or commented they basically become equivalent to turrets.
Well, turrents recently became vulnerable to critical hits and conditions, I think the new spirits should become similar to ‘structures’; immune to crits and conditions, as they’ll be very vulnerable to AoEs now that they’ll become static.

¤ Add boon effects
When traited; The trait is grandmaster, but still doesn’t feel quite grandmaster yet. Maybe add a boon per spirit, triggered by chance on hit? Or on Death? Or on Summon? Or on sequence skill use? No matter how it’s applied, it obviously needs to be balanced as boon duration can be augmented, and boons can affect traits.

Water Spirit > 5s regen
Frost Spirit > 3s Vigor (or maybe Fury? Kinda tough one)
Stone Spirit > 2s Resistance
Storm Spirit > 1s Quickness (Think lightning, think quickness! Swiftness in combat is not exactly useful, quickness on the other hand… Very powerful)
Sun Spirit > 6s Might
Spirit of Nature > 2s Stability

Based on the HoT trailer, it seems Engies are getting some kind of Drones, or Mobile ‘Turrets’… We have our own equivalent of turrets (or banners, really) but they’re immobile.

Also, rebalance the channel skills of the spirits, or make them traitable for lower CD too, some have rather high CDs

Lack of AoE
Axes, Torch, TRAPS, SPIRITS, Muddy Terrain, Entangle, GS is a PBAoE

Bad Pet AI
*Bad player micro-management

If our pet is dead
Bad player micro-management (again)

No real group support
One of the longest lasting water field, SPIRITS, FIELDS (a lot of them), Warhorn, Pets (AoE regen+burst heal, AoE condi cleanse, AoE might Stack, etc)

Boring and Repetitive
I guess that depends on how you play

Ranger’s are jack-of-all-trades, and they can be masters too, provided they are equipped with appropriate traits. And with the new traits and trait system coming, well kitten , it’s beautiful.

Yeah I know that the thief version reflects but IIRC it has lower damage output. Also, its conditional; the thief has to steal it first, whilst the warrior has it in its weapon skills, on an untraited 15s vs a untraited 35s for thief (steal has a base 35s CD for now)

I still think they should be Spirit Weapons, even if the mechanics are different.

The traits would change them by
-Burning on Hit
-Lower CD on Tome Weapon Skills (1-2-3-4-5)
-Lower CD on the Elite Skills themselves (0)

Alternatively, Tome of Courage could become a consecration, have more AoE pulsing effects to take advantage of longer duration trait, and Tome of Wrath could become a Spirit Weapon and take the mentioned advantages from the Spirit-Weapon traits.

They could always rename such skills as ‘Elite Consecration’ or ‘Elite Spirit-Weapon’ to make us understand its in same category for traits, but at the same time it’s unique in terms of mechanics