Guild Wars 2

There are a few things which, although I don’t have a warrior, I presume has placed the profession where it is in being so attractive for group play; good base survivability, group utility, and DPS.

From release, it’s very clear that condition specs are /supposed/ to be bulkier. You can’t stack condition damage without stacking a bunch of toughness, vitality or healing power along the way. Matching our damage to a zerker warrior requires something then, either a new stat altogether, or changes which make a new OR existing glass cannon stat combo (Rampager’s) have better synergy with a condition build. As is, I truly feel like a hybrid build is underwhelming for scepter, because it scales so poorly with power, given its focus is pumping out conditions.

Why not just have power improve the intensity of conditions then? Make it the ‘critical damage stat’ of condition builds in some way. That would fit with some of their plans, I mean Zeal in Guardian trait lines is supposedly 10% Power->C.D. which is laughable with something like this implemented.

The problem there is that it’s a buff to zerker specs which inherently apply conditions already without thinking about it, so some clever balancing or equations may need to be done, either that power’s effect on conditions is dependent on the amount of condition damage held, or something like that.

Finally, I think that vulnerability should also influence the damage of conditions, I think it’s pathetic that it doesn’t and that any group with a vulnerability stacker is actually favouring power DPS by a further 25% …

I don’t want to go on for too long, but I should also say, I want our group utility to go up too. 3 seconds of protection on a single type of utility skill after sacrificing a fair amount of damage and preventing effective hybrid builds is just lame. That’s pretty much the best we have to offer.

I also want encounters to be more challenging and reward players who have stacked up conditions. i.e. see Grawl Shaman in the Grawl Fractal, able to inflict conditions through shield and continue DPS while a zerker warrior cannot do any damage, is close to something which would be appropriate, but I feel this is unintended mechanics honestly. I’d like to see this, in comparison to the blatant favouring of power specs in many other encounters where inanimate objects immune to conditions are an important component, where we just sit there and hit stuff like a wet noodle.

LF Regen buffs + 50% crit chance in DS + Fury on DS is too much, I don’t buy it, there is very little sacrifice for any of this, other than not being able to go 30 into Spite, but you’d probably go for DS utility in other trees in such a build anyway.

You’re talking about 80% crit in DS here without ANY extra investment in precision. This would let you go full Cavalier’s on trinkets for a bunch of toughness and crit damage, while going Soldiers/Knights/Berserkers as you saw fit everywhere else, probably reaching something like 80-100% critical damage fairly easily.

By my estimates, this would cause each Life Blast to hit for like 2.5-3.5k while still retaining a ridiculous amount of bulk. Not only that, but wells which carry on ticking when you pop into DS may well be updated to damage with your boosted stats I guess?

I don’t know, seems pretty OP.

Example: I trait like this

30 in Curses

Adept: Hemophilia (II, Adept)
Master: Terror (VI, Adept)
Grandmaster: Lingering Curses (XI, Grandmaster)

Then RANDOMLY, this happens

Adept: Terror (VI, Adept)
Master: Hemophilia (II, Adept)
Grandmaster: Lingering Curses (XI, Grandmaster)

Nothing changes overall, but my traits in their respective slots (II/VI) have swapped. Not a huge deal, but kinda annoying when you want to swap traits on the fly.

This happens constantly when selecting two traits from 1 level.

yeah was a mistake ^^ flame/acc on each weapon set, fixed

I think it’s hard to say, dagger scales really well with power, so I’d probably use sharpening single-target, tuning crystals for aoe, but I don’t know. The thing is epidemic also spreads stuff like vulnerability and chill, so you do benefit from extra power on condition spreading I guess, abit.

I put a coral in the back because I’m OCD and weird :P just a personal thing, one day if I wanna use that rabid backpiece in a condi-focus build I’d have to change the gem and it feels like a waste, but yes, ruby gems are lovely, put one in there if you like.

Hey guys, this is a build I’ve been mucking around with in sPVP, and I like it alot, so I thought I’d share it with the masses.

There are three concepts in Guardian that I love – holy fire, blocking and retaliation. Not retaliation the boon per se, but more the idea of smacking your enemy in the face (SoW/Prot Strike) when they try and hit you. I wanted to make a build which was true to these concepts and focuses on them. Turns out, it’s not all that bad.

So I started with a fairly standard Mace burst meditation build and added in a full Guardian Rune set, and Defender’s Flame, the outcome is remarkably punishing. Why? Because neither of two bonuses have an ICD, or if there is, it’s very small and I’ve never noticed an enemy not get burned when a block occurs. Moreover, there’s a decent range on them affecting your attacker, probably like 900ish I’d say, maybe more. I’m not positive on this, but it may not even require LoS.

This adds something like 800 in burn damage onto every block with my build without any requirement for additional condition damage investment, and it’s likely most of the time, these will go unpurged given their short duration. However, you can still inflict remarkably long burns, I’ve seen them up in the 15s range during Shelter, which suggests no ICD but can’t always be sure with other people around.

So that’s it, hope you like it, try it out and go smush some people up ! Didn’t want too huge wall of text, so if you have any questions about how it plays, or whatever, just ask. Space out your blocks and time them, use them defensively, not all at once to burst 20k, but bit by bit to waste CD after CD from your opponent, until he’s just a walking sack of meat on fire.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRApd7elUgSDHHyNEfIFRuArHB8f+DXw1DFCxGC-T4Ag0CnIwShlDLDWSssYNsYZxmgDITCegA

You’re asking for a weapon which would have the same theme as Greatsword but attack twice as fast and apply cripple. I think the Sword was always supposed to be a strong movement and positioning based weapon which helps support your pet, while you misdirect and keep your opponent at bay when you want them to be, and be up in their face (or back) when it’s good for you. And it’s balanced for that.

The GS is our evasive defensive weapon which focuses primarily on your own damage and survivability with some hard hitting burst, with built in abilities which altogether negate and avoid damage.

I can’t tell whether sword hasn’t been fixed because they feel applying cripple on the move with free movement might be a little over the top. I personally really like might to pet, it can provide up to 3 stacks of might if you hit three enemies, every two seconds or so.

I don’t know alot about hybrid builds, I think it’s a hard balancing act but maybe others have done the math. I’m a bit OCD or something, and if I was making a hybrid build I would probably aim for equal amounts of power/precision/condition damage and rely on toughness for survivability as Necro base health is fine. Rampagers provides this I guess, but it’s glassy, and its useless when you decide you don’t like hybrid anymore. Furthermore, when you want to get some survivability, you either get rabid or knights for toughness and this puts a bias on power or condi, which is okay I guess if that’s what you want.

A half knights/rabid mix however, as linked below gives you a set of gear you can anytime use for a full power or full condi build, and gives great base survivability with a fair bit of toughness.

This build has some critical damage weaved in so dagger hits even harder while still giving you a decent amount of condition damage. I’ve put alot of points into Soul Reaping and gotten you Fury from entering DS, incentivizing it as much as is possible, and along with it you get some critical damage and better LF generation.

Blood Magic traits as they are are very weak I think for the investment, even though Bloodthirst works very well with a CD traited Life Siphon to give like 250HPS (untraited is like 150HPS or so).

I like the Undead rune set’s synergy better than extra condition duration honestly. You could easily take terror in the build linked but you’d need necromancer rune set and sigil of paralyzation or something to get 2 ticks of terror I think.

I dunno, I’m pretty tired right now so maybe this is bogus and horrible :P Hope it’s useful in some way.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.3|8.1n.h1.8.1o.h16|6.1o.h16|1b.719.1b.719.1b.719.1b.719.1b.719.1b.719|1n.67.1n.67.1n.67.1n.67.1n.67.1b.63|u67c.f2.a2.0.f6|30.2|3r.3u.3x.4d.0|e

Yes, I can see 30/20/0/0/20 being pretty cool, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Glassy without defensive stats on armor, but very offensive, considering conditions and terror can already put a target in close to death range quite quickly, burning will definitely add to this.

I still think there will be some strong caveat to balance this addition, but we’ll see.

Sadly, there are very few traits to influence our combat underwater outside of Death Shroud, this is an unfortunate oversight, as almost every other class I’ve encountered has either cd reductions or /something/.

Trait/Utility Switches you could make which I don’t know if you are:

Hemophilia – 20% bleed duration which I assume you have
Weakening Shroud – 2 stacks of bleeding pretty much 100% uptime if you DS every 15s
Blood is Power – 2 stacks also 100% uptime even when not traited

This should put you closer to 11, but in my experience I can keep up like 11-12 without either of the above from my quick testing underwater just now. Trident has 1s attack speed so it should be applying 7ish stacks of bleed on its own, sigil should provide 3-5, and barbed precision crits should be giving another 1-2 depending on your bleed duration most of the time, so you should be seeing closer to 15-16, which is more respectable.

Don’t forget to hop into DS for fury ! I’m sure you are, though. One of the best things we can do underwater is support our allies with DS4, and pawn them away with DS1. The fear is a fairly nice duration too, and a blind/poison on a short cd is ok I guess.

Outside of increasing bleeding/condition duration there are very few other things you can do. Opening with Spear #5 for 5 stacks of bleeds is decent, but it has a 600 range. And swapping to spear in the middle of combat is otherwise very lackluster. Hope this is useful.

Let’s hope ArenaNet introduce some nice changes to underwater combat across all classes real soon ^^

Just thinking about how guys here are all excited/afraid about the potential Terror + Burning, don’t 100% presume you’ll be able to trait for both of them optimally.

If the trait is like deep into Spite, Death or Blood Magic, you will be hard pressed to get all the Terror appropriate traits as well and may well have to go hybrid or something. Incendiary Powder for engi is in a Power Trait line I think, so I wouldn’t be too surprised.

mark my words o.o

I always did like the idea of area might from Drake, but I can never get it to use it consistently. The best success is putting it on passive and commanding it after a fire field is down, however, in a group environment you can’t always guarantee your field will be combo’d with.

I think your link has rending attacks taken as a trait, was talking about that when saying stuff about bleeds.

As a random note, sadly, I just checked and Concentration Training (+50% boons from pets) does not affect Area Might, neither does any player boon duration. Giving 3 stacks of AoE might for 30s would be sweet.

I like the idea of this build alot, I just have a few pointers -

in a group environment, bleeds from your drake may never see the light of day, being 43 dps per bleed, furthermore, without any fury, your drake is probably sitting at around 25% crit I think, so it won’t proc often enough to make it worth it. Even with fury from teammates, it’ll prioritize player characters

You then have two options – augment pet DPS or your own instead, in both cases I suggest you cut 20pts from BM.

option #1: Get Fortifying Bond

with all the boons flying around on you, this will really help your pet .. furthermore, it DOUBLES the base protection granted to it on dodge roll from Companion’s Defense to 4s (not including boon duration from the tree), giving like 50% uptime on 33% dmg reduction. Those stacks of might, fury, swiftness and anything else your party members give you, or any other source also get shared, boons which usually ‘miss’ the pet. The beautiful thing is that if they do hit your pet and you, your pet benefits twice. This is way better than the 200 all stats from the beastmaster line, for both survivability, and offense. Go a little deeper and you and your pet can both get 5% dmg bonus with a boon too, which is ok. As far as which trait to pick, well nature’s protection is pretty good, and will keep you alive.

Option #2 Your damage

At the moment, your burning uptime is overkill, it could be nicer to cut torch for warhorn, and improve your traps instead.

6 x elementalist runes + Trap traits + Pizza + 10pts in MM … (+70% burning/chill duration, doubled for traps)

Flame Trap = 3.4s burning per pulse, 3 times → 10s burning (80% uptime)
Frost Trap = 3.4s chill per pulse, 5 times → 17s chill (70% uptime, plus Winter’s Bite, 100% uptime single target)

This lets you grab warhorn for fury/swiftness, or dagger to cripple and poison foes with pretty much 100% uptime.

It’s nicer outside of s/tpvp where you don’t have to sacrifice so much since food gives 40% condi duration, add in lich rune set (10%) and +50% from traits is all you need. Sigil of Paralyzation and investment in Spite trait line also works.

with 25 stacks of corruption sigil, blood is power, and a full condi gear set you can reach probably 2400 max, 1700 base condi damage. This has a damage of 1300-1600 per second. Giving most of your fears 2600-3200 damage relatively instantly.

Corrupt boon (stability) fears also benefit as do traits like Reaper’s Protection (4s fear when you’re cc’d !) almost always forcing a stun break or crippling their health with 4-6k damage. Your two downed and on-downed fears also benefit .. it all adds up.

Nevertheless it’s a risky build as high stability/high anti-condition duration builds render it much much weaker ..

So I transmuted this skin onto a Rabid exotic backpiece. Can I upgrade this in the MF? for the defensive infusion slot? If I do will it go back to apothecary stats?

1H weapons are mostly selfish, yes, and I know alot of people don’t like mace, but I do, and that weapon is anything but selfish. Trait for symbol radius and the heal, plus Battle Presence and that’s 500hps for people in a 600 radius which you can apply to your group as you see fit. Auto-attack is throwing out another 500 every 3s and you still get a significant amount of protection by using a Shield off-hand, and a shout, which happily hit ranged players.

This is all support which /complements/ that 2h guardian next to you, given alot of fractals groups love taking two guardians, it’s nice to not have overlapping roles, not that having two of everything a 2h guardian brings is necessarily a bad thing.

With cleric’s gear, I haven’t felt like I /need/ AH in anything but WvW. You can hit 50% crit without fury in full clerics by grabbing Right-Hand Strength, and a few other bits.

With 1k healing power, signet of resolve heals close to 10k, dodging 6 times (~100% vigor uptime) in the time-frame of the heal’s traited CD gives you 1200 hp a dodge, all the while Virtue of Resolve is ticking away dropping another 4500 (~150hp/s). This totals to like 20k, more health than most guardians run, healed in a thirty second time frame, without much effort.

Thanks for the input guys, edits have been made as shown in the OP. As far as focus goes, I’m liking it alot, and have dumped torch for it in my offset, but I find it hard to give up the aesthetic of sitting in my mace set with a shield on :P I tend to take alot of aggro too, and the shield helps mitigate that. I think I like focus more to sort of hop in, mash the appropriate ability, do some DPS and switch back to my support set.

As far akittenting party members with Shield 4 goes, I have a okay solution which works most but not all the time. When hitting a mob, people tend to cluster on one face.

[MOB] : :

Dots = people.

It’s easy then to just go around the back and send out the Shield 4 conal from behind, easily catching most allies.

. [MOB] . :
——————→

I do agree on the lackluster ability of torch after playing with it for a while, which is sad because the cooldowns are nice and low even without trait investment. I think the only thing I do like is that Torch 4 hits hard at range, and that Torch 5 does tend to ‘home’ a little in on your target, as in turn your character toward your target. Some other abilities in this game of a similar nature just fail, and slap a 2-3s cd on you.

what do you think of superior rune of the pack x4/x6 instead?

Edits: After playing around with this for a while, and looking at recent posts (Many thanks to Bash.7291’s Lifesteal post), I’ve tweaked the build to what’s detailed and linked below. Thank you to people for the input !! Will continue to work on it and appreciate any opinions.

Features and Basis:

I want to be able to contribute significant damage and support to the group in group play. The idea is to do fairly strong direct damage, while bestowing the built-in support of my abilities.

The build was made with the idea of reaching as close as possible to 50% crit, +50% crit damage, 3k armor, 2k power, and 1k healing power. I’ve managed to hit most these marks and still retain a significant amount of utility and flexibility.

Mace/Shield is the main set I’ll be sitting in for support, while a Scepter/Focus switch allows me to dish out ranged damage when I can’t be up close and personal. The build contains the flexibility to be a point-stack healer, with Mace’s symbol, and Battle Presence combining to grant anywhere between 300-500HPS for anyone within a 600 radius. If the comp is more ranged than melee, or if conditions are an issue, there’s an easy switch to a PoV-based build. For anyone that’s interested, I swap Mace for Sword in WvW and a few other traits. All of this is detailed below.

Customization:

Condition Heavy Encounters:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.0|9.1k.h1f.e.1k.h1|b.1g.h1m.d.1g.h1|1k.7x.1k.7x.1n.7x.1c.7x.1c.7x.1c.7x|1k.67.1k.67.1k.67.1k.67.1k.67.1a.67|0.u29b.a5.u23b.0|54.2|v.16.19.18.0|e

Stacking Encounters/General:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.0|9.1k.h1f.e.1k.h1|b.1g.h1m.d.1g.h1|1k.7x.1k.7x.1n.7x.1c.7x.1c.7x.1c.7x|1k.67.1k.67.1k.67.1k.67.1k.67.1a.67|0.u24b.a6.u3ac.0|54.2|v.16.19.18.0|e

WvW:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.0|c.1g.h1m.e.1g.h1|b.1g.h1m.d.1g.h1|1k.7x.1k.7x.1n.7x.1c.7x.1c.7x.1c.7x|1k.67.1k.67.1k.67.1k.67.1k.67.1a.67|0.u24b.a6.u26b.0|54.2|v.17.19.18.0|e

Thanks ! I have never really noticed it before but my extended bouts in Southsun, especially with bonus MF it was really starting to become an obvious problem, your ideas all make sense and I’ll just have to plan out several farming spots in different areas and see how it goes.

Does anyone know how DR works from loot from random monsters? Sometimes I like just killing monsters mindlessly for some loot to sell, call it conditioning from other MMOs. I have a couple questions.

Is the DR reset with the daily every day, or how often?
Is it character bound?
Is it server bound, i.e. can I guest out to a different server and reset the DR?
Is it based on the mob type itself across all zones, or just the zone?
How long-ish before DR makes farming a particular mob inefficient?

Any findings people have found while doing this kinda thing would be really helpful.
Thanks in advance !

Gear/Consumables:

Armor: Power/Toughness/Vitality slotted with Ruby Orbs
Weapons: Berserkers, slot Blood/5% Crit sigil on Sword/Axe and Blood/Perception or 5% crit on Axe/Warhorn.
Accessories: Berserker’s Earrings, Exquiste Rubies // Power Toughness Vitality rings, Exquisite Rubies // Berserker’s Amulet Exquisite Ruby // Cavalier’s Cape Exquisite Ruby
Buffs: Omnomberry Ghost & Maintenance Oil or Sharpening Stone

With this kind of gear, you’re looking the following stats, approx. :

2300 Power
1800 Precision (45-50% Crit, 80-90% Crit Damage)
1500 Toughness (2.5k armor)
1250 Vitality (19-20k HP)

This gives you around a 33% proc on the Omnomberry, together with the Blood procs and Signet of the Wild gives you a very nice passive regen you don’t have to think about, and goes a long way with your slight bulkiness. When fury is up, this gets even better, even with the internal cooldowns.

Hope this is useful for some people May not be helpful for all servers, I usually play very late, but contributing 5-6 camp’s worth of points to your team with solo play is quite nice during quiet periods.

Slot Skills:

Healing Spring: Placement of this so that the field still affects your pet can be important, especially in a levelled camp, where you need your pet to stay alive. Be very aware of all the combos you can make with this field, the best of which I like using are;leaps (sword 2), projectile (axe 4, 100%, axe 1 and 2 20%), whirl (axe 5), and pets, of course, whichever you like.

Signet of Renewal: Very important for the passive effect and stun break. Knowing when to use it is difficult and requires close attention to the damage numbers flying around your head and your pet switching cooldown. Removal of at least 6 conditions is good, but take care to make sure that those conditions are worth removing.

Signet of the Hunt: Movement Speed bonus, plain and simple. I’ll mainly switch to this for walking, and switch to Signet of the Wild for combat. But movement speed is by no means awful in combat.

Signet of the Wild: Passive regen is good, and damage bonus and stability on use is good, but stops you interacting with objects or stomping, so only prevents control effects.

Signet of Stone: With the new passive buff and CD reduction, I like this alot. When taking camps, it’s important to use this if your pet’s about to die and you can’t switch it yet. Otherwise, use it to prevent burst damage and give yourself some breathing room. Combining it with Renewal can be nice for a temporary reset.

Others:

I mainly really like the Survival traits besides the Signets, so I’ll cover them here. If you want their CD reduced you would have to either lose quickness of pet swap, a significant amount of damage (2.5% crit / 5% crit dmg from Skirmishing) or the signets, so be careful.

Lightning Reflexes – Nice as an extra disengage and stun break, with some vigor thrown in. I would probably use it in place of Renewal if you feel you have conditions covered or Hunt/Wild.

Quickening Zephyr – This and a pet switch gives you 8 seconds of swiftness, which can be really cool. Also a stun breaker, use it wherever you wish, probably the same as above.

Muddy Terrain – Nice control skill, decent cooldown, use to give yourself breathing room while you kite with axe/warhorn.

Elite:

Rampage as One: Great DPS cooldown, usable stability, very nice combined with some quickness.

Traits:

These traits are very focused on damage and the utility of your signets so that you can bulk out a bit with your gear and still be fairly fierce.

Marksmanship: 30pts

I, IV, XI

Damage at full endurance is very nice, when combined with the ability to regen endurance at a fairly rapid rate, even if you feel like you dodge alot. The last two are fairly obvious for a signet build. If switching for group play and using a longbow, you can drop IV/XI for the two longbow traits, and switch slot skills, or just slot one in while retaining signets, depending on what you want to do. The Power stat from this line is what is most satisfying, but the condition duration on the vulnerability/chills isn’t half bad.

The minor traits get you some burst, opening with a Path of Scars crit is very nice.

Skirmishing: 30pts

I, IV, IX

Some might feel that crit damage is wasted on a non-BM build, but 30% critical damage is very significant, and there isn’t alot else in skirmishing for this type of power build. Vigor regen on crit is great, as most builds have some element of it in there, keeping your dodging going, and your meter full in between for extra damage. Critical Damage for the axe helps it be a little less wet noodle on single target. Crit and Critical Damage are the main reasons to go so far into this tree, as traits are one of the few places 10 precision = 1% critical damage. Again, you can swap into Longbow traits if you like with this setup.

Minor traits are very important, keeping fury and swiftness up. The flanking damage bonus is great, especially given that some of our abilities even position us there.

Wilderness Survival: 5pts

Wholly for the endurance regen.

Beastmastery: 5pts

For the quickness on pet swap.

Hi guys, this is my build for anyone that likes running around taking camps and even towers solo during quiet times on any particular zone. It’s not bad at 1v1/2v1 during roaming but it can take some work to stay alive. It’s very simple but I hope some of the subtle parts of the build are useful to some.

Weapons:

Set 1 – Sword/Axe.

This is the best Power weapon combination I personally decided on, it has some really good burst potential and some extent of control. Of course Longbow is a great power weapon and better for group play, but trying to take camps with it is like pulling teeth..

Auto-attack: Try and turn this off and control application of the cripple, especially when fighting other players. Paired with some quickness in this build, the pure output from this can be devastating.

Hornet’s Sting/Monarch’s Leap: A crit will do decent damage, but use for evasive and combo purposes in Healing Spring. The first part of the ability can also be a fairly useful disengage to give you some breathing room when you switch to Set 2.

Serpent’s Strike: On NPCs, apply at around 40% to ensure their heals are nerfed. On players, focus more on using it for the evade.

Path of Scars: The base damage of this ability is very high, for me, doing up to 3500×2 if both boomerang hits connect, even more dangerous when you can line a few enemies up.

Whirling Defense: Not bad for the combo possibilities and vulnerability. Most NPCs will happily crowd around you and some players too. If not, the reflect projectiles portion of this ability can give you some damage while giving you a bit of breathing room. Surprisingly few ranged players will turn off their auto attack when they see you doing this.

Set 2: Axe/Warhorn

This set gives you some range, group damage and utility, which is important on a melee focused set.

Auto attack: Unfortunately, on single targets, damage is very lackluster and slow compared to sword. However, on at least two enemies, the damage is nice, and better than nothing against enemies you can’t reach, or can’t afford to be in their face, such as a pack of lv82 guards.

Splitblade: Very weak in a power build, but use on cooldown if you like, or when up in someone’s face.

Winter’s Bite: Cripples many enemies’ damage output and escape capabilities, use sensibly. Rangers don’t have native boon removal, but kiting and chilling is the closest parallel we have.

Hunter’s Call: Decent damage, follows people around, use on cooldown. Just be sure you don’t waste it by being slightly out of range.

Call of the Wild: Also use on cooldown, the buffs are very important. Swiftness helps you get along between objectives.

I know that recently, F2 skill cooldowns were fixed so that you couldn’t swap pets back and forth and stack up X buff up really high since they weren’t resetting properly.

This has only affected stuff on land though. Let me explain.

I have my Red Moa out, I use my F2 for 15s of Fury. I am standing near water.

I hop underwater, where my primary pet is a shark, I hop back out onto land, calling my Red Moa, the F2 is recharged, despite it having a 30s CD. I can now reuse the ability.

I was able to stack fury up to 2min duration+ this way without any boon duration modifiers. I don’t use any underwater pets that give a boon but presumably this works with that too.

I realize it’s not huge, it’s kinda tedious to jump in and out of water 15 times to get up a 2 minute fury buff and not something I would do regularly.

However, I was in WvW the other day fighting a thief near water, and I tried this: With a wolf, I was able to fear constantly, just hit the F2, jump into water and jump out, hit F2 again. In addition it looked like his knockdown and other cooldowns were also refreshed. This is something I would presume is not intended for Rangers to be able to do.

I hope everyone doesn’t hate me for blowing the whistle on this :P If it hasn’t been observed already by a million people.

How do people feel about the addition of balanced ‘glyphs’ for weapon skills to help diversify how they are used and make them able to fit a variety of builds and situations? Glyphs for all weapon skills at once might be too much, but what about just button 1 to begin with?

Example A: Single-step autoattack

Ranger, Shortbow.

Crossfire : Fire an arrow. Bleed your target if you hit them from behind or from the side.

Option A1: Flanking attacks now inflict increased white damage, instead of bleeding.
Option A2: Flanking attacks now inflict X condition for Y seconds.
Option A3: Flanking attacks heal allies near your target.
Option A4: Flanking attacks have an X% chance to inflict Y control effect.

The idea being to allow someone who has built a particular way to still be able to use a differently focused weapon without requiring a new set of gear or something. Kinda like it is in Diablo III. The essence of the ability is the same, but it is morphed in some way.

Some downsides might need to be added to the options above to ‘balance’ but maybe you get the general idea, for all weapons, in all classes to have some flavour added to them. These can still be lore-friendly, as why wouldn’t a ranger use blinding, burning or crippling bolts all the time if they wanted/needed to?

Example B: Multi-Step Autoattack

Necromancer, Dagger

Necrotic Slash: Slash your foe twice.
Necrotic Stab: Strike your foe again, gaining 2% life force.
Necrotic Bite: Strike your foe, gaining 4% life force.

Option B1: The range of autoattacks is increased from 130 to X, but you now gain Y lifeforce.
Option B2: Autoattacks have an X change to trigger Lifesiphon.
Option B3: Autoattacks now inflict X condition, but you now gain Y lifeforce.

etc.

Maybe it wouldn’t be balanced, maybe it’d produce some really overpowered builds and require a trait tree overhaul .. but honestly many classes already would love a trait tree overhaul, and introducing something like this first, instead of later would probably be better. Hope this was interesting for people to read and mull over. And sorry if I’m like the 50000th person to suggest this. Also this might be a nice currency sink, as this could be something to spend gold, karma, skill points or whatever on at 80, I feel it might be challenging to add this system to the leveling.