Guild Wars 2

Carpboy.7145:

Im pretty sure those small changes weve known about for weeks are it

Well, they decided to sneak in some nerfs on SP thief/Hambow/that other one

My thoughts.
1. Underflows. Gimme them
2. Living Story releases should try to push for more permanent, zone-spanning meta achievements.
3. We should get heart quests and skill points in Southsun Cove
4. World exploration NG+ maybe?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I would also like to do a Guild CDI soon.

Chris

Guild missions included, I hope? Looking forward to it regardless.

Draknar.5748:

CTS surgery is pretty much out-patient these days and will cure you.

We’re not trying to avoid the fact that having to undergo surgery because you played a video game is ridiculous, right?

Also, @OP, I don’t know about the autotarget changes but the rest of them are just downright needed at this point.

jamesg.7128:

Relshdan.6854:

not much of a nerf

? #4 has gone from when YOU hit someone else to when YOU are hit. That means the one affected may not be the one you’re targetting. That’s a pretty big nerf.

I did notice a few people talking about Flame Barrier interacting with Blinding Ashes, in particular with minion based specs, and though it’s not quite the same thing- MM specs might gain a lot of benefit with their minions potentially soaking these high activation chance effects. I don’t know whether it’ll make for a big enough difference to make MM builds popular, but it could be a problem.

LordByron.8369:

carighan i already explained it to you 10 times at least…..

its easy 10% of 100 is 10, 20% of 50 is still 10…. but when you sum dps the set with 10% becomes 110, while the other with 20% will become 60…

Nobody questioned because was buffed for that reason….

And once again find me a reason to nerf celestial….just one that is not LORE.

It’s really not easy. You’re not making any sense. I don’t know what these numbers mean or are supposed to represent.

Nike.2631:

If you want to see real comedy, consider 2 guardians with this trait .

I was going to say. If attacks are slow enough, your Aegis will generate your own Aegis.

Sup dawg, I heard you liked Aegis so I gave you Aegis when you Block so you can get Aegis from your Aegis.

They also revealed a Lyssa nerf; I didn’t notice them all, but I did notice that the 6pc bonus was “convert 3 conditions into boons”. Big change, obviously.

Malediktus.9250:

That is terrible. I dont want to run those story modes again. They take forever and terrible rewards.

As I understand, you only need to do them if you want to unlock the reward chain permanently- And the main reason you’d want to do that would be to get several successive boxes of the same set of armor. I can think of a very narrow set of circumstances in which you’d lose out, here; you want to get a dungeon set, don’t want to do the relevant dungeon, and haven’t already gotten the stuff unlocked in PvP.

It does kinda suck that it won’t tell that you’ve done them based on achievements, though. They knocked down fractal levels for a reason- 30-50 is different from the old fractal levelling. There’s no new actual content in story modes.

Astral Projections.7320:

Rich iron: http://gw2.mmorpg-life.com/rich-iron-vein-map-location/1778/
Rich platinum: http://gw2.mmorpg-life.com/rich-platinum-vein-map-locations/41225/

The Brisbane spot is especially good for rich iron. It has one permanent one and frequently has a second variable site one in that area.

On a good day, it’ll also have several regular Iron and Silver nodes. I like going from Gallowfields Waypoint south through Cutpurse Circle, east to Brilitine Waypoint and then south to Enrav Exploration Post- On good respawns, that’ll have at best 2 Rich Iron, 1 Rich Silver and a dozen mixed Silver and Iron nodes on the way.

2 suggestions:

Optional downscaling
At any point in time, you can choose to lower the downscale level by up to 5 to give you more challenge and better rewards.

So, for example, let’s say we’re going to an area of Bloodtide Coast which is recommended for level 50 players, and it would downscale you to level 52. You can then opt to lower your level by up to 5 beyond that, downscaling you anywhere between 47 and 52, giving you more challenge and more rewards to meet that challenge.

Gear downscaling
When you’re level 13 or less, the best gear quality you can get is blue.
When you’re level 29, the best gear quality you can get is green.
When you’re level 59, the best gear quality you can get is yellow.
When you’re level 79, the best gear quality you can get is orange.

IMO, when you’re above these levels, accelerate the downscaling a little. Not a lot, not so much that you feel your gear is a waste of time in these zones, but by a little, because the extra stats you get from improved gear does add up over time.

CrazyCanuck.4265:

Since you failed to respond to my first post, Ill post again. DE is not a necessity for any playstyle or any game mode in guild wars 2. It is a crutch, pure and simple. Does it make certain things easier to handle? Sure it does. Are there other just as useful traits/weapon skills/utilities for handling those same things? Yes there are. Saying that without a certain trait, the class is significantly weaker is the reason why it is a trait in the first place… Mesmer is perfectly capable of performing at the top level in pve/pvp/wvw without this trait, just because you haven’t figured out doesn’t mean it isnt possible.

Um.

Have you figured out how? I’m genuinely curious how someone can play a mesmer viably at top level spvp without using DE.

Lotus.1682:

Except for now, they are gonna force you to use transmutation charges to switch looks in PvP instead of it being free like before. I hope they reward some of these charges through PvP rewards because otherwise I for one am not gonna spend the already kittenty amount of gold I make through PvP on gems just to switch to an armor set that I have already unlocked..

Have they explicitly confirmed this? I figured that it would only be necessary to spend Transmutation Charges to apply a skin to a set of gear with actual stats.

Okay, cool! I thought there was gonna be one today for some reason but I suppose not.

Swagginator.3246:

imo we need thunderstorm that does about half damage per attack, with more wider and faster attacks in air attunement as well lol.
staff ele’s are meant to cover big areas, in air the skills are just so useless.

I kinda wish that Glyph of Storms was good at all. It’s a cool skill, but it and its family don’t seem very practical to actually use.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Hey guys! We’ll be talking more about this stuff in the weeks to come in our April 2014 Feature Pack info roll-out! Tune in to Ready Up! and watch the GW2 main site for more details. We have info coming that will address a lot of these questions.

When’s the next one?

Obsidia.5127:

Pistol Whip is clearly the problem – Just lower the damage for now and see what happens.

It’ll be a mistake to start messing about with traits that will affect D/P or S/D.

Personally, I think it’s because of the evade frames it gives. I would be okay with the damage if I could turn around and stun/fear/KB the thief in the face to prevent it.

The skill does a whole bunch of stuff- It does good damage, has evasion frames, and stuns. I think one of those needs to get trimmed down.

Xaylin.1860:

right now, DE makes up for many shortcommings we have. ANet won’t recognize it as long as almost everyone runs DE.

This. This this this.

Tear it down and build the class up again. Might hurt in the short term, but the class will be better for it in the long term.

My Flesh Golem sulks more than my 4 year old nephew.

I really don’t understand why Flesh Golems seem to be so much buggier than other minions.

Falcon.8713:

Thank you for sharing your experiences I didn’t know that Lyssa would activate on golem’s charge :O ! I’m gonna look at the differences when I get home
+ what do you prefer ? Fetid Consumption variety or not ?
+ Is axe autoattack a little to weak maybe ?
Another thing, I’ve noticed that Minion AI is failing again.. What do you use to activate them into ‘combat mode’ ?

I usually prefer 20/0/30/20/0, but I bounce between the two.
Axe autoattack is rubbish.
The most efficient technique to get your minions to work properly is to pray. Seriously, though, the most reliable way to get them to activate is for them to take damage- but that’s not in your control 99% of the time.

It’s a bandaid fix.

In the short term, it does allow Mesmers more flexibility with their builds.

In the long term, it doesn’t address the fundamental underlying problem that the Mesmer’s core toolkit isn’t up to scruff, and that they depend on this trait for the class to be usable.

Deceptive Evasion needs to be reworked (read: nerfed), and the Shatter output need to be added back into the core, untraited class somehow. I don’t mesmer much, so I don’t know how to do that, but from my levelling experience, the class just does not feel right on a fundamental level without that flow of clones that you get when you’ve got DE.

Maybe have all weapon-based clone skills generate two clones instead of one? idk

Classes no, races yes.

Why bother making new classes when the standing classes are so easy to expand on?

Races would be neat because kodans.

I personally don’t find engineers and elementalists having less sigils to choose from at any one time to be that big of a problem; at least, not one that can easily be addressed without potentially huge balance concerns resulting, and concerns when it comes to practically giving them an additional sigil or two. How do you code it? Where does it go? Etc etc.

I do think there is one very big problem in the stacking stat sigils. I think everyone’s already covered why that is, though, and I don’t know how to solve it. I would say to give a trait that is similar to Master’s Bond which practically covers the role of a stacking sigil, but that would require you to actually spend traits to get it. Maybe add an elementalist/engineer exclusive sigil slot that will only accept class-specific sigils, but that still assumes that other classes would take the stacking stat sigil as well.

So yeah, lazy thought for elementalists; what if there was a trait that went something like this

Elemental Momentum: When you kill an enemy, gain 1 charge of Elemental Momentum. If you kill a player, gain 5 charges. Each charge grants 10 of a stat depending on attunement:
Fire: Power
Air: Precision
Earth: Toughness
Water: Healing Power

Def. agree on Dual Wielding and Slashing Power. Would be nice if these had more interesting elements. Just raw damage on a weapon set isn’t very interesting; at least add skill CD reductions.

Also agree on Stick and Move. Traits should not reward players for doing things that they should be doing anyway. Where does a decision come in here? Do you actively go “oh hey i should dodge roll and get my damage up”? Dunno about everyone else, but I don’t.

Don’t quite agree on Axe Mastery. It’s not raw damage, it’s crit damage, so it encourages a different stat weight; one emphasizing Precision to capitalise on the extra damage. Not the same as raw damage increasers, which don’t care which stats you use, so long as the stat you pick isn’t condition damage.

Completely disagree on Berserker’s Power. The trait introduces a conscious decision; sit on max adren and the damage bonus, or use a potentially powerful finisher?

My own calculations put 21 at a reasonable estimate, but that assumed that the crit damage traitline would remain unchanged.

I think that 15:1 is a reasonable amount. Personally, I think it would be better if it were a higher ratio, possibly about 18:1, but that wouldn’t be nice and clean with the crit damage traitline.

LordByron.8369:

From harpy fractal midboss to ascaloninan p2 boss, to ooze in reactor etc etc etc….

Harpy Fractal midboss is a DPS check? I thought it was a put the things in the thing check. I haven’t played 30+ so I’m pretty scrub tier but I didn’t think it changed after that.

Alissah.9281:

Making us do less damage in pve isnt suddenly going to make people run support/heal/tank.

It’s not a be-all-end-all solution, but reducing outgoing damage is an important element of fixing the PvE game. Rallying encourages raw damage, etc etc.

Phaeton.9582:

5×1.3=6.5
5×1.4=7

So the only new GM dps guards can viably take in spvp is this?

Personally, I would not take it as a DPS trait. The only way I can see it really being worthwhile is if you also take Battle Presence so you’re applying the base Resolve effect to your buddies, and then boosting it using both Absolute Resolution and Purity of Body so that you’re putting out constant healing while also granting extra endurance regen to a group fight.

As to which of the new traits are viable for a DPS guardian, I’m interested in how the new Zeal trait will go with something like a 30/20/0/0/20 build and Carrion gear/ammy. However, this is very much morbid curiosity and not something I would actually suggest is a viable or good idea.

TheflamingWolf.5861:

No because there is an endurance reg cap at 100% bonus, so vigor is max, the trait is utterly worthless for a grandmaster because there is a 5points trait in the line above which gives about permavigor (on crit apply 6s vigor 5s cooldown(scaling with boonduration))

It’s 5s duration, and the patch is nerfing it down to 10s ICD.

My thoughts:

Only Fetid Consumption varieties should use the Bloodbag. If you don’t have Fetid Consumption, use CC. You’ve already noted this so I presume you already know it, just double checking!

Fetid Consumption can be a troublesome trait if you don’t know what to expect from it. It can consume conditions as you try to throw them back at enemies with Staff 4 or Dagger 4, which can be really frustrating when key conditions are sent to your minions instead of your enemies.

IMO, as a hard point defender, or even as any necro, you should be using staff. You can rarely go wrong with a staff. As a defender, you have the obvious advantage of being able to lay down a minefield before people can get anywhere near you, and then double up on the Marks of Blood and Chilblains. Never hurts to apply a few condi stacks before you get into the fight proper.

Dagger and Axe are both nice potential mainhands. Personally, I prefer the dagger- an immobilise is, in my opinion, better than a cripple for setting up your minion combos. The Lifedrain is also quite nice, and with Bloodthirst, gets to do quite a significant amount of healing. This is my experience, of course, and you’ll want to experiment to figure out which one you like more.

All of the offhands have their benefits. I use Focus because it’s easy to spend your Spite 10 trait to boost it, the 4 is another spike that you can combo with your Bone Minion explosions, and the 5 is boonhate which you’re otherwise missing. If you’re running without Fetid Consumption, Dagger 4 can be very nice for obvious reasons. Dagger/Warhorn is always a fantastic combo.

For point holding, it’s more or less always Soldier’s amulet. You have utterly terrible scaling with Healing Power- You have maybe two effects that benefit from it.

For runes, I think that a good option to take is Lyssa. With the Flesh Golem summon and charge, you’ve got the elite CD to really exploit it.

What nerf?

Training of the Master which will result in what ultimately ends up being, at most, a 2% nerf?

Vampiric Master, whose defensive benefits could possibly be counteracted by the new healing power benefits?

We’re getting a couple buffs this patch, too, in the new Death Magic minors. Soul Comprehension is a bit more Life Force when our minions die, and the toughness on DS trait seems alright.

Really, they seem like pretty minor changes.

DeceiverX.8361:

And again, nothing actually changes here. People will just run berserker more, and berserker groups will still deal more damage and still be better for dungeons than any other group composition.

Why would people run Berserker more if Berserker is getting nerfed? IIRC you posted a theory about it earlier but the average player isn’t a scientist. They’re just going to go “oh, i wasn’t berserker before, it got nerfed now, why would i change now?”

And yes, changing the stats desired for dungeons will require changes across the entire game, and Ferocity barely changes anything there. Ferocity only does two things in that regard; makes conditions more appealing by comparison, and reduces the quick-kill/rallying aspects which add up to “the best defense is a good offense”.

I also hope that other changes will affect the condition meta in WvW, because as far as I can see, that’ll be the real victim of these changes. I dunno though. Fingers crossed I guess.

There’s a transmute trick you can do to move it over.

1. Level an alt to level 30 and complete the story quests to join the Priory (or whichever faction you want to get gear from)
2. Use Transmutation Stones, taking the appearance of the Priory armor and applying it to a set of unbound white or blue gear. This will make the gear account-bound, and you can move it to your main.
3. Use Transmutation Stones to apply the appearance of the Priory armor to your real armor.

It’s an expensive workaround, but it’s a workaround!

Soilder.3607:

Giving each class a new GM trait for each traitline will more than likely add more unbalance than balance because, what starts out as simple additions as first, ends up becoming broken as someone finds a way to exploit these traits in combination with other powerful abilities.

This will happen whether they implement the new traits tomorrow or whether they implement the new traits a year from now. On the flipside, new tools can potentially open up new playstyles and new build options, and a large array of options can be a balancing element of its own.

I’m completely confused by your analysis.

DeceiverX.8361:

The bottom line is that this change reduces critical damage. Okay, working as intended, right? Absolutely not the case. This change is designed to affect berserker builds such that their overall effectiveness in PvE is toned down slightly. Okay, that’s fine. But the real problem is that precision builds are not compensated in any way for this, because 10% damage overall includes damage dealt by non-critical strikes, thus meaning the penalty on critical strike damage is going to increase by a significantly larger margin.

1. This change reduces critical damage for characters which use critical damage(soon to be Ferocity). It has no effect for people who do not use what will soon become Ferocity.
2. Precision w/o Ferocity builds do not need to be compensated as they are not suffering any losses.
3. I’m fairly sure the “Berserker builds will suffer 10% damage loss” is “Berserker builds will suffer 10% damage loss as a direct result of the Critical Damage reduction through the Ferocity change”.

DeceiverX.8361:

What does this mean? It means the value of precision even further decreases. Precision-oriented builds are established to get high critical chance to bolster DPS against low-toughness foes. That said, since crit damage is multiplicative on power, precision-based builds already deal less overall damage output than power/berserker based builds. When the modifier becomes reduced, all that happens is in order for players running high-crit chance builds to work as effectively as they are now, they need to build into more power at the expense of some precision. What does this mean? All precision-oriented builds must be forced into using berserker gear to retain their existing damage while losing their high crit chance.

4. Precision oriented builds? Do you mean builds that would want to use the Assassin’s spread? Yes, the Assassin’s spread is hit more heavily than the Berserker’s spread, that’s true- However, I struggle to think of a situation in which an Assassin’s spread would be preferable for anyone over a Berserker’s spread. Could you please provide a specific example of a viable build that gains clear benefits with Assassin’s over Berserker’s?

DeceiverX.8361:

And if celestial gear gets buffed out of this zone… does this not then encourage players running anything except berserker to run celestial because it offers the best returns? This is absolutely foolish.

5. Celestial is utter junk for 95% of builds at the moment. The 6% raw stat buff is projected to only deliver a 3-4% EHP benefit at the cost of 4-7% direct DPS. There is no reason to assume that non-berserkers would desire Celestial gear over their current spread. Remember, Celestial is a complete non-option if you cannot make efficient use of a single stat on it, and that will not change even with the stat boost.

DeceiverX.8361:

Non-power based critical damage sets need to be re-evaluated. Ferocity needs to be implemented in significantly raised values in sets like Assassin’s and Valkyrie’s in order to retain their current set values (which are far out of the meta and already considered mediocre for both DPS and/or survivability) such that the only build choices beyond this point are not just berserker’s and celestial.

6. I agree, Valkyrie’s and Assassin’s will be hit harder than Berserker’s. These are two stat spreads, though, of almost two dozen. Reducing these four spreads makes the other seventeen more valuable by comparison.

IMO looking at two sets of weapons is a mistake. You should be looking at the weapon, or MH/OH combo, on its own when it comes to its abilities.

Pin Down also pierces, by the way. I do generally agree that a single skill should not have so many things attached to it but I think that Longbow would possibly be pushed under the threshold if those bleed stacks were to disappear in their entirety. Then again, if you have the crit rating for it and the crit line trait for bleed application, you can apply a lot of bleed with the 1, and the weapon will be stronger overall with a second sigil supporting it.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Pin down is still overpowered for a long range immobilize. The bleed stacks need to be removed from it (they got added at some point, I never understood why).

In WvWvW, thanks to consumables etc, the immobilize can last almost 6 seconds and the 6x bleed stacks around 25 seconds.

I think they’re there because it’s supposed to be a power/condi hybrid weapon, but the only condition it can actually apply is Burning. Ask Guardians how well only being able to apply 1 damaging condition works for them.

Alissah.9281:

Sarrs.4831:

Alissah.9281:

What about: Strider’s Defense: whenever you successfully evade or block using a melee weapon skill, gain 5s aegis (10s icd).

It would be much more in the ranger’s control when it procs, and would eliminate all passive play/rng. I’d argue that “Aegis when attacking” is kind of passive, because you’re usually attacking :P.

You’re usually dodging, too. Gaining an aegis when you dodge basically turns it into a double dodge- You dodge one attack, then you block another. I think it’s more or less just double dipping.

That ICD is really, really short too.

But you don’t spam dodges and blocks, do you? And the ICD is subject to change, I really don’t have any in depth knowledge of where all ranger traits are located…

I actually re-read it and noticed that you specified when using weapon skills. With a greatsword, you do automatically use evades; Ranger Greatsword 1(3) has an evade element.

Personally, I do not see “landing an initial melee attack” as random or spammy whatsoever. If you switch to your melee weapon or run at someone with a melee weapon, you’re doing it with deliberate and obvious intent. They know that you’ve got your melee weapon ready to roll and they know that they might need to chew through Aegis before they can land a controlling skill on you. You know that if you land a melee attack, you’re going to have a bit more breathing room.

Alissah.9281:

What about: Strider’s Defense: whenever you successfully evade or block using a melee weapon skill, gain 5s aegis (10s icd).

It would be much more in the ranger’s control when it procs, and would eliminate all passive play/rng. I’d argue that “Aegis when attacking” is kind of passive, because you’re usually attacking :P.

You’re usually dodging, too. Gaining an aegis when you dodge basically turns it into a double dodge- You dodge one attack, then you block another. I think it’s more or less just double dipping.

That ICD is really, really short too.

Warriors get tons of stuff.

And by warriors I mean hambow.

And by stuff I mean sigils.

I’m wondering how a condi/power hybrid would work with new Dhuumfire. I just wish it didn’t have such a long ICD; I’d possibly be happy with it if it was something like 2 seconds of burning, but without an ICD.

I’m also wondering how the Sigil changes will affect necros, whether Dire or Carrion. Having two conditions available from the sigils could be quite nice, though I will tentatively hold my breath. Geomancy and Hydromancy on the staff could be delicious.

mixxed.5862:

That’s a great idea! But what about:

Striders Defense: Gain Aegis when evading an attack while in melee. (= melee weapon)
Aegis duration: 5 seconds, ICD: about 15 seconds

That’d be even less random than “on hit”.

I think that evading a core defensive skill is benefit enough on its own, so attaching an Aegis to that is kind of redundant.

Hitting your opponent is far from random, too.

Thankyou, Eyes! That’s very helpful.

I’m not sure about the Condition Damage/Healing Power points, as I think they need to be addressed in their entirety on the gear, rather than just the new boost. My own mathwork similarly completely excluded these stats as frankly I couldn’t be bothered finding a reasonable assumption for them. I think they need to be looked at as a whole; Soldiers v Old Celestial v New Celestial.

On EHP, there’s also that an Elementalist will get a higher EHP benefit from it than a Mesmer as you have listed in your link, but this probably won’t push beyond a 4% increase at a rough guess.

Again, thanks a bunch for doing the legwork here.

Phaeton.9582:

This a cool idea.. you could lower the ICD though..

AEFA.9035:

I like your idea, but 20s ICD on an aegis is too long, I’d rather trade aegis for protection if we’re talking about boons.

Yeah, I’m not setting the ICD in stone. One thing to think about is that the Aegis you get will be directly countering things that enemies use to try to push you away or control you as soon as you close that distance; you Swoop in, land a hit, they’ll be trying to use Pin/PBS/Magic Bullet straight away so they can buy themselves some space. The Aegis’s effectiveness is tied to their cooldown, not yours. As a rough guesstimate, it should be good enough to reliably match CD with just one of their defensive tools- You’re still buying an advantage, but not so much to make the trait mandatory or overpowered.

I just quickly checked and the CDs on those skills are 25/15/25 respectively, so I reckon anywhere between 15 and 20 sec would also be pretty fair.

Shiren.9532:

You can express sympathy for Scarlet while at the same time staying true to the ferocious personality trait. Just write it in a way which disapproves of the attitudes of the other characters. Instead of joining on the band wagon making light of Scarlet’s death you could scold them for being so taking pleasure in the death of someone who fell victim to a dragon and lost control of her mind.

I don’t need a really complicated system but I certainly agree that the current dialogue options and the forced relationship in the game doesn’t closely resemble how I feel.

Just more good ol’ plain options would be really really nice too. Or more spread of the options we have now.

Do you think that what I’ve suggested is too complicated?

Undertaker.7451:

Now with such nerf to celestial gear, it should become real all stat equipment, witch mean it should also include:
- 1% boon duration
- 1% condition duration
+ 1% condition duration
+1% condition damage

that would add 6% for a full armor set.
Not too strong, but at least its something !

what are your toughts ?

-1% boon duration- huh? That doesn’t make sense. Guessing you meant +1% rather than -1%, and that might be okay I suppose.
-1% condition duration- While it is relatively small, personally I think it’s a fairly trivial addition, and I don’t think adding more -condition duration to the game will help.
+1% condition duration- Okay.
+1% condition damage- This is what Condition Damage does, so it’s kind of redundant.

Personally, I’d rather the spread got another couple of percent worth of stats. I don’t think 10% is an unfair number, personally.

I have two big problems with this trait.
1- It’s RNG. You could block an absolutely excellent ability like Point-Blank Shot, Pin Down or Magic Bullet which will put your enemy at a huge disadvantage. You could block nothing at all during a fight. Personally, this makes this skill absolutely utter rubbish in my opinion from a design standpoint- It’s an RNG element that counteracts clutch plays.
2- It only affects projectiles. Projectiles are a very specific class of attack and it won’t do anything against a nice big pile of abilities. This tied with the 15% chance proc rate makes it really, really tricky to justify picking up.
3- No counterplay. If you’re dependent on your ranged attacks, you can’t do anything about the fact that you’re rolling the dice when you’re fighting a Strider’s Defense ranger.

My suggestion:
Strider’s Defense: When you land a melee attack, gain 20 seconds of Aegis. 20 second CD
This nails these problems right in the face; it removes the RNG element, makes the ability more practical to use against everyone, and Aegis already has bunches of systems to support and counter it. Duration and ICD are debatable, of course; I would personally put it somewhere between 15 and 25 seconds.

Phaeton.9582:

It’s the worst trait change on rangers for sure.

What about ‘your pet f2 blinds and cripples nearby foes’

This double dips with Intimidation Training, so I’m kind of skeptical of it.

Okay, cool. Thanks for adding those. I’ll probably play with your numbers once I’ve slept; I want to check a few things. In particular:
1. How Celestial affects specs without 30/30 power/prec/crit
2. EHP for different classes
3. Damage loss without compensation

I’m just reading through, but I’m not sure whether you’ve listed your assumptions. It’s quite late for me here. I’ll poke holes where I can.

1. I think that the half percentage point that you are rounding off of the post-change critical chance is not trivial.
2. You list power before the celestial stat increase as being 1685; where did you get this number?
3. What are the assumptions you’ve made for your EHP calculations?

They seem like nice minors.

A bit of Toughness in Death Shroud never hurts. At a wild guess, it’ll be something like 80 toughness.

Soul Comprehension is better than what was there before, for non-MM, and Flesh of the Master was a staple trait for MM anyway so they get a free goodie. Necros gain life force when minions die, I’m fairly sure; both their own and other peoples’, so it’s not quite as bad as it might look at first glance.

They’re traits that let me look at the line without thinking “I’m going to be wasting my time if I don’t take minion traits/skills”.

Since I didn’t see a mode in there, I’m going to assume sPvP, so…

Attainable critical damage currently in PvP will remain relatively untouched, as we feel that it is currently in a good place.

This change will have no effect on sPvP.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

So basically – rather than having access to 4 sigil slots in combat. You would rather have access to 2 but still keep your stacks? terrible idea. Just give ele and Engineer 4 sigil slots. That way they can keep the stacks and have access to another sigil slot.

You don’t see a problem with 4 on-crit sigils?