Guild Wars 2

Kitiara.2706:

Yeh, really not sure how this will work in WvW. I feel like any reliable or fun builds we might could have used in WvW is pretty much out the window.

Just when rangers were useful in WvW, it had to be removed. God forbid we could actually play them without being yelled at.

Well I dunno where you play, but people I’m around yell at them all the time, even when they’re not around.

Still having the same issue with my medi build where I want to go into zeal, radiance, honour, and virtues. Mind you, honour is only for the medi trait, I don’t care about too much else in there. Guess I’ll just have to find out what works best.

But that litany buff, amirite? Eh? Eh?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/June-23-Specialization-Changes

Note that his formatting got a bit borked when he copy-pasta’d, so just pay attention to what you’re reading.

Warrior changes are the last on the list (they’re alphabetical).

I believe so, but I can’t be 100% sure without official confirmation.

So I’m glad I can stop getting auto-revealed from last refuge, that’s a nice buff. But can we just delete the auto smokescreen on going downed?

There’s a reason no one ever picks that thing, and I can guarantee you it’s not because it’s actually good and people just don’t know it is. All it does is wave a giant sign around saying “HEY YOU DOWNED ME, ATTACK RIGHT HERE PLEASE”. Mind you it was often moot since you’d have last refuge auto-reveal you in the first place anyways.

I mean, maybe it can have some use in coordinated sPvP, but for anyone roaming or doing more causal stuff it’s quite useless. I’d prefer if the auto smokescreen was just deleted, the only thing that makes it partially worth taking is the deception recharge reduction. Just have it reduce deception recharges by 20% and nothing else and that sounds like a buff to the trait to me.

And to top it off this competes with shadow’s embrace. Really? You’re going to put concealed defeat next to shadow’s embrace and pretend like it even remotely compares? The 20% recharge reduction on deceptions is quite nice. But you want to trade some the most powerful and reliable source of condition removal available to thieves for a smoke screen that pops when you go down, or an equally useless trait that just automatically reveals you at every opportunity it has?

I mean you might as well just delete the other two options on SA adept tier. Shadow’s embrace is just too attractive.

I was a bit confused by flash shell as well. It looks like all it does is form a light field with no additional effect? Why would I want to do that?

I don’t know that the tool tips can really be considered that accurate. It was in the PvP lobby, and we have no idea what amulet stats he had equipped, if any. Could’ve been magi stats for all we know.

I think it could have potential for WvW or PvE. Dunno about sPvP though.

Banumiel.1926:

ukuni.8745:

considering HGH builds are going to be alot more effective

They merged HGH with Potent Elixirs, but where is Fast-Acting Elixirs?

I was wondering this as well. That was part of the backbone for elixir builds, but it seems to be absent.

Mind you, if it is gone, there was still some good things traded for it.

I’ll probably be switching my build to explosives/firearms/alchemy or firearms/alchemy/tools depending on whether I’m running grenade kit or not (usually only use grenades in PvE).

One of the oddest things they said is that mortar kit skill 5 counts as an elixir skill for trait purposes… does that mean some of the elixir gun skills that are still labelled elixirs will get that treatment?

I’m looking forward to seeing how it works out with my current gadget build, which is more damage and CC oriented.

I’ll admit I’ll miss the aegis proc off the mine toss and fury from the ram, but a 50% CD reduction off something like A.E.D. could be quite valuable.

Not only that, but there’ll be a lot of use for utility goggles/analyze with the lock-on trait, although traiting gadgeteer does lock one out of taking kinetic charge.

Lordrosicky.5813:

I dont think in pvp necros will run it anymore. I think we are locked in to a signet condition spec now.

The details are important though.

Plague Sending: When you have 3 or more conditions on you your next critical hit casts Plague Signet on your target. This trait benefits from the recharge bonus of Signets of Suffering.

This needs a short icd (no more than 30s). It seems like it will be 30s and reduced to 24s with the signet trait. WHich also converts boons? Seems amazing to me. Really amazing.

Note that it says “benefits from the recharge bonus of Signets of Suffering”, it does not say it “benefits from all effects of Signets of Suffering”. As such, it may not convert boons on the plague sending auto-cast, only on the actual plague signet utility skill.

Traps.

You set the trap down, and it has the 0.5 second arming time.

After that, it can be triggered by you or an ally that is under full health (we think), after which it’ll do it’s thing. It will also have it’s recharged reduced if you have the trap trait, and work with things like runes of the trapper.

It should be possible to set one down in advance (i.e. defending a node), to potentially set off consecutive healing springs.

Not sure if pets or minions and such running over it can trigger the trap.

Tissitra.4153:

‘Lingering Curse: Gain 150 condition damage while wielding a scepter. The base duration of all scepter conditions is increased by 100%.’

Am I correct in assuming that this wording means that ONLY the scepter skills are affected by this trait now? This would be really bad considering only the autoattack and skill two even apply condi at all.

Yes, I believe it’s only the sceptre skills.

Otherwise, there would be no point in skills like fear of death, which only improve duration of fear by 50%.

Basically it allows you to maximize your bleed and poison potential, with even longer lasting cripples.

However, the 150 condition damage bonus should be applied to all conditions, whereas only the duration will be applied to the sceptre skills.

anduriell.6280:

im sorry i cant answer because the tears in my eyes dont allow me to see the screen….
there are so many wrong thing in there i dont know were to begin with.

We are going to be the worst of the worst.. even the necro will rekt us easilly from the balance.

But bearbow got buffed though…

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

mistsim.2748:

Wuselknusel.4082:

Because throwing them slightly in front of your target isn’t possible? Because the whole zerg when throwing traps from a wall will dodge them? Is that why we don’t need to be able to throw traps?

zerg? what? why would you be running traps against a zerg?

Marks? Wells? Why would you be running those against a zerg?

cuz they aren’t traps

TBH, I’d rather they make it so you can throw the banner at an enemy and hit them in the eye, blinding them and moving the banner to their location…

Wait wait wait, I started that as a joke, but now it actually sounds pretty cool.

Choppy.4183:

It’s weird that they randomized condi and boon removal, given the frequently expressed objective of increasing counter play. Leaving them as they are better supports that goal.

It’s because they wanted to make it so that you couldn’t get something like a 20 second immobilize rendered effectively irremovable due to single stacks of bleed that were coming on.

The concept of cover conditions and cover boons also just works different in GW2 than in GW1. In the latter, there were fewer enchantments and conditions going around, which sometimes had very unique effects. To be honest, I always felt the concept of cover enchantments/conditions was weird in GW1, but that’s just how that game rolled.

In GW2, you can have little bits of conditions and boons going all over the place, so the LIFO queue they used to manage it could be very unfriendly.

Of course, the randomized factor to it now could screw you as much as it could help you out. Maybe instead of removing that 20s immob that just came in, you get the 1 stack of bleed you took 10 seconds ago and that was just about to expire.

Although perhaps having the clearing randomized could justify putting some more condition removal into certain specs for professions where they’re simply too weak against conditions.

roamzero.9486:

Ralanost.8913:

The only thing we can hope for is if they somehow make it baseline and just didn’t put that in the notes. Otherwise it pretty much removes p/p as anything other than trash.

Since only one skill primarily benefits from Ricochet (Unload), to me it would make sense just to buff Unload to make it bounce.

A lot of p/d specs also used it though. It also works off the body shot skill to provide some pseudo-AoE immobilize, and it also helps you work around ranger pets and mesmer clones in general.

However, you do highlight another possibility. That would leave condi specs quite in the dust though.

I just noticed this as well………. WTF

I’ll agree with that guy in that other thread about putting ricochet back into the trickery line as long as it means putting it back in the game.

Heyzeus Kreesto…

I’m still hoping that they made it baseline and it’s just not written there. IT looks like it got replaced with the no quarter trait, although it doesn’t make sense why they would just flat out remove it for that unless they made it baseline.

Unless of course they considered it to be just too OP, but… well, who knows what brand of Kool-Aid they’re actually sipping over there?

Don’t forget the extra 20 toughness above 90% health! Surely sacrificing banners were worth that!

Goldenrevolver.4371:

ok im stupid….where exactly is a banner change?

It’s in the major trait slot for the discipline line. I think it was previously in the tactics line? All it does is give the regen tickling… I think some of the functionality, like the radius increase, may have been made baseline, but it doesn’t really say in the notes.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Yamsandjams.3267:

Captain Unusual.9163:

Consume Conditions now benefits from a 33% cooldown reduction trait. And combos amazingly well with Plague Sending.

And was honestly a tad overpowered before.

The problem is that the master of corruptions trait conflicts with terror. I was looking forward to making a terrormancer that also had the corruptions trait, but that just got blown out of the water.

It also doesn’t combo very well with plague signet. Using consume conditions will eat all your conditions but leave you with the vulnerability. Sure, you can transfer the vulnerability over, but it’s only a 4 second duration. If you hold onto it, it just makes you more vulnerable for a post-healing burst.

Not only that, but the trait will also make you take on additional conditions, which could potentially be even more harmful. For instance, if it gives you blind, you won’t even be able to use plague signet afterwards because it will just miss. We’ll have to see what the extra conditions are.

It’s not that the 33% recharge isn’t useful. It’s just that the things it’s useful for conflicts with too many other useful things. What, I’m supposed to not take terror and go for a reduced recharge on corrosive poison cloud? Give me a break.

It literally makes zero sense to put all the condition traits in the master tier. Those are basically the 3 traits out of the 9 that I would pick from that line. Most of the rest are total garbage. But nope. Anet gonna anet. I told you all – anet do not have a clue about necromancer builds and playstyles. Not a clue. And the result is shown when they put terror, path of corruption and master of corruption in the same tier. It is the end of condition necromancer

Same here. I’d like to take terror and master of corruption on my build. I’d prefer that than any of the things in the grandmaster line.

Egh, I dunno what I’m gonna do.

They also made it so plague signet only transfers a maximum of 5 conditions instead of all of them, so it synergizes even worse with master of corruption which makes no kitten sense at all.

So… you’re making me pick between something like 33% reduction on corrosive poison cloud’s recharge and damage on fear?

There’s a reason a skill like corrosive poison cloud never sees the light of day, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that it is not because it people were too busy running damage on their fears to notice poor old CPC off in the corner.

Now let’s be honest, no one would take master of corruptions to reduce the cooldown on CPC. The point to take it now is to get a ~20 second consume conditions. But is the 33% reduction to the entire line of corruption utilities worth anywhere close to anything like terror? Corruptions don’t even have a stun break.

Not only that, but you have to make it so that the player is subject to additional penalties when using corruptions by way of taking on more conditions when they use them. In theory it could be useful since you’d have even more conditions to eat off yourself, but is that really going to be worth all the damage lost from not having damaging fears?

“Ohh, but think about all the CPCs you can throw around everywhere!”. Woooo…

The corruption line is built around applying conditions to enemies, and then you go and remove a potent source of condition damage from necros that want to specialize in corruptions. I just don’t get it. I know that things like corrupt boon can be quite potent, but a 33% recharge on that for your damage on fear?

Then to top it all off, they have to go and make plague signet only transfer 5 conditions instead of the full set. This right after corruption skills are to be applying more self-inflicted conditions. Does anyone not see that something is just not lining up here? Am I the only one?

Oh well, I guess I can just stick with the overall more useful spectral skills… oh, and you make those conflict with another fear-related trait, excellent. Well, at least it wasn’t the damage one.

My build is completely messed up now. I had an idea of where to take it after the initial reveal, but now they screwed it over at every turn. Even the backup plans for it were also screwed.

Guess I’ll just have to make a different build as my standard build…

Captain Unusual.9163:

Consume Conditions now benefits from a 33% cooldown reduction trait. And combos amazingly well with Plague Sending.

And was honestly a tad overpowered before.

The problem is that the master of corruptions trait conflicts with terror. I was looking forward to making a terrormancer that also had the corruptions trait, but that just got blown out of the water.

It also doesn’t combo very well with plague signet. Using consume conditions will eat all your conditions but leave you with the vulnerability. Sure, you can transfer the vulnerability over, but it’s only a 4 second duration. If you hold onto it, it just makes you more vulnerable for a post-healing burst.

Not only that, but the trait will also make you take on additional conditions, which could potentially be even more harmful. For instance, if it gives you blind, you won’t even be able to use plague signet afterwards because it will just miss. We’ll have to see what the extra conditions are.

It’s not that the 33% recharge isn’t useful. It’s just that the things it’s useful for conflicts with too many other useful things. What, I’m supposed to not take terror and go for a reduced recharge on corrosive poison cloud? Give me a break.

Mimic: Updated functionality of this skill. This skill now causes the next utility slot skill you use within 10 seconds to recharge in 1 second. Increased recharge to 90 seconds.

I could see some potentially nice stuff with this. Mind you it only affects the utility skills, but you can do something like a double arcane thievery to provide massive boon/condi swapping, or double blink for an extra getaway. You could even double illusion of life someone to pick them up again after they go down from the first IoL expiring.

Obviously double mirror image and double decoy would be quite useful. So would double feedback and double veil.

I don’t think a double portal will be possible because mimic only reduces the recharge… it will depend on exactly how it interacts with 2 part skills (i.e. a skill and follow up skill).

Also not sure how it will interact with mantras. Would you just get a 1s cooldown after the mantra charges have expired, or could you set the recharge for a charge to 1s? It’s not clear.

I’m actually really excited about this now. It’s much, much better than the copy all boon things they had, and it provides some unique form of functionality that could be potentially game changing.

Of course, I’d rather they called it “Echo” instead of “Mimic” since the former is more iconic, but oh wells. Guess I won’t be able to tell how good it is until I get my hands on it (I’m not a mesmer expert by any means).

EDIT: Just thought that you could potentially chain it with the new chronomancer stuff to get mimic to recharge after popping it, and then popping it again to basically get 4 consecutive casts of a particular utility. O_o

EDIT 2: Just read the portal changes, confirmed that double portal won’t be possible, even with chronomancer stuff.

Cynz.9437:

ukuni.8745:

Cynz.9437:

ukuni.8745:

as an engineer i can say dont worry to much, if an engineer wants to give up swiftness just to counter you then just run away because hes not going to catch you anytime soon, that aside lets take another look at that trait, its a passive proc that activates when it hits an enemy in stealth, its going to be pritty easy for yas to counterplay that assuming they take it which is a pritty big if.

if i were you guys id be more worried about engineers taking runes of air with medkit so they have perma swiftness and all the on proc traits they can get so when you do backstab them you kill yourself literally.

essentially if you guys keep playing the way you do then you wont have to worry about this trait, except for occasional 1v1 hero.

the problem is not 1v1 really… you shouldn’t 1v1 engi as thief anway

the problem with that particular trait it removes team support thief would bring to team… no refuge, no 50% dmg redux for teammates :|

Itll only effect 1 person or otherwise engineers would just get around inficting aoe burning with incin powder.

Trait doesn’t state if it is single target or aoe.

It’s specifically worded as “analyze the target”, implying single target. In addition, the functionality mimics that of the analyze tool belt skill, which is single target. So even though no one explicitly answered the question of whether or not it is single target or AoE, the skill seems to imply it is single target. If it was AoE, it would likely have stated “analyze the target and nearby enemies” or something similar with the “nearby” keyword.

I’m curious as to whether or not this actually triggers an “analyze” effect, thus possibly synergizing with certain other traits… didn’t seem like it was set up that way from the description.

Ehecatl.9172:

Now granted it may be harder to land your traps, but to say it’s outright impossible before even trying with the new set up is a bit dramatic.

Careful now, I don’t think we’ve actually seen dramatic yet.

Although I will concur with the notion that everything is gonna be ok, everything is gonna be alright… at least for traps, anyhow.

Jana.6831:

Yamsandjams.3267:

Lock-on has an ICD of 20 seconds, so you can only practically reveal one target at a time, meaning it might not be so useful.

Mind you, stuck up WvW zergs commanders might actually want to slot a handful of engineers now to reveal multiple targets on a stealth push, since revealing 5-10 people would be much better than revealing some random dude that might not even be next to the zerg.

How can you reveal only one?

Because that’s how ICDs work. When they proc, they go on cooldown and they won’t function again. As soon as you reveal one target, the ability goes on cooldown, and it won’t proc again until the cooldown expires.

That’s why you can’t, for instance, have a fire sigil proc off 5 separate mobs at the same time even if you crit them all with the same ability. It will only ever occur on one because the ability is on cooldown as soon as it does.

Zagerus.8675:

I would rather keep 1 condition converted. The wording scares me at this point, but I hope it still means that it converts. Assuming it doesn’t*, well.. I guess I’d be okay with sticking with 1 condi removed. It’s still beneficial and we’ll just have to adapt.

It no longer converts, it only removes.

Furthermore, all condition removal is now randomized from the array of conditions applied to instead of being the most recently applied one. That may be good or bad depending on the scenario. The same applies to boon stripping/conversion.

However, I think they made it so that all conversions now have fixed durations of the boons or conditions that result, so it’s more consistent across the board. I’d have to check the livestream notes again, they went over it in the intro section. They might’ve took away the conversion for that reason.

Elixir B revival! Maybe? No…?

No…

Cynz.9437:

Yamsandjams.3267:

Are.1326:

Yamsandjams.3267:

And then when the reveal from lock on is about to expire, you can use utility goggles again to get a total of 12s reveal.

Mehehehe………. excuse me while I go concoct some evilness.

Make sure you evade an attack before you use analyze while traited with kinetic charge. Get another 6 sec of reveal once the first analyze runs out.

Oh yeah, I suppose it’s on the analyze skill, what a scrub dub I am, sil-

18 MOTHAFRACKING SECONDS OF REVEAL, COME HERE THIEVES, COME HERE

sry too busy spamming flanking strike~

Oh yeah, well just let me cripple, that’ll sto-

Oh wait…

GreyWraith.8394:

Yamsandjams.3267:

Technically not perma, you can have the stack stripped and then get CC’d again.

And if you swap out of flamethrower, it’ll go away pretty fast.

So more like a pseudo-perma stability, which is still quite nice. Might see more people running it just to help avoid CC’s although it does mean locking yourself into firearms.

They still might end up nerfing it yet, there will be adjustments after the patch goes in once they see how the dust settles from all this.

Yes, I realize that 2 CCs in a row will get through. But that descriptions doesn’t say anything about Flamethrower…

[edit: Yes, I know it’s a flamethrower trait on live. But… not in the new description! Oversight or crazy buff?]

That was a typo. The need for flamethrower was left out of the notes. You have to have flamethrower active to generate those boons. Stowing it will not generate them. They confirmed this vocally on the stream.

LOL now I understand the context of this thread. You must’ve thought everyone was sipping some crazy Kool-Aid over at ANet once you read that.

I do like how it has some additional condition clearing options as well, particularly certain classes of conditions so you can better target the condition that needs to be removed.

They have all gone to ground targeted abilities, which I’m a bit wary about. If I’m immobilized, will my thing still clear the immob? If you trait for packaged stimulants currently, it doesn’t let you do that (or at least it didn’t last time I checked).

There’s also still an issue with med packs being deployed beneath terrain and being uninteractable, so hopefully having to toss them around won’t exacerbate that issue.

It looks interesting though. I’m actually looking forward to trying it out for my healing build that I’ll need to retool for the changes.

Technically not perma, you can have the stack stripped and then get CC’d again.

And if you swap out of flamethrower, it’ll go away pretty fast.

So more like a pseudo-perma stability, which is still quite nice. Might see more people running it just to help avoid CC’s although it does mean locking yourself into firearms.

They still might end up nerfing it yet, there will be adjustments after the patch goes in once they see how the dust settles from all this.

We don’t know yet. We’ll have to wait until they tell us for certain.

anduriell.6280:

Yamsandjams.3267:

Rangers can get perma-swiftness from shouts.

Engineer has no more perma-swiftness.

:3

Good try trolling.
Why should i waste my 3 utility slots for swiftness when warrior and engie get the trait to make it passive?

Actually, it’s only 1 utility slot. Guard ensures perma swiftness and regen uptime once traited. This was the same thing engineers had as well, one trait, one utility slot.

Also, engineers and warriors already had passive movespeed traits, which is 25% and not 33%, nothing has changed there. Ranger has always had the signet, so they get to not waste a trait if they want to use up a utility slot and not spec into shouts… whether or not that is worth it can depend on the build.

Two conditions would be too much. I know, it’s “just one more”, but it would actually be quite a bit more powerful that way.

I don’t actually agree with the loss of boon conversion though, particularly since the tactics line has traits that are to work in conjunction with having boons in the first place.

But I think they did show that there were changes on how conditions were converted into boons, in that there would be a more standardized conversion. Perhaps they were afraid that converting to boons would end up being to strong with that going in as well.

Of course, given that the condition conversions will now be randomized, perhaps there is an argument to be made about two conditions removed per warhorn use. I still think it would be too strong though, considering the frequency with which the warhorn can be used when traited. This isn’t even considering things like dogged march, rampager’s stance, and shouts.

Khenzo.2465:

And not just that problem, it’s that future skills that aren’t kits will likely not see the light of day in meta builds, or only in niche situations you might slot out a kit for something. And it saddens me we are probably going to be using the same kits like we do now for a looooooooong time.

It’s just an inherent issue with the kits. They generally provide so much more worth than the other utilities that you always need at least one to be truly effective.

I don’t expect this to change anytime, at all. It’s just too ingrained into the engineer design. Kits are really more of a “class feature” than a “utility skill group”. It’s perhaps fair to say that they should never have been designed the way they were. It would be nice if hammer shakes that up a bit (haha, pun?), but I’d like something a bit more universal, in an ideal world.

But I don’t see having inherent access to a weapon swap mechanic to be beyond the realms of possibility. They’ve just never given any inkling towards wanting to do that, despite the glaring logical design flaws it demonstrates. I suppose they’re also not sure what the proper solution is as much as I am.

Of course, I don’t get paid to think about this stuff…

Here’s what I’ve posted in another thread in the thief forum. I use a Razer Naga, 12 button thumb pad:

Note that what I use may not be comfortable for you, I only use it because it’s comfortable for me. Also, I’ll assume you have the 12 button thumb pad, not one of the 9 or hexagon shaped ones and such.

At any rate, I generally bind all the numeric keys to the same number. That is, I bind keyboard 1 to thumb pad 1, keyboard 2 to thumb pad 2, &c. So I can press 1-5 on my naga for the respective weapon skills, 6 for the heal skill, 7-9 for utilities, and 10 for my elite skill. This also means I don’t have to rebind those keys in the options menu, which I like.

Then I bind 11 on the naga to the – key, and I set the – key in the game options to be used for weapon swapping. So I hit 11 on the thumb pad for weapon swapping.

12 on the naga is set to the = key, and I set the = key in the game options to be used for dodging. Thus I just hit 12 to dodge.

For accessing the F1-F4 skills, I simply make use of the left shift key, which is pressed by my pinky finger on my left hand. In the game options, I change the F1-F4 skills to use Shift+1 – Shift+4, meaning I can hold the shift key and use 1-4 on the naga to access those skills. This prevents me from having to assign new buttons for those.

For other keys, I have z set to look behind, x for about face, and I have shift by itself set to AoE loot (although that’s mostly just for convenience). I also have ctrl set to highlight objects, and I play with player nameplates set to always on.

I have the target nearest function set to the mouse wheel click, and the next target function set to shift+mouse wheel click (I forget if mouse wheel click is called mouse 5 in game or whatever). That’s probably the more awkward thing I do. One could easily set it to the c key or something.

I also set my stow weapon function to shift+z.

All the other keys are pretty much standard.

This setup allows me to maintain my left hand on WASD at all times, manipulating the spacebar with my thumb (obviously) and the shift and ctrl keys with my pinky. The only time I move my fingers off of WASD is to access things like the z, x, f, and r key. I also use q and e for strafing sometimes, though one can easily just use a and d with holding right click.

So that’s basically my setup. If you’re not sure what to do, you could maybe start with that and then tweak it if you feel parts of it are too awkward. In particular, you might find the use of the middle mouse wheel clicking to be annoying, or maybe you prefer the dodge button to not be as far away from your resting position for your thumb. I know some people like to have the dodge button assigned to something like the shift key, although this doesn’t work for my setup since I don’t want to dodge when I go to try and access my F1-F4 skills. Also, since you’re a thief, you’ll only have an F1 (and soon to be F2), so you might find a different method for accessing your steal to be more convenient. I chose the setup I did because I needed to have a way to access F1-F4 since I play all professions, though mainly engineer.

You’ll have to just test it out and find what works for you. I decided on these keybinds from weeks of experimentation and practice. I ultimately settled on the keybindings I described because I felt it allowed me to maintain the full range of my character’s mobility while still having complete access to all my skills, which was the whole point I got a naga in the first place (i.e. I used to move fingers off of WASD to hit skill keys).

Also keep in mind that if this is your first time using one of these mice, you’ll have to go through an adjustment period of probably a few weeks where you get accustomed to using it. When I first started using a naga, it was really awkward and kind of clunky, but it became very natural after a good few weeks of using it consistently. If you feel something isn’t working right, you can always play around with how the keys are bound.

EDITED FOR BAD COPY PASTA

I’ve commonly run a carrion/rabid mix on one of my builds, but I’m thinking about swapping to more rabid given how the decoupling of stats from traitlines will change things. There’s also the precision to condi damage trait in firearms…

Of course if you want all out damage, sinister is the route to go. I’ve generally never advised full dire because some degree of precision is generally helpful on engineer.

The way I see it, it’s like this…

I go into a restaurant to order a burger.

In taking my order, the server let’s me know that my burger comes with a side of a steaming pile of crap.

I let them know that I’d prefer to have the burger without the side of crap.

The server is a bit surprised, and assures me that the crap is included at no extra charge.

I let them know that I don’t really care about the price, I’d just prefer to have the burger without the pile of crap.

The server then gives me a puzzled look and inquires about why I would pay the same price for a meal when it doesn’t include the free side of crap.

I then try to explain that I simply want the burger, and that having the side of crap along with it, while free, would lessen my entire enjoyment of the burger.

Something like that, anyways… The point is that the pile of crap DID NOT ADD VALUE to my meal, even though it was free, so I just wanted it gone.

If I may be cynical about it (read, I’m going to be cynical about it), the devs are just convinced that kit refinement has always been a very special and underloved trait since it was nerfed through the floor, and making this change is a way for players to finally try it out and realize how super special and awesomely fun it is.

In other words, they want us to like it and this is how they are going to make us like it.

I don’t even care about the perma-swiftness removal. Take it away, go ahead.

But just like the burger and the pile of crap, don’t tack kit refinement onto speedy kits, because as far as I’m concerned it DOES NOT ADD VALUE to the trait. I’d rather that part of it just be deleted, even if it keeps the 20 ICD.

PistolWhip.2697:

Maybe the hammer will have mobility skills. That might be the go to roamer weapon, and that could redeem it. We’ll have to wait and see.

Although I agree that could be possible, it would be really crappy to push everyone towards it just for mobility purposes. Engineers are already tightly pigeonholed into kits, they don’t need to be pushed towards hammers as well.

Zorby.8236:

The way to move it was the swap the spirit of the skill bar and then back on. The spirit dies and goes on 20 s cd. Now we get 30 s instead…cool.

I’m thinking the water spirit will end up being even crappier now, even though they got rid of the double cast time thing… Unless it does some crazy stuff like clean all condis and put out a massive heal on being popped.

I couldn’t recall if one of the traits reduced spirit cooldowns… might be worth considering as a buff, I suppose.

anduriell.6280:

Quarktastic.1027:

Wuselknusel.4082:

Protect Me isn’t as useful as it seems to be. When the pet us soaking up damage for you, it is using your toughness for the damage calculation. So Protect Me is not more than a reliable way of killing your pet as zerker.

It’s useful in PvE to prevent getting OHKO’d by an otherwise unavoidable damage spike. Though, if signet of stone was a stun breaker, I’d never touch that shout again.

I should try to work runes of the traveler into my build so I don’t have to waste a slot for that stupid signet of the hunt.

Annnddd engie and warrior (and i guess the rest of the classes) getting passive traits to improve speed.
Will anet take in consideration my proposal of give passive effects for the pets, for example Signet of the Hunt to the cats, so at least i have a choice?

Rangers can get perma-swiftness from shouts.

Engineer has no more perma-swiftness.

:3

I’d only really consider written in stone for a signet-based build, and even then some people elect not to use it (I use it in my s/f condi signet build). If you’re only running the signet of restoration, stone heart will likely be the better option overall.

jknrich.1549:

For a statt a AOE Moa. Come on thats insane.
…
The Baby Sky hammer yes please.

You realize you can’t take both of those simultaneously, right? And both of those mean you can’t take the good old “I win” button.

I’m still convinced the moa thing will be a gimmick at best. It will obviously have to be much less powerful than the mesmer moa… maybe moas them for like 2-3 seconds and that’s it. The just pop their 5 skill and get away from your attacks is what will happen. I actually thought it was just a joke, I didn’t think they’d actually make toss elixir X do that. But oh well.

Not really sure how baby skyhammer will work out, seems like it will be more useful as a blast finisher than as a damager… well, aside from PvE where the mobs will just stand in it. Although it would be really sick to knock someone back with your rifle into the AoE of the baby skyhammer just before it hits.

So I’ll admit I’m not surprised but still disappointed to see no love given to kitless builds. If anything, kits will be an even more ingrained part of our gameplay now due to the presence of an extra kit (mortar) and some potentially attractive options in the redesigned med kit.

What’s the problem? The engineer has no inherent access to the weapon swap mechanic. I must slot a kit on my bar to be able to do that.

Now yes, I understand that I am just wanting to play the game “wrong”, but don’t try and tell me that it makes logical sense that engineers are the only profession in the game that has no inherent access to the weapon swap mechanic unless they equip a particular class of utility skills. It doesn’t. Both the single-weapon set counterparts, those being elementalist and revenant, both have inherent access to weapon swap via attunement and legend swapping. Ironically, elementalist actually has access to the weapon swap mechanic before anyone else in the game since they can swap between fire and water attunement right in the tutorial instance at level 1.

Why is this an issue? Well, first of all, it kills off build variety. Without the access to the weapon swap mechanic, any player that chooses to run kitless deprives themselves of a variety of powerful sigil effects, those being sigil of battle, doom, energy, geomancy, hydromancy, intelligence, and leeching. Thus I can’t, say, make an all-gadget or all-elixir build that also makes use of sigil of energy.

I’m already punishing myself by not having a kit on my bar, so just throw me a bone and let me access those very powerful sigils.

There’s also a few crappy things in the new trait system where some options are too heavily kit focused. For instance, the alchemy master tier slot has two traits that require kits to be useful, and the other option is the auto-elixir S which I may not even want on my build. So I either go with something absolutely useless, or something that could interfere with how I’m playing (i.e. auto-elixir S pops and prevents me from killing a guy at 2% health, or prevents me from removing condis so I die anyways).

How could this be implemented? I’m not 100% sure, to be honest. Perhaps at the very least, let it activate on tool belt skill use with a 10s ICD. This would be more usable in other builds, obviously (i.e. SD burst build with surprise shot), but at least that’s something.

But maybe I’m just hoping for too much. I mean, they basically had to move a mountain and a half just to get hobosacks taken care of. I just hope I live to see a day where I can access weapon swap sigils without having to run a kit.

Are.1326:

Yamsandjams.3267:

And then when the reveal from lock on is about to expire, you can use utility goggles again to get a total of 12s reveal.

Mehehehe………. excuse me while I go concoct some evilness.

Make sure you evade an attack before you use analyze while traited with kinetic charge. Get another 6 sec of reveal once the first analyze runs out.

Oh yeah, I suppose it’s on the analyze skill, what a scrub dub I am, sil-

18 MOTHAFRACKING SECONDS OF REVEAL, COME HERE THIEVES, COME HERE

I think it’s ok.

The cooldown on soothing mist is due to the presence of frost aura. I think they had it setup as something else before (I’d have to check the notes). 40% uptime on frost aura would be beyond insane, 20% uptime is already quite good as it is.

Well, I don’t think this will quite kill signet builds off, but it is most definitely a big loss for them.

Maybe make an addition to the signet trait that makes it so that you get a different kind of aura based on attunement when using a signet? Then you could get fire aura, but also things like frost aura, shocking aura, or magnetic shield (the reflect bubble).

But maybe it’s best to advocate for the previous functionality to be returned before thinking of potential changes.

GreyWraith.8394:

Given that the range of Soothing Mist will now be 300, the new GM trait (Soothing Power) isn’t worth a GM spot.

I suggest a range increase be added to the GM trait.

Although there was conflicting information on a different slide that said 600 range instead of 300 range.

We will need additional confirmation to know which is the correct one.

Jana.6831:

Oh my, anet: You guys basically forced thieves to be stealthed for all the good stuff (might stacking, condi removal, regen and burst) and you give 2 classes (who can stealth themselves) the ability to destroy all of that – GG, anet, GG. And I also wonder how pushing into a zerg with mass invisibility will turn out.

Lock-on has an ICD of 20 seconds, so you can only practically reveal one target at a time, meaning it might not be so useful.

Mind you, stuck up WvW zergs commanders might actually want to slot a handful of engineers now to reveal multiple targets on a stealth push, since revealing 5-10 people would be much better than revealing some random dude that might not even be next to the zerg.