Utility Skill Swap Thoughts

[Delofasht.4231]

There are quite a few odd utility choices given to players, some skills are quite strong, particularly several of the heals when compared to what is usually available to my main profession. Would love to see more choice in the utility skills, but I understand there are probably a huge number of interactions that could fully break the game.

What does everyone else think of the utilities, did you find there were any far more useful on another profession than on the profession it came from?

[Dediggefedde.4961]

Some are indeed pretty strong.Warrior's endure pain and ranger's zephyr did surprise me.Engineer's AED and Elixir-S is interesting, but probably not very useful for most classes.

But in the end, you get only untraited skills, putting your traited ones on CD. So, most will not see much use.

[Delofasht.4231]

Traited versus untrained skills are definitely a thing. Of course, you could opt for a different trait than one modifying a utility... I picked up interrupt traits and used thief Scorpion Wire to add a +2 on a relatively short CD to the long list of Mirage interrupts for fun. Also helped with keeping enemies in a Chaos Storm. Many of the utilities of other professions are quite strong for Mesmer, as many of the utilities of Mesmer are very niche or independently very weak.

[zencow.3651]

What others consider trash, is considered treasure for eles.

<3 Feel My Wrath especially

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

I love it, wish this was a permanent change. It adds so much variety and fun. At first I was a little sad, as they have not added any achievements for "catching em all", but the skills themselves are just worth it.

Thief: Killing a thief felt nerver so rewarding. With two instant charges of Scorpion Wire you can pinball your opponents from long distances, no matter what they do. The heal-skill is a 3rd dodge. The Venom can be used to boost zerg damage - not my problem if thieves in general not use it. Thieves Guild is just awesome for soloing camps or other tough NPCs, sometimes it is even useful against real players. Smoke Screen = life saver.

Ranger: So far the weakest I have found. Not a huge surprise to be honest. Troll Unguent is meh for a healing-skill. Lightning Reflexes is nice against players, Spike Trap would be nice if I was on condi. Quickening Zephyr is nice quickness supply. But "Strength of the Pact!" is definitely the most fun, activating yolo-mode.

Elementalist: Ether Renewal is a bit weak imho, never use it on my own chars. Lightning Flash is really nice for a class that has 0 access to teleports in general. Cleansing fire is just awesome, more reliable condition cleanse. Arcane Shield is a bit weird, but still useful. Tornado is just ridiculous.

Necromancer: Probably the most ideal pick of skills, not too strong, not too useless. Consume Conditions is cool, but I happen to meet almost 0 players with condition builds at the moment :S. Well of Power just feels awesome. Fighting lords, supplying pulsing stability for my allies. Corrupt boon is a bit weird, but turns out to be devastating on boon-machines. But the most awesome feature is the Flesh Golem. It behaves 100 % real, respawns when dismounting. I like it, even it if is ugly.

Mesmer: Mirror is nice for ranged enemies, bit weak heal though. Mantra of Concentration boosts my own survivability, Feedback is great to protect other players/siege. Arcane Thievery is weird, never used that skill ever. Mass Invisibility is nice, finally being able to stealth 10 people at once.

Guardian: My first victim in WvW today. Shelter improves survivabilty a lot. Sanctuary feels quite underwhelming, as it always does. If the skill was instant-cast, it could be ok. But with that casting time and that cooldown, nope. Not on any class. Judge's Intervention helps a lot chasing runners. Purging Flames is more a thing of fights in static locations like Lord rooms, still useful. Feel My Wrath just feels awesome.

Revenant: You do not get a power-meter, which is really nice. But you get access to Jailis. Vengeful Hammers gets a fixed duration of 7s, fun!

Warrior: This was the most shocking experience so far, mostly because I play a power-build. No skill is a loss, just none at all. Mending alone is already worth the switch, powerful heal + condition cleanse at very low cooldown. No difficult execution mechanisms, just push the button and go on. Bull Charge looks incredibble. If you are used to rocket-charge, this leap feels like it goes for ever XD. The opponent gets even stunned, so it is unable to get away further. For Great Justice, two charges, nice buffs but compared to Necromancer you do not hurt yourself. Endure Pain is just as ridiculous as I have expected it to be. You can activate it and become invulnerable while still being able to use all your skills. Trolling warriors with that skill is fun. Battle Standard is OK. Imho the best elite of the collection.

Again I really enjoy the event. First time in months I had trouble to quit a session. It is an awesome feature in my opinion. Maybe we can add it to the EoTM as a permanent feature?

[Shroud.2307]

I think this event was handled much better than many of the previous ones. It's nice that it isn't intrusive in that you have a choice on whether or not you want to use the skills and that you can't just have those skills indefinitely. If you're killed, you'll have to get them again if you liked what you had.

I'm sure there are some crazy OP combinations but just like all the events of the past, it's only temporary anyway. Personally I don't find this event as exciting as some of the others we've had, but I do very much enjoy that it's something different without seriously impacting game play.

I've yet to experience much of what the event has to offer since I haven't played much since it began, but I did enjoy Withdraw, Blinding Power, Quickening Zephyr and Lightning Flash on Necromancer. Those were some fun things to have.

[godofcows.2451]

balance exploits soon inc.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

@HnRkLnXqZ.1870 said:snips

thanks for the list, I was wondering what skills anet threw in.

[Delofasht.4231]

Have to echo the sentiments regarding Warrior utilities, absolutely feels amazing having access to strong reliable utilities. They are surely iconic and useful, regardless of build; even being cherry picked, the other utilities available to warriors are quite decent.

They chose odd utilities from Mesmer to share, ranged reflection is not specifically a Mesmer skill, many other professions have easier and more readily available access to it. The elite is the only functional choice as the Moa and Time Warp have entirely too long of cooldowns and are not particularly well suited for PvP encounters (just run out of range until it goes away). Mantra of Concentration is difficult to really make use of in a lot of fights, unless running some specific weapons that can create an opening to be able to cast it (Mesmers’ themselves lack much in the way of CC on weapon skills though). Arcane Thievery is quite good, but the cooldown is just a touch on the long side in my opinion (fine when traited as a Mesmer... but gives up other active defenses instead).

Generally speaking the assessment of many of the utilities is spot on. I am disappointed that I can’t choose to swap only one or two utilities though. I would love to grab the Warrior heal and Bull Charge, but keep my other profession’s utilities (Signet and Arcane Thievery). Overall few of the utilities are necessarily broken, but the inherent value of them varies quite a bit from profession to profession, I do not see many players seeking out to beat a Ranger, Mesmer, or Elementalist to hold their abilities. Revs, Warriors, and Thieves though are probably going to be the utilities most sought by other professions I would think.

[Vova.2640]

I wanna see this event with the skills not sharing cooldowns.

Many of the utility skills are kinda useless and only a select few on each class are good, but i would love to see how it would be if pressing the action key would swap skills and remove all cooldowns that were previously there.

[Jski.6180]

It seems fun not balanced for sure. I must say the new UI for the core swap is nice maybe this could be used for passive skill triggers giving players more control over there passive utility.

I am just buged that every thing ele has on its core is def it gives the feeling that anet only things of ele class as an all in def only class and not a mages class.

[Klypto.1703]

@godofcows.2451 said:balance exploits soon inc.

Yep I've already seen ppl use these to get into enemy spawns. As well as spawn camping the home bl spawn in red bl as well. The funny thing though is that if you setup your character to be a condi renegade and you get the thief swap it actually makes the spec work. Shows you how terrible elite specs are especially for the kalla legend when given core thief abilities it makes it better than an elite spec. Not to mention excluding the withdrawl heal most of those core skills are not skills people normally would use on a thief even before they killed roaming. So this will be known as the renegade re-work week event.

[Dawdler.8521]

@Vova.2640 said:I wanna see this event with the skills not sharing cooldowns.Yeah it kind of makes it useless to me. I thought that you could at least pick and choose the 5 taken skills (ie mix) but nope. Suppose it would have been OP to see 20 man meta guilds all running mass invis as elite lol. I usually run low cd sustain builds and all orb skills pretty much have higher cd than what I have. Pop a skill with 40s+ cd, flip back to my normal set and oh look my toolkit is on 40s cd.

Thanks but no thanks.

[Liston.9708]

Event is fun - working as intended. Voice comms were hilarious as people got ele, rev, thief and then lost by running over a ranger orb. I do like the fact that you need to activate the secondary and can just as easily deactivate it. Does make me wonder if it is a trial balloon for some sort of dual class like gw1 had.

[Jski.6180]

Wish it was pement and you could chose what class you wanted. Also made me realize just how week ele utility skills are.

[Kovu.7560]

On my soulbeast I'm getting a good amount of utility out of the elementalist's cantrips. The burning, raw damage, ohfuc-teleport, AoE damage elite and (especially) the various condition cleanses synergize well with my build's defenses versus power damage and traited damage multipliers. On the flip side I picked up the ranger skills to see how they'd compare to the utilities I use, and they're all kinda trash. (Traps? Really?)

Haven't killed a warrior or engineer yet, so I'm not sure how well those skills would work for me.

~ Kovu

[Za Shaloc.3908]

I barely got to play it before I died, but it was fun running the stab mantra from Mesmer on Druid, especially because CA gives you back access to your Ranger skills. Full support Druid gogogo!

[Jski.6180]

@Kovu.7560 said:On my soulbeast I'm getting a good amount of utility out of the elementalist's cantrips. The burning, raw damage, ohfuc-teleport, AoE damage elite and (especially) the various condition cleanses synergize well with my build's defenses versus power damage and traited damage multipliers. On the flip side I picked up the ranger skills to see how they'd compare to the utilities I use, and they're all kinda trash. (Traps? Really?)

Haven't killed a warrior or engineer yet, so I'm not sure how well those skills would work for me.

~ Kovu

JI and bull rush are way better then Lighting flash. Nado is nice for melee only classes but only just. I am just shock they did not have arcain blast or arcain wave in there as these are more ele like skills then just well carbon copy of war skills.

[Kovu.7560]

@Jski.6180 said:

@Kovu.7560 said:On my soulbeast I'm getting a good amount of utility out of the elementalist's cantrips. The burning, raw damage, ohfuc-teleport, AoE damage elite and (especially) the various condition cleanses synergize well with my build's defenses versus power damage and traited damage multipliers. On the flip side I picked up the ranger skills to see how they'd compare to the utilities I use, and they're all kinda trash. (Traps? Really?)

Haven't killed a warrior or engineer yet, so I'm not sure how well those skills would work for me.

~ Kovu

JI and bull rush are way better then Lighting flash. Nado is nice for melee only classes but only just. I am just shock they did not have arcain blast or arcain wave in there as these are more ele like skills then just well carbon copy of war skills.

To be fair I was using them to their full potency on a melee zergbusting spec. I'd never take those cantrips over my usual utilities for pew pew roaming. I haven't killed a warrior yet and tested out their skills but I'm enjoying how lightning flash is non-targeted (unlike JI). Rangers don't get non targeted teleports, non-Soulbeasts don't get teleports at all and ranger mobility is tied to their weapons and/or profession mechanics, not their utilities. Admittedly I feel LF should probably break stun or have 1,200 range for the cooldown it has (to compare to either blink or shadowstep), but I don't know the ins and outs of elementalist so I don't know if that'd be too powerful.

Oh, I also haven't killed a rev yet and tested their skills. Still, I'm having fun with this. =)

~ Kovu

[Baldrick.8967]

Seems some make engi's permanently invuln- let me know when you run into one of those. Beyond broken.

Picking up engi on my ranger was kinda OK, a little bit of fun for a bit but not really- rocket boots made it kinda fun...but I missed my utilities too much (and so did my squad mates). Having to run over the orb to collect is annoying,m should be offered the choice when you kill a class.

[Ultramex.1506]

I wish we could use defeated player's utility set-up but perhaps it is impossible to do so.

[kash.9213]

Guardian spirit on daredevil with Bound and shortbow is an awesome squad build.

[Assassin X.8573]

If anything this shows that anet could have implemented cross classing like gw1 from the beginning.

[Delofasht.4231]

My hope is that they actually learned which professions are significantly lacking in decent utilities, maybe learn which could receive tweaks. Basic boring teleports are less strong than they are given credit for in an environment where everyone can have a ranged weapon to hit their enemy from afar. Overly niche utilities are weak as well, and difficult to use effectively makes for a weaker utility; the strongest are direct, strong, and low-medium CD.

Cross profession worked in the first game to fill weaknesses, but honestly none of the professions have extreme weaknesses that are fixed by another professions utilities, but they do often gain some strengths they may lack (like a strong CC and mobility skill, or a good boon generation skill). Not exactly weaknesses, as other options to achieve them exist, but not in an easy one button press skill.

[Curunen.8729]

I only played a little but find the event extremely underwhelming given:

• fixed set of mostly less useful and untraited skills
• single use of special action key - inability to swap back and forth with own utilities

The second point means either you have to use ALL the utilities stolen or just your own. Maybe a single time combo with something but once you swap back it's gone and usually cooldowns prohibitive compared with own traited cooldowns...

I think it's an interesting test for something like dual classing, but in the current form is a pretty useless gimmick, that I ended up ignoring after messing around for a bit.