ZephyrusSpring.5728

I'm not trying to miss the point. Sorry. I understand that the design space is cramped by trying to accommodate more playstyles and builds. I was trying to make the counterpoint that hooking into synergy between traits can greatly expand the design space beyond what the devs may originally intend. "Do X when Y" on core traits is a great way to add new functionality to skills and that Virtuoso utility is the perfect example. It doesn't work so well when you try to do it the other way around with elite spec tools, e.g. Specter's sceptre completely undercutting the core thief tools. I was definitely hinting that Sharpening Sorrow could be converted into a meta boon trait, but I hadn't given any thought beyond that. There's a lot you can do with an open trait slot and I don't think you've fully appreciated the possibilities. After some consideration I think the meta-boon trait will likely need some kind of negative aspect to it to drag the boondps build down. It could just be something numeric like reduced damage and condition duration from phantasms and shatters or something. You can build the negative trade-off into the trait itself which is exactly what they did with Bladesworn. If the trade-off would have to be too extreme they could also swap Phantasmal Blades into the minor slot and put Deadly Blades in its place. That would have an impact on builds using Duelist's Reversal but I'm sure Anet could come up with something for that. The problem with Bladesworn is they've put themselves into a prison of their own making. They have designated the adept traits to be about flow, the masters to be about ammo, and the grandmasters to be about dragon slashing. It doesn't have to be that way and it would probably be a whole lot easier to balance the class if it wasn't. When you look at the Tempest line you'll see a trait granting some benefit when overloading in every column. Another example is the Catalyst line requiring you to take 2 traits for boon support. There are plenty of things they could have done to put alacrity on Bladesworn but they chose to kill that playstyle to maintain the sectioning of the trait line. They could have crushed Immortal Dragon instead too which would've been a lot less controversial. I think it's fairly safe to assume that they wanted alacrity on Bladesworn to tick a box but didn't want to put even as much thought into it as we have here. When you look at the healing power scaling of Unshakable Mountain you'll notice that this skill has been explicitly designed to be used without much healing power. I have to question if it's balanced and fair that you can get a lot of healing without investing the stats into it. It is exactly the same topic seen repeatedly in mobas about bruisers. Is it fair for skills to be balanced with high base output and low scaling? Especially in a game like GW2 where we have the freedom to invest into stats as we please. Historically these types of skills are abused to the maximum effect and become the linchpin of entire builds. I would expect people attempting to use this trait to at least invest into traits like Stalwart Focus or Vigorous Shouts if they're not going to put healing power on their gear. Look no further than this old Bladesworn bunker build to see how the majority of their defensive strategy revolves around the trait. Personally I don't think that's balanced and Anet were right to nuke this build. They didn't nuke it in the right way though, they should have made Unshakable Mountain require more healing power. I like your ideas for Spellbreaker, and I think you could also do something with Slow Counter along the lines of some condition cleanse as an additional tool that doesn't necessarily make FC a part of the rotation. They have a lot of freedom with Spellbreaker because they haven't really used the entire design space of a pure dps class to its full extent. It is very easy to change this, that and the other when no one will miss their absence. It is worth pointing out once again that warrior already has a tonne of support utilities so Spellbreaker's meditations would have to be something special (or mandatory) to get a spot on the utility bar. I appreciate your input in this thread even it if the tone doesn't always translate through text. It's important for ideas to get run through the gauntlet before action is taken and this is exactly the kind of discussion I was looking for with this thread.

I started playing shortly before PoF so forgive me if I didn't understand things properly back then, but I thought barrier was introduced with PoF as part of Scourge's identity. Even if it didn't originally fit the mold of the established healing meta I always thought it could fill that role given how barrier works. It was a new form of healing and has taken a long time to naturalise across the game. Can you go into more detail with this? The devs have put in a lot of work to shift the game away from the original paradigm of "no healers" and the concentration stat has been at the core of that. Naturally the boondps builds that don't need concentration for their meta-boon are going to struggle with providing every other boon, on top of actually lacking access to those boons through traits and utilities. I'm glad I was able to reasonably accurately assess the state of Specter! It's not a class I have much experience with at all but I noticed they weren't shadowstepping as much as I expected they would and followed the breadcrumbs from there. I have also read that Deadeye's version of the sceptre stealth attack does not heal allies in an area like the basic stealth attack does. Deadeye as a healer has definitely not been on the devs' to do list thus far. Thank you for linking the post of prominent Specter player. The google document buried in that post is an excellent writeup of Specter and a great source to refer to.

The part in bold is what I was referring to when I said it was a weak healer. The anti-synergy is immense but it could easily be rectified by changing Mirage Mantle to allow weapons other than the staff to provide alacrity. Honestly the whole mirage line has needed a rework for a long time and I hope heal mirage can catch the wave when the devs make a big enough splash in their attempt to bring spear mirage into existence.

I see where you're going but wouldn't that mean using a condition cleansing skill would cause you to take the full damage anyway? I'm not necessarily against that but could you provide an explanation for why moving to that design would be good or better?

I want to preface this with the notion that themed lines within trait lines only really became common with the EoD specs. The specs from previous expansions are much more jumbled, and trait lines which have received a lot of attention have been shifted towards that EoD design e.g. Berserker. Personally I think trying to force the trait lines to house inner lines is more restrictive than anything else, and it's only purpose seems to have been to give players something functional as they gather hero points to unlock everything. This design is inherently flawed as it can occasionally lead to noob traps. Virtuoso is a good example of this actually. The bottom inner line is meant to boost condition builds and yet you can squeeze more damage out of the build by taking Phantasmal Blade instead of Sharpening Sorrow. Sharpening Sorrow is a dead-end trait which induces design constraints on buildcrafting and leads to a less optimal build. This trait is occupying prime real-estate 😉. What happened with Bladesworn wasn't necessarily the fault of forcing alacrity into the line. They didn't have to make such drastic changes to the trait. They could have just tacked on "Grant alacrity to nearby allies when you use Dragon Slash." but they chose to redesign the trait and kill the playstyle. The Old Daring Dragon already did 3 different things, it wouldn't have been a big deal if it did 4 things instead. Whatever trait grants access to a meta boon does need to compete with other damage traits though. We have clearly seen the effects of needing to bring concentration in some boondps builds and not others, and I believe the devs are moving away from needing concentration. There's no denying that this squeezes the overall design space of builds. It doesn't necessarily need to be on the grandmaster trait, but something somehow needs to make room or double up with a meta boon. Knowing where to make that incision requires fairly in-depth knowledge of the spec and I'm sure a lot of people aren't confident that Anet can get it right everywhere, myself included. Indeed there often needs to be tools crafted to support healing builds and the devs are only going to make so many utility and weapon skills, so they have to take up spots somewhere. If Engineer had strong elite toolbelt skills I'm sure players wouldn't have been overly happy with Scrapper taking over their f5 skill for example. We see that tradeoff on full display with Mechanist. Some of the utility skills help with damage and others with support, and the skeleton of the spec forces an even greater trade with the loss of the toolbelt entirely. However, support capacity doesn't necessarily need to come in the form of a blatant +healing or +boons. Using Virtuoso as an example again, Blade Renewal has some very interesting synergy with traits in the inspiration line and the devs designed that skill from a pure dps mindset! It is the combination of skills, traits and spec mechanics that makes for a good support, and skills can be designed to be multi purpose by synergising with multiple traits simultaneously. Unshakable Mountain stood out to me as a clear way to make the gunsaber provide healing to allies. If that trait gave barrier to allies it could make for a very potent barrier provider while you wait to weapon swap back to staff and resolve a critical anti-synergy. It would also synergise strongly with the use of shouts. River's Flow could also be changed somehow to tie additional healing to flow generation e.g. generating flow beyond the maximum overflows into pulses of aoe regen (though that would cause another less critical anti-synergy). Other specs can provide examples of how the flesh can overcome the skeleton, and I believe key changes to these two traits would be all that Bladesworn needs. Warrior already has more than enough options on support utilities as it is. With all that said, it has occurred to me that Bladesworn synergises more strongly with quickness rather than alacrity given how slow the gunsaber is without it, and that generating the boon forces you onto the gunsaber. I do not think that moving alacrity to Spellbreaker would be any less work or synergise any better. Full Counter does not make for a reliable support tool and that's really all Spellbreaker has going for it mechanically. The theme of "boon control" or "anti-mage" manifest purely in the flesh of the spec so any utilities will have to compete with the existing core warrior tools. If core classes could give meta boons, what value would there be in choosing Spellbreaker to expand upon it?

The devs can try as they might but the players will always optimise away. We have already squished those roles into 1 healer and 3.5 dps as best as possible. By the nature of a support it makes complete sense to have them provide one of the "awkward" boons along with all the other boons they're in charge of. Sure you could run around with a Soulbeast healer in zealots gear with 2 boondps, but that puts a lot more pressure on those boondps to provide more than just a meta boon. A party composition like that is a much bigger shift from the established meta than you may think. I don't hate it, mind you. I've always been a proponent for removing concentration, and changing the party composition wouldn't be as big of a deal if the boon duration of everything wasn't balanced around concentration. But we're all stuck in the constraints of reality, and reality dictates that meta healers have to be able to provide a meta boon if they want a spot in a meta party. Vindicator and Soulbeast in particular already have the appropriate skeleton and flesh built out for them. These are the two I am pushing for the most. I think it's a real shame that a lot of the work the devs have already done is going to waste when it would only take a small modicum of additional work to unlock its potential. Soulbeast already has a trait that grants personal quickness when using a merged beast skill, so all that spec needs is a few traits jumbled around. The damage traits of the spec are on the minor passives so that should be a fairly obvious and easy thing to rectify. Vindicator I'm less experienced with, but I do believe the playstyle they've designed for Herald would be more appropriate on Vindicator. Weaver I don't care as much about. I don't know how much elementalist work the devs can handle in one sitting, and I would rather they spend their immediate energy on catalyst. With that said, I have identified Weaver as being potentially the most reactive elementalist healer if it were given the chance. Like the other two specs I do not think Weaver needs much work; access to a meta boon should be enough on its own. If you look carefully at the trait line you may notice it already has a similar amount of team support as Tempest's line. I was careful with my words there. I asked for these classes to be reviewed, not anything else. I think warrior and thief already have very strong support tools but something is not clicking properly. Perhaps people with more experience with these classes could offer better insight. Necromancer is the only class in the game that has actually bad support potential in its core kit. The devs would need to be careful in how they shift capacity from scourge into core, or they could try hamfisting it into harbinger directly.

In this thread I want to talk about how the meta-boons, quickness and alacrity, have been designated to certain elite specialisations and not others. I will discuss my reasoning for why certain specs should have which boon, and we'll go into some of the theory behind what makes a good support. This is an extremely long post so I would appreciate a degree of professionalism in your responses. I'll start with a quick ramble about the pure dps specs. Pure DPS What exactly is the purpose of a pure dps specialisation? They're not allowed to do more damage than the specs which can provide these meta boons (quickness and alacrity), so why do the pure dps specs not also have access to these boons? Many players don't care that one spec per class doesn't have access and the existence of "pure dps" specs is not a large concern to them, but they do care about the meta boons being assigned to the "wrong" spec. A common topic is that one spec should have been given a meta boon instead of another which demonstrates that most people accept the paradigm of pure dps specs. Still, I would like to get a proper answer for why this paradigm exists, or why it is so rigid. Would the world end if one class had a spec give alacrity and two give quickness without any being pure dps? Meta Boon Assignments The meta boon assignments are currently as follows: Warrior: Quickness: Berserker | Alacrity: Bladesworn Guardian: Quickness: Firebrand | Alacrity: Willbender Revenant: Quickness: Herald | Alacrity: Renegade Ranger: Quickness: Untamed | Alacrity: Druid Engineer: Quickness: Scrapper | Alacrity: Mechanist Thief: Quickness: Deadeye | Alacrity: Specter Elementalist: Quickness: Catalyst | Alacrity: Tempest Mesmer: Quickness: Chronomancer | Alacrity: Mirage/Chronomancer Necromancer: Quickness: Harbinger | Alacrity: Scourge There are many opinions that such and such spec should have this or that boon, so I'll look into the "support capacity" of each spec because I believe that is the most important metric when discussing the sharing of boons. Trying to force a meta boon onto a class that struggles to share other boons or healing does not lead to a good outcome, and I'll demonstrate as much as we get to the particular specs I have in mind. Support Capacity It is my opinion that the support capacity of a spec largely revolves around how reactive you can afford to be. If your ability to generate boons and healing requires you to constantly attack or move then you'll struggle to cover certain situations where there's nothing available to hit. Likewise if the spec requires you to go into a mode or swap between modes then you'll run into situations where your hands are tied juggling your spec mechanics. This capacity can be broken up into two categories which I will refer to as the skeleton and the flesh. The skeleton refers to the structure of the elite specs, e.g. mode swapping, whilst the flesh refers to things that can be more easily changed such as utility skills and traits. I'm not an expert on every class so if you think I've missed something vital please let me know. Warrior Meta Boons & Support Capacity The overwhelming opinion on warriors is that Spellbreaker should have alacrity instead of Bladesworn. The common reasoning for this is that Bladesworn is not a good healer. Some people argue about thematics but I actually don't care about that. The follow up question to this is how could you give Spellbreaker alacrity? Bladesworn performs fine as a boondps though it is still beholden to all the problems Bladesworns face in general and as such it is not overly popular, but not non-existent. In a dedicated healer role Bladesworn is almost unplayable. Providing alacrity through dragon slashing strongly conflicts with the way warriors provide healing because the gunsaber is absolutely antithetical to healing. You have to spend time in your dragon trigger mode to provide alacrity which then puts you into your gunsaber mode which can't heal. I have never personally seen anyone play Bladeworn healer in any group I've been in. The skeleton of this spec is not conducive to healing but it can be resolved by changing the flesh. Spellbreaker is much closer to core warrior and as such it is a lot more free and open to building towards support. The spec has the capacity to run both the staff and the warhorn which is a step above Bladesworn. The utility bar is also a lot more open to running core warrior's support utilities. Spellbreaker itself lacks a lot of supporting capacity, so I'd imagine a Spellbreaker support would really just be core warrior support plus a meta boon. The skeleton of spellbreaker does not particularly help or hinder its ability to heal. Berserker plays very similarly to Druid when you look at it from a support perspective. You want to be in the mode to give the most boons and heals but you'll have to come out of that mode every now and again. Berserker's mode doesn't completely take over your weapon bar like Druid's does so it's not as impactful, but it is still just as necessary in order to grant the meta boon. Though it is similar to druid, I still have never seen one in any group I've been in. Like Spellbreaker, there is nothing immediately wrong with Berserker's skeleton and the main problem lies with the lack of flesh. Warrior in general lacks support capacity and none of the specs do anything to shore that up. Sure you could put alacrity on Spellbreaker to have the core warrior healer experience, but Anet could just as easily change a few things to make Bladesworn a better healer. I'm not inclined to lean one way or the other, in fact I wouldn't even be against Berserker losing it's access to quickness. None of the warrior specs lean into the healer role and it's really about how much they impact the healing capacity of core warrior. Guardian Meta Boons & Support Capacity There's not as much to talk about with this one. Firebrand was designed from the ground up to function as a healer and so it is a no-brainer that is has one of the meta boons. What is worth discussing is Dragonhunter vs Willbender. Willbender is a very awkward spec to play as both boondps and healer due to the way they provide alacrity. The trait selections are very forced, and the playstyle is uncomfortable for many people. The spec does not synergize well with the core guardian healing tools because the spec relies so heavily on getting lots of hits in a short window. The best way to play this class as a healer is to use the hammer and rely on the hits from the symbol to activate your virtues, though perhaps the new spear has filled the void that the other core guardian weapons could not. The skeleton of this spec forces you to constantly juggle modes, while the flesh requires you to hit a target and have room to move. I would argue this is the least reactive spec in the game, and is an example of how even a spec like this can function as a support when given the chance. Dragonhunter is very much a core+ spec and so naturally it can mesh with the core healing tools available to guardian. The spec's skeleton also has a small alignment with healing, and the traitline has a lot of junk traits that could be replaced with ones designed to heal or grant boons. In terms of reactivity it performs on a similar level as core guardian, though it's potential reliance on the justice tether is a mark against it. Overall, I believe Dragonhunter would make for a better alacrity provider than Willbender. Revenant Meta Boons & Support Capacity Revenant has had a lot of changes over the years, and they have not faired well. There was a good thread recently in the Revenant forum: The baffling design of Revenants lately which discussed this in more detail. Herald was designed as one of the major healing focused specialisations with Heart of Thorns and so it is a no-brainer that it should have a meta boon. However, I will make the case that Herald should have alacrity instead of quickness. When Herald was first given quickness it was on the Draconic Echo trait which made your facet passives linger on you after being consumed. This effect strongly synergises with alacrity more so than quickness to increase your overall uptime of the facet passives and being able to consume them again sooner to reapply alacrity. Of course, the meta boon is no longer tied to that trait and is now based on consuming upkeep energy to pulse quickness. This change has made Herald far less reactive because you have to constantly swap legends to regain energy to power your upkeep skills. Honestly this playstyle fits Vindicator much better than Herald. What I would like to see for Herald is a synthesis of the current implementation. Herald should have a trait which causes their upkeep skills to linger on them after deactivation, granting 0.25s of alacrity per second per pip of upkeep that skill consumes or was consuming. This is very similar to the current way Herald works but with the added bonus that you could upkeep less than 6 pips per second and still provide alacrity, as well as turn off your upkeep to regenerate energy without being forced to swap legends. It would open up new avenues to play support Herald for those who feel like Herald has become something different than what they used to enjoy. Renegade has never had particularly strong healing beyond what core Revenant provides. It can provide the team with a lot of lifesteal healing but that is locked behind two layers of team members needing to be in range and hitting a target with fast hitting skills; actually maybe that counts as three layers. (Mind you, those are flesh problems). Suffice to say Renegade is extremely energy hungry, and it's been no surprise to see the player numbers slowly decline over time. Renegade is definitely a strong candidate to be the class's pure dps spec, and I've always been confused as to why they seemingly have 2 utility bars at the same time. Vindicator is a strong WvW healer and the only reason it doesn't see play in PvE is because it lacks access to a meta boon. This is one of two specs that desperately needs a review from the developers on this topic. I recommend focusing the boon application around stance swapping because that is something Vindicator loves doing. Whether to leave alacrity on Renegade is not something everyone will agree on. While Renegade does have some capacity for supporting, it has always felt like it was holding Renegade back as a dps class more than anything. Ranger Meta Boons & Support Capacity Ranger has a lot of support capacity in its core toolbox with some of it not even seeing much use because you can only put so many things on your bar. It would take something on the level of Bladesworn's anti-synergy for any ranger spec to be a bad support. Druid was made as a healer first and foremost so it should obviously have a meta boon. Utilising glyphs gives it strong synergy with alacrity to reuse glyphs in different modes sooner. There's not much to say really. Druid actually struggles on the other end of the spectrum: it doesn't make for a particularly good dps class. There is definitely a pain point here for boondps druid but that's beyond the scope of this thread. Soulbeast is the second class that desperately needs a review from the developers when it comes to meta boons. Soulbeast has strong support capabilities which uniquely extend from core ranger in a way that no other class's specialisations have. In WvW the idea of support Soulbeast or "immob" Soulbeast has been tossed back and forth a lot, but it is definitely lacking in the cleanse department in my opinion. Soulbeast is a very strong candidate to provide quickness. Untamed heavily relies on the support capacity of core ranger for its healing. This spec is very focused around you and your pet, and not anyone else. Providing an additional skill of healing through ambushes is the extent of Untamed's alignment with supporting. I personally am not a fan of the way Untamed unlocks access to ambushes and so I recognize my bias here in recommending quickness be removed from this spec in favour of Soulbeast. Perhaps a more neutral stance would be to recommend giving quickness to Soulbeast in addition to Untamed. Engineer Meta Boons & Support Capacity Engineer is another class with extremely powerful core support capacity, and the elite specs actually add on top of that as well to create very powerful healing options. Scrapper is a very reactive spec which is essentially core+ but with utilities that provide even more support options. Scrapper is a great candidate for a meta boon, but it does not have any particular synergy with either quickness or alacrity. It has quickness and there's no reason to change that. Holosmith has a glimmer of support beyond core engineer but is definitely the weakest and least reactive healer of the three. The holoforge mode adds nothing to its capacity to support and it's likely that the meta boon would be tied to it somehow which is an overall negative. I'm not against giving this class a meta boon but it would need more flesh, particularly in the holoforge. It would basically be in the same position as bladesworn. Mechanist is somewhat unwieldly because a lot of its bonus support beyond core engineer comes from where the mech is standing. This bonus support from the mech does come at a cost of the toolbelt skills which removes access to some of engineer's very potent supporting capacity in their elixir skills. It's a strange position to be in but the tradeoff is reasonable and so the spec remains a popular healer. Tying the meta boon to barrier application somewhat hampers the boondps version though. Thief Meta Boons & Support Capacity Core thief has weak support and as such any healing build relies heavily on the specialisation. Stealth has the critical side effect of turning off your auto attack chain so even if thieves were good healers I'd imagine they wouldn't be welcome in many groups until that is addressed. Thief also naturally lacks synergy with alacrity. This is not a class I'm overly familiar with so bear with me. Daredevil is a very selfish spec which used to be capable of playing boon support with the old detonate plasma skill. It's possible that a water field relic could improve daredevil's support capacity but this spec otherwise relies heavily on core thief. Being the closest to core thief can easily skew perception towards giving it a meta boon so be aware of any unconscious bias there. Deadeye has a lot of boon support baked into the spec but not a lot of healing. Not even the scepter's stealth attack provides healing so it has even less ground to stand on than Untamed. Deadeye has half of what it needs to be a good support but is completely lacking in the other half. This is the root of the suggestions I've seen to move quickness to Daredevil. Deadeye just can't heal, and that is reflected in the number of deadeye healers I have seen or even heard of. There's nothing wrong with this spec's skeleton though, it's purely a flesh problem. Spectre appears like it was created by one person and then was handed over to someone else later. Spectre has a lot of tie-ins to power up and trigger the support of core thief but the popular builds don't lean into it. This class will need a review if thieves ever get another healer weapon. With that said, it was designed from the beginning as a healer and so putting a meta boon on it makes sense. Being forced to go into shroud mode to grant alacrity interrupts the use of their core tools though. Thief healing needs buffs in general but the meta boons do appear to be in the right places at least. Elementalist Meta Boons & Support Capacity Elementalist is unique because it always has access to the water element which is where the bulk of its healing capacity comes from. However various boons come from other elements so every build will have some kind of rotation to activate all the important skills. This means specs that have to spend more time out of water will be weaker healers overall. It is a very unreactive class by design. Tempest provides a meta boon by channeling overloads which has strong synergy with both quickness and alacrity. Quickness, to get through the vulnerable channel faster, and alacrity to get back into that element sooner. Tempest is forced to leave water constantly in order to provide boons and overload other elements, and paradoxically almost never wants to overload water itself. There is a clear anti-synergy here within Tempest, however the spec has multiple panic buttons which makes for a very reactive healer even if they have to leave water constantly. This is an example of how the flesh can overcome problems with the skeleton. Weaver appears extremely unreactive at first glance, however I would argue it is actually the most reactive healer of the three because it mends the skeleton of core elementalist. It is the only elementalist spec that never has to fully leave water. The problem with weaver is the flesh. The dual skills have largely been designed with a pure dps role in mind, and accessing the third weapon skill in a pure element is somewhat unreactive. All the same, I think Weaver is a good candidate for providing alacrity to help it move through the elements faster. Catalyst is a very selfish specialisation that relies heavily on core elementalist for the bulk of its supporting capacity. Like all elementalist builds it is forced to leave water often but lacks the panic buttons of Tempest. Most support Catalyst builds recommend bringing frost bow for this reason so that you have something to heal with in emergencies. Along with its overly clunky design this class is very unpopular. It has strong synergy with quickness in order to generate energy for the jade core faster. The skeleton of this spec is essentially core elementalist plus additional combo fields and boons. It is the overly clunky restrictions on the jade core energy that currently holds this spec back. Mesmer Meta Boons & Support Capacity Mesmer as a whole is somewhat unreactive given the conditions for shattering, but not all of its support is tied to that so it has strong support options regardless. The state of the meta boon designations is cause for confusion, and it appears that the devs have broken the established pattern as a bandaid instead of sorting out Mirage. Chronomancer is the one-stop-shop for support on mesmer. As such, I imagine it's difficult for the devs to separate Chronomancer from core mesmer in their designs for healer builds. Aside from flavour, Chronomancer doesn't have any particular synergy with quickness or alacrity, though the use of wells naturally aligns it with supporting. Mirage suffers from problems of the flesh. The ambushes offer another avenue for healing, but alacrity generation is tied to the staff which consumes resources that could be used for the rifle. Weapon swapping essentially functions like mode swapping for this class but it is entirely a trait problem. Like other weak healers, I have never seen a heal Mirage in any group I've ever been in. Mirage has better synergy with quickness rather than alacrity in order to get through the ambush animations faster. Mirage is known for avoiding shattering but I don't know how relevant that would be on a healer build. Virtuoso extends the support capacity of core mesmer in a similar fashion to Soulbeast. Anything that triggers off creating a clone will do so more often on Virtuoso, and their shatters are powered by 5 clones instead of 3 (which would matter if they designed the traits to support it). However, Virtuoso does not offer any other support of its own and relies on core mesmer. I believe a support Virtuoso could work with a few key changes to certain traits in the Inspiration line, and obviously access to a meta boon. Alacrity would be appropriate in order to generate clones and shatter more often. Necromancer Meta Boons & Support Capacity Necromancer has poor support capabilities in its core kit, and that shows very clearly in the difference between Scourge and Harbinger. Reaper is a very selfish spec that is capable of granting its own quickness. I do not think this method of generating quickness would be overly engaging or reactive if it were suddenly spread to allies as well. That is to say, it could, but shouldn't. Relying on shroud health to deal damage is already a problem for the class, there's no need to double up and tie boon generation to it as well. Scourge was designed as a healer spec from the beginning. It synergises well with alacrity in order to generate shades faster. A large amount of this spec's healing capacity comes from the spec and not core necromancer which can make builds feel very one-note. Harbinger brings its own support capacity but like Deadeye it is heavily lacking in the healing department. You are encouraged to stay in shroud to generate the meta boon but you have no capacity to heal in that mode. There is anti-synergy here within Harbinger and against core necromancer. It currently does not function well as a healer but the vision of a potion slinger makes it a strong candidate for a meta boon. I don't know what harbinger needs. The skeleton is anti-synergistic so that would need attention. Being able to provide real healing while in shroud would go a long way. Harbinger brings elixirs so any improvements to core necromancer's healing would have to take the form of traits. Mucho Texto 🤮 In summary, I believe there is sufficient evidence that any spec could function as a healer if they were given the love and attention needed. Traits and skills can overcome anti-synergies in the design, but a well designed skeleton cannot make up for a lack of flesh. I do not think there is anything inherently wrong with breaking the pure dps pattern, and to that end, Vindicator and Soulbeast should grant quickness whilst Weaver should grant alacrity. Additionally, core warrior, thief, and necromancer need a review of their healing tools. Please let me know if you disagree with any analysis or conclusion. I do not claim to be an expert in every class, and even among the classes that I do play I don't play every specialisation.

That is an option and there's a few different ways you could do it, but the reason I have proposed this more complex rework is because I believe it better fits the vision of what confusion is meant to be. It'd be a real shame to have your interrupt proc get rolled into the same tick as a regular ability activation.

Confusion has been rebalanced a lot over the years. The damage on skill activation (proc) has been increased and decreased a few times, and confusion was even removed from Temporal Rift entirely. The latest iteration of this balance has been to heavily reduce the proc damage to lessen its power against multi-hitting bosses. I have come up with a better way to achieve that goal that satisfies every balance constraint. When a foe procs the bonus damage of confusion it should reduce the remaining duration of confusion on them by 1 second and inflict 1 second's worth of damage. Essentially, the bonus damage from skill activation would operate like a fast-forward on the condition's output. Enemies which trigger confusion extremely quickly would eat the total damage of the applied confusion and be cleansed of it. By functioning in this manner, the unlimited damage potential of confusion is squashed and the stat scaling on this condition could then be balanced into whatever state the devs desire without fear. I would hope it would also give them the courage to put this condition in more places, such as giving it to warriors through Body Blow.

I recant what I said earlier about the value of the beastmastery line because I was using unbuffed numbers by mistake. The true value gained from those stat boosts is less than 10%, it's the cooldown reduction on axe skills that really bring the oomph for sustained damage. Give it some more thought. You want soulbeast's burst nerfed so you're going after the permanent passive buffs. If Anet went through with your nerf what do you think would happen? Everyone would take the small hit or swap over to marksmanship that's what. Your approach would not achieve your goal. Don't be a crab in a bucket, start by gutting or redesigning sic 'em. Sic' em suffers from the same problems as every other facet of this game in that percentage modifiers cause serious imbalances. A 40% damage boost for almost nothing is still almost nothing. Sic' em desperately needs to be transformed into a flat stat boost along with providing boons. Players have way more stats and boons than pets do so by its very nature it would buff pets more than players. As an example, soulbeasts typically run around with around 10000 total power, precision and ferocity whilst pets would be lucky to get to 5500. So if sic' em gave a total of 2000 offensive stats it would be around a 40% damage boost for them but only 20% for players. Chuck on some boons that players are likely to already have such as fury and quickness and now it's starting to look like a real utility. I still don't like that design of being a generic buff though, I want it to be more mechanical. Causing the pet to do a unique attack, or resetting the cooldowns of their internal skills would be a lot more appealing to untamed. The buffs in beastmastery are about on par with having 25 might, and is additive with might. A phoenix with 25 might gets about 15% more offensive base stats from beastmastery, whilst a devourer gets about 19%. Before we get lost in the sauce its important to keep in mind that the skills of the pets are more important than their base stats e.g. the devourer having the highest dps. Starting with precision would be wise because soulbeasts already have crit chance bleeding out of their ears from the skirmishing line (50%). Pets need to get to 2470 precision with fury, and most pets start at 1524. The 150 from Pack Alpha gets them to 1674, so they would need 800 precision to get to crit cap. The felines and birds start at 2211, so with Pack Alpha they're already almost there. This is why I say the base stats of the pets should be improved rather than tying it to a trait line. Putting another 110 precision in the line is fine but there's no way you're going to put 800 precision in there. So precision in the beastmastery line is largely a dead end, what about power and ferocity? Well we've already got a potential strike damage buff pending in Wilting Strike so it's hard to say how much more beyond that would be necessary. A useful trait in the first column would be nice, perhaps adding another facet to Potent Ally would be the right place. Something like 10% additional strike damage on the pet's basic attacks when above a might threshold or something. Something that soulbeasts couldn't double dip on is surely a buff you could agree with. @Aaron Forestman.4758 Yes thank you for the reddit quip, my mind has been blown. Unleashing the pet doesn't do anything to put focus on the pet, it's actually a defensive trade for the player. Even if it did buff the pet, forcing it to become the green blob unleashed pet heavily detracts from anything interesting you might be able to do with it. Making those green blob skills conditionally available while the pet is unleashed is only the first step in realigning untamed to being pet-focused.

The Beastmastery line has needed a redesign for a while. Some of the traits do almost nothing, and the buffs it provides to pets are not mechanical enough to overcome the inherent flaws of relying on a minion. I don't know how many times we need to go through this same loop of "the new pet is too slow" before we finally see the Zephyr's Speed trait get reworked (hint: it should activate on pressing f2). As it stands, the marksmanship line is just as effective for buffing up pets as the beastmastery line, because the only thing either of them really do is provide damage buffs. Beastmastery's first column and top row need to be completely revamped. Your suggestions for fixing the top row are pretty good, but I'd go further and say that Beastly Warden should also make the pet Unshakable. I'd like to see more condition damage support in beastmastery (in addition to what you've proposed for Go For the Eyes), and I want to make clear that I'm not asking that it necessarily be stronger than either Skirmishing or Wilderness Survival. As long as its good or different enough to make you um and ah about which trait lines to pick then I'll be happy. I personally don't see Soulbeast as some overpowered monster. According to snowcrows its not even in the top 15 sustained dps any more, and it's claim to fame burst damage comes largely from sic 'em and owp not beastmastery. Nerfing the merged beastmastery traits would only further weaken the sustained damage. How much are you really benefiting from 720 raw stats anyway? By my calculation it's about a 17% increase, which is only marginally better than what Marksmanship has to offer. That is to say, I think you're barking up the wrong tree with this one. If your concern is with the pets' base stats then you should ask for buffs directly to them rather than turning beastmastery into a mandatory trait line for pet gameplay. I would certainly not be against redesigning sic 'em completely, I hate how that skill is simply mandatory for power soulbeast and yet all it does is grant a generic damage boost. It's a "utility" skill in name only. Guard and Strength of the Pack are also very weak commands that need to change somehow. As for Untamed, the biggest problem I have with it is how it replaces any pet you bring with the Unleashed Pet. Any interesting pet-focused gameplay is squashed by this. The only real solution is to get rid of the unleashed pet skills or make them conditionally available somehow. I want to bring a wolf and make the wolf stronger, not transform the wolf into a green blob. Untamed is going to continue to fail as a pet-focused spec until that changes.

Yeah I wasn’t sure where to put elementalist. Their attitude during the spear demo and the spear skills themselves portray a disdain for the class. The state catalyst has been left in is further evidence for this but the recent attention towards tempest shows the class is not entirely off their radar like guardian and warrior. Guardian appears to be off their radar because to them it is good enough and doesn’t need attention, which is my bad for conflating the two distinctions under the one banner. Thief, as well, feels like they only make pointed concessions when the community screeches loud enough. They do not appear to have a fleshed-out vision for thief. Its just very depressing that every class has major flaws and anti-synergies, and they’re too busy buffing ranger’s power weapons to bother with any of it.

Classes the devs are clueless about: Warrior Revenant Engineer Classes the devs don’t care about: Thief Elementalist Classes the devs love but don’t understand: Ranger Mesmer Necromancer Meanwhile guardian is still settling back in line after the blatant favouritism of the previous dev. It may be most appropriate to categorise it as one the devs don’t care about. Pick between ranger, mesmer or necro but don’t expect the classes to be masterfully crafted. There are plenty of major issues that have plagued these classes for years despite the favouritism.

Proposing for content to be disabled is merely a form of bargaining to have something done about it. In my opinion these fractals (you know the ones) detract from the fractal experience as a whole, and so the bargain is "if you aren't going to fix them then please get rid of them". Of course we'd all prefer if they were fixed and improved to be an overall positive addition to the fractal pool. No one would deny that improving these fractals is what players really want. But we understand Anet's history with this kind of thing and would rather see these fractals gone than left as they are. For me personally, the bugs are the main concern and the overly "gamey" nature is my second concern. When I can't tell if a mechanic has a niche quirk or is just bugged it's a really bad look. Grabbing tethers from other players in SS is a perfect example of this. Are we encouraged to do it or is it a bug / purely negative mechanic that we should avoid? When bugs like that appear in other games they disable the content until its fixed. The "gamey" nature of the recent fractals is something more subjective. When things happen too frequently on obvious timers or there's too many MacGuffins (coloured essences) it really pulls me out of the experience. Like @Shadows Creed.3902, I get the impression that the devs feel like they need to do more with each fractal, and that has manifested as being overly mechanical and gamey. Think about the parts of each cm fractal that you like compared to the parts you don't like and you'll realise you probably feel the same way. I want bosses that simply try to hit me in the face in interesting ways, and for my defensive tools to work against them. Stopping bosses from powering up or knocking them out of mapwide attacks has never been very interesting to me. The gamey nature is not grounds to have the content removed because it is a very subjective thing which people are willing to put up with. But in combination with these horrific bugs that we aren't even sure aren't intended mechanics, it displays that these fractals are in dire need of attention from the developers. And if they aren't going to give these fractals the attention they need it would be an overall positive improvement for the fractal experience if they were disabled.

I already gave my thoughts on a 3-stat vipers-clone. It would have more expertise than vipers, making a hybrid rune even less appealing than trappers. It would push it in the opposite direction and you’ll have some guy asking for a rune with more condition damage and less duration. A full set of vipers has 633 precision and you would drop all of that to gain roughly half of it as expertise, which is roughly 20% duration. A lot of builds are already struggling with too much expertise. This stat combo would not be as strong as you’re thinking. The whole point of this rune is to provide a new building piece to increase the diversity of builds. Of course if you try to shove it into an existing build it’ll just be a side grade. That’s an indication that’s it’s balanced. If you’re just going to handwave that then you clearly aren’t appreciating the potential. As for competitive, I feel like you’re just grasping at straws. Celestial and viper have the same amount of expertise, so this rune changes nothing in wvw that it won’t also change in pve. If your concern is with bunker stats like settler or dire then I would argue that using Balthazar runes to pump your burning and using your bleeds as cover conditions would be superior. Just another sidegrade right? In PvP anet can simply block this rune there like they do to so many others.