GoingMenthol.7281

I'd rather have clones function like a combat-only minion. Summon and shatter as we currently do, but if the target dies while clones are still active, the clones just attack a new target as long as you're still in combat. Clones attack whatever is nearby while Axe 3 retains the option to target specific enemies. Once you're out of combat they despawn as usual. It would alleviate the problem of fighting trash mobs that don't survive long enough to build up a 3 clone shatter

Earth field Earth field should be something like Dust field, or Sand field, or Mud field: - Leap finisher - Gain magnetic aura - Projectile finisher - Bleeding projectiles (Abrasive bolts) - Blast finisher - Area Barrier (Water blast finishers heal for 1320hp + 20% healing power, so an earth field barrier could be something lower like 800 + 10%) Skills that could possibly make a field: Dust Devil, Murky Water, Muddy Terrain, Dust Strike, Dust Storm, Sandstorm, Trail of Anguish?, Sand Swell, Manifest Sand Shade? (or make Desert Shroud turn sand shades into a field), Mud Slide, Lahar, Deploy Jade Sphere (earth) Chaos Aura and Mesmer Mesmer has so many ethereal fields to create a chaos aura from leaps and blasts, but most of the leap skills (4 out of 7 when not including copies of skills when playing Virtuoso) are power weapons (Swap, Phantasmal Swordsman, Mirage Thrust, Feigned Surge) that don't benefit from confusion damage, or they don't benefit from the Chaos trait lines that reward the use of chaos aura (Illusionary Membrane, Chaotic Transference). There should be a trait in Dueling that provides a benefit for power weapons gaining or sharing chaos aura (Dueling as it can benefit both Power and Condition builds Dark Aura Dark auras are the only aura that has no synergy with any profession. Elementalists get the four elemental auras built into their weapons, the unique ability to transmute, and multiple traits that provide benefits to auras. Guardians get one light aura trait, Mesmer gets two chaos aura traits and one weapon skill. But nothing for Dark Aura It could go to Necromancer, Thief, or Revenant, considering they all have the theme of darkness. The profession with the most Dark fields that don't involve an elite spec is the Necromancer due to its wells, but Revenant is the only one that has access to dark fields while benefiting from the torment damage (Rift of Pain, Embrace the Darkness) Water Aura? How about Swirling Aura? It can provide healing similar to how Virtue of Resolve and Soothing Mist provide a source of healing, while the "when you are struck" condition could be a projectile block (like the Guild Wars 1 version) or it can provide a boon like regeneration so it heals for more in response to physical trauma

I've been trying (and somewhat failing) to make a sword/pistol build to keep interrupting targets to refresh the pistol phantasm with duelists discipline and keep triggering the sigil of severance. Enemies with defiance bars don't trigger the sigil at all (like the test golem when you enable or disable the bar), and trash mobs die too quickly to an ambush or two to make the most of it. DPS isn't where I'd like it to be either. I'm very new to mesmer so I'm probably doing something wrong

Meanwhile Inspiring Whirl is not a Whirl finisher 😞

Mending Might - Applying might to an ally heals you them (Healing: 69) This combined with Phalanx Strength would make for an interesting healer. Axe Berserker could heal allies on every primal burst (quickness healer). Unyielding Dragon on Bladesworn would heal allies when charging Dragon Slash. Forceful Greatsword could make greatsword a healing weapon. Rifle auto could be a ranged healing weapon. And all of the healing relies on unga bunga damage

Only using skill 1 feels more like the time when everyone played the rifle mechanist meme a while back when you could file taxes in another room while you auto attack to victory. The rest of the skills on hammer range anywhere from situational to useless based on your own dps report, and that's the problem I've had with the hammer design this whole time Skill 2 is purely raw damage, no boons, no heals, but you don't use it because it interrupts the auto Skill 3 is only used when you're far away and you may as well, but you don't use it in melee because it interrupts the auto Skill 4 is only for cc and that doesn't happen that often (or anywhere near as often as the auto) Skill 5 doesn't work on a non-moving target and interrupts the auto LI is not an excuse, weaver has an LI build, specter has an LI build, virtuoso has an LI build, and the weapons used in those builds can do more than just auto attack and are also used in different builds other than LI. I don't think the same is said for hammer (maybe a roamer pvp build? do people still use that?) And again, the problem is the other skills on the bar. If hammer is going to be nothing but an auto attack weapon it may as well be a 1-hand weapon so I can do something else meaningful with an offhand We don't have a bruiser weapon that deals non-damaging conditions (weakness, slow, taunt, vulnerability without trait) or a weapon that increases strike damage based on stacks of conditions. We don't have a 2-hand condition weapon. The only weapon that has direct synergy with virtues is mace (skill 3 readies Justice) so we could have something similar on another weapon. We could have traits that benefit when blasting into fields (hammer/staff support?). We don't have a weapon that removes boons. We could have so much more, but we don't

I wish the first hit was a melee AoE and the two other hits were like normal It would have shorter range but I'm finding more situations where I'm right next to the target and cannot hit without leaping away to reposition, and fewer situations where I need to hit something at 1400 range since the 1200 attack is spaced further away from myself

That's disappointing. Renegade has Soulcleave's Summit and Spiritcrush for fire fields, and bow 1 and 3 to combo with it (not to mention swapping to Mallyx for dark fields afterwards), but warrior longbow is toned down because the combo field lasts too long

Just to add to this, I think core longbow would be better if the F1 actually pulsed damage every second. Right now we've got a 3 bar adrenaline skill that gives a 9 second fire field but only ticks damage 4 times. Why not tick every second instead?

The problem with longbow spellbreaker currently is that the 1 bar adrenaline skill is one of the worst. It does half the amount of strike damage and a third of the condition damage compared to a 3 bar burst I'm gonna spoiler my reasoning so this post doesn't become a wall of unreadable text Completely agree on how slow the bow is without quickness, so I found a quirky way to build adrenaline. Using the Merciless Hammer trait and LB4 into a stack of enemies gets me to 3 full bars if I hit a group of 5 in a single hit, and an auto attack away from full when hitting 4 targets. It can kind of remove the need for Signet of Fury or Head Butt for the ramp up to full adrenaline, but only Berserker F1 is good, while core does lower damage, spellbreaker does even less, and bladesworn removes the bow F1 (and the huge adrenaline gain) entirely So it comes back to... If longbow had something extra like a CC then it could compensate for the damage loss by providing something else instead

I'd appreciate a CC on longbow's F1 so it can be useful for spellbreaker, even if it was 1/4 seconds. I've been looking around for non-Berserker builds for longbow and the only decent one was called the "Chinese Longbow" for WvW but I haven't found anything for PvE

Now that I think about it, Malyx also feels a bit off as well due to the high cost. A lot of builds I've seen only use the elite and outright ignore the utilities because they're so situational and cost so much. I feel like the utilities should have a cooldown to balance out a lower energy cost

As someone new to Revenant, the more I play a heal Vindicator, the more I feel Ventari skills are lacklustre for costing so much to use Comparing Purifying Essence to Tree Song, Tree Song removes more conditions, heals for more per condition removed, gives endurance, gives regen, and it costs less with a lower cooldown in PvE, with the same cost in WvW

Honestly speaking, I don't like the idea of Banish making Mighty Blow have a teleport, I'd prefer a redo of Guardian Hammer skills. But if ANet are going to have skill synergy between skills then it may as well go a bit further and let skills have the ability to be immediately chained together. Warrior hammer can skill 2, 5, and 2 one after another with no wait for cooldown. It has a better flow between skills when you're attacking, Guardian hammer's 2, 4, 2 doesn't Hammer is a front-loaded weapon since it has the symbol on auto. When talking about activating Justice or Willbender Virtues, other weapons can trigger them easier since they can attack quicker (or have a quirk to speed things up) and also leave a symbol down (greatsword 2 and symbol, sword 3 or auto and symbol, mace 3 prepares Justice and symbol, etc). But since there's no rework of the weapon, the only way to have an increase in hits for the hammer would be to let skills chain together The mark from Banish is just a band aid. It doesn't fix the core problem of hammer no longer having a role as the game design changes over the years. There are no builds on Hardstuck or Snow Crows that use hammer for anything because it's not a good dps or support weapon. So if the best we get is just a band aid it may as well be the one with the pictures of cats and bunnies on it to make it look nice

Banish should recharge Mighty Blow in the same way that Backbreaker recharges Fierce Blow on Warrior

They gave Elementalist 2 hammers and as far as I'm aware they both work pretty well. Seriously, the Conjure Hammer has quickness on it's mighty blow equivalent and superspeed on banish equivalent, it's surprisingly fun

Does Necro pump out enough boons regularly for Blighter's Boon to even be interesting? I can only think of the Spite traitline and Blood is Power

Good God it's finally happening, I need to hire a tuxedo for the day

I'm gonna refer (once again) to a post I made a while ago on the problem with hammer's design and some crazy ideas I made up for changing it, please have a look

Natural Healing, Winds of Disenchantment, Featherfoot Grace, and Aura Slicer are Dervish skills Boon/Enchantment removal is not unique to Mesmer How about Mystic Vigor or Mystic Healing?

Good point, hammer doesn't need two traits. I was just thinking of how quickness could be implemented without overloading on a single trait I don't know about removing protection since it's a part of hammer's defense without traits (greatsword has blind/heal, sword has blind/projectile block, mace has heal/block. Hammer currently has protection and spacing skills, but spacing prevents your protection since you need to hit things. I'm not gonna count the ranged weapons since we're talking about a melee weapon) I remember hearing (I don't remember where though) the devs saying they didn't like the 20% cooldown traits and wanted to rework them without the cooldown reduction, so I've been avoiding adding that in as a suggestion I'm liking the idea of keeping Glacial Heart in Virtues but without the hammer ability so any builds that currently use it aren't messed up by changes So maybe something like: Honor - Major Adept - Protector's Aggression (replaces Protector's Restoration) - Hammer skills grant quickness on critical strike. Skill 2 becomes Glacial Blow (The "on crit" would be in theme with other Honor traits, makes the player choose between Zeal for symbol damage, Radiance for the crit chance, Valor for the heals/support, Virtues for Glacial Heart, and still have an elite spec to choose from) Virtues - Major Master - Glacial Heart - Chill and damage foes you disable, Immobilize or slow (better synergy with elite specs and weapons) Writ of Persistence can be kept the same without changes In regards to no weapon traits in Virtues, there isn't any weapons that have a direct involvement with the profession skills, like Mesmer Scepter generating tons of clones to quickly shatter, or Necromancer Marks generating life force. Revenant (Invocation) and Thief (Trickery) don't have weapon traits on their Virtues equivalent trait line, so it's not uncommon in the game

Yes, I'm talking about the hammers again, but it's a weapon that could really do with an update that makes it less like a slow greatsword and more of the "support allies by hitting foes" weapon that it was made to be. And the best way in my opinion is to make Honor the de facto trait line as it already has traits that focus on boon support on critical hits (Vigorous Precision, Empowering Might) These are the changes I believe would make hammer a better weapon to use: Writ of persistence replaces Protector's Restoration "Symbols are improved. Symbol of Protection now additionally provides quickness" Hammer damage is front-loaded onto the auto attack, where the symbol is. The problem has always been about how slow it is to cast Protector's Restoration is not a skill commonly used, not very useful, and can be easily replaced Additional boons synergises with Altruistic Healing to allow for more sustain oriented builds Hammer guardians are no longer forced to use Feel my Wrath or specialise into Firebrand in order to access quickness via their profession abilities Glacial Heart moved to Honor Grandmaster "Mighty Blow becomes Glacial Blow. Chill and damage foes you disable, immobilise, or slow" Moving Glacial Heart to Honor allows hammer users to keep the stronger attack without the need to branch into Virtues for a single trait The addition of immobilise allows Hammer Skill 3 to also benefit from the trait. Scepter 3 would coincidentally benefit too The addition of slow provides synergy with Dragonhunter, Firebrand, and Willbender skills and traits

I don't think I've ever seen a build use this trait, nor have I heard anyone talk about it. Is this used in any game mode? If not, can we replace it with the hammer trait instead?

Quickness on hammer please ◕ ◡ ◕

Want more DPS in your Power build? Want more DPS in your Condi build? Want to have an effective Healer build that can AoE heal and revive via Transfusion? Reduce the cooldown of Soul Spiral