draxynnic.3719

> @"otto.5684" said:

> > @"draxynnic.3719" said:

> > > @"otto.5684" said:

> > > > @"Zsrai.1740" said:

> > > > > @"Aodlop.1907" said:

> > > > > Why are you talking about Herald again?

> > > >

> > > > Because Renegade isn't a profession, but an elite spec for Revenant? Just like Herald is? Not every elite has to excel at every role or play mode.

> > >

> > > But they should. And renegade not only does not excel it is worst PvP build among all elites and core for all classes. It is expansion weapon performs poorly in open world PvE. The only area it does well is raids and support. This is extremely limited. Do I need to run a comparison against every pof elite and show how extremely limited renegade is?

> > >

> > > And let’s face it, aesthetically, no one likes the Charr party.

> >

> > There are people who regard shortbow, properly supported by the rest of the build, as one of the best weapons for open world. Wooden Potatoes cited a shortbow revenant as the best open world revenant build, for instance - granted, his criteria might not be most people's criteria, but the only flaw I can see in his build for open world bosses and bounties is that melee-oriented builds offer better sustained DPS, and that's to be expected when comparing ranged to melee in general.

>

> Generally speaking, open world builds primary goal is farming regular mobs, and much solo. World bosses is no different than raids (a bit easier). SB has serious hit consistency issues against anything that moves, especially if it is not a large hit box. That rules it out most of the time. And for rev as a whole, power herald in PvE is ideal most of the time. Sword 2,4 and 5 eat mobs and shiro mobility is superb.

The hit box issues are mainly with skills 2 and 3, which the build largely doesn't use - it uses skills 4 and 5 and otherwise mostly autoattacks and uses energy for utilities (including utilities that buff autoattacks).

If you're looking for pure DPS and going melee is viable, going melee with your melee DPS set is going to give you the most damage. This is how the balance is intended to be for most professions, and if your criteria is that a ranged DPS-oriented weapon has to match the melee DPS set, that rules out a _lot._ There definitely are times, in my experience, where good ranged DPS performs better than melee, even if the melee weapons have higher potential in ideal circumstances.

> @"Buran.3796" said:

> > @"draxynnic.3719" said:

>

> > There are people who regard shortbow, properly supported by the rest of the build, as one of the best weapons for open world. Wooden Potatoes cited a shortbow revenant as the best open world revenant build,

>

> Is not like there's much options: with staff and now hammer doing no damage, and the sword splitting the damage when there's more than one target, the only two weapons which remain are mace and shortbow. And still, mace is stronger (and imo Hizen's condi Herald is better than Potatoe's power Renegade for open world).

Not familiar with the specific build, although I've put together something that's probably similar and certainly does burn things down pretty quickly in melee. Hard to get sustained range outside of the reach of Searing Fissure, though - viper (or sinister) still gives you decent power damage, but the only condi you can get out of hammer is through Abyssal Chill with the leap and, until the patch lands, the occasional Rampant Vex proc (which you won't get many of due to hammer's low attack rate).

> @"otto.5684" said:

> > @"Zsrai.1740" said:

> > > @"Aodlop.1907" said:

> > > Why are you talking about Herald again?

> >

> > Because Renegade isn't a profession, but an elite spec for Revenant? Just like Herald is? Not every elite has to excel at every role or play mode.

>

> But they should. And renegade not only does not excel it is worst PvP build among all elites and core for all classes. It is expansion weapon performs poorly in open world PvE. The only area it does well is raids and support. This is extremely limited. Do I need to run a comparison against every pof elite and show how extremely limited renegade is?

>

> And let’s face it, aesthetically, no one likes the Charr party.

There are people who regard shortbow, properly supported by the rest of the build, as one of the best weapons for open world. Wooden Potatoes cited a shortbow revenant as the best open world revenant build, for instance - granted, his criteria might not be most people's criteria, but the only flaw I can see in his build for open world bosses and bounties is that melee-oriented builds offer better sustained DPS, and that's to be expected when comparing ranged to melee in general.

> @"KrHome.1920" said:

> Except ele I would not call any class a mage. And since ele got a melee sword elite spec it's definitely the class that fits the theme the best.

>

> Necro and mesmer have some mage elements and the other classes are either rogues, clerics or fighters with either a classic (warrior), a technological (engineer) or a fantasy (revenant) theme.

Depends on how you define 'mage'. Strictly speaking, it just means someone who uses magic. Some settings make it someone who uses a broad spectrum of magic. Some split off necromancy and other "dark" magics into their own thing and have mages being those who stick to the "good", or at least morally neutral, forms of magic (note that in Guild Wars, all forms of magic available to player professions, including necromancy, are morally neutral). This usually incorporates elemental magic and suite of non-elemental effects, making the 'mage' essentially a combination of elementalist and mesmer, maybe even with a bit of guardian mixed in if they use a lot of force effects.

In this context, I think it's fair to say that guardians and mesmers at least are 'mages', albeit mages that don't focus on elemental magic. Unless you define a 'mage' as specifically involving elemental magic, which both makes the whole discussion a tautology, and seems to be a tighter definition than the OP is using since they started out with using the revenant as an example.

Mesmers focus on magic that influences perception, alters reality, and manipulates magic in the form of raw energy. It's a different focus to elementalist, but still within the mage domain. Compared to playing a sword tempest, it also has the advantage that by retaining a weaponswap, the player isn't locked into melee. If you were to compare to, say, a Warcraft mage, the mesmer is specialising in the "arcane" side while the elementalist focuses on the, well, elemental side.

Guardians also have some similarity with divine spellcasters, but if you look through its kit, there are strong themes of fire and force effects within its repertoire, and even a bit of lightning (Orb of Wrath, for instance, is described in _Sea of Sorrows_ as a lightning orb, although it's possible that this is simply a description of what it looks like, kind of like people refer to a lot of mesmer effects as "pink lightning" when in the lore they're bolts of pure magical energy). It uses spellcaster weapons for range (apart from dragonhunters), and its skills probably have some of the best examples of combining martial and magical techniques - throwing blades of force from their weapons, encasing their weapons with magical force (sword autoattack - this used to be MUCH clearer in the graphics, but there's a reason why these attacks get longer range as the chain progresses) and otherwise combining magic with martial forms. Given that every profession in GW2 has healing, condition cleansing, and so on, you could easily view the guardian as a battlemage who primarily focuses on force effects, with some elemental effects (particularly fire) on the side. Heck, you could run a core guardian (or, better, firebrand) with scepter/X on one weapon swap, staff on the other, and mostly consecration and/or spirit weapon utilities, and that'd probably feel pretty much like a pure force mage who just happens to have heavy armour.

Revenants are a bit odd, in that they're clearly _magical,_ but the power is coming from invoking an outside party rather than through their own training (apart from the training requires to call on that outside party). They have about as many skills that involve adding magic to weapon attacks as guardian, but unlike guardian, they don't have a 'pure magic' mode outside of some legend utilities. Still, if talking about feel rather than lore, they work well enough.

Thief magic generally feels like a specialised branch of mesmer magic - more mobility and teleports, but giving up on the rest of the kit: mesmer is therefore probably a better choice for a battlemage theme. Deadeye cantrips add more magic, however.

> @"Xca.9721" said:

> I am more concerned about the 500 ms warmup; are we able to move during this period or will the skill get interrupted if we do so? Would be really bad if we couldn´t move, especially when we need to kite away

That's a valid point. If it's still possible to move, it can still serve as a mobility skill, and while the enemy gets more warning, we also get that time to try to make sure it's lined up before it triggers. If movement isn't possible, then people will probably be able to avoid it simply by moving, and its usage as a mobility skill will at least be severely impacted.

Guardian is probably on the top of the list, followed be revenant.

Mesmer works pretty well as a battlemage as a well, albeit with the weight more towards the mage side than the fighter side - it's certainly a 'lighter' fighter than guardian and revenant, and its weaponset is weighted more towards ranged attacks than melee.

Calling a core necromancer, even with dagger, a 'battlemage' is, I think, pushing it, but reaper certainly applies. Similar comments apply with elementalist - dagger elementalists are more of a close-range mage than a battlemage, but sword weaver certainly applies. You might be able to get a battlemage feel using conjured weapons, but it's a bit clunky.

Coming from the opposite side, thief has few if any overtly magical offensive skills, but there's certainly a fair amount of magic being used to support some of those attacks - teleports are obviously magic, as are some of the utility skills, especially from the deadeye. Rangers also have a bit of magic, or at least stuff that can be interpreted as magic.

Core warrior is pretty non-magical, but berserker can have a bit of a warrior/elementalist feel, and spellbreaker has some magic as well, albeit tilted towards an anti-magic theme.

Engineer is pretty clearly technology and alchemy rather than magic, but some of the holosmith (and even scrapper) stuff approaches Clarke's Third Law.

Broadly speaking, though, the top professions for that theme are probably Guardian, Revenant, and Mesmer. Each of those professions is essentially designed from the ground up to be a battlemage, and all of their elite specialisations thus far have continued in that direction. Other professions have aspects and elite specialisations that approach the theme, but don't commit to it the way those three do.

> @"Catchyfx.5768" said:

> Dance of Death (NEW): Each stack vulnerability applied to a foe grants a stack of Battle Scars. Battle Scars healing amount is doubled while you are below half health. and Thrill of Combat (NEW): Grants 1 stack of Battle Scars every second while in combat.

>

> RENEGADE META? ICE RAZOR ? :D POINT HOLDER? mayyybe? Now with lower dmg , summons maybe survive a few seconds

>

> EDIT:

> [gw2skills.net/editor/?PmwAwyZldQLMHaj1QasHKj9RjsAygl+l/rD-z5IWCOPA](http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmwAwyZldQLMHaj1QasHKj9RjsAygl+l/rD-z5IWCOPA)

>

> More likely to use Axe instead of sword

>

> If you consider new traits every Vulnerability will add heal from devastation or siphon or what ever....could be fine cuz on those traits is lot of weaknes and lots of Vuln

> EDIT:

> And now we have lot of Vigor from Retribution+ Renegades Brutal Momentum +Enduring Recovery(Passive Endu regen +25%)

>

I'd forgotten Icerazor applied vulnerability. That does make for a potentially interesting synergy. It does mean that you're really doubling down on the healing-through-lifestealing concept at the cost of spike healing, particularly since Breakrazor's Bastion was one of two Rev heals that are getting reduced, but with power damage being reduced across the board you might not need it. Keeping conditions off with such a build might be challenging, though. On the other hand, shortbow is looking like it's received less nerfs than most weapons, so shortbow might become a little more viable in comparison.

I think there is a degree to which, with cooldowns of weapon skills going up and the effectiveness going down, taking energy costs off weapon skills might well be justified. Making the revenant essentially an inverse of thief: weapon skills are cooldown-based, utility skills are largely resource-based.

I don't think it's possible to lose energy costs on non-healing utility skills without also losing upkeep skills, however: upkeep skills need some resource to limit them, and if that resource is ONLY ever used for the upkeep skill, they'd almost be no-brainers.

I would note that strictly speaking, a perfect SOTM still means that you push the enemy out of position... but yeah, I think you do have a point here. Even following their paradigm, a still-low coefficient of 0.002 or 0.003 would mean that while the damage from 'clipping' someone is still fairly low, the perfect setup at least does more damage than a regular CC would.

I suspect that there is a degree to which ArenaNet is trying to make the perfect SOTM a less important thing and making it more practical to use as a gap closer and for other utility purposes... but if so, a price reduction is probably warranted. Post-patch, it's going to be a skill that's going to be on roughly equal ground with Drop the Hammer and Temporal Rift, but which is substantially more expensive in terms of energy and recharge.

I think Shao does make a valid point here. Currently, the CC skills are part of the burst - sure, they may not be the meat of the burst, but they're usually at least equivalent to the damage of spending about the same amount of time autoattacking, so you're not losing anything by throwing all the CC you have available into the burst. Instead, you get to combine dealing damage with ensuring that your victim doesn't have the opportunity to mitigate the damage. After the change goes through, between CC skills being turned into CC-only skills and damage coefficients being reduced across the board, the potential to 100-0 someone while also stunlocking them is going to be a lot lower.

Does it compensate for losing what was possibly the most important stunbreak? Hard to say at this point, but I do suspect that CC weakness is going to be less of a problem after the patch than it is now.

> @"Ordin.8341" said:

> this is like 4'th class forum I'm checking and one thing I can only say that no one is happy witch changes to their classes so if that was the goal then good job devs :)

I think a lot of people are looking at the changes to their profession, seeing that they've been massively nerfed, and not realising that the competition is _also_ getting massively nerfed.

There do seem to be a _few_ boonsmitings in the mix, but mostly it's a broad theme of making the game less spiky. Since pre-HoT days, we've seen damage go up quite a bit while durability outside of availability of damage avoidance frames and third-party healing has remained fairly steady, making it a game where most players generally go down in seconds once their damage avoidance frames run out, but until they do, there's usually plenty of healing to top up what does manage to go through.

The goal seems to be to reduce the rate at which damage is inflicted across the board, while also reducing the outliers of healing and damage avoidance, making pressure more than simply a matter of drawing out the enemy's cooldowns.

> @"Yasai.3549" said:

> > @"draxynnic.3719" said:

> > I am pretty curious to see how Battle Scars ends up working in practice. One thing I do note is that Battle Scars doesn't actually seem to have a huge synergy with the Shiro skills themselves - the biggest synergy if you focus on Battle Scars seems to be autoattacking with sword to proc Dance with Death. So it could make for interesting synergy with Jalis or Glint.

>

> Good point.

>

> But then again, Battle Scars is a GW Shiro skill, so hopefully they are making it so that Devastation is a Shiro-esque traitline rather than it being a Shiro-support traitline.

Eh... to an extent, but it _is_ also the sword traitline, and at the moment swords are pretty much _the_ power option for revenants. While often seen that way, traitlines aren't intended to be inextricably linked to a single legend - PvE heralds and renegades who use Jalis commonly use Devastation instead of Retribution, for instance, even if they're not using Shiro.

I think Shiro probably still can get a bit of extra synergy out of Battle Scars, through applying vulnerability through Jade Winds (if you get a lot of vulnerability stacks of Jade Winds, do you get a lot of Battle Scars or just one?), using Phase Traversal Quickness to autoattack faster, doubling down on lifesteal through Enchanted Daggers and Facet of Nature (Shiro), and possibly using Impossible Odds to get additional strikes down in order to use stacks faster once you have them (although Vengeful Hammers will probably be able to do that too, if Battle Scars doesn't have an ICD). But a lot of it is probably still going to be coming out of autoattacking with sword.

I am pretty curious to see how Battle Scars ends up working in practice. One thing I do note is that Battle Scars doesn't actually seem to have a huge synergy with the Shiro skills themselves - the biggest synergy if you focus on Battle Scars seems to be autoattacking with sword to proc Dance with Death. So it could make for interesting synergy with Jalis or Glint.

> @"Shao.7236" said:

> @"draxynnic.3719" Not that I want to speak like there's some hidden tactics or super high skill plays to pull off but from my experience playing a lot, I rarely ever get CC if at all, so my guess is that they really want people not to be.

I've been playing revenant lately (Glint/Jalis) and in my experience I do get CC-chained a fair amount. That could be a style or play level (I _think_ you're generally in a higher tier than I am) difference - I generally play somewhat tanky and the build I'm using has relatively few escape options, so my response to being outnumbered is often to stall as long as I can and hope my team can exploit the situation on the rest of the map. However, this can mean that sometimes I get the CC chains piled on - I think I had one point today where I had half a dozen hard CCs hitting within a matter of seconds (against a firebrand, a mesmer, and I think another herald, IIRC).

From what I've seen of your montages, you generally have a more mobile playstyle, which makes you less likely to be singled out.

That said, on the whole, my gut feeling is that revenants are probably going to be a bit higher in the order compared to before the patch rather than lower, depending in part on how the Devastation and Corruption changes shake out. My main concerns from a revenant perspective are Empty Vessel and the possibility of the meta shifting more condi-heavy. Conversely, as you say, CC is going to be more expensive, and while damage has been reduced across the board, _most_ revenant healing doesn't seem to have been touched. So there's probably room for some cautious optimism there.

That said, I think the statement certainly holds that Spirit Boon and Unwavering Avoidance aren't helping if you've already been CC'd. Glaring Resolve will mean that there's a trait to "cover" RotGD when used as a stunbreak, however, which is something I've been asking for for a long time.

> @"Shao.7236" said:

> > @"Arkantos.7460" said:

> > for this high cost, there should be immunity to cc

> > its frustrating, casting this skill and getting cced right after ...GG

>

> The reason why it doesn't;

> * Spirit Boon

> * Unwavering Avoidance

>

> The skill is meant to be casted while reading people moves mostly along everything else in the Revenant utility and traits.

Doesn't help so much when it's your stunbreak when in Jalis, though, and that's going to be even more true when Empty Vessel gets removed. Glaring Resolve should help, though, as long as you can afford to drop Cleansing Channel.

I don't use Shiro much personally, but intuitively, it does seem as if Shiro's abilities started off being fairly focused, and then they got buffed with extra stuff, and now they're getting higher energy costs to pay for that extra stuff. If I was to use Shiro in PvP, I think I'd definitely prefer for those skills to be more focused and cheaper so you can use them for their primary purpose, rather than being kitchen-sink skills which end up being too expensive to use in practice.

I can see why the extra stuff has been added for PvE, and split philosophy means it probably can't be removed from PvP altogether, but I am inclined to agree that nerfs to the effects might be better than pushing up the energy costs.

Litany of Wrath is also... situational. Great in situations where you CAN just go full offense and tear into something reliably while the healing comes in, but that's not always the case, especially for less experienced players who don't necessarily have enemy animations and attack routines memorised and thus are more prone to being hit by CC or otherwise having their burst shut down. WP's builds are intended as something which a relatively new player can take into any solo content and do okay, and aren't necessarily going to be optimal for every single situation. There are certainly situations in which just running Litany of Wrath with big spikes (especially big area spikes) will be plenty, but if that spike gets broken somehow, you can be in trouble.

Firebrand gets a lot out of healing power, but it doesn't _need_ it for Tome of Resolve to essentially act as another healing skill, or for Tome of Courage to give you a bit of a reprieve, especially against projectile-heavy enemies.

Kind of depends on what you want. WP's series is generally looking for comfort, survivability, and maintaining momentum between fights over pure DPS. Power dragonhunter has more DPS in boss fight rotations, but probably doesn't have the solo survivability that firebrands can achieve, and its damage can be fairly bursty which means in solo open world situations it might burst one enemy (or group) down quickly and then have to coast for a bit until the skills used for that burst recharge.

> @"Kalavier.1097" said:

> > @"draxynnic.3719" said:

> > Contrary to what people have said, there _are_ references, both in Guild Wars 1 and in the books such as Ghosts of Ascalon, that necromancy _is_ often distrusted by humans due to its tendency to be associated with evil acts. Part of the reason for the Order in GW1 was to limit this by making sure that any necromancer that went bad started getting taken down hard.

> >

> > However, it's more of a case of being suspicious of the potential that a necromancer _might_ go bad rather than an assumption that any necromancer _will_ go bad. A human necromancer will probably be watched more closely for signs that they're going bad than other human spellcasters, but they're still generally regarded as being on the level unless there are any indications otherwise. If anything, a noble necromancer would probably have less social problems than a necromancer from lower classes, because the people they interact with are likely to be better educated and less likely to jump to prejudiced conclusions, and because wealthy people are generally allowed to get away with more without social consequence (in part because someone who's already wealthy is seen as less likely to use their skills for criminal activity, even if in practice that doesn't seem to be the case, and in part... consider the cliche about how if you're rich you're not crazy, you're _eccentric_).

> >

> > One thing you could possibly consider using as a model, even if it's not a Krytan example, is House Durheim of the Kurzicks.

>

> It's distrusted, but it's not shunned or hated.

>

> I still find it amusing how necromancers are sometimes viewed as evil, but mesmers, who are widely known to be able to produce incredibly realistic illusions, are perfectly fine and not feared. A mesmer can make the illusion of a bridge that doesn't exist, causing you to fall to your death. but nah, let's be afraid of the priest who gets rid of the hostile ghosts in the graveyard! :p

>

> Also, while necromancers do sometimes go evil, the number that do vs the number that don't is small.

>

> Also, IIRC the necromancer distrust in Ghosts of Ascalon was because you had a very young sylvari necromancer with zero outright asking companions "If you die, can I use your body as a minion?" because she didn't know that was an awkward, and just outright kitten question to ask a co-worker/travel companion/guildmate.

>

>

> Distrust is there, but not to a level of necromancers being shunned/hated in general. You can find commoners talking about being necromancers openly in DR. Dislike does not mean they aren't accepted as part of society.

It wasn't just that alone - there was a bit of further discussion in Ghosts of Ascalon about the wider context, such as the association of death magic with Zhaitan, which comes a little after they get out of Ebonhawke and the characters have the opportunity to explain to her just _why_ it was a problem.

Even before Zhaitan arose, we were shown several times in Guild Wars 1 that most humans are superstitious and distrustful of necromancy.

With regards to the distinction between attitudes towards mesmers and necromancers, I think it's a combination of two things:

First, mesmers just have better PR.

Second, while GW2 mechanics don't spell it out as explicitly as GW1 mechanics do, necromancy _explicitly_ gains power out of death and draining the life out of living things. It doesn't _have_ to, but the fact that it it _can_ is well enough known that the average citizen is going to be aware that at any given moment, a necromancer might decide to kill or drain them in order to augment their own power. Sure, they'll probably generally trust that a specific necromancer that they already know _isn't_ going to spontaneously start murdering civilians for their experiments (although it has happened) but some random necromancer they don't know is something entirely different.

Mesmer, elementalist, even monk/guardian magic _can_ be used to kill, but they don't have that inherent _incentive_ to do so that necromancers have.

I think most of the times I get a RotGD interrupted it's in the last half a second or so, too, so unless my opponents are deliberately waiting until the last moment before interrupting it, a 0.75s activation time would make it a lot more likely to complete.

Contrary to what people have said, there _are_ references, both in Guild Wars 1 and in the books such as Ghosts of Ascalon, that necromancy _is_ often distrusted by humans due to its tendency to be associated with evil acts. Part of the reason for the Order in GW1 was to limit this by making sure that any necromancer that went bad started getting taken down hard.

However, it's more of a case of being suspicious of the potential that a necromancer _might_ go bad rather than an assumption that any necromancer _will_ go bad. A human necromancer will probably be watched more closely for signs that they're going bad than other human spellcasters, but they're still generally regarded as being on the level unless there are any indications otherwise. If anything, a noble necromancer would probably have less social problems than a necromancer from lower classes, because the people they interact with are likely to be better educated and less likely to jump to prejudiced conclusions, and because wealthy people are generally allowed to get away with more without social consequence (in part because someone who's already wealthy is seen as less likely to use their skills for criminal activity, even if in practice that doesn't seem to be the case, and in part... consider the cliche about how if you're rich you're not crazy, you're _eccentric_).

One thing you could possibly consider using as a model, even if it's not a Krytan example, is House Durheim of the Kurzicks.

> @"Indure.5410" said:

> > @"Darknicrofia.2604" said:

> > Those changes aren't coming to PvP (yet, or at all) according to cmc.

>

> Not sure why the changes to Courageous Return then, since they aren't really in builds using Valor in PVE.

They may be splitting up the announcements in terms of what the changes are aimed at, but I'm pretty sure that this change will come to sPvP as well. While they're moving into a more split-friendly balance regime, I think they're still holding to the policy that skills and traits should broadly do the same thing in every mode, just with different numbers. I don't see them keeping the current Courageous Return in PvP just because this isn't categorised as a PvP-focused change.

> @"Knighthonor.4061" said:

> > @"RegnieRiku.4102" said:

> > I don't understand all the GS on rev requests. Both other heavies have GS access. What about pistols? Where's their heavy class representation?

>

> whats the legendary Pistol?

> Now compare to the Legendary Greatsword.

>

> You can answer this question yourself.

So it's based primarily on aesthetics?

I guess that makes sense, actually. There's no guarantee that the skills a revenant greatsword gets are going to be actually useful, but it _is_ reasonably safe to assume that from an aesthetic perspective, a greatsword is going to be a greatsword.

> @"Jojo.6590" said:

>

> Wow, these changes came out fast and are really spot on (would be nice to see these changes applied to WvW too) :)!

>

> Just an idea for Mirage and Chrono. Removing distortion and illusionary persona (LP) was too much, just taking away the former would have been fine as Chrono's clone generation/ up time really isn't that high (at least compared to Mirage). However these changes done to Chrono could actually (I know this is going to get some backlash) balance out Mirage really well with how the specialization functions. Mirage does not need distortion as it has Mirage cloak (a fancy distortion) on top of this Mirage also has really good (maybe even considerably high) clone generation and up time. I would not be surprised if removing LP and distortion brought Mirage inline, of course this is no minor change and would also require changes to a few traits and maybe even a new unique shatter for Mirage to replace distortion (at least one could hope ;) ).

> All in all these "minor" changes are spot on and the speed at witch you and your team did this is amazing! A big THANK YOU is definitely in order :)

>

> (Edit grammar)

One idea I've been pondering myself is replacing mirage shatters with clone commands that don't _necessarily_ involve the destruction of the clone. That way, mirage could maintain the theme it currently has of being able to use its clones as a persistent source of damage like an old-school phantasm build without needing IH, but it can't add the spike potential of shatters on top of that.

So, F1 might trigger IH next time you dodge, F2 might cause the clones to copy the next weapon skill you activate that isn't an autoattack or an illusion-generating skill (with reduced coefficients, naturally), F3... would need to be some form of hard CC so it still works with Confounding Suggestions (maybe it could essentially replace Illusionary Ambush and cause a daze as well - but the daze is linked to the skill rather than to individual clones so it lacks the potential to set up chain-dazes) and F4 could essentially be Desert Distortion packed into a single skill, being the one panic button that the Mirage has that actually consumes their clones.

Obviously, this is going into the territory of "major rework" rather than PvP balance, but it would be one way to give mirage a solid tradeoff compared to core.

If they're still looking to enforce "tradeoffs" (ideally remembering that one less core traitline is already a tradeoff), it will probably be Mirage and Soulbeast in their proverbial sights.

For Mirage, I could see a potential for a fairly deep rework. If shatters were replaced by skills that got their clones to do something that was less impactful than a traditional shatter but which, in most cases, did not consume the clone, than that might allow mirages to maintain their theme without being so dependent on IH... while also reducing their spike potential in PvP.

For Soulbeast... I'm not sure. Easiest approach would probably be to give their pets a stats reduction, a la Druid, so instead of the lower stats being a druid thing, the higher stats could be specifically a core ranger thing. Soulbeast already has an easier time keeping their pet alive (since exiting beastmode revives the pet) so a soulbeast might still have advantages in being a beastmaster even with such a tradeoff.

From what ArenaNet was talking about before HoT launch, Dragonhunter was already supposed to have a bit of a "witch hunter for those corrupted by dragons" identity.

Combining Retribution with Confusion, and maybe Torment, would make for a fairly strong "punishment" theme, but I suspect there'd be a lot of complaints about what they'd probably call an elite spec based around their opponent not being able to play. (Just look at the complaints that mesmers already attract.)