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The original was posted on /r/guildwars2 by /u/WaterPlane122 on 2024-04-07 16:41:01.
This post is the first of a planned series to foster discussion about traits that, over the course of expansions and balance patches, have become obsolete, underperforming and/or for whatever reason is never utilized by the majority of players.
Chronomancer Specialization
Table of Chronomancer specialization traits - via Guild Wars 2 Wiki
The Dead Traits
Today we are going to focus on two traits in the top row of Chronomancer specialization.
The combination of these two traits provide 15% bonus critical chance against Slowed foes.
On paper, that would save you 315 attribute points, but if you really look into it, there are a couple problems with this combo preventing it from ever being picked.
The Problems
- Delayed Reactions has a 3 second interval.
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Mesmer has a wide range of access to control effect, so it is reasonable to set a cooldown to prevent Mesmer from easily stacking up Slow over 10 seconds on their opponent in PvP/WvW.
However, the same treatment does not translate well into the PvE scene. The cooldown just limits Chronomancer's ability to stack Slow on their opponents way too much, resulting in inconsistent critical chance buff from Danger Time.
That makes the latter a less valuable pick, and in turn, making Delayed Reactions itself a lackluster because the Slow condition by itself is not that powerful and even less so when the opportunity cost is 10% damage increase on Shatter skills from Time Catches Up, which is now meta for both PvP and PvE damage dealer builds.
But what about other players? Surely they can stack the condition for you in instanced group contents?
Unfortunately, you simply cannot expect them to do it for you because Slow is one of the least accessible condition by all professions. Not in Raids or Strike Mission and even less so in Fractals.
- Danger Time's opportunity cost is just too much.
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To fully capitalize on Delayed Reactions, players must take Danger Time. The problem with that is it has an opportunity cost of Improved Alacrity.
And Improved Alacrity is one of the most broken trait design ever made.
First of all, there's the 10% damage bonus while under Alacrity. This was added after the +5% critical chance change on Fury in PvE, which already somewhat trivialized the critical chance bonus from Danger Time. And the damage bonus is really the final nail in the coffin.
And then the trait's core functionality. It makes Alacrity recharge your skills faster. That alone is broken enough because whatever build or role you take—DPS, Boon Support, Healing—you get benefit out of it by being able to cast whatever skill more frequently.
That means whatever functionality the other traits of the same Major Master tier has to provide, they have to directly compete against Improved Alacrity.
That is problematic. When the functionality of different traits of the same tier overlaps each other, player will always choose the most effective one over the rest.
This is what happens for today's meta DPS builds. Danger Time is not worth taking because Improved Alacrity simply benchmarks higher in terms of both burst damage and damage over time.
The Solutions
Let's first lay out the ideal trait design paradigm:
Traits of the same tier (or, traits being each other's opportunity cost) should offer functionalities distinct from each other.
In other words, each trait should have their unique functionality and intended use case, and they should never compete to offer the same functionality under the same use case, or players will just pick the more effective one and render the other(s) useless.
This coincides with the developer's published Balance Philosophy, in which it is stated that:
Purity of Purpose
Purity of purpose is the idea that a skill (or trait, or weapon, etc.) should have a well-defined identity. In other words, skills should not do too many different things at once. Some common skill identities include damage, defense, support, control, and mobility.
And...
Minimizing Bad Choices
This is just another way of saying that we want as many build components as possible—weapons, slot skills, traits, etc.—to have situations that they are viable in. Some skills may be restricted to more niche applications, but we want to avoid cases where a skill simply has no relevant use case. This can sometimes be difficult when considering the needs of multiple game modes, but that leads to our next topic: skill splits.
Notice that Improved Alacrity is a direct violation of these two design principles. It is an all-rounder that enhances all actions with a cooldown, and it renders Danger Time a bad choice in terms of both burst damage (more PvP oriented) and damage over time (PvE).
The solution would not be be reworking Danger Time into something that could heal more or provide longer lasting boons, because Improved Alacrity could cover those as well. You can safely say that this trait blocks off any trait design of the same Major Master tier that enhances player character's performance overtime as long as such performance is dependent on skill recharge.
Instead, the solution will be either of the following:
- Completely rework Improved Alacrity into something not all all encompassing & make Danger Time more accessible
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For Improved Alacrity, something more generic like enhanced healing effect and/or enhanced boon duration would be a good start. This would also go well with All's Well That Ends Well of the same bottom row and together make up a consistent theme.
For Danger Time, there are two possible approaches.
- Remove cooldown on Delayed Reactions in PvE.This would largely improve Slow uptime on single target.
Time Sink alone would be able stack up Slow for 20 seconds with 3 clones. That's over 80% uptime coverage under Alacrity with Illusion specialization selected. Throw in a couple more CC in every ~24 s and you get permanent single target coverage.
Now, whether 20 seconds of Slow is too OP in PvE is another debate...
Accept the current state under which Slow is just not accessible enough and assign a new, more easily accomplished conditional for Danger Time, such as proc on movement impaired foes, although that would break Chronomancer's theme around "time".
Alternatively, making it work unconditionally on defiant foes is a good start, though the use cause would still be highly limit out side of boss fights.
-
Either way, you keep the +15% critical chance bonus, and make crit-capping on Chronomancer super easy.
Just get a full set of Assassin's weapons and armor with Berserker's trinkets and you get exactly 60% critical chance. Danger Time adds 15% and Fury adds 25%. You get exactly 100% critical chance without having to fuzz around tools like Gear Optimizer.
If the resulting benchmark is subpar, simply move the 10% increased critical damage from the Improved Alacirty before rework to Danger Time.
- Keep Improved Alacrity's current function...
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1by62n5/balance_philosophy_dead_traits_that_you_never/
