InsaneJournal

Guild Wars meta crap, ignore
Like the title says, most of f-list is not interested. This is just me rambling.

Because the non-core professions got seriously hated on over the years and they need to be buffed.

Assassin:
I bitch about this quite a bit and at this point, there's not much more I can say. But, there are still a few more points I can make that I feel have been neglected in the past.

The thing about assassins is that they are a melee glass canon. The problem is that while this can be devastating in PvP, it's slightly useless in PvE. This is especially difficult with h/h due to the fact that everyone spikes the same target anyway, so an individual spike that gets put out of commission for the rest of the fight is fairly useless. Currently, the only viable PvE build is either MS/DB or going critscythe, critbow for the days when your assassin just can't seem to live at melee range.

To increase PvE usability, assassins need faster recharging attacks. I've said before the four to five second recharge should be the maximum recharge on any dagger attack, but damage output should not be an assassin's sole focus. Since spiking is not all that useful in PvE, what assassins need is more utility. Dagger attacks (and even dark arts magic) need to provide more utility, such as knockdown, interrupts, and condition spam. While there quite a lot of skills on an assassin that can achieve this, these almost always tend to be the super long recharge skills. So what needs to happen in PvE is not having a bunch of fast recharge damage, but rather fast recharge interrupt, knockdown, and condition utility skills.

For example, the skill Golden Strike needs to deliver the daze condition that's on par with rangers. 5 second daze is simply not enough for an off-hand attack. However, had they reduced the recharge to 5 seconds, then at 10 energy skill spammed at 5 second intervals to deliver daze permanently on a target is much more preferable. This way the ranger can daze one target while the assassin daze another and the rest of the team take out the enemy at a leisure pace. With a fast enough recharge in attack skills (include dark arts skills), an assasin can finally switch targets like any sane melee attacker when facing with block, instead of having to carry Golden Fox Strike if they want to do any damage.

In summary, change assassin attack skills so that there is much more variability in the attack chains and such that if the assassin is blocked or blinded, s/he can still deliver either damage or support for the rest of the group.


Ritualist:
The ritualist has some very special abilities that unfortunately are not supported by their primary attribute. And while weapon spells are quite unique and useful in certain conditions, item spells are powerful skills that comes at the cost of weapon bonuses, it is the spirits, with their ability to affect all allies in earshot, that is in theory the most useful of skills. Yet, because of a spirit's inability to target specific foes, to target specific allies, and being extremely fragile, they are almost never preferred to a monk's heal party, despite being much better at damage mitigation party wide.

The first problem is that spawning power provides not enough bonuses to be worth bringing over a necromancer with infinite energy. Odd, seeing as spirits have long recharge and thus being able to get the full effect from a spirit should be preferable to spamming, but in practice is not so. Thus, the first thing that needs to happen is for spawning power to boost spirit ability. Rather than given a mere health bonus, each rank in spawning power should increase the spirit's level by 1 and its armor by 5. Thus, at 12 spawning power, a ritualist's spirit has 12 more levels and 60 more armor than the necromancer's. Suddenly, the spirit is far more durable and useful in a fight.

Second, the binding ritual spirits need to be functioning at a earshot level. In many cases, the elite spirits need to do more than attack/heal a single target. Preservation, for example, should heal all allies within earshot for 94 health and loose 94 health ever 4 seconds. Wanderlust should knock down all enemies within earshot every 3 seconds and loose the corresponding health. In fact all of the single target spirits need to be changed to affect all enemies/allies within earshot, and of course loose the corresponding amount of health in turn, thus increasing the desire for a ritualist to cast spirits rather than a necromancer.

Third, while weapon spells are useful, they need to last the full duration of their skill description rather than disappear in one hit. One hit disappearance should be the paragon's specialty, therefore weapon spell effects should always be for a full duration rather than number of attacks. This way, weapon spells can finally be on par with monk protection spells.

Finally, the ritualist needs some hex removal skills. Because they are supposedly the other healing class.


Paragon:
Since ritualists have spirits that help to buff all allies, paragon shouts and chants need to do much more to help buff party members. The command skills are especially weak compared to motivation and thus need to give party members much more useful abilities, like inflicting deep wound, gaining energy, increasing damage, etc. Where motivation gives party heals, command should increase party durability, such as increasing health and energy regeneration party wide, increasing armor for a few seconds, reducing recharge for the next skill used, and the general gives +damage for the next attack.

Since spears are projectile weapons, their effects should be comparable to bows. Height should affect the damage dealt and the bonus damage should be decreased on spear attacks. On the other hand, spear attacks should have more utility, such as removing stances without having to build up adrenalin first, attacks that can go through blocking stances/enchants, and attacks that maybe removes a few enchants here and there. Spear attacks, like paragon shouts and chants, should be utility based rather than damage based. Leave the damage to the melee classes please.

In short, having a paragon should be a boon to the group and a good, supportive boon that helps make the monk's lives easier.


Dervish:
The problem with the dervish is that not only can an assassin use their scythes better than a primary dervish can, they also have less tanking ability than the supposed glass canon (thanks to critical agility, god I love that skill). So, what a dervish needs is better self healing to tank and better enchants that actually do something rather than be useless once removed.

Mysticism needs to heal the dervish a lot more than just a mere 1 health per rank. Rather, mysticism should give 1 health per hit while under the effects of an enchantment and return energy once an enchantment ends. This effect in addition to other health gain enchantments will make it easier for dervishes to keep alive when being hit by a group of skeletons.

In order to make scythe attacks more preferable by a dervish than on an assassin (and as much as I love running critscythe on the assassin, I admit it's a broken, broken thing), scythe attacks should cost much more than a mere 5 energy. (And considering a scythe's inherent ability to hit 3 foes at once, this is a reasonable cost.) Furthermore, a dervish should be able to gain energy for each successful scythe attack, just as assassins gain energy for critical attacks. The easiest way to solve this would be for mysticism to return energy for each additional foe hit at the same rate as an assassin's critical strike. (i.e. 1 energy at rank 3, 2 energy at rank 8, and 3 energy at rank 13, thus giving a maximum of 6 energy should the dervish hit all 3 foes, and reduce 10 energy cost skills to a mere 4 energy.) This way, not even an assassin's critical strikes is enough to generate the necessary energy to use scythe attacks. At the same time, this form of energy generation is not enough to use daggers, leaving assassins as their masters.


Mesmers:
Fixing mesmers should be easy enough really. Change power return so that it is the mesmer who receives energy rather than the enemy and you have the ultimate interrupter. (Spam spam spam.)