In a new blog post ArenaNet details some of the skill and trait changes coming on June 25th.

It has been announced that the upcoming content patch for Guild Wars 2 is going to feature a massive balance update. In a blog post released today, ArenaNet went over a few of the changes to skills and traits and some of the reasons behind them.

The overall force behind this massive balance update was to promote build diversity. To this effect ANet revised traits, merged a couple traits together, removed some traits altogether and added some new ones in their place. While this is a major balance update, not everything is seeing major changes. Some skills are seeing some minor boosts while others might see a bit of a nerf. To this effect ANet commented that they don't want to take too much away from popular builds since people enjoy them, but buffing everything else up to their level would invite an unwanted power creep.

As mentioned in our update overview, every trait line in the game is seeing changes. This includes the addition of several new grandmaster traits including an Air trait that allows recharging elementalist's air attunement, giving necromancers access to burning and warriors a trait that removes conditions when using burst skills. Some traits will also be moving up a tier to make some extremely effective builds harder to achieve.

Necromancer is getting a Death Shroud 5 ability called Tainted Shackles. This skill causes nearby enemies to be inflicted with conditions and controlled (cc'd) if action isn't taken.

Along with Tainted Shackles is the addition of a new condition: Torment. Under Torment, players take periodic damage but will take even more damage as they move. Torment will be available to necromancers, thieves and mesmers.

The Weakness condition is also getting a boost. Previously Weakness decreased endurance regeneration and caused non-critical attacks to have a chance to become a glancing blow. Weakness remains mostly the same while also gaining the chance to cause critical attacks to become glancing blows as well. This was done to help mitigate spike damage.

Stun breakers are being spread around to help give more build diversity. For some professions, stun breakers would exist almost entirely in a single utility skill type such as elementalist's cantrips. By spreading stun breakers out to more utility types, more diverse builds would have access to them. Elementalist's for example will see stun breakers show up in glyph and signet utility types after the patch.

This update will be coming out on June 25th. For more information on what the update has to offer, check out the update overview here on ZAM.

Matt "Mattsta" Adams