Petition to have the statue lower into the ground a bit at the start of the meta or failing that disable that final forced jump to the middle. Let players make their own way over there after the chains break and there's more of a chance they'll see it.

Edit: Not worth a separate post so I'll add here- The miasma forming around the statue is another cool thing most people miss as it happens as the portal at the Forge is created. I'd like to see this delayed a little, give people a chance to see it form while standing on the platforms.

The more unique/rare drop rates can stay, but I just want to finish the achievements for completing the armor sets!

Some of the VoE especs feel like they want for weapons that express a similar fantasy. For example, Troubadour doesn't have any musically themed weapons to equip. This just feels like natural design space to bring in some of the less used weapons (for purposes of legendary grind parity), as well as edge in some additional weapon archetypes we seem to be missing:

* Paragon - shortbow (healbow?)

* Conduit - focus (enhances equipped legend?)

* Galeshot - shield/OH sword (an offhand shield would lean further into the Twilight Princess fantasy. I could also see a thrown/grapple offhand sword to toss the Drizzt fans a boon...how does ranger not have two swords yet? Either would be wind-themed.)

* Antiquary - focus (it's Thief's luck-based class...dice?)

* Amalgam - torch (soldering on a condi class covered in liquid metal)

* Troubadour - shortbow/warhorn (harp or trumpet, very self explanatory). I could be happy with either.

Here we get into weirder territory but I think it still works:

* Evoker - torch. If any ele espec is going to change torch fire into other elements, it is Evoker, the espec forcing element specialization. Plus the spec gives a vibe of Norny fire/smoke ritual summoning.

* Ritualist - longbow. It's a ranged turret class, so we want a ranged weapon. Also one thing Ritualist lost in the transition from GW1 was an array of lightning spells, which seems very doable with a longbow.

* Luminary - is dead to me. I guess a warhorn could play with its kind of martial theming, and it could summon a warrior construct made of light? Iunno I tried but it is just a half-finished, cowardly design so it is hard to work with.

In summary, adding 2 foci over the current *none* we have for especs would increase use across professions. Additionally we have only ever had one warhorn, longbow, and shortbow, so adding one or two would help. And then just generally shields and torches haven't seen love since HoT so spread them around. Rifle and pistol are fine for now after SotO, and I don't need to see another hammer after the VoE especs.

What about toggle them on/off separately with more checkboxes? Like 4 checkboxes in each corner of the icon for sun ray, sand, water and miniatures (crabs, fish, sandcastles)

However, when VoE launched I was quite surprised to see that there wasn't a default Conjured Doorway directly tied to the Comosus Isle map (like there was with the Kodan Conjured Doorway and Hearth's Glow).

It would've been nice to have a conjured doorway that matches that beach / island vibe directly. If one could be added with this initiative perhaps it could be given to a vendor in Shipwreck Strand? Either way it would be nice to have a doorway that aesthetically matches each homestead map we get in future.

• Perhaps it could be a sandcastle door that spawns?
• Maybe the portal itself could behave like water?
• It would be cool to hear ocean and beach sound effects when it appears
• Maybe put a lil dancing crab on it for good measure!

RUNDOWN OF WHERE SPECIALIZATIONS WANT TO SPECIALIZE

* Core - nothing necessarily needs to change, but core and its synergy with ele especs needs to stop treating attunement swapping as the fundamental building block of ele. Core ele benefits from bonuses on attunement swapping in each elemental specialty. None of the especs actually need these bonuses, and they should be designed as if core attunement swap bonuses are extra sprinkles on top, not the fundaments of every spammy, spastic gameplay loop of every ele build. Catalyst and weaver already have built-in incentives that can be capitalized on that benefit from but largely trivialize the core traits; Tempest and Evoker don't really need them at all. To specify, I am not saying ele especs should not use multiple elements; what I am saying is that instead of generically forcing attunement ambivalence/swapping in every. single. espec., especs should be designed around how they best allow players to select which subset of elements they want to play in and stick to. We have specializations now, let them specialize instead of fighting this losing ideological battle that every ele build is about a "flexibility" that comes into tension with all of these especs.

* Evoker - single element summoner. Make single element gameplay baseline. I don't know why they tried to make a "flexible" espec here when the result is a very diluted, superficial rehash of things which came before--the single-element concept was good and very appropriate for Evoker's central identity. There will still be enough buildcraft available here, especially bearing in mind that there are three other especs' worth of builds players can explore. Add a third tier of familiar "chargeup" where the familiar reaches a pure, fifth element "spirit form" (with a Spirit Shroud?). Replace the center line of traits with nonelemental/spirit traits that are universal to that phase. Let Evoker fully embrance (a) single element gameplay and (b) the highly requested "fifth element" gameplay everyone wants. Again: why are the Norn assigning elements to the Spirits when they are usually all just...nonelemental spirity, and why isn't Evoker capitalizing on that?

* Catalyst - cycling combo-field geomancer. Smooth out and make a four-element cycler a little less punishing/clunky. Hammer cataboontank is one of my favorite builds to play in open world, but there are definitely ways it can lean into its strengths away from Evoker. First, your active F1-F4 attunement should be "pumpable" to generate energy; this gives Catalyst more of a mechanical identity in its F skills that synergizes with its energy theme, as well as allows it to generate energy out of combat (and just...in a more exciting/dimensional way than hitting things). Second, we do want greater access to spheres outside of sphere specialist and perhaps the ability to, sometimes, not rotate to the next element and double up on the same sphere, so make sphere specialist baseline or make augments recharge the corresponding sphere, or both. Finally, Catalyst is the combo field class, so it really deserves either (a) a larger suite of combo fields or (b) more combo fields the other especs don't have access to. I don't think poison fits Catalyst's vibe at all. I would, at minimum, add a wind field/aura and magnetic field into the game and replace the lightning and poison fields so Catalyst has a purer "geomancer"/support vibe (wind and magnetic fields would further add dimensionality to classes like Galeshot, Amalgam, etc.). I could also see room for a trait that would swap between fire/ice/lightning/poison ("attack magic") and light/water/wind/magnetic ("support magic"), which could offer some flexibility with balancing Catalyst.

(I also, personally, think Catalyst would be much more distinct and interesting as a support/tank class that provided consistent group stability instead of quickness on spectacular sphere. I have never felt like quickness really suits its vibe in any sense except for piling on boons as a support tank. I would strongly consider making Catalyst a class which solely trades off tanking/support/DPS, and move quickness to being a Weaver support option. This would create meaningful tradeoffs for Catalyst that haven't really existed since the alac/quickness patch instead of a class that can just pile on stuff. Also Staunch Auras was great and Elemental Synergy is a flavorless winmore trait only designed for PvP and I hate it.)

* Weaver - (opposite) element synergist. Double down on two element builds and craft space for fire/water and earth/air builds. Weaver is the most fully realized ele espec, so my suggestion here is fairly minor but I think very aligned with its design. Evoker's impotent middle line of traits makes me realize that Evoker shouldn't be trying to make "dual element" traits at all. That should be Weaver's wheelhouse. And, in fact, Weaver could be designed to capitalize on design space which core Ele heavily decentivizes: "opposite element" pairings (water/fire and earth/air). Core ele generally guides players into "adjacent" pairings: earth/water, water/air, air/fire, fire/earth, and currently not even Weaver--despite its art and glove skin suggesting a fire/water dichotomy--really supports water/fire or earth/air builds (Steamshrieker/Stormsinger don't really excuse this).  Adding a full center traitline--instead of the comparatively flavorless superspeed/swiftness traits we currently have, or really any of the traits, I'm not fond of Weaver's options--granting water/fire and earth/air synergies would really give Weaver some additional design space away from the other three especs.

* Tempest - inverted element force of nature. Make it less like a generic Ele+; invert element functionality. Evoker also, functionally, just plays far too similarly to Tempest; both especs heavily lean into single-element gameplay and neither really shakes up core element functionality, which means they both feel very similar. n fact, I generally have found Tempest to be the most boring ele class, because it just slapped an Overload on top of an Ele+ build, a one-note aurashare gimmick, and called it a day. Given that Tempest lacks a lot of mechanical identity compared to the other three especs, I think Tempest needs to invert element functionality in a way that will (a) give it distinct elemental niches away from the other especs and (b) capitalize on its "natural disaster" weathermage flavor. Fire should reduce DPS and increase support (particularly add a revive skill). Water should increase DPS and reduce support (ice mage, finally?). Air should decrease DPS and increase defense. Earth should reduce condi damage and increase physical damage and forced movement. Or something to that effect.

SUMMARY

Coming back around to summarize how these designs would create more defined and varied niches that cater to players' interests, we would have:

* Evoker - four single element builds with some degree of dimensionality.

* Weaver - six primarily dual element builds (emphatically creating non-core space for fire/water and air/earth) with flexibility of weaving in three or four.

* Catalyst - four element cycling build with flexibility to linger in a single element for DPS, boon, or healing goals.

* Tempest - a slower, more flexible blastmage class that can use as many or as few elements as it feels, with niches neither core nor the other three especs offer: Boon/rez fire, dps water/ice, tanky air, and movement earth.

* Core - standard attunement-swapping gimmicks and element functionality.

I find this odd, and it has genuinely put me off trying Kela more since the release of the encounter, as I do like the plan a strategy to fights, however Kela randomly pursuing someone else and then coming back to the fixate is very strange behaviour to me, and in some ways I don't feel it is intended? I sometimes as well see that she doesn't move too much on some PoVs, but then on others she does, and it just leads to this sense of the fight feeling extremely random and oddly scripted in a way, which I do understand can be there for a difficulty increase, however even random attacks / low-telegraphed movements in other fights have some degree of similarity between pulls, whereas Kela (at least from the like 10 pulls I did) was very randomly pursuing random people for a few seconds, then coming back to me as the relic holder, and when you're trying to position her for waves / crab killing, her dashing off for no reason at all then coming back is quite infuriating in all honesty, as you can't then go chase her otherwise she won't be positioned right after re-focusing on the relic holder, but if you don't chase her, you can lose boon up-time on allies that move away from the relic holder.

If you consider other fixation tanking mechanics such as Issue Challenge in wing 5, Soulless Horror always follows the person fixated, and doesn't randomly spin around and focus someone else before following the fixated person again.

I would like to suggest if Kela's fixation could be adjusted to work more like Soulless Horror's as I find that fixation / tanking mechanic to be a lot more reliable and planned, and the technology exists already to allow for the Issue Challenge functionality to be ported over to the relic holder's fixation functionality. It could even be added in a similar way where the relic holder gets some kind of ancient corruption debuff (like Necrosis) and they need to throw the relic to a second tank if there was a concern of a single tank being able to handle everything at once.

Thank you for reading! ☺️

When a Defiance Bar is present, but is so large that groups can never break them, then they are only a detriment to the player experience. Someone unfamiliar with an encounter will attempt to Break the Defiance Bar, distracting them from meaningfully contributing to the event and frustrating everyone in the process.

Reducing the scaling of the Avatars' Defiance Bars would add back an element to the fight that was clearly meant to be there from the start (freeing allies from Shackles of the All Seer), but is currently best to ignore (as it is VERY unlikely to succeed).

I assume it's just a bug and is broken but if it's an intended design having an actually useful mastery not work in a specific map because "reason" feels terrible.