Daniel Handler.4816

Maybe the implied health sacrifice mechanic? Hopefully virtuoso has some sort of speed in its traits.

https://massivelyop.com/2021/08/12/guild-wars-2-reveals-the-guardians-new-elite-spec-willbender-plus-more-end-of-dragons-info/ It is definitely active combat, but I don't see what is fast about it? As far as I can tell it doesn't have any mobility, and everything has a cast time. Skills are either slow, or they look quick but the actual effect is pulsing slower. Like thousand cuts is actually 6, over 3 seconds. That's slower than a meteor shower. I guess you can't take visual trickery out of mesmer.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/youre-invited-to-the-first-elite-specialization-beta-event/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=news&utm_campaign=rss Light blue. It's not thief.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/youre-invited-to-the-first-elite-specialization-beta-event/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=news&utm_campaign=rss They filled in the silhouettes colour. Its guardian.

Except they aren't working if you watch the video. Sharper images is not proccing on blade skills. It's possible this is supposed to be a grandmaster, or it's a bug. But I wouldn't be surprised if it just wasn't a thing.

Elite specialization

The colour is wrong for guardian.

Colour is probably the strongest indicator.

about as much as staff ele and druid. immob spam is already a thing. edit: though this will probably see some reduction so it doesn't get out of hand with condi duration.

They pierce by default, except for f3 which probably pierces with master of fragmentation. When something is added to a tool tip from traits it is blue. Mental anguish is from domination, piercing is default.

Whether you think the devs care about balancing guardians, they do nerf mesmers in response to community backlash. It is easier to build up from here (like adding stacks of unblockable) than going through cycles of nerfs because we have no perceived drawback. The "whole chrono doesn't bring anything but grav well" argument is pretty weird. It uses core utilities, yes, but gets to use them more often because of alacrity/IA and CS. Shield is incredibly useful for CC, one of the only skills in the game that can affect an entire zerg. MoD is a ranged aoe cc to proc the double damage on sword of decimation, vuln/boon rip traits in domination, and potentially absorption sigil. there are other options of course. Mesmer is just okay in PvP. Its been nerfed too many times because people complained about counterplay. See 1. I don't disagree that it's tone deaf. At the same time. I think it's about the only way we will have anything remotely strong, because players will just whine about anything that doesn't have counterplay. We'll just have to learn to play around it. (Albeit something far easier to do in PvP than in WvW)

For mesmer i dont think so. But it has happened before for other professions. Revenant's unyielding anguish is entirely different from beta.

Jaunt was only 300 range. Everyone complained and it was extended to 450.

First off, you should care about the 1v1 potential of the class because when it gets to be too excessive the entire spec is changed. The devs aren't going to let mesmers be complete monsters in small scale wvw just because zerging also exists. And on zerging, my guess is you've been trying to run power chrono. Which yeah, that's rough being useful in a coordinated group for the reasons you outlined. But it also isn't the only build. Support chrono doesn't need non-grav wells or illusions to attack to benefit from shield/alacrity/cs/grav as a cc/utility bot. Its only drawback is the lack of distortion, and griefing yourself with cs. Virtuoso is similarly balanced. You have no distortion on demand and you can grief yourself. This means we probably won't see some crazy nerf in the future. As far as reliability. MoD + Sword of Decimation > Rain of Swords and then Bladeturn Requiem and sword auto seems good enough for when they have reflects up. Especially if their stab has already been stripped because then it does way more damage/boon rip.

While the reddit thing is a bit silly. We have mistook a dragon's influence as it's physical presence before with Jormag and Drakkar Lake. The Krait and Quaggan were forced out of their home by something. That something being the DSD dragon is a good assumption but not necessarily the case. It is possible this is fairly simple story with no twists. And it's just a supercharged DSD trying to eat all this dragon jade technology, and some super intelligent Canthan is going to deus ex machina a way to stop it without killing it with Taimi. It is way more interesting if dragon jade is literally from dragons.

It seems like the dragons need to reduce the amount of magic in the world, whether it is unbound, or in objects/people. Though that could just be their hunger.

Domination/illusions/virtuoso? It doesn't seem like sharper images works with blades. And fencer's finesse uptime is going to much lower without sword clones or sw/x +sw/x

So do we know that the deep sea dragon woke up in the unending ocean before the Jade wind?

Probably dagger/torch + greatsword. The spec doesn't want to get into melee range. And needs stealth to reposition.

We know where Bubbles woke up, but do we know when?

when chrono came out f5 was tacked on. It was just core shatters with free alacrity and the ability to double skills. the viability of non-grav wells was irrelevant to bursting people down with basically no counterplay. Mirage was damage built into evade frames. Virtuoso's block/distortion is channeled, it has no instant skills, the player is the source of damage. There are no defensive mechanics holding back its power. Think of Necro's lich form. It's allowed to be incredibly strong because it is easily counterable.

What if they were in that part of the ocean when it turned to rock? Perhaps Dragon Jade is Jade powered by a petrified/subjugated deep sea dragon.

Perhaps Cantha, like so many civilizations before it, has become so magically advanced that the dragons would need to drain and recycle it to keep magic levels in check. We need to somehow restart the dragon cycle, and the villain of EoD is some industrialist going for endless progress.

I mean can't they move?

chrono and mirage had no liabilities when they came out. and now look what happened. no distortion, or minus a dodge. virtuoso seems to have enough built-in counterplay that they can balance it numerically instead of going through drawn out mechanical redesigns like the previous two.