Ukon Cairns.9160

looks good overall. finally Firebrand gets addressed. Elementalist, Catalyst, Revenant, and Chronomanacer all look like good changes. only blemish on an otherwise great patch is Deadeye range reduction. I understand if pvp could use the nerf but pve didnt. the other changes are nice and might attract players that havent played much Deadeye to try it out, but then the range being nerfed down to rifle Engineer ranges makes me concerned that players will just pick an easier Engineer build than a Deadeye build. kind of minimizing potential upside of the otherwise good changes.

First thanks for actually talking out some of the thought process here, but a couple of things are really puzzling. Like, how can you decide that core Revenant needs to lose access to alacrity (by way of ventari) in order to give quickness to herald, but then in the same patch give alacrity to core Ranger and quickness to core Warrior. Yall painting yourselves into a corner where either you have to undo these changes in the future or you never give yourselves the options of giving Ranger quick and Warrior alac. And i get needing to knock catalyst down a peg if Roul and the Snow Crowseses are abusing them that hard, but i aint stowing weapons to auto attack faster, ya hurting me as much if not more than the top dogs. Bring the top down when ya gotta but pick the floor up a bit too to compensate. Also please consider how many sources of a boon like alac or quickness a class has access to and its ease of use. Feels silly when you look at Mechanist which can provide full alacrity with auto attacks, but also has 2 mech skills and a signet to press to give it breathing room to press other buttons. Now compare that to quickness on Herald, which is only on popping your facets, so you are double tapping every utility on cooldown regardless of their other effects. Or Alacrity on Tempest which only comes from completing a long channeled skill, which comes with long cooldowns. Or most appalling compared to quickness on Catalyst, which is only on a single skill, whose cooldown is occasionally hidden, and uses a resource that needs to be built up and is shared with other skills. Im not saying they all need to be overtuned like Mechanist, we just gotta meet in the middle somewhere, gives these builds the option of at least 1 more button to press. put alac on A Tempest shout, quickness on A Herald block trait, quickness from A Catalyst combo finisher, something anything. Ending on more positive notes, harriers Herald does play better than it looks. It looked awful, and still feels a little wasteful, like im ignoring 80% of the class, but i am really enjoying that 20% im playing in. Feels pretty simple and good enough to get the job done. And ive been trying to force Bolt to the Heart on diviners alac Tempest, but now that i see you were designing with Fresh Air in mind i will give that a fair try and see how that works for me. keep up the communication!

from the top elementalist: the 5% crit chance in air attunement is kinda of pointless cause you still need to build for it cause you need that 5% in fire attunement too. alac tempest, i didnt ask for this but im intrigued by the thought of diviners tempest. catalyst and hammer changes. man, it was one of the coolest elite specs in EoD, but i cant put up anywhere near the numbers Roul and the rest of SC can, with so many of the changes we've seen to cata just being smaller numbers... it just feels like yall telling me "we made this cool thing, and its not for you." which just feels bad. engineer: the range changes for things like Aim-Assisted Rocket is nice. dont care much for holo but the thought of a pistol/pistol ranged holo forge build now that these traits play nice together is on the list of things to play, tho still rather low. mech core: jade dynamo: reworking this kinda undoes the interesting thing you did by giving the mech aim-assisted rocket. wild to see mechanist still be so strong and so simple to play, just invalidates so many other classes and builds. revenant: quick herald: i saw someone did the math so it should work but 1.5 seconds on longer cooldowns just looks so bad, i doubt i'll try it myself. salvation and ventari changes: largely interesting, i may feel more confident bringing heal renegade to group content now, tho unfortunate that this mighta shut the door on heal vindicator, as silly and niche as that already was. Edit: missed where they yoinked alac out of salvation trait. patch bad no hope. 😔 warrior: im really struggling to find a way these changes could be interpreted as good or desirable. doesnt feel like this adds a boon heal build or a chrono-esque boon tank build to pve group content, its just a powerful nerf to the "boon"dps role we had before. feels like it will be harder for me personally to do group content on warrior without my preference for spellbreaker over berserker being overlooked by "well we still want specifically banner buffs." ranger/mesmer: i dont know well enough to comment necromancer/thief: these changes arent interesting enough to comment. buffs to reaper, ele staff, and spellbreaker daggers sounded neat, but these changes arent coming to pve so im not really gonna get to see them. do hope this plays out better than it looks.

ive already refashioned and am trying to catch up on story with my deadeye because specter might just make me a thief main now. as a (potentially former) necro main, specter might be the best necro elite spec so far. (unless they can pull another 180 on harbinger)

dont love the framing of the question, but that aside Harbinger had such a fall from grace between betas. beta 1 gave this necro main the elite spec i've been waiting 5 years for and some stuff that needed addressing (it was still a beta afterall). beta 4 manage to ignore everything that needed addressing and only remove the stuff that made me excited for the spec. (the blight and lifeforce management gave me the feel of corruption condition juggling, but then beta 4 all your blight stacking tools also threw your blight away, so "blight management" became sitting in shroud, ignoring half the buttons, for 20+ seconds)

also the traits need work. they are boring and so direct. its embarrassing to see harbinger traits compared to mechanist traits or even virtuoso traits. virtuoso traits (although in need of touch ups) has its 2 things it trying to do (power and condi) and then the 3rd trait line is utility options either can dip into. personally this is the direction i wanna see harbinger explore, it has the 2 things its trying to do (condi and support) and then a 3rd trait line of utility options. but if you insist on trying to do all 3, (power, support, and condi) then look at mechanist. all the traits are so multifaceted. the major adept traits arent only a choice between power/support/condi its a choice between ranged and melee. the major grandmasters again arent just power/support/condi, they are a choice between trait interactions, utility skill interactions, the ability for the mech to take hits and the ability for the mech to evade hits. theres actual reasons to mix and match for mechanist, unlike current harbinger traits.

for me one of the things i love most about necro is the corruption condi juggling, placing condis on self to send to enemies, which is iffy in group content (supports will kindly cleanse the condis on you before you can send them) in beta 1 the blight management on harbinger really scratched that itch. you wanted max stacks for dmg multiplier, and if you dropped it you're life force plummeted to heal you. there was danger like corruptions but well meaning healers couldnt ruin what you were trying to do. beta 4 feels like a they took that away. blight thresholds just dont scratch that itch the same way. why are all my sources of blight also blight removal? i want the blight why is it so much harder to get. lordi it sucks to be teased with exactly what you wanted only to have it change in all the wrong ways. it feels like they have more work to do now than they did in august to get harbinger in a satisfying place.

actually feels a bit worse than beta 1, only just realized now, how am i supposed to stack blight if all my blight sources also remove blight now? also kinda missing the passive heal but keeping that woulda been miserable with all the skills dumping blight now. will likely share more thoughts later.

a bit disappointed, warrior is my 2nd most played class and it got the only elite spec i disliked this expac. ive never been a big fan of greatsword and bladesworn just gives up so much for a marginally cooler greatsword. pistol seems neat, but not neat enough to give up nearly every other weapon on the weaponmaster class. the funny thing is my personal idea for a warrior elite spec also disabled weapon swap, but that was cause the idea was giving them 3 weapon sets with an F button for each sets burst skill, giving the weaponmaster even more weapons to work with, not less. i want to like the explosion and ammo interactions like Major Master trait Fierce as Fire, but you've given up so many condi skills to use the gunsaber. at least im content with spellbreaker, cause im not sure theres a way for them to salvage bladesworn into something i personally will enjoy.

Vindicator was fun but it feels like its missing something. greatsword was neat but dont know if it quite hits hard enough to be the power dps rev has been looking for. heal vindicator was fun to play but feels like the utility it brings doesnt match up to what Renegade or even Herald would bring. the kurzik spear toss elite looks like its supposed to be impressive, but lacked that oomph. its almost like an action figure, where it looks neat to pick up and move around but like, what does it do?

im not much of a ranger player but untamed seemed fine... only fine. unfortunately the stuff its competing with in the betas and already in the game proper are more than fine, they're fun, or powerful, or absolutely absurd. also unfortunately giving more control over the pet by removing other controls over the pet isnt actually more control, i get that ya runnin short on buttons but untamed needs them, somewhere.

just realized i never actually gave feedback, the burst on condi virtuoso was really fun but there werent really any condis and not much dmg on it, which is kind of an issue if it wants the option of being a condi dps.

i wish i could judge the mechanist fairly but it was just too broken to enjoy this time around. as a condi engi that i really wanted, i guess its fine. did like that even tho it was clearly 3 condi traits, 3 support traits, 3 power traits, there was still reason enough to mix n match them on different builds, 1-1-3 for condi to better use the condi signet, or 3-3-1 for power to give the battle mech big boomer. disappointed that 3-1-1 condi with aim-assisted rockets doesnt really work because you cant position the battle mech, you press F2 once and no more rockets. i think an F5 key to let us ventari tablet RTS the battle mech around is a bare minimum improvement we need (besides obvious bug fixes.) mace seemed fine for power dps but i'll likely stick with dual pistols for condi dps. i hope im satisfied with whatever state mechanist launches in in february but im currently dubious.

after seeing all 9 i say harbinger is easily top 3 which is a relief. being a necro main that doesnt much like reaper and actively dislikes scourge, harbinger was a breathe of fresh air. one of the big things was managing the blight mechanic reminds me of the condi juggling with corruptions i used to love about necro, without the helpful support players interfering. liking blight so much also kinda ties in with being pretty okay with elixirs, im here to drink whatever is in the lil black bottle labeled "ignorance" one criticism, the power traits seems kind of superfluous. the harbinger traits didnt really mix n match the way the mechanist traits do, so personally i would prefer the 3 condi traits, 3 support traits, and 3 interesting utility choices the condi or support builds might choose to dip into. (tho i will admit i bias towards condi dps in general, especially on necro)

possibly my favorite of all 9 we've seen. maybe even enough to move me from a necro main to a thief main. as a condi dps with full vipers and tormenting runes scepter pistol was very comfy to play. the movement on scepter pistol 3 was a little janky but enjoyable, love it creating distance on an enemy, closing distance on a friendly, or best of all overshooting when pointblank on an ally, that third one was sincerely the best. the consuming shadow adept (major adept trait) was kind of absurd. was a very comfy survivability tool but probably should be tuned down a bit. hopefully not too much cause i liked using it, but i imagine others wouldnt be pleased with thief getting a full heal and a half for such low investment. super lookin forward to playing more of specter once EoD is out.

Catalyst is by far my favorite of these 3. it does need some work but i think 90% of that can be fixed by adjusting numbers. im liking what im seeing of hammer, augments, traits and the sphere. love the turtle friend, the whirling hammers, the loops, the voice lines. what needs improvement the sphere being stationary AND using an energy management system AND having a 15/13 second cooldown makes it a bit to difficult to comfortably use. one of those 3 things probably should be removed. the 5 second uptime on the hammer 3 loop buffs is pretty tight especially next to 3 second cast times on other hammer skills. should probably pump that up to 6 or 7 seconds at least. for a class so focused on combo fields and finishers its a bit weird for the whirling hammer 2s to not be whirl finishers and the hammer 3 projectiles not being projectile finishers is rough. also no fields on hammer itself, but that can be remedied by making the sphere better. theres some interesting traits for stacking auras but you dont really have all that much power to stack auras yourself. the elemental epitome trait gives one on a 10 second cooldown and water 4 gives one in a field every 20 seconds. and with those aura buffs only being 6 seconds long is super rough. that said, theres actually a lot of buffs to maintain between Elemental Empowerment, Empowering Auras, Flame Wheel and friends, your Jade Sphere boons, maybe even a Persisting Flames or a Relentless Fire thrown in. would be nice it if was a bit easier to maintain more of these buffs more often. with sphere adjustments and adjustments to cooldowns and durations, the rest is just tuning dmg numbers so it can do solid dps on an enemy thats smaller than an entire room. with those changes id be more than happy to swap mains to catalyst as soon as EoD launches.

I have noticed that the third hit of Scepter 1, Ether Clone, doesnt make a 4th or 5th dagger. gets to 3 then just stacks torment. assuming this is a bug, not intended.

yeah, servers seem to be struggling right now, at the moment i am both in a party AND not in a party. someone said they were dropping but their portrait remained in the UI, so i tried to start another DRM and the pop up didnt show that players name. curious. so then i dropped from party to reform. except after leaving party all 3 of them were still in my UI, with (nonfunctional) options to kick them from the party, or to join them in their instance. when i type in party chat it doesnt give me the message saying that im not in a party, but also doesnt show me any party chat. i since clicked create squad, which put up my tag which other players can see and click on the join option, but they can not join cause i am not in a squad, it tells me that when i try to type in squad chat. some real interesting nonsense for sure.

the May 11th patch was a good start at providing clarity to dmg modifiers in traits; Piercing Shards (Water: major adept) specifies it only affects Strike dmg, Elements of Rage (Weaver: major grandmaster) got changed to affect All dmg, but one that slipped through the cracks was Serrated Stones (Earth: major adept) still using the old "deal increased dmg" wording which testing has shown doesnt include condi dmg. im asking, can Anet do one more pass on all traits and use the "Strike / Condition / All" wording to clarify what these dmg modifier traits actually do.

I would like to see more consistency and clarity in the wording of traits. Today I noticed that engi has traits that refer to both "damage" (Modified Ammunition) and "strike damage" (Impact Savant) to refer to power damage. Other classes have traits (like Ferocious Aggression) that give bonuses to both "damage" (meaning power damage) and "condition damage" Since we have the different language now, could we have "strike damage" used to refer to power damage, "condition damage" for condition damage, and "damage" could be consolidated to refer to both. Specifically for traits, but also for anywhere else this wording can be used.

The skill Eat Egg you get from picking up harpy eggs or from ranger pig pets foraging fills chrono's illusion pips allowing them to use all shatter skills on cooldown, but preventing the shatter skills from doing damage / having other effects while also preventing you from summoning more clones.

the linked video hes fighting a ranger with a pig pet, who can forage for an egg to eat. i think thats it. im makin a thread in bug report now.

i also ran into this bug. in Jahai Bluffs there are harpy eggs you can pick up and eat to restore health and initiative. can it be the game giving us initiative fills up the mesmer pips but since you're not a thief you cant spend the initiative??

Obviously charr and asura make for obvious choices for engi,but im always enamored by the idea of norn engi using their inventions to try and emulate the spirits of the wild.The entire kit calls to Raven's cunning. Elixirs make you ferocious or tenacious like Bear. You have access to stealth and rocket boots to pounce like Snow Leopard.The turrets and weapon skills can also fit in to the loner, wilderness survival aspects of the norn.And last but not least, who better than an engi to set up a distillery to make some fine booze for the festivities ;)

its just not for me. i have gone into wvw from time to time for rewards but it feels like a mistake every time i do.just doesnt feel worth getting into if i havent already spent 1000 hours in wvw and/or plan on spending the next 1000 hours there.