Clockless.2503

It's the opposite. The elite specs are intended to change the feel of the profession. So you don't get the Paladin feel from guardian elites, but you might like the Druid ranger spec, or the Bladesworn warrior, or the Herald or something. The Willbender is intended to appeal to people who usually like the thief.

Isn't that the same place you want to be standing to get the maximum value out of your mantras? I don't know why you'd want to take that step forward at all.

They should change the name from Mantras to Breath attacks. You aren't reciting anything at this point, you're just spitting.

I've been thinking about hammer a lot, because it seems a shame I can't find a reason to ever use it. I'd like to see Zealot's Embrace turn into a whirling pull. I've always liked the pull on Axe3 and I think it would open up some interesting gameplay. I'd also move the symbol to Mighty Blow. Symbols are too important to your build to put at the end of an auto attack chain.

We call them brass knuckles. I don't think they'll make focus a melee weapon just because a lot of the visuals would be strange. I think they would be more likely to add a new weapon type if they wanted that kind of melee/bruiser-style combat (and that would be hard because of the lack of weapon skins in old sets, but I've been wondering if they could maybe use the same skin as the dagger and leave off the blade so it's just a hilt?). Off hand scepter is definitely possible, there are a lot of classes that could make something of that. It's mostly just visuals. Greatsword can be a ranged weapon, staff can be melee, anything can be anything.

It would be nice if you could deliver gifts to Skovtrolde Hearthstead

It's definitely much-improved. The virtue uptime is high enough that I don't feel the loss of passives, the offhand sword is a little better (though I have a lot more success with Scepter/Torch somehow, even on power builds). I like having the choice to make a condi build even if the damage is quite a bit lower than I'd want. You basically have options now, which feels a lot better even though everyone is going to end up doing the same things anyway. The UI flames are great, I'd like it if they were a little more visible though, or maybe if they went *poof* a little when they ended. I wanted to reduce the virtueless periods as much as possible, and between the faded effect and the flickering it was hard to see when one was ending. Reversal of Fortune... works. The utilities are okay, it's not like you are forced to use them all, they're just more options, and, except for Heel Crack, I think they all have their uses. Flowing Resolve is an awkward little scoot. I think it would work a lot better if it were a straight-up disengage like Roiling Light (double-tap to reengage?). I never wanted to use it at all (and if I did I regretted it). Swapping back-and-forth between Justice and Courage is all you really want to do right now.

Guardian - Willbender When Willbender made its appearance in Beta 1, we were hoping it'd dash into your hearts. It didn't quite make it, so we've executed changes on some of the major pain points we saw brought up and are excited to see you get your hands on it again soon in Beta 4. Key pieces of feedback that we identified were: 1) Skill animation felt stiff, with many skills rooting you in place during their animations. Specific changes made in response to this feedback: We've taken a look at a bunch of skills, with the approach of 'is there a strong gameplay reason why you shouldn't be able to move while executing this skill?' For several of these, the answer was no, and we've made appropriate adjustments. For example, Whirling Light now not only allows you to move during it, but increases your speed. See the full list of changes below for details on all adjusted skills. This relates to the following feedback we took to heart: 2) The teaser video and theme were about motion and momentum, but the specialization did not effectively deliver on this. Specific changes made in response to this feedback: We wanted to double down on the essential feel of Willbender; fast, mobile, never stopping, and rewarding you for pressing the attack. We've taken special care to update the Willbender Virtue skills to carry this sense of momentum. The F1, Rushing Justice, has been updated to decrease total execution time, improve the transition between the dash and the finishing attack, and to make the attack portion always execute. The F2, Flowing Resolve, is now a short dash that holds two charges, allowing you to space them out to capitalize on the healing effect, or use them back-to-back for quick direction changes, leaving multiple trails of Willbender Flames behind you. In Willbender's traits, we've reworked Restorative Virtues to be a key component of aggressive builds, as it now reduces the cooldown of all of your weapon skills whenever you trigger one of your active Virtue effects with subsequent strikes while a Virtue is active. 3) Lack of synergy with core Guardian trait lines, due to little support for Burning, and lack of exciting interactions between active virtues and Virtue-boosting traits. Specific changes made in response to this feedback: While the Willbender excels at being a fast and deadly dual-blade attacker, Beta 1 showed that there was a lot of room to improve the trait selection to allow for other strong and interesting build combinations. We've revamped the first tier of Willbender traits, removing the attribute reductions, and focusing them on improving Condition Damage (and adding Burning to Willbender Flames), Power, or Healing, respectively. We've also created interactions between traits in other locations, such as updating the grandmaster trait Phoenix Protocol to work with the Virtues grandmaster Battle Presence to be able to apply Alacrity to allies. Full List of Changes to Willbender: Willbender Virtues: Willbender Flames: Using the same version of Willbender Flames will no longer cancel itself, to better facilitate Flowing Resolve's new functionality. Rushing Justice: Improved the transition between running and punching. Increased velocities toward the end of the run and initial punch. Total range of the skill has been increased, taking the ability from maximum 450 to maximum 800 distance. Strike damage has been improved from 0.6 to 1.5. Reduced cast time of the attack by about 1/4 second. Flowing Resolve: This ability will now use ammunition and its maximum ammunition has been set to 2. Flowing Resolve now stacks in duration. Velocity and distance have been reduced by 40%. Crashing Courage: This ability now delivers a five-target area attack on impact, in addition to setting the Willbender Flames. Offhand Sword: Executioner's Calling: The secondary attack of this ability now delivers 4 strikes simultaneously. Secondary attack damage has been reduced by 50% and is amplified by 20% to targets struck by the initial attack. Advancing Strike: Increased power coefficient from 1.0 to 1.4 in PvP and WvW. Utility Skills: Flash Combo: You may now move while executing this ability. Flash Combo - Repose: You may now move while executing this ability. Whirling Light: You may now move while executing this ability. While active, this ability now grants a 50% movement speed increase while active and is affected by both movement speed and animation timescales. Attack radius has been increased from 170 to 240. Added a radius fact. Reduced cooldown from 20 seconds to 15 seconds in PvP and WvW. Heaven's Palm: This ability is now targeted with a 600 range and will shadowstep the Willbender toward their target before performing the area attack. Traits: Boon Pact: This trait has been reworked and renamed to Searing Pact and will now provide 120 Condition Damage and cause Willbender Flames to apply Burning to enemies it strikes, with a 2 second duration. Power for Power: This trait has been reworked and will now provide 120 Power, while causing Willbender Flames to inflict 33% increased strike damage. Conceited Curate: This trait has been reworked and will now provide 120 Healing Power, while causing Willbender Flames to heal the Guardian on a successful strike. Restorative Virtues: This trait has been reworked and will now reduce the cooldown of all Guardian weapon skills by 1/4 second when a virtue's effect triggers, with no internal cooldown. Additionally, activating Flowing Resolve will grant the Willbender 2 seconds of Alacrity. Holy Reckoning: This trait has been reworked and will now grant the Willbender Might each time any virtue triggers. Additionally, activating Rushing Justice grants the Willbender 3 seconds of Fury. Vanguard Tactics: The boons this trait applies have been adjusted. Shadowsteps will now grant the Guardian Resolution for 3 seconds and Protection for 1.5 seconds. Activating Crashing Courage will now grant the Willbender Resistance for 3 seconds. Lethal Tempo: This trait now increases both strike and condition damage dealt. Baseline damage increase has been decreased from 3% to 1% in PvE, and from 3% to 2% in PvP and WvW. Phoenix Protocol: This trait now includes Alacrity in addition to Regeneration when applying boons in a circle, when traited with Battle Presence. Tyrant's Momentum: This trait now increases Lethal Tempo's damage bonus from 1% to 3% (2% to 4% in PvP/WvW) per stack. Other effects of this trait are unchanged. Other changes: Shattered Aegis: This trait has been given a 1 second cooldown when Willbender is equipped, to prevent infinite loops of death in conjunction with Crashing Courage.

You can get the points from anywhere. You can even start banking them now for End of Dragons. I actually prefer to unlock the specializations a little slowly so that I can get a feel for the options, rather than dive into the whole thing and just taking someone else's meta build. With Scrapper, in particular, I felt like the hammer was such an improvement over core Engie weapons that I didn't see a high cost to basically running only two traitlines for a little while.

I think that would be too big of a change. You could make them track their target.

Hoelbrak wouldn't be too bad if you were able to use mounts and gliding.

Crusader Deborah doesn't show up too much, but surely she would count.

That's only if you are looking to use the full charge. It seemed to work pretty well if you were willing to accept a smaller payoff and more frequent shots.

The easiest way to give your character a new voice actor is to change languages, although that introduces a new problem. I do think it would be nice if there were a language selection option at character creation so that you could see what they would each sound like. Right now I think you need to restart the game just to test one out, which is a bit of a hassle. Even something like that really isn't worth implementing though.

The noise doesn't bother me, just the animation. I avoid using it just because it's so ungraceful. The weapon definitely doesn't need any buffs, though, that's staff.

I found the dragon trigger very difficult to use, flow seemed like it built too slowly and dissipated too quickly, and I wasn't able to build up the number of charges I was expecting. I was trying to fight some wurms, and I know the ability to interrupt is intentional, it just seems too easy, and I think Bulletproof Barrier has a height problem, because they were pummeling me right through it, possibly because they were going over?

I didn't like having to recharge them every time I switched maps, or having to make the same build for underwater just so that they wouldn't get removed when I went swimming, or having to wait until I restarted them before I could jump back into a fight. If I only used one it wouldn't have been so bad, but I really like mantras so I greatly prefer it this way.

I kind of saw that, but I didn't know what it was. Figures I would see you mention this right after I complained that it wasn't there. It does need to be a little more visible.

I've played it more now, and I think it's not entirely unplayable. You just have very, very few options to change how its played. I think a complete rework of the traits is needed to create some kind of second playstyle, either boon support or condi, doesn't matter, just so that you get some kind of choice. I think all of the virtues need a better range, some additional power. I didn't want to complain about the range the first time around because I genuinely thought it was a "learn to play" problem, but it isn't. You just can't quite get to where you want to be, and trying to get there often puts you in combat before you get a chance to strike. Sword 2 and Judge's Intervention work a lot better than the new skills at their intended task. Sw2 even gets a symbol on top of it; nothing in the whole elite works as well in its own mechanics as a core skill. The active power is a different problem; I don't mind the passives disappearing, but it seems like the actives only proc at the opening of the strike and then can't be reactivated without switching virtues. I don't think that's how it should work (if that's how it does, I found it hard to tell) your active virtue should reactivate its effect every time you enter combat. I'd also like to see an aura or something to let you know which virtue is active. I'd still rather dump the off-hand sword as a failed experiment and try something else, but if it needs to stay, Executioner's Calling is the big problem. I'd like to see it change to a pull like axe 3. Get rid of the vuln if you have to, you can't do much with condi anyway. And I think a rework of Sw3 is important, even if it only shows up when you are dual-wielding swords, to provide some benefit for the titular profession symbol. Otherwise Greatsword is easily the strongest option, followed by Sword/Focus, followed, strangely, by Scepter/Focus. Sword/Sword doesn't even rate.

I didn't like the spec at all. I thought it would feel more like Daredevil, but the movement and animations didn't have anywhere near the same kind of fluidity or control. Off-hand sword seems like a bad idea altogether. I wanted to use it, but the normal Guardian off-hand weapons feel like a better fit. Main-hand sword was much more useful as an engage than the virtues, but obviously I already had that weapon on a higher damage/higher sustain build in core. I'd actually like to junk the weapon entirely and think about main hand dagger instead, it seems like it would be a better fit for the class, and I'd probably end up using focus or torch anyway. Then you could use 4 & 5 as 2 & 3, and MH sword might see some competition for use beyond GS. I'm not sure how the virtues work beyond the initial burst, are they more like stances once activated? I thought that's how it was supposed to be, but I didn't see or feel any kind of continual benefit after the initial hit. I never relied much on the passives, but I feel like too much was taken away and too little left behind. I don't see a reason not to just spam them, when it seems like the design should be to encourage you to swap less frequently. I love the idea of tradeoffs in the trait lines, but like other noted I couldn't find traits I actually wanted to take. Everything seemed to have a much higher cost than a benefit. They were all underwhelming, and not much in the way of synergies (maybe it would be better if the extra healing were extra concentration instead? Maybe a GM could do something about the lack of CC?) . I tried to make a condi build to see if it would work, and came to the conclusion that it's pretty much power-only, which I guess is fine, it just doesn't leave you much to work with. This doesn't have to be as strong as FB to get me to use it (I'm actually tired of how strong main Guardians lines are since it makes them too popular), but it has to at least be fun to compensate for the loss, and this didn't have that either. About the only thing that felt good was the speed boost, but that is largely wasted at this point with all of the mount options. Maybe this is a good wvw option, if you are facing a zerg and they keep bunching up for you. I actually really liked the other two professions a lot, I might actually make a Mesmer now.