Zoser.7245

They'll nerf it as much as rework the Virtuoso to make it competitive. 👀

And those unranked players that play casual PvP, do some daylies, etc, with no interest to compete and learn anything, only have fun, will leave to play other game with an unranked system in no time after been farmed several days from alts/smurfs and get bored of the ranked players harassing them and accusing them of not play properly, not rotate, not adopt a role in the match, not having a clue of what a build is, what a combo fields the game has and how to profit them, know about CC, corrupt boons, what each boon and condition do, choose the right skills for PvP and use their skills properly, etc, etc. Forcing players who have no interest in being competitive to play with competitive players will be a disaster. Competitive players will continue to be equally toxic and casual players will move/leave to a healthier environment. The result... only more players available temporally and later only the old ranked players playing PvP and even a lower population. And the worst of all, almost no new player interested in enter directly to play where the competitive ones and pros are. Unranked exists not only for casual players but also for start to learn without pressure and without the best players abusing, which is what happens in rankeds every day.

If Anet is so stupid to listen to people who have financial interests, it is not my problem. And if a group of colleagues meets in a Discord channel to decide what and how to balance either. That is not listening to the mesmer community. It has nothing to do with it. And that's why things are going badly. If all continue as now, in the same way, soon there will be no mesmers who bother going to the forums to try to contribute something. Only non-mesmer, like now, trying to secure for themselves that mesmer profession and specializations will not be competitive, an easy prey. And if it's also garbage in PvE, even better. Virtuoso is only fine for non-mesmers. So yes, is fine for you, of course. no doubt. Congrats.

That is not true because the Virtuoso does not have the double-edged knife that is the Mirage's mechanics, the Mirage Cloak. And thanks to listen the mesmer it end being a good specialization. It was not so OP but it needed a good balance... and instead of do that, what happened due to listen to the non-mesmers was a garbage and lazy balance decision and we ended with half endurance and the "One Dodge Man". The developers recognized it. CMC even laughed publicly about it in the Virtuoso's presentation at the beta preview. Another example of what happens when developers listen to non-mesmer is the Chronomancer... Another one than ended being garbage after the rework and only recovered partially by listen to mesmers and giving back him again the Illusionary Persona. But this time, nothing will save the Virtuoso, i doubt it. And to listen to non-mesmers, the best thing they could do is delete the profession since non-mesmers do not play it, does not have interest in it and mesmers would not play a profession that is designed by people who do not play the profession and don't have interest in it. So it would be a waste of time to continue developing a profession that no one would play or be interested in. Then the best thing would be to eliminate it and dedicate the time to something more productive.

Thanks for give me and other mesmers the reason. The Virtuoso itself does not have mobility, so zero mobility in the specialization. If you first need to resort to a mesmer core melee weapon to gain mobility when you have been designed to fight at range and your sustain is zero, bad business. Blades even does not work with illusions traits as aren't illusions. Little more needs to be said. With 9 core professions and in few months 27 specializations, good luck if core mesmer skills and traits are better and more useful than your whole kit. The other new specializations add mobility by themselves to what their core professions already have. And also more useful skills and traits than the dps, dps, dps and little else that the Virtuoso brings to the profession.

Virtuoso has no mobility itself, no condi cleanse, no sustain, only dps, that is all. Core mesmer also doesn't offer the sustain needed for a snail/tortoise specialization. Then add that all its offensive kit are projectiles ALL them. Dagger skills, Bladesongs (F skills), offensive utilities... and two of the four defensive skills are channeled. Also its traits don't offer survivability, only an Aegis in their Bladesongs if traited. Great, you will block your first blade reflected. 🤣 Well, good luck with that kit of skills. Design a specialization that, at the end, will require all the core skills ignoring their own ones and even doing that, still not be competitive against not only old specializations plus the upcoming ones to like the Harbinger... it's deplorable, unless you designed it in that way on purpose. The Willbender has potential and future-proofing in its basic design with few changes and improvements. Not the Virtuoso, it should require a redesign. I tried to give some feedback and ideas. But that will require creating even a new skill or two, including its animations and sounds, as well as reworking several traits, etc, with all the time required for design and coding all that. Something that I really doubt they'll do. Maybe few changes, so what the Virtuoso needs is a miracle. The Harbinger looks good after testing it, the Virtuoso is a joke, a bad one from a competitive point of view if you want to play it. It looks like that the Virtuoso was designed for easy PvE events, social media with pretty animations, roleplay, to wear and show its cute outfits... And, of course, designed to not give headaches to his foes and be a free kill/free bag. So it is understandable to watch players from other profession come here to tell the world how wonderful and revolutionary the Virtuoso is. Obviously because it's their perfect enemy. The Virtuoso is like a snail you find out there, you can stomp on it even unintentionally or willingly, or simply ignore it because it cannot do anything to you, much less follow you with its impressive null mobility. And no-mesmers players, obviously, are very happy and don't want improvements in the Virtuso, so they are saying and writing everywhere how perfect and amazing the Virtuso is. That is all.

I said it from the beginning, even before test it as it was so obvious after watching the Virtuoso's skills initially and later its traits. It seems designed for easy PvE events and social media to show its cute outfits and pretty animations. The Virtuoso can't even solo a decent/tough hero point from Maguuma's heart. Maybe, by building it as a super tank and taking 45 minutes or more to do so, you can be successful or maybe not, while other professions do it soloing in 5 minutes., but I didn't test it in that garbage way. Also being so selfish, i can't watch it even in raids as i doubt its dps will be miles above others to go there without sharing anything interesting for the raid. Only being a dps bot. For PvP and WvW. It looks like designed to not give headaches to his foes and be a free kill/free bag. So is understandable to watch players from other profession come here to tell the world how wonderful and revolutionary the Virtuoso is. Obviously because it's their perfect enemy. The Virtuoso is like a snail you find out there, you can stomp on it even unintentionally or willingly, or simply ignore it because it cannot do anything to you, much less follow you with its impressive null mobility. After have fun with the Harbinger, i gave the Virtuoso an oportunity even knowing that it could be impossible for me to solo the content where i usually test my builds and how good a profession is for me. It took me only around 3 minutes to discard it and change my vision of how to test the Virtuoso. So i changed to other professions, several ones, and i went to roam and hunt Virtuosos in PvP and WvW with them. It was a complete success, all my suspicions were confirmed. It was like child's play to kill the Virtuosos, play cat and mouse with them, trolling them. Like I said, they were free kills and free bags and not so virtuous after all. It is clear that the name of Virtuoso was given to him for roleplaying and playing in a casual plan chatting with other players rather than for something serious or challenging. At least in that way, the Virtuoso was cool and funny... as a foe, of course. 😅🤣

My ideas to improve the Virtuoso and make him a serious threat to his enemies are these: Synergy with core mesmer: Ok as I commented previously my best solution is to remove one blade, the one over the Virtuoso’s head and blades and the Virtuoso be illusions. So keep Illusionary Persona with the Virtuoso. Then all will work smoothly. And rework the animations to have 2 blades in each side of the mesmer and when it cast F1 and F2 he creates the 5 one from himself and throw them as he is an Illusionary Persona and blades will be illusions. The problem is that there are traits related to phantasms, other to clones and other to illusions… So if blades aren’t illusions, some key traits by definition will not work with blades… If blades aren’t clones even more traits will not work. And the worst is that clones are converted into blades but blades are not clones, in fact, traits that generate blades directly are not related to clones, lol. It’s all a mess. Anyways, if you are so obsessed with eliminating the illusory person from the Virtuoso and blades are not illusions. At least find a way to make core traits work with blades, balance them and don’t waste Virtuoso’s traits to hide the mess you are created. BladeSongs: Bladesong Harmony (F1): Cast time: ½ second. (reduced) Bladesong Dissonance (F3): With 5 stacks of blades and thinking in them as 5 levels of intensity, for example, we could make it more fun and also more useful in certain situations. As we can control how much CC apply and imagine… Stacks from 1 to 3 make your foe float, the more blades stacked the higher and longer time floats your foe or foes. Stacks from 4 to 5 pull him while floating, 4 stacks - x distance and 5 stacks – x a larger one. Even the 4th stack could be a pull and the 5th stack a knockdowm. It would be something new in the game and a lot of fun to play with. Healing, utilities and elite: I’m going try to give more “utility” to the Virtuoso without sacrifice AoE and damage. Something that some brains, for some reason... wasn’t able to do previously. Twin Blade Restoration: To fix this skill without change its mechanic they need to rework its internal code to grants the healing even if you can't throw your blades. The healing must be the first action and then try to throw the blades if possible. Because, obviously, you should not be able to throw blades to the sides or your backs. You need have your target in your line of sight, have it at your front and in range. Be careful with this skill, deactive the autotarget, and de-target before heal yourself if needed in competitive modes (WvW and PvP). As it could oftently provoke undesired situations. Imagine that your team need or want run in stealth… but under the AoE pressure or something else you decide to heal yourself throwing your marvellous blades to an enemy revealing all your team/squad position due to your healing skill… Enemies will obviously chase you and your allies and if they kill all you, then all your team/squad, group, etc, will want to kill you for real. Sword of Decimation: (reworked) Create blades that tether your foes immobilizing and transferring them your conditions while you become (transformation) a high energized blade that flies fast against your foes releasing its energy when you hit them while you recover your normal state. Damage: XXXX Immovilize: 2 seconds (modified) Condition transferred: 2 (added) Number of targets: 5 Radius: 240 Range: 1200 (It's ground target like the original skill. Or, at least, it must not require a target to cast it. This gives the Virtuoso a way to engage and disengage, get in and out, and of course mobility. Yes, he flies from his location to his target. The damage can be adjusted to balance it but it lost 2 seconds of immobilization and the extra 100% damage modifier in exchange of save your life often, so it worth it, as dps I’m sure the Virtuoso will still enough dps to even gift it for free... It will still gift a lot of love. Obviously this rework will require modify the animation or a new one, but it will worth a lot for the Virtuoso.) Thousand Cuts: (reworked) Open a portal that devastates targets in a line in front of you with a flurry of blades. Passing through your portal to the blades side will vanish you in synchronization with your blades, gaining stealth and superspeed for the remaining time of your portal. If you leave the are of effect of your skill you will be revealed. Cast time: ¾ second (reduced) Damage (6x): XXXX Number of Targets: 5 Duration: 3 seconds Interval: ½ seconds Stealth: 3 seconds (added) Superspeed: 3 seconds (added) Pierces Blade Range: 1200 (This skill is beautiful visually and now also let you to pass through its portal and integrate you with your blades and utilizing them to hide you from foes.) Traits: Sadly, I’m going to assume that they are not going to give the Virtuoso the Illusionary Persona status. So I cannot delete the Sharper Images clone, alias Jagged Mind. Sharpening Sorrow: (master trait) Removed from the game. Deadly Blades: (reworked) Blades inflict vulnerability on critical hits. Fury increase your expertise. (added from Sharpening Sorrow with a lower value) Vulnerability: 5 seconds Expertise granted by fury: +99 (added) Psionic Recovery: (New master trait) Psionic skills have a 20% reduction and grants superspeed. Superspeed: 3 seconds. (Some Psionic skills have an insane cooldown, this address that problem and also let you reposition yourself fast when you cast them). Infinite Forge: (Grandmaster) Removed from the game. Blade Reinforcement: (New Grandmaster) Gain random boons per interval while you have superspeed. Creates and throw a Transfusion Blade when you apply boons. (Note: this special blade is thrown without stack it if you have a target in combat. If you don’t have a target is stacked maintaining its properties, so it will steal life when released together with the normal ones when you cast a Bladesong.) Protection: 3 seconds Fury: 5 seconds Swifness: 3 seconds Vigor: 3 seconds Might (3x): 5 seconds Quickness: 3 seconds Pierce Number of targets: 5 Interval: ¾ second Range: 1200 Combat Only (optional) Transfusion Blade: A blade that steals life from foes. PvE Life Siphon Damage: 298 (0.1)? Life Siphon Healing: 202 (0.1)? WvW / PvP Life Siphon Damage: 58 (0.003)? Life Siphon Healing: 58 (0.003)? (Blade Reinforcement can be balance in two ways. You can adjust the quantity of boons you need to apply for create a Transfusion Blade and also you can adjust the interval that the skills use tu give you boons, although with 3 seconds of superspeed as base, ¾ second is in line with other grandmaster traits creating boons so I believe the interval it’s ok and balanced. That been said. This blades deserve a bit of work, they should have a different colour, darker purple maybe, like the recall in the game, or whatever that have a good contrast and combine nicely. So you can differenciate them visually when stacked, it will be cool watch both type of blades floating together. As this Transfusion Blade steal life, the formula of the F1 and F2 Bladesong skills should be changed to admit these blades with its own effects in a mix with the normal ones when they are thrown against foes As you can imagine, being created in some way profitig the energy received from boons (a bit of roleplay 😉), it can be stacked without a target although normally will be thrown without be stacked when you are in combat and attacking and that gives you more options for prepare attacks, you can cancel/remove your target in combat strategically, use your boons skills to stacks them and then burst your foe. And have some sustain for certain game modes to not be a free kill/bag.) Taking advantage of the fact that I hope you read this, I remind you few things if you let it to me. Mirage: The poor "one dodge man", the Mirage, is still there crippled, without a deserved good balance and of whom you spoke of his lack of sustain but did nothing to give him that necessary sustain. Although looking at the chronomancer and the final result after its rework ... I am very afraid of how the Mirage could end if finally you rework him. Mesmer: Torch: Do us the favor of reducing the cooldown of the mesmer's Torch skills to 25 second cooldown. Is the time. Every time I look at it and compare our torch to other similarly performing weapons from other professions and then compare their cooldowns, I get depressed. Focus: The Phantasmal Warden's effectiveness drops dramatically the more enemies it has around it. It would be great if his axes had at least one bounce and that the probability of attacking your target while still hitting the others be a little higher than attacking the rest, so that your target takes more damage. If he has at least one rebound, the damage would be better distributed and also prioritizing your objective over those around him would have a much lower impact and it is evident that the more rebounds the better damage on the area. Many times, if you have selected a particular target, it is because it has less health or it is easier to eliminate and it is a priority. Pistol: Ohhh, one last thing, i almost forgot it... make the Illusionary Duelist's pistol skill PIERCE!!! 🙏😁 That is all. I hope that, at least, these ideas can help the developers to improve the Virtuoso and also the mesmer globally. Thank you for reading.

I did not expect that I would like this specialization over the others. The blight was not a mechanic that I liked. But surprisingly I have had more fun with this specialization than with the others… without using elixirs. Elixirs are boring, monotonous, uninspired utilities. Also you drink them and throw the bottle to the ground so there are not many options to add any extra component/mechanics in themselves. Some players already commented that elixirs should iterate with the blight to add or remove blight based on the type of elixir. But, if thematically all elixirs add blight by definition since it is their way of acting on you to empower you, I find difficult that the developers will change their mind or concept about them. So i have two concepts to improve them that i will explain later with few more things. The traits works, but I believe that polarize the power vs condition choice in adept tier is enough because at the end, the options you offer in the grandmaster tier for power and condition are both for melee traits. I watch better and more useful merge the melee traits and offer a new grandmaster for ranged style as alternative. Finally profiting this feedback, there are also obsolete skills in some of the necromancer off hand weapons and i believe that, at least, one of those weapons need an update to gain a better synergy with the Harbinger’s pistol. My ideas for improve the Harbinger are the following ones: Harbinger Shroud: Devouring Cut or Voracious Arc should be a leap finisher. And remember to change/fix Voracious Arc to be cast on target when you are underwater. Keep the ground targetting on terrain. Now the concepts to the elixirs, maybe a mix of them could also work... Concept 1 for make elixirs more useful. (It's not my favourite, but better than leave elixirs as they are now): This concept is based in add combo fields and interact with them making elixirs more useful but also more active to use allowing combos with them. In fact the change in Shroud suggested previously add a leap finisher. If that finisher is not added i will add it later as an alternative. As you drink elixirs and then throw it to the ground. When the elixir bottle hits the ground, it will trigger a finisher in two of the elixirs while the rest will create combo fields. Elixir of Promise: This is very obvious, in addition this elixir creates a water field when you drink the elixir as i think that this Elixir healing is not good. The area of the field could also pulses XXX healing per second. Duration: X seconds. Elixir of Risk: Make this skill be a blast finisher. Elixir of Bliss: Add an Ethereal combo field. Duration: X seconds. Elixir of Anghish: There is two options. If you make one of Shroud's skills a leap finisher then make this elixir a leap finisher with a very short leap to gain basically the combo finisher utility. If one of the Shroud's skills gain the leap finisher then make this skill gain a whirl finisher and add a whirl effect to the animation while throwing the elixir bottle to the ground. Elixir of Ignorance: Add a Smoke combo field. Duration: X seconds. Elixir of Ambition: I doubt between two. I prefer add Poison as a combo field but Light also fits the theme of this elite. One of those can be added as combo field. Duration: X seconds. Concept 2 for make elixirs more useful and fun: This will require more work as it will imply add secondary skills to the elixirs. After cast each elixir and get its effects you gain access to a secondary skill. In fact, i ask myself if these skills could even replace the elixirs making them obsolete, by merging some of the elixirs effects with these secondary skills and balance them , of course. I love this concept but maybe the Vile Vials should be reworked and remove the 20% cooldown reduction to the elixirs there OR leave it as it is and give this skills their own independent cooldown from the elixir's. Elixir of Promise: Gain access to "Tether Healing" skill after drink the elixir. - Tether Healing: Your corruption tether your enemies in its area of effect life stealing XXX health per second. Number of targets: 5 Radius: between 900 or to be defined. Duration X seconds. Number of targets: 5 Elixir of Risk: Gain access to "Tremor" skill after drink the elixir. - Tremor: Stomp the ground blasting the area and damaging nearby enemies. Damage XXX. Radius 360. Combo finisher: Blast Number of targets: 5 Elixir of Anghish: Gain access to "Corruption Repeater" skill after drink the elixir. - Corruption Repeater: Throw fast corrupted bolts to your enemies in a straight lines blighting them. Bolts (5x), 2 stacks of blight per bolt. Pierces. Range: 900. Number of targets: 5. (As an alternative if developers don't like the idea of inflict blight in your enemies it can do a bit of damage and apply torment them per bolt. The blight could be then in the elite maybe with a bigger cooldown.) Elixir of Ignorance: Gain access to "Corrupt Path" skill after drink the elixir. - Corrupt Path: leap backward leaving a corrupt path in your way that cripple and inflicts x stacks of poison to enemies in its patch area Duration: X seconds Distance: XXX. Number of targets: 5 Elixir of Ambition: Gain access to "Corrupted Avatar" skill after drink the elixir. The idea is that you become completely corrupted losing yourself and transformed in a corrupted avatar. - Corrupted Avatar: Become a corrupted avatar floating, unable to be targeted and pulsing corruption that corrupts your enemies. Interval: X Duration X Radius: 600 Number of targets: 5. Your corruption apply 2 stacks for blight, chilled, 2x torment and poison per pulse. Once your avatar stance ends you get full Blight. (Blight can be changed for XXX damage if the developers don't like the idea of inflict blight on enemies.) I love the Corrupted Avatar idea. Is full risk, like or you kill first or be killed to the full get blight at once when it ends if you are focused, so be careful if you want to use it to be sure that you'll win... Optimization of traits: I mainly like them but i prefer keep the choice between power and condition only in the adept trait tier and merge Cascading Corruption and Doom Approaches/Approaching Doom as the melee grandmaster option and create a new grandmaster for ranged play style. Cascading Doom: (new grand master trait) New trait resulting of merging Cascading Corruption and Doom Approaches/Approaching Doom. You can add half the power of Cascading Corruption as a buff and add half the condition damage of Doom Approaches which will be the part that empower you. And then merge the second Cascading Corruption and Approaching Doom for the pulse merged AoE damage. For example. (This trait replace both as the melee trait and leave space for a new ranged trait). Ranged Grandmaster: (new grandmaster trait) Increase your Shroud and pistol skills range by 300 and its radius by 120. Or only Shroud skills or only pistol skills, main hand weapon skills, sigle hand skills, etc, whatever combination of skills that developers consider good enough for include it in a trait like this. For the offhand weapon: Warhorn's Locust Swarm skill is pure garbage, obsolete, a lot worse than skills with 10s cooldown even if you have 5 enemies literally on your head when comparing their performance along the fight time. This idea is for improve it in general but also gain synergy with the pistol of the Harbinger and have two off hand weapons that fit well with it. Warhorn: Locust Swarm: The locusts can also apply poison every few seconds synchronizing themselves, the swarm locusts has it radius increased to 240 and its cooldown reduced to 25s. After you cast the skill you gain access to a secondary skill, “Chasers”, that let you command the locust swarm. Like when you command minions. This skill and Locust Swarm share the duration timer. So once you command the Chasers, its duration will be the time remaining since the locust swarm ability was activated. And when that timer expires both will enter in cooldown sharing that timer too. So the combo of skills will be like: Locust Swarm: Gain swiftness. Summon a swarm of locusts that siphon health to you from nearby foes and also apply poison on them every interval. Then you gain access to the “Chasers” command skill. Life Siphon Damage: 66 (0.2)? Life Siphon Healing: 37 (0.08)? Swiftness (15s): 33% Movement Speed Life Force: 1.5% Number of Impacts: 10 Number of Targets: 5 Duration: 5 seconds Radius: 240 (New radius) Poison: 1 or 2 stacks of poison for 3 seconds. (new condition added) Interval for Poison: 3 seconds. (interval for poison added) Range: 900 New cooldown: 25s - Chasers: Command your Locust Swarm to chase your target fast for the remain time of its life. If your swarm of locusts passes around enemies on its way to your target, it will also attack them siphoning their health and poisoning them for as long as your enemies are within its area of action, discounting the number of impacts / attacks that occur during the encounter and continuing towards your target. The Locust Swarm continues active until its duration time expires, even if your enemies die or nothing that can be attacked is inside the swarm, so it will still attack anything that enter in its area before its life time expires. Range: 900 Well, that is all. I hope that some of these ideas will help developers to improve or optimize the Harbinger. Thank you for reading.

Yes, there is something really wrong with the passives. Zealous Scepter is not working and it seems that it's because the passive of Rushing Justice is not triggered. 🤣 No burn, no might, nothing 😅

Yes, i was thinking the same, lol. And between the mesmers, i can also watch a clear division between those that only play PVE and those that play in competitive modes, PvP and WvW, or all modes. It is a bad joke to see the non-mesmers come to vote that everything is wonderful to try to prevent the Virtuoso from being revised and improved. Above all when it's clear that the Virtuoso has several flaws in design and lacks key utilities to become useful for team play and also for be competive. But very typical in gw2 forum. Soon wee will watch topics asking for nerfs... the Willbender already has at least two, 😆, and it would not be a surprise some against the Virtuoso too. 😅 Buy some popcorn that the movie starts tomorrow. 🤣

Uhmmm..... Haven't you seen that the confusion equation will change next week? Have you calculated the future damage before affirm your answer? 😁

@Heika.5403 It is that the Virtuoso is very boring, and the Harbinger leaves me more doubts than omens... I see it more for in certain game mode than useful in general. The new guardian does have potential, and as we have seen in updates ahead of a launch with great final balance ... The Willbender does have all the basics to become a beast even if he is balanced theorically... So with nothing else to contribute to our forum and waiting for the beta test, I have decided to research about other specializations I find interesting for now lol. But................................. Nor do I ask so much, in any case the invisibility would be indirect with the runes and the reveal is an added bonus or extra function. It is somewhat moderate/balanced. Add invisibility directly would have been maybe too much. 😁😇

Oh yes, it can be improved. Maybe they should add an "extra" effect at the end of two of its mobility utilities that doesn't require a target or one virtue and utility or two virtues. So where he lands, end its dash or teleport with those skills also place a trap that is instantly activated revealing up to 5 - 10 enemies in a 900 radius for 6 seconds. Those two skills should also trigger future or existent runes and sigils that interact with traps if you want take some profit of them too. 😉 Thinking about it, also add to is elite place an extra auto-triggered frost trap that chills enemies for 1.5s each second for 4 seconds duration and a 420 radius. 😏 That should add Willbender a bit more utility and also help its allies against stealth enemies and be a less selfish. 🧐 👽

There was also a time when "purple dps" wasn't a thing, and nobody cared. Those problems are easily solved as they did with the repeater deadeye and the chronomancer. We also have a single dodge man for a reason... There are, at least, two reworks upcoming and the Mirage has enough ballots to be one of them. So 🤞 To know how everything will end, and with the new specializations on the way, let's see who wins the lottery... the one that nobody wants.

If you look, for example, at the Virtuoso's F3 skill, the tooltip/description has 1/2s daze base duration. The core mesmer F3 has 1s. If you have 3 clones 3x1 = 3s With 5 blades if we want to balance it... (LOL) 3s/5 = 0.6s that is basically the duration for each blade stacked. If they have done it. I'm sure that they'll do the same with other skills and traits they want to keep controlled. And if they forgot some, the nerf bat will act sooner or later, they still have months to do it 🤣 Anyways it will be interesting test how the skills and traits related to clones and illusions interact.

I suggested give it a realiable source to gain superpeed often or some mobility. Obviously they don't want ot give it to this specialization. And having already a 25% movement speed in the Chronomancer trait line, i discard it now. But well... hopes are hopes... We are free to hope a lot. I don't see them reworking things for now while they are working in the next specializations to release. Maybe for the 4th beta test if they open a feedback thread after the beta test "and want" improve it we can get something. But if not, they'll only tweak numbers. And this specializations seems to be built completely around its dps and numbers... sadly. But well, we can try to give them ideas and watch if they are ignored as usual or be have luck and get something better.

If you watch at it, it's really easy to nerf, i mean... to "balance". They already nerfed its elite damage. And if needed if will be more balanced in the future!

Well... Watching the Chronomarncer and its history, the first step will be to destroy it completely and make it even more useless. And then convert it in a maid for other professions/specializations or maybe a mediocre healer. All it's possible. Yes. 🙄

I'm sure that they are very happy with the Virtuoso. If something they can release and then ignore completely not only in terms of balance, maybe some nerf at most, but also something to not get worried playing against it. If you see one nearby, it will only take you a short time to knock them out and kill them. The perfect enemy!!! After killing him 20 times, you could even buy him a drink and thank him for playing the Virtuoso and making your day easier and brighter. And also take the opportunity to talk about the experience.

My fear of a Domination 2.0 with a mix of Dueling 2.0 trait line has become real. Well, as it was already mentioned, this is a specialization is only for some meme moments against noobs, easy PvE events and social activities with nice outfits. That is all. The worst is think that it could be designed like this on purpose to avoid complains against devs due to the clones and mesmer mechanic. The Virtuoso is your solution, easily killable, easy to chase with no mobility and easy to nerf its damage if necessary and some complains come in that sense. Perfect. Perfecto!!!! The perfect specialization for devs, mods and players of other professions and specializations. One less problem, and something ignorable out there.

The 17th balance patch notes preview are here, use the link if you want to read the balance for all professions: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/99594-balance-update-preview-for-august-17-2021/ Profession Skills Combo Fields and Finisher Skills – Combo fields have received updated, higher quality visual effects. Rectangular combo fields do not yet have updated visuals, but they will be updated to match in a future update. – Combo finishers will now prioritize using your own combo fields before those created by other players, where available. – The icon border for skills that are combo finishers will now be highlighted while you are standing within a combo field. – Projectile Finisher—Water Field: The radius around the struck enemy in which allies gain regeneration has been increased from 100 to 180. – Projectile Finisher—Light Field: The radius around the struck enemy in which allies are cleansed of a condition has been increased from 100 to 180. Boons and Conditions In this update, we're making adjustments to the confusion condition in PvE. Currently, it's not strongly relevant in most gameplay, as few enemies attack rapidly enough for it to be a significant damage source. However, it's also exceedingly powerful on a few specific boss fights in raids and elsewhere, which happen to have attack patterns that trigger confusion often. This has been a problem to balance around; it's not much fun if being very good in specific raid fights means that confusion-heavy specializations like mirage aren't up to par elsewhere. To address this, we're partially normalizing the confusion condition by making the damage-over-time component of confusion in PvE gameplay scale with the condition damage stat, making it overall more useful for general open-world and mission play. Each stack of confusion will be exactly half as powerful as a stack of the bleed condition. At the same time, we're halving the trigger damage dealt when an enemy activates a skill. Overall, these changes mean that confusion will be a more reliable source of damage during play for professions that make regular use of it, and they reduce the degree to which it is split in functionality between PvE and PvP. – Confusion: In PvE only, the damage over time caused by each stack of confusion has been increased from a flat 10 (at level 80) to 11+0.03 per point of condition damage. Damage dealt to all targets when they activate a skill has been reduced by 50%, matching the current damage in PvP and WvW game modes. Mesmer – Illusion of Life: Fixed a bug that could cause affected allies to fail to be fully revived when killing enemies in certain content types or locations. – Medic's Feedback: Reduced revive pulse from 5% to 1% in PvP and WvW.

At least in the description they were more honest than in the video where they named the CC capabilities as something relevant in the specialization lol. The F3's daze has been there since the beginning of the profession and the single thing the Virtuoso adds is an inmobilization in a single utility skill... The video only shows vulneravility as a relevant often applied condition. Looks like more a Domination 2.0 trait line than anything else. I only hope that they only used damage modifiers to show the highest damage and the rest of traits can add something more useful. If you see the ammount of things the Virtuoso lacks in its skill kit and that you only have 3 selectable traits... figure. I wrote in other thread my idea of what is needed, at least, to make it useful and even compete in some role. But every time I analyze it I am more pessimistic. But there is no drama, maybe we have to accept the purpose it has. If it was designed to farm PvE events and bring something new... it's ok. Even other content if the rest of the players/group/squad want to support and buff you. But don't try solo a bounty with it, solo hard content, roaming, sPvP, or go to content where other players want you to contribute with boons, etc. 😆😅 The worst case scenario would be if it was designed this way not because of mesmers who wanted a competitive specialization without clones, but in order not to have to read any more complaints against mesmer's clones and its new specialization... "As the saying goes... Sometimes... Think bad and you will be right." I hope that tomorrow, at least, we will able to debate with more information once we watch the Virtuoso's traits.

Remove clones without a good support, sustain and mobility from your core trait lines is like leave you nude against the beasts. If for example you remove the Shroud from the necromancer you still have great core trait lines with offensive sustain, good defensive traits to save your life and even minions to invoque if necessary plus the offensive traits. Idem with other professions. But we lack a complete kit and also a good synergy between trait lines, so try to get some surviability ends with a big tradeoffs and it seems that we could also end be forced to use core utilities to gain mobility, giving up the use of the Virtuoso utilities. My idea of how the Virtuoso trait line could make it works better is a versatile one, something similar to what Scrapper, Reaper, Holosmith, etc, have in terms of versatibility and as a whole or global vision. What would be a complete kit/set condensed in the specialization's trait line (the Virtuoso), to compensate for the deficiencies of itself and its mechanics.. My wishes: A trait that gives you a reliable and consistent access to gain superspeed or a trait that reduce in a high percentage or remove imparing conditions in an effective way. Gyroscopic Acceleration, Crystal Configuration: Zephyr, Don't Stop, etc. So you can profit you limited resources to remove conditions agains the damaging ones. A trait that gives you sustain, preferably an offensive sustain in the form of life steal. But anyways something that help you to survive without clones. The autoattack of the daggers seems slow, so a trait that increase the attack speed with a modifier that increase damage or maybe a good realiable and consistent way to get quickness. Of course, put those traits in different tiers so that they are not mutually exclusive. Then fill the rest with whatever you consider good for the specialization. Maybe have a projectile reflect trait when you use your utilities or some key skills, so you can mitigate your weakness with your own dagger projectile finisher skills, stats modifiers that some are asking to empower the dps more if you want to choose that way, etc. Those are the basic things i wish... Next Friday or next week we will watch how many of them become a reality... Or not and we end with a Domination 2.0 trait line for the Virtuoso. They have many months to go to improve traits, skills, and mechanics if necessary. With what we will finally end .. Who knows, we'll see.

Comparisons are said to be odious... But I think it's clear to me which teaser I like the most for now and it's not pink. Ladies and gentlemen: The Harbinger. When even a teaser shows more interesting skills, lol. Even the potions and pistol seems to interact with its secondary hand weapon, it throws blades, but it also shows several utilities or useful skills for different purposes not all dps dps dps. I know, i know... But, what IF later the traits... IF THIS... IF THAT... if... if... 😋😁😇 Calm calm, we still have some hopes... Hopefully we are invited to test it too. 😉🤣