Ghostkat.9580

Wait, so you think just because something got nerfs, that somehow makes it okay for it to be literally unkillable with infinite Aegis and blocks? Clearly you missed the entire point of my post. I wasn't "frothing at the mouth," in spite of whatever you seem to think. I was calmly pointing out that this is an issue the devs should look into because having an unkillable class with infinite blocks by definition defeats the point of a PvP mode. Your entire response was a series of excuses. "Reminder that it didn't win MAT,". "It got 18 nerfs,". "New weapon is mediocre,". Again, that affects it being unkillable due to getting infinite blocks how exactly? Just because something has shortcomings in damage output doesn't justify giving it a God Mode. Maybe think a little bit before rushing in to be contrarian so you can keep your response on-topic.

Rifle and longbow were always bad ideas. They have never been, and will never be, good ones. The entire reason you believe otherwise is a matter of community rhetoric in the wake of long-standing complaints that Elementalist does not have a decent ranged option. This is entirely a fault of Staff and Scepter - the two most "Mage-esque" options - feeling overwhelmingly outdated in terms of more modern gameplay. Over years and years with the community's size dwindling with time, the loud and vocal voices of the GW2 community coalesced with the notion that Ele needs a new one, purely because ArenaNet did not show any signs of wanting to go back and modernize some of its more dated systems which also plague Ele to this day. Examples include the current state of the Conjured Weapons and the summoned Elementals. Enough people kept saying Rifle or Longbow was the answer, to the extent that the community's group-think just aligned with it without question. Unfortunately, this does not fix the problem, it only sidesteps it, and Ele's issues are a lot more deeply systemic than just the available weapon choices. This is also why everyone's pointing out that Catalyst's hammer has issues on Weaver and Tempest, because by design, it is meant to interact with the way Catalyst's wells function, but wasn't designed to be a serviceable hammer in its own right. This is why Conjured Lighting Hammer - for all of the issues that come with it being tied to the way Conjured weapons work - is a superior hammer in terms of gameplay, because element aside, it has everything a player might possibly want or need on one weapon hotbar, designed with parity to the layout of other weapons like Sword and pretty much all of the off-handed options. You get two AoEs - one with a combo field - a leap finisher to use as a gap closer and to make use of combo fields, and a really good CC ability. That is irrespective of its status as an elemental weapon; it's just a solidly packaged weapon kit in its own right. If Conjured Lightning Hammer was changed simply to "Conjure Hammer," was changed to a toggle instead of a 30-second timer, and without changing its animations (only the visual effects and boons/conditions associated with its abilities) was able to swap elements, it would be a vastly superior weapon to the hammer we currently have on Catalyst. That's because it's a good weapon that interacts with combat design well first and foremost, rather than forcing its design exclusively around a singular gameplay mechanic. Bow is the same way. Conjure Frost Bow is a healing weapon, but what if it was just Conjure Bow and you could change it to fire, earth or air? You'd have a very serviceable longbow that would likely function considerably better than a new two-handed longbow that only exists because a) you saw elemental arrow types in other videogames, and b) you stubbornly held onto the idea that you thought it could work if done right, without thinking about it any more deeply than that. There's nothing it would reasonably offer you that couldn't already be done by fixing the Conjured Weapon system, which exists primarily because Ele cannot swap weapons mid-combat and since single-attunement builds do exist, if you're not able to conjure an alternative weapon, you're hurt by your gameplay being too limited. A regular longbow risks being either redundant to how a Conjured Bow would be if it could element-swap, or being in the same situation as Catalyst's hammer, where it's designed specifically around a particular mechanic that doesn't really translate to the other two specializations. Conversely, Weaver could make decent use out of a build that primarily uses the conjured bow, and then swap to a melee option for close-ranged combat if needed: Right now, there are too many builds that are very heavily dependent on making use of the Conjured weapons for DPS, especially openers and rotations that utilize the Fire Greatsword. It's not uncommon for rotations to get screwed up because a party member accidentally picked up the second Greatsword drop we needed for our rotation. I'm of the mind that a) since this system is overdue for an overhaul, its fixes should be prioritized, and b) no weapon that is currently accessible through the Conjured Weapon system should be its own equippable weapon on Ele since that would be redundant in favour of better-fitting options. So that being said here is why you're getting main-hand-exclusive Pistol and not Dual-Pistols, Off-Hand Pistol or Rifle: What sorts of moves do you think would be needed to occupy all five slots, reasonably speaking? What would a water pistol, for example, do? It squirts water. Okay, that's one ability. It can shoot ice. Okay, that's a second ability. It can fire a vapor. Alright, that's three. Congratulations, you've now exhausted the solid, liquid and gas forms of water. So what's left for 4 and 5? You could shoot a puddle onto the ground and maybe it chills enemies, or heals teammates in an AoE, right? The problem right there is we already have stuff like that, and in spades, on the other existing off-hand options, like Dagger, Focus and Warhorn. All of the other elements have this same kind of issue. Players champion rifle as a ranged option because when they don't think about it deeper than in the most superficial way, they can wrap their minds around the concept of a flamethrower, a super soaker and a tesla gun. On paper, that makes sense. Try to fill 20 weaponskill slots with unique abilities not already on Ele available through other weapons so it's not redundant. Now that gets a bit more challenging. This is why it makes the most sense to restrict a new ranged option to a main-hand pistol, especially if you have development constraints and can't be putting out anything that's redundant to stuff we already have. Dual pistols could be a thing, but outside of having for the cosmetics of it, there's no real value to it other than wasting development resources making something redundant and making new icons for it, when you could instead put those resources to better use elsewhere. In terms of gameplay, a main-hand pistol can still shoot through combo fields put down by an off-hand weapon like Dagger, Focus or Warhorn. This is the reason for why main-hand focus is always the correct answer here, especially during the Far East Asian-themed expansion. I'm not pushing for it because it's what I personally like or want. I understand that Elementalist has more to gain by a) updating Staff and Scepter appropriately with more up-to-date behaviours on weaponskills, b) updating out-of-date mechanics to be put to better use in modern gameplay (including but not restricted to the Conjured Weapons, which currently cause rotational issues and other gameplay inconveniences in their present form), and c) presenting options that are likely to cater to a wide audience since this is a product put out into a consumer market with intentions to sell. So under the circumstances, if you're a business person, and you have a Korean-themed expansion, you aim to respect that culture due to who your studio's parent company is, and you need to think of what sorts of things you want to make for an Elementalist class that fits that expansion, you have to ask yourself the following questions: 1) How are the elements represented in South Korean culture, and are they associated with anything in particular that might be relevant to gameplay functions? 2) Does this game already have something which fulfills this particular archetype? 3) What is the demand for this sort of thing in the broader gaming market? 4) Does this fit the universe my game is set in? 5) Does this require a hefty development investment or can this be developed at a low cost? The answer to these questions is as follows: 1) South Korean culture uses the same representation of the elements as Japan, Vietnam and China, the five elements, or "Wuxing,". Unlike the more westernized depiction of the five elements of alchemy (earth, fire, air, water and "spirit/aether/quintessence"), the elements of Wuxing (earth, fire, wood, water and metal) are representative of the changing of the seasons, cycles of creation and destruction via how they interact with one another. Occasionally, popular culture will swap out "wood" for "air," and occasionally "metal" for "thunder" or "lightning," so creative liberties are sometimes taken with them. Wuxing is typically associated with holistic medicine and the martial arts. 2) Not adequately. The closest thing we have to a martial artist class is staff on Daredevil. People who aren't really into media from Far East Asia might not care or understand the distinction, but those who are draw a very, very firm line between that and a fists-using, fireball-throwing martial artist as two completely different and only tangentially-related archetypes. They do not fulfill the same power fantasy. 3) Very high, because this kind of content generates tons of money annually. The Dragon Ball franchise alone is slated to make just under a billion dollars this year even with no ongoing show or movie, based on Bandai's projections from the franchise's performance in the first and second fiscal quarter of the year. Additionally, the games which feature this class archetype struggle to keep interest due to budget and development constraints that prevent engaging gameplay and a functioning element-swapping mechanic. Guild Wars 2 is the only MMO with action-oriented reactive combat currently on the market to have successfully pulled off the element-swapping mechanic, making it uniquely poised to generate interest with players who have been waiting for a game to come along that can finally provide this power fantasy. Additionally, our Far East Asian-themed expansion is set to release shortly before an extremely popular franchise has a movie debut, allowing us to ride that marketing wave to signal-boost our game to a broader audience. 4) Yes, and in fact, two NPCs in the expansion perform elementally-based martial arts moves, so it already exists in-universe. In spite of many players insisting that dual fists should go on Guardian due to Guardian's similarities with Guild Wars 1's Monk and its more Cleric-based move set, a precedent was set in GW1's story in which a Canthan Monk marries an Elementalist, which could be argued as the in-narrative justification for how over time this became the regional norm and justifies two NPCs displaying these abilities. Furthermore, it is a reference to the idea of dual-classing from Guild Wars 1. Furthermore, many cosmetic skins for the main-hand weapon in question already fit the desired function. They are currently relegated to off-hand weapons. 5) Since around 90% of the proposed specialization currently exists in-game, albeit split apart and not all in one place, its development is extremely low in cost and can be accomplished with a great deal of recycling existing assets. The entire off-hand version of the weapon still sufficiently fulfills these purposes so only the main-hand skills are necessary, and the utility skills can be brought over from elsewhere. So regardless of whether or not it's something I personally want, it makes sense, from a business perspective, lore perspective, marketing perspective, and general gameplay perspective. Conversely, the only reason to continue arguing for longbow or rifle is that the community won't shut up about demanding longbow or rifle, but it's very clear that other than the insistence of wanting it for the sake of it, or insisting that it's needed to circumvent a problem instead of just addressing the problem, the community hasn't actually thought terribly deeply about the situation. Outside of just really wanting it, there's nothing about rifle or longbow that addresses a need that couldn't be sufficiently fulfilled by fixing staff and scepter and updating out-of-date utilities (such as conjured weapons) and traits, which includes getting a potentially superior longbow anyway by default in the process.

Just for context... check out this video if you haven't seen this before. Count the moves he does that are already in Guild Wars 2. Note that Flame Wall (Fire Focus 4) is used at the start of the fight and he does a combo finisher through it at the 48 second mark. Fire Shield (Fire Focus 5) is used at the 1:46 mark and its Transmute Fire form is used earlier at the 1:07 mark. Just to highlight some examples of how off-hand focus already works for a martial arts class. For a projectile, Ryu's Hanto Hadouken variant from his guest appearance in the fighting game Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid has him firing a phoenix that travels out and then comes back to hit a second time, instead of a typical fireball. https://imgur.com/DKzTovK This is literally Fire Scepter 3, which heals as a phoenix should. You can use this as an excuse to update Scepter to make the Ele mains who want to be mages happy, and also have something expansion appropriate. So in EoD, with GW2's cosmetics, you have one specialization where you can either be this: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/saintseiya/images/1/1d/Tech-Shiryu-RozansRisingDragon.jpg Or be this: https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:948/1*3QjoPyvXwOde5NmP0YHz_A.jpeg There is choice, and relevance outside of the Far East Asian-themed expansion should a player want to take the "when in Rome" approach going into a new expansion. Both parties are pleased, and now everyone's happy. For Water martial arts + Summoner, you're looking at something like this: When ANet put the Street Fighter move, the "tatsumaki senpukyaku," onto Willbender's "Whirling Light," I immediately said to myself there's a 98% chance that a game designer was like "we need a cool kick move to go on Willbender," googled Street Fighter, saw that and said "that spinning kick looks pretty cool,". What didn't occur to them is that "tatsumaki senpukyaku" literally translates to "tornado whirlwind leg" which means it's already elementally aspected to air. Whirling Light can still be a radial 360-degree weaponstrike to match the Willbender specialization artwork a bit better (it's odd it doesn't have a move that resembles what it's doing in the artwork) without it being the tatsu. The Tornado Whirlwind Leg - more commonly known in the West as the "Hurricane Kick" - should be put on the Elementalist where it rightfully belongs. I keep saying that like 90% of what you'd need to get a proper elemental martial arts class going is already in the game, so you can easily cobble it together and have it at least be serviceable gameplay-wise with very little time and money expense. AND... this is one of those things that's mega popular and makes tons of money without trying very hard. Not to mention, other MMO devs struggle with getting this to work well. GW2 is the only game on the market right now that has a serviceable elemental stance-dancing system, which is why other games either lock you into an element or provide the visual effects but don't give you control over swapping. ANet could have easily beaten the competition - including FFXIV, which gutted its Monk badly - but chose not to go the obvious route, leaving money on the table for no good reason other than trying to be different for the sake of being different. Similarly, it must not have occurred to the dev team and the DEI group who censored out content that wasn't exclusively Korean that the tatsu is from a fictionalized Japanese martial art called Ansatsuken. Either that, or they didn't care since it looked cool. However, they could have used Korean martial arts like Taekwondo, Taekkyon, Subac and Yongmudo. So... erm... whoops, I guess. 😛 We could have had a metal element being the new F5 skill instead of these weird orbs (Wu Xing, the 5 elements of Taoism, are also used in South Korea, along with Japan and Vietnam, so there's a lot of shared cultural iconography), and summons similar to overloads like what's in the BDO video above every time the water dragon appears during the moves. Considering how overwhelmingly Caucasian the dev team is, along with Zhengyi Wang's departure from the art team (he went to Blizzard) and how much stuff seems ripped at-face-value either as memberberries references to stuff in GW1 that shouldn't actually be relevant anymore or stuff from Final Fantasy XIV, I'm not entirely surprised at the lack of cultural homework done by anyone not named Maclaine Diemer. Element Monk is supported by GW1's story with the marriage of Cynn and Mhenlo, and is a better reference to the dual-classing of GW1 and how that may have impacted the culture over 250 years than trying to force Mesmer-Warrior or Bunny-Thumper into a game with a radically different combat system. There's a reason why Spellbreaker is the least-played class in the entire game... these kinds of references aren't substitutes for good game design in the combat system we currently have. And, unlike Catalyst, there's actual representation of this in-game, with two Canthan NPCs. I found it so odd that the hammer-wielding Catalyst was what we got for the Ele reveal during Lunar New Year - which has an event called Dragon Ball - while the Dragon Ball Super movie was right around the corner and was delayed until not long after EoD's release. Plus, all of the focus skins that look like knuckles weapons... it felt like such a massive marketing faux pa. It's not like Bandai didn't project that the Dragon Ball franchise would be set to make just under a billion dollars in 2023 based on its earnings in the first half of the year or anything (even with no new movie or show announcement)... The Gundam franchise made just under a billion dollars last year as well, but did we get new Mechanist skins for the Jade Mech? Nope. It's still green and fitting with very few cosmetic options... Whelp, unless Catalyst gets forcibly yeeted from the game and replaced by this, it's not happening, because ANet decide no new elite specs. And that means this will never be a thing, so I have no further reason to purchase focus skins from the gemstore, BL chests or pursue unlocks for in-game achievements: https://e1.pxfuel.com/desktop-wallpaper/656/421/desktop-wallpaper-fire-god-liu-kang-liu-kang-thumbnail.jpg Weebs get this stuff. Sadly they're in short supply 'round these parts, which is why opinions here tend to not be in their favour. ANet is welcome to do whatever they want with their game, but they also accept the consequences of decisions that don't strike when the iron is hot to successfully expand their player base (or by extension, they're responsible for those decisions which might alienate interest). I'm of the mind that unless you're making FFXIV money (which is practically carrying the entirety of Square Enix at this point), it's best for a dev team to play it safe and go with what's proven to be profitable, over trying to be different for different's sake, which is a higher-risk option. Clearly Catalyst is an example of that going horribly wrong, and should be a cautionary tale to any and all aspiring game devs who are looking for their game to be thriving and profitable with active players in the millions instead of the low-to-mid hundreds of thousands. Which also makes me worried for the expansion, since Secrets of the Obscure comes out around the same time as Armored Core 6... a game so overwhelmingly profitable that its sheer tidal wave of preorder sales had to be temporarily paused for breaking Bandai Namco's payment processors. SotO is going to have some steep competition for the first few weeks of its launch.

Fixed that for you. 😉 Seriously, though, the only reason why anyone keeps asking for longbow is because of community rhetoric due to staff and scepter being very outdated, therefore the lack of a decent ranged option made talk of longbow and rifle attractive. This does not fix the problem, it just side-steps it. Staff and scepter would still be unappealing for those who want to have an exciting mage power fantasy. If they fixed the Conjured Weapon system and let you element-swap the frost bow, you'd likely have a better longbow than getting a new two-handed one, much like how Conjure Lightning Hammer is just a better overall package than Cata's hammer. If we could element-swap that hammer, even if they kept the animations for all 5 weaponskills the same, it'd be great. Just make it a toggle instead of on a 30-second timer, and ditch the duplicate since it causes a lot of rotation problems, and you're pretty much set. Sadly, pistol feels to me to be as unimaginative in concept as bow and rifle. We have flamethrowers, super soakers and tesla guns. Zelda has different elementally-tipped arrows. We've seen that all before in games and it's pretty basic and boring. Take for example, the water element. Water 1 - it squirts water. Water 2 - It sprays a mist. Water 3 - it shoots ice. There's your solid, liquid and gas forms of water. I'm pretty sure that's the reason why it's main-hand only, instead of off-hand, so the dev team doesn't have to think too hard about a whole set of 5 moves per element on a firearm. Could they do something like "shoots an AoE puddle on the ground that heals allies/chills enemies,"? Sure, but off-hand Focus, Dagger and now Warhorn have that sort of thing covered in spades, so what would be the point of getting off-hand pistol other than a slightly clumsier version of stuff we already have? Seems like a waste of development resources. Now then, if we're talking what would have been appropriate for the expansion - and considering all of the Focus skins that look like knuckles in other MMOs, plus the martial artist cosmetics we keep getting - then Element Monk would have been the ideal thing to get. And no, before you go saying "nah it would be Guardian," read up on your GW1 lore. Cynn marrying Mhenlo introduces Elemental powers into the Monk order, and unlike Catalyst, we have two element-wielding martial artists in the game: Master Stonefist and Officer Aimi (the latter uses fire). It's also more in line with what would be expected in a Far East Asian setting, as usually the five-element diagram originating in Taoism as Wu Xing (but used in Japan and Korea as well) is typically associated with two things: Far Eastern holistic medicine, and the martial arts. For fire, you're looking at something like this: Note that Flame Wall (Fire Focus 4) is used at the start of the fight and he does a combo finisher through it at the 48 second mark. Fire Shield (Fire Focus 5) is used at the 1:46 mark and its Transmute Fire form is used earlier at the 1:07 mark. Just to highlight some examples of how off-hand focus already works for a martial arts class. For a projectile, Ryu's Hanto Hadouken variant from his guest appearance in the fighting game Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid has him firing a phoenix that travels out and then comes back to hit a second time, instead of a typical fireball. https://imgur.com/DKzTovK This is basically Fire Scepter 3's projectile visual effect so it's already in the game, just to highlight how low-cost it would be to put this together. If you're looking to break rules and make the Water stance less of the go-to for healing, you could leverage the phoenix here and do exactly what Fire Scepter 3 does, healing you when the phoenix returns for a percentage of the outgoing damage that was done, or something of that nature. Then you can use this as an excuse to revamp Scepter so those who want the Wizard/Mage power fantasy can have a better Scepter to work with. For Water, and especially if they wanted this to feel like more of a Summoner with the Celestials, you're looking at something like BDO's Mystic Awakening, and then you'd have a Phoenix on the Fire one. Note the dragon that comes out when certain moves are performed: Speaking of water dragons. You can take the Saint Seiya approach with pretty much all of the Celestials and Guild Wars 2's armour cosmetics and have something that feels like a blend of Summoner, Elementalist and Martial Artist all in one. Case and point: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/saintseiya/images/1/1d/Tech-Shiryu-RozansRisingDragon.jpg This trailer alone doesn't even show all of the water-themed moves available in the game on this thing, but for an auto-attack combo and the 2 and 3 skills, it has more than enough to pick from. I can keep going for all of the elements, but you get the point. If you look at fighting games and the sheer variety of move possibilities they have, then something like this can get very exciting. As much of a staple as elemental powers are in martial arts fiction coming out of Far East Asia, sadly most games coming out of the region haven't been able to crack how to get the element-swapping right, or make various other missteps due to a variety of reasons, including many Far East Asian games being very low in budget. There's been a high demand for a decent martial artist class in games for quite a long time that can swap between elemental stances, and it just so happens GW2 is the only game currently on the market that has figured out the element-swapping in a game with more action-y combat than Final Fantasy XIV's more rigid global cooldown system. That being said, many Monk mains have jumped ship from that game because they simplified the gameplay into the ground and removed its elemental stance-dancing, and for years they haven't been able to do Monk justice. Many Summoner mains have also left and I've encountered quite a few of both in this game. It really felt like a huge letdown when Catalyst was announced during the Lunar New Year event, which has an activity called Dragon Ball (a direct reference to the popular franchise of the same name), when the Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero movie was right around the corner and was pushed back to just after EoD's release. It's like all the stars had aligned for ANet to knock this one out of the park while the competition with more money is struggling to pull it off, and what we got instead was a big swing and a miss trying to be different for different's sake. For a game that really needs to broaden its player base significantly more, that was a big, big misstep to me. Meanwhile, putting martial arts moves onto Guardian because Guardian has GW1 Monk-like abilities doesn't make much sense when GW1's story sets up a future for element monks, we have them in EoD already, it's a good reference to the idea of dual-classing (without trying to shove homages to popular builds into a game with a very different combat system... *cough* Spellbreaker *cough cough* Untamed *cough*), it's marketable and would have immediately caught the eye of players ANet is trying to attract from other games. You're more likely to scare off FFXIV players when they see you've merged together Monk and Samurai, something Monk mains hated about sharing Striking gear because it's one of the things that shackled them back and inhibited rotation diversity. Also, I'm 98% sure whoever designed "Whirling Light" on Guardian looked at footage of Ryu and Ken's "tatsumaki senpukyaku" (literally "tornado whirlwind leg") from Street Fighter and said "that spinning kick looks cool, let's copy that," but didn't realize that in English it's called the Hurricane/Tornado Kick and is already aspected to air. Also, it's a move from a fictionalized Japanese martial art, not a Korean one like Taekwondo, Taekkyon, Subac or Yongmudo. Whoops. Yet another reason why these specializations shouldn't be designed by a committee of several people, since that's how we get too many cooks in the kitchen (especially if they don't really know from this stuff). They should be handled by one person with a focused creative vision. Whirling Light would make more sense if it was a 360-degree weapon slash anyway, considering the art for the Willbender elite spec, so they could just move the tatsu animation to where it rightfully belongs, recycle a few other things from elsewhere already in the game, put it all in one place, and you're looking at a proper Far East Asian-themed elite spec that's 90% done out of the can and can be slapped together quickly and on the cheap and still be quite serviceable, even if the animations could still use a bit more love to feel unique. Weebs get this stuff. For all Mighty Teapot kept explaining "weebs, come save our game," to be honest, the kinds of decisions that led to Catalyst's creation, or even stuff like a longbow-using Elementalist in a Far East Asian expansion (that would be more appropriate on Thief for various reasons) alienate that very demographic. The thinking is very shallow, along the lines of "well, it COULD be good," or "I saw it in Zelda, so there," without thinking it through terribly well. The result is that we now have a "Catalyst" that doesn't "catalyze" anything, whereas we could have just used the Wu Xing elements (again, also used in Korea) to have cycles of creation and destruction and actual elemental catalyzing, but I guess the only person who did their actual research on Far East Asian culture was Maclaine Deimer. It's really not hard to figure out how to put this together, but you just need to be enough of an anime fan, specifically shounen stuff, to know these things. This kind of thing is also SUPER popular in Latin America, so it's an easy way to broaden the player base into other regions outside of just North America, Europe and Far East Asia.

Shield is going to make Virtuoso very broken because it can basically get infinite blocks, with Shield recharging blades and bladesongs giving Aegis. When it comes to instanced PvE like strikes and raids, good players might wind up breaking your encounter design by way of being pretty much immortal. Furthermore, unkillable Mesmers in PvP/WvW are going to be a balance nightmare. It seems Shield from Chronomancer is the reason why the final bladesong lost its damage shielding ability, but what it got instead with off-hand shield is so much more broken. I'd honestly put the bladesong back the way it was and rethink blocks giving blade stacks. This will solve the problem of unkillable Mesmers in PvP/WvW automatically. As it stands, the fifth bladesong isn't terribly useful without its shield if faster-firing abilities just give Aegis quicker.

Hammer is very clunky and unfun to play, so no matter how strong you make it, I don't think I'll ever be using it. Conjure Lightning Hammer is a way better hammer and is tons more fun to use. Like with Fire Sword main hand and Fire Dagger or Focus, the leap finisher is on 2 and the AoE moves are on 4 and 5, so you can very easily set up combo fields to get combo auras. The hotbar layout has way better parity with sword main-hand and dagger/focus/warhorn off-hand. This means anyone who is familiar with Sword main-hand on Ele is going to have a lot more fun and a way easier time just picking up the Conjure Lightning Hammer and going to town. It's very "pick-up-and-go". Catalyst Hammer is considerably clunkier for no justifiable reason: the leap finisher is on Water 4 and the CC skill is on Air 4, whereas Conjure Lightning Hammer's 3 skill does more damage AND more CC. Imagine the following scenario: Take the Conjured Lightning Hammer and just rework it into Conjure Hammer. Let us swap elements. Don't rework the animations, just change the VFX, boons and conditions so they're element-appropriate. Remove the 30 second timer so it becomes an activated toggle, and remove the duplicate weapon drop. I get it sounds nice on paper to let a friend pick up the weapon and play with it, but it causes serious rotation issues in practice. BAM, you now have a hammer that is instantly more useful, smoother and more intuitive to play, and ultimately far more fun than the hammer Catalyst has. This is also partly due to Cata's hammer skills being designed around its wells, and by extension, Cata's traits are designed around the use of hammer over all other weapon types. Conversely, Warhorn is a great off-hand weapon because it puts down combo fields, and Sword is a great main-hand weapon because it is able to make good use of those fields for combo auras. Sword 2 on other elements just has really useful skills for gameplay, like a laundry list of "what does a player need to be able to do": Fire 2 is a leap finisher that puts down an AoE burning field, Water 2 is an excellent evade and one of the best healing skills in the game, Air 2 is a gap closer that does CC. It's like everything you need is all in one spot. Cata's hammer is not designed to be a good or useful hammer with useful skills a player needs to be able to immediately and sensibly access, it's meant to work as an accessory to the Catalyst's wells mechanic. And while a weapon fueling a spec mechanic is by no means a bad thing in it of itself (example: dagger on Virtuoso), I do believe this highlights just how poorly designed Catalyst as a spec is, and the hammer needing a damage buff outside of Catalyst to be useful and to overcome the fact that it's clunky to use is a testament to Catalyst's design issues. You'd need to overhaul how it works from the ground up and practically make a brand-new specialization if you want it to be useful. I sincerely think the people who main Cata only do so for one of three reasons: 1) Because it's been buffed to be powerful in certain game modes 2) Because they don't know how Weaver works and fell for the "playing piano" rhetoric, not realizing there are restricted element builds for it, and pushing all of the buttons in a way that more greatly resembles playing piano feels more braindead than making executive decisions about what element you're choosing to be in and why in a given situation 3) Heavy amounts of copium that this was the elite spec we got. Now that Tempest mains can use sword (which is lots more fun and will encourage more Weaver mains to use Tempest more often), it'll help ease them into Weaver since Weaver is not actually all that much more complicated once you get how sword works with using the leap finisher on combo fields you set up. I think that's going to be great for Tempest mains and restructure a lot of the current discourse on the state of Elementalist, as I'm seeing a lot of the aforementioned rhetoric in map chat coming from people who don't even have Weaver unlocked. Warhorn is a great addition to Weaver's arsenal, and offers a few alternative play style. On both, now summoner builds are far more viable. But if you want to use a lightning hammer for a Thor-style power fantasy, it's just way better and more fun to use Conjure Lightning Hammer. Sword/Warhorn is more useful not just because of damage, but convenience. Sword and Warhorn simply don't really offer much to Catalyst or its wells. I may have my heavy disagreements here and there with how some of the other specs are designed, but Catalyst is legitimately the only one that I think is so awful from the point of the concept alone that it should be replaced on principle. I thought it'd have a Deadeye-style representative in a Living World season to justify its existence, but nope, it's nowhere to be seen in EoD. It's really just an attempt at trying to force together the idea of a Scrapper and the idea of a Summoner and doing neither terribly well. There's not much incentive to use an Elementalist Scrapper when Scrapper is already in the game and is more coherent as an overall package. Elemental fist-using martial artists are actually featured in EoD (Stonefist in the tutorial zone and Officer Aimi in the Janin meta) so if a Summoner is what you wanted to go for, I would check out Saint Seiya and get some ideas of what to do with the Celestials from there. Give it main hand focus with punches on 2, a projectile on 3, and Willbender's utility skills. Then fix up Staff and Scepter for people who prefer the more westernized Mage power fantasy over the more expansion-appropriate Far East Asian one (which is justified in GW1 when Cynn marries Mhenlo, for those of you who remember), and rework the conjured weapon system as described above, and you'd make everyone happy regardless of preference, especially with pistol on the way.

Hard agree here. What this entire beta highlighted for me is how unfun and poorly designed Catalyst is in general, as well as how useless Hammer is as a weapon outside of Catalyst. The devs seem intent on trying to boost the popularity of specs and weapon choices by making them powerful, but at the end of the day, more people than not won't care if it's clunky and unfun. For all of the rhetoric surrounding how Weaver is like "playing piano," Catalyst is the one that expects you to be pushing all the buttons and then cycling through all of the elements. With the other especs, there was always a decision-making process about why you're choosing to go into a particular element, and you could make various builds that allowed you to stay in one or two and still be viable in non-competitive content. I think what Catalyst mains find appealing about it is either just how powerful they've had to make it through buffs, them not understanding how Weaver or Tempest work so a "pushing all the buttons" spec feels more braindead to them, or one hell of a lot of copium. My guild and I did some testing and I made a variety of Ele builds. Here's what we found: Sword/Warhorn opens up a new era of gameplay for Weavers and Tempests alike, and you can make a multitude of different builds now for either. For Weaver, there are more "restricted element" (staying in one or only a couple) builds which are now viable for most content, with different levels of engagement depending on how exciting or how simple you want the gameplay to be. "Summoner" builds using the summoned elementals are now far more viable against champions and running meta events. There's a water-only build that is practically immortal and is great at support with heals while also doing a more-than-acceptable degree of outgoing damage. For Tempest, sword main-hand allows for a new chapter of exciting gameplay opportunities that I think Tempest mains will find lots of fun, and ease the transition into Weaver if they've been putting it off, since its actual complexity is only marginally higher once you get used to sword + overloads. Similarly, the more exciting gameplay will draw Weaver mains back to Tempest for a different style of gameplay. I made a lightning-only summoner Tempest build that is really good, has great sustain and is a lot of fun to play, and makes use of the Conjure Lighting Hammer. The Conjured Hammer is, quite honestly, a superior hammer to the equippable one in every way imaginable. It has a better and more fun move set, does great damage, has the leap finisher in a logical place on the hotbar, and is pretty much everything you'd want out of an elemental hammer. The only downsides to it are having to pick up the second lightning hammer to extend the duration, and waiting on recasting Conjure Lightning Hammer. I tried to see how hammer would work on this build if I used it whenever Conjure Lightning Hammer was on cooldown, and it was just terrible. Not only was the damage output inferior, even with a legendary hammer, but it was just so unfun to use and the weapon's kit was multiple shades of awful and useless. Unless you REALLY have your heart dead-set on that Thor power fantasy no matter what, it doesn't matter to me if they buff the damage. The kit is so terrible and clunky to use, there's no incentive to use the thing outside of Sword main-hand and dagger/focus/warhorn on off-hand. To make matters even worse, Conjure Lightning Hammer's leap finisher is also on 2 with AoEs on 4 and 5 which gives it amazing parity with Fire Element Sword. 3 being a knockback that does CC is also great. Conjure Lightning Hammer's Wind Blast (the 3 skill) does more damage and more CC than regular hammer's Wind Storm (the air 4 skill). The arrangement and organization of the skills makes it so if you're used to Sword Weaver, the skills you'd need for your combo finishers are all in the same places so it's ultra convenient. On Cata's hammer, you have to swap to Water and push 4 for your leap finisher, or air and push 4 for a worse CC skill. You can't set up a combo field and leap through it for a combo aura on Cata, at least not easily unless it uses sword. Weaver can do it and with sword, now so can Tempest, but Cata's traits are built entirely around the main hand hammer, and likewise, hammer's skills are designed completely around Catalyst's wells. Ele mains have said this enough over the years but I wish these things were a toggle instead of a time-limited thing. It sounds fun on paper to have the second one spawn so a friend can pick it up and have fun with it, but realistically this causes a lot of rotation problems. If "Conjure Lightning Hammer" was instead changed to "Conjure Elemental Hammer" and we could just have the same animations as Conjure Lightning Hammer with different weaponskill stats and visual effects, it would instantly be a far more ideal hammer than what Cata has to work with. It just serves to highlight how useless and poorly-designed of a spec Catalyst is. I honestly really think that since two NPCs in Cantha (Master Stonefist from the tutorial area and Officer Aimi in the Janin meta) use elemental martial arts, what eventually was turned into Catalyst was originally meant to essentially be Element Monk. Then, at some point during development, all the "Dragon Jade Tech" stuff was added and the Jade Brotherhood was given scrappers, ANet tried with haste to slap together an Elementalist version of Scrapper, with the four elements being tied to holographic representations of the now long-dead corrupted celestials from GW1 who we kill to go "Weh no Su" and gain dual-classing in Factions. It's like they tried to make it "Scrapper, but also FFXIV Summoner" (in lieu of not understanding how XIV SMN works), because all of the other especs from EoD are basically mashed together versions of several ideas that don't go together naturally, including bootleg XIV jobs. Considering the devs talk more on their social media accounts about FFXIV than their actual game, this - along with the obvious FF player bait in the gemstore - should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. I was expecting ANet to try and justify Catalyst's existence by having something like the Deadeye boss fight in PoF, where a major character was going to show up using this thing to try and market it to the player base, but nope, it has zero representation in the actual story and game otherwise. At least Willbender shows up during the guild hall acquisition quest. I get this is like CMC's baby but there are better hills to die on instead of doubling down on trying to force people to like Catalyst. It's the one spec in the game I think should be deleted and downright replaced on principle, due to how poorly thought out it was from the ground up. Element Monk still makes the most sense to me as the ideal EoD Ele espec, and is supported by GW1's story due to the marriage of Cynn and Mhenlo. Not to mention, all the Focus skins that still look like knuckles style weapons in other MMOs...

It doesn't make sense to me that they'd make an entire set of weapons and not allow any players to complete said set. That would be really silly to me. I initially imagined it to be kind of like the EoD preorder bonus weapon chest, which was a sort of early access/preview to weapons we were able to obtain more of once the expansion released. Normally, I'd feel very silly about even having to ask the question, but lately ArenaNet has been making decisions which appear to unashamedly fly in the face of basic common sense, and communication hasn't been great or timely, so I can't in good conscience be certain of what should or shouldn't be obvious anymore when it comes to ANet these days. I would at least hope they would come out and say something like "once Alliances come out of beta, the War Machine weapon skin chests will be available through WvW-specific achievements/reward tracks,". Doesn't take very much effort to say and gives an idea of what the plan is, at least. As for future betas, remember when they said Alliances were going to come out THIS YEAR? Yeah, I don't see that happening. There are still too many bugs and too many problems for it to have a stable release any time soon. Then again, EoD launched in what still feels like an unfinished state, and only one Cantha-centric LW season isn't going to be enough to fill all of the story holes and explain all of the lore torn to shreds and thrown out the window just to allow EoD's story to happen, so I can fully see them releasing Alliances in an unfinished, buggy state and then tell us they'd patch it up after the fact.

I was just curious if there will be a way to obtain more of these later. I really like both the sword and the shield, but it sucks to be forced to choose only one and not be able to complete the pair. Will these be a regular WvW reward eventually, or obtainable through some other way? Is there any ETA on when we can expect their implementation?

Will these reward weapons be available later? I really like the sword and shield but it sucks to be forced to pick just one instead of being able to get a pairing or set that goes together.

I'm aware of the trend. I think it's a dumb trend, though. As I wrote, ANet is practically leaving money on the table with this practice, and I know plenty of people who would just outright buy it if it were available. FOMO in the gemstore doesn't actually work if they're not even putting the things into the gemstore that people want to spend money on. As for there not being 16 outfit bundles, I see that as a component of the problem. Basically, ANet's financial model isn't terribly sustainable, which is why they lose talent (see my above post). It's the real reason why John DiMaggio no longer voices Canach (he's worth $33 million, Matt Mercer has a NET worth of $1 million, one of those two is more amenable to negotiation if you're making a game on a tighter budget). The "scheduling conflict" thing was just ANet PR being diplomatic about it, but DiMaggio has been pretty open about how he believes he should be paid what he's worth, along with his wife, who no longer voices Rox and a few other characters. To put it simply, they need more income to be able to justify paying these artists. They don't have that much money, so we don't get 16 outfit sets in the gem shop for them to recoup those costs, because they can't afford to have that many made in the first place. However, they COULD have that money by making some things available for purchase, so they could have more revenue in the meantime. So in the end, it becomes a big "chicken and egg" type of situation. They need more stuff to put in the gemstore to make more money, but they need the money to pay the outsourced designers (like Jiamin Lin) to make the stuff that goes into the gemstore. What prevents it from being a total Catch-22 is that they do have things they could be putting into the gemstore to alleviate that problem... they're just nonsensically choosing not to. The problem with making things available via black lion statuettes is that for those of us already sitting on plenty of them, that means there's no real need for me to whip out the ol' credit card and give them my money. I already did that before, when there were things in the BL chests I wanted (which hasn't been the case for quite a few months now). If they were separately purchasable for gems - and mind you, I have money so buying gems isn't an issue for me and I personally really do not mind supporting a game I like - then I could have an excuse to pay for something. I don't mean to seem like I'm bragging for having a paycheck and a few hundred a month here or there on cosmetics isn't an issue for me. I'm trying to highlight the absurdity of how much money ArenaNet just leaves on the table when quite a few people have outright reached the point of "I'd just buy it if it were available" and they're actively shooting their own profit margins in the foot for no good reason, so whatever their financial woes are, it seems to be a demon of their own creation (unnecessarily at that). TL;DR ANet's businessmen have forgotten how to do the whole "business" thing and apparently don't care about making money to sustain their project plagued by budgetary issues. Color me frustrated, confused and angry at trying to wrap my head around the business logic of what they're doing.

Agreed. I communicated the bug with my guild also, but we expected some sort of announcement by the weekly reset and patch, and what ANet planned to do about it. We understand things happen, game dev is difficult (my husband works for a major AAA publisher and knows all too well about the putting out of fires that happens constantly), and we try to be understanding. The problem is that we've gotten zero communication since after the weekend. Again, wouldn't be a huge issue except for the fact that this is a time-sensitive event with a definitive end date so it would be unfortunate for the advertised reward to not actually be available before said event ends. We need to know what ANet plans to do about this before we ask our guild members to waste their time in organized group events over the promise of something they'll not be able to obtain.

I'm very disconcerted about the radio silence for this. My entire guild made a big event to go into WvW and encouraged non-WvWers to participate due to the reward cosmetics that were supposed to be associated with this beta. The fact that there is still no word today on the subject does not bode well for communication. At the least, tell us that either the beta will be extended, or the weaponskins can be earned through some other kind of activity. Hell, some of my guild members were open to the idea of purchasing them from the gemstore if they were available. We don't need to know the specifics of what sort of fires the dev team is dealing with internally, we just need to know how players will be compensated for losing the entire weekend to earn those rewards during a time-sensitive window.

Yeah I just noticed immediately after putting this post up that they removed the mention of the torch and its associated image. If you missed it, it looked like a rocky hand with a lava/volcanic aesthetic. There does seem to be some sort of communication breakdown. WvW players and players who were trying out the beta to get the weaponskins still have radio silence about fixing the achievement bug before the beta period ends so they can get the advertised weaponskins. My guild and I were getting into WvW specifically to take part in that event, when normally only very few of us are WvWers, but we wanted those skins. The fact that there's no word about the status of things or even extending the beta to compensate is disconcerting. I don't know what kind of fires they are putting out internally, but at the least, they could let players know that either the rewards will be moved to the next round of betas while they sort out the issues, or they can make them available through some other activity. However, on the topic of the Gold Essence weaponskins, I think my overall point here is being missed. There's currently only a drip-feed of new stuff in the gem store every couple of weeks, which has been largely lacking until the Butler & Maid outfits came out. That certainly can't be good for monetization efforts. I spoil my own guild and buy them gifts off of the gemshop, but everyone pretty much has everything by now, meaning I'm running out of things to throw money at. It's a shame that something I WANT to throw money at, and for the time being is ONLY supposed to be obtainable through outfit bundles, isn't. I'm aware that ANet unfortunately lost some of the concept designers who worked on their cosmetics and other aspects of their game to other companies. One of their long-time in-house concept artists - the guy who designed the Ministry of Purity samurai and Reiko from GW1, Primordus and Jormag's looks in the Icebrood Saga - now works for Blizzard. His name is Zhengyi Wang. So they lost him, and Jiamin Lin, who designed pretty much all of the recent cosmetics, was recently picked up by Terraform Studios and may not have availability to continue working on more cosmetics if he's put on other projects. So at the least, for those of us who don't mind supporting the game and would like to complete the Gold Essence sets, those chests being missing from the past few outfit drops in the gemstore feels like a missed opportunity. Same goes for making the new emote something we can't buy as a gift. My guild members absolutely loved the Butler & Maid outfits I bought them, so it was a shame I couldn't also gift them the emote that goes along with it. ArenaNet is practically leaving money on the table for no good reason with decisions like that.

I noticed there was a big post today about the Magmatic Torch skin, advertised alongside the Phoenix Griffon skin. Unfortunately, it's not showing in the gemstore, and can't be found anywhere else. I'm guessing this is a bug? The notes also didn't seem to mention the Jade Bot ghost skin, so I'm guessing that was an error. Maybe that was the one intended to be advertised instead? Or was the Magmatic Torch supposed to be in the game now? I'm also surprised that the last couple of outfits in the gemstore didn't also feature the Gold Essence weapon chests. I've bought every single outfit that they came with and I only have three of the chests. I've been sitting on them, unopened, because I've been waiting to get all 16 to complete the entire set, but it seems the Gold Essence chests were discontinued? They aren't being packaged with new outfits anymore, which kind of sucks, because I do want the entire set (and I'm willing to shell out money for it) but it's not even available for us to buy even if we want to.