Seventh Ranger.3968

It's gotten to the point now where almost every single ranked match has at least one bot in it, and it's an extremely rare occurrence to get a game with 10 real people. It's made ranked pretty much unplayable, since the vast majority of the time, matches are decided by which team got the most bot accounts afking on it. Their behaviours are always the same, and easily recognizable: auto-running into walls all game, or self-tormenting in base (for Revenant bots). Some names that I'm sure everyone has seen around are Redrfkk, Eignart, Hate(with a french accent on the e), and X Rogue One X. These are programs, not real players and they, along with many other bots, are ruining everyone's matches because pvp rewards aren't tied to any kind of participation, so these bots are just being created to farm rewards at the cost of our pvp matches. Anet, this is getting way out of hand. If you guys pay any attention to these forums, please respond, and start by banning the aforementioned bots. Almost any pvp player can confirm they're bots, we've all run into them many times. Not to mention the fact that they're always online playing pvp matches non-stop, with nothing but losses, should be a dead giveaway that they aren't human.

Apparently it means they don't care enough or don't have enough staff to actually do anything about it. That's the most generic automated reply I've ever seen. The worst part is, these bots should be really easy to spot. They all have the exact same behaviours, and the exact same 0 participation in matches plus they're always online and queuing for matches. It's so obviously not human, and it shouldn't be that hard to set up a program that detects stuff like that, the way the afk system can detect if you're afk.

I think what the person meant is the % of team thing at the end of the match. You have to have been participating at least 10% or something, to be eligible for rewards. Personally, I think that would help a lot, since bots never get any % of stats.

Yeah, I agree, it would help with the bot problem a little. Also just tying ranked rewards to participation and top stats and stuff would help reduce the number of bots, because people wouldn't have as much reason to do it.

It's gotten to the point where I'm regularly seeing bots in ranked games, sometimes 2 or even 3 per match. Anet, wtf are you doing? These bots are so obvious too, their behaviours are always identical. It's either characters just running into walls all game, or self-tormenting Revenants afk in base. Do you just want people to stop playing pvp and leave it to the bots? I'm seeing the same bots all the time now, they never get banned. It's like an infestation.

Interesting. I'm glad other people have been posting about it. I've also had it happen on seemingly normal stairs and flat ground in pvp, as well as when trying to shadowstep up to higher platforms. Sometimes it works fine, other times nothing happens, despite the fact that I should be close enough to the higher platform for the shadowstep to work. I'm sure it'll happen in plenty of other places too, but where I noticed it is in the Eternal Coliseum when trying to get up to the platforms overlooking mid from either side's home-side platform. Sometimes I can shadowstep up there with no problem, sometimes I just waste initiative in place.

As the title states, Death's Advance is frequently just shadowstepping me in place and not giving the stealth. And no, it's not because I'm always revealed and immobilised at the same time whenever I use it. The ability wasn't implemented properly, and needs some serious bug fixing.

That's why they should specifically buff page refunding for using pages in the same tomes, rather than just page generation overall. Especially for Justice, since it used to be so much more accessible for damage builds.

Title says it all. Firebrand still feels awful to play after the massive nerfs (because let's be honest, it wasn't a rework, it was a nerf in disguise). I totally get and agree with the idea of limiting people's ability to do everything at once, and I actually like the idea of tomes being less powerful but more accessible, kind of like Engi kits, but they woefully undertuned everything when they made the changes. Renewed Justice needs to be given back its old functionality of giving a page back on Firebrand. I'd be perfectly fine if that included reverting the cooldown reduction to 20% per kill as well. Also just in general all the tomes need better ways of generating extra pages when staying in the same tome. Either Swift Scholar needs to be buffed, or the grandmaster traits need to include some extra way of generating more pages. Resolve and Courage tomes are almost back in a good spot, but playstyles that used Renewed Justice, and focused on damage feel MASSIVELY weaker than before, even with the recent page cost reductions. Anet, you had a good idea, but you need to execute it better. Don't just nerf Firebrand across the board, make sure these changes end up being ONLY a nerf to people using all the tomes at once to get excessive value out of hybrid builds.

Honestly, I like what they were going for, they just massively undertuned it. I really like the idea of making Firebrand tomes more like Engi kits, where you can dip in, use stuff, and then dip out, but in order for that to work, they need to seriously improve the page regeneration, or at least improve the refunding for using multiple skills in the same book, because right now it just feels MASSIVELY weaker in every way than it used to after the last round of nerfs. And I'm not even a guardian main, I just like playing some Firebrand every now and then, and it hurts so bad to see every single build I used to have for the spec crushed into dust. Btw, I'm not even talking about pvp, I'm talking pve. I'm struggling in PVE with Firebrand now, which should be the easiest mode to play any given build in.

Actually funnily enough, the build that was ruined the most by the Shadow Arts nerfs was a Deadeye build. I just hate that Anet is pretty much turning thief stealth into just a trigger for other effects/boons, rather than letting it act as... actual stealth. I just wanna be able to feel like an actual assassin again when playing thief, without having to sacrifice all my offensive skills. I'd be perfectly happy to have a higher risk of being revealed by people, if Anet added more reveal to other skills and traits, I just want to find a way where stealth can still be a meaningful part of thief's kit again. Going with the method of balancing stealth through adding more reveal would also allow other classes that could or should have more potential for stealth, like mesmer and ranger, to explore more stealth options, without it becoming overbearing, and could even allow Anet to add more stealth capable or even stealth focused elite specs to other classes in the future. I think it would be really cool and interesting to see a game state where stealth has more counterplay, instead of being continually limited further and further because Anet is afraid of it, due to it being hard to balance currently. I'd even be ok with more methods of countering it beyond just reveal, if it meant we could have more stealth in the game in general. Stealth is cool and fun, and it's sad to see how little of it is allowed in the game, especially for the class that is supposed to be GW2's equivalent of a Rogue, which is THE mmo stealth class.

(Not a thief main btw, just hate how they massacred shadow arts) While the recent shadow arts rework did give Spectres some nice improvements to the support they can offer through stealthing allies, it pretty much removed stealth from Thief's kit entirely, outside of Shadow Refuge and Blinding Powder, especially in pvp. I know that was the goal, because Anet doesn't want thieves to have access to stealth anymore, since people found it annoying, but the response to that should have been to add more sources of/more access to the reveal mechanic, not remove access to stealth from the literal stealth class of the game. So many thief builds that relied on/used stealth before no longer work at all, unless they want to lose their utility skills to run Shadow Refuge and Blinding Powder, and those skills have long cooldowns compared to how accessible stealth used to be. As someone who has played both as and against thieves, I would much rather just be given reveal on more of my skills and traits, than be reduced to having less access to stealth than rangers and mesmers, when playing on the literal stealth class of the game. As someone who plays other classes more than thief in pvp, I never really found their stealth egregiously annoying. At least no more than annoying mechanics that other classes have, like ranger's perma-root builds, warrior stunlock builds, mesmer clone spam, or various other annoying things in pvp. And to be clear, I don't find those things annoying enough to want to take them away from the people who enjoy them (Except maybe the ranger root build. I'm a ranger main, and I still think that needs nerfed). So was thief having stealth really that annoying that thief and only thief had to lose most of their access to it? I desperately want to see Anet partially revert the Shadow Arts nerfs, so that thieves can get back access to things like stealth on Steal, and longer stealth durations (although I think that should be changed to a major trait rather than a minor). Does anyone else hate the borderline removal of stealth from our game's dedicated stealth/assassin class?

There are a multitude of bugs with Upkeep traits on Herald, that have been in the game since at least PoF launch, possibly longer. I've just started playing my Herald again recently, and I've noticed that they're STILL in the game. Two examples I can think of off the top of my head are having the wrong stack counts if you mount and dismount with Facets active, and Draconic Echo causing you to lose stacks when you lose the Facet's "Echo". There are several others, but I either can't remember or don't know the exact cause of them, but they all mess with Upkeep trait stack counts in very irritating ways. Please look into them, they have been around for literal years.

Has anyone else noticed the multitude of bugs with Upkeep traits on Herald? Like having the wrong stack counts if you mount and dismount with Facets active? Or Draconic Echo causing you to lose stacks when you lose the Facet's "Echo"? I've just started playing my Herald again recently, and I've noticed it still has a ton of bugs and issues with its Upkeep traits that have been a thing since at least PoF launch, maybe even further back. How have these bugs not been fixed already!? Herald mains out there, please tell me I'm not the only one who's noticed this?

This post right here. Underwater combat is practically impossible on a Vindicator right now. I reported it as a bug cuz I thought it was a mistake. It definitely feels like one big mistake, that's for sure. X'D

(I know this post is coming a bit late, but I’ve been swamped with finals and family stuff over Christmas and New Year’s) With the final beta over, and many of the issues present in the first 3 either gone or worked on, it’s time to address the issues that still remain, or that weren’t improved upon enough, as well as let Anet know what we think they’re doing right, so that they won’t undo those changes, and will continue to move in the right direction, in areas where they’re doing well. If you’re reading this and you agree with my thoughts/feedback, please leave a like and/or comment to help it get more attention, and hopefully get Anet to notice. If you disagree with any of my thoughts/suggestions, please comment and share what you disagree with (in a constructive way though, don't just try and insult me, cuz that's a waste of everyone's time). Also, if you have your own ideas or feedback that you want to post or want Anet to see, I encourage you to post them in here too. I’m really curious to hear other peoples’ opinions on these specs, and I want to try and get as much feedback and impressions in one place as we can, in the hopes that if Anet does take notice of this thread, they might listen to some of our feedback. In this post I’ll actually be starting with the specs that were most improved upon and/or are in the best spots, because it’ll be a lot easier to convince the devs not to undo good changes they’ve already made than it will be to convince them that they need to make changes to things that aren’t good. So in order of best/most improved to worst/most needing improvement, here’s my feedback on the 9 Elite Specialisations of EoD: Untamed: I was incredibly impressed and surprised with how much the devs improved this spec. It went from being a steaming pile of hot garbage to one of the best or at least better specs in the beta. They fixed almost all of the issues it had and made it actually feel pretty decent to play. The biggest issue was of course how weak the pets felt, especially their Unleashed state. This was advertised as a pet-focused spec, after all, so it was incredibly disappointing that it felt like it was actually nerfing your pets. In the final beta though, they not only significantly improved the abysmal traits for the Unleashed skills but also fixed the issue of our pets not being able to use their regular skills while Unleashed, by making Unleash just a 1 second cool-down that could be toggled back and forth between at any time, making it so much easier and more convenient to just toggle in to use the Unleashed skills and then toggle back so the pet could use its regular skills. It made Unleashing your pet no longer feel like a massive nerf and gave you the best of both worlds. The other good change they made was adding the Unleashed Ambush skills, not only giving some benefits for Unleashing yourself on weapons other than hammer, but also creating some really good value for bouncing the Unleashed mechanic back and forth between you and your pet, which was something the trailer seemed to suggest would be a core part of Untamed. The only major thing I can think of that could still be improved is adding some synergies with the rest of the class, as well as perhaps a little more focus on delivering the “super pet” fantasy that the trailer promised. If Unleashed skills counted as Beast skills, this would fulfil both of those functions by giving them much more traitability and synergy with the rest of Ranger, while also giving you some unique and varied ways to give your pets more power. That said, I’m actually not even sure if a change like that is needed. Untamed already felt pretty decent in the last beta, so it’s hard to say if it even needs more power. I also wouldn’t want it to be too strong on release and then end up getting nerfed into the ground because of it. Also last but not least, I’m glad they didn’t ruin the Bunny Thumper build. I had fun with it in the first beta, and as far as I can tell, it seems pretty decent as is, and doesn’t seem to need any major changes. Bladesworn: This spec isn’t second on the list because it’s necessarily in a really good spot gameplay-wise, but rather because the changes Anet made to it are taking it in a really good direction, and are a marked improvement over its previous iteration. The changes to Dragonscale Defence were EXACTLY the direction Bladesworn needed to go in, to make Dragon Trigger more useable, and making Daring Dragon reset Dragonscale Defence’s cool-down when you re-enter Dragon Trigger was the perfect way to ensure it would be a viable and useable grandmaster. I also personally liked the faster charge times for Dragon Slashes much better, even if it meant sacrificing a bit of damage. It reduces the time that you stay vulnerable and immobile, and increases your chances of successfully getting off your Dragon Slashes, and it also just flows a lot better in combat. Overall, I really feel like these changes are moving the spec in the right direction. That said, it still needs a fair bit of work. I was quite disappointed that they still kept pistol as a melee weapon. It’s a pistol for crying out loud, it should have range, especially since Warrior doesn’t even have any ranged offhand weapons at the moment, so it would be really nice to have pistol fill that role, and would also make it a more versatile weapon, while also preventing it from having to compete with offhand axe. I think 900 range would be best, so that it matches with other pistols as well as axe 3, since it pairs well with mainhand axe anyways, but if the devs feel like that’s too much range, 600 could probably work as well. Last but not least, I think the most important issue that Bladesworn is still facing is fragility. Even with the improvements, Dragon Trigger still doesn’t feel quite reliable enough or safe enough. You’re still incredibly vulnerable while sitting still like that, unable to dodge, and it’s also still not as easy as most of us would like to reliably get off a Dragon Slash. The stability from Dragonscale Defence definitely helps, but unless you’re only fighting one enemy at a time, there’s a decent chance that more than one of your enemies will have a disable, or may have a skill that disables multiple times, so you’ll still struggle to actually use your Dragon Slashes some of the time. Giving Dragonscale Defence a second stack of stability, but reducing the stability duration to 2.5 seconds might be a good way to deal with this issue (probably should only be done for PvE though), and would still give Bladesworns just long enough to charge up and Slash before it runs out. Now that Dragon Slash damage is lower across the board, I think it’s also time to give Bladesworns some more durability while in Dragon Trigger, to make up for the fact that they have to essentially break combat and just stand there to use it, unable to dodge or even use defensive or healing skills. This is also why I prefer the Dragon Slashes to be faster but less powerful, because it leaves more power budget for some much needed survivability. I’m not sure what form that survivability should take, damage reduction or sustain, but Bladesworns need some help surviving the pummelling they take while charging up their Slashes. Harbinger: I really loved the change they made to elixirs of allowing them to be thrown after being consumed. It brought them much more in line with Engi elixirs, which was the benchmark for elixirs, making them much more fun and interactive to use. I also really loved the fact that both elixirs and Shroud skills were given interactions with Blight, making the Blight itself a much more interactive part of Harbinger, like I’d advocated for in my first feedback post, after the original 3 betas. It gave it a more “Corruptions-like” feel and play style, which is absolutely the right direction to go with it, in my opinion. That said, they still need to do more work on it, going more in depth with the Blight interactions to make them unique to each of the elixirs, rather than just having them all increase the damage and condition duration. It feels very bland and boring, and doesn’t incentivise you to prioritise “spending” your Blight on one elixir over another, depending on your situation, which should be how it works. Same goes for the Shroud skills. They just apply extra torment, rather than being empowered in unique ways that would encourage you to prioritise using your Blight for one over the other, to suit your needs. It’s definitely a step in the right direction, and I applaud and encourage it, but they need to go further to make it a truly good spec. I do really really love what the elixir changes have done for boon Harbinger though, and I can’t wait to play it when EoD comes out. It feels like the most complete and well put together trait line in the spec, and Anet have now solved the problem of Blight not benefiting the boon/elixir play style at all, which is part of the brilliance of the direction they’ve gone in with the Blight interactions with elixirs, and once it’s had some more work done on it, I think it’ll really shine. One thing I’d really love to see is Blight affecting some of the durations of the boons the elixirs give, either as a baseline effect or (and this would probably be the better option) through one of the middle line traits. One change that they made in the last beta that I think was for the worse, however, was the removal of consuming life force for healing. Even with Blight being removable now, Harbinger is still quite squishy compared to other Necro specs. Without their shroud being able to absorb damage for them, Harbingers have very few survivability tools, and the life force converting into healing helped mitigate that. I think that without some degree of extra survivability to make up for the lack of a damage absorbing style of shroud, Harbingers will struggle to compete with the other Necro elites or even core Necro. If the issue was that it was too much of a drain on life force, then they could add a bit more life force gain into the class to compensate. We already have Corrupted Talent (gain life force when entering shroud) to help with that a bit, and they could also add some life force generation to the pistol autos perhaps. It would give Harbinger a bit of a more unique feel as a spec that wants to collect and spend life force rapidly, and would also give us more of a reason to take pistol over sceptre beyond just the stun. In all of my time playing Harbinger, I never really used the pistol much beyond my initial testing to see what it was like, and I have a feeling I’m not the only one. The last thing that still needs to be worked on in Harbinger is the trait lines, especially the power line. What are you trying to do with it, Anet? What do you want it to accomplish? These are the questions the devs need to think about, if they’re going to turn it into something useful and worthwhile. Right now it’s just a worse version of Reaper, and making it stronger so that it can be a better version of Reaper is a terrible idea, because then Reaper would become obsolete. If they’re going to keep it as a power focused line (which I don’t actually think they should necessarily restrict themselves to), then it needs to “do” power in a different way from Reaper. It could have more evasion, more cc, more healing, maybe boon ripping or corruption, etc. Whatever the devs choose though, it needs to have a clear focus/play style that sets it apart from Reaper as a power spec/line, so that it won’t always be trying to compete with it. If you want raw power damage, you take Reaper, if you want… whatever they decide to make top line Harbinger focus on, then you’d take top line Harbinger. Virtuoso: I already quite enjoyed most of the top trait line for Virtuoso when I played its first iteration, and now I think they’ve more or less perfected it and made all 3 top traits fit incredibly well together. The change to Psychic Riposte was the perfect change to make it the best grandmaster to partner with the other top line traits, instead of Infinite Forge, which is what I had been using in the first beta, and the added regen on Duelist’s Reversal gave it that little bit of extra sustain that it needed. The other 2 lines, however, still need a decent amount of work. They’re both still trying to compete with Chrono and Mirage for power and condi damage, and that’s not going to be healthy for the game no matter how those lines are balanced. They’re either going to be too weak to be worth using, when you could just go power Chrono or condi Mirage, or they’ll be buffed until they overshadow power Chrono and condi Mirage, and render those builds obsolete. Either way it’s gonna suck. What they really need to do, much like with the power line of Harbinger, is to figure out exactly what they want to do with these two lines. What do they want them to accomplish? Personally I think they should continue and expand upon the duelist theme that they perfected with the top line, albeit in different ways for each other line. I don’t have too many detailed thoughts on how they might go about doing that though, only that each one should be distinctly different from the others, so that they each feel unique to play. Also Phantasmal Blades definitely needs to be replaced with something actually useful. One idea I had for the power line is that it could perhaps be focused on lifesteal/healing from your damage. It would be a different style of duelling than blocking through Bladesong timing, but it could still be fun and could also be tied into Virtuoso directly by having it be your Blade skills specifically that heal you. I also like the idea of keeping the range threshold from Mental Focus, except changing it to healing instead of damage. You could heal for 10% of your Blade skill damage on foes within the range threshold. It would give power Virtuoso more of a melee/close range focus, which would differentiate it from the top line, which I often played as a more long to mid ranged build. The middle trait that would replace Phantasmal Blades could focus on your Psionic skills (since there isn’t a trait for them yet), making them heal you for 20% of their damage on foes within the range threshold, in addition to reducing their recharged by 20%. As for Infinite Forge, I think the general idea isn’t too bad, but it needs a little something extra to make it actually feel like a grandmaster. Maybe you heal each time it triggers? And maybe striking foes within the range threshold with Blade skills would cause you to stock 2 Blades next interval instead of 1, which would also increase the healing? I dunno, I’m just spitballing here, but I think something like that could work for the power line. Oh, and last but not least, in order to open up more buildcraft for Virtuoso in general, as well as make a melee duelist playstyle easier for Virtuoso to fulfill, maybe they could make Sword skills count as Blade skills as well? That way you could use dagger and something else as your ranged weapon set, and then swords as your melee? As for the condi line, I really have no idea. Its main problem is that it relies on Blade skills, which are all power skills. Having a power build focus on Blade skills is fine, because they already deal power damage, but for a condi build, it doesn’t make sense. None of the Blade skills inflict any damaging condis on their own, and all Jagged Mind does is just bring them up to the baseline level of existing Mesmer condi weapons. It’s kind of a “non-trait”, if you will. And worst of all, even with a lot of precision and perma-fury, it’s still hard to reach 100% crit chance or close enough, so you won’t even be triggering that bleeding with every hit. The extra bleeding damage you get from taking Bloodsong kind of makes up for that, but not really, and because Mesmer can only really apply bleeding reliably through Blade skill crits, the trait is keeping you reliant on using a bunch of power skills for your condi damage, as well as for your Blade stocking. Also Sharpening Sorrow is nearly useless. The expertise from fury is kinda nice, but you’ll rarely be able to benefit from it unless you take Dueling, which is ok for condi, but not the greatest. Yet… As I’ve been writing this though, it occurred to me that there’s actually a way to make Dueling synergise really well with condi while also creating a solid duelist type playstyle for condi Virtuoso: Blinds. By making Bladesongs apply blind, we could take advantage of Ineptitude (blinds apply confusion) from Dueling to create a great duelist playstyle similar to Virtuoso’s top line, but still unique in its own way, that would deal good and reliable condi damage. The focus on the bottom line could then be shifted away from bleeding and into something that Mesmer’s condi weapons already apply easily: confusion. The first trait could cause Bladesongs to apply blind, similar to how the top line’s first trait makes them give aegis. The second bottom trait could be left as is, since the expertise from fury will be quite useful when combined with the perma-fury from Dueling, and the grandmaster could be changed from stocking Blades from applying bleeding to stocking them from applying confusion. The increased bleeding damage could then be changed to a 33% chance to apply confusion on all crits (not just Blade crits), to keep crit and fury relevant to the build and to provide a consistent way to work on stocking up your Blades, even if you’re not on a weapon that can frequently apply confusion. The reason why it should be a 33% chance on crit instead of 100% is because it can apply on all crits, including weapons and skills that already apply their own condis, so 100% would be too much. Mechanist: To start with, it evidently needs to be highlighted that the Jade Buster Cannon (elite signet active) STILL isn’t working. I don’t know how or why Anet missed this, but it didn’t feel like it had been touched at all, in the last beta. In Mechanist’s first iteration, the elite would almost always miss unless the mech and its target were both on the flattest of flat ground, with absolutely no difference in elevation. Outside of those rare perfect circumstances, the Jade Buster Cannon would miss pretty much every time. It was basically unusable. Now, on to the actual impressions/feedback part. I think Anet did a pretty good job trimming down on some of the excessive baseline strength of the mech, and tying it to specific trait and skill choices instead, to add some much needed trade-offs for those who wanted a super powerful mech. Tying Rocket Punch to mace 3 was a great way to not only add some weapon synergies, but it also gave us as the Mechanist control over when to use a valuable disruption/interrupt skill, which was fantastic. I was also really impressed with all the trait changes: cutting out precision as a baseline inherited stat, and tying it entirely to a trait instead, meaning you had to chose to give your mech your precision, sacrificing other trait options in order to do so; removing an extra offensive skill that the mech really didn’t need, and replacing it with a defensive one instead; and some general nerfs to overly strong traits in general, which they then compensated us for by allowing signet passives to benefit the mech, just like a Ranger with their pet, like I always said it should have been like. All in all, they did a great job of toning the mech down while still preserving its ability to be strong when the proper trait and skill choices and sacrifices are made. I especially liked the added passive on Shift Signet of allowing your mech to gain copies of your boons. Spectre: The reason Spectre is so far down on this list is not because I think it’s in a bad spot or anything, but rather the opposite. It’s because it hasn’t really been improved upon at all, since it doesn’t really need to be. It was already fantastic in the first beta, and now it’s gotten some well-needed nerfs to trim the excess “fat”, so to speak, but it’s otherwise in a great spot and probably ready for release as is. The devs made some great choices cutting down on its aoe healing without really hitting the thing that gives it its identity and value among the other support specs: its powerful single target healing. I don’t think it needs any more nerfs, but if the devs do decide to nerf it further, for whatever reason, they should continue to avoid hurting its single target healing. My recommendation (again, not that I think it’s needed), would be to target its survivability a bit, if they feel they absolutely have to nerf it, by hitting its shroud. If they go after the single target healing, they risk making it too weak to be worth picking when all the other healing specs in the game do so much more aoe healing. Catalyst: The only reason Catalyst isn’t at the bottom of this list is because it’s not based on what state each spec is in, but rather on how much it’s improved, and Catalyst… was technically improved… a bit. The Jade Sphere has become a decent bit less frustrating to use, although it still remains rather inaccessible, given how hard it is to build up energy for it. It feels like it’s something you should be using frequently as a normal part of your combat, but it takes so long to build up the energy for it that you rarely get to actually use it. The new way it works now is pretty decent, but they really need to make energy generation for it easier, so it can actually be accessible and a valuable part of your kit. The changes to the Augments are also a step in the right direction, shifting the “Sphere matching” benefits away from empowering the skill effects, to just affecting the recharge or duration. It allowed them to give the Augments their full power no matter what Sphere they were used in, which is progress, but they’re still very bland skills that aren’t all that useful or special, and have no meaningful synergies with anything else in the spec. The entire spec as a whole just feels like a very haphazard mess, hastily thrown together at the last minute, to be honest. So let’s talk about what wasn’t fixed and still needs some serious work. The traits were barely touched at all, and they’re the biggest problem with the spec. I mean there’s an entire trait line that relies on you playing with an aura build Tempest for it to be even remotely useful. Not just playing with another player, but one who is specifically playing Elementalist, specifically running Tempest on that Elementalist, and even more specifically running an aura build in Tempest, on Elementalist, playing with you, all so that you’ll be able to get some meaningful value out of those aura traits. It’s ridiculous! It really feels like Anet had no idea what they wanted to do with the spec, which is really sad because there’s such an obvious answer that would be really fun and unique. I said it in my first feedback post and I’ll say it again: Catalyst should be a combo-focused spec. It would fit so perfectly with the name of “Catalyst”, and we already even used to have combo focused traits in the game. Warrior used to have a trait called Powerful Synergy which would double the effects of their combo finishers. That would be a fantastic trait for Catalyst. Engi also has a trait called Soothing Detonation, which used to heal nearby allies when you used a blast finisher. Catalyst itself even already has a trait that gives you an aura when you combo. Stuff like this is exactly what would make Catalyst interesting and unique, and give it its own identity in the game that would make it stand out not only from the existing Ele specs, but from every other class and spec currently in the game. We don’t really have any classes or specs that truly focus on combos yet, and it would be really fun and interesting to have one. It would also fit really perfectly with the new class mechanic of the Jade Sphere, since that’s literally an on-demand, customisable combo field. Catalyst could have one trait line focused on empowering its own combos, one trait line that focused on empowering allies’ combos, and the third one could stay as the all stats line, since Anet seems to like that concept, and I actually had some fun with it during the betas myself. If they wanted to be fancy, they could even have the traits give different benefits based on what type of field the combos were used in, and/or what type of finisher was used. Honestly though, anything would do. Just something combo focused to actually bring Catalyst together as a spec, and stop it from having to compete with Tempest and Weaver by trying to do the exact same things but worse. There are plenty of ways they could do it too. They could use my first suggestion of having one line affect your own combos, one line affect your allies’, and one line be all stats. Or maybe they could have one line affect blast finishers, one line affect leap finishers, and one line affect projectile and whirl finishers. There are plenty of possibilities, and anything will do, really. To that end, if a combo-focused spec is going to be a real possibility, they need to do some work on the hammer and Augment skills. I said it last time too, hammer needs more combo finishers. In order for it to actually work well with Catalyst and its Jade Sphere, especially if Anet actually does try to make it into a combo spec, each hammer attunement is going to need to have between 2-3 combo finishers, maybe with one or two attunements even having 4. Currently all the attunements only have one combo finisher except for water, which has 2. That’s just not enough to work with, for a combo-focused playstyle. I also think that all or most of the Augments should be changed to be combo finisher skills of some kind as well, with maybe one of them being a field instead. It would be a unique way to give them some more power, which they still need even after the changes in the last beta, and it’ll be exactly what they need if Anet does see sense and decide to go for a combo focus with Catalyst. Many of them would need some changes or tweaks to turn them into finishers, but I’m sure Anet can come up with something if they try. Willbender: Now we come to the specs that either barely improved overall, or actually got worse, starting with Willbender. I will say that they did make some good changes/improvements to some of the traits. I especially liked the changes to the adept major traits, which allowed for much more personalised customisation of the Willbender Flames. Same goes for the master major traits, other than the bottom one. Those changes gave us some nicely personalised customisation of the extra benefits we would get from triggering our virtues. The addition of a condition damage increase on Lethal Tempo, along with the new Searing Pact trait, were also great changes that made Willbender viable with condi as well, instead of just power. That said, that’s about the extent of the positives of Willbender. For a spec that’s so heavily focused on its virtues, it had a ton of bugs and issues with virtue-related traits not working properly, which was quite disappointing. Power of the Virtuous doesn’t reduce the charge time of Flowing Resolve, no doubt an oversight when they turned it into an ammo skill. Normally I’d just assume it would be obvious to Anet, and that they’d notice and fix it without having to be told, but given how long Mechanist’s Jade Buster Cannon has been non-functional, I figured it was worth drawing attention to. Indomitable Courage also doesn’t affect the rate at which you get aegis from Crashing Courage. I’m not sure if this is a bug or just a design oversight, but it seems pretty obvious to me that it should reduce the number of attacks to trigger the aegis from 5 to 4, since there’s no longer a time interval for it to reduce. Last but not least, Absolute Resolve doesn’t increase any of the effects of triggering Resolve when you have Phoenix Protocol. Sure it doesn’t provide a flat heal anymore, but it still gives regen, and you should still be able to get some benefit for the passive from Absolute Resolve, otherwise Anet will be creating anti-synergies, just like with how Indomitable Courage has no benefit to the aegis generation of Crashing Courage. For a spec that focuses so heavily on its virtues, I think these kinds of anti-synergies are a serious problem. We already have Dwayna runes and Elder’s Respite, it seems pretty logical to just give Absolute Resolve an effect like that, for the regen from Phoenix Protocol. Either that or they could have it increase the duration of the regen and alacrity. That could be pretty interesting too. I also noticed they actually created a targeted nerf for Shattered Aegis, when it’s used on Willbender. My wacky little Shattered Aegis build was the only real fun I had on Willbender, and it was really disappointing to see it get nerfed so substantially, when it wasn’t even that strong to begin with, especially since the Courage effect only lasts for 6 seconds, and on top of that, Mystic Rebukes can’t even crit. It just felt sad and unnecessary, and it’s just another example of an anti-synergy with traits, only this time it was inflicted on purpose, further limiting a spec that’s already not particularly interesting, diverse, or powerful. The last thing to talk about with Willbender is the direction/theme of the spec. The devs initially didn’t seem to know whether they wanted it to be an assassin or a bruiser, and it’s unclear whether they’ve decided or are still trying to figure it out. Given how the changes to traits in the last beta put a more clear focus on trying to use and trigger virtues and their effects as much as possible, and getting lots of benefits and rewards from doing so, it seems like the devs are going for a playstyle that favours more drawn out fights, where you can continuously use your virtues and Willbender Flames, and the various effects and benefits they provide. In other words a bruiser playstyle, especially since 2 of the 3 virtues (or 3 of the 4, if you’re counting both charges of Resolve) are more defensive/sustain oriented. To be honest, I’m actually hoping this is their goal with Willbender, since this type of bruiser playstyle fits much better with their Physical skills, and it’s also a new and unique way of playing Guardian that doesn’t overlap or compete with the existing specs. With a few more adjustments to the virtues-related traits in the core specs, to make them work properly with Willbender, as well as a bit more work on Willbender itself, I think it could end up being a really fun and interesting brawler type spec. Vindicator: Vindicator is the only spec of the 9 that actually felt like it just got worse in the second iteration. Changing the dodges so that they all cost 100 endurance may have made Forerunner of Death (the damage focused dodge) more accessible, but it also took away our ability to have a dodge that still had a normal endurance cost. Now they all take a long time to recharge, and it feels really hard to evade enemy attacks adequately. It was already punishing enough to take away our second dodge, but having such high endurance costs on top of that is too much. I said it in my last feedback post, and I still feel the same way now, I think the best way to handle it is to nerf all the dodges a little and just have them all cost 50 endurance instead. I would much rather have a weaker dodge that I can use more often than a stronger one that I never have available often enough, and I think many other players probably feel the same way. That’s why I almost exclusively used Saint of zu Heltzer (the healing dodge) during the first beta, even though I was testing damage builds, because its normal 50 endurance cost made it the most accessible and made it possible for me to actually comfortably fight without always getting pounded while waiting for a long dodge cool-down. I’d honestly rather go back to the endurance costs of Vindicator’s first iteration than stick with what we got in the second iteration, because at least that gives us a dodge that’s as accessible as we’re so used to, even if it doesn’t deal damage. Alternatively, if they don’t wanna revert the dodge changes, but also won’t budge on making the more offensive dodges equally accessible, they could always change the costs to 50, 75, and 100, instead. That would be a good way to allow us to have some more accessible dodge options, while still keeping the offensive ones more “expensive”. The other thing I didn’t like about the second iteration of Vindicator (although this is purely a matter of personal taste) was the Legendary Alliance skills no longer flipping back and forth. The interplay between the 2 legends of the Legendary Alliance Stance was the only thing that made those 2 legends unique, and that gave the Stance a distinct value when chosen over other Stances. We already have perfectly good damage stances and healing/support stances, both from core Rev and from its existing elite specs, and Archemorus and Saint Viktor don’t really offer anything new or unique… by themselves. It was the ability to use them together, as a “hybrid legend” or “dual legend” that gave them a unique place among the other legends. Now Anet has taken them from being a “dual legend” to just 2 separate legends that have nothing to do with each other, and will likely never be used together in the same build. We’ve never had a hybrid legend or spec before that could do both damage and healing at the same time, and it would be really cool and interesting to see Vindicator deliver on that. It seemed to be what the devs were initially going for, despite not successfully achieving it in either beta. I’m assuming the reason they separated Archemorus and Saint Viktor was because people found it frustrating to have the skills flip back and forth, when they always wanted to ignore one or the other, but from what I experienced and heard from other people, that was only because the opposite Alliance member’s skills always felt useless to a build focused on the other one, since there was very little done to make the “hybrid/dual legend” idea work very well in the first place. If the skills were simply given more power by default (and balanced accordingly), so that they would still feel impactful no matter which legend you were more focused on, then players wouldn’t feel so much like it was mandatory to ignore one or the other. One change that would significantly help with that, as well as be a good foundation for making the hybrid (middle) trait line serve its purpose more effectively, would be to change Empire Divided to a conversion trait instead. If it converted power into healing power, and healing power into power and precision, then it would ensure that no matter what your build was, you’d still be able to have some scaling with both legends’ skills, and get some value out of using both of them together, instead of always feeling like you had to ignore one or the other. Another trait change that would help improve the hybrid line would be to improve or double down on the theme of Amnesty of Shing Jea. It’s a good idea, that helps emphasise the focus of each legend, but it’s not enough to actually make a hybrid playstyle viable. Splitting your build’s focus between damage and healing will naturally lead to lower outputs of both, and while a hybrid playstyle should never be able to quite measure up to the output of a build with a single focus, in any one area, it needs to be able to output enough overall to be worth using, otherwise there’s not much of a point to the middle line and the playstyle it’s trying to realise. To that end, I think adding a small aoe damage effect to Luxon (Archemorus) skills and a small aoe heal to Kurzick (Viktor) skills would go a long way in giving them a bit of extra output to help both sides feel meaningful in a hybrid build. This could either be added on to the functionality of Amnesty of Shing Jea or, if that would make the trait too powerful, it could instead replace Angsiyan’s Trust, since that trait isn’t too strong or useful for a hybrid playstyle to begin with.

If you're interested, I actually designed a new class a while back. I wasn't specifically designing it with the new expansion in mind, but I kinda feel like its theme would be perfect for Cantha. Here's the link if you wanna check it out: New Class Idea: The Luminary - Professions - Guild Wars 2 Forums

I just had an idea in the shower last night for what I think could be a really cool support elite for warrior: Monk. Wields a quarterstaff, uses supportive mantras, and bursts become prayers with various supportive effects depending on the weapon. It would probably make a really good next elite spec for warrior, or if they really put their noses to the grindstone, they could even scrap Bladesworn and replace it with Monk. Or just give us both, lol. I don't think anyone would complain, given how little Bladesworn adds to warrior beyond a cool theme. Whaddya think?

This! 1000 times this! I forgot to mention it in my main post, but yes, that shouldn't count as a "feature" of Untamed, it should just be a baseline quality of life adjustment that's given to all Rangers. They should also add the ability to designate which pet skills you want the pet to use on its own (kinda like how you can designate your own skills as auto-attacks), and which ones you want to manually control, so you can still benefit from the pet's AI handling some of its combat for you, instead of having to micromanage all of it. Also I agree with the majority of the rest of your post as well. Good thoughts and feedback. I tried to be a little more lenient to Anet in my review, but I honestly can't argue with a lot of your points other than just saying "go easy on them" XD.

True, it does have a lot of issues, and I agree I would like to see a dedicated support spec in the future, the way Thief has Spectre now. Currently I'm using Spellbreaker for my support warrior, but it's not exactly properly focused on support or anything, it just kinda works better for it than Berserker or a third core spec, and that's it. I don't think Bladesworn is likely to be able to be completely reworked though, so they may as well try and focus on its strengths, or rather what its strengths should be (in my opinion), which is a fun roleplay-esque PvE spec. With the right tuning, it could possibly find a place in PvP, but it would require some REALLY precise tuning. I'm more of a PvE player though, which may be why I was able to enjoy Bladesworn more than most people. I think we're probably going to have to wait until the next expansion for an elite spec that can truly change the role(s) warrior can fill though.

Yeah, to be honest it was the theme I liked more than the execution. I agree that Dragon Trigger needs a lot of work, but I really liked the idea/fantasy they were going for. If they can get it to work better I think I'll enjoy playing it a lot. But yes, you're right, I'm not a Warrior main.

Thanks for your feedback, both on my formatting and on the post itself. I'm gonna look it over and try and improve the formatting. Also you make some good points about my ideas around making condi work. I wasn't really thinking about all the possibilities of the healing from Immortal Dragon, so you're probably right about it being too strong to merge with another trait. I definitely think that making Dragon Slashes apply condis for each bullet consumed will be necessary to make condi viable though, otherwise there wouldn't be much reason to use them. Not sure if that could all be just put into Fierce as Fire, but hopefully Anet can find a way.

Now that the betas are over and we’ve all had the chance to test out all the new elite specs, and now that I’ve had enough time to mull over all my thoughts and feelings about them, I figured it would be a good idea to put them into writing and post them, and see how other people feel about both the specs and my feedback on them. If you’re reading this and you agree with my thoughts/feedback, please leave a like to help it get more attention, and hopefully get Anet to notice. If you disagree with any of my thoughts/suggestions, please comment and share what you disagree with (in a constructive way though, don't just try and insult me, cuz that's a waste of everyone's time). Also, if you have your own ideas or feedback that you want to post or want Anet to see, I encourage you to post them in here too. I’m really curious to hear other peoples opinions on these specs, and I want to try and get as much feedback and impressions in one place as we can, in the hopes that if Anet does take notice of this thread, they might listen to some of our feedback. Now, going in the order that I played them, here are my thoughts, impressions, and feedback on the 9 elite specs of End of Dragons: Harbinger: I really loved the idea of elixirs on Necro, but other than that, nothing else in Harbinger really impressed me. The traits were very bland and generic, for the most part, and the power line will never be able to compete with Reaper, and Harbinger shouldn’t even be trying to compete with Reaper in the first place. I was also really disappointed with the lack of interactivity with the Blight. When I first heard about it, I was really hoping we’d be able to play with it and manipulate it, much like how a Corruptions Necro plays with and manipulates condis. It would have been a really fun and interesting expansion on the Corruptions play style, and I was really sad that we didn’t get that, because Harbinger did/does have the potential to be a great condi spec, offering a higher risk/reward balance than the safer Scourge option. I do really love the boon support aspect of Harbinger though, and I think it will fill a really nice play style that Necro didn’t have before. The only thing I think it needs is for the Blight to have some sort of benefit to that play style as well, instead of just being a punishment with no upside. Virtuoso: While on a personal level I really hate that Virtuoso is continuing the trend of taking Mesmer further and further away from being a deceiver/illusionist/trickster type class, I think it has some potential. I think its traits suffer from the same blandness as Harbinger though, and for the most part, it’s just trying to compete with Chrono and Mirage, with its power, condi, and dodge trait lines, which I think is a big mistake. A lot of the elites in the beta are suffering from a lack of identity, and Virtuoso is no different. I do really like the idea that YouTuber WoodenPotatoes suggested, of making it a long ranged artillery mage, but I’m also slightly concerned that it might either be hard to balance another super long ranged class/spec, and/or more importantly, I’m worried it might end up making Chrono feel completely overshadowed as a power spec. Depending on how it’s done it could still be a good option though. When I was playing Virtuoso, however, the most fun I had was with a Shatter focused build, that was just all about stocking up blades as fast as possible and spamming Bladesong after Bladesong, bombarding my enemies with blades and getting all kinds of benefits from it through Shatter/Bladesong traits. Bladeturn Refrain (aegis from Bladesongs) and Duelist’s Reversal (Quickness & Fury from blocking) worked really well to create a fun “duelist” play style that rewarded timing your Bladesongs well and created an interesting “ebb and flow” of battle, firing off a Bladesong, and then getting benefits from it that would tide you over until your next Bladesong was ready to hit with 5 blades, and then rinse and repeat. I think focusing on that kind of an identity for Virtuoso would give it a more clear and distinct place among the other elites, where it wouldn’t be trying to compete with Chrono for power damage or Mirage for condi damage and dodging. Instead it would be able to carve out an identity for itself as a versatile duelist that could survive well on its own and outlast its foes. It also fits really well thematically, since Mesmers originated from entertainers and performers, and a “master knife thrower” would fit really well with the class’s thematic origins, and truly live up to the name of Virtuoso. Your traits could then be how you decide what kind of damage your Bladesongs deal, what kinds of benefits they give you, and how you want to stock up your blades. Willbender: I really liked the new way that Willbender virtues worked, and I had a lot of fun with an amazing aegis build on it, which I’m really hoping will still be there when EoD releases, but other than that, Willbender is suffering from a similar identity crisis as many of the other specs. A lot of others have said, and rightly so, that part of the problem with Willbender is under-tuning, but it’s also trying to fill a role that was reasonably well filled by Dragonhunter already. Now I do like the idea of having a more dedicated assassin spec, but that would mean DH would need to have its identity changed/sharpened a little to make it more distinct from Willbender, and make it still worth using even though Willbender exists. There’s also the issue of the devs not really seeming to know whether they want it to be a bruiser or an assassin, which I think they need to sort out before releasing it. It does have some really cool concepts though, with the new virtue mechanic and the Willbender Flames, and all the ways they can be traited. It just needs more work on its identity and more power. Bladesworn: My second favourite spec, and one of the ones with the clearest and most distinct identity/fantasy. I don’t have too many criticisms about Bladesworn except for the fact that Dragon Trigger felt very hard to use successfully. I can’t count the number of times that I tried to go into it to use a Dragon Slash and got interrupted and knocked out of it before I was able to get the Slash off. It was one of the worst feelings ever, and made the class feel incredibly frustrating to play at times, despite the fact that I really wanted to enjoy it. Especially since you’d lose ALL your flow that you worked so hard to build up, and you’d have to wait the full 8 seconds before you could try again… often only to get interrupted again. Or blinded. Which made Unyielding Dragon (Slash ignores blind) feel pretty much mandatory. Given how critical it is to the spec, I think they need to give Dragon Trigger some serious quality of life improvements, in order for Bladesworn to not be completely dependent on stacking tons of stability and always taking Unyielding Dragon. The 2 easiest ways to do this are to either make it so disables don’t knock you out of it (which I think is the better of the 2 easy options, since it would keep it feeling distinct and different from kneeling with Deadeye rifle), or to allow you to dodge and cast other skills while in Dragon Trigger, just like Deadeyes can when kneeling with rifle. Another option would be to give Bladesworns a trait that would give them pulsing stability while in Dragon Trigger, but that might end up becoming pretty much mandatory if it was a major trait, and as a minor it might be too strong. It might work just fine though, but it’s hard to say. The last option (which I don’t really like) is to simply let Dragon Trigger have an interrupt cooldown so you don’t have to wait the full 8 seconds, and cause being knocked out to refund some or all of your flow, or for you to keep your bullets. I feel like this option doesn’t really make it that much less frustrating though. The other issue I have with Bladesworn is that the pistol isn’t actually that good of an offhand. It’s not really a ranged weapon, and a lot of the time axe will just straight up outperform it. I think it should be a proper ranged offhand, since warrior doesn’t really have that yet, and it would give it a more clear identity and a reason to take it instead of axe. If giving it a full 900 range would make it too strong or something, 600 would always work too. Last but not least, while it doesn’t really “need” it, I think it would be really nice if Bladesworn had a condi option. Fierce as Fire (drop flaming shell when using final ammo charges) is a good start, but it’ll never be enough to make condi viable on its own. Adding functionality to it to make explosions also apply burning would definitely make condi more viable, and a grandmaster major that made Dragon Slashes inflict burning for each bullet would seal the deal. Since Immortal Dragon (healing from Dragon Slashes) isn’t that strong anyways, it could be reduced down to 5% and rolled into Guns and Glory (GM minor) to make room. Catalyst: I think everyone was pretty disappointed with it, and so was I. The Jade Sphere needs to either work like a well or be moveable through a skill or skills. As for the traits, it was trying to do the same things that Tempest and Weaver do, but worse, which is the worst choice they could’ve made for the direction to go with it. I think they really should’ve made it a combo focused spec and expanded on the theme they were going for with Elemental Epitome (auras when you combo). It should’ve been a spec that could facilitate and empower combos, an actual “catalyst”. It could’ve had a trait line for empowering its own combos, a line for empowering allies combos (probably through the Jade Sphere), and if they really wanted to keep the all stats stacking, that could’ve been the third line. There even already used to be traits that affected combos, like the Warrior one that doubled combo effectiveness, or the engineer one that caused blast finishers to heal around you. It would’ve been really fun and interesting to see traits like that on Catalyst. To that end, hammer needed a lot more combo finishers and/or fields than they gave it. Each attunement should have had at least 2 or 3 finishers and/or fields, with one or two attunements maybe even having 4. The Augments also need a lot of work. Right now they’re weak when used in the “wrong” attunement, and just average when used in the “right” one. They either need to have a more average power level at all times, and be quite strong when used in the “right” attunement, or they need to have different average level effects for each attunement, instead of just one, kinda like Glyphs. As it stands though, none of them are really worth using over other options right now. Making some or all of them combo finishers or fields might help too, and be a good way to up their power in a more unique way. Vindicator: Much to my surprise, this actually ended up being my 3rd favourite spec out of the new elites. I had a fair bit of fun on it, despite the fact that it still needs quite a bit of work. The two damage dealing dodges both felt pretty inaccessible, due to their high energy costs, especially the top one. Without any increases to your endurance recovery, it can take 30 seconds between each dodge, which is insane, and unfortunately the traits don’t help with that much. Even the dodge that affects both enemies and allies is still fairly inaccessible unless you take Reaver’s Curse (endurance per target affected), and are hitting a lot of enemies and allies each time. I ended up just sticking with the healing dodge the whole time, because it was the only one that really felt easy to make use of. Personally, I think all 3 dodges should only cost 50 endurance, and be balanced around that increased accessibility accordingly. That way even though they’d be weaker, you’d actually get to use them more than once in a blue moon. The other issue with the spec was the lack of traits to facilitate the hybrid dps and healing play style that the Legendary Alliance Stance was supposed to be all about. There’s not much point in a Stance that has 2 legends if most of the time you’re just doing everything you can to avoid/ignore one of them and only use the other. And given how undertuned Saint Viktor was (especially his elite), it was often him getting ignored by most people I talked to. Currently Empire Divided (power at high health, healing at low) is the only trait that really helps allow for a hybrid play style. If Vindicator is going to be able to successfully fill a unique role as a hybrid spec (since we already have both a damage spec and a healing/tanky spec, and don’t need another one of either), it will need to be able to make the fantasy of swapping back and forth between damage and healing, to suit the situation, into a feasible reality. To that end, the middle line of traits (which seemed to be the one trying to be the “hybrid line”) will need some significant improvements. It also wouldn’t hurt to add at least some degree of supportive capabilities to the greatsword, although people could always just take staff as their secondary, so it doesn’t really matter too much. Last but not least, while not strictly necessary, it would be nice if some of the skills (including weapon skills) and/or traits had some synergies with Chill, since the kit had so much of it. Mechanist and Untamed: I’m grouping these two together because a lot of their issues (mainly the issues with Untamed) are much more obvious when compared to one another. To start with Mechanist, other than the Jade Buster Cannon (elite active) barely working, which I’m sure everyone including Anet is aware of, and will undoubtedly be fixed soon, it really only had 2 major issues, which are actually pretty closely linked. The first is that there were very few synergies between the mech and the Engi, like Rangers have with their pets, which normally wouldn’t really matter too much, if it weren’t for the second issue: The mech is too strong by default, when compared to Ranger pets, Necro minions, or Ele elementals. Rangers can make their pets almost as strong as a Mechanist mech, but in order to do so they need to take specific traits and skills to maximise the power of their pet, which means they have to sacrifice power or utility from other traits or skills in order to create a “super pet”. The same goes for Necros if they want to create “super minions”. A Mechanist’s mech not only exceeds that power level, but does so by default, needing only the traits from the elite spec itself to reach full power. Now since the spec is pretty much all about the mech, I wouldn’t want it to lose that level of power, and I hope Anet doesn’t just straight up nerf it to bring it in line, but I do think some of its power should be shifted into skills and traits, so that if you want to have a “super mech” that can tear through anything, you still can, but you’ll need to make sacrifices to do so, the way the other classes with pets/summons do. The signets, for example, could easily all apply to your mech the same way Ranger signets all apply to their pets, allowing some of the mech’s power to be shifted into the signets. It also wouldn’t be too hard to shift some of its power into trait and weapon synergies as well. The condi line already has some decent synergies with the Explosives spec, and it would be nice to see that expanded on, and to see something similar done for each Mechanist trait line, so that more power can be shifted into those core spec synergies instead of the mech just having a lot of damage/power by default. I could see synergies with Alchemy being really fun for the support trait line. As for the condi and power lines, I actually think it would make more sense to have the condi line synergise with Firearms and the power line synergise with Explosives, since Explosives has more power-oriented traits. Now, on to Untamed. Let me start by saying that Untamed makes a very good Bunny Thumper. The Bunny Thumper build is very fun to play and works very well… and that’s about all Untamed can do. It feels like all the devs cared about when creating Untamed was bringing the GW1 Bunny Thumper build over to GW2, and everything after that was a halfhearted afterthought. In the trailer, we were promised a spec that could allow us to truly focus on our pet and empower it to turn it into this “Unleashed Beast”. A true “super pet”. It would’ve been a fantastic contrast to Soulbeast, which was all about having the pet empower us. Instead what we got was a massive disappointment for anyone who wanted to do more than just Bunny Thump. It has no meaningful synergies with your pet besides Ferocious Symbiosis (stacking damage and speed from hits), no synergies with the rest of Ranger, and to add insult to injury, it actually has quite a few anti synergies. Unleashing your pet prevents it from using its regular skills, unlike Mechanist whose mech has access to all 8 of its skills at all times (8 if you count Crash Down and the Jade Buster Cannon). In most cases, unleashing your pet actually nerfs it because the Unleashed skills have long cooldowns, are weaker than most pet skills, and can’t be traited at all except for 2 very lacklustre traits that rarely come in handy. They should count as Beast skills, the way Mechanist’s mech commands count as Toolbelt skills, allowing them to be much more traitable and actually have lots of meaningful synergies with the rest of the class they belong to. The Untamed traits for them also need to be improved so that they’re not a suboptimal choice even in a build that should want to trait the Unleashed skills. The pet also needs to be able to use its own skills underneath the Unleashed skills, via its AI, to bring it more in line with the capabilities of Mechanists mechs. To that end, it also needs to be able to benefit from Vow of the Untamed. It makes no sense for it to only affect the Ranger but not the pet, and it would make unleashing your pet more worthwhile by actually giving it some bonuses for being unleashed, while also helping to balance the higher offensive potential it should have while unleashed with some vulnerability by making the incoming damage increase affect it. Having its outgoing and incoming damage reduced while you’re unleashed would also give a fitting cost to unleashing yourself, as well as giving you a way to keep your pet a little safer if it’s getting focused too much. And speaking of unleashing yourself, or should I say unleashing your hammer… if they’re going to do an alternate weapon skills mechanic, they really need to go the full distance and give all Ranger weapons some degree of synergy with the Unleash mechanic. It doesn’t have to be complicated or fancy, it could be just really simple functionality changes or bonuses to the weapon skills, but they need to do something. It’s not like Ranger has an excessive amount of weapon skills or anything. Right now the Unleash mechanic just feels so underwhelming and halfhearted for every part of Ranger except its hammer. Speaking of which, one of the other things the trailer seemed to be promising us, that we didn’t get, was a meaningful back and forth gameplay between us and our pet, using the Unleash mechanic. We do get some of that on the Bunny Thumper build, but it’s more about just making sure you cc your target before you Unleash your hammer, and that’s about it. I remember when I first watched the trailer, it made me think that we were going to get some sort of mechanic that would build up on us and then lash out at enemies around us, and then we could transfer it to our pet and it would build up on the pet and lash out around it, and that by bouncing this effect back and forth effectively between us, we would be able to do a lot of damage. Of course I realise now that all I was seeing was the pet using one of the animations from an Unleashed skill, but the wording of the trailer also seemed to promise us something similar, and the middle line of traits in Untamed seems to be trying to lean into that fantasy of bouncing the Unleashed mechanic back and forth. I think it would be really cool to deliver on that promise in the trailer and make the middle line more viable for “Unleash bouncing”, as well as actually give it a real “building power” mechanic, where each time the “lash” attack hits, it makes the next one more powerful in some way, to really incentivise frequent swapping. In order to make this kind of play style fully viable though, the middle line traits would have to be changed to affect the pet as well, not just the Ranger. Cleansing Unleash (1 single condi cleanse when unleashing) would also need to be improved to do something even remotely meaningful, and I think the grandmaster major should be replaced with a trait to add a “lash out” type of effect to Unleash. The current middle grandmaster is kinda useful, but fairly bland and has absolutely nothing to do with the others. I think a much more interesting replacement would be a trait that puts an effect on whoever you unleash to give them increasing damage and damage reduction, which is then consumed to lash out at nearby enemies after 10 seconds, or something like that. And each successful lash strike could increase the damage of the next lash for a little bit, incentivising you to bounce it back and forth between you and your pet to get the most out of it. Now a trait that was formerly bland and passive, with no connection to the others in its line, is much more interactive and completes the line to make it actually viable as part of a build. Oh, and while we’re on the subject of bland traits, Natural Fortitude really needs to be changed. I mean a little bit of vitality? Come on. It’s literally only there to provide a bit of a survivability boost for Bunny Thumpers. It has absolutely no value or use for any other build. It needs to be changed to something that’s actually related to what Untamed is supposed to be as a whole, not just Bunny Thumper. Spectre: By FAR my favourite elite spec out of all of them, I honestly have nothing bad to say about Spectre. It’s quite possibly the most fun I’ve ever had playing guild wars, and I really hope they don’t nerf it too hard and ruin it, because I think it might need some small nerfs, to be honest. If they do have to nerf it, the best way would be to trim some of the proverbial fat by cutting down on its aoe healing, but maintain its identity as a very strong single target healer. They could also possibly cut down on the duration of some of the boons it gives too, but hopefully as an alternative to reducing its aoe healing, rather than in addition to doing that. The last option is to change the trait that lets Siphon revive allies to make it so that using Siphon on a downed ally won’t give you the 50% recharge reduction. Also they really need to get the people who were working on Spectre to do some work on the other elites, cuz I’d pay for EoD all over again if it meant that all the elites could be as good as Spectre.

Update: The second Elite Specialization, Beacon, is now ready https://docs.google.com/document/d/1048zCocde4I99yLqs4rgMnLdbxnXzDJj8I2dnKHEy8o/edit?usp=sharing

Yeah, it definitely is similar in a few ways, but I'd like to think I've put in enough effort to make it unique in its own right, so that it feels like a truly distinct and different class. Swapping Mantles changes not only your weapon skills, like swapping Ele attunements would, but also your slot skills AND your trait effects. As for the energy system, your energy fluctuates based on what slot skills you use, rather than going up or down on its own like a Rev's, making energy management on a Luminary very different from energy management on a Rev.