mirage.8046
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Posts posted by mirage.8046
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Who said this was suddenly a kids' game because of the animation?
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9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:
I think you've misunderstood what people are talking about - which is understandable, since it IS a bit confusing. People aren't talking about being able to stock blades for use with the shatter mechanic - anything that causes a clone to appear on a non-Virt mesmer will stack a blade.
What people are talking about is how certain skills are treated as blades for the purpose of triggering traits, most notably Jagged Mind. The trend is that any skill that involves throwing or generating an energy blade at a distance counts - that's dagger attacks, most virtuoso shatters (obviously) and utilities, and greatsword skills 2-4 (in the case of Phantasmal Berserker, it's the projectile that you throw that counts, not anything the phantasms do, IIRC). Weapons that involve hitting the enemy with a physical blade - sword, axe, and apparently spear - however, do not. This means that condivirt is probably going to remain dagger/X and dagger/Y for the foreseeable future, since Jagged Mind is basically the reason condivirt exists.
if spear skills even count as blades, it'd be a win of course. not only about counting as blades to trigger traits, but condi virt also cares about fast-hitting attacks and multi-hitting attacks. this is why condi virt sticks with dagger, focus, and off-hand sword because they're the best at proccing jagged mind and other traits and quickly hit; pistol does get used instead if focus 5 is hitting random enemies but not the boss. those 3 weapons are non-negotiable in general. spear on power virtuoso should be fun though.
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Well I like what I saw with the spear and emphasizing focused targets. I now think they shocked me with the lightning theme; I was being harsh. Spear being a melee two-handed does cover a role previously unfulfilled. There's a melee condi weapon that isn't defensive There's finally a substitute for dual pistols and main-hand mace. It's nice to have the explosion mechanic on a weapon again, since EOD with main-hand mace. :)) I can only imagine what holosmith will do with all that burning, or mechanist with something that isn't confusion after nerfs to that condition. For what it's worth, keep your eye on the doughnut, not on the hole.
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Have jealous warrior mains entered the room yet?
For legal reasons this is sarcasm.
Spear 5 should help hit stealthed targets cuz it will continue to hunt them, and spear 4 looks nice. A fast-hitting 1200-range daze isn't something you typically see from warrior. The burst looks cool too coupled with the evade frames. Why skills change from 900 range to 1200 range is just silly and inconsistent. -
4 hours ago, Gesbo.6420 said:
We cant be sure just yet tho I doubth they will be as all blade skills are usually range. Tho the Blade description is usually added if you spec to Virt (mirror blade for example) and they never went into is so there is still hope. 27th here we come.
there is some hope, after all, axe was updated to interact with the blade mechanic. skills 2 grants a blade if you hit an enemy, and skill 3 benefits from stocked blades despite being a melee condition weapon. even sword 3 stocks a blade if you hit your target, though all sword skills do not have the blade tooltip, let alone interact with the blade mechanic. we'll see on the 27th!
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Im not against it at all. Would totally promote Viktor to apply condis when you're not using Mallyx. Condi vindicator is not that great rn afaik and greatsword only has little snyergy with the chill applying torment on AA and phantom's onslaught.
Knowing Anet, they would still disallow chill in WvW and PvP on dodge because they already got rid of it from the GM trait, which would also mean no torment on dodge if you ran abyssal chill.
I would love this over the shoehorned support side that Vindicator got on release!
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https://i.ibb.co/5xHN5QS/addle.png
https://i.ibb.co/TMyLctW/perforate.png
https://i.ibb.co/n6hQ4fw/autoattacks.png
https://i.ibb.co/Dg0NcS5/isolate-distress.png
https://i.ibb.co/G96s5Z0/extirpate.png
okay, judging from cast times, this better serves as a power melee weapon that isn't greatsword. it should be nice to use on power reaper and power harbinger.
skills that grant multiple boons such as 'save yourselves' may immediately consume the debuff if it denies 3 given boons. oh dear.-
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Mmmkay I like what I am seeing with Ele's spear!! It might not have a lot of mobility but compensates for etching gigantic AOEs. I doubt it'll replace staff, especially in the utility/support department, but I hope it doesn't creep on to staff's aoe capabilities. We don't know whether the spear will have leap finishers or blast finishers, which CC effects it'll have, or other utility (superspeed, blocks, auras, evade frames). I am also cautiously optimistic about Weaver's spear's dual skills. There are still a lot of tests for spear to pass. I like that air AA throws a spear, hopefully it hits multiple targets instead of being a single-targeted AA. :o Could be an opportunity for a bouncing AA here!
Hopefully, they revisit staff and do not accidentally make spear replace it for doing long-range damage and AOEs.
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On 6/15/2024 at 9:22 PM, Gud.6829 said:
ranged power should have been a pistol offhand option for the Elementalist. That's really the only weapon that makes sense.
well they had that opportunity to make dual pistols for elementalist during soto. however, just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it's the only weapon that makes sense. ele players have also requested other choices like rifle, longbow, off-hand sword, or greatsword even for years. that statement means any other decisions are senseless.
how would ranged power even work with an off-hand pistol? pistol main-hand is condi-oriented, so your only one-handed weapon has to be scepter, as nothing else works for ranged power. I suppose there is something to be said for having a main-hand melee weapon to jump into the fray and a ranged off-hand weapon for targeting foes. That is a niche, however. -
On 6/17/2024 at 11:19 PM, draxynnic.3719 said:
[trimmed]
As someone who was around back then, though, I don't think the situation then reflects the situation now. Reaper exists now. Necromancer currently has (not counting offhands) two power-oriented melee weapons, two power-oriented ranged weapons, two condi-oriented ranged weapons, one ranged hybrid, and exactly zero melee condi weapons. There's a gap in that lineup, and it's not a dire need for a third power melee weapon. Better to fix existing weapons than to simply try to replace them, while giving condi an option outside of the sceptre/pistol/staff holy trinity.
With spear as is, when it's released, there are going to be literally double the options for power (greatsword, sword, spear, axe, sword, hybrid staff) as there are for condi (sceptre, pistol, hybrid staff), outside of reaper chill shenanigans. That's getting pretty lopsided, especially on a profession where 2/3 elite specs are mostly built for condition damage (yes, there's a trait set for power harbinger, but 'power harbinger' is always going to be at least somewhat hybrid since harbinger shroud always has damaging conditions associated with it).
Oh I totally agree it's better to fix existing weapons than to introduce new ones that would replace them. I would nominate daggers to be slightly buffed on the condi side. Hybrid damage is cool and all but condi reaper makes the best use of main-hand dagger IMO. It's also core necro's only terrestrial weapon with that melee AA. Poor daggers need to be buffed, man.
I think spear may be an alternative for a faster power melee style than what greatsword can do. Greatsword however hits like a truck so spear has to compete similarly or else it won't be used. In addition, we don't know what cast times will be like or what the flow will be like until the beta, so no judgment on the spear from me rn.
Yeah, power harbinger unironically inflicts almost every condition in the game except slow and taunt (unless you corrupt quickness on enemies). Not many power builds can inflict many conditions on that level. -
neither devouring cut nor voracious dive works properly underwater.
skill 3 awkwardly leaps to your target, so it's too slow and unviable to use as a gap closer. you could just dash effectively with trident 3 or swim to your target.
skill 4 infamously doesn't exist in the game, despite hovering over the tooltip that describes voracious dive's function. instead, it plays gathering plague when you use the skill.
the only proof I know is that voracious dive was actually fixed last year in the betas for weaponmaster training and the new weapons. the bugfix however has not been pushed to the live server.
these two issues have existed since EOD launch. :| -
when I see alac tempest or quick catalyst, I realize how spoiled and easy quickness Herald has with supplying boons and having 600 radii. Tempest has to channel long overloads for alacrity pulses, and if interrupted, everyone misses out on the remaining pulses obviously. Getting stability elsewhere is crucial for channeling overloads (I don't take the swiftness + stability trait because my build can't afford to take that). Catalyst has to pay attention to its tiny energy bar that's so insulting to all Catalyst players IMO.
I don't mind having to build for the synergy or supply tons of boons. It irks me when the inconsistency of support builds isn't applied to all of them for no reason. It doesn't help that tempest has to twist its arms for sacrificing healing with auras for alacrity on overloads. One can tie the two together to make Tempest more natural to supply both. Alac aura tempest is by far one of my favorite supports to play, though. Everything flows like water ngl. (Run tempestuous aria + lucid singularity + powerful aura and you'll see what I mean.)-
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12 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:
A melee condi weapon would potentially mean that if they feel the need to tone down condi builds, they have the option to nerf the ranged weapons and present the option to choose between full range or max DPS. The alternative would be just slapping a damage reduction, if needed, without there being another option to take.
Power mesmer, and virtuoso in general, has a similar issue due to mesmer sword being balanced as a defensive weapon.
Bringing nerfs to existing weapons, ranged or melee, to make room for the new role only shifts the power onto that new weapon. DPS would drop a bit on the ranged weapons I guess.
As for my thoughts on existing weapons: Power necro wasn't hot until reaper came along. I was never around in the 2012-2015 era, but I'm sure players made it work what with wells, mh dagger, focus or warhorn, and shroud.
Heck, not even power harb which was branded to be a hybrid espec did not succeed well in PvE. Prior to SoTo, power harb lacked cleave and relied heavily on its shroud. Main-hand dagger felt like a poor substitute for greatsword. Staff and focus were all you had for power. Warhorn was kept for CC emergencies.
WvW and PvP had different success rates though. Power scourge did not exist outside WvW zergs either. It took weaponmaster training + dual swords to popularize power harbinger, yikes.
I'm glad power necro has gotten more choices for power, especially power melee. Condi necro has fared well in recent years, and SOTO has enabled many more condi builds than the old, slow core weapons. The same holds for power necro because axe, focus, warhorn, and daggers are outdated and old-fashioned. Staff is great though. How ironic a lot of the weapons are 'dead' in a class that focuses on death and revivals. -
Harbinger is viable, you can make it work as it is. "Support harbinger" does exist anyway if you look at its kit that is geared at damage, boons, and self-sustain.
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The tooltip is still outdated on top of that, mind you. :P I actually like the condi cleanse on spite, as it would offer a lot of sustain in WvW where everyone and their granny have many boons. It may not sound like a lot of sustain, but in the long run, your idea would see a lot of condis being stripped, especially if the trait is paired with relic of antitoxin.
My take on this trait?
Gain resolution for each boon you corrupt or remove. Entering shroud strips boons, grants you resolution each hit, and cripples foes. I'd keep the bonus boons removed on foes below 50% HP.
While you have resolution, it siphons health and you remove a boon from an enemy (5s cooldown on stripping a boon). -
The scepter hate because of its noise burns with a passion. Take my illusionary upvote. :P
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On 6/13/2024 at 7:45 AM, draxynnic.3719 said:
I'm saying that it wasn't actually planned out, it's just something that happened, and that might explain why it, well, feels like something that's jury-rigged out of disparate parts all doing their own thing that happens to have a certain result rather than having been designed as an alacrity provider. After all, willbender was originally supposed to be the really selfish guardian elite spec.
That doesn't fit what I've heard, mostly because the hammer itself is doing most of what it's doing primarily through autoattacks, and using skill 2 in order to get back into combat after an F2 (or to trigger Karakosa). What I've heard is that it's one of the easier heal builds to learn, the problem is that it can't heal as much as most so it falls off in fights where you really do want all the healing you can get.
This. Alac willbender was initially for it and itself only. Eventually the devs decided on group alac willbender being a thing. That's draxynnic's point. Even I know this because I was around during EoD betas.
This isn't about the devs not knowing how to design elite specs; this is the case of development. Another great example of this: the devs also decided whether Specter should give alacrity or quickness, so they added both options to it in the betas, then after beta 1, they picked alacrity as its special role. Though, ironically, to this day, Endless Night still provides quickness in WvW and PvP, but Shadestep has alacrity in PvE.
What's really quirky about willbender is not the alacrity application per hit, but that you're tied to virtues' battle presence trait, regardless of condi, heal, or power roles. F2 has nothing to do with this either. You can work around the mobility. I do feel that alacrity willbender bounces around a lot like alac mirage, so I get the annoyance. You can't tell me that you're not randomly teleporting and creating clones as an alacrity mirage just like alacrity willbender is using f2 virtue to dash and using physical skills.
At this rate you're better off asking for redesigning Phoenix Protocol because Idk where else alacrity would go and fit so smoothly into the espec.-
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1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:
I disagree on the 'done to death' bit, on the basis that there are a lot of ways to add a bit of it, but not a way to really specialise in it. Elementalist is always flipping between at least two attunements, while for engineer, it's very easy to have a bit of electricity in there, but hard to really focus on it. Hammer holosmith is probably the closest at the moment, and spear probably will be soon enough when it's introduced, but that's obviously mixing with the hologram theme of holosmith, and possibly more importantly... it's still basically a melee build skinned over with a few electricity-based graphics. There are obviously ways to do scrapper and mechanist with electricity as well, but similar issues apply.
The electricity/lightning theme, in fantasy and sometimes in science fiction, is more normally associated with throwing lightning bolts and electricity arcs at range - but the playstyle associated with that seems to be something that ArenaNet has been actively avoiding. Elementalist? Staff and pistol air are notoriously bad, and sceptre air has proven to be one of the most boring interpretations of the concept I've ever seen (running weaver for dual skills, especially Plasma Beam, does help but only so much) feeling more like a continuous laser with an electricity skin rather than a lightning-themed playstyle. Engineer's electricity-themed ranged options are basically pistol's Static Shot, Static Discharge, the shield throw (which is another case of having an electricity skin rather than really feeling like part of an electricity playstyle) and Orbital Strike. The closest is, ironically, mesmer - the purple lightning might be something other than lightning according to the fluff but it comes close in look and feel - although that's obviously mixed with mesmer stuff.
And part of my disappointment here is that having a second electricity-themed melee weapon just adds to the paradox of electricity simultaneously having been done to death while still not having been done right, and by making the "done to death" side of that paradox even stronger it makes the other side less likely to be resolved. I wasn't expecting spear to be a ranged lightning weapon - I was hoping for spear to be something similar to what you're thinking - but "melee electricity" is the thing I absolutely least wanted to see because it makes the chance of getting a proper lightning playstyle further down the line less likely. It's probably going to be more electricity-themed than hammer is (from what I've heard, hammer was originally more explosives-oriented, shifting it to electricity was something that happened relatively late in development) but it's still just another melee weapon.
So I can be harsh or overly critical about things. It's just that holosmith did this theme the best. We charge up energy to do more damage inside photon forge, even. Hammer holo is what I use in PvE and WvW yeah. It's the absolute closest you'll get to the electricity style until spear's release. Anet has done so badly on ranged lightning playstyles. I'm not sure if it's because they don't like it or had boring interpretations. Don't even get me started with the elementalist's flop pistol, staff, or boring scepter. Not even Weaver makes scepter stand out more on the electricity front. Confusion, burns, blinds, vuln, weakness, superspeed, and the like are what I would love to see on a lightning-focused weapon.
I'm not sure why a melee lightning spear is now going to compete with melee hammer either! I don't wanna say it's uninspired to do a 4th melee weapon, but there have been 3 already, what does the 4th one add apart from theme and playstyle? I do agree that this route makes a cool proper lightning playstyle less likely in the future. -
if you wanna open up a can of worms, having a support weapon on necro would be not great to balance around scourge. it used to be easier to control balancing weapons when they were limited to their respective elite specs. now that weaponmaster training has enabled all weapons to be used, that's gone out of the window.
scourge does fine without a support-focused weapon. what actually needs to happen is blood magic traits being reworked and dagger, warhorn, and staff getting serious changes. not much needs to be done.
warhorn could pulse healing and swiftness, have blast finishers. staff may need some boons like might, vigor, or fury. resistance would be so rad though, especially if it goes to warhorn lol. main-hand dagger and off-hand dagger are lost causes especially with the changes to boon corruption. now's a good time to relook at core weapons instead of shoving a support weapon onto necromancer. -
1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:
I suspect what they're thinking here is to create a general-purpose melee DPS option, since hammer is somewhat defensive in nature, sword is generally regarded as holo-specific, and mace is support-ish. But seriously. Engineer hasn't had a new ranged option that isn't deploying support fields since release. I'm getting bored of rifle and sick of grenades.
And at the risk of getting egg on my face when elespear is revealed (although I'd take that) why is it that all the good electricity-themed weapons are always melee?
Spear is the air attunement weapon of engineer's weapons. /s I was really hoping for something like explosions or burns or dangerous AOEs. Electricity has already been done to death too!
As for range? Pick your poison: melee, mid-range, or long-range. -
1 hour ago, Genesis.8572 said:
As with all spears, I'm curious which E-Specs it will work best with. This at least gives the Bladesworn a solid (mid-)range option when not in its gunsaber modes. It would be nice if this worked with Spellbreakers, at least for the thematic connection of the Sunspears, but that remains to be seen.
I know they tried making longbow and rifle work by adding 'explosions' function to some of their skills, but longbow does it better unironically because it has 5 ammo skills and 2 of those skills are explosions. Rifle DOES have 6 ammos, but only 1 skill has the explosion function. I guess rifle butt compensates for getting more ammo in return and having hard CC. They should revisit both weapons before making spear supersede them. :|
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16 hours ago, Eekasqueak.7850 said:
To be fair I've seen some warrior mains opine about how real warriors don't do ranged combat and even others claim Condi dps is un-warrior like.
Ngl this sounds like the same warriors who would suggest changing to another class for ranged combat, even if that is an extreme opinion. Condi DPS un-warrior like??? Did Tyria freeze over????
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All jokes aside, Idk why it may take the spear to fulfill that mid-range weapon that neither longbow nor rifle is sufficient for playing in the same range. Oh wait the warrior community dislikes said weapons. Longbow at least works on condi berserker. It performs okay on power bladesworn, but it's low on the preference list for the build. (Not only does arcing arrow do most of the damage, but that skill and smoldering arrow have explosions, and they have 2 and 3 charges respectively so they synergize with bladesworn's traits.)
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Having a fractal that encourages ranged play isn't horrible, but having to camp it because this fractal is melee-unfriendly is a terrible reason to go range. Unless you wanna die to Eparch's whirlwind attacks, you're asking for death.
The spongy health is disgusting, and that trend is continuing with the new fractal designs. At least this fractal doesn't have long phases before the boss on regular mode. Idk about CM though. I hate this fractal so much more than even Mai Trin t4. Besides the cons, I don't mind encouraging bringing boon corrupts, boon strips, or boon theft. You do not want Eparch grabbing boons from your allies, so supports need to be careful with Eparch having Envy. I learnt that the hard way playing my power quick harbinger. Regret is also so annoying unless you're playing with non-projectile ranged skills... Thankfully anet lets you take care of Eparch's buffs by taking yellow, blue, or purple orbs.
Wanna know the salt in the wound? A bug makes Eparch not reset its health after a group does /gg, unlike Twilight Oasis's final boss or going straight to Captain Crowe on Siren's Reef. Hopefully, Anet will look into that.
PVE Power Virtuoso and Spear wall of text
in Mesmer
Posted
I have been vouching for sword, axe, spear (on-land and UW), and even trident to count as blades because Virtuoso has zero reason to use anything that isn't dagger or greatsword, whether the build is for power or condi. The blade mechanic is great, but because the 4 said weapons don't count as blades, there's no reason to use them when they can't even trigger traits like Jagged Mind and Deadly Blades. It's been an inconsistent design since Virtuoso went live.