Loopgru.1026

Seconding Sw/Wh for roaming and staff for zergs because reflects to the face are not fun.

I'm partial to the destroyer, reclaimed, and warband staves- all of them look more like polearms than just a stick or a wizard staff. The dragon decade anniversary staff is also pretty beefy if you like the more gilded look.

I'm not a competitive player. Like, at all. So if that's your interest, I'm not your guy. That said, revenant ticks the boxes for me to feel fun, capable, and useful, which are really my core priorities for a class/profession. Fun: Vindicator makes dopamine with big numbers. Herald is super easy and makes people happy you're there. Renegade... exists, but maybe the changes will make it more enjoyable. Capable: Cele herald is up there with Reaper as the best soloist in the game, easily steam rolling champs, HoT HPs, and solo fractals. It's also among the best duellists in the game for the same reasons. Useful: In organized play, we bring quickness, or alacrity, and high uptime group stab, all without huge sacrifices in our personal performance. Vindicator can spin on a dime from pure kurzick offense to luxon support, which feels pretty great to me. We don't have the bag of tricks that some professions (mes, engi) do, but aside from those specialist niches we offer a whole lot. Plus we look cool.

1. From what you've described, Scrapper fits better- it has much more CC and support capability, and the burst of dropping shredder gyro in a lightning field is enough to curl your toes. 2. THAT SAID, you've got multiple build templates per character- porque no los dos? Use 'em both! Swap on a whim, they're both great specs, powerful, lots of fun. They'll both work well with a shared set of power-based gear, and if you want to branch out into condi holo afterward you can pull together a dire set very cheaply. 3. You mentioned ranged, and a lot of people have jumped on that; if you want a cruise control midrange option (still short-ish range, but not melee), you could check out one of the many flamethrower-based Scrapper builds.

It feels like you're being deliberately obtuse here, so I'm about done with this exchange. This is like hearing from your spouse that "we need to talk," responding with a discussion of what to have for dinner, then saying "what? we talked!" Yes, there have been tweets from ANet. There have been (I'm sure) quotes given to the media. There have been unrelated patch notes and even a brief non-address of the Dragon's End meta issues. But there has been no communication regarding the state of this elite spec or any other. So yes, on this topic, they have been silent. Anyway. Cheers.

The goal isn't- at least it shouldn't be- silencing complaints. As established, you can't please everybody. To go back to the same tired horse, the goal is to make money. ANet makes money by selling copies of the game and through gemstore sales, both of which are intimately tied to goodwill and perception in the playerbase. Will popping up a community manager with an acknowledgement of the concerns, validation that they've been heard, and a timetable for at least further information help that? Maybe. I can't say definitely for the players as a whole, obviously, but as an individual player I would feel better.

Sorry- "gone dark" in the sense of "not communicating" not in the sense of "turned off the lights and went home." The question remains. When does going silent fix anything when you've got an upset stakeholder?

You can't please everyone, it's true. That doesn't mean that it is the best thing for the game (or for the business) to just go dark. It seems like you're pretty down on and honestly rather hostile to the player base here, or at least extremely defensive of ANet in terms of how it handles situations like these. Why? I mean, think about this in the context of your professional life (I'm assuming you have one). If a stakeholder is unhappy with an outcome, when is it ever a good idea to just stonewall? When does that ever make anything better?

Beta 2 was from September 21st to 25th, or almost 5 months ago. Beta 4 was from November 30th to December 4th, or over 3 months ago. The feedback in both cases pointed to these same issues. No mechanical changes (only numerical tweaks) were made in that period. Absent some communication to the contrary to demonstrate intent, it is not unreasonable for players to feel that their feedback was disregarded- particularly when compared to the significant changes to Vindicator (no auto-flipping of utility skills), Untamed (removal of outgoing damage penalty), and Harbinger (removal of passive sustain to double-down on the high risk/high reward theme). If ANet wants patience in this situation, it's one "we've seen your feedback, we get it, we're working on it, here's a non-binding sketch of where we think we're going to go with it next" post away.

This is where we fundamentally disagree. Usage data is by necessity time-lagged (you can only gather retrospective data on what players *have* done) and it lacks contextual information (eg is hammer usage higher because it is overtuned as it was in beta 4? or because it is new so people are testing it and trying to find some way- any way- to make it fun? or because it is an actually well-received weapon?). User-reported data is necessarily skewed negative (more people will write to complain than to praise) and it is more resource intensive to actually parse and turn into information, but it is much more immediate and typically includes context. That said, it doesn't take Alan Turing's ghost to find the signal in the noise where the feedback for this weapon is concerned. Finally... While it seems you have a strong preference for usage statistics and that's fine, the fact is that ANet specifically asked for the sort of qualitative feedback being discussed here. It was solicited because it has value. It is a useful indicator. It just wasn't acted upon- and yeah, that leads to some justifiable irritation.

This isn't a question of quantitative under performance. There's no mathematical modeling or A/B testing t wade through here. The simple fact is that most people find Catalyst hammer miserable to use and ineffective compared to other options in its current state. Plenty of polls both here and Reddit and plenty of qualitative written material point to the same thing. You can certainly argue about whether those user bases are representative of the broader player population, but I tend to believe they are. This feedback was available as early as the first catalyst beta, and has been consistent since. Hammer is not fun. Being forced to needlessly lock attunements and spam abilities or lose 30% of your DPS, and having that DPS in the form of a clunky PBAoE has been very poorly received by players.

Thing is... Anet isn't a bunch of ideologically pure artists living in a commune. It's a business. Will it serve their business objectives to deliver a stable full of largely forgettable and un-competitive elite specializations that do not align with the class fantasies or mechanical forms of fun sought by their players? Or will that chill sales of the expansion and erode playerbase loyalty (and with it gem sales)?

I was really, really surprised to see that there were no functional changes made after beta 4- based on all the feedback I was certain they'd tweak it. As it stands, hammer has a massive amount of its budgeted power tied into a skill that requires a) maintaining a very specific melee range and b) rotating rapidly and in an inflexible manner through attunements. Neither of those requirements lend themselves to PvP, WvW, or solo play, and it's honestly a huge disadvantage in group PvE as well. For my nickel, it's also just not *fun*. You are punished in terms of a substantial DPS loss if you use your skills or attunements tactically and intentionally instead of just rushing from one attunement to the next. You get forced to pick one skill from each attunement to use before rotating out of it again instead of rewarding knowledge and utilization of the full toolkit. I really hope they revise it heavily.

Mechanist is S-tier for soloing- you can roll as pure glass and the bot is still a raidboss, but if you go cele it is just pure absurdity. For my nickel it has displaced cele FB/renegade/scourge in this slot, which are still strong but not on the same level. I'd also include Vindicator in that new A-tier (behind mechanist but up w/ cele FB/renegade).

Can't speak for Virtuoso, but this is way off for Vindicator in my experience. Obviously it'll depend on your gear and overall build, but Vicky alone gives a positively absurd amount of sustain (low CD good heal, tons of regen/resistance/protection/stability, iframes, condi removal w/ heal-per-cleanse). Even Archie offers a really solid amount of sustain with a low CD, scaling heal, and if you're really feeling pressured you can go with the support dodge for yet another heal + barrier. Plus remember that you've got another full legend to play with- Jalis or Ventari add even more options here.

I split them into three categories: 1 - Happy Vindicator is really the only one in this category for me. Rev has forever lacked a big bombastic smashy melee weapon, and GS nailed that nicely. Quickness, a ton of might, stability, and tons of damage make Archie a pretty awesome legend even before adding Vicky as a panic button. Bladesworn is right on the cusp here. Since the change to make berserker glassy, my warrior hasn't really seen the light of day. BS is honestly not likely to change that, but it is at least a shoo-in for my warrior's default spec. 2 - Indifferent On the positive side, I absolutely love Soulbeast, Reaper, DH, and Scrapper/Holo, so the fact that none of the new especs for those professions really does it for me is a non-issue. It would be nice to have a shiny new toy for one of my mains, but it's good enough that I have another main to juggle now. On the negative side, I dislike Mesmer and Thief, so those don't matter to me. 3 - Disappointed Catalyst is a disappointment. I love my tempest and all, but the possibility of a new ele spec designed around a big, slow, splashy hammer sounds *so cool*... But in practice they turned it into a fun-destroying mess of micromanagement and another flood of forgettable incrementalist skills like core and weaver. I really *want* to like it, but it's just not there.

Most of us don't want the Vindicator to "achieve new levels of hybrid"- we already have Herald that offers exactly that. Vindicator, with a big crunchy GS, represents an opportunity for Revenant to finally have a respectable power build. The current solution with a manual flip does exactly that. Vicky is there on the off chance that I need an occasional oh kitten button and otherwise stays out of the way and lets me play aggressively and do damage, which is perfect. Your suggestion is clunky, more likely to result in accidental, unwanted skill flips than any actual improvement in utility. Don't conflate disagreement and ignorance. If you want a "true Hybrid," play Herald instead of messing up the power spec. More generally... what content is it that you're doing where you think that this kind of multirole spec is going to shine? What gear stats would support it? Like some sort of Crusader or Celestial open world build?

If flipping comes back the espec is DoA for me. It made it impossible to specialize in PvE, and in PvP it was unreliable and took too much attention on the UI / current state of your bar. That said, for a compromise I'd crib a note from Warframe here. What about tap/hold functionality to grant access to either skill on demand? They'd need to share a cooldown, which seems fair, but if that could be implemented it would be pretty great to have ready access to either Vicky or Archie skills on demand- tap for Luxon, hold for Kurzick.

I was away from the game when this patch dropped and kept getting frustrated that my pet was bugging out when I tried to swap- I only discovered by accident that it was an intentional change. So first off, this needs to be way better communicated in game, at the very least grey out the pet swap icon in combat and give us some error text. About the change more broadly... I'm not a fan, but it's not a super big difference compared to previous where you had to drop, swap, then re-merge. I wish, though, that if this is going to stay you'd remove the cooldown out of combat on merge.

My short prescription for Vindicator: - Remove Leg. Alliance flip-over mechanic - F2 now flips over Leg Alliance skills manually if it's active - F2 now triggers switch-to-legend mechanics and traits (e.g. Spirit Boon, Song of the Mists, energy recovery) regardless of stance - Leviathan Strength: Apply cooldown reset to whatever stance is active (not just alliance) - Standardize all dodges to 50 energy and .75s evade, like a standard dodge, and adjust their on-landing effects accordingly - Replace 2 of the 3 master tier traits- one option to improve dodge access is plenty, a greatsword trait and some way to get access to offensive boons would be great here - Rework Urn, thing is hot garbage as-is

There's nothing "easier" about spammed single animation projectile than a satisfying ranged autoattack chain...

I'm curious why the suggestions here keep focusing on maintaining the existing wiffle ball mechanics & aesthetic (just variable-speed faster). It would be great to just tweak it to make it land more consistently, but for the purposes of this thread it still doesn't really address the core issue of it just being a fundamentally unsatisfying weapon to use. It seems to me that there's an opportunity for a much more interesting ranged weapon implementation in a professional that already has the thematic hooks of spirit weapons that would be far more interesting than the continued Angry Ping Pong model...

I think we keep veering off the rails here. I don't think anyone is arguing that Scepter is a bad weapon in terms of effectiveness. Missile speed issues notwithstanding, it does solid damage (especially for a ranged weapon!) and brings both a symbol (good) and an immob (albeit on a long CD). The argument is simply that it feels bad to use. Here I am, giant Norn in plate taking mighty blasting leaps with an oversized hammer, leaping across the battlefield with a Greatsword, shouting to booster my allies andshooting glowy balls from a stick that move at about the speed of a well-smacked balloon.

My proposed solution is fairly simple: Slow down the attack rate, and instead of glowy projectile balls, a spirit weapon themed scepter appears at the target and swings. Zero change to damage output overall, but the flavor would make it something I'd actually use on purpose.

Reported this in-game and haven't gotten a response. I was disconnected 3/3 times after killing Balthazar in "To Kill A God". Watched the post-fight cinematic, then immediately get the "game client lost its connection to the server" pop up. Grasping at straws, I hid my outfit, Brand's Wolfblood, and skipped the cinematic and was finally able to progress. Don't know unfortunately if it was skipping or the outfit that changed things, but one of those two appears to have some issues with this encounter.