Clockwork Bard.3105

For open world/story on Virtuoso, I've had great success with the Bladeturn Refrain (top row) adept trait. The extra aegis every time you shatter adds up to a lot of mitigation. Duelist's Reversal (top master) goes well with it, but I don't go top for Psychic Riposte at the grandmaster tier. I find the steady stream of blades from Infinite Forge (middle) far more forgiving. For a bit more self-sustain, Inspiration's middle master and grandmaster traits pairs very well with Virtuoso. You stock and spend blades so quickly that the healing is always rolling in. You probably won't want to run this kind of setup in organized content, but the open world is a chaotic place and a bit more survivability is nice to have, especially while you're getting the feel of things. Slap on something like marauder's gear instead of berserker's and you've got a good foundation to get your hands dirty.

Hehe, I knew a bunch of people would link me the Bitterfrost ascended breather. And while I am aware of it, I can't be the only person who is absolutely sick to death of picking berries. I'll gladly take the stat hit of exotic if it means my alts can gear up immediately with a bit of T6 mats and a crafting bench.

If the temporary skyscales around the Dragonfall map don't wow you, then I wouldn't invest the time and effort right now. I put off getting mine for a really long time, and I don't have any regrets over waiting. It's nice to have and has proven useful for lazily getting to points the springer has trouble reaching (anything that's not mostly vertical or is just a little bit out of its reach), but is pretty much "extra" in every way. Even when it comes to flight, I think the griffon is more fun and interesting. If I hadn't waited until I was motivated to take on the quests, I'd have found them an unbearable slog. It is a really good mount. Probably too good. But it's also completely unnecessary, and you shouldn't feel like you have to burn your valuable personal time on it if it doesn't interest you. It's probably not going anywhere if you change your mind later.

While we're requesting the ability to make aquabreathers, is exotic tier an unreasonable ask?

The GW2 story feels like a comic book, for all the good and bad that implies. The most frustrating aspect of that comicness for me is the use of continuity that references back content which may not be readily available. I know they come from a place of love, but the high-profile callbacks to Season 1 feel really gross at this point, given the sheer time-gap that content has remained unplayable. These were far from nods and references for the old guard to wink at, and it dampens the experience knowing how many players are wading through it with their investment hindered for yet another chapter. But on the whole, I consider EoD a net positive and have been enjoying it. No buyer's remorse.

I'm still really not sure how to weigh in on balance yet. I love what this spec is, but it puts a lot of my engi preconceptions on their side and I need time to process. Like I need to completely rethink my skills, because I don't have all that extra toolbelt space for things like stun break, condi cleanse and so on. The thought of running Med Kit without the F1 self heal is kind of scary. I might actually have to forgo Rocket Boots in a build, and that haunts me on a fundamental level.

I commented some on busted AC targeting in the main feedback thread, but as a wider topic I think AC targeting needs to be revisited. It's pretty clear the game is not being designed with it in mind, leading to a lot of rough edges, bugs and unintuitive behaviors. Like, let's take an example of two side-by-side allies that I want to hit with Scepter 1. I can place my reticle on either and hold left-click to use Skill 1 on them. This works intuitively and lets me go back and forth between them easily, so long as my targeting is on point. Now, if I right-click ally 1 to promote them to a hard target but place my reticle over ally 2, the projectiles will fly at ally 2 and pass through them with no effect. This wonky targeting is pervasive through out the whole game. Scepter skills are just some of the more egregious example. Plenty of more minor annoyances exist, such as melee in general. You can have an enemy in front of you, hard targeted and being hit by your skills, but if your reticle doesn't stay right on them then your auto-attacks will stop. So you have to crank the camera up super close, or stare at the ground to keep them centered. When some targets like Shadow Behemoth enter the equation, you might as well just turn AC off. Personally, I'd like to see skills behave like Tab Cam if you have a target hard selected. Like in my Scepter 1 example above, targeting ally 1 should send the bolts at ally 1, not at my cursor where ally 2 is. By promoting a target to full selection and keeping them in my general forward vision cone, that should be good enough to tell the game "I want to hit that specifically". Especially if it's not going to let me soft-target anything else anyways. I'll deselect the target if I want to go back to precision targeting.

Very first thing I noticed seconds into playing is Scepter is absolutely infuriating to play with action cam on. Action cam has always been a struggle on Thief, with things like Steal failing to fire and still going on cooldown, but it's really not working here. With an enemy or ally highlighted and the reticle dead-center on them, Skill 1 still only completes maybe one attack cycle and then stops. Expected behavior is for left-click to only use Skill 1 while held, while tapping the actual #1 begins auto-attacking. Scepter/Dagger #3 is worse. With AC on, it just doesn't work on enemies most of the time. Allies seem to target pretty reliably, so long as you've got them selected and are vaguely pointed in the right direction. But with enemies targeted, you get: "You must have an enemy or ally targeted to use this skill." Kinda hoping for an overall AC targeting QoL pass one of these days, but would at least like scepter to perform on par with the other weapons. Specter gameplay looks like it's going to involve a lot of target switching.

Was fun while it lasted. I don't know good from bad, but popping off lots of shots was entertaining. At least Unload is still a thing.

That sort of plays into my assumption. I never really bought into the idea that Season 1 couldn't come over for technical reasons. It's absolutely about presentation and sustainability. Those big zerg and holiday-style events don't translate well into the modern story mode structure. Which is where the "Remake" element comes in. It'd be like a one-on-one story Twisted Marionette fight with NPCs to make it feel larger. Then a strike version with refined mechanics. Throw in some CM stuff. Etc. It's not because the original version can't be done, but because that's the content that will last and be experienced as intended by more people. The original can revisit, but it can't last in perpetuity.

A thought experiment that's been going through my head lately is "what would a Season 1 Remake look like". We know Season 1 as it was cannot come back. It fundamentally doesn't work. And if it did, there's always a segment of the veteran playerbase who would see putting dev time into repackaging it as a waste for something they've already played. The answer to me seems to be a full remake, in the vein of how something like Final Fantasy 7 Remake completely redefines the story with only the essence of the original remaining. This theoretical Season 1 Remake would need to introduce the player to Dragon's Watch and hit all the important beats to lead seamlessly into Season 2 and beyond, but wouldn't be beholden to exact canon. Places and events can change, with any variation being chalked up to something-something-mists, so long as it still "fits" narratively into the story and doesn't feel like a total betrayal of OG Season 1's legacy. New players are there to get a condensed dose of "wtf is going on" medication, not a total re-experience of the original. On the flip side, it'd need to fit into the normal Living World Season act structure, while providing all of the crunchy content one would expect from a LWS. People who have played the original should get more out of it than just nostalgia. So we're talking things like strikes, CMs, maps, grinds, and maybe a mastery -- basically, things to do and get. Which is then where the thought experiment begins. What does that hypothetical season look like? What are the acts? Where can you go? What can you do? What would you hope to walk away with?