KinkyPotato.4219

With the recent change to Mantras such that they need to be prepared again before gaining charges, may we please revert the October 01, 2019 update which made Power Spike and Power Lock require targets? The rationale behind this is that it makes it incredibly difficult to utilize with Restorative Mantras now that the healing is once again, applied on Mantra Preparation and not on using a Mantra charge. Why can't we at least be able to cast these two ammunition abilities without a target so that we can enable the preparation of them again? This would make it A LOT smoother to gain AoE Healing out of combat, Might stacking, and Diversion cooldown reduction.

How and where are you even getting this asinine number of healing 5k per aura per person? Elemental bastion has a 391 base heal and 80% healing coefficient. Let's assume that you have the following outgoing healing modifiers in a standard healing build = +82.5% outgoing healing (10% food, 15% utility, 15% aquatic benevolence, 12.5% fully stacked benevolence sigil, 10% Transference sigil, 20% fully stacked rune of the monk). To get this so called value of 5k Healing per aura, let's look at the official wiki which has the formula for healing done and apply it to this baseless claim. Total healing done = [(mechanic-specific base healing) + (Healing Power) * (mechanic-specific coefficient)] * (sum of healing multipliers) Plugging in the numbers above, we get: 5000 = [391 + Healing Power*0.8]*1.825 I'm going to solve this for you because you obviously are not getting 5k Healing per aura. 5000÷1.825 = 391 + (Healing Power*0.8) 2,739.73 -391 = Healing Power*0.8 2,348.72÷0.8 = Healing Power 2,935.9 = Healing Power So you mean to tell me that, in addition to maintaining 82.5% outgoing healing at all times, you're running around in a gear setup that grants you 2936 Healing Power? Please do tell what this mysteriously OP gear setup is, because there is no way you're getting that much healing power in a full minstrel setup. If you need me to do a number breakdown of minstrel healing power stats as well, let me know....but don't go around spreading misinformation and claims of "healing over 5k per aura per person" when I just proved to you with basic math that it's not possible.

Bump. While I appreciate that harbingers can now heal themselves when taking this trait, transfusion still seems to be bugged when you're trying to heal allies. It still only randomly works when healing allies (not yourself).

Yes I agree with your statement.

Yeah can confirm. It doesn't even heal allies sometimes, let alone yourself.

Bump. This bug still exists today and I too, am experiencing similar frustrations with the OP. I've been wanting to try a support Harbinger in WvW and this trait just simply refuses to work approximately half the time. May we please fix this trait Arenanet so that the Harbinger always pulses healing and revives on nearby allies? Why is it randomly not working at times?

I agree with this which is why I added a third alternative competitive option in the form of Booming Voice. That way, you can still build a DPS Tempest without relying on Auras in the form of Booming Voice/Tempestuous Aria/Transcendent Tempest. Heck, you could also make a non-Aura support build in the form of Booming Voice/Harmonious Conduit/Lucid Singularity.

Yeah that could work - something like a 2 second channel time with a 12-15 second cooldown?

Thanks for the feedback! I'm open to ideas to reworking Rebound to make it truly worthy of an elite status. Perhaps a cooldown increase to allow for the application of all auras? My motivation behind this change was admittedly the Harbinger's Elixir of Ambition which may not have been the best idea to leverage. I've added an alternative rework to Rebound - let me know what you think. 1. The duration can definitely be lowered if its too much of an issue though the attempted fix here was to bake alacrity into multiple areas so as to smoothen its application. Think Alacrity Mechanist and Quickness Firebrand - they have multiple sources of their respective boon as its part of their identity. Alacrity should also be a key component of the Tempest's identity and not just a boon tacked on to a grandmaster. 2. This is where you and I differ - I for one, enjoy the playstyle of becoming an overload channeler. That is what this elite specialization is at its core and I don't think the developers should steer away from that as its thematically, a very interesting concept. As for the question of permanent overload channeler - the reduction in elemental singularity already passively exists in the current iteration of Transcendent Tempest. As elemental singularity takes 6 seconds and Transcendent Tempest currently reduces singularity time by 33%, singularities take 4 seconds if you take this trait in the game today. My idea was to shift that into a bigger, albeit more controlled, power spike where you can potentially decide when you want to overload by providing singularity reductions after casting a shout. This creates interesting decision making potential for the player and I think that's infinitely more engaging than the passive reduction right now that exists. Also, overloading is not doing "nothing". You're still doing damage/healing/cleansing/applying boons and conditions...I don't consider that nothing. It sounds like the playstyle is just not for you in my opinion - which is completely fine. But I don't think a reduction/removal of the overload channel time will put this elite specialization in a healthy state. It just needs additional incentives to aim for those powerful channels.

I'm not sure I follow - most utilities have a (potential) 45% cd reduction if you factor in alacrity and similar utility cooldown traits. Please explain what would be so wrong with giving shouts a 45% cd reduction if the same limitations don't apply to other utilities from other elite specializations? Morever, this trait is also competing with two very strong traits in the form of Invigorating Torrents and Harmonious Conduit so even if you do take the reduced recharge, you're loosing boon application on auras or stability/aegis on overloading. I'm open to ideas to make rebound better - feel free to share them if you've got any.

After our beloved balance update which saw Tempests finally receive Alacrity (albeit, in a clunky manner), I figured now would be a great time to revisit the Tempest specialization as a whole to revitalize and bring it up to today's specialization standards. These ideas include: removing pain points with existing mechanics, solidifying the alacrity role by baking the boon into additional traits rather than having it tacked on lazily on a single grandmaster, and improving shouts to synergize more with the Tempest's overload mechanic. UTILITIES Rebound Idea #1: Reworked to now Shout and infuse your allies with arcane energy. Allies who would take lethal damage while this is active ignore the deathblow, are healed instead and granted all elemental auras for 4 seconds. If the effect expires naturally, grant all elemental auras for 4 seconds. Cooldown increased from 75 seconds to 105 seconds. Rebound Idea #2: Reworked to now Shout and infuse your allies with arcane energy. Allies who would take lethal damage while this is active ignore the deathblow, are healed instead, cleansed of all conditions and granted an elemental aura based on your current attunement for 4 seconds. If the effect expires naturally, cleanse all conditions and grant an elemental aura based on your current attunement. An elite should feel incredibly powerful when casted, most notably due to their incredibly long cooldowns. While Rebound's lethal damage saves can be potentially impactful and allow for mechanic saves/ignoring, the healing is pitifully small, its secondary effects are equally lackluster and the 5 man target limit change with EoD's release hurt its niche strength. With idea #1, not only would granting all 4 elemental auras be incredibly powerful in their own right, but this would also synergize greatly with Aura traits given that you are now applying 4 instances of Auras. With idea #2, this would function as an ally-targeted A.E.D by granting condition cleansing to prevent situations in which your allies die to conditions shortly after just being saved. TRAITS Adept Gale Song: Removed Booming Voice: This trait fills the slot previously held by Gale Song. This trait allows Shouts to reduce the time to attain elemental singularity by 3 seconds. While Gale Song is incredibly powerful in certain PvE encounters where CC is prevalent and an additional stun-break is required, its competitive split of increasing its recharge to 300 seconds and passive functionality make it particularly problematic for WvW/PvP. Booming voice however promotes faster Overloads for support and DPS tempests alike as the use of two shouts between rotations can enable instantaneous overloading and make it easier to maintainTranscendent Tempest's damage buff or Lucid Singularity's Alacrity effects. Master Tempestuous Aria: Now additionally reduces the recharge of Shouts by 20% in addition to its previous effects. Increased the number of Might stacks from 2 to 3 in PvE. Harmonious Conduit: Reworked to now Grant Stability (1 stack, 4 second duration) and Aegis (1 stack, 4 second duration) to nearby allies when starting an overload. Upon successfully completing an overload, grant Stability (1 stack, 4 second duration) to nearby allies. Invigorating Torrents: Now additionally allows Auras you grant to apply Alacrity for 1.5 seconds. Shout recharge reduction and additional might stacks were added to Tempestuous Aria due to Booming Voice's new functionality. Tempests who are looking to play more offensively would therefore not want to use all their Shout utilities at once so as to not waste Booming Voice's singularity reduction. As such, lowering the recharge to allow for more interactions with Shouting and Overloading as well as slightly increasing the Might stacks should make this a more compelling option to take. Harmonious Conduit has been simultaneously updated to finally enable Tempests the ability to grant Stability and Aegis to allies. These are boons that are often mandatory for a majority of content in the game, be it competitive or PvE, and their non-existence on an Elementalist's toolkit has significantly hampered a party's willingness to bring them for Support. Additionally, harmonizing Harmonious Conduit and Lucid Singularity's functionality (ie, provide benefits at the beginning and end of an overload) solves a major pain point with the current implementation of these two traits. Similarly, enabling Alacrity on Auras with Invigorating Torrents functions similarly to the Firebrand specialization in that they have multiple avenues to grant Quickness to their party. This assists the Tempest greatly in fulfilling a strong Alacrity Support role for a team. Grandmaster Transcendent Tempest: Reworked. No longer passively reduces the time to attain singularity. Now upon successfully completing an overload, gain 10% increased damage and 10% increased condition damage for 7 seconds. Lucid Singularity: Reworked to now Grant Alacrity to nearby allies when starting an overload. Upon successfully completing an overload, grant Alacrity and an additional effect based on your current attunement to nearby allies. Fire - Your next strike inflicts burning. Water - Your next strike inflicts chill and grants Vigor. Air - Grant an additional charge of Static Charge. Earth - Your next strike inflicts bleed and cripple. As Transcendent Tempest's singularity reduction has been shifted to shouts with Booming Voice, this component was removed and replaced with a 3% damage buff to strike and condition damage. As mentioned above with Harmonious Conduit, Lucid Singularity now also provides Alacrity at the start of an overload so as to still provide a benefit even if your Overload gets cancelled. While ultimately you still want to reward a Tempest for successfully completing an overload, a Grandmaster being solely contingent on a successful channel (especially an important one like Alacrity) feels incredibly painful on fights where heavy CC is prevalent or dodging is required. One single interrupt, be it through having to evade or being CC'd will halt your Alacrity uptime considerably. This change should allow Alacrity Tempests more room to breathe and to also provide additional utility, similar to the Firebrand's Quickfire. In particular, Water's Vigor bonus also has synergy with Latent Stamina to provide further synergy and niche for endurance gains. My goal with these reworks was to not only buff Tempest to be a viable support role in all game modes, but to also update its lackluster trait and utility functions to solidify its role as a strong support. There are now multiple paths one can take when building a Tempest, with ample options that are both competitive and flavourful. Pain-points have been resolved in that Harmonious Conduit and Lucid Singularity provide initial benefits as well as additional benefits upon successfully completing an overload. Alacrity has been blended seamlessly into the Tempest's identity by also allowing Invigorating Torrents the ability to apply alacrity with aura application. Finally, shouts have been granted recharge reduction in Tempestuous Aria and an additional trait in the form of Booming Voice to directly synergize with the Tempest's core mechanic of Overloading. Please feel free to let me know any comments and feedback you may have 🙂

Why would it be? What makes diviner not OP but a condi equivalent OP?

I'd like to see something like +Healing Power (main), + Concentration (minor), + Toughness (minor) OR +Healing Power (main), + Concentration (main), +Toughness (minor), +Vitality (minor) as an alternative to Minstrel's. Trading personal survivability for more support.

This is a perfect list of feedback and honestly mimics everything I was going to include in a post.

What's wrong with tethering to a ranger to grant him and (potentially) others regen? If you have higher healing power, I don't see why this would be an issue. What do you mean by which class makes the most of reduced cooldowns? Tethering to allies doesn't reduce cooldowns, the only thing I suggested was making the Steal mechanic more interesting by setting its cooldown to 1 when used in Shadow Shroud. That way, you could really drive home the idea of a strong single target support with flexible tether swapping, Taking Amplified Siphoning would allow you to grant AoE boon support that is still aligned to the Specter's single target focus (ie, every second you could tether to a different ally to grant different boons based on what you have in your party). The difference between the current stolen skills and the Specter ones I proposed is that none of their functionalities are normalized (Consume ecto being the strongest currently as it grants you all boons). With this however, they're all normalized in that you're only receiving 1 class-specific boon with the potential to mix in more if you take Amplified Siphoning. I don't see how there is the potential for singling out classes as every boon has its uses.

Agree with a lot of people's voiced concerns about the weight and impact of Shadow Shroud. If it is truly being forced and advertised as a single target support, then the Tether mechanic of Shadow Shroud should have a significantly lower cooldown while in Shadow Shroud. That way, we can actively support whoever we choose since our tradeoff already is not being an AoE support while in Shadow Shroud. We shouldn't also be hampered by a ~7 second on Steal to swap our tether target. It feels disjointed and incoherent, especially given that Steal traits already do not interact with Ally Siphoning. Additionally, I'd like to see more interactions with allies when we Siphon on them. Having our ally steal be yet another barrier when our entire specialization and weapon focuses on barriers is a let down. Can we add something like this? Siphon - Ally target: Grant your target barrier and a boon based on the target's shadow . If you are in shroud, additionally transfer your tether to the target and reduce the cooldown of Siphon to 1 second. Guardian ally target: Grant aegis (3s) to your target. Revenant ally target: Grant resistance (2s) to your target. Warrior ally target: Grant 3 might (5s) to your target. Engineer ally target: Grant protection (2s) to your target. Ranger ally target: Grant regeneration (3s) to your target. Thief ally target: Grant swiftness (3s) to your target. Elementalist ally target: Grant vigor (3s) to your target. Mesmer ally target: Grant quickness (2s) to your target. Necromancer ally target: Grant fury (5s) to your target. Amplified Siphoning: Gain increased shadow force when hitting a foe with siphon. Grant increased barrier when targeting an ally and boons granted now apply in a radius around you. Radius: 360 Number of Targets: 5 This would not only make Siphon more thematically interesting (ie, reverse deadeye steal), Amplified Siphoning would also now present an interesting choice for Support Specters that can either choose to grant alacrity and heal more with shadowsteps OR to grant additional AoE boons based on party composition.

Except they aren't really unique because a big portion of their playstyles already exist in the game, just in other professions. Thieves gained Necro Shroud, Warriors gained an Engineer Kit, Guardians gained Thief Shadowsteps, Engineers gained a beefed up Ranger pet...not really different if you've already delved into other classes. It just feels very lazy when you take a step back and take a good look at them.

Nailed it - they only have three weeks to turn it around in the final beta which is very optimistic. If it took them x amount of months in development time to come up with these awful specs, curb your expectations accordingly and realize that a lot won't be changed in three weeks...sadly.

Agreed - this is the first expansion I haven't preordered before release. Definitely negative hype here as well. Everything is underwhelming and lacking polish, no innovation, and none of the elite specs feel fun to play.

Beastmasters -> still ignoring that there are two pets that you can have active vs the single pet that the engineer has. Yes, if a pet dies, you lose the pet-specific traits (this still doesn't prevent you from taking traits like Zephyr's Speed, Honed Axes, Two Handed Training, Resounding Timbre) but the cooldown is 60 seconds if a pet dies and you have access to a second pet which is a lot more forgiving. As such, you will almost always have a pet active vs the mechanist who gains a recharge increase when he recalls the pet. Virtues--> with your example, the same can be said about every single utility trait in the game then. Once you "use" them, their effects are gone. This is a pretty weak argument with Virtues again having multiple traits that don't ONLY buff Virtues. Eles--> same as Guardian really, the difference here is that Eles don't lose their attunement swap which is a core mechanic. Engineers however do lose their core mechanic which is toolbelt skills. BIG difference here. Minionmancers--> Sure minion traits becomes worthless if you kill them but Minions are not the only way to play Death Magic and Necros still have access to Shroud which is their core mechanic. The equivalent comparison here would be the necromancer losing Shroud to gain minions, AND having all death magic traits minion traits. So as you can see, the mechanist is NOT in a similar position as the rest as it is incredibly punished.

But this is definitely different. Beastmaster rangers -> There are a plethora of traits in this line that benefit both you and the pet. Furthermore, you have access to a swap pet mechanic whereas the engineer doesn't. Also, the cooldown for your pet dying is not 100 seconds. Virtue guardians -> What? No. There are several builds for guardian that don't use Virtues...not speccing into Virtues doesn't make your Virtues useless. Elementalists and fire -> Not speccing into fire doesn't make the other attunements useless. Not speccing into fire doesn't prevent you from swapping attunements. So no, I don't get the idea because this is radically different.

Not only this, all of your traits are largely dependent on your pet being active and alive on the battlefield. The second you need to recall your pet, you lose all mechanist traits AND the "toolbelt replacement" skills. You become SEVERELY handicapped and by the picture stills, it seems like you will have to wait longer than 10 seconds to resummon your golem (since the recharge is apparently dependent on the golem's remaining health). You basically beccome a class with only two specialization rows which is hilariously awful. Toolbelt skills don't have this restriction- you not only lose a large percentage of useful utility skills, you also downright lose their "replacements" when your golem is dead or recalled. You don't need to play the spec to know that that's already going to be an issue so I agree 100%.

These are some of the worst elite specs I have ever seen - a complete 180 in design philosophy and I think we can attribute it to the inclusion of a single new hire at Arenanet - CMC. Every spec reeks of his anti-power creep beliefs which is completely baffling, given that he was only hired as a competitive designer in October 2019. Why on earth would Arenanet give a newcomer so much power in designing an expansion's elite specs for all three game modes? I understand that two of the main specialization developers left at the beginning of 2021 but again, why not let others who are more experienced in designing these specs like Karl take charge? CMC should stick to balancing the sPvP game mode and have his input removed from PvE and WvW as these ideas were poorly implemented for those game modes. Once the masses play these specs for a couple of weeks, they will see just how useless and counterintuitive they are to the game's current design. When you compare these elite specs to the ones in HoT and PoF, the problems become so magnified, it's embarassing. You can't go from the power creep introduced in the last two expansions to the incredibly unfun and underpowered specs that EoD is bringing - it feels awful. Mesmers lose clones, Engineers lose toolbelts, Guardians lose virtues, Necros lose damage absorption from Shroud AND health, Thieves gain limited (and only if traited) AoE support with heals and barriers (no AoE boons aside from a single utility, no AoE condition cleansing) and have to wrestle with awkward ally targeting for the majority of their gameplay loop (a guildie tested the current functionality of the "Toggle Next Ally" keybind...it only targets NPCs so he was targeting minis and flame rams in WvW...yikes Anet)...the list goes on. Ally targeting is a step backwards and completely contradictory to the underlying foundation of the game explained by Jon Peters back in 2011 (article - https://booncontrol.com/threads/gw2-what’s-your-style-jon-peters-talks-about-combat.499/). The excerpt on no allied targeting specifically states " instead of watching red bars, we want you to watch your allies in the world. Making sure you are dropping ground-targeted spells effectively and moving into position to block attacks on allies is how we want players to defend each other". The specter playstyle is therefore devolutionary and goes completely against the grain of the game for the sake of being different. You are fundamentally breaking these professions with no regards to their identities or to the game's underlying systems and controls. Furthermore, build customization has been destroyed in favor of not only promoting dumbed down trait choices in which there is no room for flexibility (if I want support I pick the middle row, if I want condi I pick the bottom row...etc) but ALSO removing core mechanics which ADDITIONALLY limits trait and utility choices from core specializations. In short, we're not only getting direct surface value tradeoffs (ie, Engineers losing toolbelts) but we're also getting indirect tradeoffs in that we are restricted in our trait/utility choices because these mechanics no longer work (Engineer's Medkit no longer has a heal because of the lacking toolbelt, toolbelt traits do not work with Mech skills, core utilities becoming useless without their associated toolbelt). This, coupled with the uninspired homogenization of mechanics (for example - Engineers gaining a Ranger pet, Thieves gaining a Necro Shroud, Guardians gaining Thief Shadowsteps) is the definition of anti-fun. We've already seen this play out in multiple ways during the betas, here are a few examples: Harbingers resorted to playing "zero blight" builds because while the spec was advertised as a high-risk, high-reward, it played out as a high-risk very low reward build. Instead of going in to accumulate blight, people were simply going into Shroud to run away because the loss of both their HP and damage absorption meant that they would be free kills if they stayed in too long. Therefore, poorly implemented. Willbenders in an EoD-exclusive sPvP tournament hosted by MightyTeapot did not even select traits because the tradeoffs were so negatively impacting the guardian, that it was a downright nerf to your character picking any trait in that line. Bugged animations and cast times as well. Therefore, poorly implemented. Virtuosos have a random condition damage line despite being given a power weapon?? No one in their right mind played it and even when it was played, it failed to do any sort of competitive damage. Poorly implemented. Catalysts failed from both a creative and usability standpoint. Confused identity, an unholy hybrid of tempest and Weaver, useless utilities, a very janky core mechanic with an even jankier energy limitation, laziness with not creating an Earth field on the Jade Sphere and instead granting a Poison Field, another melee weapon with not enough distinctions to differentiate it from other melee weapons...probably the worst elite spec of the 9 revealed. Mechanists receiving a Mech who's buggy AI refuses to cooperate with the player's controls. Botched pathing (which was acknowledged on stream with no fixes???), no controls for "Return to Me", a trait line that solely benefits the Mech, no toolbelts rendering a large number of current utilities underpowered, and an incredibly punishing Recall have forced players to take the Elite Signet to ressurect it when it inevitably runs off to die. Poorly implemented as our defining mechanic requires us to slot an entire elite to work around its poor AI/overly punishing recall but to also turn on "Avoid Combat" to prevent its random off-screen deaths I will hold out my decision to preorder until the end of the final beta and observe if the community's feedback was taken seriously though I doubt there were will be any mechanical changes this close to release. I understand that power creep makes it difficult for developers to balance but at the same time, this was already introduced in both expansions. I don't think the solution either is to nerf PoF and HoT specs to make these more appealing as the player base has already been accustomed to this heightened level of power. Taking it away would result in severe backlash which I don't think this company could recover from - just look at the backlash from the Chronomancer rework and that was not nearly as bad as the level of nerfing required to make EoD specs viable alternatives. These new specs require a fundamental change to the overall state and playability of the current game which is simply not possible unless the game is completely rewritten and scrapped. These are thematically some of the best designed elite specs but their implementations are unacceptable and their place in the current game is nonexistent. The original intention of switching from the previous trait system to the specialization system introduced in Heart of Thorns was to limit the amount of choices each player can make but to make each choice more impactful. These specs however downright destroy that ideology by forcing you to take certain traits to make the specialization function on a barebone level. Devolutionary functionalities, unimaginative traits, lazy homogenization, and the direct/indirect tradeoffs of said specs make them all incredibly frustrating and limiting to play. Being a competitive player does not necessarily equate to being a successful competitive designer so CMC needs to stick to sPvP balancing and let more experienced specialization designers take the reigns.

Am I reading this right? The cooldown on Recall Mech scales proportionally with the health percentage of the golem and Crash Down? So if I recall the mech when it's at 50%, it's not a 15 second cooldown (10 second base + 5 extra seconds based on percentage) but 60 seconds?!? (10 second base + 50 extra seconds based on Crash Down) Also on topic, I have lost complete faith in Anet with the reveal of this expac. These are the worst elite specs I've seen by far and there are WAY too many tradeoffs for gaining miniscule benefits. Losing toolbelts on engineers is awful in that the class was balanced around their existence (including Med Kit's heal). Removing that AND tying an absurd cooldown on the golem recall means that you'll be fighting with only two trait rows for a long time if you need to recall your golem.

Hoping this gets fixed tomorrow! I want to play my mesmer again...