RuQu.8394

Weaver is my favorite way to play Ele, so I'm not gonna consider "that feels like Weaver" to be a severe negative. But the current 5s duration is either borderline worthless...or requires playing a really fast piano for only the weak combo instead of playing a more sedate bit of piano music that culminates in that combo in the end, but not as the only thing you were doing. I think Catalyst needs to figure out what it wants to be, and ideally that's all around combos and combo fields. Setting things up and then a finisher fits the name so well. Orbs building and unleashing is an alternative to the combo/finisher mechanic already in place, and would be a nice addition on top of it...but the Hammer needs more traditional combo tools as well.

I'm pretty limited in total possible play time, so I've fiddled around with the two that interest me but not done much using of them in game modes I don't tend to do. Between work and family, not a lot of time to get good enough at PvP to be worth the time investment in a mode that is strictly competitive. Testing them there wouldn't tell me much...my poor performance in that mode would make even the most OP spec seem marginal! But yes, as a matter of pacing it seems like they may have balanced Bladesworn around an expectation of full or nearly full Alacrity uptime...while giving it no access to Alacrity on its own. So it plays "as intended" in PvP and solo PvE is left feeling slow and ungainly.

I was trying to figure out why a friend who does a lot of PvP and I, who mostly does OW and story PvE, had such different impressions of the Bladesworn. We both love the concept. They enjoyed it...I found myself hanging out waiting around for cooldowns and super bored. Turns out the game mode differences are the cause. Gunsaber (GS) 2 is 25s cooldown in PvE, it's only 10s in PvP! GS3 is 35s pve...15 pvp! GS4/5 are 40s vs 20s. The class is more than twice as dynamic, from an APM perspective, in PvP/WvW than it is in PvE. Change the coefficients in PvE if you think more frequent uses would be a problem for total DPS, but sitting around waiting to be able to do something is not an engaging design. I want to like this spec, but it's just not working for me when I'm spending long lengths of time autoattacking with everything on cooldown.

This. The "Catalyst" should be about building reactions. That's literally it's name...something which makes reactions easier. If using Hammer abilities and combos extended the Hammer 3 ability duration and the Jade Sphere duration (either by generating energy or just extending duration if the energy mechanic is removed), that would be huge for the synergistic interaction of this class.

I guess they need some way to make us want to drop out of Gunsaber mode...but Pistol 5 is a shotgun that's pretty underwhelming with just one in the chamber. The intent being to spam that (manually) while we smack it with our axe/sword to try and get our cooldowns down, cooldowns that we cannot see because we are no longer in gunsaber mode...eh. I'd actually like some good synergy for dropping in and out of gunsaber mode, but then tweak it to a cooldown based on each round of ammo spent. Dropping down to use Pistol 5 would be an instant 6s reduction, then Pistol 4 gets us back up to 4 rounds (one naturally recharged on P5 already) for 4s more. At this point, between cast times and the usage of the other gunsaber abilities before dropping out, Gunsaber 2 is coming back up. Of course...still 20s to go until 4/5 are up, but only 5 more on Gunsaber 3. Add in Dragon Trigger charge time and you start to get a flow between Gunsaber 2/3, P5/4/5, Dragon Trigger, repeat. That's a lot nicer of a feel than Gunsaber 2/3 (4/5 are utility and situational), then P5/4/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5.

Let's look at Tactics vs Lush Forest. Tactics grants Soldier's Focus every 10s. Taking the trait Martial Cadence, consuming that buff reduces cooldowns by 3s. Lush Forest reduces cooldowns by 1s whenever you use the last round of ammo on an ability. So every 10s, I can shave 3s off all my abilities traiting in Tactics. Taking Lush Forest...I can shave off 1s every 22-37 seconds. It's just so very weak in comparison, within a spec that's core mechanic has insanely long CDs.

Let's talk Lush Forest and cooldowns. Recharge on Gunsaber is 25s, 35s, 40s, and 40s. Compare to Rifle at: 12s, 12s, 20s Just super slow to recharge. Lush Forest can seem to help this...but it only removes 1s of cooldown. That's 2.5% of one charge for Gunsaber 4 and 5. It clearly looks intended to encourage use of other abilities in rotation (no benefit to do 2x2, then 3/4/5...better to have used all your abilities at least once before using the last charge of one of them) But at most we are talking about reducing GSa2 to...22s and GSa4/5 to 37s! Still longer than Rifle's longest recharge, and practically double on GSa4/5 still. This just feels completely inconsequential. I am comparing it to Holosmith Sword 1 chain. The 3rd attack resets 3s off the other sword abilities, which is 33% of Sword2 and 21% of Sword3. This reduction occurs every 1.75s, so it definitely feels consequential to land your auto-attack chain in terms of "flowing" into more of your other abilities. Change Lush Forest to remove 20% of the reload of ammo skills whenever you empty the ammo of a skill...and that would flow! Each ability used after the initial round of shots would make a noticeable recharge of everything else. Spamming just one ability would be slow, but if you "flow" between them...that would feel like your really got into the zen of your gun(saber)-kata.

Love the spec thematically, and as someone playing a lot of Holosmith lately I was excited for this Warrior spec. In practice...I tested it out in some open world PvE (which is what I mostly do) and...oof. It was rough. The gunsaber skills felt slow, but didn't carry the impactfulness I'd expect of slow attacks. Gunsaber 2 does this big arc with a chain of explosions to follow...and barely took a dent out of the scarabs I was fighting. The cooldowns. Balthazar help me, the cooldowns! Clearing out mobs (which was slow and took most of my abilities) left me with everything except auto attack on cooldown after two mobs were dead. Then I'm autoattacking the next mobs...or I'm in Ax/Pistol and just killing them faster than I would in Gunsaber. So why gunsaber? Flow is very well named, because it flows away like water in your hands. If I kill something quickly, I've got little flow but long cooldowns. By the time I reach the next mob, my Flow has flowed away...but my cooldowns still have 15 seconds to go for the fastest ones! Second mob is dead. No flow...and nothing at all off cooldown! Fights that last longer, I get the flow built up, charge up and unleash and it feels decent, but the icons for the first 3 attacks are identical which just feels wrong. I didn't test the utilities out, but the core abilities need some solid work. I want it to feel at least as good as Photon Forge. I should feel like I'm "flowing" between enemies, slicing and shooting. Right now, that's the opposite of how it feels.

So I loved the look of this during the preview. My friends and I were quite excited for this one in particular. I don't tend to like hammers (they, rightly, always feel slow and clunky since they should "feel" heavy and deliver a correspondingly "heavy" blow)...but the spec as a whole was appealing despite my aesthetic preferences. Hammer 3 in particular looked fun during the preview. In practice, however, I found it very unrewarding. The 5s cooldown is basically not enough time to do anything else except attunement swap and hit 3 again. That's a ton of build up for a final shot that just doesn't do enough to warrant jumping through every attunement and doing no other damage except an auto attack that might sneak into the mix along the way. That duration needs to be increased to allow at least one, preferably two, abilities to be used at each attunement in the cycle. That would make for a nice build up. Fire 3, Fire X, Fire Y, Air 3, Air X, Air Y, Water 3, Water X, Water Y, Earth 3, Earth X, Earth Y...unleash! Or start in water, end in fire for maximum damage. Regardless, you'd get this rising power level as you added on stacks of orbs. As is...just doesn't feel very rewarding or usable. Speaking of unusable...the F5. Before doing anything, I couldn't figure out why it disappeared almost instantly. Turns out it "needs energy," which is not communicated well at all. Once I used it in combat, it lasted longer, and I noticed a tiny little orange bar above the icon. Seriously? That's how I know my "Energy" level? That Energy level needs a good and proper UI indicator to show me what I'm at. I mostly PvE though I've been getting into some WvW and likely will more with the upcoming overhaul. A stationary mechanic like that has limited value in high movement (PvP) or fast kill time (OW PvE) situations. Could be useful on champs...but others are around to create fields for champs and events too. When I'm running story missions or otherwise solo, it's a bit of a shame to leave the primary spec mechanic largely untouched. I've been playing Holosmith a lot lately. Imagine if my heat bar was a tiny little thing I had to search for, and if Photon Forge was only useful within a combo field radius of where I initiated it...

So many of the baseline Guardian traits have effects that interact with the passive effects of the virtues...which Willbender virtues do not have. So it's very unclear if those traits have any utility at all for Willbender. Removing them really slashes the number of viable trait builds, especially once you remove traits that boost weapons or utility types (e.g. shout, mantra, physical) that aren't used. Needs in-game clarity on if they interact with Willbender virtues.

Go with the heavy armor. Legendary gear has comparable stats to Ascended, which your Engineer surely has. So stat-wise, it's not really an upgrade. Legendary is primarily useful for two things: showing off, and flexibility of being able to equip on multiple characters. The Heavy armor variant lets you use it on the two alt classes you are most interested in, plus Warrior if you want to try that down the road. As you say, no other Medium classes you are interested in, so a bit of a waste to go that way.