I like the idea of the virtuoso but I must admit some of the animations for it fall a bit flat and feel a little jarring. A few examples:
- Why do the blades all fly over the target's head rather than making contact with the target? When using flying cutter it'd be cool if we could see a spinning blade fly at the target rather than that pink blob that flies over their head.
Edit: I've noticed not all targets have the animation fly over their head, only some of them - might need to correct that. The golem in the Aerodrome Training Room had all it's attacks fly over it's head, where as the golems in the PVP area hit on target.
- We see all these amazing blades floating above us, ready to be launched at the target, but they kinda get lost in the animation and never really appear to fly at the target, or when they merge into a larger blade it's not clear in the animation that that's what's happening. It would just be nice if the visuals matched the description more clearly. I almost imagine each blade should recoil slightly before being hurled across the room as it spins.
- Unstable Bladestorm feels jarring when it moves through the character, almost like it's a bug. Maybe would be better if it just did the animation at the target's spot, but maybe there's a reason for it's movement?
- Sword of Decimation and Rain of Swords look cool but they also both look a little too similar - maybe if Sword of Decimation was just a single sword it might work better?
- When using a Thousand Cuts I imagine lots of knives flying at the target, which isn't the case. It'd also be cool if it sounded like lots more blades were being used, as the sound effect seems to be the same. There's also a bit of a delay with the sound of the knife hitting the target and the animation of the target being hit, which is a bit jarring.
- Blade Renewal could be a bit more impressive. At the moment my character just kinda squats as though bracing for an attack. Maybe if he were to do a dance, go into kind of a trance or do some kind of meditation, something more interesting, that'd be cool. Also, when activating this there's (sometimes) a voice that says 'another' that doesn't sound like my character's voice, which is random - if you're not going to use the character's voice I'd just remove this altogether.
- I like Bladeturn Requim, that's pretty cool, but again the random crouching could be replaced with something more impressive.
- Three of the finishers - Bladesong Harmony, Bladesong Sorrow and Blade Song Dissonance have a cool pose, so I like that, but they're all the same pose for every one. Would be nice to have some variety. Also the character seems to less jump into the pose as it does float into it like there's no gravity, which doesn't feel right, but that's just me.
- The auto attack animation of my character on Flying Cutter doesn't quite give the same vibe as the cool looking artwork you guys made for the virtuoso, who seems slick and graceful. My character appears to be hacking at it's target rather than dancing with the blades. I really liked the cool animation you guys did with the axe weapon when using Lingering Thoughts - that was a well done animation, very cool, and very fun - makes you excited to play as a mesmer. The current animation is kinda lack-luster and not as fun to play. I just don't feel excited about it. Even if the character kinda stood upright and gracefully flung a spinning dagger with a slick flick of the wrist, kinda like Gambit from the X-men with his cards, that'd be cool. Even better, make the character spin on the spot before making a calculated throw with some flair. You can even do what you did with the great sword and make the dagger spin just out of the mesmer's reach as it channels it's energy at the target. Something that really brings out the Virtuoso personality. I think this is the thing I would like to see most. Presentation is important with the mesmer as it's a very theatrical character.
- Finally, all the buttons on the UI for your dagger skills all look the same, it's almost hard to tell them apart. All the other weapons have greater variety in their illustrations so I don't imagine coming up with more styles should be too difficult. You can tell that a lot of them have the same dagger simply copied and pasted at different angles. The images just feel like a bit of a last minute afterthought.
Otherwise I love that we can carry unused blades from a downed target to a new one, very handy for trash mobs 🙂
Thanks!
