So here i am, giving my 2 cents to... this...
My View is purely from PvE Perspective and All i can say is "The Vindicator feels bad to play".
I dont play PvP or WvW (that much), but i kinda know what a class needs to be "good" at that kinda playstyle, as i played years and years of PvP in WoW. And Vindicator feels like it would get steamrolled by WvW Bots that are stuck in the terrain.
Cons:
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* It provides nothing to you OR your party other Specs can't do or can't do more than twice as good. (Mechanically)
* You lack in generation of Might and/or Fury. As a Power Spec, not good.
* The Greatsword Damage is lackluster. Should Hit like a truck, feels like hitting Enemies with an Foam Sword.
* GS 5 is too random to actually be "good".
* The Alliance feels really, really clunky to use. Not having control over which skills i can use makes me wanna stay away from this Spec as far as i can.
* The F2 feels unrewarding and a waste of Energy outside of Alliance. More to the Dodge Mechanic further down.
* St. Victor Elite. Yikes. That Skill is a dunking pile of goatshit and makes me wanna do that, what you probably do when you use that skill. die.
* The Selfsustain (Using Berserkers/Diviners) is abysmal, as the Heal Skills provide not enough heal throughput.
* Only one dodge is pretty bad when combined with the low selfsustain and animationlocking. Have fun doing any HoT/PoF or Living World Seasons with only one dodge.
* The "Dodge-Jump-Superhero-Landing-AoE" may look cool, but is a DPS loss as it's Damage isn't near as much as you would hope it to be. Also way too long. And animationlocking is cringe.
* The Traits. Choosing between "Bigger AoE, even longer cooldown", "Smaller AoE, less but still long cooldown" and "Not completely unusable" in the last row seems like Christmas Decoration. Stuff that this tree doesn't look empty. 5 of 9 choosable Traits are for the lackluster Dodge Mechanic.
Pros:
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* The Archemorus/St. Victor Stunbreak. Nice reliable Stunbreaks without too much Energycost and cooldown.
* Two new people who banter with my character now and then. Probably a Con when it starts to annoy me.
How could it be made better? Some Proposals:
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* So 2 Legendarys are better than one? Why not let us choose between Archemorus and St. Victor similar to the other Legends? One for Power (Archemorus), the other for Support (St. Victor) and switch with F1. So Power Players can choose Archemorus/Shiro, Archemorus/Jalis and Supporting Players can choose St. Victor/Jalis or St. Victor/Ventari. Think about the banter between these Legendpairings 😉
* Change F2 to give Boons based on active (or even the inactive!) Legend by default.
* Add Vuln to the GS Auto Attack Chain to buff it's damage, take it from GS2 and make that Skill, so that Enemies get "grouped" like Malyx' Call to Anguish so that GS5 actually can hit more than 2 mobs.
* Completely rework the St. Victor Elite. I don't even know how to salvage this. Let it drain Energy instead of Health and Provide Pulses of Barrier or something like that. idk.
* Allow the Player to do the Superherolanding when they want to and refund Energy based of how "fast" you land again, balance it with percentile less damage if you land prematurely. Also get rid of the animationlock.
* Provide a way to reliably generate Fury and Might.
* Get rid of the "More Targets hit = more HP gain" from the healing skills. Sounds cool and Looks cool on paper, but is actually useless outside of Zergs or getting mauled by Pocket Raptors.
* Rework the Traits, all of them at the moment are "Do you want this Core Mechanic of this spec to 'be slightly less bad', 'even worse' or 'meh, but still bad'". Serioulsy. 5 of the 9 choosable Traits are for the Jump-dodge-mechanic thingy. That alone should tell you that this Mechanic isn't fleshed out enough.
* Let Archmorus Spear actually hit something. Feels like an Eternity until that spear hits something after using the skill.
Also small rant at the End: What about Vizu? She was the one who enabled St. Victor and Archemorus to kill Shiro. Yet they get all the praise.... Tsk, tsk, tsk.... Missed opportunity to give Daggers to the Revenant instead of a GS, which let's be real, should have been Core Rev to begin with.
tl;dr: Bad and needs a lot of work to actually be competetive with Herald/Renegade/Core in any way or Form. If it stays like this, i won't be playing it.
