Ludovide.1967

I think heal vindicator is incredibly fun in wvw, it can put out a ton of healing and condition cleanses, and has a really reactive playstyle. Also, ventari is very powerful right now, especially with the projectile block bubble. But, unless you take dwarf stance, it lacks stability or any really good boons. It has good protection, vigor, and regeneration uptime, but unfortunately without better access to boons like aegis and stability it feels a little lacking in wvw compared to other specs who have a ton of access to those boons. And without alacrity or quickness, it won't be viable in endgame pve as a support either. So the spec is in a really weird place at the moment, but I still find it a lot of fun to play.

Personally I think heal vindicator is a ton of fun in wvw, especially with the ventari changes. But it sucks that without quickness/alacrity it won't be viable in pve. Also, I second people saying that the elites suck. I actually think that the urn of Saint Victor is pretty cool, but that it should give out better boons. Also, it sucks if you get cced because the damage over time can kill you without you having any option to turn it off. Honestly, if the flip over skill for the urn was a stun break/gave stability it would fix the issue and I don't think it would be overpowered. The spear is a cool idea, but isn't there yet. Also, it makes archemorus the only legend without an energy drain skill, which I think needs to be addressed. Because if you are trying to play dps it means you can't use any of the abilities that interact with upkeep while using alliance stance.

Personally, I like ventari being pure support. It is the class fantasy for me, to be able to commit to basically only support and healing, and is what I love about Ventari stance. I also think it fits the idea of a person who gave up their violent/warrior ways for peace. I think making the entire stance about his tablet is a bit weird, and I would love for the abilities to do something different when the tablet is not deployed. I also think could have been cool to combine him with Ronan for a dual stance like InsaneQR suggested. I'll admit that not having good cc or any stun break hurts, and combine that with the high skill required, and I think the stance is generally not amazing when compared to other support classes, but it is also super unique and I wouldn't want to lose what makes it special.

For the most part I like the changes but I still feel like it should heal on move. I am very conflicted because I like having no energy to move it, it makes it much easier to reposition, but at the same time, it just feels clunkier now. If I send my tablet over to a low health ally, it does nothing unless I activate another skill, and considering how small the tablets radius is, my ally might have already moved away at that point. I feel like making one of the abilities a slow pulsing heal over time, or just adding some inherent pulsing healing to the tablet by default, would make up for no heal on move. The biggest advantage of movement not costing energy is the ability to keep the projectile bubble up longer and move it around. But that makes me worry that they will nerf this ability. Protective solace is one of the reasons I love Rev/ventari so much and I would hate to see it be overly nerfed. I think the empower mechanic is weird, because it is incentivising you to blow up and replace your tablet, when I would rather save the explode ability for when I need cc, not when I want to empower my skills. Maybe make it so when you move the tablet it empowers the next skill, but with a long internal cooldown? I'm not sure what the best solution would be.

Thank you! I actually had no idea the armor skin had such an impact on how dyes showed up.

I wanted to dye my engineer's armor to match the gold and green of the mech, but I haven't been able to find a dye that matches the colors exactly. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks

What rune/sigils are you using? I've been trying a similar build, and found it a lot of fun, but I wasnt sure on what gear was best for it.

I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed. I will still play virtuoso and have a ton of fun, and I'm glad to see they kept the condi line and buffed it a little bit, but I was expecting more changes. Also, I checked in game, but main hand and off hand sword skills don't count as blade skills. I just don't understand the reasoning behind that at all, considering they are literally blades and the greatsword counts as a blade (except for the greatsword auto attack, which is a shame). It's also strange to me that they kept the damage buff when within 600 range, despite it being a ranged spec. Personally I really enjoyed virtuoso in the betas, and I will continue to do so, but its a shame that, in my opinion, it is so close to being great.

So I avoided playing wvw as virtuoso because everyone said how awful it was, but I tried it out and it's surprisingly not bad. The utility skills, especially rain of swords, are just really good at harassing the enemy at range, same with the dagger's unstable bladestorm ability. If you combine that with the ability to generate blades from bleeding, you can generate all the blades you need just by casting rain of swords or unstable bladestorm into a big zerg of enemies. And that's just really fun to do. It's not amazing, due to the high amount of projectile hate, but I think it's better than people make it out to be. I also think the ability to gain unblockable shatters on blocking is better for PvP than it is for WvW, but it is still a very good trait. But I found the condi traitline to just be more fun to play with, personally.

I have to say, I think this is enough to make me want to switch out my scrapper support for a mech support. I really enjoy it. In the first beta I hated not having toolbelt skills, but honestly, the mech more than makes up for it. I don't really want toolbelt skills to be honest, especially if they come at the cost of nerfing the mech. The reduced cooldown on the mech was very needed in my opinion. However, some of the signets are now super overtuned. For example, the Shift Signet is a 20-25 second cooldown 1200 range teleport that breaks stuns and cleanses conditions and passively increases your movement speed. Compare that the the mesmer's blink, one of their most iconic abilities, which is a 1200 range teleport that breaks stuns with a 30 second cooldown. Shift signet is simply too powerful. I thought the reason you take the signet is to make sure you and your mech are in the same location, like to do some repositioning on the mech. If it needs to also break stun, fine, but why does it need to be 1200 range? That is just ridiculous. It should at most be 900 range if not 600, in my opinion. But on a more positive not, I do really enjoy the spec and am really looking forward to playing it in end of dragons

I really like the idea of dagger 3 being a flip over skill, it would bring some much needed mobility to the spec and I can imagine in pvp, sending it off away from enemies as a way to disengage (even if it is a bit slow). I dont like the idea of making the shatters ground targeted personally, atleast not f1 and f2

This is such a good idea, and would go a long way to differentiating bladesongs from the core shatters. Personally I think one of the bladesongs should grant fury, which is such and important boon for the spec, but other unique buffs to the bladesongs would be very good as well. I also second this. There are so many times when you have max blades and all your shatters are on cooldown. Even if you reduce the shatter cooldowns drastically, it will still happen fairly often. Shooting out spare blades would make having max blades not feel so much of a punishment and would add to that "death by a thousand cuts" vibe I get from the spec. Also, if blades applied some passive effect based on the number you had (like improved crit chance maybe?) it would also make having max blades feel less bad.

After playing a bit more, I have some updated feedback. Mainly that, if they are going to remove the condi dps traitline, they should make the traits focus on ranged dps vs melee dps. Dual swords with blocking and the cloud of daggers from f4 is a lot of fun in melee, and sniping enemies with f1 is a lot of fun at ranged. I'm editing this to say that I really hope they don't get rid of the condi traitline, I find it incredibly fun and would hate to lose it. I feel that, beyond the issue where you cannot stock blades at max, I would be happy with the spec is.

I tried the healing/sustain build with signet of ether and the inspiration traitline, and as far as I can tell it just doesn't trigger if you have max blades. Like you can't stock a blade when you have max blades so it just doesnt work. I really hope they fix this, because it doesn't feel like an intentional decision. Also I don't think the heal on shatter ability scales to five blades right now, unfortunately

Turning shatter 1 into an ammo skill using the illusions line causes the shatter animation to not play correctly. You create the summon circle visuals, but you don’t shoot out any blades, the enemy just takes damage. Occasionally, the summoning circle thing sticks around after you shatter or just randomly shows up. I like this! Maybe if you make it show up when you have that 5% damage buff or when the shatters are unblockable I think that would be super cool!! Finally. abilities that trigger when you stock a blade, like signet of ether, do not work if you have max blades unless you summon a phantasm. This also applies to the heal on summon ability in the inspiration traitline. With core mesmer, you can resummon clones even if you are at max, which means it can always trigger, so this seems like an oversight. One of the first builds I tried was focused on stocking a ton of blades and sustaining myself through signet of ether and the inspiration traitline, which is something that works decently with the other specs. And it just didn’t work. It’s really bugged at the moment Just editing to say that inspiring distortion does not give aegis on shatter skill 4 like it is supposed to