Matham.2106

Really liking the Mechanist and while I only played a bit of them this class is exactly what I've wanted for Ranger since the release of the game. Having a customizable pet that has their own good attacks while also allowing you to command their main abilities is great. The main criticism I have of it though is that the entire trait line is just about buffing the Jade Golem without buffing the engineer. It is kind of weird to have to rely so hard on the AI to do most of your damage, maybe shift some of this power to the engineer? Like maybe instead of the golem gets 100% of your condition damage the engineer get a 15% increase to their condition damage and then the golem get 75% of the engineer's condition damage (I have no idea how these numbers work out) so the golem doesn't get stronger but the Engineer does a bigger chunk of the damage? Other than that I don't feel encouraged to take the mace most of the time. None of the traits improve the mace or confusion so other than to apply barrier for alacrity is it actually better than using pistol main hand? There are traits to improve pistol conditions and the bleeding condition but nothing for the confusion condition so won't the pistol always deal less damage? Not to mention, the mace 2 skill doesn't deal any condition damage so would you really use it for anything other than to close distance with your target? You could also probably argue that since the pistol is ranged it is safer so you don't even need the barrier. I'm not sure where anything could be added though since the traits are already full of good effects. I didn't play any PvP with the Mechanist but from watching streams of people playing as and against the Mechanist it looks/feels like the golem is what is killing people and not the engineer. I guess this falls under "the Golem feels like it is your main DPS" criticism. I think the break bar should stay on the golem though since it is such a big part of the class if it was being effected by every CC effect that hits it the Mechanist would be unusable in PvP.

I only did a bit of messing around of the Specter but I really love the idea and can't wait to play it for real! This is the first time since the game released I've wanted to really play Thief! I think having so much single target could be an issue with it since while the single target heal is strong it means you will need to either focus on one target or get good at quickly swapping between targets. If the auto attack was weaker but pierced and hit three targets similar to the duel skill with pistol that could help alleviate some only healing one person issue. Maybe do the same with shroud, make it weaker but have three tethers? This would mean applying more venom though so I guess that would also need to be made a bit weaker? The duel skill for dagger also feel like it is much worse than the pistol one. It costs less initiative and is faster since it is one skill that isn't a channel but the pistol duel skill feels like it is always the superior option. Dagger dual skill is single target while the pistol dual skill can hit three targets and gives a lot of quickness, why wouldn't I want to use the pistol one? This is more of a question, but does the venom Specter puts on allies when healing them count as a venom for the venom life steal trait? I think it does but it's really hard to tell and the game doesn't give any indication to whether or on it is giving the life steal damage and healing. Also probably being worked on but the game seems super conflicted with how it interprets at least some NPCs. Using skills on Lion's Arch NPCs doesn't heal them but also only triggers some of the steal effects. The scepter in general is really wonky when using abilities on them and in the case of the dagger dual skill totally breaks the projectile.