Ackzar.9156

Bladesworn feedback Note: I played Bladesworn mostly in instanced PvE endgame content (fractals, strike missions, raids), so my feedback is based on my experience from this area of the game. Feedback from the Beta: Weapon swap It feels bad that your weapon swap goes on cool down after using dragon trigger. In the current dps rotation, you never go back to your main weapon set, after the initial burst opening. Because of this, people are camping the Gunblade until dragon trigger is available again. This type of gameplay where you don’t swap back to your main weapon set, makes it feel detached from the warrior class. Almost all of the spells you use are Bladesworn exclusive, making it feel more like a separate class, than an extension of the warrior class. Warrior is known to be a fast paced class, where you weapon swap often. This is why it feels so out of place to camp the Gunblade and to not be able to weapon swap when you exit dragon trigger. It just feels “clunky” from a warrior class perspective. Dragon trigger Dragon trigger feels too spammable. I think the Bladesworn and dps rotation should be centered around dragon trigger, but the way it plays now, you spend half of your dps rotation afk waiting for bullets on dragon trigger. Dragon trigger gives off the idea of being this super powerful spell that has a long channel time. Yet, in the current dps rotation, you spend almost half of your rotation sitting in dragon trigger, 1) because it’s so accessible and 2) because it’s the highest dps option. I think dragon trigger would feel more impactful and give you more of that “super powerful spell” feeling, if it requires more build up. The Gunblade The Gunblade itself is okay. It makes sense that it’s a well rounded weapon because you’re locked into using it. In PvE (raids), it feels a bit weak on the damage side. I understand that it can’t deal too much damage when dragon trigger is already dealing 350k damage, but I think shifting the power budget a bit, and giving the Gunblade itself a bit more oomph would go a long way to make it feel more like an actual weapon, and not just a “spam everything so you can get back into dragon trigger” weapon. Suggestions for the future Flow-generation If it was more difficult to build flow, players would be incentivized to include their main weapon set into the rotation, to build up enough flow. I feel like spending less time standing around afk in dragon trigger, and more time spent using skills to build flow, would make the Bladesworn feel more fluid and interesting to play, and make the use of dragon trigger feel more impactful. Traits The traits are interesting, and I like them so far. To add to my previous ideas, I would love to see some meaningful decision making in terms of the 5 bullet trait. Currently, you lose out on too much dps by taking the 5 bullet trait. What if the 5 bullet gave you increased flow generation instead of the passive it has now? (Assuming flow-generation is nerfed and takes more time to build up). That way, players are presented with a choice: pick the 10 bullet build where you use dragon trigger less frequently, but it hits harder (which would be good for bosses where you can time it with an exposed debuff), or go with the 5 bullet build where you get to use dragon trigger a lot more, while still having the feel of a smooth rotation as you’re not standing afk for 5sec every time you use dragon trigger. Conclusions All in all, it was a lot of fun playing around with the bladesworn this beta. It felt really polished considering it was just a beta event. I think the dragon trigger mechanic is really fun, and it feels good to see those huge numbers when you land it. But to make it feel like this really cool special ability, I think it should require more build-up, so the pay off feels more rewarding.

Harbinger Feedback Concept I'm not really sure what concept the Harbinger is shooting for? Is it an elixir master that chunks potions? Is it a gunslinger that runs around shooting people with these magical bullets? Is it a kung fu master than can jump around once you go into Harbinger shroud? I'm kind of joking, but the harbinger feels like this elixir chunking gun slinger that turns green and starts doing martial art leaps. On top of this you also have the blight mechanic..? In practice, it's a very fun spec, and the ideas are all good. It's just difficult to find a cohesive identity for the Harbinger. Traits There is nothing inherently wrong with having each trait line be tied to power damage/boon support/condi damage, but with the harbinger, the traits feel a bit.. boring? The power and condi traits do the same thing, just with power/condition damage. The Grandmaster traits are literally "you pulse some damage/condi around you", which I think is a pretty boring concept. I'd love to see some grandmaster trait that changes up how you play, or how a spell functions. For the power GM trait, you could something like "Tainted bolts is now Tainted blow, your attacks are no longer ranged and apply torment, instead you gain an attack that swiftly punches 3x times", or "You no longer apply torment, whenever you would apply torment, you'll instead deliver a small attack dealing X amount of damage". I'm not saying these are especially good ideas, but I'd love to see some Grandmaster traits that shake up the way you play Harbinger, something more interesting than "you pulse damage". PvE I'll start off by saying Harbinger felt a bit overtuned damage wise, and this most likely affected how it felt to play the spec. That said, Harbinger was a lot of fun to play. Being a necromancer with real mobility was super fun, it was also interesting how you almost had to "relearn" how to play necro, now that your shroud doesn't protect you. I mostly played condi harbinger so that's what I'll focus on. For condi harbinger, it felt great to actually have a proper rotation. With the whole blight mechanic, you actually felt like a proper glass cannon dps spec. You're squishy and rely heavily on your group to protect you, but while doing so, you are able to pump out insane amount of damage. I've seen the Harbinger been called "green weaver" and it's quite fitting, it Harbinger does feel similar to Weaver, in the sense that you have amazing dps, but while die if a boss even just looks at you wrong. PvP It was interesting to play Harbinger in PvP and WvW. It was a refreshing take on necro, as a mobile and squishy spec. The elixirs felt kind of bland, but I'm not really surprised, as there's only so much you can do with elixirs.. As for gameplay, the pistol didn't feel that good to play with in PvP, as it doesn't have the same flow that Harbinger shroud has. Harbinger shroud brings that mobility and faster pace of gameplay that was really enjoyable, but once your out of harbinger shroud, you kind of have to change how you fight. The reason I bring this up, is because with core necro, reaper and scourge, your playstyle feels consistent both in and out of shroud. A reaper will prefer to play melee fights where you stick to your targets both in-, and out of shroud. A scourge prefers to stay ranged, kite, and play around it's shades, both in-, and out of shroud. But with harbinger, I felt like I had to swap around this melee play style were you're mobile and have a fast paced playstyle, to a ranged playstyle where I try to kite around and with longer cooldowns to play around.

Willbender feedback I wanted to wait a bit before posting my feedback, because I wanted to have some time to both play the specialization, as well as time to process my impressions of the elite spec. Concept: I liked the concept of a mobile, assassin styled guardian, as it's a fresh take on the guardian class. But despite there being some cool ideas behind the Willbender spec, it feels like you haven't been able to tie these ideas into one cohesive elite spec. You have the mobile assassin idea, but the spec doesn't bring the kind of burst or swift movements you'd expect (in comparison to thief or a shiro rev). You also have this kind of martial arts brawler, the utility spells are there, but nothing else in the kits seems to really tie into these physical skills. Again, there are some fun and interesting concepts going on, but I was left feeling like the Willbender lacked a cohesive concept and identity. Traits: The traits aren't necessarily bad, but they lack a bit of oomph. While the idea of "gain more of X stat, but lose some of Y stat" traits are cool, it seems a bit bland when all the adept traits are like this. The "gain power, but lose toughness" is an interesting one that I can see myself using in different situations, but the other options doesn't really offer you any stats you particularly want.. I tried some condi builds, but I just couldn't find something that works well. I didn't try a boon build, but at the same time, I don't see any major boon builds being viable for Willbender. So for the adept traits, they feel bland, and there's only really one of them that are actually good. The master tier traits seems fine for the most part. I'd still like to see the traits shake up the way you play, or how your skills function. Something I'd like to see, is having Holy Reckoning changing how your Willbender Flames work, so for example, after using Rushing Justice, you next attack gains a bonus strike (similar to Rangers One Wolf Pack), or at least something that makes you think differently about how you use your Willbender Flames. It would be cool of Restorative Virtues would let you bypass the willbender flames restriction, and let you stack all of your willbender flames. The grandmasters are pretty cool for the most part, they do well to pave out different play styles. I'm not sure why Phoenix Protocol grants alacrity. Alacrity without quickness feels a bit weird, and it doesn't really help the willbender accomplish what it wants to do. If this was changed to quickness, you'd have agency how you want to set up your burst damage, you'd suddenly have 3 very interesting GM traits that all feel good to use, and makes for interesting decision making. PvE: The Willbender feels fun to play in the open world. You're mobile, fast and it's just a fun way to experience your Guardian. When it comes instanced content, and end game content, I was a bit disappointed. You use the exact same rotation you would use as a Dragon Hunter. So unless I was looking at the animation of my spells, it actually felt like I was still playing Dragon Hunter. I'm sure you could tweak some numbers that would incentivize the community to come up with a different rotation, but as it stands now, it feels too familiar to an existing elite spec. This is a problem, because either a) Willbender is stronger than Dragon Hunter, and you'd have no reason to play Dragon Hunter over Willbender or b) Willbender is weaker than Dragon Hunter on release, and the only reason you'd have to pick Willbender over Dragonhunter, is because you want to play the new spec. PvP: In PvP and WvW (solo), I felt like I didn't have the tools and the power I needed. Willbender sells this idea of being a mobile "assassin" that uses offense as the best defense. But when I played it felt like I lacked the power to pull this off. The damage isn't really there, I had to go full berserker with scholar runes to feel like I could actually burst someone, but I still didn't pack the same damage as a thief or shiro rev. I was a bit frustrated with all the cast times and animation locking that the willbender skills bring. You imagine that you'll be playing as this fast and mobile class, but your skills have cast times, and locks you in animations. This made the class feel clunky and a sense of the class actually being "slow". So neither the power, nor the mobility of this "mobile assassin" seemed to really be there. This can easily be fixed by tuning damage numbers, shortening cast times, and allowing us to move while casting the spells, so I don't see these issues as major problems. What I personally wish for, is to have some more tools carry to give us more agency. Like I proposed in the traits section, it'd be cool to give us the option to trait into a source of self-quickness. Having some more quickness would make it easier to pull of your burst, and land your damage spells in a shorter time frame, making the class feel more "bursty". I'd also love to see some more damage on the spec, not in the sense of damage modifiers, or number tweaks, but it would be cool to have something like Rangers One Wolf Pack, or Revenants Impossible Odds. Having another source of damage like this, would support the assassin feel of the spec, as well as further differentiate the feel of Willbender, from the other guardian specs.