SStelter.4712

Just going to list out some thoughts on the pvp side of things. Ele: The staff support changes are nice, though I wish they had taken a look at the offensive side of the weapon. I'll miss the cooldown reduction on lightning flash and mist form. It feels like FA Cata got off far too easy, Scepter is still pretty insane. Maybe the deploy cd will be enough to slow them down but the quickness burst they're able to put out is far too great. Engineer: Always love to see a pistol buff. Scrapper getting back Rapid Regen is amazing and is the best thing about this patch. Making Mechanical Genius less awful is always great. Guardian: Terrified to see Whirling Wrath without movement penalty, I don't expect it to stay untouched. Hammer getting it's identity back is great and everything changed is a positive. Dragon hunter is already pretty obnoxious and buffing their virtues is going to make that even more so. Hunter's Determination is pretty cool though. Happy to see Firebrand still getting worked on in pvp, at least burn FB will be good. Will bender virtues stacking is uh... very nice quality of life but probably very broken, especially courage + resolve. Mesmer: Mantras coming back is fantastic. I wish more crappy phantasm talents get rolled together there's a lot of them. Cooldown reductions good. Would love to see more condition removal options outside of Inspiration. Bunker Well Chrono is going to be extremely strong this patch. Necromancer: I love dagger, so getting some extra functionality is great. Might even make quickening thirst useful. Also love to see reaper shout buffs, Blighter's boon buff is nice but i'm not sure anyone will ever pick anything besides Reaper's onslaught. Ranger: Wow, probably got the best changes this time around. Druid is going to absolutely be a nightmare this patch. It's been so long since signets have been useable, great to see them touched up. Soul beast getting help in the condition department is lovely, especially since Untamed kind of stole their role in the power department. Also thank god that Untamed blink has a cast time, the burst was so cheesy and unreactive. Revenant: It's nice to see Renegade buffs, but I think it's a real shame that their legend stance is nearly unusable in pvp. Vindicator seems like such a pain to balance, I hate to see the chill go from their dodge since it's one of the few things that Mallyx could interact with. A shame Herald didn't get some alacrity adjustments as well. Thief: I don't think i've seen anyone try Crit Strikes in pvp for the longest time, and while I would love to see some build variety, Signets of power is probably still going to not be seen for a very long time. The change to trickster might get a few people to run trick builds, but bountiful theft just remains the general best choice. Rip swipe, you won't be missed. Happy to see Shadow Meld finally nerfed. Specter still feels very weird after the shadow force nerf, trickery remains the glue that keeps thief functional. Warrior: Mace really needs a purpose, it exists and yet does almost nothing (good for Berserk i guess). Happy to see Stances and Signets get unnerfed, the days of stance only warriors has long been over. Berserker getting some touch ups is great, but im actually really sad to see Eternal Champion get changed. I suppose the new functionality is generally better, but you could really get some crazy might healing from it. Spellbreaker rip bozo not sad to see you go. Ugh, and everyone will switch back to Bladesworn. Giving them range (I'm not certain how far the range is, but it seems pretty substantial) is going to be very frustrating. The class already has good movement capabilities and is probably going to need to be reduced in range or damage.

So this all PvE changes? Are PvPers stuck with Willbenders and Mechs until October?

This is 100% Spvp feedback, I barely took any of these classes outside of the mists. Catalyst is 100x more enjoyable than the first beta, big props. Hammer is such a confused weapon, it really either needs to be mid ranged or melee. The reason why the other elementalist weapons feel so good is because each attunement shares the same range, having 2 attunements that are closed range and 2 that are mid ranged does not feel good. Traits need a pass over, you have a ton of mechanics going on with catalyst and this is an easy place to differentiate builds. Adept could be about energy generation, Master could be about your Jade fields, Grandmaster could be about Elemental empowerment. Tie auras, attunement swapping, disables into these but give the tiers some kind of structure. Also can we get a trait for our new Augment skills? Mechanist was still very enjoyable, and while I enjoyed more control over the robot punch with mace, I really wish you could access it with other weapons. I have very little complaints honestly, the power version was great to follow up my cc and the extra burst was very noticeable. I think that my main problem was how strong the ranged mech is over the melee one, maybe giving the melee ones a teleport on their Adept trait like the untamed pet would be a good idea. Kits and Signets felt very necessary to use but I'm 100% ok with that, a lot of the other EoD skills have been extremely weak. Willbender is a lot more fun, but I still don't see how I'm supposed to keep people in my flames. Maybe add some way to continually make flames? Like Justice creating new flames when you proc the burn, or Resolve creating new flames after shadow stepping? In pvp the current set up is just not going to see any value. Offhand sword felt terrible, and I dropped it almost immediately. No problem with the traits, though the courage Grandmaster one seems terrible. I would like to see the lines structured more like the virtue tree though, so we could get a trait for Physical skills (which really aren't that great imo, Whirling light and Flash combo were the only two I ever felt were worth a skill slot.) Virtuoso is much better from beta 1 and one that feels the most well put together. Condi Virt is 100% carried by the illusion trait line, getting those massive confusion stacks felt amazing. Dom works so well with the vulnerability you get from Bladesongs. I only wish that Dueling would get some love soon because it has been neglected for so long. Dagger was good but boring, I found myself dropping it for something more defensive. Bladesongs are in a tricky spot, most of them feel very good with quickness, but you often times accidently cancel them, and being unable to shatter without a target is also a trade off. Bladeturn requiem duration needs to scale with blades because trading distortion for this is garbage. Trait wise, the middle trait line felt weak, the top felt strong, and the bottom felt ok. I can't see you ever not taking Psychic riposte because unblockable is 100% required for this class to function and should definitely be tied to a minor trait. Psyonic skills need a trait and also felt weak. Mesmer desperately needs more access to condi clear, kill two birds with one stone and make it happen with these skills. Harbinger's blight system is a great success, I had a lot of fun doing the blight shuffle, though I am sad it seems like you 100% some elixirs to control the class mechanic. Elixirs felt tons better, their tooltips are an absolute mess but their dual function as attack and support is great. The biggest issue with this specialization is that it's only defense has been stripped away and replaced with nothing, healing when you enter harb shroud or healing over time (idk why you removed this) needs to happen; maybe make it scale with the blight threshold? Pistol was good, felt like a mix of dagger and scepter, a viable choice for condition builds. I like how the trait lines are organized, and my only feedback is that the quickness grandmaster is the strongest by far. I don't know what you could replace it with, but it feels like a copy pasta of the reaper GM. Survivability aside, Harbinger was a lot of fun, looking forward to seeing more changes. Untamed was a blast, brought me right back to playing double tail swipe builds with zephyr on swap. So glad to see the unleashed mechanics work with other weapons, though the current implementation with the 10 sec cd felt really hard to weave. Maybe make the unleashed swap cd longer while making the ambush skills match that. Trait lines are good, though I felt the disable traits kind of weak in comparison to the ambush skills traits. The middle trait line felt good too, except for Restorative Strikes. Changing it to siphoning health or heal overtime when unleashed would bring it up to the same power as the others. Hammer felt great, it was such a good feeling to weave in unleashed and normal hammer skills together. Cantrips with the barrier trait actually were useable, with only Forest Fortification feeling like it had too long of a cooldown. I love being able to directly control my pets abilities and my only complaints are having new key binds for directing your pet and how button intensive this class is. Have the option to set pet skills on auto cast would go a long way to alleviating the piano playing. Specter needs work, i think the concept is good but the execution is not. Scepter being the only weapon that can target allies means you're completely locked out of the mechanic if you're not running Scepter or even if you're stuck waiting for weapon swap. I know it's a lot of work but giving the ally target mechanic to every dual wield (or ambush) skill would go a long way to making this feel feel cohesive. Shroud felt great, I assume you're supposed to go into it after you've spent your initiative. I like the well concept, though I feel like only Well of Gloom, Silence, and Shadowfall are worth taking (in pvp). Scepter was very strong, probably overtuned, the amount of damage and barrier you can dish out is insane atm. Trait wise, The adepts are mostly in line with one another, Consume shadows felt the most impactful in most fights. Dark Sentry is very powerful, I just wish other weapons could give barrier to allies. All of the Grandmaster traits are extremely powerful in their own way, with Strength of Shadows being the only offensive option. The trait line definitely needs some ordering, you have a lot of mechanics here that could neatly be separated into Adept, Master, and Grandmaster lines. Shadow shroud, Barrier, Shadow stepping, Siphoning, Torment, Wells, and Rot wallow venom. Bladesworn feels a lot worse than beta 1, I think most of it is just numbers, but you're trading your burst skill for a very clunky weapon that doesn't do much and forced to stand motionless in pvp (which is suicide). #1, Gunsabre should be very powerful, it should hit hard while also applying some burning. Cyclone Trigger should just be a block that you can reactivate for a large explosion. Break Step should be an evade. #2, Gunsabre and it's skills have a large amount of explosion tags, but there's absolutely nothing in the traits that interacts with it. #3, Flow feels a lot worse than adrenaline and there should be more ways to generate it. Most of the Armament skills felt very weak, and only Tactical Reload felt impactful. They should probably all be explosions so they can benefit from an Explosion trait. Pistol was meh, Dragon's roar was interesting but I tossed it for shield. Dragon Trigger skills were hard to land and felt much weaker than just a normal burst skill. Force distance should scale with how long it's charged. Boost caused me endless headaches with terrain difference, just make it teleport behind your enemy and deliver a slash between your starting point and your current position. Reach needs to travel much faster if it's ever going to be useful. Trigger guard should give more stacks of aegis depending on your charge. Flicker Strike should also give you quickness, duration based on charge. I like the trait line set up, Adept should be all about flow generation. Master should be all about EXPLOSIONS, granting boons, applying burns, dealing additional damage, applying vulnerability. Grandmaster should be all about dragon trigger. Unyielding dragon is by far the strongest, I personally liked Daring Dragon, Immortal dragon felt terrible and should be changed into some other form of defense. Vindicator felt great, even though I miss the auto swapping skills. Most of the class felt overtuned number wise, Greatsword was dealing insane damage with low investment, Dodge heal was massive even minimal healing power. The Dodge mechanic was fun, though the feedback from my duel partners was that they wished there was more difference between dodge types. Honestly, the most polished of all the EoD specs, it fits into many different playstyles, every skill has it's use, the traits are competitive and ordered well. Great job Anet.

PoF barely has any rewards already and you decided to take the newest addition to the game (mounts/mount skins) and lock them behind RNG predatory lootboxes? What a joke. If you had priced these skins as $5 per skin on the gem store, people would eat them up. Hell, you should have tossed some of them into rewards for actually playing the game considering a few are extremely lazy recolors. Instead you decided to get greedy and you've lost all credibility. I was really hoping buying the expansion was going to be worth it. It's been nearly two months and we still have completely broken pvp, wvw, no new dungeons or raids or fractals. Your priorities are all wrong and I can only assume you seek to sucker as many people out of their money as possible before you drive this game into the ground for good. It's sad that the company which made such a wonderful and engaging game has reduced it to an Asian MMO gold farm.

Make conditions affected by protection/weakness because they are out of control.