Vennyhedgie.5369

Fair point. I suppose I haven't noticed it as much either because of harbinger's self heal through blight recovering it quickly. I've only really tried swords on harbinger since I like how conceptually they tie up that elite spec into something interesting.

The problem with this is that the healing comes before the sacrifice and, very often, is completely wasted because you are at full health already. In PvE at least, GW2 is not the kind of game where you hover around the mid-ranges for health percents. It's very bursty, both in damage intake and healing output, meaning your health often just ping-pongs from almost-dead to full health very frequently. I'll be honest, while I conceptually like the idea of the health sacrifice mechanic, it makes no sense for it to exist in GW2. I think the only successful attempt they've made with something similar is with Vindicator's Blue elite skill, because it also prevents you from gaining health while you maintain it.

Oh I agree. I mean in the hypothetical that they tweak the numbers.

The health sacrifice reduction on the patch made the entire mechanic kinda pointless. You often just barely even notice it now. In the beta, playing swords and harbinger together FELT like you were risking your life. I liked that, that felt like it had a purpose. Harbinger as it was designed is probably the worst elite spec in the game. It had no identity. The swords fix that because they actually sinergize very well with the blight life reduction mechanic, making every move and actual, carefully thought out decision. The sacrifice skills need to do almost literaly twice the damage they're doing now, bringing back the previous health sacrifice numbers to actually feel like a risk (in PvE).

I'll admit, I don't like that the two versions of the axe are virtually identical. Yes, they do damage in different ways but they both behave basically the same (hell, even the no-offhand version is just the same as one of them, can't even tell which one). While I think the move to make it so you actually have to use different buttons instead of spamming the most cost-efficient skill is the right decision, the execution leaves so much to be desired. Considering there are only two choices for offhands still for thief, the playstyle feels basically identical, so the choice feels moot. I honestly think this weapon was the biggest loser out of the batch, even if the numbers are there, the fun factor for me is just gone. Hell, even the shortbow on engineer at least had a new mechanic going for it with the chain reactions. This really suffered from not being a main hand and off hand weapon, would've added so much more flavor and oportunities for Thief, both combining with themselves and with other existing weapons. The fact that there were at the minimum 3 versions of the Axe 3 skill and they all do the same is just lazy.

At least we have an option for a single-attunement elementalist. Even if it's nowhere near the meta, it's a relatively valid option for lower intensity builds. This really does kinda ruin that Fire mage playstyle.

Reaper was literaly designed to be slow. Granted, they CAN compensate it with a quickness trait for themselves, which honestly as much as I appreciate in terms of gameplay it always felt like a missmatch, but thematically the point of the spec is to be the slow-methodical movie hacker trope.

Pistol 1 is fine. Pistol 2 and 4 should swap around. It makes no sense that the symbol triggers with projectiles but the 2 skill is a laser instead. Clearly it's meant to be used with the rapid-fire move but it's decoupled into separate weapons. Swap these skills around and it will make sense along with my next suggestion. Pistol 5, as many have pointed out, is weird to use in the way the inputs work. Remove the unnecessary extra button press to detonate at max charge. Also, the knockback is counter intuitive to the weapon's design, as it favors enemies being clumped up. People also generally HATE having enemies spread by CC (have we not learned the lesson from Ranger's longbow and the Blast Gyro?). My suggestion: Pistol 5 will drag enemies in as it travels along its path, just like elementalists' Warhorn 4 in air attunement, lining them up perfectly for the (now swapped into the 4 skill) piercing laser. This way, you keep a CC for breakbar damage, you don't infuriate your allies, and it makes sense with the weapon's core goals of hiting as many targets as possible while piercing them.

I really liked that suggestion of a Kneel mode like Rifle on thief. Since it no longer is locked into the elite spec, it'd be neat to have a similar mechanic on another profession, and this could be a good place to put it. (Though I feel like allowing you to move on kneel was the wrong move, but I can live with that).

Double Post

TBH I'm still mad they added alacrity to Mirage to begin with. And in such a very clearly specialized way it really screamed "I just made a build for myself to play" from S.

I liked this one quite a bit, feels good to play, probably because the animations and effects seem finalized for the most part. My only real issue is that I don't like this weird Nature Strength mechanic, it feels weirdly tacked on and hard to track (we're running into the same issue as Harbinger Blight, remember when in the base game they were trying very hard to make it so we didn't have to "play the UI"?). I get that it adds burst potential, and I still need to test it with soulbeast, but I'd honestly just prefer if they removed this and tuned the skills' cooldowns and effects accordingly. My suggestion would be swapping Thisleguard into slot 5 (for an increased cooldown) and act as a counter move and blocking attacks recharges your other mace skills (maybe not 100% since it'd be easier to access the recharge this way). There is also the issue of this being split into two weapons, which makes the kit feel muddy if you only use offhand mace for example. It would work better on a 2 handed weapon so you can guarantee all the dedicated skills are available.

The visual effect for the bullets should be pulled further back on Charr, as it currently gets clipped into their body by the recoil of the shooting animation, making the water and air bullets quite hard to see.

Ah yes, the name escapes me. Starts with an S... Soo Won? Wait no...

Well as you pointed out, yes there is always going to be an optimal way for everything, but as I was trying to highlight, mirage is the only class that forces a mandatory weapon choice for a role. It doesn't give you options. Either you use staff or you can't play alac mirage, which is an odd outlier. There's no reason to not make it available to all ambushes. If you like staff, you can still use it, and if you don't you have the other weapons. Everybody wins. They also have to keep rebalancing it to have separate alacrity from you and your clones. It'd be much cleaner if you just granted a fixed amount around the mesmer on ambush, and ignore the clones altogether. That way it's tied to the mirage's dodge mechanic more cleanly.

These looked pretty neat on the preview but I feel like the guardian bias was showing STRONG on this one. Particularly the auto attack. Pistols generally are a single target weapon. Engie's autoattack used to bleed on all targets hits by the explosion and that was removed because it was deemed too strong back in the day. Thief has to invest into a trait just to get the piercing on the pistols, but it comes with a 5% damage reduction for reasons. Even the new ele pistol's new "Piercing Pebble" doesn't even pierce! So seeing the pierce here, I get why it's there, as it's good for justice, but even then you probably shouldn't be able to pierce more than 3 targets, and it's going up to 5.

Using the Boon dodge + Endurance refill on kill sigil will make you feel like an absolute beast. You're running around permanently capped on might and protection, with 2 stunbreaks, basically infinite condi cleanse. Alliance stance is so powerful I'm baffled how many people don't seem to like it lmao.

Khilbron would make a good legend. Lore-impactful, a new legend on the villain side, has sorcerous / necromancer magic. Just leaving it here.

I like the "concept" of this weapon, the canned magic and such, but as many have pointed out it looked very underwhelming. Also, please, for the love of god, remember that engie has no weapon swap. Either add it or add some condis to this weapon so we can at least do some condi damage (that typically pairs up better with support builds than power due to the stat requirements). It's even thematically appropriate considering the magic they're using: Torment on necro shade magic, burning on guardian flames, blind on thief shadow magic and confusion on mesmer magic, while adding a bit of bleeding to the auto to keep up some minor damage going. It's weird how ele weapons take into account that they have to fill in multiple roles due to the attunements being naturally versatile, but engie weapons try to specialize so much, especially considering kits are not mandatory like attunements are, and I'll never get tired of saying this.

It really baffles me that it's not the case already when Untamed has literally the same mechanic but for quickness.

Man I really like the idea for the axe but I'm very much against the forced shadowstep on a damage positive skill, that always ends up being kinda awkward to play. Kind of a similar issue with Mirage's axes. I like them in concept but I'd rather the skill 2 not animation lock you while spinning, considering the skill 3 is also an animation lock. Also, it's really starting to show on thief the lack of new offhands. Axes would've worked very well as a double set like the guardian pistol or necro sword. Would've given them a chance to add some variety to the offhands, especially considering how confused the thief weapons are. Both dagger and pistol mainhands have power and condi. Dagger / dagger is a pretty good condi weapon, but it's stealth attack and 2 skill are power only. You want to equip an offhand dagger so you have access to death blossom, but they you don't really want to use the offhand dagger since it's main use is stealth from cloak and dagger, and your stealth attack is for power. Pistol 1 and 2 are condi, but if you pair up with another pistol the 3 skill is power, and with a dagger it becomes another forced teleport. Offhand Axe could've rounded up the kits a bit better.

It's almost as if Alacrity on Mirage was incredibly poorly conceived from the get go. It's the only boon support that is REQUIRED to bring a specific weapon. No other quickness / alacrity provider is hard-stuck with a weapon choice. Even those that come from interactions like Mechanist's alacrity proccing off of barrier application on mace, for example. More so since it was moved to mace 2 instead of the auto attack. And even then you had the excuse that "it was the elite spec's weapon". Alacrity on staff feels like such a dardboard decision. It honestly bugs me to no end because I find mesmer's staff a horrible weapon to play to begin with. For comparison's sake: Warrior provides quickness through burst skills (class mechanic) and alacrity through dragon slash (class mechanic) Guardian provides quickness through... everything really, and alacrity through Resolve (class mechanic. Granted, fast striking weapons benefit this one more, but they are not mandatory) Rev provides quickness through upkeep skills (class mechanic) and alacrity through Order's from Above (class mechanic) Ranger provides quickness through ambush skills and weapon swap (ALL weapons), and quickness through celestial avatar (class mechanic) Thief provides quickness through stolen time (class mechanic) and alacrity through Shroud (class mechanic) Engineer provides quickness through combos (any sources) and alacrity through barrier application (any sources) Ele provides Quickness through jade sphere (class mechanic) and Alacrity through overloads (class mechanic) Necro provides Quickness through shroud (class mechanic) and Alacrity through barrier application (mainly shades, class mechanic) Finally Mesmer provides quickness and alacrity from shatters and phantasms if playing chrono (both class mechanics, since every weapon combination has phantasms) Then the outlier: Mirage can ONLY provide alacrity with the staff ambush (hard weapon requirement)

The event in Jahai Bluffs "Console the Awakaned Loyalists", required to trigger the next event in the chain, that grants an item for the Vision collection, can stall due to missing NPCs and it has no timer for it to fail and respawn, so it stalls infinitely, preventing progress in the collection.

Power soulbeast with a greatsword. They literaly have the same skills except for GS5. On soulbeast you get the extra skills from merging with your pets if you'd rather not manage that pet to begin with, or if you'd like some more spice you can use two pets and merging / unmerging as needed. With the addition of hammer on ranger now too (with customizable skills), power soulbeast will be very fun.

Support vindicator in PvE lasted a whole 2 months, it died the moment they removed alacrity from base revenant. I will always love their logic of Let's kill alacrity Herald and Alacrity Vindicator to give you... Quickness herald. So we lost 2 builds to get 1 back. Kudos, brilliant design. PS: Alacrity renegade would've died too if it didn't have alacrity already built in on its kit. So it would've been a 3 loss for a 1 gain.