Alchimist.4738

Going back to a smaller scale by exploring the problems on a specific region/race, or a specific localized issue such as a Revenant doing weird things in the Mists. In any cases, it's a great opportunity to introduce new characters and retire the old cast, because not only their story lines are mostly done with, but having the current cast isn't exactly super friendly towards new players which have to get through ten years of story to learn about their background, and also, and that's more personal, I don't like 70% of the current cast.

It's the player choice, but it's also heavily impacted by other players. In PvE that's fine because mobility isn't as important, but in PvP and WvW it's crucial, when your opponents pressure you you can't just sit in your wells, unless you play on point in PvP, but even then you might want to move in and out of it. That's not even talking about offensive wells which can easily be avoided by simply walking out of them. In PvP/WvW wells are traditionally used as area denial, but in the case of Scrapper they were so much more, Blast and Sneak Gyro were great tools to initiate fights by jumping on top of your opponents with the proper timing. Furthermore, ground targeted skills require good positioning but other than that I wouldn't call them "skilful" abilities, it's just as "skilful" as moving with your teammates to protect them with your Gyros, or timing you Blast Gyro to explode when you jump on the enemy. And people aren't annoyed because ground targeted Gyros are harder to use, they are not, but because Scrapper lost some of its identity and Gyros are suddenly far worse than they were, with maybe Shredder Gyro being situationally better for area denial.

Defense Field being ground targeted is fine by me, however, Gyros being too will not only remove the uniqueness of Scrapper, it's like removing the teleportation from Specter's wells, but also considerably reduce their usability. Sneak Gyro is absolutely useless now, it's like a bad Shadow Refuge, Blast Gyro is extremely telegraphed with the mobility you could always keep up with enemies trying to get out of the are of effect, now it's laughably easy to get out of it, Shredder Gyro was a great way to pump more damage while pursuing or being chased, now it's just a boring area denial which many build can do a better job at, Purge Gyro and Bulwark Gyro remain alright but are considerably worst is WvW where you won't have time to sit in them in the middle of a fight. It's overall an awful change, surprisingly in a pretty solid patch otherwise, there was a reason why Gyros became mobile a while ago.

I wouldn't mind if they skip one set of e-specs next expansion in order to add new weapons (including new weapon types such as land spear), traits (a fourth choice for all grand-master) , and new skills to core classes and even older e-specs. It'd revitalize builds for the entire class, and not just bring a new subclass, and some classes such as engineer could really use more weapon options.

I understanding wanting to stay away from story spoilers, but spoiling one meta event, or even the point of the map you're trying to showcase is fine. First because no one is forced to watch those streams if they want a spoiler free experience, but secondly because you actually need to display the content of your game, and not show the vistas and what is basically an empty map. Marketing always has been abysmal with Anet, but we're reaching new highs. Anyway, I'd rather hold my judgement regarding content when the expansion is out, but what they decide to show and not show is very puzzling to say the least.

Design Mechanist still has the same issues than it had the last beta, it takes too many things away from the player in order to give it to the mech, leading to a dependence on an unreliable AI, the player being weaken while the mech is offline, and a general lack of options as the player. The removal of the toolbelt comes to the detriment of a lot of core skills, and reduce by a tremendous amount the player agency whenever the mech is down. The traits for the most part only interact with the mech, leaving the player in the dust, and once again you have to work with less than any other classes when your mech is offline. Mace Rocket Fist Prototype feels worst to use than before. In the previous beta you could use the long stun duration to set-up a combo with your mech, the lower stun duration now stops that. Furthermore, the skill is more reliant on the mech as Rocket Punch cannot be cast by the mech if it's too far away or offline, and the Mechanist already suffers too much from being too reliant on its pet. I do appreciate having more control over the minor trait skills, but it shouldn't come at the cost of the player's own efficiency. I'd suggest reverting back the changes, and have Rocket Punch being moved to an F4 ability, and move the summon to F5. Signets Both Barrier Signet and Superconducting Signet are extremely clunky to use because they're cast around the mech, and you cannot reliably control its position. I'd recommend for both of those to be cast around both the player and the mech in order to make them more reliable, with a shorter area of effect around the player. Shift Signet is great but definitely overloaded, the "all boons applied to you are also applied to your Mech" part should probably be moved to a trait, particularly since Shift Signet has no boon interaction. Force Signet loosing the stun breaks and not gaining anything is exchange makes it one of the weakest signet, it needs to have an extra edge, something along the lines of "gain Might for each enemy struck". If we're bringing toolbelt skills to signets, it can also be a good opportunity to give them interesting toolbelt skills to give them an edge when the mech is offline. Traits All the traits should interact in some ways with the player, currently only Exigency Protocols (stronger regeneration), Channeling Circuits (alacrity whenever you apply barrier), and J-Drive (signet improvement and bombardment when the mech is away) give something to the player regardless of the mech, and to a lesser extent High-Impact Drivers (might to nearby allies) and Barrier Engine (barrier to nearby allies) give something to the player if the mech is nearby. All the other traits do absolutely nothing to the player, which means once the mech in down those traits are worthless. The other traits should either have some sort of effect when the mech is offline, or have synergies with things the player interact with, being weapon, boons, conditions, dodges ... Mech Commands Jade Mortar still as a very long cast time, making it extremely easy to avoid, making it a ground targeted ability might also help with the mech's aim not being the best.

I'd make more sense for it to be unlocked at the current level, or after crafting the associated WvW legendary armor piece, it's pretty disappointing that the WvW legendary armor doesn't have a unique visual because it's locked being WvW levels.

Compared to the current meta, it is.

Those are some nice changes, I'm still worried a little bit that the player looses too much from the specialization, most of the traits still don't interact with the player, and once the mech is down you still don't have access to your toolbelt and your mechanist trait line is mostly useless.

I kinda want a Technomancer, which would have access to Glyphs and the toolbelt skills of those Glyphs would give you access to a new sort of engineer-like attunements, changing your weapon skills in order to move away from the Kits. Those attunements could be Fire, Lightning, Metal, Dark Energy, and Alchemy. You've have access to the staff or the scepter. I'd obviously be a huge amount of work to create weapon skills for that all those attunements and weapons so maybe they could cut some corners by only affecting the new weapon, or just some of the weapon skill slots. I'm not sure what the tarde-off should be, maybe whenever you go into an attunement all of your toolbelt skills get a short cooldown, like Weaver.

In depth thoughts. Overall It's a really fun specialization, but suffers from too much power being given to the mech, which isn't reliable enough. The loss of the toolbelt when the mech is offline really cripples the player, it's by far the most punishing trade-off in the game. I'd recommend bringing the toolbelt back when the mech is offline. Right now the specialization fall apart when the mech is offline or not doing what you want it to do, so my suggestions will aim at giving more power to the player and try to make the mech more reliable. Traits Almost all of the traits give a statistical increase to the mech, but they don't do anything to the player, which is extremely punishing when the mech is offline since you've to work with one less trait line, bear in mind you also lost your toolbelt. Only the following traits give something to the player: Mech Core: J-Drive (signet keeps their passive after use and you've a passive damage beam when the mech is offline), Mech Frame: Channeling Circuits (target of your barrier gain alacrity), and to a lesser extent when the mech is near you Mech Arms: High-Impact Drivers (generates might) and Mech Core: J-Drive (generates barrier). Mech Frame: Conductive Alloys and Mech Frame: Variable Mass Distributor are the worst offenders since they just boost your mech statistics. I'd suggest to add more player interactions to the traits that just increase your mech statistics, not only to make those traits more exciting, but also to give more options to the player, which feels side-lined otherwise. Furthermore, both of the minor Mech Fighter and Energy Siphoning increase the scaling of the mech toughness and vitality, why isn't this statistical increase not centralized on one trait, allowing the second one to actually do something, which again should give more interaction between the player and the mech. Mech The mech does too much damage in sPvP and the break bar is also too strong, I understand the need for it in order for the mech to not be disabled too often, but there are other ways to achieve that, such as stability, aegis, so on and so forth. I could see one of the mentioned minor trait (let's say Mech Fighter) being rework so that the stability the player has is shared to the mech, and vice versa, and then maybe have one or two other major traits giving stability under some conditions on top of what they already do, for instance Mech Frame: Variable Mass Distributor could grant the player stability whenever they or the mech interrupt an enemy. Mech Commands Crash Down shouldn't root the player, and it should be moved to the F5, not only to be more consistent with other engineer specializations, but also to open a F4 skill, more on that below. The mech suffers from the same issues as the Ranger's pet, it doesn't have good pathfinding, which means it takes forever to get back to the player, and is a real detriment in sPvP where movement is extremely important. Right now the only way to get back your mech to you quickly in those situations is to play with the Shift Signet (which has its own issues), but you shouldn't have to take a utility slot in order to fix an inherent issue with the AI. I'd suggest the addition on a new F4 skill which would shadow step the mech to the player on cooldown, in order to give more control of the mech positioning to the player and make it for reliable. Jade Mortar misses a lot of times, I'd suggest giving more control to the player by making the skill a ground targeted ability. Signets Barrier Signet and Superconducting Signet only work around the mech when its online, which is a problem when the mech is far away from you (stuck in terrain or went chasing after someone), because then they don't do anything, both of those signets should work around the player and the mech even if it means their radius has to be nerfed. Note that the suggesting F4 shadow step ability would partially fix the problem too. Shift Signet is quite clunky to use, I'd say Rocket Boots is more effective in comparison, I'd reduce the cast time to 1/2. Furthermore, the mech seems buggy with this signet as it doesn't always shadow step with you. The mech doesn't have any condition cleanse outside of Crisis Zone, therefore it' be nice if Rectifier Signet would either cleanse a handful of conditions only on the mech on use, or at interval with the passive. At last, because the toolbelt should be introduced to the Mechanist when the mech is offline, we should get toolbelt skills for the Signets, it'd also contribute at making them more appealing.

After playing a few games of sPvP here are my first thoughts. The damage on the pet might be a bit too strong, I wouldn't mind loosing some of it to gain back more utilities on the player. The pet path finding is just as bad the the Ranger's, which is an issue because kitting is important, particularly at high level, and the pet can't keep up and sometimes take forever to get back to you, something annoying since the signet work around it. I would recommend to move the Crash Down/Recall Mech to F5, and add a F4 ability to shadow step the mech back to the player. Talking about Crash Down, the skill shouldn't root the player. Mace felt good, nothing to say on that front. The pet doesn't use some of its skills very well and they'll miss quite often, Jade Mortar being of of the worst offender. I suggest making those skills ground targeted to avoid the pet missing. For the Signets, as I talked before them being used on the pet is an issue when it went chasing someone or is stuck somewhere. I'd suggest having the Signet working on both you and your pet, but reducing the area of effect, but if your pet is down increasing the area of effect, right now they feel a bit underwhelming because of it. Not having a tool belt feels really bad, particularly when the pet is down for a 100 seconds, furthermore as it has been discussed in length already the engineer was always designed and balanced with the tool belt in mind, without it a lot of skills lose a lot of power. Bring back the tool belt when the pet is offline, which also means making tool belt skills for Signet, another way to make them a bit more compelling too. I'm not sure how I feel about the break bar it's a really strong defensive tool, probably doesn't have a place in sPvP. On the other hand the pet clearly lack other defensive tools such as condition cleanse, only though Crisis Zone which has long cool down, or a dodge, Guild Wars 2 is a game about avoid damage not being a sponge for it. I'd remove the break bar, and maybe give the ability to dodge in place (like a Mirage) when the player dodges to the pet (it'd also bring more synergy with the explosives trait line for explosive entrance). Furthermore maybe speed up some of the pet animations in order to avoid being stunned to easily, again this would come with a reduction of its damage.

You still lose all the pool of toolbelt skills you'd have available on core or the other specs nonetheless, sure you gain a new pool of skills, but this new pool is much smaller than the other one, doesn't have any stunbreaks, and breaks some of the utility skill balance because they were desgined in tandem with the toolbelt (for instance the Med Kit personal heal is on the toolbelt, without it the skill becomes unplayable). The toolbelt was designed to offset the lack of weapon swap, you can use kits to get additional weapons, but they take a utility slot, therefore all of your utilities are doubled through the toolbelt. And that's not speaking of what happens when your mech dies, and unlike Ranger which can pet swap when one of them dies, and remains potent if your pets are down, Mechanist without the mech is god awful since the entirety of the Mechanist trait lines focuses on the mech, the signet are improved when the mech is online, and you don't have a weapon swap, nor you'll have access to your core toolbelt. I'm all for trade-offs, but without gutting your possibilities, and not having your toolbelt when your mech is offline cripples the spec far too much since core skills were designed with it in mind.

Catalyst is by far the worst one of this expansion, no matter how clunky the other might feel, they all change the way you're approaching your class, while Catalyst just feels like core Elementalist with a well for an F5, an bunch of of left over ideas from Weaver and Tempest. Willbender for instance in super underwhelming, but it still manages to change the way you're interacting with the core mechanics, you don't have the virtue passives, only after using the virtue itself, but the passive is stronger and the activation of the virtue also is. It's clunky and need some polish, but on paper it's interesting, and all the other specs are like this, except for Catalyst, which changes nothing in how you're playing Elementalist. Tempest changed a little bit the way you play with your attunements by encouraging the player to stay in them longer in order to gain a new ability, Weaver also changed that by allowing you to merge two attunements, in comparison with Catalyst you just press F5 when you've enough energy (which is an awful mechanic) and the well has different properties depending on your attunement, which is super bland and boring. On paper it's boring and uninspired, and in practice it's also quite useless.

I like the idea of this spec, however, I do agree with the general sentiment that no tool belt when the mech is offline is an awful idea. All of the core utility skills are designed with the tool belt in mind, without the tool belt some utility skills become straight garbage (Med Kit being the worst offender). You're going to lose your mech in combat, which is already a downside on itself, you don't need to be punished more, so yeah the tool belt skills should absolutely be there when the mech is offline.

I'd rather have some sort of exoskeleton engineer than one based on a golem, or at the very least if we get a golem I hope we'll have the option to enter it. Furthermore, I do hope they find a way to play with the core engineer mechanics more than what Scrapper and Holo did, which was changing the F5.

It has been two years since the introduction of build templates, so I don't have too much hope left, but with a new expansion on the horizon and the introduction of new elite specializations, the current builds are going to be even more diverse, meaning switching between builds through the template system is going to be even more important. However, as you may know, both equipment templates and build templates are character specific and not account wide, which is extremely inconvenient. At this point it's actually cheaper to buy more character slots to get three new build templates and two equipment ones than buying those two options, particularly if you own a lot of legendary. It's not only bad for us the player, because I'd rather have less characters but more builds on one of them, but it's also pretty bad for sells, as anyone doing a little research will quickly learn it's more valuable for them to get more character slots than buying templates. I think it's time to introduce account wide build and equipment templates to the game. That's all.

While it has some fun aspects to it, mainly balancing Blight, the Harbinger shroud, and the pistol, it has at the same time some really bland and frankly boring traits and utility. I'd love to see the elixirs gaining different effects based on Blight threshold, similarly how Holosmith's Exceed skills get new abilities based on the Heat threshold, it doesn't have to be crazy but simple abilities such as spawning a bone minion while above X Blight, or spawning a poison cloud, so on and so forth. It would make elixirs more fun, but would also buff them a little bit, because they seem weak with what I've played so far, but it'd also give you better rewards for the risk you take. Similarly it might be a way to also balance the Harbinger shroud skills a little bit more, by making them slightly stronger than what they currently are at high Blight, but weaker at lower Blight. In summary, it's fun to play despite some bland traits/utilities, I'd love to see more interaction with Blight, similar to what Holosmith get with Exceed skills and Heat.

I do like the idea of stance, maybe you use your virtues like a core guardian normally would, with slightly different effects, but then it'd change your primary weapon skill depending on the virtue you used and the weapon, like a Mirage ambush would. However, Guardian has access to eleven weapons (including underwater) plus a twelve one for the elite so that'd be thirty-six new skills and it doesn't seem feasible. Edit: I was wrong, it'd be eight weapons that could use a modified primary weapon skill, still that'd make twenty-four new skills to make, and it wouldn't work with the idea of a sword off-hand. I still kinda enjoy the idea.

I'd go with either a "gunslinger" elite with a gun, or a "samurai" one with a staff (alongside a naginata skin). I'm not entirely sure what they could do with the core Warrior mechanic, though.

They really need to remove the after cast delay to Preparation skills, it's not only extremely awkward to use normally, but considering Thief is a class build around mobility, you just can't afford waiting 3 seconds to interact with your skills, it leaves way too much time for whatever enemies (being a player or a npc) to move away from it. Preparation skills should be online after the casting time, like traps, but unlike the latter you have to trigger them manually. Furthermore, why Preparation skills don't have a trait enhancing them, unless I'm forgetting something all skill categories across all classes (and e-specs?) have one trait enhancing all skills within their category.

While I'm sure the exploration of Cantha will be a blast, it won't offer a lot of replayability, I want something that can engage me for a long time, something the game never really managed to do. Ideally I'd like Raids with three difficulty levels, easy (to get casual players in), normal (current difficulty), and hard (challenge mode with extra spice), but I'd just be happy with only repeatable challenge modes, and of course a steady flow of new raids (which let's be honest won't happen). If not Raids I want to see challenging instanced PvE, and for the love of god stop focusing on instanced story that no one wants to replay, that's a waste of time in an MMO, just shove those story bits into a dungeon or something, and again different difficulty level would be perfect to satisfy both the casual and hardcore crowdsBut above anything else I want actually engaging open world PvE content, not the cookie-cutter borderline braindead content à la Drizzlewood Coast, force players to split into different groups rather than following one commander while face rolling, and force them to care about mechanics rather than just bursting stuff without knowing what they're doing, make the content actually challenging and rewarding to play, have consequences for failures without having them feeling unfair ... I'd like to see the content to reflect more HoT than PoF, meaning challenging but also intricate to navigate while having somewhat good events. I wouldn't mind one large map like PoF, particularly if it's an area designed for newer players/returning players who bumped their characters to level eighty to make them learn mechanics from the game and their classes, something the game still to this day doesn't do well, but to be fair learning the game with 2012 content is bad to begin with, so let's say Shing Jea Island. I think a new race is a huge waste of time, so no thanks. Same with housing to be honest, I mean guilds are kinda useless in the game, unfortunately, but you can already create a one man guild and customize your guild hall, which is housing with few extra steps. New elites go without saying, on that front I just want the Revenant's to focus on power builds and have a greatsword, everything else I don't have hard feelings either way. Both HoT and PoF introduced new general combat mechanics (Alacrity with HoT, Barrier with PoF ...) so I'd like new toys like that while keeping the game balanced too. Fishing as a mini game would be nice, while not mandatory, having to collect a wide array of fishes would be awesome, bonus points if we get random event where you have to defeat some under water monsters (or on the beach for ground combat) attacking you while you fish. 15v15 for sPvP, you can call it GvG, and create a separate ranked queue for it. WvW love, alliance and maybe some overhauls, siege turtles would be nice too. I'd like to see some open world PvP, like the light hearted events we had during the beta of the games, I understand otherwise the game is not really made for that kind of content, and WvW is what's replacing it, but some sort of call back to Alliance Battles from Faction would be nice.

Death Magic should focus less on toughness, which isn't a particular useful stats for Necromancers, and should focus more on Protection and damage reduction based on your foes conditions. Furthermore it should focus on one of the main weakness of Necromancer, which is its poor anti-crowd control tools, and therefore it should focus on Stability and stun breaks.

The projectile speed is far too slow for the intended purpose of the skill, chasing, but yet everything is sluggish in Death Shroud, so I guess it's consistent. The tracking is non-existent as the projectile goes in a straight line and can easily be avoided. Furthermore I've seen the projectile going into the ground while having a target, so it's clearly buggy. Transforming the skill from a projectile to a shadowstep would make the skill way more useful. And overall Death Shroud, but also core Necromancer traits/skills, don't need cooldown reduction or improvements, but a complete rework because they're sluggish and don't offer much compared to newer designed traits and skills.

Another balance patch without any substantial nerfs for the braindead degeneracy that are Holosmith and Mirage.They can buff core profession all they want (Necromancer and Guardian this patch) it won’t matter as long as elite specializations just have the better tools alongside insane burst potentials.Overall the meta is not going to shift one bit, same old same old.