Tabootrinket.2631

Just one thing for me : Air #4 should be renamed "suicide"

I'm gonna relax. I'll have to juggle between this game Elden Ring and Pokemon Arceus. I'm gonna be busy.

Totally. The selfish aspect of the augment is really what irks me the most. I think that should be the reward for attuning to the right element while using the augments.

Usually people don't know what they want until they have it. Of course people have different opinions, but a large amount of people like to judge a concept or a genre even before having tried it (look at the rise of the souls series). Like I said, theme park mmos are not bad per say, but there should be more diversity in the mmo genre. I just wanted to bring perspective into the subject brought up by OP.

OP seems to be one of those who played MMORPGs before WoW corrupted the genre. WoW formula wasn't bad per say, but it was but one single approach that should have been just that : one approach. But following wow every single MMO tried to do the same and now people only know about theme park mmos. Originally MMOs were sandbox oriented. In fact, they were more akin to rogue likes : You started in a hub (a main city), and had to venture your way outside as far as you could until you died and spawn back at the hub (There were like 5 hubs at most depending of the presence of faction or race). No waypoints, no schedule. A natural positive result of that was the feeling of a populated city and thus a lively community. "Legendary monster" had their own agendas in that, they spawned randomly in some region. Just exploring the outside world was enough challenge to incite people to group together. This was the formula I was most attached to. Now for most of the people here, it might sound like a boring concept, but that's because usually people tend to reject ideas they are not familiar with. Fun fact, Back when WoW wasn't a thing, people used to make fun of those who mentioned the idea of having a story and chapters in an MMORPG.

First of all, I didn't extensively test the spec so I'm just going to provide a first impression on it. The good points : Hammer skills are faster and feel much better. You are not stuck after casting air #2 in the air attunement which makes it much smoother. F5 and hammer #3 being instant cast makes the spec playable (finally). Also the radius and speed of #3 feels really good. Things that could be looked on : I didn't enjoy playing outside 'Energized Elements' trait. It felt like it took forever to build the energy. This trait makes the energy generation tolerable (but it felt a little bit mandatory which might not be a good thing). From my short play session this is what I think i got from the hammer : - The main dps source is the orbiting orbs (which is good). - Once the jade spheres are charged, #5 on all attunements provides a combo finisher which definitely comes in handy to take advantage of the fields. - While navigating the orbs you also use #2 to accelerate the energy generation EXCEPT in fire attunement where #2 seems really slow. All other attunements' #2 are some kind of channeling attacks that start hitting without delay (which is good to buildup the energy). - weapon #4s feature the situational tools, but then again EXCEPT in fire attunement where it's an attack as slow as fire #2. tldr : I feel like fire #2 and #4 should in some way align with what the other elements provide on those slots. It's kinda a pain to find a new key to assign F5. Maybe add the ability to cast F5 by pressing a second time the attunement button The energy gauge is way too tiny Overall : I don't know, I kinda feel like I'm enjoying this spec a little bit now. It requires a little bit getting used to (especially timing the utilities to the jade spheres). Gameplay wise it feels like weaver-light but the effects are satisfying, especially when you start running with almost constant quickness (please don't change that). I'm cautiously optimistic now, but I'll hold my judgement for after the nerfbat. If it doesn't happen, I like what I'm seeing so far. I think it's a shame though that most of the features of this spec are reliant on using the hammer. Kinda feels like Deadeye on that aspect.

Boring, I may agree with you on that one, since it's about personal reception (and I share that viewpoint). However I find fiery greatsword kinda powerful though. I would just like Anet to make the second weapon spawned more useful (something like halving cooldown if it's picked up and reclicking the button to equip it if it's still there after the first one expires). I personally hate Rebound for the reason you mentioned, however some might argue this is one of the best elite skills out there (I'm not one of them because I don't have the ability to use it efficiently). As for Elemental Celerity : While it still feels pretty super boring to me, I can see it becoming very useful for our class. Imagine you didn't manage to time your rotation well and messed up the cooldown on some of the skills : you press the elite skill and not only can you perform twice right away your weapon skills, but you can correct the messed up cooldown on your other skills since you spent a bit of time adding new actions to your rotation. For hammer it can also provide relatively easy access to emergency weapon skills that ups your survivability (things that were featured on the latest updates)... unless the concerned attunement is on cooldown. Since we're already going to be busy with our rotation, the elite might go off cooldown sooner than we realize, unless we're really getting destroyed in the meantime.

Meanwhile, Willbender ---> gets passif AoE alacrity distribution by being there.

I'm not even sure we're gonna run into that "multiple wells" scenario often. The wells last 5s, and are limited to the energy pool that we need to build up beforehand. By the time we finish a rotation in one element and change attunement the well will vanish too.

Quite the opposite actually. But this game forced me to change my habit to stick to one character. There's a LOT of content you can't play if you stick to one character and you were unlucky on your choice.

I don't know... I think almost everyone in every single platform talking about the especs made it very clear that Catalyst is bottom of the barrell by far as presented. There is still the chance that it might have been put into one the top priorities among the "to fix" list after beta. We may actually get surprised. If that's not the case, well, I got my thief on standby.

"Retention" and "feeling of fairness" are two concepts that those kind of companies are actually following very closely, you know. It's actually more profitable for them to make players feel that whatever is paid actually deserves it and doesn't hinder the actual experience. So yeah, that IS how working businesses function. Otherwise, the overtime player sentiment will get lower and lower until the profit doesn't come anymore. And most importantly, the next IP will tank. Balance is the key for companies that want to last with their services. Anet has found a balance, but my view is it could've been altered a little bit.

Things are not that simple. If Anet could just say no to cash shop and still have the same amount of income they would do just that. However, I think they should've thought out the balance between cash shop content and ingame content more thoroughly. While cash shop gives them income, contents give the players incentive to continue playing, and thus reasons to keep investing in the cash shop. It's kinda dissuasive when two third of cash shop weapons are more original and inspired than actual legendaries. Personally, I would have made all weapons and armors drop throughout all different contents and rare "MVP" mobs, but not exclusive to specific ones. The nature of the contents would just (drastically) increase or decrease the percentage of drops of specific gears (depending on the lore of the content). Some contents would also just straight up lead to one specific gear, laying out the backstory of that gear while progressing towards it. Btw, I mean all that content should be made intuitive and not hidden in obscure collections achievements. So we would end up with a game where every piece of armor (except maybe headgears) and weapons are earned by playing the contents... So what would be left for the cash shop ? Pieces of cosmetics that can be put ON TOP of the gears. By that, I mean adding specific slots of cosmetics that would be put on a layer above the armor set : - Badges - Scarves - Masks - Floating trinkets (like the obnoxious legendaries) - backpacks - effects applied to specific compartments of the gears - Hats that allow hair in. - new accountbound hairstyles (but it would require the possibility to change haircuts with no cash money) - pets with mini games - chairs - transportations that replace the running animation (like the broom and the carpet) -mount skins was a pretty neat idea because it's not an element that competes with any ingame activity. That idea is not new. It was actually successfully used in older Asian MMOs (Ragnarok, Maple Story, Tales Weaver too I think etc). It gave a nice balance between cash shop cosmetics and a gear progression within the game.

yes

Disclaimer : I'm not an engineer user. I liked the specialization so far. However, not having the toolbelt felt a bit lackluster. Maybe give the engi access to that toolbelt whenever the golem is off ? Specters have gained access to ally targeting. Is it possible to add the ability to move the mech by clicking on a destination (like in Diablo) ?

Overall : This batch of elite specializations is pretty disappointing and uninspired compared to what we had for HoT and PoF. The only elites that gave me a good first impression are : Specter, Mechanist and Bladesworn. Virtuoso seemed to feel kinda good gameplaywise (I'm not a mesmer user) but why bring out music related vocab when the spec merely uses daggers ?? Harbinger started with a concept that hyped me up. Using a pistol, hell yeah (why not for both hands though ?) However, the spec felt boring and the pistol forgettable somehow. Catalyst is a disgusting piece of garbage. Ele is the butt of the joke and even devs aknowledge it live on streams now. As for the specs I didn't mention, I don't have a particular opinion on them. I didn't test them extensively, I don't really have a big affinity with those classes in general. I feel like the development of EoD specializations was rushed. The specializations look like scraps of ideas patched together, and now they are trying to make them function.

Overall I love the concept, and it feels very good so far. Being able to target allies and furiously healing them while seemingly whacking them on the head is sooo much fun. Having a high speed single target healing mechanism seems interesting so far (I can totally see it come in handy with a bladesworn charging their F2 for example). It would be worrysome if that was all the spec had to offer but being able to spread barrier, blindness and alacrity kinda gives me hope about this spec. My favorite elite spec so far. negative : - Not a lot of combo finisher access if we use the scepter. Any possibility to make the scepter/pistol 3 a backward leap and scepter/dagger 3 a projectile finisher maybe ?

Meet the Crawler

You may be right about it. However from what I've seen (not much), they seem to provide barrier and alacrity to a whole group (and half a raid group), whenever they pop their utility. I don't think Specter will be the main source of healing, but they may come in clutch whenever one ally is close to death and everyone is on cool down (the scepter auto is quite fast). They also have an AoE burst healing that scales with shadow force (I think) if you trait for it. I'm curious how they may fair with a bladesworn in the group. If the two elites work the way Anet envisioned it, there could be some interesting play where Bladesworn charge their full power slash while the Specters try to keep them alive. Anyway, at least there seems to be something. We'll see whether or not it will stick the landing or not.

Looking at the Specter in the beta, and I've got to say... from an ele perspective this is disgusting. Catalyst's "elite" skill is a mere reduction of the cooldown to a decent amount, meanwhile, a mere utility from the Specter brings ALL the F'ing boons, combo field (albeit just dark field but still), alacrity on first tick and all those other perks coming from the spec itself. As an ele this is unacceptable. Ele's utilities are a spit in the face, and the elite unique is vomit. Now I'm on my way to the thief section to cry of joy as a thief that finally won't get kicked out on sight in PvE group contents

I think it’s because pet AI has already been the bane of some classes, and people hoped that giving pet as an elite would maybe lead to AI improvement. However the very first thing the mech did was yoloing on the side of the screen making the dev muse about the AI

well of course not literally. But a sustainable class that can actually provide and make use of combo field —-> specter, not Catalyst.

I mean look at all those wells in the utilities, and then look at the supposedly (single) special skill of the Catalyst. RIP Catalyst, goodbye ele, I'm getting back on my former thief main. I'm happy and sad at the same time.

The only concrete problem I see is : what happens when classes have circled through all existing weapons and we still need new e-spec ? The current system would permit them to change the behavior of already used weapons depending on the specialization. However, if they unlock weapons for all specs everytime a new spec is created, they’ll soon reach a dead end (for warriors first most likely). Current system is future proof. However making that change would be like them eyeing the end of gw2

As a former thief who moved to ele (yeah I know...), I'm quite excited with the concept of the specter. It kinda hyped me up to do the map completion with my former main thief from PoF story (where I left him out) onward, before the expac (unless the beta disappoints me like for the Catalyst)