Squigglez.1236

I do like the concept of an offensive healer but I was finding it hard to even make a build to test this. Even after the update warrior doesn't have much support utility to compliment this. In addition to that bladesworn not having access to the heal from the burst, and since spellbreaker can't give alacrity or quickness, it felt like it was exclusively for zerker. I'm mostly just making an obligatory post as I did with rev scepter that this game wasn't made with forcing people to click allies in mind. No changes have been made to make it play any better and it's even worse that it's just a single skill. It feels bad because it is bad.

I barely even bothered testing this one, the tether just gives some boons, and mace 2+3 already gives might and doesn't risk sacrificing other maintained skills, and herald/renegade already have a method to generate might. I just wanted to post what I say, and probably will continue to say, every time targeting allies in this game sucks. The game wasn't made with that requirement in mind and there have been no changes that make it less unwieldy. Having a single skill that requires ally target means this is worse than playing specter.

To my surprise M/M ranger is probably the most fun of all the weapon sets in the beta. I enjoy hammer soulbeast and M/M feels like an extension of that with it's slam attacks. It's less damage than S/A but gives defensive boons, lets you give yourself barrier, has more cc, and only has one forced movement skill. The force of nature mechanic seemed off when I read about it but given soulbeast already tries to stack their damage in One wolf pack and Sic 'Em it feels like just another addition to your burst. It may not end up the best possible dps choice but if it's workable I may end up using these instead of S/A in open world at least.

Not sure what niche this is supposed to fill right now. The effects the bow has can be done with other sets already. Since the mechanist alacrity trait has a 1s cooldown stacking the barrier doesn't help with alacrity uptime. The heal stacks don't seem strong enough since you'll already have medkit if you're heal support, also shield lets you blast water fields. I don't think slow is that useful in PvE, it doesn't effect defiant enemies and other enemies get melted. Traits let mechs stack 10+ might just for having the bot punch things already, might is pretty easy to come by now so even the rapid 25 stacks doesn't feel super useful. I'd find it more interesting if the bow had a resource mechanic like thief initiative or firebrand pages, maybe that would let you just choose which arrows you need at any given time instead of trying to stack them in such a strange way.

Not adding anything that hasn't been said, and would preface by saying I only really tested against the golem. The flip skills suck, the damage for the weapon feels low, and the attacks feel slow. Damage for skill 2 flip is almost the same as the auto attack. Flip skill for 3 feels like sacrificing health to get a slightly altered axe 3. Flip for 5 is a short range fear. The auto chain feels slow but so does skill 4 with its 1s cast.

I want to toss my vote in with what others have said. These additions to the patch notes just use paragraphs to say the same thing the notes did in bullet points. There isn't really any explaining of why most changes were made so it doesn't add anything to understanding why they exist. Warrior was probably in the largest need of explanation of the changes and they seem to have gotten the worst. You said you didn't want banners to cover quickness by themselves but what did you want them to do? Why does warrior need a trait and 100% boon duration to maintain anything. You wanted to break warriors free of banners to give them more versatility but now builds seem to be even more set in stone with bladesworn for dps, mending for peak performance, mine, cartridges, and tactical reload to squeeze damage out of a dragon slash which already makes up over half the dps, and flow stabilizer because flow honestly sucks. You had problems with the highest level groups stacking catalysts to get dps while skipping a quickness support, but the new bladesworn brings martial cadence for a 30% quick uptime, stacking bladesworns will do the same thing, especially since they have one of the highest benches now. Also why was it decided to make banners bundles again? That's how they were in the beginning and it was annoying to move them, now holding them gives you no skills, you're the only one that can move them, and their buffs aren't worth it. Just give them a flip skill that lets you port them to your position if you don't want people to pick them up to reduce cooldown and spam for quickness. Frankly making bladesworn the only really viable warrior build is just awful. I don't play warrior much but having all your damage in that one skill means enemies that move or interrupt you just kills any contribution you can do. Other enemies are dead before you can get the flow and charge the attack. With the new balance you've just double down, it's dragon slash or play something else.

Just wanted to post here but I can't finish the wizard fight. All the reflected lightning balls register as misses.

Maybe there is still a chance they'll look into the traits so catalyst gets something more than a stat boost for going ape kitten in a field. Maybe a conversion trait to at least give some incentive to add some vitality like harbinger or weaver has.

Would like to say that elixirs still have ground target underwater.

I'd agree that necro was crap on release. I still got into groups for dungeons and later got to max fractals on necro/reaper. I get the feeling that because it was once bad some people refuse to see it's pretty good now. Reaper is probably one of the easiest open world builds to get into, and while it's true that, if played perfectly, the dps is only like 33k I find it to be pretty consistent because of how self reliant it is, in some pug groups where nobody plays perfectly it makes very little difference. Scourge had a solid spot in raids and fractals too in my experience, and harbinger gets pretty good damage for a quickness class. Epi was pretty game breaking, having one person in your party bring a single utility and clearing every add that dared to breath in range of the boss trivialized too many fights and for the new strikes would've voided mechanics. Even in the dragons end meta an unnerfed epi would've let necros purge the platform during the boss fight.

Since it feels like the balances were based on benchmark videos maybe they skipped bladesworn because it took forever for someone to make a bench video, since it doesn't do anything that well, and they were just about to release when it did come out.

Just adding my vote that the rewards are crap, there should be rewards before killing the boss, and that the entire meta takes too long. Make the pre events give drops too, or let the event start when each lane has high readiness, or make the event run every hour and half the time it takes. 2 hours of work for 20-30 chests is brutal.

I'm just going to echo what others have put here so nothing really new, just adding my voice so there's more demand for change here. I did actually beat the meta on my 6th try, I do like the design of the boss fight but there are so many flaws that this it's doomed in its current state. First and foremost the "Challenge" is in the wrong place, there's nothing wrong with asking people to dodge attacks or break a cc bar, the challenge for this meta is the massive effort in stacking a squad with subgroups that have might, fury, quickness, alac and sometimes stability. This meta shouldn't require setting up the equivalent of 5 raid squads, it's just not made for it. The group I finally succeeded in had to create a 50 man squad with 20 support classes, we had to get into a map super early so that the entire squad could make it in before the event started, then had to make sure to grind until everyone got 10 stacks of participation for the damage increase. This is WAY too much prep and is orders of magnitude more tedious and difficult than the actual fight is. The actual fight I think is fun but there's still some broken bits. Others have mentioned the attack RNG which can be brutal. She decided to switch sides too often and your timer gets eaten, same thing if she keeps putting her tail up. Additionally, you made a point to say the green mechanic shouldn't be skipped, but you know what else is being skipped? The whirlpools. The break bar on those things is insanely high, every group I've been in has just let the people in the whirlpools die, it's just not worth the time it takes to try and free them. Other stuff that needs fixed. The turtle absolutely shouldn't be locked behind this, and in my opinion you shouldn't need to do a strike mission to finish the turtle either. Some people just don't like doing instanced group content that requires they submit to a meta build. The entire meta taking 2 hours is also just awful, dragon stand starts every 2 hours but at least in that you can finish it early by doing things well. The group I passed with had most people afk for 20-30 minutes waiting for it to start because they'd already gotten their 10 buff stacks. Lastly, the rewards are crap and they're all gated behind succeeding. Your 2 hours ends up giving you less for your time than an octovine or dragon stand, and if you fail you get nothing just a complete waste of your time. Suggestions: Lower the break bar of whirlpools, give attacks that hamper dps (tail and dive) a cooldown so they can't be spammed. Add an npc or something that lets you vote to start the meta early, if enough people vote the meta starts so you don't have to wait half an hour. Link the turtle egg to something else, at the very least give the egg out for the event before the boss fight so people are much more likely to get it. Also put some rewards at the steps before the boss so failures don't just give you the finger for your time. Put more valuable rewards on success or some reason people should keep doing this after they've personally gotten their turtle, the legendary items are already dropping in price and will not sustain this. Change the fight so it doesn't require groups with perfect boons and damage classes, also I'd prefer you just remove the participation buff and lower the dps check. It's just an extra chore, make the day metas give some rewards of their own to incentivize doing them. Other somewhat related notes: Some changes are seriously needed and quick. I know some people play this for the challenge but you can't gear open world events to that, once they've done it enough to get bored they'll stop doing it and then you're left with a challenging meta nobody wants to play. Additionally, not only is the requirement of constantly doing this meta burning people out as some have as many as 20-30 failed tries, but the people who do finally finish it don't want to come back to help others, and as people are constantly trying this the other maps feel oddly empty, this one meta is taking up so much of peoples play time it's literally draining some of the life from other maps. Make the Thruster Control Unit tradable, or have it drop from the basically identical fight in story mode. I know quite a few people who dread the idea of doing a strike to finish this collection.

I almost never play ele and was actually excited about hammer. Weaver does highish damage so I figured hammer was going to be a more sturdy build. Maybe not that useful for end game stuff but it would've been fun to use in open world finally giving me a reason to play her. Then the live stream and they mentioned it was bruiser, staying in combat instead of having to dip out to heal like I do when I play weaver at all (I'm very bad at ele). In hindsight it's almost funny how off this is. Catalyst is just as squishy as any other ele build. Lvl 10 jade core, vitality stat gear and runes, defensive trait set. She still just dies. Enemies spread out and I barely manage to kill one or two before the rest melt me. I have to dodge or get cc'd for a second and those orbs are gone. Any fight that moves and my damage is basically 0 and I can't maintain those trait buffs. This spec doesn't seem to do anything aside from the quickness. I hope for some massive trait and hammer rework at least.

I liked it a lot. I realize that it's not an all the time mount. When I heard it was harder to control at higher speeds I imagined it having a higher turn radius at high speeds but it seems to slide around like a roller beetle drift. The syncing could use some work, as passenger occasionally it would just zip me to catch up with the actual position of the turtle. This gets worse if you us a WP. You can WP with your ally if it's on the same map (I don't know the restrictions) but when I did that the desync got worse. My GF was firing the cannons but I didn't see anything, I was using the stomp but she didn't see anything, and I guess the rubber band zipping thing got worse, that was until we remounted. I am curious how the masteries will change how it works. The jump can only really gain height at the very start, this means if you tap space to jump then wait a second and then hold space the turtle hovers a foot off the ground for the entire endurance bar. Lastly the way endurance works with the turtle makes the bond of vigor not really do much.