Panda.1967

I’ve said it before and I will say it again because it is STILL true… SoTO is just a living world season masquerading as an expansion. It was not worth the $25 price tag, $15 maybe… the missions for each story segment have been a lot of “complete map events in the area until X is ready.” Exactly like a living world chapter.

No… no they haven’t… ANet simply accepted the reality that players will make roles happen no matter what they do. ANet still adhears to their original design philosophy that GW2 breaks away from the traditional Holy Trinity of Tank/DPS/Heal and embraces a roleless profession system… only now they acknowledge that the playerbase has made their own roles in this roleless profession system. For moat of the game’s life, ANet has attempted to break the role metas by making it harder to play certain roles, but now they accepted they exist and always will which is why many recent and upcoming changes are adding to the accessibility of these player made roles instead of taking away again like in the past. basically they switched tactics… if they can’t break player made roles by making them harder to do, then they will make them more accessible and possibly remove the need for them little by little… as more professions get alacrity & quickness access on their normal rotations, the need for boon support diminishes… as more professions gain effective self healing without a loss of DPS, the need for healers also diminishes… and the roll of tank is already seen as an unnecessary relic in most of the game… a lot of the recent and upcoming changes push the roles of Healer & Boon Support into standard DPS…

I need that glider

Ya’ll have missed the biggest problems with both Elementalist Pistol and Thief Axe… Both of these weapons need to be made into offhands. Their current designs are terrible as mainhand weapons but are perfect as offhand weapons. also… the upkeep skill on Revenant Scepter could have worked, the problem was the absurdly high -3 cost. It was mentioned multiple times before, during, and after the beta that the only way it can be remotely functional as an upkeep weapon skill is if the cost is -1 or -2 at most. Removing the upkeep and making it a duration skill may be good though… we’ll see when we get to play with it again.

1. OW, WvW, Raids, Fractals, Dungeons… yes. 2. You didn’t say it directly but, “mightfrom fire is not needed when it's easy to hit the cap” you did imply it when you said this. 3. I think the others have done a good job at supplying a list of those… and you kinda missed my point on that too. Not every build meta or not, can supply their own 100% up time on might and many of them are reliant on others to provide them might in group content. Fire fields are the most abundant source of AoE might in almost all group situations, and are constantly present and constantly blast finished.

You are aware that a large portion of the perma-might people enjoy in group content actually does come from the never ending blasting of Fire combo fields right? If they changed fire fields to nolonger give mightwhen blasted I wouldn’t be surprised if we suddenly nolonger have perma-might on absolutely everyone anymore. Sure it’s easy to have a lot of might constantly on most builds, but only a handful of builds can actually maintain max might unaided and most sources of might on most builds is self only. There are a LOT of players and builds that do in fact rely heavily on fire combo fields for their might stacks, and as luck would have it, nearly every build that can make fire combo fields follows them up with a blast finisher almost immediately.

If they do it right, they would increase access… the only reason some classes make more use of them than others is because of their comparative access to combos. For example, Mesmers make very little use of combos because they have extremely limited access to combo fields and finishers. On my mesmer, I run Scepter/Shield Chronomancer, i can lay down Chaos fields no problem, but I don’t have any finishers on my normal setup… EoD created problems for me because of the numerous times I was required to damage a target with a combo since the only finishers I had easy access to were Leap finishers with staff… you can’t do damage with a leap finisher into chaos field.

The problem isn’t actually that celestial is OP in any game mode… the problem is that the Value per Point of various attributes is grossly disproportionate… as a result some stat sets are just flatout avoided by the playerbase while a small selection are gravitated to… this disproportionate value is actually what shifted Celestial from its intended spot as the baseline well rounded stat set to one of the more desirable sets.

You clearly have no idea how Zealot’s Flame works… Zealot’s Flame is a pbAoE skill that applies burning to up to three nearby enemies. The Current Radiant Fire trait causes the skill to proc automatically on crits once every 10sec. It also increases all burn durations and reduces CDs of torch skills. You gain 2/3 of the traits benefits without ever even touching a torch. The change they are making literally forces us to use torch to get any benefit out of this trait. How it works right now is perfectly fine and doesn’t need to change to work with the upcomming pistol off-hand meta. The fact of the matter is that their claim that it is being changed to make the trait less reliant on having a torch equipped is a bold faced lie.

These two statements are completely contradictory… Radiant Fire already is independent of having a torch equipped, this change does the exact opposite of the stated goal and makes the trait now require a torch to be equipped to gain any benefit.

Thats because you personally choose to ignore the micromanagement of clones on Mirage… Mirage is the only mesmer espec that actually has micromanagement of clones. For Core, Chrono, and even technically Virtuoso there is no micromanagement of clones. Clone management is just a regular part of the rotation due to the consistency of shattering. Only on Mirage do you actually have to make decisions on what to do with them. On mirage you regularly make decisions amongst the following: Shatter clone for damage/interrupt/distortion Keep clone for Ambush Waste clone generation in your Case you seem to always choose to keep clones and waste generation. Most Mirage players still utilize shatters. They are still, annoyingly, part of how the profession works. claiming that mirage has no micromanagement because of a part that you choose to ignore would be like if I had said Chrono has absolutely no micromanagement because if I choose to if ore Continuum Split there is none. Also, even without clone shattering mirage has its own extra micromanagement in Mirage Mirrors.

I don’t have an answer as to why it shouldn’t be meta… I main Chrono and I love it… and I think it SHOULD be meta… there also isn’t nearly as much micromanaging as people claim there is… it just seems that way when you are first trying to learn how to use continuum split. The clone management is identical to core mesmer. Scepter Shield Chrono is extremely tanky and lets you shatter spam effortlessly… you don’t need to micromanage clones at all, you just shattet them every time you have 3. Mirage has more clone micromanagement than Chrono does. Mirage actually cares about the clones’ auto attacks for their Ambush skill, so Mirage has to balance when to and when not to shatter thus being mindful of when they may waste a clone generation. Chrono doesn’t care. For Chrono, clones exist only to be shattered and provide a momentary distraction. It is a very chill and laid back espec. Continuum Split is the only micromanagey part of Chrono, and only if you try to squeeze every last bit of utility out of it… when you stop trying to use it for a full reset and just use it as a force multiplier, it’s actually a lot easier to manage. Don’t try to use it to save you from fatal damage, you will die. Use it to start a burst damage phase and as an opener. It is one button used once every minute or so. The rest of the espec is identical playstyle to core mesmer… for the record, BTW; I hate that mesmer got turned into this clone shatter mess… I love the addition of clones to mesmer, but they should have been done differently IMO… phantasms function closer to how clones should have been. Mesmer class mechanic should have been Hexes. We should have been a much more CC and condition focused profession than we turned out to be.

Absolutely not… 1s block is completely useless, even with 2-3s block timing has to be precise to make block actually work. If you reduce the duration of block to only 1s then the likelihood of your block being completely wasted increases to a near certainty.

This… is actually correct… I completely forgot that Untamed has access to ambush skills, which that fact alone actually makes it solidly Ranger/Thief rather than Ranger/Warrior. I would agree with you on this if it wasn’t for the fact that ANet devs have directly stated a few times that Spellbreaker is Warrior/Mesmer… for the most accurate secondary class pairing though, Spellbreaker is really Warrior/Dervish… several of its abilities were taken from the GW1 Dervish class both in name and general function.

I have to disagree here… allowing any ally to detonate them actually makes it a whole lot harder to actually make tactical use of them… a lot of builds have blast finishers as part of their basic rotations. Allowing any allies blast finisher to detonate the arrows means they will almost always be detonated immediately.

From my experience longbow effectiveness is in this order: 1. Warrior 2. Guardian 3. Ranger The warrior has a very hard hitting Longbow that works great on both Power and Condi builds. Its got a fair spread of single target, AoE, and utility making it quite a versatile weapon. Guardian longbow isn’t the best for actual damage, but it does have a lot of utility and survivability built in. What it lacks in power though it makes up for in support. Ranger longbow by all rights should be an amazing weapon… its a pure power weapon while Warrior’s is a Hybrid Condi/Power weapon and Guardian’s is a Hybrid Support weapon… you’d think it would be the best longbow… unfortunately it has a massively crippling disadvantage. Rangers longbow losses effectiveness the closer you are to your opponent and its most damaging skills can both very easily end up doing only a tiny fraction of their total damage. Ranger’s longbow does only one thing, Power Damage, and it doesn’t do it very well.

If we ever get new porfessions they will undoubtedly be based on the Paragon, Dervish, & Ritualist from GW1. Its also possible that the GW1 Assassin could be brought back into GW2, but it would most likely just be through an elite spec (which we sort of already got with Willbender, Daredevil, Specter, & Vindicator)

I feel as though if/when thief gets torch, it'll be heavily focused around proving AoE stealth and blinds through smoke rather than applying burning... Also, I feel like I've been losing my mind over this since the game launched... but I swear Thief had Torch back in the original GW2 betas... One of the skills was to throw the torch and it created a smoke field and blinded enemies... the other stealthed yourself and allies for a few seconds, and the dual attacks were mostly shadowsteps that either blinded or stealthed.

And this is a big reason why it should have been an offhand weapon… the way they designed axe could have been a perfect offhand to pair with Scepter…

Personally I’d be happy if they just change the Axe from mainhand axe to offhand axe…

Only if ANet ends each beta with a post outlining the concerns and feedback we provided that they will be addressing, so that we know they are actually listening to our feedback.

Dragon Trigger is NOT shroud, it is Weapon Kit. Bladesworn is Warrior/Engineer not Warrior/Necro. Holosmith on the otherhand gets Shroud via Photon Forge, Holosmith is Engineer/Necro. Why is it so hard for people to get the elite spec class combos right? Reaper = Necro/Warrior or Necro/Guardian (design is unclear) Scourge = Necro/Mesmer Harbinger = Necro/Engineer Mirage & Virtuoso = Mesmer/Thief Tempest = Elementalist/Guardian Weaver = Elementalist/Thief Vatalyst = Elementalist/Engineer Druid = Ranger/Necro Soul Beast & Untamed = Ranger/Warrior Holosmith = Engineer/Necro Mechanist = Engineer/Ranger Daredevil = Thief/Warrior Specter = Thief/Necro Spellbreaker = Warrior/Mesmer Bladesworn = Warrior/Engineer DragonHunter = Guardian/Ranger Willbender = Guardian/Thief or Guardian/Warrior (design is unclear) All Revenant eSpecs are just extensions of core Revenant. Chronomancer, Scrapper, Berserker, & Firebrand are also all just extensions of their core classes.

If we don’t hear about a followup beta soon or the next thing we hear after beta ends is a release date for the weapons then there will be no changes to anything beyond simple numbers tweeks, animations, and visuals.

I like the mechanics of the pistol… and I do think it could be a good weapon… just not a good mainhand weapon… it should just be turned into an offhand.

With how condi reaper works… swords are a very good weapon for them… and Greatsword despite being power weapon is a perfectly viable melee weapon for condi reaper as is… all you need for condi reaper is access to fear, blind, and chilled… which both greatsword and dual swords grant in spades…