Riot Inducer.8964

Overall I very much enjoyed this iteration of Vindicator. Having the swap between Archemorus and Viktor really lets each one shine in their own way and you can much more effectively make use of their strengths. My only gripes with this change are the cast time for the swap, which feels bad, and also that the cooldown of the swap could feel restrictive at times. Greatsword once again felt good and I definitely appreciate it's place as a wide AoE weapon vs dual swords more relatively focused dps. The dodge leaps are also quite good with them balanced this way imo. Building towards endurance regen is fun especially the different ways you can go about it with the traits for the spec and core rev. Shorter response for me here but that's mainly because I quite like the spec and only have a couple pain points with it.

I agree, the ways you can use elixirs are great now being able to both generate and dump blight stacks with them, but the actual functions of each elixir are still extremely bland. I'll drop a couple ideas that I had for them. Elixir of Promise: The blight threshold causes the AoE to leave a poison field for several seconds doing additional damage and poison stacks. Elixir of Bliss: The blight threshold still corrupts additional boons but also grants protection to you. Elixir of Ignorance: The blight threshold causes the AoE to inflict fear Elixir of Ambition: The blight threshold extends the duration of boons and conditions

I'm going to run down a "brief" list of things I like and things I didn't with some suggestions for improvement. Blight Threshold: The blight threshold mechanic is actually brilliant on the Elixirs and I love the new design for them. They allow versatility if you want to build blight stacks on yourself or remove blight if you're under pressure and need some more hit points. That said the blight threshold mechanic works against the shroud skills with it imo. Going into shroud on Harbinger is committing to at least some blight stacks yet if you want to use your mobility skills to engage or inflict cc you actively hurt your ability to build blight stacks. Suggestion: Remove the blight removal aspect of Devouring Cut and Voracious Arc. I like the skill rewards of using the abilities at higher blight stacks and would like that to remain and even be expanded to other shroud skills to make blight more impactful to the spec. Suggestion: Jumping off of the last suggestion have blight threshold mechanics that don't remove blight stacks on pistol skills. Something simple like increased strike damage for Weeping Shots and additional condition stacks for Vile Blast. Pistol is ok but not terribly interesting, additional blight interaction could give it more of a place as a hybrid main-hand option suitable for more than the condi build. Elixirs: While I like the way elixirs can now be used to both build and remove blight from yourself, the actual effects are still on the uninspired side, as are the blight threshold bonuses on most of them. Elixir of Ignorance feels particularly limp, resistance is nice sure but locking the stun break behind the blight threshold feels bad, and the aoe aspect is especially lame. For my suggestions here I'm going to throw out ideas for the blight threshold and aoe components of the elixirs as the boon gain aspect is fine being simple with the other mechanics in play. Suggestion: Elixir of Promise, blight threshold now causes the aoe to leave a poison field damaging and inflicting poison for several seconds. Suggestion: Elixir of Ignorance, stun break is now baseline. Blight threshold now causes the aoe to inflict fear. Suggestion: Elixir of Bliss, blight threshold corrupts additional boons and causes the elixir to grant protection. Suggestion: Elixir of Ambition, blight threshold increases condition and boon duration. Limited Mobility: The reduction in range on Devouring Cut and Voracious Arc have seriously hurt the potential of the spec's playstyle as it's very difficult to disengage from close combat. With the removal of passive health regen the overall sustain of the spec is down so it's ability to remain mobile is of even higher importance. Suggestion: Simple, increase the range of these skills. Sustain and build diversity: I was quite worried about the removal of the passive health regen going into this beta, but I was genuinely quite surprised at how well I was able to survive in the more intense PvE areas (HoT zones mainly). That said when trying the power damage variant I quickly realized how much I was held up by Parasitic Contagion. I can only imagine these problems are multiplied tenfold in the competitive formats of the game. Suggestion: I think there's a solution to this and a problem created by my suggestion to remove the blight removal of shroud skills. And that is to create a new F2, that I'll call Affliction Purge, that you can toggle on to drain life force in exchange for health regen, the caveat is that the it also removes a blight stack every second and the healing is much higher when blight stacks are removed. Obviously activating Harbinger Shroud deactivates Affliction Purge and vice versa. With this we give back some of the sustain Harbinger lost but also have it as a cost that plays into the blight mechanic and gives harbingers a way to dump blight stacks without being forced to carry elixirs. Only one way to play: Something I noticed while trying out different builds is how no matter what route I was building the spec for it always played exactly the same. The rotation is always the same, jump in close, disable groups with Vital Draw, then use Dark Barrage from point blank and stay in melee to make use of your shroud aura. This samey playstyle also brings into question why the power damage option exists as, while it seems more competent than in the first beta, it still falls behind the condi build and given that you're forced into this close range playstyle you also are competing with Reaper. And frankly, Reaper still does it better and more comfortably. Suggestion: Replace Cascading Corruption with a modification trait for Dark Barrage, allowing it's shots to be fired slightly slower but with no spread. This would open up the space for a more defined ranged playstyle in the spec. Traits: Since we're now making suggestions to change traits we should address the siege turtle in the room, the traits. In short, they're not good, at all. They're extremely formulaic and dull while simultaneously having lots of holes or odd decisions. For one if you take Vile Vials you have zero benefit from blight, doubly so if you are using Elixirs in a support capacity with Twisted Medicine and aren't playing into the blight threshold mechanic. In the master tier everything is based around converting vitality to other stats with thematic extras, this is both dull and limiting as it also results in a master minor trait that is just a static stat boost. And finally the grandmasters all being pulsing shroud auras that also have to be buoyed up with static stat boosts. Suggestion: In the adept tier we have two traits that add positive effects onto blight, this is a half measure and it needs to change. Either commit to having the adept tier be about changing the positive effect of blight or make the two existing options innate to blight. In respect to the former option, the obvious choice is to have blight increase boon duration. Suggestion: Seriously merge Vile Vials and Twisted Medicine, two elixir traits is rather silly. Suggestion: Distill Alchemic Vigor and it's associated master tier stat conversion traits into a single minor or major trait that has +180-240 vitality and conversion of 7-10% for expertise and ferocity. Necro already has a +vitality trait in core so it doesn't need tons more and this way you can build for vitality if you want but now aren't forced to in order to make optimal use of any build in the spec. Suggestion: Give Doom Approaches a blight threshold mechanic increasing either it's potency (additional condi stacks) or range at high (15+) blight stacks. Suggestion: More traits that enhance the shroud for specific playstyles in the vein of Septic Corruption. Easy in for one is have Voracious Arc grant boons in aoe. Vigor and swiftness for example. Fear: Harbinger is a largely condi focused necro spec...but still doesn't have fear anywhere in its kit. This is practically an anti-synergy with core necro. If Scourge can pump out AoE fear on a 15s cooldown then Harbinger can kitten well do the same. Audio and Visuals: The new audio for elixirs is ok but could have more impact imo. And I said it last time and I'll say it again, get some new audio for the pistol! This thing is firing crazy green magic projectiles, it shouldn't sound like a run of the mill pistol! And for Grenth's sake the icons for elixirs was one of the most universal complaints the first time around, minor color tweaks of the same kitten skill icon is unacceptable! If nothing else it's a serious detriment to colorblind players and is worth changing for that alone.

In general I would recommend professions and builds that have high hp and passive defenses, as higher latency will inevitably lead to you taking more damage from AoEs and the like. Top of the list for me would be necromancer or guardian. Necro has tons of hit points and it's death shroud to tank additional hits whereas guardian has lots of passive defense options and health regen. In a strictly pve scenario builds with ai summons or companions can help you by distracting enemies giving you more time to react. Good picks for this playstyle would be ranger, necromancer, and to a lesser extent mesmer and elementalist.

I know vindicator has kind of reduced people's interes t in a dual legend spec but if we're looking at a norn based legend, Jora/Svanir are an amazing duo to build out a unique playstyle from. And you really can't do one of these characters justice without the other imo. The sons of svanir are a big deal to modern norn and there's a reason there are so many Jora statues around and not Aesgir ones. And going by race the question of asura legend is interesting and has some good candidates. Oola, Zinn, and Snaff are all good choices. All of them were mainly golemancers first and foremost, and I think this is where Oola loses out as that's all she's really known for too. Zinn has lots of interesting ideas to be explored as the founder of the Inquest and several disparate asuran settlements. However Snaff is the most interesting imo as his achievements include, pioneering golem battlesuits, creating personal teleporters, oh and mentally dominating an elder dragon.

Love the Vindicator stuff, I liked it before and these changes sound like good streamlining of the spec. Can't wait to try it out next week. Harbinger changes are interesting, good to see elixirs become more interesting, as is being able to manipulate blight. Not sure how removing the regen effect will work out in the long run, Harbinger already gives up a lot of defense/sustain, think this change might hurt the spec a lot. Untamed, I must say these changes don't really change my opinion of the spec. Pet unleashed mode is still a static skill override with no flexibility or bonus to the pets stats. While it's nice to have the attack and return commands bendable again, I still see no mention of automating pet skills which is still a marked downgrade in pet function in 90% of cases. Also hammer still doesn't have any skills that interact with the pet. All in all I feel Untamed needs a much bigger overhaul if it wants to be a spec that empowers ranger pets.

Now to start, let me just say I overall rather enjoyed Specter and it's take on a support spec. I think there's a lot of good things going on both thematically and mechanically here. Unfortunately one of the primary mechanics, Shadow Shroud, was rather unimpactful to the overall playstyle. It's single target support functions are wasted if solo and also less impactful than the massive AoE heal offered by the Consume Shadows trait when in groups. What's more, the actual skills very closely mimic necromancer's Death Shroud, up to and including the 3rd skill inflicting fear, making the shroud both unimpactful and unimaginative. However there are some good ideas in the shroud's design and after a bit of thought I believe there's an elegant way to amplify the good ideas of the shroud skills while making it both more impactful for solo and group play. To lay the groundwork for the rework Siphon would no longer be ally targetable as Shadow Shroud would now initiate the linking mechanic on its own. Now to the meat and potatoes of the rework. F2. Shadow Shroud: Link yourself to the shadow of target ally or enemy, gaining new skills and turning your shadow force into health. The tether mechanic is now the main focus of Shadow Shroud and like the scepter weapon skills can be used on an ally or an enemy. F1. Shadow Link: Tether a foe or ally to your Shadow Shroud. Shadow Link replaces Siphon while in Shadow Shroud and allows the Specter to retarget or regain their tether if it is broken due to the target of the tether dying or moving more than 1,200 range from the Specter. It is on a low cooldown (4s) and does not count as a "steal" skill for trait interactions. 1. Haunting Shadow: Damage and inflict conditions on foes in the path of your tether while healing allies in the path. Your tethered foe is struck twice by this skill. You or your tethered ally gain might for each foe struck. With tether now the main focus we are able to use it as a unique positional AoE, spreading damage and torment to foes while healing allies in a line. The healing granted by this skill would be lower than Haunt Shot but the ability to spread the healing to allies other than a single target makes up for this in my opinion. The might gained from the skill is conditional on if an ally or enemy was tethered, if an enemy is tethered the Specter gains might, if an ally was tethered then they gain the might. 2. Shadow Walk: Dash in your chosen direction while curing conditions on yourself and your tethered ally. Inflict blindness on foes and cure a condition from allies in the path of your tether. Your tethered foe gains torment for each condition cured by this skill. This skill is a reworked Dawn's Repose moved to skill #2 to emphasize it's repositioning ability while retaining the condition cleanse from Grasping Shadows. Using the dual nature of the tether we can turn the condition clearing potential of a sweeping tether move to make a potent torment application as well. 3. Grasping Shadows: Turn your shadows into an oppressive force, inflicting conditions on foes and granting barrier to allies in the path of your tether. Your tethered foe is immobilized and your tethered ally is healed for each foe struck. This skill has been retooled as a longer cooldown CC/Barrier skill. Letting your keep your tethered foe in place or offering your a stronger direct heal to your tethered ally. 4. Eternal Night: Extrude shadows from yourself and your tethered foe or ally, damaging and inflicting conditions on nearby foes. Your tethered ally is healed for each foe struck while your tethered foe suffers additional conditions for each foe struck. You gain shadow force for each foe struck. Eternal night maintains the core of its functionality but is now a much higher impact and cooldown skill. It trades its weakness application for blindness. Additionally it inflicts two simultaneous blast finishers at you and your tethered target's location. 5. Shroud of Silence: Pulse your shadow shroud with deafening silence, dazing foes in the path of your tether. You and your tethered ally gain stability for each foe struck. Your tethered foe is stunned. Mind Shock has been renamed and retooled slightly here, the main point of difference is that it would have a cast time of 1 1/2s instead of having a short cast time and long delay before the skill impacts. For this stage I tried to avoid too many hard numbers but I hope this gets the general idea of the rework I'd like to see.

My main gripe with specter shroud isn't if it's more or less effective than necro but that it's such a blatant copy paste of necro design. With mechanist getting a pet it distinguishes itself very dramatically in terms of theme and function, all of its traits are geared around customizing the pet/mech to entirely different roles. With specter shroud it's literally just a recolored core necro shroud, the skill 3 still has fear kitten! It just feels so creatively bankrupt to me that I can't enjoy it.

Welcome to being a necro! I joke but it is kind of amazing when you look at it how much of Specter is a copy pasted necro spec o.O

As I said in my reply on the feedback thread this spec nails the golemancer fantasy asuran engineers have wanted since launch. The mech is customizable and versatile. It is a big investment trait and skill wise but I feel it's ultimately worthwhile. That said it is absolutely overtuned atm. The default soldier's gear setup the mechanist has absolutely rolls over even the harder pve foes. I tried a harrier stat build with the middle supportive line and the thing can face-tank champions while pumping out obscene boons and barriers. It's amazing but it very much needs to come down a couple notches.

Man, I don't even know where to start on this spec, all the others there was some ideas that I liked in with the ones I didn't that I could offer suggestions on. This one, I'm kind of drawing a blank, it feels so half baked in so many ways that I just don't know what this spec needs to be turned into something fun and compelling. I'll try and break it down though. To start, the hammer, which seems to be the only consistent idea with this whole thing, is perfectly fine as a generic hammer, but it certainly isn't up to snuff compared to the rest of the ranger's weapons. It has lots of CC and...an alternate mode that swaps all the CC for damage that also isn't that amazing. The idea seems to be to CC something with the regular hammer skills then swap to unleashed mode and hit them with the skills that do increased damage to disabled foes...but why not just have that combo in the hammer itself? Also to follow that up, where the hell is the weapon skill that empowers your pet? That's a staple of every ranger weapon sans druid staff, why does the spec that supposed to be about "unleashing" the pet's potential not have this? Jumping off from that point, where's the pet synergy throughout the spec? Unleashed mode for pet just overwrites it's active skills with a one size fits all bundle that frankly aren't that amazing outside of the projectile blocking one. Where's the unleased mode buffs for pet damage? Why does soulbeast, the spec that actively gets rid of the pet, have more synergy with pets and beast mastery than this spec? And what's more despite the situational benefits of being able to micromanage when your pet uses its CC ability you are now burdened with having to micromanage your pet's generic higher damage ability too. The fact that people are asking for the ability to set the newly available skills to auto-cast shows that this feature is not that much of a benefit as your pet is now objectively less potent as it's not using it's abilities on its own. Beyond even that the "new" pet abilities have now bumped the engage and return command buttons off of being bindable and it is a bigger deal than I anticipated. I never realized how often I would set my pet after a target before engaging, nor how often I used the return command to pull a pet out of an AoE or away from enemies it aggroed. Not being able to quickly access these functions makes the pet feel notably less responsive. Anyways, moving along, the utility skill set with this spec is interesting at least. The condition removal one or the teleport should really be a stunbreak. The spores one is interesting and has ok damage but why on earth is the knockdown tied to being hit with all of the spores? It's so weird and specific and makes that aspect of the skill pointlessly difficult to make use of. The binding one is interesting but odd, if it can block teleportation then it has merit in pvp but other than that ranger has better CC options. The elite I think has potential, if the rest of the spec can be made better I could see it being usable. But that does leave the heal...and by Melandru's weeping boughs what the hell is this? A ranger heal that harms your pet? That's like a necro heal that drains life force or a thief heal that gives you revealed. It just actively works against the profession mechanic, it's absurd and certainly not worth the tradeoff in any situation. Ok, that's enough ranting. I think I can summarize some points I'd like to see for this spec now. 1. Condense hammer into a single weapon set that can be more mobile while still inflicting and taking advantage of CC 2. Improve synergy with the pet across the board and restore the pet controls in some fashion. 3. Flesh out and focus the unleashed mode. This needs to be more than a toggling damage modifier, 3 pet skills and overriding a single weapon's skills is not good enough. I don't know what the answer is here but I do know this is not working on any level at the moment.

I like the theme and niche of the Specter but after playing it a bit it's clear it needs a LOT of work. Functionally it is a perfectly fine support spec with a couple unique twists and overall a good addition to thief. However it's clunky in several places and generally feels like it's trying to do too many things at once. Before I get into what I don't like and would like to see changed about the spec I'd like to talk about what I do like. The scepter itself is a very interesting weapon with it's focus on having dual functionality for ally targeting. The #2 skill could be more interesting and needs more "oomph" to justify it's place and initiative cost, but otherwise the weapon is quite good and interesting imo. Similarly the wells are very cool utilities, and while some could stand to be a stronger they, on the whole are quite good. Now, what I feel like really isn't working for the spec is Shadow Shroud. It's a knock off necro shroud and it's not doing this spec any favors. On the one hand, I see what they were aiming for with it, after all the (resource) force -> hit point mechanic is a great way to give the feel and functionality of the classic GW1 Shadow Form tanky Assassin. On the other hand, effectively copy pasting a necro shroud onto thief, #3 skill with fear and all, is leaving this part of the class feeling very disjointed, especially given that there's a whole secondary mechanic at play here with the tethering to an ally mechanic. Imo the shroud skills don't feel very good on thief because for 1) they're cooldown based weapon skills on a class that has a separate mechanic for its weapon skills and 2) the skills themselves have simultaneous functionality with the tethered ally that makes them awkward to use. If you're using shroud to be offensive it's awkward to blow heals and condi-cleanses to use your rotation and if you're using it to support it's awkward to throw around impactful cc and damage to trigger a heal. The tether mechanic itself is not without fault, namely that forcing a core mechanic to rely on having allies nearby at all times seriously hurts the fun when trying to play this spec solo. I see a solution where we can make these mechanics both more versatile and simple. To start we need to get rid of the copy pasted necro skills and move the focus of the Shadow Shroud to the tether mechanic, the resource to hit point mechanic can stay. To facilitate the focus on the tether mechanic Siphon would cease to be ally targetable. Activating Shadow Shroud would now initiate the tether and you can choose to attach the tether to an ally granting them an amount of pulsing barrier or to an enemy pulsing torment onto them. Additionally Shadow Shroud would swap out your utility skill bar for a series of skills that impart effects onto you and the target of your tether as well as creatures in the path of the tether itself. This allows Specter to maintain it's focus on single target support while both not hindering solo play and also rewarding clever positioning to catch additional targets in the tether's path to maximize your damage and/or support.

Having spent a couple hours playing around with the Mechanist in pve I can say this spec really delivers on the golemancer feel in a very big and good way. Being able to customize it via traits, while somewhat formulaic (and something I had gripes with on lots of the other elite specs of this generation) really works here thanks to how dramatically they can change how your golem operates. The first tier traits visually changing the arms of the golem is amazing and I hope the other traits will get similar customization before launch, having the golem look completely different based on different choices would be fantastic. And speaking of visuals, the option to customize the golem's color is something I have seen people request and I'm all for more customization though it's not something that bothered me tbh. One last thing concerting customization, the naming is a welcome touch but it's very limiting atm as you can not use numbers, punctuation or sequential capitalization which really limits the names one can give. The mace is solid and seems well rounded, however skill #2, the lunge ability, has a stated range of "410" I have to assume that's a bug or something, what kind of leap has a range of 410? Every leap skill I have seen is at least 600 range. The signets are all solid and I can't fault any one of them, that said the heal and elite feel kind of mandatory to include based on how much they can impact your ability to keep the golem on the field. On that note, I feel like the tool kit's wrench skill that repairs turrets should also function to repair the golem and offer some more interaction with core engineer skills. Now the golem itself overall feels quite good, possibly too good. I noticed that despite how heavily the traits implied the golem would be borrowing from my engineer's stats it seems like it doesn't even need it frankly. The abilities all have either incredible base damage or scale very dramatically with power as even it's auto attacks in most forms seem to hit for well over 1k without crits, combine this with the fact that it seems to have a base 30% crit chance, massive amounts of HP and the whole thing feels a bit overtuned atm.

Have had issues with being able to use the dual skills (both dagger offhand and pistol offhand). Attempting to use them a hostile target pings an error message saying it needs an enemy or ally targeted to use and doesn't let the skill activate. Targeting an ally works fine but this bug is making it hard to get the full feeling of the scepter weapon.

Going to give some initial thoughts on Bladesworn after playing around with it enough to get a feel for it. I like the overall feel of most of the skills and abilities and the general style but it's just far too clunky to realistically make use of in most situations. Imo it really needs a lot more qol to be versatile and usable outside of niche content where you can overcome the massive limitations of the spec's systems. I'm not sold on the frankly convoluted method of using Dragon Slash; flow builds much more slowly than adrenaline and then to use it effectively you have to make sure you are in Gunsaber then go into Dragon Slash and then wait while you convert your flow into charges to actually use the Dragon Slash skills. That's a lot of hoops to jump through to make use of the profession mechanic. I appreciate the idea of Dragon Slash mode being akin to the Deadeye's kneel skills limiting mobility in exchange for massive damage but given the need to build up flow so much before hand then being made to pour all that time investment into an easily broken vulnerable state all for one massive strike that can still be blocked or disrupted even once it's executed...it's just asking far too much for something so unlikely to actually land in a satisfying way. Some qol changes that I think need to happen regardless of any systemic changes: 1. Dragon Trigger mode needs to be uncoupled from the weapon swap cooldown, using your burst mode should in no way interfere with weapon swapping, it's making the loss of the second weapon set even more painful as you can't even make use of your single remaining weapon set due to being stuck in Gunsaber mode perpetually. 2. Movement should be locked while in Dragon Trigger mode, it's far to easy to accidentally ruin your own attempt at a Dragon Slash by accidentally bumping your movement keys. The mode is hard enough to pull off without the Bladesworn themselves bungling it. 3. Make Dragon Trigger available regardless of your weapon set. Without being able to use core warrior burst skills on non Gunsaber weapon sets it further disincentives doing anything but camping Gunsaber. There shouldn't be so many barriers to using your profession mechanic. If Dragon Trigger really must be linked to the Gunsaber then allow the use of weapon burst skills in exchange for flow when not in Gunsaber mode as currently the mechanics make it feel like you're being punished for not exclusively using the Gunsaber. As for systemic changes I'd like to see in the spec: 1. Change how Flow and Charges work. Instead of flow being a massive bar to fill it fills similarly or even more quickly than Adrenaline but once the bar is full the flow is converted into a Charge that persists until it's used to charge a Dragon Slash. This would let Bladesworns more easily move between fights as currently flow builds too slowly and drops too quickly out of combat for Dragon Trigger to even be used in most PvE and small scale encounters. And the ability to carry full charges into a fight is still countered by the need of Dragon Trigger mode to charge up to use them, so it wouldn't be as oppressive as when warriors could open every fight with a burst skill. 2. Make Gunsaber's swap cooldown independent from normal weapon swap and give Bladesworns their second weapon set. Bladesworns are already giving up core warrior burst skills in favor of a difficult to use charge up mode, they shouldn't also have to give up their weapon sets. Bonus points if Fast Hands can affect Gunsaber mode's cooldown. Other changes I would like to see: 1. Give the pistol at least one actual ranged ability. I'd really appreciate it if pistol #4 was at least a 600 range attack. I like the feel of the skills but, come on it's a gun, let it shoot at least a little distance. 2. Cut the cooldowns of Gunsabre skills a bit. The lowest cooldown is 25s on that, the skills need either lower cooldowns or to be a lot more impactful and powerful to justify utility skill level cooldowns. 3. Give Dragon Trigger mode some more reliable defensive abilities, specifically access to stability and ways to cleanse/ignore blindness. If you're going to be putting so much effort into a single strike you should be able to have ways to ensure that strike goes through, if it can be reliably shut down by as low tier cc as the blind condition then it really hurts the overall usability of the ability. 4. Give more variety in the traits. This is a critique that can be used on most of the EoD elite specs so far, but the trait tiers being "three flavors of the same thing" is really uninspired and makes the Bladesworn feel even more one note than the Gunsaber focus does. How about some traits to let there be a condi build? Make explosion effects even more customizable (condi on explosion perhaps??). The traits seriously need variety and it would do wonders for making the Bladesworn feel more rounded as a spec.

Just going to leave my initial impressions here. Overall I like the feel of the spec, a more mobile martial arts focused guardian is lots of fun. Sadly the whole thing feels a bit undertuned atm, things just don't seem to hit quite hard enough, be it the sword skills, the utilities or the virtues and trait functions, it's all just a bit less impactful than I feel it should be. I can't speak to exact numbers, I leave that to the hardcore folks, it's a general feeling across the whole spec. The one bit of specific critique I can give is the range of the F1 and F2 abilities. Due to how the virtues for this spec are designed you want to use your virtues early, ideally opening the fight with them but the F1 and F2 are both 450 range lunges, which is notably shorter range than the lunge/teleport abilities on the sword and greatsword at 600 range. In practice you end up using your weapon's 600 range ability or a utility to open the fight then use a virtue when you are already at the enemy, wasting the movement portion of the skill. Bump at least the F1 up to 600 range and it will feel a lot better to use imo.

I can't speak for what has been officially said about the lore of this spec so far as I've not looked into it, but as a GW1 player the vibes I am drawing are it being related to Shiro's plague from the Factions storyline, specifically groups that studied/used the plague for their own ends, namely the Am Fah. I feel this way mainly due to the blight effect looking quite similar to the effect players can get in GW1 during a quest involving the Am Fah. https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Drink_from_the_Chalice_of_Corruption

Going to do my best to leave a thorough breakdown of my thoughts on this spec. Aesthetics Dark Disciple Mechanics Blight Harbinger Shroud The Pistol Elixirs The Traits To summarize, I like the feel of this spec but it has a LONG way to go in the design department yet. I'm hoping this feedback can help get it there.

I'm going to quote the post I first made when I discovered this.

Cantha made me fall in love with this series, I will always want to go back to Cantha. However, with Path of Fire and the current living story going back through Elona, I think I'm ready for a break from retreading GW1 locations. I love things that weave GW1 lore into the world of GW2 but at the same time I'm kind of ready for something entirely new. There's so many unexplored lands hinted at on the Whisper's globe and the Priory's map that are just waiting to be explored for the first time.

To be fair armor damage has always been fairly toothless as a death penalty, they really should have just removed it when they got rid of the cost to repair. The GW1 death penalty was a lot more harsh but it also had some play to the mechanic. You could "work off" your death penalty by killing enemies, especially bosses. And you could "repair it" using certain consumables. You could recreate the effects of the GW1 system if you tweaked the armor damage system a bit. Make it so damaged armor only provides half it's stats so there is a penalty right away but also let you repair it by killing enough enemies or completing an event or something. Then also bring back the cost to repair so that there's a trade-off with it. You can pay to remove the penalty instantly or you can fight at a disadvantage and get it repaired for free. Not that I think they'd ever actually do this. Like the personality system, armor repair is just a mostly vestigial relic from the game's earlier years.

Why are we having this discussion now? No is my answer and it will continue to be my answer until development on GW2 stops. And when that day comes (which will hopefully not be for another 5 years at least) I would rather ANet not make yet another MMO sequel. I love the world of Guild Wars and I would love more games set in Tyria, but I would prefer something different. Ideally a co-op RPG experience. Something that can be more timeless than the transient nature of full blown MMOs.