Chyro.1462

Really happy its back. Takes me back to HoT times when fresh air power tempest was a thing before nerfs ^^

Can someone clear me up why people are saying that the ambush skill is melee only? I wasn't trying the weapon out for long, but did try the ambush skill a few times. It does show a wide white circle that shows up for a short moment when casting, and as far as I could tell enemies within (or even slightly outside of) that range got hit by the ambush spores. Isn't that ranged? Just curious if I misunderstood something about the skill.

It's just a beta test, I wouldn't pay much attention to the numbers. They'll definitely still be changed until release. More important to pay attention to what it feels like to play, how the skills play out and interact, and how well it works with the elite spec mechanics.

I just feel like the Air 3 enhancement (aside from superspeed) is kinda pointless? Any decent power build aims for 100% crit in the first place, so getting a guaranteed crit does nothing. Even without 100% crit chance, you usually have high enough crit that it's more likely to crit than not. So a guaranteed crit has very little value.

Arcane Blast makes for some easy etching-filling. 3 charges, instant cast. Utility skills count too for charging an etching, so with an instant utility skill you only need 2 weapon skills to fully charge. Helps a bit.

Curious why you think anet is not responsible for this issue? It was their decision to add an invisible shoes skin as an extremely rare drop instead of just adding a visibility toggle to gear slots other than helmet, shoulders + backpiece. Or even if it was added as a more common drop, it would have prevented it becoming so inaccessible. Scarcity, low supply + high demand have led to them becoming ridiculously high valued. So yeah, it is an issue that was initiated by the devs. How is this not within common sense?

I'm so glad I don't care for bare feet (paws?) on my charr. But I do agree that the situation created with the sparsity of the invisible boots is idiotic. The price is way out of proportion for something that should just be a ingame toggle in the first place. Though I understand why arenanet can't easily do something about this now. It's a hole they dug and its too deep by now. With the high value of the invis boots they can't just add a toggle without compensating the owners of the invis boots. And with the fluctuating price over time, its really difficult to compensate everyone fairly I'd assume.

I can give you a comparison for later on if you do intend to go into group content eventually, I've played both quite a lot. You did mention that you want to lean more into support than pure dps. So I'll tell you roughly what it looks like for the two specs to fill their support role. Note that it's not important when you're just getting into the game and learning the classes, but it's more as an outlook for if you may enjoy those classes later on in their group roles as well. As boon dps Chrono you're very versatile, able to give either Alac or Quickness just by switching a trait. However it has a rather strict rotation and requires correct use of continuum split to upkeep that boon, cause you need to be generating enough clones to shatter for the boon uptime. It usually doesn't run any boon duration on gear so it has less room for mistakes when it comes to upkeeping the important boon for the group. Alac dps Tempest needs to constantly be doing overloads, usually swapping between fire -> fire overload and earth -> earth overload. The overloads pulse the alacrity with short duration, and a longer duration when the overload finishes. You have to look out that your overloads don't get interrupted, though there's a stability trait that can help with that (costs a bit of dps thou). The way the overloads work always gives you some breathing time in the rotation, since they're channeled skills that take a while to complete - so you can use that time to easily look at the fight or think of what you need to do next. Definitely lower APM than chrono. And it can run extra boon duration more easily with Ritualist gear (condi + boon, but the gear itself may be some effort to get). On the healing side, things are similar as for the boon dps - just instead of a dps rotation you have a boon rotation and plenty of extra boon duration on gear. It's easier to upkeep the main boon compared to boon dps because of the stats, instead the gameplay becomes more reactive about when to heal people. Heal chrono can easily just spam out its boons, and has more and easier access to stability + aegis, popular utility boons for a support. It also has a ton of healing output, though also spread among many buttons. Using continuum split as heal chrono correctly can be a nice bonus, but isn't required as much as for the boon dps. Heal tempest has more of a learning curve - you have to swap elements to overload for the alac upkeep (though not as tightly as boon dps since you have more excess boon duration) and much of your healing is in water. So if you have to heal a lot and just left water, you have some cooldown before you get access to your water skills again. You do have some heals on the utility bar that can help with that, though if they're also on cooldown at that time you may get rather stressed with no immediate access to healing - you do have more passive healing though through soothing mist, which is like a regen on top of regen. It's still a potent healer and has some strong revive tools, but definitely harder to learn than chrono heal.

There is a dash/evade on water 3 for mobility in addition to the superspeed on air 3. And one of the dual skills with air also gives superspeed, so weaver has a bit more of that than the others.

If you place a fire field first, then go into water and use frozen burst you still blast the fire field. Read up on how combo fields + finishers work.

Looks cool, but also a bit worried about visual clutter if it makes enemy aoes harder to see. Cause in group content you obviously won't be alone at range but stacked with everyone. Not sure if the symbol has to be that huge or prominent. From the description it doesn't sound like there's any effect in the area of the symbol, but that it's just an indicator of charging up the attack.

With ranger you have: Druid as alac heal or condi dps. Soulbeast as pure dps. Untamed as quick dps or pure dps (both power or condi). Also quick untamed is a real powerhouse for soloing open world content. Engineer has a similar line-up: Mechanist as alac heal or dps. Scrapper as quick dps or dps. Holo as pure dps. Dunno about thief cause I don't really play it. As far as WvW is concerned I also don't know much, but assume scrapper is likely meta for group play and thief specs good at roaming.

I mean.. playing weaver is also not applicable for all players. You need PoF for it. Should we not mention possible solutions just cause you require a certain part of the game to make use of it?

It was set to 90 sec when they first 'fixed' it but has been lowerd to 30 seconds in a recent patch. So 10 seconds quickness (+ all other buffs, with the might stacks and swiftness being 30sec) every 30 sec. And oftentimes you spend some of the cooldown time going to the next mob or doing something else in open world anyways. Combined with some sigils or the moung-engage relic, you could have quickness up quite regularly.

Don't you dare underestimate the power of the fire wizards :<