Caligrafers Blade.3871

Just adding my two pence at the risk of repeating the community's sentiments... so the SB is one of the most fiun weapons, and the gs proved to be the same. Having them unlocked for all specs is a huge relief! The shield though is stifling to use. As an elite spec, it feels very lacklustre. And skill 5 just does not match Ren and Vindi thematically (I do love the animation though). Suggestion: maybe add reflects/barrier. As for hammer, well.... I get it's supposed to be a 'heavy' slow weapons that hits hard, but it's way too slow and doesn't hit that hard. Skill 5 is next to useless overall and skill 3's repositioning isn't exactly repositioning. Suggestion: faster cc and reposition.

Hi everyone and thanks for the responses. Forgot to mention I'm on NA. I'll ping you on Discord firedragon.8953. Are you on NA too, SLOTH.8029?

Roles 1. Alac rev, (diviner) 2. Condo rev (viper) 3. Off heal rev (harrier) 4. Daredevil (berserker)

Well, to be fair, a third espec on the nine base professions is a bit of a stretch, and you have to appreciate the creativity and effort put into creating them. As many have rightly mentioned, especs are very close to the community's heart irrespective of the mode, so the passions run really high when it comes to their crafting. That being said, some especs did move quite a bit from their archetype (virtuoso for example) while others are struggling shadows of themselves in their new avatars (like specter). I feel we should wait and see how this beta goes, and go with the flow when the new especs are out for the love of the game and, of course, for anet's effort and dedication. Hopefully, by the next expac, we should have new professions altogether simply because if this set wasn't forced-fit enough, the next will surely be, and we might as well get new ones.

Speaking of things missed on previous posts, and I am being nitpicky here, but calling it a shroud seems too much like a necro for me. A shroud makes sense for a necro, but it's not so thematic for thief. Wouldn't be be more like a spectral meld or something? and maybe 'shadows' is an essence, not so much a force. Siphoning an essence sounds better. 'Force' works with 'life' for necros.

Quick observations On Support I'd use scepter here and Siphon on ally as soon as I enter combat. Then build shadow force, get to shroud, and spam skills on enemies while tethered, rinse and repeat. I would'nt look at damage here or going on the offensive at all. I'd probably consider Well of Gloom and Bounty, and trait Shadow Arts. By just considering this. the low initiative and the shadowstep on all wells seem justified to an extent. Going Offensive Short bow, pistol/dagger or dual dagger combo here, simpy 'cause Thieves can trait for boosting poison and bleeds, but torment no so much. I wouln'd want to use scepter here at all. I'd also take Deadly Arts over Shadow Arts, and no wells; they're suicide. I'd use shroud mainly for its barrier trait, so I'd tap in and tap out F2 immediately; no access to Thief utilities in shroud is again suicide in any mode. (Got around 10k barrier on full Plaguedoctor when insta-retapped shroud, so makes sense to ignore shroud skills completely.) However, the low intiative hurts really bad here. Not sure how to fix this (faster regen trait perhaps?) but I'm guessing if we are to go offensive condi, I'd rather use Daredevil or I 'dare'say, Deadeye, since we're not using shourd skills anyway. Final Thoughts Feels like both builds would work great in PvE but not sure about the offensive builds for PvP. I'd like to think this is a rare support-heavy elite, something I'd never thought I'd ever say about a Thief elite. Great idea though, could almost say it's very close to a paradigm shift for this profession. Phenonemal effort. Just one last thing to keep this short. Anet, please reduce the scepter sound effects. They're really loud.

Kudos to the community and especially dedicated rev players for the effort and love towards a creating a better elite. It's inspired me too to come up with some ideas. Here's my humble contribution. Summoning, not Flip In Alliance, summon the complimentary spirit to fight alongside you when you enter combat. Arch: Behaves like ranger pets, has a set of skills and attacks on his own. Vik: Behave likes engi's old gyros, follows you around and pulses heal/vigor/prot. Something like Kalla's elite spirit but moving. F2 now allows you to swap places with the other summoned spirit, pretty much like mesmers and their clones, leaving behind the spirit you were channeling, giving you a new position and skills on the utility bar. So if you were on Vik and Acrh was fighting along wth you, swap to Arch and get his skills while Vik appears to watch your back. This should help solve the high energy drain, confusing utilities bar of mixed legend skills, and the CD's that can just stay. The spirits disappear when you switch out of Alliance. In this case, F2 will now summon both spirits who will each quickly execute/fire off 1 powerful skill based on the core legend before disappearing back into the mists. No swap allowed here. Interchange Endurance While this may seem counterintuitive, the dps dodge actually require less endurance instead of more. Case in point, daredevil with Bound something. Such high endurance, and therefore wait time to fill up, is a massive dps loss. The healing dodge on the other hand can afford to be long since there's more than one way to heal consistently. This redistribution will now justify being vulnerable or susceptable post dodge for Death Drop, which also makes it a high reward/high skill but provides faster access to the much needed evades in pvp modes at the same time. On the other hand, Saint's Shield will need maybe some stab or distortion on drop considering it's high endurance. More Fury, CC On both uilities and GS. Upkeep/Elites Arch needs to hurl or summon a host of spears, like Virtuoso does daggers. A whole rain of them for a devastating AoE, with mist portals and all! One of his skills can also be an upkeep if we go with the summoning idea, and maybe pulse fury or increase ferocuty but take more damage. On Vik, can he boon support with defensive boons like prot, vigor, regen, resist, resoluton and I daresay aegis pulsing off the urn? Make it random maybe and stationary too.

I want to love the Vindicator, I really do, but I'm afraid I will have to echo most of what has already been discussed. This is from a pvp pov. Flip Flop Flip isn't working. For one, there's not enough energy to be able to use that many utilties. e.g to get to Vik, I have to go through Arch first. With weapons skills also being used, I'm almost of energy, so there' no point hitting F2 ti flip. I already need to switch out of Alliance by then. Then there's the CD anyway. So flip wasted right there. Plus they are way too expensive. Instant drain. Maybe cut it half? To the Viktor go the spoils Battle Dance needs to be instant. Urn (with CD) is suicide. Also, annoying animation. Does this guy really heal? Um.. CC? Arche more fuss We have his rage but no fury? Spear cast too long and not much damage. Also single target. Underwhelming animation. Ahem.. CC? Not such a great sword Almost a great idea. Needs more speed and movement. And damage. And fury. And...CC? Dodge wiper Another great idea but needs to be faster or more controlled. Tool tip might need to mention LoS. Animation lock post dodge is a wipe out. Trait-tore! Too much focus on endurance/Alliance. Could definitely do with some damage modifiers. Leviathan is a monster of a problem. Vindicate Us! Overall, I love the idea, and it's a brave and wonderful attempt. Just a bit more refinement, please? I really want to love it.

Given the weapons left to select from to match Thief thematically, it looked like OH sword was a contender. Personally, I'm not crazy about it myself, but I was under the impression the Thief community wanted that too. My problem is that MH sword isn't so much fun for dual wield, and an OH sword with say a MH dagger or pistol just look really unwieldy in my head, like what happened to Soulbeast: MH dagger and OH axe.. hilarious . Hopefully, the new mechanic and utilities make up for it. And also, hoping that the demon face is our new icon. I wonder what we will be stealing...

Thematically asking for a support role on a class called 'Thief' is odd to say the least. I mean I love this prof and I would like to contribute to squads/parties in all modes, but look at the previous elites: Daredevil, a solo acrobat, and Deadeye, a single-target sniper. Even basic thief traits don't exactly scream 'support' if we were to go down that path. One single line of new elite specs and new utilities just won't match what a rev, fb, scourge or even weaver bring to the table. So no, imo given it's Cantha, thematically we're getting some ninja or something with off-hand sword with focus on Acrobatics since that trait like is largely ignored. It's probably going to be poking and maybe an area-nullification or something.

I'll be happy to just get rid of them for copper.

Actually, I'm wondering how to we get Privateer weapons skins now. I was waiting for the new patch to decide if I wanted to pick a new one or a privateer one, and I didn't expect them to take the NPC away!

I wanted to enhance the Kraitkin aura with the effects from the Rime-rimmed Mariner Rebreather skin, but whenever I use an outfit, the effects are not seen.Is this supposed to be intentional?

I didn't realise fishing was a such a debated topic in guild wars! Well, you learn something new every day! My guess is it isn't going to make a difference in the game if it's there or isn't. Ideally, it could have been tied to the ascended chef crafting with fishing and cooking all kinds of seafood as part of the training. And considering we cannot craft seafood (apart from oysters and mussels), it would have been great to see new unique buffs from them. Heck, I want to craft crab cakes just because! I say it's too late now for fishing to add any value, maybe except as a waiting-for-event/killing-time activity. Having said and being done with that, it looks a lot of players want the Tengu as a playable race. It be one helluva shock for me if anet did add them. I'm actually more concerned about the new elites or more the weapons that they will eventually wield. I'm afraid that if anet allows the new elites to wield a weapon from the existing set again, it may to dilute the essence of some of the core professions. For example, rangers wielding the bows, axes, daggers, swords, torch, war horn, and staff as druid still tie into the forest guy theme. What's left are the mace, scepter, focus and hammer, which are so far away from the core theme, I would think it ridiculous if they added them. This may not apply to all professions, but even if one's not working, it will make me personally feel like all of this was a forced fit. I guess I'm saying that if we are to get new elites, anet has to really think it through. Maybe a whole new weapon set like some players have suggested: the spear family of weapons? In fact, there are some awesome quality-of-life suggestions in this thread that I think anet should seriously consider (with maybe the Underwater and WvW ones for me please! ).

Can we have an unlimited gathering tools 'armory' like the one we're going to get for legendary items, please?

I recently purchased the skyscale hatchling harvesting tool, and while it's adorable, I had actually wanted the thunderstrike one. The reason I didn't get it so far was because of the glyph; I already had the glyph of leatherworker that it comes with, and I wanted the glyph of scavenger that comes locked with the dog harvesting tool, which I'm not crazy about. So I compromised and got the hatchling. It's too late for me now, but it would be nice if there were a choice of two maybe three glyphs for some of the tools. It wouldn't work with unbound or volatile, but for some. It would also be nice if glyphs were added to the older tools. The prices are the same, so why not? I may have considered the consortium harvesting tool if it had a choice of glyphs I liked.

I had put a comment on another post regarding uw combat. I'll just copy some parts of it here since it seems relevant. Anet has a lot to fix for uw combat. We need builds to switch when we dive. The same terrestrial traits just don't work the same considering half the utilities don't work either. Gear switches anyway, so why not builds? And if they give us new elites with the next expac, they had better be uw compatible.We also so need new uw weapons, like a whole new set itself. Maybe they should just allow us to be able to use some terrestrial ones that theoretically could work, say like focus, scepter, dagger, or heck even staff on scholars.And I would like uw mounts, say orca, seahorse, shark, turtle, eel and jelly fish? The list's just pretty cool.

I actually like uw combat (yeah, yeah, hate me, I'm weird like that). And I definitely think we should get uw mounts too. Heck, I'd love to ride in the belly of a jelly fish.I'm hoping we get some with the new expansion..... which actually got me thinking... could the new elites be uw-based? I mean they'll have to fix a lot of things for uw if that's to be the case. Or anyway actually. We need builds to switch when we dive. The same terrestrial traits just don't work the same considering half the utilities don't work either. Gear switches anyway, so why not builds? It would be rally neat if our terra elite builds we equipped would automatically just switch to the new expac 3's elite set (if uw-based with all uw dedicated utilities) as soon as we dive.Oh, and yeah, we so need new uw weapons, like a whole new set itself. Or maybe they should just allow us to use some terrestrial ones that theoretically could work, say like focus, scepter, dagger, or heck even staff on scholars.But I digress, yeah, uw mounts... orca, seahorse, shark, turtle, eel and jelly fish?

First of all, congrats Andrew, albeit a little late. And thanks for this.It's always good to hear from the devs since it feels more like a convo or dialogue instead of just reading updates and stuff. For someone who's wants to play wvw and raids, I guess I'm kinda semi-happy about the message.I know players are asking for new guild-related material, so I'm guessing wvw restructuring might address that? (Still waiting. Patiently.) As for raids, I think it's fine the content is super hard. I always thought it was the ultimate endgame, something I'd play after fractals.Most players don't or can't play because of other players asking for li and kp , but there are training guilds that help.Maybe helping these guilds out would go a long way in getting more players to join raids.Perhaps as some players have suggested, some kind of special training arenas would really be great, especially considering the diff mechanics along each wing.Learning on the job on raids is actually pretty hard for both teachers and students.Which is also why I actually felt strikes to be kinda lame; not really a raid, not so much a fractal, just an isolated boss fight. I'd rather be training for an actual raid. Or doing a bounty. Bounties were a great addition, thank you! As for meta-based re-playable content, HoT maps are still the best. Heck, that was the best expansion ever, for both elites and maps (even though I hate TD. And why did gyros become wells?!! The scrapper lost its identity. Still upset about that.) But I digress. I feel Saga could learn from HoT or PoF too, or LS3 (I loved LS3; great maps! + Dragonfall). Even the masteries were sensible. I am looking forward to the new content (better masteries please?), and wish everyone at anet best of luck.

Seriously, people are asking for GS? How imaginative! Like we really need that! And with Balt as Legend, it would most probes be another fiery condi set.Now Tybalt would be awesome and hilarious. We could get rifles, so more range options. But what would really be cool would be ice-themed Norn legend with axe for a good cc heavy build.

Oooh! I love this idea!

Weaver-like mixing of Legends? I mean, we do get twice the number of utilities thanks to Legend swaps, but it's annoying when you need just one skill from a particular Legend and end up using the whole line. Of course, I don't expect it to happen, and honestly, we don't need multiple-personality disorder added to our list of woes, but I think it's high time we had an overhaul. I love my Rev but it's very frustrating to know how much more we have to do to get the same effect as another profession. Feels unfair. If Mesmer is supposed to be Anet's baby, I sometimes feel like Rev's the stepchild.

Just when I've begun to understand and enjoy WvW, it's all about to change. Sigh! Okay, lemme see if I'm getting this right. There are no more set worlds... wow, BG can't be happy about that. Now guilds can group up. Okay. But they can't choose they worlds I'm guessing. That would mean similar guilds/alliances are all put on the same world, which means big fight big, small fight small? And by the same token for individuals, all players of similar stats face off each other on the same server then? If that's the case, I think I'm going to really miss some good commanders. But on the flip side, it looks like this might provide an opportunity for others to shine. So then how about if I want to play alongside my friend say who's really good and I'm not? From what's mentioned, we have to be in the same guild, but if he's in a good WvW guild that won't take me and he needs to rep them all the time, I don't get to play alongside my friend, do I?