Sorasnobody.9350

Yeah, I have been absorbing it more so throughout the day, and I'm teetering more towards an "either or" scenario where, either they keep Transfusion as is, or they really need to double down on adjusting it, but also add a lot of quality of life in the same patch as you said. If that isn't viable right now because of resource constraints, that's fine, just keep transfusion as is, and look at making the adjustments on a bigger balance patch. What I'd give for them to rework staff into a support weapon, or tweak dagger/warhorn into a solid support weapon set 😭 feels like since sword came out, main-hand dagger has become somewhat more redundant on dps so shifting it into a full support weapon would be a solid change in my opinion and tinker with warhorn to make it give aoe healing/swiftness (therefore freeing up the relic slot)

I know I'm joining in with many others posting this, but I do hope this paints a picture of just how much of a mistake it is that you're planning on removing a component that quite frankly gives Heal Alacrity Scourge 1/2 of its identity as a healer - and more so, 1/2 of why you would take this healer over against any other healer in the game (imo). To me (and I feel a lot of others), Heal Alacrity Scourge has two identities in the end-game PvE meta as a healer, it outputs an extreme amount of barrier, that cannot be competed with by any other healer and it has the ability to pull downstates in a pinch, again something that no other healer can compete with comfortably. Heal Alacrity Scourge is renown for this ability to pull downstates to the group and I would say it is a huge part of its identity. It also works really well thematically - which some people may not care about, but it further makes the healer feel unique as you're quite literally pulling almost dead people to you, to reanimate them, very necro-esque. Heal Alacrity Scourge, without the ability to pull downstates, to me, will lose a massive chunk of why people play it and I'm pretty certain its play rate will plummet quite severely. This is the core play style of this healer I feel; you apply high amounts of barrier to compensate for your lower than average healing out put (when compared to other healers), top people up with regeneration and Transfusion healing and then if they go down, pull them all together and get them back up while continuing to spew out barrier to mitigate pressure. A large chunk of the gameplay loop will be removed by the removal of Transfusion I feel. After playing Heal Alacrity Scourge quite regularly for around 4 months after the alacrity addition, it struggles with boon output and furthermore, it doesn't have a load of healing sources (two - it has two) - which is even further impacted by the fact you use one of your strongest healing skills (1/2 sources), off cooldown to sustain regeneration and swiftness (which you have to dedicate your relic to by the way - I'm not considering Trail of Anguish's swiftness as using your one source of janky stability for swiftness is counter-productive) meaning you have even less healing sources. Your other healing source is transfusion (2/2), the skill you usually want to save to revive allies. The point I am trying to make is that Scourge lacks in overall boon output (both core boons such as swiftness/regeneration (without needing to always bring staff for the latter and/or using your aegis button off cooldown) and premium boons such as aegis/stability (Trail of Anguish is abysmal in its stability application), its healing sources are low, it has no dedicated healing weapon, but in some ways this could be overlooked, as it had un-parallel reviving and barrier potential. In my personal opinion, removal of Transfusion's pulling mechanic in PvE is a massive mistake. I don't play WvW/PvP, but I do understand how the transfusion pulling is quite a sore point in those game modes, but I don't see why it needs to be altered in the PvE landscape. To remain fair in feedback on this though, if you do look to go ahead with removing Transfusion's pulling aspect, I really think you need to give Necromancer heal some quality of life changes, not just remove its identity and then leave it at that. It has no dedicated healing weapon (when Locust Swarm could be turned easily into an AoE heal over time and AoE swiftness, instead of only self-swiftness and janky "only-heal-if-this-hits-something" healing over time - and dagger is sitting right there to become a main-hand support weapon imo, by making dagger 2 share 50% of its healing value to allies, or maybe 33%), it would need better stability access (Well of Power could become AoE stab - longer lasting too) and to make its current source of stability easier to apply. Easier regeneration would be pretty mandatory as well so that you are able to use Well of Blood for healing and not for regeneration, and Serpent Siphon for on-demand aegis, and not for regeneration. Having to dodge roll to activate a mark (that sometimes does not activate) to sustain regeneration without the two aforementioned skills really isn't fun, especially when you're tanking and moving the boss all over the place. To clarify though, this "to remain fair" feedback isn't my preferred stance on the matter; I would much prefer transfusion to just not be adjusted in any way and further quality-of-life to be added to Heal Alacrity Scourge. Thank you for reading! ☺️

Whenever you are in the empowered state (when you get bigger), any clones that should summon, whether it being from phantasms or abilities, scepter 2 or staff 2 for example, do not spawn in (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Relic_of_Nourys) I appreciate the thematic of we're literally consuming our clones before they appear it seems but I don't think this should be intended? 😭 Mentioning to give some light to the issue/bug!

With the 30th of January patch, Mantra of Pain was changed so that you can consume charges when you don't have a target selected, which is really nice, as it lets you spam this during down time on Heal Chronomancer or hell, even dps boon Chronomancer for a solid 16 might, which is handy. However, I would assume this Mantra now not needing a target, should extend to using the charges while you have something targeted? Much like Mantra of Concentration/Resolve/Recovery. I know there is an added benefit of the damage and possible vulnerability, but I feel that should be a case of you get that if you are close enough and they are in line of sight, if not, oh well, charge is used and you can get back to preparing it. I was very much looking forward to it having 0 target dependency, but at the moment, the charges will not fire when you have something selected and you aren't within line of sight/range, which can make it feel janky, if a boss is moving about, or you need to look away for a moment for a mechanic, or the boss isn't right there in front of you. I don't know if this is intended as I suppose in essence, the Mantra's charge does not require a target now, but its basically exactly the same as it was before this QoL change when you do have a target, which is sorta counter productive, as you can't really play anything without targeting the boss, to try and make use of spamming this mantra without a target. More than anything I'm posting this here just as visibility for this, in case this is not intended, but if nothing gets changed about it I suppose it is, and I'll just roll with that 😊

Scourge's Serpent Siphon is very hit and miss at the moment. It appears to be proximity based, where my sub-group and me are not being prioritized. However, beyond this, it also seems to sometimes not occur at all? I was doing Deimos earlier and used it to aegis myself from the Mind Crush and I directed the centre of the ground target just in front of me. The animation went through and it went on cooldown but I go no aegis/barrier/alac/regeneration and I just went down. I've tried to theorize if its a little like the ventari tablet bug that happened last year where it was going through the floor and maybe the Serpents are going into the ground and not actually hitting targets in the area? tl/dr 1) It is proximity based, not sub-group based. 2) When cast on yourself or near yourself, (in specific terrains?) it isn't granting any of the benefits that it should. 3) Cooldown is still occurring even when none of the effects actually happen.

Reported in-game but wanted to post it here too. When you take the Grandmaster trait in Nature's Magic: Invigorating Bond that should give vigor and protection, you don't get either boon, just the Hunker Down's innate protection. Did not check if you got the heal component or not. This was on a beta character, I don't know if that has any bearing or not!

My final notes on the beta weekend, not got as many for Thief. Unfortunately I ran into a bug where scepter skills were not granting malice so I couldn't really try anything. I did however try one whacky build which made me laugh how it was actually working (to a degree, let me clarify 🤣) Same preface, this is from a solo play perspective, with one instanced build as an additional perspective. Deadeye: Scepter/dagger - The only thing I can say about this is, it can achieve 25 might and permanent fury/quickness, as that is as far as I was able to practice with my utility skill choices for solo. As I mentioned, I could go any further with this due to malice not working properly. However, I feel this could be a potent solo build once that works as Cloak and Dagger is 5 malice generation, a perfect amount, and then you can fill your revealed time with two Twilight Assault casts. Scepter's stealth attack has always felt so slow, hence why I never try solo Specter builds, but this having quickness means you can blast that thing really quick which I love the sound of! I am intrigued to give this one a go gain after Secrets of the Obscure comes out! Heal Quickness Deadeye - scepter/pistol & sword/pistol A massive meme I know. I just remember a guildie saying "James, why can't you just deadeye heal man?" and well, you technically can now 🤣 it can achieve 25 might, fury, quickness, regeneration, swiftness, vigor, and decent protection up-time. It has a fair amount of barrier access due to scepter, but I did find I was dying on moderately threatening. Yes, me, not my friend who was in there with me, but then once I died, they went down too, which is unfortunate. This also carries no stability/aegis or group break-stuns so you'd be pretty useless on stab-requiring fights. It was a fun concept to try though! I didn't check anything else as my brain didn't even consider other builds, but I'm intrigued to give some Thief action ago again once the expansion is out! Bug(s): Even when you have a target marked with Deadeye's mark, malice is not being granted from scepter/dagger skills. I did try Cloak and Dagger but that wasn't working either it seems. Might be because its paired with scepter and that is foreign to the weapons malice mechanic works with right now. I'm sure it can be fixed though!

Dropping off some information from my notes here! Keep in mind, most of these are from a solo-play perspective but I did try a few instanced content builds too! I do want to make a point on shield, but that will be later down! Herald: Mace/axe & shortbow - I love shortbow on revenant, probably one of my favourite weapons in the entire game, but I haven't really got to enjoy it with Renegade. I love Herald thematics so this is heaven. I always felt energy was just abundant on a solo build for Herald as you are just use mace/axe, but this gives you a proper rotation. It was hard to get an accurate idea of how this was going to work as the quickness is still a little scuffed and I'm awaiting the 18th of July for the changes. However, it was nice to use shortbow and it was pulling just as much damage almost as a live server solo herald, and this had scuffed gear. Shortbow is great! More damage, soft and hard crowd control and can give you some mid-range gameplay. Quickness paired with the shortbow is also great for solo play. Fixed a few weak points for me as I didn't really enjoy how energy intensive Renegade was for solo, but I didn't enjoy how relaxed Herald was on energy. It got rather boring, but Shortbow adds some extra spice to the gameplay for me! Gives a strong double weapon set condition build too! Renegade: Heal Alacrity Renegade - mace/shield & staff This is already a build, but I really don't like having to go to mace/x to blast my might, as the off-hand always feel out of place. With this build I could easily heal moderately threatening in Special Forces while keeping up all of my boons. I do need to look at regeneration a little more, but It is nice as your might generating weapon set can easily heal without needing to swap. You can ramp up a lot of might quickly too, so if you need to swap to staff for burst healing more so, you have a lot of built up might. Mace/shield is really nice as it gives you a load of might blasting, shield four gives some healing while on this weapon set and extra protection up-time. This helps you sustain damage pressure without the need of staff to keep might blasting It has all the other strengths of Renegade, and the one thing that was grating me (off-hand) has been fixed/changed so I'm super excited! Shield 5, we gonna talk about that later on, but it feels very obstructive to use given the current environment in the game. It is slow and stops you from aiding allies at all, to instead protect yourself, which feels reverse psychology for how shield was brought into the game, as a more group support weapon. Vindicator: mace/axe & shortbow - I cannot tell you HOW MUCH I LOVE THIS OKAY. I recently made Chuka and Champawat, and it is one of my favourite legendaries, but my spark deflated as I wasn't enjoying Renegade. I love Vindicator, but it was getting rather boring for me just having a single weapon set. Having access to shortbow is a huge win! In solo play this build is immortal, and it has now gained a ton more damage, among other things. Extra damage from having two weapon sets. It also counters the issue I've had where I feel you have a surplus of energy and it feels rather wasted with a single weapon set. Shortbow has soft and hard crowd control and I was missing this on solo Vindicator and I really enjoy being able to effectively crowd control I know its just a personal cheesy point, but there is something very thematically correct about having Archemorus throwing their spear while I'm hailing down arrows. It just hits right for me! It should help boost damage as well when I can check this with proper gear. Issue(s) and proposal(s): Much like my Mesmer feedback, it isn't specifically anything to do with the beta, but I'm noticing some glaring issues with shield. Shield four is fine, I wouldn't say no to a slight healing increase or scaling with healing power so healing builds can boost this healing and none-healing builds don't just get free healing without investment. Shield 5 however is pretty sluggish and not very fun. As I briefly mentioned, it is all focused around protecting yourself, when shield, at least for me-feels like it was designed as a group support weapon. I feel it should either remain a channeled block, with new functionality or be reworked. I'll list this as proposal (a) and proposal (b): Proposal (A): You will be able to to move while channelling this. It will either retain the self block, or get rid of this for more group support. The new effect would be it would pulse 5 times and each pulse would give barrier to nearby allies and a small heal (or this little heal can be skipped out). I feel this would be a way of giving shield some more group support through damage mitigation. Proposal (B): This would redesign the ability entirely. You would have a ground targeted ability where you throw your shield to a nearby area and it pulses healing as like a healing font sort of thing? The final pulse could give a stronger heal and maybe a condition cleanse and then the shield would come back to you. It could even be pushed a step further where you can use shield 4 while it is active to cause the healing to occur where the shield is instead and give the double protection. If this functionality came into play, shield 4 could become a blast finisher, and shield 5 could be a water field to give advanced shield users some more burst healing potential. As I have echoed, I don't prepare myself for any of my proposals to be considered, I just like to offer them, especially in this case with shield becoming universal across revenant. All the same, I am so excited for my original main spec in Secrets of the Obscure!

Swinging on by to leave some thoughts based on the notes I made. Keep in mind these are mainly from a solo-play perspective, but I did also experiment with a Heal Quickness build, but sadly it was stamped on because of a bug, but I'll cover that later! Druid: Dagger/warhorn & shortbow - Since the balance patch, Druid has gained so much damage, and it as easily become one of my favourite solo builds. Good boon coverage, great damage, amazing soft and hard crowd control and some pseudo healing from your Celestial Avatar Rotation. I devised a way to get a lot of quickness with Sigil of Celerity > "We Heal As One!" on live so you could have permanent alacrity and a decent chunk of quickness, and I really tried to push further with this in beta. Dagger 3 gives quickness. The methodology I have when I can play dagger on live is dagger 3 > warhorn 5 (Sigil of Celerity) > "We Heal As One!" This should give easily 11+ seconds of quickness which is really nice considering you have alacrity as well! Dagger 3 should really help with getting more quickness uptime on this build which is very effective when solo. This can let you get combos of abilities off faster, especially in Celestial Avatar so you can get them all cast and drop out asap to get your weapon abilities used again. What I tried was less damage than my live build, but I didn't have some key elements of the build on my beta character such as strength/celerity sigils. Untamed: Dagger/warhorn & shortbow - This would play exactly the same as the build above. I need to see if axe would be better but I still wanted to try dagger on this build to make use of the beta. It will help on the opener to use dagger 3 > warhorn 5 > other boon abilities > "We Heal As One!" to get the boons rolling on this build for solo play. Again, this was doing lower damage than my Untamed build on my live character, but again, I was missing a few key components to make this work fully. As I say, dagger 3 I was running to get quickness up-time, but Untamed has free quickness without even thinking about keeping it up so dagger might not be that important for it honestly. I've got no other points to make on this as they're pretty much the same as the Druid build above. Heal Quickness Untamed - sword/warhorn & staff It didn't even occur to me until I thought about it again last Thursday, Untamed is getting staff!! I yelled! When I saw the Unleashed ability as well I LOST MY MIND. The animation and visuals are crazily well down, kudos to whoever made that! The moving field around the caster is huge so I don't see it being a problem of it affecting allies. I'm so sad though! It was bugged and wasn't granting quickness! I really wanted to give it a go as well, but I am more eager for Secrets of the Obscure to try this out now! Quickness will be super easy. You can unleash your sword attack, swap to staff, unleash instantly and then you camp on staff and then ambush staff again before you weapon swap. All your quickness comes from your weapon skills so you have a lot of utility choice. I am still working out might and protection generation, but initial theories are Jungle Stalker, pet swapping, warhorn 5 with either quickdraw or trying to use Clarion Bond, need to see which is better! Sun Spirit will be mandatory and maybe Stone Spirit specifically for protection so the aegis might be wasted. You do have a free slot to bring something else though. You have no inate stability, so "Protect Me!" might be mandatory to break-stun allies. You have nature spirit for reviving as well. You can go Water Spirit and use it as a burst heal on sword/warhorn as that could be an issue where healing will be a lot lower when you are not on staff. I kid you not though, I am REALLY going to give this build a go! The unleashed staff heal could potentially have more healing on it? If not base value, make it specifically scale heavier with healing power to open it up more so as a healing unleashed. Overall, despite being an Elementalist main, I really, really enjoyed trying out builds on Ranger and the prospects of heal quickness Untamed! I will make it work to literally just use the staff unleashed, it is stunning! Bug(s): Solar Brilliance (staff Unleashed) is not giving quickness with Let Loose traited.

Popping here to drop some notes on a few of my findings! I want to preface this was all from a solo-play perspective. With how Harbinger and Scourge are both so very similar to each other, I was able to figure out a build that would work for both elite specs by using a combo of pistol/torch & scepter/focus. This means you can play either quickness or alacrity on a solo build, depending on which one you want to play! Each build has differing method of keeping itself alive which keeps the gameplay fresher for each build. Harbinger: With the use of dagger/torch & scepter/focus, you have life force across both weapon sets which means you don't need to worry about any life force utility skills, which is great! As I have it designed, you can stay entirely mid-range on this build which is great! Pistol/torch is a perfect addition to this build! It gives a lot more condition damage to work with Parasitic Contagion. It carries some extra crowd control too and Oppressive Collapse is nice for might generation! Pulling very fair damage for a solo build and it has a lot of healing over time with Blight, regeneration and healing from Parasitic Contagion. Somehow it feels so befitting for a Necromancer! Scourge: Not much to offer as unique information that is different to the Harbinger build. It plays exactly the same but you just trade out how you sustain yourself. Out of the two, I did gravitate towards the build because I love barrier as a system, and this uses a lot of barrier spam to sustain itself. I would offer more information on this, but honestly it feels like a mirror of the build above so I can't give any more information on it. I've missed having easy might on Scourge and I wanted to use quickness on Harbinger for soloing but it just didn't have enough damage for my liking, but now it feels like my issues have been rectified which is great. I am looking forward to Secrets of the Obscure for sure with these two specs!

Dropping a few of my notes here. I want to preface, I did not practice any instance content builds. These are all from a solo-play perspective. The new weapons are fairly nice! I tried dagger first, and was totally thrown back by dagger 2 summoning a dagger throwing clone. After playing Virtuoso for quite a while, I never expected this! It is rather cool though, and I enjoyed to see it! I swapped around to axe/shield as I overlooked dagger. Shield was feeling sluggish, and I'm gonna mention this later on again. I returned to dagger and found a comfortable build that I was really enjoying! Chronomancer: Probably to no ones surprise, solo Chronomancer builds are still not that strong. Even using axe I couldn't push that much damage. Axe is still a nice addition don't get me wrong, but Chronomancer is only shines as a power spec I feel so I didn't make use of axe. I think dagger is going to be a nice power main-hand weapon so I do want to eventually try quickness and alacrity power chronomancer. Dagger will be nice for instanced content. I've not really jelled with sword main-hand so this will be a nice addition. None of the weapons have really changed the effectiveness of a solo chronomancer build so nothing to report there. Virtuoso: Dagger/shield & dagger/sword - I tried to figure something out with Virtuoso in a solo sense. I was hoping shield might give you some prowess but it just isn't enough. Virtuoso needs too many things to function and you can achieve them all solo. More of a general Virtuoso issue, but again, this makes me realize how sluggish and underwhelming shield can be. With dagger being a pivotal part of Virtuoso, I didn't even try to consider axe. I know it won't be that useful. Shield gives this access to a few extra boons, but shield 4 just feels underwhelming at best. Mirage: Staff & dagger/focus - I am absolutely in love with this build! Staff/staff was getting monotonous, same thing over and over again, but this second set breaks the cycle and it also adds a few extra things that I was missing. You can cast Chaos Storm and then weapon swap and use focus 5 and dagger 3 to get a load of confusing bolts off. Something about this is very satisfying for me! Dagger gives me the crowd control I was missing on staff/staff. Still has all the great survivability of a solo Mirage build. Breaks the cycle of just staff/staff with a weapon combo that pairs well together and enables me to stay mid-ranged. It gives me some much needed crowd control for this build that I was heavily lacking for my own taste. Has a nice burst of damage, smooth rotation and is pulling more damage than my current live solo build, even with scuffed gear so I'm excited to give it a go once Secrets of the Obscure comes around! Issue(s): Not really anything specifically from beta, but shield is something I've picked up on. As it is being shipped into every spec, I think shield needs a looking at. Shield 4 is what I am struggling with. It is very slow, it can easily interrupt itself at the end so you don't get a clone and the protection it gives is very minimal. With the new introduction of alacrity and quickness entirely from phantasms and clone shattering. This ability is really not hitting for me on actually being useful. Its meant to be a defensive ability but it feels so restrictive to use. I feel all mesmer specs, playstyle wise and to give boons have a very active one, and shield stops you from being active for a decent amount of time if you consider the flip over skill. I had this thought of turning it into more of an Arcane Shield kind of system? It would not be a channeled block anymore, but you'd get a buff where you can block three attacks. If you block an attack you get the clone, then you can use the flip over to activate it again to block three more hits. This would turn the ability into something you can press while still using other weapon skills. You could get the phantasm from it to give protection (increase the duration of protection granted as well!) while you summon more clones to give boons, heal, do damage, etc. etc. As I say, this isn't really feedback pertaining to specifically the beta, but seeing these weapons on other elite specs/core makes me realize how sluggish shield will be. I also accept is this probably won't get looked at, and that is okay, I just wanted to offer my input just in case! That aside, the new Mirage build I found was really fun and I can't wait to play with it!

Slipping by to drop some findings from my notes. I tend to try everything from a solo-play perspective, but no solo builds will be affected by the new weapons so I went ahead to try a few instanced content builds instead. Mechanist: Power Mechanist - Hammer I really enjoyed this weapon to give Mechanist a potent power dps build. Since the constant adjustments/nerfs to rifle, I feel this has fallen into the tier of a support dps weapon and I wasn't vibing with pure dps power Mechanist. Hammer however gives me something I enjoy. Electro-Whirl works cooldown wise with Shrapnel Grenade so it works the same as the current rifle combo: Blunderbuss > Shrapnel Grenade. It still has good amounts of crowd control and a block so I'm really liking how it is playing. Power Alacrity Mechanist - Hammer This plays exactly the same as the build above, but it works just as well. I aren't much of a pure dps player as I like the idea of supporting more so and I really love hammer on engineer so I will be playing this a lot more once it becomes an actual build. The block on hammer 4 is really helpful for certain encounter mechanics. I'm thinking specifically oil kiting on Deimos so I don't need to run Tool Kit anymore. Its a refreshing way to play Mechanist and might help a lot of players with the Mechanical Genius penality as you need to be melee with hammer. They might just notice their mech isn't with them, who knows 😄 Hammer is a nice accessible weapon too as just auto attack chains > Electro Whirl > Thunderclap is a strong rotation so you can play kitless Mechanist and still pump damage. Heal Quickness Scrapper - Mace/shield My eyes lit up I tell you! I have despised HQScrapper due to it using a condition damage main hand weapon-it felt very weird and off and that alone makes me not enjoy playing it. But it was always that case as there was simply nothing else, but mace is great! It will let you provide regular intervals of barrier, keep up permanent Vigor with Infusion Bomb and make regeneration a whole lot easier. With the new quickness interaction as well, every mace 2 will give quickness as you can easily create combo fields in a pinch with Mortar Kit. I'm honestly super excited to play this build! Issue(s): It isn't really something I tested on instanced dps builds, but it was something I felt when trying solo build variants. Sword feels a little bland. Don't take my word for this, but I just want to chip in, just incase it is a common thought. It feels rather heavily tied with Holosmith due to it being a lot more effective at different heat thresholds but you don't have that on other elite specs/core. Maybe I'm looking at sword too one-dimensional for PvE end game/open world but it just feels like you'll take Hammer in every situation instead if you're looking for a power replacement, and pistol, sometimes even mace is still going to be the better condition weapon. But as I say, I didn't test it so I could be completely wrong, but I'm just dropping it here in case! I'm very excited to extend my arsenal with an extra quickness healing build and a new-found alacrity dps!

Gonna drop some notes on the testing/findings I did and some thoughts. As a preface, most of my testing this beta for Elementalist was from a solo play perspective, but it still let me get a feel for each weapon combo. Catalyst: Sword/warhorn - This had a middle-ground effect for me, it wasn't the best of the best, but it was a nice thematic and worked well for having a lot of healing and evasion. I have a feeling it could be better once I've fully fleshed a rotation out and got very comfortable with sword skills as right now I haven't used sword all that much. Warhorn is so much fun on Catalyst, it gives you might/fury extension, extra boon coverage while solo and then boon extension which makes keeping up 25 might, resolution, vigor, fury, swiftness, quickness and protection easy which all those boons solo is really potent. The magnetic aura on Sand Squall is also beneficial for extra Elemental Empowerment stacks. Really nice evasions frames in water and in earth meaning you have evasion across a couple of attunements. Boon extension from warhorn which perfectly plays into all the boons you can provide as a Catalyst. Enough energy building to allow for a 4-sphere deployment rotation, something only hammer has exclusively been able to do, so this is very refreshing! Scepter/warhorn - Easily my favourite set. This achieved the highest damage as well. It brings more might generation, allows a mid-range playstyle, barrier/resistance access which then gets extended as well from Sand Squall. It has all the strengths of warhorn on the previous weapon set too. I will definitely be looking to play this set specifically when Secrets of the Obscure come out! Extra might generation over against sword/warhorn. Resistance access that can be extended, very potent for solo play. Boon extension from warhorn which perfectly plays into all the boons you can provide as a Catalyst. Enough energy building to allow for a 4-sphere deployment rotation, something only hammer has exclusively been able to do, so this is very refreshing! Tempest: Sword/warhorn - From my notes this was doing as much damage as my live character's solo build, with scuffed gear, so this version can only get better with proper gearing. I really enjoyed the evasion and blast finishers on this weapon set to get to 25 might rapidly after my fire overload. It can give itself an array of boons and then extend them all with Sand Squall. I even have a sigil of celerity setup on my live character that I would have loved to try on my beta character. I know it would have made this even stronger. Out of the two, I much preferred sword/warhorn on Tempest, it seemed to feel more natural to me. Basically the same points as sword/warhorn on Catalyst. One extra is this felt like it fit Tempest really well for me. Overloads are small in radius so being melee with sword seemed to fit super well for me and the evasion worked well to keep you safe more so while melee. Hammer - One weapon I was very ready to try, and it did not disappoint. I was able to develop a nice loop where you could go to fire > water > earth > air to keep up orbs or activate them later on, in air's case so you can Grand Finale just before your fire overload when you go back to fire. It was really fun to see this weapon on something other than Catalyst. I will say (it isn't something bothering me all that much, but worth a mention) it felt slow without quickness so I might look to pop in a celerity sigil to speed up a section of the rotation, but overall it was really fun. Despite the orbs/Grand Finale feeling okay on hammer, I will address them again on Weaver as overall they feel off. A nice rotation to still complete overloads and activate your hammer orbs and then being able to Grand Finale just before your next fire overload. It all felt like it fit well. Having alacrity solo on hammer is refreshing to bring down cooldowns to use them every single loop instead of every other loop. Very potent damage. Rocky Loop does give you more damage reduction while you overload which reduces how exposed you are to damage while completing an overload. Weaver: Hammer - I was very suspicious of how orbs were going to work on Weaver and worried it was going to be a case of double dipping every attunement to get them up. However, the dual orbs is a nice work around to let you get all your orbs active without needing to go to every attunement. It felt okay to play, and I feel most of my issues are because I'm used to the agency of hammer on Catalyst, but due to how Weaver functions, I felt without that agency due to me not having skills up when I wanted them. Where quickness lacking didn't feel that bad on Tempest, it felt pretty brutal on Weaver. Also, Weaver has no combo fields so you can't make use of the varied blast/leaper/whirl finishers that hammer has at all which does lower your sustain and boon output when solo with Weaver hammer. As I mentioned in my Tempest section, the orbs/Grand Finale felt fine there, but in Weaver, for me, they still felt really off, even with accessing them becoming easier. Due to a lack of quickness and how Weaver keeps your off-hand abilities, there was a lack of agency. No combo fields so all your benefits from various finishers are entirely wasted Grand Finale is really good inside a combo field for bonus effects as well, and you won't be able to do this on your own with hammer on Weaver. If it remains, Dual Orbs is a good way of letting you get your orbs up without needing to double dip every attunement. Issue/proposal: So, out of all of these, the only issue I ran into, and its only become more relevant now I see Hammer being used on other weapon sets, is that the skill 3 (orb/Grand Finale) mechanic, is really feeling out of place, at least for me. I have a complex where Catalyst doesn't have much identity; it is an elite spec where its class mechanic is literally a combo field (with boons, but loads of classes have boons). The other defining feature of Catalyst was hammer's orb mechanic. I did want this to become a Catalyst mechanic where using skill 3 on any weapon with the Catalyst trait line equipped would summon the orb, but now I want that even more. With the orb mechanic being stuck to hammer, I feel Catalyst is going to lose even more unique identity. Orbs are there also to give passive bonuses and generate rapid energy to use your class mechanic. Weaver and Tempest do not need energy and they both have their own modifier traits so I don't feel they need orb modifiers as well. Now, I aren't expecting this to even happen at all, but I'll propose it again, especially now I've seen hammer on Weaver and how it is feeling clunky despite Dual Orbs: Rework hammer. Remove orbs off the weapon entirely, and give it 4 new abilities, one for each attunement on skill 3. Make it where casting skill 3 on any weapon with the Catalyst elite spec equipped will summon the orb matching the attunement (basically how with Mechanist, using skill 3 on any weapon shoots Rocket Fist). My initial idea was hammer can still use Grand Finale as it was Catalyst specific, but now it won't be, that can't work. I'm not sure how Grand Finale would fire anymore, maybe deploying your Jade Sphere could be moved to f1/2/3/4 (attunement keybinds) and f5 becomes your Grand Finale so you still have control over it. This would fix a long standing issue of energy on other weapons on Catalyst as literally only hammer can build really rapid energy, which I respect is the elite spec weapon, but Catalyst on other weapon sets feels like core-ele v2 (I'm talking about live Catalyst, beta weapon sets aside, they feel great!) I also feel it might make Weaver function closer to live Weaver on Hammer. You'd be wanting to dual attunements but then double attune to fire or air (condi or power) to use the new skill 3. This is quite an extensive proposal and I've always felt that so I still won't be surprised if it doesn't ever come to light, I just wanted to put it out here properly now given how Hammer is looking on other weapons, and how Hammer is kind of of a defining feature of Catalyst, and soon it won't be. I still had a load of fun with Elementalist in the beta and no matter what happens, I'm excited for the new weapon combos when Secrets of the Obscure comes out! Bugs: Only one I personally saw is a guildie was running Aurene's Hammer (gen 3 legendary) and he didn't have the legendary hammer orbs/projectiles on Weaver like you normally do. I had them on Tempest, it just seemed to be a Weaver thing, probably as its not coded for a Dual Orb ability to give the proper legendary hammer visuals/projectiles. Only a visual bug though!

you must be using your high hit abilities (not damage, but hits per ability) while you have a sphere deployed then*. The general idea is to spam three spheres back-to-back then have a massive period, I usually have it in fire, to rebuild all your energy and do it again * as you energy generation stops when a sphere is active. That is something I wasn't aware of when first playing cata, not sure if it was something you are aware of or not.

If you're doing a two sphere deployment rotation, yes it is worse quickness, but then I need to ask why you are doing a two sphere rotation. I play cele Catalyst solo religiously and even on staff I can do a three sphere deployment, and staff is really clunky for energy building. Three spheres are always doable. With like standard cele boon duration, you get about 45% boon duration, give or take, along with some elemental empowerment buffing that. Before the patch I got 14.5s of quickness from my air sphere alone, which was also un-fun as I was delaying going there to complete my rotation for energy. Now, you get about 17.25s, let's say 17s of quickness from three spheres, of which you can get from ANY sphere now. If you're running hammer as well, it is even better as you can use Energized Elements (or Vicious if you really are going for it) and get a four sphere deployment so you go from 14.5s to over 20s of quickness on a celestial Catalyst build which is really, really nice. Although, as a few have said, would really not be opposed to energy being stripped off Catalyst or lowering deployment cost of spheres to 'reduce the drawbacks of playing an elite specialization' philosophy that anet is following 🤗

Yeah! I have the exact same usage of it. I always tank in my w1-4 guild full clears and cover extra roles. Kiting on Sabetha is so smooth as I don't even need to go back melee so no worries of dropping flak. I can cast spheres just in range of me and the group so I get quickness/protection too which helps. I've been tanking green myself in olc so I can role squish and keep an extra dps on the red watchknight instead of it being a dps out tanking. It feels like a little niche role in olc that only really heal cata can do comfortably due to having such high range boon/heal application.

Quite shocked to see a heal Catalyst thread! I've been playing it since about a month after EoD hit and its my main healer for every piece of instanced content I do. The energy can feel really rough and as you mentioned going downstate is hell as you lose all your energy, adding even more complexity to the build/role as you need to be playing perfect to not go downstate, otherwise getting the energy back can take a while without wasting Frost Bow to build the energy back. I've spent a lot of time theorizing ways for them to fix energy but I never thought about healing being a contributing factor towards jade sphere energy. It would be quite a nice change actually as you're always giving regeneration + Soothing Mists and then burst healing from Water Ripple. With spheres having icds anyway, I don't feel it would be an issue to have the energy gain uncapped either. It is already odd the class mechanic is locked behind an energy system and a cooldown but if they really wanted to keep it in place, something like this would be quite nice and it would give a lot of flexibility to a healing Catalyst build and might even allow for a 4-sphere deployment so more boon coverage as rn I tend to do fire/air/earth and if I have an alacrity Mirage I can drop water instead. Really like the idea and it's cool to see someone else is playing heal Catalyst as I've seen literally no one in game doing so 🤣

I'm just gonna drop my thoughts here in the spirit of giving feedback ig as usually I don't tend to. Really happy about the changes with Catalyst, the -10% dmg felt rather brutal and hammer's orb skills now being more reliable is very much welcomed. Aegis is nice too! I feel it will give quickness dps Catalyst at least a fighting chance. However, in the same light, I am really sad that energy has not been touched at all. Every other weapon on Catalyst feels less impactful as they don't build energy near as quick as hammer. I know hammer is the spec's weapon, but it feels a little like beta Untamed where everything was tied to just Hammer. It was pulled out and every weapon was given an unleashed skill. Other weapons on Catalyst are okay (kinda falling short) because they build energy so slowly sometimes so getting spheres off is hell. It slows down the fast paced gameplay and makes the spec feel clunky. I really hope energy is being looked at in the future. More energy access, higher energy cap, sphere deployment cost reductions or just energy being scrapped entirely. It would really smoothen out playing Catalyst for sure. Glad to see some changes in the right direction though!

bump 😄

Vapourwave Dragons are looking for new members to join us to create an active, friendly and sociable community, just in time for EoD hitting! We welcome people of all abilities; we are very beginner friendly, although we also welcome veterans that want a community to call theirs! As long as you are friendly and are appreciative of people with differing abilities/interests, then you are more than welcome! What we can give to our community: - Weekly dungeons [Saturdays @ 18:00 UTC] - We run a weekly guild dungeon run in story order with multiple event leaders so we can have a few groups all running at the same time. Based on people's preference, we all group in one voice chat and chill with each other or split into separate voice channels for each group! - Weekly strike missions [Fridays @ 18:00 UTC] - Currently we do all strikes minus Forging Steel, but we're looking at doing that (plus its CM) as a separate event! We will be adding the new End of Dragons strikes to this run as well for a big content-packed event! - Weekly raid training [Saturdays @ 13:00 UTC] - We've trained wing 1-4 fully (but this does not mean we don't cover these wings again for others that might want to practice roles different to their main role) and we're working on training wing 5-7 when we can! - Weekly w1-4 full clear kill run [Tuesdays/Wednesdays @ 13:30 UTC) - Depending on real life demands, we run either on the Tuesday or Wednesday. This is perfect for more seasoned players that are looking to do a stable weekly clear without the need of praying people on lfg are doing the wing you need! - Weekly guild missions [Sundays @ 19:00 UTC] - We do all guild missions aside from WvW/PvP guild missions, but we hope to do the WvW ones once Alliances properly release! The events mentioned are all ran on a schedule but the events we do are not limited to this! We also run impromptu events based on interest: Hero point runs, meta farms, seasonal events, extra raid training/semi training & more! - An active discord community - We do most of our communication through discord, and there is always members willing to help others out with events or with questions. - A friendly and supportive leadership team - We are a small team, including myself, the guild leader and three event leaders but we're more than happy to help you with any questions and we do our best to make you feel as welcome as possible! - A LGBTQIA+ safe space - We want you to feel comfortable expressing yourself and we do want members that also support others in expressing themselves. With this in mind, we have a zero tolerance rule on any oppression or abuse towards members based on their gender/sexuality/race/ethnicity/etc. This also extends to just general friendliness; we don't condone members insulting/verbally attacking other members or anything of that nature. What we expect from you: Not much, honestly! We just want our members to be friendly, active and sociable! There isn't any strict requirements to join us, and we are very laid back and chill as a community, so we do not expect much from you! We do have a ~50% activity preferred rule-what this means is we expect you to join us for a few events here and there and pop up in the discord from time to time, nothing too intense! We want to grow and run more events and engage with the community we're building more so and you guys just joining us for content here and there really makes us happy that we can connect with people! ^^ To reiterate, we welcome people that have literally just began the game all the way up to people that are very experienced and have been playing for like 4+ years (as an example), so please keep in mind others in the guild might not know as much, especially as we are a very casual guild so we don't expect everyone to be a guild wars god to join. 🙂 A mention for End of Dragons, we are looking to do a few events on launch! Those set in stone right now are capturing the new guild hall together as soon as we can and doing a blind strike run. No research or info will be gathered on the new strikes, we're just going to run in and experience all the mechanics brand new. We might even try the CMs too! :D Extra events will be discussed upon and posted about in the guild too! To join the guild we do require you to join and stay in the discord alongside the in-game guild! We chat the most in discord, and all of our event signups are shared in there. You can choose from an array of content ping roles (@Strikes, @dungeons, @fractals(t1-t4), etc.) to find others to do content with if you desire, and we use these during our event signups so that you can get events pings tailored to what you want to do! Voice chat is not required either; if you feel nervous to chat via voice communication with new people (I say this as I too have anxiety revolving around this), then that is okay! We just ask that you join the voice chat on mute during events if you like so that we can just explain any mechanics for the event. We want you to feel comfortable in any way possible when doing events with us! 🙂 If you have any questions, feel free to ask me here, or you can contact me or the guild leader through the in game mail system if you'd rather get in touch that way! My account name: Sorasnobody.9350 Our guild leader's account name: Skipedy.3128

I don't have much feedback as I only really tried one specific build on Willbender this time as it became possible with the changes they made. I'll probably just talk about that and one small issue me and my friend ran into when he was trying this in the open world with me. I want to say well done though, again these changes feel for the better but I don't know how best to sum them up into an overview as I didn't do enough testing with the spec so I don't want to make comments I can't confidently support. Sustain: There needs to be more healing/self sustain in the willbender by default. You lose the passive heal from the F2 and you only get a little bit of regeneration from the F2 when you have virtues as a trait line. Yes, you can go phoenix protocol for regeneration but then I do believe you lose the base healing from the trait so you are losing healing to try and get extra regeneration when you have zero healing in the spec. There needs to be more healing somewhere, increase the healing from the F2, reduce how many hits it takes to proc it, just something to give the spec some extra healing 🙂. At the moment I can't see a Willbender keeping themselves alive in the open world against anything more than 3/4 mobs if they're all vets/elites as when you take hits you don't have much healing to get it back. Just some kind of extra healing in the spec would be awesome for yourself! 😄 Heal Willbender: I first tried this in the initial beta for Willbender but I scrapped it as the alacrity was only solo, but then I saw that they changed Phoenix Protocol to work with Battle Presence so it could give AoE alacrity and I have to say it feels really fun from my perspective! Me and my Guild leader who is a long time Guardian main tried it out as she really liked the concept of a healing Willbender. There is a strong sense of lining up your multiple hit skills in your F2s to get the alacrity right as we both tried it and couldn't get 100% but once we figured out it was best to do sword 2>3 into shield 4 then swap and staff 2, you got a lot of procs of alacrity off. The extra cast of the F2 is nice as well as if you can see your alacrity about to drop off, you can pop it and drop symbols and weave autos for extra hits to get it back up. This was all done without quickness too mainly, aside from the bit from "Feel my Wrath!" so for 60% of the rotation/fight I wasn't able to cast skills quickly to get them off faster. If you could get skills off faster during the F2 window you could use your F1 as soon as it is up to facilitate more uptime on might-and in an actual situation you would have quickness from an external source to allow you to do this but hey ho boons were bugged on the console as usual 8)... We went on the moderately threatening damage field in the special force's training area and we didn't drop below 80% health when one of us was going a DPS and the other a heal Willbender so they have decent healing in their kit and with them being a Guardian at core they have nice burst healing with Empower, Holy Strike and "Recieve the Light!" Now of course, a healer is not defined by just the healing it can do. However upon testing, and working on timing the F2s correctly, you can give: 100% alacrity, 100% fury, 100% regen, 100% protection, 100% resolution, 100% swiftness, 18-20 stacks of might (you do hit 25 might but you can't cap it fully) and nice stability choices. Heal Willbender boons & healing You even have a free utility slot. I went "Stand your Ground!" as a default choice for more stab and of course it is a nice stun break that is used regularly but if you don't need that you can go Wall of Reflection for projectile hate, Healing Bow for more heals or even Purging Flames for pulsing condition cleanse that is on a lower cooldown due to Master of Consecrations. With this build as well I felt I was able to make use of all the virtues, F1 for might, F2 for alacrity and regeneration and F3 for protection which was nice as when I briefly (as in 30 minutes) tried a Willbender for open world play, I was only really using the F1 for damage and the F2...kinda I guess? for the little healing it gave. Of course, the big thorn arises though of Renegade and staff Mirage do give 10-man alacrity. I said this in my Specter feedback post and I still stand by it as it needs to be done, nerf Renegade and Mirage alacrity to 5-man otherwise all these new alac specs you have created won't even matter as people will only build them as pure DPS, not even DPS boon supports as there will be no reason to 🙂 Healbender build That is the build I went with, of course gw2skills has the old Willbender but the trait positions reflect the ones I went in the current version. I had full exotics too besides legendary on my staff, backpack and both accessories so I didn't have this full 93% boon duration. I did try Honorable Staff but the extra concentration and reduced cooldown on Empower didn't let me get better might generation over against Empowering Might and your other boons don't need extra boon duration to be at 100%. If you have extra sources of might though you could go Honorable Staff for reduced cooldown on your burst heal skills or even Pure of Heart for Shield 4 and go "Advance!" As I said, I haven't really tested Willbender in other areas, so I can't make any other statements, but I wanted to share my little theorycraft with you all!

I only really tested Catalyst on this fourth beta as I was the most excited about it for sure. I haven't got a big set of feedback to give as I don't feel much needs to be worked on now. Do note, this was all testing carried out from an open world perspective where I was soloing content that usually requires 2-3+ people. General: I love the changes you made with the Jade Sphere! Having one sphere per element is way better and them being a wider radius means that applying boons with them is a lot easier. It made me tinker and experiment with even a heal Catalyst as the healing is strong and they now give boons, but that is a side tangent. Making the Sphere an instant cast even when you're disabled was a nice move too as you can get it up ready for when you break stun or get back up and combo straight away, I was able to get to 10 stacks of elemental empowerment a lot easier due to the combo potential now. The small changes to hammer are welcomed as well! Reducing the speed on Whirling Stones is nice as well as it reflecting projectiles, that was very useful in the open world where I was testing this against tougher group content. Grand Finale being a combo finisher is great too and Triple Sear being a smaller radius to hit all three is refreshing as well 🙂 . I didn't have any use of the augments but the changes you made to them are very welcomed and I know in a PvE endgame content perspective, I would make use of them more so as they serve a great purpose! For a few slight changes I'd say: Jade Sphere: Take it off the attunement swap ICD; when you swap into a new element, it goes on the 1.5/2s cooldown of being able to swap to a new attunement and sometimes I found myself for example going into earth, wanting to combo Ground Pound and then Grand Finale straight away but then I had to wait two seconds and my Grand Finale had fallen off. Change the UI. When I see Druid, Holo, Harbinger, any Warrior spec, etc. They have a really easy to follow and visually beautiful UI to follow to see when they can use their class mechanic. It could be a bar like shadow/harbinger shroud/warrior adrenaline or even something such as Celestial Avatar where the f5 is on the top over your health pool and when you have enough energy to drop a sphere you get a little visual pulse of particles on the UI in regards to your element. You're in fire and have orb ready? A little spray of embers comes from your health pool vicinity to let you know its ready as the current energy bar seems thicker than the first beta but it is still very underwhelming and not easy to see. Make water sphere give regeneration either with its base pulsing boon or via Spectacular Sphere; I think everyone associates water with healing and defence but the sphere does not reflect this. The resolution is nice, but fury doesn't make much sense. Maybe regeneration as the base boon and then resolution via Spectacular Sphere as that boon is more premium than regeneration. Regeneration is so valuable when you're soloing and water not giving it at all even when I'm traiting into my sphere giving more boons, feels a little off. Traits: Make Energized Elements give more energy. With us having 40 energy at total, gaining 2 energy per attunement swap feels negatable and I always found myself going Vicious Empowerment for extra might and Elemental Empowerment. If this gave maybe 4/5 energy per swap, I would easily take this in a solo perspective for more spheres which means more boons for me 😛 Utilities: Make some kind of adjustment to Soothing Waters. I'm not fully sure where to take this heal but it just feels like Ether Renewal and Glyph of Elemental Harmony put together but without it granting a boon. It is nice it lowers to a 20s cooldown in a water sphere, but in higher pressure situations I would probably use this on the spot without having a water sphere out and would get no extra reward. It is also a over time heal, and the spec doesn't really have any other healing besides Crashing Font so this giving a burst of healing might be more favourable. Elemental Celerity I think is a great elite, and the changes you made makes it easier to use, however I have seen a few people say exactly what I was thinking, it needs to be a lower cooldown to allow for it to make interesting adjustments in a rotation. I was running glyph of elementals for solo but if I could do more with this elite, I would probably use it more so. If you wanted to use it to double up CC or extra damage or extra healing with Crashing Font, but then once you've done that little burst of skills, you have to wait over a minute to do it again, it doesn't have any longevity to it. Reduce the block duration on Fortified Earth. I tried this at the very start of this beta and it is really nice but it felt in some ways too long? of a block duration and I felt like a wet noodle running around holding it up for so long. I enjoyed barrier off it as a defensive utility for solo but 3 seconds of downtime for the barrier it gives felt silly. Reducing it to a two second duration with the same effect would be great! Hammer: It is quite common in earth for bleed to be everywhere, so just throw some bleed on the earth auto attack as it feels really lack lustre at the moment and also quite weak. Increase the duration of when you can cast Grand Finale. I have seen from rotations that this is one of the hardest and a lot of people mention "kitten I drop the orbs and it messes up my rotation" and I felt this too when solo. They were dropping a lot so I couldn't even combo fire/earth orbs into a sphere field to get a stack of Elemental Empowerment. A couple of seconds increase would probably help on this so 5s to 7s on the time you have to shoot them. Someone mentioned this briefly too, but add a small ICD on being able to launch Grand Finale as sometimes I was pressing 3 to get the skill going and then it registered a double tap and my orb was gone. Whirling Stones should be a whirl finisher, it is literally in the name of the skill 😄 Turn the CC type of Wind Storm into stun instead of knockdown, please honestly ignore this if it just seems very minor because it would be fine either way 🙂 Overall, I really enjoy the changes made to the spec, I feel I could solo with it, whereas I hardly could before and even then it was sub-par. I've seen it have some impressive benchmarks (maybe a little too high but damage balancing isn't just a Catalyst issue ehehe) so the changes you have made to the spec have been for the better! Can't wait to see if Catalyst receives some QoL adjustments and slight alterations before launch!

I get an easy public run every day at 12:00 UTC at least. I have never been able get a marionette run straight on reset or just after it so maybe adjusting your time might help? People definitely do it, and it feels organised too as a sort of hive mind and there has been 4/5 comms every time I've done it 🙂

I don't get what you mean?

Do note, all my feedback is coming from an open world soloing perspective in this case. I haven’t been mid maxing on a golem, but I have tested its support capabilities also which I will go over to the best of my ability! I am going to go over each section of the spec individually then create a positives and a negatives list, of which will include my proposals/suggestions. Overview Specter is a very fun spec once you get used to how it operates. It is very aggressive and you must be on your toes, always micromanaging and going on the offense which I really like. Always hitting something to get off extra sustain, conditions and utility. I began my testing a little concerned because I was struggling to do damage and stay alive, my boon application was all over the place and I was just trying too many things at once and it was leading to the spec feeling troublesome overall. A couple days in, I began to click with the specialization. I am not a thief player, I’ve never touched the class honestly, not seriously anyway but this gave me reason to give it a go and I am glad! The shadow shroud mechanic is really nice, has an array of damage, utility and CC and the aggressive method of ally healing is great! Scepter skills feel good, some reservations that I need to address, along with some bits needing some alteration/tweaking but overall it is a really nice weapon! The ally target mechanic is interesting...it needs a bit of depth I think, or just some of its skills need tweaking, but more on that later! Their wells feel useful! I have had a strong recurring concern with the elite spec utilities not even being that useful but wells do add gameplay which is refreshing! Traits give you a lot of options and overall the spec feels one of the strongest out of the 9 in my opinion in regards to specialization design/concept. Scepter I love this weapon so much! From the visuals and soundscaping, straight down to the damage and utility it provides. Smacking allies to give them barrier? Hell yes! You can buff a single person which is nice when you’re soloing something and someone flies in out of nowhere and if they’re dropping low you can just pull back and barrier spam then plus might (and quickness/regen with Endless Night). The auto attack has okay damage, it can feel a little clunky at times and can straight up interrupt my siphon which is problematic but it isn’t game breaking. Both dual attacks feel really strong. Measured Shot is a bit janky with the shadowstep on occasions but overall it’s solid! My reservation is for Shadow Sap to be improved a little by shifting damage maybe, but I’ll explain that later. The supportive elements of the auto attack and dual attacks are really good though. You can easily cap someone on barrier. I tried it with a friend and let them just stand in two flamethrower jets in the deldrimor ruins in Desert Highlands and he didn’t even take any HP damage, the barrier just constantly covered it so I can see this spec being a deadly threat in small scale WvW/PvP. Shadow Sap does have quite low values I can see; with my setup my Shadow Sap was giving a 671 barrier for 3 initiative cost whereas Twilight Combo was giving a 2.5k(?) barrier with healing on top of that for just 1 extra initiative cost. In a lot of cases, Shadow Sap just doesn’t feel good to use as the weakness offensively is wasted and 5 might on the ally cast is not enough to warrant the low barrier amount I feel. Shadow shroud I was very suspicious of this when I first went into it and thought “this does nothing?” but that was just initial doubt as now I am in and out of it loads for all it provides. Something to mention first is, tormenting runes doesn’t work with shroud torment application which just feels like a bug? Shroud isn’t a second health bar like Reaper Shroud so healing should still work I feel inside it, more on this later. Haunt Shot is what an auto should be, strong condi damage and the bit of might gen is always welcomed. Grasping Shadow is a really short cooldown, small aoe of condition damage (as well as it cleansing a condition which is neat!) and it can be cast then left to prime while you use Eternal Night so it pops as you’re finishing Eternal Night which is nice. You can dip in and 2 > 4 > 1 > 1 > 2 and then drop out again once initiative is full to get a dual attack rotation out, or you can sit in it longer and use Dawn’s Repose for barrier gen and a dash away (which can be a little janky, more later) and Mind Shock for stability and more hard CC which is always welcomed when soloing. Can I just say as well, I was almost in tears of joy with how you aggressively heal within the Shadow Shroud. Fighting enemies gives your tethered ally healing. I’ve waited a very long time for an healer that heals through doing damage and Specter is exactly that! A little like the harbinger’s shroud, it isn’t a second health pool which you need to get used to as it won’t be a saving grace unless you trait into that. Utilities not being usable is a bit ehhh too, but I’ll touch on that later. There is a nice ebb and flow with Shadow Shroud though; going in, dropping a few abilities for damage then making sure you come out to not waste initiative, once you get into the rhythm, it feels rewarding for sure. Siphon I thought it best to give this a short solo section; the new f1 works really well with the concept of the class and I like it’s dual function. You can giga buff your steal and cause this to do a lot of extra damage on enemies and the slow on it is huge. Ally targeting with it has the fundamental support there but it does feel a little like “why bother?” as you only need to use it once to set up your shroud tether and then just the barrier doesn’t do much. However, I am not certain what to suggest, so I will leave that thought open. It fits the purpose it needs and it works well with Specter being a mid range spec in the sense it activates and doesn’t shadowstep like steal. Ally targeting It is a thing in the game, but it has never really been explored and now Specter explores it in its fullest. A lot of it is getting used to it; we’ve never had this really be a big system in a spec so it’s something to adjust to. A lot of the ally targeting skills just have a lot of power behind them which is nice, sure a few are a bit janky but I am sure they can just be fixed. As mentioned, Measured Shot sometimes yeets you miles away, but what it does for the target is nice and hitting targets with the beam would be easier once the shadowstep issue is altered. It might need some priority fixes too as it literally will give anything in the beam the boons first so an ally being obstructed by two minions will not get the quickness/regen as the minions will get it. Scepter/dagger ally targeting skills feel smoother to me, mainly Twilight Combo as you can essentially cast it then be casting another skill while the missile is shooting which allows you to wrack up a few of them to pelt your ally with a big barrier. The blue highlighting on your selected ally in a squad and party UI is helpful as well! It lets me see at least who I have focused amongst the chaos of 10/5 people fighting a boss and mechanics activating, etc. Utilities Love them, loooveeeee them! They even have a trait to amplify them too! As I mentioned in my overview, a lot of the elite specs have had utilities that don’t have much integration with the actual spec and you can just go core utilities and forget them but wells are refreshing. Visually as well? Just yes AAAAHHH I love the wandering purple/blue souls you see on the base of the well, they just give me so many aesthetics and they’re a really nice touch. Each well, as far as I can see, has a different animation too as to how you shadowstep. Well of gloom you submerge into the earth, Well of Bounty I think is the one where you swirl your hands then blink, it just has a lot of flavour visually for me! Well of Sorrow is my favourite by far; a great burst of conditions and you tend to have all conditions present so extra torment is great, especially with rune of tormenting, turning offense into more healing. Well of Gloom is a nice healing skill and gives AoE potence when supporting as a Specter that is very single target focused. Well of Tears feels like a filler well; this spec is one I can’t see working with power so strike damage on this is wasted, it feels like just an extra well to proc the trait mentioned shortly. Well of Bounty was really infuriating to try and test, so much so, I was not able to. I wanted to see how good it was at giving 5 target quickness but I couldn’t select certain boons on the special forces area because of the bug that wipes self applied boons when you have console boons too (arena net this was really sloppy not gonna lie, how are we supposed to properly test a boon support if the console is bugging our boons?). It is a nice concept, but really it’s going to be very niche when this provides stability and aegis so they won’t see much use and it giving might when having every boon is strange as literally everyone can puke might in the current end game environment. I just see this well’s usage as another alacrity provider when traited. Well of Silence I didn’t use when solo as I didn’t need to really but it gives me pseudo Darkrazor’s Daring vibes and I like that. It applies a lot of strong soft CC and also pulsing daze which will make specter even more of a defiance bar breaker than core thief (and core thief has a lot with just basilisk venom alone). Shadowfall I also never used, but from what I can gather it is a really strong hard CC skill, great for like WvW bombing I would say. I do wonder its viability against basilisk venom in PvE but nevertheless, a strong elite skill! When traiting Traversing Darkness, with just 45% boon duration you can run three wells and keep up 100% alac if you keep an eye on your cooldowns properly. 55% allows for 6 and ½ second durations which lets you slowly wrack up more alacrity making it easier. Wells have a strong presence in specter and if you want to give a luxury boon they have importance which I like. Well of Bounty could be tweaked to make it more usable for its boon component, Well of Tears will probably only be used as a support well which defeats its offensive purpose by nature but if these wells did not change, I wouldn’t be mad so I won’t make any suggestions on them later on. Traits These are probably some of my favourites out of all nine of the elite specs for me. There is a clear path of really leaning on that single target support, an offensive condition damage dps line and then AoE potential through the bottom row which I really like. Before I saw the traits in the stream I did think “oh no this is just going to be like a 2v2 or WvW support because it has no AoE” but that has been debunked for me. One trait seems a little too good to be true, I won’t lie and I am expecting it to be adjusted. Consuming Shadows can cap barrier INSTANTLY on your sub group and it isn’t even gated by the fact shadow force builds up slowly as I always had a very strong stream of shadow force when I was testing this in the open world, duoing with a friend. Running 1/1/1 on condition solo worked beautifully and Strength of Shadows has a lot of defensive value too as you wrack up a lot of unique conditions on foes: torment, bleed, poison, slow, cripple to name a few. Shadestep also has potential for great interactions where you can cap your own barrier with siphoning an enemy and stealth attacking and then shadow stepping it to your allies for just crazy barrier up time. Traversing Darkness’ shadowstep healing has amazing interaction with Shadow Savior for big healing on your shadowsteps. Rot Wallow Venom is a really nice spec-specific buff as well and I cannot thank you enough for making it specter’s condi/expertise based as it means we can be this sort of aggressive dps healer support instead of a generic half-afk healer than presses 3 buttons and heals everyone to full (not literal, but you get the idea of how this plays different to something like a hfb). Traits as a collective give me a nice spread of everything I would want/need depending on how I want to play Specter. Alacrity concerns I will do this again in my Mechanist’s eventual feedback, but I have seen a lot of talk about this and wanted to add my input. Something worth knowing, I main alac mirage and alac renegade and if I can, I like to play them roles over against any other in fractals/raids. Wells will only give 5-man alacrity, whereas there is the foreboding issue that alacrigade and mirage give 10-man and it will beg the question for a lot of people of “why even bother with alac on a heal/support specter? Just go renegade.” Something needs to be done with these two mentioned roles; I feel buffing Specter and Mechanist to 10-man is just destructive and making more specs broken to accommodate two specs doesn’t sound right. Most boons are 5-man, so let's keep it that way. People will probably scream at this, but nerf Righteous Rebel to 5-man and make Chaos Vortex give 5-man alac (and 5-man might?) so that new specs have a space to breathe and be visible and that we have more options to fit that field too. Support/healing I did more testing with a friend today, and I will split this into two sections in a way. When I was duoing with him in the open world, we could face-tank so much damage and he didn’t even drop below 90% health due to all the barrier in most cases. I didn’t even have to go with defensive traits or gear, this was full celestials with tormenting runes. I could do really good damage and also give him a lot of healing with my general rotation of abilities which feels really good and I could kite around in higher pressure situations and pump auto attacks and Twilight Combos into him to just make any dangerous situation negatable. The healing from Twilight Combo and Shadow Shroud is very strong too even with a mainly damage focused setup which just feeds my fantasy further of an aggressive damage healer. On the flip side, their group play I do have concerns about right now just with a few of the issues they have. Measured shot having odd shadowstep plus its target cap not having player priority makes the boons from Endless Night a little wasted. The 5-man alacrity I am okay with, given my previous header. With fixes on Measured shot and its priority adjusting, I am sure their support play would be a lot better but right now it seems to be a little rough and that your barrier/boons on Endless Night will just give it to anything that moves which isn’t great. Positives General - I have to give kudos to the visual and soundscaping department for this spec. They make me feel so happy to play this spec and the visuals/sounds really link to that vibe of the Specter shifting through shadows and using them to destroy their opponent or buff their allies. The ally tether beam for me looks so beautiful too, I sometimes forget to fight as I'm just staring at it lmao. - A strong solo class, even with a few shroud healing issues. The sheer amount of strong soft CC you have lets you break defiance bars regularly for the 100% increased damage interval and it can cause some tougher mobs to just lose about 17/18% of their health in 3 seconds which is huge. For context I was able to solo with ease: Verdant Brink: Frog trio hp, golem hp, vampire trio hp Auric basin: Mushroom king hp, arrowhead hp, tengu group hp, vinetooth hp, chak lobber hp, tarnished sage hp, tarnished traitor event and balthazar champion event. Bounties: Legendary Smoldge (although I want to try and test against other Legendaries too) - A lot of solo potential does come down to user input but some specs just don’t allow for easy soloing at least but Specter does for sure! Decent damage when solo too; I have a standard for solo builds where if I can hit 10k condi ticks then it’s strong and I saw on multiple occasions that I hit 10k torment ticks. Sustain - The barrier output is really good without even traiting into it and you can push it further with Shadestep. It has a lot of healing through tormenting runes (not a class mechanic I know but this spec works so well with it). This will only be better with my shroud suggestions/fixes. - Ally barrier and sustain is even better too, especially with the correct traits. Your shadow steps will be healing for a considerable amount and your on demand barrier is also really nice too. - I have to stress again, I LOVE the vibe of a combat healer; where I am literally healing through fighting in Shadow Shroud. Once you get used to swapping between enemy and ally targeting, you will be able to master such a rewarding ebb and flow of swapping between ally to support them and then to enemy to do extra damage. - You have an on demand shadowstep that you’d use in an offensive rotation or to support allies and when traited through Specter/Shadow Arts this shadowstep will cause a lot of extra healing. - I was able to keep me and a friend alive on ‘moderately threatening’ pulsing damage in the special forces area with full celestial and tormenting runes so there is a lot of potential in this spec for healing without needing to go full support stats, still allowing for this play style of an aggressive damage healer. Shadestep giving revival potential is great too, especially as Siphon is on a lower cooldown when you target an ally. Boons - They can give 5-man alac, 100% easily with four wells or with three wells with 55% boon duration. As mentioned you can drop to 45% but then your wells equate to 20 seconds of alac and your wells are on 20 second cooldowns (16s with alac) so you have to be very observative to keep a track of your cooldowns to use them as soon as they come up again. I was testing this without quickness so it would be easier with that active. - I do believe they could give 5-man and maybe even more (I want to say 9-man if you position right) quickness/regen with Endless Night once the shadowstep and priority issue is sorted. You give 20s plus regen/quickness with about 45% boon duration so you could do this on three different allies in your sub and keep it up quite easily and even try to make use of Well of Bounty to get a pulse of quickness to make it easier on yourself. - Permanent vigor/swiftness and fury to your sub through Thrill of the Crime and Bountiful Theft. Their might generation is severely lacking to a sub group though. Shadow Sap gives solid single target might, but that is about it. Damage - I obviously haven’t dps tested it with the correct gear and all boons but I’ve heard like late 30k (38/39k) as a last line on condi benchmarks and as I mentioned it has strong damage when solo too and that is good enough for me. - Even a heal/support focused specter will have great damage, especially in sub group context due to AoE barrier so even more Rot Wallow venom application which will scale with the Specter’s condition damage/expertise. - When solo, you don’t even need to trait into anything defensive, not from my testing anyway so you can get full damage traits which makes it a very potent solo’er. Negatives (suggestions) Please don’t misinterpret these as me bashing the class, a lot of them are very minor tweaks, not massive aggressions with the spec 🙂 - With it having good damage, I do feel it’s ramp up time is quite slow. From my solo testing at least, it can take a bit to get going unlike some condi specs that can still mow down mobs. Part of it might come down to the fact this spec plays with very little strike damage whereas some condition specs have decent base strike damage values on skills. Not really a “fix this” just thought I’d mention it for those considering Specter. - The auto attack chain can feel a little clunky and sometimes it doesn’t let me Siphon when I’m mid animation on an auto attack and I know most auto animations can be cancelled (obviously not the best to do so but they can be) so it’d be good if this was flushed out so it doesn’t feel as janky. Also I found myself hardly using the auto attack because I felt no reason to. Maybe slightly increase the damage numbers of the torment so it feels useful to auto attack a little more in between dual attack spam. - Shadow sap needs some better uses. The weakness on the offensive strike is not that useful; this spec has a cluster of torment so it wouldn’t be too far fetched to shift some torment damage off the dual attack and put it into Shadow Sap. Its ally targeting needs something more too. Literally just a base increase on the barrier would be good enough. - It might be because scepter has a three auto chain, but you do not see its stealth attack tooltip listed when you hover over the auto attack. Not really game breaking, but worth a mention. - Twilight Combo was giving me the swiftness despite it saying it gives swiftness and barrier on the ally targeting so that would suggest it should give the ally the swiftness and not me. - Measured shot, this is really odd sometimes. It appears to me at least that when I use this when standing on top of my ally it just shadowsteps me miles away from the ally which doesn’t make any sense. Also, as I’ve stated before, it has no priority so it will give anything in the beam’s path, the boons and barrier instead of ally priority. This needs to be fixed to make this viable for support/healing Specters. A bit of an experimental suggestion, so it is safe to ignore this, make the boons pulse off your target, still three target cap but then it’ll be easier to give the boons to all three targets without positioning the beam. - I have been having an absurd amount of invalid path issues with siphon, scepter skills and wells too. Wells I get more so as sometimes ground targeting can be a little off but the siphon issues I don’t understand. I have sometimes been on a rock just underneath my friend and been able to auto him just fine, but not siphon him despite it not being a shadowstep to them anymore? I feel the game is registering siphon as a shadowstep still from its core counterpart steal when you target an ally not on the same level as you. It is the same with Shadow Sap and Twilight Combo/Endless Night sometimes, they are ranged abilities but have invalid path issues despite the auto attack working just fine from the same location. I don’t know if it is something that is really fixable but I wanted to mention it all the same. - Shroud-ehhhh, I love it (so god kitten much AAA) but it has a few issues. - Firstly, rune of tormenting doesn’t work with torment applied while in shroud. As I mentioned beforehand, Shadow Shroud is like Harbinger’s Shroud in the sense that it doesn’t replace your health so I feel you should be able to heal off torment applied in Shadow Shroud. Also I feel like utilities should be usable inside Shadow Shroud. Again, it isn’t the same shroud as something like Reaper’s for example. You have no extra sustain in Shadow Shroud right now so being able to use utilities would be great! It isn’t too much of a stretch either, Holosmith has Photon Forge which is basically just there for extra damage and they can use utilities inside this form. - A lot of the shroud abilities I feel are easily cancelled; this can be latency related a lot of the time but for some reason, I feel this more so with Shadow Shroud skills. - Not so much of an issue anymore, but some might argue Dawn’s Repose has the same issue as Willbender virtues where you dash through your foe so the skill feels it could potentially not be used properly. I don’t find many issues with it though, but thought I’d mention it in case others might think of it that way. Conclusion To sum up, Specter is a specialization that is truly unique in what it provides. It is a fun way to support and bolster allies while also being a very big stretch away from a conventional thief which is a refreshing use of “breaking class systems” that Arenanet said they were doing with these specs. It has some flaws, but those flaws can be easily fixed and ironed out. At the core foundations of the spec, Specter feels very promising to me! (Again I will say this here as I found it out after initially writing this, that action cam issue with the spec NEEDS to be ironed out). Thank you for reading my feedback!