Genesis.8572

Indeed.

Historically speaking, the ranger was designed as neither the melee or ranged class, but, rather, it was designed as the pet class.

It just doesn't seem relevant when it comes to feedback for the weaponmaster training beta about the existing warrior weapons being decoupled from their e-specs and NOT the announced new warrior weapon.

And a longbow, as per the other common suggestion, could step on the staff's toes. What's your point?

What you read was that ANet is removing the link between e-specialization weapons and the profession. So you can play, for example, a Berserker that uses Dagger and Pistol or a Spellbreaker that uses Torch, or even a core Warrior that uses the e-spec weapons. It's similar for other professions.

I only wish that the stripes were dyable and that the tiger's fur was also fully dyable rather than having to work around the unchangeable white part.

It looks like a fairy moth.

This moves the goal posts of the issue. The point is regarding in-universe naming conventions for the various cultures and whether one chooses to adhere to that or not. It's not about the realism of being locked into only one name. There are plenty of MMORPGs where you are locked into one name per server, realm, or whatever. It would be erroneous to conflate what is "actually beneficial for the game" with what is "convenientally beneficial for Teratus." Just because you find the system inconvient for your naming sensibilities and feel entitled to certain names doesn't mean that it's outdated. If you do the math for how many accounts and characters there are in GW2 and how many new accounts and characters are created each day, it's pretty clear that you are exaggerating the problem. Yes, there are a number of taken names, but there are also MANY MORE untaken ones. You have to factor in the reality that not everyone cares about lore-conventional names. So you are only competing with a relatively smaller subset of those players who do. There is no "real name" about it. Regardless of her reasons, she chose to go by the name Scarlett Briar instead of her given name of Caera. That is her name. Furthermore, the Pale Tree doesn't mandate that Sylvari have single names.

And I am one of those people, but it's still a self-imposed personal issue and not fundamentally a game one. Sometimes you have to accept that you won't get your first choice of names or that you may have to skirt around the norms of naming conventions. Naming conventions represent norms rather than rules. Reality throughout human history and cultures is full of plenty of exceptions to the norms of names. Your character is meant to be exceptional as well. My Asura follow asuran name conventions. I do break with name conventions slightly with Sylvari ones, but that is because I enjoy last names for them that help bring out further elements of their character. Also it's not as if last names are entirely foreign to or unheard of with Sylvari: cf. Scarlett Briar.

That's an issue that you impose on yourself rather than one that the game imposes on you. Say what? That is the exact reverse of my experience. GW2 is easily one of the best MMORPGs I have experienced when it comes to getting names. My partner also enjoys MMOs, and they couldn't believe how easy of a time they had getting names with this game in comparison with other ones.

I know that this meta has been tweaked as far as difficulty goes, but after all the horror stories about this meta, I was pleasantly surprised when I did the meta. I initially toured the map solely for map completion and specialization weapon collection purposes. I had no intention of doing the DE meta. I was in a map full of PUGs and roamers. When it came time for the Battle of the Jade Sea Meta, the PUG commander barely gave any instructions apart from escorting the three groups, CC, and the occasional "spread out." We succeeded at the boss with about 8 minutes left. So I got a turtle egg on my first try. I have since done it a few more times with only one loss so far. There are definitely a lot of ways the meta can turn south: e.g., CC, not burning sub-bosses at the same time, the randomized back-and-forth, etc. But there are also a lot of ways that it's pretty forgiving: hello, airship WP. Agreed. I don't think everyone needs the optimal gear or learn the optimal builds from websites and what not. There will be those who are. These people tend to be the "specialists" anyway (e.g., support, alac, heal, etc.). However, the meta does assume that you know (a) how to play your profession, (b) how to apply CC pressure, and (c) the basic boss encounter mechanics. This meta is less a matter of "gitgud" and more a matter of "gitdecent."

Odd. I mostly see your name floating around when it comes to this particular complaint and pushing up the post count. The rest of the community seems pretty happy with how things are. Even the OP was fine once they realized that they could uses spaces. 🤷‍♂️ Compared to other games, getting names in GW2 is a cakewalk. It's easy to get names in this game. My main challenge with names has more to do with the time I put into creating a name that fits the character rather than acquiring that name or finding that the desired name is taken. The former is more difficult for me than the latter and they are hardly the same thing. I have been playing GW2 since the beta and have 20+ lvl 80 characters, but I also occasionally play WoW and SWTOR. Only about 2-3 years ago did I bother trying to "convert" some of my characters from these other games into GW2 counterparts. I got all the names was aiming for without any creative alterations. Same with my partner. I even made a new batch of characters around March 2022 for EoD, and SURPRISE! I got all those names too. Ah yes. Mikey Farmer. He tills the soil of my key farmer "Sir Black Lion Keys." It doesn't really matter how you spell your character's name; it will always be pronounced "commander" (/kəˈmændɚ/). 😉

I'm aware, but it seems to suggest that we would be mostly interested in a Catalyst update as opposed to updates for any other profession.

Is there more or is it just a break bar and Catalyst update?

I've been watching the sales nearly daily for the hopes of its return. I'll also say again: Plant/Sylvari-themed mount skins. At the very least: the fern hound jackal skin.

With our luck and the current ArenaNet writing team, it will be Kasmeer.

I hope not. Facing another god in the Guild Wars franchise is about as original as facing down another Death Star in the Star Wars universe.

No one is forcing you to play the new elite specs. Each profession still has two other specializations to choose from. Keep in mind, however, that many of the "mystical" weapons have already been given to the core scholar professions: e.g., scepter, staff, focus, etc. You may not like heavy weapons, which is a matter of taste and not quality, but new elite specialization weapons were bound to expand to many of these other weapons that are not to your liking. The Bunny Thumper (i.e., hammer ranger) was a popular build in Guild Wars 1. It's honestly more of a surprise that it has taken three expansions before it was introduced into GW2.

King Adelbern Svanir Saul D'Alessio Zinn, Blimm, or Oola Riannoc

How dare you propose such a simple fix for an overly engineered self-created problem?!

I'm not sure how I feel about the Vindicator after a day of playtesting. Overall, it feels like it's trying too much with no clear identity or internal synergy and as a result, it doesn't really pull anything off particularly well. Jump/Dodge: How does the "jump dodge" tie into the idea with being a Vindicator or the Luxon/Kurzick Alliance? The Daredevil gets triple dodges because it's more acrobatic. The Mirage gets the mirage cloak because it is being deceptive and illusory. The Vindicator dodge feels a bit like it's just trying to do something different for the sake of being different without really bothering to figure out whether it really adds anything to the gameplay, whether mechanically or thematically. It feels unintuitive, again in contrast with both the Daredevil and Mirage. It also feels a bit unrewarding overall despite the ridiculous amount of traits that are dedicated to make this gimmick dodge "viable." All the dodge traits seem to suffocate the traitline of other e-spec defining traits or damage buffs that really change how the e-spec is played. In a lot of open world large scale events, the Vindicator's dodge feels like a death sentence, where you will get battered and bruised around, CC'ed, and tossed around like a rag doll in all the AoE effects. So the best you can do is rely on your back jump evades and the stability skills to do the work that normally dodge does. But the dodge itself doesn't feel like it works well in these contexts either. I'm still not sure what the baseline Reward for this dodge is versus the massive Risks that come with using something so basic as dodging in a game that wants us to be constantly dodging in open world or more recent living story episodes. I guess the reward is being able to position your Vindicator in your AoE death-trap of choice? It also feels as if Energy sigils on weapons are a MUST HAVE just so you can have at least one working dodge, which does not feel good. I'm okay with at least one must have sigil, such as Force or Bursting, but a second MUST HAVE sigil just to make my dodge mechanic function more fluidly does not feel good. It feels crippling, especially for character customization and gearing. Greatsword: It feels pretty okay as a weapon. It has nice cleave and AoE, but it also lacks in damage compared to other weapons on the same gear set on other revenant specializations. More importantly, much as others in this thread have said, the Vindicator Greatsword doesn't really feel like a cohesive weapon kit. It feels more like a generic greatsword kit that was garbled together from other professions' greatsword kits but it seems to lack much synergy, functionality, or identity to it. Moreover, I'm not really sure how the Greatsword is supposed to fit in with the support side of the Alliance or thematically with the Alliance at all. * Aesthetics: The weapon icons look more like Guardian icons than Revenant ones colorwise. Also, I feel like the Virtuoso got the entirety of the animation budget, because the animation budget for the Vindicator feels incredibly underwhelming. It feels like a lot of reused animations were just recycled to make a generic greatsword. Contrasting the Vindicator Greatsword animations with the Renegade Shortbow animations is like night and day. Utilities: The utility flipping feels a little over-complicated and wonky, especially with the addition of cooldowns on top of the upkeep. It kind of reminds me of how clunky and unusable the entire Revanant profession was in HoT beta testing. Using the F2 to flip all the utilities generally meant that the utilities I wanted to use were a constant mess that was difficult to keep track of. As one commentator said, I felt more like I was playing the UI and having to pay attention to that than I was the action going on. I think that the stability and evade utilities are MUST HAVE and highly valuable for a specialization with a crippled dodge mechanic. But the whole selfish vs. support aspect wasn't really all that interesting, since I was more concerned with getting stability or evading than I was whether it was pro-DPS or pro-support. Also, the lack of CC on this specialization is pretty glaring, especially if this supposed to contribute to open world events. But I guess who needs CC on the spec when you added those annoying waystation tables that stick out like a sore thumb in the open world? Ugh. I think that being able to pick and choose the utilities that I want on this Alliance would be much better than a needlessly gimmicky flipping mechanic. Plus, it would offer the Revenant something that it doesn't have: i.e., utility choices on a "single" legend. Then we wouldn't need cooldowns on it. Then the identities of the DPS and support side could be clearer without having to perform double-duty or mirror image each other. Elites: I'm underwhelmed by both Elites, and I can't really imagine myself using them on a regular basis. I was using the standard Maruader gear, which is likely what I would use in open world or story. The Spear did only about 2K on the Maruader gear, which was just double the standard Greatsword 1 attack. Talk about underwhelming for a damaging elite. Maybe if there was a wind-up hold down mechanic for it, similar to the Bladesworn's ability, that allows you to get more damage for holding it down longer. Or maybe add some actual CC on this spec with this Elite, please! However, using the Spear (for lack of anything better) runs the risk of flipping the terrible Urn of Saint Victor elite, which I only found myself using out of combat. It feels more like a deadweight death-trap on a character who is not geared for support side of the Alliance. Legendary Alliance: I'm not sure what the identity of this Alliance Legendary is supposed to be. Is it a DPS/support hybrid? Okay? But this is something that Revanant could easily do with Shiro/Jalis or Shiro/Ventari. Like the Alliance, Shiro also has an engage and disengage utility, and it doesn't have to rely on utility flipping to have the right one up at a given time. So the Alliance kit feels almost redundant with the existing legends, and it doesn't offer anything new apart from an awkward and unintuitive dodge mechanic that doesn't really have much payoff. There are other legends and specializations who do similar things, if not better, than what the Alliance does. The Renegade and Herald both seem to offer so much more group boon support while still pumping out more reliable DPS. So in the words of the Bobs from Office Space, when I'm looking at the Legendary Alliance I can't help but ask: "What would you say... ya do here?" Please give this e-spec a clear and competitive identity, both mechanically and thematically. Right now, the Vindicator feels like a garbled mess of half-baked mechanics rather than a specialization with a clear niche or identity.

First of all, would you mind laying off the insults and quit making it personal? Secondly, I did not think that I was somehow hiding my argument behind obscure quotes or even trying to be pretentious about it, as (1) I stated the quote in my OP, and then I rephrased it after quoting it to make my point clearer, and (2) expanded my point on that matter further. Woah. Hold it there. How am I bullying the OP? I did not agree with their D&D comparison, and I listed why in a single post responding to them. Since then, my exchanges in this thread have entirely been with you, and so far you have been the one who has been lobbing insults at me. You still keep escalating things and making it increasingly made your argument about me. I have repeatedly stated that I think that for both you and the OP, that your desires and aesthetic preferences regarding espec are valid ones to hold. I have indicated that I would want a more ranged espec as well. I just don't think that the D&D comparison is an apt one, about which the discussion then kind of derailed into one about whether Elementalists would be Wizards or Sorcerers.* (*The answer is neither because D&D fantasy is its own idiomatic genre.) I suspect that it's a bit of a smokescreen for the real disappointment that the OP is feeling. I have not said otherwise, and I have also made repeated points where I have tried to reaffirm and validate that disappointment.

Hey look. Ad hominem attacks. I think we're done here. No, but you are misconstruing my argument pretty egregiously and rudely so.

How I repurpose this quote and my reasoning for doing so was in my original post. You and the OP's disappointment and anger about the e-spec aside, I think that it is fundamentally important to recognize that Guild Wars 2's idiomatic brand of fantasy is not the same as Dungeons & Dragons' idiomatic brand of fantasy. The two games approach their own sense of fantasy differently. Not just in terms of mechanics but also flavor. I mostly come from the D&D and TTRPG side of things. One of the biggest character conception hurdles I have watched time and time again are people who are disappointed that D&D's versions of things aren't how they are in video games or fantasy literature. Why? Because D&D has evolved into its own brand of adventure fantasy across almost 50 years. (In a number of regards, it's quite conservative, with grognards aplenty hating changes to its lore and flavor.) Likewise, Guild Wars is its own brand of fantasy with its own tropes and such. I think that the OP would have been better off and made a much stronger case simply by saying, "melee is not necessarily the class fantasy I was hoping to get out of playing the elementalist, and I'm disappointed that we have another one after getting a mid-range and melee e-spec" rather than appealing to "from a D&D perspective." Because I don't think that the D&D perspective - i.e., what the Elementalist would be in D&D - is particularly relevant or meaningful to this discussion of the GW2 Elementalist. I think that obfuscates the point. This represents something of a genetic fallacy. Our first introduction to Shamans in Warcraft does not somehow represent the entirety of how Shamans exist nowadays or have since been expressed in the holistic sense of the overall Warcraft franchise anymore than our first introduction to the Paladin in Warcraft means that all paladins should start out as mounted knights. I remember how the Conjurer, our introduction to mages in Warcraft Orcs & Humans, could summon scorpions, but this is never picked up or utilized in any subsequent game apart from general conjuration of food and portals. Also, Clerics in WC1 had the Invisibility spell, which was subsequently given to the Sorceress in WC3 and Mages in WoW. In the case of Warcraft shamans, the WC3 shaman auto-attack uses a ranged lightning spell, and the shaman primarily serves a support role. Then in WoW, one of their three specializations involves elemental melee with weapons. Furthermore, there are two shamans in Heroes of the Storm: they are melee bruiser (i.e., Thrall) and melee support (i.e., Rehgar). The genetic fallacy is likewise an issue when saying that Elementalists were one way in Guild Wars 1. Yes they were, but they have evolved differently in Guild Wars 2. I do think that it's perfectly valid to say, for example, that one would want to see some things from the GW1 Elementalist return to the GW2 Elementalist. I think that's fair to say that the game play for the GW2 Elementalist especs don't fit your aesthetic preferences or playstyle fantasies. I think that wanting valid play options for the GW2 Elementalist is both valid and fantastic. I want that too. But I think that the "D&D perspective" is irrelevant for either finer points or the overall points in the OP.

It's rich that you accuse me of ignoring the overall context for the sake of your "pointscoring," when you devoted a paragraph to missing the point (and context) of a quote as a basis for your argument. Don't act like it's pedantic nitpicking for getting called out on it, drax. It's just poor form.