OriOri.8724

Silly ANet, how could they forget that you are the only person who plays GW2? Just because it works for you does not mean it is working perfectly for everyone else just yet. Its still in beta because there are still some bugs that ANet is working on fixing in it I'm sorry but this is just kitten. A $3500 PC would not be getting only 10 fps on GW2 using the DX9 renderer. And beyond that, going from DX9 to DX11 would not give anyone 15x increase in performance. Making up numbers just makes it sound like you are lying

This is why the vast majority of people craft/buy legendaries as well. But there are always that small minority of players that want the most expensive stuff just to show off how rich they are, so they think that anything they have dropping in price is a negative thing 🙄

They don't give off the appearance that they what's wrong with it to me. The spec still has no identity. There's absolutely zero in it to compensate for losing distortion on F4. The heal skill still requires a target and you to face the target (an extra condi cleanse does nothing to address that). These are all things, among many more, that absolutely must be fixed in the June balance patch This was a competitive balance patch. The whole patch was focused only on PvP and WvW. Other than fixing catalyst, the only PvE balance changes were a few ammo skills on warrior. Though the fact they fixed catalyst and still left virt design alone speaks volumes about their lack of plans to address this spec fully

I didn't know about that, thanks for the tip. Still, it would be nice to be able to use all tomes of knowledge from the dropdown menu without needing to do an intermediary step

Very excited for LWS1 to be brought back to the game. I know that it was pretty for me frustrating playing through EoD story to see all of the LWS1 references that I do not understand, so glad to finally get to play the content

The point was never to give you 1 template for each elite spec, it was to give you templates for different playstyles. That typically means different elite specs, but that was never the actual goal of the templates

You have to use a skiff in exactly 2 steps in the story, but that is no different from any story post HoT where you have been required to complete (typically tedious) reknown hearts to advance the story. But pedantically you are correct. However you don't need a skiff for map completion? You can swim just fine, or use a skimmer to zip around the water on the maps. And the fishing achievement is a personal decision. Its not required by any means

I would love to see a profession change contract in the gem store. Or, alternatively, an item that lets you transfer character specific progression to a different character. Specifically being able to transfer LW/expansion story progression, unlocked WP/vistas/PoI/HP, and hopefully also bag slots/template slots to a different character. Losing all of that just to switch to a new main is something I'm not willing to do, but there are times I wish I could change my main profession

I think you're being quite overdramatic. I don't personally understand the appeal of riding around on a skiff, or of a fishing minigame in an MMO, but other people enjoy it. And it doesn't impact how I play the game at all, nor does it impact how you play the game either. If you don't like skiffs you don't have to use them. Regardless, they aren't an embarrassment. Could the mastery line have been a little more fleshed out? Yea, absolutely, but that doesn't mean that its bad.

5 condi cleanse is really really really strong for 1 skill to do, especially since its only a 20s CD. Other than that, your idea is interesting, though virtuoso currently has more blade generation than it can handle, so I don't think it needs any more. The #1 thing that must be fixed though is the skill needs to be usable without a target. If that change is made, then the skill would be more or less fine as it is. Though I wouldn't mind seeing 1 condi cleanse be baseline on it, and have it cleanse a second condition if the blade hits something.

Echovald definitely took some getting used to, still not entirely used to navigating around it. But I will say that ANet did greatly improve the minimap on echovald vs tangled depths, its actually been incredibly helpful in showing me how to get to where I want to go

Completely off the top of my head, so this probably is busted in some way, but it would at least be super interesting if virtuoso bladesongs were changed to be toggle-able effects. You could have up to 1 bladesong active at a time, and while its active every blade you generate would automatically seek out your target (in combat) and apply the relevant effects. So you could have F1 toggled on and every blade flies out dealing power dmg. Or F2 toggled for condi damage. Having F4 toggled would let each blade be a block, with some ICD I'm sure. F3 would be the hardest to balance here as it would be completely busted without some pretty high ICD. IDK, maybe just F1 and F2 could be toggled and F3/F4 would still be cast on demand or something. But this would solve the issue of too many blades and too high cooldowns on the bladesongs. And has an added bonus of actually changing mesmer instead of applying a pretty new skin to its skills

Which one is better depends on your build and what you are trying to do. Pistol attacks do have a higher CD, but they're not that high compared to most other weapons skills 4/5 in the game, they're just a bit above average. And with duelists discipline, you get a free 25% CD reduction on them anytime you use pistol 5, which helps with the cooldowns a bit.

Balance and class design are about more than DPS potential. Virtuoso's blades still don't interact with every core mesmer clone trait. Its a lot clunkier to use than any other mesmer build because your f-skills now require you to face a target and have huge cast times (this despite the fact they are no better than core shatters). The f-skills did not have their functionality changed at all except to nerf f4 underground by replacing distortion with block. Dagger is a 1200 range weapon whose skills and trait encourage you to use it up close anyway. There are more design issues too. DPS could be top of the charts but that wouldn't mean the design was sound.

I never said anything about no travel time, just no cast time. Please don't argue against changes I'm not even proposing

Just what? We weren't asking for another alacrity or quickness spec, so I don't know why you brought that up at all? And as a pure DPS spec, virtuoso still does less damage than other specs that have actual utility on them too. It isn't even good at being pure DPS. And that doesn't address the fundamentally unfinished design it has. I just wish ANet had talked to mesmer mains when designing it. Even if it was designed for non-mesmer mains to enjoy more, its mesmer mains who will be able to tell you what will and won't work, especially considering it has to have synergy with core mesmer

Removing the cast times on bladesongs, making them not projectiles, so they can't be reflected, and restoring distortion to F4 would go a long way towards addressing major problems with virtuoso. But its sad that some of the best ways to fix virtuoso is to literally bring it up to core mesmer level of usability

Virtuoso feels weak because its core design is flawed and unfinished.

If you want sustain use chrono or mirage. Virtuoso is designed to have no sustain. And losing distortion on F4 is one of the biggest sustain nerfs I've ever seen in this game. Its insane how poorly thought out that was

They did think about it. Virtuoso is supposed to be a power based build. Then the devs quarter backtracked and tacked on condi traits for no reason, and now people think that it was designed to support condi, but that's just not true. The design is broken

I just want a finished third elite spec at this point

Now that just stings Anet

Agreed. People can enjoy it if they want to, but at the end of the day, the spec design has a bunch of problems in it

I mean...... I've gone into detail already in this very thread explaining how the design is unfinished. Just because you like it doesn't mean it was finished

Neither does an icon in the buff bar unless you are hovering your mouse over it? The only indication it will give is when you have less than 5 seconds left when it starts flashing. But again, that is a much smaller icon, whose place on the buff bar can change. Its a lot harder to look for it than to just look at your skill bar and see if the swap is still available