Arcaedus.7290

Couldn't the shattered aegis problem very easily be solved by giving it a 1 or 2s icd?

I know Anet will do whatever it is that they will do, but I just wanted to put some fun ideas/suggestions out there since everyone has already mentioned what feels bad/off at this point. I suggest these changes with PvP/WvW in mind, but I think any player in any game mode could enjoy these. I think any number of the following suggestions would be welcome improvements and maybe even fun: I think using one willbender virtue canceling out any other current active ones is a good idea, but the duration of the willbender virtue should be longer, say 8 seconds, and then have the GM trade off traits be -3 seconds. It's already very difficult for players to rack up 5-hits with this spec in pvp, so they either need more time to do so, or less hits to do so, and less hits kinda ruins the theme of willbender. Let the willbender flames of all 3 virtues persist/remain for longer, and also persist/remain even if another virtue is immediately used. Add a trait (or just a function of the specialization) that allows symbols to leave behind willbender flames after they end Increase the AOE of Willbender flames, and increase their damage Add more of a visual oomph to sword 4 and sword 5. I think the character animation is nice, but there are not that flashy of vfx for using/landing these skills Add a nice animation to Reversal of Fortune if it successfully absorbs an attack that results in the Willbender healing the greater amount Every single physical skill (save for maybe the heal) should have some sort of control effect imo. Flash Combo could do well to have cripple Flash combo gives off the vibe of a monk hitting pressure points. I think it would be neat that every single one of the 5 strikes does something unique, like maybe a different condition each (but very short duration), with the 5th hit doing bigger damage and unlocking Repose like it currently does. Potentially OP change for Heaven's Palm: Have this skill be two hits instead of 1. Both are unblockable. The first hit specifically boon-rips stability, and the second hit performs its current 4s stun. Both hits occur practically back to back, so it's easy to dodge/evade both, but you can't block it. Now THAT would be an absolute show-stopper in pvp, and would earn it a 45s cd like it has in pve. Heck, people might actually take that over Renewed focus for once.

Pretty sure it's supposed to function like Full Counter, but currently it seems bugged. Sometimes, attacks don't trigger the heal, and if you get CCed, you lose the charge, it goes on cooldown, you fail to heal, AND you get CCed. This skill also does not synergize well with on-heal traits or effects. They only go into effect if you channel the 1 second absorb, then fail to absorb an attack during that 1s.

I think this is a bug, but hard agree. I think the heal skill was supposed to function like full counter, meaning no matter what you get hit with - the attack is absorbed, and you suffer none of its effects. That means no conditions applied, no damage taken, no CC inflicted. Right now the heal is bugged on several levels. It doesn't synergize with certain on-heal traits, there are several attacks that can hit you during the heal channel and NOT proc the 4.2k heal, and then the issue with the CC thing like you said.

Played about 2 hours of this thing in pvp, and 1 hour in open world. Here's some feedback: What I liked: Overall, I see what you're going for, ANet. Specs has very beautiful animations and has a nice theme going. Conceptually very nice spec, and I love how I think it's supposed to work. Sword 5, F2, and the bottom/third master-tier trait are by far the biggest stars of the show here. There's a LOT wrong though, and some of these things may be bugs: SO much animation lock. F1 and Flash Combo are by far the worst offenders. These skills are terrible and really need their animation locks completely removed (no self-root). F1 also needs to just be sped up greatly. Speaking of animation lock, f3 could use some touching up too. It doesn't have much animation lock on the end which is nice, but the start-up and overall cast time are far too slow, allowing someone to CC you on reaction speed to interrupt this skill and send it on cooldown. I think this deserves the DH Shield of Courage treatment, where you get stability immediately on start-up, and that lasts for 3/4 seconds, and then once you finish the landing, you get the rest of your boons/benefits. In PVP, I ran Marauder's Amulet, Scholar's Rune. The damage is not there. Even landing my big hits like Sword 4, and Whirling Light will take a off a decent chunk of enemy's health, but I lose almost every 1v1 I'm in against a decent player around my skill level - these are 1v1s I would and otherwise have won on core guard, or DH. PVP-split cooldowns are too high, and not fair imo. Roiling Light is 30s? Every single physical skill is 20s+ cooldown.... these should all be 15-20s cooldown like they are in PVE. The heal. Oh dear Lord is it bugged. Like 60% of the time it reduces all damage I receive for that 1 second channel down to 0, but the heal does not proc at all. Also, when it DOES proc, it doesn't synergize well with certain traits. Namely Smiter's Boon (cast lesser smite condition upon using heal skill) does NOT work if the heal DOES absorb an attack. More complaints about the heal: It gets completely canceled out if you get hit by a CC. The heal goes on cooldown, you don't get a heal, AND you get CCed. This is either a bug, or terribly balanced. It should function like Spellbreaker's Full Counter, except healing instead of dealing damage and dazing. A suggestion here is to add a short animation if the heal does proc, similar to what Spellbreaker gets for Full Counter. PVP-split cooldowns for the virtues are too high IMO. They should be 12, 20, and 30, just like in pve. That was some fine balance if you ask me.

The T2 and T3 burst lacking in Spellbreaker is not equivalent to give and take of stats. As for the -300 toughness on Berserker: yea, just like with the WB adept traits, I'm not okay with this either? Unfortunately, Anet disagrees. Unavoidable trade off traits are just a thing we have to adapt to.

The trade off is that by picking one traitline, you can't pick another traitline.

@Arken.3725 Yo! I listened to your hour n a half vod there. This is a pretty good analysis. I agree with your ratings of each of the utilities and skills. Only two disagreements I have: 1. I feel like the only reason Deathless Courage is going to be is good as it will be, is that glass canon WBs are going to be able to lay out some serious hurt and get away with it thanks to this trait. I'd give it a grade of B+. Solid, extremely useful for some builds (and likely useful for what will be the meta WB build), but the other two GMs offer very stiff competition. 2. I think Roiling Light is really good. It's true that it doesn't offer some of the recovery/sustain that our other stun breaks do, but it has such as low cooldown and offers such amazing economy for a single skill. I'd give it a B+ as a skill. Question for you: Why Zeal? I think for Willbender/Radiance, you get more out of Virtues as your 3rd traitline - 3 condis cleansed/20s, additional protection uptime, excellent resolution access, and an additional stunbreak. Zeal gives you a bump in damage, but between Destroyer ammy/Radiance/Willbender, you probably have more than enough damage

Hey Lonami, just read through your post, and I think you have wonderful ideas. I wanted to address this point here: So I've mentioned this idea before, but I think an absolutely great way to add weapon variety into the game with this new expac would be to: Add in 1-3 entirely new weapon types. Almost every new elite spec would be getting one of theseAdditionally, make underwater weapons amphibious and let one or both of them be available for core classes.So with this, the expac would bring 2-3 new weapons for everyone. Second point there could be accomplished through narrative quite easily imo. There could be something in the expac about "repurposing" underwater weapons as land weapons due to their effectiveness at taking down underwater creatures (that are on land/floating in the air.... because Elder Dragon magic). Spear --> repurposed into a one-handed melee weapon, very similar to Paragon from GW1Trident --> repurposed into the two-handed polearm (2h spear). Similar to GS, maybe slightly lower dps, but more versatile (has some range on its attacks, variety of moveset, like blocks, parries, leaps, evades, a thrown attack, rapid-hitting attacks, wide-range melee aoe)Harpoon gun --> repurposed into either an explosive weapon, or a crossbow/crossbowgun. For the land version of harpoon gun, so many different things could be done with this - it could be a 2h mid-range weapon that focuses on large AOEs and is a bit on the slower side, it could be a 1h ranged weapon that focuses more on CC and AOE than pistol, or it could be an off-hand only weapon that has a lot of utility, kind of like the Clutch Claw in Monster Hunter World. Sky's the limit, yo.

This absolutely. I'll clarify though: No build should be able to indefinitely bunker a 1v2 in the case that you have two dps/burst/non-bunkers fighting against you. As to how long someone should be able to hold off a 1v2 is another question, but it should not be indefinite, that's for sure.

Sure, but if you compare LoW + smiter's boon before, to LoW + smiter's boon now, if things worked like you said, they should function identically. However, the way it functions now is that after casting LoW, there is a much longer delay between the end of the heal skill and smiter's boon proccing, so this almost seems like a bug actually. The only healing skill that smiter's boon SHOULD function differently for is Shelter - should proc after you finish channeling, which it didn't before but it does now.

I'll expand off this since what otto said is true. For the dps-based guardian specs in pvp/wvw, they are actually in a pretty decent spot, but fall behind the top contenders for similar roles since they can't output quite as much as these other specs.... whether it's dps, burst, CC, boons, mobility, or evades. Our two primary dps-based builds, DH and core guard just fall behind builds/specs like holosmith, soulbeast, mirage and revenant (historically). I've given this a lot of thought and I honestly don't think the solution is to buff DH or core guard much more. It would be great if instead of buffing guard, we nerfed some of the other classes. For example, one multi-class nerf that could be done would be to heavily reduce access to the protection boon, or make it so that it's nearly impossible to pull off high dps AND have high protection uptime (make the protection-granting traits compete with key damage-related traits). As it stands right now, the entire guardian class has absolutely no way of dealing with a class that can maintain the protection boon due to a lack of boon removal (and no, the pvp nullification sigil doesn't do NEARLY enough to even be noticeable). There are small QoL or even small numerical buffs that guardian could receive that I think would improve their performance a lot without overtuning them, but we don't need things like flat buffs to damaging/healing skills and traits since that would only further imbalance guard from builds/classes lower than guard on the totem pole.

Double posted, please ignore this one

This is a pretty terrible nerf. So not only has the Smiter's Boon trait been heavily devalued as a condi-cleanse, but it now is a far weaker offensive skill due to the enormous delay of the trait proccing after a heal skill. For example, if you use LoW, the delay between the end of LoW and Smiter's Boon proccing is significantly longer now than it was before. This is a bad change, and it should reverted ASAP. Literally no one asked for or wanted this nerf.

Right, my mistake, should have read that a bit more slowly. I missed the rather unexpected transition from talking about new weapons to new classes, which I think Anet has made clear they don't want to make any more new ones, just new elite specs.