Loboling.5293

So for me, I had the most fun running around the open world with Virtuoso, but I also enjoyed bladesworn. I didn't bother doing any pvp or wvw, however I could see some of the design flaws, and I went into the heart of the mists to test the pvp damage of the various elite specs. Harbinger: Like others have said, while I really appreciate an attempt to make more interaction with blight, I found the spec more fun during the previous beta. I think if they are to remove the defense hp of shroud or not have spammable barrier, they need to accept that harbinger needs more mobility. I also miss the health regen, but I can see why it's gone. But blight needs to have more payoff, and there should be more mobility. Catalyst: Just kind of meh. I really don't like the design of this class. Untamed: Felt like too much to do, fun, but not my cup of tea. I'll leave this for younger chickens. 😜 Specter: Adds something special for thief. Mechanist: Fun, and I like the new teleport. I'm not much into pet classes, but I can see the alure. Willbender: Probably my new favorite guardian spec. Could use some tuning, better mobility, and some better sustain options. Still lots of fun to play. Vindicator: Very smooth in open world, just non-stop one shotting things around me. Much better than previous beta. *Bladesworn: It's still got some big issues related to traits, cooldown timers, stowing weapons, swap gunblade cooldown, and activating dragonslash from your primary weapon. However, I found the spec, after a bunch of practice to be quite a lot of fun. I'm still sad with the design decisions for bladesworn, as I don't think warrior needed this. But I do enjoy the gameplay loop in open world pve. Needs a lot of QoL fixes that will allow for more buildcraft and versatility. Which will bring it into pvp at least. *Virtuoso: Just fun. It's a bit too single target for my tastes, even if it's not really limited that way. But going between groups of mobs and just blowing them up is a ton of fun. It really feels like an upgraded core mesmer that trades convenience and higher damage for less defense. My new favorite open world mesmer build. (Along with Willbender, who became my new favorite open world guardian build)

While I do enjoy bladesworn, despite it's flaws, in PvE, it has obvious flaws in pvp and wvw by design. I think if the Dev's wanted to make a meme one shot build, they should've based it on the Fist of the North Star rather than a samurai power ranger hybrid. We need more Aatatatatatatatatatatata!! Let our attacks land normally and swiftly, but have a delayed effect. Omae wa mou shindeiru....

What's your favorite new elite spec coming with EoD. As of Beta week 4. You can select multiple options if you enjoyed a few equally.

I'd prefer to see: 1) More damage emphasis from the pet 2) More protection for the pet, so they are strong enough for participating in zerg fights. 3) Some way of weakening the ranger to further empower your pet, making it into a true unleashed wrecking ball. The current direction for ambushes and just more pet control seems counter to the concept of the character imo.

I could get behind this kind of goo. I do think untamed should work with more emphasis on pet damage, and significantly more protection for your pet. So much, you could bring them into zergs. That along with this, where the ranger literally sacrifices life to keep their untamed pet going wild on everyone is such an appealing idea to me.

If Untamed got that kind of buff, they would be on par with the main pet class of gw2, the mechanist... I don't think that makes any sense when rangers have their own thing. 🙃

Okay, then how about we remove 300 toughness from bladesworn and at least let it hit as hard as berserker? That would be balanced for warrior right? 😜

Can we let bladesworn hit that hard with a fully charged dragonslash?

I gave a longer review of things that could be addressed, but having played even more time in pve with it and I'll say this. Please give us the ability to stow the gunsaber, we have a sheathed model, please let us put the blade away. Redo pistol (even if current skills look amazing) and add some ranged option. Allow us to draw our shealthed gunsaber at any point. (dragonslash activation from normal weapons). Improve the custimization/look of the gunsaber. Improved base flow regen. Improved utilities. Heal and elite are good. (although maybe a trait for condis would be good)

I chose option b. \__/O\__/ --o^_^o-- __l l__

So Bladesworn... in PvE The Good: Once I got over some of the chunkiness, I actually had fun. The spec is really hard to get rolling, but landing those dragon slashes still feels good. The spec seems semi balanced for PvE The Bad: The utility skills could help free warriors from banners. If they were impactful enough, allowing for +40k dps when slotted. Right now, the utilities suck. (Besides flow stabilizer, which is good because of how hard it is to get it up in the first place.) The spec is pretty clunky still, although I think for PvE it's manageable, but I agree with some others that it felt a bit better if the charge could be a bit longer in PvE The gunsaber skills have too long of cooldowns. No burst skills makes some weapons feel really weak, this leads to almost no excitement for the new pistol. The new pistol is fun, but weak, plus it doesn't serve any real purpose, without directly competing with other warrior weapon skills. The spec doesn't deliver much more than a slowed down berserker. It could be so much more. (add range, add support, or add utilities so good it makes bannerless optional. Or everything ;P) Gunsaber must be stowable and shouldn't be required to activate dragonslashes. The spec is actually growing on me a bit more, but I don't even want to bother in PvP or WvW. It's just not tuned right, like the rest of warrior kit. Bring back damage on some cc skills, bring back bursts, bring back weapon swap, make gunsaber better, improve utility skills, increase the usability of dragonslash 2 (speed) & 3 (size), allow dragonslash from other weapons to start charging, redo pistol skills (range/mh), give a support option trait, resolve/protection/resistance on slashes 360 aoe, increase damage of dragonslash 1 in pvp/wvw. It's a lot of stuff to be done, but I think this spec could actually be salvaged. Good luck devs to get this done or some of the other interesting ideas I've heard here. (kits, which could make the loss of weapon swap and burst skills tolerable)

Perhaps, I did it only once both times, with no attempt to optimize my rotation. But I figured it was worth showing the only thing this spec is good at in my opinion. It deals quite a bit of damage in a short interval. It looks like it took me a second longer to kill the hydra this time, possibly due to the nerfs. Still kind of fun though, even if very samey. When I'm playing, I barely notice I'm not playing base mesmer, although it has some more quality of life. I consider it mesmer 2.0. They removed clones, nerfed the kit, and gave it some slightly more potent burst skills. Eh, I love mesmer, so it's hard to hate it, but I'd agree it doesn't really bring much new. The improved QoL of continuously stocking blades (ammo for shatter) makes some specs and abilities fun options now. So I really think, it's just a different take on base mesmer. But can burst like a chrono/zerker/DH/SlB/Weaver/Reaper, but you lose clones (ammo) and some defense and trade them for blades (ammo) and auto blade gen (more ammo). I've got to say, they made some strange design decisions with this round of elite specs. Some elite specs don't feel like they were thought of with the rest of the kit in mind. Virtuoso: Mechanically plays almost no different than core mesmer. Catalyst: More melee fast cycling attunements. (core ele 2.0?) Untamed: Helps rangers how? Roaming, skirmishing? (Core Ranger 2.0) Bladesworn: More melee power dps, but clunky (Core Warrior Pre-release...) The rest of them, from a design pespective at least make some sense. But they missed a chance here to not just fix the issues these classes have with core, and making brand new elite specs that bring something new to the table. I guess they do bring something new, but not relative to what players have wanted. Mesmer: Long range nuker (they got that right). Now come up with mechanics for it. Don't just remove clones and rename shatters. Get the animation team to make us a 'mechanic'... Elementalist: Long range nuker again. Elementalist wanted a weapon more focused on pure destruction, that relied very little on attunement swapping. Where staff is a aoe damage/support hybrid weapon. Something you could use to rain down hell on your enemies, without the tradeoffs of staff. Something with less button presses/minute. Ranger: ZvZ, GvG WvW spec, that allows the ranger to join the likes of Scourge, Firebrand, Spellbreaker, Herald in the big fights. Same thing ele wanted in some ways. Getting 'back' their artillery damage. Warrior: Support Spec (And rebalance warrior utilities to offer greater value to help balance vs the cost of banners)

I just went back and killed the Hydra again since the changes.

That's a good point actually, but then they should've implemented this change at that time. Right now, it objectively makes the game more difficult for dealing with outnumber situations. But you're right, eventually, this problem will solve itself with the coming updates to alliances.

Seems like a really bad change. When gw2 launched it had the premise that people could do anything and progress. This meant that gathering, killing mobs, crafting, questing, events... all contributed xp. For wvw, the premise was if you wanted to defend a tower, roam, or zerg, you could make progress. I think this is a shift away from core values of gw2. I'm totally against removing repair contribution. Onto the topic of pips, I'm not a fan either. However, more baseline pips is nice, the loss of outnumbered, for my server will blow. I run the buff about 50% of the time, going to lose a lot of value from my time in wvw, trying to defend towers from zergs with a few good people. I'm not impressed. Hopefully they don't keep this direction.

I've got to say this, because I think it'll get ignored. Vindicator dodge needs to be able to move up/down terrain. Your character jumps into the sky, let us jump up a platform or at least jump down one like the default dodge.

I agree 100% that this was the beginning of trouble for gw2 pvp. In fact, the early seasons were awful. However, I do remember that after many patches, they eventually got pvp into a very enjoyable place again. This was the patch just before PoF launched. I'd be happy with anything resembling that patch or vanilla gw2. This game has the best combat system in an mmo (imo), but it's bogged down with too much aoe spam and too many boons. Hopefully they just decide to gut the OP specs, and balance EoD specs, and then work from there. There is still hope! Maybe.

I'd like to suggest dragonslashes damage go up in pvp & wvw, and you also maintain your adrenaline outside combat. I would like for Dragonslashes to be available from any weapon. And switching between your weapon, gunblade and dragonslash should feel pretty seamless. Lastly, please consider adding a skin for the Gunblade, to allow players to customize it's looks. Such as making it look like other Greatswords. I realize it's part of the aesthetic, but for the drawing animation, if I'm playing with a greatsword, I want to be able to sheath and draw for my dragonslashes, all with a single animation/skin.

This is an example of why gw2 has the best mount system in any MMO. (Just needs more skins unlocked through achievements)

Halloween by a country mile. I almost never finish the yearly festival achievements, but Halloween is usually done early. My next favorite is probably SAB, although wintersday is fun too! All else is pretty boring imo. I would rather do other things in-game and often miss the festivals. Although a few were fun when I was still a newbie at this game.

I think, unless I'm mistaken, that the quickness support only works against multiple enemies. So quickness is not as reliable in some boss encounters.

I prefer the dead parents noble combination. Because in the story, you were alive with your parents and then they were gone. You were too young to remember what happened, but not too young to forget them entirely. I think your necro could explore the dark arts to search for them in the afterlife. And unlike the other story arcs, this one leaves the least open to never touched again lore, like how you can't interact with your SISTER after rescuing her really. It makes no sense to go through all that trouble, and in gw1, she'd have become a follower. But as it is, she's just a prop with no real identity, and that's why I often go dead parents. Good luck with your new character and have fun! I do the same thing all the time, probably my favorite part of gw2.

OP this spec looks more viable than any support thief I could imagine A-Net making. You'll have aoe alacrtity, and some very high personal dps. It's a bit like a banzerker. You bring some extra damage for the group, but you don't sacrifice much for it. The flip side to that is that you can focus allies to keep them alive in a crunch. So it's like a scourge combined with a banner zerker. It'll be awesome, and while it might not find itself to be META, it'll certainly be viable and even borderline broken in some moments. You can spot heal, you can stealth allies, you can perma alacrity buff them, you can put out at least some quickness, all while mostly focusing on offence, and optimizing your damage rotation. It doesn't seem to have much of a support rotation, which is GOOD. I don't want thief support to play like a druid, etc. Focus on damage, and aoe boon support (just cast wells), while you save people who step into bad stuff. I know a lot of people would've loved a support that's OP like firebrand, but I think it's good A-Net isn't making the same mistake twice. Hopefully, as hard as this would be for guardians, they make legendary monsters able to hit through aegis, then the balance between support is much more in line. Shame they ruined the aegis mechanic with firebrand, since it no longer has a significant cost to use. Just spam as needed and good, allies survived instead of go splat. Scourge and Firebrand are terrible specs, that may be strong but they make the overall game worse. I'm glad Thief, isn't adding to that. It'll be powerful, useful, and very strong in some situations. Plus, it looks like an entirely new mechanic to play with, single target focus support. As a big time thief player, I'm very happy with this. But I get how in comparison to what's already in the game, it does lack the same luster. But I think that's good.

With serendipitous timing it would seem lol. I think we're both glad we're getting such a unique new support spec! So win, win!

Well I was wrong, they are everything I dreamed of, but also aoe boon spam... =D I can't wait to try this one, Thief was my first character and I always would've mained them if they had a support option. I just like the variety in gameplay focus. This is going to keep me occupied for a while I hope. Assuming it plays as good as it looks, although Willbender looked really good too, but played like kitten. Hopefully Specter isn't the same.