[Brutal Shot issue. Flip the order of the attack and the dodge and lower the cast time.]

@Sobx.1758 said:...or don't let your opponent walk into you when you're playing rifle? ;p

The skill's intended purpose is to create a gap when someone does close in on you. You are playing a game where there are 1200 range shadowsteps and myriad other mobility skills, of course it's going to happen.

So, when yourself in that situation, you suddenly realise that the skill doesn't even work if your opponent LoS you by walking to the side or behind you, yet it still goes on full cooldown. Or they can very easily interrupt you. It's an escape move, it's supposed to have some degree of reliability.

[Quick list of Warrior trait/skills that Anet really needs to look at IMO]

I think rifle should get a similar change to ele Lava Axe. Every time you use a rifle skill, your next AA fires two bullets. Then balance the weapon around more sustained damage, instead of meme oneshots.

[Which class for easy map completion and story]

I've recently picked up warrior (it and Necro were the only 2 classes I haven't really been able to enjoy). But I discovered the joy that is axe, and Spellbreaker adds a lot of depth and complexity to the one-dimensional core warrior.

I'm using this build, I have 100% crit chance with fury (you can swap some Assassins trinkets for Zerker and make up for the lost precision with food, but I like having freedom on what food to use), perma 25 might, a ton of sustain with Might makes right, Healing Signet as well as the defensive layers of Full Counter and the crazy endurance regen from MMR and Building Momentum (combined with the burst spam thanks to Attacker's Insight).

It takes a bit of practice to make the most out of Full Counter, but it's a very fun and rewarding build and I'm having a blast.

Another suggestion would be Power Chrono. It's actually quite a deceptively tanky build, since mesmer has its fair share of defensive utility, but also all the phantasms and clones you spam will quite often draw aggro away from you. A drawback though is that phantasms require a lot of precision, so unlike most classes that can swap a couple of trinkets and use the same gear for both open world and fractals/raids, mesmer would require a more focused build to get the most out of it. But it's not a deal-breaker, since pve is easy enough that you can afford to be less optimal.

[Mesmer Specialization that summons Illusions to heal with?]

Chrono is actually pretty good at healing, at least in pve.

Illusionary Inspiration combines really well with Chronophantasma. The staff Phantasm alone procs it 6 times every ~10s; 6 procs provide a total healing similar to, say, druid's Lunar Impact. And that's only one skill, you have other sources of clone generation. The bottleneck was that you couldn't shatter them fast enough, but the new Rewinder solved that issue.

You also have Restorative Mantras that you can spam in combination with Mantra of Pain. You even have a big heal button in Well of Eternity + All's Well that can reach above 10k heal in healing power gear.

[What does alacrity look like now?]

It looks like rainbow-coloured flames.

[RIP Banner Slaves and warriors in general]

With alacrity the cd drops down to 64s, while the banner lasts 60s. So the "steep" price for not picking them up is 4s of downtime.

[Rune of Tormenting]

@Nightmare.1234 said:

all it needs is a 1 second icd

That would be too useless then, unless the heal amount was massively buffed. Otherwise all the bonus would do is heal you for 170 when using a torment skill, up to a maximum of 170/sec, but usually much lower than that in practice.

I would rather they reworked it to heal you every second based on the number of torment stacks you have on enemies, instead of healing when applying it.

[The Psychomancer: Mesmer Elite Specialization Suggestion]

Oh wow, this is so similar to one of the 2 spec concepts I've been working on, I'll have to post it one of these days. Like the general concept of psychic domination, returning to gw1 mesmer roots and hexes, and my heal skill is named "Mind over Matter", too.

My criticism is about trait interaction. Escape Artist and stuff is one thing, but there are tons of shatter traits that don't seem compatible at all with the new profession mechanic. I guess for all the "do X based on how many clones you shattered" you could say all hexes default to 1 clone shattered, and apply these effects on the hexed target, but stuff like Cry of Pain or Master of Fragmentation. Or the fact that you remove Distortion means Inspiring Distortion will have no effect, unless you also take Blurred Signets.

The other fact I disagree with is that you double-down on hexes, as the new skill type might as well be hexes by another name, only difference is they are missing the duration extension from clone summons. That means you are introducing 10 new effects everyone facing a Psychomancer has to be aware of, and most of those are punishing enough that you have to take notice of them the second they are applied, or you just hit your ally for 6k for example. Yes, you could add some fancy symbols similar to Deadeye's scope, but that means you need 10 of them and people have to be able to tell them apart easily. And unless I'm mistaken, there's nothing stopping you from stacking them, so how would that work for visual tells?

These issues are not exclusive to your concept, they are similar questions I had to ask myself when going through gw1's hexes again. The thing is gw2 is a fast-paced game, and the condition system is already bad enough at forcing you to pay attention to the UI, I don't see how you could realistically add another layer of that on top of it. In my opinion, if hexes were to ever return, they would have to either work as part of the existing boon/condition system, or be special effects tied to very visible skills, like how Disenchantment was introduced as part of Winds of Disenchantment.

[Post your Mesmer pics here]

@Warlyx.6732 said:name of that chest item? :blush:swords name please? :)

Chest is Feathered Vestments, sword is the new legendary sword The Shining Blade.

[Guardian. The paladin, the antihero. How it feels? Charr vs human.]

Dragonhunter doesn't feel that paladin-like to me. Jumping into the air with your wings, attacking your enemies with your bow, while placing traps which spawn blades and swords to impale your enemies, it all feels closer to the antihero archetype.

Then, firebrand takes the battlemage theme and runs with it. Even your axe, which is otherwise a melee "warrior-y" weapon, creates a second ghostly blade when you attack, which makes it more magical. The symbol resembles those magic rune circles you see in other games. You use spellbooks to cast spells, and channel mantras. You are very much a heavy-armoured spellcaster.

Between human and charr, I don't know which you'll enjoy best. I struggled myself choosing a race for my guardian. With asura, especially with their cultural armor, which look like power suits, the paladin guardian becomes almost like a holosmith. All those glowing blue blades and shields could easily be holograms, and the glowing power suit armor adds to that feeling. But I ended up going with a sylvari instead. As a sylvari, you have a lot of the same qualities you listed for human, and sylvari themselves are a noble race, which fit with guardian's altruism. But at the same time, after the story of Heart of Thorns, it made sense for my sylvari to be more aggressive, more of an antihero, when Mordremoth threated their entire race.

My suggestion would be to take both your human and your charr to the pvp lobby and see how each feel at level 80 (unless you've already leveled them up of course). Try different skills and see the difference the animations make. Then, go to a bank or crafting station and go to the wardrobe tab and check all the different arnour skins in the game. See what looks good to you, and which race best translates to what you have in mind for your guardian.

[best race for revenant]

Asura have amazing cultural heavy armour, and are all around awesome.Charr have Rytlock, but for some that may be a reason not to go charr. Renegade is charr-themed, too.Sylvari have Ventari as a legend.Humans work with everything.Norn, well, I never liked them. Male norn look ridiculous, and female are just humans with bigger sliders and worse voice acting.

[Open World Domination: Mirage]

@Rysdude.3824 said:Would there be huge difference if one went from all Viper’s to all Trailblazer?

Looking at mirage benchmarks, about 15% of the damage is power-based. Of course, this is a different build, but it gives a rough idea of power's contribution to dps. So, that part of your damage will be hurt, while the condi output is unaffected. In return, you get tons of survivability.

[Is it just me, or is the Guardian's Scepter the most underwhelming weapon in the game?]

The point of the thread was not that scepter is underperforming. It just feels awful to use, because the skills are extremely bland in terms of animation, visuals, sound, and functionality. There's nothing in the game that looks worse than a guardian spamming scepter autos with quickness.

[[Poll] Weapon for the next Guardian Elite Specialization]

Dual pistols with a spec focused on mobility.

The only other weapon I would like to see on guardian would be a land spear. A few years a go I would say warhorn, but that ship sailed now, the balance team is still monkeying around and denying guardian access to swiftness, but we have mounts now.

[Dragon Hunter vs Firebrand]

Where is the neither option?

Overall, neither of them are as good as they could have been. Dragonhunter always felt like a disjointed addition to the class, and even though it was the first spec, it already felt like they were grasping at straws to make a guardian elite spec. Which shouldn't have been the case, when guardian is a notorious case of a class not exploring its core thematic. I mean, our profession mechanic is about burning, healing and preventing damage, and base guardian can't be condi, healer or tank.

Firebrand is a clownfiesta or two. It's a support spec that can't support in pve. A support that tries to maximise its personal damage, which is as contradictory as it gets. The visuals get no points from me either, all mantras use the exact same recoloured visual, and we didn't see the return of tomes, like it was promised. Every time I see my character standing empty handed with toiler paper around them, it looks as bad as the first time.

I'm currently playing firebrand because burn guardian is what I've wanted to play from day 1, but firebrand gets no points from me for that, because it should have been something base guardian could do.

[Marauders Vs Berserker Items]

I do not like Marauders after the patch. I would rather focus on retaliation and wear Valks. With Marauder, even though the dps loss is minor, the hp increase is also small.