What's with all the clunk?

[Caysadia.7405]

Snappy, fluid combat has been a core of Guild Wars 2 since its inception, and so far each expansion managed to build on that base while introducing fun new mechanics. Fast forward to End of Dragons, and it feels like that core has been ejected to the wayside. 

 

Willbender and Bladesworn both suffer from obtuse animation locks for PvP combat, and the reward isn't worth the risks taken. Long drawn out skills that can be cancelled, at the cost of the skill never firing. Trying to land virtue of justice, or chain dragon triggers, both feel really bad in the current iteration of both classes.

 

Then you have Catalyst and Vindicator, whose new mechanics are interesting, but add a crazy amount of odd bloat to both classes. Why do the jade spheres operate on both an energy and cooldown system? The spheres may be functional in PvE, but in PvP modes someone can just turn 360 degrees and walk away, forcing you to cancel early as both you and the enemy reposition. Then you have vindicator, which feels annoyingly energy hungry, and feels as if it has a crazy amount of downtime. 

 

It feels like the design doesn't want to swing back to the frankly broken state PoF specs released in, but it feels like the pendulum has swung too far left, and are instead left with classes that may be unique in gameplay, but do established things several times worse than previously released specs.

[Oslaf NA.2793]

yeah you are right.  Guild wars 2 selling point is its fluid combat and fast flow of skill usage. the flow of the new specs except harbinger is so clunky and is almost entering into the realm of unresponsiveness.  This all smells of CMC and his philosophies. 

[Xenesis.6389]

Feel like they're trying to add too much to classes just to make them feel way different from their core. Balance of classes is going to be a nightmare going forward, have no confidence they will get it right, which I guess is ok because I really don't feel like playing any of these new specs.

[Chaba.5410]

Need a BiP necro if your party needs more energy.  Oops sorry. Wrong game.

Edited September 21, 2021 by Chaba.5410

[subversiontwo.7501]

I must say that I agree with what Caysadia brings up here.

Somehow all these specs seem very backward to what we are used to. GW2 classes and combat is known to be snappy but also to have some sort of depth to its simplicity. At face value things seem rather generic but then it has layers of depth provided by traits and utilities interactions.

Almost all the new especs feels completely opposite and are convoluted at their core (assuming very specific ways of combo'ing things into oneanother and going through a number of hoops to achieve some specific end result) but very plain in how they expand out in other synergies outside of some expected half-rotation for their most rudimentary buttons. They feel like raid-rotation- or beat-em-up combo designs that finds their way into an MMO poorly. We need ways to deal with a +1 in the back, not find ways to hadoken someone into a 100-0 chain.

In fact, I've seen quite alot of people criticizing the Virtuouso for being uninspiring but I find it to be the most clear-cut and befitting typical overall GW2 gameplay. For me it was really easy to see how the daggers were meant to be played different from clones and how some aspects of ability types were moved around (ie., people complaining about the F-skills not being AoE overlooked that the spec had other choices for that built in which enabled the F-skills to add more of a focus and breach dimension ontop). It felt very "GW2" to play in that sense. The label fit the content: It is a Mesmer that trades clones for focus burst, block skills and additional AoE on weapons and utilities. It plays and feels like a Mesmer.

Most of these other specs had far more interesting labels but the content just does not line up with the labels or the intent behind them or how people expect them to be played just doesn't add up. The Ele plays better with other weapons (and exploits aura/boon interactions). The Guard was supposed to be fast but isn't (and exploits icd-loop interactions). The Rev's dodge is a complete outlier compared to everything else it does (which works quite well beyond it, so, it would likely play better with normal dodges). It doesn't add to- it takes from the whole and sit alone.

I mean, I know I said this for the Guard but it holds true for things like Ele and the Warrior too: It's not a question of them being underdimensioned now to make people test the designs, it's the fact that even if they would be dealing too much damage their underlying design is simply  too one dimensional and just about spitting out damage without any context in mind that I can think of. It doesn't really have a role whether you play self-sufficient or aim to find a place in a group and that seems to be the reception across the modes too.

I think a good comparison is to bring up the recent-day power-Scrapper builds. In terms of balance they're a nightmare (either bullying or non-consequential) and the way they play is pretty numbing. The Scrapper as a bruiser just isn't a fun interaction (it tends to roll or get rolled, depending on whether the barrier loop breaks or not). So, we're in alot of luck that Scrapper has never just been that hammer roamer as it started out life as a stealth/reveal specialist, can be played as support, has neat hybrid interactions in multiple directions, can be played at different scales and so on so forth. If Scrapper was just to roll the dice and swing it would not have stayed the test of time that it has. Many of the new specs are even less dimensional than Scrapper just played as a bruiser.

Edited September 22, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501

[Visionary.1705]

So far none of the new specs feel even remotely smooth to play. Jerky, clunky moves that seems to have been more thought out to use on stationary pve bosses and the likes.

[Oslaf NA.2793]

you feel indeed stationary when playing these new classes and much more than the usual.  almost feel like these new specs belong to a different game. 

[Junkpile.7439]

Catalyst is fluid when you play scepter/dagger and won't use sphere. To be fair meteor shower and churning earth are kind of stationary and won't even hit hard.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Junkpile.7439

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Junkpile.7439 said:

Catalyst is fluid when you play scepter/dagger and won't use sphere. To be fair meteor shower and churning earth are kind of stationary and won't even hit hard.

I saw a clip on how great the catalyst was.

It was basicly a core ele with core weapons and core skills not using anything that catalyst offers but still.

[Gibson.4036]

Agreed. 

I had hope for Willbender because I’ve always had a mixed relationship with Guardian due to it not feeling as fluid as other classes. Playing it, though, even with its many mobility skills, felt clunky. I could cover ground, but it still lacked the fluidity of my holo, mirage, daredevil, or d/d Ele.

The same was true of Virtuoso. Plodding setup and payoff compared to the rest of Mesmer. Same with hammer Catalyst.

Revenant has always felt clunky to me with its constant legend flipping, and Vindicator just looked like doubling down on that, so I didn’t even try it.

Overall I haven’t found anything wow in the new specs, or any reason to think I’d shift to them once EOD launches from the specs I already play.

 

[Junkpile.7439]

I don't like ele main hand dagger skills because most of them go throught enemy and you need to turn whole time.

 

[DeceiverX.8361]

In trying to be unique for this release, ANet sold the soul of their classes by trying to blur the lines too much. 

What's left is a homogenous goop of convoluted mechanics that could only ever be balanced in a vacuum. 

If they're OP they subsequently invalidate all of core on other classes.  The willbender example being the perfect one - if I wanted to play something featuring mobility and high damage, why as a new player should I have picked guard and not thief?   If I wanted to play squishy midrange caster DPS, why play necro to play the new spec rather than ele? 

It's very sloppy design.  There are ways to blur the line a little, but ANet went way too far here. 

[aspirine.6852]

I thought the worst so far was willbender. I started to look at my other games and internet connection because it was so unresponsive...  Almost lagging. 

[Xenesis.6389]

9 hours ago, Junkpile.7439 said:

Catalyst is fluid when you play scepter/dagger and won't use sphere. To be fair meteor shower and churning earth are kind of stationary and won't even hit hard.

Then what's the point of playing catalyst if you're not going to use hammer or the f5? lol, the traits aren't mind blowing good either.

-----

I think anet has made the mistake of looking to other classes in order to make specs, instead of looking at the class itself and trying to improve on their core mechanics. I understand they want specs to play differently, but it shouldn't resemble another class.

They're plucking skills and mechanics from other classes to make a spec, meanwhile negating a lot of core stuff. Why is willbender playing like a thief, while their virtues have no passives affecting a bunch of their traits?, why did harbinger get gravity well? couldn't they have made it an aoe fear instead to keep with their theme not chronos? why doesn't the elixirs for them heal the blight so you could have a back and forth of blight between using the shroud and the elixirs?

Bladesworn get their adrenaline changed to "flow" and a gunblade kit that wipes out a second weapon set for them lol, the class with "fast hands" no longer gets a second weapon set to play with in combat lol. Catalyst gets an adrenaline/lifeforce mechanic instead of, I dunno, cycle through their attunements(their class mechanic) to proc the f5 instead?, only to drop a terrible aoe combo field, do they even remember why they moved away from field combo combat all those years ago? They apparently remembered when they did the scrapper gyro revamp, but not now.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Xenesis.6389

[Dralor.3701]

Power level aside that is my biggest issue as well with the new elites. They feel so clunky, it isn’t fun.