How happy are you with the EODelite specs Beta wise

[XiraMint.3162]

I didn't get to all of them, but I liked Bladesworn, Mechanist and Virtuoso.  I love elementalist but Catalyst was a real puzzle (hammer timing especially felt ungainly), at least as of the first beta showing.  Tried a couple of the others and wasn't immediately inspired, or couldn't get into the flow yet. 

 

Overall, I don't think they are as clean or memorable as HoT and PoF specs ~ It feels to me more like they are offering every class a little bit of every role.  I do appreciate having more weapon choices and more options in functionality.  There are still some decent smacky/speedy options.  Thematically though, I wasn't so sure what they are actually supposed to be about.

[Ashantara.8731]

7 minutes ago, XiraMint.3162 said:

I didn't get to all of them, [...]

Why is everyone using past tense? The elite spec beta is still up. 😉

I could have been testing them, but couldn't be arsed. None of the specs really convinced me they were worth testing (or playing, for that matter). 😕

[XiraMint.3162]

On 11/3/2021 at 7:20 AM, Doul.9314 said:

Anet missed the chance to do Deathstroke for Thief, wielding dual swords (pistols and daggers core thief).

We already have Daredevil, Deadeye (Bullseye), why not to do a Slade Wilson tribute?

I am very disappointed about this.

 

 

I guess I'm late to updating this thread ~ can't find the latest beta specs one.  

 

But I felt like Virtuoso played more like I had expected Thief to play in the first place.  I never felt very proficient with the Thief melee sword/dagger, but the Virtuoso ranged ones have a good flow and some nice defense or burst options on cd with the bladesong and utilities.

[XiraMint.3162]

1 minute ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Why is everyone using past tense? The elite spec beta is still up. 😉

I could have been testing them, but couldn't be arsed. None of the specs really convinced me they were worth testing (or playing, for that matter). 😕

I believe it's almost over, since you're quoting mine. 

I don't put together an unfamiliar spec in mere minutes.  Ymmv?  I do wish it had been more than a few days per preview though.

[Ashantara.8731]

4 minutes ago, XiraMint.3162 said:

I believe it's almost over, since you're quoting mine.

Isn't it running till Tuesday night?

[Pifil.5193]

35 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Isn't it running till Tuesday night?

I thought this one was a week long but it ends tomorrow morning at 5am UTC.

[Tachenon.5270]

I've had the most fun playing Vindicator, Catalyst, and Mechanist. Already have new characters set aside for Vindicator and Mechanist. Funny thing about the Catalyst, it wasn't until yesterday that I actually saw the jade orb. I just happened to be scrolled out far enough that it was visible. I was all like, "Oh! There it is! That orb thing I see people talking about. It really does exist!" Noticed the animals, too. Cool. And one more thing! There I was, play testing a sylvari Catalyst, Longbow Ellie, in the Free City of Amnoon, when I spied someone with an Arenanet tag standing near the choya gate. Well! I immediately jumped up on a nearby crate and began dancing. Represent! Stopped dancing long enough to fight off a choya stampede, then resumed. Eventually, this individual disappeared without ever moving or speaking. Did Longbow Ellie's smooth dance moves make an impression? Will the GW2 elementalist ever get a new ranged spec? The world may never know.

Harbinger may or may not be fun. I can't abide that ugly green funk long enough to find out. Why they cleaned up the previously funky looking Untamed and left the Harbinger to rot in its own blight would make a good episode of Unsolved Mysteries.

Speaking of the Untamed, hooray, the aforementioned ugly green funk is gone, even though the pets still look like they'd give tauntaun innards a run for their money. So yay for that. But I dunno if I'd ever play it. Still not enough thump, or something.

Specter, I dunno. I don't get the whole 'single target support' thing. And I don't like shooting balls of energy at random allies. Like Tali in Destiny's Edge. Er, Gorge.

I had more fun with the Bladesworn this time around, but the gunsaber gimmick seems like it would get old real quick.

Willbender reminds me of Rex from Napoleon Dynamite. And not in a good way. Won't play it. Blah.

As for Virtuoso, I don't like it and I really can't say for sure why. To be fair, my other Mesmers mostly just sit around on the character select screen collecting dust. Except for those not infrequent occasions when I log onto one of them to see if they have something I could use on another character. So.

Thanks for reading!

/e salute

[Ashantara.8731]

1 hour ago, Pifil.5193 said:

I thought this one was a week long but it ends tomorrow morning at 5am UTC.

Oooh, okay. Thanks. 🙂

[Swizzle.7982]

I get the feeling that they simply haven't had enough time with the e-specs this expansion.

Take Virtuoso, the theme is about music but the skills are all about psionic daggers? It's as if they were still at the concepting stage, had all these cool ideas, but then didn't have the time to either streamline the ideas or pin them down quite enough. So we've ended up with this weird mish-mash of concepts. You can see the same thing with Harbinger, a kungfu shadow warrior that drinks potions and accumulates blight... like, what's the theme here? I feel like with most of the previous e-specs you could kind of sum them up in a couple of words, but this time it's quite difficult to easily convey what they're about. 

Then we have what seem like half-baked trait lines on a few classes - go top for condi, middle for support, bottom for power. Which I think again speaks to a lack of cohesion regarding the class concept. When you look at e-specs from previous expansions they either fit a very specific role or through trait choice can be made to fit very specific roles (Scourge can focus on support or condition damage for example depending the other trait lines you choose). It felt like the traits were far more impactful and that there was a real choice to be made in how you built your character. Now there's virtually no build craft to be had (on the mechanist for instance, where traits give your mech specific stats, there's no reason to take a condi trait if you didn't also take the trait that gives your mech condi damage).

I'm still hopeful that by release they'll have really nailed these specs down. Maybe it's simply the case that we don't usually see e-specs this early in development. But I really hope this doesn't make anet feel like they need to hang on to concepts just because we've already seen them (like, maybe get rid or the mismatched musical theme on the psionic dagger mage and give us an actual bard type class later, when you can do it justice?).

Edited December 6, 2021 by Swizzle.7982

[scerevisiae.1972]

Catalyst hammer is easily my least favourite (and IMO the worst-designed) weapon in the game with its absurd and ultra-clunky mix of 2 short-ranged elements and  2 melee elements.  Literally noone wanted yet another melee weapon for Ele but somehow that's what was decided.

Tempest and weaver hugely changed the way Ele plays but with hammer being DOA for WVW, Catalyst is just core Ele with a field.

Then there are the budget copy/paste gen3 legendary weapons.

So yeah, pretty disappointed with EOD as a whole. Seriously considering requesting a refund and moving onto a new MMO.

Edited December 5, 2021 by scerevisiae.1972

[Shiyo.3578]

Almost all of them have extremely boring traits.

Almost all of them are just base spec of that classs +1.

It feels like they went too far with the "Trade offs" meme and refuse to make new elites actually good. They are trying to hard to make sure base specs remain relevant when no one even cares about base specs except some vocal minority on pluto.

Overall: Underwhelming, underdeveloped, uncreative, uninteresting.