End of Dragons Elite Specialization Updates

[Kidel.2057]

Changes on Vindicator are definitely a step in the right direction. Especially the loadout management. 

 

I hope to see some changes on the 2 elite skills and the animations / legend artwork too. 

[Hajime Kurokage.5693]

Liking some of the things im seeing so far, though I was really hoping to read about a harbinger UI improvement here. I really dont want to have to shift my eyes all over the boon bar to figure out what stacks I'm at. Maybe introduce a green bar that looks similar to the Celestial Avatar ring around the health bubble?

[Gyousa.5609]

Really appreciate the clarity and direction of these changes.

 

I understand Untamed has had the least time for changes, but I'm rather disappointed by the lack of differentiation between pets when Unleashed.

 

My tiger still has the same unleashed skills as my owl, who has the same unleashed skills as my devourer etc etc etc.

 

Please consider adding new Unleashed skills, or augmenting them by family or us the Soulbeast's Archetype, which was a great idea and can help streamline changes like this. Such a shame to see that concept not delivered on by a future Ranger elite spec.

[Dawanarth.4601]

7 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

I noticed that it isn't acknowledged in any way that mechanist is not functioning under water at all... does that mean it will be ignored and we are forced to always switch elite specs if we want to do under water content like the under water fractal? Would be great to know if you are at least considering to make the mech usable under water.

Even if it simply became a submarine like a Transformer it would be better than what is currently implanted

[SirRocket.3516]

Amazing post, loving the ideas behind these changes. Cant wait to try.

[Dawanarth.4601]

On 11/23/2021 at 6:45 PM, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

Alliance Tactics: This ability has been split out from Energy Meld and now resides on the Vindicator's F3 slot only when Alliance stance is active. Cooldown is 10 seconds. Energy cost is 0.

If the Skill still switches on their own, then it would not be a great fix for me, I'd prefer for the switch to make it so you switch only the Blue or Red skills to their counterpart (As in BRRBB->Move to Red-> RRRRR or move to Blue-> BBBBB), with Energy Meld belonging to Archemorus (As he is the more Physical focused) while Saint Viktor would get another skill

While on another Legend those skill would work as before but without the Skill switch

[Malkarne.8167]

19 minutes ago, Lucinellia.9247 said:

 

The other great irony is that you can still cycle Endless Night fully over 4 targets in a sub group at 100% boon duration to provide quickness with the new changes. If it is now simply a single target ability that goes to the person you select, you just click through each person in your sub group one by one casting Measured Shot then Endless Night and filling with Wells. Now you've covered Alacrity and Quickness and the gameplay still feels incredibly unfun and not supported by the UI.

 

It is nice that TBC Restoration Druid raiding without addons has been independently created, but there is a reason that design is now pretty antiquated. It isn't fun to play and it is even less fun to play with a game where the UI does not support it in the slightest and encounters are not designed with people clicking raid frames and party members in mind.

 

It really seems like the feedback has not been understood and the state of the game not fully considered (certainly for PvE at least) when implementing the Specter changes. Specter has a lot of promise, but it is going to end up messy and underplayed like Deadeye and Scrapper are/were if this direction is maintained.

 

Lol you're totally right, I didn't even think of that. So now you can still be a quickness bot but it's just more terrible to do. If they really wanted to fix their issue with the quickness it provides they probably should have just massively reduced the duration so it functionally only grants it while the Endless Night channel is active. Like .25 or .50 seconds of quickness per pulse.

[Nyghtslave.6152]

1 minute ago, Dawanarth.4601 said:

If the Skill still switches on their own, then it would not be a great fix for me, I'd prefer for the switch to make it so you switch only the Blue or Red skills to their counterpart (As in BRRBB->Move to Red-> RRRRR or move to Blue-> BBBBB), with Energy Meld belonging to Archemorus (As he is the more Physical focused) while Saint Viktor would get another skill

While on another Legend those skill would work as before but without the Skill switch

As far as I've understood it, you can now toggle between the defensive (blue/Kurzick) skills, and the offensive (yellow/Luxon) skills with the click of a button, at 0 energy cost, with a 10 second cooldown to switch again. Basically like switching attunement on an ele

[Dawanarth.4601]

2 minutes ago, Nyghtslave.6152 said:

As far as I've understood it, you can now toggle between the defensive (blue/Kurzick) skills, and the offensive (yellow/Luxon) skills with the click of a button, at 0 energy cost, with a 10 second cooldown to switch again. Basically like switching attunement on an ele

From what I understood, it's still 1 button (Now F3 instead of F2, which remain Energy Meld) so you are still just flipping your board (From RBBRB->BRRBR) instead of pushing it in a single colour (Which I what I was explaining

[Burial.1958]

22 minutes ago, Wintermute.5408 said:

As for specter, it's a shame the problems of single ally targeting weren't adressed. I know asking for Ui redisign because of 1 espec is stupid, but boy does specter need it. I still hope for at least some crutches to ease the pain. Maybe F3-F7 skills to memorize and target members of subgroup?

 

Single Target Support is completly nonsense beside the clunkyness when u have other classes who can support 5 and 10 peoples  and  that even much better. For me it was a bad idea from the beginning. This game has sticky gameplay since RLS. Everyone on 1 Square and how do you want there now to support 1 specific ally? Did the devs even play some big zerg battles? How do you want to do that manually single target support when u have 10 FPS and an effect thunderstorm on your monitor? Will it stay so, it will be the next Thief Spec which is only for smallscale or PvE Openworld Content.

Edited November 24, 2021 by Grebcol.5984

[The Great Al.2546]

1 hour ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

So you guys are sticking with the same catalyst traits? Thats a kitten shame. Most boring traits of all elite specs

yeah, as excited as I am about the changes, I just reviewed the current traits, and I’m feeling a little less optimistic about the current state. The traits need a full rework. 

[ovenglove.9528]

Isn't sustain on Harbinger now going to be a big problem with no life force to healing? With the lowered mobility and blight still taking 1.5% health I can't see how it could be viable in spvp. 

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

Still reading through it, but it is extremely refreshing to see feedback being mulled over by the design team and relevant changes being implemented because of it, especially as regards how the balancing decisions affect pvp. That, more than anything is what I want to see more frequently. 

Edited November 24, 2021 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Storub.5907]

As a warrior main it is good to see Bladesworn issues being addressed, but it still feels like our spec weapon - pistol is extremely underwhelming. First, it feels weird to only get an offhand option when Spellbreaker got daggers in both hands. We are losing out on a dual-pistol-wielding samurai imagery here 😒. The two skills we do get are very weird and unlikely to see any use, especially since one of them moves you (which is asking for a wipe in some encounters), and doubly-especially because we lose our second set of weapons. A "three-weapon-set" warrior could perhaps take pistol in one of them, a current iteration of Bladesworn never will. He will take something that can DPS or CC.

[AvaLilly.6375]

Virtuoso

It’s great to see that you have started to fix some of the bugs, but we’re far from finished…

 

1. Healing skill needs to be looked at. Should never cancel cast by changing direction. Appreciate that the projectiles may not hit, but at least give us the heal without interruption. 
2. Cast times are way too long across the board. Particularly for being projectiles. Shatters need a hard look at for cast times. 
3. Bring the focus to Power and Defence… we don’t really need a condi focus… and… no one wants it either!

Edited November 24, 2021 by AvaLilly.6375

[ChronoPinoyX.7923]

Alright so with regards to the key E-Specs I was very critical about, here's some of my thoughts

Bladesworn:
THANK YOU, you finally gave us Stability for when we use Dragon Stance so we can actually use our Burst skill without getting tapped on the shoulder and getting interrupted. I'm slightly more optimistic about how this will play out in terms of being able to properly utilize Dragon Trigger. If the alterations to the flow speed are adjusted to what I think they are, then this may actually prove to be quite a detrimental change when combined with Stability. I'll temper my expectations on this right now, however I do see this as a massive improvement, at least in part, to being able to actually use our burst without getting interrupted by something stupidly minimal. Also why have you still not changed Pistol to Main Hand?

Vindicator:
So far I'm liking what I'm reading regarding the adjustments made to Alliance Tactics and only swapping between the Champions when Alliance Tactics is used, that effectively gives us a more varied playstyle with 3 Legends in Total, technically speaking which I like. This should have been the proper way to do it from the beginning. In terms of the GS changes, I'm still not seeing any CC skills on GS Rev but I might just be blind and not seeing it. If the case is the latter, then that should address the issue of the GS lacking in any real competitive edge over other Rev weapons. Lastly... You didn't address Urn of Saint Viktor's functionality in any capacity. I get that you reduced the Health and Energy Cost for upkeep, but the function is still gonna be useless for the large majority of the content in the game. I'll see how it plays during beta but considering what I've read, I don't expect it to function any different from what we had during the 2nd Beta. 

Untamed:
OK so far I like the change made to Vow of the Untamed, we finally stopped getting punished just because of our choices on which we unleash. Giving us back the core functionality of attacking our target and calling back our pet and giving us the option to change the control to how we want is how it should have been done from the beginning and I'm happy you chose to give it back to us. In terms of the changes made to all other weapons outside of Hammer when Unleashing the Ranger, I need to play it first to see if it makes any detrimental changes before I can really judge it. I think at this point I need to actually play this before I can give my full attention regarding Unleashed weapons. 

That's all I got for now. Can't believe I had to write at textwall but hey, if it means changes are gonna happen, Ima textwall away lel

Edited November 24, 2021 by ChronoPinoyX.7923

[hgkmaxymus.9321]

Nice changes. But I have some things to add. 

 

- Did I read it right? When you spec to Untamed, your attack/come back now are F6 and F7?! Why not make these keys the new spec pet skills? Or change the whole class pet commands.

- No news about the harbinger utility skill icons. They look like placeholders, not real skill icons, they don't match with anything.  Let's hope they release the real ones when the xpac comes 🙂 . 

 

 

[RyuDragnier.9476]

I do not agree with the Specter's Scepter nerfs or the change to Consuming Shadows. What you've done is turn Scepter into a single target buffing tool, which nobody is going to use. Why on Tyria would I waste time trying to buff a single ally when I can use another weaponset and actually do damage to the boss? The 3 on Sc/P was the thing that made it worth taking since you were helping multiple allies, not just one. I can say with certainty that with this change, I wouldn't take Scepter in Raids, Fractals, or PvE in general, it's not worth it with this change.

Consuming Shadows, the problem with it was never how it made Shroud feel like something you sacrificed, it was the fact that Shroud itself LOCKS YOU OUT OF WELLS, WITH SUBPAR SUPPORT. Almost all the support in Shroud wasn't good enough, so people preferred to sacrifice it simply because that burst heal/barrier was more useful than all of the Shroud skills combined. If I could use Wells in Shroud, I'd use it more. if there was more support than just barriers for your partner, I'd use it more. If there were actual support in there like Aegis, Vigor, Resolution, Protection, etc that effect more than just my Siphon'd ally, I'd use it more. But Shroud itself DOES NOT DO ENOUGH SUPPORT TO WARRANT USE. Fix the support on Shroud, and then maybe it'll be worth using.

Edited November 24, 2021 by RyuDragnier.9476

[ChronoPinoyX.7923]

2 minutes ago, hgkmaxymus.9321 said:

- Did I read it right? When you spec to Untamed, your attack/come back now are F6 and F7?! Why not make these keys the new spec pet skills? Or change the whole class pet commands.

The default is F6/F7, but you can change it in the control Options, so it's not a massive deal. Once you change it, that pretty much fixes the problem (if the changes are to be believed) 

[Kitta.3657]

27 minutes ago, dou.7083 said:

 

1. People crying about the condi variation and relying on the fact that Mirage is a "condi spec" need to be hard forced into queues with all the power Mirages in PvP and WvW until they forget that Virtuoso exists and start crying about the sword ambush instead, so that we can redirect useless feedback somewhere else until the release

The problems of a condi virtuoso are completely disconnected from Power Mirage. I've been playing a power mirage in both PvP and WvW (small scale minus the short period of time where you could play a snowball perma dodging build) since the launch of it and you are missing the point. The point is: Why would you take condi virtuoso? what does it give you? You can do everything better with condi mirage ESPECIALLY in PvP. Nothing in the virtuoso kit competes with what mirage offers on such a level that it begs the question of why making a halfbaked one when you could focus on what virtuoso is actually offering. A lot of mirage offers to both in a way that virtuoso does not where it has traits that are so strong in both scenarios but virtuoso instead hyper focuses it's traits to a point where there is no variety. It's half-baked. 

Also I'm done with so much condi mesmer all the time.

[ChronoPinoyX.7923]

15 minutes ago, Dawanarth.4601 said:

From what I understood, it's still 1 button (Now F3 instead of F2, which remain Energy Meld) so you are still just flipping your board (From RBBRB->BRRBR) instead of pushing it in a single colour (Which I what I was explaining

As it says here, you only swap to the corresponding Alliance Ability when using Alliance Tactics. If this is to be believed, you're only pure Red or pure Blue now, no more mixing the two

On 11/23/2021 at 5:45 PM, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

• Alliance abilities will now only switch to their opposites when Alliance Tactics is used.

[Trepidation Lost.3469]

Spectre changes and the change to harbinger heals make the specs worse than they were pre change 🙄

I’ll stick to my hoT classes for now 

[Jalad Lantana.3027]

My impression when I tried the Mechanist was that the Mech was way OP in PVE, so much I expected it to get nerfed.  It was tanky enough and had enough damage it could solo elites, while the player sat down and watched.  The damage meant it could also dispatch regular level 80 mobs quickly with the player providing no help.  Try any of that with any ranger pet.

 

Shaving some hits points off and cutting back on precision seems to be the main nerfs applied, so many be it won't be able to face tank elites any more, but cutting back on precision may not be enough to keep it from effectively burning down mobs twice as fast as any ranger pet.

[LucianDK.8615]

The mech absolutely needs to not poof when going underwater!

[Infusion.7149]

Thanks for the update, there's quite a bit to comb over here.