End of Dragons Elite Specialization Updates

[Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497]

All that feed back from specter, and this is what it lead to? I mean... I guess I'm not touching it on release. Heck, the changes alone looks like you don't want anyone to play this spec.

I wasn't expecting the changes to make something genuinely worse than how it started.

And as others have mentioned, while you are really shoe horning the specter into a single target healer, you seem to have forgotten the number one mantra of GW2, which was playing the game and not the UI.

 

Well... You have to fight with the UI untop of some other things just to heal someone in PvE. Why would I want a class that can only effectively heal one person with projectiles that can miss or be blocked? When I can throw down a field with another spec and that takes care of it very quickly.

 

And now you're doubling down on a boon that thief benefits poorly from.

Edited November 25, 2021 by Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497

[Tachenon.5270]

Mechanist -- why not give this spec a focus to use as a control device or whatever, and save the mace for a future elite spec which utilizes it more, ya know, macefully? I've wanted the mace (as a stand-in for a one-handed hammer 🔨) for my engies since launch, but not like this.

[Tseison.4659]

Sifting through as much of the feedback the Mesmer community collectively provided for you in regards to the Virtuoso to see what you guys actually took into consideration, it doesn’t line up at all and seems you only took feedback from the Virtuoso Bug Thread. 

Now I’ll first off say that we understand you had a lot of other elite specs to “cater” to, but it looks like everyone else got special service while we were left on the back burner once again. This is the continued attitude you are giving to the Mesmer class and that kind of discrimination needs to stop. I know you’re all trying to get the game ready for launch but it looks like all your resources are going into everyone else and other parts of EOD and it all is seeming too rushed and unfinished. As much as I’d like to not say this but I’d rather you guys delay the game until summer because I can tell EOD is not ready to deliver.

Now in terms of the Virtuoso, a part from myself mentioning about the additional Blade generation, I only could spot approximately four’ish other people who wanted the same. However, when I mentioned it, I had also stated that then Bladesongs should atleast get an extra charge to compensate for the amount of Blades we’d be getting or remove the cooldown for the F1 Bladesong since that will seem to be our main Bladesong we’d be using. Again the Blade generation is nice, but it won’t mean much if all of our Bladesongs are on cooldown and I know for sure you guys are capable of giving them additional charges since you’re giving them for free as per the Bladesworns utilities.

 Additionally, below are pieces of feedback I wrote in the virtuoso feedback thread in regards to a few things that were still not addressed even though a lot of us mentioned this countless times in every page.
 

Quote

 

“F1 - F3 would be great if they were instant or had a cast time of half a second and unblockable. The wind-up makes it easy to interrupt. I've also noticed that if your target ends up being out of range or hides themselves behind a wall, then you end up losing all your stacks of blades, they end up missing and then you have to get them back again. I'm hoping this gets fixed in it that if a target ends up moving out of range or is obstructed, that the skill won't go off so it saves us from having to miss.”

“F2 Bladesong Sorrow: There are not enough condition traits and skills in the Virtuoso kit to make sense of the confusion condition on this Bladesong. Additionally, with the Confusion nerfs, it's not that viable when paired with the Virtuoso.“

“Dagger Skill#2: Bladecall - Feels incomplete. I was hoping this skill would inflict either cripple or daze as the daggers returned to you just for some added flavour. So I hope this gets looked at again.”

“Jagged Mind trait: Too similar to the Sharper Images trait in the Dueling tree, and I feel it needs to be changed into something else due to overlap.”

“Rain of Swords & Sword of Decimation should’ve been merged together as visually they look the same, and SoD isn’t as impactful or worth bringing even in a WvW situation. Combining the two skills would help free up space to add a mobility skill or an even more powerful cc skill.”

“Blade Renewal: I love this skill but I hate to be that person and say that since we're so conditioned into having Distortion on F4, I would've rather have Bladeturn Requiem switched with Blade Renewal and I'd be fine with the cooldown being high. This would then allow us to bring Bladeturn Requiem as an optional defensive utility skill against melee attackers OR can be replaced with a possible mobility skill.”

 

So at the end of the day, no, you didn’t listen to our constructive feedback and only took the feedback from the bug thread in terms of older Mesmer traits not functioning with blades and other “QoL” issues and yet you guys still didn’t contribute enough to the Virtuoso and yet did SO MUCH for everyone else. A part from the Catalyst and Untamed, WE were just as more vocal as they were and yet all we received was:

• No new skills (we still have two utilities that do the same thing, can count our elite as well since it’s essentially a horizontal rain of swords)
• No mobility
• No survivability
• No off hand dagger (which we all agreed was a miss opportunity)
• No condition cleanses
• No ways to strip boons
• Bladesongs still not unblockable and yet you decide to put that behind a dodge/evade trait?
• Damage reduction on practically everything.
• No new trait line since it still makes no sense having a condition line when that’ll never be viable.
• You claim you fixed older traits to work with blades but sharper images still doesn’t.

Anyways, it still looks and will likely feel incomplete, either it be during Beta 4 or upon launch. Too much inconsistencies and lack of respect for the Mesmer profession and it’s community.

Edited November 25, 2021 by Tseison.4659
Added bulleted list.

[Mik.3401]

So sad to see virtuoso being essentially left unchanged. If the devs wants it to be unplayable then so be it. The feedback has been given, they did not action it so at least it is clear this class will be forgotten shortly after release.
The RP and open world people will love it that’s what matters

[DemonCrypto.6792]

I have one thing to say as a war main.

yes your going with the samourai vibe for bladesworn, it's weeb full power but ok.

But what is the kitten with pistol -> no main hand, no range, no real gameplay synergie
Anet we are warrior we don't have a lot of range option from the start , you have the option to give us one and you don't.

WHY? seriously don't restrain ours gameplay like that now the onely other hope for distance war is only short bow.

Give us long range pistol , i don't know if i'm the only war main thinking like this but yep this is not good.

In bonus like another said to me , berserker torch have more range than pistol . (this one stings)

 

[Narrenwinter.2637]

Most of what I have to say about the Virtuoso has already been said in this thread (and in most of the feedback after the first beta). Sadly, none of the big issues (Casting time for Shatters, Reflects nerfing the entire spec, having to face towards your enemy) have been adressed by the devs. 

I don't need the Virtuoso to be overpowered or even "strong", I just want it to be at least a little bit interesting. As it is, it offers:

-a boring and useless Heal Skill

-Utility Skills that all feel too much alike

-the most bland and vanilla Main Hand weapon in the game (not a single condition or boon on any of the three attack skills)

-an easily dodged nothingburger elite skill

-Trait lines that don't convey a real "theme" or "flavor" for the elite spec, nor do they really inspire creative builds.

-a "blade"-type on Shatter, Psionic, Dagger, Sword and Greatsword, that does not have any real impact at all.

 

My suggestions would be as follows:

-Remove Casting time and projectile-status from Bladesongs

-Let the Heal Skill at least fire Blades in every direction, to each opponent in range and let the reward scale with each opponent hit

-Give the Utility Skills more flavor, like you did with Harbinger. Add more boons (like Aegis, etc. for allies in the AoE) and conditions.

-Dagger really needs at least one skill with a condition or boon, so that it actually matters if you press 1, 2 or 3. Maybe you can add projectile block on Dagger-3 and condition removal on Dagger-2. Or a built-in Evade somewhere in the skills, so it aligns with the trait lines a little better.

-Please add some form of CC, like repeated 0.5s of Daze for enemies that stay inside the Elite aoe. Or movement impairing conditions. It does not feel like an elite skill right now.

-rework all of the traits:

The Evasion Traits (top row) lack interaction with anything else the elite spec offers. I would have expected these traits on Mirage, which was centered around evasion or on Chronomancer, which has the most Block Skills of all Mesmer Specs. The Virtuoso only has F4-Bladesong for blocking (which you reduced to 2s for some reason) and a 5 second Aegis buff on shatter-use. Give us some means of evasion or blocks, or totally rework these Traits to do something else.

The Damage-focused Traits (middle row) are all over the place. The Adept Trait rewards you for keeping a <600 distance from your target, while the rest of the spec basically screams "stay at long range distance". The rest of the traits focuses on blade restocking, which nobody asked for.

The Condition Traits (lower row) do not offer anything interesting or meaningful in regards to condition dmg output. With all the blade weapons (Dagger, Sword, GS) being power-focused (none apply any damaging conditions) the traits feel out of place. To have any impact at all, you have to seriously increase bleeding duration Jagged Mind and maybe even remove the "on-crit" restriction. No one wants to waste a trait for 2 or 3 stacks of bleeding at best. Maybe you can implement something like Opening Strike from the Ranger Profession or Riddle of Sand from Mirage Spec.

 

Another change I would like to see for the traits:

Make the "blade"-skillfact actually matter. Let each of the three Grand Master Traits add something meaningful to the Blades (as you did with the dodges on Vindicator and Daredevil).

 

Also, for the Harbinger:

I am very happy with the changes to the Elixir Skills! Offers interesting gameplay and juggling Blight-stacks up and down seems fun.

Sadly, with the changes you made to Harbinger-Shroud, Life Force does not serve any purpose other than offering a "new weapon" (five shroud skills) at the cost of locking you out of your Healskill, Utilities and Elite. This could be fixed by giving the Harbinger the passive Heal-over-time by consuming Life Force while in shroud.

 

That would be all for now.

[Coldmail.9672]

I have many hours in  GW1 on the original Thumper.

The core mechanic was to keep constant pressure on your target preferably casters.

The main pressure came from the attack/speed increase with tiger stance or rampage as one combined with a fast recharging hammer bash  (knock down) which was followed by skills that have increased effects on knocked down targets being crushing blow (deep wound) and bestial mauling (dazed).

It was pretty straight forward, very effective and showed a great synergy between master and pet. Untamed did not give me that same feeling, I did not get the simple fluent reliant game play.

I hope we can get the focus back on this 🙂

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Bladesworn still needs the following to be effective:

 

Mainland pistol.

Actual range on pistol skills, not this melee pistol crap.

Dragon Slash damage increase in competitive on all three variants.

Dragon Slash hit box size increase on all variants.

Evasion on Triggerguard instead of Aegis.

Flow rate increased or flow cap decreased.

Also, revamp Arms and Defense please.

 

 

 

 

[Poki.8235]

Spectre nerfs? Hmm... Well balancing is a long term thing, so, whatever....

HOWEVER I'm disappointed I see no specific mention of fixing Spectre interactions with Action Camera. The experience during the last beta was miserable with constant "You don't have a target" errors when I clearly had a target. I hope this got fixed and just was not in the changelog.

[Doctor Hide.6345]

15 minutes ago, Poki.8235 said:

Spectre nerfs? Hmm... Well balancing is a long term thing, so, whatever....

HOWEVER I'm disappointed I see no specific mention of fixing Spectre interactions with Action Camera. The experience during the last beta was miserable with constant "You don't have a target" errors when I clearly had a target. I hope this got fixed and just was not in the changelog.

 

That could have been a bug, so it might just be in the changelog in the end for the full list.

Edited November 25, 2021 by Doctor Hide.6345

[Mini Crinny.6190]

14 hours ago, McPero.3287 said:

So virtuoso still unplayable in WvW and PvP, the only changes were really just bug fixes and more blade generation that barely anypne asked for and was never an issue. Also nerfed in PvE? Despite being just pure dps with 0 utility which is pretty bad. 

Welcome to weavers world too 😄

[Uete.3805]

2 hours ago, Narrenwinter.2637 said:

 Also, for the Harbinger:

I am very happy with the changes to the Elixir Skills! Offers interesting gameplay and juggling Blight-stacks up and down seems fun.

Sadly, with the changes you made to Harbinger-Shroud, Life Force does not serve any purpose other than offering a "new weapon" (five shroud skills) at the cost of locking you out of your Healskill, Utilities and Elite. This could be fixed by giving the Harbinger the passive Heal-over-time by consuming Life Force while in shroud.

My feelings exactly! The Heal-over-time needs to come back and this could be a good compromise. I'd still prefer the previous version though, since Necro has very few active defenses by design and HB isn't bringing any new ones with the elixirs. The other two aspects of HB that bother me based on the changes presented here are:

+ The reduced extra condi or power % increase (they won't feel impactful enough when coupled with the new consume blight mechanics)

+ The reduced mobility on shroud (If it was deemed too powerful to have 2 900 mobility skills, keep Shroud 3 at 600 but increase Shroud 4 back to 900. The mobility was a big part of HB Shroud and I feel it's gotten unjustifiably gutted with this new iteration)

In any case, I'll wait to see how it feels next Tuesday. Thanks for the elixir changes!

[SmoovRihx.2789]

Ele still uses Hammer.

 

I've lost all hope.

 

I can't believe they completely ignored us.

 

 

[Nimon.7840]

Necromancer - Harbinger

 

Harbinger is in many ways flipping Necromancer's normal gameplay on its head, with reduced durability in Shroud and the new Blight mechanic. We collected a lot of great feedback on this during Beta 1 and have identified a number of ways to improve the specialization. There was so much feedback here that we had to filter down to the most key changes that would have the biggest impact. To do this, we identified the following common pieces of important feedback from you:

 Key pieces of feedback that we identified were:

 1)      The mechanic of draining life force to heal when in combat and not in shroud was not very clear, and felt more punishing than helpful, as it often made it difficult to accumulate Life Force to use in Shroud.

 Specific changes made in response to this feedback: We agree, there was too much going on here, and this mechanic felt 'tacked on' with no clear purpose or synergy with the rest of the Harbinger's kit. We are cutting this element out entirely, but as this results in less healing, we're making a few related changes: Blight will reduce your max health by less (1.5% per stack, down from 2%), and the Harbinger's Heal Skill, Elixir of Promise, has had its base healing increased by about 2.5x in PvE, and will now apply Regeneration to help keep you topped off as blight stacks expire.

 I thought it was a very nice mechanic. Sad it hat to go. And increasing the healing of the healskill by 2.5x isn’t anywhere near good enough, to make up for that HUGE sustain loss.

I think that this issue (“and felt more punishing than helpful”) was more a learn to play/buildcraft issue, than an actual issue.

There was only one scenario, where this was rather punishing, which was endgame pve.

  2)      Blight, as a new mechanic, isn't meeting expectations. It should interact in some way with your skills!

 Absolutely agree.

 Specific changes made in response to this feedback: We've created a new mechanic, called "Blight Threshold". Skills with this mechanic will, if you are above a certain amount of Blight stacks when you activate them, remove that amount of Blight from you but gain additional damage and effectiveness. This mechanic will be seen on Shroud 3, Shroud 4, and your Elixir skills. This relates to the next piece of key feedback we received:

 3)      Elixirs are boring! Press button, get boon isn't enough for the base version of the skill, even if traits do let them do more.

 Absolutely agree.

 Specific changes made in response to this feedback: We've redesigned the core behavior of all the Elixir skills.

 They still give you boons when you activate them, but now they will do a lot more by default.

 The key changes that apply on all of them:

 All elixirs are now ground-targeted skills. You will throw an elixir bottle at the targeted location, where it can affect up to 5 enemy targets in a circle of size 240.

All elixir skills still grant you boons when you activate them- but now they also cause damage and apply conditions to enemies in the targeted area.

They all use the new Blight Threshold mechanic- if you have enough blight, they consume some to double damage and the effect on enemies.

If you are standing in the impact area of your own thrown elixir, you will gain more Blight back than the Blight Threshold can consume. This means you can choose to use elixirs to dump blight by throwing them away from you or generate blight by throwing them near you.

 That’s what I call interesting and makes this spezialisation a lot more complex. Always great to be able to make decisions especially in pvp modes.

 If you use the trait Twisted Medicine, which causes your elixirs to also apply boons to allies, the ally boons are now granted in the impact area of the elixir. Since the self-generated boons are on activation of the skill, this means that you can gain boons yourself and apply boons to allies at a distance by throwing an elixir at them.

While this means there's a lot more going on with these skills, and that can get complicated, we've found from playing with these changes that they introduce an exciting level of mastery to achieve with practice and create fun opportunities to use elixirs in a variety of ways.

 We've also done a lot of bug fixing and balance tuning to get Harbinger in the right spot as we get closer to the release of End of Dragons.

 Full List of Changes to Harbinger:

 Gameplay Changes:

 The reduction to your maximum health per stack of Blight has been reduced from 2% to 1.5%.

Harbingers no longer passively drain Life Force to convert to health while injured and out of shroud.

 sad

 New mechanic: "Blight Threshold". Certain skills (Shroud 3, 4, and Elixir skills) will, if you are above a certain threshold of Blight, remove that much Blight but have a much stronger effect.

Skill and Trait Adjustments:

 Pistol

 Vicious Shot: Damage coefficient increased from 0.6 to 0.65 in PvE only.

Weeping Shots: Duration of inflicted Torment decreased from 6s to 4s in PvE only.

Shroud

 Tainted Bolts: Damage coefficient increased from 0.45 to 0.65 in PvE only.

Dark Barrage: Duration of inflicted Torment decreased from 6s to 3s in PvE only. Recharge increased from 4s to 6s.
Really sad to see, that damage gets reduced by this much. That’s basically all the damaging skills you used very often, and they get basically nerfed for condis by around 40-50%
I am fearing, that the full damage version of harbinger will drop in dps significantly while not adding much survivability/offensive support for endgame pve.
 

Devouring Cut: Range decreased from 900 to 600. Recharge increased from 6s to 8s in PvE only. No longer applies torment by default. Additional functionality has been added to this skill; If you are at or above the Blight Threshold (5) on use, this skill removes 5 stacks of Blight, deals double damage, and applies 5 stacks of Torment for 5s to affected targets.

Voracious Arc: Range decreased from 900 to 600. Additional functionality has been added to this skill; If you are at or above the Blight Threshold (10) on use, this skill removes 10 stacks of Blight, deals double damage, and applies 5 stacks of Torment for 10s to affected targets.

Voracious Arc: Underwater functionality has been split into a new aquatic skill, Voracious Dive. Voracious Dive will shadowstep to the targeted enemy and is not an evade. In other respects, it is similar to Voracious Arc.

 Another sad point to see. I don’t think the reduction of range is necessary.

We get a huge sustain loss, by losing the passive regeneration, and on top of that, the only defensive cooldown of the kit gets the nerf bat. Cutting its uses. Before you could use that skill as disengage, engage and defensive cooldown, now it will be much better to use it as engage and defensive cooldown (jumping on the same spot, if someone charges at you, to evade the hit and deal damage)
i also dont think, that these skills are going to be in the pve dps rotation, because loosing blight is really bad. id love to be proven wrong here.

 Vital Draw: Additional work has been done on this skill to make it function consistently and hit targets as expected in the indicated area. Now if a target controlled by this skill uses a stunbreak, they will become immune to the remainder of Vital Draw's effect.

Elixirs:

 Elixir of Promise: Base healing of this skill has been significantly increased in PvE. Now applies Regeneration (8s) to yourself on cast instead of Vigor. Is now ground-targeted; enemies in the impact area will take damage and be Poisoned (3 stacks, 5s). No longer generates Life Force. If you are in the impact area, gain 10 Blight. Blight Threshold 5: Damage and condition duration doubled.

 I guess with no passive lifeforce drain we don’t need that much lf generation

 Elixir of Risk: Still grants Might and Fury to yourself on cast. Is now ground-targeted; damage and apply Weakness (5s) to enemies in the impact area. If you are in the impact area, gain 10 Blight. Blight Threshold 5: Damage and condition duration doubled.

Elixir of Ignorance: Still breaks Stuns and grants Resistance to yourself on cast. Is now ground-targeted; damage and apply Blind (2s) to enemies in the impact area. If you are in the impact area, gain 10 Blight. Blight Threshold 5: Damage and condition duration doubled. Cooldown increased from 25s to 30s.

Elixir of Bliss: Still removes conditions, generates life force for each removed condition, and grants Resolution on cast. Is now ground-targeted; damage and corrupt a boon on enemies in the impact area. If you are in the impact area, gain 10 Blight. Blight Threshold 5: Damage doubled, corrupt 2 boons instead of 1.

Elixir of Anguish: Still grants Quickness and Swiftness to yourself on cast. Is now ground-targeted; damage and apply Cripple (5s) to enemies in the impact area. If you are in the impact area, gain 10 Blight. Blight Threshold 5: Damage and condition duration doubled.

Elixir of Ambition: Still grants all possible boons to yourself on cast. Is now ground-targeted; damage and apply one stack of every damaging condition (Bleed, Burn, Confusion, Poison, Torment) for 5s to enemies in the impact area. If you are in the impact area, gain 15 Blight. Blight Threshold 10: Damage and condition duration doubled. Cooldown increased from 60s to 90s.

 This might be overnerfed. Changes to the other elixirs are good I think.

 Traits:

 Wicked Corruption: Bonus strike damage per stack of Blight reduced from 1% to 0.5%.

Septic Corruption: Bonus condition damage per stack of Blight reduced from 1% to 0.5%.

Vile Vials: No longer causes elixirs to apply Slow to nearby enemies. This trait still applies Vulnerability but will do so in the targeted area of the Elixir skill, not around the caster.

 Wicked corruption: I still don’t see any good power weapon on necro/harbinger. This won’t see any play and makes the other 2 power traits useless as well, unless the damage portion of the elixirs is pretty high.

Septic corruption: another damage nerf of basically 25%, might be over the top together with the main skill nerfs. Harbinger was at 45k dps, but it didn’t bring  any meaningful utility to groupplay with that build. Anything below 36k will make the new harbinger useless for groupplay in my opinion, because on the full damage build you will run heal elixir, blood is power, maybe another elixir for blight stacks (most likely the quickness one), a lifeforce generator (signet) and plaguelands.

So full dps harbinger adds a bit of quickness, regeneration and swiftness to the group, but not to a mentionable extend.

A Dragonhunter can for example use stand your ground, a very powerful defensive cooldown, without losing to much dps and has a heal for the group as well as aegis.

Vile vials seems a bit weak as a trait now.

 Bug Fixes:

 Vile Blast: Fixed a bug causing this skill to apply one stack of Poison in PvE instead of the intended 3.

Dark Disciple: Fixed a bug causing this trait to not link properly into chat.

Deathly Haste: Quickness granted by this trait now priorities members of your party then squad before other nearby allied players.

Deathly Haste: Now can grant quickness to non-player allies, such as minions. Players in your party then squad are prioritized as targets before minions, where available.

 Very good changes, was very frustrating to give quickness, but not every player of the group would get it because of minions.
overall i think that i shouldnt judge a book by its cover.

and i hope to be proven wrong 
anyway its just another beta, so you can still make adjustments until eod launches and i really hope, adjustments are going to be made. especially for next weeks beta i had much lower expectations, of what is going.. and we just have to see how these changes impact the gameplay. 

KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK!

Edited November 25, 2021 by Nimon.7840

[ShionKreth.1542]

So instead of lush forest shortening cooldowns when your cooldowns have all been expended, it will instead reduce cooldowns when we've already let them cooldown back to 100%? In pvp, after the initial clash you will seldom if ever have all charges back in the same engagement, and now to prevent 'encouraging' us from using our ammunition skills back to back... you're encouraging us to not use them until every charge has cooled down, as otherwise the trait just does nothing for us when we need it? Who asked for that? It's the same mistake as original mantras all over again - being punished for using all the charges of your ammunition skills. 😒

[Skyroar.2974]

For Virtuoso, I think Anet should also look at the (non-working) synergy with core traits.

If Virtuoso is meant to be the shatter-focused spec, some of the shatter traits have a few issues that make them undesirable.

The grandmaster one in illusions, for example, gives +25% critical chance on F1, which is pointless in PvE, where you want to have 100% critical chance on your full build. I recommend changing that to a bonus critical damage instead; or, considering that illusions is meant to be good both for power and condition builds, just give it a generic damage boost instead.

In the inspiration traitline, there are plenty of traits that synergy/scale with clone generation and clone stacking, which will be extra strong on a Virtuoso that can have up to/ and shatter 5 blades, instead of 3/4 respectively. But inspiration has two issues: it focuses too much on support, which Virtuoso clearly wasn't designed for, and it lacks damage. For this reason, I recommend Anet to slightly overhaul some inspiration's traits so that there's better access to selfish sustain options and some offensive/damage support. Basically, Anet should do with the Inspiration traitline what they have done with the Elementalist's water traitline in the past. One good direction to take it is to look at Revenant's lifesteal traits, and give Inspiration's traits a few of those. It would thematically fit with the healing theme of inspiration (although perhaps not with the support theme), and give them some damage. The traits write themselves: 1) gain 1 stack of lifesteal buff each time you generate a new blade; 2) your shatters lifesteal for X damage and Y healing based on the amount of clones shattered; Also, perhaps some sort of AoE might generation (similar to guardian's AoE might on critical trait) and perhaps even fury, so that Virtuoso is not so reliant on Dueling to have permanent fury when solo, and can go Inspiration+Domination or Inspiration+Illusions instead. (While Dueling gives selfish fury, Inspiration would give AoE fury at a lower duration, fitting its support theme.)

Finally, Domination's grandmaster shatter trait, which only boosts shatters damage by 25% (or 50%) is hard to use and is competing with other trait that gives a flat 15% boost to all skills, which is so much superior in PvE when your damage rotation goes way beyond shattering. That shatter trait needs something else, especially for Virtuoso, and I think it's easy to see what: have its bonus damage scale with the number of clones (blades), so that it's above 25/50 on a fully-stacked Virtuoso. The master trait that removes boons with shatters is also niche in PvE, and perhaps would help if it had an additional, even if small, damage boost tied to it - one that, obviously scaled with the number of clones(blades).

Edited November 25, 2021 by Skyroar.2974

[Kuma.1503]

This is some quality communication. What a nice thing to wake up to on thanksgiving

In regards to Mechanist, there's a lot that I like here. 

1. Improvements to signets. 

It still remains to be seen, but with the +10% condition damage. Condi signet may see use over another kit. 

Stunbreak on Shift signet, and buff to instant cast. This makes the skill much less clunky, and much more appealing to take. Boons applying to golem is a welcome boost in consistency. 

Built in stunbreak/cleanse with crisis zone. This is massive. A huge issue with Mechanist is that many of our best defensive tools are tied to toolbelt. This makes that sting a bit less.

Stability is also huge in helping Mechanist compete with other support specs. Now we can give prot, regen, vigor, stab, might, fury, and alac while providing barrier, some heals, and respectable dps, with the caviat being we're only 5 target instead of 10. 

2. More control over golem!

THANK. YOU. Better leash range, and the ability to command my golem to return or attack my target. This really helps ease the problem with bad golem AI. I might actually be able to start fights in Titanpaw without my golem pet getting aggro'd on guards 50 meters away. 

3. Better condi support on mace. 

Mace is looking like a proper condi support weapon

 

Overall, the improvements here, especially the traitable stunbreak/cleanse and lower mech drop cooldown helps make mechanists trade-off feel less excessive. It is still arguably the harshest trade-off in the game, but we at least get some big value in exhange. I can live with it now. 

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

What I don't like

1. Core utilities are still weak without toolbelt skills

Perhaps they could be tweaked to provide some additional benefit on mechanist. Perhaps the mech could gain an altered version of each toolbelt skill. For example, using utility goggles would cause the mech to emit a detection pulse. Right now only signets and kits feel good to use. 

2. No underwater Mech

This just feels unfinished more than anything else. This severely gimps mechanist in any underwater content. The spec is unplayable in the water fractal. 

3. You still cannot dye the mech. 

The green is extremely limiting for people who like to co-ordinate their outfit with their pet. An option to dye the golem would be a huge fashion wars buff

 

 

Overall, my gripes with the spec have been lessened considerably. There's still some small improvements to be made, but overall, it's shaping up well. Keep up the good work!

[Valisha.8650]

Specter still needs a buff for pve to make it viable

[RyuDragnier.9476]

3 minutes ago, SovietVixen.7396 said:

Specter still needs a buff for pve to make it viable

It needs more support in Shadow Shroud and a revert to the changes it just got for Sc/P 3 and Consume Shadows

[itspomf.9523]

On 11/23/2021 at 12:45 PM, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

Thief - Specter

We saw a lot of eagerness for the addition of a support specialization to the Thief. Beta 3 generated a lot of excellent buildcraft and discussion, and we've begun tuning the Specter for an appropriate debut in End of Dragons.

Key pieces of feedback that we identified were:

1) Consume Shadows was causing Shadow Shroud to feel like something you should enter, and then immediately exit, to get Consume Shadows' healing effect as quickly as possible. This diminished the utility and fun of the Shroud skills themselves, as it was a strong reason to never use them.

Specific changes made in response to this feedback: The maximum potential healing and barrier from Consume Shadows will now grow stronger for every second you are in Shroud, up to 5 seconds. In Shadow Shroud itself, the skill Dawn's Repose has been changed from a dash into a ground-targeted leap, to make it easier to target a specific location, and is now a leap finisher.

2) Endless Night, by affecting three targets, was creating expected gameplay of manually selecting and 'rotating' between different targets in a group, in order to sustain quickness on multiple targets. This isn't very fun to do.

Specific changes made in response to this feedback: We'd rather not have Specter able to strongly cover both Alacrity and Quickness for groups, and so have decided to focus on the Alacrity aspect. Endless Night has been adjusted to only target one ally. This may maintain a strong all-around support role for a focused target in certain gameplay, such as 2v2 PvP or playing with a friend in the open world, while allowing Specter to still fill healing and alacrity support roles for group play.

Full List of Specter changes:

Siphon:

• Using this skill will now stop auto-attacking, to better accommodate for traits like Hidden Thief that grant stealth.

Scepter:

• Triple Bolt: Fixed a bug that caused this ability to be queued twice.
• Shadow Sap: Fixed the skill fact for barrier application
• Endless Night: The number of targets this ability affects has been reduced from 3 to 1. Slow and Quickness application has been reduced from 2 to 1.5 seconds. Fixed a bug that caused the targeted ally to not be affected when attempting to fire through multiple allies.

Shroud:

• Leaving Shadow Shroud now sets the Shadow Shroud ability on full cooldown.
• Dawn's Repose: This ability is now a ground-targeted ability instead of a ground-targeted dash. Range has been reduced from 600 to 450, with the affected radius being reduced from 240 to 180 and Fear being reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5. This ability is now a leap finisher.
• Eternal Night: Updated VFX slightly. Reduced aftercast.

Traits:

• Shadestep: Broken barrier will now be distributed evenly among allies affected.
• Consume Shadows: This trait has been reworked and the maximum healing potential reduced in PvE. Activating Shadow Shroud now grants a stack of Consume Shadows, and the specter will gain a stack of Consume Shadows every second while in shroud, up to 5 stacks. When you exit Shadow Shroud, your Shadow Force is consumed, and for each stack of Consume Shadows that you have, 10% of the consumed Shadow Force is converted into healing for nearby allies. Healing past the target's maximum health will be granted as barrier.

Bug Fixes:

• Lead Attacks: No longer reduces the cooldown of Shadow Shroud.
• Siphon:  No longer requires a pathing check in order to execute.
• Twilight Combo: The second attack of this ability is no longer jump-cancellable. 
• Haunt Shot: Removed the odd smoke bomb that appeared at the specter's feet. Updated the ability to fire from the character's hand instead of head.
• Swindler's Equilibrium: Now properly recharges Siphon.
• Assassin's Reward: Now functions correctly with Scepter abilities.
• Hidden Thief: Stealth now activates much quicker when using Siphon.

tl;dr:  "we massively nerfed support-thief so you don't have to ask it of us later."

p.s.:  While I'll be the first to say I absolutely hated the feel and mechanics of Spectre (and would have loved Shadow Form as a defensive shroud-like buff rather than a transformation), I'll also say that doubling down on poor design decisions, clunky gameplay and combat mechanics, and a forced hybrid build (not unlike Vindicator) is not a way to sell this already awkward and lackluster addition to Thief.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

50 minutes ago, ShionKreth.1542 said:

So instead of lush forest shortening cooldowns when your cooldowns have all been expended, it will instead reduce cooldowns when we've already let them cooldown back to 100%? In pvp, after the initial clash you will seldom if ever have all charges back in the same engagement, and now to prevent 'encouraging' us from using our ammunition skills back to back... you're encouraging us to not use them until every charge has cooled down, as otherwise the trait just does nothing for us when we need it? Who asked for that? It's the same mistake as original mantras all over again - being punished for using all the charges of your ammunition skills. 😒

Tbf, initial Lush Forest was very spammy and stupid to use. Despite being a strong option for warriors I much so prefer it somewhat "nerfed" aganst the idea of said spamm-y gameplay, instead of that gameplay never altering and resulting in even greater Tactics nerfs.

 

Instead what needs to be addressed now is lesser overall CDs in Gunsaber and Shout skills fro comp, Fear Me and SiO. 

[wesly.6497]

On 11/23/2021 at 7:45 PM, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

Superconducting Signet: Now plays a visual effect of the signet icon above the player when activated.  Activated skill now additionally causes 3s burning per hit. Passive Condition Damage attribute bonus changed to a 10% increase to outgoing condition damage. The passive bonus now also applies to your Mech.I didn't understand the fire  additions to the signal or Confusion (5s): 300 Damage, 297 Damage to Players on Skill Use, 573 Damage to Non-Players on Skill Use  or changed to fire?

then I was so happy when they added a signal to which it fills Confusion that was cool

 

Edited November 25, 2021 by wesly.6497

[GameDjinni.5812]

(((PVE)))) My Goal...is that one day, the Elementalist will feel powerful! I don't mind being super squishy if I'm out-DPSing the unsquishy classes. But even if I'm doing everything skillfully--playing piano just right--it's just not worth bringing the Elementalist anywhere. It's a lot of work to play the piano, and the pay off isn't greater than...say, having a jade Mech beat the hell out of everything while you sip tea or whatever.

 

(People love support tempest but that's not quite what I'm talking about.)

 

99% of the time, I feel like I'm a liability if I bring Elementalist to ANYTHING compared to if I bring, say, a Scourge. Firebrand. I guess just anything else.

 

 Currently, while Elementalist is my favorite class, I only play it once in a while to goof around at low stakes content.

Edited November 25, 2021 by GameDjinni.5812

[Rellyk.9467]

Thank you for posting this.

 

Lots of thoughts on these changes, I'll go spec by spec for the ones I focus on.

 

Catalyst

1.  The orb changes are better, but still not great.  It seems like you're heading more in the direction of Scourge Shades, and while that's not bad, that doesn't work with Eles. We'll only be able to combo the top field if stacked, and if not, it's easy to lose track of them in the visual noise.
   
   Suggestion - Instead of Scourge, why not go in the direction of the revenant Ventari tablet? Movable on a short cooldown, but only one and changes attunements with you.
2. Hammer changes are better, but it's still punishing to spam attunement swaps to keep the orbs going.  Also, the variable ranges on the elements adds unnecessary complexity.  Especially condi, which goes between fire and earth.
3. It still needs survivability if it's going to be melee.  The other specs have options for baked in survival skills.  Catalyst needs the same.
4. It has a theme but no strong role.  Catalyst is teased as focusing on auras and combos, yet it still lacks easy access to both.  You want auras? Tempest can do that with overlords easily, and all eles have access on their various weapons.  Same with combo fields.  Eles can put out lots of combo fields, and can even self combo already.  There needs to be a reason to take this elite when other specs can do the same thing without the fickleness of the orb/energy/hammer.
5. The traits are too restrictive.  If you want auras, you take these three.  Combos, take these.  Buffs, take these.  There is little incentive to mix and match, and indeed you hurt your performance if you do so.

I like the changes, but they're still not enough.  This elite needs a strong role and traits, and needs serious improvements to its survivability.

 

Mechanist

 

1.  One of engineer's core mechanics is the toolbelt.  Indeed, our utilities are balanced around having toolbelt options.  Losing all our toolbelt skills just for some mech commands is a horrid tradeoff.  Maybe automate the mech skills or have them trigger along with the regular toolbelt skills?
2. Tying us to the mace is a horrid choice.  We shouldn't be punished if we want to use a different weapon.  It also makes kits less useful.  Reversing this change would open up build choices.
3. If you're going to make the mech integral to the spec, it needs a cooldown on par with ranger pet swap.  Even at 50 sec, that's too long to wait for the main part of your elite.
4. The mech needs to work underwater.  Self-explanatory.

 

Virtuoso

 

1. The blades need to be unblockable or pierce or be instant.  There has to be an improvement to them to make them better.
2. Power needs a boost.  Lowering the power damage when it's already underwhelming is just depressing.
3. Like Catalyst, it needs some stronger survivability.  Something to help it last.
4. Coming from 3, stop pushing condi for this so hard.  Right now this is starting to feel like a weaker, less mobile, less survivable mirage.

 

Untamed

 

1. The unleashed skills on the pet still feel weak and gimmicky.  The baseline pet skills usually offer more damage or more CC.
2. Unleashing should increase the potential, based on the pet's family.  You had a brilliant design with the various pet families for the Soulbeast, maybe apply similar buffs when unleashing?
3. Likewise, all the unleashed pet skills being the same is too boring.  Every pet, regardless of family, gets the same three skills.  The skills should change based on the pet family.

 

Vindicator

 

1. The vast majority of the traits are tied to the focus on dodging.  It does little to improve anything besides the dodge.
2. Like Catalyst, the trait lines are very restrictive.  If you want dps, you take the same three traits, likewise for tanking and healing.
3. Most of the skills on greatsword feel like copies of other classes' skills.  It would be nice to give it more of an identity of its own.
4. The Alliance legend.  Hoo boy, where to start?  First of all, this hybrid legend thing is just too clunky.  In addition to our normal legend swap and our energy bar, we also have to keep track of the individual red/blue state of each skill is excessive.  Next, it suffers from the same issue that ele does.  It's punished for having the option for either dps or support on the same thing.  Yet, most players will stick with either the blue or the red and use the Alliance Tactics to keep themselves in that stance, ignoring half of the legend.  Finally, because each skill has 2 parts, they're weaker than other comparable skills.
5. The elite.  The Urn is still garbage, and the spear is underwhelming.  These elites didn't feel good to use in the last beta, and the proposed changes don't do enough to fix this.

 

Specter

 

1. The change to single target buffing is terrible.  Nothing else in this game does that, why punish thieves?  It needs to at least buff/heal the party.
2. Why alacrity?  Alacrity only really helps the utilities, not the weaponskills for thieves.  Quickness as a group boon would be a much better choice.  Not to mention, alacrity is already covered by mesmers and revenants, and they can do it far better than Specter.  If we have to choose one buff, I'd much rather have Quickness.

 

Overall, some of the changes seem like a step in the right direction, but others are just baffling or fixing the wrong problem.

[Meridian.9103]

Very dissapointed in the fact that Specter still has a 300cd trait. I thought we were past that, but apparently Anet does not even acknowledge this as a problem.