EoD Elite Spec(s) first Impression interest and review Poll!

[Bleikopf.2491]

Trying Catalyst. I feel like someone will find a use for the Jade Sphere, but I certainly won't. Hammer is a lost cause. You can make it work, but at that point why not just use D/D. 

Traist are just unimaginative. Bunch of Stat boosts, nothing more.

There might be some Lightning Rod D/F powerhouse sleeping and waiting for someone to discover it.

Jade Sphere really feels like just combo fields because I can't expect anyone to stand in them to get some mediocre boons. Cooldowns and Energy don't feel warranted. 

[Za Shaloc.3908]

Been no-lifing Virtuoso because I have had a lot more free time than usual lately. Mostly been playing power and have generally been enjoying myself. In solo roaming I have been faring decently, but I'd rate it probably like B- tier or so as it just doesn't hold up to the top tier stuff. Dueling I have been losing a kitten-ton of fights, not gonna lie, but I am still a pretty new Mesmer player so that is probably a big factor. In small-scale it feels a bit weak but it is still enjoyable and you can have impact there. It feels really bad in large-scale. My damage is neither high nor consistent enough to have a significant enough impact. Randomly dodging in AoEs in order to proc the unblockable trait feels awkward but is basically the only way you'll do damage. I see absolutely NO reason you'd ever want one in a squad over other dps options. 

 

Honestly I am majorly disappointed that ANet didn't work on the specs more. The fact that there are still bugs that have existed since the first beta that are EXTREMELY easy to test is such a shame. I was expecting major polish to happen between the last beta and EoD launch, but there was barely anything done. The balance team really dropped the ball with this and the fact that we have to wait til summer for a balance patch that may barely even impact WvW is the icing on the cake. A lot of the specs feel like they are still in beta. They UI is still horribly unaccmodating to support Specter and there is so much to juggle and micromanage when playing it *because* the game and UI were not built around it. The allied tab targeting system is still scuffed. No, I don't want to heal your kittening mini llama.

 

With all that negativity aside, I 100000% prefer the WvW balance landscape of EoD launch over PoF launch. Even the most egregious of EoD builds right now aren't even that bad at all. What I have noticed in my very lengthy time dueling many different specs is that they are all actually pretty enjoyable to fight (aside from Mechanist, but the spec is totally unfit for WvW as a whole so the least it can be is an okay duelist). Harbinger is probably the best example of this: it does absolutely massive damage but it also die so much more quickly. The fights are fast-paced and exponentially more fun than the dumb core Necro bunker builds. I much prefer this over the absolute toxic fun-killing nightmare of PoF launch condi Mirage and the total gamemode-breaking abomination that was Scourge. Fighting the EoD specs doesn't make me want to quit the game like PoF did. Not to say that things are where they should be in terms of spec balance and polish, but just that I appreciate that they weren't so outlandish with some of their design principles. I just hope that they put in the effort to polish their work more. It doesn't really bother me much at all that none or few of the specs will change the large-scale meta, but I do want to feel like I am playing a complete product and not a half-baked project.