Spear livestream thoughts?

[Kuya.6495]

Obviously trying to make your spear seem better than ele spear is impossible but I think the spear has potential on willmender in pve and it could be the equivalent of staff spellbreaker on spvp if done right.

I do kinda want to see them increase the speed of helio rush though and make spear 4 cleanse additional conditions when iluminated.

Edited June 21 by Kuya.6495

[Ezrael.6859]

Looks really basic compared to the other spears.

[Kuya.6495]

9 minutes ago, Ezrael.6859 said:

Looks really basic compared to the other spears.

I also felt kind of deflated about guard spear but I only felt that way after I saw how awesome thief, mesmer and ele spear was. 

[Ezrael.6859]

Having watched the stream I think all of them look better than Guardian.

Several of them have the awesome mechanic of a ranged auto that turns into a melee auto.

Several seem to do loads more damage, several seem to do loads more CC, the others have an insane amount of conditions both damaging and debilitating.

 

I really don't understand how the dev teams set the power value of these weapons and decide how much value each of the skills consumes, I don't see how the Guardian spear is possibly similar to any of them, but especially Warrior, Thief, Mesmer and Ele.

 

Guardian is kitten because you 'might' heal some allies for 200 with auto-attack, or charge through an ally and heal him for 900?

[A R S M A E L.3750]

yeah, I dont understand why THE SYMBOL mechanic is better for the Elementalist since that "symbol" is classic and a sign skill for the Guardian.  

guardian is regular at everything, prominent at nothing, makes me sad. 

 

but yeah, the design of the symbol was pretty than most 

[zealex.9410]

2 hours ago, Ezrael.6859 said:

Having watched the stream I think all of them look better than Guardian.

Several of them have the awesome mechanic of a ranged auto that turns into a melee auto.

Several seem to do loads more damage, several seem to do loads more CC, the others have an insane amount of conditions both damaging and debilitating.

 

I really don't understand how the dev teams set the power value of these weapons and decide how much value each of the skills consumes, I don't see how the Guardian spear is possibly similar to any of them, but especially Warrior, Thief, Mesmer and Ele.

 

Guardian is kitten because you 'might' heal some allies for 200 with auto-attack, or charge through an ally and heal him for 900?

The rest do more dmg because the rest arent support weapons, at most, from the looks of it the only other support spear is water ele.

[Tempest.8479]

1 hour ago, zealex.9410 said:

The rest do more dmg because the rest arent support weapons, at most, from the looks of it the only other support spear is water ele.

It actually looks like the only support weapon being added, as water ele is exclusively self healing. Blasting the etching water field the only way to apply group healing I can think of, and none of the boons are shared on any attunement either.

I think the Guardian spear looks deceptively simple, with the illuminated mechanic providing an interesting layer that isn't always apparent. I especially like the way getting hit by your own aoe makes it stronger, and the symbol's potency might be getting slept on. I can't remember if they showed it on stream, but the blog post stated that the illuminated version of the symbol allows a Guardian to get the always-on illumination without needing to stay in the area. Plus the loot stick is back lol

[zicaB.1794]

When I watched the trailer showing the guardian's spear: nice *-*
When I watched them showing it on stream today: meh...
When I saw them showing the elementalist's spear: WTFFF!!!???

I think we have to get used to this new model of expansions, where we pay them to spend all their time developing 25 new skills for elementalist, while we only receive 5 poorly developed ones.

[draxynnic.3719]

Eh, this is the first time ele has had a weapon that really looks impressive since PoF, and for all guardian pistol has design issues, I'd still take it over ele pistol every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

This does look a lot like they're basically giving us the original staff back, albeit with a cone that's small enough that it won't break WvW, and the other skills more oriented towards the "support flamethrower" style that skill 1 of the original staff supported as opposed to having a close-in skill 1 while everything else is more oriented towards long-distance combat. That's a playstyle that guardian has gained and lost and gained and lost again (F1 tome when you were able to recharge it through scoring kills), so getting it on a new weapon that's built around that playstyle should mean we'll get to keep it this time.

If that's not something that enthuses you... well, not everything that gets introduced to the game is designed to cater for you specifically. Guardian has a pretty good set of weapons overall. Ele... doesn't.

[Ezrael.6859]

7 hours ago, zealex.9410 said:

The rest do more dmg because the rest arent support weapons, at most, from the looks of it the only other support spear is water ele.

It has little more support than Mace auto-attack chain.

[Tempest.8479]

22 minutes ago, Ezrael.6859 said:

It has little more support than Mace auto-attack chain.

It has heal on auto, healing + resolution* on skill 2, aoe might + fury* on skill 3, aoe condi cleanse on skill 4, and pulsing resistance on the symbol. It's not the end-all-be-all support weapon, but I don't think that's what it's trying to be. From my perspective, it seems like a pretty solid offensive support weapon with good damage and some healing thrown in, which seems to be aligned pretty well with what the spear was billed to be in the blog post.

*These are effects provided by the Illuminated version of the skill.

[Ferus.3165]

Honestly it looks worse than i would have imagined from the teaser.

• The autoattack at least is not a complete melee skill but doesn't do much either. The dmg is mediocre and the healing is weak. This skill could have at least 600 range instead of the 350 it has now.
  Also you yourself don't receive any of the healing.
   
• The second skill is probably the biggest dissapointment. The animation is slow and the distance traveled is short. The skill only has 8 seconds cooldown and has 2 charges so you can at least run away reliably because you won't hit anyone with that skill who is not cc'ed. Also the mediocre damage on the skill won't matter too much because you won't hit an opponent anyway. It may be good or at least decent in large scale fights in wvw because you have so many targets to hit that you will hit somebody but then again it is questionable if the self displacement is so useful when you want to stay near the tag.
  And again you don't receive any of the healing nor the resolution.
   
• The third skill is ok. The damage is fine if both damage ticks hit. The first aoe is pretty small but that is just something all guardian weapons seem to have in common. The fury and might also have a decent baseline duration.
   
• The fourth skill seems to be the best skill on guardian spear by far. The damage is good. It's also a ranged skill with a pretty big aoe and it is not a projectile so especially in wvw this skill will be great for large scale fights. The condi cleanse is also nice although the condi clear will almost never be the primary reason for someone to use that skill but it's a nice little extra. Nothing to complain about this skill. It looks great.
   
• And at last the symbol. The damage is frontloaded which is at the very least a big improvement over the other symbol skills from guardian. Also the tooltip says it knocks enemies back but the knockback distance is zero so it seems to basicly just be a super short interrupt. The overall damage this skill does is still mediocre and the cooldown is pretty long with 20 seconds. Resistance is a pretty strong boon so the cooldown is kind of justified there. But even if the skill itself is mediocre the art of the symbol makes up for it because at least it looks great.

 

Illumination mechanic: Every skill but the autoattack can be illuminated. The illumination doesn't do a lot for the second and the third skill. The healing is slightly better and you grant allies a little bit of resolution on the second skill (at least in smallscale this is going to be very situational and for solo play this is completely useless) and you grant allies and yourself some fury and blind enemies after a delay (so the blind cannot be used to react or to counter an enemy skill) with the third skill. The only skill that really benefits from being iluminated is the fourth skill. Here you get a significant damage increase when you use the illuminated version of the skill. The symbol also doesn't change itself when it gets illuminated, the only difference is that you can move away from the symbol and still get the illuminated buff for the other skills as if you were standing on the regular symbol. But given how weak the illumination of skill two and three are that doesn't change much.

 

The spear also has no defense attached to it. You get no blocks or evades or stealth. You have no cc, neither hard cc nor soft cc. You have to be in melee range to deal damage with all the skills except skill number four. And you don't even get any sustain for yourself on this weapon (not that the sustain for your allies is great to begin with). Overall the spear doesn't seem to do a lot. Neither damage nor anything else for that matter.

Edited June 22 by Ferus.3165

[Nero.7369]

Skill 1.) Sage that a the auto attack doesn't have a ranged option, but hey lootstick is back 🙂

Skill 2.) The heal should be always aoe it will be horrible to manage to heal your party, when they have to line up for that lol

Skills 3.) looks kinda lame. Add some heal and/or a pull in like on warrior staff would be nice. Really boring rn.

Skill 4.) Seems solid

Skill 5.)  it's good we don't have to stand in the symbol all time. But applying resistance only when they don't have it makes it weak. It should apply resistance to an ally exactly once. So we can extend resistance buffs. Could also pulse heal.

Overall imo the support effect falls a bit short. A channeled block would have been nice.

I can see this as a weapon for a cele FB, sadly tho not for heal FB.  Maybe something for a healbender.

Edited June 22 by Nero.7369

[Dadnir.5038]

The best way to tags trash mobs in PvE meta event is making a come back. Gosh I missed this old staff AA.

[Mangoyami.2418]

2 hours ago, Ferus.3165 said:

Illumination mechanic: Only the second, the third and the fourth skill can be illuminated.

Did you not read the tool-tips when highlighted? the symbol is also illuminated, its effect is the same as illuminated except you're not locked to standing in the circle. I dunno about the rest of you but I'd like a good argument for how this can't be abused by willbender in wvw. I don't really want to be a bag in the world of the alac perma illumination spearbender

[Trejgon.9367]

I was not super thrilled by the blogpost, but after seeing stream presentation it looks actually nice. The illuminated conditions are simple enough, tho I also find it super fanny that helio rush animation is basically For Honor's lawbringer charge move. What it is missing for full meme would be pushing the enemy along with it. Seeing the thread about alac benders tho, I do not think those fellows are going to be liking the zig-zag mechanics of using helio rush.

Going by tooltips - not sure if this was error or intended value, but the knockback from symbol that people already complained about being reverse synergy had listed value of 0. Which makes me wonder how exactly is that different from knockdown again?

[Ferus.3165]

28 minutes ago, Mangoyami.2418 said:

Did you not read the tool-tips when highlighted? the symbol is also illuminated, its effect is the same as illuminated except you're not locked to standing in the circle. I dunno about the rest of you but I'd like a good argument for how this can't be abused by willbender in wvw. I don't really want to be a bag in the world of the alac perma illumination spearbender

you are right the symbol can also be illuminated. Sadly the illumination effect of the symbol is really weak too. The difference is that you can move away from the symbol and still use the illuminated buff on all other skills for the duration of the symbol as if you were standing on the not illuminated symbol. The symbol itself however doesn't get improved.

[Ezrael.6859]

10 hours ago, Tempest.8479 said:

It has heal on auto, healing + resolution* on skill 2, aoe might + fury* on skill 3, aoe condi cleanse on skill 4, and pulsing resistance on the symbol. It's not the end-all-be-all support weapon, but I don't think that's what it's trying to be. From my perspective, it seems like a pretty solid offensive support weapon with good damage and some healing thrown in, which seems to be aligned pretty well with what the spear was billed to be in the blog post.

*These are effects provided by the Illuminated version of the skill.

A whopping 200 heal on auto, good if you're standing behind allies that aren't moving much, so zerging or PvE.

600 range charge to heal allies in a line, how often do allies line up to be healed? It's a daft skill that won't land heals when you need it, they'll be incidental.

Wow some Resolution, because support Guardians really struggle to share Resolution, it's so great to have a skill that can share Resolution *if* you meet a prerequisite to use another ability before it.

AoE Might and Fury, again, not something we struggle to share.

 

The condition cleansing on a weapon skill is finally something useful and an actual addition to our kit and possibilities.

 

The illuminated versions of some of these skills are rather lacklustre, 2 and 3 could be the base versions and no one would bat an eyelid.

It seems all of the weapon power is consumed by skill 4 which will be situationally great, and the only thing to actually care about Illuminated for.

Edited June 22 by Ezrael.6859

[Genesis.8572]

13 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Eh, this is the first time ele has had a weapon that really looks impressive since PoF, and for all guardian pistol has design issues, I'd still take it over ele pistol every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

This does look a lot like they're basically giving us the original staff back, albeit with a cone that's small enough that it won't break WvW, and the other skills more oriented towards the "support flamethrower" style that skill 1 of the original staff supported as opposed to having a close-in skill 1 while everything else is more oriented towards long-distance combat. That's a playstyle that guardian has gained and lost and gained and lost again (F1 tome when you were able to recharge it through scoring kills), so getting it on a new weapon that's built around that playstyle should mean we'll get to keep it this time.

If that's not something that enthuses you... well, not everything that gets introduced to the game is designed to cater for you specifically. Guardian has a pretty good set of weapons overall. Ele... doesn't.

I suppose one issue is how the Spear will compete with the current WvW zerg support Guardian weapons: i.e., Mace/Axe + Shield and Staff. I'm not sure if I am necessarily seeing something in the spear that would make WvW Guardian give up those weapons for the spear. 

[Saiyan.1704]

[pvp]
I'm going to be optimistic and say that with full damage modifiers spear will either be on par with, or straight up out-damage, Hammer and Greatsword. With the exception of Greatsword's spin-to-win + Judges Intervention port burst.
Looking at just raw damage numbers from the stream,

Spear#2: 1,371
Spear#3: 1142 + 1142
Spear#4: 1523
Spear#5 1142

The base value of these skills might be accurate from w/e power they are getting from w/e gear they are using. However, they are not using full damage modifiers. So I'm thinking for a more realistic damage value, these numbers may be closer to the multiplier of 2.7 with traits + ferocity gear. So SP#2 is 3,701 damage, SP#3 is 3,083 + 3,083, and SP#4 hitting the hardest at 4,112... roughly speaking....
My only confusion is how damage is done with SP#4. The number of impacts from Solar Storm (sweet name btw) is 5. While illuminated, it is 7. The impacts are pretty clustered together so the chances of a single target getting hit by a max of 3 times due to overlapping clusters looks pretty high, even without illumination. If one single hit is anywhere around 4k, then will we be seeing a damage potential nearing 12k? Even if the modifier isn't that high, the damage still looks pretty decent.

Speaking from a selfish Willbender's point of view, I have some issues about illuminations. They don't look all that great outside of the cleanse on SP#4 but my goodness IF Solar Storm hits like a truck then it wont matter.
(lowkey I wish guard spear in general was more complex, mechanically wise.)

[draxynnic.3719]

23 hours ago, Ezrael.6859 said:

It has little more support than Mace auto-attack chain.

It might not need to be competing with mace/shield. Mace/shield is often overkill for support, so the real competition is axe/shield. If we see a situation where mace/shield is used for some situations (probably when you really need a lot of blocks), axe/shield in others, and spear in yet others, that will probably be a decent position for spear to be in.

21 hours ago, Ferus.3165 said:

 

• The autoattack at least is not a complete melee skill but doesn't do much either. The dmg is mediocre and the healing is weak. This skill could have at least 600 range instead of the 350 it has now.
   

As I keep saying in other subforums: 600 range cone autoattack is unlikely to be something that ever occurs again. They removed it from staff because they just couldn't find a way to balance it in WvW.

At least this time, though, it's on a weapon that is designed for close-in fighting, rather than boonsmiting the auto of an otherwise 1200 range weapon into a 300 range cone.

[Genesis.8572]

Just trying to compare what the different toolkits offer in WvW typical zerg support guardian setups. Mostly interested in utility. So we have the spear: 

Spear 
* Spear 1: spammable minor heal, not on autoattack chain, lootstick cone 
* Spear 2: 2 ammunition ability with healing, 600 mobility on charge; Illuminated: Resolution + bonus healing 
* Spear 3: Might, Fury, Whirl Combo Finisher; Illuminated: Fury and Blindness 
* Spear 4: 2 Condi Cleanse 
* Spear 5: Symbol Light Field, Resistance, Weakness, 150 Defiance Break 

So that weapon will have to replace one of the below potential setups. 

Axe + Shield: axe has some condi bleed/burning but not really that important for WvW zerg frontline guardian 
* Axe 2: Light Field Symbol with Fury and Cripple 
* Axe 3: 3 Person Pull, Defiance Break 150 
* Shield 4: Aegis + Protection 
* Shield 5: Light Field, Defiance Break 150, Projectile Absorption, Healing 1K+ 

Mace + Shield 
* Mace 1: minor heal on auto-attack Chain 3 
* Mace 2: Light Field Symbol, Regen 
* Mace 3: Aegis + Protection 
* Shield 4: Aegis + Protection 
* Shield 5: Light Field, Defiance Break 150, Projectile Absorption, Healing 1K+  

Staff 
* Staff 1: 1200 range 
* Staff 2: healing, blast finisher 
* Staff 3: Light Field Symbol, Swiftness 
* Staff 4: Might + Healing 
* Staff 5: Light Field, Ward (divide and conquer) 
* Note: You can condition cleanse allies with light field 3 -> blast finisher 2. 

I think that it's more likely that the Spear would have the task of competing with Axe/Mace + Shield, as I think that it's useful even in zergs to have a 1200 range option. Mace + Shield offers a lot of Aegis and Protection, none of which the Spear offers. It's also possible that this won't affect the WvW zerg support guardian/firebrand. It may instead become a frontline weapon for the Dragonhunter (replacing hammer) or possibly the Willbender (greatsword maybe). 

[Assic.2746]

On 6/22/2024 at 11:20 AM, Ferus.3165 said:

Illumination mechanic: Every skill but the autoattack can be illuminated. The illumination doesn't do a lot for the second and the third skill. The healing is slightly better and you grant allies a little bit of resolution on the second skill (at least in smallscale this is going to be very situational and for solo play this is completely useless) and you grant allies and yourself some fury and blind enemies after a delay (so the blind cannot be used to react or to counter an enemy skill) with the third skill. The only skill that really benefits from being iluminated is the fourth skill. Here you get a significant damage increase when you use the illuminated version of the skill. The symbol also doesn't change itself when it gets illuminated, the only difference is that you can move away from the symbol and still get the illuminated buff for the other skills as if you were standing on the regular symbol. But given how weak the illumination of skill two and three are that doesn't change much.

That's my point as well. Illuminated Helio Rush is just a little bit stronger healing. And it doesn't even heal you; only the allies. Illuminated version is basically the same as the basic one.

Illuminated Gleaming Disc is also bad. It's just a blind on a delay. You can't precisely use it most of the time. Just a random blind proc.

Illuminated Symbol of Luminance is good especially when you plan to use a lot of movement - Willbender.

Illuminated Solar Storm stands out among the 4 as a really great skill. Although I would argue that the condition cleanse on this skill is out of place.

I Would rather swap the effect of Gleaming Disc. Put Might and Fury application on Solar Storm and add a condition cleanse to Gleaming Disc. Most people will use Solar Storm to start the combat so it makes sense to grant Might and Fury.

Illuminated skills don't feel exciting. Most of them are just slightly better base skills. They need a lot of work.

[Kuya.6495]

Did they mention in the stream that helio rush doesn't heal you (only allies)?

[Supernova Starr.2069]

At this point, guardian getting new weapons with questionable design is apparently, the motto

Edited Monday at 06:13 PM by Supernova Starr.2069