PVE Power Virtuoso and Spear wall of text

[Noro.2879]

First thing: The spear looks like it will be so much fun to use and the art is amazing.

I'm a Power Virtuoso lover. I don't think there's many of us, but I wanted to put my pre-beta and pre-balance patch thoughts down. I'll return to this after we actually get our hands on the weapon and I can play around with it, but here we go:

I don't want this to be entirely about spear, because it's also something that affects sword and axe. The upcoming balance patch is adding a damage modifier to "Blade" tooltips on infinite forge as a means to buff power virtuoso. Spear and Sword do not currently have "Blade" tooltips, while Greatsword and Dagger do. Prior to the upcoming balance patch, these tooltips did not serve a function outside of allowing condi virtuosos to apply bleeding through jagged mind. I do not take issue with the idea of making that tooltip functional for power virtuoso, in fact I like it.

However...I do fear that Power Virtuoso may end up pigeonholed into ranged weapons for all future releases and balance patches, as that will permanently separate ranged from melee weapons with the way "Blade" is currently used. It seems like it is only attached to ranged knife/blade/sword-like skills. I think it's not a huge logical leap to attach "Blade" to skills that involve hitting the enemy with a blade (spear, sword, axe, underwater spear currently).

It might seem like a weird statement to make because what we know of Virtuoso is that it is ranged, but I don't think it needs to be. I think of Virtuoso as replacing clones with blades, and I think swinging a melee weapon in the enemy's face while launching blades with your F skills is pretty cool too. Not to mention, Power Virtuoso is particularly rewarded for being in melee (maybe it's rather moreso penalized for being at range?) quite a bit as it is currently with the 600 range 10% damage modifier, F5, D2, SW5, and now (again for the second time) with GS5+F5 being short ranged Fireworks proc sources. Sword mainhand also has a leap on skill 3 to allow it to function as a more typical melee weapon, but only on virtuoso. Maybe this is just because of the clone mechanic, but it's there. It was designed to have a gap closer for power virtuoso.

Where I'm going with this: I don't think it is necessary to attach specific weapons to specific elite specs (I think that's what weapon mastery was all about anyway), or put in mechanics that make them just less good. I don't think adding "Blade" tooltips to sword and spear will make those weapons desirable for condi virtuoso for the same reason Greatsword is not currently (yes I tried it lol), and adding them to Axe could maybe add an interesting way to play condi virtuoso.

 

Power Virtuoso is a lot of fun and has one of the most satisfying rotations and spear's cooldowns are in that sweetspot where it looks like it will fit in perfectly if you want to use it. I don't want the current weapons to get killed at all, after all I love them. But I would be very interested to incorporate an actual melee weapon and having more weapon options with different benefits is great. I think a lot of players would also be happy to see sword get some love.

 

All this to say/TL;DR:

More weapons as options to play with = good. Ranged should have a tax, melee should be stronk (IMO even for Virtuoso, both power and condi if we're being honest).

That "Blade" tooltip balance lever will be a lingering threat to melee virtuoso weapon viability for the future even if spear is fine on release. Spears, swords, and axes all do have blades so I just think it doesn't need to be that way.

 

I am not making assumptions about how Spear will turn out or how favorable it will be on each build, I just wanted to organize my thoughts about ranged vs melee on this build and I'll return after we get hands on with the weapon and get to actually test it. My motivation is that the weapon looks incredibly fun and I'd just like to see it also function well enough to justify using on my favorite build.

Edited Saturday at 05:57 AM by Noro.2879

[draxynnic.3719]

You make a valid point. Making the physical blades also count as blades wouldn't just help pvirt, it might also make axe a viable option for cvirt.

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

Both axes, swords and spears SHOULD have the blade tooltip. It's a matter of Purity of Purpose.

Adding new weapons should come with a pass of traits affecting them, otherwise they'll always feel like second class citizens. In a similar vein, it makes me wonder if Fencer's Finesse will affect on-land spear as well, both for the damage buff and cooldown reduction.

[Thar.9465]

Agreed, it's only logical. Espcially cVirt could get a more engaging playstyle if axe was made viable. In turn the fully ranged option could be weakened slightly. As for pVirt, I'm not sure how large the buff is in the end, but I hope it's enough to put it back close to other builds after it's been left behind by the power creep for so long. And if there's a proper build with the spear that's not completely outshined by Chrono due to a missing blade attribute, even better.

[Noro.2879]

52 minutes ago, Vennyhedgie.5369 said:

Both axes, swords and spears SHOULD have the blade tooltip. It's a matter of Purity of Purpose.

Adding new weapons should come with a pass of traits affecting them, otherwise they'll always feel like second class citizens. In a similar vein, it makes me wonder if Fencer's Finesse will affect on-land spear as well, both for the damage buff and cooldown reduction.

I would like to see the cooldown reduction adjusted similarly to other traits (removal of the cooldown reduction portion of the trait and cooldowns adjusted to match). I'm a fan of illusions+domination play while pugging because it's one of the best consistent ways to have any agency over my quickness uptime, but as it stands currently the dagger+sword loop doesn't work without fencer's finesse. I'm happy to take that dps loss so that my rotation flows smoothly.

While that's a bit of a different issue, I think there's not a ton of weapon skill cooldown traits left out there and this is one of them.

[Temeritas.4805]

I love this suggestion and i hope ArenaNet has something like that already planned or sees it.

I'm playing a hybrid "support" Virtuoso for open world most of the time with "Bountiful Disillusionment" + "Restorative Illusions" , and with dagger it feels great because i can spam shatters for buffs+sustain. The only other weapon option for illusion generation is somewhat GS, but this way you are very restricted on what wepons you can use. I would love to have more options here.

[mirage.8046]

I have been vouching for sword, axe, spear (on-land and UW), and even trident to count as blades because Virtuoso has zero reason to use anything that isn't dagger or greatsword, whether the build is for power or condi. The blade mechanic is great, but because the 4 said weapons don't count as blades, there's no reason to use them when they can't even trigger traits like Jagged Mind and Deadly Blades. It's been an inconsistent design since Virtuoso went live. 

[Geronmy.3298]

Even if axe counted as blades it would be worse for cvirt than dagger because axe is only usable on mirage IF traited for it. They hate axe, Mirage and specially Axe on Mirage. That's one of the reasons that even Condi Chrono doesn't use it, axe is just plain bad on both usability and damage without mirroring axes.

Also, be grateful you are getting another power weapon. Power mirage is horrible and i hate how they are pushing that garbo instead of fixing the current spec.

Edited Sunday at 03:15 AM by Geronmy.3298

[Mike.7983]

Would assume any spear skill that causes a phantasm/clone to spawn would be changed to a blade proc.  So seeing skill 2 and 4 on spear prob.  Skill chain 2>5>2>4 for burst/clones.

[Noro.2879]

35 minutes ago, Mike.7983 said:

Would assume any spear skill that causes a phantasm/clone to spawn would be changed to a blade proc.  So seeing skill 2 and 4 on spear prob.  Skill chain 2>5>2>4 for burst/clones.

This isn't about skills that produce blades, though I understand where the confusion comes from. Naming multiple mechanics the same thing is asking for trouble. "Blade" skills consist of dagger 1/2/3, greatsword 2/3/4, all of Virtuoso's damaging utility skills/elite/heal skill, all damaging bladesongs, and finally Phantasmal Blade(trait effect). All of these skills will apply bleed per hit while traited with Jagged Mind. All of these skills will be getting a damage modifier via Infinite Forge. This post is asking for consideration for the "Blade" tooltip to be extended to melee weapons as well, not about the clone(blade) generation potential of spear. It is very possible spear performs just fine without getting that tooltip, but I just personally see good reason to put effort into making sure melee gameplay is at the bare minimum just as strong as the ranged weapon counterparts and that tooltip only affecting ranged weapons would potentially undermine that in the future.

 

Clone(blade) generation isn't really actually related to it. It would matter if these weapons were usable by cvirt due to bloodsong+jagged mind, but cvirt cares primarily about the number of hits you can apply and mesmer melee weapons just don't have the hits per second to compete with dagger. Axe getting blade tooltips could make it work okay if only because it also has base conditions, but it most likely still need further tweaks before it breaks into usability on cvirt.

Edited Sunday at 05:02 AM by Noro.2879

[Noro.2879]

1 hour ago, Geronmy.3298 said:

Even if axe counted as blades it would be worse for cvirt than dagger because axe is only usable on mirage IF traited for it. They hate axe, Mirage and specially Axe on Mirage. That's one of the reasons that even Condi Chrono doesn't use it, axe is just plain bad on both usability and damage without mirroring axes.

Also, be grateful you are getting another power weapon. Power mirage is horrible and i hate how they are pushing that garbo instead of fixing the current spec.

I'm not here to talk about who hates what weapons, I'm here to talk about axe and sword being practically unusable on virtuoso already and my concerns that spear could end up in a similar position when considering the infinite forge change. Adding a "Blade" tooltip to sword and axe skills will not make them good weapons out of nowhere, but that doesn't mean it's not a step worth talking about. Both of those weapons would need a few more changes.

Of course I'm happy that we're getting another power weapon, that's the whole reason I'm posting this.

[draxynnic.3719]

7 hours ago, mirage.8046 said:

I have been vouching for sword, axe, spear (on-land and UW), and even trident to count as blades because Virtuoso has zero reason to use anything that isn't dagger or greatsword, whether the build is for power or condi. The blade mechanic is great, but because the 4 said weapons don't count as blades, there's no reason to use them when they can't even trigger traits like Jagged Mind and Deadly Blades. It's been an inconsistent design since Virtuoso went live. 

Virtuoso with traditional condi weapons also has the double whammy that you don't get the additional conditions inflicted by your clones. I'm not sure if it's still the case, but I ran a test a while back and about half of your condi stacks on staff and sceptre were coming from clones. Now, you can't really justify staff and sceptre counting as blades, but if axe did, it would at least compensate for the lack of clones.

[Markus.6415]

And this is why it always has been a bad idea to offer elite spec weapons to the base class. Many people were craving for it, but honestely... the spec weapons were created specifically for that elite spec in mind, it's traits and also it's specific visuals (might be alone here caring for that). There should be weapon for specifics build that work and don't work, you can't make everything for every elite spec. That would only result in 1 meta power weapon(combo) and 1 meta condi weapon(combo) and everything else isn't seen in PvE anymore.

In my opinion it is totally fine if spear is a good addition for Chrono and a power Mirage but just not so much for Virtuoso.

 

Edited Sunday at 08:02 AM by Markus.6415

[draxynnic.3719]

34 minutes ago, Markus.6415 said:

And this is why it always has been a bad idea to offer elite spec weapons to the base class. Many people were craving for it, but honestely... the spec weapons were created specifically for that elite spec in mind, it's traits and also it's specific visuals (might be alone here caring for that). There should be weapon for specifics build that work and don't work, you can't make everything for every elite spec. That would only result in 1 meta power weapon(combo) and 1 meta condi weapon(combo) and everything else isn't seen in PvE anymore.

In my opinion it is totally fine if spear is a good addition for Chrono and a power Mirage but just not so much for Virtuoso.

 

Generally speaking, it is fine if a weapon is focused more towards one elite specialisation than others - it goes a long way to promote variety, even.

In this case, though, I think you might be looking at it from the wrong angle. The problem is less "this weapon isn't viable for virtuoso" so much as "virtuoso is only viable with dagger and greatsword". Expanding that list would introduce more variety to virtuoso builds (there's basically two ways to play virtuoso: dagger/X+dagger/Y cvirt and dagger/Z+greatsword pvirt, and it's possible that Z=X or Y). It'd also mean that if at some point virt gets slapped down for being too strong as a full ranged DPS, there'd be an option for a practical virtuoso build that isn't full ranged.

[Markus.6415]

15 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Generally speaking, it is fine if a weapon is focused more towards one elite specialisation than others - it goes a long way to promote variety, even.

In this case, though, I think you might be looking at it from the wrong angle. The problem is less "this weapon isn't viable for virtuoso" so much as "virtuoso is only viable with dagger and greatsword". Expanding that list would introduce more variety to virtuoso builds (there's basically two ways to play virtuoso: dagger/X+dagger/Y cvirt and dagger/Z+greatsword pvirt, and it's possible that Z=X or Y). It'd also mean that if at some point virt gets slapped down for being too strong as a full ranged DPS, there'd be an option for a practical virtuoso build that isn't full ranged.

I understand what you mean here. But the variety dies if players find out wich weapon has the highest benchmark numbers. For example, the spear is very good, flows well and even gets "Blade" skilltype put on it. Suddenly every powerchrono, powervirtuoso, powermirage will run around with the spear, because it is objectively the best thing you can play -> resulting in less variety, because the biggest part of those 3 specs will play the same. That is my concern.

Same happened with the warhorn of Ele being able for every spec to use. There is no other offhand ele weapon left in PvE, nothing can compete with it. Is it Power, Condi, or Heal doesn't matter, Warhorn all the way. Variety lost.

[Noro.2879]

12 minutes ago, Markus.6415 said:

I understand what you mean here. But the variety dies if players find out wich weapon has the highest benchmark numbers. For example, the spear is very good, flows well and even gets "Blade" skilltype put on it. Suddenly every powerchrono, powervirtuoso, powermirage will run around with the spear, because it is objectively the best thing you can play -> resulting in less variety, because the biggest part of those 3 specs will play the same. That is my concern.

Same happened with the warhorn of Ele being able for every spec to use. There is no other offhand ele weapon left in PvE, nothing can compete with it. Is it Power, Condi, or Heal doesn't matter, Warhorn all the way. Variety lost.

This is just a bad argument though. Let's look at soulbeast. Mace, Axe, Greatsword, Hammer, and Sword are all viable mainhand weapons. Sure maybe not all of those are posted on the snowcrows website, but you can genuinely make use of any of those and be competitive. Is adding Spear to that list going to break the game? No. Is the fact that Longbow is also in that list for really short phase fights a problem? Actually also no.

There is more variety in power soulbeast weapon combos than basically any other class. Dagger used to be in the list and Longbow used to be in the list for all fights.

 

Elementalist Warhorn is a bad example. Mesmer Dagger is as well and this post is also attempting to bring attention to that. If Power Virtuoso can effectively make use of D/Sw+GS, D/Sw+Spear, Spear+GS D/Sw+Sw/F, Sw/Sw+Spear, Sw/F+Spear, Sw/Sw+Gs, and what ever other combo you can come up with that still has a Fencer's Finesse generating weapon, how are you going to tell me that reduces the variety in the game? We don't need every spec to be locked to one set of weapons and we actually ALL benefit as players when specs have more than one set of weapons. Especially when those combos aren't all melee-locked or ranged-locked.

Edited Sunday at 08:54 AM by Noro.2879

[Markus.6415]

20 minutes ago, Noro.2879 said:

This is just a bad argument though. Let's look at soulbeast. Mace, Axe, Greatsword, Hammer, and Sword are all viable mainhand weapons. Sure maybe not all of those are posted on the snowcrows website, but you can genuinely make use of any of those and be competitive. Is adding Spear to that list going to break the game? No. Is the fact that Longbow is also in that list for really short phase fights a problem? Actually also no.

There is more variety in power soulbeast weapon combos than basically any other class. Dagger used to be in the list and Longbow used to be in the list for all fights.

 

Elementalist Warhorn is a bad example. Mesmer Dagger is as well and this post is also attempting to bring attention to that. If Power Virtuoso can effectively make use of D/Sw+GS, D/Sw+Spear, Spear+GS D/Sw+Sw/F, Sw/Sw+Spear, Sw/F+Spear, Sw/Sw+Gs, and what ever other combo you can come up with that still has a Fencer's Finesse generating weapon, how are you going to tell me that reduces the variety in the game? We don't need every spec to be locked to one set of weapons and we actually ALL benefit as players when specs have more than one set of weapons. Especially when those combos aren't all melee-locked or ranged-locked.

It is not a bad argument, nor are Ele Warhorn or Mesmer Dagger bad examples. This is solely my opinion and the things i witnessed in the past. I'm here to add my personal thoughts and concerns on the matter. I'd be glad if you could appreciate as this and not try to render it the wrong opinion.

Looks like power ranger really has a broad range of viable weapons due to the balance changes in the past. I can't really tell because i don't play it often and don't look what the players in groups are using mostly, but it's definately not the case for all professions.

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

11 hours ago, mirage.8046 said:

I have been vouching for sword, axe, spear (on-land and UW), and even trident to count as blades because Virtuoso has zero reason to use anything that isn't dagger or greatsword, whether the build is for power or condi. The blade mechanic is great, but because the 4 said weapons don't count as blades, there's no reason to use them when they can't even trigger traits like Jagged Mind and Deadly Blades. It's been an inconsistent design since Virtuoso went live. 

Mesmer is in a really weird spot where I feel like it's the only class where the developers draw a hard line into what weapons they want you to use. Instead of encouraging creative buildcraft, they have stupid traits that say "No, you WILL play alacrity mirage ONLY with staff. You WILL play virtuoso ONLY with the Dagger/GS". 

If it was just the dagger I would understand, because it's the weapon the elite spec came with, similar to how Holosmith buffs sword or Untamed buffs hammer. However, the deliberate choice to include specifically greatsword and nothing else feels like a very clear case of playing favorites, and it annoys me inmensely.

The staff mirage case is even worse when Solar outright came out and stated that he just wanted that to be a thing specifically.

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

1 hour ago, Markus.6415 said:

It is not a bad argument, nor are Ele Warhorn or Mesmer Dagger bad examples. This is solely my opinion and the things i witnessed in the past. I'm here to add my personal thoughts and concerns on the matter. I'd be glad if you could appreciate as this and not try to render it the wrong opinion.

Looks like power ranger really has a broad range of viable weapons due to the balance changes in the past. I can't really tell because i don't play it often and don't look what the players in groups are using mostly, but it's definately not the case for all professions.

What Noro said is true though. The problem isn't that there's always a mathematically best option (there always will be). The problem comes when a weapon is better at everything, like Ele warhorn.

Ranger weapons are, for the most part, doing roughly similar things. One might have a slight advantadge over the other, but they are balanced in a way where even the best ones are not far ahead by a huge margin, so it allows players to pick whichever they prefer even if the performance is slightly worse because no one is gonna care about a 3% difference.

For example, ranger one hand sword is technically the best one, but it has a lot of animation lock/forced movement skills, which I've always disliked, so I've always prefered using Greatsword instead. Yes, it might not be necessarily as good, but if you're not having fun playing the game then what even is the point then.

[draxynnic.3719]

7 hours ago, Markus.6415 said:

I understand what you mean here. But the variety dies if players find out wich weapon has the highest benchmark numbers. For example, the spear is very good, flows well and even gets "Blade" skilltype put on it. Suddenly every powerchrono, powervirtuoso, powermirage will run around with the spear, because it is objectively the best thing you can play -> resulting in less variety, because the biggest part of those 3 specs will play the same. That is my concern.

Same happened with the warhorn of Ele being able for every spec to use. There is no other offhand ele weapon left in PvE, nothing can compete with it. Is it Power, Condi, or Heal doesn't matter, Warhorn all the way. Variety lost.

I don't think this is necessarily inevitable, because there are other levers around. How well it works on powermirage is largely going to rely on its ambush. Counting a weapon's skills as blades are a means to buff that weapon for virtuoso without buffing it for other specs. While chrono relies more on the baseline capabilities of the weapon, but pure DPS chrono cares more about phantasms due to chronophantasma. So there are quite a few methods by which weapons might have different performance with different specs.

In the meantime, I think virtuoso being basically dagger or GS ONLY is a bigger problem for variety overall. It's also a balance issue, since virtuoso DPS builds pretty much only have two settings: "full or near-full damage at range" or "not viable". There is increasing pressure for cvirt to be nerfed as it is occupying more than its fair share of the play rate, and I'd rather see a third option open up rather than ending up with the second.

(In fact, come to think on it, different weapons having different performances with different specs is not only possible, it is precisely the problem with virtuoso. Dagger and to a lesser extent greatsword is so dominant that nothing else is really even worth considering. Regular condi weapons have lost passive damage from clones, and sword is basically a defensive weapon nowadays.)

Edited Sunday at 03:53 PM by draxynnic.3719

[mirage.8046]

6 hours ago, Vennyhedgie.5369 said:

Mesmer is in a really weird spot where I feel like it's the only class where the developers draw a hard line into what weapons they want you to use. Instead of encouraging creative buildcraft, they have stupid traits that say "No, you WILL play alacrity mirage ONLY with staff. You WILL play virtuoso ONLY with the Dagger/GS". 

If it was just the dagger I would understand, because it's the weapon the elite spec came with, similar to how Holosmith buffs sword or Untamed buffs hammer. However, the deliberate choice to include specifically greatsword and nothing else feels like a very clear case of playing favorites, and it annoys me inmensely.

The staff mirage case is even worse when Solar outright came out and stated that he just wanted that to be a thing specifically.

It might not even be devs playing favorites; since its conception, this felt like a huge oversight not to count other bladed weapons even when virtuoso was still in beta. I can tell this was an attempt to promote our core blade weapons, besides the elite spec exclusive dagger; then they forgot about the other bladed weapons.

I've had problems with virtuoso, and this blade mechanic restricting weapon choices is my biggest sore spot. But it's necessary to run dagger/sword or dagger/focus because nothing else attacks as fast or works with the blade mechanic. At least pistol can be excused because its phantasm is single-targeted, attacks very quickly, and can be built for bleeding.

We have some good weapon choices that can't even be used because they don't count as blades. Of course, not all weapons are blades and therefore don't make sense to synergize with the mechanic (shield, staff, scepter, rifle). Giving virtuoso more flexibility would go a long way to promote variety.

Edited Sunday at 04:57 PM by mirage.8046

[draxynnic.3719]

That reminds me:

I don't think GS being included was favouritism. The criteria seems to be fairly specific: blades that are conjured out of magic and projected at a target count. Greatsword 2, 3 and the projectile associated with 4 fit that criteria. Physical blades, even if augmented by magic, do not. It was basically intended as a virtuoso-stuff-only thing, and then they realised that some greatsword skills followed the same theme. Mirage seeking axes would probably also count if they weren't, y'know, mirage-specific.

Whether that was actually a good place to draw the line, however, is another question, but I don't think it was a "the devs really liked greatsword" thing so much as a "the devs decided it made sense" thing.

 

 

[Noro.2879]

32 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

That reminds me:

I don't think GS being included was favouritism. The criteria seems to be fairly specific: blades that are conjured out of magic and projected at a target count. Greatsword 2, 3 and the projectile associated with 4 fit that criteria. Physical blades, even if augmented by magic, do not. It was basically intended as a virtuoso-stuff-only thing, and then they realised that some greatsword skills followed the same theme. Mirage seeking axes would probably also count if they weren't, y'know, mirage-specific.

Whether that was actually a good place to draw the line, however, is another question, but I don't think it was a "the devs really liked greatsword" thing so much as a "the devs decided it made sense" thing.

 

 

Yep, that's basically the case as far as I understand. Virtuoso = floaty conjured bladed weapon class. Which, fair enough. I just don't think it's too crazy to say a bladed melee weapon used with bladesongs and virtuoso utility skills and phantasmal blades fits the theme well enough too

Edited Sunday at 05:41 PM by Noro.2879

[LichOverlord.6329]

7 hours ago, Vennyhedgie.5369 said:

Mesmer is in a really weird spot where I feel like it's the only class where the developers draw a hard line into what weapons they want you to use. Instead of encouraging creative buildcraft, they have stupid traits that say "No, you WILL play alacrity mirage ONLY with staff. You WILL play virtuoso ONLY with the Dagger/GS". 

If it was just the dagger I would understand, because it's the weapon the elite spec came with, similar to how Holosmith buffs sword or Untamed buffs hammer. However, the deliberate choice to include specifically greatsword and nothing else feels like a very clear case of playing favorites, and it annoys me inmensely.

The staff mirage case is even worse when Solar outright came out and stated that he just wanted that to be a thing specifically.

I must admit, I feel the same way

I really want Axe/Spear to work on my mirage, and I'm going to try my damndest to make it a viable build (burst with spear while upkeeping mirage mantle and using axe/shatter to reapply torment/confusion), and the problem im running into is that it works *on paper*, and it LOOKS like it would be a viable build, but it lacks a needed weapon trait synergy that all specific weapons have

Every build for mesmer relies on at least one vital trait that specifically functions off a specific weapon, and I just don't see that as being good for the class in a design space

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

7 hours ago, LichOverlord.6329 said:

I must admit, I feel the same way

I really want Axe/Spear to work on my mirage, and I'm going to try my damndest to make it a viable build (burst with spear while upkeeping mirage mantle and using axe/shatter to reapply torment/confusion), and the problem im running into is that it works *on paper*, and it LOOKS like it would be a viable build, but it lacks a needed weapon trait synergy that all specific weapons have

Every build for mesmer relies on at least one vital trait that specifically functions off a specific weapon, and I just don't see that as being good for the class in a design space

That actually doesn't sound viable at all considering Axe is almost exclusively condi and Spear is exclusively power.