Janthir Wilds Spear Beta Event Feedback: Engineer

[Jerkstore.9234]

1 minute ago, SongBird.5046 said:

It doesn’t seem like the 2 skill is actually registering as a leap finisher. Tried both starting and ending in a field, but it’s not triggering anything. Unfortunately that means I can’t really test quickness scrapper.

I noticed this as well when I tried it out in Lion's Arch, then tried it out in open world. I didn't test extensively, but it appears to activate only if you're in combat or hit a target (not sure which).

[coro.3176]

2 hours ago, Xei Han.8736 said:

The other problem is that the entire mechanic basically forces you to get within melee range of your focused target, so skills 3, 4 & 5 end up with a lot of wasted potential when they allow for greater range.

I think what's going on here is that it's designed for mixed-range options. Eg. you engage with 2. Prime 3. CC with 4, swap to Elixir gun, blast combo to jump back. Use 3's flip projectile from range. Rush in again with 2(which is now off CD). Then 5.

[tyburok.3420]

All of the skills look really cool, but the functionality definitely needs some work. The auto should have a little more range, it is a spear and thus it should have more reach than the other melee weapons. We're mathematical geniuses, but somehow don't know spears were used to outreach swords. The second skill sometimes sends you past your enemy, causing you to have to reposition yourself. Skill 3 does not trigger Rocket Punch for mech, which I'm assuming is a bug. The flipover for skill 3 has too long of a cast time and feels clunky, because you can't cast it if you are running away from the target. I can tell my mech to Crash Down on my enemy as I'm running away as well as throw grenades behind me, but somehow this floating stick can't do that. The fifth skill feels a bit slow, and I think it should be sped up if you use it while stationary. I believe warrior's staff skill 3 had the same problem and was fixed with the same solution.

All in all, the skills look cool but are a bit clunky.

[coro.3176]

Just now, tyburok.3420 said:

The flipover for skill 3 has too long of a cast time and feels clunky, because you can't cast it if you are running away from the target.

Agree the cast time on that feels too long, but disagree that you should be able to cast it while not facing your target. That's important counterplay. It should follow the same rules as https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Net_Shot .

[Calen.8945]

PVE perspective.

The weapon feels great for condi holosmith, but it does have some pain points.

1. It's hard to tell if a target has focus in large groups, and I'm not even sure if it's working on bosses.
2. Skill 2 feels very meh, it works to apply focus but skill 5 is a far better movement skill.
3. Skill 4 is too slow and feels clucky to use. Moving it to a 3/4 cast time would be better.
4. Skill 5 is fine, though I don't really understand why you need two movement skills.

About skill 3:

It seems to me that holosmith rotations will revolve heavily around this skill. The idea is that you cast the skill, goes into forge mode for a 5s rotation than back out to cast Electric Artillery. The issues are that you can't build heat fast enough this way. I got around the issue by swapping from Solar Focusing Lens to Light Density Amplifier, but increasing the time that Electric Artillery is active from 7s to 10s could help.

Electric Artillery is also a bit slow to cast, though I'm not sure if that's do to the cast time or the animation, but it can feel clucky.

Edited Friday at 12:43 AM by Calen.8945

[Sindust.7059]

I hate the spear. Forced movement and melee, and you can't skip the forced movement skills because they do too much damage to be passed up. And because half of the forced movement is ground targeted, my character moves all over the place. For this weapon to even have a chance to be enjoyable, there needs to be some fixes to the action cam, the ability to aim at one's feet at the very minimum. And what makes it even worse is that it's stronger than pistols (I just did a parse on condi mech with pistols, a build I'm quite familiar with, so that I have a reference for the gear available on the beta char, and then a parse just button mashing with spear, and I did 2k more with spear, even though I have no clue how any of those effects interact), so if I do any serious group content in the future, I won't be allowed to run pistols lest I hold back the group.

Please delete and buff rifle and/or shortbow damage instead. It would be much better than whatever this is.

[Ruufio.1496]

It's absolute garbage just like the shortbow is.

Nothing special or unique. No boons. No interesting mechanics. No combo fields. No superspeed No Barrier. No evade. No block. Just... nothing... lmao...

 

How about some ideas, then?

Skill 1: We are engineers. Why such a bland auto attack? It's literally just... dmg. Do you remember how ranger sword 1 used to be? Unique. What if engineer spear 1 were to also work at range? Like say you're 750 range away and press skill 1 - it throws the spear as a ranged attack or energy charge or something like that. And then when you close into 180 range skill 1 becomes melee. That would be cool. Is it possible?

 

Skill 2: The idea is cool but the skill is still bland. Maybe make it daze and/or evade or something.

 

Skill 3: Skill is trash. Revamp it. Let's stick with this interesting concept of range & melee combination. Make this skill a 900 range self-pull. Pulls you to the focused target. Skill flips over into a secondary skill if focused target goes idk... 450 range away. You can pull opponent to you up to 900 range.

Skill 4: Skill is lame. Make it some sort of block that also dazes or stuns or something and add a combo field. Make it some sort of quick spin attack that leaves cascading orange AOEs in a counter-clockwise circle that stuns if enemies are on that part of the cascade or something. Something other than what it is now.

 

Skill 5: No joke, make it a 130 -1500 range leap that does AOE damage at the target. Skill has cast time depending on how long you hold the button. Hold for 3 seconds to leap maximum 1500 range. Hold for 1.5 seconds for 750 range leap. And etc. inbetween. Simply pressing the key is 130 melee range. Engineer has only 1 1500 range attack I believe - the rocket from rocket turret. Let's make this spear a melee & range nightmare for opponents to deal with.

Maybe even make this skill 5 130 - 1500 range leap work like this... Hold to charge (makes you stationary, like guardians empower does/did) Holding for 3 seconds gives you enough charge for 1500 range leap. Great counterplay for PvP because... you have to charge it for 3 seconds for maximum leap range. You do not have to immediately use the charge to leap. Maybe charge duration lasts 15 seconds until you have to recharge? Idk. Something like that.

Edited Friday at 12:52 AM by Ruufio.1496

[Supernova Starr.2069]

Spear 2 feels... Awkward, the rules on this rush/charge works are unclear

Spear 5 is too slow

Edited Friday at 12:24 PM by Supernova Starr.2069

[Worldsoul.6219]

WVW roamer here, so bear in mind this is coming from this perspective:

The weapon's concept feels really nice, and it's something Engineer I feel needed (though I would have been happier with a better ranged weapon). The theory of it being designed to focus down a single target feels like it's on the right track but it definitely needs some major tweaks.

TL;DR changes that need to happen:

• Roiling Skies/Devastator/Eclectric Artillery need shorter cast times.
• Electric Artillery needs to be omnidirectional.
• Devastator needs either needs 700 range like Conduit Surge or a larger radius.
• More utility/defensive boons or barrier. This is a melee weapon.

On to the long drawn out explaination.

• The auto attack rotation feels nice, however I feel like it doesn't quite feel right. I wish engineer had gotten even a 600 ranged version of the attack like so many other of the new spear classes. 
• Conduit Surge feels really good, though rather than making the focus duration spread to others, I would much rather it be longer duration. 10 seconds duration of the ability an 8 sec cooldown means that you HAVE to use Conduit surge as a way to keep up the buff or risk losing your damage, and cannot use it as a mobility tool. I'll be mentioning mobility in the end but that's something to consider.
• Lightning Rod feels really good, but Electric Artillery NEEDS work. Requiring to face your opponent to throw EA is not conducive to fluid combat. All it would take to fix this was make it universally targetable like grenade or mortar. 
• I am going to echo others when I say Roiling Skies NEEDS a faster cast time/180 aoe at your feet. It's a really sharp cone that makes it very difficult to land. I think the faster cast time would be necessary and the aoe at your feet would just be QoL.
• Devastator... needs work. The damage is great, don't touch the damage, but again it NEEDS a cast time buff. 3/4 seconds is more than fine. The leap needs to either be longer range (MINIMUM 700 to match conduit surge) or needs a bigger Radius as well. While I understand that the original concept of this weapon is that you are supposed to use Electric Artillery to lock someone down then leap into Devastator, the magical Christmas land scenario that would require to play out in wvw (while also making sure to keep up Conduit Surge buff) is difficult to pull off. 

The weapon needs tweaking. I agree there needs to be some kind of defensive to it in order to work. At *very* least putting vigor in there or maybe barrier would be really nice. It's a melee weapon that's designed like a ranged glass cannon weapon, it needs a little something for it to be viable. 

With that I want to talk about two things: Damage and Mobility.

• The damage is great... but only when the stars align to land your combo perfectly. This is great in PVE but in any wvw mode, the weapon (which feels like it was designed for dueling) will suffer hard for it. I spent a good solid amount of time on power, condi, and hybrid builds and while I didn't so much complain about the damage as much as the ability for the weapon to land them with the tools given. 
• The mobility is bad. I'm not saying the skill as written is bad, I'm saying that having both your mobility skills tied directly to your damage burst is a bad idea. Perhaps Conduit surge could be a good utility skill that while putting focus on something has lower damage but more utility? Also, again, a longer duration on the Focus mark, 10 seconds is too short.

My personal feelings on this, I like the weapon, but it feels like a weapon designed for the ability to weapon swap. Use one weapon then swap to spear when you need to burst, because it has no utility/defense on it.

Overall, I like spear a whole lot more than shortbow at Beta, and if you gave it the polish that shortbow got I feel like spear will be in a solid place. Damage is fine, the theme and feeling are great, but it needs to feel fluid and not as clunky as it is. 

Also props to your design team, the effects are awesome!

[Tofu.1865]

PVE Condi Mechanist Spear can hit 34k DPS bench at Golem but it takes at least 2 minutes to hit 34k though (very very slow and low btw)
Pistols are still better because they can hit 38k DPS in a minute and the Range is also an advantage

-Spear 1 (auto attack): could use some range buff? why is the auto attack range as small as a dagger?
-Spear 2 Conduit Surge: Very fun skill, perfect
-Spear 3 Lightning Rod/Electric Artillery: Lightning Rod maybe put a little bit of confusion damage, Bugged atm because it wont trigger Rocket Punch
-Spear 4 Rolling Skies: hella good because Condi mechanist has been begging for a defiance bar skill for a long time but misses sometimes because it won't lock on target
-Spear 5 Devastator: 1 second cast time and 240 AoE radius but only 1 target... why?

and on PVP...
-Decent weapon for PvP Mech... not a good duelist but good being a +1 on fights and dcapping/roaming
-Gonna be hella broken/OP in the hands of a Holosmith

the SFX is very good, but the gameplay feels very heavy and slow.

Edited Friday at 03:54 AM by Tofu.1865

[Rory Tokisaki.7810]

Spear For Pvp
The second skill seems to not give the leap finisher unless you're near the enemy which prevents a bunch of opportunities to stealth before engaging a fight. 
The third skill second stage of launching the spear lacks greatly. It feels as if the enemy must be directly Infront of you otherwise the skill cancels it self often. At the same time the cast time for launching the spear feels a bit too long.
The fourth skill is pretty bad, ignoring the long 1 second cast time, the 1 second stun duration doesn't give the engineer enough time to capitalize on landing the stun.
The fifth skill is pretty good, has nice damage, but ultimately lacks because of the long cast time, as I said before, the stun duration of 1 second on the fourth skill doesn't allow me to even use the , 1 second cast time, fifth skill because the enemy would leave the stun and dodge or use some other defensive. 

To improve the engineer spear I would suggest adding some defensives, for example allow the second skill to be a evade so the engineer can get in close range without instantly being interrupted or blown to pieces. Allow the third skill to be a projectile block until the spear fully charges and reaches the second stage, maybe even add stacks to the ability for every projectile it blocks. Also increase the range of the second stage spear launch, for it to have 600 range while the leap on the spear is 700 range is very odd, perhaps 900 or even 1200 range. It would also be nice to see a "unblockable" added to the spear if enough charges are obtained. Allow the fourth skill to be utilized better, by giving quickness upon landing the stun or reducing the cast time and increasing the stun duration. Allow the fifth skill to be utilized better, by either reducing the cast time or perhaps giving stability when activated to prevent being interrupted during the long animation.

I get the impression engineer kits are required to be utilized with the spear. This seems a bit odd since we would be sacrificing utility slots to make a weapon viable. Especially when hammer, a similar weapon that's mostly melee with gap closers, has just about enough of everything to be used on it's own, that's complimented when used with kits.

[Dark Red Killian.3946]

1 hour ago, Ruufio.1496 said:

It's absolute garbage just like the shortbow is.

Nothing special or unique. No boons. No interesting mechanics. No combo fields. No superspeed No Barrier. No evade. No block. Just... nothing... lmao...

 

How about some ideas, then?

Skill 1: We are engineers. Why such a bland auto attack? It's literally just... dmg. Do you remember how ranger sword 1 used to be? Unique. What if engineer spear 1 were to also work at range? Like say you're 750 range away and press skill 1 - it throws the spear as a ranged attack or energy charge or something like that. And then when you close into 180 range skill 1 becomes melee. That would be cool. Is it possible?

 

Skill 2: The idea is cool but the skill is still bland. Maybe make it daze and/or evade or something.

 

Skill 3: Skill is trash. Revamp it. Let's stick with this interesting concept of range & melee combination. Make this skill a 900 range self-pull. Pulls you to the focused target. Skill flips over into a secondary skill if focused target goes idk... 450 range away. You can pull opponent to you up to 900 range.

Skill 4: Skill is lame. Make it some sort of block that also dazes or stuns or something and add a combo field. Make it some sort of quick spin attack that leaves cascading orange AOEs in a counter-clockwise circle that stuns if enemies are on that part of the cascade or something. Something other than what it is now.

 

Skill 5: No joke, make it a 130 -1500 range leap that does AOE damage at the target. Skill has cast time depending on how long you hold the button. Hold for 3 seconds to leap maximum 1500 range. Hold for 1.5 seconds for 750 range leap. And etc. inbetween. Simply pressing the key is 130 melee range. Engineer has only 1 1500 range attack I believe - the rocket from rocket turret. Let's make this spear a melee & range nightmare for opponents to deal with.

Maybe even make this skill 5 130 - 1500 range leap work like this... Hold to charge (makes you stationary, like guardians empower does/did) Holding for 3 seconds gives you enough charge for 1500 range leap. Great counterplay for PvP because... you have to charge it for 3 seconds for maximum leap range. You do not have to immediately use the charge to leap. Maybe charge duration lasts 15 seconds until you have to recharge? Idk. Something like that.

I thought the same thing after seeing ranger ranged/melee. It is the coolest, and no reason why it couldn’t be done for engi spear. I second this.

[Angelissa.8409]

I did some extended testing on Conduit Surge (spear 2).

• Tooltip range is 700.
• If no target is selected, it will only charge 450 range. This is most likely a bug.
• If a target is selected, but the target is more than 700 range away, it will only charge 450. This is most likely a bug as well.
• If a target is selected, and the target is at 700 range, it will charge 700 but
• If a target is between 450 and 700 range, the ability will NOT hit. (Overshoot) This means no damage, no focused debuff. This is a bug.
• Targets that are on a slightly different elevation but have a direct path to them (think of small slopes such as a hillside, or standing on a small object) will usually bug, resulting in you jumping in the air or overshooting them, regardless of the distance.
• If a target is between 0-450 range, it will charge and hit, applying the focused debuff.

Edited Friday at 02:46 AM by Angelissa.8409

[DarkLancer.1902]

Even with engineers not really being able to support condi, this, um, how do I put this? This kit rocks. Synergy takes a bit of getting used to, but I can solo fights that I wouldn't ordinarily take on without 9-10 other players. Only problem I can see is that Electric Artillery sometimes doesn't fire. It appears completely random, but sometimes the keypress triggers cooldown without firing the skill.

[Calen.8945]

I did a dps test between power and condi Holosmith (zerker vs grieving gear) and both got around the same dps numbers. (17k for me, but others can likely get higher) So, the spear should work on power builds just fine.

[Custodio.6134]

WvW group-play/zerg-perspectice: 

Do note, that Spear in this case competes with rifle for burst-damage. So, a lot of issues actually. 
 

• the focus-target mechanic not only barely has any benefit, it is also effectively not telegraphed at all. 
• spear 2 AND spear 5 are forced movement. which isnt extremely bad, but goes dowhill combined with the next problem
• Spear 5 has both, a HORRIBLE animation (it literally gets stuck on the tiny ledge at the training golems in armistice bastion) and on top of that: a MASSIVE aftercast which feels just terrible
• generally, i feel like the damage-scaling (at least on the strike-damage side) is quite too low. It has generally a lower damage-output than rifle (its direct competetor in WvW) combined with additionally a lower-burst-potential (the important aspect in WvW). 
• Spear 3 flip-skill has a super finnicky detection of the target, and just tiny misalignments can make this skill fail to cast. this should just  have a static range within a 360 degree (or at least, 180 degree) radius that doesn´t require LoS (it´s an artillery strike after all, and your target is already markes, so makes sense thematically)
   

On the positive side: 

• i generally like the design, the approach was certainly there
• we finally have an actual 2handed melee-damage weapon that is not hammer/defensive
• aside from the issues pointed out above, the concept doesn´t feel as bad to play. It´s mainly weighed down by forced movement and animations
• spear 3 artillery strike "tracking" the target was a great choice. Otherwise this skill would be completely useless in competetive, as it would NEVER hit its target ever
• we got a better version of a CC-skill compared to rifle 4

 

tl;dr 

focus-target doesnt translate well to mid-/large-scale competetive and is badly telegraphed

forced movement = bad

animations and aftercast = bad

damage-scaling = maybe not enough

Edited Friday at 06:30 AM by Custodio.6134

[bethekey.8314]

I only care about PvP.

As a melee weapon with:

• no built in defense
• no second weapon for defense
• kits (meant to fill the void of a 2nd weapon) that get relatively weaker with each new bloated weapon you release
• likely 1 stunbreak
• likely no or very limited stability

it deserves to have very high, if not the highest damage of all the spears. Others have commented good QoL changes other than "add damage".

• 1 needs more damage, faster attacks, or more range
• 2 needs to track better and actually reset on kills
• 3 needs more damage and the charged version needs to have much faster cast/no directionality requirement.
• 4 needs to hit in melee and have a slightly wider cone
• 5 needs a faster animation and it should hit 8k+ crits easily

I'm tired of Engineer not being treated like one of the easiest to kill classes in the game. Half of our utilities aren't even used. We don't have a meta spec right now because you nerfed the one Holo build's cleanse, quickness, damage, and superspeed by 50%.

• Buff kits to make up for elite and weapon inflation. Compare most expansion weapons to kits. I'm not sure a kit has seen a major buff in 10 years to be honest.
• Rework Bomb kit. Every skill takes 1.5 seconds to go off from the start of the cast. That's an elite-level cast for every single mediocre skill.
• Rework Mech. You have Rangers infinite stealthing, smacking you for 8k, with permanent projectile hate and near permanent stability. Why isn't our pet class allowed to be viable.
• Rework Turrets. Yet another "pet" that isn't allowed to be viable. Across all pets, Turrets have the lowest mobility, lowest health, and lowest damage. Why.

Edited Friday at 07:53 AM by bethekey.8314

[bambi.6214]

Spear lacks synergies with the rest of the class. That "marked" tech, or whatever it is called, could have been so much more, like "Marked target receives 10% more damage from Explosions.", or even the god-forsaken "Turrets deal 25% more damage to the Marked enemies", just from the top of my head. But no, the spear is almost entirely self-contained weapon that could have been slapped to ANY, literally ANY other class and behave exactly the same. 

• Skill 2 movement range is too short. The skill would be a decent gap closer or escape tool if it was longer (or, you know, make Tools and Rocket Boots actually worth taking?). Also, I'm pretty sure the leap finisher is not working correctly, or at all.
• Skill 5 aftercast is atrocious. Because of the long animation and short range, we can only use it offensively, and we can't be standing still for 0.5s if we just leaped into an enemy.
• Autoattack is boring. Maybe you could slap in "Any recharging Toolbelt skills get -1s recharge time" on the 3rd skill in the chain.
• Marked mechanic needs to be more. Just more. There's no icon to indicate somebody was marked, and there are like 2 skills that benefit from the mark.
• The 1st form of skill 3 feels nice, actually rewards some thoughtful gameplay, but the Spear Throw skill (flip-over skill 3) has an awful targeting, it would be great if it was 360°, or had a better indicator that it failed.

My rant:
Engineer spear feels underwhelming and lacks identity. Just like the mechanist, the shortbow, and most of the balance patches, spear looks like a half-baked idea from a list somebody came up with 5 years ago, called Possible changes to Engineer, and since then you guys have been pulling stuff from that list, at random. And that Marked mechanic is sooooo underdeveloped, it looks like you had no time to develop engineer and gave it like 6 minutes of dev time. Not only there are like 2 skills that benefit from the Marked thing, the Mark needs an icon. I have no idea if skill 2 landed.

Edited Friday at 07:54 AM by bambi.6214

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

Appearance: Good, I like the theme.
Damage Output: Dissatisfying. I've tested it with my standard condi-build. Every other weapon/kit outperforms spear.
Focus Mechanic: Interesting approach. Looking good. Could use a visual indicator on the mob.

Auto-Attack: 
- An AoE-Weapon with a target-limit of 3? Let alone a two-handed melee weapon? Make it 5, like every other weapon of that kind.
- Vulnerability on 'focused' looks OK.
- On Human, the last animation is a pirouette. Which would lead to a 1/4 second evade on cast. I know you had that on Ranger GS, but removed/replaced it for endurance gain a few years ago. It does not have to be an evade. But it should be something 'useful'. Something like protection or might could be nice.
- Weird effect-range. Please make it 180, like you did with Conduit Surge. It is a long mele-weapon after all. 
 
Conduit Surge:
- Too short distance and way too slow.

Lightning Rod:
- I had to create a link to get the skill-name, because your tooltip is higher than my screend.
- Sadly no condition-application during the area-effect.
- Charge mechanic is OK.
- Would be nice to have defiance-damage scaling with charges, instead of immobilization.

Electric Artillery:
- I rather see this as a trigger-detonator than a projectile. The cast-time is too slow and the whole weapon is melee anyway. Then the explosion would also make sense.

Roiling Skies:
- Stun OK, Launch weird, Knockdown weird. Theme/visuals wise, it does make sense. You want to justify the huge defiance-damage.
- If you would do my Lightning Rod / Electric Atillery change, you can split the defiance damage between these two. Then this would be less of an overkill and you could add some condition-application to it as well. From the burns and shocks the visuals make, this should definitely apply some damage-conditions as well.
- Should be an explosion.
- Should leave a condition/combo field on the ground for a few seconds.

Devastator:
- Very slow cast-time, even on quickness.
- Make that thing a throw with 1,200 range. 

Overall the weapon looks nice. Concept and visuals are appealing. There is room for improvement, but there is nothing completely wrong/broken. Looking forward to the adjustments on launch.

Edited Friday at 12:55 PM by HnRkLnXqZ.1870
typos

[Bujakaa.1948]

1 hour ago, bambi.6214 said:

Engineer spear feels underwhelming and lacks identity. Just like the mechanist, the shortbow, and most of the balance patches, spear looks like a half-baked idea from a list somebody came up with 5 years ago, called Possible changes to Engineer, and since then you guys have been pulling stuff from that list, at random. And that Marked mechanic is sooooo underdeveloped, it looks like you had no time to develop engineer and gave it like 6 minutes of dev time. Not only there are like 2 skills that benefit from the Marked thing, the Mark needs an icon. I have no idea if skill 2 landed.

It truly feels underwhelming. I mean the visuals are fine but that's pretty much it.  We dont have weapon swap and we still dont get any treatment to mitigate it. Like previous person up said:

8 hours ago, Ruufio.1496 said:

Nothing special or unique. No boons. No interesting mechanics. No combo fields. No superspeed No Barrier. No evade. No block. Just... nothing... lmao...

We again have to relay on our dear god how old and nerfed kits to do something. Again we are animation locked with several skills. It just feels so sad. We have all this possibilities and utility to make things work again and we get these 5 skills. Why cant engineers at least once get some love for weapons, why Elemental gets 20+ new skills and animation, ranger gets constantly new pets.  We get shortbow...

At least spear seems a bit better. First off they definitely need to fix animations and cast speed to make some hope. Otherwise even on quickness it felt so clunky.

There could be so much potential considering we are controlling lighting here. Why not have range attack as lighting?

In the end we suck it up as engineers, we find our ways and builds, until they nerf it.

 

Edited Friday at 08:51 AM by Bujakaa.1948

[Worldsoul.6219]

2 hours ago, Custodio.6134 said:

WvW group-play/zerg-perspectice: 

Do note, that Spear in this case competes with rifle for burst-damage. So, a lot of issues actually. 
 

• the focus-target mechanic not only barely has any benefit, it is also effectively not telegraphed at all. 
• spear 2 AND spear 5 are forced movement. which isnt extremely bad, but goes dowhill combined with the next problem

I am going to stop you right here.

This weapon was *not* designed for zerg play. It's a weapon designed around single target focus. That was the goal of the weapon.

We do not need more zerg weapons. Hammer is great.

We need more mobility in WVW not less of it. 

[mootshell.8530]

It feels like Lightning Rod (Skill 3 AoE) should be a lightning field... it's a bit clunky to keep quickness up on Scrapper when it isn't. Otherwise Skill 3's flip skill, Electric Artillery, should have a MUCH higher range... it's annoying to hit with. Electric Artillery would also feel a lot better as a ground targeted skill.

There's a lot of mobility on the kit, but it's clunky. Devastator (Skill 5) would feel much better with a faster animation, and as a 600 range leap like thief staff 5. Counduit Surge would also feel better if it gave swiftness at the end to keep the movement going.

A 600 range melee/ranged autoattack would also feel really nice to compliment how skill 3 and 5 both have ranged components. As a twist, the animation could be a lightning arc like elementalist scepter air autoattack.

The problem with Focus as a mechanic is that in order for it to flow well, you need ways to recharge it on demand (like Deadeye gameplay with the Mercy skill). My suggestion for this is to give Skill 4 this role since it's the CC/utility skill of the spear. Make it so that if Skill 4 hits the Focused target, then the target is no longer Focused and Skill 2 recharges; change the name to something like Grounding. It'd fit better with what the animation actually is too.

Edited Friday at 09:27 AM by mootshell.8530

[Dirame.8521]

They said Ele was glass cannon? This is literally the glassiest.

I was one who loved Shortbow and I still do. I do not like spear.

It is slow, unresponsive and synergies are lacking.

[Custodio.6134]

1 hour ago, Worldsoul.6219 said:

This weapon was *not* designed for zerg play. It's a weapon designed around single target focus. That was the goal of the weapon.

That still doesn't change anything about the pain-points, since those apply to single-target as well without exception. 

[bambi.6214]

3 hours ago, Worldsoul.6219 said:

I am going to stop you right here.

This weapon was *not* designed for zerg play. It's a weapon designed around single target focus. That was the goal of the weapon.

We do not need more zerg weapons. Hammer is great.

We need more mobility in WVW not less of it. 

You just made me realize another thing that was bothering me but I couldnt pinpoint it exactly.

So we have that "focus" mechanic with skill 2 that targets a single enemy and then like 2 other skills are stronger when hitting that enemy, which is... something, BUUUT almost all the spear skills are AoE. 
That means they need to be balanced as AoE skills - you dont want AoE skills dealing the same damage as single-target skills. 
This design is very counter-intuitive -  on one hand you have a single-target "marked" mechanic that rewards focusing on a particular enemy, but on the other hand you have skills that are AoE and should not be hitting as hard.

The weapon makes less and less sense the longer I think about it.