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Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons Discussion Thread: Gameplay and Elite Specializations [MERGED]


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Withholding judgement until we see the traits, but early impressions of the virtuoso is that the concept is amazing, but the actual skills are lacklustre. The major problem is that it's basically just damage... Especially as there doesn't seem to be any difference in the shatters (obviously they'll be stronger as you can charge them up to 5, but they're still mostly the same...) Of course, a power DPS elite is what mesmer needs, but would be good if virtuoso had a little more versatility.

 

I do like the heal, that is pretty cool. Leans into the daggers concept and adds some interesting effects.

 

I'm personally not a fan of the dagger 3 (I'm not really a fan of tempest air WH 5 that works similarly) as it seems a bit random, but that's just personal taste

 

Also, niggly thing, I think that dagger 1 animation is going to get really annoying. Shame that we couldn't get a new animation as we're throwing the daggers...

 

Hugely looking forward to the trait reveal - praying that it adds some more complexity to the virtuoso!

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9 minutes ago, Kyniel.4706 said:

I'm personally not a fan of the dagger 3 (I'm not really a fan of tempest air WH 5 that works similarly) as it seems a bit random, but that's just personal taste

Dagger 3 is what I love the most, I'm surprised they put such a powerful effect with a wonderful animation at that slot. Makes other main hand weapons look tame. 

 

But then again, I also love WH5 air, except the unimpressive animation. 

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I threw this little picture together of what profession I think each EoD elite spec icon belongs with.
https://imgur.com/bRvlGL8

As far as what I can tell from those icons and what I associated them with.

Thief is going to have Offhand Sword and will hopefully be a DPS focused brawler class, moving away from the stealthy, teleporting harasser playstyle that has long been something many people hate about the profession.

Guardian is looking like a brawler.. possibly gaining weapon skills for having no weapons equipped or what I expect is more likely having something akin to the Warriors Rampage mode where they discard their weapons and start punching stuff.

Ele's icon i've got two theories on.
First is that it's a focus stone surrounded by fire magic which is very typical ele stuff tbh and ultimately means nothing, and gives me no inspiration for what the spec might be.

The second (and i'm far more invested in this one) is that the icon represents a flaming arrow.
The little diamond shape looks like it could be the front of an arrowhead heading right at you naturally engulfed in elemental magic, fire in this case.
I've been predicting that Ele maybe getting Longbow for a while now.
(I doubt shortbow on the grounds that they already have a conjured weapon variant and ele already has a nice pool of mid range weapons.)
So i'm betting some kind of Elemental Archer spec for Ele using a longbow, which will be great because no light armour class in the game can currently use a Longbow.

Ranger is the one i'm most curious about.
My first thoughts on that icon were "are we going to see something like a Warebeast or Shapeshifter?"
Norn have long had this ability in the franchise but it's been reduced to a gimmick racial skill that isn't really practical in serious builds.
Are Rangers going to be getting a mechanically viable form of this?. I very much hope so ^^

Or perhaps we're going to see something more akin to a reverse Soulbeast, rather than us absorbing the pet we instead take control of the pet XD
That would certainly be a funny turn of events.

There's one more theory as well that i've had for a while and that's removing the AI component of pets and having them more directly controlled by the player.
Basically your pet staying at your side visibly and moving with you in sync, attacking when you do and generally functioning like a second strike mechanic rather than an actual pet.

As for the others.. don't really have any theories atm.
Cept that Warrior is looking like some kind of Samurai.
I've thrown an idea up in the past about duplicating existing weapons so maybe something along those lines?
Example: A Warrior having 2 Greatsword's equipped and the Greatsword equipped in their first weapon slot will have different weapon skills to Greatsword equipped in the second weapon slot.
But I dunno how much faith i'd be willing to put in this one.

Samurais are known to have used spears though (Yari) so I still really hope to see land spears as a thing in GW2 soon, but if that's not coming with End of Dragons then perhaps Warriors won't be getting a new weapon with this new spec, instead they may just get entirely new weapon skills for an existing weapon/s.
Greatsword would be a candidate for that but so would Sword/Sword.

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Here is what I see with profession colors and hypothetical names:

https://imgur.com/8B1tNUS

 

Why I say the flask is engie? There is an artwork on EOD page with a high tech Jade gauntlet engineer with goggles.

Somehow, I feel like Jade is tied to the dragon. And what better to remind a dragon than a dragon eye? Think of pristine eye item, giant eye trophy, even eye of ender from minecraft if you want. To me it is alchemist using jade.

 

Whereas the icon before is bulky, and kinda look like Prototype X golem in first asura instance, I don't think it is a golem. The shape, a round hand, fists and triangular body remind me olympics symbols so it is a person. With very big armor, paladin?

 

The only other duo i am bothered with is the face and the bullet. Necro has gun, so normally it is the bullet one. But why a face that look like a vampire then as another icon? I said gladiator, but can be mercenary, or street fighter. But it can be an oni mask or a samurai mask, so maybe that.

 

I have 0 doubt for the rest of the icons. I find like Teratus above.

Edited by hugo.4705
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16 hours ago, Magek.4718 said:

Not sure how I feel about Virtuoso.

 

Thematically, it doesn't feel like an illusionist. You can't just make purple translucent effects and call them illusions!

 

I feel a doppelganger kind of spec where you lose clones in favor of a single copy of you that mimics your actions would have been a better fit.

 

That said, it IS very flashy and cool looking. It seems to be geared towards power which looks to be a good fit for me since I've been a lost sheep ever since we lost our phantasms since I played power phantasm build.

 

Dagger being main hand only is a bit suspect though since MH Sword + Greatsword is essential for any power Mesmer build. I feel like like it would have been better off hand since Memser has been lacking a good pure damage off hand ever since we lost our phantasms.

 

I'll probably end up playing Chrono for PvE and Virtuoso for PvP but we'll have to see when it launches how it'll actually be.

 

At least I've still got Shooshadoo!

I feel the same way. They should make Dagger offhand and make weapon skills 2 and 3 the 4th and 5th skills. 

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17 hours ago, Elrey.5472 said:

We can see all elite specialization icons at the website

https://i.imgur.com/cm9UxvR.png

 

My guess is: Mesmer, Ranger, Thief, Elementalist, Warrior, Revenant, Necro, Engineer, Guardian.

Apparently the Warrior isn't going to be a Bard singing about his battlefield victories, inspiring their allies to fight and be stronger. 😞

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Like others, also a bit underwhelmed by the legendaries. Don't get me wrong, the overall design looks beautiful, but having different styles and lore for different legendary weapons is one of the coolest things about them for me. I'm hardly the biggest legendary collector, but part of the reason I've gone for particular weapons is definitely because of the different looks and effects e.g. the fire footprints from Rodgort and the really fun animations of the Binding of Ipos.  I imagine that with a free precursor, I might well end up getting one of the Aurene legendaries for a weapon I use but don't yet have a legendary for (which is lots of them), but I'm not sure I'd work for another Aurene legendary after that as it wouldn't add as much new for me as a gen 1/gen 2 might.  

 

If there's a gen 4 being thought about after that, I'd love to see a few with Canthan influences, or that echo some of the cool weapons and skins in Factions.  

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Underwhelmed by some of the items teased, intrigued by others.

 

Masteries (Good) - I didn't expect new mounts or fishing, and while I don't care one way or the other I am interested in seeing how these are implemented.  These appear to have the opportunity for fun, new and different.

 

New Identity Repair Kit style options (Awesome) - It was 2 lines snuck in the middle but, new style options are something I have been waiting for for ever.

 

Elites - Virtuoso (Low Opinion) - This is pretty sad.  It appears to be very dumbed down gameplay to placate the masses of mesmers who have whined that clones, phantasms and shatters are too hard to use.  Count to 5 then dump your daggers....boring.

 

I really hope this is not an indication of the other elites.  Dumbing down core gameplay and leaving lackluster mechanics in place is uninspired at best.

 

Public Beta Weekends (Awesome) - I am all for the public Beta, hopefully it will prove my thoughts on Virtuoso and other elites being dumbed down wrong.  That you will give players the chance to play all 9 prof before EoD drops feels pretty massive, here is hoping it works out for everyone!

 

 

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Finally watched the video! 😮

 

I love the attack animations, nice colours, flowing etc.

 

Not that keen on the mario kart style floating blades. Reminds me a bit of Baruuk in Warframe, especially if their orientation remains static while dodging and moving about - seems a little inelegant especially for the theme of the spec.

 

Omg the cooldown on F4 is only 30s? And lol at the Crystal Maze style dome visual. xD Looks great!

 

Psychic Force - YES, I really wanted some kind of telekinetic force push style ability. Sure it's kind of an outlier compared with the rest of the spec but at least it's something!

 

Guaranteed we will have at least one busted trait that will make Virtuoso overpowered on launch, looking back at Chrono (chronophantasma, Illusionary Reversion on launch, alacrity etc) and Mirage (original elusive mind, among other things). I'm not worried about the survivability, there will certainly be some silly traits to cover this, at least until they get nerfed into oblivion.

 

The rest of the visual effects look amazing, and from what I can hear (difficult with the narration) the audio effects also!

 

I will probably still main Mirage, but will likely put at least one equipment/build template slot to enjoy Virtuoso.

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Just gonna copy paste what I posted in the mesmer forum about virtuoso

 

I'm not exactly sad or anything but it's rather... underwhelming.

When the shadowed teaser art was shown it was kinda obvious that the illusion blades instead of clones mechanic would be a thing, and even though I love clones as a mechanic, I'm happy to have something that's actually unique from core mesmer for once, and the idea of creating and controlling floating illusionary blades is really cool.

 

That being said, all the shatters still do pretty much exactly the same thing they do as a core mesmer, except they're now a pierce instead of a proper aoe (which is arguably worse). Press F1 for raw damage, press F2 for confusion, press F3 for daze, press F4 for distortion (which is now block, which is, again, worse).

 

Also the only thing you can do with the blades is throwing them? That feels rather uninspired. We could've used them as follow-ups to our attacks, counters, pets, persistent aoes (ala renegade charr things), or even wield them. In fact, our utility skills could've been like elementalist conjure skills, but we summon illusionary weapons instead of elemental ones, adressing complaints that mesmer has the least elite espec weapon skills of all classes in the process, but all we get are projectiles?

 

It seems like it deals good damage, and the gameplay seems cool enough at a first glance, but it just doesn't feel like enough. Nowhere near enough.

 

On a smaller note, some of the visual effects like dagger 1 are fuzzy and ugly, hope they polish it a bit.

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Uuhh I'll just wait ig, but I'm hoping for. Demonslayer warrior with Staff and Spectral skills, utilizing up to T3 Bursts (unlike Berserker and Spellbreaker) probably with the unique gimmick of having an F2 called Abandonment which absorbs adrenaline from a burst and utilizes it in the next burst (storing a supercharged burst even if you weaponswap) which will provide the new burst's adrenaline gains and unique effects based on adrenaline stored before using it. Spectral skills, dark theme, a mobile duelist warrior. Spear will do as well. Greataxe would be a dream. 

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Just re-watched the stream again. Taimi just after the Virtuouso preview get's me all the time...

THE VOICE OF TAIIIMIII. 🤭

 

Overall enjoyed the livestream. I'm not interested in all topics (e.g. Alliances, even though important for WvW) but I feel the stream had a good mix of everything. Fishing looks enjoyable - especially if there are Chef recipies - the boats do not excite me too much. Turtles on the other hand are cool, of course. I also liked the preview of the areas especially since I've never played GW1. Can't wait to learn about jade magic and technology.

 

For Feedback on the Virtuoso, please also check out the biggest thread in the Mesmer forum.

Pitty, we didn't get a preview for more specs. But being a marketeer myself, I kinda understand.

 

Repost of my feedback over there:

Quote

 

 

Some things I'd like to repeat here and some overall thoughts regarding traits and balance:

 

In case Virtuoso is supposed be a power based spec, F2 really needs to do something else than applying Confusion. There just is no point to it. Related to this, Cry of Pain, being a Minor in a hybrid traitline, has no business only affecting condition builds, more specifically one single class skill. Virtuoso aside, I hope that all classes will receive extensive trait reviews like we had before HoT. We really need a cleaning up. For Mesmer specifically, I personally despise the recent changes to Alacrity (it being on Mirage Staff... instead... it being on Dune Cloak? Or not being handed out to Mirage at all?) because it dillutes the purpose and identity of Chronomancer in an unnecessary way - even more so if Virtuoso pushes Chrono in an even less damage oriented role. Mirage as many different issues. One of the more significant ones being, imho, it desperately needing Ambushs/Mirrors to be incorporated into their Shatters (not exclusively Utilities... build diversity). One shiny Dodge is no class mechanic. For baseline Mesmers: What happened to Glamours?

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  • Copying my thoughts from the Mesmer subforum.
  •  

So overall I'm very happy with this elite specialization except the name.  In fact, I feel like a lot of my ideas were taken straight from my Psychomancer elite spec write up from a few years back. Virtuoso is too connected to musicians and this spec has nothing to do with bards or music.  I think Phantom Blade would be a way better sort of name, since that perfectly describes the spec.

 

First things first while this spec is obviously geared towards power, I hope this also signals they're going to rework the various condition damage weapons, which has been something the game has needed for a long time.  Staff and Scepter get about 50% of their auto attack damage from the clones.  Without clones that's just a massive part of your weapon's inherent damage that it needs gone.   I hope Arenanet moves the damage from the auto attack chains away from the clones and puts it aaaaalll on the mesmer.  Not only would this be better for the mesmer in general, it'd also be healthier for the game in PvP since you won't have condition mesmer turret gameplay.  The mesmer would need to actively be attacking the target to do damage.  Even if the spec is primarily geared towards power damage, condition builds should still be interesting and viable on it the way Power Mirage was still decently viable for years just not meta.

 

Moving the condition damage away from the clones and 100% onto the mesmer itself is something that should happen already, and is going to be very necessary for Condition Virtuoso to ever hope to be a thing. 

 

With that out of the way, I love the spells and theming of the specialization.  Dagger was my first choice personally as well as a specialization that removes clones and does something different entirely.  The spells look great and super fun and I love how it seems capable of firing this relentless barrage and in huge AOEs.  I also love how the shatters become true projectiles now.  While this will for sure have downsides as people can counter projectiles, it also has a lot of upsides as well. 

 

  1. Your Bladesongs move much faster than your shattered clones can run even with the Chrono super speed trait.
  2.  If you have line of sight but your or your opponent is on terrain that your clones would struggle to path to, you can still hit them.
  3. The mesmer does not need to be in point blank melee range to make the most out of the Bladesong skillls. So you can truly hang out in the back and free cast onto opponents and potentially wrack up kills.
  4.  When you bladesong, you don't have to worry about your clones being cleaved to death by incidental cleave or CC'd before they even hit the target.

There's obviously going to be some losses.  No confusing your opponent with decoys.  We trade distortion for block and damage.  But the new mechanic has a lot going for it as long as the numbers are right.  

 

The one Bladesong I have a lot of issues with is Bladesong Dissonance.  Going from instant cast Distraction which is an AOE Daze around you and your clones, to a daze with a 0.5 second cast time is rough. I think it should be instant with a very short after cast like Thief's Headshot if it's going to have to be a projectile.  Trying to interrupt a 0.5 heal with a 0.5 second interrupt with a projectile is impossible without either like super good predictive skills or luck.  Like if you're going to keep it a cast time, it should be a stun.  If it's going to be daze and a projectile it needs to be instant cast. 

 

Now, some downsides, not only does Virtuoso lose distortion, but it doesn't appear to have a stunbreak on any of the utilities.  Blade renewal seems like the best utility for PvP and it's also defensive utility and a distortion bandaid and would really benefit from having a stunbreak on it.  

 

And while a lot of people are super concerned about the builds survivability, I think we can't just it until we see the traits.  It's entirely possible the Virtuoso has a trait like Deadeye's Sniper's Scope which singlehandedly gives you all the sustain you need.  It could be that the Virtuoso's base damage is so high that it can afford to run both Chaos and Illusions and still have heavy killing potential like Holosmith.  We really don't know. 

 

Obviously the numbers are all over the place (Look at that elite skill, 40k damage with no might lol, that's not making it live).  So ultimately we'll have to see how it shakes out but I think it has promising potential.  

 

8/10. 

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11 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

I threw this little picture together of what profession I think each EoD elite spec icon belongs with.
https://imgur.com/bRvlGL8

 

I posted mine yesterday:

https://imgur.com/lhqaIde

 

Very interesting to see the differences. You could be right on Warrior, Necromancer, Guardian and Engineer there...

 

Too bad there is no Monk spec. 😪

 

 

Edited by Ashantara.8731
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2 hours ago, Matt H.6142 said:

Virtuoso takes a lot of cues from Final Fantasy x-2’s Psychic dressphere. Psionics, flying blades.  GW2 just needs to release the lost school uniform and the look is complete with the VR headset.  

I got more of a Vergil from Devil May Cry vibes out of it, especially with Bladeturn Requiem, Rain of Swords and Sword of Decimation. Virtuoso's entire kit feels like DMC5 Vergil with his Summoned Swords. 

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I think Virtuoso currently looks really vanilla and uncreative relative to core Mesmer and its e-specs. Though, this can change (kind of) with traits and such. 

 

But! Feedback that I would really like to put forward is showing new e-specs by hitting a training golem isn't exciting. Maybe after showing that, do some basic overworld PvE or show a short clip of it utilizing its abilities in a more natural way. 

 

Thank you. 

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1 hour ago, SkyCakeLight.3750 said:

I think Virtuoso currently looks really vanilla and uncreative relative to core Mesmer and its e-specs. Though, this can change (kind of) with traits and such.

It's very strange. It feels inverted, like Virtuoso is where the Shatters came from and base Mesmer added the illusions as an advanced Elite Specialization mechanic (yes these aren't technically Shatters, but as mentioned multiple times, they fill the same role and have less competing with that role). In theory I'm cool with this. The idea of a theoretically simpler/more accessible Elite Specialization in exchange for being a little more narrow is the sort of alternate playstyle thing that Elite Specializations exist for.

 

It reflects strangely on the rest of the profession, though. If Virtuoso is the simpler Shatter spec, then why do the other specs have Shatter at all instead of something more unique to them? If this was coming with an overhaul to the rest of Mesmer (with Virtuoso essentially catching what got changed so that the playstyle still exists for those who liked it) it would make a lot of sense, but without knowing that it feels like an admission that Shatter is an out of place mechanic for the rest of Mesmer without fixing it.

Edited by Jokubas.4265
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Really impressive how you will have all those beta events for the specializations, a good way to keep momentum. Looks like they will be very fun, and offer new kinds of gameplay for the professions. Note that I'm worried about balance, and devs "breaking our own rules". Very worried they wont fix the current balance. Most worried about still getting pve balance decisions that decimate wvw.

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6 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

 

I posted mine yesterday:

https://imgur.com/lhqaIde

 

Very interesting to see the differences. You could be right on Warrior, Necromancer, Guardian and Engineer there...

 

Too bad there is no Monk spec. 😪

 

 


Yeah quite different 🙂

I'm looking forward to finding out how many I got right ^^
Glad they released them all like this, it's fun guessing haha

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On 7/28/2021 at 7:31 AM, Ashantara.8731 said:

https://i.imgur.com/lhqaIde.jpg

 

1. Mesmer (The Virtuoso)

2. Ranger

3. Thief (Assassin?)

4. Elementalist

5. Necromancer

6. Revenant (Ritualist?)

7. Engineer?

8. Warrior?

9. Guardian?

 

I miss a symbol that bears resemblence of any kind to "Monk". 😢

 

 

2. Definitely a ranger, maybe summoner of animal spirits like necro's minions, weapon could be either scepter or focus. 

3. This one is confusing me. Those 3 diamonds could represent guardian's virtues or thief's initiatives. Either of them could get an offhand sword spec.

4. Elementalist but that the diamond icon again, it could also be thief's initiative, maybe a torch spec thief?

5. Kabuki mask? maybe a staff spec warrior?

6. A dual dagger spec revenant?

7. A pistol necro

8. A dual dagger spec guardian? or an axe spec elementalist?

9. An icon with an alchemy bottle so maybe that's an torch spec engineer.

Edited by kurogane.9681
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