End of Dragons elite spec preview

[Dadnir.5038]

Just now, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

You're not wrong, but those DPS traits can be weakened to the point were the de facto become empty slots. See Deathly Chill for my reasoning why this will happen to Scourge once Harbringer is fully released.

Fell beacon and sadistic searing are so weak that it's hard to imagine them weaker. Same goes for demonic lore. If the devs had to struck something it would be desert shroud/harbinger shroud not the traits... Well... Now that I write it... Harbinger shroud... It would be a good ridance thought but that wouldn't solve desert shroud.

[Kodama.6453]

7 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Still the idea of yet another aoe condi mid range necromancer feel boring asf... And, well no if fanservice had been a thing the devs would have made something involving sword and vampiric stuff with lot of mobility for the necromancer (and what the picture show suggest anything but that.

 

At least you'd be able to fly as iron man... 😆

 

There were 2 big groups when it comes to necromancer. Half of the people wanted a vampiric sword user, the other half wanted the pistol wielding plaguedoctor. They went with the plaguedoctor idea, but it is still fanservice. That they decided in favour of one big group over another doesn't change that.

 

And I can't stress enough how much I hate for engineer to most likely also fall in this fanservice stuff. Wouldn't be surprised if it is yet another Asuran inspired power melee bruiser, I can picture Anet kittening engineers over like this. It wouldn't be the first time.

At least you guys won't have to bother with me anymore, I gave up on this game completely at this point.

[Dadnir.5038]

1 minute ago, Kodama.6453 said:

There were 2 big groups when it comes to necromancer. Half of the people wanted a vampiric sword user, the other half wanted the pistol wielding plaguedoctor.

Never seen a plaguedoctor idea nor did I see anyone rooting for pistol as a weapon... Was it on reddit?

 

I can recall many people asking for sword and shield. I can recall many idea involving minions and vampirism. But I can't recall a solid idea of a plaguedoctor with pistol and elixir (or maybe I dismissed them unconsciously as too boring for being even considered).

[ThrakathNar.4537]

57 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Think how warrior feels with their stances and physicals getting handed out, or other classes with their utilities getting handed out (meditations, deceptions, cantrips...). About time that engineer's had their toys handed out like candy to others.

At least with things like meditations and deceptions they weren't flat out improved when they were shared around. When mantras were repurposed, they were given more charges, plus making the final charge stronger (at PoF launch, at least).

 

If ANet took this approach with Necro elixirs, then just a couple of skills would probably give the necromancer every boon in the game.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

6 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

There were 2 big groups when it comes to necromancer. Half of the people wanted a vampiric sword user, the other half wanted the pistol wielding plaguedoctor. They went with the plaguedoctor idea, but it is still fanservice. That they decided in favour of one big group over another doesn't change that.

 

And I can't stress enough how much I hate for engineer to most likely also fall in this fanservice stuff. Wouldn't be surprised if it is yet another Asuran inspired power melee bruiser, I can picture Anet kittening engineers over like this. It wouldn't be the first time.

At least you guys won't have to bother with me anymore, I gave up on this game completely at this point.

At least wait until you have confirmation about the engineer espec before giving up completely.

[Jski.6180]

The range on the preview was odd for the necro it was a mix of mid to close is it more thf melee like or is it more war melee like is the question sadly you cant get as much info from a preview like that. I guess we get to see the blue sword/ sword class next maybe tomorrow?

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Just now, ThrakathNar.4537 said:

At least with things like meditations and deceptions they weren't flat out improved when they were shared around. When mantras were repurposed, they were given more charges, plus making the final charge stronger (at PoF launch, at least).

 

If ANet took this approach with Necro elixirs, then just a couple of skills would probably give the necromancer every boon in the game.

Have you seen the Daredevil physical skills? Much better than the warrior ones.

 

Have you seen the Soulbeast and Weaver stances? Much better than the warrior ones.

[ThrakathNar.4537]

8 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Have you seen the Daredevil physical skills? Much better than the warrior ones.

 

Have you seen the Soulbeast and Weaver stances? Much better than the warrior ones.

Which is why I didn't mention those ones explicitly, because I agree (at least about stance, since some of the thief physical abilities are weaker than warrior ones, such as comparing the elite skills). However, spellbreaker meditations (with the possible exception of the elite) are about as strong as guardian (and in some cases weaker, as with the heal skill), and mirage deceptions are generally weaker than the ones on thief.

Edited August 11, 2021 by ThrakathNar.4537

[Xaylin.1860]

I'm fine with Harbinger if it has higher mobility than the already existing builds. 

 

Soooo... how to we rename the trait on Scourge now? 😆 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

2 minutes ago, ThrakathNar.4537 said:

Which is why I didn't mention those ones explicitly, because I agree. However, spellbreaker meditations (with the possible exception of the elite) are about as strong as guardian (and in some cases weaker, as with the heal skill), and mirage deceptions are generally weaker than the ones on thief.

Yeah, some were downgrades, others side grades, and others were upgrades.

 

This being necro I suspect that the elixirs will function like corruptions, but only affect the necro not anybody else. They will give the necro conditions in exchange for things like boons, barrier, or even stealth and invuln.

 

What would be interesting is if they inflict debuffs instead of conditions, and thus cannot be transferred to a target or minion.

[ThrakathNar.4537]

Just now, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

What would be interesting is if they inflict debuffs instead of conditions, and thus cannot be transferred to a target or minio

From the voiceover of the clip, it does sound as if that will be the case. Would be interesting to see what this "Blight" turns out to be.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

2 minutes ago, ThrakathNar.4537 said:

From the voiceover of the clip, it does sound as if that will be the case. Would be interesting to see what this "Blight" turns out to be.

I suspect that it will depend on your trait choices. Things like lose 10 toughness gain 10 condition damage per stack up to 30 times, or lose 10 vitality and gain 10 power per stack up to 30 stacks. That would be inherently self balancing.

[Acyk.9671]

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Edited April 3, 2022 by Acyk.9671

[Kodama.6453]

11 minutes ago, Acyk.9671 said:

You can trust the colour panel! It's one of the few things Anet will stick to no matter what. Otherwise people end up being too confused. Same goes with icon, they can play with us a bit but in the end you don't want to loose the player base. I still have a bit of doubts about 2 of them.

What i don't understand is why you still thought it would be thief regardless of everything in front of your eyes.

Obviously the colour palette is no longer to trust, they presented us an elite spec teaser with red marks, which is colour coded for thief in GW2. Yet it ends up being a guardian spec, which is colour coded for blue.

 

These are contradicting informations, hence why I say the colour coding can't be trusted anymore, since they have broken the premise for it.

 

And I think I mostly just didn't want it to be guardian. Because I absolutely hate the thought that Anet most likely gave in to fanservice and is making this golemancer/exosuit engineer elite spec which was floating around, which I already know that I will hate it and that this will make me stop spending money on this game. It was desperation, because I wanted to keep enjoying this game, but it seems that Anet is going to rob it from me.

[Acyk.9671]

deleted

Edited April 3, 2022 by Acyk.9671

[Xaylin.1860]

36 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Obviously the colour palette is no longer to trust, they presented us an elite spec teaser with red marks, which is colour coded for thief in GW2. Yet it ends up being a guardian spec, which is colour coded for blue.

Of course, they wanted to make it less obvious. However, the gold turning red is most likely just a side effect of them desaturating the blue. Isn't it? Wouldn't call intend on them misleading us it to be Thief. Otherwise, they should have picked different armor, really.

[Kodama.6453]

2 minutes ago, Acyk.9671 said:

Splashes of red on armor have nothing to do with the outline colour and the outline colour is what matters. Rev uses red too for example...

 

I could see you didn't want it to be guard. You went as far as considering thief could get heavy armor and necro medium. That would imply Anet changed everything this week because we weren't excited by the prospect and i don't believe that.

 

Look at scrapper and holo, those were surprising and interesting E-Specs. Why think the next one won't do the same. 

Tbh I am thrown off by the new Necro's name and animations. I didn't expect something like that at all. I thought we would get an inspired korean theme because of this hat on the asura.

If you think that scrapper was "a surprising and interesting e-spec", then you clearly were not around when HoT elite specs were announced, no offense.

 

Scrapper was a rushed job, they barely managed to get the animations ready, they put some AI on engineer with terrible path finding. Honestly, the entire elite spec was completely dysfunctioning on release, up to the point that the most efficient way to play engineer was to play core, while all other classes had elite specs which improved them and they got to play them instead.

 

So yeah, looking at how scrapper has been on release, I have some reservations here.

[Acyk.9671]

deleted

Edited April 3, 2022 by Acyk.9671

[Xaylin.1860]

1 hour ago, Acyk.9671 said:

EDIT: After thinking about it i actually don't remember how scrapper was like at release, only several weeks after.

Scrapper was presented with fire/explosion heavy effects. We didn't get too much detail on Scrapper back then, but I remember Gyros circeling the Scrapper in the first footage which suggests that ANet intended for Scrapper to have a very differenct mechanic. Didn't they even mention they were planning some way to fuel the Gyros?

 

Clearly, this all didn't happen and Scrapper ended with a joke of a class mechanic with F-Gyro and a static/electric theme. Elementalists like to cry about them getting the short end of the stick in HoT, but imho Scrapper did. I don't remember how it performed back then. But it most certainly wasn't interesting. 😉

[Kodama.6453]

7 minutes ago, Xaylin.1860 said:

Scrapper was presented with fire/explosion heavy effects. We didn't get too much detail on Scrapper back then, but I remember Gyros circeling the Scrapper in the first footage which suggests that ANet intended for Scrapper to have a very differenct mechanic. Didn't they even mention they were planning some way to fuel the Gyros?

 

Clearly, this all didn't happen and Scrapper ended with a joke of a class mechanic with F-Gyro and a static/electric theme. Elementalists like to cry about them getting the short end of the stick in HoT, but imho Scrapper did. I don't remember how it performed back then. But it most certainly wasn't interesting. 😉

Scrapper was most likely at first a prototype for a heat mechanic, which they reused later for holosmith.

Everything points towards it.

 

Scrapper hammer was presented with a rocket skill, which makes sense with a heat mechanic, but not so much with the electric theme the spec ended up with. They just kept the skill rocket charge because it was already presented to the players and therefore they basically HAD to keep it.

 

Datamines showed that the first name for scrapper was internally "forge", another hint that it was supposed to work with heat.

And yes, the blogpost mentioned a "fuel mechanic" for gyros. In the end, they just made it a representation that gyros just live for a limited time.

 

The function gyro skill was literally just a desperate try to just throw ANYTHING at engineer as a "new class mechanic", since the one they planned didn't work out and so they just had to come up with something quick.

As said, scrapper was a rushed job. They didn't manage to pull off the heat mechanic and then just randomly threw something together because they had to give us anything, which turned out terrible, so almost the entire class needed to get reworked from the ground. Basically the only thing which is left from release scrapper are most hammer skills.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Kodama.6453

[Xaylin.1860]

1 minute ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Scrapper was most likely at first a prototype for a heat mechanic, which they reused later for holosmith.

Everything points towards it.

 

[...]

 

Datamines showed that the first name for scrapper was internally "forge", another hint that it was supposed to work with heat.

 

[...]

It's coming back to me. Yeah, that's what I meant. Plus, Forge also fits the helmet. 😉

 

I assume that Heat/Fuel would have worked like Adrenaline/LF with Gyros as Toolbelt-skills. They probably couldn't figure out how to generate the resource with non e-spec weapons or Utilities. Or what kind of Utilities to add ontop of Scrapper to begin with. But that's just a very wild guess.

[SkyCake.4216]

I like how Anet put their own twist on Harbinger like they do, and it still always surprises people. I don't really mean that in a negative way or trying to say people aren't thinking enough. Just fun to see the reactions. I certainly wouldn't have anticipated this like "gun-fu" character. I think it looks more fun than anything I've seen suggested. Looking forward to Harbinger! 

 

I'm also kind of worried about Engineer. It could be something entirely different than any of the speculation. Again, Anet likes putting twists on things. But! I would rather not get another Engineer e-spec that replaces fashion and has heavy-cultural influences so that it feels strange on certain races. I get that can be a big ask since races will approach it differently. Norn tie a couple of sticks together and call it Engineering. I'm joking. Here's to hoping! 

 

Really can't wait for the livestream with more Necromancer information. 

[Sea Wolf.7368]

New necro spec looks nice but I disappointed about alchemy and elixirs maybe Anet should named it in another way. Alchemy is a core engineer specialization. This violates the class thematic boundaries. 

Lets create warrior based on soul reaping specialization.  My only complaint is that new specializations can use the main traits of other classes, which spoils the overall concept and role-playing. I'm sure no one thinks about it, but I just expressed my opinion.

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, Sea Wolf.7368 said:

New necro spec looks nice but I disappointed about alchemy and elixirs maybe Anet should named it in another way. Alchemy is a core engineer specialization. This violates the class thematic boundaries. 

Lets create warrior based on soul reaping specialization.  My only complaint is that new specializations can use the main traits of other classes, which spoils the overall concept and role-playing. I'm sure no one thinks about it, but I just expressed my opinion.

One of the things that ArenaNet said when elite specialisations were announced was that they could use them to do stuff similar to what could be done with secondary professions, without being quite so open to finding broken synergies as secondary professions. So having some elite specialisations working by borrowing features from other professions is basically just the system working as intended.

[Kodama.6453]

5 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

One of the things that ArenaNet said when elite specialisations were announced was that they could use them to do stuff similar to what could be done with secondary professions, without being quite so open to finding broken synergies as secondary professions. So having some elite specialisations working by borrowing features from other professions is basically just the system working as intended.

I agree with sea wolf and think it is intruding in the engineer thematic a bit too much.

 

Elite specs are used as a way around dual classing, but the classes are still supposed to do stuff in the way of their original class. The question would be "how would x imitate stuff which y does?".

 

Spellbreaker as an example: it got mentioned as a warrior/mesmer combination. But warriors still don't create illusions on their own or stuff like this, instead, their hard training allows them to look through illusions and destroy magic with their pure will.

 

Holosmith: combination of engineer/warrior. Instead of carrying different weapons with them which they mastered, they created a device which makes weapons out of light for them to wield. Instead of enraging and hitting enemies with more force, they have a heat system which makes them deal more damage over time.

 

Dragonhunter: guardian/ranger, but instead of using their knowledge about animals and wilderness survival to create traps, they still use their holy light magic.

 

Harbinger on the other hand... yes, it serves as a necromancer/engineer. But instead of looking how engineers do stuff and apply it with necromancy (like building stuff out of bones and flesh), they straight up do the same as engineers: using alchemy, which is a core engineer thematic. They are even called straight up alchemists, which was a title belonging to engineers formerly...

 

It's too late to change now anyway, but I am disappointed that instead of imitating engineer stuff in their own way, they just steal a core thematic from engineer (and knowing Anet, they will be straight up better than engineers by making their elixirs more potent).