Virtuoso Feedback Thread [Merged]

[necromaniac.7629]

F1 3/4 cast  time instead of 1/2 cast time felt bad

[Angel de Lyssa.4716]

I wish the mesmer could wield two daggers, not just one in his main hand.

 

I come up with the idea of the dagger in his secondary hand like this:

 

Corte psíquico. (Skill 4 - Off-Hand Dagger) Cooldown: 20s

 

Marcas al enemigo objetivo, throwing un corte psiquico rápido que gira de forma ovalada y luego regresa hacia a tí, infligiendo crippled, daze a los enemigos and remove a boon. Se convierte en "Puñalada psíquica" si ha golpeado al enemigo marcado with "Corte psíquico".

 

Damage: 238
Daze: 1s
Crippled: 5s
Boons Removed: 1
Number of Targets: 5
Time of mark: 3s
Pierces
Blade
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20% chance)
Range: 1,200 

 

Puñalada psíquica. (Skill 4 - Off- Hand Dagger)

 

Haces una puñalada psíquica desde atrás del enemigo, dañando y perforando a múltiples enemigos. Does additional damage to enemies without boons.

 

Damage with Boons: 367
Damage without Boons: 734
Number of Targets: 5
Pierces
Blade
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20% chance)
Range: 1,200 

 

Virtuoso phantasm. (Skill 5 - Off - Hand Dagger) Cooldown: 40s

 

Phantasm. Create a Virtuoso illusion that throws the last blade song you used (Harmony, Pain, or Dissonance) at the target enemy, it using the same blades that were used last time. After, that same number of blades amount used are stored.

 

(Damage and data information varies depending on the Bladesong used on the phantasm)

 

It would be a general idea, what could have been used with this specialization with two daggers.

 

 

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

This one was a lost opportunity to introduce hexes.
I don't understand the reluctance to get hexes in game.
It doesn't need to be a hundred of them, just 4 and replace the Fs with those, I don't know kind of F3 - for x time the next skill you use fails and you become dazed or F1 - Last 3 seconds, when this skill ends you take x damage, if you attack or use a skill this skill ends prematurely and you take y (more damage than x) instead.
I don't know just get a bit creative instead of the same old stuff.

[Salt Mode.3780]

3 hours ago, Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

This one was a lost opportunity to introduce hexes.
I don't understand the reluctance to get hexes in game.
It doesn't need to be a hundred of them, just 4 and replace the Fs with those, I don't know kind of F3 - for x time the next skill you use fails and you become dazed or F1 - Last 3 seconds, when this skill ends you take x damage, if you attack or use a skill this skill ends prematurely and you take y (more damage than x) instead.
I don't know just get a bit creative instead of the same old stuff.

The reason why they decided to not put hex is because they put similar things as conditions and traits that punish casting or moving, just didnt work well.

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

1 hour ago, Salt Mode.3780 said:

The reason why they decided to not put hex is because they put similar things as conditions and traits that punish casting or moving, just didnt work well.

Those don't cover the entire spectrum of what hexes did. There are so many things that could be done with hexes...those I mentioned are still the core F skills but with a different flavour that allow mind games and choices, which is all about mesmer.

In fact there are hexes on game, in the pve side, "fragility" comes to mind, which is similar to the gw1 counterpart.

I think it has to do with getting this game as simple and dumbed down as possible. 

[Yoci.2481]

I think some of you need to let go of GW1. It's a different game with much different mechanics.

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

19 minutes ago, Yoci.2481 said:

I think some of you need to let go of GW1. It's a different game with much different mechanics.

Indeed, not easy tho. gw1 is so superior mechanic wise and mesmer is so much better and original than this one.

[MrAmputatoes.6031]

3 hours ago, Yoci.2481 said:

I think some of you need to let go of GW1. It's a different game with much different mechanics.

I mean, different game different mechanics, but I think this elite spec is just a letdown to Mesmer players.

Edited August 30, 2021 by MrAmputatoes.6031

[Leonidrex.5649]

5 minutes ago, MrAmputatoes.6031 said:

I mean, different game different mechanics, but I think this elite spec is just a letdown to a Mesmer players.

it was made for non-mesmer players to have fun for 4 hours and for pve raiders to bench 40k by doing random button mushing off cooldown.

[Ronald McDonald.8165]

4 hours ago, Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

Indeed, not easy tho. gw1 is so superior mechanic wise and mesmer is so much better and original than this one.

GW1 is a product of it's time. And it shows. It's mechanics are nowhere near what GW2 has to offer. 

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

31 minutes ago, Ronald McDonald.8165 said:

GW1 is a product of it's time. And it shows. It's mechanics are nowhere near what GW2 has to offer. 

Yeah the root while casting aged badly. Still GW1 is leaps ahead in terms of tactics and deepness of skills and combat.

[Zenith.7301]

4 hours ago, Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

Yeah the root while casting aged badly. Still GW1 is leaps ahead in terms of tactics and deepness of skills and combat.

Yeah, anyone who thinks GW2 PvE has more nuance than GW1 is clearly on some strong mushrooms.

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

21 minutes ago, Zenith.7301 said:

Yeah, anyone who thinks GW2 PvE has more nuance than GW1 is clearly on some strong mushrooms.

I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not.

I was talking about PvP but even PvE is harder on gw1. I don't raid so I don't comment on that but PvE overall is harder. You can actually fail in the storyline, some missions hard mode are hard to do with bonus, the eternal grove comes to mind.

Some dungeons are equally hard, the fendi nin one for example.

Or course the 8 heroes turned the game to an easier pace in which you can mostly afk while the heroes spam energy surge. But before the heroes thing some missions took forever to do, with people begging anet to ease the game because parties failed a lot, anet didn't caved in at the time. You had to think carefully about the builds according to the enemies you would face.

Meh enough praising gw1, my point was only to get hexes into game because they were part of what made mesmer great.

Edited August 30, 2021 by Lincolnbeard.1735

[Zoser.7245]

7 hours ago, Leonidrex.5649 said:

it was made for non-mesmer players to have fun for 4 hours and for pve raiders to bench 40k by doing random button mushing off cooldown.

Let me say that... only for casual non-mesmer players as you can't solo hard content with that sh*t. It doesn't matter how skilled you are if  your skill's kit and traits are crap for accomplish hard content.  And also NO for raids...   You don't need to go deeply in the past to discover all the dps nerfs that has been done.  There is a limit in the dps allowed, but near that top limit... there are professions that bring a lot  more support and utility than the Virtuoso. He can only do dps, dps and dps plus core skills and traits.

 

That doesn't means that the Virtuoso will not be success in terms of be played. Players that careless of how the Virtuoso works/perfoms and only want to get few flashy and nice visual animations and watch some big numbers even if they are downed and killed  often...   will be happy to play it.  Also trolls that came here to ask for a mesmer specializacion without illusions and to show the world how much they'll be achive with the new specialization (Virtuoso), being in top ranks and meta everywhere.... have also been successful with the Virtuoso.

 

Now they disappeared from this forum, they laughed at people and now you only see them in the forums of the professions that they really play. And the only thing that could be proven, unless the Virtuoso receives a profound rework, is to be a complete idiot if you play it in competitive WvW , PvP modes primarily but probably even in Raid and believe that you are something better than a lackluster, an extra weigh that your team/squad/group should carry... or not and kicks it out asap. Of course, forget solo hard content.

 

What borders me the most is that someone from the design team approved the Chronomancer without distortion and Illusionary Persona at the time, then nerfing the Mirage's endurance by 50% being a basic mechanic of the specialization, seeing that they even laugh publicly about that nerf. And now to develop a specialization whose mechanics are simpler than the mechanism of a pacifier for babies. And you don't have to be very smart to see that the motive behind everything is to create a specialization that is easy to ignore, that does not give headaches and is easily defeated and easy to nerf as dps is the single thing it has to balance.

 

 

Edited August 30, 2021 by Zoser.7245

[Zenith.7301]

14 minutes ago, Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not.

I was talking about PvP but even PvE is harder on gw1. I don't raid so I don't comment on that but PvE overall is harder. You can actually fail in the storyline, some missions hard mode are hard to do with bonus, the eternal grove comes to mind.

Some dungeons are equally hard, the fendi nin one for example.

Or course the 8 heroes turned the game to an easier pace in which you can mostly afk while the heroes spam energy surge. But before the heroes thing some missions took forever to do, with people begging anet to ease the game because parties failed a lot, anet didn't caved in at the time. You had to think carefully about the builds according to the enemies you would face.

Meh enough praising gw1, my point was only to get hexes into game because they were part of what made mesmer great.

 

Wasn't sarcastic. The debuff system and build variety and complexity of GW1 completely overshadows GW2's simplistic system of boons and the irrelevant combo fields.

[KiLLiAN.5629]

I main a guardian and played a lot of Mirage recently in PvE.

 

I had tons of fun playing the Virtuoso and really love how the gameplay mechanics of a mesmer were changed. Animations are beautiful and I like the flavor of the spec. I only wish it had a dagger off-hand as well.

 

The one thing I don't like is the name of the spec. It should be called Bladesinger (cause you know, they have Bladesongs), Blade, Mindblade or something more fitting.

[Cjay.6312]

Virtuoso specifically was appallingly bad from a complete design standpoint. 8 years went into creating this really intricate playstyle for mesmer where it was really disruptive, elusive, and in your face, only to create an elite specialization that would be better suited for a ranger. For pvp, there was quite literally only one good trait in the entire traitline, and it was giving it aegis for using those disappointingly bad shatters. My list of all the issues with virtuoso is as follows:

- No passive movement speed OR mobility skills besides sw3. It's already outclassed by chronomancer and mirage in this aspect. 

-Literally 0 attempt at trying to synergize with the core traits whatsoever. Just reading through the traits of virtuoso and there are maybe 3-4 traits throughout all of the core traitlines that really accentuate virtuoso.

-Your shatters all have a long cast time, cannot be used behind you, and flat out miss if someone is strafing (also misses more if you're using a legendary weapon oddly) which is undeniably clunky by design because you cannot deal with any player that is actually moving like a real person through strafing and what not. Your damage output is also neutered by the excessive amount of projectile denial in this game and through any small form of LoS. You're limited to single target only damage, and you cannot provide much of it because it takes too long to generate enough daggers to be useful. But atleast you'll have fury from 1 column of traits right

-You have zero survivability (again) due to no passive movement speed, a really bad block that's supposed to replace distortion (forcing you to take that utility because its the only way you live on the spec), no passive regen, all your heals are unbearably bad (imagine needing a target for a heal), literally nothing is given to you for all these massive trade-offs that are thought of as insubstantial

-The pathing on your skills is actually horrendous. The shatters flat out miss more often than not. Your elite skill has a year long cast time and can literally be side stepped the moment it activates, it along with your shatters CANCEL for no reason so kittening often, and again can't be used behind you, which is again, clunky. (I keep emphasizing this because not being able to do so means that your main source of damage, your ONLY source of damage, is completely negated not by any skills within the game, but because they have a long cast time and have to be used in front of you, so anything thats in your face can just keep running to the side or through you and you actually cannot use a skill. You can't kite or do anything that you'd normally do to manage these things because you have to be at a range to be viable, even though literally all 3 other specs are designed to be close range fighters)

-The damage is just really bad. ANOTHER elite spec where you won't take the weapon given to it because it's god awful due to how low its damage output is, how clunky it is, and how little utility it provides. It could literally NEVER usurp MH sword as is. Your f2 hits HARDER than your f1 randomly. Literally no reason at all as to why but it does. The utilities are also really bad. I really enjoy using the immob utility but with the maximum amount of modifiers you can take on zerker spec, it crits for 2k and is easy to miss despite all the setup it requires. The other skill like it but is more damage based literally will hit someone a maximum of 1 times, and its also just as low damage even if they sit in it. The stunbreak, potential to be good, is on a 45s cd. Automatically terrible and could never be used. The elite, terrible pathing, terrible damage, long cast time. You'd get better use out of timewarp and that is saying something. 

-It is genuinely way too hard to generate daggers. This spec was clearly designed to be power based, and anything power based has to have some sort of consistent way of dealing damage, especially if its way of dealing damage is the class mechanic. But say you have 5 daggers and use f1, you're waiting an unbearably long time to generate more daggers because your other skills just dont give any. The one trait in your GM line that gives you daggers takes 9 seconds just to generate 3, a barely suitable amount to actually pressure someone. You could say "Just take deceptive evasion" and then you lose out on something you needed, whether it be something that provided a needed damage boost or a needed way of surviving. Your sustained damage is non-existant, so your burst damage has to be compensated as such. It's just not enough to ever be viable in PvP. There HAS to be more traits or skills that generate daggers, otherwise it simply will not work.

-Please change the block. It takes all your daggers only to do 100 damage per tick no matter the amount of daggers you have. It doesn't even get rid of blind by hitting those around you until like 3s into the cast. It's also a channeled block on a light armor spec that provides no other benefits like earth shield on ele does. And oddly enough, everything that pressures you on mesmer is unblockable anyways. It's just bad by design and through proper utilization. 

The spec is boring to play. It has the same problem harbinger does, you're not incentivized to actually play the game. You just run around waiting until you can actually contribute something and the moment you can't, you fade away from the fight altogether and rinse and repeat. It's incentivizing taking problematic traitlines (chaos and inspiration) to try and provide for it what the spec lacks. I can unironically, no meme, see bunker virtuoso being meta before any form of dps because it already doesn't do damage nor generate alot of daggers, but it can definitely run in a circle really well, and that will make me quit the game again. 

[artio.6807]

I'd like to express my disappointment. A virtuoso is an individual who possesses outstanding talent and technical ability in a particular art or field such as fine arts, music, singing, playing a musical instrument or composition. None of these characteristics are seen on this monstrosity you call 'new specialization'. It's just a thief playing telekinesis.

 

It's outrageous that the new shatter abilities are references to musical terms when all they do are launching flying daggers to 'cut' enemies. This is not what the community wanted when suggested a 'bard/minstrel' specialization.

 

The new trait lines and slot skills are terrible and simplistic. Nothing makes me excited to play with it.

I'll stick to Chronomancer and Mirage.

 

Thank you.

Edited August 31, 2021 by artio.6807

[Tseison.4659]

Trait and Skill Suggestions

Below is collective suggestions for changes to traits and skills.  (Again, these are just thoughts as things are subject to change within the Beta Event #4 and upon the actual EoD release. But a couple of these changes would be helpful to the quality of life of the Virtuoso. Thank-you.)

 

• Bladecall, add a cripple or daze upon return OR give it some form of attack chain with an evade or leap backwards for mobility and creating distance.
• Blade attacks/Bladesongs should be unblockable.

 

• F2 Bladesong Sorrow should have it’s condition removed and replaced with something else. Perhaps something that deals more damage based on conditions on the enemy.
• F4 + Blade Renewal should be swapped.
• Twin Blade Restoration should stock a Blade if both attacks hit.
• Rain of Swords radius should be increased.
• Psychic Force should have its cooldown reduced.
• Sword of Decimation merged into Rain of Swords.
• Thousand Cuts, unblockable, the portal wider and faster projectile speed.

 

Traits

• Blade attacks perhaps should have a chance of removing a boon on critical hits and deal more damage to foes with boons on them.
• Duelists Reversal + Psychic Riposte should be combined. (Too repetitive)
• Jagged Mind changed as there’s already Sharper Images.
• Infinite Forge should stock a Blade every X seconds instead of when under the threshold.
• Bloodsong should be changed as Virtuoso won’t be as good of a Condition spec as the Mirage.
• Traits that affected clones/illusions should also affect Blades and there’s still several that aren’t doing that.

Edited September 1, 2021 by Tseison.4659
Added bulleted list.

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

This is my (way too big) Virtuoso feedback and bug list after ~80 ranked games and some duels. I'm including a 4h PvP condi Virtuoso video. There is some random power virtuoso gameplay in there too but that was unintended. By the way, ignore the video title lmao, that's just dumb clickbait, Virtuoso actually sucks.

I think Illusions 132, Chaos 133, Virtuoso 112 was the best Virtuoso beta build I could find: https://i.imgur.com/6OhUsrn.jpg. The reason for Shatter Storm over The Pledge is because it allowed you to stowcancel F1 every second instead of every four seconds, giving you potentially perma stability and 18-21 stacks of might. Rune of the Guardian has interesting synergy with the aegis trait, though Rune of Orr may still be better.

Content

1. TL;DR
2. Feedback
3. Bugs

TL;DR

• Fix lots of huge bugs obviously.
• Fix laggy animations, notably Unstable Bladestorm and Rain of Swords.
• Remove the bleed-related traits at the bottom of the Virtuoso line, or condense them into one trait. Make three/two new traits.
• Illusionary Leap - often misses the target, fix the accuracy (see this video).
• Dagger - consider decreasing range to 600/900 and increasing damage/utility. Mesmer already has a 1200 range power weapon in greatsword.
• Flying Cutter - fix tracking, increase projectile speed.
• Unstable Bladestorm - fix it disappearing when touching a wall. More consistent damage and/or make it do something else than just damage (cripple/projectile block/swiftness/superspeed). Maybe ground targeted like old Chronomancer shield 5.
• Twin Blade Restoration - fix it cancelling when not facing target and buff it (lower cd/more condis removed/etc).
• Sword of Decimation - make it hit after ~1/2 sec instead of after ~1 sec.
• Rain of Swords - make it cripple and feel more like Ranger Barrage.
• Psychic Force - lower cd to 30 seconds and make it give stability for 1 second.
• Blade Renewal - consider making it the elite skill. Keep the stow cancel trick.
• Thousand Cuts - fix annoying targeting and buff the damage (or remove it and make Blade Renewal the elite). Maybe make it a regular AoE instead of a projectile (or make it unblockable).
• Bladesong Harmony - make it cast quicker, and make the projectile speed faster / track better.
• Bladesong Dissonance - make it cast quicker, and increase the projectile speed / make it track better. Make it stun for 1/2 per blade because it has a reactable cast time and long cd, and because it suits the Virtuoso kit.
• Bladesong Requiem - separate the pulsing damage and the block because it gets interrupted by stuff like Shocking Aura, Full Counter, Static Shield (move the AoE damage to F2 instead?). If not, at least increase the damage. Clarify how this skill works; is the block supposed to be 1.5s or 3s? Confusing tooltip.

______________________________

FEEDBACK

The good:

• I like Mesmer without clones; It feels refreshing to not have to work around frustrating AI and to not be kept in combat forever by your illusions. Even though I have a lot of problems with Virtuoso I still played it for 3 days straight.
• I like that the F1-F4 are new which is a first for Mesmer elite specs, it's always fun to learn new mechanics.
• The floating daggers above your head/shoulders look sweet.
• I like that the spec doesn't have broken mechanics like dodging while stunned and that it is mainly an offensive power-based class.
• I like the new (?) "bouncing on walls" mechanic but it is only used on one skill.
• Virtuoso feels decently hard to play, which is good. If you compare chaos Virtuoso vs chaos Mirage there is a massive difference. To be fair, this is partly because of the bugs that gave beta Virtuoso a very high skill ceiling, so we will see how it is on release.

 

The bad:

• Currently, Virtuoso seems to get more or less countered by a lot of classes:

1. Thief and power Revenant, because they have unblockables and because they are fast and run through your character, which makes your Bladesong targeting difficult.
2. Elementalist, because Shocking Aura interrupts your F4 block, and because they tend to have a lot of projectile denial.
3. Engineer and Warrior, to a lesser extent, because Static Shield and Full Counter interrupts your F4 block.
4. Necromancer, because you don't have a lot of condition removal and because they have unblockable marks that hit through your aegis and F4.
5. Many condition builds, unless you play inspiration. Otherwise, assuming you are running Blink and Blade Renewal (which you most likely are), you need to run Mantra of Resolve, but then you only have one stunbreak which makes you highly vulnerable now that you don't have instant blind/daze/distortion on Shatters. If Blade Renewal were an elite skill (as I suggest) you could fit both a second stunbreak and a condition removal utility. Another possibility is to make Twin Blade Restoration a viable answer to conditions.
6. Line of sight in general. For example in my duels, if my opponent decided to hide behind the rubble on Niflhel mine, I couldn't really do much because everything is a slow projectile. Ranger has Barrage to counter LoS and regular mesmer has pbAoE shatters and stuff like axe 3 and sword 3 which go through walls. Virtuoso doesn't have any of this.

• The class theme also seems a bit confused in my opinion. Its like there are three ideas mashed into one messy class:

1. Throwing dagger class. I like the idea of throwing quick sharp daggers that would feel satisfying to land. Think of how it feels to throw a small knife in real life, it has a lot weight and impact to it. I also like the concept of the "magician with throwing cards" like phantom in maplestory or zander in battlerite. Instead what we got is floaty purple magic. Only dagger 2 satisfies the dagger throwing fantasy for me, F1-F3 have such big shiny animations that I don't even notice that I am throwing the daggers above my shoulders which is a shame, I prefer clear and precise animations. God knows this game doesn't need more visual clutter.
2. "Psychic" class with PSI/telekinesis abilities. I am reminded of earthbound, or kinesis from maplestory, but in that game you throw buses on people, whereas here what we got for psionics is... one knockback on a 45 second cooldown. I think an elite spec leaning heavily into the telekinesis/psychokinesis theme could have been really cool.
3. Musical dancer class. I'm guessing the only reason the profession skills are called "Bladesongs" is because people have been asking for a music-themed Mesmer and the devs decided to throw them a bone, because in every other sense this spec has nothing to do with music or singing or dancing. But maybe it will make more sense in context of the PvE lore.

Let's get into more specifics...

 

Dagger:

• I found this to be strictly worse than greatsword. For a weapon that ONLY does power damage the power damage it does is underwhelming.
• It plays weirdly because it is technically 1200 range but skill 2 and 3 both work better at ~300-600 range, and skill 1 misses on moving targets at ~400+ range. I suspect this was intended to be like greatsword which rewards melee range to hit mirror blade. But greatsword still has good value on 1200 range with Phantasmal Berserker, Mind Stab and Spatial Surge. I would consider lowering the range of dagger to 600 or 900 and increasing the damage and/or utility, since Mesmer already has a 1200 range power weapon in greatsword.
• That said, I think dagger has some potential on a power build because the problem with greatsword is that your skills are slow and need a target, which makes you very vulnerable to thief; dagger doesn't have those problems.

 

• Flying Cutter -
  • Low damage without the flurry and the flurry is inconsistent. Much worse than Spatial Surge. Can be strafed at ~400+ range - make the projectile much faster.
  • Also, and this is more of a matter of taste, I don't like that it feels so "floaty" and "magicky", I would prefer it to feel more like quickly throwing a sharp object (I wrote about this above).
• Bladecall -
  • I like the idea of this skill and the trick where you detarget and shoot it into the ground to hit faster in melee range is cool, but it should return much faster instead of "sticking" to the wall/floor for a second. Make it feel like it is bouncing. The animation is good.
• Unstable Bladestorm -
  • This skill feels very fire-and-forget and unsatisfying. Ideally you want skills to feel satisfying to hit like Mirror Blade, Mind Stab or Axes of Symmetry, and this skill doesn't.
  • The animation is fancy, but if you zoom in on it you will notice your FPS drop massively.
  • It suffers from a problem where it disappears if it touches a wall or an enemy with block/aegis/projectile destruction. I would honestly considering reworking it. If you do want to keep its current design I would suggest some of the following:

1. Make it ground targeted, let us shoot it out like old Chronomancer shield 5 (when you could use it behind you).
2. Make it a regular AoE instead of a projectile so that you have an answer to projectile hate. This would fix it disappearing upon touching an aegis.
3. The skill has a big problem right now in that it disappears if it touches a wall. If possible, make it bounce off of walls like dagger 2 - otherwise, just make it stop moving when it hits a wall.
4. Make it inflict cripple and/or block projectiles and/or give superspeed to allies inside it. I found myself forgetting multiple times that it isn't a cripple because it really looks like it.
5. Remove the "blades shoot out" mechanic and make it deal more consistent pulsing damage to enemies inside it instead, to reward you for keeping enemies inside it using stuff like Magic Bullet, Temporal Curtain or Sword of Decimation.

 

Bladesongs:

• Contrary to some other people, I like that you need to face your target at the start of the Bladesong cast. After all, with most projectiles in the game (like say Mirror Blade) you need to face target both at the start and at the end of the cast. Bladesongs basically work like Renegade shortbow autoattack (type 2 in this video). That said, Bladesongs should be able to be used without a target. There are movement options which will really highlight the difference between good and bad players. Couple examples:

1. Start Bladesong channel, press about face. You will be able to kite away while hitting the skill, and hide the animation slightly. See this video (I forgot to record a clip on Virtuoso but Renegade shortbow 1 works the same way).
2. While running from an enemy that is targeted behind you, release W and press F1, then instantly press W again. You will able to run away from your target while casting F1. I use this at some points in my video, it will take a while to get into muscle memory though. See this video.

• In general the Bladesong animations are not my favourite because the purple effect is so big and fancy that it feels less like actual throwing daggers and more like shooting generic "purple magic". I have a feeling this would be way better if F1-F3 didn't all feel so indistinguishable "shoot some purple magic at range for a bit of damage" - I go into some ideas on that note below. The moves that the player character performs look neat though.

 

• Bladesong Harmony -
  • This skill is too slow and too inaccurate. Currently, this skill only hits at short ranges because the projectile speed is so slow and the tracking is so bad. I suspect this "shotgun" functionality may be intentional to incentivise the player to not camp at 1200 range, but if that is the case it needs to be 1/4 or 1/2 cast because you cannot really channel a slow 3/4 shatter in melee range on a build as squishy as power Virtuoso. Also, because F1 is so much weaker than F2, you are basically incentivising people to play condi Virtuoso if they ever want to land their damage and I think I speak for most when I say that we are tired of condi Mesmer always being stronger in PvP than power Mesmer.
• Bladesong Sorrow -
  • This is the best new Shatter. It is reasonably fast, and hits fairly consistently at range. However, as others like Teapot also pointed out, F1-F3 feel very same-y, and does Virtuoso really need a condition option considering we just had Mirage? What if you gave F2 the "spinning blades around you" effect that is currently on F4, and increase the damage. Bladeturn Requiem would instead be just a block (more on that below).
• Bladesong Dissonance -
  • This skill is really bad. It only dazes once, which means it doesn't synergise well with traits like Dazzling, Shattered Concentration and Vicious Expression, unlike normal Diversion. The combination of 38 second cooldown, 1/2 sec daze duration, slow cast time, slow projectile travel speed, plus exremely bad projectile tracking, makes this really bad. It is basically only a filler damage skill for when you have a blade to spare (it is never worth using with more than one blade).
  • I would suggest increasing projectile speed and accuracy (aim for it to feel more like throwing Mirror Blade), and making it a stun (1/2 sec per blade). The reason the stun on Diversion was removed was because instant hard cc is unhealthy, but Virtuoso F3 isn't instant anymore so this is a perfect time to add the stun back in. Sword of Decimation, Rain of Swords, Thousand Cuts, and Bladesong Harmony all synergise perfectly with stuns, but then Virtuoso doesn't have a single hard CC, which just feels weird. Additionally, the loss of immobilize on sword 3 means Virtuoso has one less way of locking down the enemy.
• Bladeturn Requiem -
  • I love how it synergizes with traits like Shattered Concentration and Rending Shatter, and it is a great idea to have some melee counterpressure in order to be able to deal with stuff like Thief and Revenant, but right now the damage is super low.
  • I would consider putting the "spinning blades" effect on F2 (which means you can justify buffing the damage) and Bladeturn Requiem instead becomes a block that protects against a number of hits (use 5 blades = block 5 attacks), like Elementalist Arcane Shield. This serves four benefits:

1. Purity of purpose.
2. Having blocks that pulse damage in PvP is a problem because it easily gets interrupted by Shocking Aura, Static Shield and Full Counter, and you can't do much about it.
3. Using Bladeturn Requiem with a lot of blades becomes more worth it; currently using it with more blades doesn't provide much value.
4. Virtuoso becomes less reliant on projectiles; only 2/4 Bladesongs are projectiles instead of 3/4.

A different and simpler alternative would be to make Bladeturn Requiem give distortion and instead make Blade Renewal a block and a stunbreak.

• Basically, with these reworks we go from
  • "F1: high damage F2: medium damage F3: low damage F4: damage with block"
    to
  • "F1: range damage F2: melee counterpressure F3: stun/setup F4: block".

 

Utilities/heal/elite:

• Twin Blade Restoration -
  • The fact that it cancels if you aren't looking at your target combined with the long cd, mediocre healing and long cast time, makes this heal unusable. I like that the new heal isn't strictly better than core heals in every scenario (*cough* False Oasis) but currently it is just always bad.
  • First of all, it needs to be usable without line of sight, second of all the one single cleanse is really weak considering you actually need to hit your target to get it - look at Consume Conditions, Hide in Shadows, or Mending. Because it has counterplay it needs to also be rewarding.
• Rain of Swords -
  • This is very slow and does no damage in PvP, which honestly might be a good thing because you generally don't want big pulsing AoEs in PvP.
  • That said, I would make this skill hit rapidly and cripple enemies like Ranger barrage, instead of pulsing once per second. This would fit the name and animation better.
  • Speaking of the animation, it needs to be simplified somehow because currently it is officially known as "that one utility that lags my game".
• Sword of Decimation -
  • Cool utility concept that rewards smart use, but currently it is hard to combo because it actually takes about 1 second to hit even though the cast time is 1/2 sec. For instance if you use SoD -> Chaos Storm, the Chaos storm will hit slightly too late, and if you do Chaos Storm -> SoD, the daze will wear off before the Sword of Decimation hits even though Chaos Storm daze is 1 second and SoD is supposedly 1/2 sec cast.
  • Either make the cast 1/4 sec and retain the aftercast delay (which allows you to do combos like SoD -> Chaos storm or SoD -> Illusionary Wave), or remove the delay and make the skill hit after exactly 1/2 second (which lets you do Chaos Storm -> SoD or Illusionary Wave -> SoD). Also this skill would fit better into Virtuoso's kit if you made F3 a stun as previously suggested.
• Blade Renewal -
  • Consider making it the elite skill instead of Thousand Cuts (sort of like the equivalent of Renewing Focus on Guardian). It feels elite skill worthy, and there is a risk it may become a locked utility on every build especially because it is the only way to charge blades out of combat - you don't want that. It gives Virtuoso some much-needed survivability vs condition bursts and vs Thief/Mirage/Rev. Currently you are sort of forced to play Mass Invisibility.
  • Aside from that, I like the tech of stowing it and still getting the distortion (but not the blade recharge) while being able to use skills, which should stay in the game for now because it is fun and skilled (and still weaker than core Mesmer distortion which can be used in cc). I think the cd is appropriate for the strong effect.
• Psychic Force -
  • I like the theme and the animation, but it is too weak and the cooldown is long. Normally, you can counterplay getting blinded by stow cancelling your skill and saving it, but if you do that with Psychic Force, because it is a stunbreak, it goes on the full 45 seconds cooldown. There are too many situations and ways it gets countered:

1. You are blinded. Imagine a thief stuns you with Basilisk Venom then follows up with Shadow Shot, now you have to waste your 45 second cooldown stunbreak.
2. Opponent has aegis.
3. Opponent has stability.
4. It is a 1/2 cast stunbreak but gives no stability (unlike say Blinding Powder) so you can get ccd instantly and Psychic Force then gets interrupted and goes on 45 seconds cooldown. There is a reason stunbreaks with cast time generally have stability.

• Thousand Cuts -
  • Aside from being buggy and annoying to use, the reward you get for managing to lock somebody down for four seconds is underwhelming. It needs to be usable behind you like old chronomancer shield 5, or it should lock onto your target like prime light beam.
  • Consider making it a regular AoE instead of a projectile attack, or maybe even make it unblockable (though that could be too strong).
  • Does Virtuoso really need three utilities/elites that focus on plain AoE power damage? What if Blade Renewal becomes the elite skill and the 4th utility slot is replaced by something more unique, something that fits the "psionic/telekinesis" theme?

 

Traits:

• Bladeturn Refrain -
  • Pretty good trait! Your cast times are slow (F1-F3, greatsword 2-4, scepter 3, heal, elite) so you need this to be able to cast anything when playing vs stuff like Spellbreaker or Holo. I dislike how reliant Virtuoso is on aegis and blocks, but that is mostly because this trait and Duelist's Reversal are so much better than the alternatives.
• Mental Focus -
  • Mostly a PvE trait.
• Jagged Mind -
  • Consider removing the whole condi line from Virtuoso and freeing up three trait spots. Notice that nothing stops you from playing condi even without these traits - in fact I found 112 or 112 to be better for a condi duelist. Just think about Mirage; the three bottom traits have been mostly dead since release (only the axe trait is halfway decent) because even condition builds prefer the utility or sustain from stuff like Elusive Mind, Desert Distortion, Renewing Oasis and Self-Deception. Compare to Chrono, where the same traits (like Chronophantsma) can be used for both power and condition builds. Let the condition damage come from weapons and core traits. This makes Virtuoso more interesting and versatile. This is the conclusion Teapot and his podcast guests came to as well.
• Deadly Blades -
  • Super strong trait. What I think many are missing is that greatsword and sword skills also count as blades (though the tooltips are bugged), meaning that greatsword auto can apply 3 vuln, sword auto can apply 2 vuln per hit, and blurred frenzy can apply 8 vuln! Really nice synergy with Domination.
• Duelist's Reversal -
  • The best of the three major master traits. In practice, this gives surprisingly low quickness uptime, because a lot of the time you are doing stuff like kiting, outranging, blinding, or interrupting to avoid attacks. Also traits that trigger "passively" like this are typically less fun than something like Zephyr's speed, it's not the end of the world though, it's a decent trait.
• Phantasmal Blades -
  • The blade damage is pretty low and could be increased a bit. I heard RIP say the blade should do 10 times more though which would obviously be totally insane, imagine 10k trait procs after a berserker summon.
  • More importantly, the fury duration is way too low; for an elite spec so focused on fury it is annoying that only Duelist's Reversal gives decent Fury uptime, especially compared to the Dueling traitline. Double the fury duration.
• Sharpening Sorrow -
  • See Jagged Mind - consider removing this trait. If it is kept, the fury duration is way way way too low, it actually gives less fury uptime than Bountiful Disillusionment, which also gives Might, Vigor, Stability and Regen. Make it so Bloodsong Sorrow provides fury per blade,  3-5 seconds per blade. If F2 is used instantly off cooldown with max blades this trait should basically give permanent fury.
• Quiet Intensity -
  • Good trait. The 10% vitality -> ferocity conversion does not at all make it worth to run marauder over berserker in PvP, but that's fine. In practice, right now it kinda incentivises you to run carrion in PvP.
• Psychic Riposte -
  • I thought this would be the strongest GM by far before I actually played. It is a good trait, but you actually block/evade more rarely than you'd think. The blade attack part should be removed in my opinion as it is unnecessary, deals no damage, and is basically  just annoying and reveals you in stealth. I can't imagine the damage is that relevant to PvE benchmarks either.
• Infinite Forge -
  • Great trait, really good for builds that use range and kiting to avoid attacks rather than evades and blocks, like greatsword power builds. Make it work out of combat though. If that turns out to be too strong it can just be reverted after the next beta.
• Bloodsong -
  • See Jagged Mind.

 

Core traits:

• Master of Fragmentation -
  • This only gives one more tick of damage to F4 currently, it would be more interesting if it gave projectile relfection to Bladeturn Requiem like it does with distortion.
• Restorative Illusions -
  • When/if this scales up to 5 blades it could end up being too strong, keep an eye on this.

 

Trait ideas:

• Seeing as I just suggested to remove the three bottom major traits of Virtuoso, here are some random trait ideas to replace them...

Major Adept

• "Quick Wit: You gain 7% increased movement speed per blade you currently have"
  • Can be changed to 10% or 5% depending on testing. This would provide a roaming alternative where Bladeturn Refrain and Mental Focus provide defense and damage, respectively. You are forced to choose between movement speed and aegis (both very strong) which means you cannot be both mobile and tanky. It rewards players who manage their blades well by adding  the decisionmaking (i.e. skill) of "should I use my Bladesong now or save it?". Analogous to Herald Rising Momentum.

Major Master

• "Perfect Fifth: Using a bladesong with 5 blades grants fury for 15 seconds and 5 stacks of might for 10 seconds"
  • The top traits suit a playstyle of using Bladesongs quickly without max blades in order to get a lot of aegis uptime and hence a lot of quickness, fury and blade generation. Thus it is fitting for the bottom line to be about saving your blades and using them at the opportune moment (notice Quick Wit also fits this style). The exact duration/stacks of boons can be tweaked obviously. Vigor would also fit well instead of might. The random name idea comes from music theory.
• "Sharp Harmonies: Bladesong Harmony grants fury and vigor for 3 seconds per blade that hits your target".
  • As above, this fits the playstyle of saving up your blades for the opportune moment. It also rewards you for hitting the blades rather than just using the skill. If you manage to hit a 5-blade Bladesong every time Bladesong Harmony comes off cooldown, you deserve to get permanent fury from that. Notice that Duelist's Reversal gives quickness, and Phantasmal Blades gives damage, so it seems appropriate that the third choice would give defense (in the form of vigor). Alternative name, something like "Harmonious Blades".

Major Grandmaster

• "Bladedancer: Whenever you stock a blade from a weapon or utility skill, stock one additional blade. Psionic skills also stock a blade on hit."
  • This trait makes it so Mirror Blade gives 2 blades, phantasms give two blades, Mirror Images gives three blades, Decoy gives two blades, Psioncs give two blades, and so on. People have been asking for a trait that interacts with Psionics like Twisted Medicine does with Elixirs on Harbinger, so I think this would be a good spot for it.
  • This trait would provide a playstyle that makes your active skills feel more rewarding, in contrast to Duelist's Reversal which is more defensive, and Infinite Forge which is more passive. It also suits a more "bursty" playstyle where you summon lots of blades quickly (for example, Mirror Blade -> Mirror Images gives 5 blades), whereas the other two GMs give blades more every spread out over time. This plays into the concept of the bottom traits promoting a playstyle of saving up blades rather than spending them quickly.
• "Encore: Blade attacks grant a stack of Encore on critical hits. Stock a blade after gaining 5 stacks of Encore."
  • Psychic Riposte gives blades for defense and Infinite Forge gives blades passively, so it makes sense for the third option to give blades for offense. The idea of the encore name is that you are gaining blades from expending blades, as if you are using them "again".
• "Bloodsong: Blade attacks apply bleeding on on critical hits. Stock a blade after applying 5 stacks of bleeding"
  • If you wish to keep the bleeding playstyle, you can condense it into a single trait like this, which could honestly be usable for both condition and power builds, which makes it quite versatile.

______________________________

BUGS
General:

• Phantasms - if the target dies before they convert into blades, they disappear and you get no blades. If you are too far away from your phantasm (possibly 1200 range) when it despawns you also do not get a blade.
• Hovering your mouse over the "clone dots" above your Bladesongs says "X illusions" instead of "X blades".
• Is it intended that most skills and traits do not give blades out of combat? Currently pretty much only Blade Renewal does. It seems strange to me that you are so pigeonholed into a single utility across the entire profession if you want to make use of the new mechanic of being able to prepare blades out of combat. But perhaps this is fine.
• Skills that only summon clones when used in range of a target also need a target to summon blades, for example Decoy and Mirror Images. This may be intended but is fairly unintuitive for virtuoso.
• Normally, when you have max clones and summon a new clone it overwrites the old one, triggering traits like Compounding Power and Illusionary Defense, but on virtuoso summoning a 6th blade doesn't overwrite an old blade which means these traits do not get triggered. This may be intended.
• You can stack blades before PvP matches start and keep them.
• There are a bunch of underwater bugs but I'm focusing on PvP relevant things here.

 

Traits:

• Mental Anguish - says "Shatter skills deal more damage" but doesn't increase the damage of Bladesong Dissonance or Bladesong Requiem.
• Bountiful Disillusionment - gives boons even when stowing shatter skills or using them while facing away from your target.
• Inspiring Distortion - doesn't work with Bladesong Requiem (no aegis to allies)
• Restorative Illusions - heals even when stowing Bladesong skills. only scales up to 3 blades (might be intended). Using a Bladesong with 1 blade gives you a 0-clone heal instead of a 1-clone heal which is unintuitive but perhaps necessary for balance purposes.
• Illusionary Inspiration - doesnt work with blades
• Shatter Storm - I found that bladesong harmony dealt very slightly lower damage when having Shatter Storm equipped, but somebody else reported slightly higher damage, so i am confused. Look into if this trait causes Bladesong Harmony to use a different coefficient. This trait also causes the Bladesong Harmony projectiles to be invisible.
• Master of Fragmentation - clarify how the F3 aoe works. for F4 it says "duration increased by 1 second" but it only gives 1 extra damage tick and no extra block duration; not sure if intended.
• Jagged Mind - some blade type skills do not inflict bleeding; notably greatsword and sword skills. we know this is a bug because those skills do inflict vulnerability from Deadly Blades. This but may be an unintended stroke of luck because greatsword inflicting 3 bleeds per autoattack could possibly be obnoxious.
• Sharpening Sorrow - this makes Bladesong Sorrow inflict bleeding instead of confusion. It actually interacts well with jagged mind so maybe it is intended. In that case the trait tooltip is bugged.
• Phantasmal Blades - the blade attack damage is not increased by damage modifiers. If the blade attack counts as originating from the player it should be increased by the likes of Superiority Complex and Vicious Expression, if it counts as originating from the phantasm it should be enhanced by the likes of Empowered Illusions, Phantasmal Force, and Vicious Expression.
• Psychic Riposte - same as above.

 

Greatsword:

• All skills count as blade skills, but only skills 2-4 have the blade tooltip (iirc) - add correct tooltips.
• Mirror Blade - doesn't bounce at long ranges because there is no clone to bounce to. This is technically not a bug and not necessarily the worst thing in the world. I suspect this is why you reworked Mirror Blade in the february 2020 patch so that it gives more value on the first hit than the subsequent hits - it was surely in preparation for Virtuoso.

 

Sword:

• Sword 1-5 all count as blades, but none say blade in the tooltip - add correct tooltips.
• Illusionary Leap -

1. The leap often misses targets even when they are standing still, just like Mirage Thrust (or possibly even worse). Make this skill use the leap mechanics that ranger monarch's leap uses - which is much more accurate. See my video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXU5DKfGO3U.
2. Hide the "swap" tooltip if this skill isn't intended to immobilize anymore. If it is intended to immobilize on the swap back then fix this.
3. This skill is also affected by movement impairing/enhancing effects, like chill, cripple, swiftness and superspeed, unlike other leaps in the game. I wonder if this is because the leap is the same as how sword 3 used to work during beta - back when movement skills were affected by movement modifiers. I personanlly enjoy this aspect but i suspect that the devs will want to remove this.

 

Scepter:

• Ether Clone (3rd autoattack) -  only summons blades up to a maximum of 3.

 

Dagger:

• Flying Cutter - flurry triggers inconsistenly and doesn't trigger at all on players in the downstate. It may also have something to do with what dagger skin you are using. The 3-hit counter may also be resetting when using certain skills, like utility skills or Bladesongs - check this out. Also, somebody said the flurry uses unequipped weapon strength instead of dagger weapon strength - I didn't check.
• Unstable Bladestorm - disappears completely if it touches a wall or an enemy that is blocking or projectile blocking (the latter of which may be intended). Also, and I'm unsure if this is bugged or not, the damage seems to be very inconsistent, sometimes it does almost nothing and sometimes you get two ~2k+ hits on your target.

 

Bladesongs:

• Bladesongs - F1 and F2 cannot be used without a target while F3 can; they should all be usable without a target. If interrupted towards the very end off the cast (possibly in the aftercast), your attack doesn't go off but you lose all your blades and the Bladesong goes on full cooldown.
• Bladesong Harmony - invisible projectiles when you have Shatter Storm traited.
• Bladesong Sorrow - can hit twice if you stand inside your target's hitbox. I'm not 100% on this, but the Bladesong Sorrow animation doesn't seem to scale with character size i.e. the animation is still huge on Asura while the Bladesong Harmony animation is tiny.
• Bladesong Requiem - clarify/fix how this skill is supposed to work. on the tooltip it says "block duration 3 seconds" and "duration increased for each blade" but the block is clearly 1.5 seconds regardless how many blades you have.

 

Utilities:

• Signet of the Ether - the passive "heal on illusion summon" doesn't work with blades.
• Twin Blade Restoration - skill gets cancelled if you use it while facing away from your target, which makes it unusable.
• Blade Renewal - does not interact with any traits that usually give effects on distortion i.e. inspiring distortion (distortion gives aegis), auspicious anguish (distortion removes conditions), and master of fragmentation (distortion reflects projectiles). Also, if you stow the skill you stil get the full 3 seconds of distortion and can use skills during it, however you do not get the blade recharge. This may not be a bug, and if it is, it should be kept in the game because it has a natural tradeoff between getting to channel skills safely, or getting your 5 blades back. This choice allows for strategic/skilled play which increases skill gap which is a good thing.
• Thousand Cuts -

1. It gets cancelled and goes on full cooldown when you try to use it behind you instead of interrupt cooldown.
2. It also doesn't lock onto your target when using the setting "lock ground target at current target", which may be intended.
3. The target indicator for this skill has a clock and shield symbol like Chronomancer shield 5 "Tides of Time"; this is probably a placeholder.

 

Downed State:

• Deception (skill 2) - summons a clone.

____________________

Also, I would caution Anet not to listen too much to top players, for example Helseth made some pretty crazy suggestions in the Mirage beta:

• Called Jaunt useless and wanted it to be 600 range back when it was 20s cd, had 3 charges, and did 3 confusion for 5 seconds!!!
• Called False Oasis a "sack of garbage" and "worse than ether feast", and wanted it to remove a condition each pulse!!!
• Wanted Axe Ambush to inflict 4 stacks of confusion for 4 seconds PER CLONE! And said "it's still probably not good enough"!
• Wanted mirrors to spawn 2 clones.

Some feedback was really on point though obviously, for example the idea to rework Elusive Mind (stunbreak on dodge).

Remember that it took years to nerf Mirage down to a reasonable level.

Thanks for reading p.s. yes the titles of this post and the video are clickbait

Edited September 2, 2021 by agrippastrilemma.8741

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

If anyone is bored enough read this essay of a post I would loooveeeee to hear what you agree/disagree with and if you have any bugs to add =). Let's get this spec fixed as much as possible b4 the next beta.

Edited September 3, 2021 by agrippastrilemma.8741

[MrClassy.4028]

I didn't play that much during the beta but was around Twitch so I got to see people trying out a lot of different stuff and got a lot of different perspectives on how Virtuoso, Willbender, and Harbinger were going to fit into the game. It also helped answer a bunch of questions I had about how skills worked in greater detail so I'm not too concerned about those right now since there's a lot of other changes happening to the game. Also not sure what the goal with the elite skill was though since you're stuck and the area isn't that big but oh well, "damage" I guess. People with far more hours at a higher level of play have very concise criticism on the power levels and utility of all the elite skills in the game but this isn't a wishlist for CMC.

 

The things that still stand out the most as someone who has played a lot of Chrono is:

• Virtuoso's role
• Shatters
• Projectiles in WvW
• The goal of the traits
• The role of dagger
• Blade interactions

 

Virtuoso's Role

It's pretty obvious that this is trying to be the big damage power spec: shattering clones is replaced with stocked blades that don't disappear while out of combat; the AoE damage-oriented skills; and the traits are generally offensive focused. It almost seems like this was more geared toward WvW as well since the clone change, ranged dagger, and decent sized AoEs benefit WvW a lot. I caught some of Mighty Teapot's marathon streams and in one of the segments he didn't make a video out of - "what role were each specs trying to fulfill" - he calls out that he sees what Anet was trying to do with specs, power creep with PoF, and that the Virtuoso trait line really needs to commit to being this power damage spec with the new blade synergies. GW2 classes do more than just a generic role but they certainly have a focus or role they need to fulfill given the game mode, and this doesn't quite seem oriented yet.

 

Shatters

The fact that they aren't instant cast and seem to fail when you aren't directly facing the intended target is concerning. If they aren't instant and work regardless of the direction you're currently facing, there had better be a big justification for that. Clones charge the target when shattering anyways so give the blades some equivalent time to charge up and fire. I think this comes down to shatters having the same "feel" across the specs regardless of what they're traited for.

 

No distortion and scaling with the amount of clones -> blades seems strange and doesn't fit that feel either. Cry of Frustration giving confusion on what seems to be the big damage power-focused spec and not being augmented in any other way with blades also seems strange.

 

Shatters scale with clones so it should really do the same with Virtuoso but now that we have 5 blades instead of 3 clones, some additional buff for 5 should really be considered.

 

Projectiles in WvW

If this is to be the WvW spec I saw people expecting it to be based on the state of Mesmer, it will fail with all the slow projectiles and projectile hate everyone runs. The shatters being easily reflected/blocked/destroyed in the current state of the game is concerning so power creeping most things down and maybe making dagger 1 not a projectile would help with that since lots of people run projectile hate personally or within their group. Lots of other things get reflected so it's all about balancing both sides of this once everything is released. This would be a good place for traits to help out in situations like WvW especially, and for specific PvP builds.

 

The goal of the traits

None of the traits augment the new shatters or utility skills. The other trait lines will augment weapons and some mechanics to allow for synergies with other trait based on some offensive or defensive theme but this, and other elite specs as other people have pointed out, don't do that well.

 

The bleeding traits seem out of place here. This is a power-oriented elite spec trait line with limited options - use those options to interact with the Bladesong, Psionic, and dagger skills that are being added into the game. I saw this as a common complaint from the feedback I'd read thus far about how the elite specs, new and old, should have traits that focus on their new mechanics, and not some general stuff. There are traits in the core specializations that augment strike damage, condition damage, support skills, build utility, and weapons so let those trait lines do that stuff. And if there isn't anything else that does what a new spec is trying to accomplish with existing mechanics then maybe it's time to look at that in another big balance-anti power creep update.

 

The auto-generating of blades, boons with trigger events, and super fury do fit though with the power damage theme though. The "Deadly Blades        Blades inflict vulnerability on critical hits" trait being a minor trait is interesting because it's basically the same as Domination's "Rending Shatter" and screams "big damage." This would mean that people running greatsword could get vulnerability on shatters AND take "Bountiful Blades." Deadly blades also means that we could not take Domination and not lose out on the vulnerability, or still take Domination with dagger/x and sword/x builds but take illusions (and hopefully blade attacks as well) do more strike damage with "Empowered Illusions" with our blade skills and phantasms.

 

A lot of Mesmer traits interact with "illusions" and blades replace illusions so clarification on how those interact will be needed because if all these blade attacks don't benefit from illusions traits then what are we doing playing Virtuoso.

 

The role of dagger

Given the other elite weapons and their specialization's "focus" - Chrono getting a shield so it can do offensive boons/tank - Mirage getting an axe so it can condi dps in melee - the 1200 range on the dagger without a lot of traditional Mesmer utility is lacking and doesn't fit. Greatsword and staff for long rage power and condi, sword and axe for melee power and condi, but only scepter is mid rage. Dagger being a 900 range power weapon would fit much better in the Mesmer toolkit of options since this is the power dps role. It can't really compete with greatsword so don't make it.

 

If dagger becomes 900 range then I'm not sure what to do about the other 2 skills. When I was playing with them a bit, I didn't really feel like they did much but then again, I was on Marauder gear with Divinity runes so not exactly up there in power damage. Going based on the theme of sword, scepter, and axe, one of the dagger skills should be a block or evade. Blades that destroy, block, or reflect incoming attacks would be nice but we want something that's healthy for the game. Movement would also be a choice but Mesmer already has blink, access to stealth, and sword 3 is now a leap so something that negates damage rather than moving out of damage may be more thematic.

 

Dagger currently doesn't have an attack chain but with the current "3 hits = flurry" mechanic, it could work fine. Maybe add in something with stocking a blade on a successfully flurry or some other kind of effect beyond damage?

 

Blade interactions

Now that there are 5 blades that carry over outside of battle, there is a good opportunity here to interact with the new skills or traits because phantasms no longer persist and blades should be illusions. Holo really should do this more with heat and same with Harbinger's Blight but whatever, one thing at a time.

 

This goes back to traits but a lot of Mesmer traits interact with illusions so these need to be considered. What happens when you gain a blade over the cap, will traits still trigger? With 5 blades stocked, should the psionic skills get a buff? With 5 blades, should blades that don't get stocked strike the enemy being attacked? Should stocked blades effect dagger skills? There are plenty of other skills in the game that trigger based off of other stacks, strikes, boons, or conditions so such trait being here makes sense.

 

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

@MrClassy.4028 I saw Teapot saying that trait idea to solve projectiles issue and tbh it's a kitten idea although one that fits a ANerf way of doing stuff on mesmers. In fact his idea is so bad that he suggested two traits one for Fs and one for daggers to solve the projectile problem, which obviously would be mandatory. What I mean by this is create a issue and solve it with the trait. I don't see this treatment with the other professions.

Why not solve it by F skills aren't considered projectiles? Simpler and no mandatory traits.

 

[Yoci.2481]

The shatters should keep their cast time (perhaps a bit shorter) and they should work while moving and perhaps without facing the target. But making them instant would make them too strong in melee because of the lack of counter play opportunity.

[Desaita.3792]

I think the virtuoso specialization is one of ny favourite specs released. it has phenomenal damage/crit and aoe capabilities and finally allows for a crit based duelist build. the elimination of illusions in trade for daggers was a beautiful concept.