Guild Wars 2

In general I really liked the specializations I tried. But again to make it short Ill talk about the things that hindered them mostly:

- Holosmith: Amazingly fun, Im not even sure if its damage needs to be toned down.

- Spellbreaker: I really like it, dagger main lacks dmg and some little changes could be made to make d/d more sticky to enemys. But my main problem is that it sometimes I felt it needed a little more boonstrip, as probably right necros builds can corrupt/remove far more.

- Mirage: I like it and think its fun as a condition spec, but right now IMHO it overlaps in fuction to chrono without providing your team with the amazing support. If the intention is making it a more selfish spec, probably it should feel stronger in dmg or ability tu survive. Some quality of life changes to clones life and endurance gain could do the trick.

- Scourge: Felt fun and strong, but I tested little.

- Weaver: IMHO it really needs and optional trait to counter condition bombs if it wants to be played at competitive level. Swords damage is not bad but it is on the weaker side compared to other specs and still has problem to get sticky enough to down enemy’s. ( partially because of the global CDs) But in general is in FAR better condition than the first tempest test we had.

- Soulbeast: Some pets skills need better balance to be useful and you should definitely be able to swap while merged. But those things apart, I had fun with it.

- Renegade: I like the concept, but I found it overall underpowered. Bows low dmg even in full condi gear, overcomplicated energy management for not so strong area efects (not all, some are good IMHO, but they all drain you so hard) and probably some of the most visually uninspired skills from all the specs. (The char invocations) this is IMHO the spec that needs more love, and Im not a rev main.

Hope it helps, and keep up the good work.

Alright Sure I’ll post here. I am a WvW Player mainly, only doing PVE to get gear for my WvW life. I play Necro main, really thought the Scourge would be Horrible.

Necros have mobility issues, reaper solves them. I realize you changed Speed of Shadows to not reduce F1 cooldown to prevent Scourge from abusing it with shade spam.

1. Scourge is at home in WvW Zerg fights. (I was shocked at how useful Barrier is, I was completely wrong about it, its game changing.)

2. Because of point 1, Scourge will be the focus of all the hate that exists in the world of WvW, can we please have portal on instant cast, and a stun break! Please? Don’t force us to run Well of power. Please? make people like WvW again. I believe!

Deadeyes in WvW, from stealth, sniping a full rabid Engineer for 80% or so of health with a single shot while themselves using exotic gear. So looking forward to being sniped once they’ve got their full Ascended. /s

Guardian main player here!

Firebrand: Tomes Cooldowns are too long, mantras need better range otherwise they are innefective in pvp and wvw Axe skills needs fixing, too slow and too clumsy, Firebrand needs more mobility options and reduced cds to be really efective in pvp pve and wvw. Utterly dissapointed…

Eiffel.8937:

Rev still looses its utilities when it takes up a tactic banner in wvw…

Not just banners— any bundle at all. For example, story or hearts that require you use a specific item or weapon makes all utilities vanish. When reported, I’ve been told it’s a “known issue”. It has been for a long time, now. When is the fix?

Elite Specializations
I noticed the firebrand didn’t update Shout Skills tool tips that applied aegis.
Retreat skill tool tip didn’t state that it gave quickness, when traited.
Weaver’s Prowess does not show an increase in condition damage in the hero’s panel stats window (equipment).

weaver is nice, but in its current state sword seems really weak.

my suggestions for sword:

overall the sword feels way too slow to be able to trade with other melee classes

the dual skills take too long to channel, reduce the cast time on those. you cant really afford to sit in melee range and channel for that long, you’re a squishy ele with low HP, you have to ‘weave’ in and out of range its not like d/d where you can just spam.

its highly unlikely you will be able to get a fully attuned dual skill off, 9 times out of 10 switching to the same attunement again is NOT going to be worth it. that new skill ‘unravel’ should be an f5 skill with a high cooldown. you cant afford to take it in your toolkit.

since it has no actual burst, or no condi burst, youre forced to play sustained hybrid with primordial stance.. most likely going to be with Celestial armor. i think you should increase the the attack speed on sword 1’s, i almost never got the auto attack chain finished on somebody during a fight.

sword 2 on wind is too low range. seriously? your only leap in is 450? at least 600. mirage gets a 1200 leap like what

other than those things i love the ideas, love the kit. im excited to play it when it comes out.

dragonkain.3984:

Holosmith.

Seems to be heavily melle oriented spec but lacks stability or resistance or overall surviviablity to be in melle, so he’ll be an easy kill in any PvP mode. Damage is crazy however. Solution – tone damage down a bit but give them more defences OR range.
Losing F5 skill kinda limits this specs viability by alot too…
All utilities besides Laser Disk are worthless so they need serious buffs (including toolbelt one’s)
Overall, spec is a suicide bomber who will be doing his combo and then dying with no chance of revival in any PvP(useless engineer downed state abilities say HI)Overall class doesn’t excel in anything but running away. No strengths no weaknesses.

^This. For all those saying eng dmg is OP, I reply that their healing is sub-par. The part about the “useless engineer downed state abilities say HI” is spot on.

I wouldn’t mind a slight dmg nerf to Holosmith IF the spec got better healing and downed state abilities.

Out of all the new elite spec’s, Holosmith was the closest to being ready IMO. Next would be Spellbreaker, followed by Firebrand, then Deadeye.

Mirage, Weaver, and Scourge need their dmg buffed.

Renegade is obviously unfinished. Needs a bit of work.

Soulbeast needs a complete overhaul, else no one except masochists will be playing it.

From a Mesmer main that was excited about Mirage on reveal, I got disappointed over time as more information on the spec was released.

I think Mirage Cloak is a pretty cool mechanic that you can dodge even when doing actions, allowing you to do stuff uninterrupted. In PvP this has many uses, as this allows you to dodge CC while doing a stomp. This also allows you to cast skills with long cast times without worrying much about enemies.

I like Mirage Cloak, and they even added ambush attacks for each respective weapon. This idea excited me more as this can give new skills to our old weapons, giving us variety on our old sets. Sadly, the numbers on the ambushes are all undertuned and not impactful enough to be taken. They all need large buffs to be a lot stronger than our autos. At least make them as strong as thief’s stealth attacks. Additionally, the window of time to use the ambush attack is way too short. Should have at least 3 seconds of time to engage the ambush attack.

The traits on the line are a mess. Some of them are downright useless and some of them are pretty good, but my current gripe is that the traitline doesn’t have anything that offers good support of Power play styles. Sure you can trait for defenses in the line, but having some power modifiers would be great for PvE and to some extent PvP as well. It’s like there’s no other way for Mirage to play other than spamming conditions and ‘Confusion’ onto the enemy. Thematically, a Mesmer swordsman has lots of ways to evade as well and make use of Mirage magic.

The heal, utilities and elite are all fine for me. They seem to be way undertuned for what they do, having high cooldowns that doesn’t make them worth picking over core Mesmer skills. For example False Oasis is a good heal, but its high cooldown and heal over time make it worse than Ether Feast, a heal that base Mesmer has. Needs a lot of tuning here and there but I think the functions of each Utility is good enough.

Axe skills are pretty… but they’re trash. All of them needs numbers tuning and some fixes. Axe 2 is clunky to use in PvP scenarios, should have a short evade during the animation. Axe 3 is great but… it never hits in PvP, so it should be looked on.

There are a lot of contradictory design choices with Mirage too. Firstly in PvE, Mesmer depends a lot on Phantasms for their damage and DPS. I get that clones are the focus of Mirage, but whatever clones do even with ambush attacks, Phantasms are better and more reliable. They have more health and damage and synergizes more with core Mesmer. Would be better if Mirage makes all illusions stronger, not just clones and includes Phantasms. Give Phantasms an ambush skill or else they’re a dead skill in our skill bar. Or if not, just let them reset Phantasm skills whenever they gain Mirage Cloak.

I think with Firebrand, there’s a huge disconnect between the front-line melee play style the axe encourages, the mantras wanting you to be behind your allies, and the tomes turning you into a spellcaster. A 90 degree cone on the mantras and a 900 range on the axe (the same that the Necromancer gets) would fix all three of these, turning the class into the medium range support I think it wants to be.

The class animations are gorgeous.

The mantras themselves are pretty good. With the Mantra of Solace, we finally get the moderately spammable version the “on heal” class skills ask for. Mantra of Lore was useful. I never found a use for the elite mantra. I didn’t like the preparation step, but I see its utility during combat. I just wish we could start combat fully loaded.

I’m sure it’s a lost cause, but I really wish the tomes worked with rather than replaced your weapon. If not, I’d like more powerful passive effects for the active tome. If there’s going to be a casting time to open the book up, it should have an immediate impact beyond the pages. Jumping into pure support or healing right now, particularly in melee range, is just asking for trouble.

Soulbeast. Animations: Rework Charrs animations. There are Good suggestions earlier in this threads.
Traits: Beastmaster traits affecting the pet should apply on the player White in BM.

First, kudos to the animators! Skill animations look really great on everything I tested.
Second, disappointing that PvErs like myself really didn’t have a good bout of testing.

Weaver – I liked sword even it is currently weak damage. It feels great to get so many new skills to play with! Element swapping feels like it takes forever. Barrier is a bit weak too.

Mirage – Mirrors are bad. Not loving the not-dodge. Sad damage. Absolutely NO reason to give up Chrono.

Scourge – Very fun. Love to see all the condis appear.

Holosmith – Wheeee! Because of this, I will play my neglected engi.

Firebrand – Aesthetically, very pleasing. In play, very slow. Do you want players forced into quickness traits just to offset this? As is, I wouldn’t use any mantras. (Except maybe the open-palm hand in a circle.) I like the tomes, but they feel very limiting because they’re slow with long CDs. Still, this is thousands of times better than the awful obsolecence of the previously ill-named guardian elite spec.

Renegade – What happened? The shortbow animations are cool, but mild damage and heavy energy costs are imbalanced. The utilities stink; it would be better if they worked more like mesmer illusions, IMO. Placing them feels awkward and then they don’t do much at all. Further, why don’t they follow the pet/minion exemption rule in regards to damage? Rev is still screwed underwater. I hoped for better.

I did not test Soulbeast, Deadeye, or Spellbreaker.

- Overall very positively impressed with the quality of the elite specs compared to HoT, much better work indeed.

- Now to comment on the main one I am looking for: The Weaver.

Like many said before:

- The sword needs a buff to its power damage, right now Air is almost a waste of attunement for the sword, (while water also has no condi application, it at least has some heals).

- A good solution to this – and also helping to fix some of the clunkiness the spec has, would be to improve the speed of the AA chains, and only slightly up the power damage through power scaling. Dual skills also need a buff;

- Global Attunement CD: Really feels like under constant stun effect as someone pointed out. Needs to be shorter (with 4s and chill on you, it becomes even more absolutely brutal leaving you completely exposed by the application of a single condition on you – which some classes have plenty of means to).

- Elite Skill: I really think this one could be more “Avatar State” like, by removing the CD on attunement swap for a period of time (possibly shorter than what it is today to compensate for the power of having this ability).

- Unravel: I think Unravel today is pure training wheels on ele – which is a horrible utility. If the Global CD is 4s or no go, then at least make this an F5 skill. But I would actually really love if Weavers did not have the ability to attune to a single element without Unravel (giving more purpose to the skill) and then Unravel also has some additional effect (e.g., integrate Elements of Rage in it) – this would be my dream, but possibly a far shot.

- Twist of Fate: Think the super speed should be a bit longer, and it should remove movement inhibiting conditions from you.

- Barrier application: Liked the idea of this as a means of survival, but right now the amount you get is so little and combined with the long global CD – it is ineffective. Number needs to be higher or the application possibly faster (I would actually prefer if the application was tied not to dual skills, but rather to attunement swap – then the number could be relatively small to promote the swaping fiesta).

- As for the traits, I must say – they are a bit underwhelming and not very creative:
All are quite clear:

- First line: Pick this for PvE raid damage (all are just straight up damage % buffs easily attainable and just meant to up the DPS of the spec – which I think is a mistake because people will just use these to pump higher numbers on the raids and again, we will hear people complain that ele is too strong in the DPS department – the damage should be more controlled in the weapon, while these traits could help to land a burst better – so only a momentary spike, but not a constant upgrade);
- Second line: Is the “ignore line” as Adept and GM effects are so irrelevant compared to the other choices, whilst the Master is again just a straight up damage buff that is meant as a bone to power (7 is meaningless with the current power damage of the spec) – I really like the idea of a super speed build – would be immense fun, but these traits just don’t work for it – it needs to promote sticking with air more – I honestly would like if this trait line was attached to superspeed and means of stuns / interrupts – promoting more synergy with lightning rod from Air, rather than FA (fresh air should be the base ele special thing)
- Third line: Pick this to survive – all are straight HP or Barrier buffs. (Would be more interesting if these worked more with the class mechanic – buffing stances and attune swaping playstyle – avoiding single attunement play)

Overall, as they are today, they are simply passive buffs whose purpose is only meant to complement the numbers of a build – not surviving, swap a 1 to a 3. Not doing enough damage – swap a 3 to a 1. Using a 2? Why kitten yourself?

Would be interesting if they were a tad bit more creative promoting different playstyles with synergies with the other element traitlines / attune swaping effects.

Many ideas have been posted in the ele forums, I would really urge the team responsible for the Weaver to drop by there for a chat (promise we will be more behaved then when we were talking about the Tempest).

Last note: Loved the holosmith – certainly will make me want to play an engi for the firsst time.

Scourge – a great spec that can do both support and damage beautifully. This is what I wanted when I first rolled a necromancer in the first beta weekend. This right here.
Please make sure not to overnerf it based on early PVP feedback. At most fix the damage possible by stacking shades, but allow it to do damage and some support just like other supporty builds can. We need the support and damage potential it offers in the necromancer class.

IF a PVP nerf is needed, be absolutely sure to SPLIT SKILLS. PVE will suffer utterly if these numbers get tuned down.

A lot of the OP damage that PvP players seem to be experiencing at the moment seems to be coming from Dhuumfire triggering off all F skills rather than just F1. Hopefully this is a bug and gets fixed so Scourge doesn’t suffer further nerfs in other areas.

This is exactly the kind of feedback that will make scourge in PVE utterly useless. If Dhuumfire does only trigger on F1, the spec is pretty much dead, damage wise. Dhuumfire, right now, is mandatory for competitive damage. Without it, we simply don’t have the numbers.

If Dhuumfire must be changed, make sure to split the trait, working only on F1 in PVP/WvW, and working as it is now (and as it should) in PvE

Do note that Dhuumfire only working on F1 will make this trait completely worthless – it means one burn every 15 seconds(!), 10 if you trait sand savant, which already reduces your damage output and provides more burn in itself.

A single stack of burn on shade placement every 15 seconds is possible worth it on a minor trait, it’s absolutely not a grandmaster trait.

From the class preview weekend the feeling I got was that new elites are designed more to specific role. They are not just better at everything like HoT elites were, making anything released before instantly useless. Some are clearly good at 1v1, while others are great supporting the group, and some are just great fun at general PvE in open world.

In that sense new elites are good at making PoF alternative to the HoT content, and not simple upgrade you HAVE TO grind through again. For many classes there will be situation where HoT elite remains “better”, while in other areas of the game PoF elite has clear benefits.

While some new elites were instantly accessible and provided quick fun (Holo, Spellbreaker, Deadeye), others had mechanics that I feel were not very well explained. Scourge, and the relation of Sand Shades with Death Shroud was just skipped causing much confusion. Same way Mirage, and the Mirage Cloak + Ambush mechanics were very difficult to understand.

Soulbeast:
Dmg overall feels really underwhelming, i meän really, even with vipers amulet dagger wasnt pressuring opponents enough, and i think in pve soulbeast dps is way less what beastmastery provides to condi build. You designed DPS spec with only 7%modifier on it that can ne relied on, 5% from disabling foes is just joke because its going to have 0 uptime on relevant pve content and pvp…not rewarding enough. GM slot is just pure joke: Berserker got the top one as master trait, ours is gm, stances are bad so middle one is not really option either and the bottom one: Opressive superiority, now if devs could tell me, in which content this is supposed to be used? Just trash trait, for pvp modifiers are not enough to justify to take it, and pve, lets say alot of things have more hp than the 16k you in vipers/zerker gear trait need condition that is easier to achieve and modifiers should go up to 20%

Soulbeast:
Dmg overall feels really underwhelming, i meän really, even with vipers amulet dagger wasnt pressuring opponents enough, and i think in pve soulbeast dps is way less what beastmastery provides to condi build. You designed DPS spec with only 7%modifier on it that can ne relied on, 5% from disabling foes is just joke because its going to have 0 uptime on relevant pve content and pvp…not rewarding enough. GM slot is just pure joke: Berserker got the top one as master trait, ours is gm, stances are bad so middle one is not really option either and the bottom one: Opressive superiority, now if devs could tell me, in which content this is supposed to be used? Just trash trait, for pvp modifiers are not enough to justify to take it, and pve, lets say alot of things have more hp than the 16k you in vipers/zerker gear trait need condition that is easier to achieve and modifiers should go up to 20%

Mirage: There is no reason to ever run this over Chronomancer. Elite specs are supposed to bring new mechanics and new roles, and every other profession but Mesmer is receiving them. At the moment Mirage is just another condi spec with dodges that don’t move.

After five years, shatters remain untouched. The inherent contradiction of Mesmer design, that you want us to both sustain illusions AND shatter them, continues to be ignored.

There is still time. Please boldly and courageously make drastic changes to the fundamental design of this spec, incorporating entirely new F-key mechanics and removing terrible ideas like the mirrors.

- Soulbeast needs to be able to swap pets while in beast mode.

- Firebrandt needs a “turn the pages & look through the paragrapths” animation for when he has a tome up and floating in front of him. I dislike that he just uses the battle stance idle animation. This tiny animation would run immediately while standing or even while running and would have huge impact on feeling. (Remember how impactful the Ritualist’s summoning animations were?)

• Holosmith/Scourge too much damage
• Deadeye can kite and never die, but won’t be able to hold point. People will say it’s trash in conquest, but it can be deadly in other game mode.
• Weaver is too too high risk but not enough reward. Melee weapon with lower dps than range.
• Spellbreaker has too many immunes. You can kill it with kiting, but it’s not fun to fight against

My overall impressions For the Spellbreaker

What I liked

• Full counter is incredibly satisfying to land, very fun gameplay with good counterplay. Maybe too easy to counterplay honestly.*
• Condi Cleanse and maintaining Adrenal Health is surprisingly decent despite my initial reservations with the leaked info about spellbreaker’s mechanics!
• Particle effects are pretty to look at, although it’s a stark contrast with the rest of warrior’s effects.
• Dagger feels fluid and intuitive to use. The Dagger burst goes a long way towards this.

What I don’t like

• Dagger looks like it should be a mobile weapon with 2 leaps in the skillset but between the aftercasts and short leaps, it’s really not.
• T1 core warrior bursts are bad in general and I don’t know why we’re restricted to them. If the issue was because mechanically it would drain all adrenaline rendering full counter unable to be used then either revamp the T1s or make new ones for spellbreaker! I am so sure that the majority of them aren’t even worth pressing over your regular weapon skills. Looking at you, 1s Skull Crack and 3s duration Combustive Shot. Even T1 eviscerate does less damage than Axe 4 while locking you into a slow animation. That said, Dagger burst is great because it was designed with 2017 GW2 in mind rather than being an archaic relic of 2013 GW2 forced upon the espec.
• Spellbreaker fixes none of the issues with core warrior – Defense and Discipline traitlines, Endure Pain and Berserker Stance still nigh compulsory for pvp. I was kinda excited to try an interrupt Breaker with the new merciless Hammer trait but it just didn’t work. Also it’s mutually exclusive with the new sustain trait in Strength, thanks anet.

What I would change

• Buff the T1 core weapon bursts to not be terrible. Even if this results in buffs to the T3 versions is that really that terrible considering we’re coming off Berserker who had objectively better versions in some cases?
• Increase the range and speed on the Dagger leaps. Especially dagger 2, that thing barely moves you faster than walking.
• Please make Dagger auto do more damage. I don’t understand why Thief Dagger auto is allowed to be incredibly high DPS but warrior isn’t, considering they have a similarly disruptive skillset and gameplay should they spec for it.
• Make Dagger 3 a dagger throw with decent range (300?). Pure Melee range is so bad for what it’s supposed to do. See: Thief Pistol 4.
• Reduce the Cast Time of the Breaker heal. The penalty is already the full boon strip (that renders it completely useless in pve lol), it doesn’t also need a year long cast time with it. I highly doubt you’re EVER getting this off against Thief or Mesmer or Necro.
• Featherfoot Grace would actually be competitive Berserker’s stance with a 25s CD instead of a 30s one. Right now it’s still Berserker’s stance every single time.
• Sight Beyond Sight should give you immunity to Blind for it’s duration, goes away after landing the hit together with the buff. Functionally Featherfoot Grace does the same function except a million times better because resistance makes you immune to blind, while not being completely useless otherwise.
• Imminent Threat is awful. Turns out that even when you reduce the CD of what is functionally Fear Me to almost half it’s still not gonna be used ever over Berserker’s Stance and Endure Pain, and the range is too small to be effective. Actually this is just a warrior problem in general, every utility skill made has to shine REALLY bright to outshine those 2.
• Sun and Moon Style is awful in the current implementation. On ANY other class this would read “Your interrupts grant quickness” straight up. Why restrict it to only main hand dagger which has ONE interrupt when the synergy is there with Hammer or Mace? Please take inspiration from Merciless Hammer and Shield master and offer something for all weapons together with your weaponmaster trait.

Mostly these are from a PvP perspective, I’m also an avid raider so I’m eagerly waiting to be able to test Breaker on that front – though just from this demo I’m fairly certain it’s gonna perform worse than power Berserker PS (quite a feat to accomplish) just from how bad dagger auto is.

Weaver is beyond disappointing especially for staff. needs a lot more work.
Feels slow and clunky, need an ability to access our 3-4-5 skills without waiting 4 sec/sacrificing one utility slot. Ele is squishiest class in the game, all we have is our utility skills to survive.
Also once again, Eles get the worst elite possible. Literally useless if u r not playing full melee, which you hardly can because u just insta die anyway.
I played ele for almost 4k hours, like 80% of my game time in gw2…. and weaver feels literally unplayable.

Scourge is looking pretty good but needs a little bit of tweaking.
High condi dmg, but the support aspect of it is meh.
Barrier is bad, decays way too fast.
Surviving without shroud/mobility/decent defensive skills in wvw is crazy hard.
Needs to have and give more barrier to be a viable ‘group support’ class in wvw.

Weaver:
Love the theme and mechanics, few tweaks required:
1. Auto attacks need to go trough the full chain quicker. Either through reduced animation or after cast time, need a slight increase in damage output too.
2. Make Sword Air and Fire 2 skills 600 range and reduce cast time. Air should be instant.
3. Barrier needs to be more impactful, either through an increase in base value or scaling.
4. Please fix or change Unravel Hexes to clear all conditions – not just movement impairing – when under the effect of super speed.

Soulbeast:

• Most beastmeld skills have underwhelming damage.
• The half duration and 360 radius on group stances ruins them, especially since have to give up your main damage trait to use this.
• Dagger feels slow and has weak damage, especially for a melee weapon.
• It desperately needs pet swap while melded. Having to exit meld, swap pets, wait 10 seconds, then enter meld again to use your second set of beast skills is too restrictive.
• Sustained damage (DPS) feels lacking while burst damage is excessive.
• It’s not strong enough for the complexity and effort involved in optimal rotations. You’re constantly swapping weapons/pets/meld, using skills non-stop to keep up, tracking many invisible cooldowns, and you need to use certain skills at the correct moment in your form rotation (typically while melded). Yet other classes can achieve the same effect by pressing 3 keys.

Firebrand:

What i didn’t like:

-Mantras as a whole systeme are bad and even worse with this range and cone area effect. The cast time is too long.
-The first skill on each tome should be ground targeted or 360° around the firebrand.
-The axe felt too slow .
-The cool down on tomes is to long
-Not enough condition cleanse even under tome of resolve. the cooldowns on the tome of resolve skills were too long.
-Maybe give tome of resolve a blast finisher for better support. (the spining tome of resolve skill)
-The mantra of flamme is not worth taking for only one burn each cast.

What i liked: (firebrand)

-The skill animations were very nice.
-The asura firebrand animation when entering a tome.

I tried mirage – it was both fun and frustrating to test. The sword ambush easily sold me on how interesting it can be, but the short ambush window, auto-leaps and difficult of telling if you even dodged give it a steep learning curve right now. Smoothing out the key features would go a long way

Renegade – PvP/PvX PoV – Longer, but definite feedback

Kalla Scorchrazor:

• Summons are similar to Wells, but if Wells could be killed/CC’d. That’s unecessary – summons are not powerful enough to justify being interactable. They are stationary, the counterplay is like for Wells. Icerazor and Razorclaw don’t need cooldowns. Slightly too high energy costs across the board.

• Heal – Costs 10 Energy, while all other heals cost 5, for no reason. Low base healing. Stunbreak is useful, but it’s the only stunbreak on the Legend – you often waste either stunbreak or heal. Please move the stunbreak to other skill.

• Icerazor lacks purpose. Very low power-scalling, short Vulnerability uptime. The summon often fails to cleave downed players. Currently, no reason to summon, apart from being 20x hit for some effects. I assume Razorclaw&Soulcleave will get an ICD, so I don’t count their synergy.

Traits

• Bleed-improving effects of Blood Fury and Heartpiercer don’t work rn.

• Ashen Demeanor could have 1s ICD. Gameplay of Revenant involves a lot of chain-CC to do damage.

• Wrought-Iron Will could have the radius increased to 360 – being a glassy damage dealer, you often stay at edges of fight, so 240 is too short for allies.

• Sudden Reversal – Should ignore Blind, to help against Thief dive..

• Lasting Legacy is currently the dominant trait, doubling the reason for taking Renegade (more damage).

• Righteous Rebel to compete with Lasting Legacy could also heal per Kalla’s Fervor gained. The Alacrity improvement could easily go baseline.

• Vindication – the Might duration is too short. 5-6 seconds would be the sweet spot. Alternatively, split the durations between game modes.

Shortbow

• As 900 range weapon, it puts you into range of many more skills than a 1200 range one, closer to the action. Therefore, it requires a defensive skill. I suggest #4 becoming it, working similary to Wards from GW1 – a defensive zone. Too low damage across the board. Skills 2 and 3 could use some cast time reductions – especially #3 since it’s a hard skillshot.

• Sevenshot (#3) – Arrows dissapear on collision with terrain. “Reverse shotgun” feels unrewarding, player barely ever has a chance to hit 7 shots, most of the time it’s 2-3. Currently bugged with Instant ground targeting, allowing to adjust the focal point instead of it being set at the max range (Youtube Video). The skill with the bug feels much better and more fluid, rewarding good aim – should be the official version. Hitting someone with focal point should reward extra damage – #3 is the hardest skillshot in the game. Should be the main source of Shortbow’s damage, coolest skill.

• Spiritcrush (#4) lacks purpose. Low damage, both power and condition, Slow doesn’t do much with Revenant (unreliable Interrupts, no interrupt traits). Cannot be cast behind the character, often bugs out on bridges. Prime candidate for a rework to a defensive skill.

• Scorchrazor (#5) – Great ability and feeling, just needs to be ground-targeted/skillshot.

Citadel Orders

• Too high Energy costs across the board. Consider adding a second resource for them if they can’t cost way less.

• Heroic Command – Kalla’s Fervor is so easy to come by that refresh isn’t that useful. AoE Might is ok, but consider Stability/Barrier maybe.

• Citadel Bombardment – Vastly too overcosted, provides no damage unless used against big, crowded groups. Should be tighter for PvP. Currently, not useful in PvP/against low number of targets at all.

• Orders from Above – The best Order skill so far. Alacrity is always handy. Renegade desperately needs cleanses – make this Order cleanse a condition every pulse.

Animations:

• Auto-attacks of firebrand and mirage use old animations of mace and scepter, respectively. I dont mind it, but given quickness firebrand axe animation bug out and it sometimes does not do any.
• Graphical noise from some skills is to much and some to little in comparison. For example, scourge’s sand-head is to big while the floors that holosmith’s elite leaves are barely noticeable. I think you should give us options in addition to the Lod limiter like : pvp option which is graphically tuned down but all effects are visiable , pve where we can see only our skills so people can finally see teleports on cairn over the huge effects noise but keep the white circles from other party members skills, and other pve option to fully reduce other people skills (i think will help people with worse pcs in big metas).

Professions:

• Deadeye:
  • One shots are not fun. (we already had it at the start of the game with easy 11k backstabs)
• Holosmith:
  • The range of some melee aoe attacks is to big.
• Firebrand:
  • Talent that shares out quickness with application of stability and aegis procs multiple times if the single skill that gives multiple stacks of the above. For example, shout that gives 5 stability will give 5 stacks of quickness.
  • Would be nice to get old floating tome animation back.
• Mirage:
  • To much utility on utility heavy class.
• Renegade:
  • Kalla buff stacks are stuck on 11 seconds.
  • Some skills will do more damage on bigger hit box target.
  • Arrows shot from the rifts on uneven surface disappear.
• Scourge:
  • Nice of you to take away the shroud , but the hp is still high so you could make some skills damage the player. You should do the same with next power spec.
• Soulbeast:
  • Dolyak stance bugged
  • Wolf stance given to allies sometimes stays for ever.
  • Pets with charge do 60-70 k damage.
• Weaver:
  • Seems like it is going to have same problem as kit engineer , please give us some kind of ability to see cool downs from other kits/weapons/attunments.

Summary:
All and all seems nice, some bugs here and there. I think the opinion of salty people will change once they ll start to play the specs live with different builds and good rotations.

What I’m most worried about is the environment you are creating in WvW: even more boon stripping/corrupting (that will make impossible for melees to push) and even more, strong, aoe condition application, on the same classes that already are meta.

This makes for a future where the raids will be mostly composed of Guardians / Firebrands and Necromancers / Scourges, with some Revenants, Elementalists / Weavers and Spellbreakers thrown in the mix. Everyone else doesn’t have the range and the AoE pressure necessary to play in the environment you are creating.

A few words on the elite specs I tested:

• Mirage is bad. The mechanics are borderline between broken and uninteresting, and the implementation is really cringeworthy. Most importantly, it doesn’t provide a new role for Mesmer in any game mode.
• Scourge: the boon corrupting is over the top, but it’s kinda balanced by the lack of a second health bar.
• Spellbreaker: a warrior with even more survivability and the option to create death zones for an entire zerg. What’s not to love?
• Weaver: for pvp, I believe swapping the off-hand skills BEFORE the main hand skills would make way more sense since most utility/CC are on the off hand and that’s what you want to have when you swap attunement.
• Soulbeast: fun and nice to play.

Soulbeast

• Soulbeast needs the CD on beastmode reduced significantly. It’s not a fluid or advantageous style of play to enter and exit on a regular basis because of the CD to re-enter the mode.
• Pets need to get the boons from the Ranger on exiting beastmode as a baseline for the spec, or it’s a further hinderance to use an in/out playstyle, making camping the mode or just taking the DPS traits and rarely using the mode more efficient.
• Daggers need a much faster attack speed and a short evade on #3 as per other Ranger weapons.
• Traits don’t seem to have any synergy within the lines, I attached my ideas for improvements.

Oh, and the aura should not be indefinite, it should last a couple of seconds, then dissipate, or give us the option (a check box) to remove it client side. Nobody wants to spend 1000’s of Gold to have their character obscured by fartshroud and leaves if they don’t choose that theme.

I will talk only about the holosmith since I main engi.
I think the actual heat system is good, but not perfect. We lack of change of skill with heat. We can take the trait to go to 150% heat, but that’s buff only 2 spells. I think the others weapon should get an advantage from the heat system and the spell should have real heat advantage.

Photon mod:
Make the user revealed while using this mod, otherwise it’s a bit overpowered for a full CC ambush.

The Spectrum Shield is a bit too overpowered too, the fact we got -50% cd is we are above 50 heat is like a cheat. We just need to use it when we are at 51 heat. It should be fixed with something like, when heat is above 50, we could have an effect like alacrity (only for this spell) and when above 100 we could get something like alacrity but at 66%.

Laser disk seems unblockable, but i’m not sure, i didn’t tried too much.

Radiant Arc have a cast of ¾sec , but during some tries on golem for a quickness build, it look like the skill take more 1,5 sec to launch (with quickness), and it’s not really smooth. The cast should be during the jump, for me the cast was before (so i was idling and after the cast my char jumped to attack).

Thermal Release Valve shoudln’t deal physical damage. We already have a lot of physical damage during a dodge

I’ll rank them in terms of Well-done, half-way there, and needs serious reconsideration and why.

Well-done:

Spellbreaker, Deadeye, Firebrand, Scourge, and Holosmith.

Some strengths and notes for each. Spellbreaker’s traits are the most polished and excellent among all specs, great synergy, and very well thought out.
*My only complaint is dagger burst, dagger 2, and dagger skill 4 is way too slow. IT’S DAGGER, needs to be much faster leap and attack speed for those skills. 1/2 a second is too long, it should just be instant
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/It-s-AMAZING/first#post6705457

Deadeye is fun, but has broken mechanics that can be exploited and need to be looked at. Deadeye can boonfarm, where it can reset its new steal mechanic with trickery daze to steal boons, CONSTANTLY, why building Soldiers/Mara armor. So Deadeye becomes a broken Rev/Warrior/Necro all in one. It’s crazy.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Deadeye-Rifle-Reflect/first#post6709987
Also deadeye rifle shots don’t reflect properly.

Scourge is a completely new playstyle and I love it. But the Sand Shade skills are awkward, I REALLY WANNA TO RESLOT THEM. I want to move them around for my convenience.

Firebrand – I’ll leave a post at the bottom of my indepth review. But quickly, I love the caster old school healer feel of the Firebrand.

The core issue is the traits, there are some traits THAT NEED TO BE MADE BASELINE. They will be taken all the time and everytime. which is the ones to Increase Pages, and Reduce cooldown of tomes.

This is so obvious you need to take its not an option not to. Firebrand itself on the field is great, again, love the feel and take of classic MMO Healers and Supports. Please make those traits mentioned baseline.

Half- Way there-

Renegade, and Soulbeast. Soulbeast Dolyak Stance WAS NOT WORKING the entire beta, huge dissapointment. How can we give feed back if it completely doesn’t work?

Renegade I thought was probably designed for PVE, but in PVP/WVW no one will run it, Herald is so consequential and effective with proxitmity boons over spending 5 seconds to place a not-so-strong area of control, in WVW you just kite away from it.

Only in PVE (Which i assume was the design purpose) will this be in play. Castimes need to be looked at.

Reconsideration -

Mirage and Weaver

Via my post below

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Two-Elite-Specs-need-serious-reconsideration/first#post6708050

I also gave a review on firebrand here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/A-secretly-complex-elite-spc-deep-dive-review/first#post6708980

There is also a discussion here about soulbeast. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Need-to-be-able-to-switch-while-in-Beastmode/first#post6710630

I mentioned how we need to be able to Switch pets WHILE IN BEASTMODE, being needed to switch out of beastmode, then switch pets, and into beastmode again is A. A lack of commitment as designers
B. Defeats the purpose of playing a new playstyle, its only half a playstyle. If we want to run with pets, we’ll just play core ranger.

Those are my general thoughts spread out through different posts.

Guardian:
both Core and Firebrand a plagued with horrible bugs.

see:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-Trait-bugs/first#post6715306
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Firebrand-bug-mega-thread

Tomes:
Tome CD’s are too high and cast times to long for practical use alot of times
and overall just feel incredibly clunky and are therefore not fun to use.
Tome passive are incredibly weak compared to DH and core guardian making the Grandmaster to keep them after active use not desirable at all and is merely taken cause all other options are equally bad…

Tome of Justice:
Abysmal power scaling.

Tome of Resolve:
Heal values and scaling are horrible (core guard and Dragonhunter can heal better)
Skill #3 feels pointless.

Tome of Courage:
Fairly useless unless the player takes the trait that aegis heals and that all skills in tome of courage apply aegis.

Axe:
Skill #1 feels very disconnected with its delayed 2nd attack and weak due extremly low duration conditions being applied. A range increase to 300 would also help make it a little less horrible than it currently is.
Skill #2 needs something, anything really, to be atleast borderline useable be it a leap before the smbol + lower casttime or a boon/movement impairing condition.
Skill #3 unreliable at times makes a slight range increase.

Mantras:
Need to be radial or higher ranger with a bigger angle on the cone.
Mantra of Solace (Heal skill) scaling with healing power is horrible.
Elite Mantra feels lakeluster and needs a buff (maybe protection or resistance boon)

Traits:
Aside from legendary lore these feel really uninspired, lackluster and not really impactful.
“Imbued Haste” need power added to it to not force people into pure condi.

Overall I am more than disappointed and while in the past I tried to be constructive and positive however was in charge of the firebrand spec failed on all levels.
When u try to give us a melee only support spec the skills and traits need to be powerful enough to actually enalbe such a playstyle and not make us weaker at pretty much everything except burn spam resulting in a spec that is borderline useless.

Tried out the Mirage a bit, mostly worried about its fluidity of play. The new dodge feels somewhat lackluster (could be helped by increasing Superspeed time), and the Mirage Mirrors regularly require suboptimal movement. I’m not sure if the benefits outweigh the sacrifices on dodge and movement patterns.

Also, it feels like some Elite Specs got a LOT more attention than others. I appreciate you picking a concept and going all out on it (Weaver, Holosmith), but I can’t help but think that a Mesmer Elite Spec could’ve had a concept of similar scope.

Also, keep up the good work!

Rym.1469:

Renegade – PvP/PvX PoV – Longer, but definite feedback

Kalla Scorchrazor:

• Summons are similar to Wells, but if Wells could be killed/CC’d. That’s unecessary – summons are not powerful enough to justify being interactable. They are stationary, the counterplay is like for Wells. Icerazor and Razorclaw don’t need cooldowns. Slightly too high energy costs across the board.

• Heal – Costs 10 Energy, while all other heals cost 5, for no reason. Low base healing. Stunbreak is useful, but it’s the only stunbreak on the Legend – you often waste either stunbreak or heal. Please move the stunbreak to other skill.

• Icerazor lacks purpose. Very low power-scalling, short Vulnerability uptime. The summon often fails to cleave downed players. Currently, no reason to summon, apart from being 20x hit for some effects. I assume Razorclaw&Soulcleave will get an ICD, so I don’t count their synergy.

Traits

• Bleed-improving effects of Blood Fury and Heartpiercer don’t work rn.

• Ashen Demeanor could have 1s ICD. Gameplay of Revenant involves a lot of chain-CC to do damage.

• Wrought-Iron Will could have the radius increased to 360 – being a glassy damage dealer, you often stay at edges of fight, so 240 is too short for allies.

• Sudden Reversal – Should ignore Blind, to help against Thief dive..

• Lasting Legacy is currently the dominant trait, doubling the reason for taking Renegade (more damage).

• Righteous Rebel to compete with Lasting Legacy could also heal per Kalla’s Fervor gained. The Alacrity improvement could easily go baseline.

• Vindication – the Might duration is too short. 5-6 seconds would be the sweet spot. Alternatively, split the durations between game modes.

Shortbow

• As 900 range weapon, it puts you into range of many more skills than a 1200 range one, closer to the action. Therefore, it requires a defensive skill. I suggest #4 becoming it, working similary to Wards from GW1 – a defensive zone. Too low damage across the board. Skills 2 and 3 could use some cast time reductions – especially #3 since it’s a hard skillshot.

• Sevenshot (#3) – Arrows dissapear on collision with terrain. “Reverse shotgun” feels unrewarding, player barely ever has a chance to hit 7 shots, most of the time it’s 2-3. Currently bugged with Instant ground targeting, allowing to adjust the focal point instead of it being set at the max range (Youtube Video). The skill with the bug feels much better and more fluid, rewarding good aim – should be the official version. Hitting someone with focal point should reward extra damage – #3 is the hardest skillshot in the game. Should be the main source of Shortbow’s damage, coolest skill.

• Spiritcrush (#4) lacks purpose. Low damage, both power and condition, Slow doesn’t do much with Revenant (unreliable Interrupts, no interrupt traits). Cannot be cast behind the character, often bugs out on bridges. Prime candidate for a rework to a defensive skill.

• Scorchrazor (#5) – Great ability and feeling, just needs to be ground-targeted/skillshot.

Citadel Orders

• Too high Energy costs across the board. Consider adding a second resource for them if they can’t cost way less.

• Heroic Command – Kalla’s Fervor is so easy to come by that refresh isn’t that useful. AoE Might is ok, but consider Stability/Barrier maybe.

• Citadel Bombardment – Vastly too overcosted, provides no damage unless used against big, crowded groups. Should be tighter for PvP. Currently, not useful in PvP/against low number of targets at all.

• Orders from Above – The best Order skill so far. Alacrity is always handy. Renegade desperately needs cleanses – make this Order cleanse a condition every pulse.

Without having to type my own 100 words this guy here pretty much nails it, as many of what he has listed would make pve much more a thing on Renegade. Please, please, please take a solid look at these and ALL the other suggestions and feedback and show us that you do listen, do care, and want to give us the best MMO around!! Cheers!

As soulbeast the main issue is condi clear.
A lot of the specs have great condi options so maybe you can change a trait in the soulbeast traitline or change in another. You just die to quick and have no options to solve it now

For the Firebrand:

-Tomes cd way too long compared to the power of the skills, make them all 30 sec cd and buff the healing on Tome of Resolve (it’s not a viable heal to be a viable healer option especially in raids)

- Tomes skills cast time waay to long, for real tome casting time is just rly bad it make feel everything clunky as hell and it offers waaaay to many possibilities for enemies to get rid of you

-Mantras they have already a long cd and the cast is almost 3 sec it’s kinda pointless since it’s more viable not using last charge then open yourself for 3sec of nothing when you lose way more dps and you’re vulnerable, mantras cast time should be faster

-Mantras aoes, the support mantras should be an aoe or have a wider cone(like the staff autoattack cone) with longer range, as they are now they are useless for support in a real scenario fight and seems more the usual selfish guard thing. For offensive mantras the cone is fine the range could be slightly longer

-Healer retribution trait gives 5s of reta only when you prepare the mantra instead of using the charges, this makes the trait useless with the mantra heal since you hardly will use the last charge in a real fight scenario

-axe skill 2 way too slow and the bleeding on axe should be increased because as it is right now it don’t offers much cdps in addition to fire (is more viable to focus only on fire and ignore the bleeding right now)

-Axe skill 1 and 3 need a legendary effect for Astralaria

-Bring the floating tomes back in addition to pages or don’t hide the weapons or make us hold a magic book anything because standing there without anything with the crap normal idle animation looks just ugly

SOULBEAST

Dagger Main Hand

• This weapon is extremely underwhelming. The auto chain is too slow, condi duration is very low – Faster skill chain + base condi duration to 4s would make it more rewarding/useful. Its a high risk, very low reward weapon as is.
• The skill 2 could be tweaked to grant short evasion as well, because again, its a close melee wep with underwhelming utility, speed and damage.

STANCES
Overall need more utility, considering their awful cooldowns and all the other skills they compete with.

• Dolyak Stance You must know by now but this stance wasn’t fonctional for the soulbeast at all. (Also, pulsing stability?)
• Griphon Stance is really unbalanced. Minimal utility (next to none) on a 45s cooldown is ridiculous. Feels like it needs all its numbers looked at – it’s duration buffed OR its cooldown cut OR its initial endurance gain doubled etc. Also rangers now have PLENTY of ways to build might so this stance’s might effect is redundant, especially since another stance grants might. Should also be stun break
• Vulture Stance needs more utility – again, ranger already has enormous access to might AND poison, and this stance applies both… A 33% condi duration bonus effect would be ace – it’d add more utility and compete with other skills. As the Moa is the boon Stance, Vulture should be the Condi stance.
• One Wolf Pack also feels highly underwhelming and will almost always be replaced by Entangle or SotP – since quickness synergy was added to core ranger, why not apply a quickness-related effect to this elite stance? 0.5s Quickness per One Wolf Pack strike?

BEASTMODE BEAST SKILLS
Overall in a good spot, but

• Primal Cry has awful cast time underwater… DOUBLE cast time! Also, double the bleeds, it is the condi-related beast skill after all
• All beast mode beast skills will go on full cooldown when interrupted
• The traits in beastmastery that affect beast skills should trigger ON SKILL ACTIVATION rather than on skill completion

TRAITS

• Live Fast doesn’t work on Pet F2 skills
• Fresh Reinforcements should copy the player’s boons to the pet when leaving beastmode and/or become baseline
• Furious Strength should also apply a 7% condi damage bonus or else its too Power-Centric (especially since we get a condi weapon – no synergy)
• Predator’s Cunning doesn’t quite feel master-tier – maybe add a small additional effect (5% more damage & condi damage to poison foes? Or take less damage from them?)
• Twice as Vicious feels redundant with Predator’s Onslaught BUT it has great synergy with all the beastmode CC skills
• Eternal Bond – Barrier mechanics could work really well with this one when getting kicked out of beastmode
• Leader of the Pack – Needs either CD reduction or Stance duraiton bonus (maybe per affected allies?)
• Oppressive Superiority – Too conditionnal, if you do not respect the condition this trait is useless – maybe add defensive aspect when you’re the one being oppressed? When you have less health than a foe, gain -10% damage and condition damage from them?

BEASTMODE PET FAMILY SKILLS
They need a LOT of tweaking. Many offensive ones are actual DPS loss when casting them, utility ones don’t feel useful or rewarding.

CORE TRAITS AND SKILLS
Really need to make sure that skills, traits and whatnot have some effect on the player when melded – most currently do but plenty are still left behind

RENEGADE

Let me tell you a little bit about my background. I am a WvW small group roamer who has doubles of all but one class who I have setup with a unique WvW build each that I have created on my own. In short I am competitive who over thinks a build for months at a time. That said here is my critiquing of the new renegade specialization.

TRAITS:

• “Ambush Commander”, “Endless Enmity”, and “Brutal Momentum” are great minor proficiency’s! That give a way for power builds even tho the specialization as a whole lean towards conditions.

• “Ashen Demeanor” shouldn’t have a CD on it

• “Blood Fury” Perfect

• “Wrought-Iron Will” Boon duration’s should be doubled because you have to evade successfully. and has a small radius of effect.

• “Sudden Reversal’ Perfect

• “Heartpiercer” Perfect

• “All for One” Is worthless. Because protection doesn’t protect the summoning’s from condition dmg. And if you wanted to give protection to ally’s all the time then they would just use the runes of the herald with centaur Ventari’s tablet.

• “Vindication” Almost perfect. I would add a energy decrease in cost by 1\2 for Citadel Bombardment.

• “Lasting Legacy” Almost perfect. I would add a energy decrease in cost by 1\4 for Heroic Command.

• “Righteous Rebel” Almost perfect. I would add a energy decrease in cost by 1\3 for Orders from Above

SHORT BOW:

• “Shattershot” Perfect

• “Bloodbane Path” Perfect

• “Sevenshot” Half energy cost and make 1 second cast time.

• “Spiritcrush” Make it so you can fire it behind you

• “Scorchrazor” Perfect

HEAL, UTILITY’S, ELITE:

• “Breakrazor’s Bastion” Perfect. A great idea for groups to take less condition damage. I can see this being used and being reset with Orders from Above and Serene Rejuvenation on a support build going Centaur stance and Renegade stance.

• “Razorclaw’s Rage” Perfect. More support that makes ally’s do more condition dmg.

• “Icerazor’s Ire” Perfect. AOE CC support.

• “Darkrazor’s Daring” Perfect AOE CC support again. You can even use sigil of draining and steal a bunch of heal from the enemy’s. CRAZY!

• “Soulcleave’s Summit” Perfect. Have your group kill a pesky warrior that has endure pain up? Look no further!

The last thing to sum things up is making all the summoning’s from the mists to take no damage. This may seem a bit powerful but just think about it in these terms. Most people find playing full support boring. OK OK there is some…… condition dmg but you cant compare it to Firebrand and if you are you got’s to give us a 25% movement trait . No rapid flow doesn’t count…. Its just annoying, kinda like the whole centaur tablet moving/heal wich is another point to make going full support lackluster.

Thurindir.3268:

dragonkain.3984:

Holosmith.

Seems to be heavily melle oriented spec but lacks stability or resistance or overall surviviablity to be in melle, so he’ll be an easy kill in any PvP mode. Damage is crazy however. Solution – tone damage down a bit but give them more defences OR range.
Losing F5 skill kinda limits this specs viability by alot too…
All utilities besides Laser Disk are worthless so they need serious buffs (including toolbelt one’s)
Overall, spec is a suicide bomber who will be doing his combo and then dying with no chance of revival in any PvP(useless engineer downed state abilities say HI)Overall class doesn’t excel in anything but running away. No strengths no weaknesses.

^This. For all those saying eng dmg is OP, I reply that their healing is sub-par. The part about the “useless engineer downed state abilities say HI” is spot on.

I wouldn’t mind a slight dmg nerf to Holosmith IF the spec got better healing and downed state abilities.

That is from a PvP player’s perspective. As a mainly PvE player, I highly disagree with nerfing the damage for more healing and defense as they’re not necessary for high end PvE content and actually hurts their place in the game-mode if that would happen.

Anyway, my feedback:

Holosmith: is incredibly fun to play and I love all the trait selections. It’s how trait selection should be. Bravo on this one, Anet.

There’s one really important issue that needs to be fixed for Holosmith’s launch: Photon Forge counts as a Transform, and gets its base damage values from a level 78 exotic weapon in PvP, yet only a level 78 FINE (blue) weapon in PvE and WvW! That’s right, having all the same stats in PvP vs PvE will result in you doing 30% less damage right from the get-go. It makes no sense that you would deal more damage to players with the same abilities, only in sPvP. Completely bonkers.

Photon Forge absolutely needs to be fixed as kits were a long time ago to scale from your actual equipped gear instead of a randomly chosen weapon they chose to tie the skill to. Actually, all transforms are affected by this, so they should really just fix all transforms. Photon Forge is certainly the one where it matters most, though.

Firebrand: I feel like tomes having cast time, cooldowns, plus cooldowns on the abilities, plus only being able to use 5 abilities whenever you take one out, then the tome going on full cooldown even if you don’t use any skills from it, is very poor design. Tomes would be at their most fun if they had no cooldown on entering them, but had cooldowns on the abilities in there respective to their power, or you keep the page system with no cooldowns on the abilities. In respect to gaining all the ordinary benefits of activating a Virtue when you enter a tome, give them an ammo count of 1 with a long recharge. If you have an ammo charge, you get the “active” abilities from entering a tome. If not, you simply enter the tome.

Mantras: I feel like they’re weak and flavorless, and will be annoying to use as a cone. Why make them a cone? That’s just unnecessary. Mantras themselves are just… boring play IMO. I guess they made them a little more interesting with the ammo mechanic and the final charge doing something extra.

I didn’t play the rest of the specs enough to give feedback.

Firebrand (tested in wvw)

Mantras:

Problem: Cone effects and range of 300 make the mantras useless, especially in group/zerg play in wvw.
Suggested fix: Change all mantras into a PBAOE (360 degrees) with a range of at least 450 (600 preferred).

Problem: The elite mantra is too weak to be an elite skill. Weak effects vs. the long cooldown. As it is now Renewed Focus is far superior.
Suggested fix: lengthen all effects by 1-2 seconds and add protection. Add 1 more stability stack to Portent of Freedom.

Tomes (F skills):

Problem: Casting times and cooldowns (too many and too long). We have the pages as a limiting factor already.
Suggested fix: Make the tomes instant cast and reduce the tomes’ skills cooldown to 1 second only (again, the pages are the limiting factor).

Problem: Activating a tome and then dropping it before using all pages force a full cooldown on the F skill.
Suggested fix: Dropping a tome with pages still unused reduces the cooldown (the more unused paged left = the higher the reduction).

Weaver
- Attunement cool-down is too long (although see below).
- Sword hits like wet tissue – I demand wet towel.
- I was hoping for (and now thinking it may help with the off-hand problems) off-hand sword with a decent evade/close skill & a condi-clear/negate skill on each element on shortish cd (not the usual balance, then add 5 seconds cos ele). This would help if the attunement cd was to remain, but also fills that ‘dual’ theme much better (one attunement per sword). Basically make it a blend of o/h dagger and focus, maybe even add the ability to equip into the minor GM trait.

Deadeye
AA does more damage than weaver chain and well placed will AA weaver to death before said weaver can close. If he’s been sloppy, Deadeye’s Mark + rifle 4 will do the trick by the time the weaver gets into sword range. As with any game (video or p+p) sniper characters expect to do one thing – and that thing is fun for precisely one person and misery for the rest so this is always going to be an issue; frankly it’s brave to add it to the game. Drawing aggro would help balance this in pve.

But it is fun to play, as is weaver; the problems on both can be solved with number tweaks at minimum. The Ele forum has (as I’d guess all profession forums do) way more in depth work-throughs of solutions (my favourite being the weapon switch one).

Meaningful feedback is impossible in 100 words.

Edit: Sword ideas here.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Feedback-thread-for-Weaver/page/4#post6715602
Also Devs: read profession threads.

As an engi main I love Holosmith.
Photon forge does seem a little too strong right now. I think a small nerf to the forge is needed but the sword and utility skills need to be buffed to make them useful.
I also think there needs to be some heat mechanic added to the core engi weps and skills so that they work better with the spec and you’re not forced into using the new stuff.

Renegade: Shortbow was way too weak. Long cast times with little actual dmg and it was so buggy with sevenshot getting blocked by terrain ALL THE TIME. Where was the burst/mobility? You basically poorly kite with it and dmg just never felt viable. The kalla utilities were terrible…You spend All of your Energy just to have someone CC your spirit thing and now you are just running around trying to auto 1 because you cant do anything else. I did like the renegade trait line for the power build. I liked it very much but would not use shortbow or kalla utilities in their current state.

Soulbeast! So much fun to go pet-less ranger with a buff!!! The buff needs to be higher as the overall dps is less. Activate the pet-swap in beast mode. This is supposed to be a pet-less ranger option despite it not being a camping option. They can go hand-in-hand. Pet is always going to be useful situationally in this game. The pet-swap is needed for more on-demand adaption to a situation. If people need to know which pet your attuned to just make the green aura glow a second color or slightly different color based on defense/support/fighting based pet or something. Switching out of beastmode, waiting for CD, swapping pets, waiting for CD, going back into beastmode is a long and cumbersome task while trying to focus on a fight…and nobody is planning 10sec ahead of needing to swap. PLEASE! Remove the noise from the bird mode skills! That noise is piercing and if you’re using for buffing speed and leaping 2x every 10sec your ears start to bleed. As for dagger, it felt too slow, dmg felt low and the skills felt clunky so I stopped using it right away.

(You can read bolded words for short and concise feedback.)

Renegade has a few very problematic bugs, one of which makes the entire legend’s utilities unreliable for use in all game modes because you can’t rely on them not being the victim of a “No valid path to target.” message at any given time. I have recorded a short clip to demonstrate this here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Llctr_10b50

The Brutal Momentum trait seems to have some sort of issue with Rolling Mists in the Invocation trait line. I saw my Critical Chance shoot up to 100% as it should while under the effect of Fury, for a split second before it would drop to 70%, then when combat ended, it would drop to 30%, and a few moments after pop up to 60%. It felt all over the place.

The Blood Fury trait which should provide a Bleed duration increase while under the effect of Fury didn’t seem to be working either.

Another issue comes with Seven Shot on the Short Bow, which will frequently not fire off several of the arrows, even if the terrain is seemingly perfectly flat. This can be seen in the following clip; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C4kOM3W2Xg (arrows 1-3 do not fire) and also in this example combo clip; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8847KBvhwrA (arrows 1, 2 and 4 do not fire).

On the notion of Seven Shot, it would be nice if you could aim the sweet spot in the same way you can when having set Ground Targeting to Instant (which may or may not be a bug. But it made the skill feel far nicer to use considering this is not a 1200 range weapon and enemies can close the distance needed for it to be optimal (when it doesn’t bug out) in mere moments, making the skill somewhat useless very quickly). Renegade does not have a short Immobilize, which could alleviate the problem too.

Citadel Bombardment felt pretty inconsistent in its ability to apply damage to targets. I never find the opportunity to use it in any sort of rotation, which is somewhat sad considering how cool it is. It is just way too energy hungry to use.

In fact all of the Renegade’s skills and utilities does feel as if they have a slight bit too high energy cost tied to them. It’s a constant energy starvation when playing Renegade, which just doesn’t feel as nice as when playing with any of the other weapons and legends.

PS: The heal feels rather.. in lack of better words, garbage. If it scales well, that doesn’t help condition and power builds. It just makes it awkward. Also not sure I like that the stun breaker is on it, though I can understand the difficulty of putting it elsewhere.

Firebrand

I thought the focal point of the profession would be Tomes, but long cast times and cooldowns doesn’t allow proactive game play. Furthermore, as restrictive as the Tomes are, their effects (especially Tome of Resolve) feels subpar to Healing other professions provide.

I’m going to copy my post from Reddit:

I like the concept but the execution is poor at the moment.
Animations – most of them are recycled and don’t feel fluent with sword.
Damage – Pure sword damage is… underwhelming.
Sword skills range is also too low.
Survivability – barrier that Weaver alone can generate is negligible. Those numbers need to be 3-4 times larger (yes, it is that bad).
Skills and utility – concept of dual skills is very interasting but those skills don’t feel impactful.
Elite is strong but very situational (like every Ele elite to this day which is sad).

Such long basic cooldown on elements is unacceptable. That’s why Weaver feels clunky and not fluent in gameplay. This is the core thing that needs to be changed.
Overall I’m pretty dissapointed because the concept itself is a dream come true. Some people may break their fingers trying to play it. Elements changing mechanics is kinda overkill. I see the vast amount of work that has been put into this spec but I don’t think it will work.

Weaver
My surprise favorite class of beta
Loved the animations and play style, really top notch job guys!
Will take a long time to master i really like that.
hopefully constructive critisism
Weaver’s prowess and Elements of rage didn’t seem to work (in mine at least)
Stone Resonance – the recharge 50s seemed way too high, i think a lower CD would address a lot of the weaver issues.
Earthen Vortex should do the same but move you to your target maybe.
Put unravel on f5 cause i would’t ever use it as a utility (but thats just me maybe)

Deadeye
As a thief main i wasn’t looking forward to this but i think you got the ‘feel’ just right, i was super impressed. Played SA/Tric/DE and really felt like a sniper in WvW.
issues
The kneel sometimes felt clunky, as someone in reddit said change the flip over icon to a diff colour.
The steal cast time was offputting.

Spellbreaker
I really loved Spellbreaker and felt it did exactley what it was supposed to do.
issues
The dagger leap felt a little short
The dagger stun at 1/4s was ok to interupt but not good as a setup for Wastrels Ruin maybe a slightly longer daze.
Loss Aversion seemed to do pitiful damage – 150 damage on marauders.

Mirage
Hated it the 1st time i tried it, liked it when i remade to try different builds and weapons. The sword attack is great and when id made a hybrid stat build sword/staff running Viper’s in WvW it worked super good, even i couldn’t tell which was me or which was a clone.
issues
a lot of the shadowstep utilities teleported me under the terrain in WvW mostly when i was fighting near camps. Think Weaver will be great when people stop just building for condi and not shattering.

Soulbeast
I was really excited for Soulbeast and how it would work with core ranger traits, unfortunately i found that it simply didn’t work at all with a lot of them which i don’t think should ever happen. If you have to make the soulbeast merge same cooldown as pet swap but make all the traits work please.
issues
Lots of traits simply don’t work as you’d expect
Daggers seemed to be balance around having quickness, without it they were super underwhelming.
The Aura was a little too much loose the green mist that blocks the character or lessen it a lot.

I went into beta playing Renegade mostly because I thought it looked the most appealing and would be my main in pof. Oh boy. Ok.
Playstyle: The bow dmg is just too low for a mid range weapon. Renegade is not threatening at all. Mid range you have all melee with high burst with gap closers or you’re ranged by harder hitting ranged. F2 felt useless with how easy you can reapply/stack it completely useless. F3 the energy was not worth it and the animation delay is just so stupid. I tried to use it once on Deadeye thinking hes stationary! Nows my chance! He 2 shot me through the cast. I spent more time running away in battle grounds than actually trying to even really kill anyone. Utilities did nothing. They either got cc’d or everyone ignored them and gap closed me. Energy cost was ridiculous. Used Razorclaw’s Rage and Soulcleave’s Summit and if I used ANY actual weapon skill Elite channel was done. If I just AA’d it would last like 3 sec? Can’t really go in depth on weapon skills honestly seeing as how I never had much energy for them so mostly just AA with Elite up. At least with mace/axe condi build I could channel an elite or utility and use weapon skills. Hell, even combo them.
The theme: Very cool! Charr Archer Ex-flame legion. Really nice. Red flames on the hands really cool. Fire arrows REALLY cool explosions on impacts. ALL this fire animation and yet on the bow that is unlocked with the legend, you only have TWO abilities with burn!? Two are bleeding and one is torment?? I just don’t understand. Your little ghosties as well. You have Darkrazor. That sounds cool could apply blind or something for a nice defensive. You have Icerazor who doesn’t even apply chill but instead cripples?? I don’t know, just seems really weird from a theme point of view.

Then I made a holosmith and OH MY GOD THAT SPEC IS FREAKIN AMAZING I FELT LIKE SOME KINDA GIANT NUCLEAR REACTOR GUNDAM THAT JUST WHIPPED OUT EVERY WEAPON IN THE GAME FOR NO COST AND JUST BLASTED MY WAY INTO VALHALLA. kitten good spec! Thumbs up to engi team who made that, that was so much fun.