Guild Wars 2

momophily.3814:

This has ALWAYS been the primary problem with all guardian builds. Speed /mobility always seems to be our primary trade off to the devs, and its an unfair one to shoulder in an ever increasingly fast combat system, both highend PvE or in PvP.

Totally agree! This has been my issue with a few other professions as well. The weakness of the class should be strengthened through elite specializations, not sustained. Taking an elite over the base class should give you access to counters to your own class’s weak points. As some have already done so.

Ultimately I think Elite specializations should:
1.) Strengthen an aspect of the class
2.) Strengthen a weakness of the class
3.) Provide an alternative playstyle to the class
4.) Have focus for support or damage
a.) Benefit both condi and power, equally, if dmg
b.) Benefit tanking, condi cleanse, healing, if support

Firebrand felt great but the mobility issue for guardian drives me nuts. Either I spec for it using runes or I spec for it using utility slots. I used to be able to at least use the staff as a mobility tool but now it feels like a hobo stick that is useless if I get caught with it in a fight. You lack the mobility to get close enough to do dmg….what minor dmg the weapon does in the first place. I completely agree that having a pull on the axe versus having a gap closer just doesnt work as great. The mantras and tomes need you to be near your allies as a caster. Mobility is key to this specialization so not sure why it is totally lacking it. Staff doesnt work anymore as a mid-range weapon after the nerf, please fix it.

100 words or fewer? i couldnt put my thoughts about soulbeast as a ranger main into 100 words if i tried, but here it goes:

Dagger is clunky and boring, dps is lacking, cps is lacking. Animations are boring and uninspired. Horribly designed weapon.
Stances are mostly useless and dont bring anything to the table that core skills dont do better. Elite stance is worse than frost ghost. Ditch stances and give us an original Skillline like Exceeds, or rework them heavily.
Soulbeast mode is a huge loss of dps, beast skills take too long to activate and feel lackluster, pet skills animations are kinda.. ehhh, but you could live with it if the animations were flashier.

tl;dr: Soulbeast is a clunky mess, basically makes us an even worse core ranger.
Good Job at making Ranger even WORSE anet

Sorry, can’t do “100 words or less”:

Elementalist:
Pretty much the only new elite specialization I truly enjoyed. The idea of combining the last two elements used is brilliant and so much fun! It makes for a lot of diversity.
However, the fact that you can still only attune to two elements very much limits the strength of those combinations.

Revenant:
I would have wanted something like that for the Ranger! Geez, ANet…
Also, it would have been more fitting to exchange the heroes used in skills 6-10 with someone of the respective race you play and only leave the elite to be the Charr after which this is named.

Ranger:
Boring. Definitely strong in damage (especially with the new pets), but still a very weak execution of the idea, mostly for visual reasons. The Engineer looks spectacular (even “too much”), but this?
Also, now all professions seem to overlap and boost each other with boons — that totally destroys some professions’ actual purpose.

Necromancer:
Making something “different” doesn’t automatically make it more exciting. I simply didn’t feel the connection. Perhaps it’ll grow on me…

Thief:
Nice idea, but again, more complexity doesn’t equal “better”. I don’t see this elite spec work at all outside of raids where you have group tactics.
(P.S. Didn’t get what the black dots crowning the life force circle were all about.)

Guardian:
Cool animations!
The biggest downside, however, will be the lack of stability support, among other things.
The “tomes” altering the skills, well, that’s basically the Engineer’s mechanics. I’d prefer it if you wouldn’t intermix professions’ mechanics. It gets confusing, and at some point professions will have completely lost their unique flair.
(On a different note, what is it with you and conditions, ANet? Must every profession now use condition builds for the highest level of efficiency?)

Warrior:
Completely overpowered. Those boon removals and projectile shields will pose a huge issue in PvP and WvW.
Furthermore, a two-dagger build with skills like those would have fit the Thief! It looks silly on a heavy-armored Warrior.

Mesmer:
I have rarely played my Mesmer, so I am not an expert for this profession. However, the concept and execution for Mirage look very interesting and could be a lot of fun to play. I’d say this was my second favorite from the list of new elite specs.

Engineer:
The animations are completely over the top, especially in comparison to the other professions. This will make the battlefield look like an exploding firework factory (which is visually annoying and will give many players a headache).
As for the choice of weapons, I just don’t see an engineer with a sword and shield. Dagger and focus, maybe.

Just a word about the scourge : The source of “OPness” some people see in this spec’ seems to be the result from a pair of bugs. For example :

• The tooltip of shade skills says explicitely : “Targets affected by this ability can only be affected once per cast.” That wasn’t the case this weekend and that lead to huge stacks of burn and torment from multiple shades affecting the same targed.
• Same for Desert Shroud who proc’ed Dhuumfire multiple times instead of once.

So… Once those (and other) bugs are fixed, scourge will be far from OP.

Punishment skills also felt pretty lackluster, but others have already mentioned that fact in details.

Ashantara.8731:

Sorry, can’t do “100 words or less”:

General criticism:
Not a fan of ammunition/skill charges being restricted to PoF builds. If you invent something new like that, implement it into previous content as well!

My Guardian on live has skill charges right now, or did you mean something else?

100 words or less? fine, that’s possible.

I mainly tested firebrand. It’s obvious that it has been designed as having the choice between going full condi damage or going for support. The condi dps route might work in the end, but support is dead on arrival. Tomes suffer from ridiculous cast times and cooldowns, while mantra cones are a joke and not worth the hassle. Theory behind the spec is ok, implementation is just bad. This has been discussed ad nauseam in the guardian forum.

Overall I like the new classes feel and i’m excited for the expansion there are some things I think need tweaking but I will post those thoughts in the specific forums for those classes. The thing is there is a lot of condition application coming with the new elites in a game environment that is already skewed towards that type of play but i’m not saying dial it back I’d just like there to be more counter play to it say by buffing cleansing. There are a number of traits that only clear one condition but I don’t think that will cut it.

Scourge:

Scourge seemed to have a very good AoE condi damage, which i guess its fair considering how easily it can be to focus down a necro (and scourge is no exception), also i think Demonic Lore was bugged (no ICD on downed targets) which made Scourge`s damage looks more ``OP`` than it really is.

Torch skills seemed solid imo.

Barrier is a very interesting idea for support, but as it is right now it just starts decaying way too fast, maybe increasing the time before it starts decaying to 4 seconds instead of 2 would make it good enough.

Punishment skills while good in PvP will probably be very underwhelming in PvE, mostly because of the boon requirement to inflict torment and cripple. My suggestion would be to change Punishments in PvE so they can apply the torment and cripple even if a boon is not removed. Also having a cast time on Sand Swell felt kinda clunky.

Last but not least please dont nerf Scourge`s damage in PvE because of PvP whine before we even get a chance to try the spec properly in PvE =)

I suggest that you change the Deadeye’s main rifle skills to make it easier for players at a glance to distinguish whether they are using the Main Skills and the Kneel skills.

I have a picture photoshopped for the suggestion.

Hope its useful.

I’m going to talk mostly about the revenant, as that is where I spent most of my time.

First off, glint and jalis need to be included for underwater combat.
Secondly, energy costs are out of hand… Base revenant, and herald are pretty well balanced with this, but renegade made this really a big problem. Some suggest removing weapon costs, etc. But I think it’s best to drastically reduce renegade skills energy cost and f-skills energy cost.

Now onto Renegade:

Shortbow was decent, but only when you take the traits that buff it. I think it needs some higher condition damage to compete with m/a. I would like to see some higher power scaling too to allow for more diversity. Skill 3, need I say more? Skill 4 could use an extra 2 seconds of fire field with pulsing fire like mace 2.

The utility skills were at minimum 5-10 energy too expensive each. And adding an icd for the elite skill was a huge letdown. The only fun renegade build was killed with that hotfix. Playing a lifesteal sustain roamer was pretty fun while it lasted, and not at all OP.

I also agree with everyone that the stunbreak needs to move to f2, and besides energy cost reductions, I think the f skills are decent.

The spirits should not have health, but maybe a breakbar for getting stunned 2 seconds. So there is some counterplay. Otherwise they should have stability. So they can’t be tossed about. Pretty bad feeling to pop your aoe interrupt and have it knocked off point.

The damage spirit needs cripple replaced with chill, same with one of the shortbow skills also needs chill to have some synergy with malyx.

Otherwise, I enjoyed the feel of the class. And with a lot of changes, Renegade will be usable. I can see how it should play, and it could be very fun if it was tuned properly, and some mechanics fixed. (like spirits being ragdolls in pvp, and shortbow pulsing burning)

On the topic of pvp as a whole. I was pretty happy with the balance of the week-end. A few outliers need nerfs, and a few like renegade need some help, but I didn’t see anything that was massively imbalanced. (outside of some bugs)

Many classes too strong in survivability. There are permanent dodges, permanent invul or resilence or block or dodge and permanents auras with fast heal. Every second opponent couldn’t be hitted by any ranger arrow without unblocking.

The dagger of soulbeast ist too slow. skill 2 is just a better auto attack. skill 3 has a too short range and a very clunky landing.
Ranger lose beastmode by water contact and soulbeast aura is too long in duration
Ranger couldn’t change pet in beastmode.
Many pet/sb skills are useless:
SB bird swoop is just 400 distance instead 1200 and a clunky landing
SB Devourer retreat needs stealth and the pet skill needs something other
PET pig F2 is useless and clunky from beginning
SB feline bite is worser than an autoattack!!
Change the “big” damage to something utility (drake tail swipe i.e.)
Most SB attacks are just worser than the pet skills + the melee hit distance is very slow or casttime too long.
Primal cry, spiritual reprieve and worldly blast are just too slow. Primal cry needs better conditions.
List of all land pet skills

stances are too bad or bugged and there is no trait with reload reduction.
traits seems uninteresting. heal for poison seems nice, but it don’t really scale with an attribute.

Overall – Too much spam and powercreep, and stop with the countering counters kitten (full counter, deadeye being able to remove revealed and go back into stealth in a single skill etc…). Just tone it down, and then you can tone down the ridiculous boon hate that some of these new specs have.

Mirage – Seriously, you need to go through and read every single mirage feedback thread in the mesmer forums and on Reddit. There are tons of problems with the spec at a fundamental design level. It could be made workable with simple number tweaks, but really it needs to be redesigned. At the very least mirrors need to be improved vastly.

TheMaskedGamer.5708:

I suggest that you change the Deadeye’s main rifle skills to make it easier for players at a glance to distinguish whether they are using the Main Skills and the Kneel skills.

I have a picture photoshopped for the suggestion.

Hope its useful.

Up for this one.
It’s a simple and very good modify.

Hey, so I’ve tested the Renegade, yes, Revenant is my main and it’s my darling, but nonetheless, I feel like it’s getting neglected, not by me though! Kalla? Okay, sure, why not? I mean, cool a charr, I could… think of another charr RENEGADE, who started it all and the charrs… own everything they are today to him, that’s literally what his statue says, but nope… we get Scorchrazor. Anyway! Less about the lore, more about the skills.
I literally have nothing against the shortbow, maybe except for energy consumption, but otherwise, the condi damage, which I am focusing on is pleasant, I enjoyed the shortbow, the shortbow seems like a nice additon and after a short ‘’Ugh… shortbow’’ I actually convinced myself to it! So yes, I like the shortbow.
Utility Skills… and heal and elite, I am no PvP player, but I tried to use the heal skill, which I felt like didn’t heal me at all, I just have been killed despite the skill being active, again, might be my lack of skill, but… really it should let me live at least these 10 seconds longer, right? It didn’t.
Now… let’s go a lot of years back, remember that one class that wore a blindfold? Yeah, me too. That’s what todays Rev is based on (The ritualist, just in case!) and I feel like the Renegade perfectly represents that, the spirits of long gone heroes fighting at your side, protecting you and then disappearing into the mists… there’s just one tiny little problem, they don’t exactly fight at your side, nor do they protect you, in fact, you have to protect them, or they’re going to die and be useless, doesn’t really sound all that good, right? I feel like they should… be able to follow you, be an actual warband (even though my Rev is a human) that fights at your side. I am going to mention a lot of ideas that have been probably mentioned… but maybe one more post will and then another will make this happen. Keep the charrs, keep their fighting animation, but let them follow you, like the minions follow the necromancer! Or, please, give the revenant another FX skill that will let us move them to our location, imagine and that’s the example I gave to someone, if you are downed, I am currently running Kalla, I need to help you, but I myself am at low health and my other Legend heal is recharging, now I need to get you up, I just put up the ’’totem’’ charr in one place, I move to you, I die, because I can’t get my health up and that’s how you trigger a whole raid party. Okay, maybe not, but you know, it’s just an example. Or another one! A dungeon, we won’t get anymore, but they’re still in the game, we get through a bunch of enemies, I just put up all of the immovable charrs, somewhere else, and they still have a lot of time to stay up! Do I just waste them? Basically what I am saying is, can you give us a way to let the warband members move around with us, just like https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Summon_Spirits ? It would be great, you wouldn’t have to rework the animations… too much and we would get more fun out of them and let’s be honest, that’s what Renegade is all about… a half ripped off ritualist and suddenly they have alacrity too! Because chronomancer can’t stay unique with their fancy speed up, right? Noo! So why not give us something of our own? Like for example that summon skills I’ve linked. I don’t want to go too far with my fantasy here, but just this little thing, to make the Renegade feel less boring! To make us feel like we are actually fighting amongst the warband members, not a bunch of pawns standing there and dancing around or give us a few utility skills that don’t belong to any of the legends that we can use with any of them, obviously with energy use, which I do personally enjoy, unless it drains me on start, which I try to avoid, but you know how it is at times. Just… please don’t make the Rev a cheap rip off of a class it could actually become in the future, please Anet! I think the Ritualist worked great with their spirits and since the Revenant resembles it so much, why not using something that you’ve successfully done once and can do it again?
Anyway, it would be great to see it, dreaming about it will have to be enough I guess.
Renegade has proven to be… not as interesting, but I hope it can be fixed, for the sake of my favourite class in Guild Wars 2!

Holosmith in 100 words this time:
-Powerfull and Aethetic skills.
-Easy to play.
-Great Heat Mechanic, but the heat bar should have a stat for it, and so can be increased with armor, or reduce the produced heat of some skills.
-Nothing to change for power, engineer were always medium/weak, and here is a chance to boost them.
-BUT not all the weapons are affected by heat and that’s sad.

So as I have seen that many ask why heat don’t affect other weapons, I decide to make news “heat” skills for all engineer weapons, including riffle but without hammer due to the spec Scrapper, Also dual sword can be done, but last skills must be powerful:

Pistol 1: Blast | Pistol 2: Overpowered Bullets |
Pistol 3: Holographic bursts
Shield 4: Solar Shield | Shield 5: Solar Reflexion
Pistol 4: Ionized Shot | Pistol 5: Meteor Shot
Rifle 1: Flamethrower | Rifle 2: Dazzling Shot |
Rifle 3: Fire Rain | Rifle 4: Armor Breaker |
Rifle 5: Volcanic Earthquake
Sword 4: Fire Sword | Sword 5: Powered Swords tornado

Note: All 5 skills use target area, (aoe)

These are suggestions ^^

M I R A G E

Class Mechanic:

• Increase endurance bar from 2 > 3
• Mirage Cloak increased from 1s > 2s
• Increase the damage of all ambush skills
• Hitting a foe with an ambush skill OR a deception skill restores some endurance. 10/15 or 25
• Mirage Mirrors placed on the ground should effect other Mesmers that have the Mirage spec equipped
• Increase window for ambush skill cast from 1.5s > 2s
• Ambush attacks are Unblockable
• Works with Phantasms

Axe:

• Increase attack speed
• Increase damage
• Reduced casting time for Axe 3

Healing:

• Increase base healing
• Gain stealth for 3s

Utilities:

• Crystal Sands Deals damage to all enemies within the target location, regardless of being hit by a shard. Shards will still form in the centre to create a mirage mirror.

• Illusionary Ambush COMBINED W/ Mirage Advance
  “New” Illusionary Advance
  You and all your illusions shadowstep to a random point around your target, blinding your target and nearby foes and gaining Mirage Cloak. Illusions’ actions are interrupted when they change focus to the targeted foe. You may reactivate this skill to return to your original position and restore some endurance. 30/35s cooldown

• Sand Through Glass Increased evade range from 300 > 400 and gain Vigor

• Jaunt Range increased from 400 > 600 OR Range increased from 400 > 900 but only 2 charges.

Traits:

• Self-Deception: Using a deception skill will break enemy targeting and grant quickness and vigor for 2s
• Riddle of Sand: Triggered upon gaining Mirage Cloak

• Nomads Endurance: Added Power Attribute Adjust: 150

• Shards of Glass: Baseline and have a 66% chance to create a Mirage Mirror
• Mirage Mantle: Daze nearby foes and Gain Protection and Stability when Mirage Cloak ends.

• Speed of Sand: You move 25% faster. Now has a 1s duration when you gain Mirage Cloak.

• Infinite Horizon: Baseline
• Dune Cloak: Moved to Major Master Trait and replacing Shards of Glass

*I also wanted to add that since Mirage is all about keeping our clones up and not shattering and giving us some form of deception with having them up – PHANTASMAL HASTE needs to affect both Phantasms and Illusions/Clones. Since our clones deal 1 damage and having them attack faster will help with giving the class more of that deception feel since it’s easy to find the real Mesmer when we are the only one attacking faster.

Holosmith
-No changes, though the damage might need to be tweaked down a little.
-Let us get out of Forge mode with Weapon switch
-Make other weapons affected by Heat
-Cooling vent is weak, was expecting it to lower down heat

Weaver
-Attunement cooldown too long.
-Traits are boring
-unravel seems to be bugged

Firebrand
-too bursty for a support
-TOO MUCH CONDI FOR A SUPPORT

also check proffessions sub-pages, they got a lot more feedback than this one.

Firebrand in wvw and pvp

To slow and clunky and the mantras isnt effective in a fb build. It actually more impact using shouts in a FB build.

Shelter and renewed focus are better heals then mantras.

The FB has really poor suvivability due to lack of bubbles and no mobility what so ever.

Make tomes instant
Make mantra cones be 90 degrees and 600 range
Make mantra elite reset and recharge all all mantras on final charge.
Make the healing mantra also heal allies
Revamp one of the offensive mantras and make it a 600 blink with three charges.

PvE Weaver:

Only Staff was fun to use. Sword is underpowered and clunky as hell.
The Elite Skill benefits Condi builds over Power builds which is not OK. (It doesnt give Power, but gives you Condi Dmg wtf?)
I would use FGS over the new elite skill in a power based build even in Weaver which is kind of ironic isnt it?

I mainly played Mirage during the Beta weekend and here’s my take on it:

• The mirage lacks synergy with core mesmer trait-lines. Core trait-lines are heavily focused around shattering illusions and buffing phantasms, which are counterproductive for the mirage.

• The mirage is clearly not meant to shatter illusions because without clones you can’t perform ambush attacks, yet we still have the same F-skills! There should absolutely be different ones that synergise with the mirage’s design.

• Phantasms don’t do ambush attacks and are therefore worse than clones so you dont usually use one of your 5 weapon skills.

• Even clone’s ambush attacks are very lackluster, weak and clunky.

• In order to do most damage you have to dodge and get mirage mirror, this means that you don’t always have a dodge available when you need it for survivability.

• Mirages are required to keep up clones, yet clones die like flies in pvp and wvw. There is simply not enough clone generation available. Even with more clone generation they would still be too unreliant due to their low health and survivability.

• As already mentioned, mirage cloak is a weaker dodge because of it’s reduced mobility.

• The traid “Infinite horizon” should be baseline. I thought the main concept of the mirage is that clones attack with ambushes, so this trait is mandatory anyway.

• The axe #2 ability should not summon a clone on the mirage’s casting position. Most of the time a clone won’t be summoned because enemies run away. This skill should act like staff #2 where you automatically summon a clone onto your target.

• Mirage mirrors are a clunky design. They require you to walk to them (which is very risky in pvp and wvw) to gain mirage cloak (0.75 sec) which is not worth the risk and effort.

These are my main cons I come up with.
Anet still has one month time to fix the mirage. Hopefully we will se some readjustments!

Couple gripes with Renegade.

Sevenshot: If the starting portals for the projectiles are placed on uneven terrain or are clipped inside a hill or whatnot, then the projectiles fail to fire, which makes the skill much weaker than if all the projectiles fire everytime.

Kalla Abilities: Using the utilities/heal/ulti, I often received an error message trying to put them down. Sometimes if I have Kalla selected as my legend and I am on a narrow ledge or doing a jumping puzzle, I won’t be able to heal at all because I can’t find a spot to use the skill.

For a specific example, here is a little video clip from the last demo weekend. You can see that I am able to use Spiritcrush and Citadel Bombardment, but then I am unable to place my heal skill at the same location. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rxVCOdUSdM

Thanks for the hard work and hopefully these issues can get ironed out!

DeadEye:

One of the weaknesses of a Sniper should clearly be mobility, but the standing Rifle 4 is insane mobility and can even teleport up ledges. Please make the sniper easier to stick to when actually found out and caught.

Tight limit. Won’t be able to make it. Not even remotely. Please have a look at the respective class forums. There is very great detailed feedback on their.

Overall, I like all eSpecs. Performance-wise…

The Top

Holosmith, Deadeye and Scource felt the most complete – but all of them were overtuned numberwise in some aspects. One more specific note on the Holosmith: Too few synergies with baseline traits and Sword feels very underwhelming when compared to Photon Forge.

The More Balanced

Firebrand, Soulbeast, Spellbreaker and Renegade felt the most balanced. Coming from a Mesmer I really enjoyed the Spellbreaker but some people seem not to get it’s niche and less ‘Bam, into your face!’ than baseline Warrior. The Renegade offers traits with great synergies while I’m not too exited about the Legend itself. The utilities are unique but I don’t like them being spirits and their visuals just fall short when compared to Shortbow.

More detailed feedback on Firebrand and Soulbeast.

Firebrand

• Axe: Pretty animations. #2 feels a bit too slow.
• Traits: Overall fine. Weighty Terms feels too much like Wrath of Justice. Stoic Demeanor feels a bit underhwelming for a GM trait.
• Tomes: Look interesting. Could have a slightly faster activition time. F2 needs at least better scaling with healing power. Cooldowns feel a bit too long.
• Mantras: Look interesting. Could need a wider cone and maybe slightly longer range. I disagree with others, though, that a 600 range or AoE is needed.

Firebrand offers some nice new things but needs some polish.

Soulbeast

• Dagger: Okay but boring on its own. Feels like it requires specific traits to shine. The charge mechanic on a weapon skills is an interesting new option for skills.
• Traits: Are very versatile which I like. Other people seem to miss focuson them, though. Some traits could need slight buffs (number tweaking).
• Beastmode: Pretty cool mechanic. Aura seems a bit too flashy. I wished we had a bit more diverse animations based on your pet. No pet swap while in Beastmode feels like a bandaid to force players out of it which I dislike.
• Stances: All seem to serve a purpose. Looking forward to wether sharing them actually is worthit.

Looks pretty exciting while it doesn’t offer any new role per se.

The Underwhelming

Mirage

• Axe: Okay, but condi is not my thing. Needs some polish.
• Traits: Have potential but some are blant or just plain garbage… Hello, Mirage Mantle and Speed of Sand! Additionally, Infinite Horizon kind of feels like an integral part of the identity of Mirage.
• Mirage Cloak: Nice idea, I personally like it. We somewhat lack additional sources of Endurance, though.
• Mirage Mirror: Nice idea but badly executed. Way too complicated to utilize for rather average results.
• Ambush attacks: Too weak and too limited access (e.g. why solely gained through MC and not stealth as well?). Desperately need a buff.
• Deceptions: Quite some redundancy among Jaunt, Mirage Advance and Illusionary Ambush.

While I really enjoy this kind of playstyle the Mirage currently hardly adds much more than new shiny animations to a playstyle Mesmers already got. I feel that this spec needs the most work when looking at traits, special mechanics and overall performance.

The Unsure

Weaver

• Sword: Dang, that AA is slow. Regarding the range, yeah. It’s melee. Get over it. The other skills looked nice.
• Traits: The traits look rather boring on paper but I feel the major issue is that people aren’t used to playing Weaver yet. They clearly are meant to offer sustainability. In the end the numbers might have to be crunched.
• Double Attunements: Certainly different than baseline and Overcharges.
• Stances: I like them. Some people complain about Unravel or similar not being baseline. I feel they do add temporal versatility (Unravel = Baseline Elementalist, [Edit] I meant Weave Self = lower CD without Arcane) which however aren’t integral to the Weaver.

Personally, I like the concept. But I’m just not too good at playing Elementalist so I’ll probably have a hard time playing Weaver.

Most of what I would say has already been said, but let me reiterate one thing. Reduce condition damage in WvW or greatly increase cleanses. I’ve had enough of the braindead mechanics you added over the years and people running around in Trailblazer’s applying 3-5 conditions with one button. WvW needs its own balance like PvP. It should not be integrated with PvE.

I would like to make a suggestion for the weaver.
Currently, we can switch attunement every 4sec while it’s only 2.5sec for core ele (on average), it’s too long. Moreover, weaver should always be able to access the skill/element he needs.

My thoughts:
– Remove all cooldown on attunement change.
– Then balance it: for example some kind of initiative (like thieves): 6 charges to switch, -1 at each new element you attune and +1 every few seconds.

This way weaver can react quickly and really becomes unpredictable.
At the moment, I fear weaver might only be useful in pve…
Nice spe nonetheless ^^

Hi, mirage main here!

I was thinking a good way to increase the mirror generation and give them more value would be to change the “self deception” and “shards of glass” traits.
The way i went about it was:
Self deception: when you shatter 2 or more illusions spawn a mirror (x sec idc)
Shards of glass: consuming a mirror spawns a clone (x icd)
Imo this would increase the mirror output making them a more reliable tool and it would give mirrors more value since they help with out clone generation.

Also, id make a case for axe to be buffed abit i its power department so it wont fall to the same area the rev weapons where at the start.

I believe that the ambush skill should overall be buffed both in the window i got to use them and dmg. Although im not sure about sword ambush since its already pretty solid.

Utils: heal could use a buff on healing or condi removal and a secondary buttons to teleport back to the mirror. Other utiles need smarter positioning on the mirros they summon and Jaunt imo would benefit from being 600 range each teleport.

And finally, why cant we access ambush skills in stealth as well? It would make sense to be able to do that.

All in all the hot powercreeped chrono proves to be supperior even now (but mirage has alot of potential as a thief replacement in pvp and a bice dps in pve).

Zorack.8754:

I would like to make a suggestion for the weaver.
Currently, we can switch attunement every 4sec while it’s only 2.5sec for core ele (on average), it’s too long. Moreover, weaver should always be able to access the skill/element he needs.

My thoughts:
– Remove all cooldown on attunement change.
– Then balance it: for example some kind of initiative (like thieves): 6 charges to switch, -1 at each new element you attune and +1 every few seconds.

This way weaver can react quickly and really becomes unpredictable.
At the moment, I fear weaver might only be useful in pve…
Nice spe nonetheless ^^

What if attuning to pure elements exists outside that 4sec? Doyble tapping an element you go only that element with no cd while dual element keeps thw 4sec one.

The Great Al.2546:

This is the second expansion in a row where Ele elite spec traitline is extremely boring.

Trait lines are supposed to change your play style (see: holosmith). The traits are either % damage buffs or %health/barrier buffs. Please make the weaver trait line fun.

Also sword is somehow a weaker dagger with worse range. I don’t understand how this happened.

Guardian will take your druid away, and can have firebrand.

Spellbreaker. PVE adjustments. Noted ways to have it not break the pvp.
Pvp focused to a high degree and needs some balencing for pve.

Sun and moon trait needs a rework. the 7% life-steal from crit dmg only appears to work on offhand damage and not the dagger #1. It needs to effect all damage you deal when you have 2 daggers equipped. This would help allot in pve viability and then just make it more like 3% in pvp since you can combo burn people with the spellbreaker elite and some traits for huge dmg while you burn away boons. Because of that 7% is a bit much for pvp, but 7% on dmg from both hands would be good in pve.

Also spellbreaker should make it so any and all might applied is changed into a different buff. Something that is not seen as a boon and name it something like Meditated state. The more you gain, the further you go into the mediated state and when you hit say 25 stacks you get bonus. An example could be auto that your next weapon burst is a 3 bar Adrenalin equivalent. This is in exchange for the 25 stacks of the new might buff I mentioned being consumed. Letting you get the 3rd teir burst bonuses but leaving out the high dmg as a belencing mechanic. This means you cant just run around in pve or pvp with constant stacks building from tether and crits but makes it so when they fall off your not a sitting duck.

It does not make sense that a class that is all about breaking magic… namely boons… uses boons as a main mechanic and can be punished in the same way he punishes others.

Pure spellbreaker is already weak to stun locking and such from other warriors. It is also weak from condi as condi removal is mainly just the heal. It does not need to be vulnerable to boon strip also.

Also, Soulbeast in particular:

Dagger – Horrible weapon. Hits like a wet noodle compared to existing condi damage spec and is pointless.
Stances – Also not better choices than core skills.

Verdict: I can run my power ranger setup with an occasional merge with smokescale, but basically run my current set up with slightly more nuking potential from a quick pet merge and knowing how things roll here that damage is going to be nerfed immediately. In short, the spec is pointless next to both core ranger and druid at this time. It brings almost nothing to the table.

Is engineer ever going to see its legendary weapons reflected in its kits or photon forge? At this point, it feels like our legendaries don’t even matter, we’re all identical…

Vagrant.7206:

Is engineer ever going to see its legendary weapons reflected in its kits or photon forge? At this point, it feels like our legendaries don’t even matter, we’re all identical…

Cought cough Rifle and grenades have specific trails cough cough

Firebrand
The axe autoattack chain is a pure PvE condi stacking. I tried axe in PvP and it’s really bad. Skills #2 and #3 are great though. I like the AoE daze and the pull works great. It’s just you pull the enemy and then what… you have to swap weapons to do any damage but axe is the only condi weapon so. Players are not PvP testing golems.
Unrelenting criticism This trait limits the pool of weapons to axe only. Is it possible to make it: Your attacks have 33% to apply bleeding…? Also please consider adding a blast finisher to Weighty Terms. Every tome has a combo field but no way to blast them without stowing the tome.

I tried a bit of everything but mostly played Mirage, so this is what I will talk about :

Amazing concept, truly great, the idea behind mesmer itself, I love it.

First of all, Mirage Cloak seems like it’s shorter than an actual dodge, I don’t know if it was me or just bugged or something, but I felt like I got hit by things I would have dodged if I had normal animation and pressed dodge at the exact same time.
Also, Ambush skills should have a bit more time to be used, 0.75sec isn’t enough when they don’t interrupt previous casts, so sometimes your character interrupts itself on the cast because you didn’t start them as soon as you “dodged”.

Axe 2 should be a small evade to allow for a bit more survivability in my opinion.
I’d also upgrade axe auto range a tiny bit, but I understand you want axe as a true melee weapon so I don’t expect anything on that, I just don’t see much use of its autoattack outside of PvE at the current range.

I would also love to see Greatsword Ambush be reworked, it looks great (as does most animations on most elite specs, really great job on that), but it’s really not useful at all, and not even really usable due to the regular auto-attack having a long animation, most of the time you can’t cast it anyway.

I’d upgrade Jaunt range just by a tiny bit, like 550 for example, to make it feel like an elite skill still.

Maybe give an additional effect to picking mirrors, mesmers have always lacked condi clear if you don’t go the inspiration route, maybe one condi removal on mirror pickup.

I’ve also loved the ideas I read on reddit, which are to make the endurance bar purple when playing Mirage, and to have False Oasis give regeneration on top of vigor so it synergizes with the Oasis trait.

Mirage – only going to add a few points because other people have probably covered everything else:

Axe 2 needs an evade – 3/4s would be ideal.

3rd hit of Axe auto chain (Mirror Strikes) could also do with an evade – 1/2s (similar to Ranger GS auto attack chain, or mesmer underwater Spear auto attack chain), but not crucial.

Fix Axe 3 (and Illusionary Ambush) pathing to work like Sword 3 swap – for vertical chasing/kiting.

Merge Illusionary Ambush and Mirage Advance? (Make room for new Deception utility).

Change painful sound effect of Imaginary Axes (worse than Alacrity sound effect).

Jaunt – 600 range.

Elusive Mind – also remove movement impairing conditions (cripple/chill/immob) but ICD on stunbreak?

Infinite Horizon – baseline (make room for new trait).

Add a contextual optional directional movement to dodge:
- hitting dodge button only just provides Mirage cloak and does not move you.
- pressing a directional key (forward /left/right/back) and dodge key together does a 200-300 range blink (soft sound effect) in the direction you move, and gives Mirage cloak. Also applies to double tap for dodge.
This retains flexibility dodge – you still can blur without moving by hitting the dodge button only, but you also have the option of a directional dodge blink if moving while hitting dodge.

Other mesmer notes:

Move Warden’s Feedback to Adept or Grandmaster tier in Inspiration, so as not to compete with Restorative Illusions. Focus needs some love.

Change Reflect to not break stealth and proc reveal (ie so Reflecting while in Stealth maintains stealth). This will fix a lot of trait interactions with stealth – from Evasive Mirror to Master of Manipulation.

Kylden Ar.3724:

Xstein.2187:

Mirage
Infinite horizons should be made base and replaced by Mirror-on-Shatter which now gives you mirage cloak when you use a shatter skill. No more RNG. Mirror on Shatter should then be replace by a trait that causes ambush attacks to remove boons (works with weak GS ambush).

Mirrors should now either produce a clone or refill one of your endurance bars instead. There should be a 3rd endurance bar that can only be refilled by mirrors. That way you can benefit from the mirrors when you want to.

Or, the Mirrors could be used for offense/area control by bring back the concepts of Confusing Combatant (confusion on illusion death), Crippling Dissipation (crippling on illusion death) and Debilitating Dissipation (and a random condition on clone death) that were phased out almost 2 years ago. You touch your mirror, get Mirage Cloak. Enemy touches it, it ‘shatters’ (Mirrors break, right?) and they take some damage and get condi.

I don’t know, it needs something. I spent an hour with it and said, “This will never get me out of Chrono as it stands.”

This. If Mirage is to be dependent on clones, we need clone death traits back. Also the skills need to work on moving targets, not just target golems.

Soulbeast was disappointing for me. My main is a Ranger so I was hoping for more. Disappointed that every other profession gets a new weapon but the Ranger gets an existing weapon, just in a different hand. Some of the stances could possibly be useful, but Beast Mode doesn’t excite me and right now this is looking like a specialization I don’t want to waste time acquiring.

I tested Soulbeast in wvw. Shame that Dolyak stance was bugged, I was hoping to make a wvw frontline build with it.

Sorry, I can’t put my feedback in sub 100 words. I just finished doing a writeup on the Renegade, and it is pushing 18,000 character. The short version is, everything is bad and not worth taking.

You can find it here.

I also listed my complaints and anxieties with the Mirage Traits. My complaint is I have no idea how to play the class, and also a lot of things are bad. You can find that post here.

On Mirage
I like the idea/theme of the mirage. However (imho) some things are not implemented to their full potential.
General

• As mentioned many times, it is not clear what to do with phantasms (they dont fit into the theme) and clones (shatter or not? Only Infinite Horizon gives an idea)
• Mirage Mirrors are a nice concept, however they are hard to interact with. They should stay longer and pose a threat to enemys. Give them a max count as for illusions and let them stay for the duration of the fight. Beside the name I dont see the theme in them. As for mirrors, they should reflect/copy something or give something like a path-through.
• I really like conditions in GW2 but a viable power option should be given

Traits

• Speed of Sand should be merged with Mirage Cloak and the ambush window should be longer
• Shards of Glass should give a 33% chance per illusion shattered
• Self Deception should allways create clone at starting location
• Infinite Horizon should be baseline for clones. Maybe add effect for phantasms

Skills

• False Oasis feels weak. A decreased CD would be great
• Crystal Sands needs a rework of the pathing
• Jaunt needs some rework. A great way to improve this skill (especially with self deception): Shadowstep behind your target, where your target functions as a mirror for repositioning.

Kind Regards

Soulbeast

Now when we enter beastmode we see pet turn into a green ball and shadowstep to us. Maybe we could have second special key which would make us shadowstep to pet so we could make either our pet shadowstep to player or player shadowstep to pet. CD would be shared of course. That would make positioning of your pet important so you could engage if you are merging with melee pet (especially new cheetah) and disengage by merging with pet behind you.
Thoughts?

Renegade:

Adjust energy cost, sheesh. As it stands now, the F skills aren’t even worth considering to use because they are a huge drain on energy, essentially forcing you to swap legends in order to maintain damage. Not only that, but their impact is minimal to boot. I would also like to see some synergy between Renegade and Corruption trait lines. Basic example would be to make Icerazor chill rather than cripple. Renegade ‘wells’ should spawn with stability if you insist on making them killable. Short bow is fine once you fix some numbers and paths.

Firebrand:

If this is our support build, I want to cry. Having tomes with a cast time defeats their entire purpose. Example: say you’re in WvW and need to pop a projectile reflect…..if you wanted to do this as FB, you’d need to activate ToC…cast time…then cast the correct chapter….cast time. Congrats, your party is dead. Too heavy on cast times as it stands. Tomes should be instant. Cooldowns on tomes should be reduced across the board, healing power scaling on ToR should be much higher, and some system that reduces tome cooldown based on the number of remaining pages when stowed should be put in. Last note, if you WANT to keep tome cast time….we should have a minor trait that grants party-wide barrier and stability when activating a tome. This way our party stands a chance while we frickin channel a tome. MANTRAS ARE UNUSEABLE! Give them the same radius and angle as shield #4 or no one will want to use them.

Mirage:

You know what a perfect elite is? One that has a clear focus, but allows some interesting build ideas. Reaper was perfect in this regard. Clearly a power build, but a viable condi build came out of it too. Mirage, currently, is not like this. It would be nice to see some power build potential. Also, phantasms should ambush too. Easily can institute a short daze on them to balance it.

Weaver:

By now I was sick of condi builds. Please make sword at least as strong as dagger. I mean, you have to get closer after all….as far as attuning…get rid of unravel and add a new stance. Instead, make it so attuning to an element only kicks off CD on the other 3 elements, this way you can always double tap an attunement to access whatever off hand abilities you need. This is by far the best idea. Barrier base values need to be higher. I’d like a trait that allows barrier strength to scale with power for weaver, but I know that’s a bit of a stretch…

General: barriers need to degenerate slower. It’s much too fast.

Siwo Sowa.6982:

Soulbeast

Now when we enter beastmode we see pet turn into a green ball and shadowstep to us. Maybe we could have second special key which would make us shadowstep to pet so we could make either our pet shadowstep to player or player shadowstep to pet. CD would be shared of course. That would make positioning of your pet important so you could engage if you are merging with melee pet (especially new cheetah) and disengage by merging with pet behind you.
Thoughts?

That would make an awesome top level trait!

I tested holosmith (both power and condi, in wvw and pvp) and found the photon forge mechanic interesting, although ultimately it seemed to have little sustain for a melee spec despite the defensive traits it offers. Regarding the sword, I had really hoped the holosmith would also allow for a p/sw combination. It would be interesting to know why it isn’t available as an off-hand weapon. However, I liked the design in general and had some nice duels over the beta weekend.

boonrip and condi meta is going to leave Revenant out of the game, since Revenant is all about boons and has no condi cleanse.

Also condi damage reduction does nothing against weakness, cripple, blind, chill, vulnerability and so on

The massive boonstripping might end up reverting WvW back to pirateship meta. There is no reason to have frontline if stabs don’t last, that is the concept of pirateship meta.

zealex.9410:

Vagrant.7206:

Is engineer ever going to see its legendary weapons reflected in its kits or photon forge? At this point, it feels like our legendaries don’t even matter, we’re all identical…

Cought cough Rifle and grenades have specific trails cough cough

Only one of the grenade throw toolbelt skills does? The rest of our kits don’t see any legendary effects, and PF definitely doesn’t see them.

As for Renegade:

• shortbow skills 2, 3 ,4 and 5: have an extremely long casttime, and it needs to long to appear after casted. People still just walk out of range/position and I miss most of my skills, also Citadel bombardment.
• shortbow skill 2: miss all the time the target is moving …
• shortbow skill 3: where are the bolts?, some of them seem to be lost in the mists ( I had times where only 3 appears or less ) also this skill should be faster or act like True shot or deflecting shot (dragonhunter) with ground targeting (or not)
• shortbow skill 4: toooo slow and I think I miss like ele using dragontooth and I cant target behind me … lol … every class can do that …. except Renegade
• shortbow skill 5: needs some ground direction targeting also like True shot or deflecting shot

The utilities are all to slow, to long to cast, to late at appearing on battlefield, ppl simply walk away. And the MOST DISTURBING THING…. no valid path

And plz change the stunbreaker to another utility, I dont want to use the low heal skill (wich you can buff with a bigger amount of heal and which is so much important ) for a stunbreaker , maybe the healskill should not ground targeting , instead just appear right next to the player.

I think if you made some little changes we will get a better feeling for the new legend and it would be much more welcome for rev players.

suicidalspectre.8106:

The Great Al.2546:

This is the second expansion in a row where Ele elite spec traitline is extremely boring.

Trait lines are supposed to change your play style (see: holosmith). The traits are either % damage buffs or %health/barrier buffs. Please make the weaver trait line fun.

Also sword is somehow a weaker dagger with worse range. I don’t understand how this happened.

Guardian will take your druid away, and can have firebrand.

That would be great. At least it would give Guardian the use of a staff.

Dear Anyone complaining scourge is broken OP

You’re missing the avoidance lesson here.
Dhuumfire affects shade only, not player. I really hoped i did not have to learn people on how to counter my main. because its fun face-rolling baddies who don’t know how to counter something so obvious.

DON’T STAND IN SAND SHADE.

the end