Guild Wars 2

Now the last and alas for me also the very least, the light elite specializations;

Scourge

• Didn’t bother trying this out due to the loss of the shroud. The skills look great but what made me fall in love with the Necro and Reaper was the shroud.

Mirage

• I don’t like how Mesmer works so I didn’t bother with the Mirage (I didn’t even check the skills) and I highly likely won’t be trying out any of the future Mesmer elite specializations. I have a Chronomancer though but that’s because I felt like getting all HoT specializations because the elite specializations were obviously new and because it has a 25% movement boost.

Weaver

• Huge disappointment that this didn’t get dual wielding swords. I don’t want to use sword-dagger or sword-focus so I didn’t bother trying out Weaver.
  “But you don’t seem to have that much of an issue with the other specializations that got 1 main hand weapon” you might say, well that’s because Firebrand, Mirage and Soulbeast can swap weapons and I don’t really mind this on classes that can swap weapons (except for warrior seeing he is dual wielding master, I’d be kittened off to see it have a main-hand pistol or off-hand pistol instead of both).
  “But Holosmith can’t swap weapons too and you don’t seem to have a problem with that” you’ll probably respond with, well that’s because Holosmith has a shield as an off-hand weapon. Sword-dagger, sword-focus and Holosmith’s sword-pistol feels weird to me.
  “But but but 40+ new skills”. Well depends on how you look at it. For me it’s only 6 new skills because when you have dagger-dagger, dagger-focus, staff etc. you only get 6 new skills. You don’t have access to all 40+ skills. With sword-dagger or sword-focus you have access to 18 new skills (12 sword skills + 6 dual skills). But if they had made dual swords it would have been 26 new skills and if they didn’t make “dual skills” it would have been 20 new skills. So even if I did like wielding 1 sword, no matter what it would have still been less skills then dual wielding swords without the “dual skills”.

Tried only soulbeast in depth and since this is just a feedback thread I’ll leave just these observations

• Feels too much like core ranger
• It’s unacceptable that some core utilities don’t work when using the new class mechanic

Soulbeast:
Please add pet swap in beastform or remove the CD of beastform. It feels clunky and not very fluent. Dagger AA is to slow. Dagger MH 2 is flavorless. Core Ranger needs better Condi interaction with soulbeast. Improve Poison Master and OH Dagger. Stances of soulbeast could need improvements, vulture and griffon stance felt especially lack luster. The elite could need some improvements too. Traits need some tweaking. Master traits are very situational. Add parts to this traits that give these boons/condis while playing. Fresh reinforcements should be at least a minor trait or baseline and not a major.
Grandmaster traits need some tweaking. Oppressive superiority is undertuned in comparison to similar traits. Eternal bond needs tweaking in numbers. Beast skills are way undertuned on some pets.

Thats all. Thabk you for the feedback opportunity.

Thanks for asking our feedback!

Weaver
Very good concept and spell effects. But:

• Sword: too little Power damage, too short gap closers, could use more barriers.
• Utilities: Unravel as an utility is just bad design. Change it.
• Spec Mechanics: quite clunky rotations. Some combos should be easier and what is lost in reactivity of skills 4-5 should be given back in other ways, plausibly through more damage and/or more survivability. Currently the Weaver is too much effort and too little build viability in exchange for extremely weak results.

Holosmith
The concept is cool. But:

• It’s kind of the opposite of Weaver: low effort for insanely high results. You can literally faceroll random keys and still get stupidly high damage. It is so absurd that for most of the weekend I just assumed the damage output was a bug. Clearly to be toned down.

Mirage
Interesting concept and visuals. But:

• Ambush mechanics: should be easier to use and damage numbers should be higher
• Axe: should not have the most effective way to change target for your illusions. This cool ability should be more easily available to all weapons, maybe through ambush itself.
• Phantasms: should have some use, they are useless in this elite spec…

Firebrand
Fantastic concept and visuals. But:

• Tomes: should be quicker; give immediate use, shorter spell casting time.
• Mantras: should be slightly easier to use, maybe widen the cones.

Renagade

• Horribly bland concept. It’s the first GW2 elite spec that doesn’t introduce any interesting new mechanic. The visuals and theme are also underwhelming, with these transparent unknown charr appearing and casting some buff or debuff… It should be redone entirely, but I am afraid you clearly don’t have time before release. Very disappointing.

Spellbreaker
Very interesting concept and theme. Good job. But:

• PvE: The sole focus on Boon stripping is cool in PvP and WvW, but in PvE…

Deadeye

• Well done, a niche but very intriguing concept. Can’t wait to play it more and to test its viability without the rifle as well.

Scourge
Cool. But:

• Raids and Fractals: Still unsure if barriers and boon corruption is enough to make it a viable raiding spec. Necro needs one: make sure that Scourge is actually competitive in that environment.

Soulbeast
Cool concept. But:

• Dagger: feels really uninspired and disconnected from the rest.
• Beastmodes: should have more variety in visuals and animations.

Short version:

soulbeast – great design overall, love the versatility and new depth.
But the stances are outta whack.

Bear stance – it’s good functionality wise, but a stance should not have a cast time, that’s counter-intuitive.

Dolyak stance – bugged out, does not work.

Griffon stance – 1 might on evade (not dodge, evade!) is ridicously weak. Well at least there’s no icd on it. Also quite large cd.

Moa stance – no complaints here! Love the moa!

Vulture & One Wolf Pack – you put internal cooldowns on them preventing burst. But then you also give them short duration, preventing them from being a sustain damage utility, since burst is already out. Leaving us with very underwhelming result, especially for elite, which has huge cooldown given it’s duration. At least vulture has manageable cooldown.

renegade – loved it, though as some mentioned energy costs are gonna be a nightmare, and serious sustain issues (quirky heal, not much soft cc to kite, no special movement mechanics, like for example shiro’s dodges or shadowsteps).

firebrand – love the new recharge on mantras. Tomes are in need of rework. Both mechanically (one page cost on each skill) and visually (old guardian elite tomes were EPIC visual wise – bring them back!!).

holosmith – how did this broken damage get into preview? This needs some serious nerfbat.

The projectile reflect on Spellbreaker dagger 5 is not worth the insane CD (20s weaponskill?) and the reflect.

None of the utilities feel useful.

Auto attack should hit harder and 3 targets

Level 1 bursts lacks synergy with all other warrior trees (Adrenal, Berserker Power, Cleansing ire) This is honestly the most grievous part about spellbreaker, and imo deserves a full rework. Right now core is better than Spellbreaker at EVERYTHING except boon strip, and boon strip is unimportant in anything but strict 1v1

i’ll be honest, i didnt play any demo spec by just reading skill descriptions/traits. With Deadeye only exception to me, wich is an all in idea that i like, high risk high reward, the reason i just didnt play the beta, is just a single one: the game is focused on conditions.
I will not talk about terrible balance, terrible concept of the renegade, overpowered scourge, but i will talk about the concept you have in mind about this game:

THIS IS NOT A TURN BASED GAME. STOP WITH THE CONDITION DAMAGE! CONDITION DAMAGE WORKS FOR TURN BASED FINAL FANTASY LIKE GAMES!!!!! NOT FOR REAL TIME/ FAST REACTION COMBATS!
STOOOOOP THE CONDI!!!! RLLY STOOOOOOP THE CONDI!!!! I CAN GIVE YOU A 100 WORDS FEEDBACK WITH JUST STOOOOOP THE CONDIII

I want a combat system based on fast reactions and reading of the opponent movement/rotation/animations, a combat based on movements on the field and a combat wich is fun to play. What we have now, and what i see even more with this new specializations, is just a condi spam festival, with the spec that spam more win! What Gw2 had really interesting differently from others MMO when realised, was the chance to dodge. Now you are just making dodges useless, cuz is not a matter wich crucial skill/animation you are gonna dodge, they are all the same! They all add those plenty garbage tons of condis, so it doesnt matter wich skill you dodge, is more important your cleanse management than dodge! WTF is THIS? a TURN BASED MMO?
How is even people enjoying playing pvp/wvw with all these condis? i can’t get it.
You should rlly limit conditions to merely debuffs, like cripple, chill, blind, vulnerability, immobilize etc, and minimize the damage on time. ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED.
Arenanet you are really good at doing PVE stuffs. But please separate completely the PVE gameplay/balance from the wvw/pvp one. If pvers asked for condi to be more reliable, please why you didnt do that ONLY for PVE environment? You literaly ruined PVP and WvW…. and i can’t see any expansion wich can recover from this BIG mistake.

This is coming from a usual PVP lover player who in every online game loves competition, whot with GW2 discovered himself to enjoy more PVE than PVP.

Mirage:

1) Axe isn’t very fun to use. Needs more finesse and Axe#3 has major pathing issues.

2) Mirage Cloak is really fun and adds lots of trick plays.

3) Ambush window is too small and most of the Ambush skills are too slow and ineffective.

4) Mirage Mirrors don’t do enough to warrant the player actively spawning and grabbing them on the battlefield. They also de-spawn far too quickly!

5) Infinite Horizon needs to be baseline because it means that your clones always evade like you would which could potentially fool a player – the whole point of the spec is to do precisely that after all.

6) Jaunt range is too short – it didn’t feel nice to use.

7) Illusionary Ambush has the same issues as Axe#3 and Mirage Advance seems far too limited for a steal-like ability.

8) A bunch of other things but over the 100 limit already

Mirage:

False Oasis: And i was thinking: Cool a new solo spec….maybe not a heal with 30 sec. CD? oh….not so good…30 sec CD…a Group heal? I thought it is a solo spec….maybe it is good?…oh the ammount of heal is to low to be a 30 sec CD heal…more of a 15 or even just a 12 sec CD heal….ok, only good thing: you must not stand in it….

So. please instead of giving us more heal with this skill: it is a solo spec from the gameplay i saw….dont increase the heal we are getting: lower the CD to 15 (or even 12) seconds so that we (finnaly) have one more heal with low CD…

Mesmer alreday has heal skills with high CD (and the well from Chrono is already a good group heal, with a good heal ammount….and 30 sec. CD)…..

Jaunt: For an elite skill…to short distance…i mean: press the button, target the location…use the button again….that time i also can run this little distance without using this skill…..

Increase the distance you travel with this skill.

Mirage Cloak:

To short time you have the cloak….i mean: in the video you said you can stand in the attacks of enemies without beeing hit…that is not true after all…..the attacks from enemies are way longer than the cloak is there…so you need to run out of the attacks….and dont have the time to use the Ambush attacks…..

So: Slightly increase the time we have the mirage cloak.

Ambush Attacks:

What should i say? Axe and Scepter are in some way ok….staff is well not good not bad (ok staff is not my weapon the normal 1 is bouncing and pulling enemies that i dont want)…but the rest? Needs to be something else…ok sword more movement…but after seeing how the 4 from the thiefs dagger is working i dont like sword mesmer at all….(but i like the artwork in the wiki with the little sword in the hand)….Greatsword…oh my…..that is an ambush i will never use….and i was after hearing the new elite get new skill 1 skills..: oh my: PLEASE let our Mesmers have learned something from the White Mantle Mesmers on Lake Doric….they use GS 3 as an really hurting AoE attack…and i thought: our Mesmer maybe learned this from fighting the white mantle…but no…. GS 1 Ambush….. can be ignored…

Axe: ok, really well done, nothing more to say, i like the axe, finally a weapon with movement…and also i like the trait where you can get a 20% CD Rduction on axe…

(also i am asking myself: why does the shield dont have the 20% CD Reduction as trait….just why? Alacrity maybe….but that is no real reason so maybe add this to the trait where illusions gain superspeed on chrono after shattering…so the player must decide: 20% CD Reduction + Illusion superspeed after shatter OR more group support with wells that give alacrity after they end.)

Little offtopic: after you reduced the heal from the mantra, and changed harmonius mantras, give us a 3rd mantra recharge by default…also your new ammunition system is some sort of….well…not good on the mantras….i mean, we still need to cast them new after using the last charge, change it so you dont need to cast anymore, when we used the last charge make a 0…so that we need to wait for the next charge to be ready (hey: it is like a CD….)…also after you reduced the heal ammount from the heal mantra: reduce the recharge time a little please.

Ok, after seeing that most weapons now have a default 20% CD reduction (exepct shield), i saw that pistol dont have it…what am i thinking: next elite: pistol with the 20% CD trait, COOL….(ok i also like the idea of shortbow or 2 handed daggers)…also i was thinking: maybe they even make elites that use well…staff, but changing every skill thanks to the used elite so that a new playstyle with an old weapon is created…(like: the mesmers have leared some new skills after the old ones are not working against the new enemies….or something like that…)….

But yeah, mirage needs some changes…..but i like the axe, dont touch the axe.
And yes…i just copy and pasted this comment that i already have posted in
the mesmer forum…why? well this is an thread from an dev and
i dont know if they read the class forums….

Kreed.2768:

Soulbeast

• Traits seems lackluster, especially the Grandmasters and even more so when compared to other e-specs. They should tie into Beastmode and each encourage a different type of playstyle. See Scourge and Holosmith’s Grandmaster traits as examples of how it was done right.

To add a little more about how to make the Soulbeast’s grandmasters a bit more unique and tied into the elite specialization’s mechanic, here are some quickly brainstormed possibilities:

• Make one GM trait reduce or remove the cooldown that normally applies when leaving Soulbeast form. This is for the players who like to dip in and out of the Soulbeast and quickly rotate through all the abilities available, without wanting to put the pet at too much risk just because they want to swap over to the other pet and meld with them instead.
• Make one GM apply Fury, a couple stacks of Might and Quickness when entering or exiting Beastmode. This is for the players who want to rotate in and out of Beastmode at tactical moments (burst spikes).
• Make one GM double the stat bonus applied when melding with a pet. However, make it a buff a la Grace of the Land that stacks five times over ten seconds. This would be for the players who want to camp Beastmode.

Just some random suggestions that might or might not be balanced, but I wanted to give an idea of what I thought some more GM’s that tie in with the elite spec’s mechanic could look like.

Edit: replaced Stability with Quickness to the GM that gives boons, since it makes more sense, given that it provides more synergy with other traits in the Soulbeast line.

I am a bit concerned about the skills for ranger’s new specs.

The spec has generic skills in the third slot particularly useless are the vine grabs really.

Also I understand that you want to make it more melee but it was melee already really.

I do like it but haven’t been able to try it in PVE honestly so I can’t speak to how useful the skills are.

I would love to know how people thought about the PVE side particularly when you combines this spec with traps. I hope that will work out well since it’s a condi damage build it seems.

Renegade is very very weak. Please re-work utilities on Kalla entirely and slash energy costs and cast times on shortbow/F skills/across the board. Also more damage.

Renegade:

1. Kalla’s Utilities and F skills cost too much energy, barely letting you use one utility/ F skill (looking at you energy cost on weapons skills). And underwhelming to boot.

2. Renegade seems to severely lack in survival/mobility when using shortbow and Kalla legend in pvp/wvw.

3. Stun break and healing on the same utility seems too conflicting.

Scourge:

1. Path of corruption trait with Nefarious Favor(F2) on such low cooldown is too strong on pvp/ wvw.

2. F skills’ instant casts leads to instant condition burst as soon as sand shade gets summon on top of enemy player. Some F skill should get SHORT cast time so that condi burst require more set up.

3. The burst potential is so strong with Dhumm Fire trait that I didn’t even have to take Demonic Lore trait and instead take Sand Savant for faster sand shade cooldown/more support. Scourge shouldn’t be able to do massive condi damage on top of strong support. Either one but not both at same time.

4. Torch and scourge utilities lack life force generation when scourge’s survival depends on barrier generated by sand shades. Torch could benefit from some kind of life force generation for being a scourge weapon, since scepter isn’t that great at life force generation either.

5. ~Please~ consider pve and pvp/wvw skill split when balancing.

I only tested on golems, but I found the weaver which I was looking forward to, a little disappointing. The sword / dagger combo didn’t feel very powerful, with a lot of the sword skills seeming quite weak. I also found it very hard to develop any sort of flow to the rotation as the attunement cd always seemed to keep me locked out of things for too long. The stances didn’t seem that great either.

Would be nice to have one more test weekend for the elite spec, but in PvE.

Lack of Waypoints, Mastery Mini-games and loot you pay to identify are all terrible.

Scourge:

I don’t think there is too much doubt that Scourge is overpowered in PvP and WvW. However I am a bit afraid that nerfs will severely affect PvE raid performance as that is currently necromancer’s greatest weakness. The core design of Scourge will make it a staple of WvW just because of the large AoE radius, but nerfing it will probably neuter PvE raiding Scourge.

I think the most problematic with Scourge is F2, the cd is simply too short. It is on a 4 sec cd if you trait it, remove 2 boons and remove 2 condis.

Punishment skills looks very poor in PvE because the current amount of boon spam in raid is just not there. I would suggest increase the base condi but decrease boon corruption condi conversion.

Dhuumfire interaction is also one of the biggest reason for Scourge’s strength, ideally I would place a small ICD there in PvP only. Removing the F5 pulse has been suggested but that will completely remove scourge’s potential in Raid.

Lack of main hand condi swap and LF gen can be felt even during golem testing, ideally some of the punishment or even torch skills can generate even a bit LF to sustain the damage just for raids.

tl;dr, Scourge is too strong in PvP and WvW, but careful nerfing it so it does not destroy PvE viability. Buff punishment skills to give base condi, nerf boon corruption skills by cd. Torch and punishment skills generating some LF would be nice. Lack another mainhand condi weapon other than Scepter in PvE.

PS: Demonic lore is bugged I think, the icd does not apply for downstate. That might be a big reason why the damage is so high in wvw. Worth checking out.

Torch 5 is also very bugged, I stand literally next to the golem and half times I get might stacks, other half I don’t.

“Would be nice to have one more test weekend for the elite spec, but in PvE”

I mirror this thought 100% but aside from that I really want to get back into my Rev as he was my first raid toon and heaps of fun! I am currently playing him now until the launch and am holding my breath that some tweaks are made to Renegade.
I briefly (30 mins.) played around Spellbreaker since I run cPS in raids and was wondering if it would have some viability for raiding but SPellbreaker does flesh out to be pretty much pvp/wvw only, and that’s ok, choices are a good thing as long as those choices are solid.
Now, Renegade….no need to go into lengthy detail as my thoughts pretty much mirror most of those that have posted here and in the Rev forum. I will add that I personally see it being fun and I do a lot of open world running around along with raiding and I think it will be fine for that, just PLEASE fix the energy costs??!!
You cant really do much of anything with the new “toys” because you run out and therefore have to swap legends. All the work put into it one would hope that you could use and utilize those new skills more than just once per fight, but that’s not the case.
So, if you are able to do anything along those lines I really think some players just might be naming their next-born after you all!

The holosmith seems good but there are problems with the traits that would be taken in PVE for top damage. The best adept trait is solar focusing lens which is a weak burn application. There is no trait for damage increase in the master traits, crystal configuration storm would seem the best choice but +10% damage to explosives was removed, power builds aren’t going to take shrapnel and it generates extra heat which is bad. Both tiers need better DPS options.

Hard light arena is a great skill but making it affect allies would be much better.

Prime light beam is good for both power and condi but making it so you can move while casting would make it less clunkly.

Photon forge does a lot of damage it should be nerfed a little but it should be more powerful than any kit considering you can damage yourself with it.

Sword skills are good but the auto does less than bomb kit 1 and the crit chance bonus won’t help in high end PVE, perhaps change it to a damage increase that will take it above bomb auto. The heat bonus to sword skills seem a little unfair given that no other weapon skills get heat bonuses, perhaps create a trait that adds heat bonuses to every weapon skill which would encourage kitless play which holosmith seems to be aiming for.

CinnaTree.8071:

5. ~Please~ consider pve and pvp/wvw skill split when balancing.

Seconding this.
The fact that only PvP was taken into consideration led to 2 years of nerfs for the Revenant. And now that we have pvp split Revenant skills are still nerfed, meaning that we have drawbacks like energy and condition weakness, but no real gains.

Also Revenant is basically cut out from PoF pvp meta (condi + boonrip, goodbye Herald and Mallyx), so at least make it strong as it was in PvE.

And…

Now that we have 2 elite specs it’s mandatory.

Alright, I’ll try to give a more a balanced view compared to my posts on other threads, which ask for heavy rework.

Firebrand

• There are a lot of discussions out there about mantras, so I’ll try to summarize the thoughts on them. Cones are fine for offensive mantras, as you need to immobilize or impair the movement of your opponents to use them correctly, in return those offensive mantras are quite powerful, and I like that. The issue comes when you’ve supportive mantras, and four out of six mantras are support oriented, because you cannot control the movement of your allies, and in modes such as PvP/WvW your allies will spread out and constantly move, which makes cones impractical, while in PvE you’ll also have situations where you allies are spread out, such as some raid bosses, therefore mantras are really underwhelming support capabilities. In consequence I think having AoE instead of cones would make more sense for such supportive mantras.

• Tomes shouldn’t have activation time, just like Celestial Avatar/Photon Forge/Shroud (…), because the Firebrand cannot react quickly enough to threats, harming its support potential, and it also makes the Firebrand too vulnerable to CCs.

• Tome of Resolve and Tome of Courage cooldowns should be reduce to make Firebrand exist as a support compared to the low cooldown of Celestial Avatar. Tome of Justice should keep its 30 seconds cooldown as it’s very powerful, and because Renewed Justice reset the cooldown on kills, Tome of Resolve should have a 20 seconds cooldown as it would be more in line with the other skill swapping support ability of the game, Celestial Avatar with its 10 seconds cooldown, Tome of Courage should have a 35 seconds (eventually a 40 seconds) cooldown as it’s otherwise too long to be relevant.

• Tome of Resolve feels a bit weak, even if it gets a cooldown reduction, you should consider reducing the second chapter (Radiant Recovery) casting time, one second cast time for a condition remover is too high particularly when considering most condition remover have a ½ or a ¾ cast time, Nefarious Favor doesn’t even have one and could be considered as powerful as Radiant Recovery. Another issue with the Tome of Resolve is the lack of blast finisher to synergies with Shining River, unlike the Celestial Avatar which has Lunar Impact to blast Rejuvenating Tides, as it stand right now you need your allies to blast for you, which isn’t great. Edit: Azure Sun should be a blast finisher

• Legendary Lore is responsible for some really powerful synergy, but I think they’re too powerful. As it’s right now the Tome of Justice throw too many burning stacks at its opponents, and one reason is because of the extra burning brought by Legendary Lore, I think the extra burning should be replace by slow or cripple, in order to keep the enemies in melee. Also aegis on every skills used by the Tome of Courage is bonkers, particularly with Pure of Heart, I’d rather see protection instead, and give aegis on tome skills such as Stalwart Stand, and the Unbroken Lines lasting longer (8 seconds) to compensate the lack of protection without the trait.

• Pages accompanied with the long cooldowns of tomes are leading to some awkward behaviors, because stowing your tomes means going into huge cooldown you want to keep them activated until all of your pages are gone, even though you won’t need your tome immediately, but if you stow to go back to your weapon rotation then you won’t have your tome when you might need it, therefore you want to keep your tome activated waiting for the opportunity to use your last pages, which means you’ll do nothing while waiting as you don’t have access to your weapons skills and your utilities might not have a use while waiting, this is clunky. One solution would be to reduce cooldowns as suggested above, but even though pages would remain a clunky mechanic.

• [Heavy Rework] Another solution would be to have the tomes cooldowns taking into account the number of pages left, if you have a lot of pages left your cooldown is going to be very low (as low as the cooldown on an Elementalist attunement) but if you used all of your pages then the cooldown is going to be high, in return the skills need to have different page costs, otherwise player will spam the most powerful skill carelessly, and as the skill cost goes up the number of pages also need to increase, otherwise you won’t be able to make hard choices, such as using low page cost skills to have your tome back faster or using high page cost skills to be more impactful, it’s basically how Initiative works for the Thief weapon skills, and it’s how pages should work if you want them to be meaningful.

quoted from the Rev’s forum

Rev was never overpowered in PVE that’s for sure. They were wanted in the beginning for Natural Resonance, but after that got nerfed and they didn’t get buffed in any other way to compensate revs just disappeared from raids. Now you don’t really see them outside Deimos. Power rev is crap and while condi rev is definitely better now, there are still much better condi classes to bring over a rev. Renegade is supposed to fix this, but who knows. I am annoyed that they never reverted any of those nerfs they gave us because of pvp. With skill splitting there is no reason to not reverse those nerfs, especially with power rev being in such a bad place now.

Also lol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WXn0jljaCE&list=WL&index=83

All new elite specs are awesome. They fit very thematically to Elona and are based in the lore. The mechanics and play of them (from the time I put into exploring them, which wasn’t as much as I wanted) seemed great. They are all great ideas and have been developed very well. However, NONE of them felt elite. HoT elite specs significantly boosted each prof in some way, while all PoF elite specs simply alter the prof’s mechanics to something very unique. That uniqueness is very appealing, but it’s very hard to see ppl sacrificing the elite power of HoT elite specs in favor of less power but varied gameplay in PoF.

tigirius.9014:

I am a bit concerned about the skills for ranger’s new specs.

The spec has generic skills in the third slot particularly useless are the vine grabs really.

Also I understand that you want to make it more melee but it was melee already really.

I do like it but haven’t been able to try it in PVE honestly so I can’t speak to how useful the skills are.

I would love to know how people thought about the PVE side particularly when you combines this spec with traps. I hope that will work out well since it’s a condi damage build it seems.

Taking one of two utilities that gave us stability didn’t help either.

I feel I am being forced into a build that isn’t druid or ranger – and all soulbeast.

Deadeye

1. Mark should be instant.

2. Kneel and un-kneel icons should be differently colored.

3. Rifle has no sustain. Auto attack needs to be more powerful and ricochet.
OR
Skill 3 and Skill 4 need to refund initiative on a successful hit a la P/P 3.

I play mostly PvP and mostly play guardian and necromancer.

Firebrand
Needs a re-design. Mantras and axe favor melee combat; tomes favor backline support. Tomes have the same problem as the old elites: only worth it for 1 or 2 abilities and the rest is a waste.

Scourge
Punishment skills are stacked; remove some of the torment. Fix bug with multiple burns at once from Demonic Lore. Otherwise a pretty solid spec with some numbers tweaks.

Holosmith
Photon Forge #1 and #2 damage was too high, which made it feel extremely gimmicky.

Soulbeast
Has an identity crisis and doesn’t flow well. Beastmode almost felt like you entered it just to spam more cooldowns. Having to exit beastmode in order to swap pets and then wait out the beastmode cooldown detracted from the spec. Any reason why it can’t just be permanent beastmode with the pet swap available?

Deadeye
Pretty good theme, but their mobility made fighting them a pain.

Firebrand

Tomes: Decrease summon time for these or completely remove it. Add more condition clear to F2. Reduce tome cooldown on F2 and F3.

Mantras: The cones are too small and the range is too short. Increase range to 450 and cone to 90. Or make them PBAoEs with 400 range.

Axe: Make the Auto attack’s first swing do burning so that the bleeds it supplies act as a cover for it. Lower cast time on Axe 2.

Traits: 1-1-1 need to be looked at. The others are great.

Pretty much what Shala said. Enough with the condi! It’s seriously getting out of hand. It’s not fun. condi should not be able to burst someone in a sec, if anything conditions should only serve as supplemental damage and not this craziness that it has become. Torment, burn, poison, confusion, bleed it’s all the same thing but with different names.

Perhaps this is hyperbole coming from me but Renegade is a complete dumpster fire.

There are many buggy skills and traits on the profession. Seven shot’s arrows can simply vanish from friendly or terrain collision. I believe people are saying brutal momentum is bugged too? But the most awful of the bugs personally are the ones related to the Renegade stances. No valid path is a huge concern because it basically locks you out from using your utilities until you’re on even ground. It’s only happened to me once but you can’t summon your warband members in shallow water puddles too. The game treats it as you’re underwater and doesn’t let you use your skills in water puddles, borderline broken in some places.

Shortbow is okay, however it could use some more synergy with the corruption traitline.

The stun break on Breakrazor’s Bastion should be moved elsewhere. Having it on your heal is a really bad idea considering it’s the only stunbreaker on the legend. Healing could use some number tweaking though.

Skill costs in general are way too high. Keep the long cooldowns if you must but reduce the energy costs on Kalla’s utilities as they force you to legend swap almost straight away. Citadel Bombardment needs it cost cut in half. 40 energy for an extremely slow attack that can’t reliably hit it’s target.

All in all, Renegade needs some serious work done to it otherwise if it’s left in it’s current state it’ll just be an extremely niche build for raids and fractals. With that in mind I propose that you change the Renegade stances into actual summons that have their own skills you can active at will. At least that way you can keep yourself mobile while in battle without having to stick to a small AoE.

I tried weaver and what underwhelmed.

Sure the new effects are nice. But less range than with daggers? And less damage?
Also the stances… well, they replace shouts and shouts look more useful. So overall… not happy. Also barrier? Completely useless. 1000, 2000 barrier do nothing when a daredevil hits you for 10k. And then again. Because thieves are special and can do damage just hitting 1 others need a full rotation for.

But even less happy with all those one-shotting deadeyes.

In wvw, after the initial rush you could still see a lot of holos and deadeyes and not much else from the new specs. Should tell you something.

Please put an end to the massive amounts of passive condition play in this game. It’s absurdly imbalanced.

edit to a few words:

many slow animations and casts. (tomes, dagger soulbeast)
felt better than first glimpse on HoT (many tradeoffs on classes and choices, which is good!)
some super overpowered skills (spellbreaker elite, burn firebrand, 1crit deadeye)
too much spam of everything (boons, conditions, clears)

Soulbeast was awesome!

I kept wondering that if Dolyak Stance had worked and we had another skill that could share stability (maybe like F3 on bear) we could be really good wvw frontliners.

I really enjoyed Soulbeast during the demo, particularly the variety in gameplay styles that it provides, and especially the potential to run power builds in the future.

On the other hand, I don’t agree with some posts here that pet swap should be available in Beast Mode. That seems both confusing in terms of the “fantasy” of what’s happening to the character (ie. it makes no sense. You swapped with your pet.. and then what… you’re turning into your other pet while you’re already merged with the first? Wut?) but also from a gameplay perspective. I quite liked the way Druid supplemented the core ranger, without replacing it, and in the same way, Soulbeast plays great as an addition to core gameplay.

With two pets equipped, it gives you access (potentially) to two additional sets of skills to draw on an addition to your core skills, giving you an on-demand boost to dps, support, or tankiness, and I think that’s great. Swapping directly between two of these sets while in beastmode seems like it would be overpowered and would de-emphasize the core skills, which I think is a mistake for the class.

Maybe my only criticism was that (as others have stated) the green melded effect is a bit much at times. I wish that you, the player, could see some indication in those effects of what pet family you had going at the moment, though not necessarily expose that to others (to hide it from PvP opponents, etc).

Otherwise, the elite plays very well. Will be interesting to try it out in the PvE world.

Soulbeast is exciting, but there are so many traits and skills that could use tool tips to show if Beastmode benefits. Thank you!

Just Jeff.6235:

Soulbeast is exciting, but there are so many traits and skills that could use tool tips to show if Beastmode benefits. Thank you!

In case that comment is too vague… What affect will traits like Shared Anguish and Natural Healing have while in Beastmode?

Spell Breaker – Love the bubble make it 15 Seconds long please. Boons are Cancer.

Give Warriors a Blast finisher on Great Sword or give them a better weapon to pair with WH and Hammer please ! They are forced to get so close to the aoe spam they need easy access to resistance or more damage to compensate.

Help us bring warrior out of the closet and back into the WvW spotlight, and more than just boon bot in PVE.

What does dagger only cleave 2 targets give it a hundred blades.

Just Jeff.6235:

Just Jeff.6235:

Soulbeast is exciting, but there are so many traits and skills that could use tool tips to show if Beastmode benefits. Thank you!

In case that comment is too vague… What affect will traits like Shared Anguish and Natural Healing have while in Beastmode?

Both those traits affect you fully in beastmode. Shared Anguish let’s you ignore one CC for free every 60 seconds, and natural healing grants you the regeneration from your pet.

Believe it or not, most weapon skills/traits that have pet effects do indeed affect us in beastmode.

If you would like to see which ones do and do not affect us, browse my posting history as I posted a thread containing a full list of them.

Charr Spellbreaker animation
Please replace the strange Revenant staff 4 animation used for Full Counter with the block + counterattack from Daredevil’s Bandit’s Defense. It just looks weird without the spinning floating staff.

Ross.9612:

have a way for the mirage to provide group support, maybe allow them to give the party boons when they mirage cloak, or better yet, allow them to mirage cloak allies with skills like mirage mirror.

Amazing idea, make the current Infinite Horizon effect baseline, and give it the new effect that allies can also shatter the mirrors, granting mirage cloak to them and you. An on-demand distortion kind of.

While we’re at it, can please someone of you guys give us a buff in our bar that shows when the Lesser Signet Of Inspiration from Illusionary Inspiration is off-cooldown? That would be huge. Thanks.

I felt Mirage was very well done once I got a bit more used to it, at first I wasn’t particularly sure where shatters were supposed to fit in, although once I got used to their place I enjoyed the 100% vigor uptime. Clone Generation is a little more necessary than other builds, but fairly if not easily manageable. Didn’t mind not using phantasms since Ambushes effectively made up for them “missing” as a 5th skill. Aftercast on Axe 2 needs to be lowered when using them back to back. Axe 3 is a bit wonky with terrain with varying heights. You could’ve made an Axe OH tbh since Weaver got 40+ skills, 2 more was probably not that hard. Jaunt is a useful tool for grabbing mirrors or avoiding AoE’s along with Condi Removal and mild condition pressure. Mirage Advance was a meh feeling utility, the cast time is too long. Sand Through Glass has a very obnoxious aftercast time, the only abilities working well with it afterwards were Axe 3 and Jaunt. Crystal Sand projectiles are a bit easily blocked by terrain, maybe more crystal shards with a cap on how many times an enemy could be hit. Ambushes for greatsword and sword definitely need to be looked at or when clones use them they need to apply regular damage, they did not feel rewarding to set up and use. Infinite Horizon does feel a bit mandatory and blows the other condition option, Dune Cloak, out of the water. I say condition option as only condition ambushes are rewarding to use. Chaos Vortex cast time is far too long, projectile needs to go a bit faster or have some homing, otherwise well done. Axe Ambush is decent although sometimes projectiles track to the wrong target. Scepter Ambush is garbage tier as far as conditions go since Clones have a half duration penalty, e.g. 20 potential stacks on scepter, 75% of which fade twice as fast as the other 25% (not counting Sharper Images), 16 potential stacks on Staff and Axe, none of which have increased fade. Axe 2 should spawn a clone by default after the charge is done similar to Spear 2, the mirage gimmick is neat, but somewhat vulnerable to movement, a weakness not shared by any other clone generation skill. Axe AA steps 1 and 2 might as well apply both torment and bleed as the duration is beyond negligible even with Sigils and Runes. Illusionary Ambush utility often causes LOS errors, more notably on Staff than other weapons. For PvP only, False Oasis should heal over 3 seconds. Mirage Mirrors themselves could probably use a slightly longer duration otherwise very rewarding for advance planning of movement.

Bottom Line: The biggest problem Mirage seems to face is that it will always be compared to Chronomancer which hands down has the best gimmick out of any Elite Specialization and traits that don’t attempt to alter the playstyle in any way. Mirage forces you to be careful with shattering and clone generation timing rather than letting caution fly to the wind and vomiting out 3 illusion shatters every time.

Mesmer
Attempting to look past the fact that once again, instead of actually addressing the issue on the core class ya’ll have decided to “fix” the mesmer’s issues through it’s elite spec again… here are my concerns with the functionality of the spec.

• Stationary dodging feels excessively clunky and is not useful for escaping from AoEs.
• Axes of Symmetry/Illusionary Ambush, really should have been our new F5 skill rather than a new weapon/utility skill. Please replace these skills with something else and make their functionality an F5 ability.
• Not directly related to the elite, but the recent changes to Mantras are quite honestly horrible.
  - Mantra of Recovery needs to have it’s full heal above 50% restored, in it’s current state the skill is useless.
  - Harmonious Mantras was NOT counter productive to Restorative Mantras, they actually complemented each other and made the long channel time on Mantras worth it, please restore this trait, make it baseline, or add it’s functionality to Restorative Mantras.
  - The recharge times on Mantras are completely unreasonable. Mesmer Mantras should have the same recharge rate to channel time ratios as Guardian Mantras, there is no reason for them to take 2x their initial channel time to recharge (or nearly 5x in the case of Mantra of Pain)
• All of that out of the way now… PLEASE STOP USING ELITE SPECS TO FIX THE MESMER CLASS Chronomancer’s Chronophantasm and Illusionary Reversion should have been either baseline to Mesmer or Core Mesmer traits. Axes of Symmetry/Illusionary Ambush also should have been core to the mesmer. We have been asking since the initial beta’s for ya’ll to do something about the ramp up times and inability to retarget illusions. Now you’ve answered both pleas, by adding their fixes to TWO SEPARATE ELITE SPECS instead of addressing the issue on the core class itself. So now we have Core mesmer who can’t retarget illusions and is punished for shattering because they have to resummon every illusion again to get back to decent damage and survivability. Chronomancers who can shatter all day long but can’t retarget. And Mirages who can retarget (if they mainhand Axe or sacrifice a utility skill) but are punished for using shatters.

Elementalist
Please consider flipping the attunement order so that new attunements apply to offhand first or allow for double attuning to a single element without the 3second CD between the attunements. To demonstrate…
If attuning to Water to use an offhand skill for healing you currently have to water attune, wait 3 seconds, then attune to anything maybe even water again before you can use your water offhand skills. Change this to one of the following.

1. Your offhand skills change attunement first
2. Your main hand skills change attunement first, but you may re attune to water again immediately without a CD to attune your offhand, however all other elements are still on a 3s CD.
   Either one of these options would greatly improve QOL for the Weaver spec while not breaking their balance.

Guardian
I love the firebrand spec, but there’s just one major flaw that is bugging me and nearly everyone else.

• Mantras need to be 360° PBAoE’s with 600 range. This has been stated countless times, Frontal Cone short range support skills on a MELEE oriented class DO NOT WORK. The short range can be worked around so long as the skill is 360° PBAoE, it’s not desired to keep a 300 range, but it can atleast be functional if ya’ll will just change them from frontal cones to 360° PBAoEs

I hope we all can agree on some necessary fixes for deadeye.
A trait for cantrip CD reduction for example. The CD’s are not low, and hardly justified for their effect (just think about healing skill…which is simply not worth taking at all). As addition to one in the chamber for example.
Personally I believe any cast time on kneel and mark destroys any flow, and I’d rather see them removed completely.
Some tweaks are also necessary, maybe thinking about the initiative for example, or velocity of the projectiles (and especially cursed bullet).
And malice…I think malice should also affect conditions (maybe not in terms of damage but…something) right now it’s doing nothing.
Also personally malice builds up way too slow.
Furthermore I think it is unnecessary to remove all malice stacks AND stolen when your enemy dies/moves too far. Maybe a kind of over time removal, just like adrenaline of warrior (maybe not that fast).
Range should also be addressed. Increasing from 1200 to 1500 and kneeling too 1750 or even 1800, or 1200 mobile and 1750 while kneeling. It is…disappointing, that a Soulbeast can burst better at 1500 than a deadeye.
Last point, and most controversial I guess, I believe kneel should be sniper’s cover untraited. Maybe replace this with a cantrip reduction trait.
Also maybe a viable option for some unblockable attack. Nothing too strong but…with all those reflects/blocks/projectice destruction deadeye is literally useless in larger wvw fights and can easily be shut down by just pressing a single button, making the whole spec useless.
I hope there was no salt included.

General:

-All Skills with charges should have different icons depending how many charges are left.
-New Skills have way too many effects to see whats happening in pvp
-Too many conditions without more ways to get rid of them. eg new runes that reduce incoming condition duration/damage or remove conditions
-Resistance and stability gets stripped too easily especially with the new aoe boon rip’s.
These boons should pulsed.
Firebrand:

If i remember correctly two of the reasons why the Tomes got removed was their long cd and the feel of waste if you only used them for some skills. Now tomes are back with exactly the same problems.
Make tomes more like kits free to swap with short cd on skills bit limited by page costs.

Weaver:
-Feels too clunky with the global cd. Global Cd should be reduced and the arcane trait should maybe be changed to a total value instead of 15% reduced attunement recharge.
-No access to important offhand skills when needed. You should be able to fully attune to an element by double tapping an f-key and swap main/offhand attunement with weapon swap
-Because of the inability to quickly swap attunements you cant combo your own fields

Firebrand

Visually the skills looked great despite some animations being shared through all three tomes. Though it’s a shame that we don’t have physical tomes present along with the page aura, since the original tome elite skills had them floating in front of the character and looked really cool that way— it feels like that old concept and the new models for the virtue tomes could really live up to their aesthetic potential if combined. Even the firebrand preview image shows tome in hand!

When it comes to the contents of the tomes and functionality of firebrand mantras themselves, I’ve noticed that:

• Virtue tome cool downs are too long, can be wasted accidentally, and their cast times make them feel awkward when responding to combat situations.

• Virtue tome auto attacks being cones will cripple the specialization since the cones follow the direction of the character rather than the camera. It’s possible but hard to miss a PBAoE heal, splashing a water field, and applying auras for support but cone radius allows to miss your target entirely AND forces the firebrand behind allies in order to support them which is blegh. Why do this on a profession that doesn’t even have a passive speed boost?

• Virtue tome auto attacks on a sluggish specialization like firebrand renders them useless if the opponent in PvP knows how and when to kite. The original tome elite skills had ground targeted auto attacks and were much loved, so I’d propose that change. It’s pretty disheartening to have to wait on Judge’s Intervention to catch up to a kiting enemy in WvW, especially one that heals itself faster and with less effort while you’re both slow and a low health soldier profession.

• Firebrand’s axe symbol does not apply a boon. The symbol on axe is not OP and has to be traited to not be as boring, it’s also just as stationary as the other symbols even if it does apply cripple. It could be redeemed with a boon, since it can be dodged in PvP really easily but could be stood on willingly by allies. That’s how symbols should work!

• Some of the firebrand’s mantras could use ground targeting or even AoE application like mesmer mantras. The cone radius works on some of them like the Mantra of Flame or maybe even the Mantra of Truth, but the rest are lousy as cones. Think of it like this: not ALL mesmer mantras are AoE skills, some need targets too. Not all firebrand mantras have to be cones.

I enjoyed the Firebrand spec! I did pretty well in pvp running a burn build. For someone that is fairly high ranked in WvW I oddly didnt ever try it there as I was too excited to try out the other elites and the state of WvW that weekend was not…normal… due to the high amount of random people just trying to find a space to try out their random builds. I wished the tombs were easier to access as you can only use a couple skills from it and it felt like it interupted my flow to pull one out. It would be cool if they were treated like kits as several people have already suggested…I mean this Is an Elite Specialization is it not?! Axe was neat. The pull skill usually didnt work and the #2 symbol felt like it took Forever! Scepter its fast, sword its fast, GS its fast. Maybe its following Mace and Hammer. I feel like everyone is being pulled into the Power/Condi hybrid meta to force everyone to get the new expansion gear stats….

I wish conditions would take a nerf overall in this game though. I dont like the sit in the circle with your foe and try to out cleanse the 14k condi skills you both are constantly throwing at each other….feels pretty dumb compared to the high risk, high reward power builds. Plus it feels dumb that there are so many ways to condi bomb someone and nearly insta kill them….I thought conditions are supposed to impair people and take awhile before killing?! These days its BAM! eat my 20stacks of confusion, bleeding, poison, torment and burn! as they run away and you whither and die alone immobilized in place because you only had one condi cleanse available…or worse yet if your playing Rev and have no condi cleanse…but “hey, thats your weakness so be happy you have 2sec of resistance once in a while”,,,,

Mirage in its current state not interesting for a PvE player who wanted to be efficient and deadly in open world or instanced content.

Reasons.

1) No effective AoE skills, especially power based.

2) Lackluster utility skills. I do like redirecting your phantasms though, maybe it should be F5 skill instead?

3) Axe skill 2 destroys one of your phantasm if you already have 3 active. Not cool.

4) Phantasms dont have ambush skills.

5) Sword ambush skill – I like mobility component, but for a main power weapon, damage from ambush skill… laughable.

6) Jaunt.. require buff to its range and additional functionality in PvE (Short daze? Short blur for allies?), otherwise nobody will ever use it in challenging content due to other great elite skills mesmer have.

7) Grandmaster traits either have to be baseline/major traits or be changed to something actually interesting to use. 20% condition duration because bleeding as GM.. Its not offering new forms of control over your character or anything like that.. I am sorry but elite GMs should be.. more inventive than this.

Slightly offtopic.

8) Greatsword… this whole weapon in PvE.. Change laser animation to little versions of Illusionary Wave (like one of Holosmith traits do), increase damage or something different but interesting. Nobody using it in any serious PvE activity, using it in open world just slow new players down.

Conclusion: Niche spec, feels like standard trait line, doesnt feel like something new, old stuff with tweks.

I need a counter for the sand shades on the necromancer with the time remaining till they despawn.
Otherwise you have to remember 3 different timings or you run into the problem of wasting skills because the shade despawns when you activate a skill

Firebrand overall was a very fun spec to play, most of my experience came from WvW fights and I feel like the Tome system needs an urgent rework.
My suggestion for the overhaul would be to

1) Change the tome activation to something like that of an engi kit. Make it so you cant be interrupted.
(In the current state its slow to get to the skills you want and one example is being interrupted puts it on full cool down a thief stealing on you while trying to use courage gives you a 70 second cooldown)
2) Overhaul the page system per tome to a shared ammo system, make the standard amount of pages you have 8 and rework the trait that gives 8 to a faster cooldown per page. This gives the player a choice on where to spend their pages in a fight they can allocate them to Damage, Healing or Support, this coupled with the instant cast if the tomes are switched to be like kits stops them being overpowered and abusable.
Another possibility would be to make each tome have their own ammo timer but a slow regen time on it.

Tried all the new specs in sPvP only, so my feedback is based on that.

I liked them all and I see potential for each and every one, some minor tweaks are needed and some bug fixes.

I loved the idea that the new elites should feel and play differently and I can’t really understand the people that are unhappy only because the new elite spec is not an upgrade of their HoT’s elite specs o.0

I feel the new elites are quite suited for close/mid range combat, haven’t had as much success with long range weapons / except with Deadeye’s rifle / so you might want to look into that and rework some of the old range weapons for the other classes ( might be just me though ).

Killed most of the Scourges I came in contact with, I think this class still lacks mobility silly enough ( I main survival ranger, getting out of reach of the necro/kiting and cleansing condi’s is no big deal ). Seems pure melee classes have quite an issue with them though (which brings me back to the current close range “meta”).

My 2 cents, ty, was a fun weekend.