Guild Wars 2

Amityel.5324:

scourge 9/10
holosmith 10/10
firebrand 5/10
soulbeast 3/10
renegade 0.5/10 (for actually making any elite and not forgetting revenant class)
spellbreaker 7/10
deadeye 6/10
weawer 8/10
mirage 3/10 actually big dissapointment for me I expected way better elite with this cool mechanics

Your score is almost the same as mine XD..

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t argue that no change is wanted, and if the Mesmer elites get their way on this and they buff everything up, great, that’s just awesome. I just don’t see it as absolutely necessary, I think the class is pretty fun in its current form, and again, the issues are all just “this number should be bigger, this number should be smaller,” and maybe “this attack should proc slightly differently,” which are all tiny things that they definitely can fix, when compared to things like “Firebrand Tomes are a complete fiasco and need to be redesigned from the ground up to function in an entirely different manner.”

Spoken like someone who doesn’t main Mesmer and does give a sh*** perfectly.

Go complain about what you dislike about your own main class and leave other classes to people who have actually played (and suffered on) them for the last 5 years.

Not even going to comment on the argument that weaker utility skills from elites compared to core utility skills are fine since one doesn’t have to use them. Pure bias confirmed right there.

Mirage is certainly “fun” if all you want to do is log in and fool around a bit. Once you actually try to accomplish something with the class though it becomes a clunky nightmare.

Spoken like someone who doesn’t main Mesmer and does give a kitten perfectly.

Yes.

Go complain about what you dislike about your own main class and leave other classes to people who have actually played (and suffered on) them for the last 5 years.

Will do, but I play a lot of classes, and of the nine available, the Mirage is one of the few new specs that I plan to be playing around launch. I’m still on the fence about running Deadeye instead of Daredevil, but Mirage I like.

Not even going to comment on the argument that weaker utility skills from elites compared to core utility skills are fine since one doesn’t have to use them. Pure bias confirmed right there.

It’s just the nature of the game. I main a Thief, I only used one DD Utility over the past year. I also like Guard, I ran Dragon Hunter with no Longbow. I played Tempest without Warhorn, Scrapper with only the med-bot and hammer, Herald without Shield, etc. You don’t have to like every element of a spec to like the spec itself, and Utilities are the lowest priority since you have 20+ other options for each slot, many of which work fine with the new specs.

You don’t like the new spec? That’s fine. My liking it doesn’t mean that you have to. You want changes made? That’s fine, me liking the current base doesn’t mean I would hate any positive changes made. I really don’t get why Mesmers are so freaked out by people actually liking this spec.

I didn’t play all the elite specs, I tried Holosmith, Weaver, Renegade, Firebrand and out of those I only liked Holosmith.

Holosmith: 9
Holosmith has an interesting concept/mechanic, good damage values, the weapon is good, the utilities are fine. Overall I think Holosmith is the best elite spec out of those I tried.

I didn’t like any of the other 3 I tried.
Firebrand: 4
Good concept but the Mantras are clunky to use, the cone for the tome effects is really limiting, the Axe didn’t feel powerful enough. Has potential though, making tome skills work in an area around the caster, increasing the Axe skill damage can all help in making Firebrand a good build.

Renegade: 3
Renegade offers too little, the shortbow doesn’t feel like it’s doing much damage, insane energy costs for everything make the Renegade feel clunky, the healing skill is absolutely terrible. What I liked about it is the concept of summoning Kalla’s warband. If they make the summons worth summoning (!!!), Renegade can become a good support build. Although bad at the moment, it does have potential

Weaver: 2
Weaver is the worst elite spec out of those I tried. The 4s cooldown on attunements is killing the Weave mechanic, most of the dual skills have the same problem as fire grab, hard to aim and not powerful enough. The Sword is horrible as a weapon, slow, with very low modifiers and impact. Furthermore, the casting time on the auto attacks kills it completely. The idea of dual attunements is fine, but the execution is terrible.

Aomine.5012:

Ragnarox.9601:

Kahrgan.7401:

So general consensus is renegade is lowest rated, clunky af, and poorly designed.

Good job devs

Firebrand is not far away from him too

Except Firebrand can enjoy their new crazy burning in PVE :P
(Tested, can reach 40+ stacks of burning with Tome F1 + scepter torch if traited correctly)

Well, if they could really do that then Scourge is DoA and I’d have to question why in the kitten Demonic Lore has a 3 second per target ICD. Nvm, I’m questioning that anyway, because most of the Torment a Scourge can dish out is from corrupting via Punishment skills.

Anyway, love the Scourge. Even though the Elite Skill is lazy as kitten and should definitly be changed. And it generates might, which raids have enough of to choke on already.

Holosmith might actually make me level something aside from Necro, Deadeye looks like they nailed the Sniper-theme, Weaver seems too clunky, Mirage is a friggin pain to play against, and I cannot say much about the Spellbreaker. Renegedage seems fun from looking at it I guess.

Ohoni.6057:

Will do, but I play a lot of classes, and of the nine available, the Mirage is one of the few new specs that I plan to be playing around launch. I’m still on the fence about running Deadeye instead of Daredevil, but Mirage I like.

Funny you should mention Guardian and Thief. I enjoyed Firebrand and was looking forward to how a 1 button perma quickness class with high condition damage might fit into raiding. I’d definately give the elite a 7/10 since guardian gets mantras on steroids compared to mesmer, so I wasn’t as turned off by this mechanic as most guardians go on about (I do play guardian quit a bit, have 4 actually at this point in time, 2 of them raid geared and played).

Same goes for thief, was looking forward playing deadeye in wvw and sniping away at targets. That said I’ve never played thief much so deadeye seemed like it might be an interesting niche I might enjoy.

Funny how one is always more critical of ones own class which ones knows in and out isn’t it?

Let me start with my main.
Mesmer 5/10
The concept of the mirage is fantastic. Adding more thief to my Mesmer is awesome because these are two classes I enjoy a lot. I’m totally cool with this spec being like a great solo pve class.
BUT IT IS MESSY

-I can almost never do my ambush skills because of the very short cooldown on them.
-The blinks often times face you away from your target.
-Mirage Mirrors are pretty but need more utility.
-too many of our utilities are movement skills even though they are fun.
-some traits are mandatory for the fun of the classs.
-Phantasms are neglected and should have been removed from this spec.

I like the axe and I’m actually still cool with shattering my buddies occasionally

Firebrand 4/10
I think they should have gone full support with this character as a person who made a guardian to feel like a support character or to you know.. GUARD. I’m let down again.
Although this can be saved by making the tomes easier to access when NEEDED and just what were they thinking with the mantras??

Holosmith 10/10
I hate engi as a concept.. but boy this class is fun so I’m happy for you guys who enjoy it

Weaver 4/10
I cant. I literally cant. Just give me two Attunement slots and let me choose the attunements I want to play with. Also i’m just praying to get rid of fire magic.. I don’t know why it just bothers me. I’d love to play water and air ele.

Scourge 10/10
I like it. It feels like a badsass and much different form orginal necro. MUCH LOVE

Deadeye 8/10
I think he needs some quality of life fixes cuz I kept getting stuck in kneel. BUT HES AWESOME

Renegade 2/10
Mostly because the revenant is just all around messy. I don’t play it because the theme is just too all over the place. My human I RP from ebonhawke does not want to summon charr.

Soulbeast 6/10
The merge mech is cool but minus the overly glowy green thing i kinda feel naked and lame. He needs more umph

I didn’t play warrior elite.

Ohoni.6057:

Spoken like someone who doesn’t main Mesmer and does give a kitten perfectly.

Yes.

Go complain about what you dislike about your own main class and leave other classes to people who have actually played (and suffered on) them for the last 5 years.

Will do, but I play a lot of classes, and of the nine available, the Mirage is one of the few new specs that I plan to be playing around launch. I’m still on the fence about running Deadeye instead of Daredevil, but Mirage I like.

Not even going to comment on the argument that weaker utility skills from elites compared to core utility skills are fine since one doesn’t have to use them. Pure bias confirmed right there.

It’s just the nature of the game. I main a Thief, I only used one DD Utility over the past year. I also like Guard, I ran Dragon Hunter with no Longbow. I played Tempest without Warhorn, Scrapper with only the med-bot and hammer, Herald without Shield, etc. You don’t have to like every element of a spec to like the spec itself, and Utilities are the lowest priority since you have 20+ other options for each slot, many of which work fine with the new specs.

You don’t like the new spec? That’s fine. My liking it doesn’t mean that you have to. You want changes made? That’s fine, me liking the current base doesn’t mean I would hate any positive changes made. I really don’t get why Mesmers are so freaked out by people actually liking this spec.

No offense.. but people who play this class as a main are looking for more than just a few minutes of fun. They are looking for it to play effectively on top of being just FUN.
I main Mesmer and it is really fun but its lacking purpose on top of having some really messy execution. and the traits… omg the traits.. UGH

I only played the following in PvE (which I mainly play):

- Scourge: 9/10 fun lore and interesting mechanics. Fun to play. I plan to max this out at first. It felt a bit squishy though and the barrier cooldown is way too fast. I seldom could make great use for it.

- Mirage: 8/10 fun lore and interesting new twist with the dodge mechanic. I also never felt underwhelming damage wise. Since it lacks dodges there are a lot of skills to teleport with new utilities.

Further I played the following during the class beta:

- Spellbreaker: 5/10 rather underwhelming though I like the animations, but can’t say too much

- Firebrand: 8/10 nice animations and lore. I like this one so far.

- Soulbeast: 7/10 looks strong, but somehow I don’t like running around with a constant stench cloud around me and it feels a bit off.

- Weaver: 6/10 I am sure it is fun to play, but its overwhelming amount of skills and complexity may turn off some players. Also sword feels a bit weak.

- Deadeye: 7/10 looks and feels fun to play. Not sure how it works out in PvE though.

So, I’ve looked around and indeed found a video where the Firebrand puts over 50 stacks of burn down… What the kitten? Why the hell does Scourge’s Demonic lore have an ICD? In fact, WHY do Scourge’s Punishment skills , AGAIN like release Reaper’s shouts, not apply a stack or 2 torment baseline + another on successful condi rip? The Firebrands Mantras are completely busted, but Scourge’s utilities again start out crippled compared to almost every other class’s utility skills. Like I said, like back when the Shouts didn’t have a base effect and then scaled with targets hit, but only had an effect if you hit something.

Ahlen.7591:

Spellbreaker 2/10. The only bonus of spellbreaker is it’s great at stacking might and removing boons. Other warrior specs/traits can already stack might fine and boon removal is mostly pointless in PVE (Some niche in higher fractals).

The spec removes synergy with adrenal health, berserker power, and cleansing ire, the damage on counter is DISTURBINGLY low. 4k crit counters at 3000 power and 230% crit damage? My axe already does that kind of damage on just auto crits.

For SB to work adrenal/BP/Cleansing need a rework and daggers need a massive damage buff.

Oh god no. SPellbreaker was actually one of the strongest PvP elite specs and could go toe to toe with the monsters that were Scourge and Holosmith.

Damage isn’t as important as the aoe interrupt/damage mitigaton/resistance/condi transfer and boon rip all on a tiny CD of 6 seconds. It is quite an amazing skill, it’s not anyone’s fault you only play one game mode.

Spellbreaker was one of the strongest things in the beta weekend, primarily due to FC

For, for me:

• Scourge 10/10. Unique transformative mechanical change, good re-alignment to something entirely different, pretty animations everything.
• Holosmith 8/10. Pretty, plays well, too sparkly though, I already mind the amount of spell effects.
• Soulbeast 7/10. Liked it a lot. Feels unique, looks pretty, felt very active with lots of buttons to use. Speaking of which…
• Weaver 7/10. Same reasons, really. Love the complexity.
• Mirage … does it have to be 0-10? Is -3/10 not ok? Really, this was such a huge letdown. You can clearly notice they had no consistent idea, just that name as they said in the video. There’s a bunch of ideas thrown in here which don’t work together at all, and even then are individually underpowered.

Artyport.2084:

Ohoni.6057:

Spoken like someone who doesn’t main Mesmer and does give a kitten perfectly.

Yes.

Go complain about what you dislike about your own main class and leave other classes to people who have actually played (and suffered on) them for the last 5 years.

Will do, but I play a lot of classes, and of the nine available, the Mirage is one of the few new specs that I plan to be playing around launch. I’m still on the fence about running Deadeye instead of Daredevil, but Mirage I like.

Not even going to comment on the argument that weaker utility skills from elites compared to core utility skills are fine since one doesn’t have to use them. Pure bias confirmed right there.

It’s just the nature of the game. I main a Thief, I only used one DD Utility over the past year. I also like Guard, I ran Dragon Hunter with no Longbow. I played Tempest without Warhorn, Scrapper with only the med-bot and hammer, Herald without Shield, etc. You don’t have to like every element of a spec to like the spec itself, and Utilities are the lowest priority since you have 20+ other options for each slot, many of which work fine with the new specs.

You don’t like the new spec? That’s fine. My liking it doesn’t mean that you have to. You want changes made? That’s fine, me liking the current base doesn’t mean I would hate any positive changes made. I really don’t get why Mesmers are so freaked out by people actually liking this spec.

No offense.. but people who play this class as a main are looking for more than just a few minutes of fun. They are looking for it to play effectively on top of being just FUN.
I main Mesmer and it is really fun but its lacking purpose on top of having some really messy execution. and the traits… omg the traits.. UGH

Exactly. Its clear who doesn’t main a mesmer in this thread. They get on mirage, have a few minutes of fun teleporting around PvE enemies and call it a huge success. They can’t even see the problems the spec has. I mean Ohoni just basically said that he agrees with the flaws I pointed out, and yet he then ignored them because the class was still able to kill mobs.

@Ohoni, try to use Axe 2 to reliably summon clones in a competitive environment and then tell me it doesn’t have problems. Clone generation should be automatic when that skill lands, and that’s not even bringing up the fact that it should be a short evade to cover our ass while we are vulnerable.

Mesmer mains are “freaked out” by people enjoying the spec because you are the ones ANet will look to when they look into actually fixing mirage, and then they won’t. You guys either can’t see or just ignore the problems that the spec has and call it amazing, because you don’t actually play it. You just logon for a few minutes of fun, not caring about how effective or buggy it is.

Jaunt has an ammo mechanic, so what? That doesn’t justify a 400 range shadowstep. Should be 600 range.

Our utilities are simply not good. Its not a matter of them being useful in niche scenarios (which would be fine for an elite spec, if it was designed to fill that niche role), its a matter of them just actually sucking.

Crystal sands deals low damage to begin with, but that damage is spread out between 6 shards that are buggy with terrain and can all be dodged. Seriously, 6 shards in a circle that large is pathetic. The power damage should go baseline to the AoE field, and the shards should just apply confusion, along with increasing the number of shards. That’s not “just a numbers tweak”

Sand through glass is a 30sec CD stunbreak that spawns a mirror for a pathetic attack. Blink is a 30 sec CD stunbreak that gives us the ability to choose where we go, and can be traited for CD reduction. Sand through glass is a strictly worse version of blink right now, and its mostly because mirrors are terrible. Furthermore, the evade it gives should be a 1/2 sec mirage cloak to synergize with the spec itself. I mean, really, no reason for that to be a regular evade instead of a mirage cloak. I’ll even give you this one. Changing evade to mirage cloak can count as “just a numbers change”, but fixing mirrors definitely does not fall under that category.

Mirage advance is ok, but it would be better if we could use it when out of range and just use it as a gap closer, even if the range has to be reduced slightly to 750. It should also be a 1/2 sec cast.

Illusionary ambush has lots of bugs but otherwise is ok.

Taking a look at the traits is where the bigger problems show. There’s no cohesion. There’s no focus. They aren’t good. There’s little to no synergy in the line. Most of them are average at best. Mirage was sold on the idea of performing ambush attacks with your clones to confuse enemies, so why do we have to trait for that when it was sold as a core mechanic of the class? This class is just full of design problems. And it shows if you take more than just a passing interest in the colors and the intention behind the mechanics.

PistolWhip.2697:

Ahlen.7591:

Spellbreaker 2/10. The only bonus of spellbreaker is it’s great at stacking might and removing boons. Other warrior specs/traits can already stack might fine and boon removal is mostly pointless in PVE (Some niche in higher fractals).

The spec removes synergy with adrenal health, berserker power, and cleansing ire, the damage on counter is DISTURBINGLY low. 4k crit counters at 3000 power and 230% crit damage? My axe already does that kind of damage on just auto crits.

For SB to work adrenal/BP/Cleansing need a rework and daggers need a massive damage buff.

Oh god no. SPellbreaker was actually one of the strongest PvP elite specs and could go toe to toe with the monsters that were Scourge and Holosmith.

Damage isn’t as important as the aoe interrupt/damage mitigaton/resistance/condi transfer and boon rip all on a tiny CD of 6 seconds. It is quite an amazing skill, it’s not anyone’s fault you only play one game mode.

Spellbreaker was one of the strongest things in the beta weekend, primarily due to FC

PVE is the most popular game mode and is also balanced separately from WvW and PVP.

Spellbreaker is liquid hot crap garbage in PVE, and I could not care less about PVP or WvW.

2/10.

Ahlen.7591:

PistolWhip.2697:

Ahlen.7591:

Spellbreaker 2/10. The only bonus of spellbreaker is it’s great at stacking might and removing boons. Other warrior specs/traits can already stack might fine and boon removal is mostly pointless in PVE (Some niche in higher fractals).

The spec removes synergy with adrenal health, berserker power, and cleansing ire, the damage on counter is DISTURBINGLY low. 4k crit counters at 3000 power and 230% crit damage? My axe already does that kind of damage on just auto crits.

For SB to work adrenal/BP/Cleansing need a rework and daggers need a massive damage buff.

Oh god no. SPellbreaker was actually one of the strongest PvP elite specs and could go toe to toe with the monsters that were Scourge and Holosmith.

Damage isn’t as important as the aoe interrupt/damage mitigaton/resistance/condi transfer and boon rip all on a tiny CD of 6 seconds. It is quite an amazing skill, it’s not anyone’s fault you only play one game mode.

Spellbreaker was one of the strongest things in the beta weekend, primarily due to FC

PVE is the most popular game mode and is also balanced separately from WvW and PVP.

Spellbreaker is liquid hot crap garbage in PVE, and I could not care less about PVP or WvW.

2/10.

Popularity doesn’t mean balance priority. PvP is a lot more intensive and competitive than PvE, which means you need to centralise balance around it. PvE you can run whatever you want in almost every content, which by it’s casual nature allows for leniency.

Sure, you may not like it, that’s perfectly fine, but buffing it across the board is not the answer, and you hadn’t made it clear your desire to split balance.

I don’t really care what they do with SB in PvE, do as they wish, but PvP and WvW should be separate in this, kitten is already one of the strongest E-specs.

I would however also argue this is ANET’s intention, because Bersekrer was a largely PvE spec, they added a PvP spec next. Just look at Scrapper. It was a PvP spec for Engi, and now they have Holosmith which seems like it could be viable in PvE.

PistolWhip.2697:

Ahlen.7591:

PistolWhip.2697:

Ahlen.7591:

Spellbreaker 2/10. The only bonus of spellbreaker is it’s great at stacking might and removing boons. Other warrior specs/traits can already stack might fine and boon removal is mostly pointless in PVE (Some niche in higher fractals).

The spec removes synergy with adrenal health, berserker power, and cleansing ire, the damage on counter is DISTURBINGLY low. 4k crit counters at 3000 power and 230% crit damage? My axe already does that kind of damage on just auto crits.

For SB to work adrenal/BP/Cleansing need a rework and daggers need a massive damage buff.

Oh god no. SPellbreaker was actually one of the strongest PvP elite specs and could go toe to toe with the monsters that were Scourge and Holosmith.

Damage isn’t as important as the aoe interrupt/damage mitigaton/resistance/condi transfer and boon rip all on a tiny CD of 6 seconds. It is quite an amazing skill, it’s not anyone’s fault you only play one game mode.

Spellbreaker was one of the strongest things in the beta weekend, primarily due to FC

PVE is the most popular game mode and is also balanced separately from WvW and PVP.

Spellbreaker is liquid hot crap garbage in PVE, and I could not care less about PVP or WvW.

2/10.

Popularity doesn’t mean balance priority. PvP is a lot more intensive and competitive than PvE, which means you need to centralise balance around it. PvE you can run whatever you want in almost every content, which by it’s casual nature allows for leniency.

Sure, you may not like it, that’s perfectly fine, but buffing it across the board is not the answer, and you hadn’t made it clear your desire to split balance.

I don’t really care what they do with SB in PvE, do as they wish, but PvP and WvW should be separate in this, kitten is already one of the strongest E-specs.

I would however also argue this is ANET’s intention, because Bersekrer was a largely PvE spec, they added a PvP spec next. Just look at Scrapper. It was a PvP spec for Engi, and now they have Holosmith which seems like it could be viable in PvE.

This is such a load of bullcrap. First, PvP is not more important than PvE is.Balancing priority should be given to the game mode drawing the most money in, and that’s almost guaranteed to not be PvP. Its probably WvW honestly. Secondly, balance should never be “centralized” around a certain game mode. This is the worst way to achieve balance. It should be split up between all 3 game modes to start with. And it should be balanced individually for each game mode. The balancing problems that ANet has suffered from stem in no small part from their reluctance to do full balance splits between the game modes. I mean hell, 80% of their PvP splits end up being merged in the end anyway.

Thirdly, you can run anything you want in PvP just the same as you can in PvE. Its utter bullcrap to tell people that they can run anything they want in PvE because it still kills things. Well going by that logic you can run anything you want in PvP because you will still kill players you are better than. Just because you can run it in PvE does not make it a good idea to run it in PvE. That is the same as PvP.

Only played spellbreaker.

8.5/10 – There is alot here I like, the animations, the counter, the spell effects. However daggers felt a bit “weak” but I do believe the over all spec is actually suppose to be more defensive then offensive.

Over-all I liked it and I am sure my score will change once I have more time with it.

Ahlen.7591:

Spellbreaker is liquid hot crap garbage in PVE, and I could not care less about PVP or WvW.

2/10.

Funny how the spec which brings a “mesmery” feel immediately feels weak to other players. Surprise surprise…

Weaver: 2/10

The idea might be interesting but the execution is very poor and lackluster.
Too long to change attunements, changing gets you only 1-3 skills and thus keeping you from the important 4-5 skills, traits all over the place (some will give you bonus for weaving atts, others for being fully attuned, conflicting dynamics).
Underpowered is also a factor but even if it weren’t underpowered, it wouldn’t be fun.
Fun is important, yes?

Mirage: 5/10
Has some potential, but it’s a mess and confusing to use. Too many skills do way too many different things with conflicting traits. Lacks focus.

Scourge: 8/10
Seems nice, seems a good idea well executed. INtersting playstyle.

Renegate: 2/10
Dear lord, what a mess. Poor skills, poor class mechanics, uninspired skills, boring, lacking “fun” factor, lacking focus and a clear idea.

It’s interesting to read this and see how people prefer different play styles and rate accordingly.

Now, I haven’t personally played any of these, but I have watched 2 Seasons of GoT worth of Videos on all of the specs. I’m only going to list the ones that I’m interested in from what I’ve seen rather than ranking them all.

Spellbreaker: I play a warrior, here and in just about every mmorpg, so I guess you can say I like the “In your face” playstyle. Granted, more games are punishing than others when it comes to melee, but I really enjoyed from what I played with warrior. What I saw from this spec is that it seems VERY PvP based. I don’t know if they are adding any thing new with PvP at all, but this seems like where the class would shine. The numbers did seem very low compared to a regular warrior with GS, but as a class that I felt was very immobile compared to the others, the whole getting in peoples faces and making them stay there is most welcomed. I just hope the dmg output is there to make the spec viable for PvE as well.

Holo: Honestly, I hated engineers. but I think it was because I didn’t understand how they played. When I looked at this, it made me very interested in learning the engineer and how this spec plays out. The dmg output is insane, and it also requires some management on the heat gauge as it pretty much kills you if you hit 100%. But if you can balance the heat while still keeping everything you need up, I’m almost positive that you will be doing the most damage out of all the specs. However, where it can be rewarding, it can also be punishing. So far, I like what I see with this class, I don’t know how it will fare in PvP, but it looks very good for PvE.

I had a slight interest in the Deadeye and Scourge, but I think the Deadeye will play out like Nightshades in ESO to where they just sit back and gank snipe people, but then insta die when they get engaged. I think it will be alright for Group PvE and WORLD PvP… Scourge looks interesting as well, but idk, I just could never get into casting classes.

I’d definately give the elite a 7/10 since guardian gets mantras on steroids compared to mesmer, so I wasn’t as turned off by this mechanic as most guardians go on about

Yeah, to each their own, I guess. I definitely want a massive overhaul to the FB as it is now, but I don’t dispute your right to like it and hope that what they end up with can satisfy us both.

Funny how one is always more critical of ones own class which ones knows in and out isn’t it?

Well right. I think part of it comes from knowing exactly what the class is capable of when played to its limits, and therefor knowing what the benchmark for “good enough” is for that class; then it’s partly that different players enjoy different types of gameplay, so they might agree on how a class is working but disagree on how much that actually matters; and finally there’s probably some degree of veterans on a class getting stuck in their ways and saying “this isn’t doing what I normally do as well as my current build does,” which may be true, but novices are stumbling onto completely different play styles that work better with the new specs. Not saying all or even any of these definitely apply to you personally, but I imagine each applies to at least some of the feedback.

I do hope that they can please both sides, but a lot of people do seem to think the new spec is “fun,” which is a great start. “Balance” is typically easier to fix than “fun”.

I think they should have gone full support with this character as a person who made a guardian to feel like a support character or to you know.. GUARD.

I disagree, in that I don’t think any spec should be full support, but I do believe that you should be able to trait for full support. I think that the FB should ideally be balanced around being able to trait for full support if that’s what you want, but with a viable alternative of being a medium-damage tanky build, basically focusing all that support onto yourself for better soloability. I think they can manage both.

@Ohoni, try to use Axe 2 to reliably summon clones in a competitive environment and then tell me it doesn’t have problems.

Again, I have never argued that the class doesn’t have problems, I have never argued that they should leave it 100% as-is. I’ve just noted that I, and many others, it seems, enjoy playing as the spec, and that’s a good thing. If the devs want to improve the spec, that probably won’t harm the fun people are having with it, and will likely only improve it, so why not? I am not your enemy here, stop treating me like one.

Mesmer mains are “freaked out” by people enjoying the spec because you are the ones ANet will look to when they look into actually fixing mirage, and then they won’t.

I would hope that they don’t. I mean, clearly we don’t know what we’re talking about, why would they take our feedback as more important than those who know the details? I obviously hope that they do take our feedback to heart as far as the features we enjoy, and not remove those elements, but in terms of balance tweaks they should obviously focus on those that are making a more scientific analysis of the class. If Anet chooses to ignore that feedback, that’s their own failing.

Jaunt has an ammo mechanic, so what? That doesn’t justify a 400 range shadowstep. Should be 600 range.

Again, I wouldn’t hate a 600 range, it would definitely be better, I was just saying that with the ammo mechanic, I do feel that it provides a useful function. Could be better, but currently useful and interesting.

Really though, I think you guys are doing great getting your balance points across in the Mesmer boards, so maybe it’s not worth arguing with every player who says a positive thing about the spec in a spec-review thread?

My assessment for the classes I’ve test in beta PvP.

• Weaver 6/10. Some potential to be a bruiser class there but I’m cautious. Namely the universal attunement CD restricts the amount of burst potential yet the normal attacks can easily be healed through by say a tempest. Overall I doubt weaver will change the current meta comp in PvP.
• Holosmith 8/10. Absolute blast, able to kill scrapper if they’re not careful, and I’m doing that while running tanky amulet. Survivability is an issue but with elixirs you can actually sustain quite well against bruisers. Could be a significant power dps source in teamfight. So kudos for giving engineer something else than side cap/res bot. Hard to see its higher end play when daredevil can farm it easier than anything else.
• Scourge 8/10. Scourge vs reaper seems like a fair 50/50 chance. But moreover sand shade on point is going to make conquest very interesting. With the amount of pressure sand shade can do on point…scourge will force mid/lower tier meta into a more range or melee-off-point fashion as players dancing around the point to kill scourge first. Scourge also synergise better with tempest seeing how the heal goes through. Though I doubt scourge can change that much in higher end seeing fight tends to end near but not on point.
• Mirage 2/10. Really underwhelming. Its designed as a roamer with weaker teamfight, survival and boon potential than chronomancer, yet it doesn’t deliver enough damage to justify the sacrifice. Suboptimal damage, utility/axe shadowsteps are have chunky cast time or short range (why cast time?), reliance on clones yet lack consistent clone generations, weird mirror mechanics that has no real practical use, and buggy ambush attacks. I tried all types of builds because I love my class, which literally involve 10 different traitline (not traits!) combinations with power/condi. I agree with most mesmer’s assessment, from new players to top players like Helseth – It can’t compete with chrono at all. If we want to look at roamers ability a daredevil will surpass it in every way even in terms of condi pressure.

Mirage – 5/10

I love a lot of things about it – especially the animations and visual effects (though some of the sound effects could be improved).

The mechanics are fun and a change of pace from spamming shatters with chrono, although it’s not as fluid and well executed given there doesn’t seem to be a clear design goal with it (I don’t mind about the concept being vague, but the playstyle isn’t clear at the moment).

Sartharina.3542:

Kahrgan.7401:

dchsknight.3042:

I feel like all the Renegade hate. The look flipping epic. AND I feel people who say it is unfinished just went into a map and pressed 1. I feel it is one of the most finished of the classes.

Found the revenant player.

No you didn’t. Revenant players actually see how badly and unfinished their class is designed.

i have 9 revenants , the energy cost doesn’t bother me that much and so far the dps seems fine to me , yet some skills dont seem to work like SB skill 3 and the 33 % crit chance on full endurance goes on cooldown if u get fury . but im pretty sold on renegade

shadowcaster.3789

but im pretty sold on renegade

MY BROTHER!!!

Here are my admittedly biased opinions, from a PvE only perspective after playing the demo specs:

Holosmisth: 8/10. Great concept that completely changes the feel of the Engie in a very good way. Liked it so much it got me to level up an Engie just to play this spec. Would be 10/10 if heat mechanic was applied to other weapons.

Weaver: 6/10. Again great concept, but global cool down on attunement switching makes this spec feel clunky and overly complex. It may work better for me with Dagger mainhand since sword seemed underpowered and had issues with attack chain resetting with attunement swap. I’d like to run this over DX Tempest, but probably won’t because of the current length of the cool downs. Looking forward to trying it in PvE to see what it is really capable of.

Spell Breaker: 6/10. Another great concept, but really seems to be focused on PvP/WvW. I don’t see this spec being more effective in PvE than the current condi Beserker or power Core builds, which is really too bad because I’d love to switch to something other than those. Looking forward to trying it out in PvE to see what it is really capable of.

Firebrand: 2/10. Not a big fan of the direction this takes the Guardian. Locks up the hard hitting skills behind a Engie like kit mechanic (tomes) with long cool downs. Not a big fan of the kit concept in general. Very short range cone based skills are extremely unwieldy to use. I don’t foresee playing it.

Dead Eye: 0/10. Don’t like sniper play style and didn’t really want this in the game. I don’t WvW, but I can already see the hate this will generate which will probably lead to more nerfs to the thief class that will likely screw up non sniper builds. I’ll stick to my current Daredevil and hope that it doesn’t get nerfed to oblivion because of Dead Eye.

Soul Beast: 1/10. Great concept. I was excited to try this spec since I don’t like pet AI in this game, but for some reason it seemed underwhelming when demoed. Also, the aura was very unappealing visually to me. Don’t foresee me playing.

Renegade: 1/10. Kala who? I kept wondering if she was so worth of a legend, then why didn’t I hear about her before? Would not have been my choice lore wise. It doesn’t really matter because the spec was so underperforming when I briefly demoed it. Don’t foresee playing.

I didn’t have a chance to demo Scourge or Mirage.

Weaver 1/10
Spellbreaker 7/10
Deadeye 7/10
Scourge 8/10
Soulbeast 9/10

OriOri.8724:

PistolWhip.2697:

Ahlen.7591:

PistolWhip.2697:

Ahlen.7591:

Spellbreaker 2/10. The only bonus of spellbreaker is it’s great at stacking might and removing boons. Other warrior specs/traits can already stack might fine and boon removal is mostly pointless in PVE (Some niche in higher fractals).

The spec removes synergy with adrenal health, berserker power, and cleansing ire, the damage on counter is DISTURBINGLY low. 4k crit counters at 3000 power and 230% crit damage? My axe already does that kind of damage on just auto crits.

For SB to work adrenal/BP/Cleansing need a rework and daggers need a massive damage buff.

Oh god no. SPellbreaker was actually one of the strongest PvP elite specs and could go toe to toe with the monsters that were Scourge and Holosmith.

Damage isn’t as important as the aoe interrupt/damage mitigaton/resistance/condi transfer and boon rip all on a tiny CD of 6 seconds. It is quite an amazing skill, it’s not anyone’s fault you only play one game mode.

Spellbreaker was one of the strongest things in the beta weekend, primarily due to FC

PVE is the most popular game mode and is also balanced separately from WvW and PVP.

Spellbreaker is liquid hot crap garbage in PVE, and I could not care less about PVP or WvW.

2/10.

Popularity doesn’t mean balance priority. PvP is a lot more intensive and competitive than PvE, which means you need to centralise balance around it. PvE you can run whatever you want in almost every content, which by it’s casual nature allows for leniency.

Sure, you may not like it, that’s perfectly fine, but buffing it across the board is not the answer, and you hadn’t made it clear your desire to split balance.

I don’t really care what they do with SB in PvE, do as they wish, but PvP and WvW should be separate in this, kitten is already one of the strongest E-specs.

I would however also argue this is ANET’s intention, because Bersekrer was a largely PvE spec, they added a PvP spec next. Just look at Scrapper. It was a PvP spec for Engi, and now they have Holosmith which seems like it could be viable in PvE.

This is such a load of bullcrap. First, PvP is not more important than PvE is.Balancing priority should be given to the game mode drawing the most money in, and that’s almost guaranteed to not be PvP. Its probably WvW honestly. Secondly, balance should never be “centralized” around a certain game mode. This is the worst way to achieve balance. It should be split up between all 3 game modes to start with. And it should be balanced individually for each game mode. The balancing problems that ANet has suffered from stem in no small part from their reluctance to do full balance splits between the game modes. I mean hell, 80% of their PvP splits end up being merged in the end anyway.

Thirdly, you can run anything you want in PvP just the same as you can in PvE. Its utter bullcrap to tell people that they can run anything they want in PvE because it still kills things. Well going by that logic you can run anything you want in PvP because you will still kill players you are better than. Just because you can run it in PvE does not make it a good idea to run it in PvE. That is the same as PvP.

You can technically run anythingyou want anywhere yes, but are you really going to tell me facerolling a dungeon, or fractal tier 4 (which people DO faceroll) is equivalent to playing a Platinum/Legendary PvP game, provided everyone there actually is of rank?

It definitely is not. Neither is a Raid (which I have largely given a pass in this discussion) on the level of a monthly AT.

Point is, one requires a lot more attention due to it’s harsher requirements. You can of course outplay people, but this is to a certain point. In the top end where a lot of people’s skill caps out around the same level (besides maybe the top 10 people in game), it comes down to competitiveness in builds.

Where as even in Raids, you can run a lot of random crap as long as it’s in a certain DPS threshold.

Carighan.6758:

Ahlen.7591:

Spellbreaker is liquid hot crap garbage in PVE, and I could not care less about PVP or WvW.

2/10.

Funny how the spec which brings a “mesmery” feel immediately feels weak to other players. Surprise surprise…

Implying Mesmer is weak…? When it has been Meta in PvP and PvE and even WvW for ages?

And how much Chrono breaks the game let’s just ignore that.

The disillusionment with Mirage doesn’t mean Mesmer/Chrono itself is weak. It’s one of the only professions you can still run on Core and work.

To address your point, it’s not “weak to other players” as you will have noticed the high ratings if you didn’t cherry pick the thread. It’s that Ahlen is tunnel visioning one specific aspect of the game. Yes SB doesn’t look too valuable in PvE at the moment, but in PvP and WvW is one of the best new elite specs.

stone cold.8609:

Spell Breaker: 6/10. Another great concept, but really seems to be focused on PvP/WvW. I don’t see this spec being more effective in PvE than the current condi Beserker or power Core builds, which is really too bad because I’d love to switch to something other than those. Looking forward to trying it out in PvE to see what it is really capable of.

See this is what I don’t understand about some people’s criticisms of the new elite specs…

Why would you want 2 elites specs competing for PvE right now? When you could have 1 for PvE, 1 for PvP/WvW, 1 for etc scenario… I thought that was the point of elite specs?

You can technically run anythingyou want anywhere yes, but are you really going to tell me facerolling a dungeon, or fractal tier 4 (which people DO faceroll) is equivalent to playing a Platinum/Legendary PvP game, provided everyone there actually is of rank?

Look, you can argue that PvP involves a tighter tollerance than PvE, and I think that’s true, but ultimately it comes down to fun. If a given class is not competitively balanced in PvP then it is not as fun to play, and that is the important part there, whether it is fun. But likewise, if a class in PvE doesn’t have fun and rewarding mechanics, if it leads to an inordinate amount of failure and frustration, then that isn’t fun either. A PvE player not having fun with his character matters exactly as much as a PvP player not having fun with his, and by all accounts there are way more PvE players than there are PvP players, so in aggregate, their balance concerns should take priority. I hope that all your balance concerns do get met, just so long as they don’t come at the expense of making PvE builds even slightly less fun to play.

To address your point, it’s not “weak to other players” as you will have noticed the high ratings if you didn’t cherry pick the thread. It’s that Ahlen is tunnel visioning one specific aspect of the game. Yes SB doesn’t look too valuable in PvE at the moment, but in PvP and WvW is one of the best new elite specs.

If you’ll pay attention, both players were referring ONLY to PvE, and I would agree with them that Spellbreaker really doesn’t seem to offer much to PvE, and that’s a disappointment.

See this is what I don’t understand about some people’s criticisms of the new elite specs…

Why would you want 2 elites specs competing for PvE right now? When you could have 1 for PvE, 1 for PvP/WvW, 1 for etc scenario… I thought that was the point of elite specs?

No. Every expansion, every new spec should offer something new for every play mode. People who only PvP, and want to main certain classes, should be able to play a new and interesting spec for that class. Players who only PvE and want to main a certain class, should also have a new and interesting spec to play with. It should not be a case of “oh, sorry, your main is getting a raid support spec this expansion, maybe better luck in two years. . .”

There should not be “PvE specs” or “PvP specs,” the spec should work for both. The differentiation should come in traiting, and there might be a trait thread that offers benefits only useful for PvP, sure, but then if you just choose a different thread, it should offer equally useful benefits to PvEers. I’m not sure what the best course is for Spellbreaker, but it definitely does need to offer something more for PvE players.

stone cold.8609:

Renegade: 1/10. Kala who? I kept wondering if she was so worth of a legend, then why didn’t I hear about her before? Would not have been my choice lore wise.

That’s curious because, speaking as someone who didn’t even touch GW1, she’s one of the Rev legends I know (along with Glint and Ventari). Still no idea who Mallyx, Shiro or Jalis are.

stone cold.8609:

Here are my admittedly biased opinions, from a PvE only perspective after playing the demo specs:

Holosmisth: 8/10. Great concept that completely changes the feel of the Engie in a very good way. Liked it so much it got me to level up an Engie just to play this spec. Would be 10/10 if heat mechanic was applied to other weapons.

Weaver: 6/10. Again great concept, but global cool down on attunement switching makes this spec feel clunky and overly complex. It may work better for me with Dagger mainhand since sword seemed underpowered and had issues with attack chain resetting with attunement swap. I’d like to run this over DX Tempest, but probably won’t because of the current length of the cool downs. Looking forward to trying it in PvE to see what it is really capable of.

Spell Breaker: 6/10. Another great concept, but really seems to be focused on PvP/WvW. I don’t see this spec being more effective in PvE than the current condi Beserker or power Core builds, which is really too bad because I’d love to switch to something other than those. Looking forward to trying it out in PvE to see what it is really capable of.

Firebrand: 2/10. Not a big fan of the direction this takes the Guardian. Locks up the hard hitting skills behind a Engie like kit mechanic (tomes) with long cool downs. Not a big fan of the kit concept in general. Very short range cone based skills are extremely unwieldy to use. I don’t foresee playing it.

Dead Eye: 0/10. Don’t like sniper play style and didn’t really want this in the game. I don’t WvW, but I can already see the hate this will generate which will probably lead to more nerfs to the thief class that will likely screw up non sniper builds. I’ll stick to my current Daredevil and hope that it doesn’t get nerfed to oblivion because of Dead Eye.

Soul Beast: 1/10. Great concept. I was excited to try this spec since I don’t like pet AI in this game, but for some reason it seemed underwhelming when demoed. Also, the aura was very unappealing visually to me. Don’t foresee me playing.

Renegade: 1/10. Kala who? I kept wondering if she was so worth of a legend, then why didn’t I hear about her before? Would not have been my choice lore wise. It doesn’t really matter because the spec was so underperforming when I briefly demoed it. Don’t foresee playing.

I didn’t have a chance to demo Scourge or Mirage.

Agree with Renegade.

Out of all the iconic characters Anet can choose, they choose someone that I never heard of, despite playing GW series since 10 years ago.

Ohoni.6057:

You can technically run anythingyou want anywhere yes, but are you really going to tell me facerolling a dungeon, or fractal tier 4 (which people DO faceroll) is equivalent to playing a Platinum/Legendary PvP game, provided everyone there actually is of rank?

Look, you can argue that PvP involves a tighter tollerance than PvE, and I think that’s true, but ultimately it comes down to fun. If a given class is not competitively balanced in PvP then it is not as fun to play, and that is the important part there, whether it is fun. But likewise, if a class in PvE doesn’t have fun and rewarding mechanics, if it leads to an inordinate amount of failure and frustration, then that isn’t fun either. A PvE player not having fun with his character matters exactly as much as a PvP player not having fun with his, and by all accounts there are way more PvE players than there are PvP players, so in aggregate, their balance concerns should take priority. I hope that all your balance concerns do get met, just so long as they don’t come at the expense of making PvE builds even slightly less fun to play.

To address your point, it’s not “weak to other players” as you will have noticed the high ratings if you didn’t cherry pick the thread. It’s that Ahlen is tunnel visioning one specific aspect of the game. Yes SB doesn’t look too valuable in PvE at the moment, but in PvP and WvW is one of the best new elite specs.

If you’ll pay attention, both players were referring ONLY to PvE, and I would agree with them that Spellbreaker really doesn’t seem to offer much to PvE, and that’s a disappointment.

See this is what I don’t understand about some people’s criticisms of the new elite specs…

Why would you want 2 elites specs competing for PvE right now? When you could have 1 for PvE, 1 for PvP/WvW, 1 for etc scenario… I thought that was the point of elite specs?

No. Every expansion, every new spec should offer something new for every play mode. People who only PvP, and want to main certain classes, should be able to play a new and interesting spec for that class. Players who only PvE and want to main a certain class, should also have a new and interesting spec to play with. It should not be a case of “oh, sorry, your main is getting a raid support spec this expansion, maybe better luck in two years. . .”

There should not be “PvE specs” or “PvP specs,” the spec should work for both. The differentiation should come in traiting, and there might be a trait thread that offers benefits only useful for PvP, sure, but then if you just choose a different thread, it should offer equally useful benefits to PvEers. I’m not sure what the best course is for Spellbreaker, but it definitely does need to offer something more for PvE players.

Fun to play is preference I’m afraid, and you can’t balance on preference. The issue is, if you ignore balancing in PvP, you break PvP, if you ignore it in PvE, it’s an annoyance. There’s the difference. MOB AIs will almost always be more forgiving of your lack of cohesiveness in build/gear than anyone else.

I find Soulbeast highly fun to play, but a lot of Ranger mains have found it lackluster in performance.

Yes, they are referring to PvE, but by missing it’s amazing performance in PvP/WvW they are being facetious. Implying Spellbreaker is weak in PvE due to being undertuned when really it is due to it’s design philosophy being centered on PvP/Wvw.

The problem with balancing 2 elite specs around the same mode is, then you have Elite specs which compete for the same slot. In this situation, if they make Spellbreaker too strong in PvE, Berserker will be left behind, and vice versa. This is because’s Warrior’s main usefulness comes from Banners and PS, which is on core Warrior anyway.

This is why it makes a lot more sense to have SB be geared toward PvP/WvW so it sees play at certain points, and Berserker for PvE so it sees play at certain points. I would argue most players play a variety of game modes and not just one, so this works.

To return to the main point, Spellbreaker ISN’T weak. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but that isn’t down to strength, it’s down to play style/game mode. For me, SB was one of the best Elite specs, and made me heavily consider maining Warrior again after 4 years.

So 8/10 for me, scoring the highest, with Holosmith only close behind.

Mirage: 5/10. It’s been mentioned so many times but Mirage Mirror and Ambush skills need some serious love.

Firebrand: 3/10: A frontline support with cast times to enter tomes, small frontal cone with utilities, no recharge system on pages, lackluster abilities and… too much to continue on.

Aomine.5012:

Out of all the iconic characters Anet can choose, they choose someone that I never heard of, despite playing GW series since 10 years ago.

Kalla is GW2 lore, not GW1 lore if you read a bit about the GW2 lore you’d know who she is.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kalla_Scorchrazor

Firebrand: 2/10
Could be a great spec in theory, but in practice gets screwed by the totally failed implementation of tomes and mantras. At its current state, not worth playing over any other class.

Holosmith: 9/10
Felt fun, interesting heat mechanic, nice damage, great animations. That’s what a new spec should look like.

Didn’t really test the other ones, so no rating for them.

Fun to play is preference I’m afraid, and you can’t balance on preference. The issue is, if you ignore balancing in PvP, you break PvP, if you ignore it in PvE, it’s an annoyance.

No. An unbalanced PvP class just means that either more people will be playing it or less people will be playing it, and if it’s OP and people play it even thought they don’t enjoy it, or if it’s weak and people don’t play it even though they wish they could, then that is impacting their fun factor, and that fun factor is the important part. So again, it all boils down to making the game fun. Making it fun for PvPers is not more important than making it fun for PvEers.

Yes, they are referring to PvE, but by missing it’s amazing performance in PvP/WvW they are being facetious. Implying Spellbreaker is weak in PvE due to being undertuned when really it is due to it’s design philosophy being centered on PvP/Wvw.

But again, that is not a problem of player perception, that is because ANet did not design the specs to be good in PvE. “Lame in PvE but good in PvP” is not a trade-off players should care about. It needs to be good in both.

The problem with balancing 2 elite specs around the same mode is, then you have Elite specs which compete for the same slot. In this situation, if they make Spellbreaker too strong in PvE, Berserker will be left behind, and vice versa. This is because’s Warrior’s main usefulness comes from Banners and PS, which is on core Warrior anyway.

Each should offer unique options, should play slightly differently in practice, but each of those options should be valid ones. Maybe at the most competitive levels a clear favorite emerges, and all the ranked teams only play as one of the two, but both should be good enough that more casual players can play the “wrong” one and still be almost as good as if they were playing the “right” one. Ideally both would have an equally useful role, like one is better for 1v1ing people, another better for team support or defending, and the one you use might vary based on what you expect the enemy to bring.

The point is, when a new expansion comes out, it should have nine new specs that are ALL viable in ALL play modes. If they can’t commit to making each spec viable in each game mode, then they need to add more than nine of them every two years. When a PvE Warrior buys PoF, he should have a new spec to play with, and it should be fun and balanced.

Soulbeast: -10/10

- Dagger is slow, does low damage, have no survivability
- Loss of a meat shield if you want to use the soulbeast’s special ability
- Almost no dps outside of a sic em meme build that will get nuked form orbit
- Beast skills using low powered skills, instead of using your pets’ F2 skill
- Won’t be welcomed in high level PVE and WvW, due to less buffing options than druid

It does not really matter how we rate it. If a profession can play condition damage, then it will be top, if not… well… we know where it will be. Condition damage is all that matters nowadays.

Alin.2468:

It does not really matter how we rate it. If a profession can play condition damage, then it will be top, if not… well… we know where it will be. Condition damage is all that matters nowadays.

With exception of Power Guardian which has easy rotation, good aoe damage, and one of the highest power damage of any classes.

Scourge: 10/10. As a necro main i tested scourge both in damage and support roles in both stress tests in pve, and on the golem.
-Damage is decent and the mechanics are actually interesting, rotation will be interesting trying to weave utilities for constant burning.
-Support scourge is the first support spec i really really like. The barrier filling the squadui is super satisfying and unlike other support specs a real visual clue to how much you are putting out.

Weaver: 9/10. Very fun, cool spec. Will be a challenge to learn though. The one thing i dislike about it is it will be really punishing if you mess up a buttonpress and go into water instead of air for example, because that will be on your bar for the next swap aswell. Rotation will be key, and if you mess up, recovering will be hard.

Holosmith: 8/10 fun spec, not higher because it doesn’t mix with kits to well, wich is engi core.

Firebrand: 7/10 Some cool stuff here, but overall not really my favourite, i do prefer it over dragonhunter though.

Spellbreaker: 7/10, 10 for pvp, sadly that’s all it has to offer imo. It feels like the devs developped this very fun pvp spec and said, well they have berserker for pve, wich isn’t really ok imo. I feel with just a few changes there could be a great pve variant.

Renegade: 8/10 Fun to play and great visuals, needs a bit of tweaking in energy costs. I know the lore is charr based, but i feel it should have an option to change the spirits to race or smth. Not overly excited to summon charr on a non-charr character.

Soulbeast: 7/10 Very fun, lacking in visuals, would be more excited for this if it was more visually appealing.

Mirage: 6/10 I overall don’t like mesmers and that doesn’t change with mirage, looks cool though.

Deadeye: 8/10 Fun to play, very different from the daredevil, pretty situational though, i wonder if it will be used over daredevil.

Weaver 7/10
Holosmith 9/10
Deadeye 8/10

I little clarification about the weaver. This is the most squishy profession in the game and while the barrier is good for better survivability, they are very situational and can be countered very easy by professions with better movement. Superspeed is great in the trait line but hard to work so well and compensate for everything else. By everything else, I mean the low range on the sword, compared to dagger for example, as well as the surprisingly low damage. As the most squishy profession, we have to compensate with good mobility and great dmg with range combo. If we are using a sword we will constantly be in the melee fight. If we don’t have the range and the dmg (which we obviously lack with a sword), we could at least use faster dmg bursts. Unfortunately, this is not here also because we have 4 sec global CD on attunements!

We are squishy – we have to burst fast and get out of the melee. At the moment the weaver doesn’t have range, doesn’t have enough DPS, doesn’t have fast burst and is squishy AF… Not to mention that if we make mistakes with this “play on a piano to win” profession we are punished very hard.

Weaver has great potential if:
1. You reduce the global cd of attunements by 1-2 sec.
2. Reduce the casting time of sword skills by 1/4 sec.
3. Increase the range/radius of the sword skills by 150.
4. Increase the damage of sword skills by 10-20%.

As a ranger main reading this thread it seems like everyone is overwhelmingly unhappy with Soulbeast, and I would have to agree.
This spec entirely caters to the section of the community that cried out for a petless ranger since launch. The Dagger is dreadful for Dps and Condi, it has none of the signature animation flare that all ranger weapons have in some regard. The Utilities while interesting for buildcrafting won’t see any playtime. The traitline is weaker than the core specs. The spec has focused around the Beastmode mechanic which is interesting but will ultimately fall into the same rut ranger suffers from now, a select few pets will be used 24/7 with minimal switching.

Soulbeast – 3/10

:/

We are squishy – we have to burst fast and get out of the melee. At the moment the weaver doesn’t have range, doesn’t have enough DPS, doesn’t have fast burst and is squishy AF… Not to mention that if we make mistakes with this “play on a piano to win” profession we are punished very hard.

Weaver is a class that could definitely benefit from an “easy mode.” Like as it is might be a solid “hi spec” class, but it’s just not as fun for the more casual player. Maybe figure out a way to simplify it a bit, and add more survivability to it, while at the same time limiting the option of playing “all the keys,” so that basically if you know how to play it really well, you can do so, and get like 5-10% better performance out of it, while if you don’t want to invest that heavily, there’s also a build option for you that works very well compared to other options. Alternate between them using a trait.

Alin.2468:

It does not really matter how we rate it. If a profession can play condition damage, then it will be top, if not… well… we know where it will be. Condition damage is all that matters nowadays.

“Condition damage” is still just the role DPS. It hardly matters how the numbers you produce above the enemies’ heads is formatted.

“Condition damage” is still just the role DPS. It hardly matters how the numbers you produce above the enemies’ heads is formatted.

Well, not quite. There are distinctions, and I’m not “hardcore” enough to know all of them, but the easier ones are that some enemies are especially resistant to either Power or Condi damage, so whichever enemies need killing, that’s the more useful damage ot have. Also there are certain interactions with buffs/food/whatever that mean that it’s easier to accumulate condi damage potential than direct damage some of the time. Obviously the devs can make either stronger than the other, but they are not always in perfect balance.

I see the complains now and remember the TEMPEST being one shamed class before release. Only to be one of the most popular and powerful specs this game ever saw after the HoT release. Remember my words. Mirage will be back to full POWER (of love and passion).

People are just acting immature towards the fact that the mirage didn’t have any new F-skill and/or other mechanics.

I played around with all the new specs, but in general, I didn’t see the big improvement over existing classes on any of them.

Except the Weaver.

I cannot tell you how many times in the current game that I wanted to fire off two or three of my skills and change to another element for one skill and then back, only to be thwarted by cooldowns. Now I have the option to “weave” both and yet add a third or fourth with less than half the elemental (no pun intended) cooldown. Usually by the time I fire off the skill, the cooldown is done and I can change yet again. It offers me the flexibility I have sorely missed with Core Elemental or Tempest. I can’t wait to see Weaver in a day-to-day situation.

It may end up being a novelty build, but in the testing, I fell in love with my Ele again.

Only played weaver and renegade;

Weaver: 7, I liked weaver a lot but i’m curious as to how practical the spec is. I like some of the stances and the ability to condi spike now and overall it’s fun to try and predict what order you should switch attunements in order to have your offhand skills where you need them. The dual attunement skills were quite underwhelming though. Most of them didn’t do anything special, more so just a regular skill with some cool fx. Really cool idea though, definitely love pressing a lot of buttons when they work like a well tuned instrument.

Renegade: 3, I like some of the concepts, but the class as a whole lacks a concept, or at least the implementation of that concept. It’s an offensive support spec but doesn’t really feel like it. It doesn’t feel like anything tbh. They gave us a shortbow like a lot of people wanted, and they made it condi. Cool. But it does laughable damage and condi application. Doesn’t mesh with corruption line. Has no movement/kiting skills. One dimensional/no utility/ low damage. Spirits were a cool idea, but we got dancing wells instead. They can get cc/die but they only last a couple of seconds so either they are going to melt or get cc’d and still be useless. idk bout this one. Every utility is a spirit. This is real bad for a game that requires you to be moving, requires you to have some survivability utilities, especially a get out of jail free card. The new mechanic is basically they couldn’t think of one, so they just gave us 3 new skills that are thematic with Kalla’s story, but do not go with the rest of the skills or traits. They feel so random. My expectations were really high for the new rev spec so that’s why it’s so much worse that they missed the whole dart board when trying to land an idea and implement it.

It just surprises me between these two specs. Weaver had so much work put into it to try and make an overly complex idea work and they somewhat pulled it off. Now renegade had to have the least time spent on it and they tried to mask that with pretty animations but it doesn’t work. They missed an opportunity with this legend, especially since all other legends (besides ventari lol) were totally hardcore, powerful characters most of us new and loved. And then they give us some lady charr as if they are trying to hit a quota to not get sued for discrimination. I’m all for women and other races, but pick a powerful character that means something to the players. Make it on par with glint, shiro, or mallyx. We deserved a hero, we deserved Razah. #teamrazah

ProtoGunner.4953:

I see the complains now and remember the TEMPEST being one shamed class before release. Only to be one of the most popular and powerful specs this game ever saw after the HoT release. Remember my words. Mirage will be back to full POWER (of love and passion).

People are just acting immature towards the fact that the mirage didn’t have any new F-skill and/or other mechanics.

These two are not even comparable. Not to mention Tempest was so popular because it was buffed to be extremely overpowered.

CutesySylveon.8290:

Kahrgan.7401:

dchsknight.3042:

I feel like all the Renegade hate. The look flipping epic. AND I feel people who say it is unfinished just went into a map and pressed 1. I feel it is one of the most finished of the classes.

Found the revenant player.

The overwhelming majority of rev players I spoke to called it trash as well. If you think Renegade is ‘one of the most finished’ then have to call BS.

I am a pve player not a pvp. So I could care less what PVP players think of a class.