Guild Wars 2

According to the class subforums all but a few are complete junk….thoughts?

It is a matter of personal opinion.

1.Have you personally tested all of them?

2.How about not to discuss things that haven’t been released (final) yet?

I tested every new elite during the preview. Some are very strong and I like a lot. Some are slightly underwhelming atm, but it is to be expected after testing for very little time. There are some I would personally not play yet, mostly because they do not feel very well suited for the way I play.

Lot’s of players complaining are those who have been used to exact same class and build for last 2 years, and now they feel confused and annoyed. None of the new elites is direct upgrade from HoT elite or core class, they are different and learning to play them well may take time.

I find Mirage somewhere beneath core Mesmer. It’s mechanics are slow.

The main hand Axe has short range and little defensive value.

“Ambush” is suicidal because of casting time. On top of that, it does little damage and misses often because of the slow projectile speed.

Oh and the teleport/confuse skills fail a fair percentage of the time.

I like the ones I played with but that’s just a couple of hours yesterday. I think I’ll need a lot more time after launch to get a good idea of them.

I personally wouldn’t put too much stock in what I see on the profession forums. There are a lot of very reasonable people there, I’m sure, but also a whole lot of people who see everything that happens as irrefutable proof that ArenaNet hates their class.

The questions people ask themselves are:

Is this new elite spec better at something I could do with the core specs?
Is this new elite spec better or different enough from the Hot elite spec?

If none of this is the case then why wouldn’t you go in this semi-beta phase of PoF to the forums and complain?

At least the people in the class forums have a very specific concern. What is the goal of this thread here?

Setting aside the fact that it’s difficult to judge the elites based solely on some PvP lobby testing, I’m excited about the Scourge. Holosmith will get me to play my long-neglected engi. I think Weaver will be fun to play. I like Firebrand so far.

I main mesmer and ever since the early halcyon days of Chrono, it seems we’ve had a long series of hits with the nerf bat. Mirage seems to be in that vein. As wet-noodle as mesmer damage is right now, I still see no reason to give up Chrono.

Similarly, I like the way Renegade shortbow plays, but I’m not thrilled with the very static “summons” utilities. Also, the damage kinda sucks. I’m not ready to give up Herald for this.

I’m not interested in Soulbeast, Deadeye, or Spellbreaker. However, I may try Spellbreaker later to familiarize myself with what it can do and what effects it has on surrounding players.

Overall, it’s like reading an anthology. I’ll generally find a few stories that really click with me and make me hunt down longer works by that author. I’ll find one or two that cause me to blacklist an author and avoid any work by them, and several that are just average. I’m glad there’s a range of appeal.

Honestly. I was a little biased on theif. And thought it’s new class would suck but dang dude it was legit. I think if you take full account on the class skills first and remember that each class has its purpose. Remember even right now before the new elites people are selective in each class for PvP and wvw. Same thing with tokittenight be selective with the new elites. But to say they suck is opinion. They have different purposes. Theif good job. I think scourge is good. Engineer they did well. Ele they did well. Rev I think is cool. Warrior and gaurd. Haven’t done. But relax it’s a demo. There’s much time. We still haven’t done pve. Or raids with them. Which are very different.

Actually according to every subforum their new elite spec is weak and everyone else is getting an OP one. Basically the usual profession based subforum stuff. I do hope for some changes since some designs have anti-synergy with their base class.

I think it has to be taken cautiously :

• It necessarily lacks efficiency, because lots of things are new and not known. Moreover, gear may not be the best one, choices are limited, and whatever, builds are not accurately tweaked.
• I somehow have the feeling ANet didn’t want any new spec to be as “damage bomb” as some HoT’s were. So it may feel a bit lackluster.

That said, it’s true there’re some issues that have been uncovered during this test. For example, weaver’s survivability, or mirage’s shatter. The thing is subforum seem to be extremely toxic currently. Not so much positivity, not so much rationality, and a lot of personal attacks… I won’t read them for some times…

I think things will evolve till release, for PoF’s and hopefully for HoT’s elite specs too.

Adenin.5973:

Is this new elite spec better than the something I could do with the core specs?

Thing is, there is no universal measure of one spec being “better” or “worse”. Some specs are built for solo play, others for groups. Some are meant to be dps, some support. Some will shine in PvE and others in PvP. And some are sort of good for everything but not best at any.

Saying spec is “better” would first require everyone to play exactly same content in exactly same way. Which is not true. Everyone plays the game differently, some only play solo, some with few friends and some only do large scale meta events. Not every new elite spec is, or even should be, able to shine at everything.

I would not read anything into those complaints the new specs junk based on a weekends play. Much the same happened with HOT and we all know that after HOT all of those traitlines that were “junk” suddenly became mandatory in order to be competitive.

I have tried warrior spec and thief spec so far this weekend. I am impressed with both after some tinkering and practice. I will not have the time to test other sets as I feel that in order to get an accurate assessment of how well a Spec will perform you have to spend a LOT of time in it.

They are not junk, people expected a tier 2 power creep instead of any alternative play style.
Plus happy people play the game and sour people play the forum

Still testing and am running out of time. Was testing via dummies, PvP and WvW. So that’s were these opinions are based from. I also play all classes and have multiples of all, some set as core and some HoT elites.

Some of the new elites seems to be able to pull off high burst with less effort than others. And by burst I mean attacks that are those of 10K-20K hits. Now these are at the end of some rotations. These include Soulbeast, Deadeye, Holosmith.

Couple of the classes do micro bursts to get closer to that but over more attacks. I would drop the Renegade and Spellbreaker in there.

Classes more difficult to get those numbers out of so far are: Weaver and Firebrand. Love the Weaver mechanic and think its well done but will expect its not for everyone, but have run into some exceptional ones in WvW.

Mirage and Scourge bring up the end in a DPS perspective. I know that some classes were being targetted to get more of a utility/support role so that’s got to factor in as well but was basing this pass more from the damage perspective.

Will play them all but some have more hard counters than others so far. In some cases it more advantageous to use existing weapons over new class weapon due to DPS. Example of this is the Soulbeast where using the Greatsword and Maul can bring some serious damage to the fight.

Also seeing differing results on some where the environment plays a bigger difference. Examples here, Deadeyes are more effective in WvW than PvP to me where as with the Spellbreaker works better in PvP and is ranged down pretty easy in WvW.

Lastly not all utilities are the same, some will probably need some love to up their value. An example of this to me would be the Firebrand’s heal. Running in PvP and in WvW this had some additional value in a large WvW fight but anything smaller and it just doesn’t add up as a heal even if it can trigger additional synergies.

Still more balancing is needed but assuming ANets been collecting a lot of stats on performance over this weekend. Back to testing. Good gaming!

Amaranthe.3578:

According to the class subforums all but a few are complete junk….thoughts?

You cannot judge by the class sub-forums. Every single one is filled with complaints on how bad their elite is and how strong all the others are. Think about that for a minute.

They will all be fine in the end. I’m positive many will receive tweaks before launch.

I could also see people changing mains. People may be somewhat bored with their current class / build and didn’t connect with their new elite. But they may have found something very enjoyable in another. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that and it should really be expected.

On a personal level, I normally spend most of my play time on core Ranger and Reaper. I’m really liking Scourge but am unsure of Soulbeast at the moment. I also could never get into Engineer before but I’m loving Holosmith.

I haven’t been paying much attention to other classes, but for Firebrand the problem is not a number problem or a OP or UP problem. It is purely a mechanical problem with how the spec functions. It is a melee spec that wants to support its allies, which is fine, until you realize all of the support is front facing, short range cones. You will never hit anyone with the mantras in a real scenario ever.

The tomes have a different set of problems, which is totally fixable by become kits with an initiative system. The tome problem is how you enter a tome in order to cast the perfect solution to the problem, and then you realize that unless you do 4 completely useless things you will have wasted a super long cool down on essentially nothing. There is also the fact that it takes forever to enter a tome and then forever to cast the skill you want that by the time you did all of this, either you’re dead, the scenario has passed, or you can foresee the future with such clarity that you should by lottery tickets and just buy Anet out from under NCSoft so you can force them to fix stuff.

I hate tomes, when i need only reflect pop F3 use dome skill and get out of it i got 90 sec cd. And I dont like that. Tomes are stupid cause you must use all pages cause you do that or go out on big cd. Tomes should be like engie kits with skills cd’s and thief initiative regen. And god awful cast times….its impossible in wvw and pvp where fast pace is path to win. Plus no blocks on tomes and low heal. Elite mantra should give protection. And some traits need to ne changed and buffed. … In current state I dont think I will buy expansion cause DH is still better.

Most of them have rather significant flaws, and/or are more boring than the HoT specs. None of them are unsalvageable except the Renegade, but some will take a significant commitment from the developers to fix.