Guild Wars 2

map is epic, new events are fun

EnlightenedNavigator.8296:

(also, this isn’t really related to this post, but I can’t figure out how to equip the HoT glider skin. can anyone tell me how to do that? thanks!)

If you stored it in your bank prior to the beta, remove it from the bank on the beta alt you want to use it and double click it. It will then show up on that alt when you glide.

If you did anything else with it, you can’t get at it for the beta.

From the BETA, I really enjoyed using Shiro’s trait line. LOVED using the Jade Winds elite vs. those stonehead dinosaurs when they were about to charge me.

I also really liked hunting down the mastery points. I felt a sense of accomplishment when I finally got them. There was one in particular I kept failing twice or even three times, it was the south east one in Verdant Brink that was really high up. I eventually got it though. Just required the right positioning when gliding.

Very impressed with the beta so far.

At first the map was confusing but once I had spent some time exploring it was a real joy zipping around with the glider, knowing the short cuts etc.

I really loved the mob design. Each one has its own mechanic with a pretty easy counter but you always have to stay alert and react correctly. Frustrating sometimes at the start but after a couple of days really satisfying.

I didn’t like the addition of spoken dialogue to my character, it felt you were putting words in his mouth. I think this works in a game like swtor because that games also gives you choices what to say. But I just turned the dialogue slider down to zero and it didn’t bother me as much. Really wish the dialogue sections of personal stories could be space barred through though. First time it is okay to listen/read the dialogue but on replays it is really tedious.

One thing that I noticed was that events seemed to take a lot longer if there was a big group than a small group. Some were really exhaustingly long such as the plant the explosives one in the old ruins where you snipe the husks that keep coming.

Reaper. Is. AWESOME!!! I’ve now tried Chronomancer (OMG, I can’t wait to really be one!), Revenant (covered elsewhere), and now it’s time for the Reaper! I pretty much took the stock trait build. Zerker armor on all classes. Staff/gs weaponset.

Ya’ll nailed the slow death on the head. In a really good way. Each hit does lots of damage, and the sounds for all the greatsword skills are just eerie. Chilling. THEN you transform in to a reaper with a scythe, and suddenly, just start destroying everything! It’s great. Love it. I don’t know why I would use any other weapons now, though. I feel like the shouts are going to work really well together with the wells out in WvW.

I’ve got nothing bad to say about this class. Simply put, I wouldn’t want to get in close combat with Reaper. That’s a bad idea. I’d range it first. They’re really quite frightening up close. I know that’s what ya’ll were aiming for. Ya’ll did great!

(Yes, I had tons of fun playing this reaper.)

Ok So first off i managed to pre buy on the morning of the launch, unfortunately work has kept me from playing all the way through like i would of normally.
I’m absolutely loving the map, it’s a beauty to look at and great fun to charge round. loads of little hidden places to check out and needless to say i’ve fell prey to misjudging the distance between gaps and ending up falling to my death in the abyss beneath.

The Revenent is fantastic now with the weapon swapping ability and the skills/stances for it are top notch, I would of liked to try it out with sinister stats as well as the ones that are currently available, but that’s for another day.

The Chronomancer is EPIC!!!
I loved playing this profession, was a little squishy but i put that down to me picking wrong gear for it at the time but the skills and animations are sublime, such a smooth looking addition to the Mesmer’s kitten nal. The wells are beautiful when placed and are pretty solid when it comes to their job. the whole Gravity Well Levitation thing is slightly reminiscent of a decent horror film, would of expected the the enemy to be suffering knockdown with a nice “thud” sound at the end of it though for full effect.

The Dragonhunter as well is very nicely done with the traps added to their skill allocations, I was using them vigorously throughout the story part of the beta quite contentedly. Skill 5 on the bow I don’t really get the animation, looks like they’re setting up a paddock at a horse show for the victors, kitteneesy for my liking.

The Tempest I haven’t been able to play that proper yet or the the Reaper as pretty much every event on that map and also the one in the Silverwastes has bugged out and it’s impossible to even get that far yet has kinda put a downer on the one full day off I’ve had for this beta event

I love the way that npc’s react to you differently if your character is a Sylvari and the addition of audio from your character in the middle of story missions, makes it a bit more immersive and more fun.

Overall, apart from the bugged out events and some audio missing from npc’s when they’re meant to be talking, I’m really loving where you are taking this and can’t wait for it to be released, but one thing has definitely been shown to me this weekend………

I NEED A NEW PC!!!!

Good job anet

Loving it

Really enjoy the Reaper class. I had trouble getting into Necromancer but trying this elite specialization wowed me. I do feel like the standard 1 chain is lacking in damage, given the slow attack speed, and the shouts (except for Rise) could be a bit more effective (perhaps 3 stacks of weakness or vulnerability), but the animations were impressive. Death Spiral made me spit my milk when it applied 12 stacks of vulnerability in one attack.

Engaging the Reaper Shroud made you feel like a real terror on the battlefield, flying around and attacking at high speeds, jacking damage up REALLY fast, it was VERY formidable to me. On top of that it charged up really fast which can make you transform again swiftly.

Verdant Brink was a very interesting level with how many layers and hidden routes were in it. The biggest complaint is obviously the bugs that impede progress on the map, however the way the atmosphere and the mobs change when night falls did change how I played. The wildlife, not just the mordrem, were extremely dangerous and you have to play it careful when you’re moving on your own. Saving rally points with large bonfires and the enemies just swarming you in the dark fit the feel of trying to survive a horde of monsters so you did great there. Again I think the bugs did interfere with a lot of progression so can’t say much on the rest of the chains. And gliding was kind of nice

Overall I do see the good potential in this, just have to fix a lot of bugs.

I enjoyed trying out different things on my Guardian (my main), as well as playing a Revenant. I briefly played a Chronomancer and had fun, even though I’ve never been good with Mesmers. I like how the whole specialization system can breathe new life into a class. It was fun to play around with different builds without having to pay for gear/runes and stuff.

I love gliding and jumping mushrooms. Both feel cool and the mechanic is very Zelda-ish. I can’t wait to see what iterations of skins the gliders will have on the gem store; I’m hoping for something Superman-ish.

The part of the Maguuma jungle we’ve seen is BEAUTIFUL, and I really like the Frogy village.

I like the story, especially with the whole “can we trust” Sylvari options that it looks like we have a choice on; I hope the “branches” of the events really have an impact. I also love that the Sylvari characters can hear Mordremoth.

I like the Mastery system, since it feels like I’m aiming for something real and a bit different. I also like the map rewards feature to aim for goals for whatever you’re crafting.

There’s nothing in the direction that really I don’t like; it’s mainly just minor stuff. So, it gives me hope for the future when HOT is finally released.

I am totally enjoying the new area. The charm is there. Flying is fun. Day and night events add that air of danger. The bowmen using rapid shot is a little op. I ran all the classes and enjoyed. Look forward to seeing the next beta. Tell the team great job.

RubiBayer.8134:

Xillllix.3485:

Love everything (all the PvE and new professions) except Tempest!
Tempest is terrible in my opinion (elite is useless, overload mechanic doesn’t work, shouts overlap traits, new trait lines is bad, warhorn is worse than focus or dagger offhand even as melee). It must be improved tremendously before the release.

In comparison Chronomancer is amazing.

Can you try to be more specific? We are really using this beta event as a true beta, so in a beta testing environment, what you are kind of saying is “My elite skill and overload mechanics are not functioning at all”, and I know that’s not what you mean.

It would help the teams working on it to make it better if you could let us know “I am not enjoying the Tempest in its current state. Here are the particular things things that are making me not enjoy it, and here are things that I would like to see done to change it.”

Please have a look here for all the bad things about tempest: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Tempest-Beta-Feedback-Thread

Enjoying the newness of the map, events, enemies.
The maps have a nice “scary” feel – especially that countdown to night.
I like that the new map events and mobs are a bit tougher.
The talk bubbles instead of cutscenes is a nice way to do things.
There are a few events that bugged (Collect the bugs).
There was an invisible bridge to the south for a while.
I might have missed the tutorial (if there was one) but the mastery system didnt seem too intuitive – kinda figured out how to spend points eventually.
Necro – GS was fun – perhaps a faster auto attack? the new shroud is very fun to play.
Revenant – sword animations are very cool and I like the increase in hammer damage.
- Ferocious Strikes did not seem to be triggering whether in or out of combat.
Dragonhunter – i felt that that the dps and utility did not warrant using LB instead of Scepter/Focus. Might be more specific/utilitarian in HoT later on.

RubiBayer.8134:

Xillllix.3485:

Love everything (all the PvE and new professions) except Tempest!
Tempest is terrible in my opinion (elite is useless, overload mechanic doesn’t work, shouts overlap traits, new trait lines is bad, warhorn is worse than focus or dagger offhand even as melee). It must be improved tremendously before the release.

In comparison Chronomancer is amazing.

Can you try to be more specific? We are really using this beta event as a true beta, so in a beta testing environment, what you are kind of saying is “My elite skill and overload mechanics are not functioning at all”, and I know that’s not what you mean.

It would help the teams working on it to make it better if you could let us know “I am not enjoying the Tempest in its current state. Here are the particular things things that are making me not enjoy it, and here are things that I would like to see done to change it.”

Hi Rubi,

There has been a lot of good feedback posted in the Elementalist forum.

It’s rare that the fanbase agrees on something almost 100%, but it seems like it is almost universally agreed upon that Rebound needs a total rework (I know this is not ‘specific’ feedback, but it has been posted many, many times in the Ele forums), and that the risk does not outweigh the reward of the overloads.

At the VERY least, I think that rebound should be changed to a 50% reduction, and should not trigger until a skill with a 30 second or greater cooldown has been activated. I’m not sure if you log these sort of statistics, but I would imagine that at LEAST 90% of all rebounds have been wasted on autoattacks. I would prefer seeing the skill swapped out with something new, because I don’t believe it makes sense for the Tempest to be reducing skill recharges.

I think the overloads should be changed to the following:

You should still be able to cast spells while overloading, and while the element is being overloaded, the spells should have additional effects (i.e. all fire spells would give off Might nearby, all earth skills would bleed, etc). Right now it doesn’t make sense to spend 5 seconds totally defenseless, especially when a dodge or attunement swap would break the overload.

RubiBayer.8134:

Xillllix.3485:

Love everything (all the PvE and new professions) except Tempest!
Tempest is terrible in my opinion (elite is useless, overload mechanic doesn’t work, shouts overlap traits, new trait lines is bad, warhorn is worse than focus or dagger offhand even as melee). It must be improved tremendously before the release.

In comparison Chronomancer is amazing.

Can you try to be more specific? We are really using this beta event as a true beta, so in a beta testing environment, what you are kind of saying is “My elite skill and overload mechanics are not functioning at all”, and I know that’s not what you mean.

It would help the teams working on it to make it better if you could let us know “I am not enjoying the Tempest in its current state. Here are the particular things things that are making me not enjoy it, and here are things that I would like to see done to change it.”

Heres the ele forum feedback thread that contains tons of suggestions that myslef and many many others have thought of to correct the flaws with tempest.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Tempest-Beta-Feedback-Thread

In general though, I am not enjoying the tempest because the overload mechanic isn’t very useful at all. The main reasons for this are having to wait the 5 seconds until its ready, the fact that the overloads range is so short that using them offensively means getting interrupted, and simply put, the overload effects themselves are not worth the tremendous risk we give by spending extra time in attunements and dealing with the increased attunment recharge from using them.

I honestly beleive that the overloads have to do more damage/more support than they do now, and a trait needs to either give all overloads a breakbar, or give us a way of getting stability from shouts or traits.

+ Loved the new NPCs abilitys and AI! It really makes them more dangerous and fun vs just giving tons of health and dmg, it was an awesome surprise and as someone said it would be awesome that some npcs in old areas are improved like the new ones

+ I love the art of the map, ANet artists never cease to amaze me, and the good design helps with the next:

+ Gliding is really fun, where I was playing there were lots of people thinking the same!

+ Reaper is SO fun, when completely tweaked/balanced I will love more my necro xD (played with him both pvp and pve)

+ Revenant changes had made it far more interesting, loved Shiro in general. I still think that Jalis doesnt feel tanky enough and that there things to change. Still, a vast improvement from the last beta. (only used it in pve)

+ Story is FAR more interesting than vanilla, and the little differences for silvari are totally welcomed

+ & – I like the Day/Night concept, but apart from the visuals/fx, night didn’t feel scary enough -in a more difficult if you didnt go in “protected areas” sense- . Maybe it was because of the bugged quests?

- I expected far more for Tempest, as people said in the eles forum there are really solid arguments as to what the big problems are
- Why no test for the new WvW map!!

RubiBayer.8134:

Can you try to be more specific? We are really using this beta event as a true beta, so in a beta testing environment, what you are kind of saying is “My elite skill and overload mechanics are not functioning at all”, and I know that’s not what you mean.

It would help the teams working on it to make it better if you could let us know “I am not enjoying the Tempest in its current state. Here are the particular things things that are making me not enjoy it, and here are things that I would like to see done to change it.”

Many thanks for your reply:
Here are my criticism and proposition:

Overloads
Issues
- The damage and heal on overload is lower than a normal rotation of skills, the radius is really small, and it doesn’t give us access to any new conditions or boons (it’s all things we could already do better). When overloading we cannot do anything else, it shouldn’t be a feature that prevents us from dodging or using other skills.
- Before overloading it requires us to camp in an attunement for a longer amount of time than what is necessary for the class to survive (we rely on fast attunement swapping for boon stacking and cc control).
- Because of their long channeling time the overloads are easily interrupted because we do not have a trait that gives us stacks of stability.

Proposed solution:
Reduce the amount of time necessary to wait before overloading to 2.5 seconds. The trait that adds 7% extra protection is not really noticeable, it could be replaced with a trait that gives us 2 stacks of stability when under the effect of protection. Make it possible for us to keep playing like we are used to when overloading (it would be like a defensive damage shield with a small radius).

New Elite:
Issues:
This for me is the most important skill to improve, the elementalists have been asking for for a good elite for a long time. Rebound is the complete opposite of that. It is impossible to communicate to our allies when the effect will take place, and the effect itself is barely noticeable. You don’t even know what skill has a reduced recharged because the class presses so many buttons. It could also be bugged at the moment.

Proposed solution:
Why not use the new alacrity boon? It is a great boon, it’s effect is clear and it is pleasing to see the green numbers. When an elementalist and a mesmer are in the same party they could chain alacrity together. It would give those 2 classes synergy together, something they do not really have at the moment.

Warhorn:
Issues
- When walking forward all the skills animations are behind you except for the moving water field. That is because the animations are really slow.
- While it is intended as a melee range weapon it doesn’t have what melee classes need: it has no leap, no evade, no blast, no stability, very low damage (Reaper cleave for 5000+, but warhorn skills often hit below 500). The boonshare is the best thing about it, but the rest is very limited.

Proposed solution:
- It requires some synergy with scepter for range damage: I would like to have ground target-table leap skills, the elementalist is a ranged class after all.
- Why not have Tidal Surge as a leap forward (with the water)?
- Cyclone should do tons of damage, it is a big storm in nature
- Lightning orb damage is too low, the attack range is too low as well
- Sand Squall should be a blast
- Sand Storm animation is too slow, It would be nice to have access to a new condition, like torment (it has potential for a condition build)
- Wildfire should be like Plague/Epidemic, fire should move from one foe to another. It could be a new type of more potent fire, like the green wildfire in Game of Thrones…

Shouts: Shouts are the best thing of Tempest so far, but instead of sharing auras they should do something new for the elementalist (retaliation for fire, torment for earth). The aura share should come from a cost instead, from the Water Grandmaster trait.

Tempest trait line
Issues
It has no damage modifiers and no recharge reduction on Shouts.

Proposed traits:
- Gain 2 stacks of stability when under the effect of protection / Gain protection on overload
- 20% reduced Shout recharge, shouts makes your current attunement overload immediately available
- 20% extra damage when under the effect of an aura

Thank you so much for reading this, I’ve had tons of fun in the beta. The new PvE map is amazing, the Reaper and Chronomancer are amazing, and I wished I played the new WvW map because it also looks amazing.

Since this seems to be the main feedback thread, I’ll post here.

The mastery system is clearer than the old system. However I had to explain to a friend how to set up the process for getting gliding and at the same time, map chat was explaining to another guy how to set it up.

Maybe at level 80 there can be an arrow that pops up and points to the Mastery button on the exp bar, or maybe it can “flare” and catch attention so that people will click on it as there isn’t much to draw people’s attention to this area.

I’ve yet to try tempest in wvw, but from my experience its not as great as a staff ele, simply because it has less water fields, less damage and less cc.

The warhorn skills is probably the best part of the tempest currently.

I’ll just link my previous post to save time.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Anet-I-Got-Your-Solution-Here

Love the new content so far even with the bugs.

My sister in law a Psychiatrist at Pensivania State University told me about a study of World of Warcraft players that included people who preferred or only wanted to tank or heal.

Maybe your on the way to actually making tanking, healing and support classes usefull to set up with your group and bring along. The desire to add versatility has of course failed as human nature tends to demand uniformity best example the zerk build only groups.

When the 15 or so man group I was with got ran over in one of the events as a WOW veteran I was already thinking how tank, off tanks, main and group healing, specialty buff up builds like Chronomaster well build would make the fight run way better.

ARNET might not have to make it mandatory to have you complex organize like this but it should always be that a tank/heal/support/dps group clears content faster. That way you can get and keep players who like these roles and jack of all trade players like me who like to tank, heal, support, and dps. What should be rare is anything that one single build for the whole group is the best way to do things.

I’ll add more maybe in a Tank, Healing and Support needed thread later.

I fought the Wyvern today… the boss itself was weak sauce… but the event chain leading up to it was a lot of fun. Thankfully people listened and didn’t bug out the “fill the baskets” event that starts it off.

I tested everything I wanted to and where. Revenant doesn’t seem quite ready for PvP so I wasn’t going to force that and get angry over losing because of something that wasn’t ready yet. Instead I did play one again in PvE and WvW. I tried every elite spec and had a lot of fun but it was overwhelming with so many of them. I probably should have just stuck with one for a longer period of time but my gaming time is stretched thin at times.

Love the new reaper elite spec for Necro. It plays well and gives Necro a build that can go full zerker, or build it a bit more tanky and rock some Minion Master style play and go toe to toe with some baddies.

The only thing I don’t like about it is the number 2 “Death’s Charge” in shroud. This ability more often than not ends up getting in the way than helping out. I realize it is meant as a gap closer, but in its current design a B-line charge in whatever direction I happen to be facing more often takes me OUT of a fight than puts me back in one.

Maybe it’s my mentality that’s flawed here, but when I pop shroud it’s because I’m ready to go hulk on some baddies and whoop kittens all over the place. Zipping halfway across the fight area to maybe hit one or two enemies as I fly past with little control, isn’t ideal. If the idea is that it’s a gap closer I’d rather it be something that does a shadow step and drops an aoe chill bomb.

As for Revenant, I love the design of the class, but I have a few concerns with it currently. It doesn’t seem to inherit from stats anywhere remotely as much as other classes. I can fully deck out in healing gear and not see much gain in output healing. Likewise I can go full zerker and not really notice a difference in damage enough to justify wearing that over something that will bulk up defensive stats.

Overall, the class diversity when gear comes into play feels very flat. Maybe this is by design so that you can swap legends without having to worry about being specifically geared for each legend, but what ends up being the result is that each legend ends up feeling lackluster with no way to really push those limits and focus on two primaries.

That’s the other part that I find could be improved. You can gear for a specific legend, as each has its clearly preferred stat set, but you are always bound to two. It would be really neat if the legends had a stat conversion you could spec into through their specific trait line. For example, Shiro could convert Clerics healing power to something like bonus power or crit while no longer receiving the benefit of healing power. This would allow for more build diversity in the class and gear stats as opposed to the only real option currently being celestial to account for every legend needing different stats.

Lastly, level design. Love love love it. No feedback here other than keep doing more of this!

Its really kinda hard to say “what I like” when a lot of stuff is still missing it feels like, or the restrictions make it feel so limited.

What I like:

• I like the map bonuses, they help with getting mats. But not sure if I am suppose to get one every event, or if its a chance. Sometimes I do and other times I dont, and I don’t know if this is intended or not. Also, it doesn’t really solve the problems in Orr where defending < assaulting.

• I like the monster abilities and variety. They make you think, aren’t easy, and you have to learn how to defeat them or when to dodge. The snipers though, need tuned down a bit, as in the heat of battle, you aren’t going to see them aim and basically one shot you, even with defense stats. Its like the karkas, except they had a good tell to know when to dodge or prepare your defense skills. Second are those mist dodgers or whatever, that do the Rev skill and blink around. Holy crap that needs either a long CD for them, or damaged tweaked, since if you don’t have a stun ready, its not going to end well. And don’t get me started on running into two Vets of them…

That’s really it. I can’t talk about anything else because the bugs really prevent me from doing so.

• So far, Mastery training is a drag, that I can’t properly say if I am leveling at a well enough pace, since most of the time I’m just grinding mobs, since barely any events with them bugging out, and night time having barely any.

On the mastery system, as said above its hard to judge exactly how well it progressed the mastery line. The first level to get gliding didnt take too long, that felt about the right speed. But after that, it was slow. Events were bugged so no credit was given after working on them for long periods. Some events took too long to do, such as the one where explosive charges need to be set to open a passasge way and the players defend with rifles. That took f o r e v e r. And then it bugged right after. After spending some
time in that area, an hour or two, my bar had progressed by about 1/4th of the bar.

I really want to start this statement off with, " Great Job Arenanet." I played the beta this weekend quite frequently, I can’t give a whole and concluding statement about HoT fully because it was such a small portion. But I will give my opinion about some quality of gameplay and map impressions.

I want to start off with the Elite Specialization Reaper. The specialization consisted of skills that had too much power. I used rampager’s armor and trinkets for the added condition damage and superior runes of might for the extra power. I’ve seen a lot of players complain about there not being enough condition damage or not enough conditions lasting a good length of time. But to that defense I say that the necromancer recieved a weapon that deals damage based on power not conditions. Chill is quite enough, I actually believe that it’s too much. We are trudging on the territory of heavy armor classes, with the invulnerable shroud. Not only do we not take damage but the Reaper’s Shroud does incredible amounts of damage; Executioner’s Scythe combo-ed with Soul Spiral can level the playing field of ten enemies. A warrior or even the revenent does not have this much power.

This rest of the main hand skills are awesome Grasping Darkness coupled with Nightfall is just wonderful.

The shouts on the other hand can use some re-thinking, I didn’t feel as if they fitted well with the reaper. More importantly I didn’t want use them because I had so much power at my disposal, I just used the damage dealing wells instead. The only shout that was wonderful was “Chilled to the bone.” Maybe you guys should play with the idea of actually using the shouts as self damage but party wide support skills. A great example of this is GW1 necromancer skill “Blood is Power.” There should be more chances taken; rely on degen. Its done in the silverwaste when the putrid vines emerge and it was done when you got too close to the colossal vine. Use those mechanics for skills. That’s all I have for the necromancer of the top of my head.

Now for the map.

Do not change the difficultly, if anything, make it more difficult. Even though the chain events were super fun, I started to find that with every new refresh of the chained meta events, things started to become more intuitive and easier to play (even though players didn’t understand the mechanics of the vinetenders). Make the Modrem go up and protect the Vinetenders, give them some ability to snipe us; fight fire vs fire. Make the Hylek, sabotage our plans of stealing the wyvern eggs. Engage the enemy more, they shouldnt just sit there and wait. The reason why I reiterate this so much is because after just the third time of doing Laranthir’s event meta chain. Not only were we successful but we had ample daytime to spare.

For the nighttime phase, simply make the enemies more tougher, I didn’t feel terror at night. It was actually more easier during the nighttime. I really can’t say much about night, because the bottom biome might be terror at night.

That’s all I have, great job Arena. Make it harder.

Ele squad inc

RubiBayer.8134:

Xillllix.3485:

Love everything (all the PvE and new professions) except Tempest!
Tempest is terrible in my opinion (elite is useless, overload mechanic doesn’t work, shouts overlap traits, new trait lines is bad, warhorn is worse than focus or dagger offhand even as melee). It must be improved tremendously before the release.

In comparison Chronomancer is amazing.

Can you try to be more specific? We are really using this beta event as a true beta, so in a beta testing environment, what you are kind of saying is “My elite skill and overload mechanics are not functioning at all”, and I know that’s not what you mean.

It would help the teams working on it to make it better if you could let us know “I am not enjoying the Tempest in its current state. Here are the particular things things that are making me not enjoy it, and here are things that I would like to see done to change it.”

In fact thats really what he means. Overload is a broken mechanics (in the bad way).

3triple cost … :
-5sec charge up time. Way longer than what an ele want and even more “CAN” spend in one attunement. PLUS prevent reactive gameplay)
-5sec channelling. Without somesort of protection, no stability, no reflect, no blocs, etc. there is no way it doesnt go interrupted or you get insta kille by a thief/mesmer (probably even warrior
-20sec cd. Anti synergy with the class mechanic and all the CORE TRAIT of the class, see elemental attunement and healing ripple for most famous ones.

… for a bad-medium reward:
Well thats simple: you can achieve as much healing, dps, cc provided by overload by actually … playing ele as we have been doing since release: attunement dancing.

For mor detail, see ele sub forum … yes your post feed even more the idea that dev ignore this sub forum (i can understand that YOU dont read this one, the forum is to big for one person to read everything but the message is not very good ^^)

My most constructiv post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Tempest-Warhorn-confirmed-Feedback-merged/page/32#post5322157 and the following one, had way to much to say to fill in one.

Note: this post was made before the BETA and basically everything is true, i even missed a few thing, and sadly this things arent good point for tempest …………….

I haven’t played the beta much, I am a new player in total. The first thing I noticed is the animations of the character that are improved. I liked that.

I will replay the beta and I am sure I can add more than that. I liked the flying thing, in the beginning I fear to jump, but after I took this step, I liked it!

The reason I feared, I thought its something that we equip in our character. So I was trying to find, where do I get the wings…

• PC and NPC voiced dialogue
  It really brings the characters to life and is definitely more engaging than having to go through text menus.
  There is a few tweaks to do about this though, there seems to be some kind of head tracking technology working with it and it currently messes up your character when putting the camera in front of it and turning it sightly left and right, his head turns around immediately.
  Some tweaks may be necessary about the range in which characters react too, a few times in the itzel village my character started responding to an NPC who seemed to be one layer up, I couldn’t hear him, nor see him and it just felt weird.
  I’m still not 100% happy about the game pretty much deciding the attitude of my character, and putting words in his mouth that may or may not fit how I want him to be, but that’ an RP issue that goes way back to the personal story and that I feel is wayyyyy too late to ‘fix’

• ‘Stronger’ Mobs
  Some of the new mobs are definitely more interesting to fight, and I got more than one "oh kitten!’ moments when encountering them for the first time until I tried to understand what they actually were doing.
  Veteran versions are genuinely scary this time around.
  There is a downside to that though, in a group, when following an event, it creates two different situations :
  ’ Their abilities don’t matter ’ : they die so fast they don’t even get to use it.
  ’ (Rytlock) Can’t see S***t ! ’ : So many players around, so many skill effect (especially the new ones who are flashier than ever) and you just can’t se the mobs using their skills and you get downed without even seeing it coming.
  This could be a big issue in the context of ‘challenging group content’.

• The event chains.
  The two event chains available were really fun to play and diverse enough so that it didn’t feel like the same thing all along (when they worked)
  Some parts could use some tweaking like the Laranthir sniping event in the ruins (when planting explosives) or the ‘egg planting’ event before the wyvern, they felt a little bit too long.
  The wyvern fight at the end of the Itzel event chain felt really underwhelming though, it could definitely be a little bit more challenging, cause as it is now it is really anti-climactic.
  Night time definitely needs similar events to be as engaging.
  We’re obviously missing huge parts of the overall map design but it didn’t feel like it was even possible to fail one of those events and should we fail it seems it will just be another of those ‘wait until the map resets’.
  It particularly hit me when doing the Itzel ‘prophet’ quest where you throw food at him, you throw food again and again, but there is no visible ‘progress’ to it, we don’t necessarily need a progress bar, but something like him getting annoyed halfway through or groaning between two sentences as an indication that what you’re doing actually has some kind of impact could be something.
  A little side note about event chains, make sure the end rewards of the chain, and the things you can buy at the vendor with the currency you get will be enough incentive for the players to come back to this partcular event chain, and/or the map as a whole, or else the replayability part of the map may suffer from it quickly.
  Also I second this post!

• Reaper feels awesome to play
  Reaper shroud in particular, you guys really nailed the ‘feel’ of it.
  Number/Utility wise it’s another story and still needs tweaking, but that’s for another forum post entirely.
  As a side note don’t forget to look back at the base class and squeeze some of that new found utility in it too it definitely needs it.

• The overall look and feel of the map
  The map looks awesome, the music is awesome (to the point that when the old combat music kicks in it almost ruins it), ambient sounds are great, textures, lighting, it really feels like a whole other game.
  Special mention to the Itzel village which is my favorite place in the part of the map we had access to, especially at night, whoever was involved with this particular place, you get a hug from me
  Really looking forward to what you guys have in store for us for the rest of the expansion.
  One small little thing though, at night there is some kind of ‘bloom’ effect on your character that makes it a pain to grab good screenshots of your human character with pale-ish skin without having the skin areas ‘glow’ and loosing almost every detail in the face.
  There are also some pathfinding issues with the Itzel when they sit down at night, some of them end up half clipping in the fences and decorations on the various platforms.
  One othe thing is that while exploring, gliding / mushroom jumping was fun it didn’t seem to be any fun little things to discover scattered all around in odd places.

Great BWE, thank you.

The Verdant Brink is a great map, took some getting used to the large changes in altitude, but it’s awesome. Loved the little details like cave entrances, steps on cliff edges, and paths that you miss by running past them. Itzel and their village are one of the highlights, really beautiful and atmospheric. The other wow place was the ancient ruins in the southwest. All those stairs, rooms, bridges, and sheer drops – great for exploration.

Flying and mushrooms are great. Easy to use with great wow factor. Would be nice to have extra secret things to find; personally, I love the hidden stuff.

Some of the events seemed either broken, or required a large number of people and took too long. Mostly got bored and left to do other things.

It would be great if Commander icons had the usual up or down arrow so we could tell if they’re above/below you (likewise for party members).

Didn’t have time to test the specialization for my necro, and a sword not really my sort of thing.

Mastery system is easy to use and understand. Painfully slow to rise, but then who wants to finish the expansion inside a week? I want to spend a year there.

Though I presume we’ve only been given a small sliver of map to play with; the overall Maguuma jungle experience is 9/10 with only the huge events and lack of small events letting things down. Thoroughly enjoyed my BWE, can’t wait for the next taste of jungle life.

Stronghold:
Stronghold is a fantastic PvP mode, but I would like a few differences:

-More Maps
-More challenges
-One capture point inside the bases.
-Fix the bug where you can not interact with the barrels! (Reported in-game)
-Maybe have a minimum level limit: For example 60. I don’t want to be mean with this, but it is not funny when I am on level 80, and the rest of my team is lvl 2-20.

Except bugs and Dragonhunter I’m enjoying everything. Dragonhunter was underwhelming.

Chronomancer is an op time lord.
Tempest may be less damage oriented but is very fun to play and adds a twist to ele.
Reaper IS FUN. Ok, maybe would benefit from a 5% damage increase, but the class is FUN and solid.
Revenant IS AMAZING, I love it. Still needs some polishing (survivability, bugs and energy) but feels amazing to play.

Verdant Brink IS GREAT. Here again: IS GREAT. (let’s ignore the bugs, it’s a beta)
Deadly enemies, stunning visuals and a lot of things to do in just 25% of the map.

Gliding is the best way to travel. Too bad we can’t bring it in old zones.

Gray.9041:

Revenant:
Shrio – both dual swords and shiro’s slot skills are fun, but leave the user pretty glassy, and it’s easy to die.

Use Rolling Mists Grandmaster trait along with the fury traits and with mostly Valkyrie gear to get a 20% crit chance you can not only get a nice health pool of almost 24k but can get 100% crit chance as well! If you can get your paws on some Superior Runes of Rage that might sweeten the pot.

Also, your heal (sorta) acts like the rangers Troll Unguent in that you want to trigger it prior to taking damage. Enchanted Daggers along with Impossible Odds can fill the health up pretty quickly.

I am currently really enjoying the Assassin Stance on the Revenant today. Got my teeth kicked in at first (a lot!) but now I can take down groups of foes within seconds:D Just be careful of that sword #3 skill…it can get ya killed quickly sometimes!

I am also enjoying the fact that we are given large amounts of gear to try out different builds. That is pretty cool indeed.

Tempest feels week.

Overload is not worth getting off. The three drawbacks (staying in an attunement, then channeling it, then getting a lock out of attunement) is far too hard for the reward. Either get rid of one of the drawbacks or make them less severe or increase the numbers (dmg, healing) on overload drastically.

I have been quite impressed with the beta, and liked some new skills and options for my ele. The new skills are fun to play with, not sure if they’re the most effective though.

I love the story instance, I hope there is a LOT more of it in release. Verdant brink was good and visually stunning. Events were fun, although bugged. However, I hope this isn’t all that’s in the expansion because I found maps like dry top and silverwastes got old pretty fast. Once I finish the event chains in those, I got over them because I’m not too concerned with the gear grind that they became.
It was good that they were living story releases… I would hope for some more dungeons… Some of the new skills would be really fun to try out in new dungeons.

Revenant was good, but not sure its my style of toon. I generally stick with 1 toon.

Stronghold seemed a little different this time round…. seemed like the doors got melted a lot faster than normal. I think there was the odd occasion where I would pick up supply and it didn’t count as well.

I look forward to progressing masteries and opening new areas. I feel like it could become a grind if the only way to get XP for them is doing world events.

so.. after 2 days of beta testing i think i can give some (pve) feedback.

——————————-Map——————————————

The map is insanely detailed. So many holes you poke your nose in, so many awesome looking places and its quite busy there too.. but you can actually find some quiet spots here and there. The day\night cyrcle needs a bit work…but then again it was said this is an early build of that system so lets leave it at that. The new mobs are insane. They actually put up a challenge and there are certainly no pushovers. See that big dino dude over there? Yea he will break your kneecaps if you dont fight him like you mean it. I love that there actually is the danger to get downed. The mobs are just hard enough to be able to solo em… and that is a perfect balance imo. 10\10
Gliding arround is a lot of fun, cant say much about the shrooms cause they are pretty buggy right now, but hey its a beta.. good enough.

————————————————- Revenant————————————————-

Yea we slowly get there…it still got its quirks and kinks but it actually was playable this time. If there is one thing that annoys me personally its the glow on the gloves.. its quite intense and would need imo a little down tuning. Everything else already got said about the class. Will i play it? Yea. Will it be a main or something i play a lot? I dont think so, i do like to assign my own skills and make creative builds…and with the rev its really restrictive. Locked weapon skills i can swallow.. but utility skills? Feels like its not my char. If i like 1 skill at 1 legend and wanna use it i got 4 other for me useless skills sitting on my bar (like i like the jalis heal but i dont need the rest of it for example).

————— Reaper——————————————————

First off.. im not a necro player. I leveled one to 80 and got it sitting on the far end of my char selection screen since a year now. Wasnt really my deal… the reaper on the other hand, yeap thats my kind of dish. Shouts are pretty neat, the new shroud is amazing and the gs isnt bad either. I feel there should be some damage buff to the whole deal but other then that.. yeap i like it a lot.

————-Dragonhunter——————————————————

To put it short.. its lame, sorry to say. Bow is slow and nothing special, the new virtues got nothing on the old ones, the traps are “eh”. I couldnt find my zen with this spec at all. Well it looks cool.. i give it that anytime but i prever my vanilla guard. Guard is by far not my main but even i can tell that this wont make many guard players happy :\.
All hail to those who like it, i however can life without it.

————Chronomancer——————————————————-

Well somebody clearly had a lot of fun designing this spec. Turning back time and resetting the fight? Yes please. Making your cooldowns faster? Yes please. Shield skills? Oil me up with that stuff. Im certainly not a pro mesmer but man.. the chrono is amazing. I´ll certainly upgrade my mesmer to a chrono asap.

————-Tempest——————————————————————
(so far no feedback, will try it after work if there is still time)

—————Masteries, Adventures, etc———————————————-

Neat idea to add progression after 80 without adding a gear grind. Yea i certainly look forward to unlock my masteries to get access to all the stuff the jungle puts on the table(and whatever gets added to tyria)

Adventures are fun little minigames, certainly a good time waster, ill certainly spend a lot of evenings just doing these.

————-Final thoughs———————————————

So far so good, i dont regret i pre-ordered the xpac. Heck you guys even gave a kitten about charr armor for once and i hope thats not exclusive to the revenant armor only…but i digress. The whole thing clearly needs some polish but i dont think that should be the issue. You finally found the way you wanna take the game and i fully support that route. A few months ago i wasnt able to say “yea go play gw2, its amazing”… but if the x-pac turns out like i hope it will, then i certainly will be able to recommend the game again.

I should add, Verdant Brink difficulty was pretty spot on. I don’t feel there was much to do other than events, and adventures. Adventures were good, but like the mini games, I doubt I’d play them too often.

My thoughts so far:

• Elite specs: Chronomancer and reaper look by far the most well-designed specs. Chronomancer is too awesome I just can’t compliment enough, shield is amazing and well-tuned, and its gameplay looks fantastic. Reaper looks very synergized and skills are creative, you have interesting choices in the traits to customize it even further. Dragonhunter felt a bit slow, but I liked the traits as they open interesting effects. Tempests looked the most underwhelming to me. I know it might sound sad to say, but the overload idea isn’t very good… sitting in an attunement to get a skill which causes less damage than Lava Font is the most depressing thing you ever created (I’m sorry but it’s the truth). Even in zerker it felt weak. I had a feeling that Overload Air could have a different behavior than sitting still as a Lightning Field (perhaps periodically applying retaliation to allies while it’s after-effect lasts?). Most traits not focused on overloads looked fine-tuned and worth grabbing. I hope you do something about the overloads, they don’t feel worth casting… damage coefficient, and channeling unprotected are points you should review. Warhorn skills felt much promising! I feel the lack of might generation (as an ele!) a bit odd, but some skills offer interesting support gameplay. I have a feeling that damage-focused tempests will be possible with air due to #5, and that’s a great thing because not everyone will play tempests for support! And earth #5 allows eles to drop Glyph of Storms (Sandstorm) for damage mitigation. Shouts are awesome, but I still feel the need to grab two cantrips (Ether Renewal for condi. removal, and Armor of Earth to channel overloads, therefore wasting a slot). You could change Hardy Conduit to grant 3 stacks of stability for the channeling duration, or 3sec. Really, in a sense elite specs are already limiting, don’t limit our utility choices because of the mechanics, it’s unfair.

• Verdant Brink and PvE: Verdant Brink is amazing! I love it so much already. The environment, the itzel, the day/night gameplay. The mobs you’ve designed already reject pure zerker, and this is a good step. Smokescale requires positioning not to get melt down, and the mordrem archer guys are awesome, their rapid fire and line AoE are very deadly. Raptors are lovely, you could try and do groups of three evolved raptors that ignore direct damage. THAT would be very tense! Although events were mostly bugged, I could do some sort of meta-event (I think?) that’s Colossal Vine. I like the Marionette-inspired split-up events you’re adopting, the only thing that’s beyond your powers is making people listen. They fail most of the times because they’re just smashing buttons, but I think it’s somewhat because of guaranteed beta access for pre-purchasers, and it’s likely we won’t see this happen after release.

• Mastery system: It’s taking quite some time. It feels time-consuming, but I think that’s fine (and expected). I’ll have to see how you work out exp gains to balance progress, it’s difficult to tell how it feels right now since bugs limited our progress towards maxing masteries, and there is that bug that you get to a city, grab the bouncy chest, port to Verdant Brink and open it there, making you progress faster.

• Map rewards: It’s bugged at times, and I didn’t understand what was going on (not much communication though the game, UI felt lacking).

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

I like how for the first 14 hours no one seemed to show interest in this thread, then a Red replies and everyone is interested :P

I know right?

No one liked my thread until Rubi came in.
huff

Lol

@Windu, @Lara, that’s because it indicates devs are listening. Even when they say they are reading, it attracts more people when they see a red post from a dev or someone from community team who suggests they’ll pass the information onwards.

Yah. And also, they don’t seem to combining similar threads so most get a few posts then disappear off the front page. People look for a thread that will stick for awhile to post in and one with a red post is a good candidate.

Manifibel.8420:

I heard from MattVisuals and WP’s stream that after the first burn phase on the Wyvern it melted. This is weird to me since the random Champions as part of events should be easier than a Wyvern in terms of the Breakbar, and right now its like its the other way around. It needs some tweaking, but the difficulity is great (I haven’t fought the Wyvern, so I dont know about that fight sadly Will have to go there in the remaning time.)

Theirs a Wyvern to fight? Where? All I can find are partial event chains that always bug out. :-(

I got a lot of fun, and a lot of sadness during the beta. What I tried and my feedback on it:

• Story – It feels great so far. A little of challenge, and good acting plus the awesome cutscene makes it feels very good. I hope that this feeling is not only on firt stpe, but it is taken to the whole story.

• Pve, Map, Mobs and masterys – I really like how enemy’s are a threat into the jungle. Smokescale is the best and most frightening mob there, I really like how it is challenging pass trough. The events are still buggy, so hard to take feedback, but I like the concept of needing coordination to complete (i.e. the even where all shielders need to go down at same time to be able to hit the giant monster). Masteries completely have a “Metroidvania” feeling, I love it and it seens well places on ammount of xp recquired for each tier. I feel that some of the further masterys are not worth to take tough. I really thik that the end-line mastery’s should be something really nice that makes us want to get it. but as far I’ve seen, most of end-line masteries are not very interesting.
• Revenant – Ok, here things get salty. The revenant is very terrible to play with, I feel it like being my necro 2.0 in therms of play style. Energy management shared trough all skills are very strange and limiting. There is a huge lack of movement skills, and so revenant seens a like a dumb slow profession. The ebst setup I found was Jalis/Shiro, with the combo Hammer/ Sw+Axe. Hammer have the highest priority and it is fun to play with, all other weapons are not really nice to go.
• Tempes – Full sadness mixed with awesomeness. I LOVE the overloads. I really like to fight large mobs, and the overloads seens to be designed for that. The general recharge is not so bad, and don’t lock me out too much, the problem is: Its weak. Far too weak. Shouts are mostly not that great, and I couldn’t seen then replacing my usual set if utilitys. I use feel the burn, and thats all. And finally, the worst of the worst : The elite “Rebound” ist so awnful useless, that it don’t need a rework, it need to be completely replaced. I gave specific feedback on it on elementalist forum, so will not take longe here, but take note – rebound is the worst elite I’ve seen so far.

EDIT: A little note, THANKS AND CONGRATS to the leven design team. Verdant brink is godful well make, a kittenon of details, and no matter how much I play, every time I log in there I am amazed by how great it is, and amazing/beautiful.

Thought I’d tack my impressions in here as well.

I spent most of my time in the beta testing the Reaper and working through as many of the events in Verdant Brink as possible so that’s where most of my thoughts are going to be focused.

For the Reaper, as some others have already mentioned, the greatsword skills feel a little clunky due to their longer cast times. It felt strange to want to run into a pack of mobs (like those vicious Pocket Raptors) and then have to wait for attacks to go off. I remedied this largely by pre-casting shouts (more on them in a bit) as I started to approach mobs so they would go off as I reached the pack, but I think the spec would be served pretty well by having at least one greatsword attack (maybe #2?) with a lower cast time so the weapon feels like it can stand on its own without relying on specific utility choices. I think that would also make the slow #1 combo feel better if there was one other quicker attack to weave in between.

Reaper’s Shroud, by contrast, was a lot of fun to play in. The attacks felt much more responsive, the visuals were amazing, and I didn’t even care when I accidentally charged off a cliff in shroud. Twice. As time went on I started to lean more toward a playstyle where I would do most of my actual fighting in shroud and only using my base form for initiation and shouts in between shroud sessions.

Speaking of the shouts, they felt pretty much spot on. I love the different options they give for dealing with packs of mobs, whether through more damage or CC that synergizes really well with certain trait choices. As much fun as I had in shroud, the shouts were my favorite part of the spec. They felt impactful and presented tactical decisions that felt meaningful rather than just spamming them all.

As for Verdant Brink itself and the initial masteries, I love the complex layout of the zone (and this is only the first layer!) that really makes you feel the need to explore and figure out the lay of the land before really digging in. I’m eager to see a more complete version of the night cycle on the map to see just how much it changes things overall. Also when all the events were running, pacing felt good for gaining exp to train the initial gliding mastery.

Speaking of, I may or may not have spent 10-15 minutes after I trained that mastery just jumping off a cliff, gliding around to the bottom of the hill up to the cliff, then repeating. If it wasn’t for my friend wanting to move on, I probably could have spent even longer doing so. So much fun, I can’t wait to train the rest.

As one last thing, the difference in dialogue between Sylvari player characters and non-Sylvari player characters is a really nice touch that I was hoping for and am really glad to see.

All in all, great stuff so far, I’m looking forward to the next event!

First off, thank you for this BWE because I enjoyed it.
I did encounter some problems, much like others did that I hope can be resolved before the next BWE (whenever that may be).

Snipers and Smoke monsters (I can’t remember their actual names) might need some adjustments. I was in a mix of Valk and Knight armor when a Sniper mowed my Dragonhunter down in three volleys. As someone else mentioned, in the heat of battle that’s going to be a bit of a problem to deal with.

My second problem with the mobs were those blasted smoke hound creatures.
When they are in multiples I can’t tell how I can kill just one. I know there’s some pulling required, but every time two showed up I just didn’t want to play in that area.

Aside from that, I didn’t mind the mobs. I like the Mordrem and even enjoyed playing the story mission as a Sylvari. I do note though that at the end, talking with Rytlock, there’s always a wave coming to kill you after the mission is over. That might need to be looked at, because it does ruin the ability to interact with folks after the mission is “over”.

I’m slightly jealous over those who got to play against the Wyvern, because most of the maps I encountered kept bugging out on events. The Itzel one was notorious for raising people’s hackles.

As for professions, I’d say the Dragonhunter’s main attack feels weak. Not by means of actual damage, but presentation. I didn’t get time to play out the Tempest sadly, but I did begin liking the Mesmers again when my Chronomancer was wielding Scepter/Shield and Greatsword as the swap. Now that was more enjoyable than I realized.

I really can’t wait for another BWE so I can pull up the Tempest and maybe get the Druid, assuming you guys have that available by then.

Apart from admiring how amazing the scenery in the map is. I spent the majority of my time gliding around. Just trying to get to new locations with gliding, I really enjoyed gliding on the middle roots. Although when I would be expecting a solid root and found out it was empty was sad, fell horribly to my death. I participated in any event I came across, they are fun and I think a couple changes to night time events will bring those up to level with daytime.

Overall very excited for this expansion, and can’t wait to try out the next set of elite specs.

I liked the small part of the map we’ve seen. Just don’t forget that we saw only about 1/6 of this map.

Then I was quite surprised that I liked the Tempest (even with Warhorn) and especially the Reaper – that was so much fun to play. I found the Dragonhunter very boring and was rather disappointed by the Revenant in general. Maybe this will change. Shiro was fine but fehlt somewhat underwhelming. But hey, I didn’t play it too long, so this may change :-)

Revenant: I spent Friday on my Revenant trying to see if it impressed me any more then the last beta test, the Shiro add was nice but the class did not really do it for me. Now granted I am not a melee type of player(Don’t have a Thief, War or Guard) so maybe it is just not my type of class.

Tempest: Yesterday I rolled a Tempest and used that for the rest of my testing. I did all of my testing solo in case that matters. My Non-Beta Main is an Ele so I had some high expectations for the Tempest but I must admit the Tempest left me somewhat flat. The variety as compared to a standard Ele was barely noticeable. I don’t feel that (at this point in testing) it offered me much ‘shine’ enough for me to consider switching over to Temp from Ele. I do understand that from a mechanics standpoint you don’t have to “switch” but right not I would just continue playing my Ele as is. So my overall feel for the Temp=Lukewarm

New Map: I really liked the new map. I spent the first part of my testing exploring and opened up all the shrouded areas. The layout takes some time to get used to but was not much of a problem.

Masteries: This was a bit confusing. I had 2 points from completing the first storyline but I couldn’t do anything with them that I could figure out. I spent a lot of time clicking on everything I could find just to get something to happen, to no avail. I dinged on my level during a fight and a help box kept popping up telling me gliding was available. Thank you for telling me but I am in middle of a huge battle and can’t take time to look at the UI right now. No need to keep telling me with every new kill.
{Possible Bug:}Once the Mastery bar was full it didn’t look like my kill experience was registering till I applied a point, then it went to zero and started working again.

Gliding: Kind of a bad start here. When I first got onto the map I plummeted to my death trying to glide before I realized I did not know the gliding basics yet. Ok, my bad, I thought it was going to be turned on from the get go but no biggy it will come soon.
Now I finish my Gliding Training and apply a point. When I was running down small slopes the gliders were kicking in automatically. Ok that was fine, so I figured that once I jumped off a cliff they would kick in and away I’d soar.
So off the cliff I went and plummeted to my death. Hmm, the Gliding Basics said I should be able to glide now so WP, run to the cliff… splat again. I must be missing something. Checked the Mastery again for an on switch, nope. Checked my backpack for a glide option, nope. Tried running off the cliff 3 more times, splat, splat and splat.
The last time after I died a tooltip popped up saying ‘space bar for glider wings’. Ohhhh now you tell me. WP, run off cliff, spacebar, woosh out they come and away I soar.
Now, once I got the space bar tip, (would be nice to see that on the Gliding Basics somewhere), Press the Spacebar to Gain access to the glider so that you can glide like a squirrel across the highest points of the Heart of Maguuma. everything was fine from there.
Gliding was Awesome! I spent the next hour or so just jumping from the highest spots I could find and soaring for as long as I could; usually resulting in 1 million points of damage but that was just fine, WP, Jump and away I go. Repeat, repeat, repeat…

Mob Difficulty: As a soloing Tempest set up with 70% Zerk/30% Soldier with mostly Strength and Force upgrades, I found no problem with the single Mobs including the Vets. I was usually good up to about 3 in a group without much issue. So the difficulty seemed fine to me.

Mob Respawn: Some of the respawns seemed a bit fast. There were battles where the dead ones behind me were respawning quicker than I could kill the ones in front of me. Sorry I do not recall specific mob types where this was happening. It was not everywhere on the map just certain areas. I will try to note where next time.

Events: Most of them were not working for me. The escort events worked fine. The flagpole event was not active the 6 times I check it as I ran by. The Feed the villagers event seemed to just go on forever stuck at 9/10 till I just left. I did complete one event that I did not have a clue I was even doing.

Overall: I’d say it was a successful test. Some expected problems to be sorted but all in all, interesting.
Next time, Druid please.

I hear a lot of nay saying tempest, I quite liked it a lot. I have an ele who kinda hangs out and looks lonely most of the time, the direction that they’re heading with the tempest is exciting in a fashion where my old now likely misanthropic ele will finally get some face time. I think that the overloads are a great new mechanic, but need to be a bit more worthwhile to opt in to, instead of doing anything else. I would use my water overload to run the hell away in, and personally, i think it’s hilarious and fun. I like the aesthetic of the earth one, but the damage is way too poor for the pay off. I’d actually left the celestial set on (laziness) and was surprised with the general damage I could pull off. I loved the warhorn as well, super fun with water and lightning attunement. Lightning warhorn skill 5 is just a lovely idea. However, I honestly felt that Dragonhunter was the most lacking. I think making the virtues more of a big deal is a great thing. However, when it came to the actual longbow weapon skills, I found them lackluster. The guardian barrage skill 5 was great control, but general damage was slow and low and though skill one “can” bounce, it’s never worthwhile when it doesn’t. skill 2 just needs to have all the damage if you’re forced to stay in place, or just more damage if you could move. It’s just heavily unsatisfying to have a charged shot and do mediocre damage. Ranger skill 2 can (depending) easily get 10k while stacking vuln on multiple hits. I think maybe longbow skill 4 works, I don’t know what I’d add to make it better, it feels a bit meh. I had some fun with the traps, and with the way you guys are working maps now, I feel it will be a lot more useful than it would have been in the original game.

But please, keep up with the immersion of the story. I felt in the previous original storyline (zhaitan) it was very cut and paste. As you’ve been continuing to do Living Story you guys are really starting to keep me immersed. The conversation cutscenes weren’t working because with the dissolve that would always take me out of the immersion for a second. Now, we have our character actually interacting with npcs with audible dialogue, and giving us a bigger scope of our character’s personality. Telling Bram off for running off was just such a small thing, but it makes my character engaged, and therefore me engaged as well. Your storytelling has vastly improved, and with the scope of the maps that we have now, with our new ability to glide fill me with wonder and a sense of exploration for the sake of exploration (not gettting map completion)

Thank you.

Xillllix.3485:

Proposed traits:
- 20% extra damage when under the effect of an aura

Tempest is not supposed to give you more damage modifiers. Elementalist with its core traits already have very high damage. Tempest as I wrote earlier is support/heal as far as I used it (PvP mostly)
I agree with a lot of what you wrote but this is not a thing it should have, and especially since its so easy to get auras with Tempest, it would be broken.

I tested out the Reaper over the weekend and loved it. My Necro runs with siphon wells and it works great with the reaper. My build was Spite: 2/6/7, Blood: 3/6/7, Reaper: 2/4/8. Although I did not play much of the new HoT map, I did take this character to areas I was familiar with and thoroughly enjoyed the chaos this spec brought out.

The only other class I tested was the Revenant. The entire play-style of this class is different from anything we have on the table. That is great in my opinion, but takes some getting used to. I know a lot of work has been put into this class and I look forward to the end result.

All in all, HoT will be completely worth the wait.

What I loved:
- Scenery and architecture are what Guild Wars does better than all the rest. Here too, plus verticality. Great map.
- Reaper Shroud. Slow, but has that powerful juggernaut feeling.
- Tempest overload animations.
- Companions and enemies don’t feel like braindead pushovers anymore.
- The added mesmer mechanics
- The new mesmer specilisation synergizes very well with a lot of playstyles adding depth and viable combinations. Well done i think.