Guild Wars 2

Manifibel.8420:

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.

Huh no it wouldn’t. Fire has 20% damage modifiers + might and power boosts. Air has 40% modifiers + precision/ferocity boost. Water has 30% damage multipliers. Arcane has potentially 14-20% damage multiplier from boons. A raw 20% from auras would barely compensate for the damage lost in fire. This is even more important considering how low the overload damage and warhorn damage is.

Unfortunately I didnt get to spend as much time testing as i wanted, bad RL, but I did get to play a little and here’s my feedback.

I tried the reaper, chronomancer and the tempest. They were all awesome. Especially loved the tempest.

The Tempest

I dont know why some people felt it was weak, felt pretty strong to me though I do agree that 5s channeling for overload is problematic. I disagree that charging should be reduced, yes 5s in spent in an attunement is a lot but then again thats the cost for overload, it should be a small sacrifice to gather the energy needed to unleash it all at once sort of thing. The channeling on the other hand is not simply a cost, its a punishment in that you’re essentially making yourself vulnerable. Chances are unleashing an overload will result in giving a couple of free hits to your enemy rather then a benefit for sticking to a particular attunement.

The Mastery System

maybe i skimmed over it a bit too quickly and missed something but it was really non intuitive how the whole thing worked at first. Its like okey I earned a mastery point now how do I progress this line? essentially it took a little while until I figured out mastery points was something I would need later, that first playing the game would result in an unlock I needed in order to spend masteries. that didnt feel intuitive and perhaps will need some explaining to players.

Also I dont believe the game told me how to use glinding once I unlocked it. I personally knew what to do from watching POI but not every player does so perhaps a little tutorial once you unlock a feature would be a good idea.

Map

Map was amazing, in a lot of different ways. Visually its stunning, its so dense and the ambiance, ohhh some areas at night look incredible. Awesome work. Mobs are also much improved, they got great animations and a variety of attacks as well as new mechanics. I was also impressed how many different kind of mobs one can find in that little 25% of the map. Cant wait to properly explore this and all the new maps.

Adventures

Only got to try the burn the tendrils one. But it was fun, There has to be a trick I missed something cause the best I managed to get was around 70 I believe which is like 1/2 the best score and thats with quite a few runs under my belt. Ability to restart at any point is a life saver but had I not know you could do that through watching POI I wouldnt have know it was possible at all. Some perhaps a little pop up or something should explain that to players when they start an adventure?

All in all I am very happy with what I’ve seen so far so keep up the good work! cant wait for the next BWE, hope I will have more time to play a lot more next time

There were a lot of things to love here.

1. I love the specializations for the Mesmer, Ele, and Necro. They were all fun to play and the additions seemed natural instead of forced.
2. I would enjoy the guardian specialization as well, but the skills seemed very slow and you cannot trait for them very well. I still think the specialization will be very cool once tweeked.
3. The map are incredible and we are just seeing a piece of it. Beautiful artwork and design.
4. I only mastered gliding and did not try the others that were available, but I really enjoyed being able to glide. I loved it for many reasons, but one big one was that I got to see parts of the map from a different perspective. That was awesome.
5. I like the new creatures, but would like to see the return of some of the old ones from GW1. Thornstalkers, Life Pods, and Fog Nightmares to name a few would be an awesome addition and fun for us long term GW players.
6. Even though I know this is not the final iteration, I loved the switch between night and day.
7. The events that worked were fun to participate in.
8. I played the Revenant and it was much improved over the last beta. I really liked the Shiro abilities.

Let me start with – I started playing GW2 about 2 years ago and the highest lvl toon I had was a lvl 24 ranger, then my computer crapped out and I quit for awhile. I decided to come back 3 or so weeks ago and took my ranger from 24 to 76 (with a few ToK).

When I started HoT I realized I wasn’t skilled enough to tear it up but I had a blast! The map is great. I assume the revenant will ne born somewhere in the expansion so that means there will be a lot of lower lvl zones on this map too, right?

I started with a revenant and really had fun, even dieing a lot! I then tried an Elle, Warrior, Guardian, Necro… as many as I could. I found that waiting for a group and joining in was the best way to survive and then later found myself saving people that were in trouble, so I was getting better and that what is supposed to happen.

I never really learned the characters but I made it. Like I said, it was a fun experience.

The map was great – Itzl took me some time to learn how to maneuver, again, I can see where practice and more practice will fix that. The gliding and all the different lateral (?) levels were fun to explore.

I didn’t get past the big worm in the story but I did do that twice and the second time felt like I was making some headway and helping. I love making new characters and trying them out so I spent my time doing that. I know I didn’t make the most of any of the toons but can see where it’s going to be awesome when I land on one and lvl it up.

So, I’m a newbie, casual, semi- hardcore player, which I feel most players are, and I LOVED it! It’s not going to kick my kitten I can promise you! Now I have to decide what my new toon will be totackle HoT… I don’t think it’ll be my ranger.

Thanks Anet, for a great weekend and a great game and community.

Galen Grey.4709:

The Tempest
I dont know why some people felt it was weak, felt pretty strong to me though I do agree that 5s channeling for overload is problematic. I disagree that charging should be reduced, yes 5s in spent in an attunement is a lot but then again thats the cost for overload, it should be a small sacrifice to gather the energy needed to unleash it all at once sort of thing.

Tempest is week because it does less damage than a lava font, and while casting a lava font you can do other things. The damage isnt even ranged. Look at the sort of damage melee classes or the reaper are doing, 3-5k cleaves.

In competitive context 5 second staying still in an attunement before camping a low damage skill for the following 3-5 seconds just doesn’t work and isn’t worth the risk. Mesmers and thieves can interrupt you and burst you down in a tiny fraction of that time.

I really enjoyed the time I got to play this weekend but didn’t get to play as much as I’d have liked.

Reaper – I really really liked it! I loved the way my character shouted, “your soul is mine” on the heals so please do not change that! I giggled every time I heard it. Reaper seemed easier to pick up on to me and my current level 80 necro has been stabled a while but I’m thinking she will make a comeback in HoT.

Dragonhunter – I didn’t care much for this one but it was also the first one I tried so I probably didn’t take as much time on the build as I should have since I was anxious to get to the new stuff. Still, the longbow seemed kind of weak to me. The #5 skill was cool but the others seemed to just get me killed because I wasn’t doing enough damage. I gave that one up pretty quickly. The graphics for the bow was pretty cool though.

Chronomancer – I enjoyed playing this one. Would have been better if I’d had the armor and runes that I would probably put on mine but given the selection we had, it was enjoyable. Really liked the clock graphics on the wells! I would have liked more time on this one but I got stuck on the reaper once I tried it and didn’t want to go back to the others.

Tempest – I feel like it has good potential and I enjoyed the time I played it. I’m sure it would have been a lot better if I was really skilled at putting builds together but sadly I’m not.

I think all of the classes with the right builds and armor (and a little practice) would be great. Since I wasn’t sure about what would be erased after today, I didn’t want to put anything other than what came with the character on them.

The Map – The gliding was awesome! BEST THING EVER! I was jumping up on rocks just to get a little height so I could glide. Yeah, I’m one of those people that jumps as they run as well. I hope that we can eventually get the gliding to carry over into the older maps after HoT is released. I’d love to jump off some vista on a snowy high peak and soar down to the ground. I know that may be too much to ask though. I hope we can eventually increase our mastery to glide for longer periods of time. I’m not sure if that was on the mastery stuff or not. It was a lot to take in.

I loved all of the different levels in the area we were in and the jungle areas. I can only imagine how much fun it will be when we get the full picture.

The different creatures provided a definite challenge. I’m wondering if some of the events weren’t bugged but it was a case of us not knowing how they worked? I know on one event, we did what was listed under the event but couldn’t damage the vine boss until someone said we had to kill the vine tenders (not sure if that is what they were called) at the same time before we could damage the boss. I had a lot of fun on that one!

Overall, I really enjoyed the time I was able to play and I look forward to the surprises that await us in HoT. I was concerned about my purchase initially but now I feel I will definitely get my money’s worth in the end. My only regret is that I didn’t find that Wyvern fight that someone mentioned in a prior post.

Mightybird.6034:

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.

well, since ele is already the class with the highest damage in the game, of course tempest wasn’t going to be even more offensive. It added a lot of utility however.

Overall I loved the Beta, knowing fully well that it was a Beta. Yes there were problems with “bugged” events, well they are being called bugged but perhaps we as a group didn’t do something correctly. An example of this was the colossal vine events where the vine tenders have to be killed. The first day it was immediately labeled bugged because the vine tenders didn’t stay dead. Though, with the cooperation of other players when we took them down at once we were able to kill the vine and advance.
The glider was nice, I spent more time than I should have just flying about.
I tried the Revenant last Beta and wasn’t impressed, I know a lot of others were, so I tried it again and felt the same. I will wait until HoT goes live and progress a Revenant normally so I can get a feel for the Mechanics.
So I created an Ele (my prime) and it was a lot of fun even though the armor and accessories wouldn’t give me the same Ele I normally play. I am definitely looking forward to HoT live to be able to play my Ele.
I also liked the fact that others were playing their normal professions and the synergy seemed to come natural for wandering groups and Pugs. It was a very enjoyable weekend, once again really looking forward to HoT going live.
The one serious problem I had was the Mastery system. Yesterday I leveled up, got the Mastery point, but was unable to spend it. No matter how many clicks or tries on other Mastery’s I could not get the point spent. So the achievement bar was stuck at 80 and with almost every kill, or event completion I got a popup telling me (i believe) that my mastery was complete click here to spend mastery point. Very annoying, especially when a pack of pocket raptors is exactly where the popup occurs. So that took some of the fun out of playing. Perhaps there should be a Wiki that the developers only use to convey information on what is supposed to occur with popups, Mastery points, Glider use (a lot of questions in chat about how to use the glider), Events, etc. Not a giveaway necessarily, but enough information to know when something is working correctly or not. For whatever reason I found the glider very intuitive, but others had a real problem launching until they were told how.
I also like that my toons now have a voice in these group discussions, nice work there.

All in all Kudos to Arena Net, I can’t wait to explore the upper and lower portions of this area, job well done so far.

Here’s some pvp/WvW feedback:
Class is very entertaining once you get a handle on it. Learning curve is high, but I like a challenge
Really good layout, and though some things are unrefined, it is overall just entertaining to ay. Lots of useful utility and a very unique play style

Stronghold is my favorite pvp mode…it’s just really fun

P.S. I’ve had so much fun on rev I’m going to main it

Kidel.2057:

Mightybird.6034:

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.

well, since ele is already the class with the highest damage in the game, of course tempest wasn’t going to be even more offensive. It added a lot of utility however.

To say the truth, Chronomancers added a lots of utilities, new boon (Alacrity) new conditions (Float and slow), quickness control on a weapon,time travel as healing/recharge.

Tempest gave us more of what we already had, but it’s not good enough to replace our current weapons/utilities/elites. Warhorn damage is so low why would anyone even equip it?
The only new utility it adds is boon sharing, and it comes at the sacrifice of having a usable weapon in combat, when reaper can cleave downs with 6-8k on reaper shrouds we are meant to be running around sharing boons on a 30 seconds cooldown and doing 250-500 damage here and there? Just why? You can heal better with staff, you can cc better with staff and daggers, you can stop projectiles better with focus which is a better support weapon all around (even staff is better at support).

The new elite is literally useless, nobody even sees the difference, it’s impossible to communicate when it takes effect, and the fight is usually over by the time it takes effect. It needs a redesign and it doesn’t even make sense with the Tempest theme.

The beta was fun the tempest elementalist was not so great the Overload skill,is not worth being an elite skill also in the beta around the izel village i noticed around there my friends and i had really bad frame rates and this caused me to have to tap the movement key so i dont fall off,please find a way to fix this? But all around the beta was fun.

Getting some good thoughts in here for the devs

My two pennies worth on the revenant……I couldn’t get to grips with it.
That’s is mainly due to the way I learn professions and how they play and build and integrate into the game…..I have to start at level one to understand what each thing does…so all I can really say about it is that listening to other players I know well who have high standards, it is an amazing class to play.
I did play around with ventari aspect just to see what this tome skill was about and I instantly started forming so pretty decent support and heal builds in my head….I still miss monk though so hoping it can make something like that out of it.

I also want to quickly share my thoughts, at least on the stuff I’ve been able to test.

The good stuff

1. The map looks and feels really nice. Didn’t make any screenshots yet, but I know when the expansion is live my Print Screen button will burn down.
2. Gliding is so kitten awesome!
3. The Reaper, was my favorite elite specialization so far. Not sure if it can find a place in the dungeon groups, but it was fun as hell.
4. Chronomancer was also nice, the wells seem to be pretty good and the new shatter is awesome.
5. My toons speaking, it really helps to get immersed in the story.
6. Rytlock, kitten Rytlock. Nuf said.

The I don’t know how to feel about it stuff

1. Masteries… I could only unlock the first tier (or is it track?) of Gliding. Dungeons didn’t progress the exp bar, and since there were no events in Verdant Brinks I could barely progress it. I couldn’t really get a glimpse of how fast is to progress them for non-hardcore people.
2. The Revenant feels a little bit like a wannabe Thief, instead that he is not going invisible but traveling through the mists. Also, the mace+axe combo feels so superior to any other weapon sets that the rest of the weapons feel a bit odd. Also, Shiro legend was totally not what I expected, and the healing ability on Shiro’s was pretty week in my opinion, I always had to switch out to have a proper heal.
3. The Dragonhunter, love the name… but it felt reaaaaaally weak. I was expecting something totally overpowered, but just found support traits, and the longbow doesn’t really fit with the Guardian.

The bad stuff

1. Outposts, I don’t really understand them. I see an icon in the map, but then there is nothing when you get there.
2. The Tempest was not good at all for me. Tried the overloads, and deleted it. Was thinking about PvP when I tried this one, and honestly, if you active an overload, you are pretty much dead meat. Maybe it is because the Ele is already in a very good position, but I don’t think the Tempest is providing anything to the Ele right now. The Warhorn skills are all melee oriented, but all of them looks worst than off-hand dagger or focus skills.
3. The Mobs in the open world, they look great for group content, but when the people starts rotating through maps with better rewards, what will happen when only 1 or 2 people are doing the events in older maps?

(wrote this last night but forgot to submit; I think other people have posted by now as well, but I’m still submitting this)

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.”

There’s plenty of this feedback on the elementalist forum, but I can say specifically about the two things mentioned:

The elite feels completely useless. The timing is weird (when its cast vs when the effect hits) and it’s hard to control which skill it ends up applying to. The effect is weak: an elite that reduces the cooldown of a single skill, vs the mesmer shatter that completely resets multiple cooldowns). Presumably this is because it applies to allies, but given the timing issue this is hard to coordinate in an organized group, and useless in PUGs or open world. A better effect would be an AoE cooldown reduce or reset on all abilities.

Honestly, the elementalist has always had pretty weak elites, with the most common one used being fiery greatsword, not for its damage but for its mobility. That right there is telling, and it’s astonishing that they’ve managed to add a new one that’s even worse.

I’ve seen a lot of complaints about overload on the ele forums, but speaking for myself I’ll say that the effects are not strong enough to warrant the overhead for using them: attune, wait 5 seconds, channel the ability, risk being interrupted, get an underwhelming effect, then have an increased cooldown on that attunement after swapping out. The fire overload isn’t too bad, but air doesn’t feel any better than the dagger auto-attack, and the water overload (3s channel) is only about twice the healing of cleansing wave (instant cast).

On top of all that, the entire mechanic feels contrary to the play style of the elementalist with how much it interferes with attunement swapping. Without a total rework (which seems unlikely) some things that might help would be: being able to cast (and ideally attunement swap) while channeling — I imagine this would create concerns about the animations (how do you show the dagger fire autoattack while the tempest is spinning around for instance), in which case it would help to revisit the effectiveness and impact of the overload, as well as the build up and cooldowns.

Since this is a thread about what we’re enjoying and I don’t want to derail it too much (but still wanted to provide some specific feedback asked for), I’ll also add two things I’ve really enjoyed about the new content:

The environments are amazing. I love the verticality of the new zone, especially combined with the bouncing mushrooms and glider. Being able to move up and down quickly (once those masteries are unlocked) and cross open spaces is awesome, and gliding is a blast.

I also really enjoyed the living story mechanic of my character talking while running around instead of just during cut scenes. It made me feel a lot more involved with what was going on, and much more connected to my character and what she was doing.

Revenant – Limited choice of utilities is made worse by the fact that all skills compete for a single scarce resource, energy. Why waste it on anything other than the best available one?

Personally, I’d remove the mechanic entirely, or at least from weapon skills.

I enjoyed everything I played this weekend Bugged events were obviously annoying but they know about those. The Reveant changes were awesome, though I didn’t use weapon swap much as the two swords were great in most cases. The bugged 3 skill was a bit of a pain, but Roy already knows about that one

I took my Tempest into CoF to get a feel for how Warhorn and the Tempest works in a situation I am used to playing in normally. (Unfortunately I totally forgot about trying out the shouts). Overall it worked really well and fit into my standard build smoothly (usually run dagger/focus).

Might stacking and spreading was neat and seemed better than on live currently (also stacking all the burns!). I really like how directional the warhorn skills are and that I have to actually pay attention to what I am doing instead of just hitting them mindlessly. I was also surprised to see I could use other skills while using my overloads, I am not sure if that was intended or not.

I do have some specific feedback about the overloads. Overall they all felt sort of weak. The Earth one’s cripple didn’t seem like it did much and the protection on my party members wasn’t noticeable at all (though it looks really cool).

Also the CD after using overload seems too short. Basically I could blow the fire one, switch to air, use my skills there use that overload, and then immediately switch back to fire. I think having the overloads be more effective and have a bit longer CD would be better and more fun overall.

Now that I am awake, I can remember better also what I liked:

• Our characters talking. Yes, I feel so much better now that I am no longer a silent protagonist! TY! Even running in the world it feels nice.

• Props to the first story basically “introducing” the new mobs to us.

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.”

Hey Ruby,

this is the thread with which i’m more in agreement:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Tempest-Beta-Feedback-Thread/first

Lyanna.9875:

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.”

Hey Ruby,

this is the thread with which i’m more in agreement:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Tempest-Beta-Feedback-Thread/first

I’ve also replied to Ruby here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/BETA-What-we-are-enjoying/page/2#post5365941

Loved the tempest and reaper and had fun with the dragon hunter. My feedback with those classes would be:

-Tempest: the shouts seemed to be selective about applying auras to allies. They only did this about half of the time.

-Reaper: lots of fun, my main critique would be that reaper’s shroud skill 2 sends you charging forward, regardless of what you have targeted. Several times I’d click on an enemy that was moving and completely miss it because it had gone sideways a bit.

-Dragon hunter: I’d really like the ability to ground target traps, even if I have to use a trait selection in the build to do it. I wasn’t really sure how I was supposed to play this build… Having a longbow made me think I’m supposed to be mid/far range, but all the new skills are close range. Was immersion breaking to shoot a few shots from range, run up and lay some traps, then run back away to shoot some more.

Masteries best progression idea I’ve seen in an mmo, elite specs reaper rocks, Dragonhunter maybe could feel more like a support class, Chronomancer I haven’t tried it but once I do I’m making a mesmer called Doctor Who and finally Tempest its okay but I mainly play it for the water overload and this is no joke its so much fun travelling around in a bubble. Really that’s it adventures are awesome map bonuses are awesome. I hope we find out what the ??? items are.

On the whole, I didn’t enjoy the Verdant Brink.

I rolled and deleted several classes and races trying to find one that worked for me there and finally decided to go out of the Brink and just play in the active world of Tyria. I was never able to get off the hill where we started from and that left a great deal of frustration with the area.

The Map, well the small part I saw of it, was a disaster zone as that area should be. I was never able to reach any of the other areas.

The Creatures. I hate these right now. The density of mobs made it impossible for a solo player to go anywhere.

Now I know I will be called names for that but realize I am not a casual player, I have several lvl 80s and I run high level fractals and dungeons, (often in duo or trio groups) and usually solo the story lines, I am not a beginner at the game. I don’t mention pvp or wvw here because those require completely different builds and strategies.

So the sum of my weekend was frustration and I did not enjoy playing the Verdant Brink.

Xillllix.3485:

Galen Grey.4709:

The Tempest
I dont know why some people felt it was weak, felt pretty strong to me though I do agree that 5s channeling for overload is problematic. I disagree that charging should be reduced, yes 5s in spent in an attunement is a lot but then again thats the cost for overload, it should be a small sacrifice to gather the energy needed to unleash it all at once sort of thing.

Tempest is week because it does less damage than a lava font, and while casting a lava font you can do other things. The damage isnt even ranged. Look at the sort of damage melee classes or the reaper are doing, 3-5k cleaves.

In competitive context 5 second staying still in an attunement before camping a low damage skill for the following 3-5 seconds just doesn’t work and isn’t worth the risk. Mesmers and thieves can interrupt you and burst you down in a tiny fraction of that time.

I was actually looking at it from a PvE side rather then a PvP pov. In a PvP enviroment I wouldnt even dream of poping an overload unless it was an attempt to time it so it pops when enemies get in range or something.

as for power (again from a PvE point of view) and disclaimer I only had like 1hr to try it so it wasnt an indepth analysis or anything of the story. While it may do less raw damage it felt like it had a much more AOE damage potential..

Overload Fire, Overload Air, Cyclone, Feel the Burn as well as flash freeze felt quite effective to deal with multiple foes at the same time. naturally I wouldnt expect Wide range AOE to be as damaging as more focused AOE so I am sure raw damage wise its not the best option but that doesnt automatically make it weak does it.

PvP is another story of course, still useful in most encounters WvW but in sPvP it wouldnt be my choice either.

I’ve most enjoyed Verdant Brink. This map feels so alive, full of details on every biomes, and my favourite from all was Itzel village, with it’s unique ambient and interesting event chain with Zintl acolytes. Overall map is challenging, especially in night, when on every corner you can be hunted either by Mordrem, dinosaurs or big beetles (I would never quess) what is a great idea in my opinion. Keep up the good work!

I liked the new zone, the mission playing out slightly differently on a sylvari and another char was a cool touch, and I loved my character actually speaking. Also Rytlock. <3

Class wise, revenant with shiro and weapon swap is fun, dragon hunter and reaper were fun, tempest seems pointless, I don’t get mesmer so w/e regarding chronomancer.

Since I don’t feel like posting in each class sub-forum I’ll just put my feedback here.

Verdant Brink
Most quests were bugged while I played but I knew quite bit from the Portal-Beta anyway. I like the map but not much new to say here.

Chronomancer

I love most traits and how well they tie into the existing class. While overall Chronomancers seem to be considered overpowered, there are a few things I’d like to see improved or changed.

• Well trait still bad and conflicting with Glamours. Show some commitment here and let Glamours stay the true supportive area effects.
• Slow is way to ineffective in PvE
• The change to Gravity Well makes Chronomancy quite unattractive for interrupt builds although quite a huge amount of traits focus or benefit from Slow on interrupt. Either Wells or Shield need some more CC potential to make them worth-it.
• The Well of Precognition would be more useful if it pulsed Blurr/Distortion and granted the Unblockable on the final pulse. Currently, it’s almost impossible to benefit from the final effect.

Dragonhunter

Overall not my cup of tea while I do like the concept of it. Issues I have:

• Bow sometimes feel clunky (e.g. slow and not firing behind you).
• The traitline overemphasizes Virtues and Longbow.
• Rework the Minors. There is not much blocking going on for Dragonhunters. Fuse Defenders Dogma with Bulwark or scrap it. Pure Sight is a pure ranged trait and probably should be combined with Hunters Determination. Dulled Senses and Zealot’s Aggressions are better candidates for Minors since they allow more build diversity (Trapper with Melee weapons etc.).
• Make Heavy Light work for projectiles on Scepter and Staff, too.
• While more on the offensive side, Dragonhunters need more versatile defensive traits to compensate for the loss of, for example, Shouts and Meditations. Right now, the trade-off is too big.

Reaper

The elite spec I played the most last weekend. I really enjoyed it. Reaper Shroud is just plain awesome. Some remarks:

• The concept for their Shouts is decent but they really need to be looked at. For example, Rise! would be way more interesting and versatile as a Stunbreak. YAAW could have it’s cooldown reduced and the Might duration increased instead. Suffer needs to transfer at least 2 Conditions and would hugely benefit from an ice field (for combos) instead of a Chill application.
• GS AA could need a slightly better damage coefficient. GS 2 and 3 could benefit from a slightly longer range.
• Major traits all seem to have their purpose. Shiver of Dread is underperforming, though. There are way too few ways to fear. What about making it 2s of Chill upon entering Reaper Shroud?

Tempest

I really like the idea behind this specialization and how it – at least I believe it is – supposed to encourage Elementalists to stay within one attunement for a longer time. While I do believe that many players are expecting too much since the class is in a very good spot and there shouldn’t be new additions which are even better, I think that some work has to be done to actually make Overcharges and staying in one attunement worth-it.

• Minors are boring as hell. Combine them. Add a new one. For example: Become charged with the respective element after overcharging as long as you stay within the attunement. Weapon skills have a 20% reduced cooldown. You also gain an additional bonus based on your element (e.g. Fire: +20% damage, Air: +20% crit chance, Water: +20% outgoing healing, Earth: -20% incomming damage).
• Get rid of double attunement cooldowns
• Be consistent with those Shouts… Shout = Aura. Adjust cooldowns accordingly. It’s also rather problematic that Shouts apply an Aura while Powerful Auras exists. Either remake PA or at least ensure Auras stack properly.
• Latent Stamina = totally random Water trait. What about a trait which refills x Endurance of 5 nearby allies every x seconds?
• Earthen Proxy = Yawn. Out of ideas but it’s pretty underwhelming
• Harmonius Conduit = Add 1 Stack of Stability
• Lucid Singularity = Gain immunities when ‘Charged’ based on your attunement (Fire = Burn, Blind, Torment; Air = Weakness, Vulnerability, Slow; Water = Poison, Chill, Confusion; Earth = Bleed, Cripple, Immobilize).
• Rebound = Reduce it’s duration to 3-4s and make it affect every skill while active or just remake it completely.

I really liked the beta weekend. I wasn’t able to play very longer, but I did the intro story with my Rev, follow a train of players doing the Itzel events, explored all the tree village and killed a Wyvern.

It was a terribly confusing experience, and that was great! Between the magnificent design of the map and the continuous activity all around, I find myself runing everywhere trying to simply survive, without even knowing wht I was doing.

I began following Braham into that really tense choice between two evils, and then charged ahead with Laranthir to discover how hard and fun were the new mobs. Just the first step into that stair and I was already dead on my kitten by a couple of those evil archers!

Then I adjusted and began to use the hammer more than the dual swords, and joined the Itzel event chain, which was long and fast and made me travel at least a third of the map. At some point we were taking some Wyvern eggs in the top of a cliff, after climbing a looong jumping stair, and I was so happy going back with my egg when all the other players just jump off into the void. They were flying with the boxes! And I don’t get the least idea of how to do that. So I climb dow step by step… slooooow. And lost the group.

Long story short: just surviving the mobs to find the train again was AMAZING. Even skipping was a challenge!

The Wyvern itself wasn’t very interesting. In the beggining, people didn’t know how to break its bar, so it was slow and painful, but once the poor thing fell to the ground, it simply melted.

Then came the night. Again I was with a scattered group of players picking up boxes, when they all flew and leaving me alone. Since I was on my Rev, and I don’t know how to make a Rev move faster, I ended just running around with the box, using the n1 skill from the bundle to gain swiftness and avoid the mobs.

I must say: just running round with the stupid box was at once challenging, engaging and hilarious. I went over almost all the map by feet only, leaving the box in the floor to fight pockets, mushrooms and smokes here and there, an then taking the box again to get the speed bost, all in the middle of the night, while most of the camps weren’t controlled. I roamed the viny tunnels and the bright temple, and find myself in the mid of the ruins where were so much mobs I have to use Jalis and Shiro elites just to get through.

On the second day I got the glider mastery at last… and ended on top of a moving vine wich trapped my toon from the waist down, putting the poor girl in an endless fall state.

Overall, It was incredibly fun. And I haven’t even begin with the Reaper…

I liked:

Revenant- seemed like a fun new addition to the game.

The new map bonuses in the old areas.

The living story seems like it is going in a fun direction. Favourite is still season one, though.

Feeding the frog people event was hilarious (if not a little absurd).

Things I didn’t like:

New area was pretty punishing on the FPS for the mac wrapper in a lot of places.

Reaper needs some work to make it fun. Hopefully, though, that will happen.

General thoughts:

I hope not all new areas are like the preview we got where there are wall to wall creatures and non-stop events. One of the things I love about GW2 is the existing areas are so big, lovely and fun to explore. I feel like part of a living world in this game like no other. We played wow for years and the ‘story’ and ‘lore’ there just feels superfluous and completely empty. The GW2 world, though, feels exciting and living. So, I hope not all of the new stuff will be these massive event train areas with wall to wall creatures.

Anyway, looking forward to more. And, FIX the mac wrapper memory leak so we don’t crash non-stop, please!

Personally, I’m a little surprised by the Mastery System. It requires a lot more experience than I expected. To get a Maguuma Mastery to max level (all have 6 tiers) it would require the equivalent of 66.5 level ups at 80. That means we have to get the equivalent of leveling up 266 times in the Maguuma Jungle to get all of the Masteries. Considering content is gated behind them, this seems like a pretty high requirement for a relatively casual MMO.

Friday, after being in the beta for an hour or so, I got up to take a snack break. It was around that time that a 6 year old piece of hardware on my PC blew out, making the whole system unusable. I was looking forward to this weekend so much, and I barely got to touch on it. I suppose this is all my fault for not taking better care of my electronics, and now my replacement part won’t arrive for a week. I suppose there is nothing that can be done and really no point even in bringing this up on the forums.
So I guess all I’m really trying to say is,
IT’S SOOOOOOOOO SAD.
I’m sad…

Reaper was fun while it lasted, btw.

(Part 1 of 3)
Foreword
I tried to follow the questions posed in the blog post and answer those as best I could. Here’s what I accomplished:

-made a charr ranger
-played in Verdant Brink for ~14 hours
-finished the lean training in the glider mastery
-finished the itzel language in the itzel mastery
-followed the day event chains through Laranthir’s bomb placement event and the egg planting itzel event.
-I died 47 times. (~7 to killwall below the map, ~5 to not pulling out my glider in time, and the rest to mobs)

COMBAT
Do you feel the need to use your entire skill bar in battles?
I found that I had to use my skills more strategically. Specifically, interrupts were much more useful (especially against smokescales, snipers, and stoneheads. Also, reflects were especially useful against the sniper’s rapidfire attack.

Does teaming up with other players feel more rewarding?
Teaming up with other players was especially helpful at night, when it was often quite difficult to escort the pact soldiers by yourself.

Do you find yourself wanting to change your skills and traits to overcome encounters?
Yes and no. I usually run S/T A/D ranger, and quickly changed that to S/A LB quickness ranger for the reflects and interrupts, but once there I didn’t feel too much of a need to swap weapons or skills. QZ, LR, and SoS worked out well for burst, distance/stunbreak, and invuln when needed.

Creature Difficulty
You guys are on an amazing track here. The enemies all have their own little quirks, and much more attention needs to be given to them than before. Whatever people say, don’t nerf the smokescales. There aren’t that many of them, and they can be counteracted by luring them out of their AOE…but they’re the first thing that killed me when I got in VB and I love them for it. It’s been awhile since I’ve died to a mob in PvE, and it’s refreshing to have to keep on my toes.
The stoneheads were another great mob, although I think the distance on their charge could be toned down a bit. As it is, I think it usually takes them way out of the battle (if they don’t get stuck on something…which seems to happen to a lot of the charging animations)
I liked the mordrem snipers as well. They do a kittenton of damage, but they also eat that same damage if you reflect it (axe 5 ftw). As a side note, I don’t know if it was lag on my part, but it seemed like axe 5 doesn’t start reflecting until about a half-second after I use the skill. I think the target that appears over your character’s head should be swapped from their charge line AoE attack to their rapidfire shot instead. The line AoE doesn’t pose as much damage as the rapidfire attack, and I think the warning would be better assigned there.
The pocket raptors are great. They die fast, but if you don’t take care of them they can really ruin your day.
And the mushrooms…I hope you guys know about the expanding mushroom bug, which is at the same time both hilarious and annoying. (For those that haven’t experienced this gem,

sometimes when a mushroom dies, it expands 1000% so there’s a giant mushroom filling the entire area. Think about standing at the top of the cliff during the bomb planting event, looking out, and all you see is a giant mushroom….yeah) I love the variety of the mushrooms, and especially the ones that explode when they die…i’ve been downed so many times by not staying away from their bodies.

ADVENTURES
How well do they accomplish their goals?
I played the flamethrower adventure and the one in the ruins (sorry, can’t remember the names). Both were fun, and for the flamethrower adventure, coming back to it when I had the bouncing mushroom mastery was a great feeling of development for my character. One thing I would like to see is my own score displayed beneath the top three when the time runs out.
I don’t know what you can do to counteract this, but when I was in the vine arena adventure, I got myself downed, and instead of clicking reset I clicked close, thinking that it would take me back to the flag and let me head off. Instead it closed and I was left to die with the only WP being a fair distance away. Maybe it’s just a mistake to learn from, but it was a bit annoying at the time.

NIGHTTIME VS DAYTIME
The gradual transition from day lighting to night lighting is just amazing. It really enhances the feeling of the darkness settling in. The night feels very different from the day, and I spent a lot of time gliding from high spot to high spot making my way to pact soldier while avoiding mordrem. It’s also a lot of fun to find supply in a spot where you can jump off and glide down to the rally point to deliver it.

EDIT: changed part # to reflect total parts of this post

(part 2 of 3)
MASTERIES
The masteries I earned were very useful in VB and served to enhance the feel of moving through the map. The bouncing mushrooms have an issue with you taking damage due to fall distance, but I’m sure that will be fixed, so no worries there. Gliding was fun, but the lack of a turn limit made the “slow down” part of lean techniques a little redundant.
That said, it was still fun to slowly float down to the ground.
Does it provide meaningful progression?
In short, yes. As you spend more time in the jungle, you gain abilities (gliding, mushrooms) that help you traverse it more easily and quickly. One think I’d like is if the mushrooms that you can’t use yet didn’t show their names. I think it would be fun if you come back through an area later after gaining the mastery and then you can see all the things that you couldn’t use before because now your character knows what they’re looking for.

Does it make you care about experience and mastery points?
I care more about the mastery points than the experience. Experience in plentiful. Play the game and eventually your exp bar will fill up. When I see those glowing mastery channels though…I forsee quite a bit of fun ahead trying to figure out how to get to them. I already had to spend a good 30 minutes trying to get the one above the flamethrower adventure. (I kept missing the platform I was trying to glide to…)

Does it provide a framework that you think we could regularly add to in live updates
YES YES AND YES AGAIN. Let me emphasise that adding to this system regularly is what will keep the feeling of progression up. Unless you make the amount of exp needed an astronomical number, you are going to have people marathoning and finishing the masteries within the first couple weeks. These are the people who will complain that they have nothing to do. It is vital that the speed one gains masteries stays in a middle ground, and that masteries are added at a pace that is just a bit slower than the speed at which the majority of the
playerbase finishes them. The issue I can see from this is that there’s the possibility of introducing masteries that have less “oomph” and are pretty much just an exp drain.

MAP REWARD SYSTEM
Sorry, I’m too busy on my glider to care about pact tyria right now…

STRONGHOLD
Still gliding….

REVENANT
Ooh i wonder if I can climb that tree…

ELITE SPECS
I main ranger. The only time I play a different class is in a specific circumstance (staff ele in dungeons recently, and thief/ele/guard in pvp sometimes), so I wasn’t all that
interested in trying out the elite specs. That said, I did roll and ele and try out tempest, and the skills are very cool. Overcharging earth on a charr looked awesome (but then when do charr not look badkitten?) Anet, give me druid so I can try out an elite spec…I want….

STORY
The story was fun, but I would like to be able to fail. As it is, you might as well be invincible. Death/party wipe should kick you out of the instance. You have an amazing community, Anet. If people can’t finish the story mission, they will be able to find people to help them with it. The risk of failure makes success that much more rewarding.
I liked the difference between the sylvari experience and the rest of the races, especially how your companions don’t react at all to the things your character is experiencing without their knowledge. Keep it up!

Not a particularly useful post but when I started this beta, I still hated it as much as I did during the Maguuma Portal Stone beta. All I did was die and run around bewildered until I died… had to remind myself what it was like 1 year and a half ago when I first started playing.

By Monday I suddenly found I was really having fun in spite of the bugs, stalled events, and neverending mobs. I was happy that my standard PVE build I use normally was still very effective in HoT. I was joyfully whacking Stoneheads and Pocket Raptors and whatever got in my way.. take that you spiky mushrooms.! I died more times near the end falling off cliffs or running out of endurance while gliding than I did fighting enemies. And I finished level 2 gliding mastery just before it ended… hooray!

I never thought I would end up looking forward to more… more.. more! Plz!

(Part 3 of 3)
EVENTS
There is a marked difference between the day events and the night ones. The night events are more disorganized; you are fighting to stay alive through the night and get soldier back to the rally points. There’s not a whole lot of direct storytelling, more relying on the atmosphere and experience around you.
On the other hand, the day events are very much a storyline. Laranthir’s event was quite a bit of fun with the organization needed, although I feel like the health of the vinetenders could scale a bit better, in addition to increasing the health of the wurm. As it is, especially for the first group when people are just starting to gather, it can take
forever to whittle their health down, and then the wurm dies almost instantly. If the vinetender’s health was decreased so that they died faster, but the wurm’s health was increased so that it would take a good burn to completely kill it first time through, you could reward coordination by finishing the group faster with good timing and a hard burn, but also groups that don’t have as much DPS could still progress through the event in good time. As it is, it takes quite a while to make it through this event. Either a reward should come after each group (smaller, naturally, but still a reward), or the groups should die faster so that the event doesn’t take so long between rewards.
Over on the Itzel side, aside from the bug in the first event, I really enjoyed the story being told. And putting out the fires in the village…absolute chaos. It was
amazing how well you guys did with the feeling of panic in the village. Raptors and fire everywhere, wyverns laying down lines of fire, frantically trying to find the water
buckets…it was great! On that note, at least when I did it there seemed to be some people who just…could not grasp what was going on. I don’t know how you help them without ruining how amazing the event is currently…maybe add more water buckets? Hopefully /s chat will be able to inform those people what they need to do when the event happens.
My other complaint about the Itzel event chain is when you throw the rotten fruit at the Zintl priest guy. It seemed obvious what you were supposed to do (rotten food, a speaker you don’t like, 2+2=4, right?) but there’s no indication that it’s actually doing anything while he’s giving his speech. If you want us to listen to his entire speech (and it has a set length), then put an event bar up in the corner that either has a countdown or slowly fills up or something to convey that we’re actually doing the right thing. As it was, I started to wonder if there was a spot either above or below us that we were supposed to be at instead.
Following the lorekeeper guy as he walks to the wyvren egg event is probably my favorite part of the entire chain. The exposition is great to explain their motivations and how the itzel view the jungle. Also, the way his body kinda wiggles around the shoulder/neck area as he walks…props to the animation team, it looks amazing.

OVERALL
I loved it. The new map looks amazing, and the combat is more engaging in PvE than it’s been in a very long time. Gliding felt great, the masteries leveled at a good pace (assuming faster leveling once daytime events aren’t bugged). The success of the mastery system relies on actually adding to it regularly in the future, not just planning on adding to it and then never getting around to it.

its over but what i did enjoy was the events that require people to work together. The community aspect of the new area. Much more intense then the dry top area and more involved.

What I enjoyed:

I really enjoyed the Revenant this time around, having the Shiro legend transformed the profession, had a bundle of fun bouncing around Frostgorge murdering sons of Svanir and Icebrood.

Reaper was great fun once I ditched the greatsword (a shame because I was really looking forward to it … but it was just too slow and utterly lacking in bite) and adopted dagger/warhorn with a few minions. I don’t think I spent enough time in shroud to really appreciate it (and oh how I wish there were a sort of pseudo-shroud that I could enter to look at the skills in my own sweet time … I’m a very slow study and even out of combat, there’s just not enough time for me to take in the skills) but it felt fun, and the new utilities were great. I regret not taking him to Orr or Frostgorge as I’m sure I could have had a much better time there.

Dragonhunter felt great, I really enjoyed playing it though I do take on board a lot of the criticisms that have been raised with regard to auto-attack speed, long cooldown on the cc skill, the general uselessness of the block on skill 3 (make the block a 1 second stun and I’ll love you forever ;-) ), and the requirement to be stationary for skill 2; despite those grumbles (and they weren’t game-breaking for me, just slightly irritating) I had a great time with it and I have no doubt that as I get to know the profession better I’ll enjoy it even more.

I hate to finish on a downer but I really hated Verdant Brink, it was so hard to get around (even with gliding) with so many dead-ends making it very hard to get to events (I could see them on the map but even when I was right next to them, couldn’t reach them) and if I fell (all too easy with no means of climbing back up) the scarcity of waypoints meant that I had a massive slog to try to get back to where I was. Hopefully the rest of the zones won’t be such a nightmare to navigate … I find that I need to be in the mood for jumping puzzles and being forced into a giant one is something that I’ll probably avoid once it goes live.

I’m bummed that I only got to play in the beta for a few hours (stupid RL), but wanted to give my feedback. Keep in mind, this was my first experience with HoT content, and I didn’t go to VB at all.

Revenant:
This class is just FUN. Took me a little while to get used to (there’s a reason we don’t normally get to start characters at lvl 80…), but then really liked it. I found it a little more difficult to love the mace out of all the weapon choices…it just didn’t feel as unique or as fun as the other weapons. I liked it a bit better once I split up the swords though (using M/S & S/A instead of M/A & S/S). It’s clear that some balancing is still needed (sword skill #3 was super fun and ridiculously OP….I enjoyed it while I could, because I foresee a damage nerf in future betas!), but overall the class is coming together. There was no real explanation of the energy stat, however, so that was somewhat confusing. I had some issues with Sword skill #4 not being able to kick off its secondary effect…it felt broken to me, but it also could have been me not understanding how to trigger the secondary skill to become useable.

Tempest: Pretty fun! I see a lot of people saying it’s underpowered, and I agree that the overcharge cast times need to be reduced a bit, but I had more fun in 10 minutes on a Tempest than in all the other times I’ve played an Ele in the past few years. It’s just never been a class that suits me well, and I’m hopeful I could enjoy it a lot more with this new spec. Warhorn skills were pretty universally fun. I liked all the shouts EXCEPT the elite one….I honestly didn’t see it do very much, since it’s primarily a party buff. I usually prefer to see elite skills either (1) make a massive temporary change in how my character plays, or (2) take huge chunks off enemies’ life bars. This one kind of did neither, and it fell a bit flat as a result. I can’t remember any feedback about the trait line at this point.

Reaper: Awesomesauce on a stick. I really enjoyed the verbal element of shouting death threats at enemies!! ;D I found the GS skills a bit non-intuitive, honestly, but still had fun playing around with it. It was almost like GS skill #2 should be moved to a different slot…? I dunno, but that skill in particular felt weird, even though I know it probably should have felt powerful. The trait line was a bit odd…can’t remember in more detail than that, sorry. The update to Death Shroud was VERY welcome!!!!! I’ve always hated DS, which is a bit part of me not playing necro very often, but this updated version felt meaty and terrifying….I actually felt rewarded for becoming a black death spirit. ;D

Chronomancer: My existing mesmer is going to ROCK that shield and those wells!!!! Darn you, ANet for making me learn a whole new mezzy build!!! It was a really cool experience when I realized I had forgotten to open one of the gear boxes on my test mesmer, and had equipped the shield without a mainhand weapon….I was still able to kick Mordrem tail using just the shield, the wells & the phantasm from the shield skill #4. Felt like a kitten!!! Trait line seemed overly slanted towards shatter builds, which I guess sort of makes sense given the addition of the 5th shatter skill, but for those of us who don’t love to shatter, it was hard to work out how to integrate the CM trait line in with other lines that cater to perma-illusions….under those circumstances, the CM trait line kind of shoved you into a very specific set of traits. It would be nice to see only one shatter-related trait per category, for more build variety.

Dragonhunter: I was actually pretty disappointed with this elite spec. Guardian is an all-time favorite class of mine, and I really wanted this spec to rock….but it didn’t. The longbow skills felt underwhelming. For me, it seemed like a combination of low damage and too many “utility” skills on the weapon (if that makes sense). Plus the speed of the hits paled next to the recent speed buff ranger longbows got. The traps were alright, but they didn’t seem different enough from each other for me to even remember what all of them were. It was just “heal trap” and five “damage traps.” Finally, I found the trait line REALLY frustrating. I’m used to guardians having incredible synergy among their trait lines, and while the DH trait line was okay, I didn’t really see it combining and synergizing well with any two of the existing lines. I think this spec really needs to be looked at again on a number of levels.

Due to meatspace I didn’t really get to do much. I took the Shiro stance for a whirl and I found it really fun to play. I was initially very skeptic of the jade daggers healing skill (after the first beta I’ve been worried about the Revenant’s self heal a fair bit) but after a few hours I felt it was actually quite a solid heal so long as you kept attacking. I remember PoI mentioning Shrio’s stance was very agressive, and it certainly shows.

Whining time: I don’t like how Sword skill III ‘holds’ the camera back while you teleport around. It can be a bit disorientating, because you watch yourself in the distance and then the camera moves over to you, so I found myself looking the ‘wrong’ way or even in the ‘wrong’ place to where I expected.

I assume it doesn’t follow your character because it would make the camera snap from angle to angle furiously and that made the playtesters disorientated too? If not outright ill?

I suggest when it’s activated, the camera follows you to the initial target, and then stays on the target-that way you can watch yourself teleport around and causing bother, and the camera doesn’t have to snap behind you so aggressively. If the final position is precalculated, you could simply snap it up to the target with the first blow, then as you pop around smacking things, the camera could rotate to the ‘correct’ position.

I also suggest as a nod to Factions’ Shrio’ken, the jade daggers behave like the Shiro’ken warrior’s blades/attack. Complete with a similar/the same sound effect. Make them bigger and call the skill ‘Jade Swords’ or jade blades or whatever, even.

The ‘barks’ when selecting the stances were fun. I enjoyed Shiro’s “I demand you release me!” line, one of his lines from the end of Factions for those of you who don’t know. Jalis sounded like he’d been woken up and was hungover. I might be mistaken here, but I think Shiro said “Together we are unstoppable!” after I murdified several enemies once. If that’s true, I want to hear it and that sort of thing more often. Sort of like the job-o-tron backpack, but a bit less regular. It could be fun hearing Mallyx snarl in satisfaction as you get conditions (and the stance stronger) or Jalis bellowing something when you use the taunt abilities, Ventari saying something suitably altruistic (or quoting something he wrote on the tablet) when healing, ect.

Or even just Shiro/Mallyx saying something catty when you land flat on your face from a fall Yet Again.

Reaper next.

Admittedly, I only found the time to play the beta for a few hours this weekend….. but I loved the increased mob difficulty and the smokescale in particular were awesome. I hope I can find/get one as a pet for my ranger character when the full release is out. (Would it be wishful thinking in hoping for a few mobs/creatures/smokescale to roam the map and “hunt” random players or those they come across)

Loki.4871:

Due to meatspace… {STUFF}

…Reaper next.

After I mention the glider. In total I only did about 4 or 5 hours playing I guess, but I really enjoyed the brief time I had with the glider. I didn’t realise how much I wanted this until I used it. It really made a map that was a chore to move around so much more easy and fun to get from A-B. It also opens up fascinating potential for the falling traits (Death From Above, Descent into Madness, ect) which are normally niche/flavour traits.
It also, as you mentioned you were attempting, gave my a sense of progress after hitting level 80. I found I had something to look forward to beyond a skill point/hero point/whatever to spend on something for the mystic toilet.

Looking out along Lornar’s Pass just before I came to the forums to post my feedback I found myself missing the glider already.

The Reaper is in two places right now. Crappy, and fun as hell.
Crappy, because the greatsword simply doesn’t seem to any welly behind it, certainly with the autoattack. In PoI it was specifically stated the auto attack would be slow and hit hard, but the hitting hard bit doesn’t seem to be there. It certainly doesn’t feel like it. It doesn’t help that the recharge times for skills are really long, except for gravedigger. I feel almost obliged to use the major trait that makes gravedigger reduce recharge times of other greatsword skills. As they stand right now, I think there’s too much cooldown on skills 3, 4 and especially 5. I suggest reducing their recharge times.

The reaper shroud is fun as hell. You feel powerful, you feel dangerous; it’s what I’d hoped death shroud would be in the buildup to Guildwars II. I honestly can’t think of much to say beyond pairing it with Spite gives you 25 stacks of might with breathtaking ease, so much so I found it impossible to justify taking Blood or Curses instead and I regret Soul Reaping has two very good traits for the shrouds in the same (master) tier.

Rorc.4619:

(part 2 of 3)
MASTERIES
Does it provide meaningful progression?
In short, yes. As you spend more time in the jungle, you gain abilities (gliding, mushrooms) that help you traverse it more easily and quickly. One think I’d like is if the mushrooms that you can’t use yet didn’t show their names. I think it would be fun if you come back through an area later after gaining the mastery and then you can see all the things that you couldn’t use before because now your character knows what they’re looking for.

Thank you for that point, I was thinking about that this morning and forgot it again.

I can see two reasons for having the objects visible from the get-go: 1) it could be hard to code that yellow object name tags only show up to people with the right masteries and 2) seeing them everywhere provides incentive to get the mastery needed to use them.

But it would be so much more immersive if only those with the skill are able to spot the things used by the skill without getting right on top of the object. I know the “invisible yellow names” do exist, there are a number of game objects such as planks and bottles that you can’t see unless you cursor over them. In LS1 there were refugee items to find that didn’t show up by holding CTRL down. So it would be awesome to require the relevant mastery before CTRL works to show them at a distance.

Hearing my own voice is probably the most thrilling part. Like others have said, I didn’t really think it would matter, but it changes the whole feel of the story for me.

I like gliding and can’t wait to get the next mastery level!

The adventures are cute, although I was surprised to find that they were one-action mini-games that lasted under 5 minutes. I dunno exactly what I was expecting, something more adventurous and involved, but regardless, I could see myself whiling away some down time by trying to blast more tendrils or something. It would be nice if there were more levels, or if you could get additional skills by getting higher levels.

(E.g. have any of you played Kass Basher on Neopets? [NOSTALGIA ATTACK!] you start out hitting him with a baguette, and if you are skilled enough and hit a certain point threshold, you can move up to using a stick which hits him farther, and once you hit the point threshold with the stick, you get an actual bat, which allows you to hit him the farthest! I’d like to see gold mastery of the adventures provide something cool like that, so I have something more to work towards.)

I normally don’t play my necro, because I haven’t found a build that fits my playstyle. Well, GS+shouts did it for me. I main an ele, but I only spent about an hour playing tempest because I started out on Reaper and just kept going back to it over and over. I know lots of people are concerned about the DPS and/or attack speed, but it felt good. I liked the functions of the skills.

Revenant was a ton of fun to try out, specifically Staff and the Mace/Axe sets. Each of the 4 legends feels unique enough to not overlap with eachother, or even with the Elementalists’ attunements.

Verdant Brink brought more mobs that require thought, like Dry Top and Silverwastes did. I really enjoy having to change strategies for each type, rather than just running in and popping my combo then continuing on my merry way. Stoneheads and Smokescales in particular were very well designed.

Dragonhunter’s Longbow feels great, despite how slow longbows tend to feel. The empowered Virtues are all useful and provide interesting options when your skills are on cooldown. I couldn’t get traps to work with my build, but I was running the default Celestial gear, so not a great foundation to critique.

Overall, the BWE was a blast, and really gave me a lot to look forward to for HoT. Thanks for letting us play!

Rorc.4619:

One think I’d like is if the mushrooms that you can’t use yet didn’t show their names. I think it would be fun if you come back through an area later after gaining the mastery and then you can see all the things that you couldn’t use before because now your character knows what they’re looking for.

That’s a great suggestion.

Major kudos to whomever made it so the medals on the side for events go away on their own after a few seconds! Hand health, QoL, and just plain Yay!!!!!!!

I really liked the way the story and dialogue was done (so much better than those facing each other cutscenes).

The meta events were fun though I think the “snipe the husks” and “plant the eggs” events went on a little too long (there were quite a few bugs stalling events but you know that already).

Night could do with a few more types of event (maybe large champions roaming or using the supply to create defenses, just something on top of the defend and lost soldiers).

Maybe put a few little hints at the Mursaat about (everyone loves them).

Chronomancer felt different to Mesmer and I loved the Shield (great effects) but F5 had a few bugs (rift not triggering after timer ran out and staying on the field being most common – not resetting time). The Well trait is very lackluster though also the Heal Well would be better as a more vibrant blue so allies in the field can benefit from it more.

My Wishlist for Tempest:

Overloads:

• All Overloads now grant superspeed while channeling by default.
• Overload Fire: now grants aoe retaliation when finishing the cast.
• Overload Water: now converts 2 conditions on allies into boons when finishing the cast.
• Overload Air: range increased to 750.
• Overload Earth: now also pulses aoe bleeding.

Traits:

• Minor Adept Trait: added Overloads granting superspeed while channeling.
• Minor Master Trait: Reworked – now instead grants protection when you gain swiftness or superspeed. 10ish seconds cooldown.
• Minor Grandmaster Trait: Reworked – now instead heals you (for a minor amount) whenever you gain a boon.
• Unstable Conduit: now grants the aura when you start overloading instead of when you finish the cast. Now also reduces Overload cooldowns by 20%.
• Tempestuous Aria: now also reduces the recharge of shouts by 20%.
• Earthen Proxy: Reworked – now instead gives you retaliation when you gain protection.
• Harmonious Conduits: Reworked – now instead gives you a single stack of stability when channeling a skill.
• Lucid Singularity: Reworked – now instead grants you retaliation, aegis and protection after staying in an attunement for 10 seconds. 20ish second cooldown, per attunement.
• Elemental Bastian: now casts an instant Flash-Freeze when hit below 75% instead of giving a frost aura. 30 seconds cooldown.

Shouts:

• Wash the Pain away: now also heals you for an additional 2000 health after finishing the cast.
• Flashfreeze: now also inflicts a single stack of torment.
• Feel the Burn: now inflicts 2 stacks of burning.
• Shock and Aftershock: now also inflicts 5 stacks of bleeding.
• Eye of the Storm: now also grants shocking aura.
• Rebound: Reworked – Shout and infuse your allies with surges of energy, granting them Aegis and the aura corresponding to your current attunement. Now also instant cast. 60 seconds cooldown.

Warhorn:

• Wildfire (fire 5): cooldown reduced to 25 seconds.
• Sandsquall (earth 4): now also is a Blast Finisher.

—

Overall neither of the Tempest mechanics seem worth taking. Warhorn doesn’t compare to defensive power of focus or overall awesomeness of offhand dagger, overloads aren’t worth the risk and shouts can’t replace cantrips.

I did enjoy the group events quite a bit. They were fun, and flowed pretty nicely.

That aside, I do hope that the maps are not like Silverwaste, and everything is group orientated/needed. I am hoping for some solo content as well.

I was extremely pleased with (almost) everything I experienced during the beta weekend event. – I, surprisingly, did not encounter any bugs that I’m aware of (save for a time when I endlessly flipped on a mushroom without going anywhere haha).
- The efforts taken to bring the story to life feel right and I was excited to see that the story seems to be pushing into more interesting territory than the base game ever did (Living Story season 2 excluded).
- What we have seen of Verdant brink so far has me really excited. I didn’t care for Dry Top at all and enjoyed Silverwastes for the most part and I feel like Verdant Brink is already making use of the best of both of those maps and much more.
- I felt that each of the elite specializations had the potential to be a lot of fun, but certainly needed some balancing and tweaks (which I’ve already mentioned elsewhere).
- During a previous event when I was able to try the Revenant I was extremely underwhelmed, but the increases to damage have made it a profession I am very eager to play.
- There’s only one thing that I would say greatly troubles me after this BWE, and that’s that we still have to wait to experience more!

So for the sake of beta testing here is my input on the experience. I run through the Beta with a Revenant using zerk/celestial gear duo swords and a staff. The staff is really fun for the Revenant I really like the utility with the heal, knockback and black, and I really like the staff being aoe. The swords I felt were not as fun as I had hoped. The #3 skill (the one where you teleport around) lasts way too long and leaves you way too vulnerable. I would love to see evasion added to it keeping in line with whirlwind attack, death blossom, and the some of the ranger attacks. The damage with my setup felt much better than the previous Revenant Beta, most likely due to the addition of the swords. However, I felt super squishy. The healing using Shiro and Mallyx did not cut it for verdant brink (keeping in mind I ran around alone). I may be mistaken and the damage of the foes in Verdant brink is just way too high I didn’t have a chance to test any other classes there. My last thoughts the Revenant NEEDS a passive speed boost whether a trait or a skill or something stance related. But for a primarily melee class I feel like you need the extra speed (and for all you wanting to mention guardians I have the same beef with them too). I understand relying on synergy but I enjoy each class being soloable.

Verdant Brink was a really fun area, I liked the events and the detail. It didn’t feel very rewarding though, for the difficulty I would rather grind the silverwastes. That said I already mentioned that the raw DPS (especially on snipers) made solo roaming and exploration, very not so fun. I like events scaling hard and being a challenge, I didn’t like a herd of pocket raptors murdering me near instantly while exploring the cool new place. One big thing I noticed was a drastic drop in framerates upon entering Verdant Brink. most places especially with moderate to low population I run between 35-50 FPS. Right of the bat Verdant brink hit and stayed around 25 FPS.

My last few thoughts, I have very high hopes for HoT, I really hope it is on par with the quality of expansions we saw for Guild Wars 1. The beta revealed a great start. I am just praying that HoT isn’t 3 new zones with a few fancy Hylek and a Zhaitan clone with a forest on his back. So far I like what I see, I just hope what we’ve seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

→ Revenant Balance
→ Balance VB to be soloable (except group events)
→ Address Framerate issues with HoT
→ Blow My Mind with HoT!