Guild Wars 2

Great job Arenanet with the expansion so far,nevertheless here are my thoughts on the expansion:

The good:

-The map is gigantic and there’s something to do everywhere
-The mastery system feels really rewarding
-My character talks!I feel more involved in the story now.Less story windows and more voice acting is always welcomed.
-Good variation for day/night cycle events
-There weren’t many story sequences to be played in the beta, but the few i got to play have been really exciting so far
-Gliding is definitely hands down the best thing for me.Hope we can do that in the other regions of Tyria too.
-Great environmental design of the jungle
-The mobs add new mechanics
-Soundtrack is amazing
-Tempest skills have nice animations
-Those sniping events are quite fun.Supporting allies from a large distance is a nice change of pace.I hope we get to use them in other events too.
-Jumping on mushrooms is cool.

The bad:

-FPS issues in certain areas.I do have great specs too so I hope areas like Itzel village will be better optimized
-Lack of info about when and where some events take place unless we’re being told by other players on map chat.The map itself should provide more info on events.
-Some events were bugged which made progression on the mastery system slower.Also lack of info related to game mechanics sometimes (example:defending Laranthir while he places explosives on the wall by killing Mordrem with a red shield on.We had to figure out that we needed to CC the husks to take down red shield because the buff description of the shield was bugged, random numbers instead of a description)
-As I love gliding, I wished I knew the status of the recharge bar on the glider when I’m deactivating it for a short while.I may just end up falling hard due to it being close to exhaustion without me knowing
-There should be more alternative routes for people that haven’t mastered the glider or mushroom yet.I had to walk in such big circles to get where I needed to go sometimes.
-I fail to see how tempest can be useful for a staff user.Reason why I picked staff is to keep my distance from my targets and aoe like crazy.Overloading my attunements is fun but it involves getting myself closer to the action and with my assassin build, I’m punished often for the low defense I have.
-Warhorn is interesting but it still won’t convince me to change to a scepter/dagger on the main hand.
-What’s with the scaling on the events?It’s taking longer than usual to finish some events when there are too many people doing them (ex:placing the wyvern eggs in the village)

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.”

my issue with this was that i couldnt tell if it was working or not. i.e. i would press 0 and i get an animation/noise, but i couldnt see/hear and indication if it was being used/proced successfully or which of my allies received the effect of it. for me it felt more like a player feedback thing.

I really like the new enemy types… I mean I hate them, but I like them.
They really make you rethink and come up with new strategies to fight them, though I never did work out a strategy for Smokescales.

I also loved the gliding. Even just running around normally I found myself constantly running up small slopes and onto rocks just so I could get a short glide in. It’s going to be tough to go back to areas that don’t have the glider.
I got my updrafts skill about 15 mins before the end of beta and was dissapointed to only find 1 updraft on the map, I hope there’ll be a lot more of them later.
And I hope we get to see some crazy new jumping puzzles that involve gliding. Or just a new type of ‘gliding puzzles’.

I also loved the Revenant. I’m creating one of those day 1.
My favourite weapon combo was Mace/Axe offhand, and Staff. The 2 mace skill combined with 5 axe skill was great, laying down a firefield then pulling everyone nearby into it, especially on those swarms of little dinos. And Staff 5 skill is great fun to just charge through a group of enemies, though I did it over the edge of a cliff more than once.
Shiro is great, though I found myself preferring Mallyx more often with the ‘pull conditions’ and ‘heal increased by conditions’ skills, and that cool well skill that pushes enemies out!

I also really liked the Reaper. The greatsword skills are fun and I loved using ‘Rise’ on the little dinos (if you can’t tell they were my favourite new enemy). I didn’t really get the hang of the actual Reaper skills, but they seemed good and it’s always nice to have an alternative for the F1 ability.

I liked Tempest too, but I thought it was less interesting than the other new specialisations. I didn’t get around to trying Dragonhunter.

Chronomancer is awesome, but I suck at playing it. I think because I’ve never been much good at placing wells and I always managed to mess up Contiunuum Split and use it when I had low health or all my skill were on cooldown, or just not manage to do anything useful before it reset. I just need more practice I guess.

Also the map is beautiful, as always. Great stuff.

Well, aside from getting swarmed and subsequently eaten alive by pocket raptors, that was quite fun^^
(I also fully expect a pocket raptor mini to be available when HoT gets released. I mean, come on, the name alone!)

Good stuff:
- The map. It’s really cool, the layers, though not all accessible, are promising, and especially the itzel tree village is gorgeous.
- The enemies. Both in terms of design and challenge. A lot of veterans in that map, which makes moving around on your own a little more difficult than in the vanilla game.
- The masteries. You “learn” the basics fairly quickly, but then you start using i.e. the glider and see how much more you have to learn to reach all the nooks and crannies. Might be frustrating for some, I quite like it. Also, events needing you to have a mastery or two unlocked and spent points in to do them/do them faster.
- Elite specialisations. I didn’t get around to testing dragonhunter and chronomancer, but the reaper was fun (in PvE anyway, in PvP, I didn’t get in a single kill because the thing is so kitten slow). It’s a pretty cool theme, the animations look great, and for PvE, at least, it looks like a viable option. Tempest… mhm, not quite convinced yet. Animations and theme are, like the reaper, good-looking and fitting for the class. Overloads are fun, too. But so far, I don’t feel like X/warhorn is better than current builds, anywhere in PvE at least. That might change when we see more HoT content. Buuut it was fun to play.

Not-so-good stuff:
- Nights are too bright, though I hear the current night is not the final version, so that might change anyway.
- FPS issues. I average between 45 and 50 FPS in the open world in the vanilla maps, here I occasionally hovered around 30, even when I was alone in an area, with the same settings. Most noticeable in the itzel village and the caves with the aggressive mushroom things. It didn’t bother me too much, but for players with weaker machines it might be a problem.
- One event in particular promised to be annoying: The one where the hylek sun preacher is converting itzel while you pelt him with rotten fruit. He’s talking, and talking, and talking, and talking… I’m not sure if he actually stops sooner when you throw enough fruit at him, because the event display seemed to be broken (no status bar showing, as should be, according to some fellow players; a few events actually had this, though I forgot to write it down, shame on me etc.). But if he doesn’t, it will be hella annoying when you have to wait form him to finish his overly-long speech every single time you do that event.

I suppose that’s it for now.

Edit: Because this filter is too dense to tell a sequence of numbers from actual obscenities (sigh)

So, managed to test out all of the new character options to my satisfaction (although I wouldn’t have complained about more), and here are my thoughts:

(Part 1 of… probably 3)

Revenant: Addition of Shiro and weaponswap has been a massive improvement to the Revenant. As it played in the last beta, the revenant was… playable, but probably destined for the bottom of my list in terms of preferred characters. Now, it’s a firm contender for the second tier in my personal, highly subjective order of enjoyment.

The weaponswap is a huge quality-of-life change – simply put, the existing professions without weaponswaps had the tools to get around that handicap, while the revenant didn’t. You could get away – somewhat – with being locked into melee or long range, but it’s much more comfortable having the option to switch between them. It’s possible that more flavourful ways of getting the same effect while maintaining its status as a no-weaponswap profession might have existed, but simply giving them a weaponswap was probably the simplest answer to the problem.

I do think it would be good to have a second ranged weapon, though, for the sake of variety if nothing else, as the majority of revenants probably will want a ranged weapon as one of their swaps. Ideally a condition weapon – one of the complications that has arisen from weaponswap is that with all the primary weapons except mace being lacking in damaging conditions, a condition revenant doesn’t have a second condition weapon to swap to. It may not be possible to develop one before release, but I do think this should be on the cards, and it should be part of the core rather than an elite specialisation.

Shiro as a legend seems to be one that goes well with pretty much anything – mobility, crowd control, and if you’ve got nothing better to spend your energy on you can easily convert it to damage output through Impossible Odds. The behaviour of Enchanted Daggers can be a handicap to less prepared players, since it doesn’t provide that immediate heal, and given that it’s limited in how many daggers you get, I’m not sure the internal cooldown on how often you can use them is necessary. On the other hand, unless you have Ventari as your other legend you can always switch legends for a bigger on-the-spot heal, and Enchanted Daggers also plays an interesting role in increasing damage output – making it a big on-the-spot heal that then increases damage output afterwards as well would, I think, make it too strong. Revenant legends add an opportunity to provide more unconventional healing skills on the basis that you can switch legends for the big on-the-spot heal if you need one: I think that’s an interaction that is worth maintaining.

Jade Winds is awesome, and very effective if used appropriately. It does, however, make Forced Engagement on Jalis look even more overpriced – I gather that the original low energy cost was too low, but I think 50% is too high, especially when compared to Jade Winds with the same cost. 40% for Forced Engagement may be a better compromise.
Sword has probably become my favourite weapon in the offhand, but I’m not sure about the offhand sword. It would probably be more useful in PvP, but in PvE I found that I rarely felt that I really had good reason to use the fifth skill, while the fourth skill was a bit clunky and hard to use effectively. Instead, I found that the axe had a lot more to offer as a counterpart – with or without the Shiro legend active, Frozen Blitz provides an efficient gap-closer, and combining it with skill 3 generates a fun sense of blitzkrieging the opponent.

Part 2:

Reaper: Of the various elite specialisations, the reaper probably has the biggest impact on the way the core profession plays, and as a result, it was the first specialisation I wanted to try out. It didn’t disappoint. I’ve heard that the damage on the greatsword is lacking, compared to dagger – I haven’t compared the damage outputs, so I’ll let the number-crunchers analyse that one. If true, it does seem a significant weakness: the reaper greatsword seems to be themed on having slow (and therefor easily mitigatable by dodges and blocks) attacks that hit hard when they land, but if it comes out with weaker DPS then the traditional dagger/warhorn set, there seems to be something off.

Damage output questions aside, however, it’s fun. The skills do capture the ‘death knight’ feel quite well, able to deal out death to the surrounding area. Should you choose to use them, the shouts add to this feel, allowing you to dish out extra pain to any enemy unwise enough to remain close to you… or, being necromancer, you have access to a range of other options such as wells and minions to augment the death you can deal out.

Reaper’s Shroud simply amps up the fun, and is very satisfying. Most of the skills fit quite well with the theme: Soul Spiral and Executioner’s Strike allow you to dish out serious damage, while Life Rend and the stability from Infusing Terror amplify the ‘unstoppable’ feel. The one skill that doesn’t seem to fit is Death’s Charge. There’s a certain irony in that Dark Path, which teleports you to an enemy and chills them so they can’t escape, would probably be a better fit for Reaper’s Shroud than the more range-oriented Death Shroud, while Death’s Charge, which will often take you past a target, would probably be more appreciated in Death Shroud, where it can serve as an escape as well as a gapcloser.

Tempest: It took me a while to warm up to the tempest. And I do mean a while – I was all set to discard it as a nonentity when I decided to give it one last try… and happened to have a setup and event that allowed it to shine and started having a lot of fun with it.

It turned out to be quite different to what was advertised in the PoI. From the PoI, the impression is given that it’s a specialisation to be combined with dagger for frontline use – however, as the elementalist experts will tell you, a dagger ele gets better performance at less risk of being interrupted by just being a dagger ele. Where it seemed to shine was to be employed as a kind of guerrilla warfare agent. Load up on sceptre/warhorn or staff and hit the enemy from a distance until an overload is ready, then swoop in and overload. Odds are, particularly if you have allies running interference, a PvE opponent won’t be able to respond effectively to this, and you’ll be able to complete the overload and get out – at which point you can switch attunement and prepare for the next pass. (And for the record, that’s another thing that I think the PoI got wrong – it doesn’t encourage staying in an attunement. If you’re going to use overloads you want to use them regularly, and you get the most use out of them by cycling through them instead of waiting for one to recharge). There’s still a chance of being interrupted, of course, but you’ll still get some effect from the overload if you do.

There is a valid concern about whether this sort of thing is actually viable for PvP and higher-end PvE, and that’s something that should be looked at, however, that’s probably a matter of tweaking the risk/reward balance. I do think, however, there’s the potential for a fun new playstyle for the elementalist here that is quite different to the existing builds.

Rebound… I simply never bothered with.

Part 3:

Chronomancer: Of the elite specialisations so far, the chronomancer is possibly the one that feels the most ‘business as usual’. Continuum Shift and the wells make for good additional tools to have in the mesmer’s toolbox, but they do feel like just that: additional tools, rather than a reworking of the profession to behave in a different way.
While the goal for the specialisations is to make the profession feel quite different, in this case I don’t think it’s a weakness of the specialisation that needs to be addressed. They’re good tools, and quite fun to use. It’s just, well, still a mesmer. In some ways, it’s more mesmery – in Continuum Shift we effectively get Echo back! (Okay, technically it’s more like Glyph of Recall, but still…)

Most people I’ve seen commenting on it have loved the shield, but I’m not quite convinced. I’ve played around with the Inspiration trait that generates a phantasm on blocking in the past, so looking to provoke a block to get a Déjà Vu off is something I’ve done before – however, I think it is a weakness of the shield that you can’t really get a phantasm off quickly like you can with other weapons.

Chronomancer was one of the elite specialisations that I spent the least time with – not because I didn’t enjoy it, but rather the opposite: it was a natural fit with mesmer being one of my preferred professions, and I didn’t feel I needed an extended playtime to figure that I’d got a feel for it. One thing that did stand out is the rate at which you can keep the shatters going: between Chronophantasm and Illusionary Reversion, you can often trigger a shatter, and find yourself with a full or near-full set of illusions so you can shatter again. It does make for an interesting contrast that mesmers usually have a bigger problem with having illusions to shatter than having shatters on recharge, such that I’ve occasionally used shatters without any illusions at all just to trigger traits – however, for a chronomancer, it seems as if the recharge on the shatters might well be the limiting factor more than the generation of illusions, even with an additional shatter available.

Dragonhunter: Being the specialisation that I first picked as being like a secondary profession, the dragonhunter was an elite specialisation that I went into expecting it to not feel like a guardian. It’s certainly true that it does feel like a trapper ranger that doesn’t have a pet. However, it surprised me just how much it still felt like a guardian.

Part of this is simply because, well, you’re probably still going to have a melee weapon on swap, and even with Pure of Sight encouraging longer-ranged combat, you’re probably going to have reason to pull your melee set on a regular basis (if nothing else, because there’s no better way to guarantee a trap goes off than to set it at the enemy’s feet, a trick that I used with my first ranger back in Guild Wars 1).

However, an additional consideration goes back to the initial distinction between the guardian and warrior: the guardian is intended to be the more ‘tactical’ option where the warrior was more inclined to just kill things and tough out whatever the enemy throws back at them. Longbow on the guardian feels a lot like it’s just another ranged weapon option – nice, but nothing groundbreaking. The traps, however, greatly expand the option for tactical play for the guardian. You can take the simple option of dropping them at your feet as a PBAoE. You can set them while kiting, in order to do a bit of extra damage or keep the enemy at a distance for just a little longer. Or, as I saw a number of people doing, you can set them out in advance to assist in defending a position. Basically, while at first glance the dragonhunter and traps seemed to be going a long way out from the guardian’s core concept… in practise, it seems to have meshed nicely with the guardian theme of rewarding tactical play by opening up a wide range of possible tricks.

(I have to admit, though, that I can’t say for sure how much of my enjoyment came from the spec, and how much simply from being one of my favourite professions with enough new stuff to avoid that ‘same old’ feeling.)

First of all, I enjoyed playing Reaper a lot, its attacks feel powerful and with the right build you can get big hits.

Tempest feels a little weak but I think is because we are used to big numbers I had fun playing it though.

Revenant was great compared to the last time we got to use it, Shiro is awesome but I think sword off-hand is not super useful, I trade it with an axe and it was way better. Shiro’s heal skill could be improved a little, most of the time I ended up changing to Jalis to heal up and have a little more breathing space.

Verdant Brink’s mobs are engaging to fight, no more zombie tactics, it was refreshing to get killed a bunch of times for not paying attention. I hope this gets better and better the more we explore the jungle (by better I mean engaging and difficult)
Gliding was awesome, only got the first one and half the second mastery on that track so I feel that leveling the masteries is a little too fast, considering I didn’t play a lot of time on VB.

The story instance was fun, I got killed a couple of times which was good. The fact that our character has VA is great and I loved the fact that we could hear our team’s opinion on the matter before deciding, I hope that according to our decisions we can get some of our gang complain and nag or even openly opposing what we choose.
The Rytlock animation…. WOW!. It was beautiful, seriously the peeps who made that should get a raise, the graphics and the way the cinematic played out was amazing. I would LOVE to see more of that on HoT’s story.

The map is a little confusing at first but that meant we had more to explore, the Itzel underground temple was a jaw-droping moment for me (and I know there will be more) because I wasn’t expecting that when I entered the cave. It was like that moment in the HoT trailer when we see the huge temple-like structure, I can’t wait to explore all the maps and finding stuff I wasn’t expecting/ready for.

Overall, I think HoT is looking really good, and if Arena Net keeps polishing the experience, the expansion will change the way we play GW2 for years to come.

I really liked playing Chronomancer, Reaper, and Sword/Sword Mace/Axe Revenant. I might have to try Sword/Axe next time but I forgot to. Every other time we’ve gotten a chance to play Revenant I haven’t enjoyed it nearly as much and it missing Shiro legend was why, that’s the missing piece of the puzzle. A lot of people felt the damage was underwhelming I didn’t notice it too bad and figured it’s because this character doesn’t have ascended jewelry and weapons much less armor and the right runes that I like to use for damage.

Chronomancer wells damage some people complain about but I figure the same thing but.. you’ll probably go over the numbers and figure out what would be best. I was a little bit disappointed with continuum shift simply because the window in which to jump back in time is SO short it can be really hard to use effectively. I mean when I continuum shift, I want to be able to drop a well of gravity, along with the damaging well on top of it, then shift back and cast them again for a nice aoe spike that mesmers usually don’t have prior to chronomancer.. but you might not get both wells off before you shift back depending on how many clones were shattered, I dunno, seems just a touch short, short enough that instead of it being a “planning ahead” skill it’s more of a “reactionary” skill in where you use it just before you take big damage and then shift back to full health (like a dodge almost) rather than using it to double cast spells or juke someone which is more like what I want it to be. Shield was better than I expected, well, tides of time is fun anyway. The phantasm isn’t as good as most of the others.

Reaper I just liked all around though I REALLY want some sort of spooky/ghostlike voice filter for the shouts! It just doesn’t feel right to yell “Suffer!” in my normal voice. Reaper Shroud is awesome, and GS skills feel quite powerful, though I’m not sure I’d use them in a PVP setting because they seem fairly easy to avoid.

I wanted to play them more but with most the events being broken in VB and me wanting to advance masteries I felt kinda trapped on that.

Gliding is also a lot of fun

I enjoyed Reaper a bit too much. However I do feel like there are some things I would like to see done better:

- Gravedigger’s cast time is way too slow. I do not see it as a non-shroud finisher that I believe it was meant to be.
- GS Skill 4 does not aim for a target but rather the direction your character is facing from what I saw. I don’t know if this is intentional or not.
- While the damage of the GS is a burst style, it does not seem to be the case in terms of damage output. I imagine burst to be wiping out a huge chunk of the target’s HP (in PvE at least) in a few swings. It does do this if the auto-attacks crit, but besides that, not really much damage. I would default to dagger mainhand for faster damage output.
- “Your Soul Is Mine” is very good, but it can use a little bit more healing power.
- I did not notice the 15% attacking speed trait difference in Reaper’s Shroud, and a video by Brazil on YouTube says that it the trait does not work? I am not sure if it’s true or not, but if it is, then RS autoattack would be really devastating in a 1v1 scenario.

With that said, here’s what I did enjoy:
– Reaper’s Shroud in its entirety. This is what the devs probably imagined the Reaper specialization to utilize as its main damage source, with GS skills to build up life force. Upon learning what I should have been doing, it made clearing mobs easily.
- Might stacking is ridiculous. I did not even notice I had 25 might + 25 vulnerability on the target until I saw my damage output on RS jumped from the initial hits.
- RS skills 4 and 5. These skills made Reaper my instant favorite. I was itching to keep playing Reaper all over Orr because it was just really strong.
- Death’s Charge. This skill will take practice, but I do feel this skill is really balanced. A bit hard to control, but over time I think players will get used to it.

And… I think that’s it for now. I also tried Revenant and condition damage Revenant is probably the funniest thing I’ve ever done in terms of builds.

Verdant Brink:
[+] very well designed map
[+] lot of details
[+] the devious routes
[+] the new enemies
[+] the verticality

[-] bugged event chains every time I was on the map

=> can’t wait to see the final map with the different levels etc.

Reaper
[+] realy fun to play
[+] great animations
[+] Greatsword
[+] works well with wells/minions

[-] Grasping Darkness (GS 5) doesn’t work very well … or maybe the enemies I hit are all immune to pulling?
[-] Greatsword damage could be a little bit higher
[-] Death’s Charge is not a very good skill for close combat. You just jump out of the fight or even worse down a cliff draxynnic idea to switch Death’s Charge with Dark Path isn’t so bad

=> Can’t wait to play the Reaper again.

Glider and Masterys
The Glider is realy cool. Now a jump off a high cliff doesn’t mean auto death. And with the falling traits or the Rune of Snowfall there are a lot of new tactics avaiable.

Sadly the glider doesn’t work on non HoT maps (at least in the beta).

I hope in the final game there is an explanation story wise from where our character has the glider.

Are all masterys avaiable right away or do we have to unlock some/all of them while the story progresses?
Imho it doesn’t make much sense to be able to learn the Itzel language if we never talk to them etc.

Dragon Hunter CC:
I love the Bow Skill 5, it’s so fun. The only thing I don’t like is that it doesn’t last long (like all CC in this game) &, of course, doesn’t work on important mobs. CC is so fun, balancing PvE control around PvP sucks.

I’m wondering if the “floor” of the map will be fleshed out more? I enjoyed falling and gliding into the depths trying to find stuff.

Techstriker.4130:

I’m wondering if the “floor” of the map will be fleshed out more? I enjoyed falling and gliding into the depths trying to find stuff.

Yes it will, the map is designed with several layers, we only have access to one (maybe 2) atm.

Now that the beta is officially over I thought it to be a good time to give some feedback on my beta experience this weekend. I am probably a bit late on the feedback but oh well someone may see it.

I went through the beta making a point to play all of the classes. I only got to play a bit in the main map enough to know that the gliding mechanic was a lot of fun. It added a new fluidity toward the game-play in the map. Other than that I was playing around with the new classes and testing them out.

Reaper: I had a lot of fun with the reaper. I used the reaper build to really just go into the Reaper Shroud as much as possible. The Reaper shroud was very nice to be able to gain stability and then use the 4 skill to kill most things. When using the Greatsword I had a build of zerker. I didnt really see enough damaging conditions on the greatsword skills to constitute using a condi build. Overall I liked the Reaper and I want to play as the reaper.

Tempest: When I heard you were going to add a warhorn I was skeptical. But the addition of the warhorn and overloading of the elements is a pretty cool idea. I had a lot of fun with the warhorn and fire element stacking might then just using the 4 skill to give everyone might. I also liked the overloading of each element. Truly I had the most fun with the earth overload where i just ran over everyone in my path. I will definitely be using the tempest.

Chronomancer: Just like the tempest i was skeptical to give a shield to the mesmer but the first time I used it i confused myself when using it. When I say I got confused it was because of how awesome it was. In skirimishing it would be a great way to confuse people in pvp. I used a shatter build and it was awesome. The new f5 skill was an awesome idea that I havent ever seen in anything like it in any other game. It is a great idea. I also want to play Chronomancer.

Dragonhunter: I truly didnt really like the Dragonhunter. It could be me but I dont see the bow being used for anything but damage range. I never played my guard as damage class. I have always played as tank and maybe i wasnt seeing it but I didnt see any good use as support or tank build worthy. At this current moment I probably won’t play as a Dragonhunter.

Revenant: The new physical damage skills with dual swords was a lot of fun. When dual wielding swords I did find that the 3 skill was a bit buggy when teleporting people off ledges and things like that. When using the assassin skills I heard many people talking about how they don’t see a prominent use for it. I used the assassin skill to get quickness. I didnt find the heal skill super reliable and I never used the unblock able attacks skill. I like the revenant as a class it is unique and I definitely want to play as one. Also Thank you for the weapon swapping.

I apologize for the length of this review I kinda wanted to see if I could help in anyway and also give you one mans opinion.

TLDR:
Reaper: A lot of fun owning people in reaper shroud. Little condition damage on GS.

Tempest: Great way to stack might and other boons. Overloading elements is awesome.

Chronomancer: Very unique and original. Used shatter build and owned.

Dragonhunter: I didn’t like the dragon hunter. I didn’t see a good tank or support use for bow. (just my opinion)

Revenant: Dual wield swords is fun. A bit of rough spots on the new assassin skills.

The thing that I enjoyed the most (apart from the glorious scenery) was actually the Tempest. I had not expected this, I felt that it didn’t have a role to fill for my ele.

I normally play fresh air dagger/dagger or dagger/focus, and since both the offhands there are very good I felt that another offhand would add nothing.

OH boy I was wrong.

At least for me (mainly PVE), the warhorn really made a difference, and felt like a viable (for me preferable) alternative to the other two. It just felt like the perfect compliment to my playstyle, and felt a lot more usable for my group than the normal alternatives.

Seriously, I was so happy with it.

What I really liked this beta was the dragon hunter, though many people claim they did not find a use for it. It was necessary to search a bit for a good build but using the bow to pin down enemies and the vulnerability trap were huge bonuses for me. It was nice to be able to keep the monsters away with the bow at first and sweep in with greatsword afterwards by using the wings. I always hated the fact that I was useless as a guardian while defending a fort in wvw due to lack of ranged but that was resolved now. Even when they get inside through the gate these vulnerability traps could work really well in combination with arrow carts. A few tweaks are necessary of course but in general I liked the addition to guardian.

The Good:
1: Revenant, once I got use to how to play it and find the spec I liked I started to have a blast, was nice to be able to theorycraft and not worry about cost of gear and play with it till I found the setup I liked most. But from last test to this one it was a huge improvement.
2: Chronomancer! Out of all the specs it had to be my favourite new one.
3: The new map was fun and while I was playing in the less active time brackets it was still somewhat playable and could be enjoyed.
4: The mastery system actually felt like you were accomplishing something rather then the WvW feel of it just being a forgetable grindfest.
5: The story was a vast improvement and actually hearing my character talk in it out of a cutscene made me pause and have to think figure out who was talking, but after the initial shock it was a great addition by far. It brought a bit more depth to that story and actually had me wanting to complete it in full without a full-on rush to just get it done and over with.

The Bad:
1: The time cycle for night and day felt way off to me, felt like day took forever and then night was just a dead maw of fiends and nonthingess. As well I think that there should be a transition time to allow for finishing up of stuff instead of count-down being an event killer. So maybe adding a dawn/dusk transition would fix it, not 100% sure.
2: Dragon Hunters name, it makes me just look at it and shake my head… I was really hoping it was just a well played choke as a way to hide the actualy name and see it come out as Avenger or something of that like.
3(The Ugly): How specializations worked, I go in-depth in it on a post I submitted, but it feels like a completely unfinished system when compared to the setup you guys added with the new training and trait system. Having skills and weapon choices fully revolving around a trait line feels like a massive step backwards after all of that. It removes the freedom of making your character how you want if you are forced to select one thing and with future specializations in tow it would only get worse and less appealing then it is already.

What I wish I had time to do this weekend:
1: Test out the new rewards systems on old maps.
2: Play more Stronghold.
3: Max out a mastery tree for Gliding.

I absolutely LOVED Stronghold PvP!
The match was much more interesting and required strategy instead of just simply run somewhere and fight if needed.
There was actual communication during the match and creating party team to run with was much more enjoyable. It wasn’t all about who could live the longest or hit the hardest, its was more on whose team can work together the best!

Loki.4871:

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.

With respect, I have to completely disagree with this comment….I LOVEDLOVEDLOVED how Revenant sword #3 worked with the camera. Somehow having my perspective stay where my character originally was made the image of my character teleporting among a small group of enemies and hitting everything in sight feel even more kitten than it would have otherwise. Please keep this camera setup!!!!

Things I greatly enjoyed

The way mobs felt different to face, both in the way they are handled and the way they attack
From what we saw of it so far I like the way night forces players to split up in order to be successful, I hope this is carried through to the new version of it.
The map looks fantastic and I look forward to seeing more of it
The adventures are fun and it’s addictive trying to place higher, I’d like to see some of this taken retroactively in to the game, particularly thinking of the hidden depths in silverwastes.
Chronomancer, I love the additions to what is my main, I just hope when the inevitable nerfs happen it doesn’t totally gut the class.

Things I’m not so keen on.
while i feel the night events go in a positive direction splitting people up I don’t feel the daytime events do this enough, for quite a number of them it still feels like the best way to overcome them is to throw a pile of people at them.

• Loving the reaper, Loving the reaper shroud and i can’t wait till’ i can wear a reaper hood and still have my eyes glowing (in beta i used an all-shadow-abyss Arah helm, it covered my glowing eyes). We need a bit more damage to the Greatsword Skills. We also need to make the pull skill more effective.

• Loving the Animations of the tempest overloads. I acctualy think it’d be fair if they where uninteruptable.

• Loving the way my character speaks when in action. I must also point that i greatly enjoyed the cutscenes

• what i dont love is that the game’s not Done yet ! Hurry Hurry !

Alright, things I enjoyed:

• Verdant Brink! The place was amazing, the design with all the vines all around is amazing, the music was top notch, the Itzel village is awesome, and we only got to see a portion of the map! I’m so hyped to see all the maps and explore every nook and cranny of them.

• The Enemies! They are hard, but not enough to make them annoying. You need to learn how to fight them before you succeed fighting them, and each enemy is unique, what makes the fights more interesting and fun!

• Adventures! I loved those! A casual activity we do for fun, but at the same time we can make it a hardcore activity by trying to master every adventure and make the perfect run, becoming the best bug catcher in the world! (I hope we get titles, I want to show everyone that I’m an awesome bug catcher). I just wished it was available more often.

• Revenant! The class is awesome! The animations, the lore, and this time it felt really strong after all the changes (kudos to Roy) and the addition of Shiro and swords. I probably won’t main it mostly because I grew so attached to my guardian, but it can become my close second.

• My character can talk! And it sounds badkitten! Finally being able to get there and take charge and give orders and feel like a real commander of the pact, I loved it! And talking to NPCs in instances without the side-by-side cutscenes and even in the open world is awesome!

• Day events! They were pretty engaging (when they worked properly) and felt like an extension of the instanced story. It just needs some bug fixing and some health tweaking to make some event steps not stall so much, and others feel more impactful (the wyvern died so fast… ). If the final iteration of the night becomes as engaging, and we get some sweet rewards, I can really see me spending a lot of time there like I do in Silverwastes.

• Dragon Hunter’s Traps! While I still think the class needs some work, mainly on the traits, I loved using the traps. It gave the Guardian a new bursty playstyle to burn single or stacked targets.

• Masteries! Gliding is awesome! And when the mushrooms didn’t send me flying to my death, it was pretty fun and useful as well. They change the way I traverse around the map and get me access to new places, and I’m so hyped to see how much more impact it can give in later tiers and later maps! I just wished we could unlock the mastery tracks through simple objectives to give it more meaning, since we could start mastering Exalted Lore without ever meeting one or even knowing they exist.

I spent most of the beta playing Reaper honestly its pretty much the only thing i touched and breathed for the whole weekend. I think its much much more fun than the base necro and cant stand to play necro without it anymore. It’s much more interactive and aggressive and while there are things i don’t like about it, it was over all a very good experience. I think reaper should get just a tiny bit of fine tuning (chill damage trait is ticks low for a grandmaster option, and GS needs a bit of love, speed or damage out put, one of the two.) but other than that its sitting in a good spot. Anyone who says it needs a nerf is just wrong. I found that ranged foes take em down rather quickly a fair trade for being given such awesome melee options.

In PVE:
I was really enjoying weapon swap on the Rev.

I was really enjoying Shiro on the Rev… so much so that I barely swapped out to any other legend.

I liked the Reaper’s Death Shroud, but not the Reaper AA on the GS… or any of the skills except for #3. Too slow for too little damage. That chill nerf while back just… why go into any chilling traits now? Pointless.

I liked Chronomancer, but didn’t get enough time on it to flesh it out.

Unimpressed with Tempest warhorn so played Staff Tempest and was ok, had fun with it, but went back to semi-meta staff build that I felt worked better for Fractals. Just the overloads just didn’t feel worth the trade off.

Didn’t play on the Dragonhunter.

In WVW:
Don’t play it

In PVP:
Don’t play it

Masteries… Gliding is fun because it’s something different, but didn’t gain enough levels to really unlock any masteries because of all the broken event chains and small portion of the map that I got bored with quickly (again because of the broken events).

Day and Night

I didint see much diference from day to night, i think in night mode it should have more dark areas and areas that are iluminated with torches and so being brigther and thus making more contrast areas… what i saw was everything well iluminated for what i can remember.

New weapons

I didn’t like that we have to select the new trait to be able to use the new weapon or the other skills, we could select it to have more power and eficiency and not a must have

Gliding

It`s so cool that it could make part in all game modes execpt pvp, hehehe

Revenant is ON POINT! I had so much fun playing one. Only gripes are “where are my skills?” I only get four utility skills per stance? I pray to Kormir that changes. Would like to see more passive skills too. Would also like a third hammer on Jalis’ channel skill. Pretty please. The animation doesn’t feel satisfying enough with only two. Maybe some traits that make the hammers stun occasionally or inflict weakness? A trait that makes the staff bubbles that pop off give boons like quickness or retaliation would be great too.

This rolls in with my other concern. I feel like there aren’t enough traits and variety of traits in the game. They are the things that really give the classes build diversity and synergies and I feel there aren’t enough of them. I also feel traits are more passive stuff that changes conditions you put out or damage you deal to enemies with certain conditions and less skill changing. Maybe that’s what y’all are going for, but I feel, in general, a decent number of traits should change the way some skills actually function. Like the Jalis’ hammer channel I mentioned earlier. Adding a third or fourth hammer that occasionally stuns would be a great trait. Or maybe a trait that changes shiro’s speed buff to an AoE passive, but at greater cost on your energy regen. You could have two master traits that manipulate overloads for eles. One makes the AoE larger, the other makes them last longer. Stuff like that.

The map looks gorgeous! Phenomenal job by designers and builders. Can’t wait to play more and reach that golden city looking place. Getting so hyped. My sense of wonder and my longing to explore every nook and cranny has never been higher.

Adventures were fun, hoping there is a lot of variety in the types of adventures out there.

Events seemed nice, didn’t really notice the difference between day and night in enemy behavior. I would like to see some enemies change appearance and behavior. Maybe they could be larger in the day than at night or something. Idk.

The story stuff looks to be great. Voice acting is great too. No awkward silences between npcs talking. I’m overjoyed my character finally has a voice. Though I did make multiple characters of different races and they had the same if not very similar lines. I want my race, class, and sex to change what my character is saying. I know that’s a lot of work and voice acting, but I believe in you anet.

The choices appear as though they are going to be good, but would like to see more than just two sometimes. The choices don’t have to lead down a whole story path, but some should change which characters like me and dislike me based on which other character I’m agreeing with and how I’m choosing to attack the situation. I’m also hoping they actually change my trajectory towards Mordremoth long term.

Those things really made me feel that the world is going to be alive and changing when HoT releases.

other than bugs being fixed which is just a beta thing i would like to see having full bag slots and 20 slot bags in the next beta so that i can play and not have to delete things all the time and think about it ppl that dont have that will want it after and might spend some gems to get it cause having bag space is nice

I really loved the beta
Gliding = best thing ever. It felt amazing and was really the only thing i wanted to do the whole time i was there
traversing the map became more fun the more skills you unlocked (gliding, bouncing)
At the start I didnt really like it.. probably because i saw those jumping mushrooms and just knew i was wasting my time scaling the wall, or running around to the back of the hill. This did give the motivation to go for the bouncing shrooms mastery though, so job well done ^^
Its probably good to put those things there, seeing an area you want to reach but cant really makes you want to go for the mastery.

the mobs are scary, which is fun. Maybe it was because I tried out classes I normally dont play, but I got killed alot at the start. Its great having new mobs which need new tactics, the sniper and mounted mordrem being one of my favorites as its still easy to figure them out.
The shrooms are a bit harder to figure out imo, but maybe thats because they look so laughable.. untill you notice the amount of damage they do. (future nightmare material)

The events were very buggy so thats defenitly something that needs work, but they were fun! The escort mission of laranthir, the kitty and the pale reavers was really great. Having to kill all the vinetenders at teh same time was genius, although they do have crazy high healthpool took a bit to long when we went with a small group.

Personal story looked amazing the new style is great. Going to love playing my plants if you keep the intereaction with NPC’s and ‘voices’ this way ^^
Its fun seeing reaction to plant vs non-plant
only seemed to miss the first line of dialogue audio laranthir speaks upon entering the ‘camp’ (Ive been having that a lot in personal story/living world story so might be a problem from my end)

also.. gliding <3 get knocked off a high cliff.. hah too bad stupid mob I dont insta die! (getting swarmed by mordrem upon landing did make it a little sour but still! You will not have me falling damage!)

I was swarmed with work right after the BWE so this is coming in a bit late.

Starting off, I totally loved the Beta Weekend Event. Though i believe we played a single layer of the map.

The Quest chains are well driven and the New mobs have amazing mechanics. Among the mobs i loved the combination of tiny raptors with stoneheads and tendrils, really keeps you on your feet. Some mobs however need a little buff/nerf, most prominent among these are the snipers who are too strong and well guarded by oncoming punishers. Tormentors are rather too weak. Tormentor’s corruption is hardly felt (add some torment maybe). On to itzel side the Smokescales are amazing as are the beetles. Unfortunately i did’nt get the play the Wywern as the chain was bugged most of the time.

As OP mentioned the length of night must be longer, i love all the variety offered in the event chains. It was great to see a lot of people playing well in a medium-large group. Mastery system looks nice and will ensure great many hours of gameplay (pls dun let it buff with consumables).

Coming to the specializations. Personally, I main the guardian and first thing i played on was the
Dragon hunter: The longbow did great job however the utilities offered didn’t even make me think twice on using the vanilla utilities. The DH trait offers no more than improved shield and wings, however the cast times break synergy with renewed focus. Also spear of justice is a projectile and can be easily predicted to dodge, this combined with low burn rate will leave it largely unsused.
Reaper is very op. the battles finished with me only using skill 1,5,f1,1 it was a power build though but honestly with 18k shroud and 6k AA crits who gives a kitten about health.
Chronomancer: again too op, i’d hate to face one with chronophantasma in pvp/wvw.
Revenant: Now here is a class that can fit every possible role without lessening the role of any other class. They can go full dps with huge support. Or go full condi with nice CC. There are just so many combinations i was really lost in the class. Tried out every single weapon and every single build in just one day.
Tempest: overload attunes take too long to cast, very impractical as they spawn on player. wh cannot win over existing DD as might stacking is huge requirement from the eles.

What i want?
More maps, more lore (i am a sucker of lore), some direction to story please (like omad’s machine a few hints could grip me hard), raids and the punishment for running alone (mushrooms were a great idea).

PS: Not sure if this was intended but events affecting the adventures is also a good idea as they cans top upscaling events and join them for a change so the the adventure location is safe.

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.

I feel the same… although tempest has some visually appealing skills… I feel this elite specialization needs some work before HoT is released. Reading through the posts in this thread sums up my feelings about tempest… overloads need improvement and the elite is awful.

Unlike most I only played with the new skills and traits in Southsun, solo tackling big vet karka. I feel they are best NPC to test such things out due to their variety of attacks and abilities and I wanted to not spoil my surprise of the new maps.

Chromancer – well casting is a bit slow, effects (dps and animations) are great, but was disappointed a bit with gravity well levitate. If any mob or boss is in well when it expires the levitate should work even against defiance (I really wanted to see the big karka float :-). Pull should be part of the gravity well (why not steal the guard pull trap mechanics, to work around the issues you hit?).
Reaper – OMG its awesome. I solo’d 2 big vet karka with no problems. Wish I could do that with my mesmer (if only our vitality regen was restored back the way it was…hint).
Dragonhunter – had no issues just using bow and traps. Was disappointed with the bow AOE animation and dps though.
Tempest I didn’t play since my ele experience is pretty newb with it.