Guild Wars 2

Verdant Brink – Map layout

The new map, or what we were able to play of it, is excellent. The layout is superb although somewhat constricting. I liked that more content is squeezed into smaller spaces while still conveying a grand scale and for the most part you couldn’t tell that a screen or two in a direction would be very different, however I found the linearity of the map to be somewhat irritating. For the most part there seemed to be only one or two paths to get to certain areas/events and though this was opened up somewhat after unlocking gliding, it takes some getting used to after the rather open fields we are generally playing on in vanilla.

I love the verticality of the map. Even though it is one ‘biome’ there is plenty of up and down movement and a good assortment of field types (cave, meadow, forest, cliff etc). However there are many small little crannies and areas that don’t appear to have any real purpose at the moment; I assume there will be events/adventures/content for these areas that wasn’t included in the beta event. I do realize there needs to be a certain amount of ‘wasted’ space to make it somewhat realistic and to convey a sense of travelling distance, but considering the largely linear nature of the paths between event hubs , some of these off-shoots seem out of place.

The map reminds me greatly of areas of Cantha in GW:Factions, where you might see a ‘path’ on the minimap but in reality that route is blocked by smaller debris or a mis-identified smudge on the map being a wall. While some might cringe or be annoyed I found it very nostalgic (Factions was my favorite campaign) but to others newer to the franchise (or those that didn’t play or like Factions) might not look so favorably on this. Personally I love it as the map means less! It becomes more important to know the layout of the zone and it is more immersive and brings a base level of thinking into how you will move about the zone. I highly doubt that any mapping changes will be made, but if possible I’d ask for a few more paths to different major centers in future maps — not the open fields, but perhaps a couple more routes. This may be solved once we gain access to the other two biomes, but I think it is something to keep an eye on in a general sense.

Verdant Brink – Events

While there were a few bugs (notably the Itzel event with the food baskets) the event chains were decent, however there was at least one quite unpleasant step in the Itzel chain: Placing the Wyvern eggs. Gathering them wasn’t much of a chore as the jumping puzzle-esque path made it novel, but the subsequent event where you needed to place them about the tribe’s village was exceedingly tedious. I would recommend a pretty heavy overhaul of this portion of the chain: the number of eggs needing to be placed needs to be looked at, and there needs to be other things to do during this time! Whether that is defending egg-carriers (I can’t say I recall any hostiles ever showing up to prevent the eggs being placed) or giving a bundle-item to perform a task helping the ‘infiltration/sabotage’ (knocking out hylek guards with Itzel blowdarts, creating distractions to lure hylek defenders away from egg placement sites etc).

The wyvern summoned at the end of this stage was also exceedingly easy to beat. I’m aware this isn’t the big wyvern fight, but there was zero challenge to this encounter. The group I was with was able to burst it down to 10% before it took off and then it landed shortly after and promptly died. I would prefer if the encounter used some more mechanics to prevent stacking on the poor wyvern, or perhaps have the eggs we planted hatch and produce smaller ‘adds’ that help the larger wyvern. Perhaps make these baby wyverns give the larger wyvern a stacking buff as they die? As the larger wyvern is ‘enraged’ at the loss of its young?

The laranthir quest was good overall, I don’t think I have any particular issues with it.

HoT General – Masteries

The masteries system was a nice touch, and I like that the player chooses which perks they want to go to for first and that this will impact their experience of content. While I did not play enough to reach higher ranks of the different lines (I don’t think I recall hearing anyone that did as the amount of experience to unlock is substantial) I’m both curious and apprehensive of the vendors from the various Maguuma cultures. These perks are generally more than halfway down the list and would require a sizable time investment to reach. This content was not available to me to experience this weekend, but I’m worried that people would either feel obligated to max a cultural chain to gain access to strong consumables from these cultural merchants, or feel ripped off from the grind producing rather paltry rewards —since there is no mastery reset (which I agree with) you could self-cripple your experience by sticking to one line. That said, this is merely a concern, I’d prefer the system to stay as it is: we players rarely get the chance to make impactful choices about our experience and I’m keen to have these perks apply to my live account.

Hot General – Gliding

Terribly buggy. For me at least. I have rebound my jump key to ‘C’ due to the configuration of my keyboard (it has a built in gaming pad on the left side) and my dodgroll to space. This combo made it extremely difficult to pull out my glider for unknown reasons. The button to get it out was still space, but it rarely deployed — so I got acquainted with the ground multiple times to my consternation. I would suggest either having an option to bind it, or simply have it deploy when pressing whatever button you have assigned to ‘jump’ while in mid-air. This problem may have stemmed from the fact that the button was bound to dodge-roll specifically, but I would appreciate some polish on this mechanic before launch.

HoT General – Character

Having the player character converse with the surroundings was excellent. I enjoyed it much more than the old-style cutscene conversations (though I never liked those). It was much more organic and I found myself much more interested in what npc’s had to say. I attribute this to the context the conversation takes place in — while in the open world you are still immersed, whereas in the old-style cutscenes the blurred backgrounds and cut-up portraits was an instant break from immersion that made the storytelling disjointed.

Reaper – Greatsword

I found the greatsword a bit clunky, but this was mostly on the auto attack and gravedigger. I realize you want to make these ‘big meaty hits’ but the animation of gravedigger is very distracting and breaks the flow of combat. I would suggest reducing the cast time of Gravedigger to a 1s cast time to start; this would still give enough telegraph and notice to players, while making it feel more realistic to the reaper player. The auto attack chain was decent, apart from the final portion: Chilling Scythe. I found the animation for this attack overly telegraphed. I realize that chill is a strong control condition and there needs to be some form of telegraph, but having the length of the sword turn bright blue in ice (in addition to a 1s cast time) to be over-done. While there are more important attacks to dodgeroll, anyone who wanted to would be able to dodge this attack from a mile away. I recommend either shaving the cast time to 3/4s like the first two attacks, or changing the animation to a somewhat more subtle version — perhaps a frosty trail in the style of twilight (just for the final swing)? Or perhaps just a chilly burst when the third hit connects?

Reaper – Shouts

While most of the new shouts are well made mechanically, I found that most are very situational. That said, several could be very strong in certain situations — “Nothing can save you” in particular is very strong for a direct-damage reaper in a PvP situation. That said, I would like a small modification to two shouts in particular. The new heal “Your soul is mine” underperforms somewhat, right now it mainly serves as a convenient life-force generator, but it is somewhat lacking in the healing department. I would like if the damage this shout causes is added as healing as well, or counts as lifesteal — meaning if you hit 5 targets you get another 1k healing out of the skill.

The elite shout ‘Chilled to the bone’ could use some minor tweaking as well. I love the flavor, but in all honesty, the name of the shout doesn’t fit with the rather malevolent nature of the other shouts — perhaps something along the lines of ‘Your blood runs cold"? Additionally, the revenant elite ’jade wind’ is in effect a stronger form of this elite due to the fact that it can be used multiple times with a longer duration in the same time frame. All this skill currently has is stability generation (which we necros really need) and a long duration chill. I don’t want to make it overpowered, but keeping in mind jade winds and the 2s cast time, I feel this skill could use a little love. Perhaps shave the cast time to 1.5s or give a frost armor aura to the reaper, duration depending on number of foes struck?

Overall, the shout’s mechanics are good, however a major flaw (to me at least) is the voice acting. I only played a human male reaper, but the intonation of almost all the shouts was way off base. Only ‘suffer’ sounded like it had any sort of malice in the voice, with the remaining shouts being belted out in a rather perky/chipper voice that didn’t fit at all.

Reaper – Shroud

So. Much. Fun.

Seriously, this form is amazing, and I fully expect reaper to be my new main once HoT goes live. Great job. My one small complaint is to do with the way that Death’s Charge works. I dislike that you can pass through targets and continue for a great long distance. I would recommend having it either stop forward movement on reaching your chosen target, or have it propel enemies along with you like revenant staff 5 does.

Reaper – Traits

I enjoyed almost all the reaper traits, and while it would kitten my current set up, I might suggest moving Decimate Defenses into the grandmaster slot, perhaps dropping blighter’s boon down to the master tier. DD can give you an easy 50% crit-chance (due to the vast array of vulnerability inflicting abilities necro has) and I personally think it is more impactful than blighter’s boon (though I do quite enjoy the healing in reapers shroud). I suppose you could drop reaper’s onslaught down, but most other ‘increase attack speed’ traits are grandmaster tier.

Reaper- Last notes

This new spec is both powerful and fun to play. I can’t help but feel that it would be better if chill still impeded mobility skills, but the spec is a great success. I think this will give necros the leg up they need to compete with other classes in all game modes on a more level playing-field.

Chronomancer – Shield

Well done, both skills are strong, novel and impactful. I enjoyed the alacrity phantasms very much. I also liked the 5 skill, but can’t help but feel it is on a slightly too large cooldown — I would suggest shaving it to a base 35s CD and keeping the current time reduction condition and amount.

Chronomancer – Wells

The heal is a great addition, and I fully enjoyed the lower cd on it.
While Mesmers have probably one of the best kits in terms of utilities, the utility wells will likely see use in both dungeons/hard-pve and sPvP. Well of action and Calamity both will likely see some use in pve encounters featuring larger numbers of foes, whereas precog and recall will likely see a moderate amount of use in sPvP. The numbers on these skills seem about right.

The elite could possibly stand to have a 2s cripple per pulse to give a little more flavour and control, but otherwise was well received

Chronomancer – Continuum Shift

Insanely powerful.

I feel this ability is something you definitely want to keep an eye on. With 3 clones out, you have enough time to cast your elite, use mimic, cast another utility twice… and then do that all again after you swap back. You can get 4 uses out of a utility before it goes on cooldown, and this is something that needs to be watched. Alternately you can get a grand total of 6 uses out of mantras before recasting them. I love this mechanic, and I dont’ want you to change it, but I do urge you to keep in mind the possibilities this creates in terms of future content and balance passes.

Chronomancer – Traits

I think most of these are spot on. However I’m not terribly fond of the adept ‘Alls well that ends well’ — I’d suggest changing it to condition-to-boon conversion instead of removal.

Next, Improved Alacrity is somewhat of a joke, it is 33% which sounds decent, but all instances of alarcity give you 1s of it. Meaning you get absolutely nothing out of this trait, as you appear to need a full second of it for it to apply it’s effect — I may be incorrect on this, but the current iteration feels very weak for a master tier trait.
Lastly, the grandmaster ‘lost time’ is a bit clunky. I suspect you want to get away from flat ICD timers, but this trait promotes glassy builds smashing the keys, which doesn’t fit the mesmer at all. You want to slow the foe, but you need 5 crits? I’d suggest either changing it to “Slow foe on crit, 5s ICD” or having it a flat “every 5th hit slows foe” rather than crits. The % chance of critical hits (in addition to enemies actively dodging/defending) makes the cooldown of this trait very unreliable. You might get back-to-back procs one time then not be able to apply it again for a long time depending on positioning and the flow of battle, making this a pretty situational trait.

The two clone generation traits in this spec are insanely powerful, and I run both. I quite enjoy them, and I no longer feel inhibited from using my shatters aggressively.

Chronomancer – last notes

Great work again. Chronomancer is very fun to play and quite powerful. The Continuum shift will need to be watched and tweaked, but overall a great addition.

Dragonhunter – Longbow

While I felt odd using a longbow on Guardian, I did have fun. That said I had a few issues. For one, the auto attack felt strange. I don’t really reconcile a ‘bouncing arrow’ attack similar to a thieves shortbow with the archetype of the guardian, so that was a big disconnect. I get that you wanted a condition for the application of cripple, but again, the bounce doesn’t fit with the name nor the guardian. I would suggest making the attack simply pierce, and if it damages 2 or more targets, all are crippled (but reduce the duration to 1s); this would still allow for perma-cripple if you are able to meet the requirements, but the flavour would be more in-line with guardian.

Next, Deflecting Shot was very odd to use as well. It is pretty buggy as to whether or not it will destroy the projectile. I would suggest changing its effect to be more akin to wall of reflection but moving forward (not quite as large, but bigger than the current iteration) hopefully this would increase the viability of the skill. I like the addition of the ‘line-nuke’ aiming rather than being a targeted skill.

True shot and Symbol of Energy are both nice additions to the Guardians lineup.
Hunter’s Ward felt like a neutered Barrage for the most part. I know that it has a powerful control aspect, but the fact that this only occurs at the END greatly reduces its effectiveness against players. I would suggest either upping the initial damage portion, or reducing the cast time to 2s. This would either make it more beneficial against players from a damage perspective, or easier to hit while still giving time to counterplay.

Dragonhunter – Traps

The heal was nice as a ‘prepared’ heal in that you could rig an area to your advantage, and the numbers were nice as well.

The utilities had some issues for me however. First, Light’s Judgement’ was pretty much useless to me. It only applies 1s of revealed so this isn’t anything that a thief or mesmer would fear! I know it applies it 8 times, but any player with any sort of common sense would immediately leave this area . Secondly, while it is great that guardians get access to vulnerability with this skill, I feel burning is better suited to the skill’s flavor and the guardian. This would also help give credence to condi-guards.

Next, test of faith. I don’t like this skill. It doesn’t do anything if they do not leave the area. Granted, most players will seek to leave a trap, but you need to have at least one other trap (procession of blades or Light’s judgement) to make this even remotely viable, and this takes up two utility slots. My personal recommendation is to make this the elite, and drastically change the functionality to: “Knock down affected foes for 3s and apply 10 stacks of Vulnerability for 5s.”

Procession of blades is a great damaging utility, pretty solid, nothing against it nor do I think it needs tweaking.

Fragments of faith. Oh lord. This skill is so strong.

This skill allows a 1v1 against the guardian to be pretty much a sure win, due to the free 5 or so blocks it gives in addition to the normal amounts of blocks that guardians get. While I love this skill and how strong it is, I would recommend changing it so that if you walk over a ‘fragment’ while having aegis, you still consume that fragment. As it is now, you can just stand on a fragment with aegis, get the aegis block, and then regain aegis a second later. And they last a lonnng time too. I would make the duration of these pickups shorter to make it more of a group utility skill rather than an overpowered dueling skill.

Dragons maw is an odd elite. First it gets slow, which is odd for the guardian. Next it has a unique cc mechanic. Personally, I would make this a utility instead of an elite, and change it to an immobilize instead (though keep the ‘pull you in’ part).
All the utility traps could probably use a reduction to 35s cd.

Dragonhunter – Virtues

I quite liked the changes to the virtues, though I found the Shield of courage to be odd. It blocks attacks, but due to the range of the wall it produces, it doesn’t block melee attacks. I think the wording should either be changed to denote its functionality as a projectile destroying wall, or decrease the distance from the player that the wall exists so that it can actually mitigate melee attacks

Dragonhunter – Traits

While good, Dragonhunter traits focused more on dragonhunter-exclusive uses (or at least it seems that way). There may be a few subtle bonuses that could apply to other builds, but overall there seems to be just two main setups for Dragonhunter: DPS (with strong reliance on longbow) and a supportive setup that guardians already have great success with.

Dragonhunter – Last notes

While Guardian is not my main, I found it interesting to play the dragonhunter. I didn’t like it nearly as much as the Chronomancer or Reaper, but it was serviceable. I can see a very strong support setup using it.

Tempest – Warhorn

While the skills were perfectly functional I can’t help but feel that the current two off-hands feel more impactful. Dagger offhand brings a lot of damage to the table in addition to a more active playstyle, and focus offers a lot of personal bonuses. Warhorn does excel at what it was designed for (group support) but the problem is that both mainhands do NOT particularly help here. Scepter is a mid-range weapon but most of the tempest abilities are point blank — you can use scepter pointblank and in many cases you have no choice but to do so, but generally ranged skills are slightly weaker than melee ones and this makes a disconnect. If you choose dagger mainhand you are presented with fewer party support tools than scepter would give and are split between being a dps character and a support character which felt really odd as well — but your abilities are all in the same range bracket. On top of this most of the animations were somewhat lackluster (and this is a recurring problem with other tempest skills).

There is nothing particularly wrong with warhorn, it just doesn’t really have a place with the existing main-hands.

Tempest – Shouts

Firstly, I was surprised that more than one elite spec got shouts. I’m not saying they aren’t useful, especially as a party -support mechanic, but I think I would have been more interested if they were something else -- that said, there is zero chance of complete redo’s at this point so it is what it is.

Again the heal seemed pretty good, especially if you paired it with shout traits or trooper runes.

Both Feel the Burn and Flash-Freeze are odd. The burn and chill applied is paltry at best. I would suggest changing the amount of these conditions applied based on proximity to the elementalist with 3 stages: those at the outer range get 1 stack burn/2s Chill, then a middle range giving 3stacks burn/3s chill and a point blank range giving 5 stacks burn/5s chill. Secondly, the fact that these shouts hand out auras steps heavily on the Water magic lines toes. This does give you a way to share auras without investing too heavily in your traits, but it presents an irritating choice if you DO choose to focus on auras.

Eye of the Storm is still under consideration. With many more group cc skills coming into the game, I suspect that this skill will be quite useful, but currently I don’t feel its as impactful as it could be. I would suggest it granting 2 stacks of Stability for 5s in addition to its current effects.

Shock and Aftershock is a little odd to me as well. Personally I would have preferred a 2s knockdown instead of the imobilize, and again, the fact that it gives out free auras is irksome to my planned auramancer setup. The high cd would allow for the hard cc as is.

Rebound. Ah, rebound… This skill has great possibility, but I’m not sure what to think about it. On the one hand, it is a low recharge elite that is heavy support in group scenarios (considering it can effect allied elite spells) but on the other it feels much more like a mesmer type of skill than a elementalist one. I know that there is an element tied to each shout, and that ‘arcane’ needed to make an appearance, but this doesn’t feel quite right. As a quick fix, I would apply “allies next attack deals 50% bonus damage” as well as changing the name — “rebound” has a minor negative connotation that your foe has momentarily gotten the best of you — I would suggest (with my addition to the skill) renaming it “Feel the Power!”. As an alternative to the +50% bonus, you could also make it a point-blank aoe arcane explosion that deals critical damage to 360range.

Tempest – Overcharging.

I… Liked the concept. Not terribly sure about the execution. Firstly, most of the animations were exceedingly disappointing to me. The only one I liked was the Water Overload. I know you need to re-use assets, but the warrior whirl/dredge flame tornado mixture was such a let down. The Air overload was terribly basic and while the earth overload had such potential, it was a flop. If you wanted to re-use assets I would have chosen to repeat the whirl/turn that the ranger uses at the end of swoop so that the animation is more lively, and you could have scaled down the tornado elite animation and made it fiery instead of that really see-through one from the dredge fractal. The earth animation is much too rigid and blocky — it would have been much more impressive (visually) had they been sort of hunched on it as if they were surfing and the roiling earth resembled a wave (with a somewhat more substantial trail left behind you).

All this said, the actual effects of the overloads are decent, though as you are frontline support, and these overloads are point-blank, the cast times are really long. You have the least armor and the least health available in the game, and these require you to stay on target for between 4-5 seconds not doing anything else. Yes, elementalists have good access to the protection boon, and even a trait that boosts it now, but they are still quite vulnerable to burst damage if they don’t go cele.

Tempest – Traits

They aren’t bad, but there are a few strange mishaps, such as latent stamina triggering on entering water attunement. This is unprecedented for a specific attunement being required in a different specialization. I can understand why you don’t want vigor on ALL swaps, and that unique effects based on attunement is an arcane thing, but it is very odd. I don’t have legitimate complaints other than the continued spreading of all the aura traits about the various elementalist specilizations.

Tempest – Last notes.

Tempest was probably my least favorite of the revealed elite specs. I enjoy support roles, but I found it clunky. I don’t usually play elementalist, and this may very well be part of my unease, but I think the tempest needs a bit more polish to really cement it as a valuable support option.

Shiro- Dual swords.

FUN! Very fun. I quite enjoyed both mainhand and offhand sword, but personally I found axe to be a better offhand. You CAN separate someone for your burst with offhand sword 5, but the added shadowstep on axe 4 is too strong, plus the aoe cc on axe 5. Sword 3 is very engaging, and I love that it can follow teleporting targets. I didn’t find much use for sword 2 however, as between the three shadowsteps available to my setup, I didn’t find it necessary to snare (and the chill duration is exceedingly weak).

Shiro – Legend skills

Shiro is a very powerful skill bar. The heal is quite useful and allows for extra damage, and feels just about right. The evade is exceedingly strong as it not only is an evade but also refunds a dodgeroll — this may need tweaking, as you can theoretically always dodge. The shadowstep is quite useful in a couple different ways, though I found myself relying more on my Axe 4 and saving my shiro shadowstep incase i needed to bust through a block. The quickness maintenance skill is also very very strong — I would suggest increasing its cost slightly or at least keeping an eye on it.

Jade winds… is overpowered. I like it, dont’ get me wrong, and I think I find it to be the most impactful of all the revenant elites so far, but I can’t help but feel like the revenant got a better version of chilled to the bone. Yes, it doesn’t have the chill after effect, but its a quicker cast and a longer stun, and it can be cast twice. Personally I’d suggest increasing its cost to 60 energy and/or increasing the cast time to 1.5s.

Shiro- Traits

Not fair.

There is only one obvious path. Everyone will take Assassins Presence, Ferocious Strikes and Swift Termination. The only deviation is if there are two shiro spec revenants and one can then take rapid lacerations. The only reason to take nefarious momentum would be if a bug existed to toggle into and out of Impossible odds to stack might — the other two skills are too situational to waste the energy.
While the traits are functional, there are not fun to ponder over and there isn’t really any choice which subtracts from the experience.

Shiro/Revenant – Final notes

Revenant is quite fun to play however I find it odd there is only one ranged option right now. Additionally it is quite possible that “Displacing Torment” is one of the trolliest skills for pve there is. It is highly disruptive of any organized play; the ability will be very useful in sPvP, but could give Revenants a bad name in other places. I feel like players are more or less forced to choose shiro as one of their legends in order to do anything — even with the changes to mallyx, there is still some pretty serious kink going on in terms of functionality, and this clumsiness is pretty prevalent in the other core specs as well. It works and it is fun, but doesn’t come off as polished. The shiro kit is well designed and powerful and is a clear winner in my opinion. I can see myself running Ventari in a support spec, but I can only ever see Jallis as a secondary legend. Mallyx is functional, but not for me.