Guild Wars 2

- No FPS issue;
- One disconnection;
- Sound Bug at some point during the Wyvern fight, but went back to normal afterwards;
- The mushroom pads didn’t worked even with the mastery;
- The HoT introduction was a nice surprise, it was good to see our character finally voicing once again;
- An option to leave the mastery system by using Esc as any other window in game would be nice and handful.

As for the Revenant:
- In my opinion the hammer range should be reduced to 900 or 600 units or perhaps add a longer swing animation to make up for it;
- Phase Smash and Drop the Hammer seems to be balanced, have a long casting which prevents the use of blast spam;
- Unyielding Anguish with Mace auto attack gives an easy way to stack torment. It is hard to predict how much you can stack against a player, but I was able to get up to 20 stacks against the mob by myself. Perhaps the torment is a bit heavy here and needs to be toned down;
- Inspiring Reinforcement is too easy to spawn during combat, being able to keep an uptime stability, which will seriously harm the uniqueness of the Guardian to grant stability to allies, with a slight higher cooldown.
- Mobility for now don’t have an opinion, seems ok so far being a heavy class but will only know for sure after the rest of traits and weapons are announced.

I’ll have to echo what most people on the threads are saying. Revenant just didn’t feel very dynamic.

RE: Wyvern fight
The blow back, wing flap appears to be sometimes a 120 degree arc (most of the time) in front of the Wyvern but I’ve been clearly knocked back at near 180 degree (perpendicular) from the Wyvern. There is no targeting reticule with the Wyvern blow back ability so it’s hard to tell if this is intended or not.

Otherwise, the Wyvern fight was fairly easy to understand and learn. The scaling up of Defiant based on players present was “ok” but nothing too dramatic. I’d honestly move the defiant stacks up a bit more.

I purposely tried to melee the Wyvern a few times and the fight is far more range friendly. That’s neither good nor bad but it seems to lose some flavor.

Revenant
It’s very hard to measure the class when there were certain weapons missing (i.e. Staff), the trait pool is limited (2 1/2 trait lines), utilities are limited, and only access to Celestial gear. The class ‘felt’ to be on a solid foundation from a mechanic standpoint.

My only issue was both Elites don’t feel like Elites right now. There is nothing game changing when used (energy is spent better on other utility or straight cycle on damage utilities). Both of the heals were ‘ok’ but clearly are balanced around the instant-swap mechanic trait and that’s where the mechanic shined (needs more utility-based combo though). I’d hate for the 25-pt GM trait to be a “must” trait though just to have decent heal rates unless heavily traited elsewhere.

Hang gliding
Needs a tutorial of some sort would be my suggestion. It’s odd to jump off a ledge and not have immediate access to the gliding option. It just feels clunky. The pre-engage function of the Wyvern fight doesn’t get explain that you need to jump off the ledge and the gliding will carry you (hopefully) to the next ledge.

I, and I saw others as well, sometimes fall (not make it to the ledge) after gliding a bit.

Other
I did crash once during Beta during the Wyvern fight. I don’t crash often so I have no idea why. Report was submitted.

Otherwise, very stable feeling except for extreme FPS drops with cranked up FOV settings and Wyvern fire fields/lots of players present.

It was pretty fun but also pretty confusing. It said that “The Torching Tendrils Adventure” was available, but I couldn’t find that. Some people got 3 mastery points total, but I could only come up with 2 after doing story and as many events as I could find. I also allocating one point to gliding and one to bouncing mushrooms but only gliding worked when equipped. Don’t know what I am doing wrong.

Next, the UI. Being a clicker, I was a bit disturbed by the placement of the mastery panel trigger across the entire bottom of the screen where the experience bar is. Any lag issues will tend to cause the mastery panel to open unexpectedly while trying to click on weapon or utility skills. Also, given that dealing with masteries seems to be pretty clunky, I totally expected it to be with the rest of the tabs in the hero panel, in tune with the current game UI design.

The fights didn’t seem too difficult or easy for the necro I built. I actually did not change anything from the default traits and gear supplied other than the heal.

First of all big thank you for the beta invite! It was fun to participate.

Then some notes:
-At times the test was quite laggy (1500ping) when there were many players around. In some faraway corners the game played very smoothly.
-I liked the verticality and complexity of the map even if it was small.
-Sometimes the character (female revenant) seemed to look into whichever direction she wanted. This happened mostly while running down the corridor in story instance but also outside in the open world while wielding hammer.
-Hammer skill 3 didn’t seem to blast too often.
-Hammer skill 4 was hard to aim while holding right mouse button to move the character.
-It was nice to use and channel some skills from one stance and then switch to other one while still keeping the effects of previous one.
-Wyvern fight was very cool and it had more encaging mechanics than current fights in open world, but it was still very easy. I would imagine it to become even easier as we figure out better strategies.
-Gliding was fun The activation time seemed pretty long to me.
-Mastery UI was confusing. I think I maybe probably used some points? maybe. Not sure.
-That skillpointkind of thing on top of rock was seemingly unreachable, but using revenant skill 3 of hammer to leap on top of the rock opened the interaction panel for long enough to activate the channel.

Thank you for the chance to try out this beta! It was fun

Shiren.9532:

• It was much easier with fewer people. I’m unsure about this, but in my first encounter (minutes into the beta) I had a lot of players there (looked like 15+ all hammer revenants) and we only stunned it twice. In successive fights I had fewer people (around five to 10) and it was much easier to succeed. Maybe people learned the mechanic better, maybe the scaling could be adjusted.

Problem is with skill that all revenants use for stun. That chain utility skill is bugged or has almost no effect in upscaled fights. In 20ish player fight 10 revenants barely removed 20% of the bar yet my icebow 5 removed almost 50%.
It is a bit less horrible in 5 man fights. 4 revenants barely managed to cc him in time but my icebow 5 nuked whole bar in 1 hit.

Overall impression: Generally good.

Highlights:
- Never having played the Revenant, it was pretty easy to gain competence. But the limited type of monsters made it hard to figure out how well it would do outside of Modrem (if that’s all it can ever fight as a profession, it’s well made against them, but limited in use if that’s the only area one can play them).
- The endurance regen was higher than normal, I thought. Personally, I liked it a lot.
- I did experience one game client crash during the first Wevyrn fight, but noticed no lag or latency on medium to high settings. (In a side note, thanks for not making me re-make the character after the crash.)
- My FPS seemed pretty steady about about 50-60.
- I’m HOPING there is more to the gliding than a sloped ten degree trajectory. I can see it adding a lot of depth to the game (having played AION, I enjoy flying in games).
- I agree that the mastery panel needs to be added to the hero panel UI, but I expect that’s only where it is because this is a beta and doing that would integrate things into the game that only buying the expansion would unlock.
- I noticed one area in the boss fight where a bit of metal is supposedly sticking up, blocking movement. But you can’t really SEE it. I kept getting hung up there. Maybe highlighting it as an obstruction a bit more would help (assuming this whole thing isn’t just a Beta-land test zone, of course).
- If the boss fight is “final”, I agree it’s a bit too easy. With six others and the NPC’s, we finished it off in under ten minutes toward the end of the first round.
- That said, it might be a consequence of the new boss vulnerability status bar. It definitely makes it easier to hurt them more when you know when to spam certain skills. If that’s the intention, congratulations, you did a great job!
- I’m HOPING there’s more to do/explore in the next round. The repetition was understandable for a stress test, but maybe we can repeat something new? If not, I’ll start a different character.

Conclusion:
This was only a taste, and I recognize that. I hope your servers got the data you needed and that the overall player experience was at least as good as it is in the main game. What I see is extremely promising and other than one crash about half an hour into it, it was otherwise very stable. It’s a beautiful, if dark, place and a lot of work went into it. I think I see the seeds of what you’re doing with the “other Sylvari who are not from the Pale Tree” in one of the Sylvari character story arcs in this, but that’s just a guess. I’m hoping that’s where you’re going, since nothing more was ever mentioned of it in the rest of the Personal Story lines.

The next round is in 2 hours or so. See you guys and gals there!

Personal story:
Not very difficulty, but also rather fast paced, not a big number of trashmobs between the story elements, rather good. The dialogue was also a lot more powerfull then everything we have seen before. The lips of the main character are moving when he speaks, very nice details. Rewards also felt okay.

Masteries:
The descriptions are nice, a good middleway between lore and information. It was confusing to “equip” a mastery, i didnt understand that you need to level these first. I think some pop up notifications providing these infos would be handy, same goes for the difference between HoT Masteries and the Vanilla Masteries.

Hang gliders: Feels good, but is a bit tricky to execute, you sometimes loose quite a bit of distance getting the exact feel for when to press space to activate it. Maybe add a option to “auto hangglide”? The delay before you can activate it feels a bit weird at first, but the masteries should reduce that at later levels.

World / Events: You can easily see that this was a area for demo purposes, the event schedules seemed a little bit too scripted / quick and repetetive. The overall look is amazing, the map feels huge (even the rather small part we where at). The new monster look really really neat, a lot of details at some hidden places, tricky enemies where you would expect them.

Wyvern: The fight was okay, it didnt felt static as the AOE attacks where random. It felt a little bit “meh” though because there is no way to fail it, no timer or blocked waypoints, if you die you jump back in and start again, limiting the “epic feeling of achieving something” quite a bit. Animations where smooth though.

Mechanics:
The break bar was a little bit hard to see for me, the first break bars just passed by me, i didnt realize the bar was already there, might be a matter of getting used where to look. The condition cap removal was huge and a very welcomed step. The game felt really smooth, no fps loss at all, it was a bit laggy for half an hour, it was an stress test so testing that limit out should be the purpose.

Revenant:
Animations are really good, the skills feel kinda fresh and next gen. Hammer AA is a little bit bright, rather hard to notice in brigther areas / camera angles. Overall the skills on the right side of the bar feel more powerfull by far, which is okay, the balance itself is still rather broken in terms of the vanilla classes. I dont expect the powerlevel to be anywhere close to this state at the time of release.

Adventures:
A rather big surprise here. The vine burning was a lot of fun, you expect this to be a “run around and press 1” kinda thing, but its rather challenging, at least if you didnt do it before, the difficult seems good as well, each stage feels like a progression.

Oh yeah….one other problem that I forgot to mention. I did not receive an invitation email. I don’t know what happened to mine. My spam folder is disabled so I have no idea whether the issue was that the email got misdirected or my ISP has a problem with ANet. Who knows? I have seen this happen with emails from other game companies. I am just hoping I get the heads up through other channels if it happens again, as I did this time.

-the revenant was fun. it was a small glimpse of the class and even then it felt expansive and diverse. i’m excited for the other legends’ release, and i’m excited to see their skills.
i must say that the sound effects heard in the background of the revenant character creation and also the sounds heard when swapping legends and using the elite skills are INCREDIBLE. honestly. such a great touch. my jaw honestly dropped when i heard them the first time.
-i also experienced an issue with the mushroom bouncing even when mastery points were invested into it. i imagine that this is actually intended, and that anet doesn’t want us to access some of those areas yet. but that’s pure speculation on my part.
-the mastery UI is… not good. it’s quite clunky imo. i don’t like how it covers half of my screen. i don’t like how i can’t adjust and resize the box. i really hope that gets improved down the line. i don’t care much for clicking the experience bar below, and i think that the mastery system would fit well into the hero’s panel UI.
-i had fun gliding around, and i’m excited to see the improvements made to the gliding system. i agree that a tutorial might be a nice way to introduce it.
-the wyvern fight has been eased up a bit for the demo/beta, so for the people saying that it was too easy — just wait it out. i believe it’s also been said that there will be multiple wyvern fights and they will all be different? that will be exciting. even with it eased up, i still think it will be a challenging encounter. the mechanics are interesting and unique, and definitely far improved from the current world bosses. i love the idea of being kicked off of the platform and needing to use a glider to get back up.
-the new break bar system is great. sooooo much better than the current defiance system.
-i had big FPS drops/lag when i first loaded in, but this is to be expected since it’s a stress test. i’m one of the many people who is worried about how my computer will run HoT when it’s released, as purchasing a new computer simply is not in the cards for me at all. after i began to run it for a while the client seemed to stabilize.

sorry if this is a bit disorganized. if i come up with anything new during the second round of testing i’ll either add onto this post or make another post in this thread. HoT hype!

Thanks for inviting me for my first beta.
I was very happy and excited with the new profession. Loved his looks and the skills.
Especially the ones of the Greathammer.
I just was abit overwhelmed at first when entering the area, soo much going on at once, but when u get used to it, it can be allot of fun. Good rewards from events, and the abillity to unlock masteries.
I didnt encounter any bugs or lag, so great job for that. ;-)
Im looking forward to explore more and to glide my way through HoT.
Greets and blessings, Azirof. :-)

In the future ANet you may want to include a few more things to do in your stress tests. I completed all the actual content is under 20 minutes. Even though I stayed around a bit longer, many players must have grown bored because there were less and less as time went by (not very stressful on the servers).

I did not experience any crashes or disconnects.

I enjoyed the story and didn’t seem to have any issues getting through it.

I can’t remember the specific event names (sorry). But the first two times through the “salvaging” and obtaining and delivering the explosives event I would click on the interact button but it didn’t do anything. However the third time I participated without issues. I don’t believe I experienced any lag because I could attack creatures.

I only earned two mastery points and was unable to apply or equip them to any line.
Because I couldn’t apply any mastery points I was unable to use the mushroom jump

Wyvern event – I thought was fun, but found the melee weapons were pretty useless since the wyvern was usually standing in a fire so went with ranged weapons.
Gliding – this really stumped me. As long as I jumped off the ledge toward the updraft, I didn’t have to “do” anything. The glider wings automatically deployed and it brought me right to the platform. If I missed the updraft I could not deploy the glider wings at all and just fell to my death (which seemed to take a longer than necessary time). So not sure if it was a bug or not.

Do i delete this character or do I use the same character for round 2 of the stress test?

For me, this first stress test played like it was a normal instance, as if I was in the actual regular game playing. There was no lag or disconnect or any of the usual stress test issues present. Having played GW2 Beta, I was prepared for a lot of stress….but on my part — with lag, disconnect, not being able to actually do anything much; but it all played smoothly and was quite fun.

Revenant – enjoyed the profession a lot. It’s unique and definitely stands out from the other professions, I loved the sound effects/voice acting when channeling legends (really love Jalis’ voice), good theme/visual effects. Feels quite versatile, when in combat you also feel flexible and quick. Looking forward to the introduction of the other legends, weapons and traits that will be available to the class, but so far it looks really good and playing it is definitely fun and engaging.

Wyvern – the fight was fun, I did enjoy it. I especially liked how well telegraphed the mob’s skills were – the knockback attacks and the fire breath, etc – the complex animations and movement of the boss definitely made the fight more realistic and dynamic. Would not mind if the encounter is tweaked a bit in order to become slightly more difficult.

Gliding – I felt like I needed an indicator to show me when the glider was available for me to use. Quite a few times I pressed space after falling for a while and nothing happened (there were times where the glider would not open at all), some times the glider would pop up for a bit and then disappear and reappear again shortly, guess that was because of lag or I don’t know. But a small icon that appears as soon as the glider is available for use would be nice, or at least some other way to let me know when I can/can’t use the glider.

Overall I enjoyed the demo, my main goal was to check the revenant out – and from what I experienced I quite liked it.

One thing I noticed, is that when I jumped off the side to test gliding, it didn’t seem like there was much underneath the beta area, though it looked like there was stuff below other areas. Hopefully this is just because of it being a test.

Everybody has already said what I was going to say basically. I did not have any fps issues at all or lag issues even tho I was streaming. So maybe the fps drops some are experiencing is PC related and not game related.

Nocturnal Lunacy.8563:

Everybody has already said what I was going to say basically. I did not have any fps issues at all or lag issues even tho I was streaming. So maybe the fps drops some are experiencing is PC related and not game related.

For my part it is PC related yes. But caused by an increase in certain aspects of effects in the game itself.

That’s not necs a bad thing mind you, but it is something for some players to be aware of.

Regarding the Revenant, I found hammer to be really, really boring. Although, I feel a part of this was due to celestial gear. Slow attacks combined with low numbers isn’t very exciting. I found mace/axe gameplay to be much more fun. A nice variety of conditions and the methods of their applications. Really cool skill animations too. In general, the Revenant felt really slow, I found myself mashing keys waiting for the skills to eventually activate.

Wyvern fight was really fun, it just favors ranged attacks and Jalis stance too much due to the taunt skill. I also feel that it needs a way to fail it. Needs a timer or a mechanic where the wyvern gets stronger overtime or the platform gets permanently engulfed in flames limiting space or something. There is no punishment for bad gameplay.

Mastery UI Is really confusing and ugly to look at. I really hope its a placeholder.

The environments are beautiful, I can’t wait to eventually explore more.

- no disconnection;
- no FPS issue;
- the story seems to be interesting, and our character’s voice was a very nice surprise;
- I played Revenant; at times, the head of the character seemed to turn in the wrong direction while running, and especially when going down a corridor;
- the activation time for glider seems too long; I hope ANet still works on it;
- liked the new creatures;
- Mastery UI was a bit confusing;
- The Wyvern was a fun event, but too easy.
Overall, I am impressed in a positive way.

- I had a crash at one time. You received the report data.
- There was a time span with serious lag. Most funny part was the Wyvern constantly disappearing and popping up again.
- During that time of lag, I was once able to use Judge’s Intervention from the Glider in mid air, with the Wyvern as target. After that I always got the message with the invalid path.

First off: Thanks to Anet for the Opportunity to help test the stability and mechanics of a small portion of the Expansion they are working on. I would assume they have more done than they are showing us, but in Development you have to test each part till its polished to the point where you feel you can move on to the other parts. So its understandable and the time and hard work is appreciated.

I had no crashes in any of the content that I participated in. Very solid build with very little to no lag during events. Some lag is to be expected with large numbers of players on a server.

Revenant: was fun to play and other than the skill descriptions being a little complex to understand, it was a very fun experience. I have to say that Great Dwarf Stability is pretty much OP at this point. You can literally keep stability up for you and whoever is standing with you for a long time. I can see some players having a problem with that maybe in WvW or PVP. PVE it seems to work great and as intended though, so that may be something to look at.

Mastery system: is a breathe of fresh air in terms of a Progression system that actually FEELS like Progress and not Gear Grind or Leveling Grind. Great job. Hope to see more of the Mastery system in the Future. Mushroom Jumping I did not get to do, but I did get to Glide a lot and fall a lot during.

Wyvern battle: Well I have this to say. One on One, he was VERY challenging, but as more and more Revenant players showed up he got less and less challenging. Fire was not too hard to avoid but could kill a player in a few seconds if he/she was not careful. Wing attack sometimes blew players back when they were using Stability. Not sure if that was intended or not. Noticed a lot of players were just Ranging. Not many tried Melee. Break bar / New Defiance system worked well from what I saw. Players seem to adapt and understand it more and did not have much difficulty in timing those CC on him to stun him etc. Very welcome change to the fight mechanics. The Updrafts to shoot a player back up into the battle arena was a pretty good little mechanic to put in there for those that went with Glider Mastery. really good way to represent how the Mastery Systems will help us in Battle not just in Exploration.

All in all great Build and very stable. Thanks for letting us try out the content during the stress test. Good job and keep up the good work Anet.

I found gliding activation to be unresponsive. With a 100/25 Internet connection, I frequently had to hit space twice when the prompt came up before gliding would engage. As an opinion, I’d allow the base gliding skill to be trigger earlier than the current delay.

The Mastery UI was really unintuitive. I hope it’s not the finalized interface. Finding it, the sliding up, and especially spending points are not like any other interface element in the game, nor does it improve on existing design. It doesn’t follow other software design standards either, so while I’d eventually figure it out, it should be improved to the point that I don’t need to struggle with it.

I wish I had concrete suggestions on how to do that, but I’m not a UX person.

On the positive side, the story was fun, boss fight challenging (especially as short-range melee), and the area we’re shown in the beta is interesting and well-designed. I like the revenant’s swapping mechanism, although I’m a 6 through 0 clicker. I found lots more clicking over there than my other professions. Not necessarily bad, but it afforded me less control over the camera. (Just opinion, no actionable feedback, perhaps I just need to l2p).

Only issue I had with the test pertained to the masteries. If you didn’t know to equip it to level it up you missed out on the benefits of choosing that mastery in the first place.
Putting a mastery point into a track should auto equip that mastery for convenience.

The Dragon fight was MUCH better.
- Random movements and attacks by dragon based upon players,
- Better visuals (like the flybys spraying a fire stream)
- Multiple skills and damage from the dragon,
- Environment dangers to divide player’s focus,
- However, one time I just burst into flames with nothing under my feet and dragon looking other way.
- “Kite” competent, I found the dragon a challenge, yet easy to complete…..

New animations were good.
- Expanding rings from spreading thorns (more challenging kiting.)
- Increased chaos during the events more like fog of war.
- The gliding that required time to activate rather than “on demand” is good idea
- Liked hammer special effects of Revenant

Overall impressions:
- Liked the inclusion of environmental dangers making fight/kiting more difficult
- Gliding is a fun
- Revenant will be a toon I make and play.
- Just a tiny bit of lag at initial 10 seconds, but rest of time seemed smooth.
- I got kicked from game, but may not be beta test – similar happenings to me before.
- More realism on the dragon boss fight.
- Enjoyed test, but enough content for an hour, not two.

Appreciate being included in the beta test. Will gladly talk if interested in more info/questions.

I am looking forward to Beta later today and the expansion.

I want to echo what others have said about the Mastery UI. That needs to be on the Hero Panel, like all other such things. Having it down below was downright odd and inconsistent with the rest of the UI layout.

over all I would say the stress test was rather good. the content was fun to play I had more fun then I thought I would with the adventure and the wyvern fight was interesting. I am curious at how the wyvern will progress as development goes forward with the lack of a failure state it removes the difficulty and just makes it a long fight[I assume this is mostly cause stress test so understandably not there and such] also I appreciate that even though it would make the fights easier outside of the gliding to access the fight the fight itself didn’t require you to have the defiance against the wyvern mastery thing though I would increase the knock back a little bit to make it a bit more risky other thing that I’m looking forward to with the wyvern is seeing how the burning change I heard about[at least I think I heard about] where it stacks intensity instead of duration will effect the fight given how the knock downs can put you in an unfavorable position with the fire.
as for the reinvent itself very mixed for me I enjoyed the mace axe combo but found the hammer not as enjoyable seemed to lack the same flair with the utilities the road might be a bit too strong with how much stability you could get. other thing there are a couple other concerns about the reinvent I have but with out a comparison of what the other classes will be like I will wait on that end

Here’s my feeedback:

Framerate: The smoke effects had a real impact on my fps, to the point I had to turn a lot of settings down and even then I got a lot of stutter whenever distant view of the smoldering wrecks of ships was in view. If these smoke effects are 3D particles, could perhaps they be replaced with a 2D replacement on certain LOD distances in order to reduce their impact on performance?

Tendril Torching: I had an issue where it took a full 30+ seconds after the timer had ended before my character dropped the flamethrower. During the challenge at no point was I able to drop the flamethrower with weaponswap when I knew I was doing badly and would not succeed. This caused frustration as it meant I couldn’t choose to restart immediately and instead had to wait for the timer (and the 30 sec lag afterwards) before I could retry. In addition the controls for the flamethrower were clunky, and I had difficulty reaching even the target of 50 tendrils until I realised that if I just flung my character around while skill 1 was channeling, I could sweep the flames across a wide area.

Masteries UI: If I hadn’t already known where it was, I’d have struggled to find it. Also the inability to close it with esc caused considerable frustration as I then had to locate the correct place on that panel to click and minimise it. I believe that integrating the Masteries panel into the Hero Panel would be far more intuitive. Also, it needs to be made clear that spending a mastery point doesn’t give you instant access to what you put it in. I believe a very visible progress bar and set of tooltips needs to be implemented as a part of that menu.

Gliding: While I found the glider easy to use, I agree with other feedback I’ve read that there needs to be a clear indication when you have the ability become available, and also a visible tooltip stating how to open AND close it while in the air. I would also suggest a small adjustment to the fall interval before you can open it. Due to the framerate/lag issues I was getting, it took several tries to get to the Mastery Orb on the vine opposite the area entrance because of falling too far each time. While I know from the tooltips there’s a mastery later in the line that apparently allows the glider to be opened faster, I still think the basic starting interval needs to be a little more forgiving. Lastly I’ve just an asthetic suggestion for the glider, which I believe would dramatically reduce how “clunky” it looks while while turning/strafing in the air. That suggestion would be to add a subtle “roll” animation to the glider, the way birds/planes bank in the air when they turn. I believe this would go far in improving the visual feel of the gliding system.

Revenant: Having gotten the chance to give it a much deeper look than I did at Rezzed, I have to say I really like this proffession. Some of the skills (on Mace and Axe) however seem to have activation times just a little too long, and I would suggest perhaps reducing these in exchange for a slightly longer cooldown to maintain balance in the overall frequency at which they can be used. As in an active combat style that the game encourages, these put a dampener at times on the sense of pace I felt when fighting with those weapons. I also had some issues with the firefield partially glitching into the ground on uneaven terrain.

All in all, I’m pleased with what I’ve seen so far, and I look forward seeing what we have revealed to us next!

I enjoyed the chance to play the new area. I had one disconnect during the Boss fight, but was able to get back in with no problem at all. There wasn’t any noticeable lag, either, that I could tell. The Revenant will take some getting used to. Thanks for the invite.

Had some fun in the Beta. Was a bit short but nice. I hope the deployment time for the glider is shortened. Thought it took a bit too long to come out after you jumped.

Had a good time in the stress test. Everything ran smoothly for me, didn’t have any disconnects. I thought they wyvern fight was fun. It was pretty slow at first, I think folks were feeling out the fight, figuring the best way to go about it. After we got it’s life half gone it seemed everybody got into a groove and it went down in a fairly quick manner.

The Revenant was interesting. Tried both stances. The Demon stance seemed like it would be for experience players who are able to stay alive with conditions on them. The Dwarf stance seemed a lot faster to pick up on, had a lot of fun with in. The chain effect was really cool on the wyvern fight.

The hammer skills seemed kind of slow to me, didn’t really get into them. However, I really enjoyed the mace/axe set. Love the mace 3 skill. Enjoyed smashing the little raptor mobs with it.

I really enjoyed the gliding. Had a fun time jumping off the edge and gliding around the huge vines trying and failing to get out of the beta zone lol!!!!!

My guildies were really excited to see some screen shots and they seem to be even more excited for the release. I was very satisfied being able to experience what we could in a 2 hour stress test!! Thanks ANET for the invite!!

This Beta test was a little stale for me, only because I’ve seen a a handful of people play it. I definitely did enjoy playing the Revenant. The Legendary Demon stance was definitely not something I swapped to often since it seemed to just be a bunch of condi transfers and Zzz. Mace and Axe were definitely my go to weapons considering how slow hammer seemed to be. Loving all the blasts Revenant has. The mobs seemed a bit weak? not sure if that was intentional just for Beta reasons. Wyevern was neat, definitely lackluster though. He seemed really under powered for a legendary boss considering I could just stand there, pop stab and auto attack with hammer. I didn’t have any lag issues at all with a group of people around, everything seemed to run nice and smooth. The map designs was aesthetically pleasing, as usual. Overall a very nice experience, but the hype and watching other people play the demo kind of killed it for me. I wanna try ranger staff, please. =P

I will forgo the critiquing about skills and wep usage seems others are doing quite well about that. The thing I will say for a person with dexterity issues it wasn’t too bad. I was able to do all of the skills with provided eq with minimal soreness or cramping from using skills the camera was smooth so my eyes didn’t have a freak out over all the experience was great .

Test Platform Specification:-

CPU: Intel Hex-Core i7 3930X @3.8Ghz

RAM: 32GB DDR3

Storage:
1x 256 GB OCZ Vertex kitten (OS Installed here,Game is installed here)
1x 256GB WD Velociraptor 10KRPM (Swaps/User)
2x 1 TB Western Digital Red storage HDD (The rest)

Video:
2x 3GB GeForce GTX 780 in SLI Configuration Driver version 347.88

Motherboard:
Asus Rampage IV Extreme

Input Devices:
Corsair K95, Sharkoon Drkonoid Black

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Game Configuration.

Resolution Monitors:
1920*1200 (game screen)
1920*1080 (second)

Used rendering resolutions:
Full screen 3840*2400
Windowed full screen 1920*1200

Enabled: Hi resolution character textures
Enabled: FXAA
Enabled: LoD
Enabled: Depth of Field

All other settings are set to High/Ultra.

I’d like to add :

_The LOCATION of the mastery bar is awkward. I would expect it to be coupled to the skills and traits menu., I understand it should be easiliy accessible, BUT make sure we can find it as well through this method as it is WAY more natural and logical in reflection to our present unlocks and builds..

SO either add a link to the mastery pane OR reduce the mastery box so we can only select where the experience goes and we can manage everything in the skills/traits and MASTERIES tab._

/addition 27-3-2015

Overall a perfect performance.

I didn’t get the feel of the revenant tbh.
I like condi play And I have seen mre then 35 stacks on wyvern so I am hoping max cap is now 100(+) it would allow for decent Condition usage, I hope it will be implemented into the “original guild wars 2” for bosses and also for dungeons, allowing condition builds in dungeons as well.

I did the content on ranger and on mesmer as well. Both having more dps and wider range of skills due to the fact all traits were opened up.

I liked the hangglider, wanted to try out the mushrooms but didn’t understand the function or it could have bugged on me. I hope the second try will have reset pouints so I can try again, I’d like to see the functions of the hangglider with the upwinds…
It could be a bit more snappy, if you would open up a normal higlider when falling like a rock you’d probably rip off the wings/skin

Framerate was a bit lower then in the main game, but stable. We’ll see what happens.

hi frands, I only played the stress test for 10 minutes because that’s when I realized there was no pvp! I did encounter some things like the fury on heal trait not showing up in tooltip and the orbs from the invocation traitline wasn’t there! as for feedback, I found it awkward the first part of the mastery system required 3 points not 1! also the fact that we got full Cele with DOLYAK runes made me upset, some equipment options would have been nice. the mace fire field skill’s cast time is thuper long and needs to be reduced by about 1/4 second to make it more reactive. also the accuracy of mace #3 could be narrowed a bit. I hope the other legend stances give revenant some sort of Condi removal because while resistance is interesting, your gonna need condi removal. those roots gave me a headache. lastly, the axe #5 could use a visual tweak as to show it slowly closing in to give players a more precise timing as to when it’s closing. some sort of white AoE indicator for it would be nice to see where it will affect and to plan accordingly

after i spawn into beta my fps is perfect then i log onto a non beta character and my fps is really really low, i have to relog to fix it and it happens everytime. just a heads up.

I didn’t have any performance issues and it was quite fun. I do have some constructive criticism though to improve upon HoT

I felt as though the skills 7, 8 and 9 on each legend were kinda restrictive – like there’s no variety in terms of what skills we can choose from. It’s sort of like ‘this is the legend and here are their skills and that is that’. Would be cool to include a few more skills for those for a bit of diversity.

Also, I noticed that the revenant literally had 2 heals which felt kinda OP. When I was running low on health in Mallyx’s form, I’d just switch to my other legend and be able to use that legend’s heal too. I think to balance this, perhaps when you use your main heal skill, it should be on recharge for the other legend too, but to compensate for losing a whole other heal, perhaps increase the amount you’re healed for from, say, 4500 (or whatever it was), to 5500 or 6000.

And finally, the gliding was a bit frustrating. I felt like I was half way to my death before the option to glide came up. I think it’s crucial to add some sort of auto-glide ability as soon as you start falling, or at least add it as a feature for high level gliding mastery. I died many times trying to get to a mastery orb simply because it took me forever to try and get my glider up – as it only became available after 2-3 seconds of falling (which, to me, felt far too long).

Overall, I liked the experience and loved the range and skills of the hammer for the revenant. I also liked the axe and mace skills, though I think it would be neat if their range was expanded a bit – the main reason I don’t use those sorts of weapons is the fact that they have such a tiny range (same with swords).

Thanks for including me in this stress test BETA, and I hope one day perhaps we get to experience the new WvW borderlands? – that would be an EPIC beta! crosses fingers

From a technical side, everything went smoothly. No crashes, no serious framerate drops, no stalling events. The first 30 minutes there was some skill delay, but nothing game breaking, only annoying. WvW zergfights for world bosses are worse.

The revenant seems to be an interesting class concept-wise, but I didn’t really like any of the two weapon sets. The new mechanics are nice (moving combo fields, moving reflection walls, skill shots) but I didn’t like the play style. Maybe other weapons and legends will “click” with me.

The biggest gripe is the mastery UI. It takes away half of the screen and still cant show all materies at once. If the mastery system gets expanded the wide but short list with its generous items will be awful to scroll. Design-wise the mastery UI reminds me of modern phone/tablet UIs but it feels misplaced in a pc game. It’s basically Win8’s charms bar in GW2. Speaking of the charms bar, I think the mastery UI should be placed along the right border taking away 1/3 of the screen. It will look “listier” and you’ll be able to see all masteries (per region) at once and probably have room for future masteries. And even if there are too many masteries for the sidebar, a narrow list with 7-8 visible items is easier to navigate than a wide list with 3-4 visible items.

It took me an hour or so to realize how the mastery system works (unlocking with mastery points and activating with XP) and I issued a /bug report that the jumping mushrooms don’t work, but at 1:45 I could jump on my first shroom

Minor bugs I found and reported:

• The content guide pointed me to an unnamed PoI with a ((number)) string outside the beta region
• After completing the beta story, I got the “Defense of Shaemor” event/PS text in the event list

Edit: Please, no open world cutscenes. Yes, the cutscene is really cool the first time you see it and it actually makes a good first impression, but I really do not need to see these pact choppers a second, third, n-th time. It’s okay-ish if you intend to go to the wyvern but it is really annoying if you do something else (burning those vines, celebrating the first mushroom jump or messing with the glider) and get interrupted because “some random event” on the map has been completed… again.

Two more things:

1. The hammer autoattack for revenant (at least on females) looks kinda janky and unnatural.

2. I’m finding it hard to distinguish the red made by Coalescence of Ruin from the red made by enemies.

Oh! [Searing Fissure] skill for mace on Revenant, It is a combo field but the skill doesn’t say so. Assuming fire field since it blasts might.

Another thing to add ( don’t know if it’s been mentioned)

The Revenant Auto attack is suffering from the same ranged bug as rangers auto with the trait.

I can hit the Wyvern on the platform from a good 14-1500 units

There was a good bit of background lag, can’t comment to much on revenants as half of the class is still missing.

While it was a stress test, my main feedback would have to be about the use of gliders during the wyvern fight: just jump off the platform, leave combat, heal up, hover over a pact chopper and you’re back in at full health. Feels a little too easy to me.

Glider interface needs improvement.

So far i’m happy with the HoT’s direction! Keep it up Anet!

Although what I would kindly suggest is to increase the difficulty of the boss fights with maybe 1 or 2 more skill mechanics from it?

To add on to the masteries UI gripe above, it’s stretched allll the way across on surround (and likely eyefinity) setups.

I had notice a graphical glitch with the wyvern fight, where 1 of his fire skills left an invisible fire trail that would damage those standing on top. Another bug I noticed is that if the wyvern knocks you off the platform and you land on an updraft, you pretty much get sent flying. Though, it seems you don’t leave the map, thankfully. Everyone else already mentioned the low fps, so I guess I’ll end that there.

Extras:
-The challenge was also pretty fun. Was aiming to get gold the entire time and nearly made it! (Got 97 before I gave up burnt vines)
-The Renevant is pretty interesting to play. Whether the skills/traits for this class are imbalanced or not we’ll have to see later when more of the class is revealed.
- Probably the most hyped thing for me right now is our characters being able to speak out of cut scenes.
-The new wyvern boss fight was pretty fun, though it didn’t feel like there was any risk in zerging him down. Was it because he was set on easy mode?

I was able to play the initial test today but not the one later in the evening. Here are my comments.

Story – Awesome like where this was headed and it was something that made me at least what to know more.

Gliding – Absolutely hated this. I realize this is a beta but it seems like parts of this map will be like dry top with semi-jumping areas and this is something I absolutely hate in this game. It’s also why I avoid certain content and areas. I’ll never be a big fan of areas like this if I’m required to hop, skip and jump all over the place. Exploring and figuring out stuff is fun, jumping never will be.

Rev – I doubt I’ll play this new class. It doesn’t fit into how I like to play. It seems to much like a caster / warrior / ritualist and from what I’ve seen it seems to make other classes look small compared to damage and support. I could see groups of Revs replacing hammer trains in W vs W. It’s just not a class I’ll be interested in playing. I would have liked to have been able to play with the new weapons allowed to our previous classes.

Game Area – It did seem busy and confusing at times but its pretty much like any large combat area so far. It will take a few times in there to understand what’s going on and where one needs to go. Maybe changing the color of things we need to interact with or something might help. The look of the area was fantastic I loved it. I have no idea who does the art there at Anet but you all need to keep them employed there ! One of the big attractions to this game is the non-cartoon like aspect of it. The detail in the graphics has always been awesome.

Combat – I never did figure out how the new bars under the bosses and creatures worked. I do not understand it and just attacked as usual and assume many others did the same.

Falling up forever is a thing I see.

Enjoyed the beta test / story test. Can see the hammer will be fun to use on a revenant, resisting the temptation to always be in close for melee.
Map worked well (for the bit we got into) and ran smoothly for me.
Looks really good and look forward to seeing whole map expansion.

Some QoL clunkiness I noticed:

— The Masteries access is very hard to see, being almost hidden in the sliver of space between the (former) XP bar and the mini-map. I took awhile to even notice it was there.
— When opened, the Masteries UI takes up an inordinate amount of screen space. I tend to agree with others who have suggested it might be better off in the main Hero panel. It seems almost an afterthought with where it’s placed now.
— The quest to collect ammo for the Pact forces has some redundancy or bug with the “place bomb” interact. A couple of times I was in the right spot to place a bomb and the game seemed to spontaneously do it for me while leaving the interact popup as well. The collection NPC for this quest also seems to have an unusually large “aggro” field. If the “place bomb” interact is still up and you accidentally click it again, you get dialogue from Chief Aviator Skybreaker…even though you are technically too far away to be able to realistically “talk” to her. I’m guessing the distance-dialogue is intended to help players figure out what to do.