Guild Wars 2

Here’s a few thing that stood out to me while testing the elite specs and the Revenant.
Do let me know if I claim anything here that is incorrect and let me know what you think if you feel like it

Revenant;
- Sword #1 chain damage felt slightly low.
- Hammer #1 while doing ok damage (1.5k crit with Zerker) along with the piercing effect felt like it could use a teeny bit of a faster attack rate.
- Ventari heal heals too little, either it needs to heal more or needs to be instant with a 1 second cooldown instead of 2.
- Shiro heal also felt liked it healed way too little. For something that heals while fighting, so also while taking damage, I would say it should be something you actually feel healing from instead of no effect at all.

Even with those things in mind I dare say I really enjoyed the Revenant, it feels fun and the skills are quite awesome. I found Sword/Axe with Hammer or Staff (OMFG I LOVE STAFF BTW, melee Bifrost <3<3<3 so cool and brilliant animations), or just Staff with Hammer was also really fun. While Shiro is awesome to use I feel it’s more of a PVP legend than general PvE. Ventari seems like it can be useful and the same goes for Jarlis (I personally think Ventari/Jarlis seems like the most useful combination for PvE, however, I am not one to make meta builds I feel that would be the more obvious choice).

Tempest;
- Warhorn just felt lackluster overall. I would love to say I could or would prefer using it over any other off-hand but I really don’t.
- Shouts have a way too long cooldown for what they do, and no way to reduce it (could be implemented in Tempestuous Aria maybe?)

The traits overall seem to offer fair synergy with old stuff, but it seems the ones that could be used most are Fresh Air overloading or Aura sharing (by far the superior synergy, maybe even the whole goal of Tempest?). Still, I don’t see it have any place in the current meta. Mostly what we have in Pve at least, I don’t see Tempest line replace Air, Fire Or Water because of what they provide over Tempest. And in PvP it would mean being up against what you use in the Celestial D/D build. Though I tried Water, Arcana and Tempest, which worked decently. Making a semi traditional Cele D/D ele with Aura Sharing and the Nados, was fun, but not as effective. In PvE I made a Fire, Air and Tempest build. Again, Far from as effective as the regular staff meta build. But it was fun to play. Though I didn’t use Warhorn, it worked with Staff, Dagger/Focus and Dagger/Dagger. I really hope Tempest will be tuned here and there, because it Can be quite fun to play.
1/2

Dragonhunter;
- Longbow, even though in general it is Really fun to play with it for me there is one giant annoyance. The AoE’s can’t be aimed behind you, sometimes even in a small arc in front of you (Deflecting Shot), logic speaking it makes sense without a doubt. But comparing to both Ranger and Warrior longbow, it feels annoying. Warrior can shoot both the F1 and #3 anywhere they want and Ranger can place and shoot 5 while walking and standing still and they turn to wherever you aim ( I have to say this is the same mostly for longbow 5 on Dragonhunter, but often it cancels out without having stood still to cast it). #4 and #3 simply have no line of sight, even though #4 can be closely resembled to both Warrior longbow #3 and F1. I feel that desperately needs changing.

Other than that I don’t really have a lot to note. I played with Greatsword and Longbow in PvE, Zeal, Virtues and Dragonhunter, 2 traps and the heal trap (they are pretty fun to use, especially because they are more damage oriented traps than condi). In PvP I mixed Mace/Focus with Longbow and used Meditations and one trap, Light’s Judgement. Fun to play and both bursty as survivable because of Mace/Focus and the Meditations. My trait lines were also Zeal, Virtues and Dragonhunter.

Chronomancer;
The only class I only played in PvE. I really enjoyed what I played of it. Glad Phantasm/Shatter is finally a thing with this and the Wells are pretty cool too. Can’t really comment on anything that would need changing. They seem to be useful in the current PvE meta. And in PvP I didn’t find Chronomancers that were more lethal than the regular one shot from invisibility shatter mesmer. Only more annoying with teleports and traveling back in time and stuff. But maybe I just haven’t run into good ones, or ones that figured out what to do and how to do it properly.

Reaper;
I don’t really have too much to say about it, despite the bugs here and there with traits (Most importantly Reaper’s Onslaught) I had a blast playing it. I am unsure whether the Greatsword skills should be faster here and there, for PvE they are fine eitherway, but in PvP it can be hard to hit at times because of the decently long cast times (Maybe Reaper’s Onslaught can affect Greatsword as well?). I’m not entirely sure what to think about the shouts. I feel the cast time takes away, at least for me, some incentive to use them. The only one I felt could have use was “Nothing can save you!”. And that would only be in PvE.

I know the beta testng is also for the new zone, the events and the Masteries but I chose to not do too much with them to keep them new and fresh for when HoT actually releases. I gained the ability to fly after playing through the intro with 3 characters if I recall correctly. I am unsure if latter tiers of a mastery take the same amount or not, if so, that may be too easy to complete. But I’m guessing (and hoping?) the higher the tier gets, it takes a little longer each time to get all the points? I’m not really sure what would be an ideal spot so I can’t really suggest anything here either. The part of the new zone we played it was cool at least, the events seemed cool as far as I touched them and the enemies there were pretty fun to fight.

I think that’s about it, thanks for reading if you stuck through all of it.
2/2