Guild Wars 2

Verdant Brink

Event chains were bugged out. While they were working they seemed solid with a strong narrative emphasis within them. The day events being bugged demonstrated that the area is relying too much on the event chains. If they break or you don’t want to do them, the area feels dead. It’s a similar situation at night. Forty-five minutes of the same event gets old really quick. It needs some additional, smaller events running around to break things up.

Played the vine torch adventure. It was okay but bland. Ultimately I didn’t care. It needs some kind of narrative hook to pull me in. I need a reason to care about what I’m doing. The rewards could also do with a look over. Mastery points are neat, but once I have the reward I’m not going to come back and play it again. It’s not enjoyable enough to play for its own sake currently.

Night time could be darker. Better indicator of how long until night. If I jump into a map I have no idea if it’s five minutes past daybreak or thirty minutes past daybreak until the “five minutes until night” area countdown appears. As mentioned previously, the night segment needs something to break it up. If the goal with the day/night cycle is to make them feel like completely different maps, one of the easier ways to do this would be altering mob spawns based on time. Have regular fauna retreat back to their dens/despawn at night and replace them with Mordrem. That would help establish night as Spooky Dragon Time.

Pretty much every mob in Verdant Brink feels like it’s based around some kind of gimmick. I’m on the fence in regards to how I feel about that. On one hand, it makes things a little more interesting but it increases the need for micro-management. I don’t want to have to stop every ten steps and fiddle with my skill bar because there’s a different group of mobs blocking my path. Additionally, Smokescales are ridiculous. Emphasis on the plural there. One smokescale by itself can be troublesome, but two or more together? Nah. Just, nah. It’s not even worth fighting. Just run on past them. The little mushroom guys also get a special mention for being way too cute and having an insane leash range. They just follow you forever. I don’t mind it, and I think it’s funny, but be aware that you will absolutely get trolls who gather up a posse of mushroom men and train them onto AFK players who think they’re standing somewhere safe.

Overall I like the map design. The tall, imposing cliffs that create narrow valleys and the contrast of these against the chasms, plateaus and the way everything opens up once you start unlocking masteries. It’s very well designed. The only part I didn’t really get was the mess of vines in the middle of the playable area. Visually it looks fantastic, but there’s not really anything to actually do there. You can glide down and run along the giant vines, but beyond that, why is it there? What is the player meant to be doing with it?

I didn’t get to unlock many masteries due to the bugged events, but I knocked out several levels of gliding and liked what I experienced. I’m looking forward to the next event where I’ll hopefully be able to see more of them in action. One thing of note is the number of people in chat who didn’t understand they had to completely fill the mastery bar before they could invest a mastery point in it.

I know that if you try and spend a mastery point in a track that isn’t unlocked the help system pops up that big black and orange box telling you what to do with the giant arrow pointing at the mastery track bar so I don’t know what else you can do to try and make people understand how it works but from what I could see a lot of people didn’t get it and just assumed that mastery points were all they needed to unlock masteries similar to the way you’d spend skill points or hero points, I guess they’re called now?

Reaper

Ah, the Reaper. I love the Reaper. And now I’m going to say some things about it that need to be said and will probably get me lynched. The Reaper is OP. Like crazy broken. This primarily stems from the ability to get a 100% crit rate in shroud through the selection of two traits. Decimate Defences gives you 2% crit rate per stack of vuln and Death Perception gives you a flat 50% crit rate increase when in shroud. You stack vuln on your target, jump into shroud, crits for days. This is troublesome because Necros throw out vuln like it’s candy. It’s also hilariously easy to get and maintain 25 stacks of Might in Reaper’s Shroud if you use Soldier’s Sigils. If you forgo the sigils you still get a high degree of Might, but it’s not quite 25 stacks and it’s harder to keep up. You still hit like a truck, albeit a smaller truck.

So you’ve got max Might, max Vulnerability, a 100% critical rate and you’ve done this with zero investment into Precision. With no need to invest in Precision, you can run full Valkyrie which functionally gives you the same effect as running full Zerk, but without the drawback since Valkyrie gives you the full investment of Vitality. This is amazing and I love it, but it needs the slightest nudge with the nerf bat. But not too hard? Necros need something nice too. I would change Decimate Defences to give a 1% crit rate per vuln stack and make Death Perception double your crit rate in shroud instead of giving a flat 50% to crit rate. That way if you want a Reaper that hits like a truck and crits all day, you will actually need to invest for it at the cost of something else.

Not much to say about the new skills. The new utilities are decent and get the job done. They’re in a good place. Special mention goes to Rise! for being amazing. I didn’t notice if the minions did decent damage, but they’re great at pulling aggro away from you which is useful in its own right. I didn’t like the new healing skill but I can’t remember exactly why. I probably thought the healing was too low and too conditional. In any event, it didn’t stay on my bar for very long. I also didn’t make much use of the new Elite skill. Between the hilarious long two second activation time and how strong Reaper’s Shroud was, I rarely had cause to touch it. Similar story with the greatsword skills. You swing your sword, you swing it again, you swing it one more time for the chill which turns into vuln through traiting, you press 3 for the huge vuln stack, you jump into Reaper’s Shroud and take chunks off the HP bar of whatever you’re facing with your ridiculous crits. The greatsword struck me as serviceable but not particularly special.

Dragonhunter

Overall, I found the Dragonhunter to be underwhelming. Giving the Guardian access to Longbow was a good choice since it needed more ranged options but I don’t think the bow skills are quite up to par yet and there are synergy issues between the bow and the new trap utilities. Namely, the issue is that there is no synergy.

I like the bow and traps the same way that I like freshly mown grass and peanut butter. Individually: Great! Mix them together: What are you doing? The combination of ranged combat and PBAoE traps fell completely on its face for me when I tried to play with both. Which is probably funny to hear me say if you know that I main Ranger, more specifically, if you know that before the recent “Destroy Your Entire Build” Hero Points update, I played a trap Ranger. Before the update, trap Rangers were a little uncommon to see. After the update removed thrown traps, you don’t see them at all. For the good reason that ranged combat and PBAoE traps are a terrible combination. I understand the thematic underpinnings behind the decision. The hunter lays traps and then lures prey into them. It’s just not how it tends to play out in reality. In reality, you’ll often kill the mob before it wanders into your trap, kill it so easily that you didn’t need to lay the trap at all, have it aggro something completely unrelated and run off in a different direction, start to pull the mob towards the trap and have it be killed by a passing player, belatedly realise the mob is a ranged attacker, never gain aggro on the mob in the first place since it’s a champ that’s too busy dealing with the twenty other players around it who don’t have to try and coax it into wandering into their attacks or the prey happens to be another player in a PvP situation who sees you lay the trap, walks around it, /laughs at you and rightly so. Good idea. Doesn’t work.

The fact that the new healing skill is also a trap brings with it the exact same problems that the offensive traps have. The initial heal is weak and if you manage to set it up and have an enemy wander into it when you need it, they get a blind and you get a big heal out of it. This is a bad skill. It’s too situational and there are too many things that can go wrong with it. I would not run this on my skill bar. Not even as a joke. Why would you pick this when you can pick Shelter for a 2s block and a decent heal or Signet of Resolve which heals for more, clears a condition and doesn’t require an enemy running over the trap for you to not die. To improve it, I would recommend either making the initial heal stronger or giving the player the option to detonate the trap manually for a portion of the secondary heal. That way even if they don’t get the blind or the inconsequential damage, they still get a decent heal from their healing skill.

On a similar note, the elite skill is terrible. It traps enemies for four seconds, slows them for four seconds, does minor damage and has a sixty second cooldown. It feels like Chains of Light and Line of Warding had a baby that’s worse in every single way. There’s no way that players will pick this as an Elite skill over something like Feel My Wrath. The primary issue here, I think, is that it’s trying to do too much but ultimately achieves very little. To improve this skill, I would suggest picking one area that you want it to absolutely shine and then lean as hard in that direction as you can. Something like a six to eight second Line of Warding that acts like an AoE trap offers an amazing degree of lockdown and would make a fantastic Elite skill that I would have no issue placing on my skill bar.

Dragonhunter Cont.

As for weapon skills, I like the ideas here, but they need some love and work. First up, let’s discuss True Shot, it’s a charged attack that pierces but roots you while you’re charging. This is an issue because to get the best effect from a piercing attack you need to line up targets but they’re not going to stand still in a line while you’re rooted to the ground. This skill could be improved by allowing the player to move while charging or by swapping out the pierce for an AoE burst on impact. Deflecting Shot is a great idea, but by the time I’ve seen an incoming projectile and lined up the ground targeting marker, I’ve already been hit. I feel like this could use something to make a little more workable, but I’m not sure what. Symbol of Energy is fantastic. This is exactly the kind of skill I wanted when I heard about Longbow Guardians. Finally, Hunter’s Ward, the most important thing to me here is that this skill needs a unique attack animation. Until the barriers come down, the attack animation is just a recycled Barrage animation and that’s not okay. Firstly, it’s lazy. Secondly, it’s confusing. A player should be able to distinguish between different attacks coming at them so they can make the right call on how to respond. I don’t care if it’s a rough and cheap fix like adjusting the colour values of the arrows in the animation so they glow white. A player just needs to be able to distinguish between a Barrage and a Hunter’s Ward at first glance. Beyond the effects of the skills themselves and onto the overall effectiveness of the weapon, I feel that the damage could do with an increase. I took it into WvW and found it difficult to get kills with. It was pretty good at being mildly inconvenient to enemy players, but it wasn’t particularly great at racking up kills.

The only thing that leaves us with is the improved Virtues. I love Wings of Resolve. That saved me multiple times in WvW. Being near death only to fly, fly away and heal made me laugh every time I did it. As for Spear of Justice and Shield of Courage, I didn’t use their active effects much. I like the passive burns and aegis enough that I don’t want them on cooldown unless there’s an absolutely pressing reason to activate them.

Chronomancer

Continuum shift is amazing and I love it. Even if Chronomancer offered basically nothing else, I would spec into it solely for that shatter ability. It’s not even the fact that it’s a powerful ability. It’s just fun to use.

The shield skills felt like they were in a good place when I was using them. The block is nice, and Tides of Time does its thing. They work. But ultimately, I wouldn’t use the shield outside of the test because I don’t like the mainhand options for Mesmer. Even though sword and shield worked reasonably well when I tested it, I wasn’t a fan. Additionally, if I had to pick an off-hand weapon for Mesmer, I would choose the focus every time. Ultimately, the shield isn’t bad, it’s just not a set I would choose to take.

There isn’t a lot for me to say about the utility skills. Nothing stuck out to me as needing improvement while I was playing with it. I did particularly like Well of Recall though. I think that’s earned a permanent place on my skill bar. It’s just so very useful.

I enjoyed using Gravity Well in PvE, if only because the float animation is lovely. It worked well enough but I don’t think it’s doing enough for me to replace Time Warp as my default Elite skill. I think the ultimate problem here is the same one with Dragon’s Maw. It’s spread a little thin trying to do too much. Additionally, there’s the issue that it’s an Elite skill with a 90 second cooldown that people are just going to roll out of in a PvP situation. It could do with a little love, but I’m not sure where.

Tempest

I enjoyed playing Tempest a lot. The Warhorn skills are definitely more support oriented which was exactly the aim from what I understand. They do their job well enough. My favourite combo was stacking as many boons on myself as I could then sharing them with Heat Sync and refreshing them with Sand Squall.

I like Overcharging as a mechanic and got the best results out of overloading fire. It did solid damage, especially if you stack might before using it. Overloading water didn’t seem to do much of note from what I could tell. The healing from the weapon skills felt like it outclassed that of the overload. The animation was nice though. Similar story with overloading earth. It gives a bunch of people protection but that’s not really something I can gauge the effectiveness of. It does its thing but it feels a little underwhelming. Overloading air could probably do with a little love too. It feels similar to overloading fire, in that it’s mostly direct damage, but it didn’t seem as effective to me. I think it could do with a little boost, but I’m not sure what specifically could help it out.

The utilities are decent. I didn’t have any problems that stood out while playing. Eye of the Storm is an excellent stun breaker but its worth on a skillbar is debateable since you can just trait to use it automatically when you’re hit with control effects. The aura sharing utilities are also useful, but I don’t have much more of note to say beyond that.

As it is, Rebound needs work. It’s not offering enough to warrant taking up an Elite skill slot. I like the idea of faster recharge but I don’t think 25% on one skill is enough. I also don’t know what you’d do to improve it beyond throwing stacks of Alacrity at people but that route require stepping all over the Chronomancer’s toes which is less than ideal.

Revenant

This weekend I primarily played with Shiro and the swords. I completely forgot to check out the buffs from the last event beyond weapon swapping. And on that note, weapon swapping is nice and works well.

I didn’t have much joy with dual swords in Verdant Brink. I chalk this up primarily to the Revenant having a slower ground speed than a fat, lazy turtle. It was just completely terrible. I would run after one of those Teragriffs disguised as a T-Rex and when I got close to it, it would knock me down and run off. So I would waddle after it because apparently spiky edgelord armour comes with a capped top speed, try to bang it a few times with my sword to do some damage except it was apparently in a charging stance again which seemed to make it immune to damage. Long story short, melee weapons on a character as slow as the Revenant against mobile enemies is not a great time. You can play smart by knocking it down, using one of your closer skills to move up to it and then smack it around for a while but then it’s still not dead and your skills are now on cooldown.

I eventually pulled out of Verdant Brink and went wandering around Orr and the Silverwastes to look for enemies that weren’t “Knockdown-Keep Away” or “Sitting In A Pool Of Blind” or “Literally A Dozen Tiny Raptors” that I could gauge damage levels against. The swords do excellent damage when you can get a grip on an enemy. I ended up swapping out the off-hand sword for the axe because it wasn’t doing much for me and the axe has an excellent shadowstep skill that was exceptionally useful for getting into melee range. Shiro does have a closer skill Phase Traversal but it’s not great. It’s essentially just a slow Bull’s Charge, up to and including a recycled Bull’s Charge attack animation, but without the knockdown that makes Bull’s Charge useful. The axe closer is faster, lets you shadowstep to enemies on a different vertical level to you and is just superior in every single way. If you try and use Phase Traversal on an enemy standing on a ledge slightly above your height you will slowly slide towards them and then lovingly press your cheek against the side of the ledge and you continue to slowly slide against it.

As much as I enjoy playing a hammer Revenant, the professional as a whole doesn’t feel like it’s working for me. Your skill bar being determined by your legends is an interesting design concept but ultimately leaves you with skill bars that are over-specialised when you need versatility. The biggest thing that I don’t understand though, is the complete lack of swiftness or stability. I just want to make a poster with a picture of Rytlock and text that reads, “‘That’s so sixteen stun breakers but no swiftness or stability.’ –Think Before You Speak” because apparently that’s the life of a Revenant now.

At least Jade Winds is nice. Deal with THAT, tiny raptors.

Word says I wrote over 3.5k words of feedback. I hope you enjoy it! Also, I didn’t play Stronghold.

No swiftness of revenant is really a big deal for me. But concerning the dragonhunter, I was really satisfied, even with all the traps. It’s not like you cannot start charging traps, come on a melee range to the enemy and pop them out instantly…. I think it works well.