Not directly related to this weekends’ beta, but I recently have some thoughts/ideas on future elites.
First, elite specs do not necessarily bring new weapon sets but new weapon skills to existed weapons instead. That is, a Thief elite “Ninja” can bring a new set of 5 dagger skills, but not a new weapon type; and a thief can use “Ninja” dagger skill as weapon set 1 and “Thief” dagger skill as weapon set 2 at the same time, with either just one pair of daggers or two different pairs. This may give designer a second chance to take a look at the skills designed several years ago and broaden the horizon for elite specs, especially for classes like Warrior…
Secondly, for PvE, an elite should give the basic class at least one of offensive support ability (like Warrior’s banners, not even mentioning PS), utility support ability (like Mesmer/Thief) or defensive support ability (while remaining a decent DPS, like Guardian), especially for basic classes that are lacking in those. Yes I am looking at Reaper… but Ranger, Engineer and Revenant can also have some more team support possibilities in addition to what they already have now (hope Druid, Forge and Glint are moving towards those). It is worth mentioning that team support ability is as important as, if not more important than, personal DPS in current dungeon runs.
In addition, for “Kit” like skills (I think it was mentioned that Guardian may get their tomes back), it is better they are used only as utility skills but not as healing or elite skills. No one wants to keep using a healing/support skill for 15 seconds; and a kit elite is hard to balance since it cannot be restricted by CD (yes it can has 1 or 2 more powerful skills with long CD but this will make it no difference from a “regular” elite skill). By the way I think Mesmer can also have kits in form of musical instruments which, unlike current kits, replace only #2 to #5 weapon skills (I know we already have musical instruments, but mesmers make them “magical”), along with the “Bard” elite specification.
Some immature ideas on future elites:
Cleric/Priest for Guardian, with new skill type “Tome” (as kits); hard to think of a new weapon though, may just give a second set of Staff/Scepter skills;
Warlord for Warrior, with a trait line mostly focusing on WvW support (like Tempest’s); if a new weapon is necessary, off-hand pistol (shooting into the sky though);
Snaff Legendary for Revenant, with new weapon pistol/pistol or rifle as a ranged condi option;
A ranged single-target power option for Thief (Snipper with Rifle maybe, like everyone says, but this name sounds vanilla); I personally also like a little bit “shadow magic” or “psionic” element, like the feeling of D2 Assassin’s “Shadow Disciplines” skill type or Starcraft’s Ghost.
Bard for Mesmer with musical instruments as kits (like I mentioned, healing and elite skills can be some other types, like “Songs” serving as a time-limited presence), and a main-hand weapon as useful as Sword;
I do not think Sword is a good idea for Elementalist; the dagger is already a decent melee option (there is hardly any difference between range 300 and range 130), and it is like solving Goldbach’s Conjecture for designers to come up with 12 kinds of chops…
So what are your thoughts?
(By the way currently Revenant’s weapon skills have CD while utility skills do not, I prefer the opposite (like Thief) or simply removing CD for all types of skills. People are complaining about the damage, but numbers are the easiest to change while mechanism is the hardest.)
(edited by Laurence.6751)