None-HoT players vs HoT
Unless class mechanics like Arcana, Soul Reaping, Beastmastery etc. become elite specs themselves, people that have Heart of Thorns has a massive advantage over people that don’t.
Reaper, Chronomancer and Scrapper are significantly better than their non-elite counterparts. To a point that you must be using these elite specs as they give you a very clear edge in PvP.
Reaper works way to well with Soul Reaping.
Chronomancer is not a class, it’s a new build called shatterspike 2.0
Scrapper just needs some tweaks, it’s honestly not that big of a deal, but right now it is better than engineer.
To answer your question RIGHT NOW, yes. If you do not own Heart of Thorns, you are going to be at a disadvantage in PvP.
And yes, ArenaNet is really bad at what they are doing. Instead of adding to class mechanics, they made better classes. In those three cases.
(edited by Nova Stiker.8396)
The end goal is that specializations are a different playstyle, but not necessarily any stronger than core. Seeing as this is a beta, some elite specializations ended up stronger. It’s not entirely surprising, since making things a little too strong gives you a better overall picture of what to tweak.
I’m only worried about chronomancer, since it’s been consistently strong in all three BWEs. Reaper isn’t too bad. Although Scrapper is too strong, it’s the first BWE with the elite spec.
Kirrena Rosenkreutz
The end goal is that specializations are a different playstyle, but not necessarily any stronger than core. Seeing as this is a beta, some elite specializations ended up stronger. It’s not entirely surprising, since making things a little too strong gives you a better overall picture of what to tweak.
I’m only worried about chronomancer, since it’s been consistently strong in all three BWEs. Reaper isn’t too bad. Although Scrapper is too strong, it’s the first BWE with the elite spec.
Agreed. Reaper and Scrapper just needs some tuning.
Chronomancer is just disgusting. There is no reason why it should be Shatterspike 2.0 or have shatters to begin with. Why not replace F1-F4 with different abilities?
I’m just worried about Chronomancer, it was the first elite spec and clearly has the least work put into it.
I think condition reaper is fairly well designed. It is different from condition necromancer but not necessarily stronger. Reaper seems to have more sustained damage because of chill damage whereas necromancer has more bursts due to ds2 (3x bleeds+chill+vulnerability+2x condition from corrupting a boon). Compared to that RS has only poison from skill4 + chill as condition damage sources. Dhummfire is an option but for that you have to give up signets or path of corruption+weakness+passive condition transfer.
No idea how the power or the celestial builds compare to each other though.