Guild Wars 2

Try to sum up my experience/opinions in a nutshell:

• Scourge – Overwhelming DPS, serious lack of mobility. Feels good to play though. I like the new mechanics. It just needs polishing. Easily one of the OP specs during beta.
• Holosmith – Overwhelming DPS, decent mobility. Didn’t test this myself but this is what I’ve seen from fighting it. Easily an OP spec during beta.
• Firebrand – Feels more balanced in terms of what a new spec should be like.
• Deadeye – Love the mechanics, feels good to play but way too much potential DPS on this. I don’t think it’s general average strikes need a nerf but it’s top end damage potential need to be toned down somehow. It’s debatable whether this is OP or not.
• Spellbreaker – Mixed feelings on this. This was the first one I tried. At times it felt strong and at other times it felt weak. The biggest issue I had was that it relies so much on the resistance boon and how easily that can be removed with all the boon removal in the game now. That’s not adequate sustain at all. Some of that resistance needs to be replaced with hard condi cleanse, especially after the nerf to Adrenal Health and Cleansing Ire.
• Weaver Another one that feels more balanced in terms of what a new spec should start as. It could use a buff to it’s DPS. Didn’t try this one myself but this is what I noticed playing against it.
• Mirage – Didn’t test it myself but playing against it felt exactly like playing against Chronomancer with less damage and more evasion. Felt like this class needed more.
• Soul Beast – This class definitely needs more of something. I didn’t see a single Soul Beast survive long enough in a fight to even be able to gauge what this class was even capable of. Due to this, I didn’t get around to testing it myself as it was on low priority.
• Renegade – Same issue as Soul Beast, they just never survived. It needs more of something to make it useful. Also another that I didn’t get around to testing due to how I saw it performing in combat and what others said about it.

All in all I can say that the DPS was too high during the spvp beta and that stability counter play vs. CC was negligent to none with so many boon removals. The weekend beta resulted in a 2 day nuclear bursting control CC meta where the first to hit & sit the opponent was the winner. Running support specs wasn’t working because the DPS was transcendent of any bunker or support. In a way, I enjoyed it but looking at it in terms of balance and keeping conquest interesting, the DPS needs to be lowered and it may be a good idea to gut out about 1/3rd “at least” of these new boon removal sources. This is to keep the 3 conquest roles viable: Bruisers, Peeler +1ers and Bunkers. When there are various different forms of those 3 archetypes, the conquest game is just more interesting. But when the DPS is this high and boon removals are so frequent that it’s easy to dominant with CC after stripping stabilities, it ends up in a situation where everyone is running only one archetype amongst all the classes and that is a nuclear bruiser. Peeler +1ers and Support Bunkers lose all viability when faced with this amount of DPS and highly reliable CC play. Conquest just isn’t as interesting when we lose 2 roles out of the 3.

A good thing I noticed after running 1v1 tests is that HoT specs are still very viable for being able to counter PoF specs. This is great! This is the kind of diversity that players have been waiting for. It all just needs a good polish and shine to the intra-class balance.

thanks for the feed back !

i dun think i will have enough time to try out all professions myself so imma just read the forums.

thanks again !

This is good feedback Trevor. Added some of my own experiences.

Scourge – Played against. I originally thought Scourge would replace the auramancer in a support role, but it has been surprisingly strong as an individual fighter. The power version feels a bit stronger than the power Reapers. Like all necro builds, it has many of the same weaknesses to cc and focus, but much stronger 1v1.
Holosmith – Played. I wasn’t able to do much with this. But I think that’s me, because others have been praising this one. However, I also never saw this amazing DPS that others have been talking about. The only really troublesome ones for me were the ones built to survive.
Firebrand – Played. I had a little trouble getting really into this spec. I didn’t experiment with it much. Biggest concerns where how long it took activate the books. I’m used to using virtues being on demand, but the books have quite a cast time. When I need one to save me, I’m often dead shortly after activation. So I didn’t feel they were very reliable. Probably just haven’t found the right build yet. Haven’t played against these much, because most guards I came across were still using Dragonhunter. I never came across a Firebrand that made me worried.
Deadeye – Played. This class decides matches. High damage on all attacks, lots of stealths and evades. Currently, the only counterplay is other thieves. Thieves have the problem of too many very strong builds (D/P, P/P, D/D, Staff, S/D) that require very different approaches to deal with. Only DHs and Scrappers can really stand against these other thief builds, and Deadeyes deal with both DHs and Scrappers. So teams with Deadeye and another thief build are painfully one-sided. They could use a bit more risk and a tone down on the damage. Actually, thieves overall need to be looked at in the context of pvp in general. Right now, matches are significantly more pleasant when neither team has them.
Spellbreaker – Played. I experimented with a lot different builds. I said this in the warrior forum that I kept tuning the build away from Spellbreaker. Full Counter is really good, but I’m debating whether Zerk Mode is better. Daggers aren’t bad, but I feel like I only use them for the gap closer. Boon stripping…necro/scourge is a better option.
Weaver – Played against. This class really seems dependent on the skill of the player. Some were quite impressive while others seemed to have no presence in fights at all.
Mirage – Played. I loved the Chronomancer. Everything was smooth and in synergy. This felt the exact opposite. Part of it might be because I’ve been spoiled on Chrono, but everything felt really slow and prone to unpredictable and costly failure. I gave up on it rather quickly. Didn’t play many matches against it, but still saw a lot of Chronos. Generally, much easier to fight these over Chronos.
Soul Beast – Played. I tried a lot to make this work. Got it close but never quite there. Tried many different builds and a few different pets (most didn’t feel worth taking). Couldn’t get much damage out of it (without Sic’ Em….) and it lacked the survivability of the Druid. I gave up on the daggers quickly because I couldn’t find a build that made good use of them. Stances…some didn’t work and the others couldn’t compete with Survival, Signet, and Shout skills. I said this in the Ranger forums, that traits and skills that affect pets should also affect the Soulbeast while in Soulbeast mode. Do that and adjusting some of Beast skills (lower cast time and better effects) could help this spec a lot.
Renegade – Played against? Honestly, I saw a few revs in my matches, but I think they were all Glint. If I played against this class, I never noticed.

Cleansing Ire and Adrenal Health weren’t nerfed. It was Berserker’s synergy with them that was rudely nerfed. But in spite of Spellbreaker only using one adrenaline bar per burst, they get a second burst skill, also on a low CD (and one that does a way too much stuff for one low CD skill). Cleansing Ire works fine with Spellbreaker and the new heal cleanses 7 condis. Basically, Spellbreaker does fine against condi specs. Actually, it’s probably the only spec that can truly handle a Scourge’s monstrously massive condi output. All others can put up with it for a time, but after a while, the Scourge will win.

I haven’t tried weaver, yet, but am keen to. It looks great, and I’m sure it will be very versatile.

Holosmith felt very PvE. It was like running around with an FGS, because without traiting range, it felt like it was too squishy. That said, I still melted. That said, I never was very good at engi. The more successful ones I’ve seen have been running rifle (as was I), and rocket boots and using them to run away to reset and or heal, a lot. So, it definitely has good mobility options, but in fights it just felt too easily shut down. That said, for the damage potential it has, it needs to be easily shut down. So, I would nerf its damage and give it some more sustain.

Firebrand I didn’t try yet, and not sure if I’ll have time. I’ve not seen any of these, though. Lots of DH, still, and even a couple of core guardians. I’m interested to see what it has to offer in terms of utility and team support. I always liked guardians for support roles in PvP.

Mirage was the second one I tried, and didn’t bother to queue with it. It felt like it didn’t know what it wanted to do. It has potential for both condi and direct oriented builds, and the concept of miraging is very good, it makes a lot of new plays available, but that’s all. As an actual build, to perform a role... There wasn’t really one. It did feel like it was trying to be a thief, but it needs to be "thiefy," not "trying to BE a thief." Spellbreaker got that, hands down. Core and chronomancer stomp all over it, and, while interesting, lacking a purpose, it really isn’t fun.

Scourge, I didn’t spend much time on at all. It looked spammy, and not a very viable option for supporting. It is incredibly weak to CC, as necro has always been. Supports need to be able to deal with CC in order to perform their role. It seems like it would be more PvE-oriented.

Renegade, I didn’t try, didn’t see much of, and to be completely honest did not think much of when I saw it, which seems to be the popular opinion.

Soulbeast, I did not try. I just dislike ranger in general. I think I’ve seen a few, but I didn’t really "notice" them.

Dead Eye... Dissapointed. Awesome if you want to play sniper, but it is worse than core thief for melee oriented builds. Projectile based builds are usually shut down in PvP, and that won’t even be necessary because every Dead Eye I’ve seen has melted to any decent core thief, daredevil or spellbreaker as soon as they become visible.

Spellbreaker was fun. This is the first time I’ve ever liked warrior. It will receive a lot of negatives because it’s such a huge change to how warrior has always been played. It’s less passive, you have to think about your skills and think further ahead in terms of dealing damage and surviving. The damage is reasonable, and sensible. It has less of the "let’s just throw in some big numbers and make survivability passive," feel, and really does feel more like a thief - going for that high value target or shutting a target down, peeling away from the fight to go for rangers/snipers. Full counter is an excellent concept, the only issue I foresee is that it doesn’t have a thief’s mobility, and they are similar, so they might never get a time to shine. But, a lot of new things are out and we’ve yet to see a lot of what will be tried, so at this point, who really knows?

Thanks for the comments everyone but I have a question:

Does anyone else agree or disagree with the 2nd point made in my post?
About how very high DPS changes not only the meta but how the game is played?

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Thanks for the comments everyone but I have a question:

Does anyone else agree or disagree with the 2nd point made in my post?
About how very high DPS changes not only the meta but how the game is played?

Its a bit early to get a good idea on the meta. HoT beta felt much more absurd for what its worth. A lot of “extremely OP damage” talk can be attributed to lack of experience with and against the classes. DH was considered broken in beta but when full game came out it became clear at higher end play that it was outclassed.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Thanks for the comments everyone but I have a question:

Does anyone else agree or disagree with the 2nd point made in my post?
About how very high DPS changes not only the meta but how the game is played?

Holismith DPS, yes. As I have said, it needs to receive some damage nerfs and sustain buffs.

Dead Eye and Soulbeast… Nothing should be able to hit 22k non-crit or 107k crit or otherwise. I haven’t experienced this myself. I’ve been hit by Death’s Judgement once, and it was for 12k, similar to vault, but from the safety of ranged. I do not know if the guy was complete glass with no defensive options, or if he was running a potentially viable build, so I cannot really comment on that one.

Scourge is good at area denial unless your team has solid condi cleanse. This is strong in conquest, of course, but I didn’t mention any concern for this before, because during preview weekends no one runs support, so I have no idea if a sufficient counter is there.

We need to wait until we can see the true state of the balance until after the completed specialisations have been released and sufficient time has passed for the round-a-bout of build-polish-counter build-rebuild-polish ect. has been done, so that we can offer opinions with the overall picture illuminated.

The point about roles is correct, and I was thinking the same thing yesterday, that perhaps what ANet should do is define somewhere on their website these actual fundamental roles of Support, Bunker, Bruiser, and Burst, and when creating new specialisations, refer to these definitions and build it according to one or a hybrid of two (i.e. “Bunker” often just refers to a Support & Bunker build, because support often has to build tanky, and it’s been so long since a plain bunker was viable).

If specialisations were truly designed toward a particular role, with one or two designed purely for utility, then you would be able to say hey let’s take A (damage) with B (bunker) and C (utility) and have a bruiser. Before, with fewer specialisations (5), the “play how you want” concept did not allow for such a structure, but more are added, it allows for more “specialised” and organised trait lines, and the “play how you want” becomes what role you want based on your combination of trait lines, and based on which of the two or three trait lines designed for damage you took, or if you took all three, or which of the defensive lines you took, ect. It sounds like a huge step, and a lot of changing, but we have seen similar to this prior to HoT release when a lot of traits were moved around, so it’s not an unlikely, inconceivable, nor impossible feat by any stretch.

Scourge – Played against – Seemed like an interesting addition to the necro. The area control reminded me a bit of a staff ele. I enjoyed playing against it.
Holosmith – Played – Super fun to play. It feels like it’ll be more of a pve spec, since it’s quite squishy. Still very fun with some good counterplay, maybe some minor damage nerfs needed.
Firebrand – Played – Boring to me, i don’t know I just got bored quick.
Deadeye – Played – Wonderful addition to thief, but it needs some numbers tweaks. But MOST OF ALL, malice needs to automatically drop if 2000+ yards a between the thief and the marked target. Right now, you can mark a target, run away, and if you can stay in combat using another target, you can come back and mondo burst your marked target with full malice. The counterplay should be the thief needs to focus you for a bit before the burst. Right now, there are ways around that that should be removed. (no damage dealt for 6+ seconds should start to decay malice slowly) There needs some additional counterplay.
Spellbreaker – Played – I had a lot of fun with this profession. It’s very direct and effective. With the right build, I can see this being used in pvp and the new pof maps.
Weaver – Played – I couldn’t get into it, and it didn’t seem super effective as an opponent. The only profession I quit a pvp match with before the end, to move onto another profession. For those that love learning a million skills and finding combos this could be fun, but I just didn’t have it in me this week-end for too much theorycraft.
Mirage – Played against – I didn’t even notice their mechanics. Just killed them like I would any mesmer. Not sure what this spec does.
Soul Beast – Played against – See mirage. They just didn’t stand out, and I would fight them like any other.
Renegade – Played – Very interesting and dynamic elite spec. I really enjoy what this brings to the table, but the skills cost too much (All of them, except shortbow imo) Shortbow also needs a bit of work. Best build I played was a menders renegade with shiro. Reminds me a lot of mender scrapper.

My perceived strength level:
Class Needs small Nerf:
Scourge
Holosmith
Dead-Eye

Class needs some tweak (buff):
Renegade
Firebrand
Weaver

Class needs something (not sure):
Mirage
SoulBeast

Scourge played - I actually tried three varieties: power, support, and condi.
Support fell flat. Barrier isn’t plentiful enough and doesn’t scale well enough. The playstyle would be similar to Ventari (used as support – not decap).
Power felt a little like an offensive guardian in that it could offer team support, but you were there for damage first.
Condi is totally overpowered, but not too hard to fix. First, the Demonic Lore trait is bugged and putting out one burn for each torment stack. Scepter#3 = instant death. Second, many of the punishment utility skills are too overloaded and could probably lose torment as a baseline.
Compared to repear, it’s weaker to burst, but a lot stronger vs sustained damage. It’s weak to range, but strong vs. melee.
Ghastly Breach (elite) is completely overpowered and needs a major nerf.

Holosmith played - Photon forge #1 and #2 deal far too much damage. Outside of that, seemed mediocre. Pretty easy to balance, but it may leave the spec empty.

Firebrand played - Needs a major re-work. It’s a bunch of things which don’t mesh well. Mantras are great for melee support and match with axe and other core guardian stuff. But you HAVE to take tomes, which don’t work at all in melee (too easy to interrupt); tomes have to be used from backline. But tome spells are mostly caster-centric at short ranges. Then you have the problem of tome abilities lacking any impact for their cast times and other limitations. Tomes have the same problem as the old elite tome abilities: maybe one good ability that you use and then close it. Firebrand needs to decide if it wants to be a backline heavy support or a melee combatant with light support.

Deadeye - Seems about right, but may not be top tier in PvP. Biggest problem I had fighting them was mobility in stealth allowing them to always hit hard from a completely different spot every few seconds.

Spellbreaker - Standard warrior + boon strip. Stances being near mandatory limits what you can do.

Weaver - Friend of mine who is an ele main played it. It’s viable in power burst, condi, and bunker roles. The concept is sound, but needs quite a bit of polish. Probably has one of the higher learning curves.

Mirage - Didn’t see many. The few I fought seemed like a weaker version of condi chronomancer.

Soul Beast played - This spec has an identity crisis. Right now you just merge with the pet, spam the longer cooldown abilities or the CCs and leave. It’s basically normal ranger plus a few cooldowns. I just did longbow/greatsword and it worked, but didn’t feel different from normal.

Renegade - It doesn’t matter how good or bad this elite spec is; it can’t replace Herald. The Revenant profession has a huge problem: Herald is Revenant. The other legends are too weak without it. Revenant needs a major re-work for Renegade to be viable.

Needs tweaks (nerf or buff) or bug fixes:
- Scourge
- Holosmith
- Deadeye
- Weaver

Needs some re-design:
- Firebrand
- Soulbest
- Renegade

Not sure:
- Spellbreaker
- Mirage

Scourge – Played, and played against. Played this guy first and thought, gee, if all the classes were this polished the expansion is going to turn out great. Really liked the scourge, definitely some problems with mobility, but it just felt enjoyable being able to be tanky, contesting a point and wreaking havoc
Holosmith – Played against. Still have no idea what this guy does except that they can dish out crazy damage. Good visual designs, very intuitive. Feels like as long as I stay out of the shiny skill radii they weren’t a handful.
Firebrand – Played. Did not like it one bit. Clunky to play, easily destroyed. Mantras are pretty crap except for the elite IMO. Got a fun build lined up for PvE though, 100% crit with no precision and lots of quickness anybody?
Deadeye – Played and played against. Really boring class, feels like a one trick pony.
Spellbreaker – Played and played against. Played this class second, really enjoyed it. The utilities are garbage though. Has the same issues of sustain the warrior has I think, but manageable.
Weaver – Played against. If I vsed some weavers this weekend I surely didn’t notice it.
Mirage – Played against.Feels like every other mesmer. I think they aren’t as deadly as chronomancers though.
Soul Beast – Played against. Same as weaver.
Renegade – Played against Same as weaver.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention buggy things I saw:

• Saw a Mirage’s clones turn invulnerable? I was 1v1ing my buddy Scourge vs. Mirage. I noticed the damage was ticking on the clones but when they hit 0 health, they were immediately going back to full health and not dying. This went on through the entire duel up until the combat engagement stopped, we OOC’d and everything went back to normal. lol what?
• Multiple times while playing Spellbreaker, the trait Shield Master seemed to not work at all. It wouldn’t reflect projectiles back at the opponents. And no, I was not confusing channeled attacks for projectiles or misunderstanding unblockable attacks/projectile nullification fields. I noticed it mostly while 1v1ing a Deadeye for practice. Most of the time dueling him, the Shield Master trait did not function at all. It would block his shots but not reflect them. It seemed to be happening frequently against Mesmers as well and now that I think about it, it wasn’t reflecting headshot back at thieves either.