Showing Posts For CuriousMoth.5836:
Coming at this from a PvE perspective, the only really disappointing thing about the Scrapper is the Gyros. They’re dumb, they get themselves killed, they draw agro and they provide little that I couldn’t already do without the drawback of having AI controlled minions. It would be better if they weren’t targettable / killable at all and their effects balanced accordingly, creating a new kind of minion which would be much more fun to use.
Medic Gyro is an extremely unreliable version of Healing Turret, which can theoretically heal for more in total, but lacks condition removal and will almost certainly die before it gets a chance to provide its maximum healing. The toolbelt skill is good, I just wish there wasn’t a Gyro attached to it.
Blast Gyro looks good on the surface, until you actually try it and soon realise it cannot critically hit, making it a weak skill with a long cooldown. The toolbelt skill is not particularly useful in PvE.
Bulwark Gyro is just a really, really bad version of Phantasmal Defender. In PvE, you can get over 20,000 health per defender and churn them out for non-stop protection against all but the highest damage. Bulwark Gyro will never have that kind of sustainability. Its toolbelt skill is alright, but Elixir U is better in PvE due to its much longer duration.
Purge Gyro just doesn’t do enough to warrant a utility slot. I don’t see why I would want it over Elixir C. When I can convert a bunch of conditions to boons in an area as soon as it is needed, why would I want a random AI to gradually remove conditions? Like Bulwark, it’s a really, really bad version of Phantasmal Disenchanter. It acts slower than the phantasm, its condition removal doesn’t even bounce, and it doesn’t remove boons from enemies. It’s trash. Just utter, utter trash. The toolbelt skill, while fairly good for condi builds, isn’t nearly enough to consider wasting a utility slot for this supreme garbage.
Shredder Gyro… speaking of garbage. This is the single worst Gyro of the lot, and they’re all pretty terrible. It does virtually no damage and whirl finishers, even 24 of them, are really ineffective. You drop it down, put napalm on top of it, hope for at least half the bolts to hit so you can say it’s ‘at least as good as Fire Bomb in total burn duration’, but it doesn’t land its bolts well enough, each bolt isn’t an AoE and your hammer is already providing all the short-duration lightning fields you need, so the toolbelt skill isn’t particularly valuable either.
Sneak Gyro is way too slow and stupid to compete with better forms of stealth application for things like dungeon running and it’s not particularly useful outside of that role in PvE. Its toolbelt skill is completely useless. The only reason I say Shredder is worse than this is because it has some limited potential in PvE, while Shredder has none.
It’s a bit too late to just delete the Gyros and go back to the drawing board, but as I mentioned at the start of this post, you could probably salvage them by taking them out of combat entirely and rebalancing them, so their AI and squishiness isn’t an issue. You’d think a speedy little gyro would be able to evade attacks and fly above the combat anyway.
Not sure if there’s some special place I’m meant to put this, but anyway…
Specializations
Were they fun?
Guardian: Dragonhunter
Dragonhunter was not hugely fun for me because I didn’t really enjoy its primary weapon. I run two Guardians, one berserker’s hammer Guardian, the other a scepter + torch burn-focused sinister Guardian. I made my beta Dragonhunter to explore the possibilities of condi Dragonhunter and found that, while not sufficient for me to change from Zeal / Radiance / Virtues in most cases, the traps proved a better substitute for spirit weapons in dungeons, where spirit weapons are undesirable. Much like with Purging Flames, the damage of Light’s Judgement + Procession of Blades is more bursty than the consistent burn upkeep of spirit weapons, but ultimately worse and something I’d only want as a backup. It comes at a heavy cost too, since the three specialisations I presently use synergise with each other and Dragonhunter just doesn’t. My scepter hits often, triggering Virtue of Justice often, which causes Permeating Wrath, which is buffed by Kindled Zeal and Amplified Wrath. Bleeds from the traps don’t synergise with this. Dropping a specialisation for Dragonhunter means some of this synergy has to go away and its replacement is not good enough when I don’t want to use a longbow and only want to use two or three of the traps.
I won’t be dropping my zerky hammer for a longbow, but Dragonhunter stands a much better chance of being adopted on my hammer Guardian. Presently I run Zeal / Radiance / Honour, but Radiance could easily be dropped with a change to the heal trap Purification. The massive vulnerability spike of Light’s Judgement and pull effect of Dragon’s Maw could also fill some gaps, but I feel that Dragon’s Maw doesn’t have nearly enough radius to do anything except worsen the corner stacking / line casting bug-exploits people use with the Ele’s Ice Bow. The real problem with Dragonhunter for me is that the longbow just doesn’t feel impactful or distinct from the Scepter.
Suggestions:
Make the longbow 1,500 range to differentiate it from Scepter.
Make the second skill True Shot a bunch chunky physical damage thing, because it’s not something Guardians really have right now.
Make the pull radius on Dragon’s Maw bigger.
Revenant: Herald
The Herald specialisation is easily the most fun I’ve had with Revenant so far. Being able to buff your allies, vulnerability your enemies and still have the energy to drop a damage-pulsing AoE and chunky knockback is a godsend. If I go Shiro, I’m inclined to just whack on Impossible Odds and forget about anything that isn’t auto-attacking, but with the Herald you actually manage your energy rather than tossing it until it’s all gone. The skills also seem far more fluid and easy to use (both in and out of combat) when compared with something like Ventari, which is one of many reasons I would favour Glint over Ventari even on a healer. When you think about it, it’s a lot more like the Thief with its energy management, since the Glint utilities are all free or upkeep, which frees you up to use weapon skills. It’s nice not to be so pigeon-holed by requiring energy for weapon skills and utilities.
So Herald is better for damage, better for healing, the constant protection option makes it better for tanking, it’s better for buffing; it’s just better. Shiro shines for mobility, Ventari can block projectiles for ages, Jalis can provide stability, and Mallyx is some condi damage thing I didn’t really bother with because it didn’t have enough burning and since confusion isn’t PvE viable anymore and all the other conditions are pathetically weak, burning is the only one worth using. The problem is that every other legend has a niche role if any at all and Glint just hogs the spotlight. Nothing else provides anything close to what Glint can, so why would I use anything else except for maybe Shiro to get around faster? I don’t think it’s that Glint is too strong, I think it’s that the other legends are too weak or too clunky, and don’t have enough effect to take pride of place even for roles they’re supposed to dominate.
The Shield is absolute trash, however. Envoy of Exuberance is okay, but Crystal Hibernation is just a ‘kill me now’ button. You see something charging at you, you hide in your crystal, then the crystal immediately breaks and you die instantly. Alternatively, I just have an off-hand sword and block for a guaranteed 2 seconds.
Suggestions:
Remove the breakbar from Crystal Hibernation and balance it accordingly (3 second duration instead?)
Remove the cast time from Ventari’s Will entirely.
Remove energy costs from all weapon skills and give them cooldowns instead.
Add a small energy cost to the activation of Glint facets.
Warrior: Berserker
I wasn’t exactly bowled over by the Berserker elite specialisation, but it felt like it had a lot of potential. I only tried a condition damage Warrior and I felt like the burning durations could have been increased without it being too overpowered, given that Warrior is very middling for condi damage as it stands right now; capable, but far from the best. Perhaps with Runes of Balthazar things would go a little better and Warrior bleed duration is already fine, so I guess this just needs normal testing without the beta limitations. I suspect Berserker will become a staple of zerk Warrior given its 14% precision to ferocity bonus and the additional quickness. It does mean dropping my beloved Defence spec, but I think that’s okay because the Rage skills were quite varied and fun to use, Blood Reckoning in particular suits the specialisation perfectly. The Torch was a bit… meeh, but off-hands often are. All in all, this one’s pretty good.
Suggestions:
Increase the burning duration on Flaming Flurry by half a second.
Double the burning duration on Blaze Breaker.
Thief: Daredevil
I’m sure you’ve heard it many times by now, the grandmaster dodges are clunky and awkward as heck. I’ll get into that in a moment, but first I think Thief is in the same situation as Warrior for condi damage, they’re almost there but not quite. I think Daredevil stands a very real chance of pushing condi Thief up in the world and that’s a great thing. I think having a bunch of dodges is lovely, I think the staff is fun, although the burstiness of it might lead to Vaulting WvW Thieves that one shot you, but Thieves already do that with backstab so, meh! I like that it’s a different approach to Thief, although I think the staff auto-attack could possibly use a little tuning up. In many ways, the staff is is sword / pistol with more mobile evades and less teleporting / standing still. I felt the physical skills were varied and a lot of fun to use, all achieving different tasks quite well. Fist Flurry is a bit sluggish though – it’s not that easy to apply the CC effect, which is the main purpose for using the skill.
So onto those dodges. All three dodges change your direction. With a normal dodge, you’re facing forwards, you dodge backwards and you’re facing forwards. With the grandmaster dodges, you’re facing forwards, you dodge backwards and you’re facing backwards toward the camera. Lotus is just fine in terms of how you move – if the direction thing gets fixed it will feel fantastic with Death Blossom – but the Bound and Unhindered Combatant dodges have these strange delays that leave you stuck for a short duration before you can move again.
Suggestions:
Fix the dodges, make them feel more fluid and not change your orientation.
Speed up the animation of Fist Flurry.
Make Bandit’s Defence flip over when you successful block, just like the Revenant’s Duelist’s Preparation. Blocks feel much nicer to use that way.
Elementalist: Tempest
This was my least-played elite spec, so I’ll be brief. The overloads feel fantastic to use, they’re great fun and suit the Elementalist to a tee. The warhorn seemed nicely fleshed out, a good alternative for dagger or focus, fitting somewhere inbetween the two in terms of offence and defence. The specialisation didn’t feel hugely necessary given Elementalists could already stack 25 might and two minutes of fury, and a bunch of other stuff and do great damage and provide the key to meta group DPS (Ice Booow), but then there isn’t much you could have given Elementalists that they didn’t already have, save for a suit of full plate armour. I also like that it makes auras more viable. For a while auras really dropped off the map, now we see why. All in all, pretty good specialisation.
Mesmer: Chronomancer
Really fun mechanics, great potential for new and interesting possibilities, I can summon about eight phantasmal defenders in a row now and that makes me happy, because ever since the protection trait in Chaos got nerfed two years ago she’s not felt quite up to the job of tank by proxy. I think everyone agrees Chronomancer is amazing and you did a really good job with it, though I do have to worry a little because in the short time I tested it last beta weekend I found I could maintain stealth forever. That’s going to be quite the issue in WvW, since worlds will no longer be able to sweep for mesmers after taking a keep.
Necromancer: Reaper
Other than Revenant, this is the one I was most interested in. I think it’s really, really fun, from the weighty feel of the greatsword to the aggression of the scythe, with the benefit of stability. The issue that arises is how you fit it in with the other Necromancer specialisations. Spite / Soul Reaping / Reaper seems to have become the gold standard for Shroud-focused Necromancers, but I’ve always favoured flash Necros, who use their Death Shroud to grab boons, remove conditions, break stability and soak big hits.
Reaper feels like it suits the former style of Necromancer far better than the latter. Decimate Defences goes a long way to making a Greatsword-focused Reaper viable, but I feel that it’s just too strong and it drowns out the competing traits entirely. Reaper’s Onslaught does the same thing in the grandmaster tier, being so much better than the others that there really isn’t any point to using them. In other words, it’s got some real balancing issues in terms of its build variation. Another issue is that the shouts are not great. The elite could afford to be twice as strong and it still wouldn’t really compete with the other elites. Its only selling point is that it is fire and forget, while the others transform or create a dumb (but fairly strong!) minion which is liable to get you kicked out of a dungeon party. I just don’t feel like it does enough to warrant its use. The shouts feel very balanced toward PvP, which is bad for PvE, because you can’t balance both at the same time, they need to be split like in GW1 or you just get a mess, like with confusion where it still wouldn’t be viable even if every enemy attacked twice a second.
Suggestions:
Greatly increase the damage of the grandmaster trait Deathly Chill. May want to up Terror too, because these are both really awful in PvE, even as side dish condis. When I say greatly increase, I mean two or three times as strong as it presently is. Currently even a condi build has no use for it, because with Dhuumfire you get more out of Reaper’s Onslaught.
Add 2-3% Reaper Shroud cooldown per boon to the benefits of Blighter’s Boon.
Reduce the effectiveness of Decimate Defences to 1% per stack of vulnerability.
Tie the cooldown reduction effect of Soul Eater to the greatsword auto-attack, not the Gravedigger. Increase the life siphon damage and healing by 25% (it’ll still be much weaker than Decimate, but closer at least)
Remove the ICD on Chilling Force.
Pulse “Chilled To The Bone”’s damage up to three times while an enemy remains frozen. Along with the Deathly Chill change, that should make it PvE viable without being too strong in PvP.
Did they Change how you play your profession in a meaningful way?
Guardian: Dragonhunter – It’s a possibility for one of my Guardians, but it won’t greatly change my playstyle.
Revenant: Herald – The difference between Revenant with and without Herald is night and day. I’ll be grabbing Herald as soon as possible.
Warrior: Berserker – I’ll not be changing my playstyle much, but I will take the benefits Berserker provides, since I have a specialisation which isn’t doing enough presently.
Thief: Daredevil – I’ll be taking it on my condi Thief, but my zerk Thief is happy with his sword.
Elementalist: Tempest – I suspect I’ll go back to using Scepter and focus more on buffing with Tempest handy in place of Water, but I’m undecided.
Mesmer: Chronomancer – I played my Mesmer as a tank and will continue to do so with the aid of Chronomancer. Perhaps the spec will change up one of my other two Mesmers moreso, though!
Necromancer: Reaper – I’ll certainly give Reaper a try with my zerk Necromancer, and on my condi Necromancer I’ve already seen Dhuumfire put to great effect, so I may take Dire gear and give a tanky condi Reaper a go.
How were the improvements to the previous Specializations? (Dragon Hunter, Tempest, Chronomancer, Reaper)
I didn’t play any Dragonhunter previously and I didn’t play Tempest or Chronomancer this weekend, but Reaper seems to have been moved in a generally better direction, with the exception of Reaper’s Onslaught, which just became even more overpowering compared to the other grandmaster traits. The change to Gravedigger is what has made me consider Reaper for my zerk Necromancer, so that’s a great change.
Creatures
How is the difficulty of the new hostile mobs, and are they fun and exciting?
The new monsters are great fun to fight! They’re not the slow, stupid creatures you’d tend to find in the original game, they move and charge and place AoEs which require better positioning. Sometimes their burst can be a bit too much to handle, but once you learn to dodge at the right times things get easier, so I suspect it’s along the same lines as the initial release learning curve, where what seems too hard really won’t be once we get used to it.
The mushroom guys are super adorable. I feel bad about killing them.
World
With the Opening of two new outposts, we are adding in a bunch of new events. Are they fun?
They’re fun, I’ve seen the Faren one and everybody loves Faren in his pants. Some of the events are a bit stock, though. ‘Defend the Output’, ‘Bring the Supplies to the Place’, ’Don’t let the Dude Die’, etc., but I suppose you’ve got to have some filler. The big boss encounters were excellent, with some opportunity to get in close and enough threats to keep you on your toes wherever you stood. … Also Bongo the One-Eyed clearly has two eyes.
Do the new events bring you more into the world?
Definitely! While I enjoy the more relaxed atmosphere of the original game over the Verdant Brink, I think there’s a place for very active combat struggle survivaly sort of maps and it definitely suits the tension of the situation. I feel that the characterisation is a little better in these new events too; people are more memorable even if they’re just bit-players.
Are the new events challenging, meaningful, and interesting?
Some of them are, some are just filler, but I mentioned that already. It’s nice to meet characters you already knew from before and see what they’re getting up to in the jungle, try and help them out, see their interractions with both yourself and other NPCs. With regards to the activities themselves, I found a lone champion and naturally I tried to solo it because that’s just what you do, and I could survive fairly well with the proper dodges and it was fun, felt rewarding, I got downed in the end, but not before a few others appeared to help me. That was a fun experience and times when you have that opportunity are to be cherished, I think. The huger wyvern fights are enjoyable and intersting for a different reason, because you’re actively supporting your allies rather than trying to master something on your own. It certainly meets my expectations.
Mastery System
How is the progression?
I don’t like the idea that masteries should be quick and easy to get, I want them to take me months to acquire. I don’t know if it’ll take me that long, but it’s long enough and I certainly wouldn’t want to see it reduced.
How is it using the mastery abilities in the current area?
It’s fun, but I didn’t find many updrafts after unlocking it… actually I didn’t find any updrafts after unlocking it :< I also didn’t get the chance to try out the bouncy mushrooms, but in the previous beta weekend my friend say the bouncy mushrooms are evil and throw you into pits. Now she says gliding largely negates their evil ’shroomy ways.
Is the mastery system providing a meaningful area of progression?
I was doing an event with a bunch of other players and some of us died, so we all respawned and used our gliders together to fly back down to the event. T’was beautiful, and an excellent example of how handy the gliding is. I see people bouncing around on mushrooms all the time too, and that looks useful. I don’t really know about the other masteries because gliding and bouncing on mushrooms is obviously the most fun thing in the universe after Super Adventure Box (which does itself involve bouncing on mushrooms, might I add), but so far it all seems to open up the area in a big way.
Do you care about experience and mastery points?
Yup. I like lateral progression. I’d like to be able to laterally progress into more racial skills and stuff like that too.
Does it provide a good framework to add more masteries in the future?
Seems to! I’d love to see more masteries and the variety of effects you can put into that system make it really valuable.
Do you want to learn as many masteries over time to overcome challenges later in the future?
Of course ^O^!
Stronghold PvP
Feedback on the new UI
Feedback on Stronghold itself
I have never PvP’d in GW2. I do a little WvW every now and then, but I’m mainly into PvE and RP.
Bugs
Report and notify any and all bugs using in game system as well as boards. Take screenshots and describe as best as you can
I saw some floaty grass west of Mellaggan’s Valor Waypoint. The mushrooms are a bit buggy. The Daredevil dodges change your orientation and probably shouldn’t, also they have a nasty delay. I wasn’t really making much of a list I’m afraid. I’ll do that next beta weekend!
What not to worry about
A thing, ‘cause every little thing is gonna’ be alright. Also I wouldn’t worry too much about people saying enemies are too damaging or masteries are too slow. They’re fine.
Map reward system
I don’t actually know what this is o.o;
Aaand that’s me spent.
They’re harder to get, that makes them elite :p It’s not like you have to use them, I might end up not using the Reaper spec, I almost certainly won’t be using the Dragon Hunter, but they’re still something you have to work at rather than something you can just pick like any other and advance like any other.