I primarily pve – mostly fractals and dungeons, so a lot of my class/spec feedback will be from that perspective.
Power Revenant is fantastic. The Destruction trait line is great. I had a hard time choosing traits because I wanted them all. I kept coming back to revenant while I was trying out other classes because I didn’t want to give it up, and I’m sure I annoyed my friends with the number of times I told them how much I love it.
Dragonhunter was fun. I like the option of having a longbow, but I wanted to swap the traps back out for meditations for solo play. I can’t speak for dungeon play, because I don’t normally take a guardian anyway. Traps look like they could be a lot of fun on a melee guardian in open world/solo play.
Reaper is great. Once again, I wasn’t a fan of the utilities (I ended up swapping them out for traited wells). I really enjoyed using the Reaper death shroud and made my build around that, and can’t imagine playing a power necro or death shroud build without it now.
I didn’t enjoy the Chronomancer wells, so I swapped them back out for my usual skills. I tried my usual power but ended up with a condi shatter build that I REALLY enjoyed in pvp. I can’t wait for release so I can use the build on my pvp mesmer! I ended up using all 3 traits in the second slot and loved them all.
Tempest offers some great new things for people with different playstyles. I main ele, and can see myself switching to Tempest at least once in awhile. The earth shout that grants a reflective aura is going to be incredibly useful. Fire overcharge looks very useful for stacking might before or during a fight. I’ll probably use the elite when the glyph and FGS aren’t viable. For the most part, I’ll probably stick to Ice Bow, Glyph of Storms and Arcane Shield in my utilities. I’d love to use the healing shout in certain fractals and dungeons, and the earth shout is going to be fantastic in places where we need extra reflects. I didn’t spend enough time with a warhorn to take notes.
All the Itzel stuff is beautiful, and I camped out at their lantern cave whenever I wanted a break. I love their camp, the music, and their cave.
The enemies were pretty difficult. I died a lot while trying the new specs and Revenant, but it may have been because I just wasn’t used to them yet. I was fine on my ele. Night did feel different from day. At one point, I was trying to get to a mastery point with a friend, and died repeatedly on the way there because of the number of mordrem and my tendency to ignore enemies while running through the open world. That’s not something I can do in Verdant Brink, especially at night, which is probably for the better! I liked when the enemies talked to each other, like the particular enemy type that calls out that he’ll pin me down for the other one to take out. The enemies all look super cool. The creatures that require you to be in front of or behind them to damage them are fun! I do feel the need to use much more of my skill bar with the Mordrem than with the average enemies in open world, and even in some dungeons and fractals. I definitely had a way harder time with them alone than when I was with my friends. Thankfully, I spent most of my time in Verdant Brink with two friends.
I love hearing all the races’ voices in the story! Female asura is wonderful, as always. Female norn, while not my favorite in the core game, sounded great in HoT. Something about the female charr voice (which is my favorite in the core game) sounded different and I wasn’t super fond of that.
Wyvern crashed my game when it spawned after planting the eggs in the camp. By the time I was able to load back in, it was over. I did send a crash report.
Glider was really fun, and super useful. It only took a few minutes to get used to using it effectively again. Bouncy mushrooms make a huge difference. When we were collecting wyvern eggs for the Nuhoch (I think it was Utogi?), it felt almost essential to have bouncy mushrooms and glider to do the event efficiently. At one point, my friend had bouncy mushrooms before I did, and I couldn’t find another way up so she had to portal another friend and me up to where she was. Because I spent a lot more time testing out specializations and different builds for them (first going all-in, then seeing how they would affect my usual builds), I didn’t actually do a ton of events, so I can’t speak for how quickly I progressed through them.
I spent a few minutes in one of the maps with rewards, and hovering over what each map had to offer. As someone who loves to craft legendaries, I love seeing that there will be a map for me to focus on depending on which materials I need.
Overall, I really enjoyed it and I can’t wait for it to go live!
I adore the tribal gloves, though. I’m happy to see it’ll return eventually, but I agree that HoT would be a good time and place to do it!
