Guild Wars 2

Soryuju.8164:

Just putting it out there, the Warrior’s Mending and the Mesmer’s Ether Feast are also unclassified, so Shelter’s not the only heal skill in the game that’s not assigned to a type.

Thank you for mentioning those, I do not play these two classes much. So it seems that some on-edge-of-OP healing skills will not get a skill type.

dancingmonkey.4902:

I saw a 5,286 post stating it is a fact that the engineer elite spec will be called forgeman, from some data mined post.

But how would “auto-targeting” save your fingers? You still have to throw grenades.

Secondly, I doubt you saw anything about auto targeting, The mined feature is something that snaps your AoE circles to a target. There is a difference between aim assisted ground targeting and Auto attack. Auto attacks track the target, this data mined feature will not.

I understand what you said. IMHO an option of “pseudo auto-targeting”, if it is not “real” auto-targeting, could still be useful to some players; those who want more control on the position can still manually target every wave of grenades.

1. Since we now have a good physical damage option, the Reaper Shroud, how about making Death Shroud a condition option? Currently Death Shroud has merely no value to condition builds. A baseline burning on Death Shroud #1 could help; maybe also some condition on #4.

2. Staff #1 should have a baseline condition (torment or bleeding).

Vikkela.7261:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/June-23-Specialization-Changes/first#post5149118

Josh Davis

Shelter will not be getting a skill category. It would probably need to be adjusted in someway if we did do it – and it’s fine where it is right now.

I’m ok with it, it’s a good skill that is used on almost all builds now and I would rather not getting it buffed and then be nerfed again or even worse, completely reworked

I see, thank you. However I do hope it has a skill type even though it means it will be nerfed; it should not be an exception of the rule on all skills (oh maybe it is because I am a programmer).

1. Comparing to Warrior’s Battles Standard, spirits should either be invulnerable or have the ability to move along with Ranger (moving is better since it will not overlap with Battle Standard IMHO);

2. Birds have the same statistics as Feline family and two of them (Hawk, Eagle) have conditional F2 skill; it seems reasonable to give them 1000 condition damage as Feline;

3. Shortbow skill 1 should apply bleeding regardless of Ranger’s position to his/her enemy.

Not to replace current ground-targeting mode, just to add another option.

Will conditions on our fingers be removed?

Saw a data mining post on reddit showing some potential feature about it, however it was introduced in last patch.

I remember all healing and elite skills are assigned to a skill type after a past patch. Why Shelter is left (it seems like a perfect Consecration Skill to me)? Because it is too strong?

Similar thoughts here, the “themes” of skills are sort of messed up for now.

My idea is, making humanoid form purely “natural” and leaving all “astral elements” to Celestial Form, including:
1. Staff skills all plant related (Solar Beam is fine, it “fits”);
2. Glyph skills in humanoid form all animal spirit related (like Glyph of Eagle, Winter Wolf, Black Pantheon and so on);
3. Celestial Form skills remaining the same, plus each Glyph in Celestial Form representing a specific type of celestial body (like Glyph of Sun, Moon, Comet and so on; the elite skill can be Glyph of Blackhole);

The functionality of skills can remain the same, a support role is not a bad idea to me.

One problem of this concept is, the Druid will be 25% Sylvari and 25% Norn (maybe this is the reason they did not do so).

Zetsumei.4975:

Sooo.. what happened to how elite specs with a new offhand weapon gets an upgrade to their class mechanic (e.g. chrono gets f5) while professions getting a 2handed weapon get a replaced profession mechanic (e.g. reaper loses death shroud for reaper’s shroud).

This “symmetry” does not matter; the (potential) problem is that Druid is the first class with two irrelevant class mechanisms.

Druid is a better name than DragonHunter.

Obviously the “zerg meta” build for Ranger will not include Druid trait line; however since the designer mentioned that “zerg meta” itself will be gone in HoT, I am looking forward to see what can Druid bring to the table.

Nature Magic line is still quite weak as part of a support role though.

I like the skill and functionality design of Druid. I am desperately looking forward to see how well can a pure support role function in HoT Raids.

One aspect of Druid that IMHO still has the possibility to improve is the theme design: The Glyph skills include too many different elements (tides, vines, stars) and “plant element” is just not enough. My suggestion is, leave all the “astral” stuff to Celestial Form (including Glyph in Celestial Form) and make skills in humanoid form more “plant related” (at least by appearance), especially the Glyph skills. Overall the “celestial theme” is not a problem to me; nor have I seen any complaints on WOW Druid’s Moonkin Form (and Glyph of Stars).

By the way, I will not blame the designers for borrowing concepts from other games (Engineer from Team Fort and Torch Light 2, Druid from another Druid); as long as they fit the story background and skills well, they are great design.

Raven.9603:

Electro.4173:

I guess it depends on how you look at nature.

Personally, I agree with you that the planets, sun, and moon are perfectly suited to being classified as “nature”. Heck, I don’t really know that much about them so I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure most religions that have a high nature focus like Wiccans and real life Druids the like are in large part focuses on celestial bodies as well as plantlife. But to others it seems like nature = plants, plants, plants. And those people likely aren’t going to change their mind and continue to view this incarnation of Druid as unfitting.

When i think of druid, i think of plants and animals because the base class is a homage to DnD Rangers. When they announced druid, people expected a DnD druid, at one with nature and plants and animals.

What they got was someone at one with the cosmos, basically a Moonkin from WoW when we thought we were getting Feral or Resto. Sure, the universe is “nature” in a very zen everything-is-nothing-and-nothing-is-everything kind of way, but its not what people typically associate with a druid archetype. Its also a pretty blatant rip off of guardian tomes and the guardians core role.

Agreed.

The Celestial Transform borrowed concept from WOW Druid’s Astral Form (Moonkin Form with Glyph of Starts) and functionality from Guardian’s Tome of Courage. However I do not think it is a bad thing, the concept and skills will work well together, if “Zerg Meta” is gone in HoT raids as the designers said.

I suspect that the original Druid concept is indeed based on “plant and animal” but was deprecated for some reason and replaced by the current “celestial theme”, with a few plant-y skills (Staff #4 and a Glyph skill) survived.

My guess:

Staff is a long-range support weapon; the damage skills are condition-based; it has at least one hard CC and one soft CC skill.

JediYoda.1275:

Laurence.6751:

Are we going to get to play Scrapper and Druid this weekend? They only mentioned the Stronghold thing.

You answered your own question

Yea I know, just want someone to put out the last of spark of hope at the bottom of my heart.

Ayrilana.1396:

Laurence.6751:

Are we going to get to play Scrapper and Druid this weekend? They only mentioned the Stronghold thing.

No.

Oh kitten.

Are we going to get to play Scrapper and Druid this weekend? They only mentioned the Stronghold thing.

Jerus.4350:

ocirne.7915:

Hello, I’m the person that made the metabattle power grenadier DPS rotation and wrote a large part of that page. (http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Power_Grenadier)

I’ve done some quick napkin math to calculate the damage coefficients of the hammer skills from the twitch stream. (Using the Jebro part)

Numbers are here: http://metabattle.com/wiki/User:Ocirne

Assuming my calculations are correct, then the following will apply:

In general, the hammer skills 2 Electro Whirl and 5 Thunderclap are superior DPS to rifle’s Blunderbuss and Jump Shot. Hammer 3 is also likely slightly better DPS than using the grenade auto attack so this skill could replace the grenade auto attack in the rotation in a few places.

What you guys probably want to know, is if the hammer auto attack is any good compared to the grenade auto attack. The answer is, definitely not. The hammer auto attack is approximately 20% less DPS than the grenade auto attack.

In dungeon scenarios the extra might on the auto attack is not particulary useful, the vulnerability on both weapons is relatively compareable, with grenades doing more short duration vuln and hammer less but longer duration.

As far as i can tell, hammer will be a very comparable option for dungeon Engineers, how much stronger it is compared to rifle I still need to calculate, but it should be fairly close.

Trait wise, the Scrapper traitline would replace the Tools traitline, trading a 10% damage modifier when endurance is full, for a 10% toughness -> power for 100 power and 10% hammer damage trait. The DPS between the 2 lines should be really close trait bonus wise.

As far as the Utilities are concerned, I’ll just pretend that they never existed.

Can’t ignore the time element. Higher coefficients != higher DPS, just higher damage.

Either way though I’d wager Hammer would fit perfectly well in a power build, not just with solid damage but also defense, I want it, give it to me.

However, kitten the traitline. Honestly I don’t want it at all. Don’t forget dropping Tools also means a longer recharge on Grenade Barrage (and all toolbelt skills) which isn’t completely negligible. But then you also get the 50% increase to endurance regen, again something that is a solid QoL addition. Streamlined Kits is solid both for the activated and swiftness. Basically while Tools isn’t our key traitline it still had a lot of solid things within it that make me love it.

All that said, I am curious to see the shredder gyro in a condi build as people are talking about. May be a good “no nade” build option. Though I know it’s not just me fearing the impending doom of a burning nerf that will hamstring condi builds because they refuse to split PVP skills.

All I can really say at this point is I want the hammer, but not the traitline.

I am with you. The Hammer is great, Gyros are okay, the trait line is meh.

Thanks Ocirne for the information. I am looking forward to your HoT build!

Indeed Scrapper trait line is definitely not designed for PvE and certainly cannot compare to Explosion line; but I think it is very likely to replace Tools line for both Hammer and the elite Gyro. Invisibility provided by the elite Gyro, toolbelt skill of Elixir S and combo with Smoke Bomb will probably give engi an equal ability of group invisibility as Thief’s.

maddoctor.2738:

Based on this datamined trait:
http://i.imgur.com/IcGtSWn.png

Druids get aspects and glyphs. The only other profession with glyphs is the elementalist and elementalist glyph abilities change based on attunement, so maybe the Aspects will work like attunements, providing the druid with new abilities.

One way to think about it, is for aspects to replace pets, or when you choose druid, your pet will “turn” into an aspect, providing you extra abilities based on the pet. This would make sense because having to deal with both pet swapping and aspect swapping at the same time might be too confusing and complicated.

As a fan of Vivaldi, I personally hope that the Aspects will be the Four Seasons, with different team support abilities: (Spring -> healing/defensive support) (Winter -> CC/utility support) and Summer/Fall for different kinds of offensive support abilities.

In addition, it will be more exciting if Staff skills, rumor says they are about plants, can reflect the appearance of plants in different seasons and have different skill effects as well, for instance, Winter Staff #4 applies chill while Summer Staff #4 applies burning (though I doubt they will implement 20 skills for Staff instead of just 5).

SkiTz.4590:

Pino.5209:

SkiTz.4590:

a 2nd icebow over ranger is better sustained DPS by a mile.

Icebow has always been only for burst, you don’t camp icebow. 4 3 2 … drop bow. IB dps dips after those 3 skills on cd. IB4 is long cd, you don’t wait for it. Icebow has never been for sustained dps.

All you need is burst really in a well coordinated group…. thats why 2 eles is meta…4 Ib’s melts pretty much anything in dungs/fracs lol…

Even than, once you do the IB burst, you can drop it and continue raining heavy AOE and lava fonts for way more dps than ranger will put out….

I personally suspect this will be an issue in upcoming Raids in HOT, since eventually those “hardcore” players will have 5 elementalists in their raid party for a 10-icebow burst. 2 same classes out of 5 may not be an issue, while 5 out of 10 can be quite…weird, I would say; and that is obviously something Anet would not want to see.

My guess is, icebow will be nerfed while some less “meta” classes (necro of course, ranger and engi are on the waiting list depending on the performance of Druid and Forge) will get buffed on team support ability; so far necro’s trait line rework, the reaper trait line and shout skills are not powerful enough to give it a “meta” position.

Olcon.9506:

After skimming the developer responses from the CDI, and assuming that what they’ve hinted at there has carried over to the Druid and formed the basis of its specialization, I think I have an idea as to where they’re going with this.

All the elite specializations so far have focused on enhancing the existing class mechanics, right? So instead of providing an alternative to the pet by creating permanent Stowing, I think they’re going to build off its permanent presence.

My idea:

-The aspects will be tied to pet family. One overarching aspect, with associated buffs, per family. So having a feline out would give you the Feline Aspect, no matter if you used a jungle stalker or a jaguar.

-This allows you to continue to use pets in builds for their specific command skills. Creating an aspect per pet, i.e. “Aspect of the Jungle Stalker” and “Aspect of the Jaguar” would be both too time intensive and also potentially remove pets completely from play, as I doubt they’d give literally every single pet an associated aspect.

-Immediate powerful buff/effect upon swapping pets (possibly PBAoEs included, judging from those datamined images?), followed by a constant, less powerful buff afterwards. This solves the issue on how the pets and aspects will work together and how the F binds will work. F4 now swaps both your pet and aspect, everything else will probably stay the same.

-The precedent for two aspects already exists in the Revenant. I haven’t been following its development closely as I just got back from a real long break from the game, but I do know there are multiple Legends available to it, but they can only equip two at a time, correct? Same thing here. Multiple aspects to choose from, two equipped.

-The Druid trait line now becomes about the pet buffing the ranger. This forms a nice reverse of Beastmastery, which is all about the ranger buffing the pet, while at the same time potentially opening up some interesting build options. I wouldn’t really know about that though, I’m not a theorist. The lore for “druid” fits into this nicely as well, as the druid in many different literature and games has always been a “man of nature”, benefiting heavily from its fauna and flora.

-The pet now becomes a “buff machine” with a command skill, which counteracts the notorious AI and the issues many people have had with it, and how it seems to fight against the ranger’s potential. Don’t like the pet and still think it’s bad? At least it now has some powerful buffs for you.

-Potential downsides would simply be the Druid specialization becoming the go-to choice for rangers. Many of the other classes have been having that discussion too, though, so I suppose we can cross that bridge if we ever get there.

Obviously, this is all 100% speculation. The CDI was a year ago and everything could’ve changed between now and then. I’m probably dirt wrong. But if this holds any merit at all, we may very well become Udyr plus vicious snarling beast.

Thoughts?

Same thoughts I have. However, maybe one aspect for one pet family is too much designing effort. Since the original Glyph has 4 “aspects”, I guess Druid will have no more than 4 aspects.

Same thoughts here. A lack of reliable power DPS weapons leave necros only one option, the dagger; it does not mean that dagger is designed for DPS in this case.

Take a look at GS, comparing to its first three skills (especially #2 and #3), it seems that main-hand dagger is not designed towards a pure DPS weapon. And since we have GS as a decent melee power option now, I would expect dagger to be more like a sustain weapon — but with decent DPS — like Guardian’s mace (for instance, adding life siphon to #1).

Speaking of DPS weapon, Axe needs some change/buff as well. It should have a DPS similar to Ranger’s longbow or Warrior’s rifle, especially when its range is only 600.

For DPS ranking, GS > Dagger = Axe sounds reasonable to me.

By the way, how about adding a condi (torment maybe) to Staff #1 and Scepter #3…

It does not need to be replaced by a totally new chain of attacks, just allow dodging is good enough.

I personally wish to switch the skill types of “Rebound” and Tornado; “Rebound” just does not fit Tempest.

MethaneGas.8357:

Critiques:
-Lack of condi weapons – The lack of condi weapons forces you to be a hybrid, in a way. No other weapons besides mace and axe have damaging conditions on them, so you basically have to go hybrid (which includes carrion) to be able to deal at least SOME damage with your other weaponset (staff/hammer/swords – which are power). I think damaging conditions could easily be added into the other weapon sets (perhaps to staff #2? and/or staff #4?). However, I found that the power damage was decent with carrion and the conditions while using staff were sort of O.K. if you used Mallyx… but staff was still used almost (almost) exclusively for defense.

Lack of Swiftness
I noticed that Revenant had almost no access to swiftness so I had to use Traveler Runes. I think if Revenant is to be able to use other runes… it NEEDS to have swiftness from somewhere. Be it swiftness from traits, passive in-combat 25% movement speed from traits, or swiftness from certain skills or utilities. Either way, it needs it. Having to use Traveler Runs makes 95% of the other Runes inaccessible, imo.

Lack of stun breaks
I realize that using Invocation gives you access to 2 stun breaks (your legend swap) but come on.. you swap legends because you want the utilities, not because you want to have a stun break. It’s very cool (like Necro’s Foot in the Grave trait) but it’s not REALLY a stun break when you can’t use it whenever you want to (like normal stun breaks). The only stun breaks I had were legend swaps and Shiro’s Riposting Shadows. I also had stability on dodge. If I’m being completely honest, I sometimes felt like a ping-pong ball, and I think it was probably a l2p issue, but there does seem to be a lack of stun breaks. I’m not sure how this could be addressed though, because if every Legend had a stun break, then a Revenant would have the capability to have way too much resistance to CC (stability on dodge, stun break on legend swap, + a stun break from an utility on each legend. That would be 4 stun breaks + stability on dodge).

This is just the feedback on what I’ve tried (sPvP with celestial/carrion mace/axe + staff Revenant with Mallyx/Shiro). I had several people troll/bash me for “playing a trash class” but it felt far from trash. I had a complete blast playing it, and although there was MUCH to learn, it felt decently competitive even in ranked sPvP.

Agree on the “lack of condi weapons” statement; may add a main-hand or two-handed range condi weapon.

It is not totally unreasonable since the other two heavy armor classes do not have a permanent 25% speed boost either; although it sounds weird that an centaur or assassin has no increased speed, remember what human characters say when they gain Swiftness?

Please consider removing Revenant weapon skills’ energy cost. It is acceptable not to use any utility skills while upkeeping another, but ridiculous to use only weapon #1 meanwhile. Also double limits (CD and energy) is way too harsh. Just make it the opposite of Thief’s mechanism please.

Hope Glint will bring some offensive team support options, something has effect like banners or PS…

I would love [CD but no energy cost] on weapon skills and [No CD but energy cost] on utility skills, just the opposite of Thief’s mechanism. The reason I do not think energy cost on weapon skills is a good idea is the Upkeep utility skills, you can currently only do weapon skill #1 while upkeeping a skill.

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.)

This announcement also implies that there are no more elite spec releases by at least Aug 10th.

No matter which of (signet, mantra, stance, spirit weapon, etc.) the Drones are like, the goodness I can see in Forge is that it adds some missing elements of the basic class. Hammer adds a melee option; and a set of utility skills that has passive functionality which gives Engineer a way to simplify the skill rotation while remaining a decent DPS.

Glad to know that game designers can wisely evaluate the class design. Same thing happened on Necromancer. Furthermore I can guess that Druid will add some useful WvW/PvE supportive features to Ranger (forget about spirits).

Zaoda.1653:

I personally think this will be the final specs:

Ranger – staff
Thief – staff
Ele – warhorn
Warrior – torch
Mesmer – shield
Revenant – shield
Engineer – hammer
Guardian – longbow
Necromancer – greatsword

Agree.

I agree. Thief already has decent melee options, but does not have a single-target power-damge ranged weapon.

Generally speaking, elite specializations can be put into two categories based on their “background match type”:

A). Generally lore-wise acceptable alternatives in any fantasy based games, examples: [Ranger, Druid, both use natural power], [Necromancer, Reaper (think of Death/Dark Knight), power of death], notice that these two has a Physical-or-Magical-emphasis pattern; and [Warrior, Berserker, physical power]. All of these “universally” reasonable expansion can to some degree call back to DND, the ancestor of all fantasy RPG games.

B). GW2-specifically acceptable specializations: [Mesmer, Chronomancer (no surprise since Mesmer itself is a GW2 only class theme)], [Elementalist, Tempest (I haven’t played GW1 much but someone mentioned about some elementalist with a warhorn or something)]. Those are two widely acceptable expansion of the basic class based on the background of GW series; but under this category there might also be some far-fetched ones, like Dragonhunter…

Based on above logic, there are some possible and impossible elites for every class:

1. Guardian: It has lost its chance to have a cleric-like elite (more magical based, think of Paladin-Cleric in DND) since it already uses both staff and scepter. It is hard to come up with one not worse than dragonhunter;

2.Warrior: Warlord with off-hand pistol with a WvW-surportive trait line seems reasonable based on its first elite Berserker (assuming it is DPS oriented);

3. Revenant: A GW2-specific class, and there are plenty of legendaries waiting to show their faces due its unique utility skills mechanism. I personally prefer Snaff (Zojja’s master, the last name Logan wants to hear) with rifle or pistol.

4. Ranger: Don’t know. Cannot come up with one as perfect as Druid but not overlapped with it or the basic class;

5. Thief: Based on my guess that the first elite will be monk-themed with melee staff, maybe a ninja-themed elite (dunno about the weapon); or a more magical elite with focus (scepter might be too much);

6. Engineer: It is a GW2-specific class, it has lots of possibilities for new elites; though it’s hard to pick a new weapon, torch maybe?

7. Elementalist: Warmage with main-hand sword, to pick up the deprecated concept for the first elite. By the way do not expect decent-DPS auto attacks for any elementalist’s weapons, the class mechanism does not allow it.

8. Necromancer: Same as Ranger, cannot come up with one after a perfect reaper.

9. Mesmer: Though it is a GW-specific class, a widely used class theme, the Bard, sounds like a good choice. Don’t know about the new weapon but it needs a main-hand weapon rather than a off-hand one.

Another thought I have is that, if there is going be a second elite for each class, it is possible that the new elite will add a new set of weapon skills to an old weapon, for example, a Ninja adds a new set of dagger skills to Thief but you can use Thief-daggers as weapon set 1 and Ninja-daggers as weapon set 2 with either same or different pairs of daggers.

Also on new elites’ trait lines, while each of basic trait lines (especially the first four) focuses on a certain “role” (power, condi, tank, healer), new elites’ should be more like Tempest’s/Chronomancer’s, that is, have diverse traits for different “roles” and can be used in at least two game types (PvE, WvW, etc.); reaper is not an exception though it seems that it adds some missing part of the basic class, it also gives both power and condi options.