Guild Wars 2

During the beta weekend, I felt that in terms of usefulness, the traps were all less useful than another meditation, but ranking them from nearly as useful to much less useful they were Test of Faith > Fragments of Faith > Procession of Blades > Light’s Judgement. Same for PvE. Purification varied a lot with the level of the area – in starter zones it was a strong option.
So the first set of balance changes I feel hit about the right spot, except the lack of buff to Light’s Judgement.
The second set I’m more divided about. Traps really lacked a defensive component, that’s what made Procession of Blades of blades so weak. And the daze component will make for more fun play, by making each trap multi-functional. – it removes too much damage. Purification and Fragments of Faith only get stronger by the change, and for Test of Faith the daze should be about as useful as the bleed was (it’s a trap you’d generally place a move away from). But Procession of Blades loses like half its damage, and Light’s Judgement loses as much bleeding. The problem is the same as bleeding removal from warrior rifle and ranger greatsword, it took a lot of buffing to the greatsword until it turned viable after that.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Purification: Increased bonus healing based upon level by 50%.
• Test of Faith: Increased the damage multiplier on this ability by 20%.
• Fragments of Faith: Decreased the duration that fragments remained on the ground from 15 seconds to 10 seconds. Increased the duration of the aegis granted from fragments from 5 seconds to 8 seconds.
• Procession of Blades: Increased the base damage by 36%.
• Dragon’s Maw: Increased the maw trapping duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds. Damage increased by 20%.

• Piercing Light: Added a 20% recharge reduction to Traps.

Karl McLain.5604:

Adept – Piercing Light: The bleeding effect only really benefited a couple traps, where we wanted the effects of this trait to enhance each one in the same way.

• The bleeding functionality has been removed and will now daze enemies for 1 second when traps enter their ‘activating’ state.

Wolfric.9380:

even 5s fireballing is massiv. Its AOE and can kill a target alone. This is six shots for up to 3k on crit each. The crit chance would be 70-80% so at least 4 full hits. If not dodged this is about 15k damage. So and what will hapen is fire overload bursts for 15k?

With the announced buff, Overload fire does 19k damage with carrion amulet. It’s hardly burst though.

Zenith.7301:

And the fact is, tempest will lock you out of doing DPS for a really long time.

It just isn’t acceptable in PvE. This goes as well for D/F PvE builds. Locking you out of air means your DPS plummets completely.

Put another way, they’d have to buff overloads by such a high degree to overcome the DPS loss of not using firebal+lava font or lightning whip.

I say that’s what they ought to do: buff overloads (numerically) until they overcome the DPS loss of being out of your weapon’s stronget attunement for longer. It’s a good thing the traits lack damage modifiers and other strong things, that leaves room for buffing overloads to the point that you’d always use them if you take the tempest trait line.

Valento.9852:

Wait. Are people mistaking our complaint about overloads with actual dagger skills damage coefficients? Nobody is asking the devs to increase damage to daggers! If the balancing behind overloads to make them more worth it requires D/D to be severely nerfed, so be it.

Lots of truth to this. The overload complainers mention dagger (D/D or D/W) a lot, as if its skills are so strong that they can’t afford to take the time to overload with current balance.

Azure.8670:

I have to say, Tempest is better than dragonhunter

The tempest’s mechanic may have a biger impact on playstyle than those new virtues, but longbow and traps expand the Guardian class way better than warhorn and shouts do for ele.

Yes they convince me.
They provide melee-like power to scepter and staff, allowing you a playstyle where you switch range range back and forth (more than scepter/dagger does), and a less vulnerable way to do big AoE compared to meteor shower or churning earth.
Sure, they’re a waste if you play dagger, but I don’t really.

Zenith.7301:

Moreover, nobody will use fire or air overloads, ever. What are you gonna do, sit in water/earth and do 300-500 damage autoattacks?

They need to buff water and earth autoattacks for ele, and they need to buff all scepter autoattacks. Ele has no sustained damage whatsoever in water or earth since the autoattacks are so weak.

You’re not forced to swap attunement after overloading (though swiching back and forht between fire and air helps). I wish the warhorn trait was something like “While you have a warhorn equipped, your autoattacks deal more damage/have longer range/cause longer-lasting conditions/inflict bleeding”. Dagger on the other hand needs nerfs at this state of balance, not buffs.

Karl McLain.5604:

While the changes listed are the ones you’ll be seeing in the next beta weekend, we haven’t stopped making changes as we work to improve the Dragonhunter specialization. Here’s a few more changes we’ve been playing with for the longbow.

Puncture Shot: Arrow velocity is slow! We’re looking at increasing it so that it’s less strafe-able. What we’ve got it at is ~66% increase, putting it at around Hip Shot (engineer rifle) velocity. We’re also looking at the base and bounce functionality.

True Shot: To make this ability more rewarding for stopping you in place, we’re looking at further increasing the damage.

Deflecting Shot: We’re looking at increasing the damage values of this ability, so that it has a bit more impact to it.

Symbol of Energy: It’s really hard to place this in a position on allies/enemies without them being gone by the time the arrow gets there. Upping the missile velocity by ~60% and allowing it to be fired behind you.

Thanks for your constructive feedback, everyone. I’ve got to head out for now. We’ll be back with more stuff, like traits, soon.

-Karl

Something for everyone in there – the changes to puncture shot (and symbol of energy) should make the posters who seem to want longbow to be scepter-with-faster-projectiles happier (and I don’t fully disagree with them, it was sometimes frustrating to chase after PvP enemies who ran past, not being able to punish them enuogh for being in your range), while the damage buffs to the less mobile skills should help the ranger-like feel of encouranging positioning over kiting and keep the feel of the longbow as a distinct weapon from scepter/staff (I enjoyed playing with longbow much more than with scepter, probably because of true shot and hunter’s ward).

quaniesan.8497:

You do realize you will give up alot for that sort of offensive power. Fury is easy to come by from other classes. I never seen a fight without Fury.
Also do not judge the new skills based on existing contents. Who knows , when you actually face the new mobs, you will wish that you shoulda kept quiet about “oh don’t give me skills/traits that are very strong”.

I wasn’t so concerned about balance vs other classes (revenant has been weak in the betas esp. in PvE), but internal balance, like that min-maxing would push you into stay in one legend and even skip using your stunbreak.

@KingFarout: the fury on heal has a 20 second internal recharg I’m afraid.

Invocation has traits for +7% damage and +20% critical chance while under the effect of fury.The only source of 100% fury uptime is Facet of Darkness. Facet of Nature + constant legend swapping comes close though, at 75%. Will revenant become all about staying in glint and maintaining fury (risks being dull playsyle) or are the alternatives strong enough?

I wish they’d buffed Roiling Mists by adding a non-fury effect (like dmg/crit at high health or while using upkeep skill) instead of increasing the effect of fury further than the previous +50%.

Aorin.9168:

Lastly the elite specialization traits needed a little more love to really drive the defining components of the Dragonhunter.

• Piercing Light: Added a 20% recharge reduction to Traps.
• Soaring Devastation: Increased the duration of the immobilize from 1.5s to 3s.
• Hunter’s Determination: Increased the duration of stability gained from 4s to 6s.
• Dulled Senses: Added that when you apply cripple you also apply 3 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds.
• Heavy Light: Increased the internal cooldown from 7 seconds to 10 seconds. Increased the knockback distance from 120 to 240.

You went the wrong direction on Heavy Light. With a 10s cooldown it is in no way shape or form a contender with Big Game Hunter. BGH is miles above either of the Grandmasters.

Furthermore, you have two traits that entirely depend on each other which basically makes one useless without the other. Dulled Senses is entirely depended on Heavy Light’s knockback, which is now even less reliable with an increased cooldown. Heavy Light would be a ridiculous trait choice unless you had Dulled Senses. This reliance on another trait is in direct contrast with the trait rework performed in the Specialization release and is a huge step backward in that regard. I encourage you to merge them and be more creative with a replacement Grandmaster trait.

But they’re not dependent on each other anymore. Rejoice! Dulled Senses is now a trait for buffing your autoattacks, allowing it to stack up to 15 vulnerability when you’re hitting a group of enemies (well, more like 11 vuln if you’re using true shot and other skills).

The range increase on Heavy Light was needed, it wasn’t really noticable at 120. And the trait was already the strongest of the GM traits.

Traits are great already, I don’t understand why people are complaing. They’re not supposed to be strong – overloads should fill that role.

Good to see overload buffs, they needed that. I think overload air still needs more damage (a 60% increase instead of that 30% increase would be needed to break oven with just using fire skills on staff), though I’m happy about the range buff.

Agreeing a lot with Ohoni, especially in how you run an overload rotation.

Not changing the numbers on the elite skill is the right thing – even if the numbers were bumped up to viability it wouldn’t be a fun and ele-style skill, so better to keep it as if it doesn’t exist (though I’m hoping there’s big rework of it going on in the shadows)

@Glenstorm: you switch to water because you need heals (for yourself or others), and the weapon skills there have that. If the healing weapon skills didn’t do enough, you use the overload as well.

Azel.4786:

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Don’t equate tempest=warhorn. Overloads are what bring something new (having a reason to stay in an attunement for ~8s), and they’ve just number problems.

You missed the point completely and I hope ANET doesn’t miss it like you did. In fact, you ignored so much in this topic you even ignored me saying that Warhorn is not the issue.

Overloading an attunement changes you from your standard rotation? Sure it dos.

Problem is Tempest, including with Overload, does not bring a new role.

Your comment states that you just want it to be worth it to use overload vs. doing our rotations to do a role of a “brawler / group support”.

Again, if you want that then you just want Tempest to fight over the same role with D/D cele ele and, naturally, the best one at the job will prevail. So either Tempest will be weaker at it and most people won’t bother with it (a complete failure for a new feature being added) or it will be stronger and break the balance (also a complete failure for a new feature being added).

The problem is much more than a numbers issue. Again, it is a concept/design issue.

I left the brawler/support discussion to others because it’s not a role I’m looking for (D/D already has it…). Mid-line support is what I’d like. Staff+overloads+shouts is mid-line support/nuking unlike normal staff which is back-line (dungeons don’t count). I wish scepter+warhorn would fill that role too, but the problem lies with scepter.

sidenote: scerevisiae’s stormlike moving overloads is a cool idea, no idea if it’d be better or worse than currrent mechanic, could be fun, I like water globe on warhorn.

Coldtart.4785:

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Don’t equate tempest=warhorn. Overloads are what bring something new (having a reason to stay in an attunement for ~8s), and they’ve just number problems.

Overloads are absolutely a concept problem. They demand you make colossal sacrifices in return for the exact same things you could’ve had if you were just playing a regular d/d F/W/Ar build. Even if the numbers were worth it the mechanic would still be bad because there would be no decision to make. You could simply solve when to overload and when to not overload based on some simple criteria that would likely encompass 95% of all situations.

The damage rotation I was using during beta (I kind of had to imagine that the numbers were good enough…. for overload fire they are) was 5s in fire → overload fire → 5s in air → overload air → use water and/or earth → back to fire. It’s a slow (25-30s) rotation, which makes it a different playstyle. It’s about being able getting the same kind of result by playing differently imo, not about in-combat choices like the revanant has.

Zxavier Augistine.7312:

the problem is, we have been trained for a long time to flip through attunements like the pages of a book. theres a tool for every situation and yes staying in an attunement long enough to get a powerful skill is a positive, however in a high speed skill based class why stick to an element when it will mess up your rotation? even if staying in an attunement is their idea of a “side-grade” there arent enough benefits in using them. they dont change the battle they dont do well enough to be skills we want to use.

That’s why I meant it’s a numbers problem, it’s about being enough benefits to be worth using them on most of your attunement swaps.

Zxavier Augistine.7312:

On top of that we have to take a trait line to use them, and we basically are stuck using 2 lines that are mandatory to be effective, water and arcane, respectively, which limits our overall build diversity. I want to branch out from being in water and arcane but they have the best traits and we have used them for 3 years with little to no change. what makes the tempest line something we MUST use? from what i played i would not pick that line because water does things better, and arcane makes the tempest line look like a gimmick.

If you use overloads a lot, arcane becomes much less useful, since you’re not swapping attunements often enough to benefit from swapping recharge reduction and boon-on-swap traits, freeing a trait line.

Don’t equate tempest=warhorn. Overloads are what bring something new (having a reason to stay in an attunement for ~8s), and they’ve just number problems.

Kidel.2057:

All those options greatly lower your dps. Guardian and Tempest don’t need to exchange so much.

Staff doesn’t reduce your damage until you need it (i.e. swap from sword), making it the least expensive way to make up for the gaps in what glint does (not that you’d run staff in a condi build ofc). Not comparing to other classes atm.

Mattmatt.4962:

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Mattmatt.4962:

How can you cast a non instant spell (aka spell with a cast time) when you’re stunned ?

Same way as you stun break with Rite of the Great Dwarf: you cast the skill while the rest of your skills are disabled, and when it finishes its stun break makes you able to use the rest of your skills.

So you meant to tell me that a stun breaker with half a sec activation time is reliable ?
Do you know that with human reaction time added, you’re near 1sec cast time … oh wait, 80% of stun last 1sec …..
And i’m still freaking not sure about the fact you can cast them while stunned

I didn’t try warhorn enough, can’t say. Rite sure wasn’t, you generally got interrupted a second time or bursted down a second time during its old 2+s cast.

I for sure like the direction of Vengeful Hammers’ change. Damage reduction spam from te rite isn’t enough now that glint provides a similar option, and broader options for support.

I hope Vengeful Hammers + Forced Engagement will be a playstyle. The energy needs to come down a bit before you can use both in the 10 second window between swaps without running out of energy: either Forced Engagement would need to go down to 30- energy (which will require adding a recharge to it to disallow CC lock), or Forced Engagement goes to 40- energy while Vengeful Hammers upkeep go down to 6.

Kidel.2057:

…aoe condi cleanse support…

Three options:

- Staff on swap: lets you keep providing boons while minor condi removal AoE and perma-weakness on cleave. And good self-defense. At a cost of 30% damage loss or more, and the loss of a ranged option.

- Mallyx: doesn’t let you do both support and self-buffing of damage, though it conveniently has skills for both. Also means losing a trait line in most builds, though corruption is ok if you run mace. Similar to the staff choice in condi removal and self-defense, unsure about damage loss if you don’t run a condition build, but probably similar too.

- Ventari: lets you keep doing support when you need condi removal, at the cost of 1 trait line and the lack of fury upkeep, which together will mean more damage loss than staff. And a big loss in self-defense. This is the strongest group condi removal option, and support overall.

Since perma-fury with traits is like +30% damage, and you can get some 8 stacks of might permanently, staying in Glint legend seems the best when your going for damage only, should about break even with the personal damage from shiro (thinking PvE, since condi rev seemed the PvP choice in the betas). Means the other legend is a utility/defense choice – Shiro for mobility and stun or Jalis for healing, condi clear and stability.

With Glint you can even switch at need to provide perma-protection, at half the energy cost per second compared to Jalis’ rite.

Mattmatt.4962:

How can you cast a non instant spell (aka spell with a cast time) when you’re stunned ?

Same way as you stun break with Rite of the Great Dwarf: you cast the skill while the rest of your skills are disabled, and when it finishes its stun break makes you able to use the rest of your skills.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

• Phase Traversal: This skill can now be used on a target out of range to close the distance similar to how Infiltrator’s Signet on thief works.

Seriously? That sounds like a bit too good…
I wonder how far away it can be activated, closing 2400 range for 40 energy would be so whoosh

Some much awesomeness from that POI, with Jalis turning more defensive, hammer and sword getting evades on the right skills, and more CC on staff. And getting another supportive legend, but this time with offensive support included and so many in-combat choices… looks like it’ll be great fun. Spear looks ok, hope a supportive legend like Jalis or Glint will be available too.

Negatives would be that motor-like sound for Envoy of Exuberance, and perhaps the lack of condition removal/negation on Glint.

Gathbard.6904:

I can’t wait to test Glint out, but I’m still worried about Ventari.
My main issue with him is having to re-cast the tablet every time I swap back in it, not the lack of healing.

On the bright side, suumoning and moving your tablet can now be traited for protection.

Roy needs to fight bigger fish, we never got to see the underwater versions of downed skills!
Probably the same as thedowned skills though, since those aren’t ground targeted or anything.

Spider.3109:

Fire: Probably better than the staff autoattack, but compared to a meteorshower, it loses in every aspect. It will even have problems to compete with lavatomb or the dagger autoattack. For a pure damage overload this is simply too weak.

Air: This overload seemed like its sole purpose was stacking vulnerability. If you combine it with a weapon like dagger, which has an awesom auto attack, this skill is just horrible and the field at the end of the cast feels at least like it does decent damage, but it’s way too short for a 5 second cast time.

By my calculation (at 2000 power, 0 condi dmg), including overload fire into your fireball+lava font+flameburst spam increases the DPS by 24%. That should be enough to be worth the lack of damage modifiers in the trait line.

The overload air tooltips says it should pulse every 0.25s. Though it only pulsed every 0.5s. Maybe that’s why the damage is on the low side.

2. No you lose the effect on the vanilla actives

5. Dragonhunter is awesome, strong reason for me for longing for HoT release. It bring a new playstyle to the guardian, where hang back and deal damage (without doing any support), then if you want do provide support move in and play your normal melee guardian, the back out again. Current ranged weapons don’t really let you stay at range, so as ranged damage dealer the dragonhunter is definitely better than guardian (edit: in another thread I ran the math: longbow outdoes the alternatives in ranged damage). The traps which nicely fill the hole in PBAoE abilities and work with the longbow if you think ahead, though they don’t expand the guardian’s abilities as much as the longbow.

Damage is certainly enough on sword. But it lacks the defense of staff and the range of mace.

Sword skill #2 looks like it made for catching enemies or starting fights, but skill #3 is better for that and has the same range. Or for weaving in and out of combat, but the recharge is a bit high for that. I find myself wishing for lower CD and/or more range (600) so that it can pull that kind of weight as utility. Damage is fine on it.

Staff + overloads + shouts felt strong (earth excluded), both in PvE and Stronghold. So much damage from the fire and air overloads, as long as you could snare enemies in the lingering AoE. And a lot of fun with that build.
Maybe people struggle with the the overloads because they ran dagger or scepter, which aren’t as attunement-camping-friendly as staff.

Saiyan.1704:

Traps:
Again, full trap builds are a death sentence for anyone who gets caught in a melee fights. Procession of Blades is the only trap I would considering its small cd and quick hits. That said I wouldn’t dare trade JI or CoP for it. PoF is a less risky utility, it offers more support and can most definitely deliver more damages through burn stacks. Therefore, I can’t recommend traps beyond defending Stronghold (it doesn’t perform better, mind you) or some WvW defender build where people can literally stack traps on 1 point and attack on walls. I see those being fun but very much niche build types.

I do like the fact that Process blades + Light’s Judgement + Dragon’s Maw is a death bomb. I feel Traps are too easily triggered by clones rather than players. Light’s Judgement should have a bigger attack radius.

The Process blades + Light’s Judgement + Dragon’s Maw combo doesn’t kill though, pretty far from it on celestial stats (I got a guardian to half health with perfect combo + pewpew). Procession of Blades was nice on its own though, but the low power was a problem.

Power stats + Test of Faith was the only trap I found good enough to forego a meditation.

Can’t say if the longbow was worth the loss of a trait line, though the skill 4+5 combo kills doorbreakers a lot faster than staff’s skill 5+3..

Some of the highlights:
- Events, esp. in Dry Step Mesas
- Dragonhunter traps and longbow
- New enemy types – cavalier, sniper, stonehead and more
- Tempest overloads (esp. that you stay in attunement, and how you air becomes more useful suddenly on staff) and AoE auras on shouts
- Reaper greatsword (so much more active and less aggressive than dagger, like it) and Rise!
- Itzel lore and habitation, feels alive
- Stronghold’s NPCs

Initial knockdown on Light’s Judgement would help a lot.

Purification – it doesn’t need more healing or less cast time (I get it off already and often heal to full, in the situations where it doesn’t just flop) – so some condition removal when it triggers would help make it viable.

Knighthonor.4061:

2) Test of Faith – this need a revamp. the concept is nice, but it needs more to it. Right now its just basically a giant fire ring in concept. It should have some kind of effect going on in the center of the ring.

Not more than a single initial pulse in the center IMO, I like the ring of fire style.

1. Tempest (Overall): 3
2. Traits: 5
3. Warhorn: 3
4. Overloads: 4
5. Healing Skill: 4
6. Utilities: 4
7. Elite Skill: 1
8. Animations & sound effects: 2

This thread needs tigers. Those Veteran Tigers didn’t seem to die randomly in slopes. Sorry about you beloved pet cat though, I hope it’s got additional lives and will assimilate to the jungle soon.

Buff Purification, Light’s Judgement, Bulwark. Everything else has a situation or build where they’re good.
There aren’t any must-haves on the dragonhunter that could use nerfing. The stuff that were too strong (Spear of Justice, Zealot’s Aggression) already got nerfed before the beta.

First impressions from this beta weekend:
- Revenant was more fun before, and I think weapon swapping is to blame. Some situations kind of need it, but at least it ought to be a more rare thing to swap weapon, e.g. add a 35 energy cost to weapon swapping.
- The revenant is still weaker than other classes.
- Three of the legends have defenses (jade wind and stun break on shiro, area teleport and resistance on mallyx, spammable blind on ventari with the trait). Counterintuively, jalis is the legend that lacks defense.
- The amount of gap closers and anti-kiting skills on sword+axe+shiro is a bit much.
- Salvation still lacks useful grandmaster traits if you’re taking it for the staff.

Having played with traps as ranger, I prefer without ground targeting.
The two traps with cripple on them work well for keeping the enemy away. And getting aegis while you kite. Even the plain damage trap works, as long as you’re in a spot where mobs will pass (lots of events like that).

Longbow is awesome: both skills and damage numbers feel right. And it’s fun to use, beats the other 2 ranged weapons in that aspect. Longbow #3 is a bit too situaional, I wouldn’t want more damage on it (already got a lot of damaging skills on tte weapon), but some CC like weakness or mini-daze would be nice. Keep the self-immobiliy on longbow #2, it helps the ranged feel of the weapon.

The master traits lack useful choices, feels like some traits could use moving around, like swapping place between Soaring Devastation and Bulwark.

Dragon’s Maw looks good on paper but is unreliable against mobs. (edit: just learnt how to use it against stonehead dinosaurs – so it is good after all)

With Purification, the reward isn’t larger than the effects on other healing skills, but it has a fair risk attached to it – not worth equipping, too dangerous.

I didn’t find a good situation for Light’s Judgement (I guess I wasn’t around enough many people), but the other 3 utility slot traps had their uses. The bleeds should be mentioned in the tooltips though.

Some damage numbers, at 1000 power, 0 condition damage:

Scepter/torch
#1: 237dmg per 0.8s
#2:16×117dmg, 6s CD
#4: 720dmg, 3×3s burning (1179dmg), 15s CD
I didn’t count the first part of torch #4 since it has short range.
DPS: 624, of which 50% requires stationary mob and 100% is single-target

Longbow:
#1: 287dmg per 1.0s
#2: 746dmg, 4s CD
#4: 5×186dmg, 5×4s burning (5×524dmg), 15s CD
DPS (up to 3 targets): 643, of which 37% require semi-stationary mob and 70% is easy-to-use AoE (other 30% is piercing AoE which is basically single-target)
Without skill #2 (which you can’t use if you need to kite), DPS drops to 528

I also tested against dummies, got slightly faster kill times with longbow.

Summary: if you want damage from a distance, take longbow over scepter.

Longbow also has a nicer feel to its skills. But for something a bit more defensive against a veteran mob, scepter felt stronger (didn’t use with torch),must be the defensive from offhands, immobilize on #3 and mobility that helped.

I can hear what’s being said during cut scenes, but I have to pull the volume up to max during them. Wasn’t like that during living world cut scenes.

Thaddeus.4891:

When list all the trait that people run in popular build you get a list of trait that none of them use. I use the following build : Meta PvE, Hammer PvE, Bunker Guardian, WvW Frontliner AH, Medi Guardian, Sinister Condi PvE and PvP Burst Burning. Here is the list of unused trait.

Zeal : Wrathful Spirit, Blinding Jeopardy, Expeditious Spirit
Radiance : Healer’s Retribution, Wrath of Justice, Radiant Retaliation
Valor : Strength of the Fallen, Stalwart Defender, Retributive Armor
Honor : Protector’s Impact, Honorable Staff, Force of Will
Virtue : Glacial Hearts

So there is something wrong with those trait IMO. It can be because they need a buff, because they need to be placed somewhere else, but it can also be because they just don’t fill any role.

Protector’s Impact and (maybe) Honorable Staff help at open world exploration.

It was fun against ranged opponents, like centaurs (half of them are archers) and mordrem jungle tendrils, since there’s a lot of positioning involved in using the hammer.
Most of the game is melee-mob heavy though, and there it just didn’t work – skill 2 and 4 are totally designed for fighting at a distance, so you end up autoattacking. Shiro legend (lets you teleport away or stun nearby opponents) should fix it, as should to a lesser degree weapon swapping.

HarbingerAzrael.5691:

I was just wondering how that was going to work at lower lvls, dont you get most F skills a bit later on???

I guess we’ll get to slot 1 legend at level 1-4 (so no legend swapping), and 2 legends at level 5-80.

Warhorn looks like more fun than existing off-hands, like dual heals and the fire boon sharing. But then I play nearly only with staff (I like support and don’t like attunement hopping), not sure it’s goes a long way enough to be original, like it still has a fire field in fire and an interrupt in air.

None of the utility slot shouts are support Flash-freeze and the heal look nice, and I like how auras tie to shouts. The elite… umm.

I hope overloads will contibute to attunement camping, but that 5 second before use is too low for it… I hope for a longer time required to be in attunement but lower recharge on the overload itself.

In general I like the direction but don’t think they went nearly far enough.

Staff would be great for the auto-attack (unlike mace and hammer which rely on skill #2 which is locked out at level 1). But there’s also the question of starting legend since level 1 characters get a healing skill, and Ventari would be a bad choice since it doesn’t have a true self-heal.

My vote goes for sword + assassin stance, gives you a sufficiently complex and strong auto-attack, and a way to heal yourself while being thematically consistent between weapon and legend.

Vizardlorde.8243:

Im placing my bet on mace >.> most classes start with a single 1h weapon.

Once all classes started with a 1h weapon yes, but they changed the system, e.g. gave lvl1 rangers longbow.

Feedback on weapons:

Mace/axe
This weaponset has good mobility (a teleport and the abilty to blast lightning fields for swiftness) and can deal attack fro mid-range with skill #2 before closing in, so not so much a problem with being kited, except for opponent running out of our #2 fire field. The energy costs are low meaning you can use utility skills a lot, though you can’t be so active about it since you’ll be using your weapon skills much.
I found myself using #2, #5 and #5 pretty much on recharge, and much less atuoattacking then I’m use to. It gave an aggressive feeling, I like it over something like warrior axe or necro dagger which are autoattack-focused.
The damage is hybrid, meaning you could run either carrion or zerker for damage or celestial for defense. There was like no defense (just a delayed CC), so this weapon set made me die more often than the others in solo PvE.
This was my fav PvP weapon set. In PvE I had the problem of not having a legend that supported condition damage (Mallyx wants conditions from the opponent).

Hammer
The way the skills are set up, it looks like you’re supposed to play a ranged damage dealer similar to power ranger (or greatsword mesmer I gues, though I don’t play mesmer). That style was pretty fun to play, but suffered from a lack of utility skills with range, and a lack of CC to keep enemies from getting close.
I tended to use #2 a lot, and #5 quite a bit to keep enemies away. They were all fun. #4 works against ranged attack, but is hardly fun. Skill #3 is just odd, works by confusing the mobs where you are (the leap speed is too slow), the chill as too short to matter unfortunately.
What worked better was to use it with a backline support build. Here only auto and #2 turn useful though (and situationally #4), making it a bit boring weapon.

Staff
This weapon was great fun in PvE. It’s not that effective att killing thing, since not only is the damage low, but so was mobility so I spent time running betweeen mobs. Staying alive was easier with staff than the other weapons, only problem was over-aggro caused by the bolts from skill #3 (the range on the is too long). This weapon is very auto-atack dependent, with skill #5 used on near-recharge (to gap close, or occasionally for defense), skill #3 quite often and skill #4 had its use now and then. The auto-attack is really well designed. The problems were low damage, low mobility (mostly because it lacks a blast finisher) and too high energy costs (esp #2) considering that you’d pair it with support legends and is supposed to use a lot of energy on utility skills.
First part of skill #2 was the less weak of the two, but more dull and unpredictable (whether it’d chain to the next). The second part was cooler, though weakness I already got from Jalis’ road and the energy cost was huge.

I’m hoping they’ll switch around the order of energy costs per weapon, making staff the lightest on energy, and hammer be ligher than mace. Also hoping for more CC on hammer (not cripple or weakness, but harder ones like chill, stun, knockdown), e.g. lower activation time on #5 or longer chill on #3.

I think Eye for an Eye is already good and strong, needs no buffing or change. The point of the trait is to stop the enemy from chaining CC on you, which it manages to do.

Reflexive Summon is decent already, though adding ‘: Summoned hammers now inflict cripple for 3 seconds, 10 second icd. (includes Vengeful hammers now)’ would be cool (but requires that the other 2 grandmaster traits are strong, which yours are. Note my switch of weakness for cripple, since I think that’s more needed whereas weakness the revenant already has good access to.

I agree with having a lot of fury traits in Corruption – fits with the crits focus of the line and lets you use the line without running a condi dmg build.

Your solution for the invocation [edit: I mean salvation] grandmasters just trade one problem (2 traits which are both about maxing healing) for another (your suggestions gives 2 traits which are both about using your elite).

Staff and hammer just wouldn’t kill those NPCs – in the end I ran celestial mace/ax jalis/mallyx and started to be able to win matches, even if the kills were pretty few outside trebuchet ones. Not that mallyx helped much more than giving an extra self-heal, sometimes I stayed on Jalis for long despite needing to heal just because its skills are so much more useful. With the exception of Forced Engagement, I don’t think I used that skill once, just not worth the energy and cast time. I tried switching Mallyx for Ventari – it helped for healing the lord and champions during lulls in the fighting, but you die fast if you’re on Ventari and getting attacked.

Eye for an Eye was really helpful – I remember a match without it where a condi ranger ambush-killed me in like 3 seconds because of getting CCd twice.

Here goes a screenshot. I think she was fighting the guards with me before heading up the stairs.

Just had Nika decide that the treb fire she was taking ws annoying, so she climbed up the hill and destroyed it. And then stood there, graceful and still like a statue, and watched down upon the gate I had been hoping she’d maybe help us deal with…

Lyrsen.6702:

I’ve found most people are focused on weapon and legend skills with their lack of damage or customize-ability. Damage numbers can be changed pretty easily, cast times on weapon skills and legend skills are a bit harder since they have to change the animation for the new cast time. Traits are probably the hardest thing to change or re-make.

Still, traits can be moved around, pushing too active or too specialised minor traits to become major traits and putting bland inactive traits as minor traits. Like having Cruel Repercussion and Incensed Response swap places with the first 2 minor invocation traits, in the case the traits can’t be totally reworked (see e.g. Lyrsen’s suggestion on these 2).

Lyrsen.6702:

check out my list of trait suggestions here. feedback would be much appreciated!

I hadn’t seen it, had thought people had totally missed commenting on traits. I’ll check it out, but even a quick glance shows you’ve suggestions that’d fix the 2 minor traits I comlained about.

I don’t like the Invocation line (too much focus on legend swapping and passive self-heal), so I wish all specializations would work for any broad kind of build (meaning condi, power or healer).

Minor traits that are in the way of that:
Yearning Empowerment – it’s a mace trait
Serene Rejuvenation – that’s a ventari/staff trait
Rampant Vex is mostly ok, since it works for both high-condi and high-precision biulds

Also, the corruption major grandmaster and salvation major grandmaster slots lack good, interesting options. Maybe start with removing the on-eilte traits or turning them into minor traits.

I don’t quite see the point or enjoyment of the 2 retaliation traits in the retribution line. I’d rather have a hammer trait, and another jalis trait.