Guild Wars 2

Rizo.9534:

PLZ! noneed 1 button for swap all!
Make these class very noob unfriendly!
No need for another 123fwin class.

Yes, because being a hardcore and skilled player means that you must enjoy clumsy scenarios dictated by design. If they want to make revenant hard to play, give them high risk/ high reward skills, counterplay and a resource system that rewards smart management. All which the class already seems to have, thankfully.

That does not, however, justifies excessive button spamming simply to set up something. Double button pressing or even triple button pressing simply to swap your skillset just feels plain ineffective and annoying.

A well designed hard-to-play class should always feel quite rewarding to master. In contrast, pressing too many buttons to do simplest of actions will always be annoying to deal with, no matter your mastery of the class.

Crise.9401:

I agree with you regarding Ventari, but other than that profession mechanic and weapon swap have always been separate actions.

I don’t know if there is any fix for this issue other than combining weapon swap and legend swap behind one button… but this too has downsides. Same applies to any other potential fixes or then they are just simply too involved at this stage probably

No other profession has a skill swaping mechanic as their profession mechanic, though, with the exception of those that lack weapon swapping in the first place.

One thing is managing your weapons while managing your adrenaline/ initiative/ pet/ second health bar/ revenant’s energy/ etc.

Another thing is managing your weapon swaps while managing your utility swaps while having both be dictated by energy which can only be gained by utility swap. Confusing, right? Certainly confusing for new/ casual players, but it also forces you to press two buttons every time you want to swap your weapons while having no energy left, which is even more confusing for new players (“I just swapping my weapons but I can’t use my skills, why?”) while being forever annoying to everyone (“I must swap my weapons but I just spend my energy doing stuff… guess I’m forced to swap my legends too!”).

I agree that there isn’t an easy fix, but I stand by the two solutions that I have given so far:

1. Either remove the energy cost from weapon skills and create a clear and non-confusing distinction between weapon swapping and utility swapping;
2. Or have weapon swapping also reset your energy to 50 so the design can reward players that smartly balance weapon swap with legend swap, instead of promoting both to be used at the same time.

There’s a few drawbacks to either of those solutions, of course, especially as they may restrict some balancing decisions, but at least it’s one step closer to having a class that feels natural to play with, streamlined, responsive and smooth.

Kidel.2057:

I understand your argument, but we should probably wait next beta for this kind of criticism.
With swapping being instant I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.

If the class is strong but just hard to use, then it’s perfectly fine with me. I don’t want Revenants to be overused.

I rather have my profession be hard to use in the sense that it would require skill to pull off (ultimately making it rewarding to master) and not because of some of the underlying systems that happen to feel clumsy, confusing and arbitrary. Mesmer’s shatters are also “hard to use” in PvE, but not for the best reasons.

The best solutions that I can think of to fix the flaws of weapon+legend swapping is to make ventari’s tablet auto-summon on F1 pressing, and to remove energy costs from weapons. This would greatly soften up the amount of “do-nothing” keys you’d have to press in the following situations:

1. When you need to swap a weapon but have no energy left, forcing you to also swap a legend;
2. When you need to swap to Ventari, forcing you to press at least two keys;

I was fine with weapon skills having energy costs before weapon swapping was added, and I can understand the interesting design decisions that can be made with it, but now that weapon swapping exists, I’d rather have legend swapping affect only its respective skillset and nothing else to avoid some of the new problems.

EDIT:
An alternative solution to no-energy weapon skills could be to give energy back on weapon swap too. But implementing that idea wouldn’t be smooth at all:

1. If weapon swapping would also give you 50 energy, netting you 100 energy on two swaps, players would still be motivated to press two keys instead of one;
2. If the 50 energy amount would be distributed evenly between both swaps, each giving you 25, players would still be motivated to press two keys instead of one;
3. If both swaps would reset your energy to 50, without being possible to stack them together, the problem at hand would be fixed. Players would be punished for swapping both at the same time, but then wouldn’t that, by itself, be a bit frustrating? Nonetheless, it’s something that can be avoided once mastered, unlike the double or triple key pressing with the current design, which will be imposed on players by plenty of circunstances.

Kidel.2057:

Isn’t that what Elementalist does?
You’re D/D ele, press 1 button and get a ranged ice bow, press 1 button and get fire dps skills, press 1 button and get water healing/support skills, press 1 button and get mobility lightning skills, press 1 button and get earth tanking skills.

You’re only pressing a single button before you get straight to action. That’s perfectely normal. My point is, with revenant, there will be many occasions where you will have to press 2 buttons – and sometimes even 3 – before even using a single skill.

Weapon swap will solve some problems but create new ones.

Welcome to the first profession in GW2 where you must press 2 buttons (sometimes 3) to swap a single playstyle to another.

1. Want to switch from long-range jalis tank to melee-range shiro dps? Press \ + F1.
2. Want to switch your sword/ sword to a hammer but have no energy left? Then you must change your legend as well! Press \ + F1.
3. Are you tanking with Jalis and its time to switch to your condi set to deal damage? \ + F1. Or you simply need energy so you swap to Mallyx? Well, you might very well swap to your mace as well. \ + F1.

And the best one:

1. Are you DPSsing and you suddenly need to support your team? \ + F1 + 6.

Three buttons. Three. You will have to press three buttons that do nothing by themselves only to set up a playstyle.

I’m very excited for the revenant, I think the developers have been doing a great job with it and I definitely see the possibilities that weapon swapping will bring to it. But you can clearly tell that Revenant has lost some of its elegance with this change.

Revenant has two different, distinct swaping mechanics, each one with different arbitrary rules (one restores energy, the other does not) and extremely linked to each other (motivating you to switch both at the same time). That’s clumsy, that’s confusing and that’s inelegant.

The only profession that comes close to this is a conjure elementalist, but conjures are optional, and they replace the same skillset that your attunements do, so the only time where you must press 2 buttons to do 1 single action is when you are have traits that boost your effectiveness when you are in a specific attunement (which conjures make great use of).

Sword seems strong at the moment, staff #5 is strong, and using hammer #3 as an evade would be weird. :P I wouldn’t mind, however, if staff #2 (first hit) had an evade – it WOULD make sense in that context.

ronpierce.2760:

Thanks for the reply!

Doesn’t a conditional 10% crit chance seem slightly low for a GM trait though? (No judgies!)

I agree with that. Making fury stronger seems quite GM-worthy at first glance, until you do the math and realize that it’s merely a conditional +10% critical chance trait. It ends up not being that much stronger than your average +7% damage trait, and it’s probably weaker than those party-wide +150 power/ precision traits, and none of them are grandmaster traits.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Currently intended to increase effectiveness by 50%. So it’ll increase fury from 20% critical-hit chance to 30%. That bug was fixed internally and was just a display bug from my understanding.

The trait’s description is a bit misleading/ confusing, nonetheless.

Some spot-on changes there. The new minor traits in invocation that deal with fury are especially delicious and – finally – we get a more appealing use for the fury grandmaster trait.

If you want further feedback, I still think there are some trait issues:

1. Players enjoy weapon-enhancing traits, but only sword and staff seem to have those?
2. Retribution’s master trait has two “on being disabled” traits. Shouldn’t they be fused and get a new trait there? A good opportunity for a hammer trait!
3. Ventari’s spec still has many “heal more” traits competing with each other. Those that offer condition cleansing, blind, etc, are in a fine place because they are unique, buy having to choose between “heal this way” or “heal that way” in the same tier seems to be asking for “please, pick the one that is mathematically the strongest of the two”. it makes the spec feel kind of “same-y”.

Also, I’m all for auto-summoned tablet on F1.

skowcia.8257:

No more ideas till you dont show up Shiro and Glint (signets? why?..)

Revenant’s energy is a call back to GW1’s energy, and in GW1 signets uniqueness were on the fact that they didn’t cost any energy to use. My guess is that their decision to add signets to glint might be so they can play with that idea.

Elementalists do not use conjures to fix their range limitations, so for all intents and purposes the elementalist class is restricted by range.

I do agree that revenant’s utilities are too situational (in PvE, at least) to work as a replacement for weapon swapping. But I think people are offering massive, class-changing solutions to otherwise “easy” to solve problems:

1. Give to each legend a forth utility skill that fills in some holes;
2. Tweak the hammer (and perhaps the staff) to handle melee/ ranged situations a bit better;
3. Add four new utility skills that are not bound by legend and can be slotted in any legend, with effects that fill in the gaps too.

There, most of the problem is fixed on paper, and the revenant would get as many utilities as the other professions.

Kodiak.3281:

1. The 10 utility slots, which are static and you’re unable to choose what goes into them at this time, isn’t enough to justify the loss of a weapon slot.

That, I agree with. That’s why revenant needs more utility skills. Design-wise, that’s a more elegant solution than two different “weapon” swap buttons.

I don’t think weapon swapping is unfun, I think that having two different keys for two different skillset swaping mechanics is unfun (and inelegant).

Even pressing two different buttons for a single “action” (changing, say, mace+mallyx to hammer+jalis) is already quite an issue, so you would need to find solutions for that too.

Most people that want weapon swapping are only thinking of an “easy” solution to make the class stronger, disregarding how unfun that would be in reality.

You don’t need a massive overhaul to fix the current problems with range and lack of flexibility.

1. One extra utility skill per legend, featuring more stun breaks, gap closers, ranged or anti-melee options, etc, depending on the situation;
2. Four legend-less utility skills that can be slotted on any legend, featuring the same tools as the ones I stated on the point above;
3. Tweak hammer to have more anti-melee options;

lordhelmos.7623:

If your not running hammer what will you do vs an enemy with 1200 range? Bet you will be missing that weapon swap the while chasing them around with that zero range no gap closer staff.

That’s why we need more utility options, so we can slot in gap closers or something close. Existing skills can also be tweaked, like longer taunt duration with Jalis or a way to deal with melee opponents with the hammer.

Weapon swapping is just the easiest but worst way to solve problems, because it would introduce a new one (having two swap buttons instead of one, which wouldn’t feel smooth to play with at all).

Genesis.8572:

Elementalists also have the option of slotting conjuration utility skills that can give them more style options in fights.

Elementalists pick Lightning Hammer to abuse its auto-attack against PvE’s AI, Frost Bow to abuse its Ice Storm on targets with large hit boxes and Fiery Great Sword to either abuse wall stacking (in the past) or to get extra mobility.

No elementalist has ever slotted a conjured weapon solely to have more range flexibility in serious play.

Crise.9401:

Re Revenant and weapons I would simply combine a legend and weapon swap into one action. Meaning you would have to choose the weapon to use with each legend in advance.

If Revenants were ever to get weapon swapping, I would prefer that way.

cocowoushi.7150:

@DiogoSilva I’m afraid I still have to disagree. No other class is stuck to the same weapon skills. Eles change throughout the first, as with Engi kits. “Weapon swapping” our skills is not fun. I get new situational utilities, but not new attacks. It makes fighting as a Rev repetitive, predictable, and just boring.

If I’m stuck in Mace/Axe and I need to pick off someone at 1200 range I can’t do this. Axe’s range is only 900. I’m totally useless if someone gets out of that range. I can’t even gap close (Staff 5) because that’s a different weapon.

Elementalists have a fixed range, btw, yet they work fine as they are. Staff is weak against melee, D/D is quite close-ranged.

I’d rather have revenant’s issues be fixed by making utilities and weapon skills more useful, than adding a second button for a second weapon swap. Other class needs to press 2 buttons to change to a new skill set, revenant’s shouldn’t either (this includes my criticism towards ventari’s tablet function).

Okay, now that this thread has Roy’s attention, I’m going to copy-past my impressions and feedback from the monstrous merge thread. I’m excited for the revenant, and I enjoyed it overall, but it had several issues:

Staff/ Ventari

1. AA’s healing shards disappear too quickly. Make them last ~1 second longer.
2. AA’s healing shards are sometimes placed in awkward situations, where you must turn your back and cancel your auto-attacking to catch a shard.
3. Block skill should deal some damage back (projectile reflection or something else). It’s a cool skill, but it could have been a bit more impactful, I think.
4. Having to press two buttons (F1 + 6) for the tablet is clumsy. Make it respawn instantly by your side by pressing F1.
5. Perfectionist players will want to spam the 2-sec heal as fast as possible, to keep the HPS as high as possible, leading to a frustating playstyle. Give it a 4-8 second cooldown instead, but with stronger healing per use.

Hammer

1. Skills feel slow and unrewarding. Either make them faster, or increase their DPS.
2. Clumsy in melee scenarios. It would be nice if it got some sort of knockback or leap backwards. The leap backward effect could be placed on the barrier skill, kind of like League of Legend’s Yasuo’s Wind Wall.
3. The second skill could add a cripple to nearby enemies while retaining the higher damage at range effect.
4. Perhaps chill’s duration could be 1 second higher as well.

Jalis:

1. The taunt skill costs half of your energy bar, has a 1 second casting time, yet it ends before you can even see it (/hyperbole, kinda). That 2 second duration is really, really underwhelming. I do like the idea of a high energy skill, though. Make the taunt last 4 seconds instead, and that might not even be enough.
2. The elite skill’s casting time is too long. Make it 1-1.5 seconds shorter. Increase its energy cost if needed.

Mallyx:

1. The combo costs too much energy. It seems fun on paper having to chain all those condis on you, but you spend so much of your energy that you’re left with an elite skill that barely lasts 3-ish seconds. And that’s no fun, considering how cool the elite is meant to be when used after/ alongside your other self-condi skills.

EsarioOne.9840:

Swapping would benefit the Rev, as well as players who take the time to learn the class.

I know it would benefit the class, when it comes to usefulness. But it just wouldn’t be very fun at all in several situations where you would want to switch both your weapon and your legend. Having to press 2 buttons to change your playstyle simply feels clumsy. Thus why I suggested different solutions.

Arantheal.7396:

Anyways, without weapon-swap OR a rework to its class-mechanic, this class will not work out. It’s really as simple as that.

I do agree with you. I just don’t think weapon swapping will be fun in a profession that can already swap skillsets through other means. Thus why I think that customisable utility skills would be a much better solution to add more flexibility and adaptability to the class, isntead of adding a second key press for a second way to switch skill sets.

cocowoushi.7150:

Rev really needs weapon swap. There is no good reason not to have it. The utilities legends bring (so far) are just not good enough to justify being stuck in the same 5 attacks.

The utility stances are the revenant’s “weapon swap”. If they are not good enough, which I agree with, then the problem lies there and not with the lack of swapping. Revenant’s utilities are way too context-sensitive, as you’ve said: they’re quite good in some situations and quite underwhelming in other situations. That’s why the class should have access to more utilities skills and allow us to customise them for each situation, much like what we can do with every single other profession in this game.

Fix this problem with utility skills, and there will be no need for weapon swapping. For each other profession, there’s 4 utility skills per type, and 5 types. The revenant, so far, has 3 utilities per legend, and only 4 legends. Add at least one extra utility per legend, add the option to slot in racial skills, and perhaps, to compensate for the lack of a fifth utility type, add 5 legend-less utilities that can be slotted on any legend.

DocZed.6973:

Except League of Legends doesn’t have cliffs. I can see this being catastrophic.

I can understand that, but how often will that happen? Other classes have backwards leaps as well (elementalist’s staff on fire attument), and in most scenarios, you have plenty of space behind you. I rather have a context-sensitive drawback that is negligeble most of the time, than a weapon-wide drawback that will bother you in almost every single situation.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

No, they said elementalists attunement swapping was clumsy.

I vaguely remember that, but I don’t remember their arguments. Nonetheless, elementalists only have to press a single key (F1) to change their playstyle. A revenant with weapon swapping would need to press two.

I want to add my support to Roy. I think that the Revenant shows a lot of promise and has some really good foundations, and it just needs to be tweaked and polished.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

People at the games launch said exactly the same thing about Engineer kits and Elementalists attunement swapping.

I don’t play with an engineer, but however said that weapon swapping would be annoying and clumsy for the elementalist was completely and utterly right.

I see many people suggesting weapon swapping for the revenant, and although I agree that it would make it more balanced, I think it would also make it more unfun to play with.

Think about it: weapons are heavily tied to specific legends. Although that might seem a good argument in favor of weapon swapping, at first glance, it would mean that everytime you would want to swap a weapon, you would also want to swap a legend, and vice-versa.

What would this lead to? To players having to press 2 keys every single time they would want to swap their playstyles. Worse: two completely different, unrelated keys (F1 + /).

If people are already annoyed (as I am) about having to press two keys to use Ventari properly (F1 + 6), to the point that everyone’s suggesting that the tablet should respawn instantly at your location (ultimately making the 6 key press optional, which I agree with), imagine how clumsy, how unfun, how annoying would it be to play this class if you had to press two unrelated keys for even more stuff.

Instead, I think a much better solution would be to tweak the hammer to give it a skill that would allow them to increase the gap between them and their opponent (a knockback, a leap backwards, something like that), and add customisable utility skills so players could better adapt their utility skills to their weapon of choice.

Customisable utility skills could lead to:

1. More ranged or anti-melee options to synergy with the hammer, alongside with the above suggestion to tweak an existing hammer skill to increase the gap between player and opponent;
2. For Mallyx, more condition-tanking skills to synergy with Jalis/ Ventari. This would make Mallyx not strictly a condition damage stance, but instead focused either on condition damage, condition tanking or both, depending on your choice of utilities. This way, Mallyx could be useful even to direct damage builds in condition-heavy areas. A condition tanking Mallyx build wouldn’t need to be stuck to mace/ axe, and it could go very well with hammer’s “safety” or staff’s healing.

For hammer, the tweak could be as such:

1. Have the projectile barrier make the revenant jump backwards for ~360 range as they trigger the barrier. This is what happens with Yasuo in League of Legends, and it feels good.
2. Skill 2 scales in damage the further it goes. Add an opposite effect, where it cripples enemies if they are too close.

With the way the revenant works, weapon swapping would be annoying, unfun and clumsy, even if more balanced than the current state. There’s a much better solution:

Customisable utilities.

Laraley.7695:

I love the artwork and animations, really, but it seems like ANet is only good at that now and forgot how to design a class. :/

I’d say the revenant is better designed than most other classes, it just needs more polish.

Actually, autoattacking is an excellent way to fill your energy bar. If you rotate between AAs and your other weapon skills, you generally do not lose much energy, if any at all. Whenever I forget to use my utility skills, I find myself with my energy bar full.

Revenant has many issues. This is not one of them.

BTW, I would not like to see a weapon swap with revenant. I find that energy management already makes its playstyle complex, and I would rather not worry with weapon swapping. Instead, I think it would serve the profession best to have utility customisation so we can adapt to long-range scenarios better, or have handy cleansing/ stun-breaking/ etc.

Okay, here’s my feedback. I’m excited for the revenant, and I enjoyed it overall, but it had several issues:

Staff/ Ventari

1. AA’s healing shards disappear too quickly. Make them last ~1 second longer.
2. AA’s healing shards are sometimes placed in awkward situations, where you must turn your back and cancel your auto-attacking to catch a shard.
3. Block skill should deal some damage back (projectile reflection or something else). It’s a cool skill, but it could have been a bit more impactful, I think.
4. Having to press two buttons (F1 + 6) for the tablet is clumsy. Make it respawn instantly by your side by pressing F1.
5. Perfectionist players will want to spam the 2-sec heal as fast as possible, to keep the HPS as high as possible, leading to a frustating playstyle. Give it a 4-8 second cooldown instead, but with stronger healing per use.

Hammer

1. Skills feel slow and unrewarding. Either make them faster, or increase their DPS.
2. Clumsy in melee scenarios. It would be nice if it got some sort of knockback or leap backwards.

Jalis:

1. The taunt skill costs half of your energy bar, has a 1 second casting time, yet it ends before you can even see it (/hyperbole, kinda). That 2 second duration is really, really underwhelming. Make it 4 second instead.
2. The elite skill’s casting time is too long. Make it 1-1.5 seconds shorter. Increase its energy cost if needed.

Mallyx:

1. The combo costs too much energy. It seems to fun on paper having to chain all those condis on you, but you deplet so much of your energy that you’re left with an elite skill that barely lasts 3-ish seconds. And that’s no fun, considering how cool the elite is meant to be.

I greatly dislike the idea that revenant needs a weapon swap. It already has its own version of “weapon swap” (legend swap), and adding another in, linked to a different button, would be terrible to play with. For example, if the profession was balanced around two sources of skill swapping, chances are, players would have to press 2 buttons every time they would want to swap their weapon or their legend, so that by switching to one, they could complement it with the other. Having to press buttons 2 times to switch their entire playstyle while other professions do it with 1 would make the revenant incredibly annoying, clumsy and unfun to play with. I’m already annoyed by that with ventari’s tablet.

The profession has its own share of problems, but most – if not all of them – can be fixed by giving it a customisable set of utility skills. Lack of ranged synergy to go with the hammer? Lack of synergy between some legends? Lack of some important tools for different situations? All anet has to do is to design a few extra utility skills that fill the gap holes, and those issues will be fixed.

But I’ll only write a more in-depth post after I have the chance to try it out.

It seems like each legend is inspired in a different profession, sharing similar themes but with different playstyles. So Jalis is guardian-esque and Mallyx feels similar to a necro.

I’m excited to play with the revenant, but three days without progress is going to be cruel. :x It would be lovely if I could get my gold, and put my loot into the bank. After all, why not? What’s to lose?

And will I be able to do my dailies with a revenant? If so, what will happen to any daily chest I get?

Monday: artwork teasers.
Tuesday: patch days.
Thursday: blog posts.
Friday: streams.

Seera.5916:

I just don’t want the method chosen to be adding hard roles to the game.

Hard roles is a wonderful thing, if done right. They are usually thematically tight and easy to grasp, unlike soft roles, which, at first glance, all look “same-y”. There’s a reason for why a game like GW2 is criticized for being “all dps” or having “no build diversity”: because soft roles contribute to that perception.

To be honest, hard roles are, to me, one of the key pillars of the entire RPG genre, much like how loot or stats are. A RPG is all about, as the name of the genre implies, choosing a role (Role Playing Game), a theme, a specific style or attitude. When everything feels same-y, the fantasy appeal and the charm of playing with a role is lost. Of course, that’s my opinion. You may not value that as much as I do.

However, will all being said, I don’t mean that I wish to see the “holy trinity”. There’s plenty of different roles you can make beyond healer or tank. GW1, for example, did not have a tank role, but the heal role was divided into two (healing and protection), and there was crowd controler/ disrupter (mesmers in general), minion masters or spirit turrets (great to prevent enemies from getting close to the back line, or to provoke aggro), general support (paragons especially), and a distinction between aoe nukers and single target burst builds (so it wasn’t all “dps”).

If the new content is done right, anet can potentially add plenty of new, distinct, fun roles to the game. Ventari offers an unique and different healing playstyle. Chronomancer offers time-based support for bursting, defense and general cooldown utility. Revenant’s Mallyx will be able to turn the enemy’s conditions against themselves. Etc. And all those “hard roles” are more interesting that way. They wouldn’t be half as interesting if they were just “stack might, vulnerability and fury, dps, use the occasional block or reflect” that current builds seem to generally fall to.

To be honest, I’m excited to see a full signet legend.

For other professions, signets aren’t designed to be all used in a single build, so you have some that improve condition damage and then others that improve boon builds or power builds, so you kinda do not want to take them all. It might be different for Revenant.

It’ll also be interesting to see how signets will interact with the energy mechanic, if at all. Lesser cooldowns means more passive downtime? Will they even cost energy? In GW1, signets didn’t cost energy.

I think there’s potential for something a bit more interesting here.

Thanks for the reply, Matthew.

I would like to see the hover feature to be back in some form or another, as it was quite convenient. Perhaps have it show the general currencies only. It would save me plenty of clicking just to fast check the laurels or the spirit shards I have.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Few of these humans are creatures of freedom and prefer to have more, not less of it.
And yeah in few months i won’t be complaning about it. Cause if this trend keeps up (first trait revamp, NPE, specializations, HoT sales practices) i’ll be on a different game’s forum and for a good reason.

MMORPGS, unlike single-player games, do not stop in time. They evolve over the years, as new content is added and as old content is polished or streamlined. Any game system is designed with specific purposes, and they do not always achieve those purposes perfectly, so they are improved upon or rethought in a living, evolving game like the mmo genre.

The first trait revamp was a good idea that was poorly executed. It was an attempt to bring one of the best things about GW1, skill capturing, and even the community asked for it. It ended up failing because it clashed with GW2’s design as a whole. GW1 skill capturing was clear, easy to understand and flavorful. Bosses had profession-specific auras, which immediately communicated to players that they had a skill worth capturing for. Those skills were usually related in theme with the boss backstory, and there was also a certain charm in learning skills from epic encounters and using them yourself. Besides, you could obtain normal skills through quests or by buying them for cheap. In contrast, GW2’s “attempt” to do the same resulted in a system full of hidden unlocks, poor UI support, and generic and arbitrary trait location with no flavor and no backstory. Fighting a karka queen would give you the same tier of trait from the same trait line to any profession, for example, regardless of what the trait’s effects were and wether they fit the boss or not. There was no easy access to normal traits, which ruined experimentation and sense of progression, and most of the unlock triggers were random (events) or demanded too much for too little (100% map completion, etc).

Do not compare it with the specialization system, which is a far more successful attempt and, easily, the best version of traits GW2 ever had. Specs are easier to understand and to change, they are very alt friendly, they have a cool layout with flavorful icons, they are thematically more focused (trait lines aren’t as arbitrary) and have clearer synergy between each other, and they are more impactful to your builds. They are no longer restricted by stats, and the system as a whole is much easier to expand (anet can simply add more specs in time, because trait lines aren’t as rigid as before). It can communicate properly with any player now.

tobascodagama.2961:

ANet really needs to take a class from League of Legends. You never see balance adjustments within 24 hours of a patch over there. Because they understand that it takes time for changes to play out, especially in PvP.

First impressions of what’s too strong or too weak are always wrong. Especially with an advanced class like the Mesmer that relies on careful setup to achieve good results. Because that setup can and will get disrupted once other players figure out what it looks like.

In general, Anet agrees with that philosophy.

However, keep in mind that League of Legends has a public beta server, where developers can quickly polish loose ends and refine balancing of upcomming changes. All those tweaks are done in a matter of days, not very different to what Anet is currently doing, with the exception that they’re less disruptive due to being released on a public test server first, before being available on the main client.

A public test server would do wonders for anet, and I believe they know that, but as they have nothing of the sort right now, it’s much better to keep realing quick changes for the most obvious problems than staying idle for a few months until the next patch in a critical period like this one.

In a way, you can say that the main client IS being treated like a public beta environment. Disruptive, yes, but necessary at the lack of a real PBE.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

skowcia.8257:

Rev has 4 base legends. Glint is elite…

Why do people keep saying this? Does having 4 base traitlines on a class make sense? Has it been officially announced that Revenant’s only have 4 base traitlines (legends) and that the fifth one would be the elite spec?

The fifth core spec for revs is not tied to any specific legend, apparently.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Most elite spec artwork for other classes show a hint of the weapon they gain access to.

The elite spec artwork for the ele shows no hint at all.

If we were to get sword, I think they would show this in the artwork somehow; whereas the warhorn is not a very aesthetic weapon to display.

:(

Actually, there is a sword drawn in their artwork. It’s somewhere in the fire.

The shield is glint-themed, which will probably be for the revenant’s elite spec.

The warhorn is wave/ storm-themed, and fits very well with the leaked elementalist’s artwork spec.

Minx.7521:

Why is guardian forums as bad as thief forums? >.< I thought guardian traits were great (compared to the load thieves got). Can someone explain to me what this update did that nerfed guards so badly?

All professions were “massively nerfed” and “utterly destroyed” for those who play them. You can’t go to a profession forum without avoiding threads like these.

Look at this spec artwork not yet available in-game, which we might assume it’ll be for tempet’s spec:
http://i.imgur.com/AoGISvd.png

Then compare the ocean wave’s theme with the warhorn skin (same theme).

EDIT Also, the leaked staff is the same as portrayed in the thief’s artwork, and the leaked shield is NOT chronomancer’s (it has a glint-esque theme, so it’ll probably be for the revenant).

Pre-purchase HoT, and after you get a refund for your original game, you can use that money to buy a char slot.

Thief has a new artwork with a melee staff, the leaked weapon is a melee staff, and the leaked shield seems to be Glint-theme, and Glint will probably be Revenant’s elite spec.

That being said, the warhorn’s skin fits very well with ele’s leaked artwork.

Look, I don’t know if MtD really is that strong at its new place or not. I’m just saying that I can understand Anet’s logic in this case. There are people in this thread that are talking about this trait’s effectiveness in isolation, regardless of other buffs that indirectly affect it post-patch. My reply was specifically to those people.

Pre-patch, the mesmer’s illusion trait line offers the following for condition builds:

• Confusion on shatter
• 33% confusion duration
• More staff bounces
• Might on shatter
• Torment on shatter or Illusionary Persona

Post-patch, the mesmer’s illusion trait line and the new baseline effects will offer the following for condition builds:

• Confusion on shatter
• 33% confusion duration
• More staff bounces
• Illusionary Persona
• 50-150 condition damage per illusion
• Might or Torment on shatter
• Blind and Confusion on Blind (or the other two)
• Condition damage stat scaling higher

I’m noy saying that MtD will be too strong, because I actually don’t know. I am saying, however, that I can understand how there’s a risk of it being too strong in pvp. Yes, mesmer no longer get might on shatter in order to be able to use it, but 8 (instead of 6) stacks of torment for each shatter, after condition damage being buffed, and still getting extra confusion and blind on top of it (or extra crowd control, or stronger buffs to condition weapons). If anything – and I didn’t do the math – the nerfed version of MtD might not be too far in power from the old/ current version of MtD, all things considered – and condition builds might still end up in a better place, overall.

Levetty.1279:

Regardless nothing, you said it was fair. Answer the question.

Then it is already answered. You get a GM trait and IP for free, so it easy to understand how the trait is now too strong.

Levetty.1279:

People keep saying stuff like this, why? Under the new system why does a GM trait have to be stronger then a master trait? They both cost the same to equip.

Regardless if it needs to be stronger or not, that’s how it is balanced right now, even with the new changes taken into account.

Before, MtD was a grandmaster trait that got to compete with IP.

Now, MtD is a master trait that gets IP and your grandmaster trait of choice for free.

I believe it’s a fair nerf, considering how it was indirectly double buffed.