If ticks of regeneration count as healing allies, then it will tick up insanely fast. You are looking at 75% full force over 10s with one shout and RT. Hoping this is the case.
Which is precisely why I’m not at all banking on Regen having any effect at all on the power gauge.
That’s just way too passive. Click a button and watch the gauge just pour in willy nilly.
It may also partially explain why Druid has literally no regeneration anywhere. They want the focus to be on direct heals which boost your gauge, rather than passive heals which don’t.
Maybe.. but ranger doesn’t need any more regen. It has loads of it all over the place.
True, but you’d still expect a full healer spec to have some Regen somewhere. Unless there’s a reason for it to not be there. Which could either be the aforementioned “regen doesn’t boost celestial power” gimmick, the fact that they want Druid to be pure healer and no boon support, or perhaps both. At least that’s my thinking on the matter.
This is true, it could bring some more obscure pets into favor, but it will be interesting to see which families get the 400, 700, and 1000 levels.
I’m guessing…
Spiders, Devourers, possibly Drakes – 1000
Drakes (if they don’t get 1000), Cats, Birds, Sharks, possibly Dogs – 700
Everything else – 400
Will be funny if anything with 1000 doesn’t even get conditions on any attacks. Wouldn’t really put it past them to do something like that, either.
They mentioned that you could “continue working on your masteries” in BWE3 during the livestream. Which I’m guessing means that they’ll again be simply carrying over the previous beta accounts, and not creating a new bank / account clone this time around.
If ticks of regeneration count as healing allies, then it will tick up insanely fast. You are looking at 75% full force over 10s with one shout and RT. Hoping this is the case.
Which is precisely why I’m not at all banking on Regen having any effect at all on the power gauge.
That’s just way too passive. Click a button and watch the gauge just pour in willy nilly.
It may also partially explain why Druid has literally no regeneration anywhere. They want the focus to be on direct heals which boost your gauge, rather than passive heals which don’t.
On any other class it would definitely be a huge problem.
On Ranger? Pets exist. Your pet will do enough damage in most cases to get you event credit just fine. There’s a reason why botting with Rangers is a thing.
The only potential problem area will be large zerg events with huge swarms of smaller enemies, but those types of encounters don’t really need large-scale heals anyway. Enemies melt so fast that most players won’t be taking much damage in the first place, and the few occasions where a player does get focused down you probably wouldn’t have been able to outheal the damage anyway. Easy to rally in those situations as well, even if allies do go down.
Can’t really speak to WvW specifically, as that’s not a mode I generally partake in.
Ranger has a decent number of multi-hit skills that will fill it rather nicely.
And also, keep in mind that you always have a companion around in your pet. So you’ll always have something to heal (besides just yourself) to utilize that faster growth rate of healing.
I don’t think its meant to be something you can use constantly like Death Shroud, anyway. Its probably supposed to fill a bit more slowly and make you choose when to use it more strategically.
Still no word on Frag Shot working with explosives traits or baseline pistol piercing. Meh.
Hopefully more stuff coming that they didn’t mention, but since they actually hit on Frag Shot and the change it was getting, that particular one is probably not going to happen.
I’m guessing they chose that particular idle animation / stance because the auto-attack for Druid Staff is a two-handed laser blast rather than the usual “wave my hand around while holding the staff in the other” type AA casting staffs usually have. It makes sense that for a two-handed auto-attack, Druids would be holding the staff in two hands all the time.
Yah, I definitely noticed the lack of extra pet functionality. I think the only other weapon in our kit that lacks a pet effect of some sort of Spear, which has also bugged me for a while. I’d love to see Staff get one to be in line with the other weapons we have at our disposal.
I mean, granted, the healing effects by themselves are going to help your pets, potentially significantly so, so staff isn’t completely without pet support, not by a longshot. But even still, a little something more of a direct buff for the pet would be welcome. My personal suggestion, trying to keep it in-line with Druid’;s support nature and unique from other weapons, would be something like…
“Conditions from pets last 20% longer when applied to enemies affected by Astral Wisp”.
Or perhaps…
“The first hit a pet makes against an enemy affected by Astral Wisp steals a boon from that target”
As for general boon application on Staff… I noticed the lack of that too, but I think that’s intentional. Druid seems meant to support entirely through pure heals, and not boons. There are pretty much no boons anywhere in the Druid’s kit, not even Regen. So staff not having any seems pretty in-line with Druid as a whole. I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing a boon or two somewhere, but I’m not all that bothered or surprised that its lacking.
They’ve already said that there will be more.
WHAO change is insane. Fortifying Bond + WHAO, oh mah gawd yes. I literally haven’t used WHAO once since I got Healing Spring (ran HS all the way up until the trap change, and since then have been running either Water Spirit / Troll Unguent), but now? New go-to heal thank you.
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 focused 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.
(edited by Electro.4173)
Your pet is taking up a slot that otherwise a player could have taken. And I fail to see how that would be synergy. How is healing your pet synergy by any means?
Healing your pet keeps it alive longer. Keeping it alive longer allows your pet to do what it does (damage, CC, distracting enemies, conditions, ect) more efficiently, because a dead pet can’t do any of that. AoE healing has a direct benefit to the pet mechanic, in that it allows it to function more reliably in difficult encounters.
What the Druid can do has a direct benefit on how effectively the pet mechanic works. Druid helps the pet. One entity helping another, one mechanic benefitting another = synergy.
And Druids are going to be more reliant on the pet as well, since if they’re busy healing all the time they won’t be putting out much direct damage. The pet is going to be making up a larger percentage of the overall damage output Druids are going to have.
As for the pet “taking a slot from players”… heals will likely prioritize players over pets, and I’m half suspecting that some of the improvements to pets that Irenio was mentioning is going to perhaps involve taking them out of the AoE limit in some way, since otherwise the new healing skill is rather out of line with other Ranger heals which all directly benefit the pet as well as the Ranger himself (well, other than Water Spirit, but we all know how well that one works >.>). But we’ll have to see how those balance changes come out, I suppose.
There is never going to be a spec without pets. They are 100% ingrained into everything the Ranger does. Weapon skills. Utilities. Traits.
Healing the party means healing your pet as well. They go hand in hand, its not counterintuitive at all.
Heals have great synergy with pets, if you’re just looking for synergy. Having a great amount of AoE heals and cleanse will make it easier to keep your pet alive. Which will help overall pet usefulness and helps fix one of the major issues with pets, which is keeping them alive during tougher encounters.
Also, healing your pet will give you extra growth to your Celestial Form, letting you build that up faster. So you are going to want to use that synergy.
Half the elite specs basically leave the old profession mechanic alone while adding a new mechanic of some sort. Theif, Warrior, Ele, Herald… Seems whatever idea had of every elite spec making sweeping changes to existing profession mechanics fell by the wayside at some point (or was deemed not so central that it needs to apply everywhere). So I don’t really think Druid is anything out of the ordinary with leaving pets mostly alone.
And I really don’t think tying any “needed” pet changes to Druid would be a good idea anyway. The base class needs to function, not depend on its elite spec to be fixed.
Last year was a complete rehash of the previous. Considering that and HoT, I strongly believe this year will be “3rd verse, same as the last two”. With the exception that it’ll either be changing locations to DR (hopefully not) or have to be rearranged some to allow for the new Lion’s Arch.
Maybe a new reward or two thrown in.
Pure speculation, mind you. I’d be happy to have Anet blow my mind and give us a new Halloween this year.
Based on absolutely nothing but pure self-speculation…
I’m guessing neither will count. Having regen count would be way too much sustained bar building and promote passive play a bit too much. Pop Water Spirit, pop a few Shouts, and then just sit and let your bar fill on its own like nothing.
The procs from Water Spirit feel like they SHOULD count, but I have a feeling just based on how they work that having them actually count is going to be too difficult to program and keep track of. I’d be happy to be proven wrong, though.
Its tied to an elite skill AND a profession / energy mechanic (as that’s the flipped / celestial form of Glyph of Unity). You can’t really compare it to an always-active trait.
There are pros and cons to making Smite a symbol.
~ Pros ~
- Works with Symbol traits (which is particularly nice since Scepter’s trait is in a line that’s partially based on symbols)
- Consistent damage to multiple targets
- More hits / justice procs on multiple targets
~ Cons ~
- Would probably mean a significant damage drop from its current iteration, since symbols aren’t highly damaging generally, and you’d need to compensate for the addition of a boon to the skill and the healing / traits that come with being a Symbol
- Less damage / hits vs a single target
- Less hits / justice procs vs a single target (which works against the Scepter trait as well)
- Makes the skill less aesthetically unique, more visable and thus perhaps easier to avoid
Honstly, I’m not sure which way I’d rather go with Smite. I do like the idea of every mainhand weapon having a symbol of some sort, since there are a lot of traits which focus on them to the point where I feel they deserve to be a secondary profession mechanic (ala phantasms on Mesmer) and thus more common. But on the other hand… I don’t much care for all the offensive hits the skill would likely take with the transition. Smite is a pretty decent part of why Scepter is a half-decent offensive weapon. And offense is basically all Scepter has, so take that away and it might really suffer for it.
Doesn’t fit your playstyle =/= terrible elite spec. Not all elite specs are going to fit all roles. I imagine people whose ideal Ranger is an offensive powerhouse don’t feel all that great about Druid either, for instance.
Not to say that Dragonhunter is necessarily amazing or whatever. Just saying that not fitting into a certain playstyle shouldn’t really be a basis for calling an elite spec bad.
Of course not. You’re right, and I can see how my lament can be perceived that way, but there’s also very poor synergy between the DH abilities with the rest of the Guardian skill set.
Also, Daredevil’s getting 3 dodges, Chronomancer’s getting a Braid-like reverse, Druid’s getting a de facto Death Shroud; just about every elite spec is getting a really defining unique profession mechanic. The DH only got physical manifestations of its original 3 virtues.
I’ll be the first to admit my opinion is going to be far from objective. I’m just not as impressed by the Dragonhunter as I am with other elite specs (Tempest notwithstanding), and this has nothing to do with whether the DH plays into my ideal build or not.
I think the physical manifestations could be really awesome and build defining like other elite spec changes. The cooldowns are just too darn high for them to fill that role at this point (and for some reason they keep adding traits, even to DH itself, that promote NOT using them and keeping them passive).
They seem to be addressing that somewhat with the next BWE, cutting the cooldowns of Wings of Resolve and Spear of Justice, but I’m of the opinion that it’s still not quite enough. Then again, we haven’t played with it just yet, so we’ll see.
Restricting certain pets to difficult challenges would be a terrible idea. GW2 is built around the concept of everyone of any skill level being able to access everything meaningful to gameplay.
The only thing they could do as far as “challenge pets” would be different skins of the same pets. That way everyone gets access to the core pets and their unique abilities, but there might be special skins that those who are willing to put a bit more work towards can achieve.
The “multiple aspects” thing was theorizing based on datamined materials. I think the actual Druid reveal made it pretty clear there’s just one, or they would have shown the others off, since they stated outright that they’d shown everything Druid has to offer (and listed out all the new stuff in list form, which didn’t include more than 1 form).
Either multiple aspects was considered and then scrapped, or it never existed in the first place and it was just theorycrafting. Not sure which is the case, as I didn’t really follow the datamined stuff all that closely.
Doesn’t fit your playstyle =/= terrible elite spec. Not all elite specs are going to fit all roles. I imagine people whose ideal Ranger is an offensive powerhouse don’t feel all that great about Druid either, for instance.
Not to say that Dragonhunter is necessarily amazing or whatever. Just saying that not fitting into a certain playstyle shouldn’t really be a basis for calling an elite spec bad.
Yah, I really hope pets condition damage is going to be something they look at with them adding a new pet that’s basically built entirely around condis.
EDIT: Actually, based on the pictures of the stats from the livestream which I just took a look at on Dulfy, its not really a “hopefully” even. The Wyvern has 700 condition damage in the clip, and the Bristleback has 1000. Presumably both without Expertise Training. So it seems innate condition damage on pets is definitely a “thing” now. Awesome.
Really glad there are new pets. Kind of wish there were a few more, but its a decent enough amount, and at least most of them are new pets and not just variations of existing families.
(edited by Electro.4173)
I quite like the light-based skill appearances / theme on Staff, but I do agree that they could stand to be more yellow / gold and less blue.
Celestial skills I’m fine with being blue, since the whole mechanic seems to be based on the moon / stars, and blue fits that just fine. The only one I might change would be the plant, since… its a plant. Why is it purple / blue? It’ll be especially jarring when using the trait that spawns plants when using glyphs, unless those ones are different in appearance from the Celestial ones (though I doubt it, since the skill fact was a copy of the Celestial skill).
Glyph skills are pretty much perfect as-is, I think. Plenty of “nature vibe” from them. At least the base versions. Sadly we didn’t get to see the inverse / Celestial versions.
My usual rotation for underwater combat on Ele is to start in Fire, blow all your cooldowns (except #2) first. Hit Fire#2, immediately swap to Water attune, use Arcane Wave at the same time as you’re swapping, immediately double tap Water 3 (gets you a double Blast finisher if you do it fast enough), then do Water 5. Water 5 procs Fire Aura and does a lot of damage, especially behind 9 stacks of might. After that, Water 2, then swap into either Earth or Air depending on if you’re power or condition based. Blow the cooldowns in Air / Earth and sit in those (or perhaps swap to the other) for a bit until Fire and Water start coming off cooldowns, rinse and repeat.
Can probably sneak Arcane Brilliance in there for another 3 stacks of might before you do Water 5, but I don’t think you’ll get the Fire Aura if you do that as I don’t think Fire #2 lasts quite long enough (unless you trait for longer fire fields, I suppose). Might is probably > than Fire Aura anyway, but personally I find it really satisfying to proc the aura as the timing is sort of tight.
Unquestionably pro.
Regardless of what they were originally created for, their new lifestyle / purpose no longer matches with that design. At least if you assume that their normal state is born of the Pale Tree and free of Mordremoth’s influence. And yes, you can argue that their “natural state” would be as dragon minions and not happy curious tree people with free will, but… if the latter is what they’ve chosen to embrace, then I’ll go with that, personally.
As for the fact that they can potentially be turned by Mordremoth… well, yah. They can. And so can every other race when it comes to other dragons (and I wouldn’t be surprised if other races could be turned by Mordremoth as well, we just haven’t seen it yet… Mind is one of his dominions after all, and he’d be a pretty bad mind-control dragon if he could only control the race he created). I don’t hate Norn because some of them choose to embrace Jormag and become sons of Svanir. I don’t hold it against any of the other races that they can be hit with a blast from Kralkatorrik and become crystal minions or die and rise up as Risen. If I’m going to treat everyone who COULD become a dragon minion as a threat, then I can’t trust anyone at all.
And also, isn’t it better to embrace the minions who have turned against the dragon, learn from them, how they managed to turn away, and attempt to keep them on our side? Converted dragon minions could be a very valuable asset, especially given the revelation that they can hear and understand Mordremoth. Yes, I would absolutely love to know that the random roar I just heard signals a sneak attack from behind, thank you Mr. Sylvari.
You already missed out on parts of the story if you didn’t play every race, seeing how the first 20 levels of the personal story are entirely based on your race. You missed hearing different voice acting and seeing different angles of the story from those as well.
I don’t see this as any different.
Will Druids get a written article tomorrow?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Electro.4173
I’m going to guess “no”.
All of the recently revealed elite specs have had a 3rd party preview as well as an Anet blog post prior to the official reveal. We’re already missing that (the 3rd party article, that is), so I’m assuming the “first look at Druid” mentioned about TwitchCon means literally that. They aren’t going to reveal anything about it until the presentation.
Inconsistency in elite specialization traits
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Electro.4173
I’m pretty sure they’ll be “standardizing” the descriptions eventually so that they’re consistent between elite specs. They just haven’t gotten around to it and / or haven’t decided which way they’re going with it precisely.
Personally, I’m hoping they go for the route with the little icon displaying which new weapon is granted rather than shoving it in the description. Heck, I’d like it if they had a second icon to represent the new utility gained as well, though admittedly that may be somewhat difficult to express in icon form. Still, I’m sure they could come up with some sort of icon, and then just let you hover your mouse over the icon to see a text description.
As for being “proper traits”… I think they all are already. Each one grants access to the spec-specific mechanic. Berserk, Reaper Shroud, Function Gyro, ect. Actually, that is far more than most minor traits in the game give you, not less. I’d consider them completely “proper”.
Function Gyro works on your target. You can’t target yourself. So no, it won’t work on you unless they give it special mechanics to do so. And it would likely be overpowered if it did, anyway. Sure, Rangers have a self-revive mechanic like that, but they give up their downed F3 for it and its got a cooldown before you can use it at all, neither of which would apply to self-rez Function Gyro.
Multiple-leap finisher makes more sense on Rocket Charge, given that its actually 3 distinct attacks vs a single charge for Swoop. I’m fine with that difference.
Rocket Charge getting multiple evades, on the other hand… that I’m a bit jealous of in terms of Swoop. One of my biggest wants since day 1 for Swoop has been evade on the leap portion of the skill so I could use it to dash through projectiles and damage fields, but I seem to remember it being said at some point that an evade on a leap would be “overpowered”, which is why they just put the evade on the attack portion of the skill. But here comes Rocket Charge with evades on its leaps? So… evade on Swoop’s dash now?
So… another skill made half useless in PvE for the sake of being “good” in PvP? No thanks.
Note that I have no idea how good that would actually be as I don’t partake in PvP, but clearly geared toward that mode at the very least.
Fix the wonky mechanics (cancel stuff) and reduce the cooldown a bit and it’ll be fine.
While kits would be amazing, I have a feeling they’d probably be treated more as conjured weapons (basically how they used to function before, albeit hopefully with much less cooldown and longer duration).
After all, the main reason Engineers have no weapon swap is almost certainly because kits exist. So unless they removed Guardian’s weapon swap with the Tome elite spec (if that’s even possible), I can’t see them giving us kits on top of everything else.
Alternatively, I suppose the Tomes could actually become our profession mechanic rather than being utilities at all. Tome of Justice would basically be the old Tome of Wrath, offensive / burn based. Tome of Resolve would probably borrow the healing / cleansing aspects of the old Tome of Courage. Tome of Courage (the new one, not the old one…) would be centered on defensive buffs, blocks, and reflects. That might actually be a handy way to balance them and allow them to be more powerful, since you’d be giving up your virtue passives by using them.
In terms of new weapons… wow, I dunno. Guardian has all the magic weapons already, and obviously something magical would be the most fitting. Maybe they’ll have added some new weapons to the game by then. But if not, and we absolutely have to choose from the existing weapons… offhand dagger, maybe? I mean, given the complexities of the Tomes I think an offhand is probably the most likely choice, and dagger could perhaps act as a pseudo “writing tool” of sorts, creating inscriptions or something.
For names, Arcanist sounds pretty good to me. Or Lorekeeper.
As a sidenote, this better happen at some point. I loved tomes, broken as they were. They had darn well better return via elite spec and not just be dumped into the abyss forever.
Scrapper, eh? Meh. It has a nice double-meaning (scrapper as in a close-up fighter, and scrapper as in someone who creates machines from scraps), so it certainly fits. But it doesn’t really have any cool “zing” to it. Just sounds kind of bland. Not a terrible name, but nor is it great.
I actually really liked Forge. For all the hate the name got, I always thought it sounded pretty awesome. Pictured my Engineer standing on a mountain, hammer in hand, proclaiming “I am the Forge. I create the weapons of war. Challenge my skills if you dare.” while surrounded by her army of drones.
As for the combat mechanics… uh… not much to comment on, really. Actual information was pretty darn scarce in this preview. 3 Hammer skills, one specific Drone, and… that’s it. So I can’t really say much about them. The hammer skills sound pretty cool I suppose, though I’m a bit surprised its lightning-based instead of fire given what the auto attack string looked like (unless its been changed). Triple Leap finisher sounds fun, and more lightning fields are nice (always thought Engie should have at least one).
Purge Drone… could go either way, honestly. Curing conditions sounds nice at face value, but how good it is will depend on the specifics. How often, how many conditions, whether it will “waste” shots on people who don’t have conditions (like Bow of Truth does), ect.
Drones do look really awesome, I must say. Just aesthetically.
Pretty disappointed there was no mention of any sort of profession mechanic changes. Hopefully that was just something they’re saving for the official blogpost / POI and it doesn’t mean that Scrapper just doesn’t have one, since that’s kind of one of the core principals of Elite Specs (or at least that’s what we’ve been told).
(edited by Electro.4173)
3 seems fine to me.
3rd hit of the auto chain is definitely slow, but justified due to the symbol. It’d be too much if it were sped up.
4 I definitely agree with, though. A single-target knock doesn’t really need such a long windup. I’d gladly settle with a reduced knockback range if I could get a faster startup in return.
I have enough stuff to craft my exotic gear (Celestial). Probably won’t bother actually crafting them until I create my Rev, though, no need to clog my bank up with that stuff at this point.
I’ve gathered a few weapon skins for my future Rev, since I’ve actually decided on a weapon theme for her (ocean-based weaponry). Haven’t quite gotten everything just yet, but I’m workin’ on it.
Armor skins will probably be waiting until I actually create my character, since my only heavy armor character currently is a female Sylvari and I plan on making my Rev a female Asura. So the armor is going to look quite different, need the character to properly preview in-game, and website-based previews don’t quite cut it. I guess I could create a “dummy” character or even try to create a character similar to what I’m planning for my Rev to pick out the skins in advance, but… eh. I think I’ll just wait.
Sigils and Runes will have to wait, as I really have no idea what I’m going to run as far as those go. Need to play the character for a while and get a feel for what direction I want to go with them.
Bought the account jump-start as well as an extra bag slot during the anniversary sale, so I have two bag slot expansions ready (though I’ll need a couple more to bring her in-line with my other chars). Haven’t bothered with the bags themselves, will probably hold off on those since Rev will hit right around Halloween so I’ll be able to (hopefully) get a bunch of Halloween Pails for cheap.
Also have the usual makeover kits and stuff handy, but that’s mostly just something I always have on hand and not something specifically for the Revenant.
Virtue changes – YES! This is exactly what I was hoping for. I want to use my virtues more, the virtue changes are an interesting concept that I want to use to the fullest. I think there’s still strides to be made to make them truly advantageous to use (and often enough to matter) but this is a really good step in the right direction.
Spear of Justice – Good changes all-around. Would still like to see the chain last a bit longer though.
Wings of Resolve – Very nice. Getting rid of immob was a fantastic change.
Shield of Courage – Nice changes for sure, but why didn’t this on get a recharge reduction? I mean, its a powerful ability now, but the cooldown is just silly high even for a good skill.
Longbow – Love the changes to Deflecting Shot. And the rest of the changes are solid too (glad you decided not to remove burn on Symbol of Energy, and even buffed it!). Definitely looking forward to giving this weapon another shot during the next BWE.
Traps – I think the cast time reduction will help a lot. Getting the traps down with less downtime in between will make it feel smoother. Disappointed that’s the only change they’re getting as I feel there’s plenty of tweaks and buffs to be made, though.
Piercing Light – I miss the bleed already. Daze is interesting, though.
Hunter’s Determination – I never saw the point of the old trait, so I’m glad its being replaced. New trait is pretty interesting as well, especially when combined with the new Piercing Light (thank god they aren’t in the same tier).
Hunter’s Fortification – The condition heal on block is meh. Dragonhunter doesn’t have much focus on blocking. Less damage aspect is interesting, though.
Zealot’s Aggression – More cripple is nice since its a recurring theme for Dragonhunter and offers a lot of synergy, but why another Justice passive-based trait? I thought with the cooldown changes to virtues you were finally promoting Dragonhunter to use their Virtues rather than just sitting on them for passives, and yet this does the opposite. Why not pulsing cripple for enemies chained by Justice’s active effect instead? Or if that would be too much, then perhaps every 4th hit against an enemy chained by Spear of Justice cripples (basically the same thing as using Justice’s passive, but while encouraging active use)? Something dealing with using Spear of Justice and not sitting on it.
Heavy Light – Still not a fan of passive knockback on auto-attack, but the stability on knockback is neat and will give some synergy with other weapon sets, so that’s really neat.
Overall, pretty happy. Some really nice changes. There’s still more tweaks I’d like to see, but this batch has me excited to try out next BWE for sure.
(edited by Electro.4173)
Reaper’s Shroud – Great changes. Particularly Death’s Charge. The removal of aftercast on the AA chain should also make it feel a bit smoother, and while I never really had a problem with it before, that’s nice.
Greatsword – Nightfall changes are very nice. Didn’t even realize AA were bugged, but fixes are good especially if they help performance at the same time. I’ve never really had a problem hitting with Death Spiral as a dirty PvE casual, but I won’t say no to hitting even more stuff!
Shouts – Ah, lots of great stuff in here. Cooldown reductions are fantastic. I’m not really up with all the terms and maths used for the Your Soul is Mine changes, but I’m assuming it implies an overall buff. Which I am definitely happy about. Unique Rise models is very nice, I love me some aesthetics. Love the buffs to You are All Weaklings, though I still feel the stunbreak would feel better on Suffer (or both) as I want to use YAAW as often as possible, not keep it in my pocket for when I need a stunbreak.
Augury of Death – Awesome, very happy to see a secondary effect added to this trait besides just cooldown reduction. Was kind of hoping for something a little more interesting, but the health steal fits the overall Shout theme and every little bit helps, so I’ll take it.
Chilling Nova – Never really played with this trait, but sounds like a solid change.
Chilling Force – So its now a more AoE-rewarding trait. Ok. Might be a slight overall nerf, but it again fits a theme and could be better in some situations as well. Interesting.
Soul Eater – I kind of liked the idea behind the old cooldown reduction, but no doubt this will be far more useful as a whole (and I’m still of the opinion that the old one didn’t always work anyway). Life stealing change I like. The life steal was basically only useful with 2 skills before, but even though its been reduced to literally only work with 1 skill, that skill is central to the weapon and can be used to good effect, so it seems like it’ll help in the long run. Looking forward to testing it out.
Overall, some really good stuff. There’s of course still room the improve, as always, but its good stuff. Reaper is probably getting my “best changes from BWE” award. Again.
(edited by Electro.4173)
If the changes to Heat Sync go forward as planned, the skill goes from unique and useful to boring and redundant.
Elementalist already throws AoE might around like beads at Mardi Gras. So now instead of being a unique option for passing around boons Ele normally can’t provide (or provide nearly as well as might) it just becomes redundant filler. Use it because its there and off cooldown, not because you really want / need it.
Its a huge overnerf. I can agree that the skill may have been a little overpowered, but this is basically dropping a nerf-nuke on it. Adding some limitations on it would be one thing (limit the number of boons it can pass at a time, blacklist a few of the OP boons, whatever). This is just… no.
It doesn’t help that they aren’t even buffing anything to make up for it. Warhorn could use plenty of buffs on other skills, and instead they’re basically buffing nothing (Sand Squall is just a fix, Dust Storm is a more selfish side-grade change). Heck, it seems they even ditched the idea of giving Warhorn an aura in the form of Magnetic Aura on Sand Squall.
I’d like to know where this supposed “buffing of warhorn’s utility applications” they mentioned is supposed to come in, because from where I stand we’ve gotten 2 utility nerfs (Heat Sync and no more vuln on Dust Storm) and nothing in return.
Overloads – Normalization is nice, I guess.
Earth – Some bleeds will help it be a bit more interesting, sure. Always thought it should have bleed on it. A decent buff.
Water – Seems basically unchanged outside of the normalization, though I suppose the insta-heal may come in handy.
Fire – You’re… kidding, right? I’m one of the few who thought the damage was alright in previous iterations, with most feeling it to be underwhelming… and you’re nerfing it? Right. Can we at least get a range increase or something in return, if it really “needs” to hit? Or a Whirl finisher on the tornado left behind after the overload is finished?
Air – The increase of a whopping 1 whole second to the lightning field is… nice, but it still needs a lot more duration IMO. Still think the field needs to last at least as long as the cast time, probably longer. Range increase is nice and makes more sense that way. Cast time reduction is nice. Some decent changes, though not sure if it’ll quite be “there” yet even now.
Warhorn – I don’t even know what to say. OK, so you’re hitting Warhorn’s best and most unique skill with the equivalent of a nuclear nerf-bomb. Now, I’ll admit that it was perhaps a bit too strong, but this is just WAY overdoing it. One boon? A boon that Elementalist already passes out in AoE capacity like candy at Halloween? Great, so now the skill is just redundant filler, rather than giving Tempest a way to distribute boons it can’t normally. And that’s supposed to… INCREASE the utility warhorn provides, how exactly? Why not just limit it to certain boons or make it so that you can only pass a certain number of boons, instead of just completely gutting the skill?
And in return, Warhorn is getting lots of other buffs to other skills, right? I mean, it has to be, it was already in a questionable place to begin with, and we’re supposedly increasing its utility. No? One ability is getting vuln changed to bleed (less utility again), which I’m actually alright with I suppose since WH could use a bit more condition support and it makes more sense thematically. And one ability is getting a fix. That’s it. Really? No buffs to Air 4? Air 5? Water 5? Fire 5? Heck, for that matter what happened to the proposed Magnetic Aura on Earth 4, I thought you realized you wanted an aura on every offhand and were fixing Warhorn’s lack thereof.
I’ve tried to remain positive throughout the Tempest reveals, and I actually LIKED warhorn as a concept. But even my optimism can only go so far. This is just laughable.
Rebound – Good change. Much more interesting and useful now. I am curious what the cooldown is going to be now though.
Elemental Bastion – Healing contribution? Maybe I’m just outdated on the game terms, but what the heck does that even mean? You mean scaling with Healing Power? If so… ok. Seems like a decent change.
Harmonious Conduit – Nice changes. The 20% cooldown reduction on its own was lackluster for sure, and the new trait is pretty great all-around. Damage boost is a neat idea to encourage and reward Overloads, and of course the stability is handy. Don’t know why the cooldown reduction was dropped completely, though. Would like to see it added back somewhere, perhaps onto Lucid Singularity if putting it on Harmonious Conduit would oversaturate the skill too much. As for the trait being so good that it becomes “required”… that is perhaps a concern, but I do think just giving out stability on overloads for free would be a bit too much, so I’m fine with it.
Imbued Melodies – Not sure warhorn on its own has access to enough boons for this to matter, but I suppose overloads and utilities can shore up that problem, so alright. Free Sand Squall is pretty awesome as long as it doesn’t interrupt other skills (I hated the Revenant trait that automatically casted the shield when hit below a health threshold because it did that).
Overall, there’s some pretty nice changes in there. But the warhorn changes and complete lack of Shout buffs are pretty disappointing, and leave me feeling pretty bummed overall despite the good.
After attempting to use Embrace the Darkness to spread poison during the Vinewrath events and getting cleansed by other players constantly, thus preventing me from doing anything at all… I can see WHY the change to Embrace the Darkness is good in theory. There’s just so much condition cleanse in a group, even unintentionally (player just wants to cleanse himself, but only has AoE cleanse, light fields, ect) that even if you can convince the other players to try not to heal you, it probably won’t work. I just hate that it removed all the uniqueness from the skill.
I have to think there would have been another solution of some sort besides just changing it altogether. Disable condition cleansing while Embrace the Darkness is active or something, perhaps. Anything to let EtD keep the condition pulse aspect, because it was really interesting.
However, if its done and over, no chance of having the condition transfer considered again, get over it, then… the upkeep cost is now way too high (or the skill is to weak). It was worthwhile before because you could potentially be pulsing multiple conditions out to foes. But a single stack of Torment every second and a stat boost is in no way worth -8 energy. At this point it really needs to either gain more conditions or have the cost dropped down to probably -6 or even -5 so that you get more time out of it and can continue to use other skills for a while as you keep EtD active. As it is now, I’d probably rather just keep EtD off permanently, keep my energy recharge high, and rely on Unyielding Anguish for Torment without locking myself out of other stuff with a huge -8 upkeep.
Silverwastes is accessed through Fort Vandal in Brisban Wildlands.
You can buy keys with Bandit Crests. You get those by doing events in the Silverwastes, basically, though you can also get them from other sources (like Living World episodes, Piles of Silky Sand).
Chests aren’t “obtained”. They’re basically scattered around the map as static objects. You (or someone else) needs to dig them up using a Silverwastes Shovel, then everyone can use a key and unlock them for their own loot.
Silverwastes Shovels are gotten entirely through doing events in the Silverwastes, and given out at random.
Overall, the general SW farming process goes a little something like this…
Farm events to build up your Bandit Crest reserve and get some shovels > Buy lots of Bandit Skeleton Keys > Join a chest farm map (use LFG), follow the commander, loot chests that others dig up and use your own shovels as needed to help everyone else
Rinse and repeat.
I’m sure Anet has something in mind in terms of WvW players, but from my perspective the easiest way to do it would be to provide two ways to unlock Elite Specs (one for PvE, one for WvW) and once its unlocked in either mode, allow it to be used in both.
PvE unlocks Elite Specs via Hero Points. WvW players unlock them via (insert new unlock method here). If player A unlocks their Elite Spec via PvE, they can now use it anywhere in the game. If player B unlocks their Elite Spec via WvW, they can now use it anywhere in the game.
I mean, they COULD keep them completely separate. Unlock it in WvW, and you can use it in WvW only, and vice versa with PvE. There’s no particular precedent for that, as most things are shared between the two modes, but I’m sure it could be done. But I have a feeling doing that would create a lot of “I have to unlock my elite spec TWICE?!?!” rage posts.
So yah, two unlock methods, either one allows you to use your elite spec universally. That’d be my personal choice.
As far as the datamined hero point costs go… datamining is never concrete. And yes, while 170 is pretty high based on current hero point totals, I’m pretty sure there are also going to be new ways to acquire hero points in HoT. They’re going to want you to be able to work towards your elite spec in HoT content, not do a massive grind in the old world. You’ll probably still need some points from the core game, but I’m betting you’ll be able to make quite a bit of progress toward it through HoT itself.
For me personally, my least used is probably a 3-way tie between Pigs, Bears, and Moas. Their damage is just far too low to be useful to me, considering I run a Beastmaster build and thus rely on my pets to actually be doing useful damage. Not that I always need the highest DPS pets all the time, I still like variety and swapping in different pets rather than all cats all the time. Heck, I do occasionally even use one or two pets from the above families just for varietys’ sake. But when I’m doing something that requires a “good” pet, those 3 are never my go-to’s.
If I had to pick one family as my absolute least favorite / least used, that’d probably be Pigs. On top of being way too weak offensively, I also hate Forage, its an utter chore to stop and grab items just to use them, and the RNG aspect isn’t exactly great either.
Is there a larger / HD version of that picture floating around? I need a new background, been using the Herald art for too long now.
I really don’t understand the issue.
The Gem Store is not a 100% cash-only shop. You can convert gold to gems, thereby getting items without paying real money. That has always been the entire premise of GW2’s Gem Store. The items have never been exclusive to those willing to part with real cash.
And yet here they’ve introduced a way to get the items without money… and people are up in arms about it.
What’s the difference between “do an event to get an item” or “grind some gold, convert to gems, get item”?
But… there are people who HAVE had spent real money on these items. How do you not understand?
I didn’t spend real money on those items when they were in the gemstore but I can understand their displeasure about it.
Yes, there are people who in the past spent real money on the item. And at that moment they chose to spend real money, they also had the option of instead using in-game gold and not using real money. And yet they still chose to spend cash, deeming the purchase worthwhile. Likewise, at that same time there were no doubt other players choosing the other avenue and getting the items “for free” (at least in terms of real cash) by converting gold to gems.
There were players running around with an item they obtained for free compared to those who spent cash on them when the items were first available, and no one batted an eyelash about it. But now that there’s a different way to get them for free, its a great rant-worthy betrayal. Nope, not seeing the logic there, honestly.
800 gems = $10.00
800 gems buys roughly 150 gold…
gemstore items costing 800 gems now cost a couple gold and a few hours of work.can you earn 150+ gold in a couple hours? nope…
that’s why they are mad…. it has cheapened the item considerably… if the prices were say 50 gold plus blooms, then yea, I could start to go along with it… but as for now, its considerably cheaper and I can understand the anger a bit.
So if its just price, what if they had brought back the items at a 75% discount on the Gem Store? Everyone would be ticked off about that?
And besides, current math puts it at well over a couple hours of grind, at least with the rewards they way they currently are. We don’t know exactly how the rewards are supposed to be since the devs have said that it’s supposed to stack with how many events you do (and it doesn’t seem to be working that way), but at 5-10 blooms per event, which is what we’re currently getting, if people get anything at all, it’d be anywhere from 23-50 events before you can get enough blooms to buy the items. Which is 690 minutes, or 11 hours of pure grind.
I really don’t understand the issue.
The Gem Store is not a 100% cash-only shop. You can convert gold to gems, thereby getting items without paying real money. That has always been the entire premise of GW2’s Gem Store. The items have never been exclusive to those willing to part with real cash.
And yet here they’ve introduced a way to get the items without money… and people are up in arms about it.
What’s the difference between “do an event to get an item” or “grind some gold, convert to gems, get item”?