Alchimist.4738

They really need to remove the after cast delay to Preparation skills, it's not only extremely awkward to use normally, but considering Thief is a class build around mobility, you just can't afford waiting 3 seconds to interact with your skills, it leaves way too much time for whatever enemies (being a player or a npc) to move away from it.

Preparation skills should be online after the casting time, like traps, but unlike the latter you have to trigger them manually.

Furthermore, why Preparation skills don't have a trait enhancing them, unless I'm forgetting something all skill categories across all classes (and e-specs?) have one trait enhancing all skills within their category.

While I'm sure the exploration of Cantha will be a blast, it won't offer a lot of replayability, I want something that can engage me for a long time, something the game never really managed to do.

Ideally I'd like Raids with three difficulty levels, easy (to get casual players in), normal (current difficulty), and hard (challenge mode with extra spice), but I'd just be happy with only repeatable challenge modes, and of course a steady flow of new raids (which let's be honest won't happen). If not Raids I want to see challenging instanced PvE, and for the love of god stop focusing on instanced story that no one wants to replay, that's a waste of time in an MMO, just shove those story bits into a dungeon or something, and again different difficulty level would be perfect to satisfy both the casual and hardcore crowds

But above anything else I want actually engaging open world PvE content, not the cookie-cutter borderline braindead content à la Drizzlewood Coast, force players to split into different groups rather than following one commander while face rolling, and force them to care about mechanics rather than just bursting stuff without knowing what they're doing, make the content actually challenging and rewarding to play, have consequences for failures without having them feeling unfair ...

I'd like to see the content to reflect more HoT than PoF, meaning challenging but also intricate to navigate while having somewhat good events. I wouldn't mind one large map like PoF, particularly if it's an area designed for newer players/returning players who bumped their characters to level eighty to make them learn mechanics from the game and their classes, something the game still to this day doesn't do well, but to be fair learning the game with 2012 content is bad to begin with, so let's say Shing Jea Island.

I think a new race is a huge waste of time, so no thanks. Same with housing to be honest, I mean guilds are kinda useless in the game, unfortunately, but you can already create a one man guild and customize your guild hall, which is housing with few extra steps.

New elites go without saying, on that front I just want the Revenant's to focus on power builds and have a greatsword, everything else I don't have hard feelings either way. Both HoT and PoF introduced new general combat mechanics (Alacrity with HoT, Barrier with PoF ...) so I'd like new toys like that while keeping the game balanced too.

Fishing as a mini game would be nice, while not mandatory, having to collect a wide array of fishes would be awesome, bonus points if we get random event where you have to defeat some under water monsters (or on the beach for ground combat) attacking you while you fish.

15v15 for sPvP, you can call it GvG, and create a separate ranked queue for it.

WvW love, alliance and maybe some overhauls, siege turtles would be nice too.

I'd like to see some open world PvP, like the light hearted events we had during the beta of the games, I understand otherwise the game is not really made for that kind of content, and WvW is what's replacing it, but some sort of call back to Alliance Battles from Faction would be nice.

Death Magic should focus less on toughness, which isn't a particular useful stats for Necromancers, and should focus more on Protection and damage reduction based on your foes conditions. Furthermore it should focus on one of the main weakness of Necromancer, which is its poor anti-crowd control tools, and therefore it should focus on Stability and stun breaks.

The projectile speed is far too slow for the intended purpose of the skill, chasing, but yet everything is sluggish in Death Shroud, so I guess it's consistent.

The tracking is non-existent as the projectile goes in a straight line and can easily be avoided. Furthermore I've seen the projectile going into the ground while having a target, so it's clearly buggy.

Transforming the skill from a projectile to a shadowstep would make the skill way more useful. And overall Death Shroud, but also core Necromancer traits/skills, don't need cooldown reduction or improvements, but a complete rework because they're sluggish and don't offer much compared to newer designed traits and skills.

Another balance patch without any substantial nerfs for the braindead degeneracy that are Holosmith and Mirage.

They can buff core profession all they want (Necromancer and Guardian this patch) it won’t matter as long as elite specializations just have the better tools alongside insane burst potentials.

Overall the meta is not going to shift one bit, same old same old.

I'd say nerf **everything**, it's time to fix the years of power creep, between the insane bursts of damage some builds can produce, the amount of boons some builds can maintain on their own with minimal effort, the insane support Firebrand has, overshadowing any alternatives, so on and so forth, I'd very much rather see the PvP revert back to the state it was near the end of HoT, or even better before HoT, than the farce it currently is.

The trade off for Dragonhunter is the activation time on the virtues, compared to the instant cast of core, but in exchange you gain more dynamic active abilities, so for example you cannot use Resolve to panic heal, because you have an animation to go through with the Wings, but you can use the Wings to jump in/out of combat if must be.

The trade off for Firebrand is the longer cooldown on the virtues, compared to the shorter ones of core, but in exchange you gain new weapon skills for a limited amount of uses.

Move Holo in S, SB in A.

Add core Guardian in C.

If you dislike playing support you can perfectly play cDPS Renegade.

I'm perfectly fine with Power Alacrity or Healer Renegade, particularly since it means I can play something else than Chronomancer once in a while, there will always be some roles that you might consider ungrateful.

That being said, I'd agree that Power Revenant in general isn't that thrilling to play, but that's something that isn't going to be fixed without a new specialization, because Herald and Renegade aren't exactly designed to be pure power specializations.

I want a complete rework of the Death Shroud.

Ever since the Reaper came out, the Death Shroud felt like a worst iteration of the Reaper's Shroud, it's worst at power and condition damage, and not really unique enough. Even without the comparison the Death Shroud is too slow and some of the skills are really clunky to use, such as Dark Path.

I really like the idea behind Tainted Shackles, I think they should push the idea further so the Death Shroud is about binding yourself to your opponents, so all the skills of the Death Shroud would affect bound enemies, and the skill to bound would work on an ammo basis, and then you can play with sharing conditions with your foes and taking their boons, sort of like a parasite.

Additionally I would make Plaguelands and Corrosive Poison Cloud grow in size similarly to Nightfall, and adjust some numbers in accordance.

> @"ThatOddOne.4387" said:

> Once more the more interesting parts of the episode were the environment and reasoning behind that - The Underworld, Fissure of Woe and Melandru's Domain - Rather than anything to do with dragons.

>

> Solid episode but the hype wasn't worth it, I won't say I am disappointed but I will say I am neutral and that's not what I wanted to be.

The Underworld is for Zhaitan, the Fissure of Woe for Balthazar, and Melandru's Domain for Mordremoth, of of them have had their magic drained by Kralkatorrik. We also know that the human gods parallel the dragon's magic, which explains why some of their dominions were pulled by Kralkatorrik.

That could actually be a lot of fun, I can see it working similarly to this:

You can choose two attunements for each weapon, so let's say my primary weapon is a Staff and I choose Fire and Water, then my secondary weapons are Dagger/Focus and I choose Air and Earth.

Technically you only have two attunements at a time, so you're weaker than the core profession and the other specializations, but you've the flexibility of playing multiple weapons and selecting which attunement to play with them.

> @"coro.3176" said:

> > @"Vagrant.7206" said:

> > > @"Tehologist.5841" said:

> Now there's not really much point 'cause all you need to do is get vaguely near the enemy and Photon Forge 3,5,1,1,1 oh look everything is dead.

So much this, most of the Kits, if not all of them, have been left behind, for instance Tool Kit used to be a pretty good option in sPvP, but nowadays it's pure garbage because how much power creep the game has seen and how little tweaking most vanilla skills received.

What's the point of taking those under-performing options when you can just faceroll in Photon Forge and kill everything, or when other classes can faceroll and kill you immediately.

There were nerfed at a moment of time where it was really hard to deal with, nowadays if Bunker Turret came back to what it used to be I'm not even sure it would be any good with the amount of cancer AoE and damage burst.

Shelter kind of works like Litany of Wrath, but instead of out-healing the damage through dps you just block the damage without doing dps, so it's safer because you can react faster but it's definitely a dps loss, otherwise there is a case to be made for Signet of Resolve on Slothasor or W5 in general.

> @"draxynnic.3719" said:

> > @"Alchimist.4738" said:

> > We know that Kralkatorrik can travel to the mist, and Taimi says it's a unique behavior for Elder Dragons, but I thought Jormag could also travel to the mist, or at least his minions, because in the Norn personal story we travel ourself to the mist and fight the Son of Svanir and some Icebrood Elementals there.

>

> The Sons of Svanir basically hijacked the ability of the regular norn shamans to enter the Mists. Once they no longer had control of a regular shaman prisoner to let them in, they were no longer able to - neither Jormag nor his minions gained the ability to open portals themselves.

>

> Kralkatorrik, apparently, has: probably, as someone commented above, as a result of consuming Balthazar's magic, which did include being able to open portals.

Alright, I have another question then.

Wasn't Zhaitan interacting somehow with the Underworld which is in the Mists, I'm not sure if the Eyes of Zhaitan and Mouths of Zhaitan in the Hall of Chains are supposed to be Zhaitan's minions, or just random creatures re-using the same models.

I like Felicia Day as Zojja, but if she cannot record anymore for whatever reasons it might be time to find a new voice actress, just like what they did with Rox, unless there is something that elude me.

If the voice acting isn't the issue, then Zojja absence is purely due to the narrative team not wanting to use this character, like * *couch* * Marjory for instance.

We know that Kralkatorrik can travel to the mist, and Taimi says it's a unique behavior for Elder Dragons, but I thought Jormag could also travel to the mist, or at least his minions, because in the Norn personal story we travel ourself to the mist and fight the Son of Svanir and some Icebrood Elementals there.

I think one of the reason you don't play sword on Holo is because you don't really have any good choices for your off-hand, obviously the sword also has issues of its own, but generally the lack of power off-hand weapon/main-hand is I think very limiting for current and future e-specs as it means one-handed weapon have rather poor synergies with each other, because the shield is for sustain/CCs and pistol for condition, limiting you to dual wielding weapons.

Therefore having a mace (wrench) or a torch (welding torch) as power weapons would be more than appreciated.

Edit: Also Engineer is the class with the less weapons in the game (1 dual, 1 main, 2 off), so I think it's justified and doesn't force Anet to implement new weapons to core classes unless it's necessary, and I'd argue only Engineer and Revenant would benefit from having more weapons for their core.

I honestly would like the pet for the core Ranger to be overall stronger than for Soulbeast and Druid, so those two e-specs keep their juvenile pet but the Ranger gets an adult one, which is bigger visually (really don't like having a puppy at my side) and stronger (more health/damage).

Otherwise I like the idea of reducing the overall number of pets by cutting the different iteration of the same type, if it means each pet is unique and viable.

Well we're one year into PoF and the game is far from having an healthy balance.

I've tried Dagger/Focus Weaver in sPvP, it's rather good from the few games I've played.

I use Air (1/2/3), Water (1/3/1) even though (1/2/1) is probably better, and Weaver (2/3/2), then I use Sigil of Exploitation and Sigil of Exposure, plus Rune of the Scholar and here again Rune of the Pack is probably the safer choice, and Marauder Amulet, at last I use Signet of Restoration, Twist of Fate, Stone Resonance, Unravel, and Weave Self, here you could replace Unravel by Lightning Flash or Cleansing Fire, but I just like Unravel to quickly go full Air, Earth, or Water.

A bit hard to manoeuvre against condition heavy builds, but as long as you can CCs it should be alright.

I honestly wouldn't mind an easy mode for raids, it would allow more player to get into them, which in the long run would be beneficial for both the raid community but also ArenaNet, as this content would be more profitable.

However they really need to balance the rewards properly between each difficulty mode. Easy mode should give a different kind of killing proof than hard and normal modes, alongside a piece of legendary insight, and once you get four pieces you can create one legendary insight, obviously a reduced drop rate to the unique loot and less raid currency.

Furthermore easy mode should really be a tutorial for raids, the core mechanics for both the game (dodge, combo fields, boons ...) and the boss (green, special action key ...) should be emphasized, for instance with voice acting a character could say "four of you go into the green area" during Vale Guardian, and then normal mode and hard mode would either expand on those mechanics, making them more punishing, or adding new ones.

Moreover if we get an easy mode it should be accompanied by a hard mode, which means repeatable CMs and CMs for W1 to W3.

If we get that I think the raid community could really grow, as everyone would be pleased.

Edit: Just noticed my vote was the wrong one, it is "We need both easy and hard modes".

Alright so there are already [multiple threads discussing the Function Gyro](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/50165/do-you-like-the-scrapper-spec-mechanic/p1 "multiple threads discussing about the Function Gyro") and whether or not it’s an interesting mechanic, we’re not here to discuss about that, and I suggest you express your opinions about that there, but instead we're going to talk about what could Scrapper get to make it more unique; since we recently had quite a few elite specialization reworks, one for Scrapper has to be considered at some point, as the espec is slowly disappearing from every game mode.

I’ll still give my quick thoughts on the Function Gyro to make my point clear:

The Function Gyro is nothing more than a range resurrection, which is something most professions already have with Signet of Mercy (Guardian), or Illusion of Life (Mesmer), and those are only few examples amongst many, and even the core Engineer has Toss Elixir R for that purpose. Moreover the Function Gyro can be used to increase your resurrection speed on an ally, but here again most professions have traits doing exactly that, Protective Reviver (Guardian), or Ritual of Life (Necromancer), here again those are few examples amongst many.

However those skills like Signet of Mercy are going to instantly resurrect players, even though they have a casting time, while the Function Gyro takes time to resurrect one single player, even though it doesn't have a casting time, but it can be cleaved or interrupted. Therefore even if the Function Gyro has basically free uses, it pales in comparison to what other professions can do in that domain.

Obviously the most interesting aspect of the Function Gyro is its secondary use, which is to finish players, but unlike resurrection, stomping isn't useful outside of sPvP/WvW, and even there cleaving downed players is sometime the better option. Which makes the Function Gyro the **only** elite specialization mechanic that was designed with sorely sPvP/WvW in mind, and even though some elite specializations have had their design focused around those game modes, for instance Spellbreaker, their unique mechanic managed to find a place in PvE because they weren't as limited as the Function Gyro.

This is the core issue I have, and I think many have, with the Function Gyro, it isn't a real elite specialization mechanic, it’s just a free range resurrection/finisher that hasn't any use outside of sPvP/WvW, and because of that it doesn't feel engaging at all. Furthermore the Function Gyro doesn't change the way your approach your core profession unlike what some of the best elite specializations have done, like Weaver, Scourge, and few others.

Now that’s out of the way, what can we do to either make Function Gyro an interesting mechanic, or can we create a new mechanic from scratch. I’ll focus on the latter point, as I don’t think there are any ways to redeem the Function Gyro, of course if you have any ideas I’m all ears. At the very least this thread might be used as food for thoughts for future elite specialization mechanics for the Engineer.

So to begin with we’ve to keep in mind the resource constraint, we cannot create a fancy mechanic demanding new crazy technology, neither creating tens of new skills, and we also need to keep it close to the theme of the Scrapper, while slightly changing how core Engineer is played. The Scrapper being an Engineer who scavenges the wreckage of the Pact fleet to create weapons allowing the remnants of the Pact to survive in the jungle, it should feel like the MacGyver of Tyria, creating terrifying weaponry on the fly and always adapting to its environment.

Scrapper has access to a lot of fields and the Engineer in general has a lot of combo finishers, so I think this unique mechanic should interact with combo finishers, here’s the idea:

The Tool Belt has a reduced size once you become a Scrapper, you only get F1 to F3, but you can choose you skills in your Tool Belt, similarly to how you choose your healing/utility/elite skills, therefore you can equip your healing skill Tool Belt skill in F1, the elite one in F2, and one of the utility one in F3, so on and so forth. It gives you a small drawback from picking Scrapper, which is something more espec should do in my opinion, but potentially you'll get more with the new properties of F4 and F5.

F5 is an empty slot until you make a combo finisher, depending on which combo finisher you do, blast, whirl, projectile, or leap, you’ll have a different skill appearing in F5 (see below).

F4 is called "New Blueprint", and it'll remove the skill you currently have in F5, so you can do another combo finisher to create a new skill to use with F5. Nevertheless the skills removed by F4 are still in cooldown, an hidden cooldown similar to the one kit skills have, therefore you cannot do a leap finisher, use the associated F5 skill (which is Reversed Polarity), F4 to remove the skill, another leap finisher, to get a fresh Reversed Polarity, because it'll be in cooldown, you’ll need instead to do another type of combo finisher, let’s say whirl, and you’ll have access to a new skill (which is Countermeasure Flares). If you alternate between your combo finishers often you'll have access to 4 brand new skills + the 3 from your normal Tool Belt. It's also worth noting that F4 and F5 are Tool Belt skills and therefore interacts with traits in the Tool trait line.

Here are the skills associated to the combo finishers:

* Blast finisher associated skill – Neural Aggression – Taunt nearby enemies.

Damage: 450 (1.1)

Taunt (2s)

Radius: 240

Activation Time: ¼s

Recharge Time: 25s

* Leap finisher associated skill – Reversed Polarity – Slow a foe and grant to yourself superspeed.

Superspeed (3s)

Slow (3s)

Range: 900

Activation Time: 0s

Recharge Time: 30s

* Whirl finisher associated skill – Countermeasure Flares – For a limited period of time, you daze around you a random enemy every second.

Damage: 125 (0.8)

Daze: 1s

Pulse: 1s

Range: 130

Duration: 3s

Unblockable

Activation Time: ¾s

Recharge Time: 40s

* Projectile finisher associated skill – Heat-Seeking Rockets – Send two rockets to the two nearest foes.

Damage: 598 (2.25)

Number of Targets: 2

Range: 1500

Explosion (Radius: 240, Number of Targets: 5)

Activation Time: ½s

Recharge Time: 16s

* New Blueprint doesn't have an Activation Time, but has a Recharge Time of 10s.

Obviously some traits will have to be changed, here are the following:

_Function Gyro_ becomes _Blueprint_

The description and name changed to better reflect the new abilities.

_Decisive Renown_

When you successfully create a new F5, you grant barrier and great speed to nearby allies.

Otherwise I don't think there is a lot of work to be done on the Scrapper, obviously having a better pathing on the Gryos would be more than appreciated, and tuning up the Hammer and some of the traits to increase the damage and/or survivability would also be great, after all the Scrapper isn't only struggling because the Function Gyro doesn't bring a lot to the table.

PS: It's a long post, thanks for making it through here.

One thing I find puzzling is that Facet of Nature with Shiro gives life steal to nearby allies, which directly competes with Soulcleave's Summit, we'll have to see the numbers, but it's still very odd, maybe they're also reworking Renegade, but it'll come later ...

Otherwise those changes look great on paper, they definitively make Herald a more interactive espec.