Acheron.4576

A one handed spear that functions as a range condi-focused weapon. ..

okay I will admit it, I miss my burning spear paragon. and throwing spears of light sounds like it would be fun. x.x

> @Crossaber.8934 said:

>

> No matter new era or old era, it doesn't help that stealth, back stab, shadowstep from core thief doesn't go well with samurai-ish in any way. If it is the other way around, like if we have a core class named samurai with elite spec that give stealth/shadowstep/back stab to a samurai, a samurai + thiet, it will work!

>

> But we don't have a core named samurai, when a thief + warrior, it shouldn't give samurai as a result. I don't opposite a new elite as thief + warrior, give them enhanced armor buff and fight like a warrior to some extend, that will be great, give him another name instead of samurai, it is perfectly fine.

That isn't necessarily true. Thief as a profession is a burst type class in its core due to the initiative system. This works really well with the samurai style of fighting. They tend to use bursting strikes with emphasis on precision and/or speedy strikes. (think about skills like Iai strikes)

Looking at utilities and weapon skills from core to determine whether or not it will suit the profession undermines the whole point of elite specs which is to give different concepts for the same or similar mechanics. Like how deadeye gives a mark for more focus on range and the use of shadow magic or the necromancer who got a new shroud and shouts with reaper. Functionality is more or less the same, but the approach is different. The same could be said for a Samurai-esque Thief elite spec. In functionality and style it clicks perfectly and would be a new approach to the bursty play-style.

I personally think if we do get an elite spec like this, I'd hope it would be more condi-focused. Maybe even have an elite or utility skill that allows you to "detonate" your conditions to do burst damage. (Think about a scene when two samurai clash and a few moments past and they just burst all at once and blood comes out from all their injuries.) Not only is pretty much every other great-sword user power focused, but it would help deviate from the cliche samurai archetype and becomes its own thing.

> @Crossaber.8934 said:

> Thief with shadow step never fit into samurai style, unless you are actually thinking about ninja.

>

> Samurai is a japanese warrior, they are fast and deadly warrior in heavy armor, they value honor a lot, a thief samurai with stealth and back stab is never any samurai-ish.

That actually depends on what era of samurai we are talking, and what kind of samurai. For example ronin, which were lordless samurai rarely wore heavy armor and would wear cloth and/or leather. They also were faster than the older era samurai due to their lack of heavy armor.

Older eras of samurai would focus more on high precision strike in short bursts since they are capable of taking blows and are often weighed down by their armor. Those precision strikes would be focused on hitting points where the opponent is more vulnerable and the armor doesn't cover very well.

Also most/some samurai often carried more than one sword so it could go either way when it comes to great-sword or sword/sword. If we do get a great-sword though I hope it is a condi-weapon. We have enough power great-swords as it is. Ranger, Warrior, Guardian, Mesmer, Necromancer, etc are all mainly power focused.

I personally would like something similar to older era samurai in style, but replace the heavy armor with shadow magic. There was a popular defensive ability called Shadow Form that I liked in gw1 and would enjoy seeing return that made all incoming attacks miss at a certain percentage for its duration. Maybe have that replace our steal mechanic and to be used to give us longer periods of safety to burst and escape once we are initiative starved.

I don't mind the price, i just wish I could buy them seperately. There are a couple I don't care for while the others I really like. I would rather just get what I like for a reasonable price instead of getting stuff I don't like tacked on for a larger price.

I think that if they incorporated mechanics to other weapons similar to rifle then Deadeye could be a lot more better. Like how the rifle #4 is greatly influenced by malice than any other ability. If the other weapons had something like that it could potentially be more competitive instead of just getting the flat basic damage boost. Maybe tying it into the #3 ability in some way.

I wouldn't mind seeing something similar to how Heroes were back in GW1. You had a lot of control over them, but could leave them to do their thing for the most part. Basically the option was there and it was flexible. I doubt they would have us change their skills and abilities though.

Elite Name: Shadow Dancer

Cloaked in shadow magic they dance around the battlefield, dealing conditions that damage and debilitate their enemies. They also have access to a unique condition that has its effect change depending on the game mode.

Weapon unlocked: Greatsword - a melee cleave condition damage weapon that has a lot of emphasis around a little bit of confusion and poison to synergize with one of the elite spec traits that converts poison to a stronger condition.

Weapon Skills:

AA combo - Applies stacking conditions with each strike. Inflicts poison

Shadow Onslaught - charge forward dealing damage and conditions to each enemy in your path. Can hit one enemy multiple times if they are larger. inflicts poison, torment.

Blade Dance - do a dance dealing damage to several enemies in the area around you applying condition damage. attack hits 10x spread to enemies around you. Inflicts confusion and poison on each hit.

Shadow Spiral - A spinning attack that uses a small amount of initiative that can be spammed to create a whirlwind of conditions. Inflicts poison and cripple.

Relentless Strikes - Attack a single target in front of you repeatedly extremely fast applying condition for each successful hit. Inflicts poison.

Utility/Elite: Dance skills, with the exception of the heal skill they have a cast time and have an aoe effect. They have a large radius, but you are locked in place for a sec or two.

Healing skill - Absorption - You heal yourself for a small amount and you will give yourself a short duration buff that causes all ranged attacks that hit you, to heal you.

Rapid Dance - you can cause your poison conditions to accelerate the damage they would deal over time into instantly dealing burst damage. (for balance sake they may lose the amount of total damage dealt)

Dance of Paralysis - causes enemies to become immobilized and when immobilized ends they are crippled.

Dance of Paranoia - causes enemies that you have conditions on to gain stacks of confusion if they have more torment stacks, or gains torment when they have more confusion stacks.

Elite: Dance of Madness - creates a field around you that applies poison, torment, confusion to enemies that stand inside it. Lasts for a decent duration.

Traits::

Minor Traits:

Shadow Poison - Converts poison into shadow poison that changes based on game mode. PvE/WvW - the damage of poison is increased to be comparable to burning. PvP - The damage stays the same as normal poison, instead it causes all healing to be converted into damage instead.. (for the sake of balance, the damage may be lowered in comparison to the heal itself. The idea is to severely punish healing while the condition is on the person.)

Senselessness - Deal increased damage when the enemies have conditions that deal damage to themselves based on their actions. (torment and confusion)

Stealing Shadows - When you kill an enemy the f1 skill is reset.

F1 changes: Steal ---> Shadow Form - You cloak yourself in shadow causing incoming attack to have a high chance of missing. The chance of missing deteriorates over time at an interval of 5s completely vanishing after 20s.

Role: Condi-damage, can turn the condi-damage into burst at the cost of total damage

Mechanics: This is a hit and run type of class. You want to jump in get as many hits as you can before your shadow form losses to much effect and get out. Once you have done enough hits to apply conditions, if you want to burst the damage all at once then use Rapid Dance. If you want to retreat then use Paralysis, they will be immobilized while you are locked in place and once you are no longer locked the enemies around you will be crippled. Absorption can also be helpful when getting away when they try to rely on ranged weapons.

There is a trait in Radiance that creates a zealot's flame when you crit which adds burning in aoe. It is on a 10 cd though so it won't be to much of a hit with low crit, especially when there are traits in the same tree that can increase your crit chance. The trait is pretty much a must have for condi since it also improves your burning and reduces the torch cds as well.

hmmm i've never tinkered with the stats outside of glass so i can't say for certain... you could try and swap sinister for carrion for that vitality. You will be missing out on some damage since you won't crit hardly at all. You have access to decent aegis and condi-cleanse if you use the mantras efficiently to help with survivability.

If you want to go glass then I recommend sinister weapons and armor with a few trinkets being viper. Even with them all being exotics you should be able to get 100% burn if you trait right, which is your goal. Outside of burn that expertise isn't really worth it imo.

> @Zenith.7301 said:

>

> Scepter is a ranged weapon, it should never outperform a melee weapon.

now that is a bs statement. Ranged should be able to stand toe to toe with melee. The amount of anti-range sentiment in this game is ridiculous and I have not anything this bad out of the 20-something MMOs I've played across different genres.. Especially considering how much range hate has been implemented into the game. You have skills that completely shut down range damage, skills that reflect range damage, and some enemies use your range damage to heal themselves now. The whole idea that a ranged weapon shouldn't out perform a melee weapon is completely out-dated since core gw2. Many of those who stick to melee have so many gap closers that being in range is often left pointless and barely contains any if at all tactical advantage.

-rant over-

Yes, I hope that we get a new elite spec dedicated to minions and that they take to that instance for inspiration. I had so much fun commanding my army of undead. I also like how they filed into ranks/columns when you were idle. It made it really feel like you were commanding a army or squad of undead. They could just give us new weapons. (I like the idea of sword and shield) and give us a kit that allows us to swap and command the undead. Maybe design the new weapon/s around creating and supporting the undead and swap to the commanding kit when we have enough minions and have given them enough support.

Now that many Guardians have been able to tinker around and play firebrand for a little bit which elite spec do you prefer? Are there any reasons behind your choice? What are your reasons for not choosing the other elite spec?

is the whole high risk high rewards still melee exclusive anymore? There is so much range hate in this game it isn't even funny. There are some enemies that completely neutralize range damage. Hell, there are some that make them detrimental to the fight. ie bosses i've seen having a buff that turns all projectiles into healing....

the excuse that only melee is high risk and high rewards and ranged shouldn't have as much damage because of it is total bs and hasn't really applied sense vanilla gw2.

DE seems to also synergize pretty well with condi D/D (at least at first glance). Your mark grants conditions through traits and through stolen skills. Which adds more, then there are ways to constantly gain more through utilities like mercy allowing you to use mark again. Now I'm not entirely sure how good it actually is, but I can see it has potential... maybe. Especially if you wait till you get a few stacks of malice before tossing the stolen skills.

It plays a little like a shadow drain mage in that it grants boons to your party and debuffs the enemies simultaneously.

> @Zacchary.6183 said:

> Perfected Rifle. It looks like a .50 cal. :3

I too am a user of the Perfected Rifle.

Use runes. iirc there are runes that summon a bird type pet. There is also rune of the ogre i think it is called that summons a rock hound when you are hit. There you go and have fun. =D

sword cleave and the shadow flare do pretty well aoe wise. at least it seems like it. (i'm not great at maths) The damage of shadow flare sky rockets at high malice.

Rifle is purely single target if you want to aoe then this isn't the weapon you want, period. It was never designed to be that way.

I do agree however, that the overall damage of rifle is terrible. I want to mention P/P being better single target, but i'm afraid A-net would nerf it to force rifle without streamlining rifle to actually stand a chance in pve meta....

I actually like the idea of Braham goes bad and we have to stop him for good. He seems dead set on his goal of killing Jormag, but if he does that Tyria will die. He has been shown to not listen to reason and be blinded to everything except that single goal.

I'm a fan of fallen hero stories where the "good guy" falls into bad guy territory. almost as much as I like redemption stories where the bad guy changes towards a more virtuous path.

however I hate redemption stories if it involves a fallen hero, those are just bleh. I don't really care for characters who play the good and bad game like a hot potato...

you know you are tired when you read it as underwear content.... xD

I think it would be cool to have an expansion where we go to an under water Atlantis style region that has a lot of emphasis and lore about the forgotten, where there will be some areas with water combat while others are like giant air-like bubble domes using some old forgotten tech. It would definitely be an interesting approach when we have to deal (not necessarily kill since that is bad now) with the Bubbles the dragon.

I would like to see the Monument armor sets. I always liked them and would like to see them added as armor skins.

my personal favs

Ritualist (light armor, I like the blend of the armor and tattoo like design)

Assassin (medium armor, for the love of gods not ranger i'm tired of 90%+ of medium armors being trench coats....)

Paragon (heavy armor, since paragons were a big part of the Sunspears which were a major group within Elona, it could be fun to add and maybe inspire some RP)

I would also like to see more armor sets like the Heroes had in gw1.

Jora - Brotherhood set (heavy)

Anton - Deldrimor set (medium)

Livia - Shining Blade (light)

There are parts of the armor sets that I would love to mix and match with the current ones i'm using. =D

I'm going to be using Sword/Pistol and my secondary. Sword for the cleave and pistol for the pistol whip and blinds. (plus pistol whip gets 4k at 7 malice stacks which sounds awesome to have along with the CC)

Don't forget Chakrams. That are good weapons for long, mid, and melee rang fighting styles and could fit pretty much any class. It could even be used with magic if you get creative with it using how people would normally fight at range with it. (think Xena Warrior Princess, imagine a legendary weapon after trail of it as you throw it into a group of enemies and it bounce around before coming back)

I always thought Elementalist could be given an interesting puppeteer type of elite spec. (not to get confused with pet types)

Have a familiar and you attack through your familiar instead of with a weapon. (mainly because having an attack skill for every weapon type would be a crazy amount of work) Basically your weapon skills would be replaced with familiar skills and when you use them it causes your familiar to attack and be able to control where it moves with a ground target "F" skill. I've even thought of having them each be something similar to the four sacred beast in East Asian Mythos.

the white tiger - melee attacker with fast hitting attacks and movements - lightning element

Onyxian Tortoise - the tanky one made of black stone and focused on earth element attacks.

The Azure dragon/serpent - the water elemental that has focus on healing and attacking from mid range.

The vermilion phoenix - a fire element that attacks from afar with flames.

puppeteer type classes are rare in MMOs and I would like to see something like that in GW2. It would make an epic Canthan elite spec for sure.

Elite Name: Lich Knight

Class: Necromancer

Weapon unlocked: Sword and Shield

Weapon Skills:

#1: Combo centered around building up life force quickly. Deals low damage.

#2: A 6-8 hit slashing attack that recovers health to minions on each hit. If the minions are split on targets using this skill causes them to focus this one target.

#3: A channeled aoe that recovers health to minions. If you have multiple enemies and minions your minions will split up and attack different targets within the aoe.

#4: Create a wall of bone to block an enemies path and can be damaged. Grants life force when it takes damage.

#5: Block incoming attacks and heals minions for each block

Skill Category unlocked: Enhancements - used to buff your minions pending on which minion.

Utility/Elite:

Healing skill - heals self and grants regen to minions.

Dark Flame - cloaks your minions in a dark flame that changes effect based on the minion. Guard Skeleton - weakness, Sword Skeleton - gets burning on its attacks, Staff Skeleton - increases damage of their ranged attacks.

Bone Armor - increase minion durability by halting the degeneration of summoned minions.

Helm of Madness - causes your minions to gain a quickness effect for a certain amount of time. Their eyes radiate a red glow.

Elite: Bone Explosion - your minions rush target and explode dealing more damage depending on how high your minion counter is.

Traits:: A couple of GM traits would be

to increase your minion counter from 9 to 10 gaining access to a new powerful amalgamation.

minions decay more slowly than normal

F1 changes: Use life force to summon undead minions who have stats based on their type and their health slowly degenerates. There is a max counter of 9, or 10 traited.

F1: Skeleton Guard - summons a shield using skeleton. It has a high toughness stat and naturally decays slower than others.

F2: Sword Skeleton - A melee attacking skeleton that bleeds and poisons the target. Has focus on condition damage

F3: Staff Skeleton - A magic using skeleton that attacks from range with raw power. Has focus on power damage.

F4: Amalgamation - You combine 3 of your summons together to make more advanced minions who decay slower and become stronger.

Guardian Skeleton - Has high def and can better control your target usually keeping it off your more fragile summons. (at least 2 of the 3 sacrificed minions need to be Skeleton Guards.)

Warrior Skeleton - Carries two swords instead of one. Can inflict more conditions like torment and cripple. (at least 2 of the 3 are Sword Skeletons)

Lich skeleton - A more powerful magic using skeleton with access to bone minions that run to target and explode. (at least 2 of the 3 are Staff Skeletons)

If you select select the 10 counter you gain access to a new amalgamation.

Bone Wyvern - It looks and fight much like the adolescent wyvens seen in HoT mops. It requires you to have 10 basic level minions and uses up all 10 of your counters so until it dies...again... you won't be able to bring out another one. Its stats are made up of the skeleton you sacrifices. Guard - toughness and durability, Sword - condition damage, Staff - power. Outside of AA it has access to a breath skill pending on what the highest stat is. Power - A breath that deals raw damage, Condition - A poison breath that give stacks of poison in an aoe, for toughness debilitating roar that fears and grants debuffs weakening the enemy.

The skeletons summoned are randomly skeletons belonging to different playable races.

Role: The unique playstyle is a damage dealer that plays like a support. Your character supports the minions while the minions do the damage. You can choose to play a tanky role while doing so or have the Guard minions do that for you.

Mechanics: Your goal is to get a constant stream of life force to keep bringing out more undead. There are two different approaches to take when it comes to minions. Do you want to have several weaker minions, a smaller amount of advanced minions, or do you want one stronger minion. The minions are in a constant state of decay normally and your goal is to keep them up for as long as possible though skills that specifically heal minions. The stronger minions have a slower decay rate, while the basic minions when there are enough they can attack several times and can be split among targets.

Others: You will want to have high healing power to help counter the decay and if you want to be right in the enemies face to keep the enemy distracted then you may want toughness and Vitality as well. Due to the nature of toughness you might not want to use it during group play.

Counters: There are two major ways to counter this. One is to deny the Lich Knight life force stopping their ability to bring out more minions. Second is to kill their minions by focusing them down. Without their minions they are just a big punching bag with a butter knife.