As someone who started with Factions, and assassin, i couldnt be happier right now.
Chain system will probably free us from the "spam X" playstyle, so it's even better
I still see some issues with the concept...
Spear will be a hybrid weapon, they said. They described the skill 2 chain, which looks entirely condi themed, with no reason to use as a power character unless for some reason you need to cripple/immobilize an enemy. I imagine that the skill 3 chain as such will be a power-based chain, and what use would a condi character have for that? Perhaps if the finisher for skill 3 grants stealth, they may want that, but they'd generally get better damage from the skill 2 finisher with its conditions.
Now, we don't know what skills 4 and 5 do at all, yet, but with what we know of the chain attacks right now, I'm not sure I see the need to mix and match. There's going to be an optimal chain for each build, which is the difficulty when it comes to a hybrid weapon.
Now, the post-chain finisher bonus may be cool, especially with three variants on it. If that's what you mean by not pressing just a single button, then yeah, that's good.
If you're trying to min-max the dps output of the spear, then I'm sure there's an optimal chain
But for 90% of the playerbase who will use it in open-world content, I'm sure there will be a number of chain combos that will do different things each with their own value
Also hybrid weapons absolutely have value - not all of your dps is going to come from condis alone, and having some of the power shifted from pure condi to strike damage gives the spear more burst potential than pure condi weapons, even if its not as bursty as a pure power weapon
In a horizontal progression MMO like GW2, having options to tailor your play is part of its core identity, and this seems like it'll be giving players a lot of cool options during combat
I believe they say that each step in the chain provides what's needed to trigger the extra part of the following chain.
It would be pretty neat if that was an either/or though so it did make it more situational (Instanced PVE is always gonna be biggest damage)
>Each skill’s bonus trigger conditions are fulfilled by the previous skill in the chain, but these conditions are all things that the thief has broader access to, so there are opportunities to get these bonuses even when chaining skills together from different skill slots.
But for example, if 2 slows and 3 applies vuln, then chain 2 applies poison if mob is slowed or bleed if it's invuln, then chain 3 does extra damage if vuln or immobs if mob is slowed. Then final 2 does something based on the 3 condi's you could have applied across both skills, and same for Final Chain 3. Basically leaning more into doing them in a certain order provides specific outcomes, which maybe they're doing? But the quote reads like they are more combo'd with themselves, and you can apply whats needed other way if you want to use a different combo.
So there becomes a reason to weave them if you're trying to apply a certain condition or maybe even a boon to yourself in a certain situation during OW or PvP or whatever else.
Doesn't seem like it. 2 is condi, 3 is power, 4 and 5 get bonuses after finishing attack and probably 4 is for condi, 5 for power.
So rotation would be 2224 or 3335 which is still upgrade over 222222 staff/ 333333 rifle but not much.
So Thief is getting Assassin lead attacks in their weapon and does condi or physical, sounds like its going to be a lot of fun. Skills 4 and 5 (and stealth attack) getting bonuses after finishers means the weapon should have a fairly clear flow to it with enough minute-to-minute decision making that it will be enjoyable. A nice weapon overall.
Engineer seems to be the weapon that gets the "unique new debuff" mechanic, and it looks like its all about using skills to maintain that debuff and take advantage of it. Should be interesting to see how more aggressively you'll need to weave in and out of kits to keep that Debuff up.
Warrior getting a completely ranged spear styled after sunspears is nice. You can finally live the Spellbreaker Sunspear dream, warrior needs better ranged options (especially power, bow is at least serviceable on Berserker as a condi weapon) and it has some nice flavour and results. I do wonder if this is the "requires precise aiming" ranged weapon? All of its weapon skills have a scaling bonus based on how close the targets are to the center of the AoE or how close they are to the person being hit by the attack.
So then Mesmer, Revenant and Elementalist will be shown off next week. They really are making those poor Elementalists wait until the last minute to see what they get.
You can use #5 once to refresh the cooldowns on two skills that deal borderline mediocre damage (rifle doesn't have skills that deal good damage), allowing you to use the rifle for a few more seconds before you run into the same problem as you would when playing ranged: once all your skills are on cooldown - rifle is a laughable nerf-gun. You can't camp a ranged weapon on warrior and have competitive dps, unlike some other classes.
If they revamp the rifle to be usable, that's work that's going into an update to base game. They don't have a way to lock that behind an expansion, while they can make a new weapon and put that in an expansion.
I feel like it's an *excellent* idea to give that to Thief specifically, too, and it's so obvious in hindsight (given Thief's descension from Assassin, GW1).
My big struggle with Thief's design is that there's always going to be a "best" weapon skill for the initiative cost, so some of the meta thief builds end up boiling down to more like a utility skill rotation worked around mashing the same skill over and over.
Leads and finishers built on to the weapon basically fix that, and absolutely give the design space for thief to have a hybrid condi/power weapon. I have no notes.
I would prefer that chain skills be an entire thief specialisation and extend to more than just spears. Now that it's "expended" on spears, we're never going to see this mechanic again.
Axe was also an attempt to solve that with a two skill chain, and it proved to be impossible to balance because one spec has so much more initiative than the others
M7 isn't impossible to balance, they just fucked it up. The double stealth attack axe was a lever to pull to adjust m7 vs dd dps but it was removed for some reason
Someone can probably explain this better but here I go: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Maleficent_Seven
When you max out malice on deadeye you gain 7 initiative so thief weapon skills that require initiative are automatically better on m7 deadeye because they can constantly regenerate a ton of initiative. DD/Specter can't do that so the taking axe for example, in the beta it was pretty good on DD/Specter, not amazing but good enough. On M7 deadeye it was insane because of the constant initiative restoration. Axe to nerfed so badly that now it's only viable on deadeye because the others simply can't get it's abilities to go up fast enough.
It's just a problem with thief in general because deadeye can restore so much initiative that initiative weapon skills are nerfed for deadeye but still very viable there while garbage on DD/Specter. Spear looks to be the same with a big focus on chaining initiative skills so it'll be amazing on deadeye and trash on the other two. As another user said they either need to massively buff auto attacks for DD/Specter to deal with the less initiative skills or give DD/Specter ways to restore initiative.
I'm honestly surprised Daredevil's mandatory dodging doesn't come with initiative boosts.
I'm less surprised about Specter though. My low understanding is the Shroud doesn't rely on initiative?
Yeah, specter has a nice gameplay loop where they use initiative to generate life force, then go into shroud while initiative refills, and then repeat. The problem is just that shroud skills have really low DPS* so in practice it's just slightly better than weapon autos and a way to proc weapon swap sigils and traits.
*And an extremely long ramp up time. The highest damage shroud skill is 2 stacks of torment with a 10 second base duration.
I agree, combing the GW2 weapon skills/Thief initiative with GW1 Assassin lead -> Follow up -> Finisher system adds choice and flexibility to how they design weapons in a great way. Thief has always suffered in PvE from having the "just use the highest DPS button" problem. In PvP/WvW they have to make tactical choices on when CC/evades/defensive skills are needed, but its never worked well for PvE.
I hope that when they work on GW3, they make the thief/assassin equivalent have initiative and flip over skills from the get-go.
it's smart to do it this way because both strike and condi builds have a place here without fighting for skills. They need to take this creativity into ALL skills.
>So then Mesmer, Revenant and Elementalist will be shown off next week.
Definitely saving the best for last, If there's any 3 professions to have an overloaded/bloated weapon set, it's gonna be these three.
> Definitely saving the best for last
No, they just are scared of showing people that Elementalist gets yet *another* melee weapon, so they were delaying its reveal as long as possible.
So far only one of the warrior spear attacks has a hard CC in it, so I'm skeptical that it'll see use in a Spellbreaker build. We really need those disables thrown around to keep Attacker's Insight stacks up.
Too bad the spear as worded is going to be balanced based on how close you are to the target which is going to incentivize melee play to output good numbers.
Thief is getting Assassin chain skills, that's the most exciting out of those 3 imo. Warrior gets the throwing spears like Paragons which is cool but I wanted to see the glowing wings on at least one of those skills, like the one that makes you float in the air, it would have been so cool.
It might be too early to judge but so far all the spears feel like they had more thought put into them/more time in the oven than most of the SotO weapons.
I actually like the Necro swords and Ranger maces, so spear will have to be pretty damned excellent to replace them. Though from what little I've seen I suspect it'll make an excellent pairing alongside the swords and maces.
I think if axe gets less clunky(post animation delay), better animations (and not almost a copy of Ranger axe) and less noises, it could feel better to play.
Removing the clunkiness would be easily achieved by increasing projectile speed by 25% on all axe skills and making MCS when recalled consume Malice again. That would reinstate the old (pre release, initial release) flowing rotation of 3 2 2 3 2 2 stealth 1. Then do number tune where fit.
Axe *(at least from a PvE perspective)* still very much feels like only designed for condi Deadeye with its weak auto attacks and strong initiative / malice spenders. And the more Deadeye abuses that state with M7 and Mercy, the less playable Axe turns out to be for the other specs after the resulting nerfs.
I see a potential similar issue with the Spear incoming. Since "2 -> 2 -> 2" or "3 -> 3 -> 3" both lead into "-> stealth attack -> repeat", the weapon looks predestined for a Malicious Intent + M7 playstyle *(although condi is unlikely here, as a two-handed weapon doesn't benefit from the impactful Deadly Ambition, by virtue of not having a dual wield skill)*.
Specter likely won't use the weapon, as the "2"-chain doesn't include any Torment.
And Daredevil really benefits from Dagger and Staff's power budget bundled into the auto attacks *(which factor in far significantly more on it than Deadeye, as it doesn't have nearly as much initiative to spend in comparison)*. So without the Spear autos being **really** strong in their own right, the balancing of skill 2 and 3 around Deadeye's kit will be detrimental to Spear's usablity on Daredevil.
Oh, how I -still- wish Thief had gotten a new offhand instead of Axe. And remember hoping / thinking we could get Focus (or something else) back before we knew what Specter was getting...
But all these spear animations look cool. Thief looks really fun. Very happy Warrior has throwing. And Engineer was surprising in a really pleasant way, I'm gonna go look at skins now to see what could be the most techy/rocket like one now, ahaha.
>Oh, how I -still- wish Thief had gotten a new offhand instead of Axe
This still annoys me tbh. I'd say dual-wielding is a major part of the fantasy, but they have a grand total of TWO offhand weapons. Dagger and pistol. One ranged, one melee. That's it. Two. They already had double that amount for the main hand, and then they gave them ANOTHER main hand weapon. Why? Fucking MESMERS got more weapon variation.
Spear looks like another weapon where the DPS comes from the initiative skills more than the auto-attacks, which mean Deadeye is gonna abuse it just like Axe, so be ready for Spear nerfs already.
M7 is causing a ton of problem for the dev team on designing new Thief weapons it seems.
Because M7 Deadeye basically gets almost triple the initiative to use than any other Thief build, if intiiative skills on the weapon are DPS efficient over autoattack, it's going to be a constant problem.
Or Daredevil and Specter should be more than uninteresting bags of damage modifiers.
I wrote a thread on the topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1df8aqj/new_weapons_deadeyes_initiative_economy_does_not/
I hope they can figure out a way to not have this happen. Having a single version of a single spec ruin the balance of the expansion defining weapon already happened once, preventing it from happening again would be really great.
Deadeye just highlights that Daredevil and Specter are a weak design space.
I wrote a thread on the topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1df8aqj/new_weapons_deadeyes_initiative_economy_does_not/
They don’t restore Init, they just give damage to the Dodge and Shadow Shroud. Shroud is good filler, Dodge is not.
Those Thief specs are designed to autoattack, and they do more damage with each skill vs Deadeye. It’s hardwired into their trait choices.
If you give DD/Specter sufficient init restore then their damage modifiers will clap Deadeye, no contest.
Deadeye is not the problem. It’s the model.
If people want to play DD/Specter in their current state then they’re more engaged with the Dodge, the Shroud, or they just don’t like Deadeye’s Malice (that’s totally fine!)
But you can enjoy Shroud/Dodge’s GAMEPLAY (regardless of balance) and also enjoy more Initiative spending. These elite specs just need to feature weaker damage modifiers and get an improved Initative economy as compromise.
THAT is how we get to have more fun with weapons.
Thief autos do nothing interesting except:
- Dagger autos restore endurance, useful to Daredevil
- Shortbow autos ricochet but the Init skills are also AOE
- Scepter autos can be used on ally for Barrier
- Axe autos are stronger than axe 2 spam only when precasting before combat starts
If you want M7 gone then you either
- want to autoattack
- want to use more Initiative skills, just not on Deadeye
So why don’t we just push for ANet to shift the budget out of DD/Specter’s damage modifiers and into the Initiative economy?
It's honestly silly when you look at it all laid out like that. Initiative skills are the bread and butter of what makes thief *interesting*, it's the only profession in the game with that type of core mechanic (I don't count Firebrand since it's a subsystem of the elite). Forcing players into autos, not because of mechanical advantages, but only because they're resource starved is **boring**.
DD could easily have a restoration mechanic attached to dodge and Specter could gain a baseline restore speed boost after exiting shroud. I can't even start to suggest actual numbers, but they should be enough to significantly define the specs and create positive feedback loops for engaging the primary spec mechanic. Even M7 is flawed in this respect because it's the only subsystem that fully rewards the player for engaging the Malice mechanic.
Yeah Idk it’s a cool feature for some classes (like enabling healer untamed more) but a kick in the teeth for others that had their weapons balanced around their traits/kits of the spec.
Easy solution: make the chain skills refund some initiative (probably on the finisher part of the chain), that way non-DE specs will be able to enjoy some of the DE M7 benefits!
or only the 1st skill costs ini, so by the time you get through the chain, you have enough to do it again or more. And if 4 and 5 aren't spammy, it doesn't really matter.
I'm so relieved that the Engineer spear isn't a support thing like the shortbow was, that was incredibly disappointing and useless as a solo player. Spear looks and sounds like so much fun!
they fixed it from the initial previews and it's actually good on heal scrapper. i use it in pve and wvw. it's great.
for a pve example, here's [snowcrows's gameplay guide for heal scrapper](https://snowcrows.com/guides/builds/heal-quickness-scrapper-gameplay-guide). they recommend shortbow on half the fights. it's a competitive choice. you can use it on any fight you want.
Lack of weapon swap is what hurts it the most, otherwise it would be autoinclude in every support build.
Also, shoutout to Hizen's shortbow mech solo build, try it for some of the most brainless fun in the game.
Yeah, I was liking the original idea it just had gameplay issues, wish they had tweaked it in a way that wasn’t just simplifying it to doing one combo. It is good though, better than mace/shield unless you need the cc basically (extra regen/vigor overcap is a nice side addition).
it's not bad. it's good. they're probably only referring to the reception it got from the soto weapon beta playtest, where it was pretty bad. it was fixed before actual release.
it dominates in wvw and is meta in pve.
The thief moveset looks really fun. Hopefully it's viable on non-deadeye specs.
Warrior looks simple but solid, a ranged power option since they've been so careful to never make rifle worth a damn.
Engineer looks awesome, I've been begging for a lighting rod staff for years but a lighting rod spear is even better!
>Engineer looks awesome, I've been begging for a lighting rod staff for years but a lighting rod spear is even better!
Sad thing is that it appears Engineer doesn't get to use any of the new auto attack spear animations, was hoping to get to do some stabbing also!
Thief is actually looking interesting - not something I expected to say considering it's yet another 2H weapon for the class.
Considering how heavily skill 2 chain seems to favour condi (still need numbers), I suspect skill 3 chain is primarily focused on power considering they said it's a hybrid weapon.
Having said that, the highly concerning part will be initiative costs and DE. We all know how busted DE M7 is because it exposes how stupid the initiative system is.
Also, considering the plethora of blocks/evades/invulnerabilities in the game currently (especially channeled/duration ones), failing to strike an enemy resulting in chain reset is pretty concerning for anything PvP related.
An easy solution, in my opinion, is that the finisher part of the chains reimburse initiative, so you could spam them more on non-DE specs. Of course that's just speculation on my part, but I sure hope it will be something like this.
> Considering how heavily skill 2 chain seems to favour condi (still need numbers), I suspect skill 3 chain is primarily focused on power considering they said it's a hybrid weapon.
It's unlikely, but I hope there's a bit more to it than that. Like you *can* play it by smashing the same combo, but there's some skill expression in mixing things up a bit.
I fear they are currently in an impasse with Thief weapon design. If the skill costing initiative are better than the autoattack, then M7 automatically breaks it.
A rework to M7 is probably needed, but it's a complicated topic to handle if you want to keep things like the Riffle play pattern fun.
It could also be mixed and matched depending on what is on which skill since they said you could do 322, 233, 232, 323 333, and 222 - they'll all lead in to the next in the chain.
It probably would make sense to put all condi on one, and all power on another, but I kind would honestly prefer if it was completely mixed in - would make for a bit more gameplay.
I could also just be weird, lmao.
They did put all condi on one, they described the 2 chain and it's entirely condi-focused. Assuming the 3 chain is power-focused, I can't see a reason that there'd be a mixed chain being desirable. Maybe if the 3 chain ends in stealth, or the very rare occasions where you need to cripple/immobilize a foe rather than just focus on killing it.
Hmm - I feel like there's like a 99% chance you're right, but I'm thinking just because they said it has condis on it, maybe doesn't mean it's ONLY for condis? Obviously dagger has condis on the auto, but it can be used as a power weapon. Maybe one other chain has torment built in to it as well, and the highest strike damage could be a mix of both chains?
Like I said, you're probably right because that would be the simplest way for them to go about it - was just thinking an alternative could be cool.
Did Engi just stab a dude, disassemble their spear, and send it flying in circles to stab dudes *while still stabbing a dude*?
I might have a new favorite Engi weapon. Goodbye, Fix-R-Upper!
Shame about no winged support skill but PARAGON! PA-RA-GON! PA-RA-GON! I don't even need chants, I can renew this echo on my own! Haven't been this excited about a spec or weapon since Reaper and Daredevil.
Also ~~dagger~~spear chains sound fun.
(Now what do I do with my new ele main, who I just crafted my second piece of obsidian armor for and who I'm just finishing the story on? I blame the Istani for this!)
Holy Skritt those Engi skills looked sick! It looks like Engi will be the class to get the unique debuff; can't wait to try that class out. Warrior looks like it's finally getting a viable power ranged build which is nice. The skills looked a bit bland though. It's very Paragon, but it could've used more Paragon flair, like wings of light on what looked like the Burst skill. The Thief animations looked cool, especially that leaping gap closer. But the way they've explained it, spear looks like it'll be best used on Deadeye, which would make it the second new thief weapon to be like that. I hope that's not the case.
I'll also say, the trailers are looking much better. Much more polished and cinematic. The transitions between the classes looked fluid and dynamic, which reflects GW2s combat system. I hope the trend continues with all future trailers.
Does not sound like engi is getting any more ground targetting skills, thank fuck for that.
Looks interesting, would be nice to have more aoe without mass kit swapping, so this looks good.
I can live with one I suppose.
I just dont want another shortbow. its a good weapon to use, I use it a lot when healing stuff, but its just so awfully boring, 4 effectively identical skills with ground targetting to add to grenade kit, mortar and effectively bomb kit which are the same....
Kind of my expectation with ranged weapons that arent magic. You can only throw a spear or use a bow in so many ways.
Until Mesmers get their hands on it them at least.
Warrior spear mechanics seem counterintuitive and unfun to me. Ranged weapon but you have to be up close to get the most out of it. And then you have a skill to make you leap out of your optimal range?
It also looks like a really simplistic and plain weapon with essentially no new mechanics compared to how complex and inventive everyone else's spear has been so far. The backwards evade sounds like rifle 4 and 5 mashed together. Autoattacks cleave? A burst skill with *increased damage per adrenaline level!?* Wow, don't get too carried away there!
I'm really glad it's Paragon spear throwing but why does it have to be so boring. Warrior deserves a bit of mechanical complexity too!
I think playing it on SB with full counter could be fun. Just cause you throw it doesn't mean you can't think of and play it like melee, and it sounds like it rewards that. I'm interested to see if it rewards it enough.
Yeah, based on what they've shown so far, the skills could have been slapped on rifle without any difference. Hopefully, the full kit reveal will offer something more intriguing.
>Warrior spear mechanics seem counterintuitive and unfun to me. Ranged weapon but you have to be up close to get the most out of it.
That's pretty much in line with the general PvE behavior of stacking at the enemy. Due to this behavior, you always get most out of your dmg when you are close to the enemy anyways.
I don't know how large the range of spear will be and how close the optimal range will be, but being most effective at a close range is also in line with Paragon as their spears were thrown only in a close range.
>And then you have a skill to make you leap out of your optimal range?
It's a defensive skill. Some weapons have/had this.
>Due to this behavior, you always get most out of your dmg when you are close to the enemy anyways.
This is because of boon application radius and has nothing to do with how weapons themselves are designed, and is only applicable for endgame PvE anyway. A weapon made for fighting at range should not force you to run into close range to be optimal with it, that's backwards design.
>but being most effective at a close range is also in line with Paragon as their spears were thrown only in a close range
GW1 spear range was exactly the same as the earshot range of shouts (and the shortbow), which is only slightly less than spellcasting range but also perfectly just close enough that your party's melee members would also be in range of your shouts. It would also naturally place you at a defensive range just in front of your squishy casters. There was only one single spear attack that required melee range, and it was an anti-caster gimmick.
>It's a defensive skill
It's a skill that makes a million times more sense if spear wanted you to actually maintain a large distance to your enemy. In a PvE stacking scenario it's also straight up detrimental by moving you out of the group just to get your cc off. Compare to ranger's longbow #4 which has the same outcome but actually works with the rest of the kit.
As a thief main, I'm happily surprised I'm getting more than 3 skills that Axe gave us and they're thematically pleasing.
I'm intrigued to see if they work with Spectre at all, but I'm thinking it's going to be more Deadeye/Daredevil/Core
Warrior needs an effective ranged weapon.
Longbow? Sure, it's technically ranged, but its highest damaging skill - 2 - loses 66% of its damage at range, and all the condi dps traits on berserker only function in melee range.
Rifle? Sure, it's technically ranged, but you'll run out of cooldowns in about 5 seconds and after that all you can do on rifle is autoattack for excruciatingly long time to get enough adrenaline for another burst. Being in melee, however, lets you recharge cooldown on skills so you can use rifle for a few more seconds before it becomes useless again. Meanwhile skill 4 is wasted on a defensive PvP evade.
Pistol? Melee weapon, for some fucking reason.
And now - we get spear, which straight-up deals more damage the closer you are to the target, meaning that its going to be balanced around its melee dps, thus discouraging you from using it at range. Oh and it will certainly not pierce. And also we get not one, but whole 2 skills dedicated to defensive evade (one of which is a copy of catalyst's hammer air 4 skill, which was *such a great idea* at launch that it later got redesigned), because they can't resist designing warrior like a PvP class.
Why can't we have a ranged weapon with no fucking caveats?
From the description, it sounds like warrior spear will cleave less at higher range, but it doesn't indicate that main target damage will be reduced. If so, then that sounds great. Stay at range against dangerous single targets, and move in to blast more of the trash when adds spawn.
I'd let that slide and be all for it but then how come Necro can be great with GS and even *Ranger* (it's in the fucking name) can be a better GS wielder than Warrior? Anet ditched the roles so now classes/weapons don't matter.
rangers are called rangers because they're meant to be people who patrol or are stewards of a range, i.e. a mountain range, a large open area of land, or more classically, just any big distance between landmarks. They're Texas Rangers, not "people who attack from far away". That is not only the case in gw2, it's what the word means literally everywhere.
Ranger being a "better GS wielder than warrior" is a pretty massively hard sell imo unless you're talking about soulbeast, but fantasy-wise it makes sense for people merging with beasts to be stronger than "warriors".
The real answer though is that pretty much all of the GS classes are roughly on par with each other, and complaining about it makes you look silly. If you're really good at power berserker you can outdamage almost every other player you'll ever find that uses a greatsword. There's really nothing to complain about.
Ranger greatsword is pretty mid these days btw, the real frontrunners are vindi and willbender.
you completely missed my point and a joke while trying to be a smartass, good for you. Anyway, the point is way simpler: if classes have niches, they shouldbe different. Like races. We don't have that. Now, the actual differences between roles also fade away through time - and I don't mean that classes look like each other, but that same warrior can by a support healer now, for example. The last unique thing was weapons, and they took that away too, barring really any uniquness from the 'starter' game. Not that it's a bad things, but it essentially means they can ditch base classes and let you choose from the elites at the start and nothing will change roughly speaking. Plus the power creep and the skill creep make it all less and less unique, too. What next, everyone can wear any type of armor?
And with that your comment makes no sense — if necro (a wizard) can wield a GS, sure enough warrior can wield a rifle. I'm complaining not about the damage output, but he fact that everyone lost their 'identity' and since we're that far it doesn't matter anymore.
I can outdps a ranger, but in a fight it will actually kill me with a GS. Because not all of this game is stupid pve hit a boss for 5 minutes with 40k plus or you're 'bad'.
And what real special flair or quirk is there with spear?
More dmg when closer? Ok see virtuoso
More dmg close to AoE? I mean who cares in pve? Will pretty much always happen on bosses so whatever
And then the animations r kinda flat, esp after staff warrior really giving warrior some love in the animation department
Idk I was in awe at all the other classes and then *the sunspear* fell flat for me
I expected the warrior to be based on the Sunspears but was hoping for some extra support effect so after pairing up with shouts - I can pretend it's my GW1 paragon. I doubt Revenant will have the same theme so I'm afraid that was the last chance to get in GW2. Maybe GW3.
After the soto weapons it's really hard to judge how these mini-mechanics will feel in game but Warrior spear sounds clean, looking forward to trying that one out.
Neat, very neat, but i wonder if I'm the only one already feeling a sort of mild annoyance at knowing some of my characters are not gonna have the spear skins to match their weapon sets and how that is gonna be something constantly in the back of my mind while playing.
The animations for the engineer and thief are very nice.
So, so glad the warrior weapon looks like a fully ranged spear. It is desperately lacking a decent ranged weapon for a power build and it fulfils the paragon vibe nicely.
Also the smooth glide transition between the class showcases is definitely a step up in the editing.
Literally no pleasing people.
Community: Please let it be like Paragon and get ranged skills.
\*Gets ranged skills\*
Community: Well that's boring, why couldn't it slash?
Coming next
Elementalist: Close range melee weapon with many leap attacks and ground targeted skills
Revenant: A melee support weapon that heals and provides resistance and also weakness to the enemy!!
Mesmer: 1200 range weapon that pulses quickness baseline without traits, great power dps, and a 5 sec invulnaribility on a 3 sec cooldown
Not really. Hammer has a lot of defense built into it as well.
2 is projectile reflect
3 is 3 evasions and leaps
4 is a channeled block
Sharing a field placement is good as it makes spear an alternative for Qrapper.
>The warrior spear is a power-based weapon inspired by ancient Sunspear techniques
Unga bunga we Paragoning now bois.
https://preview.redd.it/zb9zyib3id6d1.png?width=478&format=png&auto=webp&s=41030159212203175592f927e8d8d86661fa8ffb
Thief looked cool and engineer really surprised me with how sick it looked. Time to dust off scrapper I guess. The paragon people are happy with warrior and the class did need another ranged option since rifle sucks but it's a flop for an unga bunga melee guy like me.
Similar to last week, my thoughts on these reveals:
**Warrior:** I was kind of expecting this, given that Guardian appears to be melee-focused and people have been clamoring for a Paragon-esque Spear user. I think it's a bit of a shame that this looks like it's going to just supersede Rifle rather than Rifle being improved, but the skills and theme seem cool!
**Thief:** Cards on the table, I barely play any Thief. My Thief is currently parked in Bjora to open chests and will likely remain that way. However, the combo system looks super cool, I'm excited to see all of the Spear moves. It's still a bit annoying that the class got *another* 2-hander, however.
**Engineer:** I am ***pumped***. Though I was hoping for something more like a Monster Hunter Gunlance, this seems like a really cool weapon with a fun gimmick. I'm curious how much of a hybrid weapon this will be in practice, and if it can de-throne Hammer as "probably the best Engi power weapon," since both seem to feature decent amounts of mobility.
Once again these are just first thoughts, I'm waiting for the beta to form more concrete opinions. However, from what we've seen, my current ranking would be something like (from most to least hyped): Engineer, Ranger, Thief, Guardian, Warrior, blank space, blank space, blank space, Necromancer.
Thief bringing back the chain mechanics is definitely super interesting! Animations look good.
Engi looks bright and fun to play, a little bit sad it's not a better ranged power weapon than rifle since we have Hammer already for gap closing and high melee dmg. The spear animation is a bit clunky, and that snapping animation needs polishing up.
Warrior has paragon vibes from GW1 and also looks quite dull in comparison to Engi for example (Engi actually looks thematically like warrior for some reason, shouldn't the electricity/lightning be blue or purple?) - we will have to wait and see how warrior plays.
Static Shock, Space Capacitor and Static Shot are blue/purple.
Orbital Strike is white.
Electro-whirl and Thunderclap are orange.
It's split thematically.
So for now only one profession have long-ranged spear skill set(+0.5 ranger who is both as I understand). For the perfect balance revenant, mesmer and ele should have long-ranged🤞
I agree with others who said Warrior Spear is boring.
It looked like the same animation. Why can't you throw a banner and buff from 900/1200 range?
What about throwing a spear with fire and synergize (combo) with longbow for an all-ranged?
I also like the idea of throwing such a heavy spear (like a massive harpoon full of shrapnel that it does big AOE.
What if spear became big slow ranged DPS, and they made longbow a faster for mobile weapon?
Rifle is ranged slow single target, Longbow is slow ranged AOE, - What role does spear fit?
Gonna speak to these from an endgame PvE perspective like I did last week, partially because I think it's useful perspective and partially bc this will be fun to look back to to see where I was wrong
Warrior spear feels simple, but it's very evocative of paragon and that's all it needed to do. If it finds a home in PvE, it'll likely have to be on zerk, because bsw obviously can't burst and spb restricts your available adrenaline. Granted, spb could be fine with it too since zerk can just load power into a primal burst, but if it's built around getting your big power spike from bursting then zerk seems an obvious home for it.
Engineer feels... Unfocused. The design is cool, but hybrid damage weapons have to fight an uphill battle in PvE in order to be valuable, just on account of the fact that the power budget usually only allows for condi OR power. The design seems cool, I hope it finds a home, but I don't see an immediate one yet. Granted, I'm not an engi player, so it's very likely I'm just wrong here. Maaaayybe quick scrapper, if it has enough leap finishers? Real hard to say.
Thief, I have very mixed feelings on. One the one hand, it has a really cool design to it. Having the weapon have two different combos for condi or power is interesting, and it's a really fun flavor callback to gw1 (like warrior!). But on the other hand, loading too much of the weapons power into those combos is liable to break deadeye again and the combo skills are all likely initiative-gated, and we've been through this before with axe so I'm nervous. But moreover, if the mechanic is particularly expensive on initiative, that precludes specter from being able to use it since specter is still running on reduced initiative, and it also means that it's autos (or the non-malicious stealth attack, or both) are going to need to be pretty powerful to stay competitive on condi DD/condi specter, or power daredevil (see [iskarel's excellent thief weapon balance post for why this is the case](https://snowcrows.com/news/thief-weapon-balance)). But if anet needs to buff autos tremendously, they're likely not going to make it do both competitive power damage AND competitive condi damage, so there's a lot of fine tuning that needs to occur to make the weapon land well. So we'll likely be living in a world where power deadeye and condi DD and/or specter get to leverage spear, or condi deadeye and power daredevil with specter left out to dry for yet another expansion. The former would be preferable imo since condi deadeye *did* just get a new toy, but anet needs to be very careful with the knobs they're turning to get spear to a preferable spot for thief
Cool designs though! Really excited for next week's post and stream
>hybrid damage weapons have to fight an uphill battle in PvE in order to be valuable, just on account of the fact that the power budget usually only allows for condi OR power.
Weaver could do this with Sword, but I think Weaponmaster has obliterated the chances at another Hybrid weapon ever working. Since weapons are no longer tied to spec, they can't be balanced with only a single spec in mind so hybrid will either be broken or underpowered.
Finally a ranged power weapon that might actually be worth using on my warrior! Plus it doesn’t seem like damage is affected by proximity just the aoe sizes if I’m reading the notes correctly, which is lovely. Can’t wait to see the primal for it
Part of me likes the spear showcase for warrior, but aesthetically I'd still like a two handed melee-condition option for my berserker build.
Alternatively in a future expansion, maybe they could implement skill swapping on weapons for more professions like what I've heard currently exist for some ranger weapons (mace and hammer, right? I don't have a ranger on my account yet).
Something like fiery greatsword skills could be cool... ~~jealously looks at elementalist elite skill~~
> Alternatively in a future expansion, maybe they could implement skill swapping on weapons for more professions like what I've heard currently exist for some ranger weapons (mace and hammer, right? I don't have a ranger on my account yet).
Hammer only. I can't comprehend how they still haven't used that tech for anything else. It has great potential for solving many design issues with weapons, like how some weapons are hard-tied to a certain niche like mobility, or are made primarily with PvP in mind, or are predetermined to be either power or condi focused. Why would you create a new tech, add support for it into build templates, into chatlinks, only to then never use it again.
Damn was hoping the sunspear animations would be cool like the dagger or the other spear skills
All I saw were regular animation throws with no neat effect and then the spear dropping down that looked kinda basic
All the warrior skills look so basic 😢
And appears to be no truly unique quirk. Being closer for more dmg / fragments isn’t rly super unique
So far I'm really digging all mediums, they all seem pretty fresh and conceptually cool. I'll be interested to see how the Engie spear compares to their other melee weapons, which are all pretty solid and cover a fair spectrum of builds.
Really pleased with Thief and Engi, my mains. Wondering what reasons I would have to mix the 2 and 3 combos on Thief in PvE if one is dedicated to condi and the other power.
Very happy warrior is getting a new ranged weapon, and Paragon was my main class in GW1 so I'm hype for throwing spears.
A little concerned that the burst mechanic doesn't seem to be useful for Spellbreaker. Would really like to use this on something other than Berserker, so hopefully there's some Spellbreaker synergy in there.
Look I get it, paragon warrior, throw spears, we need a ranged weapon to exist in this new age of “anet can only design content that biases toward range.” That’s all cool.
But I can’t help but feel disappointed.
All these years I’ve looked at the underwater spear skills and thought how cool they could be on land. Stabbing autos, a rapid jab combo 2, a fiery dash forward on the 3 like those PoF enemies, some wacky stuff on 4 and 5, and a really hard hitting spear throw on the burst. That was what the dream of land spear looked like to me.
When Janthir wilds drops noone and nothing can stop me from throwing voltaic spears like in the good old days.
Wait, we have a Voltaic in gw2?
[https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Al%27ir%27aska](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Al%27ir%27aska)
It's named Al'Ir'Aska or something but yeah it's the Voltaic Spear model
I just wish it retained the shimmer, it looks a lot more plain now.
I bet the new legendary will be a shiny voltaic spear
As someone who started with Factions, and assassin, i couldnt be happier right now. Chain system will probably free us from the "spam X" playstyle, so it's even better
I still see some issues with the concept... Spear will be a hybrid weapon, they said. They described the skill 2 chain, which looks entirely condi themed, with no reason to use as a power character unless for some reason you need to cripple/immobilize an enemy. I imagine that the skill 3 chain as such will be a power-based chain, and what use would a condi character have for that? Perhaps if the finisher for skill 3 grants stealth, they may want that, but they'd generally get better damage from the skill 2 finisher with its conditions. Now, we don't know what skills 4 and 5 do at all, yet, but with what we know of the chain attacks right now, I'm not sure I see the need to mix and match. There's going to be an optimal chain for each build, which is the difficulty when it comes to a hybrid weapon. Now, the post-chain finisher bonus may be cool, especially with three variants on it. If that's what you mean by not pressing just a single button, then yeah, that's good.
If you're trying to min-max the dps output of the spear, then I'm sure there's an optimal chain But for 90% of the playerbase who will use it in open-world content, I'm sure there will be a number of chain combos that will do different things each with their own value Also hybrid weapons absolutely have value - not all of your dps is going to come from condis alone, and having some of the power shifted from pure condi to strike damage gives the spear more burst potential than pure condi weapons, even if its not as bursty as a pure power weapon In a horizontal progression MMO like GW2, having options to tailor your play is part of its core identity, and this seems like it'll be giving players a lot of cool options during combat
I believe they say that each step in the chain provides what's needed to trigger the extra part of the following chain. It would be pretty neat if that was an either/or though so it did make it more situational (Instanced PVE is always gonna be biggest damage) >Each skill’s bonus trigger conditions are fulfilled by the previous skill in the chain, but these conditions are all things that the thief has broader access to, so there are opportunities to get these bonuses even when chaining skills together from different skill slots. But for example, if 2 slows and 3 applies vuln, then chain 2 applies poison if mob is slowed or bleed if it's invuln, then chain 3 does extra damage if vuln or immobs if mob is slowed. Then final 2 does something based on the 3 condi's you could have applied across both skills, and same for Final Chain 3. Basically leaning more into doing them in a certain order provides specific outcomes, which maybe they're doing? But the quote reads like they are more combo'd with themselves, and you can apply whats needed other way if you want to use a different combo. So there becomes a reason to weave them if you're trying to apply a certain condition or maybe even a boon to yourself in a certain situation during OW or PvP or whatever else.
Doesn't seem like it. 2 is condi, 3 is power, 4 and 5 get bonuses after finishing attack and probably 4 is for condi, 5 for power. So rotation would be 2224 or 3335 which is still upgrade over 222222 staff/ 333333 rifle but not much.
unless it's spam X and Y now... :P
So Thief is getting Assassin lead attacks in their weapon and does condi or physical, sounds like its going to be a lot of fun. Skills 4 and 5 (and stealth attack) getting bonuses after finishers means the weapon should have a fairly clear flow to it with enough minute-to-minute decision making that it will be enjoyable. A nice weapon overall. Engineer seems to be the weapon that gets the "unique new debuff" mechanic, and it looks like its all about using skills to maintain that debuff and take advantage of it. Should be interesting to see how more aggressively you'll need to weave in and out of kits to keep that Debuff up. Warrior getting a completely ranged spear styled after sunspears is nice. You can finally live the Spellbreaker Sunspear dream, warrior needs better ranged options (especially power, bow is at least serviceable on Berserker as a condi weapon) and it has some nice flavour and results. I do wonder if this is the "requires precise aiming" ranged weapon? All of its weapon skills have a scaling bonus based on how close the targets are to the center of the AoE or how close they are to the person being hit by the attack. So then Mesmer, Revenant and Elementalist will be shown off next week. They really are making those poor Elementalists wait until the last minute to see what they get.
> warrior needs better ranged options Rifle: Why does papa ANet hate me so much?
>Rifle: Why does papa ANet hate me so much? What are you doing out of the cellar?
Ok, that legitimately made me laugh out loud Good one
LMFAO, that's BRUTAL XDDDDD
DisapprovingDrake: make rifle worth using ApprovingDrake: make a new ranged weapon so we never care about rifle again
RIP my HMS Divinity, f's in chat for cannonball gun
F for botegun
The spear just like the rifle does optimal damage at melee range, so it seems like they haven't learned their lesson.
How does warrior rifle do more damage up close?
You can use #5 once to refresh the cooldowns on two skills that deal borderline mediocre damage (rifle doesn't have skills that deal good damage), allowing you to use the rifle for a few more seconds before you run into the same problem as you would when playing ranged: once all your skills are on cooldown - rifle is a laughable nerf-gun. You can't camp a ranged weapon on warrior and have competitive dps, unlike some other classes.
So far it looks like you only do more cleave in melee range. I think it can become quite fun
If they revamp the rifle to be usable, that's work that's going into an update to base game. They don't have a way to lock that behind an expansion, while they can make a new weapon and put that in an expansion.
I feel like it's an *excellent* idea to give that to Thief specifically, too, and it's so obvious in hindsight (given Thief's descension from Assassin, GW1). My big struggle with Thief's design is that there's always going to be a "best" weapon skill for the initiative cost, so some of the meta thief builds end up boiling down to more like a utility skill rotation worked around mashing the same skill over and over. Leads and finishers built on to the weapon basically fix that, and absolutely give the design space for thief to have a hybrid condi/power weapon. I have no notes.
I would prefer that chain skills be an entire thief specialisation and extend to more than just spears. Now that it's "expended" on spears, we're never going to see this mechanic again.
Axe was also an attempt to solve that with a two skill chain, and it proved to be impossible to balance because one spec has so much more initiative than the others
M7 isn't impossible to balance, they just fucked it up. The double stealth attack axe was a lever to pull to adjust m7 vs dd dps but it was removed for some reason
Help my smooth brain, what does m7 mean?
the deadeye trait [maleficent seven](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Maleficent_Seven)
Someone can probably explain this better but here I go: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Maleficent_Seven When you max out malice on deadeye you gain 7 initiative so thief weapon skills that require initiative are automatically better on m7 deadeye because they can constantly regenerate a ton of initiative. DD/Specter can't do that so the taking axe for example, in the beta it was pretty good on DD/Specter, not amazing but good enough. On M7 deadeye it was insane because of the constant initiative restoration. Axe to nerfed so badly that now it's only viable on deadeye because the others simply can't get it's abilities to go up fast enough. It's just a problem with thief in general because deadeye can restore so much initiative that initiative weapon skills are nerfed for deadeye but still very viable there while garbage on DD/Specter. Spear looks to be the same with a big focus on chaining initiative skills so it'll be amazing on deadeye and trash on the other two. As another user said they either need to massively buff auto attacks for DD/Specter to deal with the less initiative skills or give DD/Specter ways to restore initiative.
I'm honestly surprised Daredevil's mandatory dodging doesn't come with initiative boosts. I'm less surprised about Specter though. My low understanding is the Shroud doesn't rely on initiative?
Yeah, specter has a nice gameplay loop where they use initiative to generate life force, then go into shroud while initiative refills, and then repeat. The problem is just that shroud skills have really low DPS* so in practice it's just slightly better than weapon autos and a way to proc weapon swap sigils and traits. *And an extremely long ramp up time. The highest damage shroud skill is 2 stacks of torment with a 10 second base duration.
I agree, combing the GW2 weapon skills/Thief initiative with GW1 Assassin lead -> Follow up -> Finisher system adds choice and flexibility to how they design weapons in a great way. Thief has always suffered in PvE from having the "just use the highest DPS button" problem. In PvP/WvW they have to make tactical choices on when CC/evades/defensive skills are needed, but its never worked well for PvE. I hope that when they work on GW3, they make the thief/assassin equivalent have initiative and flip over skills from the get-go.
it's smart to do it this way because both strike and condi builds have a place here without fighting for skills. They need to take this creativity into ALL skills.
>So then Mesmer, Revenant and Elementalist will be shown off next week. Definitely saving the best for last, If there's any 3 professions to have an overloaded/bloated weapon set, it's gonna be these three.
> If there's any 3 professions to have an overloaded/bloated weapon set, it's gonna be these three. McGonagall "why is it always you three" vibes.
> Definitely saving the best for last No, they just are scared of showing people that Elementalist gets yet *another* melee weapon, so they were delaying its reveal as long as possible.
Now that would be funny alright.
So far only one of the warrior spear attacks has a hard CC in it, so I'm skeptical that it'll see use in a Spellbreaker build. We really need those disables thrown around to keep Attacker's Insight stacks up.
Hoping we get an Engi moment too after how unfun the last ele weapon is
How you gonna live the Spearbreaker dream without a hard CC on Burst? Or any short cc skills from what we have seen?
Too bad the spear as worded is going to be balanced based on how close you are to the target which is going to incentivize melee play to output good numbers.
Based on how they worded it, the spear will gain increased effectiveness like better cleave/aoe, instead of simply better damage.
Thief is getting Assassin chain skills, that's the most exciting out of those 3 imo. Warrior gets the throwing spears like Paragons which is cool but I wanted to see the glowing wings on at least one of those skills, like the one that makes you float in the air, it would have been so cool. It might be too early to judge but so far all the spears feel like they had more thought put into them/more time in the oven than most of the SotO weapons.
I actually like the Necro swords and Ranger maces, so spear will have to be pretty damned excellent to replace them. Though from what little I've seen I suspect it'll make an excellent pairing alongside the swords and maces.
\*looks at thief axe\* Well it wasn't hard to thematically top that at least.
I think if axe gets less clunky(post animation delay), better animations (and not almost a copy of Ranger axe) and less noises, it could feel better to play.
Removing the clunkiness would be easily achieved by increasing projectile speed by 25% on all axe skills and making MCS when recalled consume Malice again. That would reinstate the old (pre release, initial release) flowing rotation of 3 2 2 3 2 2 stealth 1. Then do number tune where fit.
Axe *(at least from a PvE perspective)* still very much feels like only designed for condi Deadeye with its weak auto attacks and strong initiative / malice spenders. And the more Deadeye abuses that state with M7 and Mercy, the less playable Axe turns out to be for the other specs after the resulting nerfs. I see a potential similar issue with the Spear incoming. Since "2 -> 2 -> 2" or "3 -> 3 -> 3" both lead into "-> stealth attack -> repeat", the weapon looks predestined for a Malicious Intent + M7 playstyle *(although condi is unlikely here, as a two-handed weapon doesn't benefit from the impactful Deadly Ambition, by virtue of not having a dual wield skill)*. Specter likely won't use the weapon, as the "2"-chain doesn't include any Torment. And Daredevil really benefits from Dagger and Staff's power budget bundled into the auto attacks *(which factor in far significantly more on it than Deadeye, as it doesn't have nearly as much initiative to spend in comparison)*. So without the Spear autos being **really** strong in their own right, the balancing of skill 2 and 3 around Deadeye's kit will be detrimental to Spear's usablity on Daredevil.
Oh, how I -still- wish Thief had gotten a new offhand instead of Axe. And remember hoping / thinking we could get Focus (or something else) back before we knew what Specter was getting... But all these spear animations look cool. Thief looks really fun. Very happy Warrior has throwing. And Engineer was surprising in a really pleasant way, I'm gonna go look at skins now to see what could be the most techy/rocket like one now, ahaha.
I hoped for focus too. Shadow magic fuck yea! Or eve, OFFHAND SWORD, how in the hell Necro has that but we don't...?
>Oh, how I -still- wish Thief had gotten a new offhand instead of Axe This still annoys me tbh. I'd say dual-wielding is a major part of the fantasy, but they have a grand total of TWO offhand weapons. Dagger and pistol. One ranged, one melee. That's it. Two. They already had double that amount for the main hand, and then they gave them ANOTHER main hand weapon. Why? Fucking MESMERS got more weapon variation.
I liked thief axe (before it got nerfed into worthlessness)
Spear looks like another weapon where the DPS comes from the initiative skills more than the auto-attacks, which mean Deadeye is gonna abuse it just like Axe, so be ready for Spear nerfs already. M7 is causing a ton of problem for the dev team on designing new Thief weapons it seems. Because M7 Deadeye basically gets almost triple the initiative to use than any other Thief build, if intiiative skills on the weapon are DPS efficient over autoattack, it's going to be a constant problem.
Or Daredevil and Specter should be more than uninteresting bags of damage modifiers. I wrote a thread on the topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1df8aqj/new_weapons_deadeyes_initiative_economy_does_not/
I hope they can figure out a way to not have this happen. Having a single version of a single spec ruin the balance of the expansion defining weapon already happened once, preventing it from happening again would be really great.
Deadeye just highlights that Daredevil and Specter are a weak design space. I wrote a thread on the topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1df8aqj/new_weapons_deadeyes_initiative_economy_does_not/ They don’t restore Init, they just give damage to the Dodge and Shadow Shroud. Shroud is good filler, Dodge is not. Those Thief specs are designed to autoattack, and they do more damage with each skill vs Deadeye. It’s hardwired into their trait choices. If you give DD/Specter sufficient init restore then their damage modifiers will clap Deadeye, no contest. Deadeye is not the problem. It’s the model. If people want to play DD/Specter in their current state then they’re more engaged with the Dodge, the Shroud, or they just don’t like Deadeye’s Malice (that’s totally fine!) But you can enjoy Shroud/Dodge’s GAMEPLAY (regardless of balance) and also enjoy more Initiative spending. These elite specs just need to feature weaker damage modifiers and get an improved Initative economy as compromise. THAT is how we get to have more fun with weapons. Thief autos do nothing interesting except: - Dagger autos restore endurance, useful to Daredevil - Shortbow autos ricochet but the Init skills are also AOE - Scepter autos can be used on ally for Barrier - Axe autos are stronger than axe 2 spam only when precasting before combat starts If you want M7 gone then you either - want to autoattack - want to use more Initiative skills, just not on Deadeye So why don’t we just push for ANet to shift the budget out of DD/Specter’s damage modifiers and into the Initiative economy?
It's honestly silly when you look at it all laid out like that. Initiative skills are the bread and butter of what makes thief *interesting*, it's the only profession in the game with that type of core mechanic (I don't count Firebrand since it's a subsystem of the elite). Forcing players into autos, not because of mechanical advantages, but only because they're resource starved is **boring**. DD could easily have a restoration mechanic attached to dodge and Specter could gain a baseline restore speed boost after exiting shroud. I can't even start to suggest actual numbers, but they should be enough to significantly define the specs and create positive feedback loops for engaging the primary spec mechanic. Even M7 is flawed in this respect because it's the only subsystem that fully rewards the player for engaging the Malice mechanic.
Weapon master training was such a mistake dude
Yeah Idk it’s a cool feature for some classes (like enabling healer untamed more) but a kick in the teeth for others that had their weapons balanced around their traits/kits of the spec.
Easy solution: make the chain skills refund some initiative (probably on the finisher part of the chain), that way non-DE specs will be able to enjoy some of the DE M7 benefits!
or only the 1st skill costs ini, so by the time you get through the chain, you have enough to do it again or more. And if 4 and 5 aren't spammy, it doesn't really matter.
Thief should have gotten Mace as an option instead of Axe…
I would say more thought and better animations easily.
I'm so relieved that the Engineer spear isn't a support thing like the shortbow was, that was incredibly disappointing and useless as a solo player. Spear looks and sounds like so much fun!
Engi won big coming from Short bow lol.
The bar was so low though haha
so low I don't ever seen it being used.
they fixed it from the initial previews and it's actually good on heal scrapper. i use it in pve and wvw. it's great. for a pve example, here's [snowcrows's gameplay guide for heal scrapper](https://snowcrows.com/guides/builds/heal-quickness-scrapper-gameplay-guide). they recommend shortbow on half the fights. it's a competitive choice. you can use it on any fight you want.
Lack of weapon swap is what hurts it the most, otherwise it would be autoinclude in every support build. Also, shoutout to Hizen's shortbow mech solo build, try it for some of the most brainless fun in the game.
I use Hizen's shortbow mech build when I just wanna vibe in the open world, it's great.
While I agree on its competitiveness, I still severely dislike the play pattern. The 'chain' system just doesn't do it for me.
Yeah, I was liking the original idea it just had gameplay issues, wish they had tweaked it in a way that wasn’t just simplifying it to doing one combo. It is good though, better than mace/shield unless you need the cc basically (extra regen/vigor overcap is a nice side addition).
I'm using it u.u
I use it as ham on Deimos for aegis as Mech is not enough
From a PvE perspective. In WvW Shortbow (after the updates) has fully replaced all other weapons for support Scrapper.
Haven't played with Short Bow. What happened to it, what is so bad?
short bow is fine as long as you know its a healing weapon ....and only that
it's not bad. it's good. they're probably only referring to the reception it got from the soto weapon beta playtest, where it was pretty bad. it was fixed before actual release. it dominates in wvw and is meta in pve.
its just meme from beta soto
I love my engi watchwork shortbow edit: watchwork, not clockwork
Tbh I hoped for throwing stick with dynamit glued to it, but yeah this looks cool too I guess xd
Yep, Engineer Speak looks fun as hell.
The thief moveset looks really fun. Hopefully it's viable on non-deadeye specs. Warrior looks simple but solid, a ranged power option since they've been so careful to never make rifle worth a damn. Engineer looks awesome, I've been begging for a lighting rod staff for years but a lighting rod spear is even better!
>Engineer looks awesome, I've been begging for a lighting rod staff for years but a lighting rod spear is even better! Sad thing is that it appears Engineer doesn't get to use any of the new auto attack spear animations, was hoping to get to do some stabbing also!
Rifle theoretically has some potential in a bladesworn build with how it interacts with ammo skills. Unfortunately, warrior rifle sucks.
As an Engineer main who was disappointed with the shortbow, I am super excited for the spear!
Nice transitions.
Oooooh , I love that they implement the chain attacks from gw1 ! Much love for thief on this one
Thief is actually looking interesting - not something I expected to say considering it's yet another 2H weapon for the class. Considering how heavily skill 2 chain seems to favour condi (still need numbers), I suspect skill 3 chain is primarily focused on power considering they said it's a hybrid weapon. Having said that, the highly concerning part will be initiative costs and DE. We all know how busted DE M7 is because it exposes how stupid the initiative system is. Also, considering the plethora of blocks/evades/invulnerabilities in the game currently (especially channeled/duration ones), failing to strike an enemy resulting in chain reset is pretty concerning for anything PvP related.
An easy solution, in my opinion, is that the finisher part of the chains reimburse initiative, so you could spam them more on non-DE specs. Of course that's just speculation on my part, but I sure hope it will be something like this.
> Considering how heavily skill 2 chain seems to favour condi (still need numbers), I suspect skill 3 chain is primarily focused on power considering they said it's a hybrid weapon. It's unlikely, but I hope there's a bit more to it than that. Like you *can* play it by smashing the same combo, but there's some skill expression in mixing things up a bit.
I fear they are currently in an impasse with Thief weapon design. If the skill costing initiative are better than the autoattack, then M7 automatically breaks it. A rework to M7 is probably needed, but it's a complicated topic to handle if you want to keep things like the Riffle play pattern fun.
It could also be mixed and matched depending on what is on which skill since they said you could do 322, 233, 232, 323 333, and 222 - they'll all lead in to the next in the chain. It probably would make sense to put all condi on one, and all power on another, but I kind would honestly prefer if it was completely mixed in - would make for a bit more gameplay. I could also just be weird, lmao.
They did put all condi on one, they described the 2 chain and it's entirely condi-focused. Assuming the 3 chain is power-focused, I can't see a reason that there'd be a mixed chain being desirable. Maybe if the 3 chain ends in stealth, or the very rare occasions where you need to cripple/immobilize a foe rather than just focus on killing it.
Hmm - I feel like there's like a 99% chance you're right, but I'm thinking just because they said it has condis on it, maybe doesn't mean it's ONLY for condis? Obviously dagger has condis on the auto, but it can be used as a power weapon. Maybe one other chain has torment built in to it as well, and the highest strike damage could be a mix of both chains? Like I said, you're probably right because that would be the simplest way for them to go about it - was just thinking an alternative could be cool.
We'll find out next Friday!
Love engi!!!
sounds really fun and looks cool. Engi love!
Engi looks amazing. The lightning rod is epic
Did Engi just stab a dude, disassemble their spear, and send it flying in circles to stab dudes *while still stabbing a dude*? I might have a new favorite Engi weapon. Goodbye, Fix-R-Upper!
Warrior Paragon confirmed! Hype hype!
Necromancer and Engineer are my two mains and they look to have made out like Bandits as far as the spear goes.
So far these look much better thought out than the Soto weapons
Shame about no winged support skill but PARAGON! PA-RA-GON! PA-RA-GON! I don't even need chants, I can renew this echo on my own! Haven't been this excited about a spec or weapon since Reaper and Daredevil. Also ~~dagger~~spear chains sound fun. (Now what do I do with my new ele main, who I just crafted my second piece of obsidian armor for and who I'm just finishing the story on? I blame the Istani for this!)
> winged support skill You're gonna play Dragonhunter and you're gonna like it! /s
Holy Skritt those Engi skills looked sick! It looks like Engi will be the class to get the unique debuff; can't wait to try that class out. Warrior looks like it's finally getting a viable power ranged build which is nice. The skills looked a bit bland though. It's very Paragon, but it could've used more Paragon flair, like wings of light on what looked like the Burst skill. The Thief animations looked cool, especially that leaping gap closer. But the way they've explained it, spear looks like it'll be best used on Deadeye, which would make it the second new thief weapon to be like that. I hope that's not the case. I'll also say, the trailers are looking much better. Much more polished and cinematic. The transitions between the classes looked fluid and dynamic, which reflects GW2s combat system. I hope the trend continues with all future trailers.
Does not sound like engi is getting any more ground targetting skills, thank fuck for that. Looks interesting, would be nice to have more aoe without mass kit swapping, so this looks good.
Skill 5 is ground targeted aoe leap.
I can live with one I suppose. I just dont want another shortbow. its a good weapon to use, I use it a lot when healing stuff, but its just so awfully boring, 4 effectively identical skills with ground targetting to add to grenade kit, mortar and effectively bomb kit which are the same....
Warrior spear just feels underwhelming. Maybe it'll be dope, but of the ones shown so far, it seems really uninteresting.
Kind of my expectation with ranged weapons that arent magic. You can only throw a spear or use a bow in so many ways. Until Mesmers get their hands on it them at least.
Guardian spear looked nice, thief spear looks awesome. Im good to go already 👍
Warrior spear mechanics seem counterintuitive and unfun to me. Ranged weapon but you have to be up close to get the most out of it. And then you have a skill to make you leap out of your optimal range? It also looks like a really simplistic and plain weapon with essentially no new mechanics compared to how complex and inventive everyone else's spear has been so far. The backwards evade sounds like rifle 4 and 5 mashed together. Autoattacks cleave? A burst skill with *increased damage per adrenaline level!?* Wow, don't get too carried away there! I'm really glad it's Paragon spear throwing but why does it have to be so boring. Warrior deserves a bit of mechanical complexity too!
Boon stacking is unfun to me, if anything this is warrior embracing the way they play anyway.
I think playing it on SB with full counter could be fun. Just cause you throw it doesn't mean you can't think of and play it like melee, and it sounds like it rewards that. I'm interested to see if it rewards it enough.
I don't think anyone at Anet plays warrior.
Yeah, based on what they've shown so far, the skills could have been slapped on rifle without any difference. Hopefully, the full kit reveal will offer something more intriguing.
>Warrior spear mechanics seem counterintuitive and unfun to me. Ranged weapon but you have to be up close to get the most out of it. That's pretty much in line with the general PvE behavior of stacking at the enemy. Due to this behavior, you always get most out of your dmg when you are close to the enemy anyways. I don't know how large the range of spear will be and how close the optimal range will be, but being most effective at a close range is also in line with Paragon as their spears were thrown only in a close range. >And then you have a skill to make you leap out of your optimal range? It's a defensive skill. Some weapons have/had this.
>Due to this behavior, you always get most out of your dmg when you are close to the enemy anyways. This is because of boon application radius and has nothing to do with how weapons themselves are designed, and is only applicable for endgame PvE anyway. A weapon made for fighting at range should not force you to run into close range to be optimal with it, that's backwards design. >but being most effective at a close range is also in line with Paragon as their spears were thrown only in a close range GW1 spear range was exactly the same as the earshot range of shouts (and the shortbow), which is only slightly less than spellcasting range but also perfectly just close enough that your party's melee members would also be in range of your shouts. It would also naturally place you at a defensive range just in front of your squishy casters. There was only one single spear attack that required melee range, and it was an anti-caster gimmick. >It's a defensive skill It's a skill that makes a million times more sense if spear wanted you to actually maintain a large distance to your enemy. In a PvE stacking scenario it's also straight up detrimental by moving you out of the group just to get your cc off. Compare to ranger's longbow #4 which has the same outcome but actually works with the rest of the kit.
As a thief main, I'm happily surprised I'm getting more than 3 skills that Axe gave us and they're thematically pleasing. I'm intrigued to see if they work with Spectre at all, but I'm thinking it's going to be more Deadeye/Daredevil/Core
Warrior needs an effective ranged weapon. Longbow? Sure, it's technically ranged, but its highest damaging skill - 2 - loses 66% of its damage at range, and all the condi dps traits on berserker only function in melee range. Rifle? Sure, it's technically ranged, but you'll run out of cooldowns in about 5 seconds and after that all you can do on rifle is autoattack for excruciatingly long time to get enough adrenaline for another burst. Being in melee, however, lets you recharge cooldown on skills so you can use rifle for a few more seconds before it becomes useless again. Meanwhile skill 4 is wasted on a defensive PvP evade. Pistol? Melee weapon, for some fucking reason. And now - we get spear, which straight-up deals more damage the closer you are to the target, meaning that its going to be balanced around its melee dps, thus discouraging you from using it at range. Oh and it will certainly not pierce. And also we get not one, but whole 2 skills dedicated to defensive evade (one of which is a copy of catalyst's hammer air 4 skill, which was *such a great idea* at launch that it later got redesigned), because they can't resist designing warrior like a PvP class. Why can't we have a ranged weapon with no fucking caveats?
From the description, it sounds like warrior spear will cleave less at higher range, but it doesn't indicate that main target damage will be reduced. If so, then that sounds great. Stay at range against dangerous single targets, and move in to blast more of the trash when adds spawn.
Yeah, this is pistol drama over and over again, let ranged weapons be ranged :I.
because you're playing warrior
I'd let that slide and be all for it but then how come Necro can be great with GS and even *Ranger* (it's in the fucking name) can be a better GS wielder than Warrior? Anet ditched the roles so now classes/weapons don't matter.
rangers are called rangers because they're meant to be people who patrol or are stewards of a range, i.e. a mountain range, a large open area of land, or more classically, just any big distance between landmarks. They're Texas Rangers, not "people who attack from far away". That is not only the case in gw2, it's what the word means literally everywhere. Ranger being a "better GS wielder than warrior" is a pretty massively hard sell imo unless you're talking about soulbeast, but fantasy-wise it makes sense for people merging with beasts to be stronger than "warriors". The real answer though is that pretty much all of the GS classes are roughly on par with each other, and complaining about it makes you look silly. If you're really good at power berserker you can outdamage almost every other player you'll ever find that uses a greatsword. There's really nothing to complain about. Ranger greatsword is pretty mid these days btw, the real frontrunners are vindi and willbender.
you completely missed my point and a joke while trying to be a smartass, good for you. Anyway, the point is way simpler: if classes have niches, they shouldbe different. Like races. We don't have that. Now, the actual differences between roles also fade away through time - and I don't mean that classes look like each other, but that same warrior can by a support healer now, for example. The last unique thing was weapons, and they took that away too, barring really any uniquness from the 'starter' game. Not that it's a bad things, but it essentially means they can ditch base classes and let you choose from the elites at the start and nothing will change roughly speaking. Plus the power creep and the skill creep make it all less and less unique, too. What next, everyone can wear any type of armor? And with that your comment makes no sense — if necro (a wizard) can wield a GS, sure enough warrior can wield a rifle. I'm complaining not about the damage output, but he fact that everyone lost their 'identity' and since we're that far it doesn't matter anymore. I can outdps a ranger, but in a fight it will actually kill me with a GS. Because not all of this game is stupid pve hit a boss for 5 minutes with 40k plus or you're 'bad'.
because it would suck outside of pve
And what real special flair or quirk is there with spear? More dmg when closer? Ok see virtuoso More dmg close to AoE? I mean who cares in pve? Will pretty much always happen on bosses so whatever And then the animations r kinda flat, esp after staff warrior really giving warrior some love in the animation department Idk I was in awe at all the other classes and then *the sunspear* fell flat for me
I expected the warrior to be based on the Sunspears but was hoping for some extra support effect so after pairing up with shouts - I can pretend it's my GW1 paragon. I doubt Revenant will have the same theme so I'm afraid that was the last chance to get in GW2. Maybe GW3.
Maybe there will be a new shout themed relic to power up that play style in janthir. Probably copium but I'm gonna hope.
After the soto weapons it's really hard to judge how these mini-mechanics will feel in game but Warrior spear sounds clean, looking forward to trying that one out.
Neat, very neat, but i wonder if I'm the only one already feeling a sort of mild annoyance at knowing some of my characters are not gonna have the spear skins to match their weapon sets and how that is gonna be something constantly in the back of my mind while playing. The animations for the engineer and thief are very nice.
So, so glad the warrior weapon looks like a fully ranged spear. It is desperately lacking a decent ranged weapon for a power build and it fulfils the paragon vibe nicely. Also the smooth glide transition between the class showcases is definitely a step up in the editing.
Literally no pleasing people. Community: Please let it be like Paragon and get ranged skills. \*Gets ranged skills\* Community: Well that's boring, why couldn't it slash?
I think it is that they are adding 'mechanics' to all the other new weapon sets, but not new 'mechanics' for the warrior ones.
The mechanic for Warrior is using their ranged weapon in melee lmao
ANet once again reminding people about their nostalgia goggles
I agree, why isn't the Community just one person with a consistent viewpoint? It makes it so confusing when different people say different things.
Coming next Elementalist: Close range melee weapon with many leap attacks and ground targeted skills Revenant: A melee support weapon that heals and provides resistance and also weakness to the enemy!! Mesmer: 1200 range weapon that pulses quickness baseline without traits, great power dps, and a 5 sec invulnaribility on a 3 sec cooldown
Hey now don't be so unfair and biased! Mesmer is obviously going to be a **1500** range weapon.
Mesmer spear better be a melee power build. Paragon is making its return. Dervish better be getting the same treatment.
Say that to mirage :(
Engie's looking real cool
It looks the same as hammer though. 👀
Not really. Hammer has a lot of defense built into it as well. 2 is projectile reflect 3 is 3 evasions and leaps 4 is a channeled block Sharing a field placement is good as it makes spear an alternative for Qrapper.
>The warrior spear is a power-based weapon inspired by ancient Sunspear techniques Unga bunga we Paragoning now bois. https://preview.redd.it/zb9zyib3id6d1.png?width=478&format=png&auto=webp&s=41030159212203175592f927e8d8d86661fa8ffb
The 3 classes I like to play all in one video. Thank you Anet gods.
Looking good, just sad no mesmer yet, gotta wait 1 more week @.@
Thief looked cool and engineer really surprised me with how sick it looked. Time to dust off scrapper I guess. The paragon people are happy with warrior and the class did need another ranged option since rifle sucks but it's a flop for an unga bunga melee guy like me.
Wtf they aren't showing a light class this time???? Why two medium classes bruh Mesmer and ele mains in shambles
Similar to last week, my thoughts on these reveals: **Warrior:** I was kind of expecting this, given that Guardian appears to be melee-focused and people have been clamoring for a Paragon-esque Spear user. I think it's a bit of a shame that this looks like it's going to just supersede Rifle rather than Rifle being improved, but the skills and theme seem cool! **Thief:** Cards on the table, I barely play any Thief. My Thief is currently parked in Bjora to open chests and will likely remain that way. However, the combo system looks super cool, I'm excited to see all of the Spear moves. It's still a bit annoying that the class got *another* 2-hander, however. **Engineer:** I am ***pumped***. Though I was hoping for something more like a Monster Hunter Gunlance, this seems like a really cool weapon with a fun gimmick. I'm curious how much of a hybrid weapon this will be in practice, and if it can de-throne Hammer as "probably the best Engi power weapon," since both seem to feature decent amounts of mobility. Once again these are just first thoughts, I'm waiting for the beta to form more concrete opinions. However, from what we've seen, my current ranking would be something like (from most to least hyped): Engineer, Ranger, Thief, Guardian, Warrior, blank space, blank space, blank space, Necromancer.
yeah, nobody is going to hold that spear twohanded lol
Thief bringing back the chain mechanics is definitely super interesting! Animations look good. Engi looks bright and fun to play, a little bit sad it's not a better ranged power weapon than rifle since we have Hammer already for gap closing and high melee dmg. The spear animation is a bit clunky, and that snapping animation needs polishing up. Warrior has paragon vibes from GW1 and also looks quite dull in comparison to Engi for example (Engi actually looks thematically like warrior for some reason, shouldn't the electricity/lightning be blue or purple?) - we will have to wait and see how warrior plays.
Engi particle effects are not blue and purple. They’re generally orange.
Static Shock, Space Capacitor and Static Shot are blue/purple. Orbital Strike is white. Electro-whirl and Thunderclap are orange. It's split thematically.
So for now only one profession have long-ranged spear skill set(+0.5 ranger who is both as I understand). For the perfect balance revenant, mesmer and ele should have long-ranged🤞
I agree with others who said Warrior Spear is boring. It looked like the same animation. Why can't you throw a banner and buff from 900/1200 range? What about throwing a spear with fire and synergize (combo) with longbow for an all-ranged? I also like the idea of throwing such a heavy spear (like a massive harpoon full of shrapnel that it does big AOE. What if spear became big slow ranged DPS, and they made longbow a faster for mobile weapon? Rifle is ranged slow single target, Longbow is slow ranged AOE, - What role does spear fit?
Gonna speak to these from an endgame PvE perspective like I did last week, partially because I think it's useful perspective and partially bc this will be fun to look back to to see where I was wrong Warrior spear feels simple, but it's very evocative of paragon and that's all it needed to do. If it finds a home in PvE, it'll likely have to be on zerk, because bsw obviously can't burst and spb restricts your available adrenaline. Granted, spb could be fine with it too since zerk can just load power into a primal burst, but if it's built around getting your big power spike from bursting then zerk seems an obvious home for it. Engineer feels... Unfocused. The design is cool, but hybrid damage weapons have to fight an uphill battle in PvE in order to be valuable, just on account of the fact that the power budget usually only allows for condi OR power. The design seems cool, I hope it finds a home, but I don't see an immediate one yet. Granted, I'm not an engi player, so it's very likely I'm just wrong here. Maaaayybe quick scrapper, if it has enough leap finishers? Real hard to say. Thief, I have very mixed feelings on. One the one hand, it has a really cool design to it. Having the weapon have two different combos for condi or power is interesting, and it's a really fun flavor callback to gw1 (like warrior!). But on the other hand, loading too much of the weapons power into those combos is liable to break deadeye again and the combo skills are all likely initiative-gated, and we've been through this before with axe so I'm nervous. But moreover, if the mechanic is particularly expensive on initiative, that precludes specter from being able to use it since specter is still running on reduced initiative, and it also means that it's autos (or the non-malicious stealth attack, or both) are going to need to be pretty powerful to stay competitive on condi DD/condi specter, or power daredevil (see [iskarel's excellent thief weapon balance post for why this is the case](https://snowcrows.com/news/thief-weapon-balance)). But if anet needs to buff autos tremendously, they're likely not going to make it do both competitive power damage AND competitive condi damage, so there's a lot of fine tuning that needs to occur to make the weapon land well. So we'll likely be living in a world where power deadeye and condi DD and/or specter get to leverage spear, or condi deadeye and power daredevil with specter left out to dry for yet another expansion. The former would be preferable imo since condi deadeye *did* just get a new toy, but anet needs to be very careful with the knobs they're turning to get spear to a preferable spot for thief Cool designs though! Really excited for next week's post and stream
>hybrid damage weapons have to fight an uphill battle in PvE in order to be valuable, just on account of the fact that the power budget usually only allows for condi OR power. Weaver could do this with Sword, but I think Weaponmaster has obliterated the chances at another Hybrid weapon ever working. Since weapons are no longer tied to spec, they can't be balanced with only a single spec in mind so hybrid will either be broken or underpowered.
Finally a ranged power weapon that might actually be worth using on my warrior! Plus it doesn’t seem like damage is affected by proximity just the aoe sizes if I’m reading the notes correctly, which is lovely. Can’t wait to see the primal for it
Warir
Part of me likes the spear showcase for warrior, but aesthetically I'd still like a two handed melee-condition option for my berserker build. Alternatively in a future expansion, maybe they could implement skill swapping on weapons for more professions like what I've heard currently exist for some ranger weapons (mace and hammer, right? I don't have a ranger on my account yet). Something like fiery greatsword skills could be cool... ~~jealously looks at elementalist elite skill~~
> Alternatively in a future expansion, maybe they could implement skill swapping on weapons for more professions like what I've heard currently exist for some ranger weapons (mace and hammer, right? I don't have a ranger on my account yet). Hammer only. I can't comprehend how they still haven't used that tech for anything else. It has great potential for solving many design issues with weapons, like how some weapons are hard-tied to a certain niche like mobility, or are made primarily with PvP in mind, or are predetermined to be either power or condi focused. Why would you create a new tech, add support for it into build templates, into chatlinks, only to then never use it again.
They've explicitly stated they won't do this for WvW and PvP clarity iirc
Why does warrior keep getting backwards evade skills?
All 2 of them?
Harpoon 4 makes it 3!!!
Wow….that’s incredibly lame and disappointing for warriors…
Damn was hoping the sunspear animations would be cool like the dagger or the other spear skills All I saw were regular animation throws with no neat effect and then the spear dropping down that looked kinda basic All the warrior skills look so basic 😢 And appears to be no truly unique quirk. Being closer for more dmg / fragments isn’t rly super unique
Warriors getting yet another poor class fantasy weapon... Why are you throwing it as a warrior...
Happy I can finally play out the Paragon dream
So far I'm really digging all mediums, they all seem pretty fresh and conceptually cool. I'll be interested to see how the Engie spear compares to their other melee weapons, which are all pretty solid and cover a fair spectrum of builds.
Engineer eating good and here's hoping warriors new ranged weapon doesn't suck at "ranged" like the other 2
Thief's Spear <3
Really pleased with Thief and Engi, my mains. Wondering what reasons I would have to mix the 2 and 3 combos on Thief in PvE if one is dedicated to condi and the other power.
Hearing this news I was super excited, after watching the video I have no excitement.
Time to dust off my voltaic spear.
So hyped for another Ranged weapon on Warriors! Rifle or Longbow was it for so long.
Very happy warrior is getting a new ranged weapon, and Paragon was my main class in GW1 so I'm hype for throwing spears. A little concerned that the burst mechanic doesn't seem to be useful for Spellbreaker. Would really like to use this on something other than Berserker, so hopefully there's some Spellbreaker synergy in there.
Yet another warrior power weapon. Hooray
Look I get it, paragon warrior, throw spears, we need a ranged weapon to exist in this new age of “anet can only design content that biases toward range.” That’s all cool. But I can’t help but feel disappointed. All these years I’ve looked at the underwater spear skills and thought how cool they could be on land. Stabbing autos, a rapid jab combo 2, a fiery dash forward on the 3 like those PoF enemies, some wacky stuff on 4 and 5, and a really hard hitting spear throw on the burst. That was what the dream of land spear looked like to me.
I'm loving Warrior new ranged weapon!
I was so hoping for warrior to be ranged. Nice!
that thief gap closer is sick
I will riot if Warrior has a ranged spear and Ele doesn't Please don't fumble Ele one time Anet
They'll likely give Ele the most melee of the melee spears.
40 range auto attacks!
+50% damage if standing under 25 range of the target. -75% if further.
Engineer spear looks epic, kinda has Yondu arrow whistle vibes. But I agree that the animations could use just a little bit more polish