Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

 

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Elite Specs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I watched WP video again and realized he didn't even touch Soulbeast, Holosmith, or Firebrand. WTF Maybe if he wouldn't have spent so much time on Weaver he could have fit everyone else in. Peachy played around with all the specs, but the skill bar is cut off on the bottom X_X I guess I'll have to wait until anet shows the damn things to get more details. but the Firebrand animations are insane, and the AoEs are ridiculously massive.

Edit: Some redditing going on.

Renegade

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6r0082/renegade_tooltips_shortbow_utilities_heal_f_key/

Soulbeast

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6r21vn/soulbeast_skills_mechanics/

Firebrand (So much stability, holy crap, I think Grieving stats will be a great PvE choice, as it still doesn't seem to be a true condi class)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6qyzlc/firebrand_stuff/

Holosmith (sadly just a blurry image for this one)

http://imgur.com/a/8B772

Deadeye

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6qz5vm/thiefdeadeye_new_skillstraits/

Mirage

http://imgur.com/a/XjK5V

 

 

[Sledgstone 8,672]

Soulbeast looks so much more enjoyable than Druid. These mounts are going to make the game either amazing or extremely aggravating as everyone mounts up at core world bosses and fps drops to ridiculously crappy levels. I'm getting hyped tho.

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

https://twitter.com/WoodenPotatoes/status/892782501839745024

This must be for Raid Scourge because...

So Barrier's max value scales on the targets vitality, but the amount that can be applied can increase based on the Scourge's healing power, and apparently Ele's earth attunement is also getting barrier in the rebalance... because Necro can't have anything special to itself.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Interesting tidbits. Elite Specs will use the game HP structure to unlock, but it seems they reshuffled the order of unlocks so you get your GM traits faster. Mounts cancel out fall damage completely, I guess this is to supplement PoF only accounts that don't get gliding. The leaked Griffon mount is a LWS4 mount. Try not to want to barf at all the Weaver gushing.

Ok the possible Zephyrites area has me super hyped. It would be cool to have a full circle moment from Four Winds into Season 2.

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Interesting that Warrior can throw 3 axes now.. I wonder what other core abilities will get ammo? Its dissapointing that the elite specs wont be in the demo, but will only be in the later PvP demo. I guess because everyone bitched so hard about how long it took to unlock it after getting spoiled with it in the HoT beta. This makes me think they are going to make it like HoT was at launch and not nerf it this time. As long as the HP can be soloed I really don't care either way.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I like how they shuffled around who built what spec. Someone different is doing Necro and Guard this time. Of course the Ele and Memser guys got all the time and then they ran out of time for Necro and Soulbeast, wtf He barely got to talk about guardian.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

This one is better. Everyone gets some type of discussion time.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I finally got around to watching all these videos last night except for the bog otter interview. Alot of interesting changes. The ammo system should work well for warrior. Riding mounts in core Tyria should be enjoyable but I'm still concerned about world bosses. I wouldn't be surprised if they become no mount zones like most jumping puzzles have no gliding zones.

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-August-8-2017-3

These are some huge update notes. Especially for WvW:

• Being in first place with war score now grants 5 pips instead of 3.
• Being in second place with war score now grants 4 pips instead of 2.
• Being in third place with war score now grants 3 pips instead of 1.
• The Superior Siege Blueprint Case choice from the Skirmish Chest now grants 2 superior siege instead of 1.
• WvW Skirmish Claim Tickets have been reduced in the last chest of each division but have been added to every chest.

Farming pips for that back pack shouldn't take 2 years now. I'll try a few hours of WvW this upcoming weekend to see how rewarding it feels now. As long as claim tickets can be aquired with every chest instead of only the 1, people like myself with much less time to play should be able to put in a few hours a week over a year and make some progress unlike how it was before where I'd have to play for 5 hours a week minimum just to get the first wood chest that had tickets.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Couple of quick notes on the beta.

There isn't much to do honestly. The map is sectioned off similar to the closed beta of HoT. But without the elite specs, its pretty much just explore the map once, check out a few events, and I'm done.

Mounts are definitely the selling point here. I loved making a guardian just do speed around the map on a mount. I'll def do WC on all my alts once I finish the PoF story and do all there is to do on the new maps.

Thankfully, hero points are soloable again. I like the bounties. They took what was cool about the HoT Hero Points, moved them to Bounties, and improved upon them. Grabbing the bounty on the board activates it I believe, but it also shows you where they are on the map. You don't need to actually grab it to get credit. I followed a guy around that kept calling them out. I didn't realize until the last one I did that you can get a map spot by grabbing it off the board. When I defeated the last one, I got credit for 5/5 bounties despite never grabbing the other 4. Some of the bosses were more challenging than the others. My biggest gripe is the orange AoE one shot attacks on beige sand. Oye, its hard to see it sometimes in the heat of things. Maybe its my SweetFX shader though. These don't seem to be tied to any progression, but they could be tied to Spec weapon collections. It only took about 3-4 of us to take a few of these down. The Hyena was pretty neat as it teleported like the Jackal mount. Breaking the bar is essential to stopping their devastating attacks. All of these things can 1 or 2 shot you if you aren't careful.  The Hyena didn't have AoE attacks, it just teleported to a target and did big damage almost like a smokescale. Attacking these bosses even with a bigger group I still was getting 40-45 FPS so it wasn't too bad. It def seems that mounts and large city areas get HoT FPS though as I would drop down to 25-30fps just standing at the hub.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I played the beta on friday and for a while last night. I'm pleased with what I'm seeing. The beta is much smaller than the last expansion's beta but I'm fine with that. The mounts are the selling point all right. I think they need to do a bit of work on the mounting and dismounting effects tho. Since they can't be used in combat, I have a feeling it'll feel a bit clunky after a while with all the mounting / dismounting constantly. FPS in the city was horrible, but once I got away from other players I was easily getting anywhere from 45-60 fps. It really seems all over the place and makes it feel like the maps needs a bit more optimization. I didn't try any of the bounties, but I did try a couple random events. It feels very odd to me to not be gliding everywhere now that I'm so used to it. I bet once this comes out and the majority of people in lions arch are all using mounts, the fps there will drop to the 20s at all times. x_x At least there wont be a big impact on core world bosses, except for maybe teq, since there is a couple small moments after the burn phases that everyone is out of combat and can pop mounts on until they attack something.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Before it ended I did a little more exploring. The part of the map that was offered was more like the core game than any of the LWS3 maps. A lot of the events could be soloed, I ran into one that could not because the scarab bugs were very hard to deal with on a squishy class. They were attacking pipelines similar to some of the Queensdale bandit events, but the pipes took damage fast, and the scarabs spawned in packs of 3. They would do this circular motion causing a blinding and high damage area if you got caught in it. The three would stagger the attack so it was hard to melee any of them, and even as a DD with 3 dodges it was hard to stay away and attack. No one seemed interested in this event as everyone was probably doing bounties. I do like these events, but as time goes on and no one wants to do them, I hope they don't tie anything to them. I also hope they didn't become so anti-meta from the reaction to HoT that there aren't any meta chains in this expac. We don't necessarily need a DS or VB. A Gerent type boss would be nice, but I'm thinking more along the lines of Ogre Wars, where its a 15-20 minute chain that has a interesting story and a chance at a fairly rare drop at the end. These are the types of metas the player base like.

I tried some more bounties, and I do like how much HP these things have, I died one or two times and was able to get back on my mount before it died to keep helping. The only one I didn't care for was a Legendary Choya. While the little ones are funny, this one is just damn annoying. He can stunlock you and then keep hitting you until you die. It seemed to aggro downed players like Vinetooth Prime. I started jumping in the water every time he did some attacks just so I could revive myself by surfacing. His mechanics were interesting as he had a dual AoE field with arrows and you had to stand in the right zone of it to attack him. There was another bounty like this where you had to be in melee range to receive a buff to be able to damage the boss. I like this forced melee mechanic, because half the time on other ones, I'm a DD, YOLOing with my staff while everyone else is shooting projectiles.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I'm going to skip the Weaver video because its an hour and a half. But I'm posting this one for Sledge to show his bro.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I'll have to watch these when I have some free time. WP is always so long winded.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

He really just goes in depth over the skills, utilities and traits in details and shows what they do, and what they can do when enhanced by certain build synergies. The Weaver video was so long apparently because he went over every new skill... that had to be super boring.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

=/ Anet always seems to try to make something for a class with a peg holed purpose and then another class ends up doing it better.