Vordrax.5243

Soulbeast is what I was thinking of. I remember being annoyed that I could share a dagger between sets if it stayed in the same hand, but I couldn't swap that same dagger to the other hand. To that end, I was also like why can we do dagger/empty and empty/dagger to swap between those, but you can't swap between a two-handed weapon and itself if you only have it in the primary weapon set. For example, staff/staff Mesmer needs two staffs, usually with identical stats and sigils.

No, they're saying you should be able to use the same weapon in a different slot on the second weapon set. I'm pretty sure you can't do that right now. I'll test just to make sure, but last time I checked, you definitely could not.

I agree. I don't know how many builds can actually take advantage of it, but it would be nice. I know I ran a build at one point that used dagger/x and x/dagger, and it was very annoying that I had to buy a second dagger for the second weapon set, when I wouldn't have had to if the dagger was mainhand for both sets.

Looks great on my Asura, reminds me of the cannonball move you can do when using the diving goggles. But then, no one plays an Asura unless they love acrobatic moves. Dodge rolling on an Asura is like watching Yoda do lightsaber fighting in Star Wars Episode 2.

Heal Druid and Quickness Scrapper are both a lot of fun. Heal Alac Tempest is pretty cool except for Alacrity not getting applied until the overload has finished. I don't really have a worst. MAYBE Specter just because they have to spam all of their wells to get their Alac out there.

I'd dig Druid being able to go Condi Alac DPS (unless they already can and I'm not aware of it, I just haven't really seen it happen.) Maybe bring up its condi application in general, is anyone running Plaguedoctor over Harrier on Druid? Would love to see Condi Alac Druid Shortbow and Axe/Torch become a thing (again?) in fractals. And maybe even Plaguedoctor Druid using Shortbow/Staff. I'm not sure if Celestial Avatar would need to be changed a touch to make it more amenable to a support DPS, but maybe not. I think if ANet keeps moving away from making Alacrity and Quickness the primary effects on utility skills, then maybe they'll move Alacrity off of spirit actives, which will give a lot more freedom in the design space to flesh out the Druid (maybe give Untamed quickness.) I enjoy playing Druid a lot more than Heal Mech for sure.

Skyscale isn't particularly difficult, just time consuming. But there were a couple of changes that reduced the time a bit. The "Return to Dragon" achievements give 250 of each of the map currencies you need for Skyscale, which removes the need to farm them. And I believe the time gates for the skyscale hatching/growing were reduced from days to hours. Still, if you look at what you need to do to get it, it's a long list, but nothing on it is particularly challenging.

Fair enough. If the orb mechanic is supposed to be part of the weapon rather than the Catalyst, I can buy it. Eh, I feel like you were on a roll, but then you kinda did one of those forum things where you misrepresent someone else's point by taking it to an extreme. I disagree on all three of your examples. Untamed has Unleash on all weapons, even if it's not a full bar. Holosmith has access to Holoforge on all weapon sets, and they have utilities that are affected by higher heat levels. Deadeye's primary mechanic is Malice which works with all stealth attacks. And let's say that you are right, that somehow what I said means any of those things. If anything, that would be an argument for doing those things, rather than not doing the Catalyst orb on all weapons thing. My point was predicated on the assumption that the orb mechanic was a core part of the Catalyst kit. Your statement that the orb mechanic is part of the flavor of the hammer rather than the Catalyst itself was good enough - I agree. No reason to "by that logic, here is a bunch of stuff you never said" me.

I'd like to see the orbs get normalized a bit and just work on attunements or something. If it's supposed to be part of how Catalyst operates, then it should be available to Catalyst regardless of what weapon they use (similar to Rocket Punch for Mechanists - used to be tied to Mace 3, now works on all 3 skills.)

Except they (and everyone) recognize that "lower all cooldowns by 4 seconds whenever you -perform common action-" is not a good ability. It's like when Vindicator had infinite dodge spam during which they were invulnerable and did crazy healing and damage for no apparent reason. It's just not well designed. It's a COOL ability for sure, it's a lot of fun to use, but it's poorly conceived and implemented. Making it a minor trait and reducing its overall impact makes way more sense, and tying it to things that are related to the Untamed elite spec, such as proccing off of Unleashed Ambush. Keeping it as it is will make it impossible to balance Untamed meaningfully. You'll basically end up in the same boat as Elementalist, where the average player gets < 30% of the value out of the class, and 0.1% of players get all of the value, which is way higher than other classes, which means that the class gets nerfed so that only 0.1% of the population can perform at a playable level, and everyone else is left impotently complaining on the forums.

I think the issue here is the people who think that higher intensity builds should be 2-3x as effective as a lower intensity build. A 5-10% increase in DPS is sufficient to make good players swap to the stronger spec. I've said this before in a separate thread, but I'm pretty sure that these "rotations" were not intentionally designed. Players are just using what the specs have to offer, and creating their own rotations, and then demanding that the ones that they have the most trouble executing should be better than the ones that are more intuitive. Managing your heat as a holosmith is not difficult. And it shouldn't be. If managing your heat is difficult, it's most likely because the mechanic is badly designed, not because it's "for pros (tm) only!!!"

Update: Did our Fractal dailies today and I played Heal Alacrity Tempest, it is a blast. I ran Scepter/Warhorn but I've heard Staff is also pretty legit. I'm not really in a position to DPS in our Fractals so I can't speak to Weaver or Catalyst, but I can say that Heal Tempest is very enjoyable to play (minus I really think they need to have the attunements pulse Alacrity rather than just fire it off at the end, but I think that drum has been beaten to death by now, so hopefully it won't be long before it gets addressed.) So based on my personal experience, for Fractals, if you like to play defensive/healer support, I'd say Heal Tempest and Druid are both a lot of fun, with Tempest perhaps slightly edging it out (though that might just be that it's a little easier to work with, Druid seems like it has a slightly higher skill floor to get value), and I personally don't love Heal Alacrity Mechanist, but that's mainly due to the playstyle, it is very effective and brings a lot of utility. When we duo Fractals, I tend to run Celestial Alac Mechanist just because I feel like I can still heal decently while also bringing enough DPS to prevent it from being a slog.

Given how absolutely bonkers the community goes for a 3k disparity between benchmarks, I would say that it probably matters (to someone.)

For fractals, it's either Power Quickness Scrapper (mainly due to how amazing it is to just spam superspeed all over the place) or Heal Alacrity Druid. I would like to give Heal Alac Tempest a shot sometime, they are amazingly fun in open world, so I imagine they'd be a blast in fractals as well, but I'm currently fixated on medium armor professions at the moment when it comes to progression. For raids, my experience is pretty limited, but it would most likely be Condi Soulbeast. I am looking forward to trying out either Power or Condi Alac Untamed sometime soon. I need to spend some more time on the golem before I feel comfortable trying it out in a raid. Untamed is stupid fun in open world as well, but I feel like my alacrity uptime needs some work (which might be helped with the upcoming patch to help deal with FF procs on CC-immune enemies.) Every profession has something that is a lot of fun to play. I think the only thing that really frustrates people is when the lines of efficacy and enjoyment diverge significantly.

Fervent Force needs some kind of rework, and Untamed does as well. Don't get me wrong, Fervent Force might be the single most fun trait in the game. Most of my game time in the past couple of weeks has been on Untamed. FF initially feels pretty clunky, but it's something you can get over with some practice. The issue with it is kinda two-fold: 1.) It is spec-defining but a choice. These kind of trap decisions should be pruned from the game - it is significantly more powerful than either of its sibling traits, and there is no way to balance the spec around being good with and without Fervent Force without either significantly nerfing FF or making the other two grandmaster traits far more powerful. Fervent Force should become a minor trait that all Untamed will have, so that the spec can be balanced including this ability. 2.) Despite being the single most powerful part of the Untamed, it has very little to do with the spec. It affects all cooldowns, and it procs on all disables. It should trigger on something actually related to the Untamed - either have it trigger whenever one of the Unleashed pet abilities are used, or have it trigger whenever an Unleashed Ambush happens. Anyways, that's basically what I'd like to see. Add the Fervent Force proc to Unleashed Power so that it triggers off of Unleashed Ambushes, reduce the internal cooldown of Unleashed Ambush a bit (it's 15 seconds now which feels pretty long, but I'm not a balance-ologist so who knows), and add a new Grandmaster Talent (maybe one that is either support focused or condi focused.) That way, Fervent Force becomes an assumed part of Untamed, and the entire spec won't have to be balanced around a grandmaster trait.