As a part of the wind-up to the launch of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Guild Wars 2’s End of Dragons expansion, launching in February 2022, ArenaNet has been allowing players to test out the brand new specializations early. During the last beta weekend, players got a peek at the skills for the Virtuoso (Mesmer), Harbinger (Necromancer), and Willbender (Guardian). This weekend, they get to try out the Catalyst (Elementalist), Bladesworn (Warrior), and Vindicator (Revenant). Before the beta dropped, I was invited to an exclusive preview of these specializations, as well as to chat with some of the team members about their combat design.
Elementalist - The Catalyst
The Catalyst has received mixed reactions so far from fans who were hoping for a more conventional long-ranged option. Cal Cohen, one of the game designers behind this specialization, hopes they will be pleasantly surprised🌱. “Early on, we knew we wanted to do a mixed melee and ranged playstyle with the hammer,” they say. “The natural understanding of what a hammer is is as a melee bruiser weapon. Revenant does this weird thing where it has a ranged hammer; we wanted to stay true to the weapon identity of the Hammer and keep some of that melee playstyle in the kit [for the Catalyst]”.
That doesn’t mean the Catalyst is restricted, however. You can use the hammer for melee attacks bꦉy using Water and Earth, and for mid-ranged attacks by attuning to꧅ Fire and Air.
While I, like many others, would have preferred a longbow or rifle, I was still pleasaꦚntly surprised by the hammer’s skills. It focuses on creating balls of energy that float around your character and provide bonuses to you and your allies, while also harmin☂g your enemies. These orbs have a countdown and will disappear after a few seconds, but that countdown resets each time you create a new orb. It encourages you to switch between alignments so you can make another orb before the clock runs out - and creates lots of chaotic fun in the process. People who choose to play a Catalyst will need more finger dexterity than Cookie Clicker players.
Those four elemental orbs compliment the new F5 mec🌊hanic: the Jade Sphere. Rather than floating around you, the Jade Sphere is an AoE effect that is powered by your attacks (akin to a Warrior’s adrenaline). When you throw it down, it creates a combo field associated with your attunement. However, unlike some other Elementalist skills, its attunement changes with yours. My only small disappointment was that the Jade Sphere doesn’t seem to charge any more once you’ve thrown it out, even if you keep doing damage. The creatures that appear in the Jade Sphere’s AoE resemble the Celestials from the first Guild Wars, but Cohen says that’s more of an inspiration than part of the lore. “These are absolutely not the Celestials from Nahpui Quarter, but it’s definitely something we were thinking about,” they say. “These are all Canthan creatures. They’re not like a ranger’s pet - they’re more like a Familiar. This is the way that the Catalysts manifes⛄t their elemental power because they’re aware of the historical Celestial creatures. It’s an homage, but it was never intended for them to be those Celestials because they don’t all really line up with an element. Hai Jii, the Phoenix, was a Mesmer in Guild Wars 1. It isn’t suddenly a Fire Elementalist. The creatures are thematic to the elements, though, even though the actual Celestial beings aren’t. A turtle is very centred around the Earth element, for example. That’s something that makes a lot of sense.”
The Cataly🌱st manages to be beginner-friendly, even though there are so ma𓆉ny options that an advanced player could take advantage of. ArenaNet’s team has managed to balance survivability with melee combat and projectiles to create a specialization that, while not exactly what players were hoping for, makes me cautiously optimistic.
“I’m gonna be pretty excited to see how players min-max with the hammer skills and the augment skills,” Cohen says. “There are even more incremental advantages in the traits. You can be effective as a Catalyst with less planning, but I think there’s a powerful opportunity to sequence your skills really well and get just that much more of an advantage over the other players. There are so many minor decisions that just🦂 get that much extra value. It’s gonna be really fun to watch how people plan those out.”
Warrior - The Bladesworn
When I spoke over Discord to Chun-Hong Fung, one of ArenaNet’s game designers, about the Bladesworn, the excitement in his voice was palpable. This brand new specialization for Warriors allows the player to unleash more damage thaꦉn ever before, and that could be a huge game-changer.
In the demo I got of the Bladesworn’s full abilities, I saw that for myself. This specialization is focused on the new F1 ability, which allows Warriors to pull out a special weapon known as a “𒁏Gunsaber.” These abilities usually aren’t on cooldowns; they rely on ammo, instead, whi💝ch recharges slowly when depleted. The Bladesworn’s adrenaline has been replaced by ‘Flow’, though it’s also earned by attacking your opponents. While there’s still a pistol available, Fung expects the gunsaber to be the weapon of choice for most players.
“I expect them to use the pistol as more of a sidearm,” he says. “You’d occasi🍷onally switch to it and fire your 5th skill off for the damage, then swap back to𒉰 the gunsaber. It’s kind of a waste if you don’t use it; it gives really good damage. And, as you can see in the trailers, there is a bonus to you, if you want, for weapon swapping. It also adds to your flow, letting you go into Dragon Slash more often.”
With enough Flow, you’ll be able to use F2: Dragon Trigger. Once you activate it, your Bladesworn will go into a meditative state and start to generate ‘Charges’, which are used to deal a devastating attack - called Dragon Slash - on their enemies. The only catch? If you move (or are otherwise interrupted), you leave the stance and lose most of the Flow you’d been saving up. This means that the Bladesworn skills which don&r🎉squo;t focus on damage are usually about protecti𒅌on, in an effort to help you preemptively stop interruptions. Admittedly, it can be a bit difficult to pull it off with the maximum amount of charges - especially in places with lots of mobs, like the Magumma Jungle - but so satisfying when you get it just right.
The Bladesworn could yet grow too - game designer Karl McLain says the team is open to adding new weapon types in the future. “We would love toꦡ add a weapon type, it’s always on our minds,” he says. “But it costs a lot of time to make; we have a lot of differentꦦ races and combinations we’d have to create new animations for. And, when you add a new weapon, you also need a variety of skins and types. You’d need levels zero through 80 of that weapon type. It takes a lot to put a new weapon into the game.”
Lately, Warriors are mostly used as Bannerslaces in Fractals, Raids, and Dungeons, or as Spellbreakers in World versus World. This specialization will put the class in a whole new light and undoubtedly play a part in shaping the meta from February onwards. Any specialization that deals massive damage is worth paying attention to, and it&🎃rsquo;s this aspect that Fung is most looking forward to seeing in the game. “ The damage multiplier on [Dragon Slash] is just beyond anything we’ve ever put in the game before,” he says. “I just want to see the players’ reactions to the insane numbers that pop up when you perform it. I can’t wait to see that. Just, obliterating things in a single blow!”
Revenant - The Vindicator
The Revenant class, released during the very first Guild Wars 2 expansion, is a complicated class for players looking for a challenge. It requires a sturdy understanding of the game’s other systems and expert multitasking abilities to ensure you don’t run out of energy. It’s no surprise, then, that the new specialization follows that t🍌rend; when I spoke to Karl McLain -ཧ a game designer who worked on the Vindicator - he mentioned that this was one of the most complicated specializations being introduced in End of Dragons.
“With the Vindicator, I’m interested in seeing how players use the specialization itself,” he says. “Do they go plowing in to do a death drop, or🌜 do they go the safe, supportive route with the saint’s shield? I’m really excited to see how people use this dodge mechanic - my hope is that people go diving in, just trying to see how much damage they can do or how many enemies they can cleave all at once.”
Vindicators have access to a new stance: the Legendary Alliance. Essentially, this means that your Healing, Utility, and Elite skills have offensive (red) and defensive (blue) sides. Using one of the skills causes it to flip over; if you activated a red skill it would become a blue skill the next time you use it. If one side of the skill isn’t useful to you, you’re in luck! The F2 ability, on top of providing enduranc🌊e, now flips all of your skills to the opposite side. It seems that this class is♒ meant to be used situationally, rather than with a rotation (like so many others). Of course, a few rotations can’t hurt, but the player will be able to assess in the moment whether they should prioritize offence or defence, rather than necessarily planning their entire character around one or the other. McLain expects this change will be used malleably, depending on the situation in question.
“I think that players are going to find that they need to figure out how they want to use it and then also use it as the situation dictates,” he says. “We’ve been playing with them and the general consensus is that if you’re going for damage, you’re going to use all the red skills, then hitꦦ alliance tactics to flip them back over. You’d use that in conjunction with flipping between your other ꧙stances - the Assassin or the Dwarf have been used quite a bit - and your swords, as well. We wanted to make this more malleable in how you play it and, even though you have a more limited resource in terms of dodging, give you the tools to play the game in a different way.”
The other change that the Vindicator makes is to turn the player’s endurance into an attack. Instead of dodging, you’ll use endurance to do a ground-pound attack. Needless to say, this gives endurance regeneration a whole new meaning. There are several traits in the Vindicator skill tree which allow you to modify the attack: should you do a lot of damage in a concentrated area or spread the damage out farther? Do you want to grant boons or heal allies with this atꦗtack? There’s space for plenty of personalization for your playstyle. Though that adds a complication when it comes to things that require a dodge, McLain is confident the player-base and the game can adapt.
“There is some concern about th✱at, definitely,” he admits. “But the Revenant has multiple legends with defensive abilities and, more specifically, dodges. The Legendary Alliance stance has a few defensive maneuvers as well. We’re just asking the players to use their resources a little differently than before.”
One little surprise is in store for players who use the Legendary Alliance stance: Archemorus and Saint Vi🔥ktor occasionally talk to one another, rather than just to the player! It’s only a little thing, but it brings so much unexpected joy when you first hear them banter. Like this specialization, it’s creative, unconventional, and made out of love for everything the game has to of🍌fer.