[Guild Wars 2] News: Feedback update for new weapon testing

Hello everyone!

My name is Taylor Brooks and I am the combat designer at ArenaNet. Today I’m going to discuss the new Weapon Specialization system in Guild Wars 2: Celestials, which allows each class to use a new weapon type. Specifically, I'll talk about the issues we got from testing the new weapon specialization in November, and the changes we're making to the new weapon when it launches in a few weeks.

Overall, we’re excited to see people using the new weapons in various areas of the game! Some weapons are hugely popular, but others clearly still need tweaking, or simply don't work as well as they should.

Ranger

The mace was a huge hit during testing, and each of the ranger specs used it in a different way. It's clear that the mace is a powerful weapon for the ranger, but we also feel it needs some work. Like most ranger weapons, the mace lacks interaction with pets, so one of the first changes we made was to apply ongoing healing to your pet over a period of time. This will help them move along with you!

Next, the Beast Master’s Awakening Ambush lacks the auxiliary functions that other skills on the main-hand mace have. This ability now also heals nearby allies when used, so you can continue to attack hard with your friends.

Finally, we received a lot of feedback on the mechanics. It doesn't flow very well in the game and is difficult to achieve naturally. We've lowered the stacking threshold for the trigger from 6 to 5, increased the duration of Force of Nature, and shortened the amount of time it takes to stack. You'll grow into naturally larger creatures faster and more often, why not!

Rogue

After using the ax, the symptomatic sharpshooter genre has taken on new vitality in PvE, while the direct damage sharpshooter genre has also been applied in PvP. Unfortunately, ax projectiles have many qualities - "stable" isn't one of them. They have a bad habit of getting stuck on terrain in strange ways, often missing your target entirely. We will be updating the logic of all ax projectiles to behave more like normal projectiles and increasing their speed.

Also, the combination of Shadow Stepping to the target and then pulling the ax to himself makes it unnecessarily difficult to use. We'll update the effect to be similar to , so that the ax will be directed towards the target. As these effects improve, we'll continue to monitor ax usage to ensure it remains competitive against other weapons.

Warrior

As an auxiliary weapon for warriors, the staff has made new breakthroughs. Although it performed very well in the test, it also has its own pain points. The most feedback we received was about not being practical enough. One such situation is when the targeted ally does not match the skill. So instead of a targeting skill, it will now be a ground targeting skill, which helps warriors use that skill at any time.

Auxiliary warriors also noticed that their rage benefits were much lower than those of traditional warriors. We'll be adding additional rage gain to A and B to help warriors use abilities when needed. We know support warriors are still an up-and-coming genre, and we plan to add more support features to support them in future updates.

Soul Warrior

The Scepter provides the auxiliary soul warrior with their long-awaited main-hand weapon that focuses on continuous support. The weapon was well-received, but its usability left a lot of room for improvement. As it turns out, the concept of charging abilities with an auto-attack chain doesn't add much to the gameplay of this weapon. It's too simple in PvE and too unrealistic in competitive mode. We've removed this mechanic and adjusted the skills accordingly.

#Unlike the Warrior's, we believe targeting allies improves the Soul Warrior's skills. Now you can place it on an ally, sacrificing damage for support. Additionally, instead of powering up when you use the auto-attack chain, he will gradually power up over time. You can activate this skill again to detonate it early, and the effect will change as the duration increases!

There are also some major adjustments. We felt that the status-based weapon skill wasn't to our liking, so it now has a fixed duration and a fixed energy cost. As well, the skill's effect now scales over time instead of using an automatic attack chain to recharge.

Illusionist

The rifle provides support for the support type of Illusionist genre with its unique skills, and is also a powerful healing weapon. We're happy to see the positive feedback from players about this weapon, but as with everything, there are some tweaks we can make to make this weapon feel better to use.

's cast time and animation time from cast to hit have been shortened, and now correctly re-targets via Easy Cast Settings. Additionally, the explosion delay has been removed. These two changes will make your support faster and more responsive.

We've also seen some general feedback regarding this as a weakness in the weapon. We're enhancing the Phantom's effectiveness by allowing it to fire faster and attack within the combo area, and give the ability 2 charges in PvE to allow for more freedom in its use. Finally, we realized that the portal feature was harder to use with unorganized teams. We added a flash effect when the portal opens to draw the attention of other players and hopefully remind them to use the portal!

Elementalist

Pistols add a host of skills to the elementalist, providing a new weapon for the symptomatic elementalist genre and further strengthening the Weaver's dual attack. The strongest feedback was that many of the animations felt too similar, and we replaced some of the simple shooting animations with other cast animations to help change the look and feel of the weapons. We've also sped up some cast times and projectile speeds to keep the weapon feeling fluid.

On the other hand, when the screen is too busy, it can be difficult to tell which bullets are active. Elemental Bullets now display an icon in the buff bar to help if you can't see your character clearly.

At the end of Elementalist, we have the most important change: now you can pierce!

Guardian

Dual-wield pistols are a new option for Symptom Guardians that perform well in all game modes. Last month, we updated the trait to make it more useful in the game and give the off-hand pistol more scope for employment. We'll keep an eye on how this changes to make sure both the off-hand pistol and the torch have their place. As for weapon adjustments, the weapon will move faster and detonate earlier. This will make the skill feel smoother and help attack enemies within melee range.

Necromancer

The sword has a clear theme and an interesting concept, but unfortunately suffers from some clunky animation timing and low coefficients , they make players crave more damage. We will increase weapon damage coefficients across the board in PvE and make similar adjustments in PvP.

In addition, we will speed up the casting time of some skills and reduce the backswing of some skills to make the weapons better match the rhythm of the game. As with the Rogue ax changes, the projectile logic of the auto-attack chain will be updated so that they can more consistently hit targets on special terrain.

Another big addition to weapons is the rework of the and. The skill's design proved difficult to pull off. If the projectile is too slow, it will be difficult to hit a moving target, but if it is too fast, it will be difficult for the player to recall it when they want to. The sphere will now be thrown at the target, exploding on impact, causing damage and fear. It can then be used to reduce the stamina of the target hit by the explosion, causing damage and weakness while granting you power.

Engineer

The short bow aims to be a secondary weapon that allows your creativity to design the future. This weapon wasn't a fan favorite to say the least, and we knew it needed a major rework to bring it up to par with the other new weapons. We looked at all the feedback and found some common themes.

The Engineer's Shortbow was first criticized for being very slow: it's difficult to support your allies in time due to cast time, delay time, explosion time, and pulse time. In addition, for weapon performance considerations, the skill radius of the short bow must be small. The small area makes the skill harder to use, especially if you want your allies to stand in a small area for best effect.

We also received feedback that the Shortbow did not provide the right tools to make it an attractive choice for engineers over other weapons. All of these issues ultimately resulted in the short bow performing poorly in testing and gave us a lot of ideas on how to improve the short bow.

First of all, we have always believed that the short bow skill can speed things up in multiple ways. The cast time and hit delay have been shortened, and the short bow skill now does not need to detonate, and the arrow will explode immediately after hitting the ground.

We've also lowered the number of pulses for weapon skills so you don't have to stand in one area for too long to get the maximum benefit. We were so happy with the concept of chain reactions and power-ups that we retuned this mechanic to make it more suitable for the new shortbow. When you use a short bow skill, it will now briefly mark an area. The next shortbow skill in the area will consume the token and be empowered based on the first skill. With all these changes, we can expand the skill radius of the short bow and adjust the skill shape. Finally, we're also adding some new buffs to the short bow, such as a way to provide protection and divine shield.

Conclusion

As I mentioned before, these are the general changes to the new weapons in the next version of "Guild Wars 2: Mysteries of the Sky". If you want to see more specific values, more detailed changes, and a preview of our March balance update, be sure to watch our Twitch live stream.

See you in the mist!

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