Because none of this is final, I won't suggest any specific builds for these weapons, but when they do you'll find all the builds here: guildjen.com/builds/ Also remember to subscribe and like the video.
Even tough they will nerf it I love how in Snowcrows they talked that the benchmark with group and working trait would be around 68k on Axe Condi Deadeye I think 😅
if they buff necro sword i would love to see your take on it. most people didn't like dual sword, but i tried main sword and focus reaper and gs to have cool movement. i'm not so experienced though. i just like seeing people like you theory craft its cool. oh maybe with spectral walk :b
I'm amazed that neither Elementalist nor Mesmer got any of the bows, either of the bows would fit them far more than rifle for Mesmer and pistol for Elementalist.
Engi shortbow has a mighty weakness in that it doesn't allow for weapon swap like necro staff does. You'll need a kit to lean on while your shortbow isn't ready to do what it does.
It's awful, fiddly and next to useless in WvW, where I play. It's meant to be support, but I've no idea what they were thinking. Short bow on Rev and Ranger should be the base standard and as you say, with no weapon swap you would be a sitting duck.
Fully agree on your analysis. Engineer shortbow is a cool idea but currently is just lackluster (placing the explosives takes too long, detonating is also clunky, damage is too low overall). After watching the rest: - agree that warrior staff could be a very nice and useful addition, especially in WvW; - necro swords is very cool, but could indeed use some more damage, better telegraphing; - ele pistol are indeed not very fun to play and seem unpolished, none of the offhands really works with it; this should have been double pistols with more synergy between them or another offhand which works with it; - guardian pistols feel a lot better and really make condi / burn builds a lot more viable with willbender; - didn't try out ranger maces, mesmer rifle, rev scepter or thief axes.
The ele pistol critique is spot on. Its so lackluster and literally everything is single target. This means its largely useless for most end game content unless you're at a boss mob.
@@siett1335 I wish. Honestly the ele pistol feels worse in every way than the scepter. Animations aren't good, range is the same, skills are all single target unless consuming a bullet... Its like they didn't have any idea on cool weapons. Long bow, dual torches could be fun ((Blue fire for fire, Steam for water, plasma for air, lava for earth). Shortbow that is similar to the ice bow weapon but better and with different attunements... but they go 1 handed, 900 range pistol with bad single target skills...
@@dyrinn45 the crazy thing is ele players have been asking for a bow since hot. Also they could add a land spear, pike, and pole are. There is no shortage of medieval weapons they could add. Imagine a rouge in wvw with a pole are that has an ability that discounts a player on a mount from stealth. Or a guardian with a spear shield combo that has more melee range than a greatsword. It could also have a type of push ability.
I've been playing pistol weaver since the release of the beta and it's not as bad as everybody claim. Its damage are higher than scepter and water atunnement is much better for a condi build. Dual attack combined with the bullet system add a bit variation in your rotation. And for AoE you have a fire field on f/f 3, an ice field on w/w 3, a piercing bullet with a very high range on f/e 3 and another piercing bullet on f 2. What they really should work on are animations and sounds.
@@siett1335I think making new weapons would be difficult for them cuz they would need to make a lot more fashion items for them. But they could do torch, focus, warhorn heck even shield Mainhand somehow lol of course spear, trident too.
I’ve been hyped for gun mage for 12 years and I don’t think I could be more disappointed. The worst part is guardian pistol proves they can design fun magic pistol skills. Pistol needs massive rework which is very unlikely. It seems Anet are out of ideas for Elementalist or are just too restricted to develop so many skills.
I mean its on beta for a reason. They SHOULD take all these criticisms from their community and known content creators because its free QA. If they don't do anything about it after the beta's finished, not only have they ran out of ideas, but they also lost the ability to develop a game. 😂
Thief dual pistols were gutted for Rifle and keep getting phased out more and more as the game ages, and when they finally buff them at all it literally does nothing of value >.< need a rework to make them unique again. Sucks seeing guardian pop up with these god tier AoE destruction pistols and mines just hold 3 to do pseudo AA on 1 target for low damage forever.
For ele pistol, I think the idea of the elemental bullet things is ok. I also think pistol is functional (may need some number tuning), it has damage skills, it has self healing, it has barrier, it has evades, and it has range, but by golly did they miss the fun factor by a mile. Water's is by far the most interesting because water 2 is shoot a volley of bullets and water 3 puts down that field. All the other skills are just shoot a singular bullet... Even if the current animations are still place holders, it's all still just shoot a singular bullet. It doesn't feel like you are doing any combos because everything just feels like an auto attack. The scepter, dagger, and sword weapon skills feel very different from each other. Pistol also has a few functional issues: 1) it's very hard to see which elemental bullets you have up when anything is happening. The water bullet and the air bullet look quite similar too. 2) Pistol is awful at building energy for catalyst (mostly a pve issue). I've been watching some benchmarks of pistol on catalyst and it takes 11-12 seconds to build 30 energy even when you have quickness.
thank you so much for this video, i would never have the time to go through all the weapons during this week! I only tried ele pistol so far and sadly i fully agree with your comments. So plain.
Nice comments, thank you. Liked the disclaimer in the end as well. I don't play pvp so it's nice to see this point of view. Just a quick correction, around 11:52 you talk about being just one weapon twice :o)
Finally a video from somoene that actually played engi short bow and willing to say it's lackluster! The other channels are full of praises from one-shotting starter zone mobs and crazy rotate of 3 weapon kits........
SB could also just pulse conditions which would also help it to have some sort of function in the various game modes, on top of desperately needing to up the radius. Dropping a Necro Staff 5 onto a small group while roaming in WvW to eat Stab or disrupt for your team member to followup sort of function, but instead you're just spamming out Burning, Poison, Confusion, etc. to actually put some amount of pressure onto other groups while giving your own team things like barrier to help take advantage of that. That it isn't blockable would also help give it a spot in Zergs so you're actually doing more than being a heal bot with med kit. They can fix the weapon so it's not the waste of a slot, worse mortar kit, that it currently is, but it needs a lot of work to get there and I'm not certain they want to invest that level of work hearing how much they moaned about things like Weaver needing all the extra skills and how bland all those were.
Axe on thief is definitely fun, better in open world than scepter, thats for sure. What it needs is noticeably bigger hitboxes. Necro swords need either faster animations, more raw damage, or both.
Good stuff. I pretty much agree on everything there. I will say, I think quite a lot of these weapons felt designed as " what do we need to give this class so it can do this PvE build" first and foremost, which isn't always the best starting point to make the weapons fun.
I really was looking forward to the rifle on Mesmer. I was quickly disappointed. I just didn't get why there were so many ground targeted skills, little clone generation, and a super long cooldown on the phantasm that missed half the time, with no to little damage. The rifle mirage skill was super close ranged too, which made it very awkward to use. I also didn't vibe with the shortbow on Engineer. The gold star goes to Necromancer swords though. I was very surprised by how fun and flashy they were.
so far i tried the ranger maces and elementalist pistol. the maces were fun, but i hated the pistol. that one really needs a reworking. this was true of catalyst in the beginning too and is now a fave. we'll see.
i was disappointed about the Revenant getting the scepter until i tried it yesterday and boy that's so much fun that weapon, i think will work in PvP and WvW, i absolutely like it a lot and can't wait to have it on my main Rev 😛🤩✌🏾
I'm interested in seeing what the final result will be. Some of the new weapon skills seem to be more polished than others, whereas some feel like it's missing some crucial piece(s) to make it viable. Although some will need just a little bit of tweaking here or there, with CDs, energy cost, activation time, etc., some I feel need to be reworked because they don't seem to fill any purpose other weapons don't already provide (sb on engi or pistol on ele, for example). Thanks for your analysis, Vallun. I always look forward to your videos.
I have tested those weapons in PvP and PvE and there are few points I disagree. -Ele pistol: I completely disagree. The weapon was my favourite in whole beta. In PvE the rotation was very pleasant, flowed well, did very good damage. In PvP I could still see its uses. It was a very nice weapon overall. -Necro swords: on the contrary - that was a trash weapon. The cast times were way too long, damage numbers too small and health costs not worth it. Basically best way to use swords on necro was to use it as a second set and never use weapon swap. -Warrior staff - that weapon was actually overtuned. I did not have resource issues both in PvP and PvE, but I tested it on Bladesworn and not berserker. The amount of healing on staff 3 was crazy and boons it have were too much. -Revenant scepter - damage was too low for it to be any significant DPS weapon. The link wasn't impactful enough and the drain was too much of a cost. It's simply support weapon for PvE, because revenant is missing support main hand and barrier access is nice, but that's about it.
For the rest I more or less agree, sometimes with more exaggeration. -Thief axe - probably the most overpowered weapon this beta. Did over 60k DPS in PvE and you could oneshot people in PvP as a deadeye coming out of stealth. -Mesmer rifle and guardian pistols - felt nice, filling holes in the kit, pretty balanced. -Ranger mace - tested the least, but seemed ok. Pretty solid weapon, but the gimmick didn't do much. -Engineer shortbow - underwhelming weapon. Felt like it was intended purely for heal scrapper in PvE. Setting up your chain of explosions felt nice and access to the very rare combo fields like the one giving boons on blast was interesting, however the cooldowns were too long, blasting in chain still counted only one blast and engineer does not have a weapon swap, which means giving up the mace, which basically disqualifies that weapon. For PvP the damage was too low and the fields were way too static gameplay to be useful.
Thanks for the video. I recently quit the game, but still wanted to at least see what this early access expansion would add. Glad I'm not missing much. Didn't expect to.
Well that's a shame.. Ele Pistol and Necro Swords were what I was most looking forward to. Seems like they both turned out a bit lackluster or literally disappointing, I'll try them myself but not very high hopes for either at this point.
Great assessment! I didn't try them all but I agree axe thief was the most fun, sword necro felt a bit clunky to me with the animations and mh mace could work for sure on my ranger - the one thing I will say, as a rev main, I was underwhelmed by the scepter. The cleave on skill one is good sure, but yeah, I was struggling to peice where/what mode I was facilitating with is. AND, I know, Rev can be a bit... blase, as it is with our limitations in weapon & legend combos, but just letting auto-chain more or less run out the clock was a bit of a bummer. At least for me.
I was so hyped about engi shortbow. But it was also the biggest letdown. While I have to give them credits for the idea, I just hoped it was more like the Rev shortbow but with explosions and stuff attached to the arrows
People complaining Wrong weapons, there is still more expansions to come, and prob more weapons too. If you think you class after these weapons, what roles are you still missing melee/range condi/power/support? And that skills feels new and not repetative it must be hell of the job for devs. The water weapon converse could be easyest solution
mesmer rifle is pretty good. heal chrono will be a thing. gudian pistol is bit a lame. without combo field pistol don't deal much damage but guardian now have a range weapon option. that's 2 weapon I have played
I like the idea of mesmer rifle, its a weapon we needed. My only problem is how slow everything on it is. Mesmer has always been a more fast-paced class, but the rifle just feels so slow. If you don't have the retargeting for ground abilities, it is too easy to miss. The phantasm is also a bit boring. Especially because in pvp and wvw it will do no damage, so it is just a slow stun.
Axes on thief needs a little work the axe stacks they need to make it work like the moment you throw the axes the counter should already be 3 axes rather than waiting for the axes to reach the end.
Well, i'm not a Pistol fan at all. testing ele with pistol was a weird experience. maybe i should try harder next time. Dual swords on Necro is interesting, i should play necro again when the patch come out. Thanks for the vid!!
Thanks for the nice video. What I as a semi new player noticed: at this point it seems like we're getting close to having every weapon on every class, taking away the uniqueness. Imho it would have been better to introduce totally new weapons like spears and other polearms, crossbows, slings, whatever. So much still to explore.
i think thats an irrelevant point because the weapons themselves dont define the class, its the skills, if they came out with the same skills then sure, but unique skills are unique even if its the same weapon
@@Vallun gameplay wise that's absolutely true. I was looking at it from a world building perspective. There needs to be a reason why e.g. elementalist didn't have pistol skills before. Maybe using ranged, modern weapons is 'beneath' them, or their magic doesn't work on physical projectiles? So a magically enhanced whip or a spear would have been way cooler for a new mid-range weapon for them (imagine the fun animations of burning or water whip, then swirling it around to produce air torrents to block projectiles or knock people down in air, wrapping it around the body covered in rocks to give barrier and protection in earth etc.). Axes are too clunky for a thief, so maybe give them a blow gun shooting poison darts...and so on. I am well aware that it's obviously way more work needed to add fully new weapons to the game, since that also means creating new items for all levels for the loot tables and vendors. I think that's the amount of work that should be expected to be put into a paid game expansion though and I really think that there are tons of fun animations and skill designs that could stem from widening the actual weapon pool, it might inspire the designers to explore totally new skill effects (also new gameplay mechanics/effects) that then become typical for e.g. spears.
@@genericnameincMaybe we dont need "lore" for every weapons. I absolutly don't care about " magic and pistol" ... i just want gameplay and build crafting, like it Was possible in gw1. And i really dont understand why people get upset about the ability for some classes to play Some weapons... doesnt make sens... there is a lot more things to care about + news weapons would be really tough work because you'll need animation, hitbox for armor, design.... BUUUUUT gimme back Spears and scythe O:)
@@LouisS71 yeah it's not the highest priority, of course. I care mostly about gameplay as well. I just think it could be done and would be interesting to add new types of weapons. While the weapon skills differ from class to class they still often carry some common theme (e.g. pistol/scepter being medium range, hammer having lots of control skills etc.) across classes. Widening the weapon pool to some more exotic weapons could give the designers totally new ideas. Blow guns shooting poison/disabling darts? Spears that can pierce one target when thrown and impale (stun) if they hit a 2nd unit or a wall slightly behind the target as well? Lots of interesting stuff still to explore. Yes way way way more work but also the amount of work that should be expected from an expansion.
Im really mad that anet decided to fully replace the lesser defender (tier 3 trait 1 - mental defense) from inspiration on mesmer. It was really helpful quality of life trait that was extremely useful expecially in solo bounties killing with full viper gear axe pistol/staff mirror mirage. Almost made me quit the profession as a whole. 😢 I picked the trait beneath it for healing, but its not the same without this trait...
I agree with your observations, but I'm afraid that instead of making changes, arena net will simply make a colossal nerf of all previous weapons to force us to use new ones
Tried ele beta for 10 minutes. Never going back. They can just not add it if they want to. Just add a fkin long bow for ele. That shit could literally be crowd funded if needed.
Man, guardian pistols are shit. Damage is too low. No real burst. And bad signet. As usual. For instance, Longbow signet is better. As well as sword or greatsword. Pistols suck. They do not want to give any weapon with good CC. What's the point in damage, if enemy can just run away? You are rooted and slowed. Enemy is not. Even if you removed conditions - enemy will slow you again. And just run away. Pistols should be fast and strong ranged weapons. With high attack speed. For comparison, longbow is ultra slow. Every attack can be interrupted. LITERALLY EACH LONGBOW SKILL EXCEPT SYMBOL and 0 damage knockback arrow. Plus pistols do not work against barrier builds. Damage is not enough to beat through ticking barrier of revenants.
I feel the exact same way about the Elementalist. No creativity at all went into that weapon and the weaver skills were just as awful. No difference other than bullets with conditions or consume bullet to give more conditions. They really have it out for this class and it shows. I would have rather ditched adding a mechanic to an already complex class and be satisfied with just a regular pistol with some decent animations.
it actually is super strong. Test it with condi weaver - I was able to get 40burn and 35 bleed without even trying and without paying attention to rotation at all
Great video and commentary Vallun! Some weapons do feel a bit undertuned but I believe with feedback they will be in a much better place when they officially release!
Ty for the great video and info.. so dissappointed with ele pistol choice thats ridiculous. We all where hoping for bow but anet loves to ignore us...sigh
ele pistol hurts. it feels bad, it looks bad, it does badly....and its not what any ele mains wanted (which was long range). we ele mains woulda had more chance of warming up to another mid range range weap if it were well executed.
Bein real, Rev sword felt kinda weak and lost even by Rev standards. I was lookin forward to a ranged support weapon, similar to Druid staff. But again it's another melee weapon that sorta just, doesn't feel that impressive? I duno, it just didn't seem to fit any role to me atleast not one that couldn't be better performed by staff. It's only real saving grace is that it can be paired with a shield, where in PvE you can give allies aegis. That's about all I can see with it. Necro swords on the other hand, whoa baby, now we're cookin with gas. That was by far the most fun weapon. Rocked it on a bruiser Reaper build, and not only was I consistently getting top damage, but also top healing. That said, it could be that the main hand sword was pulling most of the weight and offhand sword was riding the coat tails. Especially in PvP, where warhorn fills a similar niche, but also comes with unblockable fear, and swiftness, which could definitely help with Necro's sticking potential. Also while kool, Thief axe is straight up Xayah/Talon from League of Legends. And Engi short bow felt like poor man's support Gangplank. Fun design, but needs more work.
I wanted a pistol for ele and they botched it, both function and visuals. It's boring and doesn't do anything cool, and they implemented an ammo mechanic in the worst way. There's 12 skills+dual skills and still has less cool shit then guardian with only 5. They should have made it an aoe weapon.
mesmer rifle is pretty good. a lot of healing power. heal chrono will be a thing. also now mesmer have 2 portal skill. I think mesmer rifle is most well plan weapon.
there is no perspective that could be understood by someone with half a braincell if you look at engi shortbow. it would be better to not get a weapon than to know that there is someone designing weapons who never played gw2
Huge bummer scepter not being ranged >360 on autos for rev.. still forced to take SB or Hammer, I'm sick of SB and hammer.. can't take staff without or else melee only.. so all heal/tank builds with staff+ X/Sh means outclassed by everyone because of range lockdown. 0 logic behind suddenly making scepter melee for the one class that has no 1h range option.. Everything else was more of the same and felt redundant, the 1h range for rev was the only real QoL adjustment and they dropped the ball hard.. Again.
so sad about ele pistol..first thing its crap, second its condi crap...no love for power :((( this goes for most other weps which will only supplement already broken celestial meta. Lets hope they rework these before final release.
I can only comment on thief axe, but man do I find that weapon awful in it's current iteration. Feels extremely sluggish and slow, has multiple different issues that make hitting the enemy a pure gamble and follows weird rules in order to apply the damage (especially in the case of power). On top of that it's basically just another single target weapon only disguised as a cleave weapon. Yes I understand that this is just a beta, but I honestly fail to see the purpose of this weapon design.
How could you say that to the Thief Axe? -- the weapon skills are horrible. You didn't even address the fact that skill #3 requires you to spend initiative for skill #2 or waste time throwing axes with auto. In the same time frame, your target is already dead using a dagger or sword main. The "time to kill" is soo slow, nobody will choose axe as their first pick.
its sword main hand in one set and sword offhand in the other set? if you only want to see a sword sword necro build then check my power harbinger build
I aaaaaaaaabsolutely hate thief axe. Been playing thief since 2012 and this is by far the worst weapon update the game has seen imo. They really need to hire someone that understands what we want to play given our specific class. I think this goes beyond just the gameplay, the aesthetic is terrible as well. Heart of thorns elite specs did it right, after that I've seen a gradual decline.
Most weapons are sucks. I think Anet hired some WOW or Korean RPG fun as game disigner. I don't want to shoot some spirituals stuff from flintlock pistol, or giant rock or fireball. Mesmers have a good solution how pistol can be an interesting magical weapon. Revenant's scepeter, what a hell is this? Giant sword with some tricks? Thieves need more off-hand weapons, not new mainhand or both hand. His one of the interesting part of gameplay is dual-wielding, and disigners forgot about it. Shortbow is worse weapon at all. I just want to cry, when i see this. Engi already have a bunch of grenades, a bunch of bombs, a bunch of mortar shells, useless kits. Yes, a bunch of arrows, that is what we need.😥😖
this is just another money grab to shake the meta and make everyone spend another $50 getting their builds to meta. you don't want to play the meta? then don't expect to be able to run raids, strikes, or stand a chance in pvp or wvw. everything about this game is a constant effort to make you spend more and more money for usually what amounts to cosmetics. its a trash game that uses grind to drive you to the point of spending cash. expect that as soon as they have gotten their money for everyone respeccing and regearing to catch up to meta, they will nerf back to a point where they will force the meta in a completely different direction continuing the process.
@Vallun if I knew exactly what I was having for the money beforehand... I definitely wouldnt pre order... 20 od bucks per player is a huge injection of money the other expansions though I genuinely think they were worth more money than asked. But this one is just trash, really. It's recycling weapons on classes. Story is meh too... even with all the geeks wanting Cantha to be available, Myself included.
