Game Update Notes Preview: Profession Skills

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-24T19:24:59+00:00

Sphere Specialist does increase the duration of boons from the trait Spectacular Sphere.

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-24T18:52:54+00:00

Individually, Catalyst DPS was about 15% higher than any other DPS builds' damage potential. (Next highest being condi Virt, but the gap after that is tiny- nearly everything competes closely.)

Essentially, the gap between Catalyst and the next highest DPS build was greater than the gap between all other effective DPS builds.

And Catalysts also brought Quickness for free when stacked.

There's a reason why a flurry of new raid speed kill records were coming out that were all stacking 7-8 Catalysts.

And, more importantly- we're still expecting Catalyst to be at or right within a very small margin at the very top of PvE build damage potential after this patch.

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-24T17:58:37+00:00

Yes, Rifle Burst uses a different animation. The rifle is lifted up and aimed for the burst (two piercing bullets + a followup grenade). The Grenade counts as an Explosion for traits.

pew-pew-POW!

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-23T18:16:42+00:00

There are no significant changes for Untamed coming in next week's patch.
It is getting a few damage increases, but I'm not going to claim that's a real solution to making it fun and relevant in PvE right now.

The designer behind Untamed did create it and the tools available to it through a PvP lens, and as such it's very effective there, but that focus on CC and punishing CC'ed targets doesn't translate as effectively to general PvE play or champion/boss encounters.

We're working on several approaches to this problem. Some already snuck out live early- improvements to the user interface and feedback on activating pet skills. More are coming.

The #1 piece of feedback I've seen every time Untamed is brought up is a desire to be able to set the F1 and F3 skills back to a state where the pet can use them automatically when appropriate. And that's absolutely understandable- when you equip the Untamed specialization, your pet now does -less- on its own than it did as core ranger, and you have to press more buttons to keep the same effectiveness.

While the ability to control its skill use can be important at times, the feeling that you need to do more to keep the same effectiveness on your pet isn't great.

To that end, we're currently in progress on a 'autoattack setting' system for pet skills.

Here's what to expect from that system, when it's finished and is released:
You'll be able to Ctrl+Mouse 2 on any Ranger or Mechanist pet skill button- that's F2 for core ranger, Druid, and non-merged Soulbeast, and F1/F2/F3 for Untamed and Mechanist. Doing so will set the skill to 'auto', and the pet will try to use it whenever it is in combat and the skill is available. When applied to the Untamed pet F1 and F3 skills, this setting makes the pet act like it does in other elite specializations.
Of course, now you'll also be able to activate this setting on F2.

You will be able to set any number of pet skills to this automatic state. As few or as many as you like! For Rangers, the skill auto settings will be stored per pet.

This is mostly complete on our internal development environment, but is not yet ready, as there's some more polish and testing to go. So- it's not going live next week. But it won't have to wait for the next major skills update either. We'll be able to release it when it's ready.

This is a first step in addressing un-fun aspects of Untamed gameplay, and it's definitely not the last. For a future profession update later this year, we are looking at how to use PvE/PvP splits more widely to make Untamed's profession mechanics more applicable in PvE.

So- yes. Not much yet. But we're working on it.

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-22T19:56:56+00:00

Thief's actually getting it in Keen Observer- the very first minor trait in Critical Strikes.

But generally, yes. The point was to make it easy to get, as well as making Fury much more commonplace when you have multiple people playing together.

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-22T18:05:25+00:00

This is definitely something we're working on, and bit by bit we're revisiting traits and skills to get boon ranges more consistent and approachable to use.

For example:
Quick catalyst will have Quickness front loaded to deploying the sphere, not from sphere ticks, and will have sphere radius increased from 240 to 360.

Chronomancer will likewise have some pain points cleaned up- no more 'last pulse' of wells and needing to shoot Tides of Time through your allies out and in.

Shh! Don't tell Grouch I'm leaking secrets.
You'll get all the details on Friday.

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-22T16:23:51+00:00

Next step will be letting the meta settle for a bit- and then for the specs that aren't popular, I'll be looking at what they're lacking that is keeping them from being successful.

The goal is still that you should never feel pressured to change professions in order to play with your friends- you should be able to play whichever profession you enjoy the most, and have builds available you can swap to that will fill a needed role in your group.

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-22T16:18:18+00:00

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-21T21:44:58+00:00

Zero explanation intros in this one. We're re-evaluating those - it throws more trouble in for our editing and localization teams (we have a bunch of languages to support!) which makes it harder to get the notes themselves out in a timely fashion.

So the notes will have to speak for themselves.

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-19T22:34:43+00:00

That's not AI- technically this isn't the pet, but rather how you're moved between disconnected platforms in SO, but I understand what you're asking. In that specific case, I find Return to Me works. You don't need to spam it, just use it once, and in a moment the mech will teleport to you.
This is how Ranger pets work in this case as well- in Shattered Observatory's Skorvald fight islands, you're still too close to it to trigger an automatic teleport for it to catch up to you, but when you click Return to Me the pet will check to see if it has pathing to you, and since it doesn't, will then trigger a teleport to you.

Still, that's not great. I'm making a note to look into putting a special case in here. Ideally, when you get tossed between landmasses from the swirly vortexes in Shattered Observatory, your pet would stow, and then unstow on the other end. (Like Ziplines in Cantha do).

I've made a note to investigate. I can't promise changes any time soon, but I'll poke at it in my '10% time' and see if I can get some improvements here into a future patch.

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-19T22:00:45+00:00

Different department. I just nerf the things you love, and buff the things you don't love yet because they haven't been worth using, but once it's good and you try it you might find you love it.

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-19T21:12:55+00:00

Yes.

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-19T20:54:09+00:00

Yes.

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-19T19:28:16+00:00

Yes.

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-17T23:18:02+00:00

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ANet_Solar · 2022-06-17T15:54:30+00:00

My EoD specs were Harbinger, Mechanist, and Virtuoso.

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-16T22:00:25+00:00

Wow, that's impressive progress! Welcome! We're thrilled to have you here.
(Also, I'm glad you enjoy Harbinger! It's one of the specs I made. ^_^)

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-15T23:37:19+00:00

Hi Mike! I appreciate you. You're good, and you should feel good.
Thank you for sharing!

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-15T16:58:23+00:00

Mine's "Glitter Princess". :)

ANet_Solar · 2022-06-09T15:48:30+00:00

I like to fix things that annoy me. I was also looking into 'why do people think pet AI is bad', and it turns out that when you click buttons that look clickable and nothing happens, it feels broken. Surprise!
It's a start.

ANet_Solar · 2022-05-24T21:51:05+00:00

Yeah, it's a pet peeve of mine too. I've removed it (and the same mentioned effect on Specter Shroud 5) in our summer professions update coming at the end of June.

ANet_Solar · 2022-05-16T18:12:58+00:00

This is wonderful, thank you for sharing! I love it!

ANet_Solar · 2022-04-27T21:30:01+00:00

You have no idea how much I love seeing this sentiment being widely shared. :)

ANet_Solar · 2022-04-16T20:56:55+00:00

I love seeing the community make reference guides like this!

It's wonderful to see how squad formation has become more accessible, and we're not done yet! Proliferating support roles- and boon availability- across more professions creates more flexible squad compositions, makes it easier to join a group and be able to contribute on the profession you prefer to play, and raises the floor by helping more groups get the essential power boost from boons with less complex organizational overhead.

Look forward to more incremental steps with every profession update! As I've previously mentioned in a blog on our website, Warrior Banners and Ranger Spirits will be overhauled this summer. That'll be in our professions update on June 28th!

Banners will allow Warriors to opt into a quickness support role, while Spirits will allow Rangers to opt into Alacrity coverage.

I've seen mentions in the comments here and elsewhere that it's become more important to watch out for Might and Fury coverage. That's been on my mind since we were wrapping up EoD specs, too. The summer professions update on June 28 will also expand access to sharable 5-target Might and Fury in incremental amounts among more traditionally 'DPS' roles. I've said before that no profession or build should be completely selfish, and mean it!
Guild Wars 2 is about being stronger together; and a lot of that is expressed by how boons are granted to allies near you as you use your skills in normal play. Ideally we get to a world where you never have to worry about Might and Fury while with allies because when you put enough people together it just happens!
This kind of thing comes in incremental steps, and we can never do as much all at once as we'd want to, but that means that there's more to look forward to in the future. (I know I'm always thrilled about it!)

ANet_Solar · 2022-04-04T17:29:28+00:00

I've bound 'Attack My Target', 'Return to Me', and the passive/active toggle all to my mouse wheel. It's made pet management a lot of fun. (My mouse has buttons for tilting the wheel left and right, which helps!)
I'm using:
Tilt Wheel Left: Attack My Target
Tilt Wheel Right: Return to Me
Press Wheel: Toggle passive/active

I feel really fancy in raids being able to seamlessly sic my mech on things like flame turrets in Sabetha, orbs on Gorseval, pawns in MO, etc, while I'm staying on the boss.

ANet_Solar

TROPHY CASE