GW2 Janthir Wilds - Discussion Thread

[Scyth]

Ele looks great! Finally a ranged option after so many disappointing weapons. Really wanted a longbow but the animations on this look good so can't complain.
Now we just need anet to add more Spear options as there aren't many nice looking weapons

Rev looks really cool as well.

[LilSaihah]

Rev and Ele looked amazing. Not sure what was going on with the Mesmer one, but that's on theme.
I'm also pretty hype for Ranger Spear.
I'm very optimistic for this expansion compared to SotO.

[PACOX]

Ele looks great! Finally a ranged option after so many disappointing weapons. Really wanted a longbow but the animations on this look good so can't complain.
Now we just need anet to add more Spear options as there aren't many nice looking weapons

Rev looks really cool as well.

There people on reddit who whinned that ele got spear as an ranged offensive option instead of "fixing staff". Except ele staff has only been a support weapon except for a brief period where it wasnt balanced, so I don't know what people are basing their arguments on? But as someone who has always liked ele, I'm loving spear. Ele in GW2 actually made me try mage classes in other RPGs, previously hated the elementalist/mage archtype in games before GW2. I would say GW2s take is more in line with a shaman than a wizard in other games though.


All the classes look good though, and Anet learned a lesson and showcased new animations, something they didn't do with SOTO. I'm hoping Anet moves some of the "melee staff" skins that were obviously made before the decided introduce land spears to spear. Theres a ton of good skins they gave to staff that could apply to spear from an era where they gave several classes a melee staff option.

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Rev and Ele looked amazing. Not sure what was going on with the Mesmer one, but that's on theme.
I'm also pretty hype for Ranger Spear.
I'm very optimistic for this expansion compared to SotO.

Spear mesmer should be great in pvp on paper. Its giving vibes from mirage in terms of positioning being important but mirages numbers have been nerfed and havent recovered for a few balance cycles at this point. But Mesmer/mirages axe seems similar to the spear preview.

I say this often but where Anet fumbles they also make up for it because they actually play their game and listen to the community. They might be bad communicators but I dont think Anet has ever truly done me wrong as a gamer. I've been a fan since i was little kid whose parents wouldn't pay for a MMORPG sub and also didnt have time/patience for the long grinds that were "normal" when GW1 came out. Nightfall also has special place in my heart for representation reasons.

[Scyth]

There people on reddit who whinned that ele got spear as an ranged offensive option instead of "fixing staff". Except ele staff has only been a support weapon except for a brief period where it wasnt balanced, so I don't know what people are basing their arguments on? But as someone who has always liked ele, I'm loving spear. Ele in GW2 actually made me try mage classes in other RPGs, previously hated the elementalist/mage archtype in games before GW2. I would say GW2s take is more in line with a shaman than a wizard in other games though.

It's the people who want to play like a fire wizard I guess I wouldn't mind a rework of Staff as well tbh.

Very excited for their livestream, really interested in seeing the other abilities.

[Edge-]

I'm glad the spear already seems like a big improvement over the SotO weapons. Gives me a little bit more hope for the expansion.

Still got a few months of the campaign until launch, but I'm eagerly waiting to find out what's what with homesteads. And if they'll share anything about what'll go on with them pot-JW. Because this definitely feels like the kind of feature that needs to follow us around in expansions somehow, not just exist in JW only.

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https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2177979158

vod for the livestream they did showing off the new skills. No final icons or anything which is par for the course.

Only watching guardian (zero cares about other classes, I now even have two guardians as I'm replaying the whole story on a norn alt...yes, I'm damaged), and I'm down with it.

We get our cone AoE autoattack back, even if massively nerfed range? And it heals? Rad.

Movement 2 seems...broken on 2 second cooldown? That can't be final, because otherwise that's gonna be batshit stupid mobility on top of an easy way to proc illumination before using other skills. He's resetting the cooldown with dev commands on some skills, but not seeing anything like that (and the tooltip shows 2s). Might not even need to rock WB for mobility with that, not that I think FB/DH offer anything remotely competitive nor does core. But even on a longer cooldown a nice dual-use damage/healing mobility skill.

AoE is nice, and will be a decent way to help contribute might/fury fairly reliably.

Spearthrow is rad as fuck looking. I like that the illumination effect rewards you for using it in close quarters while keeping it as a functional ranged skill.

5 is dope (and I hope we can get rid of the knockback effect in PvE since that's always annoying), and yo that's big resistance.

Not sure how to make a powerboon build work really, though. My fractal set is Harriers which is kinda shit DPS, maybe Zealot even if that still is only power/healing power/precision? The lack of ferocity will suck, but maybe that'll be a new expansion combo or something.

[unfilteredJW]

Rev was a little slow on the animations but I feel like that can be fixed.

Warrior wins 100% on theme though. I love the idea that the closer you are to the target, the bigger your aoe impact is.

[Edge-]

Rev was a little slow on the animations but I feel like that can be fixed.

Warrior wins 100% on theme though. I love the idea that the closer you are to the target, the bigger your aoe impact is.

I gotta look at the whole stream, but I've heard lots of good things about elementalist, too. While the SotO weapons weren't bad or necessarily negatively received, the sentiment around these seems so much more positive overall. I think the devs really benefitted from picking a single weapon type and being able to theme everything around that single weapon with class-specific flavors.

[PACOX]

Ele is insane. It's exactly what I wanted a ranged damage weapoj for Ele to be. They are going to have to change it 5 skills for visibility but yeah solid. Liked warrior, engi seems fun to mess around with too. Seems like they had these skills cooking a lot more than the addictions the made for SOTO, even some of the EOD specs.


Am I wrong that I almost like the place holder icons. I mean they are ugly but I would kind of like to be able to toggle "simple icons" sometimes when trying to learn a new build.

[justwatching]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YurQQMbr23o

The Housing system seems to be pretty deep. Reminds me of Wildstars.

[Edge-]

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/mmo/gu...ead-exclusive/

And PC Gamer article.

TLDR: Dramatically updated housing tools, you can build things, float things, clip things, and much more. Updated tools coming to guild halls. 300 decorations at launch, up to 800 planned through the expansion. Some monetized, most crafted.

Alt parking so they'll just hang out which is rad, and same for mounts and your skiff. Nice little flavor stuff, and alts get the usual rested perks.

Apparently you can show off armor sets and weapons and the like too, which is nice.

All home instance gathering nodes port over, and they're planning an autocollect feature for a later update which will be rad. I never do that shit.

Sounds nice, glad housing folks/builders get some apparently good tools.

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https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topi...-june-25-2024/

Spear beta patch is out ahead of its start on the 27th.

Fair number of changes for the live game too, updates around sunken treasure chests (I should do something with those, I have so many keys) and a new, confusing account-wide swim speed infusion. Which sounds nice but has me worried the expansion is going to be more underwater bullshit. Yes GW2 has the least-bad underwater combat of any MMO on the market, but it's still awful.

Some other tweaks and changes but...

Guardian
Leap of Faith: Increased the radius from 180 to 240.
Firebrand
Mantras now automatically charge in combat in PvE only.
Mantra of Solace: Increased the arc angle from 60 degrees to 160 degrees.
Mantra of Lore: Increased the arc angle from 60 degrees to 160 degrees.
Mantra of Potence: Increased the arc angle from 60 degrees to 160 degrees.
Mantra of Liberation: Increased the arc angle from 60 degrees to 160 degrees.
Willbender
Rushing Justice: Increased the Justice effect duration from 6 seconds to 8 seconds in PvE only.

AoE increase for GS 3? OK.

Nearly tripling the arc angle of mantras? OH FUCK YES, FINALLY.

Apparently making recharge automatic so we don't forget? (need to confirm this) EVEN BETTER

hype.

[PACOX]

Homesteads are insane. I don't know if it's best housing system but it's definitely the most player friendly.

[Throren]

Ya making the claims that its the best housing in all MMO's is pretty bold. From what we see it looks fantastic though. I think closest contender would be ESO's housing, instanced and such, where you can place anything anywhere.

Main differences being that the GW2 Homestead lets you scale decor (which is huge, no pun intended), shows off your gear and have alts in the house.
Where as ESO has a huge variety of different style houses in different places and racial styles and a huge amount of furniture can just be bought (and also crafted but ESO's crafting system is super easy)

My only worry is GW2's crafting system can be a little convoluted. And by a little I mean a lot. And I really hope they don't do a "Oh you want to make one simple wood chair? You need 3 whole stacks of different wood types to process into separate leg, back and seat parts of the chair, then combine them with an Ecto, some Obsidian and a stack of a new map currency item to get one chair" type deal, and hopefully crafted furniture can be placed on the trading post

[Edge-]

Trading post, brah. I still haven't bothered leveling up most professions so if there's goodies I want I'm just gonna buy them from other players.

[ryanmahaffe]

Definitely seems like they took a lot of inspiration from their ill fated sister game Wildstar. These look fantastic though, and with the spears and general aesthetic of this expansion, it definitely seems like a home run in the making.

[Edge-]

Landspear beta is ongoing, so get your testing in.

Tinkered around with Guardian spear and...I don't really get it.

1 is what it says on the tin. Not exciting, weird that it's not a chain attack, but whatever.

2 is alright. The arrow showing your direction you charge is WAY too long and it seems like you basically have to cancel out of it to not fuck yourself on positioning. Nice for getting out of range of AoE if your dodge is on cooldown too, I guess.

3 is pretty good, though holy crap the cooldown is long.

4 same as above. Condition cleanse is great.

5 just feels like the cooldown is super long for how short it is. With guard being heavily symbol based still, the lack of reliable symbol generation loses a bunch of damage.

Damage didn't seem to impressive and the healing scaling seems meh...honestly unsure what it's for. Maybe a WvW weapon? Maybe a general "whatever" weapon? I still want to try to find a niche for it maybe in open world support/dps, but unsure. Feels like it's designed for quick bursting then swapping back to your main weapon, mostly.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/...ng_everything/

Big this from my testing. With quickness, and especially alacrity, things actually felt good and like I had enough buttons to press! Otherwise it was mostly just waiting on long cooldowns while autoattacking.

[PACOX]

My general impression of guardian spear is that it's a WvW frontline support or open world self carry. It doesn't replace the support weapons guardian but fulls in the gap between wanted to use the faster DPS weapons while wanting to have sustain.


Played through all the classes briefly, most feel good. Mesmer, Ele, and warrior (I know it's not flashy but it's theme in terms of the class) look really good. Ranger spear plus merging with your pet is almost it's own half of an elite spec in the way it adds a new dimension of play. I'm very flexible with what builds I play in this game, spears have me a lot more excited than the SOTO weapon expansion. Animation and art team really did their thing. Spears obviously aren't don't cooking, there's missing trait interactions, some bugs, numbers need to be adjusted, which Anet generally does in between beta and release so I'm not worried that some of the easier things won't get fixed at least. I kind of want those simple icons as an option.

[unfilteredJW]

Rev 100% suffers from form of function.

RIP unless they do some changes.

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Big this from my testing. With quickness, and especially alacrity, things actually felt good and like I had enough buttons to press! Otherwise it was mostly just waiting on long cooldowns while autoattacking.

Rev feels like a slog even with quickness.

Man, I also hope we see some more condi types because right now the spear has no place.

[LilSaihah]

Necro, Mesmer and Ele feel good. I'm very pleased with Necro spear.
Thief feels good. Not sure about Engi. Ranger needs a bit of polish on the leap skill, but I really like what it is on paper.
Rev feels good, but I think Warriors and Guardians need a bit more polish. The Warrior skills are really small and will be trivially easy to dodge. Guardian didn't feel like it flowed well to me.

I'm very optimistic about these weapons compared to the SotO weapons, but I'd like to know more about the story etc before bolting down an opinion.
I'd also love if they did another Elite Spec, and maybe skipped weapons next expansion. Particularly as a Necromancer main, it feels like us receiving two weapons that focus around lifedrain & power damage we should get an elite spec that really capitalizes on that.

[PACOX]

Thief is actually OP. Its a damage, mobility, and mitigation powerhouse. People easily benched 50k dps on it, most dps builds are at about 40k for reference. And its very easy to hit that 50k unlike ele specs that often bench high but the dps isnt practical dps in real fights.

[Scyth]

I've mainly played around with Ele and it feels and looks really good, however it really needs a boost in dps. It doesn't feel like the glass cannon they described it to be.
Hope they buff it a bit before release.