Guild Wars 2 developer ArenaNet previewed three more classes for the long-awaited terrestrial spears today in a video that gives more insights and animations for Warrior, Thief, and Engineer. With it, the team included a blog post that describes how they’ll work and what they’ll do.
The team also included how what kind of builds they might manage, such as condition and power, as well as sneak peeks into the underlying action sets.
Warriors: All bits of ranged power weaponry
According to ArenaNet, the new spear weapon for Warrior is going to be a straight power weapon that is built off Sunspear techniques and it’s going to supply a primarily AoE kit for ranged attacks. However, it will also be much more hostile for opponents who get too close.
Looking at the entire kit, there’s a lot of AoE in it, even the autoattack called Mighty Throw that fragments the spear causing it to explode and strike multiple targets. Going up the line, there’s a cripple AoE called Maiming Spear and an evasive strike with an AoE knockback with Spear Swipe (reminiscent of the Engineer Air Blast combined with the Ranger evasion).
As for burst skill, Harrier Toss, causes the Warrior to leap into the air while evading and throw the spear at the enemy with an AoE explosion with damage dependent on adrenaline spent. ArenaNet missed an opportunity here to match up with Final Fantasy Dragoons to have Warrior leap into the air and come down on enemies with explosive force and then land back in their original position, but I’m showing that I enjoy multiple fandoms here.
According to the developer, the damage dealt by AoE strikes with ranged attacks increases by proximity.
As a straight power weapon, this kit also is extremely straightforward, it doesn’t have any combos or switching. It’s designed to provide a basic ranged option for Warriors with a pure-spike damage burst opportunity on the adrenaline meter.
Thief: Combo into finishers with this hybrid weapon
Taking inspiration from the old system from Guild Wars 1, Thieves will get a bit of assassin play built into their spears with what ArenaNet is saying is a hybrid condition and power weapon, but we’ll see which direction it builds best into.
Each of the second and third spear skill slots has three different states that are always in the same state as each other, as in they’ll always be lead attacks. Using one as a lead attack will flip the other to the next state, and so on. They can also both become combo finishers. This means that Thief’s spear use creates an interesting opportunity for dancing between the two to create combos.
After using a finisher both will switch back to their lead attack state to start the chain over again—however, using another skill within the combo chain does not reset the chain, but failing to hit an enemy with a follow-up attack shall.
Instead of simply chaining attacks, players are rewarded for strategically weaving specific strikes – such as the fourth, fifth, and stealth attacks which gain bonuses after a finisher. This suggests ArenaNet has crafted a deep combat system where combining attacks thoughtfully becomes crucial for maximizing damage output.
ArenaNet didn’t give a full rundown of what all the different attacks can do, however, it did reveal that one of the finishers, Falling Spider, can inflict bleeding, poison, and vulnerability – and inflicts additional stacks against enemies that are immobilized or under crowd control effects.
This suggests that playing to a particular finisher or combo set will provide opportunities for a specific playstyle.
Engineer: An electrifying melee experience
According to ArenaNet, Engineer is also getting a hybrid weapon in spear with both power and condition available and the theme is heavily leaning towards lightning, steampunk, short range, and single targets.
The primary skill, Conduit Surge will cause Engineers to charge at an enemy and apply an effect that will mark them. This will be used for future attacks. Lightning Rod then causes a visual effect to begin to build around the Engineer to deal bonus damage on focused targets and generate an amplifying effect on a skill in the same slot – Electric Artillery. Once Lightning Rod completes it can launch at the enemy and apply conditions.
In the fifth slot is an EMP-style skill called Devastation that causes the Engineer to leap to a targeted location and explode, creating a damaging lightning field. This is reminiscent of the Engineer Scrapper Spare Capacitor tool belt skill off the Shredder Gyro. However, given that it’s a weapon skill it will most likely be much more powerful.
Image: ArenaNet
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