The final round of Guild Wars 2 End of Dragons elite specializations was demonstrated for viewers on ArenaNet’s Guild Chat stream this past Friday – medium armor wearers, rejoice, for now is your time in the spotlight! This stream included the Thief’s Specter, the Ranger’s Untamed, and the Engineer’s Mechanist.
The first spec the devs showed off was the Specter, the new support spec for Thief. Traditionally, the Thief has been a very aggressive, selfish DPS class, so this is a big change. The new weapon for the Specter is the scepter (say that five times fast). Interestingly, all of the scepter skills can be targeted on enemies for damage and conditions, or allies for healing and boons.
The Specter also gains access to shadow shroud. Think Necromancer shroud, but in addition to pumping out damage, the Specter can also tether to allies and heal them and grant boons as they deal damage. While much of the Specter’s support toolkit is single-target, Specter also gets access to a number of well skills, which support allies and damage enemies, while also allowing the Specter to blink to the targeted location.
Next, we were shown the Untamed. With this spec, ArenaNet said it wanted to replicate the feel of the much-loved GW1 bunny thumper Ranger/Warrior build. Obviously, Untamed gets the hammer and several mechanics to deal extra damage and effects when the target is knocked down or otherwise crowd controlled. The Untamed also gains an F5 skill that activates the unleashed state and moves it between the Ranger and their pet, augmenting either the Ranger’s hammer or the pet’s attacks.
While in unleashed mode, the ranger sacrifices crowd control for extra damage, and while the pet is in unleashed mode, it gains extra condition damage.
Another exciting note for Rangers: End of Dragons will allow them to add to their pet collection the white tiger, wallow, phoenix, and the obvious best choice, baby siege turtle. Sadly, these pets won’t be available in beta, but we did get a glimpse of the phoenix, which you can see above.
Last but certainly not least was the Engineer’s Mechanist elite spec. This spec allows the Engi to summon a jade mech, which functions similar to a Ranger pet, aside from the fact that when the mech dies, its summon skill goes into a long cooldown. The mech’s skills can be selected by changing the Engineer’s traits, and each trait also affects the mech’s stats. The Mechanist also gets access to a new set of signets skills, which like previous signets grant passive effects while slotted and can be activated for damage or buffs – at the cost of sacrificing the passive one while on cooldown.
If you want to try these elite specializations for yourself, be sure to log into the game this Tuesday, October 26th, through Saturday the 30th and create a beta character. And for more analysis, stay tuned to Massively OP’s Flameseeker Chronicles column later this week!
