New Soul Feedback - Arbiter

[Durango]

Maybe you were pvping, it was one of the few dps moves for arbiter. There is next to no dps in arbiter from a dps oerspective what is a 61 arbiter going to do in pvp now? Most of it is mediocre. All these changes are making me wonder how useless it will become for pvp. How many people are actually going to buy this soul if its useless in pvp? I doubt more than a handful of pvers will buy it either. Bc of having to worry about no mages having tank gear its likely only a few mages will buy it. Guilds will slowly progress one or two guys. Id assume the rest of their mages would rather save themselves the money. The other classes new souls are incredible. This thread has turned into a witch hunt by players who prefer other classes and feel arbiter infringed on what they felt it should be bc some of arbs talents were better than theirs. Im not saying this is wrong or right. Everyone has a right to an opinion, but what is going to be left with this soul in the end? Something one or two people out of twenty play? Prob most likely. A few might buy it just for the sub spec points. I see chloros switching to it sure. Hybrids... well those get worse almost every change. It doesnt gel well with SC, warlock will prob always be useless in pvp. Harbinger hell your prob better off sticking with charb or full harby.

eh, Arbidom will be a force to be reckoned with in PvP. You can get a lot of the most annoying Dom abilities fairly easily, have multiple pulls, and very good survivability.

[vexare]

eh, Arbidom will be a force to be reckoned with in PvP. You can get a lot of the most annoying Dom abilities fairly easily, have multiple pulls, and very good survivability.

Not if Kervik has his way with AP.

[Iphigeneia]

Would nice to view a mage with a shield rather than a totem.

The very first thing I thought of when I heard that there was going to be a tank soul for mage was "ooh I wonder if we're going to get shield buff akin to the Harbinger weapon buffs that transmogrifies our off-hand into a big ol' magical Shield." And I'd been quietly hugging that little thought to myself and when I saw there was no such thing I made a :C face.

It's clearly too late to add in sweeping graphical changes but man I cannot overstate the disappointment I have with the lack of graphical "Yes Mage and Yes Tank" animations you see in this spec. And yes, I also agree with those that have said the actual ability animations are pretty underwhelming. It looks meh but it is very fun to play, so the visuals are a bit jarring.

Of course... if Trion could see their way to adjusting the Transfiguration Baubles so that any off-hand can be changed into any other off-hand -- shields AND totems AND tomes -- then I'll stop complaining and just turn the tank totem into one of my cleric's shields, or something.

[Ianto Jones]

eh, Arbidom will be a force to be reckoned with in PvP. You can get a lot of the most annoying Dom abilities fairly easily, have multiple pulls, and very good survivability.

"A forced to be reckoned with" that is still utterly reliant on the team to actually kill enemy players and for healing. Anyone that PvPs as a Mage can tell you that we lack self-sufficiency. Mages cannot match the raw burst potential of Shaman, Assassin, Nightblade, Paragon, or even Warlord, except maybe with EA, which is a 2 minute CD and easily purged. We might be able to create a Harb/Arb hybrid that is comparable to Warlord in survivability, but it would have about half the damage potential.

The bottom line is that Arb is only relevant to Harb, Chloro, and maybe Dom (if it's even worth playing after the AP nerf). The latter two aren't damage souls, and the former needs damage more than survivability.

[smellwhat]

Sorry if someone else mentioned these:

Suggestion:
Please change Icy Blast so that it does not require a target (or to be facing your current target) to be able to cast.

Reasoning:
Icy Blast and Shattered Reflection are both AE spells/attacks but they don't seem to work the same way. Icy Blast requires you to have someone targeted in order to be able to use even though it is doing damage to up to 10 around you. Shattered Reflection on the other hand does not require that someone be targeted while also damaging up to 10 around you. It would be nice if Icy Blast could be given this same mechanic of not having to target anyone in order to be able to cast it.

Additionally if I do have someone targeted then IB still requires that I must be facing that target to be able to cast it. Is this intended? Again, would be nice if it worked the same way as Shattered Reflection.

In particular, it is not as if IB is an aoe around your target but it is an aoe centered at yourself within melee range. This mechanic of needing to have a target doesn't seem to make much sense.

Arbiter abilities are not spells.

Interesting. Then what do they benefit from: SP or AP? I hope not AP since my mage is somewhat wimpy (with no STR or DEX gear). And Icy Blast that I mentioned above sure seems like a spell since it does not say Slashing attack in tooltip (yet?). And if something consumes charge... isn't that a spell just not with mana?

Because devoting magical energy to make your defenses visible is a waste of power. Why would you, as a Mage want to waste your strength making a bubble of light that does nothing instead of just having an invisible bubble and devoting the saved power to your next attack? Broadcasting you have magical shields up also would encourage enemies to hit you harder, if they don't see you're protected they won't try so hard to hurt you, thus helping you survive longer.

Threat. I want them to hit me hard and fail. They should see my shields and fear me and be attracted to hitting me instead of allies.

When can we expect to see some real T1 / T2 gear in the store?
Would be nice to test with real world armour.

And crafting recipes with cloth+toughness and/or deflect/parry? There are at least some for the other classes as they get their tank sets started at level 60.

***

(also sorry this last bit is off topic but speaking of facing the target... any chance Withering Vine can be made like all other dots so that we don't have to face our target to cast?)

[Ase85]

Icy blast, does damage to 10 enemies around another enemy as its a 20meter range aoe. It needs no change to how it is targted, the other attack is more like lucent slash and is working fine..
Reading tooltips is hard.

[Landstalker]

Yea the only good thing in arbiter for pvp hybrids is the end. Your prob going to be seeing 61 pt builds with 10 arb and 5 harb or 5 dom. Arbiter has alot of cool things that has potential for use in pvp hybrids but they were already lackluster for pvp to begin with. Now with the pve changes alteady made it is hard to justify them over current builds and their playstyle.

I hope before release this is something Kervik is able to address. For pvp this soul needs to synergize better with a mobile instacast hybrid to pair with harbinger, dom and sc. If not your likely to not see many pvpers pick up the soul. They certainly will not be running low sustained and burst 61 point tank builds. Arbiters dps will need to be burst in irder for its synergy to be appealing to pvpers as well.

Heres to hoping!

[Sheo]

Please Kervik for the mages sake put energized vitality below 15 pts and make available with 61 pts builds.

Everybody knows that mages are fragile (I speak only pvp!) dps players with half brain target and kill mages first, because they are easy to kill, far-far easier to heal for example a warlord than a mage. With this decision you could solve this problem.

I was on pts and made a few test build, but with 16 arbiter, not 15, so my numbers not exact.
harb,pyro or dom/arbiter build (no arcane ward) roughly 36 k hps (self buffed no consumables). (Maybe somebody could test it in lower gear?)
Mages could get a better survivability if they want.

In this way like arbiter now tbh I am not 100% sure I will buy the new soul, because its not worth it. Mages deserve a bit love finally.

If not and you refuse this change could you give us an explanation please?
thanks in advance

[Landstalker]

Arbiter for all intensive purposes on a pvp perspective will be like a handicapped mosquito with no fangs and unable to sustain itself. With no cc it wont even be pesky. I dont see any advantage even from a premade perspective either being the CDs for those benefits are lackluster at best aftwr considering pvp mitigations. You will not see many out of the pvp community splurging for the amount of ungodly credits you will surely require for this new soul. Not to mention most will even be more wary due to fears after its release if even somewhat tolerable the debate has already led to significant nerfs do to pve perspectives in this thread that led to the nerfs.

[Landstalker]

Please Kervik for the mages sake put energized vitality below 15 pts and make available with 61 pts builds.

Everybody knows that mages are fragile (I speak only pvp!) dps players with half brain target and kill mages first, because they are easy to kill, far-far easier to heal for example a warlord than a mage. With this decision you could solve this problem.

I was on pts and made a few test build, but with 16 arbiter, not 15, so my numbers not exact.
harb,pyro or dom/arbiter build (no arcane ward) roughly 36 k hps (self buffed no consumables). (Maybe somebody could test it in lower gear?)
Mages could get a better survivability if they want.

In this way like arbiter now tbh I am not 100% sure I will buy the new soul, because its not worth it. Mages deserve a bit love finally.

If not and you refuse this change could you give us an explanation please?
thanks in advance

Anyone who takes the time to compare the 15 point abilities/tree points in the mage class to the others will easily be upset at their findings.

[eniac]

Anyone who takes the time to compare the 15 point abilities/tree points in the mage class to the others will easily be upset at their findings.

I'm upset by looking only at the tier 1 stat-pushing talents in the 4 new souls. I mean, come on



Wouldn't it be neat if it had spell power, too, like, you know, all the other classes? And don't tell me arb needs the int to push his avoidance...

[Katosu]

Harb has the spellpower stat though...

[eniac]

Harb has the spellpower stat though...

That's a stupid way to argue since nb, rs, mm, sent, inq, para, warlord, champ, temp all have the option to spec into 2% sp/point and mage only has harb. Every other class has at least two.

[VolsalexR]

Yea the only good thing in arbiter for pvp hybrids is the end. Your prob going to be seeing 61 pt builds with 10 arb and 5 harb or 5 dom. Arbiter has alot of cool things that has potential for use in pvp hybrids but they were already lackluster for pvp to begin with. Now with the pve changes alteady made it is hard to justify them over current builds and their playstyle.

I hope before release this is something Kervik is able to address. For pvp this soul needs to synergize better with a mobile instacast hybrid to pair with harbinger, dom and sc. If not your likely to not see many pvpers pick up the soul. They certainly will not be running low sustained and burst 61 point tank builds. Arbiters dps will need to be burst in order for its synergy to be appealing to pvpers as well.

Heres to hoping!

Arb/Harb does have some hybridization potential, but Arb/SC is worthless. I think there is a very easy solution - let his Air attacks be slashing attacks (already done) and his Water attacks be SPELLS (opens lots of hybridization potential for Arb/SC). They will hit quite hard with all the Air/Water modifiers from SC, BUT they drain a lot of Charge so the hybrid won't be able to use them too often and lose Static Flux uptime.

P.S +1 to the posters above about worthless first tier talents. Tactical Knowledge(int) should be changed to SP or Prismatic Ward should be swapped with Hardened Soul so that Mages can choose what stat they want from 5 pts in Arbiter.

[vexare]

I actually like the 10% int. For tanks the avoidance is better than the nothing that sp would have added, and from a pure dps perspective the difference is fairly small. Everyone is crit capped which means SC starts creeping up fairly high on any real BiS chart. The int in first tree is fine, however there isn't much of anything in the higher trees that adds to dps with the exception of 6% air and water damage which really only helps out harb, except the base attacks themselves are at best on par with what harb already has so you will never replace rending slash withgalvanic strike ect. The only attack that could in theory be useful is glacial strike except it's -15charge cost is prohibitive as harb already has charge management issues. Finally, Arbitor has no primary bolt style abilities, nor does it have any high damage ability to use with harb's EA procs which makes the soul have absolutely horrible synergy even though at first glance it should be a natural pairing.