Assessing Janthir Wilds Spears

Give you a Raze? Sure.

Revenant's Condition Damage focused Spear was centralized on skill 5, , which had multiple Charges. The other skills on this weapon reduced the Cooldown on , letting you repeatedly cast it with increasing damage output via the Crushing Abyss mechanic.

This weapon's Condition Damage in the beta ramped up slowly to an unimpressive number, so the ramp is being improved, and the weapon skills will be faster.

While we were told the weapon would also have "[increased] condition variety to help its damage stick", this is more of a consideration for competitive modes where enemies actually cleanse conditions. The build's Torment-dominated profile might be nerfed a little to make room for other damaging conditions, but it might also be a straight buff.

Excitingly, this weapon's skill 3 allows Revenant to "dash and leave portals in their wake that detonate when foes walk over them" and it's a , I'm sorry, false alarm. Turns out it's not an edgy .

What do you mean over-engineered? A knockdown-stun-launch is just part of the minimum specs now, keep up.

Engineer's Spear dealt strong Condition Damage, with a unique "focus" mechanic tied to skill 2 .

Skill 4, , Stuns and Launches your Focused target, inflicting a phenomenal 432 Defiance Break (or 532; the tooltip and design of this skill is more than a little confusing), on a remarkably short 15-second Cooldown. Expect Condition Engineer players to become CC heavyweights next expansion.

The weapon's casts times are being accelerated, and UI improvements for the focused-target mechanic are in store (including a new little buff on our bar to keep track of—"focus", indeed).

Will Haboob jokes supplant downstate jokes? We shale see.

Elementalist's ranged Power Damage Spear is focused on its "Etching" mechanic: skill 5 in each attunement is powered up when you cast other skills—any other skills—within a short duration. At expansion launch, that duration is being extended. The weapon is also receiving damage and quality of life improvements, and its clutter impressive visuals are being reduced. This weapon's damage performance wasn't top-tier from our testing, so improvements are welcome.

Structurally the weapon was designed a bit like Firebrand's Tomes—the skills in each slot (e.g. 2 and 2) share a casting style (ground target, self-buff, Etching), which can help players memorize the effects faster.

The 3 skills grant you a buff including

• : increase the damage of your next Spear skill
• : reduce that next skill's Cooldown
• : make that next skill inflict Daze
• : guarantee the next skill is a Critical Hit?

Look at it this way: is a dedicated, personal Superspeed button. What do you mean you're not in ? Skill issue.

At expansion release, won't waste its 20% damage bonus on Autos anymore!

The 4 skills strike an Area of Effect with increased potency at the epicenter. Or, if you put your Warrior helmet on, you might consider it as a potency decrease in the outer ring.

If we took Stealth Attacks from Thief, do they also count as Stolen Skills?

Ranger's Spear borrowed the Stealth Attack feature from Thief—when entering Stealth, all the Spear Cooldown skills flip over to new effects.

Some of these skills will be getting damage improvements, to make the weapon more competitive with other Power-focused weapons in the arsenal.

Ranger's (Thief's) Spear has its skill usage centralized around Stealth, e.g. 5 2 (3 1 ). Because players like to use pulsing damage skills like (), "it was hard to weave in and an out Stealth to complete your attack before you were Revealed".

Ranger is getting a special grace period after using 5 that will allow the use of Stealth Attacks even if the player becomes Revealed. This will not apply to any other source of Stealth on Ranger, e.g. Jaguar's .

This grace period isn't being extended to Thief because that profession simply isn't known for using "popular pulsing damage skills", nor even delayed damage impacts like and . Besides, Thief isn't receiving a new Spear focused on Stealth Attacks like Ranger this expansion. Maybe next time.

Look, it didn't break 60,000 DPS this time. That's progress.

Thief's Stealth Attack-focused Spear was exceptionally strong during the beta (stealing the spotlight is just a trend by now), on practically every single damage-dealing build. Daredevil, Deadeye, Specter, and Shadow Arts (check out our Axe build!) all dealt unbelievable excessively high Condition Damage.

This weapon was also strong on Power Damage builds and featured extremely potent Defiance Break via skill 4 (which also granted a Strike and Condition Damage modifier, making it a potential fixture of all builds when paired with other weapons). The Spear can also Block Attacks, Heal the player, Evade taxes, Strip Boons from enemies, and has built-in access to Stealth. Some of its skills are also having their target-cap increased to give the weapon better cleave, so if you were wondering "ah, but will it Blend?"; yes, it can do that too. At least it's not a strong ranged weapon.

At release, this weapon will get a damage nerf—but it's also receiving some gameplay flow adjustments. Its special mechanic, Lead Attacks, consisted of flip-over chains on Skills 2 and 3 (like Auto Attack Chains). During the beta, these skills could not queue together, and the chain would only progress if you hit your target. At release, the skill chain will progress even if you miss, and it will "feel smoother with the skill queueing system".

This is actually a mobility nerf for chaining skill 3 , a far-reaching leap which scaled with both movement and cast-speed modifiers. You could clear ridiculous amounts of ground by chaining the skill, especially since it was bugged and didn't drain Initiative if you cancelled the end of the animation with Weapon Swap. What? Don't give us that look. Thief has places to be!

Power Mirage is trying so hard, you have no idea. It's going to be huge.

Mesmer's Spear performed well on both Power Chronomancer and Power Virtuoso.

While a theoretical Power Mirage could leverage an interaction with the trait and the Ambush for a 15% Strike Damage modifier, that's not enough to Bridge the Gap with the other elite specializations which were actually designed to focus on Strike Damage.

This weapon's special mechanic in the beta relied on landing a sweet-spot strike with skill 2 to gain the "Clarity" buff which improves the rest of your Spear skills; this has been changed so that the skill always grants the buff, but the sweet spot yields increased damage.

Additionally, the skill 4 will now strike in an area, making their damage output more consistent. They also jump up into the air first, and while you might be tempted to equip the to Blind your team with dazzling roleplay, your Phantasms don't copy that part of your fashion.

What's nice is that summons two Phantasms when you have Clarity. That's reminiscent of Greatsword's skill 4 when traited with . Hey, since you brought up that old weapon, did you know its skill 2 can deal low damage because its projectile can ricochet between your allies instead of striking enemies? It makes that weapon's damage pretty inconsistent. A shame, really.

Loot stick auto lives on.

Guardian's spear has potential only as a support option in PvE.

Its "Illuminated" mechanic buffed weapon skills when chained together, or when standing inside skill 5 .

Guardian healer builds tend to be quite modular in PvE, so we might see some situational use for this weapon. It has some overlap with Firebrand's access to Resolution, and Resistance—so maybe try it on our Heal Willbender build to expand its options.

Skill 2, will now function as a ground-target instead of a start-and-stop chain of two skills, and healing will be added to skill 4 .

On the off chance you've heard good things about the weapon's bursty Power Damage capabilities—that's only relevant for exceedingly short phases. If you're still asking "is this phase short enough?", it's not short enough—and the Illumination mechanic doesn't improve single target damage in any way, so it's not positioned to be a dedicated damage-dealing weapon.

When Dhuum soul-splits you, do you keep your Soul Shards?

Necromancer's spear is another in a long line of pairings made with Greatsword, the undisputed strongest Power weapon in this profession's arsenal.

The weapon struggled with Life Force generation, so it's getting some added to skill 5 —which has a long Cooldown.

Spear provides some Healing, some enemy-targeted mobility, and Boonstrip. We have those on other weapons already (specifically, main hand Sword's keeps us mobile even without an enemy to target), so how impressive is this weapon's special feature?

Unfortunately, the Soul Shard mechanic doesn't do much. It adds damage to skill 2 and heals you, but so does Dagger's skill 2 without the spooky song and dance. On expansion release, Soul Shard duration will be refreshed whenever you gain a charge, but that does not matter when the max duration will expire while you're in Shroud or Swapped to Greatsword anyway. This is a "spender" gameplay loop, not buff upkeep.

If you've ever asked "how much damage do infusions add?", it's about as much as the new Soul Shards provide: less than 3%.