Hey, everyone! My name is Taylor Brooks, and I am a designer on the Skills and Balance Team here at ArenaNet.
Expanded Weapon Proficiency is coming in 2024 during the second major update for Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure™. Each profession will have access to a new weapon. Today I’ll be giving you a peek at mesmer’s new weapon—the rifle! Rifle is a long-range support weapon packed with healing and tools to help your allies.
Portal Power
The rifle is a versatile weapon. As an example of its flexibility, skill 3, Inspiring Imagery, allows the mesmer to throw out a beacon for their allies to rally to that will burst after a delay and grant them might and fury. However, the mesmer can detonate the beacon early in a pinch with Abstraction, which becomes available when Inspiring Imagery is used. When the beacon is detonated early, it will heal allies instead of granting boons while also damaging enemies.
The weapon gets even more exciting when we look at skill 5, Singularity Shot. You shoot a bullet at a target location that grants barrier and resistance to nearby allies. A singularity will linger at the impact, and it can be collapsed with Dimensional Aperture, the reactivation of skill 5. The collapsed singularity becomes a single-use, one-way portal that an ally can use to teleport to your location! This skill can be a powerful tool to bail out an ally from a sticky situation with your careful positioning.
Rifle will open support options for mesmers and provide interesting decision points for players in moment-to-moment gameplay.
You’ll be able to try out all of the upcoming new weapon and profession combos during the Expanded Weapon Proficiency beta event starting at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (UTC-8) on November 28 and ending at 10:00 p.m. Pacific Time (UTC-8) on December 3. Please note that since this is a beta test, there will be placeholder UI, art, and audio assets for some of the weapon skills. Be sure to tune in to the Expanded Weapon Proficiency preview livestream on November 27 at noon Pacific Time (UTC-8) to get a more in-depth look at all the new weapons.
