When Guild Wars 2®: Janthir Wilds™ launches on August 20, each of the nine professions will have access to a new set of spear weapon skills that have new skill effects and animations! If you missed the expansion details, be sure to check out our Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds announcement blog first.
In case you missed our previous spear blogs, catch up on the general spear Q&A first. We also released one blog detailing how rangers, necromancers, and guardians wield spears, followed by last week’s blog about spear skills for the warrior, thief, and engineer. This week, game designers Taylor Brooks, Karl McLain, and Cal Cohen from the Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds combat feature team are ready to discuss the mesmer, revenant, and elementalist respectively.
Spears Bring Clarity to Mesmers
The mesmers of Janthir look to the beauty of their environment to guide their spear. Through careful study of recursive designs they find in nature, they are able to weave their magic in similar patterns. Each pattern produces a unique effect, giving a spear-wielding mesmer a variety of ways to approach a fight.
The core of mesmer’s spear gameplay is the second weapon skill, Mind the Gap; you’ll channel energy into your spear and swing it around in a circle. This skill is special because you will want to hit enemies with the outer edge of its area of effect. If you correctly position yourself and secure a hit in the right area, you will do more damage and gain Clarity. The Clarity effect allows you to imbue the next pattern you create with stronger magic, increasing its effectiveness. The exact effect of Clarity will be different for each skill, so you’ll need to plan ahead to gain the most value from it.
The fourth skill, Phantasmal Lancer, allows you to dash at your foe, striking them with your spear. As you dash, a phantasm is created at your starting location. The phantasm will dash through you, striking your initial target and enemies past it. If you use Phantasmal Lancer with Clarity, instead of summoning a phantasm behind you, you will summon two phantasms at your flanks that dash toward the enemy and meet to perform a simultaneous strike!
Mesmer spear is a mobile, high-damage weapon with dynamic gameplay. You’ll want to focus on your positioning in fights so that you can gain Clarity, then choose which abilities you want to empower with it. Due to the unique requirement for careful spacing, this weapon might take some getting used to—but once you get the hang of it, you’ll find yourself weaving a pattern of victory.
Revenant Spear Is a Destructive Masterpiece
Revenants who first heft their spear in battle often say that it reminds them of creation through destruction. Wielding dark power from the Mists, they paint the battlefield through constant pressure and debilitating effects. Let’s dive in and talk about how this condition-based hybrid weapon works.
We’ll start with the fifth weapon skill as the primary ability. Abyssal Raze is a ground-targeted skill with three charges that strikes up to five enemies. You’ll gain up to two stacks of Crushing Abyss per cast every time this skill strikes a foe, which amplifies the next use of Abyssal Raze. At five stacks you’ll reach the maximum effectiveness, causing every stroke of the abyss to deliver the most potent effect. With three ammunition charges available for this skill, let’s discuss how you’ll refresh ammunition using your other spear skills and maintain tremendous pressure on the battlefield while keeping Crushing Abyss active.
The other four revenant spear skills enable the use of Abyssal Raze by reducing its ammunition cooldown and keeping you and your enemies positioned opportunistically on the battleground. Your first skill is a hybrid of ranged or alternating melee strikes, and each of them reduces Abyssal Raze’s cooldown by a very short amount when striking a target. Your second skill is a bread-and-butter area-of-effect attack on a target that reduces your Abyssal Raze cooldown by nearly a full ammunition count. The third skill reduces Abyssal Raze’s cooldown by a static amount and is a movement ability that leaves abyssal mines in your wake, threatening foes who dare chase you as you paint your masterpiece of destruction. And the fourth skill serves as a delayed area crowd control ability to help you land the most optimal damage as enemies attempt to flee your gaze.
With all these new spear abilities coming in hot, we’re excited to watch the masterpieces you create on the battlefield. Happy razing!
Elementalist Spear: Etching for Power
The elementalist wields a spear as a long-range, power-damage weapon capable of conjuring powerful elemental forces such as volcanos, whirlpools, and lightning storms. The spear has a couple of minor defensive tools but is primarily focused on damage and crowd control, leading to a “glass cannon” style of play that will be more comfortable when you’re unleashing spells from a distance rather than ending up in the thick of combat. In today’s post, we’ll cover a few of the skills and some of their shared mechanical aspects.
Starting things off with the fourth air attunement skill, we have Twister, a ranged, ground-targeted area-of-effect skill that (unsurprisingly) creates a twister at the location that damages and inflicts vulnerability on enemies in the area. This skill—as well as the fourth weapon skills in other attunements—has an additional effect against enemies that are within a smaller inner radius near the spell’s center, rewarding precise placement. When Twister strikes enemies near its center, it will also bring those enemies up to float in the air.
Next up is Harden, the third earth attunement skill. This is a personal defensive skill that grants the user barrier and also enhances their next strike from any spear skill to inflict daze on their enemy. The other third-slot weapon skills have some similarities: each is a utility-focused skill that protects or empowers the user and grants a bonus to their next spear skill. All of these skills also have a relatively short casting time—or none at all—which is important for today’s final elementalist sneak peek.
The fifth weapon skill slot contains the most potent skill of each attunement, assuming you can fulfill the requirements. Each skill starts off in its base state, a quick cast that etches a spell circle into the ground. As an example, the fire skill Etching: Volcano creates a spell circle that grants might to the elementalist. The skill then flips over into Lesser Volcano, a ground-targeted spell that erupts to create several damaging strikes. Unlocking the skill’s full potential requires the spell circle to be completed before reactivating the skill. To do so, the user must simply use three other skills while standing inside the etched circle.
This process isn’t limited to spear skills, so instant-casting utility skills can be utilized to speed things up. Once the spell circle is completed, the skill flips once more to its final form—in this case, Volcano—allowing the user to unleash the full potential of the effect. The full-power Volcano erupts for a longer period of time, creating additional damaging areas and inflicting more damage than its lesser version. Other attunements utilize the same etching process, but each has their own flavor and skill effects.
Try Spears Yourself June 27!
Tomorrow, we’ll be showing off all of the new spear skills during a Twitch livestream at noon Pacific Time (UTC-7). In addition, there will be a beta event from June 27 at 9:00 a.m. until June 30 at 10:00 p.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7) where everyone can try out spears and give us feedback!
Let the summer spear fun commence!
