NimbleTack: I feel that they missed a trick with the Troubadour. Their big attack should really have been summoning a grand piano... about ten feet over the head of their nearest enemy.

Atlas3060: Troubadour using the Aurene tale is the equivalent to the Pact Commander showing off pics on their phone of their kid to random folks.

"Wanna look at my dragon daughter?!"

leukos22: The distortion share really ought to debuff you with something that prevents the use of distortion for a period of time afterwards because this WILL be abused

frostvr: I can't believe the ranger is actually... a ranger now

mikedsps: When you said flute now applies torment when playing I thought "oh, so it's a school concert."

That would be awesome in PvP if the version the enemy is hearing is all discordant and shrieking.

Relhio: Oh my God, Trahearne is dead!?

themoose89tujtuytu: As someone who plays mostly guardian, I'm very disappointed in the luminary

thegrim418: Maybe it'll be different when the beta drops and I get to play them some, but they don't feel very 'elite' so far to me. Just sort of underwhelming when held up next to the other elite specs. Maybe it's the lack of weapon additions but it just didn't seem like they felt 'complete' if that makes sense.

Jimbr16: Bold of Muk to assume the new elites are actually gonna work underwater cries in mechanist

ejmiraflor4788: I want to main ranger now. Hahaha

verstellemi: The Galeshot's swiftness is 40% from that one minor trait that increased benefit of swiftness by 20%. You can tell when he hovers over one of the traits that granted swiftness.

kennethvannorwick3557: As a Mesmer main, I despise the fact they appear to be gutting Chrono to make the new elite spec. I hate that design choice.

Flinteheart: I am a very big fan of unique buffs for classes, having played Banners and Heal Druid for most of my playtime in end-game content. The removal of those mechanics might well have been because they want this sort of thing to be an elite mechanic, and Banners / Spirits are universal? Either case, depending on how this turns out, I think Troubadour has immense potential. I just hope they don't back-pedal within a couple of months of release and make them just do more boons.

roscuro9838: Thematically, I love luminary. Feel they need to do something with the lantern, it just floating there is dumb. It needs to do something, fingers crossed they actually DO something with it on release. I was originally thinking that the shroud would just replace all the virtues and then the weapons would give you the virtue effects once you're in shroud. Which is kinda what one of the traits hints at, but they just didn't go for it. IDK we'll see.

ravenwolf8632: Troubadour has my interest as I enjoy Chronomancer.

However, I have concerns. Assuming that boon duration was not equipped, those boon duration times were not good for the Troubadour. I also don't understand why they chose Alac and not Quickness for the Troubadour, since it sounds like Chronomancer might be getting Alacrity is their key, which means the three support specs for mesmer all give Alac. I am also not feeling the gameplay loop they seem to be going with where the support bard is heavily reliant on the harp as two of the instruments are DPS, and one is major CC which spamming won't do any good so I am bewildered what they exactly expect us to do in that rotation since our boons seem loaded towards the Harp.

Key boons like protection seem lacking and I am wondering if they expect us to rely on mantra of concentration for stability then, which is no bueno given my chrono can give near infinite stability for less effort. And even if they are just trying, we know distortion is not staying, no matter what they say. So we can already consider that effect gone.

And once again it seems that a team rally is being denied. People keep trying to say "use feedback" except looking at the power picks and utility, the bar to be support is pretty much spoken for on the troub. Never mind it would be a waste of a pick to go with feedback. It just doesn't work in theory or practice for any mesmer build and when 90% of the time you want stability that means mantra of concentration is automatically going to be bespoken for as part of your utility tray, and the fights where stability is not going to be spoken for, they are so easy tht if your team needs a rally then find a new team.

It baffles me that people keep saying Feedback for mesmers exists, or worse, Illusion of Life, when a ranger has TWO team rally powers that can affect up to 10 people.

RazerTNT: imho seems the specs already need some changes

Nooctae: Bards are conceptually stupid Muk, we kinda get it.

SilvasRuin: As a Necro main, the way they designed Radiant Shroud disgusts me. It's got a cool kit if you were to use it like a normal shroud, but it actively punishes you for using more than one of them ( flipover).

Multiple builds are going to use just one of the radiant weapons each visit to shroud and immediately drop out of it afterwards.

One build is going to cycle through all (or most of) the radiant weapons as fast as they can then drop shroud to maintain the 15% damage buff.

One build (which people will attempt to use but it will suck) will be super tryhard about obtaining and exploding Light Aura. It's going to flash shroud for a no cooldown source of Light Aura and only use a radiant weapon when it runs out of stances to explode the auras with.

None of the trait combinations seem to incentivize riding out the shroud's duration, using a variety of skills outside of mashing them, or even touching the shroud 1 skill.

This feels and functions nothing like any other shroud in the game, and simplistic, boring interaction with it seems enforced.

What would have thrilled me would have been if the radiant weapons would change the 1 into an auto-attack chain of that weapon, and if it was the flip-over skills, not the initial skills, that delayed the cooldown and locked in your buff. (With a minimum cooldown so that the limited duration actually matters.)

Also, why are they giving Guardian another elite spec that exclusively uses one damage type? They already have Dragonhunter for pure Power roles. Some complaint for Galeshot, for that matter.

VinceMouse: "They removed warrior banners and ranger spirits"

Well, you're not wrong...

eternalvigilance5697: Love the Galeshot. I generally main archers in most games, but the ranged options are lacking for ranger in GW2. This will probably suffer the same problems in PvP with all the reflect though.

BackwardsCombatable: Nerfing Chrono so Bard can have an identity is an absolutely insane thing to do... and from what they've said it's not even a net positive. Chrono losing significant stab uptime, and Bard won't have precog well so it will at best be the same uptime as nerfed Chrono. What a horrible first impression.

notrlvnt: It’s always really bad to watch them manage these streams….

Talmead: Agree with the galeshot opinion. It's just faster core ranger.

raarsi-dar: Thinking Troubadour should be renamed to "Nag" with how many "this person wouldn't let this happen" abilities they have.

michalweinzettl290: Ive got a mixed feelings about the Troubadour. Back in the 2019 ive made a fun concept for the new elite mesmer spec called the Enchanter using Warhorn and Shouts skills and its new mechanics was sharing the Shatter effects. So im kinda exited that this is somehow close to the Troubadour spec but i dont know if this is the right way to it. After the first trailer preview i thought it will be like a Firebrand using the Instruments as Tomes, but maybe it will a lot of skills since its 4 Instrumenst. I was kinda hoping we will be actually using the illusionary instruments and not just that they will appear for like a half of second when using the Shatter skills. For me the concept idea is good but it needs some rework.

Jmvars: I rarely touch Guardian but I am surprised they went with alacrity over quickness because currently the only quickness DPS build Guardian has is a condition one, you can not really play power Firebrand, would be nice for them to have a power quickness variant. Willbender can already play either condition or power alacrity DPS.

EDIT: Watching on, once again I am surprised they gave Galeshot quickness instead of alacrity because currently ranger has NO alacrity DPS spec. Untamed can already do power or condition quickness DPS.

Jul 31 2025

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