We talked to ArenaNet about Heart of Thorns and the demo build coming to PAX East this weekend.

We asked him about specializations and the Revenant, but before that we wanted to ask a few question about the Mastery UI that players will first see in this demo. (View the full list of Masteries in the demo on Mattsta.Ninja) The Mastery system completely takes over the experience bar when players reach level 80. As such, the UI for the Mastery system all functions out of the experience bar. Clicking on part of the experience bar will cause the UI to shoot up from the bottom of the screen where players can see all of the Mastery trees, how many Mastery Points they have, spend those Mastery Points and select the active Mastery to be gaining experience in. While this UI is refreshing compared to all of the current UI hidden within windows, it did come across as a little confusing. Peters commented that this is not necessarily the final version of the UI that players will see. According to Peters, UI is one of the last things that gets done, so for this demo they were quickly putting together the UI that they could get built for the demo. There are some strengths to this UI, but Peters said there are still a lot of things they want to do to make it more clear on how everything works.

Likewise, he mentioned the defiance bar UI and how there will definitely be some improvements to that as well. This, like many of the things in the demo, are areas where ArenaNet really wants to see players feedback on their experience and how they think it can be improved. While the demo is partially there to get people excited, a big part of ArenaNet showing off this demo is to get the players’ opinions so that they can make this the best experience when HoT launches.

Specializations are not in the demo at all and we wanted to know if that was to keep the demo small or if specializations were simply not ready in time. Peters explained that they are not in a demo state, with some being closer than others. He said that this can sometimes be a subtle difference, where they are really excited about what a specialization is doing but can’t demo them until everything is final. While specializations were not ready to demo just yet, the Revenant was, which gave this demo the perfect opportunity to showcase the new class.

In the demo there are only two legends and two weapon sets available for the Revenant. Peters said this is in the same situation as the specialization, where the missing legends and weapons are just not quite ready to show off yet. Some of them are almost ready, but they don’t want to reveal them until they are sure the legends are working the way they want them to and are guaranteed to be in HoT at launch. Jalis and Mallyx were far enough along that they knew how they would play and feel as part of the Revenant’s lineup, so they focused on that last layer of polish to get them ready for the demo.

Talking about legends, Peters wrapped up what we know so far about them. We already know that one is from GW1: Prophecies and another from GW1: Nightfall and that Jalis a very defensive legend while Mallyx is a very condition heavy legend. He continued on to say that people can probably speculate that there has to be a legend that is pretty damage based while another one needs to be more support based. While the team is excited to see all of the speculation, Peters didn’t want to reveal anything until the legends are ready to be revealed.

Since we couldn’t get Peters to reveal the other legends available to the Revenant, we wanted to know if they had started off with a long list and have been slowly narrowing them down. Peters did say that they have a long list that they are trying out ideas with, but commented that the Revenant did not start off channeling legends; originally, it was channeling moments in history. So you would be channeling the moment of Kormir’s ascension, the time when the Jade Wind happened or the Rite of the Great Dwarf. Then it morphed into this actual legend because it gave it more character and this character had a voice that would speak to you when you channeled that legend, which made it much more exciting.

When they did start looking at legends they had a big list of different archetypes, eras from time, playstyles and feels, but also a list of questions. Do all of the legends need to be humanoid? Do all of the legends need to be good? We already know the answers to both of these questions as Mallyx being a demon is a non-humandoid, bad guy. They also looked at how these legends will feel. For a GW1 player, they get this nostalgia from summoning Mallyx and Jalis—who are these characters they remember from the first game—but for non-GW1 players they are still compelling because they will understand Legendary Demon and Legendary Dwarf. They might not understand who Mallyx is, but they still understand that they are using the powers of a demon.

We asked if this meant that there won’t be another legend tied to a demon figure, to which Peters pointed out that the skill itself is Legendary Demon Stance, so there definitely won’t be another one that is expressively demon. There were enough characters that exist in the lore that they felt they could do that and it would be ok. He did say that later on there could still be something demonic, but for now they are focusing on the purity of this is the demon one and this is the dwarf one.

Our final question for Peters involved the Revenant’s heal, utility and elite skills. Channeling legends will change these skills, but each legend in the demo only had the specific five skills with no additional skill options. Peters said that for now this is how it works, but that he can’t rule anything out. He explained that it depends on playing it more and getting a feel for the class now that they have a couple of legends in a really good place. When you start to play more, you can get a sense of whether it needs more customization there or not. Peters said that it is their responsibility now to really dive in and play it to see if enough customization is there or not, and to address it either way.

Peters commented that there is a lot of merit to both; having no customization has allowed them to create a lot of synergy between the skills, something that they wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. So if they do go in and change it, they need to be careful as Peters said that the synergy currently feels really good. On the other hand, having options helps make you feel more in control of your character and its customization. This is another area where they will be looking at player feedback to help determine which course of action they take.

Stronghold -->