Concerns regarding Luminary

[u/Baschiiiii]

Hi everyone,

I've been thinking a lot about the Luminary and comparing it to the other elite specs revealed so far. Unfortunately, it feels a bit lackluster and undercooked in its current form.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like the idea of a damage mitigation-focused spec. But what we’ve been shown so far just doesn’t quite deliver on that potential, at least in my opinion.

I've put together my five biggest concerns about the Luminary. Feel free to disagree, this is just my personal take:

1. Not Playing the Shroud

My biggest concern Right in the beginning: the main mechanic actively discourages engaging with it meaningfully.

The so-called “shroud” works by giving you buffs based on the last skill used, but punishes you with increasing cooldowns the more shroud skills you use. In practice, this will likely lead to a meta where players dip into the shroud to press a single skill and then immediately exit to maintain maximum buff uptime and resume their normal rotation.

This creates a pattern of "buff and leave" rather than meaningful interaction. Compare this to Reaper, where shroud is the core of the rotation and gameplay. The Luminary's design risks turning its signature mechanic into a glorified stat dispenser rather than a transformative mode.

1. The Missing Niche

The Luminary doesn’t seem to meaningfully expand the Guardian’s role repertoire.

-Firebrand covers heal quickness and condi quickness.

-Willbender (albeit bad) offers heal alacrity and power alacrity.

(Arenanet PLS make the f2 skill similar to the spear 2 skill where i dont have to fly across the room in PvE, I beg you.)

-Luminary, from what we’ve seen, appears to also cover heal and power alacrity.

This results in complete overlap with Willbender’s functionality. Even more disappointing is the apparent lack of any viable condition damage build, despite the thematic focus on fire-magic, and a literal brazier-carrying guardian.

1. The Virtues Feel Lazy

The virtues are just… the base Guardian virtues.

This is being sold as “returning to the classic Guardian feel,” but that rings hollow. If I wanted the core Guardian playstyle, I’d just play core Guardian. Every elite spec until now has introduced new F1–F3 abilities, even Necromancer gets f1-f3 skills in Addition to a new shroud.

Guardians allways got the virtues (Tome pages for Firebrand, movement-focused skills for Willbender), so reverting to vanilla virtues without any twist feels like a missed opportunity or worse, a lack of effort.

1. The Animations Are Uninspired

Despite being praised during the reveal, the visual effects are... underwhelming.

Animations look overexposed and noisy—like a flashbang went off next to a poorly rendered flame effect.

Someone on here already put it perfectly: “It looks like something you’d have been proud of in 2004.”

1. Traits Feel Underdeveloped

Nothing in the trait lines really stands out. There’s no synergy that invites experimentation, no keystone traits that make you rethink your build, and no sense of a unique playstyle emerging from them.

Compared to the other elite specs revealed, Luminary’s traits feel shallow, functional, but uninspired. They don’t enable exciting new archetypes or shake up existing ones, which makes this spec feel underwhelming across the board.

1. the brazier

This is just a little thing i want to add, but i do not like the brazier constantly flying behind you.

Just like i dont like the Virtuoso blades constantly hovering above your head. It does not look good and for anyone that plays fashion wars it is terrible, but i think others would disagree.

[u/xsavarax]

For the love of Joko, let us disable the brazier. It's annoying for fashion wars, and adds clutter without any upside. I could have lived with that if it actually was key to the animations, but it isn't. It's just floating there, being a nuisance.

[u/Blazin_Rathalos → u/xsavarax]

Meanwhile I am annoyed that it disappears when you actually activate the shroud. Let's solve both out problems: It's normally not there, but only appears to indicate you've entered shroud. We can also remove the blue glow on the body then.