Allona is once again joined by Hunter to go over the Specializations news and speculation from Guild Wars 2!
Audio Version

What We Did This Week
 

Hunter

Played a few hours in silverwastes trying to get a beta invite.  They don’t appear to have a good drop rate, in my opinion.
Placed 13th in Maven’s Guild Rush beating allona for the first time in a few weeks. (I wasn’t there) SHUSH
Spent a lot of time in Edge of the mists both Karma Training and Defending my keep.  Defending isn’t done often there and I can see why. Once you’ve defended the keep once from enemy players they are unlikely to return. I’ve been trying to raise my world experience rank so that I can max out guard killer and guard defense and still spec into other things I like before the new borderlands map comes out.
Gave Allona several undedicated minis and 100k platinum in the original Guild Wars because I am wicked awesome.
Did one of the most frustrating dungeon runs in recent memory with Mock. People not listening, rushing in, ignoring strategy, all on a dungeon path we’ve done tons of times. Another typical day with Mock.

Allona

Forgot to mention last week: I took part in the GW2 Toga Party pre-show, danced with people, won 50 gold, good times! And I finally gave up and made a (non-Tengu) Guardian.
Tried roaming in WvW with my ranger for my surviving the mists homework. I am le suck.
PVPed with Ultra on Saturday … he was sneaky and queued us up for Ranked without my knowledge!
In an attempt to get some of the GW1 10-year holiday stuff done, I streamed a mission on my personal channel. I was so out-of-practice, it was sad. (Sorry to the two people who popped into my stream!)
Did two runs of Arah with Spirit, Eric, Hunter, and Cal. And with that I now am a DUNGEON MASTER!
Did a quick “fungeon” with MoCK and we were joined by Rune Lockhart. While frustrating for Hunter, it was hilarious for everyone else! (H - I’m glad you take joy in my misery) (A - I really do :) )

 

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Report from Lion’s Arch
 
Ready Up Summary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPqYpcteqac
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/ready-up-core-specializations-summary/
http://dulfy.net/2015/04/25/gw2-core-specializations/

Last Friday Ready Up went through nearly every trait that is receiving significant changes, this took 4 and a half hours. We do not have that kind of time to summarize but we highly suggest visiting dulfy to read her table of changes. It took her all weekend to do. If you do have 4.5 hours to kill, Anet has posted the Ready Up to the youtubes (bonus: it has links directly to each profession!). Also Anet itself posted a brief summary on their own page.

H: There is a lot to take in here.  No firm opinions until i actually get my hands on these but a lot will be changing, lots of popular skills and builds taking hits.
A: Data usage be damned: I streamed the bulk of this over my phone! Thankfully the Twitch app has an ‘audio only’ option (gads I wish YouTube would implement that). I may have fist-pumped in the middle of the grocery store when they mentioned Time Warp was (rightfully) becoming a glamour!

 
Mesmer first? (for once)
https://twitter.com/guildwars2/status/592720217459011586

Guild Wars 2 tweeted an image of a female caster class wielding a shield. The image has a lot of pink/purple so it seems like a direct clue to the mesmer elite specialization being revealed tomorrow.  They had said the first elite specialization would be released this week, and a tweet by Lewis B of TenTonHammer suggests 8am EST.

H: Any speculation on the mesmer specialization allona?  What do mesmers lack that a specialization might help address?
A: Previously, I was wondering if it could be mesmer,