Guild Wars 2

Dalanor.5387:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RwKNkwcEZo

LOL, Dalanor I love you

What about making Healing signet heal for less health passively the more health you are missing (encouraging staying topped up and meeting those 90%+ health requirements) while making it heal more health from the active the more health you are missing and/or include some form of regen or cooldown reduction based on how much health you are missing. This would give more incentive to use the heal when you are getting low/bursted instead of hoping to duck and and let the passive bring you up.

Tal Drakkan.3284:

What about making Healing signet heal for less health passively the more health you are missing (encouraging staying topped up and meeting those 90%+ health requirements) while making it heal more health from the active the more health you are missing and/or include some form of regen or cooldown reduction based on how much health you are missing. This would give more incentive to use the heal when you are getting low/bursted instead of hoping to duck and and let the passive bring you up.

Good idea, I would decrese the passive effect by a 20% in general (let’s say you’re healing for 400 per second, then you’re going to heal 320 per second which is more than enough imo) and than adding to the active skill the effect of healing more the less health you have. I don’t know if this would be the solution but I think you understood the right direction to take, Tal Drakkan!!

Karl McLain.5604:

In general, we’ve got quite a bit more stuff coming. As before, we can’t say what these things are just yet… But there’s a bit of stuff that will shake up the meta. We’re really looking forward to it!

-Karl

I often wonder why all the upcoming changes have to be so hush-hush. Certain things are announced and feedback is taken into consideration and changes are made or not made (mesmer clones). What exactly about these other sort of changes is so critical that it must not be divulged?

I know you guys think releasing information and changing your mind and incuring the wrath of the community is worse than release no information at all… but I would at least consider releasing more information than next to nothing.

It’s probably related to the other large changes they’re doing (rune changes and sigils on 2-handed weapons). That’s likely why they can’t talk about it.

That alone will introduce new builds, for sure.

Can you tell us anything about upcoming changes for the thief?

The poison field duration reduction was already know from the stream, and doesn’t really affect anything.

Thieves will be hit hard by your proposed reduction to crit damage. I use the trait hidden killer on my thief (gives 100% crit chance while in stealth) and use Valkyrie gear on my thief. During the steam I heard that full zerkers will get about a 10% overall damage reduction, I can only assume that with the 100% crit chance on my backstab burst I will be affected way more since that is the main source of my damage! What are we being given make up for the reduced burst?

Also, won’t the crit damage decrease harm the assassin stat combination more than the berserker stat? How will you fix this?

Now that two handed weapons are getting an extra slot, are you going to equalize the damage difference between two and one handed weapons? I thought that the original reason two handed weapons had more damage was because they were balanced as if they already had a 5% damage increase on them.

Dalanor.5387:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RwKNkwcEZo

Jesus christ, holy kitten of the 7 hells and divine puff of the cherry tree this is so win!

Karl McLain.5604:

Hi all!
Once again, thanks for the feedback!
We’ve been discussing elementalists quite a bit recently in PvP and one of the things that’s brought up constantly from feedback is the internal cooldown from Cleansing Water. This is something we feel is out-dated and we’ve been playing around with removing the ICD totally from PvP. We’ve got some concerns, but would love to hear some feedback on this.
-Karl

Hi Karl!! I think this would be good, re-opening possibilities for ele d/d regen specs. Maybe making some other changings in various trait line or just moving around traits a bit could open the gates to new builds for ele! I like the direction you’re thinking for ele, can’t wait to hear what’s next (for ranger as well actually)!!!

Karl McLain.5604:

Hi all!
Once again, thanks for the feedback!
We’ve been discussing elementalists quite a bit recently in PvP and one of the things that’s brought up constantly from feedback is the internal cooldown from Cleansing Water. This is something we feel is out-dated and we’ve been playing around with removing the ICD totally from PvP. We’ve got some concerns, but would love to hear some feedback on this.

In general, we’ve got quite a bit more stuff coming. As before, we can’t say what these things are just yet… But there’s a bit of stuff that will shake up the meta. We’re really looking forward to it!

-Karl

Hi Karl – might I ask why just PvP? Ele has some rather macro-level gameplay issues in PvE right now, especially with the Staff. Mainly, the fact that Air is borderline garbage and Water and Earth have autoattacks that are far weaker than necessary, all but forcing you to continuously fallback to Fire and still being only questionably useful.

I think there’s a big issue with autoattacks in general, actually, causing major weapon balance problems among professions. Anyway, thanks for any details you can provide.

Karl McLain.5604:

We’ve got some concerns, but would love to hear some feedback on this.

Hiya Karl.

If we ignore soothing disruption’s trait for a moment, what does cleansing water without cd allows for? It can act like cleansing wave when coupled with elemental attunement, add cleansing on the glyph’s water effect, add cleansing to the new water trident, cleansing to all glyphs on water with the air’s inscription trait, allow healing rain to cleanse mid-way, and trigger a passive cleanse when critically hit.

Most of those effects are triggered on water attunement, which is the reason why the current 5 second CD makes cleansing water very weak and should not stay as it is.

If we took out inscription’s trait (currently not used, and requires a very specific trait build-up), with soothing wave, cleansing wave, cleansing water, elemental attunement and glyph of harmony equipped, an elementalist can cleanse 2 conditions by swapping to water, 1 by using the glyph, 2 from the new water trident and cleansing wave skill and 1 from dodging in water. That’s a 6-condi cleanse. With the 5 CD cooldown on the grandmaster trait, it would be 4 instead, or 5 at best if the user waits 5 seconds. So ultimately, the current version only cleanses 1 condition – sometimes 2, and without the cooldown, it would remove about 3 in a burst sequence.

Water trident has a 20 second cooldown, and the glyph has a 25 second cooldown and is conditional (you don’t always want or need to use it in water). However, soothing wave can be triggered every 10-ish seconds, and elemental attunement every 13-ish. So every 10-ish seconds, the grandmaster trait without CD would remove 2 conditions, plus 1 more each 20 seconds, plus 1 more each 25 seconds situationally.

In practice, the elementalist will probably not waste all of its healing skills in a single go – it would be overkill. That usually means not using glyph unless absolutely needed – or even not taking it (in favor of the signet).

On average and in realistic conditions, that would be 2.5 conditions cleansed every (more than) 10 seconds. Too strong for a grandmaster trait? Up to you to decide. It also requires a very rigid trait structure (elemental attunement and not only soothing wave are required, but the main “fuel” behind this trait – unless you go for soothing disruption builds instead).

This makes a trait like Cleansing Ire stronger than Cleansing Water without CD. The warrior’s trait is only at the master tier, is more reliable, and still has a secondary added effect. But Cleansing Ire is overpowered, and cleansing water without CD would probably have a worthy effect for a grandmaster trait.

In this context, if you have some doubts, there are also some changes that can be done to prevent cleansing water from going crazy. Especially from the two traits that would trigger it more often:

• Modify soothing wave by giving a longer cooldown and stronger effect. Instead of 3 seconds regen every 10 seconds, maybe 4 seconds of regen every 12 seconds? I wouldn’t put the cooldown much higher than this, though. It’s barely worth taking this trait without cleansing water, and if the cooldown gets too high, the combo won’t even be worth it.
• Modify elemental attunement. In order to prevent elementalists from becoming defensive powerhouses, nerf elemental attunement’s protection duration from 5 seconds to 3, but have it give 3 stacks of might instead of one. However, because elementalists need protection so much, add better sources of protection in their earth traits (like elemantal shielding going from 3 seconds to 5 seconds). This might seem completely unrelated, but it’s not: by making elemental attunement more of a jack-of-all-trades trait, and less of a specialized defensive tool, if players were to combine cleansing water trait without CD with this one, they would get a lot more cleansing, yes, but less protection uptime. Basically, make elementalists choice: do I want more protection? Go to earth. Am I using cleansing water trait? Ok, I’ll pick elemental attunement, but that means less protection!
• Do not put regen on water trident. If you want more party support, increase its radius and projectile speed instead. Cleansing Water is already a very appealing trait if you remove the CD, you don’t need to put regen on more skills. Alternatively, add regen to water trident, increase the radius, increase the speed, do all of those three things, but up the cooldown to 25 seconds. However, water trident is generally not the main problem here.

(Continues…)

When we take into account soothing disruption, things change a little. It was usually the reason why cleansing water was so strong before. However, players can no longer have both of them AND cleansing wave. In addition to that, full cantrip builds (20 fire, 10 earth, 20-30 water) won’t be able to pick elemental attunement nor soothing wave. Soothing wave comes at the cost of cantrip mastery, and cantrips generally have long cooldowns, so getting 3 sources of regen every 32-60 seconds, plus one from an auto armor of earth or an auto cleansing fire under the same cooldown, is probably not very strong by itself. Of course, all that would be stacked with elemental attunement triggering every 13-14 seconds, but still, it could barely compete with, say, rock solid + ether renewal unless cleansing fire is taken. And IF cleansing fire is indeed taken, then it just shows that the grandmaster trait itself would not be enough by itself in the current condition-meta.

I hope my posts were helpful.

Karl McLain.5604:

Hi all!
Once again, thanks for the feedback!
We’ve been discussing elementalists quite a bit recently in PvP and one of the things that’s brought up constantly from feedback is the internal cooldown from Cleansing Water. This is something we feel is out-dated and we’ve been playing around with removing the ICD totally from PvP. We’ve got some concerns, but would love to hear some feedback on this.

In general, we’ve got quite a bit more stuff coming. As before, we can’t say what these things are just yet… But there’s a bit of stuff that will shake up the meta. We’re really looking forward to it!

-Karl

Hey Karl, thanks for your response. I appreciate it very much!

I do hope however that with ‘PvP’ you also mean to include WvW. Personally I feel that you guys have been constantly trying to balance this entire game around a minor aspect at the cost of everything else; and in doing so destroying the aspects that actually keep this game going.

So I would humbly suggest that you guys should stop focusing so much on an aspect as minor as sPvP/tPvP and focus on the actual core aspects which keep this game running.

Thank you

Aveneo.2068:

Karl McLain.5604:

Hi all!
Once again, thanks for the feedback!
We’ve been discussing elementalists quite a bit recently in PvP and one of the things that’s brought up constantly from feedback is the internal cooldown from Cleansing Water. This is something we feel is out-dated and we’ve been playing around with removing the ICD totally from PvP. We’ve got some concerns, but would love to hear some feedback on this.

In general, we’ve got quite a bit more stuff coming. As before, we can’t say what these things are just yet… But there’s a bit of stuff that will shake up the meta. We’re really looking forward to it!

-Karl

Hey Karl, thanks for your response. I appreciate it very much!

I do hope however that with ‘PvP’ you also mean to include WvW. Personally I feel that you guys have been constantly trying to balance this entire game around a minor aspect at the cost of everything else; and in doing so destroying the aspects that actually keep this game going.

So I would humbly suggest that you guys should stop focusing so much on an aspect as minor as sPvP/tPvP and focus on the actual core aspects which keep this game running.

Thank you

This is a very common sentiment; I don’t get what the deal is with their almost myopic focus on PvP either.

Einlanzer.1627:

snip

Aveneo.2068:

Hey Karl, thanks for your response. I appreciate it very much!

I do hope however that with ‘PvP’ you also mean to include WvW. Personally I feel that you guys have been constantly trying to balance this entire game around a minor aspect at the cost of everything else; and in doing so destroying the aspects that actually keep this game going.

So I would humbly suggest that you guys should stop focusing so much on an aspect as minor as sPvP/tPvP and focus on the actual core aspects which keep this game running.

Thank you

Einlanzer.1627:

This is a very common sentiment; I don’t get what the deal is with their almost myopic focus on PvP either.

Both of you don’t even know what is and isn’t split PvP/WvW/PvE. You want them to considier removing the internal cooldown on cleansing water in PvE/WvW when there isn’t one. That is basically what you are discussing here. Nothing.

THERE IS NO ICD ON CLEANSING WATER IN WVW AND PVE!!! Never has been.
Cleansing water was never nerfed in WvW/PvE -Source is patch notes and testing and wiki

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Water Has a cooldown of 5 seconds in sPvP.

This is probably why they don’t want to split so many things balance wise because people like (see above) don’t know what is and isn’t split. Obviously people don’t go and test things either which they should feel forced to be at least read the patch notes or the wiki perhaps.

oZii.2864:

Einlanzer.1627:

snip

Aveneo.2068:

Hey Karl, thanks for your response. I appreciate it very much!

I do hope however that with ‘PvP’ you also mean to include WvW. Personally I feel that you guys have been constantly trying to balance this entire game around a minor aspect at the cost of everything else; and in doing so destroying the aspects that actually keep this game going.

So I would humbly suggest that you guys should stop focusing so much on an aspect as minor as sPvP/tPvP and focus on the actual core aspects which keep this game running.

Thank you

Einlanzer.1627:

This is a very common sentiment; I don’t get what the deal is with their almost myopic focus on PvP either.

Both of you don’t even know what is and isn’t split PvP/WvW/PvE. You want them to considier removing the internal cooldown on cleansing water in PvE/WvW when there isn’t one. That is basically what you 2 are discussing here. Nothing.

THERE IS NO ICD ON CLEANSING WATER IN WVW AND PVE!!! Never has been.
Cleansing water was never nerfed in WvW/PvE -Source is patch notes and testing

This is probably why they don’t want to split so many things balance wise because people like (see above) don’t know what is and isn’t split. Obviously people don’t go and test things either.

I was speaking in a general sense. Personally I don’t care about sPvP. What I do care about however are all the global nerfs PvE and WvW have suffered because of it. It is high time for the devs to stop treating sPvP/tPvP as if it was the entire game.

Now go outside and get some fresh air.

Aveneo.2068:

I was speaking in a general sense. Personally I don’t care about sPvP. What I do care about however are all the global nerfs PvE and WvW have suffered because of it.

That is cool that you don’t care about sPvP but the context of the conversation was about specifically Cleansing Water’s internal cooldown in sPvP. You said when you mean “PvP” I hope that also includes “WvW”. There is not icd on cleansing water. I don’t think you knew this otherwise why even say it.

Anyway alot of people don’t know this because they don’t hover over the trait to see there is no 5 with a circle around it. Or look at the wiki for traits.

What global nerfs? The biggest is RTL. SOR was a bug fix and healing reduced in sPvP only. Mist form change wasn’t oh lets just do this to ele they also did in the same patch to Elixir S for Engineers applying the same balance. You can’t use utilities with Elixier S and Mist form.

Was there some other Ele nerfs that really crippled the class in WvW and sPvP together? The sPvP Ele is much weaker then the WvW/PvE Ele.

Aveneo.2068:

oZii.2864:

Einlanzer.1627:

snip

Aveneo.2068:

Hey Karl, thanks for your response. I appreciate it very much!

I do hope however that with ‘PvP’ you also mean to include WvW. Personally I feel that you guys have been constantly trying to balance this entire game around a minor aspect at the cost of everything else; and in doing so destroying the aspects that actually keep this game going.

So I would humbly suggest that you guys should stop focusing so much on an aspect as minor as sPvP/tPvP and focus on the actual core aspects which keep this game running.

Thank you

Einlanzer.1627:

This is a very common sentiment; I don’t get what the deal is with their almost myopic focus on PvP either.

Both of you don’t even know what is and isn’t split PvP/WvW/PvE. You want them to considier removing the internal cooldown on cleansing water in PvE/WvW when there isn’t one. That is basically what you 2 are discussing here. Nothing.

THERE IS NO ICD ON CLEANSING WATER IN WVW AND PVE!!! Never has been.
Cleansing water was never nerfed in WvW/PvE -Source is patch notes and testing

This is probably why they don’t want to split so many things balance wise because people like (see above) don’t know what is and isn’t split. Obviously people don’t go and test things either.

I was speaking in a general sense. Personally I don’t care about sPvP. What I do care about however are all the global nerfs PvE and WvW have suffered because of it. It is high time for the devs to stop treating sPvP/tPvP as if it was the entire game.

Now go outside and get some fresh air.

As pointed out by Ozii you don’t really know what is changed in pvp and wvw so your statement that Pve and Wvw sufferes because of sPVP holds no weight. And for you to think that devs care more about sPVP just shows how little you truly understand about this game.

oZii.2864:

Aveneo.2068:

I was speaking in a general sense. Personally I don’t care about sPvP. What I do care about however are all the global nerfs PvE and WvW have suffered because of it.

That is cool that you don’t care about sPvP but the context of the conversation was about specifically Cleansing Water’s internal cooldown in sPvP. You said when you mean “PvP” I hope that also includes “WvW”. There is not icd on cleansing water. I don’t think you knew this otherwise why even say it.

Anyway alot of people don’t know this because they don’t hover over the trait to see there is no 5 with a circle around it. Or look at the wiki for traits.

What global nerfs? The biggest is RTL. SOR was a bug fix and healing reduced in sPvP only. Mist form change wasn’t oh lets just do this to ele they also did in the same patch to Elixir S for Engineers applying the same balance. You can’t use utilities with Elixier S and Mist form.

Was there some other Ele nerfs that really crippled the class in WvW and sPvP together? The sPvP Ele is much weaker then the WvW/PvE Ele.

Which part of ‘general sense’ do you have trouble understanding? I was not even talking about the elementalist specifically. I was talking about all the global nerfs we have seen since launch where the majority of those global nerfs were because of sPvP/tPvP; a minor and (imo) trivial aspect of this game.

And with the above post made by Karl we can see that the devs are still focusing on sPvP/tPvP. As such I humbly requested they open their eyes and realize that Guild Wars 2 is not running because of sPvP/tPvP.

Now go outside and take a breath, again.

dimyzuka.7051:

As pointed out by Ozii you don’t really know what is changed in pvp and wvw so your statement that Pve and Wvw sufferes because of sPVP holds no weight. And for you to think that devs care more about sPVP just shows how little you truly understand about this game.

I can read patch notes, experience the changes and am a designer myself (who also happened to work in the industry on game balance), but I see we’re at the point of flinging random insults regarding my intelligence now? Whatever dude, have a nice life.

Rennoko.5731:

Karl McLain.5604:

In general, we’ve got quite a bit more stuff coming. As before, we can’t say what these things are just yet… But there’s a bit of stuff that will shake up the meta. We’re really looking forward to it!

-Karl

I often wonder why all the upcoming changes have to be so hush-hush. Certain things are announced and feedback is taken into consideration and changes are made or not made (mesmer clones). What exactly about these other sort of changes is so critical that it must not be divulged?

I know you guys think releasing information and changing your mind and incuring the wrath of the community is worse than release no information at all… but I would at least consider releasing more information than next to nothing.

Personally, I’m thinking that the major, feature-only patch will introduce new weapon skills for classes (more access to different weapons or, less likely, new weapon types), and perhaps a bunch of extra utility skills and maybe traits to go with the new weapons.

This would also explain the relatively small amount of balance changes they’re allowed to show us right now. They can’t disrupt the existing groundwork too much before throwing in a bunch of brand new stuff that is meant to exist alongside.

They can’t realistically give Thief one single line of balance changes for a feature update and be taken seriously. If they can’t reveal anything else behind the curtain, it is almost definitely not just an adjustment eg. Pistol Whip splitting. It is something new.

Karl McLain.5604:

Hi all!
Once again, thanks for the feedback!
We’ve been discussing elementalists quite a bit recently in PvP and one of the things that’s brought up constantly from feedback is the internal cooldown from Cleansing Water. This is something we feel is out-dated and we’ve been playing around with removing the ICD totally from PvP. We’ve got some concerns, but would love to hear some feedback on this.

In general, we’ve got quite a bit more stuff coming. As before, we can’t say what these things are just yet… But there’s a bit of stuff that will shake up the meta. We’re really looking forward to it!

-Karl

The ICD needs to be removed for everything except Healing Seed. Then eles might actually survive conditions. Of course there is still the MASSIVE PROBLEM of being forced to spec 30 water for condition removal, on top of the mandatory Arcana points. You really need to actually give eles (and others) more options.

Tripple Cantrip Staff Ele with Dwayna Runes and 30 in Water and arcana:
Soothing Wave, Soothing Disruption, Cleansing Water and Elemental Attunement
Heal: Ether Renewal
Perma Regen, perma condi removal. GG.

Lower the CD of arcane shield and the ele should be happy. 75s? really? xD

@Auesis I think you hit the nail on the head. When I ask myself what would be super cool to have added to the game I think a whole new class like Dervish along with new weapons like halberds and flails. Then Im reminded of how much ANET loves to do the opposite of super cool and usually takes the easy way out. And that points me right to new weapon skills for existing weapons.

Ride the Lightning.

Karl McLain.5604:

In general, we’ve got quite a bit more stuff coming. As before, we can’t say what these things are just yet… But there’s a bit of stuff that will shake up the meta. We’re really looking forward to it!

-Karl

newweaponsnewtraitsnewutilspleasepleaseplease?

Just elites. Funny elites.

New weapons would be cool, but it won’t do much good for Thieves’ overall state once the novelty wears off.

What we need are some serious overhauls to address the core issues with Steal and/or Stealth.

Karl, has the dev team considered taking a look at ride the lightning? The cooldown is insanely long compared to what it used to be. The range was also severely nerfed at the same time as the cooldown. This nerf was really harsh and the fact that it always goes on full cooldown if blocked (when it was stated not to). The skill is very buggy and makes me sad everytime I use it

Rtl nerf is outdated because devs failed to take the range nerf into account when they hit eles class defining spell (in the old meta at least) with a double cd. Old skill was 1600 range on 15sec cd, then 20 sec cd, and now its 1200 range with 40 second cooldown. Very unfair

Karl McLain.5604:

For reference, in regard to Cleansing Water, there’s no internal cooldown for either PvE or WvW, as WvW uses the rules for PvE. The trait was previously split for elementalists in PvP as their healing and condition cleansing, coupled with their damage, posed greater potential than most other professions had means to deal with.

As you stated you feel that that change that was applied is outdated currently with the fact that other classes have been brought up. I agree that it is outdated you guys have stated that you plan to also return the healing of SOR to PvE/WvW levels which I also agree with.

We should know where we came from to move forward.

April 26th 2013
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/b/396007412 @ 34:42

You and Jon go over the changes you made to Elementalist in the old Meta.

If we took the old Elementalist specfically the Cantrip bunker Elementalist and put it in the current meta do you guys feel that it would be to strong?

In the old meta -

• No Dhuumfire pre Necromancer buffs
• Warriors where terrible and didn’t fit in the meta at all no sustain and terrible condition removal
• Boon stripping wasn’t as prevalent
• Thieves didn’t go 30 in trickery pre-slight of hand buff

I personally feel that if we inserted the old Elementalist into the current meta that it would compete with Warrior for that role and still people would take Warrior over the specific cantrip bunker elementalist that was nerfed in the old meta. What it would do I believe is make the drop off from taking a Warrior to Elementalist not as bad if you don’t happen to have a Warrior but still Warrior is optimal in that role.

The closest you can get to the old incarnation of the cantrip bunker ele is in WvW/PvE. Any Ele there will tell you that the buffs to the other classes have either put it on par or surpassed it in effectiveness.

Reverting the cleansing water change coupled with the SOR change will not bring the old Cantrip bunkers back. They will compete with Warriors with Warrior still being the optimal choice.

The reason why is mobility specifically RTL.

Warrior always had the mobility to compete with Ele in the “OLD META” but it didn’t have sustain or the ability to deal with conditions like a Ele. Elementalist were brought down in sustain and condition management along with mobility while Warrior was brought up in all 3 areas. Currently the Warrior can do just that so if the worry is that the old Cantrip Bunker Elementalist will come back it won’t because Warrior is still better in that Role.

I am not targeting Warriors as OP or anything I have a Warrior. I am just looking at sPvP from 8 classes 5 roles. A old cantrip bunker Elemetalist could sub for today’s Warrior but it still wouldn’t be better then today’s Warrior or that role.

RTL should also be changed I personally would like 25 seconds as a common ground anyone traiting for air skills cooldown will get a 20 second RTL. Remove the penalty the bug fix reduced it’s range to 1200 so it is no longer easy to reset combat anymore with it.

I’m wondering if there are any plans to get rid of stun-locking.

Eles were nerfed way too much. This is how I would have buffed/nerfed them (in this case D/D bunker eles):

• RTL
  15 sec CD -> 25 sec CD (no half CD if it hits an enemy) + 1550 range -> 1200 range
  A 15 sec CD was too low, 40 sec (if you don’t hit your opponent/disengage which every profession needs to do sometimes) is way too high. 25 sec CD is higher than equal skills since RTL is slightly stronger imo.

• Signet of Restoration
  Remove nerf
  Nerf should be removed to make it somewhat viable again. Still feels really weak after the nerf + bug fix.

• Lightning Flash
  Stun break + no damage + 30 sec CD
  Equal to Blink (Mesmer). Reduces the high burst potential of Fresh Air builds but increases their survivability.

• Mist Form
  Only locks skills 1-5 -> also locks heal, utility, and elite skills
  Nerf is ok since similar skills were nerfed too.

• Zephyr’s Boon
  Shocking Aura aura bug fix -> only 5 sec boons instead of 10 sec
  Bug fix (= nerf) which is ok.

• Bountiful Power
  2% damage -> 1% damage
  Nerf is ok. Similar traits only increase the damage by 1% as well.

• Cleansing Water
  5 sec ICD -> no ICD
  The ICD was a huge nerf and should be reverted.

• Evasive Arcana
  4 blast finishers -> 1 blast finisher + Cleansing Wave reduced by 50%
  2 nerfs which are huge but I think they were necessary. Back then EA was too strong. (Maybe only reduced by 25%)

• Armor of Earth
  90 sec CD -> 60 sec CD
  75 sec CD is still too high. Similar skills (slightly weaker) have ~50% CD. 60 sec CD sounds fair to me since it synergizes well with multiple traits.

• Burning Speed
  No evade -> evade
  Nice buff. Not really needed imo but I like the idea of having active defense.

• Frozen Burst
  No blast finisher -> blast finisher
  Decent buff.

I’m not sure if my suggestions would make eles viable again (probably not) but it’s a step in the right direction. The buffs which were announced so far simply aren’t enough.

Black Hat summed it up perfectly.

I would also look at Frost Aura having the ICD on it I am not sure what I would prefer the ICD and -10% damage or No ICD and no -10% damage.

I think I lean more towards no ICD and no -10% damage.

Rennoko.5731:

I often wonder why all the upcoming changes have to be so hush-hush.

The auction house maybe? Just mentioning sigils in the live tream made some prices jump (temporarily)

Heres an idea! the beginning of this debate is going to deal with auto attacks,

Elementalist only has one real optimal auto attack with d/d currently, (Lightning Whip).

Upping the amount of dps on vapor blade a tad bit plus increasing the amount of vulnerability would do wonders for Eles. Water 1 then lets the potential dps increase after swapping out of water attunement and swapping into a trait that does good dps if the opponent doesn’t clear vulnerability condi.

Lowering the cast time for Impale and upping the bleed dps would help quite a bit as well. all other auto attacks on Ele can hit multiple targets, Impale hits one target and has the slowest cast time (3/4 seconds compared to 1/2 auto atk cast speed.) Eles condition dmg is below efficent right now, Impale is probably the 2nd to worst auto attack to use currently (IMO), Vapor blade being the worst (unless you need that tiny bit of extra range I suppose).

I’ve said this before but I think Dragon’s Claw, which is Fire1, should be Eles main auto attack, I also think there should be a catch, Dragon’s claw has three fire balls that launch from Eles front arc and then spread apart until they vanish, depending on how many of those fireballs land, I believe the % dmg should increase. So for example, (I’m not saying these numbers should be implemented.) 1 fireball = base dmg 2 = 10% dps increase and landing all 3 fire balls with a single attack = 20% dps increase. Landing all three can be quite a struggle as you may know unless you are right in your opponents face.

I think it would be fair to have the attunement recharge have a standard reuse timer, Arcana line shouldn’t reduce the time of attunements and instead up boon duration and something else useful instead. Lowering attunement cooldowns across the board to ~6 or 7 seconds would give the elementalist a chance to use more defensive traits such as Lightning Touch, Magnetic Grasp and Frozen Burst. I feel putting 20% reduction to all skill CDs for all attunement lines in Arcana line for Masters trait and moving Elemental Attunement back to Arcana’s Adept slot would fix a lot of problems with the elementalist having defensive dilemmas. Protection and regen are a must for elementalist, these attunement CD changes would increase the amount of might ,regen, swiftness and protection ever so slightly compared to the current attunement CD with 30 points in Arcana. (Roughly 1-2 seconds less CD time).

Lets say elemental attunement gives ~ 6 1/2 seconds of duration to regen, protection, swiftness and 19 1/2 seconds to might. (This is current duration with 30% boon duration (30 in arcana = 30% to boons))The elementalist has three other attunements to work with so that doesn’t mean you’re going to always have, for example, protection or regen up every 7 seconds, so in my opinion a change along these lines seems reasonable to me. There is still plenty of reason to go 30 in arcana with the suggestions I made, not to mention Evasive Arcana is almost mandatory.

Armor of Earth in my opinion should have a much lower CD timer, I also think the trait in water to give vigor and regen to cantrips (Soothing Disruption) should be moved back to Adept in water.

The d/d build requires a lot of points spent to up our defense, this leaves not many points for increasing our DPS, which without critting with high crit dmg can be kind of low. I don’t think crit dps should be nerfed across the board, instead I’d create a point at which you get diminishing returns for classes that are hitting too hard with specific weapons in mind.

In order for 30 earth, 30 fire or 30 air to be optimal, I think Elementalist needs some Grand Master traits that improve our defense, I’d really love to see more diversity with traits in mind…

I know I’ve already said this as well but can we please see a valid reason to use more glyphs?!

The rangers changes are really lacking.
The class could do with overhauls in several areas such as shouts, spirits and pet AI. I realize that pet AI probably won’t ever change, but the other 2 can be adressed.
The shouts lack utility and while some can be good (with heavy trait investment and runes), some others are only good on paper.
For instance, guard has a 1 sec cast time, making it a mess. The pet part is also pretty much useless in all situations.
Search and rescue has never worked even once for me, it always failed to revive anyone. And it failed because it did NOT find the dead guys around me, not because the pet was killed or was called back or whatever.
Overall, with a shout build and runes of the soldier, it could be of use in wvw such as what the warriors and guardians have. However, the fact that it grants regen and not healing and mostly the fact that the effects not coming from traits/runes are pretty useless make them really lacking. I’m not saying we, rangers, want to be warriors. However, i do believe the shouts could also grant more utility to groups and at least have one of them less “pet focused”, making the regen part bearable.

Spirits suffer the same kind of comparison sadly. Sure, on paper they look very strong, especially the elite one. However they die so fast that they are near useless. It is very hard to ever revive someone with the spirit of nature since it has a cast animation and requires the spirit to still be alive. The warrior banner revives instantly as it is cast. The healing part of the spirit is mostly useless in pve/wvw since the spirits die so fast and they have bad pathing (same goes for the pets). If you removed the cast animation time from their active effects, it might be a bit better and they could also do with a hp boost in pve/wvw. Since you have already made a difference for the pets, why not do the same for the spirits ?

The pet AI really needs some work. The pathing is really bad and they run far away and come back more often than not instead of just following you. I realize this is probably the hardest thing to change as it requires heavy coding modifications (i work on video games as well). However, this is required and necessary to improve the class as we usually do less damage due to the fact we have a pet. A pet that instantly dies because it goes right into the AoE circles for no reason when you barely moved 1 foot.
This is, again, mostly a wvw/pve issue. I couldn’t talk too much about pvp as i’m only rank 10 there and mostly use it for build/skill testing so i don’t know about the class balance there.

I hope you read my reply and can adress at least some of the issues i pointed out in the near future.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I’m wondering if there are any plans to get rid of stun-locking.

This. Letting hard CC run unrestricted tends to take a giant poodle scoot all over pvp balance. Right now builds/classes with both plentiful hard CC and mobility are usually near to if not top tier.

Either immunity timers are needed or more optimally in the long term less CC needs to be handed out to reduce the spam. Also gap closing abilities without some sort of restriction are often doing double duty as escape tools. If a gap closer deals damage it should require a target to reflect its primary purpose.

Karl, I think you should consider having an option for d/d ele to do a great amount of damage with the draw back of being very squishy, but also having skills if timed right, that counter condis and dmg. That would make my world <3

Overkillengine.6084:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I’m wondering if there are any plans to get rid of stun-locking.

This. Letting hard CC run unrestricted tends to take a giant poodle scoot all over pvp balance. Right now builds/classes with both plentiful hard CC and mobility are usually near to if not top tier.

Either immunity timers are needed or more optimally in the long term less CC needs to be handed out to reduce the spam. Also gap closing abilities without some sort of restriction are often doing double duty as escape tools. If a gap closer deals damage it should require a target to reflect its primary purpose.

Diminishing returns as in WoW? Well, the huge difference is that DR is needed there, the amount of CC in WoW is ridiculous compared to GW2 (eg: 20s fear vs 2-3s fear).

Grimreaper.5370:

Karl, I think you should consider having an option for d/d ele to do a great amount of damage with the draw back of being very squishy, but also having skills if timed right, that counter condis and dmg. That would make my world <3

They have that, its called going full Zerker. Though one blocked/missed skill and you are going to be dead. Unlike other classes that have plenty of defence CAN go full Zerker and still haven plenty of defence be it from health/Armour tier or from stealth, immunities, blocks, invuls and others.

Dalanor.5387:

Diminishing returns as in WoW? Well, the huge difference is that DR is needed there, the amount of CC in WoW is ridiculous compared to GW2 (eg: 20s fear vs 2-3s fear).

Diminishing Returns IS needed. Getting chain CC to death simply should not happen. Warrior Hammer being the worst offender. They need to add a removable Boon that only gets applied once you get CC:

Determined: For the next 5 seconds any CC used against you will have reduced affect and duration.

Stacks up to 5 times.

1 stack = 20% reduction
2 stack = 40% reduction
3 stack = 60% reduction
4 stack = 80% reduction
5 stack = 100% reduction

So say a Warrior uses Staggering Blow, that would give you Determined(would need better name) then they use Backbreacker It would last 1.6seconds but give you another stack (now you have 2 stacks for 5 seconds) The warrior then uses Earthshaker (lets say with full adrenaline) but now the stun lasts 1.2seconds.

The more they spam CC the weaker it will become until they are immune and if the player continues to try and spam CC the duration of the “boon” keeps rebuffing, so the more players just wildly spam CC the longer the person(s) they are fighting is immune to them.

This is a good suggestion. It would also fix some of the CC-spam in zergs. Because people can right now just waltz over you by chain CC-ing you to death, and there’s not a thing you can do against it. There is literally no counter play. This problem hurts classes with poor access to stability and invulnerability the most.

It’s actually kind of silly how this slipped past the devs. You should ALWAYS prevent stun-locking in any combat system. Always.

Is this update entirely about PvP?

Sure as hell seems like it.

Karl McLain.5604:

Hi all!
Once again, thanks for the feedback!
We’ve been discussing elementalists quite a bit recently in PvP and one of the things that’s brought up constantly from feedback is the internal cooldown from Cleansing Water. This is something we feel is out-dated and we’ve been playing around with removing the ICD totally from PvP. We’ve got some concerns, but would love to hear some feedback on this.

In general, we’ve got quite a bit more stuff coming. As before, we can’t say what these things are just yet… But there’s a bit of stuff that will shake up the meta. We’re really looking forward to it!

-Karl

Hey Karl,

I feel that with the changes to elementalist condition removal related traits this would be a suitable time to revert cleansing water with the signet of restoration revert. Many players will take advantage of fresh air to maximise their skill casts which will then restrict them from spending both 30 into water and 20 into arcana for elemental attunement as it’s now a master tier trait.

Soothing disruption and cleansing wave in master tier also prevents both combined with cleansing water, something which could result in slightly overpowered on demand condition removal and reduce the need for ether renewal given the signet of restoration buff. I do however feel that some potentially “overpowered” cantrip builds could result from this depending on whether or not zealot stats are released in spvp but the trait limitations to optimise signet of restoration will obviously prevent maximising the use of cantrips.

I would like to know though, what are your thoughts on diamond skin when considering the strength of a reverted cleansing water?

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

“They have that, its called going full Zerker. Though one blocked/missed skill and you are going to be dead. Unlike other classes that have plenty of defence CAN go full Zerker and still haven plenty of defence be it from health/Armour tier or from stealth, immunities, blocks, invuls and others.”

I guess its just not quite the way I’d like it to be, I’d like to be able to go 30 in air for example and still have a decent shot at survival with d/d in mind. without 30 arcane and 15 water its just too hard to keep up with the rest.

Grimreaper.5370:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

“They have that, its called going full Zerker. Though one blocked/missed skill and you are going to be dead. Unlike other classes that have plenty of defence CAN go full Zerker and still haven plenty of defence be it from health/Armour tier or from stealth, immunities, blocks, invuls and others.”

I guess its just not quite the way I’d like it to be, I’d like to be able to go 30 in air for example and still have a decent shot at survival with d/d in mind. without 30 arcane and 15 water its just too hard to keep up with the rest.

Yep. It is disappointing. We are FORCED into taking defensive traits/gear to counter the inbuilt weaknesses of the class.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Yep. It is disappointing. We are FORCED into taking defensive traits/gear to counter the inbuilt weaknesses of the class.

That’s why evasion on burning speed is so important. It won’t be enough, but coupled with a few defensive reverts, it might be enough to bring balanced/ defensive d/d eles back to play (it won’t still be enough for zerker, glass cannon d/d eles to exist, though).

Karl McLain.5604:

For reference, in regard to Cleansing Water, there’s no internal cooldown for either PvE or WvW, as WvW uses the rules for PvE. The trait was previously split for elementalists in PvP as their healing and condition cleansing, coupled with their damage, posed greater potential than most other professions had means to deal with.

I appreciate the clarification, but no one was really discussing Cleansing Water in PvE, we were talking about PvE updates in general. There always seems to be a myopic focus on PvP when most players spend a lot more time in PvE and WvW.

Otherwise, my feedback is the same it’s been for over a year – a lot of the balance issues between weapons have to do with the #1 skills not being even remotely balanced relative to one other, which virtually single-handedly causes major discrepancies when it comes to sustained DPS. While there are a lot of other components to tune such as the #2-5 skills and traits, none of them individually carries the weight the #1 skill does in determining how effective a weapon is in general. This is the main reason why Pistols, Staffs, and Scepters are typically seen as crappy weapons in most situations across professions.

Frankly, I don’t understand in the slightest how this hasn’t been identified and corrected yet and how fine-tunings on traits and utility skills keep taking precedence patch after patch that don’t really address the core issues and sometimes manage to make things worse. Please make a concrete determination on how strong you want a #1 skill to be and do a major balancing pass on all of them to bring them to a reasonable parity relative to each other. Then, you can start focusing on the other skills and on traits.

Karl McLain.5604:

But there’s a bit of stuff that will shake up the meta. We’re really looking forward to it!

-Karl

Nothing you do shakes up the meta in the right direction.

The best way to improve the elementalist in PvE is by buffing its auto-attacks a bit. It’s the auto-attacks that help LH and D/F fresh air builds to work, it’s the auto-attack + spammable lava font that helps staff builds to work there, and it’s mostly through auto-attacks that eles can be better there. This is because in pve, sustained direct damage is king, and auto-attacks are crucial at that.

So, slight buffs to all non lightning whip, non fire ball AAs would be great to us. In PvE, but also in PvP for sustained builds (although arc lightning is good as it is in pvp).

DiogoSilva.7089:

The best way to improve the elementalist in PvE is by buffing its auto-attacks a bit. It’s the auto-attacks that help LH and D/F fresh air builds to work, it’s the auto-attack + spammable lava font that helps staff builds to work there, and it’s mostly through auto-attacks that eles can be better there. This is because in pve, sustained direct damage is king, and auto-attacks are crucial at that.

So, slight buffs to all non lightning whip, non fire ball AAs would be great to us. In PvE, but also in PvP for sustained builds (although arc lightning is good as it is in pvp).

I’ve posted, posted, and posted to the point of exasperation about how the egregious imbalance of #1 skills from weapon to weapon and the resulting major ramifications to sustained DPS is the single biggest balance problem in PvE that has been completely ignored since launch.

It’s very frustrating reading patchnotes month after month full of trivial or nonsensical trait adjustments when this has been lingering for over a year.