Guild Wars 2

Einlanzer.1627:

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.

Indeed. I have commented before on this creative number juggling that we see every patch, while really big balance problems remain unsolved.

Trivial nonsensical number juggling. I want to see an actual patch for the necromancer.

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

In my opinion I think that that ICD may be removed. I have one concern about it though: the changes to runes and sigils more specifically the runes of dwayna. If the changes to the runes of dwayna grant too much regeneration at a short interval, then it can become overpowered.

Trivial nonsensical number juggling

I don’t know, going through and iterating Runes and Sigils seems like the kind of deeper structural work I’ve been wanting to see more of.

Just some minor things that I’d like improved/tweaked, if you have not noticed them and i hope some are on the patch:
Necro axe 1 skill – Why does it not have a 123 combo? its just up! down! up! down….
Leaping skills- e.g. Engineer rocket boots, when used against a gate or wall it spaz’s out and jumps you left or right like a headless chicken.
Teleporting skills – shouldn’t they leave like a particle effect for the direction they are going in? Like shadow step should leave a feint line of smoke as its just so over powered to teleport to a corner of a structure behind an enemy and seemingly vanishing. Also recently seen alot of people bugging out on Slat like stairs, teleporting behind them then going through maps such as Lions Arch.
Wvw seige placement – Still seeing those frenchies with rams half way up the wall and arrow carts IN the wall. Some sort of system to drop the blueprint aoe to turn red if the siege placement is blocked, rather than wasting 20 seconds trying to drop it in random locations.
WvW workers – Why cant they passively use supply to repair walls or something? Once upgrades are done they are useless. I mean if i was them(a builder) and i had some people that would kill me trying to knock down the fortified wall I just spent hours building for these slackers, I’d probably do something more than standing around.
WvW Npc guards- Not doing much guarding, like the workers, they’d be mercs of a sort to defend Stonemist for example. 90% of them stand around even when the castle is under attack. Why cant they like form up on the walls when outer is under attack then form up in the Inner when the outer is lost? Just give them some sort of usefulness.
Guesting -Large events on own server – Why do i have to wait in an instance (tequal) for 1 hour + to get into my home server’s (desolation) event. The pure number of guests allowed on your own server is far too many, making endgame pve too time consuming. And even when we start the event the number of AFK players is hilarious.
Classes/jobs balencing – I think you all know best about this subject and I personally am looking foward to see what characters i will be playing throughout season 2.
PVP- oh my gosh, too much rewards for just staying and killing and capping in a group. NOTHANKU!.
Thats about it. All we need is a few things in the patches to come but so far the patch notes seem underwhelming but not all the information has been released, so i hope its worth the wait.

I’ve played ranger as my main since 3 day headstart. I have other level 80 professions, but my ranger is my most heavily invested character (2,100 hours on it). I wanted to make 2 points.

1. Rangers really need their endurance regeneration reverted back to 50%.
2. Pet AI needs improvement. Badly.

The trait “Natural Vigor” for rangers needs to be reverted back to what it used to be before the nerf. It felt that rangers were in a good place with 50% endurance regen. We couldn’t spam evades like thieves, but it helped immensely with our survivability.

Guild Wars 2’s combat revolves around the amazing dodge roll ability that all classes can perform. However, I feel the new 25% vigor regeneration is just not enough compared to other classes that can block, cleanse, and teleport through CC faster than it can even be applied. Since we don’t have a reliable way to cleanse CC, our dodge was our anti-CC mechanic. Both of our CC removals requires a minimum of 30 points into either marksmanship (Signet of the Beastmaster which ties to Signet of Renewal) or 30 points into Wilderness Survival (Empathic Bond). Both of those condition removals requires your pet to be near you for it to work, and for your pet to be alive. This encourages players to bring tankier pets such as a bear so their skills will at least work, and thus the term “bearbow” was born. Sure you could always run with healing spring, but you have to be inside of the circle for it to work. Running around inside a small circle is never a good idea when you are in WvW and there are AOEs all over the place. At least before, if you were about to be CCed, you could dodge roll.

Let’s not forget this new PvE wurm event and marionette event is extremely punishing if you don’t bring CC removal and plenty of dodges. Guess which class has a pet that is dead 100% of the time in these events so that it can’t remove conditions, and had its endurance regeneration nerfed? Even with the pet on passive, it still has a 10 meter leash and its favorite thing to do is stand idly inside of red circles that can one shot people.

What we have in terms of dodge “skills”

1. Lightning Reflexes works fine, but then I have to sacrifice one of my other critical utilities that typically end up costing me the fight.

2. Shortbow #3 works great as an extra dodge, except shortbows are laughably underpowered as well as having very short range. Long bow brings more power and utility to WvW, especially if the opponent is trying to run away. I can’t tell you how many times I have killed people who were trying to run away from me when they knew they were going to lose, and with its #2 skill being channeled, it really messes up thieves when they try to stealth away. The only problem with longbow, is it offers no defense. If I had a penny for every time point blank shot and stealth were blocked, evaded, or I was blinded at the last second, I’d be very rich. But in WvW, longbow will always be a better all around choice than shortbow.

3. Sword #2 is probably the worst “dodge” we have. If you can manage to pry yourself off an enemy long enough to use it before you’re dead, and then manage to not fling yourself off the side of a cliff while using #2, it’s still “ok” at best.

Outside of that, we’ve got a few very underpowered skills (tied to off hand weapons) not even worth mentioning that offers short vigor reneration (warhorn), and it comes with a pretty lengthy cooldown.

In the attached picture, my pet is on passive. He is so far away from me, he is hardly in the picture at all. See if you can even find him. With hardly any control over the pets, there is no way to keep them out of AOE, even on passive. We need an AI that is not shared with the normal mob AI in the game.

Dalanor.5387:

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

This is actually just depressing… sigh

oZii.2864:

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.

Sad but I guess you are right. There also is a totally different issue. While getting rid of the ICD might be okay when looking at the balance across classes, it might drastically limit the diversity within the class. After introducing defensive alternatives like Burning Fire to create diversity people will again be more likely to run Water and Arcane heavy builds.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Karl McLain.5604:

Profession Changes

Elementalist:
Our changes for the elementalist focus on increasing sustain while maintaining the delicate balance between damage and durability. We achieved this by adding more defensive effects to a few main-hand weapon sets.

• Signet of Restoration: Removed the split on this skill so that the signet passive heal amount will be increased in PvP to match the current PvE amount.
• Armor of Earth: Reduced recharge from 90 seconds to 75 seconds.
• Water Trident: Added 3 seconds of regeneration to up to 5 allies in the radius.
• Burning Speed: This ability now evades attacks.
• Frozen Burst: This ability is now a blast finisher.

Curious as to how ANY of this will actually HELP Elementalists? If you want to improve sustain – A good place to start would be looking at our pathetic health and Armor. Why is it they are the ONLY class that is Low Health and Low Armor? Sure at the start with the power they had i could understand but since then? Damage Nerfed, Healing Nerfed, Mobility Nerfed? what exactly have we gotten as compensation for all of this? Nothing

Just like how these are NOTHING changes, they won’t help us have “sustain” because guess what? We will STILL be forced to trait/build defensive or we die in seconds. So doing that forces us to have lower damage and STILL die fast. We go Zerker? We die fast, sure might get out some ncie damage but a SINGLE mistake will mean we die.

Again, i don’t see the Sustainability you seem to be after…

I don’t play elementalist in pvp. However this makes sense to me. After all the changes to ele it does make little sense to still have them entry level health and armor.

I agree with a lot of the discussion about reworking crowd control. It is a completely broken part of the combat system at the moment and hasn’t been seriously touched since launch. I feel that if Anet desires to seriously change the meta this is a great point in the system to tweak and enhance gameplay, as some points of it are simply anti-fun.

In PvP situations, as discussed, there is high potential for stun-locking, while in PvE due to the defiant buff existing on any mob stronger than a rat CC builds are non-existent. This is partly because the defiant buff severely penalizes CC builds by flat out negating crowd control mechanics without much room for counterplay(other than spamming CC to reduce defiant stacks), while also being in a metagame where damage rules, and many CC builds generate damage through having their target being CC’ed. In the context of knowing that mob AI is quite deficient at the moment and has been since launch, this was probably a last minute fix to the system, and kept PvE from experiencing stun-lock abuse.

However, in light of ANet expressing interest in changing the meta, this is my suggestion…

IF mob AI ever improves in PvE, THEN defiant as it currently exists should get a look at. Instead of a countdown mechanic, as it is now, it should be a count-up mechanic as earlier described, potentially granting diminishing returns, or a temporary (10-15 seconds) buff that grants CC immunity to the mob. The latter could raise the skill cap to some degree by putting more emphasis on good timing and situational awareness.

This change would also promote build diversity. For instance, I have a level 80 warrior, but never take him out of Lions Arch these days because I find the ‘zerker meta boring. I would much rather play Hammer Warrior in PvE, but because of how generously applied the defiant buff is in its current form, and how everything without it melts in the ’zerker meta, it’s just ineffective and anti-fun. Might as well change all warrior hammers to pool noodles, since none of the bonuses a hammer warrior could trait for and would see as desirable will ever be triggered in PvE.

Daishi.6027:

Dalanor.5387:

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

This is actually just depressing… sigh

11 dodges back to back. I marvel.

if there is nothing huge, beside the stuff you stated yet, you want to change in terms of ele survivability it will be another 3-6 months without having elementalists in esl tournys

anyway i think these changes will affect ele in the best way….ele will never die in a fight because no one will play an ele.

anyway,imho warrior is not balanced because it hasn’t got the stealth.

omg,so win.

Sickness.9831:

if there is nothing huge, beside the stuff you stated yet, you want to change in terms of ele survivability it will be another 3-6 months without having elementalists in esl tournys

:/ something needs to happen. I should be able to play zerker without a thief being able to spam heartseeker on me with little to nothing that I can do. They have faster burst with higher mobility. Lose lose.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Daishi.6027:

Dalanor.5387:

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

This is actually just depressing… sigh

11 dodges back to back. I marvel.

The initiative system (aka spam the kitten out of skills because cooldowns are for scrooobs) at it’s finest…

Can we at least get some Necro bugs fixed this patch…. i mean besides the slew of nerfs that we’re probably going to get..

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

Dire Amulet for spvp confirmed.

clipnotdone.9634:

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

Dire Amulet for spvp confirmed.

pretty sure there will never be anything Dire in PvP WAYY to Op

McLovin.2408:

pretty sure there will never be anything Dire in PvP WAYY to Op

That’s the joke.

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

There has been talk of new traits, weapons, and utilities, which would bring a little freshness into an otherwise stale meta. I’d be excited to see changes like this.

However, paying 25 skill points for every new utility or heal tends to drain the joy of seeing new additions. Not only does the cost seem totally arbitrary and ludicrous—only 5 points below the second-tier elite skills—it’s extremely unfriendly for new players/characters that don’t have a large pool of skill points to draw from.

Substance E.4852:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Daishi.6027:

Dalanor.5387:

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

This is actually just depressing… sigh

11 dodges back to back. I marvel.

The initiative system (aka spam the kitten out of skills because cooldowns are for scrooobs) at it’s finest…

All profession’s have lame build’s but some people seem content on only focusing on the thief.

On another note do a vid about passive play!

Make a Mesmer one where the clones do all the work while the mesmer pop’s in and out of stealth/ dodging to poop more clones. :P

Or a condi bunker warrior that can pretty much ignore all condition’s and control effects while running melandru runes and lemon grass also regening a stupid amount of hp per second. :P

There’s other to point out but I can’t be bothered lol

Aside from phantasams, illusions don’t do much if any damage without active play. You chose the one class that doesn’t really apply to. Illusions only attack the target you summon them on, they are designed as distractions until the active (shatter) is used.

Imagi.4561:

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

There has been talk of new traits, weapons, and utilities, which would bring a little freshness into an otherwise stale meta. I’d be excited to see changes like this.

However, paying 25 skill points for every new utility or heal tends to drain the joy of seeing new additions. Not only does the cost seem totally arbitrary and ludicrous—only 5 points below the second-tier elite skills—it’s extremely unfriendly for new players/characters that don’t have a large pool of skill points to draw from.

110% agree. New skills should be free as every other ability in sPvP or Anet gave up the competitive scene idea suddenly … ? If yes, can you (Anet) balance around other game modes too pretty please?

Dalanor.5387:

Imagi.4561:

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

There has been talk of new traits, weapons, and utilities, which would bring a little freshness into an otherwise stale meta. I’d be excited to see changes like this.

However, paying 25 skill points for every new utility or heal tends to drain the joy of seeing new additions. Not only does the cost seem totally arbitrary and ludicrous—only 5 points below the second-tier elite skills—it’s extremely unfriendly for new players/characters that don’t have a large pool of skill points to draw from.

110% agree. New skills should be free as every other ability in sPvP or Anet gave up the competitive scene idea suddenly … ? If yes, can you (Anet) balance around other game modes too pretty please?

Why not make a side quest to unlock future skills or add them to the meta achievement for living world and obtainable in spvp trough a small 1v1 fight like the Doppelganger in guildwars 1 as example. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Doppelganger

;)

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Dalanor.5387:

Imagi.4561:

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

There has been talk of new traits, weapons, and utilities, which would bring a little freshness into an otherwise stale meta. I’d be excited to see changes like this.

However, paying 25 skill points for every new utility or heal tends to drain the joy of seeing new additions. Not only does the cost seem totally arbitrary and ludicrous—only 5 points below the second-tier elite skills—it’s extremely unfriendly for new players/characters that don’t have a large pool of skill points to draw from.

110% agree. New skills should be free as every other ability in sPvP or Anet gave up the competitive scene idea suddenly … ? If yes, can you (Anet) balance around other game modes too pretty please?

Why not make a side quest to unlock future skills or add them to the meta achievement for living world and obtainable in spvp trough a small 1v1 fight like the Doppelganger in guildwars 1 as example. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Doppelganger

;)

Unlockable skills after completing quest or something when it comes to PvE? Sure, as long as there are no free traits. Different Builds add variety to WvW and PvP, do not try and take that away from GW2.

In my opinion, more trait abilities should be available in between these increments of 5 points. Currently, every 5 points you unlock a new skill, some you can choose (Adept, Master, Grandmaster) some you can’t. In between each of these 5 is where new skills should go. So, for example maybe level 12 will unlock a new skill, you won’t be spending any more points to unlock it, there will just be more variety in the trait lines.

I also think giving us 10 more trait point skills to spend would help all classes exponentially. It would open up a door to many new builds and much more variety.

The costs for new skills indeed seem to be extremly high. They still should be free in PvP. What’s the point of an accessible PvP if some players are forced into PvE to unlock the skills? People also are right when saying that new players are at an disadvantage because of the high costs. The high costs are more likely used to suck skill points out of the economy which just creates obstacles in form of additional time investments without adding any new content.

If ANet wants those skills to have an extra requirement in PvE/WvW they could indeed add quests. 25 skillpoints is just ridicioulus and will also confuse new players because it doesn’t fit the current structure of the skill tiers.

I’m really…really hoping that there will be more changes then the said list. Been waiting a long time for this patch. I was hoping they were serious when they said things like “A lot of other good things coming that we can’t mention yet”.

Thoughts on Fire Trait line:

Fire trait 5 (Flame barrier) should be a changed to have a 20% chance to proc Fire Shield while in fire attunement (instead of 20% to proc 1 second of burning…) around the elementalist instead, we already have a lot of ways to burn a target in fire…. Fire shield is only really useful when traiting for Auras on an ele. Fire Shield only seems to give might in close range combat and isn’t really worth the one point of might you get while being struck in melee range… I suggest removing the range limit for aquiring burning and might stacks and also remove the one second cd. You’re probably only going to get 3 or 4 might at most if Flame barrier worked this way if you get hit any more than that then you’re probably being zerged, or hit by a fast multi-hit ability such as Hundred Blades, IMO its perfectly fine to punish a player for using a multi-hit ability when an ele has a fire shield up, the Ele will probably almost be dead anyway if any ability used on Ele grants 5+ might stacks while Fire shield is up. I don’t believe stacking might while getting hit on an ele would be OP at all due to low HP/Defense.

Fire trait 10 (Ember’s Might) is pretty much useless for ele, we have better things to focus on obtaining than some mere burning duration.

Fire trait 15 (sunspot) should be changed, eles are not usually near the target when swapping to fire. Either make it a Point blank aoe coming from target currently selected or a PBAE around the Ele upon dodging.

Fire trait 20 (Fire’s Embrace) is not worthy of being a Master trait, this skill should be changed into something more useful unless you revamp fire shield and signets to be more useful.

Fire trait 25 ( Burning Rage) Seems like it should be stronger, I only say this because there are better ways to obtain more damage on an Ele while ignoring this trait and focusing on other trait lines. Not to mention if you are putting 25 points in Fire you are probably going to be pretty squishy at this point.

Fire trait 30 (Pyromancer’s Puissance): I don’t think any grandmaster trait should make Ele want to stay in fire, this class wasn’t designed to stay in fire attunement and make it out alive.

Fire trait 30 (Persisting Flames): This trait makes me want to cry its so bad… This should be a 5 or 10 point trait at most with the amount of fury toned down or completely removed, Ele really doesn’t have much of a problem obtaining fury at all.

All traits that reduce weapon skill recharge by 20% on Eles specific attunement line should be removed and a new skill should be implemented in their place. Arcana’s 25 point trait should be replaced with a trait to reduce the recharge of all attunement weapon skills. There are only a few weapon skills in each attunement that will really benefit from this change:

D/D’s main benefit: (Fire Grab, Frost Aura, Cleansing Wave, RTL, Updraft, Shocking aura (only ever so slightly) and Earthquake)

Scepter’s main benefit: (Phoenix, Fire Grab, Water Trident)

Focus’ main benefit: (Gale, obsidian Flesh, Swirling winds)

Staff benefit: Okay staff would benefit exponentially from this but lets be honest, staff could use some love…
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Thoughts on Churning Earth:

I feel that skill is quite useless in competitive play since its quite obvious when its being cast and takes 3 1/2 seconds to cast, there for its pretty easy to count to 3 and dodge or use a skill to mitigate all damage or partial damage, or simply just move out of the way. I know other players could assist the Elementalist with immobilize, stun, daze or pull the target into Churning Earth, but lets face it, most people don’t assist their team this well… Now if only Ele had an immobilize in Earth attunement that lasted long enough to get Churning Earth off if the opponent didn’t break the immobilize. IMO Churning Earths cast time should be lowwered to 2 seconds and the immobilize on Magnetic Grasp be increased to 3 seconds. (thats one additional second)

Thoughts on Scepter:

- Something needs to be done about Dragon tooth on Scepter, IMO after summoning the Dragon tooth you should be able to choose where it lands.

- Shatter Stone’s delay after casting it should be lowered or removed, again, its too easy to dodge or simply move out of the way.

-Auto attacks for scepter need to be looked into.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Thoughts on Focus:

This weapon seriously needs some major revamping…

Thoughts on Arcane trait 30 ( Elemental Surge): If you are getting this ability you are having to sacrifice Evasive Arcana, so I think this ability should be further investigated in order to make it viable.

Thoughts on Lingering elements (Arcane trait 15) This trait should support glyph of elemental power instead of hindering it, by obtaining 15 points in Arcane you literally hinder the potential effectiveness of this skill.

Thoughts on Enduring Damage (Earth trait 25): Since elementalist is so dependent on dodging I find this trait quite counter productive.

Thoughts on One with Fire (Fire Trait 20): Either Flame barrier (fire trait 5) needs to be revamped so its much more useful or One with fire needs to be revamped.. I vote they both get revamped!!!

Thoughts on Diamond skin: This trait is great but going 30 into Earth usually gimps an Ele due to needing 30 arcane and 15 water. Unless that is, your soul purpose is going to be fighting necro :p No condis for you mr necro! ( I personally hate rock paper scissors, and Diamond skin is definitely rock if necro is scissors). Battles should be all about skill and NOT about counter pick/traiting.

Grimreaper.5370:

Fire trait 25 ( Burning Rage) Seems like it should be stronger, I only say this because there are better ways to obtain more damage on an Ele while ignoring this trait and focusing on other trait lines. Not to mention if you are putting 25 points in Fire you are probably going to be pretty squishy at this point.

Fire trait 30 (Persisting Flames): This trait makes me want to cry its so bad… This should be a 5 or 10 point trait at most with the amount of fury toned down or completely removed, Ele really doesn’t have much of a problem obtaining fury at all.

Hiya,

I generally agree with your post, but not with those two traits.

Burning Rage is one of our best +10% damage boost traits, as burning is not hard to maintain most of the time, and being a minor pretty much means it comes for free. The problem you (and everyone else) have with this trait, is that the fire line isn’t generally worth investing points on, but that’s a problem with the line as a whole, and not with this trait. It’s also pretty much our best #25 minor trait most of the time.

And Persisting Flames is awesome, in the right build. 10 seconds of fury per blast finisher pretty much means 30+ seconds on average, not only to yourself, but to everyone around you. Elementalists get fury from zephyr’s boon – which is mostly a trait for MH dagger and not always useful (unless you’re going for an aura build, you don’t want to “waste” your auras for fury), or from arcana’s #5, which is strong enough. But the higher fire field duration especially shines in fields that tick for damage. Flamewall is too weak unfortunately, but lava font is perfect with it (lasts 50% longer with this trait), and the fields from burning speed and burning retreat also benefit from it.

Now that daggers are going to get an extra blast finisher, and if someday flamewall and fire’s traits/ minors are improved, we will probably see persisting flames shine as it is.

Pyromancer’s Puissance, however, is pretty crappy. :P The adept trait Spell Slinger (3 stacks of might per cantrip) can offer as much as PP for a higher duration with a single cantrip. Add in two cantrips or three (you can have up to five with the aid of traits), and it’s already overshadowing the grandmaster trait. It needs a boost in duration (from 10 seconds to 15 at the very least), and something more.

Changes for elementalist I would like to see:

If nothing else read the bulleted stuff. The paragraphs below the bullets are provided to substantiate my reasoning.

• Stability utility increase
  Elementalist has one stability source through utility. 75 seconds is entirely too long for 6s of stability regardless of class. Bring this inline with other classes who have access to stability.

Warrior has access to 8s stability at 40s cd, and 8s stability on 60s cd. Guadian has access to 5s stability on 30s cd, and 10s through hallowed ground. Necro has well of power for 5s stability at 50s cd. Ranger has 8s stability at 60s cd.

The only classes that do not have access to stability through utility are the classes who also have stealth ability. They also have invulnerability utility on a much shorter cooldown.

I see no reason why armor of earth should not be on 60s cd for the duration of stability it is giving. Even with boon duration and cantrip reduction. Other professions are able to increase their stability durations easily through adept tier trait lines and boon duration just like elementalist.

• Rework of Cantrips
  Cleansing Fire is not really worth taking any more.
  Lightning Flash’s range is pathetic.

The effectiveness of a teleport ability as an escape is its range of distance. Looking at other classes with abilities that help to gap close you can see that lightning flash needs a distance increase. Otherwise what is the point of having it? As an example I give the biggest offender as to why this ability has become some what ineffective in helping the elementalist to survive.

Thief- ties this ability in range with steal, infiltrator’s signet, infiltrator’s arrow, shadow shot, and two heartseekers. They have greater range with their shadowstep, and scorpion wire allows them to pull you to them even after a teleport.

• Reduction in dependence of boons
  Elementalists at this point are very much dependent on boons. Many classes have boon stripping abilities which render the elementalist ineffective.

Elementalists can’t get by without their boons. Might, protection, regen, swiftness, fury, and stability are all essential to staying alive and doing any semblance of damage. The problem is that at current removing boons is fairly easy. After this occurs and the elementalist has lost all his stacks of might they are doing little to know damage at that point.

• Damage increase changes for elementalist auto attacks
  Other than air auto attack the general damage for auto attack is not comparable to most other professions. I don’t think it needs to be equal, but I think it needs to be higher in the other attunements. It is fairly easy to run yourself out of attunement swaps, get stuck in an attunement, have abilities on cd due to long cds, and do little to no damage suddenly due to the miserable damage of your auto attacks.

• Terrain fixes for any teleport moves
  This ties into lightning flash, but also many other abilities that are buggy in general. This is seen even in the new edge of the mists map. As an example warriors hammer stuns when going down hills. Lightning flash all together not teleporting me anywhere when I click on certain parts of the map. I’m sure other professions abilities do this as well.

Well of Power only grants one second. It’s strictly just there to cover the animation time so that WoP can actually function as a stunbreak and not get chain cc’d during the activation since it not instant like most stunbreaks.

Hey devs, I’d like it if you had balance patches more often rather than holding off for SEVERAL MONTHS and then changing only two minor things per class.

Sometimes you make good balance changes, sometimes you make bad ones. But it’d at least be interesting to the players to have changes more frequently.

Aegael.6938:

Hey devs, I’d like it if you had balance patches more often rather than holding off for SEVERAL MONTHS and then changing only two minor things per class.

Sometimes you make good balance changes, sometimes you make bad ones. But it’d at least be interesting to the players to have changes more frequently.

I have to agree with this. The meta has been stale for far too long and the huge changes that we would see in GW1 where refreshing even if they weren’t always kind to our chosen class/es.

I still think that 25 second rtl is too much.

Since D/D is a weapon set it needs 20..
Devs should try to stay in combat with a D/D ele against a kiting opponent expecially in www.

A short range locked profession needs reliable gap closers…. 20 second 1200.
They even nerfed earth 3 in the past…

I’d have to disagree with the Stability thing above, but mostly because I think Stability is always way too common in the game as a whole.

Carighan.6758:

I’d have to disagree with the Stability thing above, but mostly because I think Stability is always way too common in the game as a whole.

Agree, but I don’t see arena net bringing other professions down in stability. Plus a lot of classes have immobilize which trumps stability atm anyhow.

Also I see no reason for necro to have stability buffs with the amount of cc it possesses.

Immobilise stacking pretty much negated long Stability durations, which is probably (I’m conjecturing here) why Arenanet implemented it in the first place as a way to keep Warrior in check.

Unfortunately they neglected to take into account the fact that many classes do not in fact have condition cleanse even approaching warrior with Cleansing Ire at 3 Conditions potentially every 7.5-10 seconds. So now we’re stuck with Immobilise stacking to 3 and durations in the double digits of seconds.

I can’t take the March patch seriously until they readdress this. If coding resources are being expended on fixing longstanding bugs, someone, somewhere should be tweaking that entry in the database for Immobilise maximum stacks from 3 to 1.

This also causes the huge zergs mentality, which are all over WvW. This was supposed to be a strategic sort of siege-game originally. But everyone just stacks on top of each other, and spams CC-skills, and often the largest mob wins. If you happen to be a class that does not have invulnerability, or poor access to stability, you are dead when the zerg comes. Something is clearly broken here.

Stun-locking runs unchecked, which puts classes with poor escapes at a huge disadvantage. Conditions are being nerfed left and right, while condition removal is arguably way too common. But shouldn’t conditions be the sort of thing that forces players not to ball up all the time? But the limit on the number of targets you can hit with aoe attacks, kind of breaks this idea, so balling up actually becomes the dominating strategy. And a lot of classes have no defense against that. It becomes a case of zerg versus bigger zerg.

I would welcome a solution to the simplistic combat. Both in WvW and PVE.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

….But shouldn’t conditions be the sort of thing that forces players not to ball up all the time?

The Zerg has Herd Immunity

i heard they will un do some of the ridiculous nerfs when they drop the damage 10%
has this ben said or is it just rumor ?

lol or is everything but the ferocity -10% just rumors at this point

I have never been a fan of the “rebalancing” system employed by anet for the past decade (almost that going back to inception of the true GW.)
First
Each rebalance creates a new set of unforseen problems so that “nerfs beget nerfs”. This is due to the fact that athough Anet may test them in house, the sample size is thus small and does not truely represent the impact when “all the real world GW2 players” are placed once again into a beta test mode. It is elementary statistics and the predictive power of a small group upon a larger population. So more frequent rebalances would tend to create a less than nominal outcome.

Second
I have never been a fan of the “rebalancing” system employed by anet for the past decade (almost that going back to inception of the true GW.) As once Anet “negatively breaks” a class the pattern has been to devalue other classes. This was eloquently expressed in GW with the Paragon class, then the ranger class, etc. Rarely did a class climb back to prominence in its “primary” skills. Unfortunately the Ele and Necro classes in GW2 have already suffered this fate.

Third
“will i get refunded when ferocity hits?” This is a carryover from another thread, but ties in here due to the fact that Anet has tied ARMOR to traits/skill buffs. Three points to keep in mind here: 1. Anet developed GW2 so that nerfs could and should be applied INDEPENDENTLY to different aspects of the game (seems like they will not honor this developers promise) 2. DPS and vitality are both getting nerfed (again the developers in pre-release interviews stated that “glass canon” and “tanky” play styles were equally acceptable builds, sigh, promise again broken). 3. I will end with at least one potential solution. Armor is hugh expense and undertaking in GW2. So “nerfing” builds leads to "Why did I put a years worth of gold into the now “nerfed” armor?" A solution – when anet added magic find and did away with “travelers” gear they left that “open” to be rerolled to any in the current game armor type – why not allow this option for players with each nerf, I would hope Anet would make it free or for a minor fee via an NPC. That would solve 2 issues.

i kinda wish they would just come out with legend armor and rings/trinkets.
but instead of it being a pain to craft all u need is a full set of ascended armor
or a full set of trinkets . and throw it in the mystic forge with some ectos or some junk .
just so we can swap out our stats !
don’t make it as tough as it is to get the legend weapons
just make the tough part getting a full ascendent set !

the only reason i say this is because a npc that can change your stats would mess up all prices on the black loin
but they hand out nerfs like candy it would be nice not to worry about any stats any more.
to be able to work around the patches with out a worry of all the gold u just spent
would just be so nice

I am not sure as this has been addressed as there are 14 pages but if it has please ignore.
Elementalist

-can the scepter air and water auto attacks be tuned? The dmg is very low for water and air auto takes way too long to ramp up and you almost always need to dodge roll and it cancels the chain.

-as mentioned before, glyph of lesser elementals, either reduce the cooldown or remove the duration like a necro pet as we can’t control their secondary attack.

-possibly, can the +10% dmg trait be changed to a stacking dmg buff to a certain limit the longer you remain in an element? Some really like just 1 element and even though it does limit them they would rather have a bit more capability of using that element even though they lose a lot from not using the others frequently if at all.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Stun-locking runs unchecked, which puts classes with poor escapes at a huge disadvantage. Conditions are being nerfed left and right, while condition removal is arguably way too common.

I agree with you about stun-locking, but I actually find the opposite to be true for conditions in PvP. I’ll get condi-bombed, attempt to cleanse, and then get immediately condi-bombed again. Necromancers and Engineers can stack a plethora of conditions in a matter of seconds.

Personally, I would rather see conditions deal little to no damage, and be employed mainly for their additional effects—halving the effectiveness of healing or endurance regen, for example—so that unchecked conditions will still result in your death, but actual damage is done through other means.

Of course, this is just my opinion. Not to mention that employing this type of change would require a massive game overhaul, so I don’t expect it to ever happen. But it’s nice to dream.

caveman.5840:

i heard they will un do some of the ridiculous nerfs when they drop the damage 10%
has this ben said or is it just rumor ?

lol or is everything but the ferocity -10% just rumors at this point

English isn’t your mother tongue, I guess?

And well, no. The idea is to reduce damage. Buffing people in return for the ferocity change would undermine the idea of the change.

Imagi.4561:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Stun-locking runs unchecked, which puts classes with poor escapes at a huge disadvantage. Conditions are being nerfed left and right, while condition removal is arguably way too common.

I agree with you about stun-locking, but I actually find the opposite to be true for conditions in PvP. I’ll get condi-bombed, attempt to cleanse, and then get immediately condi-bombed again. Necromancers and Engineers can stack a plethora of conditions in a matter of seconds.

Might be you’re talking about different things.

In smallscale encounters, conditions are very strong. They are easily stacked, and enemies have a finite amount of cleanses.

In large encounters, conditions become ~useless as a mix of the plethora of multi-target condition cleanses team up with the insane amount of finishers cleaning off conditions as fast as anyone can apply them.

I think Mad Queen is talking about the latter situation.

I was indeed. Although both situations should of course be taken into consideration. The problem I see, is that conditions could work to help break up zergs, if they worked on everyone in that zerg that is too close together.

If I cast Signet of Spite on someone, and then I cast Epidemic, everyone that’s clumped up on top of him should be hit by the same conditions. Not just 5 or 10 targets, but everyone within the range of the skill. This would make these massive zergs a death sentence, and there would be a good reason to spread out more. Conditions would mostly be deadly against large numbers, because then they spread easily, but they should be less useful in 1 on 1 encounters, which is where I feel they don’t encourage a whole lot of counter play.

But another problem is the stacked effects of multiple condition cleanses. Whenever players stack on top of each other, they can easily cleanse conditions from themselves, as well as nearby allies. Thus breaking the effectiveness of conditions against large mobs, and encouraging all the stacking behavior that the game is infested with. It is a logical outcome of the current rules of the game. I think they need to re-examine how conditions should work, and what kind of behavior it should encourage. Stacking everywhere should not be the answer to everything.

Sadly, there is a very tight cap to all aoe abilities, which is bad. When I drop a well of suffering, it should affect everyone that’s standing in it, and not just 5 targets. That would instantly encourage players to not all stand in the same spot and get themselves killed. Positional awareness plays a very important role in the strategy of the game, and it should be encouraged more to break up the current zerg-meta.

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

Awesome, Karl! Tis be good news.

I have a suggestion to Soothing Disruption, which might in its current state cause trouble if Cleansing Water is reverted.

1. Soothing Disruption: Cantrips and glyphs grant you vigor (6 sec) and Soothing Mist. Chill nearby foes when attuning to water (3 sec – whenever you attune to water).

Regeneration is removed because Cleansing Water might take it over the top. While Soothing Mist doesn’t compensate for the lost healing, it will add slightly to the support aspect. The chill also seems in place in terms of support, allowing you to dive into the fray and heal allies while hindering enemies at the same time.

2. Signets:

1. Signet of Air: Would benefit from PAoE blind as it’s a stunbreak. No ranged and personal blind anymore to compensate.
2. Signet of Water: Active: Now identical to Frozen Burst (even the cast time).
3. Shards of Ice (renamed): Remove a condition when using Signet of Restoration and Signet of Water (active only).
4. Fire’s Embrace: Moved to adept tier (Signet aura builds needs a chance, as they offer little to no defense on their own).
5. Burning Precision: Moved to master tier and reworked (this seemed most ideal).

I believe these changes could slowly prod the signet builds into action.

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

last time you changed things to “shake up the meta” PvP got wreaked, conditions went out of control, necros desisted every one else, then Rangers, Engis and Warriors.

I’m taking bets on what will be the text broken profession(s)…

Note: I will re-install the game in a few weeks just for a laugh.

Do the developers really want feedback? If so, then I have a story for them.

Before I played GW2 I used to play Rift. The PvP there was not as good as GW2, but it was decent…at first.

In the beginning the PvP was decent. Then the developers tried to balance the PvP.

And so they buffed warriors and thieves.
And the nerfed warlocks and pyromancers.

And so the game persisted. Players clamored about the imbalance that existed, and even offered suggestions on how to improve the balance.

And the developer response was the same: we have to be mindful of scope (though the changes were typically analogous to changing one or two talents). And they did nothing. And warriors and thieves rampaged over the battlegrounds.

That was about 2 years ago.

The other day I swung into the Rift forums and saw the same complaints. Nothing changed.

Today, in GW2, I see warriors are overpowered and still dominating the meta, as exemplified by teams like Cheese Mode winning tournaments with double warrior.
Thieves are the apex roamer class, pushing out Elementalists and Mesmers from the meta.

And I see ArenaNet doing nothing to change this.

I believe history will repeat itself.