Guild Wars 2

“Icebow getting 50% damage nerf and now affects 3 targets per hit (down from 5)”

About time if you ask me

http://dulfy.net/2015/09/26/gw2-twitchcon-skill-balance-update-preview/

I would be more hyped if the Scepter/LH build was buffed to get damage on par with Staff Ele :’)

Otherwise this is just another nerf that will make stuff longer and make me stop pugging on ele as I won’t save pugs anymore :/

Can’t wait for the nemesis video claiming necro has completely replaced ele

I don’t get this. I don’t really PvP ever, but as far as I know, cantrips have been the meta. I haven’t seen icebow in PvP ever. Does that mean Anet acknowledges this game has PvE? :O
Btw… Dragon’s Tooth being ground targeted doesn’t really help me at all. If anything, I had trouble aiming Comet when prestacking. That one should be ground targeted.

About time.
Engi on top of food chain now XD

The truth is, idiots think this will displace ele from being stacked at the expense of other classes, but it will change nothing.

Ele still has persisting flames, lava font (100% uptime fire field), and meteor shower on top of two on demand water fields, one which removes conditions, a projectile root/line of warding, glyph of lightning storm/sandstorm, and now a 90 sec cd glyph of earth elemental. And easy access to blast finishers to boot on top of doing thief/engineer level damage with the flexibility of range so they don’t need to worry about messing up max melee because they can still sit at enough of a distance and still gain all the boons.

Nothing will change unless they also touch meteor shower’s interaction with large hitbox mobs, namely capping the amount of meteors that can hit the same target, and make persisting flames not increase lava font’s duration.

Or they could buff bad classes instead of nerfing good ones

Finally.
Meteor Shower needs a nerf too….

Zenith.7301:

The truth is, idiots think this will displace ele from being stacked at the expense of other classes, but it will change nothing.

Ele still has persisting flames, lava font (100% uptime fire field), and meteor shower on top of two on demand water fields, one which removes conditions, a projectile root/line of warding, glyph of lightning storm/sandstorm, and now a 90 sec cd glyph of earth elemental. And easy access to blast finishers to boot on top of doing thief/engineer level damage with the flexibility of range so they don’t need to worry about messing up max melee because they can still sit at enough of a distance and still gain all the boons.

Nothing will change unless they also touch meteor shower’s interaction with large hitbox mobs, namely capping the amount of meteors that can hit the same target, and make persisting flames not increase lava font’s duration.

good luck.

The thing other games do better than Arenanet is nerfing on one area and buffing on another. Currently, Ice bow in rotation is a substantial part of Ele DPS and the reason it’s at the top. Take it away, and it may get outclassed entirely come Heart of Thorns; Condition Engineer already had sustained damage to rival Elementalist, BWE2 Revenant did so too.
All a nerf like that will do to the meta is change class stacking to whatever else has the most DPS.

Don’t get me wrong, Ice Bow deserves the nerf, but on the same page they should have done something to maybe DF or SF (ground targetting DT won’t help since any good player knows how to aim it anyway)

These nerfs are so intense i’ll have to reroll.

/s

Casual scrubs like me are mostly happy about the dragon tooth change

Zenith.7301:

idiots think this will displace ele

Oh my, I am an idiot. Thanks for telling me. At least I can find some help.

50% nerf but icebow still in the “meta”. Anet balancing is so sma…

If mobs moved around more lava font would be less of a thing. Hopefully a lot of new encounters will have highly mobile mobs.

You hope for more highly mobile mobs? You do realise, that if a mob moves far enough to be out of lava font’s AoE any other class will have to move their “cleave” too, which will decrease your DPS too right? (Unless you are a staff elementalist who will hit with Autoattacks anyways again)

If only there were ways of preventing mobs from moving trough our skills.

If only Maybe we’ll get such skills with the Addon
/s

IXIDOR.6278:

You hope for more highly mobile mobs? You do realise, that if a mob moves far enough to be out of lava font’s AoE any other class will have to move their “cleave” too, which will decrease your DPS too right? (Unless you are a staff elementalist who will hit with Autoattacks anyways again)

Moving mobs would be more a hit to ele dps because a lot of it comes from mobs sitting in lava font, other classes dps is more mobile and not static. Not many other classes rely on static persistent aoe to deal sustained dps. Makes more room for CC specs overall from everyone, which is an increase in diversity.

Besides its boring if the mob just sits there and eat everything. Its not very engaging at all. I believe at the start of the games betas mobs would actively move out of aoe abilities and people didnt like it because it was difficult and using abilities to stop something from moving so your damage stciks was hard :/

Sigmoid.7082:

IXIDOR.6278:

You hope for more highly mobile mobs? You do realise, that if a mob moves far enough to be out of lava font’s AoE any other class will have to move their “cleave” too, which will decrease your DPS too right? (Unless you are a staff elementalist who will hit with Autoattacks anyways again)

Moving mobs would be more a hit to ele dps because a lot of it comes from mobs sitting in lava font, other classes dps is more mobile and not static. Not many other classes rely on static persistent aoe to deal sustained dps

Besides its boring if the mob just sits there and eat everything. Its not very engaging at all.

Play some aetherpath. Mobs there move from your attacks and sometimes even flank you. And all that adds exactly zero challenge. They are actually easier to fight since they end up moving more than attacking.

Tarasicodissa.7084:

I don’t get this. I don’t really PvP ever, but as far as I know, cantrips have been the meta. I haven’t seen icebow in PvP ever. Does that mean Anet acknowledges this game has PvE? :O
Btw… Dragon’s Tooth being ground targeted doesn’t really help me at all. If anything, I had trouble aiming Comet when prestacking. That one should be ground targeted.

There were some WvW videos of 10 players stealthing and kitten zergs with Ice Bows on Reddit. As we all know Anet takes quick action when things get posted on Reddit. Lol

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Play some aetherpath. Mobs there move from your attacks and sometimes even flank you. And all that adds exactly zero challenge. They are actually easier to fight since they end up moving more than attacking.

What if… the dungeon mobs actually attacked and moved around at the same time?

frifox.5283:

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Play some aetherpath. Mobs there move from your attacks and sometimes even flank you. And all that adds exactly zero challenge. They are actually easier to fight since they end up moving more than attacking.

What if… the dungeon mobs actually attacked and moved around at the same time?

They still would be easy to kill I guess. They are called trash for a reason. Moving around only adds a bit of annoyance.

why do people think the number of targets matters. this isnt a nerf at all in like 99% of the situations where ice bow is begged for. the only encounter i can think of where this is a nerf is high level cliffside chest seal. oh and eotm.

You shouldn’t even use an Ice Bow at the chest seal in cliffside, the mobs die faster than the 4th skill recharges

I’m sad that Anet doesn’t know how to do anything but heavy handed nerfs (poor FGS), but I am glad that it got a nerf at all. I think a 20% shave from damage would’ve been sufficient, but oh well.

They could have increased its radius and reduced damage by 20%. Would of fixed it plenty. 50% does seem a bit much. But id rather this than no change.

frifox.5283:

What if… the dungeon mobs actually attacked and moved around at the same time?

It would be cool, but right now movement for them counts as a skill use, daze functions like a stun.

Good change indeed. Next step: Nerf Phalanx Strength.

I like the dmg nerf to icebow, but it could get a utility buff. They could start making all conjure weapons instacast.

Cheezy.2039:

You shouldn’t even use an Ice Bow at the chest seal in cliffside, the mobs die faster than the 4th skill recharges

the initial vets have a lot more hp than the infinitely respawning mobs

insanemaniac.2456:

Cheezy.2039:

You shouldn’t even use an Ice Bow at the chest seal in cliffside, the mobs die faster than the 4th skill recharges

the initial vets have a lot more hp than the infinitely respawning mobs

Still you shouldn’t use IB there, keep them blinded and kill one by one to get the seal down fast as possible.

Taku.6352:

insanemaniac.2456:

Cheezy.2039:

You shouldn’t even use an Ice Bow at the chest seal in cliffside, the mobs die faster than the 4th skill recharges

the initial vets have a lot more hp than the infinitely respawning mobs

Still you shouldn’t use IB there, keep them blinded and kill one by one to get the seal down fast as possible.

Difference between organized solid group and pug group where someone dropped the hammer early anyways and the DPS didn’t outlast the blinds.

What taku said.

If you coordinate well enough you won’t get to more than one phase of the respawning mobs

Taku.6352:

insanemaniac.2456:

Cheezy.2039:

You shouldn’t even use an Ice Bow at the chest seal in cliffside, the mobs die faster than the 4th skill recharges

the initial vets have a lot more hp than the infinitely respawning mobs

Still you shouldn’t use IB there, keep them blinded and kill one by one to get the seal down fast as possible.

uh yeah i pug thanks. killing them one by one isnt possible in this case. bursting everything down so that the respawns are weaker is preferable. +30 secs to my runs, -2 2 minute wipes.

This was a good change. I’m very pleased. Imagine bringing 5 Eles with a bunch of Ice Bows and nuking down Raid Bosses before anything happened.

Nerf meteor shower, nerf phalanx strength, nerf persisting flames, and voila suddenly you’ve got more class variety. They’ll probably have to nerf engineer a bit as well if they don’t want people stacking engineer instead of ele.

But nerfing the easy might stacking from one trait and perma fury/fire field of the other would open space for more classes to also bring their own might stacking utilities instead of being totally eclipsed. For example, ranger would become attractive with clarion bond to complement fury uptimes and they could even buff necro might stacking from Blood is Power for the group.

We just have to remove the monopoly on the vital boons (might, fury) from just two classes who also do some of the highest damage and provide insane utility (banners, glyphs and blast fields).

Zenith.7301:

We just have to remove the monopoly on the vital boons (might, fury) from just two classes who also do some of the highest damage and provide insane utility (banners, glyphs and blast fields).

So that means nerf everyone down to the same kitten tier level and we can all be mini-necromancers. Gr8 idea m8

Totally better than giving classes the same tools but in a different manner

stambogalizi.8356:

Zenith.7301:

We just have to remove the monopoly on the vital boons (might, fury) from just two classes who also do some of the highest damage and provide insane utility (banners, glyphs and blast fields).

So that means nerf everyone down to the same kitten tier level and we can all be mini-necromancers. Gr8 idea m8

Totally better than giving classes the same tools but in a different manner

Yeah, because what we need is more power creep than we already got last patch.

I know your precious ele/warr is near and dear to your heart and it might be too convenient, but games are not balanced by just buffing everyone, particularly PvE.

Zenith.7301:

Nerf meteor shower, nerf phalanx strength, nerf persisting flames, and voila suddenly you’ve got more class variety. They’ll probably have to nerf engineer a bit as well if they don’t want people stacking engineer instead of ele.

But nerfing the easy might stacking from one trait and perma fury/fire field of the other would open space for more classes to also bring their own might stacking utilities instead of being totally eclipsed. For example, ranger would become attractive with clarion bond to complement fury uptimes and they could even buff necro might stacking from Blood is Power for the group.

We just have to remove the monopoly on the vital boons (might, fury) from just two classes who also do some of the highest damage and provide insane utility (banners, glyphs and blast fields).

I think you are wrong on this. By only needing one war to provide might, you open up party slots. If a party wants to build for 25 might stacks, they are still going to pick the most effective might stacker. For example, why bring a necro to help the first warrior stack might, if you could instead bring 2 warriors? Why bring a ranger when you could instead have 2 eles?

I think a better way to include more classes is for every class to have their own unique non-stacking buffs. For example ranger has spotter and spirits. Necro’s vampiric aura is also interesting, if it was a more noticeable party wide buff I think necro would be more sought after.

Also, as a side note. PS war doesn’t really get a party to 25 might in difficult content such as higher level fractals, especially not in pugs. I feel like the majority of ps war hate is from people who do dungeons. PS war is probably op on trash mobs. But so is sword/pistol thief. So is ele. Even necro is op on trash mobs. Pretty much everyone is op on trash mobs. But who cares, they are trash mobs, with no interesting mechanics. It is way better to judge a class based on how a typical player can use it in a boss fight.

Zenith.7301:

stambogalizi.8356:

Zenith.7301:

We just have to remove the monopoly on the vital boons (might, fury) from just two classes who also do some of the highest damage and provide insane utility (banners, glyphs and blast fields).

So that means nerf everyone down to the same kitten tier level and we can all be mini-necromancers. Gr8 idea m8

Totally better than giving classes the same tools but in a different manner

Yeah, because what we need is more power creep than we already got last patch.

I know your precious ele/warr is near and dear to your heart and it might be too convenient, but games are not balanced by just buffing everyone, particularly PvE.

Alright , you need to understand that ele and warrior have been nerfed. Particularly PS was nerfed with the spec patch and ele will be hit kitten tuesday and was hit even harder when fgs was gone. But they’re still here.
I don’t see how dragging everyone down to the same kitten tier level is good balance

You don’t have to give ranger the capability to stack 25 might, you just have to buff his spotter and frost spirit so that he might actually see more play.

This ice bow nerf was handled in a really silly way.

What I suggested to them was to simply increase the radius of ice storm without touching the damage. This way, the conjure wouldn’t be completely useless and would still be niche against enemies with large hitboxes but wouldn’t be able to completely cheese all the bosses in the game.

But no, let’s just… nerf something to the ground so that the entire weapon altogether is crap. #Anet

stambogalizi.8356:

Alright , you need to understand that ele and warrior have been nerfed. Particularly PS was nerfed with the spec patch and ele will be hit kitten tuesday and was hit even harder when fgs was gone. But they’re still here.
I don’t see how dragging everyone down to the same kitten tier level is good balance

You don’t have to give ranger the capability to stack 25 might, you just have to buff his spotter and frost spirit so that he might actually see more play.

PS wasn’t really nerfed with the spec patch, it gained a lot of personal dmg and lost a bit of boon duration, but the runes/food you’d take to make up the lost duration didn’t drop your personal damage by the same amount, PS war got better with spec patch. Ele will still be great tuesday, the problem will be that one of their unique group buffs has lost half(maybe a bit less) of its use, and for a class like thief that really benefited from it, it maybe better to just slot in extra engineers instead because they don’t have the extra source of coefficients to bring their damage closer to the other classes.

Spirits need to stop dying left right and centre, afterwards they’d be pretty useful.

stambogalizi.8356:

Alright , you need to understand that ele and warrior have been nerfed. Particularly PS was nerfed with the spec patch and ele will be hit kitten tuesday and was hit even harder when fgs was gone. But they’re still here.
I don’t see how dragging everyone down to the same kitten tier level is good balance

You don’t have to give ranger the capability to stack 25 might, you just have to buff his spotter and frost spirit so that he might actually see more play.

How the hell was PS nerfed? Warrior is currently in the best shape it’s been in since pre-ferocity, that includes both in solo settings and groups.

Also ele isn’t getting nerfed nearly as badly as you’re making it out to be. There’s already a lot of bosses in this game where it’s debatable whether or not ice bow even damages enough to justify using over staff skills. The larger the hitbox of the boss, the worse the nerf is but the majority of bosses on this game have pretty small hitboxes so to be honest the nerf isn’t going to be too huge on a lot of them. Sure, I hate the way Anet is handling it, but it’s not like eles are going to suddenly be bad without ice bow.

Burst damage is lost, but comparing a 50% damage nerf on ice storm with the complete butchering of fiery rush is pretty silly.

It’s so sad that even on reddit all those plebs rocking necro and ranger flairs think this will somehow make their class more appealing, like they are mad at the world because they picked a garbage class at launch and never bothered to change. Elementalist is a high skillcap class, smallest hp pool in the game on light armour, it only makes sense that the highest risk has the highest reward to play. Even if raids were remotely challenging I doubt icebow would be used anyway as their are much better survivability options or you could just go with the glyph of power to keep even more chill on bosses.

Don’t worry ele’s will still be able to carry raids, even if anets whack-a-mole balance policy continues the exact same thing has happened with fgs and look where eles are today.

Evapor.6849:

It’s so sad that even on reddit all those plebs rocking necro and ranger flairs think this will somehow make their class more appealing, like they are mad at the world because they picked a garbage class at launch and never bothered to change. Elementalist is a high skillcap class, smallest hp pool in the game on light armour, it only makes sense that the highest risk has the highest reward to play. Even if raids were remotely challenging I doubt icebow would be used anyway as their are much better survivability options or you could just go with the glyph of power to keep even more chill on bosses.

Don’t worry ele’s will still be able to carry raids, even if anets whack-a-mole balance policy continues the exact same thing has happened with fgs and look where eles are today.

1. Isn’t increasing the ice bow hit box not gonna affect line-casting and roof-casting in any meaningful way? There are some spots in sPvP and WvW maps where you can point cast an enemy because of the ridiculously compressed line of sight and fenced terrains. Examples in PvE are already aplenty, so I’m pretty sure it affects all the game mode.

2. In the case the boss cannot be deep frozen or rooted, moving (small hit box) bosses inside the ice storm aoe take a considerably more damage than stationary bosses. So the same suggestion wouldn’t be really a nerf to ice bow damage.

3. Currently, Meteor Shower is the only reliable way to kill siege weapons in WvW. Increasing Ice bow aoe will make it another one in the list without really killing its effectiveness. And there are two ice bows to share with everyone!

4. Considering most (shown) future raid bosses will be huge in models, here comes my silly question: how huge is the hit box to be considered large?

I kittening called it on that reddit video repost about people using icebows in Edge of the Mists, “See, when it gets applied in Player versus Player things get fixed fast”.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

I kittening called it on that reddit video repost about people using icebows in Edge of the Mists, “See, when it gets applied in Player versus Player things get fixed fast”.

Yup, Quickfoot Katana pointed that out to me above. I though it was related to PvE lol. Silly me.
We should really hide our stuff from PvP (or WvW) players so that they can’t ruin it for us by using it.

Iris Ng.9845:

2. In the case the boss cannot be deep frozen or rooted, moving (small hit box) bosses inside the ice storm aoe take a considerably more damage than stationary bosses. So the same suggestion wouldn’t be really a nerf to ice bow damage.

Arn’t where the blobs of ice fall random? A moving boss seems just as likely to decrease its damage taken by moving within the aoe, as it is to increase it. Obviously if the boss moves out of the aoe it will take less damage. Am I missing something?