Guild Wars 2

Elementalist :

One With Air give 3/4s of superspeed + 5 seconds of vigor when triggered air attunement.

I just wonder. How many ranger still use sb after the range is change to 900?

Plz to make a “test server” that player can come and try the new triat/skill for better balance before add in the patch.

People said that A-net balance team have no dev playing ranger, then how can u tell why the ranger is so weak in dungeon and WVW? Ranger can now only appear in outside pve / pvp now. With a test server lots of players will help u to test the changes.

oh, yeah, I do not run terror/duhmfire. I dislike cookie cutter builds for the most part. However it seems you want the cookie cutter in this case.

JonPeters.5630:

Summation of high risk concerns for elementalist. Not ignoring other professions, I just have time for one right now.

SNIP (my apologies)

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10 for fresh air, diamond skin, and renewing stamina. It also still leaves builds that put only 10 points in Arcana a chance to gain Protection by going 30 air for Tempest Defense, and 10 Earth for Elemental Shielding and still have 30 points leftover.

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

I hope this helps to steer the discussion for the elementalist changes here. I’ll post this on the elementalist sub-forum as well. Hoping to get to each profession one at a time.

Thanks,

Jon

Link to the elementalist sub-forum discussion
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/December-10th-Elementalist-changes/page/3#post3138306

Thank you for the post Jon, and thank you for recognising our concerns. You already have enough to deal with in this thread but if possible would you please take a look at https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/FUNDAMENTAL-RESTRUCTURING-OF-THE-CLASS/

JonPeters.5630:

Summation of high risk concerns for elementalist. Not ignoring other professions, I just have time for one right now.

Diamond Skin
We really love this trait as it opens up some very powerful potential in the earth line to run a defensive elementalist without relying on healing power. The strength of this build is going to be the ability to quickly string small heals together to maintain that condition resistance. I think it could see use in both high damage builds looking to avoid weakness and blind, as well as in defensive builds looking to tank condition heavy classes and condition heavy mobs. I think the big question here is the base health/armor of the elementalist. Of course if you are just an elementalist you just want us to raise these, but balance must work around some fixed things and profession health and armor are an important part of defining what a profession is so that we can create powerful tools that players can actively use to circumvent these weaknesses. In this case if this trait is not powerful enough to be a grandmaster, I believe the right answer is going to be to lower the threshold, not to increase elementalist base health.

Aquamancer’s Alacrity
We moved this trait because all profession cooldown traits are in master tier, and because that is a good investment for this type of improvement. That being said, they may all not be powerful enough to warrant a master level triat right now, but I would rather increase the cooldown to 25% to get people to consider them than to have them be adept tier and allow elementalists to run all four of them.

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait and I think a better solution would be to leave it at adept tier and instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

Arcane Abatement
This is moving to adept tier because all of the fall damage traits are in that tier and in our opinion it doesn’t feel good to have to spend 20 points in a line for this kind of trait. Alacrity was the first choice to swap with it here because of the reasons stated above.

Soothing Disruption vs Cantrip Mastery
This one was debated internally for a while as well. I think swapping these traits would also help build diversity as it would let you splash 10 points in water to get Cantrip recharge, but would make you really consider going into water magic for the Regen and Vigor which is much more flavorful. I would love to hear some elementalist thoughts on that potential change.

Last but definitely not least.

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10 for fresh air, diamond skin, and renewing stamina. It also still leaves builds that put only 10 points in Arcana a chance to gain Protection by going 30 air for Tempest Defense, and 10 Earth for Elemental Shielding and still have 30 points leftover.

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

I hope this helps to steer the discussion for the elementalist changes here. I’ll post this on the elementalist sub-forum as well. Hoping to get to each profession one at a time.

Thanks,

Jon

Link to the elementalist sub-forum discussion
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/December-10th-Elementalist-changes/page/3#post3138306

Thank you VERY much for braking it down for us, showing your perspective and reasons behind the changes.
I know you are very busy and its weekend and all but whenever you have the time, could you please do the same for the other professions pleas?!

I can understand the need to nerf hammer wariors atm but i think that this is too much at the same time. I think that the real problem comes from healing signet. Maybe reducing the base heal to something like 300 and making it scales better with healing would do the trick. Maybe you guys should try that before nerfing hammer damage to the ground. IF you fix that it’ll be easier to find out what to change on wariors next. I mean there is a reason why 90% of wariors use healing signet no matter what their build is.

Anet, if you guys really want to talk about necro, then talk on the necro forums. Prove to all of us that Mark of Blood requires a 33% nerf. Here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Anet-prove-to-me-MoB-needs-a-33-Nerf

Many of us necro players are getting very very frustrated with you right now.

o.O why is it that the devs are only bouncing the ball with eles.

JonPeters.5630:

Aquamancer’s Alacrity
We moved this trait because all profession cooldown traits are in master tier…

Thanks,

Jon

Hi,

Does that mean the Warrior’s Shield Master in the Defense Adept tier will also be moved to master tier?

What about Mesmer Blade Training?

What about Engi’s Hair Trigger?

So…not all profession cooldown are master tier…what gives?

JonPeters.5630:

Almost 500 replies already so obviously you will excuse us for not addressing them all. Also keep in mind it’s now the weekend. I’ll try and get on for enough time sometime this weekend to address the bigger points of discussion but until then please keep the responses as civil as they have generally been thus far. We appreciate all of your assign for this stuff and are working hard to make the right decisions. I can say that many of the concerns brought up were at the heart of discussions when making these changes already so we are aware of a lot of the implications. This is an aggressive list of changes but we wanted to share them so that we could confirm what the highest risk changes were and try to discuss some reasoning. I don’t expect everyone to appreciate or understand the nuances of all of that reasoning, but I do have faith that you will be passionate about it so try and remember to look at all sides of the issues. It is called balance after all.

Thanks all and keep them coming. I can promise I will read every post in this thread. Have a great weekend.

Jon

So in otherwords there’s nothing we can say to sway any of these changes? May I then ask why even bother posting these notes so early? Wouldn’t it have been easier on the development team to just post this the day of the patch and then wave it off with “what’s done is done”?

It honestly feels like arenanet will not accept or hear any actual concerns and critiques and only listen to praises.

Hi all

After reading this post from Anet, im giddy to see the ranger class getting certain tweaks (be it buffs or nerfs) as they are all pointing to the right direction, however i did not see any statement in the post mentioning about our short-sword auto attack root, so i decided to copy/paste my recent post here, since this seems to be the go-to-thread with regards to class balances/changes and to have constructive discussion with the community and devs.

Im writing this post with regards to our Short Sword number 1 skill.
While there has been much contention with regards to strength of the root that comes with this auto-attack , i have not (or yet) seen Anet’s response to this matter since i played my first gw2 character, a ranger in 2012.

Hence, i have decided to write this post, to not only get the feedback from the ‘ranger’ community, but hopefully from our Anet developers too, so that we can finally get some closure or maybe response to this sticky matter.

Anet has always requested for players constructive feedback with regards to this matter, so here is my 2-cents thoughts with regard to the short sword:

Summary: it is the weapon with the right risk/reward element BUT due to state of other classes weapons, compounded by a myriad of other problems (traits, condi removal, pets, lack of anet response which will not be discussed in this post). The short sword number 1 skill becomes more of a heavy cripple to the strength of the class which is very disheartening to individuals that have ranger as their main and wish to be proud of being one.

Rewards:
1) It’s number 1 skill/‘auto attack’ has one of the (if not) highest dps of all rangers weapon and with the right buffs/traits can hit up to 5k per hit.
2) It has 2 evade skill; number 2 and 3
3) It has an effective disengage skill and leap skill (for us combo-field users); number 2
4) It works very well with our offhand weapons
i) torch : fire-fields from skill 5 + heavy fire-pressure while u auto-attack away
ii) warhorn : fury to raise damage output for power orientated rangers + a combo blaster (although the CD is way too long for my liking, it is wonderful when combo-ed with our healing spring especially when we are going into the thick of melee/condi-fights), very effective in teamfights/offhand choice in PVE from skill 5
iii) dagger : it provides us with another evade (giving us a total of 3 evades and up to 5 including our dodge rolls before combat begins) and cripple skill; an effective weapon of choice when it comes to fighting against other classes 1-1

Risk:
The one and only root which brings a heavy disadvantage in any form of fight in PVE/WVW/PVP, it is essentially the ‘Achilles Heel’ of this weapon.
Why Achilles Heel? This root creates 3 critical problems:
1) its a hidden immobilize condition which cannot be removed =3
2) unlike being immobilized, you cant dodge out of an attack!
hence, very often you will see rangers getting clipped by a perma-stun warrior, hit with shatters or torment/confusion skill(from scepter)by the mesmers, COE alpha-subject aoe ring, the multitude of AOE agony rings in FOTM and a myriad of other things.
3) it creates an unnecessary skill ceiling, for new players and old, and enhances the GW2 community already negative view of the ranger class, as:
i) newer players will shun the melee option with the short sword (as their mortality rate will increase significantly from using it) in favor of going ranged, this will result in rangers being less inclined to discover/explore new build potentials.

Conclusion: So essentially, as discussed above, it can be seen that the sword is an excellent weapon with a nice risk and reward attached to it but it is only excellent IF AND ONLY IF this risk/reward theme is applied to all other weapons in the game, which isn’t the case.

if one of the devs decide the fix this or at least explain to the community, it will be a soothing balm and potentially a game changer for rangers as we become more viable/deadly/effective in a myriad of scenarios.

This post is only posted in the pvp and ranger forum thread, so feel free to hop in-between both threads and i will also update bother threads if any kind Anet dev decides to respond on this matter.

Brutalistik.6473:

Hane.8695:

a t s e.9614:

Guys stop QQing , the hammer is still fairly strong with a DPS build . Stop being a little rabbit and running with soldier gear . Learn to use a burst set for god sake .

He is right you just have to run 0/20/30/0/20 not 10/10/20/0/30 and zergers will still work with that you don’t NEED soldiers.

and some of us may not won’t to spec towards that. Keep that in mind..who suffers the most out of it? Not every warrior wants to be burst builds, but also they don’t want to be nerf because of those players who abused it.

I know this and I was just offering an alternative build for after the up date, and it isn’t abuse if it isn’t a bug or hack, it’s use of resources the mez fall trait bug was abuse there is no bug here. And what suffering? If its so bad that they made a small build to change something they didn’t see that you stated don’t affect you why do you care at all. I think you’re just looking for someone to yell at and prove your better then.

The ele is suppose to change attunements often and a large cool down can be a big obstacle… just thinking that if you lower the base cool down to 10s and let the attunement get it down to 8s then you would probably get fewer people choosing arcane.. I just feel 10s is optimal for a cool down so i probably won’t change my traits very much with the proposed changes… currently using 10/0/0/30/30 and will probably use something very close to that after the changes. I have tried to get off arcane but keep coming back to it because of the attunement cool down.. well that and blasting staff.

Well thank the five, When I see words like “We understand not everyone will appreciate these changes” I am immediately reminded of another dev saying something similar about Scarlet. Which seemed to translate to: “Your criticism and concerns are vaguely heard but ultimately ignored.”

Dear Jon Peters
After this huge step in communication, by showing us the upcomming changes in the near future, to all classes, regarding of balance. One question keeps striking me, the same question I’ve had after reading this kind of topic, for almost 8 months.
How do you plan to improve the fact that, with every “twist” of the meta, we, as players, can no longer feel safe investing in characters?

I am not an altoholic, I’ve played mmos for the last 10 years, and as many others, I like to make my character, plan it before hand, and use it as my avatar. That is, for me, and many, what mmos are about. But in GW2, a great game, that offer so many things other games lack, while at the same time, having an immersive world, I can’t do that.

This is my testimony, I am a warrior player, and before others claim that I am a “fotm” player, I’m not. Warrior was my first character, back in wintersday, when I got the game, and since then (when warriors were “trash” or “warrior tier” for those who remember) I haven’t changed class.

I understand that some things, in the good will of bringing warriors up, were overpowered up, but at the same time, I don’t know, for example, in which kind of ascended gear to invest right now (weapons for instance), since I don’t know if my choice of build will be, in the future “temporarily OP” and then, nerfed to nothing, due to the vocal minority of the forums (as many fear). At the end of the day, as ironic as it may sound, I stopped playing when warriors were made “OP”, just because, reading this forums made me understand that the consistent whine of some characters (actually, very few, that like to make threads and threads on the matters they want to influx) I knew that my character will be nerfed.

And I really like this game, but the fact that this situation prevents me from progressing is frustrating. I didn’t even use the “hammer stunlock build”, none of the nerfs presented here affect me, in any way, at all. But I cant feel relieved because of that, I just know that, in every situation, when a class historically UP, gets a little of power, there will be some people that find easier to complain than to adapt, and, the worst thing is, they know it works.

As a warrior, I started playing because I loved the class, but as my own experience grew, I wanted to be more “competitive”, and then I understood the problems of my class, for example, sustain, which now, we have. Yet, people keep complaining about it, mainly players of other classes, and I don’t know it is worth to play the game, or to invest in the builds I want to play, if eventually, it will be nerfed, and my effort, and time spent, will lose all its value.

What I ask now, is something very simple, a statement. Will you nerf our sustain? Yes or No, thats all I need. Or, will you let us “retrait” our gear after this “balance patches”, or is intended that items, like ascended ones, that require a lot of time to get, to not serve you in the way it was promised (I’m not talking about the items changing, but the classes changing making certain items not useful for you anymore) when getting them.

This is very important, you claim that you want to stay away from power creep (in my opinion, you use that term in a bad way in this kind of topics), yet, by having skills and traits changing every 3 months now, you rend some gear useless, for players, even if the items remain the same, is no different from a gear threadmill, if after every patch, you have to get gear again.

JonPeters.5630:

Almost 500 replies already so obviously you will excuse us for not addressing them all. Also keep in mind it’s now the weekend. I’ll try and get on for enough time sometime this weekend to address the bigger points of discussion but until then please keep the responses as civil as they have generally been thus far. We appreciate all of your assign for this stuff and are working hard to make the right decisions. I can say that many of the concerns brought up were at the heart of discussions when making these changes already so we are aware of a lot of the implications. This is an aggressive list of changes but we wanted to share them so that we could confirm what the highest risk changes were and try to discuss some reasoning. I don’t expect everyone to appreciate or understand the nuances of all of that reasoning, but I do have faith that you will be passionate about it so try and remember to look at all sides of the issues. It is called balance after all.

Thanks all and keep them coming. I can promise I will read every post in this thread. Have a great weekend.

Jon

I suggest you create a thread in the class subforum for each respective class. I’m not sure how you’re able to filter through the clutter in this thread…

JonPeters.5630:

• Domination XII – Confounding Suggestions. Changed to increase daze duration by 25%.

I don’t think this change will be enough to convince myself and most mesmers to go 30 deep into domination. The reality is that the 6 piece bonus of the Mesmer rune set is stronger than this proposed grandmaster trait, which is not a good sign.

Browsing over other 6 piece bonus and comparing to gains we generally get from grandmaster traits shows that this isn’t enough. Imagine if a 6 piece bonus offered Evasive Arcana or the new Diamond Skin.

I think you guys are going to have to come up with some better ideas. Maybe take the old behaviour of converting dazes to stuns and make it “Dazes now cause stuns” with a 10s cooldown on this effect. The effect needs to have a significant effect on your overall strategy which a 25% increase to dazes does not.

Inspiration IV – Mender’s Purity. Now removes 2 conditions.

could you please make that the 2 conditions get removed >before< the heal comes in ?
would mean a lot for poison. and if not can you give me a reason why you put the cond remove after the heal comes in.

I’m liking the some of the Elementalist traits.. FINALLY!

Fire II – Burning Fire – This trait has a new effect. Use Cleansing Fire automatically when you have a number of conditions on you. 3 conditions. 40 second cooldown. Moved to Master tier. (like)
Fire III – Ember’s Might. The effect of this trait has been changed to Burns you apply last longer. 25%.(meh)
Burning Rage 25 – Increased damage dealt to burning foes from 5% to 10%.(meh)
Air V – Soothing Winds. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.(like)
Air XI – Tempest Defense. Decreased the cooldown from 60s to 25s. (nice cd but still meh)
Earth 5 – Stone Flesh – Increased toughness while attuned to Earth Magic to 1.5/level (120 at level 80). (like)
Earth VII – Strength of Stone. This trait is now Gain condition damage based on your Toughness. 10%. (like)
Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%. (like)

Really interested into actually putting points into earth now. Nice work so far.

Jon and other staff members. I look forward to reading about Necro’s and your reasoning.

Hello,

While I understand the impetus to buff guardian damage I would like to point out one change I find problematic under this objective.

Symbol of Swiftness: While I understand as a group buff this might be slightly to powerful I do not understand why there is a further restriction being placed on guardian’s mobility. Not only is this a downgrade in quality of life for staff users the decrease in mobility also will directly affect guardian damage. Specifically if a guardian is slower than every other class then how on earth are they supposed to catch them to do melee damage? This is not to say the guardian does not posses other tools but this is one of the more powerful ones to chase down fleeing players. Also as previously mentioned this would be a downgrade in the quality of life for and guardian in WvWvW because of the reduction in swiftness up time when solo or small group roaming.

Regards,
Barent

Swapping Soothing Disruption with Cantrip Mastery i think that it should be a great idea.

i could have a build S/D : 10/30/0/15/15 – 0/30/10/15/15 – 0/20/10/20/20 -etc running with lightning flash(32 s),Arcane Blast and Mist form(60s) for stomp/repositioning or i could also switch mist form with armor of earth(72s) putting only 10 points in water against a stun warrior or necro with chain fear.
Anyway,good idea with Soothing Disruption and Cantrip Mastery.

ps: diamond skin should be : Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 80-85%
Ele has got a weak armor and really poor life,it needs 2 hits to go below the 90% of his life.

I like most of the changes. I will list my bullet points now though.

Rangers need more pet control. Do it as a toggle-able option. This way, advanced skill level Rangers get more options by putting a check mark in the box for more pet options, and Novices get the vanilla controls.

Skill splits for different formats. This needs to be done. What is useful for one format is rendered useless for other formats. Playing a control class is GREAT in sPvP. In PvE? It’s not even an option.

I feel like you guys are fixing things that don’t really address the main issues. The core of the problem is that this game was supposed to be Support, Control and Damage. Damage is the only thing that matters in PvE. In sPvP it works.

I own my own Arena. I play a LOT of sPvP, but this game should not be balanced around sPvP. It should be balanced around PvE, with skill splits to balance sPvP and WvW on their own.

Underwater combat needs an overhaul. You have a world that has a TON of underwater areas and they don’t see any use because a lot of the skills are left out and the combat is lacking. Skills need more punch on underwater fights. Underwater combat needs to play like a dogfighting arcade game with a targeting reticule.

Eles need a reason to spec into one line at the expense of the others. Make every elementalists XII trait for an element do something that bars them from traiting in another element’s XII trait, but makes the one that is specced into really powerful.

Meteor Shower in sPvP and PvE needs to be able to be cast on the move. Not in WvW. It isn’t that way now because it would break WvW. Other formats shouldn’t be hindered because it would ruin one. Do skill splits.

Interesting changes on the elementalist. (I’m using 30/0/0/10/30)

I’m kind of disappointed that Conjurer didn’t get anything more to it like special effects than the normal +10 charges. I’m glad though it gets moved to adept so I can use it with Pyromancer’s Alacrity.

Going to miss the Cleansing wave (or maybe not) but I’ll replace it with the awesome Arcane Abatement that is finally being moved to adept!

Tulki.1458:

The engineer changes sound pretty reasonable, but turrets are still lacking the recent +71% PvE health boost that every other minion in the game received. This makes them way too easy to kill… a single stray shot from veterans and higher is capable of blowing up all but the thumper turret. To compound this problem, turrets have the same massive hitboxes as every other structure in the game, and a lot of the time this causes AoE skills to hit them more than once.

At the very least, if turrets won’t get this health buff, can we at least increase the reduction of cd for picking up turrets? Reward us for placing the turrets well and taking care of it. I understand that this would not include the healing turret but for every other turret this is a must to make any kind of turret build viable in anything else but pvp.

The buffs to the turret traits are great but please go all the way with your excellent changes by reducing cd of their pick up. Thank you.

Ranger

1/ active condition removal

I have the feeling that one of the ranger’s weakness is that he has almost no active way to deal with conditions and that most of them need the pet to be alive and close to you

>> make lightning reflexes remove immobilize, cripple and chill would be a good start to adress this issue.

2/ the power build

when you want to play a power build u realise that the marksmanship tree is overloaded with useful traits while the skirmishing tree is quite lackluster.

>> add the piercing arrow effect to quickdraw ( like warrior’s crack shot would be a good way to solve this problem

i am completely against this.

more balance = all classes the same?

resuming:
elementalist: more attunement cycle.
more attack for guardian
less condition damage for necro
less damage for warrior.

i dont know how could you possible like this patch

Alchemy 15 – Transmute. Increased % chance from 8% to 100%. This effect can now only trigger once every 15 seconds. —- that’s a huge part of our condition removal. We don’t have a lot of condition removal in the first place and it put’s us behind other classes.

The nerf on vigor —- will also be bad. It’s big part of our sustain on point. We can’t take a ton of hits like other classes. if we get hit with any cc we are dead. Any decent team will target an engineer with cc/or anything and they will go down.

IMO engineers are perfectly fine right now besides rng. i agree in changing transmute but we need another form of condition removal.

I think nerfs aren’t needed seeing as they aren’t overpowered.

(I’m running elixir gun, grenade kit, bomb kit, healing turret, and crate. from top to bottom. 30, 5, 0, 20, 15)

Hopefully you take this into consideration.

KlausKNT.9302:

“slowing down their opponent’s ability to act”- its not about necro- meaby warior with aoe stunlock? but not necro for now (witch class have problem to run from necro- other necro only

The statement that a necro doesn’t have the ability to lock down an opponent is false….if you are looking at necro in a small group or 1v1 fight only.

Necro has a cripple or chill on every weapon set. If you run focus, staff, and utilize #2 in shroud that’s 3 separate chills.

however only one of those, chilblains, is aoe. In group vs group this setup would give you chilblains and if your using scepter Grasping for 1 aoe chill 1 aoe cripple and 2 single target chills.

However again, the 2 aoes are ground targets in that case which are fairly easily dodged. Big red circle = dodge = oh well.

Of course getting Shroud #2 to actually hit anything is always a fun chore. I miss on this about 80% of the time, as it takes quite a long time to fire off and by the time it does the target can be obstructed by a small dip in the ground, or by a wall, or out of range, or have dodged, etc etc but it does count as a chill.

We can slow a target but unless we use a spot on locust or run Spectral walk, that doesn’t matter overly much. It extends the fight with the outcome still being the same.

PVP is always a game of rock paper scissors, we are the rock to some classes scissors, and some classes are the paper to our rock, and that’s fine in small group play.

However again, it seems to me like this games whole endgame is WvW. Theres no raids, theres no super goodies to get in PvE…Theres DAOC style WvW. And currently WvW is zerg vs zerg. This seems to be much more true in this game than DAOC and I cant really pinpoint why.

But its still a fun dynamic, as long as you feel useful during it. Personally I don’t like staff, so I lose the great majority of those group lockdowns, chilblains and staff 5. Im pretty much forced to lose my alternate choice of running focus/axe or focus/dagger for a staff and to run almost full conditionmancer even though I run a hybrid spec…because if I don’t the zerg will run over my face, because hey, part of big group tactics is movement, backwards then forwards again, taking advantage of the other side spreading out because classes have different speeds…except im the boat anchor of the group so if I cant chill and cripple the guys about to catch me im lost. Single target shroud chill, st shroud terror aint gonna save me. I need those life points to like…not die. Torment has saved me multiple times.

This is where giving us the heals from our own siphons while using our okitten ability would really be useful. We aren’t talking about life transfusion as that clearly states allies only. My guess is that the coding for that is why we cant have siphons, but even if that’s the case we are talking 5k health in a 1v1 and 9k in group, which would be powerful but not overpowered IMO on an ability that’s easily interrupted as its a channeled ability.

I appreciate that mantras are being given more attention. Even with more changes upcoming, I still feel that they’re lackluster. In addition to a CD, you have to take the time to cast to recharge the spell as well. That’s not fun. Also, there are 5 traits that affect mantras, spanning 3 different trait lines. 2 of those 5 traits are grandmaster level in 2 different lines. It’s sprawling.

At the moment, Restorative Mantras is negatively affected by Harmonious Mantras. This is because Restorative Mantras only activates at the end of the recharge cast of a mantra. So if you have both Restorative Mantras and Harmonious Mantras, you’ll see less activation of Restorative Mantras. I suggest allowing Restorative Mantras to activate when using a mantra, rather than at the end of the recharge cast.

JonPeters.5630:

• Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

I honestly couldn’t disagree more with this change. The problem is this will completely ruin the D/D ele as they rely on perma vigor as past of their survival, a D/D ele don’t have other evasion techniques like thief and mesmer and are the squishiest class in the game. Making an ele choose either elemental attunement or renewing stamina is just going to destroy the main defensive capabilities that a D/D ele has.

JonPeters.5630:

In doing so, we decided put some of the most powerful Adept tier traits in Water magic and Arcane to the Master tier to avoid power creep that would have occurred by letting players gain powerful effects in Master and Grandmaster tier of Fire, Air, and Earth and still get the extremely powerful traits in Water and Arcane by only splashing in 10 points.

I don’t believe there will be any ’ extremely powerful traits’ left in the adept section of the arcana tree if you move both renewing vigor and elemental attunement into master, the two traits which you are moving into this tier are useless to the D/D ele as you already 100% swiftness uptime and blasting staff is for staff (obviously). So essentially for D/D ele’s the only viable traits left in arcana’s adept tier is are arcane retribution and final shielding which are both pretty boring traits even with the buffs, I don’t really want to have a trait which has an icd of over 10s as it’s pretty useless to me.

TLDR: Either renewing stamina or elemental attunement needs to stay in the adept tier of arcana else the D/D ele is just going to be nerfed into the ground (you know more than it has been already).

I like the idea of the Necromancer changes, but a few things worry me.

Condition Damage
1) Are the bleeding nerfs permanent, in a way that you want to push us towards Dhuumfire/Terror for damage?
2) If you are going to then nerf Dhuumfire/Terror (the only things that are actually still holding us up as a viable condition damage build), will you revert some of the nerfs we’ve seen since Dhuumfire was added? (not all, but some).
3) What about changing Dhuumfire to Torment? Its current method isn’t fun, the Necromancer has little control over it, the opponent can’t do much about it, its just sucky right now, and it only has 1 way to balance it (duration). Torment, along with a better trigger mechanic, has 2 tools for balancing (duration and intensity), and also has more interesting gameplay associated, since if the person in question needs say 3 seconds till their cleanse they can just sit on the stacks and take the non-upgraded damage.

Defense
You keep saying we should be low mobility high aggression. I 100% agree, we should be the “manliest” class in the game. However we need to all agree that it isn’t the case right now, unless you are an MM.
4) Do you agree that Death Shroud is still slightly subpar when it comes to a defensive mechanic because of its non-scaling with enemies (whereas a block is a block, no matter how many)? If so, do you plan on any good gameplay ways to fix this (such as a 1s block on DS entry as a trait)?
5) Can we agree that non-MM siphoning is still broken? I see the problem with it, it has really difficult balance because it scales with how quickly you hit. What about implementing a short ICD on Vampiric and Vampiric Precision so it doesn’t have the crazy AoE procs (wells can proc 15 siphons per second with full traiting, 5 targets, and critting)? This way even scepter/staff builds with lower attack rates can benefit, making Blood Magic a sustain option for everyone not just dagger/wells.
6) We need more love on Death magic. I’ll talk about reanimator just below, since I talked with Sharp(?) about this before. Death Magic isn’t a good tree unless you have a staff, or are an MM. We need a non MM Grandmaster trait that gives us some really strong defense for the investment, and Necromatic Corruption needs some big changing. Death Magic overall should be our main defense tree, with Blood Magic as our sustain tree, and Soul Reaping as our Death Shroud tree (hybrid offense/defense). As it is right now though, Death Magic gives no noticeable defense to non-MMs. Blood Magic is subpar sustain, and Soul Reaping outpaces both of them in any defensive effort.

Reanimator and On-Death Traits
7) Reanimator. Thanks for the ICD drop, this helps quite a bit. But it needs to proc more during fights. As it is now, it will never proc meaningfully in any PvP match (by the time someone is killed, you won the fight, his addition is meaningless), in PvE they don’t spawn on any boss fights without adds until the end. “Hey guys I just got here, who do I attack?” “Oh, everyone’s dead? I’ll just sit here until I die…”

What about extending it to apply on minion and ally death, and in PvP when enemies are downed (instead of dead, since enemies get downed all the time and come back up, he could help swing things)? The ally/minion activation shouldn’t be guaranteed, but a smaller chance, maybe 20% when a minion dies, 50% when an ally, whatever works. But this way we get benefit no matter what.

This could apply to all on-death traits, almost all of which aren’t great in PvP or boss-fight PvE right now. Allow them to activate on minion or ally death, or enemy down, but at a reduced strength for ally/minion. This creates a lot of internal synergy within the Necromancer class, and it makes sense (why would we only benefit on enemy death? All death is equal, we already take our allies’ life force, why not other things?).

To summarize, I’d just like to know the direction the Dhuumfire/Terror and other nerfs to damage are going. I’d like to know your plans and feelings on Death and Blood Magic as they currently stand, and how you will allow us to have more defensive options. And I’d like to know your feelings on making on-death traits more impactful with more triggers than simply enemy death.

Actually, off topic but I do think I know why the game tends more towards the zerg mentality, and that’s because guards in this game are weak.

I know that sounds backwards but the key thing for a guild to do in DAOC was to take their guild and do a keep defense in enemy territory. This could be done with a well organized 8 man or 2. The key to that used to be upgraded, STRONG guards. Guards you had to worry about. Guards that could whipe an 8 man if they didn’t work to kill them in an organized manner.

Those same guards that made taking a tower without a ram so hard were also what made holding a tower against a large amount of people so fun. They were an aid that was necessary, and if I remember correctly you required a guild flag to get those upgraded guards.

I know its off topic but I think this would be something that would be extremely useful as a guild buff to a tower, instant upgraded guards to level 85 for like 3-6 hours. I think you would see that used quite a lot and make defenses a lot more viable. I believe guards used to also whisper guilds about their tower being attacked.

I know, way off topic. Sorry.

Hello, regarding Mesmer weapon diversity:

I’ve noticed in my own play-time that I rarely use the Scepter or the Torch. I feel like I have no real benefit to using my auto attack on Scepter, because it works so slowly. I love the Illusionary Counter and Confusing Images, but Ether Bolt feels lackluster and I always feel as if I’m going to have major problems in a heated fight if I switch to scepter.

It feels very disjointed as a weapon. On one hand, you have pure damage (or conditions) from shattering clones on the auto attack. Then, you get a nice block for defense and torment. THEN we get 5 stacks of confusion thrown in. I just feel like the weapon isn’t focused on anything, which would be fine if it was all-around useful, but it also isn’t really GOOD for anything either.

Same situation applies for the torch. We have the Prestige, which is a WONDERFUL defensive ability and perhaps one of my favorite Mesmer spells. Then, you have a phantasm like Mage that honestly doesn’t merit my pressing the button unless I want an extra piece of shatter fodder for a quick Diversion.

My point is this:

While I absolutely love that you are opening up our traits a lot with this build, some of the focus on certain traits seems unnecessary when two of our weapons are so lackluster.

For example: Mirror of Anguish, sure it’s a buff but we don’t REALLY need that extra thirty seconds off the cool down, and the Mantra changes (while useful for build diversity) don’t address Mantra’s main problems – being far too detrimental to cast during fights.

I’m sure you guys will make passes at balancing some of these things in the future, but I wanted to bring the weapons up specifically because they are unfortunately very underwhelming.

Cheers, and keep up the great work you guys at Anet!

well rangers r.i.p. for another few months. this changes wont make the rangers good in wvw.

Jos.8793:

Ranger

1/ active condition removal

I have the feeling that one of the ranger’s weakness is that he has almost no active way to deal with conditions and that most of them need the pet to be alive and close to you

>> make lightning reflexes remove immobilize, cripple and chill would be a good start to adress this issue.

2/ the power build

when you want to play a power build u realise that the marksmanship tree is overloaded with useful traits while the skirmishing tree is quite lackluster.

>> add the piercing arrow effect to quickdraw ( like warrior’s crack shot would be a good way to solve this problem

Agreed completely. Condition removal is a serious achilles heel of Rangers. While we can remove all conditions from you and 4 others with the signet, it absolutely requires the pet be in close proximity to us and alive. And with no other real active condi clear skll we are severly hampered. Sure there are a couple of other ways to remove conditions (like bears/spring) however these are not “synergistic” as it were, and cannot be easily used by many builds. This combined with Rangers relatively low healing levels for direct healing means that many builds that are not specifically bunker builds crumble in seconds when set against a condition user. This can be seen in numerous game modes, and is not limited on one exclusively.

What we really need is a second utility skill that can condi clear, giving us more flexibility in skill selection. Your proposed change to LR would do this, however I feel it would need to have the dodge range halved to not make it far to effective.

Secondly as you noted a power build is limited in choice in traits, because so many that a power build would want to take we cant as they are all together in one tree. My view is that “Spotter” should move in to Skirmishing tree, as it provides a precision bonus and that is what this tree line specialises in.

That would free up choices in Marskmanship for Rangers to seriously consider LB viability across different modes. Hell to be honest anything that allows a ranger to chose all the bow skills in one build is a MUCH needed change.

Yeah I like using my LB on the ranger, because I want ONE character who can attack at range effectively. It would be nice if wasnt so crap.

BoB.6082:

Alchemy 15 – Transmute. Increased % chance from 8% to 100%. This effect can now only trigger once every 15 seconds. —- that’s a huge part of our condition removal. We don’t have a lot of condition removal in the first place and it put’s us behind other classes.

The nerf on vigor —- will also be bad. It’s big part of our sustain on point. We can’t take a ton of hits like other classes. if we get hit with any cc we are dead. Any decent team will target an engineer with cc/or anything and they will go down.

IMO engineers are perfectly fine right now besides rng. i agree in changing transmute but we need another form of condition removal.

I think nerfs aren’t needed seeing as they aren’t overpowered.

(I’m running elixir gun, grenade kit, bomb kit, healing turret, and crate. from top to bottom. 30, 5, 0, 20, 15)

Hopefully you take this into consideration.

sPvP view

Engis – truly do NOT need a NERF nor a BUFF. They could stay the same. vigor nerf not good as i explained in my other post.

Rangers – Neeeed to have a higher skill floor and a higher skill cap. Other than that they are fine.

Guardians – truly do NOT need a NERF nor a BUFF. They could stay the same.

Ele – the changes you are making towards them are a step forward.

Thief – everything about them is fine besides their constant evades. You guys see that and are trying to fix it. Good thing

Warrior – they have a great amount of sustain while still dealing great dmg. bad thing

Necro – truly do NOT need a NERF nor a BUFF. They could stay the same.

Mesmer – In need of condi removal and team support. You guys are looking into that which is good

Thank you.

After reviewing the proposed patch notes for Thief, I felt I’d share my view my views on the some of the changes and propose a few others.

• Hard to Catch – I can see you want to see this trait more used, however in my experience, the reason this trait is generally unpopular is because of its unpredictable nature. Similar story to the problem Engies had with Elixers.
• Larcenous Strike – Could we get back the 2 boon steal on LS at the cost of some of the skill’s damage? S/D already had its auto attack as its primary source of damage, and this nerf to boon stealing has left the skill very ineffective for its utility use. Most of the time the user just can’t get at the boon they’re aiming for. An alternative could be making LS prioritize certain boons. I’d ideally go, Protection, Stability, Might, Regen, Retaliation, Vigor, Swiftness, Fury, Aegis. This alternative would increase S/D users survivability and value to their party without allowing them to steal everything.
  Also, is it possible to add that boon share to LS that was proposed in the past?
• Last Refuge – This trait is generally unfavoured because of it’s unpredictability. Thieves who invest in Shadow Arts take it because they have to but most of the time this trait will proc while they’re attacking which will cause them to immediately waste the stealth it grants and be stuck with 3 seconds of revealed. Could we please change the effect of this skill to something like an AoE blind or a smoke field?
• Pistol Whip – This skill will remain unfavoured until its DPS is greater then S/x’s auto attack.
• Basilisk Venom – Could the cast time on this skill be decreased? It would do wonders for Thieves in boss fight with their parties. As it stands now Basilisk Venom takes too long to cast for it to be used as anything but a random interrupt or an open strike, because it can’t be used in reaction to a boss’ strong attack. If this change was made, I feel a cooldown increase would be a fair trade.
• Venoms – This one’s a bit of a biggy. Could Venoms be mechanically changed so they’d behave similar to Mantras? As it stand, Venoms are unpopular because the user is forced to spend all the venom charges in one go. I they could choose when to spend the charges it’d allow for much more tactical usage. The cooldowns to be delayed till all the charge are used and venoms shared via Venomous Aura could behave as they do now to keep this from being too strong. Decreasing the amount of charges too.
• Condition Removal – Condition removal within stealth is fine, but when a thief tries to go stealth less, they begin to find their options sorely lacking, particularly when dealing with DoTs. Please consider something that can help these players in the future, perhaps a trait in the Acrobatics or Trickery Line which can regulate how many DoTs they can have at one time, or some way to help them cleanse them off.

ViRiD.2784:

The mesmer buff marks the return of 12-second phantasms. Along with Mender’s Purity removing two conditions, are you sure that is wise? It is true that Mesmers do need help in sPvP, but Illusionists Celerity has always felt like a problem-trait, along with Deceptive Evasion.

I disagree somewhat here. While I think there is a very large emphasis on this trait, its always been integral to the Mesmer buildset as no other trait offers as strong an incentive as this one does. Many builds across the mesmer scope saw a painful drop in damage when this went from 5 in illusions to 25. Dropping it back down to 15 gives us a chance to spec it for more build diversity and decent damage that has been missing from a lot of builds, its just that important to the Mesmer buildset. Mesmer’s with condition removal is part of their theme as well, so I don’t see Mender’s Purity as being a problem. Deceptive Evasion typically requires a lot of trait investment to grab so I usually don’t worry about it. Besides, many mesmers dont include it in their build design for various reasons.

Ultimately, I want to thank Anet. I feel like these changes are an acknowledgement of some of the issues Mesmer needs adjusted and I am ultimately happy with ALL of the changes listed here, so a very serious thank you I think is in order. If I have one other change for Mesmer I would like to see, its Torch. Skill #5 needs a serious look, its a phantasm skill and thus supposed to be either a powerful effect or at least high damage like the rest of the phantasms. It is this skill that many Mesmers don’t run Torch, so please rework this skill to either deal more direct damage or provide stronger effects for confusion/retaliation when ran. Right now Phantasmal Defender feels more powerful to me, and its not even a weapon skill. Oh, and I look forward to seeing more changes to come

JonPeters.5630:

Diamond Skin

Agree, I don’t think it’s too powerful for a GM.

Cleansing Wave

It’s a little too powerful for adept tier, but I think elementalists need a good t1 water trait with such low health.
I suggest that instead of moving Cleansing Wave, that you instead modify Soothing Wave as follows:
-Make it also affect all glyphs if cast while in Water attunement (including the elite glyph), and the Whirlpool underwater elite. Considered suggesting Arcane Shielding too but that would be way too much.
-Make it also affect Water Punch (drowning skill 1)
-Insert 8" ICD (to prevent stacking the effect via Water Punch)
-Regeneration is granted to allies at 180 units AoE
-Proc also grants 5" Frost Aura
-Increase aoe damage while in Mist and vapor form by 25%, increase vulnerability stacks to 2 per pulse.
My thinking behind it is as follows: elementalists already have high uptime of regeneration even without going all the way into Water. What they need is damage reduction so they can survive longer for the regeneration to heal them, hence the addition of Frost Aura for the (slight) damage reduction, making its duration slightly longer than Mist Form to give the elementalist a small window to heal themselves after exiting it. I am not concerned with the possibility of double chill-stacking while in mist or vapour form, as Frost Aura shouldn’t proc to chill the attacker if the elementalist is hit while in Mist or vapour form. Furthermore, making the regeneration AoE and adding Frost Aura sets up this trait to synergise with either one of the 2 Water grandmaster traits the elementalist chooses to go for. This is what a good grandmaster should do in my opinion: be good enough on its own to make you invest 20 points into, but make investing 30 points seem even more attractive!

I also suggest changing the name of Cleansing Wave cause there’s a weapon skill by th esame name and it’s confusing! :p Refreshing Wave or something?

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10 for fresh air, diamond skin, and renewing stamina. It also still leaves builds that put only 10 points in Arcana a chance to gain Protection by going 30 air for Tempest Defense, and 10 Earth for Elemental Shielding and still have 30 points leftover.

While I agree that Elemental Attunement might be the best adept trait in the whole game, it’s a high skill-ceiling trait, it requires a lot of attunement dancing to get the most of it. I think that’s a fair compromise for how powerful it is, and could justify leaving it in the adept tier. I do thoroughly disagree with moving Renewing Vigor to master though, it’s just not that good, and leaves adept with no good defensive options. You could move Final Shielding to Master tier, but only if you upped the threshold to 50% and changed the functionality to “if hit while health is below 50%”. This gives the elementalist a chance to pull a clutch move like Mist Form BEFORE the next hit lands and therefore before Final Shielding procs, so as not to “waste” the proc. Then, if the elementalist is still beneath 50% and gets hit when they exit Mist Form, they’ll get their Final Shielding.

There is a LOT of bugs and useless traits in the necromancer bloodline (a lot of them don´t stack together).
But the great problem in the Necro siphon health skills is the rly LOW stack with healing power, heal is almost useless right now and if i´m not wrong siphoning health don´t even use Healing…The passive hit siphon minor trait don´t use, or the value is so low that don´t even matter if you have healing power =/

At risk of being swamped in the mass of elaborate replies:

My main concern with these balance changes is that I don’t think there is enough thorough thought being put into them. I’ll pick one example, but there’s are many, so don’t get bogged down on just this one:

• Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier.
• Arms VII – Crack Shot. Moved to Adept Tier.

This is one of the changes for warrior. Whoever came up with this at Arenanet, probably argued the following:

It’s too easy for flavour of the month stun-spam warriors to achieve 50% crit damage. bump up to master to make it harder for them to pick up, forcing more of a choice between damage and control.

That’s correct, no doubt about it. But what example Arenanet balance person X probably never realized, is that:

Moving this trait will unhinge a number of builds that rely on the synergy between this trait, the 20-point arms trait Opportunist, and for instance, leg specialist to maintain fury and guarantee 100% critical hit chance on Eviscerates after shieldbash.

To me, and likely others as well, a constructed synergy like that ^ is what making a great build is all about. A real work of art. And it just stopped being viable, because someone at Arenanet is unable or unwilling to look past the bend on these changes.

You could very simply preserve a synergy like that, by not moving Crack Shot, but moving Opportunist to the Adept tier. Your initial goal for the change will be intact, and you won’t have destroyed a number of builds in the process.

Intended or not, when you create a game that builds on synergies, you can’t just forget about those synergies because it’s more convenient when whipping up a quick rebalance. It’s taking the complexity and diversity out of the game.

So please, for the love of god, and for the good of the game, could you appoint or consult someone who plays GuildWars 2 before just putting these things on paper. Preferably someone with a decent grasp of the way different mechanics mesh together.

No offense or incitation intended. This is just something I feel passionately about. And I really really wish Arenanet would too.

Many ele’s asked for changes to the focus last balance update and nothing really happened. We assumed the changes would be too far out of scope in the short timeframe you gave us but figured that when the next balance came around focus would get some love.

It appears not focus could be such a fun weapon to use if fire didn’t suck so bad. Could you at least look into changing the focus skills in fire?

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits.

So long as Evasive Arcana is a Grandmaster trait, Elementalist is an X/X/X/X/30 class. Anything you do further down the Arcana tree is just moving deckchairs on the Titanic. As far as I can remember, Elementalist is the only class where the “on dodge” ability is not a Master level trait.

Necromancer’s in PvP

Response to Patch Notes:

The proposed reduction on the overall condition pressure of necromancers by reducing a few bleeds sounds reasonable!

Increasing the internal cooldown on Weakening Shroud will affect a necromancer’s ability to survive quite substantially.

Reduce the duration of the bleed Weakening Shroud applies instead?

Suggestion for Patch Notes:

I would like to see the trait X, Soul Mark, moved to adept tier.

Questions for Devs:

1. Could there be a change to how the death shroud bar appears for teammates in a party to denote a difference between actual health and life force pool?

2. Has Anet considered allowing necromancer’s to recover actual health while in DS?
—This would make siphons slightly better.
— It would increase necromancer’s ability to sustain in team fights.

On a side note:
Is there any possibility of Lyssa runes being removed from PvP?

JonPeters.5630:

(Quote from JS about the recent elementalist post)

Pretty much agree with everything here. People are over-reacting that diamond skin is overpowered. For a grandmaster trait it’s honestly not that strong, cause let’s face it, how long can an elementalist stay above 90% health? It’s like 3 auto attacks from a pet and it’s gone.

Really glad to see you guys have reconsidered with leaving cleansing wave into the adapt tree as well as certain arcane spells.

JonPeters.5630:

haviz.1340:

Every minor 15 trait for elementalist triggers upon attunement change. Maybe it’s time to make elemental attunement similar, moving it to 15 arcana.

It’s not like lingering elements trait works correctly.

A bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov 26th.

Will this only work for the minor traits or also traits such as air training?

I main an acro thief with crit line and I see some problems with the consistent nerfing on the S/D.

Without dodge, I can’t mitigate damage which forces me to go shadow to have an out or burn utilities that I would otherwise use to shed conditions and keep me up during fights.

Without an instant return, I would almost need to take shadow step to break stun and avoid burst damage which is almost guaranteed against my class due to the low vitality and armor (and I already run a knight’s/berserker armor mix to keep me up). This “force” to a specific utility is counter to promoting a variety of builds.

So far I’ve watched my S/D build get hit with at least three consecutive nerfs, some of which are understandable. I have to manage my initiative, dodge and I have to know when to engage and watch the other person’s CD’s otherwise I’m a dead thief. Also, in PVE, in a pinch I will shadow return to dump conditions which has been a life saver.

If the plan is to root a S/D acro thief, then we should see synergy traits for wielding S/D otherwise we will lose our ability to dodge and deal damage (due to the fact we’ll be dead from burst and roots).