Guild Wars 2

Rosy.5194:

Ele comments:

Many people have already pointed out the issues with the proposed changes to the Water line, along with the Arcana changes. Honestly I don’t see how most builds won’t just gravitate towards 20 in water and at least 20 in arcana (if not the full 30 as usual for Evasive Arcana, the actual reason for buying into arcana, not the cooldown), which hardly increases build diversity.

I also want to point out the lousy condition removal elementalists have currently; unless you run staff, you also cannot share condition removal with allies at all, unless you have Cleansing Wave (and Evasive Arcana) — but now you must spend more in water to keep that ability. Staff is useful for a certain meta in WvW, but is lousy for basically everything else. D/D and S/D (and */F, ha ha ahahaha--ahem) are far more tricky to keep alive in a blob in WvW, being ultra squishy, and I feel required to keep 10 points in earth to stay alive (plus lots of dodging). The changes to water mean I’m going to have to DROP those 10 points, since I have enough problems with getting overwhelmed with conditions as it is.

These are not major issues in PvE. They are very major issues in WvW.

I honestly hope that they listen to not just our worries/complaints/critiques, but every other class that has concerns about their class. A lot of people are bringing up legit honest concerns with the changes and bringing forth viable responses to the changes.

Please Anet, listen to the players that love and play their classes daily and have since launch and beta.

I’m sure it’s been mentioned before but please reconsider

Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

The squishiest class without class specific damage mitigation mechanics needs it the most, yet it’s the only version that is getting moved to a higher tier. This doesn’t make sense.

-We want to make the elementalist less dependent on the arcane line

“put Elemental Attunement on master tier …then post 6 builds ALL with arcana and only one with fire”

Really…

And i know you guys are trying to make staff viable for eles for some time now, but you dont have to nerf D/D to the ground(more than already is) to achieve this.

Warrior:

• Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
• Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.

This is really a huge issue for PvE even though it is probably much needed for WvW. This separation of the 2 really needs to be addressed and am hoping for a dev comment on this.

I completely agree that a few specific traits and a hammer is OP in WvW. but in dungeons it’s already not the greatest because of defiance, unshakable and some enemies with perm stability.

I think that reworking the traits at least for now would be better to see how it pans out. I never use UF or Burst Mastery trait with hammer. Rather trait power(for GS)/defense (for hammer recharge)with shouts heal in tactics

Somewhat understand the goals outlined for warriors, in trying to prevent high C/C and DPS at the same time. However, can someone expand on the following statement when it comes to warriors and the preposed changes?

JonPeters.5630:

Our goal for many of the classes was to increase build diversity while still maintaining class roles and identities. Some of the things we increased were abilities/skills that people don’t run very often. Our goal was to increase these abilities to make them viable alternate builds.

Combined, all the changes below possibly go too far and are borderline overkill and will likely completely destroy the hammer / mace warriors; (other classes rejoice?)

JonPeters.5630:

Warrior:

• Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier.
• Discipline XI – Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed erroneous adrenaline gain fact.
• Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
• Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.
• Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear.

The end result likely been, rather leaving people the choice of alternate viable builds. You are removing current effectiveness of weapon choices outright.

If this change is overkill you have choosen for them. People will have to regear/play another build to keep up.

Mace: Longer to cast, easier to see – Can the range be tweaked slightly (minimal) on this as part of the adjustment? Mace has no other forms or cripple, snare or leap to assist in this landing. Hitting a moving target with server lag as it stands will only get worse.

Hammer: An outright 20% baseline damage debuff for the main attacks on the slowest weapon (high telegraph) in the game combined with the triat changes I think will be too far.

Warriors do need a change with the balance between DPS & C/C, but the combined changes seem possibly overkill.

Again, Why not start with just the changes to UF/BM and the longbow and see how it all evens out with other professions being buffed

If only the public had access to a test server to test changes out vs players with real gear and builds – it wouldn’t be a guessing game and soul destroying when ANET don’t quite get it right pushing to production servers.

Opinions and suggestions regarding possible ranger changes:

1. Long Range Shot - Even if the proposed changes for this skill are for the better, it still doesn’t change the fact that you are actively crippling your damage output if not staying at max range (which isn’t optimal in many cases).
   Suggestion: Equalize damage on all ranges and make it add cripple (1s) when shooting at 1000+ range.
2. Predator’s Instinct - I like this one a lot. Nothing to change here.
3. Beastmaster’s Bond - This change does absolutely nothing as the effect already recharges when you swap pets.
   Suggestion: Make it add retaliation (5s) to the pet.
4. Moment of Clarity - I don’t really like this trait to begin with. Ranger has 2 skills that cause stun, Concussion Shot and Hilt Bash, both of which require flanking to actually inflict the one second stun. I guess the idea here is that the extra 1 second should help the pet to land it’s burst, but for the ranger itself it changes nothing as the only skill you want to use here is Maul or Swoop.
   Suggestion: complete rework – Remove a condition from you and nearby allies on interrupting a foe. You and your pet gain quickness (3s) on successful interrupt.
5. Natural Vigor - This and the old Zephyr’s Speed were the cornerstones of every ranger build. I’m sad to see this one go.
6. Oakheart Salve - Maybe an unnecessary buff to passive trait that is already quite good?
7. Bark skin - Rather than buffing another passive trait, I’d like to see a complete rework into something more active.
   Suggestion: New skill – Dryder’s Defense: You and all nearby allies gain protection (5s) when you use a stun break. You take 50% less damage while stunned.
8. Circle of life - I’d like to see this, Healer’s Celerity and Trapper’s Defense fused into one trait.
   Suggestion: New effect – Create a Healing Spring when reviving an ally (with appropriate cd). Increases revive speed by 10%.
9. Strength of Spirit - I never use this trait as the effects sound so boring.
10. Two Handed Training - I like the change on this one but it could still use little something something.
    Suggestion: Drop the damage bonus and add the following functionality; Blocking reflects projectiles while wielding a greatsword or spear.
11. Enlargement – Again a trait that I never use. No opinion.
12. Nature’s Vengeance / Spirit’s unbound – Good change. I’ve had this idea that the Nature’s Vengeance should be reworked into making spirit actives create combo fields (3s) but that requires some other changes to go with it.
13. Mighty Swap – More might for me! I like this change.
14. Sun Spirit – Good change but the visual effect remains quite flashy.
    Suggestion: Change Solar Flare’s effect into something smaller. It’s too big and bright.
15. Storm Spirit – Another good change but damage-only skills feel dull.
    Suggestion: I’d also like to see Call Lightning’s activation time reduced to quarter-second and making it stun nearby foes for 1 second.

a t s e.9614:

Unspec foes for warrior trait should be instead reduced to 15% crit chance . Because it will allow builds with an already high crit chance to get benefit from it . But otherwise pretty good nerfs , now we have to choose between cleansing ire and bursy matery

But please arenanet don’t touch my thief
Shadow return is useless now or what

the fact that u suggested cleansing ire nerf shows u dont know anything about warrior that is the MAIN skill to deal with condi its the only decent condi clear a warrior has

O.o so many changes we are still in beta stage?

Kelly.5293:

Warrior:

• Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
• Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.

This is really a huge issue for PvE even though it is probably much needed for WvW. This separation of the 2 really needs to be addressed and am hoping for a dev comment on this.

I completely agree that a few specific traits and a hammer is OP in WvW. but in dungeons it’s already not the greatest because of defiance, unshakable and some enemies with perm stability.

I think that reworking the traits at least for now would be better to see how it pans out. I never use UF or Burst Mastery trait with hammer. Rather trait power(for GS)/defense (for hammer recharge)with shouts heal in tactics

I couldn’t agree more. Split unsuspecting foe into PvE/PvP categories. Reduce critical chance for PvP version. Split burst mastery into PvE/PvP and reduce burst damage for PvP. This would adequately addressing the issue with the other changes stated. However it would allow for that one build type to play exactly the same in both modes with only the damage/stun output chain being affected.

Volrath.1473:

Huge buff?! i beg to differ… it is a undeniable nerf, if the init regen traits are getting NERFED by 50% and the natural regen “buffed” by 25% meaning thieves will gain 4 init in 4 sec instead of the current 3 init every 4 sec wile loosing 50% of the regen from traits… I am very bad in math but looking at the numbers HOW can you say it is a BUFF?!

If you look at the actual numbers, over 10 seconds a thief before this change would gain 7.5 initiative, while a thief after this change would gain 10. With Quick Recovery you would gain 9.5 every 10 seconds, you would now earn 11. This is an overall buff to thief initiative sustain, which is to say over the long run thieves will regenerate more initiative than before. This comes at a loss of initiative regen burst, which would be the high cooldown traits that regen initiative like Kleptomaniac and Signet Use. Overall this is a buff.

With these changes there is even less incentive to use a hammer on a PvE warrior sine their main role role there is raw damage. We definitely need to start seeing PvE/PvP ability splitting like GW1 has.

Ranger:
•Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.

Bad idea!
ist one of the best traits the ranger has and makes a ranger more viable because this great trait cost only 5 Points.
The ranger has big issues with doing as much dmg than other classes but we have the possibility to dodge them more than others what makes it more balanced. Thats my opinion.
When u u strongly believe the ranger can evade too many attackes, then u could decrease a little bit the evade time of sword and dagger skills 3 and 4.
please dont nerf the Thing rangers make Special, the cool survivabilty! :/

PS: please add the weakness Duration in the tooltip of axe #3 and the stability Duration of signet of the wild, thanks

Tyler Chapman.1832:

a t s e.9614:

Healing signet needs NO NERF , don’t listen to the whiner . Warrior has no sustain outside of high regen . Those hammer dmg nodes nerf are perfect . But im dissapointed about thief changes honestly , S\D is the only viable build anet

The change to initiative regain baseline is a huge buff to ALL thief builds, so don’t jump so early to those conclusions!

Yup, basically only perma-stealther’s and DodgeAFKer’s (most of the time there the same thing!) are taking the hit and on this i agree. No class should be able to freely reset without down sides or cooldowns.

Serious question: Why does Anet ask for opinions and comments, when all they are going to do is what they proposed in the first place? I can’t recall a time where they posted proposed changes, and things were actually changed/modified, based on the player’s input.

I’m sure there were a couple small things, but I’m referring to balance changes, not QoL improvements and things of that nature that were changed, based on input.

I just look at the posted changes now, and figure those are going to be the changes to expect on the date given. All we are getting, imo, is the illusion of making a difference.

Can I convince you to address poisons and traps instead of shaving thieves initiative (traits), damage, stealth, and ability to dodge on a class that is already regularly hurting on survive-ability?

Kervo.2175:

Somewhat understand the goals outlined for warriors, in trying to prevent high C/C and DPS at the same time. However, can someone expand on the following statement when it comes to warriors and the preposed changes?

JonPeters.5630:

Our goal for many of the classes was to increase build diversity while still maintaining class roles and identities. Some of the things we increased were abilities/skills that people don’t run very often. Our goal was to increase these abilities to make them viable alternate builds.

Combined, all the changes below possibly go too far and are borderline overkill and will likely completely destroy the hammer / mace warriors; (other classes rejoice?)

JonPeters.5630:

Warrior:

• Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier.
• Discipline XI – Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed erroneous adrenaline gain fact.
• Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
• Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.
• Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear.

The end result likely been, rather leaving people the choice of alternate viable builds. You are removing current effectiveness of weapon choices outright.

If this change is overkill you have choosen for them. People will have to regear/play another build to keep up.

Mace: Longer to cast, easier to see – Can the range be tweaked slightly (minimal) on this as part of the adjustment? Mace has no other forms or cripple, snare or leap to assist in this landing. Hitting a moving target with server lag as it stands will only get worse.

Hammer: An outright 20% baseline damage debuff for the main attacks on the slowest weapon (high telegraph) in the game combined with the triat changes I think will be too far.

Warriors do need a change with the balance between DPS & C/C, but the combined changes seem possibly overkill.

Again, Why not start with just the changes to UF/BM and the longbow and see how it all evens out with other professions being buffed

If only the public had access to a test server to test changes out vs players with real gear and builds – it wouldn’t be a guessing game and soul destroying when ANET don’t quite get it right pushing to production servers.

it is over kill. All that dmg on hammer is coming from the crits, UF/BM fixs that since like I explained in my previous post I will have to take the hit in crit dmg or crit chance.

This WILL nerf hammer for any non meta builds(ie hammer shouts).

Still see no chainsaw kit for engi..

Still unhappy

I disagree with the change of unsuspecting foe being moved to master if you are reducing the damage from the stun skills.

Either keep unsuspecting foe as adept and reduce the damage or move unsuspecing foe and keep the damage.

Earthshaker really does not do that much damage without unusepecting foe and even then it doesn’t do great damage when a warrior is tanky. The damage is OK right now, I would rather it go up but since I only run a tanky in WvW, realisticly it isn’t going to go up unless in increase the zerker gear pieces.

In general at reducing the DPS of a warrior, when they are tanky, they really don’t do a whole lot of damage. All you are going to do is force them to run or just not include tanky warriors in small groups.

Right now, as a warrior, there are plenty of viable builds and gear combinations to go with those builds and I don’t care to see that go away. I would really like it if you set the other professions to have a wide variety of builds instead of nerfing a few professions buids that others have trouble with, and stop listeing to people when they cry for a nerf. Not every build from every profession is going to be able to counter every build from every profession and people really need to realise that because it is impossible to build for such.

Thief changes are forcing us towards D/P as the only viable weapon set by nerfing what’s really the only remaining strength of the S/D.

Nerfing the evades and saying you want to improve thief survivability through Acrobatics is a bit contradictory given that the tree is based around evades.

Phenn.5167:

Jayce.5632:

Mark of Blood like all other marks goes on full cooldown when cancelled/interrupted

So do Well of Power, Life Siphon, and Tainted Shackles.

Well of Power: as a stun break it’s instant cast, so it counts as used even if you interrupt/cancel the well later.
Life Siphon is a channeling skill.
Not true for Tainted Shackles.

Butnaked.9287:

Kervo.2175:

Somewhat understand the goals outlined for warriors, in trying to prevent high C/C and DPS at the same time. However, can someone expand on the following statement when it comes to warriors and the preposed changes?

JonPeters.5630:

Our goal for many of the classes was to increase build diversity while still maintaining class roles and identities. Some of the things we increased were abilities/skills that people don’t run very often. Our goal was to increase these abilities to make them viable alternate builds.

Combined, all the changes below possibly go too far and are borderline overkill and will likely completely destroy the hammer / mace warriors; (other classes rejoice?)

JonPeters.5630:

Warrior:

• Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier.
• Discipline XI – Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed erroneous adrenaline gain fact.
• Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
• Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.
• Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear.

The end result likely been, rather leaving people the choice of alternate viable builds. You are removing current effectiveness of weapon choices outright.

If this change is overkill you have choosen for them. People will have to regear/play another build to keep up.

Mace: Longer to cast, easier to see – Can the range be tweaked slightly (minimal) on this as part of the adjustment? Mace has no other forms or cripple, snare or leap to assist in this landing. Hitting a moving target with server lag as it stands will only get worse.

Hammer: An outright 20% baseline damage debuff for the main attacks on the slowest weapon (high telegraph) in the game combined with the triat changes I think will be too far.

Warriors do need a change with the balance between DPS & C/C, but the combined changes seem possibly overkill.

Again, Why not start with just the changes to UF/BM and the longbow and see how it all evens out with other professions being buffed

If only the public had access to a test server to test changes out vs players with real gear and builds – it wouldn’t be a guessing game and soul destroying when ANET don’t quite get it right pushing to production servers.

it is over kill. All that dmg on hammer is coming from the crits, UF/BM fixs that since like I explained in my previous post I will have to take the hit in crit dmg or crit chance.

This WILL nerf hammer for any non meta builds(ie hammer shouts).

I completely agree. I was so happy they buffed shouts but now if i want to play hammer i will have to trait only towards damage to make up for this loss in PvE.

I have been an engie since beta. I have not one, but TWO level 80’s in this profession. And I have only one problem. One that has annoyed me since day one. The healing turret. Why does this annoy me, you ask? Because it draws aggro and can be killed, just like the rest of our turrets. No other class has an AOE heal that draws aggro or can be destroyed by the mobs. Can you PLEASE fix this for us?

Mostly decent changes, but the Vigor aspect of it is woefully inconsistent.

Guardians and Mesmers still have perma Vigor kitten pt minor traits while Ele’s exact same trait is moved to Master, and Engy and Thief can no longer maintain perma vigor through traits alone.

Consistency is important in making balance changes.

On a related note: “… We don’t like classes having permanent Vigor …”

So then why exactly are these Vigor on Crit traits, that essentially grant perma vigor with even a tiny amount of extra boon duration, completely unchanged?

Lastly, Shadow Return and Evasion are two of the ONLY viable defensive mechanics for Thieves in sPvP (Stealth is not viable since you loose the ability to contest points). Both are certainly slightly over the top in the current meta, but nerfing both in the same patch is definitely a bad idea and could have massive implications for Thief viability in sPvP.

they cant do a split between pve and WvW because technically WvW is still pve. The only splits can happen is between pvp and pve because pvp is a totally different game type as of right now so it aint goona happen. Personally i think warrior will be alot more balanced now those nerfs was needed be lucky u didnt get healing signet nerfed aswell.

You guys can defend it all u like but ive seen alot upon loads of warrior vids of thier hammers hitting well over 7k damage thats pretty ridiculous and these guys wasnt even full zerker either so thats saying something and thats probably why that nerfed happened. Now alot of classes can actually deal with a warrior and lets face it that skullcrack nerf was incomming to deal with the asuras animations since they cant do anything about it they made it more obvious to see. Blame the asurans.

Thank’s for the preview. Some of the changes are very much needed (Especially warrior nerfs) and I’m glad we get to have a say in what happens. As a necromancer player I am pleased Chill of death, Deadly strength and Re-animator boosts. Chill of death will prevent players escaping and Re-animator is finally decent. Some of these are in the right direction. That said Our class is still lacking a proper sustain mechanism. Our Siphoning sucks compared to the warriors healing signet and I would like a proper explanation as to why our entire bloodline is outdone by a single skill If its possible. We have no vigor and almost no way of dealing with the ping pong effect despite having more access to stun breaks and stability then any other class aside from guards. Lich form, spectrals and well of power can only protect you for so long. So if your going want Necromancers to be anything more then Glass Fearmancers in PvP or Anti-zerg artillery in WvW. These core issues are going to have to be addressed. I would say something about Duumbfire but enough has been said on it already.

So I would start with sustain. If we cant have Vigor or mass healing then give us a way to siphon endurance off our enemies. Vampuric Rituals and Vampuric precision are currently lacklustre so the easiest thing you could do is slap a (you gain 5% endurance per pulse or crit-hit in addition to there current effects). It fits with our theme of aggression, boosts the bloodline and we no longer get insta gibbed at boss’s. I would also make Blood to power an adept major trait and make Bloodthirst the grandmaster Minor since it would allow us more options without changing how siphoning currently works

Next Get rid of protection of the Hoard as it by far is the most useless triat we have. Even in a minion build its useless. at best it 100 extra toughness something I can get from food and at worst it does nothing. Just remove it and put either repears protection, Spiteful vigor or Shrouded removal in its place and then make a new major trait. Either one of these options gives us more defence and makes death magic far more desirable. I would go for Repears protection because as much as people hate fear it would give us an answer to the ping pong effect and a means to escape. Again it fits with our theme and it would make people wary of unloading 1000+ stuns on us.

Other things I would consider include merging vampuric rituals and mastery, Getting rid of greater marks and just adding unblockable to staff mastery and making a new staff trait. and merging dagger mastery and quickening thrist.

When you look theres a lot you can do for the class that’s easy and wont break balance and I hope some of what I have suggested gets considered. Thanks again for the preview tho. Its appreaciated

First of all, I want to thank you guys for FINALLY giving players the opportunity to discuss changes BEFORE they are made! This is a huge improvement that many of us have been begging for almost ever since the first balance update. They way you have implemented it isn’t practical though, as evident of how quickly this thread is bloating and how spastic the replies are. There needs to be a separate thread for each profession in the profession forums so replies, issues and inquires are more focused and easily understood. Still, it feels good to know that you guys are finally listening in a proper manner.

Second, I suggested long ago that you should first ask players what changes they want and what they are willing to give up for those changes to be made, should you feel it necessary to avoid power creep. I still feel that is better than making changes and then asking if the reasoning behind them is understandable.

Third, numbers mean nothing if it doesn’t feel right and no matter how great a handful of testers are, it’s always better to have the opinion of the majority. Basically, you ***need*** an ***open*** beta test server! I cannot stress that enough! How you restrict access to it is up to you but all players should have a chance at getting on it.

Last, as for the “on paper” changes, I only have one complaint: stop trying to insist that all elementalists should swap between all of the attunements to be effective. That should be an option, not the norm. Give ALL elementalists the ability to weapon-swap and the press of a button out-of-combat and then give the option to do so in-combat at the cost of 2 elements. This way elementalists will still have 20 skills to choose from but some can go 10 fire and 10 air instead of 5 of everything. They will also gain the option to switch from melee to range combat while in combat, which is another major complaint.

I know you said by December 10th but have faith in your players. If you announced this was going to happen right now and told them it would take 3 months to properly implement, you would still see a party on the elementalists forums.

Every ele will now be running diamond skin.

I play a 20/10/0/30/10 Aurashare build on my Elementalist.
The point of my build is sharing boons with my team and healing. It does great in dungeons and pve but struggles a bit in pvp and wvw.

Moving Elemental Attunement to Master tier is a big hit to the support of my build as I can no longer provide Protection or Regeneration on Earth and Water swaps which added greatly to my team and I’s survival.

I understand you are trying to steer people away from the Arcana line, but this is giving me the need to further invest in it. I don’t understand what changing the Water Magic line has to do with your Anti-Arcana goal either.

Well long story short, it feels like GW2 is very DPS/Berserker build oriented, but with the build I’ve been using I found a way to play in the Supportive/Healing style I enjoy. Unfortunately the upcoming changes you’ve detailed here are going to force me to become more DPS focused.
I’ve already shelved my Ranger due to changes since launch, please don’t make me do the same with my Ele.

Some good Ranger changes and can’t wait to try them out but still needs some condensing of Longbow traits as their is basically 4 LB traits fighting for your trait points, 3 of which fighting it out over 2 Marksmen spots along with some very good none longbow marksmen traits. Also Master tier Beastmaster traits are still a barren wasteland of uselessness. As is Instinctual Bond, please replace that with something useful (or at the very least swap it back with Zephyr’s speed so we can go back to ignoring it).

Mighty Swap looks like it will be the first time Rangers get an actual benefit out of their Mechanic since you took away quickness on swap. But the mechanic still needs to go under heavy review especially in World vs World or new hard PvE content like Tequetl and Liadra.

Mesmers still need some OoC movement increases and I still think IC should be moved back to 5 trait points.

Hynoris.3684:

-We want to make the elementalist less dependent on the arcane line

“put Elemental Attunement on master tier …then post 6 builds ALL with arcana and only one with fire”

Really…

And i know you guys are trying to make staff viable for eles for some time now, but you dont have to nerf D/D to the ground(more than already is) to achieve this.

SERIOUSLY ANET… IF YOU WANT CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK, PLEASE REFER TO EACH CLASSES SPECIFIC FORUMS SO NOTHING FROM ANY OF THE CLASSES GETS LOST IN THE CLUTTER!!!!

Please do not flat out destroy ANY d/d build for the ele…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/December-10th-Elementalist-changes/first

Please take quickening thirst and dagger mastery and make them one trait, then add a trait that adds a life steal to daggers. As it is right now the life stealing traits and the dagger traits a still a bit lack luster. It hard to justify giving up our one good sorce of stability and crit damage to go into those traits.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

There actually is counter play to [Diamond skin] unlike some other similar mechanics. The goal of the elementalist with this trait is to stay above 90% hit points while the counter play is to do a bit of physical damage to the elementalist to drop them below this threshold in order to get the conditions rolling on them, which will in turn help keep them below that threshold.

In SPvP an elementalist can reach a maximum of around 20,000-21,000 hit points. This means that 2100 would be the most damage you would need to do to an elementalist to break through this trait and in most cases it would be a lower amount than that. That is not very much damage needed to do in order to start applying conditions. This still leaves room for the elementalist using healing traits/skills and kiting to try to stay above that threshold to increase their survivability vs conditions.

We have been doing internal testing and it feels like it in a good place for a tier 3 trait. That being said though and as a reminder, none of these changes are set in stone yet and are subject to change.

Bear in mind that your proposed Diamond Skin is, by definition, useless 90% of the time.. at least a fair number of players will see it that way.

I can’t see relying on staying at 90+% health as a reliable strategy for condi control as in practise, Eles spend most if not all of a fight <90% health, under which circumstances this trait does nothing.

Not a good trait at the GM level IMO. GM traits IMO should be spec-defining, and this trait certainly doesn’t do that.

just incase the devs didn’t see it.

unsuspecting foe/burst mastery is enough to tone down hammer dmg since now I have to make a choice between.

a) dropping 10 points from discipline to get UF and losing a lot of crit dmg

b) dropping 10 from defense and losing merciless hammer(because cleansing ire IS a requirement).

c) or just shifting that 10 points that would have given me UF somewhere else(which wouldn’t give me any crits/crit dmg at all).

to get those big hammer hits I NEED TO CRIT and with these changes no matter what I do I lose crit dmg/crit chance or both. Nerfing hammer dmg WILL hurt non meta hammer builds and im positive the build ur trying to nerf IS the meta build.

Too many posts have already been made for me to read all of em, so I will just ask here.
I have seen a couple of posts but no answer for berserker stance. I know that it is bugged atm. and I am not saying that it is OP or anything. It just annoys me that the bug itself makes this skill extremly good. If they are at least fixing the buff I woulnd’t mind, or just change its description to “You become a god, and you are immune to all conditions for 8 seconds.”

Was there any answer for this stance? In this topic? Or anywhere actually.

Hey dev’s thanks for this>

•Alchemy 15 – Transmute. Increased % chance from 8% to 100%. This effect can now only trigger once every 15 seconds.

The one thing i think you guys need to look at however is as a class we definately have condi clean issue’s when not specing alchemy. heck all or cleanse comes from elixirs exept the turret and skill 4 on med kit. mabie you should look into mabie introducing condi cleanse in the inventions line (On elixer infused bombs with an internal cooldown for example.) or some gadgets. goggles removing blind, confusion and fear for example. hey it would be awsome if each gadget removed a set of defined conditions they would see play and get used in builds then. heck rocket boots is allready made like this i think you guys just need to go the same way to make them viable. just saying cuz its basically go alchemy if you want condi cleanse.

Thief:
One of the issues we are working on for thieves this patch is the dependence on the traits which boost initiative.

FYI thief needs initiative to use any weapon skill and as a result use on average 2 skills, 3 depending on his weapon choice, while others can pop 4+ onto that same thief.

We have also somewhat reduced the effectiveness of high evasion thieves by reducing vigor up time…

Wouldn’t want a thief to be evasive because the average thief has such high hp and armor

This prevents these thieves from evading too much and too easily dealing with being disabled (stun, daze, fear, knockdown, etc.).

Yea because thieves have soooo many skills with stability and stun break.

Also we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait

Which seems an oxymoron concidering what the sentence just prior to this is implying.

This will reward thieves who are actively engaged in the fight rather than those who are just dodging over and over again.

Huh?

This should keep thieves from being able to recharge all of their power

Well what’s the point of going into combat then? Cannon fodder?

We felt that using a lot of different abilities to maintain stealth is ok

It’s “ok”? Really?

I recall a state of the game video where a dev said a thief is suppose to be slippery and fast on the battlefield. What happened to him? Is he living out of a cardboard box under a bridge somewhere. I have seen mesmers that can out cloak a thief, warriors that outrun everyone, eles that put out more dps, rangers that can block almost everything and nobody is susceptible to basilik poison. In short, a thief is becoming worse then lvl ups in the zerg/group and laughable if they want to roam. So what’s the end game for the thief? Just cut to the bottom line because this is agonizing.

I can agree with some aspects of thief changes / nerfs, but the vigor nerf through traits is a bit too much. I agree with whomever suggested a 25% nerf to vigorous recovery & bountiful theft rather than starting with a 50% nerf. It will still help deal with evade spamming thieves while making them slightly less prevalent and will stop other builds from feeling ruined. Shaving, not whack a mole, am I right?

Everything else looks promising enough honestly … so lastly, I would just like to suggest a little love to condition thieves and D/D for kitten’s sake. I mean … please … sword mainhand warriors have the potential to get 19 stacks of bleed from just auto attacking alone. It got me thinking and wanted to suggest the following, among other things.
—-
• Add 2x stacks of 5 second bleeds to mainhand dagger’s first attack chain, double strike, applying one bleed per strike (of two) that hits an enemy target. That might not seem like much to many … but as someone who desperately tries to run as a condi thief, this would be a very welcomed change.

• Increase the evasion duration for Death Blossom. As it is, roughly 30% evasive time to 70% vulnerability time, this “evasive” attack doesn’t work very reliably in PvP, especially considering it’s low front end damage in place for lengthy bleeds that have many sources to passively deal with them and with bleeds as a primary source of damage as a condi thief, this makes our damage more easily countered into oblivion without even being CC’d mid animation of the attack due to such short evade duration.

• ^ In light of Death Blossom’s damage … reduce the duration of bleeds to 5 seconds while increasing the stacks of bleed by 2x so that each hit of death blossom that lands applies two bleeds instead of one. Another variation of this would be for 1x bleed and 1x torment stack per death blossom hit that lands. This would be huge in terms of layering and applying more consistent condition pressure which is something that really seems to be an issue with the attack and severely gimps the DPS potential in PvP. I mean it’s either that, or give it more immediate damage so power thieves have something else to viably use before switching over to 2.

• P/D … Ricochet is nice … but shots being unable to pierce really hurt this weapon set, especially when considering a fuster cluck of AI minions and or turrets everywhere.
—-
I will say from much experience trying to roll condi that I find both weapon sets (D/D) & (P/D) hard to swap to and use effectively when coming from and comparing them to a short bow, of which, I will argue is thieves strongest all around condition damage weapon we have available. Short bow is ranged, has decent front end damage, as well as the ability to stack bleeds and lay down poison aoe while playing it safe as you whittle down your opponents. It’s the “what to swap to” to finish them off or just deal with different situations or trying to apply more pressure that’s really hard to manage / even find room for what the bow does not already cover just fine.

I just want to agree with many Elementalist concerns about the major nerfs to Elemental Attunement/Renewing Stamina and Cleansing Wave.

The reason why moving all of these to Master is a bad move is b/c ele survivability is already laughable. We die to condi-spam just like Mesmers do, so you give Mes. a VERY powerful 10-point trait (2-condi clear on every heal), yet nerf ele’s condi clear trait further. Then on top of it, you make their dodging harder, and boon-access harder. Mesmer’s for FIVE points can perma-vigor dodge + stealth. How is ele supposed to survive? Stun people with aura’s that still make them eat large damage spikes?

I fear you are pushing ele into a steathless mage-thief with these changes, without actually providing real viable sustain builds. Seems to be a little inconsistent. Please reconsider so many pre-emptive nerfs that don’t address current core issues.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

vangedas.7358:

Diamond Skin

- this can be absurdly broken. Please, please, do not go with this. Not only pure passive immunity to conditions is very powerful, cheesy and and cannot be counter-played, but this new trait would literally kill specs like trap ranger, not to mention it would hurt necromancers.
Once again, do not go with this trait, it would be a huge mistake.

There actually is counter play to this trait unlike some other similar mechanics. The goal of the elementalist with this trait is to stay above 90% hit points while the counter play is to do a bit of physical damage to the elementalist to drop them below this threshold in order to get the conditions rolling on them, which will in turn help keep them below that threshold.

In SPvP an elementalist can reach a maximum of around 20,000-21,000 hit points. This means that 2100 would be the most damage you would need to do to an elementalist to break through this trait and in most cases it would be a lower amount than that. That is not very much damage needed to do in order to start applying conditions. This still leaves room for the elementalist using healing traits/skills and kiting to try to stay above that threshold to increase their survivability vs conditions.

We have been doing internal testing and it feels like it in a good place for a tier 3 trait. That being said though and as a reminder, none of these changes are set in stone yet and are subject to change.

I think we need to have a serious discussion on the subject of ‘immunity’.

Firstly, it’s nice to see a mention of counter play, but I really think you are missing the point. Why does it need to offer imunity? Why not -80% condition duration? Then you could set it to 85% health and make it far more balenced as a GM trait. Do we really need passive immunity traits?

Secondly, why is automated response also perfect immunity? Why isn’t this -80%? That way condition builds could still impact the class, but it would be dramatically more difficult. Then as the actual conditional could be made more balenced.

This is where a lot of rage comes from. You guys totally overextend into passive or spammable aspects and don’t seem to understand why people get so angry about it. Passive traits should not be so strong as to block an entite build type when a conditional is met. Sure, you could stack condi’s on the engine when he is at 30% health, but that relies on him getting to 30% in the first place, also him not having a counter ready at that point.

Please, just change these traits and zerker stance to give a flat out reduction and not immunity. You are adding hard counters, based on passive traits. This is not balence. This is creating a rock-paper-siccors situation. This does not lead to fun or thoughtful gameplay.

FWIW, I don’t play a condi necro/ranger, my mains are mes and ele and use a variety of builds on both. I just get so frustrated seeing how these things go on and on without acknowledging the actual issue.

Edit; ‘Set in stone’. Nice pun. :P

The Elementalist changes seem like a huge nerf to most of the current builds. All 4 of the water and arcane skills that got moved are skills that I regularly use.

Can someone explain to me how the lowest health, lowest armor profession does not do the most damage at melee range? That seems like a perfect high risk, high reward scenario. Yet my guardian does more damage, and has infinitely more survivability.

What is the justification for the ele being so squishy, if the damage output is not there?

BlackBeard.2873:

I just want to agree with many Elementalist concerns about the major nerfs to Elemental Attunement/Renewing Stamina and Cleansing Wave.

The reason why moving all of these to Master is a bad move is b/c ele survivability is already laughable. We die to condi-spam just like Mesmers do, so you give Mes. a VERY powerful 10-point trait (2-condi clear on every heal), yet nerf ele’s condi clear trait further. Then on top of it, you make their dodging harder, and boon-access harder. Mesmer’s for FIVE points can perma-vigor dodge + stealth. How is ele supposed to survive? Stun people with aura’s that still make them eat large damage spikes?

I fear you are pushing ele into a steathless mage-thief with these changes, without actually providing real viable sustain builds. Seems to be a little inconsistent. Please reconsider so many pre-emptive nerfs that don’t address current core issues.

Very well said and i agree 100%.

PLEASE for once, listen to players concerns/critiques.

Not to sound negative but changes to elementalist seems to nerf survivability a bit. Being the squishiest class available (lowest hp, light armor) with no passive defenses or evades seem a bit unfair.

Devs have taken away mobility (RTL nerf), heals (EA internal cd of 9 sec and healing co-efficients), buffs (through boon stealing-removal or boon hate type traits given to other classes) but given nothing in return leaving ele’s as the least played class in pvp tournaments.

Taking 50-60 points into water and arcane traits is a must if you plan on running solo or small groups. Without those traits ele’s die far to easily and now you want to bump up some of those traits to master tier lvl? Even if people chose to place 30 into arcana line they still will lose out either elemental attunement or renewing stamina (protection buff generation or increased dodge ability) and this sounds like a big nerf to survival.

What do ele’s get in return? A 2 sec reduction on attunement swap. Slightly lower cd on a few utilities……..

With all the power creep from equipment and “balancing” other classes, elementalist are having a hard time staying alive long enough to be of benefit to groups in sPVP or WvW, which is why there is less and less of them playing (they are becoming rally bait- more of a detriment to the group).

IMHO elemental attunement trait should be a built in passive as part of the class mechanic, attunement recharge have a base of 10 sec, and perhaps specific condition removal for each minor (air 5=cripple removal, fire 5=chill removal, earth 5=burning removal, water 5 bleed or poison removal) which would make attunement swapping important to survival.

These changes would decrease the need for water/arcane trait lines.

Elementalist changes…

I see a buff to staff and scepter, and a nerf to dagger users…

You say you want to have less ele’s go deep into arcane, but these changes have the exact opposite effect. I see other people have posted similar things, but I don’t think this can be stressed enough.

I use a dagger/focus and revolve around crit damage. I use 0/30/10/10/20.

For my build at least, these changes force me to go full 30 into arcane now. Elemental Attunement isn’t even staying in adept to sorta-compensate. And side-rant, ele has lowest toughness and vit – having to go full into a traitline that gives only boon duration and profession mechanic buffs isn’t helping…

Three positive changes I like:

Air XI – Tempest Defense. Decreased the cooldown from 60s to 25s.
- Not sure how many people use this, but I do – so awesome news!!!

Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff. Moved to Adept tier.
- This is huge for staff users!

Fire VIII – Conjurer – Moved to Adept tier.
- I hope to see/create some interesting conjure builds.

Three changes that I either don’t see the reason behind, or negatively affects my build:

Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.
- This was very handy for removing a immobilize. Now it is in master and no other adept water trait would ever make it worth it to go that far. I take this trait over evasive arcana any day, having it in master locks anyone who is not bunker out of using it, giving them less options to keep an innately fragile class off the floor…Not like anyone was whining about this being OP were they…?

Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.
- This is the biggest one. You say you don’t like permanent vigor. Forgive me, but I don’t see guardian/mesmer’s 5-points vigor on crit affected. The most fragile of those classes already had it as a major trait, now its buried as a major in Master tier???? No hablas espanol!

Arcane III – Arcane Retribution. Moved to Master tier.
- This is personally annoying to my build – probably doesn’t affect too many other people though. Is it really that big a deal that it has to be master? I can see Elemental Attunement being master, but not this.

Love to see D/P perma stealth trollface teeth kicked in. However there is one issue with shadow arts tree 5 point minor trait (last refuge ) that has been discussed by thieves over and over and by most agreed that it is much more harmful then helpful, specially for x/d stealth based builds. Imho it shoud be moved into 10 points traits, so ppl that like it still could use it. As for what should fill its spot… infusion of shadow/shadows embrace or cloaked in shadow would be best candidates. This would bring x/d stealth thieves up in the food chain a little, since in curent heavy aoe/condi meta they are really lacking. All those 3 traits combined with shadow rejuvenation would give thief x/d more staying power and grp support via blinds from CnD instead of burst, stealth up, completaly reset the fight and come back again to repeat, while very other class can enjoy combat while thief has to abuse combat/hp reset mechanics.

JonPeters.5630:

Thief:

• Increased the base rate of initiative gain from .75/second to 1/second.
• Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.
• Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.
• Deadly Arts VI – Sundering Strikes. Increased the trigger chance from 50%. Remove ICD. Decrease Vulnerability duration to 6s.
• Critical Strikes VI – Practiced Tolerance. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
• Critical Strikes 15 – Opportunist. Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase cooldown from 1s to 5s.
• Critical Strikes VIII – Signet Use. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
• Critical Strike X – Critical Haste. Increase trigger chance to 25%.
• Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.
• Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 4s from 8s.
• Acrobatics IV – Assassin’s Retreat. Increased swiftness duration to 20s.
• Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
• Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
• Acrobatics XI – Hard to catch. Moved to Master Tier.
• Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Reduce initiative gain from 3 to 2.
• Trickery IV – Flanking Strikes. Move to Master tier.
• Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 8s.
• Trickery VIII – Trickster. Move to Adept tier.

Ok, let’s see…

Initiative gains/losses – 25% passive buff, Critical Strikes 15 100+% nerf, Critical Strikes VIII 50% nerf, Acrobatics IX 50% nerf, Trickery V 33% nerf. See a pattern? So yeah, I don’t like it.

Shadow Return… no. NO. NO! Stop it already! I have played S/D since January and SR is what was making the set cool. First you nerf the stunbreak, then the range(this was justifiable though, I admit)… Just no. You will break not only pvp, but pve too for all admirers of S/x with this.

Pistol whip – can’t you just make the stun 1s, how it was before before you unintentionally(I hope) made it useless in pvp setting? So now we get .25s aftercast improvement, so from the previous unintentional(as I said – I hope) 50% nerf they unnerf it by 50%, so the skill is buffed by 25%, which takes him up back to 75% efficiency. Confused yet? BTW PW relied, in most cases, a lot on procs from CS15, so it is still hit by the initiative nerfs.

Deadly arts VI – it looks interesting.

Critical Strikes VI – in tone with the other similar buffs.

Critical Strikes X – it’s definitely better than now, although I think most thieves would prefer 10% trigger chance, but 4s haste.

Shadow Arts V – I like this change, it just felt D/P was too cheesy.

Acrobatics III – 50% nerf… again with the pattern.

Acrobatics IV – never used it.

Acrobatics X – as other have mentioned – ~120hp more isn’t that “grandmastery”, see below

Acrobatics XI – too random, better keep this GM, but make it less random like “Stunbreak and gain swiftness and stability for 10s when you are disabled”, kitten CD.

Trickery IV swapped with Trickery VIII – I can live with that.

Trickery VII – again almost 50% straight nerf.

I am not happy at all. We might as well call this “the 50% nerf patch”.

Terra Dactyl.2047:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

vangedas.7358:

Diamond Skin

- this can be absurdly broken. Please, please, do not go with this. Not only pure passive immunity to conditions is very powerful, cheesy and and cannot be counter-played, but this new trait would literally kill specs like trap ranger, not to mention it would hurt necromancers.
Once again, do not go with this trait, it would be a huge mistake.

There actually is counter play to this trait unlike some other similar mechanics. The goal of the elementalist with this trait is to stay above 90% hit points while the counter play is to do a bit of physical damage to the elementalist to drop them below this threshold in order to get the conditions rolling on them, which will in turn help keep them below that threshold.

In SPvP an elementalist can reach a maximum of around 20,000-21,000 hit points. This means that 2100 would be the most damage you would need to do to an elementalist to break through this trait and in most cases it would be a lower amount than that. That is not very much damage needed to do in order to start applying conditions. This still leaves room for the elementalist using healing traits/skills and kiting to try to stay above that threshold to increase their survivability vs conditions.

We have been doing internal testing and it feels like it in a good place for a tier 3 trait. That being said though and as a reminder, none of these changes are set in stone yet and are subject to change.

translation: counter play is to hit the elementalist once or twice, as a single autoattack is likely going to deal 10% of their hp in damage, and they won’t be able to dodge since they no longer have vigor.

And note most eles run with 12k-15k hp in spvp. I guess necros with 18k-30k hp don’t usually worry about low health pools and thresholds.

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.

Seigfried.5938:

Every ele will now be running diamond skin.

I won’t. Why bother when even a necromancer with low power and high crit chance will get you below 90% health in a few attacks?

The +10% damage from Vital Striking and Superior Rune of the Scholar only work when you have a suprise attack. One or two hits and you are won’t gain anything anymore. It’s even worse with the new Diamond Skin proposal. I don’t understand why you believe it to be that strong. It feels like a master tier at best.

I think i would support removing UF and BM traits entirely before taking away hammers base dmg. This wouldn’t kill hammers in PvE and would be a decent blow to WvW. I shouldn’t be forced to run full zerker to get decent dmg out of a hammer in PvE.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

The changes we’ve done to Ele are actually going to drastically increase the amount of build diversity. The arcane recharge change really does add the flow the Elementalist needed when not spending points in Arcane. This will now allow players to stray away from spending points in the Arcane line. Ele’s will now experience faster attunement swapping as well because they will be down to 1.5s globals when they have zero points spent in Arcane and 1.2s globals with 30 points.

This makes:
13 second recharge on 0 points Arcane
12 second recharge with 10 points Arcane
11 second recharge with 20 points Arcane
10 second recharge with 30 points Arcane

Dagger ele’s will now have new specs through Tempest Defense, Elemental Shielding, and Shared Auras much more appealing, as well as being able to go up the Fire and Earth trees.

Scepter ele’s will be able to play some forms of condition builds, burst builds with more sustain, and even bunker builds.

Staff ele’s will now be able to get blasting staff from tier one and now be capable of going for a trait such as Diamond Skin, or even Fresh air or high up in the Fire line.

You say this will help build diversity, but the trait moves make some often used trait combinations impossible. The other changes MIGHT make certain things see more use. You’re definitely hurting current options because of a maybe.

People didn’t put points into arcana just for faster attunement swapping. Elemental attunement and renewing stamina are important traits. You expect people to use arcana less, but you tell them they need 20 points in it for vigor. Whether this allows people to stray from arcana depends on whether the profession with low hp and armor needs to avoid being hit with endurance, reduce damage with protection, heal with regen and just generally make up for their lack of stats with boons. Diogo brought up this very issue. You quoted it, but didn’t address that issue really.

Cleansing wave needs to stay adept. Ele will have zero adept traits that remove conditions if you move this to master. Honestly, I really shouldn’t have to say more than that. The condition meta is still very strong. You can’t improve build diversity by making it harder to get something so basic that you need to survive. Cleansing wave isn’t even that powerful. 1 condition every 12 seconds (assuming you leave water immediately) isn’t strong enough to be too much power creep. It is aoe, but the radius has always been small.

Eles will never really have condition builds unless they get more conditions. Eles have burning and bleeding, and they aren’t even that great at applying burning. If you want to give eles condi builds, give us traits that allow us to apply new conditions. Bleeds have a chance to apply torment. Burning has a chance to apply poison. When chill you apply ends, foes are confused. There isn’t any respectable condition build used on another profession that only has 2 damage conditions to its name.

Blasting staff- Guardians got their symbol enlarging trait for free. Engineers got their bomb trait for free. How long until eles get the same? Some of the staff skills have truly pitiful radii without the trait.

Also, the changes you’re planning on will shift ele bunker from active to passive defense. You go from defensive boons on attunement swap and vigor for attacking constantly to just being immune to conditions while at full hp, having more armor and another automatic defensive utility trait. Even if the new traits are awesome, encouraging more reliance on completely passive traits and hard counters hurts the game. They’re boring to use and can be frustrating to play against. Plus, the last noteworthy patch tried to give professions more support options, but you’re reversing any good that did for eles by making it harder to take elemental attunement and cleansing wave, aoe traits, because of new traits that only benefit the user.