Guild Wars 2

Something needs to change. When HoT launched it was exciting. We were all pretty pumped to see our favorite classes expanded upon and try out the new skills, traits, weapons, and builds. Once the novelty of it all wore off, we were left with the incredibly lame reality that these new elite specializations were not the god send we had hoped for. Instead of increasing build diversity across the board, it put nearly every single profession in the position of essentially needing to take this magical trait-line in order to remain competitive. Now from Anet’s standpoint, I can see the appeal. It allows them to market the game as essentially free so that new potential players will be enticed to give it a whirl. Once they hit level cap, they will realize that in order for their characters to be competitively viable they will need to run a build using an elite specialization, which hopefully causes them to pay $$$ for the expansion. It makes sense as a marketing scheme, but it doesn’t make sense for a fun game. In order to achieve the effect that Anet was after, these elite specs needed to be strong enough to make them essentially a requirement for any build. By doing so, not only did they increase the maximum potential damage output of nearly every profession, but they made each and every class incredibly easy to play to a certain degree of effectiveness. Had this idea of theirs ended up making it possible for classes to be more powerful without also making it insanely easy to achieve that degree of power, I wouldn’t be bothered by it to the extent that I am. Think of it like this. Each and every build in the game has a maximum in terms of its combat potential; a skill ceiling. The final output of each build in terms of its damage and survive-ability may differ, but they all have this point where no matter how good you are, its physically impossible to do anymore than you are currently doing with said build. Once this ceiling is reached, it wont matter how much “better” you are then your enemy, assuming they have also reached this ceiling. Heart of thorns raised the maximum output in terms of damage and survive-ability, while simultaneously lowering the skill ceiling of these optimal builds. The result is that it no longer feels like the skill>build>gear game that I initially purchased back in 2012. We are pigeon-holed into using an elite specialization that is way too powerful and way too easy to play. Is this ever going to change?

Subject A: Horse
Subject A condition: Dead
Subject B: Kicking Subject A

Please stop, it’ll get maybe fixed with the next set of elite specs.

Rayden.3695:

Subject A: Horse
Subject A condition: Dead
Subject B: Kicking Subject A

Please stop, it’ll get maybe fixed with the next set of elite specs.

Maybe subject C needs to see more kicking of subject A before they realize something needs to be done about its condition.

No idea what you are talking about,
I would never think about using Tempest on my Ele because I would need to change my play style of “staying the kitten away from the enemy”
going so close as to actually use the overloads is out of the question so the complete specialization would be an absolute waste of a otherwise usable specialization slot.

Also I would never pick druid when i wanted a build not focused on healing and support.

Thing is that most elite specializations support the play style people use on there classes anyway, so surprise, everybody uses the elite specializations to enhance there old tactics (“tactics” as in hitting things with the highest possible damage as quick as possible).

Griffin.5379:

No idea what you are talking about,
I would never think about using Tempest on my Ele because I would need to change my play style of “staying the kitten away from the enemy”
going so close as to actually use the overloads is out of the question so the complete specialization would be an absolute waste of a otherwise usable specialization slot.

Also I would never pick druid when i wanted a build not focused on healing and support.

Thing is that most elite specializations support the play style people use on there classes anyway, so surprise, everybody uses the elite specializations to enhance there old tactics (“tactics” as in hitting things with the highest possible damage as quick as possible).

Gotta come back and be a huge elitist —→ I would never take Base ele to a fractal or raid group because it lacks so much dps in comparison, also the only thing that really makes a ranger viable atm is druid with it’s healing and massive offensive support. Open world is then again a pretty meh business since you could run literally anything and make it. The point I am trying to make here is that Elite specs are more or less mandatory(except D/D thief) for major part of the more interesting content available(subjective, I know), whether it should be like that or not is again the whole dead horse thing.

Guess i’m to casual for caring about that. I mean dps only translates to time and skill, the more time an enemy needs to kill the more skill the group needs to stay alive (for most PvE content that is, never played high level fractal or raids so far)
And it doesn’t matter much to me if i can clear a Fractal in 5min, 10min or 20min as long as i don’t have annoying people in a group that complain all the time.

Another thing again is playstyle, it is nice that a tempest ele is able to deal more dps, but if the player is not able to use that to it’s fullest, that is playing in medium and short range, and is dead half of the time, all that “possible” dps is worth nothing,

Griffin.5379:

Guess i’m to casual for caring about that. I mean dps only translates to time and skill, the more time an enemy needs to kill the more skill the group needs to stay alive (for most PvE content that is, never played high level fractal or raids so far)
And it doesn’t matter much to me if i can clear a Fractal in 5min, 10min or 20min as long as i don’t have annoying people in a group that complain all the time.

Another thing again is playstyle, it is nice that a tempest ele is able to deal more dps, but if the player is not able to use that to it’s fullest, that is playing in medium and short range, and is dead half of the time, all that “possible” dps is worth nothing,

True enough, unskilled players get dead pretty fast when thay are forced to stay in close range of the enemy. But to be fair there are a couple of good reason to stay close by, first off most boonshare has 600 range so if you camp around 1000+ range with your staff you’re getting none of the might, fury, protection etc. available. Secondly in some fractals staying ranged really isn’t an option since the boss picks the target furthest away and shadowsteps to them(Molten berserker doesnt deal considerable damage doing this, +50 frac archdiviner almost oneshots an ele, Mai Trin is generally a pain) causing the ppl camping far away to die faster than squishy ppl in melee.

And as you said you haven’t really done raids but I promise you if you try to stay away from the thing you’re trying to kill you’re gonna get your kitten booted off the squad faster than light, since half the fight is positioning and camping range is wrong positioning.

Moreover, in general finishing a fight faster rather than slower has the added benefit of better performance from most ppl. Killing the same thing for 15 minutes gets tiring and human error comes into play more and more causing mistakes ppl wouldn’t generally make. It isn’t quite as black and white as that of course but fares as an explanation.

Also we’re majorly off topic from the OP, sorry about that if nothing else