Guild Wars 2

Devs, i beg you, read this:

1)Buff ele’s focus (i mean, weapon).
2)Do something with elementalists traits so it will be possible to NOT spend 30 points to arcana and still be useful. May be if player spends more points to attunes, they should become stronger. For example, change effect of minor grandmaster trait of each attune to something really strong, dunno, what exactly, but linked with attunes.
With that sort of change eles will get an option to focus on 1-2 attunes and become strong enough in aoe damage, single target damage, support, or tankiness&condition damage depending on their choice.

Thoughtless example:
Flame burst, Ring of Fire, and Flamewall skills also create Lava Font when casted with 20 seconds cd.
This example is bad, but i hope that you will understand what i’m trying to say.

I want to clear one thing about traits of warrior and one build. Banner’s build.

I like idea of support-warrior with shouts and banners (tactician or leader ), but first of all, I can’t combine heals from shouts (which are good enough) and Banners (which are pretty bad). Why Banners’ traits are bad? Let me explain.

If you put enough points to take “Inspiring Battle Standard” they will grant regen to allies and you around Banners, BUT. This regen, unlike Ele’s regen in water, does not stack with other regens. What does it means? It means that every another regen from another skills (like any of guardians or engeneers) would not stack, leading to decrease efficiency of another players (and their expectations from their actions, by the way) and making IBS traits choice does not worth grandmaster tier. More of that – grabbing more than 1 banner is not so helpful, because regen still not stack. It leads to wasted 30 points of traits for 1 banner and 2 other, not enhanced slot skills.

And even with -20% CD on Battle Standard he gives small buff for skill with 192 sec cooldown. Constant spam of 1 fury + 3 might with 25 sec >> 1 Fury + a lot Might and Swiftness with 192 sec, single rally, while this buff attached to the place (!).

I use this build for solo killing champions, to overstay them. But in party (which is obviously oriented for party, because its BANNERS after all ) this traits aren’t good at all.

My opinion to move trait IBS to Master tier, so I can combine Shouts and Standard.
Or to make IBS regen not standard boon, but special effect, like Ele’s regen and decreasing CD on Battle Standard.

But, I must admit, this is great changes, I love you, A-net. <3 Keep a good work.

CutePicsHunter.7430:

Devs, i beg you, read this:

1)Buff ele’s focus (i mean, weapon).
2)Do something with elementalists traits so it will be possible to NOT spend 30 points to arcana and still be useful. May be if player spends more points to attunes, they should become stronger. For example, change effect of minor grandmaster trait of each attune to something really strong, dunno, what exactly, but linked with attunes.
With that sort of change eles will get an option to focus on 1-2 attunes and become strong enough in aoe damage, single target damage, support, or tankiness&condition damage depending on their choice.

Thoughtless example:
Flame burst, Ring of Fire, and Flamewall skills also create Lava Font when casted with 20 seconds cd.
This example is bad, but i hope that you will understand what i’m trying to say.

The best bandaid fix they could do for Arcane trait and ridiculous Attunement cooldowns would be to go halfway with it.

Nerf cooldown reduction to 30% in Arcane, and include the other 30% reduction into the base attunement cooldowns, a step in the right direction to help reduce the REQUIREMENT of 20-30 Arcane.

I’m glad to see that you are considering reworking one of the pistol main-hand skills for thief.

While although that is important, I personally feel it would be more important to focus on improving balance and usefulness of pistol/pistol for thief. It is fun to use, but it is very lackluster and does not synergize very well. It has no access to stealth on its own from weapon skills, and thus the sneak attack is not very useful.

For a Thief, having main d/p and secondary p/d synergizes very well together. I think it would be great and encourage diversity if p/p also synergized well with d/d. Perhaps by changing unload to some form of condition-based attach to match d/d’s deathblossom which is condition based.

As it is now, the main auto-attack for P/P is condition-based, but the dual skill unload is not. Changing it to be condition-based would be more consistent and useful rather than being mediocre at either #1 or #3 or both.

Just my 2 cents

ResJudicator.7916:

AMAZING POST

I couldn’t agree more. I would start with a RtL revert (even 900 range on a 15/20s cooldown) first, then think about giving back a little bit of healing (like on cleansing wave, maybe only a 25% reduction vs. PvE/WvW).

Fixing conjures and some ele abilities is a good start, but the crux of ele woes is the poor survivability. All of the accumulated nerfs are just way too much, especially the biggest ones (RtL + healing).

How about if you are bleeding you can’t go invis cause people can see your blood trail.

Can be balanced by it being triggered after a certain # of stacks.

I’m happy to see they’re finally working on some fine tuning.

Knote.2904:

The best bandaid fix they could do for Arcane trait and ridiculous Attunement cooldowns would be to go halfway with it.

Nerf cooldown reduction to 30% in Arcane, and include the other 30% reduction into the base attunement cooldowns, a step in the right direction to help reduce the REQUIREMENT of 20-30 Arcane.

Good idea! But if doing something like this, i would prefer to give arcane 30% reduction and 40% to attunements traits. :p

Ah, yes, it must be a multiple of 30 -_-

Lafiel.9372:

How about if you are bleeding you can’t go invis cause people can see your blood trail.

Can be balanced by it being triggered after a certain # of stacks.

I’m happy to see they’re finally working on some fine tuning.

That would effectively kill stealth in game. There are too many ways to stack bleeds easily across many classes.

Looks good overall but we have no idea of the affect it will have on game play so we can’t discuss it too thoroughly since none of it is set in stone so to speak.

Would love however if the tab target worked like in GW1 full 360 tab from closest to furthest with the target closest bind actually working 100% to “reset” the tab if you go too far or change position.

On a side note its funny that these informative posts usually appear after legit leaks become public.

Sounds nice. Should give mesmers even more viability in WvW. With AoE stability and condi cleanse.

Like that ranger pets should be getting a buff in WvW/pve. Hopefully it’s enough to be felt.

Lafiel.9372:

How about if you are bleeding you can’t go invis cause people can see your blood trail.

Can be balanced by it being triggered after a certain # of stacks.

I’m happy to see they’re finally working on some fine tuning.

That would basically ruin the trait in Shadow Arts that removes 1 condition every 3 seconds.

I play a thief, I don’t run a stealth build all that often, so it doesn’t affect me personally that much but I’m curious about:

Ranger
Sick ‘Em will now apply ‘Revealed” to enemies they target. We want to introduce some counter play to Stealth (players have asked for that for a while), so we thought a pet “catching your scent” might be a cool way to insinuate some anti-stealth into the game.

Wondering if for sure they will have to target the person to apply the revealed, thus preventing them from going into stealth, or is this something that will be used to pull enemies out of stealth? And how long will the Revealed debuff last?

If you’re looking at pet support options please swap the eagle/hawk’s F2 skill. Currently their F2 is a low cooldown, somewhat spammable bleed called Lacerating Slash (it has a 6 second cooldown). When I use a pet I don’t want to press F2 every 6 seconds, it’s a waste. I’d far rather have control of Quickening Screech (a 20 second cool down that applies a 10 second swiftness buff, you could even have it apply quickness to the pet if you’re feeling generous) which would allow me another support option for my pet. I could combine it with my warhorn to help maintain swiftness on my party for dungeon play and WvW small ops groups.

One of the flaws of the bird pets is that their attack rotation results in lower DPS than similair glass pets (like the spider or cat) because the animation on Quickening Screech is so long and it’s rarely useful in PvE combat and often a hindrance to the total DPS of the pet.

Also consider that by default, not even “healing” pets or “condition” pets have healing power or condition damage (both attributes are set at 0). It might be worth looking into these two things and maybe changing some attributes around so that they can more effectively use some of their tools without needing the 300 points from the traits.

No amount of number tweaking will ever fix the elementalist

It doesn’t matter if you keep increasing numbers on random skills and increase radius of some other skills, the problems with the ele lie deep in the design concept.

Arcana trait line requirement to play the class

You promoted this profession as highly versatile..but you want us to invest 45% of the available trait pts in a specific line in order to play the profession

Your original concept was a profession able to switch to the right attunement at the right time, but that concept idea never really got implemented, for obvious marketing reasons ( all the illegitimate QQ on unofficial forums ) you decided to change each attunement into something you simply stay for few secs rather than use it at the right time.

The auto-attack on each attunement on every weapon set( save lightning whip ) is so pathetically low ( lowest across all professions ) that to stay into a single attunement ,for more than the necessary time to cast that specific skill, becomes counter-productive and can lead to a quick demise ( main reason why the current conjure design concept suck ..sorry to say that..again) .

After the round of nerfs you conveniently changed the description of the ele from :" use the right element at the right time" to " rotate through your elements to obtain same results as other professions"

Stop lying pls..quite few people realize why you did those changes, the truth is all of you devs understood how stupidly OP was the design of the ele , if the ele would have been left as it was…fewer people would have bought the game right?!

So you started introducing one weakness after the other and the result was the so much complained profession in September : low base HP, low base armor, low base stats, very high CD on skills ( highest among all professions )

The ele community found itself forced to use extremely high defensive builds in order to play the class at all, any buff request completely ignored on the contrary of nerf requests which were openly taken in consideration.

Now I’m not here to ask for more buffs, we’ve have been at it for months , over 1 year really..I’m too tired to fight a pointless battle.

I feel sorry for the Devs, I fully realize that they actully care a lot for the game and try their best..but they simply lack the necessary resources; I consider the elementalist design a disaster, many good ideas but poorly implemented, the profession is unfun to play, not matter how many times I win..there are no easy fights, even somebody who installed the game the other day can potentially beat me if I lose my concentration for a single instant.

To play an ele is extremely intensive, you need to pay attention to basically anything..to avoid a quick death, no mistakes allowed, a single mistake and 3/4 of your HP are gone.

The profession doesn’t need buffs..it needs a complete revalutation, it would require a great deal of resources that now I realize the Devs lack, therefore I’d say that it’s wise to really give up on this profession

wow nice to see all 3 of you outside the spvp subforum, thx for the sneak peek, all the qol changes are looking great

Interesting patch notes, but I feel that the attention is being paid in the wrong respects. This recent change to Rangers being able to detect stealthed players is a direct nerf to Thieves in general, and I’ll tell you why;

Stealth, unless heavily traited, does NOT provide any of the following;

• Damage mitigation
• Increased damage
• Increased mobility

To re-iterate my point here, Stealth, by itself – ONLY PROVIDES ACCESS TO A STEALTH SKILL, AND THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE. To put this in perspective to anyone who doesn’t understand how thief works;

• Dagger stealth skill is a powerful opener.
• Sword stealth skill is a useful opener, but situational
• Pistol, shortbow stealth skills are pitiful, awful, and a complete waste of our wimpy stealth in the first place

NOW! When heavily traited specifically for stealth, you can do the following;

• Run away better
• Get a second breath for combat (get some initiative back, heal some)
• Blind enemies
• Get a guaranteed crit

AGAIN, SERIOUSLY – This is ONLY when heavily traited that you can do all these things. If you are heavily traited for stealth usage, you cannot do very much else.

As a last comment in the defense of our wimpy implementation of stealth; Thieves have super low health, no powerful/quick AoE, an arsenal of single-target attacks, and no real option for ranged combat (900 is the limit!). Stealth itself, only gives us anywhere between 2 (at least) and 11 (at most) seconds of stealth, the latter only achievable using a lengthy cooldown utility skill. It only exists to give most thieves the element of surprise on an enemy, allow the use of a stealth skill, and run our happy kitten away when we actually fight someone with 2 cents worth of common sense to swing their weapon around the entire time we’re trying to close in on them.

If this hasn’t sunk in for anyone yet, let me put it in very simple terms…

You are giving a super-long range class the ability to directly counter the shortest-range class character in the game by taking away the only mechanic that they actually have access to. YOU ARE MAKING IT SO THAT A THIEF CAN. NOT. GET. CLOSE. TO A LONG RANGE CLASS, EVEN WHEN THEY ARE INVISIBLE. Let that sink in for a second. Good. Now STRIKE THIS IDEA AND TRY TO FIND A REAL WAY TO MAKE STEALTH FREAKING USEFUL.

Sincerely,
-An Already Unhappy Thief

Arheundel.6451:

You promoted this profession as highly versatile..but you want us to invest 45% of the available trait pts in a specific line in order to play the profession

Your original concept was a profession able to switch to the right attunement at the right time, but that concept idea never really got implemented, for obvious marketing reasons ( all the illegitimate QQ on unofficial forums ) you decided to change each attunement into something you simply stay for few secs rather than use it at the right time.

Yes this exactly, it’s a huge problem.

The thing is, even if attunements had NO cooldown, people say it would be massively overpowered but I honestly do not think so.

First of course you would just have to put cooldowns on the procs from attunement swapping, just like on-swap sigils, but then this actually opens up the flexibility to use your abilities when you actually need them.

Right now, even with 10 second attunement cooldowns, if you have a clutch/important cooldown in an attunement, you can’t save it and hope to use it right when you need to because of the cooldown.

If staff Ele needs to drop his chill field and swap to water attunement to do so, but doesn’t need the healing/cleanse and swaps out, they’re locked out of their ability to do that for 10-16 seconds JUST so they could drop that chill field. All of a sudden they need that condition cleanse/healing? Nope.

This also encourages you to basically just spam everything on cooldown (the way necro’s are encouraged to spam everything on cooldown) and basically just create a static rotation, this is not a good thing.

Attunement cooldowns do not affect the individual skill cooldowns, which btw are already balanced by having massive cooldowns like 45 – 50 seconds. Engineers don’t get locked out their kits when swapping in and out, why should Elementalists suffer this HUGE penalty to access their flexibility?

If each attunement was good as standalone ability set this would actually be perfectly fine, but they’re not. Fire is most of your dmg, Water very low dmg and all of your healing, Earth is all of your hard defensive stuff, Air all your CC, etc.

Notice what his post said, and what my question was about it (because I too worried like you that it would be detectable) it says sick em will apply revealed to their TARGET meaning unless they worded it incorrectly, that the thief has to be out of stealth already for sick em to affect them. If that’s the case, and I think it is, Most thieves can evade for 3 seconds while they wait for the revealed debuff to wear off.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Thief
We’re also looking at shaving the efficiency of Flanking Strike slightly, so that it now only removes 1 boon instead of 2.

Feedback: If this would be the case, will the cost go back down to 1 init also?

Also, pistol main hand may see one of its skills reworked to better support allies. We have multiple prototypes that we’re trying out, so we’ll have to see which we settle on by the next release.

Feedback: Since this is receiving attention, how about fixing the casting/after cast time? The pistol #1 is not shooting as fast as it should. In fact, there’s a lot of after cast issue with pistol in either or both hands.

I’d really love to see Guard scepter re-worked as well as the sword.

Scepter 1 hardly hits in pvp/wvw, counts as a projectile, but isn’t a projectile finisher.
Scepter 2 needs to do be rebuilt, it hardly hits the target in the center with all of the damage.
Scepter 3 is solid

Sword 1’s last chain attack needs some love, having each attack doing 269 base would bring it in line with other sword chain attacks.
Sword 2’s damage needs to be improved. I’ve flashing bladed onto a mosquito in wvw, it didn’t die as I ran through it and I was stuck in combat speed…
Sword 3…Sword 3 doesn’t track hardly at all (I’ve had it miss at 200 range with someone running by me), the block hardly blocks properly and the ‘utility’ of this doesn’t make sense. Why cast Sword 3 to only block projectiles instead of reflect, when I can dodge forward and have a better chance of hitting with sword 3 from a closer range. Ohh, and it can be reflected as a projectile but doesn’t get projectile finishers for some reason.

Greatsword is fine

Hammer is mostly fine, could use the same lock on target boost that Greatsword 3 got, would also like to see a little more range on the Hammer 2 but that might make it from a strong attack to OP.

Torch is hardly used because it has no defensive ability and condi Guard is useless without at least 1-2 more types of condition application.

Focus is solid

Shield is solid

Staff is solid

Mace is solid

I would also love to see Guards get a hard CC of some kind and symbols need to apply chill. We have decent ability to do damage to people fighting on ground we control, but we have ZERO way to keep them there on that ground.

Dynnen.6405:

I’d really love to see Guard scepter re-worked as well as the sword.

Scepter 1 hardly hits in pvp/wvw, counts as a projectile, but isn’t a projectile finisher.
Scepter 2 needs to do be rebuilt, it hardly hits the target in the center with all of the damage.
Scepter 3 is solid

Sword 1’s last chain attack needs some love, having each attack doing 269 base would bring it in line with other sword chain attacks.
Sword 2’s damage needs to be improved. I’ve flashing bladed onto a mosquito in wvw, it didn’t die as I ran through it and I was stuck in combat speed…
Sword 3…Sword 3 doesn’t track hardly at all (I’ve had it miss at 200 range with someone running by me), the block hardly blocks properly and the ‘utility’ of this doesn’t make sense. Why cast Sword 3 to only block projectiles instead of reflect, when I can dodge forward and have a better chance of hitting with sword 3 from a closer range. Ohh, and it can be reflected as a projectile but doesn’t get projectile finishers for some reason.

Greatsword is fine

Hammer is mostly fine, could use the same lock on target boost that Greatsword 3 got, would also like to see a little more range on the Hammer 2 but that might make it from a strong attack to OP.

Torch is hardly used because it has no defensive ability and condi Guard is useless without at least 1-2 more types of condition application.

Focus is solid

Shield is solid

Staff is solid

Mace is solid

I would also love to see Guards get a hard CC of some kind and symbols need to apply chill. We have decent ability to do damage to people fighting on ground we control, but we have ZERO way to keep them there on that ground.

just saying, 2 1h sword autoattack chains deal more dmg than 100b in the same time.

Knote.2904:

Lafiel.9372:

You promoted this profession as highly versatile..but you want us to invest 45% of the available trait pts in a specific line in order to play the profession

Your original concept was a profession able to switch to the right attunement at the right time, but that concept idea never really got implemented, for obvious marketing reasons ( all the illegitimate QQ on unofficial forums ) you decided to change each attunement into something you simply stay for few secs rather than use it at the right time.

Yes this exactly, it’s a huge problem.

The thing is, even if attunements had NO cooldown, people say it would be massively overpowered but I honestly do not think so.

First of course you would just have to put cooldowns on the procs from attunement swapping, just like on-swap sigils, but then this actually opens up the flexibility to use your abilities when you actually need them.

Right now, even with 10 second attunement cooldowns, if you have a clutch/important cooldown in an attunement, you can’t save it and hope to use it right when you need to because of the cooldown.

If staff Ele needs to drop his chill field and swap to water attunement to do so, but doesn’t need the healing/cleanse and swaps out, they’re locked out of their ability to do that for 10-16 seconds JUST so they could drop that chill field. All of a sudden they need that condition cleanse/healing? Nope.

This also encourages you to basically just spam everything on cooldown (the way necro’s are encouraged to spam everything on cooldown) and basically just create a static rotation, this is not a good thing.

Attunement cooldowns do not affect the individual skill cooldowns, which btw are already balanced by having massive cooldowns like kitten seconds. Engineers don’t get locked out their kits when swapping in and out, why should Elementalists suffer this HUGE penalty to access their flexibility?

If each attunement was good as standalone ability set this would actually be perfectly fine, but they’re not. Fire is most of your dmg, Water very low dmg and all of your healing, Earth is all of your hard defensive stuff, Air all your CC, etc.

Lol, why am I quoted for this, I didn’t even say any of that.

These are some really nice QoL and Gameplay improvements.
Thank you for these changes they mean a lot.
Transparency is fundamental.

A couple things I wanted to comment:
- Warriors, don’t forget to keep Triple Banners/Shouts/Stances on equality.
As I see it, Shouts should be team defensive support, Banners offensive support, and Stances “personal” stuff – but there should never be one “best” build between these three. I don’t want Tyria swarmed with shout healing clones.
- Guardian. Zeal traitline and Swiftness (or 25% runspeed) access still need adequate changes.

Oxe.6142:

Lafiel.9372:

How about if you are bleeding you can’t go invis cause people can see your blood trail.

Can be balanced by it being triggered after a certain # of stacks.

I’m happy to see they’re finally working on some fine tuning.

That would effectively kill stealth in game. There are too many ways to stack bleeds easily across many classes.

I like this idea too.

Question about: Better fast cast ground targeting.

Will it be possible to display the AoE projected area while still using this function?

Why?, because sometimes in large fights, it’s easy to lose your mouse, and it will add more functionality.

NoTrigger.8396:

Dynnen.6405:

I’d really love to see Guard scepter re-worked as well as the sword.

Scepter 1 hardly hits in pvp/wvw, counts as a projectile, but isn’t a projectile finisher.
Scepter 2 needs to do be rebuilt, it hardly hits the target in the center with all of the damage.
Scepter 3 is solid

Sword 1’s last chain attack needs some love, having each attack doing 269 base would bring it in line with other sword chain attacks.
Sword 2’s damage needs to be improved. I’ve flashing bladed onto a mosquito in wvw, it didn’t die as I ran through it and I was stuck in combat speed…
Sword 3…Sword 3 doesn’t track hardly at all (I’ve had it miss at 200 range with someone running by me), the block hardly blocks properly and the ‘utility’ of this doesn’t make sense. Why cast Sword 3 to only block projectiles instead of reflect, when I can dodge forward and have a better chance of hitting with sword 3 from a closer range. Ohh, and it can be reflected as a projectile but doesn’t get projectile finishers for some reason.

Greatsword is fine

Hammer is mostly fine, could use the same lock on target boost that Greatsword 3 got, would also like to see a little more range on the Hammer 2 but that might make it from a strong attack to OP.

Torch is hardly used because it has no defensive ability and condi Guard is useless without at least 1-2 more types of condition application.

Focus is solid

Shield is solid

Staff is solid

Mace is solid

I would also love to see Guards get a hard CC of some kind and symbols need to apply chill. We have decent ability to do damage to people fighting on ground we control, but we have ZERO way to keep them there on that ground.

just saying, 2 1h sword autoattack chains deal more dmg than 100b in the same time.

While thats true that it does more base damage a Guard has to put a ton more into defensive stats so it can survive in melee.

Lets be real, how often have you ever heard “OMFG That zerker Guard is OP”
ZZzzz….

Dynnen.6405:

Shield is solid

Actually, it is not.

Red Falcon.8257:

Triple Banners

No one needs three banners at same time. As I wrote before, you need to choose one of them to current situation.

Arheundel.6451:

No amount of number tweaking will ever fix the elementalist

It doesn’t matter if you keep increasing numbers on random skills and increase radius of some other skills, the problems with the ele lie deep in the design concept.

Arcana trait line requirement to play the class

You promoted this profession as highly versatile..but you want us to invest 45% of the available trait pts in a specific line in order to play the profession

Your original concept was a profession able to switch to the right attunement at the right time, but that concept idea never really got implemented, for obvious marketing reasons ( all the illegitimate QQ on unofficial forums ) you decided to change each attunement into something you simply stay for few secs rather than use it at the right time.

The auto-attack on each attunement on every weapon set( save lightning whip ) is so pathetically low ( lowest across all professions ) that to stay into a single attunement ,for more than the necessary time to cast that specific skill, becomes counter-productive and can lead to a quick demise ( main reason why the current conjure design concept suck ..sorry to say that..again) .

After the round of nerfs you conveniently changed the description of the ele from :" use the right element at the right time" to " rotate through your elements to obtain same results as other professions"

Stop lying pls..quite few people realize why you did those changes, the truth is all of you devs understood how stupidly OP was the design of the ele , if the ele would have been left as it was…fewer people would have bought the game right?!

So you started introducing one weakness after the other and the result was the so much complained profession in September : low base HP, low base armor, low base stats, very high CD on skills ( highest among all professions )

The ele community found itself forced to use extremely high defensive builds in order to play the class at all, any buff request completely ignored on the contrary of nerf requests which were openly taken in consideration.

Now I’m not here to ask for more buffs, we’ve have been at it for months , over 1 year really..I’m too tired to fight a pointless battle.

I feel sorry for the Devs, I fully realize that they actully care a lot for the game and try their best..but they simply lack the necessary resources; I consider the elementalist design a disaster, many good ideas but poorly implemented, the profession is unfun to play, not matter how many times I win..there are no easy fights, even somebody who installed the game the other day can potentially beat me if I lose my concentration for a single instant.

To play an ele is extremely intensive, you need to pay attention to basically anything..to avoid a quick death, no mistakes allowed, a single mistake and 3/4 of your HP are gone.

The profession doesn’t need buffs..it needs a complete revalutation, it would require a great deal of resources that now I realize the Devs lack, therefore I’d say that it’s wise to really give up on this profession

You sir, sound like a very bad elementalist.

Dynnen.6405:

NoTrigger.8396:

Dynnen.6405:

I’d really love to see Guard scepter re-worked as well as the sword.

Scepter 1 hardly hits in pvp/wvw, counts as a projectile, but isn’t a projectile finisher.
Scepter 2 needs to do be rebuilt, it hardly hits the target in the center with all of the damage.
Scepter 3 is solid

Sword 1’s last chain attack needs some love, having each attack doing 269 base would bring it in line with other sword chain attacks.
Sword 2’s damage needs to be improved. I’ve flashing bladed onto a mosquito in wvw, it didn’t die as I ran through it and I was stuck in combat speed…
Sword 3…Sword 3 doesn’t track hardly at all (I’ve had it miss at 200 range with someone running by me), the block hardly blocks properly and the ‘utility’ of this doesn’t make sense. Why cast Sword 3 to only block projectiles instead of reflect, when I can dodge forward and have a better chance of hitting with sword 3 from a closer range. Ohh, and it can be reflected as a projectile but doesn’t get projectile finishers for some reason.

Greatsword is fine

Hammer is mostly fine, could use the same lock on target boost that Greatsword 3 got, would also like to see a little more range on the Hammer 2 but that might make it from a strong attack to OP.

Torch is hardly used because it has no defensive ability and condi Guard is useless without at least 1-2 more types of condition application.

Focus is solid

Shield is solid

Staff is solid

Mace is solid

I would also love to see Guards get a hard CC of some kind and symbols need to apply chill. We have decent ability to do damage to people fighting on ground we control, but we have ZERO way to keep them there on that ground.

just saying, 2 1h sword autoattack chains deal more dmg than 100b in the same time.

While thats true that it does more base damage a Guard has to put a ton more into defensive stats so it can survive in melee.

Lets be real, how often have you ever heard “OMFG That zerker Guard is OP”
ZZzzz….

in case ur talking about pve, guard doesnt need any defense. full berserker is the way to go.

Heiltdo.2891:

Question about: Better fast cast ground targeting.

Will it be possible to display the AoE projected area while still using this function?

Why?, because sometimes in large fights, it’s easy to lose your mouse, and it will add more functionality.

I believe that’s what the new option is for, the ability to hold and release a skill, holding should show the aoe projection, then release to cast.

NoTrigger.8396:

in case ur talking about pve, guard doesnt need any defense. full berserker is the way to go.

Only if you build selfish and don’t build in any party support. Not everyone follows the ‘zerker or bust’ philosophy. Some of us like helping our allies.

Guardian Sword’s autoattack chain is the only melee weapon you can kill yourself with in Jade Maw. It’s dumb. The damage on it is fine though. Sword AA hits very hard.

Excited about the Purging Flames change, but I don’t think it’s going to address the issue of how much condition damage is being thrown around in WvW and the ability to reapply conditions immediately after they’ve been purged. Condition removal is very easily over saturated to the point of uselessness. Reducing condition duration in the field is a good start, but when the condition damage specs you’re fighting have conditions even on their autoattacks (Warrior sword, Necro scepter, etc etc) it becomes a pretty meaningless gesture. There needs to be a more systematic addressing of conditions. I won’t go so far as to say that they’re OP, but right now the counter-play that exists for them is ineffective in many settings.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Thief
Venomous Aura was very difficult to use, as the radius was fairly tight. We’ve now increased that radius a bit, so that it’s easier to share venoms with allies without huddling closely together.

We’re also looking at shaving the efficiency of Flanking Strike slightly, so that it now only removes 1 boon instead of 2.

Also, pistol main hand may see one of its skills reworked to better support allies. We have multiple prototypes that we’re trying out, so we’ll have to see which we settle on by the next release.

While I welcome any changes to main hand pistol to actually make it viable aside from niche condition builds, I’m a bit disturbed about the flanking strike change. It seems that once you make a non dagger thief weapon good, you repeatedly nerf it until dagger is the best option again. If the effectiveness of flanking strike needs to be nerfed, reduce the initiative cost again.

Jonathan,

I am pumped about the proposed changes to warrior, mes & ele and I giggled reading about the ranger skill stealth debuff – I’ll be calling for “Rangers sweep Bay” if this goes live.

I can’t comment as much on guard, thief, eng and nec as I don’t play those much if at all, but the guardian changes are exciting news as the support that runs shoulder to shoulder with me day-to-day.

Big plus for:
• Ground targeting change – if #3 works the way I am understanding (I use the keyboard for my skills, I press and hold “F1” – I can place my target and when I release, earthshaker goes off. Right? If so, Sweet.

• Tab targeting priorities – nice QoL improvement – thank you

My one point of skepticism:
Launch stun break – I agree with the concept: stun break does seem like it should be a counter for launch attacks, but…. what’s this going to look like animation-wise? Instantly upright? If I hit a stun breaker mid-air, do I land on my feet? I mean, a lot of ppl say Charr look like cats, but I kinda resent that … come on … (hehe) This is going to be awkward to implement methinks. Maybe it should be like – the launch completes, but when you land, it’s more graceful than if you didn’t hit a stun breaker and you don’t have any down time to skills/reaction. A mid-air Olympic gymnast maneuver – I guess – still seems a bit weird.

foofad.5162:

Guardian Sword’s autoattack chain is the only melee weapon you can kill yourself with in Jade Maw. It’s dumb. The damage on it is fine though. Sword AA hits very hard.

Excited about the Purging Flames change, but I don’t think it’s going to address the issue of how much condition damage is being thrown around in WvW and the ability to reapply conditions immediately after they’ve been purged. Condition removal is very easily over saturated to the point of uselessness. Reducing condition duration in the field is a good start, but when the condition damage specs you’re fighting have conditions even on their autoattacks (Warrior sword, Necro scepter, etc etc) it becomes a pretty meaningless gesture. There needs to be a more systematic addressing of conditions. I won’t go so far as to say that they’re OP, but right now the counter-play that exists for them is ineffective in many settings.

Yeah, conditions (as well as pretty much all dmg in the game) needs to be a little less sustained on auto attacks, and a little more bursty on bigger more avoidable attacks. It’s a futile effort to have avoidance when most of the DPS coming at you is from free no cooldown auto spam, especially in the case of Conditions that need condition cleansing to counter.

Passive condition cleansing would also need to be looked at.

SynfulChaot.3169:

NoTrigger.8396:

in case ur talking about pve, guard doesnt need any defense. full berserker is the way to go.

Only if you build selfish and don’t build in any party support. Not everyone follows the ‘zerker or bust’ philosophy. Some of us like helping our allies.

how is wall of reflects, spirit shield, shield 5 and everything else not party support?

SynfulChaot.3169:

NoTrigger.8396:

in case ur talking about pve, guard doesnt need any defense. full berserker is the way to go.

Only if you build selfish and don’t build in any party support. Not everyone follows the ‘zerker or bust’ philosophy. Some of us like helping our allies.

i help others with mightstacks, aegis, vulnerability, stability, regeneration, reflection, swiftness, protection, vigor, retaliation.
i guess thats all you can do except if ur going full “tank” and want to help your group with making fights last longer.

Lighter.5631:

how is wall of reflects, spirit shield, shield 5 and everything else not party support?

A guardian can provide far more support than that. I’m not saying zerker isn’t good. I’m saying zerker isn’t the ‘one true way’. There are other viable builds.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Lighter.5631:

how is wall of reflects, spirit shield, shield 5 and everything else not party support?

A guardian can provide far more support than that. I’m not saying zerker isn’t good. I’m saying zerker isn’t the ‘one true way’. There are other viable builds.

yea. but making fights last longer than needed isnt the best support you can give a group.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Lighter.5631:

how is wall of reflects, spirit shield, shield 5 and everything else not party support?

A guardian can provide far more support than that. I’m not saying zerker isn’t good. I’m saying zerker isn’t the ‘one true way’. There are other viable builds.

It’s not that anything other than zerker isn’t viable, it’s that anything else other than zerker isn’t worth it or efficient just because the way the game is, high tanky or high supportive builds just aren’t needed or as useful in the end.

Would be nice to have that change so a supportive or tanky build would be desired in some way, but right now it’s not the case.

Sic Em!’s great for Rangers, but there are things Rangers have been asking for for a LONG time like:

1.) more pet control. I know Jonathan, you have said you don’t want to exclude lower level players, but at least give us players that know we can handle it a toggle for pet control. That way you don’t alienate low level Rangers and you keep high level rangers happy. It’s a win-win.

2.) Make it so pets dodge when the players dodge. That way we can get our pets out of bad situations.

3.) Either stop having the Kraken in the jade fractal stop targeting my pet, or refer to #2. (heck, can we get that stupid thing to stop targeting clones, guard weapons, and minions please?)

4.) Can we get at least one of the 2 week updates ONLY focus on QoL? That would be amazing and the community would love it. There are so many nagging little things that need addressing.

5.) Thanks for the awesome preview and game. Love all the other stuff, it all sounds good.

Some interesting overall changes. Honestly, my only major concerns would be as follows:

• P/P on Thief – besides the overall condition vs. power-based damage issues, it’s the only weaponset without either mobility or stealth potential. I’m wondering if that’s something you guys have in mind?
• Mantras on Mesmer – Great to see some work done to bring those up, but I would tend to agree with the idea that 2 seconds of Stability may not be enough to make
  MoC get used more often.
• Elementalist – Staff buffs and Conjure-love, excellent. But, I do agree with the posts mentioning that Focus and the class’ hobbling dependance on Arcane could also use a look-see. Perhaps at a later time?

As for things I rather like:

• Overall: Condition Damage scaling being looked into? Frack. YES. I, for one, am tired of Condition builds being rather … lackluster, in PvE.
• Engineer – Oh, my. Useful Turret targeting? Stability? Less accursed RNG? Thank you. Seriously.
• Necro – Good to see Minions and Vampiric traits getting looked into. Hopefully this makes a Vampire-spec Necro a lot more feasible.
• Ranger – Pet support buffing is an interesting option. More health is, as well. As far as weapons, I’d personally be darned happy if Sword auto-chain gets that self-root removed. Sic ’Em being a stealth-counter, depends on if it does so before a stealth triggers, or afterward … the first could be interesting counterplay, the second might just be cheap.

As for Guard/Warrior … I’ll admit my knowledge of both is mostly anecdotal, since those are my non-80 professions. As such, I’ll let others step in on those.

In closing, allow me to echo the idea that it is, in fact, plenty frigging cool to see this kind of transparency from the Dev Team. Kudos.

Mikau.6920:

As a Guardian main, I’d like to suggest (Skills that aren’t very useful):

Spirit Weapons:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Time-to-evaluate-spirit-weapons/first#post2787320

Healing Breeze:
As the leaked, it really should be buffed in some way. Now is just useless.

Hallowed Ground:
Should be a stun breaker or have its CD reduced.

Signet of Mercy:
Its Cast time and CD are just ridiculous. Almost 4 sec to revive? I revive faster in direct reviving. Why I would use it if I can use santuary aside my ally (nobody can gets close, so no stomp) and both me and my ally do not have to worry about projectiles during reviving. Its cast time should be 2 sec and its CD 90~120.

Mace:
Symbol of Faith (#2) should have its cast time reduced to 1s, down from 1 1/4
Protector’s Strike (#3) should be a blast finisher if activated and its “protection if not struck” should be available as an option during the cast.

Traits:
Zeal
Zealous Blade (VII): The healing should scale with healing power (very little).
Focused Mastery (VIII): Should have a secondary effect like the torch and shield to become more interesting.

Radiance
Inner Fire (IV): Should activate with torch #4, so it wouldn’t be so situtional in PvE.
Searing Flames (V): Should have its CD reduced to at least 15 sec to be useful.
Powerful Blades (X): Should have secondary effects like Scepter (more dmg) or mace (HP).

Valor
Honorable Shield (IX): should be in the Adept line. (The shield needs some love. In this way, it will be a very little buff)
Courageous Return (Minor – Mater): Only recharge if you kill a monster when downed. Should recharge with any type of come back.

Virtues
Retaliatory Subconscious (IV): never saw a light field, ever.

Before someone starts to throw knives at me, these are only suggestions.

Very nice list and reasonable proposals. I’d only add one more to it, and it’s a “Scepter Power” from Zeal trait line,

- Scepter damage is increased by 10% (but I’d be fine with 5% as well), and increases projectile speed by 33%

I have just one request: new dance step – twerking.

Why? Hawt Ranger pants.

Nuff said.

Knote.2904:

SynfulChaot.3169:

A guardian can provide far more support than that. I’m not saying zerker isn’t good. I’m saying zerker isn’t the ‘one true way’. There are other viable builds.

It’s not that anything other than zerker isn’t viable, it’s that anything else other than zerker isn’t worth it or efficient just because the way the game is, high tanky or high supportive builds just aren’t needed or as useful in the end.

Would be nice to have that change so a supportive or tanky build would be desired in some way, but right now it’s not the case.

It depends on party composition. My tankier heal-support build has gotten many a PUG through dungeons. Even soloed bosses when the rest of the party went down. If everyone is all zerker and knows exactly what they’re doing, then yes. I agree. But if people run varied builds? Zerker, in that case, isn’t the ‘one true way’.

Now alla that is properly off topic, so shall we return to discussing the preview?

JonathanSharp.7094:

Class balance:
snip

Thief
Venomous Aura was very difficult to use, as the radius was fairly tight. We’ve now increased that radius a bit, so that it’s easier to share venoms with allies without huddling closely together.

We’re also looking at shaving the efficiency of Flanking Strike slightly, so that it now only removes 1 boon instead of 2.

Also, pistol main hand may see one of its skills reworked to better support allies. We have multiple prototypes that we’re trying out, so we’ll have to see which we settle on by the next release.

snip

Instead of making it easier to share the charges of the venom which seems underpowered considering you may cover the conditions that an engineer or necro can bring and apply more rapidly, could venomous aura instead drop a combo field related to the venom? Say ice drake venom drops an ice field which you could then leap through for your personal benefit or blast finish for your team. This would allow for more team interaction and more interesting solo play with condition builds. These could last for maybe 4 seconds and seems reasonable considering it would put them (almost) on par with necro wells except that you’d still have to trait 30 into SA to achieve it.

Lafiel.9372:

You sir, sound like a very bad elementalist.

Have you got anything to prove how bad I am…or are you simply trolling me?
I would have ignored you but…I don’t want the devs to suspect that having problems with ele is a L2p issue so..pls if you can prove how bad is @Keiji Sakuragi, I’d be obliged.
I don’t remember many people from this forum : @ Mrbig, @Diogosilva..they played with me few times, you can ask them how bad I am..

Deleted (Double post)

“We’re also looking at shaving the efficiency of Flanking Strike slightly, so that it now only removes 1 boon instead of 2.”

Thx ANet for the next thief nerf, as if we dont get enough. -.-
Why do you reduce the effectivity of S/D? Thiefs are already very squishy, especially in PvE or group fights. Also are the costs of 5 inis for only two boons not low (or cheap).
Maybe you should buff the steal mechanic from the thief and dont nerf it, except you will that the mesmer stay the best antiboon class in this game.

BTW, have you though about a rework of “Last Refuge”?

Please have an option to Tab Target Center Screen and have a non-intrusive cross-hair when it is chosen. It would be an option so it won’t bother the purists.