Guild Wars 2

Trixie.7614:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Elementalist
We’re working on the staff in an effort to make it a stronger support weapon, and we also improved the conjure weapons so that they’re stronger for support. You’ll see improvements to all 4 of the conjure weapons to make them stronger and better for support.

If you change my Fiery Greatsword 4-th ability, I will use swearing vengeance and immediately get rid of this game.

He said all 4 of the conjure weapons (there are 5), so he probably forgot we even had Fiery Greatsword.

Sylv.5324:

Fortus.6175:

Increase base HP to 18-20k like mesmers.

Our base HP is not 18-20k. It’s around 15k. If we want more, it comes from gear and traiting into likes just like eles trait into earth.

Elementalists have 10k base…no idea why. Guardians and Thieves also have this base health, but Guardians are tanks with innate healing, heavy armour and a zillion cleanses, while Thieves have medium armour, are very slippery, and are nearly impossible to lockdown.

Compare them to Elementalists, who have light armour and…a 40 second cooldown extra 2k heal? Nice work, Anet.

Good job @ traits and skills.
The 3rd option for ground targetting made me chuckle – it’s surely great to have a complete set of options! Give the guy who insisted on it a free soda
Good job @ most changes (those that I can judge). Usually I criticize you hard, but it’s not because I hate you (except for the people who added ascended gear) but because I love the game, same as for most people >.>
Looking forward to more good effort in the future :-s

Stuff missing on your list :-p ->
1) Elementalists get 3k more base health.
2) RTL gets un-nerfed.
3) AoE Healing in WvW gets unnerfed, so cleric items are cool again (1) and 2) are more important though)

PS: Relax with your e-sport craze :-p it’s fine.. (bias: I’m avid wvw’er)

Increasing base HP for ele is more valid than it seems. Initially, the ele was designed and advertised as a profession of destruction, but anet has eventually settled it as a jack-of-all-trades, probably due to the nature of the attunement system. For this reason, they could very well get jack-of-all-trades levels of HP, like engineer or ranger have/ are.

Of course, this would make HP distribution across professions a bit uneven. Each spellcasting class has different levels of HP. Although the same doesn’t applies to adventurer classes (both engie and ranger have same hp/ armor), so why not for ele sharing mesmer’s hp/ armor stats?

In fact, I think it would make more sense for a mesmer’s hp to get switched with ele’s. Sorry, Mesmer fans, I don’t really want to suggest nerfs to you! But if we think about it, mesmers, much like thieves, have build in defenses (clones, and a bit of stealth). The AI will attack clones often, and clones + stealth + tab targetting is strong versus players. That’s why mesmers, like thieves, are the two professions that can most afford using berserker gear in pvp. Not only that, but mesmer’s passive playstyle makes it a bit too easy to play, so less HP would make them a bit harder to master. But I understand that they are not really top-meta right now, so this nerf is probably unfair.

Another possibility, is to shorten the HP gap between professions. Give 13k base hp to eles/ thieves/ guardians. But maybe it would break the other two professions? At the very least the Guardian?

The problem with ele’s HP is also the skills, which in theory should justify it, but in practise does not. Most of ele’s survival comes from traits. Vigor, protection when swapping to earth, and regeneration/ healing/ condition removal/ on swapping to water and dodging while in water. When it comes to skills, a non-water/ arcana ele can’t stack enough heals, nor do they have enough protection available on earth (not talking about the boon, but that one is also missing). Most of their earth skills revolve around short-term disruption, bleeding, or cripple, which is fine, but it lacks serious defensive skills, with the exception of focus.

This is the perfect opportunity to emphasize my suggestions for a healing frost fan in the frost bow, an healing signet of water, and I would go further and suggest serious defensive traits for their earth traitline. This would give eles more sources to stack defense/ healing without relying on water/ arcana traits so much.

Air and fire traits also need more defense. An auto-cleasing flames in fire, vigor in fire, blind and weakness in air, etc.

EDIT: And please, switch fire’s condition duration with earth’s condition damage. It just makes more sense this way. Many burning effects only last 1s, which makes duration underwhelming, and many conditions are available in earth’s skills or traits. Besides, burning is ele’s main source of condition damage, not bleeding. Swapping those two would be a nice buff to both traitlines, without being overpowered, broken or anything. The current stat placement has little synergy, ad that’s also bland and unfun. And if devs’ intention is for players to make specific trait combos… well, they would still do it. A condi-ele would probably still want both.

More thoughts….

—

Balance within a profession.

1.) Find the balance between weapons, main hand vs main hand, offhand vs offhand.
Please ask yourself “why players don’t like this weapon” “why this skill is blamed so much”. before you’re doing balance.

For example, warrior can have longsword or shield to be his offhand weapon. While you look at the skills, I doubt that there is any who’s going to choose shield. More damage can be done by sword; sworders can block projectiles more often and longer duration (in total, within 30 seconds which is the CD of Sheld block)

2.) Once you provide basic balance to weapons, then it will be easier for you to orgainse utility skills and traits.

As a long time Mesmer it’s nice we are focusing on a couple of mantras for buffs but can I make a better suggestion? Mantras are not going to be viable with their long cast times and recharge with ease of interruption. Instead why not simply move mantra masteries effect to empowered mantras and replace it with “mantras affect applies to up to 5 targets around the mantras target”. So a Mesmer with the trait mantra mastery could buff a player next to him with stability or hit 3 targets with mantra of pain making it useful for harder hits when traited. If its seen as powerful I suggest making this a grandmaster trait to keep it balanced.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Increasing base HP for ele is more valid than it seems. Initially, the ele was designed and advertised as a profession of destruction, but anet has eventually settled it as a jack-of-all-trades, probably due to the nature of the attunement system. For this reason, they could very well get jack-of-all-trades levels of HP, like engineer or ranger have/ are.

Of course, this would make HP distribution across professions a bit uneven. Each spellcasting class has different levels of HP. Although the same doesn’t applies to adventurer classes (both engie and ranger have same hp/ armor), so why not for ele sharing mesmer’s hp/ armor stats?

In fact, I think it would make more sense for a mesmer’s hp to get switched with ele’s. Sorry, Mesmer fans, I don’t really want to suggest nerfs to you! But if we think about it, mesmers, much like thieves, have build in defenses (clones, and a bit of stealth). The AI will attack clones often, and clones + stealth + tab targetting is strong versus players. That’s why mesmers, like thieves, are the two professions that can most afford using berserker gear in pvp. Not only that, but mesmer’s passive playstyle makes it a bit too easy to play, so less HP would make them a bit harder to master. But I understand that they are not really top-meta right now, so this nerf is probably unfair.

Another possibility, is to shorten the HP gap between professions. Give 13k base hp to eles/ thieves/ guardians. But maybe it would break the other two professions? At the very least the Guardian?

The problem with ele’s HP is also the skills, which in theory should justify it, but in practise does not. Most of ele’s survival comes from traits. Vigor, protection when swapping to earth, and regeneration/ healing/ condition removal/ on swapping to water and dodging while in water. When it comes to skills, a non-water/ arcana ele can’t stack enough heals, nor do they have enough protection available on earth (not talking about the boon, but that one is also missing). Most of their earth skills revolve around short-term disruption, bleeding, or cripple, which is fine, but it lacks serious defensive skills, with the exception of focus.

This is the perfect opportunity to emphasize my suggestions for a healing frost fan in the frost bow, an healing signet of water, and I would go further and suggest serious defensive traits for their earth traitline. This would give eles more sources to stack defense/ healing without relying on water/ arcana traits so much.

Air and fire traits also need more defense. An auto-cleasing flames in fire, vigor in fire, blind and weakness in air, etc.

EDIT: And please, switch fire’s condition duration with earth’s condition damage. It just makes more sense this way. Many burning effects only last 1s, which makes duration underwhelming, and many conditions are available in earth’s skills or traits. Besides, burning is ele’s main source of condition damage, not bleeding. Swapping those two would be a nice buff to both traitlines, without being overpowered, broken or anything. The current stat placement has little synergy, ad that’s also bland and unfun. And if devs’ intention is for players to make specific trait combos… well, they would still do it. A condi-ele would probably still want both.

Nicely said. Except the Mesmer part. Illusions are fantastic protection in PvE, but not so much in PvP and WvW. That is where the health comes in.

Trixie.7614:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Elementalist
We’re working on the staff in an effort to make it a stronger support weapon, and we also improved the conjure weapons so that they’re stronger for support. You’ll see improvements to all 4 of the conjure weapons to make them stronger and better for support.

If you change my Fiery Greatsword 4-th ability, I will use swearing vengeance and immediately get rid of this game.

They said four. So that basically means the four utility conjures and this is the case based on the leaked patch notes. The ones that needed changes are the ones that are never used outside of goofing around like the Earth Shield, and Flame Axe.

“Not only that, but mesmer’s passive playstyle makes it a bit too easy to play, so less HP would make them a bit harder to master.”

I wish people would stop going on about passive play! When a mesmer attacks mobs in pve 90% of the time they are all over the mesmer not his pets!!! The AI actually constantly reacquires the mesmer which makes little sense from trash mobs. Note that ranger pets actually hold agro as opposed to not! Also what about engineer turrets? Ranger spirit summons? Necromancer minions all of which constitute passive play? Be honest, your real complaint about the supposed ease of play only affects pvp style play because you find their main ability to disrupt player perception with clones to hide themselves irritating. Nevermind they were designed with this concept in mind and intended to utilize this as a primary form of combat! Please offer better ideas about adjustment then “their play style is too easy”. Conveniently you point out they are not top tier class yet you throw out the idea to nerf them anyways. Not very sporting.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Increasing base HP for ele is more valid than it seems. Initially, the ele was designed and advertised as a profession of destruction, but anet has eventually settled it as a jack-of-all-trades, probably due to the nature of the attunement system. For this reason, they could very well get jack-of-all-trades levels of HP, like engineer or ranger have/ are.

Of course, this would make HP distribution across professions a bit uneven. Each spellcasting class has different levels of HP. Although the same doesn’t applies to adventurer classes (both engie and ranger have same hp/ armor), so why not for ele sharing mesmer’s hp/ armor stats?

In fact, I think it would make more sense for a mesmer’s hp to get switched with ele’s. Sorry, Mesmer fans, I don’t really want to suggest nerfs to you! But if we think about it, mesmers, much like thieves, have build in defenses (clones, and a bit of stealth). The AI will attack clones often, and clones + stealth + tab targetting is strong versus players. That’s why mesmers, like thieves, are the two professions that can most afford using berserker gear in pvp. Not only that, but mesmer’s passive playstyle makes it a bit too easy to play, so less HP would make them a bit harder to master. But I understand that they are not really top-meta right now, so this nerf is probably unfair.

Another possibility, is to shorten the HP gap between professions. Give 13k base hp to eles/ thieves/ guardians. But maybe it would break the other two professions? At the very least the Guardian?

The problem with ele’s HP is also the skills, which in theory should justify it, but in practise does not. Most of ele’s survival comes from traits. Vigor, protection when swapping to earth, and regeneration/ healing/ condition removal/ on swapping to water and dodging while in water. When it comes to skills, a non-water/ arcana ele can’t stack enough heals, nor do they have enough protection available on earth (not talking about the boon, but that one is also missing). Most of their earth skills revolve around short-term disruption, bleeding, or cripple, which is fine, but it lacks serious defensive skills, with the exception of focus.

This is the perfect opportunity to emphasize my suggestions for a healing frost fan in the frost bow, an healing signet of water, and I would go further and suggest serious defensive traits for their earth traitline. This would give eles more sources to stack defense/ healing without relying on water/ arcana traits so much.

Air and fire traits also need more defense. An auto-cleasing flames in fire, vigor in fire, blind and weakness in air, etc.

EDIT: And please, switch fire’s condition duration with earth’s condition damage. It just makes more sense this way. Many burning effects only last 1s, which makes duration underwhelming, and many conditions are available in earth’s skills or traits. Besides, burning is ele’s main source of condition damage, not bleeding. Swapping those two would be a nice buff to both traitlines, without being overpowered, broken or anything. The current stat placement has little synergy, ad that’s also bland and unfun. And if devs’ intention is for players to make specific trait combos… well, they would still do it. A condi-ele would probably still want both.

i trade u my hp, for your aoe abilities. u can have my ai and i get your viability in wvw zergs. ill give u my moa elite for your swiftness. ;-)

Why are Elementalist cooldowns so long? Even the utility (6 to 0 keybound) skills have ridiculous cooldowns. 90 seconds for Armour of Earth???

Avatara.1042:

Why are Elementalist cooldowns so long? Even the utility (6 to 0 keybound) skills have ridiculous cooldowns. 90 seconds for Armour of Earth???

Couldn’t agree with you more. But lets start with a few small things. I pointed out a possibility that I think would be a nice fix for mesmer’s with mantra’s, but I would also like to see feedback as well. I think the reason long utility cooldowns exist in ele is because they have 25 weapon skills to filter through instead of 10 like the rest of us….just saying. I agree Ele is very squishy class, perhaps a trait to increase the duration of some utility/defensive skills might balance the long recharge?

Freedan.1769:

Avatara.1042:

Why are Elementalist cooldowns so long? Even the utility (6 to 0 keybound) skills have ridiculous cooldowns. 90 seconds for Armour of Earth???

Couldn’t agree with you more. But lets start with a few small things. I pointed out a possibility that I think would be a nice fix for mesmer’s with mantra’s, but I would also like to see feedback as well. I think the reason long utility cooldowns exist in ele is because they have 25 weapon skills to filter through instead of 10 like the rest of us….just saying. I agree Ele is very squishy class, perhaps a trait to increase the duration of some utility/defensive skills might balance the long recharge?

Yeah, eles do lack traits like that. In fact, most of their traits are mediocre attunement specific ones.

Avatara.1042:

Freedan.1769:

Avatara.1042:

Why are Elementalist cooldowns so long? Even the utility (6 to 0 keybound) skills have ridiculous cooldowns. 90 seconds for Armour of Earth???

Couldn’t agree with you more. But lets start with a few small things. I pointed out a possibility that I think would be a nice fix for mesmer’s with mantra’s, but I would also like to see feedback as well. I think the reason long utility cooldowns exist in ele is because they have 25 weapon skills to filter through instead of 10 like the rest of us….just saying. I agree Ele is very squishy class, perhaps a trait to increase the duration of some utility/defensive skills might balance the long recharge?

Yeah, eles do lack traits like that. In fact, most of their traits are mediocre attunement specific ones.

Well those traits are ridiculous, for examples: toughness bonus when attuned to earth.
Seriously, what is it going to change in a battle that for the 2-3 second I am attuned to earth that I get an extra 3-4% toughness? Maybe 20% would do a difference.

Xillllix.3485:

Avatara.1042:

Freedan.1769:

Avatara.1042:

Why are Elementalist cooldowns so long? Even the utility (6 to 0 keybound) skills have ridiculous cooldowns. 90 seconds for Armour of Earth???

Couldn’t agree with you more. But lets start with a few small things. I pointed out a possibility that I think would be a nice fix for mesmer’s with mantra’s, but I would also like to see feedback as well. I think the reason long utility cooldowns exist in ele is because they have 25 weapon skills to filter through instead of 10 like the rest of us….just saying. I agree Ele is very squishy class, perhaps a trait to increase the duration of some utility/defensive skills might balance the long recharge?

Yeah, eles do lack traits like that. In fact, most of their traits are mediocre attunement specific ones.

Well those traits are ridiculous, for examples: toughness bonus when attuned to earth.
Seriously, what is it going to change in a battle that for the 2-3 second I am attuned to earth that I get an extra 3-4% toughness? Maybe 20% would do a difference.

Attunement specific traits would be fine if it was actually possible to use a mono or duo-attunement reliant build. Unfortunately they did such a terrible job on the class mechanic that no such build can be reliable without copious investment into the very trait tree which is specifically designed for swap-heavy builds!

Seriously, who thought this up? And what were they on?

Conncept.7638:

Xillllix.3485:

Avatara.1042:

Freedan.1769:

Avatara.1042:

Why are Elementalist cooldowns so long? Even the utility (6 to 0 keybound) skills have ridiculous cooldowns. 90 seconds for Armour of Earth???

Couldn’t agree with you more. But lets start with a few small things. I pointed out a possibility that I think would be a nice fix for mesmer’s with mantra’s, but I would also like to see feedback as well. I think the reason long utility cooldowns exist in ele is because they have 25 weapon skills to filter through instead of 10 like the rest of us….just saying. I agree Ele is very squishy class, perhaps a trait to increase the duration of some utility/defensive skills might balance the long recharge?

Yeah, eles do lack traits like that. In fact, most of their traits are mediocre attunement specific ones.

Well those traits are ridiculous, for examples: toughness bonus when attuned to earth.
Seriously, what is it going to change in a battle that for the 2-3 second I am attuned to earth that I get an extra 3-4% toughness? Maybe 20% would do a difference.

Attunement specific traits would be fine if it was actually possible to use a mono or duo-attunement reliant build. Unfortunately they did such a terrible job on the class mechanic that no such build can be reliable without copious investment into the very trait tree which is specifically designed for swap-heavy builds!

Seriously, who thought this up? And what were they on?

Guess
Hint: cough smiters boon cough

About what you said on rangers’ pets “we thought a pet “catching your scent” might be a cool way to insinuate some anti-stealth into the game.”
Don’t you think necro minions should also be able to catch the scent of a stealthed enemy? All the undead literature and filmography agree that they rely way more on their nose rather than sight to find their preys, since their eyes are most probably decomposed.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Increasing base HP for ele is more valid than it seems. Initially, the ele was designed and advertised as a profession of destruction, but anet has eventually settled it as a jack-of-all-trades, probably due to the nature of the attunement system. For this reason, they could very well get jack-of-all-trades levels of HP, like engineer or ranger have/ are.

This is a must and it should have been done from the moment they reduced the elementalist damage during the beta. To me it almost beggars belief that they haven’t made such considerations in their balancing.

Avatara.1042:

Sylv.5324:

Fortus.6175:

Increase base HP to 18-20k like mesmers.

Our base HP is not 18-20k. It’s around 15k. If we want more, it comes from gear and traiting into likes just like eles trait into earth.

Elementalists have 10k base…no idea why. Guardians and Thieves also have this base health, but Guardians are tanks with innate healing, heavy armour and a zillion cleanses, while Thieves have medium armour, are very slippery, and are nearly impossible to lockdown.

Compare them to Elementalists, who have light armour and…a 40 second cooldown extra 2k heal? Nice work, Anet.

do you ever tried to kill a tank ele? there are 3 impossible thing in this game: a thief run out of stealth, a ranger pet do something in wvw and catch and kill a bunker ele.

NoTrigger.8396:

Ghostextechnica.3270:

Please please please review the condition cap.

Pretty much the whole Necro class is based around condition damage and we are massively kitten in PVE by the limit.

Right now Necros have to fight and beg like crazy to participate in dungeons due to the cap!

Some comments have suggested balance would be affected if the condition cap was raised, but right now Necros can be prevented from doing any damage at all by other classes applying incidental conditions with minuscule amounts of damage that knock our high-damage conditions off the target entirely!

Is it balanced that when Necros are solo they can do full damage, whereas in groups they can’t?

“Right now Necros have to fight and beg like crazy to participate in dungeons due to the cap!”

its not due to the cap, its because you conditionnecros dont know how to play your class in pve. get berserker gear and scholar runes. when you see your damage numbers for the first time you will understand.

even with higher condition cap a berserker necro would laugh about your condition damage.

just an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ckhmyUfC2Q&feature=youtu.be&t=2m29s

+ if u think necro is built around conditions you are simply wrong.

Completely disagree…I have played a conditionmancer as my main since the pre-release, and your statement that “conditionnecros dont know how to play your class in pve” is incredibly insulting. The only reason a power necro does better in PvE is because Anet makes all the encounters DPS races, that doesn’t mean conditionmancers are completely useless. I play high level fractals on my necro with no problem and it doesn’t lengthen them by any significant amount.

“if u think necro is built around conditions you are simply wrong” …. just wow. There are plenty condi-mancers who would totally disagree with this statement.

What all you zerker-lovers seem to forget is that those of us throwing around conditions and are also providing you with some extra DPS and survivability. Most of what we do isn’t even visible and you just assume we do nothing.

Not to mention we can transfer all the conditions YOU put on a mob to surrounding mobs.

I agree that zerkers are better suited for PvE, I don’t think telling all the CM’s out there that they don’t know how to play their class is fair. Many of them have probably clocked tons of hours playing necro and trying out all the various types of builds but still enjoy the condition play style.

Traits effecting skill tooltips is a great idea! Glad to see that is coming in.

New ground targeting sounds very interesting. I think giving people a choice is always a positive.

Making Support builds viable would be a huge and welcome game changer. I know the holy trinity don’t make a show in this game, but reducing peoples’ ability to survive would really increase the need for a support class in team fights. Reduce ability to cleanse condi’s, reduce ability to constantly apply vigor, and this makes the support classes instantly more viable if they can AoE provide these things.

As a Warrior Shouts are huge. Support would be great. But you need to make sure they aren’t like Ranger spirits at the moment where you can spam them all as soon as they are off cooldown. Maybe tweak them so like stances they are a bit more situational.

Ele Staff support is something that is really enjoyable and would be good to see that improved. It ties in to the above comment on making support more viable in general.

Hello, I am a PvE only player that plays staff ele as a support, investing heavily into healing power so it looks like the changes are aimed at people like me

They seem nice, at least they are not nerfs and conjures certainly need some love.
But there are some things worrying me.

1. If the leaked notes are true, you are “normalizing” the radius on evasive arcana. I’m not sure about the current radius but If that means you are nerfing the water or earth effects radius for EA that’s going to directly hit me as a support staff player. I rely on cleansing wave to heal people, usually putting myself at a disadvantage, consuming my own dodges to heal them and using cantrips to make up for that. Plese don’t make it harder, trying to heal someone who is running all round is already hard enough. Earth’s blast effect is also useful to get a second blast in my water fields but it’s already very tricky to use on something other than healing rain.

2. I have a lot of healing power but it doesn’t feel as useful as other stats, by investing in power I gain a huge damage boost, by investing in healing power, not so much with my healing and I have to give up on a lot of damage. Sometimes people just leave groups when they realize you are healing specced. My guildies are happy to have me around but many pugs feel I am like a wasted spot in their party. I understand you can’t turn us into healing gods or the pvp crowd will revolt but why not to adjust the healing power rates to give better numbers in PvE? I’d like to feel useful in every party.
You got rid of the trinity, ok. A healer is not needed, ok. But why does it need to be so hard trying to play one? People would still need their dodges since a lot of stuff just 1-2 shots you, let me be the one that alleviate the pressure on the rest of the fight, we won’t be the fastest group, we might be the safest one, I’d love to be able to do that.

3. Please do something for our trait lines. I cannot get out of arcana. Not in my healing build, not in my dps/support hybrid one. It’s not only because arcana is that much better, it’s because 15sec CD on attunements is insane on a class that relies so much on swapping and has so many long CD, situational skills scattered around. It’s not like I can stay in one attunement and play that way, I might do it sometimes for water or fire but if I’m locked out of those two (and they don’t have the same function so I find myself needing either one or the other), most of the time I’m just wasting my time. Plus, many of our other traits feel so weak and situational. Everything that is tied to a single element feels this way. I started investing in arcana when I was 5, I’d like to get out of it, please, buff the other traits and reduce our swap cd.

If more anti stealth skills will be introduced, thieves must be buffed in their defensive sector, through boons’ access or aoe CC or some sort of immunity.

I just wish they’d focus more effort on buffing anything but warrior. They haven’t received a single nerf since launch and it’s now acceptable for them to run around with three passive signets since their damage output and CC is better then essentially anything else in the game.

They already do everything, arenanet, stop grooming your pet class and pay attention to the abandoned professions in the cardboard box in the alleyway.

@raahk
Go figure. And every time a guildie or player on my server’s map chat talks about Mesmer or Thief being OP, I scoff and say one of two words:

1. “Warrior”
2. “Guardian”

Don’t get me wrong, I see no issue with Guard having more condition clearing ability. They are the “defensive/support” fighter, after all. But that kind of utility/healing/buffing, plus steady-to-medium/high DPS is a bit insane.
And all Warrior honestly needs is a bit more sustain in PvP, i.e. the one game mode they’re hurting in. They’re already PvE Gods, and hella good in WvW.

NoTrigger.8396:

Ghostextechnica.3270:

Please please please review the condition cap.

Pretty much the whole Necro class is based around condition damage and we are massively kitten in PVE by the limit.

Right now Necros have to fight and beg like crazy to participate in dungeons due to the cap!

Some comments have suggested balance would be affected if the condition cap was raised, but right now Necros can be prevented from doing any damage at all by other classes applying incidental conditions with minuscule amounts of damage that knock our high-damage conditions off the target entirely!

Is it balanced that when Necros are solo they can do full damage, whereas in groups they can’t?

“Right now Necros have to fight and beg like crazy to participate in dungeons due to the cap!”

its not due to the cap, its because you conditionnecros dont know how to play your class in pve. get berserker gear and scholar runes. when you see your damage numbers for the first time you will understand.

even with higher condition cap a berserker necro would laugh about your condition damage.

just an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ckhmyUfC2Q&feature=youtu.be&t=2m29s

+ if u think necro is built around conditions you are simply wrong.

Thank you for proving the point so nicely. As you can see, other players consider the use of conditions as being “simply wrong”, or “laughable”.

This is a MAJOR design flaw in the game that has seen no improvement in the last 12 months.

AndrewSX.3794:

juno.1840:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Better fast cast ground targeting:
We split this into 3 different options; so that players can more easily cater how ground targeting works for them.

1. Double tap to cast
2. Press the button to cast
3. Release the button to cast
   SO GET YO CAST ON!

I would really like an option which is “Ground Target at Center of Current Target”. In other words an option to let me skip picking a place on the ground to drop the skill — instead it would put the skill reticule centered on my current target.

This would make my life so much easier as a grenade engineer.

Not going to happen imo, i mean, if it’s centered on your target, it’s no more a Ground Targeted Spell…

That said, i 100% agree that a rework/QoL change to grenade auto (just that, 2-5 are ok GtAoE) is in order.

The skills are still ground targeted… this is just an option to always ground target at the feet of your currently targeted foe. This isn’t a discussion to eliminate ground targeting skills from the game — it’s a quality of life improvement for players that suck at using ground targeting on the fly (which is totally me).

If you think about it, using this feature is actually a bit less effective for some skills (i.e. grenades when the target is running around since you won’t be “leading” the target for optimum grenade hits).

However you are trading the effectiveness of the skill for the improved performance of activating the skill. In my case I can NOT find my mouse cursor on the screen to save my life. It makes ground targeted skills very slow to use in a large battle where all the players obscure the ground reticule.

EDIT: it would be the equivalent of grenades under water (if you’ve ever tried that you’ll be like “wow” this is great).

One concern I have about skill balance is that for some reason any class that can use Greatswords also has its best skills attached to that weapon. As a result, all Warriors, Guardians and Mesmers I see running around have great, big, huge Greatswords strapped to their backs. (Okay, so the Ranger is an exception.)

Add to this the fact that there are THREE Legendary Greatswords, as opposed to only ONE of each other weapon. It makes me wonder why the Greatsword is the game designers’ favourite weapon.

I posit that the set of Warrior weapon skills on the Greatsword is the only reason that Warriors are seen by many players as overpowered in PvE. It’s the developers’ blind spot towards how overpowered Greatswords are (compared to other weapons) that is keeping their belief that Warriors are “in exactly the spot where we want them to be balance-wise” intact.
Just imagine a Warrior that never uses a Greatsword (or has his Greatsword weapon damage halved), and you will probably have a better picture of why ArenaNet considers the Warrior to be “perfectly fine balance-wise”.

JonathanSharp.7094:

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.

Instead of skills that apply revealed, how about skills that nullify the invisibility aspect of stealth for the same duration?

This way, thieves heavy into SA still have access to all their stealth based traits and abilities(Might on stealth, health regen, condition dropping, stealth attacks, etc), but players can still see them, and thieves still follow all the rules of stealth (can’t cap a point, landing an attack triggers revealed, etc).

This allows for an effective counter for stealth without completely nullifying 30 points in SA. Countering a class mechanic is (arguably) fine, countering 30 trait points is not.

Nah, Jornophelanthas – Guardian GS > all. 1 Field, 3 Finishers … all on the same weapon? As for Mesmer GS, it’s mostly a situational weapon. Mesmers tend to mainly use it for IZerker and a 1200 range single-target option. As for Warrior, I’m FAR more afraid of Hammer/Shield/Mace than GS.

Now, as regards the amount of Legendary GS versus other weapon options … that is an
extremely fair question. Although, are we not supposed to see some other options
for Legendaries in the not-terribly-far-flung future?

evilapprentice.6379:

JonathanSharp.7094:

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.

Instead of skills that apply revealed, how about skills that nullify the invisibility aspect of stealth for the same duration?

This way, thieves heavy into SA still have access to all their stealth based traits and abilities(Might on stealth, health regen, condition dropping, stealth attacks, etc), but players can still see them, and thieves still follow all the rules of stealth (can’t cap a point, landing an attack triggers revealed, etc).

This allows for an effective counter for stealth without completely nullifying 30 points in SA. Countering a class mechanic is (arguably) fine, countering 30 trait points is not.

Considering the base idea of the Pet “sniffing you out,” if that’s a doable sub-concept for the “Sic ’Em” overhaul, I could see that being sensible. It’s Mittens what sussed you out, not as much me.

Advent.6193:

evilapprentice.6379:

JonathanSharp.7094:

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.

Instead of skills that apply revealed, how about skills that nullify the invisibility aspect of stealth for the same duration?

This way, thieves heavy into SA still have access to all their stealth based traits and abilities(Might on stealth, health regen, condition dropping, stealth attacks, etc), but players can still see them, and thieves still follow all the rules of stealth (can’t cap a point, landing an attack triggers revealed, etc).

This allows for an effective counter for stealth without completely nullifying 30 points in SA. Countering a class mechanic is (arguably) fine, countering 30 trait points is not.

Considering the base idea of the Pet “sniffing you out,” if that’s a doable sub-concept for the “Sic ’Em” overhaul, I could see that being sensible. It’s Mittens what sussed you out, not as much me.

As much as I’d like things to “make sense”, I think it’s much more important abilities be mechanically sound – while I don’t think a stealth counter is necessary, I’m not going to say its broken or OP – the problem is, stealth is tied so heavily into thieves it can be broken against certain specs (IE, 30 points in SA is 30 points gone at the click of a skill). This part is silly – no other skill in the game says “Lawl, you got tagged, 30 trait points are useless until this effect wears off” with absolutely no counter once you’ve been hit with it. In addition, stealth skills can be a very large part of a builds strategy, and locking those out seems a bit much – just making the thief visible while in stealth should satisfy everyone who’s ever said stealth was too much.

@evilapprentice
Fair counter, that. But the Great Confusion Debacle proved one thing:
If the Zerglings or PvPers whinge enough, it’ll eat a heavy-handed beating. And, most likely … a quarter- or half-year hence, something Rune-wise’ll appear what makes the old Stealth ability look like child’s play.

I have to agree that E’s need a lot of fixes. They are way to squishy for their damage output. There’s little to take the heat off of you. Either raise their damage significantly or put them in medium armor.

The traits force people into specific builds and weapons. whether I want to or not earth trait has to be near maxed. Fire gets maxed for damage. Any other traits have trivial levels.

Same deal for weapons. I find myself with a staff because the extra range is necessary for survivability.

Atunement: I almost never switch it because of the traits it’s impractical. Frankly , I’d rather be married to an attunement and be able to switch weapons like every other class. (Still weapon swaps wouldn’t solve the inadequate damage/ condition damage problem anyway.)

Atunement sounds good on the surface. Still, the most you’ll be able to be proficient at is 2 atunements because of trait point restrictions.

Yes, more survivability please but I don’t use my Ele to tank. I rolled an Ele for damage. It’s simply not there.

evilapprentice.6379:

JonathanSharp.7094:

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.

Instead of skills that apply revealed, how about skills that nullify the invisibility aspect of stealth for the same duration?

This way, thieves heavy into SA still have access to all their stealth based traits and abilities(Might on stealth, health regen, condition dropping, stealth attacks, etc), but players can still see them, and thieves still follow all the rules of stealth (can’t cap a point, landing an attack triggers revealed, etc).

This allows for an effective counter for stealth without completely nullifying 30 points in SA. Countering a class mechanic is (arguably) fine, countering 30 trait points is not.

This is exactly what I suggested in this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Counter-Invisibility-not-Stealth/first

Nobody replying seem to have read the actual post though…

Ranger

There will also be # changes to some of the Ranger weapons.

i hope those # changes are for better and not worst like nerfing now lb like sb was nerfed or getting sword nerfed so we dont have any dps option xD
hopefully they bring back sb glory ranger cant be a ranger if its melee :/ and sword is best damage atm

Dristig.9678:

“Pet HP split between PvE and PvP
We wanted to make pets and summons more viable in PvE/WvW while making sure they didn’t become too strong in PvP.”

Lumping WvW in with PvE is really scary for this change. Summons that can handle PvE levels of damage in smaller scale WvW are going to be very overpowered. If for instance you buff summons to be able to stand in AoE in PvE and that strength is brought to WvW how are you supposed to kill them out in the field?

I think you may be VASTLY overestimating the HP increase being applied. He did not say pets will now be able to stand in AoE in PvE…..they should not be able to (they should be programmed with enough AI to run out of it and not run back into it.).

Looks interesting, but without details it’s hard to comment on it. Looking forward to the patch notes.

evilapprentice.6379:

JonathanSharp.7094:

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.

Instead of skills that apply revealed, how about skills that nullify the invisibility aspect of stealth for the same duration?

This way, thieves heavy into SA still have access to all their stealth based traits and abilities(Might on stealth, health regen, condition dropping, stealth attacks, etc), but players can still see them, and thieves still follow all the rules of stealth (can’t cap a point, landing an attack triggers revealed, etc).

This allows for an effective counter for stealth without completely nullifying 30 points in SA. Countering a class mechanic is (arguably) fine, countering 30 trait points is not.

Finally, someone gets what a lot of thieves are up in arms about.

I’m not sure I like the changes to Turrets. Though it will help to focus fire and down single targets faster, Engi is severely lacking in base/point harass in my experience. I use my turrets to draw so I can flank or dodge, or cover my own flank so I can focus fire forward; I need them to target independently for that. A way to apply/generate damage-reduction on them (beyond taking Armor Plating) would be helpful, and buffs to Tool Kit wouldn’t go amiss either. (such as including a turret-type skill in the Kit, so it doesn’t feel like a “wasted” slot, and/or perhaps an “energy shield” effect to Gear Shield, granting PBAoE or “turrets-only” Aegis/Protection on activation)

Also, I would greatly appreciate a further reduction in CD time for using the “Pick Up” mechanic. Right now, the CD reduction, even at 20%, is too small to make picking up my turrets a viable tactic compared to simply blowing them up and running away. An increase (decrease?) to 50% reduction from Pick Up shouldn’t be too OP, while making Turret Engi builds significantly more viable for general play.

A 1 second root on Pistol #2? Really? Meh.

Am I blind? I came to check this thread since there were still no balance fixes in today’s update (only logged in to check the notes)….and I STILL do not see any mention of toning down this boring, no skill, condition spamfest that has become GW2 PVP.

Someone please tell me I am blind and just missed it.

Velron.3729:

Am I blind? I came to check this thread since there were still no balance fixes in today’s update (only logged in to check the notes)….and I STILL do not see any mention of toning down this boring, no skill, condition spamfest that has become GW2 PVP.

Someone please tell me I am blind and just missed it.

Your neither blind, nor missed it. They dont intend to tone done condi spam, in fact they will further reinforce it by nerfing the few remaining non condi builds left. As example see the nerfs to thief stealth and s/d builds, whats left d/d condi spam!

Shemsu.8721:

Velron.3729:

Am I blind? I came to check this thread since there were still no balance fixes in today’s update (only logged in to check the notes)….and I STILL do not see any mention of toning down this boring, no skill, condition spamfest that has become GW2 PVP.

Someone please tell me I am blind and just missed it.

Your neither blind, nor missed it. They dont intend to tone done condi spam, in fact they will further reinforce it by nerfing the few remaining non condi builds left. As example see the nerfs to thief stealth and s/d builds, whats left d/d condi spam!

Been about a month since I’ve played, keep checking the forums from time to time…got all excited when I saw there were finally game update notes posted again. I thought for sure they had to finally have toned down the condi spam a bit, since they have commented in threads several times stating they would but were waiting until after PAX to do any balance changes.

So much for that.

They are hell bent on destroying the PVP in this game huh? Beta was better.

AndrewSX.3794:

Copestetic.5174:

A little range on Dag1 for Necro.

I’d prefer making it cleave.

I think that’s how axe should be actually, the particle effects work for it anyway, just enlarge them and make it a cleaving cone attack.

Fade.7658:

A 1 second root on Pistol #2? Really? Meh.

Completely stupid. Body Shot isn’t the problem with P/P. The problem with P/P, which should be obvious to anyone with halfway decent analytical skills, is that the primary damage is the #3 skill (which consumes resources) when it should be the autoattack (which is free). This messes up the whole set by pitting all forms of utility against basic damage in a resource competition the likes of which no other set in the game has to deal with. It’s totally broken.

Utterly moronic.

Avatara.1042:

Sylv.5324:

Fortus.6175:

Increase base HP to 18-20k like mesmers.

Our base HP is not 18-20k. It’s around 15k. If we want more, it comes from gear and traiting into likes just like eles trait into earth.

Elementalists have 10k base…no idea why. Guardians and Thieves also have this base health, but Guardians are tanks with innate healing, heavy armour and a zillion cleanses, while Thieves have medium armour, are very slippery, and are nearly impossible to lockdown.

Compare them to Elementalists, who have light armour and…a 40 second cooldown extra 2k heal? Nice work, Anet.

Pretty much..

It’s literally the worst of both worlds, and you have to spec to be a tank to be on the same level of survivability of another class who went beserkers how does that make sense?

If I do a berserker Ele build with either 20-30 in fire and/or air, sure I do good dmg like my other classes can, but I literally die in 1 second for almost anything lol… and don’t even have the escapability of mesmer/thief.

Avatara.1042:

Freedan.1769:

Avatara.1042:

Why are Elementalist cooldowns so long? Even the utility (6 to 0 keybound) skills have ridiculous cooldowns. 90 seconds for Armour of Earth???

Couldn’t agree with you more. But lets start with a few small things. I pointed out a possibility that I think would be a nice fix for mesmer’s with mantra’s, but I would also like to see feedback as well. I think the reason long utility cooldowns exist in ele is because they have 25 weapon skills to filter through instead of 10 like the rest of us….just saying. I agree Ele is very squishy class, perhaps a trait to increase the duration of some utility/defensive skills might balance the long recharge?

Yeah, eles do lack traits like that. In fact, most of their traits are mediocre attunement specific ones.

I honestly feel like Ele is the one class in this game deserving of an actual rework, not to attunements or anything, but just a bit of everything.

Attunement cooldowns, all the traits, hp/survivability, utilities, it’s like the class is still in beta.

Also it’s incredibly hilarious to me that my Mesmer gets 15k base HP with all the stealth/clones/distortion my survivability in FULL glass cannon mesmer spec is better than even the tankiest Ele spec. Said Ele spec might be able to sustain a bit more with the healing, but my mesmer can guarantee avoid and escape ANYTHING and mitigate way more dmg than my Ele ever could.

God forbid you play a glass cannon Ele, even a butterfly landing on you will break your legs.

McWolfy.5924:

Avatara.1042:

Sylv.5324:

Fortus.6175:

Increase base HP to 18-20k like mesmers.

Our base HP is not 18-20k. It’s around 15k. If we want more, it comes from gear and traiting into likes just like eles trait into earth.

Elementalists have 10k base…no idea why. Guardians and Thieves also have this base health, but Guardians are tanks with innate healing, heavy armour and a zillion cleanses, while Thieves have medium armour, are very slippery, and are nearly impossible to lockdown.

Compare them to Elementalists, who have light armour and…a 40 second cooldown extra 2k heal? Nice work, Anet.

do you ever tried to kill a tank ele? there are 3 impossible thing in this game: a thief run out of stealth, a ranger pet do something in wvw and catch and kill a bunker ele.

That’s nice, some of us don’t want to play bunker, I would’ve rolled guardian (who can ALSO play DPS builds btw).

That bunker won’t even tickle you.

Bunkers shouldn’t even exist or be encouraged in this game, maybe for making cute videos of a bunker surviving/kiting zergs in WvW or something (like Shamans in Warhammer), but for Spvp how are bunkers good for the game? Having a selfish invincible person sitting on a point all game while people get bored trying to kill it?

Bunkers (which are essentially just self healers/sustainers) should be Support not Bunkers, as in they focus on supporting Teammates with CC/Boons/Debuffs/Heals, not selfish sustain tanks that sit there and do nothing but live, that’s not fun at all.

Should nerf some of the selfishness and buff the support given to others on some abilities.

It seems really strange that the only charge to Larcenous Strike is halving the boons it rips. Instead of damaging the support utility of s/d, why not increase the initiative cost to 3, reduce the initiative to 1 with the change or just reduce the high damage coeff? AFAIK most thieves aren’t even sword/dagger anyway, I didn’t think it was something that prevalent.

It’s most likely a nerf caused by sPvP, Mal. You probably see them all the time there.