Guild Wars 2

So before this patch (right now) the only class I’ve seen as unviable is elementalist and sometimes mesmer.. after this patch why would anyone bring a warrior or a thief to a 5 man team?

Necros and Engis will be condispamming the points like they do now, and the only thing that can burst those classes down will be mesmer or another condiburst class?

Doesn’t seem like you guys want to address the root of the issue which is how easy it is to dump conditions on people, purging flames changes was a good counter to condispam, we need more of that.

Will the warrior greatsword even be reworked?
Hundred blades and Rush are both clunky and useless in PvP?

jonathan could your team look into

AIR II and EARTH I on Ele? its not always working on channeled skills. Most time its only working if used in the attument of the trait.

JonathanSharp.7094:

mini.6018:

Now they leave the hambow meta almost unchange while they completely kill the mace.

“Unchanged”:

For Hammer and Bow:
• Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
• Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.
• Combustive Shot – Increased pulse duration to 3s. Increased burn duration per pulse to 3s. Normalized damage per pulse. Updated pulses per tier to 2, 3,and 4 respectively for tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3.

“Completely killed”:
Mace:
• Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear.

:)

Thank you for that but i feel you missed my whole point.I wrote Almost Unchange(d) for a reason since the gameplay will not change much for a hambow build except the loss in raw dps,while the mace builds will be getting a consisten hit since skullcrack is the only reason to take a mace altogether.

So far a comparison between the 2 weapons

Hammer applies cripple from 600 range and immobilize if specced
A knockback while moving and a whirl finisher
An aoe 1200 range 240 radius 2 second stun AND a blast finisher
A knockdown
Applies weakness

Mace has

130 range.Slow autoattack
A daze wich is good but damage is really low and still 130 range
A block plus a counter but the counter casting time is too high that you will eat damage between the block and the counter itself
And f1 that was great for burst because of low cd and dps but now it will be very very difficult to counter someone with it since the weapon lacks cripple,immobilize,range and mobility unlike hammer or other weapon sets.
Also it’s a single target skill

A 1/2 casting time based on 130 range and no cripple/immobilize/gap closer means that the target literally walk away while you are casting it if you are crippled or chilled .

I will rather have Skullcrack change back to a 2 second stun instead and will still get some use out of it instead of relying on my utility to land a stun when i could just change to hammer and cripple/immobilize the target before i drop earthshatter on them.

Maybe you don’t realize it yet and you are more focuse on the “hard to dodge” part of the skill but something has to be done about it because you can’t possibly leave it in this condition.At least give us a ranged cripple or leap so people would still be able to dodge with the obvious animation you are implementing but anything for us to let us hit the target unless it’s already stunned by someone else in the 1st place.

Low range high cast time single target and no gap closers/conditions will kill the only usefulness this weapon had out of a gs/mace build since there is no way i can counter spammable attacks from teleport/stealth with such a big casting time.

I think a major question that needs to be asked is;
Are all the PLANNED major nerfs here that would cause hype in here, or are we going to get some surprise stuff that we didn’t have time to think about first? That’s what has me the most worried. (IE Necro staff that became kittened by secret nerfs)

a t s e.9614:

Will the warrior greatsword even be reworked?
Hundred blades and Rush are both clunky and useless in PvP?

If olny that man, if olny that.. Seems i asked for too much stuff as my post just been passed.

@big Oh im not saying it will function on stun, im saying they may look at making it due so with the cast time later on when they look back at the results.
I don’t read every thread last I recall you put something about it requiring LoS or w/e which frankly I feel would actually be garbage.

D/P trickery is lower on the damage spectrum for Thief burst. Given the initiative regen changes, DA investment builds are going to be more flexible due to heightened regen. Which certainly doesn’t work against dagger builds, considering DA gives them special attention. Though I don’t know why you’d speak specifically about trickery D/P. Thieves may end up rolling back to DA investment.

ensoriki.5789:

@big Oh im not saying it will function on stun, im saying they may look at making it due so with the cast time later on when they look back at the results.
I don’t read every thread last I recall you put something about it requiring LoS or w/e which frankly I feel would actually be garbage.

D/P trickery is lower on the damage spectrum for Thief burst. Given the initiative regen changes, DA investment builds are going to be more flexible due to heightened regen. Which certainly doesn’t work against dagger builds, considering DA gives them special attention. Though I don’t know why you’d speak specifically about trickery D/P. Thieves may end up rolling back to DA investment.

Trickery burst is quite high and certainly the highest of any spec that sees play.

shimmerless.4560:

Trickery burst is quite high and certainly the highest of any spec that sees play.

It’s lower than the previous 25/30/x/x/15 which is what I’m speaking towards. DA investment is going to be a bit more attractive now, so thieves may consider returning to it for their D/P.

This was posted by another user…but I think it should be posted here also.

iriyabran.6218:

So you want to take away some of the need for eles to go into arcane and you actually do exactly the opposite by moving multiple mandatory traits up in tier you force people to invest even more and even more trait points in water and arcane. Also people who go high in arcane go for “evasive arcane” NOT for the attunement cooldown.
You basically doom us to set ourself in stone with 30 water 30 arcane and 10 whatever, the attunement recharge won’t matter and diamond skin genuinely made me laugh. I wish good luck to everyone who decides to test spending 30 trait points and trying to stay over 90% health in PvP often enough for it to be a trait that justifies the investment and sacrifice of everything else.
I am not even joking when I say this I really don’t know how you guys play ele if you play it at all.

This is exactly how I feel….why ruin our current builds? Please don’t move all of our useful adept traits to master. I understand moving some….but not all. Elemental attunement and renewing stamina should both not be moved to master…only one or the other. Same with cleansing wave and aquamancers alacrity in water…all four of these traits are adept currently and all are being moved to master. I run ALL OF THESE on my current pvp build and I am sure I speak for a lot of eles when I say this that the patch is really screwing us over big time. Ain’t nobody gonna go for 30 earth or fire…we don’t deserve these nerfs.

Firstly, thank you for these changes. Looking forward to it.

You are going to have to reconsider mesmer phantasm damage. This could allow some of these specs to put out so much damage, since IC is only 15 points now. That being said, it will also open up many new builds for mesmers which will be great.

Also, can we talk about condi immunity traits? Automated response and the new ele trait. Complete condi immunity shuts down builds, worse with how easy it is for an ele to spam heals. Why do these need to be complete immunity? What about 50% condi duration and buff the conditional? Same with zerker stance, pure immunity is too strong and needs to be reconsidered…

Posted my thoughts in the Guard section already, but I’ll do it here too.

•Zeal V – Shattered Aegis. Damage instead of Burning.
Overall not a really big deal. People still probably won’t run this trait, unless it’s a substantial amount of damage.

•Zeal VII – Zealous Blade. This trait now scales with Healing power (2%.)
Nice that they finally buffed this. However you buff the sword up 5% more damage. I don’t see why you don’t do it with the Greatsword and also Mace of Justice. If you want Guardians to spec heavily into Zeal you need to give us reasons.

•Zeal XII – Kindled Zeal. Increased conversion from 10% to 13%.
Still useless. This whole trait just needs to be redesigned.

•Radiance V – Searing Flames. Reduced cooldown from 20s to 10s.
This is the one I’m most excited for. With Sigil of Nullification you’ll be removing two boons every ten seconds. This one can be really power.

•Radiance X – Powerful blades. Increased damage from 5% to 10%.
Nice change.

•Valor V – Retributive Armor. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
Didn’t really need a buff, but whatever not going to complain.

•Honor VI – Pure of Heart. Increased scaling with Healing power from 25% to 40%.
Pure of Heart isn’t bad problem is there are just better traits in Honor to choose from.

•Virtues VIII – Supreme Justice. Number of attacks going from 4 to 3.
I find this to be pretty interesting too. Going to have to wait until the patch for testing.

•Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse, rather than 8 seconds if you have no swiftness and 1 second if you have swiftness.
Whatever!

ensoriki.5789:

shimmerless.4560:

Trickery burst is quite high and certainly the highest of any spec that sees play.

It’s lower than the previous 25/30/x/x/15 which is what I’m speaking towards. DA investment is going to be a bit more attractive now, so thieves may consider returning to it for their D/P.

D/P trickery offers slightly less burst at the cost of more “burst executions”.

It’s a more sustained version of common burst build, since you can burst effectively 3 times on a 21 secs time frame, with a good daze-boon stealing-high fury uptime added to the mix, while losing about 10% of the total damage ( 15% if we use improvisation instead of dagger training).

Since mug brutal nerf there’s no point to go for full damage builds, the ini issue was really not relevant at all since common burst thief has always been about shortbow spam till you see someone at low HP then “BOOM burst”.

The problem relies in condi spam, something that is not being addressed, and stun spam.

With so many condies/stuns on a point, a thief can’t take part in greater fights aside from shortbow spam.

D/P trickery burst is not strong enough to face ANY decently played meta build ( a single combustive shot is enough to deplete almost all thief HP pool if he stays near the point, and zerker stance totally neglects D/P blinds).

My proposed change regarding Inf strike was to make it usable ONLY if the thief is in range to do the attack ( 600), otherwise it would have failed and placed the shadow return under thief’s feet, this in order to avoid the thief from jumping from a target to another, when focused, by simply pressing twice the same button ( which is the main issue about S/D at high levels).

Now lockdown builds ( necro-wars-engies and soon mesmers) will be able to destroy Sword thieves at the second disable.

Due to the abundance of CCs and conditions currently going into PvP, thieves will soon have no place if these changes go live.

Also, how many heartseekers will the init change allow to be spammed at once? 7? New thief meta incoming. :P

(I am a little concerned this will allow cloak and dagger spam to be even easier against mesmers and rangers due to pets being unable to dodge, let’s see how that turns out).

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

Also, how many heartseekers will the init change allow to be spammed at once? 7? New thief meta incoming. :P

(I am a little concerned this will allow cloak and dagger spam to be even easier against mesmers and rangers due to pets being unable to dodge, let’s see how that turns out).

instead of the old 22222 meta we wil see 22222222222 meta? oh dear

Thanks for the great communication devs!

As for the warrior changes, coming from a longtime pvp warrior and “shaving” supporter.

• I’m worried the hammer dps changes are a little heavy handed. Hammer abilities are already difficult to land against good opponents, I’m worried that a large dps nerf right after the sigil of para nerf is too much too fast, and will make it an unused spvp weapon.

• Healing signet really seems like the base passive heal should be lower, with the active component boosted to compensate. There’s very little reason to use the active effect (better gameplay). This could also be used to reduce the all around effectiveness of hambow, instead of a dps nerf.

• Great change on the mace, perfect.

Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

this sounds very bad, I like to play d/d. I need fighting in melee range with low armor, low HP. If the fight starts I have a lot of ccs to avoid dmg but after 20-30 secs all is on cd. Then i need vigor from Renewing Stamina and protection from Elemental Attunement only to survive. If I can choose only one in future it would very bad because the pressure from other classes will just over roll you. Then d/d need something other to compensate this lack.

So i am not happy with this idea. I think it will hit d/d ele very hard. More then all other ele weapons.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

/grumble

Confounding Suggestions.. Ugh. I’d rather the stun. The daze duration synergizes beautifully with Runes of the Mesmer (which also needs a buff)

All of the changes are kind of awesome, but Confounding Suggestions barely merited Grandmaster as it is. What makes it so good is that the 50% stun chance makes it MUCH easier to chance down fleeing opponents as well as escape crappy situations. Increasing daze duration takes that away, but gives us the potential (w/Mesmer runes) for a near 2-second daze, making the DazeMantra -> OH SwordDaze -> DazeMantra combo into a beastly 6-second daze… assuming they don’t just run away from you.

I’d much rather them make the 25-point in Domination grant a 20% daze duration increase. The Confounding change is still barely grandmaster-worthy IMO, if its an addition to the stun chance, then it becomes freakin’ glorious and totally worth the 30 points.

I misread that on the first pass. I agree that I’d rather have the stun. Honestly I’d prefer it to give a 1.5 second stun on a 10 second ICD.

I’m still scratching my head on the Signet of Spite Change. Lots of people don’t take it, but it gets 1 bleed removed…

Weird. I used it all the time in WvW for camps or to finish someone off.

However, I didn’t use it for the damage it did; I used it either to combine with Epidemic for AoE blind + weakness against NPC’s, or I used it as condition insurance so I could finish someone off.

Taking 1 bleed off doesn’t make any sense to me.

Thedenofsin.7340:

I’m still scratching my head on the Signet of Spite Change. Lots of people don’t take it, but it gets 1 bleed removed…

Weird. I used it all the time in WvW for camps or to finish someone off.

However, I didn’t use it for the damage it did; I used it either to combine with Epidemic for AoE blind + weakness against NPC’s, or I used it as condition insurance so I could finish someone off.

Taking 1 bleed off doesn’t make any sense to me.

There’s a couple bleed reductions on necro. I think they’re just trying to shave some of the raw condi damage slightly.

I like the look of this update. Measured changes for the most part with a move to a more controlled base line with traits being extras (the right direction to head in imo).

A note on reducing necro skills – instead of making the skill less useful in itself just remove the damage component (not everything needs one), this moves it from a “lol crit all the procs instagib” to a skill you can balance the power of with more ease. If you want it to do more of something or less of something you can fiddle with it without those annoying procs jumping in and making it hard to balance.

But thanks for the post. I would just suggest moving some traits into different trees for mesmers, theres still a real awkwardness between shatter traits and phantasm traits.

Fire II – Burning Fire – This trait has a new effect. Use Cleansing Fire automatically when you have a number of conditions on you. 3 conditions. 40 second cooldown. Moved to Master tier.

Cleansing fire is bad. A cleansing fire that you can’t control and will usually trigger on things you would never bother to remove (1 stack of bleed and the endless 1 seconds weakness/cripple applied through auto attack spam) is insanely bad. The fact that it’s a master trait in fire is just that much worse.

Fire III – Ember’s Might. The effect of this trait has been changed to Burns you apply last longer. 25%.

Ele doesn’t need more burning. The trait should remain as +5% damage to burning targets and add might you apply lasts X% longer.

Air V – Soothing Winds. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.

This trait is worthless. Adding 2% doesn’t change that.

Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.

That sounds crazy OP. A condi necro has almost no chance of knocking an ele below 90% health 1v1 if he can’t apply conditions, and he can’t even use CC condi to defend himself. This really needs to be completely rethought, because as is, it sounds broken.

Hard counters make for bad gameplay.

Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.
Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

The trait changes (less diamond skin) are bad and certainly don’t create any danger of power creep for the tier C elementalist. All of these should remain adept, with maybe elemental attunement being bumped to the 15 point perk. If anything, Renewing Stamina should be a 5 point air trait like other stronger classes have.

There’s no reason at all to nerf existing builds (which are already unviable) to make your new (terrible) traits look more appealing. And what if people don’t want to spec 20 into fire or 30 earth? They just got crapped on for nothing.

Also, I’m disappointed that nothing is being done about full earth -> air spike. That sort of cheese isn’t fun to play against. There needs to be some changes to bring that instant spike down. I like the idea of a shortc ICD on arcane blast/wave when the other is triggered. Nothing crazy, just 1-2 seconds to spread the gib out long enough for opponents to react. Combine that with removing the damage from lightning flash and mirroring it to mesmer blink would also bring the spike down.

Guardian staff #3 change is going to hurt the guardian’s mobility even more. To get full effect, we would have to wait in the circle for a few extra, crucial seconds. I would rather it be kept the same over this change.

Zanryu.3417:

I’m curious to know why a Ranger 15 Trait is now better than a Warrior’s 25 trait.

Mighty Swap gives both the Ranger and their pet 3 stacks of Might upon the pet being activated. This can occur every 10 seconds.

Versatile Power gives the Warrior 1 stack of Might upon switching weapons. This can occur every 10 seconds, or 5 when using the minor trait Fast Hands.

Even with 15 points in Discipline the Ranger now has better access to Might AND it affects their pet as well. In what ways do you believe this to be a balanced trait?

Also, I’d like to point out that Thieves and Guardians get 10% damage while their Endurance is not full while Warriors only get 3%. Shouldn’t the Warrior trait be brought up to a similar level?

Mighty Swap can only in fact occur every 20 seconds (16 if traited 15 into BM) Versatile might is also a Minor when Mighty Swap is in fact a Major. The other thing that you need to realize is that the pet is included as the ranger DPS, so giving it to both ranger and pet is like giving might to any other class. if you take fast hands the minor trait would actually be pretty much the same, but much less susceptible to boon removal as it is a multi-source boon. Now let us look at rangers access to might beyond this trait…
Rangers:
Call of the Wild 1 stack of might on a 35s cooldown
Mighty Roar 5 stacks of might 15s CD (no one takes the pet to use this ability as they are too squishy to fully utilize in teamfights)
Blast Finishers in fire fields – 2 (One on warhorn 35s, One on drake pet – uncontrolled)
Beastmaster’s Bond (when your pet’s health reaches 50%)
Beastmaster’s Might (upon signet activation)

Warriors:
For Great Justice 3 stacks of might for 25s on a 25s CD
Battle Standard 1 stack 10s reapplies every 3 seconds
Signet of Rage 5 stack 30s duration
Blast Finishers into firefields – Arcing Arrow, Call to arms, Banners X4, Stomp, Earthshaker, Stomp (rampage form), Banner replant – not really worth it.
Forceful Greatsword (upon critical hit with greatsword or spear)
Mighty Defenses (upon blocking an attack)
Quick Breathing (when removing torment or weakness)
Reviver’s Might (to allies after reviving someone)
Short Temper (upon an attack being blocked)
Versatile Power (when swapping weapons)

Yup… fear the might stacking power ranger…

Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.

Wait, what? Condition immunity when you are > 90% health? No internal cooldown, no nothing?

Doesn’t that seem really extreme, giving a class complete immunity from conditions when their health is high?

I certainly don’t see any traits around which state, “Immune to all non-condition damage while health is > 90%”…

All you have to do is drop 10% of health, why are people tripping?

Thedenofsin.7340:

Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.

Wait, what? Condition immunity when you are > 90% health? No internal cooldown, no nothing?

Doesn’t that seem really extreme, giving a class complete immunity from conditions when their health is high?

I certainly don’t see any traits around which state, “Immune to all non-condition damage while health is > 90%”…

I guess the difference is Ele HP is really low, and all condition skills (most) also have initial damage straight up. On the other hand, not all and really not even most physical weapons have any condi damage, and its quite a bit less when it does. Not to defend it but that’s the difference.

ronpierce.2760:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.

Wait, what? Condition immunity when you are > 90% health? No internal cooldown, no nothing?

Doesn’t that seem really extreme, giving a class complete immunity from conditions when their health is high?

I certainly don’t see any traits around which state, “Immune to all non-condition damage while health is > 90%”…

I guess the difference is Ele HP is really low, and all condition skills (most) also have initial damage straight up. On the other hand, not all and really not even most physical weapons have any condi damage, and its quite a bit less when it does. Not to defend it but that’s the difference.

That is all true. But as a pure conditon class. Like a rabid necro and maybe a rabid engi (to a lesser extent). I promise you wont ever get a single condition on the ele if he uses signet (or even if he doesnt). He will out heal what you do and easily outheal (whilst killing you) the 250 damage you do per attack.

Sure in team fights this trait cud just be bad. Who knows. I dont. Nobody does till they test it. But 1v1 vs a rabid necro a rank 1 ele would beat the best necro in the world. It is hard counters like this that suck. Surely it is preferable to find a better way to buff this GM trait than just making it “I win, gg” vs certain builds.

This is a great set of patch notes, can’t see much I disagree with. A little heavy on thieves and a little light on necros, but otherwise everything is pretty much and improvement.

Lordrosicky.5813:

I guess the difference is Ele HP is really low,

Yeup, the issue that it’s an ele.
Eles get a large portion of their surivivability from self healing, they won’t go under 90% very often in a 1v1 against most condi classes.

It’s one of the worst ‘fixes’ I have seen yet…
Entirely passive.
Mostly useless.
When it’s not useless it hard counters enemies, to the point where it’s not even a fight…

Terrible.
Terrible.
Terrible.
Trait idea.
Just craps on gameplay.

I didn’t think it was this hard for people to fix a game.

Just don’t make your build narrow.
As far as Meta goes, if the build doesn’t take off it wont matter. If it does, then you start to either hybridize, rotate a power spec, or focus and it becomes irrelevant.

From the other thread:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

vangedas.7358:

Diamond Skin

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

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

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

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

Anet, please, why does this need to be condi immunity?

Why not make it -75% condi duration, so condis will still be applied and just last a very very short time within the conditional frame. Same with automated response and zerker stance – Jonathan I remember discussing this with you in the past but your notes don’t indicate any change to this.

Why is a passive trait designed to hard counter builds? Don’t you think there is something slightly wrong with balancing in this way?

JonathanSharp.7094:

mini.6018:

Now they leave the hambow meta almost unchange while they completely kill the mace.

“Unchanged”:

For Hammer and Bow:
• Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
• Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.
• Combustive Shot – Increased pulse duration to 3s. Increased burn duration per pulse to 3s. Normalized damage per pulse. Updated pulses per tier to 2, 3,and 4 respectively for tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3.

“Completely killed”:
Mace:
• Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear.

:)

While nerfing hambow had to be done, why are you not splitting these skills between PVP and PVE? Hammer warriors were already unwanted in groups, and now you are crippling their damage potential. I’m sick of the whole “GS or GTFO” mentality in PVE. Please split these skills between PVE and PVP so that hammer doesn’t get completely overshadowed by greatsword in PVE (which it pretty much is currently).

As others have stated the changes to both renewing stamina and elemental attunement for the elementalist is just plain wrong. I can’t think of many if any patches where D/D hasn’t been nerfed and here we are again? Absolute crazyness. As many other have stated we have so many useless minor traits, why is it not being moved to something like lingering elements? I just just can’t fathom the reasoning for annihilating a build that’s been viable since release just to try and ballance traits that we the player base haven’t even asked for.

Well I guess my waining time in game is going to finally come to an end all together which is pretty kitten sad after I’ve stuck it out after every nerf.

JonathanSharp.7094:

We just posted this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/

Keep in mind that we can still change/tweak some of these things, so please don’t freak out. We’d love to hear your feedback! We’re currently playing with these changes and already making some small tweaks as we speak.

Now that you are moving traits around.

About Warrior:
I always wanted to play a 3 physical utility skill Warrior with Stomp, Bulls Charge and Kick. Why don’t you move Physical Training to the Adept line so I can match this trait with Distracting Strikes? Both traits make an awesome sinergy, so I’d would love to be able to take one of the grandmaster traits from the Strengh line along side these two (I’d definetly take Berserker’s Power for ultrastrong Physical utility skills!).

Physical training in the Adept line would also match all the other utility skill improvement traits in the other Adept Warrior lines.

I’d move Short Temper to the Master Line and in addition to its current effect: Your first attack cannot be blocked (30s CD).

What do you think?

ensoriki.5789:

All you have to do is drop 10% of health, why are people tripping?

If Necromancers had a trait that made them immune to direct damage until you dealt condition damage equal to 10% of their hp, you wouldn’t complain?

JonathanSharp.7094:

Rufy.6093:

LordByron.8369:

•Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
•Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

Another nerf to D/D to the level of RTL 200% nerf.

GG if you want all players enjoyng D/D gameplay to quit at all cost you will be sure this time.

RTL was one of the most unfun nerf i ever seen in a game.
This is even worse…for PvE and WWW.

I hope you are happy of how much you destroyed those in the sake of your terrible PvP.

If this arrives in PvE i think i ll find the final reson to quit this great game ruined since day 1 patch after patch.

I already quit PvP…i quit WWW and now its time for pve.

Relax man, learn to adapt and try new things. They ain’t trying to ruin any class. They are balancing all over.

:)

It’s true. And again, none of this is final, we could pull things or adjust things still. Just trying to get a sense of what you guys feel with these changes, they’re not set in stone.

I’m no expert on Elementalist builds by any means, but from what I’ve gathered it kind of feels like in trying to open more avenues for builds, D/D is being reduced. Maybe I was playing it horribly, horribly wrong, but the generic D/D bunker build didn’t feel all that OP for it to need this. Or OP at all.

I guess I’ll have to wait and hope something changes between now and December, but I’m not saving very much optimism for my bunker ele. Don’t have the gold, or desire to re-gear and switch builds, only need one more ascended ring to complete the gear set, not changing course now, but if it becomes useless that’s that. I hope you guys work things out and toss us D/D’s a bone, we’ll be thankful!

garethh.3518:

Yeup, the issue that it’s an ele.
Eles get a large portion of their surivivability from self healing, they won’t go under 90% very often in a 1v1 against most condi classes.

It’s one of the worst ‘fixes’ I have seen yet…
Entirely passive.
Mostly useless.
When it’s not useless it hard counters enemies, to the point where it’s not even a fight…
Again, a passive skill COMPLETELY SHUTS DOWN AN ENEMY.

Terrible.
Terrible.
Terrible.
Trait idea.
Just craps on gameplay.

I didn’t think it was this hard for people to fix a game.

It doesnt matter if they can refill their health above 90% at a faster rate than other classes.The reason is that for how faster ele can get back up with self healing at the same time that much faster you will be able to get him down the 90% mark again cause he has low hp.
In reality the time someone spends above 90% hp is determined by a lot of things and imo ele will spend a lot less time up there than what a warr or necro would with their huge hp pools
But other than that i completely i agree with you.Its bad gameplay and the trait will either be completely useless or a shut down for a few condi specialised builds in 1vs1..In the end i think it ll just be useless..

Honestly if ele comes back up it wont be cause the builds they open up are stronger or op than what there are available now.No vigor or on demand prot will show huge time and getting deep into arcane will create builds that are actually nerfed heavily compared to what we have now since at 30 arcana there was practically no buff to attunements cd
Just imo cause other classes see heavy nerfs and our “balance” will definately be disturbed

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

From the other thread:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

vangedas.7358:

Diamond Skin

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

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

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

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

Anet, please, why does this need to be condi immunity?

Why not make it -75% condi duration, so condis will still be applied and just last a very very short time within the conditional frame. Same with automated response and zerker stance – Jonathan I remember discussing this with you in the past but your notes don’t indicate any change to this.

Why is a passive trait designed to hard counter builds? Don’t you think there is something slightly wrong with balancing in this way?

Agree 100%. There is no skill in passive immunity to things.

Thedenofsin.7340:

ensoriki.5789:

All you have to do is drop 10% of health, why are people tripping?

If Necromancers had a trait that made them immune to direct damage until you dealt condition damage equal to 10% of their hp, you wouldn’t complain?

Considering Many weapon sets deal literally Zero condition damage yes.
The fact that many condition sets deal power damage is a stark difference.
Or Is D/P, S/D, S/P, thief,
GS, Mace, Axe, Hammer, warrior gonna suddenly conjure up a damage type on their weapons they dont have.
It’s not actual immunity in that every weapon that deals conditions also deals Power.
How much your weapon set is affected depends on how you spec, which is quite different from Your weapon set literally doing nothing.
Then again Power specs also dealt with Endure Pain and Protect me for eons before Berserker stance came on the front.
Ty.

No ele builds will be opened. The only thing keeping elementalist alive against current damage levels in the game is the vigor and on demand access to protection.

Nothing in this patch will change other than ele’s will have to lose either attunement or renewing stamina, and they will still spec 20-30 arcane because it’s their only source of survival against spike.

Understand this: No 12k base HP class will ever cope against 6-7k crits from warriors or thieves or other burst elementalists or mesmers with the baseline survival sans the vigor and access to protection.

This is why you see most ele’s dumping points 20 water 30 arcana or the other way around. Even Phantaram needs to maintain a 1300-1400 toughness build on top of having 20 water.

A Berserker geared ele just cannot exist baseline without investment in water and arcana.

The mesmer changes are kind of neat, but what I’m gathering is that these changes won’t cause diversity by themselves because a large factor of diversity is how bad some weapons are compared to others.

The mesmer scepter is still horrible. Mesmer condition builds are not viable because their condition application ramp up is too large for the rate of condition removal. The mesmer torch phantasm is still horrible. The Warden cannot be used well at all in PvP. Things like that.

And for the Ranger, the issue has always been the lack of survival in power specs relative to condition specs, and how power specs lack the burst to justify going berserker. Pets do not scale with gear, and so the berserker/power ranger will always be inferior as a large portion of its damage is not scaling with gear.

The Two-Handed mastery trait for ranger is on the spirit line, which no power speced ranger uses because in order to make power specs remotely viable, you need 30 in marksman, and 20 at least in skirmishing. The power weapon traits should be moved to the power lines!

Another reason Power Rangers will NEVER be viable in their current state is because THEY DO NOT HAVE BOON REMOVAL. A power ranger cannot exist in a meta where classes have access to high protection uptime or lots of blocking/retal.

Also, Barrage is a horrible skill that does more damage to you from retaliation than you do to all the opponents. Please change this skill.

^ exactly..losing protection or vigor and evasive arcana sustain will not be a good trade off for just freeing up 20 points that you can dump in earth for a cheesy trait that might not work at all

necro axe #1 when are you going to buff it?

I don’t understand why they can’t just remove/change Dhummfire… it was what created the Necro issues to begin with – it feels like A-net doesn’t want to address this trait because they will have to admit they made an error adding it to the class.

Nobody asked for burning on the Necro… people asked for the ability to sustain a bit more.

LET DIAMOND SKIN BE WHAT ITS SUPPOSED TO BE COMING DECEMBER 10TH… When ele’s get nerf/buffed people complain.. Our water and arcane trees practically got hard-nerfed. This will introduce some serious counter-play when you fight a diamond skin ele.
Are the people who are afraid of diamond skin seriously saying they cannot deal 1-2k damage to somone and THEN apply condis?
Do not pull some silly crap where you let the arcane and water nerfs slide and then change up diamond skin in a negative way before december 10th. This patch looks amazing, I wont have to be pin-holed into water/arcana as much anymore.
If diamond skin proves to be ridiculous come december 10th, then nerf it next patch. Give this at least a chance for the majority of the players to taste it.

The Game Slayer.7632:

You don’t know what gameplay will be like in december 10th, no one knows, and you proclaim to know? You know the future, yea? lol…. and you call me a fool… all i know is that any change is good especially when it looks good compared to what the ele is now.

By the strictest definition, no one knows anything but that they think.

But if you do think, just a lil, you can start to see how two 30 point mediocre condi clears, and some mild nerfs to d/d won’t improve gameplay.

Sure they are a start, Anet realizing that eles need condi clears in other trees is great!!!
But these are just very bad ways to go about condi clears.
Entirely passive and ineffective.

Avigrus.2871:

it feels like A-net doesn’t want to address this trait because they will have to admit they made an error adding it to the class.

Lol it’s not a feeling. It’s exactly like that.

This patch isn’t going to fix anything, and it’s more than one month away. It’s shocking how the devs still think small changes are all they need to do in order to fix the game. The problems are way deeper. I’m also extremely curious how the devs come up with percentages…like they gave pets 71.43% more hit points in pve maps. Lol I’m serious here why 71.43% and not 71.44%? I mean it feels like that 1.43% has been added just to look more professional. I know maths quite well…still I’m really confused about this. But I’m sure you guys know it better than I do, there must be some deep philosophical reason behind this.
Don’t get me wrong I’m so glad the damage on the hammer’s burst skill is getting nerfed and this patch seems full of other super c00l stuff, but after one year I can’t really trust the devs anymore.
I’m also glad they are reworking the most spammy ranged weapons in game like the mesmer gs and the ranger sb. Oh wait, they aren’t doing that.

garethh.3518:

The Game Slayer.7632:

You don’t know what gameplay will be like in december 10th, no one knows, and you proclaim to know? You know the future, yea? lol…. and you call me a fool… all i know is that any change is good especially when it looks good compared to what the ele is now.

By the strictest definition, no one knows anything but that they think.

But if you do think, just a lil, you can start to see how two 30 point mediocre condi clears, and some mild nerfs to d/d won’t improve gameplay.

Sure they are a start, Anet realizing that eles need condi clears in other trees is great!!!
But these are just very bad ways to go about condi clears.
Entirely passive and ineffective.

I disagree strongly. There was never any nerfing going to d/d. It is just a fail-safe for a power-creep. You associate d/d with arcana, which is odd. Arcana is Arcana.
Opening up offensive trait trees with a few defensive mecahnics is going to change gameplay enourmously. Compared to earth/air/fire, since when did we ever have any offensive perks to choose in water/arcana? Think about that. You’re not the one thinking it through. Let me tell you the answer , it is NEAR NONE.

Larynx.2453:

silvermember.8941:

You are right you shouldn’t compare classes.

Does it make sense for a class that has higher hp, more toughness, 5 second weapon to have more mobility than a class that has 3/5 its HP?

Does it make sense for a class to have a 20 second 1500 range skill while a class with less hp, less armor to have a 40 second CD on a very similar skill?

Does it even make sense for a elementalist in which each attunement cannot be self-sustainable to have 40 second cd on their weapon skills?

The point all those thing he listed should be the reverse. The elementalist should have more mobility and lower CD than the warrior, but they don’t.

There are more variables in play than the ones which you listed. Lets use an example,

Elementalists have 20 weapon skills, yet a warrior only has 10. Why should elementalists have double the abilities of other classes?

This is why you can not take things into a void and compare them. There’s more variables than just the class itself as well. Consider why necros are taken less often than engineers or rangers nowadays. It’s certainly not a necro issue, they are incredibly strong. Consider why warriors are even taken at all. They are also incredibly strong, but like necros if the meta was shifted warriors would not be nearly as popular even with zero changes to the class itself.

Also, “Does it make sense for a class to have a 20 second 1500 range skill while a class with less hp, less armor to have a 40 second CD on a very similar skill?”

Is just false in the premise. Rush is a movement ability tied to the warrior’s speed, and thus it is 1200 range in combat and slowed by cripple and chill. RtL is an ability not tied to the elementalist’s speed, with a faster travel time, is not slowed by cripple and chill, and was 1550 range in combat. These are the reasons why RtL was nerfed as a disengage ability, while Swoop, Rush and similar skills were left unchanged.

the warrior has 5 weapons skills that can stand on their own. Elementalist have 20 weapons skills that require constant switching to be effective. If I wanted to I can stick with hammer 90% of the time and I will still be effective, If I just stick with fire or 90% of the time, I m probably going to die. The currrent attuenement system is designed with the assumption that each attunement can stand on its own and that is far from the truth.

RTL usually glitches a lot of the time so, even if you don’t get rooted the game does it for you. The warrior on his greatsword has 2 ways to disengage, so even if one of them fails they have a second one as back up. Not to turn this into a WvW discussion, but I have been chased by zergs and still manage to survive thanks to awesome combination of those 2 skills, so you while you can be chilled, it doesn’t happen enough to actually use it as a counter arguement.

So you really don’t have a leg to stand on.

silvermember.8941:

Larynx.2453:

silvermember.8941:

You are right you shouldn’t compare classes.

Does it make sense for a class that has higher hp, more toughness, 5 second weapon to have more mobility than a class that has 3/5 its HP?

Does it make sense for a class to have a 20 second 1500 range skill while a class with less hp, less armor to have a 40 second CD on a very similar skill?

Does it even make sense for a elementalist in which each attunement cannot be self-sustainable to have 40 second cd on their weapon skills?

The point all those thing he listed should be the reverse. The elementalist should have more mobility and lower CD than the warrior, but they don’t.

There are more variables in play than the ones which you listed. Lets use an example,

Elementalists have 20 weapon skills, yet a warrior only has 10. Why should elementalists have double the abilities of other classes?

This is why you can not take things into a void and compare them. There’s more variables than just the class itself as well. Consider why necros are taken less often than engineers or rangers nowadays. It’s certainly not a necro issue, they are incredibly strong. Consider why warriors are even taken at all. They are also incredibly strong, but like necros if the meta was shifted warriors would not be nearly as popular even with zero changes to the class itself.

Also, “Does it make sense for a class to have a 20 second 1500 range skill while a class with less hp, less armor to have a 40 second CD on a very similar skill?”

Is just false in the premise. Rush is a movement ability tied to the warrior’s speed, and thus it is 1200 range in combat and slowed by cripple and chill. RtL is an ability not tied to the elementalist’s speed, with a faster travel time, is not slowed by cripple and chill, and was 1550 range in combat. These are the reasons why RtL was nerfed as a disengage ability, while Swoop, Rush and similar skills were left unchanged.

the warrior has 5 weapons skills that can stand on their own. Elementalist have 20 weapons skills that require constant switching to be effective. If I wanted to I can stick with hammer 90% of the time and I will still be effective, If I just stick with fire or 90% of the time, I m probably going to die. The currrent attuenement system is designed with the assumption that each attunement can stand on its own and that is far from the truth.

RTL usually glitches a lot of the time so, even if you don’t get rooted the game does it for you. The warrior on his greatsword has 2 ways to disengage, so even if one of them fails they have a second one as back up. Not to turn this into a WvW discussion, but I have been chased by zergs and still manage to survive thanks to awesome combination of those 2 skills, so you while you can be chilled, it doesn’t happen enough to actually use it as a counter arguement.

So you really don’t have a leg to stand on.

I am not standing on anything, that was an example. The point of the first was that statements taken in a void are inaccurate. Re-read the post. If anything, you just demonstrated the point even more.

And your response about RtL is not relevant at all. You didn’t debunk anything I said. The statement was simply false, and you didn’t really disagree with it according to your post. So there’s no point in that entire paragraph.