Guild Wars 2

In the live stream on Feb 14, 2014, the devs showed us three matches from top tiers players, and the team with Ele always lost. They had pretty good strategy, but they lost all the team fights (watch it if you like). Basically we don’t see Lys, the ele often, and when we see him, he’s mostly lying on the ground waiting for a rez. He pulled up some good insta-kill, but since the cooldown was long, his contribution to team fight was pretty… limited; and they lost (multiple times) despite having Caed.

Comments?

Increase RTL cooldown by 20 seconds.

Make Lightning Surge strip a boon.

=

Instant meta.

Because Ele + Thief synergy is rough and requires a lot of work. You cant go down if you 2v2 in current meta but you can insta burst almost anything down 100-0.

Are you speaking of the Ready-Up stream from the 14th? If so, aside from caed and supcutie, I wouldn’t really call it “top-tier” play. The elementalist is wooden potatoes who is primarily known for his lore videos…although he is rank 60+. One of the Engi’s was Matt Visual who admits himself that he is rather new to tPvP ( rank 17 ). Richie Procopio is a writer for Massively, and I think he was the rank 5 warrior.

It was a scrimmage, not a tournament and for me it was fun to watch.

Making balance decisions from the ready up matches would probably not be a good idea, as some/most of the players (including the ele) are not top tier PvP players.

With that being said, everyone knows ele needs some love in PvP, we will have to wait until March to see…

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Ele should technically be in a much better spot come the feature build.

Pretty anxious not gunna lie..

Would love to hear the opinion on necromancer from the one necromancer visible to the necro community and showed as the one developer playing the profession regarding the upcoming changes and longlasting mechanics issues.

I just hope devs understand that ele will never make it into meta as a bursty roamer like mesmer / thief cause they are not sneaky. Even if they can oneshot someone, it´s unreliable and 1 rezz would make them useless. Their boons and heals make them pretty supportive by nature especially with staff, but in a 5v5 everyclass must be stable on it´s own which ele is not due to crap ratio of surviveability/dmg, even as full bunker you sometimes die in one stun chain, 1 pistol whip etc.

and good luck landing a dhuumfire in future patch on a thief

To be fair, Lys was playing an all-in build (25/30/10/0/5 I believe, with zerker amulet).

[Aside: I believe we either call this a “jihad” ele, or perhaps a “yolo” ele build]

Also, the team that had more/better guardians always won. The first 2 matches it was 2 guards vs. none. The last one was Powerr on guard vs. Blu/someone else. Powerr is a little better at bunker-guardian-ing than the others.

Finally, burst ele requires a competent team to do ANYTHING. If the team is failing, the burst ele is less than useless. If the team is doing o.k., burst ele can wreck so much face (if left unchecked).

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Ele should technically be in a much better spot come the feature build.

Pretty anxious not gunna lie..

But the feature build wont be out for another 2 months.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Ele should technically be in a much better spot come the feature build.

Pretty anxious not gunna lie..

Ele is the only balanced class right now. You should rather tune down everyting else.

But why do I even care. PvP patches are so rare. I will never be able to take PvP serious and truely enjoy it at that pace.

Dojo.1867:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Ele should technically be in a much better spot come the feature build.

Pretty anxious not gunna lie..

Ele is the only balanced class right now. You should rather tune down everyting else.

But why do I even care. PvP patches are so rare. I will never be able to take PvP serious and truely enjoy it at that pace.

and by that, you mean nerf damage? they said they will. but ele is not in good shape anyway

Serdoc.7261:

Making balance decisions from the ready up matches would probably not be a good idea, as some/most of the players (including the ele) are not top tier PvP players.

why should balance be based around what 100 people do?
surely what 10,000 other people are doing makes more of an impact on the game?

for example, i bet you don’t see many MMs in top tier, but for the rest of us they’re all over the place and its becoming ridiculous.

and on the opposite end of the spectrum, classes like thief are fairly underwhelming when used by the average joe, but godly when used by a chosen few who spend their lives playing theif, why should the few end up getting the masses nerfed?

i say balancing from middle/upper is a good idea so we can see what “decent” players will do with a build, balancing from the top is a bad idea.

just remove every class but warrior and guardian.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Ele should technically be in a much better spot come the feature build.

Pretty anxious not gunna lie..

Preview the changes man

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Ele should technically be in a much better spot come the feature build.

Pretty anxious not gunna lie..

I’ve seen Powerr play, and I’ll say he’s pretty good. So, I’ll take his word that the ele changes are going to be good and hopefully well-thought out.

I’m curious what he means by “technically”. Does he mean the ele mechanics have been reworked to change the mechanics? Perhaps he means they adjusted other professions that were keeping the ele profession down artificially.

…not sure.

I do believe ele is in a bad place because of the amalgamation of 3 things:
1) nerfs that were over the top
2) the change to a really condi-heavy meta
3) buffs to thieves that keep ele’s out of the meta

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Ele should technically be in a much better spot come the feature build.

Pretty anxious not gunna lie..

Hyping again?
Not going to fall for it again.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Ele should technically be in a much better spot come the feature build.

Pretty anxious not gunna lie..

I hope there’s buffs for Staff coming. Not every Ele uses D/D.

No CD on attunement swap and just put the CD on the traits that proc on attunement swap? Oh please let that be one of the changes.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Ele should technically be in a much better spot come the feature build.

Pretty anxious not gunna lie..

Looks like you start buffing classes again. The biggest mistake your development has done / is doing and probably will never understand.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Ele should technically be in a much better spot come the feature build.

Pretty anxious not gunna lie..

Looks like you start buffing classes again. The biggest mistake your development has done / is doing and probably will never understand.

I dunno! Eles would also be in a ‘much better spot’ for a lot of reasons, it’s not a good idea to assume that it’s going to transcend into ‘broken’ territory.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

With warrior 5 second weapon swaps, they can utilize 4 different on swap sigils as compared to what most classes can do with 2.

Off-topic, but I’m going to go cry now, because this was confirmed to be a thing.

I just made a thread about that. Pretty sad eh?

Tyler Chapman.1832:

I’ll say that internally staff Ele has turned out to be strong, scary strong against condi meta.

How? How exactly? They flat out die to Corrupt Boon / Spite. Is there some magical spec that I don’t know about? Also, if they spec hard for anti-condition, they’re still only mediocore, still get shut down by engineer/necro, and lose a lot of survivability against power dps.

It’s like somehow the Dev’s don’t realize that people can’t spec 20/0/30/30/30 for Cleansing Fire, Diamond Skin, Cleansing Waters, and Evasive Arcana.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

At least ele will now bring the cleanse support it has needed. Will the Signet of Resto change be enough to make it super strong? Arguable, but it’s definitely a viable option now. Do you want to lose the cleanse from ether renewal? Probably not.. but dagger specs see a nice sustain boost from using RS.

Unless you’re removing the ICD on Cleansing Waters and moving Cleansing Wave back down to 10, I don’t see anyone taking SoR over ER.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Additionally, our changes has brought a new role to ele and it’s one hell of a role! I’m sure plenty of people will have tons of fun messing around with what they can do on ele now.

I’m hoping this is mid bunker. Guardian has held that role uncontested for too long.

Want a Tip tyler? you guys are not very good at balance testing, no offense but after 1 year you guys just throw updates at people crying on the forums.

Give us an alpha server and limit it like the EOTM one.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

By technically I mean that we are giving some nice changes to ele but there is so much going into that patch that trying to gauge the meta or what will be strong/too stronk/weak/too weak is just not possible right now.

I’ll say that internally staff Ele has turned out to be strong, scary strong against condi meta. The glass cannon specs seem to be unchanged but the tankier dps specs have seen substantial improvements. Enough? Arguable. At least ele will now bring the cleanse support it has needed. Will the Signet of Resto change be enough to make it super strong? Arguable, but it’s definitely a viable option now. Do you want to lose the cleanse from ether renewal? Probably not.. but dagger specs see a nice sustain boost from using RS. Additionally, our changes has brought a new role to ele and it’s one hell of a role! I’m sure plenty of people will have tons of fun messing around with what they can do on ele now.

Regardless, it’s just really hard to say where ele will stand on the tier chart in PvP with double on swap sigils coming in alone. This might over scale certain specs into godliness while bringing other classes up to par at the same time. We will have to see the implications of what a bunch of stacked up hydromancy, energy, battle, and geomancy sigils do to the tides of battles. Every single class has such drastic improvements to sustain through this that it makes glass cannon specs stand up stronger against foes, at the same time it allows full tank builds to bring out more damage while supporting their group. There is a lot more might flying around. With warrior 5 second weapon swaps, they can utilize 4 different on swap sigils as compared to what most classes can do with 2.

It’s just difficult to gauge at this point with so much happening. I really wish we could speak about what else is changing, but hopefully time flies quickly and we can deliver the news asap. Ele will however, be in a better place than it was I assure you.

another big fail… do i really need to tell u why?

u make so much changes that cant see the outcome. so u dont know if some fixes where enough or not. everybody was telling u to split balance-stuff from the changes.. but no anet needs to throw the mess in a single patch.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Additionally, our changes has brought a new role to ele and it’s one hell of a role! I’m sure plenty of people will have tons of fun messing around with what they can do on ele now.

Any hints as to what this role is? Pretty please? Of course with the caveat that nothing is written in stone (pun intended.)

Also, I hope that this role, whatever it is, is one that other classes can’t perform better than the Ele.

Well i for one look forward to the Ele changes Tyler. Ill probably reinstall to check them out whenever they come, that and Ranger changes (I have no hope for the ranger changes considering Anets past record with them)

If the 5 second weapon swap for warriors is intended, anf if warriors really are going to get double power from sigils, it’ll be impossible to balance them. Anet should seriously take a look at this. Warriors will be so broken (more than what they already are), that Anet will be forced to balance them around double swap sigil effectiveness. And by doing so, Warriors will be pidgeonholed to those sigils, and everything else will get indirectly nerfed to unviable status.

The risk of Anet reaching a dead end and putting themselves at an impossible scenario to balance for is quite high, if not ever almost garanteed, for the warrior. A solution should be considered and priotized to prevent that scenario.

A bit off-topic, but felt that it was very important to say it.

An alternative to guardian as mid-bunker would be a welcome change. There needs to be something other than just guardian for that role.

I guess the development team wants to wait-and-see on whether Fast Hands is too powerful with the sigil changes. I have my suspicions. However, what is abundantly clear to me is that the sigil change makes Fast Hands a far over-budgeted minor Master trait.

Based upon the description, I am a bit concerned. This doesn’t sound like a series of shaves and adjustments.

It really doesn’t sound like a “balance” patch; it sounds more like a “toss it in the blender and see what comes out” patch.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Most sigils will still have their same internal cooldown(all on swaps will). So technically it’s not double efficiency for warriors however, it depends how you look at it I suppose.

Rangers have some cool things coming too! Much needed power ranger lub! It’ll be all positive reactions right?!!

Hopefully this is enough to hold you over for now. I won’t be here for much longer but I know you guys deserve more communication regarding this patch so I’m doing what I can where I can. Pay attention to the forums in the near future as well as Ready Up episodes to find out as much as you can. Submit those user clips! Lets see your skills.

If they use 2 different ones they do get an added bonus.
Say you swap, trigger the first on swap. It’s used, 10 second cd.
Swap at 5 seconds, a new on-swap gets triggered. 5 seconds has passed on the first.
5 seconds later, swap again. The first is up again and triggered. Etc.
Warrior gets 2x the effect when using Fire/Doom+Air/Energy for instance than someone with a 10 second swap. This works…. similarly with on-crit/hit sigils too. If they ran Air+on swap, and fire/onswap, they could have both on-swaps rolling and both on-crits on CD at the same time with only a 5 second swap-cd, where as someone waiting 10 seconds to swap has to wait the full 5 seconds to get another on-hit/crit proc because they can’t swap to both within each 5 second window.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

By technically I mean that we are giving some nice changes to ele but there is so much going into that patch that trying to gauge the meta or what will be strong/too stronk/weak/too weak is just not possible right now.

…

And this is exactly the reason why there are public test servers/maps. To see how changes impact the game/balance before they go live in a tournament environment.

How you ever wanted to be big in E-Sports without such an absolute fundamental thing missing… ugh, just thinking about it puts someone in danger to facepalm so hard he/she might shop their head of.

I mean is there, or was there any E-Sports relevant title that had NOT some form of public testing “work-in-progress” builds?

Firstly, just want to point out that back in the ele meta Lys was a dominant force, and as one of the few players to stay ele through all their balancing hurdles there’s no doubt he will be dominant again when ele is brought back up to par.

Secondly….

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Not sad no. It feels a lot better; more fluid, more natural, no hidden rules. We will just have to pay a close attention to what happens and make any adjustments where necessary. It was an essential step towards a better future experience for players.

What kind of ratio between offence/defence is there with this double swap meta, relative to how it was? Am I going to be doing 3.8k hydro+geomancy weapon swaps on a guard or2.4-3k (I forget) on warrior? How are condi builds affected and are their condi application skills as important now?

Staff Ele…scary strong…condi meta…what?? Staff has 1 condi cleanse on a 45 sec cooldown (healing rain). That’s it. It also has a 1.5sec cast time so can be interrupted.
Please don’t tell me he’s counting condi cleanses from Ether Renewal and traits…

BlackBeard.2873:

To be fair, Lys was playing an all-in build (25/30/10/0/5 I believe, with zerker amulet).

[Aside: I believe we either call this a “jihad” ele, or perhaps a “yolo” ele build]

What kind of a build is that…I can see he’s going for extra damage on burning targets and fury on attunement swap, but why on earth would he not go 20/30/10/0/10 instead. Burning is never going to be reliably up on a target…and 10 points in Arcana = renewing stamina, blasting staff, etc.

Sunshine.5014:

In the live stream on Feb 14, 2014, the devs showed us three matches from top tiers players, and the team with Ele always lost. They had pretty good strategy, but they lost all the team fights (watch it if you like). Basically we don’t see Lys, the ele often, and when we see him, he’s mostly lying on the ground waiting for a rez. He pulled up some good insta-kill, but since the cooldown was long, his contribution to team fight was pretty… limited; and they lost (multiple times) despite having Caed.

Comments?

This is horrible logic. Did you also realize that in at least one of those games, the ele was the strongest player on the team?

style.6173:

Sunshine.5014:

In the live stream on Feb 14, 2014, the devs showed us three matches from top tiers players, and the team with Ele always lost. They had pretty good strategy, but they lost all the team fights (watch it if you like). Basically we don’t see Lys, the ele often, and when we see him, he’s mostly lying on the ground waiting for a rez. He pulled up some good insta-kill, but since the cooldown was long, his contribution to team fight was pretty… limited; and they lost (multiple times) despite having Caed.

Comments?

This is horrible logic. Did you also realize that in at least one of those games, the ele was the strongest player on the team?

He’s actually giving credit to good Ele’s.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Not sad no. It feels a lot better; more fluid, more natural, no hidden rules. We will just have to pay a close attention to what happens and make any adjustments where necessary. It was an essential step towards a better future experience for players.

And by close attention you mean the player base identifying in the 5 minutes after the actual notes are released and it taking you guys 6 months to a year to address it.

Caed sucks

/thread

Tyler Chapman.1832:

I won’t be here for much longer…

Getting the ol’pink slip eh? Just spill the beans before you go.

I have one problem with the sigils rework. It benefits dual-wielding classes (e.g., warriors, rangers, guardians) more than single-wielding classes (i.e., elementalist and engineer). This isn’t an issue currently because on crit and on swap sigils have shared internal cool-downs.

For example, you receive no benefit for using sigil of energy and sigil of battle on two separate weapon sets. Since both share their effects on a 9 second internal cool-down, you can’t obtain more than 1 sigil proc every 9 seconds.

However, with the proposed changes you will indeed be able to proc two sigil effects on a single weapon set, and up to 4 on two separate weapon sets. Dual-wielders will therefore benefit from twice as many potential effects as single-wielders.

I’m unconvinced the devs have fully considered how this sigil rework will place single-wielding professions at a disadvantage. I think it’ll be overlooked and that the problem will go unaddressed for 3 months or more. For this reason, let me propose a simple solution immediately: Double the number of sigil slots for single wielding professions. An elementalist’s staff should slot 4 unique sigils; an engineer’s pistol should slot 2 unique sigils; and so on.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Most sigils will still have their same internal cooldown(all on swaps will). So technically it’s not double efficiency for warriors however, it depends how you look at it I suppose.

Rangers have some cool things coming too! Much needed power ranger lub! It’ll be all positive reactions right?!!

Hopefully this is enough to hold you over for now. I won’t be here for much longer but I know you guys deserve more communication regarding this patch so I’m doing what I can where I can. Pay attention to the forums in the near future as well as Ready Up episodes to find out as much as you can. Submit those user clips! Lets see your skills.

That’s not what people want.
I mean, be happy.
You are working on a AAA MMO, one with a ridiculous number of sales before it even launched.
That. is. kittening. wonderful.
Congrats.

But ‘previewing’ patches means nothing, like no one seriously wants that from you guys…
People want better patches.
People want more of a focus on the fun aspects of GW2 (2v2s~, active gameplay, more easily fallowed gameplay) not YEARS tweaking balance to kitten no one likes.
I’m sorry, I mean, you guys clearly love the game, it’s just others want to too and you’re making it hard.

Phi Is Sly.1857:

Want a Tip tyler? you guys are not very good at balance testing

They can balance test.
They do a good job at balancing.
The game is pretty balanced, more balanced than any other MMO I’ve played.

The issue though is that their internal testers seem to think balance is fun.
That a balanced game = a fun game.
In short they have little if any idea what the playerbase enjoys.
That’s crazy and it’s been kittening up the game since before launch.

Any halfway decent testing team just aims to cut out the extremes in balance while focusing the rest of their resources on expanding what the playerbase enjoys/wants… no one expects perfect balance and Anet won’t ever come close to reaching it… they’ve just been chasing their own tail for the past year and a half.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Not sad no. It feels a lot better; more fluid, more natural, no hidden rules. We will just have to pay a close attention to what happens and make any adjustments where necessary. It was an essential step towards a better future experience for players.

By “and make any adjustments wherer necessary” you mean after another 4 month, right?

I never will be able to understand why small changes , like dmg-numbers, and CD adjustments cannot be made earlier.

With the new balance-patch and all the “new” stuff coming, it will change (hopefully) very much.

In GW1 nerfs / buffs were made a lot faster, and this also keept it interessting.
Why do they buff / nerf something, hmm – this could work out etc .

I have mixed feelings about this.

Im happy about eles but i fear the new sigil system will destroy the game

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Rangers have some cool things coming too! Much needed power ranger lub! It’ll be all positive reactions right?!!

Ask yourself one question. You can ask your self this question several different ways.

“Have we fixed ranger pets this patch?”
or
“Are ranger pets still a liability?”
or
“Do rangers still benefit less from ascended armour because of the way we implemented pets?”

You’re 18 months in, still plucking them low hanging fruit.

Marcos.3690:

Im happy about eles but i fear the new sigil system will destroy the game

Broken builds will be expected because of the revamping of runes and sigils and so many changes promised.

Let’s just hope for ANet to adjust and fix the broken ones fast enough before everyone starts quitting. And when I say fast.. well.. let’s just hope for the best.