Guild Wars 2

For the sake of pvp please reconsider this patch change. I hope it isn’t too late.

Honestly, the guy who came up with this idea is just clueless. You are just showing how out of touch you are with your pvp community if you make this change. And lets be honest, this is a pvp trait. People in pve wont run this.

The reason this trait sucks is as follows:

1, It introduces a ridiculously hard counter WITH literally 0 counter play for a condition class. So as a necro you will be having these eles chasing you all game and you will just die. You cant dodge, cant block, cant stealth, and cant get him to 85-90% health because your weapons do attacks for 130 damage. So the best necro in the world will lose to a rank 10 ele. This is ludicrous in a game that wants to be competitive. You wont be able to hard or soft cc them.

Imagine in dota2 if you have some guy who is the best player around, and people watch him get schooled by some guy with 20 games ever just because a hero the new guy picked is immune to everything that the best player in the world can do. You see how that would make this game a joke like gw2 is becoming?

SKILL should matter. Not build wars and spam.

2, It is totally passive and skilless. The way the best player in the world will use this trait is identical to a rank 5 noob. It is completely ridiculous and skillless.

Literally everyone who actually plays tournaments hates passive BS and immunities. And so you just put both into some kitten cheesey trait. WTf? Ele doesnt even need buffs, let alone cheesey kitten. Just nerf all the other stuff in the game and you will find ele is very strong.

I am just shocked that they do these things and actually think it is good game design. It really makes it obvious why so many people quit this game when they do such things. People don’t like the following:

1, Losing to people 500x worse than them just because of spam/lame hard counter passive traits (see s/d thief spammers and immunity people).

2, Not being able to counter act anything someone does just because of a passive trait they selected in the heart of the mists.

3, Imagine being chased by one of the invulnerable wurms from under skyhammer in pvp. That is what it will be like for a condi necro being chased by an ele with diamond skin. You cant peel for urself, you cant slow them down and you cant do more than 100 damage per attack (lol). Does that sound fun to anet? Seems like it.

And I dont even care if this change makes ele op or not. This change signifies that anet dont listen to anyone good at pvp. Because nobody good at pvp wants ele (or any class) to have such a BS trait. People will keep quitting if you keep making should terrible design decisions. Even the baddies will hate this trait (and others like it) when they get good enough at the game to realise how lame it all is.

I’m not 100% sold on diamond skin either, but this change is definitely not out of touch with the PvP community. Honestly the community would probably like to see even bigger hard counters to condition builds and even bigger buffs to eles.

I’d again recommend you to look at carrion amulet. I believe you should be able to drop an ele below the 90% threshold if you land one or two deathshroud autos. Especially with signet of spite for another 180 power at the start of the fight…

Look, I know you’re a good player, but I can’t condone this type of thread. The counterplay is to figure out how to beat it. I’m glad that people will need to theorycraft after Dec. 10th and not just use their same old builds and expect to be good to go.

It isn’t just this change. Look at the other trait changes. They are buffing things like repears protection on the necromancer and other similar traits on alot of other classes. This is complete bs too, more no skill passive spam. It is so lame and pathetic. On the necro all they do is nerf all the stuff which takes skill and just buff passive lameness. Same with ranger and ele

This is how elementalists are going to miraculously become mad skilled at the game overnight, just like skilled wars, necros, rangers, mesmers, etc. Pure skill, no cheese.

<RANT>
I’ll speak up here and say that I personally also think these 100% immunity traits and utilities are not good for the game. They should all be changed, perhaps to -x% condition duration. Being built to do well against condi damage or power damage to a certain extent is fine, but when you have this binary switch where you are all of a sudden immune to a certain type of damage for an extended period of time (I’ll include Berserker’s Stance here because 8-10s is a rather long time in PvP when it comes to complete immunity) it’s just a “feel-bad” gameplay experience. Nobody feels like they were outplayed when a condi-immune warrior stunlocks you in a teamfight, you just feel like the game is not well-balanced. At the very least, complete immunity traits like Automated Response and this new Diamond Skin need to have a buff bar symbol, a finite duration, and then a longish cooldown. Can a skilled player find ways to play against these traits? Sure, they can, with good team coordination (something not very possible in Solo Q), and with prior knowledge of how to anticipate and prepare for these traits. Against lesser skilled opponents, these immunity skills/traits are just faceroll paths to victory with little skill needed from the side employing them.

To say it a different way, these types of traits and skills are very easy to use, and very difficult for certain builds to play against. In the example of Automated Response, the use of the trait takes nothing from the user, it’s just automatic when they reach the 25% HP threshold. From the point of view of let’s say a condi Necro trying to fight the AR Engi, they have to specifically anticipate that the Engi has the AR trait, attempt to load the Engi with enough condis to kill them before the 25% HP threshold, and then hope that the Engi doesn’t have something like Elixir C or Elixir X with Lyssa runes or another condi purge from Healing Turret available to save themselves before they die. The burden of excellent counterplay is placed completely on the Necro, and the Engi has to do absolutely nothing except select the AR trait in order to place this huge burden. Having this sort of uneven play vs counterplay makes for bad game design and unhappy player experiences — people want to feel that they were beaten by the other player and not beaten by the unfair game rules.
</RANT>

Signed. Nobody wants more passive. The fun skilled builds can always exist but when the passive nooby friendly traits are as strong as “be invincible to X” well… nobody is gonna play the skilled builds.

I haven’t talked with one competent ele who thinks this trait is anything but broken.

The sad thing is, the devs seem to love it and bad players even think 90% is weak or even worthless.

Please rethink this trait.

Im not entirely sure about the trait either, but I think they were kinda on the right track…if you’re complaining you can’t kill a class like the elementalist just by spamming a Condi auto-attack, that’s the dumbest thing i’ve ever heard. And 80-95% hp is really not that much at all for an elementalist…
And if you can’t wait/last 8-10 seconds vs a warrior using Berserker Stance, I understand how that’s not exactly “balanced” but I mean cmon…you can’t just rely purely on conditions for your damage, depending on your build though :P you can’t expect one build to do better against every other build …

Like I said, it’s fine if the build you play is advantaged against most power builds, or most condi builds. But there’s soft counters, and hard counters. With hard counters, you are more than just a bit disadvantaged to beat the build that is the counter to yours. When more of the outcome of a fight is based on the builds the two players are running than the comparative skill levels of the two players, that leads to an noncompetitive and unfun PvP experience, both to play and to watch. If we don’t want Guild Wars 2 to be a competitive PvP game, then by all means, add more hard counters. The competitive players will (and to an extent already have) go elsewhere.

Even if diamond skin is not going to be good its going to be bad for the game.
Also moving Aquamancer’s Alacrity and Cleansing wave both to master tier is bad losing active cleansing. (nerfs Fresh air, old valk s/d if you take water 1, and staff)

But you pick up more passive cleansing with fire II auto procing cleansing fire on 3 conditions.

….. wrong direction…..

Lordrosicky.5813:

For the sake of pvp please reconsider this patch change. I hope it isn’t too late.

Honestly, the guy who came up with this idea is just clueless. You are just showing how out of touch you are with your pvp community if you make this change. And lets be honest, this is a pvp trait. People in pve wont run this.

The reason this trait sucks is as follows:

1, It introduces a ridiculously hard counter WITH literally 0 counter play for a condition class. So as a necro you will be having these eles chasing you all game and you will just die. You cant dodge, cant block, cant stealth, and cant get him to 85-90% health because your weapons do attacks for 130 damage. So the best necro in the world will lose to a rank 10 ele. This is ludicrous in a game that wants to be competitive. You wont be able to hard or soft cc them.

Imagine in dota2 if you have some guy who is the best player around, and people watch him get schooled by some guy with 20 games ever just because a hero the new guy picked is immune to everything that the best player in the world can do. You see how that would make this game a joke like gw2 is becoming?

SKILL should matter. Not build wars and spam.

2, It is totally passive and skilless. The way the best player in the world will use this trait is identical to a rank 5 noob. It is completely ridiculous and skillless.

Literally everyone who actually plays tournaments hates passive BS and immunities. And so you just put both into some kitten cheesey trait. WTf? Ele doesnt even need buffs, let alone cheesey kitten. Just nerf all the other stuff in the game and you will find ele is very strong.

I am just shocked that they do these things and actually think it is good game design. It really makes it obvious why so many people quit this game when they do such things. People don’t like the following:

1, Losing to people 500x worse than them just because of spam/lame hard counter passive traits (see s/d thief spammers and immunity people).

2, Not being able to counter act anything someone does just because of a passive trait they selected in the heart of the mists.

3, Imagine being chased by one of the invulnerable wurms from under skyhammer in pvp. That is what it will be like for a condi necro being chased by an ele with diamond skin. You cant peel for urself, you cant slow them down and you cant do more than 100 damage per attack (lol). Does that sound fun to anet? Seems like it.

And I dont even care if this change makes ele op or not. This change signifies that anet dont listen to anyone good at pvp. Because nobody good at pvp wants ele (or any class) to have such a BS trait. People will keep quitting if you keep making should terrible design decisions. Even the baddies will hate this trait (and others like it) when they get good enough at the game to realise how lame it all is.

you make it sound like it’s bad you won’t be able to spam skills and win anymore. And also, Anet doesn’t not listen to ele players. Like there’s so many suggestions/complaints in forums from Ele’s that it can be hard to pick out what would be a good change/suggestion to the class that would make it a bit more balanced with the other classes. They can’t just make changes solely for Pvp, they do consider skill/trait changes in all of gw2. But I do agree with you in the sense of actual skill. it does suck when you lose to some new player who was told something like “play thief. use this setup and press these buttons. you won’t be able to get hit and you’ll crit for 10k and win.”
And I also want to note that rank doesn’t necessarily matter as much anymore (Skyhammer farming)

Um……

15000-16000 average health with water traitline.

10% is 1500-1600 damage. Your minions will do that much in less than 2 secs.

It’s a useless trait. No ele will take it. An ele still needs 20 in water and 20 in arcana at the very least, not leaving enough for diamond skin.

Zenith.7301:

Um……

15000-16000 average health with water traitline.

10% is 1500-1600 damage. Your minions will do that much in less than 2 secs.

It’s a useless trait. No ele will take it. An ele still needs 20 in water and 20 in arcana at the very least, not leaving enough for diamond skin.

First of all, “Your minions”??? What game are you playing where MM Necro is viable?

But anyway, that’s exactly the problem with the trait. Either it won’t be good enough and nobody will take it, or it will be pretty OP and everyone will take it. With complete immunity traits like that, there is not much middle ground (outside of meta shifts, but meta shifts due to a single OP trait are not very natural types of shifts).

Lastly, with the words you just said, I don’t think you’ve really thought carefully about how to min-max the trait. I won’t post the exact builds here, but use that noggin.

I think it’s pretty clear how this trait can be abused. Engineers do it already. Typically condition classes are the dominant 1v1 classes on the outer nodes with the only exception really being warrior and sometimes mesmer. If you have condi immunity in any form, you can then become a dominant 1v1 outer noder.

I remember the days of ele vs mesmer on outer nodes and the outcome was determined by skill. Gone are those days, just spam 1 on your shortbow or be immune to whatever the enemy does. You won congrats!

Here is the two outcomes of this trait.
1. Nobody uses it and it’s just taking up space
2. An ele build comes out that 1v1s outer nodes that is just as braindead as the rest of them

You can exclude me from ever partaking in #2

Yeah, and I think it’s pretty obvious how to build #2. “Guys, I have another condi-immune tornado at home point.”

cymerdown.4103:

Zenith.7301:

Um……

15000-16000 average health with water traitline.

10% is 1500-1600 damage. Your minions will do that much in less than 2 secs.

It’s a useless trait. No ele will take it. An ele still needs 20 in water and 20 in arcana at the very least, not leaving enough for diamond skin.

First of all, “Your minions”??? What game are you playing where MM Necro is viable?

But anyway, that’s exactly the problem with the trait. Either it won’t be good enough and nobody will take it, or it will be pretty OP and everyone will take it. With complete immunity traits like that, there is not much middle ground (outside of meta shifts, but meta shifts due to a single OP trait are not very natural types of shifts).

Lastly, with the words you just said, I don’t think you’ve really thought carefully about how to min-max the trait. I won’t post the exact builds here, but use that noggin.

Aren’t you special.

It’s pretty obvious what some people would build like, and it’s nothing different from the usual ele bunker builds that need to go DIAF, because it’d be nice to get something different like glass cannon daggers (with no investment on 20 water/arcana) or a viable condition build, be it staff or scepter.

Good luck killing anybody in any reasonable amount of time when you’ve specced into Diamond Skin btw.

Phantaram.1265:

I think it’s pretty clear how this trait can be abused. Engineers do it already. Typically condition classes are the dominant 1v1 classes on the outer nodes with the only exception really being warrior and sometimes mesmer. If you have condi immunity in any form, you can then become a dominant 1v1 outer noder.

I remember the days of ele vs mesmer on outer nodes and the outcome was determined by skill. Gone are those days, just spam 1 on your shortbow or be immune to whatever the enemy does. You won congrats!

Here is the two outcomes of this trait.
1. Nobody uses it and it’s just taking up space
2. An ele build comes out that 1v1s outer nodes that is just as braindead as the rest of them

You can exclude me from ever partaking in #2

Phantaram i agree on everything you said and i really miss these old days where you never knew if you’d win the duel and once you made a misake you knew it was your own fault that you are loosing and with this change where they promote even more passive play the game turns into the wrong direction again

This game isn’t about killing, it’s about point capture. It doesn’t need to kill to be OP.

cymerdown.4103:

This game isn’t about killing, it’s about point capture. It doesn’t need to kill to be OP.

but you know that you sometimes have duels where you should win because you play better and get the point afterwards? because of skill not because of a trait

cymerdown.4103:

This game isn’t about killing, it’s about point capture. It doesn’t need to kill to be OP.

If you can’t threaten someone off a point, you’re not going to be successful. You don’t have the CC of the engineer/warrior, or the sheer evasiveness/upkeep of a ranger.

Sensotix.4106:

cymerdown.4103:

This game isn’t about killing, it’s about point capture. It doesn’t need to kill to be OP.

but you know that you sometimes have duels where you should win because you play better and get the point afterwards? because of skill not because of a trait

Sorry, I was replying to Zenith. I agree with what you said.

Zenith.7301:

cymerdown.4103:

This game isn’t about killing, it’s about point capture. It doesn’t need to kill to be OP.

If you can’t threaten someone off a point, you’re not going to be successful. You don’t have the CC of the engineer/warrior, or the sheer evasiveness/upkeep of a ranger.

If you own the point, you can stall out 1v1s by being really tough to kill. And if you don’t own it, maybe you’re a tornado.

How is this trait is remotely considered OP is beyond me.

Basically, this trait is asking the Elementalist not to take 1,300-2,000 damage in a fight to be effective.
ArenaNet is so out of touch with it’s community…

Last time I checked, Necromancers are going the zerker route anyways because scepter has no projectiles, fast and spams 3 conditions in a single combo, surviving thanks to fear and weakness.

HEY ENGINEERS! Want this kitten trait, all Elementalists will happy to take the trait Automated Response, something useful.

cymerdown.4103:

Zenith.7301:

cymerdown.4103:

This game isn’t about killing, it’s about point capture. It doesn’t need to kill to be OP.

If you can’t threaten someone off a point, you’re not going to be successful. You don’t have the CC of the engineer/warrior, or the sheer evasiveness/upkeep of a ranger.

If you own the point, you can stall out 1v1s by being really tough to kill. And if you don’t own it, maybe you’re a tornado.

Diamond Skin doesn’t make you immune to CC, and in the case of engineers who have a decent direct damage component they’ll have little issue knocking you off. Your tornado will also do nothing against warriors given their stability uptimes.

It’s mostly necro (without golem) and mesmer condi builds that would be affected by it.

Nova Stiker.8396:

How is this trait is remotely considered OP is beyond me.

Basically, this trait is asking the Elementalist not to take 1,300-2,000 damage in a fight to be effective.
ArenaNet is so out of touch with it’s community…

Last time I checked, Necromancers are going the zerker route anyways because scepter has no projectiles, fast and spams 3 conditions in a single combo, surviving thanks to fear and weakness.

HEY ENGINEERS! Want this kitten trait, all Elementalists will happy to take the trait Automated Response, something useful.

Around 3k armor. Some amount of Protection uptime. Rock Solid and Ether Renewal. Is it still beyond you?

Staying above 90% health on an ele could never be called passive play, regardless of spec.

That’s about 1 auto attacks worth.

Its these kind of counters which make classes viable for sustained dps… heaven forbid you might have to time your burst….

that said it will be strong as hell in the right hands

I predict a lot of new bunker eles coming up ! Hehe

I dont care about new trait for now, lets just see how it’s gonna be… Eles really need some love

The trait is completely broken. Nothing good can come from adding it to the game, for the many reasons brought up in this thread.

I’m saddened that Anet is even considering a change like this. Introducing hard counters to overpowered stuff is not the way to solve balance issues. This game already has way too much of everything – too much damage, too much evade uptime, too many immunities, too much passive or RNG play. Sometimes less really is more. Hard counter type gameplay is not fun or interesting.

cymerdown.4103:

<RANT>
I’ll speak up here and say that I personally also think these 100% immunity traits and utilities are not good for the game. They should all be changed, perhaps to -x% condition duration. Being built to do well against condi damage or power damage to a certain extent is fine, but when you have this binary switch where you are all of a sudden immune to a certain type of damage for an extended period of time (I’ll include Berserker’s Stance here because 8-10s is a rather long time in PvP when it comes to complete immunity) it’s just a “feel-bad” gameplay experience. Nobody feels like they were outplayed when a condi-immune warrior stunlocks you in a teamfight, you just feel like the game is not well-balanced. At the very least, complete immunity traits like Automated Response and this new Diamond Skin need to have a buff bar symbol, a finite duration, and then a longish cooldown. Can a skilled player find ways to play against these traits? Sure, they can, with good team coordination (something not very possible in Solo Q), and with prior knowledge of how to anticipate and prepare for these traits. Against lesser skilled opponents, these immunity skills/traits are just faceroll paths to victory with little skill needed from the side employing them.

To say it a different way, these types of traits and skills are very easy to use, and very difficult for certain builds to play against. In the example of Automated Response, the use of the trait takes nothing from the user, it’s just automatic when they reach the 25% HP threshold. From the point of view of let’s say a condi Necro trying to fight the AR Engi, they have to specifically anticipate that the Engi has the AR trait, attempt to load the Engi with enough condis to kill them before the 25% HP threshold, and then hope that the Engi doesn’t have something like Elixir C or Elixir X with Lyssa runes or another condi purge from Healing Turret available to save themselves before they die. The burden of excellent counterplay is placed completely on the Necro, and the Engi has to do absolutely nothing except select the AR trait in order to place this huge burden. Having this sort of uneven play vs counterplay makes for bad game design and unhappy player experiences — people want to feel that they were beaten by the other player and not beaten by the unfair game rules.
</RANT>

When you say, “Not good for the game.” Do you actually mean, “Not good for conditions spammers who use 1200 range and AoE?”

Anet says: “We want people use active skills with right timing”

Anet does: “Let’s buff healing signet”

Ty phanta, cmc, ken, senso I agree with all of you.
I flat out refuse to run AR. I hate the trait design.

Let me put out some examples from an engi perspective against diamond skin vs AR.

AR: Engis have 18k hp in most cases. Max at 25k. so 4.5k to 6k hp for the immunity proc.
With AR I need to stack 6k worth of damage up. With a 6s burn =3.6k damage. shrapnel grenades alone is 4.5k is not cleansed but thats over a long period of time. 5 stack of confusion is about 750 a tick for 7s.

So AR engis are possible to beat 1v1 but very difficult. For that matter at that low hp any help from ally is seconds for them to live.

Diamon skin:
Ok so the ele has 14-18k hp. Thats 1.4-1.8k damage needed to go below the threshhold.
Engi with rabid can’t do that damage easily. It can be done, I won’t lie. Heres the issue…

water attunment: regen,regen boon, evasive arcana, dagger 5 scepter 3 staff has 2 of the 5 that heal…..(not to mention kiting/dodging)
Then the almighty condi clear heal skill….that has 15s cd.

GL keeping them below the threshhold as a necro/engi.

In4b the argument for cc’ing off point… YES engis can decap easily. Guess what… most of the decap comes from rifle 2 immob….Guess what won’t work anymore… GUess what eles get in the same line as diamond skill.. O yea I forgot stability on less than 15s cd.

Stop defending this broken/stupid/bad desgin mechanic. If you think it’s underpowered its just becuz your desperate for a power damage immunity or your stupid/bad.

Lordrosicky.5813:

2, It is totally passive and skilless. The way the best player in the world will use this trait is identical to a rank 5 noob. It is completely ridiculous and skillless.

1, Losing to people 500x worse than them just because of spam/lame hard counter passive traits (see s/d thief spammers and immunity people).

Welcome to the world of playing a Power build in GW2 2013, the year of easymode condi spam plus AoE and trait procs.

Power vs Power build fights are a real duel, you can watch for each other’s big skills and dodge them, you now know that the damage has been avoided for x amount of seconds when you do so, if you mess up you are instantly punished.

Playing against a condi spammer there are no key attacks to dodge, the condi’s just continue to build up and up from every single attack the enemy makes (due to how auto-attack stacks condi’s and trait procs) doing more and more damage as they stack.

Because condi removal is limited and you have so many different condi’s on you, you need to use a multiple condi removal skill (because you can’t target the bleeding stack, or burning, or torment that’s doing all the damage (unlike how you can dodge the Eviscerate or 100B). So you need to remove the vulnerability, weakness, cripple, chill, immobilize and confusion too in order to get at the bleeding, burning or torment.).
But this means waiting until the Bleeds have stacked high enough to warrant using your main condi removal skill, by that time you’ve already taken significant damage.

So you use your condi removal to clear the damage, but now all the condi’s start stacking again because of how they are constantly applied by every enemy attack and because your condi removal removes multiple condi’s it is on a long recharge.
A recharge much longer than the high damage condition trait procs.
~Dhuumfire / Incendiary Ammo (10s) vs any multiple condi removal skill (30s+).

You can’t counter a condi build with condi removal / dodging the same way that you can actively counter and outplay a Power vs Power fight by dodging his damage and making sure yours lands because the condi’s are built up constantly over time in little pieces to become huge chunks of damage ticking away.

All you can do is try to burst the condi spec down. But most condi specs are half bunker because of the Amulets and stats required for damage. Plus they either have DS (Necro) to absorb burst. Lots of evade and healing (Ranger) to avoid burst. Or huge healing, dodge and CC (Engi) to avoid burst. Plus all the standard CC conditions to keep you out of range anyway.

What it comes down to is power creep with conditions, they keep adding more and more to the game. The condi’s are applied to targets with far too many abilities and they are added in small stacks across multiple abilities which means you have a spammy style of play.

Instead of waiting to use your key attack skill like a Power build you can just spam all the attacks and land some poison here a few bleed stacks there and then some burning with a proc and throw some cc around to. It promotes skill spamming.

To counter this ANet keeps introducing more and more condi removal and immunity, which then creates a huge imbalance. And on we go, constantly adding more condi’s, more condi traits, more removal, more removal traits.
Condi immunity, damage immunity. It’s bad, bad design.

Condi’s should be more limited across each Profession, each one only having 2 damage condi’s. And they should be applied with big damage skills, 1 main skill should apply a huge stack of bleed with a long cooldown and clear animation.
Similar skills in place for huge damage burning, torment and multiple confusion stacks.
Now there are key skills to try and dodge, or key skills to use your limited condi removal against.

Rather than the spammy mechanics of constant application and removal we have now.

With braindead passive traits on every class, maybe its time Ele get some too.

Doesnt seem like ANET can balance classes without them.

Ezrael.6859:

Lordrosicky.5813:

2, It is totally passive and skilless. The way the best player in the world will use this trait is identical to a rank 5 noob. It is completely ridiculous and skillless.

1, Losing to people 500x worse than them just because of spam/lame hard counter passive traits (see s/d thief spammers and immunity people).

Welcome to the world of playing a Power build in GW2 2013, the year of easymode condi spam plus AoE and trait procs.

snip

Rather than the spammy mechanics of constant application and removal we have now.

So ummm… How is fire bomb, chill grenades poison grenades, and any thrown normal looking ones are always shrapnel as we dont use the auto, EG 3 FT 4 un-noticable?

Yes incd powder is un-dodgable but hitting wrong target/ai hurts this trait.

But don’t complain at the engi for no animation condition attacks. Yell at the necro for zero animation crap.

When I saw this post from the front page I thought to myself
“Gee, it’d be funny if this guy is a necromancer!”

I looked at your post.
Then I loled.

HORAY for Rock Paper Scissors hard counters carried by a build.

HORAY now we have that ^ but its even more passive.

Bye bye skill! Hello filthy casual crack, Bejewelled wars 2.

Seriously Condi is to strong but things like this promote power creep

Diamond skin is more hard counter BS. I do not support it.

Hmm, I’m not an experienced PvP-er, but isn’t metagaming a skill as well?

Like: picking the right build for the game?

I’d say that Diamond Skin is a proper metagame choice in a condition based meta. The proper skillful response would be to change some utilities and traits, maybe even a weapon-set so you can land the first 10% burst. Or… change strategies mid-battle and leave handling that ele bunker to a warrior.

If it turns out that Ele bunkers are getting superpowerful, the metagame will shift to builds that can take care of those. The Ele bunkers would then have to adapt to that shift again.

Making a good build requires skill too.

It requires you to take the meta into account. That could include working around Diamond Skin if it catches on. The counterplay is done at a different level, but it is still there.

Besides, it is not like this trait is free to grab in an already popular line. It does require pretty heavy sacrifices on the elementalists side to pick it up.

@Lordsoricky

Do you realize all eles have 12-14k HP and a 10% is 1200 or 1400?

1-2 Hits and the diamond skin is over

The Lost Witch.7601:

Hmm, I’m not an experienced PvP-er, but isn’t metagaming a skill as well?

Like: picking the right build for the game?

Short answer: No. Long answer: A person shouldn’t be able to look at the line-up, of a reasonable match-up, before the match and instantly tell which team will win or lose.

Zenith.7301:

cymerdown.4103:

Zenith.7301:

Um……

15000-16000 average health with water traitline.

10% is 1500-1600 damage. Your minions will do that much in less than 2 secs.

It’s a useless trait. No ele will take it. An ele still needs 20 in water and 20 in arcana at the very least, not leaving enough for diamond skin.

First of all, “Your minions”??? What game are you playing where MM Necro is viable?

But anyway, that’s exactly the problem with the trait. Either it won’t be good enough and nobody will take it, or it will be pretty OP and everyone will take it. With complete immunity traits like that, there is not much middle ground (outside of meta shifts, but meta shifts due to a single OP trait are not very natural types of shifts).

Lastly, with the words you just said, I don’t think you’ve really thought carefully about how to min-max the trait. I won’t post the exact builds here, but use that noggin.

because it’d be nice to get something different like glass cannon daggers

glass cannon daggers is actually fun and in my opinion a balanced build. Are you sure you just don’t suck at playing glass cannons or do you want it to be op as kitten?

edit ontopic: fresh air ele with diamond skin is gonna be kittened, same with bunker builds.

Chicago Jack.5647:

The Lost Witch.7601:

Hmm, I’m not an experienced PvP-er, but isn’t metagaming a skill as well?

Like: picking the right build for the game?

Short answer: No. Long answer: A person shouldn’t be able to look at the line-up, of a reasonable match-up, before the match and instantly tell which team will win or lose.

Well, if both teams are skillful, that wouldn’t be the case.

Since the necro’s on team A would’ve brought a spare weaponset/amulet that allows them to deal with the eles on team B. And the Eles on team B would’ve come prepared and brought a spare set to change their options as well.

And of course, both teams would have to change up their strategy if they didn’t correctly predict the meta of the game.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

When you say, “Not good for the game.” Do you actually mean, “Not good for conditions spammers who use 1200 range and AoE?”

Oh come on now, I go on to explain for two full paragraphs after that exactly what I mean when I say “not good for the game”. Let’s not take the opportunity to be snarky and cynical just for the heck of it, my friend.

Retarted, pure condition builds should be unviable anyway. If this change achieves that, I’m happy.

This is why we need CDI on balance ^^

Master of Timespace.2548:

Retarted, pure condition builds should be unviable anyway. If this change achieves that, I’m happy.

The skill is totally horrible for elementalist and the game but until Anet decides to redesign conditions, it totally fine.

OP like to complain how OP stuff is because whenever it is threatening to his EZ mode, brain dead, one hand playing necromancer class.

JinDaVikk.7291:

Ty phanta, cmc, ken, senso I agree with all of you.
I flat out refuse to run AR. I hate the trait design.

Let me put out some examples from an engi perspective against diamond skin vs AR.

AR: Engis have 18k hp in most cases. Max at 25k. so 4.5k to 6k hp for the immunity proc.
With AR I need to stack 6k worth of damage up. With a 6s burn =3.6k damage. shrapnel grenades alone is 4.5k is not cleansed but thats over a long period of time. 5 stack of confusion is about 750 a tick for 7s.

So AR engis are possible to beat 1v1 but very difficult. For that matter at that low hp any help from ally is seconds for them to live.

Diamon skin:
Ok so the ele has 14-18k hp. Thats 1.4-1.8k damage needed to go below the threshhold.
Engi with rabid can’t do that damage easily. It can be done, I won’t lie. Heres the issue…

water attunment: regen,regen boon, evasive arcana, dagger 5 scepter 3 staff has 2 of the 5 that heal…..(not to mention kiting/dodging)
Then the almighty condi clear heal skill….that has 15s cd.

GL keeping them below the threshhold as a necro/engi.

In4b the argument for cc’ing off point… YES engis can decap easily. Guess what… most of the decap comes from rifle 2 immob….Guess what won’t work anymore… GUess what eles get in the same line as diamond skill.. O yea I forgot stability on less than 15s cd.

Stop defending this broken/stupid/bad desgin mechanic. If you think it’s underpowered its just becuz your desperate for a power damage immunity or your stupid/bad.

Very good post.

ITT = everyone who has played alot/understands the game says dont add diamond skin. Time to listen anet.

And, like you said, you will get farmed just as easily on a rabid engi as I will on rabid necro by this build.

Oblivion.8307:

Zenith.7301:

cymerdown.4103:

Zenith.7301:

Um……

15000-16000 average health with water traitline.

10% is 1500-1600 damage. Your minions will do that much in less than 2 secs.

It’s a useless trait. No ele will take it. An ele still needs 20 in water and 20 in arcana at the very least, not leaving enough for diamond skin.

First of all, “Your minions”??? What game are you playing where MM Necro is viable?

But anyway, that’s exactly the problem with the trait. Either it won’t be good enough and nobody will take it, or it will be pretty OP and everyone will take it. With complete immunity traits like that, there is not much middle ground (outside of meta shifts, but meta shifts due to a single OP trait are not very natural types of shifts).

Lastly, with the words you just said, I don’t think you’ve really thought carefully about how to min-max the trait. I won’t post the exact builds here, but use that noggin.

because it’d be nice to get something different like glass cannon daggers

glass cannon daggers is actually fun and in my opinion a balanced build. Are you sure you just don’t suck at playing glass cannons or do you want it to be op as kitten?

edit ontopic: fresh air ele with diamond skin is gonna be kittened, same with bunker builds.

You think glass cannon dagger ele without traits in arcana or water is balanced in the current context?

imo, people is overreacting with diamond skin change. It’s not that strong at all