Just went into a game and one side was all thieves bar 2 players, the other side was all DD Ele’s bar 2 players. You have gone from having one seemingly OP class to two, and that is not including mesmers. This is ridiculous. You have set up a game where no one gets any type of reward to ‘maining’ a class, and the result is that everyone just rolls the current OP class and it’s boring in sPvP to not have a balanced mix of classes. You need to address this. Now the problem is if I am to have any hope in enjoying the game I have to play a class that copes well with this new Ele/Thief combo, as opposed to playing the class I enjoy.
Edited by moderator: removed CoC infraction from the thread title
Yeah for sure. But I woudl like to see sPvP with lots of classes not predominatly two. I am happy with ANet but it seems they have two OP classes inistead of one.
How can Anet address the issue that you don’t have to “main” a profession in PvP? I suppose they could force you to port in with PvE armor, or just remove PvP entirely.
Yes, it’s frustrating to have to deal with countering the current FotM, but any “fixes” I can think of would certainly be much, much worse.
Also, may I recommend joining tournaments? It sounds like your problem may be hotjoin itself, which isn’t really a “game” per say, but more of an open practice/glory farming room. Tournaments have their own issues right now, but at least you probably won’t see teams with three thieves/eles.
Just went into a game and one side was all thieves bar 2 players, the other side was all DD Ele’s bar 2 players. You have gone from having one seemingly OP class to two, and that is not including mesmers. This is ridiculous. You have set up a game where no one gets any type of reward to ‘maining’ a class, and the result is that everyone just rolls the current OP class and it’s boring in sPvP to not have a balanced mix of classes. You need to address this. Now the problem is if I am to have any hope in enjoying the game I have to play a class that copes well with this new Ele/Thief combo, as opposed to playing the class I enjoy.
Anecdotal evidence doesn’t count for much. If I came to the boards to point out all the times I’ve seen an imbalanced hotjoin, I could claim every single class was imbalanced.
If you’re a thief and haven’t
pre-ordered HOT at this point,
save yourself the money and don’t bother.
Save for shocking aura being annoying, how is D/D Ele OP (in hotjoin especially)? I personally still mostly see Thieves and Mesmers, so I dunno’ what to say OP. There weren’t any real changes that made Eles OP. The main aspect of the D/D Thief burst that makes them obnoxious in hotjoin hasn’t been touched so still seeing a lot of Thieves isn’t surprising.
You’ll probably see even more Mesmers when a larger majority of the sPvP playerbase figure out how to efficiently instagib with a glass shatter Mesmer.
Only thing that will really solve the issue is weaning people to ranked Tournies, whenever they are introduced.
Save for shocking aura being annoying, how is D/D Ele OP (in hotjoin especially)? I personally still mostly see Thieves and Mesmers, so I dunno’ what to say OP. There weren’t any real changes that made Eles OP. The main aspect of the D/D Thief burst that makes them obnoxious in hotjoin hasn’t been touched so still seeing a lot of Thieves isn’t surprising.
You’ll probably see even more Mesmers when a larger majority of the sPvP playerbase figure out how to efficiently instagib with a glass shatter Mesmer.
Only thing that will really solve the issue is weaning people to ranked Tournies, whenever they are introduced.
Anyone who’s annoying to fight will be considered OP. Its extremely annoying to fight a stealth spamming thief, an evasive mesmer, a chain blocking bunker guardian, or a bunker Ele who never stops moving, constantly has protection/regeneration/stability up, and rubberbands from 20% to 100% hp 8 times a fight. A good burst ele can also be very annoying – eat 1 updraft, and by the time you have control of your character again you’re at 20% health.
I’m not saying any of these specs are OP, but they are annoying to fight (especially if your particular class/build doesn’t have the tools to pin them down), and to most people, annoying = cheap = OP.
If you’re a thief and haven’t
pre-ordered HOT at this point,
save yourself the money and don’t bother.
How did ele go from being considered underpowered a month ago to overpowered now, when it has received pretty much nothing but nerfs during that time?
I love my ele, and I think it’s a strong class with the right build, but if I had to pick a class to win one fight with, I would take guardian, mesmer and maybe thief in the right situation before I would bring out my ele.
“We recognize that the changes to [ele] will essentially remove it from play. In the future,
we may consider whether or not there is an incarnation of [ele] that would be viable
but balanced. For now, we do not expect it to see serious use.” – ANet
How did ele go from being considered underpowered a month ago to overpowered now, when it has received pretty much nothing but nerfs during that time?
We’ve been getting the best buffs alongside necro and ranger, imo.
D/D buffs, downed state buffs, good bunker builds since the beginning of the game, and nerfs to the three top professions (thief, mesmer, guardian) in addition to ele’s bunker builds. Ele’s bunkers might have been toned down, but so has the competition.
Also, most people think the eles are underpowered, because of a combition of hard-to-master with poor traits/ synergy with burst builds. The ele is advertised as a class of destruction. Most people decide to pick it to burst with their flashy fire skills. And burst eles have always been a bit underpowered because of our traits, probably less so now with the better D/D and with players knowing better and speccing the profession’s best traits (the defensive ones) with offensive amulets.
People were judging the entire class’s effectiveness on pure damage builds, as it could be clear by their comments, and they got shocked how other professions could do every burst they could with far less effort and far more defense.
Nerfs:
Removed blast finishers from Evasive Arcana
Auras no longer count as boons (no +duration)
Auras gained from finishers do not proc traits
Arcane resurrection duration decreased
Reduced the healing contribution for healing ripple
Ice Storm now applies bleed instead of confusion
Leaving Tornado’s transform strips stability
Buffs
Restored a blast finisher to evasive arcana in earth
Reduced ether renewal channel time
Conjures now have stat bonuses so they can hit gravling mounds extra hard
The downed state buff 7 weeks ago was nice (maybe a little too nice), but other than that, we’re seeing nerfs and bug fixes. The only thing that was a meaningful net buff was Ether Renewal, and it’s still not a good PvP heal because it’s easily interrupted and ends up healing for little or nothing; great in PvE though.
I just don’t see how anyone could call the class underpowered a month ago and overpowered now. I would definitely say it is (and always has been) better than most people gave it credit for, but it’s not top tier even after thief, mesmer and guardian took some nerfs. I think it’s in the middle with necro and engie, and well out in front of the generally gimmicky/inflexible classes like warrior and ranger.
“We recognize that the changes to [ele] will essentially remove it from play. In the future,
we may consider whether or not there is an incarnation of [ele] that would be viable
but balanced. For now, we do not expect it to see serious use.” – ANet
Because the nerfs caused everyone to migrate to D/D, which is our best weapon set as eles. Couple that with what Diogo said, many people realizing that eles have to spec defensively, and you have a new bred of harder to kill casters.
Most of the underpowered calls were about non bunker staff and S/D, and nearly no one plays them now, thus they are forgotten.
Also, imo, annoying =/= cheap. Cheap= taking little to no skill.
Save for shocking aura being annoying, how is D/D Ele OP (in hotjoin especially)? I personally still mostly see Thieves and Mesmers, so I dunno’ what to say OP. There weren’t any real changes that made Eles OP. The main aspect of the D/D Thief burst that makes them obnoxious in hotjoin hasn’t been touched so still seeing a lot of Thieves isn’t surprising.
You’ll probably see even more Mesmers when a larger majority of the sPvP playerbase figure out how to efficiently instagib with a glass shatter Mesmer.
Only thing that will really solve the issue is weaning people to ranked Tournies, whenever they are introduced.
Anyone who’s annoying to fight will be considered OP. Its extremely annoying to fight a stealth spamming thief, an evasive mesmer, a chain blocking bunker guardian, or a bunker Ele who never stops moving, constantly has protection/regeneration/stability up, and rubberbands from 20% to 100% hp 8 times a fight. A good burst ele can also be very annoying – eat 1 updraft, and by the time you have control of your character again you’re at 20% health.
I’m not saying any of these specs are OP, but they are annoying to fight (especially if your particular class/build doesn’t have the tools to pin them down), and to most people, annoying = cheap = OP.
Well…what you describe as being annoying/cheap I don’t find annoying at all. Most of what you described is counterable (save for the Guardian blocking, which was mostly as bad as it was because of a bug). D/D Eles can be countered with boon stripping and correctly timing your classes’ burst (or, depending on their build, tacking conditions).
The only thing you don’t mention being annoying in your post is the high burst capability certain classes can dish out, so is that the kind of meta-game most people want? Classes with faceroll burst that run around insta-gibbing? I personally enjoy that aspect of the pvp in GW2 the least.
For me, potentially getting annihilated by a Warrior in 2-3 seconds is what I would describe as cheap, if anything (not saying they are OP, just cheap. Thief burst is still borderline overpowered imo). I think that is more in line with what people consider cheap/OP, given that the forum is still filled with complaints about Thieves and Warriors.
Outside of shocking aura, I personally feel D/D Eles are fine.
Just went into a game and one side was all thieves bar 2 players, the other side was all DD Ele’s bar 2 players. You have gone from having one seemingly OP class to two, and that is not including mesmers. This is ridiculous. You have set up a game where no one gets any type of reward to ‘maining’ a class, and the result is that everyone just rolls the current OP class and it’s boring in sPvP to not have a balanced mix of classes. You need to address this. Now the problem is if I am to have any hope in enjoying the game I have to play a class that copes well with this new Ele/Thief combo, as opposed to playing the class I enjoy.
Being PO’d about FotM is just a waste of mental capabilities, because there will always be a metagame and favourite classes and with ANet not trying to make harsh and quick balance-changes, this phenomenon will continue on. Yes, I do think Thieves are heavily OP and I don’t like playing against them, but if it’s really OP, a change will come eventually and we just have to live with it for now.
Besides that, I could come up with tons of builds no1 plays that are very very strong and hard to play against in certain situations if you’re not prepared and there are always counterbuilds to the FotM (which makes the Metagame interesting and forces certain decisions while coming up with a good teambuild, so theres even sth. good about strong FotM-builds).
Excuse me, why was he infracted for this post? It’s a good suggestion, and a good observation of the game. I completely agree with OP.
However, I don’t mind thieves that much as bunker eles and guardians are just ridiculous, combined with portal mesmers… makes the format quite unplayable.
Excuse me, why was he infracted for this post? It’s a good suggestion, and a good observation of the game. I completely agree with OP.
However, I don’t mind thieves that much as bunker eles and guardians are just ridiculous, combined with portal mesmers… makes the format quite unplayable.
As you can see, the moderators edited the title of the thread because it used to have a CoC infraction in it. It does not any more.
The only balanced class in the game is ranger. A ranger can’t burst anyone down in a matter of seconds, and we sure can’t play a true bunker build either, and there are better roamers than us as well.
So if Anet truly wants to go for balance, they should drag other classes down to the level where the ranger currently stands. Ooh, just imagine the amount of qq that would bring, lol!
Win10 pro | Xeon 5650 @ 4 GHz | R9 280x toxic | 24 Gig Ram | Process Lasso user
Unfortunately it appears thief bs burst builds are here to stay, which is quite worrying from a fellow thief’s point of view. Worse are the outrageous bunkers in a game about holding points. Thing is…. i still have lots of fun with this game’s pvp regardless. Sure I would like to see a nerf to both burst and bunker in the next patch, but who knows.
Excuse me, why was he infracted for this post? It’s a good suggestion, and a good observation of the game. I completely agree with OP.
However, I don’t mind thieves that much as bunker eles and guardians are just ridiculous, combined with portal mesmers… makes the format quite unplayable.
I just got a message – I wasn’t allowed to say ANET in the title. Don’t worry I get warnings all the time…I’ll probably get a warning for saying this.
thats actually a pretty reasonable spread overall though, across the 8
Are you for real? That spread is terrible.
The most popular class is approx 3x more popular than the least.
And about twice as popular than all the others.
That’s more of a condemnation of the pit of bad that is hotjoin, though. If hotjoin weren’t so flawed, the professions would lean less heavily toward the best pubstomping glory-farmer (thief, in case you’ve never played GW2).
Yes I am for real! What … one class is 22%, the lowest is about 9%…. of course there will be a couple of classes that are just more fun to play, and they will see the highest numbers. If all 8 were played equally it would be what about 12% each. Well most classes are close to that, and ok thieves are double popular. Overall that is a good spread. If one class were 40%, or one class 2%, yeah that would be a problem.
As you can see the biggest change by far is the popularity of the elementalist.
Everything except thief falls within or very close to the expected margin of error for the given sample size (+/- 3% for a ~1k sample).
“We recognize that the changes to [ele] will essentially remove it from play. In the future,
we may consider whether or not there is an incarnation of [ele] that would be viable
but balanced. For now, we do not expect it to see serious use.” – ANet
Thief is definitely falling off in popularity, Elementalist is on a rise because of slight DD buffs and recognition from Pros as being an annoying to deal with bunker. Mostly because of the latter probably, but that being said, I’ve seen waves of Necros lately that I don’t think are getting represented, especially in the last week.
Trends come and go, I figured out a build that VERY handily has been dealing with those “nerfed” Elementalists lately on my Mesmer. I say this because Bunker DD Eles were quite hard to deal with on a Mesmer some time back, we just didn’t have enough ways to get rid of their never ending boons, now buff stripping is actually easier because their Auras don’t count as boons anymore, means I clear off that protection a lot more often, and that stability, go go Null Field ftw!
“I’m sorry, my responses are limited. You must ask the right questions.”
- Dr. Alfred Lanning, fictional character of great intellect.
