Guild Wars 2

Kalar Meadia.8439:

…maybe you can tell me how to be bad with a power based phantasm build which doesn’t use moa form if ..eventually losing, in case you forget bad or good mesmer…the phantasm still deal the same uber dmg and still have a -10s CD

And if you’re getting hit by the predictable damage from Phantasms, and not properly clearning them, you’re bad yourself.

Every phantasm summon, without exception, has a cast time, has a motion.

A glass cannon Built mesmer will have Phantasms that hit hard, and little else. In which case, you’re foolish not to have your roamer pursue and kill said mesmer as their survivability is limited, and you’re playing into their hands by giving them breathing room.

Let me make this clear.

A bad mesmer throws his illusions at you in hopes they do the job for him. A good mesmer insures the illusions preform their function. They save their cooldowns so that the illusions come up at the correct time instead of chasing you until they shatter on the invisible wall of their maximum range.

You’ll fight a bad mesmer and be frustrated. You’ll fight a good mesmer and wonder wtf hit you.

Then I’m bad along with the rest of the playerbase- the developers and the entire test team..because obviously Jon is wrong and you’re right, so all we need to do is to send a MELE roamer and kill the mesmer easily, after all to dodge the phantasms dmg/clone shatter/the mesmer himself…is basically extremely easy.

It makes you wonder why tPvP teams don’t run double warrior these days, seen as they’re way worst than mesmer, it’s impossible to dodge 100b compared to the shatter phantasm and don’t let me talk about p/w thieves..truly a nightmare.

So all I need to do is to dodge ALL the dmg coming from phantasms and destroy all clones…OMFG why didn’t I think about this before? Ha wait can you tell me how to recognize the real mesmer from the clones?…it’s just too hard to tell them apart ^^!
Ty a lot for your pro tips …-_-

Kalar Meadia.8439:

On Shatter Builds.

Shatter builds end up being heavy burst damage, and looks good on paper, but it’s not sustainable.

Shatters can be evaded, Clones, the essential fuel of shatter builds, and be destroyed before they get to you if you maintain your AoEs.

As far kittenter cooldowns. The reason why cooldowns seem like such a problem with Illusionary Persona is because it’s 30 points down the Illusions line, which, as it’s passive stat increase, lowers the cooldown of shatters by 30%. (down to 12 seconds on mind wrack) without other skills/traits that colors.

Problem is, hitting the recast on Shatter would hurt shatters further on every other build.

It also takes a 30 0 0 0 30 build (10 randomly) to really do. Push the most out of shatters, which leaves a Mesmer lacking in defensive measures many mesmers take advatnage of.

Easier to kill a shatter based mesmer.

Yeah because you just need to dodge a single clone every 180s…seriously how people can get hit by shatter? Tell them champ how to play!

No point in arguing with Arheundel. Last week he created a “nerf mesmer pls” QQ thread claiming the prof was OP cuz it had 4+ clones. Yes…he has comprehensive knowledge of the game’s mechanics.

People need to relax and give the dev’s time. They are moving Necro into the right direction and, as I just said to my friend that plays Ele, if they nerf the Ele spec they’re going to generate some other options. It my not happen at one time, but these guys are methodical. It’s no secret that Ele needs some help. Give them time.

This game is very balanced, but the builds are quite simple.. to the point that building for straight up offense is significantly more effective than building on offense counters (since they don’t promote defensive play in this game). In any case, I suggest [@John] that if you guys really want to test out skill balances in this game, just open up competitive tournaments; that’s probably the best way to test out how balance the skills are in any skill based game.

All fine but are you really looking into nerfing tank healing ele??
If you do nerf it in the end ..pls tell me what should i play then.
I need you to come up with a build that doesnt revolve around 0/0/20(30)/20(30)/20(30)
Am i an idiot that i cant make anything else work??Just one supposed viable build for ele..
:(

Sorry for repeating what everyone else is saying, Mr. Jonathan, but as a fellow level 80 elementalist that tries his best to attunement swap, dodge, use active defenses and use subtle cross-attunement synergies, and don’t get rewarded enough for that, I’m afraid.

I perfectly understand that strong builds should be toned down, and honestly, I love elementalists for how active they are, so healing tanks are a bit… bland, in my opinion.

What I’m afraid, however, is that most of the best builds for elementalists so far come from water (+ arcane + earth) traits. Those traits are fun, and give me a chance to do something at spvp, unlike that very questionaly fire traitline. I’m afraid that some of our most interesting traits and traits synergy are at the risk of being nerfed to oblivion for the sake of being “decent”/ “acceptable” on boring, healing tanks.

I think it’s clear to a lot of people that elementalists are lacking in power builds. They take far too long, require far too effort and have absolutely no margin for error to kill anything (that doesn’t hits them), and in just half the time that it would require for them to set the burst, they’re already being downed in 3 hits in 2-ish seconds, unles they sacrifice their damage to pop out active defenses that only delay the inevitable. Likewise, their non-power/ non-condition builds can’t damage, at all. I wouldn’t mind taking a bit away from healing tanks defense for a general power boost, to make the healing tanks less passive, and to make power builds worthwhile, as a whole.

Anyways, I don’t want to fill this with suggestions, so I’ll stop. But, as someone who has been begging for scraps at the elementalists’ board, it makes me nervous that the next change will possibly be to nerf a specific build only, that comes at the risk of nerfing most of the aceptable spvp builds too. And, of couse, a fiery storm will take place on their boards, judging by the morale of my fellow elementalist comrades. :P

Arheundel speaking as if he knows the least thing about balance.

Of course Mesmer’s going to get adjustments. You, who are of the whining camp, will of course celibrate with overzealous joy to anything that stomps you getting nerfed, blananced or not.

But you’re completely ignoring the important statment here. Let me quote it for you:

Balance. Really, balance is pretty good. We’re very observant of the meta, we read the forums, and we’re playing the game with you. We don’t want to make knee-jerk balance decisions. And if did whatever the community wanted, what would happen to balance? How many threads are basically: “NERF X OMG!!” “Learn to play , X is fine” “Omg no, we can’t beat X at all!” “Just saying, none of the people I know even run X anymore” “Hey you guys forget X, let’s buff Y!”….then this just repeats over and over. We can’t just do exactly what players ask for in relation to balance, because different players at various skill levels view balance differently. So what we do is balance community feedback with gameplay results. We don’t want to play whack-a-mole with balance, so we don’t just nerf/buff everything as soon as someone posts about it. It would ruin the game if we did. We try to be patient, see if the meta fixes itself (because a lot of times, once you learn how to deal with something, you realize it may not be as imba as you first thought), and then make long-lasting balance changes. We don’t want to nerf X, then realize no one uses it, and buff it again, then have to nerf it again, etc. etc.

This means they’ll be balancing the classes on a far more informed and inteligent basis than you will ever understand.

Playing the class among others enough to compare (I’m an altaholic, Mesmer is attached to the account name aka my favorite character. I play it because it’s personification matches an old favorite character of mine, not because it’s FOTM, like you assume). A lot of your gripes are absent of actual substance against an experienced player.

But again, I fully expect you to wave your had like you know more than someone who plays the class as well as others extensively. I don’t know the statistics more than the developers, I’d never claim that. They’re the one sitting with the raw play numbers. But I know the experience from multiple perspectives, something you’ve completely failed to display yourself – enough to earn you a reputation.

Now, instead of acting like belligerent, why don’t you ask me how I’d adjust mesmer? You can start by listing issues you see and I’ll tell you what from my perspective think can be tweaked.

Was it shatter you’re more concerned with? (A build pretty much designed only to burst down single enemies and only effective if you can continually cone produce, which sacrifices the boon-striping capabilities you were complaining about earlier.)

Or Phantasms? Which you claim mesmers ONLY sit behind LoS and use them endlessly like they have no cooldown and can never be identified/pursued?

You speak of balance, and why suggestions of that kind aren’t taken lightly, but what of fun? Balance shifts constantly as it is, but if professions aren’t fun enough, if the game isn’t fun enough, then people won’t stick around.

Bugs are a big part of it to be sure, with bugged abilities and traits out of the way many professions do feel a bit better to play. But do you ever question design decisions about mechanics and traits, and whether it’s actually fun to play as or against?

Take Warrior and Mesmer for example. Warrior, in terms of balance, is quite clearly a pub stomper, the kind that doesn’t dominate tournaments or dungeons at any higher level, but rolls through everything at lower levels. The result is a fairly bland to play profession that is very effective at easy things, requiring almost no thought or effort at all, but is hampered by it’s very low skill and utility ceiling. People don’t enjoy Warrior because of class mechanics, they’re almost nonexistent, the people who have fun with that are having fun looking like a kitten or smashing their faces across the keyboard and doing well in PvE.

And then there’s Mesmer, the profession that seems like it would be a high skill ceiling, but really isn’t due to how heavily constrained they are by their profession mechanics. Pretty much everything a Mesmer does is out of their hands and in the hands of the enemy, whether PvE or PvP, the heavy reliance on illusions to succeed regardless of your build makes them dependent on the AI of both the illusions and enemy NPCs, with your control being limited to where you were when you spawned them, and being able to command them to shatter. The effectiveness of clones is dependant wholly on RNG in PvE, and how intelligent your enemy is in PvP, about the best you can do to make them work for sure in PvE is using a stealth skill, and in PvP you can attempt to pretend to be a clone, but experienced players won’t fall for it, while newer players will get slaughtered. Similarly confusion is a condition that is horribly niche, it’s almost completely useless in PvE despite having a higher scaling there, and in PvP it only succeeds in punishing mindless spam by the enemy, which once again has to do with preying on new players.

And then there’s the fact that shatters and mantras aren’t actually fun to use at all, shatters being a glorified combo system not unlike a target-able adrenaline bar, and making you feel like a mindless minion bomber instead of an illusionist or enchanter, while mantras as one person once put it feel like alpha testing abilities, they are literally abilities in their most basic form with no utility or other purposes to them, with an annoying tacked on charge time as well. Combine that with how focused the profession seems to be on randomness with Staff, the Chaos tree, and the like, and it feels like you can’t depend on anything, it really feels like you just throw out a bunch of abilities and let a mix of AI, RNG, and enemy skill take over rather than player input.

So to take those two cases as examples, how willing are you, Arenanet, to go about actually improving professions in a way other than just balance and power? Are you perfectly satisfied with how fun and diverse each one is? I say screw complete balance for the moment, as far as I know you don’t have any money based tournaments yet as it is, and if you really do want it to be an “e-sport”, you have some work to do on removing RNG, giving more diversity in abilities and builds for the different professions, and managing to keep the playerbase that plays the game to have fun, not just win PvP games, happy. That was your whole motto before release, right? Making everything fun, making sure the game was ready before release, that sort of thing.

Tank ele’s make me want to bang my head against a wall. It’s just…pointless youcan’tkillmeicantkillyou lololol youarenevercapturingthispoint. What’s the point in having that type of build be available.

Duckzor.4327:

Tank ele’s make me want to bang my head against a wall. It’s just…pointless youcan’tkillmeicantkillyou lololol youarenevercapturingthispoint. What’s the point in having that type of build be available.

At the moment it’s the ONLY build that resembles anything close to “okay” for the ele.

Try one yourself and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

And you are correct, there’s no point.

Wow you want to nerf ele of all things. I really liked speccing into water and I never felt like I was particularly op.

Its the game design thats the problem not the kitten build. You made a game about holding points to win and then get upset when people make a build to do just that.

Why don’t you make a game mode where bunkering isnt rewarding rather then nerf specific skills/builds.

Thanks for the update.

I hope amidst all this chaos they are fixing that stupid ranger bug where traps don’t work in clocktower. Every time you place a trap down there NOTHING happens. Its been like this since release. Our pet A.I is still sucky (howls in particular don’t work well….)….but the fact we are made so useless in mid in the most competitive/final map is a HUGE problem for us (as well as entangle being silly buggy).

This is the single and most important thing that needs fixing for the ranger at the moment and I’m not sure this is near the top of your priorities at the moment. Its not a complicated balance issue which is subjective, its just a massive bug the ranger needs fixed soon!

@ Xrylene, good post. I feel like professions like the elementalist should be easier to play, while still being equally hard to master (although honestly, this can be achieved with a few buffs, because outside of our defense and attunement swapping, we’re pretty simple), while professions like the warrior should have extra mechanics that would add slightly more depth and complexity behind it. Something like f2-f4 dedicated to GW1-inspired stance dancing, where you get more efficient at specific tasks (caughting opponents, dealing damage, healing) at huge costs. This would have made warriors so MUCH more interesting to play.

Scrap the high recharge, win button frenzy with its little armor drawback. Give us something like “33% faster attack, take 50% more damage”, “33% faster movement speed, 50% slower endurance regeneration”, etc. I would even play a warrior for that. I love juggernauts/ soldiers that rely on brute force, while still requiring intelligent and profissional battle stancing or some other thing.

I don’t want ele’s nerfed. This build is just pointless and is completely too useful in tPvP when the ele takes 5mins to down at any given capture point.

It’s not hard to tell a mesmer apart from his clones. For one the bad mesmer usually uses his bubble to guard himself. Two the bad mesmer runs around while the clones stay in place. Pro tip for mesmers, stand still and dont use your bubble unless the person is on your kitten That way you can effectivly kill people without them knowing which one is the real you. And for those looking for the real one.. just look for the idiot running around in circles.. It is usually the bad mesmer.

No one complains about bad mesmers. Its the good ones they complain about. They are simply overpowered. Their mechanic is overpowered, having copies of themselves, their indirect damage with their insta-spawn pets is overpowered, making escaping them ludicrously hard, and to top it off they get stealth, blink, and AoE quickness. Even worse they can be tanky and still put out far more punishment than most classes can muster.

Westley.4716:

No one complains about bad mesmers. Its the good ones they complain about. They are simply overpowered. Their mechanic is overpowered, having copies of themselves, their indirect damage with their insta-spawn pets is overpowered, making escaping them ludicrously hard, and to top it off they get stealth, blink, and AoE quickness. Even worse they can be tanky and still put out far more punishment than most classes can muster.

There aren’t “good Mesmers”. There are only competent ones, and bad ones. You do have a few points on them being too effective in PvP, granted, but it’s not due to player skill. On the contrary, Mesmer is easy to play, it’s just that the results vary wildly based on your opponent, this is part of why they have so much difficulty in PvE, their skills are geared towards taking advantage of player stupidity and unawareness, which mobs can’t duplicate perfectly due to preset patterns, but random target choice.

The difference between a competent Mesmer and a bad one largely has to do with build and knowing what your buttons actually do. If you don’t know what you are doing with traits, weapons, and utilities, there are a lot that are really terrible and will weigh you down almost to the point of uselessness. As it is right now, it’s no use being mad at the Mesmer players over their phantasm builds or shatter builds, they have very little control over either, and for the most part it’s really one or the other, those are the only effective ways to play Mesmer in PvP. What needs to happen, is clones, phantasms, and shatters need to be consolidated into their class mechanic, removing them abilities from their weapons and giving them actual usable abilities instead. Then the weapon abilities can be buffed up while the shatters and phantasms are nerfed, and more power can be within the Mesmer itself instead of letting AI do all the work.

I disagree with your post entirely. I’m going to begin by saying that you must have never truly faced an above “competent Mesmer” . There is an art to playing Mesmer that doesn’t include just relying on phantasms. People are seeming to forget that slightest bit of AoE along with a missed stealth (which we only have one with a 45 sec recharge), its game over. I’ve had multiple guildies run their own Mesmers in TPvP only to realize that its not the class they imagined. Go ahead and nerf the phantasms as long as i see an absurd weapon boost or survivability boost.

Good stuff Arena Net.
100% confidence.

Cookie.1042:

I disagree with your post entirely. I’m going to begin by saying that you must have never truly faced an above “competent Mesmer” . There is an art to playing Mesmer that doesn’t include just relying on phantasms. People are seeming to forget that slightest bit of AoE along with a missed stealth (which we only have one with a 45 sec recharge), its game over. I’ve had multiple guildies run their own Mesmers in TPvP only to realize that its not the class they imagined. Go ahead and nerf the phantasms as long as i see an absurd weapon boost or survivability boost.

You’re only proving my point with the AoE comment, we have almost no control over our abilities, it’s all in enemy hands. And note, I wasn’t just talking about phantasms, I was talking about clones too and how they can be incredibly effective or worthless, based off of how much AoE you’re facing and how intelligent your enemies are. That applies to shatters as well, they’re well telegraphed and easy to avoid, and if that weren’t enough the clones can of course be killed, and short of stunning the enemy to let the shatter land, there’s very little Mesmers can do about it. If it were an effect directly tied to the Mesmer, we could at least ensure the package arrives because we could get into position ourselves, but instead we have AI reliance.

And yes, that’s the general idea, nerf the hell out of phantasms and turn them from damage powerhouses into continuous utility effects, and buff up the damage that the Mesmer itself can do. Not survivability though, or at least not directly, that’s one thing Mesmers are kitten good at that actually is within their own power rather than their illusions, surviving about as well as a Guardian.

“Balance. Really, balance is pretty good. "
invisible thief – ninja, stab, stab, ninja, stab…. cool, this class is awesome… balance ready!
tank guardian – fight for 5 enemy players – skill-skill, guardian dying, oh full hp…wtf…skill-skill…grrr….guardian dying…oh god full hp…skill-skill….guardian down, heeeelyeah….oh wtf, guardian full hp… oh my god, balance ready….run, run…))

yes, we’re watching Mesmers

Don’t watch them too closely then, they are really fine, not really op and waitin aswell at some debugs

Balance is indeed pretty good atm, when you have a clue at how playin the game everything can be hard countered and that’s the most lovely part of the gameplay. Some annoyin stuff regardin Quickness should be removed tho, like for example the condition stack (it shouldn’t apply 1 condition per hit while a player is under quickness, otherwise it’s fine)

They’re going to do what they think is right. Based on the game they created.
Stop resisting change, and learn to play the cards your dealt.

They don’t want extremes to be overly effective in their pvp, simple as that.
Glass cannon builds exist atm, but they’re not as viable in tournament play just from the sheer amount of aoe going round a node. Thats not to say you can’t use them or they dont work. But it promotes creativity, having to apply that glass cannon build to a very specific niche.

If one extreme cannot exist without dire ‘consequences’, then the other extreme shouldn’t be allowed to exist either without the same level of consequences.

Bunker builds being as effective as they are now, just creates stagnant points on the map. 2-3 bunkers to hold 2-3 nodes. The simplest formula of success.

The game has been created to allow for so much more creativity in each teams approach to victory.
The ability for a team to hold or capture a node should not be based off a build, but rather skill and coordination.

lol at the people trying to protect/hide mesmer opness , yeah Jon

start with those classes and see where that take us from there

Kalar Meadia.8439:

And if you’re getting hit by the predictable damage from Phantasms, and not properly clearning them, you’re bad yourself.

Every phantasm summon, without exception, has a cast time, has a motion.

Duuuuude come on are you still trying thís hard to keep mesmers how they are?
I thought i’d have more fun reading about the scared mesmers and guardians in this thread but this kitten is just sad.

Relax guys, he said it in his post already that whay Arena Net do is compile what every player says and if majority wants it, they will add it / nerf it/ buff it.

About the ele tank thing, i dont think they will nerf it because most of us playing elementalist doesn’t want it to be nerfed and honestly, it is pretty balanced considered it’s the only available build for us right now.

Elementalist / Mages should be the glass cannon type wherein we deal a high amount of damage and in return we die in a few hits

The problem is that here in this game we aren’t even if we use full damage gear, we only deal little damage compared to thieves and warriors, not to mention the fact that these two have more survivability than elems.

and because of the overpowered dps of thieves and warrior, it’s impossible for other glass cannons to go head to head with them, so instead we created a counter which is the tank type to deal with these insane dps classes. So why would they nerf our counter against the overpowered class? if they nerf us, they should nerf others as well.

LOL from all things eles are getting nerfed….?
are we being trolled here or what?
balance is fine?
almost everybody i see agrees this game is very flawed when it comes to balance
from mesmers who can transform you into a bird to thieves that can kill you in 3 secs with almost not doing anything that requires skill at all

about funny stuff i read about shatter mesmer.
first of all a shatter 30 0 0 0 30 (10 random) is a silly and noob build i don’t understand how can you shatter with that build but w.e.
a good mesmer don spam clones and just press F1-2-3-4, a good mesmer cast 2 clones, #3 sword, IMMMOBILIZE you, then while in blurred frenzy he shatter you 3-5 illusions (if used mirror images). how many cond removal di you have to avoid immobilize?
and if you avoid it, mesmer can always stun you for 2 secs and shatter ..you can use breakstun, but usually a breakstun has cd longer than #3 sword or stun…
go on with newbie statements

Shukran.4851:

about funny stuff i read about shatter mesmer.
first of all a shatter 30 0 0 0 30 (10 random) is a silly and noob build i don’t understand how can you shatter with that build but w.e.
a good mesmer don spam clones and just press F1-2-3-4, a good mesmer cast 2 clones, #3 sword, IMMMOBILIZE you, then while in blurred frenzy he shatter you 3-5 illusions (if used mirror images). how many cond removal di you have to avoid immobilize?
and if you avoid it, mesmer can always stun you for 2 secs and shatter ..you can use breakstun, but usually a breakstun has cd longer than #3 sword or stun…
go on with newbie statements

Well accordingly to @kalar meadia..I can dodge all that

@dimyzuka: Condition spammers are hard counters for low health high toughness/healing tank eles. And also they don’t output any decent damage at all. The only thing they can do is take damage. And also that’s the only thing ele can do as a profession, it’s literally the only viable spec choice. So if that gets nerfed to the ground there is nothing left for ele to play.

uhm no updates on a duel system or arenas

JonathanSharp

if the meta fixes itself (because a lot of times, once you learn how to deal with something, you realize it may not be as imba as you first thought)

I fixed my meta by rerolling a warrior and a thief.

I am not alone at this.

JonathanSharp

Oh ya, wanted to add: yes, we’re watching Mesmers, bunker Guardians and tank heal Ele’s. Forgot to add that.

Glad you are finding new ways to nerf Eles in the only thing they don’t utterly blow at.
Never mind finding why they all go unfun tank + heal build instead of something better.

kabaal

Ouch, tank ele is the only worthwhile spec they have. I hope you look at improving them elsewhere before nerfing it.

Glad I am not alone at thinking this.

Watching != Nerfing. Drama queens.

Mammoth.1975:

Watching != Nerfing. Drama queens.

Of course it means nerfing. What else should it mean? Also, mentioning “watching” eles in the same sentance as the ridiculously OPed guardians and mesmers? That’s just aweful.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Mammoth.1975:

Watching != Nerfing. Drama queens.

Of course it means nerfing. What else should it mean? Also, mentioning “watching” eles in the same sentance as the ridiculously OPed guardians and mesmers? That’s just aweful.

I don’t know, what else do you think watching could mean? Hint, starts with W.

They’re watching the build. If it’s fine you have nothing to cause concern, do you?

Le sigh, nothing to add other than another potential nerf to an already underperforming class is a nail in the coffin for me. You talk about whack-a-mole balancing well what happened to Elementalists between BWE 2 and BWE 3 then? If that wasn’t whack-a-mole then I don’t know what is. How about you “watch” our bug list thread and take things from there?

./facepalm + ./bangfaceondesk = how many of us feel after reading this.

Duckzor

Tank ele’s make me want to bang my head against a wall. It’s just…pointless youcan’tkillmeicantkillyou lololol youarenevercapturingthispoint. What’s the point in having that type of build be available

Because the other option for the elementalist is a build where “NowYouCanKillmeIn2ShotsICantkillYouExaclyLikeBefore”.

Oma Overdose

Wow you want to nerf ele of all things. I really liked speccing into water and I never felt like I was particularly op.

At this point I expect they announce a drastic nerf to necros as well. You know, they have so much in common with Eles (except the health): dozens of documented bug, high effort vs tiny reward, non-existant pet AI and so much more…

IPARKER

LOL from all things eles are getting nerfed….?
are we being trolled here or what?
balance is fine?
almost everybody i see agrees this game is very flawed when it comes to balance
from mesmers who can transform you into a bird to thieves that can kill you in 3 secs with almost not doing anything that requires skill at all

He did not even mention thieves, apparently they are so fine. It’s elementalists forced to spec and gear full bunker to still be hit for 6.5k by 2 button spammers that NEED nerf NAO.

Mammoth

I don’t know, what else do you think watching could mean? Hint, starts with W.

They’re watching the build. If it’s fine you have nothing to cause concern, do you?

Maybe because some people have played PvP MMOs for > a decade and learned the terrible things game designers can do?

Trust is not given, it’s earned.

In order to earn trust you don’t toss statements like necros suck because they have not learned the hidden power of DS or mentioning a reactionary ele build (reactionary because born out of our class bugs and 2 button spamming egregious OP classes) instead of nerfing what makes them all go bunker build.

Have you thought about increasing the minimum amount of players to hold a point to “2” instead of “1”. Or creating an object you need to channel on in order to capture a point, that breaks channel on receiving damage.

This would make those tank-specced classes less useful without actually having to touch them in the balance department.

Because as it stands more and more teams are shifting to a tri-tank, 2 DPS team.

Ele/Guard/Engi – tanks
Mesm/Thief – DPS

It’s just really strong.

If they keep nerfing the tankish builds but dont touch the ridiculous thief & warrior the game will end up being all about who deals faster dps.

I started using Earth/Water/Arcana traits with my elementalist at lvl 80 because it’s the only build that is actually useful for dungeons. Also, the fire Grandmaster trait Persisting Flames is still not working?

Great, now Anet will destroy the only spec usefull for Elems. Because with the other builds you will be killed so fast with subpar damage

Kalar Meadia.8439:

Was it shatter you’re more concerned with? (A build pretty much designed only to burst down single enemies and only effective if you can continually cone produce, which sacrifices the boon-striping capabilities you were complaining about earlier.)

In regards to the above quote, I’d just like to point out the 20/20/0/0/30 build that I use that can achieve both of these. Clones on dodge, boon removal on shatters, and Illusionary Persona.

I mean I generally agree with you that things are pretty balanced for the most part. I’m just pointing out that this is indeed possible, and I use it all the time. It also doesn’t just burst down single enemies, as the Shatters have a decent AoE effect when people are grouped up on a point. It’s not that large, but it can happen.

As for everyone complaining about Ele Tankiness, it’s a problem. They are actually more difficult to take down then a Bunker Guardian due to the extra condition removal and higher healing. Is it possible to counter? Sure, but if a Bunker Guardian’s durability is too strong then the same has to be the case for the Ele. You have to keep in mind a large chunk of the healing is splash healing as well, and is exceptionally powerful for team fights. Elementalists are very, very good right now in tPvP. Honestly though in open sPvP they are terrible however, due to the downed state. Their survival, support, and damage in a Scepter / Dagger roaming role however is something that should not be underestimated which it seems many here do. In my opinion, it’s better then having a Thief roamer.

i like how ele’s try to validate their overly tankiness by saying it’s the only viable build.

Will those ele nerfs carry over to WvW because I couldn’t give two kitten about SPvP? Do NOT mess with eles because a thief can’t 1v1 them to take back a little circle. You should REALLY look at the state of the class in PvE, WvW and Dungeons before messing with our three best trait lines. There aren’t a lot of options out there for specs in ele’s outside of earth/water/arcane even outside of SPvP. Trash the survivability line /spec of an already weak as water class.

Betting NONE of the devs even play ele’s.

“i like how ele’s try to validate their overly tankiness by saying it’s the only viable build.”

play one. it IS the only viable build. I’d love to play a more damaging build but it’s simply not possible.

Aether McLoud.1975:

“i like how ele’s try to validate their overly tankiness by saying it’s the only viable build.”

play one. it IS the only viable build. I’d love to play a more damaging build but it’s simply not possible.

If you don’t think a Scepter / Dagger roaming role with a Valk’s Amulet in some 0/20/0/20/30 build is viable then I’m not sure what to tell you. I flat out disagree with you. Do Ele’s have things that need to be fixed? Yes, every class has a bunch of gunk that is ineffective. The Ele has a fair amount more then normal, but both the Staff Bunker Ele and Sc/Da Roaming Ele are excellent right now.

if i were to tell my prof i’d just need another few days for “editing and translating and stuff” i’d get a mark 0 and that’s about it

you write your papers in LateX, not a hard thing to do but tedious at times and if you honestly try to tell us that editing a blog post is actually something hard to do you’re out of your mind

same with translation, first of all 99% of the people who play this game are fluent in english and translation a what 1 page (if that) blog post doesn’t even take as much as an hour

again it’s just excuses coming out of you

Aether McLoud.1975:

“excellent”. I don’t think it means what you think it means.

I’m glad we could resolve this with you attacking my use of language. At least I’m glad I didn’t take the time to go into detail, since I knew this would be the response regardless.

EnochDagor.6185:

0/20/0/20/30 is a death sentence. Seriously. You rely on too much chance and you give up all your toughness… pretty much any HS spamming thief will instagib ya.

Valkyrie’s Amulet gives you the Toughness. You do only have around 13k to 14k health however, so you are vulnerable to burst damage. However, the amount of self-healing, control, and mitigation it has on top of the incredible damage output shows me you don’t even understand what I wrote.

I know this will probably hit deaf ears, but you all should give it a try. It doesn’t have to beat Thieves 1v1, it’s a Roamer designed to support point defenders and duelists. The only Thief build it really loses to anyway is the Backstab one, and that’s only if you don’t see it coming. The rest of them are fights that are determined by mostly execution and skill. A Heartseeker spamming thief will lose terribly with blinds, control, and keeping yourself above half health.

Pray.9751:

if i were to tell my prof i’d just need another few days for “editing and translating and stuff” i’d get a mark 0 and that’s about it

you write your papers in LateX, not a hard thing to do but tedious at times and if you honestly try to tell us that editing a blog post is actually something hard to do you’re out of your mind

same with translation, first of all 99% of the people who play this game are fluent in english and translation a what 1 page (if that) blog post doesn’t even take as much as an hour

again it’s just excuses coming out of you

You’ve never worked in an office before have you? When you pass work along to others, things take time. Honestly, the anger at Jon over how slow it’s been makes sense now that I think about it. Very few people here have probably had office jobs. Could they be faster? Yeah, but it’s not unreasonable for it to take this long when you’ve experienced it first-hand.

Ele nerf incoming. Finally, hopefully all the FOTM rollers and ele bots go somewhere else.
ohwait.

le sigh.

Umweltplakette.2109:

God kitten … why don’t people just stop Flaming about Pistol Whip Thieves or 100hb Warriors with haste? … it’s SO SO SO easy to avoid those dmg combos if you aren’t any of those hardcore noobs out there. Holy kitten there are tons of Skills that simply break Stuns/Knockdowns or Teleport you elsewhere if you just use them. OFC if you just put dmg spells in all your slots then you’ll die and you simply deserve it for doing this.

I see this sort of thing trotted out, but the reality seems very different, now I wouldn’t use myself as an example as I don’t think I’m wonderful at PvP, I do however watch what are supposedly good teams on Twitch (Alpha Collective, IO, TP (EU & NA), etc) and guess what there are plenty of times they get caught by pistol whip, 100b, huge backstab, etc.

No not as much as much as some beginner, but they still get caught a reasonable number of times, you know why, because most fights aren’t 1v1 or even when they are they often have people streaming in (can’t remeber the word they use for this) one after another, both of which result (on most classes) in the limited number of stun breakers, shields , etc being on cooldown.

Furthermore as a general rule, in every single MMORPG I have ever played all the good PvPers have stated low time to kill = low skill cap, these are games where people are given a multitude of skills, situational skills, etc and part of the skill is being able to best use them all.

Hence when the TTK gets too low it bascially renders many skills useless, turns into a third rate FPS (but with less twitch or the skill required to do headshots) and the skill cap drops through the floor.

I really don’t know what Anet were thinking, the claim is for the highest skilled MMORPG PvP, yet the result is anything but.