Guild Wars 2

Some professions have pretty much ruined WvW by turning all battles into a passive face off, where groups will just stack boons like protection and resistance and turn everything into a battle of sustain. Fights used to be fun, because groups had to actively manage cooldowns and have excellent coordination to win battles—but all of that was lost slowly after the repeated updates that brought power creep into the game.

There needs to be nerfs across the board for many traits and abilities, in WvW. People simply aren’t enjoying these fights where nobody dies for 10 minutes.

It wouldn’t even be that hard. From a large scale perspective, all the bullkitten is supported by a few overperforming skills. Make Facet of Nature a personal buff, prevent Great Dwarf from stacking with other damage reducing effects, take away the healing from elemental bastion, and give Signet of Inspiration the Heat Sync treatment.
4 nerfs and an instantly more enjoyable game..

Then when people start running glass backline revs again, rework hammer to something that isn’t kittened (apparently, mental issues is a sensitive subject to the word filter).

elemental bastion isn’t that great even with tons of healing power

You’re asking them to nerf one of the selling points of the expansion…. maybe by the time the next expansion comes out they’ll think about it.

So why is sustain and healing so important and popular atm? Simple: With HoT came such an overflow of CC and random damage everywhere that good movement simply doesn’t do the job anymore

How is an ele who plays glascanon supposed to survive when tons of revs in zoneblobs spamming their hammer 2 everywhere and u are possibly a one hit?

So playing with more sustain and healing is just a logical consequence of the insane randomdamage and cc boost that came with the update

A lot of people mistake cause and effect.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

elemental bastion isn’t that great even with tons of healing power

You’re right insofar as the sustain from healbot ele comes from a lot of different sources and this is only one of them. However, I don’t think the build would be a thing without the healing from elemental bastion. Between auras on skills and passive procs, it accounts for around 7-9k healing on every engagement with a typical d/f build.

Kaldo.7960:

So why is sustain and healing so important and popular atm? Simple: With HoT came such an overflow of CC and random damage everywhere that good movement simply doesn’t do the job anymore

How is an ele who plays glascanon supposed to survive when tons of revs in zoneblobs spamming their hammer 2 everywhere and u are possibly a one hit?

So playing with more sustain and healing is just a logical consequence of the insane randomdamage and cc boost that came with the update

A lot of people mistake cause and effect.

This is completely true. The sustain meta was born out of necessity when the amount of CC and damage cleave was massively increased with HoT. But now that it’s a thing, you can’t get out of it by nerfing damage. Both sides need to be addressed and it seems only logical to start with the one currently being (ab)used.

vana.5467:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

elemental bastion isn’t that great even with tons of healing power

You’re right insofar as the sustain from healbot ele comes from a lot of different sources and this is only one of them. However, I don’t think the build would be a thing without the healing from elemental bastion. Between auras on skills and passive procs, it accounts for around 7-9k healing on every engagement with a typical d/f build.

Which is a rather small proportion of the total healing ele does in such a fight. With roughtly 1350hp/s passive heals, that’s covered in less than 7s. one wash the pain away gives same healing to allies on one use, blasting water gives more than one aura, when playing staff, heal from one aa is similar to heal from one aura, dodge gives like double healing than one aura. sure 9k heal per trait per fight looks amazing, unless compared to other traits/skills.

bastion is great for burst heals but it’s far from necessary, i often don’t use it, especially if playing /w. if they’d remove the heal from bastion, nobody would slot it and healer ele would still be awesome.

would limiting the duration of certain boons help? only in wvw, of course.

There has been several balance passes since HoT already. The professions and skills are balanced upon balanced upon balanced. There was even WvW specific balancing in April. You should feel exactly at equal level no matter which game mechanic or profession you use.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-January-26-2016
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-19-2016
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-July-26-2016-1

Wvw has a great number of distinct stats and food so i think it is really impossible to balance them . I also belive that balancing a “blob” fight is really quite impossible becouse the composition of the blob is random . The only thing you can do is to tune down some single skill of a single class but this has an impact only on roamers . And in roaming there are many broken builds … not only thieves or perplexity chronomancers

vana.5467:

Kaldo.7960:

So why is sustain and healing so important and popular atm? Simple: With HoT came such an overflow of CC and random damage everywhere that good movement simply doesn’t do the job anymore

How is an ele who plays glascanon supposed to survive when tons of revs in zoneblobs spamming their hammer 2 everywhere and u are possibly a one hit?

So playing with more sustain and healing is just a logical consequence of the insane randomdamage and cc boost that came with the update

A lot of people mistake cause and effect.

This is completely true. The sustain meta was born out of necessity when the amount of CC and damage cleave was massively increased with HoT. But now that it’s a thing, you can’t get out of it by nerfing damage. Both sides need to be addressed and it seems only logical to start with the one currently being (ab)used.

How is it an abuse? It’s a way to deal with the circumstances and btw it’s not like there is no counter to that kind of healballmeta. Boonstrips and focussing the classes that give such sustain f.e.
In Blobs even easier cause u still cannot survive a proper bomb just by sustain and heal, cause publics are not that organised.

In guilds u need to change your fighting strategies against those builds. Smallscalewise it’s one of the few possibilties you have against all the braindead conditionspammer.

So if there would be no counter at all, yes, u need a nerf, but ppl have to deal with changes in meta and adapt their strategies.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Which is a rather small proportion of the total healing ele does in such a fight. With roughtly 1350hp/s passive heals, that’s covered in less than 7s. one wash the pain away gives same healing to allies on one use, blasting water gives more than one aura, when playing staff, heal from one aa is similar to heal from one aura, dodge gives like double healing than one aura. sure 9k heal per trait per fight looks amazing, unless compared to other traits/skills.

bastion is great for burst heals but it’s far from necessary, i often don’t use it, especially if playing /w. if they’d remove the heal from bastion, nobody would slot it and healer ele would still be awesome.

uh.. I think we’ll both have a better day if we just agree to disagree here.
It’s details in any case. The point I was making (the one relevant for this thread, anyway) is that the current meta is enabled by a few key skills/builds, and it would be fairly easy to push it in a more offensive direction and make it feel less gimmicky.

darkaheart.4265:

would limiting the duration of certain boons help? only in wvw, of course.

This is what I think would be the right approach. Fact is the boon overload is what makes PVE tick right now, it’s what makes mesmer relevant. Capping Quickness, Resistance and Protection’s ability to stack duration would go a long way. I believe the base cap is 9 stacks, if in WvW those 3 could be capped at something much lower (maybe even 1?) perhaps they could balance it for WvW without ruining it outside.

I’d like to see the vanilla traits get a full look over. Some of the cool downs are extremely long and need some love.

Korgov.7645:

There has been several balance passes since HoT already. The professions and skills are balanced upon balanced upon balanced. There was even WvW specific balancing in April. You should feel exactly at equal level no matter which game mechanic or profession you use.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-January-26-2016
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-19-2016
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-July-26-2016-1

None of those balance updates address the power creep in WvW.

What server is that where players survive for 10min ?
The one im in they die in 3 seconds if they get stunned.

I support this thread. WvW needs this.

As noob player, I wish more for shared protections etc when I’m with our best players. My chars have been ganked 1v1 within 10v10 or bigger zerg fights – I don’t want 1v1 fights at all, not with their best players.

MrFluffy.9307:

Some professions have pretty much ruined WvW by turning all battles into a passive face off, where groups will just stack boons like protection and resistance and turn everything into a battle of sustain. Fights used to be fun, because groups had to actively manage cooldowns and have excellent coordination to win battles—but all of that was lost slowly after the repeated updates that brought power creep into the game.

There needs to be nerfs across the board for many traits and abilities, in WvW. People simply aren’t enjoying these fights where nobody dies for 10 minutes.

I’m not tryin to be rude, but the true issue is that some of you can’t handle change.

The devs are not nerfing anything “across the board” to make some vanilla wvw scenario.

Swagger.1459:

MrFluffy.9307:

Some professions have pretty much ruined WvW by turning all battles into a passive face off, where groups will just stack boons like protection and resistance and turn everything into a battle of sustain. Fights used to be fun, because groups had to actively manage cooldowns and have excellent coordination to win battles—but all of that was lost slowly after the repeated updates that brought power creep into the game.

There needs to be nerfs across the board for many traits and abilities, in WvW. People simply aren’t enjoying these fights where nobody dies for 10 minutes.

I’m not tryin to be rude, but the true issue is that some of you can’t handle change.

The devs are not nerfing anything “across the board” to make some vanilla wvw scenario.

If the community wants it, then I don’t see why Anet would refuse.

Extreme.8350:

What server is that where players survive for 10min ?
The one im in they die in 3 seconds if they get stunned.

Stop running headbutt.

The boon meta in large groups has been strong since HoT came out and once players figured out new optimal builds Stuff like durability remains unchanged to date, surprisingly.

I don’t think you can expect much balance in small scale though, condis have been OP for a long while.

CrimsonNeonite.1048:

The boon meta in large groups has been strong since HoT came out and once players figured out new optimal builds Stuff like durability remains unchanged to date, surprisingly.

I don’t think you can expect much balance in small scale though, condis have been OP for a long while.

small scale has always been run by the condi meta. At least in small scale, fights are mostly determined by skill. If you ever played sPvP, you’d know that Anet was very quick to respond when people started complaining about bunkers. That’s the problem with WvW right now. Groups can run bunker builds that are immune to damage but still dish out massive DPS thanks to quickness stacking.

I really wish Anet would balance professions for WvW combat, quickness stacking shouldn’t be a thing. The boon itself is too strong to begin with. I wish they’d revert it to how quickness was before, where you lost endurance in exchange for it.

Good luck with this. WvWer’s have been asking for balance since launch and they just recently made this game “buy HoT for the elite specs = win” so that those players that don’t have the skills or are just too lazy to learn this game can finally win. And they are trying to attract players that want things easy. So no chance on balance for a very long time if ever.

Playing staff elementalist right now in WvW is just the most unpleasant and frustrating experience you can have in this game, or in a MMO.

Nothing hits because of the huge delay between skills, damage is way below what other class can do with much easier means, and even with super high toughness you still get 1-1-1-1 to death before your first skill goes off if you don’t have permanent protection upkeep.

In PvP it’s the same, you’re just good at healing others and there is no build variety. Great job!

Compared to how fun the class was to play on release, this is complete kitten balance work by a team that apparently doesn’t care if in a PvP match with 10 players 8 of them are guardians.

I’m taking another break from this game. See you in 6 months or a year maybe, if the balance team ever actually balance the game instead of destroying the gameplay and build variety.

Had a bit of fun switching class to Revenants and killing other elementalists pressing the “2” key, but then I realized playing classes that I don’t enjoy because my main class is broken is not worth the space on my hard drive.

Because profession balance devs don’t actually care about the state of WvW or really the state of the game in general aside from the health of PvE and raids.

If they ever once considered WvW balance we wouldn’t have dire/TB gear, durability runes, perplexity runes, boon-sharing, damage mitigation food, skill coefficients that effectively got double normal profession skills from HoT on the new weapons, massive passive defense increases… the list goes on.

It’ll become increasingly more unpleasant to play as time goes on. I’m hoping there’s some good competition in this department soon enough, frankly.

Xillllix.3485:

Playing staff elementalist right now in WvW is just the most unpleasant and frustrating experience you can have in this game, or in a MMO.

Nothing hits because of the huge delay between skills, damage is way below what other class can do with much easier means, and even with super high toughness you still get 1-1-1-1 to death before your first skill goes off if you don’t have permanent protection upkeep.

In PvP it’s the same, you’re just good at healing others and there is no build variety. Great job!

Compared to how fun the class was to play on release, this is complete kitten balance work by a team that apparently doesn’t care if in a PvP match with 10 players 8 of them are guardians.

I’m taking another break from this game. See you in 6 months or a year maybe, if the balance team ever actually balance the game instead of destroying the gameplay and build variety.

Had a bit of fun switching class to Revenants and killing other elementalists pressing the “2” key, but then I realized playing classes that I don’t enjoy because my main class is broken is not worth the space on my hard drive.

This is the first time I’m hearing staff elementalists complain about not being useful in WvW.

There are a few stand outs for me that are a little over tuned. Bunker Druid, Condi Chronophantasma, this thief, heralds and warriors.

With the nerfs to scrapper two patches in a row i feel they are in a good spot. These other classes just need a little shaving for balance in WvW. Most of the core specs are i think where the HoT specs should be brought down to.

Some of the core classes could do with a review, how many Spirit Weapon guardians are there? What about spirit specced Rangers? Ventari Revs? Anet could remove spirit weapons from the game and no-one would notice(or care), same goes with a lot of other useless traits/abilities in this game.

It seems most classes have only a handful of specs that are useful. The rest is just trash to donate bags.

Seems an ultimate balance to the classes would be a impossible task given the fact that builds and play style can very so much.A lot of what’s happening is the current Meta of boon stacking .And like all previous Meta’s ,things just go to the extreme because that’s what wins battles .What needs to happen is to bust the Meta and pour on the boon stripping. That’s really the only balance that can work.Players need to play a part in the balancing as well.I think the best thing to do is just let people play what they want and how they want.Because in the end it’s really about having fun.

I think some people here are waaaaay underestimating how little Anet cares about wvw. There have been several changes that made for extremely oppressive play such as venomshare, stab nerf, HoT powercreep, etc that have all had significant impact on crushing the life out of a fairly unique and fun gamemode in the mmo marketspace.

Naix.8156:

I think some people here are waaaaay underestimating how little Anet cares about wvw. There have been several changes that made for extremely oppressive play such as venomshare, stab nerf, HoT powercreep, etc that have all had significant impact on crushing the life out of a fairly unique and fun gamemode in the mmo marketspace.

Well isnt powercreep what people want? People always cry on this forum about how a 5 man group should be able to wipe 25 man with unlocked AoE, no restrictions and pure dps or how their underpopulated server is supposed to beat T1 because they are hardcore and everyone else isnt. We still see threads about it pop up every month or so.

Infusion.7149:

Xillllix.3485:

Playing staff elementalist right now in WvW is just the most unpleasant and frustrating experience you can have in this game, or in a MMO.

Nothing hits because of the huge delay between skills, damage is way below what other class can do with much easier means, and even with super high toughness you still get 1-1-1-1 to death before your first skill goes off if you don’t have permanent protection upkeep.

In PvP it’s the same, you’re just good at healing others and there is no build variety. Great job!

Compared to how fun the class was to play on release, this is complete kitten balance work by a team that apparently doesn’t care if in a PvP match with 10 players 8 of them are guardians.

I’m taking another break from this game. See you in 6 months or a year maybe, if the balance team ever actually balance the game instead of destroying the gameplay and build variety.

Had a bit of fun switching class to Revenants and killing other elementalists pressing the “2” key, but then I realized playing classes that I don’t enjoy because my main class is broken is not worth the space on my hard drive.

This is the first time I’m hearing staff elementalists complain about not being useful in WvW.

he said unpleasant and frustrating, which dmf staff ele is. i’ve been playing healbot way more often than dmg now and even guys that organise squad ask for healbots, which are more useful to their squad especially when it’s laggy. I can give up to that heal tick as on pic just by standing around. dmg staff gets evaporated in laggy fights and can’t really do much dmg anyway.

ANet gave up on WvW balance when they started removing amulets from PvP.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

I can give up to that heal tick as on pic just by standing around.

Wtf kind of magic do you use for that lol. My full cleric/monk/heal sigils/heal food ele top out at ~720 ticks unless buffed by other players (which isnt just standing around)

the max i’ve seen was 968 mist/655 regen but that was with the food that gives 200 heal power for 10s on heal skill use

where i can’t have heal efficiency, i got heal power max out including infusions. that with stacks/food can heal 840-870 mist, over 900 only with a little cheat – having ice bow (+180 heal power). it’s rather clunky to use but a nice boost to non wep skill heals.

it’s funny how earlier people shunned healing in wvw, it wasn’t crazy high as now but still high enough to carry a group of people through anything.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

it’s funny how earlier people shunned healing in wvw, it wasn’t crazy high as now but still high enough to carry a group of people through anything.

Healing power is still kinda weak, it only makes sense on ele’s and I guess druids (what group runs druids though?) so it could probably use some buffs. It’s not like it could ever be OP either, since poison is such a great counter to healing specs and it’s so easy to apply. Although I guess then there’s the problem of resistance….

Anet fix ur game plz

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Infusion.7149:

Xillllix.3485:

Playing staff elementalist right now in WvW is just the most unpleasant and frustrating experience you can have in this game, or in a MMO.

Nothing hits because of the huge delay between skills, damage is way below what other class can do with much easier means, and even with super high toughness you still get 1-1-1-1 to death before your first skill goes off if you don’t have permanent protection upkeep.

In PvP it’s the same, you’re just good at healing others and there is no build variety. Great job!

Compared to how fun the class was to play on release, this is complete kitten balance work by a team that apparently doesn’t care if in a PvP match with 10 players 8 of them are guardians.

I’m taking another break from this game. See you in 6 months or a year maybe, if the balance team ever actually balance the game instead of destroying the gameplay and build variety.

Had a bit of fun switching class to Revenants and killing other elementalists pressing the “2” key, but then I realized playing classes that I don’t enjoy because my main class is broken is not worth the space on my hard drive.

This is the first time I’m hearing staff elementalists complain about not being useful in WvW.

he said unpleasant and frustrating, which dmg staff ele is. i’ve been playing healbot way more often than dmg now and even guys that organise squad ask for healbots, which are more useful to their squad especially when it’s laggy. I can give up to that heal tick as on pic just by standing around. dmg staff gets evaporated in laggy fights and can’t really do much dmg anyway.

Well if you sit in water attunement on a staff ele you are never going to do much damage. A delayed ice spike is about it. Also it is likely a team comp /coordination issue. If everyone on the enemy team is spamming boons you need boon strips.

Staff ele only does its main damage on fire attunement (lava font / meteor shower). Air attunement is a joke if you’re at staff range and don’t have line of sight, earth attunement is semi-workable if you have condition damage spec (some pieces of celestial/Sinister/etc).

In this boon meta, if you run a tempest with high toughness and auras you’re better off with Dagger+warhorn. IMO save the staff for AoE-ing walls with meteor shower and taking down siege with auto + lava font + meteor shower. With the changes that have conditions damaging siege , condi reaper with staff is stronger for suppressing walls compared to staff ele. The advantage to ele staff is the radius of meteor shower.

at least in the old days, healing/tank builds were balanced because you’d hit like a wet noodle. With quickness thrown into the mix, groups can effectively double their DPS without losing any of their tankyness or sustain.

quickness was balanced when it wasn’t a boon

anet should just cap all boon type to 10 seconds. that way classes that actively give a boon will become more valuable then classes that can build up high duration of it.

Infusion.7149:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Infusion.7149:

Xillllix.3485:

Playing staff elementalist right now in WvW is just the most unpleasant and frustrating experience you can have in this game, or in a MMO.

Nothing hits because of the huge delay between skills, damage is way below what other class can do with much easier means, and even with super high toughness you still get 1-1-1-1 to death before your first skill goes off if you don’t have permanent protection upkeep.

In PvP it’s the same, you’re just good at healing others and there is no build variety. Great job!

Compared to how fun the class was to play on release, this is complete kitten balance work by a team that apparently doesn’t care if in a PvP match with 10 players 8 of them are guardians.

I’m taking another break from this game. See you in 6 months or a year maybe, if the balance team ever actually balance the game instead of destroying the gameplay and build variety.

Had a bit of fun switching class to Revenants and killing other elementalists pressing the “2” key, but then I realized playing classes that I don’t enjoy because my main class is broken is not worth the space on my hard drive.

This is the first time I’m hearing staff elementalists complain about not being useful in WvW.

he said unpleasant and frustrating, which dmg staff ele is. i’ve been playing healbot way more often than dmg now and even guys that organise squad ask for healbots, which are more useful to their squad especially when it’s laggy. I can give up to that heal tick as on pic just by standing around. dmg staff gets evaporated in laggy fights and can’t really do much dmg anyway.

Well if you sit in water attunement on a staff ele you are never going to do much damage. A delayed ice spike is about it. Also it is likely a team comp /coordination issue. If everyone on the enemy team is spamming boons you need boon strips.

Staff ele only does its main damage on fire attunement (lava font / meteor shower). Air attunement is a joke if you’re at staff range and don’t have line of sight, earth attunement is semi-workable if you have condition damage spec (some pieces of celestial/Sinister/etc).

In this boon meta, if you run a tempest with high toughness and auras you’re better off with Dagger+warhorn. IMO save the staff for AoE-ing walls with meteor shower and taking down siege with auto + lava font + meteor shower. With the changes that have conditions damaging siege , condi reaper with staff is stronger for suppressing walls compared to staff ele. The advantage to ele staff is the radius of meteor shower.

A healbot ele will still have 2000+ power and swap attunements just as much as any other ele. Soothing mists last 8 seconds and waterfields still have cooldowns, remember?

Sure you cant reach zerker ele kind of damage but when in fire and buffed by the group you put out enough damage to support. Problem with dagger is that if your zerg need to stay at a distance due to enemy bombs/outnumbering you, your damage drops signifcantly. Staff is more balanced.

Eles are balanced, it’s the revs and boonshare mesmers (and maybe even guardians) that need to be reworked.

MrFluffy.9307:

Eles are balanced, it’s the revs and boonshare mesmers (and maybe even guardians) that need to be reworked.

Guardian boons have low duration even with high boon duration.
Besides save yourself guardian as low access to boons.
Virtues is another source of some boons still not every one run shouts or virtus traitline, it is far form beign optimal.

MrFluffy.9307:

Eles are balanced, it’s the revs and boonshare mesmers (and maybe even guardians) that need to be reworked.

If you run a pug tag or drive a guild, you’ll understand why a guard need so many boons. You feel like a ping pong ball most of the time.

But on the flip side, the boon meta is sorta getting old and boring. Doesn’t seem to diversify the game. Get a guild, run the boon meta, you’re good to go as a raid guild.

RodOfDeath.5247, sadly gw2 is heavy gimmick dependant, if they tone this down, they will create something else…

RodOfDeath.5247:

MrFluffy.9307:

Eles are balanced, it’s the revs and boonshare mesmers (and maybe even guardians) that need to be reworked.

If you run a pug tag or drive a guild, you’ll understand why a guard need so many boons. You feel like a ping pong ball most of the time.

But on the flip side, the boon meta is sorta getting old and boring. Doesn’t seem to diversify the game. Get a guild, run the boon meta, you’re good to go as a raid guild.

I get why guards need boons, but long duration protection and quickness break the game. Resistance completely destroyed condi compositions and protection + dwarf ulti destroys power builds. Fights are basically decided by whatever group runs the tankiest compo with the most sustain. It’s extremely boring and needs to be reworked.

Despite having played and owning fully ascended geared boonshare mesmer/guard & rev I genuinely think it’s within the best interests of the game’s balancing that we seriously need to take a look at profession’s boon sharing capabilities and tone things down, especially for the sake of large scale WvW combat.

I could propose a max cap on the duration of shared boons. Instead of insta-sharing your 8+ mins of free swiftness with someone it would be hard capped e.g; only a minute. For other boons it could vary; 40 seconds of protection could be capped at maybe 10 seconds or less. Enough for a moment before an engagement, not completely off the rails here’s your 2+ mins of free regen guys and a PLENTIFUL free serving of quickness to go along with it all the while spamming Inspiration Signet etc…

It is very tiresome and boring to play in the current meta of sustainable, passive-spamming, plethora of AoE skills and boonsharing monsters. It is not fun anymore. We need to break out of this ‘fire and forget’ meta and focus on active abilities that either make or break your move/actions; skill and reaction time.

Hence stating this it would be wise to take a look at the power-creep with certain skills as well. One could argue the result of all the power-creep has us locked into this abundance of shared boons & tanky skills/sustain orientated builds else we’d be obliterated by mindless spamming of these power-creeping skills. Yes, I still have a gripe with Coalescence of Ruin when brain dead skills come to mind… you’re literally Oprah Boonspree dishing out Robert Baratheon train slaps to the face and it’s just ridiculous beyond manners.

I agree with whoever suggested bringing boons in line with others; Resistance tweaked to -33% incoming condition damage instead of full 100% MC Hammer can’t touch this mode.

I’m not sure what else I’d suggest other than having wider access of boon-stripping skills in the game to combat these so called un-killable boon-sharing blobs.

Would be most appreciated if ANet would delve into this topic and balance things accordingly.. I can only hope…

MrFluffy.9307:

Fights are basically decided by whatever group runs the tankiest compo with the most sustain. It’s extremely boring and needs to be reworked.

And before that it was decided by who could range kite the most behind heavy AoE bombs. And before that it was decided by who brought the biggest melee train. And before that it was decided by who could actually see the enemy since culling was kittened.

What will ever be good enough? We’ve basicly gone through everything, except maybe the single target thieves supported by full nomad eles meta.

Dawdler.8521:

MrFluffy.9307:

Fights are basically decided by whatever group runs the tankiest compo with the most sustain. It’s extremely boring and needs to be reworked.

And before that it was decided by who could range kite the most behind heavy AoE bombs. And before that it was decided by who brought the biggest melee train. And before that it was decided by who could actually see the enemy since culling was kittened.

What will ever be good enough? We’ve basicly gone through everything, except maybe the single target thieves supported by full nomad eles meta.

When ANet can balance the game appropriately via SKILLful abilities instead of implementing pilot-mode thoughtless, spammy skills/boons/traits that fuel the mess we’re currently in now.

A game where using your active abilities in a team composition will determine who’s more skilled, disciplined better instead of being able to face tank whatever is thrown at you all the while dishing out brain dead DPS and come frolicking back into the fight moments later with ten million boons plastered on your face sponsored by Oprah Boonspree revs across the board.

I probably wasn’t around when culling was a thing. Yes pirate ship meta was horrible, along with melee-train in a completely unfair regard.. ANet seems to have found a decent acceptable balance regarding stability. Players now engage, unfortunately they are engaging with the previously mentioned cereal bowl of boons and pathetic passive skills implemented/tweaked into the game over the course of HoT.

Gameplay will never be balanced 100%, but it would be nice if the developers actually showed a little thought & care into the assessment of skills/mechanics etc before dumping it into the game and no doubt, completely ignoring their mistakes and/or letting those mistakes rot for too long. It’s always too long and the damage is done or irreversible.

Anet should take the top 5 skills/traits for each class and adjust them down a bit each month. Do the same for the bottom ones only adjust them to be more powerful. Keep going on each class until all skills/traits are close to the median average in usage.

Infusion.7149:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Infusion.7149:

Xillllix.3485:

Playing staff elementalist right now in WvW is just the most unpleasant and frustrating experience you can have in this game, or in a MMO.

Nothing hits because of the huge delay between skills, damage is way below what other class can do with much easier means, and even with super high toughness you still get 1-1-1-1 to death before your first skill goes off if you don’t have permanent protection upkeep.

In PvP it’s the same, you’re just good at healing others and there is no build variety. Great job!

Compared to how fun the class was to play on release, this is complete kitten balance work by a team that apparently doesn’t care if in a PvP match with 10 players 8 of them are guardians.

I’m taking another break from this game. See you in 6 months or a year maybe, if the balance team ever actually balance the game instead of destroying the gameplay and build variety.

Had a bit of fun switching class to Revenants and killing other elementalists pressing the “2” key, but then I realized playing classes that I don’t enjoy because my main class is broken is not worth the space on my hard drive.

This is the first time I’m hearing staff elementalists complain about not being useful in WvW.

he said unpleasant and frustrating, which dmg staff ele is. i’ve been playing healbot way more often than dmg now and even guys that organise squad ask for healbots, which are more useful to their squad especially when it’s laggy. I can give up to that heal tick as on pic just by standing around. dmg staff gets evaporated in laggy fights and can’t really do much dmg anyway.

Well if you sit in water attunement on a staff ele you are never going to do much damage. A delayed ice spike is about it. Also it is likely a team comp /coordination issue. If everyone on the enemy team is spamming boons you need boon strips.

Staff ele only does its main damage on fire attunement (lava font / meteor shower). Air attunement is a joke if you’re at staff range and don’t have line of sight, earth attunement is semi-workable if you have condition damage spec (some pieces of celestial/Sinister/etc).

In this boon meta, if you run a tempest with high toughness and auras you’re better off with Dagger+warhorn. IMO save the staff for AoE-ing walls with meteor shower and taking down siege with auto + lava font + meteor shower. With the changes that have conditions damaging siege , condi reaper with staff is stronger for suppressing walls compared to staff ele. The advantage to ele staff is the radius of meteor shower.

i am amazed by your skill to estimate my playstyle